Donald Trump

Open Thread

Mark Noonan33 Comments

In the 6 hours after the verdict was read, the Trump Campaign – via the Team Red donor ap – was taking in money at $1,600 per second. In the 24 hours after verdict, nearly $54 million was taken in. We’ll see what the final numbers are but it wouldn’t surprise me if in the immediate aftermath (say, a week?) it is around $100 million. Thanks, Democrats, you completely erased the Democrats fundraising edge for 2024. Oh, and Miriam Adelson, widow of the late, great casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, is donating about $100 million for pro-Trump PACs. Then there there are the rumors – we’ll have to see money numbers over the next couple months – that some of Biden’s major money bags are switching to Trump. But more important than that is the Team Red money – massive numbers of first time, small donors ponying up. This is people doing something. With money. That matters

Bottom line, Team Trump and the GOP will have all the cash they need.

Oh, don’t want to forget that Team Trump is building a nationwide system to monitor the vote and object early and often to any irregularities. And I guarantee you with this much time – and, now, this much money – they’ll be able to venue shop a bit to make sure they get to judges who aren’t mere Democrat hacks. Team Pudding Brain will not be able to ballot box stuff like they did in 2020. Oh, sure, in deep Blue States like California they still can…but, who cares? It is in the purple States that they won’t be able to…certainly not to the degree they’d need to for a repeat of broken water pipes at 3 am.

There were a few polls right after verdict which claimed that Biden got a boost and/or Trump lost GOP support. These polls seem like drivel to me. I guess they could be real, but most of them claimed that the re-interviewed people interviewed previously…which means it isn’t random and not at all hard to pick your target to get the result you want. In this, whatever you see in polling: give it ten days. That’ll tell us if there’s any trend away from Trump. One thing certain: Trump’s conviction won’t make Biden more popular. Won’t make us forget what we’re paying for groceries. Won’t make us forget the border and rising crime. Won’t make us forget Biden’s attempt to mollify anti-Semites over Gaza. On and on like that – Biden and his people are still who they are. And they are monumentally unpopular. Whatever negatives Trump picked up via conviction will fade away…you can’t re-convict him (and the other trials are winding towards dismissal or being pushed into 2025…showing that only in Manhattan could you get an overall system anti-Trump enough to get a trial going…to be sure, they could get it in San Francisco or LA, but Trump doesn’t have offices in those places). If the judge tries to hit Trump with jail time as a first-time offender for Class E felonies, that will just make people mad. It fades. Biden is who he is.

How will the appeals go? Badly for Bragg. Basically every element of the trial was questionable. From bringing the charges to begin with (never in all of American history has anything like this been charged against anyone. Ever), to the obviously biased judge, tainted jury pool, unfair trial procedure, inadmissible evidence…on and on. How long it takes for this to get tossed is the only question. There is absolutely no doubt that at some appellate level, this conviction gets vacated.

Some are arguing Trump should apply to the Supreme Court. While rarely done – and even more rarely accepted by the Court – it does happen when there is a case of very large and immediate impact. One we’ll all remember was the 2000 Election case. It was still winding its way through the State and federal appellate process but it was determined by the Court that all legal challenges needed to be resolved lest the people of Florida lose their equal protection under the law – that is, if this wasn’t resolved by a date certain, Florida’s vote wouldn’t count. So, too, with the Trump case – it can be argued that having this hang over Trump’s head unresolved unfairly impacts Trump’s equal protection under the law. Trump’s claim is that the trial is false. Biden’s claim is that the trial is true. But it is unfair for Trump to labor under the trial if it was false, and so someone better step in and decide if it is good or bad. And Roberts might accept it.

Here’s the crucial aspect of this – and risk to our entire Republic – if we get into the habit of placing former President’s on trial our whole system of government hangs in the balance. If Trump is defeated as a result of a trial – especially one as bogus as this, and over a trivial issue (class E felony, guys: it is the sort of thing you charge a guy with when he paints graffiti on a wall) – then it would cause a catastrophic collapse in trust in the system…and lead to retaliatory lawfare from the other side. It is best we put this to bed. I know our Liberals won’t agree – but Caesar crossed the Rubicon because his political opponents proposed to jail him after his term as governor of Gaul expired. It was start a Civil War or be jailed on bogus, political charges. If we start jailing ex-Presidents then very quickly we will no longer have ex-Presidents.

Meanwhile, Biden’s people are refusing to release the audio of Biden’s special counsel interview. Their current claim? That if released someone will make a deep-fake of it so that Biden sounds like a senile twit. This means, of course, that Biden sounds like a senile twit on tape. They really don’t want that tape out – they can barely hold Biden together for 20-30 minute public events…a long interview and I guarantee the guy was completely lost.

Hunter Biden goes on trial – after Joe and company paid a visit to Beau’s widow…who is a witness in the case. Allegedly to mark Beau’s passing…but actually to make sure she knows that you never go against the Family. Ever. I figure it’ll still wind up with a sweetheart plea deal.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan34 Comments

The Trump documents case has been put on hold indefinitely – from what I can understand, the judge is rather concerned about the whole premise of the case and will essentially engage in what amounts to a trial of the prosecutor. This is not a surprise – the case is ridiculous and any decent judge would see right through the scam.

