Open Thread

2022

Mark Noonan29 Comments

First off: always listen to this on New Years Day.

That done: what the heck is it doing being 2022? One of my granddaughters turns 10 later this month…I do remember my 10th birthday very vividly. That was 1974. I was fascinated by the whole thing of being 10 years old. And I remember figuring things out – that I’d be 20 in 1984. That I would turn 36 in 2000. 2022? How the heck did that happen?

Now I get to figure out things like if I live as long as my Dad my expiration date comes in 2047. Of course, make it as long as Grandpa then I’ll be around 2052. As long as my Grand-aunt Alice, 2063. But, slice it any way you like, there’s more time behind than in front. This doesn’t disturb me. Maybe it should, but it doesn’t. 57 years is already a long time: we’re just tacking on at this point. Will have to point out to the granddaughter that if she shakes my hand then she’s one handshake away from 1896, when my grandfather was born – that might be an interesting point for her to make with her grandchildren 40 or 50 years from now.

The country is a complete mess – the only thing that keeps China from attacking is the remaining uncertainty of whether or not we’d use nuclear weapons if our backs go to the wall. As of this moment, I doubt we could raise a military force sufficient to win against any 1st or 2nd rate power. We’re too divided and our military leadership is perfectly useless. I don’t know what they teach at the service academies these days, but it certainly isn’t whatever is needed to win a war. And any war fighting capacity which is imparted is shoved out by the time they rise to the top where the only concerns are pleasing their political masters and feathering their retirement nest. And the core military power of our nation – the lower and middle class people outside the deep blue areas: do they want to fight for America as it is right now? Do you want one of your family members to fight under these generals and admirals, with China Joe as CinC? It always astonished me how various parts of France, left and right, didn’t want to stand up and fight against Hitler – but these days I perhaps understand a little better. They should, of course, have fought: but at the time, it seemed to many of them that fighting for France merely perpetuated a corrupt and useless Ruling Class.

Earlier today I paid about $180.00 for $100.00 in groceries: I don’t know exactly what they use to judge inflation but I suspect that the numbers, like all government numbers these days, aren’t giving us the rock solid truth. It wouldn’t be in Team Pudding Brain’s interest to show inflation as high as I figure it must be…prices are getting out of control. Bad news: there are indications that we’ve only seen the start of the inflationary surge. Remember, these things take a little while to work into the system. From what I’ve read, for instance, the price of fertilizer is vastly higher…which means the farmers are going to have to charge more for, say, corn. That will make it more expensive to get your Doritos, but also more expensive for everything that uses corn…and its a lot of things. On and on it will go, pushing one thing after another. I hope inflation moderates: for me and for everyone, but I worry that it won’t, at least not any time soon. There is too much money out there right now and goods and services are getting harder and harder to procure.

Meanwhile, they’re moving what must be hundreds of thousands of illegals all over the country – sure, they are hoping that changing demographics will help them (but, will it? Polls show Latino voters aren’t keen on pronoun wars) but, still, what is the real point here? It could just be that they’re stupid…they just believe they can’t stop people from crossing and now they have to move them somewhere. They might do a vaccine mandate for air travel, but no vaccine mandate for crossing illegally. We’re in the Twilight Zone of a dead Ruling Class still holding the levers of power.

One thing I am fairly confident about is that they don’t know how hated they are. The Ruling Class, I mean. And not just by us: plenty of far left people despise them as well. Promises were made, after all. Stupid promises, in our view, but still promises – go Resist the Bad Orange Man and when he’s out you’ll get a cancellation of student debt and free college…and a host of other things as well. They aren’t delivering. Team Pudding Brain let a contract out for an $84 million facility to make Covid tests…which won’t start operating until 2024. Hunter is making bank selling his “art”. Nancy Pelosi just bought a retirement home in Florida…while in her San Francisco hard core liberals are starting to buy guns as police protection fails utterly (and not just because of “defund the police” – even the police they have are, apparently, turning a blind eye to crime. Why wouldn’t they? If they arrest someone and if it can be even willfully misconstrued as bad by the cops, their lives are ruined. Better to just drive by and pretend you didn’t see it). Everything is falling apart -but we see that they are doing well and are ignoring the Covid restrictions (AOC was caught in Miami this past week while her New York endured another round of Covid lockdowns).

