Trump Triumphus

Mark Noonan26 Comments

I mean, he might as well have been leading the Democrats in chains behind his chariot.

I didn’t write about it last night because I wanted some time to ponder it all. As a man old enough to remember Reagan’s greatest speeches, I have to say that Trump’s speech before Congress last night was the best I’ve ever heard. Sure, it was Trump all over the place – that is the Trump style. Sure it slowed in the middle but all Trump speeches slow in the middle. Sure, it could have been fifteen minutes shorter, but if you do that then the peroration wouldn’t work as well as it did.

It was inspiring, hilarious, moving and patriotic. The Democrats played the role assigned to them by Trump – pointing out early that nothing he would say would get them to cheer just set the stage and even when DJ was introduced, Democrats did exactly what Trump needed them to do…sit on their hands. The Democrats, in political parlance, are the “out” party but last night they became the exiled party. They have no connection to the United States…just rude, old, ugly representatives of a ignorant, corrupt and stupid Ruling Class that had its day. Trump placed a vision before us of a united, free, prosperous America reaching for the stars…and Democrats shouted out they didn’t like this…and held up their pathetic, little signs.

We’re moving on, Democrats. The past is past. The future beckons. You can still join us. But you won’t.

Meanwhile, for the sane part of the country – well, as was pointed out in the previous thread: 76% of the American people gave the speech a thumbs up. That is remarkable. We’re supposed to be far more polarized than that. But, perhaps we’re not any longer? Perhaps outside of the Leftwing fever swamps, people are wanting a united America? Sure, not everyone is going to agree with everything Trump does. You can’t even get 10 people to agree on where to get something to eat so getting 340 million people to agree on things is a tough task. But this isn’t about Trump. It is about America. We Americans want our country to work again…not be tied up in boutique Leftist issues that require all of us to bend a knee. Sure, go be a blue haired vegan who rides a bike to Save The Planet. Knock yourself out. But that is you. Your life. Not everyone…and we’re not about to go back to a place where the Left puts one chain after another on us to Save The Planet.

Lefties, we don’t need a Savior. We have one and He’s coming back one day…long before my barbecue kills all the polar bears. Chill.

Most of all it was fun watching Trump last night. Democrats tried to manufacture joy for Harris last year but Trump brings the real thing. And fun will always beat Debbie Downer. We have a lot of hard work ahead. There will be pain as we MAGA, but we’re going to have fun and we’re going to Make America Great Again.

There is no Hitler II

Mark Noonan47 Comments

More and more people are seeing what I’ve been seeing for a while: in the opinion of our Ruling Class, every foreign enemy is Hitler, every crisis in Munich and everyone who doesn’t get on board with fighting the new Hitler is Chamberlain. This is what they’ve sold us again and again since 1945. To be fair, nobody wants a repeat of World War Two. Six years of killing, 60 million people dead, uncountable physical damage to the civilized world. It is just too horrible to contemplate going back into such a shambles. But, here’s the thing: a repeat of World War Two has always been highly unlikely. The ingredients are hard to come by.

The first ingredient has to be a Great Power defeated but not destroyed. Germany was completely and utterly defeated in World War One. Had the Germans not called it quits in November of 1918, then the Spring of 1919 would have seen a massive allied invasion of Germany with a 3 million man American army in the van and the total allied armies equipped with tanks and planes to make mincemeat of any German defensive lines (and, as it turns out, the first airborne troops – US General Billy Mitchell envisioned dropping thousands of US soldiers behind enemy lines as the offensive started). Had the Germans fought on then the only result would have been more killing and a destroyed Germany. The Krauts quit to prevent that. They shouldn’t have been allowed to do that.

To be fair, the Allies didn’t have our luxury of hindsight so they couldn’t know that right after the war the Germans would cook up the “stab in the back” legend which excused German military failure and laid the blame for defeat on first the socialists and, later, the Jews. But some Allied leaders did have some foresight…notably Marshal Foch and General MacArthur both pointing out that the peace treaty was, at best, an armistice of twenty years. They could see this because while Germany was defeated even the supposed harshness of Versailles did nothing to cripple Germany’s latent power. It was still a united nation. It still had its industrial base. It retained an army which anyone could see would be exceptionally first rate as the Germans retained only the best of the best in the ranks. All Versailles did, really, was to clear the board and allow the Germans to start building from the ground up a new and more deadly force – and the Germans started working on this within a year of the peace (the Germans built new U-Boats in Holland and tested out tank and plane designs in the USSR, for instance). There’s the first necessary ingredient.

Second is a charismatic leader able to spellbind the Great Power’s people and forge them into a united force for conquest. Can such a person rise again? In theory, yes. But the thing about oddities is that they’re, well, odd. Not easily replicated. Plus in the German case you not only had to get that leader, he had to dovetail in with decades of the preaching of racial superiority by others who came before him…in other words, there had to be plowed ground ready to be seeded with the charismatic leader’s ideology. We do not have in any foreign leader that particular sort of person with that particular sort of ground to work with. Keep in mind how totally Hitler captured the German mind: German soldiers would throw themselves on enemy machine guns shouting “Heil Hitler” while they died. Even at the very bitter end the soldiers desperately fought completely hopeless battles for their leader. The chances we’ll find another like this are very low – almost nil.

And now comes the really hard part: once you’ve got your Great Power defeated but still intact and looking for revenge combined with your charismatic leader you need the most crucial thing: a huge run of luck. I mean like hitting the lottery five times in a row luck. The sort of luck where an observer looking back on it goes, “just ain’t possible!”.

The luck of being appointed Chancellor just as his popularity was waning. The luck of Hindenburg dying just as he’s reaching for total power. The luck of the French not destroying him in 1936 over the Rhineland. The luck of the Anglo-French agreeing to remove the Czech threat to the heart of Germany in 1938. The luck of the Anglo-French delaying Polish mobilization until August 31st, 1939. The luck of Stalin agreeing to back up Germany’s invasion of Poland. The luck of France’s massive army remaining immobile against a German military screen in the West as Poland was destroyed. And then the greatest stroke of luck of all – when Germany invades France and hits the weakest part of the French line in the Ardennes the French general on the scene totally flubs the response even though he had an armored division in place to pinch off the German offensive before it could get going. You can see why Hitler thought himself a providential genius after all that.

