In the time since my own near death experience, I have to admit some survivor’s guilt. Once you realize it can all be over in the matter of a moment or a part of the day, you wonder why you got to survive and someone else didn’t. That’s even more true when you pay your respects to someone younger than you. It’s even more true when you know their family and know they’re good people.
On Tuesday night I stood in line for two hours and fifty minutes at the viewing of a young, fallen Easton fire fighter. I arrive there at 7:30pm, after putting my dog down (more on that later), and figured I’d be able to get right through. Instead, it was the longest continual stand I have done in over a year. It was worth it. One thing about Easton, about first responders, and about our local Lehigh Valley wrestling community (his dad was a long time official), we come out for our own. People stood calmly in the line as the 8pm end of the viewing passed and just marched along to the family procession and casket. Cops, fire fighters, EMT’s, blue collar Lehigh Valley people. The honor guard was an incredible touch.
Tyler Weidner was a good friend to my cousin. His father refereed many of my matches. Their family lives up the street. It breaks my heart that they had to endure this sudden tragedy. This young father was way, way too young to die. It’s unfair. As I said, I don’t understand life anymore. Going to things like this, I probably never will again.
Ok, I’m going to admit two things. The first is, I actually held back the worst stuff about Bob “Crooksy” Brooks, a Congressional candidate in PA-7, to this point. For a while, I felt like maybe it was overkill. You see, I told you that he stiffed his ex-mother-in-law for $55,000, then lost a lawsuit and appeal. Then since he lost and owed over $130k, he just abandoned the property in his divorce settlement and left it to his ex. You see, when I first published it, I really hoped the guy would just not run. He not only announced, but also announced his endorsement from Deadbeat Bernie Sanders and every other person not from PA-7 besides Governor Shapiro. Of course, this guy had promised Governor Shapiro (and even got a newspaper to print), but what’s the truth to him? Once I knew he was getting in, I decided to tell you a bit more about “Crooksy,” mainly that he’s a militant religious and gun nut that aligns with the 3%’ers. Then, the “working class hero” that stole from his mother-in-law decided to not even attend Labor Day Celebrations with other unions, despite being a statewide union President. He’s just lazy, frankly. Others alluded to that before. Yes, the guy is a deadbeat that stiffed his mother-in-law, it’s not even my opinion. Two courts in Pennsylvania found it. Yes, he’s a right-wing nut. Frankly though, I sat on some stuff. Criticisms from an Allentown Fire Fighter in the political spectrum made me think twice. Sure, this guy is a bum. However, I can’t tell you the last time the Fire Fighters Union and I disagreed on a major campaign. Frankly, I was conflicted.
Well, now I’m not. The other night I ran into a longtime, lifelong friend at the Phillies-Mets game, I’m talking someone who came to see me in the hospital after they chopped off my leg. He’s a fire fighter for a city in the Lehigh Valley, not an overly political guy, and he asked me a question that cut like a thousand knives- are you anti-fire fighter? I had spent three hours waiting in line at a fire fighter’s viewing the night before, I spent my early, formative years in politics organizing with fire fighters in Iowa for Presidential campaigns. Not only was it such a cut at me, to say that through a personal friend? Blaspheme. I guess I was only a friend to this particular union leadership when they didn’t support a deadbeat. Fine.
So here’s where I admit the second part- I held back all the stuff where Bob Brooks really shows you who he is. Bob “Crooksy” Brooks not only stiffed his mother-in-law, his internet history is a horrendous dumpster fire of far-right wing radical rhetoric. Not only did he post about wanting school prayer and guns on demand, “Crooksy” posted the above straight up racist bullshit. Post the 13 stars? That’s one thing. To do so and then make a point to attack Colin Kaepernick directly during the “Black Lives Matter” and kneeling controversies? Bob Brooks is showing you here who he is. He was not yet a candidate for Congress when he put this out. In fact, he hadn’t even staged his coup to be the State President of the Fire Fighters yet. Bob Brooks holds views on race that are way out of line with most civilized people, not just liberals. Most of my Republican friends wouldn’t even post this.
