Author: Mark Noonan

Open Thread

Mark Noonan12 Comments

The Democrats are trying to keep the focus on Liz Cheney, and thus Trump, in order to distract from the massive disaster which is Biden. Prices are going through the roof, the border is back in chaos and our foreign enemies are being kowtowed to. Can’t really talk about that – so, let’s get another interview with Liz who will tell us how horrible January 6th was.

The good news is that most GOPers aren’t playing the game. We know that talking about the “insurrection” is just a dodge…and an attempt to split the GOP. Won’t happen. We’re woke to that.

Texas move to ban “urban camping”. Better known as bums defecating in the streets. Make no mistake about it – the Democrats, and especially the hard Left, wants quality of life to collapse and for chaos to increase – they feel, likely correctly, that people harassed to distraction won’t pay attention to what the Democrats are actually doing.

America is still not having kids. It is a problem all around the world – even the high birth rate countries are dropping like a rock. Just for the record: we don’t have a future if people don’t have kids.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan24 Comments

May Day – the day the Commies get together on Social Media and get #SocialismIn5Words trending…only to have it hijacked by we on the right, making merciless fun of them. I hope they enjoy!

The Democrats are terrified of Ron DeSantis – and with good reason: he’s staying friendly with Trump without falling under Trump’s shadow, he’s pushing base-pleasing policies, he’s showing how it’s done in handling the ‘Rona…and he knows precisely how to tell the MSM to stick it where the sun don’t shine.

For now, 2024 is Trump’s for the asking – but, will he ask? He’s not going to tell us until after the 2022 mid-terms. If he doesn’t run, then right now Ron DeSantis is the man surging to the front because he’s the guy doing it right. So, expect the MSM/DNC to simply go ever more ballistic against him over the next couple years. They don’t want Kamala facing off against him in 2024.

How did Senator Scott’s response to Biden’s speech go? Well, to nutshell it – the Democrats have let their inner racist out in attacking him.

I and many others have noted that the people who are saying to follow the science are also using the phrase “pregnant people.” Sorry, girls: in order to complete the liberation of women, you’re being erased.

Republicans are starting to turn on the corporations – and it is way past time. They are woke and they are our political enemies.

Does Biden Guarantee the Triumph of Trumpism?

Mark Noonan4 Comments

Won’t be watching Biden’s speech tonight because there is simply no point – what happens under him is whatever his aides decide because he’s clearly incapable of any sustained effort.

Over the course of today I’ve seen a lot of social media comments from Never Trump people complaining about the various hideous actions taken by those Biden aides. They are saying it is all Biden’s fault that China is on the rise, inflation is in the wings, there’s a crisis at the border, we may be facing gasoline shortages in Summer…but, no; none of this is Biden’s fault. The man is barely aware of who he is. The fault here is borne by any and all American citizens over the age of 18 on November 3rd, 2020, who did not cast a vote for Donald Trump.

To put it exactly: every person in the United States with an IQ above room temperature knew precisely what was going to happen if Biden was installed into office. Without forgetting the massive fraud which pushed Biden over the top, the bottom line is that tens of millions of people voted for a man who they knew was going to destroy American energy; encourage a flood of illegals and kowtow to China. This wasn’t in the slightest doubt: the information which would inform a person that all of this was an obvious consequence of Biden was easily obtainable. And, so, their fault. Had they done the right thing, then no amount of fraud could have got Biden into the White House. Outside the committed leftists – who want to destroy the USA because they believe it to be inherently evil – every person should have voted for Donald Trump. It should have been along the lines of an 80/20 victory for Trump.

So, all those people who have lost their jobs; all those people who are suffering psychological problems from the continued lockdowns; all those who are brutalized by the Cartels as they cross the border – the moral responsibility for it all lays entirely upon those who didn’t vote for Trump. It was a clear as a bell moral duty to re-elect Donald Trump.

