Open Thread

Mark Noonan36 Comments

I’ve been reading a biography of President Grant. Early take: he was the First Trump. To be sure, there are gigantic differences between the men – Grant being very humble at all times and, also, a man of very strict Christian morals. But, Grant, like Trump, was a normal man who succeeded by beating the upper crust types…who despised him for beating them. Part of the reason why Lee became so revered (north and south) was because people who hated Grant – which included a lot of people up north, especially in the GOP leadership – built up Lee to help tear down Grant. You gotta remember, though it is hard, that Lee’s greatest triumph, Chancellorsville, was actually botched. He should have bagged the Union army just as Napoleon did the Austrian army at Austerlitz. He failed to do so. And his attack on the last day of Gettysburg was a dismal failure of imagination. Grant had his mistakes, too, most notably Cold Harbor…but Grant never failed of his aim: in war, he always accomplished what he set out to do. It is rare that a general can boast of that.

Democracy is always very much a fight between the ins and the outs. The people on the inside want to remain inside and will only be pleased if other insiders get in…they will fight tooth and nail to keep the outsider out, or destroy him if he slips in. What we’re seeing play out here has happened before…some times the outsiders win, most times they lose (Grant could never quite defeat the political forces arrayed against him: he got re-elected, but when he left office, the insiders still controlled the destinies of the Republic). We’ll see if Trump does better.

There are rumors that the Minnesota Democrats are seeking a primary challenger to Rep. Omar. They won’t get one – they can’t. In the end, racial bean counting has become so ingrained in how Democrats view the world that the only person who could possibly be allowed to challenge Omar would be someone just like Omar.

Don’t send your kid to college – send him or her to trade school:

…consider Dan Maurer, a journeyman pipefitter with United Association Local 190, a plumber and pipe trades union in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He’s one class away from an associate degree in applied science. He left general construction and carpentry to pursue the mechanical trades and today does welding, plumbing, and medical gas piping for Boone & Darr, a mechanical contractor in Ann Arbor. A rock-solid middle-class breadwinner, Maurer is the sole support for his stay-at-home wife and two young daughters, no small feat today for any young family.

A future in the trades begins even before you graduate high school, he says: “Pay attention while you’re in public school to the education that’s right in front of you. It’s free. It’s a gift. When you go on from there to pursue a trade, remember that whatever you put into it is what you get out of it.”

More and more of that, please. We need hands-on people who know how things work…that is what we need for the practical reason of making things work, and for the future because innovation really comes from the ground up as people doing the work think of better ways to do it.

Ace collects some horror stories from the Trans front. What the State is doing – allowing/forcing – vis a vis kids who claim to be trans is appalling. If you’re the parent of a young boy or girl and that kid suddenly decides they are trans, you’re not going to be able to stop it. You might find yourself in grave legal jeopardy if you tried to stop it…and as the article notes, there seems to be unlimited funds for kids to transition. Who is ponying up this money? How did this get decided? We need to look very deeply into this, totally unafraid of the names the left us will call us for doing so. This isn’t about whether and adult can choose this (they can) nor whether we should show respect to those who have (of course we should)…this is about whether or not a minor child can choose this without parental consent…and whether or not doctors should be allowed, even with consent, to permanently, physically alter a child (I say, “no”: hey, if the kid is really determined on this, then at 18 he/she/xir can have at it…but no permanent alternations until the kid is at the age of consent).

Beto announced he’s running for President on the “hey, don’t I look young and cool?” platform. Geraghty points out:

If Beto had an R after his name instead of a D, you’d hear he was boarding-school-attending judge’s son who dodged serious charges for the DUI & burglary, used eminent domain to gentrify poor Latino neighborhoods & married into a billionaire’s family.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan41 Comments

Something I saw from Mollie Hemingway on Twitter:

Following an internet struggle session, Debra Messing apologizes profusely to men who identify as women for promoting the idea that women have vaginas. “I am so so sorry. Thank you for righting my wrong.”

The most important thing about this is that Debra Messing eventually agreed to lie – she knows full well that only women have vaginas, but because ideology trumps all, she agreed to lie and say otherwise. Right now and for a very long time, the most subversive thing anyone can do is speak the truth.