There’s a lot more coming about this “douchebag,” as he called Kaepernick (I don’t even really like Kaepernick, the guy openly says he didn’t vote in 2016, but this is outrageous.). Since his friend in Allentown claims I did this at the behest of a certain candidate, I will go ahead now and confirm that this came from another campaign’s opposition research people, not those of Lamont McClure (he is not paying this individual supplying it, nor is anyone on his behalf.). Later on I will post whole memos on him. Bob Brooks is in way over his head here. There’s a reason even some of his friends called him “Crooksy.” I wonder if they knew just exactly who he was? Do we think Lt. Governor Austin Davis knew he “Crooksy” was?
So I told you what I was betting last Sunday. I hit on my pitcher’s strikeouts parlay at +173. Unfortunately today isn’t a super strong day for pitching (I’ve still got you). I almost hit on my QB parlay, but Joe Burrow and Kyler Murray kind of sucked. Week one is hard. The Dolphins blew my early bird, and boy did they look worse than I could have imagined. All of my “safety” picks hit except for the Tigers. As for my dogs, the Browns covered and the Giants didn’t. Ok, so here’s today’s bets.
Jesus Luzardo OVER 6.5 strikeouts. Even when Jesus isn’t at his best, he piles up strikeouts. I took him at +100 on MGM.
Safety Special- Padres over the Rockies, money line. Honestly, this is a terrible bet, but I like to have at least one that should be a gimme. MGM had this -250 and FanDuel at -245. Don’t bother if you won’t put a few bucks behind it.
Strikeout Parlay- Mackenzie Gore 4+, Luzardo 6+, Gavin Williams 4+ strikeouts. These were the only three tonight that I felt reasonably decent about. FanDuel had it at +139. I generally like these bets. You take a larger number of pitchers so you can buy them down to a reasonable number of strikeouts.
Daniels and Love– I don’t particularly love anything to bet on this game. I took Love for 200+ passing yards, Daniels for 175+ passing yards, and Daniels to run for 30+. This is +118 on FanDuel. Honestly, looking over this game, I think Vegas has this one pretty well figured out.
I thought about going edgelord and betting on Washington because everyone is wrong to think the Packers are great for beating the Lions last week, but Washington didn’t look incredible in decimating the helpless Giants, and they’re on the road. I really wanted to throw you some college football action here, but I didn’t like anything for Thursday or Friday. So that’s all I’ve got until the weekend.
If you walk into a convenience store right now, there are kids buying cigarettes, or college kids in bars buying booze, who were not alive on 9/11/2001. There are kids serving in the United States military in foreign countries right now who were not alive on 9/11. I can state this kind of unequivocally now- 9/11 is a long time ago, it is now just a moment in history. There’s a fairly good argument that those moments on that Tuesday morning 24 years ago changed the course of history more than any other point in this century, and yet, it’s not really a part of the political conversation now. We are no longer in Afghanistan, the war that was a direct response to the attacks on America that day. The moment of national unity that 9/11 ignited is most certainly dead and in the ground.
Imagine having a President with 90% approval today, albeit only because society rallied around him. George W. Bush basically exhausted all of that good will and probably is not a President we should emulate today. With that said, imagine any figure in American life taking a bullhorn and telling the assembled first responders at Ground Zero “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” The unity in that moment in time was remarkable. It’s something we have never felt since. It’s something we probably will never hear again. Not long after this, it was all gone amidst fights over Iraq, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, and all the other political wars of that moment. But at least for a moment, we had it.
