Open Thread

Mark Noonan

That quake in Turkey looks really bad. Don’t forget to say some prayers for them.

Saw another one of those articles accusing Putin of war crimes – this on the basis of recruiting soldiers from occupied Ukrainian territory. This is, indeed, a direct violation of the Geneva Convention and other international treaties.

Its also worth about a fart in a hurricane.

One of the most baleful things of the past century was the Nuremburg trials is this misbegotten drivel that there is such a thing as international law or that there can be a neutral tribunal provided for a defeated enemy. It just doesn’t work that way. It only seemed that way after WWII because the enemy powers were utterly defeated and occupied. Absent that, just how are you going to serve your warrant for Putin’s arrest? Unless a Ukrainian or other non-Russian army arrives in Moscow, it just isn’t going to happen.

But even in the unique circumstances of World War Two, the trials were an absurdity. We put on trial Hans Fritzsche as a major war criminal – he was in the same dock as Goering. Of course you’ve never heard of him – he was a radio broadcaster. Sure, he broadcast Nazi lies – that was his job. But if we’re to charge everyone who broadcasts a lie as a war criminal, we’re going to be busy for a bit. We hung Alfred Jodl who didn’t really do that much to order or carry out war crimes but only passed out 12 years to Alfried Krupp who ran the sickest slave labor empire in Nazi Germany; and then we let him out after 3 and gave him all his money back. The Russians made a serious effort to pin the Katyn Massacre on the Germans and have it as one of the counts at Nuremberg – they didn’t succeed but the bottom line here is that both FDR and Churchill were advised early on that it was the Soviets who carried out that massacre and they killed the story so as to not offend Stalin. With, you know, the truth…but then we set up trials with the Soviets helping us judge Germans guilty of carrying out massacres.

This is not to say that the Nazis should have skated. As I’ve noted before, Churchill once mused that the best thing to do would be to haul out the Nazis one fine morning and just shoot them. That would have been just – and of far more moral worth than a charade trial which included a mass murderer among the judges.

But, it happened – and now pinheads are forever asking for a repeat. As if it would do anything. War is about power – who has the most and who can apply that power most effectively. If you want Putin in the dock, then you better gather a lot of power and march on Moscow. Good luck to you. If you get him, go ahead and hang him, if that makes you feel better about it. I’ve no complaint about someone who starts a war getting shot for putting the world to the trouble. But don’t preach international law at me: it doesn’t exist. If you do catch Putin then the trial you hold for him will be garbage – because there can’t be other than a guilty verdict and you’ll be charging him not with being evil, but with losing. International law is whatever the strong choose to enforce at any given time. And that is how it should be: if you defeat your enemy, he is at your disposal. Shoot him or make a deal with him, as you desire. But don’t pretend you caught a bank robber and that a trial will somehow right the scales of justice in the world.

The news report is from 2021 but I first heard it yesterday: the Orwell Estate has given permission for a re-write of 1984 from a feminist perspective. Think about it: the premier book about totalitarian propaganda is going to be re-written to fit current propaganda. And you just watch: once this new one comes out, the original will be condemned and removed from libraries. The Left hates 1984…because they know it is all about them.

They apparently had some sick, bizarre Satanist musical number at the Emmy’s. I didn’t watch it because why would any sane person watch drivel like an award show? But I guess some people are upset. Can’t say that I am – of course these nimrods are glorifying evil. Some of them are just evil, others are too stupid to realize the evil. The few pop culture people who do see through it all usually end up making really good art that doesn’t get a lot of play. Look for those gems – I’ve even found some fairly recent pop music which is darned good and interesting…gotta hunt for it, but it’s there. It isn’t the stuff that tops the charts for the most part. And some of it does make me suspect that pop culture has its secret dissidents from the Leftist Narrative.

Pudding Brain is going to do his SOTU and they’ve put the fences back up around the Capital. Because our government hates the American people.

DeSantis is pulling the plug on Disney’s private empire in Florida. Among the other benefits Disney was given in the 1960’s is that they can take property via eminent domain! Old Walt must have had one heck of a lobbyist back in the day! Anyway, that’s all over with now – a five person board appointed by the governor will look after things; the board being the method by which a Leftist local government is cut out of the process. RDS seems to really get the point: it is all about power and you don’t leave any of it lying around for the Left to use.

