Lisa Eckersley

I love my family, I love my God. Married mother of 2. Now a stay-at-home mom of our dear adult daughter with Williams Syndrome. We just keep trying 😄

[Lisa Eckersley @EckersleyLisa]

https://t.co/zPZpGlHgE5

[Melissa Redford Berezay 🇺🇸🪔 @MissRed_Roses]

This will make you smile. Rain Wilson shares his observation of returned missionary reunions at the SLC airport.

Mystic Observes Book of Mormon Promise https://t.co/C5XGBTu7An via @YouTube

[Lisa Eckersley @EckersleyLisa]

@BasedMikeLee There’s only *some* Mormon women in that group.
Anytime someone uses their religion to win you over, I immediately assume they are disingenuous and I should run away.

[Lisa Eckersley @EckersleyLisa]

@RandPaul I agree. Federal gov should return the responsibility and the privilege of taxing and spending according to the needs and wishes of their own constituents. When states are allowed to compete then the federal system thrives. Uniformity under large federal government stagnates.

[Senator Rand Paul @SenRandPaul]

Programs like Medicaid are almost entirely federal money, so states treat it as free & hardly police it. It's not free. It is part of what is bankrupting the country. Shift the cost & the policing back to the states, and watch how fast able-bodied people would get off welfare.

[Austin Justice @AustinJustice]

Andrew Wimsatt spent his life figuring out how to make things last longer.

Roads, bridges, tunnels, pavement, friendships.

He held three civil engineering degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, spent 18 years at TxDOT, ten of them as Fort Worth District Pavement Engineer, and in 2006 joined the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, where he eventually ran the Materials and Pavements Division and its $9 million annual research program. He worked on ground-penetrating radar, nondestructive testing, asset management.

Describing the work once, he said the real challenge wasn't building new things; it was making what we already have last longer.

Andrew made what we already have last longer.

He was an obsessive live-music fan who would fly across the country to see a band. He loved Slowdive. In 2023 he was recommending "Souvlaki" and "everything is alive" to anyone who'd listen, singled out their cover of Syd Barrett's "Golden Hair," and admitted that when he heard them play it at FYF in 2014, he teared up. In 2016, when bad weather killed Levitation and Slowdive threw together a surprise show at the Scoot Inn, Andrew happened to be sitting at his computer and grabbed two $7.50 tickets in the roughly two minutes before it sold out. Then he recorded the entire set on his iPhone for a friend.

He made music too. He'd been in bands with Karl Rehn since high school, engineered their home cassette recordings in the early 1980s, and in 1990 released "Reflections" under the name the Andrew Wimsatt Ensemble, cut at Sixth Street Studio. He and Rehn made music videos that ran for years on Austin's ACTV, and contributed to the score of a 1994 documentary about Barton Springs.

Then there was the archiving, which is maybe the most Andrew thing about him. He clipped television. Constantly, expertly, for free, for people he admired. The Fifth Column crew (@wethefifth) called him "Busty Wimsatt" and, in their newsletters, "ever-alert," "indefatigable," and at least once "American hero." @MattWelch called him their most devoted cliphawker. Andrew painstakingly uploaded old episodes of "The Independents" so they wouldn't disappear. He clipped @KatTimpf's Fox appearances for her Locals community. He sent @walterkirn clips of Kirn's own jokes.

"Boy did I feel special," Kirn wrote today. "Not many strangers will go out of their way to give another that kind of encouragement."

He was not, for the record, employed by any of these people.

He contributed old photographs to @iowahawkblog's Dave's Car ID Service. He was a fixture in Austin's science fiction community and once drove Howard Waldrop home from Worldcon. He was an executive producer of Penn Jillette and Adam Rifkin's "Director's Cut," and appears in it, briefly, as "Greeting Cop." He hosted a regular libertarian beer gathering at the Johnny Cash-themed bar Mean Eyed Cat. He was, per @JTLonsdale, one of University of Austin’s (@uaustinorg) original small donors. He bought a camouflage "No Step on Snek" hat at a Texas gun show this summer and his friends heard about it.

The man lived.

He lived in Cambridge Towers, a 1965 midcentury modern building near the Capitol. Punk rock, pop surrealism, midcentury furniture, a gentle Southern manner. He loved salt to a degree his friends used as a unit of measurement.

He was, by every single account, one of the kindest people anyone had met.

@greggutfeld: supremely gentle, willing to do just about anything for another person.

@PlanetTyrus: always positive, physically slight, with a monster laugh.

@NancyRomm says he once gave her the jacket off his back when she was getting hypothermic.

A friend of 13 years and dozens of concerts tells me he never once heard Andrew say an unpleasant thing about anyone.

Both his parents were English professors. His father, James, was a Chaucer scholar at UT Austin who died in 2023 at 96. His mother, Mary, took her doctorate at Duke, ran the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, held an endowed chair as McClintock Professor of Southern Letters at South Carolina, wrote the first full-length study of a nineteenth-century novelist almost nobody remembered, and spent five years on a public radio project designed to get ordinary people reading Faulkner and Welty.

