Open Thread

Mark Noonan46 Comments

For the second time in recent months, Paul Pelosi is in trouble because he got hammered.

It is a very strange story – supposedly, this weirdo in his underwear managed to gain access to the Pelosi’s manse in a heavily guarded area of San Francisco…nobody saw the guy in his underwear coming in! Then both underwear-guy and Paul got hammers…and then it gets a little foggy. Police reports indicate that Paul called about the man but said he was waiting for Nancy to get home and then the police show up and only then does underwear-guy attack…supposedly severely injuring Paul.

The Capitol Police have been called in…which makes no sense as they lack any jurisdiction…but if you want to control the investigation, having a police force tied to your office is really cool.

Gay lover spat? Mere political set up so they can blame the GOP? Who the heck knows.

Elon Musk owns Twitter – so far, nothing much has changed except for one thing: for the first time since I created my account in 2015 the things Twitter suggest to me are relevant. And I mean it: not once in the past 7+ years has a Twitter suggestion been anything remotely interesting to me. And not just the fact that for politics they’re always pushing liberals my way…for sports I get soccer, which is just so similar to hockey, I guess. For food I get Vegan stuff…which might go well with my pot roast. I get super-hero movies suggested when I’m more of a bio-pic/war drama kind of guy. On and on like that – and all wasted effort as I’ve never clicked a suggested link. Until today: when miracle of miracles, a video from Kari Lake was suggested to me. If this is all Elon does, then it is worth it.

Now, as for the permanently banned: Musk is saying that is under review. Already Corporate America is warning they’ll pull advertising if Trump’s account is restored. I doubt that Musk would really care. The only account everyone is saying must be restored is Gay Patriot’s. He went through about a score of them before he gave up. We want his original account back – Twitter just isn’t the same without his acid takes on the issues of the day.

The liberal melt-down about it has been wonderful, as you might expect. And with the fear of banning fading, people are back to their old tricks…one of the MSMers reporting from Twitter headquarters got trolled by two people claiming to be fired Twitter employees. Their names? Ligma and Johnson (I’ll give you a minute).

What has been most funny is the liberal insistence that Musk breaking the shackles of Twitter censorship is fascism. I’m deadly serious here: that is exactly what they’re calling it. Lots of them are saying they are leaving but I doubt that will happen, or last long for those who do. For people who like fast-paced, topical social media, Twitter is king. It really is a clever system when you get down to it. Truth Social and others do ok at it, but even as they improve their product, they simply can’t get around Twitter’s head start in users. Musk says it will become part of a comprehensive social media platform – which may or may not wind up being a good thing, but as he’s taking it private, only he gets to say what will be what.

The Democrats latest hopium is early voting numbers out of Clark County, Nevada. The nutshell: Democrats are doing well with mail-in votes and this presages a Democrat resurgence in front of November 8th. Two flaws in the theory: Clark County turnout is down massively…the other bit is that rural Nevada hasn’t reported a single early vote. So, the Democrat stronghold is depressed and we don’t even know what the most GOP part of the State looks like.

The Oz-Fetterman debate seems to have finished off Fetterman. In every poll taken since the debate, Oz has been in the lead. The official word is that ticket splitters will award Oz the Senate seat and the Democrat the governorship. The Official Narrative being that the GOP candidate there is just too extreme. I guess we’ll find out. But Oz was “too extreme” until a couple days ago. Meanwhile, Democrats are now pouring resources into New Hampshire…which has been officially in the bag for the Democrats since June or so. I think NH and WA will be the GOP upsets. But, we’ll see!

Oh, and Democrats: the GOP looks certain to win at least 52 Senate seats. Could go as high as 55 if they get the breaks. But, as they say, there’s more! In the 2024 cycle Democrats will be defending seats in (are you ready?) Montana, Nevada, Arizona, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. Yes, as a matter of fact, I am pointing and laughing at you. That is 10 – count ’em, ten – vulnerable Senate seats. But, don’t feel too bad…after all the GOP will be backs-to-the-wall defending seats in Alabama and Wyoming.

To make it clear to you: you’re screwed. If you’re lucky then by 2025 you’ll be looking at a Senate which only has 60 GOP Senators. It could be as high as 65.

And here’s what will really grind your gears: if you hadn’t cheated to win in 2020, then this year you’d probably be getting a net-gain of 4 and in 2024 your loses probably would have been in the 3-5 range.

Was Trump really that bad?

Open Thread

Mark Noonan39 Comments

There is a meme out there – and you may have seen it – which basically says, “how can a generation raised on Family Guy get so easily offended?”. The underlying assumption is that Family Guy is avant-garde. Speaking Truth to Power. Taking on the Ruling Class. So, why can’t these people take a joke?

The answer is simple: shows like Family Guy (and The Simpsons and even South Park) are not avant-garde. They don’t speak Truth to Power. They are yet more Ruling Class propaganda. They wouldn’t be allowed on the air if they weren’t. You think the bosses would really pay someone to make fun of them? Ain’t gonna happen – at least, not very often and when it does it is usually by mistake. You know: something like Fritz the Cat. That really did poke fun at 60’s radicalism..and it was granted an X rating for that (don’t try to sell me that sex scenes between cartoon characters caused the X rating).

I admit to never having seen a full episode of Family Guy though from time to time I do see clips of it posted here and there on line. Some of them are really funny but most are pretty conventional modern comedy (ie, vulgarity). But one clip I saw recently illustrates my point about the show being Ruling Class propaganda. In the clip, two of the characters have some sort of device which allows them to transit between parallel universes and one of the universes was predicated upon Christianity never existing – and so everyone is going around in their flying cars and other advanced tech…because you see, without Christianity to impose the Dark Ages, we’d be far more advanced. Yuk, yuk, yuk! There are two things to draw out of this – first off, the religion they insult is Christianity and that is, of course, the only religion the Ruling Class allows to be insulted. Secondly, the Ruling Class lie that religion is opposed to science. How would any person watching such a show develop the healthy skepticism necessary to step outside the approved Narrative? No chance of it – regular consumers of such fare will, of course, be able to parrot “Christians hate science” at the drop of a hat…but there is no possibility that such a person, confronted with, say, “men can get pregnant” would be able to refuse the lie.

