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Kamala: Moriarty or Zack Johnson?

Posted: August 30, 2024 by datechguy in election 2024, elections
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Youtube Capture Season 2 Episode 3 The Reichenbach Fall

Judge: Mr. Crayhill, can we have your first witness?

Moriarty’s Defending Barrister: Your Honour, we’re not calling any witnesses.

Judge: I don’t follow. You’ve entered a plea of Not Guilty.

Moriarty’s Defending Barrister: Nevertheless, my client is offering no evidence. The defense rests.

Judge: [with Sherlock at home miming his words at home] Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. James Moriarty stands accused of several counts of attempted burglary, crimes which – if he’s found guilty – will elicit a very long custodial sentence; and yet his legal team has chosen to offer no evidence whatsoever to support their plea. I find myself in the unusual position of recommending a verdict wholeheartedly. You must find him guilty.

Sherlock: The Reichenbach Fall 2012

I’ve been re-watching the excellent series Sherlock staring Benedict Cumberbatch in the role that made him an international star as Sherlock Holmes, the excellent Martin Freeman as Watson and Andrew Scott as his arch enemy James Moriarty.

One of the interestingly odd things about the series is how Scott plays Moriarty as a boarded genius with a death wish who occasionally takes the time to demonstrate to others that anything and everything in the world is his at any time he wants it. Which is why he’s so board.

The image above is from Season two when Moriarty is arrested after he breaks into Bank of England, Pentonville prison and Tower of London where he is arrested with the Crown on his head and the scepter in his hands.

At his trial he makes no defense and the judge directs the jury to find him guilty. And they to the surprise of everyone but Sherlock and Moriarty, acquit him in minutes because both knew the fix was in, Moriarty because he fixed it at Sherlock because he’s smart.

And that’s what came to mind as I read the liveblog of the Kamala interview with reactions like this:


Aug 29, 2024 9:54 PM ET Ed Morrissey

Okay, a few thoughts. Bash failed to press Harris on the Biden cover-up, but she did at least kinda-sorta bring it up. Walz may have just as well stayed home, frankly. Harris’ answers on policy flip-flops and Day One agenda were complete dodges. She doesn’t have any substance.

I may write more tomorrow. I’m not sure this really gave us much to work with, which is probably what Team Kamala wanted.

and clips like this:

and this:

and this

and reactions like this:

and this:

Here is a situation where she had every advantage, every prop possible and he has completely tanked. This leads to the obvious question

Why is the left not panicked? Why are they as cool as Moriarty when he rested his case?

Could it be that they do this because they believe they can? Because the fix is in, because there is nothing that can be done to stop them and they want us to know it?

Or could it be that they are not Moriarty, but are in fact Zack Johnson from the Big Bang Theory

Howard: Preparing to fire laser at the moon.

Sheldon: Make it so.

Howard: There it is. There’s the spike!

Leonard: 2.5 seconds for the light to return. That’s the moon! We hit the moon!

Zack: That’s your big experiment? All that for a line on the screen?

Leonard: Yeah, but, uh, think about what this represents. The fact that we can do this is the only way of definitively proving that there are man-made objects on the moon, put there by a member of a species that only 60 years before had just invented the airplane.

Zack: What species is that?

Sheldon: I was wrong. Penny can do better.

I must confess I’m not yet sure if it’s the former or the latter but we will find out in 70 days.

Update: Townhall has issues too, the best line:

Under the Fedora: From the Waitress’ mouth, No Interest, Tre Sorelle to Billy Bob’s, Forester, Cromwell and Graves Who and finally the Bright Side of a Split

Posted: August 29, 2024 by datechguy in culture, economy, under the fedora
Tags: , , , , ,

Now that I’m used to getting up at 5:14 AM for work I decided instead of dropping off the car last night for the oil change and general check before the inspection sticker to drop off my car at my mechanic’s early this morning and walk to a local diner where the waitress was surprised to see me alone as I’m normally there with my wife (off at work) or my priest (saying mass). As the election is close and she sees people daily I asked her what she was seeing.

She said things tended to vary depending on what people do but a lot of their regulars were doing OK (lots of contractors) and that in general for their base it wasn’t as bad as it’s been.

It wasn’t the answer I expected but that’s fine. I ask questions to get data point not confirm prejudices or advance agendas.

After breakfast I walked back down to the mechanics garage. He had since arrived and said my car would be ready around 9:30. When I returned after a sojourn at my sons house nearby the car was ready and would despite its age pass Massachusetts rigorous inspection on it’s first try.

But the real story came when we discussed the idea of him getting an apprentice as he had been doing this for 30 years. He told me that young folks simply weren’t interested in doing the work because that’s what the job was, long work and the few that did were snatched up by dealerships that could pay more.

It will be a sad day for me when he eventually retires, but I suspect by that time my driving days will be done.

After my inspection I ran some errands and headed out for lunch. On my way I spotted something interesting. A while back the daughters of Sabino the baker whose bread we used to buy as a kid and whose bakery burned down in a fire in my early teens, opened up a place in Leominster named Tre Sorelle which was an Italian food and items specialty shop. Sabino himself used to come in once or twice a week and I was able to buy the bread I had as a youth and give my sons a taste of it. The place closed a long time ago and has been empty, drove by today and saw it’s been transformed to a fast food place called Billy Bob’s.