Hate crimes do happen – but often the most egregious get little national reporting because they don’t fit the Narrative. Legal Insurrection has the story of a stroller belonging to an Orthodox Jewish woman being kicked in Brooklyn. This is the most vile sort of Sturmabteilung action…and the left is consenting to it by silence.

White House is mulling a move to put colleges on the hook for defaulted student loans. Good. Way past time.

Baltimore just goes from bad to worse – because the Democrats are deliberately and maliciously imposing policies to make it go from bad to worse. We really have to start campaigning by definitively accusing the Democrats of being evil. No more allowing them to pretend they aren’t responsible when places they’ve governed for decades go to heck in a handbasket.

Rich people are bribing prestige colleges to get their kids admitted. But, our moral superiors, y’all.

RSM points out that it is the Democrats who have a race problem. It does make sense, guys: remember, we’re still about 70% white as a nation…and if Democrats can’t
crack 40% of the white vote, they aren’t really going places. And if they drop below 30%?

The Real World vs TV Reality

Mark Noonan37 Comments

The other day Ace wrote a bit about this friend of his who is a SJW nutcase (I can’t remember which article it was: I searched a bit, but he’s been busy lately and so there’s a lot of articles – I couldn’t find the one) who simply didn’t believe that transgender women (ie, former men) were being allowed to compete against women. Until there was finally a small news story about it, and then she grudgingly admitted it happened, but was sure it was being exaggerated by Faux News. Ace pointed out that she didn’t believe it because the news she listens to simply never told her about it. That got me thinking: it explains a lot.

I get into Twitter and other arguments with liberals and one of their common assertions is that I should turn off “Faux News” and find out what is really going on. I never thought too much of it because I don’t watch Fox News. Heck, I don’t hardly watch any news. Anyone who has been around this blog for a while knows I have utter contempt for the MSM, but that contempt is tripled for the television branch of the MSM. I started rolling it around in my head, and I doubt that I spend even 15 minutes a month watching any sort of televised national news. I might check it if there’s a breaking story with interesting video…but, even then, you usually get the raw video faster in social media. The longest stretch of MSM-watching I’ve done over the past 10 years was Election Night 2016, because I had a feeling going in that Trump might pull it off and I wanted to see the nitwits react to that. And even there, it was only for a couple hours. Then it all struck me: they were not so much wanting me to stop watching Fox, but to start watching MSNBC. Because, man, that is where the truth is!

This burst of revelation was solidified today when a Never Trumper on Twitter was going on a rant and one of his rant points was to say that Republicans went nuts over Obama’s tan suit, but they are letting Trump get away with murder. It immediately leaped to my mind that I don’t remember the Tan Suit Scandal. Honestly, I don’t. I couldn’t begin to tell you when it happened or what the particulars were. I only know about it because since Trump took office, I keep seeing boring, poorly done leftist memes claiming that the Tan Suit Scandal was Obama’s only scandal (when I see it I always post a link to Worst President, as a sort of rebuttal). Do you guys know more about this? I asked Matt and he was pretty vague about it, as well. Bottom line, did any actual Republican go anything remotely nuts about Obama’s tan suit? But here was a guy – a guy who is college educated, top of his profession, etc – getting upset that Republicans got upset about Obama’s tan suit. Did it really happen? Meaning, not “did Obama wear a tan suit” but was there a “Tan Suit Scandal” which roiled politics for a period of time? I don’t think there was – I’m pretty sure I would have noticed it at the time. I did a bit of searching the blog, and I don’t think it even rated an Open Thread mention. I’m now quite certain that there is a world different from reality – we’ll call it TV Reality – where quite a lot of people live, and they believe a lot of nonsense simply because the TV said so…and don’t know a huge amount of stuff because TV hasn’t told them to know it.

You know TV Reality – it is where Trump is Hitler and on his last legs and there isn’t even such a thing as an anti-Semitic Democrat Congresswoman. Where Jussie Smollett was National News until the truth came out and he became a Local Crime Story. TV Reality – where racist hate crimes are all over the place, as opposed to Actual Reality where the hate crimes are exposed again and again as hoaxes. We’ve got tens of millions of people in this country who don’t believe anything they don’t see on TV – and who never, even for a moment, question what they see on TV. These people form the base of the Democrat party – but we’re not immune: I’ve seen plenty of righties, and not Never Trumpers, get themselves into a panic again and again because the TV Reality said Trump did something bad, or that Trump is in trouble over something.

