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Thus the word of the LORD came to me: Son of man, I have appointed you a watchman for the house of Israel. When you hear a word from my mouth, you shall warn them for me. If I say to the wicked man, You shall surely die; and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his wicked conduct so that he may live: that wicked man shall die for his sin, but I will hold you responsible for his death. If, on the other hand, you have warned the wicked man, yet he has not turned away from his evil nor from his wicked conduct, then he shall die for his sin, but you shall save your life.

Ezekiel 3:17-19

One the most important pf all the virtues is courage, without courage no other virtue can exist. Courage manifests itself in many ways but one of the least appreciated but most important is to see things as they are and be willing to say aloud the truth, even if it’s a painful truth that you wish wasn’t so.

Well it’s time to speak a painful truth to supporters of President Donald Trump.

Let me start by stipulating the following

  • Donald Trump is one of the best presidents we have ever had. By the ranking I made the day Biden came in Trump is in the top four presidents who have ever held the office. Since that day revelations on Fauci & COVID bring his rating down but the revelations of the degree that he was was undermined from within make his accomplishments even more impressive so at of now it’s a wash.
  • I have made it clear for a while that I believe election 2020 was stolen. To me this is confirmed by
    • The stops of the counts in several states
    • The efforts to hinder and/or stop examination of ballots and counts in question
    • The actions to censor those who said it was stolen so
  • The persecution of both Donald Trump and those who support him by this administration and by this justice department and FBI is both a national and an international disgrace.

Let me also stipulate that when it comes to the candidates I see Trump and DeSantis the way I would look at Ted Williams and Stan Musial in picking a starting left fielder for a team:

One can see this, acknowledge this and even assert, as I do, that the 2020 election was literally stolen from him, and still decide that DeSantis is the better choice in 2024. That’ doesn’t mean that Trump is a bad choice it just means that you think DeSantis is a better one.at this time.

On the other hand if you look at the data, again from the economic numbers to the accomplishments and conclude that Ron DeSantis is not only the most effective and successful GOP governor currently in office but that he is likely the best GOP governor that we’ve seen in the 21st century and I don’t think it’s close.

One can see this, acknowledge this and even assert that he would make an excellent president and still decide that Donald Trump is the better choice for 2024. That doesn’t mean DeSantis is a bad choice, it just means you think Trump is a better one at this time.

Finally I’ve asserted that the only thing that matters in 2024 is winning and that must take priority over all else.

My purpose is to defeat the Democrat agenda by electing a republican to the white house in 2024 and it is not to re-elect and avenge or defeat and humiliate President Donald J Trump.

  • If I can defeat the Democrat Agenda by embracing and nominating Donald Trump as the GOP candidate in 2024 I will do it.
  • If I can defeat the Democrat Agenda by rejecting Donald Trump and nominating someone as the GOP candidate else I will do it.
  • and if I can defeat the Democrat Agenda by having a long primary with a drag out fight between Trump and DeSantis or another candidate and then standing by the winner who survives the test for the nomination whoever he or she is I will do that too.

That is how this election should be looked at by any person who wants the Democrats stopped, any conservative who decides to sit out the election if Trump is the nominee or decides to sit out the election if Trump is NOT the nominee is going to end up with the Democrat agenda that they rightly deserve and will have the added pleasure of knowing that they inflicted it upon themselves.

You have been warned.

With all those things stipulated the time has come for me to endorse Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida both for the GOP nomination and for President of the United States

I have been leaning toward Ron DeSantis for a while, his record of acomplishments in Florida doesn’t need to be reiterated but for the record:

  • He was one of the first governors to push back at the foolish COVID rules
  • He has fought the good fight on school reform and education reform
  • He has fought back on the culture wars protecting children
  • He has fought back against Woke corporations like Disney one of the most influential donors in the state when everyone (including Trump) advised against it AND WON!
  • He has fought back on illegal immigration and exposed the left’s false compassion with things like the plane to Martha’s Vineyard and the various Bus Trips.
  • He has fought back against every media narrative that has been used against him.
  • He has refused to be intimidated by anyone
  • Despite incredible pushback he pushed forward voting reforms that made many of the tactics that the left has used to steal elections, tactics that were once common in parts of Florida, practically obsolete.
  • And just this week he replaced a Soros DA who refused to enforce the law

All of these are positive reasons to endorse him but I’ve held back because I’ve wanted to see how he handles himself on the national stage both in dealing with the incessant attacks from the Trump camp and from the MSM. The national stage is different than a state stage and until I was sure he could stand up under attacks at least as well as Trump I thought I should hold off making a final decision between him and Trump, but something happened last Tuesday , something that reminded me of what I saw at the rise of Scott Brown. Something that Trump supporters won’t like, but need to acknowledge as an unpleasant reality.

