Open Thread

Open Thread

Mark Noonan29 Comments

With bank after bank failing and pretty clear proof of Biden Family profiteering in China, you know what is on the agenda: Distraction!

So, the rumor mill is now filled with predictions that Trump will be indicted next week. The more excited claiming that he’ll be arrested and frog marched into custody…not sure how the NYPD will manage that unless Trump happens to be in NYC next week, and his Secret Service detail will also have something to say along those lines.

I’m fairly confident, though, that they will indict Trump on some bogus charges. They pretty much have to at this point: if you listen to the Left, they have been screaming for it ever louder over the past year. They seem to think there’s 25 to life just waiting there for Trump…rather than, at most, a process crime which has a max sentence of six months. And a process crime without basis. Don’t get me wrong, Trump goes on trial in NYC and he will be found guilty – there’s no way a Manhattan jury would go the other way against Trump. Its why all hopes are pinned in NYC…they’d love to do it in DC and the jury pool there is just as hostile to Trump and obedient to Dems as Manhattan, but there is GOP House oversight in DC. In NYC, everyone is on the same team and no matter what laws the prosecutors break to get a conviction of Trump, none of them will ever be charged with a crime. But Trump has not broken the law – if he ever had, he would have been arrested ages ago. He’s legally clean as a whistle. So, whatever they charge will be drivel and it will be thrown out on appeal – but appeal is after conviction and it is the conviction the Dems want.

How does this affect 2024? Plenty of Dems seem to think that a conviction bars a person from office. This is because they’re stupid and ignorant. For the GOP base, there will be a huge upsurge of sympathy for Trump…but whether that carries on or is replaced with a “maybe he’d better bow out” feeling remains to be seen. And make no mistake about it: they don’t want Trump in 2024. They say they do, and that means you know they don’t. An indictment of Trump is proof positive that the Dems internal polling shows Pudding Brain coming up short in a rematch.

But the fun part comes later – eventually, we do get the White House back and the pressure to arrest the previous Democrat President will be unstoppable. This is Late Republic stuff, but it is what the Democrats want.

Elon Musk is claiming he’s got a nifty AI program which is going to detect and track social media manipulation. We’ll see! Not that I doubt Musk’s sincerity here, I’m just not sure a computer program can snoop it out. They just do what their biased programmers tell them to do, after all. I mean, I can snoop it out and I offer my services to Elon for no more than $1,983.943.56 per year. But my results also wouldn’t be accepted by the manipulators. Maybe that’s why Elon is trying AI…give it a sense of neutrality. Anyways, if it does work it will be very revealing not so much on the manipulation (I think we on the Right can sniff that out pretty fast these days), but on just who is pushing it – which will, I bet, turn out to include lots of people and institutions allegedly on our side.

This weirdo wrote a letter to his family saying that if they vote GOP, he’s done with them – he being gay and his assertion is that the GOP is trying to eliminate homosexuality. Specifically, he said he can’t be part of a family voting for people who want to murder him. Lots of people scorched the guy as the utter loon that he is, but I saw it for what it was: very effective propaganda. Even if not entirely conscious from the letter writer. You see, the Democrats lie. They lie about everything and all the time. They do this because lying works. Lying has always worked – from getting Eve to eat the apple to getting a bailout for SVB: lies always fall on fertile ground. What this loon was doing was reinforcing the Democrat propaganda that the GOP is filled with hate-filled, cruel people out to kill. Now, maybe this guy was paid to write his letter or maybe he’s just your basic Progressive moron who believes what he sees on TV. It doesn’t matter: what matters is that Democrat voters will hear about it and their “GOP Bad” beliefs will be reinforced. And Democrats must put this on steroids going into 2024: Joe is held in contempt. Nobody likes him. Not even his own family (if they liked him, they wouldn’t have let him run in 2020). The economy is in tatters and looks to get worse. A lot worse. So, what to do? Change policy? ROFL!!! No: just get your base fired up with fear and hatred so they’ll stick with you no matter what happens. I expect the main base-motivators for the Dems will be claims that the GOP wants to kill gay people and execute women for having an abortion…and do look for GOPers who feed into this propaganda. That supposedly far-right guy you think was ok? Well, just a few thousand bucks and he’s making a sound byte for the MSM which feeds the DNC Narrative.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan64 Comments

Pudding Brain saved us from Trump’s financial crisis. Hey, I’m just going on what the MSM is saying here!