I remember everything about that day. I remember driving to school and remarking that gas was under a dollar. I remember that the sky was a perfect blue, almost completely cloudless here, roughly 75 miles from Manhattan. I remember that we were supposed to have a cross-country meet that day at home. I remember being in Latin I (I had spots to kill as a senior) and saying to a friend named Tarin that this was “definitely al-Qaeda,” (I read a lot of news back then) when we honestly really didn’t know yet. I remember being sent back to homeroom after that period. I remember sitting in senior lunch (privileges to go out to lunch hadn’t started yet) with my friends and talking to our principal about what was happening. I can almost recite the whole day from memory. I remember the weeks after too. I remember going to New York City, to Shanksville, and to Washington, D.C., all somewhat by chance, and seeing the destruction. I remember the terror of the unknown that followed. I was in the Anthrax scare in the U.S. Senate office buildings (I went to meet Rick Santorum. Yes, really.) and remember being quarantined for a night after a girl with me got sick. I remember the military members with machine guns at the Eagles-Giants game in October, the first Monday Night game in New York after the attacks. I think the enduring image though, for me and for everyone else, was still watching the first responders run into the Trade Centers, and not come out until we saw them dug out by their own colleagues in the weeks that came after. It was sick. It was disgusting. They were the best of humanity. The terrorists truly did represent all that encompasses the worst of humanity.
I’m going to be honest- before 9/11, I really didn’t like New York City. I grew up going there, even as a kid. It was big. There really wasn’t that much for me to do as a kid. There was traffic. My family liked going there for stuff that I really didn’t love at the time. I hate all of their sports teams. If I’m even more honest, I found a distaste for Washington, D.C. as a young adult that took me until years later to get over. Today they are two of my favorite places to go. One of the things that 9/11 made me realize though is that to billions of people around the globe, New York and Washington are quite literally the most recognizable symbols of the United States, and possibly the Western World. I am incredibly lucky to live within a driving distance of either. Part of the reason that cowardly bastards who join petty terrorist organizations wanted to harm them is because they represent the best of us in many, many ways.
That’s the other point that I think needs to be made here. Literally only people from these places could have endured these attacks and dusted themselves off and moved forward. They are resilient people. They’re fighters. For all of the mud that gets thrown at some of our biggest cities, I think it’s important that we remember, these people are tough. Real tough. And proud. And after 9/11, they the victims were the example for the rest of us on how to move forward. If you grew up or lived in the area that I lived in, you remarked for years how every town along I-78 from the city out here to Eastern Pennsylvania had flags on the overpasses and memorials to remember their residents who died in the attacks. It was literally every single one.
I think it’s important to also give Shanksville their props too. The tiny Somerset County town and it’s surrounding areas were not ready for Flight 93 to crash there that day. No one was. They rebuilt though, and built a beautiful memorial to the victims. Their Western Pennsylvania grit got put on full display.
As I said, this is all just history now. George W. Bush is a private citizen living in the Dallas area, and the “Bush dynasty” in politics is over. Osama Bin Laden is dead, and I have to say that celebrating his death outside of the White House was enjoyable and well deserved. There are millions of voting aged Americans who have no recollection of 9/11 or were not alive. It is simply a part of the history books now.
It’s up to us to tell that story now. For the sake of history, we all should. We are all the primary sources of how we experienced that day, and the days that followed. I hope we never forget that.
5:45 AM – Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al-Omari, two of the intended hijackers, pass through security at the Portland International Jetport in Maine. They board a commuter flight to Boston Logan International Airport, they then board American Airlines Flight 11.
7:59 AM –Flight 11 takes off from Boston, headed for Los Angeles, California. There are 76 passengers, 11 crew members, and 5 hijackers on board.
8:15 AM – United Airlines Flight 175 takes off from Boston, also headed for Los Angeles. There are 51 passengers, 9 crew members, and 5 hijackers on board.
8:19 AM – A flight attendant on Flight 11, Betty Ann Ong, alerts ground personnel that a hijacking is underway and that the cockpit is unreachable.
8:20 AM – American Airlines Flight 77 takes off from Dulles, outside of Washington, DC, headed for Los Angeles. There are 53 passengers, 6 crew members, and 5 hijackers on board.
8:24 AM – Mohamed Atta, a hijacker on Flight 11, unintentionally alerts air controllers in Boston to the attack. He meant to press the button that allowed him to talk to the passengers on his flight.
