Open Thread

Open Thread

Mark Noonan28 Comments

Sorry I’ve been out! Been sick the past week. Much better now.

So, Stumbles McGramps can’t climb stairs. What’s the over/under before the Democrats push him out?

We were utterly humiliated by the Chinese in the Alaska meeting – this was the CCP telling Taiwan, India and Japan that, at least for the next four years, America is of no account in the world. We’ll see how the nations of Asia react to this – I suspect we’ll see even more arms buildup amongst them.

In the long term, I don’t mind that. As it turns out, it was a mistake for the United States to attempt to be the security guarantor for east Asia. It is the Pacific which is our concern as it is the moat for us – our concentration should always be on keeping the sea lanes open. Actually pushing back against China is the responsibility, primarily, of India and Japan. I do believe we should maintain our alliances, but we should make it clear to our allies that it is their responsibility to build sufficient military force to defend themselves. I actually urge Japan and Taiwan to build nuclear weapons.

As for us: I’ve become a peacenik quite a bit over the past few years – I’m tired of the American Empire. We gain no benefit from it and the cost in blood and treasure is high. But the worst long-term aspect of it is that the necessity of a National Security State has been turned against us – our police and intel agencies are now being used against domestic dissent. Abandon the Empire. Return the Army to its proper number and functions (and revive the State militia) and abolish the FBI, NSA and CIA.

Ron DeSantis continues to ride high – mostly because he was the first big State governor to buck the lockdowns. The Democrats are, of course, hitting him hard but the bottom line, no matter how you want to slice the data, is that Florida is no worse off (at least) than any other State as far as infections and deaths while their economy is booming. DeSantis has also learned how to push back against MSM lies nearly as much as Trump did. So, he’s got a leg up right now for 2024 (presuming he wins next year – which looks pretty certain).

Democrats in the House are working on annulling the results of the IA04 House race. I’m really a bit perplexed on this one. Sure, Democrats always grab whatever they can get away with – but it is just one seat. And the blowback they’ll get in Iowa and around the country if they seat the Democrat who lost could be horrific for them. I’m not sure if it is mere bloody mindedness, or they’ve got some internal polling showing that they could lose the House majority in special elections between now and 2022.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan36 Comments

Tucker Carlson pointed out that, for instance, a pregnant soldier is not combat-ready and the entire military Establishment dropped on him like a ton of bricks – demonstrating that the senior officers and enlisted of the United States Armed Forces are heavily politicized and they are on the side of the Left. This is just terrible – but not surprising.

There was no chance the Left was going to leave the military alone – and we’ve seen over the years as the military has lowered standards and spent time on woke training rather than combat readiness that the Left has deeply infected the military. As far as it goes, it is lost to us. I’m confident that most of the lower ranks are with us, but they are largely commanded by people who have made the conscious choice that pleasing the Establishment is the way to go for promotions. Over the years, this has merely meant that we’ve had a gigantic negative-feedback loop where those officers who are the worst – ie, most willing to bow to whatever is fashionable on the Left – have risen the highest.

First off, it means we can’t win a war. Anyone who wants to fight us now can do so with certainty that our military leadership lacks any ability to fight for victory. They don’t know how – they don’t even know what it is. They didn’t rise because of their expertise in military affairs but because they knew how to say the right things. Secondly, it means that if we get power back, we have to purge the military brass. A lot. They can’t be trusted. Also, and this is something I’ve said before: we should reduce the size of the Army. Make it 100,000 troops and then revive the State militias. No more large bodies of troops for forever wars and, also, no body of troops large enough to control the United States.

Related: they’re gonna dump gender neutral fitness tests. Because the only way to have women in combat units is to lower physical standards.

Meanwhile, Democrats continue to push HR1, which would totally destroy the American political system. We’ll see if the GOP has the guts to really fight it.

Cuomo continues to be hammered – not on his killing of people, but on his sexual harassment. Make no mistake about it: he won’t be forced out and he’ll likely be re-elected next year. All of this is just keeping him out of the 2024 contest which is being gift wrapped for Kamala.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan20 Comments

Manchin is going soft on whether or not he’ll vote to end the filibuster – but, we all knew he would do that. He’s an egregious liar and political hack. There’s still a chance that Sinema would vote to keep it. The bottom line is that ending it right now would be pretty disastrous for us – it would mean statehood for DC and Puerto Rico and Court packing, just for starters. Side note on that: Democrats are convinced that Puerto Rico would be a lock for them and, on balance, it is likely to at least start out as Democrat-friendly territory…but I’ll bet we’ve got at least even money at taking one of the Senate seats if it comes to that. DC, of course, would be two Democrat Senators forever. The kicker, though, is that PR would get at least four House seats..and they ain’t coming out of the Red States.

