Archive for 2022

The bungled response by the Uvalde Police Department keeps looking worse as more details emerge

Posted: June 23, 2022 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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The more I learn about the police response by the Uvalde Police Department during the tragic shooting, the more infuriated an nauseated I become. 

This headline is beyond maddening, Uvalde Cops Made No Attempt To Open the Door Where the Gunman Was Shooting 19 Kids (townhall.com)

According to the San-Antonio Express News, video footage shows that law enforcement allegedly never even attempted to open the door of the elementary school where a gunman barricaded himself in a classroom for 77 minutes while police stood outside. 

“Surveillance footage shows that police never tried to open a door to two classrooms at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde in the 77 minutes between the time a gunman entered the rooms and massacred 21 people and officers finally breached the door and killed him,” the paper reported. 

There is also reason to believe the door was unlocked to the building, making it easy for law enforcement to enter the school. 

I never believed such incompetence was possible, especially in police departments.  This incompetence has a tragically high body count.

The timidity of the leadership of the Uvalde Police Department is just as shocking and infuriating as the incompetence.

It just kepps getting  worse: Uvalde Shooting Could Have Been Stopped In Three Minutes – Louder With Crowder

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw addressed a Texas state senate hearing today. He had more details than the last time we heard from him. Most notably that the shooter could have been put down in three minutes, as opposed to the one hour and fourteen minutes it took.

McGraw testified that, within three minutes, there were enough officers armed and armored up to “isolate, distract, and neutralize” the shooter. The only thing stopping them was the on-scene commander who never made the call.

The security lapses that led up to the shooting were just as infuriating. and far more tragic because this entire tragedy could have been prevented, Uvalde Officials Leave School Unlocked, Ignored Classroom Lock Maintenance Shooting (breitbart.com)

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw revealed critical school safety violations that contributed to the shooter being able to access the Robb Elementary School building and classrooms. The district also failed to correct at least one maintenance issue that kept the specific classroom door where the shooting took place from being lockable.

DPS Director Colonel McCraw told the Texas Senate on Tuesday that the south and west doors were placed into an unlocked setting, State Senator Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston) told Breitbart Texas Tuesday. The doors were routinely left unlocked in direct violation of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District’s school safety directive, he related.

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
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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:

All of this brings to mind Casino:

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.

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
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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.

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