The Democratic Party

Podcast Episode: Democratic Fights And Crooksy Chaos

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Pip: Every election cycle, someone promises the apocalypse is finally arriving on schedule — and every cycle, the map barely moves.

Mara: That's the territory Rich Wilkins has been mapping on Apocalypse Vibes — the structural limits on Democratic ambitions in 2026, the candidate quality problems making those limits worse, the progressive left's Israel politics, and what America's 250th birthday actually means when you're paying attention. Let's start with where the 2026 wave is, and isn't, headed.

The 2026 Map: Real Gains, Real Ceilings

Pip: The central argument in "Political Gravity in 2026" is that Democrats are probably winning the House, but the landslide narrative is running ahead of the actual numbers.

Mara: The post puts it plainly: "The best way to understand American politics is to understand that our country has been stuck in a 48-46% split for a quarter century or so now." That's the floor and the ceiling both.

Pip: Which means gerrymandering doesn't even need to work that hard — the electorate is doing most of the structural work already.

Mara: The post estimates roughly 400 of 435 districts are drawn so partisanly that even a wave doesn't move them, projecting a net Republican loss of fifteen to twenty seats. "The Delusions of the Progressive Populist Left" and "What Democrats Got Wrong" both reinforce why: the party is consolidating leftward while independents — now 45 percent of Americans — are calling themselves moderate, and they are not moving toward the Democratic Party as it shifts.

Pip: So the wave is real, the ceiling is low, and the party is spending energy debating whether to go further in the direction that's already not working.

Mara: That's essentially the argument. Which brings us to the candidates Democrats are actually fielding.

Crooksy Brooks: A Case Study in Self-Inflicted Damage

Pip: "Crooksy's Loose Lips" opens with a scene that pretty much writes the rest of the segment for us — Bob Brooks, at a private lunch, cracking jokes about a popular mayor's spelling while his own social media history is a liability archive.

Mara: The post is direct about the strategic problem: "The blueprint for Crooksy was written by literally the same people who created Nazi oyster farmer Graham Platner in Maine and John Fetterman here in Pennsylvania." Same consultants, same pitch, same early polling lead that is already shrinking.

Pip: A 47-43 internal in July, per "Bernie, Platner, Crooksy" — which also notes the NRCC didn't wait long to tie Brooks directly to the Fight Agency consultants behind Platner's campaign.

Mara: "Crooksy Goes to Court" lays out the financial record: money loaned in 2004, a signed promissory note from 2008, an appeal lost in 2022, and a reported hundred dollars paid to date. The post also notes an ethics complaint was filed with the House during the primary.

Pip: A hundred dollars. Over twenty-two years. That is a commitment to a position.

Mara: "The NRCC's File on Crooksy" details four lines of attack the Republicans have already assembled — unpaid workers' compensation insurance, racist social media posts, the mother-in-law lawsuit, and a pay raise Brooks took while cutting spending on actual union member advocacy. The post notes this probably is not everything they have.

Mara: Then there is the firefighter issue. "Bob Crooksy Brooks Doesn't Just Hate Barack Obama, He Hates the Folks Who Save Your Life" covers his social media posts calling IAFF members who also volunteer "scabs" and "shitbags." "Someone Ask Crooksy How Many Scabs Helped Fight Last Week's Massive Fire in Allentown" puts a concrete number on what that argument looks like in practice: over a hundred firefighters from as far as Carbon County, working for more than seven hours.

Pip: His pathway to victory, the post argues, runs through turning out the Susan Wild coalition — the very voters he most repulses.

Mara: And the through-line across all of this is candidate quality as a structural problem, not a one-race accident. Which connects directly to what's happening on the Israel and progressive politics front.

The Progressive Left, Israel, and the Limits of the Movement

Pip: "These Folks are Mentally Ill" is about the New York primaries, but the argument is really about where the progressive left can and cannot win.

Mara: The post draws the line precisely: "these embarrassing freaks are only winning certain kinds of races — very blue district, legislative races that usually have more than two candidates." Safe seats, low-turnout fields, places where you never have to acknowledge Republicans or moderate Democrats exist.

Pip: The Gaza politics driving a lot of these candidacies gets its own full examination in "For All the Talk About a Free Palestine, Nobody Has a Plan for Who Would Lead It."

