Open Thread

Open Thread

Mark Noonan44 Comments

Yesterday everyone got into a blue funk over losing the abortion fight in Ohio…except all it did was enshrine into the Ohio constitution what was already Ohio law. It was a clever tactic by the Democrats, though, and it will be used everywhere in 2024…get abortion initiatives on the ballot in order to drive turnout because, apparently, nothing is more important to suburban white women than making sure black women can get abortions (39% of all abortions in 2020 were done on black women – who make up about 12% of the female population). But, don’t get yourself in too much of a fret about it.

We scored some big local victories in New York City – in areas carried by Pudding Brain by 30 points. Seems like New Yorkers (outside Manhattan) are finally having enough of this woke garbage. No, NYC will not vote GOP in 2024…but if we’re seeing deep blue areas shift right even a little bit, then it spells disaster for Democrats at the national level in 2024. Just a few percentage points of deep blue areas moving GOP means Democrats will have an increasingly hard time winning PA, MI, WI…and even MN. We also did a bit of this on the local level in New Jersey and while (as expected) we came up short in the PA Supreme Court race, we once again pressed forward with victories at the county and school board level which are vastly more important right now.

Some people are now calling the Life issue toxic – I don’t agree. I agree that we’re losing on the issue, but I disagree that it is a losing issue for us. Our primary problem is that we’re not responding. The GOP is simply hoping the issue goes away. Can’t do that; can’t leave the field to the Democrats. In 2022 here in Nevada we were bombarded 24/7 by pro-abortion advertising on all media platforms and it almost certainly cost us a Senate and two House seats. I’m not saying the GOP response was weak – I was here; it was non-existent. Nobody even mentioned the matter on the GOP side. We lost the Nevada Senate race by 8,000 votes after Democrats spent months and tens of millions advertising on abortion. Just a bit of pushback on our side and we could easily have flipped 4,000+ of those votes. We do need to carefully think about how we want to go forward. It is clear that at the moment we do not have an electoral majority in favor of banning abortion. That is sad but entirely to be expected given overall social conditions. We have to tune our message to reasonable restrictions which are backed by large majorities and they must be coupled with massive help for pregnant women.

As the Gaza war grinds on it has become increasingly clear to me that we have to be very forthright about our views on the matter. No more trying to be nice about it. No more tip toeing around Leftist hate. Call it what it is. As I pointed out on X, you don’t get to crawl off the Israeli girl you just raped and set on fire and claim Geneva Convention protections. Such people are to be shot out of hand and only granted mercy if they abjectly surrender. And any deaths resulting from getting at Hamas are entirely on Hamas. They did deeds which have removed them from any protection of the law. Until they are on their knees they are simply to be killed. And everyone around them should shun them and flee their presence. Better to risk Hamas shooting you in the back then remain in place as their human shields. If you don’t run, it is assumed you want to be a shield.

But more than that, we also need to clearly call out the pro-Hamas people. They are trying to hide it. They have to. But anyone refusing to outright condemn Hamas – personnel and ideology – is an accessory to Hamas’ savagery. No decent person can have anything to do with Hamas, and those who are still carrying their water – by whatever verbal gymnastics – have to called out as the evil people they are. We’re not trying to silence dissent; we are out to completely condemn the evil. It must become that no person, anywhere, will raise their voice in support of Hamas. They must be made as toxic as their actions make them.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan22 Comments

There’s video out there showing Border Patrol agents using a forklift to raise up the barbed wire Texas placed along the border so that illegals can steam in. Need to really understand all that is happening here.

All law enforcement officers take an oath to uphold the law. All persons in the military and law enforcement are instructed in their duty to disobey illegal orders. It is against the law to illegally enter the USA – even if you’re an asylum-seeker, you’re still supposed to present yourself at a legal border crossing and make your case. There is never any justification for anyone to cross the US border outside of legal border crossings. What the Border Patrol – the agency tasked with defending the border! – is doing is abetting illegal activity. They are breaking the law. Now, they’ll just say they are obeying orders…and you know they are! But that is irrelevant: since WWII “I was just obeying orders” is no defense; nobody is supposed to obey an illegal order. Not under any circumstance.

Understand that our law enforcement agencies will break the law and will obey any order given. While some county Sheriff’s departments might be on our side (especially in deep red areas), I wouldn’t bet a nickle that a city or State (let alone federal) police agency will protect my rights. They are not, at the moment, going out of their way to oppress but they are definitely willing to obey any order to oppress. One thing we need to do is completely revamp how policing is done in the United States. It needs to be very local and very much under the control of the people.

The Biden people are in a funk – they are trying to thread the needle between supporting Israel and pleasing their increasingly anti-Semitic base and it just isn’t working. My perception now is that they’ve decided to lean towards the Islamist side: just more votes and money in it (nations like Qatar provide buckets of money to any institution willing to parrot the Islamist line…if you’re really wondering how America’s prestige universities became anti-Semitic sewers, there ya go). Just as Israel is set to encircle Gaza City, itself, and thus contain (and eventually destroy) the prime area of Hamas power, Pudding Brain’s people are out there saying we need a “humanitarian pause”…you know, a breather for Hamas and more time for Iran and Hezbollah to deploy forces which can strike Israel. Yes, it really is disgusting…but when your internal polls are showing you down in Michigan and that promised “consulting” job paid for by Qatari money is being pulled, you do what you gotta do.

