Archive for the ‘politics’ Category

Real Dictators vs Liberal Fantasies (Xi vs Trump)

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

…and there’s more to that poll concerning the Black Vote than meets the eye.

Posted: October 10, 2019 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, elections, politics
Tags: , , ,

Yesterday I linked to a an instapundit post that noted that the in a recent poll 32% of black men preferred the re-election of Trump to any democrat nominee. Yet let’s take a look at the opening lines of the story that contained this incredible information:

An overwhelming majority of black voters — 85 percent — said in a new Hill-HarrisX poll that they would choose any Democratic presidential candidate over President Trump in an election The survey, which was released on Monday, found this sentiment to be particularly true among black voters along partisan lines.

That story is from The Hill, and the headline says: “Poll: Overwhelming majority of black voters back any 2020 Democrat over Trump“. The only problem is when when you look at the actual poll vs the spin of the story it doesn’t look very good for the left. In addition to what Mr. Bernstein spotted there were two other data points that are pretty significant:

  1. The poll sampled more that two women for every man on presidential preference. That’s over 67% women on that pol! That’s quite a gender gap!
  2. Of the black men polled 3% were republican and 21% were independent. That means that if every single republican and independent man in the poll supported Trump then there would still be 8 percent of black Democrat men who want Trump to win in 2020.

That’s bad enough but there is something even funnier going on here: there seems to be two different pools of people being polled. The preference for president question has a sample size of 210, but the poll in general has a sample size of 1200.

Over 1000 missing people.

Oddly enough the story doesn’t note this discrepancy let alone explain it, nor does it touch on the skew in the presidential preference question 67% women , vs everyone in the poll 57%.

I’m sure there is a perfect innocent explanation for this that I’m completely missing that has absolutely nothing to do with the attempt to convince people that the president’s economy and policies might be leading to a historic realignment that could change the face of the American political scene for decades.

After all the media would not try to manipulate the public for political reasons would they?

What I saw during a side visit at CPAC 2018 to a Pinball Spot in Bethesda is finally showing in polling…

Posted: October 9, 2019 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, economy, elections, politics, special events
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In 2018 I was at CPAC with my sons when the younger seeing that I was, as usual, driving myself to a ridiculous point suggested doing something different, so we went on a little trip to a pinball place in Bethesda where I found what I thought was the most significant interview of the trip.

and wrote why this interview was so significant

Now a person like my self who has covered angry mobs last year, and is constantly bathed in the political fight, not to mention the media narrative of absolute Trump / GOP hatred and constantly in the company of activists both at home and at CPAC,  might expect a Democrat woman of color living in a blue state to give answers fitting the us vs them narrative, particularly if filmed and in the presence of her friends.
She did not.
She gave the President mixed marks, complemented him on keeping campaign promises that he made to his people, noted that as a Democrat she’d like to see some more moderate moves. Her answers had none of the rancor or the division that the media has pushed on us for the year or that I’ve seen from angry activists. They were completely reasonable answers that would not have been out of place several decades ago in a saner time when I remembered people could disagree and get along. In other words they reflected who she is, a normal American trying to get by whose primary focus is real life instead of manufactured outrage.

Remember this was 2018, Mueller was still out there, plenty of people thought there was lot of “there” there. Stormy Daniels was still out there as was the creepy porn lawyer. In fact we were still in the pre-Kavanaugh era. In other words the entire spectacle had not yet blown up on the left.

This interview, given in public on film in front of friends made me draw two conclusions, the second being the most significant

  1. Despite what our media friends are trying to sell us, Regular Democrats, even democrats in a blue place like Maryland are not wedded to the Peloxi/CNN/MSNBC line and are seeing this president for what he is rather than what they are being told he is.
  2. People like Lea are winnable and the media narrative is all about convincing us she is not.

When we got back to CPAC I couldn’t wait to upload the video and rushed to tell every person I ran into that this was incredibly important and tremendously significant. Nobody seemed to care, we were in the CPAC bubble which meant all eyes were on the pols and the activists there, not to mention the President’s upcoming speech. The idea that this might be a signal of an opening to the black community for the President and the opposition of blacks to the president might be softer than other think was something totally off everyone’s radar.

Not anymore:

From David Bernstein at Instapundit

BUT MUH NARRATIVE: 32% of African American men would vote for Donald Trump over a generic Democratic nominee.130

Well what do you know, I guess this info is out of the bubble now, and if it’s true then the danger to the Democrats goes well beyond this election.

But there is more to this poll story than meets the eye that doesn’t bode well for the left, but that’s a story for tomorrow’s post.

Impeachment Strategy (UPDATE: Letter)

Posted: October 8, 2019 by julietteochieng in Always look at the bright side of Trump, elections, politics, war
Tags: , , , , ,

Image result for tug of war

by baldilocks

I heard that one of President Trump’s lawyers sent the House a letter which basically says “hell naw we ain’t playing your impeachment inquiry games.” I read only part of the letter, but it really must be spicy, because a lot of anti-Trump partisans are wailing about it.

When this whole thing started, someone on Twitter offered this as an exclusive photo of the anonymous “whistle-blower.”


I shared it and got a lot of laughs, but the thing is this: it is probable that Donald Trump set this soap opera into motion and did so on purpose. What follows is my theory on how it went down.

Last week, it was reported that Secretary of State Pompeo was sitting in on the call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky.

After the call – or maybe before – the president tells Pompeo to get one of the latter’s people to drop some bait about the call in the presence of the right person — someone who is likely to spill the beans to the Democratic Party honchos.

This gets done and thus is born the “whistle-blower,” who so is excited about it that she doesn’t bother with the whistle-blower procedure. Instead, she runs to Congress in order pass the bait along to the other fish — especially to Adam Schiff — and they, of course, swallow it. What about the change to the whistle-blower statute regarding first-hand information? Trump changed that.

Why would President Trump do this? Simple. He knows that the Democrats have been after him since he announced his candidacy; they pre-conjured a reason for his impeachment, for Heaven’s sake. Therefore, he is forcing an impeachment at the time of his choosing rather than theirs.

I don’t think the Democrats wanted to begin the procedure this long before the 2020 presidential election. Remember that Nancy Pelosi didn’t want this to happen right now; she comprehends strategy even if it’s a dim vestige of comprehension. But her caucus isn’t even that bright. They want Trump gone NOW and Pelosi had to do what they wanted.

And President Trump knew that this is how it would probably go.

So, voila! The impeachment inquiry was conjured, appeasing Pelosi’s idiot caucus, without messing up the intended timeline. She wants to file formal articles of impeachment months from now, hoping that the procedure will last until the time of the election, causing the president to lose. Therefore, it is in Donald Trump’s best interest to have them do it as soon as possible.

What the Democrats hope is this: that a goodly chunk of their supporters don’t know that an impeachment inquiry means jack squat and that the president is not required to participate in it.

It’s a good bet.

UPDATE: Here’s the full letter read aloud. It’s spicy alright. 

The wailers are wailing mostly about the language of the letter. It’s in plan, blunt English rather than in lawyer-ese. Probably dictated by the non-lawyer who sits in the Oval Office. Good.

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.

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