Open Thread

Open Thread

Mark Noonan22 Comments

The primary beneficiaries of divorce, birth control, abortion, women’s liberation and the sexual revolution have been lousy men. Still amazes me when I look back on it all and realize it was all set afoot by lousy men and at least half of women went along with it.

With the aftermath of Afghanistan still echoing around the world, consumer prices skyrocketing (I paid $4.06 for gas today), New Orleans and other places suffering floods and power outages…Pudding Brain left DC Friday afternoon to enjoy a long weekend in Delaware.

Someone on Twitter did ask the question: why is Biden spending so much time in Delaware, where there aren’t log books for visitors, instead of DC, where there is?

I’m sure you’ve seen some of the polling of late – it is devastatingly bad for Biden and the Democrats. And it likely understates how bad because all polling is biased in favor of Democrats. Still a very long way until November, 2022, but if things don’t turn around for the Democrats, they could be heading for a wipe out.

And that’s why they’re keeping up with the Covid drivel: it allows them to keep in place where they have total control the voter fraud measures they implemented to steal the 2020 election. Rely on it: if you live under a Democrat governor, you aren’t getting out of mask mandates and the rest of it before 2023…and maybe 2025, and then only if a GOPer wins.

I see a lot of talk among the sane Never Trumpers (there are such!) and they are all fingers crossed that the GOP base is moving away from Trump, thus opening up an easy path for DeSantis to get the 2024 nod. There is something to this: I’m not a sure-vote for Trump in a 2024 primary. If he runs, I’ll listen to what he has to say and make the call at the right time. The biggest issue Trump voters have, I think, is just what would be different? We know Trump will fight. We know he won’t back down. We know he’ll push for good policies…but the bottom line was that not much got done in his four years because he lacked people who would take his orders and carry them out. Trump’s picks for office (often pushed on him by GOPers) were simply terrible. A collection of cowards and traitors. A few good ones, of course: Carson being the most notable. But the general run turned out to be people who when they weren’t actively trying to sabotage Trump, they were slow walking anything that could benefit him. We will need to have assurances that Trump will start on Day One with nothing but loyalists who are willing to risk everything to advance the cause. For the moment, Trump looks like he’s lost weight and is in a fine, combative mood: various people at the fringe of Team Trump are assuring us of a 2024 run. But, we know better: the only person who knows what Trump will do is Trump. And Trump won’t make an announcement until after the 2022 midterms.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan86 Comments

The Afghanistan debacle just gets worse and worse – to me, Team Pudding Brain has made the calculation that the worst thing, for them, is American forces engaged in a bloody shoot out rescuing Americans. Too much risk in that for them – it might fail. Lots of people would die and if its ends up being lots of Americans, even worse for them politically. I don’t know quite what they’ll do now that we lost a dozen – though my bet is they’re hoping there won’t be any more. It seems pretty clear, at this moment, that we’re out on the 31st, come what may…and if you’re an American or ally still in country on the 1st, too bad, so sad.

This is, of course, to be charged entirely to Biden. He should resign and be impeached if he doesn’t. Neither will happen. He is a disgrace such as America has never seen before…and, yes, I realize he’s senile but nobody forced him in his lucid moments to do this. And his close family and friends could have had a little sense instead of merely licking their chops over the graft they’d have at their feet.

In a bit of good news, the eviction moratorium was struck down. The dirty secret in that moratorium was how it was driving small landlords out with their properties being picked up by massive corporate entities who can carry the freight of government mandates (and lobby for bail outs when things go south). My sister-in-law has to find a new place to live because her landlord sold all 13 of his properties. He’s out: too much of a hassle.

