Liberated by Kaepernick-supporting lefty trolls

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Kaepernick (center) kneeling for the U.S. National Anthem

Alright, the liberation to get back to writing political and social commentary! Perhaps I owe a debt of gratitude to the far left lunatics who tried doxing me in recent days.

Let's start with what actually happened.

During Thursday night's Philadelphia Eagles preseason game, backup quarterback Nate Sudfeld suffered a wrist injury, one that it was later announced would keep him out for awhile.

At the time, I was "live-Tweeting" a Phillies game for a site by the name of Phillies Nation" for which I had been the lead writer for more than a year. Basically providing updates of key moments in that game as they developed.

In reaction to Sudfeld's injury, I began to see a number of folks interjecting commentary on Twitter regarding the Eagles possibly looking at bringing in controversial former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. There were many folks who were for this happening, and many against it.

At my personal Twitter feed (@MatthewVeasey), I put out a message that stated if the Eagles were to actually sign Kaepernick, I would find it offensive and would stop watching and following the team until he was gone.

My feelings had nothing to do with race, and in fact, very little to do with football talent. I could care less that he hasn't played in three years.

What I do care about is that Kaepernick has publicly come out against American police. As a three-decade law enforcement officer, supervisor and training instructor, one who still has family and many friends in the profession, I find his messages offensive.

Socks depicting pigs wearing police hats, framing police shootings as "lawful lynchings", reactions to police shootings with statements such as "there are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."

Kaepernick is no social justice warrior as he refuses to stand and respect the American flag and our national anthem. He is an anti-police, far-left radical activist. Here in America, I have a right to publicly stand against him and his positions.

Thank you, Phillies Nation, for a lifelong dream come true

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Phillies Nation made me a paid baseball writer

I'll be addressing broader issues in another separate piece to come later today. What this is, is a simple "thank you" to the folks at Phillies Nation, and to the thousands of Phillies fans who regularly follow the site.

For more than a year, I was privileged to bring my views and opinions involving the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team to a wide audience of Philly sports fans who are as passionate about the team as I am.

Last July, I was brought on board as a writer on what was then a dwindling staff, and on the Fourth of July in 2018, my first Phillies Nation piece was published.

In the 13 months since then, I provided roughly 425 pieces for Phillies Nation. Everything from simple game previews and postgame reports to more analytical breakdowns of various situations involving the team, prospect evaluations, series previews, and more.

Never once did I interject my political or social opinions into those pieces. Never once did I push those same personal values in the Phillies Nation social media feeds when I was controlling those feeds.

In fact, I have not written a single piece right here at my own blog involving anything other than baseball since March 2018. And at my social media feeds, you would be hard-pressed to find anything other than sports for the last year and a half.

I have no clue what any of the individual writers or the website owner's views are on political or social issues, and frankly, I don't care either.

Thanks to the staff at Phillies Nation for a handful of tips over this past year that I know will improve my writing going forward. Good luck to the writers who put effort into their own pieces. Most are young folks trying to get a start in an increasingly difficult industry in which to find paying work. Keep reaching for your dreams.

Thanks also to the site owner, for the opportunity to become a paid baseball writer. It wasn't much pay, especially for the amount of writing, editorial, and social media work that I provided. But it gave me a taste of a lifelong dream.

Finally, thanks to all of the Phillies fans who read my work and have interacted with me on social media, whether at Phillies Nation or elsewhere over the years.

I am not going anywhere. I'll still be writing, right here at this blog. That will, however, no longer be restricted to the Phillies and baseball, though you will still get a lot of that content. Whatever I write will be linked on my social media feeds.

Frankly, it's liberating, the thought of getting back to writing on a wider variety of topics across the political and social spectrum, as well as the Philly sports scene.

Republican citizen voices more important than ever

America needs Republican bloggers more than ever

Republicans and Democrats alike frequently criticize the general tone and specific messaging pushed by various major media outlets.

For those Americans who consider themselves to be conservative, almost exclusively Republicans, the usual suspects include broadcasters such as CNN, MSNBC, and NPR and print/web sources such as The New York Times, Washington Post, and the Huffington Post.

Leftists frequently bemoan the messaging and tone that comes from the Fox News network, including Fox Business, as well as media outlets such as One America News and The Washington Times.

For decades, liberals had a monopoly on mass messaging pushed to the American public through broadcast and print news. Slowly over the last two decades or so, conservative voices, once relegated to talk radio, have grown in influence. This has been thanks to the Internet and cable news.

