Open Thread

Open Thread

Mark Noonan32 Comments

Team Trump and the GOP are building a rather large ground game for 2020:

The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee (RNC) are mobilizing thousands of volunteers in more than a dozen battleground states, including a handful that President Trump lost in 2016, as they seek to expand the electoral map ahead of 2020.

Trump Victory, a joint operation comprised of the Trump campaign, the RNC and state Republican parties, kicked off a “National Week of Training” on Friday in a bid to train more than 6,000 volunteers and register voters in 14 states that Republicans have set their sights on for 2020.

At the same time, the committee is adding to its roster of state directors overseeing its organizing efforts, hiring staffers in Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Virginia, Republican officials told The Hill.

I’ve been wondering if Minnesota will correct its horrendous error of 1984, and 2020 might be the year it happens. We GOPers have looked and looked and looked at Minnesota and just haven’t been able to crack it. But, that’s how we thought about Wisconsin for the longest time, as well. In my view, the untold story of 2020 – though it will be told afterwards – is that the swing States are no longer Florida and Ohio, but Pennsylvania and Minnesota. Yes, I’ve heard the stories of Democrats surging in Texas…but, for 2020, that’s drivel. Trump will win Texas, easily. But, it can’t be taken for granted. Fortunately, the GOP is strong and well lead in Texas. Expanding the map is important, in and of itself, but I see something else at work here: Trump wants to win the popular vote, and he wants the House back. He’s got second term plans (most Presidents really don’t – which is why second terms are usually hideous and end up with the other party winning the next time around…Trump, I think, will change that).

Related: Democrats on the campaign trail are bedeviled by Trump’s strong economy.

Also Related, and enormously funny: factions of the Democrat party prepare to primary each other. Another untold story of 2020: the white, upper class, far left base of the Democrat party is going further and further left…so far left that Indys are being turned off and, just perhaps, a slice of Latino and African-American voters are being turned off, as well. Seriously: imagine yourself a middle or working class black guy…does anything these weirdos talk about resonate with you? Green New Deal? Open borders? Meanwhile, over there is Trump… and he’s at least a hell of a lot more fun than the Doofuses of Intersectionality.

The New York Times decides that the Soviets are the people to celebrate on the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. This surprises none of you.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan33 Comments

America: love it or leave it. That is all Trump’s tweets really amounted to. He didn’t mention race: all he said was, “if you really hate it here that much, leave”. And that is the truth of the matter.

You can’t fix what you don’t love – you must love something before it is lovable. People like Omar and AOC clearly do not love this country. Not the country founded in 1776. To them, that country is racist, slave-owning, genocidal, sexist, homophobic, rapacious, war criminal. They hate it and want it gone, to be replaced by an America they will love…a country which has torn down the Washington Monument and will consider its founding moment to be MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech (not that they believe a word of what King said that day). They want an America which despises the Pilgrims; the Founders, the Westward Expansion. That rejects the Constitution and the idea that the individual matters. It is not an America I will ever be part of – first off, because they’ll jail or kill me, and those like me; but mostly because I’ll die fighting such a thing.

Democrat says that skin color is the only thing which matters. This is racist.

They’ve decided to kill the James Bond franchise by making the next 007 a woman. This is just stupid. Bond is a male fantasy: we kill the bad guys while dressed well and looking sharp and get all the hot women. No man will want to go see Super Chick do that…nor will women, I suspect.

Don’t know why any parents let their kids have their own internet accounts: 17 year old girl murdered by loser she met on line.

The Ninth Circuit gave a win to pro-lifers. Yes, that Ninth Circuit. Trump is remaking the Courts. That, alone, is enough to re-elect him next year.

I’ve stared the sequel to Mirrors, to be called Secrets. Don’t want you guys to have to binge-read, so you’d better pick up a copy of Mirrors, today!

Open Thread

Mark Noonan65 Comments

Well, I’ve got the first bit of feedback on Mirrors which isn’t from a close friend or family member and it is remarkably positive. I’m very pleased with this. Seems that my character Celeste is proving very popular. No spoilers: go read the book and see why. Don’t fret if the genre isn’t one you normally buy: its a story, and I think quite a fun one.

