Archive for the ‘News/opinion’ Category

Under the Fedora: Dangerous Pillow Makers, Trusted Russians Manufacturers, Less Lucky Russians, Metal Detectors and Don Bolduc

Posted: September 14, 2022 by datechguy in business, elections, internet/free speech, News/opinion, opinion/news
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The FBI decided to go after that well known dangerous fellow Mike Lindell the pillow maker at a Hardee’s Drive-Thru.

Well I suppose he is dangerous to the Biden Administration in the sense that despite the loss of millions in business by places like Bed Bath and Beyond (now folding like a cheap suit) ridicule and attacks he steadfastly refuses to compromise on his opinion (which I share) that the last election was stolen and continues to produce evidence to support said claim.

That’s the thing about devout Christians, they have an affinity to the truth and they tend to not abandon it even when the emperor siccs their lions on them.

However there are apparently some things that the FBI totally approves of: Headline:

Wait — the Steele Dossier’s discredited source became a paid FBI informant?

Ed Morrissey being an honest and honorable man is flabbergasted:

There must be an explanation for this plot twist, which appears to have come right out of a James Bond film. Maybe Casino Royale … the David Niven version, not the straightforward Daniel Craig reboot. According to a court filing from John Durham, the FBI turned Steele dossier source Igor Danchenko into a paid informant.

Well after all he was willing to spread falsehood in order to aid and abet the left’s political ambitions. If that’s not worth a paycheck to the FBI I’d like to know what is?

Prediction: In my lifetime we will see FBI agents and bureaucrats who are taking part in and/or enabling the Biden Administrations efforts to intimidate their political foes & the citizens who support said foes will be sitting in a witness chair arguing:

I was only following orders!

Rather disgusting.

While that Russian apparently did OK a lot of Russians are not doing so well in Ukraine as a counter offensive seems to be gaining ground to the point where some are wondering if they should push into Russia proper and risk overextending their lines of supply.

For the record assuming these reports are correct I’d go deep enough to neutralize logistic centers that the Russians would need for any counteroffensive

In theory the Russians have the power to bring and use overwhelming force if they so choose (although it would take time to raise an deploy said force) against Ukraine, what the real question is, do they have the will?

And the bigger question is this. If this results in the fall of Putin, what replaces him?

Yesterday when I got to the warehouse where I work I was surprised to see metal detectors had been installed and that we from now on we will have to pass through them to enter.

I asked the chief of security who was there for the first day of them why, he said the company’s new owners decided on it. He suggested that given what’s been going on in the country it’s better to get ahead of such things.

Well considering that the new owners have stores and such in blue states and cities that have seen first hand what Democrat rule does and that I work in a deep blue state that is likely to replace a moderate Nevertrump republican with a radical democrat and put a DA who will do their best to turn Massachusetts into California in charge I’d say it might be prudent to be prepared for what is going to come.

Finally General Don Bolduc has won the GOP primary in NH to challenge Maggie Hassan for the US senate:

I interviewed General Bolduc at the Carenet dinner in NH last year it’s available both on Youtube

and Rumble

https://rumble.com/v1d5nqu-general-don-bolduc-nh-us-senate-candidate-interview.html

I really think this election in NH will determine if that state can be saved. If Hassan can win in this environment over a vet who has served in combat than any Massachusetts conservative who wants out of the state before it becomes California had better head to Montana, Wyoming or somewhere south, heat and bugs be damned.

Given his outspoken support for President Trump I’m sure he can expect an FBI raid any day now.

Under the Fedora: The Left’s Sweat is Showing, Jackson MS isn’t North Korea Either, No Vaccine Troubles to See Here, A Rumbling Glacier and Baseball rule thoughts.

Posted: September 13, 2022 by datechguy in baseball, election 2020, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, tech, under the fedora
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A bit back I suggested the reason why the Biden Admin is so willing to shatter norms is they are terrified of a Trump AG going all in for an investigation of what they’ve been up to.

The move on Trump Associates and Tucker is the first clincher on that kind of thing to me.

If I’m right, and my gut says I am, that means DeSantis will be unacceptable to them too because he will be doing the same thing.

That’s why you’re seeing the “Voting GOP means civil war” stuff. They know they’ve crossed a line and now they’ve scared.

They should be

I thought this story should have gotten a lot more attention.

However, following President Joe Biden’s emergency declaration, the Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) arrived on the scene, and within 24 hours, the city’s water crisis was fixed.

The EPA and Army Corps showed up and fixed the “issue” quickly and easily. Social media users have begun to speculate why Mary D. Carter, the Deputy Director of Water Operations for the past 8 years, could not fix the “problem” herself.

Of course getting the water flowing is one thing, making it drinkable is another. This is what happens when you use a public office as a source of graft rather than a public trust and that’s what the Democrat mayors of Jackson have apparently done for decades

Speaking of topics the media left wish would just go away:

More than 55 percent of children ranging in age between 6 months and 2 years had a “systemic reaction” after their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Sept. 1.

