Open Thread

Open Thread

Mark Noonan34 Comments

Rumor is that Team Biden is working with the Israeli Left to oust Netanyahu so a new, Leftist Israeli government can agree to a ceasefire which will save Hamas. For the Israeli Left, this is how to get back into office – and without the tedious need for an election that Likud might well win. For Biden, it gets Gaza off the table before the Convention so the Democrats don’t have to deal with Hamas rioters in Chicago. The primary thing here is the illustration that for the Left it is always about power – Team Biden and the Israeli Left don’t care about those who have died, nor about those who will die if Hamas is allowed to survive. They have no human feelings at all – just appetite for power (and wealth, sex and the things that go with power).

Will it work? Don’t know. Depends, in the end, how firm the Israeli people are and how much courage Netanyahu’s coalition has. We’ll see about that. But I will lay a lot of blame on Netanyahu: as I’ve been saying from Day One: celerity is crucial. Israel could never afford to drag this thing out. Unless the goal was to let Hamas survive after some severe punishment – and Netanyahu said it was about destroying Hamas – then the only way to do that was a maximum application of Israeli firepower on a tightly besieged Gaza. No supplies or people in or out; systemic, block by block destruction of every person and building in Gaza until the people of Gaza surrender unconditionally. And make no mistake about it: they would have surrendered. Probably after no more than a few weeks of that. Nobody was ever braver than the Poles in World War Two – but both in the initial invasion and during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, the Poles eventually quit after being hammered quite mercilessly by the Germans. People can endure a lot. Courage can make up for a lot of things…but after a while all you’re doing is dying with no hope of success and it is time to call it quits.

The Great Debate: far too many rumors about why now – and why it is being set for June, prior to the Convention. The only things we know for certain is that Trump has accepted and Biden will be in a soft, cuddly cocoon of MSM when it happens. I think it is a high risk gamble by a Team Biden that knows its losing.

Russia launched a surprise offensive north of Kharkov – that is, a surprise to everyone but those who can read a map.

They keep saying the offensive north of Kharkov is a feint…but I gotta say it looks to me like the Russians are going for a pretty classic double-envelopment of Ukrainian forces east of the Kharkov-Donetsk line. We’ll get a better idea as time goes on. But the problem seems to be that the Ukrainians had very limited forces up north…and apparently have a severe manpower shortage in general. In other words, if this “feint” in the north is the real thing, the Russians might find they’re punching into an empty bag. The Ukrainian forces in the east would have to retreat, or be cut off and destroyed – and if Ukraine loses a significant portion of its army, that’s game-over…it would be abject surrender. This is probably the time for the Ukrainians to ask Putin his price for a peace treaty. If it mostly entails giving up what the Russians already have, take the deal. If it is a demand for Ukraine’s destruction, then fight on and probably with more help from the West.

Peru has apparently decreed that being non-binary and the rest of that drivel is a mental illness…mostly because it is.

As I’ve said all along: live your life! Let your freak flag fly if that is what gets you through the day. As in all things, I’ll diligently work to ensure that there is no unjust discrimination against anyone for what they are or what they do. But, a guy in a dress is still a guy. Nobody is born in the wrong body. There are no trans children. Gender is immutable and it is binary. I don’t care what you do – but don’t do it to kids and don’t demand that I participate, even a little bit, in your weird, little world.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan34 Comments

The Trump documents case has been put on hold indefinitely – from what I can understand, the judge is rather concerned about the whole premise of the case and will essentially engage in what amounts to a trial of the prosecutor. This is not a surprise – the case is ridiculous and any decent judge would see right through the scam.

On the other hand, today we saw in the hush money trial in New York the testimony of Stormy Daniels – a proved liar who’s whole monetary existence depends upon getting attention. Gee, no chance she’d be playing an angle here, right? Don’t get too upset about it – the case is also ridiculous but as its in New York, it will proceed to the jury, where conviction is 50/50. But the conviction will be thrown out – you can’t actually do what the judge is doing: that is, allow salacious, uncorroborated testimony designed only to provoke an emotional response from the jury. That Democrats are going ape over the delay in the documents trial is all we need to know about the New York trial: that dog won’t hunt. Convicting Trump in New York will just burnish Trump’s credentials as an outsider. Democrats know this. They wish they could just make it go away. It was all supposed to prevent Trump from getting the nomination. Now “backfire” doesn’t begin to cover it.

The Israelis are restarting their Gaza offensive. They are still taking way too long here. Absolute brutal use of force to finish this quickly is still what they need to do. The longer this drags out, the worse it gets for them. Naturally, the world is screaming bloody murder – the world wants Hamas to survive. They want it to survive because their Arab money bags have ordered them to secure Hamas’ survival. It is really no more than that – the kids out protesting in the colleges have no idea what is going on. They’re just doing what the organizers – who are not students – tell them to do. The whole thing is disgusting – but it all stems from an unwillingness on the part of the Israelis to drive the sword all the way in. I realize that Israel feels a need to stroke the American government – but there comes a time when you choose your nation over your benefactor.

