The After Thanksgiving Open Thread

Cluster12 Comments

I thought we would pick up where we left off on the Thanksgiving thread. There is certainly a lot to talk about, including this recent NYT article on Climate Change which I thought was irresponsible. Talk about fear based politics and not one mention of data manipulation or previous predictions which have been way off the mark. Then of course there is this article on the Maunder Minimum which in my opinion merits attention.

And finally, on an issue all of us have discussed at length and what Democrats are fond of calling the “Great Recession”, here is a well sourced article that connects the dots better than we ever did and it reveals a lot.

Thanksgiving Open Thread

Mark Noonan76 Comments

For years our Progs have been telling us that Thanksgiving is just the memorial of the racist, white Europeans who invaded the Americas and deliberately with malice aforethought committed genocide against the native peoples. Now that we’ve got to get Obama’s refugees into America, the Progs are all about how if we don’t allow the refugees in, we’re betraying the very idea of Thanksgiving…which, per the Progs, is the idea of invading and massacring. I don’t think our Progs ever think things through.

But what is Thanksgiving, really? Just what it says – giving thanks. To God, boys and girls. For all that we have. And for the overwhelming majority of us, that is quite a lot.

Here ends another day, during which I have had eyes, ears, hands and the great world around me. Tomorrow begins another day. Why am I allowed two? – G K Chesterton

To be given two days of life is something astounding. And most of us are given many decades of it – and, indeed, an eternity of it, if we want. Be thankful on Thanksgiving – if you are, then you’re doing it right.

That Iran deal thingy? State Department says it isn’t legally binding. At the end of the day, the only legally-binding thing of the Obama Era is ObamaCare – and that only because the Supreme Court re-wrote it for him, twice. The good news here is that the next President is simply not bound by most of what Obama has accomplished.

Rubio might have actually killed off ObamaCare, by the way.

In polling, Trump is still running away with it – but keep in mind that at around this time in 2003, Howard Dean was at 23% and Kerry was at 4%. Things can change massively in a very short time.

What Media Bias? Part 200

Mark Noonan4 Comments

The New York Times headline:

1 Israeli and 3 Palestinians Killed in Attacks in West Bank

Sounds like someone is attacking, but the headline doesn’t make clear who attacked – but given that its three to one dead Palestinians, must be those dratted Israelis, right?

So, what happened? Well, three Palestinians launched attacks against Jews in the West Bank. The attackers managed to kill one Jewish woman while the three Palestinian attackers were killed by Israeli soldiers and civilians. A headline for this should properly be, “Jewish Woman Murdered in West Bank” or some such…but the New York Times can’t do that because Narrative. A narrative which has it that Israelis are somehow responsible for all deaths in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel.

The most horrific aspect of the story is that the terrorists sent out a 16 year old girl to do some killing – she was rammed by an Israeli car and shot by an Israeli soldier before she could carry out her design. In reality, that is the lede – nicely buried by the Times under a fog of “reporting” which attempts to get the reader’s mind off what is really happening – Jews are being targeted for random attacks and the people orchestrating the attacks don’t care even for the lives of their own children (though the Times manages to quote the father of the girl saying the killing of the would-be 16 year old murderer is a crime against childhood!). What the world needs to know is not the body count (and especially a body count which by noting the higher number of Palestinian deaths tries to make out that the Israelis are acting badly), but a clear understanding of what sort of people the Israelis are dealing with – people who send out children to commit murder.

The truth is what we need, but that is not what we’re going to get from the MSM.

Democrats Call in the George W. Bush to Save Their Party

Mark Noonan15 Comments

As polls show Obama and the Democrats in the distinct political minority in dealing with radical Islamic terrorism, they’ve decided only one person can save them:

I guess we really all do miss W, now.

This ad is nauseating – for 8 years Democrats routinely insulted President Bush in the most disgusting terms possible. He was Chimpy McSmirk BusHitler. He was evil. He lied to get us into Iraq so that Cheney could make money. He was a war criminal. But here are the Democrats at their shameless worst – using the reasonable words of a good President to try and shore up support for the disastrously failed policies of President Obama.

We all know why President Bush downplayed the Islamic aspects of our enemies – in order that it would be easier for us to defeat those elements within Islam determined to kill us. And to this day, no wise person wants any sort of war on Islam – which is why the GOP candidates of 2016 are careful to state that our problem is with radical Islamic terrorism – not with Islam, as a thing. But Obama doesn’t see anything in Islam as a problem – he has decided that there is no problem within Islam. That Islam has absolutely nothing to do with what is happening in Syria – or what happened in Paris last week. Or what may happen in the United States when the terrorists attack here, again.