A couple years back I got into a little Twitter tiff with John Cleese of Monty Python fame – my point to him was that for all the hilarity of the humor, it only made fun of the defenseless – and often, the dead. You can, after all, poke whatever fun you want at Victorians because they’re all dead and can’t punch you in the nose over it. Never once did Monty Python, or any pop culture fare over the past half century or more, poke fun at whatever was fashionable among the elite (some people bring up the skit in Life of Brian where Cleese’s character makes fun of the desire of a man to be a woman – but that was long before Trans became fashionable. Just see if anyone tries something like that on SNL or some other show in 2022).

What we’ve got is a mountain of propaganda to pierce. And it is everywhere – and very clever of the Ruling Class to simply buy the jesters and make them into mouthpieces.

So, they dredged up another accusation against Walker – anonymous denunciation about an alleged abortion 30 years ago. They really have shot their bolt, haven’t they?

And it does look like a Red Tsunami is developing. The cope among Liberal Election analysts is reaching epic proportions as they try to sift out any data point which would indicate Democrats are doing well. But, sorry: it don’t fly. The Democrats are spending money to defend their Washington Senate seat. Murray got nearly 59% of the vote back in 2016 and here in 2022 Democrats are pouring money into it. They have to. It seems that even for Washington and Oregon, there’s a limit to how much Antifa people can take. The head of the DCCC is also getting money from his own organization as his GOP challenger threatens an upset. Democrats are triaging districts all around the country…in one case moving money from a D+9 district to a D+13 district. Think about that – a D+9 district has been written off two weeks before election day and they’re trying to salvage D+13!

This is all indicative of what I’ve been expecting all year – a fairly uniform swing of 10 points to the GOP. It might be more, but I think that is reasonable. And I don’t think anything has really changed since about March…polling has just been noise and propaganda designed to get money or get money moved around.

But, Mark, what if you’re wrong?

Hey, of course I could be – if I am, then I am. But I think I’m on the right track here.

How Tough Are You Ready to Be?

Mark Noonan44 Comments

Floating across my Twitter TL earlier was a video of a housing contractor having a bad day – the video showed a house deep in the process of being constructed and his complaint was that for three days in a row, nobody showed up for work. The man’s claim was that he could offer $40 an hour and he’d get no-shows. It was very sad to watch.

But it is also something I’ve heard more and more of – work going begging because people simply won’t show up for it. And we all know why: there is so much money floating around out there for people sitting on their butts that butt-sitting is preferable to work even when work pays more. Its like this: you could make 75 grand a year by working hard…or you can milk the system for 32 grand a year and get to stay home or go hang out. It is a lot less money…but it is almost all tax free and you don’t have to work for it. Human nature: when we don’t have to persist, most of us don’t.

The problem is widespread not just in the United States, but all around the Western world. The welfare State is shoving money at people – and no surprise: the Welfare State dies if people are working property owners. If they are forever waiting for their EBT card to reload, then the Welfare State lives forever. An additional benefit for the Ruling Class is that people waiting for their EBT won’t rebel for fear of losing it. In the United States and around the West, there probably total several hundred million people who are a simple drain on the economy – either by directly taking government money or by working in perfectly useless government-funded or subsidized jobs. Needless to say, this is not sustainable.

As I have endlessly yammered on about, real national wealth is only what we make, mine or grow. It isn’t our dollars. It isn’t government spending which is counted as part of GDP. It is what is made, mined or grown – physical things which people need. Write a report about farming and you’ve created no wealth even if someone pays you a million dollars for it. Grow one ear of corn and you’ve created wealth. Make one nail. Dig one ounce of copper out of the ground: wealth is created. But the back end of that is we must have people who will make, mine and grow things.

One of the unstated things about illegal immigration is that very often it isn’t so much that illegals will take less money (though that is a big factor) but that they’ll show up – especially for the hard, dirty work. Some years back I wrote about finding that tens of millions of acres of American farmland lie fallow because nobody would farm it – my solution to that was to import, say, Nigerian farmers…give them the basics and some instruction on American farming (which is different from Nigerian farming for a host of reason; farming isn’t, of course, just putting a seed into the ground and waiting)…and then let them have the land if they farm it for five years. This is Great Replacement in action, I’m afraid, and I’m all-in on it – damn straight I’ll replace a white welfare bum with a Nigerian farmer every day and twice on Sunday (though, honestly, a Mexican or Sri Lankan farmer would do just as well for my purposes).

To carry it further – bring in miners. Bring in construction workers. Not this unvetted surge of illegals. Not the Corporate visa programs which just rip off American and foreign workers – but bring in people who want to work and just need the land, tools and law and order to make it happen. In other words, bring in Americans. We’ve lost a lot of those we had to welfare: so, let’s go find some more.

But even that is just a stop gap; an assist. Because we can’t allow millions of our own to lay around uselessly. It isn’t fair to those of us who work now, and it won’t be fair to any we import to pick up the slack in the hard/dirty but rewarding work. We must get our own people to get back to work. Many things go into making a Republic work but one of the crucial things is that the overwhelming mass of the people be independent, hard-working, law-abiding citizens. It just doesn’t work any other way. And this isn’t new. As the Roman Republic entered its final crisis, many people tried to restore the old Roman ways – various schemes to get people off the dole and into productive work. They were defeated by people who figured, instead, that increasing the dole was the path to power – that dependents would endure a Caesar a lot better than yeoman farmers would. Sound familiar?

What I’m driving at here is that if we really want to save our Republic, then we’re going to have to get a bit hard nosed in our demands upon our people. Right now, I do believe that the majority is still very much American (November 8th will go a long way towards ratifying or falsifying my view, depending on how it goes), but the number who cease being Americans and become dependents is rising all the time – we have to end that sort of thing. The rule must be, as it has been through all time, if you will not work, you will not eat. It is Biblical, after all: 2 Thessalonians 3:10.

