Michael

Not done with me yet

Even as I slowly walk out the door, those people who try and tell me what to do continue to pester me. Case in point, from a recent e-mail:

Dear business owner of monoblogue.us,
How is it possible that your website is having so many errors? Yes, most of the people share their anger and frustration once they get my email.
Now, I will show you the number of broken links, pages that returned 4XX status code upon request, images with no ALT text, pages with no meta description tag, not having an unique meta description, having too long title, etc., found in your monoblogue.us.
I have a large professional team who can fix all the above issues immediately at an affordable price. I guarantee you will see a drastic change in your Google search ranking once these are fixed.
If this is something you are interested in, then allow me to send you a no obligation audit report.
Best Regards,
Kris Macri

Guess what, Kris? You can show me whatever you want, and I couldn’t care less.

I’m sure that, over nearly 17 years, I have plenty of broken links (like the years of photos I lost) and whatever other gobbledygook you were talking about, but that comes with the territory. I write to impress readers, not Google searches.

So thanks to your “large professional team” in some Indian basement somewhere, but no thanks.

Now here’s where they tell me I can make some REAL money:

Hello monoblogue.us Team,
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Do you accept Grey Niches- CBD, Crypto, Adult, Gambling Links?
Are there any Content Guidelines that you follow?
Thanks for your consideration,
Thanks & Regards,
Parama.
Some content mill.

Something tells me those “gray niches” are where the real coin is.

And then we have one more. This guy is persistent.

Hello ,

I see your website www.monoblogue.us and its impressive. I wonder if advertising options like guest post, ad content are available on your site?
What’s the price if we want to advertise on your site?
Note : Article must not be any mark as sponsored or advertise or like that and we can only pay by paypal.
Cheers
andrew robbin
Making my website less impressive one blockquote at a time.

I think my IQ dropped two points when I read that one, Mr. English is my third language.

When I get these posts it makes me wonder just who is out there making a living on these things. Having been there once myself (“you’re doing it for the ExpOsURe!”) and knowing people are lucky if they get a penny every hundred words from these content mills, I’m half tempted to turn my website over to these guys and cash out. But my name would still be associated with it, so I’ll let them wait until the domain becomes available. (Or maybe I’ll buy a new domain just for funsies, sort of like making a mythical portfolio of the “pumpin’ and dumpin'” stocks I did once upon a time and see what kind of depressing dreck I get. Domain names aren’t that expensive. By the way, in rereading that junk fax post I remembered it had one of the best comment sections I ever had. I hit a whale of a niche that week.)

Why not? Maybe it will give me something to write about on my Substack and net me twenty bucks.

The slow walk away

This is a very difficult post to write, but write it I must.

We’re not to the end of monoblogue quite yet, but I can see it now from here. After I reread my last post, I took a deep breath, began thinking about it, and said to myself, “it’s time. My heart just isn’t in this political game anymore.”

Perhaps it was the idea that I actually linked to something I wrote nine years ago on the very subject in another state, but regardless this website has become more of a chore than a pleasure and when that happens maybe it’s time to move on. I couldn’t bear to be without it six years ago when I resigned from the Wicomico County Republican Central Committee, even when I said back then, “I can see the iceberg as I’m standing on the deck of the Titanic but no one hears my warnings.”

So I tried to take another road with two lanes, which led me to writing my Rise and Fall book. It’s hard for me to believe that, three years ago this month, I was doing my reading at Pemberton Coffeehouse and embarking on a five-month, twenty-stop DIY radio tour of the nation to promote the book. Certainly it was an experience. Needless to say, a lot has changed since then and so have I. Right now, I couldn’t say if I had another book in me or not. But I think I’ve written some good stuff here, too – problem is I think it’s being ignored in our headlong rush toward tyranny and debauchery.

Truth be told, I’m not sure what I’m going to do now. I have a light-hearted post in mind that should be up next, but I think all I’m going to have left to do here is finish out the season for Shorebird of the Month, select a Shorebird of the Year, and do my picks and pans. I’m also going to do one final edition of the monoblogue Accountability Project for 2021-22 – and it looks to be a doozy. The website is paid for through the first of November, and I think I’ll pay for it one more year for archival purposes. (It’s not an expensive hobby, but there are places I can average 100 readers a week for free, like social media.) But I think I’m just going to go ahead and broom the 2022 election widget since I’m not seeing that many races here in Sussex County and the candidates can promote themselves. It’s yet another chore to maintain and I don’t feel like it anymore.

I’ve always intended for writing to be my retirement, and in some ways I have succeeded: I have the paying job writing for The Patriot Post and maybe stepping away from the blog is what I need to write book number 3 – Lord knows I haven’t had much success or inspiration since Rise and Fall with all this going on. I’m really not going away, either – I’m just going to let someone else handle the back end of trying to keep a website up, constantly worrying in the back of my mind about being hacked again, and being pestered to upgrade WordPress on a daily basis. On Tuesday I set up a Substack account, so that’s where my musings and rants will go. I’m going to try and set up a twice-a-week schedule for my subscribers on a variety of subjects.

By the time I finish this endeavor, Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I should have just about 5,300 posts over 17 years. It’s amazing because the only place I have worked longer than this blog is for the aforementioned Patriot Post, which I began writing for in 2003 while I was still living in Ohio.

But there is a season for everything, and I believe the time has come to make a change. Thank you for being there, and for understanding.

Knees jerked with record speed

You know, they couldn’t do much with important stuff like the economy, gas price relief, or using the state’s vast surplus of borrowed out of thin air federal funding to give the taxpayers a realistic break, but I tell you what: take an incident where kids were killed by a combination of evil that pays attention to no law and police incompetence that failed miserably in upholding the right to life of some number of children and suddenly there’s a stampede by the majority in the Delaware General Assembly to DO SOMETHING – even if it does little to nothing to address a problem. And while everyone was fixated with their criminal stupidity on one issue, they took advantage of it to ramrod a provision that may allow them to keep themselves in perpetual power.

Here are the issues I have with Delaware’s gun bills: first of all, you copied off a bill that’s been shown to do nothing in Maryland over ten years aside from curtail peoples’ Second Amendment rights. The criminals laugh and keep killing people in Baltimore, which has “achieved” a record number of homicides since the bill was passed in 2013 – the last four years have been four of their top six years in terms of homicide numbers. Essentially, all this series of bills will do is make people either criminals or defenseless, and something tells me that these newly-minted criminals who run afoul of the complex new gun regulations will be prosected with the greatest of zeal in comparison to run-of-the-mill street criminals.

Secondly, what kind of business has it become of yours just how large a magazine someone owns? Leaving aside the Uvalde police force’s ineptitude or cowardice, having a force of multiple police officers means you probably have more rounds than the criminal does. Having said that, though, would those of you who voted for this garbage rather face a quartet of armed home invaders with a ten-round magazine or a thirty-round one? Thought so. (And remember: when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.)

Nine years ago I expressed my opposition to the Maryland gun law the DGA essentially copied and I still stand by every word. The only difference is the number of coffins while ignoring the hundreds of lives saved by law-abiding gun owners who respect their weapons. Ask some folks in West Virginia, for example. (And pay attention in that story to how well gun laws stopped the criminal perpetrator. He was stopped by a good girl with a gun.) Since it didn’t match the narrative, I bet you never heard this on your nightly news, now did you?

