It’s a cruel, sick, just world. The only Republican left on the Northampton County Council is Tom Giovanni. After running a cynical campaign of memes and attacks on people not running, he didn’t get to put the County GOP Chair in charge of the courthouse after all. He gets to go back to Council and sit quietly by himself as Tara Zrinski serves as the next County Executive. She worked hard, and she earned it.
The rest of the council may not make Giovanni look so bad though. The new chamber will have 8 Democrats in the 9 seats. It still might not be functional. You see, the 8 Democrats don’t necessarily get along, and might not really vote together. How it looks to break out-
Ken Kraft, Kelly Keegan, Jeff Warren- These three Democrats generally voted together on Council during the current term.
Jason Boulette- He seems pretty normal, has an impressive private sector resume, and doesn’t feel like a bomb thrower.
David Holland- I know he used to work at Gracedale, under the private management company. He ran as a Democrat. Most of the ticket didn’t dislike him. I’m cautiously optimistic.
Lori Vargo Heffner- The current President of Council won a third term. She got the most votes, after finishing third in the primary. She had a block of three Democrats that were not as friendly to the outgoing Executive, and many times voted with the three Republicans. Two of those Republicans and the two other Democrats are gone, and Lori is now on her own. This does not mean you should assume she will lose votes though. She counts to five better than a lot of these folks, regardless of who she brings on to get there. Her history with the incoming Executive is fairly sour too.
Terry Fadem- She basically didn’t engage with the other candidates in this past election and some members think she’s more like Lori than them. Time will tell.
Nadeem Qayyum- Look, I’m not getting into the rabbit hole here, but this is madness. Qayyum apparently told people he’s going to come out as a socialist after he got elected, so he must speak more English than other folks think. I don’t really know him, but if he spends most of the next four years bringing up resolutions for “Medicare for All,” for the county to condemn “genocide in Gaza,” and seeking confrontations with ICE, Democrats are going to lose seats soon.
There’s four ways this can go, as I see it-
The first trio work with two of the three (Boulette, Holland, Fadem) or more, and govern.
Lori Vargo Heffner builds an alliance with Giovanni and Fadem, and picks off Holland or Boulette sometimes, and maybe somehow finds ground with Qayyum?
Boulette, Holland, and Fadem stick together and basically choose which way the council goes.
Democrats just vote 8-1 on everything.
I don’t think counting to 5 will be easy on this council. Trying to do a re-assessment or tax increase will not be easy. Increasing spending will not be easy. Future political campaigns will also become a factor in how council works. I really don’t envy whoever these folks elect President, this will be a tough job.
Donald Trump has destroyed Washington. He has harmed our government permanently and left his successor a mess to clean up. Eventually some alternative is going to have to put functional government back together. That someone is probably the Democratic Party. The Democrats are at a crossroads- do they want to be a leftist party or a center-left/social liberal party. It’s very simple and very straight forward. For me, becoming a party that plays footsie with socialism, embraces isolationism, abandons Civil Rights, embraces guns, opposes the existence of Israel, opposes defending our allies in Europe, throws Obamacare away, and flirts with extremists, whether they have Nazi tattoos or embrace “the Intifada,” is a hard no. Our voters have rejected Bernie Sanders soundly at the ballot box twice. His politics should not be the future of our party, unless we want to never win elections again. Sure, there are some shared, common goals and aims. I embrace Democrats who actually have got things done.
For that reason, I have put together a list of Democrats who need to be defeated in 2026. Some are bad because of ideology, others because they are personally reprehensible, and in a few cases both. I did not put every “progressive” candidate in the country on the list, and that’s for a reason- they are not all bad. I oppose grifters, deadbeats, crackpots, and generally offensive people. Some of them are even moderates. These are generally people I have no interest I supporting in 2026.
Graham Platner- Maine Senate- The Nazi tattoo guy from Maine, I’ve written about him a bit here and here. And more here. This guy is an embarrassment, and yet some folks defend him, because vibes or something. Whether you want to talk about his racism and homophobic slurs on the internet, or his Nazi tattoo, we don’t need to nominate this complete novice, who is paying his wife on his campaign. He’s a nightmare candidate in the making.
Katie Porter- California Governor- I never liked the whole “whiteboard” shtick, and neither did 2024 California Primary voters. That was before she started making a fool of herself in interviews with the press. There are a lot of good candidates for Governor in California. She’s not one of them.
Saikat Chakrabarti- CA-11- Look, just read this. Sure, it was before Nancy Pelosi retired, but nothing about him has changed. He founded the Justice Democrats. He worked for AOC. He wants to remove Hakeem Jeffries as leader. He basically is running against the Democratic Party.