In addition, almost 60 percent had a reaction to the second dose of the Moderna vaccine, in the CDC survey of more than 13,000 children.

For some reason nobody seems to be reporting on this story, or this one:

According to a report in theblaze.com, the National Institute of Health (NIH) deleted certain sequences of coronavirus data from the agency’s Sequence Read Archive. This was allegedly done early in the pandemic, at the request of Chinese researchers. Doctor Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, published a study in June of 2021 that identified the missing sequences and recovered the files from the Google Cloud, from which he performed an analysis to learn more about the origins of the virus.

As the side effects become more apparent over the years you’ll continue to see the media pivot concerning the vaccine and I guarantee you by June 2024 it will be known as the “Trump vaccine” in every media outlet.

Of course if the election hadn’t been stolen all this would be front page today.

It’s been a while since I opened my Rumble account and told all of you that once all my youtube files were migrated I might start podcasting again.

Rumble warms you that it can take weeks, apparently that’s a pretty broad term because nothing moved over for weeks although all my stuff over two years old is listed as pending.

I’d be more upset except I suspect so many people are making such a move worldwide that such a time frame is inevitable.

I suspect Google/Youtube isn’t all that worried right now. As I recall neither was AOL or IE.

Finally a some quick thoughts on Baseball rule changes:

  1. If the new stay off the grass rule was in effect during Ernie Lombardi’s Time he would have hit .400 because he was so slow infielder would play there to field balls from him. He still was a regular .300 hitter.
  2. If modern players learned how to bunt there would be no need for this rule as guys would be dropping bunt singles left and right off these shifts.
  3. Since the distance from the home to 1st and 3rd has not changed I suspect that the larger bases while encouraging stealing will be more of an advantage to the defense at 1st since the first baseman can now be closer to the throw and a thrown ball is faster than a running man.
  4. I don’t know if the modified pickoff throw rule includes 3rd if it does as a manager I’d encourage runners to try to draw throws to 3rd then send my guy on 3rd as far down the line as I can to distract a pitcher.
  5. Frankly if they really want to speed up games put the mound back where it was in 1968 and let the pitchers get people out quicker. Problem solved.

Now that Ukraine is taking back territory from Russia, now is the time for the New York Times to return Walter Duranty’s tainted Pulitzer

Posted: September 11, 2022 by John Ruberry in media, News/opinion, war
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Pro-Ukraine protest in downtown Chicago this spring

By John Ruberry

There is good news out of Ukraine, its forces have made gains in the Kharkiv region and they are near Russian border. There is much ground still to liberate, not only land that Russia has seized in the war that began early this year, but also the area that have been controlled by Russian separatists in the Donetsk region since 2014, as well as Crimea, which Vladimir Putin annexed the same year.

Ukraine has endured an unhappy history. World War II and the Holocaust devastated Ukraine. And in order to impose communism on wealthier peasants in Ukraine, Josef Stalin engineered a famine in the early 1930s, known there as the Holodomor, translating roughly into “man-made starvation.” Roughly four million people perished as a result of Stalin’s atrocities against the kulaks in Ukraine.

Even in a closed society, it’s difficult to coverup a famine. And news trickled out of Ukraine about the Holodomor. But a New York Times reporter, based in Moscow, Walter Duranty, dismissed such stories, instead of “famine” he wrote of “malnutrition” in Ukraine, for instance. 

For a series of 1931 articles about the Soviet Union, Duranty, for his “dispassionate interpretive reporting,” he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. 

While in Moscow, Duranty, was granted a rarity, interviews with Stalin; he also enjoyed another rarity, a luxury apartment in the Soviet capital. During the entire history of the USSR, housing of any kind was scarce. In Moscow Duranty had a mistress, whom he impregnated, and a chauffeur. Automobiles were also rare in Russia in the 1930s. 

In 1933, another journalist, or I should say, a real one, Gareth Jones, visited Ukraine and he was horrified by what he found. “If it is grave now and if millions are dying in the villages, as they are, for I did not visit a single village where many had not died, what will it be like in a month’s time?” Jones wrote for the London Evening Standard. “The potatoes left are being counted one by one, but in so many homes the potatoes have long run out.” 

Duranty’s response to Jones was a New York Times article, “Russians Hungry, But Not Starving.” That same year, Duranty wrote to a friend, “The famine is mostly bunk.”

Another shameful sentence from Duranty, about Stalin’s brutal policies as the Holodomor continued, “To put it brutally,” Duranty wrote for the Times, “you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

Since the war began attention has been brought to Duranty’s undeserved Pulitzer. Even NPR took notice. “He is the personification of evil in journalism,” Oksana Piaseckyj told NPR earlier this year of Duranty. She is a Ukrainian-American activist who emigrated here as a child over 70 years ago. “We think he was like the originator of fake news,” Piaseckyj added.

