Challenge: Name Something Positive the Government Has Done

Mark Noonan26 Comments

Yesterday on Twitter I saw a comment claiming that the rise of Trump is due to some decades of Conservatives asserting that government is bad – I retorted that the rise of Trump is due to 100 years of the government never getting anything right. That was a bit of a Twitter thing – you only have 140 characters, so you have to be brief and this can lead to exaggeration for effect. But then I started really thinking it over, and it occurs to me that my mind had just latched on to a salient fact.

Our Progressive friends would roll that around a bit and might come up with something like “roads”; this in keeping with their basic view that all goods things come from government. But here’s the thing – outside my neighborhood right now, the road is ripped up. There wasn’t anything wrong with the road – no potholes or cracks. It had been redone a few years previously. They didn’t install new sewer or power lines. All anyone can see is that they ripped up a perfectly good road to lay down an exact duplicate of what was destroyed. Go ahead and Google “Roman roads” right now – you’ll find all sorts of pictures of 2,000 year old roads which are still in pretty good shape. If government is doing roads right, shouldn’t they last a bit? Think about it – it is, bottom line, rock laid flat over dirt. This is not a complex engineering task. Anyone want to place bets on how long our Interstate system would last if we stopped re-doing it every couple of years? I drive to St. George, Utah on a fairly regular basis and the Virgin River Gorge is almost continually being redone. Don’t tell me we can’t build it once for all – but we don’t. And I can only suspect we don’t because if we did, there’d be less government money to shove at well-connected highway contractors. I know that cars and trucks cause more wear and tear than ox carts of Roman days…but we’ve also advanced in science just a bit since then and there simply must be a way to build a road which will last with very minimal maintenance (outside of large natural catastrophes) for centuries. Sure, it’d be vastly expensive to build such roads…but once built, we wouldn’t have to worry about it for a long, long time.

Schools? They barely make kids literate these days – don’t think that the racists who have popped up of late are old, white people…from what I can see of them, they are mostly young people and that means that they are products of our current education system. Or, rather, current mis-education system…and coming out of school absolutely ignorant of history, they are falling prey to hate-mongers who know how to use “cool” imagery to sucker people. College is even worse – you can pile up debt to get a degree which is absolutely worthless…and even the hard sciences are now being infected by political correctness so I’m starting to worry we won’t have sufficiently qualified engineers in 20-30 years to maintain the technical aspects of our civilization.

I read today that the military is spending time teaching soldiers about the evils of “white privilege”…I’m sure that’ll come in handy when someone is shooting at you. Cars and houses cost vastly more than they should thanks to government tinkering with what the “experts” think should be in a car (needless to say, the experts making the rulings have probably never built a car or a house in their lives). Milk, bread and meat is also more expensive thanks to government – which figures that humanity, which has been managing to feed itself for 100,000 years, wouldn’t know what to eat if a government nanny wasn’t present. Medical research? Let’s just talk about how much longer it takes to get a treatment or medication on the market thanks to government…and how much more expensive it is because government “helped” everyone along the way.

So, just name it – name one thing you think government has done well.

Out and About on Tuesday

Mark Noonan27 Comments

Ever wonder what goes on in colleges? Here’s a sample:

Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental change. However, the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers – particularly related to epistemological questions about the production of glaciological knowledge – remain understudied. This paper thus proposes a feminist glaciology framework with four key components: 1) knowledge producers; (2) gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of scientific domination; and (4) alternative representations of glaciers. Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.

This is what is known in polite society as “bullsh**”. But it is BS with a purpose – to pretend that people who don’t know anything must be listened to. Oh, and you paid for that with your tax dollars. Human-ice interactions? For normal people, that is when you pour the bourbon…

Did George Bush lie us into Iraq? Short answer: no. But check this video out.

The hacker Guccifer has been extradited to the United States – he’s the guy who, among other things, hacked Hillary Clinton…but you can bet your last dollar that the Justice Department won’t bring up that little detail.

A chance to turn New York red in 2016? There’s been a surge of Democrats re-registering Independent and Republican this year…and Democrat primary turn out is not just a bit low, it is disastrously bad. Things could get interesting.

Why we Catholics have to keep “Popesplaining” things to you:

1. Pope says that Europe is facing an “Arab invasion” and notes that Europe has been able to deal with such invasions in the past.

