How’s that Africa plan working out for us?

Posted: October 12, 2019 by ng36b in economy, war
Tags: , , ,
Map of Nigeria, from Nigeria.ru

With the focus on the Middle East, its easy to forget there are other parts of the world. Africa in particular tends to not make our news feeds. It always makes mine though, and yesterday was more bad news:

Nigeria looks to sign military cooperation deal with Russia this month

with this gem:

““We’re sure that with Russian help we’ll manage to crush Boko Haram, given Russia’s experience combating Islamic State in Syria,” Nigerian envoy Steve Ugbah said in an interview with Russia’s RIA news agency.”

Steve Ugbah, Nigerian Envoy

Ugh.

As a nation we suck at African relationships. Nigeria in particular is a key nation, with not only a relatively functioning democracy, but also a large population and large economy. Nigeria will be a leading force in Africa over the next 20 years. And that is about where our relationship ends.

Our State Department is not pushing relationships forward enough, unlike China and Russia, who are more than happy to offer economic and military incentives to advance their influence in the region. On the military side, we should be pushing for a military collective with African Nations that would help build military standards (similar to NATO), allow collective exercises, provide personnel exchanges and open markets to military sales. On the economic side, Africa presents a unique opportunity break China’s grasp on low-cost manufature and invest in a region that is unlikely to build a military super-giant devoted to destroying the United States. While we’re at it, let’s reevaluate how we do sanctions, since we seem happy to put sanctions on African countries for human rights violations while willfully ignoring those of Arab countries.

Africa could be our answer to China if we let it be. Let’s make that choice vice letting China and Russia turn Africa into their next backyard.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Dems Confirm my 2016 Religious Freedom Fears

Posted: October 12, 2019 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Sheldon: (chasing him down the stairs) Leonard, Leonard, Leonard, Leonard, Leonard, Leonard, Leonard, Leonard, Leonard, Leonard, Leonard, Leonard, Leonard, Leonard, Leonard, Leonard, Leonard, Leonard, Leonard

Leonard: Yeah, what?

Sheldon: Amy Farrah Fowler has asked me to meet her mother.

Leonard: Yeah.

Sheldon: So? What does that mean?

Leonard: Well, you know how you’re always saying that Amy is a girl who’s your friend, and not your girlfriend?

Sheldon: Uh-huh.

Leonard: You can’t say that anymore

The Big Bang Theory: The Desperation Emanation 2010

Three years ago just after some soul searching and a reassurance from Fr. Frank Pavone that Donald Trump was pro-life I endorsed Mr. Trump just before the GOP convention. That endorsement contained these words:

I suspect I and a lot of the faithful will have to spend a lot of the next 8 years praying, fasting and begging God to help both our country and the world avoid this horrible fate but while spiritual steps to prevent these catastrophes are good and proper temporal steps must also be taken.

And the single best temporal step will be the election of Donald Trump and the breaking of the power of those Americans who have decided their fellow citizens are the enemy.


Again I don’t take this step lightly, I know that there will be times that Donald Trump will disappointment me just as I expected Mitt Romney to disappoint me on social issues and John McCain to disappoint me on immigration and George W Bush who disappointed me on spending and the bank bailouts.


But while Trump will occasionally disappoint me (when he does I’ll call him on it) I am convinced he will neither persecute me nor strip me of my rights for holding my Conservative Catholic beliefs and acting on them.


I am very sorry to say I can not make that same statement about Hillary Clinton, and I’m even sorrier to see the day when I would say this about a presidential candidate.

At the time I wrote these words I suspect a lot of people on the left, on the right, and in the media would have called my fears over religious freedom over the top.

