Archive for the ‘opinion/news’ Category

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves.  By their fruits you will know them.

Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?  Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit.  A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

So by their fruits you will know them.

Matthew 7:15-20

Since the 60’s and before the secular left has told us that Christianity and the rules of Christianity are the problem.

They told us that Christianity repressed women.

They told us that Christianity kept people from achieving their potential.

They told us that Christianity repressed science.

They told us that Christianity was the cause of more of our problems than we can count.

They even told us that if removed Christianity from our school, from our public squares and from greater culture that rather than harm our culture it would advance it beyond our limits.

All we had to do is toss God and we could be fully human.

Well starting in the early 60’s we tossed God from our schools and at first it mattered little because all the student and teachers had already been taught.

Then in the 80’s we had a new batch of student and teachers but the teachers had been students in the 60’s so even if they weren’t teaching the moral law or the laws of God they still had a sense of it to pass on.

Then came the new millennium and for the first time where we had a society where neither the young nor those who taught them had been exposed to Christianity in general and the laws of God in particular.

To be sure there were those who clung to God, who taught their kids at home or sent them to private schools to be taught the lessons of loving God and loving their neighbor, to be informed of the choice between heaven and hell, to be informed that every soul is loved by God and has value before them and that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

But those voices were marginalized in the greater culture. We finally had the society that the left had dreamed of since the 60’s a post Christian society a post Christian culture and twenty somethings not restrained by either the fear of hell, the promise of heaven, the idea that they have intrinsic value as a child of God loved so much that Christ died for them.

And now another generation later we see the result.

There are those who will blame guns, but our society was just as well armed before Christ was banished from our schools, in fact schools had gun clubs, shooting clubs and it was not unusual at all for an average citizen, many of whom had seen combat, to be armed.

Yet the shootings like those we saw this weekend in Texas and Ohio were almost completely unheard of, they were an aberration rather than a fact of life.

The left wanted a post Christian culture, well now they have one complete with the fruits of that culture, because they forgot something important.

Any time you remove God from the picture the devil moves in.

 

At the main site I have a post up with a summery of the debate but I think it can be better explained in two tweets.

or as I put it.

 

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As I noted there are those like Joe Scarborough who are shocked, Shocked that the Democrats are arguing how bad the Obama years were on stage.

But consider, if the Obama years had been good, if they had been prosperous, if they had advanced the future of Americans everywhere, then Hillary Clinton would have won 35 to forty states without blinking an eye.

the truth is Barack Obama won re-election for two reasons.

1. The GOP ran the worst possible candidate against him in 2012 (Mitt Romney)

2. Black Americans turned out in droves because even they could not bear the thought of the 1st black president losing re-election because he sucked so bad.

Every single democrat on that stage knows this.

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I’m starting to figure out why Snoops is going after the Babylon Bee, I read my wife the two headlines from this post at Instapundit and asked her to guess which is the parody and which is the real one

HEH: Marianne Williamson Not Sure What She’s Doing Up Here With All These Crazy People.

Related: Marianne Williamson: I am not a ‘wacky new-age nutcase.’

She guessed wrong, and remember in my opinion she was, other than Donald Trump of course,  the biggest winner in the Debates this week.


 

Yesterday was Baseball’s trading deadline and there were a bunch of blockbuster trades made, particularly by Houston that bolstered an already impressive pitching staff.

The Red Sox on the other hand took my advice and did nothing.

While sports radio was screaming bloody murder they also quoted a stat that to me explained why any such deadline deal was stupid.  The Red Sox are 8-14 when their ace Chris Sale (5-10) starts,  9-11 when David Price (7-4) starts and 13-9 when Rick Porcello (9-8) starts this season.

With those numbers anyone who thinks for one minute a last minute one sided deal to add a bullpen arm is going to allow those three guys to lead them to another title this year is delusional.  Much better to see if their incredible offense can carry them, put it down to a bad year for the pitchers (everyone has them occasionally) and shore up the bullpen in the off season where they can get much more bang for the buck without dismantling the team.

That’s what a GM who recognizes his job is to give his team their best shot to win each year does as opposed to keeping loud voices on the radio happy.


 

Finally here is an update on the blog situation.

You’ll notice that there IS some new posts going up on the old site, a few were scheduled posts but some are new.  I’ve found a work around that allows me to post there but I can’t put in any links, add images or even embed tweets, it’s plain text only.

