Report from Louisiana: On Newspapers

Posted: October 11, 2021 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – I have not read a single paragraph of anything uninterrupted in ten years. Perhaps I exaggerate, but not by much. I live with a “talker.”

I adore my spouse; we have a wonderful relationship. We are best friends. We travel, we go out with friends, we have a great deal in common. We have never had an argument.

But bless his heart, he is a talker.

Already, in the few seconds I’ve typed these few sentences, he has chirped up about tomorrow being Columbus Day and therefore no mail and offered commentary on the baseball game currently on television.

Sunday afternoons are quiet and lazy around here, usually. I like to get my stack of newspapers, lie about, and read them. Sunday afternoon I began with the New York Times (I know, I know…). I like the books section. I started there and tried to dive into a review of two new books about the Constitution and the American Revolution. No more than a paragraph into it, my focus had been interrupted so many times I finally gave up and turned the page.

I moved on to the Arts section and tried to read about three ballet dancers returning to the stage after the pandemic.  I had no better luck.

I tried several other articles before abandoning my paper altogether. I have the same issue when trying to read books. I work around it, I manage, because I know how blessed I am to have him and I love our life together. But geez, it’s hard to concentrate on anything.

Now perhaps he has actually done me a favor, right? I mean, The New York Times? Never in the history of ever has there been a more biased newspaper and so shameless about it. But I do enjoy a brief visit to the dark side now and then and sometimes it is terribly beneficial to read differing points of view.  I’m going to dive back into the Opinion section at some point; I really want to read Ezra Klein’s article about the peril of the Democrat agenda right now. It sounds promising. There is another article with the headline “Should You Care What Athletes Think?”  Nope. I don’t even have to read that one. Don’t care.

I truly miss the days of good, thick, news filled newspapers written by intrepid reporters scouting out sources and armed with little notebooks in their front pockets. The state of our media today is shameful and I wonder how, and when, we got to this point. I’ve been around a long time and read lots of papers, but I guess I just quit paying attention.

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.

Is This a Bug or a Feature? Covid Edition

Posted: October 11, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

As a general rule if I see a story at Hotair authored by Allahpundit I tend to pass it by, but this caught my eye because it touches on something that I’ve been talking about for a while. After looking at the piece as usual it wasn’t worth my time but the basic point that President Trump made concerning the Trust of the Biden administration is worth touching on.

Both the Biden Administration and their sycophants in the media and big tech have been pushing the vaccine to the nth degree and doing their best to demonize and/or punish anyone in the nation who dare defy their demand to receive said vaccine.

That alone is reason enough to be suspicious but there are two facts here that should be pointed out.

  1. The reason we have these vaccines at all is because of the Actions of the Trump administation to speed up their development and suspend the norms usually followed for vaccines: (Remember Kamala Harris’ very public statement that she would not take a “Trump” Vaccine?)
  2. The fact that Donald Trump was president when the vaccine was released and that Joe Biden is president as the Vaccine is being pushed has no bearing on if the Vaccine safe or effective.

The vaccine doesn’t care who is president, whether or not it’s effective or has side effects, short or long term. The vaccines are what they are for good or ill, only the messaging is different.

I guarantee you that if Trump was in office there would be no shortages of media stories questioning the numbers and even the slightest side effect would be front page news.

That we have reached this point is an indictment of us as a society.

The answer to Durbin’s favorite question for SCOTUS nominees is in: Merrick Garland favors restricting personal freedoms

Posted: October 10, 2021 by John Ruberry in culture, education, News/opinion, politics
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Blogger with Durbin in Chicago in 2019

By John Ruberry

When Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland in the final year of his presidency to replace Antonin Scalia on the US Supreme Court he was hailed by some as a moderate. 

Well “Moderate Merrick,” if he ever existed, is gone. 

Garland’s nomination was never acted upon by the US Senate, which was then in Republican control, and President Trump nominated Neal Gorsuch for the Scalia seat–and the Senate went on to confirm Gorsuch.

