Author: Mark Noonan

Open Thread

Mark Noonan29 Comments

Team Pudding Brain has been caught transporting around the USA large numbers of single, fit male illegal immigrants. This is actually against the law – as Rep Dan Crenshaw pointed out, an impeachable offense.

I’m not sure how serious Crenshaw is – he may just be putting out some boilerplate in an election year. And I think a lot of people would say that Biden should be impeached for breaking the law. But, that would be wrong. And our Amazona gonna love this:

Joe Biden should be impeached for failure to see that the laws are faithfully enforced. That is right there in the Constitution. It isn’t ambiguous: the President shall take care that the laws are faithfully enforced. In short, we’d be impeaching him for violating his oath of office. Cool, huh?

And to me it is a crucial point of principal: our government is increasingly lawless. Officials of it do whatever it is they think they can get away with. This is destroying the very fabric of our nation and so it is necessary for us to fight it out on the issue of rule of law. Of course, it is usually difficult to do this because most of the time you don’t have a handy case easily understood. We do now. The American people are aware of illegal immigration. They are aware that when Joe came in there was a huge surge in border crossings…what they don’t know is that Team Biden is refusing to enforce the law. That these people are not just being cut lose but are being transported by the government to their illegal release point. The issue is tailor made for us – and it can be made even more dramatic by highlighting what some of these people will end up doing over the next year (you know a percentage of them are mere criminals).

We impeach Biden on the accusation that he didn’t enforce the laws per his oath of office, we’ll win the PR battle – and then watch Democrats immolate themselves asserting that the President doesn’t have to enforce the law. Mark my words on it: they will lash themselves to the mast on this. They are committed to lawlessness. They will die on that hill. So, let’s help them do so.

War for Ukraine? Not interested. Neither, I think, are most people – and here the old line GOP (McConnell, eg) is entirely out of step with the base. This does surprise me as Mitch is usually pretty sensitive to where the political wind is blowing. There is no rally ’round the flag here. We are not in any sense of the word a unified nation: we are at each other’s throats and until we resolve our domestic conflicts we’d better walk small on the world stage…but it seems as if bureaucratic inertia is moving us to a risk of war. Our real hope is that Putin sees it isn’t worth it…that a dying American Ruling Class may end up doing something very stupid and so he’d better give it a rest. Fingers crossed on this one.

Niel Young, whom you are surprised to find still alive, demanded that Spotify remove his music. And most of his fans went, “what the heck is Spotify?”. Young was upset that Spotify carries Rogan’s show, which dares to cast doubt on the official Covid narrative. So, the man who once sung about facing off against Nixon’s soldiers is now an Establishment shill. Pathetic – but hippies always tend to be that, don’t they?

There is probably no liquid water on Mars. They thought they had detected some, but Mars is simply too cold. I really don’t expect us to find much on Mars – certainly no life. It has the materials for us to live, but only if we can resolve the gravity and radiation issues.

An American Foreign Policy

Mark Noonan12 Comments

Bismarck allegedly once said that there is a special providence for fools, drunkards and the United States of America. If he did say it then it was because he could see how very lucky the United State was and is: moated east and west by oceans and with harmless neighbors north and south, the United States could always pick and choose which foreign affairs to take an interest in. Meanwhile, Bismarck’s Prussia-become-Germany had to contend with Russia, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Britain and a host of smaller powers all on German’s doorstep or very close by. It was a nightmare maze to navigate through (made more nightmarish by Bismarck, but he didn’t see it that way). Bismarck died in 1898 – which, as it turns out, was the year the United States decided that being blessed by geography just wasn’t going to cut it.

There was nothing particularly wrong with ejecting the Spanish from Cuba and Puerto Rico in 1898. There was also no particular need to do it. But at least it fell in line with the general idea of the Monroe Doctrine and a long-held American ideal that the Americas should no longer be the colonial possession of Europeans. But that wasn’t really why we went into that war: it was merely the excuse. The reason we went into the war was because a segment of American political leaders felt it was vital for America to enter global competition. The concept, boiled down, was that if we didn’t force our way on to the world stage, we’d start to decline as a nation. Cuba was the excuse – but all along what was wanted was Manila and the gateway to China.

And so we did it – and placed ourselves in the position of caring about China and that meant dealing with Japan and Britain and Russia and fussing about who would govern what in the western Pacific and east Asia. I think that most of us were taught that this was fundamentally a good thing – that the USA had to get involved. But now that I think back on those lessons in high school history, they never did get around to telling us why we had to do it. It was just an assertion that as a mature great power, we should be involved and if we didn’t, disaster would follow.

