I Beg Your Pardon Open Thread

Mark NoonanLeave a comment

The funniest thing about Biden pardoning Hunter is the pretend-shock among the Left and Never Trumpers…those who aren’t immediately getting on board with the pardon (which is most of them) are all “well, I never! Who could have thought that Joe Biden would lie to us???”. Just another reminder that Trump’s most important act to date was taking out the trash on the Right.

It is a ten year pardon – going back to just before Hunter was placed on the board of Bursima. Which means that he’s now skating on everything he did during that time and Joe is betting that Trump’s DOJ won’t indict him on his part of it (Hunter can’t refuse to testify now – his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination doesn’t apply…he can’t be prosecuted for these things). This is probably a good bet – and might have already been discussed between Biden and Trump. Biden isn’t going to live much longer anyway…and even if indicted, his lawyers could very easily get a declaration that he’s not competent to stand trial. What was extra funny is that given the wording of it, there was a several hour period where Hunter could have robbed a bank yesterday and there would have been nothing anyone could do about it…Biden pardoned Hunter for everything done to December 1st.

There was, of course, zero chance that Hunter wasn’t going to skate…there was no way Biden was going to die while his only living son was locked up. This is over and above the Biden Crime Family aspect of it…it just wasn’t going to happen. All those firm statements that he wouldn’t were just lies…and everyone knew they were lies when stated. But what is odd is that usually these are done right out the door…in the last week in office, some times on the last day. Makes me (and others) wonder about the health status of Joe right now? Someone was in a hurry to get this done.

Trump posted on Truth right after tying this to the J6 defendants and so the expectation is that they walk sometime in the afternoon of January 20th. There is still some debate about how widespread the pardons should be – some arguing that only non-violent people should be pardoned. Nope: in my view, its gotta be everyone. And then compensation for them. We must “insult to injury” here. We have to let the Democrats now that it is over – their whole lawfare scheme is done and now the real law is about to be turned on them.

It is Time to Leave the Land of Make-Believe

Mark Noonan9 Comments

Syria is in another – or resumed – round of chaos. Things had stabilized there for a while – fighting still went on, but no faction could gain a distinct advantage. Its back to falling apart, I understand, because a lot of Hezbollah and other Islamist fighters were drawn into Lebanon to fight the Israelis and this allowed other factions to advance. Now there is once again doubt that the Assad regime can survive – and, once again, the Christians of Syria are under massive threat because the people who are currently advancing hate everyone who isn’t them and nobody in the world gives a damn if you rape, enslave and murder Christians. And, yes, Team Biden helped make this all possible.

This is good time to remind everyone that Syria isn’t even a country. The Experts rate about 80% of the population as “Syrian Arabs” but these are just Syrians who speak Arabic…the whole place is a hodgepodge of peoples. The flotsam and jetsam of various migrations and conquests going back 4,000 years. Even among those who speak Arabic as their mother tongue there are deep ethnic and religious differences. And Syria was never a country – no matter how far you go back, you won’t find a Kingdom of Republic of Syria prior to 1945. Since it was first conquered by outsiders, it has always been a province of an Empire of one sort or another and its borders were forever drawn and redrawn at the convenience of the imperial overlord. Syria’s current borders were set post-WWI via various treaties ratifying the Middle Eastern result.

What the world has done since 1945 is play make-believe – that Syria is a country, that Syrians are a people and we’re all supposed to respect this legal entity as if it were the same thing as, say, Spain. But the only way we could play this make-believe was by essentially going along with a dictator who held the disparate peoples together. Since 1971, this has been the Assad family (father and son). They pretended to be President of Syria – as if anyone other than their particular cronies had any respect for them – and we pretended they were the patriotic expression of the Syrian people (who don’t exist). It only worked as long as nobody internally had the wherewithal to challenge the Assad system…staring in 2011 (and partially fostered by the Obama Administration which was committed to helping Islamist movements throughout the Middle East), this system started to collapse…but as of today Assad is still officially in office because he’s been getting just enough support from Russia and Iran to hold on to Damascus…which we pretend is the capital city of a nation called Syria.

Getting back to that fighting against Israel – it officially ended with a cease fire. Or, in other words, an unmitigated Israeli defeat. To be sure, the Israelis are back-slapping themselves on how massively they degraded both Hamas and Hezbollah capabilities, especially in the number of senior leaders killed. This was all useful effort…but as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist, Israel loses. The Islamists don’t work on our time line. In their eyes, this is just a repeat of 1099 to 1187 – that is, First Crusade to the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin. And keep in mind that until Hattin, it didn’t seem like the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was in serious danger of falling…and then it fell. To the Muslim Islamist determined to liberate “Palestine”, this is all just part of a very long war which, in their minds, will end in ultimate victory.

And they’re right about that – at least, they are right as long as Israel refuses to wage full scale war against them…and as long as the West does everything in its power to prevent Israel from waging full scale war. And, once again, we’re in the land of make-believe here. In this case, pretending there is some fundamental separation between Hamas and Hezbollah, or that the sponsors of these groups are at cross-purposes. We additionally pretend that the goal of the Islamists is peace – it isn’t. Their goal is victory and for them there is no peace without it. What is happening in Syria is a conflict between different factions who have the same ultimate goal – total control of the entire Muslim world and the extermination of Israel and the Jews.

