Archive for the ‘politics’ Category

A Very Basic Question that some in the GOP Need to Answer:

Posted: June 10, 2023 by datechguy in election 2024, elections, primaries
Tags: , , , , ,

The hair on fire commentary on the Trump indictment continues but for all the bluster from the left and NeverTrump on Trump as criminal or idiot and all the anger on the right over folks who steal election proving to be dishonest in other things not to mention the double standards being applied, there is one argument keeps getting advanced that I think is nonsense so I ask this question:

In what way does the Corrupt and dishonorable actions of the Biden Administration in moving forward on the indictment of President Trump automatically mean that Trump is the best qualified candidate for me to choose for the GOP nomination for president?

There are plenty of reasons to support Trump for the nomination, based on my analysis at the time of Biden Inauguration I had him ranked 4th among president behind Washington, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. Since then the revelations of the extraordinary steps taken to hinder his presidency have only added glow to his accomplishments in the sense that it makes it more extradentary that he accomplished anything let alone what he managed. On the minus side you have his failure to check Fauci and company which proved to be a huge mistake harmful for the nation. Taken in all I still rank him 4th or maybe even third all time and that kind of record is certainly a reason to vote for him.

But being oppressed by democrats and opposed by NeverTrump is not, particularly if there is a better alternative. If we are going to choose a nominee based on the unjust persecution by the Biden Administration then there are several pro-life Catholics and J6 Prisoners who deserve the nomination over Trump.

While there is not a GOP candidate in the race I can’t vote for and a few who I might vote for someday. At this moment my choice is between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. I’ve noted the case for Trump above and it’s a good one. Personally I’m leaning toward DeSantis on these grounds:

  1. His record on the state level is as impressive as Trump’s on the Federal one
  2. There is (fairly or unfairly) a group on uninformed Americans who will vote against Trump simply for being Trump (That’s not fair but neither is life) thus giving DeSantis a better chance of winning or at least making the election slightly harder to steal
  3. He can serve two terms if he wins in 2024
  4. While Trump is in fantastic shape for his age DeSantis is younger and less likely to physically decline in office.

DeSantis hasn’t closed the deal for me yet and Trump of course has his excellent record and his ability to bring out a base of excited voters in his favor, most votes every in history other than one candidate whose “magic ballots” that appear after midnight are still suspect. As I’ve said before Trump vs DeSantis as the nominee is like choosing between Ted Williams & Stan Musial to start in left for your team. Both are excellent players with excellent records and proven results but different styles it’s a question of which one is likely to help your current team win a particular game.

It’s not going to be because the Biden Administration are a bunch of corrupt asses and choose to act as such, nor to piss of the left and Never Trump, and anyways given their temperament they’ll be pissed off anyways. Even the most milquetoast GOP candidate can do it.

I’d feel comfortable voting for either of these men in the primary or the general but when I make my decision it’s going to be based on my judgement on which candidate is the best for the job and most likely to win period, and frankly you should too and if my judgement is different than yours, that’s OK.

Under the Fedora: Felton on D-Day+79, Haiti the future of Chicago et/al, Loomer finds spare time, Stacy on coked up Elementary principal and Dallas answers Pride flag questions.

Posted: June 6, 2023 by datechguy in crime, culture, election 2024, elections, politics, under the fedora
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Today is the 79th Anniversary of D-Day and International Treasure Mark Felton has another new video on the subject, this time about the drop of dummies to decoy the German forces:

There are very few D-Day vets still left, but long after the last one is gone Mr. Felton’s videos will be informing generations yet unborn of their deeds and the deeds of others during world war 2.

It’s not equal to the legacy as those who fought on D-Day but it’s not bad.

Apparently the folks in Haiti have had enough of Gangs and police and pols who protect them for profit and have taken matters into their own hands, rather violently:

The 14 presumed gang members under arrest were arriving at a police station in Haiti’s capital, when a group of people overpowered the police, rounded up the suspects outside and used gasoline to burn them alive.

This has continued to the point where gang members are in hiding in fear of their lives and crime has plummeted.

Coming soon to Chicago , Oakland, Minneapolis and Philly? Let’s both hope not and hope that those cities don’t reach the point where it’s considered an option.

