How to Lose

Posted: September 15, 2019 by julietteochieng in politics
Tags: , , , , , , ,

by baldilocks

If I didn’t know better, I’d say that a goodly portion of the 2020 Democratic Party candidates for president are working for Donald Trump.

At the Democratic-primary debate in Houston [on Thursday], Beto O’Rourke formally killed off one of the gun-control movement’s favorite taunts: The famous “Nobody is coming for your guns, wingnut.” Asked bluntly whether he was proposing confiscation, O’Rourke abandoned the disingenuous euphemisms that have hitherto marked his descent into extremism, and confirmed as plainly as can be that he was. “Hell yes,” he said, “we’re going to take your AR-15.”

O’Rourke’s plan has been endorsed in full by Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, and is now insinuating its way into the manifestos of gun-control groups nationwide. Presumably, this was O’Rourke’s intention. But he — and his party — would do well to remember that there is a vast gap between the one-upmanship and playacting that is de rigueur during primary season, and the harsh reality on the ground. Prohibition has never been well received in America, and guns have proven no exception to that rule. In New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey, attempts at the confiscation of “high capacity” magazines and the registration of “assault weapons” have both fallen embarrassingly flat — to the point that the police have simply refused to aid enforcement or to prosecute the dissenters. Does Beto, who must know this, expect the result to be different in Texas, Wyoming, or Florida? (…)

Unwittingly or not, O’Rourke and his acolytes have stuck a dagger into the exquisitely calibrated gun-control messaging on which their party has worked for the better part of 20 years. No voter can now say he wasn’t warned.

Many of my Facebook friends are still anti-Trump – some of them are conservatives who are trouble by the president’s in-your-face demeanor. Others are slightly left of center liberals. But since O’Rourke came out of the confiscation closet, some of them are talking about sitting out the 2020 election or doing what many of us did in 2016: holding their noses and voting for Donald Trump

My friends understand that it’s all fun and games until the government starts seriously talking about mandatory “buybacks.”

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.

Follow Juliette on Facebook, Twitter, MeWe, Patreon and Social Quodverum.

Hit Da Tech Guy Blog’s Tip Jar !

Or hit Juliette’s!

How to Lose

Posted: September 15, 2019 by julietteochieng in politics
Tags: , , , , , ,

by baldilocks

If I didn’t know better, I’d say that a goodly portion of the 2020 Democratic Party candidates for president are working for Donald Trump.

At the Democratic-primary debate in Houston [on Thursday], Beto O’Rourke formally killed off one of the gun-control movement’s favorite taunts: The famous “Nobody is coming for your guns, wingnut.” Asked bluntly whether he was proposing confiscation, O’Rourke abandoned the disingenuous euphemisms that have hitherto marked his descent into extremism, and confirmed as plainly as can be that he was. “Hell yes,” he said, “we’re going to take your AR-15.”

O’Rourke’s plan has been endorsed in full by Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, and is now insinuating its way into the manifestos of gun-control groups nationwide. Presumably, this was O’Rourke’s intention. But he — and his party — would do well to remember that there is a vast gap between the one-upmanship and playacting that is de rigueur during primary season, and the harsh reality on the ground. Prohibition has never been well received in America, and guns have proven no exception to that rule. In New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey, attempts at the confiscation of “high capacity” magazines and the registration of “assault weapons” have both fallen embarrassingly flat — to the point that the police have simply refused to aid enforcement or to prosecute the dissenters. Does Beto, who must know this, expect the result to be different in Texas, Wyoming, or Florida? (…)

Unwittingly or not, O’Rourke and his acolytes have stuck a dagger into the exquisitely calibrated gun-control messaging on which their party has worked for the better part of 20 years. No voter can now say he wasn’t warned.

Many of my Facebook friends are still anti-Trump – some of them are conservatives who are trouble by the president’s in-your-face demeanor. Others are slightly left of center liberals. But since O’Rourke came out of the confiscation closet, some of them are talking about sitting out the 2020 election or doing what many of us did in 2016: holding their noses and voting for Donald Trump

My friends understand that it’s all fun and games until the government starts seriously talking about mandatory “buybacks.”

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.

Follow Juliette on Facebook, Twitter, MeWe, Patreon and Social Quodverum.

Hit Da Tech Guy Blog’s Tip Jar !

Or hit Juliette’s!

You Can’t Eat Debt

Posted: September 15, 2019 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, economy, trade
Tags: , ,

Col Von Luger: Flyers are gentlemen, not peasants to dig in the earth. So I am surprised.