If you really look at it, our entire foreign policy is just make-believe. Aside from making believe that Israel can live in peace with people who want them dead, we also pretend that NATO will put an army into the field at need. That China wants peace and stability in east Asia. That Mexico has a government that can cooperate with us to stop the Cartels from importing drugs and slaves into the USA. Even some of the deepest MAGA people share these Ruling Class illusions. It is time to dispense with them. To view the world as it is.

And the first thing to understand is that the world is suffering from a crisis of legitimacy. That is, the peoples of the world, for the most part, never really consented to the condition of the world. I’ve talked about some of the more glaring aspects of this in the past. One really good for-instance here is Algeria – which is also not a country. It was a coastal province of the Ottoman Empire when the French showed up in the 1830s. Like Syria, it had never been a country – never was there a Kingdom or Republic of Algeria. The land, itself, had gone by various names since Antiquity under this or that imperial overlord. The French called it Algeria because Algiers was the first point taken by the French and they just extended the name of that nest of pirates (it barely amounted to a town at the time) to the rest of the lands they conquered from 1830 to about 1870. But come the 1950’s, “Algeria” had a “national liberation movement”…to “liberate” a “nation” that had never existed before. Small wonder that more “Algerians” fought for France than for independence. And that when “Algeria” was “liberated” vast number of people fled…they wanted no part of the pack of bank robbers, rapists and murderers who had emerged triumphant in the French colony. And since independence Algeria has had successive rounds of oppression, coups, civil strife, electoral fraud and so forth with a Ruling clique precariously on top but kept afloat by oil money. There still is no Algeria. There still is no legitimate government of Algeria. Its still just a geographic expression. But it is all part of the make-believe and Algeria has a seat in the UN and we have an ambassador there and we act like its a country.

But while the country is make-believe, it has genuine results in the world. Because we pretended that Algeria is a country – because the whole world pretended – untold numbers of people died in a civil war there, often via the most savage methods. This was better than it being part of France? Sure, the French could be rat bastards at times…but they didn’t send gangs of psychopaths around to rape and murder people over political or religious differences. I think that’s kind of a bare minimum here…and if your system allows it to happen, its a bad system that needs to be disposed of. And even if it happens only once…you know, if there is one, single instance of rape-death squads operating in your system, its a bad system. It isn’t enough that the particular round of rape-murder ends…it should never have happened. Anyone contemplating sending out the rape-death squads should have been so certain that this ends with him strung up on a lamp post that he never sends out the rape-death squads. Kinda see where I’m going here? There is bare minimum human decency that we’re supposed to have…and anyone who can’t adhere to this bare minimum better be killed as soon as possible. Preferably after a couple rounds of being flogged and branded with a hot poker…just to really drive home the message that you can’t do that.

We’ve pretended ourselves into a world where rape-death squads are fairly common (you know, like on 10/7…but before and after 10/7 rape-death squads have been operating in parts of Africa). Where literal tens of thousands of minors are trafficked across borders and everyone acts like its just one of those things that can’t be prevented. Where drug addicts wander streets and the proposed solution is to give them a clean place to get high. On and on and on like that…every day people are abused and killed in our world because the global system bears no relation to the desires of the people (nobody voted for rape-death squads or drug addicts). Most governments around the world, most of the time, are simply illegitimate…they don’t remotely reflect what the people want, even if you can point to a previous election where the party in power got the most votes. I absolutely guarantee you that no political party in the UK ran on a program of fostering rape-gangs – but Britain had and has a problem of “migrant” gangs grooming young girls for the sex trade. This was not on a campaign poster. Nobody voted for it. Preventing it is a simply matter of logistics – in this case, kicking out the population which housed the groomers. It is there because the system wants it there no matter what the people want…and a system which implements policy against the desires of the people has no legitimacy.

Right now, I rate only Argentina, Israel, Japan and maybe two or three other nations as fully under the control of a government both voted for by the people and implementing policies the people want. Come January 20th the USA will rejoin this club (nobody voted for Biden to open up the border…nor torpedo peace in Ukraine…nor provide cash to Iran so they could pay for 10/7…nor print up so much money that eggs are a luxury…nor decide that people can be born in the wrong body so better let boys play in girls sports…). And even in those nations which have a responsible government, the overall world system is still trying to thwart it. To deliberately and maliciously ensure that the desires of the people are not implemented. To force, that is, everyone to stay in the world of make-believe where a “rules based international order” means rapists parachuting from the sky and then everyone says, “don’t kill the rapists! That would be mean!”. No, thanks. I want out of that system. I voted for an exit on 11/5 and I want the whole system tossed on to the ash heap of history. I want to live in the real world – a world where I get what I want, not what some illusionist pretends I want.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan24 Comments

So, how did that Thanksgiving feel? I mean, sure, the Macy’s parade was still pretty woke but that seemed like an ancient relic, didn’t it? The football was back to being pretty football-y (except you still can’t defend against the pass these days), having Thanksgiving dinner with the family felt more Thanksgiving-y. It felt like America again…like the last four years was just a nightmare we’ve all woken up from. And of course Donald Trump tweeted out Thanksgiving greetings even to the haters and losers. It was just a great day yesterday.

But, still, the Left is there!

