Open Thread

Open Thread

Mark Noonan105 Comments

I was actually going to include a bit about the J6 “bombshell” but I think we’re hashing that out pretty well in the previous post. So, I’ll just state this:

The January 6th hearings are an attempt by Democrats and Never Trump to make Trump toxic for 2024. Make no mistake about it – they are terrified of his running again and they know they can’t beat him: the methods they used to cheat in 2020 will not be available especially in the Battleground States in 2024 because of various legal changes over the past 18 months. They might try to bring back the Pandemic to justify mailing out millions of ballots…but they won’t have nearly the success they had in 2020. Laws have been changed, people are watching…and the man who gained 12 million votes between 2016 and 2020 is almost certain to gain even more between 2020 and 2024.

Here’s how 2024 is already going:

In 2008 the Democrats enjoyed a 1.2 million voter registration advantage over Republicans in Pennsylvania – as of 2022, that advantage has shrunk to about 540k….and it continues to shrink, rapidly. Since 2020, a net of about 1 million people have switched to the GOP from the Democrat party. This isn’t new voters – this is people taking the time to actually change their party registration from one to the other (the net is because some people have switched from GOP to Dem…but overall the stampede is to the GOP from the Democrats). It turns out that a Party keyed to the deepest concerns of urban/suburban upper class, college educated white women lacks broad appeal.

Polls: you may have already seen some of them. Ignore them – they’re doing absurd things now to come up with poll results which fit the Democrat Narrative, especially over the abortion issue. The only poll that matters is the prices of gas and food. Absent a miracle, Democrats are going to lose Congress and a large number of State government seats as well…the only question is whether this win will be on the magnitude of 2010, or something we’ve just never seen before in American politics. Looking at some polling and taking into consideration their MOE and how Democrat-heavy their samples are, a credible case can be made that Biden’s approval has slipped into the 20’s.

The Democrat response? They’ve introduced a Transgender Bill of Rights.

The return of Stagflation. This probably won’t help Democrats in the Fall.

And the Tweet of the day:

https://twitter.com/kaya_masters/status/1542236677774663680

Open Thread

Mark Noonan79 Comments

Biden falling off his bike is the perfect symbol of his Administration. Really hope it was voter fraud because if 81 million voted for him, we’re doomed.

I’ve been getting a bit doom and gloom about the economy – the official stats are still showing health out there, but inflation is galloping (official 8.6% is bogus – using the 1980 formula, its about 17%…and that is what we’re all seeing at the pump and the grocery check out), housing is looking more and more like a bubble (and Team Pudding Brain is doing bubble things now to encourage more home ownership among those who can least afford it – shades of 2008), we can’t make anything (the MSM lauds shipments of baby formula to us as if its a good thing that the United States has to import food)…it is all just falling apart. I’m genuinely concerned about the onset of a Great Depression with more than a quarter of the population out of work. I hope it doesn’t get that bad – but I think it might.

That aside, the political prospects for the GOP continue to brighten. Winning TX-34 is the writing on the wall – a majority-Latino district going GOP in the first time since forever. Democrats are trying to ignore it by saying it was a special election and so not predictive…which is just what people say when politics predicts their demise. They’re doomed, they know it – and they don’t seem to care. As things come crashing down, Democrats are set to die on the “drag queen story time” hill. It has continually amazed me how fast the most radical parts of transgenderism have become dogma on the Left. It is something which they not only can’t question but which they must loudly support. Team Pudding Brain is set to officially approve providing hormones and surgery to trans kids as young as 14…this while they are urging a ban on rifle purchases to 21. So, you’re old enough to decide if you want to be a different gender seven years before you can decide if you’ll defend yourself. It makes no sense. It is, in fact, insane.