This belief, by the way, is what did Hitler in. He really thought he was unbeatable…that a string of very bizarre luck was something he willed into existence. The luck ran out first over the skies of Britain and then in the rubble of Stalingrad. But, still: horrible war. Never want to do that again. And provision should be made in case someone else starts to get on a run of luck like that. But this doesn’t mean that every foreign enemy is Hitler and every crisis is Munich. We must stop being stampeded into bad actions by people who are not only lying to us about the threat but are, themselves, very stupid and ignorant people. That’s why they overuse the Hitler analogy, by the way: they’re too stupid to come up with anything else. We stop letting them use that on us and it’ll stop being used.

Absent a Hitler, any foreign crisis is just a thing to be dealt with based upon our perceived needs at the time. It isn’t the precursor to World War Three…it is just Russia wanting the Donbas. Do we let her have it? Try to stop it? These are empirical questions to be answered on a case by case basis. Subsidiary questions are: if we let her have it, what price do we extract from Russia? If we try to stop it: to what extent? That is, how far are we really willing to go to keep Russia out? Rational arguments can be made both ways on this – and it is in the rational argument where we’ll eventually arrive at the best solution. Shouting its Hitler II and you’re a Putin stooge if you don’t drop a hundred billion into arguably the most corrupt nation in Europe is…bad. Unwise. In fact, it is so bad and so unwise that only a complete moron or a con artist would go that route.

As I’ve endlessly yammered on about lately, it is time to rejoin the real world. Paraphrasing Bismarck, if I am convinced that well-reasoned national policy requires it, I’ll see American soldiers fire on Russians or Iranians or Chinese without batting an eye. If we are pressed to it, then war to the knife. But I also believe that cool headed diplomacy backed up by force-in-being will resolve most foreign crisis. Do keep in mind that if Germany and France had between them a military force of, say, 600,000 ready to go in 2022 then a joint declaration by them that a Russian invasion of Ukraine would be casus belli then almost certainly there would have been no Russian invasion. But, also, it doesn’t mean that Russia would get nothing…because if the Russian demand is that Ukraine turn over the Donbas to Russia or Russia will invade, then it is time for the Great Powers to get together at the table and see if a solution short of war could be found. In the real world, diplomacy is backed by force. In the fantasy world, it is backed by a Clinton Administration memo which means nothing. A powerful EU confronting a powerful Russia probably means Putin gets half a loaf. Maybe a quarter of a loaf. But he doesn’t get nothing. And war is avoided because everyone is well armed and ready to use it to make sure that Russia doesn’t try for the whole loaf.

And do keep in mind that the Russo-Ukraine crisis can become a World War if things are managed badly. Much like WWI growing out of a fracas in the Balkans. Nobody really willed that war into existence but a whole string of dumb decisions came together to make it happen. It might well be a dumb decision for us to go to the mat to stop Russia because that might draw in other powers who don’t want Russia humiliated and soon we might find the lights going out all around the world. Much better, as noted, to have armed diplomacy to come to a reasonable solution before things get out of hand.

And now to a last point on this: NATO was a huge mistake. Never should have entered into it. The theory was that Soviet Communism could only be deterred by collective security…and that does have some basis in fact if the USSR was militarily aggressive. But it wasn’t. Certainly not right after WWII and for a couple decades afterwards. Russia had been wrecked by the war. Sure, Stalin and his successors would have fought if they thought it necessary…but they weren’t about to go launching into WWIII any time soon. They couldn’t (people forget that without massive Anglo-American material aid, the USSR would have been compelled to peace in 1943, if not sooner). All NATO did was allow the Europeans to skimp on their own defense. All through the Cold War the NATO allies failed to really live up to their commitments. Sure, their armies in the 1980’s were massively larger than now…but not as large as they were supposed to be. All of them sought cuts in defense spending to use on social programs…all of them coasted along on the back of American military power. Absent NATO, the British would have had to retain a very powerful Navy (powerful enough to secure Britain’s trade unaided) while the French would have had to retain a very powerful Army (powerful enough to stop any theoretical Russian invasion at the Rhine). And our part of defending the West could have been a mere diplomatic note stating that the operation of a hostile naval force around the UK or the invasion of France by a hostile power would trigger American intervention. The Europeans would still have been backed up by us…but not dependent on us. And Europe would have been strong enough to force a diplomatic resolution to the Russo-Ukraine crisis.

Foreign Affairs

Mark Noonan10 Comments

Wenzel Anton, Prince of Kaunitz (and known by all in his time simply as “Kaunitz”) was effectively chancellor of the Austrian Empire (within the framework of the very reduced Holy Roman Empire) from 1753 to 1792. I have mentioned him before mostly because he’s one of the most fascinating figures in history, though little known these days. But in his time he very much strode the world as a colossus … everyone listening to him, wondering what he’d do next, that sort of thing. He served a total of four Hapsburg Emperors but he’s most famed for his service to Maria Theresa. It is something he did there that I want to bring up.

A lot of nonsense is being written about foreign affairs since the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting. Lots of people are considering it a disaster and that it’ll encourage Russia and China and we’re really screwed now unless we somehow get Ukraine to victory over Russia. But among the hand-wringing dramatics a couple voices have whispered: “you know, we need Russia as an ally against China”. These voices are ridiculed – yet more accusations of being a Putin stooge and so forth because, as these people say, Russia and China are friends and the only way to deal with them is to show them we’re tough…by backing Ukraine to the hilt!

It is like nobody can read a map or has even cursory knowledge of history.

To be sure, Russia and China are friendly today – China providing lots of help to Russia against Ukraine. While the war goes on, Russia will be careful to keep China happy. The quid pro quo everyone expects here is that since China supports Russia against Ukraine (which Putin states is a renegade province of Russia), Russia will support China against Taiwan (which China considers to also be a renegade province). And that does make sense. But there’s one fly in the ointment: China doesn’t need Russian help against Taiwan. Not even in the UN where China holds the same veto power as Russia. Sure, Putin issuing a diplomatic note supporting China’s annexation of Taiwan will be nice for China at the time, but it will also be quite meaningless…the merest gesture.

