Open Thread

Mark Noonan13 Comments

Two GOP councilmembers in New Jersey have been murdered in the past week. Could be just sad coincidence but the GOP is making inroads in New Jersey. Remember, we came within an ace of winning the governorship in 2021. I would not put it past Democrats to try some direct action – especially as their hate-filled rhetoric about the GOP has already primed the pump. We in the USA are not at all used to political violence, though it has become fairly common since the rise of the new left in the late 1960s; but it has all been from the left. The Ruling Class has been trying to make out that it is the right fomenting hatred and carrying out acts of violence but the bottom line is that, upon investigation, we either find that the violence wasn’t political at all, or it was actually carried out by a leftist. But – and here’s the kicker – as more and more violence is directed against the GOP, it will eventually provoke a backlash. That is the worry: because the GOP is far better armed than the left, but that would just get the authorities to be even harsher against real rightwing violence…which would, in turn, provoke yet more violence. Could get real dicey in America real fast.

Its on Twitter but you’ll want to click this and read the whole thread – its a bit of whistleblowing by a lady who used to work at a transgender clinic. The story she details of the kids who are being ruined by a rush to transition them is horrifying. It speaks of the need for a national ban on medical transition for minors. But beyond that, we do have to start figuring out just why this thing – youth transitions – came upon us so suddenly and was so uniformly accepted and enforced by the Ruling Class. Think back and try to remember when you first heard of sex changes for kids: it wasn’t but a few years ago. We had all heard of sex changes, of course; as early as the 1970’s it was something being done. Even made it into popular culture on TV by the 1980’s. But this thing of children going through medical transitions with hormones and irreversible surgery is new – but is now in government and the media the accepted and enforced norm. You aren’t allowed to question it: if you do, you are a transphobic bigot who wants kids to commit suicide.

My guess: we’ve seen just how really creepy the Ruling Class is. From Epstein Island to Weinstein to scores of other cases of well-known people turning out to be sexual degenerates, we now know that those at the top of the social and economic heap are just lousy people who sexually abuse people all the live long day. And those we can’t prove involved clearly must have known all about it and yet didn’t tell. In and amongst all this is the bubbling accusation – but still no major confirmed case – of these creeps sexually abusing minors. The stories are all over the place and they are uniformly condemned as conspiracy theories…and, heck, some of the more bizarre conspiracy theories about it might be floated by the perpetrators so that, by putting out something ridiculous, they can lump more realistic accusations in with the crazy assertions. Be that as it may, there are in my view enough credible stories – including about some pretty famous people – engaging in inappropriate relations with minors that I suspect at least a portion of them to be true. And, if so, what better way to get out from underneath legal jeopardy than by normalizing it? Turning it into something unimportant? And, hey, if a six year old can come out as Trans and if a 14 year old can consent to permanent, surgical removal of healthy organs, even if the parents object, then just what can’t a kid consent to? To put it bluntly: I think all of this was started or at least latched on to by people who are trying to normalize sexual debauchery before they get caught. What Hefner did for fornication and adultery – make it socially acceptable so that fornicators and adulterers could hold their heads up in public – so the people pushing for transitioning kids hope to do for groomers.

Pudding Brain and the Democrats are accusing the GOP of wanting to cut Social Security. It is a lie but it is a lie the Democrats always fall back on because lies work. They especially work with people who watch a lot of TV – which includes a high proportion of seniors. The GOP is always blindsided by this lie and there’s always some GOPer out there who will float the idea of cutting benefits, thus providing grist for the Democrat lie mill. It is time to get out in front of it and put the Democrats on the defensive. Propose a law which prohibits a reduction in benefits regardless of the funds available in SS. In other words, when the SS “trust fund” (which doesn’t really exist) goes belly up in 2035 then the shortfall is just drawn out of the discretionary budget. See where I’m going with this? If SS needs an extra $100 billion in 2035 then it gets it…and that means of the money appropriated for discretionary spending in 2035, $100 billion of it just “poof” vanishes. It would force Congress to act – either to cut discretionary spending or raise taxes. You and I don’t want a tax hike, but that is still preferable to the phony accounting gimmicks Congress has been using to pretend that SS is financially sound. The added benefit is that the GOP will be seen as leading the charge on absolutely ensuring that granny gets her SS and it takes away a very effective lie for the Democrats.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan22 Comments

That quake in Turkey looks really bad. Don’t forget to say some prayers for them.

