Open Thread

Mark Noonan51 Comments

Democrats have a Feinstien problem. No, its not her lifetime of corruption or that she employed a Chinese spy for years. For the Democrats, none of that is a problem! Their problem is that she’s 900 years old and is ill – can’t get to the Senate to vote the way she’s told and its holding up Biden’s horrific judicial nominees. Naturally, they want the GOP to get them out of this jam by voting to suspend the rules and allow some other Democrat to temporarily fill her seat. McConnell has come through for us on this and not allowed it – as they can’t get unanimous consent, they’ll need a floor vote and that takes 60 votes to happen. Can they get GOP votes for it? Perhaps some, but I suspect not enough. This does provide some real leverage for the Senate GOP…but one thing McConnell has never liked is using leverage against Democrats. Naked exercises of power are ok with him, but making them pay a price for something never enters into his head. OTOH, McConnell is clearly not in the best of health, himself, and as GOPers start jockeying for position, maybe they can force Mitch’s hand here? With the debt ceiling looming, this is the perfect time to take a pound of Democrat flesh.

There’s several videos of a completely looted Chicago Wal Mart. This isn’t just some high value items – the store is pretty much cleared out. The most heart wrenching was put out by a Chicago mother who was simply shopping for food for the kids and there was none left. And she does blame her fellow black people for it – pointing out that she is not a thief, but now because of them she can’t get what she needs. The bad news: it just gets worse from here. Chicago’s new Mayor is a full-blown Leninist who figures that looting is just “loot the looters”. But you can’t sustain this: businesses can’t remain in business if at any moment their whole stock of goods is to be stolen. And think about it: a whole Wal Mart was cleaned out. Even the neighborhood Wal Mart stores are pretty darn big. Think how long it would take even for a sizeable mob to clean it out…which means the police weren’t even called on a “why bother?” attitude or they didn’t come after being called (and why should they? If they did and tried to make arrests, they’d just be setting themselves up for accusations of racist brutality with the mayor siding with the looters). In a short while, the only retail outlets in Blue cities will be fortresses with only limited goods and high prices to pay the costs of security. And without any easy targets to loot, it isn’t like the mobs will then settle down and get a job…they’ll just start moving out into the rich, white suburbs with their BLM flags (that last bit will be a little funny, tho…)

China appears to be opening police stations in the USA in order to monitor and harass Chinese dissidents residing here. The two cops here were arrested but I have my doubts will really put a stop to this: the PRC has so entirely penetrated the American establishment that this might merely have been the signal for them to keep it more low key.

The latest comic book turned movie has become another in a long string of flops. Get woke, go broke as they say. But really its more “go boring, go broke”. Fun movies are supposed to be fun. Perhaps a bit ridiculous and heavy on special effects and explosions, but that is all part of the fun. But they become a drag if you have to bootstrap social commentary into them. I’m no genius author but I always consider the story before anything else. A character first introduced in Kings and Queen is gay, though not obviously so. If you’re paying close attention, you’ll notice it. But that fact also plays no role in the story. My characters have always appeared to me full grown as soon as I need them: there is character development as time goes on, but the gender, looks and basic motives of them are all there, whammo, as soon as I need them. This character, who shows up in a battle scene, showed up gay. In The Crimson Blade (Book VIII which will be released after Empress) this character becomes a secondary character in the overall story and so I tell more of his backstory – with him remaining gay, but that fact remaining utterly uninteresting in his role. Because something like that is primarily uninteresting. Its like hair color: something that just is. It is what your characters do in the story which makes or breaks them, and decides if the story is interesting. As it turns out, I liked this character so much that in Book IX (Home World), he becomes a main character.

What I’m saying here is that you can have in your stories non-traditional character roles. In fact, having a few odd balls in there is kinda fun. Anyone who reads my stories knows I favor strong female characters – I’ve never liked shrinking violets and I didn’t marry one. Mousy women have always irritated me. The girls I’ve got are gutsy broads who aren’t afraid of anything…but I’m also not going to please modern absurdity by having one of them take down a 250 pound warrior in hand to hand combat (Rossalyn slicing the unwary up with a sword is another matter entirely, of course). You can have just about anything you want in your story – but its got to be fun, not be boring because you had to shoehorn in the latest social mores as decreed by the ultra-woke. The sooner the movie makers figure this out the sooner they’ll get back to making money.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan43 Comments

I saw a meme yesterday and I may have been a photoshopped joke. I wish I had copied it but it is long gone somewhere in the Twitter TL but the gist of it was a chryon claiming 15% of the American people believe Satanist pedophiles run America. We smile. Har har. Can’t be! But then, today, I came across something called UNAIDS 8 March Principles.

