Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

The answer to Durbin’s favorite question for SCOTUS nominees is in: Merrick Garland favors restricting personal freedoms

Posted: October 10, 2021 by John Ruberry in culture, education, News/opinion, politics
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Blogger with Durbin in Chicago in 2019

By John Ruberry

When Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland in the final year of his presidency to replace Antonin Scalia on the US Supreme Court he was hailed by some as a moderate. 

Well “Moderate Merrick,” if he ever existed, is gone. 

Garland’s nomination was never acted upon by the US Senate, which was then in Republican control, and President Trump nominated Neal Gorsuch for the Scalia seat–and the Senate went on to confirm Gorsuch.

Had Garland faced the Senate he might have been asked this question from Sen. Dick Durbin, who is from Garland’s home state of Illinois, “Will you restrict the personal freedoms we enjoy as Americans or will you expand them?” Durbin posed that query to John Roberts during his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings sixteen years ago and he has asked the same question, as did his predecessor, Paul Simon, during confirmation hearings for other SCOTUS nominees. 

Well we have the answer to the question that Durbin never asked Garland. Joe Biden’s attorney general favors restricting personal freedoms.

Last week, citing unnamed threats against unnamed school board members, Garland in a memorandum declared, “I am directing the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working with each United States Attorney, to convene meetings with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders in each federal judicial district within 30 days of the issuance of this memorandum.”

In short, Garland is unleashing the FBI against parents who have spoken out against hateful and bigoted Critical Race Theory offal that is being rammed down the throats of their children. Do you want someone like Agent Petty from Ozark showing up at your front door? Clearly Garland is plotting to separate parents from their children. After all, leftists from Karl Marx on have viewed parents as an obstacle to pursuing their goal of a perfect society, which of course is a totalitarian state where the elites, who of course are so much wiser than everyone else, guide the rabble. Yes the rabble. You know, people like me and you, part of a multi-million member conglomeration similar to Ozark’s redneck Langmore clan. That’s how our leftist “betters” see us.

Last month at a Virginia gubernatorial candidate debate, the Democrat nominee, longtime Clintonista Terry McAuliffe, let loose this surprising bit of candidness, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

I believe parents should have the defining voice in school curricula—as do undoubtedly most Americans. 

In his farewell address in 1989 Ronald Reagan said, “And let me offer lesson number one about America: All great change in America begins at the dinner table.” And that is as it always should be.

But in his first inauguration speech as California governor the Gipper warned, “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction.”

We now have an attorney general–and a White House administration–that favors restricting freedom.

Don’t look for Durbin to call them out on it.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Arson, climate change, and wildfires

Posted: October 6, 2021 by John Ruberry in crime, culture, News/opinion
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Blogger at Denali National Park

By John Ruberry

Is it a wildfire if an arsonist sets it?

It’s been a brutal season for wildfires in the west. Climate change of course is usually blamed for these fires but what about arson?

The Fawn Fire in northern California, which has burned about 13 square miles, is fully contained after two weeks of destruction. It has destroyed 185 buildings.

How did it start?

A former San Francisco Bay Area yoga teacher, Alexandra Souverneva who claims to be a shaman on her LinkedIn page, is accused of accidentally starting it while trying to boil water to remove bear urine from it. But a California newspaper says that Souverneva may be connected to other fires.

Gary Maynard, a former college professor, is being held without bail for allegedly setting several fires near the Dixie Fire in northern California. He is not accused of starting the Dixie Fire, but the cause of that blaze, which is still undetermined, may have been caused by Pacific Gas and Electric equipment. 

This year, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, over 100 people have been accused of wildland arson.

Conditions are very dry in California–it is suffering from drought conditions. If an arsonist attempts to start a fire in one of the forest preserves near where I live in Morton Grove, Illinois, it will likely be a slow burn, as we’ve had a wet summer here. In California the results will be horribly different. 

If you haven’t heard about arson as the cause of wildfires it’s probably because the mainstream media, to protect another of its narratives, in this case that climate change is an existential threat to humanity, is minimizing arson’s role in wildfires. 

But CNN sees the arson angle of wildfires as a serious enough of a threat to that narrative that it published an article in August debunking it. 

Arson-caused wildfires is something to keep your eye on.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Cui Bono Black America

Posted: October 3, 2021 by datechguy in culture
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Friday I talked about how I Stacy McCain & I both look at our situations in terms of our grandparents and consider just how lucky we are. Yesterday I applied this to black America and noted that not only is black America lucky, but the progress of Blacks in America from slavery, and having nothing to a group with political, cultural power not to mention wealth to the point that it’s the ultimate victory over those who sold their ancestors into slavery as their descendants would be anything to have the US citizenship and the advantages they now possess.

