Defending Freedom in the Public Square

Mark Noonan9 Comments

Ace has a long and interesting post about the way corporate America is busily censoring the public square. A very important event in this is the banning of Robert Spencer by Patreon at the apparent express command of Mastercard. It does not appear that Patreon wanted to ban Spencer, but Mastercard insisted…and, I guess, quite a lot of Patreon’s transactions flow through Mastercard. Check your own wallet to see how many of your cards go through Mastercard’s system. Essentially, for unexplained reasons, Mastercard has decreed that no one – not even Mastercard – is permitted to make money off of Spencer.

If you are unfamiliar with Spencer, he’s most famed for running the Jihad Watch website. Ace points out that this banning might be, ultimately, at the command of Muslim investors who would prefer that certain subjects unflattering to Islam not be discussed. Ace can’t prove this – neither can I – but it does make sense. The bottom line is that a company normally doesn’t refuse to make money. Most companies will make money any way they can. Cutting off Spencer just means Mastercard is making less, which can’t be in the shareholder’s interests. But, there it is – and I just can’t imagine this happen unless some pressure was exerted somewhere along the line.

Did you know that most banks – perhaps all, but I don’t know for sure – don’t do business with legal marijuana shops. To be sure, such businesses are disreputable, but they are legal. Does it seem right to you that a legal business can be essentially cut off from normal financial activity? It should. Because the precedent of not doing business can be extended endlessly – and eventually to every sort of business that either SJW activists or Ruling Class big wigs simply don’t like.

You may have heard that Google is creating and app just for China – and which will be in accord with China’s strict censorship laws. Oddly enough, information about this doesn’t show prominently in a Google search. It does, however, show up just fine in a Duck Duck Go search. Main thing: Google, a corporate giant which collects data on us, with or without our consent, is making an app which will allow a Ruling Class to govern what people see. How long before every government tries to get in on this? Do you get the feeling that everyone in charge has had just about enough of this whole free flow of information thing the Internet brought to the world about 25 years ago? I do. I think they want it stopped.

I think we’re seeing the dawning of a two-fold control of the public square. One part of it will be simply de-platforming disliked opinions. The other part of it will be rage mobs ginned up by the Ruling Class to punish anyone who speaks out of turn. Think, for a moment, how the totalitarian tyrannies of the past kept control. To be sure, brutal terror played a big role: if you really stuck your head up, you were going to be arrested and tortured and perhaps killed. But you can’t arrest and torture everyone. You can, however, control them by putting not their lives, but their livelihoods at stake. Comrade, you better show up at the pro-government demonstration on Saturday…be a shame if you were to lose your job, or your kid were to be kicked out of school, because you didn’t. See you there!

People who are afraid of losing their jobs are going to be very careful – and with the big corporations already showing themselves willing to both bow to SJW mobs and assist governments in oppressing people, people will more and more come to understand that silence is golden. Just better not to say the things that those who control your employment will find distressing. In fact, might be a good idea to shout along with the SJW’s from time to time, to ensure they don’t turn their insane glare at you. Right now, our rights to free speech, free exercise of religion and freedom of association are already greatly eroded. Give another ten years of this SJW Mob + De-platforming, and our freedoms will be a dead letter.

I know this will cause a lot of knee-jerk opposition on the right, but our only answer to this is to exert pressure of our own. As we don’t own major search engines, nor major computer program companies, and we have no say in the media, we’ll have to use the only power we have: government. We simply must start regulating the protection of freedom into existence. Make so many damned rules and so much damned hoop jumping before anyone can be fired or de-platformed by private companies that it simply won’t be worth the effort. We Conservatives have to get over the absurd notion that just because a company is private, it is part of the public square we Conservatives want to conserve. The bottom line is that the larger the corporation, the more likely it is dependent upon and partnered with government…and that it will work with government to try to warp the public square against the interests of the people.

Some years back, I said that we needed an Employment Free Speech act – a law prohibiting any corporation (above a certain size) from firing anyone for speech made outside the work environment. We still need that; even more than before. But we also need regulations prohibiting companies within the United States – even if not based here – from cooperating with anti-liberty actions of foreign governments. You want your product or service to be available here? Then you cannot cooperate with tyranny over there. We need anti-doxxing laws (ie, laws which make it a major felony to reveal without permission the personal details of another person on line). We need laws strictly regulating what sort of data the tech giants can gather, how long they can keep it, and what they can do with it. We need laws prohibiting the government from accessing any of the tech giant data on us without a specific warrant. In short, we need a whole series of laws and regulations which will essentially make SJW-mobbing and de-platforming illegal. It will be a bitter pill for most Conservatives to swallow, but we have to do it. That is, if we want to remain free.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan8 Comments

You’ll be happy to know that San Francisco has created Poop Patrols to pick up all the feces flooding the streets of San Francisco. With a little luck, they’ll be able to head off any coming cholera epidemic. Reminds me of the old joke: what did Socialists use for light before candles? Electricity.

OTOH, modern Capitalism is Jeff Bezos worth $150 billion and trying to influence our national political decisions in a way which favors him. Seriously, guys, start looking into Distributism. It is the only way out of this mess.

The Louisiana AG has excluded Citibank and BofA from a $600 million finance program for roads – because they are anti-gun. Good. Time to start punishing corporations for taking sides in politics.

Our Perfect and Wonderful CIA which we May Never Question blew it’s communication security and allowed the Chinese in. I’ve been of the opinion that the CIA has been penetrated by enemy agents since Day One. I just can’t forget that the CIA vetted itself in it’s original hires and there was no assurance that those doing the vetting weren’t enemy agents.

Pearl Jam has provided a massive, in-kind donation to Trump’s 2020 re-election effort.

The MSM, in an effort to allay concerns that it is united in attacking Trump, coordinated an attack on Trump in the editorial pages of about 300 newspapers.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan7 Comments

More and more people are coming to the conclusion that liberal women don’t like men because they hang out with liberal men – Dem Rep Ellison accused of abuse. The MSM has been offering excuses as to why this story – apparently around for years – is only now coming out. Seems they are claiming that they couldn’t verify the details…if only Ellison had written an entry into a high school year book…

Don Surber points out that, so far, Trump is winning the trade war. The bottom line is that the American market is the most valuable in the world. And not just by a little bit…we are vastly richer than any other nation. By a long ways. To be sure, there are a few nations with higher per capita income than us, but we’re the only nation in the top 30 with a population over 150 million people. Its not just that we, as individuals, have a lot of money but that there are so many of us. No nation wants to be excluded from the American market. Sure, China and India have more people (do you realize we’re the third most populous nation in the world? I don’t think most Americans know that), but they are a lot poorer…so, even though there’s more of them, they simply can’t buy as much as we can. Our leverage in international trade is absolute – we can pretty much force everyone to do as we wish simply by threatening to cut them out of our market. Trump is doing that – and the world will knuckle under.

Democrats are now in favor of socialism. No, this isn’t a report from 1980.

Lesbian professor sexually harasses gay man…um, isn’t that doing lesbian wrong? Or am I missing something here?

Trump hung out with some bikers and one of the bikers had a tattoo which said, in effect, “I love guns and titties”. Liberals grabbed their smelling salts. I admit that the sentiment is crude, but I think that a broad swath of the American electorate is in tune with it.

As an aside, I think the next Civil War may be rather short.

Kurt Schlichter points out that Never Trump is actually Never You.

DeBlasio had his bully boys haul away a reporter who asked an impertinent question. But, yeah, Trump is the threat to the press.

We’ve Been Ruled by Idiots: and Conservatives Defend This

Mark Noonan6 Comments

August 8th recently passed and it was the 100th anniversary of the Black Day. This was the day the British began the Battle of Amiens. While it was, of itself, a big victory, the more important aspect of it was on the morale of the two sides. The German commander, Ludendorf, named it the Black Day because of the very large number of German soldiers who merely surrendered rather than fight or retreat. From that point on, the Germans knew they were beaten and were merely trying to hold on to as much as they could before capitulation. Meanwhile, all of the allied armies were stimulated by the victory as they now knew they could break the German lines at will and steadily push them back no matter what the enemy did (it was, of course, the mass use of tanks which played the decisive role here).

This was the point when the whole German war effort in World War One was shown to be stupid – and done by people who, for all their intellectual achievements, were quite stupid. Think about how the war started – Germany, faced with the need to help their Austro-Hungarian allies fight off Russia, decided that the smart course was to attack France and Belgium, thus bringing Britain into the war against them. That was their plan! Their long held, carefully organized plan was to create more heavily armed enemies from the first minute war started! And no one who came up with this plan was shot for Supreme Idiocy or even so much as committed to an insane asylum. We’ll leave aside the Allies response: charge straight ahead into entrenched German machine guns and artillery. You get the picture: We’re dealing with a lot of dumb.

I mentioned Ludendorf, and he was one of the smartest of the lot. Simply brilliant. A superb organizer. But, in the end, he couldn’t count. He launched a “win the war” offensive in March of 1918 with the idea being that Germany could conquer victory before the United States, which had entered the war the year before, could exert it’s full power (which would happen some time in 1919, if the war went on that long). As I said, he couldn’t count: he couldn’t count up all the military aged males in the UK, France and the USA and realize they vastly outnumbered the military aged males in Germany. He also, seemingly, couldn’t read a map and failed to realize that even taking Paris in 1918 would not alter the overall strategic situation. The only wise course open to him – too all Germans – once the USA got in was to pick the time to concede defeat and surrender….and that such a time was before the German soldiers started surrendering in tens of thousands.

But that isn’t the end of the dumb for the German leadership. Some weeks after the Black Day the supreme allied commander, Foch, was heard to observe, “that gentleman (the German) can still escape: but he’ll have to leave his luggage behind”. What he meant was that if the Germans would leave behind the mountains of supplies they had built up in France over 4 years of war, they could get their army back to the German border in excellent defensive positions and it would be the Spring of 1919 before the allies could launch a serious attack…and they might not want to by then. With the Germans out of France and Belgium, all impetus to attack would be gone. Germany would still have had to negotiate a loser’s peace, but it wouldn’t have been an abject surrender followed by a dictated peace. But the German military leadership, chock full of very smart men, simply couldn’t make up its mind to do that until it was too late to try. In the end, the Germans fought for 51 months and suffered millions of dead – and inflicted millions of deaths – only to lose a war they didn’t have to fight, but stupidly got themselves into, and then stupidly refused to get out of when the game was up.

I bring this up because rolling around in my head for a while now has been a dawning understanding that for quite some time, our civilization has been run by some very dumb people. Unserious people. People who are quite willing to, as it were, fiddle while Rome burns. And then I got into a bit of a debate with a Facebook friend – nice guy, fellow Catholic. But, he hates Trump and that has colored his views in astonishing ways. What he was on about a couple days ago was how Conservatism is in bad shape because it listens to Sean Hannity rather than George Will. I pointed out in response that even supposing Hannity is a carnival barker, Conservatism is better of with him than with Will. He asked, why? And I said that people like George Will are erudite, well-dressed people drinking the correct wine while justifying the destruction of our civilization. People who, like the German High Command in WWI, are very, very smart and have all sorts of credentials but simply cannot, or will not, see what is right in front of them.

Ancient Rome didn’t go from a city of a million people with excellent water and sewage systems to a city of 40,000 people living in filth and drawing their water from the Tiber all in a day. Nope, took quite a lot longer than that. Several centuries, in fact. The last great building project in ancient Rome was Trajan’s Forum, early in the second century. The next big event in the life of Rome was the sack of the city by the Visigoths early in the 5th century. Neat, 300 year period there…where not much was actually done, other than people living off the wealth and power built up by their better ancestors. Sound familiar to your modern ears? All it would have taken for Rome to endure forever was a bit of maintenance. Do you understand that? All the heavy lifting had been done. Just maintain the infrastructure and keep the army up to snuff and, presto!, things remain great. Forever. But, no; they failed.

They did do lots of things, of course. They weren’t just marking time. They had a few civil wars in there. Assassinated a crop of Emperors. Watched people getting slaughtered in the Colosseum. Sat on their asses on welfare. Let foreigners do the grunt work. Watched as their domestic industry and agriculture was moved away from Italy and over to other parts of the Empire. They also had some brilliant political leaders such as Septimus Severus and Diocletian. And the social life was quite brilliant! Excellent food, fashionably dressed people, well appointed homes. They had towering intellects like Dio Cassius and Tacitus. And in religion you could pretty much get whatever you wanted – and be sure that whatever you wanted was ratified by the religious and philosophical authorities of the day (except by those pesky Jews and those outrageous Christians, who proposed to actually live the virtues everyone said were good…the bastards!). Once again, does all this sound familiar?

But, don’t go too far in making parallels to ancient Rome. We’re actually doing worse. To give you an idea: back early in the Russian Revolution, one of Lenin’s female comrades (I think it was Alexandra Kollontai, but I’m not 100% sure), opened up a vision for Lenin of sexual relations being treated as no more significant than quenching one’s thirst with a glass of water. Lenin didn’t go one way or the other on that, but he did observe that no one would want to get a drink of water from a gutter. Of course, Lenin was wrong: we now have people eagerly looking for gutters to get their drinks from. Furthermore, they insist that if you refuse to drink from the gutter, you’re a hateful bigot! Here’s the really funny thing: given what he said about it, Lenin wasn’t woke enough to be acceptable among the modern left! If he magically appeared to today, the left would despise him for his petite bourgeoisie insensitivity. So far, and fast, we have traveled downwards!

And at least the Romans built stuff to last. The Lake Homs Dam in Syria was built in the 3rd Century by the Romans and it is still in use. It was modified last century, but only to make it hold more water. The basics of the dam are still the original Roman construction from 1,734 years ago. Our stuff isn’t built like that. We, too, have to do maintenance, but we have a much weaker infrastructure to keep up…we can’t neglect it nearly as long. But, we’ve been neglecting it. You might recall the infrastructure bill from 2009 that we spent a bazillion dollars on…well, it looks like we’ll need another bazillion for the same thing…now, we can assume that everything has run down again after nine years…or, we can assume that the first bazillion was thrown down the toilet and wound up in the hands of politically connected people who didn’t get a lot of actual work done. Take your pick on those views. I’ll let you guess where I fall on the guesses. We have weaker stuff as our basis and we’re doing worse than the Romans at maintenance. In the realm of morality, we’re traveling down a road (get that drink from the gutter!) of immorality faster than the Romans ever dreamed. Sure, they liked to watch people being killed in the arena, but at least they weren’t going about massacring unborn children, nor legalizing the practice of effectively putting a pillow over granny’s face when she gets too old and irritating to deal with.

We’ve got people covering themselves with tattoos like painted savages. We’ve got people who father multiple children by multiple women without ever making any sort of commitment to them. We’ve got people in the military who are merely punching tickets to ensure their rise in rank. We’ve got corporate officers who spend more time working out their diversity program than they do working on their products. We’ve got people who despise liberty and who think there’s a right to have a house. We’ve got religious leaders openly or covertly denying the very aspects of their religion. But we’re banning plastic straws! Tell me, what of any decent thing has been conserved? Where is the maintenance of societal norms which would allow us to survive long term as a civilization? There is none – nothing has been conserved. Not by the Conservative leaders…each time the push against civilization has come, the Conservative leaders have found an excuse for why we have to allow it to happen.

Back in 2016, I was just desperate to stop Hillary. She’s corrupt to the bone and clearly an amazingly stupid person. She even lies when telling the truth would work to her advantage. All she amounts to is an appetite for power and wealth. She gathers it endlessly and is never satisfied. And she’s not alone in this. Think of all the people who are just there, grabbing whatever they can and then working out ways of defending their ill-gotten money and power. They don’t give a damn what is happening…all they care about is getting and then getting some more…and then squashing anyone who questions how they got it, and whether they should keep it. If they were at least smart enough to make sure our Navy ships didn’t crash into freighters and that the streets weren’t crumbling, they’d be tolerable. But, they can’t manage that. They can only do what the very stupidest person can do: grab and then lie about it. My vote in 2016 was just a desperate plea against that sort of thing. But then something strange happened: the guy I voted for turned out to be pretty darned good.

I had figured Trump for “one of them”, as it were. But, even though “one of them”, at least not someone who had spent his whole, adult life – like Hillary – screwing over the people. I fully expected huge doses of liberalism to come out of the New York liberal carnival barker with a penchant for pretty ladies. All of a sudden, I’ve got a President getting the regulators – the enforcers of stupidity – off the backs of the doers…the actually smart people who make things work. I’ve got a President who understands that if we don’t make, mine and grow things here in the USA, then we’re doomed (how long have I been yammering on about making, mining and growing things, guys?). I’ve got a President who is clearly not afraid to use American military power to maximum effect, but is also chary of the blood of Americans and so shies away from foreign military actions (having a President who wants to win a fight is a rather new experience for me). I’ve got a President who doesn’t care about the opinions of pretentious, credentialed twits who not only can’t change a tire, but would be afraid to even try (ick! I’d get all dirty! Isn’t there a foreigner who can do that for me?). I’ve got a President who punches back when punched. For the first time in my life – not excluding Reagan – I actually think I’ve got a President who is looking out for me and mine.

Is he Conservative? I don’t really know. Also, don’t really care. He’s doing a lot of Conservative things, that’s for sure. Does he know what he’s doing? I’ve long suspected his political actions are built to a long held plan…but now I’m starting to think that this guy might have, for the last 40 years, thought over everything and realized that we needed some radical changes in policy, or we’re doomed. One thing I know for certain, kicking him out and putting the same idiots who have presided over the destruction of our civilization is out of the question. Trump might lose, in the end, but he won’t lose because I helped beat him…nor because I failed to support him. I’m feeling very confident about our future for the first time in a long while…and unlike back in the Reagan years, I’ve no worries about what comes after this President. Pence certainly spent his life as GOPe to the bone, but he seems to really understand what Trump is about and I’m sure that if we can get Trump two terms, his successor will just do more Trump (although more politely that Trump).

Trump stands for the Mom and Dad doing their best. He stands for the sergeant and battalion commander trying to keep readiness at a high level. He stands for the farmer growing his crops. He stands for the plumbing contractor with a payroll to meet. He doesn’t stand for the tenured radical on campus. He doesn’t stand for the CEO trying to squeeze an extra percent of profit out of moving the factory to Mexico. He doesn’t stand for layabouts manning our bureaucracy. And, yep, he doesn’t stand for the Bow Tied Conservatives who talk about low taxes and tut tut about societal decay but do nothing about it. We’ll do more for rebuilding social cohesion by having a booming, Make/Mine/Grow economy allowing a parent to stay home and raise the kids than we’ll do with 10,000 more Conservative Think Tank pieces on the decline of the family unit. If Trump is this out of control moron that our Conservative Betters claim he is, then I’m in favor of idiocy…at least this idiot is actually doing some good things. But, the truth is that Trump is proving the smarter man…and, I think, proving the more morally sound man. After all, in the grand scheme of things, who has done the more immoral thing: they guy who slept with a stripper, or the guy who justified the destruction of morality? No wise person hates a sinner because all wise people know they are sinners, too. But what must be hated – despised, loathed and driven out of the public square – is those who say that the sin isn’t a sin. According to Scripture, the righteous man falls seven times a day, and most of us ain’t righteous. But it is one thing to sin and repent (even on an endless loop of sin/repent), and quite another to sin and then say, “my sin was a good thing”. The former is human and trying, the latter is an inch away from demonic. That the demon has a Harvard degree and is impeccably well mannered doesn’t help things…nor does it detract from the normal repentant sinner that he’s an uncultured clod.

And what kind of a moron do you have to be to think that a people, awash in sin, can survive? If we’re laying around on welfare, engaging in promiscuity and then congratulating ourselves for our sloth and lust, what are we going to get? Clean cities and a strong economy? Uh, guys, I don’t think it’ll work out that way. In fact, we know it doesn’t – we’ve got feces rolling through the streets of San Francisco. We’re worried about filth borne disease in the United States, guys. You know, as we allow people to come in illegally and also allow poor bodies who need mental healthcare to just wallow on the edges of our cities in unsanitary, ad-hoc camps. How do you think things will be in 20 years, if we don’t change?

So, here I am – standing athwart stupidity, yelling “stop”. Well, not exactly: when you yell “stop” at a stupid person, it usually makes them double down. But what I am doing is making sure that I’m expending my efforts in preventing a return to Rule by Stupid. If that means I have to keep electing Trump and people like him, I’m ok with that. I’ll take the odd Playmate in the background if I also get the policies which allow me to live free…and gives me a chance to help restore a bit of sanity to our society.

Alex Jones and Stuff Open Thread

Mark Noonan19 Comments

I’ve only ever heard of Alex Jones – and run in to some of his supporters on social media. From what I gather, he’s rather out there, taking at face value any conspiracy theory you care to mention and then weaving even larger conspiracies of his own. I gather – I don’t know: I’ve never listened to word one from the guy. Basically, the guy is unknown to me. But, a lot of people love him and a lot of people hate him…and now he’s being deplatformed by the social media giants because he said The Bad Words that the SJW’s don’t like. None of that is unexpected – and neither is the TruCon, NeverTrump contingent offering a nuanced view which works out to “it’s ok the SJW’s got that guy off the web.” In other words, our Muh Principles Conservative betters are eager to surrender to the left, as usual.

Lots of heated rhetoric has been issued over this, but anyone with a brain knows what is happening: the left has chosen a marginal case to make their first move into overt censorship of non-left views. It is said that Jones has said some outrageous things, and I’ll bet that he has. And for the weak-kneed on the right, this makes it impossible to defend Jones. “I don’t want my Progressive friends thinking I’m like that! Icky poo! Bad, bad Non-Expert!”. But, I’ll defend him – I have to. As an individual, what happens to him is unimportant, but as a symbol – and a harbinger – we simply can’t let this one slide. If we do, then the left will just go to the next and the next and the next non-left opinion which is “too extreme” to be tolerated. Eventually, the only non-left opinions allowed will be the tame TruCon surrender-at-all-costs opinions (and don’t think this isn’t desired by the TruCons…its just what they want: all of us gone, them at the top of the Conservative heap, slowly surrendering to Progressive views).

The solution to this is to start putting the regulatory pressure of the government against the social media giants. This is a difficult step for small government Conservatives, but it is a pill we’ll have to swallow. The social media giants have deliberately turned themselves into an arm of the political left, and they must be treated as such. My preferred option is to break up the giants into several, smaller and competing entities…but, absent that, we need government rules ensuring that everyone has equal access to social media and, so, government prescribed rules for when an account can be deplatformed (you can see why this is my second option: eventually, the left might get the government power to make such rules…much better, in my view, to merely have smaller social media companies). For more opinion on this, here’s Legal Insurrection.

Democrats had been hoping for a special election win in Ohio and got disappointed…outside of the dollop of liberal tears this provided for us, I don’t think it means much. Democrats have done very well in the special elections overall, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into general election results. Thing about this one – it kinda sneaked up on us. I’m pretty observant about politics, but I don’t recall even hearing a whisper about it until special election day…I think the Dems and the MSM (but I repeat myself) were hoping to win this one quietly and then blast it to the rafters as proof that Trump is doomed…but an alert Trump and GOP pounced on it and made sure the GOP pulled out a low-turnout victory.

There’s a Twitter account called Sweet Meteor O’Death…a satirical account which had its very best days during the 2016 election when it was a candidate for President. Anyways, the account Tweeted out this:

Kill all the white people. And all the other people. And everything that’s alive. Except deep-sea, sulfur-oxidizing bacteria.

You get it. I get it. Twitter locked the guy’s account for 12 hours. Meanwhile, the New York Times’ new columnist’s racist rants are still there on Twitter for all to see.

Victor Davis Hanson is smart and everyone should listen to him. The thing is that everything has happened before. And if you don’t realize that, and also realize that everything can turn on a dime, you’ll always end up looking like a fool.

Russia, China and American Foreign Policy

Mark Noonan5 Comments

China is the biggest threat we face as a nation – a couple people aside from me have started to pick up on that. Part of the catalyst seems to be the discovery that Senator Feinstein employed a Chinese spy for 20 years.

I don’t go for conspiracy theories, but the bottom line is that the only nation that benefits from enmity between the United States and Russia is China. China – which hacks our government and private computer systems on a regular basis. Which has used pirated technology to rapidly catch up with us in advanced military hardware. Which is building bases in the South China Sea. Which claims sovereignty over some small, Japanese islands. Which is building a blue water navy, including a first-class, nuclear powered fleet air arm. Which has pressured Google into making a search engine which suppresses subversive (to China) speech. Which spends vast sums, open and disguised, to lobby the American government. If China wrote the script, nothing would work better for them than the intense national angst over supposed “Russian meddling” in our elections.

To be sure, Putin is acting stupidly in not recognizing that his nation’s hold on Siberia is ultimately dependent upon alliance with us. If, by some means, China can ever neutralize us in world affairs, then Russia will find itself forced to disgorge vast tracts of Asia to China (quite a lot of which was at least theoretically under Chinese rule in the 18th and 19th centuries). If you’re thinking, “Russia has nukes”, well, so does China – and much more powerful and accurate nukes, thanks to us via either Chinese theft of American idiocy (especially during Bill Clinton’s Administration). Will Russia be willing to see Moscow and Saint Petersburg nuked in order to prevent a Chinese army from taking Vladivostok? I doubt it.

In my view, confronting China takes first place in American foreign policy issues – above issues like combating Jihadism, and vastly more important than stopping Putin from annexing areas of the former USSR which are mostly populated by ethnic Russians. To be sure, Russia always has to be confronted: from reading history, that is just how it works. Leave the door open, and they’ll push in. I’d advise Russia that any attempt to annex the Baltic States, invade Poland or push beyond the Donbass in Ukraine would be considered an act of war by us. But I also think we should enter negotiations with the Russians to permanently settle the current issues with internationally recognized boundaries and Russian sovereignty over the territories they currently hold. To give force to our declaration that we’re not kidding about forbidding further Russian expansionism in Europe, I’d be willing to place US forces semi-permanently in Poland, the Baltics and Ukraine.

That done, it would be time to make a deal with Russia regarding holding China back. I doubt we’d get an outright military alliance with them, but we could engage in certain agreements to make sure that China felt unsure if Russia would stay out if we ever got into conflict with China while at the same time letting China know that if they did try an invasion of Siberia, Russia would find a friend in us. The ultimate purpose of US foreign policy, you see, should be the encirclement of China with nations bound to come to each others assistance if China moves in any direction. To this end, we strengthen our alliances with Japan and South Korea and build, as rapidly as possible, full-blown alliances with India and Vietnam. NATO could remain in ghostly existence, but I don’t see NATO ever coming to our aid against either Russia or China, and if we’re allied with Poland, etc, then the powers most concerned with Russia (and most likely to fight alongside us in a war with Russia) are already bound to us.

Most importantly, it is time for a bit of reality to enter into our foreign affairs – reality which has been absent for more than 100 years. There is no love between nations – never has been, never will be. It is all a matter of interests…and the interests of the United States are in direct conflict with the interests of China. I happen to believe that eventually they will strike militarily – they can’t get rich fast enough to satisfy the growing desires of their own people and the whole justification for the Chinese government is, “allow us to be in charge, we’ll make things ever better for you”. Eventually, crunch time will hit when the Chinese government will either have to surrender power due to a financial crisis in China, or they’ll strike out militarily in hopes of cutting the Gordian knot. I do believe, though, that a wise, tough American foreign policy can make it so that China never feels safe enough to attack us…and that means that China as to be brought to a position where war with us means war with everyone around them. Even with their vast manpower, an alliance between the USA, India, Vietnam, Japan and South Korea is too much to handle, especially if we have Russia looming over their norther border at the time China chooses to strike.

Another part of this reality is to hang it up on “Putin is a dictator”. Of course he is – but democracy doesn’t exactly flourish in China, either. In fact, truly free nations are becoming somewhat of a rarity these days. Even in the Western world, in most nations, you have to watch what you say lest the wrath of the government be directed against you. Our primary interest isn’t to defend the ragged end of a dying democracy in France or Germany, but to defend our own freedom. And if defending that freedom means taking our friends (temporarily) where we find them, then so be it. I’m not, you see, particularly keen on seeing America’s youth dying to a defend an European “democracy” which will fine or imprison you for speaking out of turn about Islam. I’m especially uninterested because I know that hardly any European nations will put their blood on the line in a major war. Sending a regiment to Afghanistan is fine for them…especially as they mostly keep out of harms way. But anyone who thinks the Germans or Brits will send an army corps to help us defend Taiwan from Chinese attack has rocks in their head.

Cold calculation is what we need, not sentimental attachment to dead and gone agreements. It is what the Chinese are using against us, and it is the only way we can thwart them.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Lot of people seem to think we’re supposed to respect Mueller because he had an excellent record in Vietnam. I don’t buy that – history is littered with fine junior officers who wound up lousy generals, or lousy political leaders. People are what they do – and no past action either permanently lifts up or casts down a person.

Legal Insurrection is saying that Mueller should put up or shut up: his probe, run through our political system, is tearing this nation apart. If he’s got the goods on Trump, let’s hear what they are. If he doesn’t, he should say so. And none of this “ongoing investigation” BS. Tell us, one way or the other.

South Africa is moving down the Zimbabwe route – now with a proposal to expropriate white-owned land without compensation. This will do nothing for South Africa’s poor – who, for the most part, don’t know how to farm. It will inflame racial tensions and give an excuse for the Ruling Class to remain in power. I’ve read lots of things about South Africa of late and none of it is good: but those thinking that the world will lift a finger to help white South Africans are fooling themselves. Now is the time to get out of South Africa, if you can. Flee. Run away. Go somewhere else. Today. It’ll only get worse from here. I do have sympathy, but it was also rather baked in that it would come out this way: there was no way the post-Apartheid government was going to provide the sort of wealth black South Africans thought they’d have if only Apartheid came to an end. Hopes were raised and are now completely dashed…and the ANC does not propose to surrender power simply because they didn’t deliver on their promises.

We all figured that Never Trump, beyond a certain point, would become Democrats – and we were right:

…according to speculation reported by POLITICO, former McCain 2008 chief strategist Steve Schmidt may go one step further: He’s reportedly thinking about signing up with a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, possibly former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.

The good news is he’d likely do as well for Schultz as he did for McCain.

Good riddance.

I don’t have too many Progressive followers on Twitter. No more than a handful as a matter of fact. Twitter is very tribal: for the most part, no one wants to listen to the other side on that platform. But there is one I do have and I admire the guy (or gal; can’t tell if the account holder if male or female): I think him wrong, but he is sincere in arguing for what he thinks is right and he’s honest and never gets nasty. I think he follows me for the same reason. Over the years we’ve had some fun discussions…but lately, we’ve both been sliding towards being angry at the same people. Or, at least, the same sort of people. You know: I despise Never Trumpers…this guy despises Neo-Liberals (as he calls them). In this, we’re both despising unprincipled people who merely latch on to a political party to serve their own, selfish ends. And what I’m thinking of late: just how large is a potential coalition of all people who despise the Establishment? And can Trump (and, believe it or not, McConnell) tap into this and create a FDR-size constituency to win the 2020 election in the manner that FDR won the 1936 election? Time will tell.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan19 Comments

President Trump went on a bit of a Twitter storm about Mueller:

There is No Collusion! The Robert Mueller Rigged Witch Hunt, headed now by 17 (increased from 13, including an Obama White House lawyer) Angry Democrats, was started by a fraudulent Dossier, paid for by Crooked Hillary and the DNC. Therefore, the Witch Hunt is an illegal Scam!

What do you guys think? Is he getting closer to firing Mueller? Some people think so – I have long argued he should, but its been so long I’m wondering if he ever will? Others theorize that Trump, Sessions, et al have their own plan to take care of this plus a great deal of other things right before the mid-terms. I guess anyone’s guess is as good as any other – but one thing I’ve noticed that in the really crucial policy moves of the Trump Administration, there are no leaks. Probably, if there is something cooking, no more than Trump and six or seven of his closest people know what it is.

Justice Ginsburg says she wants to stick around at least five more years…which is nice, but if she wants to make sure Trump doesn’t replace her, she’ll have to hang around until 2025, in my view. And even then she might find President Pence or President Haley offering up her replacement.

Powerline notes that Iran is up against the wall right now – thanks to Trump’s policies. One thing seems to be a constant under Trump: our friends do better, our enemies do worse.

Some Republicans are trying to slip through a bit of Chamber of Commerce-approved semi-amnesty garbage, apparently thinking that Trump will shy away from a budget fight less than 100 days from the midterms. This turns out to have been an incorrect assessment:

I would be willing to “shut down” government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security, which includes the Wall! Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc. and finally go to system of Immigration based on MERIT! We need great people coming into our Country!

Remember, Republicans have been gun-shy on government shutdown since the shutdowns in the mid-90’s which…did absolutely nothing to harm the GOP. And who can forget the government shutdown in 2013 which led, just the following year,…to the best GOP mid-term since the 1920’s? Seriously, I don’t get why the GOP thinks a shutdown is a bad thing. It never adversely affects the GOP and it often clarifies issues. And with Trump in the White House, you can rely on it that any shutdown will be crafted to discomfit the American people as little as possible. Immigration reform with strong border security is popular overall, and especially popular with the GOP base which needs to turn out in November to save the House. A shutdown over the issue will merely fire up the voters we need…so, do it, unless the Dems cave on border security (if they were smart, they would cave, as that would make a lot of GOP voters relax, and thus be less likely to show up in November).

Austin, Texas, is thinking of re-naming itself because Stephen Austin owned slaves. As part of the plan to ensure we keep re-electing Trump President, forever, this is great…but outside of that, it is idiocy. Austin was a man of his times – a Southerner who grew up with slavery as an established thing who also had his doubts about it as the concept of slavery as an evil was gaining currency in the Western World. That he was wrong to hold slaves – and in seeing to it that slavery remained legal in Texas – is a sin he cannot escape…but the bottom line is that he helped lay the foundations for Texas’ liberty which ultimately benefited all Texans. To expunge his name won’t change the past.