Brad Lander- NY-10- The outgoing New York City Comptroller is primarying Daniel Goldman in NY-10, because getting his ass kicked in the New York City Mayoral primary wasn’t enough for him. He’s attacking Goldman on AIPAC, and raising a lot of money, and… I guess, because he’s not pro-Mamdani? Basically he thinks Lower Manhattan and part of Brooklyn will hate Goldman because he’s not “outspoken” enough? I’m not sure. Goldman was pretty outspoken as the Majority Counsel for Trump’s first impeachment hearings, but Lander would like you to believe him getting arrested at protests is real action. This is maybe the dumbest primary in the country.
Bob “Crooksy” Brooks- PA-7- I’ve wrote about this guy too much. Read this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this. Look, you can’t trust this guy, and that’s a major hurdle for anyone to get over. He’s another John Fetterman. Right down to the hoodie.
Abdul El-Sayed- MI Senate- All you need to really know about this guy is that he had to apologize for a fundraising email he sent out on October 7th. Yes, he’s that antisemitic. He also had to scrub his social media posts for talking about “Defund the Police” and other looney tunes things. He’s been called the “bro whisperer.” Honestly, how does anybody think this guy can win a general election in Michigan? He’s endorsed by Rashida Tlaib.
Kat Abughazaleh- IL-9- Kat began her race as a barely eligible upstart challenger. Today she’s still running, against a very progressive opponent, and trying to shoot out to his left flank. Her campaign is largely about defunding Israel, but also touches on some other pet projects of leftists. She was indicted recently for a showdown with ICE, which can be commendable, but isn’t really part of the job of a Congressman. She’s also an advocate for the “Green New Deal,” a cool slogan that ended up kind of being slop legislation. She’s just not a serious person. Daniel Biss is endorsed by Elizabeth Warren of all people, and well, he’s a serious person.
Chi Osse- NY-8- I guess I can take him off of this list, but it’s still worth noting the guy said he voted for Bernie Sanders in 2016, but actually didn’t vote. I’ll leave him on, in case someone encourages him to change his mind.
Ryan Crosswell- PA-7- Again, I’ve wrote about this guy too much. Read this. And this. And this. And this. And this. Look, the guy has no ties to the Lehigh Valley, even for work, and will be gone if he loses this race, like Dr. Oz. He’s a lifelong Republican, re-registering as a Republican in several states, and voting in Trump primaries. His story about quitting the DOJ because Trump dropped the Eric Adams case, and being so enraged that he had to run for Congress, is just false. He bought his websites a while before that. This whole campaign is based on fraudulent storytelling. The guy worked at a damn union busting law firm.
Cameron Kasky- NY-12- At all of 25, Kasky knows it all. He’s going to end ICE. And Israel, I guess. As he puts it, “you can’t be a tame politician” right now. He basically wants to go to Capitol Hill to be a protestor. There’s no serious substance here, just a wishlist.
Cori Bush- MO-1- The former Congresswoman was kicked out last cycle in her primary, and just won’t go away. She’s for “defund the police,” but gets caught being hypocritical by the GOP. She slammed other Democrats over Gaza. She spent her time in Congress attacking her fellow Democrats, rather than Republicans. It’s utterly stupid to do that.
Henry Cuellar- TX-28- Trump pardoned him for corruption. His colleagues don’t even like him. By the way, accepting a pardon is an admission of guilt, legally. No thanks.
Absolutely everything is wrong with college football. No, I get it, you like going to games, and you should, but that doesn’t change what I said. From mega conferences to the ESPN rankings show every week, college football is simply a slave to big network money, whether it’s Disney/ESPN, Comcast, or FOX. Great old rivalries like Penn State-Pitt, Oklahoma-Oklahoma State, Pitt-West Virginia, Notre Dame-Michigan, or whatever one you miss, all ended because of conferences, television money, and greed. Let’s be honest, did a single person in the world really want to see the Washington-Purdue game, or the Mizzou-Vanderbilt game, or the Stanford-Wake Forest game? Of course not. The four major conferences now have zero geographical sense, and more teams than can possibly play each other in a year. “Conference championships” literally decided by obscure tiebreakers and computers. The SEC literally had one (maybe two, if you think Michigan or Georgia Tech is actually good) good out of conference win as a collection of 16 schools, and yet they got five teams into the playoffs (at the expense of the one good team they beat), basically because their network runs the process. The conference hasn’t won a national title since the NIL took over the game, and I think the reasons are abundantly obvious for that (by the way, Ed O is a national treasure). It’s a paper tiger, but one that has to be held up because ESPN has so much at stake in them. The only teams down there with a chance to do anything now are teams who have large NIL potential, basically the Texas teams (include Oklahoma, because oil) and Georgia. It’s a joke.