22 thoughts on “Open Thread”

  1. Cluster February 7, 2023 / 2:08 pm

    Tonights SOTU speech will be the most dishonest, divisive, and hate filled speech ever delivered in the history of this country. And the disconnect between the American people and their government, has never been wider. Every poll out there, including Democrat polls, show that the majority of Americans are not optimistic about the future, are worried about making ends meet, and the relentless inner city crime waves, yet tonight you will hear the American President say that America is strong and that he is more optimistic now than ever before.

    This is all completely unsustainable.

    Just 16 per cent of Americans said they were better off since Biden took office in a new ABC News / Washington Post poll

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11720257/White-House-claims-Americans-better-position-poll-responses.html

    • Amazona February 7, 2023 / 9:27 pm

      Was that 16 per cent of Americans or 16 Americans?

      The latter makes a lot more sense, and it can be accounted for by the lavish lifestyles of Hunter’s security team living in a Malibu mansion.

      • Cluster February 7, 2023 / 10:45 pm

        Sounds about right lol

  2. Cluster February 8, 2023 / 7:21 am

    Sarah Huckabee Sanders nailed it when she said, “it’s no longer a choice between right vs left. It’s a choice now between normal and crazy”

    I didn’t watch the speech, choosing Fraser reruns instead but the low lights are interesting. I liked how the GOP called him out on the relentless medicare scare, and I understand Joe wants the rich to pay their “fair share” hahahahahahaha, stop me if you’ve heard that before. but you have to wonder if Democrats ever look at data on this issue. They’d realize that the top 5% of wage earners pay upwards of 65% of all taxes, or at least I think it’s close to that. Now if they want to their billionaire friends to pay taxes, they could do that too, but don’t count on it.

    Zoom is laying off 1,500 and EBay announces layoffs, but didn’t Joe just create a bunch of new jobs???

  4. Cluster February 8, 2023 / 8:00 am

    Speaking of crazy again …

    Biden said “30 million workers had to sign non-compete agreements when they took a job. So a cashier at a burger place can’t cross the street to take the same job at another burger place to make a couple bucks more.”

    Seriously?? What a perfect summation of Biden’s America. Flipping burgers and hoping for a few more bucks.

  5. Retired Spook February 8, 2023 / 8:55 am

    My wife has some serious memory issues, but she volunteered to watch the SOTU and report back to me so I wouldn’t have to waste 90 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back. Unfortunately……….. (Hey, at 78, 90 minutes is a statistically significant portion of the remainder of my life)

  6. Retired Spook February 8, 2023 / 4:45 pm

    I don’t normally watch TV during the day, but happened to walk through the living room while my wife was watching The Story with Martha MacCallum on FNC. Martha was interviewing long-time Democrat hack Gene Sperling, and he made a statement that needs to be added to the YCMTSU file. I’m paraphrasing – if a Republican President had presided over the kind of economic and jobs recovery that President Biden has, Republicans would be demanding his likeness be placed on Mount Rushmore.

    • Cluster February 8, 2023 / 8:11 pm

      They are proud of themselves aren’t they, and for very little reason. If you’re watching Jesse Waters he is detailing parts of the SOTU speech that were lifted from others including Trump. No surprise right? Joe is a documented plagiarizer.

  7. Retired Spook February 8, 2023 / 7:35 pm

    This arrived in my inbox today from a good friend. It covers many, if not most of today’s problems. A bit long, but there was no link. Apologies to Mark for taking up so much bandwidth.

    Men, like nations, think they’re eternal. What
    man in his 20s or 30s doesn’t believe, at least
    subconsciously, that he’ll live forever? In the
    springtime of youth, an endless summer beckons.
    As you pass 70, it’s harder to hide from reality….
    as you lose friends and relatives.

    Nations also have seasons: Imagine a Roman of
    the 2nd century contemplating an empire that
    stretched from Britain to the Near East, thinking:
    This will endure forever…. Forever was about 500
    years, give or take…. not bad, but gone!!

    France was pivotal in the 17th and 18th centuries;
    now the land of Charles Martel is on its way to
    becoming part of the Muslim ummah.

    In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the sun never
    set on the British empire; now Albion exists in
    perpetual twilight. Its 96-year-old sovereign is a
    fitting symbol for a nation in terminal decline.
    In the 1980s, Japan seemed poised to buy the
    world. Business schools taught Japanese
    management techniques. Today, its birth rate is so
    low and its population aging so rapidly that an
    industry has sprung up to remove the remains of
    elderly Japanese who die alone.