Now, we need to go a little further here. We can’t stop forever and everywhere Democrats trying to score cheap “fight for the little guy” points by doing things like the moratorium. So, we need very specific, federal laws which say that things like an eviction moratorium are a “taking” under the Constitution. Moratorium to your little heart’s content, liberal areas: but you’re going to pony up every cent. Not just the rent, itself, but the cost to the landlord for repairs, taxes, insurance…every penny involved in that property which you prohibited the landlord from making money off us is now on you, liberals. And to really twist the knife in, we should do everything we can to make such payments show up in liberal tax bills…spelled out, as it were, so they can see it happening in real time. You want to help the homeless? Cool. What a great thing – but now you’re not going to shove that burden of your white guilt onto everyone. We’ll place a tax on your favorite cars, booze, coffee…anything we can find on the high end side of liberal pleasure gets a tax…and the line with the charge on it will say “help the homeless” or “pay for the rent moratorium” or “college for illegal immigrants.”

The cop who killed Ashli Babbitt is in the process of being turned into a MSM hero. We can’t know the full details because no real investigation of the shooting was carried out…but from what I can tell, it didn’t look like he had a lot of justification for shooting. Mostly keep in mind – as a Twitter wag noted – that the people making him a hero are the same people who brought you Afghanistan.

Harvard’s chaplain is an atheist. Seriously: what is the point?

Open Thread

Mark Noonan29 Comments

“All is lost, save honor” – so goes the Francis I quote, given in a letter after he was beaten by Charles V. Less known is the next part: “and my skin, which is safe”. We’ve modified that to “all is lost, except our skin.” This is the most dishonorable, demoralizing defeat in American History. The militia which ran away at Bladensburg has been redeemed.

People are saying that Biden is on his way out – nobody has any actual evidence of this and I think it is wishful thinking: this is so bad that people are just hoping that Biden is collapsing and will quit, taking this shame with him. I don’t know: he’s clearly failing mentally and physically, but his people will want to hold on to executive power as long as possible. Unless he dies or starts drooling on camera, his people won’t let him quit. And the bad news is that our national humiliation won’t depart with Biden, whenever he goes. He did it, but it is all ours: the world now holds the United States of America in contempt. Some are thinking that Biden is a coward and so he’s hiding out in Maryland. Not so sure: if he’s senile, he doesn’t know…if he’s lucid for the moment, he doesn’t care. No matter what happens in Biden’s life, it is someone else’s fault and he’s the hero of the play. Rely on it, if he’s not falling asleep over his pudding tonight, he’s crafting a mental story of how he has won the day.

Maybe – and I pray it may be so – we needed this cold slap in the face? Maybe this will at long last wake us up from our stupor? I don’t really care how the world views us except in so far as it makes them willing to challenge us. Right now, everyone in the world who was ever held back from action for fear of us is getting ready to move. This could very much go from very bad to terribly worse in mere weeks. Pray that we manage to dodge a bullet here.

Looks like we’re all going to get the booster shot. I will when it comes out. But I’m not a jerk so if you don’t want to, that’s your business.

We’re already getting horror stories out of Afghanistan on the treatment of women. We must presume they are true given what we know of the Taliban…but still take them with a grain of salt. Lots of interests very much want us to go back in and the best way to do that is tear at American heartstrings. I admit to a lack of sympathy: the Afghan men ran away. We’re supposed to go back in and rescue the women they abandoned? I’d only agree to it as a Crusade to convert the heathen. No sense in rescuing them again when their men will simply take off once the bad guys come back.

Trump got interviewed on Fox and it isn’t getting much play. And don’t you wanna know why? Because he was right about everything. The MSM would love to spin a series of lies about it and attack Trump all the live long day…but to cover it, at all, means that some of what he says has to be presented to the American people. The MSM – probably under DNC orders – can’t risk that.

Socialist magazine founder fires his staff when they try to organize a union. Such it always is and the proof that Socialism can’t work. What’s really sad about it: if the Socialists would just convert to Catholicism and become Monks and Nuns, they’d live in the socialist society they want and also put in a useful day’s work.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan32 Comments

Did a bit of shouting until blue in the face on social media yesterday about the eviction moratorium. Understand this: there is no law. There is only power and the willingness to use it. The Democrats don’t care that the moratorium is illegal. They don’t care that it will dry up the rental market. To them, this government action crushing property renters will just be proof that private property must give way to government ownership. If you’re arguing the law with the Left you are wasting your time.

