Come and Take it Open Thread

Mark Noonan8 Comments

The most important thing about the Virginia gun rally will be the result of the 2020 election: Democrats barely won control of VA and are acting like they won overwhelming victory and the victory is forever. But one thing which will get every non-leftist voter to come crawling out of the suburban and rural woodwork is a threat to gun rights…I guess its been a long while since Clinton’s assault weapons ban handed the House to the GOP in 1994. Democrats only watch MSNBC and CNN and so believe things like “polls show 90% of Americans want common-sense gun control”. I think if Trump wins VA in November, it’ll be a bit of a lesson for them…but the lesson only really works if the VA GOP gets its act together and takes back the State legislature.

The MSM was gravely disappointed – that no one was killed. For a week before the demonstration, the MSM was filled with dark hints of Nazis getting ready to run amok…and when it didn’t happen, the disappointment was palpable. And some might wonder why Antifa didn’t show up to start a fight? Those wondering this really don’t understand that Antifa is leftist goons who are paid to beat up unarmed Conservatives while ultra liberal police watch benevolently. Richmond doesn’t have ultra liberal police and the Conservatives there were heavily armed. Antifa will never go toe to toe with armed patriots. As for the claim that the event was a just a bunch of Neo-Nazis…well, only if blacks, gays and women are Nazis. Oh, and the patriots policed the area when they were done and so left it cleaner than when they arrived.

The Biden corruption story is rather massive – which explains why the Democrats want no part of it. But the Democrats are still claiming they want new witnesses at the impeachment trial, which simply will not happen without Trump getting to call witnesses of his own. I like how Trump’s people have vigorously noted that Joe doesn’t get a pass simply because he’s running for President – and that he and his kids are fair game in this. At this point, I am starting to think the point of the exercise is to harm Bernie and Warren and allow Biden a clear shot at IA and NH in the primaries.

James O’Keefe video finds that Bernie’s Commie supporters are, well, Commies. Its what I’ve been saying for a while: they are Junior League Leninists. Lenin’s ideals really determine leftwing thinking and have ever since his Bolsheviks triumphed in Russia. Can’t argue with success, right? There are no “Democratic Socialists” or whatever name they want to give themselves…they are all Leninists who will seize power by whatever means necessary…and then act like brutes when they get the power.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

Sorry I’ve been out – been painting the house and working on “Secrets”! But, here we go:

The Democrats are still trying – I guess there’s nothing else they can do but play out the farce to the end. They had their new witness give an interview and it was garbage, but wait for it: some time during the trial, someone will step forward. Probably a Deep Stater who will claim they just can’t keep silent any more…but the bottom line is that Trump will be acquitted and there’s zero chance the Senate GOP will agree to witnesses unless Trump is given broad power to call whomever he wants, as well.

Our Matt notes that the GAO said Obama broke the law in 2014 and no one called for his impeachment.

How the real world is reacting to this is shown by the Dow hitting a record high.

CNN made a naked effort to tear down Bernie and boost Warren during their debate…and I’ve seen some Bernie Bros white hot with anger over it. It is a little funny: they do seem genuinely surprised to be on the receiving end of the garbage we’ve had for decades. But, the bottom line is that the Democrat bosses don’t want Bernie…they see him as a sure loser. It isn’t about policy differences…because as far as that goes, they are all pretty much alike; it is about the (rapidly shrinking) chance of beating Trump and holding the House. But, I don’t really see Warren as the person to save the day: in fact, I think she might get beat worse than Bernie. At least there is a bit of genuineness about the old Commie. Warren is clearly dishonest and mercenary in her views and actions…an her persona of hectoring nag will turn off lots of people.

Senator McSally (R-AZ) called a liberal hack a liberal hack and all the liberal hacks and Never Trumpers got huffy about it. The rest of us laughed.

