Posts Tagged ‘history’

Misconceptions Under the Fedora: Silver, Schmidt, Schlichter, Fernandez and Bonchie

Posted: February 27, 2023 by datechguy in Uncomfortable Truths, under the fedora
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Many incorrect things come from false premises for example Nate Silver tweets

Silver assumes the scientists in question were interested in presenting fact rather than advancing a particular premise. I presume they were out to advance that false premise and therefore have no reason to be ashamed as they met the goal there were shooting for.

Along those same line Eric Schmidt is suggesting that tough words will prevent this from happening again this premise is again false as I noted

here is the williams bit

No consequences no changes.

Old friend Kurt Schlichter notes something that perplexes many conservatives like me:

In places like North Dakota and Idaho, which should be on the cutting edge of medieval conservatism, they regularly elect Buick Republicans who think we should use our inside voices. What gives?

and explains that many people are working under a misconception that they are actually voting for republicans:

In the big red states, everyone who is wants to get elected to anything joins the GOP. So, naturally, a lot of people who, in a non-red state, would probably be Democrats, join the GOP. It’s the only game in town. Can you tell the difference between Arkansas’s Asa Hutchinson and a Democrat?

But these people dilute the hardcoreness of the party. You get them in office and they do not evolve into something cool. Rather, they devolve into squishes and undercut those who actually are based. 

And that’s were he is slightly off, they are not “devolving” they are being themselves. As soon as they have a base of supporters who depend on them for favors they feel safe enough to go the John “fifth vote for the left” Roberts route. On votes that would pass anyways or they don’t care about they’ll join with the GOP to boost their “I voted with the party 90% of the time” meme but when the chance comes to advance a democrat meme or to kill a bill that means something or to put a leftist in a civil service position by which they can advance the left’s cause they strike because the only reason they are not Democrats is if people actually knew what they believed they’d be run out of town on a rail.

Now I might be being a tad unfair to wretched the cat by including him in this post based on the following tweet:

Maybe I’m reading something that isn’t there into it but it seems to me he is suggesting that the woke didn’t have the goal of demolishing the palace? I’ve always presumed they did.

Finally I saw this piece at Redstate from Bonchie:

According to Luft’s legal team, information on Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and Jim Biden was handed over to the FBI all the way back in 2019. That’s in the same timeframe that Timothy Thibault was heading up the investigation into the president’s son. Thibault was later fired for concealing evidence for partisan reasons.

Has that information resurfaced within the FBI or did Thibault bury it for good? That’s a question we don’t have an answer to. Regardless, if Luft has the evidence he claims to have, it would behoove him to get it to the House Oversight Committee immediately. The longer this stews, the less credible he is going to seem.

The piece suggests that the FBI will look more politically motivated if they stall on this but he has it slightly backwards. Biden had decided he wants to run for re-election. Winning elections is the only thing he’s been consistently good at and DaWife is all in with him.

The Democrats however want him gone and replaced with either a true believer or a more believable placeholder.

Make no mistake if the powers that are running this administration fail to get Joe to step aside with the various carrots they’ll offer this Whisileblower is the stick

Godwin’s Law needs a revision or a successor

Posted: February 12, 2023 by John Ruberry in culture, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics, Uncomfortable Truths
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By John Ruberry

It’s time to revise or perhaps expand on Godwin’s Law. Named for attorney Mike Godwin, which, according to Dictionary.com, “Godwin’s law is the proposition that the longer an internet argument goes on, the higher the probability becomes that something or someone will be compared to Adolf Hitler.” 

Here’s the new law, you can call it Godwin’s Law II, Ruberry’s Law, or just a simple observation: The longer any American political discussion continues, it’s very likely that something or someone will be called a white supremacist. 

Yes, that includes some things. When Pete Buttigieg was calling for massive infrastructure spending last year, he mentioned previous road and bridge projects and “the racism that went into those design choices.” To be fair, there is a grain of truth or two to what Buttigieg said. Nearly 100 years ago, master builder and notorious racist, Robert Moses, purposely designed Long Island’s Southern State Parkway, which was built to expand access to Jones Beach State Park, another Moses project, with overpasses that were quite low, so buses, presumably filled with minorities, couldn’t be driven to Jones Beach. 

On the other hand, it has long accepted as local gospel that the 14-lane Dan Ryan Expressway, built like a trench, was geographically placed to separate South Side Chicago’s white and growing black populations. Chicago’s NPR station dismissed that tale as an urban legend ten years ago. Long before the Dan Ryan’s completion in 1962, African Americans had migrated in large numbers to the “white” side of the expressway. 

Let’s move on to an interesting young man, Vince Dao. He’s a conservative who late last year participated in the Asian Americans Debate Model Minority & Asian Hate panel organized by Vice. Dao spoke with a level of common sense, so much so that most of the other participants, including a Bangladeshi American man and a Korean American woman with purple hair, appeared to be suffering coronary attacks as they had never been confronted with a logical discussion in their lives. 

If you only have a few minutes, the core part of this debate begins at the nine-minute mark.

