Archive for March, 2023

As the Banks Come Tumbling Down

Posted: March 13, 2023 by datechguy in Blame Biden Administration
Tags: ,

You want confirmation Captain? Take a look [Pointing to the Fleet burning] There’s your confirmation!


Tora Tora Tora 1970

For those of you eager to see what the sitting president does about banks suddenly failing let me remind you of something.

Three years ago some of us warned that allowing an election to be stolen rather than confronting the problem head on might have long term consequences that would shake the nation. But we were ignored, or cancelled or imprisoned

We ended up with mandates, drag queen story hours, an FBI acting like the left’s private gestapo, disaster in Afghanistan and War in Ukraine. And now bank failures while the crooks involved in this are amassing generational wealth.

All because people were afraid to make waves.

And if the bank with the woke risk assessor more interested in pride events than, you know managing risk or and Signature bank with former Democrat rep Barney Frank on the board fails, oh well.

Since both of these banks are Democrat donors or connected let me tell you how this is going to endvia Yes Prime Minister:

Sir Humphrey Appleby: But if you knew they were crooks

Sir Desmond Glasebrook: We didn’t

Sir Humphrey Appleby: But you could have made enquiries..

Sir Desmond Glasebrook: You don’t make enquiries of that sort in the city. They seemed like decent chaps and decent chaps don’t check up on decent chaps to see if they are behaving like decent chaps.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: And ignorance is worth paying 14 million pounds for?

Sir Desmond Glasebrook: Ignorance is safety it’s not a crime to be deceived and it’s not our own money is it? [Turning to the waiter handing the him the check] Oh thank you.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: So What’s going to happen?

Sir Desmond Glasebrook: Well there’s only one answer. The Bank of England must bail out Philips Berrison. No publicity keep it in the family, and that way we get our money back.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: At the taxpayer’s expense.

Sir Desmond Glasebrook: Of course.

Yes Prime Minister A Conflict of Interest 1987

You can bet your bottom dollar that Joe Biden’s bosses will make sure that these guys get every penny back to preserve confidence in the financial system because they are friends of the left .and if you and I have to pay for it, oh well.

Closing thought via Instapundit’s comment section:

“The government spent all weekend so they could bail out rich politically connected investors. Compare this to East Palestine Ohio where it took the government 3 weeks to even pretend to give a damn. Seriously the government worked over a weekend to just help out rich tech investors. Contrast that with 3 weeks before the feds did anything to even pretend to help out a community dealing with a massive chemical spill.”

#unexpectedly of course

Update: Don Surber Nails it:

As I watched the sudden collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank, I marveled once again at how a geezer’s administration run by tokens of diversity can wreck the economy by turning mundane functions — say, unloading transport ships — into extraordinary catastrophes, such as a supply chain backlog.

Go read it all and subscribe

Reverse Missionaries in Action

Posted: March 12, 2023 by datechguy in Uncategorized

18th and 19th Century and early 20th Century Americans and Brits take a bow.

During those days hundreds if not thousands of missionaries visited Africa spreading the word of both Christianity and the rights of man attempting to teach the idea that man’s equality before God and before the law.

It is now the 21st Century and Western Civilization is having a crisis faith in both of those things, primarily due to the successful attempts by the left to de-Christianize us and lo and behold Africa is stepping into the breach:

From the Anglican Churches in Africa:

Conservative Anglican archbishops in Africa are challenging a decision by the Church of England to allow clergy to bless same sex couples’ marriages, warning that the move puts the worldwide Anglican Communion in further jeopardy.

It seems the missionaries who went there taught them too well.

“The Church of England is very good at making contradictory statements and expecting everyone to believe both can be true at the same time. That’s what they have done with this decision,” said Archbishop Stephen Samuel Kaziimba Mugalu of Uganda in his statement.

Kaziimba said that despite the English church’s insistence that it was not changing its doctrine on marriage, it is doing exactly that, the only significant difference being the terminology of wedding versus a service of blessing.

“The Church of England … has now departed from the Bible and their message is the opposite,” said Kaziimba. “They are even offering to bless that sin. That is wrong. As the Church of Uganda, we cannot accept that. God cannot bless what he calls sin.”

