Lockdowns

Open Thread

Mark Noonan13 Comments

The GOP is slow rolling some of Biden’s nominees. Managed to collect the scalp of one of them. Biden is being forced back on minimum wage, amnesty for illegals and election reform. In other words: going as you’d expect when the President is a senile, 78 year old and the Democrats only have 50 Senators and a razor-thin majority in the House.

I did check out Trump’s CPAC speech – still not sure if he’ll try again in 2024, but the bottom line is that at least for the moment, if he runs, he’s got it. Lots can change between now and, say, June of 2023, but it is Trump’s for the asking. We’ll see if he asks. If he doesn’t get in, I’m warming to Ron DeSantis as a lot of people are, though I’m still completely open on whom I’ll actually back.

Lockdowns are being ended in Texas and that’s good – hopefully this will spread, but I’m still thinking the Democrat governors want to keep them going. In fact, I think the overall Democrat desire is to keep them going right through 2024. They seem to have calculated it out that the fear-mongering about Covid benefits them. And, maybe it does? It may well have added a couple million real votes to their total in 2020. There is a big split and a huge number of Americans are simply scared to death of the virus – I can only assume these are the people who still both consume and believe the MSM. Keep in mind that as the States reopen, there will be an economic boost and that will at least temporarily boost Biden.

I hope to goodness we don’t get into a major war these next four years: the military is going entirely SJW. I’ve heard they are even screening social media posts of recruits to see if there is any wrongthink out there. How the heck they plan on staffing the armed forces when they are excluding patriots, I have no idea. I highly recommend against any young people joining the military – and that is a sad thing for a veteran to say. But I don’t think they’ll allow you to be a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine these days. You have to check off the Intersectionality boxes, instead. Not worth the trouble – or the risk that you’ll be sent into battle and your CO got his or her job based on a SJW quota rather than battle worthiness.

Cancel Culture has come for Doctor Seuss and I find it enormously funny. Thy guy was a Commie’s Commie – but he wasn’t woke enough for modern times. Anyone want to tell the SJWs that Che killed homosexuals?

I’m still writing! A lot. Second draft of Shadow Army is now complete and I plan on dropping it in June, with the sequel to that, Kings and Queen, coming maybe in November or December. And I just finished the first draft of Book 6, which had a title but the Mrs hates the title so I’ve probably got to think up a new one.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan14 Comments

Texas is suing to block the election results. And, Texas is right – the rules of the votes were changed in an apparently unconstitutional manner which both violated Equal Protection as well as annulling the State Legislatures plenary power over how Electors are chosen. We’ll see how it comes out: if the Supreme Court rules that the State legislatures have to take it up, then the States in question all have GOP majorities. People do forget that the States elect the President and the State Legislatures – without any input from the State Executive – decide how Electors are chosen.

RIP: Chuck Yeager

As you all knew, China has lots of influence in America. And it is probably much worse than we think.

The bottom line is that our Ruling Class is largely made up of people who are very low: immoral people of little knowledge who care nothing for our country. We really should have seen this coming sooner.

The last time the sons of Americas most prominent families volunteered to fight for this country was World War Two. To be sure, a few joined up for later conflicts, but usually for brief tours far behind the lines. You don’t find the sons and daughters of the rich out there fighting in gritty places like Afghanistan. Nope. If they are there at all, it is a military lawyer or some such thing. This demonstrates that they don’t care about America. They love being rich and having the good life, but they feel no obligation to stand forth: and so the sons and daughters of the middle class and poor go (and, these days, fewer and fewer of the middle class show up). How much longer will working class kids from Alabama sign up to defend this country? How much longer before they decide that as they still have the will to fight, they are just going to fight to ensure that they reap the benefits of the United States?

One thing is certain: this can’t keep going on. We can’t sustain a Ruling Class which allows itself to be easily purchased by foreign enemies for a little money and illicit sex.