In the end, these moral cowards who failed in their duty may have ended up doing us all a favor. It can work out that way some times: that the traitor betrays himself and does good he didn’t intend. Things are on a path to get so horrendously bad, especially in areas under firm Democrat control, that by 2022 and 2024, the backlash may overwhelm even the most massive efforts at fraud. Add in that in various GOP controlled areas additional protections against fraud are being implemented, and we might end up with a couple fully free and fair elections. And they’ll be elections which provide if not Trump, then a President who successfully captured the Trump mantle and who will be backed up by an ever larger number of GOP Congresspeople who are Trumpists. I’m actually willing for the Democrats to bust the filibuster because if they do, it could mean that in 2025, President Trump or DeSantis signs laws ending abortion after the first trimester, ensuring concealed carry nationwide, defunding PP and NPR…and a host of other laws which we haven’t been able to move forward on because there haven’t been 60 solid GOP Senators.

Be that as it may, an America First polity might be on the horizon – we merely need to endure the senile dimwit and his absurd VP for a little while, and then it call comes to us.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan12 Comments

One of the arguments made against term limits is that by thrusting inexperienced people into legislatures every few years, we’d really be turning over power to the un-elected legislative staffers. These staffers, with their years of legislative experience, would simply buffalo the legislator’s into voting for whatever the staff wanted. Ok, fair enough.

How is this different from what we have now?

Do you think any of the career politicians in Congress actually read and understand the bills they vote on?

What this thought has led me to is a wonder as to whether or not institutions actually work? Outside of dogmatic governed religious bodies (most notably, of course, the Catholic Church – though you’ll note various problems there), I don’t think they really do. The only one I can think of which had at least some long-term track record of success was the German General Staff. And it cost Germany two World Wars. But you do have to hand it to them – over those two World Wars they squeezed out the maximum amount of military power Germany could provide and applied it to Germany’s enemies in the most effective way possible – thus accounting for the rather lopsided Kraut to Non-Kraut casualty ratio (not counting Holocaust, it is like 5 non-Krauts killed for every Kraut they killed). But if that is our standard of “working”, I’d rather have more failures.

I’m not quite sure what we do here – but there has to be turnover, of that I am sure. As we can’t apply dogma to non-religious bodies (we have no one who would be universally respected to define dogma and thus heresy), the only defense mechanism I can think of is term limits. And to answer the charge that this would leave the permanent officials in charge – they have to have term limits, too.

It is one thing when a corporate bureaucracy becomes ossified, quite another when a government bureaucracy does. Because the government bureaucracy can jail and kill us; so, lots more serious. Just as we must find a means of ejecting politicians from office, so we’ll have to find a way to eject bureaucrats from office. Maybe we’ll eventually have to enact an amendment which says that you can’t serve, elected or appointed, in the federal government for more than 20 years?

Here’s a story saying that NYC cops may be opting for retirement at the first opportunity. I’ve seen other stories like this. Bottom line, if I was a cop in a blue jurisdiction, I’d be out, pension or no pension. You know for certain that the police and government officials will not back you up and if something you do winds up in a viral video then regardless of the facts of the case, you will be fired and very likely prosecuted. Just not worth it. And even if you think you’ll just turn a blind eye in certain areas of town (as is happening – in “George Floyd Square” in Minneapolis, it is getting very wild west), you still run the risk of having to make an arrest of someone non-white and each time you do that, you are at risk of being the next viral video. I can’t see any pension being worth that risk. And I don’t see a real way out of this – the blue city officials have staked out the position that BLM/Antifa are right and the cops are wrong. I don’t think you can re-cork that bottle and now say that the cops are right.

Joe’s first speech to Congress will be to empty seats. GOPers should place cardboard cutouts of themselves in the seats just to highlight the absurdity of this corrupt, senile, old fool being installed in the White House.

The children of Chernobyl aren’t showing any significant damage. Not really surprised – the radiation levels are probably set much higher than public safety really requires.

The Washington Post would like you to know that Senator Scott (R-SC) isn’t black enough.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan22 Comments

Usually after a jury trial we all tend to rest content with the verdict even if we think it might not have covered all issues involved – but in the Chauvin trial, I think everyone is pretty certain that the Jury felt massive pressure to convict. Did it play a role? It will be impossible to ever know. But we all suspect it, and that’s bad – because the ultimate foundation of our liberty is trial by jury. That if we’re ever accused of a crime that we can go in front of 12 of our fellow citizens and tell our side. Now, we’re all not so sure – if someone for political reasons wants us convicted, will political pressure be brought to bear? This is very much end of the Republic stuff and at the deepest level. If we can’t repair this damage, we will break up into our tribes and count on brute force for protection.

