Author: Mark Noonan

Three Weeks Left!

Mark Noonan56 Comments

If you need a poll to make you feel good, Zogby has it Biden +3 over Trump…which works out, at least, to an easy EC win for Trump. Zogby was pretty good in 2016: but I don’t trust any polls this year. Even if they are being honest, I really do think they are just missing some huge shifts in the electorate.

Keep in mind that Hillary only got about 340,000 fewer votes than Obama did in 2012 but this worked out to dropping the Democrat total from 51.1% to 48.2%. Trump got 2 million more votes than Romney, and that was all the difference because of who and where they were: white, working class voters in the Midwest. And sure they frauded up Hillary’s total, but they also frauded up Obama’s…so, it probably all worked out in the wash. The bottom line isn’t that Hillary did so bad, but that Trump did so good. The joker in the deck for 2020 is can Trump add black and Latino working class votes to his white working class total? There are some indications he is: but it doesn’t show up in the polls. If Trump can push his African-American vote north of 10% and get near or over 40% of the Latino vote, this could end up being quite a different election than anyone expects.

Another unknowable is that in 2012, about 2.2 million third party ballots were cast but it rocketed up to 7.7 million in 2016. Those 5.5 million votes: where do they go? If its about 50/50, then it doesn’t matter. But if its 60/40 for one over the other, it could be decisive. They didn’t vote Trump in 2016 because they just couldn’t go there – but they also rejected Establishment Hillary. Do they now go, “I guess the Establishment is great” or “well, Trump turned out to not be nearly as bad as I thought he’d be”? If I had to bet, I ‘d bet the latter. Especially as I’ll bet of the 5.5 million extra votes, a huge majority were traditional GOP votes – some are now gone forever because of the evolution of Never Trump to I’m a Democrat has been completed. But how many? There is no way to know – and, once again, this probably won’t show in polling.

Voter registration trends have been remarkable, and almost all in the GOP’s favor. We’ve probably lost Colorado and Virginia for a generation or more, but trends indicate we may be on the way to locking down Florida, North Carolina and Ohio while making deep inroads in Pennsylvania and holding our own in Arizona (for a while there, AZ voter trends were against the GOP…but the past 18 months or so have seen a resurgence of the GOP so we’re now back to par for 2016). As for early voting and VBM: I’ve seen this and that. Most of what I’ve seen indicates some good news for the GOP…but I place small weight on it: just because a ballot was returned by a person of a particular party, doesn’t mean it’s going your way.

And that is another thing which I think the pollsters are missing: the number of Democrats who are now functional Republicans. Voter registration trends indicate that people are far more switching GOP to Dem than Dem to GOP…but not everyone is going to bother themselves to switch registration, especially if there isn’t an intense primary battle to be fought. Just because a State has a Dem voter advantage of, say, 200,000 doesn’t mean you’ve got that many Democrats. You’ve just got a lot of people who haven’t bothered to make it official. But their returned VBM ballot goes into the Democrat pile…until it is opened and counted.

Trump, himself, seems to be in a good mood. His team exudes confidence. OTOH, Team Biden is floating Hillary for SecDef and Cuomo for AG – measuring the drapes, as it were. Or just trying to score some excitement in a flailing campaign? I don’t really know. Biden’s campaign is ridiculous: he’s clearly too old for it. He could get bigger crowds, of course: but that means more advance planning and that means he’s committed to be there…but if he’s sundowning just before showtime, it would be a disaster to have 10,000 people waiting for a guy who either can’t show, or shows up clearly senile. So, small venues and only little advance notice (one of his events in Arizona literally had no one show up for it). If Biden wins, it means that a massive campaign of lies can get just about anyone the Ruling Class wants over the top: this would bode ill for our chances long term.

