Hong Kong

Open Thread

Mark Noonan22 Comments

Do liars like to lie? I can only assume so, especially of late. Earlier today, I came across a Twitter thread from a blue-checked Never Trump Bulwark person who was asserting:

1. Ford’s story was credible.
2. Reade’s story was ridiculous on its face.

Got that? Ford, who couldn’t remember where or when it happened and had no evidence that she so much as met Kavanaugh is credible while Reade’s story is asserted to be ridiculous. And don’t you wanna know why? Because after Bob Packwood all the Senators were on their best behavior and there never has been a case of Biden acting inappropriately around women! How does one work up the gumption for such an assertion? I mean, the guy is routinely on camera being inappropriate with women. We can only imagine how he is when there’s no one watching. And yet the blue-checked person makes the assertion. Could Reade be lying? Of course she can be – but to make out that she’s an obvious liar while Ford is just as obviously telling the truth is…well…a rather amazing thing to say.

It is amazing because the person saying it – having the mental ability to type a coherent sentence, and thus isn’t a drooling idiot – knows that the assertion is ridiculous and, further, they also know that everyone reading it knows it is ridiculous. In other words, they are lying, they know they are lying, they know you know they are lying…and they further know that not a single person on their side will take note of the lie. They’ll either have the hardihood to agree (and thus join in the lie) or if they are of a more delicate sort, they’ll stay silent. But no one on the side of the Dems/Left/NeverTrump will ever contradict it. I did, of course. And so did many others…but we’re of the right and thus we’re racist, sexist, homophobic closet Nazis who don’t count.

Washington State got conned out of millions in unemployment money by Nigerians. It is, as yet, unknown if a Nigerian prince was involved. Its not so much that our Ruling Class is arrogant and corrupt…it is that they are no good. They suck. Winston Churchill once wrote about how to deal with a Prime Minister:

The loyalties which center upon number one are enormous. If he trips, he must be sustained. If he make mistakes, they must be covered. If he sleeps, he must not be wantonly disturbed. If he is no good, he must be pole-axed.

Our rulers are no good.

The New York Times puts its obituary notices on the front page to make you all feel bad about Trump. I guess it didn’t occur to them that hardly anyone reads their paper…but, be that as it may, they also got some of the names wrong. Once again: our betters are just lousy at their jobs.

The ChiComs are in the process of crushing the last remnant of liberty in Hong Kong. I do feel for the people of Hong Kong, but there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Only a war could change this result, and no one is going to go to war with China over Hong Kong. Only thing I can think to do is to pass a law saying that if you have proof of Hong Kong citizenship as of, say 1/1/20, you get refugee status in the United States, no questions asked.

WHO is trying to burnish its image by sending out as goodwill ambassador…the wife of China’s President. Its like they aren’t even trying any more: “yep, we’re stooges of the ChiComs and we’re laughing about it.”

Outside of Biden’s “you ain’t black” comment, there’s really more for Team Joe to worry about here:

Charlamagne tha God — the black radio host to whom presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden notoriously said, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re voting for me or Trump, then you ain’t black” — warned that Democrats will face a “voter depression” problem in November, thanks to their likely presidential nominee. He said the best apology is pro-black policies and it’s time for black voters to put the burden on Democrats to win their votes, not take them for granted.

“Well, on top of possible Russian interference and voter suppression, Dems have to worry about voter depression, and that’s people staying home on Election Day because they just aren’t enthused by the candidate,” Charlamagne tha God told MSNBC host Joy Reid.

There’s some stuff out there which indicates that things aren’t going too well for the Democrats. Not just things like fundraising, the GOP win in the CA25 special and voter registration shifts…there’s also some indications that younger voters, including young black (especially male) and young Latino voters are warming up to Trump. Don’t get me wrong – Trump isn’t about to win 50% or even 30% of the black vote. But there are some indications he could get to 20%. That would be more than double his African-American support from 2016. That would be catastrophic for the Democrats…if Trump does well among African-Americans and Latinos, not only will Biden not be able to flip MI and PA, he’ll lose NM and NV, into the bargain. We won’t know it until we know it: we’re really going to have to wait for election day on this one…so much has been shifting so fast, no one can really say. But I’m wondering if Biden isn’t a Democrat version of Barry Goldwater?

Open Thread

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Looks like Hurricane Dorian may miss the USA…this after liberals went all gleeful at the prospect of it hitting Trump properties. Seems that MAGA has been granted a special dispensation.