New York dropped the idea of bail – and the completely expected result is criminals going on a crime spree. But, remember, that isn’t a failure, its a feature. Our Progressives are really no more than junior league Leninists and it was Lenin’s opinion that Capitalist law is inherently unjust and all criminals are fully justified in stealing from a Capitalist system. The left wants these criminals to go on a rampage to punish us for not being Communist.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan30 Comments

Cocaine Mitch says he’s got the votes to proceed with an impeachment trial without bothering with Nancy’s asinine demand for more witnesses. As Team Mitch put it on Twitter:

The thing fell apart because, after years of investigation, it has been discovered that Trump hasn’t done anything illegal. And that is astonishing considering he’s a NYC real estate developer…he must have some primo legal advisors who make sure that he’s always on the right side of the law. Rely on it, if they could have found anything on Trump, they would have used it. They found nothing.

But the Democrat Base is informed by MSNBC – and, so, they believe that Trump is minutes away from being removed. Seriously: if you check out the comments from these people on social media, they are convinced of it. Blow past the bot accounts (and there are a huge number of them – what is trending on social media is whatever someone pays to have trend) and see the real people, including Blue Checks, who are certain of this. And why wouldn’t they be? They’ve never heard anyone say otherwise.

Meanwhile, the GOP Senate candidate for Michigan – John James – out raised his Democrat opponent for the second quarter in a row. Democrats are donating as if MSNBC were telling the truth…and, so, instead of pouring money in to defend a Democrat seat which may go GOP in November, they are throwing their money at a quixotic attempt to unseat McConnell.

The Covington Catholic boys got a bit of justice today as CNN settled the suit. As is usual for such settlements, we don’t know any details. My view: they settled because they didn’t want to go through discovery. Even if they would have prevailed in court, the revelation of how news stories are crafted would have been devastating.

Iran miscalculated:

It is hard to understand Iran supreme leader Khamenei’s blunder in attacking the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. He either believed that Trump was weakened by his impeachment, as Western liberal media breathlessly and continuously reported, or might have been misled by John Kerry’s incompetent advice (apparently, Kerry met again with Khamenei’s emissaries in Paris just few weeks ago). Whatever the reasons, his goal of triggering a limited war with America to rally his people around the regime has failed miserably.

You know the drill: they attack, we respond…it bogs down, we hit some place where the enemy has hidden the asset behind civilians…war crimes!, blah, blah, blah and everything remains as before. Trump did the unexpected – he killed the boss. Now all the other bosses are wondering which of them have targets painted on their backs. The knowledge that you are to be droned striked in a fortnight concentrates the mind wonderfully. Don’t know if Trump is just going on instinct here or if he’s thought about it for years and always figured this is what he’d do if in office. I’m leaning these days more towards “he’s been thinking about this for a while”. We don’t know how all this will play out, but it certainly seems a better option that either flat out war or surrender which our Elites have been telling us for 40 years were our only options.

A Pushback Against Barbarism

Mark Noonan17 Comments

On Christmas Eve, I watched on TV a bit of the Mass at St. Peter’s in Rome – and there is nothing quite as impressive as St. Peter’s Basilica. Say what you will about the Catholic Church, St. Peter’s is clearly the product of a highly advanced and refined civilization.

As I watched, a little distracted by the English translation (I wish they hadn’t bothered…certainly no Catholic needed to know what was going on; we know, no matter what language) it occurred to me that St. Peter’s was probably heavily locked down by security and all sorts of screening and barriers were around and within the Church…all to prevent a savage from carrying out a horrific act. And then it really hit me:

In the very heart of our civilization, we are not safe.

Think about what we have around us, every day, grating against normality. A prominent lady on Twitter, the daughter of immigrants, related the other day her tale of woe in getting the new driver’s license. All the extra documentation she needed to obtain and provide so that she, an American, could prove to her own government that she was, indeed, a citizen of the Republic and so should be allowed to enter federal buildings. And even if she got that ID, she’d still need to take off her belt and shoes and run them and her purse through a scanner while she, herself, was quickly x-rayed on the way in. And let’s pause for a moment and think about those round, concrete bollards which have sprouted like mushrooms in front of all sorts of buildings and places…barriers against a barbarian driving a car or truck into us.

