The Stupid Failure of Foreign Aid

Mark Noonan34 Comments

In an attempt to make us all feel bad about MAGA, a Democrat operative pointed out that a 71 year old Burmese refugee in Thailand died the other day because the NGO providing her oxygen ceased service because Trump shut off the USAID funds. There were a couple problems with this:

  1. @Oilfield_Rando pointed out that the CEO of the NGO makes $2.2 million per year. You’d think he could have kicked in for an oxygen tank or two.
  2. An American lady in North Carolina died of hypothermia on January 6th, 2025, after FEMA failed to help her. No Democrat rose to condemn Biden over this. Bottom line: they don’t care about people dying. They only care about political power and the dead lady in Thailand, they think, helps them gain power. Think of how hard they had to look to even find this out?
  3. The conflict in Burma (called Myanmar by the current pack of thugs running the place) has been ongoing since 1948. It is an entirely senseless ethnic conflict that no civilized people would tolerate – and we note, with great care, that under British rule these conflicts were suppressed because killing someone on account of their ethnicity is barbaric and stupid.

As we are now closely reviewing all the foreign aid, we must also address the underlying reason for foreign aid. Why, at the end of the day, do we do it? After all, outside sporadic international help in response to natural disasters, until the mid-20th century foreign aid just wasn’t a thing. A couple reasons are given for it:

  1. Humanitarian. Can’t let people die. This, of course, is true. If we can in any way prevent an unnecessary death, we should do so.
  2. Global power. If we don’t provide the aid, then someone else will and we’ll lose influence over crucial areas of the globe, placing ourselves at a disadvantage.

We’ll start with number 2 here: global power. If we don’t, someone else will, to our detriment. Ok. Between 2012 and 2022 the United States provided about $2.8 billion per year in aid to Tanzania. That’s equal to 3.4% of Tanzania’s annual GDP. They should love us, right? I mean, if someone handed us a sum equal to 3.4% of our GDP every year, we’d probably like that guy. I know if someone handed me a figure equal to 3.4% of my annual income, I’d be grateful. So, how has this love worked out?

Tanzania has signed a $2.2bn deal with two Chinese firms to build a standard gauge rail link between the port of Dar es Salaam and a nickel mine in Burundi, Business Insider Africa reports.

Looked into who owns that nickel mine in Burundi and it appears to be a company called East African Region Group which is headed up by some sheik from the United Arab Emirates. We gave Burundi $69.7 million in 2024.

To nutshell, in return for $28 billion to Tanzania over the past ten years and nearly $70 million to Burundi just in 2024 we got…nothing. China gets to build the railroad and the Emirates get to mine the nickel. Oh, I mean, sure: there are more healthy workers in Tanzania and Burundi than there would have been without US aid and that’s nice…helps the Chinese and Emiratis a lot. I’m sure they’re grateful.

But at least we did provide the humanitarian aid, right? We can feel good about that!

Well, maybe not.

Not trying to pick on Tanzania here – in fact, I literally picked the country at random for the example here, figuring in advance that any African nation would have the same basic arc over the past 60+ years – but the bottom line is that it became independent in 1961 and in 2024, 63 years later, got $2.8 billion in aid from us. And a lot more from elsewhere (though I suspect that a lot of the non-US aid is actually just more US aid funneled through non-US NGO’s). Just what the heck have the people of Tanzania been up to all this time? In 63 years of American post-colonial development we went from an agricultural backwater to a significant industrial power (that would be 1776 to 1839) about to break out into major power level. And we didn’t get a dime in foreign aid.

Oh, wait. Perhaps that is it?

Americans are no smarter than Africans – people is people. Genius is rare and the average run of us are…average. Americans are not harder working than Africans. Americans are not morally superior to Africans. On the grand scale of things, a space alien examining an African and an American wouldn’t find a dime’s worth of difference between them. So, what gives?

The basic African story: independence granted by an exhausted Imperial power which just didn’t want to bother any longer (though people pump up the leaders of independence movements in Africa into some sort of super-human heroes); a colonially-educated, socialist-minded strong-man takes over and rules for ages (Tanzania was run by Julius Nyerere from 1960 to 1985) suppressing political dissent and trying to graft Marxist twaddle onto a subsistence-agriculture, tribal society. Debt, inflation and general misery results (in the best cases – the worst go Rwanda and genocidal murder)…along with buckets of foreign aid money. And don’t get me wrong here, as far as post-colonial strong-men went, Nyerere was pretty good…at least he doesn’t appear to have looted his treasury and he did (eventually) give up power (though basically to the one-party State he created and which persists today via bogus elections). It should be noted that Nyerere the anti-colonialist firebrand who is hailed to this day as one of the Liberators of Africa…died in a London hospital. All that time in power all that money spent…couldn’t even build one first-rate hospital in his homeland.