Trump supporter Laura Loomer confronted James Comey in Illinois during a book signing event. Gateway Pundit has the details:

It’s a nice change for her going after someone who has actually done wrong rather than going after Governor Ron DeSantis in an at best unartfully and at worst blatantly false manor.

I have admit while I’m glad Loomer was restored to Twitter the way she has been alienating some conservatives you would think Musk’s move to restore her was an in-kind contribution to the DeSantis campaign.

Trump has in my Opinion been the Best record of a US president since Teddy Roosevelt if it was up to me that would be my focus.

Stacy McCain has a story that has gotten very little press concerning a couple of married elemental school principles who got a tad involved with drugs and hasn’t ended pretty although fortunately nobody has died.

You need to read the whole thing but I want to you catch his close which asks an excellent question :

The school district can’t comment, but I can. More than a month before police found Michael Griffin ranting delusionally at the local grocery store, they went to their doctor because he was already suffering with delusional beliefs caused by his cocaine habit. Here’s a question: How much cocaine does it take to induce paranoid psychosis? And how could two public school employees afford such an expensive addiction?

A cocaine habit is not cheap, and you’ve got to be doing it pretty heavily — like, the Eagles on tour in 1977 — to reach the point where you’re in a grocery store parking lot babbling paranoid gibberish with a pistol in your pocket. How were the Griffins able to do this much coke while functioning as elementary school principals and nobody even noticed?

Finally while I was writing this post I saw Dallas Jenkins finally made a public response to the gay flag controversy that has been dogging the show for a week. It is a first rate response which I’ll post here:

His basic response was he hire crew or cast based on belief or lack thereof nor does he police people’s workspaces as long as they do their job and are committed to the show, nor does he police their social media, although there was a suggestion that temperance and judgement be used in some responses that were made online, which given the crowd funding nature of the show would be wise.

His bottom line is feel free to make up your own mind but he’s going to do what he does the way he does it because he’s not doing any of it for us per se but for God

As Gamaliel once noted time will tell who this work is from but, as for myself his explanation is good enough for me.

Let’s go Brandon: a violent start to Brandon Johnson’s Chicago mayoralty

Posted: June 4, 2023 by John Ruberry in crime, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

By John Ruberry

By all accounts, crime was the biggest issue in this year’s Chicago mayoral election. Voters in America’s third-largest city had a choice between two Democrats in the runoff matchup in April, Paul Vallas, a moderate who ran on a law-and-order agenda, and Brandon Johnson, who until late last year was a defund-the-police advocate.

Johnson won and he was sworn in as Chicago’s 57th mayor on May 15. 

But his brief time as mayor-elect was rough. While Johnson of course denounced a late April downtown flash-mob riot, he did so with a caveat, declaring that the riotous thugs “shouldn’t be demonized,” even though they acted demonically. A few days later outside Illinois’ state capitol building, Johnson doubled down on his naivete, explaining his feelings about the rioters, “They’re young. Sometimes they make silly decisions.”

A big test for any Chicago mayor is Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of summer is also traditionally when violence ramps up. 

One new wrinkle for this year’s holiday weekend was implementation of yellow-vested “peacekeepers” to control the mayhem, including 30 funded by the state. While I don’t believe Johnson dispatched any of his own peacekeepers, he’s on board with the concept. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it, Johnson’s not even been mayor for a month, but if Memorial Day weekend’s crime fighting results are any indication, Chicago is in for a tough four years.

The last weekend in May was Chicago’s most violent Memorial Day weekend since 2016–eleven people were shot to death, 42 others were wounded, and one woman was beaten to death. Let’s take a closer look at that last one. The deceased was brutally and fatally beaten with a baseball bat two blocks from Johnson’s West Side home–the alleged murderer lives across the street from the mayor.

The beating victim and nine of the eleven weekend shooting victims were killed last Saturday. Only Hey Jackass Chicago among the local media noticed that it was one of the few double-digit murder days in the last decade the city has suffered. 

Now, back to the yellow-donned peacekeepers. The concept is ripe for a parody. For instance, on my own blog, I noted that Leslie Barbara, one of the less imposing cadets of the motley class in “Police Academy,” was wearing a yellow blazer when he was tossed by hooligans into a river from a bridge–along with his photo kiosk. The aforementioned Hey Jackass Chicago is selling official peacekeeper T-shirts on the “Buy Crap” section of its website.