So here is the plan.  While I price my alternatives (likely between $500-$1000 up front at least) to preserve the old blog at an alternate location without taking a week off from work to do it I’ll be posting at both sites. Anything that needs linkage I’ll put here.  If I can get away with just text then it will go there, and perhaps I’ll kill a photo or two from my gallery to free up some space for an image or two.

As I recently did a direct non-public fundraiser  (that fell far short of my goal but did pay for pintastic coverage and provide a cushion thanks all) I’m not really in a position to do it again just a few months later, but if anyone wants to kick in to help pay for this stuff.  Datipjar on both sites DOES work.

As for my writers they can either post there sans links and graphics or post here during the transition or if they want they can take a few days off and wait for everything to work again.  I’ll leave it entirely up to them..

By John Ruberry

“Big Daddy! Now what makes him so big? His big heart? His big belly? Or his big money?” Brick Pollitt in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.

Two weeks ago at the regular Da Tech Guy site I analyzed the collapse of Chris Kennedy’s gubernatorial campaign in Illinois. In that piece I all but predicted that a member of another wealthy and powerful family, JB Pritzker, would be the Democratic nominee in the autumn general election.

But then came Rod Blagojevich.

The primary election takes place on March 20. On the Republican side, incumbent Bruce Rauner is being challenged by state legislator Jeanne Ives. I’m backing her.

Pritzker has gathered most of the key Democratic endorsements, including those from organized labor, not because of his big heart or even his big belly, as Brick Pollitt quipped in Tennessee Williams’ Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, but because of his big money. The Pritzkers have been a consistent and copious source of campaign contributions for Democrats. That big money has blinded Big Labor, as the Pritzkers have a checkered history with unions. Pritzker’s campaign is mostly self-funded.

JB is falling in the polls, although his plummet is not a complete collapse as it has been with Kennedy. A month ago Rauner, who at the time viewed Ives as nothing more than an annoying fly at his picnic, ran ads online and on television with FBI wiretap audio of Pritzker and Blagojevich discussing possible public office appointments for the billionaire after Barack Obama’s election to the presidency. A month later Blago was arrested. You know the rest of the story.

After a January Democratic candidates forum, a We Ask America poll showed that Pritzker’s two dozen point lead over his next rival that he enjoyed in October had been slashed in half. And in second place was Biss, a state senator who is the hero of the progressive crowd. In the latest poll, conducted by Victory Research on Monday and Tuesday–that’s important–calls the Dem race a “dead heat” between Biss and Pritzker.

There are several minor candidates running in the Democratic primary as well.

On that Monday the Chicago Tribune released additional Prizker-Blago wiretaps where Pritzker disparages several black politicians and jokes about the possibility of Blagoejevich appointing Obama’s controversial minister, Jeremiah Wright, to replace the then-president-elect in the US Senate. Pritzker, quoting Wright, even says “God d*mn America” during the recorded telephone conversation, which is something that could end up in another anti-Pritzker ad. As for the latest poll, the impact of Ptitzker’s comments hadn’t completely been digested.

Pritzker is now on an apology tour with the African American community.

Rauner, who the National Review calls “the worst Republican governor in America,” clearly has his own problems, chief among them are that none of his 44 Turnaround Agenda items have been enacted. The onetime businessman also signed into law sanctuary state and public-funding-for-abortion bills that have riled conservatives.

Ives is receiving flak for mocking Rauner’s failures in an ad where, among other things, a man wearing a dress tells Rauner, “Thank you for signing legislation that lets me use the girls’ bathroom,” As I noted on my own blog last week, while I don’t like the tone of the ad, her piece is factual and it may still prove to be effective, as the biggest howls against it come from Illinoisans who have no intention of ever voting for a Republican candidate for governor and GOP party hacks who have been bought off by Rauner’s big money.

There are two “Big Daddy” candidate for governor in the Land of Lincoln.

But the general election could result in being Biss against Ives, which would be something along the lines of a Donald Trump-Bernie Sanders matchup for president.

If that happens I will have a bounty of material to blog about this year.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Everyone thinks Trump’s military parade is a dumb idea. Well, everyone in the media anyway, and sadly there is a vocal minority in the military that is attempting to lend their voices as well.

We’ve done military parades before. CNN of all places had a neat wrap up of pictures from previous military parades. While we haven’t done them for a while, that is probably due to under sizing and under-resourcing our military. The last big military parade was in 1991, when we had almost 530 ships. Only a few years later, in 1995, we were under 400, and now we are under 300. Similar downsizing happened for the other services.

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