Donald Trump

Dear GOP: Stop Being Losers

Mark Noonan35 Comments

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

The primary reason we lose is because we’re losers. And we really need to stop being losers.

As the potential Trump indictment started to dominate the conversation did we see a fully unified GOP/Right condemning what would be an obvious act of merciless injustice? No: what we saw is Trumpsters and DeSantistans getting into a pissing match about who should be doing and saying what. For heaven’s sake, this was a golden opportunity to unite the party and fire up the base…and it so far is being wasted in internecine battles. And I do blame both sides.

To be sure, my bet is that the fight originated among people in the pay of the DNC – I am quite confident (because Democrats are really good at politics) that they have co-opted some of ours. People who might seem the most fervent Conservatives/GOPers who are nonetheless getting paid to sow division. To take any issue and make it a “you must back my guy or you’re a loser Commie” moment. From there, other voices just pick up the propaganda and run with it…before you know it, you’ve got people on the Right bitterly fighting it out on a matter of internal political purity while the Democrats are busily advancing their agenda. I would not at all be surprised to find out that the leak of a looming Trump indictment was done with just this sort of thing in mind…I’ll be certain of it if the indictment doesn’t happen (there are rumors that it won’t).

This isn’t about Trump. It isn’t about DeSantis. It isn’t about any particular policy prescription: it is about our ability to govern ourselves. The Democrats propose to take that away. Do you think they’ve dropped the idea of packing the Court and taking over State and local elections? They haven’t. Democrats never retreat from a position. They sometimes for tactical reasons put an issue on the backburner, but even there they still try to advance it. And they never forget it or give it up. If the Democrats secure enough power – and a divided GOP would hand it to them – they will pack the Courts, rule our liberties as unconstitutional and take over the election process to ensure we can never win again. They will do this. It isn’t a guess. It isn’t a worry. It is precisely what they’ll do because Democrats – and this has been true of them since Van Buren created the party – always believe that the survival of the United States requires Democrats to win all elections. Any election not won by Democrats was via evil machinations…all elections won by Democrats are forever. If we lose we lose forever; our choices will then be to submit, or break up the country.

What has happened to Trump since 2015 has been sheer evil. And none of it was his fault. Lots of anti-Trump GOPers like to say that if Trump wasn’t Trump then it would all have been different. No, it would not have. Trump has had 10,000 liars in government and the MSM out to get him since he came down the escalator. They never let any lies go and they always add new lies (most Democrats remain convinced that Trump is a Russian asset installed in 2016 via Putin switching votes from Hillary to Trump). The will do to anyone else what they did to Trump. They are already working up the lies to be used against DeSantis. So, when a partisan hack of a Democrat DA proposes to so much as investigate Trump, let alone charge him, the duty of all Conservatives/GOPers is to condemn the effort and stand shoulder to shoulder against it. The Democrats are the enemy.

But, we seem to prefer to fight each other. Perhaps because we’re too chicken to fight Democrats? They play dirty, GOPers don’t. But we must stop it. We must never punch right. Always punch left. Everyone needs to get on board. Sure, battle for your guy but once the guy is chosen, everyone gets on board. And while the battle to pick a guy is ongoing, any and all Democrat attacks against any of the candidates are to be met with ferocious scorn by all of us…not sotto-voiced agreed to in the hopes that that it’ll place our guy in a better position for the primaries.

The life of our nation is at risk. In the old saw: now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country. Now is most emphatically not the time to rip each other to shreds.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan29 Comments

With bank after bank failing and pretty clear proof of Biden Family profiteering in China, you know what is on the agenda: Distraction!

So, the rumor mill is now filled with predictions that Trump will be indicted next week. The more excited claiming that he’ll be arrested and frog marched into custody…not sure how the NYPD will manage that unless Trump happens to be in NYC next week, and his Secret Service detail will also have something to say along those lines.

I’m fairly confident, though, that they will indict Trump on some bogus charges. They pretty much have to at this point: if you listen to the Left, they have been screaming for it ever louder over the past year. They seem to think there’s 25 to life just waiting there for Trump…rather than, at most, a process crime which has a max sentence of six months. And a process crime without basis. Don’t get me wrong, Trump goes on trial in NYC and he will be found guilty – there’s no way a Manhattan jury would go the other way against Trump. Its why all hopes are pinned in NYC…they’d love to do it in DC and the jury pool there is just as hostile to Trump and obedient to Dems as Manhattan, but there is GOP House oversight in DC. In NYC, everyone is on the same team and no matter what laws the prosecutors break to get a conviction of Trump, none of them will ever be charged with a crime. But Trump has not broken the law – if he ever had, he would have been arrested ages ago. He’s legally clean as a whistle. So, whatever they charge will be drivel and it will be thrown out on appeal – but appeal is after conviction and it is the conviction the Dems want.

