Posts Tagged ‘Da Magnificent Seven’

Chris Harper (1951-2025) Magnificent!

Posted: August 5, 2025 by datechguy in dablog
Tags: ,

A few weeks ago I saw attempts by Elizabeth Harper to get ahold of me about Chris. I suspected it was bad news but as his wikipedia entry still said “is” instead of “was” I figured he was still with us. I tried to tweet and DM her back but for some reason neither tweeting or emailing etc worked out.

This week she got ahold of old friend Baldilocks who was able to send me a DM today to confirm what I had suspected by the messages that she sent, namely that Chris had succumbed to Cancer. He died on July 23rd of this year at the age of 71.

Chris had a long and distinguished career in the MSM at ABC News back in the days when ABC News did, well news. He had been Newsweek Bureau Chief in Beirut, and ABC’s bureau Chief in both Cairo and Rome and I was very surprised when he expressed interest in taking part in DaTechGuy’s Magnificent Tryouts when I announced a couple of openings here. Here is a bit from his first of his six “tryout” posts from July of 2016 (via the way back machine):

As a journalism professor at Temple University, I was invited to speak to a group of 25 students at the School District of Philadelphia, spending about two hours answering questions and talking about the upcoming presidential race.

We calmly discussed many issues, including race relations, immigration and Donald Trump.

You realize that almost no one agreed with you, one student told me later, adding that a teacher did describe the meeting as a turning point in the students’ journalistic training. Of course, I replied, that’s because you’ve almost never heard a conservative point of view.

To nobody’s surprise Chris quality work earned one of the two full time spots on the blog and the full Chris Muir treatment.

Here is an excerpt from his first post as an “official” member of our magnificent seven bloggers Sept 6th 2016:

Flyover country may not be the battleground for the presidential election, but there are many lessons the candidates could learn from the Midwest.

Over Labor Day weekend, I traveled through South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa. I found almost everyone I talked to held conservative viewpoints.

That shouldn’t come as a surprise, but I only speak in whispers about my viewpoints in my home of Philadelphia, a city dominated by leftists.

Chris combined intelligence with the desire to get to the bottom of things and was a person who had experience in dealing with facts. This made him an excellent choice to teach journalism at Temple University I suspect that his instruction on journalist ethics would have been vital to any student and I’d like to think that more than one young journalist might have thought twice about going along with a false MSM narrative thanks to him.

Illness required him departure from the blog last year. His 2nd to last entry came July 9th of last year. He talked about his own physical issues in reference to Joe Biden’s debate performance:

After an MRI, I started to understand how complicated it may be to find a treatment plan. But what’s worse is not knowing what is causing my mental issues. I can handle overseeing and protecting a stately blue house in central Pennsylvania. What I do and decide will have little or no impact except on my immediate neighbors.

Joe, you’ve got to come to terms with first finding out what’s going on and then determining what, if anything, can be done. You owe it to yourself and the rest of us.

If Joe Biden had taken this excellent device Kamala Harris would have been the first woman to serve as President of the United States regardless of the result of the November election and if the MSM had taken ethics as seriously as Chris did they would have reported on this years ago and the entire history of the country might have been different.

By then he was fairly sick and he regular Tuesday spot was usually empty. His final post at the site was just about a year ago Aug 20th 2024:

Last month, I underwent emergency surgery, which cost nearly $200,000. My cut is somewhere between $6,000 and $11,000. That’s likely to grow as the bills roll in.

Obama care didn’t help me a lick. Neither do the Democrats’ plans to “reduce” costs for drugs. In fact, the medications used during and after the surgery ran about $2,500. The new series of drugs cost another $2,000.

But at what cost? The hospital room alone ran more than $20,000!

The post was informative but the most important part of it was his ability to see BS for what it was, even if it was disguised as a helping hand:

The Democrats propose a plan to give money from the federal budget to those with debt—a giveaway for mostly seniors like forgiving college debt.

The plan is mostly smoke and mirrors, but, of course, the Democrats blame the GOP rather than the abomination that Obamacare created.

Any of the Democrats’ plans shouldn’t fool older Americans. You might get lower costs for some medications, but the big-ticket items will likely cost more.

Chris was always a reporter first who believed in facts and not even big bills was going to keep him from calling things as they were.

This blog was better for his presence. I’m proud he was here and I’m glad that you dear readers had the chance to experience the writing of a reporter from the days when reporters actually reported.

Both of his professions, Journalism and Education are poorer for his loss but while we join with Elizabeth in mourning him let us also take joy in the fact that such a man as him was among us.

Words of wisdom from George Washington by Chris Harper

Posted: May 21, 2024 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,

By Christopher Harper

In my successful efforts this week to avoid the nattering nabobs of negatism, I

turned to American historian Joseph Ellis, the author of a wonderful 2001 book

about the revolution.

In eloquent and thoughtful chapters, he explores important episodes about

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton,

James Madison, Ben Franklin, and John and Abigail Adams.

An exploration of Washington’s Farewell Address swept me away from the

bickering of talking heads and ignorant “experts.”

In 1796, Washington had decided to retire after two terms as president. But he

wanted to leave the country and the government with some wisdom before his

departure to Mount Vernon.

As Ellis notes, Washington makes three important points:

–Political parties may do more damage than good to the country.

“They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force;

to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a

small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to

the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration

the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than

the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels

and modified by mutual interests.”

Washington’s concerns were on the mark. Within months after Washington’s

retirement, the government became divided between the Federalists and the

Republicans.