What will come of this hatred remains to be seen – but we might get a very strong taste of it just 11 months from now. Polls are, as usual, nearly useless, but they are bad for Democrats. But for me, just looking at how things are, if I were Chair of the RNC I’d make sure I had GOP candidates even in D+10 districts. Literally anything is possible.

Meanwhile, I write – Kings and Queen will be out very shortly. That is Book V. But Heirs (Book VI) and Empress (Book VII) are 90% done. I’m about 1/3 done with The Crimson Blade (Book VIII) and I’ve already made a start on the still untitled Book IX. Meanwhile, still working on Aleste and the Icecrystal Dragons and putting ideas together for Survival (an end-of-the-world novel, which may turn out to have zombies in it) and Last Strand, the working title for a thriller about a Chinese plot against America. I write because I enjoy it. Because I believe the stories are good. And because when I’m in those worlds, I’m not watching the enslavement of the world and the destruction of the United States.

I hope you have your escape from today! If you don’t, get one – we’re in for a rocky ride. I think, with God’s grace, will come out the other side ok, but we are living in the Chinese curse of interesting times. Things are going to get stranger and perhaps far more dangerous – but with that faith in God, we’ll get through it all.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan36 Comments

So, today Pudding Brain announced that there is no federal solution to Covid. The guy who ran on shutting down the virus has given up.

Of course, it never could be shut down – the idea that if we stayed home and then masked up when we went out we’d eventually eliminate the virus was drivel. And every doctor knew it was drivel. It was all an op to get the Bad Orange Man out. That plus cheating which would make Stalin blush did the trick.

Related: Dad got Pudding Brain to say “Let’s Go Brandon” live on air – this wouldn’t have been a big thing but the Left had a nervous breakdown about it. It has been glorious to behold on social media.

Desmond Tutu died a few days ago – one of the lesser known things about him was that he held rabidly anti-Semitic opinions. This is actually no surprise at all – such views have been common on the Left for a long while. The tragedy of South Africa was always Apartheid – by setting up that hideous system, the white people of South Africa allowed anyone who would stand against it to be cloaked in impervious moral armor…no matter how otherwise nasty they were. I was surprised that Mandela emerged from prison with a greatness of heart…that he voluntarily relinquished power is very rare in African history. But his movement was chock full of very wicked people who were given a complete pass because they stood against an injustice. The lesson to be learned here is that just because someone is opposed to one sort of evil doesn’t mean they are good guys.

CNN is a dying network – and I don’t think the bosses know what to do about it. It could be they don’t want to do anything about it. The cure for what ails CNN isn’t to become another Fox, but it must become what it isn’t: a news organization. Through the Trump years, lying on behalf of the Democrats kept things afloat a bit. Fox still routinely beat CNN in the ratings. But that lying on behalf of Democrats also alienated all non-Democrats who used to watch…and as far as being liberal lunatics goes, MSNBC simply does a better job of it. If CNN were to change itself into a place of hard, factual news, it would gain a fiercely loyal audience. But to do this, they would have to tell the truth…and I don’t think the people there are capable of doing that.

The US government chartered flights over Christmas to move illegals around the country – basically seeding them in areas far from the border where it is far less likely that any agency concerned will bother with them. This is, of course, simple lawlessness on the part of the government. Hard as it will be, we must make a commitment to deport every illegal who arrived after January 20th, 2021. Sure, the rest of them as well – but those who came after that date must be made an example of: we must instruct the world that just because we get an idiotic President it doesn’t mean you’ll get away with it.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan39 Comments

Secret Service is saying that $100 billion in Covid relief has be stolen. Rely on it: it is orders of magnitude higher than that. We do have to fault Trump a bit here as well – as this thing came in, the money spigot was turned on full blast. Pudding Brain has put that into overdrive, but we have to admit where it started.

Of course the money was going to be stolen. The primary purpose, for those in the know, was to steal. We didn’t really need to spend much on this – we did, after all, have a perfectly functioning economy and health care system when this started. At most we just needed a slight boost in what we were already spending. But the bonanza of cash simply thrown out the Treasury windows was and is the opportunity of a life time. Couple years from now and we will see a few indictments – people who stole beyond their station or who didn’t divvy up the way the bosses wanted. But my bet is that half, at least, of what has and will be spent was nothing but graft.

