Open Thread

Mark Noonan33 Comments

A lot of recent polling indicates that whatever momentum Harris was getting after the coup against Biden, it is fading fast. Personally, I don’t think it ever really happened but there are only so many thumbs you can put on the scale before your poll becomes such garbage that you lose credibility entirely…there was a gap of at least several days in polling before the most recent releases and my guess on that is that they were finding what was, in the end, found: even with thumbs on the scale, Trump was at worst holding position to get past 270.

As per usual in all elections, it will be decided by who shows up. Gallup’s most recent party ID poll had the electorate R+6. All of us doubt that – but maybe we shouldn’t. Someone pointed out on X that after months of good polling for Trump GOPers were still dooming and glooming while a week of good polling for Harris got Democrats seriously claiming they’d flip Texas and Utah. We’re just built to be Debbie Downers, aren’t we? We’re so used to losing that we can’t envision winning. Maybe we should start to act like winners? Trump sure seems confident – at the worst of the Kamala-mentum he was out there golfing and nailing it. Any golfer will tell you that if you’re stressed you’ll do poorly. Trump wasn’t stressed in the least.

Keep in mind that public polls are “free” and are therefore designed for a purpose. None of them are agenda-free. Sometimes it is far more subtle than others, but if someone gives you something for free then they want something out of you. Your grandmother can give you a free lunch – everyone else is working an angle. Meanwhile, both parties have pollsters who are crucial in determining which States to spend time and money in. These people don’t mess around. If you’re such a pollster and you steer candidates wrong, you’ll be out of work. Both Team Trump and Team Harris know the state of the race – and they are pouring money into Pennsylvania, especially after Labor Day (oddly, so far Team Trump has reserved about 50% more time in PA than Team Harris – Harris almost certainly can’t get past 270 without PA…so being heavily outspent seems weird…but might also mean that the supposed record-breaking fundraising she did after the coup was just a story; of course, Team Harris might push up their numbers in PA as they see Team Trump do it).

If Gallup is right, or even if its R+2, Harris has an impossible task – there simply won’t be enough votes out there to get to 270…probably not even enough to win the popular vote, even with CA and NY voting for her in droves. R+1 to D+2 means Harris has to draw an inside straight just to get to 270. D+3 its a complete tossup. The polls are mostly predicated upon D+3 to D+5. So, we see lots of polls showing tossup or a slight Harris advantage. And if the electorate is D+5 then, yeah, Trump is going to lose. He simply won’t be able to find enough votes to get past 270. But there is zero indication that the electorate will be worse for Trump than even on party ID – voter registration and primary voting patterns all indicate an electorate more GOP than polling suggests.

Who shows up: that decides it.

And do note that Team Trump is expending efforts to drag low-propensity voters to the polls. These are people who do vote but only in Presidential years and even then not all the time. Lots of polling shows Trump absolutely crushing it with this demographic. Trouble is: they don’t vote all the time. It isn’t an absolute necessity that Trump get these people to show, but if he’s successful in doing so, what in polling today is a tight race becomes a blowout win for Trump. We’ll see if Team Trump’s bet on this pays off.

Harris’ first big policy roll out has been to steal some Trump policies and add a bunch of Communism. You should hear her border ad in Nevada – to listen to it, you’d think she’s a MAGA border hawk. It stops just half an inch before “build the wall”. It is a nauseating lie – if she wins she’ll do nothing to control the border. In fact, it’ll be a signal to let 20 million or more in. But that she’s running the ads shows (a) she’s very weak on the issue and (b) Trump has moved the window on it…just by talking about it over and over and over again. Open borders is simply unpopular. Even pluralities of Democrats favor closing the border. I’ve seen polling where majorities of Latinos favor mass deportations. Trump has won the immigration debate – of course, it only becomes reality if he wins. Anyone else will simply mouth some words and keep the bodies flowing.

But the Communism is the thing – and it is working out badly for Harris. Her program of essentially imposing price controls is being panned even in parts of the Left. Everyone who thinks at all knows it is a bad idea. The inflation is because of the government spending money it doesn’t have. Everyone knows that the only way to get inflation to halt is to dial back government spending while increasing domestic production until rising wealth restores the equilibrium we had in 2019. Her bizarre idea of providing 25 grand to new home buyers is being noticed as the pandering it is – with plenty of comments from current homeowners about how its not exactly fair to shovel cash at some people and not others.

Walz continues to be a drag on Harris – not in polling, but there’s some nonsense in that. But the crucial thing – and the thing least likely to show in general national polling – is how veterans view Walz. Most civilians simply won’t understand how infuriating it is to any veteran to see someone fake their record. Sea stories are fine – appreciated (Old joke: what’s the difference between a sea story and a fairy tale? A fairy tale begins with “once upon a time” while a sea story begins with “no sh*t”). But to lie about actual service is despised. We all honor each other’s service – doesn’t matter where you were assigned; if you showed up and did your job, you’re one of us. Sure, there is extra honor accorded to those who had to really get down into the mud and blood, but no veteran denigrates those who served. All veterans pledged their lives and that’s good enough. But to lie about it – to appropriate valor and suffering not endured – is just disgusting to veterans. And to do it – like Walz – to burnish a resume for political purposes is just beyond the pale. Recent polling in Virginia shows it close – and this after the coup. That is Virginia’s massive veteran population. There are lots of bureaucrats in northern Virginia voting with their paymasters in DC…but tidewater Virginia is packed to the gills with retired Marines and sailors who, I assure you , despise what Walz did. This could have a small but decisive effect on the result.