Saw another one of those articles accusing Putin of war crimes – this on the basis of recruiting soldiers from occupied Ukrainian territory. This is, indeed, a direct violation of the Geneva Convention and other international treaties.

Its also worth about a fart in a hurricane.

One of the most baleful things of the past century was the Nuremburg trials is this misbegotten drivel that there is such a thing as international law or that there can be a neutral tribunal provided for a defeated enemy. It just doesn’t work that way. It only seemed that way after WWII because the enemy powers were utterly defeated and occupied. Absent that, just how are you going to serve your warrant for Putin’s arrest? Unless a Ukrainian or other non-Russian army arrives in Moscow, it just isn’t going to happen.

But even in the unique circumstances of World War Two, the trials were an absurdity. We put on trial Hans Fritzsche as a major war criminal – he was in the same dock as Goering. Of course you’ve never heard of him – he was a radio broadcaster. Sure, he broadcast Nazi lies – that was his job. But if we’re to charge everyone who broadcasts a lie as a war criminal, we’re going to be busy for a bit. We hung Alfred Jodl who didn’t really do that much to order or carry out war crimes but only passed out 12 years to Alfried Krupp who ran the sickest slave labor empire in Nazi Germany; and then we let him out after 3 and gave him all his money back. The Russians made a serious effort to pin the Katyn Massacre on the Germans and have it as one of the counts at Nuremberg – they didn’t succeed but the bottom line here is that both FDR and Churchill were advised early on that it was the Soviets who carried out that massacre and they killed the story so as to not offend Stalin. With, you know, the truth…but then we set up trials with the Soviets helping us judge Germans guilty of carrying out massacres.

This is not to say that the Nazis should have skated. As I’ve noted before, Churchill once mused that the best thing to do would be to haul out the Nazis one fine morning and just shoot them. That would have been just – and of far more moral worth than a charade trial which included a mass murderer among the judges.

But, it happened – and now pinheads are forever asking for a repeat. As if it would do anything. War is about power – who has the most and who can apply that power most effectively. If you want Putin in the dock, then you better gather a lot of power and march on Moscow. Good luck to you. If you get him, go ahead and hang him, if that makes you feel better about it. I’ve no complaint about someone who starts a war getting shot for putting the world to the trouble. But don’t preach international law at me: it doesn’t exist. If you do catch Putin then the trial you hold for him will be garbage – because there can’t be other than a guilty verdict and you’ll be charging him not with being evil, but with losing. International law is whatever the strong choose to enforce at any given time. And that is how it should be: if you defeat your enemy, he is at your disposal. Shoot him or make a deal with him, as you desire. But don’t pretend you caught a bank robber and that a trial will somehow right the scales of justice in the world.

The news report is from 2021 but I first heard it yesterday: the Orwell Estate has given permission for a re-write of 1984 from a feminist perspective. Think about it: the premier book about totalitarian propaganda is going to be re-written to fit current propaganda. And you just watch: once this new one comes out, the original will be condemned and removed from libraries. The Left hates 1984…because they know it is all about them.

They apparently had some sick, bizarre Satanist musical number at the Emmy’s. I didn’t watch it because why would any sane person watch drivel like an award show? But I guess some people are upset. Can’t say that I am – of course these nimrods are glorifying evil. Some of them are just evil, others are too stupid to realize the evil. The few pop culture people who do see through it all usually end up making really good art that doesn’t get a lot of play. Look for those gems – I’ve even found some fairly recent pop music which is darned good and interesting…gotta hunt for it, but it’s there. It isn’t the stuff that tops the charts for the most part. And some of it does make me suspect that pop culture has its secret dissidents from the Leftist Narrative.

Pudding Brain is going to do his SOTU and they’ve put the fences back up around the Capital. Because our government hates the American people.

DeSantis is pulling the plug on Disney’s private empire in Florida. Among the other benefits Disney was given in the 1960’s is that they can take property via eminent domain! Old Walt must have had one heck of a lobbyist back in the day! Anyway, that’s all over with now – a five person board appointed by the governor will look after things; the board being the method by which a Leftist local government is cut out of the process. RDS seems to really get the point: it is all about power and you don’t leave any of it lying around for the Left to use.

