Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – It has been at least five years since I looked at Drudge with any regularity. In the (distant) past I rather enjoyed the site but man, the site really seemed to change. Such drama! Things just seemed so slanted. Did it change or was it just me? I don’t know, but I quit looking at it very often. Every now and then I’ll pop in over there and see what’s up. And then I leave.

Well so now we have the new Omnicron variant of the Coronavirus and Drudge is going crazy. Lockdowns! Likely in USA! Colossal outbreak! Unusual symptoms! State of emergency!

Please.

Just stop.

The variant has not been seen in the US and so far, the symptoms in people with this variant have been milder than in any other variant to date.

People are sick and tired of this panic. Now I’m not denying the Covid-19 is serious. I’m going to a funeral tomorrow morning as a matter of fact for the wife of a friend. She is a Covid fatality. Straight up. No other underlying conditions, nothing else. So yeah, I know it is a real thing, but it seems to me that if we keep crying wolf and stirring up all this panic all the time, people might be more receptive to whatever we need to do to deal with this.

Anyway. It is at least entertaining to look at Drudge every now and then, but I no longer take the site seriously as a news source. As we have established before, it is difficult to find an unbiased, accurate news site any longer. It’s the same situation for television news. Thank goodness for blogs, right?!

Perhaps this would be a good time to hit Pete’s tip jar!

Help me out…what are your go-to sites these days when you want news and information? Mostly blogs? News sites? Twitter? Where do you go? Expand my horizons, please!

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 (LSU Press).

A while back I wrote about the relative measures of success for Brady and Belichick in their new positions. As Brady has already won a superbowl we can safely state that he has met the goals without re-iterating them.

As for the Patriots and Belichick I graded the Pats on the following scale based on the pre-Brady years:

Any year that the New England Patriots post Brady:

• Have a winning record: should be considered OK
• Win 11 games: should be considered a success
• Win their division: should be considered a big success
• Make the playoffs: should considered a huge success.
• Win a playoff game: should be considered an spectacular success
• Go to the Superbowl: should be considered an extraordinary success
• Win a Superbowl: should be considered a Miracle

Now there are those who consider that a fair amount of Tom Brady’s success in general and the Patriots success in particular should be given to Coach Bill Belichick who some consider the greatest coach in Football history. For those of you who consider this the case let’s make a slight adjustment.

Any year the New England Patriots Under Belichick post Brady

• Win a Superbowl, it’s an extraordinary success
• Go to the Superbowl it’s a spectacular success
• Win a playoff game it’s a Huge success
• Make the playoffs, it’s a big success
• Win their division, it’s a success
• Win at least 11 games, it’s an OK season
• Win less than 11 games…fire the bum!

These are reasonable expectations. I suspect that Patriots fans after two decades of winning will not be as generous as me with their expectations.

with the disastrous Cam Newton season I wrote this about Belichick:

This makes the Bill Belichick Era going into today’s game a 24-34 as the coach of the New England Patriots in games not started by Tom Brady and in the three seasons that he coached the team sans Brady he made the playoffs….nearly once.

My expectations scale was “fire the bum” if he failed to win at least 11 but given the Covid situation that while effecting all teams hit his team hard I’d give him another season’s leeway, particularly if he can manage to make .500. If not I think we can safely say that the question of Bill vs Tom in terms of credit has been answered conclusively.

Well the Patriots are now 8-4 , in first place in their division and while not a lock for the playoffs yet looking pretty good with Rookie Mac Jones at the helm. Under standard Patriots scale it’s already an OK season and the Pats only have to go 3-2 the rest of the way to qualify for OK status under my Belichick scale.

Belichick has done this with a Rookie QB who had four other QB’s picked ahead of him.

It may be early to say this but I think we must conclude that Brady + Belichick were the perfect storm of the best in their professions coming together and that neither one negates the greatness of the other.

But there are still a few games to play so let’s see…