Open Thread

Mark Noonan62 Comments

The Democrats are trying desperately to pressure the Supreme Court to rule their way over the J6 and Presidential Immunity cases. Their method is to exert pressure directly on Alito and Thomas in the hopes that this will convince Roberts to do everything he can to ensure the Court decides in favor of the Dems. I doubt it will work – Roberts is a noodle but it seems that Barrett keeps him on an even keel. The bottom line for both cases is that the punishments inflicted for J6 amount to cruel and unusual while the President must have broad immunity for actions in office even if those actions are considered wrong, even illegal. It would be one thing if the President connived as embezzlement or some such crime…but if the President does something wrong in a political matter then the only solution must be via the political process (impeachment or voting the President out of office; also, of course, the Congress can deny funds until the President bends to Congressional will).

They’re also back on the “expand the Court” kick as additional pressure: rule the “wrong” way and next time we have a trifecta, the Court goes to 15 members. This is something that Congress and the President can do at any time – there’s no Constitutional number of Supreme Court Justices. We just settled at 9 early on and it has been kept out of habit. Personally, I’ve been in favor of expanding the Court for some time – like 25-30 years. The size of the country requires far more federal district courts and that implies a larger Supreme Court to ride herd on them. I figure 11 or 13 is the best number – and the next time the GOP has a trifecta, we should do it. Both for practical reasons noted but also to short circuit any Democrat attempt at a later time – if it was just done, expanding it some more would be seen as nakedly political and Democrats would pay a price at the polls for it.

The Democrats are also inciting violence – I’m not 100% sure it is intentional but the bottom line is that when you call Trump and his supporters an existential threat to all that is good and true, some people will take that literally and act upon it. They are priming their street muscle to act out – and that muscle will act out at some point in some way. We could be heading for a “Bleeding Kansas” if the far Left kooks decide that to “fight the Nazis” means doing things like blowing up churches and assassinating GOP office holders.

Trump’s trial has pretty much dropped off the map – because the Democrats are finding that it is massively backfiring. Trump did a rally in the Bronx. There is much dispute over crowd size (as usual) but the fact of the matter is that it was a fairly large crowd and given the Bronx, it was very much filled with black and brown people…including some rather prominent, political figures not normally associated with the GOP. Will Trump win the Bronx? Not a chance in heck. He’s going to get blown out there – but Trump lost it in 2020 by 67 points. My bet: he will do remarkably better this time. This still can mean, by the way, a 40 point loss. But I see what Trump is up to here – he’s got the inside track to 270. That may change, but at the moment if the election were held today, he’d probably win 312 Electoral Votes. What Trump probably wants in addition to the EC is the popular vote – it is both personal redemption and for raw, political power. Coming back into office more popular than Democrats and with a popular vote mandate means that for at least a year, presuming GOP control of at least one House (almost assured), Trump can get what he wants. Really remake Government – the people will have spoken; it will be what they wanted. So, campaign a bit in the Bronx. Why not? After all, Democrat lawfare has got you stuck in New York, anyway, might was well make the best of it.

Here in Nevada we’ll get to vote on a requirement for voter ID – this is good because if passed (can’t imagine it failing), it will dismantle the last of the Reid Machine…that curious device which always seems to get just enough votes out of Clark County to give Democrats State-wide wins. It is so weird; always in heavily union areas there’s some late arriving votes. I’m sure its a coincidence. Anyways, we’ll be able to vote on if we want people to actually prove they can vote.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan46 Comments

The Trump trial gets ever more ridiculous by the day. The judge is just being massively unfair to the defense and is doing everything he can to help the prosecution. But even with that, it is clear the prosecutor doesn’t have a case. I’m still thinking we might get a hung jury here – perhaps even a not guilty. I mean it: the thing is such an obvious show trial that even a New York jury might figure this is just a step too far. But even with a guilty verdict, this thing will be vacated in short order on appeal. It is just drivel.

Meanwhile, Biden hits the trail and nobody shows up – Trump shows up in Manhattan to large, friendly crowds. There’s a couple outlier polls showing Biden even or slightly ahead – but even in that scenario, he loses. But most polls show Trump ahead, some significantly. Trump, to the absolute shock of everyone, is becoming popular…while Biden is increasingly despised. Everyone knows he’s senile and physically one foot on a banana peel. It is actually kinda insulting that the Democrats are trying to force him on us for another four years.

The pyscho-killer who masqueraded as President of Iran was whacked in a helicopter crash so NATO and the USA expressed their condolences. Because of course. Just f’ing disgusts me the way the USA and the West gets on its knees for the mullahs. The more you hear about the guy the more psycho he was – not a nice guy. No redeeming qualities. A bloodthirsty murderer, mostly of his own people. The riddance level on his death: good.

