Open Thread

Open Thread

Mark Noonan7 Comments

Still lots of predictions out there about how the mid-terms will go – I was fiddling around with an interactive prediction site and as I ran thru it, I realized what was wrong: the Experts are rating a huge number of very Red districts as toss-ups. I realized it was the only way they could make out that the House is in play…by pretending there’s this massive Blue wave coming which will convince Red (not purple – bright Red) district voters (who almost certainly voted overwhelmingly for Trump) to place Pelosi back in control of the House. I’m sorry, but that’s stupid. There’s no indication that the GOP is abandoning Trump as it essentially did with Bush in 2006 (and continued to abandon the GOP in 2008 when McCain ran). To be sure, anything is possible – but I think the most unlikely thing in politics right now is Trump 2016 voters turning to the Democrats. Once I figured that out, I can through the prospects with my perception and I get the GOP to 220 House seats, at least…that is, if the Democrats have a good night. If the GOP has a good night, 236 GOPers come January. A one seat gain (getting gains above the current 235 is difficult because the districts are all so carefully drawn for maximum partisan advantage).

On the Senate side, I can’t see us coming away with less than 53 GOP Senators if the Democrats have a good night – that’s if they win FL, AZ and NV (with AZ and NV being two seats flipped from GOP to Dem). Now, if the GOP has a good night…well, let’s just say it can be good, great or gosh darned phenomenal, depending on the breaks. 59 is Great. Gosh darned phenomenal isn’t to be spoken out loud…it would be too good to be true. But there is a non-zero chance of gosh darned phenomenal happening.

Do remember to vote next month. Its pretty important.

In case you were wondering, Democrats are assessing their loss in the Kavanaugh fight and they seem determined on a change in tactics. They are promising to start getting aggressive and mean. No, seriously: they are whining on social media about how they were too nice during the Kavanaugh battle. Get ready for one heck of a poop storm – and if the Democrats have a bad night in November, board up your windows.

There were rumors Trump was getting ready to fire Rosenstein but Trump scotched those and now says he and Rosenstein are best buddies. Which leads me to believe that Rosenstein was told by Trump that Trump was the boss (a completely correct statement) and Rosenstein agreed with that assertion. Rosenstein is swamp through and through…but the thing about draining a swamp is that you need the cooperation of at least some swamp dwellers (they know where the drains are, after all). We’ll see how this pans out. I’ve learned enough this past couple years to trust Trump’s judgement.

Allahpundit has fallen very far in the Trump era – now he’s rehashing biased polls to make what he thinks is a point. He’s slobbering in the link over a CNN poll of 1,009 adults (not registered voters, not likely voters, but adults…nearly half of whom won’t even vote in November). It naturally over-samples Democrats and under-samples Republicans. But, that is the old line of Conservatism all over…looking for reasons to surrender. A poll like this is designed to give a squish a reason for surrendering. “Look! There’s a poll saying we’re unpopular! Abandon ship! Ahoy!”. Yadda, yadda, yadda. As if any of that means anything. I’m so glad we’re giving these people the boot. It was long overdue.

A memo apparently went out saying that it is just wrong for the GOP to gloat over the Kavanaugh victory. It was all over the MSM and Social Media…naturally with the Never Trump weenies joining. We’re not supposed to win and when we do win, we’re not supposed to feel joy. Think about this – the left tried to win by claiming a boring, married judge was some sort of serial monster and they lost. And we’re supposed to bow our heads and be ashamed. Seriously: why did we put up with this garbage for so long?

Don Surber notes that Trump did the right thing – he apologized on behalf of the United States to Kavanaugh and his family.

51-49 Open Thread

Mark Noonan21 Comments

I’d like to see #PopAColdOne trending on Twitter by the time they vote tomorrow. I saw that a group of GOPers showed up at Cocaine Mitch’s house this morning to drink PBR in favor of Kavanaugh. And I have floated the idea of having a National Kegger for Liberty in DC at some future date.

Jokes aside, it is still a bit up in the air. I do rate Kavanaugh’s chances as very good, but we’ve got a day for the left to go to work on the squishes. I doubt they’ll move Manchin because a vote for Kavanaugh is crucial to his re-election chances. But they still could find two GOPers willing to knife us in the back on this. We’ll just have to wait and see. But, come what may, the GOP is on fire over this – and, maybe, a Kavanaugh defeat would just energize the base even more. GOP fundraising has skyrocketed since this began, Trump hit 50% in Rasmussen and one generic ballot shows that the Democrat advantage among women has dropped from +22 to +1 (which, given polling bias, works out to the GOP having a polling advantage). The Democrats may have only awakened a sleeping giant.

Getting into the details of the mess, we’re starting to see the outlines of how it was created…and that those who did so might have placed themselves in legal jeopardy. Democrats have been acting over the past two years as if the levers of power weren’t in our hands. I think they are about to have a rude awakening.

The Chinese appear to have inserted a hacker chip into phones and computers shipped to the United States. This surprises no one with any sense, at all. Of course they’ll do that. They are a totalitarian dictatorship and nothing happens in China without the government being involved…and it would have been insane of the Chinese government to not avail themselves of this fantastic opportunity to spy on all of us with ease. There is no doubt in my mind that every phone and computer manufactured in China can be accessed immediately by the Chinese government at will. And this is likely just the one we caught – they are sure to have installed backup hacks in case one fails. I’ve been saying it for years: do not trade with tyrannical regimes. Do not have relations with them. All you do is weaken yourself when you do.

I’m going to wait for the votes over a couple election cycles, but there are some indications that African-Americans are questioning their long time support for the Democrat Party. I’ve always said it will happen – but I thought we’d have to do far more for it to occur. But, you know, maybe massively improving prospects combined with clear attempt by white liberals to tell black people how they have to think are doing the thing for us?

Open Thread

Mark Noonan28 Comments

Some SJW types painted nauseating graffiti all over a GOP office in Illinois. Not at all surprising. This is what the left is building – on purpose and maliciously. They want people at a fever pitch of hate. And they are hoping for confrontations – I’ve seen the comments all over social media, including from “respectable” people on the Left. Trouble is, eventually someone is going to shoot back (we’re already past the “someone is going to get shot” phase, as Congressman Scalise can testify). To be sure, the MSM will try to paint the first bit of return fire as some unique outrage…but no one is really listening to the MSM any longer. I hope it doesn’t come out like that – but if you get in people’s faces enough, you will get a direct reaction.

Meanwhile, Cocaine Mitch says he’ll hold a vote on Kavanaugh this week.

Georgetown University says it is committed to Social Justice. This is what Social Justice is, in practice:

C. Christine Fair, an associate professor at Georgetown in the School of Foreign Service, tweeted Saturday, saying white Republican men should die and an added bonus would be if women “castrate their corpses and feed them to swine.”

The University blew off complaints about this by saying they like free speech…which someone should test by holding a pro-life vigil on campus with the participants wearing MAGA hats.

Professor produces a study showing that, just perhaps, the lack of women in physics is based on something other than sexism…and, of course, promptly gets un-personed and his research consigned to the nearest Memory Hole.

Don Surber: smart guy:

The Marxist Mob’s attack on Judge Brett Kavanaugh is part of a multi-decadal plan to eliminate the Constitution — which Marxists slander as a a slave document.

Yep.

Trump should make this his 2020 theme song:

Open Thread

Mark Noonan39 Comments

As I write this, Ford won’t testify and Grassley is giving her until Friday to agree to testify. The only thing which could keep this alive would be a new accuser…and don’t think the Dems aren’t gaming that out to see if they could make it work, at least to the point where Kavanaugh’s confirmation is pushed past the mid-terms.

What has impressed me most over the past 48 hours is:

1. Aside from a few cowards, most non-left people have stood firm. For once, the non-Democrat part of the country is not running for the hills when the Democrats lob a grenade into the body politic. We’ve got to get into the mindset that we have to jump on the grenade. No more fear: fight back, every time.

