Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

Everyone likes to talk about the years biggest hits but like everyone else we had a few flops here. So today we are going to highlight 10 posts in no particular order that other than being seen on the main page got almost no linkage or love. I’m going to start with a post that I really wanted to do well because it was for a good cause

Cameron’s Crusaders Helping the families of Sick Children

The Charity supports families of sick kids helping to cover the incidental expenses of Hospital trips from gas to meals.

If you went to see the movie Miracles from Heaven you’ll get the idea of what kind of things they’re talking about.

Their website is here. They’re worth your support.

I really hoped to give this very worth charity some well deserved attention and bucks but for some reason (I presume because it was a local event) passed on this post.

I’d urge all my readers to give them a 2nd look and kick in if they can.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way let’s examine some categories.

Not falling for the (Click) bait:

Since like all blogs we are click driven on occasion we put up post that are click bait, this was one of them

Trump sums up the Obama Years in a single sentence

Since nobody bothered to click, here is the sentence:

“If he were in the private sector, he’d be sued for fraud.”

I thought that was pretty good but you disagreed.

Double standards everywhere.

We do a lot of pointing out double standards here and often it gets attention but these posts didn’t

The Melania Trump Bill Clinton Late Night Comic Test

NY Post has also inadvertently thrown a gauntlet down to every late night comic on TV.

What gauntlet? The obvious Bill Clinton Melania Trump skit test.

It is completely impossible to look at the NY Post’s photos of the possible future first lady and not imagine Bill Clinton’s reaction to it and start laughing.

Furthermore is it almost impossible to not picture a skit whereby Bill Clinton is ogling the NY Post Melania Trump cover and Hillary walks in.

The possibilities, from Bill Trying to hide the newspaper, to Hillary getting jealous (to Monica getting jealous), to Bill deciding to submit an absentee ballot for Trump over it, are practically endless.

For a comic writer it’s a fatter pitch than Denny McLain’s final toss to Mickey Mantle in Sept 1968.  Such a skit practically writes itself.  It’s a total no brainer.

I thought this post combined the best of double standards with a click bait title plus alluding to Melania Trumps racy nudes in the NY Post , apparently nobody else did.

There were other double standards that rankled me that produced yawns like

The Obvious Question to West Point and This Administration

If these West Point Graduates were posing with Bibles, Rosaries and Crucifixes would they decide it was not “political activity”?

If people want to argue that such political activity is NBD that’s fine, that’s fair debate, but don’t insult my intelligence and claim it’s not.

Yeah yeah the admin loves BLM & hates Christ, we know, big deal.

The Trump but not Cruz/bush/Rubio/christie/Kasich/Fiorina is finished if he loses Iowa double standard didn’t interest you either

The GOP/MSM Donald Trump vs Cruz, Bush, Rubio, Christie, Kasich, Fiorina etc Double Standard

But the “Trump must win Iowa or he’s finished” meme is nonsense and can be demonstrated as such by two simple questions. This is the first:

“If Jeb Bush fails to win Iowa is he finished and if not, why not?”

Now for anyone who knows anything about how the primary process works that question is pretty easy to answer but the answer to that question leads to a second one.

“Given that Jeb Bush doesn’t crack the top 3 in any early state while Donald Trump leads in most of them and has more money then Bush, why does a 2nd place finish for Trump in Iowa doom him but a 2nd place or worse finish for Bush or Kasich, or Christie is nothing for them to worry about?”

These questions are so damn obvious and follow the assertion concerning Trump and Iowa so naturally that one would think the MSM & GOP would be ashamed to make them but they assume you are too stupid to think of this.

Remember I had endorsed and was actively supporting Ted Cruz at that time but I thought this was a great post that asked a great question, but nobody else apparently agreed.

You’re not as Clever (or funny) as you think you are

Sometimes you write a post that you think is really profound but everyone else thinks is boring, like

High Noon for America

I don’t know about anyone else, but if I was the police chief of such as city, and the political left that controls my city is not willing to stand with the men and women who protect them I’d pull them off the streets rather than have them risk their necks for people who don’t care if they live or die.

That way not only will the criminal element have the joy of discovering the reality that it is only the police that protect them from the wrath of those they prey on, but the elites can discover the joy of being free from those vile men and women in blue guarding their offices, their business and their home and the freedom of self reliance.

I thought it was edgy and provocative, the readers thought it was a sleeping aid

Also the jokes in this post said one thing to readers

The H & R Block / Turbo Tax Ads you’ll never see

What if that Turbo Tax ad instead of saying “In her case yes the amount goes right here” when asked about a load deduction said: “In her case yes but we at Turbo Tax aren’t going to apply it because we want to help you to be a patriotic American who pays her fair share of taxes.”

