Archive for June, 2022

One Quick Warning about the SCOTUS Gun Ruling today

Posted: June 23, 2022 by datechguy in Uncategorized

There is some good news on the 2A front out of the SCOTUS as the Justices struck down a law which required people to show cause before carrying a weapon for self defense:

“The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees,'” Thomas wrote. “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need. That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion. It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for self-defense.”

In an era of high crime and the authorities not protecting conservatives this is very good but let me give one warning.

Some might look at this ruling and say: “Well we don’t have to worry about the gun control bill and red flag laws because SCOTUS will strike them down.”

Let me remind people who think this of two things:

  1. The only reason why this vote was 6-3 and not 5-4 was because it was a fait acompli. If there had been one more liberal vote to uphold this law rest assured that Justice Roberts would have voted the other way.
  2. People thought the same thing about Obamacare,. That it would not pass SCOTUS muster was conventional wisdom and the public argument right up to the moment when the court suddenly upheld it.

Don’t let them fool you here.

St. John Fisher, St. Thomas Moore, Blueberries LightYear vs Minions, Another Taste of Lawrence’s CRT lesions for Youth and Pinball Under the Fedora

Posted: June 22, 2022 by datechguy in Uncomfortable Truths
Tags: , , , , , ,

Today is the feast day of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas Moore who choose to die rather than betray the faith for gain in the world.

Given what we’re seen from the church lately with Bishops and priests (with some notable exceptions) unwilling to stand for the faith and Public servants either not enforcing the laws or enforcing them selectively based on political allegiance they seem to be saints critical for our time.

I’m shocked they haven’t been dropped from the calendar.

My wife is a blueberry person and would regularly buy muffins at Hannaford market. However a bit ago she cut open her muffin and there were no blueberries inside. This is despite the fact that the price for the Muffins has gone up considerably.

It led to some drama when we cut open the 2nd Muffin of the two pack:

https://youtu.be/Czq_DTvq3-0

All of this brings to mind Casino:

https://youtu.be/Yz_-k9qoYns

This is actually the “broken windows” theory of enforcement where if you take care of small things you cut down on large one.

Under the left this has become passé and we’re paying for it.

There have been a lot of excuses for the failure of Lightyear by the defenders of Disney, none on them involved the decision to push homosexuality in a film for kids.

Alas for the woke crowd unlike schools they can not compel attendance in theatres so if parents don’t want to push this junk on their kids they don’t have to.

The real fun is going to come with the new movie Minions: The Rise of Gru. You see if all the Disney apologists are right then this movie should do just as badly as Lightyear because all of the same issues they claim are holding back Lightyear’s take will still be in play when it comes out.

Of course if Minions The Rise of Gru is as big of a hit as it seems likely to be it will just be another proof of the media as the lying propagandists that they are.

Not that they care anymore, they’ve given up on worrying about the pretense of being objective.

Speaking of schools here is another bit from that stuff I hinted at earlier that they are teaching elementary school kids in the Lawrence school system.

More of that Critical Race Theory that doesn’t exist

Funny for something that the left/media claimed was just a right wing fantasy there sure seems to be a lot of prepared items ready to be disseminated to public school kids in lieu of teaching thing useless things like reading, writing and arithmetic, particularly in schools were the parents don’t have a lot of other options.

I had planned to write something more extensive today about but I had forgotten about Juneteenth being a national holiday so the school crowd I tried to contact for comment might not have been in so I figured it would be fair to give them another day just out of fairness.

Of course I suspect I’ll be a tad busy the next few days…

…as PintasticNE begins tomorrow night and I plan on enjoying myself to the fullest.

As a teaser I have an interview with the owner of Cape Cod and Beyond a company that rents out machines who came down the house to pick up the Batman 66 machine that my sons and wife rented me for my birthday.

https://youtu.be/eEAn6ofwjhU

I suspect that you’ll see a lot more of these rental companies and the price of Pinball machines and the potential for investment continues to grow, but I think the real driver is the problem of where do you store these things if you don’t have to room for it.

The nice thing about a rental is there is always a fresh machines in your hands.

For the next four days I’ll be knee deep in pinball and I’ll forget about Biden, the Gas prices, Bad Government, and the lot.

We all need a few days away from it.

The Medicare morass

Posted: June 21, 2022 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
Tags: ,

By Christopher Harper

As I head toward retirement at the end of the month, my wife and I have had to delve into the Medicare morass.

Simply put, Medicare is one of the most confusing bureaucracies I’ve ever dealt with. Since I used to report on government bureaucracies, I thought I would have some expertise in cutting through the weeds.

For the most part, I was wrong.

For those who have yet to head into the Medicare morass, I pity you. For those who have managed to get through the barriers already, I applaud you and also pity you.

Medicare, run by the Social Security Administration, is one of the most complex organizations in the country, providing some form of hospital, medical, and drug coverage for millions of Americans, most of whom are 65 and older.

Here’s my story of banging my head against the Medicare walls.

I wanted to sign up for Medicare coverage a few months before I retired, and that’s tricky. I was able to sign up for Medicare, but I couldn’t tailor our coverage until one month before I retired.

That’s when the voluminous number of letters and responses started with Medicare. It appears that the organization doesn’t know how to use email or other forms of electronic correspondence.

