Archive for the ‘politics’ Category

An important reminder to all those who watched the Democrat Debate.

The Democrat nominee will be decided by the Superdelegates on the 2nd ballot at the convention. I still think it will be Biden because by then they’ll figure out there is almost no chance to win and he’s the best shot for helping some down ballot races

You heard it here 1st


The expose of what’s going on at CNN by Project Veritas is having a lot less bang that you might normally expect. This is mainly because those of us on the right, particularly those of us who have watched and covered CNN, particularly during the Trump years already knew this was the case and those on the left who have become obsessed with removing the president by impeachment are happy to see Zucker demand all impeachment all the time and would consider this a feature.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s good journalism but it would be a real shock if any of it surprised anyone. Still it’s nice to have it on the record as to why they do what they do. I always thought it was the water


Beto O’Rourke’s treat to compel compliance by force to comply with a “buyback” program reminded me of bit of this quote from Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce

If we ever owned the land we own it still, for we never sold it. In the treaty councils the commissioners have claimed that our country had been sold to the Government. Suppose a white man should come to me and say, “Joseph, I like your horses, and I want to buy them.” I say to him, “No, my horses suit me, I will not sell them.” Then he goes to my neighbor, and says to him : “Joseph has some good horses. I want to buy them, but he refuses to sell.” My neighbor answers, “Pay me the money, and I will sell you Joseph’s horses.” The white man returns to me and says, “Joseph, I have bought your horses, and you must let me have them.” If we sold our lands to the Government, this is the way they were bought.

Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce indians

It doesn’t surprise me that younger people never heard this as high school & college don’t teach history anymore but I’m shocked Elizabeth Warren didn’t make this objection.


Nancy Pelsoi has stated there will be no vote to formally begin an impeachment inquiry in the house. This makes a lot of sense for her as such a formal vote will only cause trouble for the phony moderates that she needs to keep the gavel. Ideally any such vote on impeachment or even an inquiry would take place when it’s too late to primary any Democrat who votes against it.

Given how will this strategy worked in saving the “moderates” who voted for Obamacare I suspect it’s not going to make all that much difference but I suspect her odds of keeping seats are better with this crowd than with crew generated primary opponents in the general.


Finally The Washington Nationals after shocking the LA Dodgers made short work of the St. Louis Cardinals and are now going to their 1st World Series since they entered the league as the Montreal Expos in 1969. Of course there have been other Washington Teams the Texas Rangers were the expansion Washington Senators from 1961 to 1971 before moving to Texas and the original Washington Nationals moved to Minnesota and became the Twins, who were bounced by the Yankess in three straight in the 1st round.

The last time a Team from Washington went to the World Series was 1925 and the last time they won was the year before, both times the ace of the squad was Walter Johnson one of the best pitchers who ever lived and one of the charter inductees in the baseball hall of fame. They don’t have Johnson this time around but they do have a pitching staff that are worthy successors to him. It has the potential to be a really great world series no matter who they face.

After watching the NBA in general the last week and LeBron James in particular this week there must be a bunch of elderly South African exiles kicking themselves today. If only they had known!

Just think, if back in 1979 or the early 80’s South Africa PM Pieter Botha had the foreknowledge of today he could have invested a big chunk of South Africa’s not unsubstantial wealth in the NBA. What a difference it would have made!

Imagine Magic Johnson or Doctor J or Michael Jordan out there saying how misunderstood South Africa is. Ponder Celtics big three of Bird, Parish and McHale insisting that we have no business butting in. Picture Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman James Worthy, Patrick Ewing and the lot having no comment and finally Sir Charles statement on china rephrased defending his fellow players not getting into the issue of Apartheid in South Africa because of finances.

And why stop at South Africa? Think of all the other oppressive regimes in the past 100 years, if they only knew that a stake in an American sports league might have made the difference for them. The Central Powers might have won World War 1. Saddam might still be feeding people into wood chippers, the Soviet Union might not have fallen (the idea of funding US colleges turned out to operate too slow to save them), Idi Amin kids would be ruling Uganda, Hitler might still control most of Europe and completed his final solution.

And of course if baseball crazy Japan had thought of this in 1940 this entire China kerfuffle wouldn’t exist because Japan, thanks presumably to the support of US Ballplayers they had paid, wouldn’t have felt the need to hit Pearl Harbor. Instead they would still be ruling China with an iron fist.

All of these things could have been if they had only thought of investing in a US sports league the way China has the NBA.