2. I’m hearing from and about Average Joe’s and Jane’s – people who don’t follow politics closely and who don’t have strong loyalty to either party – who are furious over this. I’ve even heard such state that even if they could prove Kavanaugh did it, it shouldn’t stop him from being on the Court. As I’ve said before, the one thing Americans tend to unite on is that they don’t like unfairness. It is simply unfair to accuse a person of a horrible act and not only refuse all cross-examination of the accuser, but to make the accusation in such a way that the accused really has no way to even try to disprove the allegation.

How all this will work out in the near and long term, I don’t know: but I’m starting to suspect that this is going to cost the Democrats some Senate seats in November. There is a theory out there that it is all a case of mistaken identity – that it happened, but someone else was the perpetrator. This is possible…but I doubt it was “mistaken” identity…

Muckraking journalist James O’Keefe got a video of Justice Department officials admitting they use their official powers to help the political left. So, here’s the Deep State, guys: a collection of bureaucrats who view their primary loyalty as being to a political party – or movement – rather than to the people of the United States. They brag in the videos about how they can’t be fired – they are relying on the protections built into law so that people can’t be fired for political reasons: but such laws were also written on the assumption that the bureaucrats would remain carefully neutral in the political battles of the United States. It is time to clean house – and if it means changing the civil service laws, it’ll have to be done.

Interesting article on the prospect of microbial life in some briney lakes under the Martian ice…my view: life is probably very rare in the Universe. The conditions necessary for any life like we have on Earth are so narrow that the chances of any particular planet having them are small. One only need look at Mars and Venus to see…here are three planets, Venus, Mars and Earth, that all seem to have the necessary pre-conditions for life, but only one of them has it. My guess is that we’ll search a very long time, out to very far distances, and never detect anything alive.

The Air Force Secretary has mapped out a plan for the Space Force. A lot of people, including many on the right, have heaped ridicule on the President’s proposal…much as many did with Reagan’s proposal for SDI. But, folks, Space is important – I’ve held for 30 years that eventually Space will become as dominant as the Sea in human life. Whomever controls Space will control their own national destiny.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan46 Comments

The Democrats are proving there is no bottom to the gutter – Senator Feinstein, in a desperate and downright evil attempt to last-minute derail Kavanaugh, has said she received an anonymous denunciation of Kavanaugh and has referred it to Justice…where she’s likely relying on some Deep State malefactors to run with it, at least enough to lend this disgusting hit job some legitimacy.

This is the utter sh** of the left, folks – and it is what the Never Trumpers say we must vote for this November because Trump is so bad. F all these people! Get out and vote GOP as if your life depended on this November. Let’s take this garbage and shove it right up their a**.

Yes, as a matter of fact, this did piss me off. A lot.

Latest in liberal stupidity: Men’s preference for young women is a sign that masculinity is in crisis. Anyone want to break it to them that men find young women attractive because, well, sexual attraction has as its purpose procreation: you know, it’s rather biologically baked in for us to have a preference for sexual partners who can fulfill the biological purpose of sex?

So, a police force hires a man after determining he’s unable to handle stress…and then, in a stressful situation, he shoots a person. Now, why was he hired? Because he’s a Somali Muslim and diversity is our strength…

I see a Red Wave coming – because four separate forecasts have the Democrats winning the House.

Out and About Open Thread

Mark Noonan3 Comments

To give you a bit of hope for the future, a young man wrote this – and I think he’s going places:

The biggest piece of advice I can give to someone trying to get into the world of venture capital, and the place where I think I did the best job in my process, is to fake it till you make it. This means that even before you start working in VC, you should start acting like a venture capitalist. Working in private equity at The Carlyle Group, I knew I was in a related field and at a blue-chip firm that would help get my foot in the door (which it definitely did, but I was on my own past that point), but I also knew that my day-to-day at Carlyle was nothing like what my day-to-day would be like working at a venture capital firm. At Carlyle, I was dealing with billion-dollar transactions that involved decades-old companies, compared to early-stage venture capital where companies may or may not even have a product in the market and any financial records are slim at best. This meant that I had to take it upon myself to demonstrate that I had what it took to be successful in venture.