Mara: That post walks through the practical obstacles — two separate governing authorities that do not recognize each other, Abbas whose term ended in 2009, Hamas, skeptical neighboring states, and an Israeli electorate that roundly rejected the idea after October 7th. The conclusion is that attaching conditions to foreign aid is reasonable; promising a functioning Palestinian state in the near term is not.

Pip: Serious conditions on aid — yes. Promising a flying cow — also apparently on the table, and the post is not more optimistic about one than the other.

Mara: From there, the question becomes what any of this means for a country about to turn 250.

America at 250: Pride Without Amnesia

Pip: "Happy Birthday America" is the outlier in tone — a genuine defense of patriotism that holds the country's failures and its achievements in the same frame.

Mara: The post names the failures directly — slavery, Japanese internment, Jim Crow, January 6th — and then pivots: "We're also the greatest country on Earth. There is a reason my friends in foreign countries want to come here." The argument is that a nation is more than the sum of its government and its worst moments.

Pip: Ho Chi Minh quoting Thomas Jefferson in Vietnam's own Declaration of Independence is the detail that earns that argument.

Mara: The post closes on that note — that the ideals in the Declaration of Independence matter more than the day-to-day failures, and that billions live in greater freedom today at least partly because of what this country did and inspired.

Pip: A structurally frozen electorate, a candidate class that keeps finding new ways to underperform it, and a birthday party anyway.

Mara: The through-line is the gap between what the moment calls for and what the parties are actually offering. That gap isn't closing before November — we'll see if it narrows at all.

What Democrats Got Wrong.

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For the last ten years, Democrats have been locked in a brutal battle over the direction of their party. One wing of the party, let’s call it the mainstream, took the lesson from the Obama years that leaning into social issues, pluralism, and changing demographics was the pathway to a longer term majority. The other wing felt that the Occupy Wall Street movement, anger at wealthy people, and a more ideological policy portfolio would lead to victory. The “mainstream” generally won this fight and occupies a majority within the party. But the insurgents are a sizable bunch. Either way, neither has been successful.

The mainstream Democratic Party, for lack of a better way to put it, decided it needed to lean into social issues and “identity” politics late in the Obama years. This was driven in no small part by the party’s failures in elections where Barack Obama was not on the ballot. The thinking was that if you could turn out the “Obama coalition” consistently, you would win elections consistently. Not only did this fail in 2016, but Trump has seen his share of the vote improve amongst most of the groups that Obama rode to big victories, at least at the margins. The only place the party has seen real growth in this era with this strategy has been among college educated voters, particularly white ones, and that has had to offset declines with lower educated white voters. Basically running on what leftists call the “HR Lady politics” is not very popular and can’t build a sustainable majority outside of white collar, educated enclaves. It’s a losing strategy. Outreach to non-white voters who gave Obama huge numbers in his runs usually has brought leftists into the fray with circus clown candidates like Graham Platner who make fools of the party, and unpopular, absolute joke policy soundbites like “Defund the Police,” which end up not only costing us White voters, but also Black voters and Latino voters. In short, Democratic “mainstream” operatives have no bloody idea how to reach any group of voters right now besides white folks with grad degrees, and they’re still the better option because they don’t sound crazy, harmful, and destructive.

Then there’s the other side, which sounds like a campus protest at this point. These fools thought the reason Obama was successful was leftist protest movements such as “Occupy Wall Street,” and well, that’s went how you’d expect. They have jumped from “omnicause” to omnicause, hoping to jumpstart their revolution, and it just never quite finds enough support outside of lower and lower turnout primaries where they can edge out a low intensity win. They come up with slogans like “defund the police,” “Green New Deal,” and “Free Palestine,” none of which have any actual substance behind the plans (they often argue over what they even mean), and end up as the subject of Republican attack ads. They have leading figures like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who don’t have many career achievements and generally dislike the party more than they hate their opponents, and it ends as horribly bad as you’d expect. They give us ideological lunatics like Tulsi Gabbard, John Fetterman, and Graham Platner, who end up practically making the Republican arguments for them as they run away from the Democratic Party, people so intellectually flexible that they end up disagreeing with themselves on what kind of America they want. They make up roughly a third of the party that is just angry and wants to “FIGHT” or “DO SOMETHING” even if there is no concrete idea what that is. They can’t build a majority of the party, let alone the country, and if they did take over a lot more of the existing Democrats would leave. Which is bad when you’re 27% of America. They justify this though by living in an imaginary world where they’ll convert some portion of non-voters and Trump voters into leftists, which is nonsensical to any thinking person, but it’s the only way to justify moving left when the country thinks we’ve gone too far now.

