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publish, and conceal not; Jeremiah 50:2
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
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& EDITORIALS
ON THE PORCH by Will Davis
New home of the Braves
W hat do you do when you have five hours to kill in
Atlanta?
Sometimes you stumble into the best baseball
game you’ve ever seen.
My 13-year-old son Park had a travel soccer game in Atlanta near
the intersection of 1-75 and 1-285 at 1 p.m. on Sunday. Fellow soccer
dad Darren Berkner had invited us to our first Atlanta United soc
cer game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium at 7 p.m.
What do you do when you have five hours to kill in Atlanta?
My older brother, Chad, who lives in the ATL and never misses a
sports contest, had the answer.
“Why don’t y all go to the Braves game?” he suggested. “They
started at 1 p.m!’
I had not been to the new SunTrust stadium, which was about
10 minutes from the soccer field, and we agreed it was a good idea.
Until we got into the car. I turned on the radio and found the Braves
station while en route. The Miami Marlins were already up 2-0 and
now had the bases loaded.
“Ball is hit deep,” said the play-by-play man. ‘And it IS gone. A
grand slam!”
The three boys in the back were of course clueless about what had
just happened. They’re soccer players and probably don’t know what
a grand slam is. But Darren and I looked at each other and knew we
had a decision to make.
“Do you still want to go?” I asked.
Our hometown Braves maybe No. 1 in their division, but do we
really want to shell out money for a game when were already down
6-0?
“What the heck?” said Darren. ‘At least we’ll get to see the new
stadium!’
And not just once. We saw the stadium multiple times from every
angle as we drove around it over and over because we couldn’t
find the dang ticket office. It was like that scene from “European
Vacation” when Chevy Chase keeps driving around the London
roundabout over and over.
“Hey kids,” Chase kept shouting
every time they made the circle,
“There’s Big Ben! Parliament!”
Finally an officer helped us find the
ticket office and we secured a nice
S30 parking space nearby for half of a
game. Say what you will about Turner
Field, but you could always park in
Uncle Jamario’s yard for $10.1 mean
your radio would be gone and your
center console rifled through, but hey,
you saved $20. Nevertheless, onward
we marched through the new village
to the ticket office.
This was the first time in the day
I had to admit it: This place is pretty
cool. The restaurants, the shopping,
the park with the water spray features
— it’s a neat area they’ve built there
in the concrete jungle. As was said in the most overrated baseball
movie of all time, “Field of Dreams”, if you build it, they will come.
Except, they weren’t coming to SunTrust Park on Sunday. They
were going. With the Braves down 6-0, they were going... going
home.. .fast. We felt like spawning salmon trying to get to the park
with the mass exodus rushing against us, the other way, toward the
parking lots.
We finally found the ticket booth and I watched as three people
in a row made the same joke to the poor clerk. Noting that it was al
ready the sixth inning and the Braves were losing 6-0, they all asked
the same question: ‘Are tickets half off?”
And the answer was always no. The cheapest seats were $11
apiece. We weren’t sure it was worth it.
“What do y’all want to do boys?”
“EAT!” they all said, famished after their 2-1 soccer win.
We decided to take our lumps and buy the tickets, surely my big
gest waste of money since going to see one hour of the new ‘Aveng
ers” movie before having to leave with the four-year-old.
The good news was while we had bought the cheap seats, we
certainly wouldn’t be sitting in them. That’s because we could sit
anywhere we wanted. We bought the biggest pieces of pizza you’ve
ever seen, and were reminded that while Arthur Blank is famously
giving good deals on concessions at Mercedes-Benz, the Braves are
not It was hot so we found shaded seats in rightfield. The Braves got
a little closer but still trailed 9-4 in the bottom of the ninth.
“You ready to go Will?” Darren asked.
“Man, we paid full price, might as well get our three innings
worth!”
You may have heard by now, that the Braves then proceeded to
rip off six straight runs for a 10-9 win, their biggest comeback win
in eight years. We Tomahawk chopped the whole time, as the 20
of us left in the stadium tried to make enough noise to show our
appreciation for the effort. I’ve been going to Braves games since
1980, and this was the best one Fve ever seen. I’m kind of excited to
see my next Braves game. I plan on getting there just before the 7th
inning stretch.
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PEACH STATE POLITICS by Kyle Wingfield
Demand more than trolls the libs'
T here’s a quote going
around the internet under
the name of the 18th-cen
tury Irish statesman and
political theorist Edmund Burke,
who is often cited as one of the
fathers of modern conservatism.
