Net Rules, Hill Photo Blues, Beto bye Bye, Kamala Conventional Wisdom & McDonald’s Unconventional One, Under the Fedora

Posted: November 5, 2019 by datechguy in business, elections, oddities, politics, primaries, under the fedora
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There is only one thing that amazes me about the Katie Hill story. It’s the idea that she really believed that she could have nudes on the net and that nobody would notice.

Now I grant you, if she just thought nobody would care, she might have gotten away with it, but the concept that it would stay quiet is just silly.

Never forget that the internet is forever and anyone who tells you otherwise is a fool.

It’s been really funny watching the media try to spin Rep Hill’s resignation as a GOP hit job as if the party made her pose for those pictures and put them on the net. They forget that while folks in the bubble still might buy it, the actual story and the pictures are only a click away and that the sole narrative is no longer theirs.

I would have thought Matt Drudge would have taught them that decades ago but they’ve never gotten over it.

There are a lot of people who are laughing about Beto departure from the Presidential race, I’m not.

First of all Beto was extremely useful in that he said aloud the thing we all know and the left didn’t want said. With him out the left/media will do their best to pretend that others do not think like he does and such questions will not be in the debate. With him in the race that wasn’t possible.

But most important of all in the end every single democrat running for the nomination is going to lose except for one, so until it’s down to 3 or 4 candidate, the individual failures don’t mean a thing. So I don’t get excited about it, with one exception…

…that exception is Kamila Harris. Watching her fail has been an absolute pleasure, not just because she is a huge phony who slept her way to the top, but because she is the perfect illustration of the truth about conventional wisdom.

For a very long time everyone who “mattered” told us that Kamila Harris was the future and a lock for the nomination. the day she was elected it was considered Presidential prep. Her folding like a cheap suit demonstrates that conventional wisdom is always correct…right up until the moment that it’s not.

Finally speaking of the conventional wisdom, I began this piece at a McDonalds speaking with some elderly gentlemen when the manager going home came by to say hi. I struck up a conversation with him and discoveered two things I didn’t know.

  1. A slice of cheese costs them .32 when you factor in all the assorted costs.
  2. The Kiosks have led to him INCREASING rather than decreasing his staff.

That 1st fact wasn’t a big surprise but the 2nd really threw me off, I asked the manager why?

He said 1st of all we needed someone to service the tables because the Kisoks require delivery to the table and second of all the Kiosks, along with the various delivery services, increased business and orders to the point where they needed those extra folks for the cooking etc.

Now I don’t know if this is peculiar to the local McDonalds or not but I think it would be worth finding out, but assuming the manager is not blowing smoke I’d say it’s worth finding out on a larger scale.

American Success Stories What Makes America Great: Revisited: Paulo from Brazil Two years later

Posted: November 4, 2019 by datechguy in American Success Stories, business, culture, economy
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A while back I had an occasional series on youtube called American Success Stories when I talked to and interview the people who had worked and succeeded in America. One of those I talked to was Paulo from Brazil

I’m also sure his young wife and kids would like to see more of him nor do I doubt that his kids might have enjoyed it if this Sunday morning he had been at home during this labor day weekend rather than putting up siding early in the morning.
But when those kids are 18, Paulo’s hard work today will almost certainly mean he’ll have the assets to send them to college if they wish, or if they are smart enough to follow in his footsteps might be in a position to have their dad co-sign for their first home to fix up or at least know how to fix anything in sight. And I suspect that if he has a daughter who wants a big wedding someday, the willingness to be hard at work on a Holiday weekend will be the reason he can afford to pay for one or two or more.

Unfortunately I kept missing Paulo after the house was completed but this weekend I ran into him as he was doing some touch up maintenance and he had a few minutes to spare to speak with me

The house has been rented but Paulo has not slowed down one bit expect to take the time to cut his beard off. He continues to work hard and notes that there is plenty of work out there but a lot of the younger people don’t want a job, they just want the money without the work that comes with it.

Paulo is now in his early 30’s and it’s very likely that by the time he is 40 and thanks to his hard work he will be living a whole lot more comfortably than a lot of the people who took hundreds of thousands of dollars in college loans for useless degrees in cultural studies.

He will have real property and real skills to show for his investment of time and money. He is an object lesson for any teenager thinking of what to do with his future.

FYI if you want to see the before videos of the house, here they are

Joe Walsh absolutely should not be taken seriously as a presidential candidate

Posted: November 3, 2019 by John Ruberry in Always look at the bright side of Trump, economy, elections, elections, politics, primaries
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By John Ruberry

While Da Tech Guy was technical hiatus, former Illinois Republican congressman Joe Walsh announced his presidential run, which is why I’m only now weighing in.

