Report from Louisiana: Rescuing a Shrine

Posted: September 21, 2020 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – We are now in the Greek alphabet for naming hurricanes, with Beta headed toward the Louisiana/Texas Gulf coast this evening. This is only the second time we have gone to the Greek alphabet for this, the last time in 2005.

Beta will be primarily a rainmaker for us, which isn’t so bad, except the Lake Charles area really doesn’t need any more rain.

Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy worries that the nation has forgotten about Hurricane Laura and that relief efforts have stalled:

“The sentiment by many at home is that the nation has already forgotten about Hurricane Laura,” said Cassidy. “The fear is that the recovery efforts will be stall and we’ll be ignored while other news…takes over. I’m here to be the voice for the people of Louisiana and share our story with you so that you may know what we are facing.”

Many feel that if not for the Cajun Navy, progress in this area would be nowhere near where it is now. The Cajun Navy has been providing and organizing meals, relief drives, rescues, distributing water, among other things.

The Cajun Navy is not the only group providing relief and volunteering time, however.  In an uplifting story in The Advocate, we learn that a group of volunteers from Lafayette, primarily high school boys from St. Thomas More High School and their fathers, traveled to Cameron Parish “to work in eastern Cameron Parish, mostly at Catholic churches badly damaged by the Category 4 storm but also at private homes.”

While there, they rescued a treasured crucifix from Our Lady of the Star in Cameron, Louisiana. The crucifix reportedly weighs between 300 and 400 pounds and was made in Italy. The video of the rescue has gone viral around social media sites. They took the crucifix back to St. Thomas More for safekeeping.

The church also holds a seven-foot marble statue of Mary and child which was commissioned and made in Italy and dedicated in 1963.  Every year a mass is said at the shrine on June 1: The Mass to Avert Storms.

The boys from Lafayette were able to see this shrine which is still standing, when they rescued the cross.

It’s a nice reminder that as many feel forgotten in the wake of Hurricane Sally and now Beta, there are still people working to rebuild and restore the Cameron and Caldwell parish areas.

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.

Ginsberg’s Replacement The Was The Big Chance for #NeverTrump “True Conservatives” to Prove Their “Conservative” Credentials

Posted: September 21, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

For four + years those of us who have supported Donald Trump have been told by our Never Trump “true conservative” betters that whatever the advantages to various legislation and even SOCTUS judges picked by Trump. Donald Trump is so vile that to vote for his is to sell your conservative soul.

These folks should have been very happy now because their moment had come!

With the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg and the guarantee that President Trump will nominate a replacement quickly and McConnell scheduling a vote before the election one of the supposedly primary drivers for us poor deluded souls who have supported Trump is about to disappear.

Consider: if Donald Trump gets a nominee though before the election the Supreme Court will sit at six conservatives and three liberals and the primary driver for anti-abortion religious voters to hold their nose and vote Trump is gone!

Suddenly NEVERTRUMP could make the case they don’t NEED Donald Trump to be president to have an anti abortion supreme court. Even with Chief Justice John “old yellowstain” Roberts occasionally voting with the left the conservative majority will still hold.

And even if a President Biden or Harris gets elected they would need not one but TWO vacancies among Alito, Thomas and Roberts to swing the court back their way. Replacing one of the three solid liberals won’t count toward giving them a majority.

So if you are a Charlie Sykes or a Rick Wilson or an Amanda Carpenter or Joe Scarborough or any writer for National Review or the Lincoln project all you had to do is put all your weight behind the President’s nominee and all you’ve desired will be possible.

You’ll not only be proving that you meant it when you said you were pro-life conservatives who care about issues like abortion but can’t vote for Trump, but you’ll be able to strip the re-election of Donald Trump of their argument that without him there is no conservative majority. After all the battle for the courts will be already won! They’ll never be a better chance to pry those who don’t say they don’t like President Trump but want a conservative court away from him.

What will it be?

Here’s their answer:

Or put simply they’re not NeverTrump or “true conservatives” or “prolife” they’re just on the other side as long as that side is the one that pays.

Unexpectedly of course.

Questions the mainstream media needs to be asking Biden

Posted: September 20, 2020 by John Ruberry in elections, immigration, media, News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

Last week CNN hosted a town hall for Joe Biden where he was given softball questions. No, on second thought they were T-ball questions. 

The demands on whoever is president are brutal. If CNN believes that Biden can’t handle challenging queries then that in my opinion disqualifies him to be leader of the most powerful nation on the planet. And if CNN is just shilling for the Democrats, then no one should take them seriously as a news outlet. Based on their poor ratings, most people already do not. 

Here are some questions that responsible reporters should be asking Biden. The wonderful thing about the questions I’ve devised is that most of them can be posed to President Trump. Yes, a few of these queries have been given to Biden, but generally only once and with dismissive answers from the Democratic nominee.