But that’s where we’ve been heading, isn’t it? Some Lefty on Twitter was upset that San Francisco has several times the homeless population of Detroit. The assertion was greedy landowners in San Francisco not doing what was necessary to end homelessness…no consideration that when you subsidize homelessness (as SF does) you’ll get more of it. There is also no consideration on the Left about how monstrously cruel it is to allow people to live in the streets, wallowing in their own filth and making life unlivable for everyone else. I get it – even lunatic, tweaking, homeless people have rights…and I demand those rights be respected. But you don’t have a right to be whacked out on drugs and sh** on the sidewalk. And if you do that, I have the right – and the moral obligation – to restrain you until you no longer hit the crack pipe and figure the corner of Fifth and Main is your bathroom. It is sheer insanity that we allow insane, drug-addled people to ruin the public square. Sanity – and the dignity of the homeless crackhead – requires that we stop them from doing that. But, we don’t – we instead allow grifters to build “low income housing” which won’t, of course, help the insane crackhead because, being an insane crackhead, he doesn’t want to live in a house. Can’t live in a house. Would like as not wreck the house in short order if by some means he could be induced to move in.

We’re essentially allowing insane people (ie, those who set up “drag queen story time” and who allow lunatics to defecate on the street) to run our lives. And Democrats can’t pull back from it – the least failure to support the most insane thing leads to immediate social destruction. And, so, here we are: hoping not just for a big GOP win, but that the GOP winners will see the problem and proceed to legislate a ban on insanity from being in power.

The American Bar Association is proposing an end to testing for law school admissions. Standards are being dropped everywhere because where there are standards you cannot ensure that today, at this very minute, your school or corporation has the proper level of diversity. That’s what it is all about. If, however, you dispense with standards, then you don’t have to worry about who can do the job – you only have to make sure you check off all the diversity boxes. That is, that you have the “correct” number of POC, gay, trans or whatever the heck group it is the Left is whining about at the moment. This isn’t the death of expertise: it is a suicide.

But here’s the problem – it isn’t just getting them access which requires you to drop standards. You must also get the proper results. If the American population is 13 percent black, then you’d damn well better have 13 percent of the lawyers at your firm be black…and if there aren’t enough qualified black attorneys to make up that number, then you’d better fill the slots with unqualified. And even if they’re unqualified, they better be given the prestige assignments that qualified people get. See where this is heading? In the name of diversity, whether or not you’ll have a qualified person will start to be a roll of the dice. But eventually it’ll be a certainty that nobody is qualified…because any qualified person simply won’t put up with it and will find something else to do. And this doesn’t just stop with law – it is already moving into medicine and engineering and the firm designing bridges for us better have the “right” number of diversity hires and they better work on the prestige projects…which means you’ll eventually be getting products designed by incompetents and finding out your doctor is functionally illiterate. I’ve been saying that if we let this continue, we’ll eventually be treating cancer with goat entrails…and we’re moving right along on that.

China has launched her first domestically designed aircraft carrier. It is significantly smaller than a Nimitz or Ford class carrier – and not much is known about the specifications. But it shows that (a) propaganda against carriers is likely orchestrated by Chinese agents who want us to abandon them and (b) that China is building a fleet with the sole purpose of challenging American naval supremacy. China is still about ten years away from a credible challenge to us – but, also, maybe sooner as our own Navy decays from neglect. They want us gone. And understandably so – heck, if Catalina Island was a breakaway part of the United States and a foreign power was able to patrol at will off our west coast, we’d probably want to do something about it. I get it: I’ve no complaint about China doing what its doing. It is precisely what I’d do if I were Chinese.

But, I’m American…and I recognize that American naval supremacy is key to ensuring that war doesn’t come to American shores. And so much as I understand and even sympathize with Chinese ambitions, I want them stopped. But, right now, there is no will to stop them…and each year we lack the will the take up the challenge, the weaker we become in relation to China. We’re rapidly approaching the point where we cannot physically stop an invasion of Taiwan. A few years from now, we might not be able to stop an invasion of Guam and a few years after that, Hawaii.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan48 Comments

Fox News ran a report about a family with a transgender child and this caused some controversy – but what struck me as most important was Andrew Sullivan stating that, as Conservatives, it is our job to accept this reality and work it into the system. But, that is just absurd – it is also, though, how these social issue debates work. An assertion is made and we are required to accept the underlying assumptions without question. Love is love, right? But, it can’t work that way – and now that it involves children, we must not allow it to work that way.