    I was born in 1945, almost at the midpoint of the
    20th century – the American century. America’s
    prestige and influence were never greater. Thanks
    to the ‘Greatest Generation,’ we won a World War
    fought throughout most of Europe, Asia, and the
    Pacific. We reduced Germany to rubble and put
    the rising sun to bed. It set the stage for almost
    half a century of unprecedented prosperity.
    We stopped the spread of communism in Europe
    and Asia and fought international terrorism. We
    rebuilt our enemies and lavished foreign aid on
    much of the world. We built skyscrapers and
    rockets to the moon. We conquered Polio and now
    COVID. We explored the mysteries of the
    Universe and the wonders of DNA…the blueprint
    of life.

    But where is the glory that once was Rome?
    America has moved from a relatively free
    economy to socialism – which has worked so well
    NOWHERE in the world.

    We’ve gone from a republican government
    guided by a constitution to a regime of revolving
    elites. We have less freedom with each passing
    year. Like a signpost to the coming reign of terror,
    the cancel culture is everywhere. We’ve traded the
    American Revolution for the Cultural Revolution.
    The pathetic creature in the White House is an
    empty vessel filled by his handlers. At the G-7
    Summit, ‘Dr. Jill’ had to lead him like a child. In
    1961, when we were young and vigorous, our
    leader was too. Now a feeble nation is technically
    led by the oldest man to ever serve in the
    presidency.

    We can’t defend our borders, our history
    (including monuments to past greatness) or our
    streets. Our cities have become anarchist
    playgrounds. We are a nation of dependents,
    mendicants, and misplaced charity. Homeless
    veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens
    are put up in hotels.

    The president of the United States can’t even
    quote the beginning of the Declaration of
    Independence (‘You know – The Thing’) correctly.
    Ivy League graduates routinely fail history tests
    that 5th graders could pass a generation ago.
    Crime rates soar and we blame the 2nd.
    Amendment and slash police budgets.

    Our culture is certifiably insane. Men who think
    they’re women. People who fight racism by
    seeking to convince members of one race that
    they’re inherently evil, and others that they are
    perpetual victims. A psychiatrist lecturing at Yale
    said she fantasizes about ‘unloading a revolver
    into the head of any white person.’

    We slaughter the unborn in the name of freedom,
    while our birth rate dips lower year by year. Our
    national debt is so high that we can no longer
    even pretend that we will repay it one day. It’s a
    $30-trillion monument to our improvidence and
    refusal to confront reality. Our ‘entertainment’ is
    sadistic, nihilistic, and as enduring as a candy bar
    wrapper thrown in the trash. Our music is noise
    that spans the spectrum from annoying to
    repulsive.

    Patriotism is called an insurrection, treason
    celebrated, and perversion sanctified. A man in
    blue gets less respect than a man in a dress. We’re
    asking soldiers to fight for a nation our leaders no
    longer believe in.

    How meekly most of us submitted to Fauci-ism
    (the regime of face masks, lockdowns, and hand
    sanitizers) shows the impending death of the
    American spirit.

    How do nations slip from greatness to obscurity?

    * Fighting endless wars they can’t or won’t win

    * Accumulating massive debt far beyond their
    ability to repay

    * Refusing to guard their borders, allowing the
    nation to be inundated by an alien horde

    * Surrendering control of their cities to mob rule

    * Allowing indoctrination of the young

    * Moving from a republican form of government
    to an oligarchy

    * Losing national identity

    * Indulging indolence

    * Abandoning God, faith and family – the
    bulwarks of any stable society.

    In America, every one of these symptoms is
    pronounced, indicating an advanced stage of the
    disease.

    Even if the cause seems hopeless, do we not have
    an obligation to those who sacrificed so much to
    give us what we had? I’m surrounded by ghosts
    urging me on: the Union soldiers who held
    Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg, the battered
    bastards of Bastogne, those who served in the cold
    hell of Korea, the guys who went to the jungles of
    Southeast Asia and came home to be reviled or
    neglected.

    This is the nation that took in my immigrant
    grandparents, whose uniform my father and most
    of my uncles wore in the Second World War. I
    don’t want to imagine a world without America,
    even though it becomes increasingly likely.
    During Britain’s darkest hour, when its
    professional army was trapped at Dunkirk and a
    German invasion seemed imminent, Churchill
    reminded his countrymen, ‘Nations that go down
    fighting rise again, and those that surrender
    tamely are finished.’

    The same might be said of causes. If we let
    America slip through our fingers, if we lose
    without a fight, what will posterity say of us?
    While the prognosis is far from good. Only God
    knows if America’s day in the sun is over.”