2. MSM reports it as “Pope says Europe is being invaded and it is a good thing”.

The other day I saw a bit of a joke on Facebook – three pictures. First picture is of a smiling Pope Francis with the caption, “we must love all men”. Second picture is of an MSM talking head saying, “Pope Francis has made homosexuality mandatory for all men”. Third picture is of Pope Francis with a WTF look on his face. Seriously guys and gals, the Pope is not a Commie and he’s not an agent of the Global Jihadist Conspiracy. He’s Catholic – he’s going to say Catholic things and he will try to give as little offense as possible because if you’re insulting people, it is rather difficult to convert them.

Related: mass baptisms of refugees in Germany.

Related, Related: number of Catholics continues to increase faster than global population growth. Still down in the Americas and Europe, but growing by leaps and bounds in Africa and Asia. Main thing, we’re eventually going to take over. Muhahahaha! You’ll all be doing Rosaries!

Reports that plenty of DC Republicans might vote Hillary is that is what it takes to stop Trump. Sorry, folks – but that is just another indicator if its Trump Vs Hillary, Trump wins. Maybe 10 or 20 thousand upper echelon GOPers might vote Hillary…but millions of Democrats will vote Trump. If we want to stop Trump, November ain’t the place to do it…he’ll have to be stopped in the primaries.

Weekend Open Thread

Mark Noonan12 Comments

Over 80% of the jobs added in February – if we can trust BLS stats, at all – were low wage (and there’s a Zero Hedge link for those of you who have been starved for such). But don’t sweat it – I’m sure that our economy is far more valuable with more people tending bar than working in mines…

On Saturday, the GOP has caucuses in Kansas, Kentucky and Maine and a primary in Louisiana – if the Great Wall of Trump is starting to crack, we should see some signs of it in these places.

People are still arguing that Cruz should step aside and allow Rubio to be the Anti-Trump – sorry, folks, but that just isn’t rational. I caucused for Rubio but you just have to admit that stopping Trump requires someone to get more delegates than Trump…and Cruz is best positioned to do that. Cruz is, on balance, probably the guy who can keep most of the GOP Trumpsters on side. Whether or not he can generate the sort of cross-over Dems Trump has been getting is an unknown. Now, if Rubio starts to do well and pulls ahead of Cruz (this would require, at minimum, winning Florida), then perhaps Rubio can be our Anti-Trump…but elections are about votes, not about what one prefers. Right now, Cruz is getting more votes.

Gallup has Obama above 50% approval…that is bad but, also, I think quite wrong. What has happened in Obama-world which would make people think, “wow, he’s doing a good job?”. It could be a reflection of popular disgust with Obama’s prospective replacements which is driving Obama’s numbers up. It’s the first time in two years Gallup has Obama in positive territory, so I suspect it is an outlier. This is is borne out by Gallup showing Obama +7 while no other recent polling shows him in that condition – and his RCP average is 48% approval, if you include this latest Gallup poll. But, we’ll have to see how it goes – keep in mind that the President’s party usually scores within a point or two of the President’s approval rating at election time…so if people are getting happy out the Obama Era, it bodes ill for the GOP…on the other hand, the collapse in Democrat primary turnout (ie, what people are doing rather than saying the pollsters) is a stronger indicator that Obama’s time has gone.

Allahpundit wonders – is it going to be Trump/Kasich or Trump/Cruz after all is said and done?

Topical: Hitler or Stalin – who is worse?

Progressives explained: “There’s no alternative to logic except laziness” – G K Chesterton.

Making sure Trump cannot corner the Insane-American Vote: Hillary will get to the bottom of the UFO business in Area 51.

UPDATE: Well, Cruz crushed it in Kansas and Maine, while Trump narrowly carried Louisiana and Kentucky. What we have here is a political contest which no one can see the end of – Trump still has the advantage, but it is small and shrinking. Meanwhile, Bernie took Kansas and Nebraska while Hillary rolled to victory in Louisiana…I’m starting to suspect that Her Majesty’s coronation might be delayed.

