Author: Mark Noonan

The Rules of Politics are Changing

Mark Noonan9 Comments

Trump has filed forms with the FEC for his prospective 2020 re-election bid, and the State of North Dakota is checking to see if the paid pipeline protestors are filing their tax forms.

The first thing will make it much more difficult for well-heeled, Progressive interest groups to set up non-profits to oppose Trump initiatives. I don’t know all the legal ins and outs of it, but it appears that if you’re a non-profit, there are restrictions on what you can do in partisan politics – Trump is set to run again in 2020, and thus a non-profit is curtailed in what it can do against him. This is turning Progressive “lawfare” against them with a vengeance.

The North Dakota action may well be motivated by the fact that North Dakota has had to shell out big bucks due to the pipeline protests, but it works out as a discouragement for the sort of paid protestors Progressive groups gin up to make it look like there is widespread, popular opposition to certain things. This is also a bit of “lawfare” turned against the left.

And this is how you fight them. You see, for many years, the left has used the American system – and, often, taxpayer subsidies of one sort or another – to work against the actual desires of the American people. Until Walker’s reforms in Wisconsin, no one had really taken the fight to the means by which the left advances their cause – and that successful fight in Wisconsin instructed everyone that (a) you can fight them on that level and (b) you can win.

I think we’ll see more and more of this – and the Democrats just making sure there is more of it. Democrats will rue the day they walked out on Hatch’s committee. Hatch – I’ve met the man: a nice gentleman in the largest sense of the word – simply does not like the idea that decorum should be shoved aside like that. It wasn’t even over a crucial issue the Democrats had a chance of winning on – Hatch might have understood something like that. But merely trying to delay the inevitable because some shrieking protestors are demanding it? Absurd. And insulting.

The left is anti-intellectual, anti-truth and committed to the asinine concept that few experts can manage things for the benefit of all. It is past time we ended this nonsense – and we end it by hitting the left where it hurts the most: in their taxpayer money, and their ability to be jerks without paying a price.

Pre-Supreme Court Nominee Open Thread

Mark Noonan27 Comments

As the people at Instapundit are putting it these days: do you want more Trump? Because this is how you get more Trump:

The British Medical Association (BMA) has told people to stop calling pregnant people expectant mothers because it could offend transgender people. Instead, call those females “pregnant people.”

For some bizarre, inexplicable reason, the MSM is starting to pay attention to military casualties after an 8 year hiatus.

In case you ever need the info: how far away do you need to be to survive a nuclear blast? My father knew a great deal about this – bottom line: far, far away. I actually had his nuclear blast calculator for a long while: handed it off to a niece who is studying physics.

Not all American Muslims are against Trump.

Last night, Progressives were spreading the Fake News that Trump was going to rescind some protections for gay Americans – turns out, he wasn’t. Which is no surprise, at all, as Trump is probably one of the most gay-friendly people we’ve ever elected…remember, unlike Obama, Trump went into office in favor of same-sex marriage.

Like the American left, the French left is figuring that what the people want is even more leftism. We’ll see how that works out – both for French leftists and ours.

The Realities of Fighting a War

Mark Noonan22 Comments

A lot of people are getting bent out of shape over the prospect of waterboarding being resumed, at least in theory, under a Trump Administration. Just to let you know – plenty of my fellow Catholics have been loudly proclaiming the Church’s absolute prohibition against any sort of torture. I, of course, subscribe 100% to Church teaching – I routinely fall short of it, but I believe it to be correct in all respects and that everyone should do their level best to live up to it. I would have it that we would never use waterboarding, or any other terrible thing. But if you were suddenly made President of the United States and found that we had captured people who had immediate knowledge of a pending terrorist massacre, what would you do? I thank God I’ll never be in that position – but if such a situation arises and a President (any President) decides to use forceful measure to obtain information, that President won’t find me in the line of people condemning the action, or calling for a war crimes trial.

