Author: Mark Noonan

Global Warming Hoax Update

Mark Noonan43 Comments

From The Hindu:

Plummeting mercury, coupled with thick fog cover, threw normal life out of gear in the entire North India on Monday, with 24 more people succumbing to the cold wave in various parts of the region.

While 20 more persons died in Uttar Pradesh, four persons lost their lives in Uttarakhand, officials said.

Delhi continued to shiver as mercury was below normal in the city by five notches to settle at 2.4 degrees, even as it rose from yesterday’s 1.9 degrees Celsius.

The maximum temperature too dipped to seven degrees below normal to settle at 13.4 degrees Celsius…

To translate from the bizarre celsius scale those weirdo foreigners use, 1.9 degrees celsius is approximately 35 degrees fahrenheit.  That is pretty darn cold for a subtropical area of the world.  Oh, I know – our liberals will jump in and say, “that’s just weather!”.  Don’t you know the difference?  Sure do:  “weather” is anything which undercuts global warming.  Anything which supports global warming is “settled science”.  I do know the drill.

But if it is just “weather” then it seems to be happening all over the world all at the time time.  This report is from India…but waaaaay the heck away from India up in Alaska, latest reports indicate that Alaska is heading in to an ice age.  Meanwhile, there seems to be no evidence of a warming globe for the past 15 years...

UPDATE:  It gets worse for you liberals.  The only nation which has cut its carbon emissions 12% from its 2007 peak?  The United States.  How did we do it?  By fracking our way in to massively increased natural gas supplies.  Yes, liberals:  Big Oil has cut US greenhouse emissions…

Too Big to Punish

Mark Noonan4 Comments

Ever heard of HSBC?  I’ll bet most haven’t, but it is one of the largest banks in the world.  Founded in the 1860’s in Hong Kong (“HSBC” stands for Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) in part to finance the growing opium trade with China, the bank is currently headquartered in London (the bank fled Hong Kong when the Japanese arrived in 1941) and has offices and branches pretty much everywhere in the world.

It turns out that HSBC decided it could turn a tidy profit by money laundering for drug cartels and terrorist States/groups.  The actions taken by HSBC in these efforts were pretty brazen and eventually they came to the attention of the United States government and legal action was started.  And HSBC faced what amounted to a “death penalty”.  The criminal activity was so pervasive that the criminal penalties would have demanded an end to HSBC’s activities in the United States and probably a bunch of other nations where it is alleged the “rule of law”is prevalent.

But, in the end, all HSBC got hit with was a $1.9 billion fine.  Don’t get me wrong, that is a pretty hefty chunk of change, but with a market capitalization of nearly $196 billion, it is the merest chump change as  far as HSBC is concerned.  They’ll probably make it up by moving their money laundering operations to some backwater where US writ doesn’t run and just add a surcharge to the drug lord’s monthly fees.   No directors of the firm were arrested or charged, nothing else is going to happen.  A gigantic criminal enterprise which makes the mafia pale in comparison and all that happens is a fine.  The likely reason they got off with a wrist slap?  Taking down HSBC would have roiled the financial system with incalculable effects:  it might have been something like a Lehman Brothers.

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Obamunism: Women, Minorities Hardest Hit

Mark Noonan25 Comments

From CNS News:

Government unemployment numbers for December showed that while the general unemployment rate remained flat at 7.8 percent, unemployment for women and African-Americans rose despite an economy that created 155,000 jobs.

Unemployment for women rose to 7.3 percent in December from 7.0 percent while the rate for African-Americans rose sharply to 14.0 percent from 13.2 percent in November…

Still astounds me that Obama managed to win – there is not a single metric you can bring in which shows genuine improvement since January 20th, 2009.

UPDATE:  And the Obama “my praise is a kiss of death” curse continues to work.

It Ain’t Over

Mark Noonan40 Comments

The left, flush with victory last year, is intent upon destroying us.  Believing that the nation has permanently changed in their direction, the left wants us to shut up and go away.  Neo-Neocon puts it succinctly:

…A goodly portion of the preening triumphalism that has followed in the wake of the 2012 election involves just this kind of hatred: towards white men, the rich, Republicans, Christians, gun owners. There’s a lot of talk about how the demographics have permanently changed in this country, and perhaps that’s correct—and now the tables are being turned, with glee. It’s been a long time since the expression of real racism against black people (as opposed to imaginary and/or astroturf-generated racism) was acceptable in this country. But it’s now completely acceptable against white men, and this is an exceedingly ominous sign.

They do hate us and they do want us to go away – in their best moments, they believe we’re deluded fools who can’t see what’s good for ourselves; in their worst moments they consider us to be actually evil.  In either case, they don’t want us to have a say any longer in how the United States is governed.  To be sure, they continue to want our taxes, our service in the military and our compliance with their dictates…but they don’t want us raising objections.  Certainly no objections based on such tired, worn out notions as the rule of law.

So, that is what they want. What are we to do about it?  Keep fighting, of course.  But, also, change radically in how we fight.  Back during the 2012 campaign I first happened upon the Broke Party – a group of activists in the liberal strong hold of Chicago who were, justly, complaining about the corrupt political structure:  a political structure which made sure that the rich of Chicago stayed rich, the poor stayed poor and everyone kept voting Democrat.  I don’t know much about the people who started up the Broke Party.  Maybe there is an element of kookiness among them – I doubt that such people have read deeply in to the works of James Madison.  But they are oppressed people who are kept in the liberal cage – providing the political power liberals need to eventually crush those of us who are not yet oppressed.  And they want to be free of it.

We likely have more friends than we realize, but we don’t even try to find them.  I know I’ve been on like this since November 7th (and, really, for longer), but it is important.  Do any of us really think that the voters who go 90% Democrat in the blue cities really want to live in crime-infested, worn down, Third World pest holes?  No, they don’t.  You know that.  I know that.  They know that.  But they are sitting in a place where (a) they can hardly hear an alternative voice and (b) we refuse to go.  Its time we started going there.  Find the various “Broke Parties” and see if we can break them lose from the Democrats.  I think we can – maybe not a majority, but even getting 20-25% of them kills the Democrat party in a dozen States (they are really that dependent upon massive support in the urban areas).  If your worry is voter fraud then you should be even more interested in this:  they can get away with it now because no Republicans are around to watch…get some Republicans in there and they won’t be able to stuff quite as many ballot boxes.

If we hunker down and just try to hold what we have then we’ll eventually lose it all.  Douglas MacArthur was once asked his formula for defensive war.  His one word answer:  “defeat”.  You can only win if you attack – and if we don’t attack the liberal citadels, we won’t win – certainly not enough to make a clean sweep of liberalism.  We took a heavy defeat last November and we shot ourselves egregiously in the foot on January 1st.  Fine.  Over and done with.  Now is the time to fight.

Just a Note on the Fiscal Cliff

Mark Noonan32 Comments

Given the way Obama is getting insulting about the negotiations and, also, given the increasing level of hateful, eliminationist rhetoric from the left, my feeling is that we just dig our heels in and become increasingly unwilling to go along with the Democrat-led charade.  Agree to nothing.   Pass a bill out of the House keeping tax rates just where they are and cutting $1 trillion from FY2013 spending and then refuse to budge.  Also, refuse to raise the debt limit or pass any further continuing resolutions – pass a budget and then refuse to budge.

Does this carry risk?  Yes, it does – the American people might turn on us and toss us out of the House in 2014.  So be it.  I’m not about to be kicked and spat upon and then still be blamed for all the misery that Obama policies are bringing to the United States.  We can show our responsibility and patriotism by passing out of the House reasonable bills which actually address our spending and debt problems – let Obama and his toadies in the Democrat party and the MSM make of it what they will, and let the people decide next election time what they want.

UPDATE:  I was suffering from a really bad bout of stomach flu starting on the night of the 31st and continuing until just a few hours ago…so, I didn’t need Congress to make me sick to my stomach, for once.  Still, the additional nausea was unhelpful.

We really should have just passed a tax cut/spending cut bill and sent it off to the Senate to make of it what they will.  Look what going along with them got us?  Tax hikes, no real spending cuts and our brand so toxic that Chris Christie (who has killed his 2016 chances, entirely) not only throwing Boehner under the bus, but backing up a few times to run over him, again.  We’d have done better by sticking entirely to our guns.

And that is what we must do from now on – heck with Obama and his Democrats.  They are uninterested in what is best for America.  They just want to win.  Ok, so let them win – let them have it all…or, at least, as much as they can get with zero cooperation from us.  Just keep passing common-sense bills (which will be popular, by the way) and allow Reid and Obama to ignore or mutilate or whatever they want.  Can this eventually result in our loss in 2014?  Sure can – but so can nonsense like the “fix” to the fiscal cliff…how many GOP voters just said “heck with them” last night?  If we are to be defeated, then let us be defeated gloriously…and, who knows?, maybe if we fight for what is right, victory will crown our efforts?

New Year’s Open Thread

Mark Noonan28 Comments

I’ll make some predictions for 2013:

Does the fact that we’re entering the teens mean we’ll become moody and easily depressed?

Just wait till next year!  A thing always said by Chargers fans.  As they went 7-9 this season, they are keeping to their usual level.  But, the other thing all Chargers fans say – next year we’ll be 14-2 and go on to win the Super Bowl!

Chris Christie will be re-elected governor of New Jersey.  He’ll immediately be talked up as the front-runner for the 2016 GOP nomination.  This will be completely ignored by the Republican leadership who will be on the lookout for someone much more moderate and centrist than those crazy, TEA Party right-wingers we nominated in 2008 and 2012.

New York City Council Speaker (its that large that it needs a Speaker?) Christine Quinn, if she decides to run, will be elected Mayor of New York…unless she winds up squaring off with potential GOP candidate, and former Madam, Kristin M. Davis.  Given a choice between a political hack who will run on the fact that she’s gay and a madam, I think New Yorkers might go for the madam.

It will be announced some time in March or April that we are back in recession…just about the time we start to emerge from it (it started back in July or so).

When the I-pad 5 gets released I’ll once again fail to rush out and buy it.

The Syrian Civil War will come to a (temporary) end as the Assad regime crumbles…Civil War II will involve a battle between barbarians to decide who gets to rule over the carcass.

Hillary will be forced to cancel her Benghazi testimony over a terrible case of the hiccups.

In an effort to stave off bankruptcy, California will offer to sell Bakersfield to Nevada. Nevada will counter with an offer to cut cards for double or nothing.

In order to keep his promise for openness and transparency in his Administration, Obama will propose the creation of a Ministry of Truth.

Iran will announce that the earth-shattering kaboom was most emphatically not a nuclear test.

Obama will believe them.

The Department of Health and Human Services will announce that celibate religious orders will be required to provide health insurance covering birth control.  Oh, wait…that was a 2012 prediction.

Did the 2012 apocalypse disappoint you?  Well, cheer up:  only 3 years left until the Gorpocalypse!

What are your predictions for 2013?

War With China?

Mark Noonan8 Comments

It has been bubbling around out there, but if you haven’t been paying close attention, you might have missed the issue:

THIS is how wars usually start: with a steadily escalating stand-off over something intrinsically worthless. So don’t be too surprised if the US and Japan go to war with China next year over the uninhabited rocks that Japan calls the Senkakus and China calls the Diaoyu islands. And don’t assume the war would be contained and short.

Of course we should all hope that common sense prevails.

It seems almost laughably unthinkable that the world’s three richest countries – two of them nuclear-armed – would go to war over something so trivial. But that is to confuse what starts a war with what causes it. The Greek historian Thucydides first explained the difference almost 2500 years ago. He wrote that the catastrophic Peloponnesian War started from a spat between Athens and one of Sparta’s allies over a relatively insignificant dispute. But what caused the war was something much graver: the growing wealth and power of Athens, and the fear this caused in Sparta…

China is feeling its oats and, also, with grave economic, political and demographic problems, striking out in a foreign adventure might appeal to a Chinese ruling class which has no legitimate basis for its continued rule but which has so far proven unwilling to set in motion steps to create a legitimate government in China.  Japan, on the other hand, is rich and happy and not wanting to fight, but also fears that if they let China get her way on this then China will forever push Japan around.  The United States, on the other other hand, cannot afford to let China push Japan around because that would undercut our entire position not just in Asia, but the entire western Pacific…no one would rely on us if we left Japan in the lurch and everyone would scramble to make the best deal with could with China.  Certainly, there are the ingredients for war.

