Secession is the Answer Update

Mark Noonan7 Comments

Spreading like wildfire around the country:

There’s nothing like a guy with a few million bucks to lend instant credibility to a previously penny-ante movement to split up the state of California.

Venture capitalist Tim Draper of Silicon Valley has filed paperwork for a November ballot measure that would divide California into six states, calling the Golden State as presently constituted “too big and bloated.”

I think that six is a bit high, but the point still holds – California is too big and bloated.
I think this idea will start to get legs – people are tired of out of touch, remote government.

Lessons from Lost Wars in Afganistan and Iraq

Mark Noonan5 Comments

With the capture of Fallujah by al-Qaeda-linked Islamists and the clear deterioration of Afghanistan, it is time we both admit these wars have been lost, and draw some conclusions about them.

1.  Get out of the UN.  It was set up to keep the peace; peace was broken less than two years after it was set up when India and Pakistan went to war.  An organization to keep global peace which can’t stop a major war from happening is useless.  All the UN does these days is add an extra layer of bureaucracy on to the world and hamper quick, decisive action.  Kowtowing to the pretense that the UN can keep the peace just puts American policy in a bind.  Before we can do anything with UN approval, we have to get our enemies in China and Russia to agree to it – and if you think the hard heads running those countries will ever operate altruistically then you are certifiable.  When it suits them, they’ll foster wars, civil wars, insurrections, death, slaughter and disease – and prevent us from getting UN approval to stop it.  Worthless organization.  Corrupt and expensive, as well.  Better to do away with it.

2.  We must never hazard our armed forces in battle again except as a result of a declared state of war against a specific nation or group of nations.  The fatal flaw in our post-9/11 operations – and for this Bush bears a great deal of responsibility – was the fact that we didn’t declare wars.  We made terrorist groups and trivial individuals like bin Laden the primary enemy, rather than grappling with the real problem: all terrorist and Islamist activity is the result of State-sponsorship.  The men who flew the planes in to the World Trade Center were not free agents – various nations had a hand in setting the stage.  Even if they knew nothing of the pending attack, nations like Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Saudi Arabia had provided money, weapons, training, safe havens and other services to the Islamist group(s) which planned and carried out the attacks.  By making “terrorism” the thing to fight against and bin Laden the enemy, we essentially let the real enemy off the hook.

We know who the bad actors are in this – we know which nations routinely sponsor terrorism and Islamism.  If we are attacked by Islamist terrorism, then we should go to war with the nations which cause the problem.  Declared war – no “we’re not at war but we’re bombing the heck out of things” sort of quasi-war we’ve engaged in since Korea.  There are diplomatic and economic reasons why we don’t declare war – I’m fully aware of that.  Being at war poses a host of problem.  But it also clarifies things.  Let’s the enemy know our intentions are serious and they’d better get surrendering or at least making funeral arrangements.

3.  Force the enemy to surrender – and the more humiliating the surrender, the better.  Humble their pride, beat them to the ground.  Hammer them with more power than they can well imagine, hold nothing back.

4.  Be quick about it.  Getting out of the UN will help in this – it was because we felt we had to diddle around with the UN that we didn’t go in to Iraq until 2003 rather than mid-2002.  Don’t sit around trying to rebuild things after one nation or area of an enemy nation is conquered – other than maintaining the infrastructure we need for further military operations, the local population is on its own.  And if the local population can’t be trusted, then kick them out of where we are.  Don’t leave our troops at the mercy of people who want to plant road side bombs – once one goes off, everyone within 10 miles of that road is moved more than 10 miles away from it.

5.  Once the enemy has surrendered, be sure we take things to compensate us for having to go through the trouble.  Let the world know that not only will challenging the United States lead to massive death and destruction, but reparations payments and/or cession of territory to the United States.  No more, “go ahead and fight us and we’ll not only be gentle in fighting back, but we’ll rebuild you once we’re done”.

6.  And, thus, no nation-building.  We go in, fight, force them to surrender, take what we want, and then we leave.

All of this might seem harsh, but I believe it is less harsh than ten-year-long, inconclusive military-economic-political operations which are hamstrung by politics.  Had we declared war on the morrow of 9/11 upon Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya, the whole thing probably would have been over by 2004 with a complete American victory, our enemies surrendering to us, humiliated and paying us reparations until 2024.  Probably fewer dead, overall – and us at peace for the last 10 years.

