Kari Lake

Open Thread

Mark Noonan36 Comments

The now-former head of the Arizona GOP was caught on tape trying to bribe Kari Lake to quit the Senate race. He’s former because Lake said she’d release the rest of the tape if he didn’t quit and he bailed out.

In case you were wondering the real reason we lost in 2022.

I’ve been pretty sure for a while that they cheated Lake out of a victory in 2022, now I’m very sure of it. Clearly, the Establishment GOP (still mostly owned by McCain people, though not for long, it would seem) worked with Democrats to sabotage Populist/MAGA candidates in Arizona all up and down the ballot. And when sabotage wasn’t enough to do it, they turned a blind eye to (and maybe helped?) Democrats do some last-minute box stuffing. It can’t be emphasized enough that most of our recent defeats have been because of treason.

The good news is that the old GOP fades away ever more rapidly. Most GOPers now signing on for Trump is proof of this. They still might not like the Populist/MAGA base, but they’re afraid of it. Sure, they also still hope for a miracle turning back the clock, but the smarter among them know that isn’t happening. It is either go Left and work to transition minors, or go MAGA and resign oneself to no longer being able to rake it in from corporations. We’ve already lost most of the GOPers we’re going to lose – the last bits of Never Trump will become Only Democrat over the next 10 months as they find that all along they wanted to be disarmed soyboys with a strange love for Hamas. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

We are not 100% sure what we’re gaining in return…but there are some hints that as the old line GOPers move left, black and Latino people are starting to move our way. Who knew that getting rid of some officious jerks would work out like that? I know of plenty of hard working black and Latino people who are ready for a GOP vote; and now we can talk to them because we’re not longer committed to lower corporate taxes, forever wars and figuring out how to lower labor costs for the Chamber of Commerce. In this, guys, Abbott’s busloads of illegals to blue cities has been a stroke of genius. It is really opening some black and Latino eyes as they see these guys get off the bus and into hotels, free food and free phones. They say the “Great Replacement Theory” is a bit of rightwing, racist conspiracy-mongering…maybe, but right now black and Latino Americans can see it in the flesh.

Speaking of Abbott, his defiance on the border issue is also beautiful. It is the perfect set up for us – either the border remains closed by the Texas National Guard, or Biden forces it open so that illegals can flood through. Either way it is a political win for us – and a massive political win.

To be sure, some are convinced that the damage is already done. That is, Democrats are willing to take the loss on immigration in 2024 knowing that these illegals will never be forced out and they, and their children, will become reliable Democrat votes. This supposition is based on the idea that as soon as the MSM shows one family of crying illegals being sent back, there will be a groundswell of opposition to deportations and that will be that. I’m not sure – in fact, I’m pretty sure it won’t go like that at all.

Oh, make no mistake about it – if a future GOP President starts to deport, the crying illegals will be on TV. All over the TV. It’ll be 24/7 Crying Illegals. All of whom were all set to become brilliant doctors who will cure cancer as they pilot the first ship to Mars. But I just don’t think it’ll work. CNN is getting beaten in the ratings by the History Channel. The Los Angeles Times just had to axe more than a hundred employees. The MSM just doesn’t have the oomph it used to have – and even the people still watching/reading it don’t really trust it. And at the end of the day, everyone outside the fever swamps of the Left knows we can’t take in 20 million people. It just isn’t possible. We don’t have the money, space or jobs for them. They have to go back.

So, if we get a GOP President and deportations start up, I expect to hear the shrieks from the Left…but the busses heading down south, as well. And the majority of the American people grimly determined to see it done.

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 Noonan44 Comments

Here is Kari Lake hammering the MSM on “election denier” accusations. It is how it is done – and we need ever more of this. She takes their stupid lies and just shoves them right back in their faces.

It is crucial that we understand the MSM is nothing but propaganda for the DNC. It is all Pravda, all the time. Everything they say which in any way relates to politics is a lie. It is either a complete fabrication or so twisted in presentation that the kernel of truth in there is entirely obscured and you can’t from their report connect it to the actual situation. They don’t make mistakes – everything they say is off a script provided by the DNC. Some day the full truth will come out and it will be shown that those who set the tone for the MSM – the movers and shakers of it who decide what is a story and how it will be covered – received direct orders on it from DNC operatives. Rely on it: I am absolutely right about this.

But how can you be sure?

Because they are always on the same page – at most a word or two is changed. They all say the exact same thing – and such uniformity is only possible on command, it cannot develop spontaneously.

I’m confident of an Oz victory in Pennsylvania mostly on the fact that there’s been no recent polling on it – which means the pollsters, even with D-heavy samples, are finding an Oz surge and they don’t want that to get out this late in the game as it would crush Democrat fundraising down the stretch.

As I’ve said for years, none of us can know the future – it is all up for grabs and in an infinite universe, literally anything is possible. But the fundamentals of 2022 started with the fact that Pudding Brain is in the White House. Depending on who you ask and how it is calculated, the President’s party loses an average of about 30 seats in the first mid-term when the incumbent is having popularity problems – and they usually are because even people who were popular when elected suffer a bit of buyer’s remorse. This is just the natural ebb and flow of politics, guys. W bucked the trend in 2002 because that was a year after 9/11 and we were all happy and united at the time – Bush’s popularity was still sky high. Given that the GOP only needs 6 seats to win a majority, the House was gone pretty much the minute they installed Uncle Grandpa into the Oval Office.

There was an outside chance for the Democrats in the Senate. With a 50/50 tie going in and a friendly map for the Democrats, if Biden maintained about a 46% average popularity and if nothing bad happened, the Democrats might have come out even or maybe even got a net gain of 1. But Biden sits around 42% (and it is likely 38% when you account for, once again, D-heavy samples) and we’ve got inflation and shortages and crime and border problems and a general feeling that everything sucks. A good Democrat candidate who runs a great campaign can probably run 4 points or so ahead of Biden’s approval…so, if this was a good year, Biden at 46 means some Democrats can make it. Biden at 42…they’re doomed. Biden at 38 – extra doomed.

Given the fundamentals, we can expect a pretty good November 8th for the GOP – the only question is, how good? We talking a solid night of, say, 30 House and 3 Senate seats, or a wipe out with a net GOP gain of 50 in the House and 5 in the Senate? That is the only question – I think there’s a larger chance of the wipe out: Democrats are already engaging in triage and abandoning various races…while GOP groups are looking for long-shots (I saw an ad against Dina Titus here in Las Vegas – she sits on a D+12 House district: that’s a stretch, but that someone is willing to spend some GOP money on it means it is in the realm of the possible).

The next thing to consider is, what next? With a GOP Congress being likely come January, what do we do with it? It is pretty clear that at the moment, McConnell doesn’t want to have a MAGA fight against the Democrats. McCarthy, over in the House, is making some noises like he’s willing to have that battle. But that is the crucial thing – we aren’t electing a GOP Congress to work across the aisle…we’re electing a GOP Congress to engage in unrelenting war on the Democrat party. We’ve learned that all bi-partisanship gets us is slightly slower surrender. We do want Hunter indicted, Biden impeached, the government shut down until the 87,000 IRS agents are gone and the border is secured. We know that the GOP leadership largely lacks the stomach for such a fight…but the incoming Congress will be more MAGA than any past Congress: we might successfully hold some feet to the fire.