The New York Times admitted on its corporate website about Duranty’s work, “Since the 1980’s, the [Times] has been publicly acknowledging his failures.” But it has not returned the tainted Pulitzer. It also notes that twice, most recently in 2003, the Pulitzer board has decided not to revoke its award to Duranty. 

It’s time for them to reconsider.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Democrats are the vote-buying party

Posted: September 4, 2022 by John Ruberry in elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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Willie Wilson billboard in 2016 on Chicago’s West Side

By John Ruberry

“Since the 1930s the technique of buying votes with the voters’ own money has been expanded to an extent undreamed of by earlier politicians.” Milton Friedman.

“But it can also be said that the social largesse of the boss system, the food, coal, clothing, and jobs provided for the needy, was there when it counted–with no delay and no paperwork–for those loyal to the system.” David McCullough, at the opening of the PBS American Experience documentary, “The Last Boss.”

Democratic politics has gone from handing out free stuff, ploys used by machine politicians including James M. Curley of Boston and Richard J. Daley of Chicago, to handing out free stuff again. In between, the social programs created Franklin D. Roosevelt, proved to be a better and more popular distributor of goodies. Daley, unlike most of the other big city bosses, adopted to the times a bit; he was able to siphon a generous chunk of the funds from Lyndon B. Johnson’s Model Cities boondoggle, for instance. 

Last month President Joe Biden, like a Democratic boss of old, in a legally tenuous move, announced that he would forgive $10,000 to $20,000 in student loan debt. That debt of course won’t disappear, federal taxpayers will get stuck with the tab.

You’ve heard about Dr. Jill Biden. The first lady uses that title because she has doctorate in education. Chicago has millionaire businessman Dr. Willie Wilson, who according to ABC Chicago, “is the recipient of a Doctor of Divinity degree from Mt. Carmel Theological Seminary, a Doctor of Humane Letters from Chicago Baptist Institute International, Honorary Doctorate in Humanitarianism from Swisher Bible College and a Doctorate in Humanitarianism from Denver Institute of Urban Studies and Adult College.” I haven’t heard of those schools either.

Wilson is a political gadfly. He has run for mayor of Chicago three times, including his current attempt at the office, as well as for US senator and president. But he is best known as a man who gives away stuff, through his foundation, of groceries, PPE masks, groceries, and gasoline. The local media falls for his ploy–and to be fair, they have been placed in a trap, as their audience likes freebies. Who doesn’t?

Oh, Wilson favors slavery reparations.

Laura Washington, a far-left columnist for the Chicago Tribune, rightly condemned the “Willie Wilsonization of politics” in a column ironically published two days before Biden announced his student loan debt forgiveness plan. And she didn’t stop with Wilson. First up was Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

From that Trib column, paid registration may by required:

Thanks to an “avalanche” of federal stimulus funds, Lightfoot is “running for reelection armed with a seemingly bottomless gift bag of giveaways that includes everything from gas cards, Ventra cards, bicycles, locks and helmets to more than $1,000-per-household in rebates to defray the cost of security cameras, outdoor motion sensor lighting, cloud storage and GPS trackers to hunt down vehicles in the event of an auto theft or carjacking,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported in June. 

Lightfoot’s “Chicago Moves,” is the city’s $12 million transit response to skyrocketing fuel costs and inflation. It will distribute up to 50,000 prepaid $150 gas cards and 100,000 prepaid $50 transit cards to Chicago residents. 

Earlier this year, Lightfoot pushed through a controversial guaranteed income program for low-income families. The pilot program will provide no-strings-attached $500 payments to 5,000 Chicago families per month for a year. The recipients were chosen through a lottery system.

For months, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who is running for reelection in the Nov. 8 election, has ballyhooed a $1.8 billion tax relief plan in his campaign ads. It provides short-term tax reductions and freezes on purchases of gas, groceries and school supplies.

Pritzker’s “tax cuts” are quite dishonest. His gasoline tax reduction only delays a mandated tax hike–Illinoisans pay the second-highest gas taxes in the nation–until, how convenient, after Election Day. Gas station owners are required to post signs touting Pritzker’s tax “cut.” Those who refuse face a $500-a-day fine. The grocery tax “cut,” which also comes with a requirement that grocers post signage about it, although non-compliant grocers don’t face face a fine for refusing to obey. Next year, when presumably Pritzker has been sworn in for a second term, the grocery taxes return.

Because of unfunded public worker pension debt, both Chicago and Illinois face enormous fiscal challenges. In regards to those pensions, Lightfoot and Pritzker are doing what their predecessors have done worst–kicking the can down the road.

Amazingly, Pritzker is considering a presidential run. His chances of winning are dismal, I offer the reasons why here. But if Pritzker somehow succeeds in 2024, imagine all of the vote-buying possibilities for him! He already has the physique of Santa Claus. On the other hand, Christmas comes just once a year. The federal government is with us every day.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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