8:37 AM – After hearing the broadcast from Atta on Flight 11, Boston air traffic control alerts the US Air Force’s Northeast Defense Sector, who then mobilize the Air National Guard to follow the plane.
8:42 AM – United Flight 93 takes off from Newark, New Jersey, after a delay due to routine traffic. It was headed for San Francisco, California. There are 33 passengers, 7 crew members, and 4 hijackers are on board.
8:46 AM – Flight 11 crashes into the World Trade Center’s North Tower. All passengers aboard are instantly killed, and employees of the WTC are trapped above the 91st floor.
9:03 AM – Flight 175 crashes into the WTC’s South Tower. All passengers aboard are killed instantly and so are an unknown number of people in the tower.
9:05 AM – President George W. Bush, in an elementary school classroom in Florida, is informed about the hit on the second tower. His chief of staff, Andrew Card, whispers the chilling news into the president’s ear. Bush later wrote about his response: “I made the decision not to jump up immediately and leave the classroom. I didn’t want to rattle the kids. I wanted to project a sense of calm… I had been in enough crises to know that the first thing the leader has to do is to project calm.” (Miller Center)
9:28 AM – Hijackers attack on Flight 93.
9:37 AM – Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon. All passengers aboard are instantly killed and so are 125 civilian and military personnel in the building.
9:45 AM – US airspace is shut down under Operation Yellow Ribbon. All civilian aircraft are ordered to land at the nearest airport.
9:55 AM – Air Force One with President George W. Bush aboard takes off from Florida.
9:57 AM – Passengers aboard Flight 93 begin to run up toward the cockpit. Jarrah, the pilot, begins to roll the plane back and forth in an attempt to destabilize the revolt.
9:59 AM – The South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses.
10:02 AM – Flight 93 plows into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Although its ultimate target is unknown, it was likely heading for either the White House or the US Capitol.
10:18 AM – President Bush authorizes any non-grounded planes to be shot down. At that time, all four hijacked planes had already crashed but the president’s team was operating under the impression that Flight 93 was still in the air.
10:28 AM – The North Tower of the World Trade Center collapses.
10:53 AM – Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld orders the US military to move to a higher state of alert, going to DEFCON 3.
11:45 AM – Air Force 1 lands at Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, Louisiana.
12:15 PM – Airspace in the United States is completely free of all commercial and private flights.
1:30 PM – Air Force 1 leaves Barksdale.
2:30 PM – Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York City, visits the fallen Twin Towers of the World Trade Center at what becomes known as Ground Zero.
3:00 PM – Air Force 1 lands at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, and President Bush is immediately taken to a secure bunker that is capable of withstanding a nuclear attack.
4:30 PM – Air Force 1 leaves Offutt and heads back toward Andrews Air Force base near Washington, DC.
5:30 PM – Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapses.
Sometimes you meet someone at exactly the right time. They’re only going to be around for a minute, but they’re going to make a big impact on you. They’ll teach you things. They’ll bring you forward as a person. They change your trajectory.
I was not exactly a great student in my time at Moravian College. I had other priorities, we’ll say. If the class wasn’t something I knew I was interested in, I was only going to do enough to get by. Campaigns, partying, and being young were my priorities. This isn’t to say I was unsuccessful. I just didn’t care about my grades. I was class Vice-President, wrote for the school newspaper, and lead a couple clubs. I was just problematic, wild, and for a while, totally unfocused.
Ervin J. Rokke (December 12, 1939 – September 5, 2025) was a lieutenant general and President of Moravian College. He was a United States Air Force lieutenant general and president of the National Defense University.[1] During the 1980’s, as a Brigadier General in the United States Air Force, General Rokke served as the Dean of Faculty at the United States Air Force Academy.
