Archive for October, 2019

Report from Louisiana: What would it take to make you move?

Posted: October 21, 2019 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – What would it take for you to leave your community and relocate?

My family has lived in Shreveport for decades: my parents and my grandparents on both sides lived here. I’ve raised my own children here. My daughter never gave five minutes thought to staying here; she found a place to live in Texas and was gone before the ink on her diploma was dry. There are no jobs or opportunities for young people.

My husband is originally from the Midwest and while he loves visiting home, he doesn’t want to deal with the winters there, and I’m kind of thankful for that because I really do love living in Louisiana. Yes, it’s a politically screwed up state, but isn’t everywhere?

I love Louisiana: it’s never dull. I love the weather, I love the food, and I really do love the people. The scenery and diversity is perfection.

I am nearing retirement (another story in itself, thank you Common Core) and when I stop and think about it, there’s nothing much to hold me in Shreveport any longer. Crime is escalating, jobs are non-existent, poverty is high, and if the casinos ever pull out we will be in really bad trouble.

My neighborhood is one of the older, better ones in town, not high end, no HOA, strictly middle class. But it’s a pretty quiet neighborhood. Last night, someone came down our street and heavily vandalized folks Halloween decorations. My neighbors woke up to pumpkins smashed all over their vehicles, decorations pulled up, damaged, stolen.

Things like this have become the norm. Shootings are daily occurrences. Downtown is hollowed and filled with homeless people who aggressively panhandle anyone who walks the sidewalks. A day or two ago a young lady went to WalMart at 3:00 in the afternoon and was attacked in the parking lot.

Why do we stay here? Is it like this everywhere? I don’t think so.

Since my book came out last October we have spent the past year traveling all over the state for speaking engagements and I’ve fallen in love with a little town in south Louisiana. In fact, I’ve visited at least four times now and will be five before the end of the year. The people are nice, the culture is fabulous, the opportunities many. I think I need to move.

All of this is to say, what would it take for you to leave your community and relocate? What would be the deal breakers for you? The food? The local culture? Cost of living? Crime? Weather? Health care services?  There are a lot of things to think about.

But the older I get the more I realize our days are so damn limited and you never know how long you have. Why not live every single one of them to the best of your ability? 

Why settle?

Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport and is the author of Cane River Bohemia. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.

Under the Fedora: Stein’s Sin, Mayor Pete’s Dodge, MSNBC holds the line, as does Twitter, but the pros do it best

Posted: October 21, 2019 by datechguy in media, politics, primaries, under the fedora
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I was rather shocked when I saw this from Jill Stein:

You know, you can’t just slander people. You have to present some basis and fact.

I’m shocked SHOCKED as must be many regular CNN viewers who watched this at the concept that you have to actually have a basis of fact to accuse people of things. That’s contrary to the entire gameplan of Democrats and their media allies for decades.

How DARE she invade the CNN safe space and suggest such a thing!

If this wasn’t bad enough Jake Tapper pressed Mayor Pete Buttgieg on the same network on the question of Tulsi Gabbard in the same context:

“Right. But do you think Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset?” Tapper pressed again, asking directly.


“I don’t know what the basis is for that,” Buttigieg sidestepped again. “But I consider her to be a competitor. I respect her service and have very different views than she does on foreign policy and I would prefer to have that argument in terms of debates and going forward.”


Tapper pushed back, asking why Democrats defended people when Trump smeared them but didn’t seem motivated to defend Gabbard from similar attacks from other Democrats, no matter how wild.

Not only do we have the spectacle of CNN viewers having the sacred concept of Democrats smearing opponents challenged twice in one week but you have an interviewer directly challenging a liberal gay man running for high office on his position. Unthinkable!

Maybe these O’Keefe CNN videos are having an effect after all.