And that brings me to the subject of war crimes. The basis of them are various international agreements entered in to which prescribe the ways and means a nation can behave in war time – against enemy soldiers and against enemy populations. It is all very admirable stuff and if everyone would at all times obey such rules then war, while still being a cruelty, would be a lot less worse. But the plain fact of the matter is that international conventions about warfare don’t work in the breach. We only refrained from using poison gas in WWII because the enemy refrained – had the Germans or the Japanese used them, so would we have. And even without enemy first-use, as the Battle of Okinawa ground on and our losses mounted, there was an official request from the military to use poison gas against dug in Japanese forces. It was vetoed at the highest level – but had there not been an atomic bomb and we had invaded Japan, my bet is that we would have used it, if the defense of the Japanese homeland had been in any way like the defense of Okinawa.

The gold standard for how to deal with war crimes remains the Nuremberg trials in Germany after World War Two. But while there was a grandeur about them, the fact that Soviet judges participated made them not what they should have been. Stalin’s regime never packed people into gas chambers to murder them, but millions were still done to death by Stalin’s henchmen – it is hard to find a crime which the Nazis committed and the Soviets avoided. And even in things like charges about plotting aggressive warfare and engaging in unrestricted submarine warfare, our side was guilty, too…with the Brits only being beaten by the Germans invading Norway by a matter of hours, and our unrestricted submarine campaign against Japan being vastly more effective than the German’s campaign against us and the British (indeed, German Admiral Donitz was helped to a lesser sentence by no less a figure than Fleet Admiral Nimitz, who wrote a letter to the Nuremberg judges advising them that the submarine charge against Donitz could be equally applied to Nimitz).

War is cruelty and you cannot refine it – so said General Grant. By one means or another, in war you are seeking to kill and destroy. It is better for you if you use only the minimal force necessary, and that you treat a defeated enemy with mercy. But especially when faced with a cruel foe who makes no distinction and seeks to win by any means necessary, you may at times be forced to brutal methods, yourself. And it is not for us to judge the men and women, forced into horrible circumstances, about the decisions they made. If you aren’t the person making the decision – in a swift, terrible moment when you cannot possibly have all necessary facts at your disposal – then you are not the person to judge. Only God can do that.

Today, we are faced with a very cruel enemy who sticks at nothing to win. It is to be hoped that our government and military leaders will come up with a good plan which will help curb and, perhaps, eventually destroy the wicked enemy and bring peace to the world. But one thing they don’t need is high-minded virtue-signalling from those of us who don’t have to make the decisions and carry them out.

What Media Bias? Part 202

Mark Noonan39 Comments

From Conrad Black:

The two signal facts, or “alternative facts” in the well-chosen parlance of the brilliant and engaging co-counselor and victorious campaign manager of the president, Kellyanne Conway, are that public approval of the national news media now stands at 14%, and the allegations the press are now making against the new administration are of no interest to any serious segment of the public.

After a while, if you lie constantly, no one is going to believe you – even if, for the moment, you are telling the truth.

What happened to the MSM in 2016 was the cumulation of their dishonesty over a many-decade period. This was helped along by the MSM going entirely overboard, even by MSM standards, in their desire to destroy Trump at the behest of their Democrat friends and Trump’s ability to command the center of attention with a willingness to punch back very hard. The MSM is now exposed as a hollow threat – and even mainstream GOP politicians will cease to tremble in fear of offending it. But let’s take a look at how the MSM did this to itself.

G. K. Chesterton – himself a journalist – pointed out very long ago that there was no need of a censorship of the press because we already had a very functional censorship by the press. The press – the MSM as we call it today – takes sides. If they like a person or a particular grouping of people, they will go soft on them. If they don’t like a person or grouping of people, they will be merciless in hounding them. This does have an effect on how some people can be viewed even long after they are dead.

Take, for instance, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. Roosevelt is lauded in the history books as the strong President who got things done. Taft is derided as a well-meaning man who simply didn’t have the ability of Roosevelt. But, if you dig a bit into the history of things, you’ll find that even on something as signature to Roosevelt as his “trust busting”, Taft actually did far more. Roosevelt did start the Panama Canal, but he did it in a manner which caused grave harm to America’s reputation among Latin American people…Taft actually got the thing properly organized for construction and then kept a close eye on matters until it was nearly done (it was completed about 18 months after he left office…but by then it was all over but the shouting). If you’re liked by the MSM, you’ll have an easy ride – if you’re hated by them, then no level of excellence will be sufficient. When you translate this to the political parties, the MSM likes the Democrats, hates the Republicans – and this goes back quite a long ways: at least to FDR, but a case can be made that the MSM has hated the Republicans ever since Republicans thwarted Wilson, whom they liked, after World War One.

