Open Thread

Mark Noonan29 Comments

I have this friend whom I’ve known since 1971. When we were kids, we liked science fiction (heck, we both still do) and so we’d ponder in, say, 1978 what the future might hold. We came up with some pretty fantastic ideas of what humanity might achieve but among the possibilities, cannibalism wasn’t one of them. Now we’ve got alleged cannibal gangs in Haiti and there was this train accident in California the other day where a leg was thrown clear and a guy apparently picked it up and started snacking on it. We seem to be devolving at an increasing pace.

Gas prices are starting to rise again and this is putting downward pressure on Biden’s poll numbers. In response to this, Team Pudding Brain has asked Ukraine to not blow up Russian oil facilities which would put even more upward pressure on gas prices. So, we’re paying for Ukraine to fight the Russians while also doing what we can to ensure Russia has money to fight the Ukrainians. Got a call from Zombie Kafka and he asked that we knock it off.

That terrorist attack in Moscow was of the quite horrific variety. Moscow is, of course, tightly protected and gun control is universal in Russia but this terrorist squad managed to get there and accessed a pre-positioned cache of some pretty heavy weapons. You can’t stop determined lunatics. Aside from that, what’s it all about?

Nobody knows. Very good chance that nobody will ever really know. US government word is that ISIS took responsibility and that is a possibility: ISIS has a gripe against Russia over the Syrian Civil War where the Russian- and Iranian-back Syrian regime fought ISIS. The Russian government is clearly indicating a Ukrainian connection and even if that wasn’t true, the Russian government would be keen to make it true. If any element of the Ukrainian government was involved – even rogue – the US will do all it can to suppress that information. We’re in for a raft of conspiracy theories on this one, guys.

Could Ukraine have had a hand in it? That is a distinct possibility. The Russians are advancing again; not very fast or far, but definitely moving the line westwards. There was a massive Russian missile strike against Ukrainian electricity production a couple days ago. Ukraine is having ever more trouble filling its depleted ranks (there are stories that French combat units are moving into Western Ukraine; don’t guess wrong here…this is probably more to prevent Russia from moving too far west in the event of a Ukrainian collapse; the French don’t want a shooting war with Russia; they don’t have the army for it). Could desperate times in Kiev lead to desperate, even foolish, measures? They could.

Bottom line: a messy situation just go messier – and if the Russian government can pin this on Ukraine, even with bogus evidence, it will strongly motivate the Russian people to take a pound of flesh from Ukraine.

Biden’s people are pushing very hard to stop Israel from hitting the southern part of Gaza. This is because of polling in Michigan and Minnesota with their large Muslim populations. But it is also rather disgusting that our government is increasingly aligned with Hamas against Israel. I don’t think the Democrats really come back from this – once you start down that road, it ends at Der Sturmer; they’ll be repeating blood libels by 2028.

The Evil Must End

Mark Noonan23 Comments

Got my heart broken a bit today – saw this story of an 18 year old kid from backwoods Mexico who was abandoned by the traffickers because he couldn’t keep up. The good news is that he was found and got help – and will be returned to his mother in Mexico, as he tearfully desired. And, you guessed it, there was Cartel involvement: it looks like in some way the kid and/or his family owes the Cartel money and his journey was to get work to pay them off. Just in case anyone out there really thought all these people were just coming for themselves. They’re not: huge numbers are just walking ATMs for the Cartels. We can guess how many are successful in paying off the Cartels: almost certainly it is zero.

He’s just 18. Sure, a legal adult but think back a moment to when you were 18…if you had just been ripped from your family and left to die in a foreign desert. How scared would you have been? How many tears would you have shed? How desperate for your mother’s love would you have become? This was just a slight peek into the immense human tragedy Joe Biden and his puppet-masters have created…and created with callous disregard for human life.

I struggle mightily, my friends. A Catholic cannot support the death penalty. Various official Church pronouncements have condemned the practice. But I admit that I want those traffickers who abandoned the boy to die. Of course they won’t, at least not from official hands. And, yes, if they were at my mercy, that is what they would receive. I’m built for it; God made me this way. I am deeply flawed as a human being but I am ready to forgive.

