Open Thread

Open Thread

Mark Noonan12 Comments

New Mexico’s Democrat governor Grisham yesterday announced that the Second Amendment was null and void in Albuquerque for 30 days. The alleged justification for the action are the recent murders of some children, including an 11 year old. As far as that goes, this was just par for the course from Democrats – cynically exploiting the death of a child to advance their Leftist agenda; in this case, disarming the population. It was ridiculous in practical terms (the only possible people who would obey the order are those who would never murder anyone) but also an outrage against the Constitution. You really can’t just willy-nilly set aside its provisions.

What surprised everyone a bit was the number of prominent Democrats who came out to oppose the move. Not immediately – there was about a day between order and condemnation. This means someone quickly did some polling on the issue and found it catastrophically bad for Democrats. You know for certain their concern wasn’t the Constitution. Grisham is guilty of not only saying the quiet part out loud, but saying it before the Democrat party as a whole was prepared to defend it. But even with that, it is a huge problem.

The governor can be impeached. But the Legislature is controlled by Democrats. The State and local police could refuse to comply with an illegal order. But the cops most concerned – in Albuquerque – already announced they would enforce the rule. The Federal government can arrest the governor – as well as any staffers or police who cooperate with the order – on conspiracy to deny the civil rights of the people of New Mexico (this is actually a violation of US law; we really have enacted laws making it illegal to deny a person their civil rights…it has just never been enforced against a Democrat), but Pudding Brain’s DOJ won’t do that. So, we’re kinda stuck, aren’t we?

Sure, anyone arrested under the order can fight it in court and almost certainly they will prevail. Eventually. Could take a couple years, maybe longer. And what will they get after the fight? A court order nullifying the order, years after it went into effect (with maybe a judge ordering an injunction against its enforcement while the case winds its way through the courts). No penalty to the governor or for anyone who enforced the order. Lots of expense for those arrested on the basis of an illegal order. Nothing has more clearly shown that when the rubber meets the road, the Constitution is a mere scrap of paper…only in force as long as those with power agree to enforce it.

What we lack – and it is now a glaring lack, given that Democrats have dispensed with the Rule of Law – is any mechanism for enforcing the law – for securing our rights – when the government is actively working to oppress the people. A temporary fix is to get a GOP President in office willing to prosecute the governor. That would go a long way. But not all the way. In fact, might even make a Leftist hero out of her. And a GOPer won’t be President forever. Eventually, a Democrat gets back in and we’re back at square one.

It is a problem we’re going to have to deal with; the construction of mechanisms which allow the people to stop the government. Not quite sure how to go about this (some sort of Tribune like in ancient Rome?), but when all of the power is in the hands of people who don’t respect the law, we need something outside the law to stand between us and the government.

Democrats are increasingly angry over GOP governors shipping illegals to Blue cities. This means it is working; and we should not only keep it up, but increase the numbers. It is turning out to be a PR catastrophe for the Democrats…it is causing huge stress in Democrat cities (and among various Dem voting blocs) but the Democrats can’t seal the border to stop it because that would upset the far Left. They are in a pickle and it is gloriosu.

Senator Kennedy ripped into the Deputy Secretary of Energy over the price tag for getting us to “net zero” by 2050 and how nobody can say how much this will change the climate if we do it. It is in a lot of ways a grand effort by Kennedy but in the end, he lost the argument: because he conceded, repeatedly, that being “carbon neutral” is good; a goal we should achieve. We can’t do that – that is, we can’t even for a moment concede a point to the Democrats. All they believe are lies and we can’t go along with them.

There is no “climate crisis”.

Just as there is no “gun violence”. People are violent; guns are inanimate objects.

Abortion is not healthcare.

On and on like that.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan84 Comments

Senators Collins (R-ME) and Murray (D-WA) proudly announced they had advanced a “bi-partisan” spending bill through committee today. We already know what’s in it without looking: a Democrat Christmas wish list and some kickbacks to the GOP donor class. It is what “bi-partisan” means. One thing this will lack – as all bills lack – is anything for the GOP base.

