Archive for the ‘under the fedora’ Category

Five Musk v Trump Thoughts Under the Fedora: Calvin Coolidge and JD Vance, Math and Tolerances, Troll Level Infinite on Epstein, O’Neill LBJ Richelieu Elwood P Dowd and Jesus, John Nolte For the Win

Posted: June 6, 2025 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, Blame Trump, politics, under the fedora
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100 years ago we had one of the wisest Presidents ever in office. That man was Calvin Coolidge. He was known for an age of prosperity but also known for giving good advice such as this line:

“I have never been hurt by what I have not said.”

Coolidge once held the office of Vice President, JD Vance the current Vice President apparently has taken his advice to heart and put out a hilarious tweet in the face of the whole world screaming for him to say something about Trump vs Musk which said:

Slow news day, what are we even going to talk about?

Now THAT’S funny.

It’s worth pointing out that Elon Musk is right that the “Big Beautiful Bill” does not cut as much as it should and spends more than it should, that is simple math and Elon is very good at math.

But as an engineer he should also be good at the math involving tolerances, that is, how far you can push something before you reach the danger point.

As I’ve already pointed out, this is the best bill that could be gotten out of the house with the majority you have, the math is very direct, you needed one more than a majority in the House and 50 votes in the senate on a reconciliation bill.

Without bigger majorities you can’t do better than this. It’s not just a matter of straight math it’s a matter of tolerances and Musk should know this.

There was a lot of talk coming out of the MSM over yesterday but the thing that I found absolutely Hilarious was this tweet from the official Democrat party twitter/x account:

In case the tweet doesn’t show the Democrats tweeted:

Kill the bill and release the Epstein Files!

Yes you read that right, the DEMOCRATS are now suddenly calling for the release of the Epstein files. I replied thus:

I’m sorry but getting @TheDemocrats to call for the release of the #EpsteinFiles is troll level ULTIMATE! I think the feud is a real thing but if it’s not this is 12 dimensional chess not 4

This is why you should never tweet while angry or on a emotional high.

If I’m Trump I tell Pam Bondi: I know you’re going through them but dump them all by the end of next week they asked for it.

I say the end of next week because this is going to be the only story for the next few days so if you have news you want hidden now’s the time to drop it.

I often refer to Tip O’Neill’s excellent autobiography “Man of the House” because it has so many lesions on how politics works. Yesterday’s kerfuffle remined me of one such story.

LBJ was meeting with Tip and called for some polling figures and an aide was slow in getting them and Johnson chewed him out with a profanity laced tirade. When Tip spoke to the aide saying that president or no I wouldn’t take that kind of grief from anyone the aide answered: That’s just his way five minutes from now he’ll forget all about it.

If there is one consistent thing about Donald Trump it’s the ability to work with people that he doesn’t agree with or even doesn’t get along with because he is completely goal orientated. You will see him make peace and a deal with anybody as long as it advances his goals. He’ll let Elon rant and jab him gently as he has so far but one there is a common goal he won’t be shy about making up with him, particularly when he knows he holds all the cards right now.

There are folks like Steve Bannon, who never liked or trusted Musk who want Trump to go all Houthis in Yemen on him.

Trump won’t rise to that bait. He’ll simply let good economic numbers for the country (and bad stock numbers for Tesla) speak for themselves. He’ll let folks like the teamsters who voted for him remind him that he may have kicked in money but the voters were showing up at rallies for Trump long before he turned up and that with one customer base already upset with him it’s not a good idea to upset a second until Elon reaches the Cardinal Richelieu moment from the 1948 version of the Three Musketeers:

When that moment comes (and there are signs it already has) Trump will take this scene from The Chosen to heart:

Let’s pray for them both and hope Elon this scene from the classic picture Harvey to heart.

I recommend pleasant over smart too or to quote Tip O’Neill again: “I always knew how to count.”

Finally there is one point on this thing that I completely missed that John Nolte didn’t:

Nolte said, “We don’t know what’s really going on, but I do know that Trump is sticking his finger in the eye of his biggest donor and that never happens. How many times did Barack Obama piss off George Soros? Zero.”

Seriously can you think of any pol, even one who doesn’t have to face the voters again, who is willing to stand up to his biggest donor to advance what he thinks is right? Does nobody see the amount of street cred this gives Donald Trump in terms of fighting for his principles? Who else has ever done this?