That’s a very vanilla version of his career. But it’s the important public facing parts. Moravian goes further in depth:
According to an announcement from the U.S. Air Force Academy, Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Ervin J. Rokke was a distinguished alumnus of the U.S. Air Force Academy Class of 1962 and former Dean of the Faculty at the Academy. He furthered his education at Harvard University, earning both a master’s and a doctorate in international relations. His military career spanned 35 years, during which he held pivotal roles such as Dean of Faculty at the U.S. Air Force Academy, U.S. Air and Defense Attaché to the Soviet Union, Director of Intelligence at U.S. European Command, and President of the National Defense University.
Fortunately, he took an interest in me as a student, as did his right-hand man, a fellow retired military man named Mike Seidl. They regularly invited me to the President’s office and talked politics, the world, and my shitty grades with me. They got through to me, my senior year was a bit better, and I graduated. The quality of my education was wildly enhanced listening to people who had seen the world and lived it for real telling me about it. My professors taught me the nuts and bolts. These two guys really enhanced my thinking. I guess all that time in some of the hot spots of the globe gave them a perspective a kid from Easton didn’t have.
When I graduated in 2006, they both left town too. Dr. Rokke retired to Colorado. According to LinkedIn, so did Mike. For how much I love the west, that’s probably a good choice. I never saw them after my college years. I went on to work for a couple of Presidents, Senators, Governors, Congressmen, and State Legislators. I didn’t get rich, but damn was it a great ride. I had the most enriching, interesting career I think anyone could ever hope for. I never would have done it without them.
Week one is complete. This is probably way too early to rank the teams, but I did anyway. I put them in originalNFL draft order to start, then adjusted based on wins and losses, who they played, and how it looked. With all of that in mind, here’s my rankings from #1-32 in the NFL after week one.
Philadelphia Eagles
Buffalo Bills
Los Angeles Rams
Washington Commanders
Los Angeles Chargers
Kansas City Chiefs
Green Bay Packers
Baltimore Ravens
Minnesota Vikings
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Denver Broncos
Houston Texans
Cincinnati Bengals
Pittsburgh Steelers
Detroit Lions
Indianapolis Colts
San Francisco 49’ers
Seattle Seahawks
Chicago Bears
Atlanta Falcons
New York Jets
Arizona Cardinals
Dallas Cowboys
Las Vegas Raiders
Jacksonville Jaguars
Cleveland Browns
New England Patriots
Tennessee Titans
New Orleans Saints
Carolina Panthers
Miami Dolphins
New York Giants
Was I too hard on some teams? Yes. My feeling was some losses showed us a lot about the team losing. Some wins really didn’t inspire me a ton yet either. I need to see more from teams like the Jags, Raiders, and Cardinals, and found myself less impressed with them, than say the Jets. Is that likely to change? Yes. There are 17 more weeks of regular season football. This will move a lot.
I’ve had lots of jobs — bartender, Teamster, union leader, 20-year firefighter.
Now, the biggest problem we face is a Washington that burns working people. I’m running for Congress in one of the closest districts to take on the billionaires and big corporations holding us back. pic.twitter.com/KAyxPYYzVz
I remember the 2022 primary very well. A bunch of leftists in Philly and Pittsburgh running around Pennsylvania telling us that John Fetterman was exactly what we needed. He was going to be a fighter, for us. We needed an “authentic, blue collar fighter.” Pennsylvanians were dying for this guy that “doesn’t look like a politician.” The fact that all of the insiders were endorsing Conor Lamb and not siding with Fetterman was only more proof that he was who we needed now. Many of us raised questions. Even some of his opponents raised questions about what kind of guy he was. The progressive network in the big cities knew best though. I hated that he was our nominee, but eventually I voted for him, mostly because I think Dr. Oz is a jackass. There are days I really wish I had left that line blank.
I don’t mind that Fetterman is moderate, or that he supports Israel. I do too, to some extent. I mind that he was a fraud. He sold himself as some leftist/progressive champion, a blue collar guy from Braddock. He was no champion of the left, and he’s realistically just a trust fund kid that picked a tough blue collar town to launch his career in. It was a complete bait and switch. He wasn’t lying to me, I knew he wasn’t good. I still don’t like that he hoodwinked other people.