It ain’t good, folks. To quote:

…sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law. In this context, the enforcement of criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of persons under 18 years of age to make decisions about engaging in consensual sexual conduct and their right to be heard in matters concerning them.

I think that you and I – because we’re not insane – would simply hold to a principle that the age of consent it set for a reason. Understanding that there can always be exceptions to every rule, in most Western nations we have decided that before your 18th birthday, you lack the capacity to reasonably consent. Whether that consent is to take out a loan or to engage in sexual activity. We know that a 15 year old can be wise beyond their years and that a 25 year old can be childish. But the line has to be drawn somewhere and we drew it at 18.

We are also reasonable people so we’re probably not going to prosecute a 19 year old boy who has consensual sex with a 17 year old girl. But our rule will still remain that any time a person over 18 has sexual relations with a person under 18, scrutiny is to be applied and the younger the minor and the older the adult the more harsh we’re going to be. And to be fair here, the UN is not calling for the decriminalization of pedophilia but do note the way they wrote it: the minor involved is to be asked how they felt about it and if the minor says it was ok, that must be taken into consideration as a matter of law. In other words, if a groomer manages to successfully groom, then its ok.

We’re really barrelling ahead into very dark times, my friends. Evil is stalking the world and taking over every institution. Because we believe in God we know we will win…but when we do win, we must remember that at times harshness works out to mercy. We must instruct those who are going down the UN’s path. They must forever learn that you cannot do that.

Never heard of Yuengling beer until just recently – but I guess they are America’s oldest brewery and they are ruthlessly taking advantage of Budweiser becoming the King of Gay Beers. I don’t drink much these days but I will have a beer or two by the pool. So, I’ll pick up Yuengling.

In case you have been living under a rock, it is now officially reported that anti-Christian bigotry is reaching unprecedented levels. This is the natural course of events. Gay is now the national religion and no national religion allows a rival. Do keep in mind, it isn’t all gay people. Might not even be most gay people. But certain people are insisting that everyone bend the knee to LGBTQ and if you don’t, you will pay a price.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan40 Comments

Rumor mill says McConnell is about to call it quits: I guess that fall he took a little while back was much worse than originally advertised. The good news is that the Kentucky GOP rather miraculously engaged in foresight and in 2021 enacted – over the Democrat governor’s veto – a new provision for replacing a Senator: the governor must select between 3 different candidates put forward by the Party which won the previous Senate election. So, Mitch gets replaced by another GOPer. I do pray that McConnell recovers but I’m also happy he’s moving on…he did a lot of good things for us, but he’s too old and too old fashioned. He’s not the sort of leader we need in the Senate right now.

Update: In a Tweet, McConnell says he’ll return to the Senate on Monday, scotching that rumor, at least for now.

The IRS is now going to force 1099’s on anyone who receives $600.00 or more via Venmo or other electronic means. This is what Pudding Brain meant when he said he was going to make those billionaires pay their fair share: it was always about going after low paid people not letting Uncle Sam get his cut. As I’ve said again and again: the richest 1% doesn’t have any money. Not in relation to what Uncle Sam needs. In 2022 Uncle Sam spent $6.2 trillion. All the rich people in America, if we confiscated it, probably wouldn’t cover 80% of that. And even if it covered a year, that’s it. All done. No more rich people. You can only confiscate once. The real money in America – by a vast amount – is held by working people. Those who go to work every day and earn taxable wages. Each of us only has a small amount but there are 166.7 million of us. Collectively, we make vastly more than the super rich and the pool of taxable money replaces itself every year. Any “tax the rich” scheme by the Democrats will always work out to “soak the poor”. It simply can’t be any other way.

