Open Thread

SOTU Open Thread

Mark Noonan35 Comments

Did you watch it? If you didn’t, you missed an amazing speech. I remember Reagan, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen one as good. If you did miss it, here’s the text – but you’ll want to find a video of it. Worth every minute of your time.

Wow and wow and just more wow. It was a grand and glorious thing – hitting on the massive accomplishments of Trump’s term but also bringing everyone to tears several times…if you didn’t get misty eyed over Brigadier General McGee and his grandson, then you’re just a dirty commmie.

How in heck are these Democrats going to beat this guy? I guess we’ll see what they do – but Nancy tearing up her copy of the speech as Trump stepped down is an indicator of how bad this is going for them.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

A good Tweet of mine might normally get a dozen or so likes – the Tweet I did suggesting we’re going to primary Romney after his witness vote is up to 429 likes. Methinks ol’ Mitt really screwed up on this one.

What was the upside for him? A kind mention or two in the MSM…but the downside is he’s revealed he’s learned nothing and forgotten nothing. A fit of pique over Trump not making him SecState and he’s placed himself in real jeopardy for re-election in Utah.

Impeachment wraps up on Wednesday – though some Democrats are saying they’ll go right back to it. It wouldn’t surprise me: kamikaze attacks seem to be all they have left. This may well allow the GOP to take back the House in November. If we’re going to re-elect Trump, and I think we will, how many Trump voters will be inclined to vote down-ballot for a Democrat who is almost certain to impeach him again in 2021?

Coronavirus: getting a little more interesting out there. What I’m wondering about is why we care so much? Tens of thousands of Americans die every year from the flu and what I haven’t heard is that this flu is particularly more deadly or infectious than any other flu. Why the big deal about it? It would be sad if an additional ten or twenty thousand Americans die this year because of the flu, but that wouldn’t be an Earth-shaking tragedy. I’d only be worried about a flu which is set to kill millions…something like the Spanish Flu 1918-1920 which killed many tens of millions (in a much smaller global population). Is this what some are expecting and only letting it slowly dribble out? Or is it just a big nothing?

Bolton’s betrayal has been rankling me – and makes me wonder if any of them, Democrat or Republican, can be trusted? I think of the way that MacArthur was slandered into political irrelevance while his much less competent former subordinate, Eisenhower, is still lauded to the skies. Has it been that for a very long time, the good people have been destroyed so that the bad people can thrive? So that, really, bad people can make themselves look good? How many of the heroes of the past 100 years have survived real scrutiny? How many supposed bad guys have, on second look, turned out to be rather heroic? LBJ was a racist pig of a man. JFK was jumping on everything in a skirt. MLK has very definite questions about his morality. Truman sent men to die in a war they weren’t allowed to win. The Elder Bush let the completely defeated Saddam survive. Meanwhile, we know Joe McCarthy was completely right; that per MacArthur there really is no substitute for victory; that Patton correctly perceived the threat of the USSR…and all of them were taken to task by the same people telling us that people like Truman and Kennedy are icons of public service. And keep in mind that I’m deeply versed in history and am only now coming to this realization…how much less will less informed people see it? We are indebted to Trump – by accident or design, he exposed the essential corruption at the core of American institutions.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan29 Comments

Jared Kushner’s peace plan was released – looks like it would be excellent for the Palestinians if they would accept the deal (and the money) and settle down to build themselves a national life…but we can rely on it the Palestinian leadership will reject it out of hand and work up some paid mobs to pretend to be the Palestinian people expressing their righteous anger. Two things will decide the fate of this plan:

1. Trump getting re-elected: if he is, then US policy on this won’t change any time soon.

2. Most of the Muslim world telling the Palestinians to accept the deal or get bent.

We’ll see how it comes out. Elder of Ziyon has a brief rundown.

The impeachment thing still goes on – now with Bolton being the White Knight who will save the day for the left. What really irks me is now many times we on our side went to bat for Bolton and this is how he pays us back. They really are garbage, these old-line GOPe types, aren’t they? You wonder if they ever really believed anything they ever said when they were supposedly on our side. Thanks to RINO’s like Mitt and Collins, there’s still some back and forth about whether witnesses will be called. Ultimately, the witnesses, themselves, don’t matter: there’s nothing for them to tell. But it is amazingly irritating that the RINO’s keep doing this stuff – they’ve got to realize by now that we really can’t stand them doing this. In the end, though, its all a big nothing: Trump won’t be removed – it is only a 1% chance that any GOPer actually votes to convict (10% chance that Manchin votes to acquit).

The Supreme Court ruled that Trump, indeed, has the power to enforce American law which bars welfare bums from immigrating.

Latest on the Coronovirus: 100,000 may already be infected. I’m still pretty “meh” about it.

Some of our Liberal and Never Trump Elite Expert Super Smarty-Pants guys yucked it up about how we Trump supporters are all morons. They have been massively dragged on social media for it, and deservedly so. But it got me thinking: these guys really aren’t too bright and really don’t know much. They are always insulting us as having not gone to college and that we don’t read books. But I’d stack my list of read books against any of these dimwits…and I’ll bet mine is a lot larger and covers more variety.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan39 Comments

I had to be reminded that the impeachment trial was still going on – I tuned into maybe half an hour of it the first day. Apparently I’m not the only person tuning it out: ratings for the show are abysmal.

It appears that the antics of the House Managers are turning off a lot of Senate GOPers and there may not end up being one GOP vote for the Democrats…but there is a chance that two or three Democrats may vote with the GOP.

Meanwhile, the FISA court admits the warrants (or, at least, some of them) against Carter Page were bogus. Of course they were: the whole thing was bogus from the start. Always remember that all these things which were set afoot in 2016 were started by people who were certain they’d be answering to President Hillary come January, 2017. What’s happened since then has only partially been about getting Trump…they are also desperately trying to cover up what they did.

The coronovirus thing out of China – you worried about it? I can’t get worked up about it. So many of these health scares have come and gone with no real ill affect on a major scale – I guess I’m just a bit jaded about it. Though my supposition is that if the Chinese government is really locking down cities, they are at least worried it is easy to transmit from human to human. But I’ve only elevated my personal Threat Level from “Whatever” to “Huh: Interesting”.

The Democrats are getting ready for Iowa and New Hampshire – I’ve seen this and that about them. It is rare, as it turns out, for one candidate to win both contests. I guess that means we can expect a Biden win in Iowa and Sanders in New Hampshire. Meh. To me, it doesn’t really matter – unless Sanders wins both because that means the Democrat bosses will go nuts to crush Sanders…and make it so obvious that at lot of the Bernie Bros will stay home in November. A lot of people – some I actually respect – are now talking up Bernie’s chances and, additionally, trying to claim he’s the Democrats’ best chance to beat Trump. I don’t see it. Beating Trump, I mean. What in heck other than Socialism, SJW insanity and Orange Man Bad do any of these clowns bring to the table? All signs point to a strong economy through 2020 and Trump is not the guy to get us into a war…what is the event that would make people move away from Trump?

Very interesting:

The head of the one of the world’s largest Muslim organizations paid an unprecedented visit to the site of the Auschwitz extermination camp on Thursday, where he participated in remembrance prayers for the Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

Lots of things like this are going on – signs that the hatred between Jews and Muslims is abating, at least in some quarters. After Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem, told the Palestinian leadership to pound sand, set his Jewish son-in-law to find a path to peace, whacked Iran’s terrorist mastermind…funny, huh?

Brexit becomes official as Queen Elizabeth gives Royal assent. Britain leaves on the 31st. I honestly didn’t think the Brexiters would pull it off…the British Ruling class was just so entirely dead set against it…and make no mistake about it, Boris Johnson is part of that class; but he was the only one in it who realized that the people wanted it, and whomever gave them what they wanted would be rewarded with power.

Come and Take it Open Thread

Mark Noonan8 Comments

The most important thing about the Virginia gun rally will be the result of the 2020 election: Democrats barely won control of VA and are acting like they won overwhelming victory and the victory is forever. But one thing which will get every non-leftist voter to come crawling out of the suburban and rural woodwork is a threat to gun rights…I guess its been a long while since Clinton’s assault weapons ban handed the House to the GOP in 1994. Democrats only watch MSNBC and CNN and so believe things like “polls show 90% of Americans want common-sense gun control”. I think if Trump wins VA in November, it’ll be a bit of a lesson for them…but the lesson only really works if the VA GOP gets its act together and takes back the State legislature.

The MSM was gravely disappointed – that no one was killed. For a week before the demonstration, the MSM was filled with dark hints of Nazis getting ready to run amok…and when it didn’t happen, the disappointment was palpable. And some might wonder why Antifa didn’t show up to start a fight? Those wondering this really don’t understand that Antifa is leftist goons who are paid to beat up unarmed Conservatives while ultra liberal police watch benevolently. Richmond doesn’t have ultra liberal police and the Conservatives there were heavily armed. Antifa will never go toe to toe with armed patriots. As for the claim that the event was a just a bunch of Neo-Nazis…well, only if blacks, gays and women are Nazis. Oh, and the patriots policed the area when they were done and so left it cleaner than when they arrived.

The Biden corruption story is rather massive – which explains why the Democrats want no part of it. But the Democrats are still claiming they want new witnesses at the impeachment trial, which simply will not happen without Trump getting to call witnesses of his own. I like how Trump’s people have vigorously noted that Joe doesn’t get a pass simply because he’s running for President – and that he and his kids are fair game in this. At this point, I am starting to think the point of the exercise is to harm Bernie and Warren and allow Biden a clear shot at IA and NH in the primaries.

James O’Keefe video finds that Bernie’s Commie supporters are, well, Commies. Its what I’ve been saying for a while: they are Junior League Leninists. Lenin’s ideals really determine leftwing thinking and have ever since his Bolsheviks triumphed in Russia. Can’t argue with success, right? There are no “Democratic Socialists” or whatever name they want to give themselves…they are all Leninists who will seize power by whatever means necessary…and then act like brutes when they get the power.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

Sorry I’ve been out – been painting the house and working on “Secrets”! But, here we go:

The Democrats are still trying – I guess there’s nothing else they can do but play out the farce to the end. They had their new witness give an interview and it was garbage, but wait for it: some time during the trial, someone will step forward. Probably a Deep Stater who will claim they just can’t keep silent any more…but the bottom line is that Trump will be acquitted and there’s zero chance the Senate GOP will agree to witnesses unless Trump is given broad power to call whomever he wants, as well.

Our Matt notes that the GAO said Obama broke the law in 2014 and no one called for his impeachment.

How the real world is reacting to this is shown by the Dow hitting a record high.

CNN made a naked effort to tear down Bernie and boost Warren during their debate…and I’ve seen some Bernie Bros white hot with anger over it. It is a little funny: they do seem genuinely surprised to be on the receiving end of the garbage we’ve had for decades. But, the bottom line is that the Democrat bosses don’t want Bernie…they see him as a sure loser. It isn’t about policy differences…because as far as that goes, they are all pretty much alike; it is about the (rapidly shrinking) chance of beating Trump and holding the House. But, I don’t really see Warren as the person to save the day: in fact, I think she might get beat worse than Bernie. At least there is a bit of genuineness about the old Commie. Warren is clearly dishonest and mercenary in her views and actions…an her persona of hectoring nag will turn off lots of people.

Senator McSally (R-AZ) called a liberal hack a liberal hack and all the liberal hacks and Never Trumpers got huffy about it. The rest of us laughed.

New York dropped the idea of bail – and the completely expected result is criminals going on a crime spree. But, remember, that isn’t a failure, its a feature. Our Progressives are really no more than junior league Leninists and it was Lenin’s opinion that Capitalist law is inherently unjust and all criminals are fully justified in stealing from a Capitalist system. The left wants these criminals to go on a rampage to punish us for not being Communist.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan30 Comments

Cocaine Mitch says he’s got the votes to proceed with an impeachment trial without bothering with Nancy’s asinine demand for more witnesses. As Team Mitch put it on Twitter:

The thing fell apart because, after years of investigation, it has been discovered that Trump hasn’t done anything illegal. And that is astonishing considering he’s a NYC real estate developer…he must have some primo legal advisors who make sure that he’s always on the right side of the law. Rely on it, if they could have found anything on Trump, they would have used it. They found nothing.

But the Democrat Base is informed by MSNBC – and, so, they believe that Trump is minutes away from being removed. Seriously: if you check out the comments from these people on social media, they are convinced of it. Blow past the bot accounts (and there are a huge number of them – what is trending on social media is whatever someone pays to have trend) and see the real people, including Blue Checks, who are certain of this. And why wouldn’t they be? They’ve never heard anyone say otherwise.

Meanwhile, the GOP Senate candidate for Michigan – John James – out raised his Democrat opponent for the second quarter in a row. Democrats are donating as if MSNBC were telling the truth…and, so, instead of pouring money in to defend a Democrat seat which may go GOP in November, they are throwing their money at a quixotic attempt to unseat McConnell.

The Covington Catholic boys got a bit of justice today as CNN settled the suit. As is usual for such settlements, we don’t know any details. My view: they settled because they didn’t want to go through discovery. Even if they would have prevailed in court, the revelation of how news stories are crafted would have been devastating.

Iran miscalculated:

It is hard to understand Iran supreme leader Khamenei’s blunder in attacking the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. He either believed that Trump was weakened by his impeachment, as Western liberal media breathlessly and continuously reported, or might have been misled by John Kerry’s incompetent advice (apparently, Kerry met again with Khamenei’s emissaries in Paris just few weeks ago). Whatever the reasons, his goal of triggering a limited war with America to rally his people around the regime has failed miserably.

You know the drill: they attack, we respond…it bogs down, we hit some place where the enemy has hidden the asset behind civilians…war crimes!, blah, blah, blah and everything remains as before. Trump did the unexpected – he killed the boss. Now all the other bosses are wondering which of them have targets painted on their backs. The knowledge that you are to be droned striked in a fortnight concentrates the mind wonderfully. Don’t know if Trump is just going on instinct here or if he’s thought about it for years and always figured this is what he’d do if in office. I’m leaning these days more towards “he’s been thinking about this for a while”. We don’t know how all this will play out, but it certainly seems a better option that either flat out war or surrender which our Elites have been telling us for 40 years were our only options.

Happy New Years!

Mark Noonan49 Comments

Some folks are wondering what we should bring back from the previous 20’s. I’m going with Cab Calloway:

Iranians tried to attack our embassy in Baghdad. Trump sent Marines. All is calm, now. Marines are good at that. Democrats – proving they are monumentally stupid – are trying to make this out as “Trump’s Benghazi”. They wish. I can’t be emphasized enough (and count on it: Team Trump will emphasize this all through the campaign) the difference between Benghazi and Baghdad. Obama was nowhere to be seen while Americans were left to die and then a bullsh** story was cooked up to cover it up…Trump was front and center and got the Marines rolling right away. This is basic Executive competence, and Obama did not have it.

Even CNN is pointing out that the Democrat’s impeachment thing is absurd.

Biden suggests that the miner’s his policies will throw out of work should learn to code. There goes PA and Michigan if Biden is the nominee. Of course, not sure Biden will drag his was through…I’m starting to pay attention to Buttigieg; he might be about to pull a Carter: win the IA contest and then just roll to the nomination against a bunch of old guard has-beens.

I’m sure you’ve by now heard of Based Grandpa who blew away a guy working up a church massacre. The Left hates this – they mostly hate that its on video and can’t be denied. Totally blows their anti-gun Narrative.

The North Korea situation is still murky – in the end, it will come down to what the NK leadership wants…to continue to preside over a dead society armed with nuclear weapons, or cut a deal with us and come alive? We’ll see what they pick.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan34 Comments

The really cool thing about Trump is how he fires right back:

Nancy Pelosi’s District in California has rapidly become one of the worst anywhere in the U.S. when it come to the homeless & crime. It has gotten so bad, so fast – she has lost total control and, along with her equally incompetent governor, Gavin Newsom, it is a very sad sight!

When have we ever had not a GOP President, but any senior GOPer, at all, point out that Democrat run areas of the country are complete disasters? And then call out the Democrat leaders who have presided over the destruction? I can see the shape of Trump’s re-election campaign emerging. A few points I bet he’ll hit repeatedly:

1. Things are going well.
2. Democrat areas are lousy.
3. Its me or the insane Left.
4. It’ll be even better if I’m re-elected with a GOP Congress.

We’ll see how it turns out – but I’ve heard some people claim that impeachment is becoming a first rate disaster for the Democrats and that the RNC has seven times the money the DNC has.

Virginia Democrats by putting out massive effort managed to secure a narrow control over the entire Virginia government – and they are acting like they’ve gained absolute power, forever: they are proposing insane – and likely unconstitutional – gun grabs and threatening to use the National Guard to prevent Americans in Virginia from exercising their constitutional right to bear arms. There is growing fury in Virginia as people react to this – and just a chance the insanity will flip Virginia red next year. But, to me, that really isn’t the solution. The ultimate solution here is to break up Virginia into North and South Virginia…North VA being Richmond to the Potomac.

Heh: El Paso Man Comes Down from Insane Acid Trip where he Hallucinated he Ran for President

In 2019, we all became fascist. RSM explains.