The second problem is truly a problem of leadership though, and it’s made these problems way, way worse. Instead of standing on their beliefs and values and presenting a plan of any kind to the country, they have bent over backwards to appease these folks. What’s come out of it is slop policy, adaptation of half measures to try and appease people which does not appease people, and the perception among less ideological voters of all stripes that Democrats are a bunch of weirdos obsessed with changing everything in society. Let’s be honest, I kind of get people defining us by our furthest left flank- they at least have a list of things they want to do. They might not have a real plan to get there, or any clue how they’d change a government not meant to change, but they have policies. What does a Chuck Schumer Democrat do, run the government better? It’s basically a management class political party that promises to appropriate money better than the other guys and maybe be a bit better about hiring more diverse people, and defending achievements the party had in the past, like Medicare, Obamacare, or Social Security. Really, let’s be serious, most of the great achievements Democrats have in recent times are cleaning up messes left to them by Republicans. It’s not as though they’ve put forward serious regulatory bills on things like the internet, social media, or AI. It’s kind of just “we’re better at governance,” which makes people’s eyes glaze over. Then the leftists yell about giving out free shit, and most voters know it will never happen, but some folks do latch onto it, and so people assume that’s the party’s position. I mean, it’s dumb, but I can’t blame people.

So not only are Democratic leaders appeasing people who want to change the very core of the support they currently have to become something less popular, they’re also literally putting nothing forward as a party. And this has been the case for ten years. We’ll pass continuing resolutions for the same government you don’t like, but do it better than them, so vote for us. Then we wonder why we’re being defined by the least popular among us. I don’t know why we’re shocked. Ten years into this.

Bernie, Platner, Crooksy

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Well, the NRCC didn’t wait much on this.

Brooks uses Fight Agency, the same consultants tied to Platner’s campaign, and has shown no interest in dropping them. 

“Bernie Bro Bob Brooks is backed by far-left political allies who helped prop up alleged sexual abuser Graham Platner. Brooks won’t distance himself from them because he is exactly what the Democrat machine produces: a self-serving socialist who protects the system, not families.” – NRCC Spokesman Reilly Richardson

This isn’t new, if you’ve been reading here, and it’s not shocking. Much like the Nazi in Maine, Bob doesn’t really like people who aren’t white. Crooksy hates Barack Obama, and Platner’s whole campaign was against the party. As you can see above, they are both Bernie backed candidates. Let’s take a look at some of Bernie’s other greatest hits:

You know, it’s about time for this “revolution” to die. I have to hand it to Crooksy though- he’s maybe not a Russian asset, Nazi, or Shrek, but he did stiff his former mother-in-law. Bernie and Fight Agency are really picking out some fantastic people to run for Congress.

Meanwhile Crooksy is crowing about an internal showing him up 47-43 in July. That’s a lot smaller lead than Platner had two months ago. When the NRCC opens fire on this guy, he really may implode. Especially if he keeps talking.

The NRCC’s File on Crooksy

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

The NRCC has put up it’s first “red box” page on Bob “Crooksy” Brooks in PA-7, and it’s a mix of things we expected and knew, and things that are expansions on his other laundry list of problems. The four main hits they put up:

  1. Screws Over His Own Workers- Bob Brooks claims he helped expand Pennsylvania’s workers’ compensation law, but for four years he didn’t carry workers’ comp insurance for his own employees as required by law, which is a crime in Pennsylvania.
  2. Racist Behavior- Bob Brooks has been accused of racism, including sharing racist memes used by white nationalist groups on social media. Brooks took down his posts which were exposed by news outlets.
  3. Stiffed His In-laws- Bob Brooks refused to pay for a property, lied about it in court, and was found guilty in a lawsuit and ordered to pay over $130,000.
  4. Screws Over His Own Union Members- While Bob Brooks was union president, union dues increased by 14% which helped pay for a higher salary for Brooks – even though money spent actually advocating for union members was cut.

