Archive for the ‘politics’ Category

Moral Preening App

Posted: November 20, 2018 by julietteochieng in elections, politics, Uncomfortable Truths
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Andrew Yang

by baldilocks

1 “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.

3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,

4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

— Matthew 6:1-4

But, then, there are other schools of thought on this matter.

New York entrepreneur and Democratic 2020 [POTUS] candidate Andrew Yang wants to implement a system in which a government-run mobile app rewards Americans with “digital social credits” (DSCs) for good behavior.

Americans would receive DSCs under Yang’s system for things such as “participating in a town fair,” “fixing a neighbor’s appliance” or “tutoring a student,” his presidential campaign website explains.

“As individuals rack up DSCs, they would have both a permanent balance they’ve earned over their lifetime and a current balance. They could cash the points in for experiences, purchases with participating vendors, support for causes, and transfer points to others for special occasions,” Yang states on his website.

“As their permanent balance gets higher, they might qualify for various perks like throwing a pitch at a local ballgame, an audience with their local Congressperson or meeting their state’s most civic-minded athlete or celebrity.”

What could go wrong?

Yang’s social credit plan bears some similarities to the social credit system implemented by China’s authoritarian government.

Every citizen in China is assigned a social credit score that determines whether they can buy plane or train tickets.

Unlike the Chinese system, Yang’s plan does not include using digital social credit for punitive measures.

Emphasis mine. Such an app probably wouldn’t have the ability to dish out the type of punishment that the Chinese government does. However, wouldn’t it be interesting for such an app to contain a shaming measure for “bad behavior” — eating at Chick-Fil-A or supporting a pro-life organization, for examples?

Bad behavior could earn the offender a shame-swarm on Twitter or, perhaps, a visit from that chapter of ANTIFA which last seen paying call at Tucker Carlson’s house.

Surely, such a feature bug would never be built into this app. Surely not. (Insert side-eye here.)

Leave it to a Democrat politician to creep us all out. And, unlike Representative-elect Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, this one appears to have more than a few IQ points. Even creepier.

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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It’s No Mystery , It’s Still the Tom Hagen Math (and Business)

Posted: November 19, 2018 by datechguy in culture, politics
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Tom Hagen: Right now we have the unions and we have the gambling and those are the best things to have. But narcotics is a thing of the future. If we don’t get a piece of that action we risk everything we have. Not now, but ten years from now.

The Godfather 1972

I’ve been seeing a lot of articles on the sudden discovery that the Democrats don’t seem to care too much for Jews

Omar, a Muslim Somali-American elected last week to replace outgoing Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.) in the House, fought accusations that she held anti-Israel views during her campaign. As part of that effort, she told a group of Jewish voters in the state that she opposed the economic boycott of Israel, calling it “counteractive” and “not helpful in getting that two-state solution.”

But Omar’s tune has changed since winning the election. In an interview published Sunday by MuslimGirl, Omar said she “supports the BDS movement.”

“Ilhan believes in and supports the BDS movement, and has fought to make sure people’s right to support it isn’t criminalized,” her campaign told MuslimGirl, which said Omar had been criticized for coming out against BDS. Omar’s campaign also pointed MuslimGirl to her vote against an anti-BDS bill in Minnesota’s state legislature and her argument that boycott movements were successful in South Africa.

Some say it’s the Socialism and comes straight from Marx:

Louis Farrakhan in his ‘Jews are termites’ mode? Nope. That’s old Karl himself in his classic anti-Semitic effusion of 1843, ‘On the Jewish Question.’

It’s worth keeping Marx’s views in mind as you ponder the rise of figures like Ilhan Omar, the young and comely Somali refugee who just took Keith Ellison’s House seat in Minnesota. Like many new Democrats, Omar was nurtured by the far-left Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. ‘Israel has hypnotized the world,’ Omar said on Twitter, ‘may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.’

Then there is the man she replaced, Keith Ellison, now the Attorney General-elect of Minnesota. ‘We can’t allow another country to treat us like we’re their ATM,’ Ellison said of Israel. ‘That country has mobilized its Diaspora in America to do its bidding in America.’

And let’s not forget the Democrat ‘It Girl’ herself, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has gone back and forth on the question of whether Israel has a right to exist at all but has been as never-varying as Dewar’s Scotch in referring to Israel’s ‘occupation’ of Palestine.

And in fairness a few have been sounding the alarm for a while

Minnesota Rep-elect Ilhan Omar presents as a case study in the way the Democrats hate now. I have pursued the case study for Power Line readers in numerous posts as well as for Weekly Standard readers in “The anti-Israel seat” and City Journal readers in “A question for Democrats.” I wrote all the most prominent Minnesota Democrats I could think of for their comment on the Omar case. To a man and woman, they all rested on their right to remain silent.

David Harsanyi took up Omar’s case this week in the New York Post column “Here’s the anti-Semitism the media doesn’t want to mention.” Citing Power Line, he has now followed up his New York Post column with the Federalist column “Ilhan Omar’s Election Shows Democrats Aren’t Interested In Confronting Anti-Semitism.” Indeed, from Omar’s case we may infer that Democrats are becoming purveyors of anti-Semitism.

But even as anti-Trump Nazis continue to cause grief it worth reminding everyone that all of this is entirely predictable, Why?  Simple Math:

Right now the left has the Gays and the Transgenders and the Hollywood elites & media in which they are overrepresented and they figure that’s the best things to have, but in America Islam is a thing of the future.  In 20 years the children of Muslims now being raised on the tenets of Sharia law in America will be old enough to vote and Democrats going to make sure they get those votes when the time come, not now but 10-20 years from now.

The math is still the math and as Islam becomes a growth industry for the left American Jews who are now asking for clarification from folks like Omar sound a lot like a phenom I’ve seen before:

  if there is one thing that human beings have an incredible capacity for, it’s self delusion and for a very long time there will be plenty of Jewish democrats who remain in denial even as their children attending elite colleges find themselves treated as second class citizens if ever and whenever they try to acknowledge and celebrate their Jewish identity and hide it due to fear.  It’s very much like some elderly faithful Catholics who somehow haven’t gotten through their heads that this is not the democrat party of JFK or Tip O’Neill anymore.

The Democrats will leave American non-religious jews (or “Plop Jews” as comic Evan Sayet calls them) behind as they continue to court the Muslim  vote, however said Jews I suspect will be in denial and will accept ” explanations” and “clarifications” that will keep the dollars flowing right up until the point where Democrats decide that even their funds aren’t needed anymore and when they find themselves isolated and rejected with only the GOP as a safe haven, they’ll somehow blame Trump.

Ironic final thought:  In one respect this is exactly how a representative republic is supposed to work, when a particular group gains in power or population their views, even ones beyond the pale tend to get respect as the parties vie for their vote.  Now if we still had a country where both parties signed onto the same Judeo-Christian culture the price of acceptance would be rejecting views that dehumanize Jews in general and Israel in particular, but as the left has largely abandoned that culture, an effort led by many of the same liberals who now wonder why their party suddenly finds them expendable,  the fruits of the poison tree of their Marxian labors are slowing becoming ripe.

Will a defeated left turn to Violence & Civil War? Only if they’re stupider than I think

Posted: November 1, 2018 by datechguy in politics
Tags: ,

Bring it on

Andrew Breitbart

Last week I wrote that For the Left November 6th 2018 is going to make November 8th 2016 Look like a Mild Disappointment

Think about it. You’ve got Hollywood, the media, the Tech giants and big education behind you. You’ve got tends of millions of dollars being spent in races all over the country and you and yours. you’ve got every possible advantage going your way. Add to that you and your allies are completely energized and engaged, literally counting the days until the election so you can defeat Donald Trump…

…and you STILL lose.

How will they deal with the realization that their anger, rage and panic over Donald Trump is not shared by the voting public?

While the meltdown will be fun to watch when it’s all done a much more serious moment will arrive.

Having failed to realize that their tactics and message aren’t working and in fact might be costing them power the Democrat/left will have to make one of three choices.

The first and the smart choice would be to moderate, to realize that socialism and open boarders are not a winning policy, to decide that people who worship God are not a bunch of dunces and make an honest attempt to recruit candidates who can appeal to the general public instead of the gender studies department of an expensive university. This would be the smart thing politically and give the Democrats a chance to rebuild.

This is the right thing and the smart thing both long term and short term and therefore I suspect the Democrat left, deeply rooted in unreality will not do it.