Group Captain McDonald: The English have always been keen on gardening.

Col Von Luger: Oh Yes, but flowers? It this not so?

McDonald: You can’t eat flowers

Col Von Luger: Good Point

The Great Escape 1963

 

I must confess that I was concerned when President Trump started slapping Tariff’s on China having been taught from youth that tariff’s had been one of the underlying causes of the Great Depression and knowing that China has been a great holder of our debt.

His confidence in his ability to manage our trade problems apparently has not been misplaced:

China will exempt some agricultural products from additional tariffs on U.S. goods, including pork and soybeans, China’s official Xinhua News Agency said Friday, in the latest sign of easing Sino-U.S. tensions before a new round of talks aimed at curbing a bruising trade war.

This development is of some disappointment to those looking to defeat him politically but not to producers of Pork and soybeans:

“The importance of this market to U.S. pork producers is clear,” said National Pork Producers Council President and North Carolina hog farmer David Herring. “U.S. pork exports could single handedly make a huge dent in the trade imbalance with China.”


An outbreak of deadly African swine fever, which has cut China’s pig herd by a third since mid-2018, has propelled Chinese pork prices to record levels and left the country in need of replacement supplies from overseas. U.S. pork exports to China so far this year have largely fallen short of expectations.

Ed Morrissey sees what it means.

The concessions on pork and soybeans are significant, much more so than a two-week delay in tariffs. It signals that China can’t afford to deal with a lengthy trade war, especially not this year. They may not like it, but they still need to trade in order to feed their massive population, and China might have to get used to fully opening their markets and complying with agreements to do so.

President Trump, being more successful and more experienced in business than myself and recognizing that checking China’s expansion without military confrontation was a vital American interest apparently understands one of basic facts of life, a fact that he as a person who was born to wealth might not be expected to remember.

The most imposing nation no matter how large a standing army or how broad a shadow it casts on their neihbors, is impotent if it can’t feed it’s people.

Biased media has gone from annoying to dangerous

Posted: September 14, 2019 by ng36b in media
Tags: ,
Hurricane Dorian predictions, from ABC News, https://s.abcnews.com/images/US/FloridaSpaghetti_hpEmbed_16x9_992.jpg

It’s like some people just want to watch the world burn. And by watch, I mean set it on fire themselves and then sit back and smugly gaze at their destruction.

The latest sad example of this is the controversy over Hurricane Dorian’s track. Dorian was a particularly nasty storm. It was big, had strong winds, and was driving into a variety of high and low pressure regions that altered its path, in some cases by hundreds of miles. So when President Trump tweets out that the hurricane is bearing down on Alabama, he’s attempting to ensure that every state is prepared.

He’s not wrong for being concerned. Here’s NOAA’s prediction at 5 pm from 29 August:

“The guidance envelope has nudged southward this cycle, with the ECMWF and HMON along the southern side, and the GFS bracketing the northern side. There has also been an increase in
along-track spread or speed differences with day 5 positions among the dynamical models ranging from near the northwestern Bahamas to the northeastern Gulf of Mexico. This appears to be the result of differences in the models’ depiction of the strength or lack thereof of the western portion of the ridge by day 5.”

NOAA Website, https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2019/DORIAN.shtml?

Read the rest of historical data here: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2019/DORIAN.shtml?

You’ll find lots of times the models “diverge” a lot. Would you want to be caught flat-footed if the storm diverges?

If Trump used old data and put out bad gouge to the state of Alabama, then ask yourself: does it matter? Was it a bad thing to be prepared for the worst? Is it worth tearing him down over? And if he hadn’t done it and the hurricane had turned that way, would he be criticized for not preparing?

The last part that gets me is this sort of non-controversy spreads around the world. News sources in Norway are jumping on this and calling it a fake weather forecast:

“In VG’s editorial, Per Olav Ødegård stated that “good economic times are Donald Trump’s best card in the election campaign. But the economy can also be his Achilles heel”. Ødegård commented that Donald Trump depends on good economic growth in the United States for his re-election campaign. Kenneth Lund and Terje Erikstad shared the same opinion in two pieces in Dagens Næringsliv published on the same day. Erikstad further speculated that “when Donald Trump is willing to fake a weather forecast, will he also fake economic statistics?”

Yup, this model looks fake:

Or the one at the top of the page.

President Trump does plenty of controversial things, but let’s stop pretending that being concerned for the welfare of a state in the path of a hurricane is somehow contentious.

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.

Older Entries
Newer Entries