On the other hand, today we saw in the hush money trial in New York the testimony of Stormy Daniels – a proved liar who’s whole monetary existence depends upon getting attention. Gee, no chance she’d be playing an angle here, right? Don’t get too upset about it – the case is also ridiculous but as its in New York, it will proceed to the jury, where conviction is 50/50. But the conviction will be thrown out – you can’t actually do what the judge is doing: that is, allow salacious, uncorroborated testimony designed only to provoke an emotional response from the jury. That Democrats are going ape over the delay in the documents trial is all we need to know about the New York trial: that dog won’t hunt. Convicting Trump in New York will just burnish Trump’s credentials as an outsider. Democrats know this. They wish they could just make it go away. It was all supposed to prevent Trump from getting the nomination. Now “backfire” doesn’t begin to cover it.

The Israelis are restarting their Gaza offensive. They are still taking way too long here. Absolute brutal use of force to finish this quickly is still what they need to do. The longer this drags out, the worse it gets for them. Naturally, the world is screaming bloody murder – the world wants Hamas to survive. They want it to survive because their Arab money bags have ordered them to secure Hamas’ survival. It is really no more than that – the kids out protesting in the colleges have no idea what is going on. They’re just doing what the organizers – who are not students – tell them to do. The whole thing is disgusting – but it all stems from an unwillingness on the part of the Israelis to drive the sword all the way in. I realize that Israel feels a need to stroke the American government – but there comes a time when you choose your nation over your benefactor.

Israel has time and time again had their Arab enemies on their knees, only to hold off from dealing the fatal blow. People forget that for all the early Arab success during the Yom Kippur War, less than three weeks after the Arabs started it, the Israelis were poised to force both the Egyptian and Syrian armies to surrender in the field. They could easily have taken Damascus and Cairo and dictated peace. We told them not to. They went along with it. They have to stop doing that. Kill them. Finish this. Dictate the terms of settlement.

Aside: Kirby was out there announcing that you can’t crush an idea with weapons. As if World War Two never happened. Guys: force works. In fact, it is ultimately the only thing that does work in human affairs. Being law-abiding is a learned habit. Sure, you can find saints. Lots of them, in fact, if you just poke around a bit, and sometimes in the oddest areas. But for most people, most of the time, what keeps them in line is the learned behavior of civilization. Learned so deeply that most people don’t even realize it isn’t something that comes naturally. And what taught the child to share wasn’t a reasoned argument; it was a rap on the knuckles. The adult doesn’t even remember being taught to share. To say “please”. It happened so young that our memories don’t stretch back to it. So, too, with societies – especially when they’ve gone terribly wrong. What burned the cancer of Nazism out of the Germans was 1,000 bombers unloading on their cities night after night. So it will have to be with the Palestinians. A lot of them will have to die so that the shell-shocked survivors understand that it was all a lie, and never fall for it again.

The Boy Scouts will now be Scouting America – for diversity. Bottom line: if you have a son, do not send him there. They will be groomed by perverts. The leadership of the scouts has absolutely no idea what the Boy Scouts are about – and after bankruptcy brought on by sex scandals, they are trying to DEI their way back into relevancy. What the Right has to do is create an entirely new organization – I favor calling it the Rangers, as that has a distinctly American ancestry going back to pre-Revolutionary times and brought forward into modern times by the Army Rangers in World War Two. I’m not particularly concerned with sex segregation; certainly not for members under 12. As long as proper segregation is maintained in the most crucial areas, there can be groups that have both boys and girls. But they can also be segregated. I’d allow local chapters to decide. The program would mostly be just scouting: that whole camping, hiking, doing good works in the community thing. Kids need that – kids today especially need something that will get them away from video screens. But I’d have it emphasize self reliance, hard work and honesty. They idea is to help parents craft their youngsters into sober, hard working citizens of the Republic. And I think it would experience rapid growth.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

Biden promised to unify us – and if you click here you’ll see Right and Left both shouting “F*** Joe Biden”. Unity: achieved. Biden doesn’t win with this sort of attitude at large in the Republic. Its not that the Hamasses will vote Trump, but they’ll vote third party or stay home. I remember the Carter years: I don’t recall anyone held in as much contempt as Biden is.

Trump is doing well right now – and we are getting to the point in time where it would take something massive to shift it back to Biden. One can’t predict massive events, of course – they come when they come. But if polling is still tied or favoring Trump by June, then the November result is probably baked in. That said, we are having trouble down ballot. Lots of it. To be sure, special elections are not very predictive of general election results, but we are seeing a general lack of enthusiasm for GOP Congressional candidates all across the country.