But this must stop. All of it. All of this ruination of human lives. It doesn’t have to be this way. Kids do not have to be transported across continents to work for the Cartels. Drug addicts do not have to die in our streets. We do not have to put up with mobs looting stores. Public brawls over nothing. Anti-Semites marching through our cities. None of this is tolerable. It all has to go. This all must end. If you ever think we shouldn’t, or if you ever feel sorry for those we will punish, then you just think of an 18 year old kid left to die in a desert. Steel your hearts. The evil must end.

The Lies are the Problem

Mark Noonan22 Comments

Today the Supreme Court heard a couple cases related to government efforts to suppress dissenting views of Covid information. It is a rather big First Amendment case and how the Court rules will be important going forward. During the back and forth Justice Jackson expressed concern that allowing people to speak completely freely could restrict the government’s power. This was ripped into because of course the purpose of the First Amendment – as well as all others in the Bill of Rights and plenty of other provisions in the Constitution – is to limit the power of government. It seemed to shock people that a Justice on the Supreme Court could say such a thing.

To which I said: why in heck are you surprised?

Ketanji Brown Jackson is the completely conventional product of the American education and judicial systems. We need not trouble ourselves about whether or not she was affirmative-actioned into her positions; it doesn’t really matter. Whether she did it on merit or by box-checking, the result is the same. And anyone else who is a product of the American education and judicial system is going to be the same unless somewhere along the line they stepped out of it and learned something they weren’t supposed to. The small percentage who get off the ranch are the “conservative judges” that we pin our hopes on – only to all too often find that for all their ability to some times get it right, their default position is still the Establishment (only Clarence Thomas, the late Antonin Scalia and a very few others up and down the judicial line have completely freed themselves from Establishment orthodoxy). The Establishment Mill turns out Establishmentarians. It is what it is for; if there was a happy time when we had colleges and judges who were for thinking, that time is long past.

With all the back and forth about the First Amendment today, something occurred to me early on: there is a crucial issue at stake here. Two questions, really:

  1. Do lies have First Amendment protections?
  2. If not, who determines what is a lie?

I’ve talked about this before and I have come to the very firm conclusion that lies are not protected speech. In fact, can’t be protected speech. That we’re downright stupid if we think that we should fight and die for the right of someone to lie to us. But I’ll also note that no matter how you answer those questions, you are on treacherous ground. If you say “yes” then you’re plagued with liars. If you say “no” then you have to figure out how to suppress lies while retaining liberty.

In the end, there is no 100% “right” answer. This is pretty common in human affairs, actually. Hard and fast rarely works out that well no matter how stable you might think it is. It is rigid and rigid things tend to collapse. But balance is also precarious as you might recall from the last time you tried to walk on a narrow beam – there is just that perfect position where you don’t fall but just a little bit off either way and over you go. But, not being rigid, you can continually adjust yourself as you go along and so navigate the peril. Just as an aside, we are not here discussing the Laws of God, which are immutable. We are discussing human affairs; that is, how to we twist and weave with the mass of contradictory humanity towards an approximation of Justice?

To get back to Justice Jackson. As noted, she’s Establishment. In fact, bi-partisan Establishment. Uniparty, that is. When she was first put up for the Federal bench, she was introduced by Paul Ryan. She’s related to him by marriage. Ryan praised her character, intellect and integrity. And she’s been praised like that her whole career. And, hey, don’t get me wrong: maybe she’s the nicest person in the whole, wide world. I don’t know: I’ve never met her and probably never will. But her intellect and integrity? So, what Ryan was telling me back in 2013 was that he knew her, loved her, respected her…and never got around to finding out that her reading of the First Amendment was 180 from the intent of the Amendment? That’s a kind of crucial thing, don’t you think? This isn’t a variation on an obscure aspect of law. This is the First Amendment. Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech. Pretty clear, no? But Ryan never had that discussion with her? I mean, with the family. Over Thanksgiving. Little back and forth about differing views…she being a liberal jurist and he (at the time) being a Conservative House member. Never came up?

