Open Thread

Mark Noonan82 Comments

Word is that Pudding Brain has a fake e mail address. Oddly, it is a .gov address…which means he was helped in getting it by employees of the government. Like spending half his time in Delaware, this is a means whereby he avoids FOIA requests…if it doesn’t happen in the White House or in Biden’s official communications, then it doesn’t show up in oversight. To be sure, some of this is to make sure Biden is just out of the public eye – he can barely do an hour of work a day – but most of it is just to hide what is going on. From you. As Joe said, he doesn’t work for us.

Lot of argument about whether or not Trump should drop the 2020 vote issue. Maybe he should: but I’d like to point out that the GOP’s best chance of an easy move-on from Trump was for it to loudly proclaim 2020 as filled with questions and pledging to vindicate Trump’s assertion. Trump is mad – he had the White House stolen from him. It doesn’t matter if you believe that; he does. And the anger is doubled by all the GOPers he helped out dropping dime on him. This, I think, is the reason he’s running: he wants vindication.

Seems an IRS agent killed another IRS agent in a shoot out – which leaves us with the question: why are IRS agents armed?

Ninth Circuit has ruled that Idaho’s ban on biological males competing in women’s sports is unconstitutional…on what possible grounds I can’t imagine. I’m sure they dressed it up under equal protection but for heaven’s sake this issue has only existed even in theory since the 1970’s and we have no legal consensus on how all this works. Just because someone says it is so doesn’t make it so – this will go to the Supreme Court where I view it’s future as murky. There could be 2 sorta-Right Justices who want to make a name for themselves on the left on this issue as Kennedy did on SSM. The real problem here is the Courts refusing to hold themselves bound by the law – whatever is in the Constitution, this issue isn’t covered by it, plus or minus. It is therefore a matter for the States or the people to decide.

We do have in the Constitution the power to regular how federal courts operate – the right to appeal to the federal judiciary is not absolute…and as the Courts are selective in what cases they take, we can be selective in what cases they can hear. I’d hold that for a federal court to even hear a case they’d have to quote chapter and verse where the case is covered under the Constitution before they even start. I’d also work on a bit of State nullification: that is, a State going ahead and enforcing the law even if a federal court strikes it down on the grounds that the federal courts have no power over the issue. Depending on who is in the White House this could get interesting…but to me it is a fight worth having. That is: making it clear that there are issues the federal government simply has zero authority over. And lets see a President try to arrest the government of a State for not obeying a court order. Sometimes to get change you have to provoke a crisis.

Main thing: there isn’t supposed to be a final word under our system of government: it was certainly never meant to be 9 judges making the final call.

Don’t Get Mad: Get Even

Mark Noonan30 Comments

My fury has subsided. Let me tell you, yesterday evening was the maddest I have been in a long time. Perhaps ever. I don’t get mad, you see? I mean, seriously, over the course of my life if I really worked at it and decided to carry a grudge I have been able to stay angry for 3, 4 minutes at a stretch. I’m just like that. I can explode in momentary rage – but even that is very rare these days – but I can’t stay mad. There’s always a way around it. We can work it out. But last night I was in a towering rage for a long time. When the news of the Georgia indictment I read the particulars and was confronted immediately by some of the most miserable, cowardly, spiteful comments I’ve ever seen. They set me afire and I let people know just how I felt.

From the Left?

You kidding? Didn’t even bother with those idiots. I’m talking about comments from the Right. Do you want to know where we are? 100% of the Left is cheering the indictments. Meanwhile, at least 50% of the Right ranges from cheering to pseudo-intellectual posing about it. “The charges are serious and we must read the indictment”…the indictment lists Tweets as proof of a criminal conspiracy. Trump is charged with being Trump – the other defendants are charged with being Trump in the Second Degree. This is why we lose. We simply don’t understand where we are.

Think about it: why Georgia? Because the GOP governor hates Trump so much he sat on his hands while ballot dumps after poll closing handed the State to Biden. Because it is a State matter and so Trump can’t get a federal pardon. Because even if pressure is placed on Kemp to issue a pardon, he can’t – Georgia doesn’t allow Executive clemency. It is the perfect place for the Democrats to bring such charges. And it doesn’t matter how bogus it is – the jury pool where he’ll be tried is overwhelmingly Democrats and they’ll know their job is to convict no matter what. The last defense of human liberty is gone – because after half a century of de-educating the population, most people don’t even know what a jury is for. Sure it’ll be tossed on appeal, in some years. We simply don’t have the guts or the skill to do what the Democrats have done here. And even if we did, a GOP jury would still believe it must weigh the facts in rendering a judgement – we don’t have a jurisdiction where we can be certain of getting a guilty verdict.

So, where does that leave us? In a very tough spot.

A cogent case can be made for dumping Trump: that he’s just too large a burden for us to carry. I can see that point – but only if the eventual GOP nominee pledges to pardon Trump and open criminal investigations into every prosecutor – State and federal – who has investigated Trump. The charge? Civil rights violations. And to turn it about – hit them with RICO. It will not be hard to prove under that law (which should be repealed but that’s for another time) that all of these people conspired together to deny Donald Trump his civil rights; even the slightest, second-hand contacts would do the trick. You see, absent such a pledge, then all we’re doing is caving to the Democrats. What choice we make must always work out to a combat choice: a notification to the Democrats that we’re coming after them.

But whether or not we end up dumping Trump or sticking with him, we must get fully into combat mode. We must start threatening prosecution. Social and economic ruin. Expulsion from position. We have to start kicking the Left in the nuts. We must stop “being better than that”. Do we want to win, or not?