Democrats are, naturally, pointing to this as an endorsement of Biden…but its is more that GOPers just aren’t showing up. And I believe this is because there’s no reason for them to. The Congressional GOP has knifed the base in the back over and over again…so what does it matter if the GOP keeps the House? We used to all think that at least we’d get something if we had a majority…now we know we won’t just get nothing, but we’ll get nothing along with egregious insults. If the GOP wants to win Congress, they’d better pick a fight with Biden. A big one. As it stands right now, the only thing that can possibly save them is a big Trump win dragging a few marginal GOPers over the finish line (this is why there’s still a solid shot at the GOP retaining a House majority and gaining one in the Senate). But we could have had a Red Wave year in Congress…if the GOP had just given GOPers any reason to fight for one.

Red State colleges are being brought under control. Blue State colleges are still the home of raving anti-Semites. One funny note – at one college, some frat boys dragged down a Palestine flag and raised Old Glory. There’s now a go fund me to give them a party and last I checked it was over $270,000.00. It is all great and fun – and watching our flag go up was moving. But I think the GOP – and Trump – could make a big impact. They should have the party – and Trump should be there. It just so perfectly encapsulates what is going on…Democrats coddling foreign savages and domestic traitors while we patriots stand tall for America.

It is just terrible what we’re seeing here – Jewish kids being denied access and physically assaulted. As if an American who happens to be Jewish has anything to do with Israel. Even if one wants to say that Israel is the bad guy, what does a 20 year old college kid in New York have to do with it?

Nothing, of course. But, neither did the 20 year old Israeli girl who was raped and murdered on 10/7 have anything to do with Israeli policy. This is the wages of anti-Semitism. Once you start down the road of saying “the Jews” then you’ll become an increasingly evil person…willing to commit and tolerate all manner of horrors. I blocked yesterday a Catholic account on X because they started in on “the Jews”. I know that ignorance is the foundation of it all, but I think, also, there is something more sinister…something deeply embedded within Fallen Man. That is, to find the scapegoat. To relieve ourselves of responsibility by finding someone at fault for our own shortcomings…or even our own cowardice when faced with a difficult problem. It is hard to do things…but blaming someone is easy. And it is an ego-stroke when it presents itself as esoteric knowledge that only the Wise have access. Rely on it: if you confront an anti-Semite and find an unanswerable argument, their response will be “educate yourself” as if it was you, not they, who is ignorant. But that sort of ego boost is what keeps people on the train…and makes them become worse over time as they must either repent or go all the way.

There is a bill now passed by the House which makes anti-Semitism illegal. This is Democrat/Uniparty window dressing – something to do to make it appear they are doing something (and you know darned well that if the law is enacted it’ll be turned against us in a heartbeat). The bottom line is that the Hamas protestors on campus are already violating civil rights laws. If two or more people conspire to deny a right or privilege then that is a civil rights violation carrying a max of ten years for each offense. When a Jewish kid is blocked from access to campus because he’s Jewish, that is against the law. Period. Under US law you are allowed to hate Jews all you want, but you can’t stop them from enjoying the rights and privileges that all have under law. All of these kids are looking at hundreds of years in jail…if they get prosecuted. And that isn’t happening. And nobody in the Ruling Class wants it to happen. Why? Because of Arab oil money – nobody wants to jeopardize that. Huge amounts of it flow through American institutions and it is all predicated upon allowing the anti-Semitic tropes about Israel to persist.

If we do get Trump in, my hope is that he goes after these people – the statute of limitations is 7 years for these offenses. I want hundreds of these rich, privileged white kids dragged through the judicial system for years over this. We must instruct them: you can’t do that. You can’t, that is, sign on to a fashionable cause and violate rights and think you’ll just walk away from it.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan9 Comments

They got Trump on trial and so he goes and visits a bodega in NYC where the owner was persecuted by the DA for defending himself…large, friendly crowd. To be sure, Harlem is rapidly gentrifying so its not like Trump got popular in the ‘hood…but, still: it is NYC.

Do they get him convicted? Possibly, but I rate it at best 50/50 for them. It only takes on juror to have a mistrial…and the charges are so obviously politically bogus that even a NYC jury might refuse to play along. And it isn’t like the New York government is ragingly popular these days. Acquitting Trump is an excellent way to poke it in the eye. If they get a conviction it is over trivial charges which are likely unconstitutional…so, Trump doesn’t go to jail.

Democrats are crowing that while they have Trump in court he can’t campaign while Biden is free to hit the trail. That’s saying the quiet part out loud! But the fly in their ointment is that Biden can’t actually hit the trail. His latest mental breakdown had him claiming an uncle was eaten by cannibals in World War Two. That was before he warned Israel not to move on Haifa, a city that has been Israeli since 1948. Anyways, the cannibals thing stems from an uncle of his who was in the Army air corps in WWII. The poor man was a passenger and the plane went down in the ocean. One man survived but all others – including the plane – were never located. So, where Biden gets cannibals into this, I don’t know. And the man died before Biden was 2 years old, so its not actually a memory, just something Biden was told about and mangled by his desire that every story about him be the most interesting story there is.

