Archive for the ‘politics’ Category

Five Thoughts Under the Fedora: Coyote vs Acme’s a Winner, The Spin Cycle on Iran is Ending, China Says Jump Canada’s Carney Says “How High?”, Oil for the tanks of Trump, Goodbye Dolly

Posted: August 31, 2026 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, economy, entertainment, politics, trade, Uncomfortable Truths, under the fedora
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It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie that’s actually is popular both with the critics and the fans. Coyote vs Acme is one of them. I went to see it with my sons and my priest and amazingly it was even better than the hype.

That they decided it was incapable of making its cost back is a tad of a surprise but $70 million isn’t peanuts.

I have believe that it was held back because the last thing the left wants is people watching old movies and cartoons that bring people back to saner times.

The attempt to spin the Iran war online seems to have intensified. Likely because with a secure corridor for shipping and the continuing pipeline advancements the ability of Iran and their allies to stop oil from flowing is almost nil.

Add to that the phony mines and the strikes to interdict their resupply the only cards they have are talk and social media.

But once that oil reaches the market you will see prices come down & when that happens in October it will be bad news for the left and even worse for the Democrats.

But yeah believe the online folks who claim that Trump is a fool.

Canada’s decision to cover for China’s attempt to dump steel into the US through them speaks a lot to what the Canadian left has done to the country.

Personally I think it’s less about China protecting their steel exports then it is the hope that this hurts the GOP in the midterms.

Iran, Canada, Russia, China and the Democrats would all like to see the midterms go bad for Trump.

They know where their bread is buttered.

Apparently Trump has made a deal with Venezuela that will be refilling our strategic oil reserve as a “gift” to our country.

This is another blow to the “Trump is an idiot” , “Trump is a failure”, “Trump doesn’t know what’s he’s doing” narrative, but more importantly it puts the US in the single best position in the west with full tanks at a time when others energy supplies are failing.

All of this without a giant hit on our treasury. How much winning can one president manage?

Finally the reaction to the death of Dolly Parton has been a huge surprise to me. Not that people have celebrated her, but that it has been universal and international. People who have been pushing the most vile murderous ideologies have nevertheless recognized her goodness and her actions on behalf of her fellow man which was practiced without favoritism.

It was so universal that her unwillingness to attack her own people, a people despised by the elites everywhere, were not enough to bring down their opinion of her.

It would not surprise me if some of those in media complementing her don’t mean it, but they’re smart enough to know there is no percentage in trying to play those cards.

Dolly as a villain just isn’t sellable, at least not at this time.

The Left’s Southern Article of Faith Collides with the Data. (updated and bumped and recovered from the Wayback Machine due to Cynical Publius)

Posted: August 10, 2026 by datechguy in dablog, elections, politics, race card
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Prologue (8/10/26)

Today on X I noted this post from a very excellent Cynical Publius

When I saw this tweet I instantly remembered my post where I researched all of this however that was one of the posts that disappeared when I started having major blog problems (we’ll talk about the why’s for those troubles some other times) but I spent an hour or two researching & found a tweet linking to the post & was able to find the updated and bumped version from 2020.

As this lie about the south suddenly changing side with LBJ is Gospel to the left to this day rather than simply reinserting it into the sport when it was first posted I figured it deserved a full new post so here is it, unseen for years my data on when the southern states actually went GOP.

(Note, this post was originally posted on Aug 17th 2017. However the subject came up during my appearance on fault lines radio this morning so I thought I’d repost and bump it so listeners could see the actual post and data I was referring to.)

If you are even slightly a leftist such as the folks I covered on the Boston Common this weekend one of the things that you believe without question is that the only reason why the GOP has control of legislatures in the south is because of a backlash over the civil rights act of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965.
This has been an article of faith for years and it’s quite handy when you want to explain away uncomfortable electoral defeats. Why woo voters when you can simply cry “racism”.

It’s an easy to sell argument, after all the pre 1964 south was called the solid south for a reason. Through 1892 no former slave state (including border states) voted for a GOP presidential candidate. No state of the old confederacy voted GOP post reconstruction till Tennessee voted Harding 1920. Through 1955 when the fight for civil rights started looming large the GOP only managed to take states in the old confederacy two more times once when Eisenhower after winning World War to managed to take Texas, Tennessee, Florida, Virginia and once in the Herbert Hoover landslide of 1928 that added North Carolina to that list.

But the real power of the Democrats in the south wasn’t in presidential elections where they were outnumbered. It was in the state legislatures, where, with the exception of Missouri which was pretty competitive in the first half of the 20th century A republican speaker of the House in the old south and most of the old slave states (I’m missing data for Delaware) just didn’t exist.

