Archive for January, 2021

Readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmetic

Posted: January 5, 2021 by chrisharper in Uncomfortable Truths
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During the 25 years I have taught writing, I have complained frequently about how K-12 educators pay little attention to the building blocks of grammar, punctuation, and style.

In the past, students have accepted the need to learn these elements of writing. Now that’s changed.

I am teaching a month-long course in journalism history, which requires a great deal of writing.

For the first time ever, students feel emboldened enough to complain publicly that I deduct points, generally a full grade, when they make three errors or more.

“You keep dropping me entire letter grades for tiny, insignificant grammatical errors. I’ve never had a teacher complain about my grammar,” one student wrote. “Considering most of your students are juggling school, work, and the ramifications of a global pandemic, I don’t think this is the time for harsh grading.”

Another told me he checked with a website editor who said the grammar was fine. I noted 18 errors in a submission of 500 words.

Here’s what I wrote to all of the students:

After more than 25 years as a journalist at The Associated Press, Newsweek, and ABC News, I decided to teach writing. Since I joined academia, I have written and edited seven books. I’ve also written for newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and online publications. 

As such, I take writing quite seriously.

If a writer fails to understand the basic tenets of grammar, punctuation, and style, myriad problems occur.

First, readers and viewers get hung up on the errors, known as creating “noise” in communications theory. For example, I once did a major investigation of prisons, which began with a visual of geese over a Wisconsin jail. I referred to the geese as Canadian geese. Such birds are called Canada geese. At least 100 of the 20 million viewers of the documentary scolded me for the error. That means that at least 100 people stopped watching something important because I made a style error.

Second, readers and viewers may question the accuracy of the information provided if basic rules are not followed.

Third, I had the luxury of having excellent editors who would challenge almost anything I wrote. Today, there are virtually no editors who look over reporters’ shoulders for errors of grammar, punctuation, style, and most importantly, accuracy.

Lastly, if you seek employment in journalism, advertising, or public relations, you will likely have to take a writing test, which is intended to determine your abilities in accuracy, grammar, punctuation, and style.

Since this course is a writing class in the Department of Journalism, I think it’s essential that someone care about such matters.

Shades of Lunenberg at Pelosi’s House

Posted: January 5, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

About seven years ago Lunenberg Massachusetts became a national story.

A mixed race family with a 8th grade black child on the high school school had graffiti spray-painted on their house with the words “knights don’t need niggers” (the “knights” being the name of the football team) and the town was rocked.

As this was the Obama Deval Patrick years the FBI and state got involved, it was a huge story covered all over the nation and even internationally. The town and school was pilloried, their annual thanksgiving game was forfeited and the season cancelled (and in pre-covid days this was a big deal) The School had all kinds of “diversity” events added. There was a candlelight vigil and “Lunenberg High” became a synonym for racism…

…that is until the investigation took place and some interesting inconsistencies came up particularly with the graffiti itself which oddly was despite supposedly done by a bunch of kids at night managed to be painted only on a surface that was easily painted over while missing spots that would have entailed expense to fix. In the end the investigation pointed to the mother of the boy.

As I said at the time:

Where does the town of Lunenburg go to get their reputation back, where does the football team go to get their Thanksgiving game back and who pays for all the police, local state and federal that were used in the attempt to sell this BS?

And will the sites in Atlanta, Metro US, The UK Daily Mail, Sports Illustrated, Fox Chicago and the Huffington Post be reporting on these new developments with the same gusto?

None of those media outlets were interested in the correction. Only folks like Stacy McCain,

This story immediately came back to mind when I saw this post about the Antifia “vandalism” at Nancy Pelosi’s house:

Andrea Widburg at the American thinker takes up the story.

Unless the spray can coincidentally stopped spraying paint just as it got to the “three o’clock” side of the circle, it looks very much as if the graffiti artist went out of his (or her) way to protect the bricks from getting paint splashed on it, perhaps by taping off the area before spraying. This care is important because it’s easy to repaint a garage door and “notoriously difficult” to get spray paint off of a porous surface such as brick.

Likewise, the encircled “A” on the left side also has a completely vertical stripe on its “nine o’clock” side, which again looks as if someone held up a barrier to ensure that no paint got on the bricks:

Because as you know Antifa is supercilious concerning how they do their vandalism to minimize the costs of those they hit. She closes thus:

It’s entirely possible that this was an Antifa effort and the person spraying paint had some residual compassion for Pelosi. But it’s also possible that this is a false flag effort. I am not offering any suggestions as to who might have raised this false flag. I note only what others have pointed out before: Something’s peculiar here. 

I have to disagree, it’s not at all possible. This was an attempt to gain sympathy and empathy and I suspect to put pressure on the far left in congress to provide the votes she needed for speaker from those on the left like the squad which fell into line.

Everything about these people is false, start from this premise and you will no go far wrong.

Report from Louisiana: The Vaccine

Posted: January 4, 2021 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – Happy New Year! We are spending the holiday in south Louisiana in our cabin on Bayou Teche. Because I will be driving back on Sunday and back at work on Monday, I’m writing this post on the actual first day of the year. We just finished our traditional “good luck” New Year’s meal which of course includes cabbage and black eyed peas. I also cooked a bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin stuffed with andouille sausage and shrimp. We are sitting pretty fat and happy right now.

I took a moment to check some emails today and I see where the school system will soon be offering the Covid-19 vaccine for teachers and school staff. The vaccine should be available to us in the next couple of weeks. Am I going to take it? You bet I am. Sign me up. We will be getting the Moderna vaccine, I am told.