The Balloon Seems Small

Mark Noonan36 Comments

Nothing is ever really a surprise. There are always signs, though often even the most perceptive miss them. What is blazingly obvious in hindsight was actually there for all the world to see…it just wasn’t noticed.

Charles DeGaulle was asked shortly after Hitler came to power what France would do if Germany were to attack one of her neighbors. His response was along the lines of, “we shall have a limited or full call up depending on the circumstances and then, peering out from our fortifications, we shall witness the enslavement of Europe.” And that was just so very close because DeGaulle was, indeed, a very perceptive man. But even he missed the obvious – and what should have been obvious to a graduate of Saint-Cyr: there is no such thing as a defensive war. There is victory or there is defeat…and the side which stays in its fortifications loses. DeGaulle’s answer should have been, there will be a German victory parade in Paris.

This is not to condemn DeGaulle – after all, what patriot wishes to envision the destruction of his nation? To admit even to himself that his people are so weak and divided that they will throw up the sponge? He simply couldn’t imagine it – even after the great German breakthrough DeGaulle (and a very few others) were urging that several hundred thousand French troops be evacuated to France’s North African territory (along with as much military equipment as possible) to continue the struggle. To get there, get American aid (which would have been forthcoming) and just keep up the fight until German’s internal weaknesses gave the Allies the upper hand. It could easily have been done – but hardly anyone wanted to do it. They just wanted to surrender as quickly as possible and get back to their corrupt, little lives (the supposed fighting Premier of France was already feathering his nest and looking for a new post as he fled Paris).

But he still should have seen it. 1936 was the year – Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland with 3,000 troops. While the Krauts were working ’round the block to build up a military force, the bottom line was that in 1936 the German military was in no ways prepared for war (it wasn’t really in 1939, either; but it was a least vastly better prepared than 3 years previously). The French leadership called in the Generals and said, “expel the Germans”. And the Generals came back and said “we need full mobilization”, which would have taken weeks and cost huge sums of money – when all they needed to do was literally send in what they had at the border and it all would have been over in a couple days. Lots of excuses are made for why the Generals said that but mostly it is explaining it away – they didn’t want to fight. And neither did the civil leadership. So they essentially made a pact of cowardice and did nothing; even though they knew full well that allowing the German army back into the Rhineland posed a mortal threat to France. The reason it had been de-militarized was because there was no way France could match Germany in total military power…a demilitarized Rhineland was France’s shield. And they gave it up. Because they were all corrupt cowards, as would be most starkly shown 4 years later. Anyone really paying attention at that time (and Hitler was) knew that for all intents and purposes, France was removed from the European equation. And the French people were ok with it – because, by and large, they were as corrupt and cowardly as their leaders.

The balloon seems small. So did the Rhineland – most French and Brits were “they were only marching into their own backyard” about it. It was passed off as nothing and can we please just get back to our lives? The balloon seems small. But it was an enemy aircraft which was allowed unfettered access to American airspace and only shot down after its usefulness to the enemy was over. And it does flash into the mind: the Chinese told us not to shoot it down until it was in the Atlantic. How else to explain why it wasn’t shot down when detected over Alaska? And why weren’t we told about it until it was already 650 miles inside US territory? The balloon seems small – but what it foretells might be very large.

Up, Up and Away Open Thread

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Did not have “Chinese balloon rings death knell for the USA” on my bingo card.

Jesse Kelly points out that this is all our own fault – we have paid for the rise of China from worthless Commie backwater to evil Commie superpower. And when you really think back on it all, just what was the point of normalizing relations with China? It is held up as Nixon’s signal foreign policy triumph but what, really, was the benefit of it? And I mean to the USA, to China and to the world?

It sure in heck didn’t help us in Vietnam. Nixon went to China in 1972 and that didn’t stop North Vietnamese tanks from rolling into Saigon in 1975.

It didn’t help bring down the USSR. “Play the China card” was supposed to be some super-trump in global foreign relations…but as far as getting rid of the USSR, China might as well not even been there.

China’s ruthless exploitation of poor and naive third world nations isn’t doing anyone any good.

China’s ruthless dumping of third rate goods and fentanyl into the USA is kinda a bad thing, right?

China’s corruption of the global Ruling Class is probably not working out as a net plus.