What really happened is that a bunch of banks got caught in a squeeze on US Treasuries – because of Biden’s failed policies, those bonds lost a lot of value. Banks are required to have a certain amount of assets against liabilities, right? Well, the Treasuries were assets…which then cratered in value. This forced a lot of banks to try and dump the Treasuries (which nobody wanted because, of course, their value was on the downswing)…and this, in turn, led to a cash crunch: the banks didn’t have enough money to cover operations. Bye, Bye SVB and a couple other players. Fortunately, we’ve got Pudding Brain!

His people came up with this idea – and I’m not kidding here: the Federal Reserve will now loan failing banks money at low interest rates with the devalued Treasuries held as collateral at face value.

That’s it. That’s the plan. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, borrow half a million against your $250,000 house and let me know how that goes.

If you could. You can’t because you can’t borrow for greater value than your security. You know: laws of economics and all that stuff. The Banks can because they donate to the right people…and in the case of these particular failing banks, their depositors are also deeply connected to the Democrat ruling class (naturally with lots of Chinese connections, too; I’m pretty sure the boys in Shanghai gave Team Pudding Brain a call over the weekend). This is the merest papering over the cracks. It’ll likely keep things rolling for a bit. How long? Who the heck knows? Long enough for the connected to get their money back and into something besides a US bank. To loan this money the Fed will have to print which will put upward pressure on prices which will force the Fed to jack up rates some more which will punish Treasuries making their value drop even more (this is how they can claim it won’t cost taxpayers any money – because it will be Fed printing: but that devalues your assets in hand, and so it is a secret tax to bail out the Banksters. Again. Oh, what law are they using here? ROFL! Law! Like that matters. There isn’t any law which allows this – they’re just gonna do it).

Their hope is probably that it at least holds together until after Election Day, 2024.

The MSM is, naturally, asserting that the real problem is people noticing the problem. If we’d just please stick to the script, all will be well!

Tucker Carlson sent of a questionnaire to the major GOP candidates about Ukraine and got their answers back – Trump, DeSantis and Ramaswamy gave the best answers (and we’ll need Amazona for a ruling on him – he’s definitely born in the USA to people who were legally residing in the USA at the time of his birth…but I don’t know if they were citizens when Ramaswamy was born…but, anyways, he’s running: and the more I hear from him, the more I like). All three of them discounted our continuing effort in Ukraine – Trump and Ramaswamy more forcefully than DeSantis, but even RDS was noting how stupid it is to defend Ukraine’s border while ours is wide open. Pence and Christie gave the worst answers – essentially committing to the war with only small caveats about how we’ve done it. A lot of candidates didn’t respond, most notable Haley, who is probably trying to keep all her options open as her actual desire is the VP slot and so she’ll be wary of saying anything that would strike her off the eventual nominee’s list. I think that American popular support for Ukraine is very soft and entirely conditional – as long as Americans don’t feel any particular pinch, they’ll go along with it…but if push comes to shove, the people will reject the war. Better for the GOP candidates to be forthrightly anti-war on this issue.

Hey, Mark, why have you lost all faith in our institutions?

Well, skippy, I just found out that GlaxoSmithKlein hid the cancerous side effects of Zantac for 40 years. 40 years! Do you realize how many agencies in how many different nations had to be bribed to pull that off? The payoffs to bureaucrats, doctors and researchers must have reached astonishing levels – but I guess Zantac was such a money-maker that it was all worth it. To them. Not to anyone who got cancer because they wanted to cut down on heartburn. It staggers the mind when you really think about it – for 40 years a major drug company pushed poison on people and all the probably millions of people around the world who are paid to guard against precisely this…let it slide. And do note that I just heard of this – the report came out last month. When it suits the DNC/Ruling Class Narrative stories of a product causing cancer get 24/7 coverage…but for some reason this one seems to have slipped the MSM’s mind. Couldn’t be because right now Democrats are making bank on Big Pharma donations, could it?

HT: Ace of Spades

Open Thread

Mark Noonan37 Comments

Latest word is McCarthy will release to the public all of the J6 video. If so, good for him. At 4,400 hours, crowd-sourcing is probably the best way to really get to the truth of what happened, as far as video can tell (even all 4,400 hours will still be partial…cameras aren’t everywhere nor do they pick up sound. This is in line with my view that there must be no government secrets – that video is the property of the people of the United States of America and we, the people, have a right to view it, at will, and draw our own conclusions.

To give you a flavor of how the Ruling Class is reacting – Geraldo Tweeted out that we should try to remember how we felt about J6 as the MSM was covering it live…in other words, we should ignore any new evidence and stick to the carefully crafted Narrative. These people are pathetic – but, also, that is how they are: I doubt any reporter in the last 50 years has had a truly independent thought. Maybe a couple here and there if we want to be generous, but most just read from the script. And this goes back to WWI when the US government started assiduously controlling the Narrative by means of access. If you didn’t toe the government line, you wouldn’t get access…and if they caught you unauthorized in a combat zone, they’d arrest you.

