We have a new #1. At least for now? Sure, Seattle took over the lead in the NFC by themselves on Thursday. Now all they have to do is beat Carolina and San Francisco on the road to hold it. No big deal. The Rams have a stupid easy finish, so there’s no margin for error for Seattle. Meanwhile San Francisco and Chicago remain alive as well, and well, they play each other this week. Green Bay still could factor into everything, and they finish with a desperate Baltimore team and a game in Minnesota. Philadelphia will be #2 or 3, and it’s probably three, but they have a tough game in Buffalo before coming home for Washington.
In the AFC everything is a mess. Denver probably still finishes first, but the Chargers still can catch them for the division, and they just lost to Jacksonville, who can also catch them. New England loses the tiebreaker to Denver, but that’s assuming they don’t win the top spot outright. Of course, if they don’t win out, they may not even hold off Buffalo. By the way, Houston is right in this thing too. And Pittsburgh, they just keep winning.
You knew this was coming. Crooksy’s allies released polling, and well, it was garbage. Change Research did the poll entirely online, and juiced it up as far as they could for Crooksy. It was much lower quality than earlier polling that showed Crooksy going nowhere. This garbage push poll omits Mark Pinsley, the race’s real far left-winger altogether, puts Crooksy first in their order, and waters down the other candidates bios about as far as they could. It’s almost like they wanted a result that matched their narrative?
Bob Brooks was a Bethlehem firefighter for twenty years and is the current president of the Pennsylvania Firefighters Association. As a former dishwasher, bartender, warehouse worker, and now a voice for Pennsylvania’s firefighters, Bob Brooks knows what it takes to fight for working people concerned about rising costs. He wants to make the rich pay their fair share of taxes and tackle rising prices. His broad appeal has won him the endorsement of Governor Josh Shapiro and Bernie Sanders.
Ryan Crosswell is the son of a special education teacher and small business owner who became a Marine and federal prosecutor. At the Justice Department’s public integrity unit, he investigated corruption in government and had a long track record of prosecutions. When Donal Trump became president, he resigned on principle. He is running for Congress to be a voice in Washington for Pennsylvania families.
Carol Orbando-Derstine was born in Columbia and immigrated to the US when she was three. After graduating from Penn State, she worked in a Head Start program and became the executive director of two Lehigh Valley non profits. She also worked as a regional manager for U.S. Senator Bob Casey. As the first Latina running in the 7th Congressional District, Carol understands local families’ challenges, and she has the experience to deliver real solutions.
Lamont McClure is a lawyer and longtime member of the Northampton County Council. He is the current Northampton County Executive and is known for his work to protect workers and address the fentanyl crisis. McClure stopped the sale of the county’s nursing home to a for-profit company and prevented warehouses from destroying hundreds of acres of open space. He has won praise for improving county services.
Now, here’s what the PPP Poll back in the Summer said about all five candidates:
Carol Obando-Derstine, is an engineer who has dedicated her life to her community. Immigrating from Colombia at three, she overcame financial and language barriers and now holds two master’s degrees. She worked in a Head Start program and became executive director of SkillsUSA Council and the Children’s Coalition of the Lehigh Valley and has taught at Northampton Community College. Carol spent nearly a decade working on energy issues at PPL Electric Utilities helping people and companies lower their utility bills. Do you find this a very convincing, somewhat convincing, or not a convincing reason to vote for Carol Obando-Derstine?
Here’s the next one: Ryan Crosswell is the proud son of a special education teacher and small business owner. After 9/11 he joined the United States Marine Corps, and he still serves as a Lt. Col. in the Marine Corps Reserve. After the Marines, Ryan became a federal prosecutor, serving in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Baton Rouge, San Diego, and Washington, D.C., prosecuting fraudsters, violent criminals, and drug traffickers. Most recently, Ryan served in the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section but resigned rather than following politically motivated orders. Do you find this a very convincing, somewhat convincing, or not a convincing reason to vote for Ryan Crosswell?