How does this affect 2024? Plenty of Dems seem to think that a conviction bars a person from office. This is because they’re stupid and ignorant. For the GOP base, there will be a huge upsurge of sympathy for Trump…but whether that carries on or is replaced with a “maybe he’d better bow out” feeling remains to be seen. And make no mistake about it: they don’t want Trump in 2024. They say they do, and that means you know they don’t. An indictment of Trump is proof positive that the Dems internal polling shows Pudding Brain coming up short in a rematch.

But the fun part comes later – eventually, we do get the White House back and the pressure to arrest the previous Democrat President will be unstoppable. This is Late Republic stuff, but it is what the Democrats want.

Elon Musk is claiming he’s got a nifty AI program which is going to detect and track social media manipulation. We’ll see! Not that I doubt Musk’s sincerity here, I’m just not sure a computer program can snoop it out. They just do what their biased programmers tell them to do, after all. I mean, I can snoop it out and I offer my services to Elon for no more than $1,983.943.56 per year. But my results also wouldn’t be accepted by the manipulators. Maybe that’s why Elon is trying AI…give it a sense of neutrality. Anyways, if it does work it will be very revealing not so much on the manipulation (I think we on the Right can sniff that out pretty fast these days), but on just who is pushing it – which will, I bet, turn out to include lots of people and institutions allegedly on our side.

This weirdo wrote a letter to his family saying that if they vote GOP, he’s done with them – he being gay and his assertion is that the GOP is trying to eliminate homosexuality. Specifically, he said he can’t be part of a family voting for people who want to murder him. Lots of people scorched the guy as the utter loon that he is, but I saw it for what it was: very effective propaganda. Even if not entirely conscious from the letter writer. You see, the Democrats lie. They lie about everything and all the time. They do this because lying works. Lying has always worked – from getting Eve to eat the apple to getting a bailout for SVB: lies always fall on fertile ground. What this loon was doing was reinforcing the Democrat propaganda that the GOP is filled with hate-filled, cruel people out to kill. Now, maybe this guy was paid to write his letter or maybe he’s just your basic Progressive moron who believes what he sees on TV. It doesn’t matter: what matters is that Democrat voters will hear about it and their “GOP Bad” beliefs will be reinforced. And Democrats must put this on steroids going into 2024: Joe is held in contempt. Nobody likes him. Not even his own family (if they liked him, they wouldn’t have let him run in 2020). The economy is in tatters and looks to get worse. A lot worse. So, what to do? Change policy? ROFL!!! No: just get your base fired up with fear and hatred so they’ll stick with you no matter what happens. I expect the main base-motivators for the Dems will be claims that the GOP wants to kill gay people and execute women for having an abortion…and do look for GOPers who feed into this propaganda. That supposedly far-right guy you think was ok? Well, just a few thousand bucks and he’s making a sound byte for the MSM which feeds the DNC Narrative.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan20 Comments

The very phrases “gender affirming care” and “assigned at birth” have to be banned and those in official positions who use them should be jailed.

So, Mark, why bring that up?

Because I saw yet another of those RINO statements we see about, “we’re better than that” and “you know, if we use government to coerce, it’ll be used against us!”.

As if it wasn’t already – and, no, we can’t be “better than that.”

The fundamental problem we have – and I’m not the only one seeing it – is that our side doesn’t realize that it is a fight to the finish. Either our dogmas will prevail or theirs will. And the losing side loses everything. There is no mid-point between “there are two genders” and “there are three (or more) genders”. There is no possible compromise between those who think that children should attend drag shows and those who think they shouldn’t. There is no way to reconcile “all men are created equal and are endowed with certain unalienable rights” and “abortion to birth, and maybe even for a few hours after”. We either become all that they demand, or they become all what we demand.

Now, because we aren’t Leftists – and thus not rat bastards – we’re never going to massacre those who hate us. But we must remove them from all positions of power and influence. They must be forced out of office. Terminated from their positions in the bureaucracy, corporations and educational institutions. Their tax free NGO’s shuttered and the funds confiscated.

There is no other way – a house divided against itself cannot stand. It must become all one thing, or all the other.

And Ron DeSantis is doing it. Trump issued a statement as well on this subject. There are more and more people coming to the understanding – shocking as it may be – that those who call us Nazis and who think the USA is inherently racist don’t wish us well.

They did a show called Velma – a spin off of the Scooby Doo franchise – and it has bombed. I guess they made Velma a woke lesbian and made the show a bunch of woke preaching. The insidious part of this is the attempt to rewrite everything to fit the modern Left’s vision of the world – there is no room for non-Left; everything must be converted to the new religion. The pathetic part of this is that the show isn’t pitched at 6 year olds – you know, the target audience of Scooby Doo. I loved the show – when I was a little kid. I wouldn’t bother with it today (or, indeed, any time after, say, my 10th birthday) because it is a silly and childish show not suited for even teenage intellects, let alone adult. What sort of adult cares about Scooby Doo? Only pyschos, in my view. That any adult looked at the Scooby Doo material and said, “hey, we need a lesbian Velma spinoff for adults” is someone fit only for the loony bin. What’s next, Yosemite Sam comes out as gay and opens up a flower shop?