I headed off to my mechanic last week to schedule a day for my 1999 Buick LeSabre. He is a one man operation who has been in place for decades with a large and loyal blue collar clientele. He talks to everyone and everyone talks to him.

While I was there the subject of the economy came up. We both bemoaned how things were [In fact while I was tying this paragraph I got a call that a fellow I was giving a lift to work was just laid off.] His other customers say the same. Then he dropped what was a bombshell to me.

We talked about the upcoming election and he told me in no uncertain terms that many of the blue collar voters who frequent the place, voters who had voted for Trump before have told him in no uncertain terms that they were sick of him and would not vote for him, PERIOD. These were folks who didn’t like Biden and commiserated with him at the state of the country under him but still said if Trump was the nominee he doesn’t get their vote. He argued with these folks, bluntly asking: “You mean you’d rather the country go to hell than vote for Trump?” To a man their answer was “Yes”

Again, these were blue collar people, the type of people who elected Scott Brown in 2010, people who supported Trump in the past, people who hated Biden and what he had done to the country but decided they hated Trump or perhaps the circus that comes with him even more.

We talked about how this was crazy, how this was self destructive and that they were screwing themselves but in the end our arguments meant nothing because for these people feelings and emotion trumps reality.

And that when it hit me, if a percentage of the blue collar folks we need to win are saying that in this small auto repair shop I suspect it is being said (or left unsaid) all over the nation.

And thus I return to the bottom line for 2024.

The goal is to win, without the votes of people like this in states that aren’t already deep red we don’t win.

Yeah it’s unfair how Trump has been treated, yes it’s unfair that the last election was stolen from us, yes he did a great job as president and his list of accomplishments are something to sing about, it’s unfair that we have to operate under these circumstances, and it’s unfair that we have to take irrational hatred into consideration when making a choice, but you know what, we’re conservatives and we know Life Isn’t Fair.

We don’t need to like or be liked by these irrational people, we don’t need these people to agree with us, but if we want to win we DO need these people to vote with us come election day 2024.

If they don’t we don’t win, if we don’t win then

  • Say goodbye to the Trump tax cuts that expire at the end of 2025
  • Say goodbye to the SCOTUS 6-3 rulings that have hampered the left (including Dobbs) because once a 2nd Biden admin replaces an Alito or a Thomas you can bet your bottom dollar John Roberts will start voting with the left again faster than you can say “old yellowstain”.
  • Say goodbye to any chance of the border being made secure.
  • And say goodbye to the restoration of equal justice under the law because if you think the FBI, Justice Department and various agencies are persecuting conservatives for their views now, imagine how it will be when they see there are not only no consequences for doing so but are backed up by a newly re-elected Biden Admin.

And let’s be blunt about another fact of life: Where does Donald Trump expand his vote count over 2024 with? What voter will he get this time that he didn’t get the last time around?

As I’ve already noted Ron DeSantis has more than proven himself as an excellent conservative choice, both on the social and the fiscal conservative front. Not only will he draw conservative votes but because he fought back against Fauci and Biden he can expand his base with those hurt by those decision, something that Trump who kept Fauci on the payroll and pushed the fast-tracking of the vaccines AND did so with the carrot of no liability can’t. In fact Trump history with the vaccine is something that every single GOP candidate for federal office will be hit with if he is the nominee. That’s going to cost us seats nationwide that a DeSantis nomination will not.

The single best argument against Donald Trump as the GOP nominee

Bottom line DeSantis draws votes that Trump can’t and doesn’t lose votes suffering from Trump fatigue and proved this by turning his squeaker election the first time around into a landslide, a landslide that came not despite his strong conservative record but BECAUSE OF IT. No matter how much you might dislike those voters who reject Trump this ability to expand one’s electorate is in fact a feature, not a bug but not as big of a feature as the fact that the left (and the Lincoln Project crowd) are scared to death of him.