Netflix is going with a black Cleopatra. This is what she looked like from contemporary sources:

She was Greek. She might not have even known how to speak the Egyptian language. She was the tail end of a Greek Ruling Class which set itself up in Alexandria in the aftermath of Alexander the Great’s demise and simply milked Egypt for all it was worth. But even if she was the product of some intermarriage with native Egyptians, this is what Egyptians looked like:

Were Egyptians Swedes? No. But they also weren’t black Africans. They were fairly typical Mediterranean peoples – skin darker than northern Europeans but not as dark as Africans. Easily could have been admixture into them from both sub-Sahara and northern Europe (the more we study the ancients the more we’re finding that people really moved around a lot).

So, why are they doing this? Two reasons:

  1. To eliminate white people from any positive aspect of history. White people are the devil in modern thinking and so cannot be connected to anyone who ever did a good deed, or even did anything interesting. This is cultural erasure and it is spreading: black people are being credited with innovations of Europeans and rely on it, eventually black people will be credited with all technology, art, literature and architecture.
  2. The Left feels a need to create a pro-Black myth to replace the older, pro-White myth. They can’t go around and simply say that the old racism was wrong and we shouldn’t do it anymore. Because just saying that means you’re still sitting around wondering just why black Africans were so technologically backwards as late as the 19th century. Even in the Americas there were some impressive civilizations. The highest sub-Saharan cultures barely rose to the heights of the neolithic era. Only the Australians were more primitive. I mean, there are very obvious reasons for the lack of development…almost entirely stemming from the peculiar geography of Africa. But your basic Marxist “studies” professor probably can’t read a map and never learned about how trade developed. So, they just make up things.

The Ruling Class is really angry that someone leaked intel showing that the Ukrainian military is weak. They are leaving no stone unturned to find the miscreant. Which is kinda weird: after all, even if you support Ukraine, you still need to know the true situation so you can assess the needs and respond. Unless, of course, the whole thing is a money laundering grift and so you need to hide it all to keep it rolling until just before Russian tanks arrive in Kiev.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan37 Comments

Polling, as we know, is mostly useless – probably more useless now than its ever been. In the Trump vs DeSantis fight, they show Trump up big nationally, but DeSantis running neck and neck in State polling, especially Iowa. My thoughts: we’re being fed polls designed to please Trumpsters and DeSantis-stans so that internal bickering will increase and get people to stake out “Only Trump” or “Never Trump” positions which would help Pudding Brain next year.

Remember: it is always an op. What is put out for public consumption is designed to get you to believe what isn’t true and act against your own best interests. They are never telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Nothing is for free – and if the product is free, then you are actually the product. Someone paying for a poll and handing it to you “free” means they want you to believe a certain way…nobody puts up money just for the heck of it.

RFK, Jr got into the race. He’s got no chance. Not even if Pudding Brain kicks the bucket. He is far Left loon on a lot of a positions, but not on all of them and as the rich and corporations have gone ever more Woke, they are now key elements of the Democrat coalition – RFK does take stabs at them and they’ll never forgive him for doing that. He’s also in bad repute because he is a traditional Left anti-war Democrat, taking up the mantle of his father…while the Democrats are all pro-war over Ukraine and speak nary a word against the Military-Industrial Complex these days. His anti-vax ideology is also mostly absurd – but it worked out to be spot-on with the Covid vaccine so that will garner him some support among the more Libertarian parts of the Left. Not nearly enough to make a difference in the Democrat primaries.

OTOH hand, Newsom is making all sorts of moves which are clearly preparing for a White House run. Mostly low key but doing things like ripping on RDS and donating money to the Tennessee Democrat party are things you only do if you want support from Democrats in Florida and Tennessee…States Pudding Brain is catastrophically unpopular in and which a solid challenger might do some damage in a Democrat primary. Remember: LBJ was all set to run again in 1968 until he merely did worse than expected in New Hampshire. It wouldn’t take much to get the Democrat power people (who are all largely owned by either the Clinton or Obama machines) to dump China Joe. On the other, other hand Newsom might just be keeping an iron in the fire in case Joe goes so gaga or dies that the Democrats have to run others…and worse comes to worst, Newsom is positioning himself for 2028. He will definitely run for President – do not doubt that. He’s confident he can win (and he’s got a lot of reason to be confident – the MSM will puff him up like the Second Coming).