Nothing is more funny than the Woke putting up illegal immigrants at high end hotels and then, when its time to leave, finding that those illegals don’t want to leave their swell digs.

Hey, guys: masks don’t work. And I mean, at all. Here’s the report proving it…but the fact that we needed a report shows how far gone we are. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of biology knew that masks don’t stop viruses. They can’t stop viruses. Viruses are too small. It was with mask mandates that I realized we were being conned – and that medical professionals (who know better) eagerly pushed masks demonstrated just how degraded our supposedly neutral professionals are.

The Trump vs DeSantis battle heats up. I’ll support the nominee no matter, but there is great rancor growing between supporters of the two…and I suspect grifters paid by the DNC are fanning the flames. I am unsure if the GOP can united in 2024.

We Need to Destroy the GOP in Order to Save It

Mark Noonan29 Comments

The 18 Republican Senators who betrayed us today are a watershed moment, I think. Keep in mind that they didn’t have to do it just in practical terms. Once the vote to close debate happened, the Democrats had 50 plus the VP to ensure passage. They didn’t need a single GOP vote after that. Also, there is no part of the GOP base which wanted this Omnibus to pass. If you polled it, you’d probably find well more than 80 percent opposed. So, there would be no risk of a GOP base revolt over a “no” vote. Meanwhile, a “yes” vote also doesn’t help these guys because most Independents are also opposed to the pork in the bill while the Democrat voters were never going to vote for the GOPer. So, the reason why they voted in favor was to insult us.

They were letting us know that they don’t give a damn what we think and, further, that they are confident that the revolt represented by Trump and his supporters is over. They’ve figured it out – in the 2022 cycle, they managed to successfully sabotage almost every Trump-backed candidate. They now sit there and with this vote say: you can’t beat us. And even if you manage to primary us, we’ll ensure a Democrat wins so you’ll be even worse off. You have no choice but to vote for us! They are very confident that we will be so fearful of large Democrat majorities that we will now knuckle under.

But, are we? As the old phrase goes, if you’re to be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, might as well go for the sheep. What real advantage do we obtain from having any GOPers in the Senate right now? The filibuster? As it turns out, that filibuster only has one remaining purpose: to make sure when we have a majority that our policies are blocked. Today’s vote shows that the GOP will not exercise the filibuster to stop Democrat policies. Perhaps it is time we went nuclear?

Sure, we understand that large Democrat majorities will quickly enact a whole host of things we can’t stand – but is that really worse than small Democrat majorities slowly enacting a whole host of things we can’t stand? Don’t see much of an upside to that.

I think that it is time to fight, one last time (because there won’t be another time), for what we think is right. All or nothing. We need to primary every GOPer who votes with the Democrats on anything. And if our primary challenge fails, stay home on Election Day. Let there be Democrat Senators from Utah and Alabama. Having Republican Senators from there hasn’t done us one bit of good so it is no real loss. Keep voting GOP at the State and local level! We have some good eggs down there – trouble is that once they head towards DC, they abandon us. But what we’re trying to do now is sift out the people who are warriors. And if we can’t have our warriors, then we’ll have nothing. And as we punish people for betraying us, the feedback loop will start to produce warriors or, at the least, people more terrified of us than of a bad notice in the Washington Post.

And, hey, if this gambit fails then we are no worse off than we would have been. Going along as things are now means we’ll have re-education camps by 2036. Play for high stakes and maybe we get them by 2032. Big whoop. But, also, if we go to the mat and insist it is our way or the highway, just maybe by 2028 we get a trifecta of power which will do what we want? It could happen. Things suck. They are going to suck even worse over the next few years. If we stand aside from it, building up a warrior class condemning everything and never being party to the ruin, then we might find that people turn to us – in desperation, sure, but power is power. Doesn’t matter why people gave it to you. It only matters that you have it – and if we have it with people who care and will do as they’re supposed to, it could be a glorious turn around for America.

At least that is how I see it. I can’t just sit here and wait for disaster – I must do something. This is it: nuke the GOP from orbit. It is the only way to make sure…and then build it as we wish.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan25 Comments

Big Q1 2023 layoffs are coming for the Washington Post – word is they’ve lost half a million subscribers. This is good on so many levels.

And I think it is just the start – when Musk bought Twitter it had 7,500 employees. From what I can tell, he’s down to less than a hundred now and the thing is running just fine. These employees were being paid San Francisco wages – so, you gotta figure even the mail rook clerk (do they still have those?) was making north of 50 grand a year. The cost savings are immense. Additionally, there is rumor than Musk will move it to Texas, thus saving massive amounts in taxes and other fees. Other companies will be looking at this and wondering just how much they can cut.