I guess that is possible but, honestly, figure the odds. Could it be that Ryan was that incurious about her views? Well, then why was he out there touting her as being this excellent person if he didn’t know anything about her? He was either lying out of ignorance (saying good things about her that he had no idea about) or lying out of malevolence (he knew she was a judicial Maoist but didn’t want to alert the people to this fact). In either case, when Ryan introduced her in 2013, he was lying. And so, it turns out, was she: she went through the confirmation process many times in her trek to the Supreme Court and never did she let us know that she felt there was a legitimate reason for the government to censor speech. That, in fact (per her questions today) she felt that it was wrong to stop government censorship because that would make us all unsafe. This is a rather crucial bit of information, don’t you think? Its also not an opinion you arrive at all of a sudden…either you thought about it for years or it was drilled into you for years. There is no way you just suddenly look at “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech” and go, “know what? Congress shall make that law – I don’t care what the Constitution says, in certain instances I think that freedom of speech should be abridged all to heck and gone. And if Congress won’t, then the President unchecked by any authority can go ahead and do it.” It doesn’t matter that nobody asked her directly about it: we have an obligation to tell the whole truth. You are a liar if you leave crucial information out as much as if you relate false information. If a bank robber said “I went to the store and then came home” when he actually went to the store, robbed the bank, and then came home, then he’s a liar in addition to being a bank robber.

If Ryan had said, “Kentanji is a very nice lady and a wonderful part of my extended family but, my goodness, she’s a commie fanatic; don’t let her near a court”, then he would have told the truth. And it is what he should have said in 2013. But that would have made her mad. Other parts of Ryan’s family, too. And, of course, the larger Establishment which was already clearly grooming her for the judicial heights, if not the Supreme Court at that time. And when she did her first confirmation hearing, she should have told us that her judicial philosophy was warmed over Leninism with a side of Maoism. That her judicial view was to rule in conformity with her desired ideological outcome, law be damned. Had she done that, though, she wouldn’t have been confirmed. But it is more than that.

The Senate reviewed her several times, right? Plenty of time for people to dig into her background; find out her views. And as she advanced, we even started to have judicial actions and rulings showing where she was heading. All of that should have been brought to the floor of the Senate. On both sides. Friends and enemies should have been completely forthright about just who she is and what she’d do. That didn’t happen. A gigantic conspiracy of silence was created about her philosophy so she could coast into one position after another…and now she’s got a lifetime seat. She’s 54. Twenty years from now she could be part of a 5-4 Court eviscerating the First Amendment. And all because starting in 2013 everyone lied about her.

Do you start to see it? How bad lies are? And the lies to get Justice Jackson are just tiny, little lies. Mostly of omission. But, my friends, we are awash in lies. There is an ocean of lies infecting very aspect of modern life. We here on the Right perceive them pretty well (the Left gleefully engages in lying) but even we don’t really see how overwhelming it all is. Everything is shot through with lies. And it is very hard to face up to: as the late Neil Peart put it in his song Distant Early Warning:

Who can face the knowledge
That the truth is not the truth?

That is what we’re really facing: for most of the people, a pack of lies is the truth. They’ve been told for so long and so incessantly that, just as Hitler said it would, the lie has become the truth. To see that – to react to it – is very hard. It is to give up a lifetime of certainty. But we must see it. We must react to it. And we must stop it. If you wonder why we’re such a mess these days, it is because almost everything we do is based to one degree or another on a lie.

We’ve got rafts of laws on the books based upon lie after lie after lie. What we saw today was that raft running up against something true – that is, something written by the Founders more than 200 years ago. It is written in very simple English. Anyone even barely literate can understand it. The modern Establishment looks at it; they are puzzled and then angry. It doesn’t fit! If someone can say I’m wrong about mask wearing, then people might not wear masks! How can this be endured? So, they want it gone. Justice Jackson just said the quiet part out loud today. Make no mistake about it, they all feel like that. And don’t forget that a least a majority of the GOP/Conservative “leadership” also wants it gone. When McCain denigrated us as silly Hobbits he was also speaking the quiet part out loud: why can’t you dumb peasants just do as you’re told? He, too, looked at the First Amendment and found it an obstacle (remember, he of McCain-Feingold campaign finance law). And as lies have been piled up to get us to where we are today, they’ll just use more to get rid of the last threads of truth…they’ll simply lie one day and say, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech” doesn’t mean what it means.

All our problems, every last one of them, is based upon a lie. We have found out over the past 50 years or so what happens to a society when it says that lies are protected speech. All that did was allow lies to worm their way in, take over and now go after Truth, as such. It has to end. Whatever is required, we must do it. We must find the means – judicial and social – to utterly destroy those who lie. We must make lying a shameful thing again; something that mortifies the liar when caught and causes all to reject the liar and the lie. This could take some very stern action, my friends. Liars won’t go quietly. But we have to do it.

It is either that or drown in lies.

