Author: Mark Noonan

Open Thread

Mark Noonan8 Comments

Heirs is out! Book VI of the series. It picks up about 12 years after Kings and Queen – so, the kids introduced as being between five and seven in the last series are now all growed up…and not at all believing the silly stories mom and dad have related. I very much enjoyed writing it and Book VII: Empress which rounds out this particular adventure…though I’ve already got large amounts written for Books VIII through XIII (with VIII and IX almost completely done: my concentration at the moment is actually on Book X; though I keep filtering over to Book XI because it is turning out to be such a fun story). As you may imagine from the title, Heirs is about, well, the heirs – specifically using Bryce and Rossalyn’s son George, Fred and Celeste’s son James; there is also Tancheri, the Crown Princess of Valcinia (intro’d in Kings and Queen as a six year old) and another girl you get to meet in Heirs. Of course our four main heroes play huge roles, too…but outside the prologue, they don’t show up for a while. I’ve also continued on with some bad guys from the past with judicious additions of new bad guys. Get your copy!

Found out about this thing called the Volkstaat in South Africa. Apparently, just before and after Apartheid came to an end, one Afrikaner pol decided that the Afrikaners – the white descendants of the Dutch who first settled South Africa – should have their own place. So, he and others purchased some land in the middle of the South African nowhere (on the map, South Africa looks small – it is actually huge and while there are thickly populated parts, there are also large swaths of howling wilderness, especially in the west north of Capetown) and set up shop. A few decades later it is a town of about 2,000 people, so far largely ignored by the South African government and it is growing prosperous. Like all Boer towns, it is neat as a pin.

And it is doomed.

I’m sorry to say that, but reality must be faced here. To me, of course, it is people just living their own lives – and so I’d leave them alone. But that won’t happen. Naturally, they are merely put down as racists (even though I, as a white American, would not be allowed to live their, either; they only allow Afrikaners) – and, who knows?, maybe they are racist. Doesn’t matter as they don’t go out and look for black people to harass. The site they picked was chosen precisely because it was horrible…but humans being human and with hard work as the command, their horrible spot is now a nice spot. And the South African Ruling Class won’t be able to tolerate it for long…especially as South Africa decays with rising crime and rolling blackouts, they can’t afford to have any community of regular folks living well (the Ruling Class, behind carefully guarded walls continues to live well, naturally). The whole existence of such a place is a standing challenge to South Africa – which was supposed to usher in a multi-ethnic utopia once Apartheid vanished. You realize how impossible it will be for South Africa to survive under ANC rule if people can point to a community up from literally nothing at the time Apartheid ended while Johannesburg can’t even keep the lights on? On that level, it doesn’t matter what skin color the people are – if they were all black, they’d eventually be targeted. That they are white will just make the targeting easier. And they will be targeted. I wish I was wrong. I hope I prove in error. But as South Africa falls apart the white minority will be subjected to looting and violence as the ANC tries to stay in power.

The people of Portland, OR voted for commie Democrats who let crime run wild. The voters chose this because among all other horrors, the worst would be to thought of as a Republican. Elections do have consequences, though. And one of the consequences of voting for commies who believe that crime is the result of racism is that you then get crime so rampant that even a store like Wal Mart, which moves so much product that in most places the shoplifting doesn’t matter, is closing down all their Portland locations…I feel zero sympathy: they wanted this. Now they’ve got it.

Antifa/BLM domestic terrorists have been trying to shut down construction of a new police training facility in Atlanta. And I don’t mean by holding protests marches and filing lawsuits…they been vandalizing and assaulting people connected to it. Nearly everyone connected with the Antifa/BLM actions are from out of State and almost all of them are white (and upper class white). You’d think the FBI would take a glance at this, but they aren’t. They’re too busy tracking down granny who took a selfie outside Pelosi’s office on 1/6. But the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is on it – and they made 23 arrests. Including a lawyer who works for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The kicker: guess who the FBI asks to determine if you are a terrorist? The Southern Poverty Law Center. The Antifa/BLM types do what they do because they are protected by the FBI…and part of what the Antifa/BLM types do is denounce you to the police for wearing a MAGA hat. We really do have an American Gestapo…and they’ve got plenty of stool pigeons.

I love Mexico – place, people, food: all awesome. But I’ve stayed out for years and I won’t be going back any time soon: Four Americans were kidnapped after they drove into northern Mexico. The Cartels are simply bloodthirsty – you could be killed on a lark by them. Not worth the risk.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan29 Comments

I guess the city of Bakhmut, Ukraine has fallen and the Russians are hailing their victory while the Ukrainians are saying they never really wanted to hold it. The bottom line, for me, is that Russia has definitely resumed advancing and the Ukrainians aren’t able to stop it so far. No breakthrough, but a war of attrition where the Russians are just grinding the Ukrainians down…though such eventually does lead to a breakthrough as the weaker side can never sustain this kind of fight forever. Meanwhile, everyone on the Ukraine side gets ever more hysterical about how we have to support Ukraine. I think it is time for negotiations. Unless Zelensky has something big up his sleeve, offensive-wise, better to quit now rather than wait until there’s nothing left between the Russians and Kiev.

Argentina has ripped up its Falklands agreement with Britain and is demanding negotiations over sovereignty. This is what I mean about just staying the heck out of foreign problems: most of them are stupid. The bottom line is that whatever theoretical legal right Argentina received from Spain to the Islands, there never was a permanent, indigenous population of the Falklands until the Brits showed up in the 1830’s. The people who live there going back nearly two centuries have never had any connection to Argentina. They consider themselves British. The speak English. When asked in a plebiscite what they preferred, more than 98% voted to stay under British rule. But Argentina likes to get all fussy about it – and they are getting fussy about it shortly after HMS Queen Elizabeth became operational which means if they decide to start shooting over it, they’ll lose (the Royal Navy is a shadow of her formal self, but most of Argentina’s navy is laid up in port; and they don’t have a naval air arm to speak of). Amazing how stupid people can be, and for all the wrong reasons.

Kellyanne and George Conway have called it quits – which is kinda sad but very understandable. George acted like an a** during the Trump years and Kellyanne has allowed herself to be squired around by the likes of Cuomo recently. Really its all rather pathetic.

The Left is still trying to sell the notion that the Second Amendment only secured a right to bear arms to the Militia, which is now the National Guard. Of course it is absurd, but lots of people are fierce in their faith about the Militia having the right. It isn’t just propaganda doing this – it is propaganda directed a population which is barely literate and almost entirely ignorant of American history. We can’t get control of the schools fast enough. This is a terrible problem and it will harm us politically…but if we control the schools it is literally just a few years before the problem is fixed.

RDS has put out a video which is “I’m running” without saying the actual words, “I’m running”.

I’m increasingly positive that the Left overstepped on the trans issue – and it is women leading the backlash. Which is proper as women are being erased to accommodate trans women. It is very irritating, isn’t it? What is clearly a man winning women’s sporting contests, Hershey and other woke corporations using trans women as spokespeople for women’s issues. I mean, seriously: who thought this would be a good idea? Oh, yeah: Progressives did. Never forget that as ruthless and cruel as they are, they are also monumentally stupid.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

Supposedly General Miley a little while back advised that Ukraine is as strong as she’s gonna get, is not strong enough to defeat Russia, so it is time for a diplomatic solution. If this story is true, my respect for Miley goes up a notch.

Of late, Zelensky has been talking big not just about pushing Russia out of what they’ve taken in the last year, but out of all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea. Well, hey, if he can do that, more power to him: but I don’t think Ukraine has the sheer power to do that. Absent a complete Russian collapse, the Russians will pretty much hold on to what they’ve got. As I said at the start – Ukraine’s job since 2014 was to build a mobile strike force capable of immediately going on the offense either right at the time the Russians attacked, or just before that. I like to call this The Israeli Option: what to do with enemies who vastly outnumber you and have far greater strategic depth? You attack and turn their dream of marching on Tel Aviv (Kiev) into a nightmare defending Cairo and Damascus (Rostov and Voronezh). Ukraine had plenty of time and plenty of money – and even plenty of factories and material to produce this force with only very limited support from anyone outside Ukraine. They didn’t do it. They decided that bribing foreign pols as a means of securing their support against Russia was a better idea (and this tells you right there that there’s at least a huge part of the Ukrainian population uninterested in fighting for Ukraine – that the Ukrainian government, unlike the Israeli government, could not rely on the population to make the sacrifices in blood and treasure). And, fundamentally, that is why I was against giving aid from the start – if they can’t sacrifice for themselves, why should I sacrifice for them? Now is the time to make peace – before more blood is shed and before the Russians do put forth their full power.

So, now they’re admitting that masks don’t work and there’s a good chance the Chinese flu came from the lab – whether accidentally or intentionally we don’t know, and likely never can know. Just as the repeated assertions of 2020 being clean are our best proof it was dirty, the assertion that Covid didn’t come from the lab was our best proof that it came from the lab. We just know – if we’ve any sense at all – that whatever it is they’re saying is a lie…or if by some miracle the truth, only partial and designed to deflect attention from something else even worse. Why they’re dribbling this out now remains to be seen – but is certainly isn’t to enlighten us. They’re hiding something else.

Supposedly the J6 footage was all turned over to Tucker Carlson and people are starting to wonder when we get to see it. Rely on it, folks: it was given to Carlson to ensure the most Narrative-Destroying parts never see the light of day. I dig that Carlson has a lot of fans and he does, indeed, say some useful things…but he’s MSM. He’s Establishment. He’ll never jeopardize his meal ticket and while his boss is testifying that Trump was lying about 2020 election fraud, you can bet any money that Carlson won’t piss the boss off by showing that J6 was a setup to ensure the truth about 2020 never came out.

Pudding Brain’s illegal order to cancel student debt was heard before the Supreme Court today – it ain’t looking good for Pudding Brain. But there is a very worrisome thing going – all over the Democrats and MSMers (but I repeat myself) was the assertion that the Court should rule in favor of cancellation regardless of what the law says…with an unstated subtext that if the Court doesn’t rule the way the Democrats want, then it is “out of control”…and so in need of being brought under control. We need not say who’s control is needs to be brought under. This is terrible for our system of government – essentially, the Democrats are saying that any Court ruling going against their desires is illegitimate.

