Click here for DaTechGuyBlog.com Same Fedoras, Same Cannoli different domain.
Please Help DaTechGuy pay Da Bills
Click for the latest show
It’s time for the indulgence calendar for December. First the regular one.
And then the blank one:
This is the last full day of the liturgical year. As the new year begins tomorrow let me wish you a happy liturgical new year and suggest that praying the indulgence calendar on days when you attend mass would be an excellent liturgical new years resolution
Back when I endorsed Ron DeSantis I explained that the primary reason I did was because he was the best choice this time around but that I was fine with Trump as my 2nd choice and considered him not only the best president of my 60 years but in the top 5 (4th) all time.
That’s gotten me a lot of hate from Only Trumpers who don’t seem to get that picking DeSantis over Trump for 2024 is not saying something bad about him any more that taking Musial over Williams means that Teddy ballgame stunk.
But I don’t think I can express my feelings on the matter better than Kurt Schlichter who feelings on Trump mirror my own to wit:
Let’s examine why Trump can’t win. Here’s the big reason: About 53% of American voters hate him. They shouldn’t, not only because he was a generally good president but because you are not voting for Chief Pal but Chief Executive. I think his nickname is embarrassingly stupid, and I am bored by his social media rants, but neither matter. Will he kill our enemies, pump the economy, and own the libs? Yes, yes and yes. I support Ron DeSantis because I think he’s more likely to win in general and because he’s more ruthlessly conservative, but if Trump somehow wins, I will Lionel Richie it and party all night long. I think he’s got a 20% chance of winning, and I would be thrilled to be wrong. If listening to a bunch of tubby doofuses with usernames like @MAGAStudBoy420 and avatars of 80s action movie heroes with their faces photoshopped in tweeting “I TOLD YOU SO!” for the next four years is the price for having a Republican win in 2024, I’ll happily pay it.
That’s pretty much it, but there is a slight bit of movement, at least in New Hampshire:
In a shocking turn of events, notoriously never-Trumper Gov. Chris Sununu (R-N.H.) admits he would vote for former President Trump over Biden in the upcoming 2024 election.
During an interview with Puck News’s Tara Palmeri, Sununu– a notable Trump critic– hinted that he would swallow his pride and vote for the 45th president, noting he always votes Republican.
I suspect the governor doesn’t bring all that many votes with him but it can’t hurt, but the important thing he said is actually this:
“The party that chooses to move on from Trump or Biden first wins,” the governor predicted. “If the Democrats choose before the Republicans to move on from Biden — before the Republicans choose to move on from Trump — Democrats will win. America is just looking for something new — a new generation, enough of this old, old-school crap; we need to move forward. And so any new candidate on either side is going to win this election.”
This raises a good point. The biggest asset Trump has in a potential 2024 general election race is Joe Biden and his administration who are doing their best to move the NeverTrump vote toward swallowing their pride in 2024.
Me I’d just as soon nominate DeSantis and solve this problem before it comes but that leads to another question:
Both Kurt and I and have bluntly stated we’d vote for Trump and be delighted with a 2nd term, Governor Sununu has said so too (without the being delighted part) but if DeSantis actually wins in the primaries will the @MAGAStudBoy420TM crowd decide to take their balls and go home?
We shall see.
Fifteen years ago this week this blog started as the Tech blog for HiWired the company I was working for and wrote the blog for went away. It was going to be the platform where I could talk about subjects that I couldn’t touch on the work blog.
Ironically that seemingly innocent decision has next to my marriage been one of the biggest pivots in my life.
Funny isn’t it
At the time this blog was started Obama had just been elected but not sworn in. I had a good job in my field, financial security and was about as secure as a person could be.
Within a year I was unemployed and unemployable in my field, and the blog that was going to be a pastime became a full time platform to write about things while I tried to find work during the Obama years.
It’s is 14 years later and my full time job which began as a temp position during the final year of Obama still doesn’t pay what I was making before Obama was sworn in and that’s unadjusted for inflation. Four years of Trump was not enough to counter 11 years of Biden and Obama.
