China

Up, Up and Away Open Thread

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Did not have “Chinese balloon rings death knell for the USA” on my bingo card.

Jesse Kelly points out that this is all our own fault – we have paid for the rise of China from worthless Commie backwater to evil Commie superpower. And when you really think back on it all, just what was the point of normalizing relations with China? It is held up as Nixon’s signal foreign policy triumph but what, really, was the benefit of it? And I mean to the USA, to China and to the world?

It sure in heck didn’t help us in Vietnam. Nixon went to China in 1972 and that didn’t stop North Vietnamese tanks from rolling into Saigon in 1975.

It didn’t help bring down the USSR. “Play the China card” was supposed to be some super-trump in global foreign relations…but as far as getting rid of the USSR, China might as well not even been there.

China’s ruthless exploitation of poor and naive third world nations isn’t doing anyone any good.

China’s ruthless dumping of third rate goods and fentanyl into the USA is kinda a bad thing, right?

China’s corruption of the global Ruling Class is probably not working out as a net plus.

And then there is China, as such. Sure: Marco Polo bringing back the concept of pasta did wonders for dinner. Paper money? Maybe not such a good thing. Chinese music, art and architecture can’t hold a candle to the West. Philosophy? Confucius wrote down copy-book maxims designed to perpetuate his class in power…China has nothing to compare to Aristotle or Aquinas…not even anything as good as Ashoka or Averroes. Just what are we supposed to get out of China? Where’s the benefit? They’ve grafted onto the stump of Maoism the industrial Midwest…goody for them. What’s in it for us?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there is no point in the United States having relations with nations like China. It is poison. Perhaps a free China would be worthwhile, but while China is under tyranny, we should be completely separate from them.

Pudding Brain’s people are claiming 517k new jobs in January.

This did not happen.

I’m telling ya: they’re just making the numbers up. We had report after report of major corporations downsizing all month and they pop up with 517k. Yeah, right. Keep in mind that even under the honest, the jobs number is a guess based on particular assumptions…for the dishonest, its any number they want…and in this case they wanted a number for China Joe to puff for his SOTU next week.

The MSM is already getting into “DeSantis is worse than Trump”. We all knew this was coming – the only question is how ready RDS is for it? Especially if it looks like he’ll be the nominee, they will pour garbage all over him…and he will be the subject of multiple federal and State criminal investigations. It doesn’t matter what about – they made it all up about Trump, they’ll make it all up about RDS. It will take real guts to overcome it – and we’ll see if RDS has that.

It is Black History Month and I guess Disney is running a bit for the kiddies asserting that America was built by slaves and other 1619 Project drivel. If you are not in favor of eliminating Woke corporations then you haven’t been paying attention.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan40 Comments

Elon Musk announced that he was going to release the info about how the Hunter laptop story was suppressed on Twitter and everyone got al excited. Except me.

The crucial thing we need to know – the only thing we need to know – about how Twitter suppressed the story is who outside Twitter ordered it done. Now, do I have proof that someone outside Twitter gave the order? Of course not. But the bottom line is that as soon as the Post released the story federal law enforcement, almost all the MSM and all major social media platforms suppressed it. You don’t get that sort of uniformity of action without coordination – and you can’t coordinate that sort of action on the fly. People way up high in power in the USA were aware at least some days in advance that the Post story was coming and they swung into action to make sure it had as little effect as possible. They had their talking points all lined up – it was Russian disinformation. They got 50 former intel guys to sign a letter stating it was a Russian op. Doing this sort of thing takes a few calls, ya know?

So what I want to know is who called Twitter. Someone did. There’s no way it didn’t happen. If I can find out who made the call then I can find out who was ultimately behind the suppression effort by working backwards from that person and seeing who they did or do work for. And I called it before Musk released the info – 100-1 against us getting that crucial bit of information. And, sure enough, when the data was dropped, it lacked that. All it told us was what we already knew – that Twitter came up with an absurd excuse out of the Safety group and the story was gone.

Now, to be sure, they did say that political operatives – including some Republicans – had made various requests to suppress this or that account. But they still didn’t name any names. Likely because if we had an idea who had been calling before Laptop, we could eventually figure out who called for Laptop. Because as far as that goes, it had to be someone who knew about it – so, likely DOJ and/or Team Pudding Brain made that call.

And keep in mind that even if you want to say that fraud played no role in 2020, the suppression of this story did. It is absolutely hideous. Had it been about Don, Jr then Trump would have been lucky to crack 40% on election day. China Joe’s son is hip deep in federal crimes based on info on that laptop…and the pictures are downright disgusting. It was a candidacy-killer. Had it been given the normal play a story like that gets, these days Joe’s lawyers would be arguing he’s senile and so isn’t fit to stand trial. It was killed because to save Biden and get Trump out, it had to be killed. And, yes, this does make it even money that senior GOPers played a role in suppressing the story.

Until we get that info, its all pretty pointless. Musk says there is more to come – so, let’s hope. But I have my doubts that the truth will come out…because, remember, a lot of laws get broken in campaign offices and law enforcement agencies when you coordinate with media to favor one party over the other in a political campaign. A lot of well-placed people will be in jeopardy if it all comes out.

Apple CEO Tim Cook dodged questions about Apple’s relationship with China – because what else could he do? You do business in China and the Chinese own you. They have your factory. They control your labor force and supplies. If you don’t toe the PRC line, you’ll lose everything. And that is before the PRC gets you in-country, indulges any perversions you have and gets it all on video.

I’ve thought for decades that America having relations with tyrannical regimes is a huge mistake – we poison ourselves when we do that. Either we believe in our Declaration or we don’t. If we do, then we can’t hold that the PRC is a legitimate government – it is a mafia with an army. And you can’t make honest deals with the mob. We should, step by step, de-couple ourselves from all unfree nations.

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.

War

Mark Noonan34 Comments

With Ukraine in the news I’ve been pondering a lot about our general view of the world. One thing that has been striking a jarring note for me is the assumption that we bear some sort of responsibility for Ukraine. That Ukraine as an independent nation is something that we must secure.

Why?

To be sure, some say that in Ukraine’s deal to give up nuclear weapons, we pledged ourselves to Ukraine’s defense. But, we really didn’t: we pledged to rush right off to the UN if Ukraine was attacked – a UN which, of course, has a Russian veto and so the whole thing was quite toothless from the get-go. But even supposing we had an agreement to come to Ukraine’s defense, does this then relieve Ukraine from the obligation to defend herself?

Seems to me that if I were a Ukrainian patriot with a neighbor like Russia, I’d put a high priority on national defense. I realize that Ukraine is poor, but the Israelis were dirt poor in the 1950’s and their first priority was a military second to none because they had hostile neighbors who could attack at any moment. A Ukraine filled with people committed to the Ukrainian national ideal would have a very powerful army, thickly layered defenses and a reserve force made up of the entire adult population in arms. You know – be so well armed that even a successful foreign invasion would drown in blood. Do that, and the chances of that foreign attack diminish remarkably.

Ukraine’s active military is a little more than 200,000. Reserves about 250,000. To defend 230,000 square miles and 41 million people. That’s not a lot. That’s not nearly what you need. It isn’t nearly what you’d have if the Ukranian people really gave a damn. To give you a comparison, when Israel was attacked in 1973, out of an Israeli population of about 3 million, the Israelis mobilized about 400,000. That’s 13 percent. That can’t be sustained for long (your civil economy starts to collapse), but when your life is on the line, you do it. You’d think that 41 million Ukrainians could have 4 million ready to mobilize in a life-and-death emergency. And they would, if Ukrainians really cared – because Russia is right next door and the President of Russia believes that Ukraine is an integral part of Russia.

And if the Ukrainians won’t do it – won’t even show willing to do it – why in heck does anyone else have to care? Because wars of aggression are wrong? Well, yes they are – nobody ever has a moral case for starting a war, or setting things up so that the only way out is for someone to start shooting. But lots of things are wrong – the way some Arab countries treat women is wrong. What China is doing o the Uyghurs is wrong. The slave trade in Africa is wrong. The drug lords running rampant in Mexico and Central America are wrong. Lots of things are wrong which war, successfully prosecuted by good guys, could set right. But do you want to?

Who wants kids from Ohio and Alabama to head off to the Donbas to keep the Russians out of lands largely populated by ethnic Russians? Or send them off to Xinjiang to liberate the Uyghurs from China? Or even clear out the drug lords from Ciudad Juarez? If anything, I’d rather help the Mexicans dispose of the cartels – but before I hazard American blood on anything, I’d like to know for certain why we’re doing it and what we get out of it.

The first thing to keep in mind about the world is that it isn’t neat and tidy. There isn’t a completely right answer in purely human affairs. Often, there’s just a least-bad answer. The unification of Italy and Germany into nation-States was an utter disaster for the world and, most especially, Italy and Germany. The freeing of the peoples of the Austrian Empire was a disaster for the peoples of the Austrian Empire. I mean, I dig that Poles didn’t like officious Austrian overlords (who would?) but the officious Austrians kept a cavalry barracks at Oświęcim, not a death camp at Auschwitz. I guess what I’m saying here is think carefully about what you want before you act.

What I want, first and foremost, is a free and independent United States. If I’ve got that, then I am very satisfied with the world. Naturally, I understand that the United States cannot live in isolation from the world. People and trade flow around and ambitious people with wicked minds are here, there and everywhere. I do have to keep an eye on things. I will, at times, be forced to fight. But when I fight and how I fight must refer back to my first principle: a free and independent United States.

Now, as I consider Ukraine I note that it was firmly under Russian rule from 1776 until 1917 and then, again, from 1921 until 1991. At no time during those periods was Russian rule in Ukraine a threat to American freedom and independence. It just wasn’t. Sure, from a geopolitical standpoint it would have been advantageous to the US to have an independent Ukraine all through the Cold War…but it wasn’t a necessity as proved by the fact that all through the Cold War we didn’t have an independent Ukraine. If Russian rule is reimposed in Ukraine, what ill effect will this have on American freedom and independence? I can’t see any.

“But Russia might go on and attack more!”

They might. Baltic States, Poland. On and On. I note that Poland was under Russian rule from 1791 to 1918 with no ill effect on American freedom and independence. I’m very sympathetic to the Poles as they have put up with a lot. But does my sympathy for Poland extend to sending American kids to die there? Make your case, if you’ve got one. I can’t. I could not look an American kid in the eye and tell him that his death along the Bug River will keep America free and independent. I couldn’t say it because it wouldn’t be true.

Don’t get me wrong, there can be existential, global threats. Communism was such, as was Nazism. They both proposed the whole world as their jurisdiction. Fantastic as it sounds, the USSR considered the American Communist Party as the legitimate American government and Hitler had named Goebbles to be Gauleiter of America. Fighting such things anywhere is what you have to do because if they win anywhere, they are step closer to overthrowing American independence and freedom. But Putin is no Hitler or Stalin. He does not represent a global ideology at permanent war with all dissenters. He may be a bastard twenty different ways, but he’s not an existential threat.

I agree there are non-existential threats which still must be confronted. Radical Islam. Chinese imperialism. And even a bit of Russia’s aggression are causes of concern, sometimes grave concern, which could make fighting them necessary. While I don’t think Ukraine rises to such a level, I do hold that Russian meddling in the United States is a problem. But far more than Russian meddling I find the threat in Chinese and Islamist meddling to be a huge threat – especially given how much money Islamists and Chinese have to bribe Americans to betray their own.

In wanting to contend with such threats, I can agree to enter into mutual defense pacts with other nations. I can agree to military action and even full scale war. I do believe that if China attacked Taiwan, that is worth us going to war over – because of China’s meddling in the United States such a conflict, successfully concluded by China, would simply put us in a worse position vis a vis China and so allow them to interfere in our internal affairs even more.

It would, naturally, be to Taiwan’s advantage to accept our aid against China. If we win, they win. But even in such a clear cut case of fighting for American interests, I still want a clear goal and a clear payoff for our expenditure of treasure and blood. We can’t go out to bleed and die just to help – we have to be compensated for our efforts.

Suppose we had to go to war with China. Fine. It would be a years long and very expensive war in blood and treasure. I believe that even as ruined as we are right now, we would prevail in the war (China isn’t nearly as powerful as advertised). And that would be good. But we can’t do it like we did after WWII. That was a horrendous mistake: we helped our defeated enemies return to the world of competition with us. No. No, no, NO!. They had to pay. Heck, that war cost so much they should still be paying. We go to war with China and win, then for a century China should be paying us.

I’m deadly seriously here – after a war with China, I’d want every bit of gold and silver and art turned over to us and a 10% tax on China’s GDP for a century paid to us. Maybe even take some land from them: move the Chinese out and Americans in. The main thing is that they pay us for putting us through the trouble. We do not want to own the world. We do not want the world to do what we say. Yeah, maybe from mid-century on we’ve had some jerks who dreamed of such, but that wasn’t the American people. We just wanted to be left alone to hold our own. My view is that if you do things to us which force us to go fight you, then you’re going to pay. You’re not just going to lose the war, you’re going to be humiliated and then forced to work very hard to send money to us for a very long time.

It is time we got out of the dream world. All this UN, NATO, treaties and arms limitation garbage since WWII has been the answer provided by dimwits who never understood the world. The world is a real place. People do things in it. Good and bad. We can’t cure all bad and we don’t have the right to, anyway. Our primary duty is to look after ourselves – to make only temporary alliances at need, to make sure they are reciprocal (our blood to defend them, their blood to defend us) and when we defeat an enemy we don’t occupy and rebuild them…but we do make them pay. Through the nose. With usury. In blood and treasure.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan39 Comments

Secret Service is saying that $100 billion in Covid relief has be stolen. Rely on it: it is orders of magnitude higher than that. We do have to fault Trump a bit here as well – as this thing came in, the money spigot was turned on full blast. Pudding Brain has put that into overdrive, but we have to admit where it started.

Of course the money was going to be stolen. The primary purpose, for those in the know, was to steal. We didn’t really need to spend much on this – we did, after all, have a perfectly functioning economy and health care system when this started. At most we just needed a slight boost in what we were already spending. But the bonanza of cash simply thrown out the Treasury windows was and is the opportunity of a life time. Couple years from now and we will see a few indictments – people who stole beyond their station or who didn’t divvy up the way the bosses wanted. But my bet is that half, at least, of what has and will be spent was nothing but graft.

The dirty little secret of our government is that it spends so much money that nobody really knows what is going on. How can anyone keep an eye on trillions of dollars being spent? Do you realize how easy it is to divert hundreds of billions when you’ve got a flood of money that large?

Some rumors that Team Hillary is in Durham’s crosshairs. Hope so, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Cocaine Mitch, talking with Hugh Hewitt, basically said he’s asking Manchin to switch to the GOP – adding that he’s discussing whether Manchin would keep his chairmanship of Energy. I’m a bit surprised – not that it might be happening, but that it would happen now. I’d have thought Mitch would wait until well into 2022. OTOH, the Democrats are already a toxic brand and McConnell back in the Majority Leader spot shuts down all Democrat legislative programs. We’ll see how it comes out.

Donald Trump says he’ll hold a press conference on January 6th. A lot of people are downright frightened of this – I’m not. What better way to take the entire spotlight away from whatever the DNC/MSM will be doing that day? If he calls for the release of the 1/6 detainees, then I’ll figure its for sure that he’s running in 2024.

Since Covid hit, 5 million Americans obtained firearms. The people are arming in a replay of the Great Fear of 1789 in France. America is a tinder box right now – keeping in mind that our side is mostly made up of people who just want to be left alone. The problem – for the Left – is that if such people ever decide it is time to fight or die, then they tend to be quite brutal in settling accounts.

China bought Hollywood and then helped Hollywood destroy itself. It is the Chinese business model. China merely wanted to get itself going – so that it can provide pop-culture product on the global market…not so American pop-culture could come to dominate China. Now that China has got what it wanted, the Hollywood dreams of releasing American movies in the Chinese market have faded away. Hopefully this will force American studios to start making product designed for specifically for the American market. No more Superman who refuses to fight for the American way, as it were.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan44 Comments

No surprise that Milley may have been involved in coup activities against Trump. The bottom line is that pretty much everyone in the Executive Branch was working against him from Day One. They won’t tolerate an outsider. What this means is that if we secure the White House in 2024 – no matter who it is – mass firings must be the first order of business.

I know that a lot of the people in the Executive Branch have civil service protection – but those who can’t be fired have to be reassigned to sorting paper clips or something. They can’t be involved in forming or even knowing about Administration policy. And if we get a trifecta, then we have to make it so that all Executive Branch employees serve at the pleasure of the President. I get the idea behind 19th century Civil Service reform. The old “spoils system” was rotten to the core. But a system where supposedly apolitical career bureaucrats undermine a President they don’t like is worse than the most corrupt spoils system you can imagine. A corrupt crony of the President installed into office can be immediately removed when discovered – a civil service protected traitor can’t be. We elect the President to be absolute ruler of the Executive Branch. All Executive power is vested in the President. There is nobody else who has federal Executive power. Given this, only the person we, the people, place into the office may exercise discretionary power. Everyone else has to follow orders, or get out.

The Chinese just blew up 15 high rises which had sat empty for a decade. Mark it, folks: just as everything in the MSM about the United States is a lie, so is everything about China. We don’t really know the shape of the world because what is actually happening is buried under a mountain of lies. The lies are designed with varied purposes – but the general purpose is to increase the wealth and power of the Global Ruling Class, of which China’s Ruling Class is now the leading member. The bad news: we don’t know what disaster may suddenly explode upon the world because so many lies are being told.

I’ve discerned a new sort of Social Media Bot. Anyone who spends any time on Facebook or Twitter knows the normal Bot: someone paid to just mouth whatever is the Conventional Wisdom of the day. These bots are easy to spot: they usually follow a lot of people and have few followers. Because they aren’t real people. They don’t interact: they just post what they’re paid to post or argue mindlessly the point they’re paid to make. But now I see another type: harder to spot as they do genuinely interact and so can seem to be real people. But they still are part of the control system. Some of them will be Debbie Downers: always saying there’s no point, we can’t win. Others demanding purity on one issue and demanding that anyone who disagrees be blacklisted. Others stir up intramural fights. All three of them will usually be found to eventually be asking for money for something: the Cause, or the book they are writing, or some such. Have to be wary when on social media: as for me, most of my social media is done on Twitter. My block list has gone past 21,000. It is the way to keep it sane and ensure that I’m able to discuss things with real people.

LA County is going for vaccine passports. It is inevitable in any Democrat controlled area – especially after the recall failed (it failed because the Dems massive registration advantage combined with the GOP not finding a message which resonated: silver lining is that Latino voters continue to shift GOP, especially males…who in CA voted nearly identical to white males; Jose ain’t fond of Pronouns, “Latinx” and bums defecating on the sidewalk). The Democrats believe their talisman for victory is Covid fear-mongering. And if not victory, at least limiting the losses next year. If Pudding Brain is under 50% next November, it probably means 20+ House seats lost…and the lower into the 40s he goes, the worse…but the calculation seems to be that if they can keep up the fear and keep it tribal, they can limit their losses in the Purple areas.

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.