And that anti-Semitism is getting more vile and open, isn’t it?

To be fair, it isn’t all on the Left; there are plenty of Right voices also joining in on it, on the absurd notion that “America First” is undermined by the Jews. These idiots just need to remember – if they know anything at all – that most Russian Jews weren’t Bolsheviks even if a lot of Bolsheviks were Jews (as one Russian Jewish leader put it: “the Trotsky’s make the headlines but the Bronstein’s pay the bills”). Yes, there are Jews in the Globalist groups undermining all Western nations. There are also Protestants and Catholics. For the Globalists whatever ethnic or religious status they might have is secondary to their Globalist ideology. Meaning: that they are Jewish or Catholic or Protestant is entirely secondary. Their nature is Globalist first and foremost. In the end, probably better these vile people revealed themselves to us – we can ditch them and move on; they only make up a very small proportion of the Right.

On the Left, though, it is becoming endemic. To keep your Leftists bona-fides these days you pretty much have to offer support for Hamas; you have to, in one way or another, approve of 10/7. Anyone who doesn’t is a racist, sexist, homophobic, settler colonialist bastard. This is why we get people calling for a ceasefire: it is the easiest way to support Hamas without overtly stating support for Hamas. To the casual observer, calling for a ceasefire seems like a good thing and not in Hamas’ favor; but, of course, it is. It is, in fact, the one thing that can save them now. It is, in the end, a call for a repeat of 10/7 at a later date. And anyone who thinks for a moment or two realizes this…including all those Leftists in the USA who are calling for a ceasefire. They know what they are doing: and they are doing it to maintain their Leftist membership.

They do have a problem, though: most Americans – and at least a plurality of Democrats – don’t like anti-Semitism and broadly support Israel’s right to self defense. This is going to make it hard for Democrats, even with the MSM working overtime to hide the Leftist anti-Semitism.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan33 Comments

Saw on Facebook that our Matt Margolis recently lost his mother; prayers for the family are greatly appreciated.

I think I can see what the Israeli’s are up to. They do not, apparently, want to conquer and occupy Gaza. This is understandable: trying to control and take care of two million hostile people is a tall order for even a Great Power…a small power like Israel probably feels it is just too much to attempt. So, what they are doing is trying destroy Hamas’ Gaza infrastructure while killing as many Hamas members as they can – especially senior leadership. It is a play to knock back Hamas’ physical capability as well as a harsh lesson to any surviving and successor Hamas leadership that doing 10/7 means you die.

This is just guess on my part; the IDF doesn’t check with me. But it looks like this from the outside.

I don’t think this will work.

Hamas isn’t the particular problem, no more than the Nazis were in Germany – the problem is that the population of Gaza by and large has faith in Hamas’ promise, just as Germans had faith in Nazism, even if they weren’t overtly committed to the party. Even at the end, in January of 1945, most Germans still felt that Nazism was good and that Hitler would pull it off for them. It was only the spasm of violence March to May 1945 which burned out the Nazi cancer…which made it impossible for the Germans to continue to believe in Nazism. The revelation of Nazi crimes post-war wasn’t the catalyst; the Germans already knew about them before the war ended. It was Russians massacring Germans by the bushel, the French letting their Algerian troops do whatever the heck they wanted, Anglo-American soldiers giving Germans five minutes to clear out of the undamaged buildings…that is what showed the Germans they had lost, that the Nazis had lied.

There were, after all, plenty of Nazis left in Germany after the war ended. Committed, believing Nazis…and not all of them set for the gallows or a term in prison. Paul Hausser was a Waffen-SS general who went about post-war white-washing the Waffen-SS. Felix Steiner was another believing Nazi general who really wasn’t punished at all post-war; he also participated in pro-Nazi post-war activities. But while the long-term effect of their efforts has led to some absurd modern beliefs about the Nazis (most pro-Nazi organizations these days take their cues from the BS people like Hausser put out post-war, including Holocaust denial open or covert) it never recaptured the imagination of the German people…because that post-war generation knew what happens when you follow the Nazis into war. The problem with the Israeli plan – if I’ve got it right – is that it will still leave Hamas as a credible standard. No matter how many of the leadership are killed, some number of them will survive and raise the flag again…and if the people of Gaza don’t feel the war on their flesh, they’ll still believe…and just hope for a better outcome in a future round.

Of course, Israel might feel they have no other choice; as I said, holding down two million people takes a lot of effort…the process of utter humiliation which would get them to reject Hamas – and all Islamist ideologies – is time consuming and dangerous. It might be something that the Israeli body politic just couldn’t sustain. Right now, Israelis are flint; the more they hear about just what Hamas did, the more grimly determined they are upon retribution. But there’s a point where anger does start to fade and its usually when your own boys and girls are dying for limited gains. And I might be wrong; they might just be prepping the ground for a general assault and occupation.

What has been of interest for Americans has been the number of Progressive Jews – by far the large majority of the American Jewish population – is how vicious their supposed Progressive allies are. I did make the rather cold observation that for Progressive Jews, the American Left was fine as long as the targets were straight, white Christians. Progressive Jews do bear a lot of animosity towards that class of people – but none of it really justified. Whatever white Christians did to Jews in America, its many decades past. The Jews should be long past any feeling of fear or insult. But, they kept it up…only to discover, very late, that the only Americans they can rely on are Jesus-freak gun-nut rednecks. I doubt we’ll see a quick shift in Jewish voting patterns, but this is going to be part of the breakup of the Left coalition. We’re already seeing erosion among Latino and Asian communities, tiny bits of movement in the African-American communities and now we’ll almost certainly see it among Jews.

The bottom line is that the American Left is entirely dominated by a pagan (in practical terms…but lots of them are still in mainline Protestant denominations), white, upper class of ignorant holders of college degrees. Our Credentialed Incompetents. As they are without any concept of God, they are de-facto evil; they are cruel, greedy, and narcissistic. They are out there right now – or their college-aged spawn – shouting various “death to the Jews” slogans…which are just variations on “Black Lives Matter”, “No Justice, No Peace”, “Antifa”, “ACAB” and so forth. I rather cruelly asked a couple Progressive Jews just what they thought “America is systemically racist” meant when they vapidly nodded along with it? If America is racist then Americans are racist…and just what do you do with racists? You kill them. FFS, none of this is at all surprising. Except to people at the top of the social and economic order, because getting to the top these days requires the cultivation of stupidity.

We won’t ever get a majority of Jews on our side (for most Jews, being Progressive is far more important to their identity than being Jewish; so, too, for Progressive Christians). Just as we’ll never get a majority of Asians, Blacks and Latinos. But if we can just eat into the Democrat numbers here – I’m talking just 10 point shifts, which still works out to Democrats dominating these demographics – then it is all over for the Democrats. That’s why Pudding Brain’s people have been making pro-Israel noises, as have some other Democrat office-holders. I do give a tiny bit of credit where credit is due here…but make no mistake about it, those Democrats making pro-Israel statements are merely trying to ride the tiger. Most of their base – the purple-haired pronouners – are viciously anti-Semitic. But just enough of the base remains pro-Israel that the Democrat leadership needs to keep them on side. They’re trying to thread the needle…to just hold it together until 2024 is over.

I don’t think they’ll be able to…not for lack of effort, but because their base is so stupid and ignorant they simply won’t play ball. The Democrats will crack up; hopefully just in time for 2024.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan51 Comments

The same government which is sending grandma to jail for 5 years over J6 says they lack the ability to arrest all known gangsters and seal the border. Bluntly: your government approves of criminality. It is probably bribed by the gangs.

Think about it – they know who the gangsters are. They know where the gangsters live. It is almost an existential certainty that any gang member, if he’s not already wanted on a warrant, has evidence on or around him proving criminal activity. We could, like El Salvador, sweep these people up. Sure, we’re a much larger nation with many more people…but you gotta know we can get 90% of them if we picked a day and then just did it. But we don’t. And if we ask, we’re given 10,000 excuses.

And, sure, defense lawyers would be all over such an action. But, why? Because they would be paid to be all over them. Meanwhile, the government can RICO all your assets away from you without trial…but we somehow can’t confiscate the gang money which would be used to pay for gang lawyers. And the same appellate system which is refusing to help out the J6 defendants would be releasing gangsters on ridiculous technicalities in a heartbeat. We are crime-ridden because at least enough of our government is well paid to make it so.

Now, think of all the people coming across – especially those caught and released. The government knows precisely how many of them have terrorist affiliations…and yet they are allowed to come in.

I bring this up because it is why Israel suffered 10/7. The Israeli government knew that Hamas was raising up a generation of psychotic killers and training them in methods of massacre. It was an open secret that “aid” shipments to Gaza were stuffed to the gills with military material. That Hamas had entire manufacturing facilities for rockets and other weapons of war. While I am confident they just totally missed this attack, the fact that there was going to be a major attack simply could not have been missed. But the Israeli government – like our government and all Western governments – isn’t paid to protect the people. There’s no upside for expending that effort and taking that political risk. Israel has been engaged in an absurd fight over whether or not judges should have some control outside the judiciary…which is obviously something needed but they went and had a fight about it while Hamas put the final touches on massacre.