I try to think of what disasters would have been worse than Communist China, the Korean and Vietnam wars (not to mention things like the battles of Okinawa and Saipan) had we stayed home. Remember, Pearl Harbor was struck because it based the American fleet which was set to relieve the American garrison in the Philippines…but if there wasn’t an American garrison there? If the Spanish still ruled Manila or the Filipinos fully ruled themselves at that time? What would be the reason for attacking the American fleet at Pearl Harbor? Can’t really think of one.

Now, one can argue that Japanese rule of the Philippines and Indonesia would be bad. No real argument there. But China’s rule of Tibet is bad – anyone saying we have to go to war with China to free Tibet? The point I’m making: the supposed need for the USA to expend blood and treasure to save foreigners from oppression seems a little selectively applied. Either it is our policy, or it isn’t. If it is, then it is time to war with China. If it isn’t…then what the heck have we been doing for the last century? Being involved. And that seems to be it.

I bring all this up because now people are telling us we have to confront Russia in Ukraine. Saw a Tweet from a bluecheck Neocon today basically comparing the situation to Hitler’s rise to power. I’m really rather tired of that sort of thing – Hitler was a unique threat which will never arise again. The peculiar circumstances of his rise no longer exist and can’t be replicated. Hitler, of course, stepped into the European power vacuum opened by the overthrow of the Hoehzollern’s of Germany and the dissolution of the Hapsburg Monarchy of Austria-Hungary. That particular situation has now been absorbed into the European equilibrium (mostly by Stalin, as it turns out: he moved whole populations around in 1945 to make the nations of central Europe compact ethnic nations no longer having a biological title deed to lands outside their borders: some times brutality can get things done). It should also be noted that the power vacuum was largely created by us – it was our insistence on the overthrow of the Hohenzollern’s and the dissolution of the Hapsburgs which created the vacuum. Had we stayed out, the Franco-British would have had to engage in a negotiated peace in the middle of 1918.

Anyways – we’re once again being told we must get involved. The safety of the world is at stake!

Really? How so?

How, that is, does Putin absorbing the Donbas really alter the world in some intrinsically negative manner? That plenty of people in the area don’t want to be ruled by Putin I take as a given. But I don’t understand our interest in it. Seems to me that if Putin is trying to re-cobble together the Czarist Empire then Ukraine should be looking to Poland and the Baltic States to form a coalition to stop it. I doubt much that Putin wants a general war. He’d like to detach the Donbas with minimal fighting. But Poland and Ukraine with 80 million people against Russia’s 146 million is probably far more than Putin wants to tangle with. Ukraine can probably get at least some interest – if not direct help – from Turkey, Greece, Romania, Hungary, Germany, France and Britain; all of whom have a varying interest in keeping Russia curbed (the closer they are to Russia, the greater the interest). A bit of firm diplomacy by Ukraine should easily be able to get Russia to back off.

That they don’t seem to be able to do this and that they lack sufficient arms to stand up to Russia is a problem. But how is it an American problem? Ukraine has been independent for 30 years: that was plenty of time for them to measure up a possible Russian attack and prepare the means to meet it. I get it that they are wracked by corruption (including corruption where they have paid off Americans – most infamously Hunter Biden – for influence) and have rather floundered around with an aging military force…but, once again: how is this an American problem? In fact – given how corrupt Ukraine is, what benefit to the people of the Ukraine in our propping up their corrupt system which didn’t even prepare the military means to defend Ukraine?

America needs an American foreign policy. That is: a policy which locates what the American interests are and then vigorously defends them. Far more worrisome for America than Russia attacking Ukraine is China buying influence throughout Latin America. It is a problem if, say, Panama’s government is purchased by China and closes the Canal to our ships. It is, then, in our interest to see to is that the government of Panama retains sufficient independence to prevent such an occurrence.

I’m completely done with this idea that America must be involved in this, that or the other foreign land. Outside the Americas, our interests are few and mostly relate to seaborne trade…which is menaced only by China’s rising fleet. We should be working on ensuring we can swiftly put China’s fleet at the bottom of the sea…but we’re working on whether or not to send troops to Ukraine, which doesn’t help us in any way against China. It isn’t like Ukraine will send troops to help us against China. Forget about that. We pull Ukraine’s chestnuts out of the fire here and then ten years from now we go to war with China, do not look for a Ukrainian army to help us out – more than likely we’ll see Ukraine selling war materials to China.

After 124 years, it is time to write off America as a global power. It hasn’t worked out for us. It has cost us a fortune in blood and treasure and those who don’t hate us despise us. Our position in the world couldn’t possibly be worse had we, in 1898, decided to not care about who ruled in Cuba. And it probably would be a lot better. At all events, it is time to give it a try. Try an American foreign policy: cross us in our interests and we’ll kill you. Not attacking our interests? Good luck and God bless.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan25 Comments

Time flies when you’re painting the house!