I’m sure you guys have heard of the straw ban. Absolute Progressive idiocy. Heard it is based upon the conclusions of a middle school kid’s science project. Wouldn’t surprise me if that were true. Paper straws will now make a comeback. Here’s the thing, for those of old enough to remember: we switched from paper to plastic in the 1970’s to save the trees. Now, we’re going to slaughter trees again…the circle is complete!

Pop Culture Rant

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Weirdo writes a play using the music of the 80’s band The Go-Go’s. New York Times reviewer doesn’t like it. SJW hate mob descends.

Skimming thru the review and various bits and pieces on Twitter – I wouldn’t give such a concept more attention than that; you can dig deeper if you like to waste your time – I get the idea that this play was supposed to be some ground-breaking event and that the reviewer failed in his duty to praise the effort for being ground-breaking…but how using 35 year old music to kowtow to 2018 Progressive ideology is supposed to break any ground is beyond me. The whole thing seems boring – especially since the Go-Go’s started to bore me about 15 minutes after their first song hit the charts (but they were the first all-girl band to write and play their own music! Yeah? So, what? Their musical style was boring and their lyrics trite…but not even trite in a fun way like most pop lyrics are). The whole thing is rather a SJW rip-off of Mama Mia!, if you ask me. Apparently without the fun…and with substandard pop tunes as a hook.

I get nostalgia – I’m a Conservative, right? But I think, at times, we get nostalgic for things that only seemed cool at the time. It is like the continuing popularity of The Eagles on classic rock stations. It was mega-popular when it came out and I think people associate it with happy days of youth. But, come on, the music sucked! No one moves faster to change a radio station than me when I hear the first three notes of Life in the Fast Lane or Hotel California. Hotel California topped the charts in 1977 and you get to hear it several times a day if you listen to classic rock stations…but you’re lucky if you hear Lido Shuffle once a year on the same stations. And you can go listen to Hotel California if you want to compare, but I’ll actually provide Lido Shuffle for your enjoyment:

After listening to that and realizing that I’m right, also realize that if they ever do a play using 1977 music it’s gonna be with the Eagles music, not Boz Skaggs.

And just because, also from 1977:

But, Eagles, Eagles, Eagles. And don’t think I’m just ripping on them…Heart also sucked; as did Carlos Santana (never heard a more boring guitarist). Basically, most chart-toppers were lousy. You ever listen to those re-broadcasts of American Top 40? It is practically impossible to listen to: 9 out of 10 songs are just hideously bad. Not worth plowing through them to get to the one gem that actually endured the test of time.

Where am I going with all this? Nowhere – this is a rant, dang it! I’m just venting spleen on something that irritates me: and, in this case, it is the use of some of the worst music ever made as some sort of cultural markers for our civilization. I don’t care about that play because the subject matter of it seems pretty dumb…what I’m upset about is they used a lousy band and now I can find people waxing rhapsodic over the nuances of the fargin’ Go-Go’s! There are no nuances in a song that says over and over and over a-freaking-gain “we got the beat”. Meanwhile, this will never be part of a hit Broadway play:

Summer’s going fast, nights growing colder
Children growing up, old friends growing older
Freeze this moment a little bit longer
Make each sensation a little bit stronger

Because that might make you think about something – maybe even something pleasant. Its from this song:

And the guys who made up Rush are probably pinko enough…but their music is too actually good to make it on Broadway. So, we’re stuck with lousy music being made into bad plays about subjects that no one cares about. And then have to hear shrieks from SJW’s who feel we don’t appreciate it enough.

End Rant.

Worst President Re-Release Open Thread

Mark Noonan22 Comments

The Worst President in History has been re-released. It has been updated! We’re very proud of this book and are pleased that it has done so well. Just to tip you off, Matt and I just got another idea for a book, so stay tuned. And buy this one, if you haven’t!

So, there’s this anti-ICE camp and, get this, they’ve set up borders for the camp and they strictly control who is allowed inside. I’d accuse them of hypocrisy, but there’s just no point because they are shameless.

California, since 1968, has been granted waivers to go beyond the national clean air standards – and the liberals of California have used these waivers to leverage the rest of the nation to subscribe to California’s clean air standards. Looks like the EPA may end that practice. On one hand, this is good as it prevents California from effectively dictating national auto emission standards…on the other hand, the more unlivable the liberals make California, the closer we get to the day the liberals are crushed in California. I’m distressed that we might be helping the liberals get rid of some of their own stupid mistakes.

Looks like the North Korean are dismantling at least some of their nuclear infrastructure. The MSM has been relentless in not covering this.

There was yet another in the series of “waiter gets racist note” events. Naturally, the MSM ran with the story…and just as naturally, it has now proved false. You might be thinking: why do they keep doing this? Well, the reason is that the retraction never gets much notice, at all, and zero notice on the left. Rely on it, most people of the left firmly believe that each of these events actually happened, just as they still believe “hands up, don’t shoot” is true. These stories aren’t for you and me: they are for the true believers of the Left, to keep them at a fever pitch.

Have any of you seen Interstellar? Every time I hear people talking about it, they are saying it is the very worst Sci-Fi movie ever made. I think it the best. If you’ve seen it, what do you think?