To be sure, any of us who have ever lost a job knows that it is devastating. You suddenly don’t have assurance of paying the bills and with that worry, you scramble for another position. On the other hand, the bloat in corporate America is massive. Huge numbers of people are employed doing nothing that produces the product sold, whatever that may be. Empire building doesn’t just happen in government bureaucracies – it is a disease of all bureaucracies. The most positive aspect of this is that the people most likely to be fired are those who pester the American people the most: the woke with useless degrees are going to find that the 200 grand a year job attending a couple half hour meetings per day is gone for good.

As I’ve said before, a huge amount of America’s workforce is employed in useless jobs – and it wouldn’t be so bad if they were just useless, but these people also use their positions to push ever more wokeness on us…because that is their bread and butter. The more DEI you get, the more money you make.

Until, of course, there is no more money to make. We can’t sustain a pack of parasites. We need our workers to produce useful product.

I’ve been thinking about it and I don’t think we realize just how malevolently insane the United States has become. We are no longer the good guys in the world. We’re funding the war in Ukraine when that could have been almost immediately settled by Ukraine giving up the ethnic Russian territory. We’re refusing to produce our own oil and natural gas while pressing foreigners to ruthlessly exploit their own resources and workers so we can have energy cheap enough to keep political damage to democrats to a minimum. We’re arguing over whether or not a healthy 14 year old should have a double mastectomy. We’re allowing what amounts to a new slave trade to operate on our southern border. On and on it goes like that – not just bad policies which could result from mistakes, but directly baleful actions which hurt our own people and people all around the world…all the while with an MSM lauding our leadership and everyone passing out awards to each other for doing it. A reckoning will come for this – and I do believe that in God’s mercy we will have to pay a high price for it all.

But there is some good news – the Temecula Valley (CA) school district has banned critical race theory. This is in California. And this shows just how crucial things like school board elections are. Just put a few sane people into office and, presto, the hate-filled insanity stops. I hope we can get more and enough of this soon enough to avert total disaster.

Donald Trump is not having a good time – ignoring polls (most are created to manipulate rather than inform), he’s just not gaining much traction for 2024. His core supporters are still with him, but it looks like enough other GOP voters are out there to deny him the nomination if they can swiftly coalesce around one candidate (more tricky than it seems). Now he’s saying he has a big announcement coming tomorrow. I guess we’ll see if he’s got something that will restore his fortunes.

Trump’s Opponents Miss the Point. Again.

Mark Noonan77 Comments

Over on Truth Social, Trump made a statement asking if we should overturn the 2020 result. This has made lot of people very angry – with many saying it is disqualifying for any future office.

To be sure, it is an amazing thing for a former President to say. But I cannot see how it is a morally wrong thing to say.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that there was no voter fraud in 2020. Let us further stipulate that the laptop story would not have altered the result. In other words, lets pretend that it still would have all come out the same, laptop or no laptop. You are still left with the fact that elements of the Department of Justice conspired with Big Tech and the MSM to hide a story which would have been devastating to the Democrat candidate. This is election interference writ as large as you can write it. What it is saying is that if the people want the “wrong” candidate, then the top echelons of the American Ruling Class will conspire together to do whatever they think necessary to thwart the will of the people. As a side note, please remember that the DOJ had the laptop in 2019; this means they also interfered with the 2020 Democrat primary. The Democrats were not able to properly assess their candidates because the DOJ withheld crucial information from them.

Hate to break it to you, but a Republic cannot survive with that sort of thing going on. Even assuming that this time it didn’t work, the mere fact that such entities would make the attempt proves that the Constitution – the rule of law, itself – is a dead letter in the United States

There is no mechanism in American law for a do-over on elections. Once the result is entered into the books, it is what it is. So, Trump’s call for a re-vote or what have you is going nowhere even if the overwhelming majority would like it. But what we cannot do – what we dare not allow – is for this to go unanswered. Even if you’re willing to move on from Trump, you have no assurance that the same and worse won’t be done to the next candidate. We already know that people in high positions in Congress, the bureaucracy and the MSM are willing to assert the most fabulous lies about their opponents – now we know that those in charge of law enforcement are willing to ignore the law and help the liars make the lies stick. If they get away with this, they will do it again. Anyone running for office who doesn’t meet Ruling Class approval will simply be destroyed. So, while Trump’s call for a re-vote can’t happen, something must be done. People must go to jail. People must lose money. The victim must be compensated.

This is the turning point. There is no going back from this. If this sort of thing is allowed to happen unchallenged, then our votes will become worthless…our candidates will be destroyed, or will merely be tools of the Ruling Class from the get-go. What we, the people, may want, will no longer matter…we’ll get what the Ruling Class wants.