Volunteering as tribute

Posted: May 11, 2024 by navygrade36bureaucrat in blogger for hire
Tags: , , , ,

Sadly dear readers, this will be my last post here for DaTechGuy. Unfortunately, it’s been a struggle to keep revenue coming in, and when Peter said he would have to start cutting writers, rather than let others deliberate over the decision, I made the choice to step down.

It’s not all a loss though. I recently retired from the military (hence the lack of “This post doesn’t represent the DoD…), so I’m starting a fresh new phase of life as a self-employed person. I started working for Peter when my daughter was in Yale’s Children Hospital. It was a good distraction from an otherwise depressing situation. She passed away right as we were house hunting, and that experience prompted me to write “To Build A House.” Had I not been regularly blogging on DaTechGuy, I don’t think I would have had the writing skills needed to finish the book, let alone the audiobook.

My last years in the military were busy, so although I have two books I want to write, I haven’t had the time to do so. Any writer out there knows that if you don’t keep writing, your skills diminish, so sometimes my weekend blogging for DaTechGuy was the only real writing exercise I could get. Peter gave me the freedom to write about whatever I wanted to, and often it was my escape from an increasingly oppressive military culture hell bent on DEI initiatives, white supremacist witch hunts, and anything else that would distract from its lack of warfighting ability.

As I leave DaTechGuy, I don’t get any less busy. I’m now working with a team of folks at Walk The Talk Foundation to try and bring some accountability to the military, particularly the flag and general officers that have run our services into the dirt. The media has missed the big story on the decline in military recruiting. It’s less about DEI and a lot more about the poor treatment of service members. Every person I know getting out has said they won’t recommend the service to their family members. Given that a large percentage of military members serve because mom/dad/grandpa did, that by far has been the biggest depressor of military recruiting. Since the GOFOs can’t bring themselves to apologize for losing Afghanistan, poorly managing our shipyards and not fixing military pay, people like me have responded in “Atlas Shrugged” fashion by shrugging off the expectation that we keep supplying the military with our sons and daughters. At some point it’ll break, and hopefully like in Atlas Shrugged, something better will rise from the ashes.

So between helping Walk the Talk, writing two more books, teaching travel classes and helping churches and non-profit organizations with their computer networks, plus raising 5 kids….yeah, I’ll be busy.

If you’ve made it this far, I’d like to ask that you consider either donating to DaTechGuy or buying one of his books on Amazon. Leftist extremists’ pour money into their fake news organizations and make it hard for those of us willing to write and publish to make a living. Buying what we write and engaging with us online helps build that support community that we need. It’s not enough to not watch CNN or stop buying coffee from Starbucks…you have to take that money and put it to good use elsewhere. Think of it as you’re helping to prop up the folks punching back against the mainstream narrative…you may not be able to do the punching yourself, but you can support those that do, and it’ll make a difference. Even better, more money for the smaller groups of individuals forces Republican lawmakers to take them more seriously. It’s a slow and imperfect process, but its far better than donating to the Republican general fund and praying for results.

My only other ask is you get out and vote this year, and seriously consider volunteering as a poll watcher. I assisted on Governor Youngkin’s campaign in a small way, and it was because many of us went door-to-door and supervised voting booths that he swept in and kept Virginia from going overboard on blue policies. Yes, it requires you to get off your couch, stop commenting on social media and start doing something useful. Your opponents are doing this in droves, and our institutions will crumble unless good people stand up to take them back.

And if you think “I’m in a red state, it can’t happen to me,” remember that your opponents aren’t content to leave you alone…they will come after you until you bend the knee…just look at the Jewish students being hunted on college campuses if you need an example.

Take care, fight the good fight, and always punch back twice as hard!

Treat female murderers equally

Posted: May 4, 2024 by navygrade36bureaucrat in crime
Tags: , , ,

Equality before the law should mean just that: equal treatment before the law, no matter who you are. Supposedly women are equal to men, yet time and time again, women are allowed to engage in awful, illegal behavior and get lighter sentences.

Look no further than this week, where Heather Pressdee, a nurse, murdered multiple old people in different nursing homes in Pennsylvania by administering more insulin than their bodies could handle. She did this deliberately, often timing it so the person would die before being taken to a hospital in order to hide her crime. It’s outrageously despicable, yet she avoided the death penalty.

You can read the sob story of Christa Pike, who brutally murdered Colleen Slemmer in 1996. The argument is she was 18 and made a mistake. Sounds reasonable right? A quick Wikipedia search describes Christa Pike’s crimes:

  • On January 12, 1995, Pike, Shipp, Peterson, and Slemmer signed out of the dormitory and proceeded to the woods, where Slemmer was told they wanted to make peace by offering her some marijuana.[5] Upon arrival at the secluded location, Slemmer was attacked by Pike and Shipp while Peterson acted as lookout. According to later court testimony, for the next thirty minutes Slemmer was taunted, beaten, and slashed; and a pentagram was carved in her chest.[6][7] Finally, Pike smashed Slemmer’s skull with a large chunk of asphalt, killing her. Pike kept a piece of Slemmer’s skull.[5]

Keeping a piece of her skull? Carving a pentagram on her chest? That’s not a crime of passion or an accident. While not slated for execution yet, she lost her last appeal recently.

Lastly, how about the story of Miranda Cassarez, a San Antonio woman who starved her four-year-old stepson to death? The kid was only 28 pounds when he died at the local hospital. She was completely unrepentant and attempted to push the blame to anyone but herself. She’ll get 99 years in prison. I have a 4 year old at home, and while the kid sometimes drives me crazy, I can’t bear the thought of starving him to death.

Women are literally getting away with murder. True equality means we allow people, despite their gender, to suffer equal consequences before the law.

Older Entries