“Conservatism,” it intones, “is when
something triggers the libs, and the
more the libs are triggered the more
conservatismer it is.”
If that sounds fishy, remember
Abraham Lincoln’s famous warn
ing: “The problem with quotes
found on the internet is that it is
hard to verify their authenticity”
This is not a harangue about “fake
news,” which is a topic for another
day Rather, it’s a call to take very
seriously the tongue-in-cheek point
made by the Burke satirist.
The current election year, in
Georgia and beyond, so far has
not been a high-water mark for
thoughtful discussion of policy or
principle. Instead we seem to be
watching a contest to see who can
offer the most brazen or cartoonish
rhetoric or campaign stunt.
And yes, in Republican primaries,
the apparent goal in many cases is
to see who can be most offensive to
our friends on the left - er, I mean,
“the libs.”
Now, it doesn’t help that it is so
easy these days for the Burkean
wannabes among us to “trigger
the libs.” Never have so many been
offended so often by so little. But
that’s an issue for them to sort out;
the right’s ridicule of “snowflakes”
and “safe spaces” doesn’t appear to
be changing their attitude. (If any
thing, folks on the right are increas
ingly apt to adopt the gimme-shel
ter attitude, perhaps unwittingly.)
Observing the other side’s ten
dency to be trigger-happy - or
maybe, given the way they talk
about guns, I should say “trigger-
prone” - doesn’t let conservatives
off the hook. We need
to address our own
shortcomings. And the
only brand of “conser
vatism” that benefits
from the approach
we’re seeing on an
ever-broader scale is
the for-profit, politics-
as-entertainment vari
ety, which depends on
keeping people agitated
one way or another.
Here’s what I mean:
If you’re a political
consultant whose
niche is taking obscure
candidates and for, ahem, a small
fee moving them to somewhere
between still-obscure and almost -
electable, you profit from that
brand of conservatism. If you’re a
talking head whose job is to keep
eyes or ears tuned to your show,
you profit from that brand of con
servatism. If you’re a single-issue
advocacy group whose job would
disappear if the issue were resolved,
you profit from that brand of con
servatism.
Few others do.
That’s because one of the many
flaws in that kind of politics is it
doesn’t advance a real agenda. Con
sider the typical Georgian voting in
the May 22 primary If you under
stand in any depth what many of
the candidates for our state’s high
est offices would do about educa
tion, health care or transportation,
congratulations: You’re either
someone who has gotten some seri
ous one-on-one time
with them, or you’re a
mind-reader.
It is too simple,
though, just to blame
the politicians. At
campaign time, they
tend to follow public
opinion as much as
shape it. And the pub
lic is telling them this is
what we want.
We’re telling them we
want fights and puffery
more than solutions.
After decades of railing
against identity poli
tics, we have begun to reward can
didates more for showing they’re
“one of us” than for showing what
they have done, and would do.
If we want something different
from them, we have to demand
something different from them.
And that means affirming that
time-tested tenet among conser
vatives: personal responsibility,
demanding more of ourselves.
The president and CEO of the
Georgia Public Policy Foundation,
Kyle Wingfield’s column appears in
newspapers around the state.
JUST THE WAY IT IS by Sloan Oliver
More evidence of liberal insanity
T |iere are many undeniable
truths. These truths include
things like - God created the
universe, the earth revolves
around the sun, water is wet, and
liberalism is a mental disorder. Most of
these truths are self-evident and require
no proof, as even people with limited
mental capacity know them to be so.
However, liberals don’t realize that liber
alism reduces one’s ability to rationalize
and thus some proof is required.
REFERRING TO liberalism and
its leftist ideology, I once wrote “the
leftist cabal does, says, and writes so
much that is dishonest and ridiculous
that it’s difficult to winnow out the
extraordinarily stupid from the average
stupid.” In the following paragraphs, Til
highlight the “extraordinarily stupid”
to prove that liberalism is not only a
mental disorder but, also, to show the
vileness of liberalism and of the leftist
cabal.
LAST MONTH, a Canadian youth
hockey team was involved in an ac
cident that killed 15 players and coaches
and injured another 14. In response to
this horrible tragedy, Nora Loreto, an
extremely liberal, Canadian journal
ist wrote, “I’m trying to not get cyni
cal about what is a totally devastating
tragedy but the maleness, the youthfril-
ness and the whiteness of the victims
are, of course, playing a significant role.”
Imagine the outcry if a similar accident
happened to a black basketball team
and someone denigrated the players
for their “maleness, youthfulness, and
blackness?” Yes, Loreto is full of hate.
Then again, she’s part of the leftist cabal.
