Saw this on a bus in Florida.
It’s an important message.
Take Action. Stop Child Abuse.
Children are innocent!
The adults who commit the abuse and trafficking are animals.
If you see something, say something to the authorities.
You may just be saving a child’s life.
Protect our children…they are our future. 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
With efforts by the radical alt-left progressives to defund and dismantle police…
This is what the future for protection of innocents in this country looks like?
If you take away legitimate police and their efforts to protect citizens then this will force people to buy, build, and use even more weapons in their own self-defense.
Anarchy, chaos, lawlessness, and the wild west will be sure to take over as the new normal.
We don’t need more out of control gunslingers, gangs, and vigilantism battling for our streets.
Reform the police, protect the innocent people, and put the bad guys away. 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
So the progressive, alt-left have gone off the rails again with more nutty radical proposals.
This time to defund or dismantle the police!
While I am completely against corruption, racism, and police brutality, it is a BIG and STUPID mistake to hyper-generalize from some bad actors to the overwhelming number of good people that serve in law enforcement, who put their lives on the line to protect us everyday.
As with the health workers that protect us from Coronavirus and other horrible illnesses, so too with our police, we should be grateful for their protection and that they ensure some semblance of law and order and security in our society!
Yes the bad apples should be weeded out and punished, absolutely!
Also, after the latest incident with George Floyd, certainly reform is needed in terms of training and additional protections for the public.
But going alt-left crazy with proposals to defund and disband the police is completely over-the-top, irresponsible and destructive.
Hopefully, all the “normal” people out there will see the progressive folly for what it is and support the police in doing their critical mission, while also holding them accountable to do it with the integrity that they must. 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
A neck is not something to step or kneel on.
Justice for George Floyd!
Murder is murder.
While I greatly respect and admire our law enforcement for the difficult jobs that they have, police brutality and racism is not something that can be tolerated.
Our law enforcement is better than that!
Hold the responsible officers accountable, but also bring peace and civility back to our cities and streets. 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Another bloody weekend…this time in El Paso and Dayton.
With at least 29 dead and 53 injured in mass shootings.
We still don’t seem to be able to get a state of security in our country.
Whether it’s gangs and violence in our decaying cities (yes, like Baltimore).
Or mass shootings by racists and nut jobs attacking our schools, houses of worship, shopping malls, and places of work.
People can buy assault rifles with mega mags of ammunition and go crazy.
And they do!
While I was impressed with the response in Dayton especially, they killed the perpetrator within 30 seconds of the start to his killing spree, in other cases it takes considerably longer,
Moreover, while generally the first responders are brave and heroic in going after and taking out the bad guys, in places like the Parkland shooting, the officer apparently hid behind a tree while the students got massacred.
We need a rethinking of how we deal with these terror situations.
Can technology help (and I know these may sound crazy, but we have to think out-of-the-box at some point)?
We have the ShotSpotter technology to pinpoint where shootings are occurring.
Why can’t we have persistent armed drones on patrol with AI ready to swoop in (even through an open door or window) and respond and neutralize the shooter (while law enforcement makes their way through our busy city streets).
Other ideas…embedded chips in humans (yes, it is coming) that would drive the privacy wonks nuts, but can identify occurrences of extreme violence and potentially stop it.
I am sure there are other technology ideas out there.
Certainly, we do need to balance privacy with safety, and it will be tricky to make sure the AI is getting it right, but as we figure this out, tragically there are fathers, mothers, children not coming home because they are dead. 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Please see my new article in The Times of Israel called, “Don’t Call Me Sir!”
In a split second, the officer zeros in on me and admonishingly says: “I’m not a Sir!” I’m taken aback, as I watch the officer speak, their face hardened and angular and their full mustache rising and falling with their words.
It’s Pride Month, and I learned a valuable lesson in sensitivity, respect, and diversity and that in short:
Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, Jewish Lives Matter, All Lives Matter! We are all children of G-d. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
So this part 4 of my posts about the sexual misconduct inflicted on the children in Riverdale.