Not anymore

on Thursday, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) said he would strip tax-exempt status from any religious organization that supports traditional marriage, defined as one man and one woman. In fact, his position essentially amounts to a government preference for pro-gay marriage religious bodies that likely violates the Establishment Clause.
CNN’s Don Lemon quoted O’Rourke’s policy on LGBT issues, which states: “Freedom of religion is a fundamental right but it should not be used to discriminate.”
“Do you think religious institutions — like colleges, churches, charities — should they lose their tax-exempt status if they oppose same-sex marriage?” Lemon asked.
“Yes,” O’Rourke replied — to loud applause from the audience.

(emphasis mine)

Beto knows his chance of winning is slipping away and he has decided, as he did on gun confiscation, to go all in by saying aloud what everybody knows the left believes and daring others to hit him for it.

They ducked dodged and weaved which is no surprise are as unlikely to speak out for religious freedom as Steve Kerr is to be wearing a “Free Tibet” or “Free Hongkong” shirt at his next press conference.

The left considers religious Americans their enemy, this has been the case for a long time and is in fact the reason why I left the Democrat party back in the 1990’s

So when the media starts hitting Christians for supporting Trump, point to this stuff and ask them, what do you expect us to do?

Closing thought: Now in fairness to the left, in twenty years their position will change once they are dependent on the Muslim vote, the only part of their coalition that’s growing significantly in the population but of course when that happens I suspect there is going to be only one religion that they will decide is worth protecting.

Real Dictators vs Liberal Fantasies (Xi vs Trump)

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

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.

Sorry Liz and Bernie—For a country to be free and prosperous private property rights must be sacred

Posted: October 10, 2019 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,

Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and most other Democratic presidential candidates  proclaim support for either outright socialism or policies that are very much like socialism in nature.  At the very heart of all of these policies is a diminishment of private property rights. 

The founding fathers of the United States understood that the right to acquire property and the right to use that property as wished where two of the most important God-given natural rights, rights that were essential for this nation to be both prosperous and free. That was a frequent topic found in their writing.

John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the rest of the founding fathers of the United States received a great deal of their education about the essential nature of private property rights from John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government.  Here is a quote from Ch. V, sec. 27.  As you can see from this quote, money earned in the form of wages is one of the most crucial forms of private property.  It was written in 1689 and it is also the work that influenced the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution the most.

Every individual man has a property in his own person.  this is something that nobody else has any right to. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are strictly his. So when he takes something from the state that nature has provided and left it in, he mixes his labour with it, thus joining to it something that is his own; and in that way he makes it his property. He has removed the item from the common state that nature has placed it in, and through this labour the item has had annexed to it something that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour is unquestionably the property of the labourer, so no other man can have a right to anything the labour is joined to—at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others

This quote from chapter 5 of Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith makes it absolutely clear that the money paid to an individual to perform work is the same as the labor itself and both are the property solely of the individual.  Progressives do not understand that at all. 

Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command.

John Adams had this to say about the importance of private property when he wrote The Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States in1787.

Property is surely a right of mankind as really as liberty. Perhaps, at first, prejudice, habit, shame or fear, principle or religion, would restrain the poor from attacking the rich, and the idle from usurping on the industrious; but the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, to countenance the majority in dividing all the property among them, or at least, in sharing it equally with its present possessors. Debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on the others; and at last a downright equal division of every thing be demanded, and voted. What would be the consequence of this? The idle, the vicious, the intemperate, would rush into the utmost extravagance of debauchery, sell and spend all their share, and then demand a new division of those who purchased from them. The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If “Thou shalt not covet,” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.

Thomas Jefferson wrote this about property in a letter to Samuel Kercheval

The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen, in his person and property, and in their management.

In this quote from a letter to Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, Thomas Jefferson echoes John Locke.

A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings.

Milton Friedman had this to say about private property in the interview “Free to Choose”: A Conversation with Milton Friedman

I think that nothing is so important for freedom as recognizing in the law each individual’s natural right to property, and giving individuals a sense that they own something that they’re responsible for, that they have control over, and that they can dispose of

Here is one last quote on this subject, this one from the essay Will Property Rights Return? written by my favorite author Thomas Sowell

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.

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