And then there is China, as such. Sure: Marco Polo bringing back the concept of pasta did wonders for dinner. Paper money? Maybe not such a good thing. Chinese music, art and architecture can’t hold a candle to the West. Philosophy? Confucius wrote down copy-book maxims designed to perpetuate his class in power…China has nothing to compare to Aristotle or Aquinas…not even anything as good as Ashoka or Averroes. Just what are we supposed to get out of China? Where’s the benefit? They’ve grafted onto the stump of Maoism the industrial Midwest…goody for them. What’s in it for us?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there is no point in the United States having relations with nations like China. It is poison. Perhaps a free China would be worthwhile, but while China is under tyranny, we should be completely separate from them.

Pudding Brain’s people are claiming 517k new jobs in January.

This did not happen.

I’m telling ya: they’re just making the numbers up. We had report after report of major corporations downsizing all month and they pop up with 517k. Yeah, right. Keep in mind that even under the honest, the jobs number is a guess based on particular assumptions…for the dishonest, its any number they want…and in this case they wanted a number for China Joe to puff for his SOTU next week.

The MSM is already getting into “DeSantis is worse than Trump”. We all knew this was coming – the only question is how ready RDS is for it? Especially if it looks like he’ll be the nominee, they will pour garbage all over him…and he will be the subject of multiple federal and State criminal investigations. It doesn’t matter what about – they made it all up about Trump, they’ll make it all up about RDS. It will take real guts to overcome it – and we’ll see if RDS has that.

It is Black History Month and I guess Disney is running a bit for the kiddies asserting that America was built by slaves and other 1619 Project drivel. If you are not in favor of eliminating Woke corporations then you haven’t been paying attention.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan20 Comments

The very phrases “gender affirming care” and “assigned at birth” have to be banned and those in official positions who use them should be jailed.

So, Mark, why bring that up?

Because I saw yet another of those RINO statements we see about, “we’re better than that” and “you know, if we use government to coerce, it’ll be used against us!”.

As if it wasn’t already – and, no, we can’t be “better than that.”

The fundamental problem we have – and I’m not the only one seeing it – is that our side doesn’t realize that it is a fight to the finish. Either our dogmas will prevail or theirs will. And the losing side loses everything. There is no mid-point between “there are two genders” and “there are three (or more) genders”. There is no possible compromise between those who think that children should attend drag shows and those who think they shouldn’t. There is no way to reconcile “all men are created equal and are endowed with certain unalienable rights” and “abortion to birth, and maybe even for a few hours after”. We either become all that they demand, or they become all what we demand.

Now, because we aren’t Leftists – and thus not rat bastards – we’re never going to massacre those who hate us. But we must remove them from all positions of power and influence. They must be forced out of office. Terminated from their positions in the bureaucracy, corporations and educational institutions. Their tax free NGO’s shuttered and the funds confiscated.

There is no other way – a house divided against itself cannot stand. It must become all one thing, or all the other.

And Ron DeSantis is doing it. Trump issued a statement as well on this subject. There are more and more people coming to the understanding – shocking as it may be – that those who call us Nazis and who think the USA is inherently racist don’t wish us well.

They did a show called Velma – a spin off of the Scooby Doo franchise – and it has bombed. I guess they made Velma a woke lesbian and made the show a bunch of woke preaching. The insidious part of this is the attempt to rewrite everything to fit the modern Left’s vision of the world – there is no room for non-Left; everything must be converted to the new religion. The pathetic part of this is that the show isn’t pitched at 6 year olds – you know, the target audience of Scooby Doo. I loved the show – when I was a little kid. I wouldn’t bother with it today (or, indeed, any time after, say, my 10th birthday) because it is a silly and childish show not suited for even teenage intellects, let alone adult. What sort of adult cares about Scooby Doo? Only pyschos, in my view. That any adult looked at the Scooby Doo material and said, “hey, we need a lesbian Velma spinoff for adults” is someone fit only for the loony bin. What’s next, Yosemite Sam comes out as gay and opens up a flower shop?

Nothing is more funny than the Woke putting up illegal immigrants at high end hotels and then, when its time to leave, finding that those illegals don’t want to leave their swell digs.

Hey, guys: masks don’t work. And I mean, at all. Here’s the report proving it…but the fact that we needed a report shows how far gone we are. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of biology knew that masks don’t stop viruses. They can’t stop viruses. Viruses are too small. It was with mask mandates that I realized we were being conned – and that medical professionals (who know better) eagerly pushed masks demonstrated just how degraded our supposedly neutral professionals are.