Dem base: gets stuff.

Dem donor class: my goodness you won’t believe how much they get!

GOP donor class: more than enough to keep them cutting checks for the GOP.

GOP base: diddly squat.

Why is one fourth of the interested parties screwed? Why is that fourth always screwed?

I understand Collins’ position – she’s a GOPer representing a purple State and so she has to trim her sails to retain electoral viability. Totally dig it. Nothing actually dishonorable in that. Politics is, after all, the art of the possible. But, still: why do we get nothing? Collins could do it. She could easily throw us a bone. Even as a minority-party Senator she swings great weight…can gum up the works for weeks if she wanted to; could also work with GOP House Leaders on a strategy to leverage some GOP wins into the final product. But we know what we’ll get: nothing. There will be money in there for all manner of ridiculous things (the X account @RandoLand_us details it regularly); we’re literally sending money out to pay for lesbian poetry in the Third World. If the Democrats can get that – and they always do – why can’t we, say, get a few million to support artists who write from a Christian perspective? I mean, not that I need the money…but if we’re going to flash the cash at Diversity then, well, part of Diversity is me…I’m a Diversity. My voice needs to be heard!

Only moderately kidding there: I wouldn’t take the money. But, still: why not a little cash our way? Why not, say, get a return for our vote? Without Collins and other GOPers in the Senate lots of bills have a murky future. That is massive political leverage. Use it!

But they don’t and that does tell us something: they despise us. People like Collins know they need our votes, but they hate it. She’ll do bare minimum GOP-ish stuff to retain GOP votes but all her efforts are really directed at helping her friends, the Democrats. The only people on the outside looking in is the GOP base; nobody represents it at the tables of the powerful. This is why, so far, it is mostly sticking with Trump…and if DeSantis really wants to make a contest of it, he’ll have to demonstrate that he’s going to get things for the base even better than Trump could.

And it does need to be done; we on the Right are losing faith in the USA. Not in the idea; not in what the flag represents, but in the system under that flag. That is what the Never Trumpers and Collins-style people don’t get: we’re alienated. After all, we get scorned, we get harassed, we get arrested…but we don’t actually get anything. We’re going to rush more billions to Ukraine but we’ve still got people waiting years for VA benefits…and as we on the Right make up the bulk of veterans, it does sink in that slow VA benefits is intentional. They don’t give a darn about us and hope we die before they have to pay out.

Someone in the Uniparty better start thinking fast of this could all blow up.

The ADL – a mere arm of the DNC propaganda machine – has been using accusations of anti-Semitism at X to crush advertising revenues. Though the ADL is a Democrat front organization, it still has the reputation built up in the last century of being a fighter against bigotry. That it decades ago became a mere DNC mouthpiece simply hasn’t registered in Corporate America…so when they get a memo from the ADL they tend to act on it. Musk now says he’ll sue – claiming the ADL has cost X $22 billion in value. Could be an interesting case.

Tucker Carlson is interviewing a guy who says he had relations with Obama way back when. Such has been rumored since Obama first rose to prominence. I’m kinda “meh” about it – if Obama is gay or bi and hid it then it is yet another in a long line of Obama lies.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan42 Comments

Nashville trans shooter had a manifesto: we still haven’t seen it, might not for years.

Jacksonville racist shooter had a manifesto: it was out pretty much as soon as the story broke.

It could be explained by mere gatekeeping: the MSM simply not allowing anything out which could dispute the Narrative (don’t tell me that some enterprising reporter couldn’t get the trans shooter’s manifesto if they wanted to). But I’m not so sure it is just that. It was out way too fast. Like someone had it all set to go. As if someone knew the shooting was coming.

