politics

We Lost: Victory Beckons

Mark Noonan16 Comments

Nothing fails like success, you know? To take a couple examples from history:

Chancellorsville is rated as Lee’s greatest success as a general. Historians tend to use it as the justification for calling Lee a commander of genius and stand in awe of his decision to split his smaller army in the face of a larger enemy and slip around the Union flank to roll up a stunning victory. There’s only one problem with it: it was stupid.

It was only Hooker’s indecision which allowed Lee to pull it off. If the Union commander had pretty much just ordered his army forward any time during Lee’s movement to the flank, Lee would have been utterly crushed and his army totally destroyed. No really great commander gambles; great commanders rig the game so they can’t lose no matter what the enemy does. And if they can’t rig it at the moment, they don’t move. Lee’s move was daring – but reckless and no officer training school would ever teach a cadet to do that.

And it was also Lee’s eventual undoing: just two months later at Gettysburg, Lee, memory of Chancellorsville still fresh, sent his army into an attack which his primary subordinate told him was impossible. But his great victory gave him an entirely overinflated idea of what he and his army could do, and too high a level of contempt for what the Union army and its commanders were capable of. The doom of the Confederacy was sealed with Lee’s defeat: any chance of fighting the Union to a negotiated peace was lost when Lee’s foolhardy charge kicked the guts out of some of his best fighting units.

Next example: the German invasion of France in 1940. Once again, it is rated as a genius move by the Germans to send their main force through the Ardennes in a move to cut off the Anglo-French armies in Belgium. Manstein, the architect of it, is credited as a genius – and the fact that it worked tends to obscure the plain fact that it shouldn’t have worked. And I mean not at all. And while Manstein was the man who drew up the plan, he wasn’t the only general who noticed the Ardennes. In fact, nearly everyone did: German, French and English. And everyone discounted it: and not just because of the rough terrain. It also entailed sending a massive, mechanized force on a pencil thin drive supported by secondary roads. Any significant French of English drive against the flanks of such a force would quickly destroy it.

But, the Krauts got lucky. Very lucky. Half a dozen times. The French had plenty of opportunities, and forces in hand, to wreck the German plan. They unfortunately had generals who thought in terms of days rather than hours for response time. The German gamble worked only because a failure of French leadership. Especially in the first 48 hours of the breakthrough, just about any energetic French general at the Corps or Army level could have won the most stupendous French victory since Austerlitz had they just moved.

But it was also the German undoing. The success of their Ardennes gamble gave all of them, from Hitler down to the last Fritz, a massively overinflated idea of what they could accomplish. When Hitler turned his sights on Russia the following year, even the German generals who hated him figured six to eight weeks would be enough to finish off Russia. And it would have been – had the Russian leadership crumpled under pressure like the French leadership had. Stalin and his henchmen were rat bastards…but when the Germans were pounding at the gates, they stayed in Moscow and put up a fight rather than run away. And thus the Germans discovered that Luck isn’t on the side of the Master Race, but (as always) on the side with the biggest battalions.

So, why the history lesson?

Because our success was 1980 and 1984 and I think we sort of expect it to just happen again. That we have the right ideas and so we’ll just win if we get our ideas out there. We’re forever looking for the next Reagan to carry us to victory. We think that politics is just matter of finding the right message alchemy – instead of the hard work of getting voters to vote for us. Our too easy success against feckless opponents never prepared us for Clinton and Obama opponents…nor for the political machine they built and which elevated a senile degenerate to the White House in 2020.

To be sure, some get it: Scott Pressler is the most shining example of the youth of the GOP getting out there and doing the work. You should know: back around September when all of us were expecting a big win in 2022, he pointed out that while he was having some success in certain areas (most notably Florida), in lots of places there was little enthusiasm for the GOP…he was expecting what, in the end, we got: a small and incomplete GOP victory. We need more like Scott and we might just get them. People who are willing to do the hard work of registering voters and talking to them, to find out what might be on their minds.

We need to jettison Reagan. And it might be time to jettison Trump. Without for a moment elevating DeSantis or anyone else to demi-god status. Might RDS be our guy? He might. We’ll see. But if he turns out to not be the best tool to break down the Democrat door, then he gets discarded, quite ruthlessly, in favor of someone else. On and on like that – all the while working at the local level to shore up the real strength of the GOP. In each success is the seed of failure – but in each defeat there is the seed of victory. Our problem is that since 1984, we’ve only haltingly looked for the lessons our defeats are teaching us, and so we’ve lost all along…even during the times we officially came out on top of the vote. It is no good to simply get the office: we have to get all the offices, all at once, and with a firm commitment to certain actions. We can’t coast on Reagan, nor rely on a Trump to win our battle for us. It is time for us, all of us, to fight anew.

Either the Citizens Rule, or the Government Does

Mark Noonan3 Comments

I got into a little Twitter discussion on the subject of what the government may do to shape public opinion and/or withhold information from the public. This was in response to a David French piece defending the Biden Administration over its actions on social media. I couldn’t read the French piece because he’s got me blocked (I’m soooo sad about that…) but the gist of it seems to have been that the government has First Amendment rights and so it can tell people it would like something said, or taken down, and if the private actor then says it, or takes down the offending information, then its all good. This is, of course, absurd. But that didn’t stop people from defending at least the concept if not all details of French’s assertion. And so my little discussion.

