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.

Living in the Insane World

Mark Noonan36 Comments

In 1877, President Grant, just out of office, embarked on a world tour. He had been pretty much at the helm of great events since 1861 and he and his wife and long talked of a day when they would just travel the world…this was the fulfillment of what must, at times, have seemed an idle hope. They were in no hurry and stopped at many places along the way so the tour went on into 1879 (and, of course, travel by steamship and train is much slower than modern methods). In the course of this tour they visited the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey (including the Holy Land then under Turkish rule), Egypt, Greece, Scandinavia, Russia, Poland, Austria-Hungary, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, India, Burma, Siam, Indochina and Japan. Aside from his wife, he was accompanied by his son, Jesse, a journalist to document the trip and one aide. He was never under any threat of harm, was greeted warmly wherever he went and generally had a splendid time.

This, my friends, was the real world. A sane world. Of course, there were dangers – Lincoln had been assassinated in 1865. The Empress of Austria would be assassinated in 1898. But the world was sane. Safe. Murder was a rare and shocking thing (my grand-uncle Eddie Diggins was murdered in a speakeasy in 1927 and it made the New York Times – back pages, sure; but a murder in LA of someone of no real prominence made the papers in New York; that is how odd murder was). Now, why bring this up?

Because Trump has removed Secret Service protection for a lot of people of late – most notably John Bolton. This is causing quite a lot of outrage in the Ruling Class as these people are allegedly under threat of assassination, especially by agents of Iran. This might well be true – and I respond to this worry by saying that John Bolton and the rest of these people who had a hand in making this insane world should suffer the consequences of their actions. We’re not supposed to be in a world where a former official of the US government is at risk of assassination. We’re supposed to be so powerful and respected that nobody but a sheer madman would dream of killing one of our people. The solution to a threat by the Mullahs in 2025 was to have removed the Mullahs from power in 1979 when they took our Embassy. Our Ruling Class didn’t. And the replacements which have moved in since then never made any real response to the 1979 outrage. Indeed, some of the Ruling Class replacements who have come and gone positively encouraged the Mullahs to remain in power.

So, if a Mullah tries to kill you, I’ve got no sympathy.

We’re not supposed to live in a world of terrorist bombs, assassins, bums sleeping in tents, illegals pouring across borders, grooming gangs in England, sex tourism in Thailand, gangsters running Haiti, Hamas sending in rape/murder squads, 300,000 Americans overdosing on drugs, bridges that can’t be repaired for years, wildfires burning out of control for lack of water…you getting the picture? This world has gone mad and I don’t propose to protect the people who made this world from harm. They should have thought about it while they were destroying everything…I’m not going to hide a guy behind walls and guns where he’s safe from the consequences of his actions. Perhaps this will concentrate some minds going forward? Make some decisions go different ways?

We can only hope – meanwhile, let those who made the mess live in it.

UPDATE: Right around the time I wrote this, Trump ordered the declassification of the JFK, MLK and RFK files. I’m not expecting much – everyone has had plenty of time to carefully sanitize them. OTOH, our Ruling Class has a lot of very stupid people in it so maybe they didn’t? In these cases, I always recall that the Brits are keeping part of their Himmler death documents secret until 2045. I’ve always thought this weird – the “conspiracy theory” about it is that the Brits offed Himmler and faked his suicide because they didn’t want him to spill it about contacts between the UK (especially, perhaps, Royal Family) and Himmler during the war. But, if so, why not just destroy the documents? But, if the documents have been destroyed, why keep them secret until 2045? It is just weird…and maybe someone sifting through, say, the JFK files can shed some light on the sequence of events…like why the FBI didn’t have Oswald under surveillance given he was a known Commie kook and the President was coming to town?

Goodness: It’s Only Wednesday!

Mark Noonan7 Comments

But doesn’t it feel like we’ve been winning for a while now? The whole nightmare four years is *poof* gone. And, wow: was Team Trump ready for this! They must have been prepping for a long while. My guess was since September when the public polls started to show a fading of the Kamala-mentum (which meant that the internal polls already showed a Trump win). Small thing Trump said didn’t cause a lot of stir, but I noticed it (I think it was on Monday) – words to the effect of, “yeah, they knew at nine it was over but they kept hoping a miracle would happen”. That would be nine, eastern, of course. Which is probably pretty accurate – my stepson is a number-cruncher computer kinda guy and he wandered out into the kitchen/family room about 6:30pm on election night (so, 9:30 in the east) and, getting something from the ‘fridge, said “you feeling happy?”. “Still waiting for it to be called.” “You kidding? Its been over for a couple hours…”. I don’t know exactly what he had been checking on, but it means he looked at something just as the polls closed in the east and then went on to other things because it was all over but the shouting. And now we’re just rolling!

