Posts Tagged ‘datechguy's magnificent seven’

To ensure victory next year the Republicans desperately need to learn how to fight

Posted: November 21, 2019 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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The Republican party on a national level has one great failing; most of the members elected to office are spineless.  This failure has plagued the Republican party for decades.  In order to comfortably retake the House of Representatives and retain the Senate this must be fixed soon.

I’m by no means the first to bemoan the Repulican party members for being spineless.  It has been an all too frequent topic of discussion on conservative websites.  Check out this American Thinker article When will the timid GOP wussy boys step up to the plate?

As the Democrats plow ahead in their hollow quest to bring President Trump down, the absurdity of their pitiful scheme becomes ever more pathetic.  But we can say this for the Dems: they stick together, and they stick to their plan, no matter how futile it is.

The Republicans?  Not so much.  They do not stick together; they don’t stick to any plan.  They seem to barely agree on what conservatism is, let alone be true to it, to their party’s basic principles.  They cower.

The Democrats, on the other hand, will lie, cheat, and expose their monstrous hypocrisy for all to see while the Republicans quake in their boots and go wobbly for fear of being spoken of negatively by our moonbat lefty pseudo- journos in the media.  There are of course a few truly great, courageous Republicans in Congress: Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Doug Collins, Mark Meadows, John Ratcliffe, and Ron Johnson come to mind.  Others who we thought would be great — Ted Cruz, Chuck Grassley, Mike Lee, and Tom Cotton — are sitting on their hands as though they are scared to death of bad press. 

I am not advocating that the Republicans embrace the Democrats tactics of cheating, lying, or using strong arm tactics.  I am suggesting very strenuously that they stand up and fight back, something they seem loath to do.  The period leading up to the public impeachment hearings is a perfect example of this.

The faint-of-heart Republicans have decided to be bystanders in the passing parade of democrat chicanery in service to their goal of exorcising Donald Trump.  All of this points to the essential difference between left and right. 

The Left has no scruples, no allegiance to its constituents.  Leftists seek power above all else, and Trump is an impediment to that power.  The Republicans want to be nice, always nice.  They loathe the confrontation the Left purposefully generates and try to avoid it.

Why did no Republican jump to his feet in a rage when Schiff read his false narrative of Trump’s conversation with Zelensky of Ukraine?  Because they are always polite.  No Republican would ever bring fried chicken to eat in a House committee hearing room. Not in a million years.

There is hope.  During the public impeachment farce last week several Republicans demonstrated real fighting spirit and it made quite a difference.  This was noted by the Washington Examiner in this article When Republicans fight back.

Republicans grew a backbone in the hearing and pushed back against House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff’s impeachment narrative. This is the sort of thing we’ve come to expect from Rep. Jim Jordan, but the fact that Reps. Elise Stefanik and John Ratcliffe also came out swinging speak volumes. These three are all quite different breeds of Republican, but for once, disparate House Republicans all brought the same level of intensity to a high stakes hearing.

Republicans challenged the Left’s narrative not only on the facts but the process as well. They’ve done good work to expose this investigation as the sham impeachment hearing it really is. We haven’t seen this sort of energy and poise from Republicans since the Kavanaugh saga, and we have rarely seen it at all throughout President Trump’s time in office.

For so long, the GOP has been afraid of its shadow. When things get tough, they turn tail and run. We’ve seen it on budget votes, shutdown standoffs, and stunningly, Obamacare — the single issue they railed against for years on the campaign trail but failed to repeal under unified government.

The Republicans really need to build on the uncharacteristic performance that they showed last week.  They need to stand up to the Democrats in congress and they absolutely need to stand up to the corrupt and biased liberal media.  The Republicans need to learn that any coverage of them will always be negative no matter what they say.  They should just say what they believe to be right and say it loudly.  It has worked exceptionally well for President Trump. 

Report from Louisiana: Four more years of decline

Posted: November 17, 2019 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – I saw a meme on social media Sunday morning:  “Waiting for election results is like waiting for a grade on a group project. I know I did my part right but I’m scared the rest of you screwed it up.”

Well, they did.