Huge contrast to the Civil War when reporters literally crawled all over the battlefield…and though the generals hated it and would try to inconvenience the reporters, they never dreamed of trying to control them. They knew that a hundred negative articles about them would be washed away with one victory…so go out and get a victory. Our modern generals – and politicians – figure its easier if the MSMers just write up defeat as victory. And the MSMers play along with it – oh, sure, they’ll turn on a military operation, but only when they’re told to, and invariably only when a GOPer is in office (just watch, if a GOPer wins in 2024, then starting January 21, 2025 the covering of Ukraine will go uniformly negative, if the war is still going by then). Why? Because it is easier, first and foremost. Cooperate and you get a nice billet and you’re protected and have good food – to report on a war would require going out to the battlefield and that’s risky, after all.

The MSM is upset that fewer kids are choosing to go to college – after all, how you gonna turn normal kids into non-binary Commies if they don’t go to college?

I’m pleased with this. College is supposed to be for the rare heights of intellect – in a real, sane system, not 10% of any high school graduating class would be able to even get into college, the entrance exam would be so demanding. Out of college we’re supposed to get our doctors, our lawyers, our highest level scientists and philosophers of exceptional knowledge…not barely literate “studies” majors who owe a hundred grand after they’re done.

In reality, for most people, 8 years of education is sufficient. Edison, who’s mother was a teacher, had only a few months of formal schooling. Lincoln only had about a year. Once you teach a kid to read, write and do sums, it is really up to the kid at that point – and the kid will either have the mind and will for it, or not. I remember those long, dreary hours 9th through 12th grade where I wasn’t learning anything I didn’t already know…and, indeed, massively advanced upon as I devoured my father’s library. The reason I didn’t go to college was because I couldn’t face four more years of that. And these days in addition to the lack of intellectual challenge, the kids are relentlessly propagandized…and for anyone with an ounce of liberty in their hearts, that has to be enervating. And to end it up massively in debt? A complete waste unless you need the credential to get into medical or law school.

So, kids: learn a trade. Even if you’re not mechanically inclined, there are trades to learn which can lead you to quite a nice life: I know of a man who is a few years older than me and he’s got buckets of money because he started, as it were, in the mail room and just learned the business backwards and forwards and so became invaluable…and, indeed, headhunted for ever more pay. Work. Learn. Save your money. By 50 if you’re at all responsible, you’ll be well off.

If you’ve never seen the 1964 movie Zulu, you should watch it because it is one of the very best war movies ever made – but now you should watch it because, apparently, it really irritates the Left. They are claiming it is a gateway drug to White Supremacy. To his credit, one of the stars of the movie, Michael Cain, is telling them to get bent (it was his first starring role). It isn’t hard to see why the Left hates it – British soldiers as good guys is enough to kill it for them, but what is worst about it is that it shows about 140 British soldiers holding off three or four thousand Zulu warriors in a pitched, two day battle. It also, for anyone who looks into it, will reveal that while the British might not have had full legal justification for breaking the Zulu kingdom, they certainly had the moral right – the Zulu kingdom was a hideous, inhuman tyranny where murder was the method of deciding who ruled. But, that’s not really in the movie – and rightly so: the movie, itself, is about soldiers…and it pays tribute to the Zulu warriors who obeyed their king and went to war, as soldiers should.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan8 Comments

Heirs is out! Book VI of the series. It picks up about 12 years after Kings and Queen – so, the kids introduced as being between five and seven in the last series are now all growed up…and not at all believing the silly stories mom and dad have related. I very much enjoyed writing it and Book VII: Empress which rounds out this particular adventure…though I’ve already got large amounts written for Books VIII through XIII (with VIII and IX almost completely done: my concentration at the moment is actually on Book X; though I keep filtering over to Book XI because it is turning out to be such a fun story). As you may imagine from the title, Heirs is about, well, the heirs – specifically using Bryce and Rossalyn’s son George, Fred and Celeste’s son James; there is also Tancheri, the Crown Princess of Valcinia (intro’d in Kings and Queen as a six year old) and another girl you get to meet in Heirs. Of course our four main heroes play huge roles, too…but outside the prologue, they don’t show up for a while. I’ve also continued on with some bad guys from the past with judicious additions of new bad guys. Get your copy!

