Author: Californiacontrarian

Let’s pretend that you voted for something because it sounded like the “nice” thing to do. If this nice thing then proved to be not so nice, how long would you have to wait before voting again? When it comes to a candidate that you voted for, you would have to wait until his/her term had expired … no matter how poorly that elected individual was performing. But what if the thing that you voted for was not an actual person, but rather a concept. Here I am not referring to Oregon’s recent law that abolished all but minuscule penalties for possession of hard drugs, and has turned out to be a total disaster. Rather I am referring to the populace of New York City voting to be a sanctuary city.

From the Daily Wire:

New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams announced Thursday that his administration would be making significant cuts affecting NYPD and Education Department budgets, saying the cuts are necessary to deal with the ongoing illegal immigration crisis. Adams’ budget cuts will freeze police hiring. The budget cuts will also slash the city’s Education Department budget by more than $1 billion over the next two years, affecting school programs and libraries. The cuts to the NYPD come just a month after Adams said the Big Apple needs more police officers as the city faces a rise in felony and misdemeanor assaults and car thefts.

From the Daily Mail: 

The mayor announced a $110.5 billion budget, claiming cuts across all departments were necessary after the city spent $1.45 billion in fiscal 2023 on the migrant crisis. The city is predicted to spend approximately $12 billion on the ongoing migrant crisis within the next two years. The budget cuts would cause NYPD officers to be cut by a fifth, or 13.5 percent, by postponing the next five academy classes, bringing officers below 30,000 – down from 36,000.

So the citizens of NYC are now paying the price for voting to be a sanctuary city, and apparently will continue to pay the price for doing the “nice” thing. Serves them right!

11/20/23

I usually do not get interested in issues involving inmates etc. in prisons, but I found this particular story very interesting because of Roberta Bell who stepped up when somebody had to.

From BlazeMedia:

58-year-old Roberta Bell lives in Vickburg, Mississippi, where she takes care of five of her eight grandchildren. Bell worked as a corrections officer at the Louisiana Transitional Center for Women when she met a pregnant woman who needed help.

Katie Bourgeois only needed to serve two more months on her sentence, but she was about to give birth. No one in her family could take in the child until she was released and she asked Bell if she could take the baby. Bell agreed and alerted her supervisor, who told her that there was a conflict of interest with her job.

“I said, if the hospital calls me to come get that baby, I’m going to get that baby,” Bell told CBS News. “And he said, ‘Well, OK, I’m going to have to terminate you.'”

Bell decided the baby was more important than her job. A week later, the baby was born and she took him home with her.

Bourgeois was released on July Fourth, and she went straight to Bell’s home to pick up her baby.

“She was kind of, you know, a little nervous because he didn’t really know her and she says, ‘He’s crying, Ms. Bell,’ and I said, ‘Well baby,’ I say, ‘He’s got to get used to you,'” Bell explained to CBS News.

Bell found a new calling after word spread in the community and people began to donate money and baby products to her.

“God provided so much stuff,” Bell said tearfully. “People came by, agencies called. It [was] just overwhelming, because I couldn’t do it by myself. That was part of my ministry that I’m getting ready to start.”

Bell, who now works sorting cans at a food distributor, is using the donations to establish a transitional home for women leaving prison called the “Serenity House.”

A truly amazing example of self sacrifice … Roberta Bell stepping up when there was no one else! Roberta Bell is a truly amazing person that we all can admire and hope to emulate.

What makes this even more amazing to me is that while Katie Bourgeois and her baby are white, Roberta Bell is black and lives in Mississippi!

11/19/23

Blast From the Past 

All of the branches of the military, except the Marines, are falling woefully short on recruiting. As you read the following published over two years ago is there any mystery as to why this shortfall is occurring?

Who Would Ever Choose To Work Here ?   9/3/21

All of the branches of the military, except the Marines, are falling woefully short on recruiting. As you read the following published over two years ago is there any mystery as to why this shortfall is occurring?