Here’s the next one: Mark Pinsley is the Lehigh County Controller and a local small business owner. He put himself through college by enlisting in the Army Reserves and working for his grandfather’s business, then raised money to start his own company after graduation. Prior to becoming Controller, he served as a South Whitehall Township Commissioner. As Lehigh County Controller, he has investigated Children and Youth Services to help parents who had their kids taken away without cause, and he has saved the county millions in healthcare spending. Do you find this a very convincing, somewhat convincing, or not a convincing reason to vote for Mark Pinsley?
Here’s the next one: Lamont McClure is the current County Executive in Northampton County and is endorsed by many labor unions. Raised in Carbon County, McClure earned his law degree and fought in court to hold large corporations accountable, including working on behalf of former steelworkers who were poisoned by asbestos for 17 years and getting opioid manufacturers to pay for the damage they caused. As county executive, he led the effort to get 25 million for small businesses in the county to help them survive during the pandemic, he fought for working people, passed seven budgets without a tax increase and cutting property taxes, protected Gracedale nursing home from being sold to a for-profit corporation which would put our seniors at risk, and preserved over 3,800 acres of farmland. Do you find this a very convincing, somewhat convincing, or not a convincing reason to vote for Lamont McClure?
Here’s the next one: Bob Brooks is president of the Pennsylvania Professional Fire Fighters Association and a small business owner. He served more than 20 years as a firefighter and EMT for the city of Bethlehem before retiring in March. He has taken on many public safety leadership positions locally and statewide, including on Gov. Josh Shapiro’s transition committee on emergency management as a member of the Pennsylvania State Fire Advisory Board. He has coached many levels of baseball in the community, most recently at Nazareth Area High School.
So, I’m going to give you a bit of truth- removing Pinsley really makes this new poll absolute garbage. Mark isn’t dropping out, he has told the minions from Harrisburg as much. He’s also the candidate who would represent the biggest challenge to the Bernie Sanders endorsement of Crooksy. I guess if you removed that guy, put Crooksy first, give him the only bio even close to what any of them are going to say about themselves, and put the initial front-runner last, while leading off by calling him a lawyer and a politician, sure, maybe Crooksy does well. But if you’re going to do that, why not lead by calling Crooksy a deadbeat and Crosswell a Republican. About the only common ground in the two polls is Carol’s bio being similar, and she polls decently well in both.
Look, I think it’s fairly obvious that Crooksy’s team had this poll done, and McClure’s team was behind the first one. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure either out. Neither really tested negatives on each other, and this poll doesn’t include anything about negatives on Crosswell. At least the PPP Poll didn’t try to put McClure first and dumb down anybody’s bio though. This poll isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
None of this really matters, because even the best message still relies on money. You have to have enough money to tell someone your story before you even can hope they’ll believe it. You also have to hope no one else has enough money to tell people the down side of your story. In other words, will anyone have the money to tell the story I’ve told you about Crooksy? If the answer is no, then all of this is irrelevant. I guess you know my view of the guy, and again, if no one puts the money behind that, what does that matter? If McClure can cobble together a half-million dollars to tell his good bio, sure, I still think he wins this. That is, unless someone else has a 4:1 spending advantage on him. So basically, what I’m telling you is, unless independent expenditures and super pacs come into this primary, I doubt anyone actually spends enough money on their own to move this race.
There are useless people, and there’s Bernie Sanders. This man has single-handedly turned me from a liberal Obama supporter into a very certain left-of-center moderate that despises the DSA as much as MAGA. How? Well, our latest installment is Bernie killing a bill to fight pediatric cancer:
Pediatric cancer advocates scrambled to get to the Senate to watch the moment. Reporters who had covered the issue, including this one, were given the heads-up about its imminent passage. At least three kids who are bereaved siblings of cancer victims and one pediatric cancer survivor sat in the Senate gallery.
And then, it failed. A single senator stood in the way. It was Bernie Sanders.
In a dramatic, heated exchange on the Senate floor—caught by the C-SPAN cameras but largely missed by the news-consuming public—Sanders announcedhis opposition to quick passage for the bill. He did so not because he disagreed with its objective—which is to give the FDA the authority to push pharmaceutical companies to study combination drug therapies—but because he worried that extraneous provisions attached to it would make it harder to achieve other priorities. He argued that the Senate ought to be passing similarly important, bipartisan-supported health care measures along with it. His staff insisted to me that they would revisit the bill soon, and they seemed confident it would all get done in the new year.
