Campaign 2022

Open Thread

Mark Noonan27 Comments

So, the Mirrors series does head towards it’s end: I’m doing revisions to Book VI: Heirs and shortly after that, Book VII: Empress will come out. Then Crimson Blade, Home World and Ghost Tower. There might be some more after that (I planted several story lines in each book that I can pursue if I wish). But, mostly, Book X will wrap it up – that is, all the Bad Guys and Evil Things our four main heroes have to deal with will be, well, dealt with. I’ve already written The Very End where I wrap up the story line for everyone, including secondary characters. So, of course, I got another idea.

I was at work yesterday and when I took a break, in about five minutes a story of science, magic and adventure came to mind – all revolving around people who are Of The Sixteen, those who ain’t and the Terrible Secret the Sixteen hid thousands of years before. It’ll be lots of fun: no spoilers! It was amazing how fast it all came into my mind…Arkan is our hero, helped by Thomas (who has a Secret of his own) and desperately in love with Samantha, who doesn’t realize she loves Arkan. A lot of the outline is already written and I hope to have a first book out in a year or so, even before Mirrors wraps up.

That stuff is a lot more fun than real life.

So, how do we know we’re heading into a very bad recession? Because Team Pudding Brain and the MSM are out there telling us that two quarters of negative growth don’t count as a recession…even though the very same people claiming this were saying as recently as last month that they would. They must have seen the report on Sunday because this drivel started on Monday and I’ve just got to figure its a doozy of a bad report…I mean, a slight drop they’d just pass off as nothing…so, I expect it to be on the hideous side. And keep in mind that ever since Obama (with a temporary reversion under Trump) the Keepers of the Stats have been fudging the economic numbers to make it look as good as possible for Democrats.

How do we know that Democrats are about to get wiped out in November? Two things: they’re pushing out D+12 polls showing Democrats with a slight Generic Ballot lead and they’re working up to a reinstatement of mask mandates in Blue cities and States…so they can justify ballot harvesting and drop boxes again. All this means that they are expecting a 10 point or so swing to the GOP…and you just have to look at 2020 results to see that such a swing means a 35-40 seat GOP House gain. What they’re doing now is attempting to shore up not swing districts, but deep Blue D+8 to D+12 districts…because as we slip into recession and oil supplies foretell another spike in gas prices, Democrats may be in for an historic defeat. As per usual in such things, lots can change – it is months away: but at this point in time, it is getting rather baked in. If the Democrats are lucky and all the breaks go their way, they’ll only lose 25 House seats.

Democrats are insane, by the way – they brought a witch and a furry (if you don’t know what a furry is, do not look it up) in for a hearing on abortion. But they are also stuck – they said that such insane people are legitimate in the debate and now they’ve got to pretend that normal people watching this won’t be disgusted.

McDonald’s is seeing fewer customers. Think about that. Wrap your mind around it and then just know what it means for the economy. People are refraining from a burger and fries because the money isn’t in the budget for it.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan18 Comments

This song becomes more meaningful to me every year as I get older…but only today did I realize it came out 35 years ago! I know, I know – some of you heathens don’t like Rush. But that is a serious moral failing on your part, not mine:

The knives are being sharpened – more and more MSM stories pondering if Pudding Brain is too old. He was, of course, too old in 2020. Heck, in 2008 when Barry picked him, he was too old. For goodness sake, he was only picked because Team Obama knew nobody would ever move against Obama to make Biden President. But, really, he’s got to go: he’s delaying his Middle East trip – seriously – because he has to rest up after his European trip. Meanwhile, Trump is barnstorming around the country giving speeches.

We either made a serious mistake in 2020 or are the victims of the biggest rip off in human history (Spoiler: it was a rip off).

On the other hand, if the Democrats hadn’t cheated in 2020 they’d be heading for a solid mid-term victory in 2022 and a likely strong Trifecta in 2024. As it is, at best Joe is polling around 40% and the Democrats might be heading for generational wipe out. And not only that – they’re going to be defeated by a GOP which is vastly more MAGA than it was in 2020 and which is already firmly engaging in the Culture War.

This could get real painful for them. I’ll shed a tear when I find the time.

But it has to get painful for them – and every more painful. Here’s the story of a elderly man who was beaten to death by feral savages let loose by Democrat policy in New York City. And, remember, the Democrats did this on purpose. Don’t let them off the hook. It isn’t a mistake. It isn’t an unintended consequence: they want this level of crime of violence to punish us for being American. Because we’re racists and sexists and we’re too rich and we are too powerful and blah, blah, blah whatever the heck it is the Left is whining about. But, do note that the victim here is a black man.