Looks like Lori Lightfoot didn’t pass the graft around enough and she didn’t get into the runoff for Chicago Mayor. The winner will be whichever candidate seems most likely to correctly pass around the graft. Lightfoot will, of course, claim that her loss was because of racism, sexism and homophobia. This would mean the Democrat party is packed full of racists, sexists and homophobes.

There Are No Hitlers to Fight

Mark Noonan34 Comments

A lot of the justification for supporting Ukraine against Russia is based upon the memory of World War Two – specifically, the run-up to it when the Western powers had multiple opportunities to stop Hitler early and at relatively low cost, thus sparing the world the horrors of World War Two and the Holocaust. In today’s world, Putin is Hitler and Ukraine is the Rhineland or Austria…or maybe even Czechoslovakia. The main thing being asserted is that we must stop Putin on the Don or we’ll eventually face Putin on the Vistula, or maybe even on the Rhine.

This is drivel.

Putin isn’t Hitler. That is, Putin – as much a rat-bastard as you want him to be – isn’t propagating an ideology of racial superiority where everyone not of the Master Race must die or become slaves. That was the unique threat of Hitler and it simply does not exist in Putin. And this is true even if he wants to reassemble the entirety of the Russian Empire. Bad? Sure. But not an embodiment of human evil which all decent people must stand against. Unless you want to assert that any rule not consented to is absolutely immoral and must be stopped…in which case, gear up for lots of war all around the world because there are submerged peoples everywhere.

Additionally, Putin’s Russia is not Hitler’s Germany in the military sense. In 1939 the Germans had a well trained army led by officers of the highest caliber who knew how to rapidly move forces towards strategic objectives. World War One showed that even absent a Hitler, Germany with its marvelous General Staff was a standing threat. As we have seen in Ukraine, the Russian military isn’t remotely of that quality. They are building up now for what looks like will be a traditional Russian steamroller – just going to flatten the Ukrainians by sheer weight of numbers. It may work; but whether it does or doesn’t, it still won’t amount to a military force capable of arriving on the Rhine any time soon.

The bottom line is that there are no more Hitlers to fight. Almost certainly, there never will be another Hitler to fight. The more you stand back in time and look at it the more astonished you grow over the whole thing – how entirely out of phase it was with humanity. That a decidedly second-rate intellect like Hitler’s could galvanize a people to follow where he lead even though it was pretty obviously suicidal astonishes…and you then mourn that this wicked beast of a man inherited an industrial base and General Staff capable of at least giving his insane ideas a shot. But, he won’t be repeated. He can’t be repeated; the particular circumstances which gave rise to him don’t exist and can’t ever exist again. We don’t have to worry, that is, about having that one, last chance to stop a Hitler – because there is no Hitler to stop.

And without a Hitler, things become a bit more reasonable. Keep in mind that World War Two in Europe went on two years after the Germans were decisively defeated and where further resistance was just going to lead to lots of useless deaths and the utter physical destruction of Germany. Anyone other than Hitler would have called it quits after Kursk, or at the latest when the Allies established themselves in Normandy. He kept it going because he was insane – certain that if he just willed victory, it would still come even though the material factors demonstrated conclusively that it could not come. Putin isn’t like that – he’ll fight as long as he thinks he can get advantage out of it and as soon as costs exceed benefits, he’ll call it quits and make peace…even if just a temporary peace while he plans the next round. The Chinese, too, are not insane: they may well attack us or our allies and they’ll fight hard…and if they can decisively defeat us, they will; but whether in victory of defeat, they will be reasonable…quitting if the gamble fails and not dreaming of exterminating us and colonizing the United States if victorious – Hitler, keep in mind, had named Goebbles Gauleiter of the USA…his job to exterminate all Jews, blacks, Slavs and other undesirables and turn the remaining population into Germans. We simply do not face that, no matter how badly the Chinese defeat us in a theoretical future war.

Whether or not we decide to help Ukraine is then not an existential question, but a prudential judgement. The fate of the world does not hang in the balance. The enemy does not propose to alter the world to fit his views…he just wants to grab some things and then profit from the theft. It is, then, just the normal run for a war. And if you are not directly attacked, then the decision to intervene must be based upon the cold, hard realities of what your nation needs. And in this I’ve yet to see a rational argument for why the USA must be concerned about who governs Ukraine. I cannot see any threat to the territorial integrity of the USA. I can’t see that our Republican form of government will topple with a Russian army in Kiev. I see no concern about our naval supremacy if Russia obtains a naval base in Odessa. There is no worry that Russian goods produced in Ukraine will crowd American products out of the global market. The only defensible war is a war of defense – what American thing is defended in Ukraine? If you can provide that, then I might see my way to supporting American intervention…but the war has gone on for a year and I still can’t see anything for an American to be concerned with.

This is not to say that nobody else should be concerned. Poland and Romania should be deeply concerned. As should the Baltic States and to a lesser – but still great – degree Germany, France and Britain. The combined populations and industrial capacity of these most concerned nations are vastly more than Russia’s: if I were German or French or Polish, I would be working very diligently to build the military force and forge the iron-clad alliances necessary to ensure that my side can issue Russia an ultimatum and make it stick. But I am not German, French of Polish. I am American; and I’ve no concern in this matter.