The Collapse of the Middle East

Mark Noonan24 Comments

Yes, I know it has been going on for some time, but I don’t think most people are fully aware of just how bad it is – Spengler writes about Turkey’s problems:

…Turkey is a mediocre economy at best with a poorly educated workforce, no high-tech capacity, and shrinking markets in depressed Europe and the unstable Arab world. Its future might well be as an economic tributary of China, as the “New Silk Road” extends high-speed rail lines to the Bosporus…

…The whole notion was flawed from top to bottom. Turkey was not in line to become an economic power of any kind: it lacked the people and skills to do anything better than medium-tech manufacturing. Its Islamists never were democrats. Worst of all, its demographics are as bad as Europe’s. Ethnic Turks have a fertility rate close to 1.5 children per family, while the Kurdish minority is having 4 children per family. Within a generation half of Turkey’s young men will come from families where Kurdish is the first language…

Spengler also notes that corruption is a big problem and, of course, that Turkey is honey-combed with bad debt, now coming due with little chance the Turks can pay.   Iran has the same sort of problem – declining birth rate, low-skilled labor force, corrupt, bad debt…its why they were so eager to cut a deal with Kerry in return for easing the sanctions: Iran’s economy teeters on the edge of complete collapse and the deal frees up money for the mullahs (and, of course, the Iranians were doubly delighted to do it as, having taken the measure of Obama, they knew that they could get the sanctions eased and still just go on sponsoring terrorism and making nukes).  So, add Turkey to Iran to Syria to Egypt to Libya to Sudan as failed States…and look warily at the corrupt monarchies of the Arabian peninsula which keep themselves alive only so long as the oil keeps flowing and they can bribe people to silence.  Meanwhile, Islamism continues to spread and even in Afghanistan – with American troops still there – the Afghan government works out how to implement laws allowing for the stoning to death of adulterers.

So, what of it?  What can we do about it?  Not much.  Suffice it to say that at some point, this mess will draw us back in militarily, but for now there is not much we can do.  First and foremost, because Barack Obama is President of the United States.  The level of ignorance of facts and unwillingness to face the truth about the Middle East entirely cripples any efforts made by the Obama Administration – and if we did get sucked in to active military operations, it is certain that the lack of courage and military knowledge of the Obama Administration would ensure an American defeat.  All we can do is watch in fascinated horror while this goes on.

In the longer term, when we hopefully have better leadership, when we are forced to again fight in that area, it is to be hoped that we will do so with a clear eye to the harsh realities.  For whatever reason, Islamic peoples are simply incapable, as such, of building and maintaining a civilization.  They can take over from others (as they did when they first conquered such areas as Turkey, Syria and Egypt), but they cannot maintain or build on their own.  There is something in Muslim theology which prevents rationality – which prevents a Muslim government from really exercising democracy, from really allowing people to be independent, from really allowing minorities to have rights.  When we have to go back in, our policies must be governed in this light.

To be sure, I don’t want us to have to govern large, Muslim populations – whatever else may be said about them, Muslims dislike intensely any foreign domination.  So, no attempt at nation building.  But when the next war in the Middle East comes to our door, we must ensure that at the end of it, we are firmly protected against the violent acts of Islamist extremists and that the minority peoples of the area are afforded independence from Muslim rule – or even from a Muslim minority within their territories.  This will require a significant reworking of the map of the Middle East.  As I’ve pointed out in the past, new nations will have to be created where non-Muslim minorities can live in peace and independence – in places like Lebanon, parts of Syria, parts of Iraq, parts of Egypt, land must be carved out so that non-Muslims can be safe, with the additional benefit of locking the Muslim nations, themselves, in to positions from which they cannot by offensive action influence the course of world events.

We all of us – right and left – have been living in a bit of a dream world as regards policy towards the Middle East.  It is time we woke up to reality and acted accordingly.

Merry Christmas!