Take the real lesson from this past six months: if we win back executive power, our primary mission must be to dismantle executive power. It is the only way to safety. Either we curb or kill the FBI, CIA and NSA and reduce the Army to 100,000 while reviving the State militia, or we leave the means of our own death lying around just waiting for a Leftist with the guts to use them. The only reason you are not already in jail for your political beliefs is that no one in government has the guts to issue the order for your arrest. And that is just “so far”. Eventually, it will be so ordered…and as we’ve seen with the 1/6 defendants, the Courts simply will not intervene in your favor. Oh, maybe eventually the Supreme Court will intervene to tsk tsk about it…but not before you’ve been destroyed.

Take away their ability to arrest and you won’t have to worry about who gets into power.

Re-Fund the police: Austin will vote on an initiative to restore the police funding the city council took away.

As was predicted by everyone – the effort to raise up non-whites via CRT-like drivel has reached its natural conclusion: white people must accept that they are inferior to non-whites. This was built in because whenever you use race as a marker for anything, you are immediately on the path to apartheid and genocide.

Mask mandates and the “delta variant” are doing their job: prepping people for “the worst is yet to come” and allowing Blue State Democrats to retain 2020 election rules so they can cheat in 2022. I don’t think the Democrats hope the hold the House – just limit their losses. The real key for them is holding the Senate. With the Senate, they can still get judges and bureaucrats appointed. It has been a long while since Legislation really mattered…all that matters is who gets to rule on what the bureaucrats say.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan89 Comments

Here’s my view of how Covid came to be:

The Chinese, true to their doctrine of asymmetrical warfare, are cooking up all sorts of pathogens in labs. This one, essentially a modified cold virus – and thus no matter how bad, not that deadly – was developed via gain of function research (which may have been partially funded by the United States, because the Chinese own our Ruling Class and part of their warfare would be to corrupt Americans to the point their helping the Chinese destroy us). It was deliberately released into Wuhan as the Chinese knew it wasn’t that deadly a disease. The Chinese limited travel between Wuhan and the rest of China but freely allowed travel from Wuhan to Europe and the United States. They then ginned up a panic in Wuhan with all sorts of video leaking about a disease which seemed to be a deadly pathogen. Then they used an army of paid social media bots to spread this panic around the world. Fools directly or unwittingly working for China in Western governments and media did the rest.

This was just a test run: if and when China wants to make a major, military move in the world, they’ll release another one and likely more deadly. They are beating us hands down because unlike our former enemies, they found our weakness: a Ruling Class which will do anything for money. As long as they get paid, they’ll say or do anything, including national suicide.

Related: people are being urged to snitch on their neighbors. This is very much in keeping with Chinese policy.

Also related: the January Sixth defendants aren’t being arrested for crimes so much as for political opinions. It is pure intimidation designed to make people wary of participating in any anti-Ruling Class demonstration. These people are political prisoners. We at last have those in the United States. And you very much may be next. Your defense here in the immediate sense is to understand that anyone urging you to even the slightest infraction of the law is a Fed – and if you ever are confronted by any law enforcement person, do not say anything. At all. And re-watch this video.

Ultimately, Revolution is our only way out – by ballots or by any means necessary, the Ruling Class must be entirely deposed from power and patriots installed in their place.

Detroit poll finds minority citizens a bit less concerned with BLM protests about St George of Fentanyl but greatly concerned about rising crime. There is an opportunity here for a GOP which isn’t isn’t run by cowards.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan45 Comments

The FBI is now urging citizens to report their friends and family members if they suspect radicalization…which means, “if you suspect they voted for Trump”. The FBI is becoming a Gestapo; and we learned in 2020 that there are huge numbers of people who are willing to spy on and turn in their fellows…the mask mandates proved that. We get power, the FBI simply has to go. It is a bit of power that we can’t leave lying around.

And, aside: our rule must be Snitches Get Stitches.

Beyond that, as I warned before: be careful what you say and how you say it in any electronic media. They are spying.