Or as they put it so well: “We can’t walk with you unless you repent.“

Meanwhile an African reporter covering the White House says bluntly what American Reporters seem to be afraid to say both about the events of January 6th:

Some are now trying to crucify @FoxNews @TuckerCarlson over January 6th footage because America has decided to live a lie, blame only @realDonaldTrump and turn a blind eye to the massive security failure on January 6, 2021. But many people around the world continue to wonder, how on earth was it possible that in the greatest country in the world, in the most armed nation on the planet with the best and most expensive security agencies in the universe, one of the most important buildings was left unprotected and was easily taken over by protesters while the presidential election was being certified and the Vice President was in the building? Why is no serious investigation done to understand that security failure and hold accountable every person who was in charge that day? Isn’t that the most important investigation to be carried out?

Those are the words of Simon Ateba the Chief White House Correspondent of Today News Africa. He follows up with the most obvious question about the left’s reactions to those questioning the 2020 elections.

Also, why is it hard to understand that when an election takes place during a pandemic, with millions of people shipping ballots rather than showing up at voting centers on election day, many people would be skeptical about the results of that election, especially when the candidate who lost won the election day vote?

That’s a rather obvious statement and he continues but making a point I’ve been asking for years.

Instead of labeling people election deniers, is it not better to ensure that even the appearance of fraud is eliminated by having most people vote in-person on election day and with proper identification?

I submit and suggest the answer is clear, because if they do have an honest election the left can’t win or do you think it’s a coincidence that after Ron DeSantis got rules passed to clean up elections in Florida the Democrat party collapsed like a paper tiger?

While there are many places where these lesions did not take root as they might (see South Africa and Zimbabwe) we take our hats off to those missionaries who made the difference

Review: Van Morrison’s Moving on Skiffle

Posted: March 12, 2023 by John Ruberry in covid, culture, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

Last Friday, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Van Morrison released his 44th studio album, the exuberant Moving on Skiffle. 

What is skiffle? Well, the first time I heard of it was in was in an unusual place–maybe not for an American–in the movie This Is Spinal Tap. Before joining the band that would become the heavy metal act Spinal Tap, David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) was a member of a skiffle group.

Wonderful observation, you might be saying, but once again, what is skiffle? In the late 1920s, it developed as an offshoot of jug music, a genre of the American South and performed mainly by African Americans. The original skiffle was a bit country, a bit folk, and a bit delta blues. Then skiffle died once the Great Depression hit. 

Only it didn’t completely perish. 

Like a sprout from an errant wildflower seed, skiffle surprisingly blossomed again a couple of decades later in Great Britan. The UK’s biggest skiffle star was a Scotsman, Lonnie Donegan. Another skiffle performer, Chris Barber, a British aficionado of New Orleans style jazz, often recorded with Donegan. 

Growing up in 1950s Belfast, Morrsion was one of many UK youths listening to skiffle on the radio. Soon Morrison joined a skiffle band, but by the mid-1960s he was fronting Them, a blues-rock act best known for “Gloria,” before going solo in 1967. Well, you probably know the rest of his story.

Just as skiffle quickly reemerged in Britain, it all but vanished as a popular music phenomenon in the early 1960s. Only its disappearance wasn’t mysterious. The tsunami of the Beat Groups–known as the British Invasion in the United States–which included Them, was the culprit. 

The Belfast Cowboy maintained his love for skiffle thru the decades. Morrison recorded a live album with Donegan and Barber, The Skiffle Sessions – Live in Belfast 1998.

For Moving on Skiffle, Morrison issues a double album of additional classic skiffle songs–there are no repeats from the live collection.

Morrison, who turns 78 this summer, has been newsworthy of late because of his fervent opposition to COVID-19 lockdowns.

In 2021, Morrison released Latest Record Project, Volume 1, a double album. Many of the tracks, including “Stop Bitching, Do Something” and “Why Are You on Facebook?” pushed back on government and Big Tech power. Last year, on What’s It Gonna Take?, Van the Man more directly challenged the lockdowns and creeping totalitarianism, in such tracks as “Dangerous,” which was in response to comments made by Northern Ireland’s health minister, Robin Swann, about Morrison’s anti-lockdown stance. Swann has since sued Van the Man, Morrison has counter-sued. 

On what will likely be remembered as his”COVID albums,” Morrison penned all of the tracks. Moving on Skiffle is a covers collection.

Morrison, who is not a doctor or a scientist, has been proven, in my firm opinion at least, to be correct that lockdowns would not be an effective defense against COVID-19. The harm of lockdowns, such as an overall increase in mental illness and declining school test scores, is apparent.