The reality is that no child knows they are trans – they can’t. They lack the relevant knowledge to even conceptualize it. Children never have anything in their heads outside of what adults put into them. There is no latent knowledge – what we know was imparted to us. Outside of the rare genius, it is only as we get to adulthood – and really, not until we’re in our 30’s – that we develop the capacity to really think on our own…to take the knowledge imparted to us and reconfigure it via our own reason. Certainly, a child under the age of 12 simply has no capacity to determine if they aren’t their biological gender. The story Fox broadcast asserted that the child before speech was already informing the parents of trans status…this is patently ridiculous. The parents made a conscious choice for their child and then imposed it. To the objection that no parent would do such a thing I respond: are you stupid? Have you not seen what parents will do to gain vicarious fame through their children? Insane and evil people will do all sorts of things – and that they might appear to be nice people on the surface doesn’t alter their insanity or their evil…psychopaths are great at pretending to be other than themselves.

We must draw the line: and not just on surgery and drugs. No child under the age of 12 – which is what we used to call the age of reason – can be allowed to live in other than their biological gender and any person suggesting they should do otherwise needs to be jailed. There is zero chance that any person telling a 10 year old they’re trans is doing it for the benefit of the child.

The attempted assassination of Justice Kavanaugh has been successfully suppressed by the MSM – they had to as it was something which shot the Narrative to pieces. The MSM is nothing more than a propaganda arm of the DNC – and we do have to response to this. We can’t allow a purportedly neutral entity to act without restraint when their real goal is to advance Democrats to power. Freedom of the press shall not be abridged…but lying partisanship can’t just be allowed to go on without a response. Legal means must be found to at least force the MSM to acknowledge in a very public way that what the report is mere DNC propaganda.

The Democrats put their January 6th hearings on prime time and nobody watched. Because nobody cares. Because everyone outside dyed-in-the-wool Democrats know the whole thing is just a hatched job.

Biden is cratering in the polls – and as Varad Mehta (whom you should follow on Twitter), points out there is a huge difference between improving from 42 to 47 and improving from 37 to 42…getting to 47 would be helpful, getting to 42 doesn’t really matter. Pudding Brain is getting into the 30’s so even if things turn around for him over the next four months, it won’t really matter. I don’t think the Democrats really understand the catastrophe heading their way – and fudging the inflation number to 8.6% when its really above 15% won’t help. We can see the prices. I went out and bought some soda, water and a few items at the store today and it cost me $75. This wasn’t my weekly grocery shopping trip…I wasn’t buying steak and lobster. I just bought a few items…thing which would have put me back $40 a year ago. Gasoline is now $5 a gallon nationally and no sign the price will ease before $6. When people start paying $100 to gas up, it’ll cross a psychological line which will be just awful for the Democrats.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan14 Comments

District Attorney Chesa Boudin was recalled by the people of San Francisco. You really need to roll that one around a bit. He’s a darling of the Left and a scion of a multi-generational family of America Communists. He’s the standard of Progressive credentials. There is, apparently, such a thing as “too far Left” even in San Francisco. What’s going to be fun is watching Progressives blame this on America’s racist system…you know how San Francisco is a bastion of the Klan! But the reality is that white San Franciscans by and large wanted to keep him – it was POC, especially Asians, who did him in. Side note: Boudin’s family is rich and well-connected. Has been for at least three generations – that is modern Communism in a nutshell: highly privileged people who want to destroy the working and middle classes.

This is the crack in the door, in my view. Asians will soon follow Latinos in ditching the Left…not that Asians, any more than Latinos, are at the moment movement Conservatives…but both demographics believe in hard work and family. And if you want to be able to work hard and have a decent family, then you need a decent place to work and raise kids. San Francisco has become quite a Third World city over the past few years…and the next issue will be how San Francisco schools are making sure kids know about transgenderism but they aren’t making sure the kids can read. The diligent efforts of California’s university system to exclude high performing Asian kids will just accelerate this trend.

The cure for the Left is the Left in action – the thing that Boudin did (implement Marxist-Leninist legal theory) can only be done is a fully Totalitarian system of oppression. The Left is now moving far too fast…and the push back is getting intense.

