If you’re the least bit of a Trek fan you will want to take 20 minutes and watch Ladd Ehlinger’s bit on Star Trek 2 as the counter Trek that saved the franchise.
I can’t like and subscribe as I’m banned from Youtube but if you’re in a position to do so you can.
The Don Surber blog is still up but they’re already digging out old posts to give his strikes on (basically how they killed me on Youtube) but his substack account has been putting out winners daily including today’s post: “Invest in New Mexico, not Ukraine” which produced my pick for the “Quote of the Day”
Oddly enough, Biden’s sanctions pushed Putin to seek Xi’s help, reversing Nixon’s successful strategy of pitting the USSR against Red China. But then again, Biden has been wrong on every foreign policy for 50 years.
I say oddly because I do not know if this was the true goal of Biden because I don’t know who offered the bigger bribe.
Don is definitely worth a subscription if you can afford it you might consider a paid one.
Finally I don’t do a lot of tip jar shaking and given the state of DaTipJar it shows but let me instead make a pitch in a different direction.
Old Friend Zilla could use a buck or two. We’re hoping the bring here back here and she is trying to very slowing rebuild a life that has, to put it mildly, been shaken up
The tip jar has not gone up on the new site but it works fine on her old one so if you can top over and drop a fiver in there I’d consider it a favor but not as big a favor as she would .
Blogger on the right with a friend near Augusta, Georgia in 2021
By John Ruberry
Last week my wife was invited to a party hosted by one of my daughter’s friends.
Who wasn’t? Me.
There was some-and-forth, but my daughter explained that the host, who has been to my home and whose mother I’ve known for years through an old job, didn’t think I’d be “comfortable” there. After some probing, it became clear that it was my conservative political views that were the problem for them.
I pressed my daughter, “What kind of ogre do they think I am?” Well, I muscled my way into an invite–after all, I’ve lived all of my life in the Chicago area, so I know all about muscling–and do you know what? I showed up to the party. The guests found me whimsical and charming. In other words–I was lovable myself.
Over on Facebook I’ve been unfriended by many old friends–now unfriends–and at least one relative over my posts there.
In addition to my Sunday blog entries on this site I have my own blog, Marathon Pundit. The rollicking comment threads on my Facebook page–or more accurately, argument threads–bring traffic to my blog, and sometimes, here at Da Tech Guy. Friends–in the flesh ones that is–as well as co-workers, look forward to the next tiff on my Facebook page. I’m reminded of that constantly. And as I am now in my sixth decade, my real career, parts of which involve writing, is winding down. Moreso than ever, as William Shakespeare said to the Tenth Doctor in Doctor Who, “Words are my trade.” Well, maybe not completely, but I do earn money blogging and I hope to earn more.
Hey, I gotta eat.
And I absolutely do believe in what I write. And I voted for Donald J. Trump four times–twice in the Illinois Republican Primary and twice in the general election. I’m proud of those votes and I’m still 80/20 in regard to the former president.
About those old friends: Many of them are carrying on without me. Sadly, but I suspect they see me as someone who has transformed himself into an SNL caricature of a conservative, a cross between the Muppets’ Sam Eagle and Archie Bunker, but sans the bigotry on the last one.
I have long ears–and because of the blog–a long tongue. Oh, I stole that last line from Lawrence of Arabia.
The invitations to get-togethers have stopped coming from most of them. I’ve been cancelled.
Bah humbug.
Oh, please don’t worry about me. I have a wife a daughter who love me. And many new friends. And I’m still in touch with some of those old friends. During my most recent vacations, in Alaska and Georgia, I re-connected with two of them–and I met a third friend in Texas, who I met through my blogging. That’s me up there on the right last year, with a high school friend who lives near Augusta, Georgia, who I hadn’t seen since we graduated so many years ago. That moment is my favorite of the current decade.
A new friend–we met through Twitter–invited me for coffee when he visited Illinois this spring.
Even if I was really even partially Sam Eagle/Archie Bunker, your humble blogger is so much more. I work in an industry, automotive, that utterly fascinates people and I have numerous tips in regard to buying a car–without being ripped off. Your Marathon Pundit, currently nursing an injured hip, is really a runner. I’ve run 33 marathons. In addition to the blogging, I have another side hustle, stock photography. On the job, my real one, I’ve showed clients my portfolio, a couple of them are now selling pics online too.
I’m not a one trick eagle.
Yet it is only Sam Eagle/Archie Bunker the liberals only see. Perhaps that is all they want to see. Such is life as a conservative in Deep Blue Illinois.
Maybe I am the bad guy. On the flipside, I don’t believe so. According to a couple of polls, one here and another one here, it is the denizens of the left who are more likely to unfriend someone on social media than conservatives over politics. Oh yeah, liberals. The ones who so often have “Coexist” bumper stickers on their cars and “Hate Has No Home Here” signs on their lawn.
Everyone is welcome in their world. Except for folks who don’t share their political beliefs. As for myself, I’ve never unfriended anyone on social media because of their political views.
Well, this is not the Christmas message you are accustomed to, but please let me reiterate, I am fine–please don’t tell Mrs. Marathon Pundit to hide the sharp objects.
Christmas is a time for welcoming others. In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Scrooge’s nephew always invited the miser to his home for Christmas dinner.
Next Sunday is New Year’s Day. As Robert Burns wrote, “Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never thought upon.”
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
And God bless us, everyone.
Never forget.
Now it’s time for me to get dressed in my finest and head over to my sister’s home for a Christmas feast.