And one more thought on this gun subject: remember how Sussex County Council turned gutless on the great idea of a county-level right-to-work law because they were worried about how they would be sued? The same went for the City of Seaford when they passed the fetal remains law but put it on hold because the state bullied them with a lawsuit? Obviously the knowledge that the state would face a lawsuit on these prospective laws on Second Amendment grounds wasn’t going to stop our Democrat legislature because power-seekers gotta power-seek, I suppose.

Speaking of that, notice how they let the voting bill sit for the better part of a year before rushing to pass it in the final weeks of the session? Moreover, they rejected an amendment to push the effective date back to next year, meaning that the Democrats couldn’t stand the thought of having an election without the crutch of mail-in ballots. (Wonder how many mules are in Delaware these days?)

The least that could be done before mail-in balloting would be accepted is to clean up the voter rolls of duplicate, deceased, and inactive voters. After the 2020 election where the results of machine votes and mail-in balloting were so drastically different, an audit of the voter rolls is a must. (In 2020, machine votes would have given the state to Donald Trump, elected Lee Murphy to Congress, installed Donyale Hall as LG, resulted in a 12-9 Democrat Senate instead of 14-7, and a 24-17 Democrat House instead of 26-15. It would have flipped three offices in Kent County as well. All these changes accrued to Democrats at the expense of the GOP. What a shock they voted for it, huh?)

I know I should take a deep breath because I know God is in control, but sometimes I get angry about the foolishness my fellow man does in the name of law.

A less worrisome trend

One of the things that surprised and helped attract me to this area 18 years ago was the fact that Salisbury had a minor league baseball team. I’ve always had a little bit of familiarity with the minor league system from following my Detroit Tigers and seeing the back of thousands of baseball cards, but it never dawned on me that Delmarva was the team representing Salisbury, just like one may not guess that the old Tidewater Tides were actually playing in Norfolk, Virginia or that the Down East Wood Ducks are from Kinston, North Carolina.

After the pandemic wiped out the 2020 season, we learned that a few of our erstwhile opponents in the South Atlantic League would be saying goodbye to the affiliated baseball ranks without giving their fans a chance to say sayonara to the team. While the Lexington Legends transformed themselves into a franchise in the independent Atlantic League, followed by the West Virginia Power – who were reborn as the Charleston Dirty Birds – the Hagerstown Suns disappeared from the baseball world, done in by poor previous attendance and facilities. (The good news for them: they will get a new stadium and also join the Atlantic League for the 2023 season, at least as of last September.)

In baseball’s realignment for 2021, the Shorebirds were one of five former South Atlantic League teams shuttled to the Carolina League, which flipped levels with the SAL to become a full-season class A league. (The SAL became what’s known as an advanced-A league.) In that respect we were joined in the move by the Augusta Greenjackets, Charleston (South Carolina) Riverdogs, Columbia Fireflies, and Kannapolis Cannon Ballers (who had already planned a name change from Intimidators and new stadium for 2020 before the season was scrubbed.)

This all may be old news to the folks who read this website and know I’m a passionate fan of the Delmarva Shorebirds: enough so to take the time each month to select a position player and pitcher of the month, pick a Shorebird of the Year each season, and host a page on my site for the Shorebird of the Week Hall of Fame for all the guys who make The Show. But it’s important to the reason I felt it necessary to do this post.

In the winter of 2020, I was very concerned that the Shorebirds would follow the fate of the aforementioned Legends, Power, and Suns. Knowing that the Orioles enjoy having most of their affiliates within easy driving distance and also knowing the game of musical chairs enforced by Major League Baseball was going to leave one team standing on the sidelines, it was apparent to me that the cut was going to come down to either us or Frederick, since the teams in the upper minors appeared safe and they were going to find a way to keep Aberdeen with the closeness to Baltimore and the Ripken influence. As it happened, Frederick was the odd team out.

Because of the pandemic restrictions for 2021, I knew attendance would be way down – truth be told, I was just happy to get the season we did given how heavy-handed the government reaction to the CCP virus was. The Shorebirds ended up with about half their usual attendance, although toward the end of the 2021 season things began to look a little more “normal.” So I was concerned about how things looked in April this season, when we had several nights with three-digit attendance figures. And I got to thinking: was it just us, or was this a league-wide thing? So I decided to do a study, and here’s how it worked.

As I said above, there were five teams that shifted from the SAL to the Carolina League which I could use as comparisons to a previous base year, 2019 – the last full “normal” season. However, the new stadium in Kannapolis eliminated that apples-to-apples, leaving me Augusta, Charleston, and Columbia to use as comparisons. While there were affilation changes at all three due to realignment, I presumed that would be of little to no effect. (Maybe somewhat in Augusta since they went from the San Francisco Giants to the nearby Atlanta Braves, but Yankees to Rays in Charleston or Mets to Royals in Columbia – eh, not so much.)

My methodology, taking games played between the season opener and Memorial Day – which was a leaguewide day off this season – accounted for both attendance and weather, since the box scores indicate both. I even came up with a formula to determine how good the weather was for each team and season because that’s an important factor as well: based on the weather at game time I factored the weather as a zero for rain or drizzle, one for overcast, two points for cloudy, three for partly cloudy, and four points for clear or sunny.

So is the issue only with Delmarva or are we not alone? Let’s take a look, beginning in alphabetical order with Augusta.

Augusta Greenjackets

Home stadium: SRP Park (2018), capacity 4,782

In 2019, they had 23 home dates prior to Memorial Day and averaged 4,125 fans per game. Their average temperature at game time was 83 degrees and the weather factor was 3.44, meaning their games generally occurred in clear to partly cloudy weather (only one had a delay.) Their record at Memorial Day was 24-27.

Three years later, they had 24 home dates prior to Memorial Day and averaged 4,175 fans per game – basically a wash. This despite an average temperature that was three degrees cooler and weather just slightly worse at a factor of 3.33, with just one delay. This year they were 23-22.

What this tells me is that whatever slight bit of luster the stadium has lost is being countered, perhaps by taking marketing advantage of the new Braves affiliation. (Three of their four affiliates are now in Georgia.) They look to be in pretty good shape for the time being.

Charleston Riverdogs

Home stadium: Joseph P. Riley, Jr. Park (1997), capacity 6,000

The 2019 season saw the Riverdogs average 4,327 fans for their 27 home dates prior to Memorial Day, with great weather: a 3.52 weather factor, with just one delay, and average of 80.8 degrees at game time. (Can we borrow some of that?) The team was 28-23 at Memorial Day 2019.

This year, despite a better team at 31-14, their attendance slumped to 3,810 per date for the same 27 dates. I don’t think there’s THAT many passionate Yankee fans in Charleston, so perhaps the reason was the weather: while the weather was less than one degree cooler at 80.4 degrees, the weather factor was down to 2.78 thanks to three cloudy days and two games that began in the rain. In terms of real bottoms in the seats, the team is down 14,000 from their 2019 total-to-date, and if that tracks for the season like 2019 did it would make a significant dent in attendance that totaled over 300,000 that year. A drier summer, though, may allow the Riverdogs to catch up or at least hold serve.

Columbia Fireflies

Home stadium: Segra Park (2016), capacity 9,077

The Fireflies were still rather new to Columbia in 2019, so they averaged 4,201 per date for their 22 pre-Memorial Day dates that year – this despite a weather factor of 2.77 and three games with rain delays, as well as an average gametime temperature of 77.6 degrees. The team wasn’t great on the field that season, hitting Memorial Day with a subpar 19-32 record.

Three years on, they still don’t have a great team despite new affiliation, trailing the Carolina League with a 14-31 record on Memorial Day. So even though the gametime temperature (77.4 degrees) held remarkably steady between the two years, and they had better weather (a 3.24 factor) and only two delays, their attendance has declined markedly to 3,367 per game.

