Archive for 2022

Report from Louisiana: Book your reservation for Fête-Dieu du Teche Now

Posted: July 25, 2022 by Pat Austin in catholic
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – August is upon us and for those in south Louisiana, specifically in Cajun country, that means it is time for the Fête-Dieu du Teche which celebrates the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and also commemorates the arrival of the Acadians in south Louisiana.

On August 15, for the past eight years, Catholics have gathered along Bayou Teche from Leonville (Pop. 2,127) to St. Martiville (Pop. 5,844) to participate in the 38-mile journey down the bayou in a Eucharist procession by boat. The day begins in Leonville with Mass celebrated in French at St. Leo the Great Catholic Church.

Then everyone loads into their boats; the Eucharist is fixed on a altar in the lead boat, under a canopy. Everyone follows by boat down the bayou to Arnaudville (Pop. 1,614) where everyone disembarks. First communicants dressed in white scatter rose petals from baskets and the Eucharist follows, to an altar on the bank at St. Francis Regis Catholic Church. Participants kneel, pray the Rosary and Benediction, and then are back on the boats to the next stop.

By the end of the day, they reach St. Martinville where they process through town to the church, St. Martin de Tours for benediction. Confession is available at each stop.

It is a sight to behold. I’m not Catholic; we are Episcopalians, and my husband likes to say we are “Catholic-lite.” But, we love attending the Fête-Dieu du Teche because face it, what’s not to love about entire communities engaged in prayer?

Last year, as everyone was getting back into their boats at Arnaudville, Steve and I walked over to the bridge so we could see the procession as they passed under us on the way to the next town. Smiling nuns with habits flying behind them waved up at us; the incense perfumed the air and then behind the laity came the families who followed along. All in all it is easy over a hundred boats.

As more people around the world learn about this event, it grows each year. This will be year eight. We already have our lodging reserved and will be there once again to witness the event. I love how this event brings families and communities together; I love how tied to their very Cajun culture this is, too. The journey to St. Martinville commemorates the journey their Acadian ancestors made in fleeing religious persecution all those years ago.

It is a glorious thing to see and I’d encourage anyone to see it if you have the chance. Joseph Pronechen wrote in some detail about the event here and the Facebook page is here. And there is a cool video here. I wrote about it last year on this blog which you can see here.

Answer: $425,308,966 and $180,734,472

Posted: July 25, 2022 by datechguy in entertainment
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Question: What is the difference between a woke movie for kids and a non-woke movie for kids:

That is the difference between the take of the Movie Lightyear and the take of Minons the Rise of Gru

Let me point out that when Lightyear started slow excuses were made about the timing and of COVID etc etc etc, but Minions was released just two weeks later and has managed to out preform lightyear by hundreds of millions with two less weeks to do so.

A more significant fact is this one:

The general rule of thumb is a movie has to earn double its production budget in order to break even. By that metric, Lightyear needs $400 million globally to recoup its costs. Going by Pixar’s history, it should be able to cross that figure without many issues. Prior to Onward’s pandemic-shortened theatrical run, Pixar’s Toy Story 4 and Incredibles 2 both hit $1 billion. The studio’s original film Coco grossed $807 million globally. While Pixar does have some notable duds on their résumé (Cars 3 and The Good Dinosaur), it’s extremely rare for one of their films to perform poorly at the box office. Given Lightyear’s ties to the Toy Story franchise, it should prove to be a hit. Box office projections point to a modest (by Pixar standards) $70-85 million debut, but it could always surpass those expectations a la Top Gun: Maverick. It’s facing minimal competition for its target demographic.

So by these standards Lightyear is 185 million in the red as of 7/23/22

IMDB estimates for Minions on a free site the estimated budget via IMDB is $80 Million. Even if we figure another 80 million in promotion in 14 less days Minions has not only turned a tidy profit but had done so on its domestic take alone. That makes the $342 million overseas take all gravy.

That my dear friends is the difference between making a movie “Woke” and making a movie for Children.

Sooner or later studios will decide losing 180+ a shot is a bad idea.