I’m so sick of this virus and the limitations it has put on everyone. I guess it varies somewhat from state to state, but honestly the restrictions that so many business owners must face seem so absurd. For example, we drove over the levee this morning to stop by Turtle’s Bar which is on the Atchafalaya Basin. The swamp is beautiful at any time of year, but there is something about it in the winter that just draws me.

Steve asked Tanya, the bartender, “Well! Did y’all have fun last night?” because, of course, New Year’s Eve, right?

“Yeah,” she said, “until 11:00.” Bars in Louisiana are required to close at 11:00. Because apparently the virus does not spread until after 11?  Who knows? We were the only people in there at that hour, along with one other guy and with the exception of the people who live on houseboats there that walk up to her window to place an order.

We stood at the bar and swapped stories for a while, and I tried to pull up one of the bar stools to sit down. “Oh, you can’t do that!” Tanya said. “It’s against regulations because of Covid. You can’t sit at the bar.” But…you can stand at the bar and that is okay. 

Even stranger – the bartender can serve you at the bar but she can’t walk over to your table and serve you. You have to walk to the bar to get your drink, and you have to wear a mask when you walk to the bar, but once you sit back down, you can take it off again.

It all borders on the absurd.

I have several musician friends who were at home last night, without a gig, for the first time in their careers. No live music is allowed.

But hey, the casinos are apparently non-viral zones because all of our local riverboat casinos are in full swing.

The numbers for new cases and hospitalizations are higher now than they have ever been. I have more friends now who are sick than I ever have. One of my best friends has had fever for two solid weeks now and it runs about 102 even taking Tylenol and Advil every three hours. She has no taste or smell and says it’s the worst she’s ever felt in her life. Her husband is a heart patient and he has recently tested positive as well. I’m quite concerned for both of them.

I’m ready for people to be able to get back to work, for businesses to reopen and recover, and for the music to begin again. I’m ready to see full sports stadiums and concerts. I’m ready to teach school mask-free and to see my students’ faces and smiles again.

So, yes, I’ll take the vaccine. I’m not concerned. Bring it on.

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

Why Aren’t The Dems, Media & GOP Establishment Delighted at a Chance To Nip “Claims” of Election Fraud in the Bud?

Posted: January 4, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.

Jesus Christ John 3:19-21

He sees as well as you do that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.

C. S. Lewis The Screwtape letters #29

As soon as it became apparent that the great steal of 2020 was on and people began objecting to it the left pushed back. This pushback took many forms. The repeated lockouts of my account and false claims about my tweets on Benford’s law followed by repeated false apologies and false claims that they were in error) were one. The repeated line from Twitter when President Trump repeated the various claims was another so many times that’s it’s practically a meme

This Claim about the election is disputed

Twitter, every time President Trump details evidence of Fraud

Another were loud proclamations that all such claims were nonsense so much that media refused to cover hearing and ignored sworn statements that were given, even by the President who presented a summery of the fraud during a speech.

From there we had loud pronouncements that allegations from fraud undermine confidence in American elections and are a dangerous thing in our democracy, in fact it was for this reason that Richard Nixon in 1960 did not contest the stolen election in Illinois that defeated him (and in my opinion led to Watergate 12 years later as a paranoid campaign was taking no chances).

Now that the Senator from Missouri has turned the electoral college challenge by congress is a fact rather than the wet dream that it was for democrats in 2001 2005 & 2017 we are hearing loud cries that this is sedition from the media and left.

This leads to the obvious question:

WHY?

If this election was on the up and up and if the belief currently held by large chunks of Americans that this election was stolen is false then it’s in the interest of the Media, the Democrat, the left and the Tech folks who insist that this is the case that it is clearly demonstrated to be so.

If there were:

  • no republican observers hustled out of rooms or kept away from the counts.
  • no large amounts of ballots pulled from out of tables once observers left
  • No computer systems were hacked or programed to change counts
  • No large quantities of ballots marked only for Joe Biden suddenly turning up in the middle of the night in Democrat strongholds
  • No widespread use of fraudulent mail ballots in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Detroit and other cities
  • No validity to the claims listed here by state from machines spotting dems 35k votes in Arizona to Xerox copies of military ballots all for Biden in Michigan.

And if those who submitted sworn statements under penalty of perjury were lying in order to change the result of the election then exposing this as a conspiracy theory to the general public is not only in their interest but it would be very easy to prove.

Yet the left and their allies are violently opposed to taking their chance to expose this nonsense for what they claim it is.

I submit and suggest the reason is:

They know it’s not nonsense and also know that if the evidence is showed to the American people it can be easily understood.

“But DaTechGuy”, you ask, “Why then are republicans, particularly those in leadership fight so hard to keep this from happening and objecting to publicly like Senator Pat Toomey foolishly as Dinesh D’Sousa suggests.

Dinesh is wrong here. Senator Toomey and those in the GOP like him are not being foolish, he is being cowardly.

If the objection had not taken place, if evidence is never presented to the congress then members of the GOP establishment can function as normal, raise money as normal and retire as normal to comfortable lives for them and theirs in the sure and comfortable knowledge that nobody will cause them any grief as they cash in on their office.

But once it became clear that the objection would take place everything changed. (There’s a reason why the number of house and senate members objecting skyrocketed once it became plain it was going to happen)

If evidence is presented publicly to the senate and is in fact convincing and they are forced to acknowledge it as such then a choice must be made. Do you risk your their political future by acting on this evidence angering the deep state which might be unforgiving when it comes time to sit on boards, take cushy jobs at universities or even cash in as a public speaker?

Or do they like Pilate decide that it’s too risky, do they reject the evidence and the risk of the wrath of voters while earning the love of the deep state and the preservation of their prerogatives that they were so looking forward to?

One will never grow poor betting on cowardice from public servants but there is a chance but a chance that they will choose to do the right thing.

Cue the 11th Doctor:

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