Author: Mark Noonan

Trump vs the Deep State

Mark Noonan45 Comments

The Deep State? If you haven’t heard, it’s a fairly new phrase which is gaining currency – started with the Wisconsin government attempting by means fair and foul to undermine Governor Walker’s reform effort. The concept of it is that members of the permanent bureaucracy – mostly Democrats but all of them regardless of political outlook having a vested interest in keeping things as they are – will simply destroy anyone who dares to reform government in a meaningful way. The underlying ideology is deeply based in Progressive beliefs about government – namely, that a set of experts, installed in government, can manage society better than the free flowing actions of the people. To be sure, such experts are willing to maintain the form of a democratic republic, but the bottom line is that the people, individually and collectively, are not to have a say in the basic direction of government policy.

And then along came Trump.

Trump is an inherent reformer because he has no loyalty to things as they are. He might propose reforms which are wrong – and even wrong-headed – but whatever he proposes will be based upon what he perceives as the right course of action, the vested interests of government and it’s cronies be damned. This is why the party of government (Democrats, MSM, a good selection of the GOP, those who make their living directly or indirectly off government expenditures) is up in arms – hyperventilating at an astonishing pace and acting as if their very lives (which they consider the life-force of the United States) were at stake. The bottom line is that these people have no legal mechanism to enforce their will; they can’t force a new election; they can’t even force an impeachment because that would require the cooperation of such a large number of Republicans (who, even if not Trump supporters, fear the electoral wrath of outraged Trumpsters) as to make it next to impossible. They only power they have is to sow confusion and hatred and hope, by some miracle, that a correlation of forces will arise to drive Trump from office. In other words, all they have is the Deep State – and they are using it to the limit to get after Trump.

I was struck by what happened to Flynn – I compare it to what happened to German generals Blomberg and Fritsch. Blomberg was Commander in Chief of the German army in the 1930’s, while Fritsch was the man most likely to succeed Blomberg in that post. While both of them were ok with Hitler’s Nazi regime, they were determined to keep the army out of Nazi party hands – and this irritated Hitler and his henchmen. By use of various secret police files to cook up scandals, Hitler managed to get rid of both men in succession, whereupon he took full control of the Army, thus getting rid of the last check upon his autocratic power. As regards Flynn, it appears that various members of our intelligence community selectively leaked information which, translated by MSM hostility, made it appear that Flynn was doing something wrong. Flynn managed to get himself caught up in the web by failure to be completely frank with Vice President Pence (and perhaps President Trump, as well). But the main agent of Flynn’s undoing was the Deep State’s determination that he be destroyed – likely as part of a larger plan to undo Trump entirely. And for all Trump’s opponents claiming that he’s some sort of proto-fascist, I note with great care that the side using fascist tactics is the anti-Trump side.

Over the past few days, I’ve seen some interesting statements on social media. This one from Bill Kristol was flabbergasting:

Obviously strongly prefer normal democratic and constitutional politics. But if it comes to it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state.

This is a guy whom I’ve read for years and respected. He just showed himself to be someone who is entirely opposed to the workings of a democratic republic. You can’t prefer anything to normal democratic and constitutional politics. Rely on it, if we cease to use normal democratic and constitutional politics, Bill, it won’t be you or anyone you like calling the shots. Was Kristol ever on the same side as me? I really do wonder.

Back in 2003, I backed the Iraq campaign – so did Kristol, from what I can recall. I backed it because I felt it a necessary step to remove a troublesome regime and it would put us athwart the Iran-Syria axis, thus allowing us to deal with each of them piecemeal. Didn’t work out that way. We sat down in Baghdad and allowed our forces to become the targets in a shooting range. A huge number of mistakes were made, but I still believe I made the right choice in backing the Iraq campaign in the context of the times. Fast forward 14 years, and I’m wondering how many other people like Kristol were in the mix? What did they believe? Did they believe that a final reckoning with Iran and Syria was the wrong move? If they believed that, did they then do what they could to thwart action beyond Iraq by President Bush? Did our tactical mistakes in Iraq stem from the field, or from DC, where Deep State people set out to ensure that American power was misapplied? I just don’t know – and I’ll likely never know with any certainty…but Kristol’s statement isn’t unique, I’ve seen others – including some who claim to be former members of our intelligence community – who are seriously rooting for the IC to take down Trump; seriously, gleefully rubbing their hands at the prospect of the IC cooking the books until Trump is forced to resign or is impeached.

Do they realize that would spark a civil war? Are they that stupid? Don’t they understand that most of the people who would be willing to fight are on Trump’s side?