This is not to say that the physically incapable should be forced to work or starve – but if you are under the age of retirement and are physically fit, you must work or we will literally watch you starve in front of us. Now, this does mean that there must be work – something to be done by the fit person to earn their daily bread. Yes, this will require some make-work in some cases. But on the other side of that, each of us bears the moral obligation to ensure that our brothers and sisters live dignified lives. We must, if needs be, pay taxes in order to provide work as necessary to those who cannot find employment at any given time.

But make no mistake about it: if there’s a job, the person must take it. If the only job available is cleaning sewers, then sewer cleaner it shall be. Nobody gets the Welfare without the Work. This will provide a massive disincentive to be on welfare and a huge incentive to get off it at the earliest opportunity. But, also, if someone can’t get any other work than welfare work, then at least they’ll be able to hold their head up and say, “I earned my food”. That, I think, is the very crucial thing – the moral thing; that which makes the program an act of love. We’ve been letting people slack off for so long that is has lost its stigma, but that stigma must return. We must retrain people to be ashamed of taking anything they played no part in making. And we must, then, also revive the notion that all honest work is honorable to the worker and everyone who works to earn their daily bread deserves our respect no matter how lowly the sort of work is.

But, as I said, this will take a bit of hardness on our part – an unwillingness to listen to sob stories. You are either a child, an invalid, a retiree or a worker – those are the four things you can be. There must be no room in society for the bum, the hobo, the layabout. People who insist upon not working must find every door slammed in their faces. No help, not even in the least thing. It might sound cruel but if we are honestly providing some sort of work in return for sufficient aid to live, then it isn’t cruel at all – it is, indeed, an act of mercy to the bum. It is his chance for redemption. A chance to join us and contribute, even if in a very small way.

But it will seem like cruelty. And the bums will howl and the Left will give us tear-jerking stories…and we must set our faces like flint, point to the shovel and say, “get to work, ya bum”. Work is ennobling. It is decreed by God as the means whereby we earn our bread. Anything set up to short-circuit the relationship between work and bread is evil and it must go, if we are to survive.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan44 Comments

Here is Kari Lake hammering the MSM on “election denier” accusations. It is how it is done – and we need ever more of this. She takes their stupid lies and just shoves them right back in their faces.

It is crucial that we understand the MSM is nothing but propaganda for the DNC. It is all Pravda, all the time. Everything they say which in any way relates to politics is a lie. It is either a complete fabrication or so twisted in presentation that the kernel of truth in there is entirely obscured and you can’t from their report connect it to the actual situation. They don’t make mistakes – everything they say is off a script provided by the DNC. Some day the full truth will come out and it will be shown that those who set the tone for the MSM – the movers and shakers of it who decide what is a story and how it will be covered – received direct orders on it from DNC operatives. Rely on it: I am absolutely right about this.

But how can you be sure?

Because they are always on the same page – at most a word or two is changed. They all say the exact same thing – and such uniformity is only possible on command, it cannot develop spontaneously.

I’m confident of an Oz victory in Pennsylvania mostly on the fact that there’s been no recent polling on it – which means the pollsters, even with D-heavy samples, are finding an Oz surge and they don’t want that to get out this late in the game as it would crush Democrat fundraising down the stretch.

As I’ve said for years, none of us can know the future – it is all up for grabs and in an infinite universe, literally anything is possible. But the fundamentals of 2022 started with the fact that Pudding Brain is in the White House. Depending on who you ask and how it is calculated, the President’s party loses an average of about 30 seats in the first mid-term when the incumbent is having popularity problems – and they usually are because even people who were popular when elected suffer a bit of buyer’s remorse. This is just the natural ebb and flow of politics, guys. W bucked the trend in 2002 because that was a year after 9/11 and we were all happy and united at the time – Bush’s popularity was still sky high. Given that the GOP only needs 6 seats to win a majority, the House was gone pretty much the minute they installed Uncle Grandpa into the Oval Office.

There was an outside chance for the Democrats in the Senate. With a 50/50 tie going in and a friendly map for the Democrats, if Biden maintained about a 46% average popularity and if nothing bad happened, the Democrats might have come out even or maybe even got a net gain of 1. But Biden sits around 42% (and it is likely 38% when you account for, once again, D-heavy samples) and we’ve got inflation and shortages and crime and border problems and a general feeling that everything sucks. A good Democrat candidate who runs a great campaign can probably run 4 points or so ahead of Biden’s approval…so, if this was a good year, Biden at 46 means some Democrats can make it. Biden at 42…they’re doomed. Biden at 38 – extra doomed.

Given the fundamentals, we can expect a pretty good November 8th for the GOP – the only question is, how good? We talking a solid night of, say, 30 House and 3 Senate seats, or a wipe out with a net GOP gain of 50 in the House and 5 in the Senate? That is the only question – I think there’s a larger chance of the wipe out: Democrats are already engaging in triage and abandoning various races…while GOP groups are looking for long-shots (I saw an ad against Dina Titus here in Las Vegas – she sits on a D+12 House district: that’s a stretch, but that someone is willing to spend some GOP money on it means it is in the realm of the possible).

The next thing to consider is, what next? With a GOP Congress being likely come January, what do we do with it? It is pretty clear that at the moment, McConnell doesn’t want to have a MAGA fight against the Democrats. McCarthy, over in the House, is making some noises like he’s willing to have that battle. But that is the crucial thing – we aren’t electing a GOP Congress to work across the aisle…we’re electing a GOP Congress to engage in unrelenting war on the Democrat party. We’ve learned that all bi-partisanship gets us is slightly slower surrender. We do want Hunter indicted, Biden impeached, the government shut down until the 87,000 IRS agents are gone and the border is secured. We know that the GOP leadership largely lacks the stomach for such a fight…but the incoming Congress will be more MAGA than any past Congress: we might successfully hold some feet to the fire.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan47 Comments

If you listen to polls, both the OK and NY governor races are tied.