The hard core Marxists on the other side understand precisely what they’re doing – trying to overthrow the entire system so that a Marxist system can replace it. But I suspect that most on the Left don’t fully understand where they’re heading. That if they win, then shortly after we’re all destroyed, they’ll be destroyed. History, after all, is White Supremacist and so it isn’t taught.

Related: official Segregation at Michigan State.

A Norfolk, VA cop was doxxed and then fired after it was found that he had donated $25 to Kyle Rittenhouse’s defense fund. As I’ve been saying, this is the most crucial part of Leftist power: the power to control our jobs. That this cop actually got fired was just a bonus for the Left…what they really wanted everyone to know is that they can find out what you do in your private life and expose it. Every cop in America now will think twice before making any political donations. Some of them will start donating to the Left to take on protective coloring. We must cure this – long ago I said that a law must be passed prohibiting the firing of a person for actions taken outside the workplace but now I go even further: there must be severe penalties assessed to anyone who posts personal information on line without the subject’s permission.

Texas opened up and nothing bad happened. The more we see Texas and Florida in contrast to New York and California the more convinced I am that the masks and lockdowns made things worse. That there is something in this virus which makes it easy to catch when you’re inside most of the time. Furthermore, we know that the panic around the China flu was generated initially by Chinese bots on social media…I’m starting to suspect that this virus was never all that bad except in very narrow circumstances (such as we saw in Wuhan, itself, and in northern Italy) and that we were suckered into the lockdown by a Chinese op.

Trump is firing up the fundraising. Prepping for 2024? Or just building for 2022? Time will tell.

Only 12 States remain as “duty to retreat” States. The rest are “stand your ground“. This is very important because the Left has decreed that you must surrender your property to the robber. This is based on Marxist theory that the only reason there is crime is the unjust distribution of wealth caused by Capitalism – if you have more than someone else, it is stolen goods. So, Lenin’s dictate of “loot the looters”. The more “stand your ground” laws we get, the better.

Creating a Racist America

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Marjorie Taylor Greene has ruffled feathers again. She’s getting pretty good at it. This time, she’s forming an America First caucus (which is no real surprise) but she decided to twist the knife a bit by saying it would uphold “Ango-Saxon Values”. Not being Anglo (I’m a mix of Jewish, Irish, Scottish and Finnish), don’t mean much to me – but the usual suspects were up in arms over it.

Did I mention that “usual suspects” means House Minority Leader McCarthy? Yep – in fact, that’s how I heard about it: his Tweet calling it a nativist dog whistle. Which is absurd – it wasn’t a dog whistle: Greene used a bullhorn.

Anyways, this is the trend of things. I’d prefer we didn’t go this way, but in a nation increasingly atomized and with a host of non-white political pressure groups, this is inevitable. For instance, the other day the governor of Utah (you know, a Republican) said that the Utah Jazz’ exclusion of white kids from sports scholarships wasn’t racist…and that he was proud of the Jazz. I mean, my goodness: that Jazz program is the absolute definition of racist: it excludes kids based upon skin color. Naturally, old line GOPers will simply refuse to acknowledge this. They are so used to surrender that it is their default position. But Greene and the new generation of GOPers – inspired by Trump – are not going to surrender.

The bottom line is that if we’re going to start making race-based this, that and the other thing, white people will start to insist on race-based things, as well. They won’t allow their children to be excluded from opportunities based on skin color. If A is to be reserved for black people, then they will insist that B be reserved for white people – and so on and on like that with each ethnic group trying to rake off as much as it can for itself, to be divvied up by the leadership who rise to power promising to fight for the tribe.

