Yesterday Donald Trump hit Ron DeSantis from the left for signing a heartbeat bill suggesting that such bills hurt the republican party and talking how he would sign a compromise national bill restricting abortion to 13 weeks.
I can’t speak for others but I’m catholic and abortion is a sine non qua for me. It’s they type of thing that you risk your soul over. I’ve got enough sins that I worry about without compromising myself over life for the sake of a primary or national election.
Mother Angelica, the founder of EWTN put it very well herself when it comes to compromising on sin in her famous story concerning Peanuts. Her nuns were selling peanuts as a fund raiser and were doing pretty well on it when suddenly a new concessions manager demanded an “advertising fee” or as mother put it a kickback. When he threatened to pull the concession from her her answer was classic:
Mother Angelica:Look, if I’m going to hell, it’s not going to be over a peanut.
Here is her telling the story
Now there is no question that Donald Trump’s record on life as president was a great one. Three Supreme Court Judges that got rid of Roe vs Wade, first president to attend the national march for life, there is no question that his record was excellent.
Furthermore I don’t have a problem with incremental change when that’s the best you can do. In a republic you can change laws without educating the public and persuading their representatives to vote with you.
If a state has laws allowing abortion to the date of birth then in such a state I’ll welcome a 26 week ban
If a state has laws allowing abortion to 26 weeks I’ll welcome & work toward a 13 week ban
If a state has laws allowing abortion to 13 weeks I’ll welcome & work for a six week / heartbeat ban
if a state has laws allowing abortion up to six weeks I’d welcome & work for an outright ban
and if a state has laws outlaw abortion except for rape and incest I’d welcome & work for those exceptions to be removed because a life isn’t defined by the sins of their father.
if your lifeboat isn’t big enough to fit everyone pull from the water who you can while you build a bigger one.
But to retreat and condemn the efforts to save life for the sake of a political campaign, to reject what can be done in the hopes of getting power, to make the life of the unborn child with it’s potential and God given soul and to abandon the soul of the mother and the father an all those involved who risk their souls in this action is to abrogate our duty and to abandon the spiritual work of mercy that is admonishing the sinner because it is these souls that are at risk. Or as Mother Angelica put it:
Those who tell the Truth love you. Those who tell you what you want to hear love themselves.
Mother Angelica
All for the sake of a few more votes? All in the hope that both sides will love you? I think not.
Again Trump is my 2nd choice and if he gets the nomination I’ll have no trouble voting for him vs any of the “abortion till birth” democrats from Biden on down.
But in a primary with a choice between a candidate who has advance the cause of life and one that says he will roll back that advance for the sake of compromise? Well that’s really no choice at all.
After years of calling out the outrages and absurdities of political correctness and its successor, wokeness, I still manage to be regularly shocked. Yesterday I stumbled across a box while grocery shopping that boasted, “Ultra concentrated Tide–turn to cold to use 90 percent less energy***.”
Yes, even laundry detergent has gone woke.
Okay, who wants to save money?
Pretty much everyone.
However, when you look at the triple asterisks–you mean one isn’t enough?–you learn about the cold water claim, according to Tide, it occurs “on average when switching from hot to cold water.”
When Mrs. Marathon Pundit and I purchase detergent, we look for fair prices, which means we don’t buy overpriced Tide, but more importantly, we want soap that cleans our clothes without damaging them.
That’s all. We are modest folks.
The Marathon Pundit household is confident that the fate of Earth is not connected to our choice of laundry detergent.
As for Tide, it has a sustainability page on its website, where among other things, Tide claims people washing their clothes can “get great results, no matter the water temperature. Tide is specially designed to give you the best clean in every wash, even in cold water. Tide even cleans better in cold water than the bargain brand does in warm.”
Sorry I don’t believe it.
I have reasons to be skeptical of overreaching claims, as I am old enough to remember being told that carbon emissions would lead to a new ice age. That is, until I was lectured by my “betters” that carbon emissions would lead to global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps, as soon as the last decade. Al Gore predicted that last one. Yes, he did–don’t believe the lying fact-checkers.
Not only am I skeptical of leftist claims, but I am also doubly so of marketers’ claims.
As a liberated 21st century male, I do a lot of our family’s laundry. Unless a fabric is super-delicate, most of what I wash is–sorry Tide–done in warm water. Our clothes come out cleaner and there is no soap residue, as is usually the case when, against my better judgement, I wash clothes in cold. With whites I use the hot water cycle.
But Tide tells us cold water is better.