The only reason we don’t have an endless series of these attacks is not lack of power and opportunity, but simple gumption. Hamas did what all terrorist groups want but heretofore have simply lacked the will to carry out. That will now exists. No matter what Israel does to Gaza, the maestros of massacre now see what can be done and how overall weak the response is. Israel is allowing aid into Gaza; they are feeding their enemies. They are still providing advance warnings of attacks. It was a good joke for the IDF to respond to UN complains of lack of fuel in Gaza to point out (with pictures) that Hamas has a huge fuel storage facility. But why hasn’t it been blown up? And at least Israel is fighting back! With a couple score Americans confirmed dead and maybe a dozen held captive, we’re still urging restraint and talking up a two-State solution at the UN. European governments are even more craven.

I think we might be in for a bad time.

We at least have a new Speaker and to the shock of everyone, he’s not an Establishment creature. Mike Johnson is mostly an unknown quantity but he’s been a Trump supporter in the past and seems pretty America-first; he’s been given a grade of F by something called “Republicans for Ukraine”. When Gaetz threw his hand-grenade I think we all expected some sort of disaster…but in the end, the guy we got seems to be loved by MAGA and at least respected by RINO. We could have some good things. One of the things he’s promised – and he’ll be under MASSIVE pressure to break this promise – is no more Continuing Resolutions. Budgeting will be done via the budget process with each agency budget getting its up or down vote. This might seem small but it is crucial…it brings accountability and control. It makes the agencies justify their budgets. It means a lot of Leftwing wish-list stuff will end up on the cutting room floor.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan84 Comments

Still no major movement into Gaza and now we’re providing aid for Hamas. But don’t worry, Pudding Brain’s people say that if Hamas tries to steal the aid, they’ll condemn it. This is not looking good.

On the other hand, the IDF is still talking victory – that they will totally destroy Hamas in Gaza. Can’t see how they do that while allowing us to feed Hamas…but I can only assume they at least think they’ve got a plan that’ll work. We’re going to find out.

Pudding Brain went to Israel and it was just so entirely humiliating…this aged, senile crook out there to provide cover for aids who are desperately trying to get Israel to surrender to Hamas. We are a very pathetic nation right now. The pissant King of Jordan refused to even meet with Biden. I’m sure the Israelis didn’t want to…but as he’s the guy signing the checks, they had to put up with it. While Israel has built a robust domestic arms industry, there are still come crucial elements which come from us so I guess Israel still feels over a barrel.

For future reference on Israel’s part, I’d buy about 100 Panzerhaubitze 2000 from the Krauts (given the past, the Germans would likely do an easy-payment deal); its a 155mm self propelled howitzer which has an effective range of 67 kilometers. This means, depending on where positioned on Israeli-controlled territory, it can hit anywhere in Gaza or the West bank and very deep into Lebanon and Jordan, as well. Get about a million rounds of ammo for it (the stuff keeps forever) and anytime anyone in range causes trouble, just level an area with cannon fire. 155 mm is very common and no matter what is going on, you’d be able to replenish ammunition from some source. One thing the IDF has always had a lack of is tube artillery; when fighting conventional forces, that isn’t much of a handicap but when confronting dug in irregular forces like Hamas, it is just what the doctor ordered.

The GOP still can’t come up with a Speaker. The battle is between those who want a MAGA purist and those who want a conventional GOPer who can be relied upon to fully fund Democrat priorities. To me the easy deal is to agree to the RINO with a proviso that any funding bill will, once it gets to the floor, be stripped down to its components for an up or down vote. For instance, Pudding Brain wants us to cobble together a bill for Ukraine, Israel and border security. Fine. But once it comes time for a vote, it is broken up into 3 separate bills. This doesn’t mean all of it fails…but it does mean there will have to be some real horse trading…like in return for Ukraine aid, we get, say, funding to Texas for building a border wall (if we give the money to Biden, his people either won’t spend it or will buy something ineffective). On and on like that.

This battle over the Speakership is causing all sorts of heartache…in government and the pundit class. Most Americans are probably only vaguely aware of it and don’t care one way or the other. This will not hurt GOP prospects for 2024 unless something really ridiculous happens, like some RINOs joining Democrats to make Jeffries Speaker. I really do discount this – though the rumor does abound. Any GOPer voting for such a thing has got to know the career ends with that vote. There will be a successful primary challenge.

Meanwhile, GOP prospects brighten by the day – some recent polling shows any of Trump, DeSantis or Haley beating Biden (keeping in mind that anything less than Biden +5 in the popular vote likely means a GOP victory). This is not because the GOP is any good – it isn’t, and we just about universally despise it, as a thing – but because Biden is just so very bad. There have been rumors of Democrats trying to ditch Biden but I don’t think it’ll happen. Though Obama and Clinton people are all over the Democrat establishment, they generally don’t like each other and getting them to agree to an alternative is going to be hard (especially as Clinton’s people would probably want Clinton to be the alternative); if they don’t come together, then the Biden people hold sway…and as they only survive in power as long as Joe does, they simply will not let it go. Unless Biden dies, he’s the guy. And there may come a point when the Democrat powers that be just let it alone – knowing that Joe is a goner. Trump if he gets back in is only for one term; if its DeSantis they figure they can still win Congress in 2026 and do to him in 2028 what they did to Trump in 2020.