Iowa. You know: flat. Corn fields. Weird caucus every four years. Well, they held their primaries tonight and compared to 2018 turnout, Democrat participation was down 15 percent. That is bad. Harbinger of a really tough ride for the Democrats this November…but the GOP participation was up 79 percent. This is an indication of a political meltdown for the Democrats. One pundit was only half-joking when he commented that if you’re not in a D+6 or better seat, you’d better hope your GOP opponent is certifiably insane. But, as they say, there’s more! In New Mexico the Democrats made up 70% of the primary voters in 2018…today, they’ll top out at about 54%. It is going like that all over the country – in primary after primary GOP turnout is way up over 2018 while Democrat turnout is flat or down. This November could be genuinely historic in the results. There might not be anything to compare it to in the past.

The real beauty of this is that when they Democrats get wiped out this November, it won’t cause them to reconsider their views. They can’t, don’t you see? Once the Party Line has been established, you can’t alter it. Already the Left is saying that Boudin lost because he didn’t Commie hard enough and those mean, racist Republicans lied about him. They can’t step back and say something like, “you know, perhaps there is a bit of a good idea in bail reform, but maybe we should dial it back to only non-violent offenders?”. They are incapable of this – the Party Line has decreed that cash bail is a racist support of the White Supremacist Capitalist Imperialist AmeriKKKan system. If you question abolishing cash bail, that makes you one of them. And, so, come January, 2023 as the GOP takes Control of Congress, the various third-rate people who pull Biden’s strings will just go even further Left. If we Commie just a little harder, it’ll work! And, so, bring on 2024!

You may or may not have heard of the kerfuffle over at the Washington Post about reporter David Weigel and the Horrible Sexist Joke. To nutshell: Weigel, a dyed-in-the-wool Leftist, retweeted a joke: “All women are bi. You just need to figure out if its sexual or polar”. Now, to be sure, this is a joke in poor taste. It is, also, funny, because we all know – especially women – that there’s always a little crazy in there. Full disclosure: the crazy is in there because they have to deal with men. One of the Post’s resident feminist scolds decided to make an issue of this – which, first of all, means she monitors her co-worker’s social media accounts. That right there tells you she’s nuts. But, that aside, it then all blew up with various people staking out various positions. Most people on the right are just “pass the popcorn” and watching the Left eat itself. But I’ve also noticed that some on the right are urging the Post to get control of the situation and, also, issuing statements of support for Wiegel after he got suspended. And I’m all: have you guys been paying attention at all?

Weigel, himself, is a far Left fanatic. That he’s being ground up in the Social Justice Warrior meat grinder is nothing more than funny…he helped build it and has often turned the handle when other people were tossed into it. This is what he wanted – the only thing to ask him is how does it taste? Then there’s people calling on the Post to support standards of journalism and fire the lady (wild-eyed lunatic Taylor Lorenz) who started all this. Journalistic standards? At the Post? Since when? Pretty much since at least Reagan’s first term in office, the Washington Post has consistently lied about everything related to politics. It probably goes back further than that, but I wasn’t paying attention when I was a kid. They knew precisely what they were getting when they hired Taylor Lorenz – a notorious Leftist with a heavy tinge of Maoism about her. They hired her just for this. To be a lunatic throwing poop all over everything. It is what the (rapidly shrinking) readership of the Post wants. And do remember that the Post is a mere rich man’s hobby…it isn’t there to make money or tell the truth. Its there to impart a certain worldview pleasing to the money bags.

Unless and until everyone on the Right admits that 99% of the MSM are mere regime Propagandists – liars with out a shred of honor – we’re going to always have trouble winning. These MSMers are not people to pay attention to. They are contemptible in every sense of the word. Only Christian charity would lead me to piss on one of them if they were on fire. Mock them when you aren’t ignoring them.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan19 Comments

Got into a long debate about gun control over on Twitter. Not a bad one, either. I mean, the people arguing with me were ignorant of basic facts and had imbibed a great deal of Progressive lies, but the debate was civil and it did open the eyes a bit on my side: they really are convinced that being armed is not something human beings are supposed to be…at least, not armed in any way that would give a distinct advantage. Maybe it stems from a Progressive desire to be fair? Don’t really know. But we’re never going to convince these people: they’ll have to be mugged by reality. As some of them have been as I’ve seen stories of Progressives in San Francisco quietly purchasing firearms as all police protection has been withdrawn.