Jack Smith is apparently going to give a hit-piece “report” about Trump to Garland who will, of course, release it to the press. I’m pretty confident this is actually illegal…and if it isn’t, it should be made so. What’s happening here is that after the prosecutor gave up on the case, he’s throwing into the public square what he couldn’t prove in court and/or under oath. Its mere slandering. The accused has no effective means of refuting the charges. Just a final garbage act from some really garbage people.

Its been weeks and people are still dunking on the Experts who called the election wrong. I know this because something I said on August 24th has been re-engaged on X: “Trump by 5 on 11/5 and you know it”. This in response to an Expert who was asserting that Harris would win by 8. I was wrong, of course: Trump is up by 3 (with almost all of it counted…but still above 50%!)…but my 2 point miss wasn’t an 11 point miss like an Expert can do.

That does bring to mind our missing friend, Casper. I figure he’s in the midst of one of two things:

  1. Finally realizing that if they were lying about the election that badly, maybe they’re lying about everything else.
  2. Going ever deeper into Resist conspiracy theories to explain it away (latest I’ve seen is an assertion that Putin ordered Musk to use Starlink to change Harris votes to Trump).

I lean towards 2 as the most likely outcome…admitting error is the hardest thing any human being can do…and for the Left, the admission of error comes along with admitting that you supported (actively or passively) things that are downright immoral.

In response to Trump’s border and trade proposals, the Left has settled upon telling us our guacamole will get more expensive and we’ll have to do our own household chores. No line of thought has more fully shown the difference between the Left and the Right. First off, not a big guac fan and Americanized Mexican food is better than Mexican food (just as Americanized Italian, Japanese, etc food is better than its source material). Secondly, I look after my own house. I guess the Lefties really are pretty rich – or maybe they like to pretend to be rich by hiring illegal servants they can underpay? I don’t know – but I look after my own house. No, not perhaps as well as a professional landscaping company…but my yards are tidy and while it was a two day operation to trim the Phoenix canariensis (the pineapple-looking palms to you who live in frozen areas) I did get it done…and when an old sprinkler riser broke I went to Lowe’s all by myself to get a replacement. For interior cleaning as well. Full disclosure: we have hired a cleaning service a couple times but they don’t really clean what we’d like them to clean…the more tedious things that you don’t need cleaned but once or twice per year (like blinds and such). I can mop my own floor…so I’ll probably never go much into having my house cleaned by others unless physical debility requires it.

They really do live in their own world, don’t they? To be sure, some on the Right do as well – still getting pushback from Right Free Traders which I understand but, goodness, it is just a plain, historic fact that we were under Protection when we armed the whole free world in WWII. Free Trade only came to the USA post-WWII where it was felt necessary both to prevent a resumption of the Depression and to aid the rest of the world getting back on its feet. These are debatable issues but this concept that Protection = Poverty is just nonsense. Protection only becomes a problem if you’re protecting failure…but if its designed to make sure that cheap labor can’t undercut your market, then its just common sense. Remember, we’re not being out-competed by China in manufacturing…they are using slave and near-slave labor combined with low quality to simply drive out of the market all competition. This is not Trade…this is predatory and only a fool would let them continue it.

Trump, by the way, has all of his major proposed cabinet positions filled and its still nearly two months before he takes office. Just like Team Trump on the campaign trail, these people are running a very tight ship. I do think they really will hit the ground running.

Thanksgiving

Mark Noonan5 Comments

Thanksgiving is the time when we sane, normal people give thanks to God for His blessings.

It is the time when insane Liberals call us a bunch of genocidal racists.

Liberals decided to go along this route because, aside from being insane, they need to totally delegitimize the entire American experiment – and this means they have to call the Pilgrims evil. Our ancestors were just bad people who came ashore to murder and enslave! Bad, bad Pilgrims! And, so, bad Americans. But it wasn’t quite like that.

First off, Europeans had been coming to what is now New England for some time. The first exploration of what became New England was done by Verranzzano nearly a century before Plymouth Rock (there’s a bridge named after him in New York City). No permanent settlements were established for quite some time but Europeans did land here and there to explore and obtain supplies or to fish off the coast. This is crucial – this contact.

This is because by the time the Pilgrims arrived there were Natives totally familiar with Europeans…including speaking European languages. But very crucially, it means that the European disease environment had arrived. It cannot be overstated how important this was – it wasn’t at all intentional. Neither Natives nor Europeans had the foggiest notion of how disease spread. But for the Natives, the problem was that they had never been exposed to an outside disease environment and they got hit with pretty much the collected disease environment of the rest of the world that had developed over thousands of years of human interaction. They simply had no natural defense against these diseases…and given the level of medical knowledge at the time, once the diseases showed up, they would just have to run through the population until resistance was built up.

It took some time for these diseases to spread because, especially in North America, population was thin on the ground but from contact with Europeans and then from tribe to tribe the diseases shot through the Native population like an apocalyptic calamity. By the time the Pilgrims arrived, the diseases had already hit New England and among the first thing the Pilgrims came across were abandoned villages and farms, and skeletons of Natives who had died…meaning that they had died in such great numbers, and so fast, that nobody remained to bury the dead. Population was low to start with – the diseases dropped it even lower. So, when the Pilgrims came ashore they found plenty of empty land…and Native tribes, weakened by losses, eager to make deals…because they already knew about Europeans and figured having allies with steel swords and firearms would be useful.