It is Obama’s miserable failure in Iraq and Syria which has led the world to a crisis where half the population of Syria has been displaced and a sea of humanity is now seeking safety anywhere they can find it. In what must be some sort of pathetic attempt on Obama’s part to make up for his failure, he has decided that he’ll get 10,000 Syrians into the United States – a drop in the ocean of suffering. This allows Obama to preen himself on his generosity – while doing nothing to actually solve the problem his failures have helped to bring about. But in the aftermath of Paris, everyone is wary – everyone with any sense at all wants to have much more careful screening of refugees. This is just common sense – but as it wasn’t Obama’s idea, he wants no part of it. But the people are against him – and so this cynical use of President Bush.

I think this will go over like a lead balloon. Nothing in the past 7 years has to completely demonstrated the moral bankruptcy of the Democrat party.

Paris: Does Anyone Want to Get Real, Yet?

Mark Noonan21 Comments

Or are we just going to have some teary-eyed candlelight vigils and proclaim our “solidarity” with the victims? I suspect that is all we’ll do – oh, to be sure, any terrorists taken alive will be put on trial by the French and France might even carry out a few selected attacks in the Middle East; but I don’t think the French, or anyone, will really do anything.

To do something about this requires courage, determination and a willingness to inflict and suffer losses. And to have all that, you have to have something you believe in. Say what you want about the terrorists who carried out the attacks, but they clearly believe in something – something they are willing to throw away their lives for. To fight such, we need people who believe just as vigorously in a different set of ideas. What do the French believe? What do Americans believe? What do the people of the West believe? Some of the elements in Europe which are opposed to the establishment seem more interested in just deporting immigrants and ensuring more welfare for native-born layabouts. There are, of course, some who do believe in better ideas – but I don’t see them in charge; nor likely to become in charge any time soon.

I do wonder why we in the United States have not suffered such attacks – it could be just luck, but it also might relate to just how well-armed the American people are. Part of the appeal, as it were, for these types of attacks is that they provide the Islamists with a show which encourages other people to join up. You see, the prospect of Europeans – so long the dominant people of the world – completely cowed and dying helplessly at the hands of Islamists gives a sense of power to people inclined to believe Islamist propaganda. It might work out differently in the United States – certainly in parts of the United States. Rather than helpless, unarmed people the terrorists might find a good number shooting back. It would not at all be a good bit of propaganda if a terrorist cell went down before the arms of American civilians…even if a number of civilians were killed in the fight. Nope: helpless people screaming for their lives before the police can respond – that is what gets terrorist juices flowing.

But, still, we must expect that eventually some sort of attack like this will be launched in the United States. It really isn’t a matter of “if” but of “when”. Our borders are open so we’ve probably got a good number of people already here who are inclined to these types of attacks. But it would be better if we could calmly and reasonably assess the situation and reacted before such an atrocity occurs. Better to take the fight to the enemy rather than just waiting for him to strike – and even if you are of the belief that it was American actions which provoked the attacks, there’s no putting the cat back in the bag. If they are already provoked then nothing we do will un-provoke them. Better, then, to have at them before their plans are matured.

This is a world at war – and even if we want to ignore the war, it won’t ignore us. We’ll have to fight at some point – some of our lives will have to be lost. They’ll be lost in response to terrorist attacks, or because we sent out forces to attack the enemy. Pick which one you want.

Immigration as the GOP Litmus Test

Mark Noonan2 Comments

It does seem to be, now doesn’t it? You can pretty much rely on it that Jeb is going nowhere because he was forthright in his defense of comprehensive immigration reform, while we all know that Trump rocketed into first place in the polls based upon his “deport ’em” statement. And as I go around social media and the conservative websites, it becomes ever more clear to me that the GOP base, at least, has set down this marker: if you aren’t in favor of strict border security and at least some deportation, then you’re going nowhere.

Long time readers know that I’ve been an amnesty shill since 2007 – or even before; but that is as far back as I can remember making any sort of statements on it. But I’ve also been a vigorous proponent of border security – but not so much in service of keeping people out as in recognition that “open borders” works out to “borders controlled by criminal gangs”. And those criminal gangs treat the immigrants just hideously (to the absolute silence of open borders liberals, of course – they don’t want us talking about that aspect of it all). It astonishes me that the GOP isn’t dwelling upon the issue of what the criminal gangs do to illegal immigrants day in and day out – to me, it is the best way of making sure that the people understand that the desire for border security is based upon a desire for justice and mercy, not some manifestation of anti-immigrant feeling. But for all my support for border security, if I were running for office I’d be a RINO – because I’m not into deportation.