To that end, Chesa Boudin, the communist DA of SF, is in deep trouble – he fully implemented the Marxist-Leninist ideal of criminal justice and it really, really sucks. One of the unknown stories about the old USSR was how crime-ridden it was. Those who read The Gulag Archipelago know, but most people don’t…and it is simply because Soviet media didn’t cover it and Western media followed suit. But the basics of Soviet criminal law – that all crime is the result of social injustice – combined with a complete disarming of the Russian people meant that crime ran wild. You’d get 25 years for speaking ill of Communism, 10 years for murder…usually with time off for good behavior. While the bosses were tightly protected (sound familiar?) the common people were at the mercy of criminals. But unlike in the USSR, there is a recall possible in San Francisco – and nothing will spotlight the toxic environment for Democrats than the scion of the far Left getting the boot.

US Intel says that Putin is on the ropes. Given US Intel’s track record, I expect Russian tanks in Paris by next week.

The GOP continues to earn it’s title as The Stupid Party – with gas and food prices rising, a border crisis and Biden risking WWIII…they’re putting together a plan to reduce greenhouse gases. Got a newsflash for ya, GOPe – nobody gives a damn about Climate Change except those who are paid to give a damn about it.

Tampa Bay Rays went woke over the recent shootings…and DeSantis is vetoing a $35 million taxpayer give away to them. That is how its done.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan15 Comments

As of a little while ago as I write, Oz clings to about a 1,200 vote lead in the PA GOP primary – nobody really knows how it will come out. I get the sense that Oz might pull it off, but McCormick could certainly get the win. Either is acceptable to me and would be immediately favored to win in November – the Democrats having nominate a leftist lunatic who thinks Catholic teaching is “gross”. That won’t play well in Western PA where the Democrats have to come back from the politically dead if they want to win Statewide.

GOP turnout in these primaries is so far vastly better than Democrat – and in North Carolina, very much so. A lot of punditry doesn’t like to read too much into that, but one thing we learn every election cycle is that political pundits don’t know the first thing about politics…they got some hobby-horse theory about how it works and they cherry pick data which confirms their bias. And when they get it wrong, they either ignore it completely, or explain it away. To me, people taking the time to go vote – especially in a primary – is a key indicator of how things are going. The other thing is voter registration patterns, which are also favorable to the GOP just about everywhere.

Musk announced that he intends to vote GOP – because Democrats are insane. And that, right there, pretty much nutshells 2022: Democrats are about to get a scorching rebuke not because of a sudden love for the GOP, but because they, the Democrats, have become so bad that they simply have to go. The political pundit class is, as I said before, clueless. At best you’re starting to see some of them hedge a bit and say the GOP may have a good year but even that with caveats about how if this, that and the other thing happens, the Democrats could do well. But, they all know. They have to know. It is the first mid-term of a President’s party: almost always that party does badly. The House is already gone for the Democrats. It was gone the minute 2020 was called for Biden. Especially since the Democrat majority was so thin. There was, early on, a better shot for the Democrats to hold on in the Senate. Democrats only had 14 seats to defend while the GOP has 21 and most of the Democrat seats are in States Biden carried. But that was before Biden took office.

A guy Tweeted out earlier that if gasoline was $2.50 a gallon, Biden would probably be doing ok. Even if not terribly popular, at least not toxic and we’d be looking at a normal midterm rather than a wave election. There is some truth to that – Biden has screwed up lots of things, but gas prices are something you can’t get around. People see it every time they fill up their tank. They might have let Afghanistan slip out of mind. The invasion at the border might pass to the side. But you can’t forget what you paid when you gas up. Nor can you forget food shortages and price hikes. It rather sticks with you. Here’s the kicker: all Biden had to do to keep gas at $2.50 is nothing. If he had just left Trump energy policies in place, then we’d still be energy independent. And this might have also protected us against recession…because the supply disruptions which are contributing to high oil prices would have benefited the United States…we would have been pumping record amounts of oil.