Found out about this thing called the Volkstaat in South Africa. Apparently, just before and after Apartheid came to an end, one Afrikaner pol decided that the Afrikaners – the white descendants of the Dutch who first settled South Africa – should have their own place. So, he and others purchased some land in the middle of the South African nowhere (on the map, South Africa looks small – it is actually huge and while there are thickly populated parts, there are also large swaths of howling wilderness, especially in the west north of Capetown) and set up shop. A few decades later it is a town of about 2,000 people, so far largely ignored by the South African government and it is growing prosperous. Like all Boer towns, it is neat as a pin.

And it is doomed.

I’m sorry to say that, but reality must be faced here. To me, of course, it is people just living their own lives – and so I’d leave them alone. But that won’t happen. Naturally, they are merely put down as racists (even though I, as a white American, would not be allowed to live their, either; they only allow Afrikaners) – and, who knows?, maybe they are racist. Doesn’t matter as they don’t go out and look for black people to harass. The site they picked was chosen precisely because it was horrible…but humans being human and with hard work as the command, their horrible spot is now a nice spot. And the South African Ruling Class won’t be able to tolerate it for long…especially as South Africa decays with rising crime and rolling blackouts, they can’t afford to have any community of regular folks living well (the Ruling Class, behind carefully guarded walls continues to live well, naturally). The whole existence of such a place is a standing challenge to South Africa – which was supposed to usher in a multi-ethnic utopia once Apartheid vanished. You realize how impossible it will be for South Africa to survive under ANC rule if people can point to a community up from literally nothing at the time Apartheid ended while Johannesburg can’t even keep the lights on? On that level, it doesn’t matter what skin color the people are – if they were all black, they’d eventually be targeted. That they are white will just make the targeting easier. And they will be targeted. I wish I was wrong. I hope I prove in error. But as South Africa falls apart the white minority will be subjected to looting and violence as the ANC tries to stay in power.

The people of Portland, OR voted for commie Democrats who let crime run wild. The voters chose this because among all other horrors, the worst would be to thought of as a Republican. Elections do have consequences, though. And one of the consequences of voting for commies who believe that crime is the result of racism is that you then get crime so rampant that even a store like Wal Mart, which moves so much product that in most places the shoplifting doesn’t matter, is closing down all their Portland locations…I feel zero sympathy: they wanted this. Now they’ve got it.

Antifa/BLM domestic terrorists have been trying to shut down construction of a new police training facility in Atlanta. And I don’t mean by holding protests marches and filing lawsuits…they been vandalizing and assaulting people connected to it. Nearly everyone connected with the Antifa/BLM actions are from out of State and almost all of them are white (and upper class white). You’d think the FBI would take a glance at this, but they aren’t. They’re too busy tracking down granny who took a selfie outside Pelosi’s office on 1/6. But the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is on it – and they made 23 arrests. Including a lawyer who works for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The kicker: guess who the FBI asks to determine if you are a terrorist? The Southern Poverty Law Center. The Antifa/BLM types do what they do because they are protected by the FBI…and part of what the Antifa/BLM types do is denounce you to the police for wearing a MAGA hat. We really do have an American Gestapo…and they’ve got plenty of stool pigeons.

I love Mexico – place, people, food: all awesome. But I’ve stayed out for years and I won’t be going back any time soon: Four Americans were kidnapped after they drove into northern Mexico. The Cartels are simply bloodthirsty – you could be killed on a lark by them. Not worth the risk.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan29 Comments

I guess the city of Bakhmut, Ukraine has fallen and the Russians are hailing their victory while the Ukrainians are saying they never really wanted to hold it. The bottom line, for me, is that Russia has definitely resumed advancing and the Ukrainians aren’t able to stop it so far. No breakthrough, but a war of attrition where the Russians are just grinding the Ukrainians down…though such eventually does lead to a breakthrough as the weaker side can never sustain this kind of fight forever. Meanwhile, everyone on the Ukraine side gets ever more hysterical about how we have to support Ukraine. I think it is time for negotiations. Unless Zelensky has something big up his sleeve, offensive-wise, better to quit now rather than wait until there’s nothing left between the Russians and Kiev.

Argentina has ripped up its Falklands agreement with Britain and is demanding negotiations over sovereignty. This is what I mean about just staying the heck out of foreign problems: most of them are stupid. The bottom line is that whatever theoretical legal right Argentina received from Spain to the Islands, there never was a permanent, indigenous population of the Falklands until the Brits showed up in the 1830’s. The people who live there going back nearly two centuries have never had any connection to Argentina. They consider themselves British. The speak English. When asked in a plebiscite what they preferred, more than 98% voted to stay under British rule. But Argentina likes to get all fussy about it – and they are getting fussy about it shortly after HMS Queen Elizabeth became operational which means if they decide to start shooting over it, they’ll lose (the Royal Navy is a shadow of her formal self, but most of Argentina’s navy is laid up in port; and they don’t have a naval air arm to speak of). Amazing how stupid people can be, and for all the wrong reasons.