The most recent spate of shootings are clearly the result of Democrats pumping up apocalyptic rhetoric and just waiting for one of their deranged followers to explode. They’ll keep doing this. Oh, you think they wouldn’t do that? Rely on it, guys: people who favor abortion to birth don’t care about human life. They don’t have to order anyone to do it…they know, they’ve got a huge and growing crop of followers who are insane and who are driven to depression by unrelenting “the world is dying” and “GOP is Nazi” rhetoric.

Happy Easter!

Mark Noonan35 Comments

Peter proceeded to speak and said:
“You know what has happened all over Judea,
beginning in Galilee after the baptism
that John preached,
how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth
with the Holy Spirit and power.
He went about doing good
and healing all those oppressed by the devil,
for God was with him.
We are witnesses of all that he did
both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem.
They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.
This man God raised on the third day and granted that he be visible,
not to all the people, but to us,
the witnesses chosen by God in advance,
who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.
He commissioned us to preach to the people
and testify that he is the one appointed by God
as judge of the living and the dead.
To him all the prophets bear witness,
that everyone who believes in him
will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.”

Acts 10:34a, 37-43

Open Thread

Mark Noonan22 Comments

Daniel Barry defended himself against Communist BLM/Antifa terrorists and so a Soros-backed DA in Austin, TX bamboozled a jury of cowards into convicting him of murder. This is in Texas, guys: not California or New York. What is being said here is that you are not allowed to defend yourself wherever Democrats have power…if you fight against their paid thugs, you will be dragged into court and destroyed.

I’m confident that the Texas GOP will step up here – people are already calling for them to reform Texas’ pardon law so that Abbott can just spring this man from jail – but the bottom line is that we have in our country whole areas which are no-go for us. And we can’t allow that to continue. Especially we can’t let it happen in the blue cities of the Red States. Where we have the power we have to start enacting laws allowing Republican governors and legislatures to remove local DA’s who abuse their power on behalf of the Democrat party. We must let the Democrats know that we won’t let them bully us into silence.

After the TN GOP expelled those two commie thugs from their legislature, Democrats tried to make it about race because the two expelled happened to be black. This is nonsense because we judge on the content of character, not the color of skin. Stupid commies are stupid commies no matter what their race, ethnicity, gender or creed. As it turns out, the white woman involved in the insurrection didn’t get expelled – because she managed to bamboozle one GOPer into voting against her expulsion and so the vote fell just one short. How did she reward her GOP benefactor? By calling him racist, of course! The GOPer in question did issue a mea culpa and I do hope the lesson is learned: Never give the Democrats an inch. They are not good people.

House committee subpoenas Biden bank documents – we’ll see if this leads anywhere. But the fun part of this is that any argument the Democrats want to make against this is going to fail because the GOP is using the same rationale as the Democrats used for getting Trump’s tax records – which I guess were extremely clean as a whistle as they haven’t been leaked.

China is implementing restrictions on the export of Rare Earths – a key ingredient in lots of high tech things. Now, this is only a problem because our environmentalist morons (likely funded by China) won’t let us mine our own Rare Earths. But, meanwhile, we might find that we can’t build our fancy missiles because we simply lack the materials to do so. Side note: China is building a blue water Navy so they can challenge us and, if successful, blockade us during war…you know, cut us off from all the supplies we obtain in foreign countries because we refuse to produce them here at home because the Weather god would get angry if we did.

We Will Win

Mark Noonan97 Comments

There is a heavy amount of gloom and doom on the Right this day on social media. It is all over. We’re done. Doomed!

Why?

Well, we lost the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

To be sure, we lost it very badly – absolutely destroyed in a landslide loss. We were especially crushed in the suburbs where white women came out in droves to elect a Commie to the Supreme Court because she is pledged to invent a right to an abortion in the Wisconsin Constitution. Looking at this, the Right now sees nothing but Death and Despair.

But that’s because the Right, by and large, is kinda stupid. Its why the GOP has long been known as the Stupid Party. Stupid in, stupid out, dear people.

It is past time we stop being stupid.

