Your World Last Week, 3/16

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

You know how sometimes a lot of stuff happens in a week, but really nothing stands out so you really don’t remember anything? Good times. It’s almost Spring. It’s St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow. No matter how bad life is, it’s good right now. Or it could at least be worse. It could still be early February and there could be snow on the ground. Lots of snow, frozen solid because it’s too cold to melt.

So March Madness is here. Locally, Lehigh University is in the big dance, as are two Philly schools, Villanova and Penn, while St. Joe’s is in the NIT. It seems like most of New York City is in, with St. John’s, LIU, and Hofstra in. I haven’t filled out my brackets yet (that’s tomorrow morning), but I think I’m split between Florida and Arizona at the moment, but also considering Duke. Here in Easton, PA, we celebrate March Matness religiously, with this week’s NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships almost being a religious holiday. I’m taking Penn State to win by a million. In the World Baseball Classic this week the United States and Venezuela have advanced to play a championship game tomorrow night filled with geopolitical irony this year. Phillies Cristopher Sanchez, Aaron Nola, and prospect Dante Nori have all stood out for their teams in this tournament, while Phillies Americans Brad Keller, Kyle Schwarber, and Bryce Harper will play in tomorrow’s final. I’m enjoying it. This past weekend was the New Jersey State High School Wrestling Championships, and while the wrestling was good, two tweets stood out- this one about the best Italian names in each weight class and this photo of an amazing scene at the end of a semi-final match on the IBEW Local 102 mat. Peak stuff. Also if you ever thought of giving up on something, 33 year old Izzy Balsiger became an All-American 13 years after previously achieving the honor at the NCAA Division III Wrestling tournament.

In more serious matters, the United States suffered casualties in a war that it won a week or two ago in Iran. The U.S. Embassy in Iraq was hit by a drone. The President is pressuring NATO and China to reopen the Straight of Hormuz. Gas prices are up. Israel is talking to Lebanon as it increases it’s ground campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah. White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has breast cancer and I wish her a speedy recovery. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has threatened to revoke licenses for television networks that don’t cover the Iran War the way he likes. Congress doesn’t seem super pleased, but they can’t get themselves out of a paper bag. A federal judge has blocked parts of RFK Jr.’s vaccine guidelines. The USDA is making indentured servitude great again, deciding to increase temporary visas for immigrant migrant farmworkers and lower their pay. There are major primary elections tomorrow in Illinois and apparently Altoona, if you believe that. New York City is lowering speed limits to 15mph in school zones. I’m fine with that.

Last night was the Oscar’s. I watched Conan’s opening monologue and thought it was pretty funny, but Conan O’Brien is funny. “One Battle After Another” won best picture. Jessie Buckley won best actress for her role in “Hamnet.” Michael B. Jordan won best actor for his role in “Sinners,” officially making him the second most famous Michael Jordan. “Sinners” won four Oscars as a movie, while “One Battle After Another” won six. Nicole Kidman showed up Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez on the Red Carpet. And in my favorite win, “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” won best documentary feature, a big fuck you to Vlad. I still couldn’t sit there and watch the whole show though, ADHD gets in the way.

Well it’s just about St. Patrick’s Day. Go drink a green beer or some Guinness, throw on your Birds jersey for the day, and blast the Dropkick Murphy’s. Oh, and eat all of the corned beef and cabbage that I don’t get to first.

Trump Administration Legalizing Indentured Servitude for Foreign Farm Workers

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Once upon a time conservatives supported mass immigration, because they wanted cheap labor. Democrats were actually more hawkish on immigration than Republicans in my childhood. The issue was largely a fight over cheap labor vs. good wages. That was largely before Donald Trump, in fact the change started late in George W. Bush’s term. The Republicans adopted hardline views on immigration, and even want to stop legal immigration now in some circles. Of course the United States does need some legal immigration to deal with labor needs, so Trump’s hardline immigration positions are causing serious problems in some labor markets. One of them is agriculture, where the work is frankly hard for the pay and most Americans won’t do it. Since they now lack immigrants and Americans don’t want to do it, we’re getting the worst of every world now.

So now the plan is to quietly let some migrants back into the country to work, but to pay them way less and basically give them less freedom while here. Great.

Nothing like returning to the policies of the Jim Crow South.

