Archive for November, 2023

The Biden Regime Has Gone Full Dystopian Science Fiction

Posted: November 30, 2023 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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I am a huge fan of dystopian Science Fiction, especially those with a pronounced Libertarian slant.  My favorite authors in the genre are Robert Heinlein, George Orwell, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournell, Aldous Huxley, Ayn Rand, and Suzanne Collins. 

Joe Biden’s handlers have been following the plot lines featured by those authors, all from the point of view from the villains.  They most likely have never read any of these great works.   Their dystopian playbooks are based on the collective works of Karl Marx, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Chairman Mao.  Joe Biden’s Cabal should have read the same works I have read; they would have learned some valuable lessons about the various levels of hell created by collectivist policies.

Robert Heinlein wrote a short story, Free Men, and a novel, Sixth Column, where communist nations launched nuclear strikes on the US, and then invaded.  In both stories, written in the late 1940s, the communist invaders completely curtailed travel to ensure control over the conquered US.  Curtailing the freedom of movement is one of the favorite ploys used by dystopian regimes to exert complete control over a population.   The Biden Regime is using safety and climate change as a justification to curtail the freedom of movement of Americans, as chronicled in the following two articles:

NTSB Recommends All New Cars Be Equipped With Technology to Make Speeding Difficult or Impossible (thefederalistpapers.org)

In a recent development, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has proposed a measure that has sparked considerable debate.

The recommendation is for all new automobiles to be equipped with intelligent speed assistance (ISA) technology, a system designed to make speeding difficult or impossible.

The proposed ISA technology works by utilizing GPS and sign recognition to adapt the vehicle’s speed to the local limit.

Its approach is distinct from traditional speed limiters as it varies the maximum speed based on the location.

‘Dystopian Science Fiction’: Thomas Massie’s Amendment to Stop ‘Kill Switch’ in Vehicles Fails (breitbart.com)

Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-KY) amendment to stop what has been dubbed a “kill switch” in vehicles beginning in 2026 under the guise of “passive drunk driving technology” failed last week — something that largely fell under the radar as all eyes remain on newly-elected House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Congress passing his stopgap funding bill this week.

This battle broke out last week, as Massie presented an amendment, which essentially states that none of the funds made available in the Biden-approved Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed in 2021, may be used to implement Section 24220 of the bill.

George Orwell’s 1984 has long been the playbook for dystopian regimes: Biden Admin ‘Working With’ Social Media to ‘Counter Misinformation’ on Economy – The Political Insider

“The White House official said the administration is working with TikTok creators to tell positive stories of Biden’s economic stewardship while also working with social media platforms to counter misinformation.”

If it seems strange to you that the government would just brazenly admit to making naked propaganda, well, that’s just where we are now.

We’ve witnessed what that entails thanks to the release of the Twitter Files that uncovered that the administration, via the arm of the Department of Justice and various aspects of the Intelligence Community, manipulated and infiltrated social media companies to bury factual news stories and infringe on the First Amendment rights of countless users.

NewsGuard Sells Government-Funded Censorship Tool (thefederalist.com)

The for-profit censorship giant NewsGuard is now selling its “Misinformation Fingerprints” technology to private companies to silence Americans’ speech — technology the federal government helped NewsGuard develop to the tune of nearly $750,000 in taxpayer funding. So while NewsGuard is now making headlines for trying to take down Elon Musk’s X, the bigger story concerns the federal government’s funding of the censorship-industrial complex.

In September 2021, NewsGuard was awarded a grant through the Small Business Innovation and Research program, which funds early-stage companies to develop products and technologies that can be helpful for government,” NewsGuard announced in its 2021 Social Impact Report. “Under the grant,” the report explained, “NewsGuard plans to further develop the Misinformation Fingerprints tool and test the effectiveness of the Fingerprints in detecting state-sponsored disinformation campaigns.”

Federal records show the Department of Defense funded the Small Business Innovation and Research program’s award of nearly $750,000 to NewsGuard for the further development and testing of the Misinformation Fingerprints tool. And according to NewsGuard’s 2021 Social Impact Report, its “Misinformation Fingerprints” catalog traced “762 false narratives,” “providing one-of-a-kind tracking seeds for the AI tools used by defense industry clients.”

This whole transgender craze is right out of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: Even the Census Bureau Is Trying To Promote Radical Gender Ideology | The Heritage Foundation

The Census Bureau is asking Congress for $10 million to figure out how best to promote the fiction that sex is assigned at birth, rather than the scientific fact that it is present at conception. It is part of a new set of questions on sexual orientation and gender identity that the bureau wants to ask residents even as young as 15.

This expansion beyond race and ethnicity represents a new foray into sexual identity—one more step in the bureau’s decadeslong degeneration into an agency completely captured by the identity-mongering industry, and which produces the supposedly “victim” categories that the industry requires.

The Biden Administration Is Scheming To Take Your Kids Away (thefederalist.com)

Democrats have been suggesting taking children away from ‘non-affirming’ parents for years now, but Biden’s HHS is getting the ball rolling…The Biden administration has proposed new rules for foster care, which would treat any parent rejecting LGBT ideology as a child abuser.

