Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

The media attack a Christian Republican in Pennsylvania

Posted: May 10, 2022 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

You know when a Republican politician is doing something right: a big-daily newspaper starts to attack.

That’s what happened when the Philadelphia Inquirer took aim at State Sen. Doug Mastriano, who’s running for governor of Pennsylvania.

In an attempted takedown of Mastriano, who’s leading the polls, the Inky headlined an attack piece: “Doug Mastriano embodies a Christian nationalist movement as he runs for governor.” See https://www.inquirer.com/politics/doug-mastriano-governor-christian-nationalism-qanon-20220504.html

A Christian! A nationalist! How dreadful!

“We have the power of God with us,” he told a recent rally. “We have Jesus Christ that we’re serving here. He’s guiding and directing our steps.”

The Inky commented in an alleged news article: “It was classic Mastriano — how God told him to run for governor and how he was the candidate who could save the state from its descent into evil.”

Mastriano, 58, is the front-runner for the Republican nomination for governor in the nation’s fifth-largest state. He has been at or near the top of almost every poll in the nine-person race with just a week left before Tuesday’s primary. 

While the Inky and other leftist news organizations emphasize Mastriano’s religious fervor, they tend to gloss over his rather substantial attributes. 

Mastriano was commissioned in the U.S. Army in 1986 and served on the Iron Curtain with the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in West Germany. While serving along the East German and Czechoslovakian borders, he witnessed the end of the Cold War and later deployed to Iraq for Operation Desert Storm in 1991 to liberate Kuwait. He served four years with NATO and deployed three times to Afghanistan. Mastriano was the director of NATO’s Joint Intelligence Center in Afghanistan, leading 80 people from 18 nations. He completed his career as a professor at the U.S. Army War College. He retired from the military as a colonel. See https://senatormastriano.com/biography/

He enjoyed a quick ascent into politics, earning a seat in 2019 to the Pennsylvania State Senate from a district just adjacent to my home in the central part of the state. 

Mastriano supports gun rights, charter schools, and lower taxes. He opposes vaccine mandates and abortion.

The candidate also supported moves to overturn the Pennsylvania vote after Donald Trump lost the state in 2020 by a mere 81,000 votes. In his first 100 days as governor, Mastriano said he would “immediately end all contracts with compromised voting machine companies” and push to enact various voting restrictions.

After eight years of an atrocious Democrat regime, many of us are relieved that we can cast our vote for a man who reflects what makes America great despite the harrumphing from the leftist media.

Report from Louisiana: Soaring Costs

Posted: May 9, 2022 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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Photo by Krzysztof Hepner on Unsplash

By: Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – When I read an article about rising food costs and see something like “Milk is 13% more expensive than last spring, and beef prices are up 16% over last year,” those numbers are vague to me. They don’t process. I can look at 13% and 16% and know those are pretty good price jumps, but the impact of rising food prices is much more obvious when you look at individual items.

For example, one of the things we purchase is cat litter. Six months ago, we were paying $3.56 for a 5 lb. bag; now, the same bag is just over $5.  I sometimes purchase these little individual cups of Del Monte grapefruit for grab and go breakfast. Six months ago, it was right at $1 for one of these; now it’s $1.53. I guess that is still a low cost for breakfast, but it’s indicative of a much larger problem.

These rising prices are affecting everything you put in your shopping cart. A store manager recently told me that the rising costs stem from having to pay more for materials, for inks to print labels, to the higher cost of producing the product you are actually buying, and the transportation to get it to your store. Even labor shortages contribute to higher costs.

Part of the problem is all of that stimulus money which has to be reabsorbed back into the system; more money floating around means rising prices. Another factor is soaring fertilizer prices, the effects of which will continue to make food costs rise worldwide.

Bottom line is that even to a non-economist person like me, we can see that prices of literally everything we buy are soaring and there seems to be no end to it.

More than once lately I have wished for a big vegetable garden; sadly, I don’t have enough sun in my yard to even grow a tomato plant.