This is why you shouldn’t listen to polls. The chances that the GOP is in trouble in Oklahoma are <0.1%. The risk that the Democrat is in trouble in NY is <10%. That is a huge spread, BTW – but, still, pretty solid for the Democrat. What isn’t at all possible is a GOP governor losing in a deep Red State in a GOP year.

OTOH, there is that non-zero chance that the GOP gets a miracle in New York. It would take an epic GOP Red Wave to make it happen…but there is a chance (small) that this happens. It all comes down, as usual, to who shows up? If the economy is the main issue, then the Democrats are getting shellacked. The reason the Democrats are leaning heavy into abortion (every second Democrat ad here in Nevada is “THE GOP WILL END ABORTION!!!) is because they must make the race about something else. Anything else. They tried to make 1/6 the issue (there were even ads on it here in Nevada) but that flopped…so, we’re all abortion, all the time right now. Will it work? I don’t think it will – I view it as a desperate throw of the dice by a party which dares not talk about itself.

If, however, in addition to the economy being the motivator we also see a drop in traditional Democrat turnout (especially among African-American voters) then the shellacking could turn into a beat down of epic proportions…that’s where NY governor, WA Senator and other races call to the GOP.

We’ll find out 11/8.

Been working on Book VI , Heirs, honestly meant to have it out by now but my production has been astonishing in later books (it will now be at least an 11 book series) and as the story has developed the characters (old and new) have gone off in some very interesting directions and this has necessitated a bit of a rework of Book VI, mostly in the foreshadowing of things that come later. I’ll have it out in a month or so. Book VII, Empress, will come real quick after that as I have hardly any modifications to make on it. Book VIII The Crimson Blade I want to have out in Summer of 2023. All that leads up to Book IX, Home World, which is 80% done and then on to Book X, Ghost Tower about 60% done and then we wrap it up (we hope) with Book XI, Antaki (only just started). Meanwhile, I’ve got the outline of my next series…not sure what it will be titled but it is an awesome cool story of deception confronted with courage.

Ever more parents are pushing back against transgender propaganda in schools. Most famously this past week were mostly Muslim parents in Michigan who went ballistic over the propaganda. Hate to break it to the Muslims, but there time as a favored “oppressed group” now likely draws to a close. Trans now trumps all in the Intersectionality Bingo Card. Some people did get a little upset because it was Muslims and there is always that concern they’ll impose Sharia. But, given a choice between Sharia and teaching kids that men can get pregnant, I’m going to have to go with Sharia. The true solution, of course, is to take control of the school boards – you know for a fact that no member of that board roasted by the Muslims so much as asked the locals what they want. Liberal Democrats they likely were elected because Muslims, like most immigrant communities, tend to vote Democrat – and most of the time, nobody really cares what the school board is up to. Until recently, that is – we now know how crucial it is. In fact, along with Sheriffs, it might be one of the two most crucial things to control.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan17 Comments

So, we had a hideous inflation report…and then the 1/6 nimrods subpoenaed Trump. This allowed the MSM to universally drop the Bad For Democrat Narrative and pick up the…well, what they think is the Bad For Trump Narrative. They are so utterly predictable.

Naturally, the Resist (!) Left went into onanistic overdrive on the news – fantasizing about Trump refusing it and the DOJ frog-marching him out of Mar a Lago…because none of them know how things work. Trump will, of course, throw up legal objections (all legitimate as the committee has no real authority to do what they think they’re doing) and then the election will happen and on January 3rd a Republican majority will dispense with it. And it is highly doubtful that even as nasty a partisan as Garland will try to set a precedent which would allow Trump or DeSantis to arrest Biden on January 21st, 2025.

The 1/6 Committee isn’t really about the mid-terms any longer. They had hoped that their friendly MSM Narrative would make people so hate Trump that it would help them at the polls…but the reality is the story that was buried today: inflation. It is rising very fast and while various entities are still trying to hide the effects, they can only do that for a little while. Once November 8th is past they’ll give it up and let inflation run its course – with the hope (for them) that it will abate and the resultant intensified recession will end long enough in front of 2024 to give the Democrats a shot.

It was revealed by the Saudis that Pudding Brain attempted to pressure them into keeping production high in front of the mid-terms. Think about that – with many decades of proven reserves in the ground (and 200 years worth altogether) Team Biden still won’t even consider increasing American production and instead opted to try a sordid deal with the Saudis. And merely to save their political bacon. These people really do hate the United States and her people – they just want power and the wealth it brings to them.

Fetterman is clearly suffering some bad effects from his stroke a little while back and the Dem/MSM Narrative on it switched from “there’s nothing wrong” to “you’re an abelist bigot if you mention it”. I feel a little sad for the man – I’m pretty sure it is just his people (and his consultants making bank no matter how the election goes) keeping him at it. My father had a stroke and I know how difficult it is for a person to bounce back from them, if they ever fully can. Dad never quite got back and had a speech impediment for the rest of his life – looks like Fetterman will, too. This doesn’t mean that Fetterman can’t have a long and productive life, but the bottom line is that the recovery time from a stroke is not the time to be running for Senate. It is cruel to keep him at it. It may end up killing him – and the Democrats don’t care: they figure that Shapiro has a 70/30 shot at getting re-elected and will be able to name Fetterman’s replacement (personally, I think its about a 52/48 shot – I still hold that polls are massively underestimating the coming GOP turnout while at the same time massively overestimating the likely Democrat turnout).