Biden won’t be forced out right away if he wins, by the way: not if Harris has anything to say about it. She’ll want it as soon as possible, but she’ll also want two terms for herself: and that means Joe goes in January (highly unlikely) or Harris waits until January 21st, 2023 (a VP taking over for less than two years of a term is still eligible to be elected twice). No one can move against Joe unless Harris signs off on it: that is the way the 25th is written. VP can’t do it alone, but no one can do it without VP. So, Joe wins and it becomes Harris’ decision on when to act…unless Joe dies. But as long as he isn’t dead, they’ll keep him in there until Harris is ready and all deals have been cut.

Will they pack the courts? Only if they also get the Senate and even a Trump loss doesn’t ensure that. Everyone has signed off on the GOP losing CO and AZ while the GOP gains Alabama: net loss of one and the Democrats need two more. They’re making their play in ME, AK, SC and NC for those seats. I doubt they’ll win any of them. OTOH, there is the outside chance the GOP holds on in AZ and maybe even scores a miracle win in MI. Be that as it may: no Senate, no packing. If they get the Senate, they will try: but the move is unpopular and the GOP will fight tooth and nail to prevent it: this is something even the Establishment squishes would go to the mat on. OTOH, a Majority Leader Schumer has a Dem-friendly map for 2022; only three Democrat seats will be at any risk. But if the Senate is 51-49 come January, which Democrat walks the plank to pack the courts? In other words: packing is more easily said than done.

Now, to end on a high note: suppose Trump wins? It means that for the next four years Trump will continue to deregulate and will have years where he can weed out the worst of the bureaucrats: that is the most important thing he can do. It rolls back Democrat power and allows our side to compete on a more level playing field. And we’ll need that: if Trump wins, then we’ll have to do one of the hardest things in American politics: win three in a row in 2024. It rarely happens. It rarely happens even when the economy is good and the incumbent is popular. In recent times, only Reagan managed to pull it off. Clinton, Bush and Obama all failed to install their chosen successor into office. The person the Dems will nominate in 2024 will be very far left – and so we’re going to be against the wall trying to stop it: getting rid of backstabbers in DC will help us a lot.

Anyways: be of good cheer! God actually gets to decide how things turn out in the long run.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan36 Comments

I hope you guys like my fiction more than my non-fiction…because I’m definitely liking fiction more! Nearly done with Battles, the sequel to Secrets (last night I did a big bit on the final battle between the good guys and the bad guys; its quite exciting!) and I’m already way into Shadow Army, which takes our heroes six years after Battles and continues the story. Shadow Army came up because the Mrs invented the evil creatures in it…she just suddenly thought about them and before I knew it, I had 25,000 words down.

The Democrats and the MSM (but I repeat myself) are sticking to the 2016 script relentlessly. They are even now on “GOP insiders say Trump is looking for a graceful exit and a symbolic win”. Hey, who knows? Maybe they’re on to something this time…but I suspect they are just churning out what they are told to churn out by the DNC.

I’m thinking we need to ban political polling: just get rid of it. It doesn’t inform any more, if it ever did. It is now a mere tool to drive a Narrative and try to convince people that reality is different from what they can see right in front of them. If we did that, then the Experts would actually have to go out and see what’s happening before they could tell us what they think is going on. Now, they just refer to the polls and call it a day – and call you an idiot if you don’t respect the Holy Polls.

Trump’s White House speech as called a “peaceful protest in favor of law and order”…and as we know peaceful protests can’t spread the ‘Rona, it was all good. And it was also pretty amazing: mostly because of the number of “Blexit” people involved (Black Exit: black people leaving the Democrats. We’ll see how that comes out: there are some indicators that Trump will score pretty high in minority communities. But, unlike the Experts, I think I’ll wait for the votes to be cast and counted before deciding what will happen.