I don’t believe, as our establishment does, that being in favor of deportation in some form is political suicide. It does make it more difficult to appeal to Latino voters, of course, but I personally know Latino voters who are ok with the idea of shutting the door a bit and sending back those who cause trouble while in the United States. In spite of strenuous liberal efforts to present Latinos as a monolithic block on this issue, they aren’t. But, still, the GOP does have a problem here – because if we’re yammering on about deportation, then natural-born Latino Citizen A or even Naturalized Latino Citizen B do wonder if it means that Illegal Alien Relative C gets deported, even though he’s a decent chap who works for a living.

I do, though, worry about making immigration a litmus test. Marco Rubio has many of the qualities that any conservative GOPer can get behind. In addition, he is the most “natural” politician we’ve got. On the stump, he is fantastic and in debate he never stumbles. He’s young, ardently patriotic, he’s got a great life story and in spite of attempts by the MSM to gin up controversy, he’s never done anything dishonorable. In contrast to a worn out and corrupt Hillary, Rubio is stellar. But he’s also a RINO – because he did sign on to the misbegotten “Gang of 8” immigration bill. And even though he has now renounced that action and is promising border security if elected, he’s persona non grata for a large swath of GOP voters (as an aside, I’m still a Jindal supporter – but I’m pretty sure his destiny is HHS Secretary in President Rubio or Cruz’ Administration).

This is absurd. I do understand the single-issue thing – I’ve got a couple, myself. I cannot in good conscience ever vote for a candidate who would advance the cause of abortion, for instance. But I can’t see how immigration has become this massive issue which we must have first and foremost. We should, as I said, be border security fanatics – but we should also be talking up things like letting in more Christian refugees from the Middle East; more immigrants from the increasingly Christian (and massively socially conservative) nations of west Africa. We should be, that is, firmly demonstrating that we’re not afraid of immigration, as such – but that we are insistent upon justice and mercy for the immigrants…and that leaving them in the hands of bloody handed human traffickers (as the left de-facto does by refusing border security) is not something any decent person would do.

The more I look over the overall parameters of the 2016 race, the more I see a chance for a stunning Republican victory. A victory which would make Reagan’s 1980 triumph pale in comparison. We can win the White House. We can even possibly increase our numbers in Congress (very difficult in the Senate, but the fact that it is even in the realm of possibility shows the real state of the campaign). We can certainly increase our political power at the State level. But all of this will be put at risk if we’re just seen as running on deporting illegal immigrants. And we can rely upon the MSM to do the Democrat’s dirty work – they will relentlessly tell the people that we’re a bunch of kooks not ready to govern and we’d all better play it safe with Hillary. And LIV will fall for that nonsense – unless we are demonstrably not what is being said about us.

Veterans Day

Mark Noonan2 Comments

Peace

Now, God be thanked Who has watched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love!

Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,
Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there
But only agony, and that has ending;
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death. – Rupert Brooke, 1914

Attack

AT dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun
In the wild purple of the glow’ring sun,
Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud
The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,
Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire.
The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed
With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear,
Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.
Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,
They leave their trenches, going over the top,
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,
Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop! – Siegfried Sassoon, 1918

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields. – John McCrae, 1915

Who were they?

…in memory’s eye I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs, on many a weary march from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle-deep through the mire of shell-shocked roads, to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment seat of God.

I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory. Always, for them: Duty, Honor, Country; always their blood and sweat and tears, as we sought the way and the light and the truth.

And 20 years after, on the other side of the globe, again the filth of murky foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts; those boiling suns of relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms; the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails; the bitterness of long separation from those they loved and cherished; the deadly pestilence of tropical disease; the horror of stricken areas of war; their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory — always victory. Always through the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men reverently following your password of: Duty, Honor, Country.

The code which those words perpetuate embraces the highest moral laws and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the uplift of mankind. Its requirements are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are wrong.

The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training — sacrifice.

In battle and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those divine attributes which his Maker gave when he created man in his own image. No physical courage and no brute instinct can take the place of the Divine help which alone can sustain him.