Trump has terminated affirmative action. Keep in mind that Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush, Bush W all neglected this. That’s all affirmative action ever was – a note from Johnson. It never has been a law. And in practical effect, affirmative action was the assertion that the cure for injustices in the past is to commit injustices in the present. I mean, seriously: it would be hard to find a more stupid idea in history. It is so very crucial that we start to live in the real world – and part of the real world is that we can’t fix the past. It is set in stone. It happened. All we can do is go on from this point trying to do better. Sure, black Americans were behind in education and economic advancement in 1965…no doubt about it. Slavery and Jim Crow had massively and totally unjustly impacted the ability of black Americans to get educated and wealthy. And once Jim Crow was terminated by the Civil Rights Act there was absolutely nothing anyone could do about it. There wasn’t a magic wand to be waved to make it all go away – and by force-feeding black Americans into positions it merely meant that the most politically connected people would get all the benefit while the overwhelming mass of black people not only got nothing, but took an additional hit in their ability to climb the ladder. Not for nothing post-Civil Rights did a lot of the leaders get on the gravy train…because they could. They were by that time connected…and nobody gave a damn about the working class black family living in an increasingly crime-infested neighborhood as the jobs were shipped to China.

As I said on Sunday, the fix is to go back to the error and correct it. Various GOPers had tried to fix Affirmative Action…it can’t be fixed. It was the mistake. Trump did away with the mistake.

And he’s doing that a lot. I’m sure you’ve all seen this or that act which particularly pleased and/or impressed you…telling the DEI staff to clear out their desks was pretty good in my book! Its been a massive assault on a corrupt and incompetent system since the moment he took the oath…and we can look forward to a lot more of it.

Meanwhile, the new face of the Democrat resistance is that lady “bishop” at the National Cathedral. I don’t think she or anyone on the Left realizes how egregiously insulting they are. “Please protect the LGBTQ people who fear for their lives!”. Fear? Fear, what? We’re not going to go around oppressing people. We don’t give a darn! But think about what she’s saying – what the overall Left is saying: “we’re terrified!”. But that is all a lie – not by word, deed or even implication has Trump or anyone supporting him indicated hostility to people living like they want to live. “Love is love” is an absurd statement, but if that’s your creed, knock yourself out. I don’t care. But the “bishop” told the lie. Does she believe the lie? It doesn’t matter – it is still a lie. But it is a lie routinely stated and now believed by tens of millions. And its nothing but a damned insult. Until the Left understands what they are doing, they can’t even start the trip back to sanity.

President Donald J Trump (Again)

Mark Noonan44 Comments

Happy day!

Be sure to take some time to call your Liberal friends! They will be feeling very down…so, I suggest a bit of pointing and laughing.

With love!

Can you feel the hope? Not the manufactured “hope” of Obama…because we didn’t need hope then like we do now. Remember what the Left was bitching about in 2008…a center-left GOPer who pretty much gave them everything they wanted. To them, Obama was going to “save” them from that. Everyone seems a bit buoyant. Little bit of a spring in the step. Guys, I’ve never felt so good about the country. It’ll work out. I’ll get what I need. We all will. The times they are a-changing!

A veritable avalanche of Trump Executive Orders are pending – he’s said some, hinted at others…but from what I’ve heard, there are a couple hundred that will be done right away. I’m pretty sure they’ve been prepping this at least since September.

Of course the J6’ers are going to get pardoned – only question is if it will be all or if some who may have actually broken a law get left out. I’m fairly confident that no J6’er will remain long in jail. At worst, these people should have a got a fine…in the most egregious cases, maybe a fortnight in jail. All of that is long-since paid.

Trump will revoke the security clearances of the 51 intel officials who signed the letter saying the Hunter laptop was Russian. That, to me, is just a start – like with so many over the past 10 years, I figure they conspired to deny civil rights. Lots of people should go to jail.