Of course, to take sides means you are simply not going to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. You can’t – because the truth will some times work against your side. Even you don’t flat-out lie for your side, you’re still going to present things in a manner which gives best advantage to your side, and most disadvantage to the other side. And you can speak quite a lot of truth without giving the whole truth; of course, if you don’t give out the whole truth, you’ve carried out the functional equivalent of a lie…but as you can’t be caught out in a factual inaccuracy, you can pretend that you just speak the truth. And that is what the MSM did for many decades. As long as their good friends, the Democrats, generally ran things – and from 1932 until 1980, they generally did, in spite of a few GOPers managing to get into the White House – there was no need to lie; you could just tell that part of the truth which reflected most ill upon Republicans. After the election of Reagan – and, especially, his re-election – that started to change.

I still date the break with truth-telling to be Ted Kennedy’s speech against Robert Bork in 1986. No matter how you want to slice it up, Kennedy got out there and delivered a pack of lies about Robert Bork and then the MSM refused to just call them lies. This, I think, is where old Rush gets his view that, for the MSM, it isn’t the facts of the case but the seriousness of the charge which matters…we are to discuss the charge, not the facts. Kennedy made serious charges – essentially saying that Bork was a Nazi set to destroy freedom in America. Republicans were then asked to prove that he – and they – weren’t in favor of Nazi tyranny. We still weren’t to outright fabrication by the MSM, but we had stepped away from telling even partial truth. Later, especially after the GOP won Congress in 1994, the MSM went to flat out lies in defense of their side.

They felt they had to. The reason Reagan won – and Gingrich’s GOP won – was that the system created by the Democrats was starting to fall apart. The Welfare State wasn’t working. The military system and alliances created by the Democrats wasn’t working. The economic system of the Democrats wasn’t working. To tell the truth about anything pretty much meant you were going to have to say something bad about Democrats. The MSM could still tell bits of truth about the GOP which were bad for the GOP – so, of course, whenever a GOPer was caught in genuine scandal, it was played up for all it was worth – but that wasn’t enough, because the GOP was proposing alternatives to failed policies and even if the alternatives were untested, it was clear that we couldn’t just go on and on with policies which were failing right in front of everyone’s eyes. It became necessary to just cook up things to say which would either help Democrats, or harm Republicans. And that is where things started to go wrong for the MSM – took a while, but as I noted, when you lie enough, eventually people just stop believing you.

And it did take a while. It took ten thousand accusations of GOP racism, sexism and homophobia. Ten thousand accusations that GOPers want to starve kids and shove granny off a cliff. It took ten thousand stories about how swell Democrat things are while people could see for themselves that they were getting worse. It took, finally, eight years of servile MSM devotion to Obama winding up in lunatic MSM opposition to Trump to finish the job.

I’ve seen some articles by MSMers wondering how they can get their mojo back – in none of them do I see, “we’ll report the truth, no matter what it is”. They still can’t go there for the same reason they could never go there: they still like the Democrats (actually, of course, they are Democrats), and still hate Republicans. How things will work out for the next four to eight years remains to be seen. But we do actually need an MSM which will just tell the truth. The alternative media is great – and played a role in breaking through the MSM lies – but it is also contains many people just as willing to lie for their own side as the MSM has been. As soon as someone figures out that what will really sell is an MSM outfit which will just tell the truth – the verified, honest truth – no matter whom it hurts, that will be the MSM outfit which comes to dominate all others…and leads to a restoration of a genuine free press in the United States.

Out and About on a Monday

Mark Noonan28 Comments

While everyone argued about Trump’s crowd size and a zillion Hillary supporters engaged in bizarre demonstrations over the weekend, a few real things happened:

Jerusalem mayor says he’s talking with with Trump Administration about moving our embassy to Jerusalem.

Bergdahl’s lawyers are now trying to claim he can’t get a fair trial under President Trump.