As the Gaza war has gone on we’ve been treated to some MSM lies astonishing in their scope and, indeed, arrogance. Some people are pretending to be shocked about this. They also pretend to be shocked when the corruption of our government is revealed. Everyone knows. It isn’t a surprise. The MSM lies, it lies all the time and about everything. So, too, the government. But here’s why a lot of people pretend it is all shocking: they know what it means to admit that our government and media are just liars. It means we can’t allow either to go on as is.

I’ve been pointing out for a while that the First Amendment cannot sanely be construed to protect lying. That our Founders knew we would have liars does not mean they were trying to secure a right to lie. They were trying to secure a right to tell the truth – what we Catholics called rightly ordered freedom: The freedom to do what is right. While we all can do evil, we are not being free when we do so…we are, in fact, enslaving ourselves when we do wrong. What I’m saying is that we, the people, can enact laws punishing lies. We can make anyone who publicly utters a lie pay for it – in civil or criminal court, or both. And we are going to have to do this – because the MSM cannot at this point correct itself. It is, as it were, determined to lie at this point. In a sense, they’ve told so many lies that they are committed to lying. Not really, of course; anyone can repent. But in their minds to admit that they’ve been lying for years is too humiliating. So, they’ll just double and triple down on the lies. But we can’t have a Republic if liars are allow to lie with impunity…so we will have to stop them.

The other thing I’ve been yammering on about is the need to end government secrecy. It really does have to go, and in its entirety. Whatever tiny advantage we gain against foreign adversaries by having secrets is vastly outweighed by government’s ability to hide corruption and incompetence under a veil of secrecy. For us to have a Republic we must know what the government is doing as it does it. Only thus can we judge if our agencies of government are working in our interest. We must enact laws requiring the government to do everything out in the open. No secrets. Ever.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan55 Comments

Someone wrote some years ago that how a person views Israel is shorthand for whether or not they’re decent. I don’t think this is 100% but the past few days have shows the overall truth of the statement. The huge divide right now is over Israel.

To be sure, most of the Left is firmly in Hamas’ camp though there have been a few big voices on the Left raised in support of Israel. It is on the Right where we’re finding some surprises with many big Right voices – including many self-identified as MAGA and/or Trumpster – basically swallowing Hamas’ propaganda; some to the point where they’ve gone to overt anti-Semitism. It is strange, but also explicable.

The first thing to consider is that the conspiracy theory side of things remains mostly ridiculous – but with bizarre and disgusting things such as the failure to release the Epstein client list and the continual revelations of well-placed people being exposed as pedophiles, the Conspiracists have found much grist for their mill. There isn’t a cabal of Globalist pedophiles running the world…but there are a lot of pedophiles who are Globalists and the Globalists do often protect them. But it isn’t a very long step to seeing all this nauseating stuff and falling for the Conspiracy Theories which have grown up around them…from there is just a skip over to the anti-Semitic side of the aisle where it is asserted – as it has been since the Protocols were fabricated – that The Jews are behind all that stuff. I think some of our people have fallen for this. And having fallen – and being by nature Isolationists, into the bargain – they were primed to condemn Israel and now fall for Hamas.

It is sad and we will have to battle against it – but I think we should go easy on ostracism for the moment. As my Dad pointed out to me decades ago, you’re going to hate a lot of your best allies in the fight for freedom. I’ll say that in the pressure of the moment, a lot of people got suckered and I think we can induce them to come back to the side of the angels on it. Keeping in mind that I am Isolationist, Protectionist and America First…but I recognize evil when I see it and Hamas is downright evil.

A few things to keep in mind about this:

  1. The battle is not thousands of years old. It it 94 years old. It started in 1929 when the Muslim population of then-British Mandate decided, entirely unprovoked, to have a pogrom. Why? Because the Muslim Ruling Class felt threatened in its position and the Muslim population greedily eyed the rising Jewish prosperity. In short, they wanted to steal. It was only after 1929 that the Jews in the Holy Land started to arm themselves and then only in self defense. Every subsequent event in the Jewish-Muslim war started right then…it has just been a progression. But always keep in mind that the Muslims started it…and not for any good reason; just over greed for power and money.
  2. The Muslim population of the West Bank and Gaza have been rigorously educated from pre-school to hate Jews and glory in killing them. There are about 4.5 million Muslims in the area. Half are under twenty. That means that half of them – more than two million – are just eagerly waiting for their chance to kill a Jew. Its all been one gigantic Hitler Youth camp. They are now a poisoned tree and it will take a long while to purge the poison. In other words, no sane person can make a deal with them right now.
  3. Iran probably fostered this attack to scuttle the growing rapprochement between Israel and the Arab States. Iran has a deep fear of being isolated in hatred of Israel and the purpose of Hamas, for Iran, is to have an absolutely lunatic pawn to be used when Iran feels necessary.
  4. Iran and Hamas probably calculated that Israel would hold back. They still might be calculating that. In fact, Israel might still hold back – and the world is already starting to pressure Israel to hold back. Hamas wins if the Israel attack ends and Hamas is still around. They don’t care how many people die. Israel should not hold back.
  5. Hamas has no moral grounds to continue fighting. Not just on the fact that their chosen method of warfare is murder and rape, but on grounds of simple military reality: they can’t beat the Israelis. Nobody fought harder than the Warsaw Poles against the Germans in 1944 but even they, when faced with the stark fact that continued resistance just meant death with no different outcome, they honorably surrendered. Hamas has a moral obligation to surrender to spare lives. If they do not, then all lives lost are Hamas’ responsibility. This is entirely outside any other considerations – continuing to fight a hopeless battle, unless your enemy proposes to massacre all of you, is immoral. The whole world should be pressuring Hamas to surrender, not for Israel to hold back.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan109 Comments