I Think I’ve Figured This Out

Mark Noonan3 Comments

On Wednesday I was driving around and I had on the radio the Rush Limbaugh Show. I don’t listen too often because, well, Rush usually doesn’t tell me anything I don’t already know; his opinions that I agree with are already internalized and those I don’t agree with never shake me from my views. But, there he was, happily talking away. And then he said it – he asserted that it is absurd to think that we can get Apple to return I-phone manufacturing to the United States…I can’t remember the exact words, but it was something along the lines of there are 500,000 people working for Apple in China with a built infrastructure for the entire manufacturing process and we just can’t duplicate that in the United States. It infuriated me to hear anyone say that the United States can’t do a thing – and then later that day I happened to run across several other people making the same assertion. And said assertion is nonsense.

I know – labor costs. I realize that China pays it’s workers nearly nothing. I also realize – though our Capitalist Captains of Industry never like to mention it – that to do business in China requires massive bribery…but with that bribery you can pretty much do as you like. No need to trouble yourself too much over environmental regulations, safety measures or other trivia like that. But even with that, I just don’t buy the notion that you can’t make something better and cheaper in the United States.

Go to a hardware store and look for a hammer – I’ll bet dollars to donuts that almost all you find are made in China. What is a hammer? Just a piece of steel fashioned in a certain shape. It isn’t rocket science. It isn’t a complex device. I defy anyone to tell me that we can’t replace that Chinese factory using 500 workers to make hammers with a factory in the United States employing 50 workers in a highly automated manufacturing system…and by using our ability to automate along with our superior infrastructure to make that hammer cheaper than the Chinese can, especially as they then have to ship it thousands of miles before it even arrives in the American market. Oh, I realize that right now – at the moment – we can’t because our tax and regulatory system makes it exceptionally difficult to build and open a factory. But don’t tell me it can’t be done. It darn well can be – as soon as we want to do it. It just takes the political will to say “screw you” to people raking in profits off of sweated Chinese labor.

And thinking all that over, it occurred to me – there is the appeal of Trump in a nutshell. Lay aside for a moment the nauseating racists and anti-Semites who have latched on to him, solely on the strength of his early immigration comments. Such people are numerous, but not all that much – remember, we live in a nation of 317 million people, if even 1% of them hold to a particular view it can seem like a lot – especially with Social Media to magnify their voices (Twitter seems gigantic, until you realize that every day 83.31% of Americans don’t use Twitter, at all). A guy getting Trump’s vote totals – and goosing up GOP turnout numbers to some-times record levels – isn’t getting that because a few people like his Great Wall of Trump idea. He’s getting that level of support because a lot of regular folks are moving his way. And my view is that they are turning out for him because he says we can be great.

Keep in mind when someone says, “those jobs aren’t coming back”, it is invariably someone with a well-paid gig that isn’t affected by jobs moving to China. Lawyers, bureaucrats, corporate executives, consultants, MSMers, professional politicians…it is that sort of person who tells the blue collar slob that his blue collar job is gone for good…and even if he takes a job at Disney at 60% of his previous factory wage, he’ll have to train a foreign replacement, brought in quite legally via the H-1B visa program. Meanwhile, China doesn’t seem to want us to outsource our army of consultants and lawyers probably because the Chinese are smart enough not to want such people in large numbers lawyering and consulting an economy into ruin. An army of experts will rise to ridicule the idea that we can make things in the United States better and cheaper than foreigners can – and I’ll bet not one in a thousand of the people telling us such things have ever made one thing in their whole lives. And the people who do make things are rather angry that they are reserved for the “short end of the stick” portion of American life.

This is the United States of America! We’re the people who in just over a century rose from a colonial backwater to the most powerful nation in human history. We went to the Moon! And someone is going to tell me that this nation that did all that can’t make a hammer? Can’t even make a belt or a pair of shoes? Nonsense! It is our economic policies which have priced American manufacturing out of world markets, not some fundamental inability of Americans to compete. And let me tell you, if you really hold the view that we can’t out build and out compete every nation on Earth, then we might as well close up shop as a nation – allow ourselves to be annexed by some other nation with a bit more grit and determination. Grab a clue – a nation which can’t make things eventually can’t buy things, either. American consulting isn’t going to be enough on the global market to satisfy our demand for consumer goods, folks – in order to continue to get, we’re going to have to give. For 50 years we’ve just been giving money – magically printed up for the occasion by the Federal Reserve…but eventually you can’t print enough money to convince people to provide your needs and desires. Eventually they will want something and your degree in business management won’t be it.

