Five of My Thoughts Under the Fedora: Blood in Portland, Silence from Biden, Still no GOP Riots, or MLB NHL NBA of NFL Boycotts plus Pat back in School

Posted: August 31, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Saturday a supporter of Donald Trump in Portland was murdered for the dastardly crime of showing said support in public. The antifa/blm crowds that have been rioting for 95 days have been publicly rejoicing..

Of course if this had been cracked down on from day 1 rather than let it go to day 96 this wouldn’t have happened but the Democrat / Media / Academic left wanted to get votes energized and thus let things reach this point likely because they didn’t believe the polls that gave Biden a huge lead.

Well it’s 96 days later and even with Trump voters being shy (I can’t imagine why) the polls are even with Potus ahead in states like Michigan.

Congratulations guys, you’ve succeeded in energizing voters beyond your wildest dreams.

I’m writing this at 12:07 PM EST on Sunday and as of this time there is nothing on the Joe Biden Twitter feed on the murder of a Trump / Blue Lives Matter supporter in Portland for daring to be part of a caravan of Trump supporters that rolled though the city.

If I had been the guy running the Biden campaign I’d have had such a tweet condemning the murder out six hours ago, but then again the guy who likely does the tweets for the campaign likely doesn’t have the authority to do that without sanction from above, even if he or she had the inclination.

I predict there will be no riots because of the murder or should I say execution of this man. You will not see Trump supporters setting up checkpoints demanding people condemn said murder/execution nor will you see any shops burn in cities around the country.

And you Certainly won’t see any boycotts of games or practices by MLB, NFL, NHL or NBA player over this murder.

Speaking of this the sports leagues and the Democrats will only have themselves to blame at the blacklashes at the ballotbox and the ticket window that will come.

To side with riots, violence and looting might get a lot of folks on twitter excited but I’ve never known it to be a winning hand for the anyone politically in our republic.

When the big red wave washes away the Democrats this year and the great conservative exodus from the ticket office and pay channels come for the sports league it will be doubly painful because they will have done this to themselves.

Oh and it will be interesting to see how sports figures react when they suddenly find that advertisers don’t want to touch them with a ten foot pole

While I was writing this piece I noticed this tweet from Joe Scarborough from MSNBC

This follows a tweet from the Senate Deputy Whip for the Democrats

At the rate the NeverTrump Democrat left is going in full reverse by the end of the week I expect to see Joe Biden in full riot gear leading a police charge against Antifa/BLM Rioters in Portland.

A week ago today Pat Austin wrote a first hand account of the 1st week back in school for a teacher.

I teach high school, and we had four days of inservice and training of the new programs that will support virtual learning, and then we had students for two days so far on an A/B hybrid schedule. We get half of our students on an A day and the other half on the B day, then they alternate Fridays.  This is my twenty-fifth year to teach high school, and it was the first year that I felt sad at the end of the day. There were no hugs, no high-fives, and no smiles that I could see because everyone was wearing a mask.

Many people were so anxious for schools to open so we could “get back to normal,” but let me tell you, this is in no way normal. When the bus drops kids off they go straight to a homeroom, or to the cafeteria to pick up a grab and go breakfast in a big Ziploc bag, then they go to homeroom. Everyone sits in homeroom until the first bell at 7:25. We are six feet apart, and there are no more than ten kids in any classroom at one time.

I think this is one of the most significant pieces ever on the site and Pat should get an awful lot of credit.

Last week’s riot toll is three dead

Posted: August 30, 2020 by John Ruberry in crime, culture, elections, media, News/opinion
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By John Ruberry

The mainstream media has been downplaying the rioting and looting that has been occurring this summer across many large American cities–all run by Democrats.

Three people were shot last week in what the mainstream media often calls “unrest,” but are in fact riots.

Powerline has rightly called the downplaying by the media of last week’s looting in Minneapolis “journalistic malpractice.” 

One state over in Wisconsin, during the rioting and looting in Kenosha last week, a 17-year-old from nearby Antioch, Illinois, Kyle Rittenhouse, was charged with murdering three people. The media is focusing on how the riots started–anger over police shooting Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old with a criminal record, seven times. Fair enough.

The media is also exploring Rittenshouse’s possible connection with a local militia. 

Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, responded to the mayhem by sending a small force of National Guard trips, 125 of them, on Monday, which was doubled the next day. After Tuesday’s shootings Evers doubled the deployment again and he’s since accepted Guard assistance from other states and from the federal government. 

