Author: Mark Noonan

Open Thread

Mark Noonan22 Comments

Time flies when you’re painting the house!

Anyways, Mark Kelly (D-AZ) announced he will vote to kill the filibuster…which means his pollster told him he’s doomed in November and so now is going for the MSNBC gig. So far, Sinema and Manchin are firm in keeping it, but Schumer is going to keep trying. At least some people – but not nearly enough – are openly saying that this whole “voting rights” effort is merely an effort to secure Democrat voter fraud forever. They want to win by cheating. To become what the PRI was to Mexico for 70 years – a Ruling Party which engages in sham elections to lend itself a patina of legitimacy. We’ll see if they are able to do it. Their strategy right now is to call Sinema a white supremacist. Not sure this will work.

Absent this, it looks like the Democrats are in for a blow out loss in November. Think in terms of anything D+10 or less being vulnerable. So far, 28 House Democrats have announced they won’t seek re-election.

NPR reported that Gorsuch and Sotomayor were feuding over mask wearing. Turns out this was Fake News. Because that is all NPR does.

Commies on American campuses are removing statues. You know, just like Chinese commies are doing in Hong Kong. Birds of a feather.

Insane person pushes a woman into the path of an oncoming subway train and everyone is all shocked. How can you be? We decided (well, “we” as in a few lawyers and judges) back in the 70’s that being insane isn’t sufficient cause to place a person into protective custody. That really was the first shot across the bow on where we were heading…that sane people could not, except for a very short period, put restrictions on the insane was a signpost to societal destruction. We’re all sympathetic. We don’t want insane people denied due process, abused or left to rot in filth (as all too often happened in the past) but the answer to poor care at insane asylums was to improve the asylums…not let raving nutters out. People who cannot perform basic life functions such as maintain personal cleanliness and normal social interaction belong under care…not wandering through the streets. It is brutal and inhuman to let these poor people try to take care of themselves when their mental condition is such that they cannot.

UPDATE: Well, they failed – at the end of the day, both Sinema and Manchin stood up and voted very definitely against a rules change. This not only preserves the filibuster for now, it may retain it in our system for quite a long while…but mostly because we’ll probably have 54 GOP Senators come January next and then it is probably 3 or 4 cycles before the Democrats have a realistic shot at a Senate majority.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan57 Comments

Social media can be a bit of a treasure – sometimes what passes through your TL is amazing.

A little earlier today I came across a USA Today thread discussing how we need to differentiate between pedophiles and those who abuse children. No, I’m not kidding. What this is, of course, is an attempt to start normalizing pedophilia. They have to, you see? That is, they have to do this before they all get caught. They are going to “love is love” their way into legalizing the sexual abuse of children.

Then I came across a Financial Times article written by a member of the American Enterprise Institute – you know, the libertarian think tank – which asserted that the government needs to engage in psy-ops against us to protect us from political radicalization. This article, naturally, is because the pys-ops are being exposed and they are now trying to get out in front and claim it was all for our own good.

Then a guy pointed out that at this time in 2008 Obama was saying that marriage is something between a man and a woman while here in 2022 we’ve got people seriously asserting that refusal to date a trans person is bigotry.

We are moving very fast.

They sent Pudding Brain to Georgia to give a voting rights speech – given that the Dawgs won the national championship last night you can rely on it that nobody in Georgia was paying any attention. Doubt that anyone else is, either. And key Georgia Democrats begged off from the event as they have crucial things to do…the most crucial being staying the hell away from the politically toxic Joe Biden.

So far, Manchin and Sinema are standing firm against nuking the filibuster. And Senator Kelly is also saying he has his doubt about it. Amazing what running for re-election in a purple State will do for some Democrats, huh? Some say that Schumer doesn’t even have 44 Democrat votes to kill the filibuster…it is just that they are keeping a low profile and hoping that Manchin’s opposition keeps them from having to take a stand on it. OTOH, Schumer is making noises about forcing a vote on the rules change – which is dumb on two levels. One: without Manchin and Sinema, its pointless. Two: by holding the vote he’ll force purple State Democrats to choose between giving ammo to their GOP opponents or infuriating the base. And the far left base of the Democrats is furious that they haven’t jettisoned the filibuster. My only question here is how many filing deadlines have passed: Schumer pulls the trigger too soon and a half dozen Democrats could end up drawing a far left primary opponent who will be massively funded by Blue State leftists.

Sucks to be Schumer.

Long and very good article about the opposition to paleogenetic research. This is research carried out to find DNA markers on ancient remains to see how human beings moved around. A great deal has been learned in this field and, as it turns out, humans have moved around a lot. So, why should anyone be opposed to finding this out? Because the Narrative of native tribes it that the land they were on when the crackers first showed up had always been their land. Their sacred spaces, polluted by the cruel and rapacious white man. Yeah, turns out that is all bull. The Natives moved around as much as anyone else in a fierce competition for resources. Some tribes didn’t arrive in their “ancestral” lands until after the Europeans arrived…as tribes desperately sought contact with the Europeans for trade opportunities. Often, Native tribes would fight each other for access. So, there’s your reason – we’re going to kill off this valuable and interesting science because some people who are financially invested in a garbage story about pre-Columbian North America don’t want their meal ticket taken away. Side note: the author expresses sympathy for the basic concept of respecting Native traditions. For me, I’ll respect the people living by their ancient traditions but this idea that because you have X percent pre-Columbian blood you get veto power over science is drivel. People are people; always have been, always will be. Nobody is all good. Nobody is all bad. And we should find out all about everything, if we can.