But the Democrats weather god had to be appeased, and here we are.

Saw a clip of a Clark County (NV) school district meeting where a parent, shocked at a dirty assignment her 15 year old was given in school, decided to read the assignment to the school board…which promptly cut off her mic, saying they couldn’t allow someone to use dirty words in a public hearing. That, in a nutshell, is the whole problem with public schools. The good news is that at last GOPers are taking an interest in such things – and are starting to win school board seats. The importance of this can’t be emphasized enough. While having the White House and Congress is very important, controlling the school boards, sheriff’s office and District Attorney is vastly more important…it is such offices which translate policy proposals into action. They are where the rubber meets the road. Control them, then even when the Left controls the national apparatus, we can effectively block their actions.

Never heard of monkey pox before, but it is being reported…and I think all of us can smell the bull**** a mile away here. Especially as the Democrats are trying to re-stoke Covid fears just in time for Fall. As noted before, I have had Covid. It sucks very badly. Certainly a person with underlying conditions should take care. But, I’m a 57 year old smoker and I’m getting through it just fine. I’ve still got a bit of the cough, but mostly it is all gone. Worst cold I ever had by a long stretch. But, nothing to be terrified about.

Man does a DNA test on himself, finds out he’s got a huge family he never knew about. It is a cool story.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan12 Comments

Feeling better! Covid does take it out of you. But, now I’m down to a cough and some general tiredness – sense of taste and smell is back.

That said…

The Democrat insanity on abortion has been on display all week and I think for many people it is their first real look at how Democrats – or at least their fanatic base – views the matter: they actually held a useless vote in the Senate to write Roe on steroids into law…it failed but their plan was to federally fund it on demand to the moment of birth with no conscience exemptions for medical providers. Thing would have been ripped to shreds at the Supreme Court had it passed. But that they even tried this useless thing – on a platform that, at best, has about 20% support – shows how insane they are about it. They’ve spent 50 years defending a Court ruling which, even if you’re pro-choice, is clearly unconstitutional and just horribly immoral…even liberal countries like France only allow abortion up to 14 weeks…and then only after two medical consults.

Meanwhile, China Joe and the Democrats continue to sink in the polls…and we’re starting to see that in primary voting, GOP enthusiasm is massively outpacing Democrat. We could be on the run up to a very large GOP victory.

Not that the GOP won’t do their best to blow it. I get people being sympathetic to Ukraine and disliking Putin’s Russia. I understand a desire to help them out – but for the majority of House GOPers to vote in favor of $40 billion no-strings-attached to Ukraine is just stupid. We know huge amounts of it will be siphoned off in graft. Meanwhile, here at home we’ve got an invasion at the southern border and our supply chains are so jacked up that in some areas there are shortages of baby formula.

Our domestic problems are large enough. And our foreign problems are China and drug cartels…even Islamist extremism simply isn’t worth our while to concentrate on at the moment. We have to get our house in order…not send billions to a Ukraine war which at any moment could drag us into open conflict with Russia. But there goes the Congressional GOP, nodding along with a Democrat/MSM Narrative. Wouldn’t be so bad if we could find a principal, but you just know they’re so in the Beltway that they’re seriously afraid we’ll think they’re Putin Puppets if they don’t go along with this boondoggle.

People are furiously fighting over Oz and, now, Barnette in the Pennsylvania Senate race. Lots of ostensibly pro-Trump voices being raised against them – in both cases over statements they made or may have made in the past. As I said regarding Oz, I won’t hold anyone to statements made in the past: especially if the statements are pre-2018 or so. We’ve all had a massive education these past few years and all of us view things a bit differently. As I pointed out on Twitter – what’s worse: a person who made ant-MAGA statements in the past, or a person who talks MAGA all day long and then knifes us? Plenty of the GOPers who voted for Ukraine aid probably have impeccable Conservative GOP credentials. I take everyone at face value these days: what do you propose right now? And sure I know that con artists will try to take advantage of this…but I’m at no more risk, and maybe a lot less risk, rolling the dice on a newly-minted MAGA than I am on the GOPe which has betrayed me for decades.