Meanwhile, JD Vance continues to impress. We all loved how the latest attack on him was someone dredging up a picture of a young Walz apparently down for the count after a bout of youthful drinking. Another showed him goofing off with some girls in the boys room. I don’t know what they were thinking on this one – all it did was make him more relatable. I mean, relatable to anyone who challenged Jose Cuervo to a duel in high school. This, I think, is most of us. But maybe not Liberals? I dunno. Maybe Liberals don’t have fun. Maybe that’s their problem? Anyways, the guy is turning into teflon – and I think he’ll mop the floor with that phony, Walz.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan15 Comments

There’s been a persistent rumor that Biden is not at all pleased to have been forced out. I don’t know if its true but I’d bet money that it is. Gotta think about it: He was happily retired in 2019 and it was the party bosses who prevailed upon him to run. They figured that “Scranton Joe” was the best shot at beating Trump. He got into it because he was asked to get into it – and this after being rudely passed over in 2016 in favor of Hillary! Remember: he was the sitting VP of what was accounted as a very successful, two-term President. The normal course of events would be Biden getting the nod as reward for his loyal service much as Bush did in 1988 and Humphrey did in 1968. But, no: Obama and Clinton had struck the deal in 2008 and she was determined to collect in 2016…the skids were greased for her so that, really, nobody else had a chance. Passed over for what Biden likely thought was his turn, he went into retirement…until called out of it. Then, in his mind, he beat Trump (and, likely also in his mind, confirming that he would have beaten him in 2016 if he hadn’t been pushed out). He loyally allowed the Party to do its thing under the umbrella of his name…and then got unceremoniously dumped when the chips were down. In Biden’s lucid moments, that has to be infuriating. And justly so – I despise the creep, but he was done wrong by the Democrat establishment. This is why, I believe, that Harris’ desperate attempts to create distance from Biden are being undermined by routine Biden statements that she and he were tied at the hip.

I also believe that the recent revelations about Hunter and Bursima are part of this – a stern warning to Biden to knock if off. Remember: the weapons charge he was convicted off was the smallest charge possible. He actually faces a host of very serious federal crimes (along with untold numbers of State crimes across multiple jurisdictions) – it was all buried in favor of what was supposed to be a slap on the wrist. Hunter – because he’s a druggie – rejected the sweetheart deal and now does face some jail time…but still no more than a year. The rest of the charges would have him in jail effectively for the rest of his life. Biden is now being warned that if he doesn’t cool his jets a lot of bad things will happen.

And to the thought that Biden could just pardon Hunter – definitely not for State charges and the bottom line is that Nixon’s pardon was never seriously challenged. It is not settled as to whether or not a President can pardon for charges not yet filed, let alone not even known. Basically, Hunter is massively at risk – at the bare minimum of spending years tied up in court burning through every cent the Biden family has. So, cool it, Joe.

But, will he? He’s an arrogant ass as much as his son is. Personally, I hope Joe throws a grenade or two. Not just because it would harm Democrats but because it would be just. Democrats didn’t have to lie. They chose to lie – and they should pay the piper for that.

The Musk-Trump conversation has been seen by, well, just about everyone. Officially 263 million views on Trump’s X account…easily quadruple that across all platforms. They can’t stop Trump from getting his message out – and a lot of people seem interested in hearing what Trump has to say. Trump is not unpopular. Not hated. Oh, sure, mindless Democrats still hate him…but everyone else has mellowed on the man. He’s one of us. He’s not a scripted hack saying what consultants say the people want to hear. He’s not in it for himself. In fact, had he announced in 2023 that he was backing out, almost all of his problems would have gone away. He’s obviously doing this primarily because he knows that if he doesn’t – if he doesn’t win – then some very dark, evil things will have won.

Polls are still mixed – some of the most recent have Trump up. Some polls released recently but having end dates 10 days ago show Harris up. As I’ve said all along, if the Democrat isn’t consistently up by 3 points on 11/5 then getting to 270 is almost impossible…and to really have it they’d have to be up by 5. A poll showing Harris up by 3 or less is Trump at 312 electoral votes.

Harris’ popular vote total will benefit from California a lot – she’s popular there. Much more so than Biden ever was. The wine moms of suburban CA will see voting Harris as something they must do in order to retain their social position. But even with that, I still give Trump about a 30% chance of winning the popular vote – because voter registration and voting trends elsewhere just grow more favorable to the GOP. Outside of those wine moms, nobody is pleased with how things are going. As for the EC, Harris will not do as well in WI/MI/PA as Biden – just can’t happen. California liberal simply won’t have as much appear as Scranton Joe. Sure, Joe’s blue collar act was just that, and act – but its an act Harris is incapable of performing. I have no doubt that all three of WI/MI/PA go Trump…and do keep in mind that if any 1 of the 3 go Trump, Harris can’t get to 270. She needs all 3; she has to draw an inside straight…and not lose Nebraska’s 1st CD…which has had a big increase in GOP voter registration since 2020.

Side note: the funniest result is Harris taking all 3 but losing NE-01…that works out to a 269 tie. It won’t happen. Like a billion to one against…but it can happen and it shows how much Harris has to thread the needle to 270 while Trump has a half dozen ways to get to it.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan39 Comments

If Biden hadn’t picked Harris then she would have spent the rest of her life as a rather stupid Senate back-bencher. Of course, Biden would have spent the rest of his life as a rather stupid Senate back-bencher if Obama hadn’t picked him. Harris is kinda stupid squared. And once again it is all Obama’s fault: I’ve complained about Biden’s ego but nobody comes close to Obama on that score. Everyone around him had to be second-rate so they couldn’t possibly outshine Obama…who isn’t nearly as smart as his acolytes think. In fact, maybe we’re into stupid cubed here?

Anyways, how’s it going? I know you’ve been exposed to the Doom Mongers; they’re out in force! And I suspect some of the larger Doom accounts on social media are paid by Democrats. It is all an op, guys. Never forget that. The MSM doesn’t just shade the truth here and there – they are the Comms op of the DNC. The only way Harris wins – and that barely – is if GOP turnout is forced down quite a lot.

62.9 million in 2016.

74.2 million in 2020.