My prime assertion is that the government may not shape public opinion nor may it withhold information from the public. My view of the government is very much that it only has authority delegated from us and thus it may not use it’s authority in any way against us (except, of course, when we break the law and cause harm to a fellow citizen; but even there it is using it’s delegated authority to defend the citizen). But in addition to that I asserted that the government may not properly withhold information from us. Once again, it is our government. We own it. It is our employee, as it were. It only has power as we assign to it – and so it can’t possibly hide things from us because we can’t judge it’s conduct unless we know exactly what it is doing. This generated two objections.

To my first point, it was said that my view was simply silly: the President has the Bully Pulpit and so of course can shape public opinion. That, in fact, the government doing what is does must shape public opinion.

My response to that is the President, speaking from his Bully Pulpit, is not doing anything different in kind from what I am doing writing on this blog. To be sure, the President will get a lot more airtime than me, but he is still just stating his views and asking people to agree with him, just as I am. It is a pity that I don’t have a national audience, but no one is actively preventing me from having one. In theory, someone in the MSM could see what I write, decide it is newsworthy, and presto my views are all over the place. The person holding the Presidency has a huge advantage over anyone who doesn’t hold the office in getting a message out – but it is still just getting a message out. We get into a whole different territory when the President is deciding what messages may get out.

It might seem like a small difference, but it is crucial. My rights are not violated if the President’s view that I disagree with is broadcast far and wide. My rights are not violated if the MSM refuses to present my blog post to a national audience. My rights are violated if Biden were to call my internet provider and tell them to shut down my internet access so that I couldn’t post on my blog. And it wouldn’t matter what reason Biden used to justify the ask: he could say I’m a horrible, lying terrorist who no decent person should listen to. Heck, he could prove I’m all that and he’d still be violating my rights. The government must not do any such thing to me or any other citizen. I have access to whatever platforms I can pay or or which provide themselves free to users and the government must never, under any assertion, interfere with my ability to use either a platform I pay for nor one which provides itself free to users. Complete hands off. It doesn’t matter if I’m lying my a** off or slandering people six ways to Sunday: the government, which only has the authority I gave it, must not interfere with my lawful actions.

To the second objection: what about military secrets or information related to an on-going criminal investigation? Surely the government must be able to keep that from us, right?

Wrong.

Once again, it is our government. It must justify itself to us. We own it and must know what it is doing in our name. Saying the government can keep something secret from the citizen is like an employee asserting a right to keep vital information about the job from the employer. We have to know – how else can we decide if our interests are being served?

I’ll point out that Lincoln won the Civil War with hostile reporters all over the Union Army. He didn’t have a public affairs office. He said what he wanted to say, gave his orders to the generals and then suffered the pain or enjoyed the praise from each action. I’ve talked about this a bit before – the only purpose secrecy serves it to allow the government to hide things. Usually it’s worst mistakes. How many times have we seen some massive, government screw up only to be blown off by the government saying “we can’t comment on an on-going investigation”? Of course they can’t comment: they screwed up. And now they’re just trying to bury it until time passes and people forget about it. “Military security” might as well mean “we messed up and won’t tell you”. As for criminal investigations – not talking about the ongoing investigations meant that things like reports of young, Arab men taking flying lessons in the USA didn’t come to public notice.

Certainly there is a risk to both military and police action if it is all done out in the open but I think that the risk to liberty is greater. And my bet is that for every police or military loss due to disclosure we’d gain ten victories because screw ups aren’t hidden and are fixed in a timely manner. But even if you could show that openness is a net loser, we still must insist upon it. Once again: our government. It is doing things in our name. Things which may cost us our lives and our fortunes. Things which we are morally responsible to God for. We simply have to know.

And by knowing and by preventing the government from interfering with us, we shall be Citizens. We shall carry out the primary activity of Democracy which is not voting: it is self rule. It is deciding what will happen and then watching as our delegates in government carry out our instructions, and punishing them if they get it wrong.

And in the end, either we, the Citizens rule or the Government rules – and tells us what we can say, and hides information from us which could make the government look bad. For myself, I prefer to be a Citizen.

Enslaved by Lies

Mark Noonan

I was suddenly reminded yesterday of the Christmas Truce.

If you are not aware of it, this occurred on Christmas of 1914 between the trenches in France. World War One was four months old by then and the armies, by that time, were exhausted, incapable of mounting any serious offensive actions. As Christmas Eve came in, entirely spontaneously all along the front, groups of soldiers started to fraternize in No Man’s Land. It was especially marked in the areas were British and German troops faced off, but even in many areas where French and German troops held the line, this happened.

It was, of course, all every much in defiance of orders and many officers on both sides deplored it, but it was so widespread that no action could seriously be taken against the soldiers. Essentially, they called a one day walk out on the war and enjoyed themselves immensely: exchanging souvenirs, food and drink and even, according to some stories, engaging in some soccer matches.

The following year there was some repeats of this but very much rarer: the high commands of all armies decreed raids and artillery barrages for Christmas, 1915 just in order to prevent a repeat. By 1916, the bitterness of the war had sunk so deep that no one on either side was in any mood for a truce.

It was, in retrospect, one of the last acts of decency in the world.

The War was a mistake. A huge miscalculation by the German military class which, while brilliant, was entirely focused on strictly military affairs and simply did not have the corporate ability to consider anything else. They had seen their chance in July of 1914 – with Britain on the verge of Civil War, revolutionary ferment again rising in Russia – to smash France and reassert German dominance of the Continent. They guessed wrong. They should have made peace as soon as possible after the failure to destroy France. But they felt they couldn’t. Meanwhile, the French certainly didn’t feel like making peace while German soldiers occupied parts of France and that held true for Britain, as well. But the cause of the war – a stupid German attempt to simply be strong and show it – was not enough to sustain a major war effort for long. Nor was it sufficient in France and Britain to merely make the war about getting the Germans out of France and Belgium.