In case you were wondering what a real insurrection looks like, here’s Sri Lanka where they’ve chased the government out of power and burned the Prime Minister’s house. It all started because Sri Lanka’s Ruling Class wanted to curry favor with the Global Ruling Class, so they essentially destroyed Sri Lanka’s economy in the name of living Green. Turns out people with out food get rather angry.

So, how are the store shelves in your area?

Paranoid conspiracy interlude: I’ve seen the stories of food processing facilities going up in smoke in the past few months. Wonder: is someone in the Ruling Class trying to create shortages which will lead to revolt which they think they can crush once and for all? Do not put this sort of thing past them: remember, the dying Czarist Ruling Class got Russia into both the Russo-Japanese War and World War One on the theory that chaos and destruction would also them to continue to rule.

If you’ve never seen the movie Zulu, you should do so. Here’s a write up explaining why. I like it because it is a soldier’s story and while war is hideous, we must never take away the glory of those who stand up to it and do their duty. There’s a scene in the movie just before the first Zulu attack where a young and obviously very frightened soldier asks “why us?” To which the old sergeant replies – as old sergeants have probably replied for thousands of years – “because we’re here and there isn’t anybody else”. Because we’re here – it is why we do our duty in any field.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

Not your father’s GOP:

Over the top? No, it isn’t.

Jerone Davison is running in Arizona’s newly-redistricted 4th District and it is rated “Likely” to “Lean” Democrat, which is probably correct and so if he gets the GOP nomination, he’s got an uphill climb. But that hill isn’t nearly as steep as it would have been in any other year – Pudding Brain’s approval rating in Arizona is somewhat lower than pond scum.

That is a fun, attention-getting (though very true) ad, but I liked this one a lot better:

He gets it. Yes, we GOPers are Conservative and free market adherents…but when tech giants are this powerful and so closely aligned with the Democrat party we can’t allow free market theory to override our need to get our message out in the primary field of debate: social media. I don’t know much about this man but what little I’ve learned is good. I’m sure the Democrats, if he gets the nod, will find some dirt on him or make some up if necessary…don’t care. He looks like a fighter and I hope he wins.

The other video for you to watch today is linked here: in it, you’ll see three fat, well-off young women trash a fast food joint in NYC. Why? Because they charge $1.75 for extra sauce. This is not sustainable – civilized people will not put up with this forever. Nothing will be done and nothing will be done and nothing will be done – until something is done and that something will be exceptionally violent.

Looks like PM Boris Johnson might be tossed out of office because one of his people named – and I’m not kidding – Pincher has gone around groping men. The British Empire ended not with a bang, but a whimper…and British Scandals degenerated from Profumo to Pincher. Can’t say I’m sad about it if Boris goes – he was clever enough to realize he could ride Brexit into Number 10 and he has kept his word on that, but in all other things he’s what Thatcher called a “wet”…going along to get along with Labour and no real changes in British policy. They are, after all, still arresting you in the UK for misgendering someone. Hopefully someone will ride to Britain’s rescue, but I’m doubtful about it…they’re just arguing over who gets the money as that country slowly dies.

The pro abortion movements seems…kinda meh, doesn’t it? There were a few days of shrieking purple haired feminists saying they wouldn’t have sex with Republicans (thank you!), but now its rather faded away. Didn’t seem to cause much of a blip in polling, either. My bet always has been that abortion is not popular – that even most of those who don’t want to ban it find it distasteful to a high degree. Abortion is something propped up by the Ruling Class…which wants the people to be childless tenants dependent upon government subsidies to pay for imported goods. They don’t want, that is, Americans – they want us to become Europeans, with our population slowly being replaced by immigrants whom the Ruling Class believes are easily controlled (Spoiler: they’re wrong about that as Latino voters are shifting heavy to the GOP). I think that after all is said and done, outside the deepest blue areas, abortion will be restricted in this or that manner and people will cease to care much about it.