I have been saying for a while now that the way to beat Trump is to out-Trump him – not in the vulgarity, but in the gut…where people live and feel. People who back Trump rather absurdly believe that Trump is on their side even though there is zero evidence that he is actually on their side…but he’s saying he is, and it is working with large numbers of people. So, beat him at it – say you’re on their side, as well…assert that the United States will be the manufacturing leader of the world; the export leader of the world; the agricultural leader of the world; the mining leader of the world; the energy production leader of the world…that we’ll clear out of the way every last tax and regulation which makes it hard for Americans to build and grow. Leave it to the Democrats to tell their voters that they’ll manage the decline and provide a bit of welfare and job training for non-existent jobs…we take the path that says, “we’ll reform things so that there will be X Million new manufacturing jobs by 2020”.

Of course, results will matter – once you promise, you’d better deliver. But if all you’re promising is low-rent stuff like “improving opportunity” then you’re not saying anything at all. What is “improving opportunity”? It is a meaningless phrase which makes it sound like you’re going to do something, maybe. Tell people you’ll bring the jobs back from China and it sounds much more vigorous…and as you’re not Trump, you can actually come up with some plans which will do just that. Part of our problem, of course, is that Rubio and Cruz are both lawyers…lawyers have a hard time understanding regular folks (so, too, do real estate tycoons like Trump…but somewhere along the line he found out that people at least want to hear that something concrete is going to get done for regular folks which doesn’t amount to a government poverty hand-out). Come on, Ted and Marco – think about it! And then go out and say it. Sure, those invested in the current system will rise in fury and scorn over any promise to bring jobs back…but you can see how much such words work regarding votes. And you guys needs some votes – the only way to really stop Trump is to get more delegates than he does, and time’s a wasting.

Anyways, that is how I see it right now – Trump is at least speaking to desires; Rubio and Cruz are speaking to theories and playing around with “vote for me because Trump sucks”. That won’t do the trick…might deny Trump a first-ballot nominating majority, but it won’t actually stop him, nor get either Cruz or Rubio in to the White House.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan13 Comments

The Justice Department has given a grant of immunity in the Hillary case…grants of immunity are usually only given to someone who is guilty but willing to spill the beans on someone else. My guess: beans will be spilled on Someone Other Than Hillary. This way we get a prosecution while Hillary can be given an allegedly clean bill of health on the whole matter. Only question is who get thrown under the bus.

But is Bernie playing his hand in a manner to ensure that no one else can step in if Hillary is indicted?

Mitt Romney is going to give a speech tomorrow – some expect a Rubio endorsement, everyone expects some sort of attack on Trump. I don’t think an attack on Trump will do much – the sort of people backing Trump will treat Romney’s words with contempt. On the other hand, endorsing Rubio might help. On the other other hand, endorsing Cruz would be quite the unexpected thing – and probably be most useful in stopping Trump, if that can still be done.

Related: Lindsey Graham suggests it might be time to rally around Cruz.

For an alternative GOP view on Trump, Roger L. Simon appears unfazed by Trump’s enormities:

…With all his victories, however, many Beltway Republicans are obviously still tremendously upset by Donald’s success. It’s hard to tell how big the #NeverTrump crowd is, but you will excuse me if, in plain English, I don’t know what the Hell they’re talking about.

Do these people want to lose? Would they prefer Hillary Clinton be president? Are they looking for a perfect candidate? Has there ever been one? Donald Trump may actually be expanding the Republican Party. Isn’t that good? … For that group I would recommend a reading of Hugh Hewitt’s “Six reasons Trump is still better than Clinton.” If Hugh can write that after Donald famously dissed him for low ratings at the last debate, a lot of other people can swallow their pride too and get on board…

Meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg isn’t having any of it:

…Trump says he gets along with everybody and will unify the country, even as he suggests that an inconvenient judge is biased because he’s Latino, vows to ban all Muslims from the country, insists his Central Intelligence Agency will torture people, and boasts that he will declare war on disloyal journalists.

When your opponent is that unreasonable, the reasonable response is not surrender.

I don’t know whether Trump will win the nomination or the presidency. But I am fairly certain that if he does, a great many people will one day say, “My God, what have I done?”