And so the lies crept in. Both sides started accusing the other of being monsters. And while Germany was ever in the van, both sides started to behave as monsters. Step by step every rule of war was tossed aside in a desperate attempt to find some expedient which would give a decisive advantage. At the end of it all, as Churchill pointed out, the scientific, Christian States of Europe had only denied themselves torture and cannibalism as tools of warfare, and these of doubtful utility. And it was merely to sustain a war which was a mistake and which should have been composed as swiftly as possible once it was clear (say, by late 1915) that neither side could win quick and cheap enough to make the effort worthwhile. That, once again from Churchill, that in that war victory could only be bought so dearly as to be indistinguishable from defeat.

There was one more chance at human decency – the Marquis of Lansdowne, a senior British politician, circulated a letter in early 1917 arguing that peace must be made on the basis of the pre-war status quo before Civilization was wrecked. He became despised by all sides. And so the grind went on until sheer exhaustion hit the Germans harder than the allies and they quit.

I think that what happened in World War One provided the foundation of our current Age of Lies. Government got into the habit of deceiving the people, and itself. Lies became routine. It began to be asserted that certain things couldn’t be told to the public. They put high minded phrases around their justifications but the reality was that they didn’t want to admit things like 20,000 dead British soldiers on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Release that, and the British people might have decided that giving peace a chance had merit. Hide it and you could lie that things were moving along splendidly. This habit of lies and deception even worked into popular culture. You might recall the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey where the Dr Floyd character is apologizing to the assembled scientists about the cover story of a plague to hide the fact that evidence of alien intelligence had been found – and then further goes on to say that they had to find a way to release that information in a manner which wouldn’t alarm the public. As a kid when I watched that, it made immediate sense that the government had to lie and carefully dole out information. But now that I’m older and (we hope) a little wiser, I can see it: the only people who gain advantage from lying and hiding facts are con artists. People who are trying to get what they shouldn’t have.

Think about it: sure in the Civil War Lincoln and his people would try to play certain things close to the vest and try to put the brightest face on failure…but when the Battle of Cold Harbor cost 13,000 Union lives for no advantage, there was no way to hide that – the casualty lists were published within days and the newspapers were calling it the hideous failure it was from the get-go. In today’s world, can you imagine that sort of openness? Of course not. They’d hide it. Call it a victory. Call anyone who questioned it a traitor. And then they’d do the same thing again and again…the thing about Cold Harbor is that it was Grant’s only serious mistake of the war and he never repeated it. Because it was out there right away and he and his officers couldn’t deny it. They could only do better going forward. Because it was a time of truth and they were truthful men.

This is not a time of truth, nor of truthful men. We live by lies. We are enslaved to them. Grumpily for those of us who see the con, joyfully for those still enthralled to the lies. But all of us live by them. Ever said “Happy Holidays”? You participated in the lies of our times – in this case, that anyone would be doing anything special the last week of December absent the birth of Jesus. And if there ever was a Jew pissed off that we didn’t mark Hanukkah or a Muslim who felt slighted by our lack of Ramadan greetings…then they were the few jerks which always show up in any community. No decent non-Christian person ever had the slightest complaint about “Merry Christmas”. It is on and on like that. It is drilled into our brains. It keeps people justifying the lies because we need the lies to live. After all, if we told the truth about things, then some people would be upset about it! If you look at some of the people writing about what the FBI did with Twitter or the way Ukraine corruption has been swept under the rug, you can see it – they are essentially saying that these are noble lies in a good cause.

But there are no noble lies. There are just lies. And we do have to break free of them. We have to stop being slaves.

The Truth is Hard to Desire

Mark Noonan29 Comments

We got Twitter Files Part II tonight – and it was all about shadow banning.

Twitter documents clearly showed that Twitter employees were suppressing the reach of right-of-center accounts. All officially because they were spreading “hate” and “misinformation”, but the reality was because they were telling the truth and that cut against the Democrat Narrative – especially in 2020 when they needed the Covid Narrative to work against Trump. That did work, by the way.

Among the accounts suppressed was that of Dr Jay Bhattacharya who was warning that the lockdowns and masks were doing more harm than good – something that all but the most devoted Covid Cultists now admit. The guy is a professor as Stanford – MD and PhD. His skillset include infectious disease. Now, that set of credentials doesn’t mean he’s automatically right – but he’s clearly someone who should have a seat at the table. If he’s saying something, we should hear it and bounce it against what other people are saying.

But none of that from Twitter – or, indeed, from social media in general. It was all that Covid is a uniquely horrific disease and we need to mask and lockdown.

The mask thing was always bizarre to me. I mean, come on: the reason why a surgeon wears a mask isn’t to protect himself against the patient, but to protect the patient against the doctor. Surgeons actually got very good and slicing and dicing people early on. It is, after all, mostly a matter of mechanics. Once you know where the parts are, you’re good to go. But, of course, in olden days they didn’t know about bacteria and so even the most successful surgeries would fail because of a post-operative infection. Once that was known, doctors started to scrub up and wear gloves and masks – to keep bacteria from the doctor entering the patient’s wound/incision and making all medical efforts moot. Masks are to stop bacteria – which are massively larger than a virus. Comparison? It takes a thousand nanometers to make a micrometer. Most viruses are about 20 nanometers. Bacteria can come in at 2 micrometers. We’re talking hole in the ground vs Grand Canyon, guys. A mask is sufficient to stop most bacteria…but it might as well not even be there when it comes to a virus.

