Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

A Funny Vic Power Story that Says a Lot About How Far We’ve Come

Posted: February 18, 2022 by datechguy in baseball, culture
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My wife bought me both Bill James Historical Abstracts for Christmas the 1985 and the 2003 edition. The newer one had a story about Vic Power the premiere defensive first baseman of the late 50’s and early 60’s that made me laugh out loud and when I repeated it told a story about how far we’ve come on race in the US.

Power was a very dark skinned Puerto Rican player who came up in the early 50’s just as the integration of baseball was taking place. He as I noted (and as his stats at baseball reference.com can tell you) was a spectacular fielding first baseman winning gold gloves every year from 1958-1964 a six time all star in four years (some years two AS games were played) who could hit a bit often in the top ten of hitting categories and leading the league in triples once.

He was also rather outspoken and outgoing and was considered by racists of the time “an uppity nigger” (FYI Bill James notes this reference without spelling the actual word saying “uppity n-word”. I don’t believe in this N-word bullshit. I prefer to quote the actual offensive words being used, even that most offensive of words: “Semprini” , because it’s proper for us to see things as they actually were. If you are offended by their use at that time, good you should be. If you are offended by me quoting said offensive language to illustrate it, may I suggest there are plenty of other blogs out there for the weak of heart to read, but I digress…) but Power didn’t care not let such people stop him. A great illustration of this came in a story that James told of him.

He stopped by a restaurant in Syracuse to eat and the waiter walked up to him nervously saying to him: “I’m sorry sir we don’t serve colored people in this restaurant.” Power didn’t miss a beat in his reply: “That’s all right, I don’t eat colored people.”

James doesn’t relate what happened next but I laughed so loud & hard when I read it that all the people in the lunch room turned to stare, but the most interesting thing came when I was heading back from break toward my work station.

I passed by the guards station and the guard on duty was a thirty year old fellow who I knew to be a baseball fan. I told him the story and he smiled at the punch line but it was his reaction to the words of the waiter that struck me.

It was utter amazement. I’m almost sixty and while not old enough to remember ever hearing that in person I’m old enough for such a thing to be not unfamiliar to me, but to him the very idea that a person might choose to deny service to a person because of their race was so foreign and unthinkable to him that he just couldn’t process it.

I can think of no more concrete sign that we have really moved forward on race than that.

Joe Rogan, Salman Rushdie and Chancellor Kent or what freedom is.

Posted: February 9, 2022 by datechguy in culture, opinion/news
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I’m old enough to remember when the Fatwa was put on Salman Rushdie for his book The Satanic Verses.

Unlike today when phrases like “freedom of speech” are routinely redefined to suit whatever agenda the left happens to have that day in 1989 the idea of the A death sentence being publicly demanded for an author for writing a book a particular Ayatollah didn’t like was rather new and there were plenty of free speech advocates who loudly proclaimed such actions a travesty.

Much to my shock at the time there was also considerable pushback from some in the west those who attacked Rushdie. It was the beginning of what we are seeing today.

At the time I was outraged (and still am at the bounty still on his head) and considered buying the book in response to said threats. but then it hit me:

What is the difference between buying a book I don’t want in response to Islamic threats and not buying a book I do want in response to Islamic threats?

The answer: THERE ISN’T ONE. Either way I would be allowing a bunch of savage barbarians to drive me to an action I had no interest in doing. The essence of freedom is the ability to do something if one chooses or not. So I asked myself a key question: If there was no FATWA on Rushdie would I had any interest in buying this book?

The answer is and remains no.

I haven’t bought the book, I have no interest in buying the book and I don’t see myself buying the book in the future…

…but I have the RIGHT an the ability to buy the book and that right is worth fighting for.

And that brings us to Joe Rogan.

I don’t have a subscription to Spotify and never had plans to get one before the Joe Rogan business.

I am not one of the millions of subscribers who listen to Joe Rogan. I’ve listed to a clip here and there but I have little interest in his podcast in general and had no plans to listen to jump in and start listening.