The Noonan Party Line

Mark Noonan6 Comments

So just what, bottom line, do I want in a political party? Well, it’s really not all that much because, you see, politicians are, well, politicians and I’m not about to suddenly start expecting them to be worth much. Every now and again a nation hits the jackpot and gets a great leader who is also, at bottom, a good person…it is rare and it is just as rare in democratic or non-democratic government. It seems that rolling the dice with genetics or votes works out about the same (so, rare birds like Abraham Lincoln and Empress Maria Theresa are once in a couple century things…while we’re chock full of leaders like Richard Nixon and Nicholas II). But we live, pro-tempore, in a democratic republic and so it is with votes that we’ll determine which pack of fools governs us. That being said, what do I vote for?

1. First and foremost, got to be pro-life. Yeah, I’ve heard all the pro-choice arguments from rational to downright stupid. None of them matter – at the end of the day, an elective abortion kills a kid for no reason, at all. There are no conceivable effects of having a child which are worse than killing the child…as the child, you see, winds up dead. If you can’t at least get this basic thing right, then I don’t want any part of you.

2. Freedom of conscience is non-negotiable. If a person cannot say and write what he or she thinks true regardless of the place it is said or written then no one is free, at all. Other than obvious things like immediate incitement to violence everyone must be allowed to hold in public whatever opinions they want without suffering even the least bit of social or official sanction. I don’t care what your views are – I only care what your concrete, physical actions are, and then only if they affect others.

3. Property rights have to be respected. Every person has an absolute and unalienable right to the fruits of their labor, as well as the fruits of the labor of their forebears. Taxes we must have, but once a tax is paid that is the very last claim anyone has on your property. Only in the rarest of instances can I see a credible reason for a government to take a person’s property for public use and then, of course, just compensation must be paid…but we must also be sure that every other possible alternative is searched out prior to taking private property for government use.

4. All concentrations of power are wicked. Anyone proposing to create, preserve or expand concentrations of power is an enemy of justice. And power is two things – government power to compel and money power to corrupt. The ability to decide must be retained at the lowest level possible.

5. The right of the people to defend themselves with arms, if necessary, is absolute.

6. Elected government service is the duty of citizens, not the sinecure of professional politicians. Terms limits on office holders is a must.

And that is really about it – you’ll notice that I didn’t get into tax rates, what to do with Entitlements, social issues (other than abortion; but even there it isn’t abortion so much as a respect for each, individual human life that motivates my vote). As readers here know, I’ve got my opinions on such things and these things do move me to vote one way or another – but in the crucial aspects, those six points are what I’m about.

And right now, neither major political party is doing all six things. The GOP is at least pretending to do some of the six, Democrats aren’t even pretending to do any of them. I’m kind of politically adrift right now. For the moment, I’ll remain a registered Republican – though if Trump does become the nominee I’ll have to think long and hard on that. I can’t go over to the Democrats because they hold in explicit contempt everything I hold dear. I won’t go Libertarian, either, because while I admire them for their spirited defense of liberty, I suspect that in matters of religious liberty they’ll prove unwilling to fight vigorously for me. Perhaps if I saw them engaging the left on things like the absurd attempts to remove crosses from public lands, I’d have more faith in their alleged commitment to liberty.

I’m hopeful that true Conservatives out there are also thinking long and hard about all this. I’ve been drifting towards the idea of a new party for a while – not with any thought (at least initially) of such a party becoming the majority, but of a party which would hold the balance of power between the two major parties. A party which would speak for me and those like me and could extract concessions from either or both party’s in return for temporary political alliances for this or that particular issue (so, if the GOP had 210 House seats and the Democrats 205, a Conservative party could throw its 20 seats into the balance…ok, Ryan, you want to be Speaker? Ok, we want a Freedom of Conscience Act and a termination of funding for PP; and if the GOP proves unwilling, I’m sure the Democrats would throw us a bone in return for Committee chairmanships…but the ultimate idea is to slowly move the ball our way…and if things crater, then this new party is clear of all blame, and maybe a majority eventually turns towards it). I think in 2017 or 2018, such a party could be formed, and probably obtain immediately a significant number of adherents among those already in the House and Senate, and in State legislatures – and by being freed from the Republican/Democrat dichotomy, it would be free to run varied types of candidates in both GOP and Democrat districts as best opportunities present themselves.