While the loss at the WI SC is bad, less noticed is that we won a special election to the Wisconsin Senate and now have a super majority in it. We’re two shy of a super majority in the WI House but what happened last night means the Wisconsin legislature can pretty much impeach any State official they want and have them removed. Some are already talking of impeaching the Democrat governor but the smarter people are talking about impeaching the lower Court Democrat judges who have been soft on crime…you know, the judges who let Antifa and BLM skate all through 2020. That’s the place to start – get Evers (the Dem governor) if you can but much better to get rid of the lower level officials…the people who make policy happen.

We also obtained in North Carolina a super majority in the State legislature via a Democrat party switcher. The GOP Legislature there can now override the Democrat governor at will. That is a pretty cool power, guys. And altogether it means in two battleground States which will play a key role in 2024, the GOP is popular enough to secure legislative super majorities. Perhaps – and I’m just spitballin’ here – the GOP isn’t as toxic as MSM and Never Trump wants us to believe? That they may be – and I know this is shocking to even consider – lying about us because they are so desperate to get rid of Trump and MAGA that they’ll say anything even if 180 from reality?

Don’t get me wrong here: we’re very far away from the days of wine and roses. We’re in a really bad position. We suck at politics and are heavily divided. Democrats are good and politics and are firmly united. I do expect us to lose the White House next year no matter who we nominate. Be pleased as punch if we win, but I’m not expecting it. But what has happened in WI, NC and other State and local campaigns does give us cause for hope. Nobody is really looking into it – because it doesn’t support the Narrative – but my bet is that on the State and local level, the GOP is more powerful than its ever been…even in the aftermath of the Civil War. Last night while Chicago was electing a Commie lunatic as mayor, Springfield’s mayoralty went GOP for the first time since 1967…and the lady who won is pretty darned Trumpy. That is a bit of a watershed, guys. A thing that isn’t supposed to happen. But it did.

We do need some tactical changes. Clearly, middle and upper class white women are fanatics in favor of abortion. This is weird because, overall, such women hardly have abortions. But, it is what it is: you make a campaign about whether abortion should be legal or not, and these ladies will turn out for Democrats in huge numbers. I am, as you know, a raving, pro-life fanatic and I can’t moderate my views on it because I’m not a lunatic who thinks human beings are disposable…but the pragmatic facts of life are that abortion is, right now, a toxic issue for the GOP. It doesn’t do me the least bit of good to lose while insisting on the pro-life maximum position: that just means that the pro-death fanatics of the Democrat party get in. So, we have to carefully re-think our tactics…certainly do not go for any ban after 15 weeks. When we get into the fight, relentlessly point out that the Democrats position is abortion to birth (I’m serious: “so, GOP candidate, what do you think of your opponents tax plan?” “Well, Fred, first I’d like to point out that he wants the taxes to pay for abortion to birth”: like that). We have to start backing big, expensive programs for pre- and post-natal care. We trust in God’s time the American people will come to the Pro-Life position and we’ll be able to ban the hideous, anti-human practice…but, meanwhile, lets take what we can get and at least neutralize the issue against us.

We also need a make-over on how we present ourselves overall. In a sense, it is time to ditch the label “conservative”. We’re not conserving anything: everything we wanted to conserve is gone. What we’re trying to do is reform everything…to take power away from insane, corrupt, anti-human Progressives and rebuild our nation. We’re in a very real sense revolutionaries. And we should start acting like it – but like all revolutionaries, you start at the bottom. Sure, try to win Congress and the White House. Maybe you will. At least you’ll keep your finger in the pie there. But the real action for us is, as I’ve said a lot lately, down at the State and especially the local level. Just 12 years after we take over a school board we have a crop of 18 year olds who are literate, sane, healthy patriots. If, meanwhile, we’ve also taken over high education, then they won’t be turned into Commies on us. These kids will then step out into the larger world, laugh at their illiterate, blue-haired peers from Democrat areas, and proceed to take over the country.

What I’m ultimately saying here is nil desperandum – get a grip! Sure, it sucks. It will probably suck worse. In fact, it probably has a to suck a lot more worse before we have a real shot at national power. So be it. This is the Progressive’s world. It is very stupid, a lot more gay than we expected and it is failing. They don’t know what to do. They are incapable of thinking. They are just bloody-minded pressing forward with their stupid ideas because, being quite mindless, they don’t know what else to do. It will all come crashing down. We will pick up the pieces. It is just a matter of time…and if we’ve laid the groundwork, then when the time comes the Revolution will be quick and complete.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan44 Comments

Happy Indictment Day to all those who celebrate.

