Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

The Biden/Trudeau Administrations Accidently Producing The Best Argument Against the Death Penalty I’ve Seen

Posted: January 14, 2024 by datechguy in Blame Biden Administration, culture
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One of the weakest arguments against the death penalty, one that has annoyed me over the years has been the Pope’s implying God’s opposition to it. It’s an argument that to me doesn’t hold water if you consider Acts Chapter 5 which is all about how Ananias, literally dies at the word of St. Peter for lying about the price he got for a piece of land.

But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart so that you lied to the holy Spirit and retained part of the price of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain yours? And when it was sold, was it not still under your control? Why did you contrive this deed? You have lied not to human beings, but to God.” When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last, and great fear came upon all who heard of it.

Acts 5 3-5

And when his wife, not knowing he’s dead repeats the lie…

Peter said to her, “Tell me, did you sell the land for this amount?” She answered, “Yes, for that amount.” Then Peter said to her, “Why did you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Listen, the footsteps of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.” At once, she fell down at his feet and breathed her last. When the young men entered they found her dead, so they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. And great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things.

Acts 5:7-11

Now remember these are people who believed in Christ, were part of the new Christian community even before they were called Christians and had just sold some land and given a portion of the money to the disciples. Their crime had been to lie about the amount and keeping it to themselves and yet there is no hesitation at all in what happens, no appeal no chance to go to confession or repent. Nope they’re dead (Now the question as to if they are damned is a completely different one and an interesting theological question but I digress).

C. S. Lewis has his own opinions on the subject:

Thus the weakness of the theological argument argument against the death penalty, but however there is a better one that we’ve seen lately.

That argument comes from this story out of Canada:

And this one out of DC:

And then I ask myself: Would I trust the people who are making these decision with the power of life and death over folks regardless of the charge or the evidence? That’s when I remember this excellent maxium:

Never trust government with a power that you would not trust your worst enemy with.

If there is a better argument against the death penalty, I don’t know it.

Five Basic Questions Under the Fedora: Biden Admin, Schultz Disease, How Many Days Will Belichick Have Off?, Getting Drafty, Cue Yamamoto

Posted: January 11, 2024 by datechguy in Blame Biden Administration, culture, education, medicine, nfl, politics
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Can somebody answer this: 

For the sake this basic Question I’ll stipulate that Joe Biden won the last election cleanly and is not the figurehead of a foreign or domestic enemy whose was worried about the success of the US and set a goal to bring US down.

So my question: “If you were a foreign and/or domestic enemy of the United States whose goal was to bring down the country that was prospering under Trump and to that end stole election 2020 to put a puppet regime in place to enact that goal, how would your actions and agenda differ from the Biden Administrations over the last four years?”

Speaking of people trying to bring down the country apparently Dr. Anthony Fauci must not have taken his medication yesterday as he had quite a series of memory lapses.

Testifying under oath before congress he replied “I don’t recall” over 100 times. It’s a rather nasty case of Schultz disease:

So the question: How is it that being under oath tends to undermine the memory of people who are supposedly competent intelligent and in charge? 

Unexpectedly of courseTM

As I was tying this post a tweet from Rapoport & Pelissero tweeted and the NFL reported that Bill Belichick is out in New England. A news conference has been called for Noon.

I question the wisdom here as Mike Vrabel not withstanding it’s unlikely they will find a better coach but be that as it may.

While Bill might enjoy the first days off he had over the last quarter century the next question is obvious:

How many days off is he going to get before he is snatched up by a team?

If I owned a team I wouldn’t wait and let someone else get him. He’ll need time to evaluate prior to the April draft. 

Apparently the number of white recruits in the US army has practically been halved since 2018.

Think about it barely 25K recruits.

This is via gateway pundit and Military.com as is this tweet that says it all:

https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1745251068903039388

The question is obvious:

How much longer can the US avoid bringing back the draft?

I’m thinking even with a Trump or DeSantis admin not very long because unless you completely purge the woke you aren’t getting men.

Finally we now have learned that the story concerning Bill Ackman’s wife was shopped to multiple press outlets who rejected it out of hand before Business Insider decided to run with it and then have it blow up in their faces to the point where the owner of the company is rather worried:

Ackman seems to be on the warpath and the folks who green lighted this must be feeling like Admiral Yamamoto at the end of the movie Tora Tora Tora

All of this is interesting and amusing but nobody seems to have the answer to the obvious question:

Who were the people shopping this story?

We need to know their names because if the DEI state falls ironically we will have them to thank for it

Anti Semitism Hasn’t Increased PUBLIC Antisemitism Has

Posted: January 10, 2024 by datechguy in culture
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One of the things that amazes me is how many folks are shocked SHOCKED at the “sudden increase” in antisemitism.

This surprise betrays one of the more basic facts of life.

To wit, consider the world in the 1930’s. There were plenty of people who thought what the Nazi were doing was a great idea. They held how they were running their country in general and how they treated the Jews in particular as a template others should follow.

In fact the supposedly anti-fascist left which took pride in fighting on the communist side during the Spanish Civil war suddenly did an about face as soon as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was signed in 1939 and the Germans took Half of Poland and the Soviets took the other half along with the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) they were all in on defending Germany and keeping the US out of the war in Europe, right up until the Nazi’s invaded the Soviet Union and voilà, suddenly the Nazi menace had to be stopped by war.

Of course once the war began the people who had supported the Nazi’s didn’t suddenly change their minds, they either shut up and supported the war or found themselves interned just like the Japanese, only without the sympathy that history has granted them.