Angry and Hopeful

Mark Noonan26 Comments

Where are we? Here:

A man was just charged with 20 counts of sex abuse with minors. Teacher at a church school. That is bad, but it does get worse: the man is an illegal immigrant deported multiple times. You know: someone who isn’t supposed to be here but who keeps coming back in because, why not? Why shouldn’t he come back? It is clear we don’t enforce our laws – that deportation is just a bureaucratic checklist which has no baleful affect. Just go, and then come on back…if we get around to it, we’ll deport you again. Maybe; but mostly only if you let us deport you…because if you run off, its not like we’ll chase you down. Heck, you can even get a job – even though everyone who gets a job in the United States has to fill out an I-9 form where they state their citizenship/residency status under penalty of perjury.

Has anyone ever been prosecuted for lying on an I-9?

But it also just get worse than that – with Israel still reeling from the 10/7 attacks and Christians, Jews and homosexuals routinely oppressed/murdered by Muslims, all our Democrats noted that today is something like the international day to fight “Islamophobia”. As if that is a problem. Yeah, the poor, little Muslims out there being phobia’d all day long! Hey, Nigerian, your congregation was massacred by Muslims? Better not get Islamophobic about it! That would be bad.

Do I sound a little bitter here? There’s a reason: our Ruling Class hates us. Wants us gone. Is trying to replace us with illegal immigrants. Is kowtowing to our enemies. There’s just no other way to put it – Pudding Brain’s social media intern put out a lying statement in support of a “non-binary” kid who killed herself but still no mention of Lanken Riley, murdered by an illegal immigrant deliberately and maliciously allowed into our country. Oh, and let’s not forget that as cannibal gangs are allegedly roaming Haiti, Biden’s people are flying in thousands of Haitians…one of whom just raped a 15 year old girl. Can’t wait for the cannibals to get here!

The good news – and there is some good news – is that voter registration trends are still favoring the GOP. Even with the previous weak RNC leadership and a Congressional GOP knifing the base at every turn, people are turning to the GOP. Not because of love, but because it is the only way to stop the Democrats who are determined to destroy the nation they hate the most, the United States of America. Now with Trump people in charge, I expect this to continue – they’ve hired Scott Presler who has spent years, unpaid, registering GOP voters. They’ve pledged to legal ballot harvesting. They killed the old phony minority outreach team and they’ll replace it with some people who actually go and talk to minorities.

Then there are the polls; no matter how you slice it, if the election were held today, Trump would get 312 electoral votes. That’s low end; could be higher if a couple of light blue States flip his way. People are starting to look back on the Trump years as a good time…mostly because they were. Until the CCP and the DNC manufactured the Covid drivel, everything was going very well. People want that; peace and prosperity, that is. Someone said that Trump was first elected to make sure Hillary didn’t get it and then Biden was elected to make sure Trump got out. Maybe – but Biden’s people went on a radical left bender…and the more they do that the more people realize that some mean Tweets aren’t all that bad.

But, also, I think more and more people are waking up to the fact that the “chaos” of the Trump years was manufactured – by Trump’s enemies. With the supposedly non-partisan federal bureaucracy leading the way. That is, people are understanding that Trump got a raw deal. That the current charges are nothing more than political theater. It is now doubtful that any of Trump’s trials will take place before November…and even if they do, any guilty verdict is likely to boomerang. Probably most sensible Democrats are hoping the trials just go away…but the Resist nitwits aren’t having it. So, Democrats are stuck on this ride they’d rather get off.

So, I am angry. I think that came through here. But I’m also hopeful. Just maybe we can save our nation; not that Trump is the answer, but if we can get him back in, it’ll break the system for good. There will be no more cobbling it back together. And with people like Fetterman, we might even see the Democrats start to wake up to the fact that the people don’t want unlimited illegal immigration and medical mutilation of minors. We might become sane again.

Let’s hope.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan64 Comments

Haiti is falling apart. Again. Actually, of course, it never was together. Been a mess since independence. Unlike most places that emerged from colonial domination, Haiti immediately massacred the entire colonial ruling class. So, the founders of the nation really had no clue how to go about it. All else seems to stem from that. You totally understand why they rebelled and why they hated their white overlords…but they also sabotaged themselves.