And it was – and it was beneficial to both sides. No doubt about it, the Natives helped the Pilgrims through the first few years. They probably wouldn’t have made it otherwise. As it turns out – and a bit of thought would make this obvious to everyone – farming isn’t just planting seeds and getting food. Climate and soil conditions vary widely from place to place and while North America has fertile soil, no European had ever farmed it before and it had its own peculiarities which could only be overcome via experiment – which would have taken too long – or someone handy who could just tell them about the peculiarities. That is what the Natives did – and got aid in return.

But in the nature of things, there were conflicts. Bound to happen. The Europeans had their own ideas of law and, especially , land ownership and they were in no way a 1 to 1 match up to Native ideas. A treaty selling this plot of land to that European seemed to the European to be a very straightforward transfer of title. The Natives didn’t really have that developed a concept of private property. They weren’t just stone age hunter-gatherers but they also weren’t settled agriculturalists. They moved around a lot. They likely didn’t understand the concept of permanent ownership of a particular piece of land. Add into that various conflicts over what constitutes a lie, a breach of contract, or an immoral act – plenty of things Natives took for granted were viewed with suspicion or horror by the Europeans and doubtless vice versa by the Natives. Still, with all that, it was quite a while before war broke out – more than half a century passed. The causes of the war were varied but once it started, it was bound to become a blood feud. To the Natives, killing everyone was ok. To Europeans, schooled in the commands of Christian chivalry, you just can’t do that. But if that was the way the Natives wanted it, then the Europeans would pay them back in their own coin…so massacre begot massacre with the Natives having the distinct disadvantage in numbers, equipment and discipline (a Native chief couldn’t really command – he might be honored as a chief, but whether or not any particular group or person would obey was based upon what that group or person saw as advantage in obedience – meanwhile, men in the European militia were drilled to unquestioning obedience to orders legally issued).

And once war happened, and the Europeans won, they were bound and determined to prevent a recurrence. This meant they started ordering Natives around, and ordering them off. All trust broke down and the only way a Native could remain around the Europeans was to become, in effect, European. Most didn’t want to and so, war by war, the Natives just kept losing more and more and their population kept going down and down until only a remnant, easily controlled, remained.

What you have here (very briefly) is just human history. There was no evil intent – not on either side. There were misunderstandings. There were lies. There was cheating. There was also nobility and mercy. Once again, on both sides. But it was all something that was going to happen. Eventually someone was going to gross the ocean and encounter the Natives of North America…and when that happened first disease, and then conflict, were going to ensure a bad outcome for the Natives. To be angry about this in 2024 is to essentially demand a repeal of human nature and history.

The better way to view it is what came out of it all – in this case, the United States of America. A place of freedom and prosperity – where even those descended from the Natives of 1620 are vastly better off than their ancestors dreamed. Sure we can all regret the crimes that were committed, but there’s no sense dwelling upon them…nor indicting a whole civilization. They happened. They will not happen again. Our job is to make today as good as we can…not try to get pay back for people dead for centuries.

So, from me to you, Happy Thanksgiving – a time to be grateful for what we have, not morose over what happened ages ago.

Our Useless Alliances

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Why are we in NATO and the UN?

It is a question ever more Americans are asking themselves and it is time we really think this one over. The official justification for NATO, UN and all the rest of the international organizations is that collective security is the solution to the World Wars. That is, if everyone was banded together against the aggressor(s) then the aggression would never occur. It is considered axiomatic that if the USA had been part of the League of Nations in the interwar years, WWII would have been prevented. Our absence from the organization, it is said, sabotaged it and left it incapable of standing up to the aggressor. Really?

Suppose we were in the League in, say, 1938…just what would our understrength and obsolescent 100,000 man Army do in the face of Germany’s territorial demands on the Czechs? Given them something to laugh at?

The idea of collective security is based upon an assumption that everyone thinks pretty much the same way. That is, they weigh up the plusses and minuses and make their decisions accordingly. I have no idea how anyone started to believe this because all of history makes a mockery of it. Especially the history just before NATO and the UN were created. Collective security was never going to stop Hitler. It wouldn’t even have stopped a Germany absent Hitler. There was collective security against German aggression in 1914 where the Anglo-French-Russian alliance was overwhelmingly more powerful than the German-Austrian combination. It didn’t work then. It didn’t work in 1939. It never has worked. It never can work. Its a dumb idea.

The Germans attacked – in both 1914 and 1939 – not because they didn’t face a collective alliance against aggression, but because they thought they could win quick and cheap. In 1914, the German ambitions included essentially annexation for Belgium and Luxembourg, slicing off northern France, Poland and Finland to become German vassals and all of central Africa from the Sahara to South Africa. They really thought that if they could get to Paris in six weeks, they’d gain all of this. To put it bluntly, they figured that for 100,000 dead Germans, they’d gain mastery of Europe and a much larger position in the world. In 1939 it was the same thing – Hitler and his Germans thought they could win a quick victory…annul the 1918 results and gain what they wanted in 1914. It was stupid both times – and collective security stopped none of it. They were being unreasonable. Greedy and wicked. You can’t actually stop such people – you can only kill them when they try.