One does have to actually think about things and in the Russo-Chinese case given that Russia needs China right now but China needs Russia not at all, try to figure out why China is being so helpful. It becomes blazingly obvious with just the least bit of thought: a conflict between Russia and the West means there’s a conflict between Russia and the West and that suits China right down to the ground. The western world concentrating its military and diplomatic efforts over the Donbas is a West not paying attention as China builds a blue water Navy and deeply economically penetrates Africa and South America. It is a no brainer for China to help Russia – just as its a no-brainer for Russia to accept Chinese help. But because their interests coincide today doesn’t mean they always will.

And that brings us back to Kaunitz. He was made first minister by Maria Theresa because she thought him the man to cobble together an alliance which would undo the result of the War of the Austrian Succession. This had occurred just after her father had died when Prussia had invaded Austria’s province of Silesia. Entirely without justification – a mere power grab by the Prussian king who felt his army the stronger and himself the superior to any woman on a throne. In the event, after 8 years of war, Prussia did manage to keep her stolen goods in the form of Silesia, but Maria Theresa had proved herself a woman of courage and good sense, more than a match for the Prussian king. And she hadn’t given up on getting back what was stolen…but she needed a man of brilliance and tact to rework the European balance of power in her favor. That man was Kaunitz.

Part of the problem Austria had in the previous war was that Prussia was allied with France, which was Austria’s ancient enemy (French and Austrian rulers had engaged in wars for centuries). As long as Prussia could count on the large French army attacking Austria from the west and south then things would go well for Prussia. Kaunitz had the skill and he carried out Maria Theresa’s instructions – France was detached from alliance with Prussia and entered alliance with Austria (it actually was in France’s best long-term interests to curb Prussian ambition…as was proved in 1870). Getting Russia to join the Franco-Austrian alliance just made it even more powerful. This diplomatic tour de force has been called “The Reversal of Alliances” and it was an earthquake in diplomatic affairs. And it almost worked – when the war between Prussia and Austria resumed the combination overwhelmed Prussia with sheer weight of numbers…until the very untimely death of the Russian Empress at the time pulled Russia out of the war. But that is neither here nor there for our purposes today: what we’re doing is pointing out that alliances aren’t permanent. That you don’t conduct your foreign affairs based on sentimental attachments but on the cold, hard facts of your situation. The problem for the USA is that since the fall of the Berlin Wall, sentiment has governed our actions. It is time for facts to come to the fore.

The biggest fact we have right now is that China is far and away the biggest foreign challenge we face. Our foreign policy should be geared primarily towards curbing Chinese ambitions. If you take a look at the map of the world and all the strategic points on it, there will be one rather glaring absence: Ukraine. It has no strategic importance in global affairs. It is a geographic irrelevancy. To Russia it is important. Poland, too. But if you don’t border Ukraine then Ukraine doesn’t matter. Whoever holds it will not harm your own strategic position. Not for nothing have the Dardanelles just south of Ukraine been fought over for centuries while Ukraine has slumbered in obscurity for almost all its history. The former is a crucial strategic point…the latter is just a bit of flat land really good for farming. There is no upside for the USA in fussing over Ukraine – it does not help us contain China.

Another glance at that map and you’ll notice that China and Russia share a huge land border in Siberia – which is 5.1 million square miles with 37 million people living on it. Do that bit of math: that is 7.25 people per square mile. China, just south of Siberia, has a density of 381 per square mile. Siberia has vast reserves of gold, silver, lead, tin, zinc, oil, diamonds, nickel, natural gas…like some of the largest reserves in the world for these materials. Oh, and huge chunk of Siberia was under Chinese rule until the late 19th century.

Do you see what I’m getting at? Russia has this gigantic territory – larger by itself than the USA or China – which is largely unpopulated, stupendously rich in natural resources and part of which used to be Chinese…which sits south of the border with 1.2 billion people, limited natural resources and a crucial need for cheap and easy economic growth to keep their people from questioning Communist party rule. In other words, while Russia and China have a community of interests today, it doesn’t mean they always will. And, truth be told, the only way Russia can be certain of holding Siberia is in alliance with the USA. There are, then, fertile grounds of a new reversal of alliances…detaching Russia from the Chinese connection and adding her to a consortium of nations (USA, India, Vietnam, Korea, Japan) united to keep China under control.

But how can we ally with Putin?!?!? You Putin stooge!!!! Yeah, whatever. We allied with Stalin against Hitler so allying with the far less unsavory Putin against China is within the realm of possibility. And this alliance with Russia remains valid even if Putin – or any Russian leader – tries to cobble together the entirely of the Czarist Empire. It would not alter America’s strategic position. It would gravely alter Europe’s, of course, but that is an European problem…and so far only Poland and Italy are acting like Russia is a problem by vastly increasing their defense spending. But no matter how it goes over there, it isn’t an American problem.

But we can’t let aggression stand! Sure, whatever – that boat sailed in 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea and we accepted stalemate. The two World Wars were very much fought on the ground that you can’t shoot your way into power. The Allied victory in both wars placed that ideal as an absolute in global affairs. Heck, we even hung and imprisoned Nazis on the charge of plotting aggressive warfare. But at the very first challenge to the principle in Korea, we and the rest of the West folded like a cheap suit. We actually had Nazis sitting in jail for aggressive war at the time we decided that North Korea’s aggressive war was something we’d just have to live with. Don’t blame me that the main point of the world wars was wasted…that while the great good of stopping Nazism occurred, all other fruits of the victory were thrown away within a decade of the end of the war. That was done by others, not by me. And I won’t adhere to a standard rejected before I was born. Whether or not I’ll try to stop aggression is entirely dependent on whether or not that aggression negatively impacts the United States. And, sorry, but a Russian invasion of Ukraine doesn’t qualify.