But there won’t be one.  At least, not right now.

China is in much the same position as imperial Germany was early in the 20th century – feeling stronger and frustrated that their growing strength has not led to their dominance of the globe.  Back then, Germany felt that Britain – governing one quarter of the earth’s surface but viewed by Germans as increasingly flabby – was the block in the road.  And, so, Germany wanted to challenge Britain – but couldn’t because the German army couldn’t get at Britain while the German navy wasn’t sufficient to beat the British navy (then, by far, the largest navy in the world).  China might want to make some nationalist hay over the Senkakus but when push comes to shove, they are islands and the Chinese navy is simply entirely inferior to the United States navy (and probably couldn’t even beat the Japanese navy, either).  A Sino-American war right now would only have one very swift result – the destruction of China’s navy and a return to the status quo ante (there is zero chance that any American government would sanction sending an American army to mainland China).  Unless the rulers of China are the most monumentally stupid people in the world, they know this and so as long as the US and Japan remain firm (but polite and willing to provide a face-saving solution) then the Chinese will ultimately back down.

This time.

China is, of course, aware of her naval weakness – and so has built one aircraft carrier and looks to build more, while also steadily upgrading their other surface and submarine forces.  As absolutely no one threatens China’s sea communications the only possible use China can have for a first class navy is to challenge the United States.  And as a matter of fact, all of China’s military build up indicates only one thing: at some future point, the government of China envisions war with the United States.  Not a war to the death like the World Wars, but a war to kick America out of east Asia and the western Pacific (China has asserted that their sphere of influence includes the Marianas Islands – a commonwealth of the United States, but also including the US territory of Guam).  We’ll have to see how that comes out and US diplomacy should be geared towards solidifying our alliances in the area while military preparations should work on destroying the Chinese navy and blockading the Chinese coast.  But, meanwhile, not much to worry about.  For the moment.

When the Law Becomes Tyrannical

Mark Noonan28 Comments

Mark Steyn writes up the story of David Gregory illegally waving a 10-round magazine under the nose of the NRA President and, in pointing out the rationale for arresting Gregory, hits a sore point I have these days:

…To Howard Kurtz & Co., it’s “obvious” that Gregory didn’t intend to commit a crime. But, in a land choked with laws, “obviousness” is one of the first casualties — and “obviously” innocent citizens have their “obviously” well-intentioned actions criminalized every minute of the day. Not far away from David Gregory, across the Virginia border, eleven-year-old Skylar Capo made the mistake of rescuing a woodpecker from the jaws of a cat and nursing him back to health for a couple of days. For her pains, a federal Fish & Wildlife gauleiter accompanied by state troopers descended on her house, charged her with illegal transportation of a protected species, issued her a $535 fine, and made her cry. Why is it so “obvious” that David Gregory deserves to be treated more leniently than a sixth grader? Because he’s got a TV show and she hasn’t?…

We have so many law these days – local, State and federal – that is almost a certainty that each of us, at one point or another, is in violation of one or more.  Steyn lists more examples of this and points out that when laws become capricious – such as when a little girl can be fined $535 for doing what little girls will always do – then we are no longer living in a nation ruled by law, but a nation ruled by tyranny.  Remember, there’s no way they can actually arrest all of us but the laws are so numerous that we’re all going to violate at least one of them at some point…so whether or not any one of us will be punished for our transgression really rests upon the whim of police and prosecutor.  Tick off a cop and he might haul you in on some bizarre charge; get a prosecutor with a burr up his rear and you might find the full weight of the law directed against you…or, you might not.  All depends.  And since it depends not on what you do but on what the authorities decide, you are living under tyranny.

And another aspect of tyranny is when the well-connected are let off – not just Gregory not being prosecuted for something which would have resulted in a world of trouble for any of us, but in the repeated stories we see in the news of the rich and/or famous getting off because they had the money or the connections.  We are no longer living in a nation where any of us can be certain of how things will come out – work hard, stay out of trouble and play by the rules…and you can still be fined, jailed, place on “no fly” lists…all at the whim of a government official and then its up to you to prove your innocence.

