Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

Setting the captives free

by baldilocks

A guy I follow on Twitter pointed out something that has been in the back of my mind ever since 2016 when Donald Trump asked black Americans what we had to lose by supporting him in his presidential bid.

Over 90% of black voters voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but so what? Black people are only 13% of the US population.

(By the way, over 92 million eligible voters did not vote in the 2016 presidential election! I bet that number will be smaller this year.)

The point is that Donald Trump did not need black voters to win in 2016 and does not need us this year. So why does he help and support black Americans? Why does he want us on the Trump Train?

There was a lot of predictable race-baiting last week when President Trump pardoned Bernard Kerik, Eddie DeBartolo, Jr. and granted clemency to Rod Blagojevich. All three are white men and as their stories on were all the talk on Twitter, Chelsea Handler said this.

When people have a caricature formed in their minds, they are unable to see solid reality right in front of their faces. Social Media exacerbates this phenomenon because people want to be part of that which seems popular. Conversely, people hate to be contradicted and hate being wrong – although both happen all the time.  I remember the first time someone tried to explicitly shame me for predicting something that didn’t pan out.

“I was wrong.”
“YOU WERE WRONG! Aren’t you ashamed?”
“Why should I be ashamed of being wrong? I’m not God; therefore, I make mistakes.”

Yes, it really happened like that.

Anyway, the reality is that President Trump pardoned and granted clemency to many others. And many of these others are black.

Here’s a sample.

Angela Stanton-King

When best-selling author and BET reality TV star Angela Stanton-King received word on Tuesday that President Trump had just granted her a full pardon, she was literally overcome.

“I just started hyperventilating right at the airport,” she told Newsmax. “I was just crying like a baby. People thought someone had died.” (…)

For Stanton-King, the pardon represented another amazing chapter in her life’s extraordinary  journey. After surviving a troubled childhood involving abuse, she got caught up in a stolen vehicle ring, and received a prison sentence. She was released in 2005.

“When I was released from prison 15 years ago,” she told Newsmax in an exclusive interview, “I was given a $25 check and a bus ticket and told to start my life over.

“I came home to four children, and I came home to two tombstones,” she said. “My mother was in one and my grandmother was in the other. (…)

Stanton-King defied the odds. She went on to write a best-selling book about her journey, Life of a Real Housewife. The book launched her career as a publishing entrepreneur, and that led to a big role in a BET reality TV show. She also founded the American King Foundation, a nonprofit focused on criminal-justice reform and reuniting families that have been separated by mass incarceration.

In the comments to Handler’s Tweet, many others point to the error in her implication, but it’s a safe bet that she will block it all out and pretend that it didn’t happen all the way up to the next time she decides to point the racism finger at the president or at conservatives in general. She is what she is. Like-minded politicos and media professionals will do the same.

President Trump knows this, but he still keeps reaching out to fellow Americans who are black. Why? I think I have an answer.

What do all of these newly-freed former prisoners – white, black, brown, etc. – have in common besides being mostly non-violent offenders? It’s this: they all hit bottom and are determined to climb back up; they are intent on becoming better people than the persons they were. More often than not, someone saw their efforts and gave them a hand up.

They are all looking to improve themselves the right way.

That’s a very American trait which President Trump appreciates. If you ask me, he doesn’t care whether or not any of these people vote for him – many of them probably won’t be able to anyway.

What he is doing: using his power and authority to make it easier for the repentant to keep walking in the right direction instead of reverting to their old selves and old lives.

He’s inviting all of them – great and small — to be a part of the American Dream, their birthright. He’s inviting them to rebuild their lives and do their small part in making America great again.

Black, white, brown, red, yellow, they already lost the most precious thing they had to lose: freedom. Now they have it back and the president is just trying to help them hold onto it.

Do I think that the percentage of black American voters who vote for Donald Trump in 2020 will be larger than in 2016? Probably, but not by much.

Then again, I could be wrong.

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng has been blogging since 2003 as baldilocks. Her older blog is here.  She published her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game in 2012.

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One of the things that made a local butcher shop special was not just the fresh meat cut the way you wanted it by people who knew what you wanted almost before you ordered it, but was the all the people in line with you and behind the counter.

