Commentary, Punditry, and More
Be careful out there. If you celebrate, have a good time but be safe.
For me, I haven’t bothered to stay up in a number of years. The last time I remember staying up I was in New Jersey watching the Times Square area from across the river, thankful I was not in that crowd. As it was, I had a pretty good view, enjoyed the fireworks, and was in bed not long after.
Again, enjoy yourself but be alert and be safe. There are idiots enough on the road even before you add in the extra alcohol.
Just as I offered a while back to teach what I can of self-defense to those of the LGBT community, I the same offer to my Jewish friends and readers. This includes training on situational awareness, some basic hand-to-hand, and even to helping you purchase and be trained in the use of a firearm. To those thinking of such, Tony Katz has a very good post up on pistols that can fit in a Tallit bag.
The only way to ensure “Never Again” is to be aware, alert, and prepared. Glad to help with that as I can.
I went non-traditional this year, and did a nice ribeye steak seared in a brown butter sauce. Deglazed the pan with some vermouth, then threw in a mix of mushrooms to sautee in the deglace and brown butter sauce. Added a little more butter, a bit of balsamic, and had a very tasty treat. More soon, had to go out of state on Boxing day for business, going to see where today takes me.
Merry Christmas to all! On Earth, peace to men of goodwill. May your day be filled with joy and blessings.
The religious celebration of Christmas is often lost beneath the secular. As the focus for so many is on gifts, may I ask you to consider something?
Instead of gifts, please just consider acknowledging people today. Say hello, wish them a Merry Christmas, do something to let them know they are recognized as an individual. That they are worth being recognized.
Grand gestures are nice and good, but sometimes simple greetings, manners, a smile, or other acknowledgement that someone is alive, of value, and deserving of recognition just for that is one of the best gifts we can give.
Finding it annoying that none of the streaming services have the best Christmas movie ever up on rotation. It’s just not Christmas until I see Snape falling in karmic retribution for what he did to Gandalf at the top of Hogwart Tower.
*Whistling innocently strolling off after rolling this grenade out the door*
Nothing sweet about what is going on right now. After two years of plotting and planning, the Democrats have gotten the impeachment they were wanting even before Trump took office. Yes, there are plenty of citations to support that statement of fact. What has been going on, in toto, is nothing more or less than treason, a deliberate assault on the Constitution, the Republic, and the results of a legitimate election. The Republic has been dead for a while now, though I still have some faint hope of resuscitation. Hang on, the rides about to get even more bumpy and interesting.
Also, a number of the usual suspects, including the legion of pearl clutchers out there, went ape over the Washington Post’s coverage of the “Afghanistan Papers” (a deliberate play on the Pentagon Papers of yore). Before you follow the usual lemmings off that cliff, you really do need to read this.
Finally, while it has a lot of “inside baseball” on Catholicism, this post sums up a lot of the problems in the Church today. Cleaning house is the only way the Church will save itself, and the leadership seems dead set against that. There are some other things at work, as I’ve noted before, but they all tie back to the need to clean house.
Having to travel out of state for work today, more soon.
That look sums up my feelings towards the snow we got this week. Two separate bands, and they took away my normal writing time so I could shovel and salt. Sorry for the lack of free ice cream the last few days, but between work and weather…
A good Wednesday to you all.
To say that I am unsurprised that two of the three recent mass shootings in the US (there having been one this morning in the Czech Republic) happened on military bases is an understatement. The continuing policy on weapons, and the failure to learn even the most basic of lessons from Ft. Hood all those years ago, guaranteed that such would happen. The only real surprise to me is that it didn’t happen sooner.
The misguided social experiment that is the disarming of the military when on base is a failure. It deliberately sets up the military and their families as targets, even as it works to undermine responsibility, growth, and the social fabric of the military. To have what are in effect “Hall Monitors” rather than actual armed security is deliberately setting them, and those they are there to defend, up for failure and death. That the three killed at Pensacola appear to have tried to stop the terrorist despite being unarmed says much about them, and in my mind illustrates the fundamental difference between them and the leadership that condemned them to death.
I doubt that much of the military leadership will listen to the calls to rethink the policy, as they are fully into social experimentation with the military. They are woke, and not likely to change even at the costs of far higher death totals. It would be nice to be proven wrong on this, however.
As for the Broward (Coward) County shooting, I will simply note the illustration above. Serve and protect rings hollow right now, and as with the school shooting in Florida, an amazing degree of incompetence and cowardice is on display. While I could hope that evidence will come forward to mitigate, as with the above I will believe it when I see it.
The next time anyone tells you to leave your safety to the professionals, point at the above. Prepare, be vigilant, and hope for the best.