The Trump vs DeSantis battle heats up. I’ll support the nominee no matter, but there is great rancor growing between supporters of the two…and I suspect grifters paid by the DNC are fanning the flames. I am unsure if the GOP can united in 2024.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan49 Comments

Thinking about it, the best outcome of the Ukraine war is a swift Russian victory. Ukrainian victory would only mean yet another open-ended American commitment to defend an European nation against an increasingly hostile Russia driven closer to alliance with a China which poses the only strategic threat the United States faces.

It must be emphasized that Russia is in no way, shape or form similar to the threat posed by Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Hitler’s ideology required war to expand German territory into non-German territories to enslave/exterminate the local population so that Germans could move in. Putin holds to no such ideology and it is obvious that all he is attempting to gain is formerly Russian-ruled territories in order to revive Russia’s Great Power status. This is a fool’s errand on Putin’s part, but it does not amount to a threat to American interests.

More and more prison systems are transferring female-identifying male prisoners to the female prisons. This is having the obvious result. It is almost a certainty that every male prisoner who identifies as female is doing it just to get into the female prison either for the opportunity for sex or because the regime is likely lighter than in the male prisons. We’re allowing woman to be raped and abused in order to conform to insane, ideological demands. And, yes, we do bear the moral responsibility here – when we imprison a person we take over the job of keeping them safe from harm as far as practical. To put men in with women – and some of these men were convicted of sex crimes against women – is objectively evil.

People are hanging on to their gasoline cars. My Saturn was built in 2004. I will not let it go. EV’s are not just inefficient, but they are too connected to the internet of things.

You Still Only Care About What They Tell You to Care About

Mark Noonan34 Comments

Everyone is upset about Tyre Nichols – and it does, from the video we’ve seen, look pretty bad. But, once again, that is the video we have seen. As we’ve learned in the past, what is shown to us isn’t always – or even often – anything remotely what happened. I also note that the event happened on January 7th and nobody was talking about it until yesterday. Additionally, the outrage machine ginned up prior to everyone finding out it was five black officers who did the deed…two of whom were hired after the police department lowered standards to encourage “diversity”.

But we are upset not because of the horror of the crime, but simply because we are told to be upset about it. Someone decided that it was time for us to get hopped up over police brutality again and this is what they found – been better for them if the cops were white, or if even one of the five were white. But you take what you can get, right?

Now, some reading that last bit might be upset with me. Have I no feelings? Do I not care about the death of the man? What kind of a rat bastard am I?

Well, mostly what I am is someone who sees through the scam. The propaganda. Lots of bad things happen. In a nation of 330 million, you will have people doing absolutely horrific things – what I hear about, though, is determined by the MSM (by and large). I hear what others choose for me to hear – and as we know that the MSM is a mere arm of the DNC, what I hear is what dovetails best into whatever message the DNC wants at the moment. With the GOP Congress gearing up to do some investigations of Team Pudding Brain, you can rely on it that the word will go out that something else has to dominate the news cycle.

How can I be so sure of this?

Well, back on January 16th, six members of a family were gunned down in cold blood in California. Included among the dead were a 17 year old girl and her 10 month old son. And it appears that the kid was deliberately murdered, not just caught in some crossfire.

Don’t know about you, but that seems kinda newsy, doesn’t it? And, hey, even for our guys on the Left, doesn’t the massacre of 6 people via gunfire feed into the gun control Narrative? So why don’t we hear about it? I mean, I realize that the cops beating a man to death is big news – I agree that it is. But I just have this sensation that the murder of 6, including a 10 month old, is a little bigger story. But it isn’t what we’re told to be outraged about. Why?

Because it looks like it was a Cartel hit related to the drug trade. And you know damned well that a national conversation about the Cartels, the drug trade and the violence those two things involve is the last thing the DNC wants right now. I mean, we should be talking about it – what it represents is the importation of the Cartel violence we’ve seen in Mexico over the past 20 years into the United States. This massacre happened in Goshen, CA – a town of about 3,000 people in California’s Central Valley (which would be another reason it should be a big story – it happened in a peaceful small town, not a big city). It has all the hallmark’s of the Cartels – with the kid being deliberately killed to send a message. The Cartels are like that – they commit exceptional horrors to keep people in line. Whatever someone among the six – or someone related to the six – did, the Cartels were determined to let everyone know that they better not do it again.

