Open Thread

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.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan20 Comments

8.5% inflation, but you know it is a lot higher than that – they’ve clearly fudged the numbers. My guess is that it is closer to 20%: prices are just out of control. The Fed says inflation may have peaked in March…but, that’s just a lie and the Fed knows it. As long as we’re pouring money out while also not producing at home, inflation will continue to rise. Might have a few ups and downs going forward, but the only way to stop this is to choke off the money supply – in other words, we have to go into a recession to stop inflation. And we only get out of the resultant recession by increasing domestic production on all levels, but especially energy. Side note: Team Pudding Brain is absolutely opposed to increasing domestic energy production.

Oh, they’ll say they want to switch to green energy but that stuff doesn’t work. It isn’t easy to find news reports about it, but solar just sucks. Uncle Sam kicked in more than $700 million for the solar plant in Tonopah, NV (with his nephew the Nevada State government kicking in a bit more than $100 million more) and the damned thing never worked. It is now shut down (after emitting poison gas and frying untold numbers of birds) and in bankruptcy.

And I do get the appeal of solar energy – the sun does shine, after all! But not brightly everywhere all the time. At best, something like solar can be a supplement. And it seems to me that if we’re going to shell out taxpayer funds for it, they should go to put solar panels on residential roofs – especially in the desert southwest. But, that doesn’t really work, now does it? If the panels are on my roof, how does the power company profit from it? So, build the 100 acre blight on the desert and have the power sent to my home…if the thing works. One thing I’ll bet about that plant in Tonopah is that everyone who made money off it was connected to Harry Reid and his machine.

Meanwhile, supply shortages continue – and not just in energy. I read that there’s a shortage of baby formula. How does the United States ever have a food shortage? We’ve never had one except in a few areas of the South during the depths of the Civil War – and that wasn’t really a shortage of food but the inability of the crumbling Southern economy to transport the food to where it was needed. This is the land of plenty. We have something like 500,000 square miles of arable land in the United States – and that’s without bringing anything like all arable land under cultivation. And American farm land is good – it is, for the most part, very fertile and either naturally well watered or easily watered by irrigation. Its why we have been – until just recently – the bread basket of the world. And here we don’t even have enough food for infants!

And this looks to get worse. I’m sure you’ve seen your local store out of or low on very common items – but various disruptions, including the war in Ukraine, look to cause all sorts of production and transport problems as the year progresses.

And what is Team Pudding Brain up to? Blaming the inflation on Putin and getting set to green-light an absolute flood of illegal immigrants over the southern border. It is just insane.

As a result of all this, the Democrats are in trouble? How deep? They’re heading towards wipeout territory. One recent poll Joe in the 30’s on approval rating – and in the midterms, the party in power’s vote share usually mirrors the incumbent’s approval rating. Now, to be sure, some are convinced that the Democrats are serenely pushing ahead with the Progressive insanity because they’ve already rigged the mid-term vote for a Democrat win. But that isn’t possible in this circumstance. To rig a vote, you have to have total control not just of the count, but of resolving all disputes about the count. Democrats have this total control in the deep Blue cities, of course, but not much else – Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona have all done at least a bit to tighten up voting controls. They won’t, that is, get away with 2020 in those States again. Personally, I think Democrats are going Full Progressive for two reasons:

  1. The people actually running things for Joe don’t care about the upcoming vote.
  2. Those who do care figure might as well quadruple down and at least hold the enthusiasm of the big cities.

The guy who shot up the subway in NYC was on the FBI radar, has been arrested multiple times and posted insane, violent rants on You Tube. Too bad he wasn’t a middle class housewife who complained to the school board – might have been able to do something about this. I mean, the FBI only has so many people – think of all the strings attached to garage doors which would have gone uninvestigated if the FBI was spending time on the NYC shooter?

Open Thread

Mark Noonan34 Comments

Finally released Kings and Queen: Book V of the Mirrors series. To me, it is the best one. To be sure, I think that each book is an improvement over the prior – some of that is because I’m getting better at writing! Remember that when I started this, I merely sat down with a bare outline of part of a story and just got rolling. While not selling millions – it is an indy author thing, after all – people are buying it and I am getting really good feedback on it. It is fun! If you haven’t started the series, pick up Mirrors and get going. You won’t regret it.

On to more boring stuff…

Ukraine war: looks like Ivan got himself a bloody nose and is pulling back from Kiev. But the Russians don’t tend to quit, so I do wonder if this is just a regroup before they try again. Took the Russians 6 months and 3 tries to get Plevna in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, after all. Russians are just awful at anything that requires organization and timing…but they are very good and putting their head down and smashing away until the other side is overwhelmed.

Meanwhile, the Ruble massively rebounded because Putin simply started demanding payment for oil and gas in Rubles. It is hard to sanction a resource-rich nation like Russia. It can cause some dislocations, but those who were buying the resources were buying them for a reason.