What Kurt (and Sununu) Said

Posted: November 30, 2023 by datechguy in election 2024, elections, politics
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Back when I endorsed Ron DeSantis I explained that the primary reason I did was because he was the best choice this time around but that I was fine with Trump as my 2nd choice and considered him not only the best president of my 60 years but in the top 5 (4th) all time.

That’s gotten me a lot of hate from Only Trumpers who don’t seem to get that picking DeSantis over Trump for 2024 is not saying something bad about him any more that taking Musial over Williams means that Teddy ballgame stunk.

But I don’t think I can express my feelings on the matter better than Kurt Schlichter who feelings on Trump mirror my own to wit:

Let’s examine why Trump can’t win. Here’s the big reason: About 53% of American voters hate him. They shouldn’t, not only because he was a generally good president but because you are not voting for Chief Pal but Chief Executive. I think his nickname is embarrassingly stupid, and I am bored by his social media rants, but neither matter. Will he kill our enemies, pump the economy, and own the libs? Yes, yes and yes. I support Ron DeSantis because I think he’s more likely to win in general and because he’s more ruthlessly conservative, but if Trump somehow wins, I will Lionel Richie it and party all night long. I think he’s got a 20% chance of winning, and I would be thrilled to be wrong.  If listening to a bunch of tubby doofuses with usernames like @MAGAStudBoy420 and avatars of 80s action movie heroes with their faces photoshopped in tweeting “I TOLD YOU SO!” for the next four years is the price for having a Republican win in 2024, I’ll happily pay it.

That’s pretty much it, but there is a slight bit of movement, at least in New Hampshire:

In a shocking turn of events, notoriously never-Trumper Gov. Chris Sununu (R-N.H.) admits he would vote for former President Trump over Biden in the upcoming 2024 election. 

During an interview with Puck News’s Tara Palmeri, Sununu– a notable Trump critic– hinted that he would swallow his pride and vote for the 45th president, noting he always votes Republican. 

I suspect the governor doesn’t bring all that many votes with him but it can’t hurt, but the important thing he said is actually this:

“The party that chooses to move on from Trump or Biden first wins,” the governor predicted. “If the Democrats choose before the Republicans to move on from Biden — before the Republicans choose to move on from Trump — Democrats will win. America is just looking for something new — a new generation, enough of this old, old-school crap; we need to move forward. And so any new candidate on either side is going to win this election.” 

This raises a good point. The biggest asset Trump has in a potential 2024 general election race is Joe Biden and his administration who are doing their best to move the NeverTrump vote toward swallowing their pride in 2024.

Me I’d just as soon nominate DeSantis and solve this problem before it comes but that leads to another question:

Both Kurt and I and have bluntly stated we’d vote for Trump and be delighted with a 2nd term, Governor Sununu has said so too (without the being delighted part) but if DeSantis actually wins in the primaries will the @MAGAStudBoy420TM crowd decide to take their balls and go home?

We shall see.

15 Thoughts on 15 Years of Blogging Under the Fedora. Thoughts 1 to 5 In the Beginning…

Posted: November 29, 2023 by datechguy in dablog
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Fifteen years ago this week this blog started as the Tech blog for HiWired the company I was working for and wrote the blog for went away. It was going to be the platform where I could talk about subjects that I couldn’t touch on the work blog.

Ironically that seemingly innocent decision has next to my marriage been one of the biggest pivots in my life.

Funny isn’t it

At the time this blog was started Obama had just been elected but not sworn in. I had a good job in my field, financial security and was about as secure as a person could be.

Within a year I was unemployed and unemployable in my field, and the blog that was going to be a pastime became a full time platform to write about things while I tried to find work during the Obama years.

It’s is 14 years later and my full time job which began as a temp position during the final year of Obama still doesn’t pay what I was making before Obama was sworn in and that’s unadjusted for inflation. Four years of Trump was not enough to counter 11 years of Biden and Obama.

The irony of course is all that extra time to write, read and blog led me to the great conflict between Little Green Footballs who I had read for a long time back when Charles Johnson was still sane and the person whose actions would have the greatest effect on my life since the birth of my final son. Robert Stacy McCain.

The conflict between Johnson and McCain can best be followed on Stacy’s old blog here here and here and it was because of that conflict that I contacted Mr. McCain to hear his side of the story:

The story of the phone call that followed is here.

In the end I became of one that group of conservative commentators banned by Charles but my association with Mr. McCain would lead to amazing things.

When the Scott Brown thing was going on, Stacy shook his tip jar to get the funds to come here and cover it. Still not having found a job I had no funds to offer but DaWife consented to letting Stacy stay here to cover the story and I became his driver.

Programming and engineering deal with reality and it was during that week that I learned the difference between commenting from afar and covering something in person.