Israel has time and time again had their Arab enemies on their knees, only to hold off from dealing the fatal blow. People forget that for all the early Arab success during the Yom Kippur War, less than three weeks after the Arabs started it, the Israelis were poised to force both the Egyptian and Syrian armies to surrender in the field. They could easily have taken Damascus and Cairo and dictated peace. We told them not to. They went along with it. They have to stop doing that. Kill them. Finish this. Dictate the terms of settlement.

Aside: Kirby was out there announcing that you can’t crush an idea with weapons. As if World War Two never happened. Guys: force works. In fact, it is ultimately the only thing that does work in human affairs. Being law-abiding is a learned habit. Sure, you can find saints. Lots of them, in fact, if you just poke around a bit, and sometimes in the oddest areas. But for most people, most of the time, what keeps them in line is the learned behavior of civilization. Learned so deeply that most people don’t even realize it isn’t something that comes naturally. And what taught the child to share wasn’t a reasoned argument; it was a rap on the knuckles. The adult doesn’t even remember being taught to share. To say “please”. It happened so young that our memories don’t stretch back to it. So, too, with societies – especially when they’ve gone terribly wrong. What burned the cancer of Nazism out of the Germans was 1,000 bombers unloading on their cities night after night. So it will have to be with the Palestinians. A lot of them will have to die so that the shell-shocked survivors understand that it was all a lie, and never fall for it again.

The Boy Scouts will now be Scouting America – for diversity. Bottom line: if you have a son, do not send him there. They will be groomed by perverts. The leadership of the scouts has absolutely no idea what the Boy Scouts are about – and after bankruptcy brought on by sex scandals, they are trying to DEI their way back into relevancy. What the Right has to do is create an entirely new organization – I favor calling it the Rangers, as that has a distinctly American ancestry going back to pre-Revolutionary times and brought forward into modern times by the Army Rangers in World War Two. I’m not particularly concerned with sex segregation; certainly not for members under 12. As long as proper segregation is maintained in the most crucial areas, there can be groups that have both boys and girls. But they can also be segregated. I’d allow local chapters to decide. The program would mostly be just scouting: that whole camping, hiking, doing good works in the community thing. Kids need that – kids today especially need something that will get them away from video screens. But I’d have it emphasize self reliance, hard work and honesty. They idea is to help parents craft their youngsters into sober, hard working citizens of the Republic. And I think it would experience rapid growth.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

Biden promised to unify us – and if you click here you’ll see Right and Left both shouting “F*** Joe Biden”. Unity: achieved. Biden doesn’t win with this sort of attitude at large in the Republic. Its not that the Hamasses will vote Trump, but they’ll vote third party or stay home. I remember the Carter years: I don’t recall anyone held in as much contempt as Biden is.

Trump is doing well right now – and we are getting to the point in time where it would take something massive to shift it back to Biden. One can’t predict massive events, of course – they come when they come. But if polling is still tied or favoring Trump by June, then the November result is probably baked in. That said, we are having trouble down ballot. Lots of it. To be sure, special elections are not very predictive of general election results, but we are seeing a general lack of enthusiasm for GOP Congressional candidates all across the country.

Democrats are, naturally, pointing to this as an endorsement of Biden…but its is more that GOPers just aren’t showing up. And I believe this is because there’s no reason for them to. The Congressional GOP has knifed the base in the back over and over again…so what does it matter if the GOP keeps the House? We used to all think that at least we’d get something if we had a majority…now we know we won’t just get nothing, but we’ll get nothing along with egregious insults. If the GOP wants to win Congress, they’d better pick a fight with Biden. A big one. As it stands right now, the only thing that can possibly save them is a big Trump win dragging a few marginal GOPers over the finish line (this is why there’s still a solid shot at the GOP retaining a House majority and gaining one in the Senate). But we could have had a Red Wave year in Congress…if the GOP had just given GOPers any reason to fight for one.

Red State colleges are being brought under control. Blue State colleges are still the home of raving anti-Semites. One funny note – at one college, some frat boys dragged down a Palestine flag and raised Old Glory. There’s now a go fund me to give them a party and last I checked it was over $270,000.00. It is all great and fun – and watching our flag go up was moving. But I think the GOP – and Trump – could make a big impact. They should have the party – and Trump should be there. It just so perfectly encapsulates what is going on…Democrats coddling foreign savages and domestic traitors while we patriots stand tall for America.

It is just terrible what we’re seeing here – Jewish kids being denied access and physically assaulted. As if an American who happens to be Jewish has anything to do with Israel. Even if one wants to say that Israel is the bad guy, what does a 20 year old college kid in New York have to do with it?