We can still stop this, but time is short – essentially, it requires the very swift and rather overwhelming victory of the Trumpist element in American politics. That done, we’ll actually be able to undo some of the most recent racial damage created by the Left and get back on the path to a color-blind society. If we can’t get that, then this is just going to get worse and in place of the non-racist America so long striven for, racism will be the order of the day in a dying nation where tribal leaders tear society apart.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan34 Comments

Democrats in the House and Senate are moving forward with legislation to add 4 Justices to the Supreme Court. I rate their chances pretty low at the moment – it is a huge step and it isn’t at all popular. But if they are going to do it, they have to do it by, say, September or not at all. Their margins are very narrow and by Fall the Red and Purple Democrats will be looking for political cover. But it shows what they want – to simply ram through whatever they desire. It is a plain fact that the Rule of Law is dead in the United States – all that matters is what you can do if you have the power to do it. It is past time for all non-Democrats to wake up to this fact and act accordingly – only the complete removal of Democrats from any position of power will keep liberty alive.

Now that they don’t need the issue any longer, Biden is ordering a withdrawal from Afghanistan. Way past time – but do keep in mind that the only reason Trump couldn’t get us out was because the Deep State threw up every roadblock they could.

Governor Ricketts (R-NE) declares Nebraska a “2nd Amendment Sanctuary State”. This is good stuff and excellent as a pushback – but it also shows that we really are becoming two entirely different nations only kept together, for the moment, because the Left doesn’t want to let us go (they need people to hate and oppress) and we don’t want to take the risk of secession. I still hope for a peaceful settlement or separation…but the future is very cloudy.

Cop accidentally shoots a man with a warrant: cop charged. Cop deliberately shoots a Trumpster who, at worst, was guilty of trespass: no charges. We are second class citizens.

CNN is an arm of the DNC. You already knew this, but Project Veritas confirmed it.

When Did America End?

Mark Noonan26 Comments

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that you’re allowed to have a private prayer service in your own home. Five to four. One vote goes the other way and your free exercise of religion is a dead letter. Roberts, naturally, joined the liberals: he’s proved to be an utter disaster.

Someone said yesterday that packing the Court would be the end of America. I corrected the statement: it was Roe which was the end of America. Whatever one thinks of the merits of abortion, the plain fact of the matter is that the issue is not at all mentioned in the Constitution and so is something outside the scope of Federal power – it is for the States or the people to decide. The Supreme Court simply had no business hearing the case – and when it ruled on that case, it dispensed with law in the United States. The laws on the books only remained in operation as long as doing so was convenient to whomever was in power.

In comments on news reports about the Court ruling on prayer at home, there is a distinct attitude among the Left that the Court got it wrong and that free exercise is fine except when it’s not. And that, in a nutshell, is how things work these days: whatever is happening is fine until someone on the Left decrees that something else should happen. At that moment, all laws and customs against the desired Leftist action are null and void. In the end, it doesn’t matter what justification is used as it all works out the same: law isn’t law. And without the Rule of Law, America isn’t America.

The end game here is unknown – only by the slenderest threads hangs our ability to peacefully influence the policy of the federal government. If the Democrats get their “voting rights” act passed and pack the courts, then we will simply not be able to participate in a meaningful sense. For the moment, there is a bit of pushback against the complete abandonment of the American system of governance…but we’re essentially dependent upon two Democrat Senators to hold the line. Democrats are not noted for the courage or honesty.

But even supposing they hold the line and then we win next year – we’re still not out of the woods. Not even if we then go on to win in 2024. Sure, the next GOP President can do all sorts of things. Completely reverse what was done the previous four years. But all that means is what is done can be undone…and when being undone by the unscrupulous (ie, Democrats), it can run a lot faster. Remember, the bureaucrats who hampered Trump at every turn are on Biden’s team…all he has to do is give the slightest hint and the bureaucrats will be off to the races implementing new policy. Supposing we keep the ability to win at the ballot box, simply going 180 every four to eight years on policy isn’t sustainable. For a Republic to work, all political factions must broadly have the same ends in mind. These days, the two sides want completely opposite outcomes. And each side is dependent upon convincing about 10-20 percent of the voters who are uncommitted to either side…these are fickle people and they are whipsawed between the two sides. This is a recipe for disaster.