I did a radio interview about it today on The Barrett Brief and Richard Barrett asked me if I was trying to be original. Most emphatically, I was not. I was trying to tell a story of good guys (and gals) placed in strange and dangerous circumstances and trying, by their wits and courage, to emerge triumphant. RSM takes a look at the upcoming and sure-to-be-dreary Terminator sequel and notes:

Oh, wait, guess what the original Terminator had going for it? Yep, a Nordic blonde playing the damsel in distress, functionally analogous to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. It might seem farfetched to compare a schlocky science-fiction thriller to Casablanca, and you might object that Linda Hamilton is no Ingrid Bergman, but from the audience perspective, the theme of the beautiful young woman in peril, with the hero coming to rescue her from danger, is a winning formula. It’s transcendent, the stuff of classics. Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind, Han Solo and Princess Leia in Star Wars — all variations on this same timeless theme.

My hero is not a Rick Blaine – the cynical but good man. My male heroes are, if anything, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. But the basic formula is still there: St George must defeat the dragon and save the Princess. This is the timeless reality and the basic element of Christian literature. And I wrote it for two reasons. First off, because I’ve wanted to tell a story for a very long time. Secondly, because we’ve gone completely wrong in story telling. Too much Marxist and psychological claptrap. Trying to be edgy by making the hero nearly as much a rat as the villain. Mirrors is my small contribution towards returning popular culture back to sanity – and a bit of fun, for crying out loud.

AOC is accusing Pelosi of racism – you and I should go long on popcorn futures.

Epstein may not be all that rich – this is not surprising. As I’ve said before: my theory is that he’s a pimp and a blackmailer. He’s been deep in with some of the richest and most powerful people in the world for decades but there is nothing in his past which says he’s done something which would result in him being a billionaire. We’ll see what, if anything, comes out. The smart people bailed out on him in 2010 after his first conviction, but plenty of people stayed in. And my bet is because they had to: Epstein had the goods on them.

Millennials are turning to pagan sorcery for their spiritual needs. They just can’t believe that God would become incarnate because that’s so silly…so they believe a fricking crystal will heal them. This will not end well. Paganism can be healthy, but only for a while…if you are worshiping the gods of the field that can be ok…but always, every last time, pagan worship degenerates into either worship of sex or a desire to kill. Or a really twisted combination of both.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan22 Comments

Have you bought your copy of Mirrors, yet? A fairly good number have – don’t be left out!

Also, don’t be left out of Matt’s new offering: Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us from Barack Obama’s Legacy.

We’ve been busy little authors, haven’t we? Meanwhile, I’ve already started on Part II of my fiction series, to be titled Secrets. Hope – and I really will work on it – to have it out in January.

The Left is now pointing out that 2 of McConnell’s 8 great-great-grandfathers owned slaves. I guess they are really going to run on this reparations thing. I think it’ll be disastrous for them, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Perhaps there is a majority who think we have to shell out because 150 years ago, some people did bad things.

FredoCon David French is wringing his hands and getting all, “well, I never!” over a survey which claims that Christians – especially white Evangelicals – feel little or no obligation to take in refugees. But, do we have such an obligation? Meaning, does our Christian faith require us to take in everyone who lives in a lousy country? I can’t see how – welcoming the stranger is a requirement, but does this extend to essentially whole nations wishing to leave their homelands? I can’t see how – mainly because it is impossible for us to do so. The lousy nations of the world are lousy – and the good nations of the world are getting lousy – because of a moral failure which goes far beyond whether or not we’ll let a refugee in. Right after WWII the Ruling Class of the world made the determination that lousy people shall be allowed to flourish. That the West – the moral leader of the world – would not exercise its power to force barbarians to be civilized. The result has been very predictable: the barbarians have asserted themselves. We can fix the world – but it would require us to be the world’s overlords. Unless you want to do that, don’t try to sell me the notion that I have a moral obligation to take in each and every victim of barbarism.

Yes, I have heard about the Epstein arrest – hadn’t really paid much attention to that saga. My guess – with limited knowledge – is that he’s a pimp. A procurer of certain products for rich degenerates who then trades on that to obtain great wealth. I’m pretty sure not much will come of it – too many highly placed people are tied up in this. The Left is trying to work it up as an anti-Trump thing but I fully expect Trump to be clean on this as he has been on everything else they’ve tried on him. Trump does like pretty women – but women, not girls. Melania is younger than Trump, of course, but she married the man when she was 35 and is now 49. If Trump was into very young, this would not be what he did.

