Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

4 Reminders for GOP Members of Congress before the Jan 6th Vote.

Posted: December 31, 2020 by datechguy in elections, politics, Uncategorized
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John Adams: It would be a pity for a man who’s handed down hundreds of wise decisions from the bench to be remembered only for the one unwise decision he made in Congress.

1776 (Movie) 1972

Assuming the report of Senator Hawley’s determination to challenge the electors on the 6th is correct I’d like to remind GOP members of congress who are going to face intense pressure to go along with the steal of the election of four things they should keep in mind.

  1. Media Love is fleeting media hate is lasting: Never forget that to the MSM you are the enemy. You have always been the enemy and will always be the enemy. While you might get nice press for one or two days at the start of your term for voting with the Democrats on this I guarantee that within a very short time the moment you vote against one of their priorities or suggest that if a person has a penis they’re not a woman or that ripping babies from the womb & murdering them is a bad idea you will once again be considered one level short of Hitler.
  2. Who wants to be primaried? Given that 70% plus of the GOP believe this election has been stolen and evidence that this is the case continues to come out each day you’re not going to endear yourself to the GOP electorate by voting with the left here. The moment you reject a challenge to the vote in PA or GA etc you will find that not only will you have a primary opponent but said opponent will almost certainly have a built in vote block and a giant national donor base who will be delighted to vent their anger against you. Oh and if you’re in the senate and not up till 2024 or 2026 don’t think that you’ll escape this fate, why? Well because Jacksonians have long memories.
  3. Trump the Jacksonian: If you think the pushback from the voters back home and the money pouring into a primary is bad news for you, just wait until what happens when you give a lot of free time to a man with a long memory for slights. At best he will hold huge rallies for your primary opponent denouncing you as a coward who supported stealing an election from the American people. At worst he will use his connections and cash to dig deep into your background. Of course if you’re Mr. Clean you have nothing to worry about but I suspect any person willing to vote to uphold the theft of an election is unlikely to be all that clean.
  4. You’ll take the blame: There is a memorable ahistorical scene in the play 1776 where, thanks to a poll of the Pennsylvania delegation, James Wilson is put on the spot and votes for independence because he doesn’t want to be remembered as the man who stopped American independence. Right now GOP voters rightly blame the Democrats for the steal and are outraged at the cowardice state legislatures and the courts in punting on this issue, but once the votes comes up in the House and Senate the responsibility for stopping the steal or not will be on YOU and if your vote allows the steal to take place it will stick to you like a scarlet letter branding you as the one responsible for the theft of an election by the angriest (and most heavily armed) electorate since 1860 and now that social media is even more segregated by ideology said anger will be amplified for years. In an age of protests in front of people’s homes I’m sure that will be a comforting thought.

As a rule the right thing is usually the smart thing and if you are smart you will keep all of these things in mind when it comes time to vote to allow this steal to take place or not.

Cowardice State & Federal Ignorance, Trump Unrestrained and A Bad Move Under the Fedora

Posted: December 30, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

The steal of this election and the unwillingness of state legislatures to stop it at the state level demonstrates without a doubt that courage is the primary virtue which makes all others possible.by which all others.

As C. S. Lewis noted Pontius Pilate was merciful right up until the moment that it became risky for him.

Of course if the state legislators, sitting in safe districts outside of the cities had not tolerated this type of thing in the cities for years we wouldn’t be in this position today.

That same lack of courage is evident in the US Senate concerning the challenging of the electors. While Mitch McConnell is likely right that the president would lose a vote as Murkowski, Romney, Sasse and or Collins would relish the chance to publicly vote to uphold the steal of the Election it’s worth noting that the media is not going to love them any more or treat either them or any GOP voters who votes with them out of fear, any better for helping the steal along. It’s battered wife syndrome squared.

I suspect their real fear is a backlash by the 80% of GOP voters who see this election as stolen during primaries against any senator that votes against the President. It won’t be hard to find a candidate in any state and if the steal is upheld President Trump will have all the time in the world to make appearances for such primary candidates.

Personally I want a chance for the evidence of Fraud to be directly and permanently into the congressional record and I want every single Democrat to go on record supporting a crooked election and I want to see which GOP members do to

If there is one argument that makes me laugh outright concerning letting this steal go on without consequence is the one about a backlash. Personally I’d rather risk Antifa rioting without the backing of the federal government under Trump than seeing them used as muscle by the left under the protection of a Biden Administration.

And anyways, given the willingness of voters on the left to accept insane restrictions in the name of COVID that no sane person would have believed Americans would have tolerated I don’t see why you would think for a minute they would fight against congress exercising a perfectly legal and constitutional right to check election fraud by individual cities.

It’s worth noting that the same media, deep state folks who are relishing the idea that Donald Trump out of office are the same people who thought Sarah Palin became irrelevant the moment she resigned as Alaska’s governor. I think a completely unrestrained Donald Trump who doesn’t have to make nice with congress to make a deal to their votes to get things done will be far more destructive to the Deep State than Sarah Palin ever was.

And Trump is a Jacksonian, he never forgets and is unlikely to forgive. I suspect a Trump out of office will be a particularly large thorn in the side of the lot of them.