Hogwash.
Oh, my guess is that the marketing geniuses with Tide are out-of-touch rich slobs who have hired help handling their laundry chores.
If you are squeamish, you may want to skip the next three paragraphs.
I’m a runner and I run about 40 miles a week. Athletes’ foot and jock itch, usually caused by the ringworm fungus, is something I have to cope with every summer. The best way to eliminate this pernicious fungus is to wash infected garments in hot water. You hear that, Tide? Color garments might get damaged by hot water, yes, but apple cider vinegar soaking for infected color garments is great way to kill fungus.
Let’s stick with white socks. And if you had any doubts, now you know why athletes wear white socks.
Not only is cooler water, both cold and warm, ineffective in killing fungus, washing in such temperatures runs the risk of spreading the fungus to other garments. Oh, if you have a significant other who you share a bed with and you are infected with a fungus skin rash, and then your partner pulls a sheet from you as you are sleeping, guess who might acquire that rash? Even after your bedsheets go through a full cycle of a cold or warm water wash.
Oh, I’ve unknowingly put on infected clothes months after a failed wash, and guess what happened?
Let’s just say fungi are survivors.
Once again, Tide, I buy laundry detergent to clean our clothes. My way. Without wokeness, haughtiness, and without soap stains and the spread of fungus.
Back to bed sheets: Hot water washes, not cold or warm, kill bed bugs.
And finally, I don’t believe Tide’s claim that using cold water while washing clothes and bed sheets consumes “90 percent less energy.” I’ve been lied to way too many times.
Use Tide detergent. Save the planet. Get bitten by bed bugs. Spread fungal infections.
Just a reminder to the left that if they had treated Donald Trump as a normal pol right now they would be less than sixteen months away from not having to worry about him ever again.
We are just reaching the point where a lot of people, including women who grew up on porn now have families and all of the stuff I suggested to you might suddenly become normalized is out there with a lot worse to come.
People seem to be surprised that CNN & MSNBC continue to deny the Biden scandals, but I can’t see why after all when you have two stations fighting for an increasingly niche market you need to keep moving in that direction to keep it going.
Finally in my 1971 Dynasty league my team has collapse losing 14 of 15 series and the fire sale is on, Frank Howard, Phil Gagliano and Ray Lamb are already gone and Ken Sanders, Tommie Agee and even Ron Fairly may follow as I look for prospects and draft picks to rebuild, wish me luck.
Last week, during a run on the North Branch Trail at Harms Woods in Skokie, Illinois, a speeding cyclist came close to running me over and causing enormous physical harm to me.
And that got me thinking.
Chicagoans voted for a handful when they elected Brandon Johnson as mayor. He’s a leftist whose candidacy was pretty much paid for by the Chicago Teachers Union.
In July, his transition team released “A Blueprint for Creating a More Just and Vibrant City for All,” their gameplan for America’s third-largest city. In it you’ll find a recommendation that Chicago should “lower the default citywide speed limit to 20 mph generally and 10 mph on residential streets.” Currently, unless otherwise posted, the statewide urban default speed limit, when no signs are posted, is 30 miles per hour.
That means for what you might call a through street, or an arterial street, such as Cicero Avenue or 111th Street, unless posted differently–and yes, possibly higher–the speed limit is 30-mph. Expressways have a 55-mph speed limits in Chicago.
Residential streets, or what Chicagoans have always called side streets, appear to also have a 30-mph speed limit too. Although, common sense–there are pockets of it here and there in the city–compels most drivers to motor along around 20-mph. The many stop signs on Chicago side streets, as well as the numerous but not-so-clearly marked speed bumps, which are tall enough to scrape the bottoms of most sedans and SUVs if you are driving too fast–are another form of discipline. And believe it or not, many drivers keep an eye out for pedestrians and cyclists. I do.
An aside: A Southwest Side man, fed up with an alley speed bump damaging his car, removed it. He was fined $500.
These proposed lower speed limits are another bad idea from Chicago, which seems destined to be passed in population soon by Houston. It’s another utopian parlor game idea brought to the mainstream. Most people, even those who don’t drive cars, probably agree with me. Our economy and our society are auto-centric and will remain so indefinitely. Disclosure: I work in the automotive industry. People like their cars. And if people don’t own one, often they wish they did.
That’s not to say that bike riders have a legitimate beef about idiotic and reckless drivers. Many cyclists are severely injured and killed by cars. While running, I’ve been nearly hit by an automobile a few times. But bikers aren’t all angels either. More on that in a bit.
