Open Thread

Open Thread

Mark Noonan15 Comments

Democrats, MSMers and RINOs are all in Campaign Mode. You know – “it is OVER! The GOP has Lost! There is nothing that can stop the Democrat juggernaut in November! Trump has failed!” And they trot out the same polls which got 2024 wrong as proof of it all…spliced together with articles like “you know, I was like totally talking to this construction guy in south Texas and everyone is going to vote Democrat because Trump is deporting the illegals who worked the jobs”. Oh, and guys, the events in Minnesota are seared into the public mind and they all hate Trump for it.

Hey, we’ll see how it comes out – if the American people want the illegals to stay, the boys to keep playing in girls sports and carbon taxes on being normal, then that is what they’ll get. But I have my doubts about that – especially as Team Trump/GOP is already starting to use their vast campaign funds to advertise. Those videos we had of Leftist rioters waving Mexican flags? Yeah, that’s gonna start showing up on the TV…it’ll probably show up a lot for the World Series. Democrats are still for “they/them” and the GOP is for you.

Here’s what it is: the Democrats are playing the Wizard of Oz like hours after the curtain has been pulled back. We know it is all fake. But they keep pushing the buttons and working the controls as if we aren’t right there, watching them lie while pointing and laughing at them. Twenty years ago, the scenes in Minnesota would really have been seared…because there was no force to question the MSM Narrative and no GOPer with the guts to stand up against the Narrative. Now we have X and Trump…it just doesn’t work any longer.

Zeek Akram appears to be a black guy who doesn’t have a problem with MAGA. Personally, I only just recently encountered his account for the first time but he’s been there for six years. Anyways, whoever he is, exactly, he captured the truth perfectly with this:

The old charge of racism just doesn’t work on us. FFS, my granddaughter is mixed race. I don’t know anyone among my friends who doesn’t have at least some mixture added to the cracker. Who do I want my granddaughter to eventually marry? Of course a steely-eyed missile man of supreme courage and good looks with buckets of money…but the reality is that as long as the guy is sober, hard working and kind…we’re cool. Beyond that it doesn’t really matter.

The crucial thing the Groypers don’t get is that you don’t have to be white to be civilized. You just have to be civilized. Thomas Sowell is exceptionally civilized. More so, indeed, than some Groyper moron out there thinking the Jews had it coming in 1933. But the Left also doesn’t get it on the other side…to be civilized you have to be civilized. You can’t be eating rice with your fingers or taking a dump on the street…nor can you engage in “honor killing” of your wayward daughter, nor clog a street with prayer in the middle of the day. It doesn’t matter what skin color the barbarians have…if they are barbarians, they have to be kept out. As I’ve said before, I’ll trade an uncivilized American white person for a civilized Nigerian Catholic farmer any day of the week. I like the Mexicans who live behind my house much better than the drunken white people who used to live there.

I think we are on the cusp of really resolving the race issue in the United States. Sure, for the next few election cycles the Democrats will race-bait in the most cruel ways imaginable. But I don’t think it will work – that, in fact, we’ll start to see a larger and more durable shift of non-white voters to the GOP. In the end, the battle is between the Useful and the Useless. A “studies” professor is as useless as a welfare bum…and they vote the same way. But what does the black working man have in common with the black welfare bum? Nothing. He’s far more like the white working man. The Latino working man. The Asian working man. The key is “working man”. The men and women who actually get things done in the USA are all of one class…color blind and gender neutral. They just want to be able to work in peace, keep what they earn and raise their families in safe neighborhoods. Some of them are poor…some of them are billionaires. But they all want the same basic things…and I think they are about to win, over the next two or three cycles, complete power in the USA.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan25 Comments

The latest wrinkle Leftist federal district judges have come up with – if you are illegally in the USA for some undetermined period of time and “put down roots” you now have a legal interest in remaining in the USA and can’t be deported – or even detained – without due process of law. This is entirely in violation of the law as written. There is no “if you get away with it long enough” exception to immigration law. Sure, the appellate courts will eventually strike it down but then these judges will just try the next thing…because the law doesn’t matter to them. They are in place simply to impose Democrat policy preferences regardless of what the law says, or the people vote for.

We have to arrest them – we have tens of thousands of federal statutes on the books and these judges are in violation of some of them. Sure, pretty much all of us are to one degree or another…but the law is the law and if we find the violation, we can bring the charges. It is the only way I can think of to curb these people…to let them know we’re serious. Impeachment won’t work because of the 67 vote requirement in the Senate. So, we must find some other expedient to stop these ridiculous rulings from fanatics in judicial robes.

There’s a new STD floating around out there – Trichophyton mentagrophytes genotype. No, I had never heard of it, either. But, then again, I don’t get out much these days. It is a fungal infection which seems to have originated among sex tourists in Asia and it is commonly spread via sexual activity among “men who have sex with men”…which is the CDC’s way of not saying “homosexuals”. Apparently there is now a large outbreak in Minnesota…so, we wait for word on where the male officials of the State government have been vacationing of late.

Side note: that we have something called “sex tourism” is an abomination. People who do that should be flogged within an inch of their lives.

