Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Things would be so much better in the US if the news media was worthy of our trust and respect

Posted: June 25, 2020 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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All across the board, on every single issue the Mainstream News Media has failed the American people.  They have gone way past failing to inform us on so many key issues, they are intentionally misinforming us.  This has produced truly disastrous results, namely the recent rioting that rocked so many US cities and the Coronavirus lockdowns that have crippled the US economy and destroyed so many businesses.

The Mainstream News Media is more than deserving of the label Fake News, which I will use for the remainder of this article.  They have completely thrown out all objectivity, and are now the propaganda arm of the Democrat party and the progressive side of the political spectrum.  This article News Media Credibility Rating Falls to a New Low indirectly provides the proof of the bias, which reached an extreme level during the Obama Administration, only to be surpassed during the Trump Presidency.

As America grapples with a historic crisis under the leadership of a Republican president who frequently derides the media as “fake news,” new Morning Consult trend data finds Americans’ views of the fourth estate’s credibility have hit a new low during the Trump administration, largely driven by declines among Republicans.

The share of U.S. adults who said nine leading media outlets — including CBS and The New York Times — were credible has dropped roughly 9 percentage points since December 2016, from 60.6 percent to an average of 51.2 percent today. Last year, the average credibility rating sat at 55.4 percent.

As was seen in last year’s analysis, Republicans are driving this drop.

If the Fake News was not so incredibly biased toward the political left then the disapproval ratings of the networks by both parties would be roughly equal.  The drastic lopsidedness of the disapproval and approval is proof that the coverage is severely slanted to one side.

Sadly Fox News is no longer the Conservative powerhouse it used to be and that shows in the media survey.

Fox News is the only media entity to remain relatively unscathed, though the share of GOP adults who find it credible has slipped 6 points since 2016. Two-thirds of Republicans say the “Fair and Balanced” outlet is credible, a figure that’s more than 20 points higher than the next outlet’s credibility rating among Republicans (CBS, at 46 percent). 

The Fake News has particularly failed the entire nation during the Coronavirus and the survey proves it.

The poll comes at a particularly sensitive time for news information, as residents across the country seek out accurate reports on the coronavirus pandemic. Recent polling shows a country divided over the job that news media is doing: Fifty-five percent of respondents in a March 13-22 Gallup survey disapproved of the news media’s handling of the coronavirus in the United States, while a Pew survey, fielded March 19-24, reported that 54 percent of the public said the news media is doing a “good” or “excellent” job responding to the outbreak.

From the very beginning of the Coronavirus crisis the Fake News gave far more airtime to the scientists and experts that had predictions of doom and gloom. I believe this was done on purpose so government officials would lockdown the United States and tank the economy in an attempt to influence the 2020 election.  This has resulted in enormous amounts of pain and suffering as businesses all across the US close for good.

The media is going to keep the panic over Coronavirus going until the election in an attempt to cram through mail in voting everywhere and to keep the economy sputtering along so they can hammer President Trump over it. This Bloomberg headline is proof of that: Virus Surges Across U.S., Throwing Reopenings Into Disarray.

Would the recent riots that resulted in such terrible destruction have occurred if the media had not jumped to the wrong conclusions and taken them to such an extreme during the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown incidents?  Many years of the Fake News pushing the false narrative that the US is still a systematically racist nation provided the fuel and lit the fuse of the recent riots. Fake News needs to be held accountable, not by the government, but by its viewers.

Wednesday Under the Fedora Thoughts (Mostly Seattle Edition)

Posted: June 24, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

If you want to understand why the left was so insistent on POTUS not having that Tulsa Rally look no further than Seattle.

For a month the mainstream media insited that what was happening in Chaz/Chop/Seattle Autonomous Zone (or as I call it Clueless in Seattle) was a block party when the president tweeted out against it both the mayor and the Governor ridiculed it. Rapes, assaults the handing out of weapons and even shootings didn’t change their tune

During his rally watch by over 7 million he brought it up again and said he’s ready to help clean it up as soon as they ask and viola suddenly the mayor thinks it’s time for it to end.

Just a coincidence I’m sure

One thing that I regularly argue is that reality doesn’t care what kind of fantasy you build for yourself, in the end it always asserts itself.

Here is an example of Reality asserting itself in Seattle

Coronavirus pandemic or not, an investment advisory company is leaving the cultural unrest in Seattle and moving its headquarters to Phoenix’s Camelback Corridor.

” … The unrest that has taken place in the city of Seattle … there is really is not a downtown business community today,” Smead Capital Management, President and CEO Cole Smead told KTAR News 92.3 FM.