I want to win. I want them to pay. They have to pay: if they aren’t punished, then this country is doomed.

If We Want to End Drug Addiction

Mark Noonan39 Comments

Over the past few days I’ve been rewatching the Narcos television series – I’ve mentioned it before and if you haven’t seen it, worth a watch. It covers the battle against the Columbian drug cartels, starting with the infamous Pablo Escobar. It is naturally dramatized but I did check it against reality and its a fairly good depiction of what happened. But it got me thinking that we’ve been going about it all wrong from the get-go.

One of our options is to just legalize all narcotics – let US drug makers produce cocaine, heroin or what have you and let people get high to their hearts content. As the Libertarians would say, this respects personal autonomy and we’d make good revenues from the legal trade as well as making sure the drugs have quality control so people wouldn’t be ingesting actual poison. There is much to be said for this line of thinking but I have considered it and rejected it.

One of the things Libertarians get wrong is how they define “victimless crime”. The Libertarian position is that taking drugs or, say, engaging in prostitution – as long as there’s no physical coercion – is victimless and so not really a crime. As such, we should let people freely engage in these activities and only intervene if someone is being directly harmed by another. But the reason I’m not Libertarian is because I recognize that you don’t have to directly attack someone to do them harm. The millions of addicts we have in the USA cause grave harm every day even if all they’re doing is lying in a pool of their own waste – it is the fact that they are high, filthy and polluting the streets that is the harm. Harms property values. Harms public health. The disorder they represent also attracts crime – not least people looking to rob or abuse the drug addicts, themselves. While our right to believe and say whatever we want is absolute, when you get into people doing things it isn’t nearly as absolute – and if done in the public square then it must in no way impede or harm everyone else who is in or may decide to use the public square at any time. Bottom line, the follow-on effects of having drug addicts are so large that we can’t afford, as a society , to carry the burden of millions of drug addicts. They must cease to be addicts – and as they’ve mostly shown themselves incapable of self control, they must be controlled; primarily in the form of cutting off their access to drugs.

Which we have tried to do, for decades, at enormous cost and zero success. I think this is because we went about it the wrong way.

Our battle has been against the “drug lords”. The cartel bosses; the big guys who are running the operations and making billions per year off it. In theory, going after them makes sense. But only if you don’t really think about it. You see, the problem isn’t people making money off drugs; the problem is the drugs, themselves. It is the drugs we want to get rid of. But we’ve gone after the money made off drugs, instead. But there is a problem with that: Money defends itself.

When you target the latest iteration of Pablo Escobar you’ll find that just like Escobar, the primary thing he has is money. Lots and lots of money. Buckets of money. So much money he doesn’t really know what to do with it all. Escobar had so much money he bought hippos – the descendants of which still live in Columbian rivers and lakes giving everyone who wants to look a hands-on class on species propagation. Escobar was able to operate as long as he did primarily because of bribes. Sure, he also used ruthless violence at need, but the main thing was the money. Anyone who could threaten his operation was first approached with a bribe offer – the killing thing only coming in if the bribes failed. And the killing was quite horrific for two purposes; to punish the particular guy who wouldn’t play ball, of course, but mostly to show everyone that if you didn’t take the bribe (or didn’t stay bought) then the consequences would be the horrible and painful death of (usually) you and your whole family. And Escobar’s successors throughout the entire narcotics trade have taken his lessons to heart – bribes combined with quite spectacular violence.

To get after such people – that is people who have no sense of decency – requires you to get down in the gutter with them. It is a dirty, nasty business staffed by the cruel and the corrupt. And as you work your plans to get the drug lords, you are surrounded by the offers of bribes and the threats of horrific death. To operate among such people you have to take on their coloration. Do you see where this leads? You become your enemy. First in ruthless cruelty against them and finally in going along with them. You take the bribe.

Think how easy that is. Don’t condemn anyone too harshly who took the money. Especially after they’ve been at it for a few years and they see for all their efforts – and maybe a few big targets taken down – the drugs continue to flow. The bribes continue to be paid. The violence associated with it on the lower levels continues unabated. So, maybe that fifth or sixth time the bribe is offered, you take it. The Narcos aren’t stupid; they’ll let you seize a small shipment every now an again. Let you arrest a few minor players (especially if those players have become an irritation). Life will go on; but now you’re not risking anything and that ten grand a month in an offshore account just grows and grows.

And, so, my point: taking down the drug lords is a pointless exercise. Even success is useless. Escobar got his chips cashed in back in 1993 and the drug trade never skipped a beat. Because the bribes continued to flow. The violence, too. And we’ve been at this so long that I’m very confident by this point that huge numbers of our people are on the take. The sheer volume of contraband crossing could not occur without active cooperation in official circles in the USA. And the propaganda machine which works non-stop to keep border control a joke is almost certainly Cartel funded at least to some major degree. We’re really getting the worst of it here; we use to have a drug problem, now we’ve got a drug and corruption problem.

Stopping the problem – drug addiction turned into massive corruption – has always been about keeping drugs out of the hands of addicts. It has been more logistic than anything else. Somewhere along the line, the logistic chain has to be broken. Can’t stop the production of the drugs – that is in South America. Can’t stop the shipment of drugs – most of that is outside the USA and while a complete sealing of our borders would stop it, that isn’t practical given the amount of trade we conduct day in and day out. So, the only place we can break the chain is internal distribution. that is, going after the small time hoods who transport and sell relatively small quantities of the drugs. The mules and the pushers: they have to go.

