Archive for the ‘News/opinion’ Category

Five Instant One Line Time/Greta Thoughts UPDATE Bonus Thought!

Posted: December 11, 2019 by datechguy in culture, News/opinion
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If you thought Greta was insufferable before can you imagine how she’ll be now?

This is likely the 1st time in Time’s history that a person who has actually had no impact on the world, nor is likely to, has been chosen as Person of the year.

Presuming she doesn’t know it now, the day she realizes this is all a con will be her 1st chance to actually be worthy of being named person of the year.

Alas I will likely not be alive to interview Greta in thirty years to ask her why we are all still here.

Finally nothing Confirms Impeachment as a bigger Dud than Greta Thunburg being picked by Time as Person of the Year.

UPDATE Bonus Thought:

This is the 2nd time in my life (the 1st being when Obama won the Nobel Prize) that I woke up, saw a news report and thought I was still asleep.

Saudis in Florida or Palestinians in Israel It’s the same Inconvenient Reality

Posted: December 7, 2019 by datechguy in Israel, middle east, News/opinion
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“But,” said Moses to God, “when I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ if they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what am I to tell them?”

God replied, “I am who am.” Then he added, “This is what you shall tell the Israelites: I AM sent me to you.“

Exodus 3:13-14

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.

Richard P. Feynman

One of the most profound things about God is his name, which is I AM. God gives his name not as a conventional name but as a statement of fact. Some might deny that I exist, but I AM. This is why when Christ uses the term both to the crowds and at the time of his arrest it is so profound, you may not know what you are doing but I AM.

In a non-theological context it’s an excellent statement of how reality actually works, it doesn’t matter how much you spin, it doesn’t matter how much you pretend, it doesn’t matter even if you change the way people behave in the face of a reality, reality IS.

There is no better example of this then how the left reacts to Islamic terror in general and Palestinian Terror in particular.

I had a long discussion on the subject on twitter yesterday with folk dedicated to the proposition that Israel is an oppressor of the poor Palestinians who simply want peace this exchange was typical:

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And then there is this:

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The denial here is familiar to anyone who lived thorough the cold war. It rather ironically sounds like the East Germans who publicly declared how wonderful their nation while putting up a wall to keep people in and shooting those who try to cross it.

That’s the double irony of course, because since Israel built their wall in the west bank terror attacks from that direction dropped like a rock. Or hat once Israel withdrew from Gaza it immediately went from a greenhouse of plants to a base for terror.

The innocence of the Palestinians is a safe thing to claim if you are a leftwing jew in congress or in the Labor party, but Jews living in Israel don’t have the luxury of such a pretense as it can be fatal.

And that of course brings us the terror attack in Florida:

Four people are dead including the suspect after an active shooting incident at a naval base in Pensacola, Florida, police said.

The shooter was identified as Mohammed Alshamrani, a Saudi national [oops, I guessed wrong — RSM] and member of the country’s air force who was in the U.S. for flight training, law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation told ABC News. Investigators are trying to determine whether the shooting was terror-related, the officials said.

Authorities responded to reports of a shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola at 6:51 a.m. on Friday, officials said. ATF and FBI also responded to the scene.

emphasis via RSM

All the emphasis via RSM who says the following:

Y’know, if this shooter had been some kind of white nationalist alt-right extremist, CNN would be 24/7 on this story all weekend, and every liberal blog would be blaming Trump for this terrorist act. Instead what you will see is that the mainstream media and liberal bloggers will quickly bury this story, except perhaps to call out “right-wingers” as “racists” for daring to suggest that some Muslims might be dangerous.

The fact that six Saudi’s were arrested including three that filmed the attack doesn’t matter. As far as the press is concerned this is a one off incident, a one day story and says nothing about Islam.

However the victims of this attack are no less dead and no amount of pretense will keep the next set of Americans alive.

I’ll close with two more tweets that illustrate this reality:

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Under The Fedora on Monday “Moderate” Opinion, Why Dems Attack, Selling China Rice, The Church following the rules, and a Pat’s still bring fear

Posted: December 1, 2019 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, business, culture, economy, media, News/opinion, nfl, politics, Sports, trade, under the fedora
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If you want to know why people don’t give “Moderate” Muslims the benefit of the doubt this is why

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It wasn’t long ago when such a piece would be too fringe even for the Guardian.

I think this tweet is the single best political justification for the media/left’s actions on Trump that I’ve read

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if you are the party out of power looking to regain it the last thing you want is for the people being “the happiest they’ve ever been” when your foes are in charge.