Our man Matt lays out the failure of Biden’s Covid policies.

Hollywood is burning itself alive on the altar of political correctness. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving of creeps.

I have no sympathy at all – not for any of them working. I hope they all go bankrupt and have to panhandle on the street. But, that said, there is still a market for movies – we on the right should seriously consider raising some billions of dollars and starting a movie studio. Not in Hollywood! Not in California or any of the traditional entertainment area. Maybe Tulsa or some such place. A complete new start. Now, do we go and make preachy, rightwing movies? No. But we make movies. You know: fantasy entertainment designed to divert people away from their daily lives. I can easily think of a dozen movies which range from fantasy to love story to war movies to western which, well made, would be highly successful and, perhaps, even spawn a few franchises. And I’m not just talking about my books! Though that would be cool. But here’s an example: Ann Bassett. She was an Old West rancher and some time associate of Butch Cassidy. Her basic story was fighting off other cattle barons to protect her late father’s ranch. It just screams “make a movie out of me”. Heck, imagine a top flight female star and then your supporting male role is a guy playing Butch Cassidy. Blockbuster all over it. That’s the kind of movie we should make – what hasn’t been done but which can be made fun and interesting. If it can be done, all that entertainment money stops flowing Left and starts flowing Right. Think of the possibilities.

The Republic of Stupid

Mark Noonan15 Comments

I didn’t actually watch the oral arguments at the Supreme Court over Pudding Brain’s vaccine mandates but quotes of Kagan and Sotomayor demonstrated an amazing ignorance from both of them on Covid and legal issues. They were using made up figures about Covid and Sotomayor revealed she has never read the Constitution when she wondered why if a State has a power, why doesn’t the Federal government have it?

Now, this wasn’t mere ignorance and dishonesty – both Kagan and Sotomayor were put on the Court because they are stupid and are willing to lie to support whatever the Left wants. They are there to place a veneer of legality on Progressive power grabs. But take a look at Sotomayor’s career – editor of the Yale law journal, appointed to the Federal bench by the Elder Bush, confirmed 68-31 for the Supreme Court. She doesn’t know anything and is a liar and she cruised to the heights of the American legal system with bi-partisan support.

This isn’t an accident. It is deliberate. Moronic lies are the desired outcome. Somebody along the line should have noticed that Sotomayor is a stupid liar and deep sixed her career. Nobody did. Which means either that those who advanced her are stupid liars or they knew precisely what they were getting and wanted it.

As for me, I mostly go with her ushers being stupid liars. I think we’ve had a negative feedback loop in leadership which over generations has ensured that those who advance are increasingly stupid and dishonest. This goes for both government and corporate leadership. We have a government of, by and for the stupid – who are also greedy and self assured, as stupid people usually are.

Think about this: Pudding Brain let a contract for making Covid test kits which won’t result in any kits being produced until 2024. I get it – some donor needed to be paid off and this was the selected means. But 2024? That is just stupid. Anyone who sees it knows that it is mere corruption. A clever crook would have put out that it’ll be ready right away and then explain away the delays which make it off line until 2024. Step by step, right? No: they just go on and tell us “we’re stealing money.”

So many things go on which even when you account for Fallen human nature just make no sense. We expect government projects to be shot through with corruption, especially when Democrats are in. But we don’t even get the stated result. Biden shut down the pipeline and said he’d provide green jobs for the laid off workers. How hard would it be to come up with some BS, make-work positions at ten times the cost to the taxpayer? Not hard at all. The old corrupt party bosses would have that rolling in a few weeks. These guys? A year later and nothing. It is, as I’ve said, simply stupid.

It has been going on for a while – once you start putting “stupid” as the reason, the strategy in Vietnam starts to make sense: it was run by morons who were promoted to their positions by other morons, who always worked diligently to keep out of power anyone who wasn’t stupid. And it was all reported on by other morons, so the American people never got anything other than a stupid story about a stupid strategy. And then we, the people, get to make the final say with our votes…but we’re voting on which bit of idiocy gets the green light.

I think that, in part, is what shocked the political system about Trump. Whether or no he’s the very stable genius he claimed to be, he’s not an idiot. We simply have to accept that by now: he’s been investigated top to bottom by local, State and federal agencies who are staffed with dishonest idiots who would charge him with anything, if they could find it. Nothing. He’s smart enough to keep his affairs in order…he’s not, say, Hunter Biden putting all the incriminating evidence on his laptop and then leaving it at the repair shop. He breezed into town and started asking people do to non-idiot things and it simply scared the heck out of them. This is Trump vs his opponents:

But how do we escape? We’re stuck in the asylum and morons are running the show. Our best bet is that alternative media starts to really take off – because once we do have an independent media (Fox does not count) then it really just becomes a matter of pointing out how dumb they all are. Ridicule is a powerful tool, after all. But, meanwhile, we’re stuck in the Republic of Stupid, trying to work our way around the Idiocracy.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan12 Comments

Ted Cruz got himself into some trouble – he described the 1/6 people as terrorists. This, as it turns out, wasn’t the first time he had done so. He had first done it back on 1/6/2021. It probably passed unnoticed in the hubbub of the time. But on 1/6/2022, it was a massively bad misreading of the room. It could very well sink his political career.