A special thanks goes to that friend in Georgia for permission to use the above photograph for this blog entry.
John Ruberry regularly blogs from the Chicago area at Marathon Pundit.
There seems to be a lot of weird things going on with the NFL in terms of rulings and results. Many odd endings, many surprise finishes and results. It makes games rather interesting.
A lot of people have commented on these things but nobody is talking about the elephant in the room which is the proliferation of gambling on sports.
Can anyone tell me why we should not assume that the hundreds of millions being bet on the NFL is not affecting how the game is played, coached or refed?
Old friend Ladd Ehlinger (Filmladd) now has a Youtube Channel, you can find it and his material here:
I suggest subscribing, I’d do it myself but as you all know I’ve been permanently suspended from youtube for daring to suggest that election 2020 was not completely honest.
For the record you can find most of my material than managed to migrate on my Rumble channel here.
The first two episodes of season 3 of The Chosen are now both available so those of us who did not go to the theatre are caught up.
They have already managed to pay for two complete episodes of season 4 and are less than $32,000 away from making it three out of 8 as of this writing.
It will be interesting to see how much more of season four is paid for as the next four episodes are broadcast along with a 2nd movie premiere that is apparently planned for episodes 7 & 8. They’re 15 million to go to finish funding that season. I’d not be surprised if have it all funded before Easter (April 9th) but I suspect that before this season has been broadcast they will be at least 5 episodes completely paid for.
While this has been the slowest Christmas I’ve ever seen at work we had a tiny burst of orders this week.
It seems a lot of people believe that if you order something with two day delivery seven days before Christmas you’ll still manage to get it on time. Of course if EVERYONE decides to try to order 2nd day at the same time then there isn’t enough capacity to get everything in time delivered.
This happens every single Christmas as if nobody every learns. That’s one thing I’ll give Amazon, they started warning people “This will arrive after Christmas” last week.
Of course if you celebrate all seven days of Christmas that’s not a problem.
Finally the Jan 6th committee kangaroo court has decided recommended charges against Donald Trump in their last days and the media is practically orgasmic.
It’s a testament to how effective Donald Trump was as president that the left/media has spent the last six years going through so much effort to demonize him even to the point (as the twitter files expose) of the FBI actively working to help fix the election.
My thought is it would have been a lot easier for the deep state to not worry about it and ride out a re-election. By now they’d be almost done with him and able to resume business and graft as usual. In fact I suspect if they had made a deal or two with him early he wouldn’t have gotten in their way all that much.
If it was worth that much effort to keep him from the office the rot that is going on must be a lot worse and a lot deeper than we even now currently think. It also explains why the left was so panicked about Musk taking over Twitter.
Yet for some reason Trump scared them so much that they have come out into the open to be seen, giving us the choice to deal wit it or let it be. That more than anything else has been the greatest legacy of his administration that it has given us the people the choice of keeping our republic or freely letting it go.
One of the more amusing things of the past week that I didn’t bother to write about was the incredible tirade by director Billy Eichner concerning the reaction to his movie Bros.
His unmitigated rage at those unwilling to contribute their hard earned money and time which one can not supplement betrays one of the most common problems among people.
White the two of us are very much unlike in terms of age, cultural background and certain tastes, allow me to provide some perspective that he apparently lacks.
There was a time when this blog’s readership was in the hundreds of thousands a year, where we were in the top 100 conservative blogs regularly and that my blogsite actually had cracked the top 100,000 website in the world. At that time I dreamt of making a living doing this full time and providing for my family in this way, of my secular radio show DaTechGuy on DaRadio going beyond the small syndication that it had and being a national figure and there have been several big moments and several big stories that we have covered that makes me extremely proud of what we’ve accomplished in the days when the blog started when the election of Obama heralded the end to my tech career.
As you can see this has not happened. Our monthly draw of readers is what we used to do on one good day. We rarely draw links from the larger blogs as we used to. Our tip jar hits are nearly non-existent and the subscriber base while not at the point where it fails to cover expenses is slowly heading in that direction.
Fortunately if I want to confront the person most responsible for this turn of events all I have to do is walk in front of a mirror
While there may be a few extenuating circumstances here and there and a bit of bad luck occasionally when it comes right down to do it the reason this blog isn’t as big as Instapundit, or as well read as HotAir or as edgy as Ace of Spades or as prominent in the Conservative press as The Gateway Pundit or as skillfully written as The Other McCain or as able to cover large events as Legal Insurrection or as respected as Don Surber all comes down to me either not working hard enough or making the wrong calls or wanting a particular direction or simply not being as good a writer or promoter as others who have done a better job in this business better over the years with their eyes on the goal of achieving what those giants in the conservative blogosphere have done.
I’ve reached an age where it’s not prudent to take the risks necessary to try to change this direction nor do I have the ambition that I once had to make those goals. For now I’m content to rest on the laurels I have (there are a few) to keep thinks rolling and to put my two cents in along with the excellent writers who remain until I’m too old to go on or until they censor me away.
and that brings me back to Mr. Eichner.
He is still a lot younger than me and in the end he has produced a large movie with a large cast that has been shown in thousands of theaters across the nation which is an achievement.
But if he is looking for a larger scale of success the first thing he has to learn is to take ownership of failure and learn from it rather than blaming people he hates for it.
Until and unless the likes of Billy Eichner can understand that the father of one’s failures is almost ourselves he will will go from an angry young man to an angrier old man.
Take my advice, that’s no way to live.
Closing thought. If anyone of you think we’re still worth a ten spot a month or more your tip jar and or subscription will not be unappreciated.
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