Various Leftists groups are dredging up Michael Brown (hands up, don’t shoot lie) and George Floyd (I can’t breath lie). Then there was Biden’s vile, racist speech on Sunday. Pretty sure these idiots are looking for another summer of riots. There are those who disagree with me on this – figuring it would be insanely stupid of the Left to stir the pot. My rejoinder to that is the Left is insanely stupid. My thinking is they believe that if they can stir up the fear and hatred of 2020, it’ll somehow work to Biden’s advantage.

We built that pier to bring aid to the Palestinians and Hamas is stealing all the aid. This is because Hamas doesn’t give a damn about human life. None of the Islamists do. Heck, none of the various stripes of pedos, grifters, tyrants and freaks who run our world do. They’re all anti-human and only interesting in obtaining money and sex for themselves.

Red Lobster if filing for bankruptcy because that is what middle class, family-orientated businesses do when the economy is red hot like Pudding Brain says it is.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan34 Comments

Rumor is that Team Biden is working with the Israeli Left to oust Netanyahu so a new, Leftist Israeli government can agree to a ceasefire which will save Hamas. For the Israeli Left, this is how to get back into office – and without the tedious need for an election that Likud might well win. For Biden, it gets Gaza off the table before the Convention so the Democrats don’t have to deal with Hamas rioters in Chicago. The primary thing here is the illustration that for the Left it is always about power – Team Biden and the Israeli Left don’t care about those who have died, nor about those who will die if Hamas is allowed to survive. They have no human feelings at all – just appetite for power (and wealth, sex and the things that go with power).

Will it work? Don’t know. Depends, in the end, how firm the Israeli people are and how much courage Netanyahu’s coalition has. We’ll see about that. But I will lay a lot of blame on Netanyahu: as I’ve been saying from Day One: celerity is crucial. Israel could never afford to drag this thing out. Unless the goal was to let Hamas survive after some severe punishment – and Netanyahu said it was about destroying Hamas – then the only way to do that was a maximum application of Israeli firepower on a tightly besieged Gaza. No supplies or people in or out; systemic, block by block destruction of every person and building in Gaza until the people of Gaza surrender unconditionally. And make no mistake about it: they would have surrendered. Probably after no more than a few weeks of that. Nobody was ever braver than the Poles in World War Two – but both in the initial invasion and during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, the Poles eventually quit after being hammered quite mercilessly by the Germans. People can endure a lot. Courage can make up for a lot of things…but after a while all you’re doing is dying with no hope of success and it is time to call it quits.

The Great Debate: far too many rumors about why now – and why it is being set for June, prior to the Convention. The only things we know for certain is that Trump has accepted and Biden will be in a soft, cuddly cocoon of MSM when it happens. I think it is a high risk gamble by a Team Biden that knows its losing.

Russia launched a surprise offensive north of Kharkov – that is, a surprise to everyone but those who can read a map.

They keep saying the offensive north of Kharkov is a feint…but I gotta say it looks to me like the Russians are going for a pretty classic double-envelopment of Ukrainian forces east of the Kharkov-Donetsk line. We’ll get a better idea as time goes on. But the problem seems to be that the Ukrainians had very limited forces up north…and apparently have a severe manpower shortage in general. In other words, if this “feint” in the north is the real thing, the Russians might find they’re punching into an empty bag. The Ukrainian forces in the east would have to retreat, or be cut off and destroyed – and if Ukraine loses a significant portion of its army, that’s game-over…it would be abject surrender. This is probably the time for the Ukrainians to ask Putin his price for a peace treaty. If it mostly entails giving up what the Russians already have, take the deal. If it is a demand for Ukraine’s destruction, then fight on and probably with more help from the West.

Peru has apparently decreed that being non-binary and the rest of that drivel is a mental illness…mostly because it is.

As I’ve said all along: live your life! Let your freak flag fly if that is what gets you through the day. As in all things, I’ll diligently work to ensure that there is no unjust discrimination against anyone for what they are or what they do. But, a guy in a dress is still a guy. Nobody is born in the wrong body. There are no trans children. Gender is immutable and it is binary. I don’t care what you do – but don’t do it to kids and don’t demand that I participate, even a little bit, in your weird, little world.

The Declaration Test

Mark Noonan24 Comments

On July 4th, 1776 we said, among other things, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. In fact, we asserts this as a self evident truth. You know: like the sun in the sky. I don’t have to prove this is correct, it is what it is. If you reject it, you are a liar or insane, just as you would be if you said at noon at the sun wasn’t up in the sky. To be sure, people can dispute this dogma and the United States is the only nation in the world – and likely will always be the only nation in the world – to assert such a thing in its founding document. But being an American requires subscription to certain dogmas, much as being a Catholic or Evangelical, Muslim or Jew requires subscription to certain assertions. The only way America works is if, by and large, everyone accepts certain things as a given – in America’s case, the Declaration of Independence is bare minimum…if you don’t believe what’s in it, why in heck are you here?