Anyways, Mark Kelly (D-AZ) announced he will vote to kill the filibuster…which means his pollster told him he’s doomed in November and so now is going for the MSNBC gig. So far, Sinema and Manchin are firm in keeping it, but Schumer is going to keep trying. At least some people – but not nearly enough – are openly saying that this whole “voting rights” effort is merely an effort to secure Democrat voter fraud forever. They want to win by cheating. To become what the PRI was to Mexico for 70 years – a Ruling Party which engages in sham elections to lend itself a patina of legitimacy. We’ll see if they are able to do it. Their strategy right now is to call Sinema a white supremacist. Not sure this will work.

Absent this, it looks like the Democrats are in for a blow out loss in November. Think in terms of anything D+10 or less being vulnerable. So far, 28 House Democrats have announced they won’t seek re-election.

NPR reported that Gorsuch and Sotomayor were feuding over mask wearing. Turns out this was Fake News. Because that is all NPR does.

Commies on American campuses are removing statues. You know, just like Chinese commies are doing in Hong Kong. Birds of a feather.

Insane person pushes a woman into the path of an oncoming subway train and everyone is all shocked. How can you be? We decided (well, “we” as in a few lawyers and judges) back in the 70’s that being insane isn’t sufficient cause to place a person into protective custody. That really was the first shot across the bow on where we were heading…that sane people could not, except for a very short period, put restrictions on the insane was a signpost to societal destruction. We’re all sympathetic. We don’t want insane people denied due process, abused or left to rot in filth (as all too often happened in the past) but the answer to poor care at insane asylums was to improve the asylums…not let raving nutters out. People who cannot perform basic life functions such as maintain personal cleanliness and normal social interaction belong under care…not wandering through the streets. It is brutal and inhuman to let these poor people try to take care of themselves when their mental condition is such that they cannot.

UPDATE: Well, they failed – at the end of the day, both Sinema and Manchin stood up and voted very definitely against a rules change. This not only preserves the filibuster for now, it may retain it in our system for quite a long while…but mostly because we’ll probably have 54 GOP Senators come January next and then it is probably 3 or 4 cycles before the Democrats have a realistic shot at a Senate majority.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan57 Comments

Social media can be a bit of a treasure – sometimes what passes through your TL is amazing.

A little earlier today I came across a USA Today thread discussing how we need to differentiate between pedophiles and those who abuse children. No, I’m not kidding. What this is, of course, is an attempt to start normalizing pedophilia. They have to, you see? That is, they have to do this before they all get caught. They are going to “love is love” their way into legalizing the sexual abuse of children.

Then I came across a Financial Times article written by a member of the American Enterprise Institute – you know, the libertarian think tank – which asserted that the government needs to engage in psy-ops against us to protect us from political radicalization. This article, naturally, is because the pys-ops are being exposed and they are now trying to get out in front and claim it was all for our own good.

Then a guy pointed out that at this time in 2008 Obama was saying that marriage is something between a man and a woman while here in 2022 we’ve got people seriously asserting that refusal to date a trans person is bigotry.

We are moving very fast.

They sent Pudding Brain to Georgia to give a voting rights speech – given that the Dawgs won the national championship last night you can rely on it that nobody in Georgia was paying any attention. Doubt that anyone else is, either. And key Georgia Democrats begged off from the event as they have crucial things to do…the most crucial being staying the hell away from the politically toxic Joe Biden.

So far, Manchin and Sinema are standing firm against nuking the filibuster. And Senator Kelly is also saying he has his doubt about it. Amazing what running for re-election in a purple State will do for some Democrats, huh? Some say that Schumer doesn’t even have 44 Democrat votes to kill the filibuster…it is just that they are keeping a low profile and hoping that Manchin’s opposition keeps them from having to take a stand on it. OTOH, Schumer is making noises about forcing a vote on the rules change – which is dumb on two levels. One: without Manchin and Sinema, its pointless. Two: by holding the vote he’ll force purple State Democrats to choose between giving ammo to their GOP opponents or infuriating the base. And the far left base of the Democrats is furious that they haven’t jettisoned the filibuster. My only question here is how many filing deadlines have passed: Schumer pulls the trigger too soon and a half dozen Democrats could end up drawing a far left primary opponent who will be massively funded by Blue State leftists.

Sucks to be Schumer.

Long and very good article about the opposition to paleogenetic research. This is research carried out to find DNA markers on ancient remains to see how human beings moved around. A great deal has been learned in this field and, as it turns out, humans have moved around a lot. So, why should anyone be opposed to finding this out? Because the Narrative of native tribes it that the land they were on when the crackers first showed up had always been their land. Their sacred spaces, polluted by the cruel and rapacious white man. Yeah, turns out that is all bull. The Natives moved around as much as anyone else in a fierce competition for resources. Some tribes didn’t arrive in their “ancestral” lands until after the Europeans arrived…as tribes desperately sought contact with the Europeans for trade opportunities. Often, Native tribes would fight each other for access. So, there’s your reason – we’re going to kill off this valuable and interesting science because some people who are financially invested in a garbage story about pre-Columbian North America don’t want their meal ticket taken away. Side note: the author expresses sympathy for the basic concept of respecting Native traditions. For me, I’ll respect the people living by their ancient traditions but this idea that because you have X percent pre-Columbian blood you get veto power over science is drivel. People are people; always have been, always will be. Nobody is all good. Nobody is all bad. And we should find out all about everything, if we can.

