MAGA

Making, Mining and Growing America Great Again

Mark Noonan6 Comments

Haven’t yammered on about this issue for a while – but it is time to revisit it.

As everyone knows, I assert that national wealth is only what we make, mine and grow. Tangible goods that allow human beings to live – the more you have, the richer you are. Its the difference between being in a besieged city and having a stack of treasury notes or a stack of pancakes; who, then, is the rich man? In and around our immigration debate – legal and illegal – what we’re not getting is any discussion of what we’re trying to accomplish.

The pro-immigration types are telling us that we must have immigrants to compete in a global market. And there is some logic in this – if India has A Brilliant Scientist then it would be nice if the USA could poach A Brilliant Scientist. You know, like all the physicists we picked up from Europe prior to WWII. This is a “no duh” situation. But are we really doing that? Who are we really getting? A lot of people have dug into the H1B database (which I’m confident they’ll try to make classified so we can’t read it any longer) and found stuff like this:

Fast and Friendly seems to need a lot of foreign employees…to manage convenience stores. Which is an important job – we Americans do depend on our convenience stores – but it doesn’t seem, you know?, crucial to the global success of the United States. And that is before we start thinking it over and realize that a lot of companies are clearly becoming visa mills…and I’ll bet a lot of these “employees” are paying for the privilege and using it as the merest means to skip the immigration line…you know, once in under any sort of legal status it gets hard for us to get them out again.

One thing I’m not seeing in these applications for H1B is things like “farmer”, “miner”, “welder”…you know, people who would actually contribute to increasing American wealth. I mean, we do still have mines and farms and right now they’re beating the bushes looking for welders. But not a lot of H1Bs for these. Why not? Why are our H1Bs for tech workers and, as we can see here, low-rent retail? The claim is that we only do this because out of 340 million Americans we couldn’t find a single person to fill the position and so we had no choice but to import someone.

Sorry, that is just a lie. I get it – there really are some first rate people out there that American corporations would like to hire but the H1B program, whatever it was intended for, has just become a means of importing cheap labor…and likely includes a series of scams designed to rip off the system. It is clearly time to massive reform the H1B system to ensure that there really is a search for American talent and only after that search proves fruitless do we bring in a foreigner…with a proviso that if a foreigner is a stand-out brilliant engineer or doctor or some other solid, scientific discipline we bring them in just because its smart to have as many such as you can get.

And it is also time for us to start getting back to making, mining and growing things. We need to reconfigure the American economy to make it welcoming of the hard worker…the person who is willing to get dirty to make things, mine things and grow things. And in that, maybe we will have to import some foreigners because, lets face it, some Americans are downright lazy (it is a disease of wealth). But however we manage it, we must get back to a productive America…an America that once again builds wealth from the ground up. And, side note on this: if we become a productive America again, then nobody is really going to fuss about foreigners moving in…its the difference between getting an additional factory worker rather than just a lower-wage replacement coder.

MAGA is Coming

Mark Noonan7 Comments

The Congressional GOP tried to pretend it was 2016 last night – trying to help the Democrats ram through a 1,500 page continuing resolution which was packed with Democrat spending priorities and various things to hamstring the incoming Trump Administration. For the moment, it appears to have been stopped – with Elon Musk and JD Vance leading the social media charge against it. It could, of course, come back! But it still was a least a victory for a day…and the first time we actually made a GOP-controlled chamber of Congress listen to us.

To listen to the RINOs, this was once again just one of those darned things we couldn’t change – if we wanted relief for hurricane victims, we had to go along with all the Democrat spending. This was never a convincing argument in the past but, also, there never was much we could do about it…but now we’ve got at least a significant number of MAGA representation and at least one friendly social media platform…we are both able to get our message out and there are enough MAGA representatives in Congress to make it so that any RINO going along with it would be heavily exposed come re-election time. Like this: if there are 220 GOPers in the House and 195 vote for it, that’s cover. If there’s 220 and 150 vote for it…that’s catastrophe…that’s clearly providing the votes for a Democrat bill. Rely on it: they will try to ram it all through…the Uniparty is still pretty strong and utterly hates us.

The strongest message I saw yesterday on Social Media – from accounts large and small – was to keep hammering back on it with “why can’t you just pass a hurricane relief bill?”. This, of course, was deadly for the Uniparty. Their argument was that we had to go along with the Dems because they control the Senate…our argument (and its unanswerable) is why don’t they have to go along with us as we control the House? The secondary argument (also effective) was to say, “put action off until the 6th for Trump’s signature on the 20th”. We all do feel for the hurricane victims but our bet is that most of them would back us on this…sometimes you do have to do the patriotic thing even if it hurts. To wrap it all up in a pretty bow, we also pointed out that whatever fallout there is will occur while Biden is President…not Trump. This isn’t even our mess – its the Democrats’ mess. Let them clean it up. Or not. We don’t care. By the time votes are cast again, the budget crunch of December 2024 will be ancient history…if there’s a time for such a fight, it is now.