I believe that the problems of America today – as a society – stem from the atrophy of belief in American dogma. That is, we have increasingly ignored the Declaration and gone about doing things which directly contravene what the Founders fought for. This is not some novel idea: all nations and religions eventually have the same problem: a collapse of belief. Some nations and religions recover, others don’t – but they only recover by harking back to first principles and rigidly enforcing them. This is what we must do to save America: we must make belief in America near-universal among Americans. All things we decide to do must pass what I call the Declaration Test: is the proposal in conformity with the Declaration of Independence? If it is, then let us do it. If it is not, then it is abhorrent and must be rejected.

Think about this for a moment: right now, China runs various psy-ops on us while also bribing our institutions to work against American interests. This is part of China’s asymmetric warfare model against us. China reviewed her options in the mid 1990’s after the Gulf War showed American military superiority and decided that any sort of direct military confrontation with the USA would be a high risk operation. At least, that is, until America was massively weakened. Using the lever of “free trade”, China entered the USA and set about the program of undermining us from within while continuing to build up traditional military and industrial might for themselves…so that if a war came, it would be the USA in the morally and physically weak category. And even if war didn’t come, then the erosion of American confidence would leave China the dominant power in east Asia, Africa and South America. There were many arguments made in the 1990’s about why we needed to engage in the China trade – we’d make money! We’ get a strategic partner! Wealth would moderate China’s political system! This was all drivel, as we can see in the results but what was wrong from the beginning is that the USA, as an institution, could not legitimately engage with China. Why? Because China’s government does not have the consent of the governed. The PRC is a standing insult the the ideals of our Founders. It is a rejection of American dogma from start to finish.

It must be understood that under American beliefs, the government of China has not the just authority to do anything. Sure, they have the physical power to do things, but that isn’t the same as having the just power. Never in Chinese history has there been a Chinese government which had the consent of the governed (with a Taiwan exception, of course). If we as Americans enter into agreements with China, who are we agreeing with? A treaty binding on America is a treaty negotiated by the elected President and then ratified by the elected Senate – with any further legislation needed to enforce the treaty created by Congress and signed by the President. In other words, on our side, a binding treaty is something done with the consent of the American people via the mechanisms those people have devised to determine popular consent. China’s government is a corrupt oligarchy which shot its way into power in 1949 and never let go. If we make a deal with China then it means we’ve just made a deal with what amounts to a Mafia. Deals with the mafia are never a good thing – sure, mobsters are noted for keeping their word at times, but you’re still dealing with mobsters. You know: liars and thieves who will twist the deal to suit themselves.

Think about how it would be if we had never dealt with China – certainly never dealt with China since 1949. China, herself, would still be an economic backwater and a distinctly third rate military power. We wouldn’t have Chinese money corrupting our politics and society. Our position in the western Pacific wold remain supreme…we wouldn’t have Taiwan, South Korea and Japan furiously building up their military forces, almost certain to eventually encompass carrier battle groups and nuclear weapons. If we had merely obeyed the dogmas of the USA – if we had put China to the Declaration Test, the USA and the whole world would be better off.

So, too, with one thing after another, in both foreign and domestic affairs. All of our problems stem from a rejection of the wisdom of the Declaration and the embrace of ideas contrary to it. Deep State? Where and when did the American people in Congress assembled really consent to domestic spying? When was it announced before hand that the government would collect masses of data on us and then, after reviewing that data without a warrant, launch criminal investigations of us? The Russians are kicking us out of our base in Niger…when was consent obtained from the American people for us to have a base in Niger? I’m pretty up on things…I don’t recall that debate and decision. When did we consent to sending billions of dollars to NGO’s to transport millions of illegals to the US border? Oh, sure, it was in a law enacted somewhere…but I don’t remember us having a debate about it like, say, we had an open and lengthy public debate about building the Panama Canal. All the time now our government and institutions are trying to slip things in on us – the whole trans thing came out of nowhere with no popular demand and no public debate. It was just decided one day that people can change gender and everyone just had to conform to that. On and on and on like that. Keep in mind, I’ve made no judgement on the merits of the issues I’ve listed – my complaint isn’t that we have a base in Niger or that a guy in a dress wants to be called “ma’am”. My complaint is that we did not obtain the consent of the governed on either issue. Do whatever you want – as long as there’s a debate and decision. As long as consent is obtained.

The Declaration Test must become our go-to thing. Anything that anyone wants – or any thing we discover going on – must be referred to that document and a determination must be made as to whether or not it conforms to it. This is not a Right/Left debate – it is an American/Un-American debate. If we are to be Americans – if we want to be Americans – then we’d better start being Americans.

Team Biden Implodes

Mark Noonan46 Comments

Biden’s intern put up a post on X where a picture of a smiling Biden has the caption, “On my watch, when we make promises, we keep them. And we leave no one behind.” This is after Afghanistan and was posted the day after Team Pudding Brain announced a suspension of military aid to Israel. Here’s the thing about it: as of this writing, it has 3.7 million views…and 11,000 “likes”. Of the people who have seen it, 0.29% have liked it. And keep in mind that on X a certain large percentage of likes are really just “I saw it”, not necessarily an indication of approval. For a bit of comparison, I checked Trump’s old X account – it has been restored but the only time Trump has used it since his suspension was to post his mugshot. He was routinely getting low end 50k likes, high end 300k.