In the end, I don’t think they’ll get Trump. Right now, depending on the poll, Trump is approved of by anywhere from 39% to 55% of the American people, so don’t pay attention to polling on what is going on. But I do believe that, at bottom, in a fight between Outsider Trump and anyone Inside, Trump will win – people do have immense contempt for government, for the MSM and for those who cheer lead for same. But only time will really tell.

Life Comes at You Fast, Open Thread

Mark Noonan75 Comments

Appears that Mike Flynn has resigned. The Democrats and the MSM (but I repeat myself) got their scalp – but it does appear that Flynn was not entirely truthful in the conversations he had with Russian officials. Lesson: never, ever even remotely shade the truth. But think about this – at worst, Flynn lied about a phone call…Hillary lied about Benghazi and not only didn’t resign, but got promoted to Democrat nominee for President. Keep that in mind: Flynn is out, but don’t play the MSM’s game, here.

All those groups making up the #Resistance? Yeah, just as astro-turfed as you suspected:

Ezra Levin, a former staffer for Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, and his wife, Leah Greenberg, are the president and vice president of the Indivisible Guide’s board, respectively.

Levin is also associate director of the Corporation for Enterprise Development, an anti-poverty nonprofit. Melissa Bradley, who sits on that group’s board, previously worked for Green for All, a group founded by liberal commentator and former Obama administration official Van Jones. She was appointed as a Soros Justice Fellow through the Open Society Foundations, which Soros founded.

Greenberg previously worked for Humanity United, which is funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute.

The secretary of Indivisible Guide, Angel Padilla, works for the National Immigration Law Center, which is funded by Soros through his Open Society Foundations. And treasurer Matt Traidi is the research team director for the Service Employees International Union, a major donor to and endorser of Democrat politicians, Capital Research Center notes.

Hat Tip: Instapundit

Oregon Muse over at Ace of Spades has some words for the Never Trumpers:

You need to shut up and go away.

There are two reasons for this. The first is the whole #Nevertrump thing, which I’ll get to a bit later. More importantly, you need to shut up and go away because your policies suck and don’t work. I’m referring to these policies, which you have been agitating in favor of for over 20 years:

1. open borders
2. comprehensive, multilateral trade agreements
3. a large military footprint overseas

Now, you may not want to admit this, but I think it’s pretty obvious that all of these policies have been abject failures.

Do keep in mind that I still hold that our 2003 invasion of Iraq was the correct thing to do. What I’ve discovered in hindsight is that how we did it was wrong – mostly in that we stopped at Baghdad and failed to press to on Damascus and Tehran. I can’t change what happened in the past – but now I’ll never agree to our engaging in overseas military operations of a major character unless it is unlimited warfare pressed until all our enemies are killed or taken. That said, the last 20 years should have shattered many illusions on all sides. They have certainly shattered mine. I do not believe that some of the policies I earnestly supported in 1997 are the correct policies – and some policies I thought flat wrong back then are now embraced by me. To sit there and adhere to political or economic theory in the face of events disproving the theories is asinine. It is, however, what Progressives do…and any “Conservative” who is still holding to things like NAFTA agreements and open borders in 2017 is merely a Progressive who likes low corporate taxes and bombing stuff from time to time.

Gay New Yorker comes out as Conservative and hate ensues – the man’s statement:

When Out magazine assigned me an interview with the Breitbart.com rabble-rouser Milo Yiannopoulos, I knew it would be controversial. In the gay and liberal communities in particular, he is a provocative and loathed figure, and I knew featuring him in such a liberal publication would get negative attention. He has been repeatedly kicked off Twitter for, among other things, reportedly inciting racist, sexist bullying of “Ghostbusters” actress Leslie Jones. Before interviewing Yiannopoulos, I thought he was a nasty attention-whore, but I wanted to do a neutral piece on him that simply put the facts out there.

After the story posted online in the early hours of Sept. 21, I woke up to more than 100 Twitter notifications on my iPhone. Trolls were calling me a Nazi, death threats rolled in and a joke photo that I posed for in a burka served as “proof” that I am an Islamophobe.

Read the whole thing. Michael Kaplan, the author, appears to have had enough of people trying to fit him in a box. Because he’s gay and from New York, Progressives expect him to hold to certain views and demand he act in a certain way. This is fine for anyone who wants to be a mindless serf…but anyone who wants to think, or even just have a set of friends who are varied and interesting to be around, can’t stand it.

Bureaucrats are feeling a sense of dread over Trump. If you read the article and don’t laugh, you have a heart of stone.