Barr says he’ll get the citizenship question on the census. I think that Trump should just do it, Courts be damned. It is clearly not something the Courts have any authority over – there is no case to be made that anyone suffers harm by the government asking someone if they are a citizen. People get asked this every time they seek employment, for crying out loud.

99.99% of Americans have no idea who Chandra Bose was – but, he was an Indian nationalist who made common cause with Hitler and Japan during WWII. He is considered a hero among parts of the Indian population. Be that as it may, he did buddy up to Hitler…and AOC’s chief of staff has been wearing a shirt with Bose’s image on it. Not cool.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan16 Comments

So, AOC has been running around claiming the border patrol detention facilities are Buchenwald II…making absurd claims of horrific treatment of the illegals. I’m not quite sure what the plan is. As you would expect, rank and file lefties are taking AOC’s claims as gospel, but how does that really help the left? No one outside the left – and, I suspect, some Never Trump Fredo-cons – are lending any credence to the stories but even if they were true, the people suffering the abuse only have to agree to go back home for it to end. I can only assume the left thinks that if they really push the “Trump is a Nazi” meme, it’ll eventually take hold and a few million white, middle class voters in the Rust Belt will suddenly decide that open borders and health care for illegals is the way to go.

Nike pulled shows decorated with the Betsy Ross flag from production because Kaepernick said the flag was a symbol of slavery. Kaepernick is an anti-American jerk – and if we’re such a lousy country, why does he stay?

Austin, the one place in Texas where liberals are allowed to flourish, has legalized camping on the city streets. The natural result: homeless people are camping on on the city streets. The left wants to make America a Third World dumpster.

Independent journalist Andy Ngo was given a beating by Antifa thugs in Portland – with, from what I can tell, a wink and a nod from Portland’s police department. My view: the feds have to step in. The Constitution empowers the federal government to ensure a Republican form of government: and with the government of Portland allowing political violence, there is no Republican form of government there. Shut the city government down, arrest everyone, and force the people of the city to start all over again.

In an entirely unsurprising bit of news, it is revealed that migrants are buying children to use when they cross the border. You already knew this – because with kids as a “get into America free” ticket, that is precisely what people wanting to cross will obtain.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan40 Comments

Pelosi has agreed to hold a vote on the Senate-passed border bill. Ol’ Nance is in quite a pickle. She’s got a batsh** crazy caucus (at least half her members) which takes its cues from the even more insane upper class white liberal base of the party…and they want Resistance! They want Impeachment! They want war to the death! But, Pelosi isn’t entirely stupid: she knows that going down the route of the Insane Resistance Left means not only Trump re-elected, but likely with a restored GOP House majority. I think that here she’s trying to take a crazy-pants issue off the table. I don’t think it will work.

Supreme Court rules that we can’t have a citizenship question on the census because Justice Roberts (I’m thinking) felt he needed to throw the left a bone so that he’ll still get invited to the prestige parties in DC. It also rule that the State legislatures will continue to draw legislative district maps, in spite of a heavy effort by Democrats to get judges they’ll pick to draw the lines. So, mixed bag: and we need to re-elect Trump. Two more liberal justices are almost sure to leave the Court between now and January, 2025 and if we can get to a 6-3 or 7-2 majority on the Court, then even a squish like Roberts won’t matter any more.

The MSM got a picture of two dead illegal immigrants (father and child, it seems) and has posted it all to heck and gone…which I guess is supposed to make us all go, “Orange Man Bad! Impeach!”, or something. While we’re all sympathetic to the dead, the bottom line is that they are dead because the adult involved decided to jump the line. Nothing prevented him from applying for legal immigrant status. Nothing prevented him from showing up at a port of entry to claim asylum status. He decided, with child, to try to cross a river. Any experienced outdoor person (or swimmer) can tell you how fraught with danger crossing a rive is, especially with a child. He bet his (and the child’s) life he could make it. He lost. Meanwhile, plenty of people (me, included) have been shouting about the deaths along the border for years…deaths the MSM never covered because there wasn’t an Orange Man Bad angle.

According to a survey, young Americans are growing less tolerant of homosexuality. This, to me, is a backlash – and it is created because it has been years since the gay rights movement was about securing rights for gays. It is all about punishing anyone who isn’t enthusiastic in approval of anything the most lunatic homosexual activist demands at the moment. And, of course, this was inherent from the beginning.

