The Application of Mercy

Mark Noonan44 Comments

In Humbolt Park, Chicago, last night a couple was dragged from their car and shot. The man is dead and the woman is injured. It is entirely irrelevant why this particular event happened. The punishment of the criminals, if it happens, will also be entirely pointless because they won’t be punished properly.

I got into a good natured argument yesterday and today on Twitter about the post-Civil War Reconstruction period. I took the position that the main American mistake – our mistake of all mistakes – was that we allowed the Confederate leadership to live after the war. Not only allowed them to live, but allowed them to prosper and resume their power in the South. This is why we got Jim Crow. It wasn’t imposed by poor white farmers, but by the Ruling Class. The Ex-Confederates that we let off formed the KKK and used the most horrific violence imaginable against black Southerners as well as any white Southerners who wanted to take a stab at living in peace and justice with the freed slaves. And make no mistake about it, there were plenty of white Southerners who were willing to live in peace – I’m not saying they were ready, in 1865, to intermarry (though some did, in spite of huge pressure against it), but they were willing to live and let live. That was all very deliberately and maliciously suppressed by the Klan, under the control of people who had been Confederate generals, governors and other officials.

We have had the sense that Grant’s policy of letting them up easy was the correct way to go and in a certain sense, this can’t be argued against. As the historian Will Durant pointed out, the greatest military captains of history have shown that clemency is a mighty engine of war. But when we think about some of those past captains, we see it wasn’t exactly like it was after our Civil War.

Caesar was famously magnanimous with the defeated Gauls. He treated the defeated so well that during the ensuing Roman Civil War the Gauls didn’t rise in revolt when they could have easily thrown off Roman rule. Its not like the Gauls didn’t have people who could fight. They did: Caesar had let quite a lot of them off to return to their homes. But they didn’t rise. Why not? Probably had something to do with Caesar having their main leader strangled in Rome after his defeat. In other words, Caesar was merciful, but he wasn’t stupid enough to leave a strong, intelligent and clearly brave enemy alive.

Another example of this sort of thing was what the Austrians under Prince Schwarzenberg did to the Hungarians after their revolt was crushed in the 1840’s. Once the Hungarians were down, the operatives of the Austrian Monarchy went to work hunting down the leaders of the Hungarian revolt and hanging them in large numbers. The Prince was urged to mercy by a friend who, like many in Austria and around the world, was horrified at the operation of vengeance. Schwarzenberg said that he quite agreed that mercy was necessary – but, first, they had to have some hangings. Did this make him a hypocrite? Not at all. Cruel? Nope. He was merely being wise and ultimately merciful. Another observer of the same events, the still young Bismarck still more than a decade away from fame, responded to a friend complaining about the repression in Hungary by asking why no tears were shed for all the people who had been made widows and orphans by the rebels? People were acting as if the rebels must certainly have been in the right and that their actions were immaculate. This, to Bismarck (and to any fair observer) was drivel. The Hungarians had their complaints about the Austrian Monarchy, but so did everyone – but the Hungarians had no particular justification for going into revolt…especially as for each Austrian act of repression against Hungarians, there had been Hungarian acts of repression against non-Magyars in Hungary. Very rare will there be the person who is totally in the right!

Now, how did this work out? Well, once the hangman’s noose was put away (and it was, fairly quickly), order and justice were restored and some years after it was all over, Gyula Andrássy – a Hungarian rebel who had been condemned to death in absentia and actually hung in effigy – was appointed Prime Minister of Hungary and Foreign Minister of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Funny how things can work out? But it likely would not have worked out had the Austrians simply allowed the rebels to resume their position in the Hungarian Ruling Class as if nothing had happened. What we did in 1865 was allow the defeated enemy to resume his position. This got us a century of Jim Crow and, ultimately, played a huge role in the subordination of State governments to the Feds. Think about it – a modicum of justice in the South and there never would have been a Plessy vs Ferguson leading to a Brown vs Board of Education. No consent decrees. No gerrymandering minority-majority house districts. No “one man, one vote” destruction of the State Senates, which was a body blow to the very concept of Republican government. A few more hangings and we wouldn’t have had Jefferson Davis spinning his Lost Cause drivel while Forrest created the KKK to be a mafia-like muscle to re-impose Confederate rule in the South (and, yes, I realize that Forrest seems to have had a change of heart years later, but by then the damage was done – he’d have been far more useful to peace and justice dying at the end of a rope in 1865 than dying with lots of black friends in 1877).