Mark Noonan7 Comments

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus
that the whole world should be enrolled.
This was the first enrollment,
when Quirinius was governor of Syria.
So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town.
And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth
to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem,
because he was of the house and family of David,
to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.
While they were there,
the time came for her to have her child,
and she gave birth to her firstborn son.
She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger,
because there was no room for them in the inn.

Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields
and keeping the night watch over their flock.
The angel of the Lord appeared to them
and the glory of the Lord shone around them,
and they were struck with great fear.
The angel said to them,
“Do not be afraid;
for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy
that will be for all the people.
For today in the city of David
a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord.
And this will be a sign for you:
you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes
and lying in a manger.”
And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel,
praising God and saying:
“Glory to God in the highest
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” – Luke 2:1-14

Mark Steyn, NRO, Liberal Fascism and the Conservative Coward

Mark Noonan32 Comments

Taking note of the Duck Dynasty fracas, Mark Steyn wrote what we expected – a witty and devastating critique of a culture being bound hand and foot by liberal fascist control freaks.  To illustrate his point, Mr. Steyn noted a couple of old jokes from ancient times (ie, the 1970’s):

…Here are two jokes one can no longer tell on American television. But you can still find them in the archives, out on the edge of town, in Sub-Basement Level 12 of the ever-expanding Smithsonian Mausoleum of the Unsayable. First, Bob Hope, touring the world in the year or so after the passage of the 1975 Consenting Adult Sex Bill:

“I’ve just flown in from California, where they’ve made homosexuality legal. I thought I’d get out before they make it compulsory.”

For Hope, this was an oddly profound gag, discerning even at the dawn of the Age of Tolerance that there was something inherently coercive about the enterprise. Soon it would be insufficient merely to be “tolerant” — warily accepting, blithely indifferent, mildly amused, tepidly supportive, according to taste. The forces of “tolerance” would become intolerant of anything less than full-blown celebratory approval.

Second joke from the archives: Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra kept this one in the act for a quarter-century. On stage, Dino used to have a bit of business where he’d refill his tumbler and ask Frank, “How do you make a fruit cordial?” And Sinatra would respond, “I dunno. How do you make a fruit cordial?” And Dean would say, “Be nice to him.”…

This caused the editor of NRO – Jason Steorts – to first make a tut-tutting criticism of Mr. Steyn for not understanding that being a meany is bad and then, when massive criticism was directed at Mr. Steorts, he just doubled down:

The point is basic courtesy, Mark. It’s that you could mount your opposing argument without insulting people. Sure, you have the right to insult people, but I can’t sympathize much with someone who exercises that right just to prove it exists, which seems to have been part of your rhetorical strategy. What I would like to de-normalize is boorishness, whatever its content…

And this, in turn, prompted a small comment from me:

No, Mr. Steyn cannot mount an argument against the left without insulting them. To disagree with them is, in their view, to be insulting. We’re not dealing with rational people, here. We’re dealing with people who are, in the largest sense of the word, insane. For crying out loud, they really think that its ok to kill a baby! When you’re dealing with that sort of irrationality, trying to keep it polite is the least of your concerns. Our job, as sane people, is to drive these people entirely out of power. We won’t do that if we try to pretend that lunacy has a proper place in the debate.

I don’t know Mr. Steort from Adam – until just yesterday, hadn’t the foggiest clue who NRO’s editor was, or that they even had one.  But the fact that someone like Mr. Steort is editing the on-line descendent of the magazine William F. Buckley founded to “stand athwart history yelling, ‘stop!” speaks volumes about how low we’ve fallen.  Per the comment at Red State, that has now been changed to, “Standing Athwart History, Yelling Okay Go Right Ahead (We Don’t Want to Offend Anyone)”.  Red State also noted that Mr. Steort is in favor of gay marriage, but that isn’t as important as the discovery, by me, that in reading Mr. Steort’s article in favor of gay marriage, I also discovered that he’s in favor of insanity, as well.  To quote:

…Romantic attraction is a unique type of desire in which a person is wanted in his or her unity and totality, and sexual activity is the unique expression and bodily dimension of such desire. The desire is thus unique in both its “inner” (“subjective,” “mental”) and its “outer” (“objective,” “bodily”) dimensions, and its fulfillment is intrinsically good…

