Kim Davis on being released from jail & a leftist pounding on the doors of the Supreme Court

As I’ve been watching the left continue its violent push to make the rest of us comply with their demands and the craziness of their Kavanaugh stuff to the point where we actually had a Democrat editor justifying the shooting of Steve Scalise as the natural consequence of his votes.

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Seeing all this I couldn’t help but think of the contrast between their actions and those of Kim Davis.

For those of you who have forgotten Kim Davis is the former Democrat who refused to issue gay marriage licences with her name on them in Kentucky when the Supreme Court imposed Gay Marriage overriding the laws of her state and others.

She sought compromise, her opponents would have none of it:

Davis didn’t seek publicity, those who choose to force her hand did, as marriage licences were available just a few miles away. Even as the country’s media and elites demonized her and pundit after pundit attacked her she went to court to defend her position citing her religious beliefs seeking a compromise that would allow her to function without her name being on marriage certificates.

She was threatened with jail, and accepted it:

On Thursday the judge in the case gave her one last chance to fold her card, she declined saying it was a heaven or hell issue to her. So the judge had her jailed, meanwhile four of her five deputies agreed to issue the licences to gay couples as he commanded and on Friday began doing so.

And did so without anger or hate

Kim Davis has gone to jail without fear, without complaint. She did not scream defiant curses, she did not call for violence in her name. Her only worry was disobedience to the Lord.

And when the courts decided that she should be freed how did she react

Kim’s Davis’ entire speech was about God and serving him and thanks and love for her supporters.

No critique of the judge, no anger over her imprisonment, no fancy words about the political irony of a bunch of Republicans defending an elected democrat. No talk about the likelihood of her being re-imprisoned. Everything completely consistent with the dignity of the stand she took for the sake of her soul and others.

And when offered muscle to protect her from all those who were threatening her in person and online she declined:

Given her situation the offer of armed protection must have been attractive, she has been vilified and hated not only by the left for her principled stand but by some on the right objecting to her civil disobedience on law and order grounds. How easy would it have been for her to accept this offer of protection. How comforting might it have been to know people considered her so important they were willing to fight for her. How tempting.

I’m pleased to say she did not give into this temptation:

Oath Keepers has been contacted by Kim Davis’ legal team at Liberty Counsel, and they have, on her behalf, declined our offer of assistance in protecting her from a possible repeat incarceration by Federal District Court judge David Bunning. We will, of course, respect her wishes, and are hereby issuing a stand-down for our security volunteers who were planning on deploying to Morehead, Kentucky on Monday.

She didn’t even fire or critique her deputies who issued the licences that she would not:

Now the last thing the left could hope for was that she would fire her deputies, allowing them to attack her for demanding a conscience exception while not allowing her subordinates to do the same.

Alas poor leftists, that was not to be:

Before starting her workday, Davis appeared defiant, saying she will not issue any marriage licenses that go against her religious beliefs. But she left the door open for her deputies to continue giving out marriage licenses to same-sex couples as long as those documents do not have Davis’ name or title on them.

The marriage license that the couple received said “pursuant to federal court order” on it, and instead of listing Davis’ name and Rowan County, it says city of Morehead, the county seat.

Her willingness to stand without violent confrontation, taking the penalties prescribed by law and not attack those who went after her had a salutary result at the ballot box:

Alas for our liberal friends the voters of Kentucky clearly knew which side they were on too and it wasn’t close

Bevin was able to defy pundits, political insiders and polling — including one released by his own campaign in October that showed him losing — and emerge a winner Tuesday night.

In the end, it wasn’t even close. Bevin won 107 of the state’s 120 counties on his way to a nine-point victory.

Who made the compromise she sought a legal reality

“To ensure that the sincerely held religious beliefs of all Kentuckians are honored, I took action to revise the clerk marriage license form,” Bevin said in a statement.

Davis’s team was delighted:

“This is a wonderful Christmas gift for Kim Davis,” the group said. “Kim can celebrate Christmas with her family knowing she does not have to choose her public office and her deeply-held religious convictions.”

I think driving Kim Davis from the Democrat party will cost them for decades to come.

And in the final irony David Ermold one of the men who forced the confrontation that sent her to jail ran couldn’t even win the Democrat primary to unseat her despite a ton of money from bigtime liberals

A gay Kentucky man who was denied a marriage license by Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis nearly three years ago has lost his bid to unseat her. 

David Ermold had been seeking the Democratic nomination for county clerk in Tuesday’s primary in Rowan County, Kentucky. Though Ermold’s high-profile campaign raised more than $200,000 from supporters, including donations from Amy Schumer and Susan Sarandon, he lost to challenger Elwood Caudill Jr. in the four-way primary, the Lexington Herald-Reader reports. 

and liberals in the press are still angry, particularly as she has a book out:

Holier-than-thou public figures such as Gov. Matt Bevin, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and evangelist Franklin Graham rallied to Davis’ cause. Those three have now written promotional blurbs for her book, which has the arrogant title, “Under God’s Authority.”

