Archive for September, 2022

Under the Fedora: The Left’s Sweat is Showing, Jackson MS isn’t North Korea Either, No Vaccine Troubles to See Here, A Rumbling Glacier and Baseball rule thoughts.

Posted: September 13, 2022 by datechguy in baseball, election 2020, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, tech, under the fedora
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A bit back I suggested the reason why the Biden Admin is so willing to shatter norms is they are terrified of a Trump AG going all in for an investigation of what they’ve been up to.

The move on Trump Associates and Tucker is the first clincher on that kind of thing to me.

If I’m right, and my gut says I am, that means DeSantis will be unacceptable to them too because he will be doing the same thing.

That’s why you’re seeing the “Voting GOP means civil war” stuff. They know they’ve crossed a line and now they’ve scared.

They should be

I thought this story should have gotten a lot more attention.

However, following President Joe Biden’s emergency declaration, the Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) arrived on the scene, and within 24 hours, the city’s water crisis was fixed.

The EPA and Army Corps showed up and fixed the “issue” quickly and easily. Social media users have begun to speculate why Mary D. Carter, the Deputy Director of Water Operations for the past 8 years, could not fix the “problem” herself.

Of course getting the water flowing is one thing, making it drinkable is another. This is what happens when you use a public office as a source of graft rather than a public trust and that’s what the Democrat mayors of Jackson have apparently done for decades

Speaking of topics the media left wish would just go away:

More than 55 percent of children ranging in age between 6 months and 2 years had a “systemic reaction” after their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Sept. 1.

In addition, almost 60 percent had a reaction to the second dose of the Moderna vaccine, in the CDC survey of more than 13,000 children.

For some reason nobody seems to be reporting on this story, or this one:

According to a report in theblaze.com, the National Institute of Health (NIH) deleted certain sequences of coronavirus data from the agency’s Sequence Read Archive. This was allegedly done early in the pandemic, at the request of Chinese researchers. Doctor Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, published a study in June of 2021 that identified the missing sequences and recovered the files from the Google Cloud, from which he performed an analysis to learn more about the origins of the virus.

As the side effects become more apparent over the years you’ll continue to see the media pivot concerning the vaccine and I guarantee you by June 2024 it will be known as the “Trump vaccine” in every media outlet.

Of course if the election hadn’t been stolen all this would be front page today.

It’s been a while since I opened my Rumble account and told all of you that once all my youtube files were migrated I might start podcasting again.

Rumble warms you that it can take weeks, apparently that’s a pretty broad term because nothing moved over for weeks although all my stuff over two years old is listed as pending.

I’d be more upset except I suspect so many people are making such a move worldwide that such a time frame is inevitable.

I suspect Google/Youtube isn’t all that worried right now. As I recall neither was AOL or IE.

Finally a some quick thoughts on Baseball rule changes:

  1. If the new stay off the grass rule was in effect during Ernie Lombardi’s Time he would have hit .400 because he was so slow infielder would play there to field balls from him. He still was a regular .300 hitter.
  2. If modern players learned how to bunt there would be no need for this rule as guys would be dropping bunt singles left and right off these shifts.
  3. Since the distance from the home to 1st and 3rd has not changed I suspect that the larger bases while encouraging stealing will be more of an advantage to the defense at 1st since the first baseman can now be closer to the throw and a thrown ball is faster than a running man.
  4. I don’t know if the modified pickoff throw rule includes 3rd if it does as a manager I’d encourage runners to try to draw throws to 3rd then send my guy on 3rd as far down the line as I can to distract a pitcher.
  5. Frankly if they really want to speed up games put the mound back where it was in 1968 and let the pitchers get people out quicker. Problem solved.

Report from Louisiana: Juvenile Offenders going to Angola

Posted: September 12, 2022 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – Much to the ire of liberals, Louisiana officials are close to finalizing a plan that would move “high-risk” incarcerated teenagers from existing juvenile correctional centers to Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

The identified teenagers, about twenty-five of them, are “high-risk” due to lack of response to the “open dorm strategy” and will be placed in individual prison cells. This move is partially in response to several recent instances of violence, riots, and escape at several youth facilities. These teens will leave their one-person cells during the daytime to attend class and group counseling.