Because my husband is retired military, we have access to the commissary which has traditionally offered lower prices for many items, but now this is one area where shortages are quite evident, and shelves are bare. Prices seem to be about in line with prices everywhere else now. While there is still some savings to be had on certain items there, the bottom line is that comparison shopping is becoming an art form.

We have been watching sale flyers for the grocery stores and stocking up on shelf-stable items when we can. If coffee is on sale, we stock up. I find I’m buying fewer snack items (not a bad thing!) that before and I’m stretching leftovers and being more mindful about waste.

It makes me worry about the working poor – and maybe I’m in that group! – who don’t qualify for government assistance but who isn’t wealthy either. Between rising gas prices, rising food prices, and overall inflation, we will all be on tighter budgets for some time to come.

Clipping coupons has never been my thing; I either forget them or resent having to by a dozen of something just to save a quarter, but maybe I need to take another look!

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.

The Left Wont Like the New Rules on Protests and Molotov Cocktails

Posted: May 9, 2022 by datechguy in Uncategorized

That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!

Popeye the sailor (repeated quote before eating his spinach & beating the bad guy)

When the IRS was busy going after conservatives under Obama I wrote this:

If you’ve read the first three parts of my worries concerning the IRS scandal there is one assumption that might not make sense to you. The left often portrays the Tea Party as a group of violent gun toting thugs, ready to snap into a multi-shot rage at the drop of a hat. A collection of cowboys. That being the case, why on earth would they not fear to provoke such well armed people with  a violent streak?

The answer is very simple. The left may say all these things about the right and violence, but the leaders who spew this stuff know it simply isn’t true. They’ve seen the tea party crowds pick up after themselves, they’ve seen the right to life marches bury the capital in people without an arrest. They saw Glenn Beck events take place with little or no incidents. Even more significantly they’ve seen their own speakers at colleges around the country walk without fear while speakers of the right need massive security to function. This has gone on for years and years and years without a reaction. The left assumes that as long as they don’t strike first at the right they can do what they wish.  It’s reached the point where the very suggestion that the right would fight back is almost quaint.

Since then we have had a stolen election, peaceful protesters locked up for months without trail for trespassing while rioters and looters in US cities are let loose, police targeted (unless they shoot conservative trespassers) parents labeled as domestic terrorists, SCOTUS opinions leaked to try to rob a ruling, massive censorship and an actual mister of disinformation appointed.

All of these things have targeted conservatives and that’s not even considering the inflation, debacle in Afghanistan and the renewed threat of Nuclear War to save graft for the left funneled through Ukraine threated by the Russian invasion.

And now we have folks being harassed at Churches and firebombings:

I stand amazed that we have not had an actual shooting Civil War or Lincoln County war on a national scale. The left seems to think it’s impossible but it’s becoming more and more likely as they continue to act more and more desperate.

I think the only thing saving us from this result is the likelyhood of the left getting stomped in the upcoming election not to mention 2024 but let me make a rather unpleasant prediction.

If we see this Supreme Court ruling stolen, and election 2022 stolen as well I think the very well armed right will decide that neither the courts nor the ballot are legit and will finally reach the points of “That’s all I can stands I can’t stands no more.”

Because once the right decides to cross that line I suspect it will not stop with firebombs and beatings I suspect it will be more like that famous warning from the Magnificent Seven that Vin gives the famers in the village plagued by bandits:

Once you begin you have to be prepared for killing and more killing, and still more killing until the reason for it has gone.

The right doesn’t want this which in my opinion is the only reason it hasn’t happened.

People on the left who have lived their lives in the safest and most pampered nation in the world have no idea how bad it’s going to be if the decision to cross that line is made. As a person who reads history I do and I urge those on the left who are not actively seeking a bloodbath to think very carefully and move away from the ledge for the sake of us all.

Because they will not like the new rules, not one bit.