On his way out the door, Obama gave us one more lie.

Democrats are just not getting it: Caroline Kennedy being talked up as a possible Senate and Presidential candidate. You see, she doesn’t have Clinton’s “baggage”, so that will make us all want to elect a member of a worn out, has-been political dynasty…

Some law professors are suing President Trump over the Emoluments clause. Said clause:

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State

So, even if a foreign leader staying at a Trump hotel is considered an “emolument”, all Trump would need is a waiver from a GOP controlled Congress to get past the difficulty. But, I don’t buy the argument that such is an emolument – the definition being, “a salary, fee, or profit from employment or office”. Donald Trump is neither an employee nor an officer of his various private concerns at the moment. You can argue that because it is still “all in the family”, as it were, he’s getting paid but that stretches it to near impossible lengths. Suppose, Progressives, your favorite Progressive movie star became President…would a foreign leader renting one of their movies work out to an emolument? No – this is just an attempt to work up nothing into something.

Seems that while some of the senior leadership at CIA dislikes Trump, perhaps the rank and file are more pleased with him.

Don Surber reminds us that the same CNN which is after Trump is the CNN which hid Saddam’s crimes in order to retain “access”.

Plenty of speculation on who will be Trump’s Supreme Court pick.

Progressives want to get Trump out via impeachment. The plan works like this:

1. Hold loud, nasty protests on a regular basis.
2. ????
3. Win 218 House seats and 67 Senate seats in the 2018 mid-terms.

No one mention to them that even if Democrats held on to all their Senate seats up for election in 2018 and won every GOP seat up (this would include winning Senate seats in such areas as Tennessee and Utah, by the way), Democrats would only get up to 56 Senators… As I said, don’t bring this up too often…let them dream their little, dreamy dreams. Keeps them busy while Trump and the GOP Congress get things done.

Out and About in Trump’s America

Mark Noonan63 Comments

So, what happened today?

Some of our Progressive friends made some rather nasty tweets about Barron Trump…because Presidential kids are off limits, but only if you’re a Democrat.

Another great hearted Progressive had an epic meltdown when Trump was sworn in. Seriously, you’ll get tears of joy just watching it.

No matter how hard any Progressive tries, they’ll never outdo this bit of virtue signalling.

Trump’s anti-ISIS statement in his speech got one Progressive really worried.

Kurt Schlichter has a kind word to say about the protestors.

Trump proposed to de-fund Planned Parenthood on the Roe anniversary.

Nancy Sinatra’s boots were made for walking all over CNN’s lies.

Sweet Meteor of Death apologized.

A guy who goes by the name of “Mad Dog” is now officially our Secretary of Defense.

With Trump, we’ve got our first President who has been in favor of gay marriage since day one in office.

All references to Climate Change were removed from the White House website as of Noon, Eastern.

Progressives were gleeful that fewer people turned out for Trump’s inaugural than Obama’s – like Hillary winning the popular vote, this is meaningless. Maybe if we gave Progressives a cookie for every time they Pretend Win, they’ll go away?

Robert Stacy McCain clears out some of the Progressive cobwebs regarding reality:

Notice how (a) the anti-Trump protests are endorsed by the rich and famous, and (b) the violence of the anti-Trump mob attacking people in D.C. is depicted as a “clash” for which the victims of mob attack are made to seem equally responsible. Also (c) the violent mob getting pepper-sprayed by police is the headline, rather than the criminal activity of the mob which provoked this police crowd-control response.

The news media and the entertainment celebrities have chosen sides, and if any Trump supporters are injured as a result of the anti-Trump mob violence, the liberal elite will say, “They deserved it.”

Bathing in Progressive tears was rather fun today – but never forget that these people will not quit. At least, they won’t quit until they are de-funded and they are forced to get jobs…

It’s Trump’s America, and We’re just Living In It

Mark Noonan16 Comments

I say that because everything seems to be revolving around him – especially regarding our Progressives. I think a week ago or so I was thinking that the left’s lunacy about Trump had peaked. I was wrong. One of the accounts I follow on Twitter is that of Godfrey Elfwick (@GodfreyElfwick), who describes xirself thusly:

Genderqueer Muslim atheist. Born white in the #WrongSkin. Itinerant jongleur. Xir, Xirs Xirself. Filters life through the lens of minority issues.

