Posts Tagged ‘datechguy's magnificent seven’

By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – What a fab piece by John Ruberry on this blog yesterday! If you missed it, scroll down and read it. He has itemized everything that is wrong with the Biden presidency so far, at least as far as we know. Who knows what else is down the pike?

Ruberry has lined out the facts for us, but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence and frustrations to back it all up. Everywhere I go I hear people talking about gas prices and supply shortages.

We were in south Louisiana last week and because my husband makes friends easily and can talk to literally anyone, we have talked to so many people that are absolutely furious at the current situation. I point out south Louisiana because so many people across the nation think south Louisiana is only New Orleans, but trust me, the entire south central and southwest part of Louisiana remains strong Trump territory. There is literally no reason we should be paying over $3.00 for gas right now. And as Ruberry says, higher gas prices hits the poor the most. I’d say the poor and the middle class, but the point remains.

And the supply shortages? Insane. Yesterday we had lunch after church with three other friends, and there was a large table seated next to us with nine people. Because their group was so large, they were a bit loud and it was easy to listen in to their political lunch topics. They were complaining bitterly about supply shortages and fearful for the holiday season.  There was one silent person at that table, a young man in his mid-twenties, and I’m willing to bet he was the only Biden voter and therefore was scared to say anything. He looked miserably uncomfortable. Maybe the food didn’t agree with him.

On an encouraging note, I’m reading more and more things about the decimation the mid-terms are likely to bring to the Democrats. We can pray.

At any rate, it’s enough to keep one up at night worrying about the future, for certain. I try not to because my husband worries enough for the both of us.

Be sure to read Ruberry’s piece. He nailed it.

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.

Two weeks ago, the Biden regime issued a directive siccing the Department of Justice on concerned parents, who dare to speak out against progressive indoctrination, at school board meetings.  For more information on this despicable abuse of power and abuse of the Constitution, please check out this article, which I wrote. 

My article was outclassed by this letter from Moms for America.  I really believe the Biden regime completely underestimated the level of outrage their unconscionable dictate would generate from concerned parents, who were already outraged by the obscene level of progressive indoctrination that has infected schools all across the United States.

Here is the heart of the letter from Moms for America.

The recent letter from the National School Boards Association (NSBA) to the Biden Administration and subsequent statement from the Department of Justice likening concerned parents to domestic terrorists is a direct threat to mothers and our constitutionally protected rights.

The United States Constitution is the law of the land, and the federal government, by law, must operate within the confines of the Constitution.  The Department of Justice has no authority to limit the speech or assembly of concerned mothers addressing their state and local school boards or dictate to local law enforcement to inhibit a mother’s right to do so. If the NSBA truly has the interests of our children’s safety and education in mind, they would welcome the input of parents addressing concerns instead of seeking the federal government’s aid in silencing them.

Moms are justifiably angry. Our children are being exposed to inappropriate sexual content, gender indoctrination, anti-family, and anti-American propaganda, and the tenets of critical race theory – all under the NSBA indoctrination umbrella of Social Emotional Learning (SEL). Our nation’s children are being taught to hate their country, hate their neighbor, and hate themselves.

Moms are showing up in schoolboard meetings across the country to protest these radical ideas being thrust on their children, calling for a return to a classical liberal arts education where children can learn to think for themselves.  We want real science, true history, and classical education that teaches kids to read, write, calculate, and be good citizens. That doesn’t make us domestic terrorists; it makes us responsible parents.

These are our children.  Parents’ rights are fundamental and supreme. Elected officials and school administrators must recognize and respect this fundamental right.  Schools, as well as other community and government organizations, are designed to support the family unit, not replace or regulate it. As stated in the Declaration of Mothers, which was introduced into the Congressional Record in 2018,  “No association or government organization can replace the family no matter how well-intentioned or well-designed it may be.”

While NSBA accuses moms of shutting down school board meetings with disorderly conduct, it is, in most cases, school board members that shut down public comment and even restrict it altogether when they do not like what moms have to say.

It is not parents, but rather the National School Boards Association and their state affiliates that are the real threat to our children through their stranglehold on public education.

The National School Boards Association and their state affiliates have become an immediate threat to our constitutionally protected rights as mothers as well as the physical, mental, and emotional health of our children. NSBA and their state affiliates work directly with the Teachers Unions, Superintendents Association, and the National Association of State Boards of Education to lobby union agendas that endanger the health and well-being of our children, usurp parental authority, and ensure superintendents and school board members toe the union line. And they do so with public funds.

Moms for America are absolutely correct about the fact the Department of Justice has no constitutional authority to intervene in what are purely local instances of parents expressing their outrage over what is taking place in their children’s schools.  The parents speaking at these meetings are most definitely exercising their God-given natural rights of freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, and freedom to petition; all of which are protected by the First Amendment.

All totalitarian regimes, such as the Nazis and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, focus their indoctrination efforts on children.  Their goal is inculcate children whith beliefs that are radically different from those of their parents.  Progressives here in the United States are doing the same to public school children all across this nation.  Parents are rightfully upset about this.