A lot of people are agog over Branson…flying about as high as a U2 could fly. It is a vanity project designed to boost stock prices and maybe get some more corporate tax breaks for a man who already has far too much money.

11 year old kid in Belgium gets his degree in physics. Clearly a clever child – but as his goal is immortality, I suspect a great deal was left off his education. Mostly the bit about how if God doesn’t grant us eternal life, you shall not have it. Sorry, that’s just the way it is…if a new heaven and Earth are never to be created, then this heaven and Earth will simply die out. Amazing that they missed that bit in teaching physics. But, then again, most of our educated people don’t really know very much.

Interesting article on Robert E Lee and his place in America. Well worth the read. I have to say, I never felt any sympathy for Lee and I’ve long viewed his virtues under the lens of the fact that, in the end, he sent a hundred thousand men to their deaths to defend slavery. That he, himself, claimed to not like the system just makes it worse in my view: He said that he had no choice but to join Virginia’s (and thus the Confederacy’s) army once Virginia went out. But there was no law in Virginia binding him to serve…but, meanwhile, he had already given his oath, sworn so help him God, to defend the United States.

The bottom line is that we made a huge, national mistake in that we allowed the Confederate leaders – civil and military – to escape justice after the war. Clemency was a requirement, of course: we could not have reconciled without it. But what we did wasn’t clemency: it was letting the people who cause the war – without the slightest justification – to skate. Clemency comes after punishment, not instead of. By letting them all off the hook, we allowed them to very swiftly regain political control of the South and then impose Jim Crow, which made us a nation of liars until 1865.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan28 Comments

Gas prices are up 40% under Pudding Brain. It just gets worse from here – because the way to choke off this inflation is to stop spending and/or jack up interest rates, neither of which Team Senile can do as either or both would tumble the economy into steep recession just in front of the 2022 mid-terms. OTOH, rising prices might do as much damage to them as a recession. There’s nothing we can do about it because we have no control over any lever of power here – all we can do is endure it and at least know that the difficulties the Democrats get into here are richly deserved.

For years, we’ve been angry and frustrated as corrupt and incompetent teacher’s unions parlayed the respect people have for teachers into ever more money for a totally useless public education system. The pandemic may have changed that. The unions proved corrupt and many of the teacher’s revealed themselves as time servers. Parents are at long last starting to push back…and some are even trying to take over the local school boards. The bottom line, though, is that public education is the problem of public education. It can’t be other than an indoctrination system – it is just a matter of which ideology will turn the crank and indoctrinate the kids. The only way to get quality education in line with parental expectations is to let the money follow the students. Absolute school choice – the parents get a sum per kid which can be used in any education facility they deem proper. Sure, you’ll get some weird stuff in there on that…but what you’ll mostly get is kids learning to read and write. And only being taught what the parents want. There isn’t a huge market out there for having your kids taught they are evil because they are white.

China uses social media to control it’s citizens – and is now using it to control everyone. It can’t be emphasized enough that a lot of what drives debate these days are social media trends which are almost entirely manufactured by interested parties. If you’ve got the money and the manpower (xir-power, I guess these days) you can get anything trending on social media. China does this – and then gets the global MSM to tout it (that’s the easy part – the parent companies of the MSM are so invested in China that they’ll get their news actors to say whatever is demanded). We must break up the big social media platforms and we must also regulate them: forbidding them from blocking or banning speech except for specific incitement to physical violence. The days when we on the right could defend corporate independence are over – especially when what we’ve got in social media is government censorship one step removed.

Related: Facebook will ban criticism of institutions if the criticism is intended to cause harm. In practice, this will mean that if you say something bad but true about Islam, you’ll get banned – if you say the most monstrous lie against the Catholic Church, you’ll be fine. Just watch and see.

