immigration

Open Thread Futures at -$1.79

Mark Noonan65 Comments

We were supposed to be hoarding oil, I guess.

I supported the lockdowns when they were announced – but I’m starting to think that we might have made a mistake. Perhaps we should have made it a matter of personal choice? Do as much social distancing as possible. Wear masks and gloves. Work from home if possible – but let everyone assess the risk for themselves? As we see Democrats trying to force us into a Great Depression over this, it is clear that we didn’t think this all the way through at the start. At all events, it is time to start easing up. We do have to get back to work.

President Trump is going to suspend immigration – which makes sense. Until we’re back to full employment, we simply don’t need more people here. Liberal heads will explode over this – they will step on this rake. They have to. Orange Man Bad, right? So they’ll be out there telling us to stay in our homes but we must welcome new immigrants.

The Experts are still telling us that Biden has it in the bag – which sounds familiar. Almost like I heard this four years ago, or something. But, be that as it may, Steven Hayward has a contrarian view – mostly because Trump isn’t afraid to hit back and the Democrats are a targe-rich environment.

North Korea’s dictator is said to be in bad health.

What I expected to find: Russia didn’t want to help Trump in 2016. Of all the absurdities these past few years, this is the most egregious: that Russia wanted Trump. Its stupid – they owned Hillary. And even if they didn’t own her, they knew her policies were tailor-made to let Russia do whatever it damned well pleased in the world. Russia always wants to sow confusion because that’s just the way Russia is…but to think they’d want to roll the dice on Trump when they had a sure thing in Hillary is ridiculous.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan29 Comments

Jared Kushner’s peace plan was released – looks like it would be excellent for the Palestinians if they would accept the deal (and the money) and settle down to build themselves a national life…but we can rely on it the Palestinian leadership will reject it out of hand and work up some paid mobs to pretend to be the Palestinian people expressing their righteous anger. Two things will decide the fate of this plan:

1. Trump getting re-elected: if he is, then US policy on this won’t change any time soon.

2. Most of the Muslim world telling the Palestinians to accept the deal or get bent.

We’ll see how it comes out. Elder of Ziyon has a brief rundown.

The impeachment thing still goes on – now with Bolton being the White Knight who will save the day for the left. What really irks me is now many times we on our side went to bat for Bolton and this is how he pays us back. They really are garbage, these old-line GOPe types, aren’t they? You wonder if they ever really believed anything they ever said when they were supposedly on our side. Thanks to RINO’s like Mitt and Collins, there’s still some back and forth about whether witnesses will be called. Ultimately, the witnesses, themselves, don’t matter: there’s nothing for them to tell. But it is amazingly irritating that the RINO’s keep doing this stuff – they’ve got to realize by now that we really can’t stand them doing this. In the end, though, its all a big nothing: Trump won’t be removed – it is only a 1% chance that any GOPer actually votes to convict (10% chance that Manchin votes to acquit).

The Supreme Court ruled that Trump, indeed, has the power to enforce American law which bars welfare bums from immigrating.

Latest on the Coronovirus: 100,000 may already be infected. I’m still pretty “meh” about it.

Some of our Liberal and Never Trump Elite Expert Super Smarty-Pants guys yucked it up about how we Trump supporters are all morons. They have been massively dragged on social media for it, and deservedly so. But it got me thinking: these guys really aren’t too bright and really don’t know much. They are always insulting us as having not gone to college and that we don’t read books. But I’d stack my list of read books against any of these dimwits…and I’ll bet mine is a lot larger and covers more variety.

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 Noonan16 Comments

Chadwick Moore on Twitter had an interesting observation:

But along with far-left politicians, another class of people benefit from $15 minimum wage: illegals. Not because they’ll get paid more (ha!), but because they’ll be more attractive hires for struggling small businesses in our sanctuary states. I don’t think that’s coincidental.

You almost hate to do it, but you do wonder just who is being paid off? The way Democrats are acting vis a vis the border, it does creep in on you that they’re being paid Cartel money. How else can you really think they are ok with this? Are there Chamber of Commerce types making sure money goes to those who favor open borders? How about Cartel money? We don’t really know – no one is looking into it. And its not like there’s a sense of morality on the Left which would make them refuse bribes…and corporate bosses seem to be for sale like penny candy.

This is what the future hold for all of us, if we lose: the left is organizing a hiring boycott against former Trump officials. Remember, in the old Soviet Bloc, the real way they controlled people was by controlling their employment, housing and education. Failure to sing from the Commie Songbook placed all three at risk. The left wants veto power over anyone who offends them.

