Open Thread

Mark Noonan73 Comments

It appears that about 49 million Americans tuned into the SOTU and 76% of those who watched liked what they saw. It will be hard for Democrats to gain leverage for their absurd plans – be it the insane Green New Deal or their continuing conviction that somehow, some way, Trump-Russia is the way to get Trump.

As for that Green New Deal – I agree with those who say that our best tactic is to reject the premise. Don’t argue the stupid details. Reject the very notion that we need a Green New Deal. The premise is that human action is causing environmental change which will certainly be catastrophic to life on Earth. That is a stupid notion: the idea of an idiot or of a person who is running a con to grab power and wealth no one would otherwise give to them. The footsoldiers of the Green New Deal are the idiots – the people pushing it from the top are the con artists. Neither should be allowed so much as the time of day. their entire idea is baseless, corrupt, stupid and cruel.

Senator Rand Paul is calling for hearings into the selective prosecution of Trump officials. In my view, McConnell should empanel a select committee on this. Democrats want to keep up the investigations in the House? Fine: we can’t stop them…but we can bury them under a mountain of investigation, as well. Fire with fire: and as our investigation stands a massively better chance of uncovering criminal actions, the Democrats should fear such a tit for tat operation.

There have been Conservative voices – and not just Never Trump “Conservatives” – saying we should lay off Joy Behar over her use of black face in the past. Such people are fools. The Democrats made the determination 50 years ago that they would fight with any means necessary. So be it: now, we just have to turn it against them. We’ve been playing by rules which were discarded with Johnson was still President. Behar used black face: any Republican who did such a thing would be fired and hounded out of public life. So, Behar must be fired and hounded out of public life – by the Democrat’s definition, she’s a racist and she has to go. And while we do it, just keep telling them: “if you quit, we’ll quit”.

In light of this: a Colorado school teacher who tweeted out threats against the Convington Catholic boys may be fired. There should be no “may” in it. She has to be fired: these people on the left must be instructed that they are no longer permitted to slander us.

Robert Stacy McCain takes note of a guy named Anand Giridharadas. A man who is part of our Elite (attended the same school Chelsea Clinton did, eg). A man who is a pinko as you can get without dressing up like Lenin. But a man who also, it seems, is disgusted by the liberal elites on top of our society. Give it a read – and I’ll be keeping an eye on Anand going forward, because I’m starting to see some on the left who are as fed up with things as we are. They will never agree with us on policy, but that’s fine. We don’t expect everyone to agree with us. Nor do we ever expect to get 100% of what we want to the exclusion of ideas we disagree with. But we all do need to work to destroy our current Ruling Class. It has to go.

SOTU Open Thread

Mark Noonan29 Comments

I’ll be watching tonight: wouldn’t miss it for the world.

We’re going to need a lot of popcorn: the lady who is accusing the Virginia Lt Governor of sexual assault has retained Ford’s law firm. This will get more and more fun for a while, it would seem.

Meanwhile, Northam got $2 million in campaign funds from Planned Parenthood. He was very firmly bought.

We need to find out how much Planned Parenthood spent to buy Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) because she just blocked a bill which would have provided protection for children born alive after an abortion attempt. The abortion lobby has it’s requirement: once that kid is slated for death, death it must be.

Jim Geraghty points out that the VA GOP is in no rush to get Northam out – their State legislative elections are in November and the GOP would be totally ok with this albatross hanging around the Democrats’ neck at the time.

Birth Control and Abortion

Mark Noonan18 Comments

I despise Birth-Control first because it is a weak and wobbly and cowardly word. It is also an entirely meaningless word; and is used so as to curry favour even with those who would at first recoil from its real meaning. The proceeding these quack doctors recommend does not control any birth. It only makes sure that there shall never be any birth to control. It cannot, for instance, determine sex, or even make any selection in the style of the pseudo-science of Eugenics. Normal people can only act so as to produce birth; and these people can only act so as to prevent birth. But these people know perfectly well that they dare not write the plain word Birth-Prevention, in any one of the hundred places where they write the hypocritical word Birth-Control. They know as well as I do that the very word Birth-Prevention would strike a chill into the public, the instant it was blazoned on headlines, or proclaimed on platforms, or scattered in advertisements like any other quack medicine. They dare not call it by its name, because its name is very bad advertising. Therefore they use a conventional and unmeaning word, which may make the quack medicine sound more innocuous.