If this is conservatism, then we’re in trouble.  Its basically a statement that “if it feels good, do it”…and its good.  As G. K. Chesterton noted, the purpose of Progressives is to go on making mistakes, and the purpose of Conservatives is to go on preventing the mistakes from being corrected.  A Progressive comes up with a completely stupid and insane idea and immediately puts it in to effect – when it all falls apart and destroys everything in its path, here comes the Conservative to say, “we can’t change it; it is part of the sacred inheritance of the past!”.  Mr. Steort exemplifies this.  I really can’t say this is a matter of stupidity, however; Mr. Steort is clearly not a dumb man.  But he just as clearly doesn’t want to offend against the liberal world view.  That would be bad.  It would get liberals mad and they’d say nasty things about you.  And, so, I’ll put it down as cowardice.  Much easier to write pretend-conservative pieces where you essentially concede the liberal argument while making small asides which claim you still respect and honor that old time religion.

As I noted in my small comment, liberals are essentially insane.  Not in the clinical sense where we could diagnose and treat them, but in the fact that what they propose flies in the face of facts and logic.  That what they propose, if really and fully implemented, would utterly destroy human life on earth.  People who think that babies can be killed, that tax increases cause prosperity, that crony-capitalism is a good idea, that government employees are altruistic, that a small elite can better decide things than people on their own; that a hack, Chicago politician is a new messiah – these are not rational views to hold.  Added to their irrationality and completing it is a mercilessness which knows no bounds.  You can rely on it that no matter how nice and polite we are, the left will still seek to destroy anyone who dares to dissent.  This is not a call for us to start being mean and merciless – but for pity’s sake, don’t just sit there and be a punching bag.  Hit back.  And keep on hitting because until we completely remove the left from all ability to effect policy in this nation, we will not be able to reform and save it.

You Say You Want a Revolution…

Mark Noonan3 Comments

…well, you ain’t alone and you’ve got allies you never suspected:

On Thursday, a town hall meeting hosted by Al Sharpton and the National Action Network to address gun violence exploded into a revolt against “Chicago Machine” politics, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and the aldermen in City Hall, with panel and audience members calling to vote out their elected officials.

One 82-year-old preacher even called for “Tea Party” style meetings in some of Chicago’s south side communities such as Altgeld Gardens and Trumbull Park.

“This was a historic event,” Paul McKinley of V.O.T.E. (Voices of the Ex-Offender) and former 2nd Congressional District GOP nominee to replace Jesse Jackson, Jr. told Breitbart News. “Not because of Al Sharpton coming to town,” he continued. “This was first time since electing Mayor Harold Washington in the eighties that all of these grassroots groups and community organizers have come together under one roof to talk about the problems plaguing our community.”

While the stated goal for Sharpton was to bring the many different groups together to discuss solutions to the city’s violence epidemic, he may not have gotten the types of responses he was looking for. Calls for more gun control laws and getting guns off the streets were nonexistent and not mentioned by residents throughout the session.

Instead, attendees offered solutions addressing the problems facing their community as a whole rather than just taking on “gun violence” itself. Audience members addressed the need for jobs and solving the foreclosure crisis plaguing Chicago’s south and west sides. Perhaps the loudest message—and one that Reverend Al or the Chicago media have yet to report on—echoed by several different people in attendance as well as panel members was that it is time for the black community to start voting differently.

“The manner in which we have been voting needs to change,” Wendy Pearson, an activist against Chicago school closings, told the room. “I’m here to say to you that we have been trained to vote in a specific manner… we need to start looking at the manner in which our elected officials have been voting… if they have not voted in a manner that is beneficial to you, yours, and your community, then you need to start voting them out.”