But now lets go forward – we need NATO, it is said, because we have to defend Europe from Russia. Ok. We’ll leave aside whether Europe is worth defending (in my view, it isn’t) and just concentrate on the claim. Did NATO stop Russia from invading Ukraine? Twice?

No.

NATO is overwhelmingly more powerful than Russia. If NATO wants, it could raise a military force large enough to make mincemeat of Russia in short order.

Did this stop Russia from attacking Ukraine?

No.

Of course not. Because Russia knows full well the situation and the bottom line here is that no NATO country is going to actually send an army to fight and die in the Donbas on the debatable issue of it being actually Ukrainian. The only thing that might have stopped Putin from invading wasn’t the existence of an alliance much more powerful than he…but an army in Ukraine either before or right after the Russian attack. Putin might have listened to, say, two German armored corps stationed outside Kiev in February of 2022. Might. He still may have gone right ahead if he felt confident that the Russian army was stronger. People who start wars aren’t noted for their rational thoughts. Even great conquerors like Napoleon get caught up in their own desires; never fully understanding the folly of what they’re doing. If they did understand the folly, they never would attack. Someone who attacks is someone who left off at least most of sanity some time before (even if attacking a much weaker enemy – like say the USSR against the Finns in 1939…no way Russia was going to lose but Stalin still sent men to die – to die – for what was at best a modest convenience for Soviet strategic needs; that’s just nuts). And here’s the real kicker: suppose two German armored corps outside Kiev would have stopped him? Nice. One small problem: Germany doesn’t have two armored corps. The Germans only have two panzer divisions plus one panzergrenadier. That’s pretty much it. Hard to deter anyone if you don’t have any force to deter them with.

And that gets us to the really fatal flaw behind NATO and the UN – they are predicated upon having a force immediately available to be unquestioningly used against aggression. There was a time when NATO had this – but after the Cold War ended, it all atrophied very rapidly. Everyone kept saying that NATO provides collective security – repeating it like an incantation as division after division, wing after wing, task force after task force was cut from NATO’s military inventory. Even if the theory of collective security was true, it doesn’t work without military force. Only the USA still maintains a sizeable military force…and our current force is run down, demoralized and understrength after two rounds (Obama and Biden) of imposing Woke ideology on it while equipment and training went by the board. I doubt our ability to field even a complete division for ground combat right now – and the streaks of rust I see on our ships makes me doubt heavily that we’ve even got a Navy at the moment. But we’re Patton ready to fight compared to the European military forces…did you know that Gibraltar, the gateway to the Mediterranean, is currently protected by 235 British soldiers and two patrol boats? You hold Gibraltar and you control one of the most vital trade routes in the world…and it is currently defenseless. Makes ya feel safe, doesn’t it?

As we enter Trump II, it is time we really started to think again about what we want? And I am certain that NATO isn’t it – there’s nothing in Europe I’d ever send an American kid to defend and if I’m concerned about our global position than alliance with Japan, India and Vietnam seems far more useful than what we have now. But I also think we have to abandon this concept of permanent alliances. NATO and the UN have proved not just useless, but malevolent – actually undermining our power and position in the world. An alliance is a thing for the moment – to do a particular task. I want an alliance with India not so that 50 years from now we’re still allied with India, but because the USA and India share a common need to deter China’s power grabs. Once the China issue is settled, then there will be no need for a USA/India alliance and it can lapse.

It is time for us to stop doing things just because it is what we’ve been doing. I realize that a huge number of people have invested their whole lives – and make their money – off the current system, but the system is to serve the country, not the country the system. What we have now serves no purpose; not even a bad purpose. Dispense with it and look for new ways.

The New GOP

Mark Noonan18 Comments

So, Trump appointed Lori Chavez-DeRemer Secretary of Labor…and much heartache ensued.

This is mostly because she was one of the few House Republicans to sign off on the PRO Act – a union-favorable bit of legislation which has been proposed and shot down in Congress by various means. It polls very well – though probably with the poll questions couched in a way to make it as favorable as possible. The biggest sticking points on the Right are that it essentially voids “right to work” laws and allows independent contractors (the “gig economy” – Uber drivers and such) to organize and strike even though they aren’t technically employees of the company they work for. The first point is the very biggest sticking point – we on the Right fought for years to make it so that unions can’t force people to be union members and pay dues…the PRO Act would essentially undo that and allow the unions to siphon off money even from people who don’t want union representation. So, Chavez-DeRemer is, in my view, wrong on this issue.

Why did Trump appoint her?

Very simple: he knows that the future of of the GOP is tied to working class voters – this is life or death for us. We either retain working class votes (and expand our support among various minority working class demographics) or we’re cooked. This pick is a tip of Trump’s hat to workers…and allows us to talk to the workers over the heads of the labor union bosses. This is worth having someone economically Left in the cabinet. And, in fact, points up the need for us to start to rethink how we do things.

Let us first be clear that we are not anti-union. There is nothing wrong at all with workers combining together to obtain the best deal possible from their employer. But let us also state firmly that public-sector unions are an abomination – any such thing is essentially a conspiracy to defraud the taxpayers as a public-sector union’s goal is to take more money from the taxpayers regardless of performance. That said, it is time for the GOP to become a union shop, as it were. When there is a dispute between workers and a large corporate entity, our sympathies must lie with the workers.