What if that H & R Block ad instead of saying “Nobody gets more of your money back then Block, guaranteed.” said “Nobody makes sure you pay your fair share of taxes like Block, guaranteed.

They said I shouldn’t quit my overnight job

Not Interested

There are times that you write about things that interest you even if they don’t apparently interest others like

Pintastic NE 2016 Interviews Pt 1: the Vendors

If you are a pinball fan these are the type of people who will help keep you running and make your experience even better, and the Hobby is all the better for them being there for us.

I still think these interviews were cool and if you are a pinball fan they should interest you, but people were more interested in the Pintastic posts on the tables than the vendors.

I do a lot of posts on my faith, most are received well, but for some reason this one wasn’t

The Unexpectedly Chronicles: The ACLU makes Matthew Kelly’s Point about the Catholic Faith

If the culture of today’s secular liberalism had been there when the church introduced hospitals and education for the masses we would be still living in a feudal age consisting of the very rich and the very poor.

Or basically what the left is trying to remake California as.

I thought it was a great post making a great point, but apparently my considerable number of Catholic readers disagreed.

The 2016 I Thought Turkey’s could Fly Award

The I thought Turkey’s could fly award goes to the post that had the best potential to be picked up nationally and get a ton of hits and fill DaTipJar but didn’t.  It’s failure surprised and disappointed me.  It came from my coverage of RedState Denver

Denver Day Four Part 2: Redstate day 1 Larry O’Connor Dave Weigel and many many more

This post had everything.  Live exclusive interviews.  Nationally known names like Dave Weigel of the Washington post and Larry O’Connor and a great interview with Steve Kelly of KNUS, regular people, conservative activists and pols running for office.  At the very least each of these groups had an incentive to promote this post and generate  a bunch of eyeballs.  At best they should have produced a bunch of eyeballs on their own and would prompt their readers and listeners to hit DaTipJar to see more.

They didn’t. My EWTN trip posts beat this one easy in both categories.

Come to think of it I didn’t finish my last two posts on the last WQPH trip up to EWTN up, but I’ll bet they’ll do better that this one too.

Well these were the lemons of 2016.  At least in terms of the charity post I hope this one turns it into lemonade as for the others, Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa.

The Mask has dropped from Justice Ruth Ginsberg:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she doesn’t want to conjure up the possibility of Donald Trump in the White House.“I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president,” Ginsburg told The New York Times in an interview published Sunday. “For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.”Ginsburg, on the high court since 1993, told the Times the prospect of a Trump presidency reminded her of the type of wry comment her late husband might have made.“‘Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand,’” Justice Ginsburg said.

Not only did the mask of impartiality drop she refused to put it back on and doubled down:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s well-known candor was on display in her chambers late Monday, when she declined to retreat from her earlier criticism of Donald Trump and even elaborated on it.

“He is a faker,” she said of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, going point by point, as if presenting a legal brief. “He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. … How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that.”

As you might have heard this got some critique from Donald Trump but it also got a lot of critique from liberals as well:

The New York Times:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg needs to drop the political punditry and the name-calling. …

In this election cycle in particular, the potential of a new president to affect the balance of the court has taken on great importance, with the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. As Justice Ginsburg pointed out, other justices are nearing an age when retirement would not be surprising. That makes it vital that the court remain outside the presidential process. And just imagine if this were 2000 and the resolution of the election depended on a Supreme Court decision. Could anyone now argue with a straight face that Justice Ginsburg’s only guide would be the law?

The Washington Post

I first wrote about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s controversial comments about Donald Trump on Monday. Since then, the situation has erupted into an all-out feud, and now the editorial boards of both the New York Times and The Washington Post have weighed in against Ginsburg’s decision to insert herself into the 2016 campaign…I’ll say at the top what I’ve said before: It’s hard if not impossible to find a direct analog to what Ginsburg has said in recent days. Supreme Court experts I’ve spoken to were unaware of any justices getting so directly and vocally involved — or involved at all, really — in a presidential campaign.

Slate:

There is really very little to debate about the ethics of Ginsburg’s comments. They were plainly a violation, the kind of partisan partiality that judicial ethics codes strive to prevent. But Ginsburg, who is a quietly canny judicial and political strategist, surely knows that her comments were an ethical error. That leads to a fascinating question: Why would the justice risk her reputation and good standing—and even her power to hear cases involving Trump—for a few quick jabs at the candidate? The answer, I suspect, is that Ginsburg has decided to sacrifice some of her prestige in order to send as clear a warning signal about Trump as she possibly can. The subtext of Ginsburg’s comments, of her willingness to comment, is that Trump poses an unparalleled threat to this country—a threat so great that she will abandon judicial propriety in order to warn against looming disaster.