And then came Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson

In 1957 Johnson in an effort “sanitize” himself on civil rights for a presidential run pushed through the first civil rights bill post reconstruction. When he became president after JFK’s murder in 1963 he managed to get the Civil Rights act of 1964 passed doing so with only 8 votes from the old confederacy in the house and none in the senate, he followed that up with the Voting Rights act in 1965 and declaring that he would secure the black vote for Democrats for the next 2 centuries (although he used somewhat different phrasing describing the black vote, employing a word rhyming with “trigger”).

It is at this point that according to our friends on the left that the old solid racist south (including many of the slave holding border states) decided to abandon the Democrat party and started voting GOP

However there is one problem that stands in the way of that argument: The facts.

As Tip O’Neill once said all politics is local and nothing better reflects the feelings of a local electorate than a vote for a state legislator. So if the left’s meme is to be believed it shouldn’t have taken more than a few two year election cycles for a combination of mass defections and outraged old racists to fill the south with GOP speakers in their houses. So let’s take a look at a chart that lists all the old slaveholding states and see how quickly those racist southerners and old segregationists managed to flip their states to their new favorite party.

[table id=1 ]

As you can see when the data is presented the left’s article of faith runs smack dab of a factual cliff.

With the exception of a two year period of in Tennessee when a democrat defector gave the GOP the house for one term, No state of the old confederacy elected a GOP house until 1995 and even with that happened in North and South Carolina, North Carolina flipped back to the Democrats the very next election and stayed there until 2011.

Of those states only one other (Florida) joined South Carolina as a solid GOP state in the 20th century five of the states flipped this decade. And think about it. If you believe our friends on the left then Alabama the state where Martin Luther King wrote is famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail and Mississippi the state where the famous case of the murder of civil rights workers dramatized in the film Mississippi Burning took place in the 60’s were so apparently so outraged over the Civil Rights act, the Voting Rights act and LBJ that their voters they waited nearly 2 1/2 generations to vote GOP.

That’s simply not credible.

Now as this is such an article faith for our Democrat friends they will sooner imagine armies of ancient segregationists bussed from Nursing Homes on election day each years than believe the data.

Because there is a much more credible explanation as to why the left is losing the South that’s staring them in the face but that’s a post for later this week.

Update:  Heard back from the Delaware legislative librarian 9/21.  She was out on Friday but when she got back she kindly provided me both house and senate info from 1965 to present that I’ve used to update my table.  Many Thanks

Does Anybody on the Right Still Remember How Winning Elections Works?

Posted: August 8, 2026 by datechguy in elections, politics
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Looking at the situation in Washington I see stupidity & cupidity both in DC by “conservatives” and online from “conservatives”

First in Washington:

I find it completely unbelievable that the GOP has not forced the Democrats to do an actual filibuster. This could have been done months ago and would have served two purposes both which would have been positive for the GOP.

The first of course was the possibility that they would be able to get a vote on the “Save” act. Given that voter ID is an 80-20 issue it is something that would help republicans nationally & force Democrats to insist that women and minorities are too ignorant to get ID’s.. The falseness of this argument is so easily proved as almost everyone has ID) & the cries of “racism” so phony (where are the lawsuits against Banks by lawyers seeking a quick buck) that it would increase GOP chances in the falls.

There is also of course the possibility that such a vote will pass. If it does the Democrats who rely on cheating to win are finished.

I’m convinced this hasn’t happened because quite a few members of the Senate on the GOP side are afraid of angering people who might have a desire to keep this from becoming law. As long as the bill is not in a position to be passed it costs them nothing to talk up the bill, but the moment there is a possibility that it could become a law they’re in trouble.

I think this is the real reason why the vote hasn’t been called. He’s protecting members of his own caucus from a vote they don’t want to take.

That’s a disgrace.

But the disgrace & the bad decisions aren’t only in Washington I see them also online among the base and it comes in two flavors.

Flavor #1 is the “Why isn’t everything done now!”.

By every since objective measure Donald Trump has accomplished more than any “conservative” president has managed since Reagan and more. Moreover he is managing to do this with all of Washington, all of media, all of academia & every person our enemies can buy online & in Washington doing all they can to stop him.

Moreover despite all the left/media claims he is doing all of this within the law, not defying courts, or trampling on the the Constitution. This upsets some people who have spent a life getting instant gratifications but the reality of life is actually doing things takes time. Particularly if you’re not looking to break the law or become a dictator.

That’s annoying enough (& I think augmented by bot-farms & paid folks trying to push this “Trump is a failure” business).but what really pisses me off is the reactions when we actually win.

The president got his AG choice passed 50-49 and while leftists are screaming bloody murder that it happened quite a few conservatives are screaming because the margin wasn’t higher because some GOP senators like Susan Collins didn’t vote for him.

For a party that’s supposed to know history this kind of thing is nonsense.