All we can really say here is that the aid is the problem – that it actually props up what is wrong in the recipient countries. Think about it: Nyerere’s policies were basket-case bad right out the gate…what kept his people fed sufficient to prevent bloody revolution was the foreign aid. The gifts of the First World. And so it goes in one Third World nation after another – a lousy, stupid and usually corrupt post-colonial Ruling Class makes a mess of things and then begs for aid to put a band aid over the failure. And we give and give and give and nothing really ever improves and on top of all that, we here in the USA don’t even get to exploit the material resources and cheap labor…the Chinese get to do that. How is this good? How is this considered moral?

I don’t want us to leave people to just die – but if people are just dying then we can’t just pass out the cash. We have to address the underlying problem…and that problem is going to invariably be the Ruling Class of the country where people will die if they don’t get aid. They’re either too corrupt or too stupid (or a combination of same) to run their country. I don’t care about offended patriotic sensibilities…if you will starve without my food, then when I send the food, I send my control over you. Because I can’t trust you’ll fix the problem. If we send aid, it comes with strict instructions not just on how the aid is used, but how the recipient country will organize itself going forward. And, hey, they can refuse the conditions…and the food. Their choice. Let the local strong-man rant and rave about American imperialists…I don’t care. But if he wants food rather than his people rising up to kill him, then he’ll do as he’s told.

As I’ve said on many occasions of late, it is time for us to enter the real world. To take things as they actually are, not as we might wish them to be. It is the only way anything is going to get fixed.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan38 Comments

The court orders against Trump are simply absurd. If they aren’t quickly disposed of on the appellate level, then Trump should start to ignore them. Perhaps first by quietly informing Chief Justice Roberts that he’d better put his judges on a leash or he’ll make it a pure Executive vs Judiciary conflict…such a conflict the Judiciary, being un-elected, is bound to lose. That is, if Roberts wants to retain Executive deference to Judicial rulings, then this nonsense of one federal judge issuing a nation-wide TRO simply has to stop. Forever. Side note: the Constitution gives Congress the right to regulate how cases are brought before the Courts…I recommend we enact legislation stating that only a Supreme Court Justice can issue a nation-wide TRO…and that TRO can be voided if three Justices decide to do so.

Do keep in mind why the Left is fighting Trump tooth and nail rather than picking it’s fights: it has to. It can’t concede an inch here. My Mrs – mostly non-political – asked me why don’t the Democrats just get on board with stopping the worst of the waste? Answer: because the worst of the waste is why Democrats get into power. Its why we see people entering the system poor and quickly getting rich far beyond what their official salary can justify. I’m not talking about the ideologically committed – they only make up a small percentage of all Democrats (though they rule absolutely as far as policy and messaging go): I’m talking about 90% of the Democrats from Senator down to associate professor at your community college. Its all about stealing – about getting well paid for doing nothing useful. While one individual $5 million grant might seem to you and me like something not worth fighting for, the people who were getting paid with it are up in arms…as is everyone else who lives off such grift. If one part of it goes down, all of it will go down…so they fight for each part of it, no matter how stupid and corrupt it looks.

Here’s my view: Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot. It is highly likely that all of the laws which restrict Executive discretion over personnel and discretionary spending are unconstitutional…and we do have a Court which may very well rule exactly that way. Democrats might be setting themselves up for a catastrophe. After all:

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.

Article II, section 1, paragraph one. There are no modifiers here. There is one person – and one person, alone – who has executive power, and that is the President. The President, and only the President, can give orders and/or delegate executive power. To say that some part of the Executive branch, or some executive function, is outside the control of the President is a clear violation of the Constitution. The Congress does not have the power to reach into the Executive and make it do things – the Congress’ power here is of the purse: the means to make the Executive bend to Legislative wishes is by refusing to appropriate funds for the Executive. This concept that the Legislative can tell the Executive whom can be hired and fired – that is, who the President may delegate authority to – flies in the face of the Constitution. So, too, does the concept that the Judiciary can interfere in Executive actions.

The Pope issued a statement which is being hailed by the global Left as an assertion that Trump is evil for his deportation program. It is always, however, necessary that one read statements of Pope Francis rather than blindly accept what someone says he said. In the statement:

…one must recognize the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe from those who have committed violent or serious crimes while in the country or prior to arrival.

To be sure, the Pope clearly doesn’t like the idea of mass deportations based solely on the fact of immigration status. But after he goes on a bit on that subject, he is forced (because Catholicism requires it) to concede:

This does not impede the development of a policy that regulates orderly and legal immigration.

So, if you really want to sum up the Pope’s views:

Nations must remain open to immigrants.

Immigration should be orderly and legal.

Criminals must be controlled.

Deportation should not be based simply on the legal status of the foreigner in country.

