Open Thread

This Open Thread is Exonerated

Mark Noonan35 Comments

That feeling of joy you got in your heart earlier today? That was your realization that Justice can still be had in the United States.

Flynn was railroaded, plain and simple – and some of the things coming out today show that Obama knew…what we don’t know, yet, is if he ordered it. We won’t know unless someone turns on him…which would be a very difficult thing for any Establishment type to do because they know that it would forever be over for them. No one in the club would ever let them back in again. I’m not even sure the prospect of 20 years in jail would convince someone to drop dime on Barry.

Be that as it may, what is clearly emerging is that the law enforcement and intelligence agencies of the Obama Administration – and continuing via Deep State operatives during the Trump Administration – cooked up a false investigation to first try to stop Trump from being elected, then to undo the election once he had one. As one Twitter friend of mine put it: in January of 2017, we did not have a peaceful transfer of power. It was all garbage from start to finish. There was never any collusion with Russia by Trump or his team – in fact, its coming out (as I long suspected) that if Putin preferred anyone in 2016, it was Hillary, who was already safely bought and even if not bought, so mind-bogglingly stupid that Putin could get away with bloody murder on her watch.

But we’re still not done – and we won’t be done until at least some of these criminals go to jail. My Father was opposed to the death penalty all his life (as far as I know), but there was one thing he wanted to keep it for: treason. His view was that treason was the worst possible crime because to betray a nation is to attempt to murder every citizen of the nation. The people who thought this up and carried it out are traitors; their loyalty, when not to a foreign paymaster (and I’m certain that a large number are the deep-cover spies of foreign powers) is to their class. They don’t give a damn about our country. Patriots simply do not use lies and blackmail because their side lost the last election. I want these people to go down, very hard.

We’ll see if that happens – the Deep State is still very powerful and its hard to find anyone who has the position to do something who isn’t allied with the Establishment or deathly afraid of it. I hope that Barr has the guts to do it – and I hope he’s found at least a few others with the guts to push this to a conclusion.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan40 Comments

A slight modification to the US Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Nothing in this Amendment shall be construed as prohibiting the imposition of civil and criminal penalties for the publication of false information.

Just a bit of spitballin’ here – but as I said in an earlier post, we must do something to end the Reign of Lies which has warped our politics for the past 50 or maybe even 80 years. I really am all ears here – but please don’t try to tell me that we must retain the current system which allows the MSM – in service of the Democrats – to brazenly lie all the time without any possibility of punishment. I realize that it is a very dicey thing, but I can’t see the Republic surviving if lies are allowed to go unchecked.

And, in fact, I think that God – in a way – commands us to do this: we are not supposed to allow lies to fly unchecked. Something must be built into the system as a corrective to falsehood.

Our Founders built the most brilliant system of government in human history and it has stood the test of time, but the Founders, understanding that people will lie for political advantage, never imagined a time when 95%+ of the news media in our country would (a) be liars and (b) be liars in the service of only one political party.

And speaking of lies – the Democrats and their MSM lapdogs really are circling the wagons for Biden, aren’t they? What amuses me most is that there are still some so-called “Conservative” voices out there claiming they are shocked at the double standard between Kavanaugh and Biden. To me its, oh, puhleeese! Of course the MSM and Democrats were going to treat Biden entirely differently from Kavanaugh. Everyone – including Kavanaugh’s accusers – knew the accusations against Kavanaugh were lies from the get-go; the Democrats, MSMers and Never Trumpers just pretended they thought otherwise because it was their shot to take down a Trump court nominee. But now that we have accusers of Biden – far more credible accusers – the problem is that if we go along with the accusations that would hurt a Democrat. And you know we can’t have that (and in case you were wondering why I suddenly got in the mood to amend the Constitution, this is it). Don’t look for truth, logic or any semblance of basic decency: this is about getting power…and for the Democrats anything that gets them power is good.

Some are talking that Biden can’t survive this when added to his obvious mental decline – I say: watch them. As long as Biden can stand up with his eyes open for five minutes, the DNC and MSM will prop him up as the second coming of Pericles. They have to – to ditch Joe means getting someone else, and if that someone else isn’t Bernie then the Democrats will be faced with open revolt. The only hope the Democrats have here is that after Biden picks his VP, he keels over. Absent that, they are going with him to the end.