Not sure what can be done – colonial overlordship is the obvious solution, but who would take on the job? The Haitians would start taking shots at you even if you were trying to improve things. There also just isn’t much to work with. No significant natural resources. Population is badly educated. They do have the island climate and beautiful beaches so tourism is an obvious thing but there are also other places with just as nice beaches that don’t periodically descend into savagery. Just really bad and really sad. Naturally, we’ve pledged more than $100 million in additional funding…for just what, I can’t say. There is no government in the country.

Speaking of descent into savagery, all of Oakland’s Taco Bell’s are converting to cashless operations only via drive through. The reason is the incessant robberies. This might only be a band aid. We’ve already seen plenty of other businesses go under in the Bay Area simply because crime is out of control. OTOH, San Francisco just enacted via referendum two “law and order” measures…not much (drug tests for welfare bums, restoring some powers to the police) but at least a step…and an indication that even in the Progressive citadels, there’s a limit. As I’ve said, civilization is a veneer – and a very thin one, at that. You only keep it by firmly upholding it. You can’t really let people do whatever they want; there have to be rules, strictly enforced.

The Pittsburg Police will not have any officers in police stations between 3 and 7 am and only have limited numbers of officers on patrol. The reason? Well, they only get 8 percent of their calls during that time.

Until now.

Just watch: they’ve opened up a Window O’ Crime…the crooks will know when it will be easiest to get away and that’s when they’ll strike. Watch, especially, for home invasions to increase.

Dungeons and Dragons was a game played by nerds when I was a kid. I tried it a few times but I thought the premise ridiculous and never got into it. But a lot of people loved it. Naturally, the Woke have taken it over and are determined to turn it into something that nobody will like. Not sure how they’ll ruin it, but they will. After all, the game is fantasy and everyone is allowed to insert their own desires into their character (because, you know, they’re made up) but I’m guessing there will be some rules about the gender and race make up of characters or some insistence that certain types of characters be of certain genders, orientations and skin colors. Because the whole point of the game isn’t to go on an adventure but to make sure all boxes are checked off…

Team Trump is now fully in control of the RNC – with Trump’s daughter as co-chair. Oddly, this is probably the means whereby the RNC is saved. Donations have been plummeting as the GOP Base has tended to see the RNC as a tool of the GOP Establishment. And there is much truth in that assumption…the strategy and spending of the RNC is so incompetent that you do wonder if it was deliberate sabotage. We won the 2022 Ohio Senate election by more than 250,000 votes – the GOP poured money into this race while starving the Arizona gubernatorial and Nevada Senate races of funds; races which were lost by 17,000 and 8,000 votes, respectively. Don’t tell me the money and number-crunch guys didn’t see this coming. Or, if they didn’t, then they are so incompetent that it doesn’t matter if it wasn’t treason as it might as well be.

Look to the new RNC leadership to clean house and then for Team Trump and the RNC to go on a fundraising blitz…which will probably rake in money as the Trumpsters will open up for the RNC now that it is in loyal hands.

UPDATE: Checking in on the Left, this is from a HuffPo editor.

They are such sad people – but it shows they really believe the drivel.

State of the Open Thread

Mark Noonan50 Comments

There were two things the Left settled on after last night’s senile rant by Pudding Brain:

  1. He’s SOOOOO vigorous!
  2. He shouldn’t have called Laken Riley’s killer an illegal.

Point one was, of course, pre-set; they were going to say that no matter. It was a chorus clearly scripted. It mostly drew chortles.

The second point was just as universal but came out a little later as the Left absorbed the performance. Biden mangled the poor girl’s name in his scripted attempt to defuse the issue and that did generate a lot of negative comment but the “don’t call them illegals” thing is more telling. The Laken Riley issue is highlighting the broader issue of border security and the Democrats want it gone. That is why they are demanding we stop saying “illegal” when referring to illegal immigrants. They don’t want the American people thinking in those terms, because that terminology cuts against them.

Call them Dreamers or Newcomers or Migrants or any other positive-to-innocuous term you can think of, but don’t call them illegal! They don’t want the outrage of the American people getting focused here. I don’t think it’ll work; the cat, as they say, is out of the bag – and anyone with a daughter or granddaughter sees Laken Riley. It could have been ours on the slab in a morgue…and set there because Biden’s people maliciously opened the border and cruelly refuse to close it. It does sometimes work like that – things can be horrible and everyone knows it is but there is no focus…until something happens that provides the focus. Riley’s murder has done that – she really just was a nice, young girl starting out her life and a miserable excuse for a human being killed her for no reason. And it wouldn’t have happened if illegals weren’t here.

