Open Thread

Mark Noonan17 Comments

Ace went off on a bit of a rant about the fact that both US and Brit intel people were passing messages back and forth wondering if both Brexit and Trump were the result of Russian interference:

These people are literally insane, and were in the grips of a hysterical delusion — “without evidence,” as the hysterical leftwing media might say — and they run the f***ing world without our consent and in secrecy.

These “intelligence officials” are so completely out-of-touch they cannot fathom even the possibility that the wider public might deviate from the BBC/MSM line that defines their reality, and immediately suspect RUSSIAN AGENTS must be behind any deviation from the expected left-liberal upper middle class consensus that they believe is the only mode of thought or possibility in the world.

Ace goes on to note that they are “pig-ignorant and stupid”. I fact checked that assertion and found it to be completely true. The people who run the world are mostly behind the scenes and man the corporate and government bureaucracies around the world. The all went to the same sort of schools and learned the same sort of things and are completely convinced they simply know better than everyone who isn’t in their clique. Trump, Brexit, Hungary, Poland…all these people and movements which propose to give regular folks a say are a terror to these people. They really do fear that if we secure power, we’ll immediately launch global nuclear war…that is, if we don’t immediately start committing genocide. They think we’re too stupid to be trusted with power…and so it came naturally to them to think that we dimwits were being fooled by someone into wanting Britain to be free or America to be great again. And we simply must get rid of them – the survival of our nation and civilization requires it. They have to go, by any means necessary.

Democrats are pretty much all-in on Medicare for All…but I don’t think it’ll play well with suburban voters. We’ll see.

Yes, the polls are biased:

While looking into this phenomenon in 2016, I contacted a number of polling groups. I knew that they “weight” and adjust their samples to make them reflect certain demographics of the U.S. population. In simple terms, if their sample ends up with too many young people, they assign greater weight to responses from older people. The methods they use to do so vary and are arcane, to say the least. For example, ABC states that it “adopted iterative weighting, also known as raking or rim weighting, in which the sample is weighted sequentially to Census targets one variable at a time, continuing until the optimum distribution is achieved.”

But one of the most interesting things I learned had to do with one big factor for which they typically don’t “weight” or adjust. It’s one that I think is arguably among the most important when it comes to polls measuring political issues: political affiliation. In other words, the national pollsters I spoke with told me that if they end up interviewing significantly more Democrats than Republicans — which is often the case — they don’t necessarily adjust the results to try to make the sample reflective of the U.S. voting population.

I also bet that, on the flip side, if they are finding significant numbers of Democrats who are going towards the Republicans, they toss that data out. It is how they missed PA and MI in 2016…they probably had somewhere in their data the indication that Trump was doing well in both States, but as it didn’t fit their pre-determined polling outcome, they just ignored it. Right now, except for a few outliers, all polling indicates that Trump is doomed – that there isn’t the slightest chance of him winning. They even have polling showing the Democrats are taking Texas. Now, I can’t say for certain, because I don’t have certain knowledge: but I will say I highly doubt all this polling. I doubt that Trump could raise the money and draw the crowds if he was in such bad shape that he was about to lose Texas. I also doubt that somewhat more than 25% of his 2016 Texas voters have suddenly discovered a desire for far-left Progressive policies. But, we’ll see…and what we’ll see, I’m guessing, will be a repeat of 2016.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

So, Trump called out Representative Cummings about how his District is lousy. Democrats, MSMers and Never Trump (bit I repeat myself) all jumped on it as racist – which shows how incredibly stupid they all are. Cummings has been in Congress for 23 years, “fighting for his constituents”…which means he’s the most incompetent fighter the world has ever seen.

What Trump did was a flash of strategic brilliance – he’s forcing Democrats to defend the indefensible (ie, the places they’ve run into the ground) while also, just perhaps, opening a few eyes. The inner city – entirely Democrat run – is a festering sore on the nation. Places with no jobs (except for the political connected), no hope; fatherless families; high crime; drug addiction; abuse of various types. They are havens for gangsters. Their infrastructure is crumbling. Disease is common. Garbage goes uncollected. They are getting infested with rats. But we’ve all pretty much pretended that none of it was happening – for fear of being called racist as a huge number of the politicians directly in charge are black. Well, Trump has the guts – and now the Democrats have to defend what they’ve done. It will end badly for them. They made these areas what they are – and they are horrible.