The second choice is denial as described in this piece at bearing arms:

It’s also possible that a couple of wins for Democrats in the right places–such as the Florida governor’s race, where the Democrat holds a strong lead over his opponent–might be enough to stave off the destruction for a time. Instead, what wins there are will be spun as evidence that the tide is turning against President Trump and that it’s a huge victory for the left.

Now I think the Democrat lead in Florida is smoke and mirrors but let’s say they do well in that state and maybe Wisconsin, then they might go this route on the theory that it allows them to not have to make the decision to moderate yet, after all two years in an eternity in politics and a million different things could happen with Trump, the economy et/al.  The advantage of this plan is it keeps the confrontation with their new base from taking place which amazingly consists of groups whose stated goals are diametrically opposed to wit:

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

Expect the Democrat establishment and media to play this card if humanly possible the real question is: will the base go along with it?   I’m betting not so much but in terms of what’s best for the country it’s better than the third option.

And that third option is riots and violence and perhaps even attempts to provoke civil war.

Now some of you might think this is nonsense and I wish to God you were right. But for the last several years we have seen as illustrated by ace the whole “kill trump” meme condoned and celebrated by the left.  Antifa has been cheered and authority ceded to them in leftist cities.  Violence and intimidation, as long as it is directed against conservatives has been either minimized, condoned or ignored while at the same time in the media, in the university and all over social media platforms and from Hollywood we have had the left insist that Donald Trump and anyone who supports him is a Nazi or worse whose ultimate aim is the most vile and violent acts against them.

Is it any wonder that we see stuff like this:

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

stated openly, without critique, without rebuke and without any risk to reputation or employment because of the hope that such a statement might generate one more vote for Democrats nationwide?

So when this defeat takes place and those fools who have bought into this narrative of Trump and his supporters are out to get them and must be stopped the violent left, seeing that the electoral process won’t get them power will now decide that the actual physical destruction of their foes is the only option to save them?

There is a real chance that the Antifa / Black Lives Matter crowd will decide to escalate into violence in the tradition of the Weathermen and the Black Panthers.  This possibility has disaster written all over it for Democrats as it has three inherent problems.

The first it’s unlikely to be embraced by black and Hispanics voters enjoying prosperity:

As a group, DILEs [Democratic/Independent Liberal Elites]  are younger, whiter, richer and better-educated than the rest of the country. Strikingly, it is the only cohort across the political spectrum not to rank jobs and the economy as a top priority, preferring the environment and climate change. Polls show that people like Winston’s DILEs are also far less religious and far more socially liberal than the rest of the Democratic Party on issues like abortion and LGBT rights. 

If you’ve seen ANTIFA up close you’ll notice right away that they’re whiter than wonder bread and are charter members of the DILE crowd.  A bunch of white elites in masks breaking things won’t win over blacks and Hispanics who now have jobs and want to keep them.

The second problem of course is that if the black lives matter crowd descends into violence (and some might argue that this has already happened in some cities it  but the MSM has decided it’s a “local issue” and not reported on it) justifying it per the results of election 2018 it will even further hurt the left in swing districts that they need to win in 2020 and beyond and further drive minority voters, more interested in getting ahead in the best economic times in years, to the party that’s providing it.

But the real kicker is if this violence comes it will almost certainly be directed in cities controlled by the left that haven’t seen a GOP mayor or city council in decades, because if the left as a group decides that violent revolution is a good idea they will find that directing it against conservatives in areas where conservatives are solicitous of their 2nd amendment rights will not end well for them.

And while the left might believe another “Kent State” might be useful electorally, particularly if instead of troops or police, shots are fired by Trump voters , unlike the last once they won’t control the message.

Kent State was a watershed for the left because their narrative was the providence of an anti-war media trusted by a nation who were able to sell it to them unopposed.  A “Kent State where these is cellphone video of the crowd attacking citizens or police with violent force before being countered by force is very different narrative than one the left wants to build.  In the age of the selfie a media tarnished by the “fake news” moniker isn’t going to get the public to buy violent protesters as victims.