Historically, Columbia hasn’t been able to keep a team very long – their previous team, mostly known as the Capital City Bombers, lasted a couple decades before being moved upstate to Greenville in 2005 and becoming what’s now known as the Greenville Drive. But it’s somewhat of an unfair comparison because the team came to Columbia in 2016 and had the benefit of Tebowmania in 2017, so attendance wasn’t going to stay on such a plateau. Still, a drop of nearly 20 percent would be concerning to most owners and league officials. And that leads me to…

Delmarva Shorebirds

Home stadium: Arthur W. Perdue Stadium (1996), capacity 5,200

At the start of 2019, the Shorebirds were opening a fantastic season – they began with a 24-4 record, hit Memorial Day at 39-11, and finished with 90 wins and the first half SAL North title. So despite a weather factor of just 2.96, one delay, and an average gametime temperature of 70 degrees, the Shorebirds averaged 2,398 for their 25 openings.

Fast forward to 2022, and we have the opposite team: just 16-29 on Memorial Day. While it’s seemed like a cold spring here, our gametime temperature was only a degree cooler at 69.3 and the weather factor only slightly worse at 2.86. The team had no weather-related delays. (They did get an umpire delay at a game I was at. Need to make sure not to eat where he did.)

So the drop in attendance to 2,147 per game is a little troubling, but not as significant as Columbia’s. In fact, it’s fairly comparable to Charleston’s, which means a dry and warm summer could get us back into the neighborhood of 200,000 fans overall. (We will have four fewer scheduled dates for the foreseeable future as A-ball teams are now scheduled for 132 games instead of the previous 140.) Based on average, that’s a drop of 12,000 fans for the Shorebirds right there but because most of that shortage is on the Mondays they now have as an almost-perpetual off day, it’s more like about 8,000 fans.)

And because this is a phenomenon hitting three of the four teams I studied, I think it may be the setting up of a new normal that’s hopefully just a base which can be improved upon once economic conditions finally improve – that, however, will have little to do with baseball.

If – and that’s a pretty big if at this point – the Shorebirds do somehow manage to get 200,000 fans at this point, that’s going to be a testament to a loyal fan base that hasn’t minded the mediocre-to-bad teams Baltimore has normally sent us over the years to show up and see the boys play. To see all the empty seats in April I was pretty worried Seventh Inning Stretch LLC, the owners of the Shorebirds, may find an excuse to leave our friendly confines by their selling the team to someone who wants to move it either the available facility in Frederick or the new stadium in Hagerstown but if attendance stays reasonably steady or improves for the next few seasons they’ll maintain their investment.

Do that and, good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I’ll be there.

Postscript: since the original draft of this I wrote the week after Memorial Day while the Shorebirds were on the second and last two-week road trip for the season, the Shorebirds had a five-game homestand that featured wildly varied attendance figures: high triple-digits on Tuesday and Thursday, the usual nice 2,000-ish crowd on Wednesday from the Silver Sluggers (age 55+ promotion where they get discounted tickets) and solid crowds on Friday and Saturday of over 4,000 apiece – the two largest crowds of the year and first ones over 4,000. Friday may have been helped a bit by the long-awaited pro debut of Heston Kjerstad (2nd pick overall in the 2020 draft, sidelined in 2021 by myocarditis and since early spring training with a hamstring injury) and Saturday was a Little League day. Both Friday and Saturday had fireworks as well. (Sunday’s game was rained out and Saturday’s was delayed two hours by rain as well.)

Overall, they drew 12,957 for the five games, so if you round it up with what could have been a decent Sunday attendance of 2,043 to make the math easy it’s 15,000 for the set. (That number would have been doable since the Shorebirds were planning a postgame mini-clinic for kids.) Going back to my “picks and pans” last year I mentioned that their largest 6-game set in 2021 brought 14,249 to friendly confines of Perdue; well, this year they beat that number with the last 6-game set before Memorial Day and most likely would have again this week had rain not foiled those plans. (In looking back, though, that six-game set was only five due to a Thursday rainout so it probably would have been someplace around 16,000 for six games – just about even with what we drew the last week of May.)

Going forward, the end of the school year will hopefully help build the midweek numbers a bit and there are several good promotions and big-crowd events still to come. So I feel a little less worried than I was and I like having the numbers to back it up.

A rookie mistake?

While I work in Wicomico County, my wife and I neither live nor vote in Wicomico County. So this misdirection seems a little strange.

As you can see from the photo, I am in possession of a mailing from one Julie Giordano, who is a Republican running for Wicomico County Executive. (This actually came in our mail for my wife’s “household,” which is logical as she at least is a registered Republican.) I do believe most people who read this are familiar with the fact that I’m a recovering Marylander and ex-Republican who now lives a few miles across the line in Delaware.

So this probable simple mistake by the company mailing this out (not noticing that the address pre-printed on the flyer was in Delaware) got me to thinking about how the political process works now. One thing about my leaving the state of Maryland and the Republican Party is that I don’t get their mailings anymore, but my wife does. However, since she’s not a 4-4 Republican in Delaware yet I don’t think she gets the volume of stuff we (mainly I) received in Maryland. But what she does get seems to reflect the idea of security.

Believe it or not, I took a photo of the total of two flyers my wife received for the entire 2020 election from State Senator Colin Bonini’s ill-fated campaign for governor – one extoling his 2A bonafides and the other as a letter from his wife. (I think I was going to use them for a post I never ended up writing – until now.) It was obvious that Bonini was scanning the voter rolls looking for a few nuggets as well as cutting into the “mama bear” vote in a primary where his main competition was a woman, that being Julianne Murray (who ended up winning.) So here’s that example, a blast from the past.

We didn’t feel at home in Delaware until the political flyers started showing up. But in the election of 2020, this was all we got – both addressed to my wife. Definitely going for the female vote.

To me it’s obvious Julie Giordano is looking to shore up the female vote in an election where she’s going up against the man who’s currently the acting County Executive, but who doesn’t have a ton of name recognition because he’s never sought office before. (John Psota, who was initially appointed as the Director of Administration for the county, is the acting executive who stayed on because County Council couldn’t agree on a formal successor to the late Bob Culver, who passed away in July, 2020. After going through the process twice without success, they threw up their hands and kept Psota in the job until this year’s election.)

While Giordano has a background as a teacher and parent, this flyer talks about security, as in not defunding the police but defending them. On the other side is a quote, presumably from Julie, that says, “If you want to change policing and the end product, I suggest you go to the academy and walk their walk.”

It’s actually a pretty good flyer, but it’s not going to get Giordano any votes from our household because we can’t vote in Maryland anymore. (At least my wife’s name better not be on the list, since I made sure mine was removed.) Maybe they were thinking in terms of donations or word-of-mouth? If so, I suppose she’s getting some pixels but maybe not in the sense she would like. A better campaign would have culled the list before spending a buck or two on printing and postage given she only has about $8,000 in the bank to play with and her primary opponent was bankrolled by some serious coin. (For example, why is lobbyist Bruce Bereano involved in the Wicomico race? That’s a post for another day, particularly since a reporting date is coming up.)

Let’s hope the attention to detail is a bit better if she’s elected as County Executive. (And a message for the current one: can you get your folks to cut some of the roadside weeds around the county? It’s a hazard at some corners.) In the meantime, I’ll be interested to see what shows up in our mailbox later this fall from candidates we can actually vote for.