The only advice I can give on this is to shut off the TV – if we did that, Trump would get 80% of the vote in 2020. We do have to find some way to battle this – we have tens of millions of people acting in an amazingly stupid manner because they are convinced that the person on TV in makeup who is reading lines off a teleprompter is real. That when one of these dimwits makes a pronouncement it is as if God Himself were speaking…rather than realizing what they see is a person who got the job because he or she looked and sounded good on TV. Can’t emphasize it enough that brains and ability are not requirements for being on TV – all that is required is looking and sounding good. And they’ve got makeup, lighting, computer programs and sound technicians to make you look and sound really good. I remember that time I went on TV and I had to spend 45 minutes in a makeup chair…for a 10 minute spot! I looked fabulous…and if I had said the moon was made of green cheese, at least a portion of the audience would have bought it because I looked good and I was on TV.

Brainless prats on TV mouthing lines that leftwing propagandists fed to them…mindless boobs at home watching it and thinking, “yeah, sure, Putin rigged the election for Trump to win”. Trouble is the mindless boobs get to vote and their vote counts as much as yours. This is a huge problem for us to get around.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan142 Comments

The Democrats are inserting language into their resolution condemning “hate” words about the Charlottesville events…because a few losers with tiki torches definitely stand on the same plane as a Congresswoman on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

The Democrats are making Labour’s choice – that there is more money and votes in anti-Semitism than there is in opposing anti-Semitism. After all, if you remain pro-Israel, all you get is a fairly small number of Jewish votes (some in crucial areas, to be sure; but still an overall small number). If you allow anti-Semitism to slide, then you stand to gain the rapidly growing number of Muslim votes as well as tap into far left groups and people who have it in for Israel. You’ll also likely find that foreign Muslim powers will be willing to funnel money and other goodies towards you.

Lots of blame-casting going on about this, but if you really want to know who to blame, it was Eisenhower. He was the man who set the stage for this long-running, human tragedy by failing to back the British-French-Israeli alliance against Egypt in 1956. We had a chance to drop like a ton of bricks on Islamist nationalism…and we refused to do so. All else just flows from that failure.

Related: David Duke endorses Omar.

You can never be woke enough: Sarsour is accusing Nancy Pelosi of being a tool of the Patriarchy. Reached for comment, the SpokesUltimateMan for the Patriarchy said, “no f-ing way”.

A scientist – a real one – is being ostracized because of WrongThink. I’m not sure that science is supposed to work that way.

The War Against Life

Mark Noonan36 Comments

People would understand better the popular fury against the witches, if they remembered that the malice most commonly attributed to them was preventing the birth of children. – G K Chesterton

And, now:

At least 60 women have joined the BirthStrike movement, which encourages women to refuse to have children because they believe the earth is in crisis due to climate change. Members of this newly formed group believe it would be unjust to raise children in a world that could look vastly different than the world they grew up in.

We’ve come a long way, baby: now to not having babies because the air might be hotter a hundred years from now. There is an insanity at the bottom of all of this, and I can only describe it as a hatred of life. We have people – many, many millions of people – who are so miserably unhappy that they just can’t stand the thought of people just, you know, living. It gets them upset…and, so, they come up with twisted ideas like late-term abortion, assisted suicide and, now, refusing to carry out the basic task of producing the next generation.

I know precisely why these people hate life, of course. It is plain as a pikestaff: they have forgotten about God and so have no hope. All else flows from that. If they’d just remember God for a moment, they’d recover hope and then stop killing babies and oldsters and would joyously welcome their own children into the world.

The sick and twisted times we live in all stem from the same thing: forgetting about God. Sozhenitsyn noticed it decades ago. Once you take God out of the equation, what purpose can life possibly have? It is either greedily grab all you can, or kill yourself in despair. No God, no point to living – it is all just a mechanical and pointless process. Pray for these poor fools.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan58 Comments

I don’t think the Democrats realize that if they really go for impeachment, we’re not going to lie down for it. We already know they’ve got nothing on Trump – Mueller would have found it a year ago, if it existed – so we also know that any move to impeach him would be a purely partisan political act. And act of hatred and disdain – not just for President Trump, but for all of us who support him. I do hope that cooler heads prevail – trouble is, the cooler heads in the Democrat Party are Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

Get ready for a wild ride into 2020 where literally everything may happen.

