Open Thread

Mark Noonan51 Comments

The Democrats – still in the Senate majority – have been holding Orange Man Bad hearings to finish off their term. Yesterday, the Orange Man was Bad because of this illegal immigrant he’d like to deport – Foday Turay – who is a prosecutor.

A prosecutor. Prosecuting American citizens. Democrats thought it would be a good idea to highlight that they gave a job in law enforcement to an illegal immigrant.

This is a strong indicator that our Democrats haven’t learned a darned thing. Trump ran an 18 month campaign with one of his major issues – front and center all the time – being that he was doing to deport the illegals. After hearing this argument – and the Democrat counter-argument, forcefully stated with a billion dollars of campaign funds and overwhelming MSM support for the Dem position – the American people elected Trump. That’s it. We’re done here. There might be some room for compromise here and there (we’re not rat bastards with no feelings, after all) but the basic thrust is going to be deportations and border security. That is what the American people want. It is what they will get.

Democrats are saying how mean it will be if illegals lose their jobs.

I don’t know what to say about such people – that is, people who can’t absorb simple facts like, say, a lost election. There’s no mind for me to reach. If after 11/5 you’re shouting BLM slogans, condemning Israel and rising in defense of illegal immigration you’re not just wrong, you’re an idiot. These ideas were rejected by the electorate…the only path forward for those who back such views is to rethink them, make adjustments and try different tactics. Democrats are acting like 11/5 didn’t happen.

Maybe its because after their news outfits finished up lying to them on 11/5, our Democrats continue to trust them? This would make them even stupider…but one of the excuses the MSM/Dems are making is that Trump didn’t win a landslide. To be sure, it wasn’t a 1980 result, but it was a close as we’re going to get any time soon. Let’s look at it:

In 2016, Trump received 62,984,828 votes. In 2024, 77,237,942. Little bit of math – even a Liberal could do this – and we see that over an 8 year period while under constant attack and lawfare, Trump increased his vote total by 14,253,114. That’s a 22.6% increase over his 2016 vote. That’s a pretty popular guy. And we must always keep in mind that in all three elections, Democrats stuffed ballot boxes. It is what they do – they insert as many fake ballots into the system as they can…this is especially prevalent in the Blue States where Democrats have consistently removed any vote security systems. My guess is that in any given national election, Democrat vote totals are probably 10% fake though it would take a very thorough investigation to get to an exact figure – it might be more (don’t get me wrong, even without fake votes, we were losing CA and NY…but we’d lose them by smaller margins in an honest system and we wouldn’t have the sheer magic of every late-decided House race in CA falling to the Dems weeks after the election).

And in this election, Trump’s coattails were sufficient to secure a Congressional majority. The Supreme Court is majority in favor of law. The Administrative State (Deep State) is going to be brought under control. We won, Democrats. You lost. You have no real power to alter the course for the next two years. Prepare for the mid-terms: they are traditionally favorable to the Party which lost the previous election. But, my goodness, you’re going to get wiped in 2026 if over the next two years you just keep going Resist drivel. There’s nothing to resist. The people have chosen. You have been rejected. The chances that in two years the people will be going, “wow, sorry I voted Trump: what I want is a return to the border invasion and more medical mutilation of kids!” is nil. If you want to win in 2026 and thus gain some actual leverage, you’re going to have to come up with something different.

Or don’t. I don’t care. The stupider you are, the better for us.

It looks increasingly like Hegseth and the rest of Trump’s picks will sail through. Joni Ernst was leading a charge against Hegseth – in cooperation with the MSM/DNC who worked up a series of increasingly stupid lies about Hegseth – but she’s cooling her jets now…there have been rumors of a primary challenge. There still might be one: her choice to make an issue out of Hegseth angered a lot of people (me, inlcuded). There was just no sense in it. Even if you dislike Trump, the place to fight him is not in cabinet picks…by and large, the American people accept that a President should get the cabinet of the President’s choice. To expend political capital fighting the guy chosen to clean up an obviously dysfunctional military was just stupid…and to lend credence to the Democrats’ serial slanders of the man was disgusting.

I’m sitting here getting ready to release Book IX of the Mirrors series (Home World) and I’m about 65% done with Book X (this will wrap up the series with possible different story lines available for later works – but I want to start working on my post-apocalyptic series Of the 15 as well as a sort of Hallmark movie story about a sailor and a princess) and here comes Hollywood with….Meet the Parents 4. Look, I get it: Meet the Parents was hilarious. The second installment was a credible sequel. The third installment dragged out a premise which was exhausted. What they heck are they going to do in a fourth movie? And, hey, its not just me putting out stuff that is new entertainment content…there are a host of indy writers out there, including some on the Left, who are putting out new stuff which has different takes on things. But our Entertainment Industry is a sick joke…just recycling the same old stuff over and over again. The reason? They figure an established franchise is at least sold money-maker…but they aren’t solid money-makers. Disney has just about killed the Star Wars franchise. The Narnia franchise is about to be destroyed in a woke version. The Tolkien universe is almost completely destroyed (this destruction starting, actually, with the total ruination of Faramir’s character in the third movie). Its not just that they are out of ideas: they are destroying what was once good ideas.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan21 Comments

This will be a bit for Amazona to chew on!

Team Trump is asserting that they will be working to end “birthright citizenship”. This is the concept that if you are born in American territory, you are American. The argument in favor of this is the wording of the 14th Amendment which goes: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside”. This is held to mean that in 1868, an Amendment to ensure that black Americans who had been cruelly denied their rights as citizens applies to Juanita in Chiapas who boards a bus for Juarez, crosses illegally into El Paso and has a kid.