This triumph which is the greatest of its type in the history of the world however is not celebrated as it rightly should be in the black community and instead black America is routinely told how oppressed they are in a state so racist and so hostile that they are slated to lose before they even begin.

The question becomes, why would people sell a message of racism and destined failure rather than a history of success over odds to their culture in general and their children in particular?

Why would they present America as a racist desert for blacks while at the same time tens of thousands of blacks are fleeing the oldest black republic in the history of the world and are currently living under a bridge in Texas in their quest to become part of this nation that activists say will oppress them.

So the question I ask black America in general and Black Americans in particular is.

Cui Bono?

Who benefits from keeping you in fear, who benefits from selling you a message of despair and disillusionment? Who benefits from the hate crime hoaxes and the false perceptions of of thousands of unarmed blacks shot annually by police nationwide increasing the stat by a factor of 100 or 1000?

Who is getting rich and comfortable by selling you this bill of goods?

I submit and suggest that once you start asking and answering that question will break those who wish to keep you in peonage for their own benefit. And that truth will set you free.

The Left’s Dirty Little Secret: Black America since 1865 is one of the Great Success Stories in History of Mankind

Posted: October 2, 2021 by datechguy in American Success Stories, culture
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Yesterday I commented on how both Stacy McCain and myself understand the secret of happiness by realizing that no matter how bad an individual situation we remember how far our families has come in a couple of generations from subsistence to comfort.

But our experience pales before the experience of Black America as a whole.

Think about this for a second. Newly freed black American’s in 1865 as a whole:

  • Owned little or nothing
  • Were illiterates
  • Were considered inferior
  • Had (in contrast to African immigrants post 1865) no national identify other than slavery
  • Had no political power
  • Had only whatever experience they had as slaves (primarily subsistence agriculture)

There was no real political class or professional class or middle class shopkeepers to support them, at best that were patronized by well meaning people who thought them lesser and at worst they were exploited to gain wealth and power in the conquered states (the “carpetbaggers & machine pols of reconstruction”)

Yet from this situation in 150 consider the state of black America now

Black buying power currently stands at over $1.1 trillion and is on the road to hit about $1.5 trillion by 2021. This collective buying power means that nearly $2 trillion will be flowing through black America annually very soon, making us the centerpiece for various researchers, marketers, advertisers, and other campaigns designed to influence black spending patterns.

educationally

  • Per the NSBA in a 2020 paper 2017 stats from the national school board 11% of teachers and seven percent of SCHOOL PRINCIPALS are black (out of 13% of the total population) two thirds of black students graduate with high school diplomas.

In reputation

  • Black students and applicants at the corporates level are actively sought by companies and colleges.

In politics

  • 63 members of he current congress are black (about 12% corresponding to the population) and that’s not even considering the numbers in various state legislatures and local governments.

In identity:

  • Black culture, black music, black literature, black television and the black church have provided a visible culture that is noted and powerful worldwide

Finally consider

  • Black actors,, sportsman, broadcasters and prominent scientists, members of government are fully a part of American culture as a whole as are black Americans in every part of life.

Frankly the only places where black America is regressing is in Democrat cities many run by black pols and even that that the rising tide of black America lifted all black boats including those who were corrupt in the community as well as those who were not.

As a person who is a student of history I submit and suggest that no other society has come from that point from nothing as the black community and thus I state for the record:

The success of Black America’s rise from Slavery to where it is today is one of the if not the greatest Society success stories in the History of Mankind and is a peculiarly American Success Story

Now there are those in that corrupt community who would have Black America ignore this fact and focus only on failure and there are others, particularly in the Democrat part who would keep Black American in the plantation of victimhood and suggest to black children and teen that they are oppressed and inferior and thus need to be lifted rather than encourage and challenged but to all of those who claim the state of Black America is one of oppression I ask you these two question:

  1. How many of the descended from black slaves in America would exchange their lot with a Black person in Africa and would move there permanently if given the chance?
  2. How many of those descended from the blacks slavecatchers and slave sellers in Africa would exchange their lot with a Black Person in America and would move here permanently if given the chance?

I submit and suggest that the number of the first is negligible and the number of the 2nd is almost all of them.

That’s the final victory of black America, those who descended from the people who sold their ancestors into slavery would given anything to be in the position of the descended from those they sold vs where they are now. And all of this comes from the hard work of those slaves and their children who started with nothing and built a culture and society.

Take a bow black America and remember the people trying to sell you victimhood are the folks looking to build their power on you perceiving yourselves as inferior.

Don’t fall for it, you’re descended from giants, act accordingly.

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