Nothing better than a kid with a plan and the grit to carry it out. Full disclosure: this young man is the son of a lady I grew up with. She’s naturally proud of her boy, and I think with good reason. So, as we geezers sit around wondering what comes after us, I think we can rely on their still being a good deal of determination and willingness to work in America. Where’s he’s going is where the future of the American economy will start. I hope he does well – for himself and for everyone.

Victor Davis Hanson nails it. Again. Because he’s smarter than most everyone. Love to hear a discussion about just any subject between him and Thomas Sowell. They could talk about knitting and I bet it’d be fascinating.

The Trump Administration has shut down the offices of the Palestinian Authority in DC – a move apparently in response to the PA’s refusal to get realistic about making peace. And this after various funds provided by us to the PA were cut. It is the way to go – and I don’t think we’ll get more than pro-forma words from the Arab world over it. No one wants the Israeli-Palestinian war to continue except the PA because the ongoing war is the primary justification for the PA government remaining in power. Time for a change, though. The Palestinians can have peace and prosperity as soon as they ask for it – they’ll just have to give up their stupid dream of one day driving the Israelis out of Tel Aviv.

A Progressive group as come out in favor of GULAG. No, I’m not kidding – they really think that GULAG is a good idea.

A Broadway actress has made a massive, in-kind donation to Trump’s re-election effort by wondering if where is John Wilkes Booth when we need him. OTOH, this sort of inflammatory, eliminationist rhetoric does get into the minds of the insane and convinces them to act. Our Progs really have no idea what they’re doing.

The ‘Stache of Doom (I stole that from a Twitter account, and I can’t remember which one) has dropped the hammer on US participation in the International Criminal Court. This is only sensible – the real reason for the Court is to drag US (and Israeli) officials before it in a form of globalized lawfare against us.

This police shooting is, well, strange – cop says she shot the (unarmed) guy because she thought she was in her apartment and he was an invader. I don’t know about you, but I tend to remember when I’m in my own home and when I’m not. Something bizarre is going on in this case.

British cops, who apparently have nothing else to do, are asking the public to report “non-crime hate incidents”. Which, of course, makes that whole Battle of Britain thing to have been rather a waste of time.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan8 Comments

Rachel Rollins won the Democrat primary for Suffolk County, MA District Attorney…and, given the nature of things, this means she’s the new DA. She’s promised to “decline to prosecute”, unless a supervisor’s permission is obtained, such crimes as trespassing, shoplifting, disorderly conduct, receiving stolen property, driving without a license, minor in possession of alcohol, drug possession with intent to distribute. Everything old is new, again – especially for liberals, who haven’t had a new idea in a century. This is precisely what did starting in the 1950’s – going easy on “minor” crimes because, well, they were being committed by poor boys who were simply acting out of frustration over poverty and lack of opportunity. The result was our murder rate in the 1970’s. This is just the per usual virtue signalling from leftists who will never, ever spend the night in a crime infested neighborhood.

Some Lefty rando on Twitter decided to get into Robert O’Neill’s face when O’Neill mildly pointed out that Obama still can’t say “Radical Islam”. The Lefty said:

He kinda killed Osama Bin Laden, so….

Thing is, O’Neill was part of Seal Team 6, which took out Bin Laden…the rest of the Lefty rando’s day didn’t go so well on Twitter.

Papadopoulos got 14 days. Trump pointed out that it cost $28 million to get to this…$2 million per day spent in jail.

Corey Stewart wants to have an ICE Tea Party on September 15th outside the Fairfax, VA ICE office.

Woman gets dumped, and Robert Stacy McCain has an interesting take on it.

Kavanaugh, TDS and Open Thread

Mark Noonan23 Comments

The Democrats seeded the audience for the Kavanaugh hearing with people who would deliberately try to disrupt the proceedings. The Democrat Senators all went on tirades against Kavanaugh. It was the most un-American, anti-democratic performance I’ve ever seen. I was disgusted and angered. I can only imagine the Democrats were trying to placate their base because they can’t in any way stop Kavanaugh from being confirmed. But I think what they did will turn off ever larger numbers of people.