The dirty little secret of our government is that it spends so much money that nobody really knows what is going on. How can anyone keep an eye on trillions of dollars being spent? Do you realize how easy it is to divert hundreds of billions when you’ve got a flood of money that large?

Some rumors that Team Hillary is in Durham’s crosshairs. Hope so, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Cocaine Mitch, talking with Hugh Hewitt, basically said he’s asking Manchin to switch to the GOP – adding that he’s discussing whether Manchin would keep his chairmanship of Energy. I’m a bit surprised – not that it might be happening, but that it would happen now. I’d have thought Mitch would wait until well into 2022. OTOH, the Democrats are already a toxic brand and McConnell back in the Majority Leader spot shuts down all Democrat legislative programs. We’ll see how it comes out.

Donald Trump says he’ll hold a press conference on January 6th. A lot of people are downright frightened of this – I’m not. What better way to take the entire spotlight away from whatever the DNC/MSM will be doing that day? If he calls for the release of the 1/6 detainees, then I’ll figure its for sure that he’s running in 2024.

Since Covid hit, 5 million Americans obtained firearms. The people are arming in a replay of the Great Fear of 1789 in France. America is a tinder box right now – keeping in mind that our side is mostly made up of people who just want to be left alone. The problem – for the Left – is that if such people ever decide it is time to fight or die, then they tend to be quite brutal in settling accounts.

China bought Hollywood and then helped Hollywood destroy itself. It is the Chinese business model. China merely wanted to get itself going – so that it can provide pop-culture product on the global market…not so American pop-culture could come to dominate China. Now that China has got what it wanted, the Hollywood dreams of releasing American movies in the Chinese market have faded away. Hopefully this will force American studios to start making product designed for specifically for the American market. No more Superman who refuses to fight for the American way, as it were.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan19 Comments

Some are saying the Omnicron variant is our off ramp: that it is, apparently, a mild version and it will allow the Democrats to declare victory and move on – but, I don’t think so. All I can see is that they seem to be quadrupling down on it.

We can assume part of this is mere stupidity – our Ruling Elites are simply not very bright. But in addition to that, I think they believe they can’t back off on it now. It would be too much of an admission they were wrong. And, of course, the more Covid fear they keep up in the Deep Blue areas, the more voter fraud they can justify…and there are indications of an extremely toxic political environment for Democrats. They aren’t doing well anywhere. Can’t remember exactly where it was, but it was a State legislative district in New England which the Democrats held in a special election last week…but their margin of victory dropped from something like 20 points last year to 3 or 4 this year. Meanwhile, quite a number of these specials are going our way.

To give a real idea how it is going for those who are keeping up the Covid fear – Boris Johnson’s Tories lost a by election in Shropshire a couple days ago. The seat has been Tory held for nearly 200 years. The swing against the Tories was 37 points. Lots of things are going on, but 99 Tories just voted in Parlaiment against Johnson’s vaccine mandates – it only became law because Labour backed it. A Tory government dependent upon Labour votes is a Tory government on the ropes.

Science guys say they found water in a canyon on Mars – frozen, naturally, but apparently quite a bit of it and right below the surface. This is important – we know there is a lot of ice in Mars polar regions but human colonization of Mars, if it ever happens, will be vastly easier in the central regions of Mars. Finding water in such a place makes it a prime location for human exploration. Still, though, the real problems remain: radiation and gravity. Mars has no magnetic field and so solar radiation hits the planet at a vastly higher rate than the surface of Earth and, of course, Mars has a much lower gravity and we simply don’t know what long term low gravity will do to us.

Wikipedia is getting set to purge entries on Communist mass killings – I’ve long said that Wikipedia, if the information is in any way political, is an unreliable source. The Commies who run it hate that people can tell the truth about Communism and so they’ve long edited things to downplay Communist atrocities. This is something we can fix: all we need do is make our own Wikipedia.

A Lutheran church is having drag queen prayer time – because, of course. It is astonishing how fast this all came about. I mean, figure the odds that biology would result in anything more than, say, 0.0001% of people having a divergence between their biology and their perception of their gender. But now something like 20% of youngsters are claiming to be at least somewhere on the trans spectrum. It is now fashionable – and this means it will recede, but not before a lot of people are permanently screwed up because at the age of 6 they decided to play with a doll instead of a fire truck.