The rapid jerking of knees

Every time there’s a disaster, whether natural or man-made, there’s always that moment of passion when it’s determined the politicians have to DO SOMETHING. It doesn’t matter whether that action is really necessary and not ill-advised, it just has to appear to deal with the problem and make them look good.

The last time the liberals came so hot and heavy for our guns was the aftermath of Sandy Hook, but that was a case of curious political timing: since the shooting occurred during the lame duck period between the election and the swearing-in of a new Congress, it meant that some of the momentum for change was blunted by the three-week interim before a new Congress, who hadn’t run so much on gun control, was sworn in. Yes, there was a call for “common-sense” (read: overrestrictive and unconstitutional) gun laws, but that wasn’t really part of the Obama re-election platform.

Almost a decade later – and with a detour to a Florida high school included – we have the same situation with the Uvalde massacre. Yes, the situation in Uvalde is complicated by what appears to a be a badly botched response by local officials, but that portion of it doesn’t fit the narrative that the guns the shooter had were completely responsible. By gummy, dem guns just up and fired themselves – a shame the guy holding them had to be shot by a police officer to stop the gun from shooting. And it’s amazing that all this comes up in an election year when the Democrats have exactly zero avenues of success to run on.

Anyway, some of these bills were already languishing in the Delaware General Assembly, but in the days after the tragedy there was a renewed push for gun reform in the same warmed-over package that was going nowhere. The bodies were barely cold when most of these provisions were introduced:

Banning the sale of assault weapons (HB 450) – new bill
Limiting high-capacity magazines (SB 6) – introduced in March 2021, substitute bill put in place June 7, 2022
Raising the age from 18 to 21 to purchase most firearms (HB 451) – new bill
Strengthening background checks by reinstituting the Firearm Transaction Approval Program (FTAP) (HB 423) – introduced May 2022.
Holding gun manufacturers and dealers liable for reckless or negligent actions that lead to gun violence (not yet introduced)
Banning the use of devices that convert handguns into fully automatic weapons (not yet introduced)

Out of the six, the Republicans seem to be most supportive of HB423, as several are either sponsoring or co-sponsoring the measure because it brings the background check back to the state. That bill has advanced out of committee already, as has HB450 and HB451. The substitute SB6 has already passed the Senate on a 13-7 vote, with the “no” side being bipartisan thanks to lame-duck Senator Bruce Ennis.

A state 2A advocate by the name of Brad Burdge had this to say about these bills being considered in Delaware:

HB450 – “Cut & Paste” law from Maryland’s law, passed nearly 10 years ago that would outlaw purchase, possession and sale of AR-15 and similar weapons.  Weapons already owned would be grandfathered. This has been proposed and rejected by several legislative sessions, yet the current rash of events reported around the country appears likely to sweep it into law. The Delaware State Sportsmen’s Association (DSSA) is already preparing to take this to court as an unconstitutional abridgement of Article 1, Section 20 of the Delaware Constitution with provides that ” A person has the right to keep and bear arms for the defense of self, family, home and State, and for hunting and recreational use.” The AR-15 and similar rifles are not “weapons of war”, as no military in the world uses them. They are a semi-automatic version that is cosmetically similar to the M-16/M-4 “Automatic/Select-Fire” weapons used by many military units.
HB451 – Increases the age of purchase, possession and ownership of any firearm from 18 to 21, excepting military service or under the supervision of someone over 21.
SB6 – Outlaws firearm magazines with capacities in excess of 17 rounds.  It requires those currently possessed to be turned in to law enforcement within a matter of weeks. Amendments that modified this law to penalize persons who commit felonies with high capacity magazines (over 20 for pistols and 30 for rifles) is scheduled to be stripped from the bill.
HB423 – Would shift the responsibility for background checks on firearm purchases from the Federal NICS system to the Delaware State Bureau of Investigation.  This would appear to provide for approvals based on more accurate and timely data. Delaware DOES NOT report all felony violations to the Federal NICS process – only mental health issues! Delaware condones potential sale of firearms to convicted felons! Many of the gun rights/activist organizations SUPPORT this bill as an improvement on the current process and it is co-sponsored by several Republican legislators. It would also negate the value and avoid the issues associated with SB3, which requires a “License to Purchase” a firearm. SB3 is redundant and adds bureaucracy and expense to the purchase process, as these checks would be performed at the point of sale – again.
“Unconstitutional, Anti-Gun Bills on the Legislative Hall Agenda,” June 6, 2022.

Given that description of HB450, I just might have to go back and update my testimony against that bill from 2013. I especially love some of my rewrites of the Second Amendment they seem to be proposing.

But these are troubled times for those who believe in the Second Amendment. Even with the defection of Bruce Ennis, there’s a 13-8 majority in the Senate that will pass these and probably 24 (if not more) votes in the House. Methinks if we can hold this off (even in court) until November, though, we may be able to turn these things away.

Shorebird Player and Pitcher of the Month: May 2022

If things had turned out ever-so-slightly different, I would have had dual repeat winners for the first time. Until the last week of the month, Darell Hernaiz was once again the clear leader of the band insofar as the top position player went, but instead of getting another award he got something more important: a long-overdue promotion to Aberdeen on May 24.

Isaac Bellony parlayed his good May into being called up the Aberdeen the next month. Here he celebrates a win over Fredericksburg May 19.

In the interim, this month’s eventual winner did something you don’t see every day: hit a natural cycle of (in order) single, double, triple, and home run. That 5-for-5 day last week (with another single added for good measure in a 14-6 win at Charleston) vaulted Isaac Bellony past the absent Hernaiz and into this month’s honor. The switch-hitting outfielder ended the month with a slash line of .250/4/20/.845 OPS, all of which led the qualifiers. (One hitter had a better average and OPS but in a limited number of at-bats, only 16.)

The 20-year-old native of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands was signed back when the Orioles were beginning their push to rebuild the international pipeline in the latter days of Dan Duquette’s tenure as general manager. (For context, Bellony was signed on July 27, 2018 – right in the midst of five major league selloff trades that brought over a dozen players to the Orioles’ starved minor league system. Those begat a haul that soon brought former Shorebirds Jean Carlos Encarnacion and Jean Carmona over.) Isaac showed some potential in the Dominican Summer League when he began playing in 2019, so after the year-long minor league hiatus he was promoted to the Complex League in Florida, hitting .259/4/11/.804 OPS overall, primarily for the Orange team (37 of 39 games.)

In the absence of Hernaiz, Isaac has become the primary offensive threat for the Shorebirds, and despite his average falling off a little bit in May, his overall .262/6/30/.843 OPS at the end of May led the remainder of the team in those slash categories. One item that may change in the future, though: like Cedric Mullins before him, future success may dictate the switch-hitting may be dropped as Bellony’s only 1-for-21 as a right-handed hitter this season. Given his stat sheet now has a handful of left-on-left at-bats, that may have already occurred.

Fans of the Shorebirds may have noticed the international flavor of the team this year, particularly as Bellony represents a product of the emphasis on scouting abroad. Isaac is the first homegrown international position player to be a Shorebird of the Month since 2017 (current Shorebirds coach Daniel Fajardo was the last) but I suspect there may be more in the pipeline.

Meanwhile, on the pitching side Daniel Lloyd was definitely in the mix for repeating the honor of Shorebird Pitcher of the Month, but instead I chose to honor another player recently promoted to Aberdeen.

While Alex Pham was only in for two hitters in this May 15 game against Salem, his body of work since rejoining the Shorebirds last month was enough to give him the nod as Shorebird Pitcher of the Month.