That’s more than a 11% increase. The Democrat’s nightmare? That he even does 50% of that for 2024…they need to depress the GOP and especially GOP-leaners who only vote in some Presidential election years. How bad are they going to lie? This bad:

That is how much they will lie – completely brazen. Absolutely not telling you the truth. They will be 180 from reality. Do not lose heart! Do not let them fool you. I remain absolutely confident in Trump’s victory. In fact, I’ve never felt so good about politics. Not even 2004 when I was feeling pretty darned good about our chances. This is different – I am happy we’re having this battle. I am not stressed in the least. This is the most fun I’ve ever had watching politics.

How is it really going? Here’s how:

Not every State lists their voter registration by partisan ID but it is highly likely to be like this across the board. Does this guarantee a Trump win? Of course not – but people are moving to the GOP for a reason. I can’t see this not coming out in the votes. Do keep in mind that the Party in Power loses for two reasons:

  1. They’ve just been there a long time (like the GOP in the 1992 cycle)
  2. The Party in power has loused everything up (like the Dems in 1980 or the GOP in 2008)

Team Democrat hasn’t been in very long – not enough time for everyone to just grow tired of them…but I will assert they have loused everything up. To be sure, trends only continue until they don’t…but I have to figure that every time someone goes grocery shopping “MAGA” shines a little brighter…and that’s why we’re seeing these voter registration trends.

Trump went back on X – and his posts are immediately getting millions of views. Democrats are upset about this. I suggest pointing and laughing at them.

Update: The Musk-Trump conversation. I listened to it live. Those two can talk! And that’s what it was – two normal human beings having a conversation about what is going on. Peaked at more than 1.3 million active listeners. 72.9 million views of the X post about it. Many large accounts were also streaming it – some have guessed the live audience in total might have peaked at about 10 million. Lord only knows how many people will listen over the next few days. Team Trump definitely needs to do an edited version – some of it was outright fantastic and laugh out loud funny. Probably boil it down to a 30 minute “best of” and get 50 million to download it, easy.

Do You Want to Die?

Mark Noonan38 Comments

Couple things came across on X today that got me thinking a little more deeply about our current condition.

The first was a news report about the President of the International Olympic Committee claiming, to quote, there is “no scientifically solid system” to determine male or female.

Next thing was a report out of the UK where the government is going full-Gestapo against British people who dared to be upset about foreign savages stabbing British girls.

Final thing was, in response to that, someone posting a link to the Sex Pistols song, God Save the Queen. You remember it, don’t you? I do; and this bit:

God save the Queen
She ain’t no human being
There is no future
In England’s dreaming

These three things rolled around in my head a for a bit and it occurred to me, very counter-intuitively, that because the Brits tolerated that lyric, they are now being arrested for posting memes about foreign savages.

It might seem wrong to think that because, of course, the UK government is savagely repressing free speech whereas the Sex Pistols were a sort of test case for free speech. The sort of thing we were told we must allow to happen or we’d all end up arrested. Well, the Brits did let it happen – and now they’re being arrested. Funny, isn’t it?

There’s no future in England’s dreaming. They did get that right, but not how they meant. What they meant was that there was no future in England’s dream of a solidly middle class society of strictly law-abiding people who did the right thing cheerfully. Punk rock was at war with that. So was the rest of British pop culture – and, indeed, pop culture all through the West; taking endless shots at the staid, boring old fuddy-duddies who just wouldn’t let people have fun. We’ve got to fight for our right to par-taaaaay!

But, of course, nobody was ever against having fun – but the fuddy-duddies did object to thinking that being garbage was fun…being drunk. Being stoned. Being on welfare. Dressing like a weirdo. This wasn’t fun; this was just being insulting. And living off the productive while doing it. So the fuddy-duddies objected and got made even more fun of…and so they just let it happen because, being fuddy-duddies, they didn’t want to seem rude. Problem was that there was a social system which was based upon sobriety, hard work, thrift, being law-abiding…and it was so very successful that it built a surplus that lazy, profligate drunken thieves could take advantage of. That old fuddy-duddy society is now long gone…and now your daughter can be murdered by a foreign savage and if you object you’ll get a visit from the police.

And that brought my mind back to the IOC President – what he said is a lie. He knows it is a lie. Everyone who heard it knew it was a lie. He knew that everyone who heard it knows that he knows it is a lie. Yet, he said it; he went ahead and lied. And he still has his job. The particular lie here isn’t really the point – the point is that our society has become so entirely suffused with lies that we don’t really even notice them. A lot of people commented on the article – but only very rarely did anyone call it a lie. They called it stupid. They called it ignorant. They called it all sorts of things but only a few (me, included, of course) called it what it is: a lie.

You have to really roll that around in your head for a moment, what the IOC guy said: he is denying not some controversial theory of the universe but a self-evident truth. I don’t need to prove to anyone what a man is. I don’t need a DNA test. I need to merely see the person – naked if necessary just in case there’s been some surgery, etc – and that will tell me what I need to know. I no more need to prove a person is man or woman than I need to prove to anyone that water is wet by pouring a bucket of it over their head. We know water is wet. We know what a man is. We know what a woman is. There’s no guesswork here. And that makes the IOC President a liar – quite an egregious and ridiculous liar. The only possible out for him would be a determination that he is stark, raving mad. Because only a madman can possibly not know the difference between a man and a woman. Anyone else making such a claim is just a liar.

It is said that C. S. Lewis was greatly influenced by G. K. Chesterton and I do believe this is true – if for nothing else than that both of them hit upon the requirement that if you’ve gone wrong, you have to go back to the mistake – no matter how far back that is – and fix it from there. It is no use trying to tinker with the mistake. You can’t fix wrong – you can only stop being wrong. And as I pondered all of this, it came into my mind that the error – where we went wrong – was when we accepted the assertion that we must tolerate wrong if we want to be right.

You know the argument: its generally associated with the Libertarian ideal these days but its been around for a long time. Let’s just say it started with Voltaire in the 18th century – “I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it”. This, of course, was in stark opposition to the societal expectation of his day – in both Catholic and Protestant countries – that there are some things you just couldn’t say. Mostly related to blasphemy against God. To be sure, some nations took it hard in the direction of not saying anything against the King, or the government, or the higher orders in general and that was wrong. But because Louis XV would unjustly send a man to the Bastille for speaking out of turn about Madame du Pompadour it doesn’t necessarily follow that we must allow everything to be said as if nothing matters.