It’s no different than the 70’s and 80’s. All during those years when I was at school, high school and college there were very public intellectuals who were all in with the Soviet Union, with the system of communism and predicted that capitalism was flawed and would fall, right up to the day that the Soviet Union collapsed. It was amazing how many people who didn’t consider the Soviets an “Evil Empire” suddenly decided it was once it was gone. Suddenly it was passé and everybody KNEW that the Soviets were bad.

This is pretty much what is happening now.

The Jew haters out there have always been out there, it’s just post World War 2 and Post death camps it wasn’t considered socially, morally or legally acceptable to be a Jew hater in public. Suddenly there was a social and legal cost to discriminate against and publicly hate on Jews.

However the world war 2 generation is now if not completely dead in their late 90’s and 100’s and are no longer a factor. Furthermore the generations who followed them has embraced birth control sterilization, abortion and even the castration of their own kids while the Arab world whose hatred of the Jews goes far back and far beyond the creation of the state of Israel and been fruitful and multiplied.

Combine that with those who never stopped hating the Jews who suddenly sense that those who might object no longer have either the will or the moral courage to act and POOF here comes open antisemitism on a grand scale.

Bottom line, the west abandoned it’s moral compass and thus there is no longer a moral or social cost for hating Jews in general and the west in particular.  Combine that with a loss of the will to enforce the laws that might bring legal costs to illegal acts done in the name of Hating Jews and those who have waited three quarters of a century to publicly vent their hatred of the Jews and the west where they have succeeded can let their freak flags fly.

And those flags will fly until the cost of flying them is higher than the freaks are willing to pay and every day that we delay in enforcing those costs it will become geometrically harder to do so.

Ouch-ouch: Failures of Latvia’s new electric trains serve as a warning for the rest of us

Posted: January 7, 2024 by John Ruberry in business, culture, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

During those rare occasions I get into a political discussion with leftists, often the back-and-forth veers into a predictable detour–whether the topic is health care, energy, or the environment–with this reply, “But in Europe they do it this way.” 

For the most part, I don’t care how things are done in Europe. 

One exception is Latvia, where Mrs. Marathon Pundit was born–and both of us visited this EU nation last summer.

What is the biggest story in Latvia in the first week of 2024?

The failure of new electric trains there, replacing old electrics. The new trains are operated by a company called Vivi. and the trains were built by Skoda Group, a Czech company.

From Public Broadcasting of Latvia last week:

On Tuesday morning, trains were delayed by up to three hours on the Rīga-Skulte line. Latvian Radio correspondent Viktors Demidovs was among those inconvenienced by the delay.

“I saw the new electric train at the station Garciems. I pushed the button to open the door but nothing happened. The conductor opened it manually. There was complete darkness in the train and climate control was not working either. [..] It turned out the train had been standing there for half an hour.”

Vivi representative Sigita Zviedre said there had been an issue with the power collector and the train’s battery had run out.

Vivi also stated that Latvia is not unique in finding deficiencies with new trains after putting them in traffic and said that Lithuania and Estonia had faced similar issues at the beginning. 

For emphasis, I’m repeating part of the last sentence of the third paragraph, “…the train’s battery had run out.”

Commuters rely on these trains, and not surprisingly, their malfunctions are a major inconvenience for many of them. Some passengers have been to forced to hail taxi or Uber rides to get them to their destination, and for now, Vivi is offering to reimburse those riders inconvenienced.

Of the 11 Vivi trains that are supposed to be operational, according to Public Broadcasting of Latvia, only six are currently running. While yes, with any new transportation product, some minor and infrequent hiccups are expected, but five of eleven trains not running is too high of a failure rate for just about everyone. Imagine if we were talking about new automobiles instead–and it’s a model that you were considering buying.

Okay, you are very likely reading this blog post from everywhere else but Latvia. What does this have to do with me?

Remember what I said that leftists are obsessed with how things are done in Europe. And they want to replicate, failures and all, the European way here. By the way, much of the funding for Vivi trains comes from the Cohesion Fund of the European Union.

Electric trains, failures and all, may be coming here.

Here’s an op-ed from Forbes, written by “climate futurist,” Michael Barnard:

North America has a railroad problem that the rest of the world doesn’t have. As a result, a lot of North Americans think it’s too expensive to electrify that mode of transportation. As we explore electrifying everything everywhere all at once as a key wedge in solving global warming it’s time to debunk that notion. 

Why am I singling out North America and North Americans? Because the Americas are singular in their lack of ability and willingness to do what the rest of the world has already mostly done.

Climate futurist? Yep. That’s a thing among those pushing the green agenda. And of course, I’ve noted before that liberals adore trains because they only go where there are rails.

In a practical way, it’s beneficial in North America to see how Latvia is enduring its electric train problems.

Meanwhile, the electric trains debacle is a Latvian cultural phenomenon.

Jānis Liepiņš adds another song to the many tunes about trains, although his mournful ballad, “Dzeltens Melns” (Yellow Black), unlike most train songs, does not celebrate riding the rails. Because of course, when you sit in a Vivi train car, the yellow and black cars often sit still as well.

Mrs. Marathon Pundit also noticed that Latvians on social media are quipping that instead of Vivi, the new electric trains should be named Vai-Vai, which translates into “Ouch-Ouch.”

UPDATE January 9:

The temperature this morning in Riga, Latvia was 32 degrees Fahrenheit (Zero Celsius). The “impact of frost” is being blamed for some Vivi electric trains not running today. Latvia is northern Europe and it borders Russia. It can get much colder than it is today there.

From Public Broadcasting of Latvia:

Due to the ‘impact of frost’ on the new electric trains as well as health issues of drivers, several trains in the directions of Sloka and Skulte have been canceled on Tuesday, January 9, passenger carrier Vivi said on Facebook.

And what are these ” health issues of drivers?”

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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