Remember You’re Only the Middleman for the Graft

Posted: November 2, 2023 by datechguy in opinion/news
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James Hacker: No Mrs. Rogers it won’t do. Either you must get some patients into this hospital or I shall close it.

Mrs. Rogers: Yes well minster in the course of time…

James Hacker: No no, not in the course of time Mrs. Rogers, now! Get rid of 300 of your people and get some doctors and nurses and get some patents.

Billy Frasier: Now look here without those 300 people this hospital wouldn’t function

James Hacker: You think it’s functioning now?

Mrs. Rogers: Minister, it’s one of the best run hospitals in the country. It’s up for the Florence Nightingale Award.

James Hacker: And what, pray, is that?

Mrs. Rogers: It’s won by the most hygienic hospital in the area.

Yes Minister: The compassionate Society 1981

One of the things that allows people to rob us blind is their misunderstanding of subsidies given to various producers of various items.

As a general rule I think the only things that really deserve subsidy are things that increase our supply of

  • Food
  • Drinking Water
  • Fuel
  • Electricity

The basis for this is that a country that can provide food and water, electricity and fuel without outside help is truly independent because if worst comes to worst the necessities of food and warm shelter are available so the people can survive. And of course such a country can tell any other country or group of countries who want to buffalo them to get lost because anything they would have to do without would be either a luxury or convienence.

This is not the case with electric cars. Consider this bit of info:

The paper estimated that the average cost of EV subsidies, ultimately footed by American taxpayers, were around $8,984 per car. That was thanks to a combination of the well-known $7,500 federal tax credit as well as state subsidies.

‘Our preliminary analysis indicates that states handed out over $646 million in taxpayer subsidies to EV buyers in 2021,’ read the report. ‘Dividing by the 435,320 EVs sold in 2021, the average EV buyer received state credits totaling $1,484.’

Now people think. “Hey I’m getting $8500 for buying this car!” but what’s actually happening is that $8500 is added to the price of the car so it’s going to the manufacturer to offset the costs that are being imposed.

Or think of college. People wonder why the price of college admission has gotten so out of hand. The reason is simple. When you have the federal government giving out free cash to help offset the cost of attending colleges, the colleges increase their prices to absorb as much of those funds as possible.

That’s why you have so many more administrators these days. All those tax dollars are helping to pay for all those people who process said tax dollars. The subsidy is not for you it’s for the people who are to be rewarded, it’s just passing through your hands.

That’s why one should always be wary of governments offering gifts because in the end it’s all about rewarding friends and those friends aren’t you.

Once you understand this, then the rest makes a lot of sense.

It’s the first of the month so it’s time for the Indulgence Calendar at DaTechGuy Blog for any and all who wish to pray for and help out the souls in purgatory.

It’s also All Saints Day a holy day of obligation for Catholics as we honor the saints in heaven, the Church Triumphant who have fought and won the good fight that we the church militant are still fighting on earth.

Because it’s All Saints Day it also means that there is a special series of indulgences that we have earn every single day through November 8th either for ourselves or for the Church Suffering (the souls in purgatory).

Beginning today, continuing tomorrow on All Souls Day ( where the church remembers the souls in purgatory) and throughout the octave of this Holy Day of Obligation a Plenary indulgence is available each day for anyone who visits a graveyard and prays for the dead.

These indulgences are available under the normal rules: which are:

  1. Communion the day of the indulgence (covers all indulgences that day)
  2. Prayers for the intentions of the Pope (covers all indulgences that day)
  3. Confession within 20 days before or after the day of the indulgence (covers all indulgences during that period of time)
  4. MUST be in a state of grace at the time of the indulgence (no unconfessed mortal sins)

Also be aware that unless your death is imminent you can only gain one Plenary Indulgence a day so if you earned for say:

  • Visiting the Blessed Sacrament for a half hour or more
  • Reading scripture for a half hour or more
  • Praying a group Rosary

then the indulgence you earn will be only partial.

Finally a plenary indulgence automatically becomes partial if you have any attachment to sin (that’s why they are so hard to get).

So if you’re a Catholic take advantage of these next 8 days, your soul and the souls in purgatory will thank you.

Anyways here is this month’s indulgence Calendars to download if you want.

That the full calendar the blank one is next

100 Word Fan Fiction: Paper Birth

Posted: October 31, 2023 by datechguy in fan fiction, fun
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In an age before computers the paperwork had to be filed in person, not hacked.

So there he stood in uniform before a file cabinet in Berlin. In went a military record, enlistment papers, commendations, promotions, leaves, wounds and even pay and viola Oberst Schreiber Kant of the Gestapo now existed and had a paper trail to prove it.

Now came the harder problem, finding the right mark for the plan, he scanned the files till he suddenly saw a familiar name. It was fiction he shouldn’t exist but so they said was he.

Suddenly everything needed fell into place.

Previously Fast and Slow Next: Guilt Trip

One of the advantages of waking up in excruciating pain is that you are up early enough to notice pieces quickly such as this one from Stacy McCain on what the media thinks REAL threat to the country is today ( Spoiler: it’s not Hamas or their supporters) :

Based on his stated supposedly biblical positions, the Bible in Johnson’s head is a silly, vicious farrago of ignorance and bigotry, and a blueprint for Christofascist tyranny. . . .
[T]he right loves to say we live in a republic not a democracy. And what they mean by that is that authoritarian disenfranchisement is awesome as long as it benefits the party of white biblical Christofascism. . . .