They’re supposedly working on a pill which will eliminate certain aging cells in your body, thus allowing you to stay healthy and live longer. A lot longer: like to 200 years old. First pass on this: it won’t work. I can imagine it helping, to be sure – but more than doubling human life is probably a pipe dream. According to the article, we’ll find out – the pill is supposed to be ready in about 10 years. Would I take it? Not to live to 200: don’t want to. But to keep my mind and organs from deteriorating? That would be highly tempting – because outside of death, itself, what frightens us? The fear of being alive but incapacitated. And that, I think, is where any such treatment will fail…it might help, say, keep your liver healthier longer (and that’s a good thing) but ageing is still going on…coded into you is still the decay and it very likely accelerates over time so you’d have to take ever more of the drug for ever shrinking benefit and lord only knows what side effects.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan105 Comments

I was actually going to include a bit about the J6 “bombshell” but I think we’re hashing that out pretty well in the previous post. So, I’ll just state this:

The January 6th hearings are an attempt by Democrats and Never Trump to make Trump toxic for 2024. Make no mistake about it – they are terrified of his running again and they know they can’t beat him: the methods they used to cheat in 2020 will not be available especially in the Battleground States in 2024 because of various legal changes over the past 18 months. They might try to bring back the Pandemic to justify mailing out millions of ballots…but they won’t have nearly the success they had in 2020. Laws have been changed, people are watching…and the man who gained 12 million votes between 2016 and 2020 is almost certain to gain even more between 2020 and 2024.

Here’s how 2024 is already going:

In 2008 the Democrats enjoyed a 1.2 million voter registration advantage over Republicans in Pennsylvania – as of 2022, that advantage has shrunk to about 540k….and it continues to shrink, rapidly. Since 2020, a net of about 1 million people have switched to the GOP from the Democrat party. This isn’t new voters – this is people taking the time to actually change their party registration from one to the other (the net is because some people have switched from GOP to Dem…but overall the stampede is to the GOP from the Democrats). It turns out that a Party keyed to the deepest concerns of urban/suburban upper class, college educated white women lacks broad appeal.

Polls: you may have already seen some of them. Ignore them – they’re doing absurd things now to come up with poll results which fit the Democrat Narrative, especially over the abortion issue. The only poll that matters is the prices of gas and food. Absent a miracle, Democrats are going to lose Congress and a large number of State government seats as well…the only question is whether this win will be on the magnitude of 2010, or something we’ve just never seen before in American politics. Looking at some polling and taking into consideration their MOE and how Democrat-heavy their samples are, a credible case can be made that Biden’s approval has slipped into the 20’s.

The Democrat response? They’ve introduced a Transgender Bill of Rights.

The return of Stagflation. This probably won’t help Democrats in the Fall.

And the Tweet of the day:

https://twitter.com/kaya_masters/status/1542236677774663680

Open Thread

Mark Noonan79 Comments

Biden falling off his bike is the perfect symbol of his Administration. Really hope it was voter fraud because if 81 million voted for him, we’re doomed.

I’ve been getting a bit doom and gloom about the economy – the official stats are still showing health out there, but inflation is galloping (official 8.6% is bogus – using the 1980 formula, its about 17%…and that is what we’re all seeing at the pump and the grocery check out), housing is looking more and more like a bubble (and Team Pudding Brain is doing bubble things now to encourage more home ownership among those who can least afford it – shades of 2008), we can’t make anything (the MSM lauds shipments of baby formula to us as if its a good thing that the United States has to import food)…it is all just falling apart. I’m genuinely concerned about the onset of a Great Depression with more than a quarter of the population out of work. I hope it doesn’t get that bad – but I think it might.

That aside, the political prospects for the GOP continue to brighten. Winning TX-34 is the writing on the wall – a majority-Latino district going GOP in the first time since forever. Democrats are trying to ignore it by saying it was a special election and so not predictive…which is just what people say when politics predicts their demise. They’re doomed, they know it – and they don’t seem to care. As things come crashing down, Democrats are set to die on the “drag queen story time” hill. It has continually amazed me how fast the most radical parts of transgenderism have become dogma on the Left. It is something which they not only can’t question but which they must loudly support. Team Pudding Brain is set to officially approve providing hormones and surgery to trans kids as young as 14…this while they are urging a ban on rifle purchases to 21. So, you’re old enough to decide if you want to be a different gender seven years before you can decide if you’ll defend yourself. It makes no sense. It is, in fact, insane.