Governor DeSantis is trying to ban CRT in Florida. This is the way. The bottom line is we can keep the USA or we can keep CRT: the two are incompatible. It must be remembered that the right to free speech is an individual right, not a government right. The government only has the right to say what we tell it to say through laws enacted by our representatives. A government-funded school is the voice of the people, not its own voice. If any teacher wants to teach something the people don’t want taught, they are free to start their own entirely private school…but we, the people, have the right to demand an end to Communist indoctrination in the schools we own.

Some cops proudly put up a picture of $100,000 in cash they had seized and it is causing a stir: the woman they took the cash from wasn’t charged with any crime and she isn’t, as far as we can tell, the target of any criminal investigation. She was merely carrying the cash – and the cops took it. This is civil asset forfeiture…and if the lady wants her money back, she will have to sue the police: there is no mechanism in the law to merely return seized money.

To be sure, carrying a hundred grand around is a bit eye raising – but it isn’t illegal and the police must not have the power to seize an asset unless a court of law has determined it was used in a criminal activity. I can barely go along with freezing assets of someone accused of a crime but the authorities must not be able to take a red cent until after a conviction. What the law allows at this time is mere theft by the cops – and while 100 grand is a lot, they seize any amount they can get their hands on and use the flimsiest excuses for doing it. I’ve read that in some jurisdictions the average amount seized is just a few hundred dollars.

The concept behind forfeiture was that it would be a telling blow against drug lords – but I don’t think we’ve run out of drug lords. Meanwhile, I’ve read many cases were innocent people had their property taken. It is past time to end this farce.

Portland, OR has been ruined. The Left destroyed it. On purpose. Because they believe that anything good in the United States is the result of theft and oppression by a systemically racist/sexist/homophobic Capitalist-Imperialist genocidal system. But most people still aren’t understanding the on purpose part of it. More and more are, but there’s still a pretty steep learning curve. The Left wants chaos and destruction because that will bring down what they view as an evil system…and upon the ruins they will erect whatever warmed over Marxist drivel they believe at the moment. This isn’t an accident. This isn’t a failed policy. This is what is desired – and until we fully internalize this fact, we’re always going to be at a disadvantage fighting the Left.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan9 Comments

I’d like to say I don’t know where the time went – but, I do: still writing! Kings and Queen (Book V) will be out soon so I was doing some last touches on that…but, honestly, I’m already deep into Book IX. Not only that, but my granddaughter said my stories needed a dragon, so I took Celeste’s daughter Aleste and with assist from the granddaughter, I’m writing Aleste and the Icecrystal Dragons. So, hey guys! How ya been?

Anyways – so, Smollett is guilty, as we all knew he was as soon as the story broke. I’m sure if someone did some digging they could find something that almost amounts to an actual hate crime by a GOPer, but even then, not really. The trouble the Left has here is that we’re not racists. I pointed out on Twitter that if Smollett had actually gone to MAGA country he would have learned that we’re very nice people who don’t give a darn what you do as long as you don’t adversely affect housing prices. Keep your act together and we’re cool.

There’s a poll out for youngsters about their willingness to be friends with people who have different political views and for Democrat kiddies, they are overwhelmingly against being friends with Republicans. Part of this, I’m sure, is peer pressure: they don’t want to be known as someone who is friends with Republicans because all the cool kids don’t have any Republican friends. But it is also of the nature of the Left: hate is what motivates them. It is why they do what they do.

Some people are pointing out how horrible the crime is in Democrat cities and are asking when the DA’s in those towns will finally say, “enough”. I tell them: don’t hold your breath. It is the Left’s opinion that the prosperity and safety of middle class America is a false front on an intrinsically evil society. The Left is letting the criminals out to prey because they believe that it will help generate an acute social crisis which will turn people away from the American system. It is Lenin’s old dictum: the worse, the better. There is a fly in the ointment, however: the Left is the Ruling Class. So, when the people do turn against the system, these junior league Bolsheviks will find all of the hatred directed their way.

