Open Thread

Mark Noonan129 Comments

The Supreme Court shot down the Texas case – unanimously. This is about how I expected it to go. It shouldn’t have gone that way, but the Court wasn’t going to provide us a way out of this. Politics is always the answer to political problems. Do keep in mind, though, that war is a continuation of politics by another means. If we are sure our loss is due to cheating as the Democrats are convinced that their losses are due to cheating then politics will shift from ballot to cartridge box. It is incumbent upon everyone who wants a democratic Republic to ensure that all future elections are free and fair.

That said: do note that Democrats are already gearing to force Joe out – they’ll get him out over Hunter’s corruption of Joe senility, but they will get him out. He will not see the end of his term in office, come what may. Joe is pliable enough, but the last thing the Democrat powerbrokers want is a President who’s wife and closest aides are the only people allowed to see him.

As China cracks down on Hong Kong dissidents, one person notably silent on it is Pope Francis – likely as a result of the Vatican’s agreement with China, the provisions of which are still not fully known. To be sure, the Pope has said things against China, but it is odd that he hasn’t stood forth on the matters of liberty, and especially as it relates to Chinese Catholics. I have to come down hard on the Pope on this one: no agreement with China is worth this much. My view is that various parts of the Church bureaucracy are in the hands of the same sort of people who run the American and other global bureaucracies: ie, people who are both stupid and bought. China is a menace to human decency and must be excised from the councils of the world.

Speaking of which, the Democrats are practically owned by the Chinese. Don’t crow too much about this as I’ll bet a lot of GOPers are now CCP franchises, as well. What is really astonishing in the chump change which the Chinese buy our leaders with. You’d figure that if you were going to betray the greatest nation in human history, you’d at least want the ChiComs to provide a hot chick, right? Nothing doing: they’re sending us the chicks the CCP leadership rejected. Now we can really see why we went Russia, Russia, Russia this past four years: it was likely paid for and orchestrated by China, which has a vested interest in getting rid of Trump and having something else be America’s bogeyman.

You Bet Your Life

Mark Noonan46 Comments

Saw this post on Twitter which referenced Texas HB196 – which was an act introduced by Rep. Thresa Meza to amend Texas’ “castle doctrine”. The long and short of it seems to be to restrict the ability of a property owner to use deadly force to defend said property. As you can see from the Twitter link, the explanation offered is that a person shouldn’t get a death sentence for robbery. I’ve seen this before and I find it an interesting idea.

You see, it is Stalinist jurisprudence.

Now, Stalin likely didn’t work this out on his own; for sure things in Marx and done by Lenin closely informed Stalin’s criminal code, but as Solzhenitsyn pointed out Gulag Archipelago, the criminal code of the Soviet Union both disarmed the populace and required it to give every benefit of the doubt to the criminal. The ultimate result of this was that crime was rampant in the USSR. It wasn’t reported on and, of course, it didn’t affect the very closely guarded elite, but the average Soviet citizen was plagued by crime his or her whole life. This being based on the general Marxist idea (refined by Lenin) that crime is only the result of injustice: essentially, if you have more than the criminal, then you are the thief. I can’t say the quote linked above is definitely Meza’s: I haven’t been to track down certain proof. But, it is in line with her bill about the castle doctrine…and her bill is an attempt to bring Soviet jurisprudence to the United States. She was, by the way, a teacher and a lawyer before entering office. So, she was teaching kids and carrying out legal actions with her mind certain that crime is never the fault of the criminal.

This brought to mind the George Floyd case. Once it became clear that he was a petty criminal and was resisting arrest (and also was, apparently, high as a kite) the word went out, before the MSM completely memory-holed this stuff, that whatever Floyd did before that knee got on his neck, it didn’t warrant a death sentence. And, that is true: it didn’t. But here’s the real deal: George Floyd bet his life.

And then he lost the bet.

Floyd’s wager was that he could be a petty criminal and drug addict and then, when arrested, he could resist arrest and he would get through it with no serious consequences. Given his arrest record, he won this bet many times. On May 25th, 2020, he lost the bet.

The reality is that we all bet our lives all the time. When you hop into your car, you are betting that a fatal accident won’t happen to you before you get to your destination. This is almost always a safe bet but 102 people lose that bet every day. Still, low risk bet. Higher risk bets are things like skydiving or climbing Mt Everest. Another is being a criminal. Essentially, a criminal is betting his life that he can get what he wants without paying for it and nothing bad will happen to him. As in driving a car, this is mostly a safe bet – less safe than the car, but still pretty safe. If you decide to take this bet and rob your local liquor store tomorrow, you almost certainly will not die as a result of it. But you would be betting you life, and you might lose. You might have picked the liquor store where the guy has a gun under the counter and has a keen appreciation for his property. Of course, the more bets you place, the more you can lose. Place $5 on roulette and your possible losses are $5. Place $50 in five dollar increments on ten different spots, you could lose all $50.

Floyd made the following bets with his life.

  1. Be a criminal.
  2. Be high.
  3. Resist arrest.

Any one of them can lead to disaster. Doing three bets at once simply increased the odds that disaster would strike. It did for Floyd in the form of a policeman who didn’t take his knee off Floyd’s neck in time. To be sure, Floyd making the bets doesn’t excuse everyone else involved – the officers involved are under indictment and we’ll see how those cases come out (almost certain acquittal in my view: but, we’ll see). But the bottom line is that the police didn’t place Floyd’s bets for him. Floyd did. Had he not placed the three bets – or even decided against betting one of the three wagers – he’d likely be alive today.

As for me, I have little sympathy for folly. I watched not too long ago a documentary about an expedition to Mt Everest which was pitched in sad tones about some people who died trying to climb that mountain. All the tear-jerking narrative and somber music, you know? I felt nothing for the deceased. It was foolish of them to make the attempt. There was no upside to even a successful climb. There is nothing at the top of Mt Everest that any human being will ever need. I can barely understand why Edmund Hillary did it; but after someone had done it, what the heck possible justification can one muster to risk their lives merely to stand on a particular spot of ground? You bet your life to climb up to a place which has nothing of use and where human beings can’t live without life support? That’s not adventurous or brave: that’s just stupid.

And, hey, I understand striving for the grand achievement. This is why I can say that Hillary’s achievement was something – but, even then, not much. It wasn’t even in the same league as useful risks like Yeager breaking the sound barrier or Armstrong going to the Moon. Useful things flowed from both of those acts of sublime courage. What flowed from Hillary’s effort? Well, a picture in National Geographic…and about 300 corpses of people betting their lives that they could climb to a completely useless point on the map.

Congrats. I guess.

But at least the mountain climbers get some exercise out of it and search and rescue teams are kept in top form looking for them. Betting your life on being a drug addicted petty criminal? Yeah, not so much good going on there. Floyd’s death was decreed many years before he died. He could have prevented it by the simple expedient of not being a thief or not being an addict or not resisting arrest. He chose not to. He apparently liked his life as it was – and in that, I won’t judge. Everyone is to live as they please.

And everyone is to suffer the consequences of their actions.

And that, I think, is really what is missing in us these days: we don’t want to take responsibility for ourselves. Everyone has an excuse and it’s always that other guy, who played zero role in our decisions, who is the source of the trouble. That has to stop.

No, it isn’t a balanced thing if someone breaks into a home to get a TV that he gets shot. But it was the bet made: I bet my life against a free TV. This is not a wise bet, but it is a bet many make…and some of them lose their bet.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan14 Comments

Texas is suing to block the election results. And, Texas is right – the rules of the votes were changed in an apparently unconstitutional manner which both violated Equal Protection as well as annulling the State Legislatures plenary power over how Electors are chosen. We’ll see how it comes out: if the Supreme Court rules that the State legislatures have to take it up, then the States in question all have GOP majorities. People do forget that the States elect the President and the State Legislatures – without any input from the State Executive – decide how Electors are chosen.

RIP: Chuck Yeager

As you all knew, China has lots of influence in America. And it is probably much worse than we think.

The bottom line is that our Ruling Class is largely made up of people who are very low: immoral people of little knowledge who care nothing for our country. We really should have seen this coming sooner.

The last time the sons of Americas most prominent families volunteered to fight for this country was World War Two. To be sure, a few joined up for later conflicts, but usually for brief tours far behind the lines. You don’t find the sons and daughters of the rich out there fighting in gritty places like Afghanistan. Nope. If they are there at all, it is a military lawyer or some such thing. This demonstrates that they don’t care about America. They love being rich and having the good life, but they feel no obligation to stand forth: and so the sons and daughters of the middle class and poor go (and, these days, fewer and fewer of the middle class show up). How much longer will working class kids from Alabama sign up to defend this country? How much longer before they decide that as they still have the will to fight, they are just going to fight to ensure that they reap the benefits of the United States?

One thing is certain: this can’t keep going on. We can’t sustain a Ruling Class which allows itself to be easily purchased by foreign enemies for a little money and illicit sex.

Lockdowns don’t work. Not quite sure what the real thing is here: I figured that after the election, they’d ease up. But now I’m starting to think they want St Joe to save us…so they are going to lock us down until Spring and then claim that the normal falling away of the virus is thanks to Biden forcing us all to wear the same masks we’ve worn since March saved us all.

A Time of Choosing Approaches

Mark Noonan54 Comments

Ultimately, we might be faced with a choice between Franco and Lenin. This is very dangerous, these times we live in.

Me? What would I do? Well, if I had to choose…then just figure that its Spain, 1936 and I’m a Carlist.

I think a lot of people miss what Solzhenitsyn really meant when he said the 20th Century’s problem was that people had forgotten about God. It is an easy statement and most probably think they grasp it…but you have to dig really deep to understand that those who forget about God are incapable of morality. Sure, sure; we’ve all heard the stories of the good atheist. Yadda, yadda, yadda…but doesn’t matter. If you really have excised God from your life then there is nothing to hold you back except purely practical considerations. Mostly: you don’t want to go to jail. But if jail isn’t in prospect, what’s to stop you? You don’t believe in God – indeed, you’ve forgotten about Him.

When we read story after story of rich, powerful men preying upon women and youth, what do you really think that is about? For goodness sake, these are rich men: they can pony up the money and have a bevy of gorgeous women (or boys, if they swing that way) voluntarily do whatever sexual acts are desired. But, they don’t do that, do they? No: they want someone they can abuse. If you pay someone the asked price then it isn’t abuse. It is still just as immoral, but where is the power involved in that? How can you feel a special, elect person unless you can force someone to do something with no worry about consequences to yourself?

Because that is the real mark of forgetting about God: becoming a bully. When we say the phrase “brotherhood of man” we can only say that if we’re the children of God. And if we are all, indeed, children of God then we are brothers and sisters and so we really shouldn’t abuse one another. But if there isn’t any God – if we forgot about Him? – well, then; who are you to me? You are whatever I can force you to be. And there is a delicious pleasure to be had in abusing another person. Don’t doubt me on this.

In ancient America do you think the Aztec priests woke up on Monday going, “oh, geesh, its rip-hearts-out day! Dang! I just wanted to go fishing!”. Nope; it wasn’t like that because it couldn’t be like that. Aztec priests, priests of Baal, Auschwitz guards, NKVD interrogators…all have this in common: to them, it was cool what they were doing. They enjoyed it. And don’t think they didn’t know it was wrong: that is something that can’t be excised from the human heart no matter how much a person forgets about God. How do we know this is true? Because the one thing an Aztec priest and NKVD interrogator would never do is volunteer to be subjected to what they did. You think the guy who ripped out a heart really thought that God was pleased? Don’t be quite so silly: if he really believed that, he’d have undergone it. If you don’t want it to happen to you then you know that you shouldn’t do it. But, still, they did it. Because there is an exquisite pleasure in being cruel. There is a rush in doing evil which the victim is forbidden to stop. That someone is at your mercy is a glorious feeling – provided, of course, that you take that first step in forgetting about God.