Haiti’s President was assassinated. You really do feel for that poor country – ever since independence, it has endured tyranny and chaos in succession. It isn’t the people, as such: Haitians in the United States are some of the most successful and law-abiding people we have. But something in that land just brings out the worst in some people. The only thing I can think of is making it a Trust Territory – of the US, of – heck, I don’t know – Brazil. Someone, anyone, has to take charge of the place and govern it in the interests of the Haitian people and likely for a century or so. Until, that is, several generations can be raised up to live under law. They do in the United States – they will in Haiti, if they are compelled to do so.

The Mars helicopter had an amazing flight. This is something that does surprise me – I figured with the very thin atmosphere, they could never get anything off the ground. So, impressed with the engineers who figured this out.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan34 Comments

Ilhan Omar and the normalization of anti-Semitism on the Left. It already happened with Britain’s Labour Party. And it is a simple equation: there are vastly more votes and money on the side of anti-Semitism, if you can stomach it. Which, as it turns out, the Left can (and, yes, there are Jews going along with it – and it is nauseating. I can only imagine what it’s like for a Jew to see a fellow Jew go down that path). If you brief is that the West is inherently evil – and that is what the Left holds these days – then everything of the West is evil; and Israel – Judaism – is of the West. It is just that Jews, as always, are the easy target…a small minority is much easier to attack than anything else. Never Again has turned into “Not Until We Can Get Money For It”.

Football is Gay, says the NFL – Babylon Bee points out that it isn’t. Just the Cowboys.

The shredding of Kamala Harris in the MSM has to have a point. We can’t be sure what it is, but here’s what I suspect. Team Biden knows that Pudding Brain won’t make it to 2024 and, if he does, he won’t be in condition to run. But Team Biden wants the full ride: 8 years. What to do? If Joe dies or simply can’t hack it (well, he already can’t – but let’s just say if he can’t be kept awake for at least two hours a day), then Kamala gets in. Bye, bye Team Biden – all the perks of White House power flow to Team Harris. How would you – supposing you were lobotomized and placed on Team Biden – feel about that? Not good, folks. So, have to ace out Harris some way…so, pour filth all over her in the MSM. Of course, this doesn’t matter if Harris is the heir presumptive to a dead or failing Joe…so, they’ve got to have a substitute waiting in the wings who isn’t hated by everyone (like Harris is). Who is it? Well, I noticed that Jill Biden was reading briefing papers for Joe’s slipshod amble through Europe. Maybe they are setting it up so that, as much as we love Kamala, the best way to finish Joe’s work is with Jill Biden? Stay tuned.

Armed robbers held up journalists interviewing Oakland’s violence prevention chief. The worst thing about our Ruling Class is how utterly incompetent it is. Tyranny sucks, but can we at least get some first rate tyrants?

Open Thread

Mark Noonan20 Comments

I did a bit on the Barrett Brief this morning, talking politics and Shadow Army and as we discussed things, I went on a little mini-rant about what needs to be done with popular culture. What I said, boiled down, is that we can’t win unless we win the culture. Win all the elections you want, but if the culture is far left, far left will be the country. What I urged in response to that was this: if you’ve got an idea for a book, a movie, a song or a piece of art – DO IT. Don’t be afraid. I was terrified of putting out Mirrors. Afraid that people wouldn’t like it. Forget that. Just put it out there: give people what you have. Maybe you aren’t the great artist…but if you’ve got something to say, in whatever medium, say it. We need to flood the zone.

As those who have read so far know, what I’ve written is a story about normal, good people thrust into strange circumstances – but the key to it all is that they are normal, good people. Not perfect people, but not tortured super heroes with shameful pasts they are unable to come to terms with. Even when I set a character on a path to sin (Jerome, most especially – for a bit of a spoiler to those who have read only to, say, Battles at this time, he keeps on living; he’s in Book 7), the prospect of redemption is always there. The good guys are believers in God and in doing what is right even when it is hard. The books are family friendly (I’d say 12 and up); there is a tiny bit of salty language, but not much. No gross sexual scenes and even in the battle scenes, I don’t try to gross people out with gore. There is no woke SJW preaching. This is the sort of thing which we need to produce and keep producing until it starts to make its way into the general public. Maybe my books will mostly stay on shelves. No problem. But that its out there might inspire the next guy and maybe that will be the blockbuster which opens up the dam and allows a flood of socially conservative popular culture to flow.