The fact that there was a genuine pushback and that it was at least partially successful shows that the Trump victory is for real…it wasn’t just a vote against Biden, it was a vote against the Establishment…and the GOP part of that Establishment as much as any other part. People don’t want business as usual. If the Left had a lick of sense – or wasn’t motivated purely by hatred – they’d realize that now was the time to try to get things like universal health care or at least something like it. We don’t like the health care system. We don’t like Big Pharma. We’re also open to ideas, knowing that nothing is going to be perfect. They could bring their proposals to us and get a hearing…buuuut being hate filled and stupid, they are turning the CEO murderer into their sick and twisted version of a hero. Not really sure what we’re going to have to do with the overall Left…they are so amazingly ignorant and filled with hate that its going to be a problem just dealing with them. Of course, if we really do get the promised reforms, the Left will see a drastic reduction of taxpayer funded Leftist storm troopers and that will lower the overall temperature over time.

Like a lot of people, I’m feeling very positive about the future – understanding that the mess the Biden people made is real and will take some time to clean up (do note that they’ll stop putting out bogus economic data – no longer need to protect a Democrat so we’ll shortly be getting true inflation and unemployment data). But I feel like for the first time in a long time – maybe since Reagan – that we’re going to have policies designed to help America…and that gives me hope.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan87 Comments

The Republican Statewide early voting lead in Nevada ended up last night at 44,500. That is a lot. That is unprecedented. In 2020 Democrats had an 87,000 vote lead going in and Biden ended up winning the State by 33,000. Today is the last day for early voting in Nevada and if the Democrats don’t have a massive turnout then Trump is going to win this State and its 50/50 on Brown beating Rosen.

Republicans lead in North Carolina early voting.

Democrats aren’t allowed to look at Florida early voting totals because it will make them cry.

Jobs report came in at 12,000+…and you know that will be revised down to show job losses. Inflation also remained high. Employment and income are rather important election-drivers. Perhaps even more than the desire of a blue haired middle aged lady to get an abortion.

Via manipulated data, the Administration has tried to make out they’ve been an economic success and we, sadly, know that this propaganda line works to a certain extent – but only with people who are not having a hard time. And people are hurting out there. My bet is that we’ve had no real economic growth at all since COVID. And it will be reality that will ultimately drive this election result – you can hide this in this stats month by month, but it is real:

If you attend to social media, do keep in mind that there will be Dooming. It is infectious and we GOPers have been conditioned to accept it. None of us are immune to the propaganda no matter how wise we are…and deep in our hearts has been set the notion that we just can’t win. Doomers – most of whom are paid by Dems – play to that. To discourage…to, if nothing else, save a couple marginal seats downballot for the Democrats. Don’t fall for it! Bolt a smile on your face, say your prayers, vote and lets see what happens.

MAGA

Mark Noonan28 Comments

With the RFK, Jr endorsement of Trump we can truly say that this is no longer a GOP vs Democrat election. It really is The People vs The Powerful. We’re not fighting to elect Trump so much as fighting to destroy a corrupt, stupid and cruel Ruling Class. This Class does include many GOPers as well as a host of pundits and such who have made their way by being the controlled opposition to the Democrats. This is best shown by some alleged pro-lifers saying they’ll vote Harris or sit the election out because Trump hasn’t been Simon-pure on abortion.

Nobody on Earth is more of a pro-life fanatic than me. I want the barbaric, inhuman practice banned. There is never any legitimate reason to terminate a pregnancy. Pregnancy is not a disease. No pregnancy is unplanned. No child is unwanted. There are some times tragic and even wicked circumstances that produce the unborn child, but the unborn child is still a miracle of life…and a human being vested immediately upon conception with all the rights that every other human being enjoys. But politics is the art of the possible. Except in a few very Red States and localities, a ban on abortion simply isn’t possible. We’re more than 50 years into the Ruling Class propagandizing for abortion and those lies have sunk deep roots into the American heart and mind. So deep that even decent, moral people can be confused on the issue and so be unwilling to ban. We’ll be a long time undoing it – and the effort is now, politically, State and local while the real work is to build a Culture of Life that will make the very concept of abortion unthinkable.