Mercy must always triumph over Justice. But Justice must have her due. It can’t be otherwise. To get back to the start of this piece, the reason savages dragged two people out of a car and shot them is because we developed an entirely mistaken idea of what mercy is. We have it in our minds that Mercy means you skate. It can’t. If you do wrong, you must pay. A price is demanded for everything. Even God’s mercy had a price, after all. What will be done wrong about the people in Chicago is that they won’t be forced to the real atonement necessary. Even if they spend some time in jail, it still can’t possibly balance the books. For goodness sake, they dragged people out of their car and shot them! How is 20 years in jail going to make up for that? How will that deter the next barbarian? But before you go “death penalty” I’ll also ask: what will killing the shooters accomplish? To their fellow barbarians, they are still heroes who showed The Man. Dying from lethal injection won’t balance the books.

No, there has to be more – it isn’t enough to jail or kill: the perpetrators must be revealed for what they are: very stupid barbarians who will find out that Civilization can be one real son of a bitch when necessary. The reason our civilization used to hang, draw and quarter people wasn’t to be cruel. No, it had a very specific purpose: it was to show everyone, especially the barbarians, that Civilization wasn’t to be trifled with. That if you’ll live in peace with your neighbors, you’ll be fine: but if you won’t, then you’ll be made to curse your mother for giving you birth.

And it works, guys. The reason that we used to live in a world where even in big cities we didn’t have to lock our doors at night is because for centuries before, the most harsh punishments had been meted out to those who broke the rules. In the long run, it was a mercy to do it – because it eventually deterred people from being savages. Yes, provide mercy – and I mean in the sense of letting someone eventually off. But first, to put it bluntly, there must be a little hanging. We don’t have to do it to everyone who drags a person out of their car – just a few. The rest will get the message. And then we’ll have the crowning mercy of nobody being dragged from their cars and shot requiring us then to brutally punish the perpetrators. Because that is what you’re doing – you’re not trying to be cruel: you’re trying to get to a point where you don’t have to punish very much because there’s hardly anyone to punish. That is real Mercy.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan20 Comments

I did a bit on the Barrett Brief this morning, talking politics and Shadow Army and as we discussed things, I went on a little mini-rant about what needs to be done with popular culture. What I said, boiled down, is that we can’t win unless we win the culture. Win all the elections you want, but if the culture is far left, far left will be the country. What I urged in response to that was this: if you’ve got an idea for a book, a movie, a song or a piece of art – DO IT. Don’t be afraid. I was terrified of putting out Mirrors. Afraid that people wouldn’t like it. Forget that. Just put it out there: give people what you have. Maybe you aren’t the great artist…but if you’ve got something to say, in whatever medium, say it. We need to flood the zone.

As those who have read so far know, what I’ve written is a story about normal, good people thrust into strange circumstances – but the key to it all is that they are normal, good people. Not perfect people, but not tortured super heroes with shameful pasts they are unable to come to terms with. Even when I set a character on a path to sin (Jerome, most especially – for a bit of a spoiler to those who have read only to, say, Battles at this time, he keeps on living; he’s in Book 7), the prospect of redemption is always there. The good guys are believers in God and in doing what is right even when it is hard. The books are family friendly (I’d say 12 and up); there is a tiny bit of salty language, but not much. No gross sexual scenes and even in the battle scenes, I don’t try to gross people out with gore. There is no woke SJW preaching. This is the sort of thing which we need to produce and keep producing until it starts to make its way into the general public. Maybe my books will mostly stay on shelves. No problem. But that its out there might inspire the next guy and maybe that will be the blockbuster which opens up the dam and allows a flood of socially conservative popular culture to flow.

