Archive for June, 2022

Report from Louisiana: A Generic Economy

Posted: June 20, 2022 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – A few days ago on this blog, datechguy wrote about a favorite local business that was a casualty of the Biden economy:

In the grand scheme of things it’s just one more business that has gone under thanks to the Biden Administration Economy and the steal of the last election. It’s just a few more jobs lost by people who worked there for decades, it’s just one more person whose decades of hard work building a business has gone for naught. Nobody in Washington will note it, it will not make the NY Time or the Washington Post or the TV news nor will those in the administration which insists we have a booming economy notice that it is gone.

Y’all. I could have written this myself because the same thing happened to me this week and I know it’s happening all over the country. I know it is.

One of my favorite local businesses is Champagne’s Bakery located in Henderson, Louisiana on the edge of the Atchafalaya Basin. The business began 134 years ago in Breaux Bridge and is known for their French bread which they sell wholesale to a large percentage of restaurants in the Acadiana region. At the bakery in Henderson, when the bread is fresh and hot, a flashing light like a siren will spin wildly on their sign. It’s a landmark!

Champagne’s (pronounced SHAM-pines)  is known for their trademark “pink cookies.” They are about the size of a quarter and are little sandwich cookies with icing as the filling. They are just the right size to pop into your mouth whole. During Mardi Gras they make them in purple and green; during football season you can get them in LSU purple and gold or Ragin’ Cajuns red. But always there are pink ones. They are delicious!

When the bakery announced on social media last week that they were closing, a large number of shocked commentors lamented the loss of the pink cookie.

A local radio station reached out to the owner for an explanation:

Paul said that, like most places, the bakery took a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic. Business slowed, but Paul said it wasn’t terrible.

The bakery was still recovering from the pandemic and things were looking pretty good until, he says,  the economy began to turn.

When I pressed him for more, he said that inflation is killing the business.

3 years ago, Paul was paying around $15 for a case of eggs. Today, he is paying around $60. A few years ago, shortening for the baker cost Paul about $28 for shortening. Today, that same package of shortening sets him back $90.

Who can survive increases like that?!

Not to mention that when we were there two weeks ago, they were having trouble getting supplies in because of trucking woes. Their suppliers couldn’t get their goods to them. Smaller trucking companies are having to lay people off and make adjustments of their own; look at the diesel prices to figure that one out.

So, yes, I’m mad that I’m losing my favorite bakery. I’m even more mad that another, yet ANOTHER, local mom ‘n pop business is going under, a casualty of the Biden economy. But what really bothers me is where this is going to end. The WalMarts are going to survive. They’ll be here forever. Most of your chain restaurants are going to survive too. But soon you’re going to lose the local flavor, and even part of the culture, of what makes your area unique.

You’ll have to participate in hyper-capitalism to get anything done, to buy goods and materials, to eat.

Our local diners, those that are left, are struggling. They’re raising prices, they’re closing a couple of days a week, they’re struggling to find employees. They have to take what they can get from the labor force and it’s often lackluster.

I diverge from my point a bit, but really, where is this going to end?

In The Advocate this morning was an article about struggling shrimpers; fishing is a major source of livelihood for people in south Louisiana but rising fuel prices are contributing to the demise of that for a lot of fishermen.

Where does it all end? What will out economy and our culture look like at the end of this?

The loss of our local bakeries, restaurants, diners, and shops will soon mean our country is generic from one end to the other. You won’t be able to tell New Orleans from San Francisco.

Maybe I exaggerate, but not by much.

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.

If As The Left Claims A Transgender “Woman” like Lia Thomas has no unfair advantage …

Posted: June 20, 2022 by datechguy in Uncategorized

…then why don’t we hear about all the Transgender men doing well in Men’s sports?

I mean if there actually is no difference if you grew up with the muscle mass of a man or not in sports then we should be hearing about all kinds of Transgender men making big strides in college and pro sports. We should be hearing about transgender men playing in the high minors, Transgender men being scouted for the NFL draft and NBA drafts and Transgender men making splashes internationally in Hockey and Soccer.

If the actual biology doesn’t matter this should be a story somewhere, shouldn’t it?

Privilege Theory vs Actual Reality at a Bar in Leominster

Posted: June 19, 2022 by datechguy in culture

Yesterday after opening day in my face to face Tabletop league (My Nationals took 2 of 3 from the world champion Rockies) and an unexpected nap I found myself alone in the house with a couple of hours to go before my wife got home. Normally I’d head to Happy Jacks but their surprise closing drove me a bit farther down route 12 to Longhorn Steakhouse home of the Spicy Chicken Bites, the Best Appetizer for the price in town.

There was a woman behind the bar. When I sat down she was in the process of reconciling her drawer but recognized me from visits with DaWife for dinner and knew what I wanted. I watched her between pitches and it brought to mind my mother watching bartenders and being able to tell who was stealing and who was not (she wasn’t btw). She was rather busy as a good bartender is, constantly washing glasses, busing the bar, fixing drinks for customers in the primary restaurant. I’ve always enjoyed watching a person do a job well and like the late Mike Romano who cut meat like the pro he was, this Bartender knew her craft and was able to keep all of us taken care of while still cashing out for her replacement.