But they don’t even have to Memory Hole this – sure, it was reported, but it wasn’t given the sort of reporting that moves it into the national mind. A wire service story which may be picked up by a few outlets. The local news will give is some coverage…maybe even a few national outfits will give it passing mention. But it won’t be on the loop – we won’t have people pontificating about it. It won’t be noticed. Because we weren’t told to notice it.

Do you want to know how I found out about it? Simple: as I saw the Nichols story unfold, I could easily see that it was another op – an effort to get us looking at something other than what is really happening. I could have searched for a score of different things – real problems – that we’re not being told to notice. I just happened to search “california murder charges” because I knew with absolute certainty – given the Cartels and the drug trade and California’s de-facto legalization of criminality (something we aren’t allowed to notice because Newsom might be the Democrat standard bearer in 2024) – that I’d find some inhuman barbarism within the past 30 days.

It can’t be emphasized enough how important it is to ignore what the MSM is saying – especially on TV. Whatever it is they are saying, if it isn’t an outright fabrication then it is something curated to support the DNC Narrative. We must stop caring about what they want us to care about – and start caring only about the things which matter. I’m sorry Nichols is dead. I hope that those who killed him get what’s coming to them…but police brutality isn’t even top 100 of our problems right now. We have much bigger fish to fry – and far more lives to save – than what the MSM tells us to care about.

The Need to Punish

Mark Noonan9 Comments

Just a little while ago I finished watching the movie Narvik. Highly recommend. Five stars. It is a dramatization of the German attack on the Norwegian town of Narvik in 1940 – the Germans invading Norway primary to gain control of Narvik because, during winter, that was the port where a huge portion of Germany’s iron ore came from. Lose that port, lose the war: that was the point for the Germans. It is a Norwegian movie so it is in subtitles for the most part, but it is well done so that you hardly notice that you’re reading the dialogue.

While a war movie, it isn’t centered on war, as such. Certainly there are battle scenes but the story is really about what do you do? Who is right? Who is wrong? What is moral? What is immoral? Collaboration or resistance? Fight on when its hopeless or just quit? The Germans, naturally, are the bad guys – mostly because they really were. But the British are not portrayed very favorably either. Neither are the neutral Swedes. The French (who really did come to fight for Narvik) are given a dose of glory. As I said, definitely recommend. But aside from offering you a couple hours of interesting and moving entertainment, there was something that struck me in the movie.

There is this scene where Gunnar – a young, Norwegian soldier; he, his young wife and child are central elements of the story – finally gets really into the fight and is able to pay out the Germans in their own coin. He shoots two Germans manning a machine gun nest. As he’s turns to leave, he notices that one of them has started moving. He quickly goes over to the man and turns him over: he’s just a kid (like Gunnar) but he’s also no threat: he’s dying and the lad’s dying eyes plead with Gunnar, “help me!”. But all Gunnar does is shove him a bit and, as the kid dies, ask “why are you here?”. No answer is provided: and for Gunnar and his dead enemy, no answer is ever going to really be provided.

The scene bore in on me the crime that is war. Don’t get me wrong: if you’re fighting to defend yourself, you commit no crime – but to start a war is a crime. There is never a justification to start shooting, or set up a situation where the other side feels it must start shooting or die. That player in the movie dying at his post represents millions – and even though, in this case, it was a young German, we do feel the sadness; the loss. The pointless waste of a life. But as we really consider it, we must never forget that it was a crime – and the attacker from the youngest little soldier in the ranks to the top military and political leaders are guilty.

Therefore, you are without excuse, every one of you who passes judgment. For by the standard by which you judge another you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the very same things. – Romans 2:1

Any 18 year old Fritz in the German army, if asked, would say that it would be wrong if a foreign army suddenly descended on his home town and started confiscating, ordering about, oppressing and such. And so, the Germans who landed at Narvik knew they weren’t supposed to do that. No citizen of Narvik or Norway had in any way offended any German in the least. You have no excuse. You may obtain forgiveness, but you have no excuse.

And that thought, in turn, brought me to think about our larger crisis, domestic and foreign. The way the world is really in bad shape. And it occurred to me this is because, after more than a century of incredible evil done by nations and ideologies, nobody was ever sufficiently punished for their transgressions. Justice must always be tempered by mercy, but it still must be justice. Because we must apply mercy, after WWII we wouldn’t line the Germans up and shove them into gas chambers…but hanging a few Nazi leaders hardly atoned for the crime. And this leaves aside the fact that nothing was done about the Soviets, who were only marginally less bad than the Germans.