Related: they are making a 5th Indiana Jones movie. With 78 year old Harrison Ford as the star. It is ridiculous. And this is really our opportunity. Not only is the Left out of ideas, but even when the recycle their old ideas, they are now injecting them with whatever is fashionable. I’ve finally binge-watched The Walking Dead and I’m on the last season…where we’ve now got a deaf character. I mean, seriously: how could a deaf person survive a Zombie apocalypse? The only way you can survive, at minimum, is hearing them coming so you can kill them or move away before they bite you. But you gotta have it, along with the gay and lesbian couples because, sure as heck, as the world ends what people will care about is making sure the last fads of the dead world keep going. I’m expecting the upcoming final season to add a few more SJW box-check characters. All we need at the start is something that is merely fun.

Joe Biden went to meet Putin for Lord only knows what reason – the whole world knows that Biden is senile and feeble and thus there is no hard center to American government. We’re getting bad policy, but that is more by accident…Biden’s aides are running the country, turning the crank at different times and at different speeds and what flows out was a mish-mash of liberal twaddle but even in that, there is no direction.

Inflation is rising fast and the Fed is saying they’ll jack up rate in 2023. It’ll be sooner than that, I bet, though 2023 would be best for us as it would create a 2024 recession just about assuring a GOP landslide. They get to pick their poison – jack up rates and send us into a tailspin, or hold off and watch inflation spike to 10% or more per year. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of useless clowns.

Cocaine Mitch promises to block Biden’s judicial appointments if he becomes Majority Leader. Never get too mad at Mitch. Sure, he’s Deep State and Establishment…but he knows how to play hardball on the things which matter to us.

Hungary bans LGBT content for minors. This is fighting the Culture War.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan42 Comments

I detect a slight note of panic among Never Trump – and both parts of it: that which rejected the GOP and joined the Democrats and that which merely rejected Trump. They are in a fright because Trump isn’t going away. Things are not working out the way they hoped…their hope having been that once he was defeated, the Trumpsters would, one way or another, agree to allow Never Trump to resume power in the GOP. That isn’t happening.

This is because they fundamentally misunderstand Trump and his supporters – with the crucial thing being that it is Trump supporters who are driving the cart. These Trump supporters may, indeed, swing behind DeSantis or someone else in 2024, but only in so far as DeSantis or whomever prove themselves Trumpist. What Never Trump still doesn’t get – though some come very close to understanding – that we’d really rather lose on MAGA than win on anything else, because to win on anything else is to lose, anyway. We’re all in. Do or die.

Florida bans Critical Race Theory in public schools – this is a growing trend on the right and it is the first sign of real health in our body politic in decades. As I’ve said before: CRT is evil and it must go. The Republic is incompatible with people believing CRT. This is, to be sure, causing some breach among black Conservatives – because there are some who hold that CRT, though flawed, has some real truth to impart. I reject this notion. And it must be rejected because the ultimate basis of CRT is Marxism, which is inherently wrong and an intrinsic evil. Nothing which uses Marx in any way can be good or true.

AG Garland is going to investigate the audit of the 2020 election in Arizona. This is proof that fraud decided the 2020 contest. They are terrified of the truth coming out.

Democrats are in a fury against Manchin (D-WV). I really did expect him to cave long before this – if he runs for re-election in 2024, it is better than even money he loses. He can’t ever get the Democrat nomination for President or VP, so his only political future if a cabinet post, and he only gets that if he plays ball with the national Democrats. But, he’s still not playing ball. Maybe, at the end of the day, he just doesn’t want any political future? After all, he’s got the Senate pension sowed and he’s going to make bank as a lobbyist (if he wants). It might be that he’s simply uninterested in wrecking the Republic just to please people in New York and Los Angeles who despise him.

Inflation is rising, fast. The only good news here is that a repeat of Carter might give us a repeat of 1980.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan14 Comments

Over the years, I’ve written a bit about how I hold one of the most decisive moments for civilization was the French quitting in Algeria. I’m just reading a book about it – A Savage War of Peace, highly recommended – and I’m just past the part where DeGaulle is returned to power (very much due to the political stresses caused in France by the war in Algeria) and he’s reforming France and sent out a first-rate military commander to Algeria who pretty much whacked the Algerian rebels from pillar to post. That is now the end of 1959. The bottom line is that France had won the war – the Algerian rebels were still here and there in the interior, but only in small, hunted groups and even many Algerians were tired of it all. And then, over the next two years, DeGaulle just gave it all away to the rebels. This has been held as wisdom: France had to get out of Algeria and DeGaulle cleverly played up to those who didn’t want out until he was strong enough to dispense with them and make a deal with the rebels. This, to the Ruling Class in the West, was the only way to go. But, was it?