Yeah, no. Don’t think so. The Constitution isn’t a suicide pact. I’m a strict constructionist…original intent and all that. There was no intent to make “anchor babies” a thing. It wasn’t even in mind as the Amendment was proposed, passed and ratified. There was no court case on it – we don’t have, for instance, a court case from 1880 where a person illegally in the USA is arguing their American-born child is American. It wasn’t even a concept until about 40 years ago. This is mostly because travel used to be far more difficult and pregnant women wouldn’t often travel as their condition wasn’t conducive to arduous travel. But when you can now fly cheaply many thousands of miles in a few hours…here we go.

To hold that the 14th means we must allow “anchor babies” is as stupid as saying that a law legalizing interracial marriage means two boys can get married. Sure, this is basically what Obergefell held…but that was one of the most monumentally stupid decisions the Court has ever rendered. This has nothing to do with the merits of same sex marriage – maybe it is something we should do? But to apply laws written without the subject in mind is just asinine. Anchor babies and SSM were new subjects that no law, prior to them being brought up, covered. In the case of SSM, the Court should have ruled: sort it out via the political process. Because no law of the USA prior to the concept of SSM covered SSM – and this includes, of course, the Constitution of the USA which, being silent on the matter, leaves its resolution to the States, or the people. So, too, “anchor babies” – no law of the USA covers it, so any laws about it will have to be made on the fly and if you really want “anchor babies” to be American citizens because of the plot of dirt they were born on, amend the Constitution…don’t try to bootstrap it on to something never intended for it.

Assad’s regime in Syria has collapsed and the usual collection of Neo-Con warmongers and Liberal idiots is cheering. We pray for the people there and hope that we get a miracle…but what we’re likely to get is a massacre.

Good to keep in mind that Syria isn’t a country. It is a geographic expression. The people who reside in the borders of Syria are very different groups, some of whom hate each other with a passion. Assad is Alawite and his faction has dominated Syria since the early 1970s…as a sort of 3 million person Alawite Empire lording it over the other 22 million people there…though the Christians and Druze of Syria have tended to favor Alawite rule as it is far less oppressive than other Muslim rule (Alawites are a bit of a bizarre Muslim sect held by many Muslims to be heretical…some even consider them idolators). The Alawites were long heavily suppressed by other Muslims (especially the Turks during the Ottoman Empire) but when the French took over Syria in 1918, they tended to favor the Alawites and so, post-French rule, the Alawites were best positioned to take over.

As you can see just in that short paragraph, this isn’t going to be a cut and dried thing. The rebels are not fighting for a free Syria where are all afforded equal rights – they just want to be in charge. The only possible saving grace here is that the rebels are a coalition and maybe none of them are strong enough to totally dominate…that might provide some wiggle room to avoid disaster. But there is a massive danger that this is going to degenerate into tribal score-settling and that means Alawites, Christians and Druze are in for a very bad time.

I talked about this a few days ago – about how we live in the land of make-believe. And a price will now be extracted for the world pretending that Syria was a country…rather than several countries that want nothing to do with each other and so, upon independence, what should have done was to break it up into its ethnic components, including population transfers to avoid having oppressed minorities. Had the real world been lived in then what we call Syria today would be at least 5 nations including 1 Christian and 1 Druze and nobody would have been dying all this time. Side note: there is an even money chance that American intel people fostered this Assad collapse just to toss a problem for Trump to deal with.

A Racism Interlude

Mark Noonan7 Comments

You might have heard of Tania Fernandes Anderson; she’s this tub of lard immigrant on the Boston City Council who has gone on viral rants about how racist and horrible the USA is. Starting out life in Cape Verde, she illegally immigrated to the USA at the age of ten, only becoming a citizen in 2019. And she learned – in her liberal, New England city she saw how things were…and knew that if you played up to upper class white Liberal guilt, you can get anything you want. I don’t really blame her for working the system – I blame the system she was able to work.

But, anyways, she’s now been arrested by the FBI on theft and wire fraud charges. What? You think that someone who decided to lie about American racism to get ahead would be honest? LOL. Of course she’s a thief – her whole life is nothing but lying and stealing. Guarantee she’ll blame racism for her arrest…but the actual fault is in that whole kickbacks thing. To be fair, this is rather par for the course in Boston politics but it is done a lot more carefully than Anderson did…she likely thinking she was bullet proof on account of skin color and hollering about BLM.

What’s really funny is that, given her background, he family probably engaged in the African slave trade. Cape Verde was a Portuguese territory until 1975 – with the Portuguese, as far as can be determined, being the first human beings to ever set foot on Cape Verde. Sure, she’s got African blood but Cape Verde wasn’t a destination in the slave trade – it was a stop over. That her ancestors never made it to Brazil (by far the biggest destination for African slaves) indicates more “participant” rather than “victim” in the whole slavery thing. And remember: the Portuguese were the first humans to arrive in Cape Verde…it wasn’t the occupation of a place with an indigenous population. So, not only does Anderson not have much of a legacy of slavery to deal with, she also doesn’t have a legacy of colonialism. And she never lived in America during slavery or Jim Crow. In fact, she was privileged from the moment she set foot here…but this didn’t stop her from making a living based on ranting about racist oppression.

