Posts Tagged ‘datechguy's magnificent seven’

Report From Louisiana: Loose Thoughts

Posted: November 15, 2021 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – Random thoughts this morning….

  • I just saw in The Advocate that former NOLA mayor Mitch Landrieu has been appointed by Biden to oversee the $1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure bill. My first thought was “WTH?!”  Mitch Landrieu who was the ramrod for destroyed NOLA’s monuments, who thought “equity circles” would help solve crime in the city, the gun-control advocate…I mean, what could go wrong?  In trying to find some kind of positive spin on this, I can only hope he will perhaps do something with this new power to help coastal erosion issues in Louisiana.
  • Beto O’Rourke has thrown his hat in the ring for Texas governor.  Now I remember why I burned out of political blogging. I hate them all.  Hate.
  • On that note, I have just finished reading a book I thoroughly enjoyed: Hondo Crouch’s daughter, Becky, has written her third book and it’s a treasure. Luckenbach: The Center of the Universe, is a joyful look into the life of Hondo and the good times had by all at Luckenbach. If we could all only approach life as Hondo did, the world would be better. The man who fired a cannon full of chicken feathers during festivals at Luckenbach and awarded “purple hearts” to those “who fell down the best” obviously has a joyful outlook on life. The man who led a parade from the Alamo to Luckenbach, TX while playing a pea-trap with a kazoo hidden inside is someone I wish I had known. I laughed out loud on nearly every page and read every other page aloud to my husband. So much fun!
  • Speaking of books, I’m happy to be able to get back out on the speaking circuit again. The Covid shutdowns pretty much halted any book appearances I was doing after Cane River Bohemia came out. That, and time – those things taper off after your book has been out for a year or so. But I do have an appearance tomorrow and I’m looking forward to it. It is fun to get out, meet people, and talk about a project so close to my heart. This book has taken me all over the state of Louisiana and it’s been a fun ride.
  • Holidays? I’m feeling a bit of Christmas spirit this year; sometimes it’s more of a struggle, but this year, since so many things were shut down last year, I am a little excited. That being said, I am a one holiday at a time girl, and I’m not going to put up any tree until after Thanksgiving. Plus, we put up a live tree, and it will be quite dead by Christmas if I put it up too early. One holiday at a time. No tree. Yet.
  • Closing arguments today in the Rittenhouse trial. Predictions?

How long can MSNBC viewers fall for the lies?

Posted: November 14, 2021 by John Ruberry in culture, economy, media, News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

Sometime in her early 20s my wife, aka Mrs. Marathon Pundit, realized she’d been fed a stream of lies from the Soviet Union. The state media and the government schools put forth this whopper, for instance, that Estonia, Lithuania, and her own Latvia voluntarily joined the USSR in 1940, after the Red Army moved in

What else had they lied to her about?

Plenty of things. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster was one colossal series of disinformation. And she grew up with the false belief that Soviet citizens enjoyed a standard of living that was among the world’s highest. And some information was left out. While we were still dating we were looking up with amazement at the stars on a crystal clear and moonless night in rural Michigan. Then she asked me, “Did the Americans really send men to the moon?”

Let’s move up a few decades to MSNBC, the most reliable mouthpiece for leftist Democratic politicians and their supporters. 

Watching MSNBC you’ll be told that Critical Race Theory is not being taught in public schools. As I explained last week, while the original CRT texts probably aren’t being presented, lessons are being rammed down kids’ throats that put them into two camps for instance, oppressors and oppressed. And that America is incurably racist–well there is a cure. And that is of course CRT, even though it might be labeled “equity training.”

That conversation is morphing into their belief that conservatives don’t want racial history, including slavery, taught in schools. That’s just made-up nonsense. 

Just this morning on some MSNBC program called Velshi, one of the panelists made the claim that many of the protesters who spoke up at school board meetings aren’t parents, or perhaps she said they don’t have children at those schools. No matter. For instance as taxpayers these patriots have a right to voice their opinion on how the biggest part of their property tax bill is spent. Secondly if we take that twisted logic further, then Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, who has no children, should have no voice in how are youngsters are educated. 

MSNBC and CNN pushed the Trump-Russia collusion fallacy for most of the Trump presidency. It is the Elvis-sightings of political scandals. Elvis Presley died in 1977 and there was no Trump-Russia collusion during the 2016 presidential campaign. 

Here’s another MSNBC fable–that Kyle Rittenhouse, in the words of one commentator on that network, was “arguably a domestic terrorist.” The MSNBC talking heads were infuriated that Rittenhouse crossed a state line from Antioch, Illinois–which borders Wisconsin, to travel during the riot (oops, unrest) in Kenosha, where his father lived and where Rittenhouse worked. The truth has since emerged that the then-17-year-old was just trying to help out in a lawless zone who was forced into a situation where he had no choice but to defend himself.

