Archive for April, 2022

Five Libs of Tik Tok Thoughts Under the Fedora

Posted: April 21, 2022 by datechguy in Uncategorized

it’s generally a bad idea for a Newspaper to be caught in a straight out lie but the Washington Post managed to do so here:

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1516534502213840897?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1516534502213840897%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdonsurber.blogspot.com%2F2022%2F04%2Fhighlights-of-news_01812107177.html

On the plus side being owned by a billionaire means you can likely pay out any lawsuit something like that produces.

Again looking on the bright side of this for the Post from this story, a newspaper wants to make people think they are relevant and the post has certainly demonstrated that they can make a story or a subject visible.

The number of followers of the twitter account Libs of TikTok has as of this morning increased by more than 25% and counting and the videos made by the various liberals she is highlighting are getting a lot more views. None of this would have been possible without the efforts of the Washington Post so I guess this proves the relevance of the MSM to some degree still exists.

Another interesting point if the post wants to focus on the bright side of life is this. For the last week we have seen the Post and other liberal sites insist that the purchase of Twitter by Billionaire Elon Musk is a dangerous thing as it will promote standards that are contrary to the good of the country.

The Post story on the Libs of TikTok account and the attempt to intimidate and put in danger the Orthodox Jewish lady who runs it is a perfect demonstration of the dangers they are trying to illustrate: Don’t let Twitter get bought by a billionaire or they’ll become assholes without standards, just like us.

Not the method I’d use to make the point but hey it’s his paper.

What really struck me about the whole thing is that what the Libs of TikTok basically did was tweet out videos that leftists had willingly and deliberately put out on a public social media forum and exposed it to a larger audience.

Nothing get the left more upset than people seeing them as they are, and apparently as they are is pretty nasty. Remember this is why Stacy McCain was banned from twitter years ago for the crime of directly quoting liberals and letting people who might not have seen what they’ve said see it.

It’s all: Look at me, look at me and then: How dare you look at me!

Of course the funniest thing are the cries that this is an attack on the LGBTQ community and the implication that this is reinforcing negative stereotypes.

Shouldn’t they be angry at the people in the videos who made the videos and put them up on the net to be seen? Aren’t they by showing themselves as they are the culprits here?

What’s really making them angry is how it removes the plausible deniability from the various school districts, school boards and leftist pols who can’t pretend that these people in the videos are not the groomers people say they are.

Even better will be the number of people who pick up this standard

Texas is success and Illinois is failure

Posted: April 20, 2022 by John Ruberry in business, crime, culture, economy, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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Blogger in Big Bend Ranch State Park last week

By John Ruberry

After a ten-day vacation I’ve returned home to Illinois, which should be renamed ILL-inois.

Since I was born–let’s just say for the same of humility it was a really long time ago–Illinois and Texas had roughly the same population. The Land of Lincoln had slightly more than 10 million residents then, while the Lone Star State had about half-a-million fewer people. According to the 2020 Census, Texas was the home of 29 million people, with Illinois at just under 13 million. Overall, in the same time period the overall US population soared from 179 million to 329 million. 

Texas has prospered and continues to do so; Illinois has gone from stagnation to decline. The Prairie State has been losing population every year since 2014.

I know of many Illinoisans who have bailed on this state and moved to Texas. The most noted departure was that of Roger Keats, a former Republican state senator and onetime candidate for Crook County–oops I meant Cook County–board president. In his 2011 farewell letter to suckers like my wife and I, who remain here, titled “Goodbye and Good Luck,” Keats wrote, “I am tired of subsidizing crooks.”

Since I was born four Illinois governors, three Democrats and one Republican, have served time in federal prison. No Texas governors have suffered that indignity. Last month, Michael Madigan, who was Illinois’ most powerful politician until he was ousted as Illinois speaker of the House in 2021, was indicted on a whole slew of racketeering charges. Madigan, except for two years in the 1990s, served as House speaker beginning in 1981. From 1998 until 2021 Madigan was also chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party. Overlooked in the rundown of Boss Madigan’s career by journalists after his indictment is this ironic nugget: his predecessor as speaker was George H. Ryan, a Republican, who is one of Illinois’ felon governors. 

While the numbers might be slightly different today, here are more highlights from Keats’ Parthian shot: 

Illinois is ranked 50th for fiscal policy; 47th in job creation; first in unfunded pension liabilities; second largest budget deficit; first in failing schools; first in bonded indebtedness; highest sales tax in the nation; most judges indicted; and five of our last nine elected governors have been indicted. That is more than the other 49 states added together!… “We are moving to Texas where there is no income tax while Illinois’ just went up 67%. Texas’ sales tax is half of ours, which is the highest in the nation. Southern states are supportive of job producers, taxpayers and folks who offer opportunities to their residents. Illinois shakes them down for every penny that can be extorted from them.

While flying into Dallas Fort-Worth Airport I saw numerous suburban subdivisions under construction. I remember those halcyon home building days in Illinois. But the biggest boom I saw was in the oil industry towns of Odessa and Midland on the Permian Basin. Homes, office buildings, and hotels are popping up there like dandelions in spring. Or like Illinois politicians in prison.