Greece is seeing a new surge of migrants from the Muslim world – a lot from Afghanistan. By land from Kabul to Athens is 3,591 miles. That is quite a trip. It took Alexander the Great years to make it…and somehow I don’t think most Afghans own an SUV to make that trip go faster. Someone is organizing and supplying this migration. And government must be involved as before they get to Greece, they’ve crossed at least two international borders.

And here’s the sort of upstanding citizens Greece and Europe are getting:

A … asylum-seeker was arrested in Villeurbanne, a suburb of Lyon, France, on Saturday after he allegedly killed a 19-year-old and wounded nine others at a subway stop.

The suspect, armed with a knife and a “skewer” of some sort, was arrested at the scene. He is reportedly a 33-year-old Afghan citizen who was hoping to gain asylum in France.

The bad news: I bet his attack will probably not be held against him at his asylum hearing.

Mickey Kaus talks Epstein:

We’re in the middle of a global populist surge. There’s a sense that elites are not playing by the same rules as everyone else. They might not even be playing the same game. It’s pretty clear that Epstein was running some kind of a sex ring for the rich and well connected. How big a ring? We don’t know until we try to find out. But there are reports out there [click if you dare] that it’s bigger than we might think — bigger than old, familiar Prince Andrew, involving a non-trivial cross-section of business and entertainment leaders, plus some prominent Anglo-American families and maybe a handful of nation states.

Read the whole thing – there are circles within circles going on here. I started out figuring someone handed him the hemlock (as it were) to protect some other interest of his…but I’m starting to wonder if he was killed? We don’t really know what he was doing all those years when the very top of the global elite were at his beck and call; even after his conviction. And sure in heck the global elite doesn’t want us to find out. But, we must: we have to know. We need to know how Epstein got his money; how he got his connections; who protected him; who was involved on all levels. Chips fall where they may – we need to find out every last detail…and then start arresting everyone who committed even the least crime related to it all.

Still lots of talk about the Hong Kong protests – but, in the end, the people of Hong Kong have no weapons. They are doomed, unless the rest of China rises…and from all accounts, the people of China don’t want to rise.

There was some renewed talk of the way the CIA backed modern art stuff in the middle of the 20th century. The official word is that the CIA felt we needed to have some cool, new art to show the world that we were hip and with it…what I think actually happened is that the CIA was penetrated from the beginning and the USSR used the CIA to push cultural garbage (like modern art) as a means of tearing down the West.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan7 Comments

I did a little checking with Expert Opinion and its still pretty set: Trump is doomed. And I mean in the “he hasn’t got a chance” sense. But then you see the crowd at Trump’s rally in New Hampshire last night. Honestly, I can’t see how the man loses – his opponents can’t draw flies. But, the polls say he’s done. I guess we’ll find out next year.

As if you didn’t already know this, there’s leaked audio of the New York Times deciding to switch from “Russia” to “Racism” against Trump. Long time readers might remember my very long series of “What Media Bias?” posts. I stopped doing it because it was so obvious that it really didn’t need further explanation. But, still, nice to get some absolute confirmation.

China is cracking down on Hong Kong – some people are officially upset with Trump as he’s not being forceful about it. But, what’s he really supposed to do? He’s already engaged in a trade war with China. He’s already trying to detach North Korea from China’s orbit. He’s already buddying up to India and Vietnam against China. He’s rebuilding our Navy. He’s sending our ships into waters claimed by China. Short of war, there’s nothing we can do for Hong Kong: and I don’t think anyone wants to fight China over Hong Kong. It is sad, but it was inevitable: a tyranny simply will not tolerate the slightest bit of freedom. China only kept hands off until disruption wouldn’t roil markets too badly…and rely on it that Hong Kong’s rich will cut whatever deals are necessary with Beijing.

SpaceX is talking up its mission to Mars. I think we should go visit Mars, but I’m doubtful about our ability to live off Earth for any length of time. The more we learn about the planets, the more incredible it is that Earth has life…things just have to be so incredibly perfect for life to exist that the chances of it existing elsewhere are getting vanishingly small…and we’re also learning that what Earth has is not at all easy to replicate, even on a small scale. Among the massive problems, I see radiation as the largest. Living things don’t like it: our atmosphere and magnetic field keep out lots of it…but once away from Earth, you lose that protection and have to make the means of keeping it off you.