One thing that especially disgusts me: pro illegal people saying, “illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes”. This is obviously untrue drivel but even if it is true, does that matter? For heaven’s sake, Riley would be alive if the illegal wasn’t there. If that was the only crime an illegal committed this year, it would still be an outrage. An entirely preventable death. It is like people just don’t care about other human beings dying – except when its fictional Palestinian deaths, of course. Anyways, I’m not about to take moral lectures from people just back from the “shout your abortion” rally.

Among the diseased mental droppings last night was a program to have the US military build a pier in Gaza to ship supplies in. Among the history of dumb ideas, this one is right up there. First off, all we’d be doing is providing supplies to Hamas, thus prolonging the war. Second, it puts a wedge between the USA and Israel and thus encourages Hamas to resist in the hope that the USA will eventually pressure Israel to leave Hamas alive. Third, and worst, there is zero chance Hamas won’t take a shot at us. If a Hamas militant is any way within range of US troops, he will open fire. He can’t do otherwise; we are the enemy to Hamas. They hate us; and it is likely a tie between hating us and hating Jews. This means there is a very good chance that one or more American will be killed by Hamas in our effort to supply Hamas.

And all of this because Team Biden wants to shore up support among pro-Hamas Muslims in Michigan. Americans are to die in an effort to secure some electoral votes. Disgusting doesn’t begin to cover it.

Side note: the father of one of the Marine’s killed in Biden’s botched Afghan withdrawal heckled Pudding Brain last night. He was arrested. A gold star father; arrested for saying words. That is Biden’s America.

Meanwhile, Islamists continue to attack defenseless Christians in Africa and our government doesn’t give a damn. Never let the vile people running our government claim any mantle of morality.

Trump Rolls On

Mark Noonan66 Comments

Nine to nothing; that was a bit surprising in that I thought at least 1 or 2 of the liberals would stick by their party on the ruling. But, honestly, it would have been a tough pill for even the most ardent liberal Justice to swallow: the 14th, if it even applies, is a federal matter subject only to federal law. To disqualify anyone from the ballot would take a federal conviction…and even that wouldn’t necessarily stop a State from placing the convict’s name on the ballot. The Constitution gives the States great control over the manner of choosing Electors. It would be a very bizarre thing if we ever had a situation where someone who had been convicted under the 14th secured 270 electoral votes for President. But the issue only comes up after a conviction in federal court.

Think about that.

A DC jury would convict Trump on command of any charge filed. Zero doubt. You could charge him with being a vampire and DC jury would find him guilty. And yet not only has Trump not been charged with insurrection or any similar sort of act, but neither has anyone else involved in J6. What does that tell you? That the Powers That Be understand that such a charge would be tossed on appeal…perhaps even on the liberal-dominated DC Circuit. The Democrats know they can’t even take the first step on using the 14th against him, even in theory.

So, why all the fuss? Honestly, it was just to fill the empty heads of #Resistance liberals. To make it seem like something is being done. Remember, those types of people believe that Trump really is a Russian agent and that Putin flipped votes in 2016 to get him elected. Not kidding: they believe the whole thing from start to finish. Doesn’t matter that every fact shows the accusations are false: it is what they were told and to this day the MSM has never admitted that they participated in a lie. These people sit around wondering all day long “when will they get Trump?”. This was one in a series of efforts to “get Trump”. It failed; but they’ve already got other arrows in the quiver. These are all falling apart one by one, but it looks like there’s enough to keep it going until after Election Day.

All polls must be taken with a grain of salt, but as I’ve always said, they can be useful in spotting trends. Right now, an outlier or two aside, all polls are indicating a Trump win – with 47 to 49 percent of the vote, with 49 percent working out to an electoral college triumph; maybe as high as 327 Electoral Votes. Get above 50 percent and Trump will head towards 350. That is, of course, now; 8 months out. Lots can change. The trouble for Team Pudding Brain is that things can’t change for the better. Inflation is likely to rise again at least near term. Job losses (especially full time) are mounting. The border remains open. Crime continues to rise. Nothing Team Pudding Brain can do will reverse this because they are ideologically committed to the policies that are causing all the trouble. The only new wrinkle is the increasing hostility to Israel…a gambit to keep Muslim voters on side with a huge downside risk of losing the Jewish vote, which is nearly as large and could easily tip a State or two to Trump. Maybe a miracle happens…but even if things start to get better in spite of Biden, the fact remains that Biden is increasingly mentally and physically feeble. Six months from now he’ll just be worse; all of us who have dealt with aging relatives know how this works…once they start downhill, it just accelerates. Biden is clearly heading downhill.