The last bit most Americans are going to disagree with – the Pope is getting into a little bit of a gray area here in saying we can develop an orderly and legal immigration system but if someone jumps the line we can’t send them back into the line just based on that. The schizophrenia required to take any Left position rears its head here. In my view, I am not in any way in violation of the Pope’s statement – even though I favor a 20 year moratorium on all immigration (as per usual, unless an actual life is at stake). You see, to have an orderly and legal immigration system, I first must gain control of the situation – and this means I better not let anyone else in for a while as I sort out those who have come in over the past few years. Essentially, in order to be compliant with Church teaching on the matter of welcoming the stranger, I have to go through a process to ensure that I may welcome the stranger. The Pope might take exception and get very angry with me, but nothing I would do on immigration – and nothing Trump is doing – actually violates the inherent dignity of the migrants.

Think. Change.

Mark Noonan16 Comments

Elon Musk, the other day, opined that our Navy is living in the past and wasting money on weapons systems which will not be effective in the next war. He’s right.

I’m not of the school that holds the aircraft carrier to be obsolete in the face of modern anti-ship missiles but I am of the opinion that the Carrier Battle Group as the primary expression of naval power is not what it needs to be. Today it is, of course, the carrier and escorts – the carrier to be the strike force, the escorts there just to protect the carrier. I favor a more balanced approach – and I said some years ago that we need to revive the battleship concept (or at least the battle cruiser). In my view, the carrier might remain the primary strike force but we’d be foolish to rely only on piloted planes when we can fill the sky with missiles and drones. My revived battleship would fulfill that role.

The Burke class destroyer is 9,700 tons and it carries 96 Vertical Launch System cells. Imagine what a 50,000 ton ship could carry. Plus, that new battleship could be heavily armored (no modern ship carries anything like the Iowa’s 307mm thick armor – do keep in mind that the Nevada was missed by an atomic bomb by 1,600 yards and survived the blast – and she was built in 1916). It could initially carry a pair of 8 inch guns for shore bombardment and thus have space for the Rail Gun if that is ever worked out. With nuclear power it can cruise along at the carrier’s speed. With automation its crew would probably be about 300. It would incorporate all the modern stealth tech we can think of. And between missiles and drones it could put an overwhelming amount of ordnance in the air – and be a big enough ship that we might fit two or three reloads inside her.

It is important to always be thinking about things. We’re seeing on the battlefields of Ukraine that the tank is no longer Queen of the Battlefield. She can still do a lot of things, but she must be careful and stay hidden most of the time. Modern aerial tech means at least for now we won’t see anything the Operation Barbarossa with this 6,000 armored vehicles flooding across the open country. Not until tank tech takes a step forward as well (which we should also be looking into). If we sit tight with our Cold War-era military ideas, we’re going to get beaten.

But it isn’t enough to just change the material – the people must change, as well. I’ve often brought up Jacky Fisher as the exemplar of the Change Agent. Came into command of the Royal Navy and pretty much presented the United Kingdom with an entirely new Navy in about 5 years. And it was the Navy the Brits needed – fast battleships with big guns, no messing about with ships that, in Fisher’s words, “could neither run nor fight”. But even he had a little fail in this: he didn’t really change the people. Oh, he had people he favored and advanced – but they were favored because they agreed with his ideas on material changes. He neglected to look into whether or not they were changing their minds while changing their clothes.

Fisher presented his admirals with a fleet of battleships which were faster and better armed than the German ships they’d face. The whole concept was to move faster than the enemy, keeping just out of range of his smaller guns and then proceed to blow him to pieces. Unfortunately, his admirals just charged ahead into range of the Germans and got the bad end of the German concept of ships…slower, lesser-armed ships which could take immense punishment. At Jutland this resulted in the Brits losing 3 battle cruisers to the German’s 1…and the Brits, must less armored, were literally blown to pieces. So, a bit of attention to the detail: ask your people just what they plan to do with the fancy, new stuff you’re providing to them.

But change is the constant – and as Conservatives, it is our job to embrace change after we’ve done our “parable of the fence” review of the problem. That is, once we have actually identified the problem which will prevent our Conservation of something we love, have at it – even if it means revolutionary change. We hope that Trump and Team will continue to get the ball rolling. First in gutting the Deep State, then starting the process of reform. But our job is to not only sustain this, but to demand it go the right way. We can’t just latch on to anyone who puts “MAGA” in his bio…we need people who will actually do what needs to be done…and that is going to take us putting on pressure, getting involved in local politics and that sort of thing. And then, of course, defending the innovators. The whole Global Elite is going after Musk now – and I’ve always said that Musk is not my cup of tea. But I have to defend him…he’s on the side of the angels right now and if I let them get Musk’s scalp, it just moves me up the line.