I’ve seen a lot of Right influencers – including some major Catholic accounts – on social media moving towards overt anti-Semitism. This, my friends, is the lure of cash…there are people who will pay you a lot of money to toe a line. The Left, of course, does this – you can’t really think these Leftist accounts which repeat the most absurd lies actually believe it. But some people will sell their soul for money. Now it is happening on the Right. Keep in mind that I blog and post on X and I’m just this guy…I’m doing ok, but suppose someone proposed to double my annual income at the stroke of a pen and all I had to do was lie about Jews? It is chump change to the person buying the influence…it would be life-changing for me. To be sure, I believe I am morally strong enough to reject such an offer (and, in fact, will never get into a position to have the offer made…those who are bought are cultivated over time until the offer is made)…but no matter what, there will always be people who will give into temptation.

It is everywhere, my friends. Latest revelation is that Code Pink is apparently heavily funded by the Chinese Communist Party. Why wouldn’t they? An organization made up of people who hate America and who want it destroyed? Of course you kick a couple bucks over to them. Qatari money. Saudi money. Russian money. EU money. All of it filtered through various dark money organizations and passed out to people who will hew to a propaganda line no matter how absurd it is…because it is propaganda directed at an American population increasingly ignorant of basic history (read that in Philadelphia public schools they don’t mention things like the Civil War or WWII but they will tell you that Settler-Colonialism is evil, while Islam is good). That is, you can say really rather stupid lies and hardly anyone out there will have the knowledge to call you out on it.

There’s an article in New York Magazine which laments that the historically black neighborhoods of NYC are demographically changing…you know, the local population being replaced by outsiders. This is, I gather, bad…but apparently only if its a black neighborhood.

Side note on that: NYC is becoming a place where you can live if you are desperately poor or fabulously rich…but if you just work for a living, you can’t stay. This is same in California, Illinois, Washington, Massachusetts…and we can take a guess why these areas are like that.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan19 Comments

Homan is drawing down federal officers in Minneapolis…because he’s getting ever more cooperation from local law enforcement. The bet is that Minnesota business interests are putting pressure on the government there. Keep in mind that the State legislature is very evenly divided so Democrats are not all-powerful. They do hold the State-wide offices but only via fraud in Minneapolis…and Trump’s actions have already heavily cut into their ability to carry that out. Basically, everyone is running for cover.

Keep in mind that the Democrats had hoped to have continual violence all year long in Minnesota: to hide and preserve the fraud, weaken Trump overall and goose Democrat turnout in November. Trump refused to play along – he actually did lower the temperature, while increasing the pressure (those federal fraud investigations are still ongoing and uncovering more of it all the time). It is very important to keep in mind that while Democrats do have power they are, for the most part, pretty stupid people…the smart people who built the machine are long gone…what is left is people who managed to get into power because of the machine, but who have no real clue how it works…nor that the most important part of it is keeping the cities livable. Trump is playing them like a fiddle.

The Washington Post fired a huge amount of staff. Bezos could keep them – the financial losses at the Post are chump change to him. But Bezos lives in the real world – and a money-losing enterprise doesn’t appeal to him. Nor does endless Democrat propaganda. Sure, Bezos is a big Liberal…but he appears to want a news outfit that, you know?, some times reports the news. One of the fired people put out on X a series of recent articles…they seem to deal with health care and I suspect that was the reporter’s beat. Ok. Fine. Health news is useful. But in all the articles I didn’t see one looking into the massive amount of healthcare fraud. You know: like how Los Angeles has more hospice care facilities than Florida.

Look, guys: you can be Liberal, if you like. It is pretty dumb – you have to believe some utter nonsense. But, hey: live as you want to live! What you can’t be is, well, evil. And it is evil to ignore all the money being stolen simply because reporting it would look bad for Democrats. You should still report it. Heck, you should want to report it. Long term, it would help your side if you hammered the corruption. That you don’t cover the corruption means you’re part of it…not reporters at all. Mere regime propagandists. I don’t think Bezos wants that and after some efforts to simply get the Post to start being a news outfit, it looks like he’s decided to dispense with the propagandists. For crying out loud, the money being stolen is supposed to help the poor you Liberals claim you care so much about.

Israel appointed Major General Ghassan Alian to head up their Druze affairs bureau. Not much: except Alian is a Druze. You know: not a Jew. Who is a Major General in the IDF. That right there is why we stand with Israel. Is Israel perfect? No. Does Israel make mistakes? Oh, some quite fabulous ones. But they are the only decent nation in the Middle East…and one of the very few decent nations in the world. We’re not owned by Israel…we simply recognize our kin even across the water.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan29 Comments

Walz backed down, Frey is standing firm – both are idiots but my guess is that Walz knows a losing hand when he sees one…while Frey is probably so beholden to Minneapolis corruption that he knows he stands or falls with it. Bottom line is that if Minnesota allows mere federal law enforcement, then the jig is up for the Left in that State…they’ll lose their ability to steal money and elections.

Trump isn’t backing down. The various hand-wringers on the Right went into full Doom mode but were silenced when ICE was seen having beers and watching Minnesota cops clear out the rioters from their hotel. Nobody is leaving. Nobody is slowing down. The illegals are still going to go. All of them.