Let’s say for the sake of discussion that you are in the midst of a job interview, and as fate would have it, you are interviewing with the CEO of the company. During the interview you notice that your potential future commander-in-chief repeatedly glances at his watch. After his fifth glance you actually become a bit irritated, but then you rationalize that he may in fact have something more important to do … like going to the funeral of a friend’s son. 

During the interview the first time that he apparently forgot your name, you rationalized that you may have misunderstood him. However, the second time he called you “Sam,” you felt that it was necessary to tell him that your name was not Sam, but Dan. He responded to that by saying, “Yes, yes, I know,” in a somewhat jocular tone. Nonetheless, the thinning of his lips and the narrowing of his eyes were dead giveaways that he did not take kindly to being corrected … even when he was obviously wrong.

To some of your questions he repeatedly referred to the index cards that he was trying to hide in his lap. It almost seemed that he needed the cards to answer some straightforward questions. In addition twice I asked what I thought was a simple question, and twice his convoluted answer came around to something called ‘bow’ accompanied by a tear in his eye. By the end of the interview I had pretty much made up my mind. To myself I said, “Who would ever choose to work here?”

As you walked out of his office someone in the hall tugged at your arm and whispered, “Be very careful, son. He will never stand behind you in a pinch. Furthermore, if you make a wrong decision based on his advise, he will let you hang on your own. Because he is in charge, he constantly ignores the advice of those that know much more about something than he does. That is why those that evaluate the strength of this company are increasingly giving it a failing grade. The only reason I am still working here is that I am getting close to my twenty year retirement, and if I quit now, I will lose big time. Be assured that I will deny what I am saying to you, as the last seventeen year vet that opened his mouth got fired. Some say that the CEO’s ineptitude is related to early dementia, but I think he was incapable and incompetent long before he became demented.”

Then he added parenthetically … “who would ever choose to work here?”

I predict that we will see a drop off of new enlistments in all the branches of service as those in charge are now too woke, too gutless, and too stupid!

9/3/21

www.californiacontrarian.com

As many of you are aware, our military is having a big time problem recruiting. Granted not all branches are having this recruiting problem, but three of the four branches are having a major issue. FYI: The Marines are not having a problem. In fact as opposed to the other three branches of the military, the Marines do not seem to be having any issue. My guess is that this is because pride, professionalism, and challenge are all a part of being a marine. Likewise the standards to get into the Marines remain tight, and there are no perks accompanying signing up.

The Army recruiting is down for the third year in a row. This year the Army has 50,000 new recruits instead of the 65,000 that it hoped for, and as a consequence of this year after year of its poor recruiting numbers the total number in theArmy has dropped down to 452K instead of 485K. Similarly the navy is short 7,500 recruits despite offering perks to some to induce them to sign up. Likewise the Air Force is short 10% of its 26,877 goal. 

A recent article from the Washington Post essentially said that this recruiting shortfall across the three branches of the armed forces was a conundrum. To me there is no mystery here and rather, there is an easy common sense answer. 

Let’s assume that one is a graduating high school athlete, and he/she is considering which college to attend. First, there is a meeting with the college coach. Recruiting high school graduates is an integral part of a coach’s job. The coach is very aware that he must treat not only all the prospective recruits, but also all of the other kids on the present team with respect. If he doesn’t treat all of his players with respect, then  recruit A, recruit B, etc. will find out, and the word will spread. Consequently, before not too long, this commander-in-chief coach will be out of a job because he will have a recruiting shortfall … prospective recruits will not sign on. How would this be different than the present military commander-in-chief, Joe Biden, and his minions who did one thing after another during Covid to s**t on those in the military with his vaccine mandates,etc.

Similarly, when military physicians attempted to speak up about what they were seeing in terms of increased side-effects from the vaccines, the kibosh was put on them. Word of this utter disregard for these military physicians spread to those back home, and this lack of respect from the military higher-ups filtered down to future potential recruits.

