Open Thread

Mark Noonan19 Comments

Got into a long debate about gun control over on Twitter. Not a bad one, either. I mean, the people arguing with me were ignorant of basic facts and had imbibed a great deal of Progressive lies, but the debate was civil and it did open the eyes a bit on my side: they really are convinced that being armed is not something human beings are supposed to be…at least, not armed in any way that would give a distinct advantage. Maybe it stems from a Progressive desire to be fair? Don’t really know. But we’re never going to convince these people: they’ll have to be mugged by reality. As some of them have been as I’ve seen stories of Progressives in San Francisco quietly purchasing firearms as all police protection has been withdrawn.

To that end, Chesa Boudin, the communist DA of SF, is in deep trouble – he fully implemented the Marxist-Leninist ideal of criminal justice and it really, really sucks. One of the unknown stories about the old USSR was how crime-ridden it was. Those who read The Gulag Archipelago know, but most people don’t…and it is simply because Soviet media didn’t cover it and Western media followed suit. But the basics of Soviet criminal law – that all crime is the result of social injustice – combined with a complete disarming of the Russian people meant that crime ran wild. You’d get 25 years for speaking ill of Communism, 10 years for murder…usually with time off for good behavior. While the bosses were tightly protected (sound familiar?) the common people were at the mercy of criminals. But unlike in the USSR, there is a recall possible in San Francisco – and nothing will spotlight the toxic environment for Democrats than the scion of the far Left getting the boot.

US Intel says that Putin is on the ropes. Given US Intel’s track record, I expect Russian tanks in Paris by next week.

The GOP continues to earn it’s title as The Stupid Party – with gas and food prices rising, a border crisis and Biden risking WWIII…they’re putting together a plan to reduce greenhouse gases. Got a newsflash for ya, GOPe – nobody gives a damn about Climate Change except those who are paid to give a damn about it.

Tampa Bay Rays went woke over the recent shootings…and DeSantis is vetoing a $35 million taxpayer give away to them. That is how its done.

The Last, Best Hope

Mark Noonan12 Comments

I consider the central idea pervading this struggle is the necessity that is upon us, of proving that popular government is not an absurdity. – Abraham Lincoln

That, boiled down, was all the Civil War was about. Lincoln’s view was that regardless of any complaints the South had about the result of the 1860 election or the structure and function of American government, they could not legitimately break up the country because they didn’t get their way. Popular government requires that the losers accept the loss and set their minds to reversing the result at a future election. But there was more to Lincoln’s statement than the immediate problem of the Civil War – the assertion is rather universal: is popular government something wise, or nothing but folly? The jury is still out. Spoiler: the jury will always be out. It is an endless effort.

Popular government has two requirements: the aforementioned acceptance of the election results and that the government never seeks to thwart the popular will. People have to get out there and campaign and vote, accept the results and then the government has to do what it was elected to do within the restrictions of the Constitution. Obviously, we’ve settled whether or not secession is something to do when you lose, but we haven’t settled whether or not popular government can maintain a system where the popular will prevails. The popular will is whatever the people want done now via Constitutional means and the unrepealed Constitutional things they did in the past: the government, to be truly popular, must do both to the best of it’s ability – honor what exists, and implement what is desired under law.

Voting is, of course, only a mechanism for assessing the popular will. It tells us who convinced the most people to go along with a party or candidate. This is a very important thing, but it isn’t the end of it. Voting is only an aspect of how things work. Far more important is what the government does once it is in power. First and foremost, does it do what it said it would do? Secondly, does it obey the law as it does things? A government which doesn’t do what was proposed – or, even worse, does the opposite – is deliberately thwarting the popular will. A government that doesn’t obey the law is attacking the very concept of popular government.

And as I said, our experiment is still on-going – and we’re rather up against it. For a short while there, the example of America started to spread liberty around the world. But even at its peak in, say, the 1950’s, the freedoms being established weren’t American freedoms. They were conditional. How so? Well, let’s take a look.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Congress shall make no law. That is a very vigorous statement. Doesn’t matter how bad you want it. Doesn’t matter how justified you think you are or even if 90% of the people agree with you…Congress shall make no law. Boom, as the hip people say. Done. Now, to be sure, you can break the law and so make laws against free speech and so forth, but if you are obeying the law – as is required for popular government to work – then you have no recourse other than changing the Constitution, a very difficult process and even here in 2022 you’d never get close to an Amending majority to change so much as a word of that. Now, how about this for a contrast:

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

The Canadian Charter goes on for quite a bit after that detailing this, that and the other thing but it is all moot: Everything after the word “it” negates what was said before and makes nonsense of what comes after. What are “reasonable limits”? The Charter doesn’t define them so what a “reasonable limit” is will be whatever the government of the day decrees…and as that government, via the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, essentially controls the terms of the political debate, it isn’t like the people have a real shot at changing who will be decreeing what is reasonable. The current government of Canada got 32.6% of the vote last election – and just today it announced that it is freezing handgun purchases…because, to the government, that is a reasonable limit. And as we saw with the trucker protests, the government will also decide what are the reasonable limits to popular opposition to government decrees.

Neat, huh? Voting all over the place…and your freedoms are non-existent; entirely depending on the government deciding whether they meet reasonable limits.

And it is like that all over the world. Either there is no specific assertion of the rights of the people (France’s Constitution, for instance, only asserts that it honors the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man – but it doesn’t make them obligatory under French law), or such assertions are hemmed in with weasel words allowing the government to do whatever it wants. Only in the United States do you get things like Congress shall make no law or shall not be infringed. And, let me tell you, this just irritates the heck out of our Ruling Class.

And don’t act all surprised about this – what government ever really wants to limit itself? Well, we know of one, and just one: The Constitutional Convention of 1787. For the very first and only time in history, a group of people came together to craft a government which would have built in provisions to limit the power of government. Most people – even most historically literate people – don’t realize how astonishing this is. People who are drawn to government are, after all, mostly drawn to power. Such people are inherently unlikely to enact anything that would actually stop them from doing something. But in 1787, a whole bunch of people drawn to power did just that. It was a miracle – and as I said many years before, I think that God moved them to do as they did. Can’t prove it, but what emerged out of Philadelphia in 1787 was so unique and so sublime that I can only credit God for it. But, that aside, the main thing is that it was done.

And ever since then, people far less worthy than the Founders have tried to work their way around it. You can just look at a Pelosi or a Clinton and see them burning with envy at Justin Trudeau just deciding, all on his own, that you can’t buy a pistol in Canada any longer. They hate the fact that here in America there are clear, easy to understand laws which say the government can’t do that. And of course they still circumvent the law as often as they can. But even that probably bothers them – they have to dress it up, slip it into a must-pass bill, make sure the MSM gets the right Narrative…and all the while they have the fear that our genuinely independent judiciary will strike it down, with the added complication that dozens of States are likely to resist and by non-cooperation and lawsuits cause all manner of trouble. So, soooo much easier if you could just get Pudding Brain to sign a decree between Matlock and Nap Time.

And they also very much prefer that our ability to speak, worship, own property, be armed and so forth were subject to their arbitrary interpretation of what the law says. They really want some “reasonable limits”!

They’re trying to get those “reasonable limits”. Been trying for decades and they’ll never quit. Dressed up as “gun safety”, “reproductive rights”, “equity” and such, they are very much trying to impose some “reasonable limits” on us. And we have to fight them off – as preparation for utterly destroying them as a political force. We must do this because we must continue to obey Lincoln – we must, that is, continue to prove that popular government isn’t an absurdity. It is either win this fight, or throw up the sponge and look for the first likely dictator who at least promises to leave us alone in our personal beliefs. We’d get the choice between the Left’s Lenin, or our Caesar. I don’t want that – I’d rather we kept freedom. But, in the end, there might not be enough of us to do that. But I’m sure going to try.

This is still the world’s last, best hope. Has been since 1776 and will be until such time as the rest of the world starts writing into its laws the things government isn’t allowed to do. And in this, you’ll now pardon me if I don’t give a damn about the world and it’s problems. This is a big reason why I’m indifferent to things like Ukraine: I’ve got bigger fish to fry right now. Namely, making sure America as founded continues to exist. All else comes a very distant second to that. We are, thank God, not involved in a hot Civil War, but we’re just as much in a Civil War as ever…because as was said regarding the last one, the House must become all one thing or all the other. Either we restore an America where government is restricted, or we become an America where the people are.

Shall Not Be Infringed

Mark Noonan17 Comments

As per usual in the aftermath of a shooting, the debate is over what restrictions should be placed on gun ownership. And even gun rights advocates essentially concede the point that there should be restrictions – the only thing being debated is what sort of restrictions there will be. We have to get away from that. We must, that is, start insisting that words mean what they mean and that written law is obligatory. Because we’ve allowed words to be twisted and permitted the written law to be optional we’re in the mess we have today. Time to take that stand: draw that line.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Our liberal friends like to concentrate on the first four words: asserting that firearms ownership is tied to militia, with the National Guard, essentially the Army reserve, being now the only legitimate place to bear arms. But that is just obvious drivel – anyone reading the sentence can see that the author was merely explaining the reasoning behind the amendment…and the militia is not the National Guard: it is, essentially, all adult citizens capable of bearing arms. It most emphatically is not the military – that is why it says “militia”. The Military is a permanent force raised and armed by the State. The militia is an ad hoc organization of self-armed civilians called into service in an emergency. Very different species! But even if you want to assert that the Militia is now the Military, you can’t get around the last fourteen words – the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. Even if the author meant to write that you have to be in the Militia to bear arms, the sentence doesn’t assert anything like that – but it does clearly state that the right to bear arms is something that government can’t infringe upon.

Infringe is an important word here – because it means to transgress, to violate, to invalidate, to encroach upon. The author could have used all sorts of words here, but he choose “infringe” because he wanted to make clear that there were no circumstances where you could deny the people the right to keep and bear arms. The government, per the Second Amendment, can do nothing to prevent or even so much as hamper the ability of the people to keep and bear arms.

No exceptions! It doesn’t say “shall not be infringed, once you pass a background check” or “shall not be infringed, except in a gun-free zone” no “shall not be infringed except for reasonable safety regulations”. It says shall not be infringed and then, literally, period. End of sentence. Nothing to add, retract or modify. We’re done here: the government cannot infringe upon the people keeping and bearing arms.

Now, lets move on to the next very important word in the sentence: arms. What is an “arm”? Well, it is anything you choose to arm yourself with. It doesn’t say the right to keep and bear muskets. Nor the right to keep and bear swords. Or keep and bear arms as long as they aren’t too lethal. No, it says “keep and bear arms.” It secures our right to keep and bear anything you wish to use as an arm – as a weapon. The author could have been specific but he wasn’t – he merely wrote the word arms. Even if in the author’s mind something else was meant, the word “arms” means what it means: it means weapons in general. Anything from a Swiss army knife to a thermonuclear device.

Hey, Mark – you’re not saying that the people can keep and bear nukes, are you?

I’ll bite: yes. Technically, you have a right to keep and bear nuclear weapons. Now, in practical terms, the chances that any person will obtain the necessary materials, skills and funding to build a nuclear device is nil. But the way the Second Amendment was written does not provide any exclusions. You might want exclusions in there. The author might have thought there was still exclusions in there. But the words of the law – which is what we must adhere to – makes no exclusions. It says “arms” and that people can keep and bear them.

In practical terms, what we’re really dealing with in keeping and bearing arms is arms that one person or, at most, a small crew of people can maintain, deploy and operate. And to drill down further, 99.99% of the time we’re going to be talking about small arms. But small arms does include things like automatic weapons, grenade launchers, anti-air and anti-tank missiles. And it must include those things because the clear intent of the author was to ensure that the population, without exception, was able to be armed sufficient to shoot back at an oppressor. It isn’t like no exceptions are placed into the Constitution. There’s lots of them in there – heck, even habeas corpus, the primary legal defense of free people, has exceptions. Arms do not. And the people who enacted and ratified it could read. They knew what they were doing. They were members of government who were ensuring that their fellow citizens could shoot them if they got out of hand. They were, of course, a much braver bunch than our current Ruling Class…and I’m pretty sure they had our current Ruling Class in mind as they wrote and ratified.

But aside from the crucial need to shoot oppressors, there is a larger issue at stake here: the rule of law. For many decades now, we have allowed the Ruling Class to say the law says something it doesn’t say and/or ignore what the law clearly says. The whole mess we have right now was allowed to happen because of this practice of law becoming really just whatever the bosses wanted it to be at the moment. It can’t be that way. Well, it can’t be that way in a Republic. You want that sort of thing, get yourself a monarchy where the King can decree suddenly that the law now says this or that. For us, the law says what it says and it won’t say anything different until we change it via Constitutional means. No short cuts. if you don’t like what the Second Amendment says then you can’t just ignore it and start infringing on keeping and bearing arms. If you want to place restrictions on keeping and bearing arms the only path you have is via Amendment: you’d have to change the law.

And that is the way it should be and must be because we must get back to Rule of Law. If we want to live in a Republic then the law, even when its stupid, must be enforced. After all, we made the law and must be bound by our own actions. It is the only way to safety. We’d be safer under the most draconian but strictly enforced laws we made than we can be under the most liberal legal regime that has people ignoring the law when it suits them. If I know I’ll have my head chopped off for doing A, I won’t do A…but what am I supposed to do when whether or not I’ll get my head chopped off for anything depends on the whim of an official? Because for a free people, in the law lies our only safety.

It Is the Moral Collapse, Stupid

Mark Noonan27 Comments

This one has some staying power. The most recent massacre, I mean. We might be talking about this all the way to, you know, like next Monday.