When the attempt to censor his came out I was as you might guess outraged. I don’t like the idea of people trying to force someone off the air because they don’t like what he’s saying or who he is interviewing.

You can’t have freedom of speech and if you don’t have freedom to listen. I think the attempt to take away that ability to listen is unamerican totalitarian and frankly evil and the people who are pushing that need to be fought because just like redefining words didn’t stop with “marriage” censoring speech and the ability to listen won’t stop with Rogan.

All that being said you can’t have freedom to listen without the freedom to not listen and as much as I want to make sure he has a platform so the people who want to hear him can do so I have no interest in joining that crowd because I freely choose not to.

Some might object saying that is it my moral duty to listen to jump in, perhaps I will like it, perhaps I would be this harkins back to one of the best statements in history concerning this type of thing.

Chancellor James Kent, author of Kent’s Commentaries, and one of the most influential American
legal minds of all time, had a personal story that illustrates how foreign this impulse is to American law. According to Kent’s grandson: [He was] waited upon by a temperance committee and urged to give his authority and sanction to the principles and aims of a mass meeting by adding his name to the list of
those who had pledged themselves not to use intoxicating liquor, being unduly pressed after his first polite negative, he made the following reply, declining the request:

“Gentlemen, I refuse to sign any pledge. I never have been drunk, and, by the blessing of God, I never will get drunk, but I have a constitutional privilege to get drunk, and that privilege I will not sign away.”‘

Kent never had the inclination to grant legislative authority over his sobriety.

I have no intention of granting either my political enemies or my political allies the authority to determine what can can’t or what I must listen to.

If some day Rogan has a guest I’m really interested in and I choose to jump in or even subscribe, fine but nobody is going to make that judgement but me.

THAT’s freedom.

I’m Old Enough to Remember When the idea that the Government Was Hooking People of Color on Drugs Was a Conspiracy Theory

Posted: February 7, 2022 by datechguy in culture
Tags: , ,

Ten Years ago when I woke up to the news that Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for basically being Barack Obama I though that I was still asleep and just dreaming.

It’s happened again, but instead of a silly dream it’s apparently a nightmare:

“The Biden administration is set to fund the distribution of crack pipes to drug addicts as part of its plan to advance ‘racial equity.’ The $30 million grant program, which closed applications Monday and will begin in May, will provide funds to nonprofits and local governments to help make drug use safer for addicts.

“Included in the grant, which is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, are funds for ‘smoking kits/supplies.’ A spokesman for the agency told the Washington Free Beacon that these kits will provide pipes for users to smoke crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine, and ‘any illicit substance.’”

Four thoughts

  1. If this had been a Trump program the moment it had been proposed every media outlet in the nation would have been screaming it was a conspiracy to keep people of color hooked on crack, but instead we are only hearing about this after the grant program had closed applications for the funds.
  2. I maintain that the last election was stolen and the information that continues to get around the media’s blockade increasingly supports that idea and Donald Trump did better with the black community then other GOP members, nevertheless the Black Community overwhelmingly supported this administrations election therefore I don’t want to hear a damn thing ever again about the circle of poverty and addition when said community is aiding an abetting such a scheme.
  3. What makes this even worse is the supposed “leaders” of the Black community in congress and in the communities did not raise holy hell over this program and the cementing of a permanent addicted black underclass whose addictions will be supported by government funds. This tells you all you need to know about what the so called black leadership thinks about the black community. Remember this is being done under the guise of “racial equality”.
  4. Finally I must commend the various drug gangs and cartels on their ability to normalize themselves within the American system. They apparently have used their influence and cash to lobby and/or contribute through the political system to such a degree that a program whose very suggestion would have been condemned by members of both parties in the 60’s is now going though without a whimper. These guys might be evil but nobody can say they’re not smart.

You wanted a post Christian society, you’ve got it.