VDH:

The final irony? If the CIA, FBI, and DOJ have gone the banana republic way of Lois Lerner’s IRS and shredded the Constitution, they still failed to remove Donald Trump.

Trump still stands. In Nietzschean fashion what did not kill him apparently only made him stronger.

It is very hard to predict the future, but I rate the chances of a Trump defeat next year much lower than the chances of a Trump landslide.

Yet another liberal judge has issued yet another completely illegal injunction against President Trump vis a vis immigration. This is why it is so very important not just to win in 2020, but 2024 and 2028, as well. it’ll take us more than a decade to rework the Courts to the point where we can rely on them to enforce the law.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan20 Comments

Supreme Court rules that illegal aliens can be arrested by ICE after they finish their State sentences. This is a win – but it shows you how far back the left pushed us until Trump came along.

Senator Warren (D-High Cheek Bones) did a town hall in which she proposed $100 trillion in new government spending. Not sure this will be the path to victory. It would be the path to bankruptcy, though. (HT: RSM)

Aside: I am wondering how the Democrats’ “white people: you suck” platform will play with blue collar white voters in 2020.

CNN wins an award named after Cronkite for their Parkland townhall…which makes sense as we’re giving them an award for hackery named after one of the premier hacks in American journalistic history. A lot of people keep saying that Trump is attacking our norms by calling the MSM the “enemy of the people”: the truth of the matter is that Trump is asserting the norm. The only function the MSM has is to provide the truth as best they can determine it. They don’t do that – they lie, they hide the truth, they play politics…and by so doing, they negate the reason for having a free press and, so, become an enemy of the people. They can fix this real easy: just report the truth. That’s all they have to do.

They won’t do it.

Newtown, MA public schools have been teaching the kiddies that Christians and Jews modified their religious books in order to contradict Muslim claims. I can only guess that this is a belief held by some Muslims…but in a time when you can’t even say an Our Father in public schools, why in heck are the kids being taught such things? You know why: the left has made the calculation that Islam is the future…this is part of that.

Some science guys think they’ve figured out, via DNA, who Jack the Ripper was. Seems to make sense – but, it won’t stop people from thinking differently (HT: Ace)

Open Thread

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Trump and the incoming House Democrats are (surprise!) at a bit of an impasse over border wall funding. Meaning, Trump wants it funded and Democrats really don’t. Some are saying that it was the GOP’s focus on immigration rather than the booming economy which cost the GOP the House…but sounds to me like Chamber of Commerce Republicans desperate to convince us that we have to get on board with open border. We know that the Democrats victory wasn’t as big as advertised. I’m thinking that Trump may be doing the right thing here – if the Democrats want a government shut down over the issue of border security, that might prove a winner for Trump and the GOP.

We might have misjudged Mexico’s new President. He’s passing out awards to Kushner and making trade and border deals with Trump…and now seems determined to really crack down on Mexico’s criminal violence. We’ll have to see how this comes out – but, hey, if he’s a genuine Mexican patriot, then good things will follow. And we’ll be able to work with him even if we disagree.

Tumlbr says it is banning naughty pictures – so, it’ll now be the go-to place for feminist screeds.

Democrats seem to have decided that going on a witch hunt against Trump is what they were elected to do. Funny, we had some hotly contested House and Senate races here during the campaign and I don’t remember a single Democrat candidate saying, “elect me and I’ll investigate Trump”. But, hey, maybe I missed those ads. My thinking: if they don’t swiftly come up with indisputable evidence of Trump malfeasance, the American people will swiftly grow weary of continuing investigations. Either you got the goods on Trump, or you don’t.

Suggestion to the GOP: lower the beer drinking age back to 18. It was raised in 1984 to 21. And it is absurd – if you’re old enough to vote and be drafted, you’re old enough to drink a beer. But, still, I think we should also annul student loan debt in arrears and make such loans subject to bankruptcy laws. There’s lots we can do to get the youngsters to take a look at our side.

Title IX is a reign of terror. Remember, it is never about justice – in fact, leftists hate justice in all its forms. It is about power – the left wants it.

Judge let’s an illegal immigrant MS-13 guy go – MS-13 guy murders. This is why laws have to be enforced. There is never any actual discretion in this – once before the Court, the case must be decided on law. If the law was broken, some price has to be extracted from the guilty. We can be merciful – in fact, we must be merciful – but if someone broke a law, something has to be done by the guilty to redress the balance. For this guy, it was obvious: deportation. Judge disagreed – and now Herson Rivas is dead; hacked to death. Put his picture on TV; to contrast with Mom running into tear gas with the kids, you know?