And I know that sounds dismissive of tragedy but it isn’t really: it is dismissive of the official response to tragedy. A little earlier today I saw that the Yankees and Rays will forgo their game broadcast and will, instead, broadcast several hours of DNC gun control propaganda. They didn’t call it that, but that doesn’t change what it is. As I read the Yankee’s statement is just became blazingly clear what they could actually do to bring an end to this:

Fire the next top flight player who gets a girl pregnant and doesn’t marry her.

Because that is what this all is: what is wrong with our society is entirely the result of society deciding not to enforce standards. Sure, one ball player not doing the right thing didn’t cause this all to happen, but thousands of professional sports stars over decades acting like pigs in the off season played a huge role. They taught the young men of America – and especially poor, young men – that it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you can deliver the goods. That only your ability to make money matters…everything else will be covered up, paid off and forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Years ago I wrote about Mick Jagger and his life and I pointed out that his persona, especially as young, was an act. He was a middle class kid. Nice, respectable life. His mother was a Tory. He did very well in school and had he not become a rock star, probably would have had a long and successful career in some square employment. But the persona, crafted to sell records, was of a wild, party man. A street tough telling it like it is via his music. Sex, drugs and rock n’ roll! But it was, indeed, all an act. A very successful act: Jagger is worth about $500 million. And I considered Mick Jagger, and many like him, and wondered how many people took it at face value and decided to live that life – live the act, that is. But by actually doing it and not having an army of people to keep things squared away and hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up all mistakes?

Given the popularity and endurance of the Rolling Stones, it was probably several million people around the world who wanted to be like Mick. Or like any one of scores of other famous rock acts…which were (and are) acts. Make believe. Those few in the business who really lived that life – Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Keith Moon, etc – ended up dead at very young ages. Because living that life is suicidal. Neil Young sang about it being better to burn out than fade away – but he sang that in 1979 and he’s 76 now and very much fading away rather than burning out.

Let me quickly think of the people I know – friends and family – who are six feet under because they went along with all that: George, Todd, Rob, Pat, Jeff, Alex…that’s just top of the head. How many people can think of that many in a few seconds? Then we can add those who are simply a mess: a good dozen that I can easily think of. And then there’s their kids! Also a mess – though some of them have managed to rise above.

Certainly the sudden massacre of 19 kids in school is a shock – but in the grand scheme of things, in this War Against Decency we’ve been waging for 70 years, it hardly counts as a skirmish. More than 100,000 people died of drug overdose in the United States last year. That about 5,200 school shootings. And they passed almost unnoticed. Not dramatic enough. Can’t make a good DNC political point about it. And, heck, I actually saw pictures of NYC billboards which are telling drug addicts not to feel shame, but just use the drugs properly. But dead is dead – whether from a bullet or drugs. Or any other of the social ills which are causing people to die (I think I read that 28 people were murdered in Chicago last weekend…and not too long ago an adorable little girl was gunned down in a McDonald’s drive through…but, hey, she was black and so was the shooter and it was over gangland crap so nobody gonna do a major news story about that).

We can change and we will change. This cannot endure. Bad as it is – and looks to get worse – the strength to cure this will be summoned. The longer we wait, the more brutal the reaction. But it has to be. Civilization is necessary in order for 90% of us to live. When our backs are really against the wall, you’ll be surprised what people are capable of. But until then, I’m going to keep pointing out what is wrong and who contributed to it.

So that when retribution comes, the right targets will feel the heat.

We Wanted This Culture of Death

Mark Noonan15 Comments

In the aftermath of the latest school massacre, the Democrats have brought up what they always bring up – gun control. You know the usual: universal background checks, things like that. Nobody, as far as I can tell, has even asked whether the shooter would have passed the background check (my bet: he would have). It is all so patently ridiculous – performative theater, though Democrats are looking here to goose their base for November. Don’t know if it will work – they tried it with Roe but the bottom line is that people care far more about what it costs to fill the tank than a theoretical end to abortion.

But people were killed, does that make a difference? Perhaps, but probably not. I think that we’ve become rather numb to this, and that is sad in itself. But it is what we asked for.

Earlier today, I came across a Tweet which said that it may be that the cops didn’t charge into the building but instead isolated it before moving. I don’t know if that is 100% accurate but I think that would be in keeping with normal police procedure. You don’t know what’s out there and until you’ve got some intel, any move you make might make things worse. But the point of the Tweet was that the cops should have just charged in supreme disregard for their own lives. To which, you answer: yeah. But.