It is said – and generally accepted – that after WWI the punishment of the Germans was too harsh. The reality is that it was too light. Remember: they attacked France, Belgium and Luxembourg without the slightest provocation. And this led to four years of miserable, slogging warfare where untold numbers of young men died when, with just an ounce of decency on the part of the Germans, they would have lived. All the Germans had to do to save the lives of millions was…not attack people who offered no offense in any way. Quite honestly, for a century after that, the Germans should have been de-jure shackled to plows to pay back those they attacked. And WWII was even worse…and all we did was hang a few Nazis and then let the Germans get rich building cars and then we sat there, slack jawed, as they complained about what we did during the war. And, remember: no excuse. Any German asked in 1939 would have answered “no” to the question “should Nation X attack Germany unprovoked?”. They knew what they were doing was wrong. And they gloried in it…and only rejected it when it was all over. Germans want to complain about Dresden? They should feel lucky that every city and town in Germany wasn’t razed to the ground.

And I do think that this unwillingness to punish on the larger scale has led to our unwillingness on the lower scale. We’re forever finding excuses. Letting the guilty off. Figuring out how we can turn a blind eye to it. Easier that way, don’t you know? To punish is to take responsibility…and to assert a standard that you, too, must he held to. It is almost as if by letting Nazis and Communists off we then gave ourselves permission to bomb mud huts in Vietnam and drone wedding parties in Yemen. That if we let the mugger and armed robber off in our streets, we can then excuse the politician taking bribes. That if we all smear a bit of sh** all over ourselves, none of us will notice we stink.

It is high time that we got ourselves cleaned up. That we start to punish the guilty. Yes, yes, yes: always tempered with mercy. But mercy is to reduce the punishment either in scope or duration…but there must be punishment. The guilty must feel at least some of the pain they inflicted. And nobody has an excuse – the dictator plotting war and the punk plotting robbery already know they shouldn’t – and they know they shouldn’t because they know they wouldn’t want themselves to be the victim of an unprovoked attack or a robbery. When we think of all those who have been victimized by war and crime over the past century because our failure to punish encouraged the next war or crime, then really no amount of harshness meted out to the guilty is excessive. If the Germans in 1939 had been shackled and working merely to feed themselves and pay back those they attacked, then there would have been no WWII. In Europe, 60 million people would not have died. Try to sell me that brutally humiliating the Germans for, say, 50 years after WWI would have been worse than WWII. And how many in our cities have been robbed, raped and murdered by people who had previously robbed, raped or murdered? You tell me that punishment doesn’t deter crime? Maybe – but I know what a guy breaking rocks in the hot sun for 10 years won’t do for 10 years: rob. That’s at least some people not robbed; and that makes the punishment of the robber just and merciful. And as merciful to the robber as to any potential future victims – by punishing, we are at least for a time preventing the miscreant from sinning, and that’s a good thing.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan23 Comments

China Joe announced that we’ll be sending 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine – this, apparently, is what the Kraut’s demanded before they would agree to send Leopard tanks. Ukraine is getting a hodge-podge of military equipment which they have no training or maintenance facilities for. This will get interesting.

Russia, meanwhile, continues to push forward in certain areas, likely to prep for an offensive after the Spring rains. We’ll see how this comes out – but I suspect, long term, that Russia will have some Abrams tanks to sell on the international arms market. The bottom line, absent a collapse of Russian will to win, is that Russia has vastly superior numbers over Ukraine and the outcome is only a matter of time.

New York City erected a Medusa-looking statue on their courthouse – in honor of RBG and abortion, so at least kinda appropriate. Very ugly, though. But that is the point of modern art: to be ugly. To be something you hate but can’t get rid of.

Also in New York City – for ages they had de-facto segregation in their schools. This was to allow New York’s rich progressives to have high quality public schools while proclaiming their allegiance to diversity without, you know, the diversity. There merely skimmed the cream of the crop of minority students to put into class with the kids of rich, white Progressives. Former Mayor DeBlasio, true to his Leninism, put an end to that – rather than have test scores determine who got into the swanky, Manhattan public schools, they created a supposedly scientific algorithm which would decide…naturally, it really just managed to shove into these schools kids who were in no way prepared for high education achievement. There is a bit of poetic justice here in that rich, white liberals lost their little education plantation…but the bad news is that now all of New York’s public schools suck. This is considered fine by the upper end of the Ruling Class because they send their kids to private schools and, hey, who wants to take the time and effort to improve all schools? Better to just score some DEI brownie points by wrecking the few remaining good schools.