Oh, just so you know, I don’t believe that minors should be waking around with an AK-47. 

For months MNSBC has been following the Democrat Party line that inflation was all but non-existent, then it was “transitory,” and now while it is real, inflation is not a problem. After Velshi MSNBC’s next program, The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart came on. His first guest was the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), who discussed rising prices. “Part of the reason that people are talking about inflation is that there are costs rising for American families across the county.” Duh! Her party’s solution? Of course it’s the expensive Build Back Better bill that includes child care money–and that will bring down costs for Americans. Wow. Give Jayapal her Nobel Prize for Economics now! Capehart didn’t bother to challenge Jayapal’s idiocy.

You probably believe that the typical MSNBC viewer is a hardened leftist who is immune from logic. Yes on the first and no on the second. MSNBC is telling its core audience what it wants to hear. But untruth can only be carried so far. Imagine for a moment a brothel that caters to men in their 50s like me. (Disclosure–I have not been to such a place.) You walk in and the women comment on how handsome you are–and that you are in incredible physical shape. They laugh at your jokes and when you bring up politics, “Republicans are racists, Biden is the best president since FDR,” one of the women winks at you and says, “Let’s continue this conversation upstairs in private.” And upstairs you go.

Eventually you learn that you are being played at that imaginary brothel–you ascertain that the sex workers are coyly reconfirming beliefs that you already have. “I’m a great looking guy.” Even though you’re not. You’re a guy in your 50s. Duh! They just want your money so they tell you want you want to hear.

MSNBC just wants your time. With so many choices for time–hundreds of cable channels, streaming services, podcasts, the internet, not to mention old school choices such as books and actually sitting down and having a one-on-one conversation with another person, time is an ever-precious finite resource. MSNBC is reconfirming the false beliefs–Trump colluded with Russia, Rittenhouse is a vigilante, inflation is not a problem–of its viewers to steal that time.

Sure it’s a trite expression, but time really is money.

What will MSNBC say if runway inflation–not to mention Jimmy Carter-era stagflation–is with us in a year? 

How many of its viewers will switch the channel? Forever.

MSNBC’s ratings are already way below those of Fox News. CNN is in even worse shape.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate is unconstitutional in the extreme

Posted: November 11, 2021 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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Joe Biden, the illegitimate president of the United States, issued his federal vaccine mandate last week.  The actual text proved to be just as tyrannical, unscientific, and unconstitutional, as we’ve all been led to expect.   It is impossible to fully chronicle all of the ways this egregiously oppressive mandate violates the Constitution of the United States in anything short of a book.  In this article I will concentrate on the most important few.

I am far from alone when ot comes to individuals and accurate news sites documenting the ways that Biden’s vaccine mandate violates the US Constitution.  Check out this article, Mark Levin: Vaccine Mandate ‘Unconstitutional’ — ‘Federal Government Doesn’t Have Plenary Police Powers — The States Do’, from one of the most accurate constitutional scholars I’ve encountered.

LEVIN: What’s happening throughout this country — listening to those wonderful patriots there — is that the government is weeding out people who just don’t go along with authoritarianism. They’re weeding out people through these vaccine mandates. Many people who have the natural immunity, they’re going to be fired with an unconstitutional legal mandate from Joe Biden. The federal government doesn’t have plenary police powers. The states do.

And OSHA has no statutory authority, that is the Labor Department, over vaccines. If any department did and they don’t, it would be HHS. And notice they didn’t issue any regulation. So this will be defeated. But it’s the mentality, it’s the totalitarian mentality.

Mark Levin is absolutely correct when he states that the Federal government does not have the authority to issue this vaccine mandate, or any type of mandate.  He is also correct that the individual states may have the authority under our constitutional system, the deciding factor would be the constitution of each state. 

The United States Constitution did not create an all powerful national government, which has complete control over the states.  Instead the Constitution created a mostly federal government where the states are generally sovereign nations, tied together by a weak central government. 

The federal government is only granted a discreet set of clearly defined powers, which are plainly spelled out, or enumerated, in the Constitution.  All of the powers granted to the federal government are listed in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution, in the section titled Powers of Congress.  All powers not granted to federal government, and not specifically denied to the states in Article 1 Section 10, remain with the individual states.  This is discussed in great detail in Federalist Paper Number 45 by James Madison

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected.

The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State. The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security.

OSHA should not exist at all because the United States Constitution does not grant the federal government the power to regulate businesses in any way.  The federal government granted itself that power by distorting the plain text of the Interstate Commerce Clause, which only grants the federal government the authority to regulate the large scale flow of commerce between the individual states, not the commerce inside of each state.  Since OSHA should not exist, it does not have the authority to issue a vaccine mandate.  As you can see from Article 1 Section 8, Congress is not granted the authority to issue vaccine mandates, therefore the federal government does not have the power to do so. 