And we all knew this. Or were supposed to know this. I learned the basics of it in High School biology. But I guess most don’t know…or were easily bamboozled by the TV. The call for masking to stop a virus should have been met with contemptuous laughter…but, as it turns out, I lost a friend of 20 years when I pointed out that masks were useless. She was sure they worked! Because the TV said so.

I guess, thinking back on everything, I should have realized we would have this problem when, years ago, I found that people were demanding – and doctors were prescribing – antibiotics for colds and flu. Antibiotics do absolutely zero against a virus. They can’t do anything against a virus. Bacteria and viruses are entirely different species of problem. But there is was – and now Covid hysteria does make some sense.

We’re really stupid as a people.

But we’re also highly propagandized. Huge amounts of what people think they know is actually just an ad campaign which got drilled into the brain by a corporation or a bureaucracy. Solzhenitsyn noted this in the USSR – that history isn’t what happened but what the government chose to hammer into the public mind. It takes an act of will to go beyond the Narrative. first to ask if the Narrative makes any sense and then, if it doesn’t to figure out what might have happened. Example:

The Official Story of WWII had it had it that the Soviets, by a miracle of organization and work, moved most of their heavy industry out of the Donbas in front of the advancing Nazis and set up shop in the Urals where they then produced what was needed to win the war.

Well, sure enough, there were a lot of factories set up in the Urals…but we’re supposed to believe that in the chaos of defeat and retreat, with the limited Soviet transport system giving priority to the armies at the front they yet found the manpower and means to move whole factories a thousand miles to the east. Yeah, sorry: no, that didn’t happen. On their best days the Russians couldn’t pull that off. With the Nazis at the gates, they sure in heck couldn’t.

The reality is that American and British arms, munitions and material keep the Soviets in the war. We sent, for instance, something like 400,000 trucks to the USSR. 13,000 tanks. About 120 tanks made up a Soviet tank corps (roughly equivalent to an armored division for other European military forces). Thirty one tank corps were formed by the USSR during WWII. Do the math: most Soviet tank corps were equipped to one degree or another with American tanks. Sure, they did build T-34’s. Lots of them – in factories in the Urals where US-made machine tools and US-supplied materials made it happen. But the bottom line is that without our help, they simply wouldn’t have enough to fight a war with.

Once you think about how ridiculous it is to move, say, a steel mill a thousand miles then the whole fantasy falls apart…and that makes you look up just what we sent to the USSR during WWII and you find it was a simply staggering amount of everything you could possibly need from boots to to fighter planes.

But we all believe it! The TV said so. Or some such.

The truth, as the catch-phrase goes, is out there. And it is pretty easy to find. But I think that most don’t desire to find it. Most these days prefer that others do their thinking for them. I think people by now are simply afraid of it – afraid that if they seek the truth and find it, they’ll be forced to act.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan82 Comments

Trump announces for 2024, McConnell gets re-elected as Senate GOP leader, the GOP takes the House.

A lot of people are saying a lot of things about what this means and making their stout assertions of what will happen. Spoiler: nobody has the first clue. If the election we just had didn’t tell you that you can’t predict things, then nothing will. As for me, I predict nothing. I will pay no attention to any poll. I will pay no heed to the Experts telling us how it will go. It will be as it will be and we’ll find out after it is over how it went.

That said, there is still much we can say. And of course I’ll say it!

Trump’s speech last night was rather low key, wasn’t it? I’ve never subscribed to the view that Trump is unscripted: I’m pretty confident that he plans everything out to the last detail. So, that was the effect he wanted to present. Why? Could be because after last week’s disaster, being too rah rah would look ridiculous. Could also be that he’s trying to overall strike a new tone: “look, guys, it is bad: we can fix it, here’s how”. Could also be influenced by the potential GOP field…you know, look weak and see who strikes first and then your response is a counter-attack which, no matter how blistering it is, always seems fair turnabout by regular folks.

As for myself, I have decided not to commit myself to anyone this early on. I’m going to see how it plays out. As we get to the end of 2023 I’ll probably decide who my candidate is but even that is subject to change based on circumstances. I really don’t think anyone is wise to commit this early. Once you start getting invested in a thing, you start to blind yourself to possible alternatives. I’m keeping my powder dry.

A lot of Never Trump is now gleeful thinking that the Bad Orange Man is done. He may be! But don’t count on anything. Certainly don’t count Trump out given what we’re getting in the Senate. The bottom line is that a huge portion of the GOP base despises the GOP leadership – and the Senate GOP leadership in particular. I have had a lot of respect for McConnell but I do believe his time is done and he’s making a mistake by hanging on – and if it starts to look like he only hung on thwart Trump, then Trump’s stock with the GOP base will only grow and solidify. McConnell is very much the past presiding over the councils of the present – and his post election statement about finding ways to work with Biden caused immediate outrage. We didn’t send GOPers to Congress to pull Biden’s chestnuts out of the fire! McCarthy, set to be Speaker, seems to at least understand this a bit. He’s a squish, but he also doesn’t hold the base in contempt the way McConnell does. With Mitch there making deals with Biden, Trump will have the perfect foil for a GOP primary – and his opponents will be faced with the stark choice of denouncing McConnell or being seen as Establishment tools.