This doesn’t mean we go socialist or do something stupid like that – but we must be seen as the party that will listen to the worker’s concerns and see if a deal can be worked that avoids a strike and keeps a company profitable. We all know that the economy is forever changing and that business must continually adapt to changed conditions to remain profitable…and that profits aren’t bad; they are the only reason anyone engages in business to begin with. But when we have a situation where, say, a company is trying to import workers or export the factory…we should be dropping like a hammer on that corporation and taking the side of the workers. It doesn’t matter if ACME can make the hammer cheaper with slave labor in China…ACME will just have to make that hammer in the USA paying American-scale wages to American workers. Sure, the workers will also have to understand the thin profit margins on each hammer and adjust their pay expectations to that – as well as their productivity requirements. But this is all just the fair give and take that is supposed to happen in an economy built for a sane nation. Nobody is going to get everything they want – but reasonable people will get everything they need.

The main thing here is that the old GOP is dead. It actually died when we got our Trifecta after the 2004 elections and we couldn’t even defund NPR. It would have been nothing to do it – not that much money, we had the majorities…just do it. Nothing. That is when we started to learn that the old GOP had been running a con on us for decades and their only goal was to keep corporate taxes low and defense industry profits high. Now we sit on the cusp of Trump II and it is high time everyone got on board – the old ways didn’t cut it. We lost. Now we have to try something new…and when you try something new, it is going to be difficult and often uncomfortable. Perhaps this or that pick or policy by Trump will fail…doesn’t matter. We have to try things. In the trying will be the education which will get us to our goal…an America where the Constitution is again law (and much more strengthened) and we’re free and prosperous. This will take a long time. There will be failures on the path…but we’re on this path and we have to stay on it, or we’re doomed.

Waking Up From Woke

Mark Noonan25 Comments

So, I’m suspended on X for a week – kinda surprising as I’m a verified account but my assumption is that I got mass reported by the Left. It still mostly works via automated systems, after all! Anyways, I’ve appealed the suspension and we’ll see how that goes.

But, still a great overall site – and one of the things I saw recently was people talking about what made them wake up from Woke. We already know that quite a lot of prominent people who used to gravitate Left are now supporting Trump – but aside from the bigs like Musk and RFK, plenty of small fry are also discussing this. What it is all coming down to, from what I’ve seen, is people hitting that tipping point where the lies about Trump become so absurd that they can’t be ignored. This point is going to vary from person to person, of course; and most people on the Left will swallowing anything and will never hit that point…but the more intelligent do, and I think they all will over the next couple years if they haven’t already.

And it isn’t just lies about Trump – though that is most prominent – but the lies in general. Another big who went from Left to sane is J K Rowling of Harry Potter fame. Make no mistake about it, she’s still Left – and still doesn’t fully see that it was the early parts of the Left program which led to where we are today – but she just couldn’t stand the lies about men in women’s spaces. It is so obviously false to have men in women’s sports and private spaces that she rejected it and now gets massive Left pushback…which she laughs off as she sleeps peacefully on her pile of money. But she, like other bigs, has it easy on that score: having that much money does make you pretty much immune. The smaller people have to have real courage to come out as sane – and all glory to them, even if they do retain many Left positions.

As I’ve yammered on about endlessly, it is the lies that are the problem. We could have full on socialism and it wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t built on a fabric of lies (yes, I know; you can only have socialism via lies but supposing there was some perfect world where you didn’t have to lie to be Socialist). Everything is endurable, no matter how tyrannical and even cruel, if the truth is still demanded. It might be harsh to be shot for opposing the dictator…but it is much worse to be socially and financially ruined by liars who are themselves immune from such ruination. You can obey the dictator and live…but under Woke Rule, you can only live peacefully if you agree to lie. I don’t mind people thinking I’m wrong…I can’t stand people lying about what I believe.

I do believe this is going to become an increasing trend – 18-29 year old males went heavily for Trump on 11/5. That is, the people most lied about and most often compelled to lie just to live went for their way out. But so is everyone – I believe the only demographic that didn’t swing to Trump is unmarried, upper class urban and suburban women with college degrees…in other words, only the most relentlessly propagandized people still haven’t shifted. But even they will – there is just so long you can keep the “refugees welcome” sign out as you barricade your door against South American gangsters roaming your neighborhoods. We are waking from woke…sanity is returning…and with it, the chance to really reform our nation.

It is Trump’s World Now

Mark Noonan40 Comments

So, Joe and Mika (Morning Joe hosts, in case you totally forgot they existed) went to Mar a Lago to talk to Trump…they announced it like it was some grand gesture on their part, Trump acknowledged it with the contempt it deserves. It is obviously just a ploy for ratings. The MSM was quite proud of its high ratings on Election Day…which were driven up late by all of us tuning in to watch them melt down over the results…but since the 6th, they’ve been dropping like a rock. Even the Liberals are tuning out. They’ve got nothing left to say.

That is, as long as they lie they’ve got nothing to say. And that is their whole problem: their total existence has been to propagate lies for the DNC and it failed…it didn’t keep Trump out. It only barely got him out back in 2020. In Trump, we’re dealing with a once in a century political phenomena and the media simply blew it…and destroyed their last shred of credibility in the process. Already rumors of large scale layoffs and reorganization float around Social Media.