The other part of it is the not everyone gets to do it. That’s the flip side of abuse: exclusivity. Fruits that are forbidden to all but the Elect. If you’re in the club, you have the privilege. If you want the most insane ego trip then you want to be abusing in a manner that is denied to most. Joe down the street would long ago have been locked up for life if he did 10% of what some of these rich men do. And that’s the beauty of it for them. To be able to let loose their own perversions upon helpless victims while most can’t is the mark of being at the top of the heap. Of being a special, advanced person who can’t be questioned by the lower orders.

But it isn’t just super rich who have forgotten about God. Nope: plenty of people far down the socio-economic scale, aping the super rich, have forgotten as well. But they do lack the means and the protection to really go to town. So, they do what they can – like, you know, burn down a business during a riot one day and then harass a person for not wearing a mask the next. Place everyone on edge about pronouns and systemic racism. With, you know, only you and the select in the club knowing what is a violation. It isn’t quite like Epstein, but it is still a rush for some low-rent pipsqueak of a nobody to be able to lord it over some shop owner or random person walking down the street.

What we have in America today is a system of privileges assigned by money or claimed victim status. If you’re rich and shovel money out to the right people, you are nearly untouchable. If you can claim the correct victim status, you are also untouchable. But in both cases, you are allowed to touch anyone. Only you get to decide what is good and what is bad and your word, even if it changes by the minute, is law. Everyone who isn’t rich or a victim is your plaything. Their lives are in your hands: you can cost them their job, ruin them socially. Just a bit more pushing and you might even be able to send them to prison for daring to transgress whatever insane rules you thought up just the moment before. And, remember, they think it is fun. They have forgotten about God and so their lives are without hope or purpose: to fill up this vacuum, they’ll shove just about anything in there. And the ultimate thing to satisfy is human lives. They already work towards this, step by step; checking along the way to see if anyone will really stop them. And nobody is…so they just keep going.

So, what are we to do? I mean: those of us who remember God and so have morality and wouldn’t think of abusing anyone?

We’re going to have to relearn an old lesson taught by the Scipios of Rome and Hernan Cortes: you don’t tolerate barbarian bullies. Either they go, or we do.

The time of choosing his rapidly approaching.

The House of Christmas

Mark Noonan1 Comment

By: G. K. Chesterton

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost – how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky’s dome.

This world is wild as an old wives’ tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan65 Comments

Project Veritas put out the proof that CNN is a mere propaganda arm of the DNC – something we’ve all known for a while. But for those a little slow on the uptake: CNN is only just now reporting that China lied about the Chinese Flu. Seriously: news you and I learned in January is now being breathlessly reported on CNN.

If your goal was to rig an election, then you would do just what the Democrats did.

Some are despairing that we’ll never get around this: that the cheat was so large and brazen in 2020, it shows we’ll never be able to win again. This is not the case: the Democrats always cheat. There has not been an election since 1824 when Democrats didn’t cheat. But cheating enough to win the Electoral College is a staggering undertaking and can only be done if you have total control over the voting districts you need. In 2020, because the GOP was caught flat-footed by the scale of Democrat cheating, the Democrats look to have pulled it off. But if they try again in 2024, the GOP will be wise to what they are doing – and, meanwhile, we have a great deal of power over the Democrat controlled areas, as we do in Florida, and can impose controls which will make cheating that less likely to succeed.

What is most important to me – and this is now yet another genuinely Conservative thing Trump has done (and, so, a Revolutionary act) – is that the fraud is very much out in the open now. The Democrats had to shove millions of ballots into the system to drag Biden over the finish line (no one really believes Joe Biden got more votes than Obama did in 2008). And Trump warned about it months in advance – he said precisely what they’d do, and then the Democrats went on an did it. The pressure will now build in areas where the GOP has control to improve processes to detect and prevent fraud.

You might have heard all sorts of worry-stories about Florida and Texas: how the Democrats were going to use voter fraud to flip both blue. Well, Trump won Texas by 631,000 votes and Florida by 371,000 votes. The Democrats did try to fraud there way through both States. They weren’t able to because the GOP got wise to their tactics and simply adjusted the rules to make cheating vastly more difficult. And, remember, even squish GOPers go along with these reforms: no GOPer wants to actually lose his or her race due to fraud. What I’m saying is, fret not! We’re not out of this game by a long shot.