We’re conservative we deal with facts. These are the facts, and these facts need to be put before GOP voters NOW before the voting begins and before all the lesser candidates dogpile on DeSantis which for most if them is the only reason they are in the race at all. There is no time to wait on this.

So for all these reasons, I Pete DaTechGuy now officially endorse Ron DeSantis for the GOP nomination and throw this blog behind his campaign and if you want us to win in 2024 I urge you to join me in doing so. This puts me on the opposite side of people I like, such as Don Surber who literally wrote the books on Trump and sites like Citizen Free Press who are invaluable conservative reads.

I suspect this will lose the blog more than a few fans and will generate cries of “RINO!” which is ironic given I’m the guy who in 2016 re-endorsed Trump right after the Billy Bush take came out when everyone and I mean everyone was running for the hills. It might even cost us a bit from the already depleted Tip Jar but this is no time to worry about that, I want us to win and the reality is what it is and the time to say this is NOW when it can make a difference and at a time when people are pushing the “campaign trouble” narrative it a case that needs making and if this advice isn’t taken then at least i’ll know that if the worst does come it will not be because I was silent.

You have been warned.

Closing thought: I’m convinced that if we nominate Donald Trump we will lose but if my advice is ignored and he wins the votes to be the nominee I will support him in the general election and make the best possible arguments for Trump (there is no lack of good arguments for his re-election) to convince those Blue collar folks to abandon their irrational hatred and vote for him, even though I think said effort is doomed to failure. After all with God all things are possible.

Important note: This is my own endorsement, I have not consulted any of my writers on this and it’s very possible that one or more or even all of them will disagree with me. They are welcome to do so and if they want to make the case that I am wrong here at the blog, they are welcome to do so as well.

Update: It’s been a while since my last Instalance. Thanks Glenn. Yup we’re still here after 15 years lost domain and banned youtube account not withstanding. Take a peek and see that the writers and I are still at it. You can find my old Youtube stuff at Rumble here and if you still like what you see after all these years please consider hitting DaTipJar as the Biden economy has not been so good to the blog and my employer is cutting hours.

Update 2: I was looking at the comments at Instapundit and it seems a lot of people there are taking my endorsement of DeSantis about as well as YouTube took me saying election 2020 was stolen.

Update 3: Two things:

  1. in update 2 I meant to say “election 2020, not 2022 fixed
  2. I work Sundays from 3:30 to midnight and have no net access I also moderate all comments so if you post a comment after 2:30 PM EST I won’t even see it till about 1 AM.

German Officer: [Bringing in dummy paratrooper] General this is what they dropped/ They explode when they come in contact with the earth. In the dark they look like soldiers.
Aide: Perhaps they are what General Richter saw, not real paratroopers.

General Erich Marks: No. When you create a diversion, it’s for a reason.

The Longest Day 1961

We’re heard a lot of things concerning Jan 6th from the left and we’ve seen Americans whose crime was to walk into a public building with police allowing them in treated worse that those burning down their cities because they have the same unapproved opinion on the honestly of Election 2024 as I have.

But if you really want to understand what actually happened and who is telling the truth, you can’t do better than the clue provided by this bit of breaking news.

Hotair puts it this way:

Fox News reports that the House Committee that was supposed to inherit the files from the January 6th Committee was handed a jumbled mess of unorganized files and computer records, and as they have been sorting through them they discovered that about 1/2 the records are missing.

This is illegal for a number of reasons, both due to laws demanding the preservation of records, and by the rules by which the committee was established. Many January 6th defendants have been requesting some of these records for their defense, claiming that they contain exculpatory evidence, and the House simply cannot provide them due to their absence.

To me it’s a very simple equation:

If you are doing things above board and the evidence supports your conclusions naturally you preserve all your records as required by law so that any mere blogger who questions it can be quickly shot down as a crank.

But if you destroy those records, it’s for a REASON. And the logical reason for it is that the evidence it contains contradicts and or disproves what was being presented. Which is why no republican who might object to such things or demand that such evidence be preserved was allowed on the committee.