We’ve got four more years of John Bel Edwards. Pete wrote about this yesterday.  It’s true, as he says, that Edwards is a pro-life Democrat and to a state that is heavily Catholic, especially in the southern regions, that matters.

However, I’d hardly say that his re-election is a mandate. The race was very close and for a lot of us who would like to see business returning to Louisiana, this is not really good news. It means:

Four more years of high taxes.

Four more years of trial lawyers running businesses out of the state.

Four more years of last-in-everything.

Four more years of shackles on the oil and gas industry.

Four more years of decline.

The race was close: Edwards received 774,469 votes and Rispone received 734,128, giving Edwards about 51% of the vote. Voter turnout was about 50% and it is worth noting that Orleans Parish went 90% for Edwards. 

The days leading up to the election were insane: Donald Trump lobbied throughout Louisiana for Eddie Rispone and his rallies drew literally thousands. In the Shreveport/Bossier City area here in northwest Louisiana, Trump visited on Thursday, before the Saturday election.

Interestingly, just days before Trump’s visit, the Shreveport mayor Adrian Perkins (D) issued a “stand-down” order, telling Shreveport police and fire responders to offer no assistance to the security of the President during his visit. Shreveport’s first responders had been in planning meetings and had assignments to assist Bossier City (we are divided only by a river). This stand-down order met with a backlash against Mayor Perkins that resulted in a local defeat of the Mayor’s bond election that was also on the ballot.

The only good news here is that this runoff election granted Louisiana Republicans a supermajority in both the House and Senate, and so Edwards will have a tougher time this term.

Looking at the numbers, it is interesting to consider for example that voters reinstated the Republican Secretary of State overwhelmingly over the Democrat candidate (59% to 40%), but only 51% of those same voters went for Edwards.

I think a lot of the problem for Republicans in this election can be placed on two things: a lot of people see Edwards as just moderate enough that they can take him. The second thing is that Republicans just did not offer up a top tier candidate. Rispone’s name recognition was zero coming into this election and he had no political experience. He’d just made lots of money in the private sector. He knows business and he touted himself as the Louisiana Donald Trump.

If Senator John Kennedy had run, we might be having a very different conversation right now.

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.

Report from Louisiana: Election Countdown

Posted: November 11, 2019 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By: Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – Saturday was the last day to early vote in the gubernatorial election and the turnout across the state has been quite heavy. The scene was surreal in Shreveport as the line to vote snaked outside the Registrar of Voter’s office out on to the street, extending at least two blocks. The day was clear and crisp, vibrant blue skies and bright sunshine.

As we stood in line, across the street at the Caddo Parish Courthouse, two rallies were in competition with each other to have their voices heard. One group of about thirty-five were there in support of the Confederate monument that stands in front of the courthouse. (Its fate is still in litigation). They waved various Confederate state and battle flags and marched around the courthouse square chanting about preserving history. A second group, a climate change activist group, held posters and signs denouncing drilling, global warming, and burning coal while marching the opposite direction around the square. At one point the climate change group stopped and faced those of us in the voting line and shrieked “ROCK THE VOTE, Y’ALL!”

It was a bizarre sight. People in the line around us snickered and wondered how many of those climate change folks rode their bicycles or their cars downtown. They were all wearing sneakers and plastic sunglasses…the hypocrisy was curious. On the other hand, the monument supporters were interesting too. All in all, it made the wait in line fairly interesting. It’s probably the most people I’ve seen in downtown Shreveport on a Saturday in quite some time.

President Trump has been spending some time in Louisiana these past few weeks as the election nears. Before the primary last month he spoke to a capacity crowd in Lake Charles in support of Republican candidate Eddie Rispone. Last week he spoke in Monroe, Louisiana and the local news there reported over 40,000 people requested tickets to that event. The overflow crowd was served by large screens outside the arena; and President Trump will be in Bossier City on November 14 to lobby for Eddie Rispone.

Election day is November 16 and currently the pollsters are reporting that the race is “too close to call.” It will come down to turnout. I’ll be honest – I’d be surprised if Gov. Edwards loses. Eddie Rispone doesn’t have any political experience which is not necessarily a bad thing; a lot of people see Edwards as just conservative enough on some hot-button issues that they can stomach him. Plus, Edwards is using fear, now telling voters that Eddie Rispone will “rip away their health care” and freeze Medicaid.