At any rate, that is how I see things and how I see myself in the political spectrum.

Super Tuesday

Mark Noonan40 Comments

UPDATE III: Votes are still being counted, but I’m encouraged. It has been a good night for Trump but not that good. There’s no reason, I can see, for either Rubio or Cruz to get out at this point (Rubio’s big stand will have to be in FL in two weeks. He must win there).

Sure, Trump still is the front-runner and has the best chance of getting the GOP nomination, but there is a chance that either Rubio and Cruz will keep dogging him and denying him a first-ballot majority, or one of them may yet become the Anti-Trump and roll up more delegates than Trump. We’ll have to see how it comes out.

UPDATE IV: Ok, so the votes are counted.

First and foremost, the Democrat turnout has collapsed against 2008 and the GOP turnout was not just large, it was remarkably large, historic…record setting, I understand in some States. These are numbers which in normal politics would indicate a Republican landslide in November…but with Trump at the top of the heap, we just don’t know…and might not know until the votes are counted on November 8th.

Second, I don’t see any reason for Bernie to drop out on the Democrat side. Hillary did roll up some big wins, but the States that the primaries are heading to are much more Bernie-friendly. In the end I do expect the Democrat leadership to muscle Hillary into the nomination, but if I were Bernie – or one of his supporters – I’d carry on the fight. I’ve talked with a number of these Democrat Bernie supporters…unlike the Obama-bots, they don’t seem to be relentlessly nasty people. They are wrong, but not wrong-headed. I wish them well – I don’t want a Socialist United States, but I admire the sincerity and conviction of these people.

Third – now what, for the GOP? As I said last night, no reason for Cruz or Rubio to back out at this point, though Rubio has to win in Florida on the 15th to remain in any way credible. There is a chance – a small one – that the combination of Cruz and Rubio can deny Trump a first ballot majority at the Convention. This does not mean that Trump isn’t going to be the nominee – the only way to prevent that at this point is for a candidate to roll up more delegates than Trump does, and that is a vanishingly small probability. But if Cruz and Rubio come to Cleveland with enough delegates to prevent Trump from winning on the first ballot, then Trump is going to have to make a deal…and it will be a deal with two candidates who rose out of the TEA Party movement. In other words, if Cruz and Rubio are worth anything, they’ll be able to force Trump to make some moves which would make a Trump candidacy and Presidency far more palatable. Just as one scenario: Rubio gets the VP slot, Cruz gets a SCOTUS promise. That sort of thing would make #NeverTrump into #WTFOkIGuessTrump. We’ll have to see how that plays out (no, I’ll never be a Trump supporter)

Continue reading →

It Ain’t Super Tuesday So We Don’t Have to Be All Depressed (Yet) Open Thread

Mark Noonan32 Comments

So this Swedish teenager – apparently starry-eyed for some boy – agrees to travel nearly 2,000 miles with him to Syria. The story says they took a bus to ISIS controlled territory! What in heck is going on in this world? First off – just what did anyone ever hear about ISIS which makes them say, “sounds good; sign me up?”. She’s not Muslim – she’s native Swedish…what brings such a child to such a place? And how in heck did she just waltz in there where our Special Forces troops risk life and limb to get in?

We live in very strange and amazingly stupid times.

Christie endorses Trump. See my above comment.

Glenn Reynolds analyses the Trump phenomena and notes that similar political rumblings are being seen in Britain. Boiled down – people are afraid to hold in public unpopular opinions until it is safe to so do. As more and more people “let it all hang out” people start to realize that their secret views are not really all that unpopular and a preference cascade erupts – in a flash, safe political calculations are upset. Trump’s vulgar demagoguery is allowing more and more people to, as it were, let it rip in the public square. This is allowing some people of decidedly fascist and/or racist views to poke their heads up a bit, as well – and that shouldn’t be ignored and should be smacked down as much as possible…but it is also allowing people to say true things which have been forbidden for a long time. We’re all going to get to see how this plays out – I don’t think anyone is going to be able to stop it from happening, even if Trump ends up losing. The cat is most definitively out of the bag.

Host of un-watched ultra-leftwing TV show is boycotting her show because it keeps getting pre-empted by things people would rather watch.