Second, I despise Birth-Control because it is a weak and wobbly and cowardly thing. It is not even a step along the muddy road they call Eugenics; it is a flat refusal to take the first and most obvious step along the road of Eugenics. Once grant that their philosophy is right, and their course of action is obvious; and they dare not take it; they dare not even declare it. If there is no authority in things which Christendom has called moral, because their origins were mystical, then they are clearly free to ignore all difference between animals and men; and treat men as we treat animals. They need not palter with the stale and timid compromise and convention called Birth-Control. Nobody applies it to the cat. The obvious course for Eugenists is to act towards babies as they act towards kittens. Let all the babies be born and then let us drown those we do not like. I cannot see any objection to it; except the moral or mystical sort of objection that we advance against Birth-Prevention. And that would be real and even reasonable Eugenics; for we could then select the best, or at least the healthiest, and sacrifice what are called the unfit. By the weak compromise of Birth-Prevention, we are very probably sacrificing the fit and only producing the unfit. The births we prevent may be the births of the best and most beautiful children; those we allow, the weakest or worst. Indeed, it is probable; for the habit discourages the early parentage of young and vigorous people; and lets them put off the experience to later years, mostly from mercenary motives. Until I see a real pioneer and progressive leader coming out with a good, bold, scientific programme for drowning babies, I will not join the movement. – G K Chester, The Well and the Shallows

Always keep in mind that the people in favor of birth control – and, now, abortion – are in favor of evil, but are too cowardly to shout their evil. Except, until just recently. The “shout your abortion” people are getting to the point where they will boldly announce their support for infanticide. Remember that the most common charge leveled against witches in olden days was that they prevented the birth of children. Our modern witches are certainly in favor of that – and are only a step away from raising altars to Baal and burning children alive.

It is good, perhaps, that the liberals, starting with the disgusting “shout your abortion” movement, are taking the mask off. It is way past time that we understand that these people think of the human race as a pestilence. That they want fewer of us – or, more accurately, they want fewer of the sort of people they don’t like. You’ll never see them volunteer to off themselves to control population size. We now have a real chance to get people to understand what is really covered under the phrase “pro-choice”: an excellent bit of propaganda whereby a good-sounding phrase covers a monstrous action. But this is where it leads – this, indeed, is where the whole course of action since birth control first arose leads: to the destruction of human life. As Chesterton pointed out, what objection can you have against infanticide once you’ve asserted that there is no moral stricture against physically preventing people from getting pregnant? People laugh at the slippery slope. They laughed even a decade ago.

Anyone laughing, now? You see where this is going. You have no excuse to pretend you don’t know. It is either become Pro-Life, or participate in evil.

Super Bowl Open Thread

Mark Noonan14 Comments

Super Bowl is a bit “meh”. We all know that Brady and the Patriots are going to win…and we don’t really like the Rams, either. But, I’ll watch…

Legal Insurrection has a positive review of “First Man”. A movie I really wanted to see, until I found out they cut the flag raising bit. What really irritated me is that I know the real reason they did: the Chinese market. Mark my words on this: the world would very much like to erase the fact that not only were Americans first to the Moon, but the Americans who did it were AMERICAN to their finger tips. And I mean from Astronauts down to the guys who cleaned up after hours. The world grits their teeth on it…and they are hoping that the next human to the Moon is non-American so they can completely emphasize that and try to make Armstrong into a footnote. This is why I want us back there before anyone else…and to Mars before anyone else.

Word is that Trump’s SOTU will be about “Choosing Greatness”. Good theme. It’ll irritate the liberals…and it’ll be funny to watch them claim that “Choosing Greatness” doesn’t mean things like Moon shots, but providing free college.

Why was Northam’s picture not used? Well:

During the 1992 campaign, I was a military aide to an assistant secretary in one of the cabinet departments and all of my counterparts were Bush Schedule C appointees. Through them, I became acquainted with some senior people on the Bush campaign team. There was tons of oppo on Bill Clinton and his horndogging and the fights between Bill and Hillary on the campaign trail and some really salacious stuff on Hillary’s extra-curricular activities but the Bush campaign elected not to use it in large part because Bush was still stinging from the Willie Horton ad. So finding a GOP campaign acting against its own interests for the sake of being a noble loser isn’t new. I would submit the 2008 McCain campaign had as its objective to be a gracious loser to the first viable black presidential candidate. I’ve never really been convinced Mitt Romney wanted anything more than to lose cleanly in 2012.