I don’t advocate for a pullout from NATO out of petulance but simply because I can’t see the slightest need for it. A Russian invasion of Ukraine doesn’t matter to me. Those whom it does matter are quite powerful enough to build an army to repel a Russian invasion. I also know that in the primary challenge my nation faces – China – the Europeans are far more likely to back China than the USA. There is little community of interest between the USA and the EU…and as Europe is arresting people for social media posts, I can’t see how a stand for Europe is a stand for liberty…sure, a German prison is much nicer than a Russian prison, but both are holding people who said things offensive to the government. This is very alien to the American experience – it makes Europe no longer America’s cousin, but a very strange, malevolent place that Americans better not travel to any longer, lest we run afoul of their Orwellian speech laws.

As in so many things, it is time to enter the real world. The real world is that the USA has maybe one or two friends in the world (Israel and Japan? Maybe a couple others). Everyone else wants us dead or at least to play us for their own ends. We might have a sentimental attachment to France because of Normandy but we must start to understand that the French government will piss on our graves over there if they felt it was in France’s best interests to do so. Nobody else in the world acts on sentiment, and we must stop it.

The Russo-Ukraine War

Mark Noonan9 Comments

The War of the Spanish Succession lasted from 1701 to 1714. It was, in a sense, the first world war in that it involved fights in Europe, Asia and the Americas as a coalition led by Great Britain fought to curb the ambition of France under Louis XIV. In the much-smaller population of the time, it still carried off via war and disease about 2 million people.

Thing is, the war actually ended in August of 1704. That was when an Anglo-Dutch force captured Gibraltar and secured British control over the Mediterranean Sea. After that, it was just a lot of fighting with no major strategic shifts until a peace of exhaustion was secured in 1714…with Britain retaining control of the one prize of the war: Gibraltar (still under British rule to this day).

It is often like that: wars going on after the issue has been decided. This is invariably because the side that lost doesn’t want to admit it and so keep smashing their skull against the stronger, victorious side.

World War Two? It ended in June of 1942 with the Japanese defeat at Midway. It is understandable once you realize that the only path to Axis victory was keeping the American military out of Europe. For all FDR’s commitment to the “Europe first” strategy, he wouldn’t have been able to carry it out if Midway had been lost, Hawaii conquered and the west coast under attack from Japanese carrier battle groups. Without full commitment by the USA to Europe, the Anglo-Russian alliance would have been insufficient to overcome Germany (side note: if we had been defeated at Midway that wouldn’t 100% mean we lost the war – we could build ships faster than the Japanese and so we might have retrieved the situation…but for Japan, and thus for the Axis, Midway was do or die; Japan lacked the resources to replace the equipment and men lost when 4 fleet carriers went down during that battle). Midway won, FDR could keep his promise…and an American army landed in North Africa just five months after Midway. In a sane world, Germany and Japan would have sued for peace no later than January of 1943.

So, too, other wars. The Civil War was over when Vicksburg surrendered in 1863. World War One was over for Germany when they lost the Battle of the Marne in 1914…doubly over when their gamble at Verdun in 1916 was drowned in blood. So, why bring this up? Because the issue in Ukraine is not who is right or wrong, braver, more noble…the issue is this: is this war already over?

In my view, it is. Ended before it even started. After Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014 and clearly indicated that he considered Ukraine to be Russian, it was time for Ukraine to pursue one of two courses of action:

  1. Appeasement of Russia.
  2. Building a military force so potent that it could immediately respond to Russian aggression in an absolutely devastating manner.

Ukraine pursued neither of these options. They lived on in a sort of dream world where a corrupt and incompetent Ruling Class passed out bribes to foreign influencers and hoped that the mere thought that Ukraine would become part of NATO would deter Russian aggression. This obviously was a very bad idea – it is clear now that building up a military force was the best option as the war has revealed Russia’s astonishing military incompetence. This really shouldn’t have surprised us…we should have figured that 70 years of Communist rule had pretty much wiped out all decent and courageous elements in Russia and the dregs of Stalin’s GULAG weren’t going to be very good (side note: they weren’t very good in WWII, either: Russia’s victory was gifted to them by Hitler’s incompetence…and even then the Russians lost a couple million more than necessary simply because the Russian leadership used blood rather than thought to get at the Germans).

But all of that is past. Can’t change it. But what we also can’t change is the battle lines. For example:

And then:

Notice that the lines have not moved in any significant way in two years. Nobody really knows how many have died in the war as both sides lie quite egregiously about it. Best estimates are about 2 million total casualties and this would indicate given normal killed to wounded ratio that about 700,000 are dead and 1.3 million wounded, some significant number of those wounded permanently crippled. All credit to the Ukrainian military for at least stopping the Russians from taking over the whole country…but there’s no further point in fighting. It is just going to get more people killed and likely not change anything…with the understanding that if this becomes a genuine war of attrition, Russia will win due to superior numbers and eventually conquer the whole country. It is highly unlikely that Putin wants to draft enough Russians to do that…so, once again, back to nothing ever changing.

Peace now based on current lines of control is the best option. And I’m talking full peace. No ceasefire: an actual treaty between Russia and Ukraine ratified by both sides which cedes Russian-controlled territory to Russia but also commits Russia to no further territorial claims against Ukraine. Such a thing won’t actually stop Russia but it puts to bed Putin’s theory that Ukraine is Russian and should be part of Russia. It would be an admission by a Russian government that it really doesn’t have title to Ukraine. And then Ukraine can start to build that first-rate army they should have built after the 2015 ceasefire. Of course, I don’t know if Ukraine has any better military material in their population than Russia does – they, too, are the dregs of Stalin’s GULAG. But they can at least try – and very likely a force even a little bit better than Russia’s will whack the Russians pillar to post if it comes to it. The idea here is for Ukraine to have a force in being – instantly ready to go – which can both defeat an oncoming Russian invasion and rapidly move the conflict onto Russian territory…so when the battle lines stabilize it is Ukraine holding the whip hand. This is just Weaker Country Strategy 101, guys. I’m not suggesting something new. It is how the IDF trounced the combined forces of the Arab world in four different wars.

