It didn’t help that it rained yesterday, something that tends to keep the visiting bikers off the road. Fortunately the rain stopped by early afternoon and the bikes appeared soon after that.
All in all, it was a a low-key Motorcycle Week. Somehow I think next year’s rally will more than make up for it.
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Pro sports keeps ignoring the lesson of “Get woke, go broke”, with the latest example being baseball games canceled because the ball players decided they weren’t going to play because of the shooting of felon Jacob Blake by police. That Blake was in violation of a restraining order that ordered him to stay away from the victim of an violent sexual assault Blake had allegedly committed and other outstanding warrants plays no part in this.
What these players and the sports organizations are choosing to ignore is that they are losing fans in increasing numbers, and if the fans go away, so do their pro sports careers.
Fans don’t care nearly as much as they did. They’ve learned to live without sports, especially in their current diminished condition. They’ve learned that they’re taken for granted. And more and more they’ve determined that they won’t pay another dime to attend games or to watch them on TV.Fans have found better things to do than patronize spoiled multimillionaire athletes, are focusing on local sports or on more family oriented activities that don’t involve professional sports. Long-term die-hard fans are tuning out, myself included. I have no plans to watch any NFL games which means that neither the New England Patriots or the Philadelphia Eagles can count on me attending games or watching them on TV. There are plenty of other fans of these teams and all the others feeling the same way.
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MLB, like the NBA and NFL, has allowed its fan base — its financial blood flow — to erode.
Fans can’t help but apply Thursday’s walkout to their own realities: “Would I be allowed to simply stand up and walk out of work in protest of anything and not face suspension or termination?” And they conclude that they could not, or would not — even at a small fraction of big-league pay.
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Are Trump voters lying to pollsters about who they’ll be voting for in November? Are they also lying to co-workers, friends, and family members? If the study conducted by CloudResearch about responses to polls is anywhere near accurate, the answer is a qualified “yes”.
11.7% of Republicans say they would not report their true opinions about their preferred presidential candidate on telephone polls.We have also have to be careful if we voice our opinions to our family and friends. TDS is widespread.
In contrast, just 5.4% of Democrats say they’d be reluctant to share their true voting intentions — roughly half the number of Republicans reluctant to tell the truth on phone polls.
10.5% of Independents fell into the “shy voter” category, just a percentage point lower than how Republicans react to phone polls.
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It looks like Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler is getting desperate as he’s had to resort to publishing a letter to President Trump as a means to bolster his re-election campaign by laying the blame for the rioting, looting and arson taking place in Portland on Trump and the federal officers who were protecting federal property. The truth is the rioting, looting, and arson were taking place well before the feds showed up. Wheeler is applying Alinsky’s Rules to the dire situation he’s found himself in, specifically “Accuse your opponents of acts you yourself are committing.”
Wheeler’s own words condemn him, he having stated he’s allowed Portland to burn because “it had nothing to lose.”
Who the heck wants a mayor that will allow his city to be destroyed because he’s too weak or too scared to actually do something to stop it?
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I was running an errand for the WP Mom – seeking a birthday card for her great grandson (my grand nephew) – and experienced the same thing she did, that being a dearth of birthday cards. More accurately, a dearth of birthday cards for boys of almost all ages. There were plenty of birthday cards for girls from 1 year old through their teen years.
There were some generic kid’s birthday cards, but there were very few of them, and none that were appropriate for a 5-year old boy. Most of those generic cards seemed a little too ‘frilly’ for me, meaning they were really aimed at young girls. (Is that just my White Heterosexual Male Privilege/Patriarchy speaking? No. How do I know? It was simple: I asked one of the young store associates with whom I am acquainted whether it was just my perception. She agreed with my observation and said she’d never really noticed it until I mentioned it.)
It’s one thing if there had been row after row of empty slots where those cards would normally be located, meaning they were sold out. But those rows and rows of empty slots don’t exist. Those cards weren’t sold out. They were never there.
Is it because there isn’t much of a market for birthday cards for young boys? Or is it because we have reached the point in our society where cards have become far more female-focused and greeting card companies are abandoning a portion of their market?
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Antifa, BLM, and their hangers on have gone past rioting, looting, and arson in Portland.
They are now actively killing people...and cheering their murder.
“As cars drive through the intersection, a man can be seen pulling a gun and shooting. The man who is hit stumbles and falls and is then illuminated by headlights. . . . At the moment of the murder, a voice can be heard to celebrate the death of a ‘Trumper.'”Writes Andy Ngo, “On the 95th night of riots and violent protests in Portland, a conservative rally attendee was fatally shot. On confirming the deceased wasn’t one of theirs, antifa and BLM cheered & danced in the street outside the Justice Center.”
I expect this will become more prevalent now that they’ve passed that psychological threshold. Then again, mobs like killing. They always have.
I am laying a good portion of the blame on Portland mayor Ted Wheeler and his indifference to the destruction of his city.
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Believe it or not, there is someone out there who has authored a tome that defends the looting that has been taking place in those cities ‘protesting’ the death of George Lloyd. The author of the book defends looting “as a way to undermine the “white supremacy” behind the idea of property and that the value of small businesses is a “right-wing myth.””
The author, Vicky Osterwell, makes the argument that “looting is a powerful tool to bring about real, lasting change in society. The rioters who smash windows and take items from stores, she says, are engaging in a powerful tactic that questions the justice of ‘law and order,’ and the distribution of property and wealth in an unequal society.”
There’s one problem with looting, that being that most of those small businesses looted won’t be back, ever. There will be fewer places to loot going forward. Areas of the city will become retail deserts because why would anyone open a business knowing their goods would be stolen all in the name of “distribution of property and wealth in an unequal society”?
Apparently Ms. Osterwell has never read any Adam Smith, but instead has been delving too deeply into long discredited Marxist economics, where no one owns anything and everything is ‘free’. Of course it never really works out that way...ever. She has consumed the Marxist economic Kool-aid and chooses to ignore how things actually work as well as ignoring a good portion of human nature. But then Marxists usually do.
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the roar of motorcycles is dwindling away, the sun has reappeared, and where the last week of summer is starting.