I find this to be entirely believable. I’m quite certain that the reason the Left has rolled from one triumph to another since 1968 in spite of being insanely out of step with the American majority is because the GOP simply refused to fight. It is why so many people hate Trump – he is fighting. And, by fighting, winning. And, now: what don’t we know about all the senior Democrats of the past 40 years? I’ll bet its a lot – there are probably whole file cabinets of dirt that GOPers have, but never used.

Some military leaders in Venezuela are starting to break with the Communist dictatorship. I hope it is true: a nice revolution overthrowing the left is always a good thing.

Misanthropic Humanitarian over at Ace goes over the way the left is going after Mrs. Pence. This is battle space prep, in my view: they still hope to get Trump out, and so wish to pre-smear the Pence’s…and even if they can’t get Trump out, smearing them works long-term because it is highly likely that Pence will run in 2024 and, also, as the Pence’s are deeply Christian, such a campaign works towards the Left’s general desire to demonize Christians out of public life.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan16 Comments

So, Ralph Northam (D-In Deep Doo Doo) is, so far, refusing to quit after a photo was found of him either in blackface or a Klan outfit (it still isn’t clear just which of the two he was). Though rumors fly that he will quit. Some Democrats are calling for him to step down, others are standing by him…and the MSM is just furious. At us; for noticing. Banner week for the Democrats: infanticide, closet racism and Pelosi’s approval rating dropping like a rock. Best joke so far: we’re keeping Northam comfortable while we discuss whether his governorship is viable.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are starting to line up against Trump for 2020. Latest entrant: Cory Booker. T Bone could not be reached for comment.

They all seem like ill-educated clowns, to me: but, then again, maybe I’m not the right guy to judge. I’d like to think that none of them have a chance, but each of them is running because they are sure that if they get the Democrat nomination, the entirety of the global Establishment will move heaven and earth to get them elected. Against all that, we’ll have Trump and us. Who will prove the stronger? Time will tell.

I’m betting on Trump and us.

Apparently there is a lot of discounting for prescription drugs but you and I don’t get to see it: Trump wants to make it so we do. Outside the limelight, Trump and his Administration just keep working away to make things better for regular folks. He should be re-elected with 60% of the vote. If we had an honest media, he would.

Trump is also rebuilding our Navy: we just let out a contract two build two Ford Class carriers at once. The carriers are good. Saving money by building two at once is great. Best of all is the maintenance of a large, experienced workforce for such things. We get into a shooting war with a major power, we might have to replace sunk and damaged carriers in a hurry, and we’ll need the skilled people to do it.

Never Trump Never was Conservative

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Ace takes Jonah Goldberg to task over an article Goldberg wrote in 2013 – an article arguing that GOP voters should ignore Mark Sanford’s adultery and vote for him, anyway, because the Democrat candidate was so liberal that it wasn’t worth, in 2013, standing by an absolute condemnation of adultery to the detriment of the overall political cause. There are, of course, strengths and weaknesses to such an argument, but Ace’s main point is that for some, weird reason in the middle of 2015, Goldberg (and the rest of Never Trump) suddenly decided adultery was such a hideous sin that it’d be better if Hillary were elected President. Because the lady who helped cover up her husband’s adultery is morally superior to a guy who committed adultery, or something.

And the “or something” is this, in my view: the people who make up Never Trump never wanted Conservatism to win. What such people wanted was the entirely of liberal social policy combined with low taxes (especially on corporations, and especially in the form of so-called “free trade” agreements). Oh, and drop a few bombs every now and again on poor foreigners and send Flyover Americans out to fight from time to time – always on the understanding they’d never be allowed to win and they could face criminal charges if their actions upset some DoD lawyer.

What we have to do here is to realize we were suckers. Conned. Yokels who were taken in by city slickers. No shame in it, because the con artist is still the bad guy. But, we were stupid: we paid and we voted and we waited and waited and waited for decades for the Great Conservative Victory…and even when we had power (including total power under Bush from 2003 to 2007) nothing Conservative ever happened. Even after that, we still didn’t put two and two together. It wasn’t until Trump came along that the mask was ripped off – and it was ripped off because Trump not only said he’d do conservative things, but he actually started doing them.

