New Dem. Strategy – Men, Just Shut Up!
The View from the Middle
The old Democrat message used to be - if you disagree with us, you are just deplorable. If you are pro-life, you’re a misogynist. If you are concerned about border security, you’re a xenophobe. If you support law enforcement, you’re a bigot. If you are in a traditional marriage, and a Republican, you’re a homophobe. If you were to suggest that there is a radical and violent element within the Muslim religion that will use terroristic tactics in their effort to create a world caliphate, you’re an Islamophobe. Even President Obama recently indicated that this approach will not attract independent or moderately conservative voters. But, I think I have discovered their new message, and it is, “if you disagree with us, Just Shut Up!”
It was Mazie Hirono, Democrat Senator from Hawaii, who recently announced it and virtually shouted it to America. In front of an array of TV cameras and microphones, Ms. Hirono said that when it comes to Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations of Brett Kavanaugh, “men should just shut up!” There were no qualifiers before the word “men”, so I’m left to deduce that she meant all men, about half of the voting public. Then, as if that was not outrageous enough, she went on to say that men should just, “step up for a change.” For a change? So, no men have ever been noble? No men have ever been supportive of women? No man has ever made the ultimate sacrifice for women and children, like on the Titanic, or in World War I or II? Or like every stinking day! I have a wife and two daughters. Do you think I don’t honor, respect and even sacrifice for them every day? How dare you suggest that I need to “step up for a change”!
So, let me get this straight, Ms. Hirono. If I am even skeptical of a 36 year old accusation, with no contemporaneous corroboration, where the alleged victim can’t remember the date or location of the offense, and the only other witness named in the accusation has denied it ever happened, and the accused has denied it happened, and women have lined up to support the accused for his good character and integrity and support for women throughout his life – I have no right to be skeptical? And I should ‘just shut up”? Really? What happened to the first amendment?
And she’s just the tip of the iceberg. She is the piece of the resistance that has poked its head, maybe inadvertently, out of the water. We have seen this “shut up” campaign for a while now, but it became official when Maxine Waters, Democrat Representative from California, told a crowd in her district, “ If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out, and you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” They’re not welcome anywhere? In America? Anymore? Really?
And then the attacks began. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was harassed inside a restaurant in DC, to the point she had to leave. Pam Bondi and her date were assaulted as they came out of a “Mr. Rogers” movie. I guess they weren’t welcome in that neighborhood. Isn’t that a little ironic? And Candace Owens, a black conservative woman, and Charlie Kirk were hassled outside a restaurant in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. Are they planning these ironic twists? Don’t be confused, however. This harassment tactic is just a plank in the broader “shut up” strategy.
Then we have the “heckler’s veto” which we saw during the Senate confirmation process of Judge Kavanaugh. Of course, these hecklers only jumped up and shouted insane rhetoric when either Judge Kavanaugh was speaking or when a Republican Senator was trying to form a question. Again, don’t be confused. This is just another version of the “shut up” strategy. Their sick, twisted plan is to completely silence the other side so that they can win every argument. No need for debate, negotiation or compromise with the “shut up” strategy.
And, for now Ms. Hirono and the Democrats have aimed this message at men, but women won’t be far behind. If you are a pro-life woman, you can bet that they will eventually tell you to “shut up”. If you are a gay man (or woman for that matter) who supports border security, you will be told to “shut up”. If you are a black man who supports President Trump’s policies, you will be told to “shut up”. Just look at what the left has done to Kanye West. He has been vilified, called a no-talent idiot and an uncle Tom, and that is just another way to say – shut up !!!
If this doesn’t scare you or anger you, then you haven’t been told to “shut up” – YET. We need to get rid of this sort of vile rhetoric from our political process. The way our founders planned for us to do that was to vote these vermin out of office. So, start looking for the intolerant “shut up” proponents and send them home for the holidays - permanently. That will finally deploy their own strategy back onto them.
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
Thursday, September 13, 2018
Nike / Obama Fraudulent Messages
The View from the Middle
Nike just launched an ad campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick with a message that says, “Believe in something even if it means sacrificing everything.” The first problem I have with this message is that Kaepernick isn’t “sacrificing everything” for a cause, which I actually support. He didn’t lose his starting role with the 49ers because of his protest, in fact Jed York, the CEO of the 49ers, supported him publicly and coordinated a million dollar donation to groups that supported his cause. He also started eleven games, including three pre-season games, after he first sat and then knelt for the anthem. After the 49ers went 2 and 6 to start the season, Kaepernick lost his starting job. He lost it for poor performance, not for his protest position. He didn’t sacrifice anything for any cause.
My second problem with this ad campaign is that Colin obviously doesn’t understand what the ultimate sacrifice is. Since World War II we have had over 500,000 men and women “sacrifice everything”. We have had almost 7,000 of our soldiers give the ultimate sacrifice in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars alone. Over the last ten years we have had over 1,500 police officers die in the line of duty and we had 750 law enforcement officers make the ultimate sacrifice as a direct result of their efforts to save the lives of their fellow Americans on 9/11. THAT, Colin, is what it means to “sacrifice everything” for something people believed was more important than their individual lives. Making millions of dollars off an ad campaign after losing your job for cause is NOT the definition of sacrificing everything.
Kaepernick can also suggest, now, that his protest was not meant to disparage our military. Unfortunately, Colin didn’t do his homework. If he had gone to official American flag protocol sites, he would have found that the number one reason we stand for our national anthem is to honor those who have actually made that ultimate sacrifice to insure Kaepernick’s freedom to do exactly what he is doing. In fact, 62% of US veterans believe that Colin and his followers have the right to kneel during the national anthem, and I’m with them. But 40% of those same veterans have also vowed not to watch an NFL game until the kneeling stops. I am also with them, and I believe I’m in good company.
Beware Nike. Beware NFL. Beware NFL players. If you lose anywhere near 40% of your customer base, you’ll all be bankrupt. There are ways to draw attention to this issue, but sitting or kneeling for our national anthem is not one of them.
And while Nike is spewing its ludicrous message, President Obama is busy rewriting history. It started a few weeks ago when he described his administration as “scandal free”. This was the administration of Benghazi, where four Americans were murdered in a terrorist attack which they blamed on a video. It is the administration of Lois Lerner and the weaponized IRS that selectively brutalized conservative organizations. Obama’s DOJ attacked the media when it surveilled James Rosen of Fox News and his parents and the AP wire, and then lied to America as Eric Holder denied it. And don’t forget Loretta Lynch’s “call it a matter” order to James Comey, then FBI Director, as it tried to whitewash the Hillary Clinton investigation. Obama also must have forgotten Hillary Clinton’s private server and the fact that she used bleachbit on 33,000 emails that were under subpoena. This last one is still an active investigation and I believe will come back to bite the first lady of Democratic politics in the butt. Google would have to come up with misdirecting algorithms and the country would have to suffer from a national amnesia for all the Obama scandals to be forgotten, although he will get the support of the “lap dog” media in that effort.
Most recently, Obama has tried to take credit for an economic surge that he claimed couldn’t happen. Remember, 2% GDP growth was the “new normal” and 3% to 4% annual growth was just not possible. Now that it is all but certain that we will reach that 3% growth number in Trump’s second year in office, the “you didn’t build that” President is trying to take credit for it.
Finally, I’m amazed at how President Obama can condemn divisiveness and simultaneously divide the country in order to influence the midterms. In his speech at the University of Illinois he first slandered the rich and successful in America, accusing them of using race, ethnicity and religion to continue to divide us. Of course, I’m sure “his” billionaires are all saints. He then turned on the entire Republican party calling them bigots and fearmongers. With those comments he has demonized 100 million voters, according to the Pew Research Center. That is not just prejudice. It is super, colossal, mammoth prejudice. Then, amazingly, within a few sentences of accusing 100 million people of being fearmongers, he somberly tells the crowd that “these are dangerous times!”. No fearmongering there!
But he finished with something that I totally agree with. He said, “We won’t win people over by calling them names or dismissing entire chunks of the country as racist or sexist or homophobic.” But didn’t he just do that? The hypocrisy of our politicians will never cease to amaze me.
The View from the Middle
Nike just launched an ad campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick with a message that says, “Believe in something even if it means sacrificing everything.” The first problem I have with this message is that Kaepernick isn’t “sacrificing everything” for a cause, which I actually support. He didn’t lose his starting role with the 49ers because of his protest, in fact Jed York, the CEO of the 49ers, supported him publicly and coordinated a million dollar donation to groups that supported his cause. He also started eleven games, including three pre-season games, after he first sat and then knelt for the anthem. After the 49ers went 2 and 6 to start the season, Kaepernick lost his starting job. He lost it for poor performance, not for his protest position. He didn’t sacrifice anything for any cause.
My second problem with this ad campaign is that Colin obviously doesn’t understand what the ultimate sacrifice is. Since World War II we have had over 500,000 men and women “sacrifice everything”. We have had almost 7,000 of our soldiers give the ultimate sacrifice in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars alone. Over the last ten years we have had over 1,500 police officers die in the line of duty and we had 750 law enforcement officers make the ultimate sacrifice as a direct result of their efforts to save the lives of their fellow Americans on 9/11. THAT, Colin, is what it means to “sacrifice everything” for something people believed was more important than their individual lives. Making millions of dollars off an ad campaign after losing your job for cause is NOT the definition of sacrificing everything.
Kaepernick can also suggest, now, that his protest was not meant to disparage our military. Unfortunately, Colin didn’t do his homework. If he had gone to official American flag protocol sites, he would have found that the number one reason we stand for our national anthem is to honor those who have actually made that ultimate sacrifice to insure Kaepernick’s freedom to do exactly what he is doing. In fact, 62% of US veterans believe that Colin and his followers have the right to kneel during the national anthem, and I’m with them. But 40% of those same veterans have also vowed not to watch an NFL game until the kneeling stops. I am also with them, and I believe I’m in good company.
Beware Nike. Beware NFL. Beware NFL players. If you lose anywhere near 40% of your customer base, you’ll all be bankrupt. There are ways to draw attention to this issue, but sitting or kneeling for our national anthem is not one of them.
And while Nike is spewing its ludicrous message, President Obama is busy rewriting history. It started a few weeks ago when he described his administration as “scandal free”. This was the administration of Benghazi, where four Americans were murdered in a terrorist attack which they blamed on a video. It is the administration of Lois Lerner and the weaponized IRS that selectively brutalized conservative organizations. Obama’s DOJ attacked the media when it surveilled James Rosen of Fox News and his parents and the AP wire, and then lied to America as Eric Holder denied it. And don’t forget Loretta Lynch’s “call it a matter” order to James Comey, then FBI Director, as it tried to whitewash the Hillary Clinton investigation. Obama also must have forgotten Hillary Clinton’s private server and the fact that she used bleachbit on 33,000 emails that were under subpoena. This last one is still an active investigation and I believe will come back to bite the first lady of Democratic politics in the butt. Google would have to come up with misdirecting algorithms and the country would have to suffer from a national amnesia for all the Obama scandals to be forgotten, although he will get the support of the “lap dog” media in that effort.
Most recently, Obama has tried to take credit for an economic surge that he claimed couldn’t happen. Remember, 2% GDP growth was the “new normal” and 3% to 4% annual growth was just not possible. Now that it is all but certain that we will reach that 3% growth number in Trump’s second year in office, the “you didn’t build that” President is trying to take credit for it.
Finally, I’m amazed at how President Obama can condemn divisiveness and simultaneously divide the country in order to influence the midterms. In his speech at the University of Illinois he first slandered the rich and successful in America, accusing them of using race, ethnicity and religion to continue to divide us. Of course, I’m sure “his” billionaires are all saints. He then turned on the entire Republican party calling them bigots and fearmongers. With those comments he has demonized 100 million voters, according to the Pew Research Center. That is not just prejudice. It is super, colossal, mammoth prejudice. Then, amazingly, within a few sentences of accusing 100 million people of being fearmongers, he somberly tells the crowd that “these are dangerous times!”. No fearmongering there!
But he finished with something that I totally agree with. He said, “We won’t win people over by calling them names or dismissing entire chunks of the country as racist or sexist or homophobic.” But didn’t he just do that? The hypocrisy of our politicians will never cease to amaze me.
Wednesday, September 5, 2018
Algorithms - Masters or Servants?
Algorithms – Master of Servant?
The View from the Middle
Maybe the greatest mismatch in history is currently on stage in Washington as tech giant CEO’s like Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Jack Dorsey (Twitter) match wits with congressional committees filled with 50 to 60-year old’s who barely know how to turn their computers on. Even though Zuckerberg and Dorsey have both admitted to left leaning bias and more than 100 Facebook employees have formally complained about it, our congressmen and women seem to just flail around as the tech CEO’s dazzle them with an avalanche of BS and blame their algorithms for the problems.
They talk about their algorithms as if they all-knowing, all-powerful forces of nature that they are at the mercy of. When asked, “how is it that Diamond and Silk get blocked by your system?”, they just answer, “oh, our algorithms do all of that”. What about the “shadow banning” of Donald Trump Jr. or Ronna McDaniel, the RNC Chairwoman, by Twitter? I’m sure the same BS answer is coming – the algorithms did it. You’ll never get the truth out of these guys, so let me fill you in.
What is an algorithm? According to the dictionary, an algorithm is simply “a set of rules for solving a problem in a finite number of steps”. And who creates these algorithms? Facebook, Twitter and Google, et al create them of course. While Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey will try to convince you and our congressional representatives that they are slaves to their algorithms, you need to know that they are, in fact, the masters of them.
There are two maxims that I learned from P&G early on in my career as computers were becoming more and more commonplace. The first was, “garbage in, garbage out”. This, of course, is saying that for errors in your volume forecasts or estimates of your product needs. The computer just does what YOU tell it to do. If you put in the wrong information or create an inaccurate formula, the computer is just going to execute what you put in. It isn’t going to ask you, “are you sure you want to do that?” Garbage in, garbage out.
The second maxim I was taught was, “every system is perfectly designed to deliver the results it produces.” Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey know exactly what results their search engines are producing. Zuckerberg knows, for example, that Facebook is blocking conservative people and sites at a vastly higher rate than liberal people and sites. Jack Dorsey knows that Twitter is “shadow banning” enormously more conservatives than it does liberals. They just don’t care, or, even worse, that’s exactly what they want their algorithms to do.
If Facebook, Twitter or Google wanted to make their platforms emphasize “truth” or “balance”, they could do it in a heartbeat. They are masters of their algorithms, not servants of them. But, until we get real competition for Google, Facebook and Twitter we will see slow to no progress. If I was offered a conservative friendly alternative to any of these big three tech giants, I (and about 100 million other Americans) would jump all over it. Now, THAT might get Zuckerberg’s and Dorsey’s head out of their…well it might get their attention. I’ve heard Donald Trump Jr. is looking into creating or supporting such a venture. We should all hope he is successful and I would be OK if he made a few billion dollars in the process. If you see it coming, buy into it.
The View from the Middle
Maybe the greatest mismatch in history is currently on stage in Washington as tech giant CEO’s like Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Jack Dorsey (Twitter) match wits with congressional committees filled with 50 to 60-year old’s who barely know how to turn their computers on. Even though Zuckerberg and Dorsey have both admitted to left leaning bias and more than 100 Facebook employees have formally complained about it, our congressmen and women seem to just flail around as the tech CEO’s dazzle them with an avalanche of BS and blame their algorithms for the problems.
They talk about their algorithms as if they all-knowing, all-powerful forces of nature that they are at the mercy of. When asked, “how is it that Diamond and Silk get blocked by your system?”, they just answer, “oh, our algorithms do all of that”. What about the “shadow banning” of Donald Trump Jr. or Ronna McDaniel, the RNC Chairwoman, by Twitter? I’m sure the same BS answer is coming – the algorithms did it. You’ll never get the truth out of these guys, so let me fill you in.
What is an algorithm? According to the dictionary, an algorithm is simply “a set of rules for solving a problem in a finite number of steps”. And who creates these algorithms? Facebook, Twitter and Google, et al create them of course. While Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey will try to convince you and our congressional representatives that they are slaves to their algorithms, you need to know that they are, in fact, the masters of them.
There are two maxims that I learned from P&G early on in my career as computers were becoming more and more commonplace. The first was, “garbage in, garbage out”. This, of course, is saying that for errors in your volume forecasts or estimates of your product needs. The computer just does what YOU tell it to do. If you put in the wrong information or create an inaccurate formula, the computer is just going to execute what you put in. It isn’t going to ask you, “are you sure you want to do that?” Garbage in, garbage out.
The second maxim I was taught was, “every system is perfectly designed to deliver the results it produces.” Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey know exactly what results their search engines are producing. Zuckerberg knows, for example, that Facebook is blocking conservative people and sites at a vastly higher rate than liberal people and sites. Jack Dorsey knows that Twitter is “shadow banning” enormously more conservatives than it does liberals. They just don’t care, or, even worse, that’s exactly what they want their algorithms to do.
If Facebook, Twitter or Google wanted to make their platforms emphasize “truth” or “balance”, they could do it in a heartbeat. They are masters of their algorithms, not servants of them. But, until we get real competition for Google, Facebook and Twitter we will see slow to no progress. If I was offered a conservative friendly alternative to any of these big three tech giants, I (and about 100 million other Americans) would jump all over it. Now, THAT might get Zuckerberg’s and Dorsey’s head out of their…well it might get their attention. I’ve heard Donald Trump Jr. is looking into creating or supporting such a venture. We should all hope he is successful and I would be OK if he made a few billion dollars in the process. If you see it coming, buy into it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)