And that makes me want the shooter’s associates looked into. He was 21 – ie, born in 2002. Woke was already heavily into the schools. As he went through schools he got the full show – racism bad, America bad, white males bad. What I’m saying: whatever was in this guy, the Left put it there. Who, then, turned it to racism? Sure, I know he could have found it himself as the web is chock full of it…and the means used by propagandists to sucker people in are very effective (and that’s whether you’re trying to turn your target racist or trans). But, still; its a long way from posting on some Stromfront chat room to getting a gun and killing human beings (just as its a long way from a girl liking Tonka trucks to having “top surgery”). Who lit the fuse? I want to know – what we need to know: are there people pushing people towards certain actions to support the Ruling Class Narrative/Agenda? We know that scores of the “climate change forest fires” have actually been set by arsonists – someone is setting those people off, and I suspect that someone set the Jacksonville shooter off.

And it might good deeper and higher than we suspect. Over the last couple weeks the FBI has busted down a couple doors and shot people for positing “threats” on line. It is clear that the Feds are looking for a “MAGA Terrorist” they can put on trial. The two guys shot didn’t fit the full bill, not being credible in a trial setting…and now both are conveniently (for the FBI) dead. I strongly suspect that the apparatus of power in the USA is trying to get horrid things to happen to justify the continued power of the Ruling Class.

“But Mark, they would never do that!”

Yes, they would. Ruling classes threatened in the core of their being will do anything to keep in power. There are more than enough questions about the Colosio assassination in Mexico back in 1994 to conclude that it was likely the Ruling Class eliminating one of their own who had got off the ranch. When power, wealth and prestige are at stake, people do all sorts of odd things…and do keep in mind that America’s Ruling Class, each year, dispenses trillions of dollars and the influence that goes with it. And we also know that, by and large, those in charge of the United States has no sense of morals at all. There’s nothing to hold them back.

They’ve set Trump’s trial date for the election interference case for March 24, 2024. They will try to get a swift conviction and place Trump in jail. Sure, Trump’s lawyers will appeal and all that, but they want him in jail – at this point, in the hope that the GOP would then dump Trump. Make no mistake about it, they fear him again…there is a palpable shift out there and some polls are reflecting an easy Electoral College win for Trump. We’ll see how it goes; I would suspect that Trump’s legal team will try to delay it.

Burning Man is a ridiculous gathering of modern, smelly hippies in the Nevada desert. All those purple haired vegans you’ve heard about? They attend it. This year its being held on tribal lands near Pyramid Lake and some other purple haired vegans decided to block traffic to the event to protest hot weather. Absolutely hilarious that two sets of Commie losers were in a stand off! Anyways, what they forgot is that an Indian Reservation is owned by Indians and if they don’t want you blocking their road, you don’t get to block their road – Native cops busted down the barricade and arrested all the whiny, upper class white Commies and you’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan103 Comments

Tucker’s interview with Trump has been up (as this point) a bit more than an hour and it has more than 81 million views. This is going to far outpace whatever audience the Fox GOP debate will get. I didn’t watch the debate as I tend not to watch such things this early on, especially with that many people on stage. It is a bit silly. But I did watch the Trump interview with my Mrs – he’s still engaging and fun to watch. Clearly a little older but he seems in good shape. The usual run of Trump thinking out loud…but also, as per usual, did nail point after point. The Mrs was entertained – and she’s never particularly warmed up to Trump.

Trump is still a major political factor. To try to dismiss him is folly.

Now: we’ll see what happens when votes start being cast.

Do any of you remember the Eddy Grant song Electric Avenue? Lately a line in it has been rolling around in my head:

Who is to blame in what country?
Never can get to the one

Does seem like that, doesn’t it? Because we were all good, little GOPers back in 2001 – and patriots, always – we kinda let it slide that nobody in official circles went to jail over the attack. It was massive fail in intelligence, law enforcement and military…nobody paid a price (except for the 3,000 who died, of course). I think that’s when things really started to fall apart…when our Ruling Class found out that no matter how bad the failure, if they just scripted it right, they could breeze right past it…and maybe even get a commendation and promotion.