It is Like the Sun After the Storm

Mark Noonan33 Comments

Things are changing so fast we can’t keep up with them all. On the matter of South Africa, my go-to has been an account on X, @ConCaracal. He’s a South African who has been grinding away trying to reform the increasingly racist South African government. Over the past few years, especially, the South African government has become increasingly strident in its hatred of whites. There are now more race-based laws on the books than under Apartheid. This shows that the primary complaint the ANC really had with Apartheid is that they didn’t have that power for themselves. It has been a fairly bleak battle for white South Africans and, indeed, South Africa recently enacted an entirely unconstitutional law to confiscate white-owned farms without compensation. This is the path Zimbabwe went down and so we all knew where it was going. And then, Trump.

Did you ever imagine you’d see the day that the American Secretary of State would call out Third World racism? We’re not supposed to mention this, guys. Remember, we’re the bad guys and we have to allow tin pot Third World tyrants do whatever they want. This was a gigantic earthquake in foreign affairs…and while it has caused little notice in the USA, it has been noticed in South Africa – as Conscious Caracal said:

The key take away here is the same for everything – we didn’t have to do what we were doing. All this time we’ve been bending the knee to Third World tyrant-thieves and we could have just called them out on it. Now, this doesn’t solve South Africa’s problem – the country is in horrid shape and the ANC does need it’s enemy (white people) to justify continued power. Its not like they can stop stealing from the Treasury, right? Keep in mind that the whole farm confiscation thing is absurd – the government of South Africa is the largest landowner in South Africa…if they want to pass out land to black farmers, they’ve got millions of acres to spare. But that doesn’t generate race-hatred. But pressure from the Trump Administration will be crucial in the fight to turn South Africa into a rule of law nation.

And on and on and on like that. We’ve been essentially destroying ourselves for decades, internally and externally, in service of some mythic belief that the US is the bad guy. That white people are the bad guy. That Christians (and, recently, Jews) are the bad guy. That the very creation of our nation is an unforgivable sin. And now it just stops…because we’ve got a President who doesn’t want to play that game. And it is glorious.

Our Government is Bad. Like Really, Really Bad

Mark Noonan62 Comments

So I guess the FBI employs 13,000 agents – which seems like a heck of a lot – and 5,000 of them were employed going after J6 people. Little back of the envelope math and that means 38% of the FBI was concentrating on that.

In 2022 (the last year complete stats are available) 73,654 Americans died of fentanyl overdose.

You’d think the FBI would have concentrated on that problem.

Even if J6 had been an actual insurrection that caused the death of cops, you’d still think that 73,000 people dying from a drug overdose would draw a little more attention than J6. You know, given that if J6 was an insurrection then not only did it fail, it didn’t even appreciably slow things down.

Why did the FBI do this?

  1. It is easy. Fighting the drug cartels takes a lot of very hard work, often in very bad locations, at great personal risk. Going after J6ers involved finding a law-abiding patriot who was somewhere in proximity to the Capitol and then dragging his/her unresisting a** through the judicial wringer.
  2. It is what the political bosses wanted. The pay and promotions were going to be handed out based on who did the most to nail the J6ers.
  3. Regardless of how things came out long term, the FBI agents were sure that the GOP would never do anything to them and would keep referring to them as “our brave and dedicated FBI”.

Guessed wrong on that last one, guys! But more importantly, what this reveals is the utter rottenness of the FBI – and, indeed, all agencies of government. Even if one wants to put the worst possible reading on J6, hardly anyone involved committed an act of actual violence. Most of the people brought to court had just been in the area or had peacefully entered the Capitol for a few minutes (this also tells us that the actually violent were probably agents – even if free-lance – of the FBI). No decent, moral human being would do more than pass out fines to these people…maybe in one or two more egregious cases give them six months in jail. What the FBI did to the J6ers was simply horrific – they did this to Americans. To us. It was nightmare stuff out of some dystopian novel where the Nazis won WWII.

The other day I watched a documentary called American Nightmare. It is one of those true crime docuseries and when I turned it on, I had never even heard of the case – though as it went on, it was clear that it caused at least a bit of a media sensation when it was happening (I haven’t watched much TV news over the past many years – though, full disclosure, since Trump was elected I have watched more than usual to get my gloating in). The basics of the story is that a lunatic broke into a home in the middle of the night, tied up the guy after drugging him and then kidnapped the girl. When the guy woke up from the drugs – and sat in fear doing nothing for a while because the kidnapper had threatened him if he went to the police – he called the cops who then immediately suspected him of murdering his girlfriend. It got worse when the girl was let go (after being held for two days and raped twice); the cops then decided this was all some scam worked up by the girl based on a recent movie plot. The cops were getting ready to charge the couple with felonies over making a “false” police report when, lo and behold, a totally unrelated cop – just doing her job, no special intelligence or ability needed – found the clues that indicated the story was real…and then they got the guy.

