News, Entertainment, Enlightenment
I was a slave William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 10-20-21
Guhs u guh nbchem by cm voscha jfyumoly, qbyh by cm lyuffs myffcha bcgmyfz ni cn.
Vyhdugch Zluhefch
Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit quote puzzle: I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted.
Frederick Douglass
Every Czech William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 10-19-21
A vavf’l cfgo A osk s kdsnw mflad A xgmfv gml A ugmdvf’l vg lzw lzafyk A osflwv.
Xjwvwjauc Vgmydskk
Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit quote puzzle: Every Czech is a musician.
Czech Folk Saying
Vote Early Vote Often, Memories South Philly’s 2nd Ward
By Bob Small
This was probably around 1989, when I was visiting my old South Philly apartment-mate, having recently moved up and out to Swarthmore. On the way to the local dinery, we ran into a D Committee Person who asked if I was voting today, Election Day.
“Joe, I don’t live here anymore”
“Bob, I didn’t ask you that”
This was back in the wild and wooly days of South Philly D Politics, where the 2nd Ward Meetings would end with the admonition to “vote early and often”.
Said as a joke. I think. The big names were Vince Fumo, Joe Tayoun, and Joe Vignola. Maybe you heard of them. Quite sure the same jiggery-pokery never happens with R’s in Delco.
If elected, the Greens would never engage in this. Not sure about the Libertarians.
In Swarthmore, at the 2005 Primary, I went in to vote on a Ballot Question, as befits a Green Party member. However, the Judge of Elections tried to refuse to let me vote as I was neither D nor R. As this Ballot Question would involve higher taxes, I asked whether I would be exempt from these taxes as I was denied my vote.
When that didn’t work, I stated I would sit on his election table, as I had sat in at various protests, until I was physically removed or allowed to vote. Wanting to avoid a scene, he allowed me to cast a ballot. What he should have done, if he was unsure of the law — imagine a judge not knowing the law — was to let me have a Provisional ballot.
Later that year, in my only foray into electoral politics, I ran against him, as a Green, and lost, but felt vindicated.
My story ended up being shared state wide among the third parties of the time,
so this particular slight, denial of the right to vote, could never happen again.
I had a running mate in that election, who ran as both a Green and a Republican,
for the Wallingford Swarthmore School Board. She lost, of course, but won the next year as a Democrat. Her name is Mary Gay Scanlon. I often wonder what happened to her.
With our own ears William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 10-18-21
Vmvip Tqvty zj r dljztzre.
Tqvty Wfcb Jrpzex
Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit quote puzzle: How great you are, Sovereign Lord! There is no one like you, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears.
2 Samuel 7:22
Fables in the Legend William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 10-17-21
Xem whuqj oek qhu, Ieluhuywd Beht! Jxuhu yi de edu byau oek, qdt jxuhu yi de Wet rkj oek, qi mu xqlu xuqht myjx ekh emd uqhi.
Iqckub
Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit quote puzzle: I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Koran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.
Francis Bacon
Overkill Predicted For Baseball
By Joe Guzzardi
Major League Baseball’s odyssey toward the World Series began with two wild card games; the Boston Red Sox versus the New York Yankees, and the Los Angeles Dodgers against the St. Louis Cardinals. Luckily for MLB, the two games featured four of baseball’s historic and most revered teams. Television rating were high, but the games were a slog, especially for East Coast fans. The American League contest was a tedious 3:13 hours, and the National League’s game was played at a quicksand-like 4:15 hour pace. The Dodgers-Cardinals face off was a tight 3-1, but most EDT views missed the exciting Chris Taylor L.A. bottom-of the ninth-home run that sealed the Dodgers’ victory.
For dinosaur fans that yearn for fewer and speedier playoff games, the forecast is grim. In 2022, the fondest wish of MLB owners will come true when a new collective bargaining agreement will expand the wild card from its current one-game, sudden death format to the best-of-three. More than half of baseball’s 30 teams will be post-season eligible, and inevitably MLB will expand to 32, thereby further diluting the talent pool that fans pay a king’s ransom to watch. MLB will surpass NCAA football and basketball and the NBA as the sports that endlessly grind on with impossibly long, overlapping seasons.