Oh, to be sure your average gay man out there did just want to be left alone – to be able to live as he wished without risk of losing his job over whom he had sex with. This was a reasonable demand to make. Unless we wanted to start arresting straight people for fornication or adultery, there simply was no justification for punishing someone for having sex with whomever. But the left – and, more accurately, the most insane part of the left – wasn’t after toleration; they were after destruction. Specifically, the destruction of the concepts of “right” and “wrong”. It helped gay people to win by asserting that gay is the same as straight…and regular, non-insane gay people benefited from that victory. But it came at a cost which will now, most likely, be paid mostly by non-insane gay people. Gay people would have been better served by a more go-slow approach as people were more than willing to extend tolerance…but buy forcing a leap from “leave me alone” to “bake me a cake, bigot”, a backlash has been created: people don’t like to be dictated to. (HT: The Other McCain)

Open Thread

Mark Noonan53 Comments

We’re winning, guys. Slowly, but surely:

The U.S. Supreme Court has reversed the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, and has ruled that the 1925 ‘Peace Cross’ Memorial erected to remember World War I dead can stay on public land.

It is insane that any American court even accepted the case – it is not in any way, shape or form an establishment of religion to have a religious symbol on public property. The whole thing about the Establishment clause has been twisted – as we all know, because we’re not dumb and know history, an Establishment of Religion is where the government selects a religion and makes it mandatory – and provides various penalties, large or small, for anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the officially sanctioned religion. That is all the Founders were trying to prevent – they weren’t trying to prevent the erection of a memorial cross by a people, at the time, better than 95% Christian (and even today better than 70% Christian). We’ll get more and more like this as Trump’s judges take hold of the Judiciary.

I watched most of Trump’s re-election kickoff rally – I know all our Experts say he’s doomed and its all over and we’re just waiting for the Democrat to win…but, geesh! That was a big, enthusiastic crowd…and I can’t think of a Democrat who can draw that sort of crowd absent a rock star performing at the event. We’re, once again, told that crowd size doesn’t matter…ok, Experts: you say so. I guess we’ll see how it comes out. Oh, Trump raised nearly $25 million in the first 24 hours after his campaign announcement. That’s more than any Democrat, by a lot. Too bad for Trump that a poll is more important than people and donations, right?

If you watched that rally, you saw the themes Trump is going to hammer on over the next 18 months: People Vs Powerful; “I’m for you, they’re for anyone but you”; the economy is booming. That’s a pretty strong message.

Kamala Harris – providing more evidence that Trump is going to win – asserted in a Tweet that Trump’s plan to deport illegal immigrants is an effort to change our demographics. She’s saying that the Real Americans – the people she cares most about – are the illegals! With opponents like this, Trump doesn’t need any friends.

Roger Simon – now resident of Nashville where he’ll be one of the pioneers in the creation of the American Jewish Hillbilly Community – writes about his former home, Los Angeles:

I left Los Angeles for Nashville slightly over a year ago. When I call friends back in my former home (for 50 years), most of them tell me I got out just in time.

Actually, they’re wrong. I should have gotten out ten or even fifteen years before. The handwriting was on the wall. “California dreamin’,” pace Mama Cass, “was no longer a ray-al-it-tee.” It hasn’t been for a long time.

Read the whole thing – and I can attest to what Simon is saying. I’ve been around Los Angeles since 1970, off and on. I even lived there for a few years after I got out of the Navy. Since about, oh, 1995 or so, it has just started to crumble. The last time I was in downtown LA, I was nauseated…doubly so because LA is my father’s city, and my grandfather’s. And I remember how it was when I was a kid and it’s all been wrecked. It is dirty, it is falling apart, it is overrun with zombie-like people who, per reports, are sh**ting so much on the streets that there is typhus. This is what Liberalism does. This is what they want to do to your city. We have to stop them.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan29 Comments

Ace rips into a new, Feminist hero brought forth by the MSM for Pride Month – she left her husband and kids to become a lesbian. She was 36 when she made the discovery. Ace has a few words to say:

Today’s Feminism-Forward Woman

She can be anything she wants to be — including an irresponsible tweener girl, when she feels the pangs of young romance moving through her.

Which is pretty much it. I’ll say something that is probably pretty unpopular: no one is born gay. Not in the sense that it is meant these days – that it is something so integral to your personality that you must express your desire for same-sex attraction. That some people have a very deep-seated attraction to members of the same sex cannot be doubted. Given what we know of genetics, there probably is some genetic role in such an attraction. But, you’re still human: you only must be born and die. Other than that, its all a choice. And this particular lady choose to break her promise and make her life an almost inevitable train wreck.