First off, it involved the betrayal of more than a million French citizens in Algeria; about 10% of the total Algerian population. It also involved the betrayal of at least 100,000 Harkis – these were Muslim Algerians who fought for France. Their numbers may have been even higher. This was more active fighters than the rebel ALN army had. By a lot. And you figure that for the 100k fighters, gotta be at least some family/friends who were supportive, so that might work out to another million people there who clearly preferred to remain part of France. They were completely screwed over by the French government. The French citizens were evacuated (though some were killed on the way out) while the Harkis, considered traitors by Algeria’s new masters, were killed, imprisoned or otherwise made to suffer for many years after the war.

Now, why bring this up? Because what France did was cross a bright, red line. At the end of the day, they passed power over to a group of people who, in the course of the war, routinely targeted unarmed non-combatants for death…and not just death, but often quite horrible and cruel death. In the end, Algeria did have to be independent: their current population is 44 million against France’s 67 million and it is just about impossible for that to be a colonial relationship. But recognizing the inevitable doesn’t get one off the hook for basic morality. It was a crime – a French crime – to turn the people of Algeria over to a pack of brutes, which is all the ALN ever was. The correct course of action was to simply state that this would never happen – that the future of Algeria was going to be decided by decent people, not by those who set bombs in stores or tortured people to death. The Ruling Class holds that you simply make the deal with whomever is fighting you – end the war by any means necessary. Decency requires that you only give into brutes if they are so strong there’s no way to stop them. France had won. All they had to do was keep up the pressure until the rebels quit and then – only then – would it have been time for France to work with those Algerians who weren’t brutes about what came after French rule.

And so it has gone over and over again since the end of World War Two: repeated fights between civilization and barbarism where civilization – massively restricting its use of power – still comes out first against the barbarians and then civilization just hands things over to the defeated savages. No wonder they keep at it. If you wonder why, say, the Palestinian leadership keeps it up it is because of this: they know, from nearly a century’s experience, that if you just keep being savages and merely manage to survive the retaliation, you’ll eventually be handed all you wanted. This has to change if we are to save civilization. The barbarians have to be taught that the wages of savagery is death and nothing else but death.

Fauci helped create the Coronavirus and then, from his perch, pretty much ensured our response to it would be counter productive. He’s either stupid or a traitor: I go with stupid. I recall that he’s only famous because he stood athwart Reagan during the AIDS epidemic.

Yesterday was Tank Man day: the anniversary of when that guy stood in front of the tanks at Tiananmen Square. What was entirely unsurprising was China’s efforts to censor references to it. The tech giants got caught and had to quickly re-adjust their algorithms, but for a while there a search of “Tank Man” brought nothing related to China up. Meanwhile, Facebook banned Trump for two years while China’s accounts were up and running, spewing out lies all the time. Our large corporations are owned by China: they have to go. If it takes confiscation, they have to go.

In the deep blue cities, the long term result of Floyd’s death has been a massive spike in crime, and a lot more black deaths. But, hey, at least they weren’t killed by cops.

Tyranny is Our Future

Mark Noonan27 Comments

One way or another, the end of freedom as we’ve known it is coming – the only question before us is what sort of tyranny will replace the freedom we used to enjoy. And I mean “used to” in the sense that what you think of as freedom – what older folks, especially, grew up understanding as freedom – is already gone. You already can’t say or do quite a lot of things that you or our parents and grandparents used to do.

This is in the nature of things, after all: freedom always breeds license and license creates a chaos which begs an end to liberty. Human being are very bad at keeping an even keel over the long term. It isn’t that most of us tend to an extreme but that enough of us do that a corrective has to be applied to everyone. This time is a little different from the historical precedent, though, in that some of the chaos-generators are doing it precisely to make freedom intolerable as preparation for the imposition of the tyranny they prefer. These are the people of the Left.