It is a good theory, I’ll grant it that – it does seem that if I in any way curtail someone’s ability to say a thing then it might come out that I, in my turn, am curtailed. But what if what the other person is saying is just a lie? What if its an insane lie? What if its an assertion that we can’t tell man from woman? To be sure, we didn’t immediately jump from Rousseau’s absurdities to “hey, I can’t tell what a man is”, but it is a rather straight line. There is another quote from Voltaire which is pertinent here: “those who can make you believe absurdities will get you to commit atrocities”. Yeah. No kidding, Volty ol’ buddy. We went from the absurdity of the proposition that humanity once lived in a “state of nature” to “you can be born in the wrong body” in just 250 years. Blink of an eye. So maybe defending to the death everyone’s right to say whatever they damned well pleased wasn’t such a good idea?

What we’ve done is place lies on the same platform as truth and said, “you’re equal, have at it”. But lies, being lies, cheated and has now kicked truth to the curb and is running wild. Here’s my assertion on this: nobody actually believes a lie. Even the people who get conned out of money by the more conventional kind of liar – you know: “hey, I can get you 25% returns forever, just give me your money”. Nobody believes that – the “suckers” are just hoping they get paid before the pyramid scheme blows up. Everyone knows that there’s no such thing as a free lunch and that what is too good to be true is always false. A six year old can believe a lie. A senile person can believe a lie. No person in possession of their senses does.

But people do go along with the lies – for a variety of reasons and none of them matter. What matters is that they are participating in them even if just by silent consent. And they participate because they are expecting a payoff before it all goes to hell. Even if that payoff is just what they think will be a little bit of peace and quiet. And after now a couple centuries of allowing lies to pervade we are now in a situation where things are starting to crack – and I mean the basics of civilization. You see it: most obviously in the public brawls and looting of stores. But it is also in a bridge that can’t be repaired for years, or a space capsule that can’t land because, apparently, someone forget to make sure it could land…or maybe they didn’t even know what’s required for landing a space capsule? But they launched the thing! They did that – clearly didn’t know if it would work, but they launched it. Far more important than the space ship was that the lies were agreed to…and I’m sure the workforce that failed to replicate 1969 tech is filled with diverse and equitable people…when we need some geek with a slide rule to just do the math.

So, as Chesterton and Lewis pointed out, to fix this we have to go back to the beginning and start all over again. Our mistake was to allow lies. We must not allow lies any more. First off, we have to punish those who are lying. This is crucial: they must feel real pain. Not so much to punish them (though there is that) but to instruct everyone else that lying is bad. Really bad. Like so bad you should never, ever do it. Not even a little bit. Secondly, and far more importantly, we have to ban lying. We can’t let people lie and call it free speech. Just can’t. I know: tricky. This won’t be easy – but if we allow lies to flourish then we’ll just get more lies. Liars like to lie – beats working for a living. Until it is legally and socially impossible to lie and be rich, we’ll just continue to be overwhelmed…and our civilization will die. First in a round of cruel oppression as the liars try to kill everyone who won’t go along, secondly as everything falls apart because liars can’t do things like keep roads and sewer systems working. And do keep in mind that I said the liars will kill us – in fact, they already are: those girls stabbed in Britain were stabbed by liars. Sure, maybe a foreign savage held the knife, but it was a polished, urbane bureaucrat who invited the savage in via lies. Bottom line is that one way or another a lot of people are going to lose everything – liberty, property and life. Your choice: liars, or you.

This Post Never Deployed to Iraq Open Thread

Mark Noonan48 Comments

Who the heck vetted Tim Walz?

His whole thing is “level headed but liberal solider”…you know, MidWest Dad…hunter. Not a kook. The guy bails out on his unit – apparently backing out of his service commitment – just before his unit deploys to Iraq. Then he goes into politics repeatedly claiming to be a combat veteran!

FFS: this is catastrophic for Harris.

Of course the MSM went into overdrive cover up mode as this all came out but more and more of it just kept showing up…it is now impossible to ignore and if they let Walz debate Vance it’ll be presented to a national audience after Walz is the official VP nominee.

Don’t know what they do here – most likely they’ll just try to brazen it out. But there is a non-zero chance they’re forced to dump Walz at some point.

In addition to that, the Walz’ are…well…psychopaths. Walz signed bills to give illegal aliens drivers licenses and place tampon machines into the boys room…while Mrs Walz recalls with delight how she opened her windows so she could smell the fire of the BLM riots. Kinda funny on the tampon machine thing: all day today on X the Democrat bots were out there jumping on every tampon post to say “hey, we need tampons to be available!” as if this somehow explains why they’re in the boys room. The other line the bots took is that all cool guys carry a tampon around just in case a girl needs it. Maybe things have changed since I was in high school back in the last Ice Age but this just seems like…bullsh** on stilts. You’d need a PhD in mathematics to calculate the number of lockers “tampon boy” would be shoved into. I just have this odd idea that girls – being fully capable beings – look after that aspect of their lives very well, thanks very much, and don’t need a man to tell them what to keep handy in case of an emergency.

Harris got heckled by some pro-Hamas people at a rally – it might have been a set up but maybe not. The Democrats ditched the Jew to keep these people quiet but the bottom line is that Hamas – and thus the Hamasniks – want all Jews dead. Just not having one on the ticket isn’t going to make them shut up.

JD Vance again and again proves he’s intellectually brilliant and verbally adept. He simply destroys the false Narratives of the MSM and if he debates Walz the fight will be called after twenty minutes. Think about this: Walz was chosen because he’s lesser than Harris (and, of course, not a Jew)…Vance was clearly chose because he’s great and Trump is not afraid of his understudy shining bright. I’m still favoring RDS for 2028 but I freely admit that Vance impresses me more day by day. And if I’m torn between RDS and Vance in 2028, that’s a good thing.