John Schindler writes about an alleged revolt of the intelligence community against Trump – claiming that they are refusing to give certain types of intel to Trump. If true, then this is why we got Trump: the government just doing what it wants, people be damned. We elected Trump – for better or worse – to be the guy in charge of the Executive Branch, which includes the intel agencies. I understand that some of them might object very strongly to Trump – and perhaps even object on reasonable grounds. But it isn’t their job to set policy – that is Trump’s job. If you figure you can’t work for Trump, then resign.

Weekend Open Thread

Mark Noonan45 Comments

The full 9th Circuit Court may be set to re-hear the Trump case. Apparently, one of the judges demanded it. I’ve never heard of such a thing – the losers in cases before a panel often request a full hearing, but I’ve never heard of one of the judges of the court requesting it. Something is up – I gotta think that this judge isn’t wasting everyone’s time: shouldn’t it be likely that the judge at least thinks there’s a court majority to overturn the 3 judge panel? Perhaps enough judges figure that service to Progressive causes is all well and good, but a judge deciding immigration policy is a step too far? Stay tuned.

Socialism in action:

Biology student Luis Sibira stumbled across the first set of gory remains last November: eight pink flamingos, their breasts and torsos sliced out, leaving their heads, spindly legs and vivid feathers scattered across the marshy ground at Las Peonias Lagoon in western Venezuela…

But this isn’t simple poaching, he said. Sibira and other investigators from Zulia University, a public university in Maracaibo, are convinced that the protected birds have become the latest victims of Venezuela’s growing hunger crisis. People have become so desperate, he said, that they are butchering and eating flamingos.

There is some evidence that Venezuelans are chowing down on cats and dogs, as well. Ask a western Socialist about it, and he’ll just say they still haven’t quite done socialism right…and that this is all our fault, anyways.

German Chancellor Merkel is speeding up deportations – because making nice-nice with Euro-weenies is all well and good, but she’s heading for electoral defeat later this year unless she changes course.

Excellent article by Robert Stacy McCain on how social misfits – often from distressed family backgrounds – become fodder for radicals who want to destroy whatever system happens to be in place at the time. I call this the Uselessly Educated Syndrome – people who have obtained education which is of limited utility who then go on to demand radical social change because if they can’t fit into normal life, then normal life will just have to go. People like this have been pestering civilization ever since it developed enough surplus wealth to give rise to an educated but idle class of people. Do you want to know why the Roman Empire endured for centuries after it’s peak while the British Empire was gone less than 100 years after it peaked? Rome created engineers – Britain created lawyers.

Sanctuary cities are starting to cave to Administration pressure.

Con man gets suckered – Sid Blumenthal, a Clinton functionary, got suckered in by some fake commercials about a non-existent New York City mayoral candidacy for Donald Trump’s father. I keep telling you guys: our Progressive opponents are simply not the sharpest knives in the drawer. A few of them are wicked smart, but most of them are just rote repeating what the smart one’s tell them to say.

V the K has an excellent idea. None of you better spill the beans on this one.

What Sizes do #MAGA Hats Come In Open Thread

Mark Noonan24 Comments

Kurt Schlichter – the left hates you, and wants you dead:

The Left won’t say it out loud – at least not yet – but make no mistake. If violence is what it takes for the Left to prevail, then violence we will have. You saw it, and you were meant to. Berkeley was a message about the price of dissent where leftist hold sway. And they seek to hold sway everywhere.

Read the whole thing.

Denying free speech is a crime:

They told me if Donald Trump were elected, voices of dissent would be shut down by fascist mobs. And they were right!…

…Whether or not Berkeley loses its federal funding over the Milo riots (and it won’t), I think it’s time for action to address this double standard. First, state and local law enforcement agencies need to target violent rioters who seek to silence speakers. It is a felony under federal civil rights law to conspire to deprive citizens of their constitutional rights, among which is free speech. In addition, many states have laws (generally called Klan laws) that punish people who engage in mob violence or intimidation while masked. These should be applied as well.

Read the whole thing.

Anti-Trump rioters blocked an ambulance with a critically ill patient.

Middle school student beaten for wearing a Trump hat.

Gay Progressives protest against Trump, who at the end of the day is working to protect them.

Lady Gaga actually put on a decent half-time show – so, now she’s a Nazi.

Robert Stacy McCain has some advice for parents of college-bound children:

So if you’re a middle-class parent and your kid is a small-town high achiever — Taylor Wallace was a football star and valedictorian in high school — you might want to think twice before sending them to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Duke, Oberlin, etc. Any student with the grades to get into an Ivy League school can go to a state university and excel. He’ll find a lot more middle-class kids he can fit in with, and a lot fewer snotty prep school kids than he’d rub elbows with at Columbia. After your son’s successful career at State U., maybe he’ll become a millionaire, and then he can send your grandchildren to Cornell in appropriate style, but otherwise, just leave the elite schools for the rich kids, most of whom are degenerate atheist swine.