Righthander Alex Pham was here at the very tail end of an extended 2021 season, pitching in three games as a wrap to a year that sent the Bay Area native from his senior campaign at the University of San Francisco to Wareham, Massachusetts for a brief pre-draft stint in the showcase Cape Cod League circuit to five games (and all of 6 2/3 innings) in the Complex League to two weekends and a week here. Looks like he pretty much covered all the corners of the country.

While Alex was unscored upon here, a couple rough outings in Florida contributed to an overall 3-1, 4.63 mark and 1.543 WHIP. A 12:3 strikeout to walk ratio was also promising for a guy not picked until the 19th round. (Just like Shorebird of the Week Hall of Fame pitcher Josh Hader – granted, Hader is by far the most successful from that year’s round, just three of whom even made the Show.)

Pham didn’t show up here this season until the end of April, so I’ll take the liberty here of lumping in his single one-inning appearance with April to his May stats. It all worked out to a 1.59 ERA in six appearances covering 11 1/3 innings, where Alex allowed just eight hits and struck out 15 while walking seven for a 1.324 WHIP. Perhaps those aren’t eye-popping stats, but Orioles management has been aggressive with moving up the 2021 draft class and considering Alex will turn 23 later this fall they wanted to see how his outstanding breaking ball (it was very fun to watch batters react to it) would play at a higher level. (So far, so good – his Aberdeen numbers are a shade better than he had for the Shorebirds.)

Pham emerged from a scrum at the top of the pitching heap that included the aforementioned Lloyd as well as Hugo Beltran, Shane Davis, Alejandro Mendez, and Preston Price. Hopefully those who remain will keep making it hard to select the next Shorebird Pitcher of the Month.

I’ll be back to the normal first Thursday selection in July for the June honorees.

Another reminder: elections matter

In the wake of Uvalde the politicians generally divided on two sides, with one side being more “bipartisan” than the other. And while there were a few courageous folks who reminded the people that the gun, no matter how “scary” it looks, is an inanimate object that could sit loaded forever and do no damage unless and until someone picked it up, most politicians licked their finger and stuck it up in the wind. Since the media was blowing around the theory that the shooting was all the fault of the “assault rifle” that the shooter was carrying, that’s how the politicos came down.

While it was a disappointment – but no surprise – that a fair number of RINOs came out on the latter side of finger-stickers, as it stands right now we have a Democrat in charge of this state. And, of course, he led off his usually boring and non-controversial “week in review” e-mail with his statement on what we should do post-Uvalde:

So many across the country are feeling helpless and hopeless this week. A massacre of an elementary school classroom has come on the heels of a racist mass shooting in a grocery store. But elected officials — here in Delaware and across the country — are not helpless. The reality is we can do something about these horrific tragedies. In every state in the nation, and in Congress, we have the ability to pass legislation to make it harder and harder for people to get their hands on weapons that cause these mass murders.
We have made progress here in Delaware, but it isn’t enough. I’m committed to working with the General Assembly to continue doing our part to prevent these shameful, appalling, unnecessary tragedies. In the meantime, my heart is with the victims and their families.
“Reflections On This Week,” Governor John Carney, May 27, 2022.

Since I’m not afraid to proclaim my help and hope comes from Jesus Christ, I suppose I don’t fall within that “so many” category. Maybe we just need more to join those ranks.

And yes, our elected officials aren’t helpless. But we don’t need legislation to make it harder to get guns – we need legislation to make sure more of them are around when and where they’re needed, such as in West Virginia the other day.

What has to be obvious to all but the most fanatical gun grabber is that the Uvalde shooter was a mentally sick individual. As with most of these incidents, the bread crumb trail was easy to follow after the fact – unfortunately, no one put the pieces together beforehand and got the kid the help he could have used.

This message is about the other 99.999% of gun owners who are responsible enough to know what their weapons are capable of and treat them with due respect. There’s only a small percentage of them who would even desire to carry them around, but what if even 5% of those gun owners used a right to carry concealed? That’s one portion of the solution we can use, but I guaran-damn-tee that’s not what Governor Carnage has in mind when he says he wants to make it “harder and harder to get their hands on weapons.”

However, I titled this post “elections matter” because there’s a simple fact at play here: despite the fact there’s a few short weeks left in our regular General Assembly session, that’s more than enough time to whip out more gun-grabbing legislation. (Generally, the worst of legislation is the knee-jerk type that comes together the quickest. I’m sure all those gun control lobbyists already have their wish list bill ready to go, just waiting for a crisis such as this. Can’t waste it!) But you definitely can’t discount the thought of a Special Session later this summer to deal with gun legislation, especially since the Democrats nationally have nothing else to run on and it’s an election year in Delaware too.

Alas, we can’t get rid of John Carney until 2024 and he’s term-limited anyway. (One 2023 story will be the battle to succeed him, which will start in the latter half of the year.) Because of the census and redistricting, though, every seat in the General Assembly is up for election this November. Also on the ballot is the important law enforcement post of Attorney General, where incumbent Democrat Kathy Jennings is not term-limited out but has a Republican contender in Julianne Murray.

Let’s look at the General Assembly, though. While the filing deadline isn’t until July 12, most of the Senate incumbents who are running for re-election have already filed: the exceptions are the embattled Darius Brown in District 2, John Walsh in District 9, and Dave Wilson in the 18th District. The House, however, is a bit more muddled as the majority of incumbents are still waiting to file, including most of the group from Sussex County. We know that Rep. Steve Smyk is leaving District 20 to try for the Senate District 6 seat that’s opening up with the retirement of Senator Ernie Lopez and a Republican, Bradley Layfield, has come on board for the newly-relocated House District 4 in the Long Neck area.

Being that we are still a month and a half away from the filing deadline, it’s the way-too-early guesstimate of the chances that Delaware Democrats withstand the battering their party label is getting from the sheer incompetence (or intentional destruction) of the Biden administration, but at the moment here’s how things look.

In the Senate, there is a Democrat only filed in 7 seats, a Republican only filed in 6 seats (one would be a flip, at least until John Walsh or another Democrat files) and 8 seats up in the air as both a Democrat and Republican have filed. At this second, it is possible that the Republicans could get the majority but more likely they could cut into their 14-7 deficit. A four seat pickup isn’t that much of a stretch, though, considering just a few years ago there was a special election where control of the Senate was in the balance.

In the House, the disparity of filings has the Democrats enjoying a 15-5 bulge but all that changes once Republicans begin to file. (At the moment, one is replaced by a Libertarian, which would be a historic day for that party.) The GOP would have to hope the GOP wave currently sweeping the nation isn’t dashed by the breakwall of redistricting that favored the Democrats as much as possible – remember, just population changes likely flip a seat as the former Democrat Rep. Gerald Brady’s District 4 seat was the one moved to Sussex. The GOP needs six addtional seats to gain control, but with all 41 House seats up as usual this is their best chance in a decade and the political winds are the most favorable for them since the Obama wave ended Republican control back in 2008.

Returning to the Senate for a moment, bear in mind the GOP picked up at least one seat each election during the TEA Party era, even despite Christine O’Donnell. (In 2008 things looked really bleak as it was 16-5 Democrat then, even with there still being a handful of centrist-to-conservative Democrats in the Senate back then.) So a four seat gain is a stretch, but because all 21 are up it’s possible.

Assuming they get control, at that point all the Republicans need is a spine. Granted, that may be more difficult for them to come by than legislative control but it would be nice to have the other side have to come over to be bipartisan for a change and maybe they can get common-sense legislation like elimination of gun-free zones on most public property and funding the construction and staffing of places for those kids who show signs of becoming the next Uvalde shooter to go for the help they need. (And that includes faith-based initiatives.)

