Archive for the ‘politics’ Category

When a bomb is about to explode in your neighborhood do you call the ACLU, Antifa, or Black Lives Matter?

Posted: December 27, 2020 by John Ruberry in News/opinion, politics
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Broadway in Nashville in 2018. AT&T Building in background.

By John Ruberry

The defund the police looks pretty irrelevant now. As you know on Christmas morning an explosives-laded recreational vehicle devestated a business district in downtown Nashville.

“This vehicle has a bomb, if you can hear this message, you need to evacuate” was the loop recording that played before the bomb detonated at sunrise in Music City.

Someone, or more likely more than one person, called not Black Lives Matter, Antifa (true, I don’t believe they have a listed phone number), or the ACLU–all of them who are proponents of the defund the police movement–about the warning. Instead the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department was called.

And six MNPD police officers cleared the area, most likely minimizing injuries and possibly fatalities. These hero cops appear to be pretty young, they may have had children at home. They were on the streets on the one day when most people don’t want to work.

There are a couple of theories on what motivated the bomber–or bombers. I’ve been to Nashville and 2nd Avenue, where the explosion happened, is just a block from the popular and generally crowded entertainment and bar district on Broadway. If human carnage was the goal then Christmas Eve around sunset would have been a much better time for that. Or last night, the day after Christmas. One theory is that the recording was meant to frighten away pedestrians and residents so there would only be cops on 2nd Avenue when the bomb went off. Another hypothesis is that because the rigged RV was parked adjacent to the AT&T Building, the explosion was the work of anti-5G paranoids. AT&T mobile and internet service in Nasvhille has been severely disrupted by the bombing, as has 911 service as far away as Kentucky.

As for the first theory, when that RV exploded that would mean only cops would be killed. Back to the Nashville hero police officers: These six appear to be ordinary beat cops, not specialists that you’ll find on the bomb squad. All but one, the sergeant, have been on the job for less than five years. It’s beat cops that the defund the police activists have their eyes on; “moderates” within that movement admit cops with advanced skills, such as bomb experts, are still needed. But you’re not going to find the specialists, with all due respect to them, patrolling the streets at dawn on Christmas morning.

“Call a friend, call a cop,” was the slogan of PSAs back in the 1970s. Alright, perhaps you don’t need to have cops as your pals. But police officers sure come in handy when all hell is about to break loose.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

A Quick Note to My Fellow Christians in General and Catholics in Particular

Posted: December 23, 2020 by datechguy in catholic, Church doctrine, elections, politics
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Screwtape: Look, you must think of your man as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his intellect coming next and finally his fantasy. You can hardly hope at once to exclude from all circles anything that smells of the enemy…

Wormwood: You mean the Germans?

Screwtape: No NO! Not them you fool! I mean the REAL enemy!

The Screwtape Letters Focus on the Family

Given what I’ve been seeing and hearing from some of my brother Christians I think it’s incumbent to remind people of something.

Christ came to save us from the clutches of the enemy.

The enemy he was referring to is Satan, not the Democrats, not the deep state and not Biden or Harris as the song notes

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, let nothing you dismay.
Remember Christ our savior was born in Christmas Day
To save us all from Satan's power when we have gone astray
Oh tidings of comfort and Joy, comfort and joy.
Oh tidings of comfort and joy!

It is for the redemption of our sins allowing us eternal life, not relief from the effects of the sins of others than Christ came in the world lived and died.

If you are counting on God saving us from them you are likely to be as disappointed as the Zealots who expected the messiah to bring down Roman Rule.

While it’s true that the enemy had some influence on those who did it, the fraud and theft of this election is the work of man. It’s up to men to make it right.

God can provide virtue to such men, and their Guardian Angels might prompt them to do so, but in the end, men they must make that call.

The Best Advice I’ve Heard on the Subject

Posted: December 21, 2020 by datechguy in politics
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Grant is not going to retreat

Robert E. Lee May 7th 1864

One of the reasons for studying history is the perspective it gives, the experience of others, which is one of the reasons why the left has done it’s best to substitute propaganda for history to keep people from that prospective.

A lot of people are wondering what to do next, I have a longer post on the subject already written but I want to remind you of a the perspective of a man in a bigger immediate crisis.

