Posts Tagged ‘reality’

Breakfast With the Man Who Wasn’t There

Posted: January 25, 2024 by datechguy in election 2024, elections, politics, primaries
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I’ve always known how to count

Tip O’Neill

After Ron DeSantis pulled out of the race and I endorsed Trump I wrote the following in closing:

I’ll close with the same words I ended my endorsement of DeSantis with:

Closing thought: I’m convinced that if we nominate Donald Trump we will lose but if my advice is ignored and he wins the votes to be the nominee I will support him in the general election and make the best possible arguments for Trump (there is no lack of good arguments for his re-election) to convince those Blue collar folks to abandon their irrational hatred and vote for him, even though I think said effort is doomed to failure.  After all with God all things are possible.

Short of my sons each finding a nice Catholic wife there is nothing that is likely to make me happier then to be proven wrong in my assessment of our chances come November 2024.

After writing this there was a comment left by a strong Trump supporter who declared:

there are no blue collar haters of Trump … period … they may not all be fans … but no TDS among blue collar … anyone with TDS who claims to be “blue collar” is just lying …

and the Dems would have, will try to steal the next election from WHOEVER the GOP runs … so may as well go with the guy who gives us the best chance … and that was always going to be Trump

Well today after mass I had breakfast with a close friend. A guy as blue collar as they come who has been with the GOP since long before I met him. In fact he was a republican a solid decade and a half before I decided to join the side I was on.

One or twice a month or so we go out for breakfast and talk Religion, politics and sports and today we talked about Trump’s impending nomination.

To my surprise this fellow, who had voted for Trump in 2020 bluntly stated he was disgusted with him and would be voting for RFK Jr. this time around.

This is a fellow who is as conservative as they come, this is a fellow who acknowledges that Trump did a good job as president and noted both his problem solving style and his tendency to, if he could not achieve a desired aim directly, create the condition so that said desired aim could take place.

He further acknowledged that Joe Biden has been an absolute disaster as president and has bluntly stated that a second Biden term will be even worse.

None of that matters however. He’s disgusted with the cult of personality, he’s disgusted with the toadyism whereby when a person is running against him their the worst person in the world (and the subsequent falsehoods involved) but if they turn around and endorse him they’re suddenly wonderful again.

I spent an hour making the case that this is a binary choice and that a Biden 2nd term will mean the end of our civil liberties because if you reward someone who uses the full power of the state to destroy political opposition you are giving incentives to such a practice and once established can’t be stopped. The GOP voters choose Trump and that was our only choice to stop them.

He counted that Trump would cost the house and the senate not only in this election but in elections to come and Trump would produce majorities for the Democrat with an even worse long term result. Even if by some miracle Trump won a 2nd term Absolutely nothing I could say would change his mind, he is convinced that Trump’s second term, if it happened, will be the revenge tour and that he will be unable to fill a cabinet or achieve what he had done before

Absolutely nothing I could say would change his mind and as I dropped him off at his place noted that a commentator on my site specifically said that people like him simply didn’t exist. He answered:

“Well you can tell him that you just had breakfast with one.”

In fairness this is less an irrational hatred than a rational disgust and distrust but the end result is the same.

I greatly fear that this conversation is taking place all over the country to the same result, and while that might suit some in the Trump camp who do not wish the votes of the insufficiently devout, for a person like me who knows how to count it means it will take this administration making a move so inept producing a disaster so horrible that even those who hate Trump will decide they can’t let this continue.

Well either way I’m going to play this out and make the case for Trump as best I can until it’s over like Jackie Robinson after Bobby Thompson’s home run where he was the last off the field keeping an eye on Thompson on the off chance he failed to touch each base because he knew the game wasn’t officially lost until he did. If proved wrong nobody will be more delighted than I.

It’s a very long time between now and November and a I’ve said before with God all things are possible. I just wish that the defeat of the communist left didn’t rely so much on that maxim.

Who Are You Going to Believe Our Narrative on Gaza Or Your Own Eyes

Posted: January 20, 2024 by datechguy in Israel, Israel vs Hamas
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Sir Humphrey Appleby: A minute is a note for the record and a statement of action, if any, on what was agreed upon. Now what happened at the meeting in question?