Tough, but fair.

Ten Democrat Senators who will vote on Gorsuch are up for re-election in Trump or near-Trump States in 2018. #Winning.

The Guardian has a well-reasoned article about Trump. The End Times are clearly upon us.

An Outrageous Riot

Mark Noonan39 Comments

The riots in Berkeley, I must say, have got me quite angered. I’m used to the ways of the left and how they behave, but something about last night just really set me off. This isn’t about Milo Yiannopoulos, as a person – though some weak Conservatives last night tried a bit of moral equivalency between him and the rioters – it is about the basic concept of a civil society.

The United States has always been a free speech citadel in the world – no matter how we might have restricted speech by this means or that in the past, it has been since the beginning that in the United States you are more free to speak your mind than in any other place. We have no blasphemy laws; we have no laws of Lèse-majesté. There is no sort of political speech which is banned. Outside of things like yelling fire in crowded theater or immediate incitement to violence, everyone can say what they like. Until just recently.

It has long been known that the left hates free speech. Oh, when they lack power, they’ll talk a good game about free speech (such as the so-called “Free Speech Movement” in the 1960’s), but the whole game is always to just make certain that leftwing speech is shouted from the rooftops and all non-left speech is suppressed. To the left, all non-left speech is actually evil – sirens songs spun by forces against “the people”. Meanwhile, all leftwing speech is inherently good. They don’t view suppressing non-left speech as bad – in fact, it is a positive good as it prevents people from making the mistake of not being leftist. But even without that mindset, non-left speech has to be suppressed because leftwing speech cannot stand up in a free and open debate. Once there’s an actual argument, the left loses. And the left doesn’t like to lose.

In Berkeley, we saw clear as a bell just what the left wants: the elimination of all non-left voices from the public square. And we have to let them know that we won’t be eliminated. I tweeted out last night that I figured a good start would be to withdraw federal funds from Berkeley. I’m glad that Trump had the same thought. Why in heck are we, the people being chased out of the public square, footing the bill for those chasing us? Oh, you can take it a different way – as Gavin Newsome did; in response to Trump, he whined that it was unfair to punish all of Berkeley for the actions of a few. But it’s not like Newsome was proposing to do something about those few. Oh, no – the fact of the matter is that people like Newsome like their bully-boys. They might officially deplore the violence, but they’ll never lift a finger to stop it. And as for the student body of Berkeley – where were you guys? If most of you are really against the violence, why weren’t you out there confronting the rioters? Heck with that – suppress free speech then at the very minimum, we take your taxpayer cash away.

There is talk now of FBI investigations and civil rights lawsuits – and I hope they go forward. It was, in my view, a direct violation of rights that the college and city of Berkeley essentially offered no protection to the rights of Americans who had merely gone to hear a talk. The authorities have an unlimited responsibility to ensure that the rights of all the people are protected – and this not only means the rights of people to go listen to speech, but the right of business owners not to have their establishments smashed to pieces.

Enough is enough – the left has gotten away with trashing this nation for too long. As a free speech absolutist, I want them to be able to continue to say whatever they want. But when what they do gets into lighting fires, smashing windows and beating people, then it’s time to take action.

UPDATE: A little harsh, perhaps, but I think V the K at Gay Patriot is on to something here – relating to a fashion designer making clothes inspired by rioting Social Justice Warriors:

So, whether you’re beating a Trump supporter unconscious with a metal pipe, or just spraying painting “STOP HATE” on a Mormon Church, you will look fabulous, darling. Oh, the romance of socialist revolution! Why be a plain vanilla college student who has led a quiet life of white privilege, when you can be a revolutionary like Che Guevara! Put on that distressed leather jacket, cover your face with a black bandana, and go out there and start a fire in a trash can! Smash some other people’s car windows! That will show those jocks from high school who never invited you to their parties and got to screw all the good-looking girls! You’re down with the struggle, baby! When you take your laundry home — including the pair of pants you crapped in when you thought you saw some riot police headed your way — make sure you tell Mom and Dad’s maid to follow the f–king care instructions TO THE LETTER! Can’t have your best bad-ass riot clothes ruined by that insolent wench.

These are mostly well-off kids – probably bored; many of them, perhaps, from distressed home lives…and here’s their chance to act like they are something. People who can’t accomplish real things often turn towards nihilistic destruction. Lenin was a lousy lawyer; Hitler was a failed artist – both of them were from well-off backgrounds and never wanted to sully their hands with actual work. Not saying all these kiddies are budding Hitlers and Lenins, but they are of the type.

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.