This is the level of dishonesty we’re dealing with these days: it is just lie after lie after lie and we’re supposed to just swallow them all. Back in the heyday of BLM she went viral for her rants in the city council (naturally with cameras rolling!) and woe to anyone who called her out on it…she was an authentic voice! Except she wasn’t American by birth…she might as well have been a Swede. She had nothing to do with America’s past…plus or minus (save a chance that her ancestors helped transport slaves to the USA; that is a distinct possibility). She was a fraud from the get go…and we had to put up with her. And still do. Even if she goes to jail, we’re still going to be supporting her…and if she doesn’t go to jail, or gets out after a slap on the wrist (likely) then she’ll probably still find some way to live off the public dime.

And here’s the real outrage of it all – she’s ultimately making her living by being racist. She stands there (waddling a bit, she really needs to drop some weight) wagging her finger at white people, as such. That is the definition of racism; ascribing certain qualities to a group based on immutable facts such as skin color. We ran out of American racism some time ago – the small amounts we have left are getting swastika tattoos in prison between bouts of meth dealing. So, we’ve started importing it…in the most ironic aspect, we’re importing it from Africa.

And think about the Penny trial…this is the final result of “reverse racism”. Back in the old days, white prosecutors would go after any black person who caused trouble. And using loaded language would get the larger population to view such with suspicion so that it was easier to railroad the target. Now in NYC we’ve got a white man who came to the defense of, among others, people of color, but because he defended them against a black guy, he’s on trial for manslaughter. How is this any different from Jim Crow, just with the skin colors reversed? This is the really bad long-term effect of letting the Left get away with calling America racist and/or saying that white people are inherently racist – it otherizes white people and makes them the bad guy no matter what. Once again, no different from what happened to black people under Jim Crow.

Leftists call this “restorative justice”…to translate that for you: because black people were treated unjustly in the past, we’re going to treat white people unjustly in the present. And then say mindless drivel like, “to the oppressor, equity looks like tyranny”. As if Penny oppressed anyone! His only real guilt is being white – being good looking and a Marine just makes him worse. You just know the Leftists in NYC look at him and go, “I bet he voted for Trump!”.

We really need to start to push back against this – it is illegal to oppress people in the USA. No; seriously. Massively against the law. We passed these laws to stop white jerks from screwing over black people. But, guess what? The laws are color blind. As, indeed, all American law always has been…it doesn’t say “don’t oppress black people, but take a stab at the crackers”. No; the law says you can’t oppress anyone. Period.

Time to start using those laws.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan16 Comments

Getting old is fun – for instance, I started feeling this odd lump on my back and the Mrs, examining it, said I should go get it checked…so, off to the Doc who takes one look at it and breaks out the knife…got it sliced off and then burned a bit. So, yeah, feeling great! I’ll get the biopsy back in a week (it is probably pre-cancerous so no real worries). But, hey, fellow geezers – you do have to get stuff like that checked. Its a difference between some temporary discomfort and a real problem.

Speaking of real problems, the Hegseth nomination is clearly in come trouble. Why? Because Democrat operatives in the MSM started what amounts to a whisper campaign of slanders…”he drinks!” and “he plays around!”. The man is married and has seven children. As a manly man, I have no doubt that back in the day he probably took a drink or two and I believe for men such as him the phrase “has to beat them off with a stick” is appropriate. But its all just uncorroborated rumors…meanwhile, people who know him are going on record saying he’s a great guy. Which he probably is – even if there is a smudge or two in his background (like none of us have that). But that doesn’t stop our RINOs…who are clearly compromised by the Deep State.

In response to this, rumors were floated that DeSantis might be picked if Hegseth drops out…and this is Team Trump signalling that no matter what, the SecDef isn’t going to be a career four-star now working in the Defense industry. In other words, reform is coming to Defense…business as usual is over with. When that particular rumor started to float I noticed a distinct die-down in the anti-Hegseth effort…and, in fact, there seems to be ever less pushback on any of Trump’s nominees. This tells me that the Gaetz nomination was very deliberate…putting someone out there to be a lightning rod and to give a scalp to the wets. By and large, I expect Trump’s current nominees to get in…and thanks to the 1998 Executive vacancies act, Trump can pretty much get anyone he wants to 210 days even without Senate approval or having the Senate to into recess.

We’re going to get our reforms.

In light of this, there are now rumors that Biden is going to blanket pardon a host of people – everyone directly connected to him, of course, but also such people as Adam Schiff and Anthony Fauci. Will he do it? I’m sure pressure is being brought to bear…but, on the other hand, with the Hunter pardon 90% of the threat to Joe, himself, is ended. And its not like Joe is feeling a deep sense of loyalty to his party comrades these days. We’ll see how that plays out. Keep in mind that if they are pardoned, then they can’t invoke the 5th when called to testify before Congress or a grand jury…and even if we can’t get the top guys, there are a host of secondary people in the Democrat Party, the RINOs and the overall Deep State who are highly at risk. Everything they’ve done to get Trump has involved criminal acts…and Biden simply won’t pardon everyone.

We’re going to get our revenge, as it were: except, of course, it isn’t revenge…it is just getting the laws enforced.

Trump will travel to Paris for the re-opening of Notre Dame…this, to me, is significant as France is the pivot of European civilization, as well as being the eldest daughter of the Church. The French, themselves, have had their culture and religion atrophy over the past century but there still is a beating heart of France in there…and for Trump to attend the symbolic restoration of France’s heart is, to me, significant. I suspect that Catholic Melania has been working on him…and this was greatly reinforced by his downright miraculous survival of an assassination attempt.

I Beg Your Pardon Open Thread

Mark Noonan17 Comments

The funniest thing about Biden pardoning Hunter is the pretend-shock among the Left and Never Trumpers…those who aren’t immediately getting on board with the pardon (which is most of them) are all “well, I never! Who could have thought that Joe Biden would lie to us???”. Just another reminder that Trump’s most important act to date was taking out the trash on the Right.