One of those real peacekeepers, whom a veteran of the Obama administration hilariously defended as someone who “mishandled the stress” of being a peacekeeper, was arrested after allegedly beating and robbing a man. The accused, an ex-con who was on parole, was allegedly in the process of removing his yellow peacekeeper vest as the cops approached him.

Okay, skeptics may object and tell me that Memorial Day weekend was just one weekend, and a long one at that. What about this weekend?

Well, as of 9am Sunday morning Chicago time, nine people have been shot to death this weekend so far and at least 33 others wounded. Included in those numbers is mass shooting in Johnson’s neighborhood in Austin, where one person was killed and six others were wounded.

Let’s go Brandon!

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

The mainstream media was wrong about Bud Light: Boycotts work

Posted: May 28, 2023 by John Ruberry in business, culture, media, opinion/news, politics
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

By John Ruberry

We’re approaching the two-month mark of the Bud Light boycott, which of course began when transgender social media, utilizing his–yes his–goofy 1950s-sitcom ditz schtick to recklessly promote Bud Light beer. 

Immediately, I was confident that this boycott had staying power, despite the increasingly irrelevant mainstream media telling its dwindling audience it did not. As Da Tech Guy himself explained, Anheuser-Busch’s problem is that Bud Light is too easy to boycott. Coors Light, Miller Lite, which taste similar–assuming that light beers have a distinguishable taste–are usually available in the same liquor stores, supermarkets, bars, and restaurants. And they are all priced about the same. 

American megabrewers are selling image and personality. Beer? Not so much. And in a few days, Bud Light, after partnering with Mulvaney, torched its macho brand-building work of four decades in just a few days. “Fratty” is the word used by the now-on-leave marketing head for Bud Light, Alissa Heinerscheid. Anheuser-Busch’s non-apology from its CEO only fanned the flames. 

Bud Light’s slogan is, “Easy to drink, easy to enjoy.” And it’s easy to boycott.

I have to reach back to Monty Python’s Flying Circus to find a worse marketing campaign. 

Boss (John Cleese character): Now, let’s have a look at the sales chart (indicates a plummeting sales graph). When you took over this account, Frog (Eric Idle character), Conquistador was a brand leader. Here you introduced your first campaign, “Conquistador Coffee brings a new meaning to the word vomit.” Here you made your special introductory offer of a free dead dog with every jar, and this followed your second campaign “the tingling fresh coffee which brings you exciting new cholera, mange, dropsy, the clap, hard pad, and athlete’s head. From the House of Conquistador.”

Yeah, I know, Bud Light’s Mulvaney campaign hasn’t been, so far, as awful for Anheuser-Busch as it was for the fictional Monty Python coffee brand. But sales of the beer continue to slide. Last week, by way of a $15 mail-in rebate, A-B started giving the beer away, because, unlike wine and hard liquor, beer has a brief shelf-life. 

So, yes, boycotts can be effective. 

But we were told by the mainstream media that boycotts don’t work.

Here a few examples of that wrongness:

Six weeks ago, ABC News’ Max Zahn and Kiara Alfonseca cautioned us about boycotts, “However, the campaigns rarely succeed in hurting a company’s sales or influencing its decision making.”

Around that same time, Patrick Coffee (no relation to Python’s Conquistador Coffee) of the Wall Street Journal, while citing other experts, opined that about the Bud Light boycott that “such campaigns often have failed to deliver a meaningful blow.” (Paid subscription might be required to access the link.)

Citing “research,” and of course falling back on “experts,” Becky Sullivan of NPR warned us “that other social media-fueled boycotts were short-lived.”

So where are the finger-waving fact-checkers? Why haven’t these articles been revised?

Meanwhile, Target is facing a boycott over its prominent promotions of “tuck-friendly,” that is, male-genitilia-hiding, swimsuits, as well as arguably promoting the trans agenda to children. It has lost $10 billion in market valuation since a boycott began against Target. 

Such a move is now called “Bud Lighting.”

This won’t be the last time that I say, when you get woke you go broke.

And it won’t be the last time I point out instances where the mainstream media was wrong.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Older Entries
Newer Entries