Kellyanne and George Conway have called it quits – which is kinda sad but very understandable. George acted like an a** during the Trump years and Kellyanne has allowed herself to be squired around by the likes of Cuomo recently. Really its all rather pathetic.

The Left is still trying to sell the notion that the Second Amendment only secured a right to bear arms to the Militia, which is now the National Guard. Of course it is absurd, but lots of people are fierce in their faith about the Militia having the right. It isn’t just propaganda doing this – it is propaganda directed a population which is barely literate and almost entirely ignorant of American history. We can’t get control of the schools fast enough. This is a terrible problem and it will harm us politically…but if we control the schools it is literally just a few years before the problem is fixed.

RDS has put out a video which is “I’m running” without saying the actual words, “I’m running”.

I’m increasingly positive that the Left overstepped on the trans issue – and it is women leading the backlash. Which is proper as women are being erased to accommodate trans women. It is very irritating, isn’t it? What is clearly a man winning women’s sporting contests, Hershey and other woke corporations using trans women as spokespeople for women’s issues. I mean, seriously: who thought this would be a good idea? Oh, yeah: Progressives did. Never forget that as ruthless and cruel as they are, they are also monumentally stupid.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

Supposedly General Miley a little while back advised that Ukraine is as strong as she’s gonna get, is not strong enough to defeat Russia, so it is time for a diplomatic solution. If this story is true, my respect for Miley goes up a notch.

Of late, Zelensky has been talking big not just about pushing Russia out of what they’ve taken in the last year, but out of all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea. Well, hey, if he can do that, more power to him: but I don’t think Ukraine has the sheer power to do that. Absent a complete Russian collapse, the Russians will pretty much hold on to what they’ve got. As I said at the start – Ukraine’s job since 2014 was to build a mobile strike force capable of immediately going on the offense either right at the time the Russians attacked, or just before that. I like to call this The Israeli Option: what to do with enemies who vastly outnumber you and have far greater strategic depth? You attack and turn their dream of marching on Tel Aviv (Kiev) into a nightmare defending Cairo and Damascus (Rostov and Voronezh). Ukraine had plenty of time and plenty of money – and even plenty of factories and material to produce this force with only very limited support from anyone outside Ukraine. They didn’t do it. They decided that bribing foreign pols as a means of securing their support against Russia was a better idea (and this tells you right there that there’s at least a huge part of the Ukrainian population uninterested in fighting for Ukraine – that the Ukrainian government, unlike the Israeli government, could not rely on the population to make the sacrifices in blood and treasure). And, fundamentally, that is why I was against giving aid from the start – if they can’t sacrifice for themselves, why should I sacrifice for them? Now is the time to make peace – before more blood is shed and before the Russians do put forth their full power.

So, now they’re admitting that masks don’t work and there’s a good chance the Chinese flu came from the lab – whether accidentally or intentionally we don’t know, and likely never can know. Just as the repeated assertions of 2020 being clean are our best proof it was dirty, the assertion that Covid didn’t come from the lab was our best proof that it came from the lab. We just know – if we’ve any sense at all – that whatever it is they’re saying is a lie…or if by some miracle the truth, only partial and designed to deflect attention from something else even worse. Why they’re dribbling this out now remains to be seen – but is certainly isn’t to enlighten us. They’re hiding something else.

Supposedly the J6 footage was all turned over to Tucker Carlson and people are starting to wonder when we get to see it. Rely on it, folks: it was given to Carlson to ensure the most Narrative-Destroying parts never see the light of day. I dig that Carlson has a lot of fans and he does, indeed, say some useful things…but he’s MSM. He’s Establishment. He’ll never jeopardize his meal ticket and while his boss is testifying that Trump was lying about 2020 election fraud, you can bet any money that Carlson won’t piss the boss off by showing that J6 was a setup to ensure the truth about 2020 never came out.

Pudding Brain’s illegal order to cancel student debt was heard before the Supreme Court today – it ain’t looking good for Pudding Brain. But there is a very worrisome thing going – all over the Democrats and MSMers (but I repeat myself) was the assertion that the Court should rule in favor of cancellation regardless of what the law says…with an unstated subtext that if the Court doesn’t rule the way the Democrats want, then it is “out of control”…and so in need of being brought under control. We need not say who’s control is needs to be brought under. This is terrible for our system of government – essentially, the Democrats are saying that any Court ruling going against their desires is illegitimate.