Our man Matt lays out the failure of Biden’s Covid policies.

Hollywood is burning itself alive on the altar of political correctness. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving of creeps.

I have no sympathy at all – not for any of them working. I hope they all go bankrupt and have to panhandle on the street. But, that said, there is still a market for movies – we on the right should seriously consider raising some billions of dollars and starting a movie studio. Not in Hollywood! Not in California or any of the traditional entertainment area. Maybe Tulsa or some such place. A complete new start. Now, do we go and make preachy, rightwing movies? No. But we make movies. You know: fantasy entertainment designed to divert people away from their daily lives. I can easily think of a dozen movies which range from fantasy to love story to war movies to western which, well made, would be highly successful and, perhaps, even spawn a few franchises. And I’m not just talking about my books! Though that would be cool. But here’s an example: Ann Bassett. She was an Old West rancher and some time associate of Butch Cassidy. Her basic story was fighting off other cattle barons to protect her late father’s ranch. It just screams “make a movie out of me”. Heck, imagine a top flight female star and then your supporting male role is a guy playing Butch Cassidy. Blockbuster all over it. That’s the kind of movie we should make – what hasn’t been done but which can be made fun and interesting. If it can be done, all that entertainment money stops flowing Left and starts flowing Right. Think of the possibilities.

The Republic of Stupid

Mark Noonan15 Comments

I didn’t actually watch the oral arguments at the Supreme Court over Pudding Brain’s vaccine mandates but quotes of Kagan and Sotomayor demonstrated an amazing ignorance from both of them on Covid and legal issues. They were using made up figures about Covid and Sotomayor revealed she has never read the Constitution when she wondered why if a State has a power, why doesn’t the Federal government have it?

Now, this wasn’t mere ignorance and dishonesty – both Kagan and Sotomayor were put on the Court because they are stupid and are willing to lie to support whatever the Left wants. They are there to place a veneer of legality on Progressive power grabs. But take a look at Sotomayor’s career – editor of the Yale law journal, appointed to the Federal bench by the Elder Bush, confirmed 68-31 for the Supreme Court. She doesn’t know anything and is a liar and she cruised to the heights of the American legal system with bi-partisan support.

This isn’t an accident. It is deliberate. Moronic lies are the desired outcome. Somebody along the line should have noticed that Sotomayor is a stupid liar and deep sixed her career. Nobody did. Which means either that those who advanced her are stupid liars or they knew precisely what they were getting and wanted it.

As for me, I mostly go with her ushers being stupid liars. I think we’ve had a negative feedback loop in leadership which over generations has ensured that those who advance are increasingly stupid and dishonest. This goes for both government and corporate leadership. We have a government of, by and for the stupid – who are also greedy and self assured, as stupid people usually are.

Think about this: Pudding Brain let a contract for making Covid test kits which won’t result in any kits being produced until 2024. I get it – some donor needed to be paid off and this was the selected means. But 2024? That is just stupid. Anyone who sees it knows that it is mere corruption. A clever crook would have put out that it’ll be ready right away and then explain away the delays which make it off line until 2024. Step by step, right? No: they just go on and tell us “we’re stealing money.”

So many things go on which even when you account for Fallen human nature just make no sense. We expect government projects to be shot through with corruption, especially when Democrats are in. But we don’t even get the stated result. Biden shut down the pipeline and said he’d provide green jobs for the laid off workers. How hard would it be to come up with some BS, make-work positions at ten times the cost to the taxpayer? Not hard at all. The old corrupt party bosses would have that rolling in a few weeks. These guys? A year later and nothing. It is, as I’ve said, simply stupid.

It has been going on for a while – once you start putting “stupid” as the reason, the strategy in Vietnam starts to make sense: it was run by morons who were promoted to their positions by other morons, who always worked diligently to keep out of power anyone who wasn’t stupid. And it was all reported on by other morons, so the American people never got anything other than a stupid story about a stupid strategy. And then we, the people, get to make the final say with our votes…but we’re voting on which bit of idiocy gets the green light.