I’m naturally bringing this up because of the meeting today between Trump and Zelenskyy. Yes, a lot of NeoCons are very upset about it. I’m not. Zelenskyy has been playing a role and getting the aid and its all been quite useless…and then he had the idiotic idea of campaigning for Harris in Pennsylvania. This will go down as one of the most bone-headed moves in diplomatic history…the foreigner seeking aid always strokes both sides of the political divide. The Israelis know to keep lines open to both Republicans and Democrats and never overtly engage in partisan American politics. When the life or death of your country is at stake, you swallow your pride and do what’s best for your country…not what’s best for a partisan photo-op. So, today Trump and Vance raked Zelenskyy over the coals. Fully deserved and the best way to get to a peace deal…the Ukrainians had to learn that they’re not talking their butts out of this one…more aid may be forthcoming, but peace is the objective here, not another four years of war.

And this is yet another example of us getting back into the real world. The pretend world is Slava Ukraini! with the brave and heroic Zelenskyy in his fatigues fighting the Russians in the trenches. The real world is that Zelenskyy is an entertainer promoted way above his pay grade, his fatigues are a costume and the trenches are running red with blood. Maybe the Ukrainians really do want to fight on – we don’t know as Zelenskyy cancelled the elections so there’s no way to assess Ukrainian opinion on the matter. But whatever on that – it is their country and their blood. If they want to keep fighting then God bless…do your best. But without our money and weapons. I don’t want to risk a hot war with Russia in the center of Europe over the Donbas…not when we’re $37 trillion in debt, our armed forces are very weak, our manufacturing capacity anemic and China is building a blue water navy.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan7 Comments

Nevada’s Attorney General – a Democrat – decided he wanted Nevada to be a sanctuary State. Nevada’s Governor – a sane person – said not so fast:

Aaron Ford – the aforementioned AG, Democrat and lunatic – is already running for Lombardo’s job in 2026. So you can understand why Ford would want to pick some fights with Lombardo…but, this fight? Seriously? Nobody outside the Leftist loony bins likes sanctuary policies. Even those who favor loose immigration policies don’t like the idea of State and local governments not cooperating with federal law enforcement on removing illegal aliens…and the more stories we see of illegals getting caught, released and then committing absolutely hideous crimes, the less people like the idea of sanctuary.

Nevada is a closely divided State (though registrations are trending GOP of late) but with 2026 being the mid-term year after a GOP win, you’d have to rate Ford’s chances out the gate as “has a solid shot at it”. Lombardo has been an effective and generally popular governor – and Democrats seem to have a really hard time winning the governorship – so it was never going to be an easy fight for Ford…things like this are going to make it impossible for him absent a complete GOP meltdown. But that is the Democrats right now, isn’t it? They are all-in on transing kids, protecting illegals and defending wasteful spending. Trump has picked a series of 70/30 issues, got himself on the side of 70 and has the Democrats digging in behind 30. Just amazing.

Jeff Bezos has decreed that the Washington Post will take a Libertarian line on personal and economic freedom. This did get his the opinion editor to step down – we’ll see if any further resignations occur. Best post on X about it:

We’ll see how this comes out – but if WaPo merely becomes a place where non-Left opinion can exist, that will be an improvement. A vast improvement – not least in getting a lot of the Ruling Class out of their bubble. The reason Democrats are tripling down on trans, illegals and waste is because all signals they receive indicate these as the popular positions. They never hear dissenting views. You will seriously find liberals out there who never even heard of Hunter’s laptop or that Trump-Russia was totally debunked…the MSM never told them.

And that is what Jake Tapper is counting on – he’s got a book coming out in May called Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, its Cover Up and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. I’m not kidding. Look it up. He really wrote a book called that. As if he wasn’t one of the people desperately covering it up! He’s naturally being scorched on X over it but it must be kept in mind that most people who actually pay attention to Tapper never heard about Biden being gaga until the debate. It was just a stutter!

When we ask ourselves how Kamala Harris got 75,017,613 votes, that’s why: these people never heard about her. The MSM hid her inability to string a coherent sentence together. They carefully edited the clips. They told the viewers that what she said was brilliant. Just at they told their viewers that the Orange Man is Bad while Harris is nothing but Joy. And even after Trump put full effort into showing this to be nonsense, more than 75 million people still hadn’t been reached on it. They still bought the MSM lies…and will buy Tapper’s book.

Greenpeace is going on trial in civil court – with the plaintiff asking $300 million. An amount that would effectively bankrupt Greenpeace. At issue was a series of protests orchestrated by Greenpeace against an oil pipeline (now completed). The plaintiff argues that Greenpeace encouraged illegal acts during the protests and then raised funds off the press coverage of the protests. This would be a criminal enterprise designed to enrich the perpetrators. It all came to a head in 2019 so I can see why federal prosecutors didn’t do anything…but I believe they should now on any charges still within the statute of limitations. It is a rather new thing to consider but as I think about it, I kick myself for not thinking it up years ago. I mean, think about the BLM/Antifa people who raked in huge donations…off of riots! That they encouraged and perhaps even directly participated in. RICO – its not just for Mobsters any more!

Open Thread

Mark Noonan23 Comments

The Official Word from the Progressive TV Chattering Class is that Trump has gone too far and now people are getting angry as Trump’s support collapses. How’s that working out? Well, lets check in with one of the most accurate pollsters of 2024:

The “Trump is going too far” message is orchestrated on the Left – it isn’t really directed at Trump but at week-kneed Congressional GOPers and the center-right people who are still all “well, I never” about things. The Left knows that Trump isn’t really controllable in that he doesn’t have to seek another term…but there is leverage over the Congressional GOP. But here’s the thing on that – the GOP House majority is so narrow that everyone in the GOP expects it to be lost in 2026…and that means if you want to get anything done, better get it done now. Absent a complete economic meltdown over the next 12 months or so, the Senate is probably safe for the GOP. So, a Dem House majority isn’t all that much a threat. Plus the Congressional GOP knows that going against Trump now is probably political suicide. There might be some time in 2026 to take a vote against Trump to provide a little separation in a swing district, but now isn’t the time for it.