People may give lip service and even dollars to BLM etc but when it comes to their own skin, they become conservative in a hurry.

The Mayor’s sudden reversal is causing a lot of schadenfreude on the right side of twitter but I submit and suggest that while all of this is fun what really matters is what happens in November.

If Seattle re-elects this same crowd it will be a signal to the business community and the populace that this can and will happen again.

If you live in Seattle, your city’s future is up to you. I submit and suggest unless your plan is to buy up land cheap and build a compound for yourself it might not be a good idea to re-elect these folks

One of the oddities of the net is that you will get the same story framed different ways. I was downstairs on my backup computer when DaWife mentioned something on Pam Geller’s site suggesting Seattle’s Mayor had moved in on Chop/chaz etc. I had just installed reinstalled Brave on the machine so I didn’t have a bookmark to her site there so I did a quick search for her to get there. Instead I got the SPLC listing and a dozen articles about how horrible she is. That’s when I realized the default search engine was “google” I switch the default search engine to Duck Duck Go and searched again. Entry one? Pam’s Site. (Turned out the story was the same report that she changed her mind).

That type of bias against conservatives is in play every day all over the world and the effect it has is insidious.

Finally to the surprise of nobody who has been paying attention lately the “NASCAR Noose” turned out to be a hoax, a garage pull.

I think the backlash against all this stuff is going to be spectacular come election day and the reckoning the week after the election will be worse.

Report from Louisiana: More Protests

Posted: June 22, 2020 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – Everyone is talking about statues again, and not just Confederate ones.

Now the Theodore Roosevelt statue will be removed from the Museum of Natural History:

The bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt, on horseback and flanked by a Native American man and an African man, which has presided over the entrance to the American Museum of Natural History in New York since 1940, is coming down.

The decision, proposed by the museum and agreed to by New York City, which owns the building and property, came after years of objections from activists and at a time when the killing of George Floyd has initiated an urgent nationwide conversation about racism.

For many, the equestrian statue at the museum’s Central Park West entrance has come to symbolize a painful legacy of colonial expansion and racial discrimination.

This is becoming epidemic.

They aren’t stopping at just monuments. At LSU in Baton Rouge, the Middleton Library is being renamed, and Troy Middleton’s name removed from the exterior of the building after a dig through archives determined Middleton held segregationist views in the 1950s.

Lee High School is Baton Rouge is going to be renamed. The school board member who opposed the motion is being targeted as a racist.

Activist Gary Chambers is also calling for street names with Confederate names to be changed:

Chambers, who is publisher of The Rouge Collection, also repeated his call that streets near Lee High, several of them named after Confederate generals, be renamed. “There’s even a street named Whitehaven,” he said.

One of the groups behind the removal of the Confederate monuments in New Orleans, Take ‘Em Down NOLA, has a list of sites they want renamed which they published in 2017. Their website now also calls for abolishing the police:

In this moment of global reconciliation with age old truths around systemic racism, Take Em Down NOLA demands that the city government finally begin the real work of reckoning with the WHOLE truth of white supremacy in New Orleans. They can start with the immediate removal of ALL symbols to white supremacy, including those that represent figures both before and after the Civil War. And they can move further by taking steps towards the abolition of the NOPD by DEFUNDING them (as they currently expropriate some two-thirds of taxpayers’ money) and PROACTIVELY reallocating those funds to children and families and the development of jobs that pay a LIVING wage. Minimum wage has never been sufficient, and it certainly isn’t now. 

There is apparently no compromise and no room for discussion with radical extreme points of view – from either direction.

In Shreveport this past weekend, we have seen one demonstration after another; they have been peaceful, but have not been without conflict. Shreveport’s Confederate monument is still standing in front of the courthouse; the monument stands within a fence on a tiny parcel of land owned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy – although this is still in litigation. During the protest this weekend, one of the participants climbed over the iron fence with a sledgehammer and posed for photos with the caption “Move it or Lose It!” 

No harm was actually done, but the threat was made, and the person was trespassing on private property. Whether that land is actually owned by the UDC or not, the monument certainly is, and so: trespassing.

The Dallas, Texas Confederate monument is being dismantled as I type this.

At any rate, there is no end to this, and when all the monuments are gone, when all the school names and street names have been changed, when every single symbol is erased, will people then stop having racial bias? Will that do it?

When does it end? What does it take?

I don’t think anyone has the answer to that.

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.