I think that, in part, is what shocked the political system about Trump. Whether or no he’s the very stable genius he claimed to be, he’s not an idiot. We simply have to accept that by now: he’s been investigated top to bottom by local, State and federal agencies who are staffed with dishonest idiots who would charge him with anything, if they could find it. Nothing. He’s smart enough to keep his affairs in order…he’s not, say, Hunter Biden putting all the incriminating evidence on his laptop and then leaving it at the repair shop. He breezed into town and started asking people do to non-idiot things and it simply scared the heck out of them. This is Trump vs his opponents:

But how do we escape? We’re stuck in the asylum and morons are running the show. Our best bet is that alternative media starts to really take off – because once we do have an independent media (Fox does not count) then it really just becomes a matter of pointing out how dumb they all are. Ridicule is a powerful tool, after all. But, meanwhile, we’re stuck in the Republic of Stupid, trying to work our way around the Idiocracy.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan12 Comments

Ted Cruz got himself into some trouble – he described the 1/6 people as terrorists. This, as it turns out, wasn’t the first time he had done so. He had first done it back on 1/6/2021. It probably passed unnoticed in the hubbub of the time. But on 1/6/2022, it was a massively bad misreading of the room. It could very well sink his political career.

I’ve been saying for years that for Republicans the prime rule is to never speak ill of other Republicans. There is no upside to it – this is because the Democrats never speak ill of their own. Not in any real sense: they circle the wagons or remain silent when one of theirs does something wrong. Only when really pressed on it will they actually condemn a fellow Democrat who has gone wrong and it is usually just the once and as a precursor to an attack on Republicans. What must be discarded is any sense that Democrats have morals – a sense of honor, of patriotism, of some shred of concern for something outside their desire for power, money and position. They don’t have such. And, so, joining them in condemning a fellow Republican means you’re just helping amoral cretins win the battle. Don’t do it.

This does not mean everyone has to approve of all actions by all Republicans everywhere. It just means don’t attack them. If you feel a strong desire to attack a Republican who has done something wrong or stupid, attack a Democrat instead. Use that to get the urge out of your system.

This is especially true right now where the base of the GOP feels certain it was cheated out of 2020 victory and is equally certain that at least some elements of the GOP helped the Democrats to steal the election. Joining the Democrats in an attack on ours merely tells the base that you are not on their side – and that is a deadly thing to do right now. Ted Cruz may still be able to get himself out of this – he’s a clever man. But he’ll have to make a firm assertion that he’s on the side of the base – his best route to this is to admit he was wrong to call the 1/6 terrorists and to then condemn the treatment of the 1/6 detainees. As a matter of simple justice, they must be released forthwith – given that Antifa is almost entirely skating for massively worse actions all through 2020.

Meanwhile, the Democrats also completely misread the room: they and their MSM lapdogs treated the anniversary as if it was a 9/11 of Pear Harbor remembrance: something that is viewed almost universally the same by almost all Americans. But at least half – and perhaps much more – view 1/6 as the righteous anger of people who have been pushed around for too long. Their ceremonies looked ridiculous…and people are far more concerned with high gas prices and empty store shelves.

There’s a Progressive lady on Twitter who has been essentially live-streaming her red-pilling. She still claims the Progressive mantle, but as her city of San Francisco has become unlivable, she’s giving voice to rational criticisms of the Progressive policies which have wrecked the city. To her most recent thread, I noted that consciously or not, the rulers of San Francisco have adopted the Marxist-Leninist legal dogma that all crime is the result of an unjust system – that if you are robbed, then it is you who are the criminal as you have benefited from the unjust system. The robber is just redistributing your ill gotten gains. Lenin’s infamous phrases, “loot the looters” and “who whom?” are being put into effect – that last bit is his requirement that we take into consideration not the crime, itself, but who is committing the crime and against whom. My wonder: will more Progressives wake up as the Twitter lady has? If so, elections going forward can get very interesting.

Georgia is launching an investigation into ballot harvesting. My guess: the Powers that Be there realize they messed up by allowing the steal in 2020 and are trying to mend fences with an infuriated GOP base.

I got an account on Gettr: the latest entry to replace Twitter and Facebook. Of all of them, Gettr is by far the best – still not nearly as much traffic as Twitter, of course, but very easy to use…and they claim they won’t be banning people for giving Progressives hurt feelings. We’ll see. Meanwhile, the word is that Trump will launch his social media ap in February.

2022

Mark Noonan29 Comments

First off: always listen to this on New Years Day.

That done: what the heck is it doing being 2022? One of my granddaughters turns 10 later this month…I do remember my 10th birthday very vividly. That was 1974. I was fascinated by the whole thing of being 10 years old. And I remember figuring things out – that I’d be 20 in 1984. That I would turn 36 in 2000. 2022? How the heck did that happen?