But here are supposed pro-lifers essentially knifing us in the back – as if electing a pro-abortion fanatic like Harris will help. Of course it won’t. But they don’t care. They are not actually pro-life…they are pro- making money off the life issue. And you make the most money by losing. That is, by having abortion legal everywhere and issuing futile complaints about it with a link at the bottom for a donation. This is the sort of people who infest our Ruling Class – Democrat and Republican. Truly vile people who play upon emotions to secure power and wealth they couldn’t earn in a fair system. And now the people are starting to unite against it. Sure, under the banner of MAGA and with Trump in the lead, but it really isn’t about Trump any longer.

It is about MAGA.

It is about getting rid of these hideous people and starting to reform our nation – to restore the shining city on the hill. To secure for ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty. But here is the thing: you can’t recapture the past. The America of, say, 1912 when my grandfather was 16 is gone forever. We’ll never get back to that time when Americans were largely untaxed and unregulated – and the America where it was expected that everyone pulls their weight with no help from the government. In order to secure those blessing of liberty we are going to have to take reality into consideration. And while always working to reduce the tax and regulatory burden and build a self-reliant people, understand that in the short- and medium-term quite a lot of the Progressive mess will have to remain; our job being to turn it away from its Progressive intent.

In light of this and in keeping with building the broadest possible Reform coalition, we can’t just outright reject some things. I’ve talked in the past about the GOP leading the way in student debt reform – the Democrats just want to keep passing out the debt and then relieving it selectively for political purposes. We should be working to make it dischargable in bankruptcy, holding the schools accountable for at least some of the debt and forcing colleges to reduce costs (education costs have increased by orders of magnitude faster than inflation). In other words, we drop the “pay your bills, bum” and start to work on measures that resolve the problem while garnering support.

Welfare is a bane. We know this. But we can’t just end it like waving a magic wand. We need programs that require recipients to work – even if its make-work. And ensure that anyone who works 40 hours a week has sufficient to live a dignified life in their neighborhood: so, if the person is working but only making 80% of what’s needed, we kick in the other 20%. The goal is to show the poor that we’re here for them; that we want better for them – and to twist welfare away from a permanent dependency into a temporary launch pad. You can see where I’m going with this.

Coalition building is hard, but it is necessary. We can’t do the reforms we need with a bare EC win, or even a bare popular majority. We need to start working for 60% of the vote…for a MAGA trifecta that will last for 20 years. That is how long it will take to impose sufficient reforms to ensure that even when MAGA finally loses an election, the other side will be required to keep our programs in place…much as the GOP had to when they finally beat the Democrats after 20 years of the New Deal.

I do believe we are on the cusp of an historic victory. The Harris campaign is a fraud. Not just the usual run of lies, but a complete set of lies from start to finish, all designed to make it seem like she’s winning when the reality is 180 degrees different. Reminder: if it elects Harris, that is a bonus – the goal is to prevent a Congressional and State Democrat meltdown. They know that if they hold that power then even 4 years of Trump won’t fundamentally change things. This is what they are doing – saving the Party; Harris is just a placeholder who allows Democrats to pretend their standard bearer isn’t responsible for the mess. But I do not believe this will work – I can see the outlines of a big Trump win coming. But it only comes via Trump’s strategy – and you have seen enough by now to know he’s not running ideologically Right…he’s running to garner a broad coalition. Our job is to join in the effort. Make it our own. And carry it forward even after Trump is gone.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan42 Comments

I detect a slight note of panic among Never Trump – and both parts of it: that which rejected the GOP and joined the Democrats and that which merely rejected Trump. They are in a fright because Trump isn’t going away. Things are not working out the way they hoped…their hope having been that once he was defeated, the Trumpsters would, one way or another, agree to allow Never Trump to resume power in the GOP. That isn’t happening.

This is because they fundamentally misunderstand Trump and his supporters – with the crucial thing being that it is Trump supporters who are driving the cart. These Trump supporters may, indeed, swing behind DeSantis or someone else in 2024, but only in so far as DeSantis or whomever prove themselves Trumpist. What Never Trump still doesn’t get – though some come very close to understanding – that we’d really rather lose on MAGA than win on anything else, because to win on anything else is to lose, anyway. We’re all in. Do or die.

Florida bans Critical Race Theory in public schools – this is a growing trend on the right and it is the first sign of real health in our body politic in decades. As I’ve said before: CRT is evil and it must go. The Republic is incompatible with people believing CRT. This is, to be sure, causing some breach among black Conservatives – because there are some who hold that CRT, though flawed, has some real truth to impart. I reject this notion. And it must be rejected because the ultimate basis of CRT is Marxism, which is inherently wrong and an intrinsic evil. Nothing which uses Marx in any way can be good or true.

AG Garland is going to investigate the audit of the 2020 election in Arizona. This is proof that fraud decided the 2020 contest. They are terrified of the truth coming out.

