Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

The Real Culture War Elite Violent Campus Anti-Semites and their Faculty Enables vs my “White Privileged” Dad.

Posted: April 24, 2024 by datechguy in culture, education, education, elections, politics
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Lieutenant Harold Kaminsky: [to Captain John Earle, who demanded confirmation before alerting anyone when informed of a sub sighting in the restricted zone] You wanted confirmation, Captain? [Pointing to the Pearl Harbor fleet aflame] Take a look! There’s your confirmation!

Tora Tora Tora 1970

I found myself thinking of my father yesterday and realizing that the people who are currently occupying colleges and screaming for the destruction of Israel and the death of Jews would have defined him as having “White Privilege”.

Well he certainly was white (although many in society didn’t consider the children of Sicilian immigrants white and he certainly was loaded with privilege his entire life.

  • He had the privilege of being born to a family of 9 from Parents who came from Sicily with nothing
  • He had the privilege of leaving school at 13 to work full time in the paper mills to help support a family that while having a little bit of land was dead poor.
  • He had the privilege of working through the shutdowns of the plant to clean out the vats for extra money in an age when there was no such thing as “welfare”.
  • He had the privilege to spend years in the Pacific on an Ammunition ship knowing it would take but a single hit for his life to end it his 20’s.
  • He had the privilege after the war of running a bar and restaurant in a town that didn’t like Italians.
  • He had the privilege of enduring gunshots fired at his house and business for being an Italian businessman in the wrong town, of being jumped and in one instance run over for daring to carry on and not pay protection.
  • He had the privilege of seeing his wife and mother of his four children at the time caught in an explosion at his place, being badly burned but somehow surviving to eventually give birth to a fifth child.
  • He had the privilege of using his skills as a carpenter to build the house where he moved his family to and eventually build next door to his mother-in-law after her husband died to take care of her.
  • He had the privilege of having her move in with her and devoting himself full time to her welfare when she was too sick to live in her house next door.
  • And he had the privilege of after a lifetime of labor to die just after retirement at 65 before he ever received his first social security check.

But the biggest privilege he had was being brought up in a faithful Catholic house, marrying a faithful Catholic wife and during all that time of unremitting labor and danger thanking God for all the blessings he had. Always sharing what he had with strangers in need and never complaining about his lot, at least not in the 23 years that I shared a house with him.

Yet in contrast we see people attending elite universities, people who have rarely if ever had to struggle, who would be considered part of the 1% not just of this nation but of all human history abusing that advantage to gain an elite education, flouting the law and terrorizing their fellow students whose primary crime is to belong to a race that has survived thousands years of various attempts to exterminate them.

I’ll wager these pampered fools never had “no” said to them in their lives. They wouldn’t have lasted 15 minutes in the great depression let alone on the battlefields of World War 2 in the world where my dad and millions like him bore the “privilege” of responsibility. They’ve not builders they’re destroyers.

Even worse the “adults” in the room are encouraging them to continue such behavior and at the highest levels of Government people holding power do little or nothing out of fear that enforcing the law might cost them votes come November.

In my fathers day they would have been quickly arrested and subject to the full penalties of the law and in states like Florida where sanity still rules they are, which is why you aren’t seeing Campus takeovers and bridges blocked, because people protest within the boundaries of the laws and the adults in charge make sure that if they cross the line between exercising their rights and abusing the rights of others, they suffer the consequences.

These kids never faced the consequences of their actions. Now all of us get have the “privilege” of doing so.

Media malpractice on the Dexter Reed police shooting

Posted: April 14, 2024 by John Ruberry in crime, culture, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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Dexter Reed Chicago Police mugshot. Source: Chicago City Wire.

By John Ruberry

On his Prime Time show last Thursday, Jesse Watters, nailed it when he excoriated the mainstream media over headlines used to describe the deadly shooting of Dexter Reed by a Chicago Police tactical squad last month.  Reed was pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt, which in Illinois, is a legitimate reason for police to pull a driver over. 

A Chicago police officer asked Reed to roll down his front windows, which initially he did, but then he rolled them up, he ignored demands to get out of his SUV, then he fired his gun eleven times, wounding one cop.

Headlines like these, Watters reported, were used about the Reed shooting:

“Black man dead on Chicago street after cops fired nearly 100 bullets.” 

“Police fired 96 shots in 41 seconds killing Black man during traffic stop.”

“Deadly Chicago traffic stop where police fired 96 shots raises serious questions about use of force.”

Watters points out that deep in the story the “journalists” mention that Reed shot as the cops first. 

But the media knows that often users only look at headlines of stories as they appear on their smartphones. They don’t bother to read the stores that accompany these headlines, or they are blocked by paywalls. 

