6/17/20

Today I met with two friends from church who also live alone. Penny had a good time getting attention and being able to explore and sniff around for two hours. Tonight, I have Bible study at the church.

San Luis Obispo County reported 20 new cases of COVID-19 today, bringing the county’s total to 376 confirmed cases. It is the largest single-day increase in cases since the pandemic began. Health officials stated five people are hospitalized, including two patients who are in the ICU, 70 people are recovering at home and 300 people have recovered. San Luis Obispo County has had one death attributed to COVID-19.

Nine recent cases are connected to an outbreak at the Vista Rosa Assisted Living facility in San Luis Obispo. Seven residents and three staff members have reportedly tested positive for the virus.

County Health data shows 177 of the cases are the result of the patient having direct contact with another person who tested positive for the virus, 125 cases have been determined to be the result of community transmission, and 56 cases are attributed to travel. Eighteen cases are still under investigation.

In Santa Maria, health officials are struggling with a much larger coronavirus outbreak at Country Oaks Care Center, which is a nursing home. Thus far, 25 residents and 14 staffers have tested positive. Additionally, there have been five deaths related to the outbreak at the Santa Maria nursing home.

Justice! Justice! Justice!

Such is the shout of a lost world full of chest-thumping God-haters, Babel-builders, and ark-knockers who should be pleading for grace rather than justice (and if the Biblical allusions evade you, bless your heart). Sadly, even evangelical virtue-twerkers are out shouting the slogans of Woke Religionists, taking part in their version of 7-11 worship songs.

Justice! Justice! Justice! No Justice, No Peace!

Repeat 11 times.

Completely devoid of any Biblical notion of justice and woefully unaware of their identity before God as victimizers rather than victims, the world is inadvertently calling for their own destruction. They ought to rather cry out for mercy, but the concept is lost on the self-righteous.

And every section of pagandom has its own version. The greenies have “environmental justice.” The Molechites have “reproductive justice.” The Cultural Marxists have “racial justice.” The Bolsheviks have “economic justice.” The pervies have “sexual justice.” Heck, even the cat ladies have “animal justice.”

And to justice bandwagoners, justice apparently requires breaking stuff and vandalizing things. Even pagans are riding shotgun on the justice buggy.

Now, pagans (actual real-life, self-professed pagans) are vandalizing Christian monuments in the name of “pagan justice.”

I kid you not. I’m just waiting for Russell Moore or the soy-boys at the Gospel Coalition to spin it as a “Gospel issue.”

In Crediton (a town in England) a statue that is a depiction of St. Boniface, a Benedictine monk who spent his life trying to convert the Germanic people to Christendom. Papistry aside, Boniface’s statue is a symbol of the 8th-century outreach from one people-group to another. He was hardly racist and certainly was not a colonizer. He was a humanitarian.

Nonetheless, pagans attacked his monument with graffiti that reads “God is dead” and “Pagan Justice.”

The local newspaper reports that the native townies are mostly upset at the disrespect toward the monument and towards the hard work the town puts into being tidy.

People, this is not about disrespect to pieces of marble throughout the world. It is about an attack upon the very foundations of Western Civilization. The pagan hordes are at our gate and are beating on it like Sodomites on Lot’s front door.

A majority of voters oppose budget cuts to local law enforcement, rejecting calls from some liberal activists to “defund the police.”

The Quinnipiac University survey revealed that 54% of registered voters are against the notion of “cutting some funding from police departments in [their] community and shifting it to social services,” with 41% expressing support. Proposals to reduce police funding and provide more resources for social programs are under consideration in municipalities across the United States.

“Voters come out very strongly against defunding,” Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy said in prepared remarks.

Democrats and Republicans view the matter differently.

According to the Quinnipiac poll, 80% of Republicans are against such measures, with just 10% expressing support. By comparison, 70% of Democrats back efforts to shift some police resources to social services, with 24% opposed. Meanwhile, a majority of independent voters are opposed — 56% are against reducing police funding, while 40% are supportive.

Suburban voters were relatively split on the issue, with 48% opposed and 46% favorable. Among city voters, the poll found 51% of registered voters opposed to reductions in funding for the police in favor of spending more on social services, while 44% were opposed. Backing for maintaining police funding was the most pronounced with voters in rural communities, with 68% of such voters registering opposition to cuts and 28% giving the thumbs up.

The Quinnipiac survey was conducted Thursday through Monday and has a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points.

A blind woman in Rhode Island was banned for two years from a public park and library in Westerly for sharing her Christian faith, according to a discrimination complaint.

Officials at the Memorial and Library Association, in charge of Westerly Library and Wilcox Park, demanded Gail Blair, 63 at the time and blind, stop having conversations with others in the park about Jesus.

During the chats, Blair typically would offer a copy of the Gospel of John. Association members called the police on June 24, 2019, claiming she “acost[ed]” patrons by “stopping” and “giving them religious pamphlets.”

On Tuesday, Blair, represented by First Liberty Institute and William Wray Jr., an attorney at Adler Pollock & Sheehan P.C., filed a discrimination complaint with the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights against the library association.

In the complaint, Blair, who worked as a nurse until 1991 and suffered from a disorder that caused gradual vision loss, says she was banned “because of [the Association’s] unlawful discrimination against me on the basis of my disability and my religious beliefs.”

A representative for the association told Fox News it “does not engage in nor tolerate any forms of discrimination,” adding that it has not received a copy of the complaint and “cannot specifically comment on the allegations made by Gail Blair.”

“The Association vehemently denies any claims of discrimination or wrongdoing and it looks forward to receiving a copy of the complaint in order to rebut and disprove any claims made by Ms. Blair.”

In July 2019, Blair was volunteering with her church’s Bible school event in the park when the Westerly Police Department informed her, she had trespassed. They warned her a future violation would result in her being arrested.

“The Police Department searched for all incidents that involved complaints or trespass notices issued to anyone for distributing information, pamphlets, soliciting, selling, hawking, etc., and found none apart from when the Association called the police to eject me from the park,” Blair said. “My conduct did not violate the ‘Rules of Conduct’ posted by Westerly Library and Wilcox Park. Nor did it violate any of the Park’s Guidelines.”

Blair, who lives next to the park said she “cannot independently access another public park or another free public library.”

She denied accosting park patrons. “I do what the Pocket Testament League urges,” Blair said. “Simply offer them a Gospel of John, the Word of God. No arguing.”

Jeremy Dys, special counsel for litigation and communications for First Liberty, the largest religious freedom legal group in the U.S., called the incident “outrageous and discriminatory” in a statement to Fox News.

“No government entity should ban anyone—let alone a gentle, blind woman— for simply carrying on conversations about her faith and giving them a copy of the Gospel of John in a public park,” Dys said.