Post-season’s qualifying standards have plunged since 1968 when the Detroit Tigers were the last team to win a World Series by capturing the American League crown, and then advancing straight to the World Series. Ten times in history, teams have won 100 plus games and not even qualified for playoffs. Led by batting champion Norm Cash and his .361 average, the 1961 Tigers won 101 games, but finished eight games behind the Yankees. That’s the way it should be. Teams that feel deprived when they don’t get past the wild card have a simple solution: win more games during the season. Under the projected format, however, teams under .500 that qualify for the playoffs will be commonplace.
Unhappy fans might as well throw in the towel. Money overrides all other considerations. As money-hungry MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said: “Baseball is a growth industry. Eventually, we’d like to get to 32 teams.” Under the new set-up, MLB owners and players will cash in. MLB currently grosses more than $10 billion annually. With two new clubs, the owners would likely add $2 billion or more in expansion fees, and new media rights’ revenues.
MLB negotiated a new seven-year television contracts with Fox and Turner Broadcasting – TBS and TNT – which will fetch $8.3 billion, a 40 percent increase over prior contracts, mostly for the right to broadcast postseason games. Expansion, possibly to Portland, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Nashville, Montreal, Vancouver or Mexico, is assuredly in baseball’s future, assuming 75 percent of the owners vote favorably. More teams mean more playoff games, and will generate much more revenue.
Players are all-in on expansion too. As part of the new collective bargaining agreement, players also win. More team revenues will mean higher minimum salaries, and player-friendly free-agency agreements. Today, baseball’s minimum salary is $572,000; the average is $4.2 million; and the most eye-popping incomes are the Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Trout, a $427 million contract paid out over 12 years, and the New York Yankees’ Garrett Cole, $324 million spread out over nine years. Trout and Cole’s annual incomes are $37.7 million and $32.4 million, respectively.
In his giddy anticipation of never-ending revenues, Manfred is overlooking one important variable. Baseball’s television audience is dwindling. The under-18 market doesn’t care about baseball, a sport they consider too boring. Once baseball’s most passionate fans, youths have shifted their allegiance to soccer, basketball and football. Older fans, another of baseball’s traditional backbones, are dissatisfied with the constant changes, and have lost interest. Younger and older fans agree that baseball’s most important games, the playoffs and the All-Star Game, start too late; they yearn for old-fashioned day games. Kids go to school, adults work. All-Star Game television ratings have been in free-fall for years, and bottomed out in 2021 when only 8.2 million tuned in. Proof of fans’ indifference: compared to 2019, the last full 162-game season, the 29 regional sports networks that Nielsen Media Research measured reflected a 12 percent audience drop.
Baseball is on a collision course with overkill, and many consider its death overdue. No fan, young or old, is naïve enough to think that Manfred cares about baseball. His self-confessed mission is simple: let’s follow the money.
Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers Association member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.
Overkill Predicted For Baseball
Atheism is a disease William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 10-16-21
X wps gpiwtg qtaxtkt paa iwt upqath xc iwt Atvtcs, pcs iwt Ipabjs, pcs iwt Zdgpc, iwpc iwpi iwxh jcxktghpa ugpbt xh lxiwdji p Bxcs.
Ugpcrxh Qprdc
Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit quote puzzle: Atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of understanding.
Plato (or maybe not)
Galley slaves William Lawrence Sr Omnibit 10-15-15
Ben Hur was wrong. The Roman and Greek navies did not use slaves or prisoners to row galleys but professional rowers. Galley salves did not become common until the 16th century long after those empires fell.
Biden Frivolously Neglects National Security
By Joe Guzzardi
To learn first-hand how negligent the federal government is about national security, book an airline reservation to any destination. By comparison to the open Southwest border, airports are locked down tight.
The pre-boarding drill is too familiar. Travelers, once at the football-field long Transportation Safety Administration pre-boarding line, must remove shoes. After taking out iPads, liquids, gels and aerosol items (maximum 3.4 ounce-capacity) which have been packed into one quart-sized, clear plastic bag with a zip-top closure, airplane passengers then must toss their baggage into bins for screening.
After that frustrating drill, passengers must show government-issued identification with a current photograph to a TSA official, and go through a metal detector. Unlucky passengers are pulled aside for further screening with either a full-body pat-down or a handheld wand that’s passed across the upper torso, hands, legs and backsides. These considerable inconveniences that often involve affronts to privacy cost taxpayers $7.7 billion annually.