And by “go” I do mean in a quite literal sense. Gone. No longer around. Dead. Quickly and in large numbers. And at first glance what I’m suggesting might seem cruel. They’re just small fry, right? Not the big, bad drug lords. Sure. But it is the mules and pushers who actually hand out sufficient illegal drugs to cause 100,000 overdose deaths per year in the USA. In Latin and South America the number of people murdered by the drug trade is probably past a million by now. What I’m saying is that a few hundred – tops – dead mules and pushers and the supply of drugs on the streets dries up; and a vastly higher number of people don’t die next year.

It would work because the reason they’re in the business is that it is low risk/high reward. Drive that truck from San Diego to Chicaco. Easy. Sell those drugs in Chicago. Also easy. Probably won’t get caught. If you do, its a bit of jail time but because you’re smart, not too much; you didn’t keep sufficient drugs on your person to make your arrest a major rap. So, what I’m saying is that if we catch a guy selling an ounce of coke: kill him. You seriously would only have to do it a hundred times or so before people got out of the business.

The retail dealer can’t hide. He’s not like a drug lord in his guarded palace with an army of gunslingers and lawyers. He’s just a guy on a street corner (as it were) selling small amounts of narcotics. You can see it; seriously just drive into the more run down areas of any major city and no matter how innocent you are, in a short time you will figure out who the dealers are. He’s also in routine contact with drug addicts – people not well skilled in avoiding surveillance. We could, on any given day, arrest most of the drug dealers in any given city. And if we then placed them on trial the next day and shot them the day after that…week at the outside, nobody wants to move product on the streets any more.

Because that is the thing; it has to be death and it has to be swift. If it isn’t death and if it isn’t swift, just wasting your time. What you’re trying to do is instruct not very bright people. People who have a dim ability to see the future and very limited concern about other people. The only thing that can get their attention is violence. If you do want an alternative to execution you can try flogging. Fifty lashes with a bullwhip. But who shall apply the strokes? And that might not work; might become a macho game with these idiots to see who can put up with it the best. But death is death; these people very much want to stay alive. You put the word out that if we catch you with an ounce of coke then 48 hours later you’re dead, they’ll get the message.

All of this is only if you want to end the scourge of drugs. You don’t have to. It can turn your stomach and you can turn away. But if you want to end it – strictly speaking, make it such a small thing that it has no effect on overall society – then this is what you’ll have to do. They are killing 100,000 a year via OD. More via murder and mayhem. Are your sensitive feelings more important than the 250 or so who will die tomorrow because you didn’t shoot ten drug dealers today?

One day we will again be a serious society – a real country which identifies a problem and applies the appropriate solution even if its a hard thing to do. When that day comes, my ideas here – to one extent or another – will be applied. It is just a question of how long it takes for us to wake up.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan49 Comments

Proterra just filed for bankruptcy.

They’re an Electric Vehicle company much-touted (and subsidized) but Team Pudding Brain.

Energy Secretary Granholm cashed out $1.6 million in Proterra stock just before it went belly up.

Now, you can be stupid and say this was all just a coincidence…or you can see the obvious: a grift company set up to drain money from the Treasury tipped off the Energy Secretary – who must have been in on the scam – so she can get her pile of money, ultimately courtesy of the taxpayers.

They’re not even really hiding that they are corrupt. They keep the details secret, but the fact that they are corrupt is obvious and they are laughing at us. With the revelation that foreign oligarchs and gangsters have funneled $20 million into various Biden Family shell companies, the MSM position (so far) is that there is no proof that any of this money was directly given to Joe Biden. They know that’s a stupid thing to say. They don’t care. They know nothing will happen; they are even confident that if a GOPer wins the White House nothing will happen – likely because too many senior GOPers are hip deep in the overall Ruling Class corruption. Like this:

Senator Tim Scott – who is not a bad guy – had his campaign books looked into and it seems that huge amounts of money are being spent on brand new companies. We’re talking millions of dollars going from Scott’s campaign chest (which is huge) into these companies for…well, not for a whole heck of a lot. And make no mistake about it, what Scott is doing here is legal. But it is almost certainly what Matt and I found in Caucus of Corruption back in 2006: politicians essentially paying themselves out of campaign donations. You know: hire your wife as a consultant for half a million dollars. With this being relatively clean – legal and not actually hidden – can you imagine what we’d find if we really dug into the bowels of government? As of a minute ago, in FY 2023 (which started October 1st, 2022) Uncle Sam has spent $4,805,159,571,246.00 – $455 million more than they had spent by this time last year! Who the heck is keeping track of all that?

Suppose you had just a billion dollars and someone was stealing ten thousand dollars a day from you…you have a billion. It’ll be ages before you really notice it. And that is just you with your own billion dollars. Now imagine nearly five trillion dollars being shoveled out and millions of people coming and going…how hard would it be to steal a million dollars every day? That would only be 365 million by the end of the year. That is 0.007% of the money. that is like someone slightly shaving some metal of a penny. How would you notice? What I’m saying: rely on it, huge amounts of money are being stolen. probably at least a trillion every year of late. Often legally: but only as long as the people don’t find out about it and so demand reforms. Protecting that pile of stolen money is crucial to those stealing it: there is literally nothing they won’t do to keep you from finding out about it and stopping it.

Like, for instance, indicting Trump for saying things…which ultimately stems from Trump wanting to look into a big part of the corruption, what was going on in Ukraine.

RDS booted a Soros-backed, Commie State Attorney. And this is sure to warm Amazona’s heart – not just on a Commie getting the boot, by why she got it: DeSantis determined she was violating her oath of office by allowing violent felons to skate. This is wonderful stuff; and definitely the way to go. We can no longer tolerate people getting into official positions to undermine what those positions are for.