Do you want to read the whole thing? Probably not, but I felt obligated to throw the link in there, just so you could see that I’m not making this up. Does anyone really believe that “Christofascist tyranny” and “authoritarian disenfranchisement” (whatever that means) are eminent dangers to our country, or that Mike Johnson aspires to achieve this?

Johnson of course is the new very unexpected speaker of the house and democrats who created his speakership by voting with the 8 GOP reps who wanted to outset Speaker McCarthy are having a serious case of buyers remorse. To wit:

MAGA Mike unveiled the first piece of legislation promoted by his regime.

CBS reported, “House Republicans want to pay for emergency aid to Israel by cutting funding to the IRS, teeing up a collision with the White House and Democrat-controlled Senate over how to support a key U.S. ally.

“The House GOP released a $14.3 billion standalone measure on Monday that would pay for aid to Israel by cutting the same amount in funding that was allocated to the IRS under the Inflation Reduction Act, one of President Biden’s signature pieces of legislation.”

That is what conservatives have wanted for 31 years now, going back to the Reform Party, the Gingrich Revolution, the Tea Party and Trump. $30 trillion later, we may actually get cutting-before-spending legislation.

That’s via Don Surber whose early morning piece I caught almost as soon as it was published thanks to the pain still hitting me in the gut.

That the left media would be going all in on painting the rather mild mannered speaker they despise as an existential threat to American Democracy at a time when Jewish students are being advised to hide in attics at Universities and cities like Boston and New York have folks extoling the virtues of those who kidnap, murder women and children and behead babies might seem odd when this stuff is being plastered all over the news:

To the right are screen captures from two very large protests, the top showing a demonstration of an estimated 7,000 pro-Hamas protesters taking over the Brooklyn Bridge in New York on October 28, 2023. In the video at one point you can read a sign that clearly says, “Our soldiers will not be held accountable for anything.”

The second picture is from a protest in Chicago. The demonstrators at this moment are chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”, a chant that has always meant in plain language, “We will kill all the Jews in Israel because Allah said only Muslims can live there.” It is also written into the Hamas founding charter, which states unequivocally that it “owes its loyalty to Allah, derives from Islam its way of life, and strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.”

That comes from a Robert Zimmerman piece linked by Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit around the time I woke screaming in pain today. Zimmerman notes these thing that one can’t help notice in the news but then provides the answer to why the left seeks to elevate Mike Johnson as a danger while ignoring the threat of mobs provoking fear and violence :

What has not been noted enough however is the political allegiances of these pro-Hamas demonstrators. While not every Democrat favors what Hamas did on October 7th, we can be very very VERY confident that practically every single one of these pro-Hamas protesters, calling for the death of every Jew in Israel and numbering in the tens of thousands, is a Democrat, and has been voting for Democrats their entire lives.

This is the base of the Democratic Party. It is why the anti-Semitic “squad” of Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), and Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) are all elected members of the Democratic Party caucus in the House of Representatives. The first two represent districts strongly controlled by Democrats, most of whom come from the local Muslim communities, while latter two come from the one-party secular cities of New York and Boston, controlled wholly by Democrats.

This is of course consistent with the ghastly Tom Hagen Math that I’ve been writing about since 2016:

Right now the left has the Gays and the Transgenders and the Hollywood elites & media in which they are overrepresented and they figure that’s the best things to have, but in America Islam is a thing of the future.  In 20 years the children of Muslims now being raised on the tenets of Sharia law in America will be old enough to vote and Democrats going to make sure they get those votes when the time come, not now but 10-20 years from now.

And if that means that Jews in the US have to live in terror for their lives, particularly in blue cities and bright blue campus’ nationwide, well so be it.

The only problem is that this isn’t something that plays well outside of the deepest of blue cities so it must be suppressed and/or ignored because the story can’t be about Democrats supporting babykillers and kidnappers. Stacy McCain again:

Readers will recall that we last paid attention to Mr. Berlatsky two weeks ago (“Noah Berlatsky, Who Seems to Be OK With Pedophiles, Sure Does Hate Republicans,” Oct. 9), when Berlatsky sought to persuade his readers that what was really newsworthy was not that Hamas terrorists had slaughtered hundreds of Israelis civilians, but rather the Republican reaction to this massacre. Notice the pattern: No matter what the actual news may be, every day is Attack Republicans Day for Noah Berlatsky.

Why do you think that is?

Stacy gives his reason why Berlatsky wants to advance this narrative, but in my mind Mr. Zimmerman’s explanation as to why Democrats want to change the subject is more persuasive. I fully believe that in just a few years we will see this from Democrats:

Or you simply an example of a “good German”, who makes believe evil isn’t happening in your name, and will later claim “you just didn’t know, you had no idea what the Nazis were really doing?”

For the left to see themselves in the light of truth might be unbearable. But for the voters of the nation to see Democrats in the light of truth, that’s unthinkable.