You know the song Putting on the Ritz where the line goes, “trying hard to look like Gary Cooper”? I never really got that because, for me, Gary Cooper was an older cowboy actor. But here’s a picture of him from a 1926 silent film. I get it, now.

The limit is 13. I repeat, the limit is 13!

Open Thread

Mark Noonan40 Comments

Rumors have been swirling that they are getting ready to impose COVID lockdowns again for 2024. I discounted them but now I’m not so sure – Lionsgate has reinstated mask mandates in their LA office and a few other bits of info in my own life tell me that something is up: that there might be a push to resume COVID panic. The main reason I can figure for this is to allow free flowing fraud for 2024 – and the bad news for us is that most battleground States have Democrat governors who will certainly want to impose the mandates when ordered to. Still not a done deal: outside of a small portion of idiots, nobody wants mask mandates and other COVID lockdowns in place. Popular resistance might prevent it.

The other possibility for bringing them back is that we are teetering on the edge of a major economic downturn and getting COVID restrictions back in place will be a convenient thing to blame…rather than all the selling out to China and paying for a proxy war in Ukraine that we’re losing. Main thing: put nothing past these people. As I’ve said before – once you get a person going along with abortion to birth, there is no morality left. They are into objective evil.

They seem to be slow walking Maui information, don’t they? Rumor is that hundreds are still missing – and must be presumed dead by now. Including large numbers of children. Why not let it out right way? Because they need it to be old news…dribbled out, perhaps with a Friday newsdump. To have Democrat policy cause such a shocking disaster isn’t something they want in the public eye. They also needed a chance to get Pudding Brain’s meds right for a visit. They did the best they could but of course that senile idiot tried to make the tragedy about himself; trying to talk up a minor house fire he had once into something comparable. But make no mistake about it, that fire was caused and aggravated by Democrat policy at the local, State and federal level. It should never have happened – and if by some chance it started, wise policy before and during would have made it a minor event. This is blood on Democrat hands.

We on our side really need to hit on this; every Blue city murder, every death along the border, every drug overdose…all of it comes to us via Democrat policy. They are piling up corpses in great, big bloody batches and we can’t afford to be nice about it: paint their doors with the blood of the victims. No more letting Democrats get away with a claim of being compassionate…they are as cruel and uncaring as the worst savages of history.

The end of Buckley-ite Conservatism? National Review is ending its fortnightly format and going monthly. Naturally they are dressing it up as new and improved…but the bottom line is that it shows a declining appetite for what NR sells. And just what does it sell? Conservatism which Liberals find tolerable.

No disrespect to the late Bill Buckley here. He was a man of brilliance who did many things to advance Conservative thought. In the heyday of Liberal dominance – the 20 years after the end of WWII – Buckley’s magazine was one of the few things keeping the flame of Conservatism alive. But in the end Buckley’s project failed. And it failed because it presumed Liberalism to be a valid worldview. That is, that Liberalism had a genuine intellectual and philosophical underpinning. It didn’t. It doesn’t. It never could have. Liberalism, from its first emergence in the middle 18th century always had the fatal flaw: the absurd belief that if we could just get the system right, we’d get the desired morality. Buckley’s brand of Conservatism did see through that, but not all the way. There was still some underlying assumption that Liberalism is tolerable, when just a bit of thought lets you know that it will always devolve into some sort of totalitarian barbarism. Communism, Socialism, Fascism, Nazism all grew out of Liberalism…and the increasing favor tyranny finds on the Left today is just yet another manifestation of Liberalism’s devolution to tyranny.