A Chair and a Sign and a little Courage Is All It Takes

Posted: June 19, 2020 by datechguy in crime, culture, Uncategorized
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This post comes from a series of Tweets I put out yesterday. If you prefer a twitter thread you can read it here. I have modified it slightly due to the different interface of a blog

If you watch the MSM you are bombard of images of protests against the police, political leaders scrambling to be the first to hit them, corporations rushing to pay “protection” money and bend the knee to those who are trying to, at best neuter and at worst destroy the police. It’s on the news, it’s on entertainment shows, it’s on sports shows you can’t escape it.

The real problem for those of us who think #bluelivesmatter & #supportthepolice is that there is very little pushback in the non virtual word to the media’s anti police narrative. Hashtags are nice but they don’t make a difference in the real world. For days the thought ran though my mind that “Somebody has to do something!” and I suspect that’s been going through a lot of people’s minds. On Wednesday it suddenly hit me that this was the wrong way of thinking.

The right way of thinking is “I have to do something.” So here is what I did.

I went to Ocean State Job lot before work for a folding chair, some markers and some poster board. Unfortunately poster board was on sale so all that was left was two loud bright green boards both torn at the bottom. I had no time to spare so I bought them.

When I got home from work at Midnight I took out one of the poster boards and on one side wrote “Support Our Local Police” and on the other side wrote “Support Our Local Fitchburg Police” and it put it back in the car

I woke up around 8 AM (I never use an alarm clock ) went to my church and had confession from my priest. Then I drove down to the municipal parking lot. took out my chair, my sign and my rosary and walked to the intersection of Main street and Putnam Street unfolded my chair and sat down with my sign facing the one way traffic going straight on main or turning on Putnam.

I was there about an hour holding with my left hand while praying a Rosary for Police with my right. A few people beeped, some walked by and said they agreed (and commented that the sign was hard to see in the bright sunlight suggesting different colors). There was none of the commotion of the BLM event of a few weeks ago. No fuss, no muss, no shaking down anyone for cash, just one man sitting down in the sun holding a sign in support of the Police.

The high point for me was when a police car drove by, slowed down on Putnam, rolled down his window and said “Thank You”.

I’d like to think that for someone who has spent the last month being told how horrible he is by moves and shakers across the land.

After I finished two twenty decade rosaries and a pair of Divine Mercy Chaplets I picked up my sign and my chair, headed back to my car and went home. No fuss, no muss, it was a pretty unremarkable hour. But it meant something.

Police officers have a thankless job. They are called when there is trouble and are expected to handle it. That means they generally deal with people at their worst because when they show up it’s because

  1. Someone is doing something bad
  2. Someone is angry or about what someone else is doing
  3. Someone is in trouble or scared
  4. Someone either just had or is in the midst of an accident or crisis

In other words a police officer generally appears at a time of maximum tension. Such situations are inherently volatile. Even a routine traffic stop can become life or death without warning.

Yet a police officer is excepted to either diffuse the situation or handle it with the appropriate amount of force needed, with the word “appropriate” to be defined after the fact.

Furthermore in such a situation whether alone or in force they are expected to stand there when people berate or disparage them or even throw objects at them. And of course there is always a camera phone ready to condemn them if they put a foot wrong.

They are always a single remark or action, away from being out of a job or in the dock it can happen in the blink of an eye. And that’s not even mentioning the risk of permanent injury or death.

That is the daily price police pay to allow our society to live outside of gang justice or vigilante justice or tribal justice. I couldn’t do it & I suspect neither could those making political hay & racking in $ attacking them.

However we’ve ceded the public argument to those seeking gain political & financial power off the backs of the men & woman who do a thankless job day in & day out that most of us couldn’t handle so we can live safe.

This can’t stand.

My little chair and sign yesterday was a tiny public response in a small city to the media juggernaut but it was noticed & appreciated by those who needed to see it.

I think if you really want to show you support the police and believe blue lives matter I’d make a sign like the one I did supporting your local police, get a chair & be seen for an hour. Maybe your town is quiet and maybe won’t be a big deal but your local #police will see it and know that no matter what narrative the media / left wants to push, there is someone who knows the job they do and thinks it’s worth it.

I submit & suggest that if you make than sign & have the courage to be seen in public for an hour, it will be make a difference to a local cop worried about where this is going & be more valuable than a hundred tweets with the hashtags #bluelivesmatter or #supportthepolice

Closing thought: I did a series of audio interviews called “Interviews with Immigrants” a while back. On one of them I spoke to a lady named Maria from the Dominican Republic. She told me the story of visiting her sister in Leominster MA and sitting alone by a pond one day when three men she didn’t know came walking by. After they went by it suddenly hit her that for the 1st time in such a situation she wasn’t afraid. That’s when she knew she wanted to live in America.

That’s what those who are trying to destroy the police want to take from us.

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