Philadelphia: A city on the brink of chaos

Posted: October 3, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

I spent nearly 16 years in Philadelphia. I enjoyed an occasional trip to watch the Phillies or the Eagles. The museums are excellent, notably the Barnes and the Constitution Center.

Although I’m not partial to cheese steaks, the restaurants are terrific. I particularly enjoyed a Brazilian restaurant in Center City.

I could put away my car and take rapid transit to most places I needed to go, although I’ve seen better systems in other cities like New York and Chicago.

The people of Philadelphia can be a bit hard-edged, chip-on-the-shoulder types, but I’ve seen that in many other cities where I lived.

So it angers and saddens me that the city that saw the creation of the nation and served as its capital for a while is being torn apart.

About five years ago, I realized that the city was in trouble. It happened on the Temple campus, where I taught. I stopped by the local Chinese takeout to find a group of young teenage women stealing soft drinks from the shelves. The women weren’t old enough to be college students and probably came from a nearby high school.

As 20 customers stood by, I grabbed one of the girls and asked the owner to call the campus police. He declined and told me to let her go.

As I stepped outside, five girls surrounded me and started to spit and harass me. No one stopped to help me, even though the harassment and taunting were obvious to the dozens of people passing by. No one wanted to get involved.

Fortunately, I hold two black belts in martial arts and easily frightened the girls with two quick demonstrations of my abilities without hurting anyone.

Before the girls fled, they threatened to bring their fathers back for a beatdown.

When I wrote about the incident on this website, I was ostracized by several fellow faculty members because I was a racist.

I also got a call from the campus police. I expected questions about the incident or an apology. Instead, I got a threat that I could be fired if I followed through on my suggestion that people on campus should be allowed to arm themselves.

When the looting came in 2020 after the death of George Floyd, it was apparent that it was time to leave Philadelphia, especially when the rioters got away with their actions and paid $9.25 million because the cops used tear gas!

The recent looting happened when a judge dismissed charges against a cop who killed a Black man wielding a knife.

Even though the interim police chief correctly described the looters as “criminals,” I doubt many will be held responsible for their actions.

It’s worth noting that Philadelphia, like many other cities I’ve lived in and won’t visit again, like New York, Chicago, Washington, and San Francisco, is run by Democrats. As Philadelphia elects a new mayor this year, I hope at least some of the voters realize that something has gone wrong in their city and won’t be fixed by the current crew that runs the place.

What the Democrat Left is by Kirk

Posted: October 2, 2023 by datechguy in Uncategorized

If you want to understand what the Democrat left has become you can’t do better than this comment at the battleswarm blog on the decline of San Francisco. I reproduce it here in it’s entirety:

They all thought they knew better. They did not.

That’s going to be the epitaph for the United States, and the Democratic Party. Real fact is, they have to produce results people want, or they’re dead, dead, dead. The shakeout from the uniparty displaying its utter incompetence is going to take decades, but… So be it.

I used to work around a guy who was a Democratic Party precinct official. We’d argue politics at lunch with him… He was basically a die-hard Scoop Jackson Democrat, decent hard-working guy who believed in the Democrats the way a Jesuit believes in the Catholic Church.

He kept moving up the ranks, and eventually got sent off to some “leadership conference” back East, early in the first Clinton administration. I have no idea what he saw back there, or experienced, but he came back a changed man. You’d needle him the way we always had about the Democrats and their various corruptions, but after that “leadership conference”, he’d just sit there with an expression of what I can only describe as “rueful acknowledgment”. He gradually separated himself from his party activism, and by the time I last saw him about a year later, he wasn’t even involved any more. I asked him directly, about that time, and I couldn’t get an answer out of him about anything he’d seen or otherwise experienced that had “broken his faith”, but it was obvious that something had transpired. Only thing I could get out of him was something to the effect of “…they’re going to be hunting Democrats through the streets with dogs, one of these days… And, they’re going to be right to do it, too!!!

I have thought a lot about that guy and what he said. I still have no idea what the hell it was that changed his outlook that much, but I’ll say this: Before he left, he was all proud of the fact that he was on the same floor with all the bigwigs attending the conference, the national leaders from the Democratic Party. Something he saw around them? Something he heard? No idea; he’d never say what it was.

And take note the first Clinton Administration was 30 years ago and the left has only gotten worse since then.