Will they replace him? Only if he’s dead. His people now have sufficient control over the levers of Democrat power that it is almost impossible to displace them. A full court press by Teams Obama and Clinton might do it, but even that would only make it 50/50. Of course, he might very well die; what sort of chaos ensues if that happens after early voting has commenced is anyone’s guess. But probably there isn’t urgency among Democrats to replace him. To them, its a simple calculation: in the unexpected event that Biden wins, then all is good…if he loses, they figure Trump will have a bad 2026 midterm and with an open seat in 2028 the Democrats would think they’re favored to win it. Democrats are actually confident that they can keep Trump boxed in for 4 years just as they did before.

This doesn’t mean they won’t cheat. Of course they’ll cheat. Massively. They always do. But there is a limit to what cheating can do, and in Georgia and Wisconsin cheating is now a heck of a lot harder than it used to be. Nevada, too, as we have a GOP governor. And cheating only works if you have total control in the exact areas you need it. Trump gets to 49% and they’d just have too large a task on their hands.

I rate the odds as 55/45 in Trump’s favor right now. Subject to modification as conditions change over the next 8 months.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan36 Comments

The Crimson Blade goes live on March 10th! You can pre-order Kindle now. Having just done the very last review of it: gotta say, its awesome. There’s a growing conflict in the family, as it were. The Enemy is moving! But in ways that our heroes don’t fully understand. Everyone who likes a bit of history will enjoy the interaction between Fred and Celeste where it comes out, big surprise (/sarc), that Celeste is an ardent Monarchist!

So, the Michigan primary was a blowout win for Trump – and quite impressive numbers rolled up, including in traditionally Democrat areas. That plus the number of Democrat primary voters who voted “uncommitted” has Team Pudding Brain in a panic – that’s why they’re now overtly repeating Hamas lies and putting ever more pressure on Israel to quit. They are desperately worried they simply will not have enough votes in Michigan even given the invariable ballot box stuffing in Detriot.

To me, Israel continues to go far too slowly and carefully. I understand: they want to keep their own casualties low in addition to be chary of the blood of the Palestinians. These are noble sentiments, but celerity is key to success in war. You take too long and you can end up spilling more blood than if you just rammed through. And here’s the cruel truth: in war you must be willing to pour out whatever amount of blood is necessary to win. Nobody was more keen to keep casualties low than Wellington…but if the situation called for it, he would ruthlessly engage in quite bloody actions.

The vileness of our opponents becomes ever more clear, and it is finally costing them support. They were able to hide it for so long with their friendly media and, lets face it, some clever propaganda by Team Clinton and Team Obama…but with a senile Biden in charge, there’s no clear message and so the very worst aspects of the Left keep emerging where a Clinton or Obama would have skillfully hid them. The murder of that poor girl in Georgia is especially galvanizing…the Democrat attempts to sweep her death under the rug are leaving a very bad taste everywhere. We all know: she’s dead because illegals have been blithely released by the people specifically charged with keeping the people safe. You can’t work your way around that.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan42 Comments

So, what’s the over/under on Haley getting crushed in South Carolina? I’m going with 40.

She’s still in the race because a lot of big money people keep handing it to her. So, her staff has no reason to quit: they’re still getting paid. And that she hasn’t pulled the plug regardless tells me she’s a creature of her staff. Regardless of what happens in 2024, she’s off my list for 2028. I just don’t trust her.

Team Pudding Brain is now set to call the Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal. Basically asserting the Islamist position on the matter. Why? Gotta be Michigan – his people must be seeing disaster there and are desperate to shore up his support there among the Muslim community. But it probably won’t work: by and large the Muslim community anywhere in the world takes a strongly anti-Israel position.

But even if they kowtow to Islamist demands, I don’t think it is going to do the trick. The murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley by an illegal immigrant is, by itself, just another in a long list of crimes committed by illegals who aren’t supposed to be here…but her death seems to be resonating far more widely than most. People are sick of it. Sick of illegals. Sick of the fact that once an illegal commits a really big horror we invariably find out he was in custody before and could have been deported.