I make no predictions but I’m working on the assumption that we’re going to lose 2024. Always hard to pry the incumbent Party out of the White House, no matter. Absent a complete economic meltdown (a 50/50 prospect at the moment), let’s just say we’re gonna lose. This, first off, will make any defeat feel less bad – and it can also impel us to try things. Zeldin is pushing to be RNC chair and he has it right: you fight in every precinct. You don’t resign any of the board to the enemy. I think that if we discard the worn out notions of the past and simply try new things we might get some remarkable results. As we can’t change the early voting laws in Blue/Purple States, use them (it is already being done to great effect in NY and CA – and Newsom, the Democrat’s rising star, is way underperforming what was expected because of it). Find a guy or gal to run in the Deep Blue. Mike Garcia is apparently the Giga-Chad: I guess he won a Biden +8 district in 2020 so the Democrats decided to get rid of him by making his district Biden +12..and he still won easily. While voting in the House like he represents Alabama! One jokester said “its 2032, Democrats redistrict Garcia into downtown Los Angeles and swear they’ll get him this time!”. Mostly what it shows is that if you try and find the right message and messenger, no place is really off the table.

That is the attitude I want us to carry into 2024: lets just fight. Do our best. Try something new. It can’t possibly go any worse than it just did!

What I’m also thinking is that DeSantis should think carefully here. I don’t go with the Trumpsters who think he’s just a GOPe mole. He came out of the GOPe, but his fights against woke Corporations show that he’s learned the lesson. Mitch and Co might think that RDS is their ticket back…but they may find that, as the GOPe did with TR, that they just made that damned cowboy President. My concern is that if 2024 is a loser, then we don’t want to expend RDS in a bruising fight to beat Trump and then have him lose the White House. If I were an RDS advisor, I’d be thinking long and hard about telling my guy to back away from 2024. Or make only a token run and then get behind Trump. It works like this:

If you get behind Trump and work your tail off for him, you’ll build up huge goodwill with the Trumpsters. They won’t forget: they’ll be in your pocket for 2028. This works out even if Trump loses. If, however, Trump were to win then its still just 4 years, Trump can’t run again and you’ve not only got the Trumpsters in your pocket, you’ve got the President clearing your path in the primaries in 2028. Plus if we do win in 2024, we’ll almost certainly be coming in during a time of severe economic pain that will take years to dig out of. Might be better to let Trump tackle that: he’ll be free to piss people off, after all.

Anyways, that is mostly where my thinking is right now. I will add one last thing: the only people I’ll pay no attention to at all are those who say they won’t back the GOP nominee unless it is their choice. Such people – and there are Trumpist and Never-Trump people like this – are not only useless, they are destructive. I’ll vote in 2024 for whomever is on the GOP ticket because that person will always be the moral and intellectual superior of the Democrat. If a person can’t commit to that, then get out: we got better things to do.

Post-Election Thoughts

Mark Noonan10 Comments

Taking a look at what happened last week, I figure there’s a few things we need to realize.

In a large swath of America, the voters swung Right. In fact, if we get a House majority (probably 80/20 we do) it will be on the backs of some pretty Blue districts falling our way. To be sure, a bit of America swung Left, as well, especially in the most crucial States and districts (we lost Pennsylvania because the Obama-Trump voters abandoned Oz…I guess Fetterman’s blue-collar lie about himself worked – plus people apparently were sympathetic to him staying in the race after his stroke: never underestimate the Stupid Factor in Democratic governance). But, overall, there was a shift to the Right. We will win the overall popular vote for the House, and at a margin which in the past would have normally netted us about 30 seats.

We didn’t get that net 30 House gain because we were simply out-hustled. Sure: the Democrats definitely cheated as much as they could to make sure, but the bottom line is that we had no plan, apparently no inkling, of what to do about early voting. In this, primary blame lies with the GOP Leadership. It is their job to know and they didn’t. We were blindsided by a well laid plan by Democrats to gather ballots from marginal voters. Remember, when it comes to voting, it doesn’t matter how stupid the voter is – a vote is a vote. And if you find it distasteful that Democrats combed the nursing homes and dregs of the welfare-dependent for votes then I suggest you just grow the heck up. It is what it is. We need a plan to match it – we need our people heading out to our most feckless voters and getting them to cast an early ballot. If we have to stand over them and help them fill it out, so be it. If we want to win, it will have to be done.

We must, now, really start to understand how Democrats view politics. It isn’t an incidental thing to them: it is their life. Not talking about the cheeto-munching bum they caged a vote from: I’m talking about the elected officials and Party activists. Ever since the Democrat party was founded, they have felt that the only safety for the United States is Democrats in power. To them, there is no legitimate way for a Democrat to lose an election. And the follow up to this is that there is no action which is illegitimate if it gets a Democrat to victory. What I’m saying is that they take this stuff seriously and if we want to beat them, we’ll have to do the same. There is no “country over party”. It is all party, all the time. We must have the mindset that if we don’t win, America is doomed. We are starting to get that but not nearly enough: there is infighting already between Team Trump and Team DeSantis. This is the sort of thing you hardly ever see on the Democrat side – they don’t knife their own.

Well, Shoot: That Didn’t Work!

Mark Noonan27 Comments

Still a lot out there here at about 10:30 pm Pacific but, clearly, the GOP got beat. Looks like we’ll win the House and might still take the Senate, but clearly the Democrats out-hustled us where it mattered. Turns out that abortion did come riding to the rescue!

This is a telling blow against Trump – large numbers of his people went down in flames. And in this environment, that simply should not have happened. Now, we can whine all we want about unfair attacks and the usual run of Democrat cheating…but, seriously, none of that should have mattered. We got beat like a rented mule, guys: don’t try to sugar-coat it.