Related: Richard Fernandez takes a very intelligent look at how civil war might be. He’s wrong, in my view: if we descend into civil war, it will be extremely violent very fast. Once the lid is removed, 60 years of hatred will emerge and start butchering everyone on the other side it can get its hands on. People, especially on the right, will be looking for payback. That’s why I think a putative Civil War II in the United States would be very much like the Spanish Civil War.

The new Attorney General will not recuse himself from the Mueller investigation. Good. But, also, a bit moot at this point – the Democrats are fleeing from Mueller as fast as they can and have latched on to “obstruction” as the thing to go after Trump on…it is nice and nebulous and you can spin it any way you like.

Hillary says she’ll be the only Democrat not running for President in 2020. We’ll see – but if she does want to change her mind, she’ll have to do it in the next 30 days.

Rep. Ilhan Omar is an anti-Semite. Democrats are in a pickle trying to dance around that fact. They’ve already made the calculation that there’s more money and votes in America’s growing Muslim community than in America’s shrinking Jewish community, so they will not – cannot – actually smack her down. OTOH, the charge of anti-Semitism is starting to hurt the Democrats and they want to make it go away. It won’t, though: if you lie down with dogs, you come up with fleas.

Breakfast Club Evita – our own Socialist AOC – might be in a bit of legal jeopardy over how she managed campaign funds in 2018. A lot of funds; and they seem to have been moved around in odd ways almost as if she were trying to hide where the money was going.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan49 Comments

Trump came back from Vietnam empty handed – seems that the North Korean’s tried to pull a fast one and Trump walked. Neither Trump nor the North Koreans are saying this is the end. I figure the North Koreans were testing to see how far Trump would go to get a deal. They found out: not too far.

Here’s the thing that our Experts are missing: the proper goal for American foreign policy vis a vis North Korea is to detach North Korea from China. I’m starting to see some hints that Chinese realizes this might be Trump’s goal, and they don’t like it one bit. China likes having a crazy North Korea around to muck up things in east Asia. Makes it easier for China to do things…at least they aren’t crazy, right? That Trump went to Vietnam to meet Kim is also interesting: in relation to China, we need the Vietnamese as allies. I’m wondering if Trump is working on a grand realignment in Asia? Hope so. It is long overdue.

Now, if we could just get everyone to see that our proper policy in Syria is to detach it from Iran…even if this means making a deal with Assad.

In a very quiet way on a Friday night, the Washington Post issued a correction regarding its original reporting on the Covington Catholic boys. I don’t think this will be good enough. I do think that they’ll eventually settle out of court for a large sum of money in order to avoid a crushing loss in Court. Either way, the MSM is being instructed that they must not slander regular folks. I like this.

Seems that religious believers don’t like it when their parish or synagogue gets all SJW. My parish is mostly free of overt Progressivism, but there is still the jarring note from time to time. I understand that in some parishes, it is quite SJW…one friend of mine going to a Church for Mass and the first thing she noticed was no crucifix. If you’ve ever been to a Catholic Church, you know the most prominent thing is usually a gigantic statue of Christ crucified right over the altar. I can’t imagine why anyone calling themselves Catholic would find such a thing inappropriate, but apparently some do. The bottom line is that when religious bodies seek to become part of the world, they die. The end. I know the Catholic Church is in sorry shape right now, but I also know plenty of young Catholic men and women are rising up to rebuild the Church. This Progressive drivel shall pass. Don’t know about the old mainline Protestant congregations…they seem to be gone for good.

The Tru Cons sent a pro-choice liberal to cover CPAC. That’s all you really need to know about the Tru Cons. As Glenn Reynolds points out:

“Conservatism conserved?” They haven’t even conserved women’s sports without penises. And, more tellingly, they haven’t even tried.

Governor Northam’s (D-Minstrel Show) wife handed out cotton balls to African-American children.

No, I did not make that up.