As we pretty much already knew, the FBI was targeting Catholics as domestic terrorists. Like the Traditional Latin Mass? Dude: the FBI wants to know all about it. Hey, I get it – the Trad Catholics can be a bit tiresome (I actually lean a bit left theologically; that whole Divine Mercy thing has sunk deep into me), but they aren’t terrorists. Unlike, you know, Antifa/BLM who are…and are also crooks and con artists, into the bargain. The sort of people the FBI might want to look into before they tackle the lady on her way to Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. And I would like to remind one and all that while we Catholics are pretty easy going…we can become Cristeros at need.

The World Bank is cutting off funding to Uganda because of a recently passed law restricting homosexuality. Now, to be sure, I don’t think Uganda should have passed this law. I don’t think the government should be in the business of policing the personal relationships of the citizens. But here’s the thing: I’m not Ugandan. Not my country. The people of Uganda are perfectly capable of exercising their own judgement about what is best for themselves and while I can offer my opinion on it, I in no way have the right to try to force a people to live as I think best. The purpose of The World Bank is to provide funding to poor nations so they can rise out of poverty. Uganda has a Per Capita Income of about a grand a year. That’s pretty poor, if you ask me. They could probably use some economic development…but what they don’t need is rich, white foreigners telling them how to live. The old Imperialism sought to bring Christian truth and material advancement…the new Imperialism seeks to make the world like San Francisco.

Mercy: It Isn’t What You Think it Is

Mark Noonan33 Comments

Dan McLaughlin – a man of the Right but whom I often disagree with – posted a Tweet the other day saying we should have hung Jefferson Davis after the Civil War; this has sparked a bit of a debate with most people disagreeing with McLaughlin. I was one who supported the assertion. Not only Davis, but Lee; in fact, all elected officials of the Confederacy; all cabinet officials; all general and flag officers; all governors of seceded States; all elected officials of seceded States – all should have variously been hung or if mitigating circumstances were found, imprisoned for long terms, most for life. Additionally, all members of the Confederate States armed forces should have been permanently disenfranchised if no other punishment was warranted for actions during the war.

Harsh, huh?

But not really. For the longest time I went along with the agree-upon post-Civil War Narrative that Grant’s “let ’em up easy” terms were best as it was asserted it quickly restored national unity and ensured against a repeat. But upon long reflection, I have concluded that this Narrative is as much drivel as the former Confederate’s Lost Cause Narrative.

First off, there wasn’t going to be a repeat. The war was over. The South was utterly crushed. They had no means with which to wage war. The huge armies that the South managed to field in 1863 were gone and couldn’t be remade. It was more than a generation before the physical damage was repaired. The concept that the South – having just been wiped out – would resort to arms if we weren’t nice to the Confederates is just nonsense on stilts.

Secondly, the former Confederates weren’t in the least moved by mercy. Their sole purpose once we decided to let them go was to restore as far as possible the supremacy of the Planter Class which had engineered secession and lost the Civil War at massive cost to those Southerners who had no stake in the Planter Class. The Klan was formed six months after the last battle; and it’s purpose was to beat down any person, black or white, who might strive for a new direction in the South. Anyone who wanted blacks voting, getting educated, owning property was targeted. Yes, most of the direct violence was against black people…but plenty of white people felt the fury as well; to intimidate them into looking the other way when the Klan went out to murder. The only thing which prevented the former Confederates from reimposing slavery was the 13th Amendment – and with the Klan they imposed a system which was all but slavery.

Davis, Lee and a few other top people hanging from a gallows and you don’t get this. Disenfranchised Confederate soldiers means black Southerners united with those whites who resisted the Confederacy (and there were a lot of them) would control the future of the South. There would have been a real Reconstruction; a real re-integration of the South into the national political system…not this bastard, hybrid system we had from 1865 to 1965 where in parts of the country American citizens were routinely denied basic rights because of their skin color. There was more shame in Jim Crow than slavery, when you really think about it – we inherited slavery; we made Jim Crow…or if not made it, tolerated it. Looked the other way; pretended it wasn’t happening or wasn’t a problem. It was a poison injected into our society after the most glorious moment in our history – the end of slavery. And think of all the people who died or were brutalized because of Jim Crow. Set that against twenty or thirty people hung…people who had, no matter how you sliced it, levied war against the United States, and so were traitors by the strict definition of the Constitution.

Mercy, you see, isn’t softness. It isn’t a refusal to acknowledge what happened and demand an accounting – it is a decision to remit full punishment for transgression. In other words, you do not exact your pound of flesh. But this doesn’t mean you don’t take an ounce or two. After the Hungarian rebellion against Austrian rule in 1848, one of Bismarck’s friends bemoaned the repression the Austrians were dealing out to the defeated Hungarians. Bismarck asked in reply words to the effect of, “what about all the people who died in the rebellion? Doesn’t their blood cry out for justice?”. What Bismarck was hitting upon is that anyone who resorts to arms bears responsibility. To be certain – and Bismarck would agree – at times you can be in a position where resort to arms is the only way out. But even if you are fully justified in fighting, people are going to die…and it will be the most innocent who suffer the most because you decided to fight. The Hungarians felt they had to fight (I’ve thought about it and I don’t think they were justified; there were vitally necessary reforms but there was no reason to fight; given the nature of the world at the time, the Austrians weren’t being oppressive brutes and there was a great deal of willingness to reform in the government); fine – fight. But they lost. And now the instrument of government must exact a reckoning on those who resorted to arms. Schwarzenberg, the Austrian Prime Minister (in effect) was alleged to have said, “certainly, there must be mercy. But first, some hanging.”. You can’t just start a war, lose it, and expect everyone to act as if nothing had happened. So there was some punishment – and some mercy. In the long stream of history, one of the Hungarians condemned to die for rebellion was eventually pardoned and rose to be Prime Minister of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; but there still had to be the hanging.