Meanwhile, Democrats have rung the alarm bell in…Oregon. I guess there’s just so much Antifa a place can take and then they’ll even (((shudder))) give the GOP a shot: we’re looking pretty good for the governorship and even have an outside shot at a legislative majority. Meanwhile, over in Washington Patty Murray appears to be in some trouble – I’ll still rate that “lean Democrat” because they have so much power (and ability to cheat) in Seattle…but, clearly, Democrats are in some trouble. What we saw in 2021 was a pretty nearly uniform swing in VA and NJ of ten points from the Democrats to the GOP…if that holds true in 2022, a huge GOP year is coming…but there’s is a chance that the swing will be even larger. Meanwhile, Ron Jonson looks like a lock in the WI Senate rate while Kemp appears similarly situated in the Georgia governorship (don’t even talk about FL – Governor and Senate races will be called at poll closing in the Panhandle). What I can’t see is a huge divergence between PA and WI…they tend to flow together being States with a lot of demographic similarities. We’re about to clean up in WI but fail in PA? Could happen – but PA is trending Red much more rapidly than WI (voter registration changes in favor of the GOP mark out PA as the next FL). We’ll see what happens – but I’m expecting some pretty big wins in PA. Michigan? Officially, everyone says that Whitmer has it in a lock…and it would take a pretty big GOP wave to get the GOP over the top there. But we might have that.

From the Ukraine to the Nuclear Holocaust is But a Step

Mark Noonan28 Comments

The Ukrainians blow up a bridge. Putin calls it terrorism and in retaliation rains down a bunch of bombs on Ukrainian cities…and then nitwits in the West start calling for direct strikes on Russia.

Not liking where this seems to be heading.

As I’ve said all along, there is zero American strategic interest in who governs the Donbas or, indeed, all of Ukraine. It wouldn’t change the balance of power against us in the least. On the other hand, Poland, Germany and Romania (and, to a lesser extent, France, Italy, Spain and England) have a vested interest in the matter. Combined, they have land forces numbering about 170,000 – and reserves can be mobilized to make them larger. France, Italy, Spain and Britain can back that up with about 380,000 troops (once again, more when fully mobilized). This doesn’t count air and naval forces. Nor economic power. That is more than enough to deter Russia – especially as Europe’s population and industrial power is larger than Russia’s so in a long war, Europe wins no matter what the Russians do (and France and the UK are nuclear-armed, so that balances against Russia’s nuclear weapons). Quick and cool-headed diplomacy backed by a credible threat of force likely would have gotten the Russians to back down.

So, why wasn’t that done? Because while quick and cool-headed diplomacy backed by credible force would likely get Russia to back down, it wouldn’t certainly do so. In other words: the Europeans might have to fight. They don’t want to. And I don’t think they want to ever: not even if their homelands were at stake. Certainly not for the Donbas. Europe is so sunk in narcissistic sloth and cowardice that I doubt there is the plain courage to stand up to a bully…so, they asked us to step in and they are pouring weapons into Ukraine hoping that somehow the 41 million Ukrainians can defeat 145 million Russians (do the math, guys).

The chances that anyone will use a nuke are low, but as I pointed out previously, they are rising all the time. The whole concept of using nuclear weapons being unthinkable was something implanted by propaganda to make sure, first and foremost, that the United States never took advantage of its overwhelming superiority in that area. I still doubt that Putin will use them – he can put into uniform about 3 million soldiers and that should be more than sufficient to deal with Ukraine. But you never can tell – there are stories rolling around that US and NATO special forces are boots on the ground assisting the Ukraine on the battlefield. If they are, it is likely intel that they are providing – data on Russian strength and intentions obtained from our satellites and human intelligence capabilities. If this is so, and if such manages to route a significant Russian force thus opening up Russian territory to Ukrainian invasion, things could get dicey very fast.

It is a very delicate situation right now and I very much doubt that our political or military leadership has a clue how to end it. They want victory, of course – or at least something that can be presented on TV as a victory (our Ruling Class lives and dies by how things appear on TV): but nobody – not NATO and not us – wants to put in the real effort necessary to secure a victory. Its all just a hope.

But Putin isn’t hoping – he’s trying to win. Like all Russian leaders he’s confronted with the fact his Russian people simply aren’t good at things which require organization and timing. So, he seems to be turning to the tried-and-true Russian method of just pounding his way through to success. You hope that Ukraine has produced a general who can confound Putin’s plans – and swiftly, but without seeming a mortal threat to Russia. And you hope that nobody at State or DoD is contemplating something like a covert attack on Russia’s military infrastructure by American forces.

I don’t know how it will come out – but literally anything is possible given the level of stupidity and ignorance our leaders have. Let’s just pray for peace – that somehow God grants us mercy and this war just blows over.

The Evil Democrats

Mark Noonan

The Department of Homeland Security is admitting that Cartel income from human trafficking across the American border has risen from $500 million in 2018 to $13 billion in 2022. Drugs are still number one by far, but let’s face the fact that the United States has become an insatiable maw for the new slave trade – and huge numbers of these people are no more than slaves, especially the “unaccompanied minors” being sent across. Also: there is zero chance that there has been this much of an increase without the active cooperation of American law enforcement officials. Something this big is by far too easy to spot and even the veriest simpleton of a cop would be able to figure out what is going on. I’m not saying that everyone is involved but, also, you never need that – and the Cartels have decades of experience of bribing (and intimidating) law enforcement. And with $13 billion just in slaves to sell, the Cartels have plenty of money for bribes.

And we got here because the Democrat Party- the Left, the overall Establishment – wanted this. Don’t try to soften this: what is happening with human trafficking is the easy and obvious result of Democrat policies to allow people to flood in unvetted and then allow them (heck, send them, often by plane) deep into the American interior with a mere notice to appear which will be ignored. And the Democrats did this – opened a border which Trump had by and large secured – simply because they hate us. They don’t care about these poor people (Martha’s Vineyard proved that – they bounced those illegals out so fast their heads were spinning). They don’t care about the mountain of human suffering they are causing not just among these trafficked people, but among the American communities they are settled in, with all the connections to Cartel criminality which comes with them. They just don’t care – they did this because it was the opposite of what we wanted. They are spiting us with the blood of foreigners suffocating in trucks or raped along the border.

And they are like that because they are not good people. And I don’t mean this in the sense that all of us can strive to be better – I mean that they have chosen to be bad. To be evil.