Had Garland faced the Senate he might have been asked this question from Sen. Dick Durbin, who is from Garland’s home state of Illinois, “Will you restrict the personal freedoms we enjoy as Americans or will you expand them?” Durbin posed that query to John Roberts during his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings sixteen years ago and he has asked the same question, as did his predecessor, Paul Simon, during confirmation hearings for other SCOTUS nominees. 

Well we have the answer to the question that Durbin never asked Garland. Joe Biden’s attorney general favors restricting personal freedoms.

Last week, citing unnamed threats against unnamed school board members, Garland in a memorandum declared, “I am directing the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working with each United States Attorney, to convene meetings with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders in each federal judicial district within 30 days of the issuance of this memorandum.”

In short, Garland is unleashing the FBI against parents who have spoken out against hateful and bigoted Critical Race Theory offal that is being rammed down the throats of their children. Do you want someone like Agent Petty from Ozark showing up at your front door? Clearly Garland is plotting to separate parents from their children. After all, leftists from Karl Marx on have viewed parents as an obstacle to pursuing their goal of a perfect society, which of course is a totalitarian state where the elites, who of course are so much wiser than everyone else, guide the rabble. Yes the rabble. You know, people like me and you, part of a multi-million member conglomeration similar to Ozark’s redneck Langmore clan. That’s how our leftist “betters” see us.

Last month at a Virginia gubernatorial candidate debate, the Democrat nominee, longtime Clintonista Terry McAuliffe, let loose this surprising bit of candidness, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

I believe parents should have the defining voice in school curricula—as do undoubtedly most Americans. 

In his farewell address in 1989 Ronald Reagan said, “And let me offer lesson number one about America: All great change in America begins at the dinner table.” And that is as it always should be.

But in his first inauguration speech as California governor the Gipper warned, “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction.”

We now have an attorney general–and a White House administration–that favors restricting freedom.

Don’t look for Durbin to call them out on it.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Some Data from the present and a prediction of the Future

Posted: October 10, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

John Bernard Books: What good’s your assurance when my veins are filled with your damn juice?

The Shootist 1975

According to this data via the the VAERS website the COVID 19 vaccines have caused more, life threating events, more permanent disabilities and more direct deaths than all other vaccines combined since 1990.

Furthermore the number of adverse reactions to all other vaccines since 1990 is 824K vs 778k for COVID.

And of course these numbers only count stuff that has been reported and we have reason to believe that these numbers are low

If a batch of Hamburg had reported 1/10 of the side effects these virus had it would be recalled and the lawsuits would be legendary.

Eventually another administration will be in power and all of this will come out. I presume when it does (and particularly if it’s led by Donald Trump) the media & the tech companies that censor this data will suddenly discover it newsworthy and the vaccines will suddenly become the “Trump” Vaccines.

#Unexpectedly of course

Update: One argument I’ve heard from people concerning this stuff is that there have been few immediate side effects from the vaccines (and given these figures 500K adverse reactions out of 150 Mil people vaccinated in the US comes to .3% and that’s a fair point to be made and even the 7,347 deaths and 8,628 disabilities amount to only 15,975 people or .01% of the population ) so the math is still very much in your favor but there are three things I would point out.

  1. The actual odds of dying from COVID are also less than 1% for everyone except those in the highest risk ranges
  2. A person who has already had COVID would already have antibodies against the disease which would decrease these odds even further.
  3. Those figures above represent only the immediate side effects, we don’t know the long term effects that might result. Under a standard that only considers immediate effects for one year afterwards Cigarette Smoking would be consider a safe and harmless recreational activity.

This is not to say that some, indeed many may consider this an acceptable risk and I have no problem with those who have and those who choose to play these odds.

But I submit and suggest that nobody should be forced to play them

(added the John Wayne quote from the shootist)

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