ON SUNDAY, April 15, David Buck-
el, a leftist, gay rights, environmentalist
lawyer, immolated himself in Central
Park, New York. Buckel doused himself
with gasoline and set himself on fire.
His charred body was discovered by
joggers. A suicide note, found nearby,
stated that he was protesting mankind’s
use of fossil fuels. He wrote, “I am
David Buckel and I just killed myself by
fire as a protest suicide. My early death
by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing
to ourselves.” Oh, did I mention he was
a liberal.
PERHAPS THE most mentally
deranged person in the country is
the ultra-leftist Cassie King, a vegan
student at UC-Berkeley and an animal
rights activist Two months ago, King
conducted a protest in which she had
herself covered with animal manure
while laying on a sidewalk in front of
a San Francisco, Trader Joe’s grocery
store. The dung was piled to completely
cover her body, including her face, to
protest the conditions at the egg farms
from which Trader Joe’s buys its eggs.
King is a member of the radical animal
rights group - Direct Action Every
where (DxE). DxE is an activist group
that steals and releases farm animals
and then claims the animals have been
“liberated!’ DxE says that meat is not
food but “the torment and suffering
of billions of our friends.” Who thinks
this way? Answer - liberals, leftists, and
Democrats.
IF YOU thought that liberal craziness
is isolated to individuals,
think again. Beginning
in 2017, the city of Los
Angeles decided to com
bat global warming by
painting their 6,000 miles
of asphalt streets “white.”
I kid you not; city leaders
in Los Angeles decided to
spend $40,000 per mile
to paint the streets white.
Why? Because white ab
sorbs less heat than does
black asphalt. Consider
the miniscule area of the
planet covered by LA city
streets and the infinitesi
mally small contributions those streets
might make to global warming, and
then you realize the lunacy of spending
a quarter of a billion, taxpayer dollars
on an idiotic attempt to thwart some
thing that is unproven. This insane
expenditure of taxpayer dollars is being
done in a city where crime is out of con
trol and there are tens of thousands of
homeless in tent cities scattered around
town. Nero fiddled while Rome burned
and liberals paint the streets while Los
Angeles collapses. This is collective
liberalism at its most stupid.
AS YOU know, Syria has chemi
cal weapons and has used them on
its citizens. So, what did the United
Nations (UN) do? Next week, Syria is
scheduled to assume the chairman
ship of a UN forum on disarmament
of chemical weapons. Hillel Neuer,
executive director of United Nations
Watch (an organization that tracks the
UN), said, “Having the Syrian regime
of Bashar al-Assad preside over global
chemical and nuclear weapons disar
mament would be like putting a serial
rapist in charge of a womens shelter!’
Neuer added, “The Assad regime’s
documented use of chemical weapons
remains the most serious violation of
the Chemical Weapons Convention in
the treaty’s 20 year history!’ Appoint
ing Syria as chairman of this forum is
stupidity raised to the infinite degree.
As expected, several nations are protest
ing, and Syrias chairmanship might
be overturned. However, the mere fact
that the UN would consider putting
Syria in charge of a chemical weapons
disarmament forum shows the absolute
stupidity of the UN. Yet, liberals fawn
all over this leftist organization, and
demand that the United States adhere
to its dictates. This confirms that liberal
insanity is global.
Slo&n O/tVefi
ABOVE ARE five
examples of insane
liberalism. Everyday
we are exposed to other
examples - gender is a
choice, open borders are
good, police are out to kill
unarmed blacks, the U.S.
is a racist nation, etc., etc.
I don’t believe that every
liberal is as crazy as these
examples, but I do believe
that these examples high
light that wacky liberals
are not outliers - they are
not “one offs.” The above
examples highlight a disturbing pattern
of mental disorder among liberals.
Enough liberals, on college campuses,
in the media, in politics, and in society
exhibit abnormal thought and abnor
mal behavior such that what was once
called abnormal has now become the
norm among liberals. What’s troubling
is that no liberal ever calls out another.
The crazier the idea, the more it is ac
cepted among liberals. It’s evident that
liberalism is irrational; thus, Undeniable
Truth #1 - liberalism is a mental disor
der has been proven to be true.
WEEKLY Quote: “The conventional
viewpoint says we need a jobs program
and we need to cut welfare. Just the
opposite! We need more welfare and
fewer jobs. Fm talking about welfare
for all.” - Jerry Brown, the mentally
disturbed governor of California.
Sloan Oliver is a retired Army officer.
He lives in Bolingbroke with his wife
Sandra. Email him at sloanoliver@
earthlink.net.