That this is all an op is shown by the RINOs who immediately jumped out with their pre-written amnesty plans…and the Democrats also came out with theirs. Both are absurd, neither has a chance of passage and if any get through Congress, they face a certain veto by Trump. The Democrats want to make ICE get a judicial warrant for each illegal and they can only get such if the illegals commit a federal crime beyond illegal entry…so, you know, no deportations once you get into the country. Nothing shows better that this whole effort is to keep up the fraud…because Democrats know they can’t win without it. And do keep in mind that if we lose in 2028, then that may be final…Democrats will pack the courts, open the gates and do everything they can to make sure they can’t lose a vote.

This is why the continued insistence on the Right with keeping the filibuster is just plain and simple stupid – there is no upside to keep it, no downside to dropping it. Keeping it just allows Democrats to slow us down in 2026 while dropping it doesn’t matter long term…Democrats will ditch it at their first opportunity. This isn’t the old America – we’re no longer living in a nation where everyone is a patriot. Democrats hate this country. They only see it as something to steal from – with the Leftwing fanatics additionally seeing it as something to kill as soon as possible.

But if we stand firm, we’re going to win. The economy is starting to go like a rocket. Trump is clearly enjoying himself, knowing that he has every advantage. He’s already on the stump for 2026 and he plus GOP have something like a billion dollars in the bank to campaign with. The Democrat policies are downright insane and nobody looking at them will figure they have the better path forward..and Trump will make sure everyone looks at them.

That vile Ilhan Omar was the “victim” of an alleged “attack”…someone sprayed some liquid on her. The pre-made MSM Narrative was her continuing her speech like the Brave Fighter for Justice she is…but, sorry, someone sprays some unknown liquid on my I’m going to immediately wash it off and get myself checked out. This is simple prudence…that she kept talking puts a huge amount of Smollet on this event. There’s nothing I want more than her being stripped of her “citizenship” and deported. She’s not one of my fellow Americans…she’s a mere Paperwork American and if we can find the slightest falsehood in there, out she goes.


Open Thread

Mark Noonan26 Comments

Our top immigration judge has advised that immigration judges are not bound by federal court rulings saying the Executive can’t detain illegal immigrants without bond. This assertion has one really strong thing going for it: the law.

Essentially, all these federal cases against immigration enforcement are absurd: they aren’t federal judicial matters. They aren’t dealing with citizens but with foreigners and the presence of foreigners in the USA is, in law, essentially at the discretion of the Executive. This is how Biden and Obama hand-waved millions in – because the Executive has control of it under the powers of the Commander in Chief. The only time a federal court could get involved is if a detained person asserts American citizenship: that is something for a court to decide. But if you’re not a citizen? The Executive can hand wave you out or in. If we were to go to war with China tomorrow, then Trump could simply order every Chinese national detained – regardless of immigration status – and then deported.

There’s no appeal on this. If ordered, done. The whole fracas we’re seeing is simply stupid – the people getting violent about it are ignorant fools when not wicked.

This also shows that under the radar, Trump is getting a lot done – and a lot done which will have massive long term effects on national policy of all sorts. It is my view that Trump at least sometimes picks an issue to make the Left go ballistic over so that while they are having their hissy fit over it, he can busily do other things.

I don’t think Democrats have any idea of the wind they are sowing. We fought them in 1861-65 when they tried to nullify federal law after losing an election fair and square – and after that, we let them up easy. We swiftly allowed them to rejoin as full citizens. People who had been Confederate officers and senior elected officials were allowed to exercise power in the United States. It won’t be like that after round two – we’re fed up. There’s a video out there of a couple guys duck hunting by a lake in the Pacific northwest and this shrieking woman just walks up to them, shouting foul language and telling the hunters she hates them and wants them to leave. The guys just laugh it off and to really set the woman off, shoot a duck. This is the sort of lunatic the Left is…and our guys are still quiet and laughing it off. But if we do get pressed to the point where it is fight or flight, it will be fight…and we will win…and our mercy will slumber.

Trump, as others have pointed out, is their last chance – if he succeeds then the Republic goes on serene and happy. If they do manage to stop him, then that only means that our being fair and nice didn’t work. It’ll be time to be something other than fair and nice.

A Warm, Collective Open Thread

Mark Noonan20 Comments

UPDATE: Wow, that was a bit of a surprise in Venezuela. Between this and Iran we’ve just instructed our enemies that there’s nothing they have we can’t take away. This will greatly assist Rubio in “negotiating” with them.

Mamdani in his inaugural address talked of ending “rugged individualism” and replacing it with “the warmth of collectivism”. I found examples of this – bit of a before and after:

That, of course, is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; first as a young artillery officer in the Red Army, secondly about ten years later after drawing an eight year stint in Gulag for writing a letter mildly critical of collectivist warmth. Keep in mind that he was plucked out of the Red Army while he was at the front and the day after he had saved an artillery battery from a local Nazi counterattack. He was arrested by SMERSH – an organization founded by Stalin (it stood for “death to spies”) – to foster collectivist warmth at the front during WWII…the warmth being fostered was mostly to keep SMERSH personnel out of the front lines.