I’ve been saying for years that for Republicans the prime rule is to never speak ill of other Republicans. There is no upside to it – this is because the Democrats never speak ill of their own. Not in any real sense: they circle the wagons or remain silent when one of theirs does something wrong. Only when really pressed on it will they actually condemn a fellow Democrat who has gone wrong and it is usually just the once and as a precursor to an attack on Republicans. What must be discarded is any sense that Democrats have morals – a sense of honor, of patriotism, of some shred of concern for something outside their desire for power, money and position. They don’t have such. And, so, joining them in condemning a fellow Republican means you’re just helping amoral cretins win the battle. Don’t do it.

This does not mean everyone has to approve of all actions by all Republicans everywhere. It just means don’t attack them. If you feel a strong desire to attack a Republican who has done something wrong or stupid, attack a Democrat instead. Use that to get the urge out of your system.

This is especially true right now where the base of the GOP feels certain it was cheated out of 2020 victory and is equally certain that at least some elements of the GOP helped the Democrats to steal the election. Joining the Democrats in an attack on ours merely tells the base that you are not on their side – and that is a deadly thing to do right now. Ted Cruz may still be able to get himself out of this – he’s a clever man. But he’ll have to make a firm assertion that he’s on the side of the base – his best route to this is to admit he was wrong to call the 1/6 terrorists and to then condemn the treatment of the 1/6 detainees. As a matter of simple justice, they must be released forthwith – given that Antifa is almost entirely skating for massively worse actions all through 2020.

Meanwhile, the Democrats also completely misread the room: they and their MSM lapdogs treated the anniversary as if it was a 9/11 of Pear Harbor remembrance: something that is viewed almost universally the same by almost all Americans. But at least half – and perhaps much more – view 1/6 as the righteous anger of people who have been pushed around for too long. Their ceremonies looked ridiculous…and people are far more concerned with high gas prices and empty store shelves.

There’s a Progressive lady on Twitter who has been essentially live-streaming her red-pilling. She still claims the Progressive mantle, but as her city of San Francisco has become unlivable, she’s giving voice to rational criticisms of the Progressive policies which have wrecked the city. To her most recent thread, I noted that consciously or not, the rulers of San Francisco have adopted the Marxist-Leninist legal dogma that all crime is the result of an unjust system – that if you are robbed, then it is you who are the criminal as you have benefited from the unjust system. The robber is just redistributing your ill gotten gains. Lenin’s infamous phrases, “loot the looters” and “who whom?” are being put into effect – that last bit is his requirement that we take into consideration not the crime, itself, but who is committing the crime and against whom. My wonder: will more Progressives wake up as the Twitter lady has? If so, elections going forward can get very interesting.

Georgia is launching an investigation into ballot harvesting. My guess: the Powers that Be there realize they messed up by allowing the steal in 2020 and are trying to mend fences with an infuriated GOP base.

I got an account on Gettr: the latest entry to replace Twitter and Facebook. Of all of them, Gettr is by far the best – still not nearly as much traffic as Twitter, of course, but very easy to use…and they claim they won’t be banning people for giving Progressives hurt feelings. We’ll see. Meanwhile, the word is that Trump will launch his social media ap in February.

2022

Mark Noonan29 Comments

First off: always listen to this on New Years Day.

That done: what the heck is it doing being 2022? One of my granddaughters turns 10 later this month…I do remember my 10th birthday very vividly. That was 1974. I was fascinated by the whole thing of being 10 years old. And I remember figuring things out – that I’d be 20 in 1984. That I would turn 36 in 2000. 2022? How the heck did that happen?

Now I get to figure out things like if I live as long as my Dad my expiration date comes in 2047. Of course, make it as long as Grandpa then I’ll be around 2052. As long as my Grand-aunt Alice, 2063. But, slice it any way you like, there’s more time behind than in front. This doesn’t disturb me. Maybe it should, but it doesn’t. 57 years is already a long time: we’re just tacking on at this point. Will have to point out to the granddaughter that if she shakes my hand then she’s one handshake away from 1896, when my grandfather was born – that might be an interesting point for her to make with her grandchildren 40 or 50 years from now.

The country is a complete mess – the only thing that keeps China from attacking is the remaining uncertainty of whether or not we’d use nuclear weapons if our backs go to the wall. As of this moment, I doubt we could raise a military force sufficient to win against any 1st or 2nd rate power. We’re too divided and our military leadership is perfectly useless. I don’t know what they teach at the service academies these days, but it certainly isn’t whatever is needed to win a war. And any war fighting capacity which is imparted is shoved out by the time they rise to the top where the only concerns are pleasing their political masters and feathering their retirement nest. And the core military power of our nation – the lower and middle class people outside the deep blue areas: do they want to fight for America as it is right now? Do you want one of your family members to fight under these generals and admirals, with China Joe as CinC? It always astonished me how various parts of France, left and right, didn’t want to stand up and fight against Hitler – but these days I perhaps understand a little better. They should, of course, have fought: but at the time, it seemed to many of them that fighting for France merely perpetuated a corrupt and useless Ruling Class.