I mean look, I say a lot of mean things about far lefties, and some of them are probably a bit hyperbolic. Not in this case. This ass hole literally killed a bill to help kids with cancer because the bill didn’t deal with other things he wants done. Like, really. Kids with cancer dude? The week before Christmas, he killed a bill to help kids with cancer. I knew he was a piece of shit before, but this is the kind of low that I did not think was possible.
We often have the argument over which side is worse. Both sides in politics claim the high ground. I think we are reaching the point where both parties literally have extremists so far out on the horseshoe that they’re just both assholes who need to go home. Bernie isn’t the only person who has played football with this bill, amazingly. Take his right-wing mirror, Rand Paul, for example:
The bill was on the doorstep of passage through the Republican-controlled House when Elon Musk suddenly decided to take it upon himself to kill it. In a series of caustic tweets, he called for GOP lawmakers to scrap every element of the legislation that wasn’t a simple continuation of the current government policy. The health care components that had been negotiated were scrapped.
And then, for a brief moment, they looked like they might be revived.
In the hours after Congress passed that pared-down December 2024 funding bill, lawmakers revisited three pediatric cancer provisions. One of them, which would provide money for pediatric cancer research, passed the Senate with unanimous consent. The Give Kids a Chance Act failed. This time it was Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) who objected.
Ok, so the socialist left-wing nut and the libertarian right-wing nut have taken turns blocking care for kids with cancer. Shocking? Not at all. What is this a fight over, you ask? What could possibly cause these two men to take turns sticking it to children with cancer? Trust me, it’s as dumb as you can imagine.
For example, Rand Paul had come around to support a unanimous consent request on the Give Kids a Chance Act in part because lawmakers had added to it a provision he wanted: one that would give the FDA authority to share information about innovator (i.e., brand-name) drugs to prospective applicants. That specific provision is projected to save roughly $1.2 billion over the ten-year budgetary window (according to Hill aides), which would go into a Medicare account. Why does that matter, you ask? Because Sanders wanted the savings to be used to fund community health centers instead. And once money goes into Medicare, it’s hard to take it out for use elsewhere. No politician wants to be attacked for raiding a social safety net program.
That was just one problem that Sanders had with the bill. He also wanted all of the provisions that Musk scrapped back in December 2024 to be passed as well, not just the Give Kids a Chance Act. Among them: mandatory funding for the national health service corps and mandatory funding for the teaching health center program. Were they not important, too, he asked on the Senate floor.
“We must revive that bipartisan agreement that was worked on month after month after month by Democrats and Republicans,” Sanders said.
Efforts were made to try and push through. Sen. Bill Cassidy, who took over the chairmanship of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee from Sanders in 2025, tried holding out carrots, making what appeared to be a commitment to his colleague to help get community health care funding passed. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a major proponent of the Give Kids a Chance Act, tried wielding a stick instead.
“He is literally killing kids in front of us because of his political movement,” he said of Sanders on the Senate floor. “It is ridiculous.”
Jesus f’ing Christ, Markwayne Mullin sounds like the f***ing adult in the room here! Does anyone know how ridiculous that is? Markwayne Mullin. From Oklahoma. The sane adult in the room. Are you for real?!?
Look, one can and should argue that this is Chuck Schumer and 8 Democrats who voted to reopen the government’s fault- they didn’t take easy victories like this and put it in their demands to vote to end the shutdown, let alone the health care subsidies for millions of Americans. Even so, this is not a bill that really should need to be in a negotiation. It’s not like money going into the Medicare fund is a bad thing, especially for the socialist that says he wants to put literally everyone on Medicare. But fine. This bill may be incremental progress on health care, but it’s progress no less, and lawmakers should vote for progress for their constituents any time they have a chance to. Moving legislation is hard.
Lawmakers like Bernie Sanders make it harder, doing stupid stunts like this on bills that no one wants them to fight over. There’s a reason this guy hasn’t passed very many bills in his 30 plus years in Congress. He’s the last person you should take advice from on who to elect to Congress to make American life better.
Apocalypse Vibes 