And our choices will be a Left tyranny, or a Right tyranny. The possibility of returning to the level of freedom we had in, say, 1960, is extremely low. I actually believe it is impossible – mostly because that level of liberty was only possible because most people alive in 1960 were still keeping to the old moral code: they tolerated those pushing the boundaries in 1960. They shouldn’t have, as it turns out – but, there you go: it happened. Because in the 60 years since the old moral code has been discarded by nearly everyone (most especially those charged with maintaining it), we simply can’t get back to that level of liberty. There’s no basis for it: there is, that is, no stable, moral society as a base from which the experimenters can dare to stretch out.

Naturally, I prefer a Right tyranny. Not least because Right tyranny normally develops into ordered liberty. Left tyranny, especially now, looks to be both permanent and increasingly insane in it’s demands. We’ve seen the rapid trajectory these past ten years where what was completely out-there stuff is now being enforced in our institutions as the most ancient and settled dogma. They won’t stop: the whole thing of the Left is that it must always go further Left, mostly because the Left always fails and the Leftist cannot conceive of any reason for failure other than they didn’t go far enough. Attached to this – and sometimes dominating it – is the need for enemies. You have to go ever further Left so that you can have someone around who didn’t go there fast enough and so can now be built up as an enemy to be destroyed. So, I want a Right tyranny not because it is better than freedom, but because I can’t have freedom and so I’ll pick the least offensive poison.

And part of the reason we can’t have freedom (for a while: a right tyranny will eventually produce freedom, though it may take a while) is because we made one very crucial mistake, as a civilization: we presumed that liberty was an end. It isn’t. It is a means to an end: the end being a just society. Our trouble on the right has been our assumption that if we just defend liberty and give people an example of the happiness and prosperity that freedom generates, they would naturally drop their non-liberty ideologies and join us. It didn’t work out that way because we didn’t realize the most crucial aspect of human nature: we are Fallen. Rather astounding that those on the Right could forget this, but it was forgotten. I mostly put it down to those on the Right since, say, WWII, not being true Rightists. They were really Liberals who were in a rearguard defense of the 19th century. Be that as it may, the fact that humanity is Fallen was forgotten and left out of all calculations and so we weren’t prepared for people who can see, with their own eyes, the happiness and prosperity and reject it in favor of something else. Not because the something else was superior, but simply because it was something else…and most importantly, something else that they would be in charge of.

We always needed a corrective to unfettered liberty. We needed a way of stopping those with an evil idea from suckering the ill-informed into joining their evil idea. We needed, in the end, something like the Inquisition to root out heresy (in this case, political heresy) to simply make sure that when a Maoist came to town, he was run out of town on a rail before he could use slick marketing to convince the citizen of a free and prosperous Republic that what was needed was a bit of murderous Cultural Revolution. If we get a Right tyranny, this will be the main mark of it: a complete assault on all Left ideas to expunge them from the public square. That is what will actually justify the Right tyranny and what will cause it to cling to power beyond it’s time: the necessity of excising from the polity the idea that the ideas of a 19th century lunatic German are superior to 2,000 years of Western, Christian civilization.

We’ll see how this comes out. I will still work as if we can preserve freedom and maybe by some miracle we are able to do so…but the most likely outcome is one side or the other scoring a big victory, and then simply imposing itself on the other side. Both sides will be forced to this: because they cannot coexist. One or the other will eventually have to go.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan23 Comments

Been busy writing!

Shadow Army is now ready for pre-order on Kindle. The paperback will release June 15th. Around December 15th, Book 5 will come out – Kings and Queen, which completes the two-book set with Shadow Army. And then, in 2022, two more will come out, Book 6 and 7 which will complete the entire series.

I’ve been thinking about the slogan “black lives matter” and it works out to an egregious insult: it is a claim that black lives never mattered until a drug addict resisted arrest. Ain’t having it: black lives have always mattered.

They’re now admitting what Trump said at the start: Covid came out of the lab. Now there are two questions to answer:

  1. Was it a manufactured virus?
  2. Did the Chinese deliberately spread it around once it got out to ensure the whole world took the hit?

The government of the People’s Republic of China is a stain on the world and the enemy of human decency. We should break all trade relations and forbid travel between our countries.