Supposedly the judge will issue a gag order…which, if nothing else has, proves this is political. On what possible grounds would any judge demand silence on this case? It isn’t a matter of national security. All of the parties to it are public. Indeed, with leaks we’re already learning what the case is (as an aside, all leaks are felonies…think about that: the people charging Trump with felonies are committing felonies as they try to control the Narrative). I guess we’ll find out if that is the case.

The whole thing is stupid and destructive. But it is also our fault – that is, it is the Right’s fault. Why is there a commie DA charging Trump? Because for decades the Left worked hard in the trenches to take over the Institutions. They now have people who are committed to the Left. Not to America. Not to the people. Not to truth or the law – just to the Left. Trump is being charged because the Left wants him charged, and they’ve got a DA – indeed, a whole city government in NYC – which will knock down every law in place to get him. It took a long time to get here.

And it will take us a long time to get back. We’ve already discussed it a bit but there is nothing more important than things like school boards, county commissions and sheriff’s offices. Secondary importance are State legislatures. Least in importance right now are federal offices…all we need do is retain enough federal power to prevent a packing of the Court and hamstring efforts to legislate the Left into power. Sure, they’ll still just do whatever they can, but without a Court to ratify it as constitutional and without the ability to make it into law, it is really just something the Executive branch is doing…and that can be undone if we get that back.

But down in the cities and counties, that is where the action is. That is where you really shape the legal system and the culture. There is Drag Queen Story Time because we let the cities and counties fall to the Left. Take them back and we replace Drag Queen Story time with Veteran Story Time. We teach the kids to be healthy, sane patriots. We protect the rights of the people against Federal encroachment. We build the power base which will eventually allow us to recapture all of government and destroy the Left. We never give up the fight at the federal level…but we understand that until our States and localities are sending patriots to Congress, we can’t do much with the Federal government. If we build the power then one day we’ll find we’ve got a trifecta of America First in DC…and then the Revolution.

Waco and the Problem of the Police

Mark Noonan69 Comments

I watched the Netflix documentary on Waco last night and, first off, definitely worth watching. It doesn’t judge at all: it presents the sequence of events interspersed with interviews with participants on both sides. It lets you make up you own mind about what happened. It all pretty much confirmed the views I formed at the time.

Koresh was a religious lunatic leading a group of suckers. Dime a dozen as far as that goes. It did bring to mind why, once upon a time, the Catholic Church burned heretics…when one female Davidian was talking about how she had been chosen by Koresh to have sex with him it clearly showed that her burning desire for personal union with God – which is supposed to be provided to us in the Eucharist – was warped by Koresh into him getting sexual favors. People do yearn for God: mountebanks are clever at providing something which seems like it. The show did get into the accusations of sexual abuse by Koresh towards minors but, at the end of the day, there never emerged much evidence of it – there’s a chance that it happened, but we’ll never know for certain. The accusation of physical abuse (beatings and the like) was pretty much disproved.

It was the accusation of sexual abuse of minors which brought Koresh to the attention of the authorities. They investigated but couldn’t find enough to bring charges. But now Koresh and his Davidian’s were on the radar. The next thing looked into was the fact that they had lots of guns. Even by Texas standards lots of guns. Apparently, the local Sheriff notified ATF of reports of illegal guns in the Davidian’s compound. Whether or not this was a good idea by the Sheriff is a prudential judgement – you’ll just have to think on it and make up your own mind. But once the ATF got involved, that’s where everything went bad.

They inserted an informant into the compound and it was this informant who provided the affidavit which underpinned the warrant. From what I can tell, it had a lot of suppositions…they could have been doing this or that illegal thing with weapons. As per usual these days, getting a judge to sign off on a warrant is easy…and the cops know which judges are most willing to approve a warrant even on flimsy evidence. Be that as it may, they had their warrant: it was what they did with it that caused the problem. The ATF claims they opted for the massive raid because they had been told that Koresh rarely left the compound – which is a ridiculous assertion as their own informant must have seen that Koresh regularly left the compound. He could have been picked up at the next grocery run. Here’s the key which, to me, tells the tale: the media was tipped off on the impending raid. This shows that what the ATF wanted was a flashy raid…you know, the kind where they’d then line up all the seized guns for a photo op. The bad news was that the MSMers tipped off to be there got lost and asked a postman where the Davidian compound was: the postman was a Davidian. Now they were alerted before ATF arrived.