Tom Homan has noted – as I did some while back – that it is a violation of federal law to in any way harbor an illegal or impede federal law enforcement in detecting and removing illegals. This is a direct shot at the Democrat mayors and governors who say they are “Trump-proofing” their jurisdictions. Can’t do that, guys. Nullification was settled when Lee surrendered to Grant…you can’t on the State or local level nullify federal laws. If you believe a federal law or action is unconstitutional, take it to court or apply to Congress for a change…but you can’t just set aside the law. I really do hope he makes a few very prominent examples…a governor and/or mayor in cuffs and brought before a federal court for arraignment on harboring illegal immigrants will get the message across: don’t do that. This doesn’t mean they have to actively pursue illegals, but they can’t stop the feds from doing it…and this includes actions like ignoring ICE detainers. If you know you have a bank robber in custody but let him go before the feds arrive, you just committed a crime…so, too, with illegals.

Hegseth is going to turn our military back into a military. No more fudging standards just so a careerist officer can get a “first”…”first woman Ranger!”, “first woman submariner!”…heck with that. Look, if the girls can meet the necessary standards, fine…but no more making it up as we go along so that we can have a “diverse” force. We need a lethal force…I don’t care what color or gender it is. Can it kill the enemy? That has to be the only standard. And for goodness sake, scrape the rust off our ships…its a darned disgrace.

And as we saw yesterday with The Village People singing, it is going to be fun. No more morose fussing over the lunatic obsessions of people with daddy issues or still angry the cheerleader wouldn’t date them in high school. The world will once again be for the normies…the people who work, pay the bills, pay the taxes, serve in the military and make society work. It is time for us to Make America Great Again!

Now What?

Mark Noonan5 Comments

I will have a January 20th post up, of course. Liberation Day is nearly here! But before we get into Trump 2.0, I want to take some time to sort of review where I am, politically, and where I think we need to go to really get out of this mess.

As has been seen over the past dozen years or so, there has been a fairly significant shift in how I view things – not really so much a change in ideological perspective, but more an understanding of just how wrong things have gone. This, I think, is a journey all thinking people have been on – even some on the Left have taken it, while remaining Left overall. The bottom line is that if you are a person of moderate intelligence, a bit of goodwill and some patriotism, you can’t possibly believe the same exact things you did in, say, 2005. The trouble with our Democrats, the overall Left and the diehard Never Trumpers is that it is forever 2005…the only wrinkle they’ve added to it is the trans issue (which has proved very destructive to these people and they don’t realize it yet).

It has been a journey! Someone a little earlier on X referenced the McMartin Preschool Trial and that blast from the past got me realizing that it was then and there the first doubts crept in…that the Media is simply lying. That government institutions don’t have a few bad apples, but are rotten barrels. And that if they’d lie like that – even after it was clear the lies were exposed – then just what else are they lying about? But the beginning always ties into the end…and now we see here of late that again and again senior people in our public and private institutions are sexual degenerates…when not messing with kids, they are just being generally horrifically abusive to anyone they can dominate. And that while they’re doing it, everyone around them knows it and doesn’t talk about it until it is too late.

The archetype of this is Jimmy Savile over in the UK – the man became a major player in 1964 when he started hosting Top of the Pops and remained front and center in the public eye until his death in 2011. And it was only in 2012 that the sexual abuse allegations exploded into the public sphere…but once that happened it came out that as early as 1963, before he rose to the top, people knew what he was doing. And he was allowed to just keep on doing it. You read he was made a member of the exclusive Atheneum Club in London…and was nominated by Cardinal Hume, who appears to have played a role in covering up sexual abuse scandals in the Church…and round and round it goes.

But this isn’t about sex scandals – it is about an Establishment filed with abusers and enablers and its all covered up by the MSM. And then you move on to defense contractors. Other government contractors. People getting grants from the US government for very bizarre-sounding projects. And we can’t stop people from crossing our border and then you find that we’re giving grants to NGO’s that are providing transport to the border and illegals are caught with pre-paid debit cards and just now Speaker Johnson tells us that when he met with Biden like a year ago he knew he was gaga but didn’t bring it up in public.