There are some less-bad polls for Biden out there, keeping in mind that to get past 270, he’ll have to get atop Trump by more than 3 percentage points (and anything below 5 is dicey). Other polls show Trump lead steady. Doesn’t really matter. The Mrs paid $4.88 for gas today. If Biden wins in spite of that, we never had a chance. That is, we lost our country ages ago and have just been going through the motions. But those gas prices, those food prices, Biden’s bizarre mental ramblings and increasing physical breakdown, the open border, the crimes committed by illegals, the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine (which is tipping towards disaster, by the way; the MSM isn’t covering it because nothing good for Biden is about to happen there), the sense that nobody is in charge…all of that, and more, is making Trump 2017-2019 shine in retrospect. He’s not nearly as hated as some think.

And if you drill down into the “Biden wins” analysis, it is all based upon a low-turnout election where Democrat GOTV swamps Trump just enough to give Biden 4 more years. Maybe it will be that way. But if its a high turnout election, then it looks like the higher the number of voters, the more Trump is going to get (in some polls of people who didn’t vote in 2020, Trump is up by double digits). Nobody can really know this – there’s no way to know, for certain, who will actually show up. Sure, we can know that a certain number almost certainly will show…but even among the most consistent voters there is some up and down election to election. For those who are occasional voters, its a crap shoot. And as GOP voter registrations continue to improve, we’re getting a class of voters who rarely or never vote. Absolutely no way to know how many of them show – can’t even take a guess at it. The “good” polls for Biden are all D+5 to D+7, predicated upon the GOP just staying home out of disgust for Trump. But if the electorate is R+1, the polls showing it good for Biden are worthless. R+2 or 3? Political earthquake.

More trouble in the House. MAGA blames RINOs, RINOs blame MAGA. There is blame to go around – and MAGA does need to get a larger sense of the possible here, especially with a razor thin majority. But most of the blame must lay at the Speaker’s feet. The Speaker has immense power in the House – Democrats made sure of that over the years. You’ll note that when Nancy was running the show, nothing good for GOPers ever got to the floor. Johnson can do that, too. Democrats can pass whatever they want through the Senate given their majority and our RINOs, but Johnson can pretty much spike anything unless he gets what he wants. And his job was to get us something. We know with a Democrat Senate and White House we’re going to have to put up with huge amounts of Commie garbage. Way of the world, GOP. Do better at the next election. But we did win the House…and that means every bit of Commie garbage should have something MAGA attached to it – if Democrats get money for an NGO to send migrants to the border, then we get money to pay for Texas to build a fifty foot high wall. Like that – and so on and so on. But we got nothing. We always get nothing. And Johnson and the RINOs are smart enough to know that if we don’t get something, there will be trouble. If Johnson falls – and even if we get a Democrat Speaker – then let the lesson be learned: don’t betray the GOP base. Make certain to stroke us. This is the growing pains of a new GOP, guys. Don’t get too upset about it. In the 1850’s the House was a complete mess because the new GOP also hadn’t figured itself out and so essentially handed power to Democrats. It takes time to change.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan14 Comments

Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) is rock solid on most things, but like most GOP Senators he’s still fully committed to the post-WWII “rules based international order”. You know, the thing that got us to lose 58,000 men in Vietnam, as just the highlight of the military and foreign policy disasters since WWII. Today he was doing a bit of saber rattling vis Iran. I pointed out that this is foolish given that our current political and military leaders are incapable of mounting a successful military effort. Our leaders are cowards and traitors, our military is worn out, we’re not getting enough recruits, training and maintenance have been let slide. To risk a major American military force against even a second rate enemy is folly and should only be done at the most extreme need…Israel’s possible conflict with Iran is insufficient cause. Israel has subs with cruise missiles. These missiles are almost certainly nuclear tipped. Israel will be fine.

Supposedly abortion was going to put Florida in play. Well, the latest poll – taken after abortion got on the ballot – shows Trump with a 12 point lead…and that support for adding abortion rights to the Florida Constitution is at 42%. That’s not all that much. We can rely on it that Democrats will go 24/7 abortion as we head towards November and it may, indeed, affect some votes. But I suspect that the post-Dobbs effect is starting to fade. As I’ve said before, for the pro-abortion people and areas, absolutely nothing changed. Here in Nevada we put abortion rights into the State Constitution decades ago. I don’t think we should have, but we did – and the only way that is going to change is if the people of Nevada vote to remove it. Twice (each amendment requires a majority vote in two consecutive elections). That just isn’t going to happen in any time line you care to think about. Maybe in a generation of two after the Culture of Life imparts itself to the people it’ll be repealed as a sad relic like some vestigial Jim Crow laws are these days. But not right now. How can you keep people outraged over something that doesn’t matter? All Dobbs did was restore the proper Constitutional position and if you live in a pro-abortion area you got what you wanted.