Who had also done this sort of thing before. But nobody believed the accusers. Now, to be fair, the MO of the perp was absolutely bizarre. If someone came up to me and told me that story, I’d be doubting it heavily. But the cop’s job is to check things out. You know: investigate. Had the cops done some investigating they would have found sufficient in the earlier cases to nab the guy before the poor girl featured in the story had been kidnapped and raped. But, that’s hard, you see? Much easier to just aggressively interrogate the victim(s) and hope you can catch them in a lie that you can prosecute.

The bad guy was caught almost by accident. A good cop just doing her job put two and two together. But there were probably scores of cops involved over a period of years when the creep was operating who never did put two and two together. And I’m not saying they just missed something – they didn’t look. And in questioning the victims, the cops routinely lied to them. About what they were after as a police force. When the victims were given their police files after it was all over, it was clear that the cops never did anything but first try to nail the guy for murder, then tried to nail the girl for false report when she turned up alive. After I finished watching, I turned to the Mrs and said, “are criminals only caught because they’re dumber than cops?”

Guys, I think it is really bad: that we’re living entirely on luck right now. Or had been until 1/20, at least. I wouldn’t trust an employee of any government agency with a burned out match right now. When not overtly corrupt, they’re lazy and stupid. Maybe one in a hundred is actually trying to do a useful job in the day to day. Now we better understand why US Naval warships are rusted, why planes on routine flight paths crash, why a train wreck with chemical spills is just left to sort itself out, why fire hydrants in LA don’t have water…the people running the show haven’t a clue what to do. Right now the Left is filled with whines about the uncertain economic futures of the people on the DOGE chopping block and I’m like, “what would you say you do around here?”

In response to us playing The Bobs here, multiple FBI agents have filed suit against President Trump…claiming it is a violation of their rights if he gets a list of FBI agents who worked on J6. The Democrats will find some federal judge to issue an injunction. I hope Trump just ignores it – of course the President – who is the chief law enforcement officer of the USA – gets to know what the cops were working on. It is all so very stupid – but, hey, its what they’re going with.

I had estimated some years back that about 1 in 3 federal dollars was wasted – just uselessly spent when not outright stolen. I massively underestimated it. And now we get to find out just what its all been wasted on…and how many people have had their rights violated by the thieves.

I really hope the security people for Trump, Vance, Rubio..heck, all of them…is tip top. The Blob will not go down easy.

We Have One President

Mark Noonan13 Comments

As JD Vance posted on X today:

Career bureaucrats don’t get to violate lawful orders from the President of the United States. They answer to the president, and he answers to the people.

Really not that complicated.

And as I said some long while ago: we elect one person to be President. Per the Constitution:

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.

Not vested in a committee. Not vested in government employees. Not vested in some bizarre coalition of media types, bureaucrats, former Democrat Presidents and RINOs: a President has all executive power. If there’s something the federal government is allowed to actually do, it is the President who does it. This is actually a bit different from every other nation on Earth – because we’re a bunch of American weirdos as far as form of government goes. Personally, I like it – but it is a strange hybrid of Monarchy, Republic and Democracy. If run properly, it works like a charm. All Trump is doing is moving us back to a Constitutional form of government.

And that has the overall establishment (more and more are calling it The Blob – and that’s a good description) in a panic. As I’ve also been saying: there’s trillions of dollars of annual spending at stake here. Huge numbers of people – foreign and American, private and public sectors – simply live off The Blob. They have no other life skill than extracting taxpayer money from it. They don’t do anything. They don’t know how to do anything. Their whole career path (and lots of them have advanced degrees!) is get in and then just rising up the path ever higher in the government/corporate/NGO system. Never having once been held accountable but each year getting more income and benefits. Trump is a threat to that – and it does involved millions of people. Over on Bluesky the Left is apoplectic – and there are subtle calls for violence. If I dug deeper I’d probably find open calls – but looking at Leftist chatter is something you can only do in short bursts.

Of course, I do expect The Blob to react – and I honestly hope that Trump’s security team is absolutely first rate. Vance’s too. Heck, even Rubio’s. Remember, many Leftists are certifiable and just as in the two attempts in 2024, there are plenty of people who will believe that shutting down USAID is the End of Our Democracy and will act accordingly.

UPDATE: Just want to point out something as we really start to get some whines from The Blob about how hard this all is. Peter the Great in his great, reforming drive in Russia relied mostly on a few close aides and some foreign employees because he simply didn’t – or couldn’t – trust a lot of run-of-the-mill Russians to carry out the reforms (they were by and large not liked by the Russian people who preferred to stick with their old ways). This did make sure a lot of Peter’s orders were carried out with dispatch but he got the “cat’s away/mice will play” problem. In other words: if Peter wasn’t directly watching, these people would steal everything that wasn’t nailed down. Eventually it was found out and Peter, being what he was, had the miscreants knouted – this was whipping with a pretty horrific rawhide device.

On the day of the punishment he had it all done in the public square with him and other prominent people in attendance along with a great mass of Russian people. There was no specific number of lashes ordered – they were to be beaten until Peter said to stop. They went at it. Probably quite the horrific spectacle but it was getting Peter’s point across. Why bring this up?