One of the best posts I ever wrote was done at this time. Boston Berkshires and ‘Bama, the close:

She was a 50 something Coakley volunteer. As I greeted her she sat down in front of Au Bon Pain tired from her exertions and dismayed by the Brown supporters all around where she sat. She had been sent out because of fire regulations, I couldn’t see why she couldn’t be somehow accommodated. I discovered she had come to Massachusetts 15 years ago from her native state of Maryland and cheered the liberal policies that she so believed in that the state seemingly embraced. I asked her finally why she thought a state that had voted 69% for Kennedy and had so convincingly selected Martha Coakley in the primary could change so quickly?

She had her answer.

“The Brown people are a bunch of Redneck Teabaggers.” she proclaimed. “Massachusetts is Boston on one side, the Berkshires on the other with Alabama smack in the middle.” She said this with a bitterness and a contempt that she presumed I had shared since I was standing with the Coakley crowd for nearly my entire time.

At this moment Robert Stacy McCain emerged from Au Bon Pain with the coffee that is the Gasoline of his engine I wished her well and excused myself knowing that my experience of 46 years in that middle of her adopted state would be no match for the comfortably bigoted fiction with which she consoled herself, even if I was inclined to be so un-gallant as to try

The campaign cumulated with my first official set of press credentials when Stacy, Dan Riehl and myself entered the Scott Brown victory party, each of us wearing one of my fedoras

That’s where I met Ace of Spades, Pam Gellar, Roxeanne De Luca Carl Cameron and got my first condescending reaction from a member of the MSM but most importantly it’s where I learned this about the press:

While most of the reporter types were busy talking to themselves, I was interviewing the waitstaff. Why? Because they were the only voters in the room! I talked to more than a dozen of them and got great information on all kinds of things. It speaks volumes that a room full of reporters didn’t think of doing this.

What I didn’t realize at the time is that it wasn’t a question of them thinking of doing it, it was that their narratives were already written. But what I also didn’t know is this tendency to talk to normal people would be the basis for the event that made this more than a one off.

6-10 on Friday

The bumpy road ahead in Israel

Posted: November 28, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

After reporting on the Middle East for many years, I realize how difficult it is to find any lasting solutions. Also, predictions about the region are about as accurate and useful as those of the talking heads paraded on national television.

But here are some background and thoughts about the road ahead.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which control Gaza, are vicious organizations. The Palestinian Authority, which rules part of the West Bank, is corrupt. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is inept.

The leadership of all three governments must go.

Hamas came to the forefront in 2006 when it split from the Palestinian Authority, which was formed in the 1990s to rule over parts of the West Bank and Gaza. Many Palestinians voted against the leadership of the PA, which was controlled by the Fatah branch of the Palestine Liberation Organization, because of widespread corruption. Yasser Arafat, the leader of both the PLO and Fatah, had died two years earlier, and no one could manage the Palestinian factions. Since 2006, no elections have happened as the rift between the West Bank and Gaza widened.

How to get rid of Hamas and Islamic Jihad? The Israeli armed forces have pushed through northern Gaza, and most of the Palestinian leadership has fled to southern Gaza on the border with Egypt. As part of the hostage and prisoner exchange, Israel must insist that the Palestinian leaders leave Gaza for other Arab countries. That happened, for example, in 1982 after Israel forced the PLO leaders to leave Lebanon for Tunisia. After that, the people of Gaza must have an internationally supervised election to choose a new government.

How to get rid of the current leadership of the PA? Again, internationally supervised elections may be the answer. Although Arafat had many detractors, he was able to keep the diverse Palestinian groups going in roughly the same direction for more than 30 years. Part of the problem with the PA was that much of the power rested with those Palestinians who lived outside of Israel and returned in the 1990s while those inside Israel’s boundaries held little influence.

Unfortunately, democracy isn’t a mainstay of Palestinian philosophy. But the current leaders have failed to improve the lot of the average Palestinian and should be held accountable.

Then there’s Netanyahu, who has been prime minister three times for 16 years, bringing a hardline attitude toward Palestinians, ignoring most of the agreements made in the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, and increasing tensions within Israel itself. Moreover, his government’s failure to anticipate the Hamas attacks on October 7 should make all Israelis doubt his leadership.

Unfortunately, Israel’s electoral system favors small groups of voters who hold extreme views on both the right and left. Citizens vote for their preferred party and not for any individual candidates. The 120 seats in the Knesset are then assigned proportionally to each party, provided that the party vote count meets the 3.25% electoral threshold. As a result of the low threshold, a typical Knesset has 10 or more factions represented. With so many parties, it is nearly impossible for one party or faction to govern alone, let alone win a majority. In the government before the war, Netanyahu had to woo the conservative religious factions, for example, to create a coalition.

With the ongoing war, the government has the support of nearly all parties. But that support will quickly dissolve when Israeli citizens and politicians look more closely at the once-vaunted intelligence agencies that missed the Hamas strategy. Fortunately, Netanyahu will likely be sent packing.

Neither Hamas nor the Israeli government will be seen as victors in the current war. That’s usually an opportunity for some serious peace negotiations, as happened after the 1973 and 1982 wars, but all sides will need new leaders and fresh ideas to create significant changes.

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