Author: M. Noonan

Small Thread Because I’ve Nothing Specific to Write About

M. Noonan8 Comments

Lot of violent and/or eliminationist rhetoric these days – almost all from the Left. Which is “as usual”, of course; it has just become so ubiquitous that no one can ignore it. And, I think, the regular folks – those who don’t spend their days in flame wars on social media – are starting to notice; and not liking what they see. No one can actually predict the future, but I’m laying my money on the Democrats increasing political radicalism turning off casual voters who will either stay home or vote GOP come November…and come 2020, unless there is a sea-change in Democrat attitudes. And I don’t expect that change until after a crushing loss in 2020.

I’m a bit serious about that. I was running things through my head and using 270 to Win and I’m expecting Trump to win 37 States with 356 Electoral votes in ’20…and if the Democrats keep the insanity up to 11, it might end up being 42 States and 391 Electoral Votes. Time will tell, of course – lots of things to happen between now and then, but I don’t see a trajectory which has the Democrats backing off and coming up with policies that appeal to people outside the true-blue, Progressive believers.

But, also, there is success for the GOP – things are going pretty well in the country right now. People might be feeling so good by 2020 that they decide they want four more years of it, regardless.

Related: Democrat governor candidate Cynthia Nixon calls ICE a terrorist organization. To be sure, she’s going to be crushed in the NY primary as she’s running against a sitting Democrat governor, but make no mistake about it: at least 40% of the Democrat base agrees and they are the people who will be driving the train in 2020.

It has been HOT in Southern Nevada. Got up to 112 on Thursday. Our Progressive friends will say this is Global Warming…but as I’ve lived out here 25 years, it is just par for the course. Now, 112 is a bit toasty…but I think my blood has thinned or something because below 80, I feel cold. Anything up to 105 and I barely feel it. And, yes, it is a dry heat – current humidity is 4%…which is murderous on the vegetable garden.

Melania Trump has visited 100% more children detention centers than Michelle Obama ever did.

Do you ever check out Powerline’s “The Week in Pictures“? You should.

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Open Thread to Talk About Other Stuff

M. Noonan75 Comments

Wow! Talking about immigration sure hit a nerve. Keep at it, guys! But, if you’ve got other things on your mind, here ya go:

We’ve withdrawn from the UN’s “Human Rights Council”…and, about time. It is a disgusting organization which is a mere tool of anti-Israel and anti-American creeps. Now, let’s withdraw from the UN…or, if we must keep it, let’s move the headquarters to Goldfield, NV…with a ban on air conditioning to save the environment.

Leftist extremists went after DHS Secretary Neilsen when she went out to dinner. I don’t think they’ve really thought through how badly this could wind up.

The SPLC has become a hate-group, targeting anyone who disagrees with the left and then pressuring corporations and groups to cut ties with the targets. Turns out, this isn’t very wise: the SPLC just got hit with a $3 million judgement due to their actions…and now as many as 60 other groups are considering lawsuits. Here’s the thing: it isn’t actually a good idea to lie. We can get quite rough in the give-and-take of politics, but consistently lying about people is a poor business model.

Laws (Even Immigration Laws) are Laws

M. Noonan75 Comments

The DNC ordered the MSM to make the detention of people at the border an issue, and now the MSM is full of stories of the heartless, cruel Trump separating families. First, for Amazona (our, “it’s the law, dammit” person…who is correct in all respects on this), we’ll bring this up:

Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers, or (2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers, or (3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both. – 8 USC 1325

So, you can see, entering our country illegally is, well, illegal. And there’s no carve out for people fleeing persecution. If you want in, you have to come in legally…and, of course, you can just present yourself at the border and claim refugee status and your case will be judged according to law (and we have a host of carefully crafted laws and regulations just for that). There is no carve-out for someone caught illegally here – or attempting to illegally enter – who says, upon arrest, that he or she is a refugee (though, even here, after detention such a person can still claim refugee status and that case will be judged on its merits, no prejudice attached for the illegal entry). And the bottom line is that neither Mexico nor Canada is a dystopian hellscape…once in either country, it is no problem to go to the closest US consulate and claim refugee status. But, that isn’t what is wanted here. What is wanted is easy entry – and then the chance to disappear into the illegal alien underground, where there are plenty of people willing to help you skirt US law in the matter of your residency.