We need to get back to an understanding that a price has to be paid. There is nothing free. And the more disruptive the action, the higher the price. We have turned mercy into mere mushiness; a sentimental unwillingness to make sure that those who dare greatly also understand that failure has its very high cost. Our latest iteration of this is the BLM/Antifa riots and the spate of store lootings. Everyone wants these things to stop – but I might well be the only person in the United States who understands that if you want to be merciful, then some people will have to pay, and perhaps with their lives for the most egregious. And keep in mind that I oppose the death penalty! On the whole, don’t use it…but if we identify, say, twenty people who organized the BLM/Antifa riots which led to so many devastated lives…then four or five of the worst offenders being hung is merciful…because the survivors would never risk a repeat of it, and so we won’t have thousands of people with ruined lives because someone wanted to make a violent political point.

Human life – human civilization – is a precarious balance; everything has its mirror and it is in striking the balance between the two extremes that we find peace, freedom and safety. Tolerance balanced with intolerance. Order balanced with liberty. Justice balanced with mercy. But balanced. No element being allowed to run away with itself; everything kept in check by its opposite. We have lost that balance and so everything gets ever more insane. It is time to revive it.

Conservatives: Stop Helping the Left

Mark Noonan44 Comments

Never retract. Never explain. Get the job down and let them howl.

That is a quote attributed to 19th century Oxford professor Benjamin Jowett – quite a famous educator in his time. I bring it up because we on our side – the Right side of the political spectrum – need to lay that quote to heart. Why?

Well, the other day Kari Lake made a statement about how the House should annul the 2020 election and install Trump into the White House. I didn’t bother looking deeply into it because such a thing can’t be done and I’ve no time to waste on such things. But lots of people did look into it – naturally ridiculing Lake over it and making a huge fuss out of a few words said by a private citizen on TV. The thing is that huge numbers of people were attacking her from the right.

What possible use is that? What advantage can we possibly gain by joining the Left in attacking one of our own?

Don’t bother telling me that the statement was bad. Of course it was. But where was it handed down from on high that if someone says something ridiculous that everyone has to comment on it? Condemn it? Further: when was the rule established that we have to make sure we condemn any of our own who say or do something stupid? Do the Democrats ever attack their own? Stacy Abrams and her boosters went on for years saying she had won the Georgia gubernatorial race even though it was patently obvious that she hadn’t – and to contrast with Lake, at least in the case of Arizona there remain some very serious questions about whether or not all the GOP ballots were counted and/or whether or not some Democrat ballots were slipped in after the election was over. Abrams lost clearly – and if there was any cheating, it would have been the per-usual cheating Democrats do. So, if anything, Abrams lost by a larger margin than official totals. But, that didn’t stop her, nor her people: claiming for ages that it was fixed and she was the legitimate governor of Georgia. Did you ever hear a single Democrat get out there and ridicule her? Condemn her? Even take mild exception to her position?

No. Not a peep. And to this day Abrams is a highly regarded leader in the Democrat party. Why do we on the Right always participate in Leftist attacks on our own? We do not need to. If one of our commits a crime, you can rely on it that the Establishment will prosecute (and as we see with Trump, even if there isn’t a crime). If one of ours does something immoral, that’s gonna lead the news. So, if one of ours is actually bad, they’re gone. But if one of ours merely says or does something dumb: let them weather the storm. Make a judgement if you want to stand up for them depending on the nature of the mistake…but for goodness sake, don’t help the Democrats destroy them! You don’t have to jump in there. Almost certainly, nobody asked you. And anyone who does ask you is a Democrat operative trying to get GOPers on record condemning a fellow GOPer…simply to make it easier to destroy that GOPer.

If a GOPer/Conservative angers you, here’s an idea: move on. Find a Democrat to attack. Don’t attack the GOPer. That GOPer will be attacked, at length, for actions real and imagined by the regime MSM. Your help is not needed! And nobody cares that you manged to preen yourself on our superior morality by condemning someone on our side.

Unless and until we get to the Democrat level of loyalty to friends and ruthlessness to enemies, we’re simply not going to win.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan82 Comments

Normally, I never condemn anyone for their vote but for 2024 a GOP vote has become a moral obligation on all decent people. Regardless of what anyone thinks of any particular GOP candidate and in spite of the manifest weakness, corruption and folly of the GOP, itself, the Democrats have become so overwhelmingly bad – anti-human, evil in policy – that anyone with the least moral sense has to vote for the one alternative likely to eject the Democrats from power: and that is the GOP.

They are using the Department of Justice as a Gestapo. They are selling us out to the Green Lobby while China builds coal-fired power plants. They favor abortion to birth and the medical transition of children. They are conniving at the new slave trade along our southern border. They are making policy based on bribes and kickbacks. They are feeding the flames of internal hatred and division merely to keep selected demographic voting blocs on their side. It is all just horrible and if it goes on America is lost. They must be stopped – and the only way to stop them (God help us!) is the GOP.

As I’ve said many times, I will back the eventual GOP nominee regardless of who that person is – and I am no longer engaging in internal debate about which candidate is best. They are all better than any Democrat. From the most Trumpy to the most RINO among them, they are all miles above any Democrat. I urge all on our side to cease sniping at each other – sure, battle for your candidate, but don’t spend any time attacking the supporters of someone else. Save that fire for the Democrats. There is simply too much at stake for us to waste our effort on internal battles.

