Archive for August, 2021

Report from Louisiana: Get me Outta Here!

Posted: August 23, 2021 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – So many conflicting emotions and stories on my news feed this morning. It’s enough to make one just pull the plug, put the house up for sale, and move out to the most rural, off the grid place you can find.

On the one hand, JOY! It’s the first day of school! Precious back-to-school pictures fill my social media feed of little children with big backpacks and happy smiles.

On the other hand, I also see one post after another of cancelled festivals and events due to the Covid surge. New Orleans has cancelled JazzFest, again. Everyone worries about Mardi Gras – will it happen or not?  Many other small, local festivals are announcing cancellations: the KBON Music Festival, the Delcambre Shrimp Festival, and Festival Acadiens et Créoles was rescheduled to the spring. The Natchitoches Meat Pie Festival and the Scott Boudin Festival also cancelled. The list continues to grow.

But school is fine, apparently, as is packed arenas for music concerts, and sports events.

It doesn’t add up.

In addition to all of this, on a more local level, we had at least three homicides in Shreveport yesterday several more shootings on top of that, one high-speed chase, and one elderly woman was stabbed sixteen times in the face and neck.

We may have topped 60 homicides for the year here yesterday, and we still have four more months to go. It isn’t getting any better, we had no leadership, and nobody willing to do anything to stop this violence. Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins has posted nothing but Covid vaccination and information on his social media feed for as far back as I can stand to scroll; not a word about the daily shootings and killings.

Silence.

It all just makes you think. You know, last week we were in a small community and nobody got shot, stabbed, or tried to kill a policeman. We could take an evening walk through town, leave our front doors unlocked, and not worry about getting robbed or mugged. People in these smaller communities know each other, they go to church together, the family unit is tight. That’s not to say they don’t have their problems, they do. Many rural communities across our country have terrible drug problems, young people bored with nothing to do, and their own unique issues.

There is no Utopia.

But after yesterday’s bloodbath here, it does make one long for a quieter community.

I don’t know what the answers are, and I know that Shreveport is far from unique in its crime problems. All I know for sure is that an answer must be found. We spend a lot of time throwing blame and not enough time working for solutions, it seems. And maybe that’s all I’m doing here; I just know I no longer wish to live in this city where human life apparently has absolutely no value and our leaders are silent about it.

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

Irony/Cowardice Overload Sunday 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time Edition

Posted: August 23, 2021 by datechguy in catholic, Church doctrine
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Courage is the first of human virtues because it makes all others possible.

Aristotle

If you are a Roman Catholic who went to mass Sunday you heard the readings from Lectionary 122 for the 21st Sunday in ordinary time. and if you paid attention to your Missal you might be subject to an Irony overload.

Everywhere that mass took place the faithful heard the same reading from the Book of Joshua 24:1-2, 15-18 where Joshua gives the people a choice to follow God or no declaring: “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord”.

And also everywhere that mass took place that reading from Joshua was followed by the same responsorial Psalm verses from Psalm 34 (Ps 34:2-3, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21) with the refrain: “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.”.

But depending on where you went to mass and the choice of the Pastor the next reading might have been different. The Lectionary calls for the 2nd reading to be from the letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians 5:21-32 which goes like this:

Brothers and sisters:

Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.  Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body.  As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So also husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. 

He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

    For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother

        and be joined to his wife,

    and the two shall become one flesh.

This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.

However an option is given to reduce this reading to Ephesians 5:2a, 25-32 adding the 1st part of verse 2 which looks like this (omitted verses in strikethrough, added verse in underline)

Brothers and sisters:

Live in love, as Christ loved us.

Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.  Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body.  As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So also husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. 

He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

    For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother

        and be joined to his wife,

    and the two shall become one flesh.

This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.

So as you can see rather than both Husbands and wives being subordinate to one another and each having duties the duties of the wife are omitted while the duties of the Husband are retained. This is done to avoid the anger of feminists within the church which is very ironic given that once you have exercised your option on the 2nd reading all congregations are given the same final Gospel reading, the end of Jesus the bread of life discourses in the Gospel of John 6:60-69 begins:

Many of Jesus’ disciples who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?”

However Jesus rather than equivocating or ducking the issue or offering an alternate teaching challenges his disciples:

Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them,

“Does this shock you? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.”


Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him. And he said,

“For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father.”

Jesus doesn’t back down one jot and because of this some of his disciples leave

As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.

At this Jesus turns to the twelve. Rather than having second thoughts about his teaching he doubles down and gives the same option to the apostles who come back with the right answer


Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?” 

Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”

So think about that for a second. The very week that Jesus in the Gospel stands up for his teaching even if it costs him many disciples the US Bishops precede that critical moment with the option for the local pastor to run for cover in case anyone might be offended by divinely inspired scripture. This is a shame because the church teaches us that courage is one of the four cardinal virtues.

The irony is palatable, but not as palatable as the cowardice

What does the White House staff and the media know about Biden’s cognitive decline?

Posted: August 22, 2021 by John Ruberry in baseball, economy, media, News/opinion, politics, Sports, Uncomfortable Truths
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Connie Mack in 1938. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

By John Ruberry

The United States’ worst week in my lifetime was the prior one. 9/11 was a horrific tragedy but after that attack Americans were united in a way, albeit briefly, that it probably hasn’t been since World War II and sadly, we probably won’t see such unity again.