Officially the race is a tossup with Harris having a slight edge 270-268. This is at the peak of her glow (or maybe a few days after that peak – there is some recent polling showing Trump rising again). I don’t believe that for a minute. I’ve got it at 312 to 226 favoring Trump with him still having slight chances in Virginia and Minnesota. I am completely confident that Trump/Vance will mop the floor with Harris/Walz (or whomever, who knows?). Because Harris is on top, I rate Trump’s chances of winning the popular vote low but I bet he gets above 80 million votes. And he might pull off a popular vote win – if Harris is finally flushed out of hiding and forced to expose herself to the American people in an unscripted setting, she might implode as badly as Biden did – remember, Biden’s implosion was a combination of bad times and Biden’s clear personal failure. If Harris is revealed as unfit (and she’s totally unfit; and without Joe’s excuse of being senile) then that same dynamic will come into play.

As for the bad times – they’re here and very likely to get much worse. The market volatility we see is based on fear that a recession is inbound. In the USA the employment outlook is bleak and while this might lead to a rate cut, that would immediately set off inflationary pressures. Meanwhile, crime continues to surge in the USA, the war in Ukraine continues to go badly: the Russians have been putting massive pressure on the Ukrainians and slowly grinding ahead. To give Ukraine her due she did launch today (or yesterday, depending on time zone) an incursion towards Kursk: this is, in military parlance, a “spoiling attack”. It isn’t a serious drive on Kursk but a means whereby the Ukrainians hope to draw in Russian reserves thus relieving the pressure elsewhere. How effective it is will be determined by the Russian reserves…if they’ve got enough to contain this attack and still press ahead elsewhere, then that is very bad news for Ukraine. South of there, the Middle East remains on fire and nobody can predict how that is going to go. The bottom line is that all of the things that dragged Biden down pre-debate are still at play…and the MSM hyping Harris can only have so much effect on that and that effect wanes ever faster as time goes on.

Meanwhile – here in Nevada we booted 90,000 bogus voter registrations off the rolls here in Clark County. Methinks I feel the hand of our Republican Governor in all this – former sheriff of Clark County and thus has many connections here. Lombardo does have policy ambitions but to get any of them he needs more GOPers in Carson City…so he’s doing what he can to help. Getting those registrations off the books helps a lot because that is the pathway of Democrat cheating – casting ballots for dead or moved-away voters. Not no more! I rate Nevada as Likely-R for November. There’s also moves along these lines in Arizona and Georgia. And there’s been reforms like this all over where GOP has power – so, it’ll be vastly harder for Democrats to cheat this time and they won’t have Covid to help them. This, by the way, is why Trump kept harping on the steal – to keep it in GOP minds and thus provide the political pressure to clean up the system. You think any of this would happen if Trump had just meekly accepted the 2020 result as Nixon did 1960? Also: voter registration trends continue to favor the GOP all over the Battleground States. Lots of Experts downplay this but I just can’t see someone switching to GOP or registering GOP unless they are planning on voting for Trump…with the indication in new registrations that it is low-propensity voters lining up for The Donald.

Feeling Good About #MAGA

Mark Noonan77 Comments

Dow go down – but now the Futures are up. Its a bit volatile out there…and I do think the big banks managed to manipulate us out of a major slide today. A thousand points isn’t anything to sneeze at but there were multiple reports of trading house websites crashing…and so preventing a lot of people from dumping their stocks, especially early on. The bottom line is that we’re in the midst of a debt-fueled bubble. Will it pop? Not if the central banks around the world have anything to say (and they have a lot to say). For the USA it is a matter of just keeping it afloat until November 5th – after that, even if inflation spikes again, they don’t care. Either Harris will have won or Trump would have – if its Harris they’ll blame anything but her. If its Trump they’ll blame him for it all. If Harris they’ll count on the worst of it being over far enough in front of 2028…if Trump, they’ll exacerbate it and hope it stays bad all through 2028.

But it still might pop – and in a 2008 manner. If that happens in the next 60 days, Trump will win in a landslide. That is what will keep the Fed and others massaging the system furiously. Do keep in mind that the very thought of Trump being sworn in terrifies our entire Ruling Class. They will stop at nothing to prevent such a thing from happen. I do hope that Trump’s security team has heads on a swivel. But outside a repeat of Butler, everything else is also on the table – and if you think the MSM has been brazenly lying to this point, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

They are going to try to lie Harris into office. In 2020 they at least had Covid and related problems…here in 2024, it is all bad for the incumbent party. They’ve got nothing to work with except to lie, lie and then lie some more. Harris won’t just be coddled – she’ll be given an endless tongue bath. The whole point of it, though, isn’t to increase her support – they really can’t. She seems to have a hard ceiling and Trump continues to gain in personal popularity. What they are trying to do is convince Republican-leaners to stay home. To figure Trump has no chance and so don’t bother. Harris needs a low turnout election. Very low. Like an election of complete indifference. If you take a look at the polls showing her “surging” they are predicated upon a D+5 or more environment…and not just heavily D, but low turnout so that the D voters make up 42 or 43 percent of the electorate. In other words, an electorate where a huge swath of Presidential-year independent (but GOP leaning) voters stay home. Can they make this happen? We’re going to find out – if they do, they win. And win forever.

Trump’s task is to take the anger at current conditions and channel it into a message of change – if you look at his tag line it isn’t just “make America great again”…it is also make America safe, powerful, wealthy, etc again. This is a line of talk designed to get those GOP leaning independents to the polls. This is why, at times, you’ll see some odd moves in Trump’s messaging…he’s not speaking all the time to you and me, the core GOP electorate. He knows we’re going to be there and for him…but he needs 5 million people who only vote when angry. Angry with crime, prices, immigration…that sort of thing…and willing to come out and give Trump a shot at fixing it.