That said, Florida and Texas went bright Red. These are large population, highly diverse States and yet the GOP managed to wrack up impressive victories – with Florida being orders of magnitude more Red than anyone expected. Democrats are largely finished in that State and it will take them a generation to recover – and then only if they start changing their tune, which the national Democrat party might not let happen.

Ron DeSantis is the clear winner tonight – just a huge, crushing win. Rubio, too (his opponent torched $73 million in a losing effort). I can’t see DeSantis not running for President in 2024. I sure in heck would if I were him. Now, its not a 1 for 1 State to National transfer – sometimes people who do fine at the State level fall apart on the national stage. Bobby Jindal, anyone? But this is his moment and I can’t see him passing it up.

What about Trump? I’m sorry to say it might be time for him to bow out. It won’t be for me to decide for him and if he secures the nomination I’ll enthusiastically back him, but while millions love him, millions also despise him. It might be time for us to find someone less divisive who is yet a proven fighter. I hope Trump thinks long and hard. We own him an incalculable debt: but for him, we never would have realized how deep the rot had gone. He woke us up and sent us into battle as happy warriors. We owe him, big time. But politics is often all about timing and Trump’s time may be past. If he announces he’s staying out he can clear the field for DeSantis – keep the Trump base fired up and transfer that love and loyalty over to our new champion. He’ll be remembered in the history books as America’s Pitt the Younger: he didn’t defeat Napoleon, but it was the Britain he reshaped that defeated him.

Now, I do not and never will regret getting rid of Roe. Outside of moral considerations, it was the correct legal decision. We did the right thing and if we pay a prices for that, we should wear it like a medal. We do have to retool our message – social issues can win for us (see Ron DeSantis, eg) but we have to be careful how we message and whom we pick fights with. We also need a better economic message – something far more hopeful than what we’ve had so far.

Chin up! The fight isn’t over!

‘Twas the Night Before Midterms

Mark Noonan8 Comments

And all through the House, Democrat Committee chairs were having their stuff boxed up.

How will it go tomorrow?

I think well. At least to the point where we win the House and Senate. I can’t see a path for the Democrats to get above 49 Senators after all is said and done and even 48 is a big stretch requiring a pretty darned good Democrat election day turnout. The House, as I’ve said all along, is a foregone conclusion – the GOP only needs a net of 5, after all. If Democrats run massively ahead of Pudding Brain’s approval, they’ll still lose 15 to 20 in the House.

Governorships? Looks like PA will stay Democrat and that is really too bad (there are some rays of hope in that response bias among GOP voters especially in rural PA is so low that the polls – even the good ones – are missing a huge bloc of GOP voters: I would like this to be true, but I’m not counting on it). New York looks definitely within reach for the GOP – still have to say it is Tilt Democrat but, really, that Democrats are in a last-ditch defense of the NY Governorship is pretty much the tale of 2022. Things are bad – and they are worse in Blue areas than Red. There’s even a shot that a sorta-GOPer could win the Los Angeles mayor’s race. I do believe we’ll win NV and hold AZ (perhaps by a comfortable margin) while FL and GA have long been out of reach for the Democrats. On the whole, I expect us to do well at the governor level and consequently well in State legislative races (in NC looks like we’ll take the State Supreme Court and, once and for all, we’ll be able to draw district lines in that State as we see fit). Still also have some hope for us in MI and I’m very confident we’ll prevail in WI.

What is all comes down to, as in all elections, is who shows up? Democrats are nervously reassuring each other than this time will be different – that the in-Party will buck the President’s approval rating and a surge of Election Day Democrats will turn the tide. Some Democrats are downright insane on this, by the way: predicting a Blue Tsunami! But most just hope to limit the losses and maybe keep a 50/50 Senate on the backs of this Democrat surge. As per usual, anything is possible. But as any Democrat dreams their happy dream of a sudden late Democrat surge, do keep in mind that it could be the other way – we could have a late GOP surge.

The predictions (which mostly run to a 1-2 GOP Senate and 30 House gain) are predicated upon strong but still rather normal GOP mid-term turnout. And if you look deep and ask, you’ll find that just a small increase above that and things start to fall apart for Democrats very fast.

In light of this, I found it interesting that there have been a slew of MSM articles telling Democrats on Election Day to beware of the Red Mirage. The theory here is that a blowout GOP win in FL with, perhaps, Oz and Walker leading early doesn’t mean disaster: Democrats could make up all that in late-counted early votes! This has triggered some gloom-and-doomers to assume the fix is in. Not me. Mostly because I know that while you can fix a Presidential vote by having control of a few cities in key States, doing it nationwide in a mid-term environment is just about impossible. The Democrats will cheat as much as they can, but they simply lack enough control of the process to prevent a GOP wave. Their cheating might save a few marginal seats for them in deep Blue areas, but it won’t stop what’s coming.

So, why write the articles? Simple: it seems highly likely that Florida will be incandescent Red and for about an hour or two it will be the only major thing for anyone to talk about on TV and Social Media. Word gets out of such a stunning win and you risk having a Democrat in, say, Arizona, heading home from work and deciding that since it is all over, might as well pick up Arby’s instead of stand in line for an hour in a lost cause. The articles are an attempt to shore up Democrats in AZ, NV and CA.

And they are fearful of that – a combined GOP larger-than-expected turnout with a Democrat lower-than-expected turnout. If that happens, this is where we not only get the upset wins in NY and MI, but also in PA, WA and NM. This is where the GOP gets 4-5 in the Senate and 40+ in the House. This is where State races give the GOP more power at the State level than they’ve had in a century.