Because, you see, in a life and death struggle against the Fascist Beast, the Communists were determined to be firmly in the “life” camp. Cowards to a man and woman, the apparatchiks that Stalin had infested Russia with since the Revolution were living a nice life and certainly didn’t want to see it end over something as trivial as a Nazi invasion…but when the Motherland was calling for complete self-sacrifice by everyone, kinda hard to justify keeping yourself out of the combat units…unless you can find something useful to do elsewhere. And where better than ferreting out spies for a paranoid Stalin who couldn’t imagine a Soviet agency not being filled with people who despised him? But this means you had to keep finding them, right? I mean, if there ever came a point where you had defeated the Fascist spies, then it was time to pick up a rifle and charge into a Nazi trench. So, they just kept finding spies…and it didn’t matter how absurd the case was…there just had to be a case. Solzhenitsyn’s letter to a friend was all that was necessary…and the combat officer was degraded in front of his own troops and sent into the sausage grinder of Gulag.

But Mamdani says it will be different! How? Well, he says that if private landowners aren’t proper stewards of their property, then the City will step in and take over. And who decides what proper stewardship is? Well, the City. And never in human history has there been a government swayed by money and connections, right?

I mean, you know what is going to happen – some tenants will pitch a fit about a particular landlord and get the City to take over…and then if its not a desirable property the City will just let it rot (the tenants not paying rent, of course – or only nominal rent)…if it is a desirable property, then the tenants will be booted out in favor of those with City connections (they’ll do this by letting the tenants slide on the rent and then surprising them with eviction for unpaid rent…and these people will suddenly find that the byzantine system of eviction in NYC doesn’t apply to them). The bottom line is that the connected will wind up in all the nice areas – carefully guarded by the police who will never be so defunded that they can’t protect the Ruling Class – and everything else just falls apart…because no landlord is going to invest a cent in property which can be seized at the whim of Mamdani’s college roommate’s brother in law who’s now got a job in City government.

There are two ways to become Communist – and there have always only been these two ways: be stupid, or be evil. You can be a combination of both, but you simply must be stupid or evil. We tend to think of people like Marx as wrong. That is not the way to view it. He clearly wasn’t stupid – whatever you want to say about his philosophy, he certainly did create something that has moved millions. So, not stupid: thus, evil.

You think about it – he was the son of a lawyer who owned land. He had a good education paid for by his father. He dodged the draft (he being then a subject of the Kingdom of Prussia). He started writing for various Leftwing rags supported by rich people and ultimately Engels became his benefactor – Engels being the son of a very rich man. Point blank: Marx never worked a day in his life: he hadn’t the foggiest notion of the economic and spiritual needs of workers. But Marx did find he didn’t like Christian Europe – though technically Protestant (his father – a non-observant Jew – had officially converted to avoid official Prussian anti-Semitism when the Rhineland came under Prussian Rule in 1815), his Jewish background was a social hindrance…but rather than trying to understand why and seek amelioration (as many Jews did through the 19th century, being notably successful in the UK and USA on this front) he just decided he hated it…and cooked up a philosophy who’s main point was the destruction of everything he hated – Christianity, nobility, family and country. His work is very much a work-backwards thing…that is, he knew what he hated and he crafted his philosophy just so the destruction of the hated thing was justified.

I mean, think about “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. What absolute drivel. What is anyone’s ability? How do you know they are fully employing their ability? What is a need? How do you ensure that everyone’s needs are met all at once? How do you assign priority between needs? It is just stupid – the whole thing is unworkable. But if you want to convince a Christian to murder every priest and destroy every family, nothing better…because if you don’t think about it, it seems like a good idea. I mean, everyone has needs, right? Why can’t they all be met?

Oh, that’s right – what you might call a “need” the next guy might call a luxury…and this is before we get into a debate about having three pairs of size ten loafers but five people need them.

And it lead to 100 million murders…so far. The philosophy is still murdering people in China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam and other places…and stirring up hatred, lies and theft everywhere…and even some murder even in places like the USA. Essentially, once you get to Marxism then you can simply justify any monstrous act and dress it up as altruism. Lenin was the first to figure this out…but he was eagerly followed by Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot…and now Mamdani.

He’s not a murderer! How dare you!

Because he’s a communist – the only reason he hasn’t had someone shot is because he doesn’t have the power. If he ever gets the power, he’ll kill people. He’ll steal untold sums. He’ll do everything rotten any human being has ever thought of and he’ll announce it as Serving Humanity. He’s either evil or stupid – though he seems more a combination of the two. A trust fund baby who’s never worked a day in his life is going to make sure the landlords behave…as if he has the slightest clue about maintaining a building or what its like to deal with tenants who treat the property like garbage because they feel immune to eviction. He’s already showing in his appointments that he wants an anti-Semitic, Islamist and Communist regime to punish New York City for daring to be American.

Now, how much damage he’ll actually do remains to be seen – Democrats are in a bit of a bind in that he’s a hero to the far left, but huge amounts of Democrat money are at stake in NYC and if he starts driving that money down to Florida and Texas, that’s going to be a major problem for the Democrats…they’ll start running out of money to steal, themselves. So, we might find that while Mamdani is allowed to make his grandiose communist statements, his wings are clipped in actual policy. But that doesn’t change what he is – remember that. Unless he repents and admits he was wrong, he’s someone to be warily watched.