Earlier today I paid about $180.00 for $100.00 in groceries: I don’t know exactly what they use to judge inflation but I suspect that the numbers, like all government numbers these days, aren’t giving us the rock solid truth. It wouldn’t be in Team Pudding Brain’s interest to show inflation as high as I figure it must be…prices are getting out of control. Bad news: there are indications that we’ve only seen the start of the inflationary surge. Remember, these things take a little while to work into the system. From what I’ve read, for instance, the price of fertilizer is vastly higher…which means the farmers are going to have to charge more for, say, corn. That will make it more expensive to get your Doritos, but also more expensive for everything that uses corn…and its a lot of things. On and on it will go, pushing one thing after another. I hope inflation moderates: for me and for everyone, but I worry that it won’t, at least not any time soon. There is too much money out there right now and goods and services are getting harder and harder to procure.

Meanwhile, they’re moving what must be hundreds of thousands of illegals all over the country – sure, they are hoping that changing demographics will help them (but, will it? Polls show Latino voters aren’t keen on pronoun wars) but, still, what is the real point here? It could just be that they’re stupid…they just believe they can’t stop people from crossing and now they have to move them somewhere. They might do a vaccine mandate for air travel, but no vaccine mandate for crossing illegally. We’re in the Twilight Zone of a dead Ruling Class still holding the levers of power.

One thing I am fairly confident about is that they don’t know how hated they are. The Ruling Class, I mean. And not just by us: plenty of far left people despise them as well. Promises were made, after all. Stupid promises, in our view, but still promises – go Resist the Bad Orange Man and when he’s out you’ll get a cancellation of student debt and free college…and a host of other things as well. They aren’t delivering. Team Pudding Brain let a contract out for an $84 million facility to make Covid tests…which won’t start operating until 2024. Hunter is making bank selling his “art”. Nancy Pelosi just bought a retirement home in Florida…while in her San Francisco hard core liberals are starting to buy guns as police protection fails utterly (and not just because of “defund the police” – even the police they have are, apparently, turning a blind eye to crime. Why wouldn’t they? If they arrest someone and if it can be even willfully misconstrued as bad by the cops, their lives are ruined. Better to just drive by and pretend you didn’t see it). Everything is falling apart -but we see that they are doing well and are ignoring the Covid restrictions (AOC was caught in Miami this past week while her New York endured another round of Covid lockdowns).

What will come of this hatred remains to be seen – but we might get a very strong taste of it just 11 months from now. Polls are, as usual, nearly useless, but they are bad for Democrats. But for me, just looking at how things are, if I were Chair of the RNC I’d make sure I had GOP candidates even in D+10 districts. Literally anything is possible.

Meanwhile, I write – Kings and Queen will be out very shortly. That is Book V. But Heirs (Book VI) and Empress (Book VII) are 90% done. I’m about 1/3 done with The Crimson Blade (Book VIII) and I’ve already made a start on the still untitled Book IX. Meanwhile, still working on Aleste and the Icecrystal Dragons and putting ideas together for Survival (an end-of-the-world novel, which may turn out to have zombies in it) and Last Strand, the working title for a thriller about a Chinese plot against America. I write because I enjoy it. Because I believe the stories are good. And because when I’m in those worlds, I’m not watching the enslavement of the world and the destruction of the United States.

I hope you have your escape from today! If you don’t, get one – we’re in for a rocky ride. I think, with God’s grace, will come out the other side ok, but we are living in the Chinese curse of interesting times. Things are going to get stranger and perhaps far more dangerous – but with that faith in God, we’ll get through it all.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan36 Comments

So, today Pudding Brain announced that there is no federal solution to Covid. The guy who ran on shutting down the virus has given up.

Of course, it never could be shut down – the idea that if we stayed home and then masked up when we went out we’d eventually eliminate the virus was drivel. And every doctor knew it was drivel. It was all an op to get the Bad Orange Man out. That plus cheating which would make Stalin blush did the trick.

Related: Dad got Pudding Brain to say “Let’s Go Brandon” live on air – this wouldn’t have been a big thing but the Left had a nervous breakdown about it. It has been glorious to behold on social media.

Desmond Tutu died a few days ago – one of the lesser known things about him was that he held rabidly anti-Semitic opinions. This is actually no surprise at all – such views have been common on the Left for a long while. The tragedy of South Africa was always Apartheid – by setting up that hideous system, the white people of South Africa allowed anyone who would stand against it to be cloaked in impervious moral armor…no matter how otherwise nasty they were. I was surprised that Mandela emerged from prison with a greatness of heart…that he voluntarily relinquished power is very rare in African history. But his movement was chock full of very wicked people who were given a complete pass because they stood against an injustice. The lesson to be learned here is that just because someone is opposed to one sort of evil doesn’t mean they are good guys.

CNN is a dying network – and I don’t think the bosses know what to do about it. It could be they don’t want to do anything about it. The cure for what ails CNN isn’t to become another Fox, but it must become what it isn’t: a news organization. Through the Trump years, lying on behalf of the Democrats kept things afloat a bit. Fox still routinely beat CNN in the ratings. But that lying on behalf of Democrats also alienated all non-Democrats who used to watch…and as far as being liberal lunatics goes, MSNBC simply does a better job of it. If CNN were to change itself into a place of hard, factual news, it would gain a fiercely loyal audience. But to do this, they would have to tell the truth…and I don’t think the people there are capable of doing that.