The breaking point – the thing which pointed to ultimate failure – was the casting out of the Birchers. I, too, once believed that it was a good and necessary thing. Can’t have kooks! Well, true; but we also can’t let ourselves be suckers. And casting out the Birchers made us suckers. Whatever screwball ideas they may have had, the bottom line is that they were defending what Conservatism is supposed to defend; faith, family and property. Because they were abandoned, the Right essentially abandoned the defense of faith, family and property. If you think back on it all, every time there was a crucial fight on those issues, the Conservative movement caved into the Left. It wasn’t Conservatism which began the pro-Life movement. It wasn’t Conservatism which saved the Second Amendment. There weren’t rich donors behind them; while Conservatism would say kind things about them, they never got into the fight. If Conservatism wanted to Conserve anything then it’s jobs was to guide and channel the Birch-impulse…away from the genuine screwballs. But to do that would be to get down in the dirt and fight it out to the destruction of Left or Right. Conservatism never wanted to do that. Might upset the liberal friends, you know?

And so it drifted until with betrayal piled on top of betrayal, the common folk turned to an outsider to get what they want – a defense of faith, family and property. We’ve yet to see how this comes out – but what Buckley did is gone, never to return.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan82 Comments

Word is that Pudding Brain has a fake e mail address. Oddly, it is a .gov address…which means he was helped in getting it by employees of the government. Like spending half his time in Delaware, this is a means whereby he avoids FOIA requests…if it doesn’t happen in the White House or in Biden’s official communications, then it doesn’t show up in oversight. To be sure, some of this is to make sure Biden is just out of the public eye – he can barely do an hour of work a day – but most of it is just to hide what is going on. From you. As Joe said, he doesn’t work for us.

Lot of argument about whether or not Trump should drop the 2020 vote issue. Maybe he should: but I’d like to point out that the GOP’s best chance of an easy move-on from Trump was for it to loudly proclaim 2020 as filled with questions and pledging to vindicate Trump’s assertion. Trump is mad – he had the White House stolen from him. It doesn’t matter if you believe that; he does. And the anger is doubled by all the GOPers he helped out dropping dime on him. This, I think, is the reason he’s running: he wants vindication.

Seems an IRS agent killed another IRS agent in a shoot out – which leaves us with the question: why are IRS agents armed?

Ninth Circuit has ruled that Idaho’s ban on biological males competing in women’s sports is unconstitutional…on what possible grounds I can’t imagine. I’m sure they dressed it up under equal protection but for heaven’s sake this issue has only existed even in theory since the 1970’s and we have no legal consensus on how all this works. Just because someone says it is so doesn’t make it so – this will go to the Supreme Court where I view it’s future as murky. There could be 2 sorta-Right Justices who want to make a name for themselves on the left on this issue as Kennedy did on SSM. The real problem here is the Courts refusing to hold themselves bound by the law – whatever is in the Constitution, this issue isn’t covered by it, plus or minus. It is therefore a matter for the States or the people to decide.

We do have in the Constitution the power to regular how federal courts operate – the right to appeal to the federal judiciary is not absolute…and as the Courts are selective in what cases they take, we can be selective in what cases they can hear. I’d hold that for a federal court to even hear a case they’d have to quote chapter and verse where the case is covered under the Constitution before they even start. I’d also work on a bit of State nullification: that is, a State going ahead and enforcing the law even if a federal court strikes it down on the grounds that the federal courts have no power over the issue. Depending on who is in the White House this could get interesting…but to me it is a fight worth having. That is: making it clear that there are issues the federal government simply has zero authority over. And lets see a President try to arrest the government of a State for not obeying a court order. Sometimes to get change you have to provoke a crisis.

Main thing: there isn’t supposed to be a final word under our system of government: it was certainly never meant to be 9 judges making the final call.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan49 Comments

Proterra just filed for bankruptcy.

They’re an Electric Vehicle company much-touted (and subsidized) but Team Pudding Brain.

Energy Secretary Granholm cashed out $1.6 million in Proterra stock just before it went belly up.

Now, you can be stupid and say this was all just a coincidence…or you can see the obvious: a grift company set up to drain money from the Treasury tipped off the Energy Secretary – who must have been in on the scam – so she can get her pile of money, ultimately courtesy of the taxpayers.