To top it all off, one Progressive spied an anonymous lady sitting behind Kavanaugh and claimed that the position of her fingers amounted to a secret white power signal. Rather than having everyone laugh at him over it, bags of Progressives ran with it – they were seriously saying that this was the proof they needed that Trump is trying to secure white power fanatics for the Court. When it came out that she’s part Mexican and part Jewish (and descended from Jews who had to flee the Holocaust) that still didn’t stop the Progressives from claiming she’s a secret agent of white power! These people are certifiable!

OTOH, The Resistance set up a Twitter poll about Trump and 2020 and as of this time, with >214k votes cast, Trump is winning with 54% of the vote.

Bob Woodward wrote a book about Trump and made some claims some are finding unbelievable – especially General Mattis. Woodward has had a long-standing reputation as being a guy who can get White House staffers to talk. As for me, I’ve never really believed it. No White House staffer, of any President, is going to talk to Woodward unless he or she has permission to do so…and, so, will only say what is pre-approved. There’s no way a famous guy like Woodward can actually get a scoop. Its why guys like him aren’t workaday reporters…no one would go to such a person and spill it unless someone wanted it spilled. Woodward’s books have probably had some real insights into events, but to think he’s ever unearthed something in his books is absurd. My thinking is that no one who mattered in the White House spoke to Woodward – at least, not off the record. Woodward, at best, was only able to glean whatever Obama hold-overs could get…which was likely mostly second-hand stuff.

Britain’s Labour Party has a growing anti-Semitism problem. Lots of people complain about it, and their complaints are valid. Nothing, however, will be done about it. Labour’s future electoral health is based upon pleasing the rapidly growing Muslim population of Britain…Britain’s small Jewish population just won’t matter to Labour. I figure over the next decade Britain’s Jews will abandon Labour…and I wonder how long America’s Jews will continue to lend their support to the Democrats?

Liberals just don’t like America – nor the fact that the first man on the Moon was an American. They really don’t like their nation – First Man is just another symptom of it. Think about even some good movies – like, for instance, “Saving Private Ryan”. It was great – wonderfully done movie. But, still, think about it: the movie isn’t about the bravery of the troops or the magnificent victory they won: it was merely about who lived and died, who suffered and how much. We’re not supposed to be proud of the Army Rangers, but sorry for their plight. Even though most of them were double volunteers (volunteered for the Army, then volunteered for the Rangers; same thing for the Paratroopers).

Most of the real fighting in WWII wasn’t done by draftees – not in the sense of men who had to be forced into the fight. Even if they were particularly drafted, it was likely because they were told to wait for call-up as the military couldn’t take them when they presented themselves for service (the late William Manchester explained this about himself in his autobiographical “Goodbye, Darkness“). As Morrison put it, we had tough guys eager to fight against the enemy. And tough they were. And we should be proud of them. They weren’t lambs lead to slaughter, but lions who grabbed the enemy by the throat and slew them without remorse. But you can’t say that any more in the movies…it would offend liberals, and hurt ticket sales in China

Nike picked Kaepernick as their new model. Using the ridiculous tag line of “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” Hate to break it to ya, Nike, but Kaepernick didn’t sacrifice his career for his cause…if was any good, he’d still be playing; and the fans would even put up with kneeling, if he could at least get better than 4-12 on the year. But to be an overpaid second-rater and then complain about America? That just pisses people off.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan19 Comments

California passed a bill to require all corporate boards to have at least one woman – because you tender, little ladies just can’t get there on your own, I guess.

Robert Stacy McCain notes the “wilding” problem in Chicago – and links to this article:

After spending the day at Oak Street Beach, the girlfriend claims she and her boyfriend were walking back to their car at around 6 p.m. in the vicinity of the 900 block of North Lake Shore Drive when they were surrounded by “20-to-25 offenders who gathered around them,” Hopkins said.