It is a ten year pardon – going back to just before Hunter was placed on the board of Bursima. Which means that he’s now skating on everything he did during that time and Joe is betting that Trump’s DOJ won’t indict him on his part of it (Hunter can’t refuse to testify now – his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination doesn’t apply…he can’t be prosecuted for these things). This is probably a good bet – and might have already been discussed between Biden and Trump. Biden isn’t going to live much longer anyway…and even if indicted, his lawyers could very easily get a declaration that he’s not competent to stand trial. What was extra funny is that given the wording of it, there was a several hour period where Hunter could have robbed a bank yesterday and there would have been nothing anyone could do about it…Biden pardoned Hunter for everything done to December 1st.

There was, of course, zero chance that Hunter wasn’t going to skate…there was no way Biden was going to die while his only living son was locked up. This is over and above the Biden Crime Family aspect of it…it just wasn’t going to happen. All those firm statements that he wouldn’t were just lies…and everyone knew they were lies when stated. But what is odd is that usually these are done right out the door…in the last week in office, some times on the last day. Makes me (and others) wonder about the health status of Joe right now? Someone was in a hurry to get this done.

Trump posted on Truth right after tying this to the J6 defendants and so the expectation is that they walk sometime in the afternoon of January 20th. There is still some debate about how widespread the pardons should be – some arguing that only non-violent people should be pardoned. Nope: in my view, its gotta be everyone. And then compensation for them. We must “insult to injury” here. We have to let the Democrats now that it is over – their whole lawfare scheme is done and now the real law is about to be turned on them.

It is Time to Leave the Land of Make-Believe

Mark Noonan10 Comments

Syria is in another – or resumed – round of chaos. Things had stabilized there for a while – fighting still went on, but no faction could gain a distinct advantage. Its back to falling apart, I understand, because a lot of Hezbollah and other Islamist fighters were drawn into Lebanon to fight the Israelis and this allowed other factions to advance. Now there is once again doubt that the Assad regime can survive – and, once again, the Christians of Syria are under massive threat because the people who are currently advancing hate everyone who isn’t them and nobody in the world gives a damn if you rape, enslave and murder Christians. And, yes, Team Biden helped make this all possible.

This is good time to remind everyone that Syria isn’t even a country. The Experts rate about 80% of the population as “Syrian Arabs” but these are just Syrians who speak Arabic…the whole place is a hodgepodge of peoples. The flotsam and jetsam of various migrations and conquests going back 4,000 years. Even among those who speak Arabic as their mother tongue there are deep ethnic and religious differences. And Syria was never a country – no matter how far you go back, you won’t find a Kingdom of Republic of Syria prior to 1945. Since it was first conquered by outsiders, it has always been a province of an Empire of one sort or another and its borders were forever drawn and redrawn at the convenience of the imperial overlord. Syria’s current borders were set post-WWI via various treaties ratifying the Middle Eastern result.

What the world has done since 1945 is play make-believe – that Syria is a country, that Syrians are a people and we’re all supposed to respect this legal entity as if it were the same thing as, say, Spain. But the only way we could play this make-believe was by essentially going along with a dictator who held the disparate peoples together. Since 1971, this has been the Assad family (father and son). They pretended to be President of Syria – as if anyone other than their particular cronies had any respect for them – and we pretended they were the patriotic expression of the Syrian people (who don’t exist). It only worked as long as nobody internally had the wherewithal to challenge the Assad system…staring in 2011 (and partially fostered by the Obama Administration which was committed to helping Islamist movements throughout the Middle East), this system started to collapse…but as of today Assad is still officially in office because he’s been getting just enough support from Russia and Iran to hold on to Damascus…which we pretend is the capital city of a nation called Syria.

Getting back to that fighting against Israel – it officially ended with a cease fire. Or, in other words, an unmitigated Israeli defeat. To be sure, the Israelis are back-slapping themselves on how massively they degraded both Hamas and Hezbollah capabilities, especially in the number of senior leaders killed. This was all useful effort…but as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist, Israel loses. The Islamists don’t work on our time line. In their eyes, this is just a repeat of 1099 to 1187 – that is, First Crusade to the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin. And keep in mind that until Hattin, it didn’t seem like the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was in serious danger of falling…and then it fell. To the Muslim Islamist determined to liberate “Palestine”, this is all just part of a very long war which, in their minds, will end in ultimate victory.

And they’re right about that – at least, they are right as long as Israel refuses to wage full scale war against them…and as long as the West does everything in its power to prevent Israel from waging full scale war. And, once again, we’re in the land of make-believe here. In this case, pretending there is some fundamental separation between Hamas and Hezbollah, or that the sponsors of these groups are at cross-purposes. We additionally pretend that the goal of the Islamists is peace – it isn’t. Their goal is victory and for them there is no peace without it. What is happening in Syria is a conflict between different factions who have the same ultimate goal – total control of the entire Muslim world and the extermination of Israel and the Jews.

If you really look at it, our entire foreign policy is just make-believe. Aside from making believe that Israel can live in peace with people who want them dead, we also pretend that NATO will put an army into the field at need. That China wants peace and stability in east Asia. That Mexico has a government that can cooperate with us to stop the Cartels from importing drugs and slaves into the USA. Even some of the deepest MAGA people share these Ruling Class illusions. It is time to dispense with them. To view the world as it is.