It is time for we, the people of the United States, to stop looking for foreign dragons to slay. We won’t find any. After Hitler’s death and the dissolution of the USSR, there is no ideology outside the USA proposing to destroy us. That we have our own, internal enemies seeking our destruction is another issue, but is actually another reason to come home: we have enough on our plate inside the USA to take up our time…we don’t need foreign problems in addition.

And the world really doesn’t want us to fix things. Sure, they want us to pay for the Ukraine war. If it goes south, they’ll be delighted to watch American teenagers being blown to pieces to retrieve the situation. But they don’t want to obey us; they don’t want to change. They want to keep their fetid, little hatreds and bigotries…their ridiculous customs and slavish devotion to local mountebanks. Everyone likes it when someone pays for dinner – nobody likes it when that guy comes home and tries to organize your life for you. We have no business outside the United States. It is not our concern. We are our concern. And as we have nuclear weapons, carrier battle groups and 400 million privately owned firearms, nobody is ever going to try to invade us. Stop looking for the ghost of Hitler – come home and let the world be.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

There was a video which crossed my Twitter time line earlier today – just a couple minutes of a street scene in Philadelphia…just a bunch of clearly wasted drug addicts wandering aimlessly. It was very sad and it showed, better than anything else, the cruelty at the basis of Progressivism. This is what they want – deliberately orchestrated. If we try to do anything about it, they’ll call us cruel…while they create places where junkies can shoot up “safely”. The Left considers this preferable to any system enforces decency.

My view: we’re going to have to get hold of this problem. It is inhuman to allow people to slowly waste away in public. It will cost us some money, but probably less than the total cost we’re paying now, especially in ruined lives. The basic principle is that nobody is allowed to be intoxicated in public. I’d set it up so that the first time you’re picked up publicly intoxicated you get ticketed and a small fine. Second time, ticketed, small fine, 24 hours in the drunk tank. Third time; 7 days in the tank. Fourth time: however much time it takes to get the person completely dried out (even if this requires medical intervention for the seriously addicted) and then six months on a chain gang (without necessarily having chains, but the idea is incarcerated and taken out 8 hours a day to do some work); the prisoners earn minimum wage so after their dry out plus six months, they are clean and sober and have some money. Fifth time; repeat of the fourth but two years on the chain gang. Sixth time: permanent incarceration on the chain gang. All through the first five arrests they are offered – free of charge – rehab facilities to get permanently clean. Before we essentially make them permanent wards of the State, they are given every opportunity to turn their lives around and become productive citizens…or at least drunks smart enough to get high indoors and stay inside until sober. No more filthy, diseased, drug addicts/drunks wandering the streets. If a person can’t on their own stay sober in public – remember, it would be on the sixth time that the hammer falls – they we will ensure they stay sober, forever. No brutality here, guys; drink or drugs can get into a person and they simply lose the ability to resist it. That is just life for some people – but we can’t let them wander around high and filthy causing all sorts of knock-on problems for everyone capable of staying sober until they get home.

And the overarching principle here is that the public square is for all of the public and so must remain a place where the public can be, at all times, with minimal chance they suffer any loss caused by the drug addict, boozer or criminal. It is our moral duty to make sure that at midnight on a Friday, a 14 year old girl is completely safe no matter what neighborhood she’s in. This might be as unattainable as all ideals are – but we must strive for it and get as close as we can.

Team Pudding Brain has their brilliant plan to stop the drug crisis – they are going to make it harder for responsible people to get pain medication from their doctor. As the linked Tweet notes: the Democrat’s invariable plan is always to punish the responsible for the actions of the irresponsible.

XVIII Airborne Corps announced that they are changing the name of Fort Bragg to…Fort Liberty. Which means they couldn’t find a differently abled, non-binary POC hero to name it after. Entirely gutless. Look, I understand not keeping Bragg – Braxton Bragg was not only a Confederate general, he was a lousy Confederate general. There have been some heroes we can honor, ya know? One very good suggestion was to rename it after Major Richard Winters of Band of Brothers fame. Another candidate would be Corporal Melvin Biddle who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his service in action with the 517th Parachute Infantry Regiment during the Battle of the Bulge. But, I guess our military can only honor woke these days, so as they couldn’t find a woke hero that wouldn’t offend every other woke group, they went with milquetoast.

John Fetterman was sent to the hospital with clinical depression, likely a long term effect of his stroke last year…and then his wife took off for a little vacation to Canada with the kids. Oh, you think that’s bad? Well, it gets worse: she posted all this on her Twitter account! What a complete psycho creep! I really do feel for Fetterman – he’s a moron surrounded by ambitious people who don’t give the least damn whether he lives or dies.

Someone has posted pictures of Madonna and Roseanne Barr and notes that Roseanne is the better looking woman these days.

Now that the East Palestine, OH train wreck has become a political train wreck for Team Pudding Brain, we’re all being urged to stop being political about it. Standard MO for the Democrats – anything that looks bad for them is time for unity. Anything that looks bad for us and its time for 24/7 hate-coverage. Oh, and the statement by Mayor Pete and other Democrats/MSMers that it was the ending of a regulation by Trump which caused the problem? Two things wrong with that:

  1. The regulation in question, in place or not, would have made no difference.
  2. The regulation was terminated by a law passed under Obama.