Farther down the bar there was a thin fellow whose arms suggested he did some weightlifting. We struck up a conversation and it turned out he was formally employed at the same Market Basket as my son and a friend now working at one closer to his home.

He talked about working six days a week, about trying to keep up with his department, how hard it was to get help and the extra time that meant for him, but he also talked about his granddaughter and how he made it a point to put away money from those all those six day weeks so that when she was 18 and he was about to retire he could give her some cash to get herself started.

Noticing the time I headed home as DaWife was at work and was scheduled to get out at 10 PM. I got in at 9:35 and did some picking up so the place would be more presentable when she got home, but she didn’t get home at 10:15 as expected. It was past eleven when she walked in the door. She was the only nurse on duty at her place and there was work that had to be done which kept her for an extra hour. This was something that was not unusual on days when she was alone and she was happy to finally be off her feet and only deal with the aches and pains that are standard as you prepare to complete a sixth decade of life.

As I watched her go to the recliner I thought about the fellow working six days a week and the bartender who was busting her ass at her job and realized that based on the materials I had been given which I wrote about yesterday children all over the country are being taught how these three hard working people are members of a privileged class of oppressors who are keeping others down and that moreover there are people making a fortune off of selling this lie and shaking down corporations, perhaps even the ones these three are working for, to help finance this lie to not only school kids but to the public at large.

This is how you create division and how you bring down a republic.

Review: Season 6 of Peaky Blinders

Posted: June 19, 2022 by John Ruberry in entertainment, media
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By John Ruberry

Earlier this month Season Six of the BBC gangster drama, Peaky Blinders, began streaming on Netflix.

The show centers on a Birmingham Romani organized crime family, the Shelbys, and the leader of that gang, Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy). He’s a World War I veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, who manages to build a business empire, while getting elected to Parliament as a member of the Labour Party.

This will be the final season of Peaky Blinders, although a movie is said to be in the works.

The next two paragraphs contain some Season 5 and 6 spoilers.

During Season 5 a new major character, Oswald Mosley (Sam Claflin), a Birmingham member of Parliament like Tommy Shelby, is introduced. He’s the founder of a British fascist party–and Mosley was a real person. Shelby’s relationship with Mosley is complicated, which fits the show as the plot lines are anything but simplistic. Shelby’s plot to assassinate Mosley–the real Oswald died of natural causes in 1980–is foiled by the Irish Republican Army. The IRA kills the would-be assassin and other member of the Peaky Blinders, the “muscle” end of the Shelby operation.

While Tommy is the leader of the gang, his aunt, Elizabeth Pollyanna “Polly” Shelby Gray (Helen McCrory), was the glue of the enterprise, formally known as Shelby Family Limited. But McCrory died at 52 of lung cancer in 2021, just as production of this season started. Other than Tommy Shelby, Aunt Polly was the most important character in Peaky Blinders. Her off-screen death was a tough blow for the show. To compensate, the role of Tommy’s sister, Ada Thorne (Sophie Rundle), is elevated, but Rundle is placed in an impossible position. Meanwhile, Polly’s son, Michael Gray (Finn Cole), holds Tommy responsible for Polly’s murder.

Also back in Season 5, another new character Gina (Anya Taylor-Joy), Michael’s wife, makes her debut. We learn in the new season that Gina is the niece of South Boston gangster Jack Nelson (James Frecheville). He’s a not-too-thinly disguised characterization of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. Like the patriarch of the Kennedy dynasty, Nelson has anti-Semitic and fascist leanings. Calm down my liberal friends, it’s true about Kennedy. With Prohibition over, Tommy and Nelson hope to offset the end of it by smuggling opium into Boston. 

Mosley has a new lover, Lady Diana Mitford (Amber Anderson). She declares herself to Ada, in cruder terms, as a bisexual but she also has her eyes on Tommy. The real Mitfort was the first cousin of Winston Churchill’s wife, Clementine. Unless this plotline is being saved for the Peaky Blinders movie, I am stupefied why this angle wasn’t developed into the storyline. The future wartime leader, amazingly is portrayed by three actors over the six seasons, makes a cameo appearance in Season 6. 

Season 5 ends and Season 6 begins with Tommy wallowing in mud. And mud is fitting metaphor for this season, while good, falls short of the greatness of Peaky Blinders, although I didn’t care for the Russian diversion in Season 3. The final episode of this last season, nearly 90 minutes long, is the best, as Tommy’s older brother, Arthur (Paul Anderson), emerges somewhat from his alcohol and drug induced haze as the Shelbys face a two-front war. A third front of sorts is there too as Tommy’s marriage with Lizzie (Natasha O’Keeffe) faces challenges. 

In regard to Nelson, Season 6 would have been much more interesting if instead Joseph P. Kennedy was the Boston foil for Tommy.

Surprisingly, while the show continues with a dark and gothic soundtrack, the unofficial theme song, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Red Right Hand” is sadly missing. But arguably the worst song Bob Dylan ever recorded, “All The Tired Horses,” covered by Lisa O’Neill, is included.

All six seasons of Peaky Blinders are currently streaming on Netflix. It is rated TV-MA for nudity, drug use, foul language, and violence. 

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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