And I think that disaster is what we’re going to get.

Enlightened Insanity

Mark Noonan16 Comments

Do you realize why there was an Inquisition? That is something I think most people don’t ponder much. Most just consider it to have been a uniformly horrible thing which we happily dispensed with as the Enlightenment instructed us in the value of tolerance. To a certain extent, there is some truth to such a view, but it doesn’t cover the entirety of it.

That which we call the Inquisition started in response to the Albigensian heresy in the 12th century. If you read secular history about it, you’ll find that the poor Albigensians were horribly persecuted by the Church because they simply wanted to practice their simple faith. Ok, fine. But they also believe that sexual reproduction was inherently wrong – that the physical world was something created by an evil god and it had to be renounced so that the human spirit could unite with the good god. In other words, if the heresy had been allowed to continue, it would have ended civilization. The Church, of course, was also concerned with what happened to human souls – being rather interested in their winding up in heaven rather than hell and so looked in horror upon a sect which pretty much ensured via its beliefs a one-way trip to hell. So, there were two reasons to go after these guys: they’d imperil your soul and end civilization. That is why there was an Inquisition – to root out people preaching insane, destructive ideas.

To be sure, any institution run by human beings is going to mess up. It is in the nature of things because we’re human. Whether or not the attempt should have been made or whether or not the right methods were used in the attempt is a matter for debate. But the fact that lunatic ideas which bring death should be stopped is not something I will debate about. Lunatic ideas bringing death are bad. And bad things are to be held at arms length to the best of our ability.

But, in the event, those who argued against the Inquisition and in favor of tolerance won the debate. The Enlightenment – so called – happened. And people were free to express themselves in any way they chose. This did have the benefit of giving us the Declaration of Independence…but it also gave us the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf. Bit of an up and downside on that – and the Declaration of Independence could easily have been written by St Thomas Aquinas…the Manifesto and the Kampf, not so much…because both of those were heresies and St Thomas would have seen right through them.

Now, why do I bring this up? Because earlier today I saw a Twitter thread by a Muslim which expressed the view that Islam needs an Enlightenment. There is much merit to such an argument on the face of it. But I also immediately had my doubts.

First off, of course, is my belief that Islam is itself a heresy – Mohammed taking various aspects of Christianity (and a little Judaism) that he liked and dispensing with the bits he didn’t like. The classic heresy model – leaving something or things out. Be that as it may, if it started as a heresy, it developed rather rapidly into its own thing. And as a Christian I can and do take various issues with it. But whatever one wishes to say about it, for quite a long time it was just another part of the world tapestry. Violent as all things can be, but also beautiful, as all things can be. Yes, I can list for you a large number of Muslim sons-of-bitches but any Muslim out there can come up with a list of Christian SOBs to match – but in neither case were the SOBs the thing about the religions or the civilizations they created. I’ve read quite a bit of history of Islam and I do have to say that something changed over the ages – and the change was rather recent.

Some time in the 19th century or maybe a little earlier, the historical records start to document people of the Muslim faith acting in ways which they simply had to know were wrong. Not just in Christian ideals, but in Muslim ideals. There is a difference between fighting for your side – however brutally you may do it – and committing acts of cruelty. One early example of this is the massacre of about 50 British captives in Delhi during the Mutiny of 1857. But it got worse as time went on – acts of supreme cruelty which had no justification and which the perpetrators knew were wrong when they did them (on the simple fact that they would never want such things done to them). It wasn’t, after all, backwoods Muslim peasants who set the bombs which started the Battle of Algiers in 1956 – it wasn’t, that is, regular, old fashioned Muslims who came up with the idea of setting a bomb off specifically where children gathered so as to cause the most horrific death and injuries to people who could have in no way caused offense.

That takes a modern, Enlightened mind to come up with.