Pre-Trump, Conservatism Was a Grift

Mark Noonan17 Comments

Back in March of 2017, I was of the opinion that the Never Trumpers were mostly just dismayed by Trump’s personality and that most of them would eventually realize that Conservative victory was more important than hurt feelings. As Trump’s policies have been vigorously Conservative, it would only make sense that anyone who wants Conservative victory would sign on with Trump.

And, man, I hate finding out that I was a sucker.

Today, it was announced that Jonah Goldberg is leaving National Review to found a new outfit with former Weekly Standard Editor-in-Chief Steve Hayes. They say they’ll be Trump-skeptical and opposed to partisan boosterism. So, yeah, they’ll be out there vigorously tearing down anyone who can help Conservatism while helping Democrats in any way they can. They’ll likely still shill for “free trade” agreements and low corporate taxes, but that’s because most liberals are in favor of such things. You can rely on it that over the first six months or so in business, these “Conservatives” will “evolve” on issues like abortion and gun control.

Let’s pause for a moment here and review a bit of what Trump is doing:

1. Remaking the Courts in a solidly conservative manner.
2. Reducing onerous regulations.
3. Tax cuts.
4. Working to de-fund Planned Parenthood.
5. Pushing back against the emerging Trans agenda.
6. Rebuilding our military might.
7. Standing by Israel in deed as well as word.
8. Destroying one after another of the Progressive heroes of our era.
9. Exposing the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the MSM like no one ever has.
10. Reviving the Rule of Law.

As far as I can tell, there’s not much missing there from what Conservatism has said it wants. Now, to be sure, Conservatism is still largely in favor of so-called “free trade” and Trump is obviously against it, but that’s just one thing…and it’s not like he’s trying to erect permanent barriers to trade. His whole thing is using tariffs as a weapon to force our trade partners to be fair: in the end, Trump wants free trade, as well…though he clearly recognizes the national security aspect of the matter: if we could get 100% of our steel cheaper in foreign markets, we’d still want a very large steel industry here at home. But, still, that is just one thing – and we Conservatives are getting so much else, what is there to complain about? Apparently enough to convince Goldberg and Hayes to found a new media outfit to fight Trump…but fight him on what?

That’s the thing: they want to fight Trump and that means they want to fight Conservative victory. I’m not buying some bullsh** story about how Trump is so immoral that we have to stop him. I doubt that Hayes and Goldberg are stupid enough to believe the Trump-Russia drivel (but, hey, maybe they do?). They are fighting Trump while Trump pushes through a Conservative agenda more comprehensive than even Reagan attempted. If you’re fighting Trump, then you simply must not want Conservatism to prevail. And that’s what I think is at the root here: they don’t want Conservatism to prevail. They are revealing themselves as grifters…people who merely said what they figured we wanted to hear as a means to make a buck or two. They never actually wanted Conservatism to win, and that must be because they don’t actually like Conservatism. I’m open to other explanations if anyone has them – but from where I’m sitting, I can only figure that when Goldberg and Hayes and the rest of the Never Trump regiment finished their articles advocating for Conservatism in the past, they smiled and thought to themselves, “that’ll keep the suckers donating for another month”.

For fifty years they’ve been at this. In hindsight, it was probably Nixon who injected the poison into the Conservative movement Buckley founded in the 1950’s. Nixon was not remotely Conservative – he started the EPA, after all – but he knew that he needed Conservative votes to prevail…and he got them. He hired a few high powered Conservative voices, and that was that. Conservative leaders found that there was money and prestige to be had…as long as you sold yourself off to whatever non-Conservative guy was out there willing to pass out the jobs. Reagan, then, was an anomaly: someone who only slipped in because the base loved him so, and Carter collapsed. I think back now on the Reagan years and all the things that didn’t happen. All the things which could have been done to roll back liberalism, and yet none of them were. Reagan, after all, kept Nixon’s EPA, and Carter’s Department of Education. There’s some old video, I think, of Trump ripping into Reagan back in the day – I think I see why he might have done that: Reagan was great and he’ll never be forgotten, but he had a lot of opportunities which slipped by unused. And now I wonder who in the “Conservative” movement helped those opportunities to be lost?