However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind… – Douglas MacArthur, 1962

Insanity on Campus

Mark Noonan7 Comments

When was the last time a student flunked out of college? I’m not talking about someone who hit the bong so often they just stopped going and dropped out. I want to know when was the last time someone attended class faithfully, attempted to do the course work and was found so lacking in ability that they were forced to leave college due to poor grades. I’ll bet it has been a long time – and if it does happen at all these days, I’ll further bet that such events are very few and very far between.

All of the lunacy we’ve seen on campus of late I trace back to the fact that you don’t need to be hard working or intelligent to get into college: all you need is money; and Uncle Sam will back a loan for you, if you don’t have any of your own. This has flooded colleges with vast numbers of people who don’t know much but who believe they do know quite a bit (after all, they’re in college, right? College people are smart, aren’t they? The current crop, however, is living off the intellectual reputation of those who went to college 50 or more years ago) – and college administrations quake in fear of them. Partially because the administrators are liberal and thus share a great deal of both the ignorance and the certainty of the students, but also because if you try to bring a bit of discipline to campus, you risk the revenue stream (a kid expelled is one less tuition check next semester – and if that happens often enough, there won’t be as much money to pay high salaries to professors and administrators).

It is a toxic stew – can’t risk the money; professors who are aged liberals; students who know next to nothing…and all stirred up by people who either just want a fracas, or who want to game the system to their own advantage (after all, if you’re set to graduate with a worthless “studies” degree next year, it is in your interest to demand that the college hire more people just like you).

There are colleges out there which don’t accept federal money and are thus free from all this – you never hear the kids at Christendom College or Hillsdale College demanding a “safe space”. This is the model we should take as our conservative alternative to the current higher education system. Either that, or make the federal money no-strings-attached – essentially say that as long as it is being used to educate kids, we don’t care what particular sort of education goes on (this has risks, of course – you could get a lot of Kook Universities springing up out there). But one thing is certain is that as long as we keep the current system, the lunacy will only get worse.

UPDATE: One of the events triggering the Missouri dust up was the alleged scrawling of a swastika made of feces. One small problem: no one has any actual evidence that such a thing occurred. We’ll have to see if any does come up. I doubt that it will: we’ve seen plenty of these alleged racist incidents turn out false, or at least entirely uncorroborated.

UPDATE II: Robert Tracinski writes up his own reform proposal – burn the universities to the ground. This is way too extreme, of course: such fires might spread to nearby property, some of which may be owned by sane people. So, I think my proposal still works better.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan27 Comments

Quentin Tarantino joins the #BlackLivesMatter movement, makes some anti-police statements; police get angry, Tarantino says:

They want to slander me and imply I’m saying things I didn’t say. The reason is because they want me to shut up… It’s much easier to feign outrage and start arguments with celebrities than deal with the fact that the citizenry has lost trust in them.

Just a little heads up, Quentin: you’ll find that in the general run of things, people want all celebrities to shut up. Mostly because if you’re doing movies, TV and music, you probably only have a hazy idea of how the real world works and thus anything you say is probably divorced from reality. But, that aside, I’m not going to boycott your movies over your statements recently. I won’t be going to see any of them in the future – in spite of the fact that you’re a top-notch movie maker – but that is because I’m coming more and more to the conclusion that movies which kill people in a “cool” manner are not good for the mind and spirit. To be sure, some times a movie has to have some people die – and some times has to have a lot of people die (a war picture, for instance). But there’s a difference between the depiction of the fundamental tragedy of death before one’s time, and death just put out there for our entertainment.

Readers here know that I’ve long called for massive reforms to our police and criminal justice system. But what is wrong with our system has nothing to do with race – there aren’t a host of racist cops out there gunning down people because they are black. It is true, of course, that black people in higher proportions run afoul of our broken justice system, but that is a reflection not of racist police, but of a increasingly failed society – and a failure, it must be noted, created in large part by rich, white liberals. I know how quite a lot of African-Americans feel about it all because I’ve actually listened to them talk about it – but there are also plenty of poor whites, Latinos, etc similarly ground up in the system. There’s a lot which needs to be fixed – people like Tarantino aren’t helping, at all.

Some indications that the Russian jet downed over Sinai was done in by a bomb. We’ll have to see – given that it happened in Egypt and Russians are involved, conspiracy-theories will abound. It would not, of course, surprise me to find that a terrorist did get a bomb on the plane.