Now one thing conservatives and moderates don’t do, is yell and scream when liberals present fringe ideas. “That’ll never happen,” is a typical response they offer.
Abolishment of cash bail is one of those “loony” ideas that no one took seriously ten years ago. Well, liberals kept pushing, albeit slowly at first, but next week the SAFE-T Act takes effect in Illinois–it abolishes cash bail. The defund the police movement–and some municipal police departments, not in Illinois, did see cuts in funding. Defund the police was another left-wing parlor game dream concept. Thankfully there has been some pushback lately. The left’s war on popular home appliances, such as natural gas stoves, dishwashers, and even ceiling fans, has begun.
One can view the low default speed limit movement as a secondary front of government’s war on internal combustion engine automobiles. But Chicago drivers, few of whom drive EVs, also have to cope with seemingly omnipresent red-light cameras as well as speed cameras that spew out tickets to motorists for driving just 6-mph over the speed limit. A 20-mph arterial street speed limit offers a new revenue stream for Chicago, which, because of unfunded pension mandates, is functionally bankrupt.
Why aren’t more Chicagoans going full “Howard Beale?” He was the tormented antihero in the Network movie. You know, sticking your head out of the window of your home and screaming, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!” Watch the clip in the link. And the Howard Beale reaction works much better in cities.
Oh, let me return to those bicycle riders. Presumably, the proposed default 20-mph speed limit in Chicago would also apply to them. Or would it? What I call the cyclist lobby possesses the imperiousness of the green movement and the aggressiveness of a testosterone rush after a brutal workout.
Prior to the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, I saw many senior-citizen regulars on the North Branch Trail during my runs. But lockdown queen Lori Lightfoot, Johnson’s predecessor as mayor, closed Chicago’s Lakefront Bike Trail.
Where did the cyclists go?
Some brought their bikes, or rode them, to the North Branch Trail. Several cyclists nearly ran me over in 2020. My guess is that they were speeding along well over 30 mph. Did I say speeding? Harms Woods is part of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, and the speed limit on paved and dirt trails is 15 miles per hour. I suspect there were many complaints about these Tour de France wannabes, because in 2021 I noticed newly posted 15 mph speed limit signs on these trails. A year or so later, all of those signs were gone. Likely there were more complaints, but not from the same people. And not only were those speed limit signs gone, but so were those elderly trail walkers. Those hiking regulars never returned.
Wait, there’s more!
Many of these speeding trail cyclists ride three abreast on a very narrow trail. And it’s now a rarity when I hear a bell ring, horn honk, or an “on your left” shout out from cyclists passing me during a run.
The photograph at the top of this post is of the North Branch Trail during the 2020 lockdown.
When I pass a walker or a runner on a path, I always say, “On your left.” My parents taught me manners.
Oh, until the running and cyclist paths were separated on Chicago’s Lakefront Trail, I experienced numerous close collision calls with cyclists while running there. Just as when there is a crash between cyclist and a car the “winner” of that collision is obvious, so it is when a bicyclist plows over a runner, particularly one like me, who is nearing retirement age. But don’t feel sorry for me. When it’s between me and a cyclist racing up an elevated bridge on the North Branch Trail over a busy street, I usually prevail.
Northeast of where I live is Sheridan Road, which bisects some of the wealthiest communities in America. Sometimes I see packs of bicyclists of more than a dozen, zooming in and out of traffic, seemingly oblivious to cars.
While I don’t see those bike packs within Chicago’s city limits, with a 20-mph default speed limit, will emboldened cyclists misbehave recklessly in the same manner?
As for myself, I can take solace knowing that in three months the North Branch Trail will be nearly bike rider-free. Winter will be here, and the cyclists will retreat into hibernation. As they will in Chicago, whether there is a 20-mph speed limit or not.
While I see fewer runners on the trails on rainy days, particularly cold ones, I almost never see cyclists.
Say what you will about automobiles, but they have roofs and windshield wipers, as well as heating and air conditioning. Unless your car’s A/C is broken, unlike a cyclist commuting to work on a hot summer day, you won’t need to shower when you arrive at your jobsite to remove newly acquired body odor.
Oh, on occasion, I do ride a bicycle. And yes, I’m one of the good ones.
UPDATE September 12:
They’re not all gone! During this morning run, I saw a 15 mph “Share the Trail” sign in Harms Woods just north of Golf Road. I also saw many cyclists–and one jerk on a motorized bike–going much faster.
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