We are imprisoning ourselves – caging our own people, while barbarians roam free.

This is wrong. This is terrible. This is not how civilized people are supposed to live. It is the barbarians who should be running and hiding from us…not we erecting anti-terrorism barriers in front of our buildings, parks and places of worship. And it is becoming so ubiquitous that even us older folks aren’t noticing it – but worse than that, the youngsters are growing up thinking that it is normal to have such things. That to live you have barriers and machine guns and tanks and, with all that, the barbarians will get through from time to time and carry out a massacre.

No. No. No. That is not what should be.

Qassim Soleimani was a very dapper man – in uniform or mufti, he was always carefully groomed and well turned out. But make no mistake about it, he was a barbarian. Doubly so because he deliberately became one, rejecting the 4,000 year old civilization he was born into. He was not, be sure of it, the only person in the world organizing and funding barbarism…but he was one of the main ones. When Trump ordered him killed, a peculiar bit of satisfaction came over me…the purveyor of blood finally paid in blood for what he did. I’ve been saying for years that Islamism is a con. As much of a con as Nazism or Communism is or ever was. It is a grift; a justification for a mafia-like entity to batten itself upon a nation and suck its blood. Not for the leaders of Islamism is strapping on a bomb and blowing up a marketplace – nope; they convince others (or force via threats to families, if needed) to do that. Because it really is just a con: what they say and do merely justifies their barbarism…and allows them what they, and all barbarians, really want: to live fat on the carcass of civilization…making nothing and doing nothing of merit, but having the luxuries of life in gross.

Trump struck a hard blow against barbarism – and promises more of the same if the Iranian leadership doesn’t cool it. But to me, that isn’t quite enough. We need to forcefully let everyone know that civilization wins. That we will punish those who seek to kill and destroy as a means of garnering unearned wealth and power. For decades we’ve allowed the barbarians to push us back to the point where we’re bunkered into our churches and government offices…now is the time to start the counter-attack.

And I can’t think of a better way than painting a target on the backs of the barbarian leaders. Let them know that if they orchestrate savagery, we’re coming after them – that they will die; that they will no longer live well while others die. Do it often enough, and they will change their tune because all those who seek to live well off others primarily want to live. They are brutes, to be sure, but also cowards of the lowest sort. Mere amoral appetite…and the thing that terrifies them the most is losing wealth and life.

Happy New Years!

Mark Noonan49 Comments

Some folks are wondering what we should bring back from the previous 20’s. I’m going with Cab Calloway:

Iranians tried to attack our embassy in Baghdad. Trump sent Marines. All is calm, now. Marines are good at that. Democrats – proving they are monumentally stupid – are trying to make this out as “Trump’s Benghazi”. They wish. I can’t be emphasized enough (and count on it: Team Trump will emphasize this all through the campaign) the difference between Benghazi and Baghdad. Obama was nowhere to be seen while Americans were left to die and then a bullsh** story was cooked up to cover it up…Trump was front and center and got the Marines rolling right away. This is basic Executive competence, and Obama did not have it.

Even CNN is pointing out that the Democrat’s impeachment thing is absurd.

Biden suggests that the miner’s his policies will throw out of work should learn to code. There goes PA and Michigan if Biden is the nominee. Of course, not sure Biden will drag his was through…I’m starting to pay attention to Buttigieg; he might be about to pull a Carter: win the IA contest and then just roll to the nomination against a bunch of old guard has-beens.

I’m sure you’ve by now heard of Based Grandpa who blew away a guy working up a church massacre. The Left hates this – they mostly hate that its on video and can’t be denied. Totally blows their anti-gun Narrative.

