Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

The more I see of what is happening to Democrat run cities in terms of crime the more I’m convinced that the left has been fighting a culture war against Black Americans…and won.

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Of course there are some winners of color in the left culture war against black Americans, such as the Black Lives Matter leader Patrisse Khan-Cullors, a self proclaimed “Marxist” who now owns multiple million dollar properties under her corporations name far away from the people she supposedly is serving.

As always Marxist leaders end up in luxury while the people they are supposedly defending end up poor.

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In fairness this activist is not alone, folks like Rebekah Jones have learned the ancient lesion that it’s a lot easier to convince people to give you money as pretending to leading a cause rather than actually doing or creating something. It’s all playacting & Illusion which likely explains why Hollywood where people play make believe for a living so loves such folk.

PT Barnum would be proud.

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Of course some people are young and naïve enough to think that being an “activist” makes them smart enough to actually run a company that creates things, like David Hogg. He thought he could make pillows and discovered that activism does not translate well into real world practical knowledge about making things. Or to put it another way because Mike Lindell makes it look easy doesn’t mean it is.

I’ve found that to most people the easiest job in the world is one somebody else is doing.

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Finally 33 years ago today my new wife and I were in Vancouver Washington (right next to Portland OR) for our honeymoon as Citi-travel messed up our London Trip and DaWife’s aunt who came to the wedding graciously offered the use of her guest house as her son was in Australia for several months along with the use of a car.

The two weeks we spent in the area were wonderful. Her father family were there and we traveled as far north as Victoria Canada, down the Oregon coast, west up the Columbia river and got lost in Seattle while driving.

We seriously considered moving there at the time. Recent events have shown that not doing so is likely remains the single best decision that we ever made as a couple.

Americans are republicans, so it seems perhaps not entirely an American thing, to be pro-monarchy.  But there is something to be said for the British royals, at least as they used to pull it off. True, there is something inherently “unfair” about a system that elevates someone by virtue of the family to which they are born. But is there really so much difference, between a Prince Harry and a Prince Hunter? They both have opportunities presented to them due solely to their names, but at least Prince Harry hasn’t sold out to China.

It’s a natural human inclination to admire or hold up someone in a group as someone somehow superior in certain respects, at least, to others, someone to perhaps model ourselves after. Every high school in America crowns each autumn a Homecoming King and Queen. But homecoming royals notwithstanding, in high school and beyond, pop culture predominates, and tends to hold up celebrities and athletes as these models for ourselves. It’s not entirely clear this is an advancement over royalty.

The very word “royal” is synonymous with the highest possible standards. From getting the royal treatment to booking the royal suite, use the word “royal” as a descriptor and it’s referring to the grandest, the biggest, the highest, the best. There’s a reason the royal straight flush is the highest possible poker hand (unless you’re the type who plays with jokers).

Unfortunately, all too often, the British royals, the world’s most prominent, fail spectacularly to live up to even decent standards, let alone royal standards. From King Edward VIII to Prince Charles to Princess Margaret to Prince Andrew to Prince Harry, the Windsors have steeped themselves in a miasma of sex scandals, mostly. With evidence like Edward VIII’s abdication of the throne in favor of a tarty American divorcée and Prince Andrew’s apparent Jeffrey Epstein-fed taste for underage children, an argument that royals can set standards tends to end with the question, how low?

Which makes Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, stand even taller, even from six feet deep in his newly dug grave, as the great British royal, the one-time Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, has finally, at the age of 99, passed to the next world.

Adventurer, pilot, sailor and yachtsman, consort of the Queen, Prince Philip helped sink Italian cruisers and destroyers as a 19-year-old midshipman during World War II, in a battle in the Mediterranean Sea opposite the ruins of the ancient Greek city of Taenarum, and he was the first British royal to cross the Antarctic Circle, on an expedition aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia in 1956-57.

He was also patron to some 800 organizations, helping to found the World Wildlife Fund, for which he served as UK president for over twenty years.

He carried himself with distinction and class and humor, and truly did set a royal standard. It’s a standard his grandson, Prince William would do well to imitate, if there’s to be any hope for the Windsors.