Now, to be sure, the original Never Trump objections to Trump had some validity. I know people who were Trumpsters from Day One (my brother is one of them) but there were a lot – a lot – of people, like me, who went for Anybody But Trump until there was no one left but Trump. I even know some people who, faced with the choice between Hillary and Trump, decided to not vote for President, or vote for some Third Party candidate as a protest. The bottom line is that in 2016, there were plenty of solid reasons to not want Trump – not least of which was what I feared the most: that if he got in, he’d strike a deal with the left and leave us high and dry. But, still, I voted for Trump – because I saw clearly that there was a moral issue at stake here and no matter what Trump had done, it wasn’t remotely as bad as Hillary had done and in policy, with Trump, I might at least get something I wanted from time to time. But then Trump won and started to govern. Lo and behold, within months of taking office, he was accomplishing more solid, conservative things than even Reagan had done. In short, by about July of 2017, if you were conservative, you made your peace with Trump because, as it turns out, his victory was a good thing.

Now it became crunch time, as it were. I wrote, I think shortly after the election, that anyone who remained Never Trump for a long period of time would eventually become left. I was a bit wrong about that. They didn’t become, they already were. There is plenty of evidence of this – most notably in how so many Never Trump people have jettisoned their beliefs nearly entirely. They no longer offer conservative criticism of Trump because you can’t conservatively oppose the conservative policies of Trump’s Administration (small exception is on trade: you can be a conservative free trader…I’ll disagree with you on that, but because you want Free Trade and I want Protection doesn’t mean either of us are liberal). To me, this just isn’t really possible, outside of a religious conversion. And while liberalism is like a religion (more like a cult, these days), it isn’t exactly like that. But we do have people who are becoming liberal and just baldly asserting things as truth which yesterday they said were lies.

I can only work from the assumption that they never believed a word of what they said before. I don’t know (and don’t care) if they believe what they are saying, now. But that rapid a 180 by such a large number of people – supposedly educated people – is just too unlikely except as a result of cynical dishonesty. They were dishonestly and cynically parroting Conservatism when it punched the ticket (and had no chance of winning and thus no chance of forcing them to do something they didn’t want to do) and are now parroting Liberalism because that is now punching the ticket. I wish the liberals a lot of luck with them (and some liberals are on to the scam and are disgusted by the embrace of these people by the left…no decent person likes a traitor. Ever.). As for me, I’m just glad we are rid of them – we still might lose, but at least now we’ll lose after a fight, and that allows you to rest easy, no matter what the outcome.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan38 Comments

RBG, where are you?

NATO will increase defense spending by $100 billion. Amazing what you can get when you have a President who asks.

The former Starbucks CEO (some rich dude; could care less who he really is) is rumored to be planning an Independent, moderate liberal campaign for President. And this, naturally, scares the bejabbers out of the Democrats. Can you imagine their tears if Trump wins New Jersey with 43% of the vote? Anyways, typical for modern liberal fascism, they are trying to intimidate him into not running.

Meanwhile, to make liberals even happier: rumors persist that Hillary may yet run again.

Don Surber gives you some idea about what a loss to journalism the death of Buzzfeed would be.

RSM goes over a recent murder case: poor, little girl is killed in a drive by. She’s black and, in the initial confusion, her family says the suspect is a white man. Cue the MSM to scream “hate crime” all over the place. The case quietly dropped out of the news when two black men were arrested for the crime. The family appears mortified by what happened – and, I would be, too. Not only the unbearable pain of losing a family member, but also being made the focus of a false MSM Narrative. This sort of thing is getting out of hand – liberals (and Never Trump, but I repeat myself) are ginning up hatred and division for mere partisan advantage…but when you feed hate, hate is what you’ll get.