And the “but” is that by what standard should a cop selflessly sacrifice himself? I mean, I know the standard. John 15:13, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” But there’s a problem here – that’s a Christian standard. It is, to be sure, shared to some extent by other faiths, but the highest expression of it is Christian. To go to certain death for the benefit of others is something Christ did, and all Christians are supposed to follow the example of Christ as far as they are able. But this standard isn’t shared by people with no faith – and keep in mind that “no faith” runs from the most irritating atheist you’ve ever met all the way up to the weekly Church-goer who lives the other six days of the week as a practical pagan. The chances that any particular person – let alone any particular cop – will be a Christian hero are rather small these days. I’d guess that its about one in four Americans who actually take a stab at living a Christian life these days.

And as I said, this is what we wanted. Not like we specifically voted on it, but we passed in silence as it happened. I mean that as a people, of course: some of us objected vigorously and we were told to shut up. But a school shooting is a bum defecating on the street is a child being sex trafficked is a starlet being used as a sex toy is an activist getting rich off tragedy is a corporation turning a blind eye to his Chinese supplier’s slave laborers is a twelve year old being told he’s genderfluid by his teacher and so on. You get the picture. The shootings gather more notice because they are dramatic (and the Democrats hope to wring political advantage out of each corpse), but the rest of it is just going on right in front of us…and in the course of a year causes vastly more deaths than all the gun violence combined.

As I’ve said before, there is a cure for this. It is the same cure used the last time barbarians inundated the West: extreme violence. What we call cruelty these days because, not being Christian (or any sort of faith, really), we have lost sight of what real cruelty is. Civilization is not innate to humanity. The normal course of humanity is to grab whatever it can with no thought to others or the future. To be a person who cares about others and takes a thought for the morrow is a learned quality. We, as a people, learned it over a thousand year period and via the lash, the branding iron, the headsman’s axe and the gallows. We were forced, by those who wanted civilization, to knuckle under to required norms of behavior. And we became so used to this that we forgot that our custom of being decent was force reduced to routine and hiding it’s claws. We began to believe that decency was the norm and that we could release our instincts and everything would work out not just as well as we had it, but much better.

We believed this because people can be very, very stupid.

So, we’re now getting to the point where we’ll have to choose and I believe we will choose incorrectly. That is, we will refuse to apply the violence necessary to restore decent behavior. And because we make this choice, we’ll then find a small group of people who will make it for us and so we’ll get the same result. Civilization will not completely die – it can’t. People will want to eat in safety. Right now, they don’t see how large the threat is but a day will come when they do, and then those who threaten the safety will find things starting to go very badly for them.

But, meanwhile, we’ll just keep going on – stepping around the sh** on the sidewalk as we walk from one mass shooting to another.

The Endurance of Lies

Mark Noonan14 Comments

Over this past few weeks it was fully confirmed that Hillary Clinton and her team made up Trump-Russia out of whole cloth, passed it on to the MSM and Justice and both those institutions ran with it – for years – even though a cursory examination right at the start showed the whole concept was false. For us on our side, we knew it fairly instinctively that it was false – partially based on our mistrust of the MSM but mostly because it simply didn’t make sense that Russia would want Trump as President. They knew Hillary Clinton very well: they knew, that is, that a second Clinton Administration would sell out American interests as readily as the first Clinton Administration (not to mention as readily as the Obama Administration). Russia and indeed all global powers wanted Clinton to win in 2016. Nobody knew for sure what Trump was going to be like, but they knew – every person on Earth with an interest knew – that a Hillary Clinton Presidency meant continued hobbling of American economic and military power and American assistance in undermining the American position in the world. If Russia, or any foreign actor, was to interfere in the 2016 election, it would be to benefit Hillary.

And now that it is all exposed what do we see? That people still believe the anti-Trump Narrative. I see it all day long on social media. Of course, it helps that so far the New York Times has not run a story about Clinton’s role in starting Trump-Russia. Nobody is more ignorant of the world than someone who is an avid consumer of the MSM! But while belief based on ignorance is still bad, belief based on refusal to admit error is much worse, because that is what causes our side the most trouble.

I’ve been watching the Never Trump and the Dislike Trump people and while they do now know Trump-Russia was false, they still go with the overarching anti-Trump Narrative. In other words, faced with the proven fact that the primary objection to Trump is false, they still fall back on the feeling that Trump was and is just bad and so must be opposed. And their conviction that Trump is bad is based entirely upon information provided to them by the very same sources which made up and ran with the Trump-Russia story. The believed or at least lent credibility to Trump-Russia and this made them oppose Trump and now that they know it was all false, they still want to maintain their anti-Trump stance. The Lie is dead, long live the Lie!

