If you want to win in 2024 You’d Damn Well better Deal with Reality

Posted: September 20, 2023 by datechguy in election 2024, elections
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“First we must cross the river,” Benito was saying.  “Do you believe me now when I tell you that you must not attempt to swim it, or even get wet from it, or must you try that too?”

“What happens if I just dive in?”

“Then you will be as you were in the bottle.  Aware and unable to move.  but it will be very cold, and very uncomfortable, and you will be there for all eternity knowing that you put yourself there.”

Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle Inferno 1976

Lately we’ve been seeing a lot of posts about Democrat panic as things continue to get worse in the country and more and more of what the left has been doing continues to come out.

But then actual reality slips in and that’s when you get nailed:

Bonchie at red state puts it in perspective:

The GOP challenger was James Guzofski, a local pastor who once proclaimed from the pulpit that the prophets told him Trump won the 2020 election. He lost by 12 points in a district that current Republican Gov. Chris Sununu won by 22 points. In other words, this wasn’t some long-shot blue district. This was a district the GOP was supposed to easily compete in, if not be favored to win outright. 

Moreover this puts the GOP majority in the house on a knife edge:

There are now 198 Republicans, 197 Democrats, two Independents, and three vacant seats in the state House.

Now you would think that going into an election with a 2 seat majority in a 400 member house the state GOP would have been all in concerning this election.

It was not.

There are several lessons here the first is this:

It doesn’t matter what the national pols are saying, if you are losing districts like this, that you absolutely have to win then you aren’t going anywhere.

People can get excited by Biden’s falling poll numbers all they want but if you can’t win a seat like this it those numbers are meaningless.

But more important consider this:

Guzofski is a Northwood selectman and a chaplain for the Northwood Fire Department. He has been in the ministry for 34 years. Guzofski said, “I have been elected twice to the office of selectman in Northwood dedicated to keep your taxes low. As selectman I have implemented plans for better communication between town officials and you. … For years I have served our Nottingham and Northwood community, fighting for your needs in town.”

Sounds like a person who is well known in the area and might have plenty of local pull particularly in a district where there former rep was a republican and the republican governor won by 22 points. But there is also the youtube video of him proclaiming from the pulpit that the prophets told him that Trump won the 2020 election.

Now it’s one thing to believe that election 2020 was stolen based on the evidence as I do, it’s another to proclaim that the prophets told you that Trump won in 2020.

One might think that the saints might be more interested in the state of a person’s soul vs the results of a national election but let’s stay on topic a sec.

How many voters who voted GOP in the past looked at that video and bluntly told themselves: “I don’t want this loony at the state house?” I’m guessing more than the 331 votes margin he lost by.

What does that tell me? Just this:

It doesn’t matter how many people show up at rallies in deep red states or just how inept Joe Biden is, there is a portion of the GOP vote that simply will NOT vote for Donald Trump or people associated with him and no amount of national polling or wishful thinking or saying how foolish this is will change that.

And it’s worth remembering this fellow had a long local footprint. He was the fire department chaplin, he was a local selectman he is known in the community but that didn’t matter. There are those who simply will not vote for a Trump associated candidate no matter how much of a local footprint he has:

I wish this was not true, but wishing that it’s not true or saying how unfair it is doesn’t change things.

I’ll give Bonchie the last word:

I may not be that smart, but I’m capable of learning from past mistakes, and I’m not going to blow smoke up anyone’s backside and suggest this special election result doesn’t matter. Clearly, given what happened in 2022 with special elections, it matters, and if something doesn’t change quickly among the Republican electorate, 2024 is going to be another swift kick in the teeth. 

DaTechGuy’s (Almost) Daily Dose of Pintastic NE 2023: Todd Tuckey of TNT Amusements

Posted: September 20, 2023 by datechguy in fun, pinball, short films/interviews, special events
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There are some things that simply make Pintastic Pintastic and one of them is Todd Tuckey of TNT Amusements making the annual pilgrimage. I had the pleasure of taking him to dinner at Linguini’s Italian Eatery on day two with my son and of course I had the even greater pleasure of sitting down with him for an interview on day 3 (Saturday)

Pintastic NE 2023 the story so far:

Epilogue: Now while I’m giving you Pintastic a piece at a time and cover what I think is interesting my primary goal there is to play pinball (thus the early to bed plan to get machines empty in the morning. Todd gives you Pintastic a full day at a time in his famous TNT amusements videos. For those who want a different perspective on the show than mine because he’s up much later with all the folks.

Here are his videos from Pintastic NE 2023:

Video one First Day:

Part 2:

And finally part 3:

Trump’s stand on life and Mother Angelica on Peanuts

Posted: September 19, 2023 by datechguy in abortion, catholic, elections, elections, politics, primaries
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Remember, vote for life. It may be your own.