Victor Davis Hanson goes over this sort of thing in relation to the Covington boys. What must be kept in mind is that racism – real racism – is almost non-existent in America in 2019. So, too, with homophobia and sexism. This is why the left insists there are “dog whistles” and “white privilege”. You can’t find anything remotely approaching Bull Connor, so you have to make up things to fill the role. And part of making up things is to make up racial incidents. And, so, they make them up – the more I hear about the Convington case, the more convinced I am that people went there to do it…and merely looked around until they found targets they thought they could frame (with the help of an MSM which would accept the Narrative and try to suppress the facts). The problem is that if you treat people like dirt – and the Convington boys were treated like dirt – then eventually the people you spit on are going to strike back. Hard.

A Cave or a Tactical Retreat?

Mark Noonan50 Comments

Did Trump cave? Time will tell. But, let’s look it over:

We were at an entire impasse. The Trumpist base was delighted with the shutdown and fully prepared to wait forever for the government to reopen. The Democrats were also delighted with the shutdown and fully prepared to wait until Trump agreed to a permanent spending bill with no wall. Neither side felt any desire to move – and, in fact, both sides faced the wrath of their own base if they did move. What was the end game on this?

Sure, Trump could have just continued with the shutdown and used emergency powers to build the wall. But, he said very clearly that he still may do that. Meanwhile, there are other things to do, none of them getting done if the shutdown goes on and on. Someone needed to take the Base Hit and move. Trump decided to move. He has said that he’ll give it a few weeks to see what the Democrats do, and then either return to a shutdown or just build the wall. Our real trouble here is that we don’t know what Trump fully has in mind, and as I’ve noted before, in the really crucial policy moves, there are no leaks from Team Trump.

There are things moving in the world, and while we all do feel delighted with the shutdown, there are things that we want done which are hampered by the shutdown. Then there is the thing of foreign and defense policy which can’t sit in suspension forever. The fast-moving situation in Venezuela once again informs us that we have to be nimble. Trump has a grave responsibility as President and I don’t think it would have been wise to just keep going and going and going. He showed that he’s ok with it – longest shutdown in US history, after all – but, in the end, when you’ve reached an impasse, you have to do something different if you want to break it.

I’m in the position of trusting Trump’s instincts on this. If it was a mistake, then that will just have to be endured. But if Trump has something up his sleeve (perhaps inside knowledge of coming events which will make the shutdown moot?), then we all might wind up very pleased after all is said and done.

We’ll just have to wait.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan63 Comments

Act Blue is supposedly a small-donor organization allowing Democrats to give small amounts which are then passed out to various causes and candidates. In my view, the actuality is that it is a money-laundering operation taking in big donor cash in small increments and then passing it out to various causes and candidates. Be that as it may, it is a powerful fundraising tool for the Democrats, as we saw in 2018. The GOP seeks to counter it with an organization which will genuinely take in small donor cash. It is important to counter the Democrats – not that the money is all too important, but donations to such groups are considered a barometer of political health with the grassroots.

Nathan Phillips, the leftist Native American activist who caused the ruckus with the Catholic boys is not a Vietnam Vet – and if a DD-214 I saw earlier is correct, he’s a former USMC reservist with only a little more than two years active service and a lot of AWOL in there. In short, he’s just like all leftwing activists: a dishonest grifter.

Related: Covington kids are going to the White House.

Ace has been on fire about the Covington case – if you’re not a regular reader of the blog, you’re missing out. Come on: go over there and become the Moron you were always meant to be (look it up: you’ll find out in the archives why you’re a Moron). Anyways, he’s had a lot of choice words of late:

…maybe donate to American Greatness. Or to the American Mind. Or to The Federalist — so when FusionGPS’ paid ops sh** out the twitter hashtag #WhoFundsTheFederalist?, you can say, “I fund them, motherf***er.”

Or donate to this here blog.

Should we continue funding failure? What do we expect will come out of our continuing investment in failure?

We asked them to take our concerns to the establishment, to act as our tribunes to the actual decision-makers, so that our concerns would be addressed.

They mostly refused, and mostly delivered the establishment’s concerns to us.

We asked them to take our side against the media’s constant attacks.

They mostly refused. People like David French have a nice little cottage industry going of calling conservatives racists in The Atlantic.

We asked them to score a political victory for us once in a while.

They completely failed. This may be our fault, for wrongly assuming they had any efficacy or influence to begin with.

Now we’re down to the very most minimal request: Please don’t scalp-hunt our children just because Jezebel and the HuffPo are doing it and you don’t want to feel like a left-out Nazi.

