Posts Tagged ‘datechguy's magnificent seven’

The civility and tolerance of the political left have been on full display since the Abortion SCOTUS leak

Posted: May 12, 2022 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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The title of this article is an example of extreme satire and irony.  The behavior of the proponents of abortion has been as atrocious as we’ve all come to expect.  Their behavior has not sunk to the level we all witnessed during last summer, when ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter were rioting almost nightly.  There is a good chance that could happen. I believe that they are just warming up.

Abortion has become a religious sacrament to those who inhabit the left side of the political spectrum.  The slaughter of unborn children, up until the moment of birth, is a sacred right to the vast majority of modern Democrats. Because abortion is seen as a sacred right, any threat to abortion is met with religious fervor. 

Marxism is at the very core of the political left.  Individual life has very little value to a Marxist because that family of philosophies is based on collectivism.  Violence and intimidation are the tactics most often used by the political left because they operate under the mistaken belief that the ends always justify the means.

This past Sunday, which was Mother’s Day, leftists decided interrupting Catholic Masses was an acceptable tactic to protest the leaked end to Roe versus Wade.  As you can see from this article, they mistakenly believe they have the right to interrupt a church service.

After interrupting Mass, the protesters feel like they can get irate when asked to leave. “I have a right as an American!” one of the pro-baby-killing activists screams as she’s walked out of the church. And while she certainly has the right to protest, she doesn’t have the right to do so inside a church, especially as Mass is being conducted.

I understand leftists seem to have an issue understanding the difference between private and public property—the communist brain disease destroys the ability to understand such concepts early on—but the church is private property, and they don’t even have to be allowed on the grounds, let alone in the building.

This Tweet documents the startling events that took place during Mass in one Catholic Cathedral

As you can see from this Tweet by journalist Any Ngo, things turned violent in Los Angeles.

Democrat politicians, such as the mayor of Chicago, are openly calling for violence.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot encouraged violence on Monday in a tweet asserting the U.S. Supreme Court’s leaked opinion draft signaling the downfall of Roe v. Wade means the justices will come for the“LGBTQ+ community” next.

“To my friends in the LGBTQ+ community—the Supreme Court is coming for us next. This moment has to be a call to arms,” she wrote on Twitter. “We will not surrender our rights without a fight—a fight to victory!”

The conduct of the so called pro abortion activists has deteriorated to the level where they  firebombed a pregnancy center, then gloated about it in a rather ghastly manner.

‘BURN LITTLE JESUS FREAKS’: ABORTION ACTIVISTS LEAVE VILE VOICEMAILS FOR CHRISTIAN ORG THAT WAS FIREBOMBED

The media attack a Christian Republican in Pennsylvania

Posted: May 10, 2022 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

You know when a Republican politician is doing something right: a big-daily newspaper starts to attack.

That’s what happened when the Philadelphia Inquirer took aim at State Sen. Doug Mastriano, who’s running for governor of Pennsylvania.

In an attempted takedown of Mastriano, who’s leading the polls, the Inky headlined an attack piece: “Doug Mastriano embodies a Christian nationalist movement as he runs for governor.” See https://www.inquirer.com/politics/doug-mastriano-governor-christian-nationalism-qanon-20220504.html

A Christian! A nationalist! How dreadful!

“We have the power of God with us,” he told a recent rally. “We have Jesus Christ that we’re serving here. He’s guiding and directing our steps.”

The Inky commented in an alleged news article: “It was classic Mastriano — how God told him to run for governor and how he was the candidate who could save the state from its descent into evil.”

Mastriano, 58, is the front-runner for the Republican nomination for governor in the nation’s fifth-largest state. He has been at or near the top of almost every poll in the nine-person race with just a week left before Tuesday’s primary. 

While the Inky and other leftist news organizations emphasize Mastriano’s religious fervor, they tend to gloss over his rather substantial attributes. 

Mastriano was commissioned in the U.S. Army in 1986 and served on the Iron Curtain with the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in West Germany. While serving along the East German and Czechoslovakian borders, he witnessed the end of the Cold War and later deployed to Iraq for Operation Desert Storm in 1991 to liberate Kuwait. He served four years with NATO and deployed three times to Afghanistan. Mastriano was the director of NATO’s Joint Intelligence Center in Afghanistan, leading 80 people from 18 nations. He completed his career as a professor at the U.S. Army War College. He retired from the military as a colonel. See https://senatormastriano.com/biography/

He enjoyed a quick ascent into politics, earning a seat in 2019 to the Pennsylvania State Senate from a district just adjacent to my home in the central part of the state. 

Mastriano supports gun rights, charter schools, and lower taxes. He opposes vaccine mandates and abortion.

The candidate also supported moves to overturn the Pennsylvania vote after Donald Trump lost the state in 2020 by a mere 81,000 votes. In his first 100 days as governor, Mastriano said he would “immediately end all contracts with compromised voting machine companies” and push to enact various voting restrictions.

After eight years of an atrocious Democrat regime, many of us are relieved that we can cast our vote for a man who reflects what makes America great despite the harrumphing from the leftist media.

Report from Louisiana: Soaring Costs

Posted: May 9, 2022 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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Photo by Krzysztof Hepner on Unsplash

By: Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – When I read an article about rising food costs and see something like “Milk is 13% more expensive than last spring, and beef prices are up 16% over last year,” those numbers are vague to me. They don’t process. I can look at 13% and 16% and know those are pretty good price jumps, but the impact of rising food prices is much more obvious when you look at individual items.

For example, one of the things we purchase is cat litter. Six months ago, we were paying $3.56 for a 5 lb. bag; now, the same bag is just over $5.  I sometimes purchase these little individual cups of Del Monte grapefruit for grab and go breakfast. Six months ago, it was right at $1 for one of these; now it’s $1.53. I guess that is still a low cost for breakfast, but it’s indicative of a much larger problem.

