Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Philadelphia: A city on the brink of chaos

Posted: October 3, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

I spent nearly 16 years in Philadelphia. I enjoyed an occasional trip to watch the Phillies or the Eagles. The museums are excellent, notably the Barnes and the Constitution Center.

Although I’m not partial to cheese steaks, the restaurants are terrific. I particularly enjoyed a Brazilian restaurant in Center City.

I could put away my car and take rapid transit to most places I needed to go, although I’ve seen better systems in other cities like New York and Chicago.

The people of Philadelphia can be a bit hard-edged, chip-on-the-shoulder types, but I’ve seen that in many other cities where I lived.

So it angers and saddens me that the city that saw the creation of the nation and served as its capital for a while is being torn apart.

About five years ago, I realized that the city was in trouble. It happened on the Temple campus, where I taught. I stopped by the local Chinese takeout to find a group of young teenage women stealing soft drinks from the shelves. The women weren’t old enough to be college students and probably came from a nearby high school.

As 20 customers stood by, I grabbed one of the girls and asked the owner to call the campus police. He declined and told me to let her go.

As I stepped outside, five girls surrounded me and started to spit and harass me. No one stopped to help me, even though the harassment and taunting were obvious to the dozens of people passing by. No one wanted to get involved.

Fortunately, I hold two black belts in martial arts and easily frightened the girls with two quick demonstrations of my abilities without hurting anyone.

Before the girls fled, they threatened to bring their fathers back for a beatdown.

When I wrote about the incident on this website, I was ostracized by several fellow faculty members because I was a racist.

I also got a call from the campus police. I expected questions about the incident or an apology. Instead, I got a threat that I could be fired if I followed through on my suggestion that people on campus should be allowed to arm themselves.

When the looting came in 2020 after the death of George Floyd, it was apparent that it was time to leave Philadelphia, especially when the rioters got away with their actions and paid $9.25 million because the cops used tear gas!

The recent looting happened when a judge dismissed charges against a cop who killed a Black man wielding a knife.

Even though the interim police chief correctly described the looters as “criminals,” I doubt many will be held responsible for their actions.

It’s worth noting that Philadelphia, like many other cities I’ve lived in and won’t visit again, like New York, Chicago, Washington, and San Francisco, is run by Democrats. As Philadelphia elects a new mayor this year, I hope at least some of the voters realize that something has gone wrong in their city and won’t be fixed by the current crew that runs the place.

What the Democrat Left is by Kirk

Posted: October 2, 2023 by datechguy in Uncategorized

If you want to understand what the Democrat left has become you can’t do better than this comment at the battleswarm blog on the decline of San Francisco. I reproduce it here in it’s entirety:

They all thought they knew better. They did not.

That’s going to be the epitaph for the United States, and the Democratic Party. Real fact is, they have to produce results people want, or they’re dead, dead, dead. The shakeout from the uniparty displaying its utter incompetence is going to take decades, but… So be it.

I used to work around a guy who was a Democratic Party precinct official. We’d argue politics at lunch with him… He was basically a die-hard Scoop Jackson Democrat, decent hard-working guy who believed in the Democrats the way a Jesuit believes in the Catholic Church.

He kept moving up the ranks, and eventually got sent off to some “leadership conference” back East, early in the first Clinton administration. I have no idea what he saw back there, or experienced, but he came back a changed man. You’d needle him the way we always had about the Democrats and their various corruptions, but after that “leadership conference”, he’d just sit there with an expression of what I can only describe as “rueful acknowledgment”. He gradually separated himself from his party activism, and by the time I last saw him about a year later, he wasn’t even involved any more. I asked him directly, about that time, and I couldn’t get an answer out of him about anything he’d seen or otherwise experienced that had “broken his faith”, but it was obvious that something had transpired. Only thing I could get out of him was something to the effect of “…they’re going to be hunting Democrats through the streets with dogs, one of these days… And, they’re going to be right to do it, too!!!

I have thought a lot about that guy and what he said. I still have no idea what the hell it was that changed his outlook that much, but I’ll say this: Before he left, he was all proud of the fact that he was on the same floor with all the bigwigs attending the conference, the national leaders from the Democratic Party. Something he saw around them? Something he heard? No idea; he’d never say what it was.

And take note the first Clinton Administration was 30 years ago and the left has only gotten worse since then.

The United States is now a full fledged Police State

Posted: September 28, 2023 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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Without a doubt the founding fathers of this great nation are now spinning in their graves.  They pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to create a Constitutional Republic where each and every individual was meant to be free.  What we have now is the exact polar opposite of the free society they hoped to create.  As you can see from this Patriot Project article, conditions here in the United States have deteriorated to the point where the people have finally noticed.

Almost three-quarters of Americans are worried that the United States is devolving into a tyrannical police state that conducts mass surveillance, ideological indoctrination, censorship and the partisan targeting of political opponents, according to a new poll.

The latest survey by Rasmussen Reports found that 72 percent of likely voters are concerned that America is becoming a police state, with 46 percent saying they’re “very concerned.” Only 23 percent say they are not concerned.

In another indication of the public’s growing distrust of the U.S. intelligence community, half the respondents strongly agree that “the FBI is a danger to the freedom and security of law-abiding Americans.”

I was most surprised by this poll for a couple reasons.  Most Americans still seemed to be asleep to the fact that their freedoms have been all but stripped away.  To get that high percentage of positive responses, a significant percentage of those on the left would have agreed.