And watched while we, under Trump, defund the Left. That still remains the key to avoiding a future of Collectivist Warmth…because the real fraud of the Left is that they’ve been subsidized by us. Without taxpayer funds, they will fall apart. That is the best way to torpedo Mamdani right now – just don’t send federal dollars. Say that given his unconstitutional actions, funds are being withheld until policy changes. He’ll want very much to take over NYC rental properties…but you still have to pay the owners if you are taking their property. NYC’s budget is already stretched past the breaking point…he won’t find billions to dispossess the landlords. In my view, the Mamdani experiment can be terribly useful for us – a real dose of Communism to hold up to American eyes, convincing them to never, ever go that route.

Happy New Year!

Mark Noonan17 Comments

Gotta say, enjoyed 2025. Got to do our usual beach vacation but we also tacked on a week up at Lake Tahoe, always an impressive place to be. Job is ok. Writing is fun. And, of course, Trump is President – he’s gone way past what I voted for and is starting in on things I wish to heck I had voted for. In my view, it is all starting to come together.

Altogether, something more than 2 million illegals out of the country – and we didn’t take in millions more. Next year promises a massive increase on that deportation number as the provisions of the OBBB come into play…including a large increase in staffing to get the illegals out. Plus, the Lawfare is running on empty…sure, you can hamstring things up, but only for a while…Trump has mostly won his cases and, in the end, there isn’t a Trump Exception to Article II. He is President. He has all Executive power vested in himself. The laws are all very clear – that nobody has enforced them is neither here nor there: they are being enforced now…and you can only sue so many times before the appellate courts just tell you to go jump in a lake over it…they’ve already ruled repeatedly that Trump can do what the law allows.

The drug trade is being massively impacted by our strategy of hitting it on the logistic side – something I’ve been urging for years. Drug lords come and go. Addicts are addicts. But the low level people who move the drugs and the money have operated with near-impunity…now they have to bet their lives that they can get drugs into the USA and money back down to the Cartels. After a while – and it won’t be a long while – they’ll stop finding people willing to bet their lives even under severe duress. What we can expect now is that the Cartel-owned governments will try to get into the smuggling business…using diplomatic cover to move money and drugs. This will work to a certain extent, but not nearly sufficient to keep the Cartels as powerful as they have been.

We’ve also turned off the spigot of American money which keeps the global Left in power. It can’t be underestimated how much of the sinews of Leftist politics have come from the US taxpayer under the guise of fostering democracy around the world. What we’ve really done is empower those the American Left favors…including using good, old fashioned voter fraud to get it done. That money is now gone…the NGOs are cast adrift…and we see the Right on the rise all around the world in consequence. We’re going to gain allies more and more as the miasma of Leftist power evaporates.

We’re going after corruption here at home – Minnesota is just the tip of a very large iceberg. All up and down the line money has been stolen. You might recall me asserting some years back that I estimated one in three federal dollars is stolen…I’m now thinking one in two…perhaps even two in three. It has been a bonanza of theft and it has all been used to keep the Left in power so they can both steal more and dictate ever more aspects of our lives. It has been going on for decades and nobody has done anything about it…a few small players on the edges might from time to time get taken down (likely because they didn’t share out properly) but nobody went after the system of corruption which has been built up in our country…the very concept that every year more and more must be spent no matter what result we’re getting. That awards are given essentially for having the largest staff and spending the most money. Trump is hitting at that – and this is the core of Leftist power in the USA. If they can’t steal money from us, they can’t survive politically…because nobody would vote for a Leftist unless paid to do so.

The GOP is flush with cash and continues to make large voter registration gains. Vance is the prohibitive favorite for the 2028 nomination and everyone is already quietly starting to line up behind him. Meanwhile, over in Democrat-land, they’re broke and hoping that Newsom can stop the nomination of a Harris/AOC ticket. We still can’t make certain predictions about how 2026 will go but we know that if the MSM is saying it, its a lie. So, the stories of alleged Democrat resurgence are just nonsense…the means to get Democrats to donate…but, once again, the cutoff of money to NGOs is a body blow…whatever else they were doing – no matter how much was stolen – the crucial thing was to launder it back into the DNC. You don’t get a ten million dollar grant to study two-spirit poetry in Sumatra without kicking a lot of that back to the benefactor. Rumor is that ActBlue is being investigated. Do recall that Matt and I essentially exposed this in 2007 with Caucus of Corruption…even back then we found huge numbers of donations for Democrats coming in like $26.59. Nobody donates $26.59. A foreigner donates in foreign currency and that gets converted into US dollars. This money squeeze will increasingly impact all Democrat efforts…from paying people to fill out fake ballots to purchasing rent-a-mobs to emphasize Democrat talking points.

To sum up, I enjoyed 2025 and I’m looking forward with eager anticipation to 2026.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan32 Comments

A passage from the upcoming Book X of the Mirrors series:

“An atomic bomb,” Tom said, nodding his head. “Where it splits an atom causing an explosion?”

“Well, so I’m informed; I never made it to any advanced mathematics,” Jerome replied. “But not just one atom; quite a lot of them packed very close together and then blown up causing the split and explosion. We dropped two of them on Japan and they threw up the sponge.”

“It sounds very horrible,” Aleste said. 

“It is very horrible, but it did end the war.”

“It did, but I perceive it was like the way my grandmother ended the war; it just made more wars.”