But it doesn’t mean the end of the world. It would make it harder for us to win – but not impossible and if we do, we’re no longer hamstrung by the filibuster and will be able to do lots of things which we couldn’t before. The key to victory will lie in doing ever more to get non-traditional GOP voters on board. Especially Latino voters – who are primed, I think, to go steadily 45% for us. This is especially true given that the Democrat party is enthralled to upper class, white liberals who simply have nothing to say to anyone who works for a living. Most Latinos, being relative newcomers to the USA, haven’t got out of the habit of working…like the guy who came here today, on a Sunday, to take floor measurements. How many crackers are willing to do that? How hard do you think it’ll be for us to get him to vote our way?

But, for now, let’s hope we don’t get to that point – much better if we can keep the Democrats tied up until next year when it will become increasingly difficult for them to get Red and Purple Democrats to walk the plank. And then if we can win the House and/or the Senate in 2022, the Democrats have no way to move their legislative agenda forward.

Related: Democrats having a hard time appealing to Latino men.

Our Matt notes that Rush Limbaugh’s death certificate lists him as the greatest radio host of all time – which has the benefit of being absolutely true.

Cuomo is up to five credible accusers of sexual harassment. Doesn’t matter. He’s a Democrat. “Me Too” was only a tool to hammer Republicans with. That it managed to get Al Franken was just bizarre – and something Democrats remain angry about it. Rely on it – Cuomo will be overwhelmingly re-elected next year, because for the most part the people of New York aren’t even hearing about this, nor about the nursing home deaths. They’re still being told that Cuomo is great. The hits on him are to keep him out of the 2024 election – Democrats are expecting Joe to be dead or incapable of running by then, and they want the field cleared for Kamala. I’d love to be wrong about this – that Cuomo would be forced out and a measure of justice done. But I won’t hold my breath.

Democrats have found more Enemies for us to destroy: Pepe Le Pew and Speedy Gonzalez.

Yes, this is ridiculous. But the purpose here is to, step by step, erase the past. The weakness in Orwell’s 1984 was that Winston Smith had memories of times before the Party. What the Left wants is no memories. Every book, song, statue, painting, building or whatnot which can indicate a different mode of living will be destroyed – and a hundred years from now, only Party approved things will exist.

We’re starting to get some pictures from Mars Perseverance and they care cool. I do have one question: don’t those tracks kinda look like they’re made in wet ground?

Open Thread

Mark Noonan13 Comments

The GOP is slow rolling some of Biden’s nominees. Managed to collect the scalp of one of them. Biden is being forced back on minimum wage, amnesty for illegals and election reform. In other words: going as you’d expect when the President is a senile, 78 year old and the Democrats only have 50 Senators and a razor-thin majority in the House.

I did check out Trump’s CPAC speech – still not sure if he’ll try again in 2024, but the bottom line is that at least for the moment, if he runs, he’s got it. Lots can change between now and, say, June of 2023, but it is Trump’s for the asking. We’ll see if he asks. If he doesn’t get in, I’m warming to Ron DeSantis as a lot of people are, though I’m still completely open on whom I’ll actually back.

Lockdowns are being ended in Texas and that’s good – hopefully this will spread, but I’m still thinking the Democrat governors want to keep them going. In fact, I think the overall Democrat desire is to keep them going right through 2024. They seem to have calculated it out that the fear-mongering about Covid benefits them. And, maybe it does? It may well have added a couple million real votes to their total in 2020. There is a big split and a huge number of Americans are simply scared to death of the virus – I can only assume these are the people who still both consume and believe the MSM. Keep in mind that as the States reopen, there will be an economic boost and that will at least temporarily boost Biden.

I hope to goodness we don’t get into a major war these next four years: the military is going entirely SJW. I’ve heard they are even screening social media posts of recruits to see if there is any wrongthink out there. How the heck they plan on staffing the armed forces when they are excluding patriots, I have no idea. I highly recommend against any young people joining the military – and that is a sad thing for a veteran to say. But I don’t think they’ll allow you to be a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine these days. You have to check off the Intersectionality boxes, instead. Not worth the trouble – or the risk that you’ll be sent into battle and your CO got his or her job based on a SJW quota rather than battle worthiness.