Then there’s the comments! It is hard to find positive comments at all – and the post has been “ratioed”; that is, far more comments than reposts (and indicator that the best time to delete the post was before you sent it; second best time is right now). Most of the comments you’ll find could be shortened to two words beginning with “f” and “y”. This guy is getting scorched by a nation increasingly outraged by how bad things are going.

Meanwhile, Decision Desk (a normally very reliable source) figures that Trump leads in both head-to-head and wide-field matchups in the 7 crucial Swing States.

You can never tell when a shift will happen in politics. In hindsight you can always see it, but while it is happening it is easy to miss. We might not be at the point where it all changes. Heck, Biden could still win this thing. But it seems to me that people are just sick and tired of all this. The betrayal of Israel to curry favor with college anti-Semites might be the last straw – not that most Americans are deeply invested in the outcome in Gaza (they aren’t) but it is just a sleazy move. Everyone can see why Biden is pressuring Israel – and pressuring Israel by denying aid which he and his people rammed through Congress just a couple weeks ago on the assertion that it had to be sent right now. This might be straw/camel’s back stuff.

But it is also a rather large pile of bad – the war in Ukraine is clearly failing. We’re pumping money into Ukraine and while the number of Ukrainian millionaires is at an all-time high, the Ukrainian government has announced that they’ll be combing the prisons for men to draft into the army. Russia continues to advance slowly but seemingly inexorably and we’re just waiting to see if there’s a major Russian offensive this summer (June is the time when the ground is really hard and dry enough in Russia for major movements).

Inflation continues to bite – gas prices are high, food prices are getting ridiculous. Everyone but the rich are being priced out of single family homes. The American Dream is currently unobtainable by youth.

The border remains open – today the story broke of an illegal dragging an 11 year old girl into a van in broad daylight and raping her. Yep: Biden’s people had refused to deport this Dreamer who Just Wants a Better Life. Hey, we gotta have these illegals in order for wages to be crushed so guys who fly private jets to climate change conferences can make a higher rate of return. We’re talking maybe a whole percentage point more annually, guys. That ain’t chicken feed…and if your daughter has to be raped, that’s a price they are willing for you to pay.

And what is the Team Biden program here? Abortion! Our Democracy! Orange Man Bad!

That’s it. All they’ve got. Could it work? Yes. As I said, if it does, we never had a chance.

But I think it won’t work. In fact, I think Biden might already be toast.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan34 Comments

The Trump documents case has been put on hold indefinitely – from what I can understand, the judge is rather concerned about the whole premise of the case and will essentially engage in what amounts to a trial of the prosecutor. This is not a surprise – the case is ridiculous and any decent judge would see right through the scam.

On the other hand, today we saw in the hush money trial in New York the testimony of Stormy Daniels – a proved liar who’s whole monetary existence depends upon getting attention. Gee, no chance she’d be playing an angle here, right? Don’t get too upset about it – the case is also ridiculous but as its in New York, it will proceed to the jury, where conviction is 50/50. But the conviction will be thrown out – you can’t actually do what the judge is doing: that is, allow salacious, uncorroborated testimony designed only to provoke an emotional response from the jury. That Democrats are going ape over the delay in the documents trial is all we need to know about the New York trial: that dog won’t hunt. Convicting Trump in New York will just burnish Trump’s credentials as an outsider. Democrats know this. They wish they could just make it go away. It was all supposed to prevent Trump from getting the nomination. Now “backfire” doesn’t begin to cover it.

The Israelis are restarting their Gaza offensive. They are still taking way too long here. Absolute brutal use of force to finish this quickly is still what they need to do. The longer this drags out, the worse it gets for them. Naturally, the world is screaming bloody murder – the world wants Hamas to survive. They want it to survive because their Arab money bags have ordered them to secure Hamas’ survival. It is really no more than that – the kids out protesting in the colleges have no idea what is going on. They’re just doing what the organizers – who are not students – tell them to do. The whole thing is disgusting – but it all stems from an unwillingness on the part of the Israelis to drive the sword all the way in. I realize that Israel feels a need to stroke the American government – but there comes a time when you choose your nation over your benefactor.

Israel has time and time again had their Arab enemies on their knees, only to hold off from dealing the fatal blow. People forget that for all the early Arab success during the Yom Kippur War, less than three weeks after the Arabs started it, the Israelis were poised to force both the Egyptian and Syrian armies to surrender in the field. They could easily have taken Damascus and Cairo and dictated peace. We told them not to. They went along with it. They have to stop doing that. Kill them. Finish this. Dictate the terms of settlement.