The latest Trump indictment is the same flaming garbage as the other two – they are charging him for speech. The only reason they can do this is the charges are being filed in DC and the federal judiciary there is under the control of frothing-at-the-mouth Leftwing fanatics imposed by Obama. The case should be tossed, but it won’t be – even the DC court of appeals is a no-go as a majority of it is Democrats. Eventually the Supreme Court will toss the case, but that could be years from now. The only question here is do Democrats feel an advantage for a quick trial and conviction (there is no doubt a DC jury will follow Party orders and convict no matter what the facts are), or have it hang over Trump especially if he’s the nominee? They might not know themselves, so you may see a bit of confusion in how they proceed. And they’re not done – they’re working on more charges in various venues and I would suspect if Trump is the nominee then in September of next year he’ll be charged with sedition.

But, does it matter? Right now, Trump is riding high for the GOP nomination and there are worried rumbles among the Left: a concern that even if Biden remains ahead, he’s not enough ahead to win. Remember, 3 or less points in the popular vote likely means a GOP Electoral College victory. And one recent poll actually had them tied – which would work out to a catastrophic Democrat defeat, probably costing them the Senate. I don’t care too much for polls…but the people who control the money in politics (on both sides) live and die by them. That is why we’re also hearing rumbles that people want Joe off the ticket…that, in fact, the recent revelations about Hunter originate in Democrats trying to force a change on the ticket. Who can really know?

The basic problem the Democrats have is that for the first time, they don’t have a smart person in charge. Much as we all despise Obama and the Clintons, they knew how to operate political machinery. Biden is senile and barely able to function more than a few hours a day. The Executive decisions likely depend on who talks to him last, and most of the time that would be Jill, who has never shown any political talent. The really bad thing for Democrats is there is nobody to ride herd on the most kook Left parts of the coalition. They are now rather regularly saying the quiet part out loud…including in front of people who aren’t emotionally committed to them. It could make for a wild ride next year.

It is the Heretics World and We Just Live in it.

Mark Noonan38 Comments

Not for nothing did people fight wars over the definition of words. After all, homoiousios and homoousios are only one letter off from each other…but blood was spilled and an Empire was rocked to its core over it. Because homoiousios means that Jesus was like God while homoousios means Jesus is God. It is crucial, though the modern mind has a hard time understanding why. Had homoiousios triumphed then the West, the world you know, would have been exceptionally different. Almost certainly something like the Muslim world…Jesus eventually demoted to mere prophet with some later person able to change the message because, well, just one more prophet, right? But we were saved from that by the Council of Nicaea which defined the term for the whole Christian world. At that point, those holding to homoiousios were ultimately doomed because the gatekeeper was the Church and the correct term had been defined in Council.

You can, if you like, get into interminable arguments about whether that would have been a good or bad thing. As a believing Catholic, I say it would have been bad. It would have led to a world without salvation…a static, dead world with no real hope. The great achievements of Europe would never have surpassed the old Greco-Roman world. But that argument need not detain us here – what is important to take away is that words matter and who controls the words, wins.

This came into my mind when I saw yesterday a story both sad and absurd about a teenager being taken by his mother to another State for transition medicine after his State banned it for minors. We’ve all seen these stories – all designed to get us hating the people banning medical transition for minors, but that ain’t working – but for the millionth time I saw, “gender-affirming care”. That’s when it hit me: they are controlling the words and so framing the debate and essentially forcing us to battle on their ground. We can’t win as long as phrases like “gender-affirming care” are permitted. The heretics are now the gatekeepers.

And that isn’t the only thing; it is just what struck me at the moment. This is not a debate about the merits of transitioning. But it is a warning that if we don’t get control of the language, we can’t win. No matter what battles we might win at the State or federal level, as long as the heretics get to define what it is we’re doing, they’ll win. That is why, when I saw it, I pointed out that we need to change the term to the biologically correct wording: gender appearance modification. Because that is what they’re doing. They can’t change a person’s gender: all they can do is modify how a person looks. Sometimes quite remarkably, but that doesn’t change the underlying biological facts. By letting them get away with saying “gender-affirming care” we are essentially conceding their argument: that gender is a social construct and that if a person says they are a different gender then so they are.

I really don’t want us to get hung up on the one issue here – so, let’s also point out that “abortion is healthcare” is another heretical phrase being used to destroy the orthodox and correct, “kill an unborn child”. Do we really want to win the Life debate? Then we have to start being enforcers of orthodoxy: every time they say anything other than “kill an unborn child”, we say it…and where we can, we enshrine it into law: that is, we force official terminology to conform to our views. So, where a publicly funded hospital these days might say they performed 1,257 pregnancy terminations last year, we’ll force them to officially record 1,257 unborn children were killed last year. Heck, just the fun in forcing the Left to argue that kids weren’t killed is worth it: remember, the more people actually see what the Left wants, the less popular it becomes. But outside of that, it is the truth – and the most important thing for any human to do is adhere to truth. Haltingly, failing a lot of times, still each person must strive to be as truthful as they can at all times. The Truth does set you free – mostly because it allows you to live rationally.