But it won’t just end with our corrupt and stupid Ruling Class living forever. That is what the Roman Ruling Class thought once they had disposed of the Gracchi. The people’s champion was destroyed and the people to all appearances knuckled under…and then once fine day Octavian, Antony and Lepidus issues proscriptions of hundreds of members of the Ruling Class and the people were entirely indifferent. What I’m saying is that if the people cannot elect their champions, then they will passively support the person who kills the people who destroyed their champions. If the law is dead and its just a competition to see who can hold power, then the winner of that power struggle is invariably the person most willing to kill those the people hate.

Just a cautionary word. I hope people figure this out fast – because it is either some DOJ people doing 20 years, or it is eventual civil war followed by a tyrant.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan50 Comments

Stochastic terrorism is the coming thing! If you’ve never heard it then the explanation is simple: it was just made up. Far as I can tell, less than six months ago. The claim is that when someone says something mean, it triggers the violent – so, when you say you don’t like minors going to Drag Queen Story Time, you are a stochastic terrorist…someone may hear you say that and go on a shooting spree!

Now, if a Leftist says that Trump and his supporters are Nazis and this causes Antifa to attack Trumpsters that is not stochastic terrorism. Do keep that clear in your head – it is only stochastic terrorism when you say something the Left doesn’t like. When the Left says something you don’t like, that is just Speaking Truth to Power, or whatever drivel phrase the Left is using these days. What they are trying to do, of course, is get us to shut up – but don’t think it is just to get us to voluntarily shut up. They are calling our words terrorism for a reason: because terrorism is illegal. They very much want arrests to be made of the “stochastic terrorists” who are the root cause of mass shootings.

Don’t underestimate the Left. They are not merely wrong – they participate in evil. Even that nice Leftist guy you know – he’ll denounce you to the police if given the opportunity. And he’d think he was doing you a favor. The basic Leftist is the sort of person Solzhenitsyn was talking about when he wrote, “you won’t understand it until they hiss at you, ‘you’re under arrest'”. They don’t understand where it all leads – that the path their on leads to Civil War…and if the Left wins, it eventually means that everyone gets arrested because the Woke dare not run out of enemies…there will always be people who weren’t with them fast enough.

There is much discussion of the 2024 GOP Primary season – mostly falling into the two Trump and DeSantis camps…but the DeSantis camp perceives a real problem: a whole bunch of also-rans are talking about getting in and they are afraid that a splintered anti-Trump vote means Trump gets it.

That is true, of course. But the way the anti-Trump people frame it shows they still haven’t learned anything. Trump can be beaten for the GOP nomination. And not just by DeSantis. In theory, any potential GOPer can beat Trump. But only if they out-Trump Trump. This has been true since 2015 and it will remain true until Trump withdraws from politics. At least 45% of the GOP base is Trumpster – and in some States, it is far higher. Plenty of Trumpsters are willing to move on and find someone else. Even my MAGA-from-the-elevator brother is willing to go for DeSantis. But you know what will happen: it will be Trump vs whomever and Team Trump will highlight the Establishment backgrounds of all other GOP contenders. For the most part, in most States, this will be an unanswerable argument – unless a GOPer proves not just that they have left the Establishment, but that they are actively at war with the Establishment. I’ve been saying this for a while and it remains true: the best first move of any Trump challenger is to take up the cudgels for the J6 detainees. Not even Trump has really done that. But if done, it proves that you don’t give a darn what the Establishment wants…and, rely on it, any GOPer voicing support for the detainees will be condemned by all Establishment people. Does DeSantis want to beat Trump? We’ll find out not in attacks on Trump. Not in attacks on Trumpsters. We’ll find it out in a relentless war against the Establishment.

Word is that Warnock is favored next month in the runoff in Georgia. But, I don’t care what Experts are saying. We’ll see how it comes out – what we’ll find out is who can turnout the base. I doubt that anyone is terribly enthusiastic at the moment – it was a long, exhausting 2022 campaign season. So, dragging people to the polls will tell the tale.

FTX is enormously funny to me. Even more than Theranos was. Just more proof that our Ruling Class is corrupt and also rather stupid. But not all of it is stupid – there is zero chance FTX got that far without the active cooperation of Money and government. It looks to be that a Ponzi scheme was used to finance political payoffs. Pro tip: if you’re buying nothing and hoping to make money by selling your nothing for even more money to someone else….give me a call: we should play poker.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan38 Comments

After Trump has his announcement speech, quite a bit of Catholic Twitter had a debate about Trump’s call to execute drug dealers. As you might recall, I long ago decided to oppose the death penalty. My grounds for that were that mercy should always triumph over justice and that I don’t really trust the government with the power to execute citizens. I’m still of that opinion but the debate got me thinking.