And the first thing to understand is that the world is suffering from a crisis of legitimacy. That is, the peoples of the world, for the most part, never really consented to the condition of the world. I’ve talked about some of the more glaring aspects of this in the past. One really good for-instance here is Algeria – which is also not a country. It was a coastal province of the Ottoman Empire when the French showed up in the 1830s. Like Syria, it had never been a country – never was there a Kingdom or Republic of Algeria. The land, itself, had gone by various names since Antiquity under this or that imperial overlord. The French called it Algeria because Algiers was the first point taken by the French and they just extended the name of that nest of pirates (it barely amounted to a town at the time) to the rest of the lands they conquered from 1830 to about 1870. But come the 1950’s, “Algeria” had a “national liberation movement”…to “liberate” a “nation” that had never existed before. Small wonder that more “Algerians” fought for France than for independence. And that when “Algeria” was “liberated” vast number of people fled…they wanted no part of the pack of bank robbers, rapists and murderers who had emerged triumphant in the French colony. And since independence Algeria has had successive rounds of oppression, coups, civil strife, electoral fraud and so forth with a Ruling clique precariously on top but kept afloat by oil money. There still is no Algeria. There still is no legitimate government of Algeria. Its still just a geographic expression. But it is all part of the make-believe and Algeria has a seat in the UN and we have an ambassador there and we act like its a country.

But while the country is make-believe, it has genuine results in the world. Because we pretended that Algeria is a country – because the whole world pretended – untold numbers of people died in a civil war there, often via the most savage methods. This was better than it being part of France? Sure, the French could be rat bastards at times…but they didn’t send gangs of psychopaths around to rape and murder people over political or religious differences. I think that’s kind of a bare minimum here…and if your system allows it to happen, its a bad system that needs to be disposed of. And even if it happens only once…you know, if there is one, single instance of rape-death squads operating in your system, its a bad system. It isn’t enough that the particular round of rape-murder ends…it should never have happened. Anyone contemplating sending out the rape-death squads should have been so certain that this ends with him strung up on a lamp post that he never sends out the rape-death squads. Kinda see where I’m going here? There is bare minimum human decency that we’re supposed to have…and anyone who can’t adhere to this bare minimum better be killed as soon as possible. Preferably after a couple rounds of being flogged and branded with a hot poker…just to really drive home the message that you can’t do that.

We’ve pretended ourselves into a world where rape-death squads are fairly common (you know, like on 10/7…but before and after 10/7 rape-death squads have been operating in parts of Africa). Where literal tens of thousands of minors are trafficked across borders and everyone acts like its just one of those things that can’t be prevented. Where drug addicts wander streets and the proposed solution is to give them a clean place to get high. On and on and on like that…every day people are abused and killed in our world because the global system bears no relation to the desires of the people (nobody voted for rape-death squads or drug addicts). Most governments around the world, most of the time, are simply illegitimate…they don’t remotely reflect what the people want, even if you can point to a previous election where the party in power got the most votes. I absolutely guarantee you that no political party in the UK ran on a program of fostering rape-gangs – but Britain had and has a problem of “migrant” gangs grooming young girls for the sex trade. This was not on a campaign poster. Nobody voted for it. Preventing it is a simply matter of logistics – in this case, kicking out the population which housed the groomers. It is there because the system wants it there no matter what the people want…and a system which implements policy against the desires of the people has no legitimacy.

Right now, I rate only Argentina, Israel, Japan and maybe two or three other nations as fully under the control of a government both voted for by the people and implementing policies the people want. Come January 20th the USA will rejoin this club (nobody voted for Biden to open up the border…nor torpedo peace in Ukraine…nor provide cash to Iran so they could pay for 10/7…nor print up so much money that eggs are a luxury…nor decide that people can be born in the wrong body so better let boys play in girls sports…). And even in those nations which have a responsible government, the overall world system is still trying to thwart it. To deliberately and maliciously ensure that the desires of the people are not implemented. To force, that is, everyone to stay in the world of make-believe where a “rules based international order” means rapists parachuting from the sky and then everyone says, “don’t kill the rapists! That would be mean!”. No, thanks. I want out of that system. I voted for an exit on 11/5 and I want the whole system tossed on to the ash heap of history. I want to live in the real world – a world where I get what I want, not what some illusionist pretends I want.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan24 Comments

So, how did that Thanksgiving feel? I mean, sure, the Macy’s parade was still pretty woke but that seemed like an ancient relic, didn’t it? The football was back to being pretty football-y (except you still can’t defend against the pass these days), having Thanksgiving dinner with the family felt more Thanksgiving-y. It felt like America again…like the last four years was just a nightmare we’ve all woken up from. And of course Donald Trump tweeted out Thanksgiving greetings even to the haters and losers. It was just a great day yesterday.

But, still, the Left is there!

Jack Smith is apparently going to give a hit-piece “report” about Trump to Garland who will, of course, release it to the press. I’m pretty confident this is actually illegal…and if it isn’t, it should be made so. What’s happening here is that after the prosecutor gave up on the case, he’s throwing into the public square what he couldn’t prove in court and/or under oath. Its mere slandering. The accused has no effective means of refuting the charges. Just a final garbage act from some really garbage people.

Its been weeks and people are still dunking on the Experts who called the election wrong. I know this because something I said on August 24th has been re-engaged on X: “Trump by 5 on 11/5 and you know it”. This in response to an Expert who was asserting that Harris would win by 8. I was wrong, of course: Trump is up by 3 (with almost all of it counted…but still above 50%!)…but my 2 point miss wasn’t an 11 point miss like an Expert can do.