Open Thread

Mark Noonan60 Comments

Our liberals are going nuts over Trump sending troops to the border…apparently working under the weird assumption that our army isn’t supposed to protect our borders. I guess that concept has gotten lost after 70 years of sending our troops into foreign shooting galleries under strict orders not to win.

President Trump is asking for $341,559.50 in legal fees from Team Stormy. No, I don’t know why they didn’t just round it up.

Its a small and very, very weird world:

In a really strange turn of events, it has been discovered that bombing suspect Cesar Sayoc worked at Ultra Gentleman’s Club in West Palm Beach, FL, the same strip club that Stormy Daniels performed at back in April, WPTV reported.

Jair Bolsonaro won the Presidency of Brazil with 56% of the vote and this is being described as a major blow against Democracy…because the people voted the wrong way, you see? The global elite is deathly afraid of that. Now, plenty of people on the right in the USA did laud the victory…but I’d hold off. Let’s see if he’s really the Tropical Trump he’s called, or if he’s a nut before we embrace him.

Victor Davis Hanson has an excellent article on the paradoxes of the immigrants – specifically, the caravan. Mostly centering around the oddity that they want to come here, but they don’t seem to particularly want to be American. I liken it to the barbarians outside Rome in the 5th century…they very much wanted to enjoy the good things of Rome, but they weren’t at all interested in preserving the social structures which produced the good things of Rome. The collapse of Western civilization (which was quite epic) from the 5th to the 10th centuries was simply because of this – and had the barbarians come in and humbly asked to be taught, it would have been a lot different. I’ve come around to the view that all immigration to the United States must cease for a period of at least 20 years. We need to kick out those who won’t assimilate and assimilate those who are willing. And only after that is accomplished can we afford to open the door again.

I didn’t know this – Don Surber notes that in order to get a poll response pool of 737 people, a total of 38,000 calls had to be made. That is a 1.94% response rate. Now, the pollsters tell you this doesn’t matter because those who hang up likely have the same overall opinions as those who don’t. Really? Seriously? I just can’t hold that to be credible – you might be missing some major trends out there. You know, like PA, MI and WI all breaking for Trump…

UPDATE: Trump secures Amazona’s vote for 2020:

President Donald Trump said in an interview that he plans to sign an executive order ending “birthright citizenship” for the children of non-American citizens who are born on U.S. soil, a move that would likely be challenged immediately in the courts over its constitutionality.

The first thing you think is that Democrats will challenge this in court…but, if they do, they have no assurance that the Supreme Court will back them. All they may end up doing is cementing Trump Administration policy. Also: my bet is that most Americans didn’t realize until just now that you can get citizenship merely by being born in the United States, even if of illegal immigrant parents. Democrats should be wary of fighting on this hill.

They won’t be, of course. Because they’re stupid.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Solution to the Caravan: close the border. Just tell Mexico that nothing crosses the border if that Caravan gets within 100 miles of it. Until the Mexicans turn it around and send it home, nothing gets across in either direction. It’ll cause an economic disruption, but far more in Mexico than here…and even the drug cartels would exert pressure to get the Caravan turned around.

That Trump rally in Texas was astonishing. Just a gigantic, happy crowd. Once again – all the Experts tell us the GOP is doomed on the 6th, but where’s the evidence? Where are the throngs showing up for Democrat events? Heck, where are the early votes? So far, only Nevada has given the Dems a slight edge in early voting, and my bet is that is only because the rural areas of Nevada haven’t checked in as of this moment. As for all the money the Democrats suddenly got – I’m figuring it is laundered money-bags money. Someone pushed the panic button and some big money people shoved money around and made it appear that Act Blue is getting huge small donor money. Of course, we’ll all find out for sure in two weeks.

President Trump remains the ultimate troll:

Trump says that he might nominate Hillary Clinton to the Supreme Court, just so the media will investigate her deleted emails

PETA says that milk is a symbol of White Supremacy. It is really getting hard to parody the Left these days.

The actual hero of Telemark has died at the age of 99. A genuine tough guy.