I’ve had mixed feelings over the years on Walsh, who was part of the GOP Tea Party wave in 2010 but was essentially gerrymandered out of office by Illinois Democratic Party boss Michael Madigan. His triumph, without any Illinois Republican Party financial support over Democratic incumbent Melissa Bean was a shocker, many people viewed his chances of winning as dismal because of a then-ongoing child support dispute with his ex-wife and a lawsuit, since settled, from his onetime campaign manager over fees he said were owed to him.

The only positive thing I heard during that 2010 race about Walsh was from my wife. She was thoroughly impressed by a speech he gave at a Tea Party event where I live, Morton Grove, Illinois. She predicted, “He’s going to win.”

Always listen to your spouse.

During his single term in Congress, for the most part I supported Walsh. I met him at a different Tea Party event and I was impressed that he was familiar with my blog, Marathon Pundit, and what I wrote about him. Still, I always thought he was a bit nutty. But that goes for many politicians of course.

Walsh seemingly found his place in 2013 after when Chicago conservative talk radio station WIND-AM hired him for its coveted afternoon drive-time slot. Early on his show was enjoyable and informative–regularly trashing President Obama on just about everything, including the economy. Salem Radio Network picked up his show for national distribution in 2017, while he was a third-tier talker, his future was still bright.

Then something snapped within Joe. If you are familiar with the 1970s movie, Network, like the mentally unbalanced TV anchorman Howard Beale, Walsh changed. Beale went from decrying big government and big business every night to preaching that the latter wasn’t really bad after all. Then Beale’s ratings dropped. As for Walsh, who was never completely on the Trump Train, earlier this year he began to sprinkle his program with bits of criticism of Trump–which quickly became a flood. I tuned out and so did many of my friends. How many others bailed? I dunno. WIND-AM stopped subscribing to Nielsen in 2016. I listen to other radio shows besides right-wing talkers, it’s a good idea to see what the other side is up to. But like Beale’s later performances, I felt I was being preached at by Walsh, not spoken to. Not fun. So on my way home from work I’d connect my iPod and listen to Mark Levin’s podcasts instead.

Since his announcement, Walsh has been struggling to get noticed, just as the other Republican challengers again Trump have. Those other candidates are another nut-job, former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, and former Massachusetts governor William Weld, the vice presidential candidate in 2016 on the Libertarian ticket.

Presumably because last week President Trump made his first appearance in Chicago since his election–not surprisingly he trashed the city–Fox 32 Chicago’s Mike Flannery interviewed him this weekend on his Flannery Fired Up program. Playing devil’s advocate, Flannery mentioned the “booming economy” and Friday’s strong jobs report, Walsh countered on the economy, “It was booming under Obama.” Which one is true, Joe? What you said this weekend about Obama, or your unilateral condemnations of Obama as president, including of course on the economy?

No one should take Walsh seriously as a presidential candidate.

And then there is this Tweet.

And then this one:

But we will still be hearing from Walsh every now and then; the mainstream media, which mocked him for years, fell in love with Walsh after he announced his campaign against Trump, I mean that he is running for president. With the anti-Trump media it’s all about hating the president.

Oh, I did say Walsh was “a bit nutty,” right?

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

30 Tips to Stay Married 30 (31) Years #27 Take Culture With a Grain of Salt

Posted: November 3, 2019 by datechguy in culture
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Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it “real life” and don’t let him ask what he means by “real.”

CS Lewis The Screwtape Letters Letter #1

If there is one thing that you can’t avoid these days it’s unsolicited advice.

In the old days it would come from friends, acquaintance and relatives, now it comes from everywhere in the culture.

TV, Movies, Talk shows, podcasts, and social media are constantly telling you how you should live, how you should eat, how you should have sex etc etc etc. Furthermore in today’s cancel culture a lot of this is given in terms not just of advice, but as a command, do this OR ELSE.

Now of course both you and your spouse live in the culture, the place and the time where you are so while this bombardment can’t be avoided completely it can be ignored and some of it might even make sense or have merit but all of it, the advice and the culture should be taken in the context of what we said yesterday: No source of advice, not even this post can beat the experience of each day you have together.

The demands of culture are transitory. Even just a few years of marriage will outlast the fads of the day. Once you are talking lustrums (5 years) or decades you will realize just how hollow they truly are.

Take it all with a grain of salt.

The Tips So far”

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