Archive for September 19, 2023

Trump’s stand on life and Mother Angelica on Peanuts

Posted: September 19, 2023 by datechguy in abortion, catholic, elections, elections, politics, primaries
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Remember, vote for life. It may be your own.

Mother Angelica

Yesterday Donald Trump hit Ron DeSantis from the left for signing a heartbeat bill suggesting that such bills hurt the republican party and talking how he would sign a compromise national bill restricting abortion to 13 weeks.

I can’t speak for others but I’m catholic and abortion is a sine non qua for me. It’s they type of thing that you risk your soul over. I’ve got enough sins that I worry about without compromising myself over life for the sake of a primary or national election.

Mother Angelica, the founder of EWTN put it very well herself when it comes to compromising on sin in her famous story concerning Peanuts. Her nuns were selling peanuts as a fund raiser and were doing pretty well on it when suddenly a new concessions manager demanded an “advertising fee” or as mother put it a kickback. When he threatened to pull the concession from her her answer was classic:

Mother Angelica: Look, if I’m going to hell, it’s not going to be over a peanut.

Here is her telling the story

Now there is no question that Donald Trump’s record on life as president was a great one. Three Supreme Court Judges that got rid of Roe vs Wade, first president to attend the national march for life, there is no question that his record was excellent.

Furthermore I don’t have a problem with incremental change when that’s the best you can do. In a republic you can change laws without educating the public and persuading their representatives to vote with you.

  • If a state has laws allowing abortion to the date of birth then in such a state I’ll welcome a 26 week ban
  • If a state has laws allowing abortion to 26 weeks I’ll welcome & work toward a 13 week ban
  • If a state has laws allowing abortion to 13 weeks I’ll welcome & work for a six week / heartbeat ban
  • if a state has laws allowing abortion up to six weeks I’d welcome & work for an outright ban
  • and if a state has laws outlaw abortion except for rape and incest I’d welcome & work for those exceptions to be removed because a life isn’t defined by the sins of their father.

if your lifeboat isn’t big enough to fit everyone pull from the water who you can while you build a bigger one.

But to retreat and condemn the efforts to save life for the sake of a political campaign, to reject what can be done in the hopes of getting power, to make the life of the unborn child with it’s potential and God given soul and to abandon the soul of the mother and the father an all those involved who risk their souls in this action is to abrogate our duty and to abandon the spiritual work of mercy that is admonishing the sinner because it is these souls that are at risk. Or as Mother Angelica put it:

Those who tell the Truth love you. Those who tell you what you want to hear love themselves.

Mother Angelica

All for the sake of a few more votes? All in the hope that both sides will love you? I think not.

Again Trump is my 2nd choice and if he gets the nomination I’ll have no trouble voting for him vs any of the “abortion till birth” democrats from Biden on down.

But in a primary with a choice between a candidate who has advance the cause of life and one that says he will roll back that advance for the sake of compromise? Well that’s really no choice at all.

Small towns face a serious shortage of cops

Posted: September 19, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized

By Christopher Harper

Just a few miles west of my home in Muncy, Pennsylvania, the town of Montgomery had to shut down its police force.

The decision for the town of just under 2,000 people wasn’t because of anti-police riots; it happened because Montgomery couldn’t afford a full-time force anymore.

What happened in Montgomery is unfortunate but not uncommon to what’s unfolding in smaller municipalities nationwide.

“A lot of municipalities are going to face this as tax bases decline and costs increase exponentially,” Montgomery Mayor Rocky Sanguedolce said. “Nobody wanted to do this.”

America also faces a police officer shortage. From Minnesota to Maine, Ohio to Texas, small towns unable to fill jobs are eliminating their police departments and turning over crime fighting to their county sheriff, a neighboring town, or state police.

Officer resignations were up 47% last year compared to 2019 — the year before the pandemic and George Floyd’s killing — and retirements are up 19%. That’s all according to a survey of nearly 200 police agencies by the Police Executive Research Forum. Though the survey represents only agencies affiliated with the think tank, a fraction of the more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide, it’s one of the few efforts to examine police hiring and retention and compare it with the time before Floyd’s killing.

“Fewer people are applying to be police officers, and more officers are retiring or resigning at a tremendous rate,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum. “There’s a shortage of police officers across the country.” Compounding the exodus of veteran officers, young people are increasingly unwilling to undergo the months of training to become a police officer, Wexler added.

More than 500 U.S. towns and cities with populations of 1,000 to 200,000 disbanded policing between 1972 and 2017, according to a study by Rice University economics professor Richard Boylan.

With the massive amounts of money spent at the state and national levels on fighting crime, it would seem essential that governments come up with some way to provide funds to communities that cannot afford a police department.

With a dependence on the Pennsylvania Highway Patrol in the case of Montgomery, it’s unlikely that the response time to any serious crime would be good.

Fortunately, my home in Muncy has amassed enough funds to keep its police force and raised money to build a new fire and emergency services facility. I wish other communities could say the same.