But what if Evers dispatched 500 National Guard troops to Kenosha as soon as the rioting started Sunday night? Perhaps that militia would have stayed home and Rittenhouse, who appears to be a troubled cop-wannabe that got his hands on an AR-15 rifle despite being a minor, would have remained home in Illinois. 

Details are still coming in on the shooting death of a man during Saturday’s round of rioting in Portland, Oregon. Last night a pro-Trump group confronted Black Lives Matter in downtown Portland. In what the local police are calling a homicide–a man wearing clothing with a Patriot Prayer logo was shot to death in the middle of a street. The Oregonian is calling Patriot Prayer a far-right group. Of course the mainstream media never calls Antifa far-left, but that’s a subject for another post, of course. 

The rioting, mercifully no longer called “mostly peaceful” by the media, has been a nightly event for three months in Oregon’s largest city. Portland’s ineffective mayor, Ted Wheeler, is deaf to the concern of law-abiding citizens of the Rose City. 

It’s a new week. Hopefully last week’s riot deaths will be the last ones. And perhaps these homicides will finally compel mayors like Wheeler to take back their cities in the names of the rank-and-file citizens they claim to represent. 

Never forget: The most important responsibility of any government is to protect its citizens. 

As for the mainstream media, I believe they are too far gone to save themselves. 

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

The Most Important Riots that Didn’t Happen: Update: The Shooting in Portland Won’t Cause on Either

Posted: August 30, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Detective Gregory: Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?

Sherlock Holmes: To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.

Detective Gregory: The dog did nothing in the night-time.

Sherlock Holmes: That was the curious incident.

Arthur Conan Doyle: The Adventure of Silverblaze 1896

David Webster : [at a passing column of German prisoners]  Hey, you! That’s right, you stupid Kraut bastards! That’s right! Say hello to Ford, and General fuckin’ Motors! You stupid fascist pigs! Look at you! You have horses! What were you thinking? Dragging our asses half way around the world, interrupting our lives… For what, you ignorant, servile scum! What the fuck are we doing here?

Band of Brothers 2001

Saturday morning I came across this story concerning a double murder in North Carolina:

As Laura’s stepdad pulled into her driveway, he was rear-ended by the guy on the right in the picture above, identified as Ty Sheem Walters, 23. It was reportedly a “minor fender bender.”

What happened next?

Walters pulled a gun and proceeded to shoot Nick Wall in the head and torso, killing him. He then decided to shoot Laura Anderson in the head, killing her. Both slain in the front yard of the young lady’s new, first home.

The killer also shot a third person, who survived and was stumbling around in shock when police arrived.

Ty Sheem Walters was caught and charged with two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.

This all happened on Monday in South Carolina, four days ago, in a race-obsessed country. Isn’t it odd that nobody heard about it?

Now this is not only an example of DaTechGuy’s 3rd Law of media outrage in action but I got to thinking about it and what this symbolizes is even deeper.

For the last several months we have been told that America in general and American Whites in particular are a bunch of racist and that this racism is “systemic” the media/ democrat / academic left have insisted this is the case, left has insisted this is the case, heck even the Tennesee Titans players insist this is the case to the point they made a public video to tell white America how just awful and oppressive they are.

The irony of this being done by people making six to eight figures annually not withstanding this leads to an obvious point.

If America in general and American Whites in particular are so racist, why aren’t we collectively blaming America’s blacks for the horrific murders of the 45 year old Mr. Wall and his 21 year old stepdaugher?

Why are white Americans not marching in the streets and burning down neighborhoods and as we are all apparently gun nuts as well as the media narrative suggests why aren’t we out spilling blood in revenge, not to mention putting pressure on business’ to fund efforts to punish the black community for this outrage?

For those who don’t know the answer it’s because that the base narrative of systematic racism is a bunch of bull and that any sane person holds a race responsible for a murder that is clearly the unplanned act of an individual. Only the farthest fringe of the fringe would think this and such voices are roundly condemned by all sides.

Yet this has exactly been the response to the death of George Floyd by the media / Democrat / academic left and for reasons unknown a lot of Black Americans have bought into this and because of this cities across the country have seen mayhem, looting, arson and even murder. All of this in response to what was in reality a local police story. In fact the more facts come out the less the narrative of the left on it holds up. Moreover black Americans who do not go along with this narrative are attacked for this by the woke legions .

So why are we at this point where so much damage to property, lives and livelihoods have taken place?