In the end, it is up to the votes of Pennsylvania to sort it out – but my advice to everyone is don’t take anyone’s word for it. Look it up yourself. We know that the most fierce voices are raised against those who fight for us – Trump, Greene, etc. And that tells me something: somebody doesn’t want me to have a champion. So, my first inclination when someone is attacked from the right is to question the attacker’s motives.

Court ruled that California’s ban on gun sales to under-21 is unconstitutional. Which, of course, is “no duh”. And I hate to break it to you, but as soon as someone sues on the cigarette and booze bans, they’ll go down as well. An adult is an adult. Period. Personally, I think we should never have lowered the age to 18 – stupid mistake. But if you make 18 the age where you can vote and enter into contracts, then that covers everything an adult is able to do…so, if you want your ban on booze to 19 year olds to stick, better amend the Constitution to return the voting age to 21.

Team Pudding Brain wants to turn American health care over to WHO – in the name of fighting the pandemic, but actually because (a) they hate the American people and (b) would love to be able to shrug and say “hey, we understand your anger here, but this is a WHO decision” whenever the global elite decides it is time to crush us under useless medical mandates.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan32 Comments

Sorry I haven’t been around, but the Chinese Bat Flu finally got me – felt my first symptoms on Saturday evening and tested positive on Monday morning. Basically, I’m ok – but it is a miserable cold. I seem to be pretty much past the fatigue/fever/ache part of it and am now in the cough/nasal congestion area – which is what I always hate the most about any cold. Anyways, not much inclination to write.

The leak of the supposed overturn of Roe is, in my mind, a desperate, last ditch attempt by Democrats to keep urban woman on board…as prices and shortages continue, there becomes less and less incentive for any Democrat constituency to show up in November and I guess they felt that it was slipping away so badly they needed to move on this now rather than wait for the decision to come in June.

And I think this leak is worse than a crime, it is an error. Democrats have been able to sustain a significant level of support for abortion by making sure nobody knows that Roe legalized it to the moment of birth. Poll after poll shows that solid majorities favor restrictions or bans on abortion after the first trimester. And, so, you never hear that talked about in the MSM…because the Democrats can’t afford to have people know that their abortion position is radical. Heck, the Alabama law in question only bans after 15 weeks…which makes it roughly line with France…hardly a hotbed of Christian fundamentalism (and in France you have to have two medical consults before the abortion is performed – which, to me, is still wrong, but it is at least reasonable).

Trump endorsed candidates swept the boards in Ohio…which shows the continuing power of Trump within the GOP. The sensible part of Never Trump (there really is such a thing) has been so desperately hoping that Trump was at last fading…but I’ve been pointing out to them that for a lot of people, the worse Team Pudding Brain gets, the more Trump will shine in hindsight. I really got under their skin a week or so ago by suggesting this will even most people to believe 2020 was stolen as nobody will want to admit they were suckered by the anti-Trump media op.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan30 Comments

I don’t actually trust Elon Musk. Maybe he’s a nice guy and that’s cool. If I ever hang out at places billionaires gather, I’ll let you know. Absent that, all I know about the guy is that he is a billionaire…a class not noted for their friendliness to, well, me. Donald Trump being one of the rare exceptions which prove the rule – and maybe Musk is another of those exceptions. But don’t go setting him up as some sort of icon. He appears to be committed to free speech and that is great – but he’s also decisively left of center in most of his views and we still might find that his idea of free speech isn’t the same as ours.

That said, the Meltdown of the Liberals when word came of Musk’s purchase of Twitter was glorious. The only event topping it was Trump’s 2016 win (and that event could only be topped by a 2024 win for Trump). It was hilarious for them to suddenly realize that they had set the standard at “private companies can do whatever they want”. They set that standard because they were confident that the private companies they cared about would always be run by their ideological allies. Now they’re rather caught in a bind – but, hypocrisy is their middle name so they’re already shifting over to demands to regulate social media.