Conferences no longer have anything to do with old rivalries, or geography, or anything sane. They have to do with television markets. The more big markets you are in, the more money you are worth, the better your conference becomes. This basically sucks for the game. I just got done ripping the SEC, but let me give them some credit here for a second, they are the only major conference that truly makes any geographic sense at this point, but it only works because they’re the only part of the country that is more obsessed with college football than the NFL. The ACC has decided to go north and west, and makes zero sense now. The Big 12 is literally a collection of whoever is left out of the other three. The Big Ten? It’s the worst offender, now literally holding court in almost all of the top ten markets in the country. I mean sure, we all wanted Rutgers-UCLA, right?
How you spend your money says everything about what matters to you. ESPN has the SEC. It also has the ACC, and it added quite a few dollars onto that TV deal to insure that it essentially had Notre Dame’s road games in the deal with the ACC (Usually three or four a year). Notre Dame gets about $17-22.1 million a year from the ACC according to Google AI (though the ACC claims that’s not football related), on top of their $50 million plus from NBC. The new revenue model adds about $10 million per school for the top teams, who now will play Notre Dame more often (for instance, Clemson will now play them for 12 years, starting in 2027). At the time of the deal, ESPN added $3 million per school (approximately $50 million) to the payout. That number has only grown. Finebaum and the other talking heads can claim Notre Dame isn’t the ratings giant it claims, but both Disney and Comcast pay out money that says otherwise. Clemson and Florida State are still unhappy with their media payouts, but they would almost certainly leave if the $10 million or so boost they got was suddenly gone. It’s basic math. Unless you think both Comcast/NBC and Disney/ESPN are morons, Notre Dame is clearly making everyone a lot of money. Does Notre Dame get to pocket a lot more money than the ACC teams? Yes, sure. It’s obviously worth it to them too though.
What everyone wants from Notre Dame is to strip them of their independent TV deal with NBC. It would make less than zero sense for Notre Dame to give that up voluntarily though. The ACC isn’t going to stop scheduling games with them if they add $50 million plus annually to their TV deal. Two Big Ten teams this year, and three next year, line up to play them. A pair of SEC teams seem to show up every year. All told, Notre Dame gets ten Power 4 games easily, and they don’t have to split money with teams who add little value. It pisses off fans from other teams, but let’s be honest, if Alabama could add this kind of value, they wouldn’t be sharing with Kentucky and Mississippi State. Same for Michigan and USC. Again, how you spend your money says what’s important to you.
The ACC promoting Miami’s case for the CFB Playoff is not on it’s face offensive. Miami is a member school, and splits the payout with the other member schools. Miami campaigning for Miami is also not an issue, of course they would. In fact, Miami getting in over Notre Dame isn’t really a problem, while I think Notre Dame is better and Miami isn’t a contender, Miami won the game. Miami wasn’t the issue. The issue was the efforts to which ESPN, the ACC and SEC’s TV partner, went to campaign for Alabama at the expense of Notre Dame, and the degree to which the ACC took part. Both Miami and Notre Dame were better teams than Alabama this year. Again, winning SEC games is not some special achievement anymore. The ACC putting the Miami-Notre Dame game on a loop on their ESPN administered network the week of the selection, not to mention direct attacks on social media, was harmful. If the ACC isn’t an ally, why is Notre Dame participating with them? Do we not think one of the other conferences would enter into a deal with Notre Dame that *adds* money to their TV payouts for every member school? Of course they would. The only reasons they are in conferences is money. Don’t kid yourself.
Notre Dame should leave the ACC. It would kill the ACC, yes, and maybe that’s not great, but it’s probably necessary to do any real damage to ESPN. Skipping the Bowl Game did directly hurt the bottom line, and did damage to the value of the bowl brand, which hurt ESPN too, but that’s not the big hit. Killing one of their conferences would send the message that ESPN and the conferences are not really in charge here. It’s time for the NCAA to re-assert control, and Notre Dame could speed up that process in football right now. Break an entire conference and set off a domino effect the other three can’t quite handle. Or better yet, form a true “scheduling consortium” with a few other powerhouse teams where everyone can have their own TV deals and show how useless these conferences are. The point is, once one school shows they can devalue an entire conference, the whole game is over. Someone will have to step in, and the only possible entity is the NCAA.