Cancel Culture has come for Doctor Seuss and I find it enormously funny. Thy guy was a Commie’s Commie – but he wasn’t woke enough for modern times. Anyone want to tell the SJWs that Che killed homosexuals?

I’m still writing! A lot. Second draft of Shadow Army is now complete and I plan on dropping it in June, with the sequel to that, Kings and Queen, coming maybe in November or December. And I just finished the first draft of Book 6, which had a title but the Mrs hates the title so I’ve probably got to think up a new one.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan24 Comments

Did you know that Amazon got a $600 million contract from the CIA in 2013? Looks like they got another juicy one in 2020, as well. There’s nothing wrong with getting government contracts, of course – but when a monster company like Amazon is getting them, it makes you wonder just what happened to get that contract? Who talked to whom? We’ve got this multi-trillion dollar government spending money like mad and contracts like $600 million to Amazon barely create a ripple. This is the first I heard of it. It just illustrates, in my view, that we’ve created a monster and nobody really knows what it is doing.

Mexicans, being sensible and civilized people, are going with coal power. I’d prefer we all went with nuclear power, of course – but what we’re finding out is that we can’t rely on solar and wind.

Democrats are moving to censor all non-Left speech. I guess they figure if they don’t, they’re doomed. This is probably true. There are many moves being made in the Battleground States to fix the election vulnerabilities as was done in Florida. My view remains that they went all out to steal it for Biden, knowing that it would be obvious but calculating (correctly) that no one would really try to stop them. This doesn’t mean, however, that the GOP wants to lose forever. Just a few minor changes in election law will make it vastly more difficult to cheat. So, losing that option, Democrats are going to try to suppress our speech so that no one can campaign outside the Party Line.

The Democrats are in full court press against Governor DeSantis – because Governor DeSantis is doing Covid correctly and thus would be a strong candidate in 2024.

The Muppet Show has been labelled offensive content.

Trump will speak at CPAC – note that it is in Florida. Likely because Covid but I doubt it’ll get back to DC any time soon. Let’s face it: DC is enemy territory. He’s refusing to tip his hand on whether he’ll run in 2024 and that is entirely unsurprising. I suspect he won’t run, but it’ll be foolish of him to tip his hand before the 2024 mid-terms.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan10 Comments

Saw an article today out of the New York Times (shudder) but I had to read it because it was about Mike Wallace – the famed 60 Minutes correspondent. The gist of the story is that Wallace was a creep. Now, it is a bit unfair to write such things about him now that he’s 9 years dead and can’t defend himself, but here we are. It’s 2021 and the human decencies are fairly shredded. To hear the story, Wallace was a physically and verbally abusive jerk who was also prey to insecurities on a grand scale. Now, with that in mind, think back to, say, 1978. You’re watching 60 Minutes and you are simply in awe about how great it all is…how honest and trustworthy Mike Wallace was. Just before they filmed that bit, he either knifed a competitor or forced some poor girl to do something for him.

Puts it all in a different light, doesn’t it?

For decades we all followed these people. We thought of them as honest and educated and, normal sins aside, decent. Turns out, they were none of these. At the end of the day, Network had it right all along.

But, as they say, there’s more! Let’s consider for a moment that nearly a decade after Wallace cashed it in, someone who worked closely with him for years decides to write a tell-all about his experience. Wallace can’t defend himself (and, heck, he probably couldn’t if alive: if anything recent events have shown that no matter how creepy the story about a celeb, it’s always much worse the more you dig in). Now, think what garbage that is: for years this guy took abuse and averted his eyes as others were abused and he did nothing about it. He let it go on. Because he would risk his career by calling it out.

We really do live in garbage times. And the people who have latched on to the heights of our society would make Nero blush.

Biden is turning out as bad as we suspected. He’s truckling to China and Iran. Leaving the border wide open. Killing jobs. Restarting the wars in the Middle East. But, it gets even worse from a Democrat perspective – he’s also hoisted the white flag on amnesty, minimum wage increases and his gun control effort is DOA. I’ve seen lots of Progressive social media comments where they are in a blue funk over how this is working out. How it all works out remains to be seen – but the economy wobbles along while President Mask Mandate couldn’t get up from his nap to look at the emergency in Texas. This does not bode well for Democrat chances next year or in 2024. But, we’ll see what happens.