The use of kids, I think, results from the fact that until just recently, we went very easy on people who showed up with kids. Which astonishes me – we should have been even more strict about that given the amount of trafficking going on across the border. Without a blood test, how in heck would we know if any particular kid presented at the border is the child of the adult with them? New orders from the government have us enforcing the law listed above – if you enter illegally, you’ve broken the law and are held over for trial. Just as if you had broken any other law. Naturally, we won’t imprison kids with adults awaiting trial (for obvious reasons), and thus comes the “ripping families apart” drivel.

There are plenty of countries in the world where, if a person from there showed up here claiming asylum, I’d pretty much automatically give it to them. North Korea; Syria; Somalia; Myanmar; Cuba; Afghanistan; Venezuela; South Sudan; Libya. There are others where I’d be inclined to give the benefit of the doubt. But south of the Rio Grande, there’s only one – Venezuela. How much you want to bet not one in a thousand of those crossing are from a place you have to flee from? What we’re getting is people who simply want to move, and who don’t want to wait in line. As for me, I see no good coming out of rewarding people for ruthlessly exploiting children to get a jump on the entry line. Such people seem to me to be the people we’d least like in our country. I mean, think about it: it’s a very long journey through an underground system controlled by some of the most vicious gangsters the world has ever seen. Who would put their child through that?

President Trump is doing the right thing – by enforcing the law, he’s discouraging this cruel practice of exploiting children. Those who are opposing him are de-facto encouraging criminality – in effect, they are lobbying for the criminal gangs who exploit these people trying to come here illegally. I’ve spent the last few days on Social Media with Progressives and Never Trump trying to shame me over this…and nothing has more convinced me of the moral collapse of the Progressives and Never Trump than their bizarre desire to have criminality rewarded in the name of having a talking point against Trump.

President Trump and a Sane Foreign Policy

M. Noonan62 Comments

Compare and contrast: Donald Trump, called ignorant, stupid and crude by the Expert Class, manages to at least get the ball rolling on a settlement of the Korean War and the de-nuclearization of Korea. The Expert Class (Conservative and Progressive, makes no matter in this case) is the same sort of people who got us into the Korean War without a declaration of war, expended 33,000 American lives – along with many hundreds of thousands of Korean and Chinese lives (as well as blowing everything above a hut in North Korea to pieces) – and then said, “ah, heck with it: lets just settle for a stalemate.” A stalemate which has now gone on for 65 years, continues to cost lives and, until just yesterday, carried a real threat of renewed fighting at any time.

Who is actually dumb? Heck: who is actually insane?

Reading the comments from Expert Class people on social media after Trump concluded the summit, I kept getting angrier and angrier. These people clearly wished that Trump had failed – and are hoping against hope that it will still fail at some future point. I got the distinct impression (and I’m not the only one) that they’d prefer a bloody war to result in Korea, as long as we lost it and they could pin the blame on Trump. Look, I despise the North Korean regime as much as anyone – just as I despise all tyranny, and especially tyranny of the Communist variety, because it is so invariably anti-human. But I also don’t want the sons and daughters of America to die in war unless it is necessary – and I sure as heck don’t want them shoved into another war to bleed and die and then not be allowed to win. I tend to think this is a rather sane way to view things.

Trump is trying to get something better. Maybe the North Korean regime also wants something better? Sure, we can count on it that they will try to wring every advantage they can out of this and you can rely on it that they’re plans don’t include the creation of a pluralist democracy. What can we do here?

1. Nothing and hope that the North Korean regime merely dies, and doesn’t decide to take out South Korea in it’s death throes.

2. Go to war and expend a lot of lives destroying the North Korean regime, and then spend a couple decades rebuilding the place.