The mainstream media doesn’t want to report the news–it wants to advance a left-wing agenda. Foremost on their agenda is to re-elect Joe Biden so the man who sends mean Tweets, Donald Trump, doesn’t return to the White House. The uproar over the police killing of George Floyd pushed the frail Joe Biden past the finish line in 2020. The media is hoping, with Reed, that history repeats and a new backlash can drag an ever-frailer Biden to victory.

The media, both local and national, is borrowing a page from the Trayvon Martin shooting, by using old photographs of him, of when he was younger and well, cuter. The Chicago media, in their stories, used high school photos of Reed, who was 26 when he was killed.

Chicago’s most-read newspapers, the Tribune and the Sun-Times, have a general policy, instituted in 2021 against using mugshots in stories. Of course, they both made an exception in the case of Donald Trump. The Chicago City Wire, derided as a “fake” newspaper by Chicago’s self-appointed media elite, has no such rule, so it published Reed’s mug shot.

That’s not all. The City Wire reports that was Reed arrested twice in 2023. The first bust was for retail theft, the second was for aggravated unlawful use of a weapon.

The City Wire also revealed that Reed, who once worked as a security guard, received a Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) loan of $20,832 for his business that consisted of “all other support activities for transportation.”

Thousands of very suspicious PPP loans were issued to Chicagoans during the COVID pandemic, particularly in impoverished areas not known as hubs for business activity, including West Garfield Park, where Reed lived.

Sam Charles of the Trib managed to do some insightful reporting today when he revealed that Reed was shot in 2021.

“I’m physically disabled and mentally unstable with PTSD, short-term memory loss, slurred speech, drop foot in one of my legs, blindness in one eye, shoulder/arm hard to move, weakness and/or sensitivity,” Reed, who was 26 when he was killed last month, wrote in an August 2023 court filing. “With all these medical conditions it has been hard for me to work and/or do certain things.”

Well, if Reed was truthful in that filing, then I have a question: Why did Reed–and as we know, he was arrested for aggravated unlawful use of a weapon last year–have a gun? And where did he get the firearm?

Chicago has among the toughest gun laws in America.

And of course, Reed, despite his troubles, should have known want what to do when police officers pulled him over.

On Thursday’s Chicago’s Morning Answer show with Dan Proft and Amy Jacobson on WIND-AM, John Garrido, a former CPD lieutenant, told the hosts, “This incident, like so many other ones, could have easily been avoided,” Garrido explained, “all [Reed] had to do was comply. All he had to do was roll the window down, open the door, get out of the car, and he would live another day to tell stories about how the police somehow violated his rights.”

Garrido had more to say about Reed. “He was in court–or supposed to be in court–two weeks prior to this incident.” The former cop theorized that Reed possibly was afraid if he was caught by the CPD tactical squad with a weapon, one that he was not supposed to have, that he could have been sent to jail.

Clearly, there is more to learn–and report–about the Reed death. But it appears that the mainstream media cares more about one thing–advancing their left-wing narrative.

As for the Tribune and the Sun-Times–as well as national outlets–why not reach out to someone like Garrido when reporting on Reed and similar police stories?

Note: Proft says he is a principal of Local Government Information Services, which publishes the Chicago City Wire and other local publications.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

A Pair of Pet Peeves of Mine Concerning War

Posted: April 4, 2024 by datechguy in culture, Israel, Israel vs Hamas
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Hacom: Reger, these are young men. They are not old enough to be excused.
Reger: They’re visitors.
Hacom: Well, have they no Lawgivers in the Valley? Why be they not at the Festival?
Captain Kirk [in local dress]: We heard that you might have rooms for us.
Reger: There. You see, Hacom? They’ve merely come looking for a place to rest afterwards.
Hacom: The Red Hour has already struck.
Tamar: Hacom, these be strangers. The Valley has different ways.
Hacom: Do you say that Landru is not everywhere?
Tamar: No, of course not. It’s simply they may have different ways.

Star Trek The Return of the Archons 1967

We all have pet peeves in our life, my wife hates when I leave lights on (I like to see) and I hate pans left inside of pans on stoves while DaWife is all for it. But this article title hit a serious Pet Peeve of mine concerning war:

I Am Furious About the Relentless Anti-Israel Propaganda

Now the article itself by David Strom is better than the title. It talks about the relentless propaganda by the left, and by universities and by Hamas attacking Israel and he expresses his disgust thus:

But the truth is that very little of the criticism aimed at Israel is even remotely rational or motivated by anything but anti-Western or antisemitic hate, and I am sick and tired of it. And I am just as disturbed by the media’s spreading of that propaganda with far too little skepticism. 

Words have meaning. Actions have context. Hamas is objectively evil. 

While I share Mr. Strom’s support of Israel and his analysis of Hamas I’ve got to say none of this infuriates me.

Why? Two basic reasons.