They’re not even really hiding that they are corrupt. They keep the details secret, but the fact that they are corrupt is obvious and they are laughing at us. With the revelation that foreign oligarchs and gangsters have funneled $20 million into various Biden Family shell companies, the MSM position (so far) is that there is no proof that any of this money was directly given to Joe Biden. They know that’s a stupid thing to say. They don’t care. They know nothing will happen; they are even confident that if a GOPer wins the White House nothing will happen – likely because too many senior GOPers are hip deep in the overall Ruling Class corruption. Like this:

Senator Tim Scott – who is not a bad guy – had his campaign books looked into and it seems that huge amounts of money are being spent on brand new companies. We’re talking millions of dollars going from Scott’s campaign chest (which is huge) into these companies for…well, not for a whole heck of a lot. And make no mistake about it, what Scott is doing here is legal. But it is almost certainly what Matt and I found in Caucus of Corruption back in 2006: politicians essentially paying themselves out of campaign donations. You know: hire your wife as a consultant for half a million dollars. With this being relatively clean – legal and not actually hidden – can you imagine what we’d find if we really dug into the bowels of government? As of a minute ago, in FY 2023 (which started October 1st, 2022) Uncle Sam has spent $4,805,159,571,246.00 – $455 million more than they had spent by this time last year! Who the heck is keeping track of all that?

Suppose you had just a billion dollars and someone was stealing ten thousand dollars a day from you…you have a billion. It’ll be ages before you really notice it. And that is just you with your own billion dollars. Now imagine nearly five trillion dollars being shoveled out and millions of people coming and going…how hard would it be to steal a million dollars every day? That would only be 365 million by the end of the year. That is 0.007% of the money. that is like someone slightly shaving some metal of a penny. How would you notice? What I’m saying: rely on it, huge amounts of money are being stolen. probably at least a trillion every year of late. Often legally: but only as long as the people don’t find out about it and so demand reforms. Protecting that pile of stolen money is crucial to those stealing it: there is literally nothing they won’t do to keep you from finding out about it and stopping it.

Like, for instance, indicting Trump for saying things…which ultimately stems from Trump wanting to look into a big part of the corruption, what was going on in Ukraine.

RDS booted a Soros-backed, Commie State Attorney. And this is sure to warm Amazona’s heart – not just on a Commie getting the boot, by why she got it: DeSantis determined she was violating her oath of office by allowing violent felons to skate. This is wonderful stuff; and definitely the way to go. We can no longer tolerate people getting into official positions to undermine what those positions are for.

As we pretty much already knew, the FBI was targeting Catholics as domestic terrorists. Like the Traditional Latin Mass? Dude: the FBI wants to know all about it. Hey, I get it – the Trad Catholics can be a bit tiresome (I actually lean a bit left theologically; that whole Divine Mercy thing has sunk deep into me), but they aren’t terrorists. Unlike, you know, Antifa/BLM who are…and are also crooks and con artists, into the bargain. The sort of people the FBI might want to look into before they tackle the lady on her way to Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. And I would like to remind one and all that while we Catholics are pretty easy going…we can become Cristeros at need.

The World Bank is cutting off funding to Uganda because of a recently passed law restricting homosexuality. Now, to be sure, I don’t think Uganda should have passed this law. I don’t think the government should be in the business of policing the personal relationships of the citizens. But here’s the thing: I’m not Ugandan. Not my country. The people of Uganda are perfectly capable of exercising their own judgement about what is best for themselves and while I can offer my opinion on it, I in no way have the right to try to force a people to live as I think best. The purpose of The World Bank is to provide funding to poor nations so they can rise out of poverty. Uganda has a Per Capita Income of about a grand a year. That’s pretty poor, if you ask me. They could probably use some economic development…but what they don’t need is rich, white foreigners telling them how to live. The old Imperialism sought to bring Christian truth and material advancement…the new Imperialism seeks to make the world like San Francisco.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan82 Comments

Normally, I never condemn anyone for their vote but for 2024 a GOP vote has become a moral obligation on all decent people. Regardless of what anyone thinks of any particular GOP candidate and in spite of the manifest weakness, corruption and folly of the GOP, itself, the Democrats have become so overwhelmingly bad – anti-human, evil in policy – that anyone with the least moral sense has to vote for the one alternative likely to eject the Democrats from power: and that is the GOP.