Review: Ozark Season 4 Part 2

Posted: May 8, 2022 by John Ruberry in culture, entertainment, media, politics, Uncategorized
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By John Ruberry

Five years after the fictional story of the Naperville, Illinois crime family, the Byrdes, began streaming on Netflix, Ozark has come to an end. 

Late last month the final seven episodes, comprising of Season 4 Part 2, were released. 

If you haven’t heard of the Byrdes, the family is headed by Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman), a financial planner whose firm makes the fatal mistake of laundering money for a Mexican drug cartel run by Omar Navarro (Felix Solis). Marty is married to Wendy (Laura Linney), a former Democratic Party operative, although the word “Democrat” hasn’t been mentioned for the past two seasons. Their children, Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz), and Jonah (Skylar Gaertner), are reluctant partners in the family business, which is based in the Lake of the Ozarks region of Missouri. A riverboat casino is the centerpiece of their laundering operation.

Leaving an organized crime network is much harder than joining one. But that’s what the Byrdes continue to strive for, looking back at the Chicago area as a safe haven. For real. Clearly, the Byrdes haven’t been keeping an eye on the dramatic rise of violent crime here. 

The Byrdes have formed a shaky alliance with a member of a local small-time crime family, Ruth Langmore (Julia Garner). A two-time Prime Time Emmy winner for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for that role, Garner is simply fabulous. Marty and Wendy can’t protect and grow their operation, let alone leave it, without assistance from other villains, convenient and tired ones, including a former Republican US senator from Illinois, Randall Schafer (Bruce Davison), and the CEO of a Chicago-based pharmaceutical corporation, Clare Shaw (Katrina Lenk). Yawn. Republicans bad, pharmaceutical firms, also bad. The money laundering Brydes? Not so much, at least according to the scriptwriters. Wendy, to protect their rackets, finds herself a reluctant participant in a Midwestern vote-suppression scheme that Schafer is behind. 

In real life, between the release of Part 1 and Part 2 of Season 4 of Ozark, the decades-long Democratic boss of Illinois, Michael Madigan, was indicted. But never forget, in television land, the GOP is evil.

Oh, what was that about Netflix losing subscribers?

A character introduced in Season 4, a disgraced former Chicago Police detective with good intentions, Mel Sattem (Adam Rothenberg), confronts the Byrdes over their hubris gained from their power and money, equating them with the Kennedy family and the conservative Koch family from Wichita. Slow down there. There is no Koch-equivalent to the Kennedys using their influence to allow Ted Kennedy to walk away with only a hand slap after arguably murdering Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick. 

Okay, I’ve hit the things that I didn’t enjoy with Ozark. Back to the good stuff–and there is plenty of it. 

The Navarro family has its own struggles. Omar’s nephew, Javi Elizondro (Alfonso Herrera), has plans that don’t coincide with those of his uncle. One of the many appeals of Ozark is the shifting of alliances–and the betrayals that accompany them. And of course, so are the performances–led of course by Garner–of the major characters and minor ones. One of the minor characters, Rachel Garrison (Jordana Spiro), makes a surprise return.

The cinematography of Ozark is at a feature-movie level. 

While of course set in Missouri, Ozark except for some Chicago scenes in Season 1, is filmed in the Atlanta area. In Part 1 of Season 4 I noticed a light rail train in what was supposed to be downtown Chicago. What were called streetcars way back when haven’t been running in Chicago for decades. In Part 2 of the final season, I spotted what appears to be a cabbage palm tree in front of Ruth Langmore’s Lazy-O Motel. That tree cannot survive a Midwestern winter.

And what about Wendy and Marty Byrde? As I remarked in a previous review, they are the television version of Tom and Daisy Buchanan, who in The Great Gatsby “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness.”

All four seasons are available for streaming on Netflix. The series is rated TV-MA for graphic violence, drug use, nudity, and obscene language.

Earlier post:

Review: Ozark Season 4 Part 1.

John Ruberry regularly blogs from the Chicago area at Marathon Pundit.

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