A Christian heretic becomes an apostate – some geebo who wrote a while back ago that if you do A and B and C, then God will surely give you D, in this case in relation to sex. It doesn’t work like that: God isn’t a vending machine. People are always trying to fit Christ’s message into their own desires…they manage this trick by ignoring such crucial things as the command to take up your cross and follow Him. God doesn’t promise you joy and wealth on Earth…He promises you eternal life, which is vastly more important, and next to which any sufferings here are nothing. You may get joy and wealth, but rely on it you didn’t get them because you’re special. And you may get suffering – in which case, you rely on God and do your best.

Don Surber has more faith in PM Boris Johnson than I do – but that is because I think Britain is already dead. I’ll be pleased to be proven wrong.

Anti-Semitism will get you fired from CNN…but only if someone NOT from CNN uncovers it. If only CNN had people who were trained to investigate things and report the facts…

Open Thread

Mark Noonan44 Comments

Interesting article about the Trump/Bolton dynamic. You may have been wondering – many have – how an Establishment guy like Bolton manages to work with Trump? Well, the bottom line is that Bolton is a patriot, first and foremost. Bolton knows that his job is to provide the President with the best advice possible…and then let the President decide the course of action. Bolton is, apparently, abrasive and pushy (and this does some times rankle Trump), but at the end of the day, when the President decides, Bolton backs the President. This isn’t the first time a leader had someone like that on his team – and the best leaders have two or three like that. You have to, if you want to win…you need people who aren’t afraid of you, who can shake you up, but who will also do as they’re told.

Omar’s family is keeping to Omerta about her marriage issues – to the point where even reporters trying to figure it all out just can’t do it. To me this means that there is something in there hideously embarrassing.

NR article about how the Left is convinced they’ve already won in 2020. I’ve seen this for about a year – especially after the mid-terms. the Left isn’t convinced they will win: they are convinced that they already have won; with a subtext that if Trump did somehow manage to win, it could only be via fraud. The Left looks at the vision of future America and the 2044 Presidential election wherein a majority of Americans will be non-white and so their future is assured, no matter what. No one seems to have told them that Texas is only 45.35% white. But, be that as it may, they are certain – and that is why they are pushing themselves ever further Left. They’ve already won, you see? And that means the Left has won…so by insisting upon open borders and Medicare for all, they are just doing what they were elected to do (next year, but don’t confuse the poor dears).

Meanwhile, some polls have Trump garnering support of 45% of Latino voters.

Boris Johnson will be the next British PM…and he’s pledged to get Brexit done, but I doubt he will. Certainly not the full break with the EU that the Brexit vote ordered. Britain is done. They lay supine under Iranian threats because they don’t have a fleet large enough to fight. They get arrested for saying The Bad Words. There’s nothing left.

Cory Booker says he’d like to beat Trump up. I doubt that Trump is worried.

We have to discuss nutsack waxing because our Tru-Con Expert Betters spent the last 50 years making sure Big Corporation was taken care of while civilization died.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan32 Comments

Team Trump and the GOP are building a rather large ground game for 2020:

The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee (RNC) are mobilizing thousands of volunteers in more than a dozen battleground states, including a handful that President Trump lost in 2016, as they seek to expand the electoral map ahead of 2020.

Trump Victory, a joint operation comprised of the Trump campaign, the RNC and state Republican parties, kicked off a “National Week of Training” on Friday in a bid to train more than 6,000 volunteers and register voters in 14 states that Republicans have set their sights on for 2020.

At the same time, the committee is adding to its roster of state directors overseeing its organizing efforts, hiring staffers in Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Virginia, Republican officials told The Hill.

I’ve been wondering if Minnesota will correct its horrendous error of 1984, and 2020 might be the year it happens. We GOPers have looked and looked and looked at Minnesota and just haven’t been able to crack it. But, that’s how we thought about Wisconsin for the longest time, as well. In my view, the untold story of 2020 – though it will be told afterwards – is that the swing States are no longer Florida and Ohio, but Pennsylvania and Minnesota. Yes, I’ve heard the stories of Democrats surging in Texas…but, for 2020, that’s drivel. Trump will win Texas, easily. But, it can’t be taken for granted. Fortunately, the GOP is strong and well lead in Texas. Expanding the map is important, in and of itself, but I see something else at work here: Trump wants to win the popular vote, and he wants the House back. He’s got second term plans (most Presidents really don’t – which is why second terms are usually hideous and end up with the other party winning the next time around…Trump, I think, will change that).

Related: Democrats on the campaign trail are bedeviled by Trump’s strong economy.