Creepy Joe Biden remains creepy.

Senile Joe Biden also remains senile.

If you want to get good, solid, down the middle political analysis, you’re going to have to go on Twitter and follow Varad Mehta. I don’t always agree with him, but everything he says is worth listening to and you’ll always come away knowing more than you did before.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan5 Comments

Getting close to release for Shadow Army!

We should have it ready for release in a few days – gotta rush it up as we’re going on vacation the 2nd week of June and the Mrs, already reading Battles, wants it for beach reading material!

I was talking to Matt the other day in connection with this and we did ponder the prospect of doing a follow-up on Worst President. We rejected the idea because we both found that we didn’t care about Joe Biden. He’s not worthy of anyone’s attention, really: a senile cipher for the Ruling Class.

The State-sanctioned racism the Left is trying to impose on us is getting a lot of pushback. This is just one of many such efforts. Critical Race Theory might be the hill the Left dies on – they are committed to it, now. They can’t back away and don’t want to – but it is a monstrous outrage against basic human decency. We can push them over the edge with it.

Teen Vogue had an article up about how you can use menstrual blood for your magic incantations. Think about that. It is 2021 and Teen Vogue is telling little girls that they can be witches. Party of Science, y’all.

Team Obama is putting out a nonsense story claiming that Michelle Obama was the target of racism all the time while she was First Lady. This is the sort of drivel they’re putting out these days to justify their White Supremacist Threat Narrative. But, do keep this in mind: the audience for this isn’t you and me. We know it’s bull as much as those putting it out do. The audience is urban/suburban wine mom Democrat voters. To keep them believing that they are engaged in a desperate battle to keep racism at bay.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan14 Comments

The DOJ has finally decided, four years later, that the attack on GOP Congresspeople which resulted in the wounding of Scalise was an act of domestic terrorism. Ace, though, points out that there are two things here:

  1. The DOJ carefully classifies things to ensure the lowest possible number of Leftist and Islamist terrorist attacks. Gotta keep that White Supremacist number looking good, right?
  2. The DOJ is probably getting ready to broaden the definition of terrorism to include you and me.

We’re heading towards the end game here: the time when we’ll either win and restore liberty, or lose and be destroyed.

Some people are saying they won’t give up masks even after being vaccinated. Then why the heck get vaccinated? I’ve seen threads on Social Media and it becomes clearer to me that some people simply don’t know what a vaccine does. The real problem here is that they get to vote.

I did not know we had a secret, undercover Army, nor that it is about 60,000 strong.

I’ve long had a bad taste in my mouth about Special Forces and I’ve despised the whole concept of espionage my whole life. The logic behind it is insane – because we have to engage in global skullduggery, we need our people to lie about who they are to keep their identities secret. And you just know they’re being used against American citizens. But, outside 4th Amendment concerns, the real problem is having secret agents and secret soldiers. The Law of War says that when you capture secret soldiers, you can pretty much shoot them out of hand. The Nazis we captured dressed up in American uniforms during the Battle of the Bulge were up against a wall about a week after being caught. That is what you do with people who sneak.

I know our Special Forces guys are brave and almost all are solid patriots – the man who recruited me into the Navy was a Seal and he was one of the wisest and nicest men I’ve ever met. But, end all this: no more spies, no more secret soldiers. When we fight, we come right at you and let you know it was us. As for gaining intelligence: when has that ever really helped us? Our intel agencies have routinely failed to get us vital, actionable intelligence. Dispense with all of them. Send the Special Forces back to the regular units. Train the regular units up to Special Forces standards. Call an end to secret government garbage. We’re a Republic; we do our business in the Forum, not the Divan.

Warrantless gun confiscation is illegal, per the Supreme Court. This is a real victory for liberty. And now the SC is picking up an abortion case and we’ll see if they can strike a blow for State’s rights.

Make America Disco Again

Mark Noonan17 Comments

War in the Middle East. Gas shortages. All we need is a bit of inflation (which is coming) and for Biden’s brother to make beer and we’re back in the 1970’s.

At least we might get some cool music again:

Sorry I didn’t write for a week! Was just finishing the final draft of Shadow Army. Have that out in a couple weeks. It picks up our heroes 6 years after Battles.