Whereas no one would be surprised if a pompous, unsympathetic, surly, ‘my way or the highway’ college coach had difficulty recruiting new players for his team, why should anyone be surprised at the present day shortfall in military recruiting, considering who is the military commander-in-chief?

To me … an easy answer!

11/18/23

Last week I witnessed some of my grandkids playing “duck, duck, goose.”

For those no longer familiar with that kid’s game, it involves all the kids sitting in a circle, and then the chasing by the newly identified “goose.” When I saw them playing, the refrain of “duck, duck, duck etc” reminded me of our illustrious Supreme Court.

As I have pointed out many times before, if the Supreme Court had not ducked their responsibility in the aftermath of the 2000 Presidential election, our country would not be in the mess that it is in today. Hopefully the country will not have to depend on SCOTUS after the 2024 election.

Today I read about another SCOTUS “duck.”

From The Epoch Times,

“The U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 13 declined to take up a lawsuit filed by four New Jersey nurses to challenge a now-scrapped state COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

The justices will not examine a U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals decision that dismissed the nurses’ challenge as moot. In the Supreme Court’s list of orders released on Nov. 13, the court rejected an appeal in the case, Katie Sczesny, et al. v. Murphy, Gov. of New Jersey, et al. No comment from the justices was provided.”

The case involved a Covid vaccine mandate by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. In early 2022, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy issued an executive order that “unvaccinated covered workers must obtain their first dose of the primary series of a COVID-19 vaccination by January 27, 2022,” adding that those workers have to give “adequate proof” they’ve received all their shots by Feb. 28 of that year. Those who do not provide sufficient proof ‘must be considered noncompliant.’

“The nurses—Debra Hagen, Jamie Rumfield, Katie Sczesny, and Mariette Vitti—filed a lawsuit against the governor’s office and said that although the order allowed for religious or medical exemptions, the state “mass-denied religious exemptions in state institutions, stating that accommodating people with religious exemptions would constitute an ‘undue burden’ on the state because the employees with religious objections to the COVID-19 injections are a ‘threat’ to the safety of others.’

“A US. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order that declared their lawsuit moot after the New Jersey mandate has since been rescinded. The nurses then appealed their case to the Supreme Court”

Either what Governor Murphy did was legal or it wasn’t. The fact that “the case is now moot” because his vaccine mandate has been rescinded, is pure and simply a Duck by SCOTUS! When the next pandemic-like illness happens, and it will … we will all have to undergo the same rigamarole that these nurses had to go through, because SCOTUS ducked. When the country has important legal matters to deal with, one would think that SCOTUS would have the balls to step up (with apologies to the female members of the Court). Just like their election case cowardice, assuredly this will come back to bite them.

11/17/23

Perhaps an arbitrary question, but wouldn’t it have been prudent to evaluate the untoward health effects of cannabis before jumping off liberal groundswell of cannabis approval. Today I am going to talk about another as yet previously unknown side effect from cannabis.

Recreational use of cannabis is associated with a 1.5-fold increased risk for atrial arrhythmias, according to study findings presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2023, held in Philadelphia, PA, from November 11 to 13.

The analysis included 17 cohort studies (4 prospective observational) with 81,269,314 participants from North America, Europe, and Oceania. The patients had a mean age of 46 years (range, 41-72), and 45% were women.

Recreational cannabis use was associated with a significantly increased risk for atrial arrhythmias (OR, 1.55; 95% CI, 1.13-2.13), with a high degree of heterogeneity observed (I2 =99%). Meta-regression analysis showed that mean age was not a contributing factor (P =.58).

While atrial arrhythmias are often not life threatening, they can significantly increase the risk of stroke. What is even more amazing about this atrial arrhythmia-cannabis causal relationship is that age is not a contributing factor! Perhaps this should have been looked into before the rush to legalize its use. Just saying!

11/16/23

Apparently the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “substantially underestimated the role of the sun in global warming.” Which means it overestimated man’s role. Which is no surprise, given the IPCC’s shameful history of politicizing the climate and fabricating a temperature threshold that has no basis in science.