Looks like Lori Lightfoot didn’t pass the graft around enough and she didn’t get into the runoff for Chicago Mayor. The winner will be whichever candidate seems most likely to correctly pass around the graft. Lightfoot will, of course, claim that her loss was because of racism, sexism and homophobia. This would mean the Democrat party is packed full of racists, sexists and homophobes.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan30 Comments

I had mentioned before Aleste and the Ice Crystal Dragons – the story is hooked into my Mirrors series but it came about after I was explaining the series to my granddaughter and she observed that it was an utter fail because it didn’t have any dragons in it. So, I told her to come up with a story that had dragons in it. With her talking and me writing, the book was made. And we’ve got some reviews over at Amazon:

I read this book to my 3rd grade class and they absolutely loved it! The cliff hangers left them begging for me to read more each day. We feel in love with the character Aleste and her bravery throughout the book. The details, descriptive language, and great vocabulary used throughout this book made it a great book to share with my students. Awesome job!

Got a kid or a grandkid? Get the book. It is a heck of a lot of fun.

Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell of Los Angeles was shot and killed on Saturday. It is in the news but it isn’t really making the news, if you know what I mean. The increasing collapse of civilization in Los Angeles does not support any Democrat Narrative, nor will it help Newsom when he runs for President in 2024 or 2028, so what would have been a huge story 20 years ago, is pretty much nothing these days. Nor are any other stories highlighting the end of civilization – the re-barbarization of the West which gains speed day by day. You know – things like mass brawls at fast food joints and stores. Nobody ever even knows why the fights start but a score of people at times are just pounding on each other…or one poor body is being beaten mercilessly by a gang of thugs and everyone is just standing around filming it.

This is not normal and it is not sustainable. Eventually everything falls apart and the reaction sets in – a very violent reaction as the few remaining civilized people decide that the barbarians have to die.

Former Governor Larry Hogan is giving a class these days called, “Why You Got Trump”. At any event, he may as well be doing that. He’s rumbling about running for President but what he’s really doing is auditioning for an MSM gig…which a failed Presidential run and then complaining about the eventual GOP nominee will get him. His most recent absurdity was to claim that DeSantis pushing back against woke ideology in public schools is “big government”…you know what all True Conservatives with Muh Principles oppose. It is just a stupid thing to say – the schools are government and all RDS is doing is making them bend to the will of the people of Florida…you know, like a government is supposed to do. It is stupid – but it is wowing the Left, and that’s the point of the exercise. But for us, what he’s doing is providing the perfect foil for the new, populist GOP…an example of what we cannot go back to. Maybe it is time to move on from Donald Trump, but it isn’t time to move on from Trumpism.

There’s a news report about how to survive a nuclear blast. I did not have this on my 2023 bingo card – but, kiddies, let us oldsters clue you in, because we learned this stuff when we were kids. If there’s a nuclear attack, get under your desk, put your head between your knees and kiss you a** goodbye.

Speaking of which, the global Ruling Class is really pushing for Ukraine victory…but I’ve yet to see how Ukraine destroys the Russian army. That is a kind of a crucial First Step here…a plan and the means to do that. I think that our leaders are so divorced from reality and so ignorant of history that they just don’t know this. That they think high tech weapons will just do the trick, somehow. But unless Ukraine builds a military force which is capable of sustained offensive operations, its all just a waste of blood and treasure. Keep in mind that since the initial Russian invasion there hasn’t even been a battle. Oh, sure, there’s been lots of fighting and dying, but no battles once you understand that a battle is a event whereby your principle military power is directed against the enemy’s principle military power and decisive results are achieved one way or the other. Attrition warfare isn’t a battle…and its a sort of warfare Ukraine can never win given the population disparities. Meanwhile, the Russkies seem to be calling up half a million…and not to just hold the line, but to provide a powerful strike force which will be launched against the Ukrainians with a mind towards destroying the Ukrainian army.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan84 Comments

I do feel sorry for Fetterman – he nearly dies of a stroke and this his wife and friends, instead of caring whether he lives or dies, press him to keep running for an office he was manifestly unfit to serve in. Yes, shame on us for not being able to beat him, but it is simply a crime that he didn’t withdraw from the race. Keep that in mind: the Democrats will do anything to obtain power. They don’t care how much harm it causes…as long as they can get the power, its all good in their view.

The number of train derailments is getting beyond coincidence. If we had an actual FBI, they’d be looking into it to see if foreign actors were involved, directly or indirectly. This doesn’t mean, of course, that it definitely is an attack – but it could be, and we should find out. There is the chance, however, that it is just degraded infrastructure. Remember, the last thing a Democrat infrastructure bill does is provide infrastructure…it provides money for cronies and various BS projects nobody needs. There is no upside for Democrats if rail lines, roads, bridges, etc get built and repaired. There’s no payoff for them – but there’s a huge payoff if you can send a couple million for an anti-racist program to fight systemic racism in the construction industry. Meanwhile, the train derailment in Ohio isn’t the problem – the real problem is that we on the Right have noticed the derailment.