The Trump Administration has been facilitating talks between Israel and various Arab States…this is because Trump is just smarter than anyone we’ve had in the White House since Reagan.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

With Epstein’s death, a gigantic sigh of relief was heard throughout Manhattan, DC and Hollywood…but there are still a lot of lose ends, and the Ruling Class is diligently trying to tie things up:

On Friday, unsealed court documents named former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and former Clinton cabinet official and ex-New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson as among those who allegedly had sex with an underage victim of Jeffrey Epstein. But while all three evening news broadcasts covered the case, one thing was missing: any hint that those two men are Democrats.

If you check anything about Epstein in the MSM or Wikipedia, you’ll see that Trump is mentioned all over the place – that is also a bit of lose-end-tying. Trump really never had much to do with the guy, and certainly not in the last dozen years or so. But, the MSM must protect their masters! And that means downplaying all the prominent Dems in Epstein’s orbit and overemphasizing any Republican involvement. And they wonder why we hold them in contempt? Aside from that, I don’t know where this goes – but you can rely on it, the full truth won’t come out for a long, long time unless Trump and Barr really press the matter. Side note: I’m pretty sure he offed himself, but there were so many “mistakes” the prison had to make to allow him time to do it that I can only assume his death was greatly desired…and I’m wondering if anyone got word to him that his timely exit would result in something he cared about being protected?

Germany provides free college – and you’ll find our domestic leftists all happy about that. But, free college leads to pretty much what you’d expect:

The problem is that every pupil who has passed the school-leaving exam, the Abitur, has the constitutional right to a place at university, even if he or she has to wait some semesters and has no real academic inclinations or talents. The result is a proliferation of abstruse and socially irrelevant courses, a drop-out rate of about 30% (a shocking waste of human and financial resources) and the lack of skilled workers you mentioned.

Free college isn’t to provide educated people – free college is to provide make-work jobs for people in education who will then have a vested interest in preserving the Ruling Class which provides their sinecures. A follow-on benefit is the ability to propagandize to youth for four additional years so they are really solidly in line with Ruling Class desires. The end result is an uneducated population of drones who do as they are told.

Looks like China is about to crush all resistance in Hong Kong. Lots of people are huffing and puffing with righteous indignation over it. It is times like these where I like to remind people that righteous indignation hurts nobody. There is a case to be made for intervening in Hong Kong…but the only meaningful intervention would mean war with China. By all means: China poses a gigantic threat to the United States and the sooner we have it out with them, the less costly it will be. But that is not what these people demanding we “do something” mean…what they mean is “I want to demand we ‘do something’ so I can say I stood with the people of Hong Kong, but if you think I’d risk my life – or, even worse, my investment portfolio – to defend the people of Hong Kong, you’re nuts.” Hong Kong only gets out of its jam if the revolt spreads to the rest of China; so far, there’s no indication of that happening. Side note: this is the long term result of our refusal to unleash the Nationalist Chinese during the Korean War. We were stupid and cowardly then, and now we get to watch while a free people is destroyed.

The new and increasingly non-racist South is becoming ever more Republican. It is a Democrat lie that the old, racist Democrats of yore switched to the GOP. The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1965. As late as 2002, Democrats had complete control of the Alabama government. It was only after the 2010 elections that the GOP gained control of the Alabama legislature for the first time since Reconstruction. That was 45 years after the Civil Rights Act which infuriated, particularly, racist Alabama Democrats…who were then supposed to go GOP because the GOP is racist, and yet somehow all these racists forgot to vote GOP until 2010. The reality: the racist Democrats remained Democrats and only with the rise of a new, non-racist white electorate in Alabama did the GOP gain control.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan42 Comments

Lots of things are being proposed in the wake of the mass shootings, the most pernicious being the red flag laws. Imagine an America where liberals get to turn you in to the police with the accusation that you’re insane, and then you have to prove you’re not in order to keep your right to bear arms.

Democrats, sick people that they are, are fundraising off the shootings. Beto has been the most vile in this, directly accusing the President of racism.

The Dayton shooter seems to have been a far-left kook, while the El Paso shooter supposedly had some rightwing leanings. This works out to the MSM covering El Paso while downplaying Dayton.

The people of Hong Kong are rising up against their Communist overlords – but they will not be successful. The Chinese government would like to defuse the situation with little or no bloodshed, if possible, but make no mistake about it: Hong Kong will be brought fully under the heel of Beijing. The people of Hong Kong have no way to resist: they don’t have guns.

Meanwhile, China is developing a plan for a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere…and like the last one attempted by Japan, they aren’t asking Great East Asia if they want to be part of it.

Leftists forced the New York Times to memory hole a headline about Trump the left didn’t agree with. Paper of record, ya’ll…its just a record of how to surrender to Communist apparatchiks.