First Hamas and the Arab World have been spreading propaganda about Israel from almost the moment of its creation, in fact there is a rather famous intercept from the 1967 War with Nasser pretty much blackmailing Jordan into joining the war and discussing how to spin the destruction of the Arab air forces. Falsehoods and lies are a basic tactic in Muslim Arab culture even to their own people (There are generations of Egyptians who have been taught since their birth that the 1973 war with Israel was a resounding victory).

Second and most importantly: This is war.

Right now Hamas is fighting for it’s very survival, they had no idea that Israel would respond in the way that they did and the people who cheered on Hamas on October 7th and rushed into Israel to steal what they could had no idea that they would be reduced to living in tents because of these actions.

The Qataris and the Iranians who are financing Hamas didn’t see this coming either. They’re happy to fund proxy efforts (Iran with the help of Obama’s pallets of Cash and Biden’s moves to push up oil prices) but don’t dare let the war touch themselves. If Israel decided to strike Qatar they would last about 30 seconds and Iran understands that a direct assault on Israel could give them the casus belli for a counterstrike that could contain a nuclear component to end the Mullahs once and for all.

So naturally they use the best cards they have in their hand which are playable.

For Iran and Qatar it’s money and that money is wisely spent on buying academics and media who are easily bought and pushing a narrative. There are plenty of Muslims in Europe and the US who don’t like Jews and would be happy to see them dead but without the ability or strength to legally slaughter the Jews in their midst they’ll settle for intimidation and vandalism and the spreading of propaganda across regular and social media until such a time in the future when their numbers grow to the point when they can can openly slaughter them.

For the far left which has been aborting and neutering their own children and encouraging other to do the same, they’ll welcome the additional number sure in the idea that it will be a generation or more before they are strong enough to take action against the gays, transgenders and libertines which the Arabs despise. (And if it means some Jewish leftists are demoted from Useful idiots to simply idiots to be discarded so be it).

For Hamas it’s the hostages. As long as Hamas holds them or can be thought of as holding them they have a card they can use to delay and disrupt Israel both in the field and on the home front, so no matter how much understandable outrage one might hold over the barbarity of holding hostages, especially women & children I’m not phased or shocked over their doing so because for them that’s the best card they have.

This is war, a game of life and death that is played to win, I’m not outraged about the Arabs playing the game in the way they see fit nor am I outraged over them saying one thing in Arabic to their own people and another to people in the west with different customs and standards. That’s what drives me nuts. This is not our culture, it’s not our standards. This is what the Arab/Muslim world is, it’s what it’s always been, it’s what they’ve been doing for decades and what people like Pam Geller and Robert Spencer and Brigitte Gabriel have warned the west repeatedly about. It’s not a secret and we should not be shocked and outraged that they act as they do.

If you want to be outraged, be outraged about the people who either through ignorance or expedience fall for or pretend to fall for it for cash, or fame or acceptance or even fear.

That’s something to be outraged about.

Instead think of how to counter it and act accordingly.

I’ll take “Things That Actually Don’t Phase me” for $2000 Alex

Posted: April 2, 2024 by datechguy in culture, News/opinion
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The good folks at Libs of TicTok note an interesting double standard when it comes to “hate”.

Now given that I’m a very Catholic guy, who reads scripture regularly (a minimum of 21 chapters and seven Psalms a week) you might think this would bother me.

But other than the double standard, which at worst annoys and which I’ll note, it doesn’t really bother me. Let’s list the reasons why it doesn’t bother me in order of unimportance:

  1. I don’t know if they’re actual Catholic Bibles
  2. None of this does anything to my faith or anyone else’s
  3. As long as the person is alive it’s their soul to play with and or throw away
  4. You never know what God has in store for such a guy, If there was such a thing as the Bible on the day Saul left for Damascus he might have cheered burning them too.
  5. Such an act self identifies someone that I need to pray for thus generating needed prayer
  6. If those bibles belonged to the person who burned them it’s none of my business unless I lived in the town and was delayed by a fire illegally set at an intersection

In a republic reason one is the key one. I don’t believe in hate crimes. If a person chooses to hate their neighbor that’s on them people have the right to their own opinions even nasty ones. As long as those actions don’t harm anyone and involve their own property it’s not my business. In fact if they had not left this in the middle of an intersection blocking it I don’t think it would be newsworthy at all.

Now if they sheriff decides to cite this guy for blocking an intersection and reckless endangerment (fire at a public intersection) I’m all for it but those are the crimes involved period.

If some guy wants to buy bibles and burn them, it’s on them. Now if someone decides to try to take one of MY bibles or someone else’s Bible, Catholic or no, and destroys it, THEN we have a problem that needs to be acted on. That’s theft and vandalism.

But I’m not going to be provoked by idiots being idiots who are only harming themselves to anything other than prayer.

That’s how Christianity works.

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