I guess the Democrats have some polling indicating that Haley has strength among some section of the voters because they are going hard after her – with the universal talking point being that she’s a race traitor who uses a “white” name in order to be acceptable to the racist GOP. Day by day, Democrats just get more inhuman an disgusting. I hope that it is turning off ever more people.

Al Sharpton and the Race-Baiter Brigade went down to Florida the other day to protest DeSantis’ education reforms…and it was as if nothing happened. Because, of course, nothing happened. Nothing could happen. DeSantis and the Florida GOP weren’t about to give in to any demands and any effort by Sharpton to gin up violence would have resulted in real arrests…with people going to jail rather than being let off entirely or given small fines. The best news we’ve had of late is that ever more GOPers simply don’t care if they’re called racists. At long last, that false accusation is losing it’s sting. Calling us racists is a stupid and insulting lie – but, they won’t stop it so all we can do is ignore and it and implement policy.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan54 Comments

Randoland is a Twitter account which details the spending on those gigantic bills they pass out Congress. Example:

The Department of Health and Human Services awarded $1.4 million to Florida State University for a CRT-related program called “TRANSFORMING HEALTH EQUITY RESEARCH IN INTEGRATED PRIMARY CARE: ANTIRACISM AS A DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION”

This is, of course, complete drivel. It is make-work and a complete waste of money – but only from our perspective. From the Left’s perspective, it is money well spent.

You see, what the Left gets out of this is yet more propaganda pushing their views and people with a vested interest in keeping it all going. After all, $1.4 million goes pretty fast. Next year or the year after, the people studying anti-racism as a disruptive innovation will either have to get a grant to provide more anti-racism or they’ll have to get a job. Guess what they’ll choose? And you can rely on it that if people are paid to fight racism they will never run out of racism to fight.

Knock on benefits for the Left here are donations (the people getting these grants will want to keep Democrats in office) and conversion…actual or feigned (and it doesn’t matter to the Democrats which it is: both are just fine): the more this stuff is out there, the more people feel like they have to go along with it. And yet others just decide to get in on the payday and find some racism of their own to fight against.

And this is a huge problem for us – there is so much money flowing out of government and into Leftist hands that we’re a bit overwhelmed. How can we compete with an institution which passes out trillions of dollars, almost entirely un-audited?

The answer is that we can’t. So, we must get in on the act.

It will prove impossible – at least any time soon – to get the Congressional GOP on board with cutting this kind of spending. But I do believe we can get them on board with spending money on us. Sure, I know: long term getting rid of the spending is best. But that’s a pipe dream at present…so, lets stick our hand out. Let’s provide millions of dollars for Conservative studies and programs (which would have the benefit of being something useful). A few million for lesbian poetry reading here, a few million for a laudatory biopic of Pinochet there. See where I’m going? The reason we have gay Superman is because we’re paying for it – so lets pay for a Superman who b*** slaps Commies. Guess which will be more popular, anyway?

That train derailment in Ohio has picked up the hashtag #OhioChernobyl – which does seem a little melodramatic to me. That is, I don’t think its as bad as some are claiming. On the other hand, it is clearly pretty bad. And it is also a tremendously telegenic disaster…it is the sort of thing which would get eyeballs glues to screens. But nobody is covering. Not in any big sense. Some people hadn’t heard about until they saw a social media posts on it. This just shows you that what is in the news is carefully curated. I can only assume that a massive train derailment and chemical spill isn’t in the script right now and so it is just being ignored. And that begs the question: what other big stories are just being ignored because they don’t fit the script? That is, which don’t help Democrats advance their Narrative?

Team Pudding Brain has gotten trigger happy over balloons of late – I guess they got their focus group results on letting the first wander across the country and it wasn’t good. Personally, I just don’t know – I certainly can’t believe the government on it, nor the MSM (which is a mere arm of government). The stories of aliens are probably exaggerated.