That is, of course, why the Democrats keep claiming that Trump has a double secret probation plan to ban abortion after he gets back in. But, he can’t. It almost certainly wouldn’t get through Congress even if the GOP has a trifecta and, per Dobbs, such a thing would likely be struck down as unconstitutional. Abortion is immoral but Roe was just bad law – there was not the slightest warrant in the Constitution to make that ruling. The Justices just made it up because they wanted abortion legal. Democrats will try mighty hard to scare urban/suburban white women about Trump’s Secret Plan to Make You all Handmaids, but I suspect it won’t work.

The GOP is knuckling under for a renewal of FISA. Of course. Speaker Johnson says he changed his mind once he got the Super Secret Briefings about it. So now his position is “trust me, bro”. Too late for that. We can’t possibly trust the government. Our assumption is that Johnson caved because the FBI, using FISA, found something on him. We’d like very much to trust Speaker Johnson – and there is a way he can get us to do that. Tell us what FISA is finding. That’s it. Keeping everything under a veil of secrecy is the problem – we can’t possibly trust the government to operate the program as its advertised as it was used to spy on Trump. But we can agree to keep it – with modifications – if we are told what it does other than spy on Trump. Not asking for nitty gritty details…but if this program is so great, then you should be able to point out a couple things it did. Plots foiled. Terrorists caught. Things like that. Let us know; you work for us, after all.

But even then if we do keep it, I think we’ll need to have a provision in there saying that the federal government can’t use FISA information to so much as investigate an American for actions inside the USA – let alone prosecute or jail them. That is, if you find Joe Smith is talking with Terror Fanatic Abdul in Syria…kill Abdul; you can’t touch Joe Smith. Not with FISA information. Not even with information you were able to dig up because you had FISA information. If its FISA, then as far as American citizens saying and doing things in the USA, it doesn’t exist.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan41 Comments

The polls are tightening! Biden is surging!

Or, so goes the conventional wisdom. And, hey, there might be some tightening as the primaries end and everyone sorts themselves out on partisan lines. But, there also seems to be in the latest raft of polls some significant oversampling of Democrats. Maybe the earlier polls oversampled Republicans? Could be. But as we’ve said here for years now, don’t put your faith in polls. 2016 was the definitive year on that – wasn’t it something like a 97% chance Hillary would win based on polls? This, I think, is far more decisive:

Except for a very slight uptick in Colorado (which was probably out of reach for us all along), this is a catastrophic collapse for the Democrats. And keep in mind that this shift happened while the GOP was largely run by anti-Trump GOPers who were diligently trying to finish off the whole MAGA movement. This is registration gains in spite of deliberate RNC incompetence. This is people looking at their nation and saying, “we’ve got to do something!”. Not that the GOP is great, but it is the only way to stop the increasingly insane Democrats.

I think that the Biden vs Trump rematch will revolve around the fact that here in 2024 there is no longer any mystery about Biden. Even discounting cheating to get him into the White House, the thing about him was supposedly boring and conventional. That there would be no massive policy changes and we’d coast along in peace and quiet after the alarms of the Trump years. That might have been the plan – in his lucid moments, it was probably what Biden wanted – but given that he is increasingly senile, his aides are running wild, imposing ever more far Left lunacy without a shred of legal power to do so. Biden can’t hide behind a Narrative any longer – he sucks. And the price of food and gas are through the roof. I expect at this moment a 49% to 47% Trump victory. Keep in mind, of course, that anything less than a 3+ point Biden win in the popular vote works out to a Trump electoral victory. Basically, Biden has to get above 50% to win because I can’t see Trump getting less than 47%.

Team Pudding Brain has pretty much abandoned Israel. They tried for a while to triangulate support for Hamas and Israel but the Muslim voters they count on aren’t having it – they demanded abandoning Israel and that’s what they’re going to get. Nothing matters to the Democrats more than winning and if they have to hate Israel to get a win, they’ll do it. Don’t put too much stock into this for us as a Party – most Liberal Jews are Liberals first and last…they are just Jews by descent for the most part; they’ll swallow the insult. Orthodox Jews were already moving towards us. This will accelerate that and it might mean a House seat or two but nothing decisive for 2024.

And it is just disgusting what they are doing. Hamas already has a plan written up for what comes after they kill all the Jews of Israel. Plans for what happens to Jewish property. All neatly typed up and ready to go. There are genocidal maniacs in this conflict; its just that they’re all Muslims. I do worry that Israel is losing the will to finish the job. Anything short of the total destruction of Hamas will be an Israeli defeat, and perhaps an ultimately fatal one. A nation can’t afford to have something like Hamas as a living enemy. I did hear the theory that they are just hunkering down and waiting for November’s result. This could be true. Biden’s people do have a lot of control over deliveries of war materials to Israel and so can exert a lot of pressure…pressure the Israeli’s know will end with Trump’s victory. But that is also a long time from now. Its all very murky at the moment.