It’s like the story of the Mafia approaching Rocky Marciano to try to get him to throw his title fight against Don Cockell to clean up on the odds. Rocky rebuked them saying he was ashamed that they were Italian. The dons were disappointed but were impressed that he stood up to them.

In the end when Musk realizes this he will get that his best chance to meet his goal of reaching Mars is with Trump at his side vs sword to sword.

Yesterday the left was partying like Satan until 3 pm on Good Friday, let me remind them it quickly went down hill for him from that point.

Five Quick Thoughts Under the Fedora Trump Completely Unafraid, Unexpectedly again, Anti Catholics Upset, A Minority View and A Big Baseball Surprise

Posted: May 4, 2025 by datechguy in baseball, dynasty baseball, economy, fun, under the fedora
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It’s amazing watching Donald Trump constantly owning the MSM during hostile interviews.

What a difference when you don’t need them for exposure.

During the Biden years it was constant that various figures kept coming in lower than “expert” expectations, and then were revised down months later.

We’re only 3 months into Trump and already we’ve had two months of Trump beating “expert” expectations.

And no I’m not sick of winning.

The funniest thing about the Trump as Pope thing isn’t JD. Vance’s excellent response to Bill Kristol.

The funniest thing about the Trump as Pope thing is the people acting the most insulted are those who hate the church the most.

Not any outrage over Washington state passing a law to violate the seal of confession but a Trump as Pope image, vapors!

I might be in the minority here but I think this season of Doctor Who has been surprisingly good.

There hasn’t been a lot of preaching or woke just stories and when Davies team decides they want to tell a good story they are certainly capable of doing so.

Let’s hope this continues.

Finally I haven’t written much about my 1973 baseball league but with 57 games to go I find myself two games up leading my division thanks to a 7-3 run by me and a 1-9 run by the team that was ahead of me.

In the 5 years of our league no team has ever repeated as a division winner although a few have managed to make the playoffs in multiple years in a row. This difficulty is by design is VERY unusual for a team to repeat in this league

Mind you every other division winner has a better record than me as do 2 wild card teams so if I hold on I don’t know if I’ll get anywhere but still, not bad at all!

Five Weekend Thoughts Under the Fedora: Bugging Toddlers, Suddenly Minority Parties Matter, Tucker and Owens, The Army of the B Ark and the Church / University scandal parallel

Posted: March 9, 2025 by datechguy in under the fedora

Vice President JD Vance talked a bit about protesters harassing him while he was out with his toddler.

What I really want to know is where was the secret service? If there were people who might have been a threat to a sitting VP & his kid one might think that would be a reason for them to act.

But maybe that’s just me.

I’ve noticed a big chance in the MSM over the last couple of months.

During the Obama years and During the Biden years when the Democrats had all three branches of government the MSM had absolutely no interest in any GOP position as they had no power. You could turn to any network and you would not find a GOP member of congress anywhere in sight as they had little power to change anything.

At the moment the tables are turned as the GOP has not only the White House but a majority in the senate and a small majority, albeit a small one, in the house. So on fiscal matters which require only a simple majority as has always been the case the Democrats can’t stop a united Republican majority from passing what they want you would think that the MSM would be talking to the GOP and reporting on their plans.

Amazingly they seem to have decided that the Democrats who are completely without power are the story and they’re talking about their plans to shut down the government, which is apparently no longer a crisis if they do it.

Funny how that works isn’t it?

I must confess that I’m a bit confused about the sudden onset antisemitism that has hit Candice Owens. I find it particularly particularly odd as it seem to coincide with her discovery of the Catholic faith (a discovery that I approve of). You would think that this would cause one to be better disposed to the faith that the the Catholic church came from.

Tucker Carlson’s dalliance with the “blame the Jews” business or at least sympathy with their enemies has also seemed to coincide with a move toward the Christian faith (though not the catholic church). Again this is odd to me.

I’m wondering how much of this is due to grief they got from the Jewish left in the past and their distrust of them now (frankly I’d distrust people who have to be dragged screaming and kicking into opposing those who want to see them dead) and I’m also wondering if they as independent podcasters are dependent on funds that are coming from those who oppose Jews in general and Israel in particular after all that’s how those folks got their footholds in academica.

The real question to me isn’t so much their opinions, which they have a right to have, but this question: “Are their positions on Israel, Iran etc. etc. etc. Different than the positions they held say 10 or 15 years ago?”

If there is a significant change then the why becomes VERY interesting but frankly I’m not interested enough to research it, although I’m sure there are people out there who are.

The sheer scale of the amount of money being spent on NGO’s by the US government and on actual government employees doing nothing by Doge.

It seems like a lot of the people whose jobs are at stake seem to be leftists who make a permanent living in NGO’s.

I’m thinking that it’s a lot like the British peers buying commissions for their 2nd, 3rd and 4th sons who were not all that bright.

But if you want to really figure it out, the thing to do is to consider all those leftist folks who took useless majors in college that make them unemployable in the private sector where the last thing employers want is someone who rocks the boat vs people who get things done.

A lot of money democrats have a lot of kids like this who want jobs that bring prestige and money the NGO’s provided this and the feds willingness to fund them gave them power.

In short they are the B Ark from Hitchhikers who are pretty much a useless part of the population who are now panicked about the idea that they might have to actually be productive for a living.

On the plus side they’ll have plenty of time for a bath.

The folks at Columbia University seem rather put out that 30 million of federal funds are at risk due to letting the mob take over building and persecute Jews.

Nobody seems to realize that the Universities are making the same mistake that the Catholic Church made when they discovered priests going after boys.

If the church had exposed and prosecuted these men right at the start while it would have caused short term scandal it would have made it clear that this sort of stuff wasn’t tolerated and would have saved decades of grief and prevented a lot of evil.

Likewise the solution for the Universities remains pretty plain

  1. Prosecute those who violate law
  2. Expel those who commit violence, vandalism or impede students from study
  3. Sue students & NGO’s who damage properties for the cost of repair

The solution is simple it’s a question of will

Five Trump Thoughts Under the Fedora: The First Big Test, Orders Up, Learning Nothing , The Missing Meme, A slight Bow

Posted: January 31, 2025 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, Blame Trump, media, under the fedora
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The Collision of a flight with a military helicopter over the Potomac is the first real big test for the Trump administration.

This is something that has to be handled wisely, Trump needs to be presidential while at the same time highlighting the importance of competence vs DEI when dealing with important life and death jobs.

Of course the press spin has helped him as it again seems to be titled toward amplifying the loudest and most hysterical “Blame Trump” declarations.

I suspect Trump’s instincts will prove wiser than the press’ but time will tell if I’m right or not.

While Trump executive actions have been swift and decisive and dizzying there is one thing that needs to be remembered.

All of these actions that Donald Trump has taken and he has taken many rather popular acts are completely reversible because they are by executive order.

If he wants them to stand beyond his presidency Trump needs to get these thing codified into law and the fact that the GOP house has not taken any action along those lines yet disturbs me.

Of course they might be waiting for an opportune time or might be waiting for a spending bill that can’t be filibustered to attach his EO’s to, but whatever the tact they need to keep this in mind otherwise the next Democrat president can and likely will put all of this nonsense that Trump has removed back in play with a single signature.

One of the things that never ceases to amaze me concerning the media and Donald Trump is their complete inability to learn from their mistakes.

President Trump after a term in office and four years to think about how to achieve his goals has pivoted in terms of tactics to adapt them to current conditions and has used this to achieve the highest approval ratings he has ever scored.

Meanwhile the media continues to try to spin and play “gotcha” in an age where the net allows us to debunk them to a public that doesn’t trust them.

Perhaps never having been taught how to think but only how to react they may not know how to deal with the onslaught of action that this administration has become and serving a niche market means they don’t dare go out of the zone.

They’ll have to wait for a mistake, one will eventually come but will they be ready when it does?

I’ve been surprised by the lack of focus on Abortion in the hearings for RFK JR.

The reality is that it’s going to take republican votes to sink any Trump nomination and the place where Kennedy should have been most vulnerable was abortion being a lifelong Democrat. Of course his description of abortion as a tragedy rather than something to be celebrated shows his age.

That they didn’t press it more suggests it’s all about show and fundraising from true believers than anything else.

Of course the unwillingness to celebrate killing kids rather than simply tolerating it at alone might be enough to cost him Collins and Murkowski. But will it cost him more?

As Trump’s press secretary welcomes new media to the press conferences in DC allow me to take a slight bow.

While I was unable to secure Trump as an interview in the closing days of the blog as a business I can take a bow for another matter.

I’m welcome to allow someone to correct me but unless I’m very much mistaken the very first question asked of Donald Trump either on the campaign trail or as President by a member of the new media in an official setting was asked by me in Derry NH in September of 2015

Not a bad legacy

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