The US government chartered flights over Christmas to move illegals around the country – basically seeding them in areas far from the border where it is far less likely that any agency concerned will bother with them. This is, of course, simple lawlessness on the part of the government. Hard as it will be, we must make a commitment to deport every illegal who arrived after January 20th, 2021. Sure, the rest of them as well – but those who came after that date must be made an example of: we must instruct the world that just because we get an idiotic President it doesn’t mean you’ll get away with it.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan39 Comments

Secret Service is saying that $100 billion in Covid relief has be stolen. Rely on it: it is orders of magnitude higher than that. We do have to fault Trump a bit here as well – as this thing came in, the money spigot was turned on full blast. Pudding Brain has put that into overdrive, but we have to admit where it started.

Of course the money was going to be stolen. The primary purpose, for those in the know, was to steal. We didn’t really need to spend much on this – we did, after all, have a perfectly functioning economy and health care system when this started. At most we just needed a slight boost in what we were already spending. But the bonanza of cash simply thrown out the Treasury windows was and is the opportunity of a life time. Couple years from now and we will see a few indictments – people who stole beyond their station or who didn’t divvy up the way the bosses wanted. But my bet is that half, at least, of what has and will be spent was nothing but graft.

The dirty little secret of our government is that it spends so much money that nobody really knows what is going on. How can anyone keep an eye on trillions of dollars being spent? Do you realize how easy it is to divert hundreds of billions when you’ve got a flood of money that large?

Some rumors that Team Hillary is in Durham’s crosshairs. Hope so, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Cocaine Mitch, talking with Hugh Hewitt, basically said he’s asking Manchin to switch to the GOP – adding that he’s discussing whether Manchin would keep his chairmanship of Energy. I’m a bit surprised – not that it might be happening, but that it would happen now. I’d have thought Mitch would wait until well into 2022. OTOH, the Democrats are already a toxic brand and McConnell back in the Majority Leader spot shuts down all Democrat legislative programs. We’ll see how it comes out.

Donald Trump says he’ll hold a press conference on January 6th. A lot of people are downright frightened of this – I’m not. What better way to take the entire spotlight away from whatever the DNC/MSM will be doing that day? If he calls for the release of the 1/6 detainees, then I’ll figure its for sure that he’s running in 2024.

Since Covid hit, 5 million Americans obtained firearms. The people are arming in a replay of the Great Fear of 1789 in France. America is a tinder box right now – keeping in mind that our side is mostly made up of people who just want to be left alone. The problem – for the Left – is that if such people ever decide it is time to fight or die, then they tend to be quite brutal in settling accounts.

China bought Hollywood and then helped Hollywood destroy itself. It is the Chinese business model. China merely wanted to get itself going – so that it can provide pop-culture product on the global market…not so American pop-culture could come to dominate China. Now that China has got what it wanted, the Hollywood dreams of releasing American movies in the Chinese market have faded away. Hopefully this will force American studios to start making product designed for specifically for the American market. No more Superman who refuses to fight for the American way, as it were.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan19 Comments

Some are saying the Omnicron variant is our off ramp: that it is, apparently, a mild version and it will allow the Democrats to declare victory and move on – but, I don’t think so. All I can see is that they seem to be quadrupling down on it.

We can assume part of this is mere stupidity – our Ruling Elites are simply not very bright. But in addition to that, I think they believe they can’t back off on it now. It would be too much of an admission they were wrong. And, of course, the more Covid fear they keep up in the Deep Blue areas, the more voter fraud they can justify…and there are indications of an extremely toxic political environment for Democrats. They aren’t doing well anywhere. Can’t remember exactly where it was, but it was a State legislative district in New England which the Democrats held in a special election last week…but their margin of victory dropped from something like 20 points last year to 3 or 4 this year. Meanwhile, quite a number of these specials are going our way.

To give a real idea how it is going for those who are keeping up the Covid fear – Boris Johnson’s Tories lost a by election in Shropshire a couple days ago. The seat has been Tory held for nearly 200 years. The swing against the Tories was 37 points. Lots of things are going on, but 99 Tories just voted in Parlaiment against Johnson’s vaccine mandates – it only became law because Labour backed it. A Tory government dependent upon Labour votes is a Tory government on the ropes.

Science guys say they found water in a canyon on Mars – frozen, naturally, but apparently quite a bit of it and right below the surface. This is important – we know there is a lot of ice in Mars polar regions but human colonization of Mars, if it ever happens, will be vastly easier in the central regions of Mars. Finding water in such a place makes it a prime location for human exploration. Still, though, the real problems remain: radiation and gravity. Mars has no magnetic field and so solar radiation hits the planet at a vastly higher rate than the surface of Earth and, of course, Mars has a much lower gravity and we simply don’t know what long term low gravity will do to us.

Wikipedia is getting set to purge entries on Communist mass killings – I’ve long said that Wikipedia, if the information is in any way political, is an unreliable source. The Commies who run it hate that people can tell the truth about Communism and so they’ve long edited things to downplay Communist atrocities. This is something we can fix: all we need do is make our own Wikipedia.