I had to file three separate letters to Medicare to convince the minions that I was retiring.

I then was told my Medicare costs would be significantly higher for my wife and me because I earned more than I should in 2020. I had to appeal that decision, convincing the authorities that my retirement in June would mean I wouldn’t make as much money. That took two appeals—another set of letters and responses—until I finally returned to the original Medicare cost.

Then I decided to obtain a Medicare Advantage program from a private insurance company to ensure my wife and I got decent coverage for health issues and drugs. It’s rather strange since we don’t have many health issues.

The number of Medicare Advantage programs is voluminous and complicated. I still don’t truly understand the drug formula, known as the “donut,”—which is supposed to make it less costly the more drugs you have to use.

Most of my doctors take Medicare, but my chiropractor doesn’t. He finds it too costly to get paid by the government.

Our dentist doesn’t take Medicare. In fact, only a handful of dentists in our area take Medicare, so we added an extra dental plan at $109 a month.

For the past decade, I have had a Health Savings Account, which allowed us to save about 25 percent in taxes on the money spent for copays and other approved procedures that insurance plans didn’t cover. That saved us about $600 a year in taxes.

Medicare doesn’t allow such accounts. Although Congress has tried to pass such measures, not much has happened.

During the 2020 campaign, most Democrats called for “Medicare for All,” meaning that everyone would be brought under the umbrella of the health program. Since it’s estimated that Medicare may go bankrupt in a few years on its present course, it seems evident to me that would be a bad idea.

I’ll report later whether Medicare works for my wife and me. But I’ve added a few more gray hairs and seen my blood pressure rise during my lengthy attempt just to get signed up for the program.

“What Identify Do You Choose?”

Posted: June 21, 2022 by datechguy in catholic, Church doctrine, culture
Tags: ,

Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours-and the more “religious” (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here,

C. S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters #7

The story concerning Bishop McManus decree that Nativity School in Worcester MA may no longer identify as Catholic has gone national and international.

I suspect that McManus who I know and is the Bishop of my diocese will get a lot of pushback from Massachusetts “Catholics” whose primary allegiance is to the left but there are two bits of the story that are rather significant that deserve to be amplified.

The first was this line which might seem throw away but I think is pretty big:

In March, Bishop McManus was made aware of the flags being flown over the Roman Catholic affiliated school and, according to the school, asked them to remove the flags.

He issued a public statement, and later a letter regarding the flags, after private talks with the school were reported on by the media.

In other words he was willing to deal with this privately. I suspect flags that said: “End Racism” and/or “God Loves Everyone” would have been perfectly acceptable, conveying the messages the Jesuit school wanted to advance without adding political context contrary to church teachings

But the “private” talks became public, almost as if someone decided to leak them in order to put pressure on the Bishop.

Remind you of anything?

The second came from the public statement Bishop made in his open letter to the community last month as he explained church teaching:

We believe we are created by God at the moment of conception, something science supports by the presence of a unique DNA distinct from the mother. We believe that we are all loved into existence by God and redeemed by the Christ’s dying on the cross and rising from the dead to make it possible to enjoy eternal life with God in heaven. We call that the “Good News.” We are stewards of our bodies but not owners to do with it as we please. So, while I must love my neighbor regardless of what they consider their gender to be, no one, including individual popes, bishops, or Catholic school teachers, can say that Catholic teaching can condone transgenderism, since that gender is a gift from God.


Which brings us to the issue of the flags at Nativity School. These symbols which embody specific agendas or ideologies contradict Catholic social and moral teaching. Gay pride flags not only represent support for gay marriage, but also promote actively living an LGBTQ+ lifestyle.  Others in society may say that is fine. Such people may be doing wonderful humanitarian work. But an institution that calls itself Catholic cannot condone that behavior, even though the Catholic Church will “go to the mat” in teaching we must love those with whom we disagree.


The same is true for Black Lives Matter as a logo. Because every human life is sacred, the Church is 100% behind the phrase “black lives matter.” However, a specific movement with a wider agenda has co-opted the phrase and promotes a 13-principle agenda for schools, which, I daresay, most people do not know about but is easily available on the internet. Similar to the gay pride movement, those principles include, in their own words, to be “queer affirming” and “trans affirming.”


The BLM movement also contradicts Catholic social teaching on the role of the family. To Catholics, the Holy Family is not just a quaint image. God the Son chose to enter the world as a child and be raised by a mother and a father (the Nativity). The BLM movement in its own words is “committed to disrupting the Western prescribed nuclear family structure requirement,” which is another clear example of an ideological principle that conflicts with Catholic teaching.

He ended this phrase with the key question to the Jesuits at Nativist school:

So to the Board of Nativity School, the question is simply this: Which identity do you choose? 

emphasis mine

You would think Jesuits would know this stuff and believe it but apparently not as the Jesuits choose the world and will be lauded by the world for it.

Bishop McManus is going to get a lot of grief over this decision in this bluest of cities in this bluest of states but apparently he knows his Gospel realizes that grief from the world is part of the job description for a prince of the church.

“If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you.

Remember the word I spoke to you, ‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. And they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me.

If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin; but as it is they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me also hates my Father.

John 15:18-23

It’s nice to have a bishop who believes, but it’s sad to reach the point in the church where such a Bishop is a novelty and a sign of courage rather than the rule.

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