Surrounded by armed guards, California Governor Newsom proclaimed in the streets that “weapons of war” have no place there. Make no mistake about it: Newsom will be hard for the GOP to beat. He’s good looking, sounds good on TV and, of course, the MSM will cover up his crimes and puff him up as the Second Coming. But he can be beat – his State is a complete disaster outside a few, rich coastal enclaves. The way to handle him in debate is to simply get truthful about him: “Governor, you hate the people of California. You want them to suffer. You talk about ‘weapons of war’ but what you really are trying to do is make honest citizens into criminals while you deliberately and maliciously allow real criminals to run amok.” Words like that – 100% true – will put that arrogant ass into a defensive mode and he won’t know how to deal with it as he’s never had a hostile question asked of him.

What do to about rising egg prices and people suddenly dying? Claim that the eggs are causing sudden death. I’m serious: it is what they are trying to assert. This after they tried to assert that all the sudden deaths are due to climate change.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan66 Comments

So they found yet another trove of classified documents illegally in China Joe’s possession.

It really is a matter of anyone who goes up against Trump wrecks themselves, don’t they? Sure, Biden managed to cheat his way into Trump’s job…but we’re already well past the point that Joe’s reputation has been utterly destroyed because he went up against Trump. Having mountains of classified documents going back at least 15 years when his hack AG went after Trump on a bogus claim of mishandling documents is just the perfect manifestation of karma…and the millionth time the Democrats have proved that whatever they accuse us of, they are guilty of doing.

Personally, I don’t see a nefarious reason on the part of Pudding Brain for having them – whatever those around him might have done with the documents (Hunter would have had to be a saint not to sell them to the highest bidder…and “saintly” isn’t a word I’d use to describe a man suing in court to prevent his illegitimate daughter from using his surname), I think that Joe, himself, kept them because they made him feel important. Biden’s whole career has been a mere series of lies he’s told himself to make out that he’s the hero of the show – the smartest, bravest, most important man. He probably thought it was cool that he could see secret information and just wanted to hang on to it as a talisman of his greatness.

But the real issue is that he really did break the law – just as Hillary did – and we already know that no legal sanction will be applied. It was apparently only in this last couple days that DOJ officials started searching for docs. Until then, they allowed Biden’s personal attorneys to do the searching. This after they raided Melania’s panty drawer searching for secret documents. That is the problem with our society – the double standard. Laws are applied differently depending on how juiced in you are with the Ruling Class. Such a thing is unsustainable.

I wonder how many, besides me, got a feeling of joy in the heart contemplating arresting everyone at WEF and, after confiscating their money, set them to hard labor? It did flash through the mind as I thought about how wicked and corrupt they all are (they literally had to import hookers to keep up with demand in Davos…and we all know that among the “goods” imported were minors)…and just for a moment a flash of justice came to mind. I think that more and more are getting to that…getting, that is, to understand just why the Jacobins did what they did.

Hulu is running a series based upon the entirely bogus 1619 Project materials. They really are determined to get Americans to hate their own nation. And our response must be the ruthless defunding of all Leftist ideology – DeSantis is leading the way on this in Florida. Who controls the schools, controls the future. I’d rather we just abolished the education system…but if we can’t, then we’d better control it and ensure that our beliefs are transmitted to the next generation.

The cops in Atlanta killed a white Antifa criminal and, so, other white Antifa criminals then rioted in black neighborhoods. And, yes, CNN stuck with the “mostly peaceful protest” reporting. Governor Kemp has ordered a crackdown and it seems that even the city government is willing to hit back…but the fracas stared in one of those Antifa “autonomous zones” which emerged in 2020…what in heck is such a thing doing in Georgia in 2023? A state which re-elected its Republican governor by 7.5 percentage points? Why did Kemp allow that thing to continue? Really: in our Red States, we must start insisting that the GOP hammer the Left…we can’t stop Antifa from ruining Portland, but we can sure save Atlanta.