They are using the Department of Justice as a Gestapo. They are selling us out to the Green Lobby while China builds coal-fired power plants. They favor abortion to birth and the medical transition of children. They are conniving at the new slave trade along our southern border. They are making policy based on bribes and kickbacks. They are feeding the flames of internal hatred and division merely to keep selected demographic voting blocs on their side. It is all just horrible and if it goes on America is lost. They must be stopped – and the only way to stop them (God help us!) is the GOP.

As I’ve said many times, I will back the eventual GOP nominee regardless of who that person is – and I am no longer engaging in internal debate about which candidate is best. They are all better than any Democrat. From the most Trumpy to the most RINO among them, they are all miles above any Democrat. I urge all on our side to cease sniping at each other – sure, battle for your candidate, but don’t spend any time attacking the supporters of someone else. Save that fire for the Democrats. There is simply too much at stake for us to waste our effort on internal battles.

The latest Trump indictment is the same flaming garbage as the other two – they are charging him for speech. The only reason they can do this is the charges are being filed in DC and the federal judiciary there is under the control of frothing-at-the-mouth Leftwing fanatics imposed by Obama. The case should be tossed, but it won’t be – even the DC court of appeals is a no-go as a majority of it is Democrats. Eventually the Supreme Court will toss the case, but that could be years from now. The only question here is do Democrats feel an advantage for a quick trial and conviction (there is no doubt a DC jury will follow Party orders and convict no matter what the facts are), or have it hang over Trump especially if he’s the nominee? They might not know themselves, so you may see a bit of confusion in how they proceed. And they’re not done – they’re working on more charges in various venues and I would suspect if Trump is the nominee then in September of next year he’ll be charged with sedition.

But, does it matter? Right now, Trump is riding high for the GOP nomination and there are worried rumbles among the Left: a concern that even if Biden remains ahead, he’s not enough ahead to win. Remember, 3 or less points in the popular vote likely means a GOP Electoral College victory. And one recent poll actually had them tied – which would work out to a catastrophic Democrat defeat, probably costing them the Senate. I don’t care too much for polls…but the people who control the money in politics (on both sides) live and die by them. That is why we’re also hearing rumbles that people want Joe off the ticket…that, in fact, the recent revelations about Hunter originate in Democrats trying to force a change on the ticket. Who can really know?

The basic problem the Democrats have is that for the first time, they don’t have a smart person in charge. Much as we all despise Obama and the Clintons, they knew how to operate political machinery. Biden is senile and barely able to function more than a few hours a day. The Executive decisions likely depend on who talks to him last, and most of the time that would be Jill, who has never shown any political talent. The really bad thing for Democrats is there is nobody to ride herd on the most kook Left parts of the coalition. They are now rather regularly saying the quiet part out loud…including in front of people who aren’t emotionally committed to them. It could make for a wild ride next year.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan25 Comments

Little follow up to my post from two days ago: after discussing what is brave and so forth, got into a similar debate about what are rights. It was rather heated for a while and I think I’ve identified why: I thought after a while that we were talking past each other because I realized I hadn’t pointed out that with rights come responsibilities…and that’s when it all really fell apart and I found out that lots of people don’t even have a mental conception of responsibilities. And, guys, this was me arguing with the Right. The Left never even showed up.

To nutshell it, I pointed out that we are under no obligation to allow bad and/or insane people to occupy the public square. That among the rights we as citizens hold is the right to a peaceful, polite, orderly society so that we may conduct our lawful business without let or hindrance. This caused the explosion – one guy considering me a fascist over it. The bottom line is that those opposing me do not believe that we have a right to decency and neither do people have a responsibility to be decent. Sure, they conceded that someone causing direct harm could be arrested…but only in very narrow circumstances and if I didn’t like the way things we, too bad: we can only be free if lousy people are allowed to be lousy.