These rising prices are affecting everything you put in your shopping cart. A store manager recently told me that the rising costs stem from having to pay more for materials, for inks to print labels, to the higher cost of producing the product you are actually buying, and the transportation to get it to your store. Even labor shortages contribute to higher costs.

Part of the problem is all of that stimulus money which has to be reabsorbed back into the system; more money floating around means rising prices. Another factor is soaring fertilizer prices, the effects of which will continue to make food costs rise worldwide.

Bottom line is that even to a non-economist person like me, we can see that prices of literally everything we buy are soaring and there seems to be no end to it.

More than once lately I have wished for a big vegetable garden; sadly, I don’t have enough sun in my yard to even grow a tomato plant.

Because my husband is retired military, we have access to the commissary which has traditionally offered lower prices for many items, but now this is one area where shortages are quite evident, and shelves are bare. Prices seem to be about in line with prices everywhere else now. While there is still some savings to be had on certain items there, the bottom line is that comparison shopping is becoming an art form.

We have been watching sale flyers for the grocery stores and stocking up on shelf-stable items when we can. If coffee is on sale, we stock up. I find I’m buying fewer snack items (not a bad thing!) that before and I’m stretching leftovers and being more mindful about waste.

It makes me worry about the working poor – and maybe I’m in that group! – who don’t qualify for government assistance but who isn’t wealthy either. Between rising gas prices, rising food prices, and overall inflation, we will all be on tighter budgets for some time to come.

Clipping coupons has never been my thing; I either forget them or resent having to by a dozen of something just to save a quarter, but maybe I need to take another look!

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.

Review: Ozark Season 4 Part 2

Posted: May 8, 2022 by John Ruberry in culture, entertainment, media, politics, Uncategorized
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By John Ruberry

Five years after the fictional story of the Naperville, Illinois crime family, the Byrdes, began streaming on Netflix, Ozark has come to an end. 

Late last month the final seven episodes, comprising of Season 4 Part 2, were released. 

If you haven’t heard of the Byrdes, the family is headed by Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman), a financial planner whose firm makes the fatal mistake of laundering money for a Mexican drug cartel run by Omar Navarro (Felix Solis). Marty is married to Wendy (Laura Linney), a former Democratic Party operative, although the word “Democrat” hasn’t been mentioned for the past two seasons. Their children, Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz), and Jonah (Skylar Gaertner), are reluctant partners in the family business, which is based in the Lake of the Ozarks region of Missouri. A riverboat casino is the centerpiece of their laundering operation.

Leaving an organized crime network is much harder than joining one. But that’s what the Byrdes continue to strive for, looking back at the Chicago area as a safe haven. For real. Clearly, the Byrdes haven’t been keeping an eye on the dramatic rise of violent crime here. 

The Byrdes have formed a shaky alliance with a member of a local small-time crime family, Ruth Langmore (Julia Garner). A two-time Prime Time Emmy winner for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for that role, Garner is simply fabulous. Marty and Wendy can’t protect and grow their operation, let alone leave it, without assistance from other villains, convenient and tired ones, including a former Republican US senator from Illinois, Randall Schafer (Bruce Davison), and the CEO of a Chicago-based pharmaceutical corporation, Clare Shaw (Katrina Lenk). Yawn. Republicans bad, pharmaceutical firms, also bad. The money laundering Brydes? Not so much, at least according to the scriptwriters. Wendy, to protect their rackets, finds herself a reluctant participant in a Midwestern vote-suppression scheme that Schafer is behind. 

In real life, between the release of Part 1 and Part 2 of Season 4 of Ozark, the decades-long Democratic boss of Illinois, Michael Madigan, was indicted. But never forget, in television land, the GOP is evil.

Oh, what was that about Netflix losing subscribers?

A character introduced in Season 4, a disgraced former Chicago Police detective with good intentions, Mel Sattem (Adam Rothenberg), confronts the Byrdes over their hubris gained from their power and money, equating them with the Kennedy family and the conservative Koch family from Wichita. Slow down there. There is no Koch-equivalent to the Kennedys using their influence to allow Ted Kennedy to walk away with only a hand slap after arguably murdering Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick. 

Okay, I’ve hit the things that I didn’t enjoy with Ozark. Back to the good stuff–and there is plenty of it. 

The Navarro family has its own struggles. Omar’s nephew, Javi Elizondro (Alfonso Herrera), has plans that don’t coincide with those of his uncle. One of the many appeals of Ozark is the shifting of alliances–and the betrayals that accompany them. And of course, so are the performances–led of course by Garner–of the major characters and minor ones. One of the minor characters, Rachel Garrison (Jordana Spiro), makes a surprise return.

The cinematography of Ozark is at a feature-movie level. 

While of course set in Missouri, Ozark except for some Chicago scenes in Season 1, is filmed in the Atlanta area. In Part 1 of Season 4 I noticed a light rail train in what was supposed to be downtown Chicago. What were called streetcars way back when haven’t been running in Chicago for decades. In Part 2 of the final season, I spotted what appears to be a cabbage palm tree in front of Ruth Langmore’s Lazy-O Motel. That tree cannot survive a Midwestern winter.

And what about Wendy and Marty Byrde? As I remarked in a previous review, they are the television version of Tom and Daisy Buchanan, who in The Great Gatsby “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness.”

All four seasons are available for streaming on Netflix. The series is rated TV-MA for graphic violence, drug use, nudity, and obscene language.

Earlier post:

Review: Ozark Season 4 Part 1.

John Ruberry regularly blogs from the Chicago area at Marathon Pundit.

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