Critics of the plan speaking with a judge recently are concerned that it will feel “too much like prison” for these offenders and that the adult lifers at Angola will present a problem:

Vincent Schiraldi, a juvenile justice expert the civil rights attorneys hired to testify in court, told the judge he ran into an adult inmate while touring the proposed juvenile justice facility at Angola just last week.

Schiraldi, who oversaw incarcerated youth facilities in Washington, D.C., and managed New York City’s Rikers Island jail, went on to express concern about the facility for incarcerated youth at Angola.

“It’s going to scream ‘prison’ to the young people,” he said in testimony Wednesday.

Incarcerated young people should be kept in housing that looks less like cells and more like dormitories, otherwise they will be at higher risk for self-harm and suicide, Schiraldi said. He also said that recreational facilities at the site are inadequate. There isn’t an indoor gymnasium and the outdoor space doesn’t have a full basketball court or field where young people could realistically play team sports.

Additionally, “Schiraldi also described the kitchen in the Angola facility as ‘disgusting’ and called the visitation area inadequate. During family visits, incarcerated youth wouldn’t be able to touch visitors and would be forced to talk to them through a mesh screen, according to photos Schiraldi showed the court. ‘This is terrible. Kids should be able to be in the same room with their parents,’ he said.”

According to The Advocate, “Some worry that putting the youth on the grounds of the infamous prison, the nation’s biggest penitentiary and a former slave plantation, sends a message that they are beyond redemption. The soft-hearted fret because “these children…made a mistake.” Schiraldi laments that “the facility’s open showers…poses a humiliating environment for youth the clean themselves in.”

Again, remember, high-risk offenders. Not “just a mistake.” The prison setting is exactly what juvenile justice officials want for these offenders. These are offenders who are identified as “high-risk,” not your petty theft shoplifters.  Officials believe that the single-person cells are necessary for the innates privacy and security.

Color me unsympathetic to the lamentations of the liberal bleeding hearts on this one. In spring 2022, three juveniles escaped from Ware Youth Center with the help of a trustee. They were being held on murder and armed robbery charges. This summer several inmates escaped from a suburban New Orleans youth detention center after a riot. It was the fourth incident of escape this year.

Clearly the system is broken, on many levels.

The Reality of the Trump vs Biden Economy Strikes in Fredrick MD

Posted: September 12, 2022 by datechguy in Uncategorized

I’ve known the Popes back in Illinois known all of them, they’re all liars and braggarts but don’t know of any particular reason why a liar and a braggart shouldn’t make a good general.

Abe Lincoln on being told John Pope can’t be trusted to tell the truth.1862

Stacy McCain had a lot of fun with the story of the end of the Lesbian Vegan Donut Shop in Fredrick MD but there are a few things about the story that are worth a bit of time.

I’ve known plenty of bakers and it’s not an easy life. It’s not for the lazy or for those who care to sleep in. You have to be up early to bake and have your products ready for those people who work early in the morning as the story Stacy Quotes notes:

Shop owners Alissa and Keirsten Straiter have always been the bakers at Glory Doughnuts, waking up to get donuts going by midnight or 1 a.m six days a week. Morning help arrives around 5 a.m. so they can open two hours later. Around that time, Alissa, 25, and Keirsten, 26, become the shop’s cooks.

So we know to start conclude that the two women who opened the business are not lazy or expecting a free lunch and were willing to work hard to make their business work. We can also conclude from the fact that since the initial article was written in 2015 that the donuts and/or pastries they make were of a good enough quality for a business, because when it comes to anything to do with food, particularly pasty there is no substitute for stuff that takes good.

So you have hard work and a product that is appealing, no matter what your politics or your proclivities might be that’s a good start for any business.

However beyond hard work and skill you have to make good decisions. And these ladies made two decisions that limited the appeal of their business.

The first was the decision to push vegan food. Now while there is a market for vegan food it’s not as broad for as for one that simply offers vegan choices as one of several option..

And of course there was the decision to push the Gay/Trans agenda publicly at their place. This again limits a customer base. There is for example a historic diner in Fitchburg whose new owners I hear make a mean Chicken and Waffles but they choose to fly the Transgender flag. As much as I like chicken and waffles that’s a line I won’t cross.

Now this is still (supposedly) a free country and if a business chooses to play the Transgender flag or the Hammer and Sycle of the Soviets or even the Nazi Swastika that’s their business but they have to accept that said decision will limit their clientele to those not offended by them.

Stacy McCain picked up on the irony here.