That last point most surprised me because Democrats have an abysmal record when it comes to freedom.  Guess what? An alarming number of Democrats think YOU have too much freedom as an American – Louder With Crowder

47% of Democrats say speech should only be legal “under certain circumstances.”

52% of Democrats support the government censoring social media under the guise of “national security.”

34% of Democrats say Americans have TOO MUCH freedom,

75% of Democrats support government censoring what they define as “hate speech.”

Both political parties are responsible for the transformation of the United States into a police state, thanks to the war on terror.  This transformation has greatly accelerated under the Biden Regime, ‘Used for political speech …’ FOIA shows Biden’s DHS censoring Americans was ABSOLUTELY political – Twitchy

New documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests show that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) argued that the agency could regulate speech related to “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine” as well as “irregular immigration.”

Those subjects stretch across much of the “space” used for political speech in the last few years.

So DHS asserted the authority to target viewpoints on racial justice, Ukraine, and other political subjects, including views based on fact but viewed as misleading in context.

It is most foolish to expect that the youth of America will fix this, Students’ Lack of Basic Knowledge of US History and Civics Remains a National Embarrassment | American Enterprise Institute – AEI

Only 13 percent, in one survey, knew when the US Constitution was ratified, for example. Most couldn’t say which countries the US fought in World War II; only one in four could even say why American colonists fought a war against Great Britain. Unsurprisingly, older Americans have the easiest time of it, with 74 percent answering at least six in 10 questions correctly. Among those under the age of 45, only one in five pass, which says a lot about the debased standards of common knowledge expected of students in US schools, whose founding purpose was to prepare ordinary people for self-government.

A well armed American citizenry is the only force that can roll back our police state, that is why Biden Pledges to ‘Centralize, Accelerate, and Intensify’ Gun Control Push (breitbart.com).

While announcing the launch of the executive Office of Gun Violence Prevention, President Joe Biden pledged to use the office to “centralize, accelerate, and intensify” his administration’s gun control push.

Biden noted that he has chosen Vice President Kamala Harris to oversee the office.

After Biden announced the launch of the new office on Friday, he then called for an “assault weapons” ban, a “high capacity” magazine ban, and universal background checks. He also called for Congress to take action for more gun restrictions then he pledged to use the office to “centralize, accelerate, and intensify” his administration’s gun control push.

When the music’s over…

Posted: September 26, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

Two longtime friends—who helped me in my celebrated but short career as a rock ‘n’ roll singer—died this past week, causing me to recall the fine times we had with the band.

Ken Mills, who died at 75 in Minneapolis, served as the manager and booker of my band, The Trippers. Steve Ettles, who died at 72 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, was the first roadie for the band.

Based in Sioux Falls, the Trippers played gigs throughout the Midwest, first as a cover band for rhythm and blues and later as an emerging acid rock group in the 1960s. We weren’t good enough to make it beyond the Midwest, but we earned spots in the Rock Halls of Fame in South Dakota and Iowa. Our one hit reached No. 99 on the Billboard’s Top Tunes.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh2r3G7a1Tg&list=PL48ywZUEnrB7ZhkJPP5VfwPw3nHIze2Kb

I’d kept in touch with Ken and Steve over the past 50-odd years and seen them both a few years ago.

In the 1960s, Ken fell in love with rock ‘n’ roll. He began managing, booking, and promoting bands as a junior in high school. After promoting bands, Ken started working in radio as a disc jockey and worked at KISD, KLOH, KELO, KXRB, and KLYX in the Sioux Falls area, as well as developing and launching his own station, KSKY, in the Black Hills. Ken was inducted into the South Dakota Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009. As he got older, Ken developed a problem with his vision and became an advocate for those with severe eye disorders and blindness, using his voice to communicate with his audience.

Steve had a tougher life. His engaging smile earned him friends throughout his life. Unfortunately, his smile also got him entangled in a savings and loan association scandal. He spent a year in federal prison for doing what he thought was a favor for a friend. It turned out the friend was embezzling money unbeknownst to Steve. I told his story and those of others in a book I wrote a few years ago, Flyover Country. The book focuses on the 1969 high school graduating class from Lincoln High School in Sioux Falls.

As the introduction states: “Flyover Country focuses on a group of baby boomers who graduated from high school in 1969 in the Midwest before setting off into the world in a time of turbulence to fight in Vietnam, to protest against that war, to find jobs, to have families, and to live lives throughout the United States and overseas. Many of these people have made significant contributions to their communities as business owners, doctors, lawyers, ministers, politicians, and teachers. Many have suffered through tough times, losing their way due to alcohol or drugs or facing family crises from divorce to the death of a spouse or a child.”

Steve’s story was one of those lessons. Over time, he managed to regroup and rebrand, never losing that smile. See https://www.amazon.com/Flyover-Country-Boomers-Their-Stories/dp/0761853324

Already, two band members are gone: Mike Ward, a prominent news executive, and Terry Park, a psychiatrist. Only four of us remain.

Together, we played until the music was over. Long live rock ‘n’ roll!

ICYMI, here is my swan song at the Iowa Rock ‘n’ Roll Music Association Hall of Fame. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6xwsQzygtA&list=PL48ywZUEnrB7ZhkJPP5VfwPw3nHIze2Kb

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