I remain serene – certain that Trump will win. The party that had to swap out its candidate with a sleazy backstab isn’t on the path to victory. If Harris was in any way good, the DNC would have dumped Pudding Brain late last year and rigged the primaries for her, not Biden. She’s no good. She isn’t “brat”…she’s nearly 60. Like me. She’s old and she represents a dying past…and a dying Ruling Class. Trump may be older in years, but he represents a bright, youthful future for America…a land of hope and dreams…not fussing over pronouns and worried about if a person meets certain gender and demographic requirements.

This is our times, my friends. Finally and at last, America can break free of the Left. Not all at once – what was a century in the making will take time to undo. But we can shatter the chains. We can reclaim freedom – and sanity. I do believe that Trump has tapped into that sensation that nothing is working but that it can be fixed, if the cretins represented by Harris are turned out of office.

They can’t stop us. Oh, they’re going to try – but we are the stronger side. The decent side. The intelligent side. The hard working side. Their collection of grifters, charlatans and blue haired weirdos doesn’t stand a chance against us. We’re going to fight and we’re going to win.

UPDATE: Word is she picked Walz. So, the candidate who bailed out BLM has picked the guy who let BLM burn Minneapolis. This is the first Judenfrei major party ticket. FFS the Democrats are going to get wiped out.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan86 Comments

Trump has agreed to debate Harris on September 4th – Fox News venue but this time with an audience. Other rules apparently like those during the Pudding Brain debate.

Officially Harris is favored to do well at the debate – and she certainly can’t do worse than Biden. But she’s not a very bright person, she does not do her homework and seems to have a lackadaisical attitude about staying on message. I think Trump may be able to flummox her – and an upset Harris with her whiny, nasal voice won’t come across very well.

Outside optics, all policy advantages are on Trump’s side. Harris is busily distancing herself from…well, just about everything she’s ever said before. She has, as I’ve mentioned before, 100% signed on to each bit of Leftist idiocy as it has come up. No holding back! But now she has to convince people who aren’t Leftist idiots to vote for her…and this will be the very first time she’s ever tried that. Remember: she did Deep Blue California politics and then flopped on entering the national stage…only to be plucked from failure by Joe Biden. What I’m saying is that she’s barely ever been challenged – and certainly never challenged by someone like Donald Trump. It’ll be a new experience for her and I doubt she’ll be ready for it. She might think herself a tough cookie, but she’s never had to be tough before.

There is now a plethora of polling showing Harris doing well – that is, vastly better than Joe was doing. The plus and minus of it all still indicates a Trump win…though without the assurance of a popular vote win that Trump was going to get had Joe stayed in. Harris will be incandescently popular in California and that will drive up her total votes. But that doesn’t matter – what matters is 270 and right now, the worst look for Trump is 268 Electoral Votes…with him having to flip just one of Wisconsin, Michigan or Pennsylvania and Harris having to draw an inside straight to just eke out 270. Some of this polling result is because even though Gallup detects and R+6 environment and most number crunchers expect it to be R+2, the polls are coming in D+5 to D+9. But lets just leave that aside: polls are polls and we learned in 2016 that you can’t live and die by them. The best analysts have dug deep into the numbers and found that what is making Harris look as good as she does is Democrats just being relieved that Joe was given the boot – they were looking at a sure loss and now have flipped to believing that Harris means a sure win. This euphoria will fade…but it will be kept going through the Convention as Democrats and the MSM (BIRM) are determined to give no opening for anyone to challenge her from the floor.

At the end of the day, people still have to buy groceries and gas. The economy still continues to shed jobs for American citizens. Housing prices are still unsustainable. Autos are too expensive. Crime is on the rise (in spite of bogus numbers from the FBI saying it is going down). The border is still a mess. Hearing of an illegal committing a rape or murder is still a common occurrence. In other words, the fundamentals of America which had Trump winning before the debate continue. Harris has to fight against this headwind and hope that she can convince people that she can fix what she and Joe broke. This is a nearly impossible task even with the MSM in the tank for her. The MSM was just as much in the tank for Joe Biden and we see how that worked out. You can’t get around what people live through – you can’t talk them into calling themselves liars.

They say it is Shapiro who will be the VP pick – I guess someone leaked a proposed Harris/Shapiro ad. OTOH, this “leak” might have been intentional…a means to get Harris to not do it. Anti-Semitism of the most vicious sort is common among Democrats these days…especially among their most activist people. You know: the people who riot and burn things when they don’t get their way. But even if they end up going with Shapiro, I’m not too worried. Yes, he will complicate Pennsylvania for us, but nobody votes for a VP…and he’ll be carrying around the barnacles of Harris’ idiotic policy statements over the past four years. Plus, now that I’ve got a look at him he seems a typical Democrat – an ignorant, arrogant, elitist ass. Vance will destroy him in debate.

I don’t think I’ve ever been more serene about the result of an election. In think I’ve reached a sort of Mistrust Nirvana – that is, I am so disconnected from consuming the MSM propaganda that I now assume the truth is 180 from what they’re saying. They’re telling me that Trump is doing terrible and Harris is this super genius. Sorry, no. I know that Trump isn’t doing terrible. He never led in polling in 2016 and 2020 (aside from temporary leads in one or two outliers). Trump has been consistently tied or ahead since March. He’s already mostly locked down Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona. He’s got huge cash on hand. He forced a sitting President to quit. Maybe I’m stupid. Maybe I’m biased. But I just feel that Trump is on the path to win this thing – and by a substantial margin after its all said and done.

A Program of Reform

Mark Noonan22 Comments

The Democrats are making their idiotic push to place term limits on the Supreme Court. This won’t work (at least right now) and it has nothing to do with fixing anything: they just don’t like a Court that doesn’t rule in their favor. But a clever GOP (don’t laugh) would latch on to this and broaden it into a general reform effort.

I do think the American people are getting into the mood where, per Jefferson, they are willing to alter or to abolish their form of government. Part of this sentiment does stem from ignorance – the nimrods who don’t like the Electoral College, eg. But the main thing is that a broad majority perceives, however imperfectly, that things just aren’t working. That the government is actually hostile to the people. In light of this, I’ve got some suggestions on how we should go here.