“That was magic.”

“So is your terrible bomb; you and your people have just forgotten what magic is. People always want short cuts.” Aleste shrugged. “And who am I to talk?”

“Couldn’t you stop using magic?,” Tom asked.

“I’d like to but I can’t; it is too late. Mother is wrong; it can’t be fixed. We’re just stuck with it now. Like your people and that bomb.”

Tom nodded.

“We all learn a bit, but never early enough.”

“Well, I sure didn’t. But if I had to guess, Tom, you learned soon enough.”

He shook his head.

“Not nearly soon enough.” He touched the globe and anchor emblem on his blouse. “Dad was a Marine in World War One. Fought in the Argonne. Told me about it. But he left out some details.”

“That’s as old as time.”

“Sure is. But I didn’t help myself. I was Romantic about it on purpose, I guess. What was my meat and potatoes?”

Tom stood up and started to recite with dramatic gestures:

The first that the general saw were the groups

Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops;

What was done? what to do? a glance told him both,

Then, striking his spurs, with a terrible oath,

He dashed down the line ‘mid a storm of huzzas,

And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because

The sight of the master compelled it to pause.

With foam and with dust the black charger was gray;

By the flash of his eye, and the red nostril’s play,

He seemed to the whole great army to say,

“I have brought you Sheridan all the way

From Winchester, down to save the day!”

“Gorgeous bit of poetry by Thomas Read. Dad loved it so much he named me after him.”

“It is a good bit of poetry,” Aleste said. “Stirring.”

“It is that, but I’d have been better off reading Sassoon.”

“What did he write?”

“Oh, a little more bitter than that.” 

“Please, tell me. I have to know. To learn.”

“All right.”

“You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

Sneak home and pray you’ll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go.”

“That is bitter and I’m sorry for him. But it is something to know.”

“It is that.”

I really like that bit – the attitude is deeply woven into the whole tale: we must be brave. But let’s not kid ourselves, either. I think it is something that we have definitely lost in our storytelling. You think of even the very good war movies of the past 30 years or so and throughout them is a thread of its just suffering and you must get through it – but there is also heroism, which cleanses the effort. As long as we are this side of the hereafter, things won’t be all neat and tidy.

The latest example of this is some people getting upset that we’re killing drug smugglers. For goodness sake, they’re de-facto pirates. We can hang them after a drumhead court martial…its actually a mercy to whack them with a missile. It is over quickly. And we should be celebrating our sailors and airmen doing the deeds – they’re defending the least of us from a horrible scourge. And, sure, we can also spare a thought to those we kill – some of them are very much compelled to do it. But, then again, a man who truly knows the value of life would never hold his life more valuable than someone else’s…and everyone who gets into those boats has done just that, and so is getting what’s coming to them…getting, that is, what they were going to deal out. And more mercilessly…over a period of years, and the destruction of not merely individuals …but of families and whole communities.

I think we need to spin better tales, guys. I wish I were a better writer – that I could write something that would shake the world! I hope that some of ours eventually do…because we need stories that enlighten and encourage us. That show us that the good guys do win…but that even the most glorious victory comes with a high price.

Anyways, just a bit of thought I’m having as I polish up the book and get it ready for publication!

Open Thread

Mark Noonan27 Comments

Animal Farm was Orwell’s stinging parody of Stalin’s rule in Russia. The lies. The corruption. The secret police. The hypocrisy. Naturally, it is now being remade in a big budget film where the villain is – wait for it! – the Capitalist!

Yes, that’s it! The nice, wonderful Commies are doing a great job and it is all ruined by a Capitalist who subverts it.

It is a…well…rather Orwellian perversion of the story. And oh, so very 1984 in that it is a falsification of history. The kids ain’t reading, guys. And they won’t want to watch the old 1954 animated version (too stale in looks!) so going into the future if someone wants to find out about Orwell they’re going to find out he was a Communist who exposed how Capitalists ruin everything.

This is why the Right simply had to get into pop culture. We have to start writing books (doing my best!), songs, movies, TV shows…painting, sculpture. And we can’t just copy what was done before the Left ruined everything. It does have to be fresh and new – something that will appeal to people who are only barely literate in the traditional sense (they might be able to read words, but if you try to lay on them something as complex as, say, 1984, they won’t be able to fully understand it). This is where people like Musk have to step forth…we need money. Lots of it. We need to reward those who are right now in the infancy of an alternative pop culture.

Trump is going to address the nation – as of now, I don’t know for certain about what, but we’ve got quite a fleet off South America and Trump showing he’s rather upset with the corrupt, communist narco-terrorists down there. The Right is on the march down south – Chile being the latest nation to toss the Left out. But in Venezuela and Columbia as well as other places, the Left is too deeply entrenched (and is too willing to kill) to remove from power by normal means. I think Trump wants to give things a little shove. But, we’ll see! You never can tell what Trump has up his sleeve.

Trump caught a lot of flack over his post about Rob Reiner’s death. OTOH, Trump would catch a lot of flack if he posted, “I like apple pie”. TDS is widespread. But what was irritating was the number of people on the Right – not TDS-infected Never Trumpers – who took the opportunity to tut tut about it. As if they had just been waiting for their chance to show how morally superior they are. Like that is actually a morally correct thing to do…or that it is something that helps.