His parents spent their careers recovering things other people had stopped reading. They taught their son to make things last longer.

His mother now has Alzheimer's and lives in a nursing home in Round Rock. Andrew helped care for his father at the end, and then her. His routine was to drive out, walk with her, and then take a second walk alone.

He photographed what he saw on his walks. His Instagram is herons -- wading, fishing, one caught mid-wingspan over the water -- plus hawks in bare branches, a squirrel wedged in a tree hollow, a snail on a brick wall, bluebonnets, and a lot of Texas sky at the second it went orange.

Two days before he died, he was at a friend's house for movie night, watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 do "The Crawling Hand."

He spent his whole life trying to make things last longer, and he was good at it, and he was doing it right up to the end -- the second walk of the morning, until he sat on a park bench in the morning sun.

He is survived by his siblings, Alison Ross and David Joseph Wimsatt. And by his mother, who he walked with that morning, and who does not know he isn't coming back next week.

[Lisa Eckersley @EckersleyLisa]

@RCamposDuffy @michaeljknowles No! We want to reduce federal government spending! Not expand it. This ‘nice’ program will get abused and defrauded and have unintended negative consequences. Just like any subsidy.

[Garritt Hampton | Thinking Dad @GarrittHampton]

Let me reframe the Trump/Vance child care credit argument for you in simple economic terms.

Option 1) The government cuts my taxes by $9,000. I keep the $9,000 and my family is benefitted by the whole amount.

Option 2) The government gives a $9,000 credit to "stay-at-home moms." In order to give that credit, the government has to take approximately $19,000 dollars from taxpayers to pay for administration and distribution of the funds, and for the 50% of funds (conservatively estimated) that will go toward fraud and waste.

This is a no-brainer. End the government handouts. Reduce taxes, cut spending, prosecute fraud, let the free market work.

[Lisa Eckersley @EckersleyLisa]

@ConceptualJames @EmilyVBurns I did not vote for more entitlements or more more subsidies. My vote will go for anyone who will reduce federal spending and return powers and responsibilities to the states. Federal spending and taxation are grossly high. Balance, reduce and cut the federal budget.

[Ian Miller @ianmSC]

Yeah I just don’t think we spend enough time talking about the fact that virtually all of the “experts” who told us Covid required draconian lockdowns and mandates didn’t actually believe any of it and never followed the rules they demanded others comply with

[Jeff @_Jeffery0]

“Mehdi Hasan Claims Islam Is Peaceful - Then This British politician has A BRUTAL Response”

Speaker: My side of the argument is regularly told that we are demonising Islam and whipping up fear of Islam.

But let me tell you what actually whips up fears of Islam.

9/11. The London bombings. Madrid. Mumbai. Bali. Death for apostasy. Death for blasphemy. Death for adultery. Death for homosexuality. Gender discrimination. Child marriage. Beheadings. Imprisonment for being raped.

The murder of Theo van Gogh. Death threats. Sharia patrols. Polygamous marriages.

This is what causes fear of Islam. It is not me.

We'll be told this is just the extreme fringe of Islam.

Well, look at Saudi Arabia the birthplace of Islam and custodian of its holy sites.
People are executed for blasphemy and apostasy.

But apparently, that's the extreme fringe?

Calling Saudi Arabia the extreme fringe of Islam is like calling the Vatican the extreme fringe of Catholicism. Sorry, it just doesn't work.

Then we're told violent Muslims have misunderstood Islam.

Saudi Arabia has misunderstood. Iran has misunderstood. Yemen has misunderstood.
Has there ever been a more spectacularly misunderstood religion than Islam?

I'm constantly told that I need to respect Islam. But I'm under no greater obligation to respect Islam than any other belief.

I am under no obligation to make compromises with an ideology I simply don't see as peaceful.

Why don't I see it as peaceful? Because of the evidence.

If I look around the world and see the countries where Islam calls the shots, all I see is brutality and violence imposed by the state.

[Enes Kanter FREEDOM @EnesFreedom]

I I have an idea…

Why not just merge the @NBA and @WNBA?

If biology doesn’t matter anymore, then why have separate leagues at all?

Rules Are Rules!

#LetFreedomPlay

[Lisa Eckersley @EckersleyLisa]

@laralogan The solution is to massively reduce the size of the federal government and make policy-making and program-funding the responsibility of local governments.

[Mrs. Dr. Publius @MrsDrPublius]

Please tuck this list of scriptures somewhere accessible. The next time you are afraid and don’t know what to do please read these scriptures out loud. God bless you.

1.  Psalm 32:8 - "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with My loving eye on you."

2.  Isaiah 30:21 - "Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”

3.  Psalm 37:23-24 - "The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in Him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with His hand."