That does bring to mind our missing friend, Casper. I figure he’s in the midst of one of two things:

  1. Finally realizing that if they were lying about the election that badly, maybe they’re lying about everything else.
  2. Going ever deeper into Resist conspiracy theories to explain it away (latest I’ve seen is an assertion that Putin ordered Musk to use Starlink to change Harris votes to Trump).

I lean towards 2 as the most likely outcome…admitting error is the hardest thing any human being can do…and for the Left, the admission of error comes along with admitting that you supported (actively or passively) things that are downright immoral.

In response to Trump’s border and trade proposals, the Left has settled upon telling us our guacamole will get more expensive and we’ll have to do our own household chores. No line of thought has more fully shown the difference between the Left and the Right. First off, not a big guac fan and Americanized Mexican food is better than Mexican food (just as Americanized Italian, Japanese, etc food is better than its source material). Secondly, I look after my own house. I guess the Lefties really are pretty rich – or maybe they like to pretend to be rich by hiring illegal servants they can underpay? I don’t know – but I look after my own house. No, not perhaps as well as a professional landscaping company…but my yards are tidy and while it was a two day operation to trim the Phoenix canariensis (the pineapple-looking palms to you who live in frozen areas) I did get it done…and when an old sprinkler riser broke I went to Lowe’s all by myself to get a replacement. For interior cleaning as well. Full disclosure: we have hired a cleaning service a couple times but they don’t really clean what we’d like them to clean…the more tedious things that you don’t need cleaned but once or twice per year (like blinds and such). I can mop my own floor…so I’ll probably never go much into having my house cleaned by others unless physical debility requires it.

They really do live in their own world, don’t they? To be sure, some on the Right do as well – still getting pushback from Right Free Traders which I understand but, goodness, it is just a plain, historic fact that we were under Protection when we armed the whole free world in WWII. Free Trade only came to the USA post-WWII where it was felt necessary both to prevent a resumption of the Depression and to aid the rest of the world getting back on its feet. These are debatable issues but this concept that Protection = Poverty is just nonsense. Protection only becomes a problem if you’re protecting failure…but if its designed to make sure that cheap labor can’t undercut your market, then its just common sense. Remember, we’re not being out-competed by China in manufacturing…they are using slave and near-slave labor combined with low quality to simply drive out of the market all competition. This is not Trade…this is predatory and only a fool would let them continue it.

Trump, by the way, has all of his major proposed cabinet positions filled and its still nearly two months before he takes office. Just like Team Trump on the campaign trail, these people are running a very tight ship. I do think they really will hit the ground running.

Thanksgiving

Mark Noonan5 Comments

Thanksgiving is the time when we sane, normal people give thanks to God for His blessings.

It is the time when insane Liberals call us a bunch of genocidal racists.

Liberals decided to go along this route because, aside from being insane, they need to totally delegitimize the entire American experiment – and this means they have to call the Pilgrims evil. Our ancestors were just bad people who came ashore to murder and enslave! Bad, bad Pilgrims! And, so, bad Americans. But it wasn’t quite like that.

First off, Europeans had been coming to what is now New England for some time. The first exploration of what became New England was done by Verranzzano nearly a century before Plymouth Rock (there’s a bridge named after him in New York City). No permanent settlements were established for quite some time but Europeans did land here and there to explore and obtain supplies or to fish off the coast. This is crucial – this contact.

This is because by the time the Pilgrims arrived there were Natives totally familiar with Europeans…including speaking European languages. But very crucially, it means that the European disease environment had arrived. It cannot be overstated how important this was – it wasn’t at all intentional. Neither Natives nor Europeans had the foggiest notion of how disease spread. But for the Natives, the problem was that they had never been exposed to an outside disease environment and they got hit with pretty much the collected disease environment of the rest of the world that had developed over thousands of years of human interaction. They simply had no natural defense against these diseases…and given the level of medical knowledge at the time, once the diseases showed up, they would just have to run through the population until resistance was built up.

It took some time for these diseases to spread because, especially in North America, population was thin on the ground but from contact with Europeans and then from tribe to tribe the diseases shot through the Native population like an apocalyptic calamity. By the time the Pilgrims arrived, the diseases had already hit New England and among the first thing the Pilgrims came across were abandoned villages and farms, and skeletons of Natives who had died…meaning that they had died in such great numbers, and so fast, that nobody remained to bury the dead. Population was low to start with – the diseases dropped it even lower. So, when the Pilgrims came ashore they found plenty of empty land…and Native tribes, weakened by losses, eager to make deals…because they already knew about Europeans and figured having allies with steel swords and firearms would be useful.

And it was – and it was beneficial to both sides. No doubt about it, the Natives helped the Pilgrims through the first few years. They probably wouldn’t have made it otherwise. As it turns out – and a bit of thought would make this obvious to everyone – farming isn’t just planting seeds and getting food. Climate and soil conditions vary widely from place to place and while North America has fertile soil, no European had ever farmed it before and it had its own peculiarities which could only be overcome via experiment – which would have taken too long – or someone handy who could just tell them about the peculiarities. That is what the Natives did – and got aid in return.