Crooksy’s Really Problematic, Antisemitic Endorser

/ Rich Wilkins / 5 Comments

Way back on September 12th, 2025, Congressman Ro Khanna of California endorsed Bob “Crooksy” Brooks for Congress. Crooksy was very proud of himself. He said of Khanna’s endorsement, “My friend (and PA native) Ro Khanna has been a champion for working class people. Grateful to have him on board.” Ro said a bunch of nice things about Crooksy too. None of this is shocking, Ro endorsed Bernie Sanders for President and Bernard endorsed Crooksy on day one. It’s all one little corrupt crew of bros.

I wonder if Crooksy was still proud yesterday. Ro went on a bender of antisemitism and just outright lunacy. He defended left-wing freaks. He defended outright right-wing fascists. It was rather remarkable and stands right up there next to Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 point NBA basketball game as one of the most amazing feats of human achievement in history. Let’s take a look at Ro’s big day.

Defending Pat Buchanan

Ok, this is amazing by any standard.

Pat Buchanan is a fucking lunatic, pardon my French. First off, he argues World War II. wasn’t necessary and that Winston Churchill caused the war by pledging to defend Poland. He also says the Treaty of Versailles after World War I was too harsh. He thinks that Hitler was actually a pragmatist, at least in 1933. He literally wrote a book outlining all of this stuff. Buchanan once said that the Congress of the United States was under Israeli occupation. Buchanan once had to remove a forum for Shoah deniers from his website. He once wrote a piece for “The American Free Press,” a publication ran by a Holocaust denier. He called AIDS a “retribution” against “homosexuals.” He questioned “Did Hitler Want War?” in an article. The guy said a lot of crazy shit. Look, some bad statements and acts don’t disqualify every last idea you speak for the rest of your life. Was Buchanan occasionally right about singular issues? Sure. The guy also defended Hitler, wanted to basically stop non-white immigration, and trafficked in homophobia. Given all of that, no normal person should feel the need to defend him on a specific instance. Hell, Donald Trump once opposed this guy and called him a “Hitler Lover.” Ro isn’t normal though.

Ro Copies Gretchen Whitmer’s Statement on Michigan Synagogue Attack

This is just embarrassingly bad work.

This is terrible staff work. If it mattered to him though, he would have required actual work.

Ro Expresses Pride in his Antisemitic Friends

When you’re a United States Congressman, sometimes you just let some things go. Not everyone gets a response. A younger staffer at Third Way is probably not someone you should choose to go after.

Now, there’s the whole issue of whether he should have engaged anyway, but this post comes out around the time today of the synagogue attack in Michigan. Necessary? Definitely not. Let’s go deeper though. He defended three specific people. Let’s look at them.

Hasan Piker is an asshole, again, pardon the French. I’m not sure why he got famous, but some people listen to him. Not shocking, people vote for Donald Trump. Not that long ago though, saying you supported Hamas, a terrorist organization that kills Palestinians and hasn’t held an election in Gaza in like 20 years was a deal breaker. Saying the same for Hezbollah, a terrorist organization that occupies Lebanese sovereign territory, was also a dealbreaker. And the Houthis? They’re newer to the public debate, but they’re literally shooting at foreign ships coming into their region. No thanks. As for Graham Platner, how about we just don’t add to that. The guy had a Nazi tattoo for decades, goes on Nazi podcasts, and retweets Nazis. Look, whatever good ideas he may have, he’s a Nazi, and I was always taught that’s bad. As for Mamdani, I’ve made it clear how I feel. He’s probably the least offensive of these three, and he’s still awful. I’m not embracing the Intifada, even if I think Israel’s war in Gaza is awful at this point.

To be clear here, we’re not going to claim that all of Ro Khanna’s nonsense is Crooksy’s responsibility- besides, he doesn’t pay up on his responsibilities. The bigger point here is that a lot of the same people end up showing up in all of this antisemitic bigotry. Ro Khanna, Ruben Gallego, and Bernie Sanders are all endorsers of Graham Platner and his Nazi tattoo in Maine, and they’re all endorsers of Obama-hating Bob “Crooksy” Brooks here in PA-7. Hey, at least Crooksy only takes his mother-in-law’s money, that’s a helluva lot better than getting a Nazi tattoo, right? Once Martin Heinrich joins they can get the whole band together. These folks want to effectively U-Turn the Democratic Party from where it’s been post-Barack Obama and take it to some sort of pre-LBJ version where we “prioritize” the “working class again,” which is really just code word with them for white guys (Kamala won every other “working class” demographic in 2024). They’re readily willing to toss aside Jewish voters, who are probably the second most consistently Democratic voting group in the electorate, to appease voters they can’t appease anyway. I don’t know why anyone would want to follow the strategy of a guy who lost two primaries for President by millions and millions of votes and has passed like three bills in thirty years in the Congress, but here we are. On the dumbest timeline. With the dumbest endorsers, endorsing a guy who pulled his shirt over his face when he was asked about funding Israel at a Lehigh Valley 4 All meeting (the video has since been made private by the group). We’re going to pretend there is some sort of morality here, some sort of strategic vision here, quite frankly some sort of brain waves here. Meanwhile this snake oil salesman is being endorsed by a Congressman defending Pat Buchanan. Great times.