I used to think that lies couldn’t endure the truth. Turns out I was wrong: if it is a lie that people want to believe, it is going to be quite durable. And for many people, the anti-Trump lies are comforting. And I think this is because they simply do not want to confront what Trump exposed: the utter rot in all American institutions. For these people, life remains good (though inflation is now putting some pressure on that). They tend to work in professions that don’t require a lot of effort and they are well paid. They live in nice areas. As long as they don’t rock the boat too much, they can stay on the gravy train for life and, with a little luck, make a great deal of money. But even if they don’t rise to the heights of money and fame, they still live well. Writing a couple articles a month is a lot less bothersome than clocking in 40 hours a week, right? Trump showed them that while life was good for them, things were bad for the United States. That millions of people were losing their hope for the future…and that the enemies of the United States were on a rampage. And the fault for everything going wrong was in the American institutions which had become both stupid and corrupt in equal measures. How can you defend that? Well, you really can’t – but you can at least attack Trump as a backhanded way of defending the Establishment. An anti-Trump diatribe kept you on the gravy train…pointing out that Trump has been maligned by MSM and government liars gets you kicked off right quick.

So, expect them to continue. And take your fun while you can – these people sift data now to “prove” that Trump is no longer popular with the base and that we’re finally going to get Romney II in 2024 to restore the Balance or some such drivel. Basing their whole worldview on a pack of lies, they simply don’t see what is coming – and their tears will be even more delicious than the liberal tears. But I do wonder – once Trump or Trump II (DeSantis) becomes President and starts to dismantle the Empire of Lies, will they then come around to admitting they were wrong?

Open Thread

Mark Noonan15 Comments

As of a little while ago as I write, Oz clings to about a 1,200 vote lead in the PA GOP primary – nobody really knows how it will come out. I get the sense that Oz might pull it off, but McCormick could certainly get the win. Either is acceptable to me and would be immediately favored to win in November – the Democrats having nominate a leftist lunatic who thinks Catholic teaching is “gross”. That won’t play well in Western PA where the Democrats have to come back from the politically dead if they want to win Statewide.

GOP turnout in these primaries is so far vastly better than Democrat – and in North Carolina, very much so. A lot of punditry doesn’t like to read too much into that, but one thing we learn every election cycle is that political pundits don’t know the first thing about politics…they got some hobby-horse theory about how it works and they cherry pick data which confirms their bias. And when they get it wrong, they either ignore it completely, or explain it away. To me, people taking the time to go vote – especially in a primary – is a key indicator of how things are going. The other thing is voter registration patterns, which are also favorable to the GOP just about everywhere.

Musk announced that he intends to vote GOP – because Democrats are insane. And that, right there, pretty much nutshells 2022: Democrats are about to get a scorching rebuke not because of a sudden love for the GOP, but because they, the Democrats, have become so bad that they simply have to go. The political pundit class is, as I said before, clueless. At best you’re starting to see some of them hedge a bit and say the GOP may have a good year but even that with caveats about how if this, that and the other thing happens, the Democrats could do well. But, they all know. They have to know. It is the first mid-term of a President’s party: almost always that party does badly. The House is already gone for the Democrats. It was gone the minute 2020 was called for Biden. Especially since the Democrat majority was so thin. There was, early on, a better shot for the Democrats to hold on in the Senate. Democrats only had 14 seats to defend while the GOP has 21 and most of the Democrat seats are in States Biden carried. But that was before Biden took office.

A guy Tweeted out earlier that if gasoline was $2.50 a gallon, Biden would probably be doing ok. Even if not terribly popular, at least not toxic and we’d be looking at a normal midterm rather than a wave election. There is some truth to that – Biden has screwed up lots of things, but gas prices are something you can’t get around. People see it every time they fill up their tank. They might have let Afghanistan slip out of mind. The invasion at the border might pass to the side. But you can’t forget what you paid when you gas up. Nor can you forget food shortages and price hikes. It rather sticks with you. Here’s the kicker: all Biden had to do to keep gas at $2.50 is nothing. If he had just left Trump energy policies in place, then we’d still be energy independent. And this might have also protected us against recession…because the supply disruptions which are contributing to high oil prices would have benefited the United States…we would have been pumping record amounts of oil.

But the Democrats weather god had to be appeased, and here we are.

Saw a clip of a Clark County (NV) school district meeting where a parent, shocked at a dirty assignment her 15 year old was given in school, decided to read the assignment to the school board…which promptly cut off her mic, saying they couldn’t allow someone to use dirty words in a public hearing. That, in a nutshell, is the whole problem with public schools. The good news is that at last GOPers are taking an interest in such things – and are starting to win school board seats. The importance of this can’t be emphasized enough. While having the White House and Congress is very important, controlling the school boards, sheriff’s office and District Attorney is vastly more important…it is such offices which translate policy proposals into action. They are where the rubber meets the road. Control them, then even when the Left controls the national apparatus, we can effectively block their actions.