Of course it’s just possible that today we are dealing with lesser sons of greater fathers who would not have sold themselves, but there just might be some elderly Japanese vet in a nursing home who fought in China in 1940 watching all this unfold on TV & thinking to himself. “It would have been worth a shot”

After watching this video I have the following question for the left that insists that Trump is beyond the pale and must be replaced.

What assurance do we have that things worse than this…

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

…will be faced by Conservatives in general and Trump supporters in particular if you are granted power?

Key Phrase: “Friendly Room”

Posted: October 14, 2019 by datechguy in elections, politics, primaries
Tags: ,

We’re already talked a bit about how Beto O’Rourke’s admission in front of TV camera concerning taxing churches has confirmed what we’ve all known for years concerning the left. Now comes the left with the “Beto as Strawman” argument claiming that he’s a nobody, a non-entity who doesn’t really matter:

Given his low and static polling, it’s hard to tell what, exactly, Beto O’Rourke hopes to accomplish by staying in the presidential race. But while his actual goal seems a bit elusive, he is increasingly playing a very specific role: the human straw man, the embodiment of every seemingly irrational conservative fear about what the left really wants.

That’s Jordan Weissman arguing in Slate that O’Rourke’s positions aren’t actually positions of the left and all he is doing his stoking conservative fears. This is only part of his attack on Robert Francis O’Rourke

This is not the first time O’Rourke—a politician, it should be noted, without a constituency: no district, almost no support in the polls—has promised to make conservatives’ worst nightmares come true. After adopting gun control as a marquee issue following the mass shooting in El Paso earlier this year, O’Rourke promised a mandatory gun buyback program for assault weapons, memorably telling a moderator, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.” Not long after, Trump and Republicans blamed his comments for making it harder to get a gun control deal done in Congress. (Yes, that’s a bit rich coming from the GOP, but I’ll come back to that).

These are not the only far-left positions Beto has staked out recently. He’s strongly 
pro reparations, for instance. But his comments about churches and guns are especially remarkable, in that he’s essentially adopting unpopular stances that Democratic politicians have spent years claiming are unfair caricatures of their actual beliefs. He is turning himself into a walking straw man, the non-fringe guy Republicans can reliably point to when they want to say: “See, the libs really do want to take your guns and shut down your churches.”

emphasis mine

There are two problems with this man’s point. The 1st is highlighted by the emphasized text. It’s rather comical to see this argument given that it was the same lefty media created him out of the whole cloth, extolling Mr. O’Rourke, promoting him as “Beto” as a counter to Ted Cruz authentic ethnicity and put him up and the sign that Texas is finally turning their way. They drew millions of dollars from liberal activists all over the country in his failed effort for senate seat and then floated him as a potential presidential candidate before they knew that the Democrat field would become large enough to field a shirts vs skins Basketball game with benches for both teams.

But it’s the second point that really give the lie to the entire piece and it comes from four simple words in the 1st sentence of the piece following the embedded video (again emphasis mine):

O’Rourke’s comments drew a warm round of applause in the friendly room, and riled conservatives, who have spent years worrying that Democrats might try to do such a thing.

That’s the key line, the room was full of Democrat activists, the people who give the money, who put the pressure on candidates and decide who can choose to make hell for any candidate who doesn’t toe the line.

  • Did those activists boo or cat call that line making it clear that this is not what Democrat believe?
  • Did they rush to defend the black church which had for so many years been the place, despite existing tax laws where Democrats openly campaigned organized and raised money?
  • Did they defend conservative Muslims who have increasingly become an important part of the Democrat coalition?
  • And most important of all did any Democrat candidate rush to clearly state that this is completely contrary to what the Democrat party in general or they in particular believe?

The answer to all of these questions is not just no but HELL NO and the reason for this is the same as why when Joe Biden they didn’t do any of these things when Joe Biden went all in on gay marriage in 2012 because he knew that this is what the people who matter in the party believe..

Beto is playing a similar gambit. He understands that the people who matter in the party along with the college students taught by their minions in school are already at this place. He furthermore is in a can’t lose proposition for him. At worst by forcing the issue he raises his profile and lasts longer int he primaries ensuring him face time for a while. At best he’s getting some chits in for next time around and assuring himself of good speaking fees for the next four years.

There are many descriptions that can be made of these moves that are apt, but “Strawman” is not one of them, in fact “Strawman” is best used to describe those on the left who are trying to pretend that Beto’s opinions are an outlier rather than someone saying aloud what everyone knows.

Update: added link and image plus this Atlantic link via Instapundit which touches on a cost that the left, in my opinion, simply doesn’t care about.