Cuomo is finally some flack for his disastrous Covid response – but, don’t fool yourself: this is just someone in Democrat-land (probably Team Harris) trying to put a veto on him for 2024. Nothing will actually happen to him, any investigation will be a white wash…and New Yorkers will overwhelmingly re-elect him next year.

If you don’t regularly go to Ace of Spades, you should – just for the headlines, if nothing else.

Nancy Pelosi Puts Hyperpartisan Lunatic, Conspiracy Theorist, and Hardcore Racist In Charge of Alleged “Security Review” of Capitol Incident

I wish I could write headlines like that.

If you search for info about climate change on Facebook, you’ll soon only find approved opinions. Big Tech gets more creepy by the minute.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan41 Comments

So, now they’ll call witnesses…you know, the people who were supposed to be called when the House was considering whether or not to impeach. Our Ruling Class is total clown show. Ted Cruz opines – and he’s likely correct – that they were ready to wrap this thing up but last night Social Media bots exploded with demands for witnesses and the Blue Checks caught the fever and here we are. Who orchestrated this? That is what I’d like to know – who paid the army of bots to make calling for witnesses trend on social media? Someone had to think it was a good idea.

It could have been the Chinese or other foreign actors who simply want America embroiled in domestic squabbles.

I do wonder if the Democrats have considered that when you accuse the innocent of crimes and hound them mercilessly, they tend to become what you said they were: in other words, treat 74 million Americans like rebels and what you’ll eventually get is 74 million rebels.

The Lincoln Project has completely imploded and, seriously, it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving set of creeps. Except for one thing: these people used to be our leaders. Respected voices! They didn’t just suddenly become garbage: they always were. Someone gave the go-ahead to remove the protection and here we are. But they all had to know. Especially the money bags. You might give $5 to a bum on the street without inquiring closely as to whether food or booze is to be purchased…you give millions and you’re going to find out every last thing about the guy. How many other groups – right and left – are run by garbage people warping our political debates, but they’re currently protected? I have a Twitter friend who is a complete Commie – he and I have had some interesting discussions about what we’d each like to see happen to the bosses of both parties.

France sent a nuclear attack sub to patrol the South China Sea. This is, interesting. I mean, that France is doing it. China lays claim to the entire South China sea, these claims being disputed by all other nations bordering that sea. Under Trump, we routinely sent ships in to enforce the fact that the South China Sea is international waters. Why France? I can only assume that France, taking note of America’s problems, has decided that if French interests in the area are to be protected, France will have to do it herself. This, long term, is a good thing. I am tired of the American Empire. I also don’t want us to go to war with China without allies having skin in the game. Japan and South Korea are making major increases to their naval power as a deterrent to China and that is also good. The bottom line is that no one is going to invade China – their vast population means they can just throw bodies at you until you’re exhausted. But in any war with China, it will be destroying China’s maritime trade which will be decisive. China requires not just massive exports to fund itself, but massive imports to sustain its internal life. This is why China is building a big navy. Anyone else adding anti-Chinese naval forces to the balance is a welcome thing.

I’ve seen various efforts afoot in Red States to terminate Critical Race Theory. Trump, of course, did this for the Executive branch but Biden has put it back in place. Nothing we can do about that right now – but where we have control, we should exercise that power. Critical Race Theory is a racist, Marxist philosophy which was cooked up as the economic justification for Marxism dried up in the1960’s and 70’s. As the poor and middle class in the capitalist countries became vastly wealthy by historic standards, the appeal of Marxism – that the poor can’t get ahead until they seize the means of production – was shown to be drivel, even if you ignored the manifest failure of the Communist countries to provide a decent standard of living. Latching on to race was the Marxist’s way out of the box: it wasn’t class, but race, which drove the cart. And until the inherent racism of American and Western society was destroyed, justice could not prevail. Anything we can do to get rid of this pernicious doctrine is justified; we cannot tolerate a philosophy which holds that white people are inherently racist and that America is evil. It has to go, or we go.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan71 Comments

They are starting up the Shampeachment – I’m pretty sure Chuck will bury this as quickly as possible. The only question is whether or not the Democrats can get more than 1 or 2 to go along with them in the Senate. Any GOPer who does will not be running for re-election.