It really should come as no shock – after all, a person who is ok with federally funded abortion on demand to the moment of birth (the core, Democrat demand on the issue) is someone who left off morality quite a while ago. And they don’t get away from this descent into wickedness if they say that they, personally, don’t like abortion to birth…if you think that anyone, anywhere, should be able to hold that position and also hold office in the United States, then you are downright evil on a very personal level. To paraphrase our Democrats, it isn’t enough to be against killing kids 8 months into pregnancy – you must actively work to stop it.

There is no policy of the Democrat Party – or of the overall global Left – which is not based upon hatred. Forget their words: they long ago learned to turn words on their head. Remember, when a person of the Left says they’re fighting Liberty, what they mean isn’t the ability of the individual to live as they see fit. No, it is something much more sinister than that: they are fighting to liberate from the family, from the country, from morality…from God, at the bottom of it. That is what they mean by the word Liberty – and that is why you will see them say “my body, my choice” in regards to abortion and then shout “vaccine mandate” in the next breath. It isn’t a contradiction to them – your Liberty is only the Liberty to be opposed to God and all that is decent…but you don’t have the liberty to do what you wish. Because if you can do as you wish, you may choose to do something the Left doesn’t want – you may even decide to worship God and then get married and raise children in a family.

This all stems, by the way, from Lenin and the Russian revolutionaries. It can’t be emphasized enough how Leninism rules the Left these days. He was, after all, the first successful Leftist. He managed to obtain, retain and transmit his power. All the other Leftist movements before him (most notably the Marxists of 1848 and the Communards of 1871) had been crushed. Lenin won – and even those who claimed to reject Leninism still, by various degrees, sat at his feet and learned from the master. Because Leninism gained a country – and eventually an Empire – it was able to nurture itself and spread out into the world. By threat and blandishment it made it impossible for anyone on the Left first to oppose Leninism and later to refuse to support Leninism. The process took about 50 years (1917 to 1967); it first captured the colleges and then, via the college graduates, captured the institutions college grads work in.

But the main thing about Lenin wasn’t the Marxism – in fact, Marx would have rejected a lot of Leninism. Lenin was an opportunist of genius and in his time Marxism was the fashionable thing as it seemed to offer a “scientific” explanation and cure for the ills of society. But the main thing Lenin wanted was absolute power for himself and absolute war on the society he came from – he hated those damned, thick-headed Russian peasants who only wanted to be left alone. He despised those middle class drones working away and trying to merely build a nice life for their families. He also hated this nobility he came from, but not nearly with the white-hot passion that he hated the peasants and middle class…with their infuriating religious devotion and unwillingness to fit into the boxes Lenin assigned to them. What Lenin did was make it appear that his least desire was the only way to Marxism – didn’t matter if he changed his mind from day to day, whatever bug was up his rear at any given moment was the absolute necessity for the Marxist future.

Does this at all sound familiar? Bring anything to mind? Perhaps all those Democrats who are always immediately on board with The Current Thing? They’ve merely learned their lesson – because failure to immediately follow the Party Line (initially established by Lenin, carried on by whomever gets themselves into a position to make the New Party Line, often on a daily basis) means you are outcast. Destroyed. Ruined! Marked for nothing but destruction.

You might want to say at this point, “hey, Mark: I know that the leaders are bad, but the rank-and-file people aren’t. They are good people. They want good things; they’ve just been conned.”

To which I answer: yes, they have been. Just like the Germans were conned by the Nazis.

The Nazis sold the Germans a flaming pile of dog…stuff…but after a while, you are still a human being with agency and you get to decide your level of participation. And some Germans figured out that even the first step was bad. Others figured it out later. But the overwhelming mass didn’t figure it out until a Russian or American boot was kicking their door in. I’ll never forget that The World at War interview with a “typical German woman” and she said it true: she didn’t become angry with Hitler and the Nazis until the defeat. It was a Gangster’s anger – Hitler had promised them the world if they obeyed. They obeyed…and all they got was a ruined nation. And then there was Hitler’s secretary, Traudl Junge, interviewed many years after the war, pointing out that her immediate post-war assertions that she hadn’t known Hitler was a monster was based on her not wanting to know. And your typical Democrat person in the United States doesn’t know that humans are being trafficked. Doesn’t know that crime is rising. That there are shortages of food in some places. That kids as young as 8 are being “transitioned” on the flimsiest of justifications. To be sure, the MSM – owned by the Democrat Party – isn’t helpful to anyone who wants to know…but everyone is supposed to want to know. These rank-and-file Democrats don’t want to know.

And it doesn’t matter why they don’t want to know. Laziness, cowardice…what have you. We’re human beings. We have Reason – we’re supposed to use it. We’re supposed to think about it. Someone says we need to abort a healthy child at 8 months from a healthy mother, we’re supposed to ask why someone would want to do that? What’s the justification? On every level – practical and moral. We are accountable for our actions. For we believers, it is accountability to God. For non-believers it would be accountability to the community. But there is always that accountability – why? Why do you believe as you do? Why do you act as you do? Justify it. And if you can’t justify your beliefs and actions, you’d better stop. The Germans suddenly found themselves in May of 1945 in a non-Nazi world where they had to provide an explanation for boxcars of people shipped – with massive cooperation all through German society – to death camps. There will come a day – and we pray to God it is soon – where people will be asked to justify why they thought it ok for kids to be trafficked across the border. Why they thought it ok for thugs to burn cities. Why they thought it ok for government agencies to spy on Americans.

But until that day, we on our side must be on our guard. We can’t cooperate with these people because, as decent human beings, we cannot cooperate with evil. There is no bi-partisanship with the Devil. There is no mid-point between Good and Evil. There is Good and there is Evil and as far as human Reason can determine, we are obligated to adhere to Good, cost what it might. If this means we lose elections – if this means we lose all power and are utterly under the boot of a Leftist tyranny – then that is how it will have to be. We can’t do what is wrong and hope we will get what is right out of it.