3. Try to work a deal where they become a non-immediate threat and are able to slowly build themselves up over time (which does carry a risk that a richer North Korea might eventually become more militarily powerful than a poor North Korea…but, ultimately, that is more South Korea’s problem than ours, and as long as South Korea maintains their first-rate military, such a problem is contained).

I think Option 3 is best. Others can have a different view; I understand and respect that…but what we’re getting from the Expert Class is a clear hope that everything goes to heck in a hand basket, just so they can blame Trump. So, heck with them. They’ve pushed a foreign policy for decades which has proven not just a failure, but an insane failure. Time to move on.

And that, I think, is what President Trump is doing: moving on from the framework of the past. The President is abandoning the post-WWII settlement in favor of a new idea that if we strenuously pursue American interests, good things will follow not just for us, but for the whole world. The Expert Class hates this idea, mostly because they hate the idea of the United States going forward and carrying the world in it’s train. But for those of us who believe we’re the good guys, then we see it is a logical that if we do things to sustain ourselves, that will help us and all the other good guys in the world.

Who benefits from a weak America? Not us. Not the forces of freedom and decency. Who benefits from a powerful America? Us, and the forces of freedom and decency. We’ve tended to go weak ever since WWII. Even under supposedly Conservative governments, we have bent the knee to such things as the UN and have deliberately refused to flex our full power on the world stage. This hasn’t been done for any rational reason – it as been done for the insane reason that our Expert Class doesn’t believe we should be too powerful (you should look into Expert Class commentary after the fall of the USSR…they were worried that without the USSR to keep us in check, we’d destroy the world, because we’re stupid redneck deplorables). As the Expert Class can’t actually make us non-powerful, they have set up a system of treaties, organizations and agreements which says we can’t do things unless the rest of the world agrees we should. We’ve been hobbled and made unable to stay completely out of foreign entanglements while also not being able to finish conflicts once they come up.

We’ve been forbidden to be either Isolationist or Empire. And what have we got for this? Well, the aforementioned Korean War. But, also, Vietnam War. The ongoing Global War on Terrorism (which will hit its seventeenth anniversary this September; keep going and a couple years from now young American men and women who weren’t even alive when the war started will get the privilege of being killed in it). Various other small wars for our own involvement but let’s not forget things like the Bosnian War; the Rwandan genocide; the mass migration of people; the various failed States around the world; the destruction of our own morality (done primarily to crush our spirit and make us docile)…it has all been wrong, and insanely wrong, at that. We’ve really done nothing right. And the people who have done it all wrong are now standing up and telling us we must not follow Trump on this. Nuts to that.

I’m fully aware that Trump might fail. Anyone who attempts anything risks failure – it is in the nature of things. But one thing I can’t see me agreeing to is to keep going on with the same, old insanity. We’ve tried it. We given the smart guys who are supposed Experts their chance…and we’ve got piles of corpses and a demoralized world now prey to the worst among us as a result. No, thanks. I can’t say what, exactly, will work to fix on this, but it will be something other than the insane Experts are prescribing. Maybe Trump has got it figured out? We’ll find out over the next couple years and I’m willing to give him time. And if he fails, I’ll agree to try something else…but not what we’ve been doing. That is over and done with and only Progressives and Never Trump haven’t figured that out.

Another Open Thread Because I’m Working on a Prequel to the Novel

M. Noonan33 Comments

Everyone has to die. I think all of us go through periods where we wonder why we bother living, at all. Most of us get over it – some don’t, and we have seen the results today. We also saw in Charles Krauthammer the other side of the picture: if there’s anyone who was justified in wallowing in self pity and perhaps eventually deciding to end it all, it was him…but, he never did: and now that he’s facing a known end in just a few weeks, he’s carrying on with grace and courage. I also recall a lady I worked with – dead about ten years now – who was also wheelchair-bound and in really bad shape…but, she kept working, even though she didn’t have to, and was always bright and cheerful. I’ve never known anyone personally who committed suicide, so I don’t really know what that whole situation is like…but it just strikes me as so odd. I can see it, but I don’t really understand it…after all, even the worst day has air to breath, people to see, things to think about and read.