One thing useful about being on Social Media is to see what the Bots are saying. These are the fake accounts which are paid to push particular notions. The Blue Checks live and die by these Bot comments. Seriously: if you go to a Blue Checks account and see who is commenting favorably on their drivel, it is often better than 90% Bots. And the Blue Checks simply gotta know that is what’s driving their Social Media clout. But, they just love their likes and retweets. Anyways, what the Bots are saying is what the Ruling Class wants them to say – and what they are saying is that January 6th was the moment America unified against Trump.

No: seriously. Stop laughing! I’m being serious here. That is what they are saying.

Of course, it is all a Narrative. The Insurrection at last exposes Trump and the people unite behind Biden and now we’ll go forward into our Social Democrat future. This is what the Bots are saying. It is entirely divorced from reality, but they are running with it. They are seriously acting like you’re sitting there in your home, traumatized by 1/6 and so grateful that Joe Biden is now in there to save you. So, that is the Narrative for at least the next couple years. The ridiculous Springsteen ad is part of that. Meanwhile, the other thing they’re doing is calling the GOP and bunch of Q-Anon Nazis. I’m not sure this bold strategy of theirs will pay off.

Joe Biden is opening up the border – which is part of his Clever Plan to…I dunno…get the Democrats to lose 60 House seats next year? Gun control and Amnesty: two issues which can unify the disparate parts of the anti-Democrat coalition.

One of the key things to look for after any Democrat political victory is to see whom they make walk the plank when the Democrats do what they promised they wouldn’t do. This year’s winner is Democrats From Oil Producing States. In this case, New Mexico Dems trying to survive Biden’s fracking ban.

Victor Davis Hanson on America’s Animal Farm.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan51 Comments

If the Democrats were trying to provoke a civil war, what would they be doing differently?

Of course, I don’t think they are aiming at that – but only because they are so ignorant of history that they wouldn’t know. But it is disastrous what they are doing. Removing Marjorie Taylor Greene might seem a like a bit of fun to them, but it is telling her constituents that they aren’t allowed to have a voice in the House. Add in things like imposing political reliability tests on soldiers, allowing Ruling Class crooks to skate, having the entire Establishment call us simply bad people…this is going to work out that we, on our side, will eventually be forced underground as we become second class citizens. One might want to look into what happens when second class citizens are forced underground…of course, this will be the first time anyone has tried this experiment on a heavily armed population.

We might see the result of f*** around.

SAG was going to kick Donald Trump out, but he fired them.

Trump also had the perfect answer to the Democrats’ unconstitutional Impeachment scam.

Liz Cheney survived the attempt to oust her from GOP Leadership – but she’s got an incredibly tin ear. My bet: she loses her primary next year.

Liberal Canadian sketch troop gets so woke they cancel themselves.

Democrat governors: they suck as bad as you expect.

Related: campaign to recall Governor Newsom in California keep trucking along.

Zucker to leave CNN. No one really cares.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan48 Comments

Now that McConnell has come out against Majorie Taylor Greene all the liberals who hate us will…keep hating us.

We must stop playing this game with them.

Bernie Sanders is a White Supremacist. Eventually, every non-insane person will realize that you can’t be woke enough. That’s when we win.

Portland has discovered that allowing Antifa to run riot for a year kinda sucks.

The guys at the Lincoln Project are pretty much what you expected them to be. We must keep in mind that for decades, these people were the real leaders of the GOP. Now we know that some of the accusations against “us” were true because these garbage people were our face to the world. I am so glad they unmasked themselves and are no longer part of us.

The MSM is now reporting what a lousy job Cuomo has been doing in NY regarding ‘Rona. This, I suspect, is Team Harris making sure Cuomo doesn’t run for the Democrat nomination in 2024.

We’re supposed to get hair-on-fire about the coup in Myanmar. Democracy is under attack! Well, it is a Democracy which brutally forced into exile about 740,000 Rohingya Muslims. I’m not sure I want us propping up a “Democracy” which does that sort of thing. I’m also just sick and tired of Imperial America. Its none of our business. The people of Myanmar have my prayers for peace, freedom and prosperity and I hope they are able to work out their problems. Without us.

Florida never went into the massive lockdowns and they are doing very well – and their economy isn’t crushed. The lunatic Democrat attacks on Governor DeSantis are because they fear this man running against Kamala. You know – the lady installed as VP. Who couldn’t even make it out of the Iowa Caucuses.