5 Quick Thoughts Under the Fedora The Liberal City Ten Count, Easy pickings in Kenly NC, Reynolds Jan 6th Prediction, Hume -2 Mil, Avoid Monkeying Around to Avoid Monkey-Pox

Posted: July 24, 2022 by datechguy in under the fedora

Today’s First Reading at Mass was Abraham asking God if he would spare Sodom & Gomorra if he could find at least 50, then 45, then 30 and finally 10 people and God answering

“For the sake of those ten I will not destroy it.”

Genesis 18:32b

With the mass migration of normal people from blue states and areas I have a sinking feeling that cities like San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, NYC and DC have a bureaucrat whose job it is to make sure that the population of actual faithful Catholics living in the city limits never falls below ten.

I suspect this job has become more vital over time

A Town in North Carolina police force has resigned en masse over a new city manager citing a “hostile work environment”

The new town manager has a history of employment in liberal cities and I suspect brought a lot of that with her to this town in NC, but I suspect the new woke agenda isn’t playing here:

“It is with a heavy heart that I take this action. I have been with the town since 2004 and fully expected to finish my law enforcement career with the Town of Kenly. Unfortunately, there are decisions being made that jeopardize my safety and make me question what the future will hold for a Kenly Police Officer,” wrote officer G.W. Strong.

There are a lot of liberal cities bleeding police and heading to departments big and small in Red States. I suspect none of those police will be heading to Kenly North Carolina.

If I’m a thief or gang member from Raleigh or Goldsboro I’d be planning on an excursion to Kenly in a couple of weeks as there will likely be easy pickings, but if you want your small town to become more “progressive” you can’t do it without cost.

I noted that Glenn Reynolds in his linkage of a Johnathan Turley piece on the latest from the Jan 6th committee ended with this comment:

Also, if things keep going the way they’re going, the January 6 “insurrectionists” will ultimately be looked back upon as martyrs who tried to prevent a tragedy.

All of what has happened has been due to cowardice. The unwillingness to bluntly state that there were shenanigans in the last election that the establishment left and their allies in the judiciary in the blue states and regions they took place in were unwilling to call out in fear of rocking the boat has had huge consequences for this country and caused incredible pain to hundreds of millions of people.

I shudder to think what the result will be when they try this again in 2024, I suspect the result will not be as peaceful.

I really can’t do better than Stacy McCain in his takedown of Edenborough University over them cancelling David Hume (d 1776) for not being sufficiently woke by 21st century standards:

defaming the dead is easy work. Hume was a man of formidable skill in argumentation, and if anyone at the time had found fault with this footnote in his essay, certainly Hume would have been capable of defending himself. As it was, of course, no one in 18th-century Europe had any reason to question Hume’s judgment on this matter. How many avid believers in racial equality were there in England in 1758? Few, if any, I’m sure, and probably they had more important matters to deal with than accosting a Scottish philosopher about a footnote.

Really, why was this deemed important enough to rename a building at the University of Edinburgh? Is it any wonder that donors are canceling their bequests? What a silly tempest in a teapot — “Ban the dead racist David Hume!” — yet the Eminent Scholars in charge of a university evidently took it seriously.

Well they likely didn’t need those 2 million pounds of bequests cancelled so far anyways did they.

UPDATE soon to be banned:

The media keeps breathlessly going on about Monkey Pox however they have not yet been able to report on what for them would be the holy grail for Monkey Pox. An outbreak among monogamous straight people.

Put simply for all the hysteria concerning Monkeypox if you want to avoid the disease here is the secret:

Monogamous sex with one monogamous partner

I’d like to point out this cunning plan works with both straight and gay couples.

and I’ll leave you with this tweet:

Pritzker meddled in GOP gubernatorial primaries

Posted: July 24, 2022 by John Ruberry in covid, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

Amazingly, the quiet presidential campaign of J.B. Pritzker, a billionaire pol from the family that created the Hyatt hotel chain and more, continues. That says about the girth of Illinois governor’s ego and the threadbare status of the Democratic presidential bench, as the failures of the Joe Biden administration continue to mount.

