At 11:35 PM on Wednesday, 4-19-2017, I parked my car on 49th Street between Hamilton and Caldwell Streets, next door to the apartment building I live in. (No space was available in the building's parking lot.)
Before I could shut the ignition off, a man in his twenties or thirties approached me. I went ahead and rolled my car's left front window down.
First thing he asked me: "Do you have a cigarette?"
"No," I told him. "I don't smoke."
"Do you have a cell phone that works?" he asked me.
"No, I don't," I answered.
This same man then pulled a gray semiautomatic handgun, pointed the gun at me, and asked me for my car keys. After I turned the ignition off and relinquished the keys, he instructed me to "Run down the street. I won't try to hurt you."
He pointed toward Caldwell Street, and I ran down Caldwell...for a few seconds.
I then turned around and saw him speed up 49th Street before he made a right turn to Hamilton.
After that, I jogged (and eventually walked quickly) toward home.
At 11:45 PM, I called the Omaha Police and reported the theft. About a half hour later, two officers and, later, a detective stopped to interview me about the carjacking.
This incident DOES have a happy ending:
At 1:57 AM that Thursday morning, the police phoned me to let me know that my vehicle was found...in a parking lot at the 3000 block of South 104th Plaza.
Two more OPD officers stopped by outside the apartment building I live in to deliver my car...and I was able to drive it again at 2:56 AM that Thursday morning.
The car was left intact.
In fact, the thief not only left $2.14 in change in my 2006 car...he also left a Black & Mild cigar band inside the car (as well as the cigar's wrapper).
I LUCKED OUT!!
Even so, the second-guessing already has begun: A loved one told me that "I would've just rolled the window back up and driven off."
With my luck, I would've been shot and killed for rolling the window back up.
This is why I've felt reluctant all these years to tell loved ones about personal troubles. When I make a move to try and change all that, this is what I get: "I would've just rolled the window back up and driven off."
Things just AREN'T that simple!
This morning, a reporter from one of the local TV stations interviewed me about the incident as part of that station's report tonight about local carjackings.
I originally intended to tune in...but because of tonight's second-guessing by this loved one, I won't watch tonight.
I mean, it's not enough that the last 94 hours have been ruined because of this carjacking.
It doesn't matter to that second-guesser that I'm safe and that I got my car back.
Here's my question for the second-guessers out there:
"With all that I've been going through these last sixteen months, how would you feel if this carjacker had gone on and shot and killed me?
"Who would you turn to next to dump on? HUH?"
I wanted to write this post a week ago...but circumstances prevented me from getting to it until now.
I'm still steamed at the campaign ads brought out by the National Republican Congressional Committee in support of US Rep. Lee Terry Jr. (R-NE) labeling his biggest challenger, Nebraska State Sen. Brad Ashford (D-Omaha), as "soft on crime," and trying to tie him not only with convicted mass murderer Nikko Jenkins...but also with the Islamic State terrorists who've recently, among other things, lopped journalists' heads off.
Terry's ads are a complete and total pack of lies. That's all there is to it.
In one plug, Terry and the NRCC claim Ashford supports Nebraska's "Good Time Law," which gives prisoners a day off for every 24-hour period they spend behind bars without breaking prison rules. (This law dates back to the early 1990s.)
Jenkins was sentenced to 21 years in jail...only to spend just a decade behind bars. (Didn't matter that while still in the pokey, Jenkins time and time again showed violent behavior.)
He was let out of prison last year...after which he killed four people in ten days.
The NRCC's next commercial for Terry Jr. really took the cake, linking Ashford with the Islamic State people.
That's today's Republican Party for you. When its operatives see one of their party's incumbents/candidates in trouble, they take the "Willie Horton" page out of Lee Atwater's book.
Today's Republicans just love to sow fear rather than hope.
And then their spokespersons have the NERVE to wonder (often out loud) why their party continues to lose ground among voters.
I remember when Ashford was a Republican. Then he became an independent in order to try to get what was then (2013) Jim Suttle's job as mayor of the Big O.
Now I see why the 64-going-on-65-year-old Ashford switched from the Elephants (as a state senator, he pledged the GOP from 1987 to 1995) to the Donkeys:
Ashford (back in the Unicameral since 2006) got sick and tired of all those Republican antics...especially that party's stunts of the last five years.
Brad Ashford wants to get this country's minimum wage increased to $10.10 per hour, would like to target tax cuts to America's middle-income families, and is out to invest in the nation's education system and the country's crumbling infrastructure.
Terry Jr. doesn't want any of these things.
In fact, this namesake son of a legendary local news anchor (maybe you watched Lee Terry Sr. on KETV's Newswatch 7 during the 1970s) has participated in all fifty (and counting) House votes to strike down the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010...and all fifty times, Lee Jr. has come out in favor of repealing this law.
Ashford supports the immigration reform bill recently passed by the US Senate (the bill that puts border security first and also includes a tough-but-fair pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants currently living in these fifty states- and the pathway does come with a criminal background check, a requirement to repay back taxes, and a heavy fine, among other things).
Lee Terry Jr. doesn't support the bill...and it's simply because of its pathway to citizenship. (How would he feel about the bill if the lion's share of undocumented immigrants coming to these shores were from Ukraine rather than Mexico?)
Ann Ferlic Ashford's husband has said he'll reach across the aisle if elected to the US House.
Robyn Terry's husband isn't the moderate he and his supporters make him out to be. What's more, since LNT Jr. got to the nation's capital in 1999, his efforts to reach across the aisle have been some kind of rare. According to ballotpedia.org, the 52-going-on-53-year-old former Omaha City Councilmember has voted with his fellow Republicans 94.4% of the time here in 2014.
During last winter's highly-infamous sequester, many US representatives gave up their salaries.
Not Lee Nathan Terry Jr.
He decided to keep getting those paychecks on account of his and Robyn's ownership of "a good house" and the need to put one of their three sons through college.
To top it all off, Terry fils bragged that he didn't give a crap about what happened to all those families affected by that sequester.
How do you think Terry pere would've acted at a time like this?
You know, Lee Terry Sr. wanted this US House seat...back in 1976.
But fellow Omahan John J. Cavanaugh defeated LNT Sr. and held onto that House gig for two terms.
Ashford's hoping to be the second Democrat since Cavanaugh (and first since Peter Hoagland) to represent the Cornhusker State's Second House District.
If you live here in Nebraska's Second House District, why don't you ask yourself: "What's Lee Terry Jr. ever done to help us rank-and-file citizens?"
If your answer turns out to be "nothing, nada, zippo," join me in getting Terry the Younger out of Washington, DC and sending Ashford there to replace him.
See you at the polls on 11-4-2014!