Secession is Still the Answer

Mark Noonan99 Comments

Surprised that nearly ten years have passed since I first wrote on this subject. I stand by it. I bring it up now because Marjorie Taylor Greene Tweeted about a national divorce and it has caused people – Right and Left – to lose their minds. But such things do need to be discussed – and acted upon after discussion.

The word “secession” has a bad connotation in American usage because of the Civil War. And, in truth, the secessionists of 1861 were entirely unjustified in their action. As we state in our Declaration of Independence, it can at times become necessary for a people to dissolve the bands which have connected them to another people. But as the Declaration also says, this is only justified if the other people have by a series of usurpations and and injustices proven that their aim is subjugation. The South had no such cause in 1861 – and, in fact, the incoming Lincoln Administration (used at the proximate cause for secession) had repeatedly pledged to take no action against Southern institutions. And any action that might be taken in the future would follow the Constitutional order which would take into consideration Southern demands. You can’t rebel because of what someone might do to you at some future date – you can only justly rebel over past, ongoing or obviously imminent injustices.

But secession is not an inherently bad thing. After all, the Founders were secessionists. They had determined that the British government was determined to treat the American colonies as a cash cow with no reference to the needs or desires of the colonists – to reduce the colonies to subjugation. And, so, they seceded. And they weren’t the only people to ever do this. Norway is a secession from Sweden. Slovakia a secession from Czechoslovakia. It happens. Some times people just can’t live together and it is better that they live apart. And it might be time for us to consider that.

Back in 2013 I only meant secession in the sense of breaking up the States. My prime example then was California which is, in reality, four States with three of them subjected to the State running from Long Beach to San Francisco. The people of North, South and East California are fully justified in seeking secession from California – if they want it – because the actions of that part of California running along the coast clearly seek to subject the rest of California to their dictates without the people in the subjected areas having any real power to affect policy. Other States which are clearly more than the one legal entity currently existing are Nevada, New York, Illinois, Washington and Oregon…and cases can be made for Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania. In order to really have self government, the States will eventually have to be broken up – we cannot forever allow a few high population areas within a State to dictate to the rest of the State. People have rights – and their primary political right is to live under the laws they wish, not under the laws someone else wishes for them.

But now I am starting to wonder if the United States can remain together. I’m wondering whether secession is not just the answer partially, but totally?

Of course, it isn’t a simple split – not State by State. In fact, the part of the country which is moving me to think of separation is about 20 cities. They just happen to be very large population cities and they control the political destiny of half the Country (at least). If we are to separate, it won’t really be so much, say, 30 States going one way and 20 going the other…it’ll be about 100 counties going one way and all the rest going another. Essentially, the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, New York and Chicago need to be dealt with. But I don’t mean dealt with as they wish to deal with us – I wish in no way to dictate to San Francisco how the people there live. I just want to make sure the people of San Francisco can’t dictate how I live. We need to figure out if there is a way to retain San Francisco in a union which includes Provo, Utah and where both San Francisco and Provo mind their own business.

Can we do that? I’m not sure. The trouble is that these cities by their inordinate political power control the government, the media and most of the education and corporate establishments. They don’t want to leave us alone. They feel a duty to force us to live by their rules, even if their rules are downright insane. It might prove impossible to reconcile the differences…and the biggest stumbling block is going to be that the other side consider it immoral to mind their own business.

But, meanwhile, if we can save the Union, our best shot is to break up the States – and maybe make the large cities into City-States. But one way or the other, secession is the answer…either in unity or disunity.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan30 Comments

I had mentioned before Aleste and the Ice Crystal Dragons – the story is hooked into my Mirrors series but it came about after I was explaining the series to my granddaughter and she observed that it was an utter fail because it didn’t have any dragons in it. So, I told her to come up with a story that had dragons in it. With her talking and me writing, the book was made. And we’ve got some reviews over at Amazon:

I read this book to my 3rd grade class and they absolutely loved it! The cliff hangers left them begging for me to read more each day. We feel in love with the character Aleste and her bravery throughout the book. The details, descriptive language, and great vocabulary used throughout this book made it a great book to share with my students. Awesome job!

Got a kid or a grandkid? Get the book. It is a heck of a lot of fun.

Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell of Los Angeles was shot and killed on Saturday. It is in the news but it isn’t really making the news, if you know what I mean. The increasing collapse of civilization in Los Angeles does not support any Democrat Narrative, nor will it help Newsom when he runs for President in 2024 or 2028, so what would have been a huge story 20 years ago, is pretty much nothing these days. Nor are any other stories highlighting the end of civilization – the re-barbarization of the West which gains speed day by day. You know – things like mass brawls at fast food joints and stores. Nobody ever even knows why the fights start but a score of people at times are just pounding on each other…or one poor body is being beaten mercilessly by a gang of thugs and everyone is just standing around filming it.

This is not normal and it is not sustainable. Eventually everything falls apart and the reaction sets in – a very violent reaction as the few remaining civilized people decide that the barbarians have to die.