I have to admit that I’m surprised they limited themselves to just four things with this guy, but as I found in the primaries, there’s so much more than you can actually print legally about him. They’re hitting on the obvious stuff, being a racist who stiffed his family. They’re also hitting him though right where his message is most vulnerable- he’s not a champion of blue collar Americans. They’re going to call him a “union boss,” an attack with a false meaning for the most part, by hitting him for his compensation in the job and job performance. I mean, I guess that works with Republicans, but I don’t know there. The first hit, that he doesn’t have workman’s compensation insurance for his landscaping business could expose him to some serious issues legally, and also open up the long rumored issues of how he got the business. Of course they have videos of Crooksy saying crazy things and also avoiding talking (see above) on the page as well. I doubt this is everything they have, but it’s probably enough to pull Crooksy down a bit. I’m sure they’re going to use the deadbeat stuff and racism to really nuke him, because well, it’s true.

With what we are seeing in the Platner race today, you may have to actually kill someone to get headlines that raise eyebrows this cycle.

The Delusions of the Progressive Populist Left

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment
This could be written in one sentence- “They didn’t vote for him.”

Welcome to the mythical summer of “the Democratic Tea Party.” They can win the most gentrified areas of New York City. They can win Denver. They can win the super safe Philadelphia seat. The Bronx? The Hudson Valley? Suburban Chicago? All the competitive Texas seats? Suburban Philadelphia? South central Pennsylvania? Every California competitive race but one? Suburban Maryland? The Iowa seats? I could go on. They lost every one of them.

Progressive populists are winning low intensity primaries. Safe seats that no Democratic nominee can lose. Races with backbench, lower profile (to the general public) candidates or divided, underfunded competition from multiple candidates. Wildly leftist seats. Rural white seats and gentrified white trust fund babies. Actual working class districts with working class voters? Those folks want nothing to do with these idiots. People in competitive districts? They’ll pass.

Their movement is white, educated, and very male. Their attempts at “working class” are trust fund babies like Graham Platner and grifters like Bob Brooks that somehow didn’t get beat up too badly in their bar room days. When they ran Bernie in 2016, he hit his high in the low-40’s in the primaries. Four years later, with huge money advantages and organization, he fell downward closer to a third. Both times Black peoples had no interest in him. No primary this year suggests anything has changed.

But let’s play along for a minute. Their entire theory is that most Democrats will stick with the party in the event the DSA takes over. They also believe there ae a group of non-voters and even Republicans out there who would vote for them, but not Dems. Is this realistic? Would Republicans cross over to vote for DSA Democrats? Well 77% of them call themselves conservatives, another 18% call themselves moderates, and just 4% call themselves liberals. Even among the whole electorate, liberals are the smallest share of the three options (conservative, moderate, and liberal). Could people not voting right now tip the scales in favor of the DSA types? Well, more non-voters favored Trump in 2024, so that’s not super promising. It doesn’t stand to reason that people calling themselves conservative or moderate in general would prefer the further left version of Democrats to the current version of Democrats that they also didn’t prefer to Trump. But there’s a greater danger here- it really wouldn’t take many existing Democrats just deciding they’re out on this to make the Democrats a hopeless minority forever. Democrats have received about 48% of the vote or more in every Presidential election since 1996, so let’s use that as a baseline. If ten percent of Democratic leaning voters decided they didn’t want to vote for this party anymore, the party would be a 43% national party and would lose both houses of Congress and the White House for a generation. A little over 40% of Democratic voters are independents that lean Democratic, and about 45% of them are moderates, at minimum. So figure conservatively somewhere around 20% of Democratic leaning voters are definitely well to the right of these people, at least. Losing half of them seems to be an automatic. Reality is that these numbers could be a lot more.

What’s the point in taking over a party that can’t win anymore? Ok, you win a majority of a small group and meanwhile the larger public is repulsed. It’s hard to put lipstick on a pig. You can say Mamdani is a model for Democratic Socialist governance if you want, but they can talk about the $4 billion bailout from Albany he got this year and the missed pension payment for city workers worth $2.3 billion more. We all know that $6.3 billion for a city is a lot of money. People who don’t live in these big, blue cities are not going to be as okay with that kind of government as the very progressive voters in those places. How do you sell this to people who are largely not all that ideological, let alone to anyone opposed to leftism?