Nothing, of course. But, neither did the 20 year old Israeli girl who was raped and murdered on 10/7 have anything to do with Israeli policy. This is the wages of anti-Semitism. Once you start down the road of saying “the Jews” then you’ll become an increasingly evil person…willing to commit and tolerate all manner of horrors. I blocked yesterday a Catholic account on X because they started in on “the Jews”. I know that ignorance is the foundation of it all, but I think, also, there is something more sinister…something deeply embedded within Fallen Man. That is, to find the scapegoat. To relieve ourselves of responsibility by finding someone at fault for our own shortcomings…or even our own cowardice when faced with a difficult problem. It is hard to do things…but blaming someone is easy. And it is an ego-stroke when it presents itself as esoteric knowledge that only the Wise have access. Rely on it: if you confront an anti-Semite and find an unanswerable argument, their response will be “educate yourself” as if it was you, not they, who is ignorant. But that sort of ego boost is what keeps people on the train…and makes them become worse over time as they must either repent or go all the way.

There is a bill now passed by the House which makes anti-Semitism illegal. This is Democrat/Uniparty window dressing – something to do to make it appear they are doing something (and you know darned well that if the law is enacted it’ll be turned against us in a heartbeat). The bottom line is that the Hamas protestors on campus are already violating civil rights laws. If two or more people conspire to deny a right or privilege then that is a civil rights violation carrying a max of ten years for each offense. When a Jewish kid is blocked from access to campus because he’s Jewish, that is against the law. Period. Under US law you are allowed to hate Jews all you want, but you can’t stop them from enjoying the rights and privileges that all have under law. All of these kids are looking at hundreds of years in jail…if they get prosecuted. And that isn’t happening. And nobody in the Ruling Class wants it to happen. Why? Because of Arab oil money – nobody wants to jeopardize that. Huge amounts of it flow through American institutions and it is all predicated upon allowing the anti-Semitic tropes about Israel to persist.

If we do get Trump in, my hope is that he goes after these people – the statute of limitations is 7 years for these offenses. I want hundreds of these rich, privileged white kids dragged through the judicial system for years over this. We must instruct them: you can’t do that. You can’t, that is, sign on to a fashionable cause and violate rights and think you’ll just walk away from it.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan43 Comments

Vile anti-Semites have largely taken over many US colleges and in just a few areas, the authorities are moving against them – recently in Texas. Once this happened, quite a number of people on the Right got upset. You see, we’re suppressing free speech.

I am so very tired of this drivel – this Libertarian nonsense that I’m obligated to look after the rights of people who will have me shot at the first opportunity. There was a time when I believed that an open airing of ideas would lead, by and large, to the correct ideas being adopted. It doesn’t work that way. People lie – and liars lie because lies work.

Aging has-been Susan Sarandon was out there and when asked about the rapes on 10/7, she just flatly denied they happened. She’s lying. She knows they happened. We all know they happened. But she’ll bare face that out – because there’s no consequence to her for it. She’ll still be an honored person; the Left takes care of their own. And because people like her are willing to lie, the lies become commonplace…and young people, ill-equipped under the best of circumstances to detect a lie, fall for it. I’m supposed to let liars tell America’s youth that Israel is evil? That America is evil? That the Constitution I swore to defend has a built in mechanism for self destruction?

No. I won’t do it. I will not play by rules the other side rejects. Anything we can to do hamper the propagation of anti-American views and anything we can do to punish those who hold those views will be done. It has to be. Its either destroy these people or they’ll destroy us.

Polls are still going back and forth (though mostly favorable to Trump) but the official word from almost all Experts is that Biden has it in the bag. Maybe he does? Who knows? But with Trump stuck in NYC for his bogus trial what we’re seeing is outpouring of support from working class New Yorkers for Trump. Will Trump win New York City? Not a chance; the working class there is actually rather small – the connected rich and the welfare bums make up a majority of the population and they’ll keep voting Democrat. But I think it does show something…perhaps some sort of fundamental shift: the working class is turning to Trump. No to the GOP, but to Trump. So is the middle class outside of the government-supported middle class. The Democrats are the party of the richest and poorest Americans…Trump is the candidate for everyone else. We’ll see if that’s enough in November…and if it is enough, if the GOP is willing to see that their future is as a populist-conservative working/middle class party.