Team Pudding Brain has their solution to the inflation problem: order the MSM to talk about how it isn’t a problem. And like proper lapdogs, the MSM is going right along with this order. I’m not sure how well telling us to disbelieve our lying eyes will work. I suspect it won’t. One smart guy did point out that Biden hasn’t remotely hit bottom: apparently, he shoveled out some money for parents and didn’t broadcast too widely that the money is their child tax deduction for 2021…which means that when people go to do their taxes in April of 2022, they’ll find that they already spent their child deduction. I’m sure that’ll go over real well.

Lots of people are noting that Latino voters are dropping the Dems. For males the Latino vote is almost mirroring the vote for white males. If you really drill down to it, the only really strong demographics for the Democrats are African-Americans and white, college educated women. And even the black vote is starting to get a few cracks in it. I don’t think that the Democrats can win much with that. As for the Latinos – don’t expect them to be Buckley-ite Conservatives. They just want law and order, good schools and a vibrant economy. In other words, what the Democrats would at least try to get for them before they were taken over by the aforementioned Bolsheviks. It is, though, our opening…and the GOP should push hard for Latino votes. A vote in 2022 for a good economy can be turned by, say, 2028 into a vote for limited government.

Russia is making waves in Ukraine and it looks like Pudding Brain will roll over for them. In this, probably for the best: can you imagine how catastrophic our defeat would be if we got into a shooting war with the current crew in charge? Also, we don’t have a strategic interest in who governs the Donbas. OTOH, the case can be made that we should stand against military aggression, as such. Not so sure I’m on board with that. Used to be. Maybe not any longer. Some things have to be worked out and war is just politics by other means. Putin – correctly – sees control of the Donbas as vital to his national security: the resources there are vital. Our largest strategic interest is to contain China. Sending an army to Kiev doesn’t serve that interest. Meanwhile, our useless allies won’t send an army…mostly because they haven’t got one. And, finally, the reason Putin is moving is because he knows he’s only got a short time – the miracle of having such a useless American President might never happen again. He kept quiet for Trump because he knew – from Trump’s actions – that Trump wouldn’t put up with it. Putin knows that he can walk all over Biden.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan47 Comments

They had the oral arguments for the challenge to Mississippi’s 15 week abortion ban. I read a lot of very smart takes on it, and some raving lunacy from the Left as well. Bottom line is that no one can say for certain how the Court will rule. Strike down? Narrowly uphold? Revoke Roe? Until the ruling comes down, we’re all guessing. Justice Thomas asked what is, to me, the key question: where is this in the Constitution? It isn’t, of course, and the Court’s decision to invent a right to abortion out of thin air was horrible…and it is a very key cause to the hatred in American politics these days. I do hope the Justices lance this boil. And some smart people think they might – that the lines of questioning have some thinking it will be 6-3 to strike Roe down…with Roberts merely going along with the majority. If it is struck down, I hope Thomas is the decision author. It will be his legacy to the United States.

Bank of America execs advise their staffers to “dress down” when they come into the office in NYC…to avoid being targeted by violent crime. This won’t, of course, stop BofA from being a reliable defender of the Ruling Class. The younger people don’t remember the crime wave of the 60’s to the 90’s…and this one is going to be vastly worse than the first because at least during the earlier crime wave, cops were trying to stop it. Now? A cop would be a fool to try and stop it…make the slightest mistake in making an arrest, and you’re life is ruined. The criminals know this. Criminals are cowards and they aren’t very bright – but they also know when it is open season.

Dr Oz announced he is running for Senate in Pennsylvania as a Conservative Republican…which is quite a surprise for a guy who got his start with Oprah. The bottom line is that he’s taken a large number of far Left positions over the years, most notably on gun control. This, naturally, caused the right to drop on him like a ton of bricks. Except for me: we’ve all had an education this past five years. All of us, no matter how knowledgeable or perceptive, have found that things we used to believe were false in whole or in part. Perhaps Dr Oz has had a bit of an awakening? I put it like this: I don’t care if you were wearing a Che shirt at an Antifa rally yesterday – if today you are saying the Left has to go: welcome to the party. I think we should listen to what Oz has to say and make the call on that…not hang him out to dry because of positions he took in the past.

Hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio likened China disappearing people to being “a strict parent”. The video is nauseating – and if you still wonder why I stopped being a supporter of Capitalism, here it is. For every Elon Musk – who seems a decent enough fellow – there are a score of Dalios: amoral, money-mad creeps who don’t give a damn what happens to people as long as they can make money. The only way to stop them – the only way – is to confiscate their money. People like this warp our debate and prevent a clean, clear view of the world. They keep us shackled to China as we slip ever further down into a deindustrialized, drug-addled dependency. In the end, they go or we do.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan60 Comments

Not guilty is good. The liberal tears were delicious. But as I read the comments on social media – pro and con – I noticed that people were really missing the crux of the matter.

The reason those rioters were out there attacking Rittenhouse and he was forced to shoot them to defend himself is that various political and corporate media leaders decided we had to have an acute, race-tinged crisis in America to assist them in removing Donald Trump from office. Every bit of loss in 2020 is the fault of those who deliberately and maliciously pumped up George Floyd’s death into a racial issue. The rest of it flowed from that – and even as we rightly condemn the actual rioters and the lower-level people who organized and paid them, never lose sight of the fact that on top of it all were some very rich, very powerful people who burned down poor and working class neighborhoods simply to craft an anti-Trump Narrative.

Such callousness shouldn’t surprise any of us – remember, these people are in favor of such things as abortion on demand to the moment of birth. They cover up pigs abusing young men and women. They sell America out for Chinese money. They are not, in short, people with a sense of morality. They just want what they want and there is nothing they won’t stoop to. And our task is to get rid of them.

In the various things bubbling up today were people reminding everyone that Go Fund Me banned Rittenhouse from fundraising but allowed one of his rioter/attackers to raise money. To me, that encapsulated it nicely – and also told me, once again, that until we despoil these people, they’ll just keep doing it. As long as they have money and control over the levers of public discourse, they’ll continue to spread lies in service of themselves. One thing I hadn’t noticed until just today was the huge number of people who believe – in all sincerity believe – that the three people Rittenhouse shot were black. How did they get that idea? Because the media didn’t describe them as rioters – it described them as BLM activists or racial justice activists. People – and a lot of them are black – just assumed that they were black.

But that is just what our media does, and on command from the Ruling Class. They deliberately obfuscated the issue to keep hate alive. Another theme that came up on the Left was the assertion that if a black man did what Rittenhouse had done, he’d be dead or in jail for life…meanwhile, on this very same day a black man was acquitted of shooting 5 in self defense. Not only was it ruled by the jury to be self defense, but it was a gun fight with the cops and the defendant is a convicted felon. In other words, the jury set aside assumptions, looked at the evidence and said that in this case, the guy was justified in shooting to save himself. But, that doesn’t fit the Narrative…of course, nothing but lies do fit the Narrative, and so that is all we get.

Pudding Brain had a routine colonoscopy – so routine that the White House failed to notify the public about it until the day it happened. And those of us of a certain age know what you have to do to get ready for it…which means that Joe must have spent all day Thursday occupied, shall we say? And we also know that once you’re done with it, the combination of hunger, lack of sleep and medication makes you next to useless for the 24 hours after the procedure. And yet Joe only tossed over power to Harris for a couple hours.

Sorry, something is up – and it wasn’t a colonoscopy. They’re covering up some aspect of Joe’s health…and now we think those rumors of Team Pudding Brain trying to ditch Harris might have something to them.

Austria, as well as other nations, are reimposing lockdowns…which is so very strange in that you tried it, it obviously didn’t work…so now you’ll do it all over again? The problem with the Global Ruling Class isn’t that it is corrupt, it is that it’s stupid.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan24 Comments

As I write it is late Tuesday so we still don’t know the Rittenhouse verdict – I am nervous about it as the self defense was so patently obvious that not guilty should have taken an hour. Is it hung up on one or two holding out for innocent, or one or two holding out for guilty? I guess we’ll find out when we find out.

The bottom line, though, is that where there is a Democrat DA, you don’t have a right to defend yourself. If you do against those allied politically with the DA, you will be prosecuted and if nothing else, the process will be the punishment. I urge anyone living under a DA where there is risk of Leftist violence to move to a place which has a Republican DA. But even then, watch out: if the federal government under a Democrat decides to charge you with civil rights violations because you defended yourself, you’ll be in the same predicament.