It looks like our prayers for Pope Francis should be more for a holy death rather than recovery right now. Still some hope he’ll emerge from the hospital but an 88 year old with his maladies doesn’t have a lot of time left. As I’ve said pretty much from the start, Francis is theologically rock-solid but in the areas of politics and economics he is Left. He’s been an interesting Pope and probably what was needed at the time as the Church had become a bit ossified. Naturally, however, the Left elements in the Church took advantage of a kindly nature and tried to push actual heresy. That is for the next Pope to clear up. Cardinal Sarah is probably out of the running on account of age so I’m at a bit of a loss of who to pray for on it. Some are talking up Cardinal Pizzaballa – the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem – and while the man has guts (he offered himself as a Hamas hostage in return for release of the captive Israelis) he also seems (in my view) far too soft on Hamas, itself. Cardinal Besungu of the Democratic Republic of Congo is considered a very conservative alternative…and as the Church in Congo is horribly oppressed (a short while ago Islamists there beheaded 70 Christians in a Protestant church), he’d probably be a little bit…militant in defending Christ’s flock. But, in the end, we’re all just going to have to wait and see how this goes.

The German elections went about as expected – the socialist SPD was trounced, the center-right CDU emerged on top…and AfD came in second, about doubling their support from the previous election. Between the CDU and AfD and some small fry, there is a solid, Conservative majority for the Bundestag…and what this means is, naturally, that the CDU will coalition with the just-defeated SPD to keep AfD out. This is the Ruling Class Uniparty writ very large. But I think the CDU is making a huge mistake here – the German people rejected the Left but weren’t quite ready to go AfD…but if the CDU sees its mandate as something other than curbing migration, then there will be another election pretty quickly and the AfD might wind up the largest party in the Bundestag (they are second largest now). One curiosity about it – if you look at the election returns by district, what you see is that almost universally the old “West Germany” voted CDU while old “East Germany” voted AfD – with the SPD winning a few urban cores. A guy I know on X pointed out that old Germany was actually best preserved in the east because, in reaction to Communist occupation, they desperately clung on to their national identity. Looks like he was right. Additional observation: exit polls show that German youth resoundingly rejected both CDU and SPD, the two major post-WWII German political parties…they opted for the Right-Populist AfD or the Left-Populist Linke. The German Ruling Class is on borrowed time.

Bongino as Deputy Director of the FBI is a clear sign that Trump, Bondi and Patel are not about to put up with internal sabotage.

Among many senior officers fired after Hegseth took over Defense was the Chief of Naval Operations – Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to hold the post. And the Left has gone ballistic…”she highly rated! She’s a warfighter!”. The ships are rusty. I’ve seen video after video of US naval warships entering or leaving port absolutely covered in rust. She’s a bad officer, period. So are all other senior officers in the Navy. Civilians don’t fully understand the need for “spit and polish”…its not don’t just to look good but to internalize into serving sailors that they are sailors. This is the USS Aaron Ward after suffering repeated kamikaze attacks off Okinawa:

That crew fought off most attacks and got this hunk of junk back into port for repairs – because they were sailors. Meanwhile, in our modern, diverse and equitable Navy, USS Bonhomme Richard caught fire in port, San Diego, and burned to uselessness…because nobody on the ship or even in that whole naval installation was a sailor. Hegseth can’t fire the senior officers fast enough.

No, You Can’t Use my Morals to Kill Me

Mark Noonan37 Comments

The latest effort to derail DOGE has been to have moderate Right (not specifically Never Trump) people write despairing pieces about the failure of Conservatives to deplore Elon Musk’s serial adultery. He has 12 confirmed children, a social media influencer claiming number 13. They tie this into Trump’s sexual past and throw up their hands (a little dramatically) wondering just how we can do anything when those in charge of the movement are sinners? This effort is clearly orchestrated by the Left – which doesn’t care at all about morality but they will wipe their butt with their own flag if it helps them.

Rely on it, if we made an effort to codify morality into law, these same Right voices would rise in opposition to us on Libertarian grounds. The only people morality applies to, in their minds, is us: we have to be perfect and if we ain’t, then we don’t deserve to have power…or, indeed, anything.

To make it clear: adultery is a sin. Fornication is a sin. Horrible, bad sins which can destroy a human soul and condemn it to everlasting damnation.

But so, too, divorce and birth control. Working on the Sabbath. Not going to Mass on Sunday. Do you get what I’m saying? If we are to base our politics upon what is considered a sin in Christian theology, then we’re going to have a very different political organization. And one that won’t win anything. To be sure, winning in politics is not usually the most crucial consideration. We Christians are in the world but we are not supposed to be of it and we are supposed to, as far as possible, meekly live within the political structure trusting to God that things will work out. And for the most part, that is what Christians have done – it has been a long time since anyone really insisted upon any distinctly Christian policy in American politics. But things are different now. We’re not fighting for mere political power. We are fighting for our very lives.

We Christians are to accept martyrdom if it is thrust upon us. We aren’t to seek it out but if we are placed into the position where we can only live by denying God, then it is time for us to die – and joyfully so. But our prime duty here is escape if possible. Just as we are to avoid near occasions of sin, so we should avoid, if we can, situations where the choice becomes apostasy or death. That is what we’re trying to do here. I know it sounds perhaps a bit melodramatic, but it is win in politics right now, or die. If we lose and have to die, so be it – we trust in God. But let’s try not to lose.

We have to fully grasp what we’re up against. Remember, when the Palestinians sent in rape/murder squads to Israel, the global Left supported the Palestinians. They still do. Even today they are still out in the streets waving Hamas flags and calling Israel the bad guy. Think about that. They also sincerely believe that a human being can be born in the wrong body – and that anyone denying this is malevolent. They believe that punishing criminals is wrong. Not kidding about that: they are all in for “alternatives to punishment”…because they have internalized the idea that crime only happens because of injustice. We joke about saying “society made me do it”, but they really believe this to be the case…and so “society” needs to be punished. These are not reasoned, logical positions. They are not just false, but obviously false…and yet tens of millions of people in these United States of America believe it all and given that they further believe the world will die if they don’t get their way, we have the recipe for massacre.