The Experts are still saying that Trump is doomed – though the smarter Experts (those who can tie their own shoes) add the caveat “if the election were held today”. Of course, the election won’t be held today – but if it were, it would still be a decision between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Anything is possible in politics but I can’t see the American people, faced with crisis and economic crash, turning to a 78 year old, addle-brained political hack. Maybe they will – but until it happens, I won’t say it will happen. And, as it turns out, if you look at some of the voter registration numbers, social media activity and fundraising, it seems to me that Trump is well-positioned for a win in November.

I also wonder what real affect the Democrat governors will have on November? It is obvious that they aren’t acting for health and safety but merely to keep people miserable in the hope that this will help Biden. Its an open question as to whether or not that theory is correct…but I wonder if the actions like Oregon’s governor saying she’ll keep the shutdown until June is storing up a level of outrage against Democrats? No way to know – but I do know that some people are rather irked by it all. At the end of the day, we’re not going to have a cure for this thing, ever (even a vaccine won’t be 100% against it). Most of us will catch it at some point. Isn’t it time for we adult citizens of the Republic to just start assessing the risks for ourselves? I think so. And I wonder how people will long-term react to a Democrat governor saying you can’t go to the park?

Open Thread

Mark Noonan12 Comments

As we all suspected, Flynn was framed. Completely set up as part of a process which was supposed to get people to lie under oath about President Trump. The plan ultimately failed because the plotters made one, fatal error: they assumed we on our side are garbage like they are. A Deep Stater/Establishment person is willing to lie – we’re not. We know that if you lie – especially under oath – you are taking your immortal soul in you hands and letting it slip through your fingers. Only coercion can get us to lie like that…because at that point we’re not morally responsible for the lie. Flynn agreed under duress to say he had done something wrong to save his family – only that could get him to go along. And then only for a little while. Flynn and Stone and everyone else simply refused to give the coup plotters what they wanted: someone who would swear that President Trump had colluded with Russia.

They didn’t get it – and now its all coming out, just what they did. We’ve got a problem: it was people who claim to be citizens of the United States who did this. Who else have they done it to? How many people are sitting in jail right now because they were forced to choose between the total ruination of their family or “confessing” to something they hadn’t done? And where did we breed in our nation the sort of people who can do things like that? How did it happen? This has to be fixed. For me, step one is to abolish the FBI…and review all their cases to see how many innocent people they’ve railroaded – but, until it is, remember: Never talk to the police.

Our Governor in Nevada is keeping us closed down – but, I also perceived watching his speech about it that he’s really not going to keep us closed up much longer. He’s talking a big game, but the bottom line is that people want to get out. At the end of the day, we’re adults and citizens of the Republic: we can assess the danger for ourselves. The Blue State governors naturally want to keep things closed tight – because they believe misery will help Biden in November. But as more Red States open up, the pressure will become enormous to open back up everywhere. Summer is coming – we want to go out.

I’ve actually always enjoyed reading CounterPunch articles – it is far, far left stuff, but they at least pull no punches and usefully skewer idiots…like Joe Biden, back in 2008:

Biden is a notorious flapjaw. His vanity deludes him into believing that every word that drops from his mouth is minted in the golden currency of Pericles. Vanity is the most conspicuous characteristic of US Senators en bloc, nourished by deferential acolytes and often expressed in loutish sexual advances to staffers, interns and the like. On more than one occasion CounterPunch’s editors have listened to vivid accounts by the recipient of just such advances, this staffer of another senator being accosted by Biden in the well of the senate in the week immediately following his first wife’s fatal car accident.

As they say, there’s more! You just know that Reade isn’t the only one. Biden entered the Senate in 1973. He’s old school – and the old school Senator was Ted Kennedy…a pig of a man who assumed his power allowed him to be a brute with women. And, ol’ Ted was right – he’s still honored as the Lion of the Senate, after all. What makes you think that Joe Biden, with Ted as an example, held back? His deep religious convictions which made him into a Catholic supporter of late-term abortion? Biden has to deny it – well, what he actually has to do is admit it and retire from public life, but he won’t do that – but if he denies it and any more comes out, he’s cooked. The MSM is doing massive cover-up for Biden here (he’s going on Morning Joe to take the softest of soft-ball interviews about it), but if it doesn’t all come out now, it’ll come out via Trump in October.

Kim Jong Un-Dead Open Thread

Mark Noonan17 Comments

As of this moment, no real word on whether the man is dead, or not. But the fact that he hasn’t appeared in public to scotch the rumors indicates that he might have assumed room temperature. We can’t be sure of anything – not if he’s alive or dead and, if dead, what caused the demise. Official rumor is he went in for surgery and either died on the table or went into a coma…but maybe his sister and putative successor got tired of waiting for the throne? Who knows? We’ll just have to wait and see.

As for lockdowns: I’m starting to think we made a mistake. A completely understandable mistake, but one nonetheless. Next time, I think we should just go with masks, social distancing and the closure of events and venues where people crowd close together…and even then, if it can be managed with social distancing, it should be allowed; you know, a bar which has a capacity for 80 persons would be reduced to 20 persons during a pandemic, that sort of thing. A spirit of rebellion is growing – but slowly: people are worried and so still willing to put up with it. But try to extend this past, say, May 15th, and you might spark a revolution.

Joe “Fingers” Biden is in more trouble that most suspect – “most” being Democrats and Never Trump. I just don’t get how they think then can sell this guy to the public. He’s never been ragingly popular. He has no particular achievements to his name. He’s a life-long politician in a nation rather tired of such. He’s got all sorts of corruption issues and, lets face it, he likes to get handsy with the ladies, to say the least. As to whether or not he’s guilty of the alleged assault – we’ll never know for certain: it is alleged to have happened 27 years ago. On the other hand, there is more corroborating evidence – by far – of the accusation against Biden than there ever was against Kavanaugh. But here are our Democrats and Never Trumpers – backed up by the MSM stenographers – trying to downplay this. Do they not realize that Trump already has $240 million in the bank for the Fall campaign and he has absolutely no qualms about hitting his opponent with everything he’s got? Rely on it: Trump will bring all this stuff up – in ads and at the debates.

Speaking of which, there is now a bit of an effort – in the name of Coronavirus – to cancel the conventions. Just trying to keep us safe, ya dig? The reality: the Democrats are terrified of the prospect of Biden trying to make it through an hour-long, prime time speech.

The Experts are still assuring us that Biden has it in the bag: but even as they write their pieces, you can feel the fear in them: they know they are whistling past the graveyard. Everyone knows that any poll which has more Democrats than GOPers in the mix is pie-in-the-sky nonsense…and the only polls showing Biden ahead are polls with very much more Democrats than GOPers. I think they are just hoping that something will turn up – something which will doom Trump or some change in the Democrat ticket which will make their dreams come true. I discount rumors that Democrats are seeking to replace Biden – any attempt to do so would open up a can of worms Democrats would prefer to keep shut: every power broker in the insane Democrat coalition would insist upon their views being accepted before they’d sign off on a Biden replacement.

Is the office as we know it going for good? Its an interesting thought. As for me, I’d bribe my boss to be able to continue work-from-home. There is zero upside for me in going to sit in a cubicle every day when I can do my work better and faster at my desk at home. Now, some people feel they can’t be fully productive without the structure of the office – I know a guy who as fired as work-from-home because he was consistently late getting to work – but I ain’t one of them. We’ll see how it comes out – but telecommuting is the thing for me. Let me do that, and I might not retire unless and until I lose my marbles.

Open Thread Futures at -$1.79

Mark Noonan65 Comments

We were supposed to be hoarding oil, I guess.

I supported the lockdowns when they were announced – but I’m starting to think that we might have made a mistake. Perhaps we should have made it a matter of personal choice? Do as much social distancing as possible. Wear masks and gloves. Work from home if possible – but let everyone assess the risk for themselves? As we see Democrats trying to force us into a Great Depression over this, it is clear that we didn’t think this all the way through at the start. At all events, it is time to start easing up. We do have to get back to work.

President Trump is going to suspend immigration – which makes sense. Until we’re back to full employment, we simply don’t need more people here. Liberal heads will explode over this – they will step on this rake. They have to. Orange Man Bad, right? So they’ll be out there telling us to stay in our homes but we must welcome new immigrants.

The Experts are still telling us that Biden has it in the bag – which sounds familiar. Almost like I heard this four years ago, or something. But, be that as it may, Steven Hayward has a contrarian view – mostly because Trump isn’t afraid to hit back and the Democrats are a targe-rich environment.

North Korea’s dictator is said to be in bad health.