“If America is to hold together, assimilation [is]–not just good or bad–[but] necessary,” Dao stated. “I don’t think it’s going to be possible for America to survive as a stable functioning society if people don’t, to some degree, say, ‘Well here’s what we’re going to commonly agree upon.'”

“But who gets to choose it?” another panelist asked. Dao responded, “The majority culture I suppose.” When pressed on what was that majority culture, Dao elaborated it would those who happen to be in power. “And who’s ‘people with power?’ White people?,” the purple-haired woman bellowed out while rolling her eyes, adding derisively for emphasis, “I’m going to say it… white people!”

Not surprisingly, purple-haired woman brings up “white supremacy,” proving the infallibility of Godwin’s Law II or whatever you think it should be called. Later in the exchange she asks Dao, “Do you ever say ‘all lives matter?'” His response, was, “Of course.” Another woman, sarcastically responding as if Dao was on trial for murder and he admitted in testimony that he committed the deed, answered back, “There it is! All lives matter!”

Yes, some leftists believe if you say, “All lives matter,” it is racist.

The sheep in George Orwell’s Animal Farm would be proud of Dao’s detractors. 

When Republican Larry Elder, a black man, ran for governor of California two years ago, a Los Angeles Times columnist warned that Elder offered a “white supremacist worldview” and that he was a “very real threat to communities of color.” Last month, the brutal beating death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police officers–the first five cops charged with his murder are black–was presented by some media wags as an example of white supremacy. Oh, the chief of police in Memphis is an African American woman.

The general theme of the white supremacy trope is that America is rigged–and our nation’s ruling class is in place–forever. 

No, it isn’t.

Let’s talk about William Augustine Washington. He was the last great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Augustine Washington, a slave-owner like his famous son, our first president. 

While generations of the Washington family enjoyed great financial success, William Augustine Washington, who died in Bradley, Illinois in 1994, was a humble tool-and-die maker. That’s something to ponder as Presidents’ Day is next week.

At my age I can say I know, met, and interacted with thousands of people, many of them fascinating individuals. Until recently I worked with a man, a modest yet erudite clerk, who was a descendant of George Washington’s successor as president, John Adams.

When I toiled in the hospitality industry, one of the salespeople I worked alongside had a distinguished ancestor of her own, Arthur Middleton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Years earlier she parlayed her lineage, and, ahem, white privilege, to land a highly paid job. Well, not really–on the financial end. She wore a hoop skirt while portraying an ordinary citizen at Colonial Williamsburg. 

As for my white family, the richest member of my extended relations was a great uncle–who fathered one child, a son. The son died broke.

America is not “rigged,” but that is not to say racism doesn’t exist. It certainly does. 

But America’s freedom to succeed comes with a curse, the possibility of failure, even if you are white.

And for some sheep, America is about, and only about, white supremacy. Which is why, because of those sheep, if you wait long enough, every political argument will devolve into that topic. 

Yes, we have a new law of political discussion.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

A Reminder About Those Who Call Conservatives “Nazis”

Posted: February 11, 2023 by datechguy in culture
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Sir Humphrey Appleby: Let’s look at this objectively. It is a game played for national interests and always was. Why do you suppose we went into it[The EU common market and parliament]?

James Hacker: To strengthen the brotherhood of free Western nations.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Oh, really. We went in to screw the French by splitting them off from the Germans.

James Hacker: Well, why did the French go into it, then?

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Well, to protect their inefficient farmers from commercial competition.

James Hacker: That certainly doesn’t apply to the Germans!

Sir Humphrey Appleby: No, no. They went in to cleanse themselves of genocide and apply for readmission to the human race.

Yes Minister The Devil You Know 1981

There is a saying that “ignorance is bliss”. I don’t believe that’s true.

Ignorance particularly ignorance of history is a recipe for the making of fatal mistake that have already been made by people again and again and again.

Today I’m watching the 1961 Movie: Judgment at Nuremberg. One of the great movies that available free on Amazon Prime but is highly forgotten. The only living member of the primary cast which was a who’s who of some of the greatest stars of Hollywood is William Shatner who played the aide of Spencer Tracy’s head jurist.

I’d like to play a small clip from the movie: You will need to be signed into Youtube to watch it. If you’re banned from youtube like me you’ll have to watch it on Amazon

They used actual films taken by the allied troops rather than recreating it for the 1961 film. To say there were and are horrible is one of the greatest understatements in history.

And the left calls us Nazi. They do so because we support the 2nd Amendment, because we say there are two genders, because we are willing to define “woman” and because we will not set back and ignore it when babies are slaughtered in the womb but most of all, they call us Nazi’s because we won’t bend the knee to the woke.

I submit and suggest that every time they do so they insult every single person who was slaughtered, who was displaced, who was persecuted and who was occupied by the German forces from 1939-1945 and before. And they disgrace themselves and all of those who fought against this evil in the hopes of making themselves equal to those brave men and women when they are not in the least possible way.

Many are young and ignorant and kept so and might be excused by their ignorance, but not in their staying ignorance.

It is those who know better who are the ones who should be ashamed of themselves, if they had any capability to being so that is.

If Dianne Feinstein is suffering from cognitive decline and is unfit to serve, then why she still a senator?