As to that war in the Middle East – it is happening because the Palestinian leadership was ordered to do it by Iran. Iran, in turn, ordered it done because they want our attention on that while they take Team Biden to the cleaners in return for a revived Iran Deal, which will be even worse than the last one. The Iranians are able to do this, I think, partially with the active connivance of part of Team Biden, partially because the rest of Team Biden is simply too stupid to see the game.

For those who know what they’re doing, I really have no explanation for their fervent desire to appease Iran. It doesn’t even make bad sense as our wartime alliance with Stalin did. The Iranian regime long ago forfeited the support of the Iranian people. Iran is a basket case of a nation. Let them fall apart – and then once the Mullahs are out, work a deal with their successors. But the foreign policy elite has it in their mind that we must sustain the Mullahs. Even outright bribery doesn’t explain thinking this is something to do (the Saudis – Iran’s deadly enemies – would pay more for a different policy line).

CDC says you can drop the masks if vaccinated (I am – first shot, bit of a sore arm; second shot, crying like a little girl my arm hurt so much…but in 36 hours I was fine). This whole thing has been drivel from start to finish. It was a bad flu, nothing more.

They are doing an audit of Maricopa County, AZ – and they are finding discrepancies. I doubt, though, they’ll find enough to be decisive: those who conducted the steal have had more than enough time to destroy evidence. And its not like Biden’s DOJ will be coming after anyone who broke the law. I honestly have my doubts that Biden even topped 65 million votes. They really stuffed the ballot boxes this time – they wanted to be sure he got over 50%. But, even then, they underestimated how big Trump’s vote would be, especially in the Battlegrounds – that’s why they had to stop counting for a bit, manufacture some more ballots, and then stuff them in to shove Biden over the EC top by 42,000 votes. That is how close a shave it was – just that many votes the other way, and Trump would still be in.

I know this makes some people certain we can never win again – but the bottom line is that in the GOP controlled areas, reforms are being enacted which will make it vastly harder to cheat. Remember, in 2000 Gore’s attempt to steal Florida led to weeks of controversy. In 2020, the State was called for Trump 17 minutes after the polls closed in the panhandle (not, though, by the major networks – they delayed that call for a long time because they needed to call AZ for Biden before or right around same time to give the impression of a Biden win). That is the difference between a State where Dems can stuff a ballot box and a State where they can’t. There has been much hang wringing about the future of the GOP in Texas – but not from me. The reason it has gotten closer is not because Latinos have been moving in (TX hasn’t had a white majority in ages) but because in the deep blue areas of Texas (and there are some big ones, like Austin), the Democrats have been stuffing the ballot box. But that will now become harder. As I’ve been saying for ages, the best defense against fraud isn’t voter ID (though that helps), but requiring precincts to report their total number of votes within 30 minutes of closure. Once that number is locked in, you can’t stuff…puts a huge handicap because no matter how much data is crunched, no Democrat really knows what turnout will be in the deep Red areas until the vote comes in.

The GOP nominee for Virginia’s Lt Governor is a black woman who rips to shreds Critical Race Theory. More of this, please. My view: CRT must become illegal in the United States. Yes, I know this would take an Amendment…but it is such a poison that the Republic must vomit it out entirely.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan36 Comments

The Democrats are trying to keep the focus on Liz Cheney, and thus Trump, in order to distract from the massive disaster which is Biden. Prices are going through the roof, the border is back in chaos and our foreign enemies are being kowtowed to. Can’t really talk about that – so, let’s get another interview with Liz who will tell us how horrible January 6th was.

The good news is that most GOPers aren’t playing the game. We know that talking about the “insurrection” is just a dodge…and an attempt to split the GOP. Won’t happen. We’re woke to that.

Texas move to ban “urban camping”. Better known as bums defecating in the streets. Make no mistake about it – the Democrats, and especially the hard Left, wants quality of life to collapse and for chaos to increase – they feel, likely correctly, that people harassed to distraction won’t pay attention to what the Democrats are actually doing.

America is still not having kids. It is a problem all around the world – even the high birth rate countries are dropping like a rock. Just for the record: we don’t have a future if people don’t have kids.