There is some irony in the fact that the Trump years were actually the heyday for Glory Doughnuts, whose anti-Trump owners apparently made their first crucial mistake by changing locations right at the start of the 2020 pandemic. Then Biden got elected, and rampant inflation sort of eroded the disposable income that folks used to have, back when gas was just $2.25 a gallon. Now the lesbian vegans are trying to explain those bouncing paychecks:

Now we can’t say for sure that if they had chosen to worry about baking and cooking rather than wearing their political and social allegiances on their sleeve if they might have drawn a large enough base to stay alive but there there is one fact that I can say for sure. If you have a strong economy with plenty of people ready and able to spend you can afford to limit your clientele and stay in business, if not then you can’t.

The reality of business is simple. The bottom line doesn’t care if you are Lesbian Vegans Transgender or whatever. It only cares if your product can generate enough revenue to pay your expenses and debts.

During the Trump years their donut business was able to do so, during the Biden years it could not.

But the ladies should not despair. Both are used to hard work and their product was good enough to sell for seven years. They can return to their home based model on a smaller scale. With a little luck in a couple of years they can settle their outstanding debts things and consider trying again if they want.

And if they are really lucky by late 2025 a 2nd Trump administration will have the economy firing on all cylinders again to the point where they can reopen in deep blue Maryland and commiserate with paying deep blue customers once again about how awful it is to have the Orange man back in charge.

Now that Ukraine is taking back territory from Russia, now is the time for the New York Times to return Walter Duranty’s tainted Pulitzer

Posted: September 11, 2022 by John Ruberry in media, News/opinion, war
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Pro-Ukraine protest in downtown Chicago this spring

By John Ruberry

There is good news out of Ukraine, its forces have made gains in the Kharkiv region and they are near Russian border. There is much ground still to liberate, not only land that Russia has seized in the war that began early this year, but also the area that have been controlled by Russian separatists in the Donetsk region since 2014, as well as Crimea, which Vladimir Putin annexed the same year.

Ukraine has endured an unhappy history. World War II and the Holocaust devastated Ukraine. And in order to impose communism on wealthier peasants in Ukraine, Josef Stalin engineered a famine in the early 1930s, known there as the Holodomor, translating roughly into “man-made starvation.” Roughly four million people perished as a result of Stalin’s atrocities against the kulaks in Ukraine.

Even in a closed society, it’s difficult to coverup a famine. And news trickled out of Ukraine about the Holodomor. But a New York Times reporter, based in Moscow, Walter Duranty, dismissed such stories, instead of “famine” he wrote of “malnutrition” in Ukraine, for instance. 

For a series of 1931 articles about the Soviet Union, Duranty, for his “dispassionate interpretive reporting,” he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. 

While in Moscow, Duranty, was granted a rarity, interviews with Stalin; he also enjoyed another rarity, a luxury apartment in the Soviet capital. During the entire history of the USSR, housing of any kind was scarce. In Moscow Duranty had a mistress, whom he impregnated, and a chauffeur. Automobiles were also rare in Russia in the 1930s. 

In 1933, another journalist, or I should say, a real one, Gareth Jones, visited Ukraine and he was horrified by what he found. “If it is grave now and if millions are dying in the villages, as they are, for I did not visit a single village where many had not died, what will it be like in a month’s time?” Jones wrote for the London Evening Standard. “The potatoes left are being counted one by one, but in so many homes the potatoes have long run out.” 

Duranty’s response to Jones was a New York Times article, “Russians Hungry, But Not Starving.” That same year, Duranty wrote to a friend, “The famine is mostly bunk.”

Another shameful sentence from Duranty, about Stalin’s brutal policies as the Holodomor continued, “To put it brutally,” Duranty wrote for the Times, “you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

Since the war began attention has been brought to Duranty’s undeserved Pulitzer. Even NPR took notice. “He is the personification of evil in journalism,” Oksana Piaseckyj told NPR earlier this year of Duranty. She is a Ukrainian-American activist who emigrated here as a child over 70 years ago. “We think he was like the originator of fake news,” Piaseckyj added.

The New York Times admitted on its corporate website about Duranty’s work, “Since the 1980’s, the [Times] has been publicly acknowledging his failures.” But it has not returned the tainted Pulitzer. It also notes that twice, most recently in 2003, the Pulitzer board has decided not to revoke its award to Duranty. 

It’s time for them to reconsider.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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