So, you conclude: what has gone on is all nonsense. Its all just a corrupt scam of one type or another…people raking in money, doing payoffs, working deals where in return for burying this bit of scandal that thing will be done. And where are the decent people? Oh, right: there are none. At least, not in the institutions. If they were decent, they’d expose it, even if it cost them their job. And that means that the very best people are…go-along-to-get-along careerists. Guys, this sort of system nearly got Trump killed in Butler, PA. And it doesn’t matter if the slackness was deliberate or just how things are…absent Trump’s miraculous turn of his head, he’d have died right there and we might be locked into bloody civil war right now. All a full review tells us is that the rot has been there a very long time. McMartin happened in 1983. JFK’s assassination in 1963. McCarthy was hounded out of the public square for pointing out the obvious in 1954…just when did the USA become dipped in filth with no chance of logic or common sense coming out on top?

All we can say is that it was a long time ago. Before most of us were born the seeds of the current swamp were planted. Sure, probably as early as Woodrow Wilson. Or even Teddy Roosevelt who got a free ride from the press because they liked him and who first came up with the idea that a President can do whatever he wants unless expressly prohibited by law. But we also know: once you step aside from the rules, everything that comes after is wrong. As I said a while back ago, if you start your equation with one plus one equals three, then everything that comes after is wrong, no matter how desperately you try to make it right. Once you have an error your only way out is to go back to the error and correct it, and then start all over from that point.

And that, ultimately, is what I think we’re doing. Perhaps a bit haphazardly, certainly not totally consciously, but that is it. In a way, finally trying to carry out Warren G Harding’s “return to normalcy”. Keep in mind that he said that in the 1920 Presidential election…this was before FDR and the New Deal. We didn’t have a military-industrial complex at the time. The FBI was just a few guys in the back rooms of the Justice Department. The CIA and NSA were far in the future. Government regulations were still a rarity. But Harding could see – and the American people could feel – that the period of time from McKinley’s assassination to the end of Wilson’s term had gone wrong. That muscular American foreign intervention was just not good for us. That preening “great men” trying to force us down new paths wasn’t wanted. With Return to Normalcy as his slogan, Harding got more than 60% of the vote…and he and Coolidge did try to get us back to normalcy. It was our bad luck that Hoover managed to get himself into the Harding/Coolidge administrations and managed to work himself into the favored spot for the 1928 GOP nomination when Coolidge (who could easily have won it) decided not to seek a second full term. Hoover, who was a Progressive to his core, was merely a mini-FDR in policy…with the unintended catastrophe being this nominal-Republican (we’d call him a RINO today) presiding over the start of the Great Depression and tarring the GOP for 40 years with it. By the time the GOP had recovered, it was too late – the rot (the swamp) had become overwhelming.

Trump is our attempt to return to normalcy. Not for nothing is Trump looking back and back for policy inspiration. Having been at the raw end of the Swamp for ten years now, he’s not in a mind to take their policy recommendations at face value. I have seen statements of his on economics and foreign policy which could have been lifted out of McKinley’s last speech (worth a read; a bit dull, but its like the sun coming out when you consider where we are). Even on immigration, all Trump is trying to do is get us back to the Immigration Act of 1924 – which was itself a huge component in the attempt to return to normalcy…because tens of millions of Third World immigrants wasn’t normal. Keep in mind that Titanic wasn’t built to provide John Jacob Astor swank accommodations across the Atlantic…it was to get steerage immigrants into the American labor market as fast as possible. The luxury of the Titanic was PR…the money was from importing cheap labor. White Star. Cunard. Hamburg-America, North-German Lloyd and many smaller firms…all competing to build the biggest and fastest ships to transport poor people into the American labor market. The Act of 1924 put a stop to it (and put those firms mostly out of business – only Cunard sort of survives as a subsidy of Carnival Cruises). Side note: Titanic was built by White Star, which was owned by International Mercantile Marine which was founded by J P Morgan, who wanted to monopolize the Transatlantic trade in labor which would, of course, benefit the profitability of his industrial interests in the USA. Neat, huh?

Do keep in mind that the Immigration Act of 1924 didn’t stop immigration. It is condemned these days because it excluded Asians and is described as something that simply stopped immigrants from coming in, but that isn’t so. Plenty of immigrants continued to arrive…just not a flood of immigrants, and those that were allowed in were cream of the crop from their home countries. Naturally, these days we won’t exclude based on race or national origin…but it simply makes no sense to allow a flood of unvetted immigrants to pour in. It is abnormal to do that. Stupid. Insane. Directly harmful not just to us, but to the immigrants, themselves…especially the lower end of the immigrants who are bound to be most abused all through the process.

And that gets us to our conclusion here – what are we to do? Simple: find out where we screwed up, go back to that point and fix the mistake. For immigration, the mistake was the 1965 immigration act. Like that, again and again and again. We keep losing wars? Why? Well, because we allow military officers to think of it as a career rather than a calling…they aren’t striving to defend America, but to get that star on their shoulder, and then some more. Pete Hegseth pointed out that we now have 44 four-star officers on the roles…we had 7 in World War two. This is what careerism breeds. Meanwhile, in the pre-WWII army, outside of MacArthur (who was unique in so many ways) the men who lead us to victory were majors and lt. colonels until just before the war started. They weren’t working for promotion, but to make the best military force they could. The mistake, then, is the gigantic military bureaucracy…get rid of it and turn the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines back into warfighters.

One thing I believe is crucial is to jettison certainty – everything needs to be thought about. Certainty does exist. There is absolute truth. But right now we’re in such a fog of swamp-created nonsense that we can’t be sure about anything. We might have to sort of feel our way forward here. Be ok with some potholes and some mistakes along the way. But the goal is to return to a sane, rational, logical and common sense society. A place where normal human beings can live and work. A return to normalcy.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan19 Comments

I think we’ve all noticed it – that Trump’s nominees are giving a full-throated endorsement of Trump policy. This is different from 2017 when it was pretty much “hey, approve me for this position and I’ll keep an eye on Trump for you!”. This now has the Democrats in quite a state of terror. They realize that what they’ve dished out for decades is about to be handed right back to them.

Our Democrats are now, as per usual, demanding bi-partisanship and that we make sure there isn’t any politicization of Justice. This is quite hilarious – that is, that they think we’d listen to them. We know what “bi-partisan” means: they get 90% of what they want, we get nothing. We also know what they mean by “politicization of Justice” means: for goodness sake, don’t do to us what we did to Trump! Of course, we don’t have to politicize Justice to go after Democrats…in what they did to Trump are a host of violations of federal law. This is why when Bondi said she would go wherever the law leads, Democrats got a sick feeling in their stomachs. All she has to do is follow the law and a lot of Democrats are going to jail.

Still, it remains to be seen: that is, if she’ll really follow the law. It is our hope, but nothing is for sure until it happens…and Trump is a deal maker: he might agree to turn a blind eye on this or that in order to get something he wants more. This would be ok as long as its something good for us. On the other hand, even if Trump would like to turn a blind eye, if Bondi gets the right people around her, it might not matter what deals Democrats want to strike…the hammer of Justice will drop on them.

The real problem the Democrats have is what Tallyrand said of the Bourbons after their restoration to the throne of France: they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Democrats are still voting against deporting illegal immigrants who commit sex crimes, and against banning men from women’s sports. Think about it: these are no brainer issues. Of course if you’re in country illegal and commit a sex crime you must be deported. Of course you can’t have boys competing with girls in sports. These are issues Americans are 70/30 in favor of. There is not a single vote to be garnered by opposing these measures…and plenty to be lost. But most Democrats are still committed to the flag they lost under in November.

The rule of thumb is that the party which won the White House will door poorly at the following midterms. The GOP should work from this assumption but there is an even money chance that it will go badly for the Democrats…and it’ll start leaning GOP if Trump has even moderate success over the next year. People carefully considered what the Democrats were offering and rejected it. The normal course of events for Democrats is to identify the issues they failed on and either jettison them, or at least modify them towards the political center. Nothing doing: the issues they failed on the worst are being held up as a litmus test for Democrats.

The ceasefire deal in Israel seems to me like a bad idea. I’m going to rely on Trump and Bibi to pull the fat out of the fire here but I can’t see an upside to allowing Hamas to live…let alone remain in charge of Gaza. It is clear, however, that the Israelis have lost some of the iron in the veins. The spirit of 1948 has atrophied. Time marches on. The Holocaust generation is nearly gone. A 25 year old Israeli has to ask great-grandpa about it, and great-grandpa is likely passed away by now. Sure, he learns about it in school and, by rote, honors the fallen…but he’s looking for a job and a girlfriend and there’s that weekend at the beach…suiting up to dig Hamas rats out of bunkers in Gaza lacks appeal. And lacks apparent immediate need: Israelis don’t feel like their backs are to the wall.

