Brennan and the Collapse of America

Mark Noonan73 Comments

John Brennan Tweeted out an announcement of his forthcoming book. My response to that was to Tweet:

John, you are precisely the sort of person who has f***ed everything up for the past 75 years.

Leaving aside his clear role in trying to destroy President Trump, the fact remains that Brennan spent 25 years at CIA, often in the top reaches with access to the President (he was Clinton’s daily briefer). He was there, possessing the data and offering the advice for decades, winding up as Obama’s CIA director. So, when people like President Clinton, President Bush and President Obama said they were relying on “advice”, Brennan was that “advice.” The President gets to make the final call, of course, but only between options provided by the guys giving the advice. In reality, permanent bureaucrats like Brennan are the people who behind the scenes run our country.

How’s that been working out?

It is a rare leader who can get the bureaucracy to do anything it doesn’t want to do. Now, to be sure, most people who rise to the top in politics are part of the team: there really isn’t much friction between a President or Prime Minister and the permanent staff. Most of the time, they are on the same page…but in those rare instances where the boss wants something that the bureaucracy doesn’t, the bureaucracy comes out on top. This is usually be delay: back-burner it until the boss losses interest. To force a bureaucracy to move, you must pester it.

Churchill was like that: he was forever simply calling up the bureaucrats or sending them notes demanding to know the status of the order he gave. Eventually, just to get him off their back, they’d do as ordered. As for President Trump, he is only just now getting a measure of control over the bureaucracy. Even more so than Churchill, Trump is the outsider and he’s got a whole bunch of plans the bureaucracy opposes. Even absent the partisan angle, they’d be fighting him tooth and nail. That the bureaucracy is largely made up of hyper-partisan Democrats just makes the battle more intense.

And Trump’s fight here is crucial to the future of the United States: we must excise the Brennans. They simply have to go. Not because they’re partisan Democrats. Not even because they are corrupt. They have to go because they are no good. They suck. They are lousy at their jobs. They don’t really understand anything. Brennan has a degree in Political Science and a Masters in Government. There is, of course, no science in politics and what the heck is a Master of Government? What, exactly, have you learned? I don’t know: but the output of people with such degrees is pretty bad. Our government and military is littered with people with degrees in political science and government and what we get are the Department of Education and military plans which send guys to fight terrorists and then charge them with war crimes when they kill terrorists.

This doesn’t seem to be an ideal situation.

Right now, as we’ve all seen, just about every poll shows Biden in a walkover. Even Rasmussen has Biden up big (though, unlike the rest of the pollsters, Rasmussen is quick to point out that at this exact time in 2016 they had Hillary up big). I’m still getting voter registration data and VBM return data which indicates great strength for Trump out there. Add to that the spontaneous demonstrations in favor of Trump and we look at the polls and then file them away. But win or lose, the key thing for us is to get after and get rid of the Brennans in our government. If we have to fire everyone and start over, we can’t refuse the duty. We can’t persist as a free nation if our bureaucracy is both incompetent and corrupt.

These people took a United States in 1945 from the pinnacle of power to a debtor nation which is dependent upon Chinese tyrants for its manufactured goods. Not only that, but because we have become economically dependent upon foreign tyrants, these tyrants are more and more calling the tune in the United States. For fear of losing money in China, corporation after corporation toes the Chinese line…and because the tyrants have money, ever more Americans are willing to tailor their public actions to suit Chinese desires. Either these people go, or the United States goes.

I expect Trump to win on November 3rd. That will be great – but even four more years of Trump won’t do what we need. We need twenty or thirty years of power to reform this nation from top to bottom, and our problem is to figure out how to get that.

Trump vs ‘Rona Open Thread

Mark Noonan52 Comments

How will Trump’s illness play out? I have no idea; less than an hour ago he was out driving around Walter Reed greeting the crowd of supporters which has been out there since he arrived…and this is in DC, which means people came from a ways away to see him…which does seem to be an enthusiasm indicator.

The Left, as usual, was nauseating about it: glad that he was sick, hoping he would die. This did not in any way surprise anyone: and I’ll just say it – they are in favor of abortion and so have no actual moral sense. You can’t be in favor of abortion and have the slightest concern for human life. The end. This is different, by the way, from someone who is just unwilling to ban abortion…but the Left isn’t like that: they believe abortion is health care and a good thing. So, they are depraved.