Joe says we voters “don’t deserve” to know his views on court packing. Which, of course, means we know: he’ll pack it in an instant if given the chance. But, it doesn’t poll well: it really is just a tiny minority of really butt hurt liberals upset that Trump got to appoint 3, so they want to appoint 4. Joking aside, it is a danger to the Republic because if they did pack it to a 7/6 liberal majority, that Court would rule any way the Democrats wanted at the moment. Better to avoid that by keeping Trump in the White House and Cocaine Mitch running the Senate. This issue is causing some heartburn for Democrats – in both the AZ and CO Senate races, the GOP incumbents scored pretty heavily in debate by getting both their Democrat opponents to refuse to answer the question. I just have to think that voters aren’t going to like this “you don’t deserve to know” attitude. Could make some tight races flip our way.

Seems like the kooks set up by the FBI in the “kidnap Whitmer” scheme have one thing in common: they don’t like Trump. No surprise: real 2A, Conservative militia types are law-abiding patriots. We will fight if our lives and liberty depend on it, but we’re not lunatics…you know, like liberals are. My view of this is that the FBI got wind of these losers and then egged them on until they broke a law…all so they could blame Trump. As far as that goes, it worked: to the end of time, liberals will assert that MAGA-hatted Trumpsters plotted to kidnap Whitmer.

Brennan and the Collapse of America

Mark Noonan73 Comments

John Brennan Tweeted out an announcement of his forthcoming book. My response to that was to Tweet:

John, you are precisely the sort of person who has f***ed everything up for the past 75 years.

Leaving aside his clear role in trying to destroy President Trump, the fact remains that Brennan spent 25 years at CIA, often in the top reaches with access to the President (he was Clinton’s daily briefer). He was there, possessing the data and offering the advice for decades, winding up as Obama’s CIA director. So, when people like President Clinton, President Bush and President Obama said they were relying on “advice”, Brennan was that “advice.” The President gets to make the final call, of course, but only between options provided by the guys giving the advice. In reality, permanent bureaucrats like Brennan are the people who behind the scenes run our country.

How’s that been working out?

It is a rare leader who can get the bureaucracy to do anything it doesn’t want to do. Now, to be sure, most people who rise to the top in politics are part of the team: there really isn’t much friction between a President or Prime Minister and the permanent staff. Most of the time, they are on the same page…but in those rare instances where the boss wants something that the bureaucracy doesn’t, the bureaucracy comes out on top. This is usually be delay: back-burner it until the boss losses interest. To force a bureaucracy to move, you must pester it.

Churchill was like that: he was forever simply calling up the bureaucrats or sending them notes demanding to know the status of the order he gave. Eventually, just to get him off their back, they’d do as ordered. As for President Trump, he is only just now getting a measure of control over the bureaucracy. Even more so than Churchill, Trump is the outsider and he’s got a whole bunch of plans the bureaucracy opposes. Even absent the partisan angle, they’d be fighting him tooth and nail. That the bureaucracy is largely made up of hyper-partisan Democrats just makes the battle more intense.

And Trump’s fight here is crucial to the future of the United States: we must excise the Brennans. They simply have to go. Not because they’re partisan Democrats. Not even because they are corrupt. They have to go because they are no good. They suck. They are lousy at their jobs. They don’t really understand anything. Brennan has a degree in Political Science and a Masters in Government. There is, of course, no science in politics and what the heck is a Master of Government? What, exactly, have you learned? I don’t know: but the output of people with such degrees is pretty bad. Our government and military is littered with people with degrees in political science and government and what we get are the Department of Education and military plans which send guys to fight terrorists and then charge them with war crimes when they kill terrorists.

This doesn’t seem to be an ideal situation.

Right now, as we’ve all seen, just about every poll shows Biden in a walkover. Even Rasmussen has Biden up big (though, unlike the rest of the pollsters, Rasmussen is quick to point out that at this exact time in 2016 they had Hillary up big). I’m still getting voter registration data and VBM return data which indicates great strength for Trump out there. Add to that the spontaneous demonstrations in favor of Trump and we look at the polls and then file them away. But win or lose, the key thing for us is to get after and get rid of the Brennans in our government. If we have to fire everyone and start over, we can’t refuse the duty. We can’t persist as a free nation if our bureaucracy is both incompetent and corrupt.