Don Surber on the Democrats: A Leaderless Party With No Plan

The Trump economy is pretty darned good. Some are talking up that its weird that the economy is so good but Trump’s poll numbers are still no good. There’s a reason for that:

1. The polls are wrong.

Everything – and I mean everything – that the MSM is going to produce from now until election day is designed to harm Trump and help the Democrats. I don’t buy the excuse that they just missed certain things in Florida and Michigan in 2016. Remember, Hillary cancelled her fireworks display several days before the election. She knew she was beaten – and so, too, did everyone else who could see the raw data, and that means the pollsters and MSM bosses. They just kept churning out the BS because they didn’t know anything else to do. Telling the truth certainly wasn’t an option.

Can the Democrats win next year? Of course they can – eleven months is a very long time in politics and all sorts of things can happen. But sitting here on December 27th, 2019 I have to say that the guy sitting on sacks of campaign cash and able to draw gigantic, enthusiastic crowds and the drop of a hat is likely to be the winner.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan15 Comments

Not quite sure how the impeachment thing plays out, now. There are polls which show support for it dropping, others showing that everyone wants Trump gone yesterday…OTOH, the RNC has seven times the money of the DNC. Democrat candidates still can’t draw flies while Trump gets massive, enthusiastic crowds at the drop of a hat.

The Democrat claim that they want a “fair” trial is garbage, of course. What they want is a long series of witnesses called for their side while no one is allowed to even mention Biden’s name. The purpose of Democrat getting witnesses is to have a daily drama – with carefully served up bits on the news – of “the walls are closing in on Trump”. The hope there is that it will eventually cause a break in Trump’s support – though they know that is highly unlikely. Failing that, they just want Trump tied up with impeachment while they sort out which loser gets to face him in November. I highly doubt that McConnell will accommodate the Democrats and even wets like Romney are going to be wary of doing anything which appears to give the Democrats anything.

The real action is now with Barr, anyway: what he does will determine the long-term affect of all this. If he winds up with some toothless report deploring “mistakes”, then he’s been a waste of time…if he brings indictments, then the whole thing could become a catastrophe for the Democrats. Lots of people are saying it is for sure one or the other – but no one actually knows; unlike the Mueller investigation, Barr’s troops are keeping things close to the vest. Which is right and proper…but irritating in we’d all like to know what’s coming.

Rep. Van Drew, who switched to the GOP, says he had to because he was essentially ordered to vote in favor of impeachment. The Democrats claim they didn’t whip votes for it, but I’m pretty confident they promised no money and possible primary challenges to anyone who didn’t toe the line. Van Drew is just trying to save his career, naturally: he’s in a Trump district and this is his chance to stay in office. But it still is astonishing that a person will switch to the minority party…this should have got a lot more play, but the MSM was clearly ordered by the DNC to ignore it.

Meanwhile, Trump and McConnell are remaking the courts – especially the infamous 9th Circuit. Now, before you pop the corks, remember that if the Democrats ever control the White House and Congress again, they will simply change the courts as necessary to either remove them from the equation or remake them as liberal. People forget that the number of Justices and the number of federal courts is set by Congress. They can expand the Supreme Court to 15 and the federal courts to any number they think convenient. They could make, say, a Conservative 9th in charge of Utah and Idaho and just make an entirely new one for CA, WA and OR. Also, the Democrats, back in that much power, wouldn’t have the least compunction against just ignoring the law. It is good that we’re changing the courts because this will allow us to prevail on the legal merits far more often than not…but we can’t go to sleep on this. We have to keep the liberals out of power.

Johnson won big in Britain and now he’s got a chance to remake British politics as much as Trump is remaking ours. The key for both the Tories and the GOP is to wed populism to conservatism…to make the right the party of the people. Brits, by and large, are far more liberal than Americans, of course, so its not a one for one comparison…but your basic Brit still does share many notions with your basic American. We like things fair and square; we like to have our opportunities and to keep our rewards; we like our own countries and don’t really care too much about foreign nations; we like to stand up to international bullies, but we aren’t interested in looking for crusades. We don’t have any problem with giving a poor person a hand, but we don’t like multigenerational welfare families – eventually, you gotta go to work; we’re very tolerant, but tolerance cuts both ways – we’ll tolerate the weirdos, but they have to tolerate us, too. If Trump and Johnson can pull it off, we might be in for a generation of center/right governance in both countries.

California is going after HAM radio operators – and it may just be another example of California’s government being stupid, but I wonder: is it really an effort to shut down a mode of communications the government has no control over? If your long term plan is to set up an oppressive regime – and that is the Left’s long term plan – then you can’t afford to leave the people with an unrestricted means of sharing news.