I’m thinking that the disgusting reaction of the Left to the President’s illness is going to play very poorly out there.

The MSM put out a poll which shows Biden up 14 – getting a huge bounce from the debate. Which is stupid: even if you didn’t like Trump’s performance, you couldn’t be at all impressed with Joe’s bumbling performance. Aside: this same MSM poll had Hillary up 14 a week later in the 2016 cycle. In fact, someone screenshotted the October polls for 2016 and only one had Trump in the lead…and most had Hillary up huge. Maybe they’re right this time, but it is to be doubted.

We’re a month away. In 30 days, all questions will be answered. Either Trump wins, or Biden does. I’m back to being very firm about a Trump victory…a guy with ‘rona heading out to greet the crowd isn’t going to lose to a guy who put a lid on the day’s activities before most of us west coast time people woke up this morning.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan105 Comments

Looks like Joe will show for the debate tomorrow: though, of course, don’t think he won’t back out if his meds aren’t kicking in on time.

I’ve seen some prep work done in Bluecheck social media to allow Biden to go after Trump’s kids: this to deflect from Hunter Biden, with the most recent revelation that he got $3.5 million from the wife of the mayor of Moscow. As someone pointed out: maybe the Russian dossier was about Hunter and they just put Trump’s name into it?

Not only does Mitch have the votes to confirm ACB, it looks like they might move this one right along and allow Trump to swear her in before the election – which could be crucial if it is close. Personally, I don’t think it will be. I think that however it goes, it’ll be big one way or the other. Either people will reaffirm their rejection of the Establishment in big numbers, or they’ll reject Trump by big numbers. I’m hopeful for Trump, of course: and I still see voter registration and early voting numbers which indicate Trump might have this. But, we’ll see!

But, with Pelosi wondering if Democrats can control 26 House delegations, my view is that the Democrats know they are sinking fast and are desperately hoping for something so screwed up that they can fraud their way to the White House. And why 26 House delegations? Because if the House picks the President, then each State gets 1 vote. Right now, it is GOP 26, Dems 22 and 2 split. And this, mind you, is with a Democrat House majority – and even if the House remains Democrat, there is little chance that four delegations will flip.

Trump’s taxes – which, by the way, he paid millions; don’t buy the MSM lie that he only paid $750.00 – are just one in a huge series of “bombshells” which the DNC/MSM will drop on us now until Election Day. This particular one was likely timed so that the debate moderators tomorrow can dwell on it and thus not have time to discuss Hunter’s dealings.

Cindy McCain, fresh from spitting on us by endorsing Biden, has been named to Biden’s transition team. If Joe wins, maybe there’s a cabinet slot for her…the bottom line is this is who we used to have. And I’m glad their gone.

More evidence of water on Mars – which is cool and no matter how you slice it, it makes exploration of Mars a lot easier in the long run. But I still doubt humans can live there long-term: there are too many hazards for us to overcome. Until we can figure out gravity and a sure-fire way to block solar radiation, brief visits will be all we can do.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan51 Comments

With Romney’s announcement that he’ll vote for the nominee, it looks like Cocaine Mitch has the votes lined up to replace RBG…and I suspect he had it all along. I can’t imagine a scenario where Trump and McConnell hadn’t gamed this out twenty ways to Sunday. Everyone knew RBG was dying and so there were probably contingency plans covering every possible way that could come out.

I have seen some rather heated Twitter fights over just whom Trump should pick – who would be better in a political sense, who would be more reliable when it came time to rule. I decided not to have a dog in those fights because, in the end, it doesn’t matter: Trump is the guy who gets to pick and we’re all just going to have to swing in behind it when it comes. I think most of us are simply happy that a mindless vote for whatever is fashionable on the Left will be replaced with someone who might actually rule on what the Constitution says.

Democrats are threatening to pack the Court if we get this. Meh: I expect them, if they win it all, to not only pack the Court but add DC and Puerto Rico as States and then simply do whatever they want as they set up an unconstitutional electoral system which ensures we can’t win. The stakes really are high in this election: and only a crushing defeat of the Democrats will allow a chance for sane Democrats to recapture their party. Lose to them this year, and the insane Democrats will be fully in command.

Team DNC/Biden did have an awesome August for fundraising…and this generated stories of Trump/RNC being broke and desperate. Well, the Trump/RNC combo is doing fine and breaking fundraising records. Once again, never believe the MSM. They lie all the time about everything.