Well, meet Bob Brooks, now a candidate for PA-7’s Democratic nomination to Congress. Bob Brooks wants you to know that the Democratic Party forgot how to talk to working class people before he came along. Sound familiar? Yes, watch the Fetterman commercial above. It’s the same damn message, verbatim. That’s not shocking. Brooksy is literally using the same team that created the Fetterman myth. They want you to believe that he’ll come along and be different. Brooks, like Fetterman, will be a working class hero who fights for the little guy. Brooks, like Fetterman, is endorsed by Bernie Sanders. He even has the tacit Harrisburg insider support that Fetterman had when he was sitting Lt. Governor. If you just took Brooksy out of his own ads and had John Fetterman do them, there would be no skipping a beat. They both even tell you about how the steel mills left their towns (Brooks had no steel mills in his actual neighborhood). Similarly, neither actually ever did anything about it for those steelworkers, unlike opponents of their’s. Hell, Fetterman chased a black guy down the street with a shot gun because he thought he was shooting a gun- Brooksy probably agreed, he’s right with the 3%’ers on arming everyone. John Fetterman and Bob Brooks are basically the same guy, minus well…
You might be saying to yourself, “okay Rich, but Fetterman won his race.” Yes, he did, and at least for two years that was helpful on some basic level. The main difference is that John Fetterman didn’t stiff his former mother-in-law for $55k. Crooksy? Yeah, he did. Yeah, he never paid it back either. Look, it only took a few internet clicks to find. If I could do that, what will the NRCC and their allies do to defend a seat they paid tens of millions of dollars for? By the time it’s Labor Day in 2026, they will have portrayed him as the symbol of elder abuse and fraud in America. Hell, they’ll probably say he took the $55k to Wind Creek and gambled it all away while he was supposed to be on the clock working. Is it fair? Probably not. They’ll embellish the actual shitty thing he did and make it a new inquisition. Sure, Fetterman was a mess by the Fall of 2022, but he was running against a quack who made a fool of himself every time he spoke. Mackenzie just won’t speak. Problem solved for them. The Republican media machine will beat this guy over the head so badly with his transgressions that he’ll have to pick up and move after the race. That’s how politics are.
This is the choice that Democrats have to face on Brooks. Under the best case scenario, you get a carbon copy of the John Fetterman who mislead you on who he was and disappointed you as a Senator. These guys say the exact same things at the behest of the exact same people, even down to the talking points about “corporate pac money” and “stock trading” that neither of them is going to do shit about in Congress. And that’s the best case scenario. The worst case scenario? You’re nominating a “deadbeat” that the Republican Party will beat to death with the negatives that could be found without a Lexus Nexus account. You tell me what’s worse?
We are now under 20 games to go for most teams. The NL Playoff picture looks almost done- the Mets lead the Reds and Giants by 4, and the Diamondbacks and Cardinals by 4.5 games with 19 left. The real drama at this point is whether the Dodgers will hold off the Padres in the NL West race. Even the home field and bye races aren’t super closer, with Milwaukee leading Philadelphia by 5.5, and Philadelphia leading Los Angeles by 4 games. The NL Cy Young should be a wrap for Paul Scenes, while the MVP really will come down to Schwarber and Ohtani, I think. The National League intrigue is minimal.
The AL picture is a freak show, where anyone .500ish is still alive, with Seattle leading Texas by 1.5, Kansas City by 2, Cleveland by 2.5, and Tampa Bay by 4 for the last spot. New York and Boston would currently meet in the Wild Card Round, but both are in range of catching Toronto, who actually has the best record still. Seattle is clinging to life in the Wild Card race, but also is only 2.5 games back to win the AL West. Things are pretty wild in the AL at this point, with 2/3 of the league still in this thing.
With that in mind, here we go with this week’s power rankings. Teams currently in the playoffs make up 1-12. From there, I’m pretty much ranking your chances to sneak in out to about 20. From 20 to 30, I’m rating if you’re worth watching right now.
Apocalypse Vibes 