Term Limits

Yes, indeed, let’s have some. Of course on the Supreme Court – but also on the House and Senate. Eight years is more than enough for a person to be President. Probably twenty is good for a Justice (and that is all federal judges, not just the Supreme Court). But the House should be a ten year max (5 terms) and the Senate eighteen (3 terms). But we don’t stop there! Oh, heck no!

One of the objections to term limits on Congress is that it in theory turns all power from transient office holders to permanent staff and bureaucracy. And this is a genuine danger. The solution is simple: nobody is allowed to be a federal employee for more than twenty years. There should be a fairly rapid turnover of all government personnel – both to bring fresh ideas in and to periodically clear out people who have burrowed in, set up a corrupt system and now just reap the benefits. A wrinkle I’d like to add to term limits: if you are in one elected office, you can’t seek another. So, you’re a Representative who wants to run for Senate? Resign your office first. Senator who wants to be President? Resign your office first. You ran for a term and you are obligated to serve that term dedicating 100% of your time to that office…if you are seeking another office, you busted that deal. Out you go.

Power Corrupts

It isn’t just that they are in there too long, it is also what they do when they’re in there. Most of our Congresspeople are dimwitted pyschos who merely follow orders so they can stay at the trough. Replacing them on a rapid basis will help cure this but it can’t cure human nature – and anyone who actually seeks power is to some degree insane. So, we need some controls on them.

First off: nobody elected or employed by government can make more than 200% of the median American income. We’re just not going to pay them very much. This might seem counterintuitive in that a low paid bureaucrat is theoretically easier to bribe (and that risk is real) but what I’ve seen in history is that low paid bureaucrats tend to be dedicated people…in other words, they wouldn’t take the job in the first place based on money as there simply isn’t any. Low paid bureaucrats tend to be dedicated, hard working people who do it as a calling. Oh: no pensions except for retired military. Everyone else gets a 401k. Electeds get nothing.

Second: Upon leaving office, every person who was paid by the Treasury endures a full financial audit from an outside auditor. Every last thing is looked into – where every penny came from, where it went to. Save those receipts guys: you have to account for every cent. If you can’t, then lots of jail time is on the horizon depending on how many cents are unaccounted for. This is the backstop – the sure knowledge that once you’re out of power, someone is going to check and see if you were on the take while in power.

A large problem is friends and family. As we have seen with Hunter, family and friends latch on to the elected family member and milk the connection for all it is worth. So: if you have a family member in elected office you may not be employed by any government agency, government contractor or non-profit organization. Nor can you be employed by any entity that receives more than ten percent of its funding from the government. Essentially, once you’ve got a family member in office (family: parent, sibling, grandparent, uncle/aunt, child, first cousin), you can only work in 100% private sector enterprises. Persons identified as close friends of an elected are audited every five years. Another aspect of this: once an elected or bureaucrat leaves office they can never be employed by an agency of government, a non-profit or an education entity that receives government funds. Need to stop the nest-feathering.

Best and Brightest

As we have seen of late, the people running our government are very stupid when not actually malevolent. This is because the government has used the same feeder system of schools to obtain their staff and those schools have collapsed into a morass of Marxist indoctrination. The bright, young New Dealer of 1933 actually had a substantive education often far in advance of the overwhelming majority of the American people. He might have got it wrong, but he got it wrong after thinking it over. Today’s Ivy League graduate has barely a sixth grade education from 100 years ago and is infused with some of the most stupid, illogical and anti-human ideas ever created. We need a new way to find our bureaucrats.

Aside from the twenty year limit on having them around, I also say that nobody over the age of 25 can start government employment – civil or military. The oldest government employee will now be 45. We don’t need old barnacles like Fauci hanging around for decades. The low pay will stop attracting people who are primarily motivated by money and that is a big help right there – but to make sure we’re not just replicating the corrupt and stupid bureaucracy generation after generation, I want competitive testing for entry and these tests to be conducted by randomly chosen outside testing companies. Basically, nobody in government gets to decide who will be employed by government. The old boy network comes to an end. We’ll still get idiots and thieves, but I think this would vastly reduce their number.

These are just some of my ideas: I’m sure others can come up with refinements, improvements and things I haven’t even thought of. But I do think that we on the Right have to start pushing a general program of reform – that will require major Constitutional changes – because we have found that our current Constitution insufficient to secure our rights and the orderly and honest conduct of government.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan30 Comments

Harris is at the peak of her MSM-created glow…and according to the polling averages…she’s still losing.

We also know this, even without looking at polls, because she’s putting the word out that she won’t ban fracking, doesn’t support a mandatory gun “buy back” and no longer supports Medicare for All…at least, that is what aides are telling MSMers. To get Harris to actually state this publicly is probably an impossible task…it would infuriate the Democrat base. This is just done so the MSM can slander Trump for making “baseless” attacks.

Here in Nevada the only thing I’m seeing from Democrats on the regular is their abortion-all-the-time ads. These specifically trying to make Sam Brown politically toxic against Rosen in the Senate race. Will it work? We’ll see; the issue saved Democrat bacon here in Nevada in 2022…but that was because the GOP never refuted the ads. The apparent strategy was to ignore the issue and hope it went away. That didn’t work. Brown has put out some counter ads explaining his position…but I think to defeat the issue (that is, make it neutral) he’ll have to take on the pro-abortion referendum on the Nevada ballot. This was designed to drive up Democrat voting for November – it is totally un-necessary as abortion is secured in the Nevada Constitution up to six months. But the referendum the Democrats cooked up is extreme – it legalizes abortion to birth, allows non-doctors to perform abortions and doesn’t require parental notification if a minor seeks an abortion…so, you know, its the “Let’s Protect Degenerates Act of 2024”. It is being marketed as just “protecting reproductive freedom” but if Brown and the GOP can come up with a good program it can be exposed as the extremist bit of legislation that it is…and thus essentially take abortion off the table for 2024.