Because when the thieves were a few strokes away from death, Peter ordered a halt. The men with the whips then shouted up to Peter:

“Please, little father, let us beat them a little more: they stole the bread out of our mouths!”

Peter, though, ordered it stopped. Here’s the thing – everyone who works for a non-profit who is making more than the average American income is stealing money out of the mouths of the poor. That they are doing it legally just makes it worse. A non-profit is a charity. Its why we don’t tax it. A charity isn’t a place to have a career – its a place to dispense aid to the poor.

The people losing their place at the troughs should count themselves lucky we’re not whipping them for what they’ve done.

Take a Bow for the New Revolution

Mark Noonan20 Comments

Wow.

Super wow!

We have been suckered for decades, guys.

Trump and Team are just rolling through the system and simply stopping it from being what it has been. Sure, there are arguments still to be had, lawsuits to go through and some legislation is going to be needed for long-term fixes…but Trump is cutting through the Deep State Swamp like a knife through butter. And this means it could always have been done. Ike to Nixon to Ford to Reagan to Bush I to Bush II…all of them could have done precisely this. None of them did. Did they not see it or were they captured by it? Doesn’t really matter at this point.

You sit there with this stunned realization that the USA was ruined – the whole world has been ruined – for simple lack of will to do the right thing. Everyone was just going along with it when not actually malevolent. Among the firings, the FBI boss in Las Vegas was canned. A bit of a surprise as we’ve had no particular problem with Vegas FBI but then you think about it…the FBI had Hunter’s laptop for more than a year. They knew for certain it was Hunter’s and that it contained existential proof of felony criminal activity and the FBI sat on it. To protect Joe f-ing Biden! To protect that slime ball piece of filth? Really??? But they had to – Joe was the only person the Democrats figured could possibly beat Trump and so it had to be buried. And it only came out, as it were, by accident – and then the FBI participated in the effort to suppress what the FBI knew. So when the FBI boss in Vegas gets the axe, you understand it: where were the good apples?

There were none. They were all bad. Maybe some of them can be salvaged under new direction, but not one, single FBI employee was doing the morally correct thing. For how long? Nobody knows. For decades, at least. Maybe since the start.

And, my friends, it was everything. That lady “bishop” who gave Trump a woke scolding? Her organization has taken in millions of taxpayer dollars to bring in “migrants”. We just found out today that a group in Poland called “Krytyka Polityczna”, which is trying to build a Leftist system in Poland was cut off by Trump. Fine – but why in heck was the USA ever funding them? Forget for a moment that its Left…why are we trying to alter Poland’s political climate in any direction? Shouldn’t the Poles be sorting themselves out? But of course we have been – Poland is still actually Catholic, pro-life and doesn’t want all the woke garbage…can’t have that! So, we’ve been pouring in the money to get the Left into power…so that Poland can be destroyed. And on and on and on like that…doing all kinds of corrupt funding and pressures and prosecutions all designed to get to one thing: totalitarian Leftist control of everything.

And it all ends…when we want it to. What lives by the Executive Order, dies by the Executive Order. Congress has essentially been passing all discretionary spending power over to the Executive for decades. They shouldn’t, but they did – because the last things a Congresscritter wants is responsibility. Better to let the Executive make the call and take the heat. But this means that all along we could have stopped funding the Left. Bush II had the Executive and a GOP Congress…and he made not a single move along these lines. Why the heck not? I just don’t understand it…it would have helped him! Remember, government funding was a large reason why we wound up with the 2008 crash…had Bush cut them off, it might not have happened. It is simply bizarre.

But, now its all over. At least while Trump is in. We’re getting the change we voted for. A Revolution.

So, let’s not get fooled again. Ok?

Open Thread

Mark Noonan4 Comments

I watched a little bit of Hannity’s interview of Vance and while I can’t recall Vance’s exact words, I was impressed when discussing military matters that he seems to understand that there have been huge changes in war fighting capability (and there will be even more going forward) and that is essentially time to think anew and act anew. This is an excellent and necessary first step as our military was built for the Cold War and then downsized while starting to concentrate on battling insurgency…but its mindset is still mostly Cold War…like we’re about to be faced with 10,000 Russian tanks pouring through the Fulda Gap in Germany. Neither the Ukrainians nor Russians have given a really good account of themselves in the war (probably poor leadership on both sides causing this) but they have given us some hints about what’s coming…and how difficult it is to move against any sort of alert and entrenched defense.

We all recall WWI when the cannon and the machine gun ruled the battlefield and the whole problem was that they prevented the stronger allied army from imposing its will on the weaker German army…until it was found that if you put a plate of steel on a tracked vehicle, you could get at the machine guns and artillery. Most military thinking still seems to be built around the idea that you’ll dash ahead with your tanks and other armored vehicles, break the enemy line and press on to victory. But what I’m seeing in Ukraine is that armored vehicles don’t dare show themselves…drone-fired and man-portable anti-tank weapons are making it difficult for armor to even properly engage the enemy. I believe this is why the Ukraine war has become a trench-war stalemate.