On May 5th 1864 US Grant and Robert E. Lee fought their 1st major engagement against each other in the Battle of the Wilderness which took place on the old Charlottesville battlefield, the site of Lee’s greatest victory.

On the second day of the battle as report after report of disasters came in Grant had finally had enough saying:

Oh I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command and try to think of what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.

emphasis in original

Grant understood that he had superior numbers and that what was needed most of all was determination. He had over 17,000 casualties vs the rebels 11,000 and more than 50% more men killed outright, but when the day was done instead of retreating as every other commander who had preceded him had done in the face of a drubbing he continued south where he would face Lee in in battle after battle. More than half of his army would fall during these battles.

Over and over people had derided Grant for the losses in his fights and called for his removal but Lincoln knew the math and kept stuck with Grant till eventually the cork was in the bottle and Lee was under siege.

There are many naysayers who say give up and surrender, this is the worst possible advice there is. The pressure needs to be kept up because this remains the time when they are weakest they will be.

Don’t give the left a moment to catch their breath.

Chicago mayor Lightfoot’s status as a fraud solidified in her response to police raid on wrong home

Posted: December 20, 2020 by John Ruberry in crime, elections, News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

The competition for worst big city mayor is fierce, New York’s Bill de Blasio and Eric Garcetti typically lead the pack but don’t overlook Lori Lightfoot of Chicago.

How did America’s third-largest city get there?

Lightfoot’s victory in last year’s election was a fluke. She and Toni “Taxwinkle” Preckwinkle, the president of the Cook County Board emerged as the top two candidates after a 14-candidate first round of balloting–she collected only 17-percent of the vote. Lightfoot, used her endorsement by the Chicago Sun-Times and her time as chair of the Chicago Police Department Office of Professional Standards to fashion herself as the reform candidate. Her predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, decided not to run for a third term; it’s widely believed his blocking the release of a video until after his 2015 reelection of the shameful deadly police shooting of Laquan McDonald led to his bowing out.

Now there is a another video. Late in Emanuel’s second term Chicago police officers raided the apartment of social worker Anjanette Young. But they busted into the wrong home. Guns were drawn and Young was handuffed naked while she screamed. “You’ve got the wrong place.”  She said that 43 times. Lightfoot’s campaign slogan was “Let There Be Light” and this was her opportunity to be transparent in a time of crisis. 

She wasn’t.

City lawyers sued to block CBS Chicago from airing the video of the botched raid. Lightfoot later called that a mistake. 

Let There Be Light.

Then the woman often derisively called “Mayor Beetlejuice” claimed that she wasn’t aware of the raid on Young’s home. But emails show that Lightfoot learned about the raid in November of 2019, around the time CBS Chicago began reporting on it. She says she “focused on budget issues” at that time and the could explain why she has no recall of the emails.

Lightfoot also admitted that she was wrong when she said that Young hadn’t filed a Freedom of Information Request for the video of the raid. The victim had in fact done so. 

At best, Lightfoot’s Chicago is circling the drain. Yes, she inherited a mess. Even before the COVID-19 epidemic Chicago was losing residents. Chicago’s public-worker pension worker plans are the worst-funded of any big city. But Lightfoot’s lockdown orders are best draconian, she hasn’t been taken to task as much as she deserves for that only because her fellow Democrat, blowhard governor JB Pritzker, has been all over local media almost daily trying to frighten Illinoisans into compliance with his own lockdown orders. 

Shootings, murders, and especially carjackings in Chicago are up dramatically over last year.

What are Lightfoot’s priorities? 

The day before the second round of widespread looting and rioting, deemed “unrest” of course by the mainstream media, Lightfoot followed through on her threat to close the vast Montrose Beach to visitors because she thought too many people gathered there on a gorgeous late summer afternoon. 

In the spring Lighfoot scolded Chicagoan by declaring “getting your roots done is not essential.” During that first lockdown, which closed all hair salons, the mayor got her stylist, maskless, to do her hair. 

When confronted with a predictable uproar for her hypocrisy, Beetlejuice doubled down, “I’m the public face of this city, I’m on national media and I’m out in the public eye.”

Last month a few days before imposing a second COVID-19 lockdown, Lightfoot appeared, maskless, outdoors at a spontaneous rally at an unsafe distance with many others as she celebrated the media calling the presidential election for Joe Biden.

Chicago, a failed city, has the perfect person to represent it in the public eye.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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