Look, I get that many have fond memories of Reiner as “Meathead” on All in the Family (a very conventionally Liberal , anti-American show in hindsight) as well as his movies Spinal Tap (mediocre with only one really funny scene) and The Princess Bride (cute enough, but it doesn’t hold up well – saw it for the first time in years a couple years back and it is definitely at the bottom of the re-watch list…its cuteness doesn’t sustain itself). Additionally, the manner in which he died was horrific – nobody should have to go like that. But none of this changes the fact that Reiner, for the last ten years of his life, voluntarily became a vicious liar for political purposes.

It wasn’t a mistake. He didn’t misinterpret the data. He set out to lie because, in his mind, Trump did the unforgivable thing of defeating Hillary. Reminder: all of these Hollywood types were good friends of Trump. Sought him out. Honored him. Couldn’t wait to be around him. Until Trump decided to challenge Hillary…whom the Hollywood types wanted as President because that is what the Script said. She had stood by Bill (as so many Hollywood types have stood by cheating spouses) and the payoff for that was supposed to be the White House (akin to a movie or book deal). Trump ruined all that. They had a whole host of TV shows and movies based upon the idea of a female President. Trump took it all away – and, so, when Hillary had her nervous breakdown about it, Hollywood took its cue and went to work. Knowingly. Voluntarily. Deciding that poisoning American politics was worth it if it could harm Trump.

Those lies are not funny. They have got people killed. They already sparked two attempts on Trump’s life (that we know of). They got Trump’s friends and allies ruined in Lawfare of the most foul, Stalinist sort. They have the USA today simmering on the edge with violence common and Civil War a possibility. Was Reiner the only person to do this? No. Was he even the most important? Again, no. But he was a willing participant in it and he never backed away. It was his own son who killed him – his now 32 year old son, who has a long history of drug addiction. Meaning that over the last ten years, when his son was 22 to 32 to years old and battling demons, Rob was taking the time out of his day to lie about Trump. This is just freaking bizarre – but it it was Rob chose to be.

So, no, we are not morally obligated to forget all that. In fact, it is far more morally important that we view things clearly than try to soften things up with pablum. Lives are at stake in our ability to fearlessly state the truth. And the truth is that whatever Reiner was in the past, for the last part of his life he decided to do very bad things. Trump called that out. And it should be called out. Yes, the evil that men do is interred with their bones – in that Reiner’s fate is really up to God now. But we have an obligation to not set up a system where a vicious liar is honored. Only a repentant liar may be honored.

The Left is trying to sweep the murders at Brown under the rug. Have to: if Jews and the few Conservatives at Brown were targeted, then all of higher education is going to feel the heat. The Left is hoping they can string things out and hope the news cycle changes (I think the fracas over the Reiner post was partially because of that – they wanted us to talk about anything else but Brown – especially after the pogrom in Australia). I’m hoping that Trump’s people are looking at it very closely…I want to find out just how deep the colleges are with antifa and Hamas.

Just Thinking a Bit

Mark Noonan20 Comments

Had a Man Cold this past week – toughed it out to Thursday end of shift by means of using up my “work from home” days but for Friday I had to do the worst possible thing you can do: take a sick day while sick! Total waste of a day! But, I needed it: slept most of the day. Didn’t go to Mass today because I’m still feeling it and I don’t want to get people sick just in time for Christmas (feel a bit guilty about that even though it isn’t a sin to miss a Mass because ill) – but what this really got me thinking is that I’m 61 and I felt the first symptoms last Monday while by tomorrow – a week in – it’ll be almost all done. Always been like that for me: I don’t get ill much and I get over it fast. Same thing with injury. I never bruise. I take falls that should break bones but they don’t. I heal fast – like when I have a root canal in the morning the pain is gone by afternoon and I’m eating normally that evening. The dentist is flabbergasted about how strong and deep the roots of my teeth are. I go and get a physical and everything is fantastic. I might be from what they call “the deep end of the gene pool”…that is, one of those people who’s genetics have determined a strong constitution. Generally people in my family (both sides) make it into their 80’s but I did have a grand-aunt who made it to 100. We’ll see how long this ride lasts!

As you might have guessed, I’ve been pondering my own mortality – not in a morose way! We all owe God a death, right? True, we all want a highly extended line of credit, but it stalks us all. It is more in thinking of how much time has passed, what I’ve seen – and when considering, say, my grand-niece born earlier this year, what she might see? I mean, if she lives the normal female lifespan for 2025 of 81 years, she’s going to 2106! And she’ll have met a man who as born in 1964. And will be one handshake away from a man (my grandfather) born in 1896.

Let’s roll that 81 years back – and its 1944. Call it 1945. Think of all that has changed since then. There was still a British King-Emperor of India. Israel was still in the future. To us oldsters, that world seems familiar but not for the young. Black and white photography? You had to dial a phone. And the number was Lakewood 2697. Long distance seemed a bit miraculous. The kids are now asking, “what the heck is long distance?”. Hardly anyone had flown in a plane as yet; if you could afford to travel you still got aboard a train…or a ship if crossing the sea. Television existed but was still years away from common; you listened to radio shows. And if you needed to reach someone fast you sent a telegram. This is an alien country to anyone, say, under 40. You know: born in 1985 or later. As for the rising generation (born after 2000, now, guys!), even a cell phone without video capability would seem stone age.