Otherwise, well, there must be other European royals capable of setting a royal standard. I mean, this is the land of fairy tale castles, right?

Is there a Hapsburg in the house?

By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – With my retirement from the classroom now about 33 (school) days away, I find myself sometimes doing a little self-check: “Are you sure? Any second thoughts?” 

The answer to that question is a resounding NOPE. I am ready. I am done. I have some deep questions about the state of education today, and about the issue of teacher pay, and about the expectations of our students, and oh, so many other things.

I hope to explore some of those questions after May 28, and after a short decompression period of rest, relaxation, regrouping and reprioritizing.

I have a lot of other questions on this Monday morning, too, most not related to education, but to life in general. For example,

How have we let social media become such a profound influence in our lives? How did we even function before social media? Why do we let this dictate so much of our moods, information, relationships, and activities? Why?!

Why don’t we pay teachers more? Why don’t we value the work they do more? Why does the public relations person in a school district make literally twice as much as a classroom teacher?

Why have so many people turned away from the church?

Why aren’t we, as a nation, able to sustain that level of American pride that we felt after 9-11? Why are we so divided and this group hates that group and this group hates that other group and everyone is mad all the time?

Wouldn’t our kids be healthier, both mentally and physically, if they played outside more? Pickup baseball games at the playground? I walk through the neighborhood and seldom see kids.

Why are we still wearing masks if most of the population is either vaccinated or has Covid antibodies from being sick?

Why do all SUVs look the same?  I miss muscle cars.

Is there any single reliable, unbiased, objective newspaper in America anymore?

What is the percentage of people in America without a cell phone? Has any other invention in our lifetime become so necessary so fast? Do people realize how fast this technology has rewired our brains? And is this a good thing?

Why don’t we do a better job taking care of mental health in our country?

Are we going to get to the point where we have to show proof of Covid vaccines to travel, or attend concerts, or go to school? Is this legal? Do we do this with other vaccines? How many legal challenges will this invite? How long will this drag out?

Why is there so much urban decay in my city? Why are we letting buildings just decay and collapse all across the city? No wonder people feel hopeless here.  

Why are liberals so convinced that alternative energies are the answer and electric cars are better when our power grid collapsed for over a week under a single snowstorm?

Sometimes I lay awake at night wondering about things like this. I used to hear my parents utter similar frustrations; a lot of times my Mom would worry about the state of music, for example, and wonder why everyone didn’t listen to Frank Sinatra all of the time. (She wasn’t really wrong…).  Sometimes I think, maybe I’m just getting old. I remember too much, and so often our memories are nostalgic and romanticized. Maybe things weren’t that great.

Or maybe they were.

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.

Now apparently they dream of it, to wit:

The school quickly launched an investigation and discovered that a “student of color” was responsible for the graffiti.

According to student newspaper The Albion Pleiad, college President Matthew Johnson informed students that a “current student of color” was responsible for the incident. As M Live reports, Albion Department of Public Safety Police Chief Scott Kipp stated that the suspect was a twenty-one-year-old Black male.

The school stated that the student acknowledged his responsibility and was “immediately removed from campus” while administrators “conduct a full investigation as part of our student judicial process.”

This would seem a change from the days when Black Students wanted to attend colleges that they had hitherto been excluded from because such an education was the best chance to better one’s self and thus expand the prospects for themselves and their children. This required hard work and study but the rewards of said effort were potentially huge both short and long term.

In the 21st century however this is not the case, not only has the value of a college degree dropped significantly (due to reasons that have nothing to do with race) but in current culture in general and campus culture in particular the value of being considered a “victim” both as an individual and as a group has increased to a point where there is a positive incentive for a black student or any group considered “marginalized” to be able to claim victimhood, thus equating themselves to those brave people who paved their path without all that inconvenient risk and danger

Even more incredibly even if when, in this case, the student who perpetuated said hoax is caught, the value of said hoax is retained by others in said “marginalized” community because nobody dares protest the scam for fear of being called racially insentitive.

This will end when the incentives for this behavior are removed and/or when a white student or employees sues the university for either “emotional distress” or an “unfriendly work environment” over the results of said events.