The answer is you don’t, and you won’t. Yes, they are going to win elections in very blue areas right now. Expanding beyond that isn’t something they have even fathomed beyond some nonsense about “turning out non-voters” that probably don’t like them either. The whole thing is just Corbyn’s British Labour on steroids, and probably will go about as well. In what world are you going to sell voters in the Midwest, or even here, on electing people who are members of a political party that is nominating people supporting the Kremlin, Cuban communism, and people chanting “death to America” over in New York City? Literally why would any American with a sane mind look at the recent winners in New York City and Denver and be like, “yeah, I’m for this?” This is a dead end. For those of you who say “well the establishment Democrats lost too!,” yes, you are right. They lost in no small part because the country thought they were too obsessed with social justice and economic redistribution under Biden, how the hell do you think the country is going to react to someone who is actually a real life leftist?

Crooksy’s Loose Lips

/ Rich Wilkins / 3 Comments

The other day Bob “Crooksy” Brooks was sitting for a lunch with friends. As one would expect from Crooksy, he said something stupid. He made a joke about Mayor Sal Panto’s social media posting, saying something along the lines of he got drug for his social media postings, but at least he spelled them right. He probably figured he was sitting with friends, and he was. But well, the walls have ears when you run for Congress, and the walls couldn’t wait to tell me about it. Was his joke mildly funny? Sure. But Sal Panto is popular in Easton, and with good reason, he’s the best Mayor the city has ever had. Also though, Crooksy’s social media postings are cringe, cringe, cringe. And more cringe. He all but defends violence. Like the problem here isn’t whether or not Bob can put together a complete sentence (he barely can), it’s more that he spent most of his adult life spouting off offensive, racist shit before he decided he was a working class hero leftist politician. But that’s neither here nor there, he’s nominated now, amiright?

The right wing is just starting to tee up their line of attack against Bob for later this Fall. They dug up his hits on IAFF Fire Fighters who are volunteers too, and kind of easily, because the guy must not have his Facebook locked down. I mean, you’re running for Congress, man. The graphic above from Fox News ironically just uses his own words against his campaign statements, they didn’t even have to lie for once. Look, pro tip here- a former bartender should have a consistent position on how we tax tips for bartenders. Going on some bro podcast and calling Trump’s so-called (it’s not really, or at least not fully) “no tax on tips” position “garbage,” then having your handlers say you support it is campaign malpractice that’s impressively bad even for a knuckle dragger like Crooksy. The question is, is he dishonest, stupid, or both? I’m going with both. The result of that is he just shoots from the hip on policy questions and tells the room whatever he thinks they want to hear. Kind of makes sense now that he recently told a room of mostly Muslim Americans that Israel’s war in Gaza is a genocide, but when he was asked about cutting aid to Israel at a Lehigh Valley for All meeting a few months ago, he pulled his shirt over his face like he was afraid of the question. This guy believes whatever he’s told to believe. Consistency isn’t his thing.

If you believe the Democrats are going to win 30 seats and take the House in a wave this year, none of this will matter. Crooksy will win because Democrats win, and frankly any complaints I have against him won’t mean anything because the race will be too far gone. I don’t believe that at all. These midterm elections are going to be way more competitive than most Democratic activists want to believe. This is what happens when activists and electeds just talk to each other and confirm each other’s biases. The fact is that battleground voters think Democrats are nuts right now. They think we are more extreme than Republicans. They thought this in 2024 too, and then voted for Republicans. Now we’re nominating embarrassing, Mamdani-DSA candidates around the country.

The blueprint for Crooksy was written by *literally* the same people who created Nazi oyster farmer Graham Platner in Maine and John Fetterman here in Pennsylvania. The idea they sold voters on is that Crooksy would win back (white) working class voters because he’s a working class, union President with a bald head that said some stupid things on social media that makes him “authentic.” It’s literally the same as Platner’s story, to the word. We heard some of the same rhetoric around James Talarico’s campaign in Texas too. Well, how’s it going? Platner’s once mighty lead in Maine is gone, because his personal baggage is out now (oh hey, Crooksy), and he’s getting absolutely housed among white, non-college educated voters in Maine, the people he was supposed to pull back to the Democrats. Oops! Talarico is doing even worse. There’s less than zero reason to think that Crooksy is doing better with white non-college educated voters here, or frankly any other group that didn’t vote Democratic in 2024. He’s not. He’s probably going to be lucky to flip any individual precincts on Mackenzie, let alone communities, and therefore his pathway to victory will be motivating more core Democrats, the type that were the backbone of Susan Wild’s coalition, to show up. Frankly, he repulses a lot of those activist types, and I doubt he does much better with the 30 or 40 something year old college graduate couple living in the suburbs either.