Say what you want about Trump, but he’s popular now. No, the polls will never let him have, say, 60% approval ratings because that would just be too horrible for them to allow…but when sports stars are doing the “Trump Dance” in the end zone, you know which way the wind is blowing. The last 4 years will be a footnote in history…the histories written about these times will focus on Trump from 2015 to 2029…what he was doing and saying, and only bringing in his opponents, from Biden on down, to discuss how badly they misjudged Trump. The physical event which wrought this was Butler, PA…but it had been building for a while as a man who has masterful skills in PR simply used those skills to best effect to make people nostalgic for 2019 and fill them with hope for 2025.

This is why the Speaker came to MSG on Saturday with Trump. It is why the incoming Senate Majority Leader is talking up how committed he is to the Trump agenda and is ok with recess appointments if necessary (they likely won’t happen: but its a good threat to have to convince everyone to go along)…he’s talking up having the hearings for the major appointees wrapped up by January 20th so Trump can really hit the ground running. People who really know understand what has happened…and so do people who know less, but who are also a bit media savvy…like Joe and Mika.

What will actually happen remains to be seen. Trump is stepping back into a looming Recession (in fact, we’re probably already in one) with wars around the world and criminal gangs determined to keep the drugs and slaves flowing into the USA. It is going to be rough – and Trump still has a lot of weak-kneed GOPers to deal with and Democrats who are still certain they can lie their way out of this. I have confidence in Trump’s skills but he’s got FDR-sized problems on his plate and he has less time and a much smaller Congressional majority to deal with them. But for the next two years, it is all Trump – only as we head into the mid-term scrimmage will there be a hint of GOP opposition (and none of that if things go reasonably well over the next two years). Our job, as citizens, is to give him his chance.

The Times They are A-Changing…

Mark Noonan23 Comments

Trump has commenced the shake up of the American system. I do expect all of his nominees to eventually be confirmed or at least given recess appointments – this is what the American people voted for. Most estimates indicate that not only will Trump win the popular vote, but will end up just at or slightly over a majority of all votes cast. The people spoke: change is coming. And it really needs to be embraced.

I know plenty of very smart, knowledgeable people on the Right who have varied objections to this or that Trump nominee. Gaetz, of course, has the most open opposition and I get it: that is, I understand the underlying reason for being dismayed. But hear me out on this: Gaetz, or someone very much like him, is precisely what is needed. To get the change we need requires a clear and clean break from the past. Those placed in charge of the departments must have zero loyalty to the current structure – the current leadership and the assumptions of that leadership.

It cannot be understated just how wrong we’ve gone – that what we have done, as a people, for many decades has been based upon mistaken or just plain false assumptions. To take one example: Russia. Step back for a moment and think about the situation in 1945: Russia controlled all of Eastern and Central Europe. An Europe that the Anglo-American alliance had proposed to free as a result of the Second World War. We could have done it. Russia was not all-powerful in 1945. The army they had along the Elbe was all they had, and it was weaker than the Anglo-American army right across that river. Russia did not have atomic weapons and had no means of striking effectively at either the UK or the USA. Russia, point blank, was at our mercy – and this before you consider that most of their industrial and agricultural production lay in ruins and the Red Army only deployed because of American trucks and American food. We simply could have ordered them to clear out – they would have had no choice but to obey or face a suicidal fight against us.

This was not done. There were various reasons we kept to the concept of alliance with Russia – some of it orchestrated by Russian agents in the US government – but the bottom line is that we still sought cooperation with Russia. Fine. It was a policy. Maybe a bad policy, but it was the policy. We basically consigned Central and Eastern Europe to Russian domination. And then we decided that this domination was bad and required us to go toe to toe with the Russians for decades. What on Earth for? To stop Communism? But we weren’t even stopping Communism in the United States. We let Communism conquer China. We left Communism in control of North Korea. We let Communism take over all of Southeast Asia. Cuba: still Communist! When you think back on it all it does seem a false show, doesn’t it? that the USSR eventually fell based on its own contradictions just makes what we did even stupider…but, we did it; and now here in 2024 we’re still supposed to stop the Russians (heirs of the Communist Russians) because…why? What are we defending in Ukraine? What are we defending in Europe? A British kid is about to spend years in jail because he attended an anti-immigrant protest…other Brits are being routinely visited by the cops for social media posts. Just what are we doing here?

We’re just keeping on based on the mistakes of the past, now enshrined as if they were holy relics never to be questioned.

We need to break from all that. To start afresh. What, really, is our desire? In both foreign and domestic policy? Perhaps we don’t really know? The only thing we do know is that everything that has happened has gone wrong – that welfare designed for a hand up has become a life style. That tolerance for the odd has devolved into drag queen story time. That welcoming the stranger has become the trial of Laken Riley’s murderers. That NATO morphed from defending the Fulda Gap into trying to eject the Russians from the Donbas. Its all a gigantic mess – and nobody who had a hand in making it or who has accepted this lunacy as normal can be in charge any longer. That we need people totally unconnected to it.