Former Governor Larry Hogan is giving a class these days called, “Why You Got Trump”. At any event, he may as well be doing that. He’s rumbling about running for President but what he’s really doing is auditioning for an MSM gig…which a failed Presidential run and then complaining about the eventual GOP nominee will get him. His most recent absurdity was to claim that DeSantis pushing back against woke ideology in public schools is “big government”…you know what all True Conservatives with Muh Principles oppose. It is just a stupid thing to say – the schools are government and all RDS is doing is making them bend to the will of the people of Florida…you know, like a government is supposed to do. It is stupid – but it is wowing the Left, and that’s the point of the exercise. But for us, what he’s doing is providing the perfect foil for the new, populist GOP…an example of what we cannot go back to. Maybe it is time to move on from Donald Trump, but it isn’t time to move on from Trumpism.

There’s a news report about how to survive a nuclear blast. I did not have this on my 2023 bingo card – but, kiddies, let us oldsters clue you in, because we learned this stuff when we were kids. If there’s a nuclear attack, get under your desk, put your head between your knees and kiss you a** goodbye.

Speaking of which, the global Ruling Class is really pushing for Ukraine victory…but I’ve yet to see how Ukraine destroys the Russian army. That is a kind of a crucial First Step here…a plan and the means to do that. I think that our leaders are so divorced from reality and so ignorant of history that they just don’t know this. That they think high tech weapons will just do the trick, somehow. But unless Ukraine builds a military force which is capable of sustained offensive operations, its all just a waste of blood and treasure. Keep in mind that since the initial Russian invasion there hasn’t even been a battle. Oh, sure, there’s been lots of fighting and dying, but no battles once you understand that a battle is a event whereby your principle military power is directed against the enemy’s principle military power and decisive results are achieved one way or the other. Attrition warfare isn’t a battle…and its a sort of warfare Ukraine can never win given the population disparities. Meanwhile, the Russkies seem to be calling up half a million…and not to just hold the line, but to provide a powerful strike force which will be launched against the Ukrainians with a mind towards destroying the Ukrainian army.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan84 Comments

I do feel sorry for Fetterman – he nearly dies of a stroke and this his wife and friends, instead of caring whether he lives or dies, press him to keep running for an office he was manifestly unfit to serve in. Yes, shame on us for not being able to beat him, but it is simply a crime that he didn’t withdraw from the race. Keep that in mind: the Democrats will do anything to obtain power. They don’t care how much harm it causes…as long as they can get the power, its all good in their view.

The number of train derailments is getting beyond coincidence. If we had an actual FBI, they’d be looking into it to see if foreign actors were involved, directly or indirectly. This doesn’t mean, of course, that it definitely is an attack – but it could be, and we should find out. There is the chance, however, that it is just degraded infrastructure. Remember, the last thing a Democrat infrastructure bill does is provide infrastructure…it provides money for cronies and various BS projects nobody needs. There is no upside for Democrats if rail lines, roads, bridges, etc get built and repaired. There’s no payoff for them – but there’s a huge payoff if you can send a couple million for an anti-racist program to fight systemic racism in the construction industry. Meanwhile, the train derailment in Ohio isn’t the problem – the real problem is that we on the Right have noticed the derailment.

I guess the Democrats have some polling indicating that Haley has strength among some section of the voters because they are going hard after her – with the universal talking point being that she’s a race traitor who uses a “white” name in order to be acceptable to the racist GOP. Day by day, Democrats just get more inhuman an disgusting. I hope that it is turning off ever more people.

Al Sharpton and the Race-Baiter Brigade went down to Florida the other day to protest DeSantis’ education reforms…and it was as if nothing happened. Because, of course, nothing happened. Nothing could happen. DeSantis and the Florida GOP weren’t about to give in to any demands and any effort by Sharpton to gin up violence would have resulted in real arrests…with people going to jail rather than being let off entirely or given small fines. The best news we’ve had of late is that ever more GOPers simply don’t care if they’re called racists. At long last, that false accusation is losing it’s sting. Calling us racists is a stupid and insulting lie – but, they won’t stop it so all we can do is ignore and it and implement policy.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan54 Comments

Randoland is a Twitter account which details the spending on those gigantic bills they pass out Congress. Example:

The Department of Health and Human Services awarded $1.4 million to Florida State University for a CRT-related program called “TRANSFORMING HEALTH EQUITY RESEARCH IN INTEGRATED PRIMARY CARE: ANTIRACISM AS A DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION”

This is, of course, complete drivel. It is make-work and a complete waste of money – but only from our perspective. From the Left’s perspective, it is money well spent.

You see, what the Left gets out of this is yet more propaganda pushing their views and people with a vested interest in keeping it all going. After all, $1.4 million goes pretty fast. Next year or the year after, the people studying anti-racism as a disruptive innovation will either have to get a grant to provide more anti-racism or they’ll have to get a job. Guess what they’ll choose? And you can rely on it that if people are paid to fight racism they will never run out of racism to fight.

Knock on benefits for the Left here are donations (the people getting these grants will want to keep Democrats in office) and conversion…actual or feigned (and it doesn’t matter to the Democrats which it is: both are just fine): the more this stuff is out there, the more people feel like they have to go along with it. And yet others just decide to get in on the payday and find some racism of their own to fight against.

And this is a huge problem for us – there is so much money flowing out of government and into Leftist hands that we’re a bit overwhelmed. How can we compete with an institution which passes out trillions of dollars, almost entirely un-audited?

The answer is that we can’t. So, we must get in on the act.