Keep in mind that the whole basis of Nazism was stupidly wrong – ultimately based upon the belief that the Jews were an organized, malevolent force in the world deliberately out to destroy the civilized people – ie, the Aryans. This is no different from the modern Left believing that we are an organized, malevolent force deliberately out to destroy the planet. The Germans bought the Nazi argument and at least 40% of the American people have bought the Left argument. It won’t take much for a solid majority to get behind “born in the wrong body” and “that hamburger is killing the Earth!”. And people who think that the world will end if they don’t prevail are not noted for holding back…once you get that idea fixed in your head that only total destruction of the enemy allows you to survive, you’ll do anything to get your way.

I am not here in this year of 2025 trying to preserve Christian morality – we lost that fight decades ago when we didn’t oppose the completely insane idea of no-fault divorce…when we seriously went along with the idea that a promise made to God and Man can be annulled by a judge. At that point, the slide down into Elon Musk having 12 or 13 children from a large number of women was kinda baked in. And, on the whole, this is actually far more human than the Left which wants to trans kids they don’t abort…and suicide them if they wind up depressed teenagers. At least Musk is making babies and wanting them to get on a path towards a useful life. Better if he wasn’t nailing everything that will sit still for five minutes…but if I’ve got a choice between a world where people are bumping uglies with wild abandon and having buckets of children and another world where they lop off healthy body parts and then suicide the result…I know what I’m choosing. And I did just mention the suicide thing, didn’t I? Really think about that – the Left thinks it is good if people can have taxpayer funded “doctors” kill them if they’re feeling out of sorts. They don’t even call it a necessary evil any more – they call it good. Positive. A great outcome. Yay death!

For my own safety’s sake, I must defeat these people. Because I am not like them, I don’t want them jailed or killed. I will allow them to remain in their personal delusions…but I must do everything I can to remove them from all power and influence in the world. I will go pretty far here, including to eventual disenfranchisement and confiscation of their wealth if that proves necessary to stop these insane people. But for right now, I think that if we can de-fund them that will solve most of the problem…my conviction is that these insane beliefs are only given credence because subscription to them ensures well-paid sinecures for those willing to push the lunacy. Don’t ever downplay the power of a dollar sign in front of a morally and intellectually weak person. Much is written in the history books about how the German generals went along with Hitler even when it was clear his military commands were leading to disaster…much less is written about how Hitler secured and retained that compliance: money. He simply bribed his senior leaders to go along…and go along they did, only concerned about keeping their place at the trough. So, too, the modern American Left. And if we take away the money…if nobody is paying them to be insane, then there’s a strong chance they’ll stop being insane. And Musk is leading the charge in taking away their money.

Do I trust Musk? No. The default position on anyone with a great deal of money and/or power is mistrust. Trump gets trust now because he’s proven himself in the face of terrible odds to be on my side. Musk? Well, he’s doing some good things but so far the chips haven’t really been down…he hasn’t had to choose between his own happiness and the good of the people. The Left is pushing that way and he’s probably going to be forced to make that choice. We’ll see how that goes. But, meanwhile, he’s doing what I want – except too slowly and being far too nice to the Left. I want what he’s doing put on overdrive. Musk is a tool. He’s useful right now. If he remains useful then I’ll keep backing him – but the minute the tool is broken or proves ineffective, I’ll drop him like used chewing gum.

And here’s the kicker: once I defeat these insane people and restore a world where truth is the basis of action, then I can start to revive Christian morality – or, indeed, any moral code. People who think that abortion is good are not going to be converted to Christianity with ease. Heck, just getting them to stop being raving lunatics is a herculean task. But if they are no longer paid to believe that abortion is good then they might stop actually believing that abortion is good…and that will open them up to the prospect of understanding that being a good person requires a strict moral code enforced by law and custom. But this is all for after: after the Left is defeated. I can’t get there from here – I must first get rid of the lunatics. Then I can talk.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan17 Comments

That’s FBI Director Kash Patel to you, Liberals

Confirmed 51-49 because Collins chose this as her “I’m an independent” vote to retain electoral viability in Maine and Murkowski just hates the Republican party.

Remember, the Democrats have been mostly lock-step against our guys while Biden’s clowns almost all got significant GOP votes. That really has to stop. Until Democrats stop being vicious partisans, we have to be vicious partisans.

How does our Ruling Class view him? Well, they consider him a Conspiracy Theorist…mostly because Patel knows that 2020 was fraudulent, J6 was a set-up and he knows where the bodies are buried in the Trump-Russia op. In other words, he knows who the bad guys are – and the bad guys know he knows. And now he’s the director of the federal government’s most powerful law enforcement agency. A lot of people in DC are Googling defense attorneys today.

Reminder: the only good thing about Fetterman is that he’s not a raving anti-Semite. Other than that, he’s true-blue, fanatic Commie Left. He voted against Patel as he’s voted routinely against Trump’s other nominees.

The James Bond character has been signed over to Bezos…so, in keeping with the Rings of Power production, I now expect that while Bond remains a white male they add like 19 non-white and/or non-male characters to have 27 different story lines obscuring the main Narrative. That, by the way, is what was wrong with Rings of Power. I didn’t mind adding Hobbits though in Tolkien’s universe the played no role in the First or Second Ages. I don’t care about the black dwarfs and elves as its rather irrelevant (though the problem with the Elves in all of the Tolkien movies is that they don’t make them as god-like as they are in the story – these are tall, strong, beautiful people with no signs of aging at all…in the movies they just don’t capture this). But the story of the creation of the Rings of Power has one flaw for modern production codes: only one strong female in it, Galadriel…who I think they made into Feanor’s brother when she was actually his niece which is weird but I guess they needed that as they make her character into one driven by desire for revenge on Sauron when her actual motivation in life was dominion of her own outside control of the Valar…this motivation finally coming to an end when Frodo offers her the Ring and she refuses it (“I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel”). Anyways, what they tried to do with Rings of Power was simply too much so they could add one diversity hire after another so you barely get into Sauron and the making of the Rings. I expect the Bezos Bond will have at it with SPECTRE while his niece is doing the really important work of battling dead-naming at MI6.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan76 Comments

We’re approaching the denouement of the Russo-Ukraine War: Trump’s team will be meeting Putin’s team in Saudi Arabia soon in order to work out the preliminary deal. Many people are upset with this because it is clear that the USA will not insist upon Russia evacuating all Ukrainian territory and, further, that we are not interested in Ukraine joining NATO (that is, we’re not interested in committing to Ukraine’s defense and thus endless friction and hostility with Russia). What the final terms are remains to be seen but Zelenskyy and other European leaders have already said they reject whatever deal is made.