A Lutheran church is having drag queen prayer time – because, of course. It is astonishing how fast this all came about. I mean, figure the odds that biology would result in anything more than, say, 0.0001% of people having a divergence between their biology and their perception of their gender. But now something like 20% of youngsters are claiming to be at least somewhere on the trans spectrum. It is now fashionable – and this means it will recede, but not before a lot of people are permanently screwed up because at the age of 6 they decided to play with a doll instead of a fire truck.

Governor DeSantis is trying to ban CRT in Florida. This is the way. The bottom line is we can keep the USA or we can keep CRT: the two are incompatible. It must be remembered that the right to free speech is an individual right, not a government right. The government only has the right to say what we tell it to say through laws enacted by our representatives. A government-funded school is the voice of the people, not its own voice. If any teacher wants to teach something the people don’t want taught, they are free to start their own entirely private school…but we, the people, have the right to demand an end to Communist indoctrination in the schools we own.

Some cops proudly put up a picture of $100,000 in cash they had seized and it is causing a stir: the woman they took the cash from wasn’t charged with any crime and she isn’t, as far as we can tell, the target of any criminal investigation. She was merely carrying the cash – and the cops took it. This is civil asset forfeiture…and if the lady wants her money back, she will have to sue the police: there is no mechanism in the law to merely return seized money.

To be sure, carrying a hundred grand around is a bit eye raising – but it isn’t illegal and the police must not have the power to seize an asset unless a court of law has determined it was used in a criminal activity. I can barely go along with freezing assets of someone accused of a crime but the authorities must not be able to take a red cent until after a conviction. What the law allows at this time is mere theft by the cops – and while 100 grand is a lot, they seize any amount they can get their hands on and use the flimsiest excuses for doing it. I’ve read that in some jurisdictions the average amount seized is just a few hundred dollars.

The concept behind forfeiture was that it would be a telling blow against drug lords – but I don’t think we’ve run out of drug lords. Meanwhile, I’ve read many cases were innocent people had their property taken. It is past time to end this farce.

Portland, OR has been ruined. The Left destroyed it. On purpose. Because they believe that anything good in the United States is the result of theft and oppression by a systemically racist/sexist/homophobic Capitalist-Imperialist genocidal system. But most people still aren’t understanding the on purpose part of it. More and more are, but there’s still a pretty steep learning curve. The Left wants chaos and destruction because that will bring down what they view as an evil system…and upon the ruins they will erect whatever warmed over Marxist drivel they believe at the moment. This isn’t an accident. This isn’t a failed policy. This is what is desired – and until we fully internalize this fact, we’re always going to be at a disadvantage fighting the Left.

What is a Hero?

Mark Noonan19 Comments

I ask this because I’ve come across a large number of people on our side who seem to wish that Kyle Rittenhouse would go silent. Go away, that is. That it is in some way distasteful that he should be happy and having a good time and that people should be honoring him. I believe this attitude is borne of two things:

  1. Personal cowardice.
  2. Not knowing what a hero is.

We are many decades into the anti-hero in popular culture, aren’t we? The person who isn’t all that great but who manages to do something good along the way, as it were. I don’t think this was foisted upon us by popular culture, or at least not entirely. I think a lot of people wanted it – wanted, that is, a world in which “hero” became something other than what it had been before.

We can see this in what we call heroic – a nurse working the Covid ward: hero. A soldier who endured an IED attack in Iraq: hero. With full intent to offend modern sensibilities, I’ll just come right out and say it: they aren’t heroes.

A hero is someone who goes above and beyond that which is expected. A nurse is supposed to treat patients. In so doing the nurse isn’t a hero: the nurse is just doing the job. So, too, with the soldier: it is expected that soldiers will go on patrol and we also expect that some patrols will be attacked and some soldiers will be killed and wounded while on patrol. There isn’t anything heroic about it: it is just the job of the infantry. It would be heroic if a non-soldier suddenly jumped into the Humvee and went on the patrol because we don’t expect a civilian to patrol…we expect the soldier. When you do what is expected of you, you have done just that.

The Medal of Honor, crucially, is awarded to servicemembers who go above and beyond the call of duty. Their duty is to fight; we expect them to be in battle and bravely fight the enemy until victory or death. We award the medal when, in the course of doing what is expected, they go on and do something unexpected. A good way to consider it is that the medal of honor is for doing something that no sane person would ever order a servicemember to do. An order that simply can’t be given: an order which doesn’t merely carry the risk of death, but has built into it almost certain death. Like this:

For valorous and gallant conduct above and beyond the call of duty as Commanding Officer of a Scout Sniper Platoon attached to the Second Marines, Second Marine Division, in action against Japanese-held Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands, November 20 and 21, 1943. The first to disembark from the jeep lighter, First lieutenant Hawkins unhesitatingly moved forward under heavy enemy fire at the end of the Betio pier, neutralizing emplacements in coverage of troops assaulting the main breach positions. Fearlessly leading his men on to join the forces fighting desperately to gain a beachhead, he repeatedly risked his life throughout the day and night to direct and lead attacks on pill boxes and installations with grenades and demolition. At dawn on the following day, First Lieutenant Hawkins returned to the dangerous mission of clearing the limited beachhead of Japanese resistance, personally initiating an assault on a hostile fortified by five enemy machine guns and, crawling forward in the face of withering fire, boldly fired point-blank into the loopholes and completed the destruction with grenades. Refusing to withdraw after being seriously wounded in the chest during this skirmish, First Lieutenant Hawkins steadfastly carried the fight to the enemy, destroying three more pill boxes before he was caught in a burst of Japanese shell fire and mortally wounded. His relentless fighting spirit in the face of formidable opposition and his exceptionally daring tactics were an inspiration to his comrades during the most crucial phase of the battle and reflect the highest credit upon the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