The Chinese are not stupid – highest paid bureaucrat in California has ties to Chinese intelligence. One has to hand it to the Chinese: they are really good at what they do. Read the story: the man in question is an avowed patriot for China. He might be American, but he says his loyalty is to China. And yet he was given this very powerful and lucrative job. Back in Beijing, I’m sure that caused quite a lot of laughs. History is filled with rich Empires purchasing the loyalty of poor barbarian leaders…but I think that China’s purchase of America’s Ruling Class is unique. We are the richer nation, by far and yet they’ve bought us.

This is not just the ChiComs owning Joe: there is no aspect of American life where China hasn’t purchased a controlling interest. Our entertainment industry allows China to censor it. Our Tech companies fall all over themselves to help China develop tools of oppression. Social Media gleefully allows armies of Chinese bots to warp public perception of events. Politicians are paid off to dance around China’s manifest human rights violations. Chinese money flows into radical Left groups in the USA to foment hatred among Americans (they probably fund some of the more screwy right wing groups, as well). China didn’t even spend all that much money to get this: not only is our Ruling Class corrupt, it is cheap…$20 hooker stuff. What angered them all, and I think more than anything else, was that Trump was messing with this. China didn’t like it, either, and I’m sure Chinese intel helped out the DNC/MSM any way it could against Trump. Can we get around this? We’re going to have to or we’ll wind up a Chinese colony. And it will take even sterner actions than Trump was doing to make it happen: China must be pushed out of the United States.

The God in the Cave

Mark Noonan10 Comments

I’m going to post some things about Christmas that I have found interesting over the years. Feel free to share any that you like!

This sketch of the human story began in a cave; the cave which popular science associates with the cave-man and in which practical discovery has really found archaic drawings of animals. The second half of human history, which was like a new creation of the world, also begins in a cave. There is even a shadow of such a fancy in the fact that animals were again present; for it was a cave used as a stable by the mountaineers of the uplands about Bethlehem; who still drive their cattle into such holes and caverns at night. It was here that a homeless couple had crept underground with the cattle when the doors of the crowded caravanserai had been shut in their faces; and it was here beneath the very feet of the passers-by, in a cellar under the very floor of the world, that Jesus Christ was born. But in that second creation there was indeed something symbolical in the roots of the primeval rock or the horns of the prehistoric herd. God also was a Cave-Man, and had also traced strange shapes of creatures, curiously coloured, upon the wall of the world; but the pictures that he made had come to life.