The North Korea situation is still murky – in the end, it will come down to what the NK leadership wants…to continue to preside over a dead society armed with nuclear weapons, or cut a deal with us and come alive? We’ll see what they pick.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan34 Comments

The really cool thing about Trump is how he fires right back:

Nancy Pelosi’s District in California has rapidly become one of the worst anywhere in the U.S. when it come to the homeless & crime. It has gotten so bad, so fast – she has lost total control and, along with her equally incompetent governor, Gavin Newsom, it is a very sad sight!

When have we ever had not a GOP President, but any senior GOPer, at all, point out that Democrat run areas of the country are complete disasters? And then call out the Democrat leaders who have presided over the destruction? I can see the shape of Trump’s re-election campaign emerging. A few points I bet he’ll hit repeatedly:

1. Things are going well.
2. Democrat areas are lousy.
3. Its me or the insane Left.
4. It’ll be even better if I’m re-elected with a GOP Congress.

We’ll see how it turns out – but I’ve heard some people claim that impeachment is becoming a first rate disaster for the Democrats and that the RNC has seven times the money the DNC has.

Virginia Democrats by putting out massive effort managed to secure a narrow control over the entire Virginia government – and they are acting like they’ve gained absolute power, forever: they are proposing insane – and likely unconstitutional – gun grabs and threatening to use the National Guard to prevent Americans in Virginia from exercising their constitutional right to bear arms. There is growing fury in Virginia as people react to this – and just a chance the insanity will flip Virginia red next year. But, to me, that really isn’t the solution. The ultimate solution here is to break up Virginia into North and South Virginia…North VA being Richmond to the Potomac.

Heh: El Paso Man Comes Down from Insane Acid Trip where he Hallucinated he Ran for President

In 2019, we all became fascist. RSM explains.

Don Surber on the Democrats: A Leaderless Party With No Plan

The Trump economy is pretty darned good. Some are talking up that its weird that the economy is so good but Trump’s poll numbers are still no good. There’s a reason for that:

1. The polls are wrong.

Everything – and I mean everything – that the MSM is going to produce from now until election day is designed to harm Trump and help the Democrats. I don’t buy the excuse that they just missed certain things in Florida and Michigan in 2016. Remember, Hillary cancelled her fireworks display several days before the election. She knew she was beaten – and so, too, did everyone else who could see the raw data, and that means the pollsters and MSM bosses. They just kept churning out the BS because they didn’t know anything else to do. Telling the truth certainly wasn’t an option.

Can the Democrats win next year? Of course they can – eleven months is a very long time in politics and all sorts of things can happen. But sitting here on December 27th, 2019 I have to say that the guy sitting on sacks of campaign cash and able to draw gigantic, enthusiastic crowds and the drop of a hat is likely to be the winner.

Merry Christmas!

Mark Noonan17 Comments

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came to be through him,
and without him nothing came to be.
What came to be through him was life,
and this life was the light of the human race;
the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.
A man named John was sent from God.
He came for testimony, to testify to the light,
so that all might believe through him.
He was not the light,
but came to testify to the light.
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world,
and the world came to be through him,
but the world did not know him.
He came to what was his own,
but his own people did not accept him.

But to those who did accept him
he gave power to become children of God,
to those who believe in his name,
who were born not by natural generation
nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision
but of God.
And the Word became flesh
and made his dwelling among us,
and we saw his glory,
the glory as of the Father’s only Son,
full of grace and truth.
John testified to him and cried out, saying,
“This was he of whom I said,
‘The one who is coming after me ranks ahead of me
because he existed before me.'”
From his fullness we have all received,
grace in place of grace,
because while the law was given through Moses,
grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
No one has ever seen God.
The only Son, God, who is at the Father’s side,
has revealed him.

John: 1:1-5; 9-14

Open Thread

Mark Noonan15 Comments

Not quite sure how the impeachment thing plays out, now. There are polls which show support for it dropping, others showing that everyone wants Trump gone yesterday…OTOH, the RNC has seven times the money of the DNC. Democrat candidates still can’t draw flies while Trump gets massive, enthusiastic crowds at the drop of a hat.