Here’s some alleged audio of a Twitter meeting after the Musk news came out.

As it turns out, I am still in favor of regulation of social media. No matter the private aspect of their ownership, the bottom line is that social media is becoming the primary means whereby public debate is carried on. To me, if a platform does not ban all political/controversial speech, then it has voluntarily entered the public square and become part of it – and the public square is for all, especially those we hate the most.

In their renewed love of regulation on this, the Left hopes to ban “hate speech” and “misinformation”, which we know will amount to banning anyone who disagrees with the Left. To get out in front of it, we need a law (which may end up having to be an Amendment) along the lines of:

No free to use public media platform shall deny access to any person or entity who wishes to comment on matters of public controversy.

Nothing in this law shall be construed as permitting sexual indecency, slander, incitement to violence or the promotion of activities illegal under US law.

That pretty much covers it – though it can be refined as we like. But we dare not let anyone start to place into law anything related to the content of speech. Nothing about “hate speech” or “disinformation”. Because that is a slippery slope.

Democrats, ruthlessly exercising their State legislative power rammed through some of the most amazing Gerrymanders in history…all the while suing GOP States for far less offense. But, it looks like the Democrats went too far – in New York, their ridiculous map was tossed and the judges will find some people to draw new ones. Because Democrats are Democrats, you can expect this new map to still be favorable to Democrats…but not by the lopsided amount the rejected map had. Here’s a sample of how ridiculous the Democrat map was:

Zoom in on that a bit to see that in areas it literally goes down a street to connect parts of the district together. Democrats felt they had to do this to try to save their bacon in November…now, they won’t save as much. But, in the end, I don’t think it was really going to matter…they might be heading for such a blowout in November that all they’ll have accomplished was to lose seats they could have won, but they shifted too many Democrats out of them to try to shore up weaker seats.

Related: Pudding Brain’s approval is underwater in 40 States….in a poll historically Democrat-friendly.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan20 Comments

Representative Henry Cuellar (D-TX) is sounding the alarm about Democrat chances in November…but, there’s an odd wrinkle here: Cuellar’s office was raided by the FBI a little while back and he’s embroiled in a scandal. OTOH, we know that Democrats use the FBI and DOJ to punish political opponents and the last thing Team Pudding Brain wants right now is a Latino Texas Democrat warning that they’re going to get destroyed in November because Latinos are going to vote GOP…and a lot of the reason will be Biden’s Border Crisis.

Democrats are getting alarmed here in Nevada, as well. All 4 of our House seats are up along with 1 Senate seat and the governorship. 3 of 4 House seats are currently Democrat as is the Senate seat and governorship. Democrats thought they had this sewn, don’t you know? With total control of the State government it was Fun Time! Part of their fun was redistricting and the Democrats took their Life Seat (NV-01) which was packed full of Democrats and broke it up a little bit to provide more Democrats in other House districts. That was before gas prices sky rocketed and polling started to show a big shift of Latino voters to the GOP. But now they’re kinda stuck…NV-01 is still a high hill for the GOP to climb but in a Red Wave year it could easily go GOP. Meanwhile, Senator Cortez-Masto (D-Zombie Reid) is a nonentity running against Republican Laxalt who is proving an excellent campaigner and the GOP has two good prospects to run against Governor Sisolak (D-Whatever the DNC Tells Him to Do). Could be some very good news in Nevada this November.

Ron DeSantis does it again. No, not smacking Disney down. Not stopping grooming in kindergarten. No: this time, its limiting tenure as public universities. This sort of thing is small but crucial. Progressives get themselves deep inside and then change everything … and one of the best ways to be “inside” is to be tenured in a university. You are practically untouchable. Its like being a made man in the Mafia. There is a huge argument about whether we should go Trump or DeSantis in 2024. I don’t care which one of them gets it – either is going to be a fighter for us.

Remember the lunatic conspiracy theories about people having their organs removed for transplants? Well, looks like the Conspiracy Theorists were just ahead of the curve. Again. But, really, this is bestial what the Chinese are doing – all very Soylent Green which, along with Rollerball and Network are the three 1970’s movies to most accurately predict the future.