The irony of course is all that extra time to write, read and blog led me to the great conflict between Little Green Footballs who I had read for a long time back when Charles Johnson was still sane and the person whose actions would have the greatest effect on my life since the birth of my final son. Robert Stacy McCain.
The conflict between Johnson and McCain can best be followed on Stacy’s old blog here here and here and it was because of that conflict that I contacted Mr. McCain to hear his side of the story:
The story of the phone call that followed is here.
In the end I became of one that group of conservative commentators banned by Charles but my association with Mr. McCain would lead to amazing things.
When the Scott Brown thing was going on, Stacy shook his tip jar to get the funds to come here and cover it. Still not having found a job I had no funds to offer but DaWife consented to letting Stacy stay here to cover the story and I became his driver.
Programming and engineering deal with reality and it was during that week that I learned the difference between commenting from afar and covering something in person.
One of the best posts I ever wrote was done at this time. Boston Berkshires and ‘Bama, the close:
She was a 50 something Coakley volunteer. As I greeted her she sat down in front of Au Bon Pain tired from her exertions and dismayed by the Brown supporters all around where she sat. She had been sent out because of fire regulations, I couldn’t see why she couldn’t be somehow accommodated. I discovered she had come to Massachusetts 15 years ago from her native state of Maryland and cheered the liberal policies that she so believed in that the state seemingly embraced. I asked her finally why she thought a state that had voted 69% for Kennedy and had so convincingly selected Martha Coakley in the primary could change so quickly?
She had her answer.
“The Brown people are a bunch of Redneck Teabaggers.” she proclaimed. “Massachusetts is Boston on one side, the Berkshires on the other with Alabama smack in the middle.” She said this with a bitterness and a contempt that she presumed I had shared since I was standing with the Coakley crowd for nearly my entire time.
At this moment Robert Stacy McCain emerged from Au Bon Pain with the coffee that is the Gasoline of his engine I wished her well and excused myself knowing that my experience of 46 years in that middle of her adopted state would be no match for the comfortably bigoted fiction with which she consoled herself, even if I was inclined to be so un-gallant as to try
The campaign cumulated with my first official set of press credentials when Stacy, Dan Riehl and myself entered the Scott Brown victory party, each of us wearing one of my fedoras
That’s where I met Ace of Spades, Pam Gellar, Roxeanne De Luca Carl Cameron and got my first condescending reaction from a member of the MSM but most importantly it’s where I learned this about the press:
While most of the reporter types were busy talking to themselves, I was interviewing the waitstaff. Why? Because they were the only voters in the room! I talked to more than a dozen of them and got great information on all kinds of things. It speaks volumes that a room full of reporters didn’t think of doing this.
What I didn’t realize at the time is that it wasn’t a question of them thinking of doing it, it was that their narratives were already written. But what I also didn’t know is this tendency to talk to normal people would be the basis for the event that made this more than a one off.
6-10 on Friday
As I’ve written before I’ll be able to tell you who is lying about the state of the economy, the Biden administration or our own eyes, by the end of the week. Two big clues just turned up.
The first is that the Saturday after Cyber Monday which during the Trump years had been an optional 7th workday of the week will be a regular day off. While this is a big clue it’s also possible that the change in the shift structure from six months ago at my place meant there is enough weekend coverage that we aren’t needed. So it’s possible that this is solely due to clever preparation by the company to cut down on overtime expense.
The 2nd is more substantial. Yesterday was Cyber Monday, and not only were we able to keep up with orders but by the end of the day we were told that instead of coming in two hours early the rest of the week for the ten hour days they scheduled us for we can come in at our normal times.
Four days after Black Friday and we’re already back to 8 hour days. In the time that I’ve been here that’s unheard of.
As of right now Friday is still a mandatory 6th day. If that becomes optional before the week is out then hold onto your hats everyone because if you think it’s a bumpy ride now it’s about to get worse.
Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog 