War: it Really is Kinda Hell

Mark Noonan15 Comments

There is a video out there showing a Ukrainian drone slamming into a Russian high rise – and it does evoke memories of 9/11…and everyone is jumping on the Ukrainians for doing it, whether deliberately or accidentally. I am very much “meh” about it. Russia started this war without any justifiable cause. And this incident has been tossed into the War Crimes pile…that is where everyone involved in a conflict accuses the other of being war criminals.

And that is why I have dispensed with the whole concept of war crimes: there is just no point in it.

To this day, there is still argument going on about what the Germans did in Belgium during World War One – both in the immediate invasion of August, 1914 and throughout the war. That Germans did rape, murder and loot from Day One on is not in dispute…but there are still people trying to argue that this or that particular incident didn’t happen or was itself justified. It is all such a drivel argument – the war crime, if such exists, was the German invasion. The Germans had no cause to attack Belgium – a small, weak and entirely inoffensive nation which would never have dreamed of challenging German power. If not a single Belgian had been killed, it still would have been a crime. So, people trying to twist themselves into knots saying, “well, when this village was burned and inhabitants massacred, it might well have been in response to a Belgian taking a pot-shot with the farm’s shotgun”. As if that mattered – there wasn’t supposed to be a German to take a pot-shot at.

This is why I’m only interested in who fires the first shot or who sets conditions upon which firing must commence. That is, who started it? After that, all wrong is the fault of the person who started it – nothing the aggressor does can possibly make it better or worse, and nothing the victim does in response is wrong. You open fire, you take your chances…and as far as I’m concerned, if you’re the aggressor and end up losing, count yourself lucky if every last one of you isn’t killed by the victor. What any nation should do in war – and especially my nation – is based entirely upon expediency…what will bring us victory the quickest and at least cost? This is moral because the faster you end a war the less costly it is going to be – and the force used to end a war is always morally proportionate to need, proof being that it ended the war (lots of theological people try to tie themselves in knots over this as part of the Just War Doctrine…mostly so they can hate on the USA for using atomic bombs…but the bottom line is that as long as the force is proportionate to needs, it is legitimate…and that means whatever force you can bring is legitimate).

Sure, I’d prefer a world where there were fully established rules for war and everyone tried to adhere to them. But it isn’t going to happen. It can’t happen when, in modern times, the combatants don’t even agree on what is right and wrong. That’s the real failure of all the peace and arms-control treaties…they have words on them and the contracting parties don’t even agree on the meanings of words. Back when it was two deeply Christian powers in conflict you could make rules…because both sides were working off the same ultimate rule book. But between, say, Catholic me and Communist enemy, where is there any meeting of mind? When I say “justice” is means just about the opposite of what the Communist means. I can’t make a deal with him – can’t have agreed upon rules of conflict. I can only, when pressed to it, fight him with every available means lest he kill me and all I hold dear.

Just my two cents on that particular modern debate. Fight if you want. You’d better win if you decide to fight. If you decide to fight and lose, I don’t care what happens to you.

MAGA is Coming

Mark Noonan7 Comments

The Congressional GOP tried to pretend it was 2016 last night – trying to help the Democrats ram through a 1,500 page continuing resolution which was packed with Democrat spending priorities and various things to hamstring the incoming Trump Administration. For the moment, it appears to have been stopped – with Elon Musk and JD Vance leading the social media charge against it. It could, of course, come back! But it still was a least a victory for a day…and the first time we actually made a GOP-controlled chamber of Congress listen to us.

To listen to the RINOs, this was once again just one of those darned things we couldn’t change – if we wanted relief for hurricane victims, we had to go along with all the Democrat spending. This was never a convincing argument in the past but, also, there never was much we could do about it…but now we’ve got at least a significant number of MAGA representation and at least one friendly social media platform…we are both able to get our message out and there are enough MAGA representatives in Congress to make it so that any RINO going along with it would be heavily exposed come re-election time. Like this: if there are 220 GOPers in the House and 195 vote for it, that’s cover. If there’s 220 and 150 vote for it…that’s catastrophe…that’s clearly providing the votes for a Democrat bill. Rely on it: they will try to ram it all through…the Uniparty is still pretty strong and utterly hates us.

The strongest message I saw yesterday on Social Media – from accounts large and small – was to keep hammering back on it with “why can’t you just pass a hurricane relief bill?”. This, of course, was deadly for the Uniparty. Their argument was that we had to go along with the Dems because they control the Senate…our argument (and its unanswerable) is why don’t they have to go along with us as we control the House? The secondary argument (also effective) was to say, “put action off until the 6th for Trump’s signature on the 20th”. We all do feel for the hurricane victims but our bet is that most of them would back us on this…sometimes you do have to do the patriotic thing even if it hurts. To wrap it all up in a pretty bow, we also pointed out that whatever fallout there is will occur while Biden is President…not Trump. This isn’t even our mess – its the Democrats’ mess. Let them clean it up. Or not. We don’t care. By the time votes are cast again, the budget crunch of December 2024 will be ancient history…if there’s a time for such a fight, it is now.

The fact that there was a genuine pushback and that it was at least partially successful shows that the Trump victory is for real…it wasn’t just a vote against Biden, it was a vote against the Establishment…and the GOP part of that Establishment as much as any other part. People don’t want business as usual. If the Left had a lick of sense – or wasn’t motivated purely by hatred – they’d realize that now was the time to try to get things like universal health care or at least something like it. We don’t like the health care system. We don’t like Big Pharma. We’re also open to ideas, knowing that nothing is going to be perfect. They could bring their proposals to us and get a hearing…buuuut being hate filled and stupid, they are turning the CEO murderer into their sick and twisted version of a hero. Not really sure what we’re going to have to do with the overall Left…they are so amazingly ignorant and filled with hate that its going to be a problem just dealing with them. Of course, if we really do get the promised reforms, the Left will see a drastic reduction of taxpayer funded Leftist storm troopers and that will lower the overall temperature over time.

Like a lot of people, I’m feeling very positive about the future – understanding that the mess the Biden people made is real and will take some time to clean up (do note that they’ll stop putting out bogus economic data – no longer need to protect a Democrat so we’ll shortly be getting true inflation and unemployment data). But I feel like for the first time in a long time – maybe since Reagan – that we’re going to have policies designed to help America…and that gives me hope.

Knowing What You Know. And Don’t Know.

Mark Noonan33 Comments

The discussion in the past thread with Amazona about the JFK assassination brings up the real subject we need to delve into: what do we know for certain? This might seem like a small – and might even seem like an irrelevant – question but in my view, it is the crucial starting point.

First off, let’s dispense with the whole phrase “conspiracy theory”. Yes, we do know there are some clearly kooky ideas about a lot of things out there but when we tag something as a “conspiracy theory” what we’re doing is both dismissing it and warning everyone away from it. “Come on! That’s just a conspiracy theory! You don’t want to be one of those crazies. Right?”. It is very effective propaganda designed to shut off debate and inquiry. And the kicker on it is that it can be used both ways by grifters – some using the accusation to get people to stop asking but the mirror-image of it is used by the other grifters…those who want you to believe nonsense and so they package it up as “they call me a conspiracy theorist but I’ve just found the truth!”…this makes that grift bullet proof the other direction. The most notable recent example of this is Candace Owens who has gone off on anti-Semitic rants of late and she’s keeping her listeners on board (and clicking!) by saying those who disagree are trying to “silence the truth by calling me a conspiracy theorist!”. So, have a little care here – and dispense with “conspiracy theory”. What we have is people making assertions – test them against known facts and your own good sense; only reject an assertion if the facts and your sense indicate against them.

So, back to it: what do we know? That is the first and most important question. As it relates to the JFK assassination what we know is pretty limited. When you really grind it down, all we know for certain is that JFK was shot and killed. Everything else related to it has some questionable aspects. Even for someone like me who asserts that forensics indicates Oswald as the lone shooter I am forced to admit that a good defense attorney could have shot reasonable doubt into the assertion…not enough to have saved Oswald in a putative 1964 murder trial, but certainly enough for a dispassionate observer ten years later to go, “not proved beyond a reasonable doubt”.

The really important aspect here when you ask, “what do we know?” is that assertions by Experts and government agencies are now known to be questionable. There is no neutral arbiter whom we can rely on to speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Might there have been in 1963? Possibly – but the seeds of what has come after – complete institutional collapse – were already planted by then. We can’t necessarily impose today’s dishonesty on the people and agencies of 1963 but we also can’t assume that the people and agencies of 1963 who went on to a whole series of now-exposed lies weren’t also lying in 1963.

It is good to keep in mind that in any analysis of the past, we’ll never have the complete picture. For some things we have more data than others, but all historical documents still only amount to what someone thought important enough to write down. For the historian, it is really good if several major players in an event wrote down independent, contemporary accounts because the compare and contrast can provide some real insights…but, still, even that is just what the players decided to write down. It is still incomplete. In fact, it never can be complete. There will be facts not recorded – perhaps not even known at the time by the principle actors. So, you’re never going to look back and get the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. All you’re going to get is part of the story and it is going to be written by people who had their own prejudices even if they didn’t have a specific agenda in what they wrote.

Our saving grace here is that, as God told us, “for every tree is known by its own fruit” (Luke 6:43-45). We can’t know exactly what happened in the past…but we can see what happened and so get some very deep insights into the actual motivations of those who made the decisions. Did a conspiracy kill Kennedy? I don’t know – and I likely can’t know. But what I do know is that after JFK’s death a muscular anti-Communism and a full-throated exploitation American power dwindled to “our long, national nightmare is over” and lets cancel Apollo’s 18-20. Oh, and “ask not” morphed somehow into the Welfare State. Like JFK represented something that our overall Ruling Class didn’t like…and it didn’t like Nixon…and didn’t like Reagan….and now really doesn’t like Trump…all four men being ardent American patriots who view America as the best thing and worthy of building up. If JFK’s assassination wasn’t a conspiracy it certainly worked out to a disaster for the United States…and the primary beneficiaries of the event were contemptible, thieving cowards who have just about ruined the USA.

Just to give you an idea of how bad it is – how low we’ve fallen – I looked up the construction of the USS Enterprise (CVN-65). It was an approximately 95,000-ton nuclear powered aircraft carrier that was laid down on February 4th, 1958 and went into commission (that is, a combat-effective warship for the United States Navy) on November 25th, 1961. A little over two years, nine months from laying the keel to sailing off into the ocean blue ready to do battle for the United States. I then looked up the USS Enterprise (CVN-80). It is an approximately 100,000-ton nuclear powered aircraft carrier laid down on April 5th, 2022. Wanna guess when its going into commission? They hope to have it ready in 2029. Seven years! And do you want to bet on us meeting the 2029 date?

On May 25th, 1961 Kennedy laid out the aspiration of going to the Moon in the 1960s. It was an aspiration. We had no idea how to do it other than some theories on paper. As we went into it we found that we not only didn’t know how to do it, we didn’t even know what we had to learn before we could start figuring out how to do it. But everyone went to work and the project was done in a little over eight years. Sheppard only made his suborbital flight twenty days before Kennedy set the goal. We set up the Artemis program in 2017 to get us back to the Moon and the first manned flight of the program is set for 2026. Who has benefited from this? Who’s fruit? What tree?

Kennedy wanted us to do great things. Nixon wanted us to do great things. Reagan wanted us to do great things. Trump is asserting we will do great things. Johnson: here’s some welfare. Carter: the age of limits. Clinton: depends on what the meaning of is is. Getting the picture? Those who want America to be great and get greater are hammered back into the ground…those who go along with decline are rewarded and praised. Did a conspiracy kill Kennedy? It is irrelevant if it did or didn’t – what’s relevant is that everyone the Establishment hates gets raked over the coals. That tells us what has happened even though we don’t know fact for fact how it happened. And, in the end, it doesn’t matter if its a cabal of wicked people or just a pack of stupid crooks…its all worked out the same and very badly for us.

So, in the end, all we really know is if something worked out well or badly. That it was good, or bad. And while we can’t know if the bad things were caused by malevolence or folly, we should treat all bad things as if they were caused by malevolence. Whether a person is bad or stupid, only whacking them about the head and shoulders will get them to stop being bad or stupid. I don’t care if, say, Mayorkas is in the pay of the Cartels or if he’s just stupid – in either case, I want him jailed for twenty years. It doesn’t matter, in the end, why he left the borders open…it only matters that he left them open and I’ve got no time or energy to figure out his motivation. Whether his successor is stupid or wicked won’t matter as long as in his successor’s office is a picture of him in jail.

And in service of this goal of just punishing the heck out of those who do wrong and/or are stupid, we have to stop going along with the Establishment’s demand that certain subjects aren’t open to question. I don’t care if the guy telling me something is wearing a literal tinfoil hat…I want to hear his statement and assess it on my own. And if he’s telling me that lizard people are causing the decline of American farming I’m only interested in knowing if American farming is declining. If it is, that’s bad – and I don’t care if the guys in charge were wicked or stupid, I want them broken.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan13 Comments

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) took dead aim at the infamous Filburn case – this was a Depression-era court case in which a man was fined for producing for his own consumption more wheat than the federal government allowed. Filburn’s argument – which is 100% correct – was that since his wheat was only for his own consumption it wasn’t commerce (interstate or otherwise) and so Congress had no right to regulate his production under the commerce clause. The Supreme Court – by 1938 controlled by FDR loyalists – simply ruled that the clearly written Constitution meant the opposite of what it said. This is the foundation for why the federal government is deeply involved in all aspects of American life (it was also the foundation of the absurd Roe and Obergefell decisions).

It is way past time we revisited these issues – in fact, Lee might have hit upon the most crucial: that is, the federal government’s assertion under the commerce clause that as anything might effect interstate commerce it is covered by federal law. This assertion makes a mockery of even having State and local government. Commerce is a word with meaning – so is interstate. For Uncle Sam to have a say there must be something for sale across State lines. If it isn’t for sale and/or doesn’t cross State lines, the federal government has no power over it under the 10th Amendment which holds that powers not granted to the federal government are reserved to the States or to the people.

Keep in mind that the federal government’s interference in agriculture was based upon the idea that we must keep food prices high. Think about that. America’s fertile farmland and hard working farmers had done so well that food prices were dropping. Now, this did adversely impact some farmers…no kidding; of course it would. This did result in the heartbreaking fact that a farmer who wasn’t making it was going to lose his farm…perhaps a farm several generations in his family and founded by a hard-bitten pioneer back in the Old West. That was tragic…and some aid should be rendered to any hard working person who is losing out. But to keep food prices high? Why in God’s name would anyone want high food prices?

I guarantee you that farming, as an industry, will never die. People gotta eat – three squares a day, every day. There are 335,893,238 Americans. That is more than a billion meals per day. Every day. We should be producing at maximum capacity to both ensure there’s always more than enough and that it is as inexpensive as possible…not working out ridiculous programs to restrict production and artificially keep prices high so that the least-efficient farms can keep going (spoiler: they didn’t keep going anyway – 100 years ago there were 14 million employed on farms in a much smaller US population, these days it is about 3 million). And don’t get me wrong here – I personally think more people should be in the food production business. I don’t like megacorporations owning vast farm and ranch acreage. I’m ok with tax and regulatory changes which would make it easier – and more profitable – for small, local farms to operate. But to restrict production? That’s just stupid.

Daniel Penny will be attending the Army-Navy game (Go Navy, BTW) as a guest of VP Vance (yes, I know that technically he’s not until 1/20 but its clear that neither Joe nor Kamala are working any longer so we default to Trump and Vance). This has caused some heartache among the Stupid-American Community. Their argument is that it is unsavory for Penny to be there…as if he did something wrong.

And you really need to roll that around in your head. Back in 1912 when the Titanic was sinking, by and large the men aboard swiftly figured out that they were going to have to die if the women and children were going to live. Sure, there were a few cowards but if you, say, roll through the First and Second Class passengers who died, you’ll be in almost all-male company. These were the men with easiest access to the lifeboats – and they were men of social and financial power. They could have mostly got away. They stayed, and died. Because that is what you do. So, too, with Penny. He could have just sat there and pretended he saw nothing…but he saw a threat and he saw innocent people who had no way to defend themselves…and so he placed himself – his life – between the threat and the others. You can never know what will happen once a physical altercation begins. Penny, as a Marine, obviously knows how to take care of himself in a fight but in a fight, the other guy always gets a say. For all Penny knew, he was going to his death…and yet he went anyway. That is just heroism, plain and simple.

And that is what the Left is really complaining about here – not the death, but the heroism. They can’t stand it; they hate it, in fact. They prefer that people sit quietly and accept their fate – no, not themselves. They want to be in privileged communities and transport where such risk will never confront them. But for you, serf, they just want you complacent as they run their little sociological experiments on you. The threat wasn’t a threat – he was a street dancer who needed help! That he was a drug addict who had refused lavish offers of help is simply not mentioned. Because to mention it blows up the whole program. So, Penny had to be brought down…and we all expected a conviction because it is NYC…but we all forgot that the jurors ride the subway, too.

If the Left keeps up with this sort of thing then the world will swiftly come to understand that the real purpose of the police isn’t to protect and serve the honest, but to save the lives of the guilty. We have police so that we, the citizens, don’t have to lynch criminals. A societal decision was made more than a century ago that we would surrender part of our right to self defense in the interests of order and justice (plus as we went along we became a lot more weak-stomached than we used to be). But this only works so long as, by and large, the police keep us safe…and not just safe from rape and murder, but from even being overly harassed as we go about our business. The Left likes to assert that someone ranting and raving on a subway is just something you can ignore…but you can’t. Especially if you’re a youth, or a woman, or an unfit man. That raving lunatic might end up harmless…but you can’t be sure. The whole time he’s there ranting and raving you are in terror. The police are supposed to come and take that man away…and do it so efficiently that only rarely is anyone confronted by someone raving on a subway.

If that deal is broken, then people will reclaim their right to self defense…and the raving nutter won’t be merely restrained by a passenger (this is all Penny did – the man was alive when the police arrived), but he’ll be killed. And nobody saw nothing. The Left doesn’t realize the fire they are playing with here.

UPDATE:

Just so we can all keep up to Social Media speed here, Sidney Sweeney was recently photographed at a pool and to the shock of some, she didn’t look like she does when she’s perfectly made up for the red carpet. They’re calling her mid! Well, we report, you decide (posting bikin-clad pics of Sweeney is NOT engagement farming. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

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.