And, so, it was refreshing to see that Vance is clearly thinking about this – about how remotely operated weapons and such are altering battlefield conditions and so we must adjust ourselves to the new reality. My view is that we’re going to want to comprehensively develop this concept…what I’d like to have is the ability at the start of any conflict to essentially shut down the enemy. Destroy his ability to move and communicate and you’ll also destroy his ability to shoot (or at least shoot with any prospect of success). Remember the Germans produced 4,400 tanks in the last 4 months of the war but hardly any of them made it to a battlefield because German road and rail systems had been destroyed by bombing. These days, drones can probably drop every bridge in a medium-sized nation within hours of the start of a fight…that, alone, will destroy their ability to move efficiently.

From what I can tell, the efforts to block Trump’s nominees are failing – even Gabbard and RFK seem set to cruise through. Part of this is the realization even by the RINOs that there is huge primary risk in actually stopping a nominee. Part of it is that the Democrats are stuck on stupid. Shrieking, ignorant stump speeches in the committee hearings rather than actual questions. On the other side of it, all Trump’s picks are clearly intelligent people who have thought about things.

The Department of Defense will no longer fly a female soldier around for abortions. This was Biden policy that if you were stationed in a Red State and needed to whack your kid he’d pay to fly you to a Blue State where it could be done. To me, just weird – the concept of a female soldier is based around the Strong Woman Who Don’t Need No Man…but who apparently can’t exercise a little self control on the weekends and so needs a plane ticket from Alabama to California. Which is it, Liberals? Pick one.

All the hot chicks are with us and this is upsetting the people who can’t get dates – in this case, a hot correspondent is being condemned for her clothes by the people who covered up Biden’s laptop.

Democrats are having their DNC meeting to pick new leadership and figure out why they lost. They are confident it was because of sexism and racism. So, we’re certain that Trump still has moles in the DNC. These people really have learned nothing…but, in a sense, they can’t. Any admission that they got it wrong means that several parts of the Democrat coalition will walk out…go third party and stay third party thus simply handing power to the GOP for a generation. The downside here is that refusal to jettison the most lunatic parts of the coalition will continually alienate the overall electorate. On the other hand, don’t get too cocky, GOPers: I can’t remember the state (think it was South Dakota) but this past Tuesday a special election for State legislative seat in a district that was Trump +24 flipped to the Dems. Special elections are strange and the Dems have gotten really good at flipping special election seats because turnout is so low but the bottom line is that without Trump on the ballot, the GOP does have a turnout problem. The GOP had better start giving people a reason to vote for them or we might have problems.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan33 Comments

Watching a bit of RFK get grilled – you’d have some sympathy for the hostile questions except for you know the Democrats are just lying, ignorant hacks who have been provided their questions by the Swamp. Kennedy isn’t perfect, but (as we used to say of old-timey Liberals) his heart is in the right place: he’s skeptical of the amount of medication we’re given these days. And everyone should be.

Look, I don’t like pain or cold symptoms or feeling sad just like everyone else – but I also know (because I took high school biology) that the human body is built to fight this stuff off. Our biology – created by Nature or God, depending on one’s point of view – desires our health because healthy human bodies means the continuation of the human species. Medicine is supposed to just back up this natural course of events…not take over our lives. Some people are taking huge numbers of pills to try to regulate every aspect of their physical and psychological well-being. That isn’t good.

I’m 60. I’ve got a bum knee. It hurts all the time – sometimes very badly sometimes less badly, but all the time. My eyesight is getting poorer (I have to wear glasses to be able to see the TV from my chair; my close up vision is still pretty good but even there the eye doc is saying I’m close to needing reading glasses, especially at night). I get those odd aches and pains that you can’t determine their source. I’m getting old. But even so, my body still tries to repair itself. And, to be fair, I am in pretty darned good health for a 60 year old who has smoked since 13 (I can do laps underwater in my pool, for instance). I do at least 20 pushups every morning! I’m sure if I bothered going to doctors on the regular, they’d find stuff to medicate…I’d reject it out of hand. I don’t want to go the route I’ve seen other oldsters go where its just one more pill after another and, of course, you can’t cure getting old and dying.