4.  Isaiah 41:10 - “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed for I am your God.   I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

5.  Romans 8:28 - “ And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose."

6.  Psalm 46:1 -  "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble."

7.  Isaiah 26:3 - “You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in You."

8.  John 14:27 - "Peace I leave with you; My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid."

9.  Genesis 28:15 -  "I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

10. Exodus 14:14 - "The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

11.  Psalm 34:17 -  “The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them; He delivers them from all their troubles."

12.  Proverbs 3:5-6 - “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight."

13.  Lamentations 3:25 - “The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him;…"

14.  I Peter 5:7 - “ Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you."

15.  Psalm 94:19 - “ When anxiety was great within me, Your consolation brought me joy."

May God’s peace and comfort keep you and strengthen you.

Peace and be prepared.

[Alastair Hilton @London_W4]

Dear Mr Burnham @andyburnham , you say that asylum seekers should not just be housed in poor areas, but in rich areas. No, they shouldn’t be housed in any areas of Britain. There is no war in France and hasn’t been for quite some time. Nor Germany, nor Italy, nor Greece, nor Spain. All countries that they’ve travelled through to get to ours. They’ve travelled to ours not out of desperation, but in search of a better life. A life where you will give them a house, a phone, spending money for life and no requirement to ever integrate or to work. Paid for not by you, but by hardworking British taxpayers. People who work day and night and stress and can’t sleep because they don’t know how to pay the next electricity bill. People who are decent people and trying to make a decent life for themselves and their families. This is Britain and it is a pleasant land because of the people here. The lands that the asylum seekers have come from are not pleasant lands. Not because of some geographical anomaly, but because of the people. The people that you now want to occupy every corner of this pleasant land. No, they shouldn’t be housed in rich areas or poor areas. They should be sent home. Because they will never call Britain home, but I do and so do many other people who love Britain and want it to remain as Britain. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

[Lisa Eckersley @EckersleyLisa]

@ianmSC In this video he asks ‘how can we win back trust in public health.’ I think everyone should always be highly skeptical of our public health officials. ‘Do your own research’ seems smart.

[Lisa Eckersley @EckersleyLisa]

@JonCaldara During ‘Covid’I learned that ‘because it’s the NICE or KiND thing to do’ is NOT a valid argument.

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

Can President Trump PLEASE give the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the Amish for their amazing work rebuilding Western North Carolina?

They have literally rebuilt HUNDREDS of bridges, homes, businesses, and roads... and are STILL HERE!!!

No group deserves it more.

[Brigham Tomco @BrighamTomco]

Jason Chaffetz writes op-ed for @Deseret in response to Sen. John Curtis' state-sponsored visa proposal:

"I categorically reject this approach. It prioritizes cheap labor over healthy wages and affordable housing. We can do a better job of matching people who need and seek work with available jobs. That’s the kind of legislation we should prioritize."

GOP donors say Chaffetz is already working hard to coalesce support for a 2028 Utah governor bid. Meanwhile, other Utah donors are teasing that Curtis might jump in. Looks like the first shots of the 2028 race have been fired. The issue? Immigration.

[Vandie @VanDiemen_]

I'm a Utah Employer. I couldn't object to this more strenuously. Entire cities in Utah are becoming unrecognizable because of how many foreigners have arrived in such a short period of time. We already have a housing crisis, critical housing units are being occupied by immigrants. Crime is going up, every night on the local news I see stories of foreigners behaving badly and people are getting hurt. This bill is meant to reduce costs for employers, but wages for my working friends are stagnant, they aren't saving as much as they should and they're feeling despair as their financial futures slip away. Hundreds of millions are being spent to educate immigrant kids, teachers are voicing frustration with how many ESL kids they have to teach, and the kids of native Utahns are falling behind as a reuslt. To top it all off, I can't find a parking spot up in the canyons anymore! Our trails and parks are packed with people who aren't from here.

And your disposition is to do the exact thing that would make it all worse? To help some business owners increase their profits?

Have you talked to an old timer in one of these neighborhoods where immigrants are settled and listened to the despair in their voice as they watch things transform around them? As things decay and fall apart all? As houses fill up with people who don't speak the same language, who don't share the same values, who don't cherish our local heritage or culture? I have. Are we supposed to ask them to get over it? Are we all supposed to just get over it?

I don't recognize the state I grew up in. The last thing we need here is more foreigners. Politicians have a duty and a loyalty to the people they represent, not outsiders. This proposal tells me that you are out of touch. This proposal tells me that you don't care about the wage suppression that will hit native, working Utahns hardest. This proposal tells me that you don't care that people here are already struggling. This proposal tells me that you care more about them than you care about us.

[Lisa Eckersley @EckersleyLisa]

@DrNeilStone You’re right, it wasn’t entirely Fauci’s faulty. It was also Birx’s fault, Newsom’s fault, Whitmer’s fault, Dr Angela Dunn’s fault (here in Utah),etc. A whole lot of inconsiderate, thoughtless selfish people who saw a chance to enrich themselves, financially or in social capital.