So, who fired first? Cops say Davidians. Davidians say cops. We’ll never know. Especially as the prime evidence of the first shot – one of the two front doors of the compound – came up missing. Huge shock on that. I mean, the compound was completely surrounded by cops and they were fully in control of the site after it was all over and the debris was being cleared away but the one piece of physical evidence which might have shown who pulled the first trigger comes up missing. The other door, which was part of the double door entrance, was intact (being made of metal), but door which was a key piece of evidence that every cop in the world knows needs to be preserved gets mislaid. Weird. Go figure, huh? I actually go with the story that the ATF started shooting the Davidian’s dogs and that got a Davidian to shoot in a panic, as untrained people are wont to do in a stress situation.

Be that as it may, it became a massive firefight with an untold number of shots fired, only coming to an end when the ATF ran out of bullets and had to withdraw. This kinda lets me know that the ATF, at least on that day, was a bunch of untrained clowns cosplaying as SWAT. They only hit six people with thousands of rounds fired. From video you’re mostly wondering what they’re shooting at. This does lead to the possibility that it was ATF being the untrained people panicking in a stress situation. But, no matter really: it happened. And now the ATF had a catastrophe on their hands instead of a sexy raid. What to do?

Gear up the propaganda machine!

You might recall how we were all told what a hideous person Koresh was. Every last story and rumor, even third hand, was spread about. In this, the MSM was just being the MSM: mindlessly repeating what they were told. But the key here is that the FBI cut the Davidian’s phone line – the only people the Davidian’s could talk to was the FBI. When you’re running a propaganda op it is very important to be in full control of the type and flow of information. And it is clear, especially in hindsight, that the primary goal of the FBI in their statements was to cover up the fact that the raid likely never should have taken place – we were to concentrate on the “brave men and women of law enforcement” and the (allegedly) suffering children…no questions about the warrant, the manner and timing of the raid and no second-guessing on who shot first. By and large, this worked: public opinion at the time was largely on the side of the cops.

And here we get to why I think it ended as it did. As the documentary makes clear, Koresh was still talking to the FBI and people were still dribbling out of the compound. There was every indication that Koresh would eventually come out. But the FBI clearly hated the fact that they had to wait on him to make up his mind. This is why they started doing things like crushing the Davidian’s cars with tanks, cutting off water and power, and doing psy-ops with sounds blared into the compound. This, as was reasonably pointed out by a Davidian in the documentary, was senseless. Allegedly, Koresh was a completely insane man and the FBI’s plan was…to drive him more insane via sleep deprivation? This was supposed to produce a good outcome?

What went wrong, and wrong from the start, is that law enforcement viewed Koresh and his people as perpetrators. Suspects. Bad guys. They never once went into the situation with the concept that Koresh and his people were, well, people. Citizens. Endowed with certain, unalienable rights. If you ever watched the Breaking Bad series there’s this part of it towards the climax where White’s brother-in-law, a DEA agent, is trying to take out White and his monumental contempt for White’s confederate, now willing to help, shines through. This, in the show, leads to a fatal error and the brother-in-law gets killed. Pure dramatic presentation, of course, but I do believe that the attitude of contempt rings true. That is, I think our law enforcement people, especially federal law enforcement, hold their targets in contempt. And who is the target? Anyone who comes up on the radar: if they notice you, then you must be lower than dirt. And so can and should be treated like dirt. That’s why Waco ended as it did – the FBI didn’t think of the Davidian’s as human beings and citizens the FBI was sworn to serve and protect (yes, the cops are supposed to serve and protect even the worst criminals as far as practical) but as sh** stains to be disposed of at the convenience of the FBI.

Keep in mind that the guy in charge of the FBI’s HRT at Waco was also involved in Ruby Ridge a short while before. Of all the people interviewed in the documentary, he’s the only one I came off entirely disliking and figuring to be a liar. He’d probably deny it to my face, but I’ll say he likes killing people. He gets a kick out of being the bad ass. And to him being a man means being ruthless. This does have its place in the world – but it is supposed to be confined to the battlefield…not a compound in Texas. Americans are not supposed to be treated as you would treat, say, a band of Taliban fighters.