One thing that is an advantage for us is how utterly delusional the Left is becoming. One of the history accounts on X posted a video of Goering’s arrest in 1945 – where he’s turning in his weapon and about to have all his decorations and badges of rank stripped from his uniform. What struck me on that was the expression on Goering’s face: he was crestfallen. It was the moment when he knew that the game was up. Got to keep in mind that just before this, Georing was still working on the theory that the Allied leadership would want to talk to him. Himmler had similar delusions. That after all of WWII and the emerging evidence of the Holocaust, they’d still be players. Goering having his sidearm taken let him know that he was just another criminal being processed. He was a man who had completely separated himself for all human decency but who thought he was still human. Rely on it, not too long before that video was taken, he had hugged his daughter and told her he loved her…as if he was human. But, he wasn’t. Only repentance could have restored him to humanity. As far as we know, he never did. He play acted as a human being, but he wasn’t human. The plain fact of the matter is that he never loved his daughter…a man who can be instrumental in murdering millions can’t possibly love. But such a person can delude themselves into thinking they do.

So, too, with our Lefties. They think they’re human, but they’re really not. Once you’re at the point of nodding along with abortion to birth and having healthy body parts cut off of children, you’ve left your humanity very far behind. You’ll still play-act like a human, but you aren’t. As with Goering, only repentance can restore humanity. This is why we see the Left endlessly bemoaning the dead Palestinians while not even mentioning the dead Jews. They’re play acting. They don’t care about either. But the gambit for power is, at the moment, to support the Palestinians and hate the Jews…so one dead Palestinian brings forth tears…a Jewish baby burned alive brings forth nothing. This is also why as Christians are massacred by Muslims in Africa we don’t hear a peep…because the Left doesn’t care that they’re dead. It means nothing to them, not even in theory. Only if the deaths can help the Leftist gain wealth or power do they matter.

But this is not a strength. It is ultimately a fatal weakness. Just as it was for Goering in days gone by. When you get delusional you simply don’t understand how you look to sane people. You, in fact, start to think that the more delusional you are, the more admirable. You start doing increasingly stupid things to service your delusion…until it all comes crashing down. I think we’re at that point; we’ve tipped. Sure, the Left still has all the power, but its based upon people not figuring it out…and day by day, more and more people are figuring it out. The Left is just crazy…doing insane, stupid things. Think about this: the illegal immigration issue is simply killing Democrats in polling. They won’t even slow it down. They could easily do so; one crisp order from whomever is pulling Biden’s strings and border crossings will drop 90 percent. But insane people don’t respond to rational incentives. The Left is committed to the open border and believes that they are admired for it.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan9 Comments

They got Trump on trial and so he goes and visits a bodega in NYC where the owner was persecuted by the DA for defending himself…large, friendly crowd. To be sure, Harlem is rapidly gentrifying so its not like Trump got popular in the ‘hood…but, still: it is NYC.

Do they get him convicted? Possibly, but I rate it at best 50/50 for them. It only takes on juror to have a mistrial…and the charges are so obviously politically bogus that even a NYC jury might refuse to play along. And it isn’t like the New York government is ragingly popular these days. Acquitting Trump is an excellent way to poke it in the eye. If they get a conviction it is over trivial charges which are likely unconstitutional…so, Trump doesn’t go to jail.

Democrats are crowing that while they have Trump in court he can’t campaign while Biden is free to hit the trail. That’s saying the quiet part out loud! But the fly in their ointment is that Biden can’t actually hit the trail. His latest mental breakdown had him claiming an uncle was eaten by cannibals in World War Two. That was before he warned Israel not to move on Haifa, a city that has been Israeli since 1948. Anyways, the cannibals thing stems from an uncle of his who was in the Army air corps in WWII. The poor man was a passenger and the plane went down in the ocean. One man survived but all others – including the plane – were never located. So, where Biden gets cannibals into this, I don’t know. And the man died before Biden was 2 years old, so its not actually a memory, just something Biden was told about and mangled by his desire that every story about him be the most interesting story there is.

There are some less-bad polls for Biden out there, keeping in mind that to get past 270, he’ll have to get atop Trump by more than 3 percentage points (and anything below 5 is dicey). Other polls show Trump lead steady. Doesn’t really matter. The Mrs paid $4.88 for gas today. If Biden wins in spite of that, we never had a chance. That is, we lost our country ages ago and have just been going through the motions. But those gas prices, those food prices, Biden’s bizarre mental ramblings and increasing physical breakdown, the open border, the crimes committed by illegals, the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine (which is tipping towards disaster, by the way; the MSM isn’t covering it because nothing good for Biden is about to happen there), the sense that nobody is in charge…all of that, and more, is making Trump 2017-2019 shine in retrospect. He’s not nearly as hated as some think.