Did you notice that the MSM was 24/7 eclipse for a while? I did. Lots of people did. Personally, I think it was to deflect attention away from Trump’s statement on the abortion issue. This is crucial. What he said did upset some pro-Lifers but the pragmatic facts of life are that a majority of Americans currently want abortion legal, at least through the first trimester. We just can’t get around that. Took 50 years of relentless pro-abortion propaganda to get us here and we won’t undo that in a day. It will take decades for us to build a culture of life – and we can’t do that if for purity’s sake we turn all power over to the fanatic pro-abortion Democrats. We have to take what we can get – that was Trump’s essential message. And it is a message Democrats want to bury because their whole Fall campaign is going to be “Trump wants to ban abortion” as a means of scaring upper class urban/suburban white women. Trump does need to get out in front of this – my view is that our failure to do so in 2022 cost us at least 3 Senate and a dozen House seats. Failure to address abortion squarely turned a Red Wave into a Red Trickle. Trump is doing the right thing here; nobody likes a coward so lets be a bit brave and say what we want.

Team Pudding Brain is also cooking up more illegal plans to annul student debt. You can get mad about it, if you like, but it is what it is. They’re playing to win. Those on our side who are all “pay your bills” are simply not getting it. In 2024, some votes have to be purchased. As I said years ago we should have been out in front on this one – and casting it as “Democrats enslaved you to college debt and we freed you from it”. If not cancellation, then at least make it dischargable in bankruptcy. And put the colleges on the hook for at least some of it. Tax college endowments to pay for low income college. So much we could have done and we just blew it. I’m hopeful that Trump comes up with something along these lines. There’s already indicators that youth is prepared to abandon the Democrats…we just need something to tip them.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan44 Comments

We were all wondering when it first came out if it were an April Fool’s joke, but it does appear that Biden is denying he proclaimed trans visibility for Easter. Now, to be sure, one must think carefully about this: the Party Line on it now is that the day has been around since 2009 and it just happened to fall on Easter…and, hey, isn’t this just as important as the observation of the resurrection? So, it might be just on that level that Biden is denying he made it happen – that he was just rote doing what you’re supposed to do on national observations that we all participate in. Because, you know, we all can’t wait for trans day of visibility to roll around each year.

That, of course, is actually damage control: someone decided that Biden and the rest of the Democrats would make a to do about trans on Easter as a malicious insult…and they thought that our outrage would get blowback that would work to Democrat advantage. When it was actually done – when the thing was in the public square – they suddenly realized how absolutely hideous it was and now they’re trying to back and fill.

My advice: forget the polls. They are going to fluctuate a bit back and forth. Carter had a 7 point lead in Gallup in April of 1980. Dukakis was down 2 in April of 1988, up 16 in May. On and on like that. This is what I think is the real dynamic of 2024: that people are just getting sick of it all. The trans on Easter thing is just another element in a large tapestry of things people just don’t like about the Biden years. The biggest thing will remain the price of gas and groceries but in all respects, just nothing is going right. That is why Democrats are now pinning their hopes on abortion: they just managed to get a pro-abortion amendment on the Florida ballot. They’ll do that in as many States as they can. Trust me on this: by September it’ll be 24/7 abortion. It did work partially in 2022. Will it work again? I doubt it. If it does then it means we never had a chance, anyway: if America returns Biden to office just to make sure children can be killed, then we’re out of the political market altogether. But outside a desperation move like that, there’s nothing Biden and the Democrats can do – any policy that would actually fix the problems they’ve created (notably reducing spending to cut inflation and closing the border to stop illegal immigration) is opposed by too large a part of the Democrat base. They are caught in a bind and can only hope that something else gets them out of it. Abortion is something else. So, too, things like trans day of visibility…but that has already backfired.

People are tired. Biden was supposed to be a placeholder. The Not Trump. He wasn’t supposed to do anything but end Covid and then let things coast until someone else got in. But they forgot he is senile – and when not senile, stupid. He isn’t running the show. He lacks the wit or will to ride herd on the far left like Obama and Clinton did. Thus the far left is setting the policy – but nobody ever voted for the far left. The more they do, the worse it gets for Biden.

Louis Conter, the last survivor of the USS Arizona, passed away. He was 102. God bless the man. Almost all the WWII vets are gone. Korean vets, too. The old soldier you see these days is likely a former 19 year old Marine from Vietnam, 1967.

Angry and Hopeful

Mark Noonan26 Comments

Where are we? Here:

A man was just charged with 20 counts of sex abuse with minors. Teacher at a church school. That is bad, but it does get worse: the man is an illegal immigrant deported multiple times. You know: someone who isn’t supposed to be here but who keeps coming back in because, why not? Why shouldn’t he come back? It is clear we don’t enforce our laws – that deportation is just a bureaucratic checklist which has no baleful affect. Just go, and then come on back…if we get around to it, we’ll deport you again. Maybe; but mostly only if you let us deport you…because if you run off, its not like we’ll chase you down. Heck, you can even get a job – even though everyone who gets a job in the United States has to fill out an I-9 form where they state their citizenship/residency status under penalty of perjury.

Has anyone ever been prosecuted for lying on an I-9?