Will that happen? Once again: it is impossible to know. Depends on who shows up. I admit to some butterflies in my stomach but it isn’t fear – it is hope. We might really win this thing. Be nice if we did! But, we also might lose this thing. That would suck. On the other hand, I’m a Christian so I know how the story ends and thus have no real long-term worry here.

Go vote. Unless you’re a Democrat. And then just wait on the results.

The Death of Thought

Mark Noonan31 Comments

Saw a Tweet by Tom Nichols – you know, The Expert who deplores how we stupid people just don’t get it – bemoaning that America is being burned to the ground by people like Trump because the Elite never accepted them. Now, to be sure, there would be a bit to that – even when everyone officially loved Trump, he was considered a boor. A flashy, crude bull in the Ruling Class china shop. His family was rich, but still very nouveau; the Trump family started to pick up some money with Donald’s grandfather, but it was dad Fred Trump who got them rich. Basically, the Trump’s haven’t had their money long enough for it to have the stench of work removed.

Nichols isn’t rich – he does well enough, but he’s not one of the rich people who probably despised Trump all along. But while not rich, he is of the class. That is, the Ruling Class. He’s got his degrees and he’s got his positions in the Establishment and, dammit, he’s mad at us for not doing as we’re told – just as the upper class of New York City couldn’t stand Trump for not trying to be like them. But what got me thinking was how Nichols is claiming that Trump, et al are trying to burn it all down. In a flash it came to me what Nichols’ real problem is: he’s never once thought about things.

If you get an engineering or medical degree then, at the end of the day, you had to show you could do some engineering or medicine before you got it. There’s just no other way to do it. On the other hand, if your degree is in history or philosophy or such like, you don’t have to show the faintest thought about the subject: to get the degree, all you must do is repeat back what the professor told you. This doesn’t mean a person with a liberal arts degree can’t think, but it does mean that such a person doesn’t have to think in order to get the degree. And, these days with all the dumbing down, you can get all the way to doctorate without showing the least spark of original thought. My bet, actually, is that most degree programs in the so-called liberal arts these day are designed to discourage thought: they want people who regurgitate information but they don’t want anyone questioning the facts or drawing an unapproved conclusion from the facts as presented.

Man has no alternative, except between being influenced by thought that has been thought out and being influenced by thought that has not been thought out. — G.K. Chesterton

Chesterton there was discussing specifically why we study philosophy, which he admitted can be a bit of a bore. But do keep in mind that in Chesterton’s day, he was talking about the educated people in this matter. He wasn’t expecting the store clerk to take the time to learn Aristotle and Descartes. Be ok if he did, of course, but Chesterton knew that most common people don’t have the time nor inclination for such things. But society, as a whole, is going to be ruled by one or the other – thought that has been thought out, or thought that hasn’t been. It was and remains the duty of those who rule us – by fate, inheritance or transient political victory – to be those who have thought their thought out. Because if we are ruled by people who haven’t thought things out then you’ll get…well, you’ll get what we’ve got.

Over in New York, governor Hochul is in some trouble – may even get beaten on the 8th. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Even in a GOP wave year, New York – really New York City – is so reliably Democrat that the particular conditions wouldn’t matter. There would be so many Democrat votes that the Democrat will win. But there’s a problem and it is particular, especially, to New York City. Crime is rampant. Now, the MSM tries to tell us that because the murder rate is still lower than the peak about 30 years ago, this complaint about crime is just a GOP psy-op designed to fool people into voting for them. It is another example of the MSM’s willingness to say things not only divorced from reality, but from the reality the reporters know from personal experience. The regime propagandists of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia weren’t this compliant! The MSMers know. They live in NYC. They can see it with their own eyes: people waltzing into stores to rob/trash them. Goods in stores increasingly locked up to prevent wholesale looting. The feeling of being unsafe on the streets and the subways. Everyone in NYC feels it. They know it. And while the MSMers are going to loyally carry that water, the voters of NYC are under no such obligation. To be sure, if Hochul is booted on Tuesday it won’t be because NYC went red – but it could because a lot of Blue NYC just stayed home rather than ratify the homeless bum pissing on the curb outside.

And the problem in NYC stems from the imposition of certain policies: most notably the end of cash bail. If you haven’t paid attention to it, you should, because ending cash bail has become the mark of Leftist justice reform. They’ve put it on mute the past six months for political reasons but make no mistake about it: ending cash bail is something they are determined to do. The theory behind this is that cash bail unfairly burdens poor people who are disproportionately minority. This is absolutely true. I mean, no duh: the poor person, whether criminal or just some poor schmuck who got picked up, doesn’t have the money for bail nor for good lawyers who can get bail lowered or removed. Obviously, any system of bail is going to hit against the poor vastly more than against any rich person.

But the solution – ending cash bail – is obviously something which was not thought out. I can totally dig trying to find some way to lower the burden on the poor, but blanket removal of bail requirement was going to have that effect: petty criminals would feel invincible. They wouldn’t even have to spend the night in jail. And people of low moral character would be encouraged to start engaging in crime – especially theft – for that same reason: no real sanction. They can figure: how likely is my trial for stealing $500.00 worth of stuff from CVS even going to happen? And that is if they even bother making an arrest. After all, what cop is going to bother arresting someone – taking that risk and that extra work – just to see the guy walk out of the precinct before the cop has even written up the complaint?