What Waco showed us, had we been paying real attention, is that our law enforcement is out of whack. No longer consistent with a Republic. There is, as I’ve said, a certain point to the BLM assertion that the police are an occupying force. Leaving aside the lies and corruption of the BLM leadership, the fact of the matter is that the police all too often view the public as the problem. There is a disconnect between law enforcement and the citizens. There are lots of reasons for this, and some of them do involve the people being jerks – in some urban areas of the USA, the people are only barely civilized and are only partially capable of assessing risk/reward in actions. This does lead the police to dealing with people who are simply doing enormously stupid things which are lethal to the police if not swiftly controlled. And the police can’t tell if they’ve got a lunatic who will try to kill them even after, say, being shot or tased or someone who will understand that the game is up and its time to accept the cuffs and the ride to the station.

But even with that said, the internal attitude of too many police – and, as I’ve said, especially federal police – is contempt towards their targets. This must be brought to an end and it is a matter of training. This is something we can fix. We can train our law enforcement to be defenders rather than occupiers. People who’s first care is the rights of the citizens rather than the collaring of the “dirtbag”. This is not to say that criminals should get off easy: I’ve made it clear over the years that people who commit crimes – especially against lives – need to really feel it in their hearts and on their bodies. But even if we sentence a man to 20 years of hard labor and make him work 12 hours a day, six days a week…he’s still a citizen. He’s still a human being. God created him and we dare not ignore God. He’s still to be treated as well as we can consistent with total security…and never to be thought of in degrading terms. You start thinking of people like animals or lower, you’ll soon start treating them as animals or lower. Much better, in my view, that in terms of human dignity, that we treat people better than they deserve. After all, treat each man as he deserves, and who would ‘scape whipping?

Indict This Open Thread

Mark Noonan64 Comments

Mindless Biden Drone 1: “We’re getting killed over that massacre of Christians in that school! What do we do?”

Mindless Biden Drone 2: “Tell everyone that our hearts go out to the transgender community?”

MBD1: “That’s already in the script.”

MBD2: “Trans day of visibility?”

MBD1: “We scheduled that yesterday.”

MBD2: “I’m out of ideas.”

Mindless Biden Drone 3: “I got it!”

MBD1/2: “What?”

MBD3: “We get the DA in NY to charge Trump!”

MBD1: “But its bullsh**.”

MBD2: “And?”

MBD1: “Run with it!”

And that is how we get to a Trump indictment. Apparently not just about the alleged payoff to Stormy…they’ve got him nailed on multiple counts of…filling out paperwork incorrectly!

((Cue that ‘dun dun’ sound from Law and Order))

Look, guys; it is all BS – but they got their indictment and they’ll get their Trump mugshot and that will keep the Democrat base happy for months…and maybe even take the sting away when the charges collapse. But most importantly they got six murdered victims off the news. That was the crucial thing here.

Because the backlash is coming. I’m sure the DNC has internal polling showing that the issue is a loser for them: they know they have to keep talking up the issue as if its great because their base simply wouldn’t know what to do with any shift on it…but they had to get it off the TV.

Presto: gone.

Everyone other than the most wet noodle GOPers was out right away condemning the move. Everyone who isn’t a dyed in the wool Democrat knows its bogus (and according to polling, even 30% of the Democrats know its bogus). Some are saying the Dems long term plan is to have this help Trump (you can only imagine the amount of money he’ll fund-raise off it and the Trump story for a while now will suck up all the air in the room) by generating GOP base sympathy. I’m not so sure – the Democrats are still as ruthless as they’ve ever been, and when its time to get 2,000 votes together to flip an election their way, cracker jack…but of late I’ve noticed an increasing level of sheer stupid among them. Like when the SecDef went to Congress and said he had no regrets about how the Afghanistan withdrawal went…seriously, all the moron had to do was express pro-forma regret for the lost lives and move on…”no regrets!”. Idiot. Something ready made for the GOP 2024 campaign reel. They might be floundering badly here. It’ll be up to the GOP to see if they can capitalize on it. Do keep in mind that we’re not called The Stupid Party for no reason!