Never heard of monkey pox before, but it is being reported…and I think all of us can smell the bull**** a mile away here. Especially as the Democrats are trying to re-stoke Covid fears just in time for Fall. As noted before, I have had Covid. It sucks very badly. Certainly a person with underlying conditions should take care. But, I’m a 57 year old smoker and I’m getting through it just fine. I’ve still got a bit of the cough, but mostly it is all gone. Worst cold I ever had by a long stretch. But, nothing to be terrified about.

Man does a DNA test on himself, finds out he’s got a huge family he never knew about. It is a cool story.

Time for Intolerance and Exclusion

Mark Noonan19 Comments

Before anyone gets their knickers in a knot over that, lets review something: Anti-racism and anti-fascism.

Our Leftist friends are very keen on both of those things but you have to take a look at what they’re really saying. When they say they are anti-racist/anti-fascist they don’t just mean they are opposed to racism and fascism. They way they mean it is that unless you are actively anti-racist, you are racist. And of course the only way you can be actively anti-racist is to sign on, completely, to whatever policy prescriptions they are pushing at the moment. Failure to sign on is proof that you are not anti-racist and are thus actually racist…and so you shouldn’t be tolerated. You should be excluded. Essentially, the Left has already laid down the marker that tolerance and inclusion are not their desired goals.

And we must tit for tat on that.

We tried tolerating those who hate us. Who hate the United States. The theory was that in order to remain free we had to be tolerant. And to a certain extent, this is true. A free people must allow wide latitude of belief otherwise they simply can’t be free. But life, like art, consists in drawing the line somewhere. There is a definite point beyond which tolerance for different ideas works against the very concept of tolerance and while the exact point is debatable, that it exists is as hard and fixed as a geometrical fact. When we tolerate people who seek to undo us – who seek to end, entirely, the nation founded in 1776 and replace it with something else – then we are tolerating our own destruction. We are letting our murderer into the house, arming him and then letting him attack us. Kinda hard to survive when you’re doing that.

We’ve let this go on so long that we are already, all of us, at risk of losing our jobs and social position for a single, unguarded phrase. If the Left decides, they can turn an apparatus of social opprobrium on us and most of us would find our employer and our friends abandoning us as they sought shelter from the storm. We already self-censor. We already leave certain subjects alone or only discuss them with people we entirely trust. We’re already living under totalitarian tyranny. And we’re living under it in the name of tolerance and inclusion. We can’t do this any longer.

We have to push back – we have to start firing them. Ruining them. Making their lives a living hell. Get corporate boards more terrified of us than they are of the Left. We have to set the standard that anyone who holds the United States to be racist and/or that white people are inherently racist cannot obtain employment and is to be shunned in public. It is harsh, I realize that – but it is the only way we can remain free and, indeed, tolerant. Tolerance, as it turns out, only applies to the tolerant: those who aren’t are to be excluded from it’s protections.

Some of this is already started and I applaud it. Disney has gotten hammered in stock price and public perception since they waded into the trans issue. There have been – though only a few – fired for holding views which are opposed to sanity. But we need to do more of it. We have to hammer back, twice as hard. Those who hold views which make us out to be the bad guys should be afraid to speak up…afraid that if they say the wrong word, they are ruined. It is kick them out of society, or get kicked out, ourselves.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan12 Comments

Feeling better! Covid does take it out of you. But, now I’m down to a cough and some general tiredness – sense of taste and smell is back.

That said…

The Democrat insanity on abortion has been on display all week and I think for many people it is their first real look at how Democrats – or at least their fanatic base – views the matter: they actually held a useless vote in the Senate to write Roe on steroids into law…it failed but their plan was to federally fund it on demand to the moment of birth with no conscience exemptions for medical providers. Thing would have been ripped to shreds at the Supreme Court had it passed. But that they even tried this useless thing – on a platform that, at best, has about 20% support – shows how insane they are about it. They’ve spent 50 years defending a Court ruling which, even if you’re pro-choice, is clearly unconstitutional and just horribly immoral…even liberal countries like France only allow abortion up to 14 weeks…and then only after two medical consults.

Meanwhile, China Joe and the Democrats continue to sink in the polls…and we’re starting to see that in primary voting, GOP enthusiasm is massively outpacing Democrat. We could be on the run up to a very large GOP victory.