At the Doug Ross Journal (where I found the above tweet) I saw something that jumped out at me.

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It turns out this isn’t a new story:

The U.S. can now ship rice to China for the first time ever, signaling a win for President Donald Trump in his efforts to reshape the trade relationship just after talks between the nations broke down Wednesday.
Officials from the nations finalized a protocol to allow for the first-ever American shipments, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Thursday in a statement. China is the world’s biggest rice consumer, importer and producer.

That’s from 2017 and this is from Feb

While there’s no guarantee, farmers and millers are increasingly optimistic because the Chinese ban has been lifted, a handful of U.S. rice mills have been cleared for export, and China is looking to make the Trump administration happy with commodity purchases.
It was in December that China took a major step toward making that happen, changing its customs regs and officially lifting its ban on U.S. rice. Separately, China has now officially cleared seven of the 34 U.S. rice mills that USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has asked China to certify under the country’s sanitary and phytosanitary regulations, U.S. industry and government officials tell Agri-Pulse. The remaining mills are still under Chinese consideration, sources say.

Oddly I don’t remember reading it before. Remember Media Bias isn’t just what gets reported, it’s what gets promoted.

Apparently a judge in Michigan believes it’s discrimination when a catholic priest decides not to enable her in a state of mortal sin to commit further mortal sin.

Judge Sara Smolenski, the chief judge of Michigan’s 63rd District Court, received a call from the priest at St. Stephen Catholic Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, requesting she not attend communion.
“This is not about me against the priest, and it’s not really me against the church,” Smolenski told CNN. “This feels like selective discrimination. Why choose gay people, and why now?”
Smolenski, 62, said that the Rev. Scott Nolan, the priest at St. Stephen for approximately three years, called her on November 23 and told her, “‘It was good to see you in church on Sunday. Because you and Linda are married in the state of Michigan, I’d like you to respect the church and not come to communion.’”

Actually given the Pope we have the idea of a church actually enforcing the rules of the church might actually be newsworthy.

Finally thanks to my injury I was able to watch the entire Patriots game this weekend and see them one guy keeping his balance on an onside kick away from a shot at yet another miracle comeback.

It’s a testament to what Brady has done in the past that when they managed to score the 2nd of the three scores they needed for a chance that even with under a minute to go and no time outs kicking the ball that you could hear double in the voices of the announcers in a game that should have been over and feel fear in the stadium after Edelman caught that touchdown, but in reality the Texan response was classic Patriot defense by a former Pats defensive coordinator, leave the other team just enough space and just enough time to get close but still lose.

Evanston, Illinois’ use of weed taxes for reparations won’t solve deeper problems

Posted: December 1, 2019 by John Ruberry in News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

If you want to immerse yourself with sanctimonious leftists then I suggest you drop everything you’re doing and head to Evanston, Illinois, which borders Chicago and is the home of Northwestern University. It’s located two towns from the suburb I live in.

I did so once at a meeting of the Evanston Democrats.

In 2016 Donald Trump gained just seven percent of the vote in Evanston.

Despite being run by liberals for decades, Evanston, the onetime home of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, will divert all of the sales tax revenue from soon-to-be-open legal marijuana shops for slavery and discrimination reparations.

Illinois of course was not a slave state. Ironically, one of my great grandfathers, Joseph Ruberry, a Civil War veteran who served on the Union side, is buried in Evanston. Also located six-feet under in Evanston is common sense.

In 2000, the African American population was 22 percent, now it’s about 17 percent. One goal of these reparation payments is to address this decline. About $500,000 to $750,000 is expected to be collected each year, which won’t be enough to pay for a stately home on Evanston’s lakefront.

In short, these reparation payments won’t make much of a difference.

As for the decline in Evanston’s black population, that’s in line with a similar fall off in Chicago. Other things are at work. While not as severe as its much larger neighbor, Evanston has a gang problem. Statewide, Illinois is becoming a difficult place to earn a living. Corruption, government incompetence, and unfunded public worker pension obligations are a millstone fighting prosperity.

While not as high as Chicago’s, suburban Cook County, where Evanston sits, has one of the steepest sales tax rates in the nation. Illinois just increased its income tax rate–many states have no state income tax. The Prairie State’s gasoline tax is the third-highest in America.

But liberal politicians love taxes–it gives them more power.

Here’s my prediction: In spite of these upcoming reparations payments, the black population of Evanston will continue to fall.

Of course leftists in Evanston a decade or so from now will argue they have another solution. And whatever that will be–it will involve more taxpayer money.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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