And if you drill down into the “Biden wins” analysis, it is all based upon a low-turnout election where Democrat GOTV swamps Trump just enough to give Biden 4 more years. Maybe it will be that way. But if its a high turnout election, then it looks like the higher the number of voters, the more Trump is going to get (in some polls of people who didn’t vote in 2020, Trump is up by double digits). Nobody can really know this – there’s no way to know, for certain, who will actually show up. Sure, we can know that a certain number almost certainly will show…but even among the most consistent voters there is some up and down election to election. For those who are occasional voters, its a crap shoot. And as GOP voter registrations continue to improve, we’re getting a class of voters who rarely or never vote. Absolutely no way to know how many of them show – can’t even take a guess at it. The “good” polls for Biden are all D+5 to D+7, predicated upon the GOP just staying home out of disgust for Trump. But if the electorate is R+1, the polls showing it good for Biden are worthless. R+2 or 3? Political earthquake.

More trouble in the House. MAGA blames RINOs, RINOs blame MAGA. There is blame to go around – and MAGA does need to get a larger sense of the possible here, especially with a razor thin majority. But most of the blame must lay at the Speaker’s feet. The Speaker has immense power in the House – Democrats made sure of that over the years. You’ll note that when Nancy was running the show, nothing good for GOPers ever got to the floor. Johnson can do that, too. Democrats can pass whatever they want through the Senate given their majority and our RINOs, but Johnson can pretty much spike anything unless he gets what he wants. And his job was to get us something. We know with a Democrat Senate and White House we’re going to have to put up with huge amounts of Commie garbage. Way of the world, GOP. Do better at the next election. But we did win the House…and that means every bit of Commie garbage should have something MAGA attached to it – if Democrats get money for an NGO to send migrants to the border, then we get money to pay for Texas to build a fifty foot high wall. Like that – and so on and so on. But we got nothing. We always get nothing. And Johnson and the RINOs are smart enough to know that if we don’t get something, there will be trouble. If Johnson falls – and even if we get a Democrat Speaker – then let the lesson be learned: don’t betray the GOP base. Make certain to stroke us. This is the growing pains of a new GOP, guys. Don’t get too upset about it. In the 1850’s the House was a complete mess because the new GOP also hadn’t figured itself out and so essentially handed power to Democrats. It takes time to change.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan14 Comments

Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) is rock solid on most things, but like most GOP Senators he’s still fully committed to the post-WWII “rules based international order”. You know, the thing that got us to lose 58,000 men in Vietnam, as just the highlight of the military and foreign policy disasters since WWII. Today he was doing a bit of saber rattling vis Iran. I pointed out that this is foolish given that our current political and military leaders are incapable of mounting a successful military effort. Our leaders are cowards and traitors, our military is worn out, we’re not getting enough recruits, training and maintenance have been let slide. To risk a major American military force against even a second rate enemy is folly and should only be done at the most extreme need…Israel’s possible conflict with Iran is insufficient cause. Israel has subs with cruise missiles. These missiles are almost certainly nuclear tipped. Israel will be fine.

Supposedly abortion was going to put Florida in play. Well, the latest poll – taken after abortion got on the ballot – shows Trump with a 12 point lead…and that support for adding abortion rights to the Florida Constitution is at 42%. That’s not all that much. We can rely on it that Democrats will go 24/7 abortion as we head towards November and it may, indeed, affect some votes. But I suspect that the post-Dobbs effect is starting to fade. As I’ve said before, for the pro-abortion people and areas, absolutely nothing changed. Here in Nevada we put abortion rights into the State Constitution decades ago. I don’t think we should have, but we did – and the only way that is going to change is if the people of Nevada vote to remove it. Twice (each amendment requires a majority vote in two consecutive elections). That just isn’t going to happen in any time line you care to think about. Maybe in a generation of two after the Culture of Life imparts itself to the people it’ll be repealed as a sad relic like some vestigial Jim Crow laws are these days. But not right now. How can you keep people outraged over something that doesn’t matter? All Dobbs did was restore the proper Constitutional position and if you live in a pro-abortion area you got what you wanted.

That is, of course, why the Democrats keep claiming that Trump has a double secret probation plan to ban abortion after he gets back in. But, he can’t. It almost certainly wouldn’t get through Congress even if the GOP has a trifecta and, per Dobbs, such a thing would likely be struck down as unconstitutional. Abortion is immoral but Roe was just bad law – there was not the slightest warrant in the Constitution to make that ruling. The Justices just made it up because they wanted abortion legal. Democrats will try mighty hard to scare urban/suburban white women about Trump’s Secret Plan to Make You all Handmaids, but I suspect it won’t work.

The GOP is knuckling under for a renewal of FISA. Of course. Speaker Johnson says he changed his mind once he got the Super Secret Briefings about it. So now his position is “trust me, bro”. Too late for that. We can’t possibly trust the government. Our assumption is that Johnson caved because the FBI, using FISA, found something on him. We’d like very much to trust Speaker Johnson – and there is a way he can get us to do that. Tell us what FISA is finding. That’s it. Keeping everything under a veil of secrecy is the problem – we can’t possibly trust the government to operate the program as its advertised as it was used to spy on Trump. But we can agree to keep it – with modifications – if we are told what it does other than spy on Trump. Not asking for nitty gritty details…but if this program is so great, then you should be able to point out a couple things it did. Plots foiled. Terrorists caught. Things like that. Let us know; you work for us, after all.