Now I get to figure out things like if I live as long as my Dad my expiration date comes in 2047. Of course, make it as long as Grandpa then I’ll be around 2052. As long as my Grand-aunt Alice, 2063. But, slice it any way you like, there’s more time behind than in front. This doesn’t disturb me. Maybe it should, but it doesn’t. 57 years is already a long time: we’re just tacking on at this point. Will have to point out to the granddaughter that if she shakes my hand then she’s one handshake away from 1896, when my grandfather was born – that might be an interesting point for her to make with her grandchildren 40 or 50 years from now.

The country is a complete mess – the only thing that keeps China from attacking is the remaining uncertainty of whether or not we’d use nuclear weapons if our backs go to the wall. As of this moment, I doubt we could raise a military force sufficient to win against any 1st or 2nd rate power. We’re too divided and our military leadership is perfectly useless. I don’t know what they teach at the service academies these days, but it certainly isn’t whatever is needed to win a war. And any war fighting capacity which is imparted is shoved out by the time they rise to the top where the only concerns are pleasing their political masters and feathering their retirement nest. And the core military power of our nation – the lower and middle class people outside the deep blue areas: do they want to fight for America as it is right now? Do you want one of your family members to fight under these generals and admirals, with China Joe as CinC? It always astonished me how various parts of France, left and right, didn’t want to stand up and fight against Hitler – but these days I perhaps understand a little better. They should, of course, have fought: but at the time, it seemed to many of them that fighting for France merely perpetuated a corrupt and useless Ruling Class.

Earlier today I paid about $180.00 for $100.00 in groceries: I don’t know exactly what they use to judge inflation but I suspect that the numbers, like all government numbers these days, aren’t giving us the rock solid truth. It wouldn’t be in Team Pudding Brain’s interest to show inflation as high as I figure it must be…prices are getting out of control. Bad news: there are indications that we’ve only seen the start of the inflationary surge. Remember, these things take a little while to work into the system. From what I’ve read, for instance, the price of fertilizer is vastly higher…which means the farmers are going to have to charge more for, say, corn. That will make it more expensive to get your Doritos, but also more expensive for everything that uses corn…and its a lot of things. On and on it will go, pushing one thing after another. I hope inflation moderates: for me and for everyone, but I worry that it won’t, at least not any time soon. There is too much money out there right now and goods and services are getting harder and harder to procure.

Meanwhile, they’re moving what must be hundreds of thousands of illegals all over the country – sure, they are hoping that changing demographics will help them (but, will it? Polls show Latino voters aren’t keen on pronoun wars) but, still, what is the real point here? It could just be that they’re stupid…they just believe they can’t stop people from crossing and now they have to move them somewhere. They might do a vaccine mandate for air travel, but no vaccine mandate for crossing illegally. We’re in the Twilight Zone of a dead Ruling Class still holding the levers of power.

One thing I am fairly confident about is that they don’t know how hated they are. The Ruling Class, I mean. And not just by us: plenty of far left people despise them as well. Promises were made, after all. Stupid promises, in our view, but still promises – go Resist the Bad Orange Man and when he’s out you’ll get a cancellation of student debt and free college…and a host of other things as well. They aren’t delivering. Team Pudding Brain let a contract out for an $84 million facility to make Covid tests…which won’t start operating until 2024. Hunter is making bank selling his “art”. Nancy Pelosi just bought a retirement home in Florida…while in her San Francisco hard core liberals are starting to buy guns as police protection fails utterly (and not just because of “defund the police” – even the police they have are, apparently, turning a blind eye to crime. Why wouldn’t they? If they arrest someone and if it can be even willfully misconstrued as bad by the cops, their lives are ruined. Better to just drive by and pretend you didn’t see it). Everything is falling apart -but we see that they are doing well and are ignoring the Covid restrictions (AOC was caught in Miami this past week while her New York endured another round of Covid lockdowns).

What will come of this hatred remains to be seen – but we might get a very strong taste of it just 11 months from now. Polls are, as usual, nearly useless, but they are bad for Democrats. But for me, just looking at how things are, if I were Chair of the RNC I’d make sure I had GOP candidates even in D+10 districts. Literally anything is possible.

Meanwhile, I write – Kings and Queen will be out very shortly. That is Book V. But Heirs (Book VI) and Empress (Book VII) are 90% done. I’m about 1/3 done with The Crimson Blade (Book VIII) and I’ve already made a start on the still untitled Book IX. Meanwhile, still working on Aleste and the Icecrystal Dragons and putting ideas together for Survival (an end-of-the-world novel, which may turn out to have zombies in it) and Last Strand, the working title for a thriller about a Chinese plot against America. I write because I enjoy it. Because I believe the stories are good. And because when I’m in those worlds, I’m not watching the enslavement of the world and the destruction of the United States.

I hope you have your escape from today! If you don’t, get one – we’re in for a rocky ride. I think, with God’s grace, will come out the other side ok, but we are living in the Chinese curse of interesting times. Things are going to get stranger and perhaps far more dangerous – but with that faith in God, we’ll get through it all.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan36 Comments

So, today Pudding Brain announced that there is no federal solution to Covid. The guy who ran on shutting down the virus has given up.