Still, there remain more liberal resources. The influence of the old school networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC continues to wane. However, there remains a large segment of America who still receive their news from these sources, especially at the local news level.

The vast majority of newspapers and TV entertainment programs in America remain under the control of liberal media organizations as well. The messaging pushed out to the public is overwhelmingly liberal, unless you specifically go looking for conservative voices.

That fact makes the continued efforts and expansion of independent Republican voices more important than ever. It is one of the main reasons that I put effort into this website and into my all around social media presence.

Michelle Malkin is the queen of American conservative bloggers. Born in my hometown of Philadelphia and raised across the Delaware River in South Jersey, the 47-year old Malkin makes her home in Colorado Springs, Colorado with her husband and two children.

A decade or so ago, Malkin gave occasional space at her michellemalkin.com home to an anonymous contributer known only as "See-Dubya" who once described their blogging as follows:

"Actually, blogging is kind of therapeutic. Especially when you’re a red-state person living in a blue, blue state, and your neighbors would burn a peace symbol in your yard at midnight if they knew how you really felt about things. Some people do yoga; I pound the keyboard. The blood pressure goes down either way."

Your own therapy aside, the continued presence and growth of American bloggers of a Republican persuasion is vitally important thanks to the upcoming midterm elections here in the United States.

The facts are that, no matter who sits in the Oval Office, the President's party loses an average of 30 congressional seats in normal midterm elections.

One reason this happens is what is known as the "presidential penalty" - voters from the President's party are happy that he won. History shows that happy voters are much more likely to stay home than angry, possibly more motivated, voters from the opposition.

Per Tom Murse writing for Thoughtco.com:

"In the 21 midterm elections held since 1934, only twice has the president's party gained seats in both the Senate and the House: Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first midterm election and George W. Bush's first midterm election. On three other occasions, the President's party gained House seats and once it was a draw. On one occasion, the president's party gained Senate seats."

Continued propagation of 'fake news' may be our collective fault

President Trump has repeatedly railed against 'Fake News'

President Donald Trump may not have coined the phrase "fake news", but it absolutely seems as though the practice has exploded since he took office.

Just last week during his speech in front of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the President delivered the statement “it wasn’t until I became a politician that I realized how nasty, how mean, how vicious, and how fake the press can be.”

The statement was greeted by a loud chorus of booing. At least it sounded that way to those watching on a popular German news program. 

However, the broadcaster 'ARD' later admitted that it had "boosted" the sound clip to make it appear louder than it actually was, per Chris Tomlinson at Breitbart. When originally heard on CNN, for instance, the booing was moderate, and obviously came from media in the back of the room.

The ARD editor-in-chief then made the following statement as part of his defense for the move:

"By the way, newspapers also make comparisons when they enlarge image sections and may even mark them with a red circle – nobody would come up with the idea of calling this manipulation, but rather journalistic precision."

Journalistic precision? Now there's a new one.

But this statement perfectly sums up the tactics repeatedly used against the President by the former "mainstream" media here in America, which include cherry-picking from quotes and highlighting stories with unflattering photographs.

In a 2017 year-end article, Georgina Rennard with the BBC did a nice job defining "fake news" as follows:

• Completely false information, photos or videos purposefully created and spread to confuse or misinform
• Information, photos or videos manipulated to deceive - or old photographs shared as new
• Satire or parody which means no harm but can fool people

Liberal news outlets such as CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, NPR, and more have consistently been violators. This is particularly so in their coverage of the President, his team, and his programs.

Dan Gainor at Fox News did a nice job breaking down the media's 2017 anti-Trump efforts in a piece characterizing their "round-the-clock journalistic insanity":

"...the media have been claiming Republican politicians are evil, racist, crazy or stupid (or all four) for years. Journalists and their lefty partners in slime are running that game on Trump more aggressively than they ever tried with President Ronald Reagan. None more than CNN. The network’s “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter was freaking out about his view of Trump’s mental health back in August. “Is the President of the United States a racist? Is he suffering from some kind of illness? Is he fit for office? And if he's unfit, then what?” He began 2018 with a claim the year was starting off with “madness.”"

President Trump Needs to Pick His Social Media Battles

On Friday, January 20. 2017, Donald John Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States.

There is much that is unique about the Trump presidency even before considering any policies, programs, or laws which may be enacted.

Trump is the very first U.S. President who does not have any prior American military or governmental service on his resume. He has spent decades managing his family business well, growing it into one of the largest and most successful private institutions in the land.

Also, as we found out in the Republican primaries, President Trump has an affinity for social media. In particular, the President made use of his private Twitter account to take his message directly to the voters during the primaries.