“When history called upon Kim, she was both ready and willing to respond,” Bevin wrote. “Will the same be said of you?”

Pardon me while I pound my fist.

if she’s pounding her face now wait till Kim Davis gets re-elected again.

Lucy and me EWTN studios Irondale Alabama 9-6-18 (camera date was off)

The Latest in my series of Interviews with Immigrants is the incredible story of Lucy from Vietnam which I conducted during my trip to EWTN studios in Alabama at the beginning of the month.

If you are a person who regularly watches the Daily mass on EWTN you have seen Lucy in her white alb as she has not missed a mass in ten years.  If you’ve ever wondered who she is and wanted to know her story, here is your chance to hear it.

I had planned to get this interview up earlier but the Kavanaugh stuff ate up all the oxygen on the net

The full Interviews with Immigrants playlist:

Philippe: Haiti

Hanna:  Iraq

Alvin:  El Salvador

Maria:  the Dominican Republic (translated by Christian from Puerto Rico)

Lucine: Cape verde Islands

Donald:  Cameroon

Margaret Mary, England.

Lucy, Vietnam

And the updated map


Massachusetts Blows the Trump Boom Windfall

Posted: July 26, 2018 by datechguy in Uncategorized

You know that boom in hiring, investment, manufacturing taking place all over the nation that has resulted in expansion for business and bonus’ for employees everywhere? Well Massachusetts has taken decisive steps to put an end to all that.

On June 28, 2018, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed a bill titled “An Act Relative to Minimum Wage, Paid Family Medical Leave, and the Sales Tax Holiday” (H.4640). The new law, dubbed the “Grand Bargain,” implements incremental increases in Massachusetts’ minimum wage over the next five years, and creates a new paid family and medical leave program in the Commonwealth. A full text of the bill can be found here.

Minimum Wage Increase
The law increases the minimum wage from $11.00 to $15.00 over the course of five years. In 2019, the minimum wage will increase from $11.00 to $12.00. Thereafter, it will continue to increase each year in $0.75 increments until it reaches $15 in 2023. The Grand Bargain also results in a five-year phase out of the requirement of premium pay for hours worked on Sunday

Six months ago if you were a Massachusetts business, you were thinking about how you would use those tax cuts to grow your business, now you are thinking if you have 50 employees you are going to have to make sure you can generate an extra $100,000 next year and $400,000 by 2023 to cover the wage increases for those fifty folks, not to mention the taxes that come along with it.

So while business in other states take advantage of both the Trump boom and the Trump tax cut to expand their production, modernize equipment, bring in new workers, pay bonuses to reward their best workers businesses in Massachusetts are going to have to think twice before taking any steps knowing those low skill workers will add $8000 to the debt side of their ledger each.

And it’s worse than it sounds because while in a one party state like Massachusetts there is absolutely no prospect of this higher minimum wage being reversed, there is always the chance that the Trump boom might be curtailed by a Democrat victory in November of this year or in 2020 and of course as the Trump Tax rates aren’t permanent it’s very possible either a victorious Democrat or a feckless GOP congress will choose to let them die.

Massachusetts voters may have overwhelmingly voted for Hillary Clinton but they had better pray that Donald Trump stays where he is with a GOP congress because once the Trump boom and the Tax cuts end, so will the jobs that this economy has produced and discover that the true minimum wage remains constant at zero.

If you are a young person or someone starting a family the time to get out of this state is now.

Maria and Christian

The latest pair in my “interviews with immigrants” series is now up.

First I spoke to Alvin, he is in his mid 20’s and comes from El Salvador

Of the immigrants who I’ve interviewed story was slightly different. The rest of his family was already here but he choose to remain home until the violence became so bad it was a question of life and death.

Two weeks later I interviewed Maria from the Dominican Republic. She was iffy about her english so christian from Puerto Rico agreed to translate (and took that nice picture). Since he has only been here a year and the culture of Puerto Rico is different I included him in the interview as well even though technically he is not an immigrant because Puerto Rico is an American territory.

It worth noting that both Maria and Alvin had college educations where they lived but have been willing to work lesser jobs as they go back to school and learn english, it’s also worth noting that as I alluded to in my July 4th post while Maria wasn’t in the same immediate danger, it was the safety of America that brought her here.

A pair of notes, the delay in posting these interviews were mainly due to Pintastic 2018 coverage , I hope to conduct an interview with a young lady from the Cape Verde Islands this week and am in negotiations to speak to another from Australia. My goal is to get 30 different countries before I start repeating countries but it’s likely that I won’t reach that number before that happens.

You’ll note that other than Phillipe from Haiti, who is very interested in politics, I don’t ask much along those lines. That’s because I’m more interested in getting the where’s and why’s about coming here and their impression of America as a country and Americans as a people. Those are the data points I’m trying to fill and educate myself on.

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