While we are living in the Error of Obama, not much will be able to be done about this, but if we do win back power (hopefully no later than 2016) one of the main aspects of government reform must be the massive repeal of laws and regulations.  Perhaps a commission could be set up to review each law and regulation and determine if it should remain, be repealed or be folded in with other laws or regulations for simplicity.  At bottom, as a citizen, it shouldn’t take me more than one day’s reading to find out everything which is illegal under federal law, and less than a day further reading to know everything that is illegal under State and local law.  If it takes a person longer than that to get through the law code (and I’ll bet no one could get through it these days in less than a period of months), then it is no longer a code of laws, but a license to oppress.

And a lesson to be learned here is to stop demanding that government “do something” each time some sort of crisis or problem develops.  That is the root of this – for about a century now we’ve turned to government to fix things and now we’ve got a government which is tyrannical.  High time when a problem comes up that each of us decides to roll up the sleeves and get a little dirty fixing it, ourselves.

I’d Like to Thank Nancy Pelosi…

Mark Noonan7 Comments

…as this time for ensuring that the Republican Party retains control of the House until at least the 2022 mid-terms:

House Democrats will introduce legislation to ban the production of high-capacity magazines on the first day of the next congressional session, the office of Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), one of the lawmakers sponsoring the bill, told The Huffington Post. The Large Capacity Ammunition Feeding Device Act will mirror a failed bill introduced during the 112th Congress…

As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m more than happy to re-fight the gun control debate with the Democrats – even after weeks of demonization and in the wake of the Newtown massacre, support for gun rights polls high and the NRA remains more popular than, for instance, Nancy Pelosi.

Now, to be sure, Democrats are not introducing this twaddle with any hope that it will be passed – it is just mindless fluff being fed to their base which demands they “do something” about gun violence (no, not the gun violence in gun-controlled Chicago…our liberals don’t care about that; perhaps because its mostly black and brown skinned kids being killed?).  But it will force Democrats to go on record – and the House GOP leadership should ensure that all Democrat proposals for gun control are fast-tracked for floor votes.  Democrats in red and purple areas of the country (and even some blue areas which manage to combine being a hippy with owning a gun…we’re looking at you Vermont and Oregon) will have to vote against, GOPers will gleefully vote against…and all Democrats will be tarred with a “gun grabber” brush for the 2014 mid-terms.

Given that we probably will go over the cliff and we will be blamed for it (somehow or another an asinine proposal to raise taxes on “the rich” is resonating more with the American people than the stark fact that we’re bankrupt and need to cut spending), I was wondering what we’d do to regain political traction.  Here it is – handed to us on a silver platter.  Yes, our Democrats are better at the nuts and bolts of politics…but, remember, they are liberal and thus will continue to fall in to idiocy.  Therein lies our hope for a better future…

Norman Schwarzkopf: RIP

Mark Noonan2 Comments

An American hero has passed away:

Truth is, retired Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf didn’t care much for his popular “Stormin’ Norman” nickname.

The seemingly no-nonsense Desert Storm commander’s reputed temper with aides and subordinates supposedly earned him that rough-and-ready moniker. But others around the general, who died Thursday in Tampa, Fla., at age 78 from complications from pneumonia, knew him as a friendly, talkative and even jovial figure who preferred the somewhat milder sobriquet given by his troops: “The Bear.”

That one perhaps suited him better later in his life, when he supported various national causes and children’s charities while eschewing the spotlight and resisting efforts to draft him to run for political office.

He lived out a quiet retirement in Tampa, where he’d served his last military assignment and where an elementary school bearing his name is testament to his standing in the community…

Not many commanders get a chance like Schwarzkopf had – to do a massive turning movement against an enemy and utterly destroy him in the field.  That it took him only 100 hours of offensive operations to finish the Iraqi army puts him in the realm of past commanders such as MacArthur and Lee.  Make no mistake about it, it takes massive amounts of moral courage to do what Schwarzkopf did – all too many commanders go in to battle merely determined not to lose, but some rise above fear and take the risks necessary to win smashing victories – and victories which end up costing less lives than longer, drawn out, cautious campaigns lesser commanders think up.  We can only hope and pray that we have even one or two officers in the United States military of the caliber of General Schwarzkopf.  God rest his soul and comfort his family and friends.