China

Open Thread

Mark Noonan28 Comments

Gas prices are up 40% under Pudding Brain. It just gets worse from here – because the way to choke off this inflation is to stop spending and/or jack up interest rates, neither of which Team Senile can do as either or both would tumble the economy into steep recession just in front of the 2022 mid-terms. OTOH, rising prices might do as much damage to them as a recession. There’s nothing we can do about it because we have no control over any lever of power here – all we can do is endure it and at least know that the difficulties the Democrats get into here are richly deserved.

For years, we’ve been angry and frustrated as corrupt and incompetent teacher’s unions parlayed the respect people have for teachers into ever more money for a totally useless public education system. The pandemic may have changed that. The unions proved corrupt and many of the teacher’s revealed themselves as time servers. Parents are at long last starting to push back…and some are even trying to take over the local school boards. The bottom line, though, is that public education is the problem of public education. It can’t be other than an indoctrination system – it is just a matter of which ideology will turn the crank and indoctrinate the kids. The only way to get quality education in line with parental expectations is to let the money follow the students. Absolute school choice – the parents get a sum per kid which can be used in any education facility they deem proper. Sure, you’ll get some weird stuff in there on that…but what you’ll mostly get is kids learning to read and write. And only being taught what the parents want. There isn’t a huge market out there for having your kids taught they are evil because they are white.

China uses social media to control it’s citizens – and is now using it to control everyone. It can’t be emphasized enough that a lot of what drives debate these days are social media trends which are almost entirely manufactured by interested parties. If you’ve got the money and the manpower (xir-power, I guess these days) you can get anything trending on social media. China does this – and then gets the global MSM to tout it (that’s the easy part – the parent companies of the MSM are so invested in China that they’ll get their news actors to say whatever is demanded). We must break up the big social media platforms and we must also regulate them: forbidding them from blocking or banning speech except for specific incitement to physical violence. The days when we on the right could defend corporate independence are over – especially when what we’ve got in social media is government censorship one step removed.

Related: Facebook will ban criticism of institutions if the criticism is intended to cause harm. In practice, this will mean that if you say something bad but true about Islam, you’ll get banned – if you say the most monstrous lie against the Catholic Church, you’ll be fine. Just watch and see.

Haiti’s President was assassinated. You really do feel for that poor country – ever since independence, it has endured tyranny and chaos in succession. It isn’t the people, as such: Haitians in the United States are some of the most successful and law-abiding people we have. But something in that land just brings out the worst in some people. The only thing I can think of is making it a Trust Territory – of the US, of – heck, I don’t know – Brazil. Someone, anyone, has to take charge of the place and govern it in the interests of the Haitian people and likely for a century or so. Until, that is, several generations can be raised up to live under law. They do in the United States – they will in Haiti, if they are compelled to do so.

The Mars helicopter had an amazing flight. This is something that does surprise me – I figured with the very thin atmosphere, they could never get anything off the ground. So, impressed with the engineers who figured this out.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan14 Comments

Over the years, I’ve written a bit about how I hold one of the most decisive moments for civilization was the French quitting in Algeria. I’m just reading a book about it – A Savage War of Peace, highly recommended – and I’m just past the part where DeGaulle is returned to power (very much due to the political stresses caused in France by the war in Algeria) and he’s reforming France and sent out a first-rate military commander to Algeria who pretty much whacked the Algerian rebels from pillar to post. That is now the end of 1959. The bottom line is that France had won the war – the Algerian rebels were still here and there in the interior, but only in small, hunted groups and even many Algerians were tired of it all. And then, over the next two years, DeGaulle just gave it all away to the rebels. This has been held as wisdom: France had to get out of Algeria and DeGaulle cleverly played up to those who didn’t want out until he was strong enough to dispense with them and make a deal with the rebels. This, to the Ruling Class in the West, was the only way to go. But, was it?

First off, it involved the betrayal of more than a million French citizens in Algeria; about 10% of the total Algerian population. It also involved the betrayal of at least 100,000 Harkis – these were Muslim Algerians who fought for France. Their numbers may have been even higher. This was more active fighters than the rebel ALN army had. By a lot. And you figure that for the 100k fighters, gotta be at least some family/friends who were supportive, so that might work out to another million people there who clearly preferred to remain part of France. They were completely screwed over by the French government. The French citizens were evacuated (though some were killed on the way out) while the Harkis, considered traitors by Algeria’s new masters, were killed, imprisoned or otherwise made to suffer for many years after the war.

Now, why bring this up? Because what France did was cross a bright, red line. At the end of the day, they passed power over to a group of people who, in the course of the war, routinely targeted unarmed non-combatants for death…and not just death, but often quite horrible and cruel death. In the end, Algeria did have to be independent: their current population is 44 million against France’s 67 million and it is just about impossible for that to be a colonial relationship. But recognizing the inevitable doesn’t get one off the hook for basic morality. It was a crime – a French crime – to turn the people of Algeria over to a pack of brutes, which is all the ALN ever was. The correct course of action was to simply state that this would never happen – that the future of Algeria was going to be decided by decent people, not by those who set bombs in stores or tortured people to death. The Ruling Class holds that you simply make the deal with whomever is fighting you – end the war by any means necessary. Decency requires that you only give into brutes if they are so strong there’s no way to stop them. France had won. All they had to do was keep up the pressure until the rebels quit and then – only then – would it have been time for France to work with those Algerians who weren’t brutes about what came after French rule.

And so it has gone over and over again since the end of World War Two: repeated fights between civilization and barbarism where civilization – massively restricting its use of power – still comes out first against the barbarians and then civilization just hands things over to the defeated savages. No wonder they keep at it. If you wonder why, say, the Palestinian leadership keeps it up it is because of this: they know, from nearly a century’s experience, that if you just keep being savages and merely manage to survive the retaliation, you’ll eventually be handed all you wanted. This has to change if we are to save civilization. The barbarians have to be taught that the wages of savagery is death and nothing else but death.

Fauci helped create the Coronavirus and then, from his perch, pretty much ensured our response to it would be counter productive. He’s either stupid or a traitor: I go with stupid. I recall that he’s only famous because he stood athwart Reagan during the AIDS epidemic.

Yesterday was Tank Man day: the anniversary of when that guy stood in front of the tanks at Tiananmen Square. What was entirely unsurprising was China’s efforts to censor references to it. The tech giants got caught and had to quickly re-adjust their algorithms, but for a while there a search of “Tank Man” brought nothing related to China up. Meanwhile, Facebook banned Trump for two years while China’s accounts were up and running, spewing out lies all the time. Our large corporations are owned by China: they have to go. If it takes confiscation, they have to go.

In the deep blue cities, the long term result of Floyd’s death has been a massive spike in crime, and a lot more black deaths. But, hey, at least they weren’t killed by cops.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan28 Comments

Sorry I’ve been out! Been sick the past week. Much better now.

So, Stumbles McGramps can’t climb stairs. What’s the over/under before the Democrats push him out?

We were utterly humiliated by the Chinese in the Alaska meeting – this was the CCP telling Taiwan, India and Japan that, at least for the next four years, America is of no account in the world. We’ll see how the nations of Asia react to this – I suspect we’ll see even more arms buildup amongst them.

In the long term, I don’t mind that. As it turns out, it was a mistake for the United States to attempt to be the security guarantor for east Asia. It is the Pacific which is our concern as it is the moat for us – our concentration should always be on keeping the sea lanes open. Actually pushing back against China is the responsibility, primarily, of India and Japan. I do believe we should maintain our alliances, but we should make it clear to our allies that it is their responsibility to build sufficient military force to defend themselves. I actually urge Japan and Taiwan to build nuclear weapons.

As for us: I’ve become a peacenik quite a bit over the past few years – I’m tired of the American Empire. We gain no benefit from it and the cost in blood and treasure is high. But the worst long-term aspect of it is that the necessity of a National Security State has been turned against us – our police and intel agencies are now being used against domestic dissent. Abandon the Empire. Return the Army to its proper number and functions (and revive the State militia) and abolish the FBI, NSA and CIA.

Ron DeSantis continues to ride high – mostly because he was the first big State governor to buck the lockdowns. The Democrats are, of course, hitting him hard but the bottom line, no matter how you want to slice the data, is that Florida is no worse off (at least) than any other State as far as infections and deaths while their economy is booming. DeSantis has also learned how to push back against MSM lies nearly as much as Trump did. So, he’s got a leg up right now for 2024 (presuming he wins next year – which looks pretty certain).

Democrats in the House are working on annulling the results of the IA04 House race. I’m really a bit perplexed on this one. Sure, Democrats always grab whatever they can get away with – but it is just one seat. And the blowback they’ll get in Iowa and around the country if they seat the Democrat who lost could be horrific for them. I’m not sure if it is mere bloody mindedness, or they’ve got some internal polling showing that they could lose the House majority in special elections between now and 2022.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan41 Comments

So, now they’ll call witnesses…you know, the people who were supposed to be called when the House was considering whether or not to impeach. Our Ruling Class is total clown show. Ted Cruz opines – and he’s likely correct – that they were ready to wrap this thing up but last night Social Media bots exploded with demands for witnesses and the Blue Checks caught the fever and here we are. Who orchestrated this? That is what I’d like to know – who paid the army of bots to make calling for witnesses trend on social media? Someone had to think it was a good idea.

It could have been the Chinese or other foreign actors who simply want America embroiled in domestic squabbles.

I do wonder if the Democrats have considered that when you accuse the innocent of crimes and hound them mercilessly, they tend to become what you said they were: in other words, treat 74 million Americans like rebels and what you’ll eventually get is 74 million rebels.

The Lincoln Project has completely imploded and, seriously, it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving set of creeps. Except for one thing: these people used to be our leaders. Respected voices! They didn’t just suddenly become garbage: they always were. Someone gave the go-ahead to remove the protection and here we are. But they all had to know. Especially the money bags. You might give $5 to a bum on the street without inquiring closely as to whether food or booze is to be purchased…you give millions and you’re going to find out every last thing about the guy. How many other groups – right and left – are run by garbage people warping our political debates, but they’re currently protected? I have a Twitter friend who is a complete Commie – he and I have had some interesting discussions about what we’d each like to see happen to the bosses of both parties.

France sent a nuclear attack sub to patrol the South China Sea. This is, interesting. I mean, that France is doing it. China lays claim to the entire South China sea, these claims being disputed by all other nations bordering that sea. Under Trump, we routinely sent ships in to enforce the fact that the South China Sea is international waters. Why France? I can only assume that France, taking note of America’s problems, has decided that if French interests in the area are to be protected, France will have to do it herself. This, long term, is a good thing. I am tired of the American Empire. I also don’t want us to go to war with China without allies having skin in the game. Japan and South Korea are making major increases to their naval power as a deterrent to China and that is also good. The bottom line is that no one is going to invade China – their vast population means they can just throw bodies at you until you’re exhausted. But in any war with China, it will be destroying China’s maritime trade which will be decisive. China requires not just massive exports to fund itself, but massive imports to sustain its internal life. This is why China is building a big navy. Anyone else adding anti-Chinese naval forces to the balance is a welcome thing.

I’ve seen various efforts afoot in Red States to terminate Critical Race Theory. Trump, of course, did this for the Executive branch but Biden has put it back in place. Nothing we can do about that right now – but where we have control, we should exercise that power. Critical Race Theory is a racist, Marxist philosophy which was cooked up as the economic justification for Marxism dried up in the1960’s and 70’s. As the poor and middle class in the capitalist countries became vastly wealthy by historic standards, the appeal of Marxism – that the poor can’t get ahead until they seize the means of production – was shown to be drivel, even if you ignored the manifest failure of the Communist countries to provide a decent standard of living. Latching on to race was the Marxist’s way out of the box: it wasn’t class, but race, which drove the cart. And until the inherent racism of American and Western society was destroyed, justice could not prevail. Anything we can do to get rid of this pernicious doctrine is justified; we cannot tolerate a philosophy which holds that white people are inherently racist and that America is evil. It has to go, or we go.

Out and About

Mark Noonan30 Comments

Trump won’t be charged for inciting a riot. These people are simply ridiculous.

Google suspended Parler from its app store. They really are going full blast into censorship.

Nikki Haley took a look at her political career and decided to burn it down. She said she wanted to deliver some “hard truths” in her speech to the RNC. What she delivered was idiocy. Look, I can understand if you don’t like Trump but right now, at this moment, if you are a GOPer, you don’t say anything bad about him. Keep your trap shut, ya dig? She opened hers – and she’ll still be hated on the Left, and now is forever mistrusted on the right. She’ll be the Jeb! of 2024.

New York City continues to be destroyed by the Democrats. Freed at last from any loyalty to the old, Corporate GOP, we should have a stunning opportunity here to start pulling Blue city voters over to our side.

How much ammo should you carry? Short answer: how much can you carry?

Murkowski is probably not going to run for re-election in 2022.

Georgia promises election reforms. Right now, we control the whole Georgia government. Put in a few Florida-style reforms, and Georgia might remain competitive for a few cycles (we are losing it: it is getting to be another Virginia…OTOH, North Carolina is becoming another Florida).

Senator Manchin said he wouldn’t go for $2,000.00 in Biden Bucks for ‘Rona relief – but, now maybe he will.

Joe Biden’s paymasters in China are claiming the concentration camps liberate women. Expect more of this as the next four years unfold.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan129 Comments

The Supreme Court shot down the Texas case – unanimously. This is about how I expected it to go. It shouldn’t have gone that way, but the Court wasn’t going to provide us a way out of this. Politics is always the answer to political problems. Do keep in mind, though, that war is a continuation of politics by another means. If we are sure our loss is due to cheating as the Democrats are convinced that their losses are due to cheating then politics will shift from ballot to cartridge box. It is incumbent upon everyone who wants a democratic Republic to ensure that all future elections are free and fair.

That said: do note that Democrats are already gearing to force Joe out – they’ll get him out over Hunter’s corruption of Joe senility, but they will get him out. He will not see the end of his term in office, come what may. Joe is pliable enough, but the last thing the Democrat powerbrokers want is a President who’s wife and closest aides are the only people allowed to see him.

As China cracks down on Hong Kong dissidents, one person notably silent on it is Pope Francis – likely as a result of the Vatican’s agreement with China, the provisions of which are still not fully known. To be sure, the Pope has said things against China, but it is odd that he hasn’t stood forth on the matters of liberty, and especially as it relates to Chinese Catholics. I have to come down hard on the Pope on this one: no agreement with China is worth this much. My view is that various parts of the Church bureaucracy are in the hands of the same sort of people who run the American and other global bureaucracies: ie, people who are both stupid and bought. China is a menace to human decency and must be excised from the councils of the world.

Speaking of which, the Democrats are practically owned by the Chinese. Don’t crow too much about this as I’ll bet a lot of GOPers are now CCP franchises, as well. What is really astonishing in the chump change which the Chinese buy our leaders with. You’d figure that if you were going to betray the greatest nation in human history, you’d at least want the ChiComs to provide a hot chick, right? Nothing doing: they’re sending us the chicks the CCP leadership rejected. Now we can really see why we went Russia, Russia, Russia this past four years: it was likely paid for and orchestrated by China, which has a vested interest in getting rid of Trump and having something else be America’s bogeyman.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan14 Comments

Texas is suing to block the election results. And, Texas is right – the rules of the votes were changed in an apparently unconstitutional manner which both violated Equal Protection as well as annulling the State Legislatures plenary power over how Electors are chosen. We’ll see how it comes out: if the Supreme Court rules that the State legislatures have to take it up, then the States in question all have GOP majorities. People do forget that the States elect the President and the State Legislatures – without any input from the State Executive – decide how Electors are chosen.

RIP: Chuck Yeager

As you all knew, China has lots of influence in America. And it is probably much worse than we think.

The bottom line is that our Ruling Class is largely made up of people who are very low: immoral people of little knowledge who care nothing for our country. We really should have seen this coming sooner.

The last time the sons of Americas most prominent families volunteered to fight for this country was World War Two. To be sure, a few joined up for later conflicts, but usually for brief tours far behind the lines. You don’t find the sons and daughters of the rich out there fighting in gritty places like Afghanistan. Nope. If they are there at all, it is a military lawyer or some such thing. This demonstrates that they don’t care about America. They love being rich and having the good life, but they feel no obligation to stand forth: and so the sons and daughters of the middle class and poor go (and, these days, fewer and fewer of the middle class show up). How much longer will working class kids from Alabama sign up to defend this country? How much longer before they decide that as they still have the will to fight, they are just going to fight to ensure that they reap the benefits of the United States?

One thing is certain: this can’t keep going on. We can’t sustain a Ruling Class which allows itself to be easily purchased by foreign enemies for a little money and illicit sex.

Lockdowns don’t work. Not quite sure what the real thing is here: I figured that after the election, they’d ease up. But now I’m starting to think they want St Joe to save us…so they are going to lock us down until Spring and then claim that the normal falling away of the virus is thanks to Biden forcing us all to wear the same masks we’ve worn since March saved us all.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan65 Comments

Project Veritas put out the proof that CNN is a mere propaganda arm of the DNC – something we’ve all known for a while. But for those a little slow on the uptake: CNN is only just now reporting that China lied about the Chinese Flu. Seriously: news you and I learned in January is now being breathlessly reported on CNN.

If your goal was to rig an election, then you would do just what the Democrats did.

Some are despairing that we’ll never get around this: that the cheat was so large and brazen in 2020, it shows we’ll never be able to win again. This is not the case: the Democrats always cheat. There has not been an election since 1824 when Democrats didn’t cheat. But cheating enough to win the Electoral College is a staggering undertaking and can only be done if you have total control over the voting districts you need. In 2020, because the GOP was caught flat-footed by the scale of Democrat cheating, the Democrats look to have pulled it off. But if they try again in 2024, the GOP will be wise to what they are doing – and, meanwhile, we have a great deal of power over the Democrat controlled areas, as we do in Florida, and can impose controls which will make cheating that less likely to succeed.

What is most important to me – and this is now yet another genuinely Conservative thing Trump has done (and, so, a Revolutionary act) – is that the fraud is very much out in the open now. The Democrats had to shove millions of ballots into the system to drag Biden over the finish line (no one really believes Joe Biden got more votes than Obama did in 2008). And Trump warned about it months in advance – he said precisely what they’d do, and then the Democrats went on an did it. The pressure will now build in areas where the GOP has control to improve processes to detect and prevent fraud.

You might have heard all sorts of worry-stories about Florida and Texas: how the Democrats were going to use voter fraud to flip both blue. Well, Trump won Texas by 631,000 votes and Florida by 371,000 votes. The Democrats did try to fraud there way through both States. They weren’t able to because the GOP got wise to their tactics and simply adjusted the rules to make cheating vastly more difficult. And, remember, even squish GOPers go along with these reforms: no GOPer wants to actually lose his or her race due to fraud. What I’m saying is, fret not! We’re not out of this game by a long shot.

The Chinese are not stupid – highest paid bureaucrat in California has ties to Chinese intelligence. One has to hand it to the Chinese: they are really good at what they do. Read the story: the man in question is an avowed patriot for China. He might be American, but he says his loyalty is to China. And yet he was given this very powerful and lucrative job. Back in Beijing, I’m sure that caused quite a lot of laughs. History is filled with rich Empires purchasing the loyalty of poor barbarian leaders…but I think that China’s purchase of America’s Ruling Class is unique. We are the richer nation, by far and yet they’ve bought us.

This is not just the ChiComs owning Joe: there is no aspect of American life where China hasn’t purchased a controlling interest. Our entertainment industry allows China to censor it. Our Tech companies fall all over themselves to help China develop tools of oppression. Social Media gleefully allows armies of Chinese bots to warp public perception of events. Politicians are paid off to dance around China’s manifest human rights violations. Chinese money flows into radical Left groups in the USA to foment hatred among Americans (they probably fund some of the more screwy right wing groups, as well). China didn’t even spend all that much money to get this: not only is our Ruling Class corrupt, it is cheap…$20 hooker stuff. What angered them all, and I think more than anything else, was that Trump was messing with this. China didn’t like it, either, and I’m sure Chinese intel helped out the DNC/MSM any way it could against Trump. Can we get around this? We’re going to have to or we’ll wind up a Chinese colony. And it will take even sterner actions than Trump was doing to make it happen: China must be pushed out of the United States.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan32 Comments

Trump is doing wonders for peace in the Middle East. The Palestinians fired off a few rockets at Israel, but that is just the pointless action of people being left behind. Only the Palestinian leadership and the Mullahs have an interest in continued war in the Middle East, and Trump has sidelined both of them. Trump should get a Nobel Prize for all this but he won’t because the entire global Ruling Class is garbage.

Who will win November 3rd? I think Trump will; but I don’t know. No one knows. Its all about whether the Love Trump+Fear Dems outnumber the Hate Trump people. For those of you who would like some good insights into what is happening on the ground, I suggest checking in from time to time with Larry Schweikart, M Joseph Sheppard and Cotto/Gottfried. They’re not mindless boosters but they also aren’t doom-and-gloom naysayers. They are, as far as I can tell, giving out info they think is correct. They are all on Twitter so, sorry Amazona!

Related: Bill Powell says the Trump people are confident.

Senator Cotton wants to undo China’s Most Favored Nation status. This is something we never should have given to China. But whatever merits it ever had, it is clear that China treats us as an enemy, so we might as well be realistic about such things and cut them off from our markets.

Are the ChiComs funding BLM? They’d be the most amazingly stupid people who ever lived if they aren’t. For China, BLM does two things: harms American unity while also allowing China to say, “see, America has civil rights problems, too.” All we know is that at the drop of a hat, BLM has rioters wherever wanted and bail money is provided very fast. Someone is funding BLM…and it isn’t American patriots.

Air Force says they are already test flying a 6th generation fighter. If so, good. Air superiority plus Naval supremacy are the twin pillars of American power. They allow us to intervene whenever we want to at minimal risk to American safety.

Suzie Sorority has become a BLM radical...and, as you suspect, it is because she’s been made insane by Progressive propaganda at college. But now, in Lancaster, PA, at least these upper class Bolsheviks are facing million dollar bail.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan59 Comments

China has a debt problem:

China’s consumer loans are shrinking at an unprecedented pace after a decade of breakneck expansion, a blow to the government’s strategy of relying on spending as a growth engine amid the worst public health crisis
in a generation.

The net balance of consumer loans – made up of short-term and credit card loans from banks and online lenders – plunged by a quarter in the first two months of this year to 7.4 trillion yuan (US$1 trillion), according to data published by the People’s Bank of China. Some microlenders are staring at 20 cents on a dollar in bad loans.

China is fundamentally weak because China’s government does not have the consent of the governed – it is really as simple as that. Governments like that of China can, for a while, make things seem to work – but only seem. China is a honeycomb of bad debts, corrupt deals, crime and poverty masked by showpiece cities. Not only did China’s economy take a massive hit from the virus, it is going to keep on taking hits as foreign nations move their supply chains out of China. People are at last awake to how dangerous it is to have their supplies come out of China because of the sort of government China has. We’ll see how China weathers the storm…but it will be a very difficult time for them.

Related: Bloomberg killed a story about the corruption of China’s ruling class. One of the most astonishing things about Coronavirus is how it revealed the extent of China’s corruption of American institutions. They’re all bought, to one degree or another. Our supposed Expert Elite betters seem to have one thing in common – they’ll sell their country out for a few bucks.

Obama finally got around to endorsing Biden.

Don Surber’s plan to reopen America.

Ace rips into the New York Times over their stealth-editing of a Biden story at the behest of the Biden campaign. The story, of course, was about the sexual assault allegations launched against Biden. The bottom line is the accusation is far more credible than that made against Kavanaugh – but the MSM is determined to cover up for Ol’ Joe…because he’s a Democrat, and there’s an end on it.

Rumor mill has it that AG Barr is still rolling steadily along on the investigations with Brennan said to be a large target. We’ll see.