The New Democratic Establishment’s Loser Values

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

Two things happened yesterday that are only sort of unrelated. Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico endorsed modern Nazi sympathizer Graham Platner for the Senate race in Maine. Look folks, on this, I’m not “vote blue no matter who.” This guy has Nazi tattoos, he is pals with Nazis, was a Blackwater mercenary, and posts horribly racist shit on the internet. All of his behavior screams Nazi. If we nominate this piece of human sludge, we should lose the race. Heinrich isn’t alone though. Ruben Gallego recently endorsed him too. Ro Khanna has also endorsed Mr. Nazi Tattoo. Not to be left behind, Bernard Sanders had to be involved as an endorser. In case you’re wondering, all of them but Heinrich (to my knowledge) have endorsed Bob “Crooksy” Brooks, a man who stiffed his mother-in-law for $55k, said President Obama “sucks,” stated his hate for Colin Kaepernick very loudly, and spouts off fanatical stuff about guns and religion. Kind of fits, right? We went through this before with John Fetterman, and people ignored the obvious. Fetterman was a degenerate nut-job, and now we’re going to arm an army of him in Congress, if these bros have their ways.

Now, as I said, there was a second thing that happened. Last night Muhammad “Sef” Casim lost a special election for the Prince William County Supervisor race in the Woodbridge, VA district. Dems had held it for 38 years. “Sef” was a problematic candidate, not unlike Platner. He says really racist shit. Casim was also an outright antisemite. Republican Jeannie LeCroix beat him by 6% and almost 20% wrote in another candidate. After winning a primary running as a far left nut, Casim blew a lay up race, failing to even reach 40%. Much like Mamdani, the general electorate was less impressed with his left-wing populism and looked for literally any other option but to vote for this bigot. Northern Virginia, much like New York City, is very Democratic. Once you got beyond the primary, most Democrats don’t want this kind of vile shit.

The “new” Democratic Establishment, built of consultants and operatives from the Bernie and Fetterman world, are building a Democratic establishment that will cement MAGA control of the White House for years to come. It’s a road to nowhere. Here in PA-7 they are promising jobs to young candidates and electeds who endorse them, and painting a rosy picture of a future that looks very much like a Bernie rally. It’s fools gold. Bernie Sanders lost cleanly twice when he ran for President, because he couldn’t build a coalition of people who were bought in enough to vote for him against the “boring old” establishment figures that he and Mr. Nazi Tattoo want to create. Regular, real people who live in this country don’t want this shit. Most people want to be normal. Our party does not want a revolution:

Analysis of the data suggests the Democratic coalition can be broken into three distinct blocs. Moderates—voters who identify as moderate Democrats, independents, or anti-Trump Republicans—account for 47 percent. They are demographically diverse, older on average, and the most electorally flexible—only 45 percent say they have never voted for a non-Democratic presidential candidate.

A second bloc, Progressive Liberals, make up 37 percent. They are reliably left-leaning, whiter than the other blocs, and disproportionately concentrated in suburbs and on the West Coast.

Last comes the Woke Fringe—voters who identify as democratic socialists or Communist. These add up to just 11 percent of the coalition. The Woke Fringe is the youngest of the three groups, the most conspiratorial, the most likely to report poor mental health, and—not incidentally—the most likely to spend excessive sums of time on the internet. Notably, previous quantitative and qualitative Manhattan Institute research on the GOP coalition shows that the youngest and most hyper-online Republicans also skew hardest toward ideological wackiness.

So why the hell are we listening to a bunch of lefty white guys who want to expel Jews and welcome Chairman Mao to the party? It’s somewhat the fault of donors. It’s somewhat the fault of podcasters. It’s largely the fault of “the bubble children” in DC that manage the interest groups in between their stays at the party committees. What they are building is a party that isn’t likable. They are building a party that is weird, fake, and harmful in the eyes of most Americans. They’re building a freak show. We need to reject them. A fake “working class hero” movement lead by an 80 something year old that used his campaigns to make money isn’t useful.