What I’m asking is for you to all put on your Inquisitor hat. This will be a tough pill for you Protestants out there to swallow – but to be a bit brutal about it, the reason we have “medical aid in dying” up in Canada (rather than calling it by its proper name: murdering people for budgetary reasons) is because way back when Martin Luther said that people can deny the definitions settled by a Church Council. This is not me being mean: this is me just pointing out that when you start to allow private judgement to trump all, the heresies unleashed won’t just stop at denying the supremacy of the Pope. So, anyways: remain Protestant all you want, but channel your inner Torquemada all the same. In all things, look for the phrasing which is being used to deny obvious truth…and then call it out.

Because we must get control of the words – to force the Left to explain itself in our terms; the true terms. Let them go before the American people and be forced to say what they really want. And then let the chips fall where they may. I have a strong suspicion they’ll fall our way.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan25 Comments

Little follow up to my post from two days ago: after discussing what is brave and so forth, got into a similar debate about what are rights. It was rather heated for a while and I think I’ve identified why: I thought after a while that we were talking past each other because I realized I hadn’t pointed out that with rights come responsibilities…and that’s when it all really fell apart and I found out that lots of people don’t even have a mental conception of responsibilities. And, guys, this was me arguing with the Right. The Left never even showed up.

To nutshell it, I pointed out that we are under no obligation to allow bad and/or insane people to occupy the public square. That among the rights we as citizens hold is the right to a peaceful, polite, orderly society so that we may conduct our lawful business without let or hindrance. This caused the explosion – one guy considering me a fascist over it. The bottom line is that those opposing me do not believe that we have a right to decency and neither do people have a responsibility to be decent. Sure, they conceded that someone causing direct harm could be arrested…but only in very narrow circumstances and if I didn’t like the way things we, too bad: we can only be free if lousy people are allowed to be lousy.

This shows how far the rot has gone – first that people believe a bum or a gangster is someone exercising freedom rather than representing the mentality of a slave. Secondly that decent people have to put up with the lousy…that if we don’t do that, we can’t be free. The truth, of course, is that if you don’t have an orderly, polite society you can’t be free…because a disordered, rude society is swiftly run by the most barbaric among us and barbarians do not respect the rights of anyone. This is why we have people waltzing into stores and just swiping everything. You can say the changes to the law caused it and I’d agree that it was a proximate cause of the event, but the bottom line is that you and I – even if absolutely assured we wouldn’t get prosecuted – simply would not go and steal stuff. We know its wrong and we don’t have a right to take what belongs to others. Barbarians don’t know its wrong and figure anything they can grab is theirs by right.

And how are we supposed to survive like that? The answer is that we can’t. It is already starting to fall apart (and the suburban people who figure they can just shop on line are gonna love it when their Amazon delivery trucks start to get hijacked in droves). Eventually those who produce or who have goods to sell will retreat behind walls and only allow select people in…and they’ll only produce in small amounts for fear that goods available for sale are also readily available for theft. Shortages, lack of access, rising prices are going to come unless this is stopped.

And they way you stop a barbarian is to hit him. Very hard. So that it hurts a lot. And you keep hitting him until he stops. It is the only way. It isn’t fascist; not even akin to fascism. It is saving civilization and thus freedom.

So, Hunter had his plea deal and the judge tossed it because it absurdly granted Hunter immunity from future charges…in case anyone following up on his actions found even more crimes (spoiler: there are more crimes. A lot more crimes). So, he plead guilty. Now, don’t get your hopes up: Team Pudding Brain isn’t going to allow Joe’s spawn to go to jail and they will want all possible charges wrapped up before election day, 2024, for fear that if a GOPer – or even a hostile or indifferent Democrat – gets in for 2025 the jig will be up. Rely on it that they are already working on a modified slap on the wrist. And the Biden’s are too arrogant to understand that the way out – the way to make this all go away – is for Hunter to see the inside of a jail cell. Say a 3 year rap, out in 18 months. Be good for Hunter: his best chance to get clean before he overdoses. It would still be a wrist slap, but everyone is going to figure “at least he went to jail” and stop looking into it. The hope is the nitwits keep screwing it up and a GOP President gets to have his team look into it.

DeSantis said something mildly approving of RFK (who is a nut) and the world went mad – and mostly is was DeSantis supporters who went mad. They’re busy writing his political obituary over it. But I do detect something: some RDS supporters clearly only backed RDS as the non-Trump without much hope he’d actually win the nomination and thus provide these people with an excuse to vote Biden in 2024. As for me: it wasn’t that bad and RDS has plenty of time to repair whatever damage was done. What I’ve been advising people is to not get committed to any particular candidate too early. The Trumpsters and the DeSantis-stans are both making the mistake of getting too deeply invested when the first primary is still months away (though I suspect DNC pot-stirring is playing a role here). I’ve committed to vote for the GOP nominee – of late I’m not even saying who I prefer. Any GOPer is the moral and intellectual superior of every Democrat.

In line with that, do you feel the shift? After the 2022 midterms I think most of us expected rather resounding defeat in 2024. I sure did. But Dobbs fades and Pudding Brain’s utter nastiness comes ever more to the fore. I think people are disgusted with him. A lot. Sure, Trump has his negatives – and rely on it that if RDS or someone else gets it, their negatives will be driven sky high by the MSM – but Trump didn’t abandon a grandchild. Isn’t talking about “gender affirming care” for minors as if the very concept weren’t an abomination. Without getting too deep here, for the first time in a while I do think we can win next year. Steep hill to climb. We still have to win outside the margin of fraud (which will be a lot lower than in 2020), but I think we can do it. Stay tuned.