I know this isn’t popular, because Notre Dame is not as popular as it once was. In the 1900’s, the overwhelming majority of Americans didn’t go to college, so they chose their team allegiances based on other factors. Notre Dame being forced to go independent and travel the country, as well as their ties to the Catholic Church, built in millions of fans. Today, a lot more people go to college, and most of them don’t go to Notre Dame. They don’t like Notre Dame being unique, because people hate unique things, and their schools are not unique. They’re going to kick and scream about Notre Dame delivering a shock to the system. If Notre Dame has the courage to soldier through it though, everyone will be better off when the conferences die, for football (to be clear, they’re not as problematic in other sports). They’re out of control and need to be reigned back in.
The NCAA needs to separate “power four” football into it’s own division. The “group of 5” conferences are playing a different sport where there are smaller budgets, little TV money, and tiny bits of NIL. The 18 Big Ten teams, 16 SEC teams, 17 ACC teams, 16 Big 12 teams, Notre Dame, Oregon State, Washington State, UCONN, and between 1 and 9 more teams should be put into a separate division altogether. This would form a division of 72 to 80 teams, which should them be split into 8 regional divisions of 9 or 10 teams (based on which number you pick). You would play 8 or 9 division/conference games, against EVERYONE in the conference/division. The eight champions should make the playoff, period. You can schedule anyone you want with your 3 or 4 other games. This is the only sensible way forward, the only way for college football to act like a serious sport. Consolidate the “Group of 5” schools into four conferences and create a playoff for that division too. From pure budget perspectives, this would be fair.
Notre Dame can do what needs to be done here. Live by the values that made the program great- independence. It was forced on Notre Dame. Notre Dame is big enough to force it on the sport. Tear down this house of cards and do everyone a favor. Neuter the overrated SEC.
Here’s a serious question- is there a chance that both Super Bowl teams from last year, teams that have met in two of the last three Super Bowls, miss the playoffs? The answer is yes. With that said, the answer is that is still unlikely. Kansas City is dead in the water at this point, sure. Philadelphia looks cooked, but they play Las Vegas and Washington for three of their last four games. With even a 2-2 finish, the Eagles are 10-7. Dallas would have to win out to beat that. Even so, it’s possible.
As soon as everyone got high on Chicago being good, they go and get manhandled in Green Bay, a team who has their flaws too. Go figure. Increasingly to me, it looks like the Rams are the team to beat in the NFC, just by being consistent. The West and North are very good divisions, and their finishes should be exciting. The East is really just a matter of if Philadelphia can beat a couple of teams playing out the string the next two weeks, and the South is a dumpster fire where the Carolina Panthers feel like the hot hand. Remember back in September when the Buccaneers looked great and Baker was leading the MVP chase. That was fun.
Denver now has all two way tiebreakers over New England, which is insane to me, but whatever. Those two look great. Jacksonville has shocked everyone and taken over the South, but Houston is charging hard and has the best defense in the league right now. The Chargers and Bills are very alive, and I wouldn’t want them in that Wild Card round if I were one of these young upstart teams. Someone has to win the North. Increasingly that looks like Pittsburgh. Is this good for that franchise? Probably not. Nobody else seems to want this division title though. While I still wouldn’t be shocked if the Ravens win if it comes down to the head-to-head in the final game, right now Pittsburgh has the edge.
This past year, in Northampton County’s vast ruby red Northern Tier there was an election to be the Magisterial Judge in the Wind Gap/Plainfield area. There were two respectable, good people running to be the new judge. One won the Republican nomination, and eventually the seat, and the other won the Democratic nomination. In the Democratic Primary, there were 1,522 votes cast. Over 10% of them (195) went to a third candidate in the race- the candidate was at the January 6th rally in 2021 that ended up ransacking the capitol (no idea if he went inside or not). This same candidate was also at the center of a legal case involving the Northampton County GOP showing home made pornography at their general membership meeting (to be clear here, as the victim). He also was reportedly saying in his campaign that he did not believe PFA’s were constitutional, and he wouldn’t enforce them (I have nowhere to link to here because the campaign is over). Even with all of that, this individual received nearly 200 Democratic primary votes. Is it possible some of them just didn’t know what they were doing? Sure. Over 10% of them? No. Some people knowingly and willingly voted for this guy.