After emerging victorious from a large, qualified field of candidates, Trump continued engaging his millions of followers on Twitter during the General Election campaign.

His upset defeat of the Democratic candidate, former First Lady, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, was fueled partially by his social media engagement with voters.

Trump used Twitter to take his message directly to the people.

Writers Write

Press box at Comerica Park in Detroit, home of the Tigers

The great Flannery O'Connor was quoted regarding writing: "I'm a full-time believer in writing habits...You may be able to do without them if you have genius, but most of us only have talent and this is simply something that has to be assisted all the time by physical and mental habits or it dries up and blows away."

What she was saying in her oh so elegant way was that we writers need to do: it's not good enough to call yourself a writer, or to say you want to be a writer. Writers write. It's in the doing. O'Connor was emphasizing that you need to do, and do regularly, or your talent will waste away.

I've been thinking about this a lot over the last few years, but in particular over the last few months, as I prepare to transition from one career to the next. Whether I ever draw a paycheck, a royalty check, a residual check, whatever - my next career will be as a writer.

The importance in writing is not whether you make money from your creative output, though I will never undervalue the importance of earning a living. The earning is an entirely separate issue. What is at it's most basic for a writer is that very output.

Writers write.

Lenten Sacrifice

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the holy Christian season covering approximately six weeks until Easter.

During the Lenten season, Christians traditionally prepare for Easter through a process of increased prayer, penance, and sacrifice.

Of course, we are all supposed to be praying regularly, asking repentance and making atonement for our sins, and finding ways to sacrifice some part of our own blessings in the form of charity all during the year.

Lent is a good time to both get yourself back on track if you have let some of that spiritual responsibility slip, and also a good time to strengthen your commitment to areas of your life that perhaps need more attention.

To meet these increased spiritual goals during Lent, Christians often make what amount in the secular world to New Year resolution-type promises of change. Only these are promises to God from themselves. The promises can involve saying a daily rosary, returning to Church and the sacraments, and giving up something of importance to them.

That last part, the giving up of something important, is known as a Lenten sacrifice. Remember, the whole point is to prepare for the events of Good Friday and then Easter, when Jesus Christ sacrificed his own life for your sins. Keeping that much sacrifice in mind, how tough is your own?

Each year, I also try to make a Lenten sacrifice. I've usually had success in the past, but this year I am going a little more ambitious. I am personally building a number of elements into my Lenten sacrifice. Maybe one or more will inspire you as well.

First, I am actually simply going to continue a spiritual exercise which I began all the way back in November. At some point in mid-November of 2013, I began to say a full rosary each day. Somehow, I have been able to keep it up every day. I have found lately that there were a couple times where I almost just let it go. Lent will be a good time to increase my commitment to it.

Next, I am going to commit to going to Church more often. My own local St. Christopher's Roman Catholic parish will be offering Mass on a nightly basis. I will be going a few times. I am also volunteering more in my role as a church Lector to do the readings at Mass during this period.

Also during Lent, I am going to make sure that I participate in appropriate sacraments more often. Most specifically, going to Confession, doing Penance, and sincerely attempting to stay away from the occasion of sin. I'm planning on making a Confession now, at the start of Lent, and again closer to Easter.

These things should go a long way towards meeting my goals of increased prayer and penance during Lent, and your own adoption of any would help you do the same. So now, on to the sacrifice part. What am I "giving up for Lent" this year?

First, we'll start with the treats/goodies category. I will be giving up all cakes, cookies, pies, candy, ice cream, and other similar desserts and treats. Only exception will be for breath mints, which some might consider as "candy", but which I slot into their own special category as someone who has a lot of dealings with the public.

Next, a bit tougher one thanks to specific circumstances. I will be giving up soda as well. However, I am giving myself a "special dispensation" on St. Patty's Day weekend to allow for drinking soda at events surrounding that upcoming celebration. Better that than imbibe in too many "adult beverages", especially when driving. Outside St. Patty's weekend, no soda either.

Not just a "don't do that" period, Lent is a time to "do", to take action where it may be needed. I am going to begin seriously getting back into a regular physical workout routine. Starting with daily walking, and then building up to more as the Lenten season advances and I get in better physical conditioning.

And then I added on a new one this year, limiting my use of personal social media, particularly by refraining from Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of social media during the Lenten season with two exceptions only.

Those two social media exceptions will be this blog, where I will actually attempt to write MORE, something that I have been trying to get myself to do anyway. And also my professional Twitter account @PPDMattVeasey, where I have an expected responsibility to participate for my employer.