I often use Jacky Fisher as the exemplar for change – though a career Naval officer he was never part of the system of the Royal Navy. He lived in it, he loved it – and he knew it was completely useless for its intended task (maintaining naval supremacy), so when he got in charge of the beast he proceeded to change everything, holding loyalty to no persons or assumptions of the past because those persons and assumptions had all gone wrong. He built an entirely new Royal Navy – a much better Navy and one which saw Britain through the titanic struggles of two world wars. And do keep in mind that he was hated. With a white hot passion. Most of the senior admirals of the Navy despised the man – he was lower class (maybe even mixed race!), he was no gentleman, he was screwing with the stately progression of professional Naval careers and advancing other lunatics! You know: lunatics who thought that a warship should concentrate on combat effectiveness rather than spit and polish.

That is what Trump is trying to do here: insert people into office who are not at all loyal to what is and has been. I have called someone like Gaetz a hand grenade and there is that aspect to it…but he’s not just a grenade. He wasn’t chosen to be a bomb. Trump sees something else in him – maybe he’s wrong, but Gaetz wouldn’t have been picked just to say outrageous things…he was picked because he and Trump think that he can change the way things are done. In other words, that Gaetz has ideas for executive actions that will turn the Department of Justice around – to make it into something it currently is not. We know that nobody at Justice is remotely interested in the word…the whole system is designed to destroy identified enemies, increasingly those who are political enemies of the Democrat party. We want a Justice department that is dedicated to justice…we can’t get one with the current personnel under the current rules…we need someone who will go in, ruthlessly fire the worst actors, and simply insist that those remaining and brought in dedicate their lives to justice. Maybe Gaetz will fail, but that is why he was appointed…so, too, all the rest.

It is going to be a wild and bumpy ride! The hatred and fear of the current Ruling Class will cause them to try every expedient to thwart change. This will not be easy. We will lose a few rounds. But if we stand behind Trump and his team, they will have the underlying political mandate to continue. This doesn’t mean blank acceptance of everything Trump and Co do, but it does mean that anyone with an ounce of patriotism will be wary of contradicting Trump and only stand athwart on the most crucial of issues. That has to be our test, as a people: our willingness to ratify our own votes. We gave Trump a majority – we must sustain him in carrying out what we elected him to do. If we don’t, if we let the Ruling Class scare us off, then what we did 11/5 was meaningless.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan66 Comments

Trump’s cabinet is starting to shape up and it is already more solid than his first – naturally, some people already have objections to this or that pick on varied grounds but, hey, its much better we’re complaining about Trump picks than watching in dismay as Harris picks one corrupt lunatic after another. Rubio at State surprised me but I think he’ll be fine. Noem at DHS is also a bit of a surprise but also fine. On and on like that.

Trump is also laying out some agenda items and his education reform proposals – to force colleges to actually teach rather than be mere indoctrination centers – are key to the long-term survival of the United States. I’ve said for decades that we have an American Left because it is taxpayer subsidized. There are massive numbers of people who are perfectly useless being paid big money ultimately from taxpayers to advance Leftist causes in spite of popular disapproval. Just forcing colleges to cut their bloated administrative staff will be a huge victory for sanity. Deportations of illegals by the million is definitely on the agenda and I hope Democrats try to stop it – the more they are perceived as defending illegals, the better for us long term. Nobody other than corrupt fools wants illegals in country…getting them out was one of the main issues decided by this election and the people want them out. Preliminary moves are being made to bring the Ukraine war to an end (shaping up as de-facto recognition of Russian territorial gains; the cost of trying to expel the Russians being just too high for such a marginal issue – most of the people who live in Russian-occupied territory are ethnic Russians; its basically returning Ukraine’s eastern border to where it had been under the Czars).

Our House majority is terribly narrow – and it is the result of Democrats getting a lot of really good gerrymandering…some of it forced by judicial decisions. Basically if we got this House vote in 2016 it would have been 250 GOPers…now it is, at best, going to be 222. The Red States were also screwed in the census redistricting…there are 8-10 House seats sitting in Blue States which should have been assigned to Red States after 2020. This does make it crucial that we win in 2028…we must control the head count in 2030 and ensure a legal distribution of House seats (and, of course, Electoral Votes…Trump could have won without WI/MI/PA if House seats and resultant EV’s had been legally distributed). We will naturally have some House RINOs try to screw us…but we do have the power of victory. Trump won, and decisively – even the most RINO GOPer is going to be terrified of crossing Trump, at least early on…and that is when most of the work has to be done.

The Senate battle right now is over Majority Leader – I would prefer Scott but that will very much be decided by the internal dynamics of the GOP Senate. I’m looking on it calmly because even if we get ultra-RINO Cormyn, the bottom line is that common sense dictates cooperation with Trump. In 2017, McConnell didn’t go that route because he and the rest of the GOPe were convinced that Trump was a flash in the pan and a mistake…nobody looking at election results can say that now. Trump represents a huge electoral constituency which the GOP will need to retain if they want to win going forward. Failure to back Trump at least on the crucial votes would be catastrophic for the GOP.

Just keep in mind that we’re only past the first step here – we won. But the task of reviving America is going to be a long and difficult one. It won’t be remotely completed during Trump’s term. All we’re really doing here is stopping the bleeding and laying the groundwork for the future. Keep faith, keep smiling and keep praying.