While our leaving South Vietnam in 1975 after years of fighting there was a major blow to our psyche–the South Vietnamese military still hung on for over two years after America’s combat role ended. 

Afghanistan fell to our enemy, the Taliban, last week, nearly a month before President Joe Biden’s withdrawal date, September 11–which was later changed to August 31. Americans, friendly Afghans, and our allies who want to leave Afghanistan are unable get to the Kabul Airport. And people at the airport are being killed by the Taliban.

The Soviet puppet state in Afghanistan managed to maintain power for three years after the USSR returned home.

The situation in Afghanistan is so awful that the mainstream media, CNN and the New York Times for instance, have slowly turned again Biden. They’re not as hostile as they were with Donald J. Trump. but it’s a start. I suspect they are holding Biden accountable only to protect what remaining credibility they have with the ten-percent of Americans who whole-heartedly believe their spin and lies.  

When Biden began his third presidential run two years ago something was very evident. Let’s just say the spin was off of his fastball, that it appeared that “Good ole Joe” wasn’t “all there” anymore, even as he squinted at his teleprompter reading remarks written by someone else. 

I’ll be returning to baseball a bit later.

Last week Biden, or more likely the president’s protectors among his family and this staff, chose the most sympathetic interviewer they know, former Bill Clinton senior staffer–and donor to the tainted Clinton Foundation–ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, to give the president the opportunity to explain why the Afghanistan defeat is not a debacle.

Notice that I didn’t call Stephanopoulos a journalist.

Even Biden’s dwindling number of apologists admit the ABC interview went poorly for him..

But the worst part of the ABC interview ended up on the cutting room floor, as Tucker Carlson pointed out on his show. When Stephanopolous questioned the chaotic nature of our withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden replied.

Look, that’s like askin’ my deceased son Beau, who spent six months in Kosovo and a year in Iraq as a Navy captain and then major– I mean, as an Army major. And, you know, I’m sure h– he had regrets comin’ out of Afganista– I mean, out of Iraq.

Amazing. Biden can’t immediately keep straight where his son served and with which branch. Beau Biden never served in Kosovo or Afghanistan. And Beau was in the Army. Not the Navy. Had Trump expressed such confusion some Democratic blowhard, probably Sen. Chuck Schumer, would be calling for the president to take a mental acuity test and suggest enacting the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. 

What else is on the cutting room floor of other Biden interviews, both as a candidate running from inside his “basement bunker” or as president? As a resident of the White House there isn’t much Biden material to work with. Since being sworn in as president Biden conducted only nine sit-down interviews. At the same point in their presidencies Barack Obama had done 113 and Trump 50. Someone is afraid of the media, a media that until this month was quite friendly to Biden.

In the sad later years of Connie Mack’s unprecedented 50-year tenure as manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, he often couldn’t remember the names of his current players but he’d call for substitutions with players who hadn’t played for the A’s in decades. Imagine Chicago White Sox manager Tony LaRussa, who used to manage the Athletics, calling for pinch hitting Jose Abreu with Mark McGwire.

Are there moments like that with Biden? Does the media know? Do they have videotape of it? Stephanopolous of course has the recording of Biden confusing his son’s miltary service. What about prior Stephanopolous interviews of Biden? Those should be made public in their entirety immediately by ABC News.

Mack owned the Athletics so firing him was problematic–but he was eventually forced out by his sons in 1950 when he was 87.

If we have not just a confused but also a senile man as president then removing him from office is the duty of Congress. And the rest of media, if they have evidence of Biden’s cognitive decline, then they need to cough it up now.

And that goes for Biden’s staff as well. When Mack made his non-sensical calls as manager of the Athletics, his coaches would calmly overrule “the Grand Old Man of Baseball.” Is Biden’s staff stepping in and overruling their old man?

Who is in charge? Or as Chris Wallace this morning asked of Biden’s secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, “Does the president not know what’s going on?” Note how Blinken doesn’t answer Wallace’s question in this clip.

Mack ran the Athletics into the ground after many great years at the helm, leading his team to nine American League pennants. Biden never had any great years. Mack’s A’s were just a baseball team. America of course is so much more–not just here at home but to the rest of the world.

Afghanistan is not the only failure of the Biden presidency. There is the border crisis and his inconsistent policy on COVID-19. Are these flops the work of a man who is mentally adrift?

And has Biden’s open borders policy with Mexico made the COVID resurgence worse? Failure seems to be piling upon failure–and we are just seven months into Biden’s term.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

An American Father

Posted: August 22, 2021 by datechguy in culture, education
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All Politics is local

Tip O’Neill

The last 10 months from the steal of the election to the dishonorable debacle in Afghanistan I’ve really been in despair concerning the state of my country that my sons will be inheriting.

And then I saw this:

a lot of people make a lot of money on the race racket. This man isn’t one of them and the best part of his speech at the local school board is that it made a difference:

The good news is this shows that the Race racket in general and Critical race theory can be beaten at the local level ie people stand up to fight and refused to be played. He understand that the most dangerous thing to a person’s success is an excuse to fail.

The bad news is that even after this speech Critical Race Theory was beaten by one vote.

As long as there are financial incentives for the race racket there will be people playing the race card but local action can trump it but only if people are willing to fight.

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