No more compromise. We fight. We fight all the time. We fight on every issue. Nothing Left gets done with our help – it only happens because they overwhelm us. And if we obtain power, then as far as that power allows, we extirpate the Left from political, economic and social power. All or nothing, guys. Good or Evil. I want Good.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan27 Comments

A couple days ago Elon Musk suggested a possible path to peace in Ukraine – the nutshell of it was free and fair elections in the ethnic-Russian areas and everyone abides by the result. It is to be doubted that Putin would ever agree to it even though such a vote would probably result in a win for Russia…but likely not an overwhelming win and he’s certainly not about to allow free and fair elections in the Donbas when he won’t allow them in Moscow.

But what amazed was the fury which greeted Musk’s suggestion – even Ukrainian government officials piled on. The same officials who were grateful a couple months ago to Musk for providing Starlink for free after the Russians have pretty much zapped the entire Ukrainian communications network. Musk was roundly condemned as a Russian agent and the very thought of peace was scorned.

People around me long enough know that my basic belief about war is that if you get into one, you apply the maximum power you can muster against the enemy until he quits. This, of course, is a very American perspective because we are so powerful – generally, a full application of American power means the other side loses (this is why we’ve been forbidden to apply our full power since 1945). Even in our current state of decline, we’re still vastly more powerful than anyone else out there. But what if you aren’t the strongest power?

It still holds in my view: you apply the maximum amount of power you can muster. But with a thought towards obtaining peace as soon as possible because if you are the weaker side, then a long war only has one ending for you: defeat.

As I noted early on, the path to a clear-cut Ukrainian victory was for them to be able to mount a serious offensive into Russia right at the start. Think Six Day War: you drive deep and fast to entirely disrupt the enemy plans and, hopefully, get him to panic and willing to talk peace at just about any price. Absent that, the second best option was to trade space for time – and sell territory at a usurious blood price: hopefully that would get the Russians to quit. As it turns out, Ukraine did neither – it was, in fact, Ukrainians who were ground up defending every inch of ground in positions good, bad and indifferent as the Russians systemically used artillery to bludgeon their way forward. Now the Ukrainians, re-equipped by NATO, are taking the offensive again and they are gaining ground…but mostly it looks like ground the Russians are giving up, unwilling to spend blood to hold it…and, once again, Russian artillery is exacting a high blood price for each Ukrainian advance.

So, in my view (and, apparently, Musk’s) it is time to talk peace. It is unlikely that Ukraine, unaided on the ground, will be able to expel the Russians from all Ukrainian territory. If they are finally able to do so, the price will be high and the further they advance, the more heavily Russian the local population is. And, of course, the Russians get a say: if Putin fully mobilizes Russia for war, he’ll have overwhelming weight on his side and he will prevail…perhaps conquering the whole country. So: smoke a peace pipe.

But, we can’t have that, it would seem. I guess our Ruling Class can’t think of anything else to do. And they are making money off it.

In other Musk news, he’s once again saying he’ll buy Twitter. As soon as word of this came out, everyone’s follower count dropped – some by many thousands. I only lost 12 because I don’t let bots follow me. So, it seemed pretty clear that Twitter was getting rid of bots before Elon takes over and shows that their algorithm is entirely self-dealing and their traffic and trends are manufactured.

Herschel Walker – I’m sure you’ve talked about it. As for me: I refuse to condemn based on an uncorroborated story. Walker denies it. Unless and until stand-up-in-court proof is presented, I will discount the accusation. A lot of us on the right are taking this basic position and the left is getting mighty irritated with us – but what is making them scorching mad is when we say that even if they prove it, we won’t withdraw support for Walker.

The funny part about this is that I’m sure their strategy went like this: “Hey, they’re a bunch of white, racist Christians who hate anyone who sins. They’re only backing Walker because they think he’ll do as he’s told. So, we tell them that Walker paid for an abortion and their Christian bigotry, supported by their racism, will do Walker in!”. Don’t doubt me on this: they really think we’re like that. As if we Christians don’t believe that the blood of Christ covers all sins. And in addition to that, it won’t make us help elect a man committed to the Democrat’s position: federally funded abortion on demand to the moment of birth.

What pleased me most when the story broke is how few bedwetters on the Right emerged – discounting all Never Trump (which has morphed into Never Republican), of genuine conservatives only a few lent the story any credence, and most of them said it made no difference given Walker’s opponent. We’re learning! We’re no longer falling for the Left’s drivel. This is good and bodes well for the future.

Nuclear Nightmare

Mark Noonan60 Comments

I’ve talked a bit about the lies of our times (translation: yammered on endlessly about it), but something jumped out at me today.

There has been some chatter about the supposed threat of Putin using nuclear weapons in his war in Ukraine. Whether or not there’s anything to it, I don’t know. Could be just fear-mongering by our leaders to keep us on board with spending endless billions of never-to-be-audited dollars there. But it occurred to me that if, say, Putin were to use a nuke to destroy a Ukrainian division, just what could anyone do about it?

Ukraine gave up its nukes: so, no threat of retaliation from there. If there was to be a proportionate response, it would have to come from the USA, UK or France – the three nuclear-armed NATO powers. Which nation will risk a nuclear exchange with Russia over that? Nuke Smolensk and risk Nancy, Birmingham or Boston being wiped out in response? Not gonna happen – not in any conceivable universe of possibilities.

So, in the end, if Putin decided he has to use nukes, he’s got a free-fire zone. And that also got me thinking: just why haven’t nuclear weapons been used since 1945?

They kill lots of people?

Ok. They sure do. But so does conventional bombing: the conventional bombing raid on Tokyo March 10th, 1945 killed an estimated 100,000: about as many as were killed at Hiroshima. Dead is dead – whether in a nuclear flash or a firestorm. And nobody has been shy about killing since WWII – just between Korea and Vietnam about 6 million people were killed. And think of all the fighting all through the past 75 years! War after war after war and nothing is resolved and then some more war and killing because it wasn’t resolved and so on and etc. This is better than a nuclear bomb?