What this trial has done is shown that we need specific laws on the books securing the right to self defense. We have to make it clear that if you start violence, anyone can pretty much do anything they like to you if they feel that you are a threat to persons or property. We obviously will not be able to get these things enacted in Blue States, but in every State we can, do it. So that if a local Blue DA decides to mess around, won’t be able to.

“I Did That” Biden stickers are showing up everywhere as Republicans learn political street fighting. They are heavily effective – and things like high gas prices are set to sink the Democrats quite a lot.

It looks like we finally have a whistleblower at the FBI who is on our side – revealing that the FBI has conducted counter-terrorism investigations against parents attending school board meetings. This is terrifying stuff – the FBI is becoming the Demcorats Stasi. The next GOP President will have to largely dismantle the FBI and start all over.

Glenn Reynolds notes that we’re hampered in our space program because we worry too much about safety. Sure, we do have to take care – but the bottom line is that if humans really want to live in space and on other planets, then humans are going to have to die in space and on other planets. We should already have a permanent presence on the Moon and be scouting sites for a permanent presence on Mars by now. If we’re going to go, go. Don’t fuss too much about it.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan43 Comments

Prices are rising and real wages are falling and the alleged President’s approval rating officially is in the low-40s. This is the sort of thing which causes political meltdowns. At this moment in time, any Democrat in a district or State D+10 or less should be running as if they’re losing.

Real problem for them: if the economic situation doesn’t change, then it won’t matter how they run: they’re going to lose. And even D+15 might not be enough.

The kicker: the only way to fix this is to kill inflation…but doing that causes a recession.

Looks like we won’t return to the Moon before 2025. I’m actually ok with that – I don’t want Pudding Brain’s name on the plaque.

Masked up California is having much more Covid than unmasked Florida. Meanwhile, Sweden which never masked is done with it. The initial “15 days to slow the spread” was, in the event, a mistake – but, an understandable one. Everything we’ve done since then – every last effort – has been useless or counterproductive. But the Democrats won’t let this go: they just extended the mask mandate here in Vegas. No reason. There’s no science behind it. It is just because. Saw a recent poll where Democrats believe that the hospitalization rate for unvaccinated Covid is 50%. It is less than 1%. But if you watch the MSM, that is what you believe because that is what they imply with their fear mongering.

Kyle Rittenhouse is, as we all know, completely innocent. But we’ll have to see what the jury says – from what I can glean from the trial, the prosecutor has no case. Remember: Rittenhouse is charged, among other things, with first degree murder – meaning the State is arguing that Rittenhouse had malice aforethought: that he went there intending to kill. Even the most negative reading of Rittenhouse’s actions don’t allow such an absurd view. But that is what they’re going for. But the reality is that rioters went after him and he merely defended himself. There is zero indication that he sought the situation where shooting might occur. The only thing they might have him on is a misdemeanor gun possession charge. So, we’ll see what happens. But even if convicted, expect that he’ll be released on appeal.

The usual weak sisters on the Right are arguing variously that Rittenhouse did wrong and/or that he shouldn’t have been there. My question on that is: why shouldn’t he have been there? Are we all supposed to just clear out when the DNC is paying Antifa to riot? Is that the rule? That when they are working up their riots we just have to let it all happen? Not even be on the streets we have a perfect right to be on? This is what, I think, irritates us most about the Right – their assumption that we have a responsibility to make life easy for the Left…that they are allowed to do whatever they damn well please, and we just have to let it happen.

Mayor Pete was out there grappling with our transportation crisis the other day by…complaining about racist bridges. Yes. You read that correctly. Seems that the Left claims that certain bridges around New York City were made deliberately low so that buses filled with blacks and Puerto Ricans couldn’t get to the beach. Of course that is all drivel – the bridges were built that way because back in those days that is how you did that particular sort of design. But it was interesting to see. The hook the Left had was that the designer was, indeed, a racist. No doubt about that. Plenty of contemporary documentary evidence that he disparaged non-white people on a regular basis. With that, a whole theory was crafted. But what the theory always lacked was any evidence that the designer – and everyone else involved in a massive highway project – was making design decisions based on race.