The Key Line From the Ironic Story of Charlotte Bellis That You Might Have Missed (and the obvious question)

Posted: January 31, 2022 by datechguy in covid, culture

By now you might have seen via the Washington Examiner the story of Charlotte Bellis who is a pregnant journalist from New Zeeland who was covering the Taliban for Al Jazeera. found to her utter surprise that she was pregnant and has been unable to get back into her native country for the birth of her daughter despite being vaccinated and boosted due to the stupid COVID rules her country has adopted.

The irony of course being that after leaving Qatar because it’s illegal to be pregnant and unmarried (oddly enough no protests by western feminists at the Qatari embassy, unexpectedly of course) and having to leave Belgium where her partner and father of her child NY Time Photo Journalist named Jim lives because foreigners can only stay there three months out of every six where could they go where they both had visa’s for?

The problem was the only other place we had visas to live was Afghanistan. I organised a meeting with senior Taliban contacts, “you know how I am dating Jim from The New York Times, but we’re not married, right?” “Yes, yes we respect you both and you are foreigners, that is up to you.” I nervously continued. “Well, I am pregnant and I can’t get back into New Zealand. If I come to Kabul, will we have a problem?” One translated for the other and they smiled. “No we’re happy for you, you can come and you won’t have a problem. Just tell people you’re married and if it escalates, call us. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”

Yes they were welcomed into Afghanistan while New Zeeland has continued to reject them despite the bad PR this is giving the country and the massive amount of paperwork hoops they have navigated to be rejected.

We got letters from New Zealand obstetricians and medical experts to confirm the dangers of giving birth in Afghanistan and the impact of high stress during pregnancy. We included ultrasounds, letters in support of our relationship, bank statements, our Covid vaccinations including boosters, evidence of my resignation and our travel itinerary since. Between Jim and I, we submitted 59 documents to MIQ and Immigration NZ, including a cover letter written by our lawyer summarising our situation.

Vup they’re vaxxed AND Boosted and they’re still not letting then in. That’s a pretty good hook to show the COVID insanity irony that’s sweeping the west.

In my opinion however there is a bigger irony to this story, one that you would not know if you had only read the Examiner piece but is hidden in plain sight at the very start of her piece in the New Zeeland Herald that the Examiner story is based on:

For years I had been told by doctors I would never have children. I threw myself into my career and made my peace with it.

Hold on, do you mean to say that her doctors, those people trusted with diagnosing illness and giving advice on survival, extensively trained in the west with degrees from universities, licensed by the state and the final arbiters of what the “Science” says concerning these matters were WRONG about her ability to have children, and not just one doctor, MULTIPLE doctors over the course of years had told this young woman that is was not possible to have children to the point where she had to mentally make piece with it got this completely and utterly wrong?

Did they get their degrees at the same university as Fauci?

So think about it New Zeeland is keeping her out of the country of her birth because of COVID rules Rules supposedly based on science and the advice of Doctors…

…which are the same folks that insisted for years that this woman was not capable of having a child.

THAT is the ultimate irony here that lays waste to the COVID madness but there is another irony that is illustrated in this piece that exposes a hole in western culture.

This lady and the NYT guy Jim clearly like each other. They got together in Belgium, they got together in Afghanistan and he was trying to get into New Zeeland to be with her at the birth of their child. They clearly value each other and the child they will have together they child she never thought she could have. The child she calls a “miracle”. As a devout Roman Catholic an obvious question came to me

Why didn’t they just get married?

Think about it for a second. If they had gotten married she could have kept her job and her health insurance and not had to start on this three country quest in the first place. Instead they are both jumping though multiple hoops through three countries as they attempt to get into a 4th when all of this could have been avoided if the these two people who at the very least seem to like each other VERY much simply said “I Do”.

Some say: Well marriage is just a piece of paper, well so are the visas and forms they are filling out to try to get back into New Zeeland and they didn’t have a problem with that did they? It would be no more complicated being married with a child holding jobs that send them around the world then it would be being unmarried with a child doing the same thing.

It’s moments like this when the advice my father gave me and that I’ve given my sons really rings out: “If she’s good enough to sleep with, she’s good enough to marry.”

Personally I think this miracle child is worth it.

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