A mass of legend and literature, which increases and will never end, has repeated and rung the changes on that single paradox; that the hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded. It is at least like a jest in this, that it is something which the scientific critic cannot see. He laboriously explains the difficulty which we have always defiantly and almost derisively exaggerated; and mildly condemns as improbable something that we have almost madly exalted as incredible; as something that would be much too good to be true, except that it is true. When that contrast between the cosmic creation and the little local infancy has been repeated, reiterated, underlined, emphasised, exulted in, sung, shouted, roared, not to say howled, in a hundred thousand hymns, carols, rhymes, rituals, pictures, poems, and popular sermons, it may be suggested that we hardly need a higher critic to draw our attention to something a little odd about it; especially one of the sort that seems to take a long time to see a joke, even his own joke. But about this contrast and combination of ideas one thing may be said here, because it is relevant to the whole thesis of this book. The sort of modern critic of whom I speak is generally much impressed with the importance of education in life and the importance of psychology in education. That sort of man is never tired of telling us that first impressions fix character by the law of causation; and he will become quite nervous if a child’s visual sense is poisoned by the wrong colours on a golliwog or his nervous system prematurely shaken by a cacophonous rattle. Yet he will think us very narrow-minded, if we say that this is exactly why there really is a difference between being brought up as a Christian and being brought up as a Jew or a Moslem or an atheist. The difference is that every Catholic child has learned from pictures, and even every Protestant child from stories, this incredible combination of contrasted ideas as one of the very first impressions on his mind. It is not merely a theological difference. It is a psychological difference which can outlast any theologies. It really is, as that sort of scientist loves to say about anything, incurable. Any agnostic or atheist whose childhood has known a real Christmas has ever afterwards, whether he likes it or not, an association in his mind between two ideas that most of mankind must regard as remote from each other; the idea of a baby and the idea of unknown strength that sustains the stars. His instincts and imagination can still connect them, when his reason can no longer see the need of the connection; for him there will always be some savour of religion about the mere picture of a mother and a baby; some hint of mercy and softening about the mere mention of the dreadful name of God. But the two ideas are not naturally or necessarily combined. They would not be necessarily combined for an ancient Greek or a Chinaman, even for Aristotle or Confucius. It is no more inevitable to connect God with an infant than to connect gravitation with a kitten. It has been created in our minds by Christmas because we are Christians, because we are psychological Christians even when we are not theological ones. In other words, this combination of ideas has emphatically, in the much disputed phrase, altered human nature. There is really a difference between the man who knows it and the man who does not. It may not be a difference of moral worth, for the Moslem or the Jew might be worthier according to his lights; but it is a plain fact about the crossing of two particular lights, the conjunction of two stars in our particular horoscope. Omnipotence and impotence, or divinity and infancy, do definitely make a sort of epigram which a million repetitions cannot turn into a platitude. It is not unreasonable to call it unique. Bethlehem is emphatically a place where extremes meet. G K Chesterton

Open Thread

Mark Noonan18 Comments

So, you’ve started on Kings and Queen and you suddenly figure out a really cool plot development – one which will just make the story vastly more interesting and fun…and then realize it means you’re going to have to do quite a bit of ret-con on Shadow Army because of it. You smile and do it anyway – because fun is what stories are supposed to be about.

Trump is still battling away. He’s got the next week to get something so strong that the Courts and/or the State legislatures can’t ignore it. We’ll see if he can do this. To me, the obviousness of the steal grows day by day…but I’m not a Court nor am I a GOP State legislator who simply may be chicken. At all events, Biden’s best hope is to crawl into the White House with no real authority and a complete inability to permanently alter anything. Meanwhile, looming in 2022 is what may be a blowout GOP year.

And I heard that Trump is considering appointing a special counsel to look into voter fraud in 2020. To be sure, Biden could immediately fire the guy and the MSM would cheer…but for all fair minded people, that would essentially be an admission of guilt. Here is a good rundown on all the oddities of 2020’s vote.

Looks like the GOP will win IA-02 by six votes. Never doubt that you should vote. There are seven Iowa Democrats kicking themselves this morning.

The GOP – including Trump – are all-in on the Georgia Senate runoffs. I’ve been swatting at GOPers (or supposed GOPers) telling us to boycott the campaigns. That would be suicidal. I know the GOP sucks – but it’s all we got. And we can’t let the Democrats take the Senate. The end.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mark Noonan43 Comments

I got the bird in, so I’m rolling along quite nicely right now. Also got Matt working on the cover art for Battles, which is the awesome conclusion of the Mirrors series. I’m also working on the first draft of Kings and Queen, the concluding book of the two book Shadow Army series. Have I mentioned that I’ve been writing a lot?

Last night, the Supreme Court – with Gorsuch smacking down both Cuomo and Chief Justice Roberts (who naturally joined the liberal minority) – ruled in favor of religious liberty. It was ruled that you can’t put extra restrictions on religious services while letting secular activities to continue. This is simple common sense, but that it was 5-4 shows that common sense is at a premium right now.

President Trump had his hearing in Pennsylvania and it went pretty well for him. He’s also got efforts afoot in Georgia and Nevada. Bottom line: it isn’t over yet. Still a very big long shot, but the main thing right now is the fight. Concede nothing to the Democrats. If Joe manages to keep the steal, fine. We won’t like it and we won’t forget it: but we’re not going to roll over for it. The Democrats have been put on notice by Trump that the new GOP will contest every action.

I hope you all have a blessed day!