At the border, however, illegal aliens from more than 100 countries have been able to walk right in, surrender to Customs and Border Protection agents, and wait for transportation to their final destination within the U.S. The aliens’ backgrounds and health status at the time of their crossing are unknown. But, after the fact, officials learned that more than 18 percent of illegal immigrant families and 20 percent of unaccompanied minorswho recently crossed the U.S. border tested COVID-positive before border agents released them into the interior.
Moreover, trusted border sources revealed that, exclusive of their immigration offenses, 15 percent of border crossers have criminal records. Edgar Campos-Campos, for example, a previously deported and now detained Mexican national, was convicted of aggravated statutory rape in Bedford County, Tenn. Immigration law, until Department of Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas redefined to his advantage what criminal behavior is, banned convicted felons from reentry. In his memo to Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Tae D. Johnson, Mayorkas also doubled down on keeping the border crisis overheated when he pronounced that “undocumented non-citizens,” as he calls illegal immigrants, won’t be deported unless they represent a threat to border security, national security or public safety.
The contrast between airport security and open border insecurity proves that the U.S. isn’t a serious country. If the federal government should suddenly become motivated to protect its citizens, the border could be secured in little time. Israel can share its approach. Last month, Israel Aerospace Industries, a defense contractor, introduced REX MKII, a remote-controlled robot that can patrol border zones and track infiltrators. The unmanned vehicle can be tablet or manually controlled to achieve the most effective movement or surveillance functions. REX MKII is the latest addition to the drone technology world. Proponents claim that semi-autonomous machines, like the four-wheel-drive robot REX MKII, provide a large range of protection as they gather intelligence. The Israeli military currently uses a smaller but similar vehicle called the Jaguar to patrol Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip.
Israel is keenly aware of threats from foreign enemies, but the U.S. is indifferent to the identical risks. Former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott, ousted by Biden after his 30-year career defending the homeland, said that terrorists and other criminals, now aware that the border is open, are diligently trying to cross into the U.S. Scott said that criminals want to gain access to the U.S. interior. Statistically, Scott added, the widely available public CBP statistics prove that every year the illegal entries always include rapists, murderers and potential terrorists. “Those all exist in who we actually catch,” Scott said, concluding that “to think there is not just as bad or worse people in those getting away would be naive.”
Scott’s credible warnings should be heeded. Moreover, last year’s DHS Assessment Threat predicted the 15,000-strong Haitian surge, also ignored. Neither Biden nor his immigration czar Vice President Kamala Harris has been to the border, proof of their superficiality. DHS Secretary Mayorkas continues to undermine national security and subvert immigration law with his dangerous statements and inaction. In the Biden White House, naïveté, to Scott’s assessment, reigns.
Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
Elanco Arrogance Inspires Mom To Run For School Board — A silver lining in the dark cloud of the last two years is that citizens are waking up and getting involved.
Jennifer Jarvis of Lancaster County, Pa. attended her first school board meeting last month. She was concerned about the Eastern Lancaster County School District’s (Elanco) stringent mandatory mask policy and the affect it would have on her seven-year-old son who has autism and a sensory processing disorder.
The school board brushed her concerns aside with condescension and arrogance.
Mrs. Jarvis wouldn’t quit, though, and her story hit a nerve. Other parents came to her side.
The board backed down and exemptions to the pointless, if not dangerous, rule became easy to come by.
Oh but the hornet’s nest was kicked. If you can’t trust your elected officials to do what’s right when they aren’t being watched, you can’t trust your elected officials.
Mrs. Jarvis decided to launch a last minute write-in campaign for the Nov. 2 school board election. Four seats are contested. All incumbents are running but besides Ms. Jarvis there are two other write-in candidates.
She says one thinks like her but they are not coordinating their campaigns. The other thinks the opposite of her.
Mrs. Jarvis, though, seems to have captured the imagination. People are approaching her with concerns long ignored.
One person described how a copy of Lighter Than My Shadow by Katie Green had been circulated from the Garden Spot High School/Middle School Library, and the school officials shrugged off complaints.
The book, ostensibly about an eating disorder, includes illustrations of sexual relations that are rather graphic for a school book.
See below.
Sorry.
Mrs. Jarvis said that someone from neighboring Conestoga Valley School District informed her that district is planning an in-school Covid vaccination clinic. She investigated and confirmed it is being considered.
There is a pretty solid argument that the young should remain unvaxxed. The vax might even be more dangerous than the disease for the young.
We are wishing you well Mrs. Jarvis.
Again, sorry for the below image but it was in a school book.