Yet another false accusation of racism. Racism does, indeed, exist in the United States. My “block” list on Twitter is probably half outright racists. But it doesn’t really keep a minority person down…and 7 years after we elected our first African-American President is is the height of absurdity to keep harping on racism as if this were still 1960 in the Jim Crow South. But, liberals want to keep harping on it – and if they just have to make stuff up, that is what they’ll do.

And also 7 years into Obama’s Administration, the Washington Post makes the shocking discovery that here is a lack of U.S. leadership in the world.

What’s coming for us…

On Behalf of Nevada, I Apologize Open Thread

Mark Noonan70 Comments

My goodness – about 75,000 people participated in the GOP Caucus yesterday. Doesn’t sound like much? Well, 31,500 participated in 2012…and Trump got more votes last night than there were 2012 participants.

I think we’re all a little stunned this morning – at least, I know I am. It is becoming real, now…Trump is almost sure to be the GOP nominee. And with Trump being able to gin up turnout numbers like that, I really, really doubt “expert” opinion which says that he’s a sure loser in November. Whenever Hillary and Bernie go at it hammer and tongs, the number of Democrats who show up has gone down, not up. Declining number of voters vs rising number of voters…who do you think is better able to win, in the end?

UPDATE: If I had to put my finger on it, I’d say that it was Jeb Bush’s candidacy which nailed it all down for Trump…here was the Establishment writ large immediately raising buckets of money and people started to feel, “damn; they’re going to force us to pick Bush and it will be Bush vs Hillary”. It appeared to me the Walker was sitting atop the polls until Trump got in…and provided the absolute anti-Establishment voice…he immediately crushed the life out of the Walker campaign (and what small amount of life there had been in the Jindal campaign) and left us with a collection of pure Establishmentarians or outsiders who, thus far, haven’t had what it takes to bring down Trump…but if Bush hadn’t got in, I think it would have gone very differently.

So, What Will You Do in November, Conservatives?

Mark Noonan60 Comments

Allahpundit has some interesting thoughts on how that might play out:

I’m not saying conservative revulsion at Trump isn’t real. It is, and I think when it all shakes out in November that Trump will have seen more Republicans stay home for him than stayed home for either Romney or McCain. But I don’t think there’ll be a third party and I also don’t think that some sliver of conservatives staying home will doom Trump’s candidacy. Given Hillary’s weakness and his own appeal to independents and Reagan Democrats, it’s possible that he’d find the votes he needs to win in the center. That would be the final indignity to the conservative movement after having its impotence laid bare for more than a year — staging a mass boycott of Trump on election day and discovering that Trump can win anyway…

I think he’s right – because Trump will pull into the GOP far more people than stay home or write in a candidate. He’s not just going to get the storied “Reagan Democrats”, he’s going to get the “Trump Democrats”…people who normally vote Democrat but will slide over to Trump because (a) Hillary is just horrible and (b) Trump’s brand of populist nationalism is deeply in tune with their overall worldview. Last night I engaged in a (very polite) argument with a conservative on Twitter over the prospects of Trump winning Pennsylvania. That State, like Michigan, is one of those States the GOP should win fairly easily – and yet, year after year, we keep losing them. Win PA and MI and the GOP could still lose FL and thread the Electoral College needle to victory. The conservative I argued with was certain – Trump will never, ever win PA…the Philly suburbs would reject him. Which is likely correct – but I’m thinking that Philly, itself, might generate more votes for Trump than anyone suspects. Meaning that what Trump might lose among upper class white voters in the ‘burbs could be more than made up for by winning the votes of working class white (and minority) voters in the cities.

Just a net switch over to Trump of 155,000 PA votes in 2016 annuls the 2012 result. 225,000 does it for Michigan. 50,000 does it for Ohio. 50,000 does it for Florida. 55,000 does it in Virginia. Flip those States from 2012 and Trump has 302 electoral votes. But even if Hillary hangs on in PA and MI, Trump is still at 266…think he can’t win any of NV, CO, NM, IA or WI? Any one of those States would hand the election to him. But it might get worse than that – Trump’s appeal to cross-over Democrat votes might find Hillary having to defend herself in odd places like New Jersey, Maine, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Oregon.

Of course, on the other hand, we can rely upon the good sense of the American people to reject a vulgar demagogue like Trump. Sure we can. The same nation that made the Kardashians rich and famous is sure to see right through the Trump scam…