Your World Last Week, 2/16

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Welp, I spent Monday to Wednesday in the hospital last week, how was your week? Since I didn’t do last week, indulge me in doing two weeks. The Milano-Cortina Olympics are about half over now, with Norway and Italy leading the way in the medals count. Americans who have won Gold so far are Breezy Johnson (Alpine Skiing), Liz Lemley (Moguls- singles), Jordan Stolz (500m and 1000m speed skating), and the figure skating team (Ilia Malinin, Amber Glenn, Alysa Liu, Madison Chock, Evan Bates, Ellie Kam, and Danny O’Shea) . Americans who have won Silver so far are Ben Ogden (Cross-Country Skiing), Alex Hall (Freestyle Skiing), Corey Thiesse and Korey Dropkin (Mixed Doubles Curling), Ryan Cochrane-Siegle (Men’s Super G), Jaelin Kauf (Moguls-Singles and duals), Madison Chock and Evan Bates (Figure Skating Pairs-Ice Dance), and Chloe Kim (Snowboarding- Halfpipe). Americans who have won Bronze so far are Ashley Farquharson (Luge), Jacqueline Wiles/Paula Moltzan (Alpine Combined), Jessie Diggins (Cross-Country Skiing), and Liz Lemley (Moguls- duals). Lindsey Vonn did ski after her torn ACL- and ended up getting more hurt, sadly. Mikaela Shiffrin lost. “Quad God” Ilia Malinin stunningly fell and finished eighth. On the positive side, both hockey teams are steamrolling everyone so far on their way to the medal rounds. We need Bode Miller back, he was entertaining.

We celebrated Valentine’s Day, a holiday with mixed historical context, not to mention overpriced food specials. The government is partially shut down over ICE funding, but also ICE is funded by the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” but also government employees will start getting laid off soon. Don’t even try to make sense of that. Nick Castellanos got cut by the Phillies this week, not because he likes to drink beer in the dugout, but mostly because he wasn’t good anymore, which is sad, because I kind of liked him. The Seahawks won the Super Bowl, which is about as “meh” as can be for an Eagles fan, but they were pretty good. The Patriots did not look very good, making for a terrible game. Green Day opened the Super Bowl, and in case you were wondering, they played “American Idiot.” Bad Bunny played halftime, and was disapproved of by a majority of Americans who were also mad that they could not understand Spanish, a language that has been in America basically since Europeans colonized it. For the rest of us, we were reminded that we still like hot Latinas dancing, for some reason there were telephone poles, and Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin were there. Savannah Guthrie’s mom is still missing, despite several people now having been detained for questioning. Unrelated, but the FBI Director is a podcast star. Tyler Reddick won the Daytona 500 and Michael Jordan showed up to hoist the trophy, because he’s Michael Jordan and you’re not. Barack Obama did an interview and he decried the “clown show” on social media from his successor, and also told us aliens are real (although he’s walking that back to mean they “probably” are real). In other words, Barack Obama is just telling you what you already knew. Pam Bondi went up to Capitol Hill to yell at members of Congress in a hearing that was as useless as almost all others, it was just offensive because she tried to act like the Epstein files aren’t a big deal. Tom Homan says the occupation of Minneapolis is over and just a small force will remain. Parts of California could get 8 feet of snow this week. Kid Rock’s festival tour sales suck and a couple of events might be canceled. Iran and the United States are getting ready for talks. I think that’s all the news I have for you this week. Have a great week.

Planet Allentown and that Debate the Other Night

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

I don’t know Ana Tiburcio, but I feel bad for her. Getting up and debating in a televised setting for any office takes a level of confidence that like 99% of people don’t have. Then you add on that a lot of the people criticizing her now were going to say she sounded out of her depth no matter what, and it’s kind of a no win situation. She was debating a perennial candidate in Bob Smith, so he’s comfortable being lost up there, and she’s supposed to win, and nothing she did was going to be good enough, and yeah- it’s hard as hell. I want to give her some grace for that debate performance because I know it isn’t easy.

With that said, we are talking about an election that decides who controls a 102-101 election, and by extension, the well being of millions of Pennsylvanians. Tiburcio is supposed to win, and should, but it’s fair to expect her to do some real basic things in a debate. She had a job to introduce herself and her work to the public in the debate. When your leading achievement that *you* cite on the school board is community engagement, you need to go into some depth for us about that engagement- what you’ve learned, some precise stories you’ve heard, some details. I wasn’t sure from that debate if she had mastered her current job, let alone shown us she’s ready for this one. She also had a job to introduce us to her opponent. When she had a chance to ask him three questions, she decided on the second one to say, “I think I know enough about him already.” That’s wonderful. You as the candidate aren’t the audience. The voters are. They need to know more about him, and you have to assume they don’t know yet. When you combine these problems with the consistent answer of “I’ll ask the legislators,” a reasonable person could be left standing there asking, is the Democratic candidate as prepared to actually do the job as the Republican? Or is she literally being put forward as literally a proxy vote in that district for the other two state reps in Allentown? I’ll leave out the criticisms of the bizarre things (calling Josh Siegel a “five… out of ten” in the seat before her because she couldn’t find his office was weird shit), but I think it would be fair to ask if this is going to be an independent person and legislator in Harrisburg or if everything down to district office staff will be picked in the other two offices.