Of course, it never could be shut down – the idea that if we stayed home and then masked up when we went out we’d eventually eliminate the virus was drivel. And every doctor knew it was drivel. It was all an op to get the Bad Orange Man out. That plus cheating which would make Stalin blush did the trick.

Related: Dad got Pudding Brain to say “Let’s Go Brandon” live on air – this wouldn’t have been a big thing but the Left had a nervous breakdown about it. It has been glorious to behold on social media.

Desmond Tutu died a few days ago – one of the lesser known things about him was that he held rabidly anti-Semitic opinions. This is actually no surprise at all – such views have been common on the Left for a long while. The tragedy of South Africa was always Apartheid – by setting up that hideous system, the white people of South Africa allowed anyone who would stand against it to be cloaked in impervious moral armor…no matter how otherwise nasty they were. I was surprised that Mandela emerged from prison with a greatness of heart…that he voluntarily relinquished power is very rare in African history. But his movement was chock full of very wicked people who were given a complete pass because they stood against an injustice. The lesson to be learned here is that just because someone is opposed to one sort of evil doesn’t mean they are good guys.

CNN is a dying network – and I don’t think the bosses know what to do about it. It could be they don’t want to do anything about it. The cure for what ails CNN isn’t to become another Fox, but it must become what it isn’t: a news organization. Through the Trump years, lying on behalf of the Democrats kept things afloat a bit. Fox still routinely beat CNN in the ratings. But that lying on behalf of Democrats also alienated all non-Democrats who used to watch…and as far as being liberal lunatics goes, MSNBC simply does a better job of it. If CNN were to change itself into a place of hard, factual news, it would gain a fiercely loyal audience. But to do this, they would have to tell the truth…and I don’t think the people there are capable of doing that.

The US government chartered flights over Christmas to move illegals around the country – basically seeding them in areas far from the border where it is far less likely that any agency concerned will bother with them. This is, of course, simple lawlessness on the part of the government. Hard as it will be, we must make a commitment to deport every illegal who arrived after January 20th, 2021. Sure, the rest of them as well – but those who came after that date must be made an example of: we must instruct the world that just because we get an idiotic President it doesn’t mean you’ll get away with it.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan39 Comments

Secret Service is saying that $100 billion in Covid relief has be stolen. Rely on it: it is orders of magnitude higher than that. We do have to fault Trump a bit here as well – as this thing came in, the money spigot was turned on full blast. Pudding Brain has put that into overdrive, but we have to admit where it started.

Of course the money was going to be stolen. The primary purpose, for those in the know, was to steal. We didn’t really need to spend much on this – we did, after all, have a perfectly functioning economy and health care system when this started. At most we just needed a slight boost in what we were already spending. But the bonanza of cash simply thrown out the Treasury windows was and is the opportunity of a life time. Couple years from now and we will see a few indictments – people who stole beyond their station or who didn’t divvy up the way the bosses wanted. But my bet is that half, at least, of what has and will be spent was nothing but graft.

The dirty little secret of our government is that it spends so much money that nobody really knows what is going on. How can anyone keep an eye on trillions of dollars being spent? Do you realize how easy it is to divert hundreds of billions when you’ve got a flood of money that large?

Some rumors that Team Hillary is in Durham’s crosshairs. Hope so, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Cocaine Mitch, talking with Hugh Hewitt, basically said he’s asking Manchin to switch to the GOP – adding that he’s discussing whether Manchin would keep his chairmanship of Energy. I’m a bit surprised – not that it might be happening, but that it would happen now. I’d have thought Mitch would wait until well into 2022. OTOH, the Democrats are already a toxic brand and McConnell back in the Majority Leader spot shuts down all Democrat legislative programs. We’ll see how it comes out.

Donald Trump says he’ll hold a press conference on January 6th. A lot of people are downright frightened of this – I’m not. What better way to take the entire spotlight away from whatever the DNC/MSM will be doing that day? If he calls for the release of the 1/6 detainees, then I’ll figure its for sure that he’s running in 2024.

Since Covid hit, 5 million Americans obtained firearms. The people are arming in a replay of the Great Fear of 1789 in France. America is a tinder box right now – keeping in mind that our side is mostly made up of people who just want to be left alone. The problem – for the Left – is that if such people ever decide it is time to fight or die, then they tend to be quite brutal in settling accounts.

China bought Hollywood and then helped Hollywood destroy itself. It is the Chinese business model. China merely wanted to get itself going – so that it can provide pop-culture product on the global market…not so American pop-culture could come to dominate China. Now that China has got what it wanted, the Hollywood dreams of releasing American movies in the Chinese market have faded away. Hopefully this will force American studios to start making product designed for specifically for the American market. No more Superman who refuses to fight for the American way, as it were.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan19 Comments

Some are saying the Omnicron variant is our off ramp: that it is, apparently, a mild version and it will allow the Democrats to declare victory and move on – but, I don’t think so. All I can see is that they seem to be quadrupling down on it.