Posted: January 29, 2023 by John Ruberry in congress, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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Feinstein official Senate photo, retrieved from her website on January 29, 2023

By John Ruberry

Nearly overlooked earlier this month because of the drawn-out vote for speaker of the House was the breaking of seven decades of precedent in the upper chamber of Congress in the election for largely ceremonial post of president pro tempore of the Senate. Largely ceremonial only up to a point, that is. The holder of that position is third-in-line in presidential succession. Every president pro tempore elected since 1949 had been the longest-serving senator from the majority party. The dean of the Senate is 89-year-old Dianne Feinstein, she has been representing California since 1992. But Patty Murray of Washington, who is a relatively spry 72, was elected president pro tempore, which ups her salary a bit and earns her a security detail.

Feinstein reportedly declined to run for president pro tempore.

Concerns about Feinstein’s mental acuity go back to 2020, when she praised then-Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsay Graham (R-SC) when the confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett concluded. “This has been one of the best set of hearings that I’ve participated in,” she told Graham before hugging him, “I want to thank you for your fairness.” 

Personally, I think Graham did a decent job during those hearings, but Feinstein overlooked–or should I say she couldn’t remember–that during the Donald Trump presidency it was the duty, in the eyes of the Democrats’ hard-left base, for every Democratic member of Congress to RESIST Trump and the Republicans.

Shortly afterwards, Feinstein stepped down as the ranking Democrat of the Judiciary Committee.

Last spring, her hometown newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, spoke to members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as ex-Feinstein staffers, about her mental state. And all of them, anonymously, told the Chronicle that because of memory issues, Feinstein appears unable to serve as senator.

More bluntly, in my words, it looks like Feinstein can’t do her job.

“I have worked with her for a long time and long enough to know what she was like just a few years ago: always in command, always in charge, on top of the details, basically couldn’t resist a conversation where she was driving some bill or some idea. All of that is gone,” a California House Dem admitted to the Chronicle about Feinstein. “She was an intellectual and political force not that long ago, and that’s why my encounter with her was so jarring. Because there was just no trace of that.” 

The same article offered up this damning quote, “There’s a joke on the Hill, we’ve got a great junior senator in Alex Padilla and an experienced staff in Feinstein’s office,” a former staffer said.

Last year the New York Times described an experience that will be familiar to anyone who has witnessed a friend or relative suffering from cognitive decline.

One Democratic lawmaker who had an extended encounter with Ms. Feinstein in February said in an interview that the experience was akin to acting as a caregiver for a person in need of constant assistance. The lawmaker recalled having to reintroduce themself to the senator multiple times, helping her locate her purse repeatedly and answering the same set of basic, small-talk questions over and over again.

Tellingly, a visit to Feinstein’s Senate website offers up a photo of her that appears to be a couple of decades old. That’s the pic you see in this entry. Click here for a more recent photograph.

This month, two Democratic southern California members of the House, Katie Porter and Adam Schiff, announced they are running for Feinstein’s seat–her term expires in 2025. Schiff, who repeatedly lied about having evidence proving Trump-Russia collusion, claims he informed Feinstein of his intentions. Believe that if you want to. 

Other candidates are expected to declare their candidacy. Feinstein hasn’t said anything yet, but she’s expected to announce that she will not be running for reelection. 

Clearly, Feinstein should have resigned for health reasons at least three years ago. 

One way to minimize the chances of having senators–and House members–suffering from cognitive decline is to enact congressional term limits, even though that may mean amending the Constitution. Besides, serving in Congress should be a highlight of someone’s career–not the entire career.

Feinstein’s sad situation is not unique in Washington. Two Republicans who served with Feinstein, Strom Thurmond, who ended his 48 years in the Senate at 100, and Thad Cochran, who resigned after 39 years in the Senate, suffered cognitive challenges late in their careers, as well as one Democrat, Robert Byrd–he died in office when he was 92.

For five months in 2001, at the age of 98, Thurmond was president pro tempore. And when Byrd died, he was president pro tempore of the Senate. Hey, hats off to the Democrats for bucking tradition by electing Murray over Feinstein for that post.

Besides congressional term limits, America also needs smarter voters. Although by all accounts Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is a healthy 89-year-old man. Last year he was just elected to his eighth term. Grassley is a former president pro-tempore.

Having wiser and less selfish members of Congress is probably too much to hope for.

Mental issues can burden younger persons too.

In Pennsylvania, 53-year-old Democrat John Fetterman, who suffered a stroke last year, successfully ran out the clock in his successful Senate election, despite speaking struggles in his few public appearances and a disastrous debate performance. 

Joe Biden turned 80 last year and he’s expected to run for reelection. Biden has had many mental miscues in his two years at president. But that’s a problem well worth another discussion.

Please don’t call me ageist. If heart ailments, cancer, accidents, or infectious diseases don’t conquer me first, I am certain that one day I will suffer from cognitive issues. 

UPDATE February 14: Today Feinstein announced that she won’t seek reelection. Call me ableist, agist, or whatever. But Feinstein should have quit at least two years ago. She can still resign.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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