The reality is the violent extremists of the left are primary a threat not to the right but to the left.  Mr. Cromwell might be right about blood in the streets but it will likely be Democrat blood in Democrat streets and I suspect that once the Democrat elites realize that said blood threatens them they’ll want no part of it.  I suspect any such rampage will end with the amusing spectacle of Democrat mayors and or Democrat governors begging President Trump for help as people who have lived comfortably in the Kindergarten of Eden who scream “Nazi” at the sight of Donald Trump discover the difference between pretend danger and violence and the real thing.

Perhaps those screaming “revolution” should ask themselves:  Are you really going to raise an Army to overthrow Donald Trump out of a lot of rich pampered kids who need safe spaces and counseling if Steven Crowder shows up to speak at their college?  I don’t think so.

But if I’m wrong and the left does go this route it will certainly be interesting to watch the Nancy Pelosi’s Bernie Sanders and Maxine Waters of the world try to put the monster they have unleashed back it it’s cage.  It will be even more interesting when they come crawling to Trump to do it for them.

Pritzker falling in Illinois Dem guv race

Posted: February 11, 2018 by John Ruberry in opinion/news, politics, Uncategorized
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By John Ruberry

“Big Daddy! Now what makes him so big? His big heart? His big belly? Or his big money?” Brick Pollitt in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.

Two weeks ago at the regular Da Tech Guy site I analyzed the collapse of Chris Kennedy’s gubernatorial campaign in Illinois. In that piece I all but predicted that a member of another wealthy and powerful family, JB Pritzker, would be the Democratic nominee in the autumn general election.

But then came Rod Blagojevich.

The primary election takes place on March 20. On the Republican side, incumbent Bruce Rauner is being challenged by state legislator Jeanne Ives. I’m backing her.

Pritzker has gathered most of the key Democratic endorsements, including those from organized labor, not because of his big heart or even his big belly, as Brick Pollitt quipped in Tennessee Williams’ Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, but because of his big money. The Pritzkers have been a consistent and copious source of campaign contributions for Democrats. That big money has blinded Big Labor, as the Pritzkers have a checkered history with unions. Pritzker’s campaign is mostly self-funded.

JB is falling in the polls, although his plummet is not a complete collapse as it has been with Kennedy. A month ago Rauner, who at the time viewed Ives as nothing more than an annoying fly at his picnic, ran ads online and on television with FBI wiretap audio of Pritzker and Blagojevich discussing possible public office appointments for the billionaire after Barack Obama’s election to the presidency. A month later Blago was arrested. You know the rest of the story.

After a January Democratic candidates forum, a We Ask America poll showed that Pritzker’s two dozen point lead over his next rival that he enjoyed in October had been slashed in half. And in second place was Biss, a state senator who is the hero of the progressive crowd. In the latest poll, conducted by Victory Research on Monday and Tuesday–that’s important–calls the Dem race a “dead heat” between Biss and Pritzker.

There are several minor candidates running in the Democratic primary as well.

On that Monday the Chicago Tribune released additional Prizker-Blago wiretaps where Pritzker disparages several black politicians and jokes about the possibility of Blagoejevich appointing Obama’s controversial minister, Jeremiah Wright, to replace the then-president-elect in the US Senate. Pritzker, quoting Wright, even says “God d*mn America” during the recorded telephone conversation, which is something that could end up in another anti-Pritzker ad. As for the latest poll, the impact of Ptitzker’s comments hadn’t completely been digested.

Pritzker is now on an apology tour with the African American community.

Rauner, who the National Review calls “the worst Republican governor in America,” clearly has his own problems, chief among them are that none of his 44 Turnaround Agenda items have been enacted. The onetime businessman also signed into law sanctuary state and public-funding-for-abortion bills that have riled conservatives.

Ives is receiving flak for mocking Rauner’s failures in an ad where, among other things, a man wearing a dress tells Rauner, “Thank you for signing legislation that lets me use the girls’ bathroom,” As I noted on my own blog last week, while I don’t like the tone of the ad, her piece is factual and it may still prove to be effective, as the biggest howls against it come from Illinoisans who have no intention of ever voting for a Republican candidate for governor and GOP party hacks who have been bought off by Rauner’s big money.

There are two “Big Daddy” candidate for governor in the Land of Lincoln.

But the general election could result in being Biss against Ives, which would be something along the lines of a Donald Trump-Bernie Sanders matchup for president.

If that happens I will have a bounty of material to blog about this year.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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