These people took a United States in 1945 from the pinnacle of power to a debtor nation which is dependent upon Chinese tyrants for its manufactured goods. Not only that, but because we have become economically dependent upon foreign tyrants, these tyrants are more and more calling the tune in the United States. For fear of losing money in China, corporation after corporation toes the Chinese line…and because the tyrants have money, ever more Americans are willing to tailor their public actions to suit Chinese desires. Either these people go, or the United States goes.

I expect Trump to win on November 3rd. That will be great – but even four more years of Trump won’t do what we need. We need twenty or thirty years of power to reform this nation from top to bottom, and our problem is to figure out how to get that.

Trump vs ‘Rona Open Thread

Mark Noonan52 Comments

How will Trump’s illness play out? I have no idea; less than an hour ago he was out driving around Walter Reed greeting the crowd of supporters which has been out there since he arrived…and this is in DC, which means people came from a ways away to see him…which does seem to be an enthusiasm indicator.

The Left, as usual, was nauseating about it: glad that he was sick, hoping he would die. This did not in any way surprise anyone: and I’ll just say it – they are in favor of abortion and so have no actual moral sense. You can’t be in favor of abortion and have the slightest concern for human life. The end. This is different, by the way, from someone who is just unwilling to ban abortion…but the Left isn’t like that: they believe abortion is health care and a good thing. So, they are depraved.

I’m thinking that the disgusting reaction of the Left to the President’s illness is going to play very poorly out there.

The MSM put out a poll which shows Biden up 14 – getting a huge bounce from the debate. Which is stupid: even if you didn’t like Trump’s performance, you couldn’t be at all impressed with Joe’s bumbling performance. Aside: this same MSM poll had Hillary up 14 a week later in the 2016 cycle. In fact, someone screenshotted the October polls for 2016 and only one had Trump in the lead…and most had Hillary up huge. Maybe they’re right this time, but it is to be doubted.

We’re a month away. In 30 days, all questions will be answered. Either Trump wins, or Biden does. I’m back to being very firm about a Trump victory…a guy with ‘rona heading out to greet the crowd isn’t going to lose to a guy who put a lid on the day’s activities before most of us west coast time people woke up this morning.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan105 Comments

Looks like Joe will show for the debate tomorrow: though, of course, don’t think he won’t back out if his meds aren’t kicking in on time.

I’ve seen some prep work done in Bluecheck social media to allow Biden to go after Trump’s kids: this to deflect from Hunter Biden, with the most recent revelation that he got $3.5 million from the wife of the mayor of Moscow. As someone pointed out: maybe the Russian dossier was about Hunter and they just put Trump’s name into it?

Not only does Mitch have the votes to confirm ACB, it looks like they might move this one right along and allow Trump to swear her in before the election – which could be crucial if it is close. Personally, I don’t think it will be. I think that however it goes, it’ll be big one way or the other. Either people will reaffirm their rejection of the Establishment in big numbers, or they’ll reject Trump by big numbers. I’m hopeful for Trump, of course: and I still see voter registration and early voting numbers which indicate Trump might have this. But, we’ll see!

But, with Pelosi wondering if Democrats can control 26 House delegations, my view is that the Democrats know they are sinking fast and are desperately hoping for something so screwed up that they can fraud their way to the White House. And why 26 House delegations? Because if the House picks the President, then each State gets 1 vote. Right now, it is GOP 26, Dems 22 and 2 split. And this, mind you, is with a Democrat House majority – and even if the House remains Democrat, there is little chance that four delegations will flip.

Trump’s taxes – which, by the way, he paid millions; don’t buy the MSM lie that he only paid $750.00 – are just one in a huge series of “bombshells” which the DNC/MSM will drop on us now until Election Day. This particular one was likely timed so that the debate moderators tomorrow can dwell on it and thus not have time to discuss Hunter’s dealings.