I have also undertaken a couple of more personal restrictions for Lent, and we'll just keep those between me and the Lord at this point. Oh, and all of my fellow Catholics should remember to refrain from eating meat today, Ash Wednesday, and every Friday through Good Friday. Also, today and each Friday you should limit yourself to one full, large meal.

I think that if I can successfully accomplish all of that, it adds up to a solid, legitimate personal Lenten observance. Prayer, penance, and sacrifice all built into the plan. So, there's my plan for Lent - what's yours?

No Savesies?

As I write this, the sun is glistening off the snow pack that has covered my street for the better part of the past six weeks. Temps are forecast to keep rising and, mercifully, the snow should be gone by the weekend.

But for weeks now, Philadelphia and surrounding areas have had to deal with mountains of snow in a continuous barrage, the likes of which I cannot remember seeing in my lifetime.

Sure, we've had large snowfalls in the past, but they seemed to last on the ground a few days, and then temps would rise, rain would come, and the piles of snow would be gone. This year we never seemed to get a break. It was one measurable snowfall on top of another. Again, hopefully that is all coming to an end now.

With the snow have come a number of practical issues that we have all had to deal with, from altered transportation schedules to cancelled school and work days, and, of course, physical labor. The need to continually dig out from the storms. In Philly under Code 10-720, residents have to clear a 3-foot wide path in front of their homes within six hours of the end of a storm.

But that clearing of "a path" only takes care of enabling folks to use a walkway. There is another issue, one that has become extremely heated and controversial over the years and been particularly highlighted this year due to the regularity of the situation: the saving of a parking space from which you dug out your private vehicle.

Over the years we have come up with a number of colorful ways to save the spaces. Some have placed elaborate, creative, humorous artworks in the space. Others have put household objects such as old toilets out there to save a spot. For most, the tried and true method is the placing of lawn or beach chairs in the spot.

These saved parking spaces have caused problems over the years, both here in Philly and elsewhere.

2014 MPO SET TO BEGIN

A new teaching year is beginning for myself and my fellow members of the Philadelphia Police Department's Advanced Training Unit, with a handful of new courses to be presented and refreshers coming on a few more.

Each year, the Municipal Police Officer's Education & Training Commission (MPOETC) develops four courses as mandated classroom training for all of Pennsylvania's law enforcement officers.

In Philly, it is the ATU's job to present those courses to the vast majority of the city's 6,000+ officers, detectives and supervisors. The ATU also provides fee-based training to 'outside' jurisdictions such as the police from SEPTA, the university police at Temple and Penn, and a few other agencies and municipalities.

Each MPOETC course is presented as a half-day of training, making for two full state-mandated days in the classroom for each officer. Every single year, the 15 or so members of the ATU staff will provide instruction to roughly 25,000 attendees in a couple of thousand sessions.

However, for 2014, that number will expand, because every two years all officers are also required to receive recertification training in CPR and First Aid. The CPR training is a full day. The First Aid training is a half day, and the PPD always takes advantage of the other half day to present some type of additional training.

Comeback of a Blogger

Back in February and March of this year, 2013, I told myself that I was going to get back into writing for this then-neglected blog on a regular basis.

After peaking my activity in 2008 and 2009, when I was posting up a new story on a pace that was almost every other day, I dropped to 79 in 2010, 26 in 2011, and then a barely once a month pace of 16 last year.

So what happened? For the most part, Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media happened. When I did get time to express myself, those were the chosen outlets. It generally took much less work and thought to put together, and there was much fun and enjoyment to be gained. But slowly I have come to the realization that it simply isn't enough.

What writing a blog allows is a greater depth of expression on issues, when that is what you want to communicate. Every entry doesn't have to be long or wordy. It doesn't have to be on a topic of epic importance either. But it does give you a chance to go beyond the Twitter limits of 140 characters, and it allows you to feel more writing ownership than Facebook.

The history of this "mattveasey.com" blog goes all the way back to 2004, and so there is also an investment of my time and talent, and my name, that are intimately involved.

So I'm making a comeback. I will be writing here more. The topics will be as they always have been, things that interest me the most, from family to faith, politics to culture, sports to media, and more.

There will be a comeback for some of the old "feature" editions as well, including the "Rock and Roll Heaven" series, the "Real American Heroes" series, and of course I will continue to honor an "American of the Year" at the end of December.

I hope that if you enjoyed my writing in the past, whether you always agreed or not, that you enjoy once again. I will be sharing links to what, in my opinion, are the best or most interesting or most informative articles at both my Facebook page and Twitter feeds.

Let the comeback begin.....