Crooksy’s continual mistakes are going to burn him. And he’s going to keep making them.

These Folks are Mentally Ill

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

In about an hour we’re probably going to see some far leftists win Congressional primaries in New York. Daria Avila Chevalier (NY-13) was protesting Israel on October 8th, 2023, she thinks America bullied Russia into invading Ukraine, she doesn’t believe *anyone* should be deported (even violent criminals), she’s for ending police and abolishing the border, she called Joe Biden a war criminal, she called white women “ugly,” and called the United States a disgrace that is worse than Hamas. Nearby in NY-7 is her friend Claire Valdez, who is partially running on her opposition to Israel coming before her opponent, as well as her support for unifying Ireland (no one is fighting for this in 2026). Then there’s Brad Lander, challenging Daniel Goldman on the all important Gaza issue in NY-10, and he admits that all the antisemitism makes him feel “queasy,” as he does it. Virtually everyone is a lunatic in NY-12, so I’ll just leave that alone, no sense attacking the whole field when only one nut can win, right?

These people are a bunch of sick nuts. We had a woman who wanted to put “Zionists” in concentration camps get 40% in a primary this year, so I don’t think we can put anything as “out of play” at this point. Here in PA-7 we nominated a grifter who stiffed his mother-in-law, so even normal places are nominating nuts. How did the Democratic Party go this far? We were normal like five minutes ago? One way to understand it is that a good chunk of Hillary’s 2016 primary voters are either independents now or dead, and Bernie’s 2016 voters are mostly still around. Another way to view it is that the party is hollowing out and only 27% of Americans identify as Democrats, so the nuts are what’s left. While I think the Hillary Clinton campaign playbook largely doesn’t work in America, nominating people who howl at the moon is probably not a path forward. Just ask Corbyn’s Labor Party.

I think it’s worth noting though, these embarrassing freaks are only winning certain kinds of races- very blue district, legislative races that usually have more than two candidates. The third of Democrats who don’t think Fidel Castro was that bad can win three and four way primaries in places where the Republicans aren’t a threat. Relatively normal, moderate Dems will be tasked with taking back the Senate in Alaska, Iowa, Texas, Ohio, and North Carolina, while a Nazi will try in Maine.These nutbags seem to do well in super urban and rural areas and nowhere else. Basically in places where you don’t have to acknowledge Republicans or even moderate Democrats exist if you don’t want.

Congrats New York. You’re weird.

Bob “Crooksy” Brooks Doesn’t Just Hate Barack Obama, He Hates the Folks Who Save Your Life

/ Rich Wilkins / 2 Comments

Bob Brooks is a pile of human garbage that anyone should be ashamed of. If you’re defending him, it’s because you want a Congressional staff job and the benefits, let’s be honest. Don’t tell me it’s because you have Democratic values, the man hates Barack Obama. He is accused of committing mortgage fraud, entirely so he could stiff his mother-in-law. He’s not just a random deadbeat. No, he’s much worse than that.

A couple years ago, you might have heard that I was almost dead. Literally a couple *weeks* ago, a keyboardist had a heart attack in my basement during band practice. Both times, the incredible folks of Suburban EMS came to save the day. There’s not enough things I can say about these people, I’d be cremated or in a box somewhere without them. When the keyboardist had his heart attack, these EMT’s were joined by the good people of the Palmer Township Police Department and our *volunteer” fire fighters. What does Crooksy think of them? From Bernie:

The Beacon’s Chuck Ross has some up with something I failed to cover during the primary, and that is Brooks’ revulsion at professional firefighters who dare act as volunteer firefighters in their own communities. Ross points to angry social media posts from Brooks, calling them “scabs” and “shitbags.” 

This country currently faces a severe decline in volunteer firefighters. The number of volunteers has declined about 25% over the past two decades, while emergency calls have increased 70%, particularly in the MidAtlantic.  The shortage is so serious that Lehigh and Northampton Counties both offer real estate tax rebates to volunteer firefighters. 