Democrats lost badly in Kentucky last night – they are comforting themselves with the old “it was a low-turnout election” thing. They are also making very weird speeches about the defeat. Other than that, it was fun last night to collect some more liberal tears.

As an aside, the polling in Kentucky was downright terrible – a polling lead of five percentage points for the Democrat wound up with a nearly nine percentage point win for the Republican. 2014 polls were pretty terrible, too – you might recall how plenty of GOPers were either behind or neck and neck with their opponents, only to run up smashing victories when the votes were counted. Part of this would be the difficulty in polling in individual States, especially in an off year…but I think that polling is just getting harder and harder to do. Keep that in mind as we head into 2016. That said, latest poll is just hideous for Hillary.

Israeli professor shouted down by student radicals – because free inquiry means not letting alternative views be heard, right?

The city of Houston had a very broad anti-discrimination law up for a vote on Tuesday – Houston is the liberal corner of Texas, by the way. Should have been a slam dunk, but it went down to flaming defeat. Houston is a liberal place – meaning a rather small, rich, white Ruling Class is kept in power by strength of minority votes. Kevin Williamson over at NRO notes some problems for the Democrats in this sort of system. For me, I see the GOP opportunity – and, yes, even an opportunity to do well in places like Chicago and Detroit. It simply can’t be that a working poor African-American has anything in common with those who run the Democrat party. They don’t have much in common with those who run the Republican party, either. But if the GOP were to start offering them some things? And some things that the Democrats simply cannot offer? It could get very interesting.

The Real World is Still Out There

Mark Noonan2 Comments

A quote from Gary Kasparov in Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must be Stopped, via Ace:

Unfortunately, Putin, like other modern autocrats, had, and still has, an advantage the Soviet leadership could never have dreamed of: deep economic and political engagement with the free world. Decades of trade have created tremendous wealth that dictatorships like Russia and China have used to build sophisticated authoritarian infrastructures inside the country and to apply pressure in foreign policy. The naive idea was that the free world would use economic and social ties to gradually liberalize authoritarian states. in practice, the authoritarian states have abused this access and economic interdependency to spread their corruption and fuel repression at home.

There is a myth out there which asserts that capitalism and free trade will lead to greater global interdependence, more political liberty and less chance of war. I don’t quite know where this idea comes from and I can’t for the life of me figure out how anyone can believe it. There was no more free trade in the world than in late July of 1914, when the whole world crashed into war. The British Empire was the guardian of free trade back then, much as we are today. The economies of France, Russia, Germany and Britain were deeply intertwined. Wealth was accumulating. Germany, especially, was the beneficiary of this. And what did they do with their increasing wealth? Built up the most massive military force in the world and then unleashed it as soon as they thought the time was right (they calculated that with Britain nearly in civil war over Home Rule for Ireland and Russia suffering a renewed wave of pre-revolutionary activity, they could get a smashing victory in just a few weeks). Today it is even worse because with modern propaganda techniques, the Russians and Chinese have an easy way to twist our own domestic political processes in a way which helps them – they can lie to us, as it were, through our own media; lull us to sleep, get us worked up over anything other than what is important (and, of course, the Islamists and their fellow travelers also do this).

This is not an argument against capitalism or free trade – it is just a cautionary tale: don’t trust such things to solve the world’s problems. Right now, Russia and China (and especially China) are using the global economy to build up their military power. Russia is already striking – using their old, old method of eating the artichoke one leaf at a time. Will China strike? I can’t see why they wouldn’t. When China’s government figures the time is right, they’ll strike (and we can actually call their activities in the South China Sea as a preliminary moves).

Let no one ever sell you on the notion that there is a panacea for what ails humanity. We are a Fallen species. We will make the most astounding mistakes. Russia is already making them – by attacking us and the EU, they are alienating the very forces they’ll need if China ever turns its hungry eyes on Siberia. China is also being monumentally stupid because no conceivable action of theirs will secure them the precious talisman of control of the seas – and without massive imports, China’s economy grinds to a halt (though making a grab at Siberia would relieve some of these economic pressures on China).

Of course, it doesn’t help the situation at all that we’re being dumber than anyone. Under Obama, we’re signalling to the whole world that we won’t fight. That we are not only a sleeping giant, but a cowardly giant, as well. A bit of vigorous response now and over the next five years and we can at least give massive doubts to Russia, China and the other bad actors in the world that we’re serious (this would mostly involve massive increases in our Navy and Air Force). At long as Obama is in office, we won’t do this – we can only hope the next President will.