Also Related, and enormously funny: factions of the Democrat party prepare to primary each other. Another untold story of 2020: the white, upper class, far left base of the Democrat party is going further and further left…so far left that Indys are being turned off and, just perhaps, a slice of Latino and African-American voters are being turned off, as well. Seriously: imagine yourself a middle or working class black guy…does anything these weirdos talk about resonate with you? Green New Deal? Open borders? Meanwhile, over there is Trump… and he’s at least a hell of a lot more fun than the Doofuses of Intersectionality.

The New York Times decides that the Soviets are the people to celebrate on the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. This surprises none of you.

Memo to the Left: Stop Insulting Me

Mark Noonan33 Comments

I lost a friend over politics yesterday. Truth be known, it was a long time coming. I had just held back as this person went ever more into the insane leftist ideology. But, yesterday, this person posted a “If you support Trump, you’re a racist” meme and I noted that, hey, this means you’re calling me a racist. The conversation went downhill from there until the “unfriend” button was clicked and that was that.

I don’t care.

You see, I’m tired of being insulted. I do know my Christian duty: to love those who hate me and pray for those who despise me. And, as best I can, I try to live up to that and with God’s grace, I’ll get better at it. But I just can’t stand being insulted any longer – especially as the insults are all damnable lies. I’m not a racist. I’m not a sexist. I’m not a homophobe. I’m not anti-immigrant. I’m not a fascist. I’m not a Nazi. But I’ve been called all of these things, over and over again, for decades. It is past time to call a halt – and the only way I can do that is to vigorously push back whenever someone issues a slander about me.

Of course, the full blown leftist out there will vigorously assert I am all those things but that I don’t realize that I am. And that’s fine: you can believe whatever bullsh** you want – but because you believe something monumentally stupid it does not follow that I have to meekly accept insults. You insult me, and I will call you out on it. Don’t want to be my friend any more? That’s your business. I won’t be insulted. Not any more; I’ve had enough.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan33 Comments

America: love it or leave it. That is all Trump’s tweets really amounted to. He didn’t mention race: all he said was, “if you really hate it here that much, leave”. And that is the truth of the matter.

You can’t fix what you don’t love – you must love something before it is lovable. People like Omar and AOC clearly do not love this country. Not the country founded in 1776. To them, that country is racist, slave-owning, genocidal, sexist, homophobic, rapacious, war criminal. They hate it and want it gone, to be replaced by an America they will love…a country which has torn down the Washington Monument and will consider its founding moment to be MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech (not that they believe a word of what King said that day). They want an America which despises the Pilgrims; the Founders, the Westward Expansion. That rejects the Constitution and the idea that the individual matters. It is not an America I will ever be part of – first off, because they’ll jail or kill me, and those like me; but mostly because I’ll die fighting such a thing.

Democrat says that skin color is the only thing which matters. This is racist.

They’ve decided to kill the James Bond franchise by making the next 007 a woman. This is just stupid. Bond is a male fantasy: we kill the bad guys while dressed well and looking sharp and get all the hot women. No man will want to go see Super Chick do that…nor will women, I suspect.

Don’t know why any parents let their kids have their own internet accounts: 17 year old girl murdered by loser she met on line.

The Ninth Circuit gave a win to pro-lifers. Yes, that Ninth Circuit. Trump is remaking the Courts. That, alone, is enough to re-elect him next year.

I’ve stared the sequel to Mirrors, to be called Secrets. Don’t want you guys to have to binge-read, so you’d better pick up a copy of Mirrors, today!

Open Thread

Mark Noonan65 Comments

Well, I’ve got the first bit of feedback on Mirrors which isn’t from a close friend or family member and it is remarkably positive. I’m very pleased with this. Seems that my character Celeste is proving very popular. No spoilers: go read the book and see why. Don’t fret if the genre isn’t one you normally buy: its a story, and I think quite a fun one.

I did a radio interview about it today on The Barrett Brief and Richard Barrett asked me if I was trying to be original. Most emphatically, I was not. I was trying to tell a story of good guys (and gals) placed in strange and dangerous circumstances and trying, by their wits and courage, to emerge triumphant. RSM takes a look at the upcoming and sure-to-be-dreary Terminator sequel and notes:

Oh, wait, guess what the original Terminator had going for it? Yep, a Nordic blonde playing the damsel in distress, functionally analogous to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. It might seem farfetched to compare a schlocky science-fiction thriller to Casablanca, and you might object that Linda Hamilton is no Ingrid Bergman, but from the audience perspective, the theme of the beautiful young woman in peril, with the hero coming to rescue her from danger, is a winning formula. It’s transcendent, the stuff of classics. Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind, Han Solo and Princess Leia in Star Wars — all variations on this same timeless theme.