Of course if you are a liberal snowflake and unable to cope with this kind of direct challenge to the liberal smear machine you till have MSNBC

A panel on MSNBC Live mocked Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard for not explicitly denying Hillary Clinton’s accusation that she is a Russian asset.
Clinton, 71, said that the Hawaii congresswoman is being groomed by Moscow to run as a third-party spoiler candidate in 2020 to help President Trump win reelection. Gabbard has since hit back at the 2016 presidential candidate.
“One thing that was interesting about Tulsi Gabbard’s response, I mean she went after Hillary Clinton strong, she said she wasn’t going to run as a third party candidate, she never denied being a Russian asset,” Kimberly Atkins of WBUR said while beginning to laugh on the show Saturday morning. “That was the one aspect that was missing from her response, which you think that would be in the first line or two. It was not there.”

At least the traditions and standards of the left’s attack machine are still sacrosanct somewhere.

I should also note said liberal standards are being held up by Twitter as well:

Maybe it was this next post that did him in. Everyone knows you’re not allowed to challenge the new gender theology. “These are both me. Sometimes I like looking like and androgynous emaciated albino space vampire. Sometimes I like looking like a strung out 90’s computer hacker. Sometimes I feel more gay vampire, sometimes I feel more sk8r boi. Guess what? That doesn’t make me my own special gender.”

That’s gay writer and model Mike Harlow before being permanently banned from twitter supposedly for “harassment” but more likely for being part of the #walkaway movement. Some think this is an attack on gays thinking for themselves but I object to that characterization:

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

There are plenty of straight folks that Twitter has banned for thinking for themselves, but generally it’s not so much a question of them thinking for themselves but for having the potential to influence others to do so as well.

Finally when it comes to seeing how properly repressing speech one doesn’t like is done you have to go to the pros:

A Facebook post that criticized Islam’s Prophet Muhammad sparked a riot in southern Bangladesh on Sunday that left at least four people dead.
Hundreds of Muslims took to the streets in the town of Borhanuddin, 195 kilometers (120 miles) from the capital Dhaka, to protest the offensive social media post allegedly written by a Hindu man.
A local official said a meeting was held on Sunday to try to defuse the tensions that began Friday as the Facebook post gained traction.

But the angry protesters started attacking security officials, prompting them to retaliate.

Now in fairness to the left’s minor league Rasputins with Islam becoming more and more a force in the Democrat party the day will likely come when posts like this are the excuse for Democrats to riot become the norm

Of course you have to disarm the targets of your violence first.

Chicago teachers demand smaller class size by striking, but enrollment is already declining

Posted: October 20, 2019 by John Ruberry in education, News/opinion, politics
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Chicago Teachers Union member at a 2012 Occupy Chicago rally–classes were in session that day

By John Ruberry

Chicago Teachers Union members are on strike again, 300,000 students and their parents have to reshuffle their weekday routines. 

In Chicago and many other big-cities, school is more than being an educational institution. Three quarters of Chicago Public Schools students qualify for government paid-for or subsidized lunches, many also qualify for breakfasts under similar circumstances. 

Or maybe schools in Chicago are less than being an educational institution as barely one-in-four students read at grade level, despite most schools having “College Predatory” and “Excellence” in their names. But CPS schools serve, even when there isn’t a strike, sadly as day center centers.

While meals are still being provided at CPS schools since the strike began last week, the walkout is hurting those that the Chicago Teachers Union purports to represent, the kids and their families. Parents are taking time off work to watch their children. Chicago’s new mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has offered teachers a 16 percent pay raise, but union leaders say that they are striking for, wait for it, the kids and their hard-pressed parents.

On the other hand, the CTU is advocating for a financial program for teachers and support staff so they can purchase a home in Chicago. Wait, aren’t Chicago taxpayers paying teachers and other CPS employees so they can buy a home? There is plenty of affordable housing in Chicago, just not so much in the fashionable neighborhoods on the lakefront.