Fridays were always busy, people had been paid or were buying for the weekend, lots was going on and when you stopped down you were bound to see people you knew.

Now on weekdays, particularly in the morning this was always true. There were folks who would stop down daily for whatever they were cooking or just to visit. It was much like a barber shop. Mike and the team would be working or orders or pre-made foods or any of the daily grind that went on while folks would gather and talk both to them and each other.

I suspect that Saturday will be too busy for this kind of this and today will likely be hopping too, but it will be nice to stop down and see a few of these folks one more time.

Am I the only person sick of seeing Mike Bloomberg ads that I can’t skip every time I want to play a video on YouTube?

I’ll wager that a lot of people a lot younger than me are sick of them too and that will not bode well come primary day.


There is one advantage to the “Bloomberg Everywhere ads”. They have replaced the “Steyer everywhere” ads that were bombarding us for a few months.

By my count to date those ads have earned Steyer nearly 1 delegate at the Democrat convention.

I guess now we will see the difference between a multibillionaire and a billionaire in action.


President Trump’s showing in NH is all the more impressive when you consider these factors.

  1. There was no question as to the result
  2. There was every incentive to GOP voters to cross over to vote Dem while almost no incentive for Dem voters to do the opposite
  3. His GOP opponent was not only the governor of a neighboring state but was supported by a former recent NH GOP chair.
  4. Has had three years of unrelenting media opposition on all the media in the area
  5. He lost the state last time around

This doesn’t bode will for the left when you consider that he won without NH last time. President Trump doesn’t believe in the prevent defense.


Speaking of states President Trump lost last time I thought this story might be of some interest:

Virginia state Democrats on Tuesday stormed out of the House chamber after a local black minister led the body in an opening prayer that openly and strongly condemned abortion and gay marriage.

Rev. Robert M. Grant Jr., who pastors The Father’s Way Church in Warrenton, used his few moments at the microphone addressing the newly Democrat-controlled House of Delegates to decry abortion, advocate for traditional marriage, and warn against God’s wrath if the state legislature goes against Biblical principles.

I’m old enough to remember when there would be universal outrage if a bunch of Democrats in the former capital of the Confederacy walked out on a prayer by a Black Pastor, particularly during “Black History Month”.

But we are in the age of the yellow dog media where even Governor Blackface/Klanhood is forgiven by the national media as long as you proudly wear the D after your name.


Finally if you haven’t heard about the anti-Trump fanatic who drove into a GOP registration tent trying to run folks down earlier this week , it’s likely for the same reason you haven’t heard about the guy with a cane sword swinging it at Trump supporters or a former Cop who was assaulted at his birthday party because his hat looked like a Trump hat.

As long as the assaliant is a Trump oppoenent and the target a Trump supporter as far as the national media is concerned it’s not news.

Now if one of the people threatened pulled out a gun and shot the assailant in any of these cases. I have a feeling it would be promoted everywhere as the next Kent State.

Unexpectedly of course

A few days Ago Stacy McCain noted that the real news in this piece linked by Ed Driscoll was the Communist insurgency and death squads in the Philippines where things were so bad the people voted for someone who would wipe them out using extralegal methods.

Now all of this is important but I want to note one other point that is being missed here:

As Sherwood-O’Regan said, “As we grow and climate change becomes a harsher reality, privileged activists need to learn to de-centre themselves and meaningfully support Indigenous, disabled, queer, global south, POC, and other marginalized people who are on the frontlines 

That these activists are a bunch of privileged bigots is not a big surprise because you’re basically dealing with a movement that came from the Green parties (high funded by the Soviets during the cold war) who were supported by a lot of bureaucrats hoping to cash but let me ask one question that seems to be missing here.

If this person actually believes that “Climate Change” is a danger to the planet and that millions will die from it, why would you be more worried about the ethnic makeup of the leadership since if they fail, it won’t matter since everybody would die anyway?

Now if you think these European voices are ineffective that’s fine, if you think they are not making headway that’s fine too, but if, as you say, we have to act NOW then the top concern has to be effectiveness not diversity.

Either you out to save the world or you’re not.

Now as I see this for the grift that it is, I don’t particularly care one way or the other about the feelings involved here, but I think it’s interesting to see where the priorities of all these folks are.