What I expected to find: Russia didn’t want to help Trump in 2016. Of all the absurdities these past few years, this is the most egregious: that Russia wanted Trump. Its stupid – they owned Hillary. And even if they didn’t own her, they knew her policies were tailor-made to let Russia do whatever it damned well pleased in the world. Russia always wants to sow confusion because that’s just the way Russia is…but to think they’d want to roll the dice on Trump when they had a sure thing in Hillary is ridiculous.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan35 Comments

Taking into consideration what Democrats are saying and doing in the aftermath of Trump’s re-open plan, I can only conclude that the Democrats have war-gamed this out and figure that the more pain there is, the better for them. They seem determined to shut down as much of the economy as they can and keep it shut down for months. They know – they must know – this will be catastrophic. Not just in economic losses, but in lives lost…people who have nothing to do and are fearful are subject to all sorts of maladies; and as things stay entirely concentrated on Coronavirus, other health care needs are kept to the side, which will also cause death. Democrats want all that – they want everyone perfectly miserable so that they, the Democrats, can ride to their rescue in November.

Would it work? Meaning – if they got their way, would it ensure Trump’s defeat? I’d have to suspect as much…we’re miserable enough as it is, but if we lacked all hope then lots of people probably would turn on Trump. But Trump is not a fool – and so he’s offering hope. I think people will grasp it.

Watching Biden interviews – and they’re all done in extremely friendly circumstances – is getting painful. You start to feel sorry for the old man – he’s clearly not mentally or physically up to the task and was only propelled to the nomination because the Powers That Be felt that Warren or Bernie would have been a certain disaster. The real question: how is this guy going to compete with Trump? The Energizer Bunny of Presidents? And as for the Tara Reade accusations – the MSM is doing Biden no favors by suppressing it…it just means that for a lot of middle of the road voters, they won’t hear about it until Trump tells them. At length. In debates and on TV commercials. Trump will make Biden’s handsiness an issue – with reams of video to back up the claims that Biden is a weirdo.

Beef processors are having some trouble – and it is bad news as we rely on beef. Buuuuut…they are largely having a trouble because they are dependent upon illegal labor. Make things better and I’ll bet they could attract high quality labor…sure, I’d pay an extra buck a pound for my steak, but I’m ok with that. And it would only be until someone really got into the nitty gritty of it all and found a faster, cheaper way of getting it done. Competition isn’t a panacea – what sometimes has to happen is a rap on the knuckles to concentrate the mind.

RSM – maybe this bug isn’t as deadly as we thought?

Open Thread

Mark Noonan59 Comments

China has a debt problem:

China’s consumer loans are shrinking at an unprecedented pace after a decade of breakneck expansion, a blow to the government’s strategy of relying on spending as a growth engine amid the worst public health crisis
in a generation.

The net balance of consumer loans – made up of short-term and credit card loans from banks and online lenders – plunged by a quarter in the first two months of this year to 7.4 trillion yuan (US$1 trillion), according to data published by the People’s Bank of China. Some microlenders are staring at 20 cents on a dollar in bad loans.

China is fundamentally weak because China’s government does not have the consent of the governed – it is really as simple as that. Governments like that of China can, for a while, make things seem to work – but only seem. China is a honeycomb of bad debts, corrupt deals, crime and poverty masked by showpiece cities. Not only did China’s economy take a massive hit from the virus, it is going to keep on taking hits as foreign nations move their supply chains out of China. People are at last awake to how dangerous it is to have their supplies come out of China because of the sort of government China has. We’ll see how China weathers the storm…but it will be a very difficult time for them.

Related: Bloomberg killed a story about the corruption of China’s ruling class. One of the most astonishing things about Coronavirus is how it revealed the extent of China’s corruption of American institutions. They’re all bought, to one degree or another. Our supposed Expert Elite betters seem to have one thing in common – they’ll sell their country out for a few bucks.

Obama finally got around to endorsing Biden.

Don Surber’s plan to reopen America.

Ace rips into the New York Times over their stealth-editing of a Biden story at the behest of the Biden campaign. The story, of course, was about the sexual assault allegations launched against Biden. The bottom line is the accusation is far more credible than that made against Kavanaugh – but the MSM is determined to cover up for Ol’ Joe…because he’s a Democrat, and there’s an end on it.

Rumor mill has it that AG Barr is still rolling steadily along on the investigations with Brennan said to be a large target. We’ll see.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan37 Comments

Either the doomsayer models were wrong – or President Trump has had a great victory over the virus. The MSM will say that NY Governor Cuomo saved the day…as part of the DNC backup plan to dump Biden (which can only happen, I think, after Bernie quits…which is why he may not quit).

We’re all wondering how in heck an agent of the Chinese government – disguised as a reporter – gets admitted to the White House press briefing. Mostly because it is redundant given how slavishly the American MSM parrots Chinese propaganda. Make no mistake about it, with a wave of Xi’s hand a gigantic amount of American media company wealth could disappear. How loyal are the corporate bosses to America vs Their Money? I think you know the answer.

With Corbyn out, it is now thought that Labour will pull back from the evils Corbyn introduced – especially the ever more explicit anti-Semitism. Mark my words: they’ll try to downplay it and the British MSM will cover it up, but the anti-Semitism is a requirement to be a full-on Labourite these days. The calculation was made: there’s a huge future, electorally and financially (especially financially) in playing up to Islamists…and the price demanded is anti-Semitism. Anyone thinking that things will change with Labour – except for the worse – is whistling past the graveyard.

Don Surber points out the MSM’s kamikaze run against hydroxychloroquine. Never has TDS been more stark – simply because Trump suggested it, the MSM went all-in against it. It does look like it works – at least to some extent, and especially for people with severe cases. What I learned the last couple days if that you go on a ventilator, your outlook is pretty bleak…trust me on this, if I catch the bloody thing and I get bad and go on a ventilator, I want them to throw everything they’ve got at it. And I think that is how most people view the matter. I was pondering how Trump might have hit upon this drug – and then it hit me: we’ve got lots of people who study plagues as part of our national defense strategy. I suspect Trump just asked them, in effect, “what do we have on the shelf that might work on this?”. When they came back with the answer, “hydroxychloroquine”, he said “go for it”.

We were told our hospitals would be overwhelmed and we’d be stacking bodies like cordwood. Well, it hasn’t quite been like that – as is seen by the lack of video on the MSM showing overwhelmed hospitals and stacked up bodies. But, never one to despair, CBS looked around and found a video of a person who says she was a nurse who had to quit because there was no proper equipment at the hospital. The CBS tweet got 23 thousand retweets and 8 million views. You know how this ends, right? Of course you do: its all bullsh**. Turns out she barely works as a nurse and seems to spend a great deal of time doing some sort of modelling on Instagram. She was provided the proper equipment but, on her first day on the job, insisted she be allowed to break protocol…and when told she couldn’t, she walked out…right to her video camera to make something which was almost certain to go viral and provide massive fame to someone who clearly wants to be famous. CBS News did not check out the background of the lady…but did add dramatic music to her tearful video. Yes, the MSM is the Enemy of the People.

Day 15 of Lockdown

Mark Noonan72 Comments

Plague. Earthquakes. And, now, a comet. Whomever is opening up the seals of the apocalypse really needs to cut it out.

OTOH, if it isn’t the End, that comet might be quite the light show in the sky – no danger to Earth as its closest approach will be 72 million miles…but if high estimates prove correct, you’re going to see it very bright in the night sky with the naked eye.

The Kennedy Center – basically, a welfare program for the rich – got $25 million from the Stimulus and then canned the workers. Rep Scalise wants to rescind the grant. That’s fine, but we really aren’t getting anywhere unless the directors of the Center are flogged.

More talk of Democrats dumping Joe for Cuomo. Can’t see it as other than a disaster for the Democrats – the only alternative to Joe is Sanders. Cuomo hasn’t even entered the race…the DNC works some crooked deal to put Cuomo on the ticket and the Bernie Bros will revolt. I doubt it would happen, anyway – and not because Biden would be opposed. He likely doesn’t even know where he is most of the time: but his handlers are licking their chops at the amount of patronage they’ll be able to dispense in Biden’s name and they won’t want Cuomo to barge in and mess up the program.

New York City is being hammered while Las Vegas, so far, is getting off lightly…perhaps gambling and whoring isn’t as much an affront to God as being largely in favor of infanticide, as New Yokers – by their votes – seem to be? Just a thought.

The Great Facemask Debate goes on. As for me: from what I’ve learned, most transmission is via being in close contact with the infected for a significant period of time or literally touching the virus (on a person or surface) and then touching your face. This is why hand washing and social distancing are so important: from what I can gather, if you do the washing and distancing, your chances of catching the disease fall remarkably. But, for anyone who does have to go around people…wearing a mask seems to be an effective way of not touching your face, which would help.

China simply rebroadcast MSMers and American Democrats as part of their propaganda effort. Seriously, that’s all they did: the MSM and the Democrat Party are broadcasting Chinese Communist propaganda. I only hope they got paid for it – I don’t want to think some of my fellow Americans are stupid enough to do that for free. We woke up one fine morning to discover that a pandemic exposed how much of America China has purchased.

Related: backlash against China grows. China really screwed the pooch on this one – I’m with those who theorize that China knew what sort of problem they had back in December and made the conscious choice to ensure the whole world got the same problem.