The quick reaction to the strike is that Chicago has no more money, as the city is essentially bankrupt due to unfunded public worker pension obligations, including those for teachers. But somehow the cash to end the strike will be “found,” although it will likely involve borrowing from Judas so the city can rob Peter to pay Paul. If that last sentence doesn’t make sense then you are not from Chicago

One of the CTU’s key demands is a familiar one, smaller class size. But that issue should be taking care of itself as for three straight years CPS enrollment has dropped by 10,000. Twenty-six CPS high schools have fewer than 270 students and two of them fewer than 100. These schools were built to accommodate much larger enrollments. But that didn’t stop CPS from opening a new high school in Englewood, a neighborhood whose population has dropped by two-thirds since 1960.

And Chicago’s overall population is declining, leading the charge of the Illinois Exodus that has been going on for five years now

Incompetent and corrupt government reaps a poor harvest. And the money that Lightfoot will need to “find” to end the Chicago teachers strike will hasten the Exodus. And fewer taxpayers means less money.

John Ruberry blogs from the Chicago area at Marathon Pundit.

Why doesn’t the left cheer when they’re wrong about bad things too?

Posted: October 20, 2019 by datechguy in culture, dablog, education, media, News/opinion, Uncomfortable Truths

A few days ago I lead with a post about some apparent insanity in a school district in NH that I had seen at a site I frequent. Turns out the info in question was incorrect & I missed an email warning me of same so the post in question went up as scheduled.

When I saw the email I added an update as follows:

Update: Got a heads up that suggests there might be less to this than meets the eye, While that might be embarrassing for me it would be delightful as it would indicate that insanity does not reign at the school in question and that’s more important that a post getting hits. I don’t believe in pulling posts as it changes the record so for now I’m going to put the base post under a “more” tag until I get more data. For now we’ll wait and see and if a correction is warranted I’ll update the post with it.

Long story short the info was incorrect the author apologized to the people in question. I provided a 2nd update joining in said apology and rejoicing that the school in question was not in fact insane. As it’s likely who saw the 1st post but might never check it again a fresh post linking to the mea culpa was the proper and honorable thing to do which was the primary reason for this post.

Then it hit me. The reason why I wrote the base post was I don’t want public schools to be acting insane and the purpose of said post was to hold up a light to such behavior to stop this school & others from acting that way.

Thus when it turned out this school wasn’t doing so I was very happy regardless of any embarrassment from an erroneous post because my primary goal is schools not acting insane.

This is not the case with the Democrat/left media. Think about it for a second

  • The media/left went all in on the idea of a Supreme Court Nominee being a sexual predator, then the evidence showed the accusations were not credible
  • The media/left went all in on the idea that the President of the United State was colluding with Russia to steal an election, and even with an independent council, a staff full of partisans, the assistant AG working against the president it turned out their suspicions were unfounded.
  • The media/left went all in as various colleges being bastions of “rape culture with claims that as many as 25% of the women attending were assaulted but it turned out that the methodology of the studies and the definitions of assault were so stretched as to be meaningless.
  • The media/left went all in on various race hoaxes being furious that various individuals, some involving celebs, particularly at colleges were a bunch of racists and white supremacists, yet over and over these turned out to be hoaxes.

Now supposedly the left and media and the guests they brought in did this because they didn’t want a serial sexual predator on the supreme courts or a President conspiring with Russia, colleges being bastions of rape, gay black TV starts threatened with nooses or racist acts being committed all over the nation. That being the case all of these things turning out to be false should be cause for celebration for the left who can breathe a sigh of relief that none of these things that they considered beyond the pale had happened.

Yet instead their reaction has been at best been too ignore when such hoaxes are exposed as such or at worst to continue to insist they are true despite evidence to the contrary.

Now if you work under the assumption that the goal of the media/left is to prevent such behavior then you might be utterly confused at this reaction as it makes no logical sense.

However if you work from the assumption that the primary goal of the left/media is POWER and or WEALTH and that in search of said power & wealth the events and actions that they supposedly deplore are used to generate both the funds to gain them and the means to retain them, well it makes perfect sense.

To them the the only “crisis” in government is when they don’t control it and the only “abuse” of power is if it not in their hands. Work under that assumption and all the left/media does and you will never be shocked or surprised by anything they do ever again.

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