It will prove impossible – at least any time soon – to get the Congressional GOP on board with cutting this kind of spending. But I do believe we can get them on board with spending money on us. Sure, I know: long term getting rid of the spending is best. But that’s a pipe dream at present…so, lets stick our hand out. Let’s provide millions of dollars for Conservative studies and programs (which would have the benefit of being something useful). A few million for lesbian poetry reading here, a few million for a laudatory biopic of Pinochet there. See where I’m going? The reason we have gay Superman is because we’re paying for it – so lets pay for a Superman who b*** slaps Commies. Guess which will be more popular, anyway?

That train derailment in Ohio has picked up the hashtag #OhioChernobyl – which does seem a little melodramatic to me. That is, I don’t think its as bad as some are claiming. On the other hand, it is clearly pretty bad. And it is also a tremendously telegenic disaster…it is the sort of thing which would get eyeballs glues to screens. But nobody is covering. Not in any big sense. Some people hadn’t heard about until they saw a social media posts on it. This just shows you that what is in the news is carefully curated. I can only assume that a massive train derailment and chemical spill isn’t in the script right now and so it is just being ignored. And that begs the question: what other big stories are just being ignored because they don’t fit the script? That is, which don’t help Democrats advance their Narrative?

Team Pudding Brain has gotten trigger happy over balloons of late – I guess they got their focus group results on letting the first wander across the country and it wasn’t good. Personally, I just don’t know – I certainly can’t believe the government on it, nor the MSM (which is a mere arm of government). The stories of aliens are probably exaggerated.

The military is having trouble recruiting. The brass says its just because kids are afraid of getting hurt but we all know that’s a lie. Its about the woke stuff. The active strength of the Army is under 500,000. In a nation of 330 million and 4.3 million men coming of military age annually, there there is no possible way we can miss recruitment targets…unless the men just don’t want to serve. And why should anyone? You don’t get to spend nearly enough time getting trained. You have to kowtow to woke garbage all day long – and your career in the military can be ruined if you say something that someone claims offends them. Then, if you go get into a fight, you’re commanded by timeserving cowards who don’t care how many of you die, but who will see to it you’re charged for war crimes if you kill the enemy the wrong way. Screw that! I would never tell a kid to join up these days. And I’m sure plenty of fathers and grandfathers are telling the kids, “its not what is used to be; stay out”.

They are Evil and They Hate You

Mark Noonan20 Comments

Because I’m still part caveman, I can’t figure out how to embed this video in the post, so you’ll have to go to Twitter to see it. The issue was the placement of a halfway house for sexual offenders right next to a school bus stop – the lady in the video is defending this and saying that it is up to the parents to protect their children by talking about it. The assembled parents are not pleased with this and, of course, no sane, decent person would be. The obvious result of placing sex offenders in proximity to the vulnerable is that the vulnerable will become victims of the sex offenders. It will happen. And this is not to say that there shouldn’t be programs to help reintegrate offenders back into life nor to say that some people can’t be redeemed and so we shouldn’t try. But it is to be logical about it – it is just a known thing that a high percentage of sexual offenders will offend again. Whatever you’re trying to do with them, to place them near easily accessible, defenseless victims just means that bad things will happen. It would like trying to stop drinking in a liquor store. It, perhaps, could be done but your chances are pretty low.

But I think there is an important lesson for all of us to learn here. Remember back when Covid was new and Cuomo was being lauded to the skies as the real leader dealing with it while we got the Narrative that Trump was floundering? But, meanwhile, we kept hearing stories of sick people being sent to retirement homes with massive resultant infections and deaths among old people? The MSM covered up the Cuomo orders to send Covid patients to the nursing homes but did, of course, give us the horror stories of death. And at the time I noted something: there was zero chance that Cuomo didn’t know what would happen. I mean, for certain, he knew that if he sent Covid patients into retirement homes the result would be lots of infections and deaths because very early on we learned the highest death rates were among elderly people with co-morbidities (you know, the sort of geezer we place in a nursing home). What Cuomo did – abetted by an MSM to cover up his part in it – was deliberately increase the death toll to make Trump look bad.

A lot of people had a hard time with that. To think that there are people who would do something like that is hard – we’re not used to thinking of our fellow humans being that callous…to essentially kill people for a polling result is just too fantastic. But it is what happened. There is no other interpretation which follows from the data. Cuomo ordered Covid patients into nursing homes – and you’d only do that if you wanted people to die. Dumping Covid patients on a sidewalk would have caused less death; both to the Covid patients and to the geezers. Cuomo did the exact thing you’d do if dying is what you want. Why would he do that?

Because he’s an evil man and he hates you.

That is also very hard for people to wrap their heads around. When we think of “evil man” we think of Hitler or Manson. That’s evil! And sure enough they were. But they didn’t do their thing alone. They had people willing to do the deeds. And over the years lots of people have offered lots of excuses for why the followers obeyed the orders and nobody has yet to state the obvious: they did it because they were evil people and filled with hate. They were bad and they enjoyed being bad. It was fun for them. They were punishing those they hated and it felt great! We do need to understand that evil seems fun, especially as the evil doer carries out the act. There is a thrill and a rush in doing wrong. If there wasn’t this sensation, it would probably happen a lot less. While it is true that there is great joy to be had in helping the helpless (and true joy, which is very important) there is no less a feeling of triumph in harming the helpless. It is a false sense of triumph, of course, and it leads invariably to destruction and true death, but the sense is there and people find they enjoy being cruel just for the fun of it. There are people who are happy to carry out orders to be cruel. Solzhenitsyn wrote about it – how an NKVD brute felt like an honest to God man when he was beating a helpless prisoner to death.