Lockdowns don’t work. Not quite sure what the real thing is here: I figured that after the election, they’d ease up. But now I’m starting to think they want St Joe to save us…so they are going to lock us down until Spring and then claim that the normal falling away of the virus is thanks to Biden forcing us all to wear the same masks we’ve worn since March saved us all.

The American Choice

Mark Noonan10 Comments

If you’re needing a little morale boost:

Interviews with more than 50 state, district and county Republican Party chairs depict a version of the electoral landscape that is no worse for Trump than six months ago — and possibly even slightly better. According to this view, the coronavirus is on its way out and the economy is coming back. Polls are unreliable, Joe Biden is too frail to last, and the media still doesn’t get it.

“The more bad things happen in the country, it just solidifies support for Trump,” said Phillip Stephens, GOP chairman in Robeson County, N.C., one of several rural counties in that swing state that shifted from supporting Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016. “We’re calling him ‘Teflon Trump.’ Nothing’s going to stick, because if anything, it’s getting more exciting than it was in 2016.”

This year, Stephens said, “We’re thinking landslide.”

That does seem, on the face of it, rather a stretch. The official word is we’re too polarized as a nation to allow any candidate to get to landslide territory (let’s call it getting 56%+ of the vote). To a certain extent, this is obvious: the polarization is seen in the fact that the Left – which makes up the core of the Democrat party – considers the United States to be an inherently racist nation unworthy of support unless it becomes entirely Leftist. We on our side, of course, think the United States is inherently good and merely needs to live up to it’s founding ideals. That is quite a polar opposite view of the same set of facts.

But, in the end, how large is the Left? Meaning: how many people in the United States actually subscribe to the notion that America is inherently evil? That is what November will tell us. It might be a plurality. It might be either an Electoral or popular vote majority. If it is then not only do we lose, but we lose forever: if a majority consciously decides to install a government committed to acting on the assumption that America 1776-2020 is evil, then we’ve lost the fight. Its over: we just have to adjust ourselves to living in a new America which will be quite different from the old.

But, still, that is a pretty confident feeling quoted in the article, isn’t it? Now, to be sure, maybe someone is just trying to bamboozle: all political campaigns say things are going just swell no matter how doomed they are. But they do have some data points to back up their assertion: there is argument over just how many people signed up for Trump’s rally in Tulsa, but the bottom line is that many hundreds of thousands of people signed up for a venue holding less than 20,000 people. That’s a lot. None of us can conceive, even with popular music acts, Biden getting that kind of response. Then there’s things like voter engagement: over the ‘Rona lockdowns the campaigns were forced to go almost entirely online…and Team Trump simply blows Team Biden out of the water in online engagement. It isn’t just a little bit better: it is orders of magnitude better. I’ve also seen good data on GOP voter registration and time and again at Trump rallies, significant portions of attendees are Democrats or rare/new voters. I’ve always said look not at what people say, but at what they do: what people are doing is turning to Trump, at least in the data we can see. Only the public opinion polls are against Trump. Maybe they are right this time? If they are, Trump is going to be destroyed in November. Figure the odds they are right, though.

My view is this: people who aren’t Democrats but are Democrat-leaners – people who mostly vote Democrat but are not committed to the Democrat notion that America is inherently racist – are looking around at riots and absurd lockdowns (DeBlasio actually said – I’m not kidding – in response to Jews reopening their kid’s parks, that he won’t allow people to “take the law into their own hands”: this after allowing nuts-to-butts rioting and protesting by Leftwing groups) and perhaps reassessing just how bad Trump really is? I mean, sure he’s rude and crude and he’s not at all the nice, made-up politician mouthing bromides about peace, love and unity that these Democrat-leaners are used to voting for…but he isn’t the guy locking down people for stupid reasons nor allowing rioters to run amok in the city. How many such people, without ever admitting it, will pull the lever for Trump even if it is a mere rebuke to Democrats who have gone off the rails?

We’ll find out in November.