But it also just get worse than that – with Israel still reeling from the 10/7 attacks and Christians, Jews and homosexuals routinely oppressed/murdered by Muslims, all our Democrats noted that today is something like the international day to fight “Islamophobia”. As if that is a problem. Yeah, the poor, little Muslims out there being phobia’d all day long! Hey, Nigerian, your congregation was massacred by Muslims? Better not get Islamophobic about it! That would be bad.

Do I sound a little bitter here? There’s a reason: our Ruling Class hates us. Wants us gone. Is trying to replace us with illegal immigrants. Is kowtowing to our enemies. There’s just no other way to put it – Pudding Brain’s social media intern put out a lying statement in support of a “non-binary” kid who killed herself but still no mention of Lanken Riley, murdered by an illegal immigrant deliberately and maliciously allowed into our country. Oh, and let’s not forget that as cannibal gangs are allegedly roaming Haiti, Biden’s people are flying in thousands of Haitians…one of whom just raped a 15 year old girl. Can’t wait for the cannibals to get here!

The good news – and there is some good news – is that voter registration trends are still favoring the GOP. Even with the previous weak RNC leadership and a Congressional GOP knifing the base at every turn, people are turning to the GOP. Not because of love, but because it is the only way to stop the Democrats who are determined to destroy the nation they hate the most, the United States of America. Now with Trump people in charge, I expect this to continue – they’ve hired Scott Presler who has spent years, unpaid, registering GOP voters. They’ve pledged to legal ballot harvesting. They killed the old phony minority outreach team and they’ll replace it with some people who actually go and talk to minorities.

Then there are the polls; no matter how you slice it, if the election were held today, Trump would get 312 electoral votes. That’s low end; could be higher if a couple of light blue States flip his way. People are starting to look back on the Trump years as a good time…mostly because they were. Until the CCP and the DNC manufactured the Covid drivel, everything was going very well. People want that; peace and prosperity, that is. Someone said that Trump was first elected to make sure Hillary didn’t get it and then Biden was elected to make sure Trump got out. Maybe – but Biden’s people went on a radical left bender…and the more they do that the more people realize that some mean Tweets aren’t all that bad.

But, also, I think more and more people are waking up to the fact that the “chaos” of the Trump years was manufactured – by Trump’s enemies. With the supposedly non-partisan federal bureaucracy leading the way. That is, people are understanding that Trump got a raw deal. That the current charges are nothing more than political theater. It is now doubtful that any of Trump’s trials will take place before November…and even if they do, any guilty verdict is likely to boomerang. Probably most sensible Democrats are hoping the trials just go away…but the Resist nitwits aren’t having it. So, Democrats are stuck on this ride they’d rather get off.

So, I am angry. I think that came through here. But I’m also hopeful. Just maybe we can save our nation; not that Trump is the answer, but if we can get him back in, it’ll break the system for good. There will be no more cobbling it back together. And with people like Fetterman, we might even see the Democrats start to wake up to the fact that the people don’t want unlimited illegal immigration and medical mutilation of minors. We might become sane again.

Let’s hope.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan36 Comments

The Crimson Blade goes live on March 10th! You can pre-order Kindle now. Having just done the very last review of it: gotta say, its awesome. There’s a growing conflict in the family, as it were. The Enemy is moving! But in ways that our heroes don’t fully understand. Everyone who likes a bit of history will enjoy the interaction between Fred and Celeste where it comes out, big surprise (/sarc), that Celeste is an ardent Monarchist!

So, the Michigan primary was a blowout win for Trump – and quite impressive numbers rolled up, including in traditionally Democrat areas. That plus the number of Democrat primary voters who voted “uncommitted” has Team Pudding Brain in a panic – that’s why they’re now overtly repeating Hamas lies and putting ever more pressure on Israel to quit. They are desperately worried they simply will not have enough votes in Michigan even given the invariable ballot box stuffing in Detriot.

To me, Israel continues to go far too slowly and carefully. I understand: they want to keep their own casualties low in addition to be chary of the blood of the Palestinians. These are noble sentiments, but celerity is key to success in war. You take too long and you can end up spilling more blood than if you just rammed through. And here’s the cruel truth: in war you must be willing to pour out whatever amount of blood is necessary to win. Nobody was more keen to keep casualties low than Wellington…but if the situation called for it, he would ruthlessly engage in quite bloody actions.

The vileness of our opponents becomes ever more clear, and it is finally costing them support. They were able to hide it for so long with their friendly media and, lets face it, some clever propaganda by Team Clinton and Team Obama…but with a senile Biden in charge, there’s no clear message and so the very worst aspects of the Left keep emerging where a Clinton or Obama would have skillfully hid them. The murder of that poor girl in Georgia is especially galvanizing…the Democrat attempts to sweep her death under the rug are leaving a very bad taste everywhere. We all know: she’s dead because illegals have been blithely released by the people specifically charged with keeping the people safe. You can’t work your way around that.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan43 Comments

Now that the whole football thing is over with, we can fully concentrate on the sport that matters: Hockey!

We here in Vegas fell in love with our Golden Knights during the inaugural season 7 years ago and the love affair has just grown since then. Going from Misfits to Champions in 6 years just cemented it. I had never watched more than a couple minutes of hockey in my life until that first season…but as the Knights started to shock the world by winning and getting into playoff contention, I started to watch. It took a little while to grasp the rules and tactics of the game but I’m pretty well grounded now…periodically shouting at the TV “shoot, dammit, there’s a lane open” and “for crying out loud, don’t turn it over at the blue line” and other such hocky-fan things. It is the last, remaining un-woke sport, anyways. And I like the element of luck in it. In all major sports the worst can beat the best but in hockey just a little more so…because you’re trying to get a little black thing to go into a net off ice. The skills are there, the shot is there and its perfect…but it hits a post or goes just slightly wide. You never know how a game can go…how at times you’ll go 40 minutes of play without anyone scoring, and then in five minutes 4 goals are scored collectively. So, hoping my Knights repeat! To make up for the national humiliation of the Chiefs repeating.

Everyone in Pudding Brain’s world is out there asserting that Biden is vigorous and sharp as a tack…while he’s got no official actions scheduled for the next three days. You know: the middle of the work week. That presser he gave was a catastrophe…and his Super Bowl rant about potato chips didn’t help. Everyone knows: he’s senile. He’s probably lucid no more than a few hours a day and can’t possibly map out a strategy. We’re now governed by a collection of West Wing staffers and Jill who try to work the Joe Oracle to get a decision…its why everything is a mess right now. The only way out, now, is a Trump vote in November.

And that is why with very few exceptions I’m getting harsh with Never Trump. To be fair, I know a few who have consistently opposed Trump on policy grounds since 2015. That’s fine. I disagree but if someone is giving me an honest opinion based on facts and their interpretation of same, I can’t really complain. But the broad mass of Never Trump are just mind-numbed Orange Man Bad cretins. There is no moral or intellectual world where Biden is better than Trump. Getting Biden out is crucial to the basic safety of the United States. And these Never Trump guys are on and on about how they have to keep Biden in because Trump is worse. That isn’t just dishonest, it is stupid. It isn’t about Trump. It is not even about Republican or Democrat – it is about getting a clearly, mentally incompetent man out of office. Even Kamala would be better in that at least she’s not senile (other than that: disaster). Right now, if the 3 am call comes, we have no idea who will make the actual decision…and we might get no decision (which is vastly worse than even a bad decision) because nobody wants to take responsibility for it. Biden must go.

The Senate GOP is backing the Ukraine aid bill (naturally) but Senator Vance (R-OH) found within the text a requirement that the money remain available for Ukraine until September, 2025. Meaning that if Trump wins and carries out his pledge to end US support for the Ukraine war, he can be impeached. Rely on it, the Ruling Class knows it is at least even money that Trump wins in November and they’re trying to hamstring him in advance. The border bill was like that, too; all sorts of provisions which would de-facto tie Trump’s hands on border security.

Of course, poison pill or no, I think Trump should go for it. It is unlikely that there are 67 Senate votes to remove Trump. Just let impeachment after impeachment fail, if that is what it takes. Trump’s main task, if he wins, is to clear out the bureaucracy, anyways – that is where the danger really lies to himself and to any future GOP President. We now know that various officials of the Executive branch were not only refusing direct, legal Presidential orders, they were actively breaking the law to take down Trump. Massive housecleaning is necessary. An end to Civil Service protections, at least in all senior Executive Branch positions. Executive Branch people have no power – the President is the only person vested by the Constitution with Executive power. Anyone who exercises Executive power does so at the discretion of the President and simply cannot, except in cases of obviously illegal orders, refuse a Presidential order.

Canadian Leftist groups in cooperation with the Canadian government cooked up a story about how Catholic Church schools in Canada had mass graves for Native children murdered by Catholic Church schools. It was quite a big issue in Canada and they even got the Pope to issue an apology about it. Trouble is, there were and are no mass graves. Of course there weren’t: hey, the Church has a lot of faults but they don’t mass murder people. It was just a ridiculous accusation…but the Ruling Class ran with it because it was an attack on the Church and they’ll always go for that. It has all been exposed as a hoax but that doesn’t matter: to the Leftist, to original, flaming headline is always the dogma. “Hands up, don’t shoot”, “was just buying skittles” and “I can’t breath” are obligatory beliefs even though there isn’t the least bit of truth to them. So, too, with the “Church mass graves” story – the Left still asserts it is true, and so very often these days Leftist terrorists are burning down Catholic churches. Naturally, the police don’t get them: they’re busy looking for people who are misgendering.

So a perhaps-trans shooter with “free Palestine” on Xir gun tried to do a mass shooting, fortunately stopped. But you’ll be pleased to know the shooter is an illegal immigrant in country for 19 years and voted in the 2020 election.

Volkswagon has their Super Bowl ad and it was pretty good…left out something, though.