Things change very rapidly. In the Mirrors series I deliberately created a world where change wasn’t happening – the final explanation (and end) of that status is explained in Book X (honest, I’ll have it out soon – but its the last of the series and I love it so much I’m loath to finish it…I keep refining the refinements!). Change is good. Change is natural. But, also, change is deadly. Gotta be careful with it. In general, the Revolutionary is someone to be afraid of – most of the time, he really doesn’t understand anything and is entirely destructive. Only very rarely does a Revolutionary create something better than what was destroyed (our Founders, of course, being one of the rare examples of good Revolutionaries). In this bit more of a century since the end of World War One, we changed very much too rapidly. We let the Revolutionaries run wild. Sure, this got us the Moon and some very amazing medical advances…but it also got us nuclear weapons and assisted suicide. There’s some plusses and minuses here.

In the main, most people do just want to live their lives. To be sure, “living their lives” for some subsets of humanity is, well, bad. Afghan tribesmen living their lives see a bit of rapine as a fine way to make a few extra bucks. But, for the common run of humanity, just living as they see fit is the sum total of life’s goal. Tolkien noted this in his works when he had Aragorn point out that his job – his purpose in life – is to protect the simple people so they could remain simple. That is, not stupid: but untroubled. It is the duty of those who know to protect those who do not. Just as a parent sets guardrails for children so, too, must the true leader set guardrails for the people as a whole. Our Founders set them! But, just perhaps, not firmly enough? Trusted too much? Living as they did as free and equal people and being honest and upright patriots, they possibly assumed that the perverse could never gain sufficient purchase in the American mind to ruin their great work…we have found, now, that some things should have been much more firmly written. Ah, well: live and learn, right?

After Revolution, Reaction. And I think that is where we’re heading. These days, the word “reaction” has a bad connotation. Of course it does: we’re under the rule of Revolutionaries! But the last great Reaction was after the maelstrom of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Everyone had had quite enough of Revolution! That is why the later attempts to revive Revolution – most notably, 1848 – failed miserably. There were gripes and, indeed, even things to fight over. But, in the end, nobody wanted to create another period like 1791 to 1815. People opted for incremental change. And, year by year, they largely got it – the 19th century was a century of political, economic and social improvement. It was only after the turn of the 20th century…when the Bad Old Days were getting on to a century before and out of living memory…that people started listening again to the siren song of revolt and Revolution.

Though, to be sure, I don’t think anywhere there was a majority in favor of overturning the entire system. Lenin annulled the Russian election of 1917 – his Bolsheviks only winning 23% of the vote and, by far, a center-left coalition of democrats having won. Hitler never got more than 37% of the vote in a truly free and fair election. Mao, Mussolini and Castro never even considered a remotely free election. As angry as a people might be with the system, a desirous as they may be of deep changes, hardly anyone wants a complete overturn. Sure, the peasants of Russia had abandoned the Czar, hated the nobles and wanted the land for themselves…but they didn’t want to replace all that with a Commissar telling them all their land belonged to the State. That they might have been confused or lacked understanding is neither here nor there – they didn’t get what they wanted. In fact, hardly anyone ever does from the Revolutionaries because, for the most part, Revolutionaries hate the people…and want them punished for not measuring up to what the Revolutionaries believe is right conduct. And I do believe this latest run of the Revolutionaries is coming to a close – their desperate efforts to import a new population to use in overturning things is failing. And this was the last trick they had up their sleeve.

All around the world – and not just in the West – we see people rejecting those who uphold the current status quo. Nobody wants to continue as we have. Everyone looks around and wonders just why there are suddenly tens of millions of migrants and we have to let them in…and give them full benefits, legal protections and the right to vote. And then we also look around and notice that it isn’t our people who need to be replaced. That is, the Christians – the real believers, and the people who are of those who made our nation and civilization – are still having sufficient kids to maintain their population. It is those who have abandoned God who need replacements…not us. But it is those who abandoned God who are importing the replacements…and why replace us with people who aren’t like us? Who in many cases actively hate us? We figure we can do without the replacements as much as we can do without those who are actually being replaced.

This is why Populist-Right parties are going from strength to strength all over the world – even in places like Japan. The system the Revolutionaries made has failed in its promise and we’re all figuring that our old ways are just fine. You know: that tired, old bit about being sober, hard working, loyal, honest. Sure, it is boring as all get out and you don’t get the sort of art our Ruling Class prefers, but it works. And it’ll work forever. It will never fail – and it will always improve things. And so we no longer care what they say about it. It doesn’t sting. Perhaps if they had actually got us wealthier and, say, pushed us to the stars we’d still let them stay in charge…but we’re a bit pinched on the finances and they can’t even build a bridge in less than ten years. So, thanks; but go away.

And if they don’t go away voluntarily? That is, if they don’t surrender the power they lost fair and square in elections we win? Well, that would be…bad. Like very, very bad. Mostly for them, of course. But also for us. You see, we’re kind and tolerant and do want to live and let live. But if pressed to it…well, let’s just say that the Left won’t like what happens.