I understand that Brooks may have no issue with volunteer firefighters so long as they stay out of a municipality covered by a professional and unionized fire department. But does that make sense. The Lehigh Valley’s three cities have all had major fires over the years during which volunteer firefighters from other municipalities assist. The most recent example of this is at an Easton hotel. Should a professional Easton or Bethlehem firefighter refuse to assist if he is also a volunteer at Plainfield’s fire department and that company responds?  Should they just stand by and watch a building burn?

As I said before the primary, Republicans had more on this pile of donkey loaf than I did. I did not have these social media posts. Of course they had the goods here:

In the original article they go on to point out that this post from Brooks is nonsense. Of course a volunteer force should not go into Easton, Bethlehem, Wilson, Allentown, or Emmaus uncalled and undercut unionized, paid members who fight fires for a living. What Crooksy doesn’t point out here is *that doesn’t happen in reality.* There aren’t volunteers from Nancy Run going into his former turf of the city of Bethlehem and responding to routine fire calls. Far from. Almost always, the volunteers are called in because there aren’t enough paid fire fighters on call, or in some cases on the force at all, to respond to the severity of the fire. The reality is that our society doesn’t have the resources to keep people safe all of the time. These folks volunteer to help us deal with that.

I’ll take a guess that this human pile of sewage will say is that these professional fire fighters are “taking advantage” of the real estate tax rebates. Yeah well, our society offers those because we can’t take care of ourselves. God bless these guys to give their time off for the rest of us. I sleep better at night knowing anyone would give of the most important resource we have, time. He knows this though. His union was pleading for more resources from the City of Bethlehem in last year’s budget because *they need more fire fighters.* I even agree with him for the most part. Apparently he doesn’t hold the courage of his own convictions.

Crooksy is just a garbage human being. He should drop out of this race today and just admit the con. Maybe we could still convince the former Congresswoman to take his place.

Crooksy Goes to Court, Part Whatever At This Point

/ Rich Wilkins / 2 Comments

Fresh off of running for the hills when asked if he committed mortgage fraud by a Republican tracker, Bob “Crooksy” Brooks is due in court tomorrow for his latest court date for screwing his former mother-in-law out of over $150k, after interest. Crooksy is basing his entire campaign off of his false “one of us” argument, but what Deadbeat Bob means is one of us as long as you’re not a minority. A majority of “us” liked Barack Obama, Crooksy sure as hell didn’t. I wonder why? They won’t ask him in court tomorrow, but it’s not like he’d tell the truth anyway.

Here we are a month after the primary and this con artist is heading to the court over money loaned to him in 2004, that he signed he’d pay back in 2008, that he lost his appeal over in 2022, and still to date has paid only a reported $100. There was an ethics report filed against him with the House of Representatives during the primary because he was just trying to pretend the lawsuit never happened. Crooksy thinks everyone will just forgive and forget that he’s stiffing his mother-in-law. His continuation as a candidate for the House is very Graham Platner-esque, which makes sense because they have the same consultants. These guys really pick only the best people.

There are rumors that Crooksy is drawing a look from the U.S. Attorney’s office, and I’m sure the Attorney General would like to take a crack at him over his “quit claim” on the property he stiffed his mother-in-law for. I actually don’t think it would be wise for either to open an investigation unless the statute is about to run out on this. He’ll still be as guilty or not next year and it would look nakedly political. Besides, it looks as though Deadbeat Bob will be spending significant general election time in the court room arguing this case anyway. Bob’s defenders have taken in private to criticizing the woman he stiffed out of the money, and I think it’s just a matter of time until they start trying to call her crooked, unhinged, and other evil words. Maybe she is. That doesn’t matter a single iota, as Bob signed the promissory note to pay her back. He acknowledged that he owed her the money, and he then did everything possible to not pay her. If he weren’t your political candidate, you’d call him a deadbeat.

Ryan Mackenzie deserves to lose in 2026. He voted for everything Donald Trump asked him to vote for, and Donald Trump is about as popular with the electorate right now as athlete’s foot. So of course the consultant class in DC and Harrisburg have saddled us with a pile of cow dung to get elected in this district. My plan is to just leave the race blank right now see what comes around in two years.