The old movie line goes, “once is an accident; twice is coincidence; three times is enemy action”. Conservatism has blown potential victory many more than three times. We’re not that stupid nor are we that incompetent. The only thing we’ve won on is the gun control issue – but, please note, that wasn’t won by Conservatism, as such, but by gun owners, themselves, fighting it out tooth and nail against the same liberal Establishment which Conservatism gets beaten by day in and day out. We can’t even muster up the grit to keep boys out of the girls’ bathroom. Or, at least, we couldn’t until Trump came along. Prior to Trump, we just kept losing – and looking back on it in hindsight, I can only assume that our defeat was the result of sabotage. This is not to say that we were destined to win, but it is to say that in conflict after conflict with the left, we just kept throwing in the towel. Why? Why give up? Why did we quit?

I think we all should have woke up a bit when National Review fired John Derbyshire. To be sure, the offending article by Derbyshire was a bit out there, and I thought so as soon as I read it. But, still, it was just an opinion. It could be countered with other opinions – but no one on the right did that. He was just fired, defined as a racist and never spoken of again. But, we all could be forgiven for not catching on at that point because, as I said, Derbyshire’s article was way outside the norm. But a couple years later, Mark Steyn was also out at National Review and, while the issues were varied, the final trigger was Steyn repeating a couple old jokes from Bob Hope and Dean Martin about homosexuality (Hope: “California just legalized homosexuality; I got out of there before they make it mandatory”; Martin: “How you make a fruit cordial? Be nice to him”). We were shown, right then, that Conservatism was entirely in line with the left when it came to proclaiming certain subjects forbidden territory…and, what, then is the difference between Conservatism and Liberalism? None that I can see.

Well, it is all exposed, now: no one is so blind that they cannot see the truth that the pre-Trump Conservatism was useless, if not deliberately baleful. The grifters are leaving us – well, more accurately, they are packing their bags and getting out as we show them the door. None of us know what will happen going forward – Trump may win or lose in 2020. But we’re done with the Never Trump losers. They are free to break out the kneepads for whomever is paying them to shill for the Establishment. We’re now busy with other things – that whole tearing down the Establishment and winning Conservative victory. It is a relief, actually. At least, now, we know that if we lose, we lose because we got beaten…not because our “leaders” waved a white flag.

End Stage Trump-Russia

Mark Noonan19 Comments

So, we had Cohen at the House today – where someone convicted of lying to Congress got to testify…which just shows how stupid this whole thing has become. I was working a bit of over time today, and so missed the hearings. When I got home to check on how it went, this stood out:

Cohen testified that he went over “topics” that Democrats would raise at today’s hearing with lead anti-Trump attack dog, Adam Schiff (D-CA), chairman of the House intelligence committee. So the substance of his testimony was coordinated with the Democratic leadership.

And that is that – he’s coordinating with the people supposedly just trying to elicit the facts of the case. That isn’t fact-finding and oversight: that is prosecution. But the House doesn’t prosecute – not even in impeachment; the House just gathers facts and, depending, refers them to trial before the Senate or to Justice for prosecution. The fact that Cohen was getting coached from the Democrat side of the aisle means that all he was doing was feeding the partisan, Democrat Narrative. Not a word of what he said can be trusted, even if he hadn’t previously lied to Congress.

I have noticed – and so have plenty of others – that the Trump-Russia thing is rapidly morphing into “Trump violated campaign finance laws by paying off women”. Lawyers would have to really decide, before a judge, if such payments were campaign finance violations. But even if they are, such things are invariably handled by fines. Personally, I don’t see them as such – even if Trump dipped into actually donated money to pay the ladies off. From what I can gather, Trump has had a lot of women shake him down for money post-interaction. What isn’t completely certain is whether he had sex with any of these claimants. Such things are difficult to prove unless there’s a third witness or forensic evidence (like a blue dress, ya dig?). Normally, people aren’t having sex a trois; so, its “he said/she said”. But if you’re a billionaire, maybe you just make the calculation that its better to pay for it to go away than to fuss about a sordid scandal in public? The ultimate outcome of the Stormy Saga indicates that Trump may be the put-upon person in all this (though it is enormously funny, still, that Stormy will be the first prostitute to ever pay a politician). If a lot of ladies, justifiably or not, were coming out of the woodwork demanding cash for silence in 2016, then in my view that would be a campaign expenditure…after all, Trump has never hid his social life; none of us were shocked to find out he might have had a dalliance with a lady of interesting background. He wasn’t paying to hide; he was paying to get rid of so he could get on with the campaign. So, campaign expenditure. Of an odd sort, to be sure; but, still.