I recall my Uncle Mike – he was afflicted with something genetically common in my family: a bum heart valve (my grandfather had it, my dad had it, Uncle Mike as noted, my cousin has it – there is a high chance that I’ll have it at some point). The fix for this is to replace the heart valve – my dad did that and regretted it. Sure, it got him to 82 but he had to take pills and pills and pills and the blood thinners meant that if he sneezed too hard he’d bruise and it was all just a hassle. Uncle Mike got the diagnoses, considered what dad had gone through and decided to give it a miss…when the doc said it was “any day now” on his death, he went around visiting friends and family to say goodbye and then went home to die in his bed (the thing about it is that until that valve actually fails, you’re fine – if it fails and you don’t get rushed to the hospital for the valve replacement, you die). We can’t fight the inevitable. I think that is what RFK is really saying on medicine – and on food, all he’s saying is that perhaps we should have more fresh, natural food in our diet…this does kinda make some sense.

Pam Bondi got out of the Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote. Do note that when it is crunch time, Democrats never break ranks…they never make the grand gesture to the other side. This is what is really so infuriating about the Murkowskis of the GOP. There is no need for them to vote against our side – it is never reciprocated. All they’re doing is throwing a bone to the Democrats and giving them the “bi-partisan opposition” talking point.

Trump continues to sign his Executive Orders – set to sign one banning Critical Race Theory from federally-funded schools. Aside from torpedoing the hideous, anti-human ideology behind CRT, the real news here is that, finally, we’re using the strings. Keep in mind that most of the federal government’s power to influence State and local affairs comes from the strings attached to federal money. If you don’t do what Uncle Sam says, you don’t get the money. You don’t have to do it! Most of this stuff can be legally ignored by the States and localities…but they won’t get the money if the do that. For the first time, we’re attaching our strings. Democrats have gleefully attached their strings ever since the Welfare State was truly born in the 1960s…the GOP never has because, well, that wouldn’t be nice. Democrats would object! Now they can object al they want – we don’t care. Better, of course, just to dispense with all this drivel…but if we can’t then the crucial thing is to move the money from the Left’s priorities to ours.

Heck of a First Week, Huh?

Mark Noonan23 Comments

There’s really too much to talk about! Future historians are going to have to spend chapters just on the first week – and keep referencing back to it as they discuss future developments from the initial actions. We’re definitely getting what we voted for!

The capper came on Sunday when the far-left President of Colombia tried to stop Trump from deporting Colombians back to Colombia (think about that for a second). Trump immediately hit back, hard, and Colombia had to cave. It must always be remembered as we engage in our foreign affairs that any nation we deal with needs us far more than we need them. And it is also useful to remember that as ragged as we are at the moment – with all our monumental problems – we are still, by far, the most powerful nation on Earth.

People tend to forget that when the Germans threw in the towel in May of 1945, American power was waxing. We had millions of soldiers in the USA still in training – they never even got out of the country. We had 12 field armies. A Navy of 4,200 combat ships. 43,000 combat aircraft. And we were still building flat out. Latent in the USA is still that power. We still are a young country. We haven’t really begun to tap the resources in and on our own soil. But more importantly than that, access to the US market is a live or die need for other nations…if they can’t sell to us, they can’t sell their products and their economies will shrivel up and die. For Latin America it is even more than that – the remittances from legal and illegal immigrants in the USA is a gigantic part of their national income. We’ve been treated like garbage because we’ve allowed ourselves to be treated like garbage…like Colombia or nations like that should be taking any other tone than polite request with us.

Look, I don’t want conflict with other nations. I have become an America First Isolationist. Foreign wars, aside from being just generally bad, are bad for the USA. We can have a National Security State or we can be free and prosperous. I want good relations and reciprocal trade with other nations. I wish nothing but goodwill to all. But, dang it, we must be treated fairly and with respect. We’re not the world’s garbage can, nor the world’s piggy bank. If we give, we must get. If they want us to treat them with respect, that goes both ways. You ask us if we will agree – you don’t demand.

And that is what Trump is trying to do – to rebalance the world. To make it real. And the real world is that you’re not allowed to walk all over us.

We’re also not allowed to walk all over ourselves. Plenty of people in the Deep State tried right off to find a way to resist Trump – playing word games with job titles and basically saying that they were going to do to Trump in 2025 what they had done in 2017. Ain’t happening. Hegseth is already laying down the law at Defense. Rubio is doing it at State. Lots of people are being fired, reassigned or simply being told not to bother coming back in. Per Civil Service rules, Trump can’t just fire all these people…but he probably does have power to find them surplus to needs and then can them (and having them sit at home for a month and nobody notices would kinda prove the point). Also, we don’t want these people screwing around while Trump tries to get his nominees confirmed…we need to get our people in charge, have them learn the lay of the land and then we can start seeing who stays and who goes. Remember, in Trump’s first term, the bureaucrats would just flat out lie to Trump’s appointees about what they could legally do…that isn’t happening this time. Trump’s Chief of Staff is making sure all i’s are dotted and t’s crossed.

It has been a heck of a lot of fun! Now, do keep in mind: the sugar high will wear off. There will be bumps along the road. There will even be failures and defeats. But the course is set – and right now Trump has the Left on the ropes…and the Democrats seem determined to hold to their 2024 program.