As were were very correctly doing tributes to the heroes of Normandy, it once again occurred to me what a bad general Eisenhower was. The bottom line was that the allied material superiority was so great by the start of 1944 that there was no practical chance of the Germans stopping us – at best, they could slow us down; but the end was inevitable. Choosing Normandy over Calais was a mistake – sure, Calais was better defended, but not that much better…and Normandy only lead to Paris, while Calais lead straight into the heart of Germany…a sort of reverse of what the Germans did in 1940. Add in things like getting caught with his pants down in the Battle of the Bulge, and I get a picture of man who lucked out in being supreme commander of an army which couldn’t lose, and so gained glory he never really earned.

Soros backed a bunch of District Attorney candidates in California and they didn’t fare too well. The larger picture I see is Democrats simply not getting the votes or the money they need to win big in November. Lots of time between now and then, but absent something horribly bad going wrong for Trump or the nation, I’m expecting November to be at worst a draw in the House and a win in the Senate for the GOP…with a slight chance of a mini-red wave showing up.

More to that: California Democrats are pushing a tax break for illegal immigrants. We know how liberal California is…but there has to be a breaking point. Some point where even Californians go, “this is nuts: I’ll vote Republican”. That point may be closer than we suspect.

Trump says he’s willing to back a law which will make the Feds obey state marijuana laws. I’ve long figured the War on Drugs was lost…don’t like it, but the ultimate source of the drug problem isn’t that drugs exist, but that people lack the moral strength to refuse the temptation. Even with that, though, I’d agree to keep them illegal if the attempts to catch drug dealers hadn’t created a surveillance State where we, the people, are watched in all our doings on the theory that one of us may one day decide to become a drug lord. End it – spend the money on treatment.

Iran appears to admit they facilitated the travel of some of the 9/11 conspirators.

There are more job-openings than job-seekers in America. TruCon Muh Principles solution: import more foreigners! Actual Conservative solution: hey, maybe pay the workers a little more.

Open Thread

M. Noonan24 Comments

The Philadelphia Eagles have decided to make a massive, in-kind donation to Trump’s re-election effort: Trump has disinvited them to the White House to celebrate their Super Bowl victory because some players are still carping about kneeling during the anthem. Trump has this ability to make his opponents do stupid, self-destructive things. It is why I consider his re-election in 2020 to be near-certain. Right now, he’s got them once again defending kneeling during the anthem – not even a couple weeks after they thought the NFL had put the issue to rest.

The EU and Italy are in dispute about economic and migration policy – with the Italian government bucking against EU-imposed economic strictures and also not happy at all with what the EU has utterly failed to do with Italy’s influx of migrants. Powerline has a nice run-down on what is at stake. The biggest problem with the EU is that the people didn’t create it. They were willing to go along with it while it, apparently, ensured prosperity and peace…but right now, especially in places like Italy, it is providing neither…and the people of Italy are getting fully awake to the reality that no people of Europe gets to set EU policy…it is all set by un-elected bureaucrats who hold the people of Europe in profound contempt.

Don Surber notes how Trump just plays the MSM like a fiddle – this time over whether the President can pardon himself. The reality: Trump is working to make the 2018 mid-terms at least in part a referendum on whether or not he should be impeached. He knows – as I’ve long known – that if it is a central issue, his Trumpsters will troop to the polls in numbers never seen in a mid-term election. Naturally, the MSM is falling for it.

Bill Clinton, being Bill Clinton, got himself all bollixed up over questions about the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Kurt Schlichter has been pointing out – as I have, too – that Never Trump is a gateway drug to being a Progressive. Here’s your proof.

Smart and Dumb

M. Noonan13 Comments

Lots of discussion of late about smart and dumb – mostly Progs and Never Trumpers saying they are smart while Trump and we Deplorables are dumb. Let’s examine that a bit.