Aside: Kirby was out there announcing that you can’t crush an idea with weapons. As if World War Two never happened. Guys: force works. In fact, it is ultimately the only thing that does work in human affairs. Being law-abiding is a learned habit. Sure, you can find saints. Lots of them, in fact, if you just poke around a bit, and sometimes in the oddest areas. But for most people, most of the time, what keeps them in line is the learned behavior of civilization. Learned so deeply that most people don’t even realize it isn’t something that comes naturally. And what taught the child to share wasn’t a reasoned argument; it was a rap on the knuckles. The adult doesn’t even remember being taught to share. To say “please”. It happened so young that our memories don’t stretch back to it. So, too, with societies – especially when they’ve gone terribly wrong. What burned the cancer of Nazism out of the Germans was 1,000 bombers unloading on their cities night after night. So it will have to be with the Palestinians. A lot of them will have to die so that the shell-shocked survivors understand that it was all a lie, and never fall for it again.

The Boy Scouts will now be Scouting America – for diversity. Bottom line: if you have a son, do not send him there. They will be groomed by perverts. The leadership of the scouts has absolutely no idea what the Boy Scouts are about – and after bankruptcy brought on by sex scandals, they are trying to DEI their way back into relevancy. What the Right has to do is create an entirely new organization – I favor calling it the Rangers, as that has a distinctly American ancestry going back to pre-Revolutionary times and brought forward into modern times by the Army Rangers in World War Two. I’m not particularly concerned with sex segregation; certainly not for members under 12. As long as proper segregation is maintained in the most crucial areas, there can be groups that have both boys and girls. But they can also be segregated. I’d allow local chapters to decide. The program would mostly be just scouting: that whole camping, hiking, doing good works in the community thing. Kids need that – kids today especially need something that will get them away from video screens. But I’d have it emphasize self reliance, hard work and honesty. They idea is to help parents craft their youngsters into sober, hard working citizens of the Republic. And I think it would experience rapid growth.

The Limits of Self Determination

Mark Noonan10 Comments

One of the principles of global affairs that is universally accepted is the right of peoples to self determination. That is, as far as possible, every identifiable nationality should be able to determine its own fate by its own means of arriving at national consensus. For the most part, this is the correct way to go because human beings have a right to their community and their community may express itself. Certainly, as we sit here in our United States, we do not wish to have any alien power dictate to us how we shall conduct our affairs. Any such effort would be considered by us to be an act of war and we would almost certainly fight against it. But even with that, I think that the expressed principle of self determination is incorrect.

To take a step back out of any modern controversy, back from the late 19th century until World War One, the Serbs were considered to be rather pests in the European body politic. They were primitive, nearly barbarous and were given to insane outbreaks of violence. Part of this, of course, was because they had for centuries been under Turkish rule and that rule was not conducive to the development of civilized behavior…but, still, the Serbs had agency and once they gained full independence from the Turks, they did a lot of really lousy things and well earned a reputation in Europe for being a problem to be dealt with. One of the more hideous things was the murder of King Alexander and his wife Draga during a coup; not just murdered, but mutilated. One of the major conspirators in that effort had a hand years later in setting up the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand which led to WWI. Nutshell: not nice people. But once World War One got rolling, Anglo-French propaganda turned these barbarians into the “plucky little Serbs” fighting the mean, old Austrians. Truth be told, the Serbs deserved all they got and more.

Given all that they had done, were the Serbs really people you want self-determining? If it was just that they were being lousy to each other, that wouldn’t be so bad, but they also touched off a world war. It is when you review the full story of the run up to WWI that you understand why the Great Powers of Europe tried to sustain Turkish rule over Serbia…the Turks were holding down people who very often needed a beating. So, there’s our fly in the ointment: we want people to rule themselves, but what do we do if they rule themselves so badly that it causes catastrophe?

Now lets jump over to today: we’re told that the Palestinians deserve their own State, totally free and independent. Leave aside that the Palestinian leadership says they want all of Israel and the massacre of all Jews. Lets just go with the concept that in Gaza and the West Bank the principle of self determination dictates an eventual fully independent State. It isn’t just Islamists saying this – it is some of the most reasonable, intelligent and educated people in the West. It is taken as a given that our end must be Palestinians governing themselves. And to be sure, in theory I think that all of us would want that – given that we want the same for ourselves.

But here’s the problem: Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Sure, the Islamists called it an “open air prison” with the Israeli border controls but that is just nonsense; and if it was a prison, it was enforced not just by Israel, but by Egypt, which has controls at least as strict as Israel’s (and probably more). However you want to slice it and no matter what complaints you wish to make about it, Gaza was free of Israeli occupation. The people of Gaza could choose their course. They were also the recipient of untold billions of dollars in aid from all around the world. They had the freedom and the money to choose.

They choose to build rockets and rape/murder squads.

Self determination suddenly looks a lot less cool, if you ask me.

How in heck is Israel supposed to live next to that? And a fully independent Gaza and West Bank just means even less ability for Israel to check those forces in favor of rockets and rape. The Israeli city of Sderot is 2,800 feet from Gaza. Do you want people who build rockets and rape/murder squads 2,800 feet from you? From your daughter? It is not something that any rational person can agree to – especially after 10/7. Maybe in the days when it was just a few rockets that Iron Dome could mostly stop and the every now and again stabbing attack…but when its 1,200 dead Jews including women who were raped to death, that makes it impossible to lived next to the people who did that. People who do that have to be watched; controlled; ruled.