But that’s where we’ve been heading, isn’t it? Some Lefty on Twitter was upset that San Francisco has several times the homeless population of Detroit. The assertion was greedy landowners in San Francisco not doing what was necessary to end homelessness…no consideration that when you subsidize homelessness (as SF does) you’ll get more of it. There is also no consideration on the Left about how monstrously cruel it is to allow people to live in the streets, wallowing in their own filth and making life unlivable for everyone else. I get it – even lunatic, tweaking, homeless people have rights…and I demand those rights be respected. But you don’t have a right to be whacked out on drugs and sh** on the sidewalk. And if you do that, I have the right – and the moral obligation – to restrain you until you no longer hit the crack pipe and figure the corner of Fifth and Main is your bathroom. It is sheer insanity that we allow insane, drug-addled people to ruin the public square. Sanity – and the dignity of the homeless crackhead – requires that we stop them from doing that. But, we don’t – we instead allow grifters to build “low income housing” which won’t, of course, help the insane crackhead because, being an insane crackhead, he doesn’t want to live in a house. Can’t live in a house. Would like as not wreck the house in short order if by some means he could be induced to move in.

We’re essentially allowing insane people (ie, those who set up “drag queen story time” and who allow lunatics to defecate on the street) to run our lives. And Democrats can’t pull back from it – the least failure to support the most insane thing leads to immediate social destruction. And, so, here we are: hoping not just for a big GOP win, but that the GOP winners will see the problem and proceed to legislate a ban on insanity from being in power.

The American Bar Association is proposing an end to testing for law school admissions. Standards are being dropped everywhere because where there are standards you cannot ensure that today, at this very minute, your school or corporation has the proper level of diversity. That’s what it is all about. If, however, you dispense with standards, then you don’t have to worry about who can do the job – you only have to make sure you check off all the diversity boxes. That is, that you have the “correct” number of POC, gay, trans or whatever the heck group it is the Left is whining about at the moment. This isn’t the death of expertise: it is a suicide.

But here’s the problem – it isn’t just getting them access which requires you to drop standards. You must also get the proper results. If the American population is 13 percent black, then you’d damn well better have 13 percent of the lawyers at your firm be black…and if there aren’t enough qualified black attorneys to make up that number, then you’d better fill the slots with unqualified. And even if they’re unqualified, they better be given the prestige assignments that qualified people get. See where this is heading? In the name of diversity, whether or not you’ll have a qualified person will start to be a roll of the dice. But eventually it’ll be a certainty that nobody is qualified…because any qualified person simply won’t put up with it and will find something else to do. And this doesn’t just stop with law – it is already moving into medicine and engineering and the firm designing bridges for us better have the “right” number of diversity hires and they better work on the prestige projects…which means you’ll eventually be getting products designed by incompetents and finding out your doctor is functionally illiterate. I’ve been saying that if we let this continue, we’ll eventually be treating cancer with goat entrails…and we’re moving right along on that.

China has launched her first domestically designed aircraft carrier. It is significantly smaller than a Nimitz or Ford class carrier – and not much is known about the specifications. But it shows that (a) propaganda against carriers is likely orchestrated by Chinese agents who want us to abandon them and (b) that China is building a fleet with the sole purpose of challenging American naval supremacy. China is still about ten years away from a credible challenge to us – but, also, maybe sooner as our own Navy decays from neglect. They want us gone. And understandably so – heck, if Catalina Island was a breakaway part of the United States and a foreign power was able to patrol at will off our west coast, we’d probably want to do something about it. I get it: I’ve no complaint about China doing what its doing. It is precisely what I’d do if I were Chinese.

But, I’m American…and I recognize that American naval supremacy is key to ensuring that war doesn’t come to American shores. And so much as I understand and even sympathize with Chinese ambitions, I want them stopped. But, right now, there is no will to stop them…and each year we lack the will the take up the challenge, the weaker we become in relation to China. We’re rapidly approaching the point where we cannot physically stop an invasion of Taiwan. A few years from now, we might not be able to stop an invasion of Guam and a few years after that, Hawaii.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan14 Comments

District Attorney Chesa Boudin was recalled by the people of San Francisco. You really need to roll that one around a bit. He’s a darling of the Left and a scion of a multi-generational family of America Communists. He’s the standard of Progressive credentials. There is, apparently, such a thing as “too far Left” even in San Francisco. What’s going to be fun is watching Progressives blame this on America’s racist system…you know how San Francisco is a bastion of the Klan! But the reality is that white San Franciscans by and large wanted to keep him – it was POC, especially Asians, who did him in. Side note: Boudin’s family is rich and well-connected. Has been for at least three generations – that is modern Communism in a nutshell: highly privileged people who want to destroy the working and middle classes.