McKinley told the room, “Stop blaming just anybody for the violence in the city of Chicago. Blame the right people, not just white people, but the right people. Because it’s not just white folks a part of this, but it is on the fifth floor. The fifth floor took your schools, the fifth floor just took your jobs that he said that he gave to the ex-offender… and every single alderman was a part of this criminal process.”…

As I’ve been saying since before the 2012 election, there is a growing dismay with just how bad things are out there.  The Ruling Class and its lapdogs in the MSM don’t talk about it – in fact, they’ll ignore this, too.  To them, there can’t be an event where a lot of black people are fed up with a liberal government.  Just isn’t possible.  The TEA Party is racist, ya dig?  But these people are just as much TEA Party activists as a mostly white crowd in rural Oklahoma.  In fact, they are more so – they aren’t worried about the long term effects of liberal government: they are living with the hideous effects of long term liberal government.

These are the people we need to talk to.  Some people get it – Rand Paul recently opened up an office in Detroit.  Sure, its a help to his Presidential ambitions, but it is also good for Detroit.  Paul is a conservative who knows that conservatism can help – and would be voted for by lots of people who currently vote Democrat.  Now, would we get a majority in Chicago?  No.  Don’t need it, anyway.  But if we can drive up our total in Chicago by 10 or 20 percentage points, then Illinois becomes a Red State.  Do that in Los Angeles and California becomes a Red State.  Do that in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania becomes a Red State.  Starting to see the picture?  Bottom line, except for a few places like Rhode Island and Maryland, there is no State which is safe from the GOP if we can just get a bit more in the large, urban areas.

These people are ready for a change.  Their schools suck, there are no jobs, blood sucking politicians are bleeding them dry, crime is rampant and they aren’t allowed to own guns.  If we go in there and offer them real change – show them some respect and offer them some help – then we’ll get their votes, and we’ll win every election.

Continue reading →

Cutting Military Benefits

Mark Noonan14 Comments

I’m posting this from a former ship mate of mine – we served together on board the USS Conolly way back when.  Joe became a lifer dog, of course, while I got out after four years – but that just puts him in an even better position to understand these things. 

Sorry if this offends anyone but I feel I need to post it.

Mr. President and US Senate,

I just want to say, Thank you , and You are welcome for the service of my self and my brothers in arms, who sacrificed 20+ years of our lives, enduring years of deployments out of CONUS assignments, 24+ hour days in conditions most Americans would consider not fit for an animal to work in, endless hours of waiting for the next order to get underway or move out, the letters from our families that state they miss us, don’t want to worry us, but we are not sure if we can make the rent this month or the light bill, least of all the grocery bill. Thank you.
We left our families on a moments notice to engage an enemy, right a wrong, supply disaster relief, chase an unseen enemy for months on end during the cold war, to protect embassy’s against people who hate us, but need us there to make sure the relief money keeps rolling in from the US, and keep the Sea lanes open, air space free, and our shore lines protected from those that would want to cause us harm. We did it because we love this country.
We did it for you and for our fellow Americans because we felt it was a our duty to give back to this great country for all that was given to us. All we asked for was a paycheck (and that was not much: most of us qualified for food stamps and public housing, but we were to proud to apply for it, and actually at times forbidden to apply, so as not to embarrass the US Government with the fact we were so poorly paid), and for the vision of the retirement we were promised, when we finished.
Now the comments coming from Washington are that we have to give it away because we really don’t need it, if we are of working age.
Pleased can you explain to me why you let welfare run rampant with fraud and do nothing, why you let SSDI run rampant with fraud and do nothing, why you let Medicare and Medicaid run rampant with fraud and do nothing. Why are you giving cell phones and calling plans away for nothing, public housing availability without drug testing, and the list goes on and on.  Yet when it comes to the Military who daily put, and are to this very second, place or have placed their lives on the line.  Please Sirs, let me know why, you feel it is ok to take from us, to cut back on what we were promised, because you consider it an “entitlement”, yet other entitlements are off limits.
To the citizens of this country, Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the opportunity o serve and defend this great country. To the US Government thank you showing your gratitude for all that we did for you, time and time again. By stating it is my duty to give back so that others may take what they did not earn, and in a lot of cases do not want to earn.

I love this country and what it stands for, I will defend it to my death, gladly and without hesitation, all over again if asked.

God Bless America and those that have defended and those that continue to do so.