My hero is not a Rick Blaine – the cynical but good man. My male heroes are, if anything, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. But the basic formula is still there: St George must defeat the dragon and save the Princess. This is the timeless reality and the basic element of Christian literature. And I wrote it for two reasons. First off, because I’ve wanted to tell a story for a very long time. Secondly, because we’ve gone completely wrong in story telling. Too much Marxist and psychological claptrap. Trying to be edgy by making the hero nearly as much a rat as the villain. Mirrors is my small contribution towards returning popular culture back to sanity – and a bit of fun, for crying out loud.

AOC is accusing Pelosi of racism – you and I should go long on popcorn futures.

Epstein may not be all that rich – this is not surprising. As I’ve said before: my theory is that he’s a pimp and a blackmailer. He’s been deep in with some of the richest and most powerful people in the world for decades but there is nothing in his past which says he’s done something which would result in him being a billionaire. We’ll see what, if anything, comes out. The smart people bailed out on him in 2010 after his first conviction, but plenty of people stayed in. And my bet is because they had to: Epstein had the goods on them.

Millennials are turning to pagan sorcery for their spiritual needs. They just can’t believe that God would become incarnate because that’s so silly…so they believe a fricking crystal will heal them. This will not end well. Paganism can be healthy, but only for a while…if you are worshiping the gods of the field that can be ok…but always, every last time, pagan worship degenerates into either worship of sex or a desire to kill. Or a really twisted combination of both.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan22 Comments

Have you bought your copy of Mirrors, yet? A fairly good number have – don’t be left out!

Also, don’t be left out of Matt’s new offering: Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us from Barack Obama’s Legacy.

We’ve been busy little authors, haven’t we? Meanwhile, I’ve already started on Part II of my fiction series, to be titled Secrets. Hope – and I really will work on it – to have it out in January.

The Left is now pointing out that 2 of McConnell’s 8 great-great-grandfathers owned slaves. I guess they are really going to run on this reparations thing. I think it’ll be disastrous for them, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Perhaps there is a majority who think we have to shell out because 150 years ago, some people did bad things.

FredoCon David French is wringing his hands and getting all, “well, I never!” over a survey which claims that Christians – especially white Evangelicals – feel little or no obligation to take in refugees. But, do we have such an obligation? Meaning, does our Christian faith require us to take in everyone who lives in a lousy country? I can’t see how – welcoming the stranger is a requirement, but does this extend to essentially whole nations wishing to leave their homelands? I can’t see how – mainly because it is impossible for us to do so. The lousy nations of the world are lousy – and the good nations of the world are getting lousy – because of a moral failure which goes far beyond whether or not we’ll let a refugee in. Right after WWII the Ruling Class of the world made the determination that lousy people shall be allowed to flourish. That the West – the moral leader of the world – would not exercise its power to force barbarians to be civilized. The result has been very predictable: the barbarians have asserted themselves. We can fix the world – but it would require us to be the world’s overlords. Unless you want to do that, don’t try to sell me the notion that I have a moral obligation to take in each and every victim of barbarism.

Yes, I have heard about the Epstein arrest – hadn’t really paid much attention to that saga. My guess – with limited knowledge – is that he’s a pimp. A procurer of certain products for rich degenerates who then trades on that to obtain great wealth. I’m pretty sure not much will come of it – too many highly placed people are tied up in this. The Left is trying to work it up as an anti-Trump thing but I fully expect Trump to be clean on this as he has been on everything else they’ve tried on him. Trump does like pretty women – but women, not girls. Melania is younger than Trump, of course, but she married the man when she was 35 and is now 49. If Trump was into very young, this would not be what he did.

Barr says he’ll get the citizenship question on the census. I think that Trump should just do it, Courts be damned. It is clearly not something the Courts have any authority over – there is no case to be made that anyone suffers harm by the government asking someone if they are a citizen. People get asked this every time they seek employment, for crying out loud.

99.99% of Americans have no idea who Chandra Bose was – but, he was an Indian nationalist who made common cause with Hitler and Japan during WWII. He is considered a hero among parts of the Indian population. Be that as it may, he did buddy up to Hitler…and AOC’s chief of staff has been wearing a shirt with Bose’s image on it. Not cool.

In Congress, July 4th, 1776

Mark Noonan12 Comments

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…

…We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.