Oops! … but no apology from the mendacious IPCC.

From Capital Research Center:

In early March, the New York Times cited a recent report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), with the headline, “Climate Change Is Speeding Toward Catastrophe”:

“Climate time bomb? One would think this should be cause for genuine alarm. However, note that the IPCC website has a disclaimer: “IPCC endeavors to ensure, but cannot and does not guarantee the accuracy, accessibility, integrity and timeliness of the information available on its Website” (emphasis added). How many websites have a disclaimer regarding supposed “facts,” the accuracy of which cannot be guaranteed—especially on such an important topic? Yet “immediate and drastic” changes to the entire world economy are necessary?”

But this is not the first time for the mendacious IPCC!

“The IPCC was caught in a massive lie by the Wall Street Journal in 1996 when it deleted conclusions contained in the report The Science of Climate Change 1995, approved for publication. The deleted lines

-None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases.

-No study to date has positively attributed all or part [of the climate change observed to date] to anthropogenic [man-made] causes.

-Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced.”

Oops! … but no apology from the mendacious IPCC.

But wait! When the IPCC finds something that does not fit its predetermined conclusion, it cannot get away from its intrinsically mendacious proclivity … it merely does not leak its conclusion to the New York Times, or perhaps the equally mendacious NYT simply “forgets” to publish it.

From I&I:

According to James Taylor of the Heartland Institute, “scientists have documented, and even the IPCC has admitted, “that temperatures were warmer than today throughout most of the time period that human civilization has existed. Temperatures would have to keep warming at their present pace for at least another century or two before we reach temperatures that were common during early human civilization.” Therefore, “there can be no climate crisis – based on the notion of dangerously high temperatures – when humans have thrived in temperatures much warmer than today for most of the last 12,000 years.”

I am sure that even the mendacious IPCC would agree that 12,000 years is quite a long time!

11/14/23

The following is from a piece from Fox Business:

“Middle-class families in California are getting slammed with an “unreasonable” cost-of-living-penalty for simply residing in the Golden State, according to a new report.

“According to data from the Transparency Foundation’s Cost of California Report, a typical middle-class family of three earning $130,000 a year faces a financial burden of more than $26,000 because of higher living expenses.

“The foundation’s data showed that on every household budget, the cost to live in California is exponentially higher compared with the national average, according to Transparency Foundation Chairman Carl DeMaio, who laid blame on “costly mandates and bad policies.”

“DeMaio is calling on residents to demand a true cost-benefit analysis on every state law, regulation and mandate that is not imposed in other states. 

Here are the costs for California versus the national average in each category, according to the Transparency Foundation: 

• Housing: Homeowners pay 32% more in California and renters pay 47% more
• Gas: 25% more on average
• Food: Grocery bills are 4% higher
• Water: 47% higher
• Health care services: 42% higher
• State and local taxes: 14% higher
• Child care: 34% higher
• Electricity: 48% higher
• Car insurance: 22% higher
• Health insurance: 3% less
• Homeowner’s insurance: 68% less

This should be a warning to those who live outside of California …    

Consider what would happen to our country if Gavin Newsom, the present governor of California, became President! OMG!

11/13/23

 “Life is always full of tough choices.”

That could well have been said by Christie Werts who is deservedly my Sunday choice for someone that we can all admire.

The background is a bit complicated so bear with me.

Christie Werts, 48, married Wesley Werts, 45, in 2018. Both have children from their previous marriages: Mrs. Werts’s 15-year-old son, Vance, and 21-year-old daughter, Megan; and Mr. Werts’s son, Austin, 14, and daughter, Dakota, 10.

Mr. Werts’s ex-wife had struggled with drug addiction, leading to him winning custody of Austin and Dakota. The couple divorced in 2015. “She had a total of six kids,” Mrs. Werts said. “Two with my husband, then the rest each had a different father.”