So, killing really isn’t the reason nobody uses them. But what about the long-term effects of nuclear war? Nuclear Winter! Land and water poisoned for thousands of years! Well…if you look into Nuclear Winter, if it is something which can happen (and there are doubts), then it is predicated upon thousands of nuclear weapons going off nearly at the same time. This is something which is very unlikely to happen. And as for poisoned land and water – well, as I’ve pointed out before, people never stopped living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even around Chernobyl they’re doing nature documentaries to chronicle how plants and animals are thriving in the absence of human activity. Think about that – the most deadly and poisonous nuclear accident in history…and they’re doing documentaries about how plants and animals are thriving. People live there now, too; some people have apparently lived there all along, and nobody is growing a third arm or having any other unusual physical actions.

So, just maybe the dangers of nuclear radiation are a bit overblown?

Now you have to think back a bit – and be over the age of, say, 45. People younger than that simply won’t have a memory of how we were positioned in the last part of the Cold War. At our peak, we had more than 31,000 nuclear warheads. And we didn’t just have the nukes – with rockets, bombers and subs, we had the ability to deliver these weapons with pinpoint accuracy in literal minutes from the word “go”. Old time veterans like me can remember SIOP: Single Integrated Operation Plan. That was military shorthand for how to wipe out the entirety of the Soviet Union in about thirty minutes.

But here’s the real kicker – and is once again something we know but we don’t know. Any of us of the right age who looked into weapons and capabilities of the USA and USSR knew at a glance that any nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union was only going to have one outcome: a wiped out USSR. Sure, the Russkies would try to respond but given their technological and organizational level (which was low – see Invasion of Ukraine for an example of Russian combat effectiveness), they’d have been lucky to get one or two shots off at us before they were utterly destroyed. Dirty little secret of the Cold War was that most Russian ICBM’s were not launch-capable at a moment’s notice. It is actually tricky to keep a liquid fueled rocket ready to go and the Russians just didn’t have the skill to do that. Their liquid-fueled rockets were usually standing empty and it would have taken hours or days to get them ready…and we would have seen that with our satellites giving us plenty of time to attack before they could even launch. This is why the Soviets invested so much money in mobile nuclear launchers…they needed to keep something they hoped we would miss (we wouldn’t have – any rocket which can go between continents is large and noticeable from the sky). Their bomber force was obsolescent before it took to the air – and they never mastered the American ability to build a genuine penetration bomber which would have a solid shot of making it to the target. The Cuban Missile Crisis was caused by the Russian desire to have at least some missiles with a decent shot of hitting the United States before we could destroy them on the ground.

But we never thought of it that way, did we? Even after sizing up capabilities, we were still frozen in the concept that a nuclear exchange meant mutual destruction. Nobody wins. Everyone is dead. Civilization is wiped out – and the few survivors are living in a Mad Max dystopia. Just can’t do it! And we got to that mental attitude early on – about the time MacArthur was suggesting that the best way to deal with a million ChiCom soldiers massing in Manchuria would be to drop an atomic bomb on them. You can’t! It would be mass murder! The Russians would nuke us in response and we’d all die!

Well, can’t see as sparing those ChiComs nuclear destruction was all that helpful – not to them or to us. Nobody knows how many Chinese soldiers died in Korea: Chinese government assertions on it are quite useless and while we made estimates, we never really counted. But, rely on it, they were enormous. Again and again the Chinese leadership sent masses of their soldiers straight into American firepower. Their deaths must have been in the hundreds of thousands. And then there’s the deaths they inflicted – ours, South Korean, other UN allies. Over a three year slugging match in horrible conditions for both sides. So, a nuke in Manchuria is the morally inferior choice? Even if it brings with it the possibility that the mere threat of nuking might have got the ChiComs to climb down? Or, if it didn’t, bring the war to the same, swift end it brought to WWII? With a lot fewer of ours dead? And does anyone really think that if we nuked the People’s Volunteer Army in Manchuria that Stalin would risk Moscow for the chance of nuking New York City?

Where’s the downside here?

But we were told that to even contemplate it was immoral. And who said so? Well, the usual suspects when we discuss any historical restraint placed on the application of American power – the American left and Establishment was against it. But why were they? It isn’t like we’ve found these people over time to be opposed to death. Oh, sure, they don’t want to die themselves, but again and again they have sent people they don’t know into the shambles of war…had them fight and die for no purpose and then awarded themselves medals and commendations for doing it. So, I can’t see that morality is what got them to advocate against nukes. And, in fact, the only thing a refusal to use nukes helped was…the enemies of the United States. Here you have this Super Power with overwhelming force which can make all your bravery quite useless…and that Super Power pledges not to use it against you. You can do whatever you want: start wars, murder people, loot and imprison…kill as many Americans as you can! And rely on it, no matter what you do, that Super Power will never take the easy way out of his problem by simply exterminating you with a few bombs well placed.

I just have to believe that the campaign to make nuclear weapons unthinkable emerged from the USSR. Had to: it only helped them. It allowed them to feel safe from destruction while also make it seem like they were a power equal to the United States.

But now it is 2022. Things are different. And serious people with actual knowledge of how nuclear weapons work are in power and to them it is a mere calculation: a cost-benefit analysis. We might find out soon that plenty of players around the world are willing to use nukes against the nuke-free – because the target can’t hit back and none of the nuke-armed powers are going to risk themselves by retaliating in the name of the victim. What I’m saying here is that after quite a long while of living a pipe dream about nuclear weapons, we might have to live in the real world of them.

And that makes me wonder: it has been a long time since we built or tested a nuke. Just how effective is our arsenal? Because if it isn’t up to snuff – and our enemies have fully penetrated our government and probably know to the last detail the condition of our nuclear force – then we might find a nuclear sabre rattled at us.

We might be in for a very difficult time – and all because, ultimately, we allowed ourselves to be conned on this and so many other issues.