Mother Angelica

Yesterday Donald Trump hit Ron DeSantis from the left for signing a heartbeat bill suggesting that such bills hurt the republican party and talking how he would sign a compromise national bill restricting abortion to 13 weeks.

I can’t speak for others but I’m catholic and abortion is a sine non qua for me. It’s they type of thing that you risk your soul over. I’ve got enough sins that I worry about without compromising myself over life for the sake of a primary or national election.

Mother Angelica, the founder of EWTN put it very well herself when it comes to compromising on sin in her famous story concerning Peanuts. Her nuns were selling peanuts as a fund raiser and were doing pretty well on it when suddenly a new concessions manager demanded an “advertising fee” or as mother put it a kickback. When he threatened to pull the concession from her her answer was classic:

Mother Angelica: Look, if I’m going to hell, it’s not going to be over a peanut.

Here is her telling the story

Now there is no question that Donald Trump’s record on life as president was a great one. Three Supreme Court Judges that got rid of Roe vs Wade, first president to attend the national march for life, there is no question that his record was excellent.

Furthermore I don’t have a problem with incremental change when that’s the best you can do. In a republic you can change laws without educating the public and persuading their representatives to vote with you.

  • If a state has laws allowing abortion to the date of birth then in such a state I’ll welcome a 26 week ban
  • If a state has laws allowing abortion to 26 weeks I’ll welcome & work toward a 13 week ban
  • If a state has laws allowing abortion to 13 weeks I’ll welcome & work for a six week / heartbeat ban
  • if a state has laws allowing abortion up to six weeks I’d welcome & work for an outright ban
  • and if a state has laws outlaw abortion except for rape and incest I’d welcome & work for those exceptions to be removed because a life isn’t defined by the sins of their father.

if your lifeboat isn’t big enough to fit everyone pull from the water who you can while you build a bigger one.

But to retreat and condemn the efforts to save life for the sake of a political campaign, to reject what can be done in the hopes of getting power, to make the life of the unborn child with it’s potential and God given soul and to abandon the soul of the mother and the father an all those involved who risk their souls in this action is to abrogate our duty and to abandon the spiritual work of mercy that is admonishing the sinner because it is these souls that are at risk. Or as Mother Angelica put it:

Those who tell the Truth love you. Those who tell you what you want to hear love themselves.

Mother Angelica

All for the sake of a few more votes? All in the hope that both sides will love you? I think not.

Again Trump is my 2nd choice and if he gets the nomination I’ll have no trouble voting for him vs any of the “abortion till birth” democrats from Biden on down.

But in a primary with a choice between a candidate who has advance the cause of life and one that says he will roll back that advance for the sake of compromise? Well that’s really no choice at all.

Small towns face a serious shortage of cops

Posted: September 19, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized

By Christopher Harper

Just a few miles west of my home in Muncy, Pennsylvania, the town of Montgomery had to shut down its police force.

The decision for the town of just under 2,000 people wasn’t because of anti-police riots; it happened because Montgomery couldn’t afford a full-time force anymore.

What happened in Montgomery is unfortunate but not uncommon to what’s unfolding in smaller municipalities nationwide.

“A lot of municipalities are going to face this as tax bases decline and costs increase exponentially,” Montgomery Mayor Rocky Sanguedolce said. “Nobody wanted to do this.”

America also faces a police officer shortage. From Minnesota to Maine, Ohio to Texas, small towns unable to fill jobs are eliminating their police departments and turning over crime fighting to their county sheriff, a neighboring town, or state police.

Officer resignations were up 47% last year compared to 2019 — the year before the pandemic and George Floyd’s killing — and retirements are up 19%. That’s all according to a survey of nearly 200 police agencies by the Police Executive Research Forum. Though the survey represents only agencies affiliated with the think tank, a fraction of the more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide, it’s one of the few efforts to examine police hiring and retention and compare it with the time before Floyd’s killing.

“Fewer people are applying to be police officers, and more officers are retiring or resigning at a tremendous rate,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum. “There’s a shortage of police officers across the country.” Compounding the exodus of veteran officers, young people are increasingly unwilling to undergo the months of training to become a police officer, Wexler added.

More than 500 U.S. towns and cities with populations of 1,000 to 200,000 disbanded policing between 1972 and 2017, according to a study by Rice University economics professor Richard Boylan.

With the massive amounts of money spent at the state and national levels on fighting crime, it would seem essential that governments come up with some way to provide funds to communities that cannot afford a police department.

With a dependence on the Pennsylvania Highway Patrol in the case of Montgomery, it’s unlikely that the response time to any serious crime would be good.

Fortunately, my home in Muncy has amassed enough funds to keep its police force and raised money to build a new fire and emergency services facility. I wish other communities could say the same.

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