The Silent Majority is starting to find it’s voice. Let’s face it: stating in public that you support Trump is a risk. You could be physically attacked. Your property could be vandalized. Heck, you could even lose your job. But, now, more and more people are putting out the Trump sign and joining spontaneous rallies in favor of the President. The vote November 3rd might be very different from what we expect.

I don’t know if Kim Klacik can actually win in her overwhelmingly Democrat district – but she should.

The policies she advocates are not only Conservative, they are almost Distributist, as well. Only an insane person – you know, a Democrat – could object to them.

Idiocy on the Basis of Sex

Mark Noonan14 Comments

President Trump gave out both a very nice off the cuff statement about RBG’s death as well as an excellent official statement. I am not bound by such conventions.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a relentlessly baleful influence upon the American body politic. She was one of the spear points in the Feminist effort to enshrine into law and custom the bizarre notion that only things men do have any merit. As Chesterton pointed out: feminism is the assertion that a woman is a slave if she serves her husband but free if she serves her employer.

RBG’s great claim to fame is, of course, her work to end discrimination “on the basis of sex”. They even made a movie about her titled just that. And all over social media the past 24 hours I’ve seen liberals bemoaning the fate of women’s equality now that RBG is gone.

Permit me to point out something:

Discrimination is not wrong. It is ok to discriminate. Not only is it ok, but you, yourself, do it all the time. You discriminate about who your friends are. Which family members you’ll regularly invite over. What you’ll have for lunch. And, hey, it isn’t just you: the NBA definitely discriminates all the live, long day against short guys. And women. And women.

There is, after all, a WNBA. You probably first heard of it when the players walked off the court during the anthem recently. You might have been vaguely aware of it before that event. But why, decades after RBG rescued us from discrimination against women, is there a WNBA? Because of discrimination. Because the NBA discriminates against anyone who can’t go toe to toe on the court against LeBron James. Say what you want about James (and I’ve said a lot; nearly all bad), the bottom line is he’s one heck of a basketball player…and any team which can’t put up people to contain him will get blown out. And, given this, not a single NBA team has signed a female player. And this is because even the cream of the WNBA crop aren’t up to being benchwarmers in the NBA.

Because they are women.

And that’s gotta hurt. But only dumb people; so, you know: the left.

What is wrong isn’t discrimination, but unjust discrimination. If you were to discriminate against someone capable of doing something simply because of their race or gender or creed that would be wrong. That would be something worth fighting against. And maybe early on RBG and the other feminists were fighting a good fight. But that was a long, long time ago. Once laws specifically prohibiting women from doing what men do were discarded, that was the end of the fight for equality. If you can try to do it, then you are free. That you end up not being able to do it would be either because of some failure on your part or that you lack some vital talent for the job. What the WNBA players lack, uniformly, is being 6 foot, 9 inches tall, 250 pounds of brute male muscle and skill. It is no shame that a WNBA player can’t compete with James; it is just a fact of life.

And everyone deals with it. No one really gets heartache over the fact that women aren’t placed on NBA teams or NFL teams of MLB teams. We all know that, person for person, the chances of a woman being able to compete on that level are nearly zero. Maybe someday we’ll find a woman who can do it, but it’ll be the rarest of rare birds. Meanwhile, it is just for there to be discrimination like that.

But outside professional sports, we’ve seen some rather odd things. We know that a woman can’t be an NFL linebacker and everyone is cool with that…but if you try to say a woman can’t be a combat infantryman, everyone is going to drop on you like a ton of bricks. And that is the ultimate legacy of RBG: the assertion that women can do whatever men do. Which is dumb: women can’t. Just like men can’t do what women do. That whole giving birth thing is rather exclusive, for instance.

This concept that women are just like men and can only be free if they do exactly what men do is insane. And it is made doubly insane by the insistence that women do the worst things men do: work too hard; neglect home and family; play around on the side. This, guys, is not an improvement over the wife of ancient days who minded the house and raised the children.

RBG is gone. Her legacy lives on: and will be with us for quite a while. But if we ever to recapture our sanity, it will be by a stern and knowing rejection of what RBG stood for.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan32 Comments

Trump is doing wonders for peace in the Middle East. The Palestinians fired off a few rockets at Israel, but that is just the pointless action of people being left behind. Only the Palestinian leadership and the Mullahs have an interest in continued war in the Middle East, and Trump has sidelined both of them. Trump should get a Nobel Prize for all this but he won’t because the entire global Ruling Class is garbage.