Indeed, elections matter. Let’s do better in November, Delaware.

My thoughts and unanswered questions about the Uvalde shooting

You know me: in most instances I like to wait a few days and digest all sorts of takes, hot and cold, before I put up my two cents about events such as this.

I first heard about what some are calling the Texas Massacre (no chainsaw required) in the afternoon and evening after it happened. Initially I thought just a couple people were involved, putting it in the category of the type of school shooting where jilted ex-boyfriend decides he can’t live without his ex and plans to make sure no one else gets her either. Obviously that’s tragic but life rolls on – unless it’s local we don’t even remember the name of the school where it occurred a month later.

But as the reported death toll from Uvalde continued to increase, we began to hear about this as an event rivaling Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Parkland. Because it was an elementary school and not a high school, the best parallel to me is Sandy Hook, and it just so happens I wrote at some length about it in the wake of the shooting four times – once the day of, the next two days on the folly of a gun ban and the media’s fascination with guns, and a wrapup of sorts a few days later like in this situation. After re-reading all I wrote on Sandy Hook, it’s amazing how closely the Uvalde shooting is hewing to that line, even to the point of reporting how close the kids were to a break. (Sandy Hook occurred days before Christmas break, while Uvalde occurred in the last days of the school year.) Even more scary was the fact that both lone gunmen shot their parental figure first, then took off to a school important to the parent. (Initially some reports were that the Uvalde shooter’s grandmother died; in fact, she was shot in the face but managed to survive.)

The passage of almost ten years hasn’t dissuaded me from a pro-gun stance because, just like Sandy Hook, the gun wasn’t the real problem: the problem was a child whose upbringing seemed to fail in a moral sense. What parent is “training up a child in the way they should go” if the kids are playing Call of Duty for hours on end and talking about shooting up a school on social media?

But we all know that the one approach from the Democrat Party is a demand to restrict our Second Amendment rights by banning what they term “assualt weapons” or “weapons of war.” In this case, as a start they’re talking about reinstating the “assault weapon ban” that was in place for about a decade between 1994 and 2004 – funny, that didn’t stop the Columbine shooting. In addition to that, they’re seeking to nationalize “red flag” laws that have turned tragic.

Yet the more I hear about the timeline of events in the Uvalde shooting, I think the focus on the gun is misplaced.

There’s a balance which has to be kept between freedom and security. We could create hardened compounds out of our schools, with metal detectors, intruder locks on classrooms, bulletproof glazing, and so forth, but what message does that send to a child? Besides, someone has to man a metal detector, locks can be left unlocked (like the back door apparently was at the Uvalde school because it was an awards day), and glazing does nothing if there’s an open door. None of these security measures are foolproof.

I’ve heard a lot of people talking about having an armed veteran or retired police officer volunteer his or her time at a school, much like a school resource officer. (This person could be the supplement to the employed officer.) Obviously, that’s going to be an availability issue at times because people have appointments and incidents which come up in real life. On balance, though, I think between this and various non-intrusive security and procedural upgrades we would do more to enhance school safety than a gun ban would ever hope to achieve. (Apparently there was a camera system at the school so they could track the shooter’s movements – after the fact, as part of the investigation. Wouldn’t it have been nice for the police to be able to tap into that?)

The problem with banning anything is that there’s an instant black market for the product if people still desire it – and they usually do. Ban smoking in an office building and you’ll walk through a cloud at the door. When people complain about that and the facility places a restriction on smoking by the doors, they just move farther away. When they still get the complaints the facility bans it on the property, so people go to their private cars for their nicotine fix. That’s how it works.

People didn’t stop drinking alcohol for Prohibition, they just made mobsters like Al Capone wealthier. If people want what the regressives consider “assault rifles,” they will get them somehow, to the benefit of criminals. Do you honestly believe people will give them up willingly, and do you want to be the law enforcement officer to try and enforce that?

I’m just as sick of reading about these tragedies as anyone else, although I’m not going to mock the “thoughts and prayers” crowd like others do because prayers for comfort and healing are always welcome to me. If the unthinkable happened to me I would appreciate the support as I tried to piece my life back together.

But I don’t have the answers. All I can tell you is that I strongly believe the gun ban proponents are barking up the wrong tree, and their alacrity after the incident just feeds the scuttlebutt beneath the surface out there about Uvalde being a government-backed “false flag” operation to seize the media narrative, take people’s minds off the horrible economy and whatever else the government is doing to usurp our rights, and lay the groundwork for disarming the population. Sorry to sound all Qanon on you, but that’s the thought process people have been led to after the last two-plus years of being told we shouldn’t question authority and if a schmuck like me can sense it, what does that say about the trust we have in our institutions?

Something in our institutions let the Uvalde shooter down, and he wasn’t equipped to deal with it in a manner acceptable to civil society. The gun was just the tool the shooter used to exact the price that over a score of people paid.

Seeking the Truth

There are some people who gauge success by how many social media friends they have, and by that token I guess I’m not that successful. Between Facebook and Twitter I have about 2,000 friends/followers and that’s far less than some other people I know (from social media, of course.) Furthermore, many years ago I began a page on Facebook devoted to this site but it really never took off and the last time I updated it was several months ago – at one time, my website was supposed to automatically update that Facebook page every time I posted, but “set it and forget it” stopped working and I usually forget it, although since that little universe of 100 or so followers is mainly among my friends anyway it really makes no difference.

However, it would be nice to have some sort of payoff for all the work I put into my writing – not as in expecting it to pay my bills, but at least spread the word a little more. To that end, I’ve been considering other ways of putting my name out, whether by purchasing Facebook ads (which I’ve tried in the past, but weren’t all that successful) or exploring alternatives like Gab or Parler, where I also have accounts. But the market I thought would be most successful was Truth Social; however, I don’t have an iPhone as that was the way to get their app.

Lo and behold, though, the other day I saw where Truth Social was now available for PCs and laptops so guess where I am now? Yes, @monoblogue.

I began by following some of the suggested people they had, and I like how they made it easy to post, so I shared the last post I did here as well as my last post at The Patriot Post to break the ice. We’ll see if Truth Social is the answer to the social media question, so if you’re already there give me a follow.

This was a quick post because the next one this weekend will discuss a current event.

Odds and ends number 112

It’s time for what seems to have become a monthly or so airing of those chunks of bloggy goodness I create out of the whole cloth of my e-mail box. Say that three times fast.

As always, these snippets run between a couple sentences and a few paragraphs depending on how much I can write about them, which is why at times things get “promoted” like my last article. Anyway…

An upcoming day of action

If you live in Delaware and are into the Article V convention idea, then June 7 is the day for you. Convention of States Action president Mark Meckler – yep, the guy of Tea Party Patriots fame and a familiar name to readers of Rise and Fall – is scheduled to lead a rally on the east steps of Leg Hall in Dover. But it won’t be a stand around and cheer event as those attending will fan out and try to convince legislators that we as a state should back an Article V convention. (This is why the event is on a Tuesday.)

One of the tasks given is to “deliver an information packet (provided) to your own legislators.” However, I suspect that my legislators would already be on board considering both properly voted against a 2016 blanket recission of existing convention calls (HCR60 in that session.) Hopefully someone can say hello to Bryant and Tim for me in that case.

There’s also some interesting reading on that front from CoS, as writer Jakob Fay addresses a critique of anti-CoS talking points and adds some insight of his own.