Bernard Wooley: Well the book was discussed and the Solicitor General advised there were no legal grounds for suppressing it.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: And did the Primer Minister accept what the Solicitor General had said?

Bernard Wooley: Well he accepted the fact that there were no legal grounds for suppression but….

Sir Humphrey Appleby: [Interrupting] “He Accepted the fact that there were no legal grounds for suppression.” You see?

Bernard Wooley: [Suddenly understanding] Oh!

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Is that a lie? 

Bernard Wooley: No. 

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Can you write it in the minutes?

Bernard Wooley: Yes

Sir Humphrey Appleby: How’s your conscience?

Bernard Wooley: Much better thank you.

Yes Prime Minister Official Secrets 1987

One of the most valuable things about doing shoe leather reporting in person is the ability to actually see what is going on and hear what is being said as opposed to the filers of the media, who, particularly by omission, create a path to the narrative they wish or if there is no path to such narrative simply omit info completely or refuse to cover a story.

This is why first hand observation is huge and while folks like Robert Stacy McCain and James O’Keefe are so valuable to those who want to know actual truth.

A great example of this came out this week. For a long time we have heard the narrative of the Yesterday there was a report that was tweeted out concerning the Israel Hamas War. 

The war has gone on long enough that troop rotations are taking place. IDF soldiers are coming home and they are telling what they’ve seen and apparently it doesn’t match either the “open air prison” or the “innocent civilians” business.

an excerpt:

There is poverty, and there are also entire areas of cities full of buildings packed with apartments and homes full of appliances, modern comforts, vehicles, and a standard of living that could rival many places in Israel, that easily surpass most of the Arab world. This is not a deprived blockaded population in concentration camps. Soldiers describe being shocked by this – GAZA is under Egyptian & Israeli blockade but you would never know it, it (was) a modern prosperous thriving territory. – The tunnels, the weapons, the preparations & infrastructure to ‘go get the Jews’ are everywhere. In the houses, under the businesses, in the mosques, the UNRWA schools, the hospitals and clinics, GAZA is not an open prison – it is a giant terror base.

and this isn’t the only source:

Earlier this month, one of the 646’s battalions began going through central Gaza’s al-Azhar neighborhood, dubbed by Israeli officials the “Towers neighborhood” for the 31 apartment buildings allegedly populated by Hamas officials.

“We discovered that every house has a shaft, and a whole underground network connects them, including the school and the mosque,” said Shushan.

We have to abandon the fiction that peace is possible between the Gazans and Israel. 

Update: Rush Limbaugh understood this years ago:

The Dear School of Experience Visits A Survivor of Kibbutz Nir Oz 

Posted: December 15, 2023 by datechguy in culture, Israel, Israel vs Hamas, Uncategorized
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K’Mtar: [Alexander has just dropped an opponent in the Holodeck] Po’tajg! Po’tajg! Finish him. [Alexander drops his bat’leth and walks away. The Hologram Klingon gets up knife ready to kill him from behind] Freeze program. [To Alexander] You should have killed him when you had the chance.
Lt. Worf: Why did you not?
Alexander: I don’t know.
K’Mtar: Look at him! He did not care that you showed him mercy. He was going to kill you.
Lt. Worf: K’mtar, that is enough.
K’Mtar: If this was real, he’d be dead by now. 

Star Trek TNG Firstborn 1994 via chakoteya.net

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.

Ben Franklin Poor Richard Almanack 1758

Yesterday I talked about the problem of Gaza post Hamas, over at the daily links at Elder of Ziyon I saw this story and video that emphasizes that problem, a story that is both heartbreaking and maddening

“We thought that Palestinians are good people. All they want is peace and prosperity,” Lahav told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview from a hotel in this Red Sea resort city where she and most of her community were temporarily relocated. “It’s just that Hamas is forcing them to be in this aggressive situation.”

When terrorists first shook the door of her safe room on Oct. 7, Lahav was sure that she and her 22-year-old daughter were about to be killed. But a makeshift lock she had fashioned out of an oar and a vacuum cleaner thwarted three separate break-in attempts. The women lay in the darkened room for about 10 hours listening to sounds of automatic gunfire and grenade explosions. At one point, they heard a group of teenagers robbing their house.

Later, Lahav learned from other Nir Oz survivors that Gazan women and children as young as 10 years old had followed Hamas terrorists into the kibbutz, looting, helping the armed terrorists, and apparently enjoying themselves.