A hundred thousand people died of drug overdoses in the USA in the year ending April of 2021. That was a big jump – more than 25 percent – from the year before. But lets say the jump was temporary and in a normal year 70,000 die. That’s still a lot. More than 190 a day. And that doesn’t cover all the drug deaths – we’d also have to include all murders related in the first or second degree to drugs (ie, drug trade people killing each other over drugs as well as drug addicts who commit crimes – including murder – to support their addiction). Any way you slice it, that’s a lot of stiffs.

How many people would die of drug overdoses next year if this year we hung a thousand drug dealers?

It needs to be thought about. A lot of people are in the drug trade because it is a low-risk, high profit enterprise. They start tuning in each day to see a couple drug dealers were hanged, it might make them seek other lines of work. Can anyone know for certain that we wouldn’t immediately get a thousand replacements for the thousand we hung? No. But suppose we did so and it made it 50 percent less likely that a druggie can get his drugs at any given time? Hang 1,000 criminals, save 35,000 lives?

What it comes down to is how we will view both Justice and Mercy. I have my growing suspicion that softness on crime is neither Just nor Merciful – and not only unjust and merciless to the victims, but especially unjust and merciless to the criminal. I do believe it is crucial to provide a way out even for the worst criminals…but by the time we’re on a guy’s fifth arrest for drug dealing, I think we might be dealing with someone rather incorrigible. It is something to think about.

Looks like the House will be a 222-213 split. The GOP is pledging investigations of Biden and we’ll see if they really do it or just go through the motions. Meanwhile the bed-wetters are upset with us – saying that we should ignore Biden’s crimes and get legislating! Morons. The last thing we want is legislation – though we do look forward to zeroing out the budget for the Special Counsel Garland just appointed to investigate Trump for the millionth time. Also those 87,000 new IRS agents. The Special Counsel was appointed, by the way, to give the MSM something else to report about if the House investigations of Biden prove to have teeth.

Maricopa – it was either cheating or the most fabulously incompetent election ever held. And don’t think that people won’t be purposefully incompetent. It is nearly as effective as box-stuffing and if done right it keeps you away from any legal jeopardy. Bottom line: cheating or incompetence kept Kari Lake out of the governorship. And as the person running the election was Lake’s opponent…kinda makes you go with cheating-via-incompetence. Certainly Abe Hamadeh coming up just short after late ballot drops is highly suspicious…but if you’re cheating the new governor in you’d better make sure you cheat in your guy as AG. No doubt things are screwy – the good news is that Hobbs is a zero and her legislature will be GOP controlled.

Elon Musk is conducting a poll on Twitter about reinstating Trump – as of this moment, 3.9 million votes, 56 percent for reinstating Trump but that is down from 60 percent earlier.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan82 Comments

Trump announces for 2024, McConnell gets re-elected as Senate GOP leader, the GOP takes the House.

A lot of people are saying a lot of things about what this means and making their stout assertions of what will happen. Spoiler: nobody has the first clue. If the election we just had didn’t tell you that you can’t predict things, then nothing will. As for me, I predict nothing. I will pay no attention to any poll. I will pay no heed to the Experts telling us how it will go. It will be as it will be and we’ll find out after it is over how it went.

That said, there is still much we can say. And of course I’ll say it!

Trump’s speech last night was rather low key, wasn’t it? I’ve never subscribed to the view that Trump is unscripted: I’m pretty confident that he plans everything out to the last detail. So, that was the effect he wanted to present. Why? Could be because after last week’s disaster, being too rah rah would look ridiculous. Could also be that he’s trying to overall strike a new tone: “look, guys, it is bad: we can fix it, here’s how”. Could also be influenced by the potential GOP field…you know, look weak and see who strikes first and then your response is a counter-attack which, no matter how blistering it is, always seems fair turnabout by regular folks.

As for myself, I have decided not to commit myself to anyone this early on. I’m going to see how it plays out. As we get to the end of 2023 I’ll probably decide who my candidate is but even that is subject to change based on circumstances. I really don’t think anyone is wise to commit this early. Once you start getting invested in a thing, you start to blind yourself to possible alternatives. I’m keeping my powder dry.

A lot of Never Trump is now gleeful thinking that the Bad Orange Man is done. He may be! But don’t count on anything. Certainly don’t count Trump out given what we’re getting in the Senate. The bottom line is that a huge portion of the GOP base despises the GOP leadership – and the Senate GOP leadership in particular. I have had a lot of respect for McConnell but I do believe his time is done and he’s making a mistake by hanging on – and if it starts to look like he only hung on thwart Trump, then Trump’s stock with the GOP base will only grow and solidify. McConnell is very much the past presiding over the councils of the present – and his post election statement about finding ways to work with Biden caused immediate outrage. We didn’t send GOPers to Congress to pull Biden’s chestnuts out of the fire! McCarthy, set to be Speaker, seems to at least understand this a bit. He’s a squish, but he also doesn’t hold the base in contempt the way McConnell does. With Mitch there making deals with Biden, Trump will have the perfect foil for a GOP primary – and his opponents will be faced with the stark choice of denouncing McConnell or being seen as Establishment tools.