Southern Illinois could be a lucrative area for oil fracking. But our state’s Democratic governor, J.B. Pritzker, says he supports “clean energy” and it’s believed he opposes fracking. He’s up for reelection this year. Why aren’t his Republican opponents calling for fracking in Illinois?

No place is perfect, not even Texas. It has its own power grid, heavily dependent on wind power, which works great, until it doesn’t, as was the case after a large ice storm last year. Millions of Texans were without power for several days after that storm. But twice in the last decade, I was without electricity for several days, as were hundreds-of-thousands of others in the northern suburbs of Chicago. Unlike the Texas outages in 2021, this was not a national news story. My provider for electricity is Commonwealth Edison, which has been implicated in the Michael Madigan scandals.

Illinois is misruled by con-artists like Professor Henry Hill, the scoundrel from the play and the movie The Music Man, only our grifters are bereft of Hill’s charm.

We may not end up relocating in Texas, but Mrs. Marathon Pundit and I will leave Illinois. My family roots here reach back to 1850. When my great-great grandfather, another John Ruberry, arrived in Illinois from Ireland, this state was the land of opportunity. Illinois is now the land of corruption, high taxes, and decline. 

Like Keats, my wife and I are sick of subsidizing these crooks.

John Ruberry regularly blogs from Morton Grove, Illinois at Marathon Pundit.

The Single Best Argument for Abortion and Birth Control I Have Heard in Years…

Posted: April 19, 2022 by datechguy in culture, media
Tags:

…is Taylor Lorentz claiming to have PTSD from being a Washington Post Journalist during a visit to MSNBC:

I mean yeah, police, firemen, soldiers, nurses and the people of Ukraine might have to deal with death, destruction and life and death on a daily basis, but that’s NOTHING compared to the nasty feedback she gets from doing things like Doxing the “libs of tic tock” account person who has the audacity to take videos that people deliberately put on a public worldwide forum and post them on a public worldwide forum.

I mean can you imagine how the children of such a woman would be prepared for life? Can you imagine them being able to cope with anything with such a person as their primary role model?

Granted abortion is murder and Birth Control is a sin and every person is made in the image of God (including Ms Lorenz) and with God all things are possible but if I was the left and wanted to try to persuade people that Abortion should be an option I’d put her on the posters saying: “Do you really want people like this raising children?”

All kidding aside Ms. Lorenz reminds me of something else.

Could you imagine the reaction if a male reporter claimed PTSD over online feedback?

Our “betters” keep telling us that women are men are equal yet we keep hearing stories about how hard women have it or their inability to cope.

So which is it elites? Are woman just as strong, tough and competent as men or are in need of special protection? Choose one.

(In fairness to our elites as they can’t define “woman” or “man” this question might be too much for them.

Closing thought: Totally unrelated headline via Citizen’s free press & NPR

It’s time to screen all kids for anxiety, physicians’ task force recommends

Cool Cal

Posted: April 19, 2022 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
Tags: ,

By Christopher Harper

As the 100th anniversary nears of his ascendency to the presidency, Calvin Coolidge is becoming cool.

Coolidge became the 30th president when Warren Harding died in 1923 and held the post until 1929, when he decided not to run. He promoted a mixture of lowering taxes, cutting the federal budget, removing the federal deficit after World War I, promoting racial harmony, and embracing America’s small-town heritage.

Coolidge is finally getting his due as a good president in a 2013 biography by Amity Shlaes and a more recent series of essays and a book about conservatives from Matthew Continetti, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Shlaes, a former journalist who heads the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation in his hometown of Plymouth, Vermont, carefully dispels many of the myths about Coolidge in her book.

Both Shlaes and Continetti want to give “Cool” Cal his due. “Cool” Cal seems a lot better than the liberals’ description of Coolidge as “Silent” Cal. 

Moreover, the misconstrued moniker fails to acknowledge Coolidge’s activities on the radio—long before FDR—and his fascination with modern technology, such as air travel. 

Although historians have placed Coolidge in the lower half of presidential accomplishments, Shlaes argues that that’s mainly because he was a conservative.

Her recalibration of Coolidge’s accomplishments argues that he’s worthy of a much higher place in presidential rankings.

Coolidge carefully steered the country through the disastrous aftermath of Woodrow Wilson’s calamitous post-World War I antics and illness and the scandals left by Warren Harding.

Continetti pushes Coolidge’s reputation into the upheavals of the 21st century, comparing Cal and Donald Trump.

“Both Coolidge and Mr. Trump staked their presidencies on voter satisfaction with broadly shared prosperity. Both supported restricting immigration into the United States. Both wanted to protect American industry from foreign competition. Both sought to avoid overseas entanglements,” Continetti wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal. “Trump’s views now dominate the Republican Party. For anyone who grew up with the GOP of Ronald Reagan, the two Bushes, and John McCain, this can be strange and bewildering. But in many respects, it’s a return to the principles of the 1920s of Coolidge.” 

Coolidge presided over a prosperous nation at peace. He preached America First—as did Trump. 

When I started my deep drive into presidential biographies about three months ago, I didn’t expect to find such an underrated president as Coolidge. 

I’d move him into my top tier of George Washington, James Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, Grover Cleveland, and Harry Truman. 

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