This is the crack in the door, in my view. Asians will soon follow Latinos in ditching the Left…not that Asians, any more than Latinos, are at the moment movement Conservatives…but both demographics believe in hard work and family. And if you want to be able to work hard and have a decent family, then you need a decent place to work and raise kids. San Francisco has become quite a Third World city over the past few years…and the next issue will be how San Francisco schools are making sure kids know about transgenderism but they aren’t making sure the kids can read. The diligent efforts of California’s university system to exclude high performing Asian kids will just accelerate this trend.

The cure for the Left is the Left in action – the thing that Boudin did (implement Marxist-Leninist legal theory) can only be done is a fully Totalitarian system of oppression. The Left is now moving far too fast…and the push back is getting intense.

Iowa. You know: flat. Corn fields. Weird caucus every four years. Well, they held their primaries tonight and compared to 2018 turnout, Democrat participation was down 15 percent. That is bad. Harbinger of a really tough ride for the Democrats this November…but the GOP participation was up 79 percent. This is an indication of a political meltdown for the Democrats. One pundit was only half-joking when he commented that if you’re not in a D+6 or better seat, you’d better hope your GOP opponent is certifiably insane. But, as they say, there’s more! In New Mexico the Democrats made up 70% of the primary voters in 2018…today, they’ll top out at about 54%. It is going like that all over the country – in primary after primary GOP turnout is way up over 2018 while Democrat turnout is flat or down. This November could be genuinely historic in the results. There might not be anything to compare it to in the past.

The real beauty of this is that when they Democrats get wiped out this November, it won’t cause them to reconsider their views. They can’t, don’t you see? Once the Party Line has been established, you can’t alter it. Already the Left is saying that Boudin lost because he didn’t Commie hard enough and those mean, racist Republicans lied about him. They can’t step back and say something like, “you know, perhaps there is a bit of a good idea in bail reform, but maybe we should dial it back to only non-violent offenders?”. They are incapable of this – the Party Line has decreed that cash bail is a racist support of the White Supremacist Capitalist Imperialist AmeriKKKan system. If you question abolishing cash bail, that makes you one of them. And, so, come January, 2023 as the GOP takes Control of Congress, the various third-rate people who pull Biden’s strings will just go even further Left. If we Commie just a little harder, it’ll work! And, so, bring on 2024!

You may or may not have heard of the kerfuffle over at the Washington Post about reporter David Weigel and the Horrible Sexist Joke. To nutshell: Weigel, a dyed-in-the-wool Leftist, retweeted a joke: “All women are bi. You just need to figure out if its sexual or polar”. Now, to be sure, this is a joke in poor taste. It is, also, funny, because we all know – especially women – that there’s always a little crazy in there. Full disclosure: the crazy is in there because they have to deal with men. One of the Post’s resident feminist scolds decided to make an issue of this – which, first of all, means she monitors her co-worker’s social media accounts. That right there tells you she’s nuts. But, that aside, it then all blew up with various people staking out various positions. Most people on the right are just “pass the popcorn” and watching the Left eat itself. But I’ve also noticed that some on the right are urging the Post to get control of the situation and, also, issuing statements of support for Wiegel after he got suspended. And I’m all: have you guys been paying attention at all?

Weigel, himself, is a far Left fanatic. That he’s being ground up in the Social Justice Warrior meat grinder is nothing more than funny…he helped build it and has often turned the handle when other people were tossed into it. This is what he wanted – the only thing to ask him is how does it taste? Then there’s people calling on the Post to support standards of journalism and fire the lady (wild-eyed lunatic Taylor Lorenz) who started all this. Journalistic standards? At the Post? Since when? Pretty much since at least Reagan’s first term in office, the Washington Post has consistently lied about everything related to politics. It probably goes back further than that, but I wasn’t paying attention when I was a kid. They knew precisely what they were getting when they hired Taylor Lorenz – a notorious Leftist with a heavy tinge of Maoism about her. They hired her just for this. To be a lunatic throwing poop all over everything. It is what the (rapidly shrinking) readership of the Post wants. And do remember that the Post is a mere rich man’s hobby…it isn’t there to make money or tell the truth. Its there to impart a certain worldview pleasing to the money bags.

Unless and until everyone on the Right admits that 99% of the MSM are mere regime Propagandists – liars with out a shred of honor – we’re going to always have trouble winning. These MSMers are not people to pay attention to. They are contemptible in every sense of the word. Only Christian charity would lead me to piss on one of them if they were on fire. Mock them when you aren’t ignoring them.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan20 Comments

Representative Henry Cuellar (D-TX) is sounding the alarm about Democrat chances in November…but, there’s an odd wrinkle here: Cuellar’s office was raided by the FBI a little while back and he’s embroiled in a scandal. OTOH, we know that Democrats use the FBI and DOJ to punish political opponents and the last thing Team Pudding Brain wants right now is a Latino Texas Democrat warning that they’re going to get destroyed in November because Latinos are going to vote GOP…and a lot of the reason will be Biden’s Border Crisis.

Democrats are getting alarmed here in Nevada, as well. All 4 of our House seats are up along with 1 Senate seat and the governorship. 3 of 4 House seats are currently Democrat as is the Senate seat and governorship. Democrats thought they had this sewn, don’t you know? With total control of the State government it was Fun Time! Part of their fun was redistricting and the Democrats took their Life Seat (NV-01) which was packed full of Democrats and broke it up a little bit to provide more Democrats in other House districts. That was before gas prices sky rocketed and polling started to show a big shift of Latino voters to the GOP. But now they’re kinda stuck…NV-01 is still a high hill for the GOP to climb but in a Red Wave year it could easily go GOP. Meanwhile, Senator Cortez-Masto (D-Zombie Reid) is a nonentity running against Republican Laxalt who is proving an excellent campaigner and the GOP has two good prospects to run against Governor Sisolak (D-Whatever the DNC Tells Him to Do). Could be some very good news in Nevada this November.

Ron DeSantis does it again. No, not smacking Disney down. Not stopping grooming in kindergarten. No: this time, its limiting tenure as public universities. This sort of thing is small but crucial. Progressives get themselves deep inside and then change everything … and one of the best ways to be “inside” is to be tenured in a university. You are practically untouchable. Its like being a made man in the Mafia. There is a huge argument about whether we should go Trump or DeSantis in 2024. I don’t care which one of them gets it – either is going to be a fighter for us.

Remember the lunatic conspiracy theories about people having their organs removed for transplants? Well, looks like the Conspiracy Theorists were just ahead of the curve. Again. But, really, this is bestial what the Chinese are doing – all very Soylent Green which, along with Rollerball and Network are the three 1970’s movies to most accurately predict the future.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan33 Comments

Some recent polling indicates an impending disaster for the Democrats – but outside polling, the RNC is now targeting about 70 Democrat House seats. Sure, there is some bluster always built into such things, but that large a number shows the GOP knows that if there’s a year to just have someone running, this is it. A lot of seats can fall our way just because we’re not the Democrats.

In response to the dire political picture, the Democrats seem set on fighting over Florida’s law to ban teaching sexuality to kindergartners. I don’t think this will work out as well as they hoped – though there is a chance that such a thing is merely to keep suburban white women on board. In other words: to prevent a 40 seat loss from turning into a 70 seat blowout. You know: “hey, we know that prices are through the roof and crime is rising, but don’t vote GOP! Don’t want your neighbors to think you’re a homophobe, do you?”.

Other than that, the issue is a real loser for the Democrats. The line has been crossed and people don’t want any of it. Polling on it shows massive public support with even pluralities of Democrats not keen on teachers talking sexuality with little kids without parental knowledge or consent. Even a lot of gay people are coming out forthrightly in favor of the law: because everyone knows that when you’re six years old, you don’t have a sexuality…and they further know that it is absurd to provide life altering chemicals and surgery to kids because they allegedly are trans.

All of a sudden, both the New York Times and the Washington Post confirm the Hunter Biden laptop story. Everyone is asking: why this and why now? After all, the lie was already sold and did its job. The Democrat base remained convinced that the laptop was bogus. So, why even bring it up again?

Various theories are put forward: Putin is about to release a lot of dirt, so get ahead of that. There are investigations going and they may result in indictments in spite of strenuous efforts by DOJ to avoid it, so get in front of that. They’re going to 25th Joe out and this will be the leverage to get Team Pudding Brain to go along with that. I simply don’t know – but whatever reason they’ve brought it back up again, it bodes ill for the Democrats.

The bottom line is that the e mails are authentic – and that means that Hunter Biden is massively compromised by foreign powers and “the Big Guy” probably is as well. How this is to be managed if it comes out in a way that even the MSM can’t cover it up for the Democrat base is going to be tricky.