It is all just getting to be too much. It is shifting the political dynamic, including in blue areas. It is such an easily fixable problem and everyone can see that government and business are conspiring to keep the illegals flowing. It makes people feel, correctly, that our Ruling Class hates us. This can lead to very odd things happening. Buckle up.

Some House Democrats are apparently working on ways and means of not certifying the 2024 election if Trump wins. They’ll only do this if they control a majority of House delegations next year – which may be different from who holds the overall House majority. Remember: when the House votes for President, it is one State, one vote. So, whoever has control of 26 or more State delegations wins. Currently the GOP controls 26 State delegations with 2 delegations split (so, essentially, no vote) and 22 under Democrat control. The Democrats would have to have a really good night in November for this to shift significantly. But, there you go: they are going to fight for democracy by denying the result. They are just lying, corrupt hypocrites determined to gain and retain power.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan37 Comments

Some Russian dissident gets offed in prison and we’re supposed to get all weepy-eyed about it.

Know what? Father Petros Mwale, a parish priest in Malawi (that’s in Africa, for any of you liberals who learned pronouns rather than geography in college), has been asking for our prayers for the farmers of Malawi as they endure a terrible drought. I do hope you will pause for a moment here and offer up those prayers.

The people there make $579.00 per year per capita. You know: your monthly car payment. They’ve got lots of problems, of course, just like the rest of post-colonial Africa and they have struggled to chart a course. Not nearly as bad as some African countries have had it. They work: 80% of the population engages in subsistence agriculture. They are pretty much free though there are abuses and corruption, just like everywhere. But, its mostly ok because they are pretty traditional and most issues are settled by local councils. And here’s the thing: the country borders Lake Malawi; its 11,400 square miles of water area with an average depth of 950 feet; so, big lake. Holds 2,000 cubic miles of water.

What I’m pointing out here is that Malawi has water. In, fact, quite a lot of water. Yes, other countries border the lake so it isn’t all Malawi’s, but they get their fair share right? Now, imagine if for a moment we had spent 10% of the Ukraine budget helping Malawi build a first rate water retention and irrigation system? The poor farmers there would have access to water even when the rains don’t come.

But, hey: nobody in Malawi passes out $50,000 a month no-show jobs to Westerners.

It is crucial to remember that what is a crisis in the world is usually what the Ruling Class wants to be a crisis because they can rake off money or power over it. There’s no rake-off helping hard working dirt farmers feed their families.

But, do get weepy over a dead Russian if that floats your boat.

I guess the latest thing for the Cartels is just to toss the drugs over the border wall where they are immediately picked up and driven off. We’ve talked about this before: you can’t stop a criminal cartel. Here’s a Wikipedia list of them – if you dig through it, you’ll note that Cartel follows Cartel. As soon as we take one down, another immediately steps in…because you can’t take them down. Not really. We might get the boss of a Cartel, but there’s a whole system of moving drugs from production to user. It probably employs hundreds of thousands of people and there are billions of dollars to be made. You can’t stop that by knocking off a boss.

OTOH, if we could catch the driver of the truck that picked up the drugs and hang him, that would stop it.

So, too, hanging the street pusher. The guy who is buying money orders to transmit them south. In short: the small fry. We can stop them because we don’t have to stop all of them: guarantee you the supply of small fry to actually move the drugs and money dries up when you start hanging them. To be sure, it won’t stop it entirely: even Singapore’s draconian laws against drug trafficking don’t stop it. But Singapore arrested a bit more than 3,000 people for drugs in 2023. New York City had that many deaths just from drug overdoses. Additionally: Singapore isn’t plagued by drug addicted zombies defecating on the streets.

Here’s your choice: execute 300 street pushers or have 3,000 addicts die next year. Choose.

How’s the election going? Well, Pudding Brain’s people are now starting to push a ceasefire proposal at the UN to stop Israel from taking the southern part of Gaza. In other words, what they’re trying to do is save Hamas. Why? Michigan: has a large Muslim community which has been rock solid for the Democrats. Plenty of Muslims are upset that Pudding Brain hasn’t taken a forcefully anti-Israel stance. Recent polling shows that Michigan in play, with some polls showing a Trump lead. So, screw the Jews: we need Michigan!

But think about it: Democrats encouraged the migration of a large population of anti-Semites in order to get their votes and now they’re moving to being overtly anti-Israel in order to retain the anti-Semitic votes.