The logical conclusion of his is the folks on the January 6th committee are corrupt bastards who should never be allowed in any office of trust and that the entire narrative we have been sold on it is and always has been a lie.

And to those on the left who still insist that all of this is above board and claim I should not say such scandalous things, I say in the same frame that Harry Truman answered the Russian ambassador: Stop acting in the scandalous way and I’ll stop calling your behavior a scandal.

A note: The reason you have both the tweet in question and the image of that tweet in this post is because for some strange reason wordpress didn’t like that tweet embedded when I tried to do it at first. A few years ago I would have automatically assumed it was a tech issue and pulled the duplicate but since being repeatedly falsely banned by twitter during November and early December of 2020 and being kicked off of youtube for suggesting the fix was in on the last election I must confess I’m a tad jaded these day so I’ll just keep the screen shot in, just in case.

I first heard of the Kevin Brown business on the drive home last night hearing he was suspended for something he said on his broadcast.

Things being what they are these days I had presumed he had said something either affirming conservative values or noting liberal insanity, things which are VERBOTEN by those who run sports media these days.

Then however they played the clip of what he said and all of us in the car were confused. Barber noted that if the O’s won that night it would be their first series victory in Tampa bay since 2017. My thought was, hey this is a positive thing highlighting the difference between the bad old days and what they have now.

Apparently any mention of the bad old days was too much for the o’s and denials by Baltimore not withstanding. broadcasters from all kinds of teams are having fits over it and are shocked that a team would so such a thing.

Apparently none of them remember what happened to Red Barber.

His entry at the encyclopedia Britannia reads thus:

Known for his integrity, Barber left the Dodgers after he was urged to make his commentary more supportive of the team, and he was fired by the Yankees after he reported that the last-place team had attracted a mere 413 fans for a September game.

A little more detail on the story is here:

That September 22 [1966], the day Michael Burke became president, 413 specked 65,010-seat Yankee Stadium. On WPIX television, Barber thought it “the perfect place for Burke to start, nowhere to go but up.” Red asked director Don Carney to pan the stands. No shot. He asked again. Zip. Later he said, “I found out [Yanks radio/TV head] Perry Smith was in the control room. He told them not to show the seats

Well he may not have gotten the shot but Barber spoke up anyways:

Barber recalled from using 1930s radio teletype, leaning into his mic: “I don’t know what the paid attendance is, but whatever it is, it is the smallest crowd in the history of Yankee Stadium, and this crowd is the story, not the game.” Red’s act defied. Next week, like Mel Allen in fall 1964, he misjudged. Asked to breakfast by Burke, Barber, like Allen then, anticipated a new pact—indeed, thought Burke was going to ask about player personnel! Instead, the new Yanks head said. “We have decided not to renew your contract.” Barber convened the press, said that “I have a record of thirty-seven years of fine work. I am not going to allow Mr. Burke, or anybody, to trifle with it,”

Now in fairness there is always the possibility that the O’s will be able to produce some other reason for this nonsense, but let’s not pretend that this is a shock, after all if the Yanks were willing to do this to a broadcast legend like Red Barber how less likely are the O’s going to feel guilty over doing something similar with Brown if the owner digs in his heels?

Actually now that I think about it I guess Brown was suspended for advancing a conservative value: The same conservative value that Barber was fired for, telling the truth.

Under the Fedora: So Let Me Get This Straight…

Posted: August 7, 2023 by datechguy in Uncategorized

….All Season the Red Sox have been streaky good and bad and after a very hot streak the Redsox have yet another cold streak…and this one is because they didn’t make moves?

…according to the MSM it’s perfectly fine that the US woman’s soccer team publicly disrespect the country they play for on foreign soil but when they lose and Americans who didn’t like how the team treated their country cheer THEY’RE beyond the pale?

…Australia had some of strictest vaccine mandates in the world and yet Pfizer employers in the country got a different shot then the general public?

…New York State raised the age of criminal liability to 18 and made it almost impossible to send offenders under 18 to prison and they are suddenly shocked SCHOCKED that the violent crime and recidivism rate among said teens is through the roof?

…a Canadian hospital denies a man a transplant because he did not take the COVID Jab, he dies and then health care officials approached his grief stricken wife asking if she would donate his organs?