And that is how the Left always does it. They create a theory and then find some nugget of fact to hang the whole thing on. The idea, for instance, that the conquest of North America was a deliberate attempt at genocide is based upon a letter written by a British general in which he suggests delivering the blankets of smallpox victims to the Natives. That it was a frustrated general at his wits end on trying to defeat wily Native warriors is left entirely out of the fact. He wasn’t trying to kill all Natives – he was trying to win a war. And the kicker is that it wouldn’t have worked – because that isn’t how smallpox spreads. The idea was based upon the very flawed idea of disease transmission back in those days. And that then gets you to understand the crucial aspect of the European conquest: it was European diseases, carried unknowingly by Europeans, which did the most damage. Most Natives who died of European disease never even laid eyes on an European. And this massive die-off caused gigantic social disruption among the survivors. They started to question their own ancestral ways – and swiftly started to adopt European ways to the maximum amount possible. By the time Lewis and Clark carried out the first American expedition to the west, the Native tribes way of life was massively and irretrievably changed from pre-Columbian times. But there is goes – and now it is pretty much being taught as fact in America’s schools: we came here to kill. Because we’re just rat bastards. Because we’re white.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan40 Comments

What will happen in Virginia on Tuesday? Your guess is as good as mine – if I was confident that fraud was unlikely, I’d figure that Youngkin has it. All trends, polls and increasingly ridiculous actions by the Democrats indicate that Youngkin has the momentum. But, after 2020, none of us are going to be sure in any place Democrats have control over the vote count. At all events, if they manage to cheat to a narrow win, it is still a disaster for them. This should be a walk over for them…Virginia with its massive population of DC people living in Northern Virginia is a Blue State. It isn’t California Blue, but its just a couple steps away from it. And the Democrats are in trouble.

And they are in trouble because at the top of their heap sits a senile old crook who’s staff is made up of idiots. Add to this the complete failure by Democrat Congressional leadership and what we have is a nation spinning out of control into political and economic paralysis. My view is that Biden didn’t get close to 81 million votes in 2020 but even supposing he did, those votes are long gone, now. He’ll keep the partisan Dems on board but all indications are that he’s already lost Independents and absent a complete turn around where things are positively booming in November of 2022, the Democrat party is going to get wiped out everywhere they don’t have total control over. Its why they’re doing things like their absurd redistricting in Illinois which will result in 3 GOP House members in a State Trump got 43% percent in…these are desperate expedients to save as much as they can.

Kinzinger announced his retirement today – it looks like, at most, only 1 or 2 of the GOPer’s who voted to impeach Trump over 1/6 will return to Congress in 2023. Good riddance. They cast their action as a vote against political extremism but that’s only because they’re stupid and corrupt. Whatever 1/6 was, it wasn’t an insurrection. It wasn’t a threat to the Constitutional order. The only person killed was an unarmed protestor, shot by an incompetent cop. The impeachment of Trump over it was a crude and disgusting political ploy and no person of sense or honor could lend it credibility. They did: and now their careers are largely over and they’ll end their days as pathetic “Conservative” punching bags on MSNBC.

Some Conservatives have recently made the startling discovery that we should be gearing our economy so that one person working can support a spouse and kids. Glad to see the guys getting to where I was more than a decade ago.

What destroyed the Bonhomme Richard? It appears that what the ship lacked was sailors. Go ahead and read this article about it – and if you are an old sailor like me, weep. I wasn’t on my ship part of the Damage Control Party but I could have been grabbed at random to fight a fight or fix a leak because I was trained to do so – by actually fighting staged fires in training. I knew how to use the equipment and where it was stored. To this day, I would know exactly where to hit the fire with water or chemical retardants if I was aboard a ship on fire. It astonishes me that this basic sort of training is lacking. And, my goodness, the training, itself, is the most fun you’ll ever have in the Navy! They set steel buildings on fire for you and let you go put it out. For a bunch of 19 and 20 year old kids, it is a blast. But, I guess the kids are busy with other things these days.

One of the things that scares me about cruise ships is the knowledge that hardly any of the crew are sailors who know how to handle a ship in a crisis. I didn’t imagine in my wildest dreams that US naval warships had become heavily armed cruise ships. The report about the Bonhomme Richard shows that the ship wasn’t prepared for disaster and the crew was untrained in how to deal with disaster. It was a war ship! It is supposed to he shot at. It is supposed to experience life and ship threatening disaster…and everyone on board better know how to knock down a fire and plug a leak. The next President simply must clean house – drop all the intersectional pronoun drivel and get our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines back to doing their jobs.