But the lack of ads attacking Trump or lauding Harris indicates that Team Harris is still getting its act together – they haven’t worked out their message and haven’t put together a strategy for the Fall. Do keep that very much in mind: Harris is nothing more than a stop-gap. A desperate ploy to get rid of Biden who was ushering in a down ballot meltdown for Democrats. So far, Harris is doing what she was supposed to do – stabilize the field. Going from there to 270 is a very tall order, though. Harris is still Harris; someone so bad that she didn’t even make it to Iowa in 2020 and who some were trying to boot from the VP slot earlier this year. And as Harris gets out there – and as the anti-Harris ads from Team Trump get repeated on a loop – we might find that Harris is as toxic as Biden.

Team Harris’ first bit of genius was to work up “White Women for Harris”…where a bunch of looney-tunes Karens talked up how white chicks gotta defer to black women…but also vote for Harris to make up for their support for racism. Not sure how well that will play with people outside the wine mom demographic. Their next step is the upcoming “White Dudes for Harris” which will apparently be headlined by David Hogg, Adam Schiff and Pete Buttigieg. Errr…not sure how this expands Harris’ support. This aside from the fact of the racial segregation. As a joke Trump should have a “Rednecks for Trump” Zoom call…in fact, maybe not as a joke. Heck, I’ll get into overalls and rent a hound dog for that. Team Harris is touting that 80,000 “dudes” have signed up for the event…”Rednecks” would get a million participants, easy.

Bottom line is that I don’t think Team Harris knows what to do here – or, worse for them, they think they do know and what they’re doing is playing Woke Team Intersectionality while asserting that Trump and Vance are the weirdos.

Meanwhile, Venezuela had an election. Why? Because the “deal” Team Pudding Brain made with Maduro was for us to lift sanctions on Maduro’s thug regime in return for an election. Maduro kept his word – he had an election. And after forcing his primary opponent off the ballot and using every manner of fraud in the book…he still lost. But then just announced he had won. He can do this because he has all the guns. It was a box checked off some years ago: confiscate all civilian firearms.

There is widespread unrest in Venezuela because the steal was so brazen but the bottom line is that if the people don’t have guns, they can’t win. There are some rumors that some army units are joining the people and if that is so, there is a chance…but no guns, no revolution. It is that simple: guns = liberty. In truth, there is only one free nation on Earth: the United States with our Second Amendment. Maybe Switzerland a bit but even there I doubt they secure a right to bear arms…it is more that you’re part of the militia and the government provides a weapon, revocable at will.

UPDATE:

“JD Vance and Trump are weird!” – Democrats

Also Democrats:

Man, am I Tired Open Thread

Mark Noonan12 Comments

We left Del Mar yesterday at 12:15 pm. We arrived home at 3:44 am. Why?

Well, because we have enviro-idiots demanding we go green, we are shipping truckloads of lithium batteries around the country and, in the nature of lithium batteries, one truckload of these exploded into flames on I-15 northbound…forcing the closure of the entire road for about 18 hours. This caused all traffic northbound on I-15 to be rerouted the roundabout way to Vegas – I-40 to Needles (just north of there, actually) and then US-95 into Vegas. Trouble is that I-40 is a much smaller road and it went down to just one lane each way due to construction. It took us 8 hours to go 77 miles! So, very tired this fine morning! And wondering if there is a PhD with the skills to calculate the carbon footprint of a truckload of burning lithium batteries combined with thousands of cars and trucks crawling along I-40 at less than 10 mph.

Also mildly curious about what we’re going to do if there’s a terrorist attack on our infrastructure – there are those two ways between LA and Vegas – I-15 and I-40. Shut both of them down via just a couple well placed bombs and just what happens to our economy? We’ve spent trillions on infrastructure and it is soft as butter. And I guess none of the geniuses in our National Security State ever thought that between major roads there should be first-rate lateral communication just in case something goes wrong. But I’m sure our DEI checklists are all filled out.

Anyways, wasn’t able to pay full attention to politics this last week because things like beach, food and beer commanded a great deal of attention. But I did see the cowardly, bet-wetting panic all over Right social media about Harris. As if she was this super-genius the Democrats had been hiding for decades, just to spring on us at the last moment.

No. She’s an idiot. She’s a commie. She’s taken every stupid position the Left has demanded since she entered public life. She’s a desperate stop-gap the Democrats were forced to turn to after Biden imploded and DEI requirements prevented anyone better from getting the slot. Meanwhile, our guy just forced out a sitting President after surviving an assassination attempt. Seriously, guys: grow a pair.

Now, can Harris win? Of course she can. The commie cancer is deeply embedded in the United States. At bare minimum 40% of the American people nod like morons when someone says “AmeriKKKa is a racist nation”. There’s no way around that in the short term. To get Harris to 270 they need to convince another 10% that another round of welfare spending is the way to go – and/or convince them that Trump is a hairy ogre out to get them. This can be done – especially with the MSM entirely in the tank for her. And as I’ve said all along this election cycle: if we lose, then we never had a chance anyway…the cancer will prove too strong to cure.

But I do not think we will lose. Harris is getting a glow based on MSM slobbering all over her. They are naturally producing polls with a Democrat-favorable results. But, here’s the thing: even the polls showing Harris ahead show her losing. Just like Biden, she has to be, at minimum, +3 in the RCP averages on Election Day to have a chance at getting to 270. A chance, guys; Biden “won” in 2020 based on 40k or so votes across 4 States in a D+5 environment. Harris’ path to victory starts out narrow – and Team Trump is already working to narrow it via a series of devastating ads which merely restate what Harris has said. How is it going? Harris’ people are already lying and saying that Harris will not ban fracking…this proves conclusively that at this moment her own polling shows her losing Pennsylvania. Team Trump is focused, disciplined and quite ruthless – they even had a memo out shortly after Pudding Brain dropped out telling us precisely what would happen…MSM orgasm, polls good for Harris…and then they’ll set to work correcting this.

In the end, we place our trust in God; we know how this comes out. And we have a little bit of faith in the man Trump, who has been through hell for us and is still standing. We don’t doom-monger. We don’t get overconfident but we remain confident.