Someone like that is going to have a hard time over the next four to eight years as satirizing the left is getting difficult. However, Godfrey xan’s up and comes up with this:

Calling people racist worked a treat during both Brexit and Trump. We just weren’t screaming it loud enough is all

And that does seem to be what the left is doing – but as Godfrey also discovered today, there are quite a lot of tolerant, caring Progressives who figure that peace, justice and unity will best be created by calling for actual violence – scroll through his TL to earlier today for some samples of it.

I’ll make this prediction – unless we’re sitting on 25% unemployment in 2020, Trump will get re-elected. The left is just going to keep going bonkers, as far as I can see, and thus just continue to remind all of us why we sucked it up and voted Trump.

There is a wonder – will Obama be booed as Bush was? Decorum says it shouldn’t happen – if it does, though, it is because of the nastiness Obama has injected into American life.

Is What You Believe True?

Mark Noonan37 Comments

So, what is it that you believe? People believe all sorts of things – absolutely convinced that they are right. And I’m not just talking about ignorant belief, but well-informed belief.

Just as an example, Douglas Haig was commander of the British forces in France from December 1915 until the end of World War One. During Haig’s tenure of command, Britain engaged in massive and completely fruitless battles, most notably the Somme and Passchendaele. There’s no doubt about some basic facts here – Haig was in command when vast numbers of British soldiers were killed during offensives which simply failed to win the war. On the first day of the Somme, nearly 20,000 British soldiers were killed. Still, it was Haig who in 1918 worked out the military moves which broke the back of German resistance in France and forced the Germans to capitulate. In the immediate aftermath of the war, a grateful Britain awarded Haig an earldom and 100,000 pounds (about five million US dollars, adjusted for inflation). But the days of Haig’s positive press were short-lived. Even before he died in 1928, he had come in for severe criticism from Winston Churchill in his history of the First World War. Churchill, however, didn’t attack the man, as such – later historians did, and ripped into Haig quite severely. By the time everyone had got done with him, Haig was a callous, stupid commander who has pointlessly sacrificed British lives to no purpose. Ask anyone with familiarity with World War One history, and that person is probably not going to have kind words to say about Haig. We all just know he was a bad commander – and probably a bad person, into the bargain.

But, on the other hand, Haig was one of the founding members of the British Legion – a group akin to our Veteran’s of Foreign Wars and/or American Legion. At a time when some powerful voices in Britain were figuring that former soldiers could shift for themselves or survive on private charity, Haig worked diligently to get the British government providing for veterans in a manner fitting of their service and sacrifice. This is not exactly the sort of action that a callous man would engage in. It is, in fact, the action of a man who cared very deeply for the men who had served under his command and wanted to ensure they got all the help they needed in the difficult transition to civil life. Most people who know of Haig know nothing of this – it, after all, doesn’t quite fit the Narrative which has been imposed upon History.

I bring this up because it shows how a certain set of beliefs can grow and become downright impervious to actual facts…and that people then learning about things can just be flat wrong, because what they learned simply wasn’t true. As Reagan said, it isn’t what they know that is worrisome, it is what they know that isn’t so.

We know that our Progressives believe a lot of twaddle – but there is some twaddle that we on the right just as stoutly adhere to. I won’t bring up specifics in this post, because I’m trying to provoke thought, not battle. It is good to roll over in the mind, from time to time, what we think is correct. Maybe we latched on to an idea years ago and have just left it un-examined for years. Perhaps that view has been challenged, but rather than thinking it over we just stuck to our position with fanatical determination. But, what if we are wrong? We might be, on this or that point.

Always be willing to take a fresh look at things. Always be willing to accept new facts, and adjust your views in light of the new facts. Do not dig in your heels! A willingness to accept correction is a vital requirement of life. We don’t know everything – we can’t know everything. The person who is going to win the battle is going to be the person who is willing to see what is happening and listen to criticism. We’ve got a bizarre opportunity coming up starting on Friday – none of us can know what will happen. But if we on the Conservative side want to a Conservative America to emerge – and we do, right? – then we have to be willing to think anew and act anew. We can’t be sure that the particular ways and means we’ve used in the past will bring us to victory now and in the future. This isn’t a call to jettison belief, but a call to seek new ways to apply those beliefs to current circumstances.