I was at an impasse in Book VIII – mostly how to deal with a character who, it turns out, does have to die in order to build a really good story line for another character – the other day and so I sat myself in front of the idiot box to drop thinking for a bit (it does help; a clear mind can suddenly solve a riddle that has bothered you all day) and just absorb passively. As I clicked through the available product – mostly dreck, it goes without saying – I came across an interesting documentary. Produced by the BBC in 2015, it is called 1945: The Savage Peace.

The story it tells is what happened to the Germans of eastern Europe after WWII. Spoiler: it was bad. Like really, really bad. For a lot of people it will come as a revelation because it is something not covered in depth in Western histories of WWII and its aftermath. To nutshell it, after WWII the German territories of East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia were transferred to other nations – most to Poland with a slice of East Prussia going to the Soviet Union (and still part of Russia today – you can see it on the map as a small exclave between Lithuania and Poland). The German population of these territories was forced out – ethnically cleansed as we would put it today. Additionally, the German population of the Sudetenland in today’s Czech Republic as well as long-established German communities in Hungary and Romania were also sent off to Germany. It was many millions of people. Nobody knows exactly how many because in the chaos of the time nobody bothered to count how many were left in these Soviet-occupied areas of post-WWII Europe (quite a large number of them had, of course, fled ahead of the Soviet advance at the end of the war).

And it wasn’t done gently; the people who exiled the Germans were Poles, Czechs and others who had just spent years under very brutal Nazi German occupation and once they got on top of the Germans they very cruelly extracted their pound of flesh. Not only did these Germans lose their land, they lost pretty much everything but the clothes on their backs and while in transit to Germany they were subjected to beatings, rapes and murders. The documentary interviews several Germans who endured it – all very old by 2015 and between 10 and 15 years old or so when it happened. So, it is designed to evoke sympathy for the Germans and while the documentary does make passing reference to the immediately prior Nazi brutality, the whole thing is pitched to make out that the Germans were mere victims. And, to be sure, the people they interviewed – all kids at the time – were specifically innocent. They couldn’t interview their parents because by 2015 all those who were adults in 1945 were dead. But by doing this, it really wrecked the context. While little Helga was innocent her mom and dad were probably participants – or approved of – the equally brutal relocation of Poles in 1939-40. And like all German adults, they knew about the Holocaust and did nothing about it. And like the Russians who threw themselves upon the German population at the end of the war, the Poles and Czech almost to a man and woman had someone close murdered or otherwise brutalized by the Germans during the war. Two wrongs do not make a right…but you can’t lord it over people and treat them like despised slaves for 5 years and not expect some payback. That Helga had to watch in terror as her family was brutally exiled is sad…but Helga’s family should have considered that possibility while they were going Sieg Heil for all those years (East Prussia, for instance, voted overwhelmingly Nazi in the last free election).

I bring this up because this documentary works out to a re-write of history and coming off very badly in it are the Poles. Jews and Czechs also not looking all too kind. It is a white-wash of Nazi history and an attempt to slander people who are clearly out of favor in the European Establishment; the Poles, especially, not knuckling under to EU dictates about Woke policies and immigration. Germans, of course, are the pillar of the EU Establishment…so I guess they’ve decided to kinda gloss over that 1939-45 unpleasantness. I do perceive that we’re getting a lot more of this sort of thing…not just the “black people did everything wonderful” drivel, but attempts to reassign within European/Western history who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. The bad guys are, of course, you; this started actually back in the 1980’s when people accused Ike of being a war criminal because some number of German POWs died in American captivity post-WWII. Some did; but people are always dying. An in-depth study showed that the German POW death rate was in line with everyone else in the area…all higher than normal but it was the immediate aftermath of WWII with Germany an entire wreck. But that didn’t stop the “bad Ike” stories…and in spite of being debunked, the myth persists to this day. The past is being edited just as in 1984 in order to control the present and future.

In a ridiculous attempt to cover up the side effects of the Covid vaccine they are now claiming that the common cold, all along, causes heart problems. They are really desperate to hide the truth.