Lest anyone think I’m merely picking on the lesbian lady, another story along these lines caught my eye. It was recently announced that Father Morris – a long time commentator on Fox News – is leaving the priesthood so that he can get married. Which immediately made me wonder just how galactically stupid his future bride must be. The man is proposing to break a promise he made to God in order that he make a promise to a woman. How likely is it he’ll keep his second promise?

The lady wasn’t born to be lesbian, Morris wasn’t born to be married. They are each making a choice: and a wrong, wicked, evil choice as their choice starts with breaking a promise. Such is the sad state of our world that both of them will be accepted as normal, upstanding members of the society even though they are both demonstrating they can’t be trusted.

Donald Trump decided to name his Mrs “Melania T”, our replacement for “Jackie O”. Naturally, the left melted down. And that’s a good thing.

Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) has a new book out about Social Media and how lousy it is. I’m going to get it because Reynolds does pay much more attention to tech stuff than I do.

Something interesting:

Progressivism’s perversion of our ruling class’s ideas about war and peace began at the turn of the 20th century. It prevailed in the winter of 1950-51 when this class, having committed the armed forces to war in Korea, decided to order them not to defeat an enemy that had already killed some 15,000 of their number, but rather to kill and die to “avoid a wider war,” and to foster an international environment pleasing to itself and allied governments. Since then, the U.S. government has won no wars. More important, it has not sought to win wars. Instead, our foreign policy establishment has spent some 100,000 American lives and trillions of dollars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in pursuit of world order, multilateralism, or collective security. It has cited as a badge of superior wisdom its trashing of Aristotle’s notion that victory is war’s natural objective.

Read the whole thing.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan12 Comments

So, the Democrats called up John Dean – of Watergate infame – to try to make the case that Trump is worse than Nixon. It didn’t work out too well:

There was a memorable exchange between Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Mr. Dean during the hearing. When Gaetz spoke, he entered into the record a December 2005 essay by John Dean, titled “George W. Bush as the New Richard M. Nixon: Both Wiretapped Illegally, and Impeachably.” Gaetz then asked Mr. Dean, “How many American presidents have you accused of being Richard Nixon?” It was a humorous moment, and Dean responded that he had actually written a book called Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush.

Personally, I think this was Pelosi’s attempt to feed something to the base in lieu of impeachment. But I’m not sure she can ride that tiger – remember, a very large portion of Democrats, per polls, believe that Trump was elected because Putin switched Hillary votes to Trump. The constituency of those who believe that Trump is the personification of evil is large in the Democrat party – and will have a huge say in whom the Democrats nominate in 2020. These people might not be satisfied with anything less than Articles of Impeachment.

Leftist fascists are suing Masterpiece Cakes, again. They know they can’t win – they are doing it to make sure that no one else will show such courage. The process is the punishment – which is why we need a Civil Rights Act which explicitly allows anyone to refuse service on any grounds they choose.

California is going to provide full health benefits to illegal immigrants under 26. Trump should withhold all federal health care funds for California. If they’ve got enough money to do that, they don’t need taxpayers in the other 49 States helping out.

Poll says that a majority want abortion legal, but with restrictions. Which is probably correct. I doubt that there is even 25% support for an outright ban on all abortions (this is my position, by the way). But I bet there’s not even 10% who are in favor of the Democrats demand for federally funded abortion on demand up to the last minute (and a few minutes later if the kid makes it past the abortion). My view is that if Roe were disposed of (and it should be, simply on the fact that the ruling was grossly unconstitutional), I’ll bet that most States would ban third trimester abortion, nearly as many would also ban second trimester…and only a couple three would keep it fully legal throughout the pregnancy. That still wouldn’t be good enough for me, but it isn’t for me to impose, but to convince…and that is just what the pro-abortion people don’t want to do. They want their views rammed through, what the people want be damned.

Report is that Barr’s investigation into the investigators is rather broad. We can hope. I know none of us really believe that any of the major players will see the inside of a jail cell…but I also know that each of us, in the back of his or her mind, hopes it will be so. It isn’t vindictiveness. In fact, after a short stint, most of us would probably be ok with Trump pardoning them…but we want justice. We want to know that the Rule of Law really applies to everyone.