On and on like that, all across the nation and in every aspect of our lives we are burdened by the results of policies imposed by people who are sure they are right, but clearly never thought about what they believe. Sowell has been writing about this for decades. I’ve read those books but only just now am I fully understanding what his main complaint was and is: nobody is thinking. It is all very mindless what goes on. All of our problems – our lack of industrial capacity, or lack of energy production, our food shortages, our crumbling infrastructure, our crime rate, our collapsing education system, our drug addiction, our homelessness, our open border…all if it, every last bit, the result of the ruthless imposition of policies nobody thought about. Nobody sat down and said, “so, what will happen if we do this? It was all just done.

And people like Tom Nichols want us to stick with that. And for a long while I thought that it was, perhaps, pettiness or some other normal, human emotion preventing his like from seeing that Trump really isn’t all that bad (I mean, my goodness, compared to Joe Biden!) and that some good things come from ruthless rejection of Liberal/Left certainties. But then you see that Tweet and you remember that people like him are all-in on fighting Putin over Ukraine and then it really hits you: they’ve never thought about one darned thing.

We have to defend Ukraine!

Why?

To save Democracy!

If Ukraine falls I’ll lose my right to vote in the USA?

Putin stooge!

No matter what what way you ask about it, you won’t get an actual answer. We’re backing up Ukraine – at the risk of WWIII – to save Ukraine from Russia, or NATO from Russia, or Democracy from Russia…and blah, blah, blah. But no explanation of how, say, changing the Russian flag over Donetsk for a Ukrainian flag will actually benefit us. We just have to do it! Russia is bad, don’t you know! Don’t you remember Reagan!

Yeah. As I recall what Reagan wanted was to stop the USSR from expanding outside the USSR via proxy wars and, of course, to get a real nuclear arms reduction treaty with them. He got that. How is that similar to stopping Russia from taking over ethnic Russian territory governed from Moscow prior to 1991?

You’ll never get an answer to that. Nor to why we would, say, defend Germany from Russia rather than Russia from Germany. I mean, on the whole, the Germans are working against us in foreign affairs. They are also major economic competitors who don’t have to pay for an army because we’re there for them. Any chance we should reassess this situation?

No! You Putin Nazi Puppet!

Note that I’m not saying that defending Ukraine is wrong – I’m merely saying that no thought is happening behind our efforts and any attempt at thought is immediately shouted down. And the shouts are led by the people who supposedly have the superior education and thus can think things out better than us.

Until we clear all these people out – not just the politicians but the corporate bosses, the bureaucrats, the generals and admirals, the professors – everyone in charge, we’re not going to fix this. I would seriously expect better results at, say, Defense if I randomly selected some sergeant and made him Chief of Staff. I’d have some confidence, that is, that our four star sergeant might think about things before he made a decision…you know, like what might be the long-term effects of lowering physical requirements so that girls can be in combat outfits. Same with everything – put a plumber in charge of Harvard’s Department of Philosophy and there’s just that chance he’d crack open some of the books and think about whether or not what they’re saying is worth any human being knowing. They really do all have to go. I don’t care what they do, but they must leave. Anyways, might be fun to watch them try to tackle a job which requires results. But, more importantly, once they’re gone, we might be able to openly think about what we want.

Red Wave Inbound

Mark Noonan23 Comments

This is how the MSM is covering the White House preparations for Tuesday:

Even before senility Biden was incapable of admitting error – his whole life has been the ceaseless crafting of Narratives where he’s always the hero. The fact that the Democrats are about to get wiped out as a direct result of his actions just won’t compute in that musty thing he uses for a brain.

Plus, Team Biden has to start looking over its shoulder – things are not likely to get better for the USA any time soon and no major legislative efforts will happen. There are already – because, likely, Team Obama and/or Team Clinton authorized it – MSM stories highlighting Biden’s obvious physical and mental decline. Pudding Brain’s people only keep their cushy positions as long as The Senile One occupies the Oval Office…as soon as he’s gone, they’re gone. And a lot of Democrats are going to want Joe gone come Wednesday.

Democrats are looking forward to 2024 with fear in their hearts…if Biden is the nominee and things haven’t 180 improved by then, they’ll get beaten in a 1932-style landslide. No matter who the GOP nominates. They probably don’t want Harris, but they also can’t get Joe out without her active cooperation…and if she’s in any way smart (debatable) she wouldn’t agree to it unless the power people agree to grease her skids for the 2024 nomination.

It is at long last even starting to dawn on the most ardent Democrats that things are going poorly – here in Nevada, they’re hoping a blizzard in Washoe County will save the day for them. In a way, I feel sympathy for them – the MSM (on orders from the DNC) has been playing them for suckers. Four months ago the MSM was all happy talk about Democrats winning Senate seats and maybe even holding the House. It was absurd from the get-go: the GOP only needs 5 House seats for a majority. They’d get that even if Joe was popular. As for the Senate, in 2021 there was some chance…but by late Spring of 2022, that had vanished and it never returned. Now they’re backs to the wall hoping they can save their seats in New Hampshire and Washington and so keep the GOP below 54 seats so that 2024 doesn’t award the Republicans a filibuster-proof majority. Rely on it Democrats, you were never going to do very well in 2022…and the messaging presented just made it all worse. They really thought that abortion and January 6th would trump concerns about shortages and high prices. I want to give the GOP mole who convinced the DNC to do that a medal.

Now, how big a wave? Don’t know. And there’s even the usual caveat that anything can happen. But my guess at the moment is a net 30 seat gain in the House and 3 in the Senate plus some really big gains at the State level. But, we’ll see. On Tuesday!