5 Iowa Caucus Thoughts Coincidences, App less voting, Participation Trophies, SOTU & NH Scrutiny Under the Fedora

Posted: February 4, 2020 by datechguy in elections, News/opinion, oddities, politics, primaries
Tags: ,

It’s 8:59 AM Tuesday and I’ve just woken up and we still have no results from Iowa.

This is just a day or two after CNN and the Des Moines Register declined to release the results of the final poll.

And a few days after the Democrats allowed a rule change on Debates.

Yeah if I’m a Bernie Bro I’m going to trust the results, sure I am.

One of the things that occurred to me as the Democrats were busying blaming an app for their issues is that they had a caucus four years ago, and four years before that, in fact they’ve had plenty of caucus’ without this app and were able to count the votes.

How is it that they weren’t able to just, you know, count and report the votes without said app? I think that’s a very interesting question don’t you?

One other great coincidence of this “result” in Iowa is that all the candidates that the Democrat establishment wanted to protect were able to give speeches as if they had not lost, even better for them is that with the SOTU tonight, Impeachment finishing tomorrow, and NH only a few days away by the time Iowa DOES report their results it will old news.

Unexpectedly of course

Speaking of the State of the Union it will be interesting to see if President Trump includes a line about the Iowa voting or the fact that he managed to get just over 97% of the vote with over thirty one thousand votes vs just over 900 for Weld, Walsh and “other” combined. Somehow the GOP was able to count these votes without the Democrat app.

Unexpectedly of course

Finally for a lot the good folks at Granite Grok have been writing about the voting in NH and the sudden migration of non New Hampshire residents who suddenly become voters on Election day (completely unexpectedly of course) on election day. Normally this is reserved for the General election but with the desire to stop Bernie combined with the Iowa debacle it will be very interesting to see if democrats take a sudden interest in having the actual rule of law followed when ballots are cast in the state.

Should be fun.

Oh fyi finished the post at 9:33 AM still no results….

Report from Louisiana: on Reading and Education

Posted: February 3, 2020 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
Tags: ,

By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – With the resignation of Louisiana State Superintendent of Education John White, effective in March, many Louisiana educators are closely watching the process and the candidates for the post.

Personally, I shed no tears over John White’s exit. Under his tenure we have moved into Louisiana’s version of Common Core of which I have been a vocal opponent.

I am on year twenty-four right now, in my career, and plan to do one more and then leave the profession.  I have no desire to teach from a canned, scripted curriculum that assumes one size fits all in the classroom. The education profession has become something I no longer recognize; it might be better, it might not, but it’s left me behind.

As a secondary ELA teacher, it hurts my soul that my students no longer read novels. In tenth grade, only the PreAP, or honors kids, are assigned an entire novel and that is a summer reading assignment. In the classroom, my curriculum is based around two “anchor texts,” Macbeth, and then The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. We do actually read all of Macbeth but with Lacks, we only read the Prologue. We are required to read many, many scientific articles about ethics. We read a couple of short stories. We do a whole lot of graphic organizers.

So, it is my hope that the new Superintendent of Education will put an end to this nonsense and bring back actual textbooks rather than copied articles. But, it is also true that the new superintendent could double down and make this all worse.

The one thing that has made all of this bearable to me is that I am still fighting for my students. A couple of years ago I started a classroom library and in my classroom every child reads for fifteen minutes at the beginning of ever class period. Their reading is from a book of their choice and I’ve built a nice collection of both fiction and non-fiction.

My school is a high-poverty school and is Title 1. Most of my kids are not on grade level and many don’t have books at home. And you know what? The buy-in for my reading initiative has been awesome! It is pure joy to me to look out at my kids during that fifteen minutes and see every kid buried in a book, reading.  I hold them accountable only by their Friday reading response journals: every Friday each student writes a letter to me about what they’ve been reading all week. I often respond back, with a couple of sentences, and we have a sort of dialogue about their books.

Whenever a student finishes a book they’ve really enjoyed, they tell their friends and through word of mouth, interest spreads.

I now have students that have left my class and moved on come back to my room asking to check out a book. We have a school library as well, and some go there. But many of these kids now trust me to recommend a book they will like, or they know that I will order the next book in a series they’re reading. We’ve built a relationship around books. It’s pure joy!

I started out building this classroom library by going to thrift shops and pillaging every Little Free Library near me. I went to garage sales and estate sales. I ordered a lot of books with my own money, I wrote a grant and a local television station gave me money to buy books. I used my own blog and social media accounts to beg for donations and I set up an Amazon Wish List. Books flooded in. I was amazed! People I didn’t even know were sending me books. Many came from readers of this blog!  I still have my Amazon Wish List and I currently have a Donor’s Choose project running to add current titles to my shelves that kids have been asking for.

When I retire I’ve promised to donate my library to two other teachers in my department.

I will be closely watching the search for our next Superintendent of Education. It is my sincere hope that he/she also believes in independent reading, student choice, and teacher autonomy. Teachers know their students and know what they need. And what we don’t need is a one size fits all scripted curriculum implemented with an iron fist.

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.

The Brady Jimmy G Debate is Over 3 Strikes and You’re Out!

Posted: February 3, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

For three years on Boston Sports Radio we have heard caller after caller excoriate the Patriots for keeping Tom Brady while Trading Jimmy Garoppolo to the 49ers.

We were told this despite two trips to the Superbowl and a single defensive stop from it being two rather than just one Superbowl win.

Well this year Tom Brady ended his streak of three straight superbowl appearances unless you count the following ad.

and Jimmy G and the 49ers were taking on Patrick Mahomes who Brady had beaten the previous year in Kansas City to advance to the Superbowl.

The game was pretty even until the 3rd quarter when the 49ers took a 20-10 lead and when Patrick Mahomes threw an interception with 12:05 seconds to go Jimmy G was given a golden opportunity.

With a two score lead in the bank all he had to do is lead a team whose strength is primarily the run down the field and eat up time and when on the 1st play of the drive the 49ers ran for six yards it looked like this would be the case and a short pass later, with 11:18 to go it looked like the game was over.

Alas after a one yard run on 1st down Jimmy G was given two changes to get the 1st down for the 49ers. He failed forced out of bounds on a three yard scramble and then throwing incomplete forcing a punt with Nine minutes and one second to go, only managing to eat three minutes.

Strike One.

That was more time than it took Patrick Mahomes to drive down the field and score a touchdown for Kansas city making it 20-17 with 6:17 to go

But even so it was not a problem. Jimmy G had the lead and the ball with 6:17 to go. He was in the same spot as he had been five minutes earlier. All he had to do was get a few 1st downs and Kansas city would not be able to stop him from winning the game.

he had a two score lead so no matter what happened he would have another chance to put it away and when the 49ers ran for five yards on 1st down it looked like once again they would be in great shape to finish the chiefs off.

However instead the ball was entrusted to Jimmy G who managed to throw two incomplete passes giving the ball back to the Chiefs having run less than a minute off the clock.

Strike Two.

Now Patrick Mahomes had the ball and five minutes and eighteen seconds to take the lead and he did so with a five yard pass to finish a seven play 65 yard drive whose only fault was leaving two minutes and sixty seconds for the 49ers to come back from a 24-20 deficit.

Now here was Jimmy G’s chance to be Tom Brady. He had 2:50 seconds on the clock and three time outs. If he could drive the team down for a touchdown his two previous failures would be completely forgotten and he would get the win and his 3rd Superbowl ring only this time it would not be a gift from the greatest quarterback who had ever lived.

He started well driving to the 49 Yard line of Kansas City with a 1st and ten with 1:56 to go and four chances to pass his way into football immortality or at least four chances to advance ten yards and keep moving. The Result?

  1. Incomplete
  2. Incomplete
  3. Incomplete
  4. sack

To add insult to injury Kansas city only needed two running plays to turn their 4 point lead into an 11 point one and the ball once again was in Jimmy G’s hands to try and pull off a miracle, the result?

  1. Incomplete
  2. Interception

Jimmy G was 0-5 with one sack and one interception in his last 5 pass attempts furthermore with the game on the line during three 4th quarter drives he was a combined 3-9 for 36 yards and one sack. 3-11 with a sack and an interception if you count the forlorn hope.

Now I ask each one of you who has been calling WEEI or the Sports Hub or any other radio station for the last three years one simple question.

Do any of you seriously believe that if Tom Brady had been at Quarterback on those three drives that he would have failed to come through at least once?

Lets ask the chiefs

3 3rd and 10’s three first downs against this same Kansas City team only one year removed from the Superbowl win.

Or how about one more example. With a lead in hand last year and a chance to ice the game in last year’s Superbowl

Now don’t get me wrong. Jimmy G is a good quarterback and it would not surprise me to see him once again with a chance to win a Superbowl.

But can we finally stop hearing Patriots fans cry over the Patriots trading away Jimmy G and insisting that the Patriots would have done at least as good or better?

Illinois corruption investigation breaks wide open with guilty plea of state senator for bribery over red-light cameras and more

Posted: February 2, 2020 by John Ruberry in crime, News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

Last Sunday in this space I wrote about the need to ban red-light cameras in Illinois–and nationwide. One of the reasons I gave was that the easy cash collected from these “safety devices” fosters corruption. Oh, as far as safety, I mentioned in that post that the record on safety involving red-light cameras is at best mixed. They may even cause automobile accidents.

On Tuesday former Illinois state senator Martin Sandoval (D-Chicago), who has close ties to longtime state House speaker Michael Madigan–who also is the chairman of the state Democratic Party–pleaded guilty to bribery, tax evasion, and extortion charges in federal court. Sandoval is now cooperating with the feds.

Sandoval is the former chairman of the senate Transportation Committee. Using the clout from that post, he promised to “go balls to the walls for anything you ask me” to a representative of the red-light camera firm referred to as “Company A” in the plea agreement.

So far that company has not been officially named but perhaps in a verbal misstep, told a judge, “I accepted money in exchange for the use of my office as a state senator to help SafeSpeed, or Company A.”

SafeSpeed denies wrongdoing and in a statement says it is cooperating with federal authorities. 

Politicians are nervous. This weekend on his Fox Chicago show Flannery Fired Up, host Mike Flannery said, “This red light camera company–suddenly candidates, Republicans and Democrats in Springfield and elsewhere are racing to get rid of this money as if it was infected with the coronavirus. ”

Prosecutors say that Sandoval accepted $250,000 in bribes, including $70,000 in bribes to benefit the red-light camera industry. 

It hardly seems that the industry needs the help. According to the Illinois Policy Institute, Illinois drivers have handed over $1.1 billion to municipalities in fines involving red-light camera infractions. Illinois’ largest city of course is Chicago so it won’t shock you that it has more red-light cameras than any American municipality. Chicago, as I also mentioned in last week’s DTG entry, has already endured its own red-light camera scandal. The central figure in that scandal worked his way up the ranks in Boss Madigan’s Chicago ward organization.

Part of the federal investigation involves lobbying done on the behalf of Commonwealth Edison, the local electrical utility.

As far as public interest, the jaded residents of Illinois will have reasons to keep their attention focused on these scandals. Why?

  • Because people hate utilities.
  • They hate red-light cameras.
  • They hate politicians.

Yes, people keep re-electing the latter, but Boss Michael Madigan, the Michelangelo of gerrymanderers, mocks the electoral system by creating legislative districts that all but ensures Democratic super-majorities in the Illinois General Assembly. 

And increasingly, people hate Illinois. The Prairie State has lost population for six straight years. And no, cold winters aren’t the reason. The states that border Illinois, as well as nearby Michigan, are gaining residents. 

As nauseum pols and media figures are calling–again–for “meaningful reform” in Illinois. Here are my suggestions: Amend the state constitution to ban gerrymandering, and bring term limits to the General Assembly–four terms in the House and two in the Senate. Majority leaders, minority leaders, House speakers and Senate president should be limited to four-year terms. And while we are amending the constitution, the pension guarantee clause needs to dropped, but while protecting those recipients on the lower and of the pension scale. 

Did you know that state legislators can be paid lobbyists? Ban that too.

Also, the state needs a strong inspector general with the power investigate General Assembly members. 

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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