Lt Hawkins was expected to land first. He was expected to take on the very dangerous task of attacking enemy defense positions to allow the rest of the Marines to get ashore. While he was doing that, he wasn’t doing anything but his job – but when he was wounded, his task was over. He was supposed to evacuate to the rear. Had he done so, nobody would have had the slightest complaint to make about the bravery of Lt Hawkins. But, he didn’t. We can’t know exactly what went in through his mind, but I’ve read enough history on this sort of thing to suspect that Lt Hawkins felt he couldn’t leave – for the love of his comrades, he was going to keep on fighting, knowing that as long as he was in the line of fire, someone else wasn’t. That was above and beyond the call of duty. That is why a grateful nation awarded him the Medal of Honor.

This is not to say that Rittenhouse’s actions were in the same league as Lt Hawkins’. But as a 17 year old civilian it was not in any was expected that he should stand against communist thugs in the act of looting and burning a town. We expect the police and the National Guard to do that. Absent them, we expect mature adults to do that. As the police and Guard were absent and there didn’t seem to be a mature adult willing to go out there, Kyle did. And he stood up to the thugs and won. He went above and beyond any call of duty he had as a citizen. And, so, he’s a hero – and he deserves his fame and the honor of his fellow citizens.

And now some are complaining about it and I suspect it is because, at the back of their minds, they know they wouldn’t have gone out there. Kyle isn’t the sort of hero they want because he is a challenge they can’t meet. They want anti-heroes, because actual heroes are too difficult to emulate. The people complaining about Kyle are, in fact, cowards. But they have been well trained in being cowards, so we can excuse them a little bit.

That said, it is time for us to start getting back into the hero business: to honor and hold up as examples not people who just did their job or who triumphed over adversity, but people who didn’t have to do a good thing but, at the risk of their own lives, went ahead and did it anyway. That is a hero. That is what we must put front and center into the public mind – to instruct us on being a hero. To make us, collectively, want to be as brave as a hero. It is only thus that we can even have heroes.

If you wonder why our nation has gone down the tubes while those who we expect to save it stood aside, there is the reason: as a society, we didn’t put a premium on being a hero. We put the premium on being the victim. Kyle wasn’t a victim: he is a warrior. He stood up. He did what had to be done at the moment without a thought for his own safety. The same people condemning Kyle for his actions would laud him to the skies for enduring cancer. But merely enduring isn’t heroic – it is taking the action that no one can demand of you. That is the heroic thing – and if we want people to stand up against the bullies who are destroying our nation, then we’re going to have to honor heroes.

Reparations?

Mark Noonan49 Comments

The subject bubbles up from time to time. The first time I recall hearing about it was maybe 1988 or 1989. When I first heard about it, I rejected it in anger: the whole concept was ridiculous. How could people living today be held in any way responsible for actions of those long dead? For a long while, that is where my opinion rested. But, things change.

In 1776 we adopted as part of our founding document the assertion that “all men are created equal”. If we were to write that today, we would say “all persons are created equal” but the meaning doesn’t change in the least. When Jefferson penned those words and when the representatives of the States in Congress assembled adopted them, they probably didn’t fully grasp what they had just did. It was an astounding thing to say but even more astounding to make it part of a government document.

It is good to keep in mind that the concept wasn’t tied to a Republic or to Democracy. In 1776, most of the world was under monarchy but there were Republics in Holland and Venice and other places – but none of them had any assertion of human equality as their foundation. And, indeed, these Republics were very restrictive on who could be a citizen and who was allowed to be in charge. Outside of a religious concept of a brotherhood of man, inequality between people was taken as a given – and those at the top of society expected – and almost invariably received – deference from the lower orders. This really was something new: we were asserting that all human beings are created equal and, as equals, are all endowed with certain rights (that is also crucial: “certain rights” is a very forthright statement that there is no doubt that the rights exist and all people are endowed with them). My main point here is that it didn’t have to be a Republic making the assertion: any system of government could assert it. The form of government is irrelevant to the statement – but the statement, once adopted, compels a certain manner of government.

Once you make that assertion then it is required that the system of government, as far as practical, act in a manner which treats all persons as equals. You could, in theory, still have a king; still have a hierarchy. But you must treat everyone as equals under the law. Meaning: that nobody is allowed to be under legal disability for reasons other than their personal actions. You can’t, that is, say “you can’t do this because you are that”. That is inadmissible; can’t happen. We’re all equals and we are all allowed to do every legal thing anyone else is permitted to do. And one of the very specific things which immediately became morally and legally impossible in a system founded on “all men are created equal” is slavery. No argument can be made – all men being equal – that one person shall be compelled to labor for the benefit of another.