Perhaps some day in the future the Palestinians can regain self government, but it would take at least a couple generations of instruction – basically un-teaching them hatred of the Jews. Until then, I can’t see any reason other than stupidity for wanting a Palestinian State. We can’t let adherence to a theory blind us to reality. However it happened, and whoever was at fault, the Palestinians have become essentially a national Einsatzgruppe bent on the murder of Jews. Until that is changed, they can’t decide for themselves.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

Biden promised to unify us – and if you click here you’ll see Right and Left both shouting “F*** Joe Biden”. Unity: achieved. Biden doesn’t win with this sort of attitude at large in the Republic. Its not that the Hamasses will vote Trump, but they’ll vote third party or stay home. I remember the Carter years: I don’t recall anyone held in as much contempt as Biden is.

Trump is doing well right now – and we are getting to the point in time where it would take something massive to shift it back to Biden. One can’t predict massive events, of course – they come when they come. But if polling is still tied or favoring Trump by June, then the November result is probably baked in. That said, we are having trouble down ballot. Lots of it. To be sure, special elections are not very predictive of general election results, but we are seeing a general lack of enthusiasm for GOP Congressional candidates all across the country.

Democrats are, naturally, pointing to this as an endorsement of Biden…but its is more that GOPers just aren’t showing up. And I believe this is because there’s no reason for them to. The Congressional GOP has knifed the base in the back over and over again…so what does it matter if the GOP keeps the House? We used to all think that at least we’d get something if we had a majority…now we know we won’t just get nothing, but we’ll get nothing along with egregious insults. If the GOP wants to win Congress, they’d better pick a fight with Biden. A big one. As it stands right now, the only thing that can possibly save them is a big Trump win dragging a few marginal GOPers over the finish line (this is why there’s still a solid shot at the GOP retaining a House majority and gaining one in the Senate). But we could have had a Red Wave year in Congress…if the GOP had just given GOPers any reason to fight for one.

Red State colleges are being brought under control. Blue State colleges are still the home of raving anti-Semites. One funny note – at one college, some frat boys dragged down a Palestine flag and raised Old Glory. There’s now a go fund me to give them a party and last I checked it was over $270,000.00. It is all great and fun – and watching our flag go up was moving. But I think the GOP – and Trump – could make a big impact. They should have the party – and Trump should be there. It just so perfectly encapsulates what is going on…Democrats coddling foreign savages and domestic traitors while we patriots stand tall for America.

It is just terrible what we’re seeing here – Jewish kids being denied access and physically assaulted. As if an American who happens to be Jewish has anything to do with Israel. Even if one wants to say that Israel is the bad guy, what does a 20 year old college kid in New York have to do with it?

Nothing, of course. But, neither did the 20 year old Israeli girl who was raped and murdered on 10/7 have anything to do with Israeli policy. This is the wages of anti-Semitism. Once you start down the road of saying “the Jews” then you’ll become an increasingly evil person…willing to commit and tolerate all manner of horrors. I blocked yesterday a Catholic account on X because they started in on “the Jews”. I know that ignorance is the foundation of it all, but I think, also, there is something more sinister…something deeply embedded within Fallen Man. That is, to find the scapegoat. To relieve ourselves of responsibility by finding someone at fault for our own shortcomings…or even our own cowardice when faced with a difficult problem. It is hard to do things…but blaming someone is easy. And it is an ego-stroke when it presents itself as esoteric knowledge that only the Wise have access. Rely on it: if you confront an anti-Semite and find an unanswerable argument, their response will be “educate yourself” as if it was you, not they, who is ignorant. But that sort of ego boost is what keeps people on the train…and makes them become worse over time as they must either repent or go all the way.

There is a bill now passed by the House which makes anti-Semitism illegal. This is Democrat/Uniparty window dressing – something to do to make it appear they are doing something (and you know darned well that if the law is enacted it’ll be turned against us in a heartbeat). The bottom line is that the Hamas protestors on campus are already violating civil rights laws. If two or more people conspire to deny a right or privilege then that is a civil rights violation carrying a max of ten years for each offense. When a Jewish kid is blocked from access to campus because he’s Jewish, that is against the law. Period. Under US law you are allowed to hate Jews all you want, but you can’t stop them from enjoying the rights and privileges that all have under law. All of these kids are looking at hundreds of years in jail…if they get prosecuted. And that isn’t happening. And nobody in the Ruling Class wants it to happen. Why? Because of Arab oil money – nobody wants to jeopardize that. Huge amounts of it flow through American institutions and it is all predicated upon allowing the anti-Semitic tropes about Israel to persist.