Bravery is Good and Should be Honored

Mark Noonan7 Comments

Had a rather interesting day on Twitter (or is it Xitter, now?). It started with me seeing an NRO article which condemned Aldean’s tune by saying we need songs about virtue, not violence. That started me off by saying that one of the manly virtues is the use of violence to defend the community. Next up was a Tweet asserting that what ails us is that so many of the very best in the West died in the two World Wars and so we’re just breeding from the dregs. To that I objected that while it is true that the best die in the highest portion in war, what was really the poison was our lack of honoring the fallen.

Oh, to be sure, we’ll build them a monument. We’ll say we honor the troops – but we don’t honor what was most important about them: their valor. Bravery. Guts. The fact that they went into the worst situation, behaved like lions, and defeated evil enemies. That is what we should be talking about, and quite endlessly, because it is worth talking about. It is an example and an aspiration for all of us – to show even a tenth of the courage of those who prevailed in war.

But, instead, our stories are all about how lousy it was and what were we fighting for and dammit that guy died and all we want is for this to be over with. All of these are true enough sentiments as any combat veteran will tell you but they aren’t the story.

I think this stems from the aftermath of World War One and especially the play Journey’s End. Some years back I spoke about this play in relation to a recent adaptation and it really is a good play but when I saw it I felt that it was missing the key aspect of the setting.

The play, itself, is set in the days just before Operation Michael was launched by the Germans. This was the start of Germany’s Spring offensive of 1918. Their supreme effort to win the war in France before the full power of the United States could be brought to bear. The basic German plan was to destroy the British army and in service of this goal they put together an army of picked men, specially trained and equipped for the offensive. They culled out of all German divisions the very best men, gave them the best weapons, backed them up with the most massive artillery Germany could create and then launched them against a British army which was worn down by years of fighting and was being denied reinforcements from home for fear of the British command launching more fruitless attacks against the German front. It was, as Churchill wrote, the most powerful onslaught in military history. Still is to this day; no particular offensive in World War Two can compare the the power the Germans directed against British line on March 21st, 1918.

And the Brits held. Sure, they had to withdraw, pretty deeply by Western Front standards, but at no time was their front broken. At no time did the troops panic and flee. Outnumbered at the point of attack two or three to one, the British soldiers bled that German assault, with many British units fighting until exterminated. In the end, this massive attack representing the very best Germany had pushed forward into a completely useless salient about 15 miles into the British lines. It was without a doubt the most sublime defensive stand in history.

And what does the world know about it? Journey’s End – it was all just a waste.

But it wasn’t a waste. It was a victory. It was bravery. To this day young British children should thrill to oft-retold tales of their ancestors standing up to the most powerful army ever and giving it a drubbing so that freedom could live. I’ll bet not one in a thousand has ever even heard of it…and if they hear anything about World War One it was that it was just nothing but bad. This isn’t to excuse the political and military leaders of Britain or the other combatants in the war – they truly were downright awful on all sides for the most part. But to take the courage of men pitted against the fires of war and insult it is more disgusting than the worst strategic or tactical blunders of the leaders. It is a betrayal of the warriors.

And now I’ll get to the last thing which got me sitting here writing – that was after I had defended the brave and the fulfillment of duty I got the pushback that things like the strategic bombing campaign of Germany was a crime and the men who did it evil – one person actually comparing them to Auschwitz camp guards (“weren’t the guards doing their duty? Huh; what about that, smarty pants!”). And that is when it really hit me; we’ve been heavily propagandized, especially since the end of World War Two. Propaganda which has made us forget and/or denigrate bravery and doubt ourselves – “maybe we weren’t any better than the Nazis?”. It was the putting of Journey’s End on steroids. At least in the play the protagonist is shell-shocked after years at the front…but now the very best we’ve ever had sent out into the worst thing to ever happen are either pathetic victims or criminals in their own right.

This is very insidious and I have to figure it was cooked up in Moscow – because the USSR really was no better than Nazi Germany in most respects and it was terribly weak compared to us and so something had to be done to make sure America never flexed its power. What better way than a campaign of slander against our troops and against our nation? How better than to say that the bombing of Dresden or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima were just the same as a Nazi concentration camp? The merest bit of thought shows they weren’t remotely alike. Even if we in the aftermath decide that the strategic bombing campaign was wrong, the fact remains that we did it for the right reasons: we were trying to end the war by the swiftest means available (thus reducing the overall death total) while defeating inhuman tyranny. Meanwhile, the Nazis were trying to exterminate people who couldn’t possibly fight back. Not even remotely the same sorts of actions – but they were compared, with a subtle implication that somehow we were a little worse (“we’re better than that!”).

We have to get back to honoring bravery. To look at our troops and see what they did. Sure, you can point out that they weren’t all saints, but it must immediately be said that it doesn’t matter. What matters as regards our soldiers is that they went out and fought for us and did it well and beat evil enemies. I have wondered for years why no movie was ever made about Ernest Evans and the USS Johnston – I’ve mentioned Evans before: to remind, he was the skipper of the Johnston and when he sighted the enemy battle fleet – which included the super-battleship Yamato – he immediately charged the enemy and fought like mad – him and his whole crew – until the Johnston was shot out from under them. We can’t make that movie – because all we can do with it is show how incredibly brave they all were and that isn’t the sort of story we’re allowed to tell these days. If we ever did anything with it, it would probably be to find some poor survivor who suffered PTSD over it. But it was brave; and the actions of that crew – and the crews of other small ships who also joined the charge – saved the day at Leyte Gulf…after the admirals had screwed up and got themselves decoyed by the Japanese, leaving small ships like the Johnston out on a limb, with only their hearts and their blood to stand against the Japanese.

But we must relearn those stories. We must relearn to honor heroes. It is the only way we can survive – the only way to have hope.