    Author UnKnown

    • Cluster February 9, 2023 / 8:43 am

      Just had a chance to read that, and I agree with every word. We are an Oligarchy now and the ruling class is hell bent on “fundamentally transforming” this country (Obama is still pulling the strings). I remember too when the half white President Obama sharply criticized Bush for racking up $4 trillion in debt which he called at the time, anti patriotic. Do you think he lied? Obama then racked up over $8 trillion in debt. America is in a death struggle.

      Also revealed yesterday was that the American President blew up the Nord Stream pipeline (otherwise known as Nordstrom to the WH press secretary). This of course resulted in a massive natural disaster and sending energy prices soaring in Europe, which is strange considering that the American President purports to care about the environment and the poor.

      Real Americans need to remove the fake Americans

  8. Cluster February 9, 2023 / 9:07 am

    Isn’t it a little bit Orwellian to realize that the American President considers Russia to be the worlds greatest threat while China sends spy balloons all over the world? How much money did China send to the Biden family? Any guesses?

  9. Amazona February 9, 2023 / 9:10 am

    Red light: As San Francisco struggles to deal with prostitution, a city supervisor suggests legalizing it

    Of course he does.

    This is the “thought process” of the Left. “OMG the crime rate is skyrocketing! What can we do?”

    Easy. Change the law so nothing is a crime, and watch those stats shift. Why, it’s almost like magic!

    • Amazona February 9, 2023 / 12:18 pm

      What, exactly, is the impact of carbon on the temperature of the planet?

      • Cluster February 9, 2023 / 2:13 pm

        Well according to actual data, there is none.

        I read that there was a large fence wrapped around the Capital for the SOTU. Could there be any better symbol of the disconnect between Americas ruling class and the people they govern?

        Oh and black female GOP representative was shot and killed the other day and I am guessing most people don’t even know about it.

        Just another day in the most corrupt country in the world.

  11. Amazona February 9, 2023 / 9:17 am

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) was asked on Wednesday about former President Donald Trump reposting a picture of what claims to be DeSantis “grooming” high school girls when he was in his 20’s as a teacher as the former president is ramping up his well-known social media attacks against the governor.

    What the hell does Trump think he’s doing? Launching preemptive strikes against a potential adversary? He is coming across as more of a demented old fart living in 2016, swinging wildly at anyone he thinks might stand in his way. The fact that this is exactly the WRONG tactic for this campaign seems to fly right over his head.

    It’s harder and harder to say “I would trust his judgment as president” when he is showing such terrible judgment now. We need a statesman, not a hysteric. We know what he can do, we have seen what happened when the Left took over, we are living on the edge of so many potential disasters that our nerves are frayed and we just want to get through the next two years, and we need a calm, reasonable and competent leader to step up. Instead we seem to be getting Trump 2.0, who is a petulant child.

    • Amazona February 9, 2023 / 9:29 am

      More of the same:

      Steve Kirsch says: I debunked the stupid leftwing lie that Governor DeSantis signed a law “allowing” forced vaccinations. Epoch had called me for a comment right after Trump repeated that stale claim.

      Maybe we need #Trump STFU

  12. Amazona February 9, 2023 / 9:41 am

    @RepClayHiggins tells Twitter execs to prepare to be arrested for criminal interference in the 2020 election

    The Left has had some success in framing the multiple crimes associated with the 2020 election as claims the election was “stolen” (with the help of Trump, who just can’t get off that bubble) making it easier to sneer at the claim because it is so specific and so emotionally charged. Change the rhetoric to “rigged” and all of a sudden the facts start to reveal themselves. And now a possible charge of “criminal interference”. Finally, some progress. Interference has now been proved, and upping the ante to “criminal interference” is the next logical step.

  13. Cluster February 9, 2023 / 9:43 am

    Keep an eye on this guy …. Donalds is going to be a force. And I agree about Trump – I think he’s just incapable of being a statesman and that will ultimately be his demise. He doesn’t play well with others, which is a shame because he is the one that set the new conservative agenda.

    https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/byron-donalds-is-done-playing/

  15. Cluster February 9, 2023 / 2:19 pm

    So I read that for the “first time ever”, an all female crew of pilots will fly over the Super Bowl, kind of cool. Also read that this will be the first Super Bowl with two starting black QB’s, interesting. Lots of “firsts” being celebrated all the time amongst females and minorities. White men?? Well we were the “first ever” to actually fight for freedom … and won.

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