The bill to nowhere

Speaking of our esteemed legislature, it’s up to the Republicans to save us from a sneaky tax hike. Thanks to a lawsuit brought by the usual left-wing suspects who believe our public schools aren’t enough of a money sinkhole, the three counties in Delaware now have to reassess every single piece of property.

(The plaintiff in the lawsuit was a group called “Delawareans for Educational Opportunity” described in the suit as “parents of low income students, English language learners, children with disabilities in kindergarten through grade three, and other parents with students attending high poverty schools.” Since I doubt those parents had the coin to sue the state, it’s really that eeeeeeevil “dark money” the Left claims to hate behind it.)

To address this unapproved school tax hike, Rep. Mike Smith introduced a bill that insures “that school districts collect the same total revenue after reassessment as they did the previous year.” Yeah, when pigs fly. It’s a great idea, but we know that bill goes nowhere past committee because, to Democrats, too much money for schools is never enough. But ask for school choice and you get crickets.

As they always say, elections matter. Do better this year, Delaware.

Where are the jobs?

It’s always fun to see the conventional wisdom buckle under good old-fashioned analysis, and fortunately there’s somebody who’s paid to go through this data so I can share it.

One selling point of offshore wind was its job creation aspect, but a recent analysis by the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy put the lie to that. As David Stevenson concludes, “(study author) Wood Mackenzie is generally reliable, but this study misses by a country mile and is misleading elected officials and the public.”

It’s always been a pipe dream that we would somehow create thousands of jobs building, erecting, and maintaining wind turbines that only last about 20-30 years. Supposedly wind is free and renewable energy, but the millions of dollars needed to collect and harness it has to come from somewhere as does the natural gas backup plant required when the wind doesn’t blow for a spell, as happened off Europe last year.

There’s a reason I occasionally remind people that, once they received access to reliable electricity, farmers stopped using their windmills to create power.

Indivisible is so pissed over abortion

And this was an e-mail I got on Mother’s Day, no less – from a mother!

As you can imagine, the regressives at Indivisible are in a way over losing their cherished right to abort their babies practically at will. There are a couple lines worth mentioning and responding to.

The right-wing is trying to impose their narrow, cruel, patriarchal, white nationalist vision of the world on all of us. They want to force us into obeying their rules and living our lives bound by their twisted worldview.
We deserve the right to make our own healthcare decisions. We deserve full control over our own bodies. We deserve full control over our own lives.
Leah Greenburg, “Overturning Roe v Wade is deeply unpopular,” May 8, 2022.

Sorry, Leah, having a baby is not a “healthcare decision.” You ceded control of your body when you decided to have intercourse, so if the result of that is a human being with unique DNA then the burden is on you to carry it to term. At that point you concede “full control over our own lives” because there is another life inside you, full stop. (The irony here is that Leah and her Indivisible co-founder husband, Ezra Levin, have often put a photo of their young child at the end of their monthly newsletters.)

The second point is this:

This is a huge coup for the worst people in our country. But if you’re watching closely, you may have noticed that for a party on the verge of achieving one of its greatest goals, Republican elected officials don’t seem very happy. In fact, they don’t seem to want to talk about this at all. Instead, they’re talking about the circumstances of the leak. They seem to think if they can kick up enough of a fuss about how this came to light, everyone will forget about what the light reveals.
Ibid.

Of course the conservatives are talking about the leak because it’s unprecedented. We’re supposed to have trust in our institutions and leaking this decision was made for one reason and one reason only: to try and change someone’s mind, or, failing that, perhaps eliminate the problem. (Why do you think there’s additional security around the SCOTUS these days? This is why I thought the decision should just be released as is.)

Imagine if someone connected with a right-leaning justice had leaked the Obergefell decision taking away the states’ rights to recognize (or not to recognize) same-sex “marriage”? Wouldn’t the Left have demanded the ruling be made official immediately so that some gun-toting Deplorable didn’t coerce a justice into switching his or her vote to the right side? The Obama administration would have had Homeland Security and every other alphabet agency dropping all they were doing and turning over rocks to find the leaker so they could be punished.

So spare me the crying on both counts. Make Dobbs law and return abortion to the states so we can have our own crack at it. Speaking of that…

How to protect women (and babies)

I just became aware of this via Maryland Delegate Neil Parrott, a friend of this website and a two-time (and final) Maryland Legislator of the Year in 2017 and 2018.

In its infinitesimal wisdom, the Maryland General Assembly passed a bill this spring allowing, among other things, non-physicians to do abortions (the Abortion Care Access Act), so there’s a group attempting to petition this to referendum this fall.

It’s an uphill battle to be sure – securing 25,000 signatures by May 31 and the rest of the 75,000 needed by June 30 – but if anyone knows how to do it, that would be Neil Parrott. I encourage my Maryland friends to participate.

Additional abortion insight

If you’re not reading the Substack of AND Magazine, you probably should be. I probably have eight or ten articles I could include here, including tomes on debit cards for illegal aliens and how those children are being forced to work, taking weapons away from our troops to send to Ukraine, Wuhan flu lockdowns in China, and so much more. In fact, it’s such good stuff I decided to pay for a month and see what else I can get. (What I receive for free is quite good.)

But since I’m talking about it: earlier this month, in what was basically three consecutive posts, Sam Faddis laid out part of the Left’s plan regarding abortion:

Once upon a time, the Democratic Party seemed to believe in the Democratic process. It focused on organizing and turning out the vote. No more. That party is dead.
It has been replaced by something that looks a lot like Marxist revolutionary movements throughout history. It has no use for the popular vote. It believes in the power of the state and when necessary, the use of mob violence to intimidate its foes. It is getting ready to unleash its thugs into the streets again in response to the anticipated reversal of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court.
While Joe conjures up the specter of a right-wing, white supremacist, trans and gay-hating wave of domestic extremism, the radical domestic movement of which he is a part is already mobilizing and taking to the streets. If the Supreme Court exercises its authority, overturns Roe v. Wade, and returns the question of abortion to the legislatures where it properly belongs our cities will burn.
Sam Faddis, “They Don’t Just Want To Kill Babies – They Want To Kill The Republic,” AND Magazine, May 5, 2022. All emphasis in original.

And when the first pro-abortion protestor is cut down by police it will be George Floyd all over again. You don’t put up fences for peaceful protest.

Let’s go on, shall we?

A group calling itself ‘Ruth Sent Us’ is calling for its followers to invade the homes of those Supreme Court justices it has identified as being likely to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.
(…)
If you try to sign up to participate in a Ruth Sent Us event you are redirected to the site for an organization called Strike for Choice. This group is organizing similar actions all across the country targeting businesses and corporations that it does not believe have been sufficiently vocal in standing up for “reproductive freedom.
Strike for Choice operates under the umbrella organization Vigil for Democracy, which is actually organizing a whole series of “strikes” each one of which focuses on a different point in a far left agenda. Vigil for Democracy expresses a radical agenda explicitly directed at supporters of Donald Trump and members of the MAGA movement. Earlier this year it organized a series of “strikes” outside U.S. Attorney’s offices demanding that Republican lawmakers present in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021 be arrested and tried for treason. In the old Soviet Union they called those show trials.
Sam Faddis, “Here Come The Foot Soldiers Of The Revolution,” AND Magazine, May 6, 2022. All emphasis in original.

These are the “thugs” that are being unleashed on the streets, as Faddis wrote. Several years ago I participated in a pro-life protest up in Easton and we just stood on a sidewalk on a day the Planned Parenthood branch there was closed, yet we had a police officer watching our truly non-violent protest. Obviously not everyone follows those rules.