This is a follow-on to my post of January 10 regarding a message from Salanter Akiba of Riverdale (SAR) Academy about the exploits of one of its former teachers and administrators who “pleaded no contest to two counts of second-degree child molestation.”
I agreed to be interviewed by the SAR investigator about my experience as a 7th-grade child who had been lured for a Shabbat to this monsters home.
Rabbi Rosenfeld was never my teacher, and I would have never ended up at his home for Shabbat if not for this person, who invited me there, drove me there, and listened to my cries in the next room.
It was extremely painful to recount in detail the childhood memories of sexual assault as she asked me question after question about every detail, and without malice, but basically forced me to relive the events of so long ago.
What is incredible to me is that the enabler/facilitator of that Shabbat invitation and course of events, I have come to understand, MAY STILL WORK IN THAT SCHOOL!
How many other children were lured to Rabbi Rosenfeld’s home by this person–who was being paid and given benefits, as well as provided harbor and shelter, by this school (perhaps unknowingly) for decades and decades.
But now if it is true, that this person is still there, the school has an ethical and I am certain, legal duty to protect the children that go there.
No child should be abused sexually or otherwise or be part of such atrocities by former or current staff.
I was one of the children who suffered in silence for too long.
But now I understand that one of my purposes in this world is to help make things right.
To the Riverdale community, to the board and leadership of SAR, I ask you, what is your role and responsibility?
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Interesting sticker on this guy’s smartphone this morning:
“Guns and Coffee”
And the Starbucks mermaid in the center is packing two pistols in her hands, instead of the usual fishy fins.
Now the good thing about this particular guy was that he was also wearing a lapel pin from a prominent law enforcement agency here in Washington, D.C., so that was comforting.
I’ve heard about the economic trade-off (“opportunity costs”) between “Guns and Butter,” meaning how much we choose to budget for defense vs. civilian goods/social entitlements.
But this is novel–“Guns and Coffee”–I guess you can have your coffee and your 2nd Amendment rights as well.
What happens if you haven’t had your coffee yet, does the little mermaid shoot first and ask questions later? 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Bad boyz, bad boyz what you gonna do?
When the bad boyz come to hurt the girls.
The bad boyz better watch out.
Feminism is alive and well.
Women are individuals full of rights and fights.
No one will take away what is theirs by G-d given creation of their soul and body.
Whoever tries to is destined to the dustbins of history.
Bad boyz, bad boyz…better recognize that women are people too.
And they are smart, resourceful, powerful, and good.
Sugar and spice and everything naughty and nice.
911, 911, 911…take this bad boyz away. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
So this is an interesting poll from Emerson College:
“49% of U.S. voters believe that the Trump administration is truthful, while only 39% feel that way about the news media.”
Growing up, I never thought or felt the media was biasing the news.
Frankly, it never would have occurred to me.
Maybe, I was too innocent or naive.
But I always thought the media’s job was to “tell it the way it is.”
The media’s job, I understood was to be a honest broker, investigate, report, and tell all sides of the issues to help inform and educate.
What people then did with that information was up to them.
They would be free in a democracy to form their own opinions and see things that were presented to them through their experiences and sense of identity and justice.
But now, the world is upside down, and bias, bigotry, and prejudice is embedded in the media news itself.
The same story on a deportation case today can be told by CNN as one of racism and cruelty to immigrants for deporting a mother of two who was “a threat to nobody” or by FOX news as one of enforcing the laws and security against an undocumented immigrant with a felony conviction for social security fraud.
It depends what colored glasses your looking through and how you want to influence or control what the masses think and do about it.
No wonder, people don’t trust the media!
Not only were the projections based on garbage polling completely wrong in terms of who would win the election, but the reporting out of daily events is done through one-sided reporting, “alternative facts,” and “fake news.”
The Democrats and Republicans are duking it out, but it’s the media that it getting the biggest black eye on honesty and credibility, and losing the fight for influence over the American people. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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