I submit and suggest that it’s because the media / Democrat academic / Left decided that the George Floyd case would be a useful election tool in election 2020 and that they further decided that the unrest it produced might energize the black community enough to return them and their allies in the deep state to control to once again give them access to the power, wealth and influence that the allocation of trillions of tax dollars annually affords them.

A lot of people and corporations have been manipulated for the sake of the power of these bastards and it’s cost people lives, business, their communities destroyed and shattered. They have spread fear and violence all in the name of beating Donald J Trump.

Of course the irony is that this is turning on them to the point where not only will Donald Trump be re-elected but the conditions are set for a 2nd Big Red Wave a la 2010 to take place at the state level, ironically right before redistricting.

That is what I find so disgusting about all it this. All this destruction, all of those lives ruined it was all a waste. It’s telling that you didn’t see the democrat / media / academic left start to come out against all of this horrible violence until they realized that it was backfiring.

Americans understand that while their neighborhoods escaped this violence, they could have easily not been so lucky. They like me understand that all they worked for decades could have been gone in a flash.

How do I feel about it, I feel like this:

I’ll forgive them, I’ll even pray for them. These are non optional doctrines that Christ and the Catholic Church requires of me.

But I can guarantee you this. While I will forgive it will be a very long time before I & a lot of other Americans forget and I promise you I’ll remember every single election day till I die/

Update: Before this was posted but after it was written a Trump Suppoter in Portland was murdered by an Antifa guy during a caravan of Trump supporters driving through. I predict there will not be a riot over it, furthermore I predict that no NBA, NFL, NHL or MLB team will feel the need to cancel games over this political murder.

the real question is, will the DA who has been refusing to prosecute the rioters right along let this one go too?

Tariffs on Cruise Lines?

Posted: August 29, 2020 by ng36b in business, economy, News/opinion, trade
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The Pride of America, the only US flagged cruise ship, in Hawaii. Image from Wikipedia.

Cruise ships haven’t had good news in 2020. Many of the first COVID patients in the US, including the people in my area, caught the disease while onboard a cruise vessel. Then cruise lines wanted federal money under the CARES act, even though they aren’t incorporated in the United States, and thus don’t pay US taxes. Combined with the difficulty in cleaning a ship while underway, and cruise lines are facing a difficult return to normal. If stock price is any indication, Carnival Cruise line plummeted from 50 dollars a share in January to almost 8 dollars in April, and is currently sitting around 17 dollars.

Cruise lines have found unique ways to evade US laws and taxes. All but one cruise ship is flagged outside the United States. The flag of the cruise ship allows it to sail in international waters, and dictates what sort of domestic laws apply while onboard. Most cruise ships are flagged in Liberia, Bahamas or Panama. Each of these nations have weak labor laws with limited ability to enforce them. Cruise lines don’t have a minimum wage and get away with significantly lower safety standards. Worse still, if a crime is committed onboard, its notoriously hard to prosecute. A study from the University of Florida found that:

The Cruise Line International Association claims that cruise ships are inherently secure because ships offer a controlled environment with limited access. “However, there has been some startling statistics between 2003 and 2005: 24 people were reported missing and 178 people reported a claim against sexual assault. Additionally, the FBI has opened investigations on 305 cruise-based crimes, from 2000-2005” (Porter, 2006, p.597). The CLIA compares these statistics to U.S. crime rates and harps on being the safest form of transportation and inherently secure. They fail however, to examine the context to which these statistics apply.

Given that Americans make up nearly 75% of cruise line passengers, it seems unfair to have Americans financing a system that is exploiting workers and dodging taxes. The tax dodging makes it easy to undercut any US company trying to start a competitive cruise line. Given the negative attention on cruise lines, its probably time for President Trump to threaten tariffs on the cruise industry.

Cruise ships pay a docking fee and port tariff, based on tonnage, when they dock in a US port. An easy way to encourage better behavior is to raise the port tariffs on non-US flagged vessels, as well as providing a discounted tariff to cruise lines that voluntarily follow US employment and criminal laws. You could have a high tariff, with a discount if the ship pays minimum wages, and a further discount if they follow proper US criminal proceedings. The result is a carrot and stick approach, either getting more money from the industry or enforcing better behavior on the part of the cruise line. Given that cruise lines are struggling, now is the time to negotiate a better deal.

Cruise lines have benefited from America for years under flags of convenience. Perhaps its time they follow the same rules the rest of the United States does.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

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