There’s an oddity about the Black Sea – apparently, when sea levels changed ages ago, the “original” Black Sea (much smaller than the current one) was submerged…and became a nearly oxygen-free layer of water. The upshot is that deep down in the Black Sea, anything that winds up there gets amazingly preserved, including this 2,400 year old shipwreck. The ship is remarkably intact. And it, while the oldest so far, is merely one of what may be scores or hundreds of such ships. The science guys are pretty committed, from what I can tell, to leaving everything in place…but, I’m not sure. What good does it do down there? My view: find some way to raise as much as possible and preserve it.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan19 Comments

An old friend – we first met in 1971 – walked back into my life today. Haven’t seen him since 1987. He first popped up a few weeks ago at another friend’s house…just knocked on his door and said “hello”. Now, he’s called me – using the number the other friend gave him. It is very strange to hear a voice from such a long time ago come back. But, it is also quite splendid. There aren’t, I think, too many people that really get into your heart. This friend is one of them. We only talked briefly – going over the largest aspects of each others lives since we parted. I’m hoping to get together soon so we can really talk over what each of us has done. This shows that true friendship never ends – we were talking as if we’d seen each other last week rather than decades ago. So, a good day for me.

Senator McCain is gone. I’ve obviously had some strenuous political disagreements with him. I’ll leave those aside for a bit. I prefer, right now, just to remember him as a hero of my youth. But I will say I oppose appointing his widow to his seat – there is something, in my view, just terribly un-American in doing that.

Mark Krikorian has something interesting about the Tibbetts murder:

…Tibbetts’s killer is reported to have lived in the United States for seven years, from age 17, and worked at an Iowa dairy farm for four of those years. He worked on the books, having used a stolen identity to get past the Social Security–number check (not E-Verify) used by his employer. His lawyer said that the killer “diligently filed tax returns legally with the IRS.” He had a car registered in someone else’s name and managed to drive for years without a license. He had a child with a high-school classmate of Tibbetts’s, meaning he was presumably listed as the father on the birth certificate.

That’s a lot of interaction with our institutions. That an illegal alien can do all that — for years — without raising a red flag represents a profound failure of policy…

It is that, but John Hinderaker notes that it is something more:

So the Social Security Administration and the IRS are not cooperating in the enforcement of federal law, which is the prime duty of the executive branch, according to Article II of the Constitution. President Trump runs both of those agencies. Why can’t he make them shape up? That question is the key to understanding American politics in the 21st Century.

The government is increasingly just doing whatever it wants. But that isn’t how it is supposed to work. We gave Donald Trump this power – not some unelected bureaucrats. It is very much time that we, the people, start to take charge of our government. One thing we haven’t really considered is that the bureaucrats should be term limited. No one should make a career out of being a bureaucrat. Other than military, perhaps no one should be permitted to work for the federal government for more than ten years?

Some Prog SJW type was just booted by ESPN…likely because ESPN is figuring out that when people tune into sports, they are trying to escape politics for a while.

DNC sets the rule that there has to be an equal number of men and women on their party committees…but, if gender is a social construct, how can they know?

Open Thread

Mark Noonan46 Comments

Today is Supreme Court Justice-mageddon! President Trump has said he’ll announce his nominee at 9pm, Eastern. As for me, I’m hoping for Amy Barrett for the exact reason many Conservatives want Trump to shy away: I want the Culture War battle that would ensue. I want, that is, Democrats to out themselves as anti-Catholic bigots. Even if we lose the nominee, it would still work to our long-term electoral advantage.

Mitch McConnell was harassed outside a restaurant by some leftwing nitwits. I wonder if these guys realize that one day, they’re going to do this to someone who will kick their ass? You wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. But I know people who just don’t take this from anyone. It’ll be interesting to see how that will play out.

Appears the betting line on Trump getting a Nobel Peace Prize is 4 to 1. Only people with better odds are the leaders of the two Koreas.

The MSM is trying to gin up a story about how Trump is kicking foreigners out of the military – all it really amounted to was a small number of foreign recruits failed to meet the necessary requirements. This sort of thing is starting to be an in-kind donation to Trump’s 2020 re-election effort. Guys, if you want to stop being called Fake News, maybe stop pushing Fake News? Just spitballin’ here…

I’ve seen the #WalkAway hashtag on Twitter now for about 10 days – the posts are all the story of how a Democrat walked away from that party. Very often, it is Afican-American or other core constituencies of the Democrat party making these statements. Democrats are downplaying it – but the fear has got to be there. Obama got 93% of the black vote in 2012; Hillary got 88% of it: and it was 88% of a significantly smaller number of voters as many African-Americans just stayed home. At 88% of the vote, Hillary still lost, but still could have won…imagine what would happen if it was 85%? Or even 80%? Keep in mind, that is still a crushing victory among that demographic…but at 85%, Democrats likely have no path to 270 electoral votes. And if that vote holds down-ballot, then Democrats would be crushed in the House, as well. We’ll see how it comes out – our first clue will be the votes this November. If there is a significant uptick in GOP support among African-Americans, then the game is up for the Democrats: they’ll be out of power for a generation.