I make no predictions but I’m working on the assumption that we’re going to lose 2024. Always hard to pry the incumbent Party out of the White House, no matter. Absent a complete economic meltdown (a 50/50 prospect at the moment), let’s just say we’re gonna lose. This, first off, will make any defeat feel less bad – and it can also impel us to try things. Zeldin is pushing to be RNC chair and he has it right: you fight in every precinct. You don’t resign any of the board to the enemy. I think that if we discard the worn out notions of the past and simply try new things we might get some remarkable results. As we can’t change the early voting laws in Blue/Purple States, use them (it is already being done to great effect in NY and CA – and Newsom, the Democrat’s rising star, is way underperforming what was expected because of it). Find a guy or gal to run in the Deep Blue. Mike Garcia is apparently the Giga-Chad: I guess he won a Biden +8 district in 2020 so the Democrats decided to get rid of him by making his district Biden +12..and he still won easily. While voting in the House like he represents Alabama! One jokester said “its 2032, Democrats redistrict Garcia into downtown Los Angeles and swear they’ll get him this time!”. Mostly what it shows is that if you try and find the right message and messenger, no place is really off the table.

That is the attitude I want us to carry into 2024: lets just fight. Do our best. Try something new. It can’t possibly go any worse than it just did!

What I’m also thinking is that DeSantis should think carefully here. I don’t go with the Trumpsters who think he’s just a GOPe mole. He came out of the GOPe, but his fights against woke Corporations show that he’s learned the lesson. Mitch and Co might think that RDS is their ticket back…but they may find that, as the GOPe did with TR, that they just made that damned cowboy President. My concern is that if 2024 is a loser, then we don’t want to expend RDS in a bruising fight to beat Trump and then have him lose the White House. If I were an RDS advisor, I’d be thinking long and hard about telling my guy to back away from 2024. Or make only a token run and then get behind Trump. It works like this:

If you get behind Trump and work your tail off for him, you’ll build up huge goodwill with the Trumpsters. They won’t forget: they’ll be in your pocket for 2028. This works out even if Trump loses. If, however, Trump were to win then its still just 4 years, Trump can’t run again and you’ve not only got the Trumpsters in your pocket, you’ve got the President clearing your path in the primaries in 2028. Plus if we do win in 2024, we’ll almost certainly be coming in during a time of severe economic pain that will take years to dig out of. Might be better to let Trump tackle that: he’ll be free to piss people off, after all.

Anyways, that is mostly where my thinking is right now. I will add one last thing: the only people I’ll pay no attention to at all are those who say they won’t back the GOP nominee unless it is their choice. Such people – and there are Trumpist and Never-Trump people like this – are not only useless, they are destructive. I’ll vote in 2024 for whomever is on the GOP ticket because that person will always be the moral and intellectual superior of the Democrat. If a person can’t commit to that, then get out: we got better things to do.

The Blizzard of Oz

Mark Noonan14 Comments

I can’t recall a political endorsement in a primary causing such an immediate and heated firestorm. When Trump endorsed Oz, it caused very large numbers of prominent Trump supporters to go absolutely ballistic. They hate the endorsement. To hear many of them speak, this endorsement tears it with Trump: they are done! Going to back DeSantis in 2024. Trump is an embarrassment! He’s always picking terrible people! If he wins in 2024, it’ll be as bad or worse than it was in 2016!

For a moment there, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were listening to Never Trump. I mean, this was astonishing.

And it also lets you know just how very bad at politics our side is. I mean, we are just terrible at it. We don’t understand how it works. We routinely step on our own crank. We hand the Democrats the weapons to attack us with.

Aside: by “we” I mean “everyone but me”. And probably Trump, as well.

First and foremost, in our internal conflicts we have to be careful that in trying to push our preferred person forward, we don’t create a toxic environment. In other words, don’t shred your own side. This is true for any Party primary. Vigorous attack and debate is good – but your primary purpose is to sell your candidate and do it in a way that the supporters of the loser swing enthusiastically behind your guy. Torching Oz as a horribly bad choice is not quite the best way to go. It should be like, “I understand Trump has endorsed Doctor Oz. As we all know, any of our fine candidates will be better than the Democrat. I’m disappointed he didn’t endorse Candidate X instead, but I still believe that Candidate X is our best option and here’s why.” See the difference?

Beyond that sort of tactical operation, there is more to consider here.

I do get the doubts about Oz. Yes, he’s taken pro-choice and anti-gun positions and he has, to put the best face on it, been open to medically transitioning children. He has taken these positions. In the past. That is kinda important because in the past, Trump took some pretty Left positions. And I’ve seen over the past 14 months some very far Left people starting to rethink their views. We’ve all had an education of late, haven’t we? Trump busted down the doors and exposed the rot in the heart of our institutions. Everyone is dealing with that. The Left and Never Trump by sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting “I can’t hear you!”. Everyone else…by thinking it over. And very often coming to conclusions very different from before.