But in the nature of things, there were conflicts. Bound to happen. The Europeans had their own ideas of law and, especially , land ownership and they were in no way a 1 to 1 match up to Native ideas. A treaty selling this plot of land to that European seemed to the European to be a very straightforward transfer of title. The Natives didn’t really have that developed a concept of private property. They weren’t just stone age hunter-gatherers but they also weren’t settled agriculturalists. They moved around a lot. They likely didn’t understand the concept of permanent ownership of a particular piece of land. Add into that various conflicts over what constitutes a lie, a breach of contract, or an immoral act – plenty of things Natives took for granted were viewed with suspicion or horror by the Europeans and doubtless vice versa by the Natives. Still, with all that, it was quite a while before war broke out – more than half a century passed. The causes of the war were varied but once it started, it was bound to become a blood feud. To the Natives, killing everyone was ok. To Europeans, schooled in the commands of Christian chivalry, you just can’t do that. But if that was the way the Natives wanted it, then the Europeans would pay them back in their own coin…so massacre begot massacre with the Natives having the distinct disadvantage in numbers, equipment and discipline (a Native chief couldn’t really command – he might be honored as a chief, but whether or not any particular group or person would obey was based upon what that group or person saw as advantage in obedience – meanwhile, men in the European militia were drilled to unquestioning obedience to orders legally issued).

And once war happened, and the Europeans won, they were bound and determined to prevent a recurrence. This meant they started ordering Natives around, and ordering them off. All trust broke down and the only way a Native could remain around the Europeans was to become, in effect, European. Most didn’t want to and so, war by war, the Natives just kept losing more and more and their population kept going down and down until only a remnant, easily controlled, remained.

What you have here (very briefly) is just human history. There was no evil intent – not on either side. There were misunderstandings. There were lies. There was cheating. There was also nobility and mercy. Once again, on both sides. But it was all something that was going to happen. Eventually someone was going to gross the ocean and encounter the Natives of North America…and when that happened first disease, and then conflict, were going to ensure a bad outcome for the Natives. To be angry about this in 2024 is to essentially demand a repeal of human nature and history.

The better way to view it is what came out of it all – in this case, the United States of America. A place of freedom and prosperity – where even those descended from the Natives of 1620 are vastly better off than their ancestors dreamed. Sure we can all regret the crimes that were committed, but there’s no sense dwelling upon them…nor indicting a whole civilization. They happened. They will not happen again. Our job is to make today as good as we can…not try to get pay back for people dead for centuries.

So, from me to you, Happy Thanksgiving – a time to be grateful for what we have, not morose over what happened ages ago.

Our Useless Alliances

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Why are we in NATO and the UN?

It is a question ever more Americans are asking themselves and it is time we really think this one over. The official justification for NATO, UN and all the rest of the international organizations is that collective security is the solution to the World Wars. That is, if everyone was banded together against the aggressor(s) then the aggression would never occur. It is considered axiomatic that if the USA had been part of the League of Nations in the interwar years, WWII would have been prevented. Our absence from the organization, it is said, sabotaged it and left it incapable of standing up to the aggressor. Really?

Suppose we were in the League in, say, 1938…just what would our understrength and obsolescent 100,000 man Army do in the face of Germany’s territorial demands on the Czechs? Given them something to laugh at?

The idea of collective security is based upon an assumption that everyone thinks pretty much the same way. That is, they weigh up the plusses and minuses and make their decisions accordingly. I have no idea how anyone started to believe this because all of history makes a mockery of it. Especially the history just before NATO and the UN were created. Collective security was never going to stop Hitler. It wouldn’t even have stopped a Germany absent Hitler. There was collective security against German aggression in 1914 where the Anglo-French-Russian alliance was overwhelmingly more powerful than the German-Austrian combination. It didn’t work then. It didn’t work in 1939. It never has worked. It never can work. Its a dumb idea.

The Germans attacked – in both 1914 and 1939 – not because they didn’t face a collective alliance against aggression, but because they thought they could win quick and cheap. In 1914, the German ambitions included essentially annexation for Belgium and Luxembourg, slicing off northern France, Poland and Finland to become German vassals and all of central Africa from the Sahara to South Africa. They really thought that if they could get to Paris in six weeks, they’d gain all of this. To put it bluntly, they figured that for 100,000 dead Germans, they’d gain mastery of Europe and a much larger position in the world. In 1939 it was the same thing – Hitler and his Germans thought they could win a quick victory…annul the 1918 results and gain what they wanted in 1914. It was stupid both times – and collective security stopped none of it. They were being unreasonable. Greedy and wicked. You can’t actually stop such people – you can only kill them when they try.

But now lets go forward – we need NATO, it is said, because we have to defend Europe from Russia. Ok. We’ll leave aside whether Europe is worth defending (in my view, it isn’t) and just concentrate on the claim. Did NATO stop Russia from invading Ukraine? Twice?

No.

NATO is overwhelmingly more powerful than Russia. If NATO wants, it could raise a military force large enough to make mincemeat of Russia in short order.

Did this stop Russia from attacking Ukraine?

No.

Of course not. Because Russia knows full well the situation and the bottom line here is that no NATO country is going to actually send an army to fight and die in the Donbas on the debatable issue of it being actually Ukrainian. The only thing that might have stopped Putin from invading wasn’t the existence of an alliance much more powerful than he…but an army in Ukraine either before or right after the Russian attack. Putin might have listened to, say, two German armored corps stationed outside Kiev in February of 2022. Might. He still may have gone right ahead if he felt confident that the Russian army was stronger. People who start wars aren’t noted for their rational thoughts. Even great conquerors like Napoleon get caught up in their own desires; never fully understanding the folly of what they’re doing. If they did understand the folly, they never would attack. Someone who attacks is someone who left off at least most of sanity some time before (even if attacking a much weaker enemy – like say the USSR against the Finns in 1939…no way Russia was going to lose but Stalin still sent men to die – to die – for what was at best a modest convenience for Soviet strategic needs; that’s just nuts). And here’s the real kicker: suppose two German armored corps outside Kiev would have stopped him? Nice. One small problem: Germany doesn’t have two armored corps. The Germans only have two panzer divisions plus one panzergrenadier. That’s pretty much it. Hard to deter anyone if you don’t have any force to deter them with.