Cindy McCain, fresh from spitting on us by endorsing Biden, has been named to Biden’s transition team. If Joe wins, maybe there’s a cabinet slot for her…the bottom line is this is who we used to have. And I’m glad their gone.

More evidence of water on Mars – which is cool and no matter how you slice it, it makes exploration of Mars a lot easier in the long run. But I still doubt humans can live there long-term: there are too many hazards for us to overcome. Until we can figure out gravity and a sure-fire way to block solar radiation, brief visits will be all we can do.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan51 Comments

With Romney’s announcement that he’ll vote for the nominee, it looks like Cocaine Mitch has the votes lined up to replace RBG…and I suspect he had it all along. I can’t imagine a scenario where Trump and McConnell hadn’t gamed this out twenty ways to Sunday. Everyone knew RBG was dying and so there were probably contingency plans covering every possible way that could come out.

I have seen some rather heated Twitter fights over just whom Trump should pick – who would be better in a political sense, who would be more reliable when it came time to rule. I decided not to have a dog in those fights because, in the end, it doesn’t matter: Trump is the guy who gets to pick and we’re all just going to have to swing in behind it when it comes. I think most of us are simply happy that a mindless vote for whatever is fashionable on the Left will be replaced with someone who might actually rule on what the Constitution says.

Democrats are threatening to pack the Court if we get this. Meh: I expect them, if they win it all, to not only pack the Court but add DC and Puerto Rico as States and then simply do whatever they want as they set up an unconstitutional electoral system which ensures we can’t win. The stakes really are high in this election: and only a crushing defeat of the Democrats will allow a chance for sane Democrats to recapture their party. Lose to them this year, and the insane Democrats will be fully in command.

Team DNC/Biden did have an awesome August for fundraising…and this generated stories of Trump/RNC being broke and desperate. Well, the Trump/RNC combo is doing fine and breaking fundraising records. Once again, never believe the MSM. They lie all the time about everything.

The Silent Majority is starting to find it’s voice. Let’s face it: stating in public that you support Trump is a risk. You could be physically attacked. Your property could be vandalized. Heck, you could even lose your job. But, now, more and more people are putting out the Trump sign and joining spontaneous rallies in favor of the President. The vote November 3rd might be very different from what we expect.

I don’t know if Kim Klacik can actually win in her overwhelmingly Democrat district – but she should.

The policies she advocates are not only Conservative, they are almost Distributist, as well. Only an insane person – you know, a Democrat – could object to them.

Idiocy on the Basis of Sex

Mark Noonan14 Comments

President Trump gave out both a very nice off the cuff statement about RBG’s death as well as an excellent official statement. I am not bound by such conventions.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a relentlessly baleful influence upon the American body politic. She was one of the spear points in the Feminist effort to enshrine into law and custom the bizarre notion that only things men do have any merit. As Chesterton pointed out: feminism is the assertion that a woman is a slave if she serves her husband but free if she serves her employer.

RBG’s great claim to fame is, of course, her work to end discrimination “on the basis of sex”. They even made a movie about her titled just that. And all over social media the past 24 hours I’ve seen liberals bemoaning the fate of women’s equality now that RBG is gone.

Permit me to point out something:

Discrimination is not wrong. It is ok to discriminate. Not only is it ok, but you, yourself, do it all the time. You discriminate about who your friends are. Which family members you’ll regularly invite over. What you’ll have for lunch. And, hey, it isn’t just you: the NBA definitely discriminates all the live, long day against short guys. And women. And women.

There is, after all, a WNBA. You probably first heard of it when the players walked off the court during the anthem recently. You might have been vaguely aware of it before that event. But why, decades after RBG rescued us from discrimination against women, is there a WNBA? Because of discrimination. Because the NBA discriminates against anyone who can’t go toe to toe on the court against LeBron James. Say what you want about James (and I’ve said a lot; nearly all bad), the bottom line is he’s one heck of a basketball player…and any team which can’t put up people to contain him will get blown out. And, given this, not a single NBA team has signed a female player. And this is because even the cream of the WNBA crop aren’t up to being benchwarmers in the NBA.