All leftist philosophies believe that children belong to the state rather than to their parents.  Stemming from this is the belief that parents have no right to determine what their children are taught.  Progressives here in the United States, also being totalitarians, share this deeply mistaken belief.  If you question this, check out these statements by Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe.  In the United States parents have always been the supreme authorities when it comes to making decisions for their children, not the almighty state.  Parental rights is the nearest thing to an absolute in the country.  It has always been that way.  Progressives are seeking to topple this.  Moms for America are perfectly right to rage against this in their letter, If more parents spoke out in this manner and organized into groups such as Moms for America, this indoctrination would soon end.

By John Ruberry

Late last month a Nordic noir six-episode series, The Chestnut Man, a Danish production began streaming on Netflix. It’s based on the novel of the same name by Søren Sveistrup. It’s an ideal autumn offering on many levels. The Chestnut Man is set in Denmark in October with fall colors at their peak. Halloween–the celebration of it has been spreading in Europe–plays a part in the story, and oh yeah, it’s a compelling crime drama centered on a serial killer who leaves stick chestnut figures, chestnut men, at the scene of each murder. Just as the carving of pumpkins is an old tradition in North America the building of chestnut men is similar a tradition in Scandinavia.

Naia Thulin (Danica Curcic) is a police detective and a single mother whose work keeps her away from her daughter, Le (Liva Forsberg), so the girl spends more time with her quasi-grandfather, Aksel (Anders Hove). By the way Hove was a regular on the ABC soap opera General Hospital.

Thulin is assigned a new partner, Mark Hess (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard). Their first investigation is a chestnut man murder. Hess has a troubled past–he was recently fired from his job in the Hague. The chestnut man case is quickly tied to the disappearance of the daughter of a politician, Rosa Hartung (Iben Dorner), who is the minister of social affairs. Her position puts in charge of foster care and child custody cases.

Obviously I don’t want to give up much of the plot because it will introduce spoilers. Let’s just say viewers will be confronted with twists and turns in the story line. The scars of unhappy childhoods figure in to the plot as well.

I also recently watched two other new Netflix series that I believe any level-headed person should avoid. 

Brand New Cherry Flavor is set in Hollywood in the 1990s and centers on a young Brazilian director (Rosa Salazar) who sees her first movie project stolen by a scumbag Hollywood producer. (Aren’t they all scumbags?) Inexplicably the director consistently barfs up large-eared kittens. Except for the negative portrayal of Hollywood I detested this series. And with a couple of exceptions I hated the characters. Even the kittens disturbed me. And there is a disgusting sex scene I won’t even describe here.

You can judge a book–and a TV series–by its cover. The Netflix graphic promoting Midnight Mass is centered on a main character, a Catholic priest, who has a sinister look on his face. The plot driver of this series is that priest (Hamish Linklater), a mysterious young pastor who arrives at an island parish that serves a tiny fishing community. Let’s just say Midnight Mass has about the same amount of respect for the Catholic Church as The Da Vinci Code, only with tons of gore and blood thrown into the mess. Although to be honest I did enjoy Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code book. The movie? Not so much.

The island’s sheriff, a Muslim, Rahul Kohli, is quite good in Midnight Mass however.

In Midnight Mass the cinematography is beautiful–but The Chestnut Man has that and so much more–I believe you’ll enjoy that series.

The Chestnut Man is rated TV-MA as it contains graphic violence and crime scene photos, foul language, sex, and brief nudity. It is available streaming on Netflix in English, English with subtitles, Danish with subtitles, Spanish, as well as simplified and traditional Chinese. There are bits of dialogue in The Chestnut Man in English and German–with subtitles. I watched it in Danish.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Three weeks ago I was hopeful that I was seeing the first signs that people around the world were finally ready to fight back against the freedom crushing Coronavirus restrictions.  I was so hopeful that I wrote this article People around the world are beginning to rise up against Coronavirus restrictions and vaccine mandates.  My hopes that I was seeing the beginnings of a wave of mass protests that would ultimately result in the end to all of the lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccine mandates that have plagued the world for the past eighteen months, have since been extinguished. 

In the two weeks leading up to that previous article, I encountered numerous articles chronicling mass protests where tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of individuals were taking to the streets to demand an end to all liberty destroying Coronavirus restrictions and mandates.  These mass protests were happening all around the globe and seemed to be gaining in both the numbers of protests each day and the number of individuals at each protest.  It really seemed to me that a momentum was beginning that would feed on itself, and over time, escalate to a point where governments around the world would have no choice but to end all mandates and restrictions.

Unfortunately, these protests petered out soon after I published my article.  The momentum stopped and the protests quickly diminished in both size and frequency, without any meaningful easing of restrictions and mandates.  None of the conservative and libertarian websites I get my news from are posting stories about new or continuing  mass protests now, even those in Australia, which appeared to be on the verge of exploding into mass riots.  These mass protests might be continuing, and all sites, even Breitbart is ignoring them, which I doubt. 

Right now I am so disheartened by the fact that these mass protests have diminished rather that escalated.  I am sickened by the fact so few around the world seem to value their freedom enough to stand up and say, in a firm voice, enough is enough. I am most saddened that so few here in the United States seem to value their freedom and liberty at all.  This is most shocking to me considering that the United States used to be the freest and most prosperous nation that ever existed.

I am not going to give up the fight, even though it now seems to be a hopeless cause.  I’m actually going to redouble my efforts to bring about a mass nonviolent uprising against all of these mandates and restrictions, and I encourage everyone to do the same.  I’ve always been a rabble rouser who enjoys a good fight, even if it is a hopeless cause.