And anyone can be evil. As Chesterton pointed out, by strenuous efforts we can maintain a level of good in our lives. We have to be constantly on guard. By prayer and works of mercy we have to continually shore up our desire to be good. Yes, we Christians know that it is God’s grace that saves…but even with God’s grace, if we don’t keep at it constantly we will backslide and, step by step, become worse. Now, imagine for a moment a person who doesn’t even try. Day by day this person is flowing along thinking themself a swell fellow but, actually, day by day is the descent into madness. The world passes in front of them. It grows increasingly dark. Horrible things are happening which call upon all decent people to act. But if you aren’t decent, then what does the call to act mean to you? It means to find an excuse as to why it isn’t your fault – and thus to find a scapegoat. Some person or group or institution which is the source of all problems and if you can just get at them, all will be made well.

The people on the Left are very much those who don’t try to be good and who come to believe that there is Something Else (not the Leftist!) who is at fault and needs punishment. Kids can’t learn to read? Bums pissing on the sidewalk? People being trafficked? It can’t be the Leftist’s fault! Admission of guilt is the first step to repentance…but repentance means changing your life. And who wants to be bothered with that? Better to, instead, insist that someone else change. Find me the person to hate! The Leftist will follow any person who tells them that they are pure and good but that This Person or That Group is the source of all evil…and will carry out the most obscene things with full knowledge of what will happen if it just punishes the guilty and leaves the Leftist free to make no personal change. As in the nature of things, most of these Leftists are followers. The longer on the Left, the more willing to go along with the most obscene evil. Point out the target to them, and they go right at it. The Followers are always ready to obey orders.

Cuomo, like all elected Democrats, is not a leader. Such people are the definition of “follower”. And let us thank God the Left in the USA hasn’t found a Lenin or Mao to lead the charge. We are better off because those in charge are puppets on a string and so they are far less effective than a determined and clever leader would be. The leaders of the Democrat party are installed into power because of their pliability – their willingness to lie, cheat and steal as directed by their wirepullers: that collection of bureaucrats, MSM personalities, corporate bosses, NGO directors, etc who set the Party Line and enforce it. But even as followers, it must be kept in mind that they are not removed from responsibility. Cuomo, being a man in possession of his faculties, knew exactly what his Covid order would produce and he went ahead and did it. And only a heart fill with hatred and cruelty can do that. And his underlings who carried out the orders. And the MSMers who covered it up. They weren’t making a mistake. It wasn’t an accident. It was deliberate and malicious – and when we get to deliberate and malicious, we’ve arrived at evil.

And so, too, that lady in the video. She might seem like a nice person but she is evil. She is, like Cuomo, clearly not insane nor possessed of an IQ of 60. She knows what putting sex offenders near children will do. It is as sure as night following day. There is no uncertainty here. And that means she wants the sex offenders to attack the children. That is the goal. To cause pain and suffering.

To win, we must free ourselves from the concept that people on the Left are just like us but with a slightly different means to a mutually desired end. They don’t want the same ends we do. Even if they use words like “justice” and “freedom” the meanings they attach to those words are not the same as you attach to them. And it isn’t just that they want a slightly different result than you do – they want an opposite result. Where you want prosperity, they want poverty. Where you want peace, they want war. Where you find joy, they wish to create despair. They do not think that anything we have is good. Our entire civilization and way of life is hated by them – and we, who adhere to it, are hated as well. They look back on the grand sweep of history – and especially Western history – and see mere crime piled upon crime and only now have they figured it out and it has been determined that it all has to go. It must be replaced. You’ve already seen this: everything that we love is to varying degree and in varying combination racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist, imperialist, patriarchal, transphobic, etc, etc, etc and whatever else they can pile onto it. And the final, crowning thing is that this racist/sexist/homophobic/etc society causes climate change and is killing the planet. And if its killing the planet, what action against it is illegitimate?

These are the kind of people we are dealing with – not one Hitler or Manson to get rid of, but ten million Himmlers busily working away, day by day, thinking themselves paragons of virtue. They’re kind to animals. They love their children. They are polite and well mannered…and they will attend a conference at a nice hotel where the ways and means of killing millions (under euphemistic phrasing) are discussed because, if not done, the world will die.

They all have to go. We must remove all of them from every position of power and influence. They are not well meaning but mistaken – they are baleful but sure they are right. We must stop thinking of them as being part of us. They are very much “them”. We, unlike them, will not and cannot be cruel or unjust – but by every legal means at our disposal, they must be removed from power and rendered incapable of ever regaining power. They must be exposed for that they are. We must hold their evil up in the light of day and make them answer for it – for every illegal immigrant brutalized, for every bum who dies on the streets, for every victim of a criminal they released, they must pay…and they must admit their guilt. Only thus can we be safe – and only thus can they possibly repent and come to the light.