But even then if we do keep it, I think we’ll need to have a provision in there saying that the federal government can’t use FISA information to so much as investigate an American for actions inside the USA – let alone prosecute or jail them. That is, if you find Joe Smith is talking with Terror Fanatic Abdul in Syria…kill Abdul; you can’t touch Joe Smith. Not with FISA information. Not even with information you were able to dig up because you had FISA information. If its FISA, then as far as American citizens saying and doing things in the USA, it doesn’t exist.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan41 Comments

The polls are tightening! Biden is surging!

Or, so goes the conventional wisdom. And, hey, there might be some tightening as the primaries end and everyone sorts themselves out on partisan lines. But, there also seems to be in the latest raft of polls some significant oversampling of Democrats. Maybe the earlier polls oversampled Republicans? Could be. But as we’ve said here for years now, don’t put your faith in polls. 2016 was the definitive year on that – wasn’t it something like a 97% chance Hillary would win based on polls? This, I think, is far more decisive:

Except for a very slight uptick in Colorado (which was probably out of reach for us all along), this is a catastrophic collapse for the Democrats. And keep in mind that this shift happened while the GOP was largely run by anti-Trump GOPers who were diligently trying to finish off the whole MAGA movement. This is registration gains in spite of deliberate RNC incompetence. This is people looking at their nation and saying, “we’ve got to do something!”. Not that the GOP is great, but it is the only way to stop the increasingly insane Democrats.

I think that the Biden vs Trump rematch will revolve around the fact that here in 2024 there is no longer any mystery about Biden. Even discounting cheating to get him into the White House, the thing about him was supposedly boring and conventional. That there would be no massive policy changes and we’d coast along in peace and quiet after the alarms of the Trump years. That might have been the plan – in his lucid moments, it was probably what Biden wanted – but given that he is increasingly senile, his aides are running wild, imposing ever more far Left lunacy without a shred of legal power to do so. Biden can’t hide behind a Narrative any longer – he sucks. And the price of food and gas are through the roof. I expect at this moment a 49% to 47% Trump victory. Keep in mind, of course, that anything less than a 3+ point Biden win in the popular vote works out to a Trump electoral victory. Basically, Biden has to get above 50% to win because I can’t see Trump getting less than 47%.

Team Pudding Brain has pretty much abandoned Israel. They tried for a while to triangulate support for Hamas and Israel but the Muslim voters they count on aren’t having it – they demanded abandoning Israel and that’s what they’re going to get. Nothing matters to the Democrats more than winning and if they have to hate Israel to get a win, they’ll do it. Don’t put too much stock into this for us as a Party – most Liberal Jews are Liberals first and last…they are just Jews by descent for the most part; they’ll swallow the insult. Orthodox Jews were already moving towards us. This will accelerate that and it might mean a House seat or two but nothing decisive for 2024.

And it is just disgusting what they are doing. Hamas already has a plan written up for what comes after they kill all the Jews of Israel. Plans for what happens to Jewish property. All neatly typed up and ready to go. There are genocidal maniacs in this conflict; its just that they’re all Muslims. I do worry that Israel is losing the will to finish the job. Anything short of the total destruction of Hamas will be an Israeli defeat, and perhaps an ultimately fatal one. A nation can’t afford to have something like Hamas as a living enemy. I did hear the theory that they are just hunkering down and waiting for November’s result. This could be true. Biden’s people do have a lot of control over deliveries of war materials to Israel and so can exert a lot of pressure…pressure the Israeli’s know will end with Trump’s victory. But that is also a long time from now. Its all very murky at the moment.

Did you notice that the MSM was 24/7 eclipse for a while? I did. Lots of people did. Personally, I think it was to deflect attention away from Trump’s statement on the abortion issue. This is crucial. What he said did upset some pro-Lifers but the pragmatic facts of life are that a majority of Americans currently want abortion legal, at least through the first trimester. We just can’t get around that. Took 50 years of relentless pro-abortion propaganda to get us here and we won’t undo that in a day. It will take decades for us to build a culture of life – and we can’t do that if for purity’s sake we turn all power over to the fanatic pro-abortion Democrats. We have to take what we can get – that was Trump’s essential message. And it is a message Democrats want to bury because their whole Fall campaign is going to be “Trump wants to ban abortion” as a means of scaring upper class urban/suburban white women. Trump does need to get out in front of this – my view is that our failure to do so in 2022 cost us at least 3 Senate and a dozen House seats. Failure to address abortion squarely turned a Red Wave into a Red Trickle. Trump is doing the right thing here; nobody likes a coward so lets be a bit brave and say what we want.