Finally I think signing the COVID relief bill was a bad move by the president. Authorizing billions in gimmies for special interests is never a good thing and it would have been instructive, particularly in the Senate to see members of congress to afraid to challenge a stolen election bravely fighting to defend pork giveaways for all. But I suspect the need for even the small amount of comparative aid for people overrode that consideration.

Although in fairness if there has been one consistent fault with Donald Trump it’s that he’s never been shy about increasing government spending even if he has spent wisely.

DaTimes admits it published ‘fake news’

Posted: December 29, 2020 by chrisharper in media, Uncategorized
Tags: ,

By Christopher Harper

The New York Times finally admitted that it published fake news over the past few years.

The admission wasn’t about the coverage of the Trump administration, but the errors stabbed at the very heart of what DaTimes considers its influence: international reporting.

You shouldn’t be surprised that you haven’t heard much about the massive editorial issues because DaTimes dumped the findings on the weekend before Christmas.

Reporter Rukmini Callimachi has been at the center of the publication’s coverage of terrorism, particularly the Islamic State.

In December 2014, Callimachi unearthed what appeared to be an important discovery. Syrian journalist Louai Abo Aljoud, Callimachi reported, said he had seen three American hostages while he was being held at an Islamic State facility in 2013. Upon further inspection, however, key details failed to bear out the “news,” resulting in an editor’s note affixed to the story on Friday.

“After the article was published, The Times learned that Mr. Aljoud had given inconsistent accounts of key elements of the episode to Times journalists and others,” the note reads in part.

After the publication of the editor’s note, Karam Shoumali, a Syrian journalist who worked with Callimachi, tweeted that he told the reporter about errors in the story. But she refused to change the details.

The tweet stands as evidence that as early as late 2014, less than a year after Callimachi jumped from the Associated Press to DaTimes, colleagues expressed concerns about her methods and conclusions.

But there’s a lot more. A key figure in DaTimes’ podcast, “The Caliphate,” which Callimachi created, was a fraud. Last September, Canadian authorities charged Shehroze Chaudhry for carrying out a terrorism hoax. Chaudhry was a key figure in “The Caliphate,” a 12-part series created in 2018. 

On Friday, DaTimes finally came clean. An editor’s note atop “Caliphate” admitted the collapse of key episodes. “In the absence of firmer evidence, ‘Caliphate’ should have been substantially revised to exclude the material related to Mr. Chaudhry. The podcast as a whole should not have been produced with Mr. Chaudhry as a central narrative character,” the note reads in part.

DaTimes failed to listen to various reporters from the news organization itself. This frequent problem has existed at the publication in past misadventures, such as Jason Blair and Judith Miller. 

Last week top editors who worked with Callimachi admitted their errors. But some reporters were not assuaged. C.J. Chivers, a former foreign correspondent and now a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine, was among the first Times reporters to complain to editors. 

“You discouraged people from using the fire alarm, and when some of us did use the fire alarm anyhow, we found the alarm was not connected to anything,” Chivers reportedly told the group. 

But there is a more fundamental question that runs through these problems at DaTimes, mainly since it is far from the first time that such egregious errors have happened. 

I gave up on DaTimes a few years ago. But it would seem its loyal readers should be asking a fundamental question: If someone got away with making stuff up for six years, shouldn’t the news organization take a harder look at all other aspects of the publication?   

Report from Louisiana: Wuhan Diary

Posted: December 28, 2020 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – As an avid and constant reader, I decided to do the Reading Challenge on Goodreads again this year; last year I set the lofty goal of 100 books and missed the mark with 63 out of 100 books.

This year, because of the pandemic, probably, I did better. I set a lower goal of 75 books and so far I’ve read 82. I’ll probably be at 83 by the end of the year.

Currently I am reading Wuhan Diary by Fang Fang, which is the collected dispatches, or posts, from the renown Chinese author during the 76 days of the Wuhan lockdown. While most of us are tired of Covid, tired of reading about Covid, and tired of all things Covid, I am enjoying the book.

To me, it is interesting to see what it was like in Wuhan in the days after the pandemic broke. Fang Fang’s frustration with the situation is evident and she is well aware that the government censors are reading and taking down her posts. Her readers would screenshot the posts and share them via text message to each other, and in many ways she became the voice of the pandemic in Wuhan as people in lockdown were starved for information that was not filtered for them.

Her frustration with the initial position that the virus is not contagious from person to person is clear. She does not mince words, despite the censors. As the lockdown in Wuhan drags on, it has been interesting to read how neighbors worked together to supply each other with fresh food, medicines, and supplies.

The book also shows that we are not all that different; Fang Fang loses many friends and colleagues to the virus; she deals with the same problems we all have: shortages, misinformation, isolation.  She worries a great deal about the mental health issues that result from the lockdown and she worries about the marginalized who cannot get medical treatment, especially in the earlier days before the temporary hospitals were constructed.

She also has very relatable problems, like running out of dog food. (She cooked rice for her dog when this happened.)

Sometimes she even challenges the censors. She wants to be seen as a witness, not necessarily a critic. As a result, her voice is honest, and heartbreakingly real.

I’m not finished with the book yet, but I do recommend it. Somehow it seems fitting to end this year of the pandemic with Wuhan Diary.

Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport and is the author of Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and her Circle at Melrose Plantation. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.

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