The United States Constitution granted each branch of the federal government separate and discrete powers.  The Legislative Branch rights laws, the Executive branch executes laws, and the Judiical Branch interprets laws.  In Federalist Paper Number 47 James Madison commented on dangers of the branches of the federal government ignoring the separation of powers

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. 

In the legislation that created OSHA, or any subsequent legislation, that unconstitutional body is not granted the authority to mandate vaccines.  Joe Biden is violating the separation of powers by rewriting the OSHA laws to grant that body the authority to do so.

The Kentucky Resolutions draft by Thomas Jefferson. written in 1798, is a fantastic resource for understanding the United States Constitution.  In section 1, Jefferson discusses the relationship between powers granted to federal government versus powers retained by the states. He also mentions clearly what happens when the federal government oversteps its authority.

Resolved_, That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.

In Section 9 Jefferson laws out the best method for states to deal with unconstitutional usurpations by the federal government.  It is called Nullification, which the states can do themselves, completely independent of the Supreme Court, which has abandoned the Constitution many decades ago.

Resolved_, That a committee of conference and correspondence be appointed, who shall have in charge to communicate the preceding resolutions to the legislatures of the several States; to assure them that this commonwealth continues in the same esteem of their friendship and union which it has manifested from that moment at which a common danger first suggested a common union: that it considers union, for specified national purposes, and particularly to those specified in their late federal compact, to be friendly to the peace, happiness and prosperity of all the States: that faithful to that compact, according to the plain intent and meaning in which it was understood and acceded to by the several parties, it is sincerely anxious for its preservation: that it does also believe, that to take from the States all the powers of self-government and transfer them to a general and consolidated government, without regard to the special delegations and reservations solemnly agreed to in that compact, is not for the peace, happiness or prosperity of these States; and that therefore this commonwealth is determined, as it doubts not its co-States are, to submit to undelegated, and consequently unlimited powers in no man, or body of men on earth: that in cases of an abuse of the delegated powers, the members of the General Government, being chosen by the people, a change by the people would be the constitutional remedy; but, where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy: that every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact, (casus non foederis,) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits:

Report from Louisiana: a trip to Fredericksburg, TX

Posted: November 7, 2021 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – I was on the road last week and so missed posting here. We travelled to Fredericksburg, Texas, the Hill Country, which has been a bucket list trip for my husband for several years. It’s only about a seven-hour drive from where we live, so we took the opportunity last week to go.

It was a wonderful trip, but we are exhausted! We had three days to cram in as much as we possibly could; Monday and Friday were driving days. We had to be back home Saturday for other obligations.

Tuesday was a highlight for me: we went to Luckenbach, Texas (if you know, you know.). My husband calls Luckenbach “the Grand Old Opry of Outlaw Country Music,” and I guess it is. The song made it famous, but the musicians made history and if you’ve never read about Hondo Crouch, do yourself a favor and “meet” this man.  If only we all move through this life with the grace, love, and humor of Hondo, we would all be so much better off.

Hondo’s daughter, Becky, has written one book about her father and now has another called Luckenbach, The Center of the Universe, which I bought on my trip there and it’s one of those laugh out loud books that you want to read aloud to someone. Hysterical.

Anyway, the trip to Luckenbach was a sort of pilgrimage for me and was a highlight.

The other super cool thing we did was visit the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg. I have read a lot of books and memoirs of the Pacific War and so I was excited about this outing; however, that being said, I can not express how exhausted I was at the end of our visit! I’m one of those people who wants to see it all, read it all, touch all the interactive stuff, watch all the videos, at a museum. You just can’t do it, here. I really needed two days to see this museum the way it should be done. We started in the Nimitz Gallery and learned so much about Chester Nimitz – what a fascinating man! Then we moved on into the timeline of the War, then the various exhibits for each stage. We got to 1943 and had to stop for lunch.

After lunch, my brain was like a sponge that had soaked up all it could hold. Nothing was sinking in. We finished, and man, the finish was fabulous! There is a video display of a submerged airplane while a video takes you through the treaties of surrender and the celebrations. You never forget the price of war.

The exhibits in this museum are awesome and it is so well done. There are exhibits outside as well and most impressive is the Japanese Garden of Peace which was a gift from the people of Japan. It is beautiful and impressive.  There is a specially trained gardener to maintain the space.

We did several other things like tour the Texas Ranger Heritage Center in Fredericksburg (not to be confused with the Texas Ranger Museum in Waco), which was cool, and we visited Fort Martin Scott, an Army frontier post.

The landscape in the Hill Country is beautiful and has proven itself perfect for vineyards and so now there are at least forty wineries in the immediate area. Not being a wine-girl myself, we stuck to the German restaurants and breweries, but groups of people go there just to get on trollies and visit the wineries.

It was a fun trip and now I’m trying to get back into my routines, pack up the Halloween decorations, and think about the holiday season ahead.

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.

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