And that gets us to the really fatal flaw behind NATO and the UN – they are predicated upon having a force immediately available to be unquestioningly used against aggression. There was a time when NATO had this – but after the Cold War ended, it all atrophied very rapidly. Everyone kept saying that NATO provides collective security – repeating it like an incantation as division after division, wing after wing, task force after task force was cut from NATO’s military inventory. Even if the theory of collective security was true, it doesn’t work without military force. Only the USA still maintains a sizeable military force…and our current force is run down, demoralized and understrength after two rounds (Obama and Biden) of imposing Woke ideology on it while equipment and training went by the board. I doubt our ability to field even a complete division for ground combat right now – and the streaks of rust I see on our ships makes me doubt heavily that we’ve even got a Navy at the moment. But we’re Patton ready to fight compared to the European military forces…did you know that Gibraltar, the gateway to the Mediterranean, is currently protected by 235 British soldiers and two patrol boats? You hold Gibraltar and you control one of the most vital trade routes in the world…and it is currently defenseless. Makes ya feel safe, doesn’t it?

As we enter Trump II, it is time we really started to think again about what we want? And I am certain that NATO isn’t it – there’s nothing in Europe I’d ever send an American kid to defend and if I’m concerned about our global position than alliance with Japan, India and Vietnam seems far more useful than what we have now. But I also think we have to abandon this concept of permanent alliances. NATO and the UN have proved not just useless, but malevolent – actually undermining our power and position in the world. An alliance is a thing for the moment – to do a particular task. I want an alliance with India not so that 50 years from now we’re still allied with India, but because the USA and India share a common need to deter China’s power grabs. Once the China issue is settled, then there will be no need for a USA/India alliance and it can lapse.

It is time for us to stop doing things just because it is what we’ve been doing. I realize that a huge number of people have invested their whole lives – and make their money – off the current system, but the system is to serve the country, not the country the system. What we have now serves no purpose; not even a bad purpose. Dispense with it and look for new ways.

The New GOP

Mark Noonan18 Comments

So, Trump appointed Lori Chavez-DeRemer Secretary of Labor…and much heartache ensued.

This is mostly because she was one of the few House Republicans to sign off on the PRO Act – a union-favorable bit of legislation which has been proposed and shot down in Congress by various means. It polls very well – though probably with the poll questions couched in a way to make it as favorable as possible. The biggest sticking points on the Right are that it essentially voids “right to work” laws and allows independent contractors (the “gig economy” – Uber drivers and such) to organize and strike even though they aren’t technically employees of the company they work for. The first point is the very biggest sticking point – we on the Right fought for years to make it so that unions can’t force people to be union members and pay dues…the PRO Act would essentially undo that and allow the unions to siphon off money even from people who don’t want union representation. So, Chavez-DeRemer is, in my view, wrong on this issue.

Why did Trump appoint her?

Very simple: he knows that the future of of the GOP is tied to working class voters – this is life or death for us. We either retain working class votes (and expand our support among various minority working class demographics) or we’re cooked. This pick is a tip of Trump’s hat to workers…and allows us to talk to the workers over the heads of the labor union bosses. This is worth having someone economically Left in the cabinet. And, in fact, points up the need for us to start to rethink how we do things.

Let us first be clear that we are not anti-union. There is nothing wrong at all with workers combining together to obtain the best deal possible from their employer. But let us also state firmly that public-sector unions are an abomination – any such thing is essentially a conspiracy to defraud the taxpayers as a public-sector union’s goal is to take more money from the taxpayers regardless of performance. That said, it is time for the GOP to become a union shop, as it were. When there is a dispute between workers and a large corporate entity, our sympathies must lie with the workers.

This doesn’t mean we go socialist or do something stupid like that – but we must be seen as the party that will listen to the worker’s concerns and see if a deal can be worked that avoids a strike and keeps a company profitable. We all know that the economy is forever changing and that business must continually adapt to changed conditions to remain profitable…and that profits aren’t bad; they are the only reason anyone engages in business to begin with. But when we have a situation where, say, a company is trying to import workers or export the factory…we should be dropping like a hammer on that corporation and taking the side of the workers. It doesn’t matter if ACME can make the hammer cheaper with slave labor in China…ACME will just have to make that hammer in the USA paying American-scale wages to American workers. Sure, the workers will also have to understand the thin profit margins on each hammer and adjust their pay expectations to that – as well as their productivity requirements. But this is all just the fair give and take that is supposed to happen in an economy built for a sane nation. Nobody is going to get everything they want – but reasonable people will get everything they need.

The main thing here is that the old GOP is dead. It actually died when we got our Trifecta after the 2004 elections and we couldn’t even defund NPR. It would have been nothing to do it – not that much money, we had the majorities…just do it. Nothing. That is when we started to learn that the old GOP had been running a con on us for decades and their only goal was to keep corporate taxes low and defense industry profits high. Now we sit on the cusp of Trump II and it is high time everyone got on board – the old ways didn’t cut it. We lost. Now we have to try something new…and when you try something new, it is going to be difficult and often uncomfortable. Perhaps this or that pick or policy by Trump will fail…doesn’t matter. We have to try things. In the trying will be the education which will get us to our goal…an America where the Constitution is again law (and much more strengthened) and we’re free and prosperous. This will take a long time. There will be failures on the path…but we’re on this path and we have to stay on it, or we’re doomed.