Here is the video

It’s heartbreaking because better than one in four of the people in her Kibbutz were killed or kidnapped. But it’s also maddening because this woman is in her 60’s and the evidence during her entire life has been that the Palestinians have wanted them dead, have cheered when terror attacks had taken place and only saw the Israeli peace camp as useful idiots to be exploited.

Yet it took the slaughter of her neighbors for her to learn this lesson and the only reason she and her daughter lived long enough to learn that lesson was that her makeshift lock held out.

How many of her neighbors would still be alive today if they had learned that lesson before Oct 7th?

And let’s ask two more important question to folks here in the states, questions whose answers I believe are just as clear:

  1. How many of those protesting in the streets today in NYC, DC and elsewhere would kill the Jews they encounter here if they thought they could get away with it?
  2. Is there any reason to believe they would or will stop with the Jews when they are done

I submit and suggest that the answer to question 1 is “Yes” and the answer to question 2 is “No” and the only reason you will not likely see this happen in the US is that the citizens of this country are the most heavily armed civilian population in the world today, possibly in history.

Which explains why the left wants us disarmed.

May Israel grow wiser from these event and may the west profit from this horrible example. Finally to those who don’t think this could happen here, I wish you the best of luck, may the dear school of experience never take residence in your town.

Update: She wasn’t alone in her naïveté and her reeducation

Why The Answer to Britt Hume’s Question For the Left is Easy (But not for the reason you might think)

Posted: October 6, 2023 by datechguy in Blame Biden Administration, culture
Tags: , , , ,

Screwtape: If such a feeling is allowed to live, but not allowed to become irresistible and flower into real repentance, it has one invaluable tendency. It increases the patient’s reluctance to think about the Enemy. All humans at nearly all times have some such reluctance; but when thinking of Him involves facing and intensifying a whole vague cloud of half-conscious guilt, this reluctance is increased tenfold.

C.S. Lewis: The Screwtape Letters #12

Today I’ve been re-importing my hundreds of Big Finish Doctor Who CD’s that I’ve gathered over the last 15 years and in between I’ve been taking a peek at the news and noticed this excellent tweet from Britt Hume vis Twitchy concerning General Miley’s insistence that Joe Biden is “Alert” and “Sound”

Let’s for the sake of this piece stipulate that the General is using the same definition of “alert” and “sound” that Mr. Hume is (which given the Democrat/Media/Deepstate left’s redefining words for their purposes might be a leap) and let’s further stipulate that a leftist who sees this tweet also uses the same definition of said words that Hume is.

With those stipulations one might think that the answer to Mr. Hume’s question is rather obvious.

It is not.

That would seem an odd or even impossible thing to say. Given the evidence at hand it would seem impossible for any reasonable person to believe the general’s words, but you must understand that even if we did not live in an age where objective fact is under attack there is a choice to be made here for any leftist who seriously considered Mr. Hume’s question.

If he believes his eyes then such a leftist must acknowledge several things.

  1. That Joe Biden is not fit for office due to his mental state likely caused by age
  2. That the media/establishment left has been lying to him about said state for years.
  3. Conservatives who have been saying this for a while were telling the truth.

It is those last two things that are the real struggle here, because to acknowledge this opens up a Pandora’s box of questions about things that the left has believed without question and disbelieved without question. They would have to acknowledge their complicity in not only believing the lies but in advancing and promoting them socially.

In short they would have to see themselves in the light of truth and that light might not be a flattering one.

But consider the alternative:

If they choose to ignore the evidence and believe the General vs their eyes then none of those beliefs need be questioned. They can remain in their bubble and enjoy the social affirmation that said bubble offers and insures, free from guilt, free from responsibility, free from the need to look in the mirror and see themselves as they are. To quote Screwtape: “His aim will be to let sleeping worms lie.”

To many that might seem incredible and impossible but remember just this week the girlfriend of Ryan Carlson who saw him murdered right in front of her refused to give the police a description of the murderer for “social justice” reasons.

In short apparently the answer to Brit’s question for the left is in fact obvious not because the answer reveals an obvious truth, but because it supports a convenient lie being told to themselves. Unexpectedly of course.

Rather sad actually

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