Illinois, despite the influx of COVID bailout cash, remains a financial basket case. At best, Pritzker and his fellow Democrats have only chipped away at the state’s pension bomb. Illinois has the worst-funded public pension system among the states. In 2021 the Prairie State lost 122,000 residents, only New York and the District of Columbia, percentage-wise, saw a bigger population drop.

At Wirepoints, Mark Glennon, justifiably eviscerated Pritzker in his critique of the governor’s trial run of a presidential campaign speech given last weekend in Florida. Yes, Florida, the place that Democrats, including Pritzker’s wife during the worst period of the COVID-19 lockdowns, flock to, despite the governorship of Ron DeSantis, a man they hate. Oh, while in Florida–Pritzker was there to give the keynote speech at a gathering of Florida Democrats–he contracted COVID. I wish him well–as someone who was afflicted with COVID last month, I can say that it is not an enjoyable experience. 

I’m going to focus on just a couple of items from Pritzker’s dishonest Florida speech. “We honor the results of elections,” Pritzker said, obviously alluding to the Capitol Riot and its show trial investigation of it by the House January 6th Committee. In response Glennon retorted, “In Illinois, that would be elections based on the most gerrymandered map in the nation, which he approved in violation of what many regarded as his most important campaign promise – to deliver fair maps.” Yes, Pritzker repeatedly vowed as a candidate in 2018 to veto gerrymandered legislative and congressional maps. The Democratic supermajorities in the General Assembly–in place because of the 2011 gerrymandered map–sent to Pritzker’s desk new contorted legislative maps, which Pritzker signed into law. 

Pritzker lied–and free and fair congressional and state legislative elections in the Land of Lincoln died. But since Glennon’s article was posted, the Chicago Tribune revealed that Pritzker this year contributed $24 million to the Democratic Governors Association. That group spent millions on ads supporting the most conservative Republican candidate running to replace Pritzker this autumn, state Sen. Darren Bailey, who easily won the GOP nomination. Yes, I voted for Bailey. 

As with other races the DGA has meddled in, the group saw Bailey as the most conservative, or in their likely thoughts, the most extreme candidate. And presumably the easiest one for Democrats to defeat in November. But such a ploy might backfire. In another Republican gubernatorial primary race that the Democratic Governors Association meddled in, its preferred “extreme” candidate, Doug Mastriano, trails the Democratic nominee by only a few points. Yes, he can win, which has some Dems nervous. 

On the flipside, imagine the mainstream media uproar if Republicans funded the campaigns of a Bernie Bro socialist running in a Democratic primary. They’d cry, “Election interference,” and “This is undermining free and fair elections!”

A couple of times in my lifetime–on the presidential level–Democrats received the GOP general election candidate they were rooting for, Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Donald Trump in 2016. You know what happened.

Bailey, in deep blue Illinois, faces a tougher hurdle than Mastriano. But much can happen in the next four months, and Joe Biden’s continued mismanagement of the economy, the border–heck, his complete mismanagement of everything–may compel moderate Land of Lincoln voters to send a message to the Democrats. 

Are there enough such Illinoisans to send Pritzker packing? 

Not yet, as a recent poll tells us.

Because of high taxes, Illinoisans suffer from among the highest gasoline prices in the nation. Pritzker, under the guise of a tax cut, is forcing Illinois gas station owners to post signs informing motorists of the “tax cut,” which is really a delay in an inflation adjustment, suspending it until December. Gas station operators who refuse to post the required signage face a $500-a-day fine. Without the fine threat, Illinois grocers are also being forced to post similar signage about a one-year suspension of a one-percent sales tax.

If Pritzker prevails over Bailey, look for his presidential campaign to begin. It will fail. Pritzker is not a likable candidate–and Illinois’ standards are low. His flat speeches are drenched in condescension. Pritzker comes across as a sleazy closer at a Las Vegas timeshare presentation, a meeting that you only agreed to endure after being promised free show tickets and two glasses of wine “Sign here,” he’d say, “you won’t regret it,” as all 350 pounds of him leans into you.

But not even alcohol can make Pritzker more palatable. 

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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