Yes, COVID, along with pre-exisiting conditions, killed millions, despite lockdowns, masking, and vaccine mandates. But Florida, which didn’t pursue an aggressive lockdown and masking policy, didn’t see a higher COVID death rate compared to lockdown states like New York.

Moving back to Moving on Skiffle, this sparkling collection stays away from politics, except for the strongest track on the collection, “Gov Don’t Allow,” a reworking of the 1920s folk standard “Momma Don’t Allow,” with new lyrics authored by Morrison.

“Gov don’t allow any freedom of speech in here,” he sings, “but I think it’s going overreach–gov don’t allow any freedom of speech in here.”

Now that I have politics out of the way, let’s discuss the rest of Moving on Skiffle.

Other highlights of this ninety-minute collection include another musical reworking, “This Little Light of Mine” becomes “This Loving Light of Mine,” where Morrison adds “Amen” verses. “Gypsy Davy” has a Celtic feel, and there are two Hank Williams songs, “Cold Cold Heart” and “I’m So Lonely I Could Cry.” 

Overall, the collection has a Creedence Clearwater Revival flavor, partly because of the inclusion of Lead Belly’s “Cotton Fields,” which CCR covered on Willy and the Poor Boys. Their hit from that album, “Down on the Corner” has a classic has a jug band feel. 

If you are a Van and Man enthusiast from way back, you’ll adore the final cut on Moving on Skiffle, “Green Rocky Road,” a nine-minute-long track that echoes Morrison stream-of-consciousness gems such as “And The Healing Has Begun” and “Listen to the Lion.”

Skiffle has many definitions. So if you’d prefer you can define Morrison’s latest work possibly as an Americana collection, albeit one with gospel music overtones. 

Oh, I nearly forgot. As with all Van Morrison albums, the singing here, including the work of the backup vocalists, as well as the musicianship–down to the washboard–are spectacular. 

Moving on Skiffle can be downloaded from iTunes or purchased at Van Morrison.com.

Related post:

As Van Morrison turns 77, here are his ten best albums

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Family doesn’t cancel you

Posted: March 11, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
Tags: ,

I have five living kids at home, and the comments I get from strangers when they first hear this is telling. If someone tells me “That’s awesome,” or “Sounds like a beautiful family,” they are most likely Catholic or Muslim. But that’s not most people. Most of the time I get asked “You know how babies are made, right?” or “Sheesh, did you run out of condoms?” I’m not sure when it became weird to have large families, or actually like having kids, but its painfully obvious that we have oriented our culture around mostly childless people. When I see ads for Disney parks, they feature young or old couples, and typically at least one gay couple. But there are more gay couples than kids in these commercials now. Disney, a theme park once totally oriented for children, is quickly becoming a childless playground. Everywhere the advantage of childlessness is touted. People with large families are bad for the environment. We are made to suffer through inflation, because it’s harder to feed our kids when the price of eggs quadruples due to bad monetary policy. And try going to Disney, or fly to Hawaii, or get a hotel to provide you two rooms next to each other to accommodate your large family, because you’ll often get little to no sympathy or help.

The big advantage of family finally became apparent to me this last week. Almost 4 years ago, the Navy accused me of a crime I didn’t commit. I provided all the evidence to show this, but the investigator, a corrupt official in the Defense Department’s Investigator General, wrote a biased report to try and punish me. I’ve had to defend myself at a Court Martial, an Article 15 proceeding, and this last week at a Board of Inquiry, which finally found me 100% innocent of all charges. During this process though, I watched many people that I served with abandon me. The Navy went from telling me I was one of their best officers, to “You’re horrible scum,” to now saying “Hey, since you’re innocent we have this great assignment to get you back on track!”

Honestly, it’s pathetic. I was reminded every day of how fickle people and organizations are. I have read plenty of articles about people getting cancelled at work because someone made an accusation, but now I actually lived it.The one constant I had during this process was family. Every time I came home after receiving bad news, I had a wife and kids that still loved me, still believed in me, and encouraged me to take on the next challenge. While the true friends I have were encouraging, it really was family that kept me going. It makes me feel bad for the childless couples out there, because as I see companies laying people off, I wonder “Who do they turn to?”It’s telling that the same government that makes it difficult to have large families is the same government that wants you to worship it, make it your religion, and then cancel and kick you out once you are no longer useful. I’ll write more about the whole process later, but for now, I’ll be having dinner tonight with the best group of people I know.This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. Because honestly, after multiple years of serving, I have no idea what their views on darn near anything are.

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