As I said, I don’t think Jefferson or the Founders fully grasped this – they were thinking of their peers when they wrote it. Men of the 18th century, their world was a world of higher and lower orders and an expectation that those below would serve those above. Some men already saw that slavery was incompatible with any just system, but by far almost everyone simply accepted things as they were and never figured they would change or, indeed, that there would ever be a need to change them. Keep in mind that even free labor was expected to be subordinate and respectful. The franchise wasn’t universal even among white males. In 1776 in no place on Earth was there a system where anyone thought that everyone could rise as high as they wanted: certain avenues of advancement were permanently closed off to this or that group of people for this or that reason. But, still, the Founders went ahead and wrote it down and then adopted it. The Declaration isn’t a law like a part of the US Code is law, but it is the founding document – the legal justification for the existence of a thing called The United States of America. Without it, there is no legal basis for the existence of our nation. And we went ahead and declared all men are created equal. At the very instant we adopted it, slavery was legally and morally defunct in the United States. From that moment on, every person held to slavery in the United States was having his labor stolen under the color of law.

That we did not immediately abolish slavery doesn’t change the fact that we said “all men are created equal”. We still said it. We still asserted it. It was still a dogma we claimed was essential to the justification of our existence as a nation. You can try to slice and dice this any way you like, but you can’t get away from it – starting on July 4th, 1776, the labor of black Americans was unjustly stolen from them (it had been before, as well, but the United States, as an entity, only became responsible on 7/4/1776). And it went on like that for 90 years. And when we finally got around to abolishing the slavery which existed in unjust law, we then spent the next century placing legal disabilities on black Americans. Doesn’t matter why we did that – it was wrong; they were created equal and so had the right to do everything everyone else was allowed to do. But by law and custom black Americans were hamstrung a thousand different ways from exercising the rights we said were theirs – inherent to their humanity – on July 4th, 1776.

Good for us that in 1965 we finally put an end to the injustice under the color of law. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we finally said “in law, all people are created equal and we will ensure that”. For most people – including me until recently – that was the end of it. The Law was now, at long last, equal for all. But, there’s a problem: during the time when black Americans were having their labor stolen (1776-1865) and the time they were legally hampered in enjoying the fruits of their labor (1865-1965), a gigantic wealth gap opened up. In other words, by fake laws which were unjust the moment they were placed on the books, we had prevented black Americans – who were just as much American citizens as George Washington on July 4th, 1776 – from gaining what every other American was permitted to gain: wealth.

So, now what? I’m not entirely sure. Well, that’s not entirely correct: I am sure about two things

  1. In some manner, this injustice visited upon our fellow Americans has to be rectified.
  2. In no way can we allow the rectification to end up pouring money into leftwing race-hustlers.

Most of those who argue for reparations are merely con artists hoping for a gigantic, taxpayer-funded payday. If you look at the proposals, what you don’t find is money going to actual descendants of American slaves. It is all for “programs” and such…gigantic piles of money to be placed under the control of mountebanks who will then dole it out, mostly to themselves. I don’t want that – and I’ll fight against that.

But, still, something needs to be done. Some means of helping balance the books. And the books are unbalanced. Howard University’s endowment is about $700 million. Harvard’s is about $53 billion. The difference is how much wealth each community was able to generate and thus provide for higher education. Nobody who went to Harvard ever had their earning opportunities curtailed. The people who graduated Howard before 1965, regardless of how brilliant or hard working, had their earnings curtailed as a matter of course.

I admit that I don’t know how this is to be done. I’m descended from a 1776 American, but as far as I can tell no ancestor of mine ever owned a slave. And given they were from New England, there is a high probability they were Abolitionists early on. But the other strain of my ancestry arrived much later; very near the end of slavery. How is my liability to be calculated? And what of the guy who’s ancestors got here in 1910? And 1970? We know that most black Americans are descended from slaves, but a very large portion aren’t. At least, not American slaves. A black guy who’s great-grandfather emigrated from Jamaica in 1890 doesn’t really have any claim, does he? He was never an American slave and he volunteered to come to a society where legal and social disabilities had been placed on black people. But I do believe we need to square accounts.

As a Distributist, my preference is, of course, that individuals and families obtain property. Heck; it isn’t a preference: it is more of a demand. It is the only point of working: obtaining property. The national patrimony is, also, quite large. Uncle Sam owns about 640 million acres of land, after all. Land is property and if we transferred, say, ten thousand acres of land in Southern Nevada to a trust for verified descendants of American slaves and allowed them to develop or sell the property as they saw fit, where’s the skin off anyone’s nose?

It is just an idea: one of probably many people can think of where at least in some measure, we can make up for the fact that black Americans were prevented from building up wealth. The most fun idea I have is confiscating half the Ivy League endowments and transferring them to the endowments of HBCU. Kind of a two-fer there: helps right a wrong and drains money away from upper class far left nitwits. I think it is something we can and, in the end, must do. We must, that is, demonstrate by actions that we, the American majority, really want full participation by black Americans in the life of America. And, yes, I know that the race-hustlers will never stop. I don’t care about them. But I do care that my fellow Americans who are black know that I’m on their side. That I really do know my nation’s history. That I want all of us to go forward, together, and make a more perfect union.