Which leads us to the subject of Ce-Ce Gerlach in this race. Ce-Ce is a bit to my left, as I think you could guess from the blog. With that said, no competent adult watched that debate and can honestly say Ce-Ce wouldn’t have been a more prepared candidate to do this job in March when the winner is seated. She was passed over because the folks pulling the strings here, the other major electeds in Allentown, don’t want her. I’m not sure why one blessed voter in Allentown should care what they want? When the other option was someone who was working on state issues as an aide to the State Senator, I think that was easy to excuse. He was ready to do the job. That does not seem to be the case now. If this races doesn’t change (i.e.- add candidates) between now and May, I have literally no argument for why a person should not vote for Ce-Ce Gerlach. In fact, I’ll be honest, they should. If that upsets some of the folks who are “leaders” in Allentown, so be it.

Allentown has weird politics. In the past year the Mayor beat a “Make Allentown Great Again” style candidate 80-20%, a noose was planted in City Hall, allegedly by the person who claimed it was put on their desk, and the “conservative” wing of City Council went away for the first time in forever. Don’t get this twisted, Easton and Bethlehem have their quirks too, but Allentown can be on it’s own planet sometimes. While the utter disgusting corruption of the Pawlowski era is gone now, the old idea of a couple of leaders sitting around and dividing out the spoils among the peasants that are loyal to them is still there. We’re seeing the ugly side effects of that manifest themselves in this race now. It isn’t a pretty sight to watch.

Why Pinsley Should Stay in PA-7 Instead of Running for PA State Senate 16

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Mark Pinsley is running for Congress right now in PA-7, and at least according to Facebook, still has an even scheduled for this weekend. He should keep it up. Of course, the street rumors are churning that Pinsley will soon drop out of the race to run for the 16th District in the PA Senate. The preferred story out there is pretty predictable- that seat is winnable, the writing is on the wall, and he lacks money. Those are all pretty good reasons to make the move, if we’re being honest. The problem is, these stories are like a night club, you can get in, or if you know someone who owns the place, you can really get in. You see, Mark Pinsley is a serious problem for Bob “Crooksy” Brooks, the preferred candidate of the Harrisburg Good Ole’ Boys. They want to make Crooksy the “working class hero” of the left in this race, hence his endorsement from Bernie Sanders, but it’s all fraudulent. A lot of people are realizing that Mark has actually been honestly talking like a leftist populist for a long time. They are going to have to astroturf that kind of movement for Crooksy. So the more juicy version of this story that people who know, but don’t like it, are trying to get out there is this- the 16th State Senate District nomination to take on Jarrett Coleman can be had, if he just moves over to that race, from this one. They may insinuate support or money for that, I’m not privy to that, so it’s not clear.

Look, if in fact Mark can actually go to that race and cleanly clear the field and flip it, then he should do that. That’s not clear though. First, he did lose by nearly 10% last time. Second, this race is going to be anything but clean and clear. The Bucks County Democrats chose to endorse Pennridge School Board Member Bradley Merkl-Gump, who defeated the “Moms for Liberty” slate on that school board in 2023. That endorsement has come under fire by activists and other candidates alike. Lehigh County resident Juan Vargas decided he’s just going to run anyway. Ruby-red Richlandtown Mayor Wayne Codner, a Black veteran winning in deep red territory, is likely to run. And well, the commentary on the endorsement was basically awful in the article. The Red, Wine, and Blue organizer said no one likes it, a Democratic consultant said the party has no idea what they’re doing. This primary is going to be ugly and brutal.

There’s a fairly decent chance that Pinsley can win this primary. He has been the nominee before, he’s an elected official in the county with more voters, and he’s run before. That’s far from a sure thing though. And then there’s the question of whether he should want that. Does he want to run as an anti-establishment candidate against candidates who are literally living the anti-establishment mantra right now? Does he want to win an ugly primary and spend any money he has trying to claw through it? Does he really believe all the state leaders and labor unions saying the seat is open right now are going to fund him at the level he needs to beat a Yass-funded candidate? Yeah, there’s lots of maybes there. Maybes don’t often become yes’s, and they never do when you need a bunch of them in a row.

Yeah, I’m sure everyone is telling him he has no shot to win the Congressional race. I don’t think he’s a favorite or anything. But if he’s going to roll the dice on coming up with a flush here, why not go for more consequential victory?