And that’s just too darn bad: they don’t get a say.

For the European leaders, the bottom line is that they don’t have significant military forces ready for action and there is a distinct lack of will on committing European youth to war. The European Ruling Class is barely hanging on via increasingly repressive measures against dissidents and telling European youth that its time to ruck up and enter the trenches would be immensely unpopular (can you imagine? “Ok, Nigel from Liverpool – you get to go to Ukraine to die for the Donbas while Abdul from Pakistan gets to stay on welfare here in Blighty grooming your younger sister!”. Not gonna work out). If you don’t have force on the table, you don’t get to decide how a war goes.

As for Ukraine: they’ve been bled white (those who stayed: looked like a couple million Ukrainian youths bailed out early) and they simply lack the power to expel the Russians. At this point, it doesn’t matter what weapons we give them: there just aren’t enough Ukrainians in uniform to get through what are by now multiple layers of Russian defensive positions against a Russian army which hasn’t even begun to really call on Russia’s manpower reserves. Ukraine’s chance to have a say in the war was the 8 years between Russian invasions – they could have built up a powerful, mobile army to strike at Russia just as (or, better, just before) the Russians came on. They didn’t. Zelenskyy staked his country on the moral character of the European leadership and Joe Biden. Bad call. While Ukraine retains sufficient force to make total Russian conquest prohibitively expensive, they don’t have enough to go beyond that. Exhausted military forces also don’t get much of a say in how a war ends.

And both the USA and Russia have bigger fish to fry. Our challenge is in China, Russia’s challenge is to rebuild their military force and industrial base as quickly as possible to keep China from getting froggy about Siberia (people forget that large parts of Russian Siberia were Chinese until the mid-19th century). Bottom line: there’s no will for the war to continue, and so it will end. And if by some chance Ukraine and Europe reject the deal and decide to fight on? Then it is no skin off our nose – and we’ll have no reason to help Ukraine further.

CBS News had the day yesterday – making some of the most stupid statements ever made by an alleged news organization. One thing they highlighted as how cool it is that Europe oppresses free speech…with the capper being a CBS news actor telling Rubio that the Nazis used free speech to create the Holocaust. We all had a good laugh at that but I used the opportunity to remind everyone that only one nation on Earth actually secures the rights of the people: the USA. It is only our Constitution which has the phrase “Congress shall make no law”. All other Constitutions, no matter how wonderfully written or how much they talk about human rights has that – and all of them have provisions which allow the government to suspend every human right when the government decides it needs to. There is only one free nation on Earth: the USA. There only ever has been one, and only ever will be one – no other nation’s Ruling Class is ever going to allow the people to write it into basic law “Parliament shall make no law”. Our Constitution kinda slipped into being almost by accident…nobody was paying attention to what we were doing and the powers that would want to stop us were too far away. The whole thrust of the Progressive Left in the USA, by the way, has been to annul “Congress shall make no law”. Via bureaucratic and judicial fiat the Left has tried everything it can to get around that…and they never will stop trying to. It is the final bulwark of human liberty.

Defending Law

Mark Noonan34 Comments

This is going to cause some controversy:

The quote is attributed to Napoleon and it is very much in line with his thinking. True enough even if he never uttered the exact phrase. But, what does it mean? That a leader should go off and be lawless and claim as justification that he’s saving the country? Well, we get that on the regular right now. The world has always been filled with such de-facto assertions. But Napoleon wasn’t asserting a national policy for his government – he of the Code Napoleon knew that law was crucial – but simply making an observation. Keeping in mind that he had turned out the Directory in a coup…to the immense joy of most French as they were, by 1799, sick to death of endless Revolution. I believe that this is the sense in which Trump is working.

The law, from the Constitution on down to the lowest county ordinance isn’t a suicide pact. We cannot, of course, have a civilized society if we don’t have laws. But the law can become destructive of its own ends – like, for instance, when we have people asserting that the 14th Amendment secured a right for foreigners to illegally enter our country and give birth to citizens. If the law explicitly said that, then only an insane person would abide by it – and everyone who violated it would be saving the country, and thus violating no law.

Another example – the law clearly states that Hunter Biden is pardoned for all violations of federal law from January 1st, 2014 until December 31st, 2024. And that, by law, ends that. But it isn’t at all just. It isn’t what the law is for – the power of pardon isn’t intended to get your drug-addicted son off from his serial violations of laws. And, so, while it would be a technical violation of the law to now rake over every action of Hunter’s starting on January 1st, 2025 (he will break the law again; there is no doubt about that) and then throwing the book at him, it would be just. You see how this works?

Personally, I think what Trump has done here is fire a shot across the bow of those in the country who are willing to go along with Democrat efforts to hamstring the Executive. We know what the Democrats are doing and why – and that is fine. But nobody else should be helping them at all. If, for instance, the Supreme Court decides not to intervene in these ridiculous lawfare cases against Trump’s Executive actions (or just delays action based on some absurd adherence to established judicial procedure), then Trump will wait a while…but then act. The laws we have on the books that are supposed to protect us from unjust government actions are not there to allow well-funded Leftwing activists to stymie via lawsuits actions by the duly elected Executive. You are not being oppressed if your federal meal ticket is taken away and no host of Leftwing judges can make it so.

And, in the end, if Trump does act against a court order after giving fair time for it to be worked out, then he will be saving Law. Keep in mind that if the Lawfare actually worked – if it actually prevented Trump from doing the legal things he was elected to do – then it would go into the public mind that the law is useless. Even downright evil. If working within the system and winning fair and square by the book gets you nothing, then you will seek other means of getting what you want. Trump won the election. The Republican Party won the election. The MAGA voters won. And when you win you get what you want. That is the rule. And they’d better darn well get it – or things will start to happen that nobody likes.