If folks knew their history they would know that this is standard fare, as I wrote about in the early days of the blog during the Obamacare debate:

The background: In the book was a Congressman Leo O’Brien who had promised a vote to Sam Rayburn on an issue and was getting killed at home over it. Since his word had been given (Yes that makes a difference, I still believe that one’s word is sacrosanct) Tip told him he had no choice but to go to Rayburn and ask to be released. (How hard must that have been) I’ll let Rayburn and O’Neill finish the story:

“…you gave me your word and I expect you to keep it. However I can certainly appreciate your situation, so here’s what I’ll do for you. On the day of the vote I want to see you in the front row. Keep your eye on the doorkeeper. If I don’t need your vote, Fishbait Miller will give you the sign and you’ll be free to vote your district.”…

…when Leo took his seat in the front row, he looked around and saw thirteen other guys that Sam had in his pocket in case he needed them. It wasn’t just Leo. The entire front row was sitting there and waiting for the nod from Fishbait Miller.

This is the real question that we don’t know the answer to. Does Nancy Pelosi have the votes and is just deciding who sits in the front row or is she scrambling for votes? And if the media knows what the truth is will they tell us?

It turned out she had the votes and made it a point to allow as many Democrats as she could in swing districts to vote against it & make a fuss about it.

Now Susan Collins is the last GOP member of congress in an increasingly blue New England. Despite being clearly the most liberal member of the GOP in the Senate & despite the complete ineptness of her opponents in Maine (only Donald Trump is more lucky in his enemies) her seat is still at risk. A vote in “opposition” to Trump might annoy but in the end it wasn’t needed for the win and if it gives her a better chance to win in November it decreases the chance of the left taking charge of the upper house.

Yet people are crying online that “true” conservatives in Maine should vote against her over it or that they hope she loses for voting against Trump.

Again there is an element of bot & paid actors in this bit but there are plenty of others who are either just click baiting or forgetting how keeping a majority in a country works.

The difference between being in the majority & controlling the agenda & being in the minority is huge & how huge is evident by the desperation Democrats have to get that majority back.

Let’s not help them by our own stupidity or let being annoyed cause us to make stupid decisions that we will later regret.

Repeats Under the Fedora: Fauci diaries, DeSantis v Fauci, 4th Doctor Remains Undefeated on the Powerful & the Stupid, Biden’s Tapes and let’s say it one more time

Posted: July 28, 2026 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, Blame Trump, covid, culture, medicine, under the fedora
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It never ceases to Amaze me that people write things down that incriminate them. The Fauci diaries reveal him to be everything that people have claimed he was for quite a long time. It’s also worth noting he didn’t know that he had a pardon coming when he did.

This is what happens when folks assume their allies will have power forever, it also illustrates the difference between an “Italian” and a “Sicilian” and also an old saying that nobody does good like a good Catholic and nobody does harm like a bad one.

The diaries also not how much Fauci detested Governor Ron DeSantis who apparently was too smart to fall for a lot of his stuff.

This is one of the reasons why I supported DeSantis in the Primary over Trump as I believed that the COVID stuff and the Fauci stuff would be tied to Trump like a scarlet letter while DeSantis would be able to use the COVID business against Biden or whoever the nominee for the Democrats was.

Trump was of course able to deal with this by simply not discussing Fauci during the campaign, he learned quickly it was a loser & dropped the subject. In fairness to Trump on this subject he was born into a culture that held medical doctors in high esteem, a culture where the Hippocratic Oath had not been edited and one where the idea that a Doctor or any medical professional would give false advice to harm the nation & the people in it for fame, wealth & power was practically unthinkable.

There has been a lot said on Twitter/X about the Fauci situation but the thing that is most true is that those who have worshiped Fauci (and let’s not pretend it isn’t worship they have friggen Fauci votive candles) will completely ignore the diaries because to acknowledge them would violate their worldview & they can’t have that.

This is also why the left/media can be outraged by Donald Trump jokinkly comparing Kathleen Collins to Dylan Mulvaney without being able to say WHY they’re outraged because to say why is to admit that men who pretend to be women are not.

The 4th Doctor’s line about the very powerful and the very stupid changing the facts to fit their views remains undefeated.

Speaking of facts and views the Biden tapes are now out and it’s rather clear that the President had classified documents in his possession, knew that the items were classified and discussed them with his ghostwriter.

Look for the same media that went after Trump and supported the Mar-a-lago raid to completely ignore this or pass over it quickly, in fact I think they already have.

(see 4th doctor reference above)

Finally let me repeat something I said a long time ago on the subject of Transgenderism that I’ve been repeating for years and still bears repeating:

If a person decides they are Napoleon & decides to talk, act, & dress like Napoleon even to the point of surgery or even chemical use to make them more closely resemble Napoleon that’s on them, their problem, their delusion, none of my business.

The moment that person insists that I shout: “Vive L’Empereur!” & then tries to use local state & federal law & or cultural pressure to make me do so, then it transforms into my problem to defend my rights & I will defend those rights & not submit.

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