Not that the GOP won’t do their best to blow it. I get people being sympathetic to Ukraine and disliking Putin’s Russia. I understand a desire to help them out – but for the majority of House GOPers to vote in favor of $40 billion no-strings-attached to Ukraine is just stupid. We know huge amounts of it will be siphoned off in graft. Meanwhile, here at home we’ve got an invasion at the southern border and our supply chains are so jacked up that in some areas there are shortages of baby formula.

Our domestic problems are large enough. And our foreign problems are China and drug cartels…even Islamist extremism simply isn’t worth our while to concentrate on at the moment. We have to get our house in order…not send billions to a Ukraine war which at any moment could drag us into open conflict with Russia. But there goes the Congressional GOP, nodding along with a Democrat/MSM Narrative. Wouldn’t be so bad if we could find a principal, but you just know they’re so in the Beltway that they’re seriously afraid we’ll think they’re Putin Puppets if they don’t go along with this boondoggle.

People are furiously fighting over Oz and, now, Barnette in the Pennsylvania Senate race. Lots of ostensibly pro-Trump voices being raised against them – in both cases over statements they made or may have made in the past. As I said regarding Oz, I won’t hold anyone to statements made in the past: especially if the statements are pre-2018 or so. We’ve all had a massive education these past few years and all of us view things a bit differently. As I pointed out on Twitter – what’s worse: a person who made ant-MAGA statements in the past, or a person who talks MAGA all day long and then knifes us? Plenty of the GOPers who voted for Ukraine aid probably have impeccable Conservative GOP credentials. I take everyone at face value these days: what do you propose right now? And sure I know that con artists will try to take advantage of this…but I’m at no more risk, and maybe a lot less risk, rolling the dice on a newly-minted MAGA than I am on the GOPe which has betrayed me for decades.

In the end, it is up to the votes of Pennsylvania to sort it out – but my advice to everyone is don’t take anyone’s word for it. Look it up yourself. We know that the most fierce voices are raised against those who fight for us – Trump, Greene, etc. And that tells me something: somebody doesn’t want me to have a champion. So, my first inclination when someone is attacked from the right is to question the attacker’s motives.

Court ruled that California’s ban on gun sales to under-21 is unconstitutional. Which, of course, is “no duh”. And I hate to break it to you, but as soon as someone sues on the cigarette and booze bans, they’ll go down as well. An adult is an adult. Period. Personally, I think we should never have lowered the age to 18 – stupid mistake. But if you make 18 the age where you can vote and enter into contracts, then that covers everything an adult is able to do…so, if you want your ban on booze to 19 year olds to stick, better amend the Constitution to return the voting age to 21.

Team Pudding Brain wants to turn American health care over to WHO – in the name of fighting the pandemic, but actually because (a) they hate the American people and (b) would love to be able to shrug and say “hey, we understand your anger here, but this is a WHO decision” whenever the global elite decides it is time to crush us under useless medical mandates.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan32 Comments

Sorry I haven’t been around, but the Chinese Bat Flu finally got me – felt my first symptoms on Saturday evening and tested positive on Monday morning. Basically, I’m ok – but it is a miserable cold. I seem to be pretty much past the fatigue/fever/ache part of it and am now in the cough/nasal congestion area – which is what I always hate the most about any cold. Anyways, not much inclination to write.

The leak of the supposed overturn of Roe is, in my mind, a desperate, last ditch attempt by Democrats to keep urban woman on board…as prices and shortages continue, there becomes less and less incentive for any Democrat constituency to show up in November and I guess they felt that it was slipping away so badly they needed to move on this now rather than wait for the decision to come in June.

And I think this leak is worse than a crime, it is an error. Democrats have been able to sustain a significant level of support for abortion by making sure nobody knows that Roe legalized it to the moment of birth. Poll after poll shows that solid majorities favor restrictions or bans on abortion after the first trimester. And, so, you never hear that talked about in the MSM…because the Democrats can’t afford to have people know that their abortion position is radical. Heck, the Alabama law in question only bans after 15 weeks…which makes it roughly line with France…hardly a hotbed of Christian fundamentalism (and in France you have to have two medical consults before the abortion is performed – which, to me, is still wrong, but it is at least reasonable).

Trump endorsed candidates swept the boards in Ohio…which shows the continuing power of Trump within the GOP. The sensible part of Never Trump (there really is such a thing) has been so desperately hoping that Trump was at last fading…but I’ve been pointing out to them that for a lot of people, the worse Team Pudding Brain gets, the more Trump will shine in hindsight. I really got under their skin a week or so ago by suggesting this will even most people to believe 2020 was stolen as nobody will want to admit they were suckered by the anti-Trump media op.