Archive for the ‘News/opinion’ Category

Why doesn’t the left cheer when they’re wrong about bad things too?

Posted: October 20, 2019 by datechguy in culture, dablog, education, media, News/opinion, Uncomfortable Truths

A few days ago I lead with a post about some apparent insanity in a school district in NH that I had seen at a site I frequent. Turns out the info in question was incorrect & I missed an email warning me of same so the post in question went up as scheduled.

When I saw the email I added an update as follows:

Update: Got a heads up that suggests there might be less to this than meets the eye, While that might be embarrassing for me it would be delightful as it would indicate that insanity does not reign at the school in question and that’s more important that a post getting hits. I don’t believe in pulling posts as it changes the record so for now I’m going to put the base post under a “more” tag until I get more data. For now we’ll wait and see and if a correction is warranted I’ll update the post with it.

Long story short the info was incorrect the author apologized to the people in question. I provided a 2nd update joining in said apology and rejoicing that the school in question was not in fact insane. As it’s likely who saw the 1st post but might never check it again a fresh post linking to the mea culpa was the proper and honorable thing to do which was the primary reason for this post.

Then it hit me. The reason why I wrote the base post was I don’t want public schools to be acting insane and the purpose of said post was to hold up a light to such behavior to stop this school & others from acting that way.

Thus when it turned out this school wasn’t doing so I was very happy regardless of any embarrassment from an erroneous post because my primary goal is schools not acting insane.

This is not the case with the Democrat/left media. Think about it for a second

  • The media/left went all in on the idea of a Supreme Court Nominee being a sexual predator, then the evidence showed the accusations were not credible
  • The media/left went all in on the idea that the President of the United State was colluding with Russia to steal an election, and even with an independent council, a staff full of partisans, the assistant AG working against the president it turned out their suspicions were unfounded.
  • The media/left went all in as various colleges being bastions of “rape culture with claims that as many as 25% of the women attending were assaulted but it turned out that the methodology of the studies and the definitions of assault were so stretched as to be meaningless.
  • The media/left went all in on various race hoaxes being furious that various individuals, some involving celebs, particularly at colleges were a bunch of racists and white supremacists, yet over and over these turned out to be hoaxes.

Now supposedly the left and media and the guests they brought in did this because they didn’t want a serial sexual predator on the supreme courts or a President conspiring with Russia, colleges being bastions of rape, gay black TV starts threatened with nooses or racist acts being committed all over the nation. That being the case all of these things turning out to be false should be cause for celebration for the left who can breathe a sigh of relief that none of these things that they considered beyond the pale had happened.

Yet instead their reaction has been at best been too ignore when such hoaxes are exposed as such or at worst to continue to insist they are true despite evidence to the contrary.

Now if you work under the assumption that the goal of the media/left is to prevent such behavior then you might be utterly confused at this reaction as it makes no logical sense.

However if you work from the assumption that the primary goal of the left/media is POWER and or WEALTH and that in search of said power & wealth the events and actions that they supposedly deplore are used to generate both the funds to gain them and the means to retain them, well it makes perfect sense.

To them the the only “crisis” in government is when they don’t control it and the only “abuse” of power is if it not in their hands. Work under that assumption and all the left/media does and you will never be shocked or surprised by anything they do ever again.

The End of My Sojourn in CA May Be Near

Posted: October 19, 2019 by julietteochieng in immigration, local, News/opinion, personal, politics, Uncomfortable Truths
Tags: , , , , ,

See the source image

Now they’re coming for the writers

by baldilocks

I’ve been saying to any who will listen that the goal of California’s Organized Left (OL) is to drive out the middle class. The OL’s dream population will consist of the rich and the servant class, with the latter being composed mostly of illegal aliens.

Here’s more evidence for my theory.

[Assembly Bill 5], which cracks down on companies — like ride-sharing giants Lyft and Uber — that misclassify would-be employees as independent contractors, has been percolating through the California legislative system for nearly a year. It codifies the 2018 Dynamex decision by the State Supreme Court while carving out some exemptions for specific professions.

But the exemption for freelance journalists — which some have only just learned about via their colleagues, press reports, social networks and/or spirited arguments with the bill’s author on Twitter — contains what some say is a potentially career-ending requirement for a writer to remain a freelancer: If a freelance journalist writes for a magazine, newspaper or other entity whose central mission is to disseminate the news, the law says, that journalist is capped at writing 35 “submissions” per year per “putative employer.” At a time when paid freelance stories can be written for a low end of $25 and high end of $1 per word, some meet that cap in a month just to make ends meet. (…)

Many publications that employ California freelancers aren’t based in the state and it’s not clear how AB 5 will affect them. Still, some are choosing to opt out entirely. Indeed, several freelance writers who spoke to THR say that various out-of-state employers — some with offices in California — have already told them they’re cutting ties with California freelancers. (…)

THR has additionally reviewed several job notices in transcription, blogging and SEO writing that have explicitly stated that California freelancers will not be considered.