To be clear, what Ginsburg is doing right now—pushing her case against Trump through on-the-record interviews—is not just unethical; it’s dangerous. As a general rule, justices should refrain from commenting on politics, period. That dictate applies to 83-year-old internet folk heroes as strictly as it applies to anybody else who dons judicial robes. The independence of our judiciary—and just as critically, its appearance of impartiality—hinges on a consistent separation between itself and the other branches of government. That means no proclamations of loyalty to any candidate, or admissions of distaste of any other.

Even CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin was not happy as reported by Newsbusters:

No, I don’t think there’s any chance she will resign, but I think it’s appropriate to criticize her about this. This is not how Supreme Court justices have talked traditionally. They do not get involved in day-to-day political controversies. They do not endorse or un-endorse candidates.

Describing himself as a “great admirer” of Justice Ginsburg, he then got to the subject of recusal as he added:

And I think there are lots of good reasons for that, not least of which, something involving the election may come before the Supreme Court in a Bush V. Gore type case. And I think she’d have to recuse herself at this point. 

I just think, as someone who is a great admirer of Justice Ginsburg, she is completely wrong in this situation, and she should not be making these kinds of political statements.

And cartoonists as well:

In bashing Donald Trump, some say Ruth Bader Ginsburg just crossed a very important line https://t.co/ys898EjUeT pic.twitter.com/lDYBIu0IMU

— The Patriot (@ThePatriot143) July 13, 2016

A lot of people are upset about this ethical violation.

I’m not.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a complete abrogation of her duty as a judge on the highest court in the land and an action unworthy of her and her position. Furthermore it sets a horrible precedent for the future.

However there is one other consideration.

If there is one thing that anyone who watches the court knows it that any 5-4 decision will involve a “conservative’ justice voting with liberals. You will not and have not seen any of the liberals, Kagan, Sotomayor or Ginsberg being the deciding vote for a case going in the direction of conservatives.

Justice Ginsberg’s public statements make it plan for all to see that our liberal friends on the Supreme Court are simple ideologues and that their vote on any key issue dividing left and right would be no different if every brief in support of the liberal position consisted of the sentence: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” repeated ad infinitum.

Ann Althouse gets it

In the case of Justice Ginsburg, Trump isn’t inferring bias and politics from whatgroup she belongs to. It’s a reaction to her particular statements. It’s individual. She openly displayed her political leanings and her desire for political allies on the Court and her intent, going forward, to use those allies to get to a majority that would overrule cases that recognize important constitutional rights — includingHeller, the case that says there is an individual right to bear arms.

And here’s where it becomes clear that the NYT editorial proceeds upon the second reason I posited above, that Justice Ginsburg’s particular political statements are dangerous and damaging to the political cause she and the NYT support. “In this election cycle in particular,” it’s important to keep voters believing that judges will be impartial and above politics, and here’s Ginsburg “call[ing] her own commitment to impartiality into question.” The Times tries to pass this off as Ginsburg “choos[ing] to descend toward [Trump’s] level,” but she’s not joining Trump, she’s proving him right: Judges are political, and that’s a bad thing. Perhaps Curiel didn’t deserve the criticism, but Ginsburg does, and it’s very irritating to the NYT, it would seem, because the Curiel incident was so effectively used against Trump, and then along comes Ginsburg displaying herself as pleased to be political.

Justice Ginsburg unethical behavior has provided a valuable service to the entire nature by allowing them to see that lie that the NY Times and other want to keep hidden.  The question becomes will the American people react the way the NYT and the left fears they will?

One can only hope but no matter how they do, rest assured the American people will get the president and the justice system we deserve.

Sorta Update: Justice Ginsburg has finally figured out she was not helping her cause.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Thursday she regrets remarks she made earlier this week to CNN and other news outlets criticizing presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

“On reflection, my recent remarks in response to press inquiries were ill-advised and I regret making them,” Ginsburg said in a statement. “Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office. In the future I will be more circumspect.”

The best part of this non-apology is it allowed Donald Trump the high ground in response:

“It wasn’t really an apology, but we have to move on anyway. It’s just something that should not have taken place,” the presumptive GOP presidential nominee said.

“It’s just a very disappointing moment for me because the Supreme Court is above that kind of rhetoric, those words. … But she acknowledged she made a mistake, and I’ll accept that.”

The greatest ally Trump has in this election are the people who oppose him.