I don’t know the Democrats’ end game here. Clearly, the large majority of the Democrat base wants Trump impeached. They are convinced that he colluded with Russia to switch votes from Hillary to himself in 2016. So, too, do a large number of Democrat House members want him impeached. Its not a matter in the House of “can they get to 2018?”. If Nancy holds a vote, I can’t see any Democrats voting against. The only question at that point would be if any GOPers would vote along with them. But I don’t see Nancy wanting to hold a vote – such an action is fraught with peril for the Democrats. I think that Nancy would only go along with it if she were assured that at least 5 Republicans in the Senate would vote to convict (this wouldn’t be enough to remove: but it would be enough to say that a bipartisan Senate majority voted to convict, and that would be enough for political purposes). If they impeach via a party-line vote and then Trump is acquitted in the Senate, that would be a disaster for the Democrats heading in to 2020. Trump would be vindicated – and the Democrats very publicly exposed as mean-spirited, hyper-partisans. OTOH, Nancy might be forced to it: the base gets more extreme every day. They might start talking up primary challenges in 2020 for House members who don’t vote to impeach.

Do keep in mind that there is a part of the GOP – rapidly shrinking but still there – which would love to go along with the Democrats in getting rid of Trump. Flake and McCain are gone…but Romney is there along with Murkowski. Cocaine Mitch, though, can probably keep his caucus in line: remember, if the House impeaches, there has to be a trial in the Senate. It isn’t up for debate: the Chief Justice comes over to preside and the Democrats make their case, then the Senate votes. And if it comes to that, absent some really solid evidence against Trump, I think McConnell will be able keep the GOP majority in line…and even a Murkowski would tread carefully, knowing that a vote to convict would make her toxic with GOP voters unless there was clear evidence of criminal behavior to justify the vote.

And so we go on with our insane times – the most law-abiding President we’ve had in ages being dragged by people who probably violate federal laws a dozen times a week…and all of it being done in service to a stupid theory cooked up by Team Hillary to explain away their loss. Just incredible.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan13 Comments

So, a woman in Massachusetts attacks a man for wearing a MAGA hat. All too common SJW action these days – but there’s a twist: she is an illegal immigrant and is now in ICE custody.

We’ve gone far wrong when foreigners illegally in our country think they have to right to do anything political. And how many are there like her? This really burns me up: it is like these people think we’re garbage and don’t even have a right to our own nation.

Leftist sucker Jorge Ramos got arrested by his hero Venezuelan dictator Maduro…Ramos found out that dictators brook no opposition of any kind. I’d like to feel sympathy for Ramos, but I can’t: if in 2019 you don’t understand that socialist dictators are bloodthirsty savages, then you are simply too stupid for words.

A warning that just because the Democrat primary is a clown car of socialist idiots, don’t think they can’t win. Do read it: it is important. The Democrats can win in 2020. I think their chances are better than usual at ousting an incumbent President because (1) the entirety of the global Establishment will help them in any way possible and (2) Trump is a polarizing figure who will generate a backlash. Now, on the flip side, (1) Trump is a polarizing figure who can get his own base to the polls and (2) outside the social media fever swamps, people are feeling pretty good about the country. But make no mistake about it, 2020 will be a hard fought campaign and, likely, a narrow decision regardless of how it goes.

Never Trumpers are determined, not to beat Trump, but to cause him enough damage that Democrats can beat him. They are going on history here: no President challenged in the primary has won a second term. That is true: but the thing is, each President challenged seriously in the primary was being challenged because it was perceived he wasn’t doing what the rank-and-file wanted done. The Never Trumpers despise the GOP rank-and-file. This is a revolt of the Cocktail Party. Even if they got a serious contender (like Governor Hogan of Maryland), it would immediately be perceived by GOP voters as the rise of the swamp…such a candidate, even if well funded, would be lucky to hit even 10% in any early primary, and that would be that. And, of course, everyone involved would have to go into it knowing that never again would they play any role in GOP politics. Most Never Trumpers are likely ok with that – this is being done as their last effort under the title of Republican…to try and give Democrats victory and then slide into Democrat party positions as a reward for their betrayal of the GOP.