Team Pudding Brain is also cooking up more illegal plans to annul student debt. You can get mad about it, if you like, but it is what it is. They’re playing to win. Those on our side who are all “pay your bills” are simply not getting it. In 2024, some votes have to be purchased. As I said years ago we should have been out in front on this one – and casting it as “Democrats enslaved you to college debt and we freed you from it”. If not cancellation, then at least make it dischargable in bankruptcy. And put the colleges on the hook for at least some of it. Tax college endowments to pay for low income college. So much we could have done and we just blew it. I’m hopeful that Trump comes up with something along these lines. There’s already indicators that youth is prepared to abandon the Democrats…we just need something to tip them.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan44 Comments

We were all wondering when it first came out if it were an April Fool’s joke, but it does appear that Biden is denying he proclaimed trans visibility for Easter. Now, to be sure, one must think carefully about this: the Party Line on it now is that the day has been around since 2009 and it just happened to fall on Easter…and, hey, isn’t this just as important as the observation of the resurrection? So, it might be just on that level that Biden is denying he made it happen – that he was just rote doing what you’re supposed to do on national observations that we all participate in. Because, you know, we all can’t wait for trans day of visibility to roll around each year.

That, of course, is actually damage control: someone decided that Biden and the rest of the Democrats would make a to do about trans on Easter as a malicious insult…and they thought that our outrage would get blowback that would work to Democrat advantage. When it was actually done – when the thing was in the public square – they suddenly realized how absolutely hideous it was and now they’re trying to back and fill.

My advice: forget the polls. They are going to fluctuate a bit back and forth. Carter had a 7 point lead in Gallup in April of 1980. Dukakis was down 2 in April of 1988, up 16 in May. On and on like that. This is what I think is the real dynamic of 2024: that people are just getting sick of it all. The trans on Easter thing is just another element in a large tapestry of things people just don’t like about the Biden years. The biggest thing will remain the price of gas and groceries but in all respects, just nothing is going right. That is why Democrats are now pinning their hopes on abortion: they just managed to get a pro-abortion amendment on the Florida ballot. They’ll do that in as many States as they can. Trust me on this: by September it’ll be 24/7 abortion. It did work partially in 2022. Will it work again? I doubt it. If it does then it means we never had a chance, anyway: if America returns Biden to office just to make sure children can be killed, then we’re out of the political market altogether. But outside a desperation move like that, there’s nothing Biden and the Democrats can do – any policy that would actually fix the problems they’ve created (notably reducing spending to cut inflation and closing the border to stop illegal immigration) is opposed by too large a part of the Democrat base. They are caught in a bind and can only hope that something else gets them out of it. Abortion is something else. So, too, things like trans day of visibility…but that has already backfired.

People are tired. Biden was supposed to be a placeholder. The Not Trump. He wasn’t supposed to do anything but end Covid and then let things coast until someone else got in. But they forgot he is senile – and when not senile, stupid. He isn’t running the show. He lacks the wit or will to ride herd on the far left like Obama and Clinton did. Thus the far left is setting the policy – but nobody ever voted for the far left. The more they do, the worse it gets for Biden.

Louis Conter, the last survivor of the USS Arizona, passed away. He was 102. God bless the man. Almost all the WWII vets are gone. Korean vets, too. The old soldier you see these days is likely a former 19 year old Marine from Vietnam, 1967.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan29 Comments

I have this friend whom I’ve known since 1971. When we were kids, we liked science fiction (heck, we both still do) and so we’d ponder in, say, 1978 what the future might hold. We came up with some pretty fantastic ideas of what humanity might achieve but among the possibilities, cannibalism wasn’t one of them. Now we’ve got alleged cannibal gangs in Haiti and there was this train accident in California the other day where a leg was thrown clear and a guy apparently picked it up and started snacking on it. We seem to be devolving at an increasing pace.

Gas prices are starting to rise again and this is putting downward pressure on Biden’s poll numbers. In response to this, Team Pudding Brain has asked Ukraine to not blow up Russian oil facilities which would put even more upward pressure on gas prices. So, we’re paying for Ukraine to fight the Russians while also doing what we can to ensure Russia has money to fight the Ukrainians. Got a call from Zombie Kafka and he asked that we knock it off.

That terrorist attack in Moscow was of the quite horrific variety. Moscow is, of course, tightly protected and gun control is universal in Russia but this terrorist squad managed to get there and accessed a pre-positioned cache of some pretty heavy weapons. You can’t stop determined lunatics. Aside from that, what’s it all about?

Nobody knows. Very good chance that nobody will ever really know. US government word is that ISIS took responsibility and that is a possibility: ISIS has a gripe against Russia over the Syrian Civil War where the Russian- and Iranian-back Syrian regime fought ISIS. The Russian government is clearly indicating a Ukrainian connection and even if that wasn’t true, the Russian government would be keen to make it true. If any element of the Ukrainian government was involved – even rogue – the US will do all it can to suppress that information. We’re in for a raft of conspiracy theories on this one, guys.