We can assume part of this is mere stupidity – our Ruling Elites are simply not very bright. But in addition to that, I think they believe they can’t back off on it now. It would be too much of an admission they were wrong. And, of course, the more Covid fear they keep up in the Deep Blue areas, the more voter fraud they can justify…and there are indications of an extremely toxic political environment for Democrats. They aren’t doing well anywhere. Can’t remember exactly where it was, but it was a State legislative district in New England which the Democrats held in a special election last week…but their margin of victory dropped from something like 20 points last year to 3 or 4 this year. Meanwhile, quite a number of these specials are going our way.

To give a real idea how it is going for those who are keeping up the Covid fear – Boris Johnson’s Tories lost a by election in Shropshire a couple days ago. The seat has been Tory held for nearly 200 years. The swing against the Tories was 37 points. Lots of things are going on, but 99 Tories just voted in Parlaiment against Johnson’s vaccine mandates – it only became law because Labour backed it. A Tory government dependent upon Labour votes is a Tory government on the ropes.

Science guys say they found water in a canyon on Mars – frozen, naturally, but apparently quite a bit of it and right below the surface. This is important – we know there is a lot of ice in Mars polar regions but human colonization of Mars, if it ever happens, will be vastly easier in the central regions of Mars. Finding water in such a place makes it a prime location for human exploration. Still, though, the real problems remain: radiation and gravity. Mars has no magnetic field and so solar radiation hits the planet at a vastly higher rate than the surface of Earth and, of course, Mars has a much lower gravity and we simply don’t know what long term low gravity will do to us.

Wikipedia is getting set to purge entries on Communist mass killings – I’ve long said that Wikipedia, if the information is in any way political, is an unreliable source. The Commies who run it hate that people can tell the truth about Communism and so they’ve long edited things to downplay Communist atrocities. This is something we can fix: all we need do is make our own Wikipedia.

A Lutheran church is having drag queen prayer time – because, of course. It is astonishing how fast this all came about. I mean, figure the odds that biology would result in anything more than, say, 0.0001% of people having a divergence between their biology and their perception of their gender. But now something like 20% of youngsters are claiming to be at least somewhere on the trans spectrum. It is now fashionable – and this means it will recede, but not before a lot of people are permanently screwed up because at the age of 6 they decided to play with a doll instead of a fire truck.

Governor DeSantis is trying to ban CRT in Florida. This is the way. The bottom line is we can keep the USA or we can keep CRT: the two are incompatible. It must be remembered that the right to free speech is an individual right, not a government right. The government only has the right to say what we tell it to say through laws enacted by our representatives. A government-funded school is the voice of the people, not its own voice. If any teacher wants to teach something the people don’t want taught, they are free to start their own entirely private school…but we, the people, have the right to demand an end to Communist indoctrination in the schools we own.

Some cops proudly put up a picture of $100,000 in cash they had seized and it is causing a stir: the woman they took the cash from wasn’t charged with any crime and she isn’t, as far as we can tell, the target of any criminal investigation. She was merely carrying the cash – and the cops took it. This is civil asset forfeiture…and if the lady wants her money back, she will have to sue the police: there is no mechanism in the law to merely return seized money.

To be sure, carrying a hundred grand around is a bit eye raising – but it isn’t illegal and the police must not have the power to seize an asset unless a court of law has determined it was used in a criminal activity. I can barely go along with freezing assets of someone accused of a crime but the authorities must not be able to take a red cent until after a conviction. What the law allows at this time is mere theft by the cops – and while 100 grand is a lot, they seize any amount they can get their hands on and use the flimsiest excuses for doing it. I’ve read that in some jurisdictions the average amount seized is just a few hundred dollars.

The concept behind forfeiture was that it would be a telling blow against drug lords – but I don’t think we’ve run out of drug lords. Meanwhile, I’ve read many cases were innocent people had their property taken. It is past time to end this farce.

Portland, OR has been ruined. The Left destroyed it. On purpose. Because they believe that anything good in the United States is the result of theft and oppression by a systemically racist/sexist/homophobic Capitalist-Imperialist genocidal system. But most people still aren’t understanding the on purpose part of it. More and more are, but there’s still a pretty steep learning curve. The Left wants chaos and destruction because that will bring down what they view as an evil system…and upon the ruins they will erect whatever warmed over Marxist drivel they believe at the moment. This isn’t an accident. This isn’t a failed policy. This is what is desired – and until we fully internalize this fact, we’re always going to be at a disadvantage fighting the Left.