Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

I’ve been arguing for some time that instead of getting rid of the filibuster the rules should be changed so that to you have to hold an actual filibuster, that is, holding the floor continually to stop a bill like it always had been instead of doing the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy version where they just assume that since they have the votes we all pretend that there is one.

Apparently somebody is listening:

“We ought to nuke the zombie filibuster and require a talking filibuster if Democrats want to try to block it,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, wrote in a post on X, referring to the bill that Republicans argue is essential to ensuring “election integrity.”

“The modern-day filibuster is a perversion of how the Senate was supposed to function,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., one of the loudest proponents of the legislation, wrote in a post on X this week. “Instead of arguing positions and attempting to pass legislation, it has become a way to avoid doing the work and to block the President’s agenda in the name of institutional supremacy, even though most of the senators got elected with help from POTUS.”

I for one would be delighted to have democrats on record saying that women & minorities are so ignorant that they can’t get a photo id for voting when they have to show one for everything else.

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Given that my own job is about to disappear in the next 90 days the whining by the Washington Post Guild about layoffs really strikes me the wrong way.

The argument that the owner should happily lose money to keep it open seems a joke.

But what I’m not seeing is the obvious alternative.

If they’re convinced that there is a demand for what they are offering why not find financial backers to open an alternative to the paper. Surely there must be plenty of people in the woke crowd making seven figures or more who would love to be owners of a Newspaper and with all of Hollywood backing you should have no problem getting such a venture off the ground.

Show us how it can be a profit making business for them all & how vital those post employers are.

The fact that this is not happening and that even China doesn’t find it worth financing such anti Trump propaganda through you speaks volumes.

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Ronald Reagan famously said: “The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” the best example of this had been the huge backfire that police body cams have been to the left’s narratives.

While there have been cases of cops turning the cameras off in situations, which rightly raise suspicion of misconduct in those situations the vast majority of the times said cameras show police trying to calm situations in the face of violent screaming and/or unhinged people resisting arrest of threatening them.

This has been a giant shock to the narrative that so many in the left bought into for years and now that the question of Body cameras for ICE agents is coming up some of the left aren’t all that pleased with the idea.

Congressional Democratic leaders have made universal use of body cameras one of their prime demands for imposing accountability on Immigration and Customs Enforcement, especially after federal agents fatally shot two American citizens in Minneapolis. But after an outcry from privacy advocates that surveillance tools will allow ICE agents to identify and track protesters, Democrats are also calling for restrictions on how the body cameras can be used.

Or to put it simply if Body cams show that these “protests” are not organic & can identify people who are constantly bussed or flown from one protest to another the whole narrative breaks down.

Furthermore while video of protestors violating civil rights of others who disagree or calling black ICE agents “Nigger” to their faces might play well with millions of violent leftists, in the end a million violent leftists in a country of 330 million is far less that then tens or even hundreds of millions who would be applauded by these actions show leftist thugs for the violent lunatics’ that they are.

Democrats hate transparency

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One of the things that I’ve observed in life that has surprised me over the years is not how many people don’t know things, but how many people don’t WANT to know things.

You see knowledge carries with it responsibility. If you don’t know something you can’t be held responsible for it. It was the go to defense of Germans in 1945 who claimed ignorance of the death camps and in fact two of the three conditions necessary for Mortal Sin which if un-repented & unconfessed brings damnation are full knowledge & deliberate consent. (although the church teaches that deliberate ignorance to avoid knowledge doesn’t absolve responsibility)

So if you actually KNOW things, like that there is funny play with the ballots in Georgia, or that a daycare is collecting federal funs without without having kids or that the illegal aliens that ICE is hunting for in neighborhoods have criminal records and are being released by prisons & judges endangering the general public for political reasons they become very difficult to defend.

Must better to pretend it isn’t happening and be secure in your beliefs because once you know it becomes a moral choice that needs to be made.

This came to mind when I was reading US Grant’s memoirs Vol 2 when he was meeting Lee to arrange the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. Grant notes the following:

I then suggested to General Lee that there was not a man in the Confederacy whose influence with the soldiery and the whole people was as great as his, and that if he would now advise the surrender of all the armies I had no doubt his advice would be followed with alacrity. But Lee said, that he could not do that without consulting the President first. I knew there was no use to urge him to do anything against his ideas of what was right.

(emphasis mine)

Personal Memoirs US Grant 1885

I would very proud if anyone, particularly an enemy, thought that about me. I frankly & regretfully think a lot of both the political & social media world functions on the exact opposite principle.

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56 years after the change in the Catholic Mass there are still those who debate the change and argue for the Latin Mass.

I’ve been to Latin masses both Sunday and daily & while I find them in many ways more reverent I don’t find it superior to the vernacular mass, nor do I find it inferior.

My thought is as a Catholic looking to keep souls out of hell the more people who go to mass the better so I’d encourage having both masses available if doing so gets a larger amount of total people getting to mass. I want people in heaven, I’m indifferent to which devotions, which saints they venerate & which mass they use to do so.

All that being said if there was one change I would make to the current standard Mass it would be the return of the Last Gospel which is read at the Traditional Latin Mass just before dismissal.

That is John 1:1-14 which I include below:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

A man named John was sent from God. He came for testimony, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him

He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him. But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision but of God.

And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.

This was once read at every Mass & every Catholic knew these words, which is the summery of who Jesus Christ was and is.

In my opinion it would be very healthy if every Catholic had this reminder on a weekly basis again.

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Finally today is Superbowl Sunday and the New England Patriots are playing in their 12th Superbowl, their first in the post-Brady era.

This is the first time since in over twenty years that I’m not working the day the Pats are playing so I’ll be able to watch it for a change. But the Patriots have met a different milestone by this trip.

As I said this is the Patriots 12 trip to the Superbowl they are 6-5 going into this game (0-2 in games not started by Brady) as a team.

This means they finally matched Bill Russell’s record of 12 trips to the NBA finals. Of course Russell did better than the Pats. He went 11-1 in those twelve trips, two of them as player-coach of the team.

You can argue that the Pats are more impressive since NFL playoffs are one and done so it only takes one bad game or one bad break (think the helmet catch) to lose so they had to be excellent just to get their and flawless to win.

On the other hand in a best of 7 series the best team generally wins and Bill Russell’s Celtics teams managed to win best of seven series 11 times out of 12. So there’s no question who the better team was.