San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin – yes, the son of the Commie murderers of yore – is facing a recall effort. Think about that: a Commie son of Commie murderers is facing recall in San Francisco. Trump woke us on the right up to how bad things are – but Pudding Brain and his like at the local level in the post-Trump world is now starting to wake up urban Progressives. This is not to say that I expect San Francisco to vote GOP any time soon…but gun ownership is rising and, very quietly and only among trusted friends, these urban Progressives are now starting to question aspects of the Progressive religion. I’ve seen several bits written by such – and they freely admit that they’ve always hated Republicans, assuming such are ignorant racists, and that they, the Progressives, were on the right side of history leading the world to a future of peace, prosperity and justice. But that was before they had their car broken into a dozen times and had to step over mounds of feces on the sidewalk outside their zillion dollar home.

Revolutions happen slowly and then all at once. Think about the Russian revolution – on the whole, actually, things were better than they had been in Russia in times past. Even with the war – which Russia had de-facto already won (only to lose it because of the revolution) – things ground along pretty well. There was more freedom of speech than ever before. Political engagement was increasing. There was a rising class of independent farmers. The government was fairly competent and staffed by mostly honest men. But then, without warning, people just decided they had enough – that, while better than olden times, they simply couldn’t endure the Czar and his system any longer. It was nearly universal: hardly anyone stepped up to defend monarchy: from nobleman to laborer, everyone simply agreed that whatever else happened, the Czar had to go. And so it was done and a 300 year old dynasty was swept away in a couple days. I think it may be like that here – that our total Ruling Class (which includes a lot of GOPers, of course) will find that they’ve worn out their welcome. That even if things aren’t horribly bad, they have to go, even if we don’t agree about what comes next.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan57 Comments

Of course they spied on Trump. We all knew that pretty much from the get-go, but it is nice to get some additional confirmation on it. The real problem isn’t the spying but that nobody will really pay the price for it. They’ll protect each other. In fact, I suspect that this particular release was allowed because some Democrats want to put a veto on Clinton’s revived interest in Presidential politics: there are plenty of signs and rumors that she’s at least thinking about a 2024 run. Most Democrats don’t really want that – certainly Team Pudding Brain and Team Harris don’t want it.

Our only way out of this is to dismantle the National Security State. As I’ve said before, it has to go. Really, having things like an FBI and CIA are incompatible with a Republic. We can, perhaps, endure a very small group of intelligence operators who focus entirely on external threats and ferret out spies in the US, but I mean small. Like not more than a couple hundred in total, with US Special Forces troops providing on the ground muscle at need. Certainly there must be strict prohibitions against collecting any data on American citizens without a warrant and periodic outside audits to make sure they’re staying on the straight and narrow.

Meanwhile, the word is that Durham’s investigation is accelerating.

Trafalgar, one of the best pollsters of the past few cycles, has it R+12 in the generic Congressional ballot. Nobody has ever seen anything like that. Everyone is (wisely) taking it with a grain of salt. This is wipe-out territory even if it is R+6. The real kicker in the poll: it was a D+3 sample. Under Pudding Brain, we may test the irreducible minimum of Democrat support.

Canada went under de-facto martial law today – never thought I’d see anything like that. It is very strange – all they have to do is end the absurd mandates and it all goes away. Its not like Trudeau was ever all that popular to begin with. He, in fact, got less votes than the Opposition last time out (though his party ended up gaining a few seats given the weirdness of Canadian politics). He’s pretty much already at the irreducible minimum for a Liberal Prime Minister and the next election is years away. But he’s calling out the big guns. Tactically, the truckers should retreat – just go home. And stay there. Let Canadians find out how dependent they are on truckers. Already there is increasing pressure within Canada to end the mandates, so what amounts to a strike by the truckers would be highly effective.

In the US, the mask mandates are dropping like rocks: our Democrat governor here in Nevada, who apparently can read the polls showing a Red Wave building here, decided that The Science called for an end to mask mandates. But here’s the weird thing: in some Democrat areas, the general mask mandates are being dropped but the mandates for masks in schools are being extended. That is just bizarre as kids are least at risk for catching and transmitting the disease. The teacher’s unions are naturally behind that, but I don’t see the upside for them on it. Could just be Progressive pigheadedness.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan20 Comments

One of the sure signs of an impending political disaster for a political party is a series of articles explaining why in spite of everything going to heck in a hand basket, this time everything will be different. Getting a lot of these articles about the Democrats. The best so far was one which asserted that even in an R+1 environment, the Democrats can hold the House. Its like they’re ignoring that the GOP only needs a net gain of 6 to take the House. If it was D+4 this GOP takeover is likely to happen…but with Pudding Brain sitting at around 42% in the polling aggregates, the best outcome for the Democrats right now is a net loss of about 30.

And the really curious thing is that the Democrats don’t seem to fully realize what’s coming for them – I mean the stalwarts and the pundits. The Democrat leadership does, its why we’re up to something like 28 or 29 House Democrats calling it quits: who wants to fight a hard battle only to wind up in a very powerless House minority in 2023? And that minority gets more powerless all the time – both parties guilty (though Democrats far more guilty) of reducing the minority’s ability to affect legislation. And now in 2023 will come the tit for tat removal of Democrats from committees. I really can’t explain the Democrats on this – with a razor thin majority, the time was to try to co-opt at least some GOPers…nothing doing: it has been all hard left. Could be, of course, that with the narrow majority the far Left Democrats are insisting and Nancy really can’t do anything else.

We’ll see how it comes out – but I don’t think Democrats can talk their way out of bare shelves and high gas prices.

We did some sort of raid into Syria. Supposedly to kill some terrorist mastermind – they say we got him, and also got some kids. I think the bad guys are making sure they’re always around kids and other non-combatants. Seems to me that we should pay a hitman to take these guys out – less expensive and less chance of killing kids when we do it. It is probably illegal for us to do that – but Congress has the power to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal (though some treaties we’ve engaged in limit that), and I think we should go that route – even if it means denouncing some treaties. Let our intel agencies name the guys we want dead, put a price on it and then grant a Letter of Marque to anyone who wants to give it a shot – bring us proof the target is dead, collect the money. You’re on your own – get caught or killed, nothing will be done for you. Plenty of people would take us up on the offer.

Facebook is losing users. It is the most irritating social media platform I’m on. I only retain my account because it allows me to keep track of family and friends. But I have been suspended for the most mild political jokes posted. And my account is small, which means some narc who knows me – or knows someone who knows me – is monitoring my posts and reporting me. Others are even more irritated than I am. Facebook has a choice: be a platform which allows people to talk, or die. Personally, I think they’re going to die: like the MSM, their cultural imperatives are such that they can’t change.

Think of Joe Rogan: he gets 11 million views for his podcast (I’ve never listened to it, myself). This is more than the top three cable news programs combined (all of which are on Fox). Listening to people who talk about him, he seems a left-of-center guy who just invites people on who he thinks have something interesting to say – you know, keep the show topical and interesting to draw and retain an audience. The rather “no duh” media model. All the MSM has to do to restore its viewership is do the same thing – stop being DNC lapdogs and just talk openly about things people might want to hear. Presto: eyeballs on screens. But they can’t seem to do it – they’ve gone with their usual method: trying to get Rogan banned. They managed to snooker (very easily, because they’re stupid) some aged, has-been recording artists to pull their music from Spotify (which carries Rogan) with a demand that Rogan goes, or they go. The funniest bit about this is David Crosby who made a fuss after Neil Young did…but it seems that neither Crosby nor Young own their music rights, having sold them in the past (presumptively after blowing all their money). But even if they could get their stuff off, Spotify is telling them to take a leap – Rogan is getting 11 million hits a show…Crosby is probably getting a few thousand hits a month.

Canadians have had it with Trudeau’s Covid restrictions and massive protests by Truckers are causing all sorts of trouble for the Canadian Ruling Class. With the workers uniting to resist oppression, the Socialists know what to do: take down the Truckers Go Fun Me account.

Meanwhile, Team Pudding Brain put out its latest Covid plan and it says…to pretty much keep on doing what we’re doing: useless mask and vaccine mandates. These mandates will only be followed by the Democrat governors already following them…GOP governors will continue to ignore them. The math here is very strange: to be sure, a segment of the population is still terrified of Covid. This is the Democrat base – especially white, upper class college educated females. You’ll still find them talking about being triple vaxxed and never stirring from home except at great need. But, seriously, how big a political constituency is this? It can’t be more than 15% of the population, tops. Everyone else is really getting rather done with it: as has been pointed out, if masks worked, then they would have worked a long time ago. After two years of wearing a face diaper everywhere if we still have Covid, then we ain’t getting rid of it. All the mandates do is please the cowardly and piss everyone else off.

And that is before you add in the hypocrisy – mask mandated California is about to host a maskless Super Bowl. You know, we can all see this – and see the politicians not wearing a mask (the LA Mayor was caught without one and seriously tried to sell us “I held my breath as I took the picture”). We know its all BS. We can’t imagine why some people are still living in a world where we have to “fight Covid”…and my bet is that when vote-counting time comes around, the number of people who will punish mandates will vastly exceed those thankful for them.