I used to be a stalwart defender of the FBI. I believed the CIA was dedicated to defending America. I thought that large corporations were by and large beneficial. But here in 2022, I want both the FBI and the CIA abolished and I’m in favor of breaking up the large, monopolistic corporations. I’ve had an education. It started for me before Trump, but it was the Trump years that showed me how bad it was and how far I had to be prepared to go to fix it. What I’m saying here is that the past is not the present: things change. If you could go back to the our old blog you’d find me vigorously defending the FBI, CIA…Wal Mart, for crying out loud. Are you going to hold me to that? Tell me that because I once held a particular view I can’t hold a different view now that I’ve obtained different information?

But that is the standard we’re being told to judge Oz on – in the days of being in Oprah World, anything he said is permanently binding on him and it all makes him unacceptable. Forever.

Sorry: that is just a stupid, unjust attitude. If the Muslim Oz will pardon, it is also un-Christian. We all get not just second chances, but buckets and buckets of chances. I will not deny Oz a seat at the table because he once said something I don’t like.

So, what is Oz saying now? On the trans issue, nothing: at least, nothing that I have found. He will have to address that directly, I think. That’s up to him. But he now claims to be pro-life. He isn’t running on a gun control platform. His policy positions are secure borders, energy independence, curbing corporate power, school choice. Not a bad list, if you ask me.

To be sure, Doctor Oz translated into Senator Oz could betray us. Like Romney and Murkowski have (Collins hasn’t – she does what she needs to do to stay viable in Purple Maine; she must at times vote against us). But he could also betray us like Barr or like Sessions did. Remember them? Rock ribbed Conservatives. Honest and brave men we could count on. Except they both folded like cheap suits at the first bit of Leftist pressure. And, sure, a Senator Oz could fold just as readily – like, for instance, current Senator Toomey did…he of Tea Party Conservative fame…but when the real test came, he went along with the Democrat’s 1/6 fantasy.

The bottom line is that Oz, no matter how badly he could betray us, cannot do worse than some of those we trusted the most.

And then there’s the chance he won’t betray us. Could happen. Every now and again a person of courage manages to navigate their way into politics. Doesn’t happen often as politics attracts the greedy and the cowardly (the stupid, too: in freaking spades), but it does happen. Right now we’ve got Rand Paul and Ted Cruz in there – both men, I think, we can rely on to stick to their guns no matter. Could Oz be another one? No way to know until it happens. But consider this: the GOP Establishment already hates him. The Donor Class isn’t on his side. His own Liberal media friends are soon to turn quite viciously on him. He only wins and only stays in office – let alone aspires to a different office – if he keeps us on his side.

Oz is worth about $100 million. He’s not just famous: he’s got nearly universal name recognition. So, he isn’t in this for the money and he isn’t in it for the fame. He could have pretty much sat on his a** for the rest of his life raking in money and being on TV any time he wanted. You know, just like Trump in 2015. There is a chance that Oz is running for office – which will impact his money making ability and turn him from universally beloved American personality into a partisan figure – just so once he gets in there he can sell us out to the Democrats. But figure the odds, guys. Unless Oz is the most spineless sort of man, the chances of that happening are billions to one against.

This is not to say that a Senator Oz will always vote the way you want. Pennsylvania is heading towards Red State status, but its a ways away and anyone running Statewide there will have to trim their sails this or that way to retain electoral viability. In short, you can expect a Senator Oz to sometimes go contrary on us – but betray us? Like Toomey did with the impeachment vote? I just don’t see that in the cards. In fact, I see what I believe Trump sees in the man: an ally. Someone who is willing to bite the bullet and enter the sewer of politics because he wants something better for others. He doesn’t need to do this for himself – so, unless he’s some sort of psychopath, he’s doing it for someone else…and the only realistic party that can be is, well, you and me.

It is time, my friends, that we all grow up and start understanding that politics isn’t neat and tidy. It is a mess; mostly because it is run by people…but, worse than that, it is often run by the worst sort of people. But who are the heroes of politics? Those who bucked the trend. The people who stood forth in glorious contradiction of the age. Those who went in it to do something rather than be somebody. People like Lincoln and Churchill at the heights…people like Reagan and Trump on the lower level. Maybe Oz – and a lot of other normal people stepping forward – are just what we need? Maybe it is time for us to think about what we want and how we might get it?

I’m always reminded these days of something my father said to me about 1982 or so. I was 17 and dad was explaining to me how liberty is fought for. One thing really stuck: “I’m telling you, Mark, that when it becomes a real, final fight for liberty in America, some of your best allies will be people you can’t stand. Don’t reject anyone who is willing to stand with you.”