Because they are women.

And that’s gotta hurt. But only dumb people; so, you know: the left.

What is wrong isn’t discrimination, but unjust discrimination. If you were to discriminate against someone capable of doing something simply because of their race or gender or creed that would be wrong. That would be something worth fighting against. And maybe early on RBG and the other feminists were fighting a good fight. But that was a long, long time ago. Once laws specifically prohibiting women from doing what men do were discarded, that was the end of the fight for equality. If you can try to do it, then you are free. That you end up not being able to do it would be either because of some failure on your part or that you lack some vital talent for the job. What the WNBA players lack, uniformly, is being 6 foot, 9 inches tall, 250 pounds of brute male muscle and skill. It is no shame that a WNBA player can’t compete with James; it is just a fact of life.

And everyone deals with it. No one really gets heartache over the fact that women aren’t placed on NBA teams or NFL teams of MLB teams. We all know that, person for person, the chances of a woman being able to compete on that level are nearly zero. Maybe someday we’ll find a woman who can do it, but it’ll be the rarest of rare birds. Meanwhile, it is just for there to be discrimination like that.

But outside professional sports, we’ve seen some rather odd things. We know that a woman can’t be an NFL linebacker and everyone is cool with that…but if you try to say a woman can’t be a combat infantryman, everyone is going to drop on you like a ton of bricks. And that is the ultimate legacy of RBG: the assertion that women can do whatever men do. Which is dumb: women can’t. Just like men can’t do what women do. That whole giving birth thing is rather exclusive, for instance.

This concept that women are just like men and can only be free if they do exactly what men do is insane. And it is made doubly insane by the insistence that women do the worst things men do: work too hard; neglect home and family; play around on the side. This, guys, is not an improvement over the wife of ancient days who minded the house and raised the children.

RBG is gone. Her legacy lives on: and will be with us for quite a while. But if we ever to recapture our sanity, it will be by a stern and knowing rejection of what RBG stood for.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan32 Comments

Trump is doing wonders for peace in the Middle East. The Palestinians fired off a few rockets at Israel, but that is just the pointless action of people being left behind. Only the Palestinian leadership and the Mullahs have an interest in continued war in the Middle East, and Trump has sidelined both of them. Trump should get a Nobel Prize for all this but he won’t because the entire global Ruling Class is garbage.

Who will win November 3rd? I think Trump will; but I don’t know. No one knows. Its all about whether the Love Trump+Fear Dems outnumber the Hate Trump people. For those of you who would like some good insights into what is happening on the ground, I suggest checking in from time to time with Larry Schweikart, M Joseph Sheppard and Cotto/Gottfried. They’re not mindless boosters but they also aren’t doom-and-gloom naysayers. They are, as far as I can tell, giving out info they think is correct. They are all on Twitter so, sorry Amazona!

Related: Bill Powell says the Trump people are confident.

Senator Cotton wants to undo China’s Most Favored Nation status. This is something we never should have given to China. But whatever merits it ever had, it is clear that China treats us as an enemy, so we might as well be realistic about such things and cut them off from our markets.

Are the ChiComs funding BLM? They’d be the most amazingly stupid people who ever lived if they aren’t. For China, BLM does two things: harms American unity while also allowing China to say, “see, America has civil rights problems, too.” All we know is that at the drop of a hat, BLM has rioters wherever wanted and bail money is provided very fast. Someone is funding BLM…and it isn’t American patriots.

Air Force says they are already test flying a 6th generation fighter. If so, good. Air superiority plus Naval supremacy are the twin pillars of American power. They allow us to intervene whenever we want to at minimal risk to American safety.

Suzie Sorority has become a BLM radical...and, as you suspect, it is because she’s been made insane by Progressive propaganda at college. But now, in Lancaster, PA, at least these upper class Bolsheviks are facing million dollar bail.