Who will win November 3rd? I think Trump will; but I don’t know. No one knows. Its all about whether the Love Trump+Fear Dems outnumber the Hate Trump people. For those of you who would like some good insights into what is happening on the ground, I suggest checking in from time to time with Larry Schweikart, M Joseph Sheppard and Cotto/Gottfried. They’re not mindless boosters but they also aren’t doom-and-gloom naysayers. They are, as far as I can tell, giving out info they think is correct. They are all on Twitter so, sorry Amazona!

Related: Bill Powell says the Trump people are confident.

Senator Cotton wants to undo China’s Most Favored Nation status. This is something we never should have given to China. But whatever merits it ever had, it is clear that China treats us as an enemy, so we might as well be realistic about such things and cut them off from our markets.

Are the ChiComs funding BLM? They’d be the most amazingly stupid people who ever lived if they aren’t. For China, BLM does two things: harms American unity while also allowing China to say, “see, America has civil rights problems, too.” All we know is that at the drop of a hat, BLM has rioters wherever wanted and bail money is provided very fast. Someone is funding BLM…and it isn’t American patriots.

Air Force says they are already test flying a 6th generation fighter. If so, good. Air superiority plus Naval supremacy are the twin pillars of American power. They allow us to intervene whenever we want to at minimal risk to American safety.

Suzie Sorority has become a BLM radical...and, as you suspect, it is because she’s been made insane by Progressive propaganda at college. But now, in Lancaster, PA, at least these upper class Bolsheviks are facing million dollar bail.

The Trump Response to 9/11

Mark Noonan82 Comments

I had tried to think of something to say about 9/11, 19 years on, but I only got a little bit about it…and then something hit me and I’ve pondered it a bit: Our response to 9/11 was a Deep State dodge.

Think about it: back on that day, we were all on fire to go get whomever it was and make them pay. And while bin Laden was the prime mover of the event, we also all knew that the real source of the trouble resided in Tehran. Absent Iran’s support for terrorist groups, none of the terrorist groups would amount to much. To really do anything in the aftermath of 9/11 meant a reckoning with Iran.

When we went into Afghanistan, I felt it was a misuse of time and resources but I understood it; bin Laden was there and we wanted him, specifically, dead. When we started to gear up for Iraq, I saw it was our means of inserting a large, US military force into the strategic center of gravity of the Middle East as part of a program of getting after Iran in the by and by. I thought we’d be in Baghdad by summer of 2001 and then start putting maximum pressure on Iran, including military force if needed, to topple the regime and thus get us to the conclusion of the problem: the ending of State-sponsorship of terrorism (which is done by others, but none on the scale of Iran). When we fidgeted around on the WMD issue and the UN, I put it down to a foolish but understandable desire to get the world community on board, and especially the Brits.

But then we stopped. And started to nation-build. And allowed our soldiers to be clay pigeons in Iraq…clay pigeons being shot at by Iran’s proxies. And, yet, still, I kept on: sure there was something going on which would eventually get us to confront Iran. But, it never happened. In the end, we were reduced to just trying to prevent catastrophe in Iraq before Obama took over. Which was accomplished – only to see Obama throw it all away as he felt that the path to peace was in currying favor with Iran.

But now I step back and watch the past 19 years and I see it better: for both Bush and Obama (and, really, Clinton and Bush before them…and, indeed, all the way back to Ike’s idiotic decision to smack down the Anglo-French and Israelis over Suez) the whole point of American policy has been to not do anything but only to appear to do something. From 1956 until 2016 – 60 long years – the whole effort has been a con. An effort to make it seem like something is happening when nothing is happening (except all the dead: they dead really got dead). This is especially true of the period 2001 to 2017…Bush II to Obama when we had the moral right to do what was necessary…and then we didn’t do it.

The clarifying comes about via Trump, who’s earliest actions in the area were to blow hell out of ISIS without inserting ground forces; move the Embassy to Jerusalem and denounce the Iran deal. All things which all the Experts said would be disastrous. All things which they said indicated that Trump had no idea how things work. Well…now we’ve got peace deals between Israel and UAE and Bahrain; rumors that other Arab States will follow suit; Iran isolated; Russia and Iran presiding over the junkheap of Syria; the Palestinians no longer a factor; ISIS destroyed; Muslim terrorism no longer really a thing…and our boys and girls are coming home and we’re not drone-sriking all over the place. It took less than four years to accomplish all this. Sixty years to accomplish nothing (except, once again, all the dead people).