This shows how far the rot has gone – first that people believe a bum or a gangster is someone exercising freedom rather than representing the mentality of a slave. Secondly that decent people have to put up with the lousy…that if we don’t do that, we can’t be free. The truth, of course, is that if you don’t have an orderly, polite society you can’t be free…because a disordered, rude society is swiftly run by the most barbaric among us and barbarians do not respect the rights of anyone. This is why we have people waltzing into stores and just swiping everything. You can say the changes to the law caused it and I’d agree that it was a proximate cause of the event, but the bottom line is that you and I – even if absolutely assured we wouldn’t get prosecuted – simply would not go and steal stuff. We know its wrong and we don’t have a right to take what belongs to others. Barbarians don’t know its wrong and figure anything they can grab is theirs by right.

And how are we supposed to survive like that? The answer is that we can’t. It is already starting to fall apart (and the suburban people who figure they can just shop on line are gonna love it when their Amazon delivery trucks start to get hijacked in droves). Eventually those who produce or who have goods to sell will retreat behind walls and only allow select people in…and they’ll only produce in small amounts for fear that goods available for sale are also readily available for theft. Shortages, lack of access, rising prices are going to come unless this is stopped.

And they way you stop a barbarian is to hit him. Very hard. So that it hurts a lot. And you keep hitting him until he stops. It is the only way. It isn’t fascist; not even akin to fascism. It is saving civilization and thus freedom.

So, Hunter had his plea deal and the judge tossed it because it absurdly granted Hunter immunity from future charges…in case anyone following up on his actions found even more crimes (spoiler: there are more crimes. A lot more crimes). So, he plead guilty. Now, don’t get your hopes up: Team Pudding Brain isn’t going to allow Joe’s spawn to go to jail and they will want all possible charges wrapped up before election day, 2024, for fear that if a GOPer – or even a hostile or indifferent Democrat – gets in for 2025 the jig will be up. Rely on it that they are already working on a modified slap on the wrist. And the Biden’s are too arrogant to understand that the way out – the way to make this all go away – is for Hunter to see the inside of a jail cell. Say a 3 year rap, out in 18 months. Be good for Hunter: his best chance to get clean before he overdoses. It would still be a wrist slap, but everyone is going to figure “at least he went to jail” and stop looking into it. The hope is the nitwits keep screwing it up and a GOP President gets to have his team look into it.

DeSantis said something mildly approving of RFK (who is a nut) and the world went mad – and mostly is was DeSantis supporters who went mad. They’re busy writing his political obituary over it. But I do detect something: some RDS supporters clearly only backed RDS as the non-Trump without much hope he’d actually win the nomination and thus provide these people with an excuse to vote Biden in 2024. As for me: it wasn’t that bad and RDS has plenty of time to repair whatever damage was done. What I’ve been advising people is to not get committed to any particular candidate too early. The Trumpsters and the DeSantis-stans are both making the mistake of getting too deeply invested when the first primary is still months away (though I suspect DNC pot-stirring is playing a role here). I’ve committed to vote for the GOP nominee – of late I’m not even saying who I prefer. Any GOPer is the moral and intellectual superior of every Democrat.

In line with that, do you feel the shift? After the 2022 midterms I think most of us expected rather resounding defeat in 2024. I sure did. But Dobbs fades and Pudding Brain’s utter nastiness comes ever more to the fore. I think people are disgusted with him. A lot. Sure, Trump has his negatives – and rely on it that if RDS or someone else gets it, their negatives will be driven sky high by the MSM – but Trump didn’t abandon a grandchild. Isn’t talking about “gender affirming care” for minors as if the very concept weren’t an abomination. Without getting too deep here, for the first time in a while I do think we can win next year. Steep hill to climb. We still have to win outside the margin of fraud (which will be a lot lower than in 2020), but I think we can do it. Stay tuned.