Could Ukraine have had a hand in it? That is a distinct possibility. The Russians are advancing again; not very fast or far, but definitely moving the line westwards. There was a massive Russian missile strike against Ukrainian electricity production a couple days ago. Ukraine is having ever more trouble filling its depleted ranks (there are stories that French combat units are moving into Western Ukraine; don’t guess wrong here…this is probably more to prevent Russia from moving too far west in the event of a Ukrainian collapse; the French don’t want a shooting war with Russia; they don’t have the army for it). Could desperate times in Kiev lead to desperate, even foolish, measures? They could.

Bottom line: a messy situation just go messier – and if the Russian government can pin this on Ukraine, even with bogus evidence, it will strongly motivate the Russian people to take a pound of flesh from Ukraine.

Biden’s people are pushing very hard to stop Israel from hitting the southern part of Gaza. This is because of polling in Michigan and Minnesota with their large Muslim populations. But it is also rather disgusting that our government is increasingly aligned with Hamas against Israel. I don’t think the Democrats really come back from this – once you start down that road, it ends at Der Sturmer; they’ll be repeating blood libels by 2028.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan64 Comments

Haiti is falling apart. Again. Actually, of course, it never was together. Been a mess since independence. Unlike most places that emerged from colonial domination, Haiti immediately massacred the entire colonial ruling class. So, the founders of the nation really had no clue how to go about it. All else seems to stem from that. You totally understand why they rebelled and why they hated their white overlords…but they also sabotaged themselves.

Not sure what can be done – colonial overlordship is the obvious solution, but who would take on the job? The Haitians would start taking shots at you even if you were trying to improve things. There also just isn’t much to work with. No significant natural resources. Population is badly educated. They do have the island climate and beautiful beaches so tourism is an obvious thing but there are also other places with just as nice beaches that don’t periodically descend into savagery. Just really bad and really sad. Naturally, we’ve pledged more than $100 million in additional funding…for just what, I can’t say. There is no government in the country.

Speaking of descent into savagery, all of Oakland’s Taco Bell’s are converting to cashless operations only via drive through. The reason is the incessant robberies. This might only be a band aid. We’ve already seen plenty of other businesses go under in the Bay Area simply because crime is out of control. OTOH, San Francisco just enacted via referendum two “law and order” measures…not much (drug tests for welfare bums, restoring some powers to the police) but at least a step…and an indication that even in the Progressive citadels, there’s a limit. As I’ve said, civilization is a veneer – and a very thin one, at that. You only keep it by firmly upholding it. You can’t really let people do whatever they want; there have to be rules, strictly enforced.

The Pittsburg Police will not have any officers in police stations between 3 and 7 am and only have limited numbers of officers on patrol. The reason? Well, they only get 8 percent of their calls during that time.

Until now.

Just watch: they’ve opened up a Window O’ Crime…the crooks will know when it will be easiest to get away and that’s when they’ll strike. Watch, especially, for home invasions to increase.

Dungeons and Dragons was a game played by nerds when I was a kid. I tried it a few times but I thought the premise ridiculous and never got into it. But a lot of people loved it. Naturally, the Woke have taken it over and are determined to turn it into something that nobody will like. Not sure how they’ll ruin it, but they will. After all, the game is fantasy and everyone is allowed to insert their own desires into their character (because, you know, they’re made up) but I’m guessing there will be some rules about the gender and race make up of characters or some insistence that certain types of characters be of certain genders, orientations and skin colors. Because the whole point of the game isn’t to go on an adventure but to make sure all boxes are checked off…

Team Trump is now fully in control of the RNC – with Trump’s daughter as co-chair. Oddly, this is probably the means whereby the RNC is saved. Donations have been plummeting as the GOP Base has tended to see the RNC as a tool of the GOP Establishment. And there is much truth in that assumption…the strategy and spending of the RNC is so incompetent that you do wonder if it was deliberate sabotage. We won the 2022 Ohio Senate election by more than 250,000 votes – the GOP poured money into this race while starving the Arizona gubernatorial and Nevada Senate races of funds; races which were lost by 17,000 and 8,000 votes, respectively. Don’t tell me the money and number-crunch guys didn’t see this coming. Or, if they didn’t, then they are so incompetent that it doesn’t matter if it wasn’t treason as it might as well be.

Look to the new RNC leadership to clean house and then for Team Trump and the RNC to go on a fundraising blitz…which will probably rake in money as the Trumpsters will open up for the RNC now that it is in loyal hands.

UPDATE: Checking in on the Left, this is from a HuffPo editor.

They are such sad people – but it shows they really believe the drivel.