Matt Patrica is Laughing his Ass off Right Now

Posted: October 2, 2023 by datechguy in nfl, Sports
Tags: , ,

Why

Well it’s not because the Patriots have started 1-3 after all they started 1-3 last year as well so he might chuckle slightly over the lack of improvement I suspect the big laugh comes from this:

Last season after 4 games the Patriots offense Under Matt Patrica & Joe Judge scored 74 points after 4 games (67 on offense) and would score 29 (22 on offense) in game five (W vs Detriot) and 38 in week six (all of offense) vs Cleveland.

This season the new and improved offense minus Matt Patrica under Bill O’Brien has scored 55 points in 4 games (53 on offense).

In short the Matt Patrica offense put up an avg of 16 3/4 points per game after 4 games and would average 17.8 after 5 games.

The Bill O’Brien offense has after four games put up an average of 13 1/4 points per game and to get up to Patrica’s avg after game five will have to up up 36 points next week.

Given this team has yet to break 20 points in a game so far that will be a neat trick.

Now of course it is only week four and it might be that Bill O’Brian & the offense will have their “eureka!” moment in the near future making everything change.

But if that doesn’t happen a whole lot of New Englanders (particularly on the radio) owe Matt a big apology.

Six months that shook the marketing world: Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney debacle and killing a cash cow

Posted: October 1, 2023 by John Ruberry in business, culture, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics, Sports
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By John Ruberry

It was six months ago today–April Fool’s Day no less–when Dylan Mulvaney, to cap off his 365 Days of Girlhood series, did his first of two social media posts hawking Bud Light. Previously, in the words of Alissa Heinerscheid, who was in charge of marketing the brew, it was a “fratty” beer. The effect on Bud Light sales was immediate–a consistent and sustained 30-percent sales drop.

Immediately, the “experts” in the business world and the media, who are in fact narrative-driven morons with crisp, broadcast-friendly speaking voices, immediately ran to defend InBev, the parent company of Anheuser-Bush, with a consistent refrain, as if they were reading the same script, declaring “Boycotts don’t work.”

While that’s generally correct, the sales drop for Bud Light, a brew that tastes the same as Coor Light and Miller Lite, was in fact a walkaway. “Joe Sixpack,” the typical Bud Light drinker who believes that men are men and women are women–despite mutilation surgeries and hormone injections–found a way to scream “F*ck you” to the elites who say otherwise. 

Bill Maher said on his HBO show that the average American is furious because “they’ve had an agenda shoved down their throat.” When one of his guests, US Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) objected to Maher’s truth, he struck back, “You have to accept everything they say or you’re a bigot.”

So true. 

The plummet in Bud Light sales is a major victory for conservatives, as well as the majority of Americans who have known the difference between males and females since they were two years old.

And gender, despite the claims of now former Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, is not “a spectrum.”

Mulvaney, whose ditzy faux female social media posts are about as pleasant as loud audio feedback, as well as the rest of the Anheueser-Busch marketing staff, did what was deemed impossible: killing a cash cow. I had a couple of marketing classes in college. Cash cows were revered by my professors, they are product lines that sell well with minimal advertising support. Heinz Ketchup, Ivory Soap, and Kellog’s Corn Flakes come to mind. The bountiful profits from cash cows are “milked” to support struggling brands. It’s a marketing circle of life.

One of those professors, in a lecture decried the use of celebrity endorsements in advertising, calling it “lazy marketing,” He also warned that celebrities, particularly those from the entertainment world, are known to do things morally objectionable, or get involved with unpopular political causes.

Now Anheuser-Busch is now spending a lot of money on its Bud Light “Easy to Sunday” campaign tied to the NFL as well as producing, again, commemorative cans, but this time with the logos of popular NCAA football programs, instead of a one-off Mulvaney can that was not sold to the public.

Too little too late. 

As sales continue to lag for Bud Light, it’s likely that scarce shelf space in supermarkets and liquor stores will soon be allocated to better selling brews. Modelo Especial this summer surpassed Bud Light as America’s bestselling beer.

The Bud Light cash cow has gone dry.

As I predicted here at Da Tech Guy months ago, using transgendered people to hawk mainstream products, while not completely dead, is now close to it. 

We have witnessed six months that shook the marketing world. 

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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