Here we go:

  • Will you be releasing the names of your potential Supreme Court nominees, as President Trump did as a candidate in 2016 and did earlier this month?
  • Do you support “packing the Supreme Court,” that is, nominating additional justices to the court to go beyond nine members?
  • Where’s Hunter?
  • Do you unconditionally oppose Antifa?
  • Will a Biden administration investigate plots by Antifa and other groups to incite riots in cities such as Portland?
  • You favor a nationwide mask mandate to fight COVID-19. What is your legal basis for instituting one?
  • Do you support statehood for the District of Columbia? And for Puerto Rico?
  • Many states, such as Illinois, Kentucky, and New Jersey, have public-sector worker pension plans that are essentially bankrupt. Do you support a federal bailout of these and other state worker pension plans?
  • Numerous cities also have similarly under-funded pension plans. Will you back a bailout of those plans?
  • What is your position on bailing out states whose tax revenues have plummeted because of COVID-19 lockdowns?
  • Do you favor allowing states to declare bankruptcy?
  • Speaking of Illinois, in 2008 the US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Patrick Fitzgerald, was in the midst of a corruption investigation of Rod Blagojevich, the governor of the state, and Tony Rezko, a member of Blago’s inner circle who donated large sums to the campaigns of Barack Obama. Your ticket mate kept Fitzgerald in his post after becoming president. This year John Lausch, the current US Attorney in Chicago, is in the thick of investigating more public corruption. The center of this scandal appears to be longtime Illinois state House speaker Michael Madigan who is also the chairman of the state Democratic Party. If elected will you keep Lausch in his post?
  • Where’s Hunter?
  • If elected you will be older than Ronald Reagan, the oldest person to serve as president, was when he left office after two terms. Are you physically and mentally up to the office? If you are now what will happen if you one day are not?
  • Do you support the Green New Deal?
  • Do you support fracking?
  • Do you support nuclear power?
  • Do you support coal power?
  • Do you back amnesty for illegal immigrants?
  • Do you utilize teleprompters during interviews and question-and-answer sessions?
  • Where’s Hunter?

I’m sure there are many more questions readers can come up with.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Fatama MovieReview

Posted: September 20, 2020 by datechguy in catholic, entertainment
Tags: ,

If you’re looking for the movie that is the “Anti-Cutie” Fatima is it.

Fatima tells of the Apparitions of Our Lady in Fatima Portugal during mid 1917 to three children. The disbelief of both the church and local officials of this story and the final conclusion of the “Miracle of the Sun” witnessed by the thousands who came to see the promised miracle.

The story of three children Lucia (Stephanie Gill) Jacinta (Alejanda Howard and her brother Francisco (Francisco) is told through a series of flashbacks as an author and skeptic Professor Nichols (Harvey Keitel) visits the adult Sr. Lucia (Sonia Braga) at her cloistered convent as part of a book he is writing.

There are solid performances here. All the child actors are excellent. Joaquim de Almeida (Father Ferreira) is excellent as the parish priest, Lucia Moniz as Lucia’s mother the faithful catholic who doubts her daughter is particularly good and the interplay between the Mayor(a staunch atheist trying to defend his position and his wife the faithful catholic is extremely interesting and well done.

For myself it’s the little dramatic things that resonated with me. Lucia recognizing the temptation and presence of the Devil when she is feeling pride the crowds wanting “the seers”. The anger of a mother who had lost a son (the movie takes place during World War 1) demanding answers as to why HER faithful prayers are not answered. The realization of what happens to your fields of crops when hundreds tramp on them to get to a site and the child and man hawking Rosaries at the site of the apparition illustrate human nature in action.

The story is pretty faithful to historical events from the appearance of the Angel of Peace and Portugal (Ivone Fernandes-Jesus) to the pushback and persecution that the children get to the point where they are held by the civil government to prevent visiting “the lady of the Rosary” (Joana Ribeiro) as they are considered a threat to the atheistic government of Portugal at the time. The irony is what is left out, [Minor Spoiler] particularly in the finale where my wife and I both noted that the single tangible physical miracle of that final day is completely skipped [/spoiler] as is at least one of the visits and parts of the message of our lady.

That is the only nitpik for the faithful and the only reason for the secular woke left to cheer. That a movie like this which promotes the promises of our Lady and the hope they can bring is coming out at a time of an international pandemic, civil unrest in the US is huge.

That a movie that promote three pious children and how they suffer for their obedience and piety it comes out at the same time as Netflix and critics are pushing “Cuties” a movie that exploits young girls sexuality to the delight of the critics and the establishment left as legitimate entertainment is, in my opinion, the hand of God.

4 1/2 out of five

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