Fear is a powerful tool.

Thankfully this will be over soon.

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 (LSU Press). She blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.

Progressive indoctrination in US schools has reached dangerous levels

Posted: November 7, 2019 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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It is difficult to pinpoint just when progressive indoctrination began at the college level in this country, it began slowly and under the radar at first.  What is abundantly clear today is that indoctrination has reached levels that are hazardous to our constitutional republic.  You can see just how dangerous the level of indoctrination has become from the Federalist article 4 Reasons Socialism Is More Popular Among Americans Now Than Ever Before

The supporters of socialism are not simply the young, but they’re disproportionately young people who are college-educated. The more college they have, the hotter for socialism they get. According to a 2015 poll, support for socialism grows from 48 percent among those with a high school diploma or less, to 62 percent among college graduates, to 78 percent among those with post-graduate degrees.

Those on the left probably jump immediately to the conclusion that support for socialism is just a natural outgrowth of big brains and elite educations. But there is, in fact, a less obvious but ultimately far more compelling explanation: Something — something bad — is happening at universities to pull students toward the (far) left.

We have already seen above that what’s not happening at even elite universities today is a whole lot of education in important subjects such as history. What we are getting instead is a lot of groupthink and indoctrination. Universities have always skewed a bit left. But beginning in the early to mid 1990s (for reasons I’ve explained in some detail elsewhere), ideological diversity began to vanish entirely, as the leftward deviation turned tidal.

Unfortunately the progressive indoctrination has spread down to high schools and grade schools because progressives infected teaching colleges.  The indoctrination has also been spread down to this level by teacher unions. 

Multiculturalism has always been a vehicle used to spread progressive indoctrination. Here is a particularly ridiculous example I found on Breitbart  Seattle Schools Plan Curriculum to ‘Explore’ Cultural Appropriation of Math.

The Seattle school district is putting into place a K-12 curriculum that encourages students “to explore how math has been ‘appropriated’ by Western culture and used in systems of power and oppression.”

Here is a quote from the Breitbart article that was originally from an article in Education Week

In most places, if schools offer ethnic studies at all, it’s usually in a stand-alone course in high school. But increasingly, schools and districts are starting to sprinkle ethnic studies across the K-12 spectrum. Seattle is taking a highly unusual approach by weaving the field’s multicultural and political questions not just through all grade levels, but into all subjects.

Politically correct revisionist history has been a mainstay of progressive indoctrination.  It is a particularly dangerous one because it is meant to undermine the entire foundation of our constitutional republic.  This Daily Signal article Woke History Is Making Big Inroads in America’s High Schools chronicles the spread of this revisionist history.

Two years ago, the Indiana Legislature mandated that high schools offer an ethnic studies elective. As approved by the state’s Education Department, the class teaches about the contributions of ethnic and racial groups, various cultural practices, as well as such concepts as privilege, systematic oppression, and implicit bias. And now three states—California, Oregon, and Vermont—are trying to create authoritative statewide templates that, advocates hope, will make it easier for schools to adopt ethnic studies.

The statewide California ethnic studies curriculum was proposed in June by an advisory committee, composed of ethnic studies teachers and professors, and met with public outcry that such classes are designed to recruit students into political activism, indoctrinate them with ideological jargon, and promote the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

Multiculturalism may seem warm and fuzzy on the surface however it is meant to tear down one particular culture, the culture of the United States.  Here are two great Thomas Sowell Quotes which sum up this sham.

Much of what is promoted as “critical thinking” in our public schools is in fact uncritical negativism towards the history and institutions of America and an uncritical praise of the cultures of foreign countries and domestic minorities.

What “multiculturalism” boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture—and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.

It will be extremely difficult to turn the tide back on this progressive indoctrination but it is something we must do to save our constitutional republic.  Ending Common Core and all other federal intrusions, while taking local control of K-12 schools, are important steps in the process, along with completely relaxing the iron grip of teacher unions.

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