Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

We must not let politicians use Coronavirus as an excuse to transform the US

Posted: April 30, 2020 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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Just about every day since the Coronavirus crisis began I’ve seen progressive politicians voice the disturbing notion that this is a perfect opportunity to transform the United States in some way.  Always their proposals will make the United States a more progressive nation.  These politicians are nothing but shameful opportunists. We should resist these calls very strenuously.

Several progressive elected officials and Hillary Clinton have proposed that enacting Medicare for all would be a perfect solution our current crisis.  They are living in a fantasy world.  Socialized Medicine has an abysmal track record.  Check out how nations with socialized medicine have fared during this crisis.  The US has preformed far better.  Nothing would destroy the United Sates medical system, which is by far the best in the world, faster. 

Joe Biden, and others, have, proposed enacting the Green New Deal because of Coronavus.  That would destroy our energy sector, which thanks to the efforts of President Trump, made the US a net positive producer of energy.

Universal basic income has been proposed many times, including recently by Nancy Pelosi, as a temporary solution to our crisis.  Once enacted that new entitlement would quickly become permanent.   Nothing would trap generation after generation in poverty more securely than this.

Changes to our electoral system such as voting by mail and vote harvesting are the most dangerous changes proposed by progressives.  If they were enacted progressives would win election after election because of their willingness to use fraud and to deceit to win elections. 

Getting everything back to the way we were before the Coronavirus crisis as quickly as possible is the best and quickest way to restore our economy and standard of living.

If Four Years Ago Someone Told me a Drudge Search for “Reade” would have this result:

Posted: April 30, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

I’d have called them a liar.

Who would have though he’d actually out MSM Chris Hayes?

Update: I’ll be discussing this and how DaTechGuy’s Four Laws of Media Outrage apply to the Tara Reade case tomorrow on DaTechGuy Off DaRadio DaTechGuy’s AM Court Livestram at 9:30 AM EST.

I’m not the only one thinking this way about Tara Reade…

Posted: April 28, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Via Hotair my: “CNN thinks he did it” meme is getting support:

A generous and even sensible reading of this call is that it confirms what Reade originally alleged in 2019, that Biden, as we’ve known he’s done for years, creepily touched her neck and generally invaded her personal space, albeit with no obvious intent of personal gratification, sexually or otherwise. Even if you’re the most die-hard Democrat in the media, it makes little sense why you wouldn’t just want to investigate and then exhaust the Reade allegation so it doesn’t hang over his head until Election Day. But after months of the media hedging on the Reade story, the specific Larry King Live episode apparently featuring Reade’s mother has inexplicably gone missing on CNN’s Google Play archives of the show.

All of which raises the question: What does CNN know that we don’t?

Jazz expands on this:

 Even with the addition of the Larry King tidbit, Reade’s most serious claims still generally fail the tests we normally apply to these types of ancient, nearly unprovable, “he said, she said” situations. We lack any sort of physical evidence or even a direct witness to the claimed attack. We would also normally be looking for multiple contemporaneously corroborating witnesses, of which Reade has a few, but far more of her former coworkers in Biden’s Senate office tell very different tales. We would also normally check for a consistent description of events by the victim over the years. Reade fails that test entirely.

With all that in mind, why wouldn’t CNN do precisely what the New York time and other liberal outlets have done? Interview her, along with any available witnesses for both sides and publish their findings. They could state that Biden definitely has a history of invading women’s personal spaces and making them “uncomfortable,” but never in a way signaling that he was seeking sexual gratification. Then simply note Reade’s changing tale over the years, and conclude that she has a right to tell her story, but they simply can’t find enough hard data to conclude that her version of events is accurate. At that point you can simply ignore Reade and if anyone complains about the lack of coverage you can simply point them to your previous investigation and say that there’s nothing new and relevant to add.

Surely the powers that be at CNN are aware of all this. They could have flushed the Reade allegations out of the public debate weeks ago, perhaps briefly revisiting it this weekend after the Larry King material came out. Why didn’t they? Is it conceivable that some of the reporters at CNN know, or at least suspect something that may come to light about the Reade allegations later?

To ask the question is to answer it.

Personally if I was the left and wanted to kill all this I’d pay a woman to make wild accusations that could easily be proven false and then contrast this with Reade and lump them together in coverage.

Don’t be surprised if this happens next.

Report from Louisiana: Education Disparity during Covid Closure

Posted: April 27, 2020 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – One of the issues this pandemic has exposed has been the complete and utter lack of preparedness by education systems for such an event. Granted, nobody could have expected a nationwide shutdown of the economy and stay-at-home orders for weeks on end. But, in Louisiana at least, this is not completely without precedent. When Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans, we dealt with extended school closures in specific areas of the state. The difference, of course, as far as education goes at least, is that those displaced students had other school systems still in operation where they could transfer. That is not the case now.

What has emerged is a patchwork of fixes and plans between school systems. Each district is working in different ways to educate their students and there is little uniformity between systems much less within each individual district.

The result is that some students are receiving an education and others are not. The Advocate reports on survey results by the state Department of Education:

Educators said the coronavirus pandemic has exposed a national digital divide that is especially jarring in a state like Louisiana, where about two-thirds of students — nearly 500,000 youngsters — live in low-income households.

When the shutdown order came, the school in which I teach, for example, was winding up Spring Break. We walked out of our classrooms that previous Friday fully expecting to return in ten days. My classroom right now is exactly as I left it on March 6.

School districts across the nation scrambled to enact a plan. Nobody knew how long we would be closed. Students did not leave the campus with textbooks, work packets, or technology.

In a Title I school, like mine, the problems are compounded by the fact that many of our students do not have home computers or Wi-Fi.  But, in another school across town, kids have Wi-Fi, strong parental support, and personal computers.  

What were districts to do? How can you level this field over night?

We did the best we could, I guess. We set up dates where students could come to the school and sign out Chromebooks if they needed technology, but that doesn’t solve the Wi-Fi problem. Some students were given copied work packets. We enacted a “do no harm” policy where students can be graded on the work they turn in, but can’t be given a zero for work they don’t do, and overall a student’s grade can not go down from what it was on March 6.

Is this ideal?  Nope. But what’s the answer?

And how do you prepare for something like this?

Some school districts across the country have set up mobile Wi-Fi hotspots in buses parked in the neighborhoods, but obviously this has not been a uniform practice.

According to the survey:

Officials in the East Baton Rouge Parish school district told the state that 55% of their students lack access to a laptop; Central, 50%; Jefferson Parish, 40%; Livingston Parish, 38%; St. John the Baptist Parish, 65%; West Baton Rouge Parish, 65%; and St. Landry Parish, 60%.

At the other end of the spectrum for students lacking laptops is Ascension Parish, 1%; Lafayette Parish, 20%; Orleans Parish, 20%; St. Bernard Parish , 15%; St. Charles Parish, 5%; Plaquemines Parish, 10% and Zachary, 0%.

The shortage is even worse in rural areas, where five mostly north Louisiana school districts say 75% or more of their students lack access to a laptop or tablet at home.

Governor Edwards is planning to begin to reopen Louisiana for business at the end of the week and will announce his plans during a press conference later today. He has cautioned residents to temper their expectations and notes that this will be a very gradual process.

One of the things we certainly must address in the near future is to develop some kind of emergency plan that does not contribute to the already huge disparities in our education systems. While it’s impossible to prepare for what you don’t know, it is possible, now that we DO know, to create some kind of contingency plan for our students.

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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