Archive for May, 2021

Remember Operation Warp Speed!

Posted: May 4, 2021 by chrisharper in Uncomfortable Truths
Tags: , ,

By Christopher Harper

As Joe Biden tries to take a victory lap over the vaccination program, he and the media have suppressed any praise for Operation Warp Speed, the Trump program that made the shots available far sooner than anyone expected. 

On May 15, 2020, President Trump announced the program to encourage private and public partnerships to enable faster approval and production of vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic. The name came from the speed of travel from Star Trek. 

Here’s how constant Trump critic David Sanger of The New York Times greeted the program:

“President Trump is pressing his health officials to pursue a crash development program for a coronavirus vaccine that could be widely distributed by the beginning of next year, despite widespread skepticism that such an effort could succeed and considerable concern about the implications for safety.

“In more normal times, a vaccine can take upward of a decade to get through all the regulatory approvals. Some officials note the dangers of rushing: During the Ford administration, a rushed vaccine for swine flu caused several dozen deaths and damaging side effects.”

A photo cutline that accompanied the article said: “Dr. Anthony Fauci has warned the president and his team that a vaccine would take at least a year to develop and produce.”

I checked the article for a correction or a retraction and found none. 

That doesn’t surprise me. Neither does the absence of praise for what President Trump and his administration helped accomplish: a vaccine for the virus.

Only recently, a bevy of media hacks misrepresent Trump’s role in finding a solution.

CNN political analyst Gloria Borger falsely said Operational Warp Speed occurred under President Biden, and no one on CNN’s panel corrected her in real time. The correction to the falsehood came much later.

“Everybody understands that Operation Warp Speed happened under Joe Biden, but getting vaccines into arms was a Biden operation,” Borger said.

The Trump administration gave somewhat more than $12 billion for the development and testing of the vaccines. So far, two of the companies that got money, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna, have effective shots. A third vaccine from Pfizer got substantial funds from the German government, and the Trump administration ordered 100 million doses for $2 billion. 

Without Operation Warp Speed, the vaccines would not have been available to stop the spread of the virus.

As Paul Harvey used to say: “And now you know…the rest of the story.” 

Thank you, President Trump!

The Blue Man’s Burden

Posted: May 4, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

With Thanks to Mr. Kipling

TAKE up the Blue Man's burden -
Enlist forth the best ye breed -
Go bind your kids to service
To all the public's need;
To wait in heavy harness
With Badge pinned on your chest -
Confront the criminal element 
That never is at rest.

Take up the Blue Man's burden -
In patience to abide
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred threats diffuse,
The Angry, doped or sullen,
So normal lives resumes.

Take up the Blue Man's burden -
To savage streets give peace -
Be present at the accident
So life may not soon cease;
When every single moment 
From domestic to traffic stop,
May bring unexpected crisis 
To Bring your hopes to naught.

Take up the Blue Man's burden -
No social workers in sight,
As you walk the streets and sweep em
Neighborhoods full of fright.
When calls are make go enter,
Where others fear to tread,
Confront them with your living,
And mark them with your dead !

Take up the Blue Man's burden -
And reap the new reward,
The blame of those you protect,
The hate of those you guard -
The tag of "racist" bear it
As activists make their cry:-
Though you're the first they shout for,
If foes come in their sight

Take up the Blue Man's burden -
You dare not stoop to less -
And enjoy the sweet poured coffee
To cloak your weariness;
Your spouse may cry and worry,
When leave for work you do,
While media and academia
All throw their ire at you.

Take up the Blue Man's burden -
Have done with childish days -
Don't seek lightly proffered laurels,
Or Cultures easy, praise.
Come serve protect and guard them
Through all the thankless years,
And when day duties are over,
Know you've have earned your beer.

Report from Louisiana: Office Space

Posted: May 3, 2021 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
Tags: , ,

By: Pat Austin

I have been thinking a lot lately about workspaces. As I transition into retirement, leaving my classroom of twenty-five years, I have been moving some things home and setting up a new workspace in my house.

When I wrote my first book, I did it on my laptop sitting at an antique oak desk in front of a big picture window in my living room where I can look out at the neighborhood, watch the rain, and cars speeding down my residential street.  The desk belonged to my grandfather in a railroad office and the top is scarred and marked with various scratches, dents, and ink spills. I have never had the least interest in refinishing it; I love its character.

Working on my second book now, I feel like I want to do this one in a different space. I know, that makes no sense whatsoever, but the opportunity has just sort of developed organically. I’ve inherited a powerful desktop computer from my gamer-son, so I bought a nice, new monitor and have set up a new space.  This time my “desk” is a marble topped wrought iron table that used to be my breakfast table. My chair is an old classroom teacher chair that I brought home and covered in pages from To Kill a Mockingbird, slathered with ModPodge, and finished with several coats of polyurethane. The result is pretty cool.

Speaking of cool office spaces, there is a guy I follow on Instagram only for his beautiful shots of his writing space. I don’t know him, never met him, but I feel like we would be friends based on his workspace.  The sepia tints, the browns and earth tones create a casual, moody vibe. Most of his photographs have a cup of coffee in them; that’s his schtick, I guess. The pictures are cropped in a minimalist fashion, drawing your focus to one specific item in the picture. The focus might be his turntable with an album cover of a cool jazz recording sitting on top or a neat stack of music biographies. It just looks cool, and I enjoy checking out his feed each day.

I like my space where I write to be clear of clutter, except of course for my research. While writing Cane River Bohemia, I had stacks of books piled on the floor, piles of primary source material, letters, photocopies, my index card file, and a stack of USB drives, but it was all put away and organized at the end of the day.  But with my desk in the front, main room of the house, it was extremely difficult to concentrate. My family, as much as I love them, always walked by with a question about dinner, someone expressing their own boredom, my husband’s frequent “aww look at the cat!” statements, and the incessant television carrying on. I feel the need for a quieter space this time. In fact, I wrote all of Cane River Bohemia with headphones and my Writing playlist now that I think about it.

My new workspace isn’t perfect, and it isn’t complete. All I really want is a quiet space that is mine, and that is relatively free from clutter.  Will it help my writing? Probably not, but I’m having fun creating it, and isn’t that the point? It’s the journey, not the destination.

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

I was just thinking…

Posted: May 3, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

How is it possible that the same people who have a horror of genetically modified foods think it’s OK to pump hormones into kids to block puberty?

Why would people who tell us they’ve won an election fair and square be taking such efforts even four months after courts have ruled to keep people from auditing ballots to verify this supposed fact?

Why are some of the people who are loudest in their opposition to the police ones who have regular police protection?

How is it that business are not afraid of those that the media insist are dangerous because they insist on their second amendment rights but are terrified of group who march who are opposed to them?

Why is the Cardinal who warns members of his flock about sins which can carry eternal damnation in order to save them from it considered hateful while one who ignores or dismisses such sins without warning of their consequences considered loving?

Older Entries
Newer Entries