“She described a completely unprovoked attack with no warning. Her and her boyfriend were enjoying the day on the beach. They were walking back to their car minding their own business and, with no warning at all, they were surrounded by this large group and they did absolutely nothing to provoke it,” Hopkins said.

“They started a confrontation and, at some point, the victim was struck in the head and fell to the ground.”

Civilization is a thing veneer, folks. And lots of very bad people figured that out a long time ago – mostly notable Lenin, Hitler and Stalin. You rip the lid off, and people will do the most astonishingly savage things. Not all of them – but enough will. People just take peace for granted – security of life and property. But the general security we enjoyed in our cities wasn’t a natural event. It grew over a thousand years during which time everyone went around armed and punishments for even relatively minor crimes were brutal: in 18th century London, most men carried a sword and you could be flogged for petty theft. The idea that one shouldn’t commit a crime didn’t come naturally: it was literally beaten into the population. Its been a long time since the pound of flesh has really been extracted and, meanwhile, we’ve been essentially telling the rising generations that being a criminal is cool. What happened in that article is the natural result – and the natural result of that will be everyone eventually going around armed and a return to savage punishments for even minor offenses. And don’t think this all “just happened”…as I said, bad people long ago figured out that civilization is a weak reed…and those who hate our civilization (and they are legion among us) see things like the “wilding” as just another means of tearing down the hated civilization.

What is the Trump/Russia thing? Don Surber puts it all in a very complete nutshell:

The real news was the breakfast itself, which was relegated to Paragraph 14: “One of the meetings he recounted was a Washington breakfast attended by Steele, a Steele associate and Ohr. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, who worked for Fusion GPS, the political research firm that hired Steele, attended at least part of it.”

Ohr was not only married to a woman who worked for the company Hillary and the DNC hired to get dirt on Donald John Trump, but Ohr was meeting with the man in charge of delivering the dossier.

The only collusion with Russians was Steele and his sources at the Kremlin getting together to put together a dossier aimed at bringing down a duly elected American president.

It is all anyone needs to know – the Trump/Russia thing was cooked up by people determined to get Trump. The end. Shut it down – fire Mueller.

The reason we don’t have a Democracy is because our Founders knew that a full Democracy was too risky – remember, all the Athenians had to do to win the Peloponnesian War was not vote to execute a batch of successful admirals. The Founders kept the people away from full power, and that is a good thing, because popular passions can get out of hand. On the other hand, those yapping about “saving Democracy” under Trump dislike Democracy as much as the Founders did…especially as a fully functioning Democracy would probably force into exile most of those now claiming to be Democracy’s defenders.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan13 Comments

We’ll start off tonight with a racist song:

Legal Insurrection writes up the possibility – thin, but real – of a GOP Senate upset in Rhode Island.

On Twitter this evening someone posted a short video of the line for Trump’s Indiana rally. Now, I realize that Indiana is one of the most Trump-friendly States you can find out there…but the line was astonishing. My guess: there are more Republicans these days than there has been for a while, and they like Trump.

Democrat warns law enforcement against enforcing the law because Trump is President. I don’t think our Democrats fully realize what they’re doing here.

Democrat money is now far left – which is likely why the Democrats keep going further left: it is where the money is. Trouble is, I think this increasing leftist purity among Democrats is making the party smaller. Sure, it is more on fire enthusiastic and donates and organizes and knocks on doors like no tomorrow…but as a party becomes more ideologically pure, it starts to turn off anyone who isn’t ideologically pure. Some people on the right simply don’t like the populist elements of Trump. Well, I can dig that…but a fusion of Conservatism and Populism will likely win elections, whereas a purely Conservative party will consistently lose. Democrats are now purely left…

Democrats are calling for a boycott of In N Out burger…apparently not learning a thing from their Chik Fil A debacle.

Civil Rights of 1919. As it is, I think Congress can legislate very broadly, as the Constitution directly gives Congress the power to make all necessary laws and regulations to ensure the Constitution is enforced.

And we’ll end this with a secretly racist song: