Donald Trump

Making Peace Isn’t Appeasement

Mark Noonan19 Comments

Back in 1908 G K Chesterton wrote a book called Orthodoxy in which he explained his general views but the opening of it has always stuck with me:

Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true.

He went on to discuss the main bee in his bonnet on this – people who say they believe in themselves, pointing out that the madman is the most self-confident person. But this is applicable to any of the cynical maxims our worldly people believe that aren’t true. Another one – this one more relevant post-WWII – is that “you must not appease a tyrant”.

This is considered self-evidently true based on the fact that the British government – led, in turns, by Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain – tried to appease Hitler and the final result was World War Two. Aha!, say our Worldly Experts, the key, then, is to never appease. Never let aggression stand. Go right after those tyrants!

Except, of course, they’re full of it.

As it turns out, I would actually support a general American crusade against evil in the world. I would support raising an American military of 30 millions equipped with the most deadly weapons we can devise to drive through the world killing every last tyrant, murderer, liar and thief we could find. I would then write it in stone on mountains all over the world – in letters carved ten feet deep and towering a hundred feet high – that if anyone in the world set out to do what the dead evil tried, we will be back to kill them all over again. It would be a long, bloody and expensive war but when it was done, all the real evildoers being dead, we could relax in a Long Peace, maybe lasting for centuries before people forgot and started it all happening again.

But that isn’t what anyone wants. I might be the sole person on Earth who can contemplate such a thing. But that doesn’t make me wrong. It just makes me someone who has thought the matter all the way through.

Those who run our world and tell us we must not appease and must not deal with tyrants and so forth are, however, just lying. They’ll appease and deal all they want – when it suits them. And when it suits them to have us oppose the aggressor/tyrant, they’ll have us do so. But only half-hearted. Not all the way! We must stand up to Putin! But, no, not to the point where we’re actually harming him! Its like when we went to war against Terrorism in 2001 but refused to fight the actual Terrorists (you know, the Mullahs in Tehran). All they’re doing, really, is coming up with rationalizations for a policy which profits them the most. And, right now, the policy they want the most is continued war in Ukraine so they can keep harping on the nonsense idea that Trump is somehow Putin’s puppet and his peace deal is worse than Chamberlain at Munich.

Of course, Chamberlain at Munich wasn’t actually Chamberlain at Munich.

The official word we have about Munich is that a craven and stupid Chamberlain sold out the Czechs in the vain hope that it would buy Hitler off and thus avoid a war. The subtext being that Chamberlain should have stood firm and gone to war for the Czechs in 1938.

This is an arguable point – there was much to commend itself in the idea of fighting Nazi Germany in 1938. In hindsight, of course, we can really believe that had this happened, the world would have ended up in a much better place in later years. And it might have – but we don’t know. All we know is what happened. In the event, the Czechs, themselves, refused to fight. They blame the Brits and the French for not fighting but that is, well, bizarre. The choice to fight or not fight was the Czechs. They had a very good army and their defenses in the Sudetenland were formidable. Once the guns went off, no way to know how things might have turned out…lots of people would have loved to see Hitler taken down a notch and if the Czechs had stood tall, they might have found some combat allies. In no event would fighting have made them worse off as surrender merely ensured seven years of Nazi occupation followed by forty six years of Soviet domination.

But here’s the real crux of the matter – if it was morally required to fight Hitler’s regime in 1938 then it was equally morally required to fight Stalin’s regime. Between the two of them, in 1938, there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference. Hitler’s regime went on to plumb the depths of depravity with the Holocaust, but that didn’t start until after WWII began and wasn’t fully implemented until 1942. We can’t demand people at the time know the future – especially something as unimaginable in 1938 as Auschwitz. You can’t, that is, claim that a later event requires prior action. All we can do for 1938 is look at 1938 and see what might be best given what was known at the time.

The first thing to remember about 1938 is that it was just twenty years since the end of World War One. A million Brits had been killed in that war. France had lost more than a million. Nobody in either country wanted a resumption of that. And British and French intelligence had determined, very firmly, that hardly anyone in Germany wanted a war, either. After all, the Krauts had lost nearly two million…and lost the war! The only thing the leaders of the world could see resulting from a war was another slogging match with piles of corpses and victory bought so dear as to be indistinguishable from defeat. Once again – remember! – you do not know about the Holocaust. It hasn’t happened. Hitler’s regime is no more evil than Stalin’s and nobody is demanding war to the death against Stalin. The British, especially, realized how precarious their position was…they were still massively in debt from the war, but their economy was just starting to recover from the depth of the Depression…and they still ruled a quarter of the globe and their Navy was the largest in the world. Another twenty years of peace and the economic ship would be righted…and British global dominance would continue. Go into another World War? Total bankruptcy even if victorious…the Empire dissolved simply for lack of resources to hold it. The end of Britain’s dominant position in the world.

So, sure, who gives a darn about the Sudetenland? That is, who cares about a landlocked nation in the center of Europe that you can’t render direct aid to even if you wanted to? If selling it out got you twenty more years of peace (and British intelligence was appraised of the growing opposition to Hitler in the military plus Germany’s increasingly difficult financial situation as Hitler’s rearmament and public works programs strained the German economy) and the chance that the Hitler regime fades away before anything bad happens? Of course you do that.

But then back come the people who live by cynical maxims – but look at what happened! Europe overrun! War lasting for years! Total destruction of the Continent! All of it could have been stopped if Chamberlain had told Hitler to go jump in a lake at Munich!

Maybe. Maybe not. Once again: we just don’t know what might have happened. We can only know what happened. And, as I said, there was a good argument to fight Hitler in 1938. But there was also a good argument not to: that is, his regime was on shaky ground financially and the Anglo-French alliance was massively more powerful than Germany, even if allied with Italy and Japan. We really condemn Chamberlain before the bar of history not because he appeased at Munich, but because in six weeks two years later Germany overran western Europe. That is, had Hitler not been able to take Paris, then Chamberlain’s memory would tend towards blessed rather than reviled – he would be remembered as the man who rearmed Britain and got her ready for WWII (the bottom line is that the Hurricane and Spitfire fighters, the Lancaster bomber and the Crusader/ Valentine tanks were all products of Chamberlain’s government). And here’s the real kicker – the reason you can’t be too sure about any counter-factual argument – the reason Hitler was able to conquer western Europe in six weeks was a simple (if quite grand) command failure of the French army.

We all know the great German breakthrough at Sedan in May of 1940 – but what most people gloss over (if they even know about it) is the fact that the French had a complete armored division just south of Sedan, perfectly positioned to pinch off that German breakthrough and make mincemeat of the entire German plan. The whole of Manstein’s famous plan was based around a quick breakthrough and a dash to the sea to spread panic among the Anglo-French military organism. If the Germans didn’t breakthrough – and quickly! – then the whole thing would fall apart as the numerically superior and higher quality Anglo-French force redeployed to stop and then roll back the German effort. And what did the French do with their armored division south of Sedan? They dispersed among the infantry forces…blowing their perfect opportunity. This was compounded in following days as a whole series of French errors messed up any chance of a credible response…but even those failures were predicated upon the first.

And that was it. One terrible mistake. Don’t think it’s silly – it has happened plenty of times before. The Austrians at Austerlitz and the Prussians at Jena similarly made mistakes which allowed Napoleon to wipe them out quickly…almost effortlessly, it seems in hindsight. Even though, combined, their armies were larger than Napoleon’s. Take away the mistakes and the Campaign of 1805 would have gone a lot differently. So, too, the Campaign of 1940.

The reality is that the blitzkrieg model of warfare only works if your enemy sort of walks into it – does things which allow you to waltz on through their lines and raise havoc in their rear areas. It worked quite spectacularly in 1940…and thus sowed the seeds of Germany’s defeat because those Krauts really thought they had something there. That is, they could destroy anyone with a combination of tanks and close air support. They ignored their luck at Sedan, plus ignored that, at the end of the day, they sent almost their entire armored force and most of their air force against one small sector of the French line and then the French command pretty much did exactly what the Germans needed to make the gamble pay. That might happen again – but it almost certainly won’t. And for the Germans, it never happened again. Their hubris led them find themselves sixteen months later sitting outside Moscow and Leningrad without the slightest clue what to do next.

What is the reality? That a well managed defense still has all the advantage. The Germans, themselves, showed that – and right at the end of the war. At the Battle of Seelow Heights in April of 1945, the Germans were outnumbered ten to one and they still held the Russians for three solid days…and if the Germans had had anything left to deploy, the Russian attack would have failed.

As it relates to current events, the Russians tried to do a blitzkrieg in Ukraine and after making some advances, found themselves unable to move further save by lengthy and costly siege operations against an alert and well-commanded enemy. What happened in February of 2022 is what was most likely to happened in May of 1940 – save for some incredible stroke of luck. The Germans got theirs. The Russians didn’t. But, on the other hand, it also works the other way – the Ukrainians also lack the power to crush the Russians absent some incredible stroke of luck. The only way either side can triumph is to somehow bring overwhelming force to the crisis point faster than the other side and move reinforcements there. Given general Russian incompetence it is unlikely that Russia can do this, and given Ukraine’s inferior manpower it is unlikely they can as well.

They can keep killing each other! And given Russia’s superior manpower if Putin can hold his people to it long enough, eventually Ukraine would be totally defeated for simple lack of soldiers to hold the line. But this is a project of years – and the side on the offensive is going to lose more dead than the defenders. And it is a massive role of the dice for Putin to even try. We can’t bet on a miracle – we can only count on cold, hard facts. And the cold, hard facts say this war is a stalemate and the result cannot be altered by the forces on the ground…only the intervention of a new, third power Army can alter the equation…and no third power wants to jump in here. We don’t. The Europeans don’t. So, it is time for peace…and, yes, a peace which allows Putin to keep his ill-gotten gains.

Which is not, by the way, outside of human experience. In fact, it is the more common result of warfare. The French lacked the power in 1871 to expel the Germans from France…and so they made a peace where they surrendered Alsace to Germany. It was bad. Unfair. Lousy. But what can you do? You either can do a thing, or you can’t. The French couldn’t beat the Germans that year. Continued fighting would only result in more dead with no alternation in France’s favor…and a solid chance it would get worse for them. Swallow the pride, make the deal. So, too, with Ukraine.

And it isn’t despicable appeasement – it is just diplomacy. We acknowledge Russia’s rule in the Donbas (Ukraine does, too) in return for a cessation of hostilities and a chance for Ukraine to rebuild herself economically and militarily. In other words, for a chance – if really desired – to alter today’s outcome at some future date. If its that important to them – I suspect it isn’t as the lands Putin occupies are mostly inhabited by ethnic Russians and even the most ardent Ukrainian nationalist is not seriously going to want to war on Russia to take in Russians as fellow citizens. This is all that Trump is doing – trying to wrap up Putin’s stupid war and allow the world to move on without more killing.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan7 Comments

Trump nuked a drug boat – and this is fully in line with what I’ve been saying about fighting the drug trade. It is primarily a logistic issue – and all true strategists concentrate on logistics. In the trafficking of human beings and drugs, we’re talking very large amounts of physical things which must be moved from place to place (and the money, also physical in the form of cash, must also be moved). Our enemy in the War on Drugs has a very long and entirely naked supply line…that is what we hit. We hit it by sealing our borders and by taking out identified drug transport in international waters and air space. Rely on it, we keep doing it, the people who transport the contraband will get the message…it won’t, of itself, stop the trade…but it’ll shift it from moving easily identified and targeted tons down to small quantities carefully concealed. Reminder: the widespread use of drugs like cocaine switched from a vice of the rich to a general vice because the suppliers worked out the means of producing and transporting large amounts of it – driving down the retail price to where everyone could avail themselves of it. Trump’s strategy will make the contraband vastly expensive…once again the province of decadent rich people.

I’d add to this a wrinkle to hit the money – while there are still some major global banks willing to facilitate criminal money, most don’t and all of it eventually gets detected. This is why to this day, to move the money to the cartels it has to be physically carried there. I’d offer letters of marque to anyone who wants to take the risk – outside US territory – to seize this money. Get it back to the USA, and you get to keep half the proceeds. Full title, tax free. Not just money – anything of value; go after everything they’ve got. Make them expend vast resources just to protect their money.

Covid cases are allegedly rising – and some California officials are recommending masking…which doesn’t work. They are getting desperate on the Left…trying every expedient they can. We won’t fall for it again.

Tim Kaine – who is allegedly a US Senator – says our rights are from government, not from God. And that any system that says rights are from God is a tyranny.

“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by the Creator…”

I think I read that somewhere once.

Blue State Failure: a Federal Response

Mark Noonan16 Comments

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence. – Article IV, section 4, US Constitution

I’ve been pondering this since Trump sent the Guard into DC and is suggesting that he’s willing to do it in Chicago and other Blue cities plagued by crime. The federal nature of the United States is crucial to the very existence of our nation as we know it – that is, the States are sovereign and the federal government only exercises delegated powers…that which the States, or the people, surrender to it via the Constitution. So, on the immediate face of it, the federal government should not be interfering in the normal course of law enforcement in the States or the cities, save directly in response to violations of Constitutionally valid federal laws. A federal system is a major plank in the defense of our liberties.

And we have lessons from history on the dangers of centralized control: part of the reason the Roman Empire crumbled was the decay of provincial and municipal government – that is, the constituent parts of the Roman Empire became horribly mismanaged and the Emperors felt compelled to progressively take direct control of local affairs…just to ensure basic law enforcement and services were maintained. Roman rule was pretty light early on, but by the third century started to be suffocating…and by the fourth so onerous that people welcomed barbarian and, later, Islamic conquest just to get the Roman bureaucrats off their backs. What I’m pointing out here is that centralized control, while it can provide a temporary fix to local government failure, tends to breed even worse mismanagement as time goes on as the bureaucracy becomes enormous, expensive and self-serving.

But I think there is more for us to consider here.

The United States shall guarantee to every State…a Republican form of government. That is a very important thing. The Founders did not propose to allow any of the States to erect a monarchy or other un-Republican form of government. The States are sovereign and govern themselves according to whatever laws they like…but they can’t create any tyrannical form of government…and if they do, the United States the Constitution implies the federal government may directly intervene and oust any tyrannical regime, substituting for it a government responsible to the people.

The question before us now is this: are the States all governed by a Republican form of government?

It is a very serious question. We know that voter fraud is rife in the Blue States. That, in fact, the governments of the Blue States have set up voting systems which guarantee that massive fraud will occur. Mail in ballots. Allowing ballots to arrive long after the election is over. Lack of controls on ballot handling. Counting ballots in secret. Forbidding challenges to election results. Registering non-citizens to vote. Refusing to purge the dead and departed from voter rolls. All of this and more puts a gigantic question mark on the stated results of all Blue State elections. We can concede that the deeply Liberal parts of America are voting in large numbers for the Democrats – but we still see elections coming in close on election day with a GOPer ahead and then over days and weeks ballots dribble in until the Democrat wins. And only in the very rarest instances has there ever been a GOPer behind narrowly on election day emerge victorious.

The pragmatic facts of life are that we can’t say with any level of certainty just how the actual citizen bodies of places like California, Oregon and Illinois voted. Sure, good chance they did vote Democrat…but by how much, really? Maine (at large), Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico and New Hampshire were all close enough that merely moderate amounts of ballot box stuffing could have produced the Democrat wins. And the GOP actually increased its California House vote but ended up losing House seats in the State (Harris did five percentage points worse than Biden had in 2020).

And then we look at what the Blue States do – last November Californians passed Proposition 36 with 68 percent of the vote. This law imposed a lot of stiff penalties on crime – crime that the California and local governments have allowed to run rampant. Gavin Newsom has refused to provide any funding to enforce it. Think about that – more than 2/3rds of the people supported it. This means very large numbers of Democrats voted in favor. It is massively popular and only a politically suicidal government would ignore the will of the people here.

Unless that government was certain that it’s power wasn’t dependent upon the consent of the governed.

Sure, the California Democrats couldn’t stop Proposition 36…but they also don’t care about it. It means nothing to them. Sabotaging it carries with it no political risk. Because power is not apportioned in California via votes…it is apportioned via other means. In this case, whatever amount of ballot box stuffing is required to ensure super majority control by Democrats. My contention here is that California does not have a Republican form of government.

And this is where we can get legitimate, Constitutional actions to essentially annul the de-facto powers of the Blue States and cities. They aren’t responsive to the will of the people and they are inflicting upon their people violence and other crime. It is now Trump’s responsibility to stop this. I’m not entirely sure he sees it this way, but it is the actual situation…and I do believe he is moving that way. The fact that crime in DC is nearly gone almost instantly after mere law enforcement shows how easy the fix is…and how the rampant Blue crime is a policy choice…and a policy choice by people who feel confident that no matter what they do, they’ll never be voted out…because, in reality, they were never voted in.

And it is in the lawful Trump that we have our best opportunity to do this but not set a destructive precedent. We really don’t want federal power butting into State affairs…but we have a moral and legal responsibility to ensure that our fellow citizens are governed according to their consent. Trump is the man – and maybe one of the very few men – who would be able to exercise the power to ensure a Republican form of government but not abuse it, and not set up some permanent system of federal interference in State affairs. And that makes me think that perhaps he is on the same page as I am and is just step-by-stepping it? Could be. I hope so. And if we can reform Blue State government then we’ll take away the last prop of Liberal power…their dictatorial control over the Blue States.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan5 Comments

Still much to do and many rocks and shoals to navigate around, but it does look at this time like Trump will be able to arrange some peace between Russia and Ukraine. The sticking points will be how much territory Ukraine has to give up and how much of a security guarantee for Ukraine Russia is willing to tolerate. Make no mistake about it, Putin likely isn’t giving up the dream – token US or NATO forces in western Ukraine won’t bother him…a brigade or two near the new eastern border would. Meanwhile, Zelenskyy has the fear that peace will bring an election he’s likely to lose – and then face the music for how the war was conducted – while plenty of Ukrainian power players will be willing to stoke anti-Russian fires for domestic political purposes. It is a tricky situation!

But the pragmatic facts of life are that neither side can afford to continue – last I heard the Ukrainians were drafting kids and old men while Russia seems to increasingly rely upon mercenaries to fill the ranks. Keep in mind that Total Fertility Rate for Ukraine is 1 and for Russia 1.47 (and a lot of that is probably non-Russian ethnic minorities): these countries aren’t producing a lot of fit, young men year by year. Nobody knows how many people have died in the war – both sides lie egregiously about casualties – but its probably some hundreds of thousands dead: and whatever the number of dead the best way to estimate wounded is times two of the dead figure. It is probably in the neighborhood of a million dead and wounded between the sides…this is being bled white. And ultimately for nothing. Putin and Zelenskyy must get out.

This was the image of the day – and maybe an image for the ages:

They’re all waiting on Trump – each and every last one of them totally irrelevant to how this will come out. Trump will decide – and he’ll ultimately decide for Putin and Zelenskyy. The may buck and they may kick and scream and perhaps even derail this particular effort…but eventually they all will have to knuckle under. There is no power like the USA elsewhere in the world. It has been thus since 1945…and the only foreign policy problem we’ve had since then is our refusal to act like we are the most powerful. We’ve been playing this weird game where we let second and third rate powers talk to us like they matter…that we have to get them to agree with us, rather than ultimately just issuing them orders on how to behave. Trump instinctively understands that even in our currently weakened State, we still hold all the cards.

It isn’t as odd as you think – from 1815 to 1914, the world waited on decisions from Whitehall in London. The British government essentially had veto power over everyone else – their sea power gave them this and nobody could really argue with them. And the British didn’t fuss with the concerns of second raters – they were just told what to do and if they tried to fight it they’d swiftly find a British fleet off their coast. The power vacuum we allowed to exist since 1945 is now being filled. By Trump.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan29 Comments

I get Trump’s reticence in relation to military action against Iran. War is always incalculable in results. Once the guns go off, you never quite know how it will come out. Clearly, the Mullahs should never possess a nuclear weapon. The chances they’ll actually use one are low given Israel’s almost certain already existing nuclear deterrent, but the world can’t rely on Mullah reasonableness. Additionally, I have held since 1979 that the Iranian regime is a pestilence. And since the fall of the USSR, they have been the primary promoter of Islamist terrorism (good to remember that prior to the fall of the USSR, most Muslim terrorists officially adhered to some sort of Socialist program downplaying the Islamic element…but the only pay for it post 1991 has been Tehran, so the Socialism is muted and the Islamism emphasized). Bottom line, if the Mullah regime goes, the most likely outcome in the Middle East is a general peace settlement as there will be no one to pay for Islamist programs (another good thing to remember is that outside Iran and its proxies, Islamist propaganda these days is heavily suppressed in Muslim nations…sure, they’ll let you publish endless copies of Mein Kampf and anti-Semitism if the order of the day…but this “river to the sea” nonsense is kept under control). In my view, we should – if necessary – launch attacks to ensure Iran’s nuclear program is crippled (there is some doubt that Israel has a weapon – outside a nuke – which can reach the deepest buried elements).

But I’m going to trust Trump’s judgement on this. He does have access to a lot of information we don’t have and, very important, he has earned our trust. The man took a bullet for us. He’s reliable – even if he gets it wrong, the motivation will still be to do what is best for the USA. If he orders an attack, I support that – if he decides to hold off, I’ll support that.

Someone posted a video on X claiming to show an empty Los Angeles emergency room – with the narration claiming it is a horror as “our people” aren’t getting life-saving care. If true, what it means is that illegals aren’t using the ER as their primary care facility…which they routinely do, clogging up the system and costing everyone untold sums of money. If they’re refusing to do this out of fear of ICE, then that is what I voted for – illegals should be afraid to show their faces. They should live furtive lives in the shadows – impossible to rent a house, buy a car, get health care…because they aren’t supposed to be here. They can go back home and not have these problems.

We’re also getting more tear-jerker bits of propaganda about some of the deported – “she’s a grandma who has been here 30 years and she loves being in America”. Yeah, if she had the least bit of respect for America and Americans, she wouldn’t have come here illegally. We really need to get that across – illegally crossing our border is an insult. It is done by people with total contempt for the United States and our people.

And, guys, it has been a long time since the immigrant was a self-selected, hard-working person who wanted to build a better life. The floodgates were opened under Obama (and, really, even before that) and the word went out that the suckers in the USA would let you stay illegally and provide you housing, medical care, food and education…never asking you to contribute or develop any love for America. The people who flooded in – especially when Biden was in office – are leeches looking to live off the American people. They’re precisely the people who keep their home countries as dumps…voting for any conman who offers a free ride and cheering loudly each tin pot dictator in turn…and, of course, considering it a point of honor to help and protect criminal gangs. They all have to go.

ICE is reporting a 500% increase in assaults on their officers – all of this encouraged and orchestrated by the Democrats. They are all-in on illegals – this is insane but, really, they can’t do otherwise…an end to illegal immigration and the huge amounts of graft it begets is a death knell for the Democrat party. Already the DNC is being starved of funds…the more Trump does the less money the Democrats will have. And that’s just one of a score of problems here – each 750,000 illegals deported means one less Blue State House seat, even if the SC refuses to allow Trump to only count citizens in the census. They must fight like this and hope that some even turns the American people against Trump’s policies. I don’t see that happening – they probably don’t, either – but they’ll keep at it because they have no choice.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan26 Comments

This was done in Los Angeles yesterday:

The riots were pretty bad there – with the Mayor and police chief of Los Angeles positively encouraging violence against ICE, which was executing valid warrants to detain illegal immigrants. As noted in my previous post: I’m supposed to let people who do this vote? People who scrawl that on our buildings? They get to have as much say as I do?

Look, you’re allowed to hate Trump. You’re allowed to hate Trump policies. But if you are violently trying to stop lawful actions by the Trump administration, you’re insane. You are creating a situation where people can get killed. The place for disagreement is politics…that is, you try to change the government in future elections, not try to intimidate people via violence. Insane purveyors of violence should not be allowed to vote.

Team Trump is responding properly to this – these idiots all did this on video. They seem to forget that there are federal charges – very major federal charges – in trying to prevent the execution of a federal warrant. The funny part here is that these laws were first enacted to stop Democrats from denying civil rights to black people…now they’re to be used to stop Democrats from protecting illegal immigration. It seems that from time to time the heavy club of federal law is needed to keep Democrats under control

The Trump-Musk feud has calmed down a bit…and it really does seem that the proximate cause was Trump withdrawing Musk’s preferred man to head up NASA. From what I understand on that, it was Senate opposition that convinced Trump to withdraw the guy…which does sometimes happen. Could there be some level of Deep State machination in this? Sure. But you also pick your battles…and I guess this was a battle Musk wanted Trump to pick. Trump saw it differently and here we are.

It is good to keep in mind that Musk never was 100% on board with the Trump program. Musk is also a strategist…and his strategic interests are high tech plus space exploration. A lot of this matches up with MAGA but its not a 1 for 1 thing. Musk favors solar over nuclear. Favors open immigration in the tech industry. Musk is a free trader who dreams of a massive human investment in making humanity multiplanetary…Trump wants America first, restrictions on immigration and his Department of Energy is already pushing hard for massive nuclear power development. These are issues honest people can have disagreements over…but they are different strategic aims and those pushing for their aims will come into conflict. Two very large figures came into conflict…and Trump emerged as the more reasonable of the two. I suspect that Musk will work out some deal with Team Trump so that at least he can get some of what he wants. Think of Musk as Nimitz and Trump as MacArthur…very different ideas about how to defeat Japan but their conflicting visions, pushed with vigor, actually ensured quicker defeat of Japan than if one of them had got their way entirely.

The Democrats got their “Maryland man” back! With a raft of federal charges. And while he is back in the USA to face those charges, he’s still illegally in country…which means no matter what some federal judge says, he’s not being let out of federal detention per-trial. Looks like their hero is a pretty bad guy…and that the reason he had to flee El Salvador was because of a hit he did on a rival gang. So, he’s going to sit in federal custody, be convicted of a long list of federal charges…and then deported back to El Salvador to face charges there.

And the GOP will be able to make a whole series of campaign ads about this for 2026. Oh, and all that “Death to Amerikka” stuff from yesterday will also make it into the ads. Do keep in mind that our opponents are very stupid – they only managed to hang on to power because their idiocy was covered up by an MSM almost all Americans trusted.

Most Americans no longer trust that MSM.

Opening Day Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

That time of year again – when hope is strong…

As a Padres fan, I know that pain is coming my way. Ah, well! Its Opening Day…for now, its all good.

With all the woke garbage, baseball is still American. Of course, some bits of legend are fading – I was at a minor league game with the grandsons last Spring and after a guy whiffed I commented “Mighty Casey has struck out” and got blank stares from the boys. I was shocked: they had never read Casey at the Bat…but, then again, I don’t think the kids are reading much of anything these days. Anyways, they’ve heard of it now…and they both like to play a bit of Little League ball. It goes on.

One thing that is still amazing me is how so many on the Right still go along with the Left Narrative. The Signal thing is just that – another Left Narrative. We know the Left doesn’t even give a darn about national security. Heck, they hate the USA with a white-hot passion. But they got their little report (provided to us by a known and quite notorious liar who has routinely lied about Trump since the get-go) and they’re running with it…and the Usual Suspect Right voices are “well, this is bad, we should do something, there should be investigations and resignations!”. Which, of course, is the point of the exercise.

Back in 2017 the resignation of Michael Flynn and the start of the “Trump-Russia” special counsel investigation was really the beginning of the end for that Trump term. Very much good was still accomplished but so much time was lost and as people were forced to resign, they were invariably replaced by Establishment hacks who undermined Trump at every turn. I get us falling for it a bit in 2017 but in 2025? Come on – only a moron would go along with this.

And there they go – going along with it. So, morons.

The good news is that Trump is not allowing himself to be stampeded here – he’s holding firm and so are his people, and if you think the AG is going to recuse herself and appoint a special counsel, you’re nuts.

Meanwhile, the lawfare against Trump continues – with the judicial rulings getting ever more absurd…which, in the end, will play right into Trump’s hands. Keep in mind that Trump does not want to defy these rulings. As I’ve said for a while, Trump is the most law-abiding President we’ve had in ages. He wants to work within the system…but the system does include his ability to deport any foreigner he wants (no reason required) and to hire and fire at will in the Executive Branch (Executive power is vested in the President per Article II…this power is 100% Trump’s, not the judges – it can’t be taken away in any form save by Constitutional amendment). Our hope – and likely, Trump’s – is that the Supreme Court calls the District courts off…tells them to stop doing this. If they don’t…then on the matter of deporting criminal illegal aliens, Trump will openly defy and the American people will back him on it.

Don’t want it to be this way – I want us to retain judicial review (which is not, by the way, written into the Constitution…it isn’t even really implied in the document; the independent Judiciary was created so that the Executive wouldn’t have the power to jail people…it wasn’t set up to play referee on political matters) but we can’t let judges decide the course of the country. That is for the people via their elected leadership to decide. The Courts should only intervene if there is a really egregious violation of the obvious requirements of the Constitution. No penumbras here, guys. And if the Courts don’t curb themselves, then they’re going to find that they have no mechanism to enforce their rulings. The Judiciary has no army or police…and even if they want to hold in contempt and issue fines, the President can just pardon his people. I hope that Roberts can see the writing on the wall and reverse course.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan21 Comments

To get back at it, Home World was released on March 15th! It is Book IX and the penultimate book of the series (with the possibility of some one-off books in the future). Book X (currently untitled) will come out later this year to wrap it up. As the title suggests, our heroes are back here! As the jacket blurb notes, just a quick trip back home to wrap up all affairs…but things go wrong.

Its a fun one, guys! You’ll especially enjoy the time frame it happens and some side comments about America and the world. I thoroughly enjoyed putting part of the action in Arizona; with a character met there being based on an X friend who’s a rancher and author out in that State, though as with all characters, also a mash up of two or more people.

The JFK docs were released – no, we’re not going to find the plan by the CIA to kill him. That was never going to be in there. But this doesn’t mean we’re not finding things. Steve Portnoy did some reading:

So, the CIA noted that Oswald met with Cubans and Russians two months before Dallas. And then failed to note this little fact to the Secret Service/FBI when they knew Oswald was in Dallas when Kennedy was scheduled to be there. This is very much shades of Butler, PA. Had the CIA advised the Secret Service that a Dallas resident (and had been since June of 1962) has serious Commie connections, then it would have been natural for the Secret Service (and/or FBI) to keep tabs on him during JFK’s visit. Like maybe figuring out that he worked at a place which had a field of fire into the path the President would be taking through Dallas. And then for 60 years the CIA demanded that this be kept secret.

Pro tip: if you don’t want people to believe conspiracy theories, the first rule is to not lie by omission.

Do keep in mind that you don’t have to do something to cause an event…you can often cause the event by not doing things. You know, like not having an officer on the roof with a clear line of sight to the Presidential podium.

Malicious or incompetent? That is the unknown thing – and likely can’t be known at this point as nearly everyone involved in dead; and likely didn’t write it down…or destroyed ages ago the documents which would give us an answer. And the jokester gives us the best word on it:

I do apologize for the vulgar language…but its appropriate here. The fundamental problem here, as I’ve been noting for a while, is government secrecy. That somehow the government has got the idea that they are allowed to hide things from the people…as if we are serfs and they are masters. It isn’t supposed to work like that. What started as operational security concerns (Grant being furious at newspapers for basically writing his battle plans into the newspapers) has morphed into the government carefully doling out information which doesn’t tell us what the government actually did. If Oswald was just a lone nut then we, the people, did need to know how this lone nut was able to get into position to fire three rounds at the most powerful man in the world. The government hid that from us. Quite diligently. Because a lot of them would have been hung out to dry whether it was conspiracy or incompetence.

Trump is still holding back on a showdown with the Judiciary. The deportations to El Salvador are called “too late, judge”; implying that if the judge had ruled prior to the planes leaving our airspace, the deportations wouldn’t have happened. Roberts rose to the defense of his judges and that made them go totally insane…now basically ruling that Trump can’t be President without their permission. It is absurd…and it isn’t actually stopping anything. And Trump is just giving them enough rope to hang themselves.

In any battle between the elected and the un-elected, the elected is going to win. Simple as: the people will always favor those who they voted for. Trump is likely just waiting for his best moment to strike…when it all piles up as idiotically (and it is; high and deep!) that he can be the reasonable one defending Constitutional norms.

It must be kept in mind that the Judiciary has no method of enforcing its rulings. In that, only the Executive can enforce. The unwritten rule since Marbury is Executive acquiescence – though Biden’s refusal to obey the Court on student loans ended that precedent (to no Leftwing complaints, of course). And on the whole the Marbury precedent has been good – healthy. But it isn’t so much any longer. This is mostly because the Courts are intervening in areas which have no Federal or Constitutional scope. It has happened before, of course. Dred Scott was an egregious example of the Court getting involved in something it shouldn’t have – at that time, the legality of slavery was up to the States but the Court decided without any Constitutional authority to decree that Missouri’s slavery laws were valid in Wisconsin. It was an absurdity. But for the most part, the Court remained reticent and only acted when it was something crucial.

We can pick a case to say this is when the Great Departure happened but I’ll settle on Roe – that horrible poison in our body politic. Abortion was largely unknown (and mostly impractical) at the time the Constitution was adopted. No provision in that document in any way relates to how medical practices are to be regulated, nothing in there defines when a human being is endowed with their rights, no clause says a person has a right to an action which requires the assistance of at least one other person. Given all this, it all fell under the 9th and 10th Amendments…it was a matter for the States or the people to decide. If you wanted to make it a Federal issue, you’d have to amend the Constitution. And, by and large, the people and the States were dealing with it – badly in my view as abortion was legalized in State after State but this is how it works and I could have no complaint about the process much as I dislike the result. Whammo: here comes the Supreme Court to invent out of whole cloth a “right to privacy” which means we can’t regulate abortion at the State level. It wasn’t just a stupid ruling – it was an evil ruling. It cut at the very heart of the American system of government. Until Hobbs, it essentially removed the American people from any say in the matter. Since then, its just been one bad, wicked decision after another and now we have the Courts completely out of control trying to insert a “but, Trump” exception to Article II. It has to stop. It will be stopped. Only question is whether Roberts will call off the dogs or if Trump will start to openly defy the Courts.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan34 Comments

Stock markets have been sliding and, naturally, the Democrats and Never Trumpers (BIRM) are all, “see??? We told you so!!!”. The reality is that Trump’s actions are deflating the Biden Bubble. The stock market gains of the past 4 years were illusory: fueled by massive inflationary spending and producing, very likely, no real wealth at all…indeed, ten years from now a review of that time frame might reveal we lost real wealth over the 4 years. Reality actually started to set in before Biden was carted out – many months of year-over-year declines in the “win” for Vegas casinos. Always an excellent barometer of economic health…Vegas does well when people have money to blow.

In addition to the printing- and debt-fueled asset bubble, it was also manipulated higher via bogus government stats. This sort of thing started under Obama (with a chance it started under Clinton). It is very easy to manipulate the numbers – especially the top-line inflation and employment numbers which are still, quite ridiculously, accepted as gospel in the financial world. If you think the little bureaucrats in the Bureau of Labor Statistics won’t lie for politics, then you just haven’t been paying attention. Of course they will – and they did. They are probably trying to lie right now, making out that things are worse under Trump than actual. I do hope his Treasury Secretary gets a handle on it. We do need actual economic data, after all. Hard to make valid decisions based on false information.

This will hurt! Economic dislocations always do. It hurt recently in Argentina when Milei took a DOGE-like chainsaw to Argentine government. It is hard to obtain economic news from Argentina as the global MSM is controlled by people who hate Milei as much as they now hate Musk…but they can’t hide the fact that Argentina’s monthly inflation rate has dropped from 300% to just over 2%. When you start to take apart a system based on graft then that system will experience pain. But it is merely draining the poison out of the system…and better for Trump to be doing it now, pretty much on purpose, than just muddling along waiting for another 2008-style financial collapse. A year from now will be the test – and my bet is that inflation will be beaten, interest rates will be much lower and the economy starting to boom just in time for the 2026 midterms.

Meanwhile, how are the Democrats prepping for next year? On a day when they could have been highlighting the market drop (this will temporarily hurt Trump’s approval, no doubt about it) they decided to go with this:

Khalil is one of those piece of trash foreigners who lives in the USA (ie, nowhere near the third world…poop hole he claims he’s proud to be from) and organizes anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-American protests. He’s a green card holder but that has now been revoked and he’s going to be heading back home. Dems are trying to tear-jerk us into a guilt trip by pointing out he’s married to an American woman who is pregnant with his child. My suggestion: she goes with him and finds out what life is like for a woman under Islamist rule. See if she’s still proud of him then. If they let her out of the house ever again.

And how did our man Trump respond to this disgusting effort at emotional blackmail?

Very weirdly even some on the right are arguing this guy has rights – to a certain extent, yes. He’s a human being and all human beings are endowed with certain rights. But he’s not a citizen. Our laws are the attempt by the citizens of the USA to secure the rights endowed to them … not some backdoor for a hate-filled foreigner to enter our country and try to tear it down. Guarantee you, no American soldier ever gave his life so that foreigners could shout anti-Semitic slogans on a college campus. If you aren’t a citizen of the USA then you are a guest – and guests are to behave will or be asked to leave. Khalil is free to go back home and be all the Jew-hater he ever wanted to be. He doesn’t get to be here doing that.

At this point it is good to note that what Trump and team are doing is clearing the decks. A lot of people are upset at the pace of this or that action or wishing that something else was being put first and so on. But what Trump is going via DOGE, via firing people, via things like deporting that creep is sort of resetting the system to its factory settings. This is why Trump has signed off on the Continuing Resolution – something we all despise and I’m sure Trump does, too. But with the cuts happening via DOGE and the Democrats about to be starved for funds, the time for the budget battle is in September after Trump has defunded the Left and fired/deported some of the leadership. The fact that the Senate Democrats posted that on X shows that the adults have abandoned the Democrats…probably because the money isn’t coming in any longer. Its the theater kids in charge…and, man oh man, are they stupid! If all goes just moderately well, then Trump will be setting the entire fiscal agenda against Democrats who are shouting incoherently about issues the American people are 80/20 against.

I’ve never felt better about politics than right now – and it just keeps getting better and better! Like I said, we’re in for some pain. There will be rocks in the path. But the course is set – as long as we remain firm and Team Trump’s security has their head on a swivel, we’re just going to roll over the Left.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan23 Comments

The Official Word from the Progressive TV Chattering Class is that Trump has gone too far and now people are getting angry as Trump’s support collapses. How’s that working out? Well, lets check in with one of the most accurate pollsters of 2024:

The “Trump is going too far” message is orchestrated on the Left – it isn’t really directed at Trump but at week-kneed Congressional GOPers and the center-right people who are still all “well, I never” about things. The Left knows that Trump isn’t really controllable in that he doesn’t have to seek another term…but there is leverage over the Congressional GOP. But here’s the thing on that – the GOP House majority is so narrow that everyone in the GOP expects it to be lost in 2026…and that means if you want to get anything done, better get it done now. Absent a complete economic meltdown over the next 12 months or so, the Senate is probably safe for the GOP. So, a Dem House majority isn’t all that much a threat. Plus the Congressional GOP knows that going against Trump now is probably political suicide. There might be some time in 2026 to take a vote against Trump to provide a little separation in a swing district, but now isn’t the time for it.

It looks like our prayers for Pope Francis should be more for a holy death rather than recovery right now. Still some hope he’ll emerge from the hospital but an 88 year old with his maladies doesn’t have a lot of time left. As I’ve said pretty much from the start, Francis is theologically rock-solid but in the areas of politics and economics he is Left. He’s been an interesting Pope and probably what was needed at the time as the Church had become a bit ossified. Naturally, however, the Left elements in the Church took advantage of a kindly nature and tried to push actual heresy. That is for the next Pope to clear up. Cardinal Sarah is probably out of the running on account of age so I’m at a bit of a loss of who to pray for on it. Some are talking up Cardinal Pizzaballa – the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem – and while the man has guts (he offered himself as a Hamas hostage in return for release of the captive Israelis) he also seems (in my view) far too soft on Hamas, itself. Cardinal Besungu of the Democratic Republic of Congo is considered a very conservative alternative…and as the Church in Congo is horribly oppressed (a short while ago Islamists there beheaded 70 Christians in a Protestant church), he’d probably be a little bit…militant in defending Christ’s flock. But, in the end, we’re all just going to have to wait and see how this goes.

The German elections went about as expected – the socialist SPD was trounced, the center-right CDU emerged on top…and AfD came in second, about doubling their support from the previous election. Between the CDU and AfD and some small fry, there is a solid, Conservative majority for the Bundestag…and what this means is, naturally, that the CDU will coalition with the just-defeated SPD to keep AfD out. This is the Ruling Class Uniparty writ very large. But I think the CDU is making a huge mistake here – the German people rejected the Left but weren’t quite ready to go AfD…but if the CDU sees its mandate as something other than curbing migration, then there will be another election pretty quickly and the AfD might wind up the largest party in the Bundestag (they are second largest now). One curiosity about it – if you look at the election returns by district, what you see is that almost universally the old “West Germany” voted CDU while old “East Germany” voted AfD – with the SPD winning a few urban cores. A guy I know on X pointed out that old Germany was actually best preserved in the east because, in reaction to Communist occupation, they desperately clung on to their national identity. Looks like he was right. Additional observation: exit polls show that German youth resoundingly rejected both CDU and SPD, the two major post-WWII German political parties…they opted for the Right-Populist AfD or the Left-Populist Linke. The German Ruling Class is on borrowed time.

Bongino as Deputy Director of the FBI is a clear sign that Trump, Bondi and Patel are not about to put up with internal sabotage.

Among many senior officers fired after Hegseth took over Defense was the Chief of Naval Operations – Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to hold the post. And the Left has gone ballistic…”she highly rated! She’s a warfighter!”. The ships are rusty. I’ve seen video after video of US naval warships entering or leaving port absolutely covered in rust. She’s a bad officer, period. So are all other senior officers in the Navy. Civilians don’t fully understand the need for “spit and polish”…its not don’t just to look good but to internalize into serving sailors that they are sailors. This is the USS Aaron Ward after suffering repeated kamikaze attacks off Okinawa:

That crew fought off most attacks and got this hunk of junk back into port for repairs – because they were sailors. Meanwhile, in our modern, diverse and equitable Navy, USS Bonhomme Richard caught fire in port, San Diego, and burned to uselessness…because nobody on the ship or even in that whole naval installation was a sailor. Hegseth can’t fire the senior officers fast enough.