Leo P Leonard Jr. RMCS(SW) USN Retired
Richard W. Schuerch Jr. BTC USN Disabled Vet
Joseph J. LaPenna Jr. OSCS(SW) USN Retired

That Second Hand Smoke Thing? Yeah, it Was BS

Mark Noonan19 Comments

From Reason:

Several years ago I was talking to an epidemiologist who is skeptical of the idea that smokers pose a mortal threat to people in their vicinity. Although he supported workplace smoking bans, he was frustrated by the willingness of so many anti-tobacco activists and public health officials to overlook or minimize the weakness of the scientific case that secondhand smoke causes fatal illnesses such as lung cancer and heart disease. He wondered when it would be possible to have a calm, rational discussion of the issue, one in which skeptics would not be automatically dismissed as tools of the tobacco industry. I suggested that such a conversation might take place once smoking bans became ubiquitous, at which point the political stakes would be lower. Judging from a recent article in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, headlined “No Clear Link Between Passive Smoking and Lung Cancer,” that conversation may have begun.

The article describes a large prospective study that “confirmed a strong association between cigarette smoking and lung cancer but found no link between the disease and secondhand smoke.” The study tracked more than 76,000 women, 901 of whom eventually developed lung cancer. Although “the incidence of lung cancer was 13 times higher in current smokers and four times higher in former smokers than in never-smokers,” says the JNCI article, there was no statistically significant association between reported exposure to secondhand smoke and subsequent development of lung cancer…

This is what I knew from the get-go: it was always nonsense to think that second hand smoke was a huge killer – or even a risk, at all.  Certainly no more of a risk than going outside on a smoggy day in Los Angeles and just breathing.  The amount of tobacco smoke a person would inhale via second hand smoke – even if they lived with a smoker – would be so tiny as to be inconsequential as a health risk. Remember, even for very heavy smokers, not all of them get lung cancer – smoking increases the risk of cancer, but it isn’t a 1 for 1 thing.  If you smoke, it doesn’t mean that smoking will kill you.

Hopefully this will open up a debate – and get us away from the idiot idea that smoking is some sort of massively hideous thing which needs to be banned.  Smoking is just a thing you can do – like eating cheeseburgers or having a coke.  Not the healthiest choice.  Not something any doctor would recommend, but it is something to do – for pleasure.  You know, to enjoy life.  Probably be better if all of us smokers ditched the cigarettes and switched over to pipes as we’d probably end up smoking far less (and mostly smoking much higher quality tobacco), but its still just one of the pleasures of life that someone may engage in.  And like all things in life, there is a risk involved.  Of course, the rule is, “eat right, exercise, die anyway”.  Main thing to remember about life is that no one gets out of it alive.  At some point certain, in a more or less painful manner, we will all exit this world.  And if before I go I can have a smoke, that’ll make it more pleasant than going, as I must, without a smoke.

Monday Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

Today is the 69th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Bulge.  Hitler’s last – and monumentally stupid – last gamble for victory in the Second World War…but showing that even an idiot, cornered, can still cause grief.  We lost 19,500 dead in five weeks of battle.  We lost 4,486 over the 9 years of the Iraq campaign.  Some times, it does seem like we’re living in a different country.  That we simply don’t have the courage and the leadership we once had.  Its not that anyone is stupider – or more or less likely to make mistakes (the Battle of the Bulge was so costly mostly because of American mistakes, after all) – but that we don’t have the grit and determination to carry a thing to a conclusion.  I wonder, given our current leadership (and this is not a slam at Obama, per se; he’ll be gone in the by and by – this is a concern about the whole lot of them, military and civilian from top to bottom) if we ever can or will fight a battle to a finish?

Looks like we might be partnering up with al-Qaeda in Syria.  More of that “smart diplomacy”.

Spanish government, faced with protests, proposes anti-protest law.  That will work well.

A judge has ruled that NSA spying violates the 4th Amendment.  Obama, if he were reached for comment, would say, “who cares?”.  Its not like he’s obeying any of those tiresome, old amendments anyways.

Slow-witted, hack Democrat woman Senator endorses equally slow-witted, hack Democrat woman for President.

The President still hasn’t signed up for ObamaCare.

Hope you are all having an excellent Holiday season – as for me, I’m enjoying Christmas time.