If we do get Trump in, my hope is that he goes after these people – the statute of limitations is 7 years for these offenses. I want hundreds of these rich, privileged white kids dragged through the judicial system for years over this. We must instruct them: you can’t do that. You can’t, that is, sign on to a fashionable cause and violate rights and think you’ll just walk away from it.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan43 Comments

Vile anti-Semites have largely taken over many US colleges and in just a few areas, the authorities are moving against them – recently in Texas. Once this happened, quite a number of people on the Right got upset. You see, we’re suppressing free speech.

I am so very tired of this drivel – this Libertarian nonsense that I’m obligated to look after the rights of people who will have me shot at the first opportunity. There was a time when I believed that an open airing of ideas would lead, by and large, to the correct ideas being adopted. It doesn’t work that way. People lie – and liars lie because lies work.

Aging has-been Susan Sarandon was out there and when asked about the rapes on 10/7, she just flatly denied they happened. She’s lying. She knows they happened. We all know they happened. But she’ll bare face that out – because there’s no consequence to her for it. She’ll still be an honored person; the Left takes care of their own. And because people like her are willing to lie, the lies become commonplace…and young people, ill-equipped under the best of circumstances to detect a lie, fall for it. I’m supposed to let liars tell America’s youth that Israel is evil? That America is evil? That the Constitution I swore to defend has a built in mechanism for self destruction?

No. I won’t do it. I will not play by rules the other side rejects. Anything we can to do hamper the propagation of anti-American views and anything we can do to punish those who hold those views will be done. It has to be. Its either destroy these people or they’ll destroy us.

Polls are still going back and forth (though mostly favorable to Trump) but the official word from almost all Experts is that Biden has it in the bag. Maybe he does? Who knows? But with Trump stuck in NYC for his bogus trial what we’re seeing is outpouring of support from working class New Yorkers for Trump. Will Trump win New York City? Not a chance; the working class there is actually rather small – the connected rich and the welfare bums make up a majority of the population and they’ll keep voting Democrat. But I think it does show something…perhaps some sort of fundamental shift: the working class is turning to Trump. No to the GOP, but to Trump. So is the middle class outside of the government-supported middle class. The Democrats are the party of the richest and poorest Americans…Trump is the candidate for everyone else. We’ll see if that’s enough in November…and if it is enough, if the GOP is willing to see that their future is as a populist-conservative working/middle class party.

One thing that is an advantage for us is how utterly delusional the Left is becoming. One of the history accounts on X posted a video of Goering’s arrest in 1945 – where he’s turning in his weapon and about to have all his decorations and badges of rank stripped from his uniform. What struck me on that was the expression on Goering’s face: he was crestfallen. It was the moment when he knew that the game was up. Got to keep in mind that just before this, Georing was still working on the theory that the Allied leadership would want to talk to him. Himmler had similar delusions. That after all of WWII and the emerging evidence of the Holocaust, they’d still be players. Goering having his sidearm taken let him know that he was just another criminal being processed. He was a man who had completely separated himself for all human decency but who thought he was still human. Rely on it, not too long before that video was taken, he had hugged his daughter and told her he loved her…as if he was human. But, he wasn’t. Only repentance could have restored him to humanity. As far as we know, he never did. He play acted as a human being, but he wasn’t human. The plain fact of the matter is that he never loved his daughter…a man who can be instrumental in murdering millions can’t possibly love. But such a person can delude themselves into thinking they do.

So, too, with our Lefties. They think they’re human, but they’re really not. Once you’re at the point of nodding along with abortion to birth and having healthy body parts cut off of children, you’ve left your humanity very far behind. You’ll still play-act like a human, but you aren’t. As with Goering, only repentance can restore humanity. This is why we see the Left endlessly bemoaning the dead Palestinians while not even mentioning the dead Jews. They’re play acting. They don’t care about either. But the gambit for power is, at the moment, to support the Palestinians and hate the Jews…so one dead Palestinian brings forth tears…a Jewish baby burned alive brings forth nothing. This is also why as Christians are massacred by Muslims in Africa we don’t hear a peep…because the Left doesn’t care that they’re dead. It means nothing to them, not even in theory. Only if the deaths can help the Leftist gain wealth or power do they matter.

But this is not a strength. It is ultimately a fatal weakness. Just as it was for Goering in days gone by. When you get delusional you simply don’t understand how you look to sane people. You, in fact, start to think that the more delusional you are, the more admirable. You start doing increasingly stupid things to service your delusion…until it all comes crashing down. I think we’re at that point; we’ve tipped. Sure, the Left still has all the power, but its based upon people not figuring it out…and day by day, more and more people are figuring it out. The Left is just crazy…doing insane, stupid things. Think about this: the illegal immigration issue is simply killing Democrats in polling. They won’t even slow it down. They could easily do so; one crisp order from whomever is pulling Biden’s strings and border crossings will drop 90 percent. But insane people don’t respond to rational incentives. The Left is committed to the open border and believes that they are admired for it.