That Trump has managed to move the ball this far forward towards peace and an end to the scourge of terrorism shows that it could have been done at any time. All anyone had to do was want to do it. I now view our actions post-9/11 (until Trump) as being the actions of our Expert class designed to make it appear we were doing something while actually doing nothing. As for why they wanted to keep up the enmity between Israel and the Arab States and keep Iran afloat…I don’t know. I suspect bribery. I also don’t care why they did it: I only know that Trump has shown we don’t have to do it their way.

The monument to those who died on 9/11 and those who have died in all the fighting since must be an Israeli family vacationing on a beach in Bahrain while a Bahraini family has dinner in Tel Aviv. That is the glory; that is the lion’s share. That is where Trump is bringing us. We are still some time away from that happy moment and those who want the old ways to persist will do some very nasty things to get their way…but Trump has shown that we can have peace. That we don’t have to forever live in a world where we’re periodically shown pictures of middle easterners blown to hell.

We have a real chance – for ourselves and for the world. All we need do is make the right decision on November 3rd.

Terminate the Military-Industrial Complex

Mark Noonan57 Comments

The real problem with the Military-Industrial Complex is that we have one. Having a large, standing Army is a mistake. If you read military history of the United States, the universal refrain is how deplorable it was that we relied on a small Army and large Militia. You’ll read of the many military disasters created when poorly trained Militia was sent into battle – and there were some pretty major catastrophes. But, using the small Army/large Militia model did win us every single war to World War II. Since World War Two? Well, we’ve had a large, standing military force and the Militia doesn’t even exist any more…and we’ve lost every war.

There are a host of reasons for the defeats, of course: but what benefit have we accrued by maintaining at very high expense this large Army organism?

Naturally, I’m bringing this up because of Trump’s feud with the brass. The Democrats, now leaving off calling them War Criminals, is rising to the defense of the brass, thinking that this will some how get us rank-and-file veterans to abandon Trump. This, more than anything, proves that Democrats are very unfamiliar with military service.

We have nuclear weapons so it is highly unlikely that anyone would dare nuke us. We have a massively armed population, so foreign invasion is simply impractical (it would take many millions just for the occupation forces). We don’t need this monstrosity where officers are placed on a path to promotion (and a juicy Defense Contractor career post-service) by their ability to please their political masters. A smaller and genuinely professional military force – where the officers are dedicated to the service, not their careers – seems to me to be the better way to go. A revived Militia would provide the means of rapidly expanding the Army in case of a major war…as well as providing a leaven of trained people in the civilian population who can act against enemies, foreign and domestic, at need.

Think of it: a voluntary, civilian militia (which can be used for a host of functions) would probably be some millions strong. It would mostly arm itself (though some weapons would be provided by the government; mostly crew-served weapons). Sure, it wouldn’t be nearly as good as a professional military force: but say there were five million Militia members organized into five thousand regiments scattered here and there around the country? No one is going to mess with that; not foreign enemies, not domestic enemies. Invasion and revolution would both be permanently impossible (unless the Militia was the revolutionary force…but that means that the people are conducting a revolution for themselves). And we wouldn’t have this large, bloated military force which tempts politicians into foreign adventure while also being institutionally incapable of winning a war because the price of victory is too high for politicians to contemplate.

The Democrats are ALL Losers Open Thread

Mark Noonan28 Comments

Do I believe Trump called our dead soldiers “losers”? Of course not. First off, the sort of people who would say that are out there rioting and looting. Trump can be rude and crude – but it must be noted, only to people who attack him, first. He never throws the first punch.

But get ready: they will trot out things like this every week or so now until November 3rd. In fact, this feels more like an “October” story than a September one. I suspect with Biden starting to slump they are bringing out some of the big guns early to try to chance the dynamic of the race. They clearly coordinated this story with Team Biden.

And here’s why they are getting desperate: awesome employment numbers for August.

Poor lady died in February; gets notice she’s got the ‘Rona just now. The numbers are bogus, guys; they are just making them up.

Nancy Pelosi may have handed to House to the GOP with blowout.