The Democrat claim that they want a “fair” trial is garbage, of course. What they want is a long series of witnesses called for their side while no one is allowed to even mention Biden’s name. The purpose of Democrat getting witnesses is to have a daily drama – with carefully served up bits on the news – of “the walls are closing in on Trump”. The hope there is that it will eventually cause a break in Trump’s support – though they know that is highly unlikely. Failing that, they just want Trump tied up with impeachment while they sort out which loser gets to face him in November. I highly doubt that McConnell will accommodate the Democrats and even wets like Romney are going to be wary of doing anything which appears to give the Democrats anything.

The real action is now with Barr, anyway: what he does will determine the long-term affect of all this. If he winds up with some toothless report deploring “mistakes”, then he’s been a waste of time…if he brings indictments, then the whole thing could become a catastrophe for the Democrats. Lots of people are saying it is for sure one or the other – but no one actually knows; unlike the Mueller investigation, Barr’s troops are keeping things close to the vest. Which is right and proper…but irritating in we’d all like to know what’s coming.

Rep. Van Drew, who switched to the GOP, says he had to because he was essentially ordered to vote in favor of impeachment. The Democrats claim they didn’t whip votes for it, but I’m pretty confident they promised no money and possible primary challenges to anyone who didn’t toe the line. Van Drew is just trying to save his career, naturally: he’s in a Trump district and this is his chance to stay in office. But it still is astonishing that a person will switch to the minority party…this should have got a lot more play, but the MSM was clearly ordered by the DNC to ignore it.

Meanwhile, Trump and McConnell are remaking the courts – especially the infamous 9th Circuit. Now, before you pop the corks, remember that if the Democrats ever control the White House and Congress again, they will simply change the courts as necessary to either remove them from the equation or remake them as liberal. People forget that the number of Justices and the number of federal courts is set by Congress. They can expand the Supreme Court to 15 and the federal courts to any number they think convenient. They could make, say, a Conservative 9th in charge of Utah and Idaho and just make an entirely new one for CA, WA and OR. Also, the Democrats, back in that much power, wouldn’t have the least compunction against just ignoring the law. It is good that we’re changing the courts because this will allow us to prevail on the legal merits far more often than not…but we can’t go to sleep on this. We have to keep the liberals out of power.

Johnson won big in Britain and now he’s got a chance to remake British politics as much as Trump is remaking ours. The key for both the Tories and the GOP is to wed populism to conservatism…to make the right the party of the people. Brits, by and large, are far more liberal than Americans, of course, so its not a one for one comparison…but your basic Brit still does share many notions with your basic American. We like things fair and square; we like to have our opportunities and to keep our rewards; we like our own countries and don’t really care too much about foreign nations; we like to stand up to international bullies, but we aren’t interested in looking for crusades. We don’t have any problem with giving a poor person a hand, but we don’t like multigenerational welfare families – eventually, you gotta go to work; we’re very tolerant, but tolerance cuts both ways – we’ll tolerate the weirdos, but they have to tolerate us, too. If Trump and Johnson can pull it off, we might be in for a generation of center/right governance in both countries.

California is going after HAM radio operators – and it may just be another example of California’s government being stupid, but I wonder: is it really an effort to shut down a mode of communications the government has no control over? If your long term plan is to set up an oppressive regime – and that is the Left’s long term plan – then you can’t afford to leave the people with an unrestricted means of sharing news.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan52 Comments

President Trump sent a letter to Nancy Pelosi about her Impeachment effort. Its a bit of a scorcher.

The climate change talks in Madrid are rated a failure and they’re blaming Trump for it. So, more winning!

The Far Side has returned.

FISA court condemns FBI abuses. My view: abolish FISA. A Republic cannot have secret police of any type. We really aren’t allowed to have secrets, folks: a Republic where the people are sovereign must do all its business in the Forum, not the Divan. This does have the weakness of our enemies always knowing what we’re doing, but it has the strength of our enemies always knowing what we’re doing.