The former CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch is accused of sexual abuse. I do admit to being entirely creeped out by the picture of the guy. Our world is run by degenerates.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan52 Comments

I was thinking about that Ukrainian SS guy honored by Canada’s parliament. First off, my bet is that hardly anyone in the parliament had the foggiest notion of who fought who in Eastern Europe in WWII. For most of them – as for most in the West – there is just a vague sense that the Nazis were bad and that anyone defined as bad must be a Nazi. Probably not one in a thousand adults in the West today could even identify a particular Nazi program – and I include the anti-Semitism because do keep in mind that anti-Semitism is rapidly rising on the Left and in the schools the Holocaust is discounted in favor of various Woke programs (bet money that the kids in school have heard vastly more about George Floyd of Fentanyl than they have about the Holocaust over the past couple years). So, no surprise that a member of the Waffen-SS was honored – all they heard is that he was Ukrainian and had fought Russians. But then I thought further: even if you explained Nazi ideology to them, could the determine what makes it bad?

Because what, really, did the Nazis do that a modern Leftist would object to? The only thing I can think of is: jail homosexuals. And even that wasn’t a specifically Nazi thing: German law had long held harsh penalties for those convicted of homosexual acts (as did most nations in the world back then). Hitler, indeed, was very tolerant of it. And that goes to another thing the Left would have a problem processing: Hitler was an anti-Christian Bohemian. He didn’t believe in working for a living. Kept odd hours and odd habits. Was a crank in his personal habits (no smoking, no drinking, vegetarian). Shave off that mustache and give him a Che t-shirt and Hitler would fit in at Antifa meetings. The bottom line is that nothing the Nazis did is actually objectionable to the modern Left.

Heck, I’ve even seen a recent Leftist presentation which presents white people as insects sucking the blood out of non-whites. You know: we’re vermin. Just as Nazis described Jews. It really doesn’t surprise once you do think about it: people who have cut themselves off from God and who have started to worship themselves are the very definition of Supermen (that word confuses Americans with our Superman comics – but what is meant by the word is a person who holds themself unbound to any system of morality and who follow their own star without any thought to how it might affect others).

This is a real problem: we’re dealing with the amoral. If we were dealing with merely greedy or cruel people it would be a lot easier for us…but what we’re dealing with is people who are convinced they are morally excellent when they have no morality at all. This makes them very dangerous – and deadly to us if they win.

Elon Musk went to the border and it went viral – mostly because he’s a famous billionaire who owns the premier social media platform in the world. But the shrieks of hatred from the Left were amazing. Do keep in mind that most independents and all Democrats have no real idea what has been going on at the border. The news doesn’t cover it, so they just don’t know. Musk going brought it for the first time before huge numbers of people…and the video coming out of Border Patrol agents cutting the border wire and fist-bumping the illegals as they crossed is absolutely devastating for the Democrats. If Musk really keeps X as a free speech platform (and he recently fired X’s “election integrity team” when he discovered it was essentially working for the DNC) then what happens next year might be very surprising. The Democrats are bad people doing bad things and making life miserable. Forget Democrat rumors that they’re going to scratch Biden…if the truth really gets out, it doesn’t matter who the GOP and Democrat candidates are…the GOP will walk away with it no matter how much the Democrats try to cheat. Do keep in mind: the MSM hasn’t really reported the truth in general since 1980…and by telling the truth – even as they hated doing it – all they got was a landslide Democrat loss. Since then and increasingly since 2000 the MSM has relentlessly lied for the Democrats. Break that down, and 1980 can happen again.

It was recently reported that Hunter Biden rented new digs (he’s mostly been living at the White House and the Biden estate in Delaware of late): a $15,800 per month house in Malibu, CA. If true – and it probably is – just where in heck is he coming up with that amount of money?

Government might shut down. None of us care.

Lies are Poison

Mark Noonan42 Comments

From time to time I check out Mark Felton Productions on You Tube – he does history with a heavy emphasis on WWII. Very interesting stuff, some of which I was unaware of which does surprise me given my overall knowledge of the time period. But, hey, there is always more to learn. One of his recent bits was a close look into the Soviet investigation into Hitler’s death and I have to say that after watching all Felton came up with, it looks pretty clear to me that the bodies presented by the Soviets as those of Hitler and Eva were nothing of the sort…plants designed to blind the unwary as to what really became of the corpses (it is very clear that Hitler and Eva did die in the bunker on April 30th, 1945). Best guess is that Hitler’s super-loyal valet Heinz Linge buried the bodies elsewhere, perhaps on his own, and simply carried the secret to his grave…and it is therefore possible that the remains are currently under a Berlin parking lot. Not a very important thing in the grand scheme of things, but still very useful in seeing how people can fool themselves or let themselves be fooled for political purposes.

I bring that up because another Felton production is this video about the Katyn Massacre.

Give it a watch as it is once again good history presentation. But beyond that think about this: for decades after the war the US and British governments essentially went along with the Soviet lie about Katyn – blaming it on the Germans even though at the time we had direct, first-hand evidence proving it was a Soviet crime. Officially we went along with the lie because we needed to keep the USSR on side during WWII. But even that shred of reason disappeared after the end of the war…but it was the 1980’s before it became common knowledge in the West that the Soviet Union had murdered 12,000 Polish POWs as well as many other Poles whom the Soviets merely thought might at some future point become troublesome.