Emphasis mine.

I write 104 blog posts a year, at minimum, for this site alone. We disseminate news.

A few months back, I got booted from one of my side hustles – transcription – because I live in CA. I didn’t understand why; now the picture is clear.

Ignore the what the OL says justifications are for the law and let me tell you what it really is.

Freelance writers – even itinerant “street artists” like me – are considered part of the middle class by the OL because we all have the potential of upward mobility and, most importantly, we cannot be controlled by an employer.

So, we have to submit, find a more “acceptable” line of work, or get out. It’s that simple.

By the way, you may have noticed that I didn’t factor the homeless into the OL’s desired population. That’s because they are merely a temporary tool to drive out us icky middle class undesirables.

California Governor Gavin Newsom and CA lawmakers enable the many repugnant practices of the chronically homeless, specifically things which can lead to death. Public defecation and opioid usage are chief among these and the OL hopes that these things will thin the herd once its usefulness has ended.

Ingeniously evil form of “ethnic” cleansing, no?

The law goes into effect on January 1. Time to start planning and praying.

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.

Follow Juliette on Facebook, Twitter, MeWe, Patreon and Social Quodverum.

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Life is Not Fair

Posted: October 15, 2019 by julietteochieng in News/opinion, Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

Hot News Flash
by baldilocks

Lebron James and Hunter Biden are rich and I am not.

And I have a raging case of writer’s block so go read this.

When Houston Rockets’ general manager Daryl Morey tweeted, “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong,” Communist China called a foul. Down came the tweet and Chinese state television axed two NBA exhibition games. NBA boss Adam Silver promptly announced, “We have great respect for the history and culture of China and hope sports and the NBA can be used as a unifying force to bridge cultural divides and bring people together.” Silver also barred NBA players then in China from speaking to the media.

For observers far and wide, particularly in embattled Hong Kong, it was a clear exhibition of China’s totalitarianism and a clear case of the NBA cowardly caving to China’s Communist dictatorship.

In the political, entertainment, and even the sports commentariat, many made that charge, but Golden State Warriors’ coach Steve Kerr said he had no comment on the “really bizarre international story,” and “a lot of us don’t know what to make of it.” It was a strange response for someone with firsthand knowledge of oppression and violence.

An NBA champion as a player and coach, Steve Kerr is the son of Malcolm Kerr, whose parents Stanley and Elsa arrived in the Middle East in 1919 to join relief efforts that followed the Armenian genocide. As Ailene Voisin of the Sacramento Bee recalled, in the early 1980s Malcolm Kerr left UCLA to become president of the American University of Beirut, “despite increasing political instability within the region.” Then, in 1984, Malcolm Kerr “was shot to death by terrorists outside his office.”

As a writer for ESPN noted, “two Islamic terrorists ambushed Malcolm outside his university office and shot him in the back of the head for the crime of being an American.” When the Islamic terrorists gunned down his father, Steve was only 18 and a freshman at the University of Arizona. Kerr wept through a moment of silence for his father prior to tipoff against archrival Arizona State.

Four years later, as Kerr and his teammates warmed up before a game with that same school, a group of 10-15 people began chanting “PLO! PLO!” The group also chanted, “Your father’s history” and “Why don’t you join the Marines and go back to Beirut?” As Kerr told Tracy Dodds of the Los Angeles Times, it was “pretty disgusting. It’s hard to believe that people would do that.”

Lots of previously unbelievable things are happening these days.

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.

Follow Juliette on Facebook, Twitter, MeWe, Patreon and Social Quodverum.

Hit Da Tech Guy Blog’s Tip Jar !

Or hit Juliette’s!

Real Dictators vs Liberal Fantasies (Xi vs Trump)

Posted: October 11, 2019 by datechguy in economy, nba, News/opinion, politics, Sports
Tags: , , ,

The characteristic of Pains and Pleasures is that they are unmistakably real, and therefore, as far as they go, give the man who feels them a touchstone of reality. Thus if you had been trying to damn your man by the Romantic method…you would try to protect him at all costs from any real pain; because, of course, five minutes’ genuine toothache would reveal the romantic sorrows for the nonsense they were and unmask your whole stratagem.

C.S. Lewis Screwtape 13

One of the defining characteristics of the last three years of the Trump Administration has been the media, the Democrats and activists insisting that he is a dictator and that they are being oppressed, that they are being censored, that the president is operating concentration camps and that any day could be the day that liberals , journalists, gays, etc etc etc would be locked up. I remember working with a young lady, a Bernie supporter who was convinced that she as a lesbian would be thrown into a camp by Donald Trump.

Of course the fact that people were and are freely able to express these opinions in social media, on television, in movies, in classrooms, in public speaking appearances and at rallies not only without fear but with financial and social rewards does not shatter the illusion of oppression to those residing in the kindergarten of Eden, a world where all the dragons you slay are made up out of the whole cloth. Reason and facts are insufficient to break that fun house mirror reflecting virtue and courage to those who wish to see it in themselves.

For that you need the harsh light of reality, which China is providing to the woke oppressed millionaires of the NBA:

Hotair has a list of ten times when the NBA, it’s players, coaches and stars had no problem making political statements, but once a Houston Rockets exec tweeted in support of Hong Kong suddenly folks like Steve Kerr decided they didn’t have anything to say:

As many others have noted over the past 36 hours, the league is known for — and celebrates — its wokeness. People like Kerr and Gregg Popovich are beloved figures among sports-loving liberals for their willingness to chime in on matters of social justice, and have received glowing coverage in the press for it. I don’t begrudge them their greater interest in American injustices than Chinese mass oppression either; it’s natural to worry more about how your friends are being mistreated than people a world away. But that rule of thumb isn’t foolproof: Surely we can agree that once the level of foreign oppression reaches the concentration-camp stage, some reflection on whether you should continue to do business there while ignoring what’s happening is in order. And yet here’s Steve Kerr, the woke coach, playing dumb right in front of reporters.

Folks like Steve Kerr who was never shy about hitting the president suddenly had nothing to say, but China has plenty to say:

Chinese state television said on Tuesday it would not air NBA exhibition games played in the country this week, heaping pressure on the U.S. basketball league after a tweet by a Houston Rockets executive backing protests in Hong Kong. Rockets general manager Daryl Morey apologised on Monday for any hurt caused by the tweet, which he quickly deleted over the weekend.

But China’s government, fans and the team’s partners have not been assuaged, resulting in loss of sponsors and broadcasts in the world’s second-largest economy and an important National Basketball Association (NBA) market.

“We strongly oppose Silver’s support of Morey on the basis of freedom of speech and we think any comments that challenge a country’s sovereignty and social stability is not within the scope of freedom of speech,” CCTV said Tuesday in a statement in Chinese, adding that it would review its relationship with the NBA.

The NBA issued a statement saying it regretted Morey’s remarks, drawing criticism from U.S. lawmakers.

and the Rockets’ owner was quick to tweet himself

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

The very woke Rolling Stone was not impressed

The Rockets and the NBA could have stood up for Morey, for decency, and for the protesters and their human rights. More than 2,000 have been injured in months of demonstrations that the Chinese government characterizes as “riots,” but selling sneakers, jerseys, and the game  But they instead folded all too readily, all too eager to hold onto the dollars that they glean from the Communist nation. 


The NBA issued a sorry statement, declaring the league realizes that the tweet may have “deeply offended” Chinese fans and that they “have great respect for the history and culture of China,” as if that had anything to do with a bill that could be used to disappear journalists and critics of an autocratic regime. Morey, who The Ringer reports was at one point in jeopardy of losing his job, tweeted his own apology that read like it was dictated by his boss. Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai, a co-founder of Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba, published an open letter on Facebook that referred to protesters as a “separatist movement.” Even James Harden, the Rockets’ star guard, issued a mea culpa for some reason, even though he wasn’t involved.


That last bit of rank submission to an autocratic regime captured the full extent of the NBA’s sellout to China. Several politicians on the left and right, including presidential candidate Julián Castro and Rep. Ben Sasse (R-MO), called out the NBA’s cowardice. Even Rockets fan Ted Cruz took a principled stand:

It’s apparently rather quickly that the NBA was between a rock and a hard place. It’s one thing for China to bully video games companies and brands here and there but the NBA is not a niche market and now you have seeing the censorship hit NBA games as well not to mention the spectacle of a CNN one of the most woke networks of the west asking a question at a press conference and being given the silent treatment.

Someone else immediately comes to take the mic away from Macfarlane. There’s some crosstalk as she argues that she’s asking a legitimate question that hasn’t been answered, but the real payoff to this clip comes when the camera cuts back to Harden and Westbrook. Both are sitting in front of microphones and obediently saying nothing as the question hangs in the air. The NBA is not talking about politics suddenly. Not a word.
I don’t think there can be any doubt about what is happening here. Everyone involved has been told—maybe warned is a better word—not to say anything about China or Hong Kong.

Or to rephrase it, these big strong nuclear athletes who are not afraid to speak out against an American president who they know won’t repress them are terrified of speaking out least they offend China.

I’d like to end with this tweet of Steve Kerr’s latest statement:

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Congratulations are in order for Mr. Kerr and the NBA, they now have been taught very plainly by China what a real dictator, who makes you obey or else, is.

Don’t expect to see any sort of “resistance” against China from the NBA, not when there is something to actually lose on the line.

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