Times, tastes and populations change.

Speaking of tastes changing I found myself in the mood to re-read Bernard Cromwell’s Sharpe’s Eagle or Robert Graves’ I Claudius or one of the later C. S. Forester’s Hornblower books during lunch. As I arrived at the restaurant 10 minutes before they opened and there was a Barnes and Noble’s 3 minutes away I ducked over to search for one of the three to pick up.

When I checked the fiction section the only one of the Sharpe’s books there was Sharpe’s Tiger the only Hornblower Book was Mr. Midshipman Hornblower which I had at home & wasn’t in the mood for and neither I Claudius or the sequel Claudius the God were in sight.

As little as 20 years ago it would have been unthinkable for a fiction section of a large bookstore to be deficient in any of those volumes but again, time and tastes have passed me by.

Finally you might remember the rather ugly split between Project Veritas and James O’Keefe who was the founder and face of the organization.

As you might have heard James being James he’s has continued on with his work even infiltrating the DNC this month and exposing some very iffy stuff from Act Blue concerning donations details of which you can find at OMG (O’Keefe Media Group).

but apparently Project Veritas is also still soldiering on and has an expose with a Lawyer who appeared for the FDA admitting on an undercover video that they abused their authority

I’m pleased Veritas is soldering on as it’s better to have more than one group doing that job that the media used to do.

Follow the Money Gaza Edition

Posted: August 28, 2024 by datechguy in economy, middle east
Tags: , ,

Antonia: Nobody wants to work the high risk planets like Earth. Part of the incentive package is that the government will match any insurance payout for accident or death.

6th Doctor: Money! This [murder] has all been about money, filthy lucre.

Doctor Who, The Condemned 2008

About a dozen years ago back when I was doing door to door pitching for advertisers for the old DaTechGuy on DaRadio show I found myself in a Doctor’s office. He told me that his practice was restricted to immigrants, legal or otherwise, who were covered by Mass Health (our state’s universal healthcare system). Remembering the nature of my grandparents and the Italian immigrants who tended to downplay sickness I knew I expressed surprise that he could make a practice out of it. He told me that it was exactly the opposite, that the current batch of immigrants came in for every little thing and that he was constantly billing the state for it. As he put it, looking at my city, anyone who didn’t build his business model on this was a fool.

That’s what I thought about when I saw this write-up about Gaza:

Under the rule of Hamas in Gaza, beginning in 2005, the smuggling tunnel industry in Rafah (from Egypt) flourished, which in addition to arms also transported goods into Gaza and controlled the markets in Gaza. The tunnels served as a gold mine for a large group of Gazans, controlled by Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Dozens of them became millionaires (!) from that corrupt underground activity. from

Like Democrat non-profits in the US they didn’t let a crisis go to waste.

Gaza’s millionaires live in mansions overlooking the beach in Gaza, with luxury furniture smuggled from Europe and the Gulf countries, they are surrounded by servants, drivers, private tutors for their children, security and maintenance personnel. They drive in luxury cars, some of them own yachts in Qatar, they eat in prestigious restaurants and go on prestigious vacations all over the world, their children study in academies abroad. In all the mansions – there are underground shelters for protection against war.

In Gaza the wealth is not equally distributed, there is a layer of millionaires, even billionaires, who got rich from corruption and the industry of death and terrorism, many senior Hamas officials and their associates simply steal the donations money and the Qatari money that is transferred to support the Gazan population – into their own pockets. There is an intermediate layer that also prospers indirectly from these industries and the wages that Hamas pays its members, and there is a layer of very poor unemployed people who are completely dependent on them.

Gaza is neither an “open air prison” nor a “concentration camp”, it is tragically a society ruled by corrupt leaders who created extreme class gaps and send the poor to die for the continued maintenance of the bloody terrorist industry and the donations that enrich them personally beyond imagination.

And don’t think for one moment that the NGO’s and the UN administrators who are constantly seeking money here are not getting their cut. Again like US pols who divert taxfunds to dem NGO and reap campaign contributions from it.

Remember that the pullout of Israel from Gaza was to demonstrate to the world Israel’s good faith, instead all it did was create a money pit for those who wanted to get rich off terror. An entire economy built on death, sort of like the abortion industry.

What would they do once Israel was gone?

The Most Horrible Paragraph I’m Seen in Years

Posted: August 27, 2024 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Is this one from a story about what is happening in England these days:

Other journalists are nervous. Tim Stanley, the Telegraph commentator, admits it. Discussing the case of the 69-year-old widower jailed for nearly three years (after what many deemed a ‘justice-as-revenge’ show trial, complete with nationally distributed mugshots and televised proceedings), he suggested that the man’s situation should be carefully examined. ‘But,’ he went on, ‘I’m reluctant to do it, lest my words are taken down and given in evidence.’

The whole piece is worth reading but as a person whose father fought in World War Two and who thinks that Winston Churchill was one of the greatest English speaking persons in the last 100 years that England should have fallen this far.

What the hell did The Few die for?

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