The military is having trouble recruiting. The brass says its just because kids are afraid of getting hurt but we all know that’s a lie. Its about the woke stuff. The active strength of the Army is under 500,000. In a nation of 330 million and 4.3 million men coming of military age annually, there there is no possible way we can miss recruitment targets…unless the men just don’t want to serve. And why should anyone? You don’t get to spend nearly enough time getting trained. You have to kowtow to woke garbage all day long – and your career in the military can be ruined if you say something that someone claims offends them. Then, if you go get into a fight, you’re commanded by timeserving cowards who don’t care how many of you die, but who will see to it you’re charged for war crimes if you kill the enemy the wrong way. Screw that! I would never tell a kid to join up these days. And I’m sure plenty of fathers and grandfathers are telling the kids, “its not what is used to be; stay out”.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan13 Comments

Two GOP councilmembers in New Jersey have been murdered in the past week. Could be just sad coincidence but the GOP is making inroads in New Jersey. Remember, we came within an ace of winning the governorship in 2021. I would not put it past Democrats to try some direct action – especially as their hate-filled rhetoric about the GOP has already primed the pump. We in the USA are not at all used to political violence, though it has become fairly common since the rise of the new left in the late 1960s; but it has all been from the left. The Ruling Class has been trying to make out that it is the right fomenting hatred and carrying out acts of violence but the bottom line is that, upon investigation, we either find that the violence wasn’t political at all, or it was actually carried out by a leftist. But – and here’s the kicker – as more and more violence is directed against the GOP, it will eventually provoke a backlash. That is the worry: because the GOP is far better armed than the left, but that would just get the authorities to be even harsher against real rightwing violence…which would, in turn, provoke yet more violence. Could get real dicey in America real fast.

Its on Twitter but you’ll want to click this and read the whole thread – its a bit of whistleblowing by a lady who used to work at a transgender clinic. The story she details of the kids who are being ruined by a rush to transition them is horrifying. It speaks of the need for a national ban on medical transition for minors. But beyond that, we do have to start figuring out just why this thing – youth transitions – came upon us so suddenly and was so uniformly accepted and enforced by the Ruling Class. Think back and try to remember when you first heard of sex changes for kids: it wasn’t but a few years ago. We had all heard of sex changes, of course; as early as the 1970’s it was something being done. Even made it into popular culture on TV by the 1980’s. But this thing of children going through medical transitions with hormones and irreversible surgery is new – but is now in government and the media the accepted and enforced norm. You aren’t allowed to question it: if you do, you are a transphobic bigot who wants kids to commit suicide.

My guess: we’ve seen just how really creepy the Ruling Class is. From Epstein Island to Weinstein to scores of other cases of well-known people turning out to be sexual degenerates, we now know that those at the top of the social and economic heap are just lousy people who sexually abuse people all the live long day. And those we can’t prove involved clearly must have known all about it and yet didn’t tell. In and amongst all this is the bubbling accusation – but still no major confirmed case – of these creeps sexually abusing minors. The stories are all over the place and they are uniformly condemned as conspiracy theories…and, heck, some of the more bizarre conspiracy theories about it might be floated by the perpetrators so that, by putting out something ridiculous, they can lump more realistic accusations in with the crazy assertions. Be that as it may, there are in my view enough credible stories – including about some pretty famous people – engaging in inappropriate relations with minors that I suspect at least a portion of them to be true. And, if so, what better way to get out from underneath legal jeopardy than by normalizing it? Turning it into something unimportant? And, hey, if a six year old can come out as Trans and if a 14 year old can consent to permanent, surgical removal of healthy organs, even if the parents object, then just what can’t a kid consent to? To put it bluntly: I think all of this was started or at least latched on to by people who are trying to normalize sexual debauchery before they get caught. What Hefner did for fornication and adultery – make it socially acceptable so that fornicators and adulterers could hold their heads up in public – so the people pushing for transitioning kids hope to do for groomers.

Pudding Brain and the Democrats are accusing the GOP of wanting to cut Social Security. It is a lie but it is a lie the Democrats always fall back on because lies work. They especially work with people who watch a lot of TV – which includes a high proportion of seniors. The GOP is always blindsided by this lie and there’s always some GOPer out there who will float the idea of cutting benefits, thus providing grist for the Democrat lie mill. It is time to get out in front of it and put the Democrats on the defensive. Propose a law which prohibits a reduction in benefits regardless of the funds available in SS. In other words, when the SS “trust fund” (which doesn’t really exist) goes belly up in 2035 then the shortfall is just drawn out of the discretionary budget. See where I’m going with this? If SS needs an extra $100 billion in 2035 then it gets it…and that means of the money appropriated for discretionary spending in 2035, $100 billion of it just “poof” vanishes. It would force Congress to act – either to cut discretionary spending or raise taxes. You and I don’t want a tax hike, but that is still preferable to the phony accounting gimmicks Congress has been using to pretend that SS is financially sound. The added benefit is that the GOP will be seen as leading the charge on absolutely ensuring that granny gets her SS and it takes away a very effective lie for the Democrats.