I think that regarding the trans debate, the most crucial thing we can do is assert the plain fact that heterosexuality is the norm. Sure, in a human population of 7 billion, you’re going to find lots of variations from the norm, but all the variations combined are going to be a tiny fraction of the whole. Our presumption – our insistence, really – is that any minor who proclaims themselves in any way not heterosexual is mistaken. Only after study by genuinely disinterested third parties can any proper judgement be made as to whether or not there is a genuine variation.

We must bring an end to this current system which socially punishes the norm, provides benefits for the abnormal and immediately agrees with any proclamation of variation from the norm. There’s a poll out that says about 20 percent of youngsters view themselves as something other than heterosexual. This is not biologically possible and probably overstates reality by at least a factor of 10. But because of our current system, many of these kids will be set on a path which will prove destructive. We must put a stop to this – it is genuinely insane and continuing it is not survivable.

Since you guys won’t show up on Twitter, I’ll give you some samples of what you can find there.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan33 Comments

Some recent polling indicates an impending disaster for the Democrats – but outside polling, the RNC is now targeting about 70 Democrat House seats. Sure, there is some bluster always built into such things, but that large a number shows the GOP knows that if there’s a year to just have someone running, this is it. A lot of seats can fall our way just because we’re not the Democrats.

In response to the dire political picture, the Democrats seem set on fighting over Florida’s law to ban teaching sexuality to kindergartners. I don’t think this will work out as well as they hoped – though there is a chance that such a thing is merely to keep suburban white women on board. In other words: to prevent a 40 seat loss from turning into a 70 seat blowout. You know: “hey, we know that prices are through the roof and crime is rising, but don’t vote GOP! Don’t want your neighbors to think you’re a homophobe, do you?”.

Other than that, the issue is a real loser for the Democrats. The line has been crossed and people don’t want any of it. Polling on it shows massive public support with even pluralities of Democrats not keen on teachers talking sexuality with little kids without parental knowledge or consent. Even a lot of gay people are coming out forthrightly in favor of the law: because everyone knows that when you’re six years old, you don’t have a sexuality…and they further know that it is absurd to provide life altering chemicals and surgery to kids because they allegedly are trans.

All of a sudden, both the New York Times and the Washington Post confirm the Hunter Biden laptop story. Everyone is asking: why this and why now? After all, the lie was already sold and did its job. The Democrat base remained convinced that the laptop was bogus. So, why even bring it up again?

Various theories are put forward: Putin is about to release a lot of dirt, so get ahead of that. There are investigations going and they may result in indictments in spite of strenuous efforts by DOJ to avoid it, so get in front of that. They’re going to 25th Joe out and this will be the leverage to get Team Pudding Brain to go along with that. I simply don’t know – but whatever reason they’ve brought it back up again, it bodes ill for the Democrats.

The bottom line is that the e mails are authentic – and that means that Hunter Biden is massively compromised by foreign powers and “the Big Guy” probably is as well. How this is to be managed if it comes out in a way that even the MSM can’t cover it up for the Democrat base is going to be tricky.

San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin – yes, the son of the Commie murderers of yore – is facing a recall effort. Think about that: a Commie son of Commie murderers is facing recall in San Francisco. Trump woke us on the right up to how bad things are – but Pudding Brain and his like at the local level in the post-Trump world is now starting to wake up urban Progressives. This is not to say that I expect San Francisco to vote GOP any time soon…but gun ownership is rising and, very quietly and only among trusted friends, these urban Progressives are now starting to question aspects of the Progressive religion. I’ve seen several bits written by such – and they freely admit that they’ve always hated Republicans, assuming such are ignorant racists, and that they, the Progressives, were on the right side of history leading the world to a future of peace, prosperity and justice. But that was before they had their car broken into a dozen times and had to step over mounds of feces on the sidewalk outside their zillion dollar home.

Revolutions happen slowly and then all at once. Think about the Russian revolution – on the whole, actually, things were better than they had been in Russia in times past. Even with the war – which Russia had de-facto already won (only to lose it because of the revolution) – things ground along pretty well. There was more freedom of speech than ever before. Political engagement was increasing. There was a rising class of independent farmers. The government was fairly competent and staffed by mostly honest men. But then, without warning, people just decided they had enough – that, while better than olden times, they simply couldn’t endure the Czar and his system any longer. It was nearly universal: hardly anyone stepped up to defend monarchy: from nobleman to laborer, everyone simply agreed that whatever else happened, the Czar had to go. And so it was done and a 300 year old dynasty was swept away in a couple days. I think it may be like that here – that our total Ruling Class (which includes a lot of GOPers, of course) will find that they’ve worn out their welcome. That even if things aren’t horribly bad, they have to go, even if we don’t agree about what comes next.