But their backs are to the wall. The Islamists take a very long view of this struggle. To them, survival after 10/7 is all the victory they need…they are now the he-men of the Islamist world who stood up to the Israelis and survived. Money and recruits will flow in. The world will rebuild Gaza for them. It might take ten years, but they will attack again. Sure, the Israelis will implement many new security protocols but human slackness always erodes these things over time…it is just the way things are. On 10/6 Hamas could easily get anything it wanted into Gaza – its why they had those thousands of rockets. The day after the ceasefire it’ll be almost impossible to get things in…but day by day it will get easier. Hamas’ goal is the total destruction of Israel and the murder of every single Jew on Earth. Unless and until Israel recognizes this and acts accordingly, there is always the possibility that Hamas can win.

UPDATE: Our Matt has an interesting look into the behind-the-scenes backstabbing that led to Biden’s withdrawal. Do read it: looks like they had knives out for a long time.

Normal vs Insane

Mark Noonan20 Comments

Their real objection to Hegseth is that he’s a normal man. Good looking guy, too. Incredibly in shape. They hate that. What I mean is that the basic Liberal’s path to getting a girl these days is to be a “male feminist” which means agreeing with every dumb thing feminists say and hoping you get a shot at it…the darker side is, of course, the actually abusive men who declare they are feminists so they can gain access to their victims. Hegseth is…a man. No saint. As someone once said: “soldiers are no angels, nor the gentlest of creatures”.

Their attempted smears of Hegseth on grounds of drinking and dallying with the ladies is, well, ridiculous and reveals that his critics have spent no real time with a combat unit. People who have signed up to be at the sharp end of a war – even if no war is going on at the moment – do live a little bit on the edge. In wartime, probably a little over that edge. In the World at War TV series, I believe it was an interview with cartoonist Bill Mauldin where he relates the story of when he was in Italy and taking a little break in a bombed out Italian house and in walks a British Tommy with a young Italian girl of…shall we say, questionable moral character…and the pair, taking no apparent notice of Mauldin, proceed to do what boys and girls will do. After they had finished they got up to leave, the Tommy saying, “good day, Yank”, and back off to the battle for him. When you might die soon, questions of morality get a little hazy. And you don’t judge the military by civilian standards. Ever.

The fact that Hegseth is in superb physical condition at age 44 tells us that he’s not a boozer. That he is a good looking man explains why he had plenty of opportunities with the ladies and didn’t refuse them. That he’s now married for five years and there are no recent allegations of him getting off the morality ranch shows that his statement that he underwent religious conversion six years ago is credible. In other words, in his late 30’s, he grew up a bit, as men will do. Sure, would have been much better if he had come to this ten years previously…but life is life and we’re not on a schedule.

They hate Hegseth because he’s a normal man – but they fear him because he’s not one of them. He’s not a career officer who kissed butt to get stars on his shoulders as prep for moving into a defense contractor job as prep for returning to the Pentagon and on and on ad infinitum. He’s not committed to the defense bureaucracy. Not committed to letting today’s brigadier general become a major general just because its his turn. Not committed to “diversity” when what we want is lethality. An old veteran like myself has seen over the past few years our Navy ships covered in rust and I know that its all gone wrong…no sailor would ever allow his ship to look like that. This means that our current sailors, ain’t. I believe that most of them want to be and will be if given leadership to become sailors…and that is what I hope Hegseth will do for the entire military. And the Left hates that, too…to them, the military is a social program for their experiments. For patriots, it is the lifeblood of the nation.

As we watched the lunatic ravings of the Senate Democrats, it became crystal clear that Trump represents a return of sanity to DC…Democrats are in a last-ditch, rearguard defense of insanity. And it is clear they learned nothing from the election…they even engineered some Code Pink crazies to disrupt the start of the hearing (who should now be prosecuted like J6 defendants, IMO). They don’t realize that 2024 was a demand that the craziness end…the clear failure in the California wildfires just putting a nice cherry on top of that…all that money to be spent and they couldn’t even get working fire hydrants. No. We’re done with that. We don’t care about boutique Liberal whines. We want things to work. We want things to be sane again.