From Epoch Bright:

In 2021, the couple found out Mr. Werts’s ex-wife was expecting again and 33 weeks pregnant; her sister had called them from hospital because the expectant mom was still doing drugs and very sick due to COVID-19. There was no one to take care of the baby.

Christie Werts was once a foster child, and said, “as if it was a sign from God, that she often dreamed of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby even before they learned about the child.”

“I told my husband, ‘We should take him,'” Mrs. Werts said. “We didn’t know race, we didn’t know gender, we didn’t know anything—I just knew we wanted to take this baby. I just knew that I felt like he could be with brothers and sisters instead of going into the system. We were already in love with this child.”

Baby Levi was born on Aug. 23, 2021, after his mother was induced at 33 weeks. She passed away four days later from a stroke resulting from a blood clot.

However, the whole process of adopting Levi was not easy. 

The Wertses reached out to Child Protective Services, who told them Levi could not leave the state of Texas because he still had a biological father. If the couple wanted to keep the baby out of care, they would have to move to Texas and become foster parents.

Subsequently the  Wertses sold their home in Ohio, and Mrs. Werts, who works in information technology, moved with the couple’s three youngest kids to Texas. Mr. Werts had to work out of state as a crane operator, so his wife worked extra hard to help their children adjust to the move.

The family then began the painstaking process of registering as “foster to adopt” parents, including 60 hours of classes, home checks, and house modifications, all while hoping nothing would complicate the process.

“Personally, because I believe in God, I felt like it was kind of God’s plan from the dreams, preparing me,” Mrs. Werts told The Epoch Times. “I’ve always known that God is real and that He works in our lives. But when you witness something that you have dreams [of], that God put in your heart, and then it turns into reality, I think my faith got even stronger.”

The Wertses moved back to Ohio in mid-December 2022 after finding a homeowner who supported their adoption journey and offered them a six-month lease-to-buy option on a farmhouse. After traversing every hurdle, they officially adopted 17-month-old Levi by virtual court proceeding on Jan. 24, 2023.

Truly an unbelievable story about a truly praiseworthy couple.

11/12/23

As many of you are already aware, I often listen when Senator John Kennedy (R,LA) speaks.Recently he said the following:

“We’re playing footsie, and we have for years with Qatar. Qatar does provide the electricity for Gaza. In effect, they give it to Hamas and the Biden administration allows it. The Biden administration allows billionaires to live in Qatar and not just from Hamas, but also from ISIS. The Biden administration sends a message of weakness when it refuses to enforce the oil sanctions on Iran, when it cut and ran in Afghanistan, when it removed the sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream II pipeline, when it gave Iran $4.5 billion in cash from the International Monetary Fund. And I could go on.”

And he did go on:

“President Biden and his team think while we’re in the middle of a bar fight or a prison riot, they want to quote Socrates and read Beowulf and think if we’re just nice guys, that we can be partners with Iran and we can’t. We have to wipe Hamas off the face of the earth.”

To me “Quote Socrates and Read Beowulf’ is a classic line and will go down as such!

Seriously, if we want peace, Biden has got to go. The only way to peace is through strength, and from my perspective this means Donald Trump. It has taken long enough, but others are getting the same idea.

From The Epoch Times:

“Real estate tycoon Robert Bigelow, the biggest donor to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 2024 presidential campaign, said he’s now backing former President Donald Trump, in part because the security threat posed by the unrest in the Middle East requires the “strongest commander” and that the former president is the obvious choice.”

Calling President Trump a “bull” and Mr. DeSantis “dinner,” Mr. Bigelow told The Financial Times in an interview Wednesday that he believes the former president’s campaign has built up significant steam, making him hard to beat.”

Bigelow continued, “I’ve got to look at who would probably be the strongest commander, with the most experience,” Mr. Bigelow told FT. “And that’s only one guy,” he continued, while calling President Trump “streetwise” and “a hell of an [expletive] kicker if he needed to be.”

At this point Senator Kennedy, Robert Bigelow, and I agree!

11/11/23