Real genius is rare. So rare, in fact, that it hardly ever shows up. Plenty of people are given the title these days, but that is merely a reflection of our Participation Trophy society. For instance, various pop stars have been called geniuses…which is absurd when you compare them to Mozart, who really was a genius (he started composing at five years old, guys). Now, this isn’t to say that some people aren’t very talented – many are. Some of them even approach genius…but genius has this thing about it: it isn’t bound by what has come before. That is the mark of it – when you see someone striking off in a new direction that no one suspected was there before, there’s your genius.

You can’t force genius to be – it seems to be innate in some people. They just have a mental ability (probably a combination of genetics and environment) which simply moved their mind into a new groove which we non-geniuses can’t see (but the most perceptive of us can perceive..and thus allow genius to go its way, only occasionally tapping on the breaks so the genius, in exuberance, doesn’t drive us mere mortals off a cliff). This doesn’t stop people from trying – “gifted” courses in school are a symptom of this; a genius doesn’t need a gifted course. The genius is going to go someplace new long before you even know where he’s going. Quite often, a genius is going to be a flop in school, as it turns out…not for lack of understanding, but because they understand it too well almost intuitively and are bored with it and want to move on to whatever it is that is interesting them.

How many geniuses have we had? Well, in Western Civilization (which I am most familiar with) I count maybe seven or eight in the last 300 years. Mozart, already mentioned…but also MacArthur, Einstein, Lincoln, Bismarck, Napoleon, Churchill, Van Gogh…maybe a few others. And it is a debatable subject. One man’s genius might be another man’s merely talented person. You’ll note that I didn’t include Edison…because I view him as a product of his time who took a systematic view of how to get things done; but there wasn’t a lot of “flash of genius” in his work…just a lot of hard work and persistence (which is invaluable, by the way). The bottom line is that even if you add a few more to my list (and take a few away from it), you’re not talking a lot of people. Three political geniuses in 300 years: Bismarck, Churchill and Lincoln (all three charted a course no one could see; all three were despised not merely by their opponents, but by most of their allies, most of the time). And keep in mind that Bismarck, for all his genius, was the ruin of a civilization. We’re on our 45th President, and we’ve only had one genius (as an aside, I think the only other President who might be considered a genius is Teddy Roosevelt…nearly as much of a disaster as Bismarck, but clearly a man of gigantic intellect and talent).

Most of us are not geniuses, of course. And even geniuses can be quite stupid at times. A story I once read said that Newton got himself a pet cat and cut a hole through his door so the cat could go in and out at will. In the fullness of time, this cat had three kittens. The great genius pondered this event and after profound reflection, cut three, smaller holes in the door. Most of us are average, or at least our intellect clusters around the human average (which is why its called the average). Some few are very stupid, and some equally few are very smart. We can’t rely on either supreme stupidity or supreme intelligence: it is too rare to take into account in our day to day actions. Most of the time, we just have to go forward as best we can and assume that everyone else is pretty much just like us – smart, but not that smart and thus capable of astonishing error.

The problem we have with our Progressives and Never Trumpers is that they really do believe that they are all extra smart. In the quiet of their hearts, they probably (most of them) account themselves geniuses. They assume their superior intellect and thus expect us to obey – after all, if we were smart like they are, we’d be just like them. It is nonsense – most of them are no smarter than any of us. It is almost certain that none of them are geniuses, just as it is almost certain that none of us are. That there might be a genius on their side (just as there might be one on ours) is a chance so small as to not be worth considering. And, main thing, if there is a genius, then that person (whatever side he or she might be on) is likely despised by everyone else…that is another problem geniuses have; being so intelligent and able to see things that others can’t, most people mistrust them and think they are doing something wrong (as in morally wrong). And if there is a genius on either side, that person is going to take (drag, really) there side in a direction they never wanted to go and award them astonishing victory they kicked furiously against.

Last thing on this: another thing about genius is you can’t always tell its there until after it has completed it’s task. So many people are carping and complaining, and public doubts are so stirred up, that the sheer brilliance of the course isn’t recognized until the destination is reached and everyone starts going, “wow; this is cool!” after the fact.