The Last Weekend of Obama Open Thread

Mark Noonan39 Comments

I have to say, the sycophancy I’ve seen on the left regarding Obama’s exit has been nauseating – someone once called the MSMers protecting Obama “throne sniffers”…that is what, apparently, most Obama backers are these days. My goodness, I remember when Reagan left office – I was a little sad to see him go, but I didn’t get maudlin about it, nor write hagiographies about him…these Obama-bots are just being pathetic.

There is now a 12-Step program which will de-racist you – preventing you from thinking Ungood thoughts and allow yourself to easily slip into the mental world the Progressive leadership has planned for you. Totalitarians gotta Totalitarian, I guess.

The DOJ says that Chicago’s police force – run entirely by Democrats for decades – uses excessive force. Clearly, reforms are needed – just as clearly, the people of Chicago will re-elect the same Democrats who created this problem.

Representative John Lewis (D-GA) says he doesn’t consider Trump to be a legitimate President. Lewis, in the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement was an American hero – these days, he’s just a partisan hack.

Gay Patriot provides an example of the tolerant left.

I’ve long felt that the underlying reason for the left being the left is a desire to rationalize refusal to do one’s duty by others. This, to be sure, is a bit differentiated from your standard liberal out there – I’m talking about the real far out leftists: the sort of people who, say, clearly and definitively state their opposition to such things as the traditional family. These are people who, for a variety of reasons just don’t dig doing that boring stuff which happens to preserve civilization. People who become leftists just don’t want to do such things, and so they cook up theories about how their refusal to do the job makes them more worthy than those who do. This post by Robert Stacy McCain tends to confirm my view.

A German court has ruled that any Jew or Jewish structure wandering around Germany is an Israeli agent and may be attacked on the pretext of opposing Israeli policy in the West Bank. This isn’t law; this isn’t justice – this is just a refusal to accept facts. In their rush to not be judgemental, the Europeans are turning their nations into Orwellian nightmares.

RELATED: Secretary of State (until noon on Friday, that is) John Kerry is going to Paris to defend Israel. If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you…

Kellyanne Conway will speak at the March for Life. Another reason to be glad you voted for Trump…

10 Days Left Open Thread

Mark Noonan61 Comments

Protesters are setting out to wreck Trump’s inauguration. I don’t think these guys realize just how badly outnumbered they will be by the Trumpsters. It could be that they simply (a) don’t know anyone who voted Trump and (b) actually believe that DNC garbage about how Hillary actually won save for Russian hacking.

Just to give a flavor of what we’re up against – regarding Jeff Session’s nomination for Attorney General, the Democrat leadership has pretty much convinced their base voters that Sessions is a Klansman. Think about that – the man who once worked diligently to put the head of the Klan to death is being accused of Klan loyalty. This is what we’re up against, folks – people who will lie brazenly, and people who will eagerly swallow whatever lie is presented to them. As an aside, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ, But Really Lives in NY) is using the Sessions confirmation hearing to launch his 2020 Presidential bid.

Why smart people were never, #NeverTrump – Congress to take up national reciprocity bill for concealed carry. Had Hilly won, this would never even get started.

We’ve had this as a subject recently – Trump may be consulting anti-vaxxers. My bit of Libertarianism does allow me to support parental opt-out in some cases. Personally, I think the anti-vaccine crusade is about as valid as the anti-GMO crusade…based upon anecdote rather than evidence. But people must have the right to live as they wish – and parents are ultimately responsible to God, not the State, for the raising of their children. However, diseases with high mortality rates which can be vaccinated against must be vaccinated against…and even for low mortality rate diseases, there might be a necessity, at times, for large-scale vaccinations. Clearly, a lot of issues will be tackled from a different angle over the next four to eight years…and as long as the people are regularly consulted on what is done, there should be no long-term harm in it.

The anti-Israel (and, often, flat out anti-Semitic) Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement just had a major failure – it is to be hoped that we’ll soon inter the whole idea, for good.