Yesterday was the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge – a battle which displayed astonishing American courage in battle, and the sort of command failure we’ve become used to…likely because the Bulge was the second time Ike was caught with his pants down (the first being at Kasserine) and his reward for failure was being made General of the Army and President of the United States. Another thing a Republic must be is merciless to it’s servants who fail. Allowing failure to go unpunished merely ensures you’ll get more failure. Every military commander, especially, must always have the sense of the guillotine behind him – because failure in that area means people, citizens of the Republic, are going to die needlessly.

The Left has their Sanctuary Cities for illegal immigrants – you know, where they ignore the plain law and allow people who aren’t supposed to be here to remain – but they don’t like the Sanctuary Cities for guns which are being created. Well, too bad: especially as the 2nd Amendment is American law while coddling illegals, isn’t.

Rebuild the West

Mark Noonan16 Comments

Papa_George

What is the West? Been hearing a lot lately from Establishment types – especially Never Trumpers – about how Trump is destroying the West. I opined back at one of the nitwits that if his idea of the West is what we’ve got to save, then I want it to die.

That picture above is my Grandfather. George Childs Noonan, Sr. Born in 1896. Went to war – along with his seven brothers – in World War One. Because his country asked him to. And there was no way his country would ask him to fight except in a good cause and to do good for the world. Unlike about 115,000 of his comrades, he came home. So, too, did all of his brothers; though all had been wounded in the war to one degree or another (the family joke is this is why we’ve had nothing but bad luck…grandpa and his brothers used up the family allotment). My grandfather would be 123 and it is odd that a 55 year old man has a grandfather that old…but he married a little later than usual for men of his generation (1926; he was nearly 30 when he got hitched) and his son, my father, was even later to the marriage game (31 when he married my mom); so, this means a guy born in the 60’s has a grandpa born in the 19th century when most people my age have grandfathers born in the 1910’s and 20’s.

Because of the enormous age gap, I never really got to know my grandfather well. By the time I came along, he was pushing 70…and my earliest memories of him are when he was well past 75. He died in 1981 at 85 years old. Most of what I know I got second hand from my father, plus a bit from a fascinating bit of autobiography he tried in the 1960’s. The man clearly was a character. It was muted by the time I remember him, but in his day he was the life of the party. He knew all sorts of interesting people and tried all sorts of interesting things to make a living.

He was honest and he imparted that to his son, who gave it to his son: DO NOT LIE. I remember one time as a boy I broke that rule and lied directly to my grandmother and though it happened more than 40 years ago and she’s more than 30 years in her grave, I still feel a deep and abiding shame over it. Better to be a bank robber than be a liar. Speak the truth, or don’t speak at all. Keep the secrets: just because you found out something this doesn’t make it right for you to blab about it to every Tom, Dick and Harry out there. Be generous: it is better to have 10% of something than 100% of nothing. Treat everyone with respect – doesn’t matter if they are the sleaziest bum on the street, it won’t cost you to call him “sir” and treat him decently. Work hard. Don’t expect charity. Keep to your own business and only want what you earn. These are the lessons which were transmitted…and though they become attenuated in this modern age of clatter and buzz, gape and gloat, they still come home to me.

That was the West. That was what was worth preserving. That is what we lost – and its been replaced by something else, something I don’t like one bit. It might still fly the same banners and speak the same words, but it isn’t the same thing. We’re expected to lie – in fact, it is demanded that we lie. We’re supposed to envy anyone who has aught that we don’t have, and demand they give it over to us. We’re to treat people with contempt. We’ll send our young men and women off to murky wars with no clear idea of what is to come of it…and then do dirty, backroom deals with cretins that we’re supposed to be fighting.

No more of that for me: what I fight for is what my grandfather actually, in the flesh and with his blood, fought for. A West of truth, of decency, of hard work, of self reliance. What he shipped off to fight for in 1917 is long gone, but I now see my duty: to bring it back.