Finally, Faddis concludes in his last piece:

What we are seeing is not protest. What we are seeing is not the work of disconnected local groups of concerned citizens. What we are seeing is an ongoing revolution with the intent of destroying the existing social, political and economic order. It exploded into view in the runup to the 2020 election and was aided and abetted by a new media which told us to ignore the obvious import of what we were seeing.
The target now is religion in America. Churches, synagogues, and mosques will burn. God himself is under attack.
Sam Faddis, “God Is Under Attack – The Mob Comes For Religion,” AND Magazine, May 9, 2022. All emphasis in original.

It so happens our church is currently participating in a fundraiser for a local pregnancy center. While Salisbury is fairly far away from the big city, it’s not unthinkable that their facility could be doxxed and vandalized because they promote alternatives to abortion. It tells me something when women are advised to avoid “pregnancy centers” by abortion advocates because when they visit such a place they may actually come to the realization that either they can get the support required to raise their child or can give the child to a loving adoptive family, like the adopted child of one of my relatives and his wife.

Finding my way onto mailing lists

When I used to blog on a daily basis back in the day, I was on a TON of mailing lists. (In essence, I used to try and write a single-subject odds and ends piece daily. That got to be too much with a family and full-time job.)

Once in awhile I still see the results of that time as new things slide into my e-mail. So it was with a group called People for Liberty. Now I have somewhat libertarian roots but maybe my guardrails have drawn a bit closer as I’ve gotten older and more into my faith.

But in reading about Bitcoin 2022, a National Liberty Day of Service, or a medical marijuana event called Chronic Palooza, it gave me an opportunity to reflect on how libertarianism as I see it seems to work.

In my mind, political thought is linear. You could imagine it being a highway, with one direction taking you through the villages of liberalism, socialism, and communism on the way to totalitarianism where one group controls everything and somewhere there is one person who controls that cadre. In the other direction you have the towns of conservatism and libertarianism, with the road leading to anarchy as every person has the ultimate in liberty. However, the nature of people dictates the Darwinian principle that only the strong survive, thus, somewhere there is one person who would reign supreme.

In other words, that line forms a circle where you end up in one place regardless of the road you take. Where I want to be is on the opposite end of that diameter where there’s an equal share of liberty and responsibility. In my mind, this is where faith tempers liberty to the extent required to place us on the opposite side.

I think I’m going to leave a very intense issue of odds and ends on that note. I was going to toss in some Rick Weiland for comic relief, but I’ve had enough of the loony left for now.

The separation of church and state

Initially this was going to be part of an upcoming “odds and ends” piece, but the longer I thought about it, the more I felt it needed the promotion. So here you are.

Erick Erickson is the only person I pay for a Substack subscription, and it’s because he writes well about the interection of political conservatism and religion, seeing that he has a background in both. Now I don’t always agree with him, but in a couple pieces lately he’s made good points I felt were worth sharing and expanding on. The odds and ends regarding Delaware and other things can wait a day or two. After all, it IS my sandbox here.

In the first instance, Erick ponders the question whether you can be a Christian and a Democrat at the same time. I’m going to assume for the sake of the argument that we are not talking about a Joe Biden who is a Christian for show but governs in a manner that’s not too Biblical, in my estimation. Then again, that could just be my bias showing, so let’s get to Erick’s money paragraphs here:

If I, formerly elected Republican Erick Erickson who has never and will never vote for any candidate who is pro-abortion and once filibustered a resolution to make Barack Obama an honorary member of my city council before advancing legislation to privatize the local police force when it tried to unionize, were to sit in a church and have the pastor tell me to vote Republican, I’d have to leave the church. I know some people go to church for political rallies. I go for Jesus. For a pastor in a pulpit to tell me I must choose one group of sinners over another because the sins of the Democrats are so much more at war with Christian culture than the sins of the Republicans, the pastor would still be telling me to choose a sinner instead of Jesus. Preach the gospel.
But preach the gospel in such a way that convicts the congregation of their sins. Preach Christ in such a way that there is a clear alternative to the world. Preach on the sins and do not shy away from them. I suspect if a preacher does this, he will be pulling people out of allegiances to sin and allegiances to politicians who are hostile to the things of God without turning them off over partisanship.
Erick Erickson, “The Partisan Church Divide,” Erick Erickson’s Confessions of a Political Junkie, May 2, 2022.

It’s granted that those in my little church in Salisbury, Maryland tend to vote Republican simply because the Democrats seldom put up a candidate in state and national elections who is appealing to them. Yet if I were to check into their political registration I wouldn’t be surprised to find that a lot of them remain Democrats because either that’s how their family always voted or because they believed in the role of government being a hand up. On the latter point, I believe generations of handing up have made people dependent on the god of government and not the God whose Son was Jesus Christ. People who have rendered unto Caesar no longer seem to render unto Christ what is His, yet many of those who follow Christ serve their fellow man through volunteering, freely giving of their time and treasure.

But Erick concludes with his Most Important Point:

I fear for the Republican Party when my Christian brothers and sisters who allied with the GOP over abortion or sexual ethics get so focused on the sins of the other party that they, in allyship, are not as bold in calling out the sins inside our own tent. We will become just like the Democrats over time — a party without God convinced we carry His banner to deliver a false heaven of idolatry to this earth of idol worshippers.
Ibid.

This is a part where I struggle to some extent – not that I see Republicans as perfect by any stretch of the imagination, which is why I’m no longer in their party – but there’s such a wealth of material on the other side it’s like shooting fish in a barrel and I sometimes get to looking at it as taking the gains where I can get them. For example, Donald Trump was far from a perfect man but he advanced the cause when it needed to be promoted. Because absolute power corrupts absolutely, we can spend hours heatedly pointing out the foibles of politicians of all stripes while forgetting we only control the life of one person – the self.

I thought the timing of this was interesting when only a week before Erick had written about the Right suffering from “a persecution complex.” On that front, it brings up an interesting point.

Over the last few months, our small group from church has spent its time watching an episode of The Chosen each week. For those unfamiliar with The Chosen, it’s a crowdsourced episodic program available online or on several non-network outlets through Angel Studios – it’s even watchable through an app on your phone. (Another project of Angel Studios is called Dry Bar Comedy, which gives you an idea of their worldview.)

The Chosen follows the adult life of Jesus Christ, the main story beginning at the point where he begins performing miracles and gathering disciples. But a constant on the program is the heavyhanded spectacle of the Roman Empire, which seems to look at the Jews overall as something of a barely tolerated nuisance and sees Jesus as someone who is not only anethema to the “official” Roman multitheistic religion but also one who upsets the apple cart of having subjects to the Emperor (at that time, Tiberius) and his state-level leaders, such as King Herod Antipas. I have no idea if the series will lead there, but surely the subject of persecution will arise if they explore the time of the apostle Paul, who spent the first years of his adult life as Saul, one of those persecutors. “I am Jesus who thou persecutest, it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks,” said Jesus in Acts 9.

In this nation of ours we spend a lot of time kicking against the pricks, as we fight tooth and nail over the right to kill our babies, keep God out of our schools but allow groomers promoting transgenderism to teach classes, and generally otherwise excuse behavior that would have been frowned upon in the generation of my parents. (I’m thinking in a Proverbs 22:6 manner here.) Yet I continue to pray for revival despite all that, and I’m sure Erick does too.

As I said, I don’t always agree with him but more than most I think he gets it. These are just two good examples.