An Atomic Lie

Mark Noonan22 Comments

Got into a very long debate on X about the morality of the use of the Atomic Bomb. It is seriously gotta be the biggest engagement post I’ve ever had there: as of this moment, 56,600 views, 358 reposts, 3,100 likes and 474 comments. In strict X parlance, I have been “ratioed”. This means you have more comments than reposts and usually means you’ve said something ridiculous. Not in this case. If you clicked on it, you’ll see that my post was a picture of my Dad as a young Marine, the notation that he was waiting on Okinawa to invade Kyushu in November of 1945 and finishes up with a small, editorial comment about those who say that A Bomb was bad.

Some of the comments are bad faith but most, in my view, simply betray ignorance. Some times well meaning ignorance, but ignorance nonetheless. And that actually has me a little worried. If you go through the comments you’ll see that several times I pointed out the four options available to Truman in July, 1945. They are, sometimes very briefly stated:

  1. Blanche at the cost of finishing off Japan either by nukes or invasion and agree to negotiate a peace which would force Japan to surrender their Empire, but leaves in place the Japanese Ruling Class which waged the war…and that Ruling Class now convinced that their suicidal fight to the death got us to blink. That they are our moral superiors and just need better material for Round II. In other words, this end almost certainly means another war – and maybe a nuclear war as Japan did have a nuclear weapons program. So Pearl Harbor Two might have been Los Angeles and San Francisco getting nuked.
  2. Starve Japan to death. The Japanese were incapable of feeding their population from domestic food production. Like Britain, it was import, or starve. Japan had no means of obtaining resources of any sort as our command of the sea was absolute. We could have just stood off and let starvation kill Japanese until they quit. This would have been up to tens of millions…and they might not have quit. Once their population dropped to sustainable levels, they might have still refused.
  3. Invade Japan. This is a very well known option and all post-War analysis indicates this would have been a horrific affair with maybe a million American casualties and untold millions of Japanese deaths.
  4. Drop the Atomic Bombs and so instruct the Japanese that we could kill them with no loss to ourselves; that any future dying would only be Japanese and to no avail.

As I also pointed out at various points, commanders in war, civil and military, are besieged by a host of information arriving all at once from every point of the compass. Some of it is false. Some irrelevant. Some flat contradictory with other information arriving at the same time. Out of this morass of data, the commander must tease out the correct information or lose. This is not an easy task. It is not a neat and tidy exercise as it can sometimes appear in a history book. This is why when looking back, caution must be taken. We weren’t there. We weren’t under those particular stresses. We benefit from hindsight no matter how much we try to set that aside. In my view, Truman made not just the best of a bad situation, but the correct moral decision. The intention was not to massacre Japanese, it was to end the war by the swiftest means…to end the effusion of blood, Japanese as well, as quickly as possible. And it was done; in the end, no matter what else, it worked. And if you want to call it wrong, you simply must come up with an obvious, superior option which was known to the decision makers at the time. There simply wasn’t any beyond these four. None of them were perfect, all of them posed risks: Truman chose the best one.

Do keep in mind that the comments condemning Truman as a monster issued from both Left and Right. People are getting united in a shared insistence that there was simply no justification at all for dropping the Bomb. What this tells you is that the general propaganda line has worked. And, of course, we know that propaganda does work. But this is doubly disturbing this propaganda issued to condemn the Bomb originated in the Soviet Union to denigrate our effort in WWII – to make out that we were bad, and so excuse Soviet actions. This line was picked up by Nazi-apologists as a means of getting around the Holocaust. But now it has morphed into a general belief that America is morally tainted. When added to slavery, it is being used to make out that America is the bad guy in the world. That we’re the nation that has to be destroyed. And the Right is participating in this – going along with it. And from what I can tell, they are doing it mindlessly…just so they can have something they agree with the Left on. A “see, I hate that, too” moment.

When we combine this with the “anti-colonialist” attitude of the Left and the increasing number of people on the Right who are condemning Israel’s war in Gaza, we can see our problem: basically, our entire civilization is in the dock and it is being found guilty. That it is ignorant people making the ruling is neither here nor there: ignorant jurors get a say. And the USA is being found guilty.

This is worrying not just for the fate of our nation, but for the fate of anything resembling civilization. Islamists savages went on a rape/murder spree and that’s in the Memory Hole while college kids riot on campus in favor of the savages. We’re being told we have to save Democracy in Ukraine even though elections have been suspended there. The Free World we defend with NATO arrests people for misgendering. China buys whatever influence it wants – and our open border and drug addiction may very well be a Chinese op. But we’re not allowed to fight against it because we’re the bad guys…the people who held slaves and who cruelly and needlessly nuked Japanese children. You see?

We really have to win this November. Not for Trump. Heck, he’s not even the guy we remotely need right now. He’s just massively the superior of the alternative. But we, the Americans – those of us who are left – have to take control of our country. Or we simply won’t have one – it’ll be falsified out of existence. We must find the ways and means of getting the liars out of all power and influence and simply re-instructing an ignorant population on what America actually was, and can be again.