Kurt Schlichter: everyone who takes on Trump gets crushed. It really does seem that way, doesn’t it? I think it is because he’s the first GOPer in a very, very long while who really takes on the left. Reagan did it a bit, but never with the knee-to-groin ruthlessness necessary. I note, with great care, that Trump never starts these fights…but when he punches back, he punches to knock out. And usually does.

Never been a particular fan of Jeanine Pirro – and these days I just don’t watch much TV (its more of a device to watch DVD’s on, now; and I’m wondering why I pay for cable, at all) – but she let rip on Pelosi:

“So let me see if I understand this: An American mother shows a picture of a child murdered by an illegal, and Chuck Schumer and his gang they come out and show pictures of federal employees. Is there a moral equivalency here? Are you folks, schizo?”

“Are you working for Americans or illegals? Or is it that you just don’t give a damn? You vacation in Hawaii. Your buddies vacation in Puerto Rico during a shutdown and you plan a jaunt to Europe while federal employees are trying to save every dollar to buy groceries. Admit it — you don’t give a damn.”

It is an important point – but do keep in mind that our liberals don’t view it like that. I know: I’ve got deep blue friends. They are convinced that Pelosi spends her whole life caring and only wants to help everyone and only us mean, racist, sexist, homophobic Republicans stand in the way. Even back in 2009 when the had the White House and overwhelming Congressional majorities.

Stalinism Comes to America

Mark Noonan27 Comments

I’m sure you’ve all heard by now of the Covington Catholic blow up so I won’t go over the specific details. Suffice it to say that it was clearly a planned operation designed to elicit a specific result: Catholics are bad. Outside of the general hatred of Christianity on the left, I think it is all part of a plan (the attacks on Mrs. Pence being part of this) to so denigrate Christianity that when RBG’s replacement is named, the left will feel safe in attacking the nominee on purely religious grounds. But there is more to it than that.

Carried along by their conviction that they are on “the right side of history”, the left has decided to go full Stalinist. They are identifying certain segments of our society as the enemy solely responsible for all of the ills of society – and they are suggesting ever more violent remedies to remove these malefactors from society. That is Stalinism in a nutshell. Unable to provide the Socialist utopia promised – and not particularly interested in providing it in the first place – Stalin hit upon the clever scheme of finding someone to blame for all problems, and then mercilessly going after them. That is what the American left is now engaged in.

In America, the “wreckers and Kulaks” of Stalin’s Russia are now the straight, white Christians – mostly male, but they’ll lump in any woman who doesn’t pledge allegiance to feminism: they are the source of all ills. They have made every problem, on purpose, because they are simply bad and wish to do evil at every opportunity. And we can’t make a prosperous, safe and just society as long as these straight, white Christians are in power. And, furthermore, all they are doing is upholding White Supremacy…so, getting rid of them by any means, fair of foul, is legitimate.

Those Catholic school kids could have been anybody – it doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that they can be identified as the enemy. In this case, the identity was created by putting out a short clip of a video which was claimed to show certain, bad actions. That the alleged bad actions didn’t happen – and the larger video clearly shows they didn’t happen – was irrelevant. They only needed their small video clip as proof…and what appears to have been a well-coordinated series of social media sock puppet accounts and previously prepared MSM coverage, immediately took over. In an instant, the boys were evil Catholic racists worthy of having their lives destroyed. That it is all proven false, now, is actually quite irrelevant. The footsoldiers of the left believe 100% in the original Narrative (they won’t even look at the evidence showing it false) while a thrill of fear went through all non-left hearts: if they can do this in an instant to a random group of kids, they can do it to anyone.

We’re going to see more and more of this – a blatant, naked attempt to rile up their troops while at the same time frightening us into silence. They will get their troops riled up – but I’m not sure that they are going to get the silence they expected. When it first came up, I pretty much ignored it – figuring it was just another race hoax of the sort we’ve seen so often lately. But as it unfolded, it became clear that it was more than that. And, at first, most right voices remained silent (while the Never Trump immediately took the left’s side in the fight). It was only after the proof came out that right voices started to rise…and as the monstrosity became fully revealed, people got ever more angry.

Get ready for the most intense, hate-filled political period in American history since the Civil War. This is going to get very ugly, very fast. At stake is all the marbles: either they win, and we’re done for, or we win.