Our Progressive friends are arguing about who is Most Oppressed – pass the popcorn as this goes on. It was thought by some that after the 2016 disaster, the Progressives would at least mute their identity politics program…they haven’t, and looks like they won’t.

Gay Patriot unearths this cry of despair from a Prog:

A vote cast for Trump is kind of like a murder; there may be context to consider — a disadvantaged background, extenuating circumstances, understandable motives — but the choice itself is binary and final, irrevocable. There’s a case to be made that it’s indefensible; that his supporters have forfeited any right to be respected or taken seriously.

Turns out, now that Obama is leaving office, there isn’t a lot of demand for Progressive liberal arts grads and they’ve got the sads about it. Please try not to laugh too much when you read that link – we have a duty to be kind to our Progressive friends.

This guy allegedly committed a murder:

Gomez has worked at the Alliance for Climate Education, a climate alarmist activist group. In 2014, he spoke at a climate event with Governor Jerry Brown, billionaire climate change activist Tom Steyer, and University of California system President Janet Napolitano, former governor of Arizona and Homeland Security secretary under President Obama.

Getting into a fight at recess could send a kid to jail. I got in a fight at recess. Twice. Once I ended it by punching the other kid in the stomach. The other time, the other guy ended it by clocking me in the eye (I had quite a shiner for a few days). In neither case was anyone sent to jail and we all grew up and lived our lives as if nothing had happened.

As long as we’re on the subject of just who is the Putin Puppet, there is a good chance that the anti-Frackers are in that group. The last thing Russia and OPEC want is for the United States to fully exploit it’s energy resources…same reason the rest of the world doesn’t want us fully exploiting our manufacturing, mining and agricultural potential…if we did, we’d crush the global competition. We really do live in the Land of Plenty, folks – we’re slopping over with resources human and material and if we ever decide to go flat out, everyone will be buying from us. The rest of the world doesn’t want that because it affects their bottom line (temporarily, of course…they’d soon get the benefit of American production bringing prices down for all manner of goods)…our domestic Progressives don’t like us because rich America is an America which doesn’t need Progressives.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds notes a rather large problem we’ve got:

So the problem here is that you can call for an investigation, but who do you trust to investigate? The news media? The national security bureaucracy? Congress? All of them have gone out of their way to prove themselves untrustworthy. That’s not a good thing, but it’s reality.

The first major news outfit which will declare and enforce a policy of only reporting what can be verified as true, will win this battle. No more anonymous sources; no more writing the articles to put a spin on the information; no more burying the lede – back in World War Two, General Stillwell, in command of the China-Burma-India theater, was asked what he would allow in the Army newspaper; he said, “if you can prove it, print it”. That’s all there is about it – if it isn’t proven, it isn’t news. Speculation belongs in the editorial pages, as do polemics. The news is what happened that can be verified, nothing more and nothing less.

The juicy story is the life-blood of the news media – we understand that; if it bleeds, it leads. At bottom, the MSM is always waiting for the next Watergate or Profumo scandal. Click on that link about Profumo – that was just wonderful stuff for news…it had illicit sex, possible espionage and a senior member of government lying about it in Parliament. That is the sort of thing MSMers live to uncover…but the thing about the Profumo scandal is that it was all true, and could be verified as true. It wasn’t a report from anonymous sources saying that they heard Profumo was doing wrong…sure, it probably started with such things, but then the MSMers went out and confirmed it…viola! Great story, resignations from government, the party involved defeated at the next election. For an MSMer, what more can you want? And the kicker was that by reporting on it, the MSM of the day did a public service…it was bad what Profumo was doing, possibly risking the safety of the people of Britain. But if all you got is a guy who won’t even attach his name to the story, then all you’ve got is rumor-mongering…and if you report on that as if it were news, rather than rumor, then your credibility will be shot when it is revealed you’ve got nothing. And so it has gone…and not just gone with the MSM, but also the bureaucracy and Congress. In the urge to harm an opponent, all three have destroyed their own credibility by reporting rumors, most of which later turned out to be false.

Get your credibility back, MSM – only report the verified truth.