The Trump Response to 9/11

Mark Noonan82 Comments

I had tried to think of something to say about 9/11, 19 years on, but I only got a little bit about it…and then something hit me and I’ve pondered it a bit: Our response to 9/11 was a Deep State dodge.

Think about it: back on that day, we were all on fire to go get whomever it was and make them pay. And while bin Laden was the prime mover of the event, we also all knew that the real source of the trouble resided in Tehran. Absent Iran’s support for terrorist groups, none of the terrorist groups would amount to much. To really do anything in the aftermath of 9/11 meant a reckoning with Iran.

When we went into Afghanistan, I felt it was a misuse of time and resources but I understood it; bin Laden was there and we wanted him, specifically, dead. When we started to gear up for Iraq, I saw it was our means of inserting a large, US military force into the strategic center of gravity of the Middle East as part of a program of getting after Iran in the by and by. I thought we’d be in Baghdad by summer of 2001 and then start putting maximum pressure on Iran, including military force if needed, to topple the regime and thus get us to the conclusion of the problem: the ending of State-sponsorship of terrorism (which is done by others, but none on the scale of Iran). When we fidgeted around on the WMD issue and the UN, I put it down to a foolish but understandable desire to get the world community on board, and especially the Brits.

But then we stopped. And started to nation-build. And allowed our soldiers to be clay pigeons in Iraq…clay pigeons being shot at by Iran’s proxies. And, yet, still, I kept on: sure there was something going on which would eventually get us to confront Iran. But, it never happened. In the end, we were reduced to just trying to prevent catastrophe in Iraq before Obama took over. Which was accomplished – only to see Obama throw it all away as he felt that the path to peace was in currying favor with Iran.

But now I step back and watch the past 19 years and I see it better: for both Bush and Obama (and, really, Clinton and Bush before them…and, indeed, all the way back to Ike’s idiotic decision to smack down the Anglo-French and Israelis over Suez) the whole point of American policy has been to not do anything but only to appear to do something. From 1956 until 2016 – 60 long years – the whole effort has been a con. An effort to make it seem like something is happening when nothing is happening (except all the dead: they dead really got dead). This is especially true of the period 2001 to 2017…Bush II to Obama when we had the moral right to do what was necessary…and then we didn’t do it.

The clarifying comes about via Trump, who’s earliest actions in the area were to blow hell out of ISIS without inserting ground forces; move the Embassy to Jerusalem and denounce the Iran deal. All things which all the Experts said would be disastrous. All things which they said indicated that Trump had no idea how things work. Well…now we’ve got peace deals between Israel and UAE and Bahrain; rumors that other Arab States will follow suit; Iran isolated; Russia and Iran presiding over the junkheap of Syria; the Palestinians no longer a factor; ISIS destroyed; Muslim terrorism no longer really a thing…and our boys and girls are coming home and we’re not drone-sriking all over the place. It took less than four years to accomplish all this. Sixty years to accomplish nothing (except, once again, all the dead people).

That Trump has managed to move the ball this far forward towards peace and an end to the scourge of terrorism shows that it could have been done at any time. All anyone had to do was want to do it. I now view our actions post-9/11 (until Trump) as being the actions of our Expert class designed to make it appear we were doing something while actually doing nothing. As for why they wanted to keep up the enmity between Israel and the Arab States and keep Iran afloat…I don’t know. I suspect bribery. I also don’t care why they did it: I only know that Trump has shown we don’t have to do it their way.

The monument to those who died on 9/11 and those who have died in all the fighting since must be an Israeli family vacationing on a beach in Bahrain while a Bahraini family has dinner in Tel Aviv. That is the glory; that is the lion’s share. That is where Trump is bringing us. We are still some time away from that happy moment and those who want the old ways to persist will do some very nasty things to get their way…but Trump has shown that we can have peace. That we don’t have to forever live in a world where we’re periodically shown pictures of middle easterners blown to hell.

We have a real chance – for ourselves and for the world. All we need do is make the right decision on November 3rd.