You could say that the things like the bombing in Algiers was provoked – and, to a certain extent, that is correct. The French, far more than the British, could be very brutal overlords when challenged. There were plenty of reasons for the Algerians to be displeased with the French. But it should be noted that the first serious effort of the Algerian rebels wasn’t so much to go after the French, but to kill those Algerians who were friendly to France. And kill them quite brutally, without sparing women and children. That sort of thing isn’t done in response to provocation – that is a cold blooded act of murder. So were the bombings. So, later, were acts like the Munich attack and the Avivim school bus bombing (seriously: what sort of a sick person even thinks up a target like that?). Muslims were involved in these things, but to deliberately seek to murder – usually very cruelly – people who specifically can’t fight back…no, sorry, I’m not going to say that is a Muslim thing. That is an Enlightened thing – that is what happens when people are allowed to pursue insane ideas to their logical conclusion.

Given things like bombed school buses and, well, Treblinka, I’m going to have to come down a bit against the Enlightenment – the idea, that is, that everyone should be able to proceed unchecked wherever their thoughts take them. I’m going to assert that there needs to be a corrective, here and there, which will tell the insane to sit down and shut up – before they get gas chambers or bombed buses into their heads. I think that I’d rather have to deal with the most deeply orthodox Muslims around as they deal with me, a deeply orthodox Christian. I think we’d probably get along better than modern, Enlightened folks. Even if we ended up fighting each other, it wouldn’t be a contest to see who could be the most merciless.

Anyways, this is where my thoughts are leading me these days. A sort of Endarkenment…where being a lunatic gets you a padded room rather than a tenured position or a promotion to Dear Leader.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan68 Comments

I’ve noticed over the past week that a bunch of Never Trump Republicans have started to write things along the line of, “I was hoping Biden would prove a moderate”. This is utter bull. Joe Biden has been in public life for half a century – everyone familiar with politics knows that Biden is both a liar and a bully. Everything that Biden is doing was predicted before the election and no one is stupid enough to have actually fallen for the Op which put Biden in office. And we know the real reason the Never Trump wanted Trump out – because he was wrecking the Tru-Con game of talking a big fight and then rolling over for the Left. This new Never Trump effort is an attempt to get back into the con – getting back, that is, into getting respect and money from us. Nothing doing. Never Trump made it’s choice and it is irrevocable – they no longer get a say in what we’re going to do.

Joe Biden is firing just about everyone Trump hired. Noted. When we next take the White House, the first Executive Order is to fire every single Democrat appointee effective immediately. This is pre-civil war stuff, to be sure: a complete overturn of personnel and policy as different parties win. So be it. It is what the Democrats want. They can end this any time they choose – all they have to do is start to treat us decently.

Glen Reynolds notes that the FBI isn’t very good at catching actual bad guys. Time and again a crime is committed by a “known wolf” and we’ve also seen how whom the FBI goes after is based on just about anything except what is right. I’ve called for abolishing the FBI for years – and it seems pretty clear to me that the FBI’s reputation is mostly based on good PR.

Here’s something you’ve never heard of because it doesn’t fit the Narrative: white guys falsely convicted of murdering a black man….and the conviction was done because it was felt necessary to punish some white person, any white person.

As I’ve said, BLM does have a point. Just how many people are sitting in jail right now because politics required it? We’ll never know, will we? But we’ve seen this sort of thing time and time again…people being railroaded by police and prosecutors for political reasons. The police and prosecutors are supposed to be the impartial tribunes of the law…but, clearly they are not, at least in areas where Democrats have a Narrative to support. I’m not quite sure how we reform our way out of this – in the Constitution, we’re supposed to have a speedy trial, and maybe that is the fix? You arrest someone – well, you’ve got a week to put him on trial and if you can’t, he walks. For good. If you do, after all, have real proof of guilt, you should be good to go, right? And if you don’t – if you’re trying to apply pressure for a guilty plea or working on someone to provide false testimony – then having only a week to get that done means you probably can’t do it.

Segregation is being pushed by the Left on college campus because they believe – probably correctly – that this is the way to build hardened cadres of foot soldiers…people who will become entirely infused with the Critical Race Narrative who will then go out, degree in hand, to rise into positions of authority in corporate and government bureaucracies. We must make Critical Race Theory illegal in the United States.

Biden’s You Tube videos are getting so many downvotes that You Tube is going to remove that function. Must protect The Precious!