Related: they are making a 5th Indiana Jones movie. With 78 year old Harrison Ford as the star. It is ridiculous. And this is really our opportunity. Not only is the Left out of ideas, but even when the recycle their old ideas, they are now injecting them with whatever is fashionable. I’ve finally binge-watched The Walking Dead and I’m on the last season…where we’ve now got a deaf character. I mean, seriously: how could a deaf person survive a Zombie apocalypse? The only way you can survive, at minimum, is hearing them coming so you can kill them or move away before they bite you. But you gotta have it, along with the gay and lesbian couples because, sure as heck, as the world ends what people will care about is making sure the last fads of the dead world keep going. I’m expecting the upcoming final season to add a few more SJW box-check characters. All we need at the start is something that is merely fun.

Joe Biden went to meet Putin for Lord only knows what reason – the whole world knows that Biden is senile and feeble and thus there is no hard center to American government. We’re getting bad policy, but that is more by accident…Biden’s aides are running the country, turning the crank at different times and at different speeds and what flows out was a mish-mash of liberal twaddle but even in that, there is no direction.

Inflation is rising fast and the Fed is saying they’ll jack up rate in 2023. It’ll be sooner than that, I bet, though 2023 would be best for us as it would create a 2024 recession just about assuring a GOP landslide. They get to pick their poison – jack up rates and send us into a tailspin, or hold off and watch inflation spike to 10% or more per year. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of useless clowns.

Cocaine Mitch promises to block Biden’s judicial appointments if he becomes Majority Leader. Never get too mad at Mitch. Sure, he’s Deep State and Establishment…but he knows how to play hardball on the things which matter to us.

Hungary bans LGBT content for minors. This is fighting the Culture War.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan42 Comments

I detect a slight note of panic among Never Trump – and both parts of it: that which rejected the GOP and joined the Democrats and that which merely rejected Trump. They are in a fright because Trump isn’t going away. Things are not working out the way they hoped…their hope having been that once he was defeated, the Trumpsters would, one way or another, agree to allow Never Trump to resume power in the GOP. That isn’t happening.

This is because they fundamentally misunderstand Trump and his supporters – with the crucial thing being that it is Trump supporters who are driving the cart. These Trump supporters may, indeed, swing behind DeSantis or someone else in 2024, but only in so far as DeSantis or whomever prove themselves Trumpist. What Never Trump still doesn’t get – though some come very close to understanding – that we’d really rather lose on MAGA than win on anything else, because to win on anything else is to lose, anyway. We’re all in. Do or die.

Florida bans Critical Race Theory in public schools – this is a growing trend on the right and it is the first sign of real health in our body politic in decades. As I’ve said before: CRT is evil and it must go. The Republic is incompatible with people believing CRT. This is, to be sure, causing some breach among black Conservatives – because there are some who hold that CRT, though flawed, has some real truth to impart. I reject this notion. And it must be rejected because the ultimate basis of CRT is Marxism, which is inherently wrong and an intrinsic evil. Nothing which uses Marx in any way can be good or true.

AG Garland is going to investigate the audit of the 2020 election in Arizona. This is proof that fraud decided the 2020 contest. They are terrified of the truth coming out.

Democrats are in a fury against Manchin (D-WV). I really did expect him to cave long before this – if he runs for re-election in 2024, it is better than even money he loses. He can’t ever get the Democrat nomination for President or VP, so his only political future if a cabinet post, and he only gets that if he plays ball with the national Democrats. But, he’s still not playing ball. Maybe, at the end of the day, he just doesn’t want any political future? After all, he’s got the Senate pension sowed and he’s going to make bank as a lobbyist (if he wants). It might be that he’s simply uninterested in wrecking the Republic just to please people in New York and Los Angeles who despise him.

Inflation is rising, fast. The only good news here is that a repeat of Carter might give us a repeat of 1980.