Why keep up the lie? Why, after the war and when we were officially competing with the USSR for global position, pretend we didn’t know? I think it was because we felt we had to maintain a fiction that the USSR wasn’t as bad as Nazi Germany. That our alliance with them in WWII was still somehow basically honorable and that the USSR was a legitimate player in the post-WWII world. Having the Soviets guilty of a Babi Yar-type massacre – and knowing it was only one of at least scores – rather blew that conception out of the water. Katyn wasn’t the only thing proving the USSR evil, but it was the best documented (mostly because the Nazis – for their own cynical reasons – made sure it was documented, including the participation of American and British POW military doctors). It was proof that there was no redeeming quality in the USSR – that it was simply evil. There was not the least justification for killing those Polish POWs…to say nothing of the teachers, doctors, priests and such killed along with them. They were just killing people who were educated and might not knuckle under to Soviet domination…which, of course, was just what the Nazis were doing in their part of occupied Poland.

You see where I’m going with this? By keeping up the lie we didn’t just let the Soviets off the hook…we poisoned ourselves. We became liars. At the official level. We told our own officers who had participated in the on-site investigation to keep their mouths shut about it. We went through a whole rigamarole about working with the USSR – co-existing with them – rather than seeking their destruction because we had become liars. Truth tellers would have gone to war with the USSR…liars would negotiate arms control treaties with them.

Guess what happens when you become a liar? Well, you keep lying about lots of things. I’ve tried to identify just when the USA went off the rails and wound up in our current condition and I have long figured that our WWII alliance was a big part of it…but now I think I’ll pinpoint it: when we participated in this lie, that is when we began to die.

We can still fix this but our first step is to not lie. And not let anyone lie. Harsh punishment for lying. To survive and restore our nation the most important thing we can do is not allow liars to have a say ever again. Lies are poison.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan65 Comments

I watched an Estonian moving called 1944; highly recommend. It is in Estonian and so has subtitles but it is just a good movie. It involves Estonians who have been forced by circumstances to fight in both the German and Soviet armies in WWII, naturally ending up fighting each other. Aside from some good acting and direction, it is worthwhile to watch because it does get into that moral dilemma of just what is the right thing to do? You feel for the soldiers on both sides; caught in a web, a small nation between overwhelming neighbors. The Estonians in the Waffen SS mostly despising Hitler but hating the Soviets for deporting their families in 1940…the Estonians in the Red Army mostly despising Stalin and his regime but wanting the Germans out of their nation. Give it a watch.

Pudding Brain and his people are all-in on open borders. Actually saying it out loud and on the cameras, though absurdly claiming that Trump is responsible for a broken immigration system that they’re fixing. They’re also all-in on medical mutilation of minors. Keeping prices high. I think what we’ve really got is a senile Executive and all the little Commies lower down have nobody to stop them…and so they’re pushing Left on the long-help Leftist theory that the reason the American people haven’t embraced Communism is lack of Leftist policy. This may not work out as they hoped.

On the other hand, the GOP is also all-in on helping out Pudding Brain in Ukraine. I just don’t understand it. I mean, outside of bribery. There is zero political downside for the GOP standing aside here – don’t even have to actively oppose the Ukraine war…but for goodness sake don’t be out there being a booster for it. It is bound to end in failure…and all they’re doing is ensuring that the blame for the loss sits on the GOP. The Base doesn’t want this war.

Polls says this and that – and some special elections have gone against us. How will 2024 come out? Beats the heck out of me. But some Leftists are sounding the alarm just as they did in 2016: on the ground, there does appear to be a shift to the GOP. Pennsylvania voter registration continues to favor the GOP. Looks like there won’t be unlimited drop boxes in Wisconsin for 2024. I do think the GOP can win – if it can unite.

That unity will be hard to gain because the Democrats will pay for “GOPers” to sow division. They’re already doing it. There are two equally stupid positions to hold: Never Trump and Only Trump. I don’t care how much a RINO the person is: better than any Democrat. I don’t care how Trumpy a candidate is: still better than any Democrat. Time for everyone to grow up and just do the right thing.

Menedez gets indicted again. Don’t for a minute think this is because the Ruling Class is opposed to corruption. If the charges are true – and remember DOJ does just make things up – then his problem was either stealing above his station or not sharing out properly. Also, could be a back door to force Pudding Brain out: apparently, there is at least some connection between what Menendez is accused of doing and Hunter’s dealings. And keep in mind what they’re charging Menedez with: profiting off of his wife’s actions. Sound familiar?

Couple of minority kids deliberately ran over a retired cop here in Vegas. They were booked as “white”. Not the first time I’ve seen this; and it is clearly deliberate. They are fudging crime stats right in front of us. Trying to lower the amount of POC crime and make out white men to be far more dangerous than they are. All part of a program designed to eventually arrest every troublesome MAGA person as a terrorist.