One of the unpleasant, but absolutely true things to know about our democracy and the people participating in it is that the people don’t really trust politicians or experts anymore. It’s more pronounced on one side, but it’s not limited to that side. Politics have become almost entirely tribal, completely culturally, and more or less, emotional. Nearly every institution from the White House to the Army, to the Catholic Church, to banks, to college football powers, have been engaged in a scandal in the last 50 years that have wrecked public trust with them. No one likes banks. Organized religion has been in a decline with the public for years. No President has been willing to get into a protracted war after Iraq. Faith in institutions is gone. People tend to believe the institutions aren’t for them. Experts work for them, not for us, or something.
Whether you believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya, 9/11 was an inside job, or Trump had Epstein killed, an increasing number of people on your side agree with you. This has not been true in the past. People basically don’t believe anything their told, as long as it does fit their world view, as you can see in the polling above.
This is, in and of itself, the main reason that Barack Obama and Joe Biden ultimately gave way to Donald Trump. They ran a political party based on “managing” society right. There’s a lack of audience for that. An increasing share of the American left are also chiefly concerned with “getting stuff” from the government. If they don’t, they’re not super interested. They also aren’t interested with a government run by “experts” if it isn’t doing what they want. People don’t believe the experts. They don’t believe the institutions. They believe nutty videos on YouTube and TikTok though. You know they’d never lie to you or manipulate you, right?
Last week I met Crooksy in the flesh. I have before, but I know I was not as interested in it then. His campaign manager walked up with him at an event, outside of the actual event, and said to him “this is Rich Wilkins, the guy who writes mean things about you.” You know what, that’s sort of accurate (I write accurate things about him), and it’s actually pretty funny. I said “how do you do,” and moved along. It was cold, but cordial. That’s really all it needed to be. I have said the guy would be inappropriate as a nominee, let alone a Congressman. I stand by that.
Later on in the event, a labor “personality” from a union that backs Crooksy decided to let me know they were unhappy with my coverage of their endorsement. After questioning why I didn’t ask them first if I was right (someone involved told me, why would I?) quite aggressively, I asked a pretty straight forward question- was what I wrote wrong? Their answer- “it didn’t go down the way you wrote it.” I don’t know, if I was going to confront someone like that, I’d probably be able to just say “yes, you were wrong” when asked that. Hey though, I guess sometimes the truth is a problem for some.
Look, I have the least skin in the game of anyone in this whole shenanigan- I don’t work for anyone involved in the race. I’m not going to work for anyone in the race. While I have a preference in the race, there are several candidates I could accept if they won. It has been said to friends of mine that I’m “harming my ability to work” by being so vocal about Crooksy. Huh? I haven’t worked for an actual candidate since before my health scare, almost two years, and I’m not really trying to. I charged my last candidate gas money basically for a couple months of work, because I grew up looking up to them and just wanted to help them through. These people want to blacklist me from a job I don’t want or have? Allegedly I won’t be able to work anymore judicial races, at least at the state level. You wouldn’t believe how badly that has me torn up, I might not be able to go on here (I shouldn’t have to tell you to read that with sarcasm, but yeah.). I didn’t have people attempting to blacklist me from work I don’t do on my 2025 bingo card, but I think this is supposed to scare me or something. Listen, I was almost dead once, you’re going to have to do better than that to scare me now. At least threaten to kneecap my good leg or something, I might blink. I’ve never really socialized with my co-workers much, the ones I am friends with know we’re friends. The rest? Honestly, maybe we’re acquaintances. I find myself more and more at odds with the world a lot of these people are trying to build. My attachment level is pretty low at this point.
These folks are hellbent to make sure people don’t have choices in this primary and don’t hear information about the people they want to thrust onto the voters. They had emissaries up here trying to clear the field and rally support. It didn’t work. They think if voters hear about the candidates, they won’t pick their guy. They’re probably right. What I don’t think they want to realize is, the 9-1-1 calls are coming from inside of their own house. Most of what I write is coming from people they tell it to. You think I found this stuff on my own? I dug up social media posts? I mean, this stuff is fair game, but it was given to me. It came from multiple sources. There’s more of it not yet written. The stuff I knew about the guy is stuff that quite frankly I can’t write, it lacks sources willing to talk about it. At least right now. Look, the total readership of this blog isn’t going to move this primary. I mostly put it out hoping the right reader will see it. I have no grand illusions here. If you want to spend all day mad about it, go right on ahead.
I don’t think I’ll be asking the good ole’ boys and girls out on the Susquehanna for a green light on anything. I mean, God bless, but they just don’t really matter to me. If they did, I’d be writing about them. God knows normal people would cringe if they read that kind of stuff.
Apocalypse Vibes 