Democrats are in a fury against Manchin (D-WV). I really did expect him to cave long before this – if he runs for re-election in 2024, it is better than even money he loses. He can’t ever get the Democrat nomination for President or VP, so his only political future if a cabinet post, and he only gets that if he plays ball with the national Democrats. But, he’s still not playing ball. Maybe, at the end of the day, he just doesn’t want any political future? After all, he’s got the Senate pension sowed and he’s going to make bank as a lobbyist (if he wants). It might be that he’s simply uninterested in wrecking the Republic just to please people in New York and Los Angeles who despise him.

Inflation is rising, fast. The only good news here is that a repeat of Carter might give us a repeat of 1980.

To Wall or Not to Wall?

Mark Noonan118 Comments

Trump says he’ll sign the budget bill, even though it has a lot in it his base despises. This is clearly a deal worked out between Democrats and Chamber of Commerce GOPers. Remember, at least half the GOP Congressional membership is as much open borders as the Democrats are.

So, what does it mean? The end of MAGA? I don’t think so. Trump says he’ll just go on and build the wall, anyway (and I would if I were him – and I’d calmly ignore any judicial injunction against it, using Andy Jackson’s old mot, “the Court has ruled; now, let the Court enforce”). We really need to re-work the GOP. A lot of real progress has been made getting rid of the Flakes and Ryans, but plenty remain. And even solid people, if they stay there long enough, will get captured by the system. At the end of the day, Trump is working hard to carry out his promises, and I’m with him through 2020.

Former FBI director McCabe said he pondered carrying out a coup d’etat against Trump after Comey was fired. He doesn’t use those words, but that is what he ultimately was on about. Now, a lot of people are very angry over this – I’m less so. I’m sure he would have liked to do it, but I don’t think it ever amounted to much: just some fools having a bull session (possibly following a good cry after Hillary lost).

Governor Gavin Newsom (D-North Mexico) wants to shovel $25 million of California taxpayer’s money at the illegal immigrants.

Someone do the math: CA taxpayers are exiting the State at X rate, illegals are arriving at Y rate. When does CA run out of money to shell out to the illegals?

Legal Insurrection notes that Newsom is clearly gearing up for a Presidential run. Not clear of which country at the moment.

Rumors abound at this time regarding the Jussie Smollet case. Some are saying that Chicago PD figures it was a hoax, but I’ve also read statements from Chicago PD denying this. What seems clear to me is that we don’t have what was originally told: racist, Trumpster white guys attacking a man because he was gay/black. Bottom line: treat all race- and gender-based attack stories as false until proven otherwise.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan21 Comments

Let’s talk a minute about race.

It’s meaningless.

Warren’s idiocy on the Native American thing merely highlights how stupid the whole issue has become. Why did she take her 1/1024th Native Blood and emphasize it? Because we’ve created a racial spoils system where you can parlay any bit of non-white blood into victim status, and thus reap unearned rewards. The really sick and twisted thing about it is that our liberal race-mongers are essentially agreeing with National Socialist ideology: that your ethnic heritage determines your worth and some ethnic groups are superior to others. That Hitler made out that the Germans were best is irrelevant: the concept remains the same. All Hitler was doing was saying that his ethnic group was best – which is what every race-baiting grifter says.

The pragmatic facts of life are that human beings, as such, are monotonously the same. Take a fit, young man and women from different ends of the Earth – entirely different ethnic backgrounds – and put them in a room together, throw on some Barry White and leave a bottle of wine and what you’ll get 9 months later is just another human baby. A grand thing, but genetics, outside possible defects, will have nothing to do with the ultimate adult you get out of it. What sort of person anyone winds up being depends not in the genes of their parents, but on what they learn as they grow. Recently a prince was born in London and, rely on it, right around the same time a peasant was born in Nigeria. Take the kids and switch them and what you’ll get 20 years later is a black Prince and a white Nigerian. What mom and dad provided won’t matter – what the parents who actually raise the kid provide will be crucial.

We create an issue about race – and we always create the issue because we’re trying to run a con. Back in the past, the con was that non-white people couldn’t compete and so had to be kept down as drawers of water and hewers of wood. Right after we ditched that drivel, someone came up with the idea that non-white people are inherently superior and that the only reason that any white person is on top is due to an unfair advantage. The earlier myth allowed some people to exploit cheap labor; the current myth allows some people to exploit affirmative action (writ large). I am sick to death of it. Racism, as a concept that non-white people are inferior, is just about dead as a door nail. Maybe a few score thousand people in all of the United States believe it. But the New Racism is alive and well and has a vastly larger constituency than the old racism ever had. I’m glad that Warren is being roasted over her absurdity: I hope it leads to the whole racial con we got going being ditched. We are people; we are what we learn and do…not what genetics we are.

Stormy Daniels’ lawsuit against President Trump was dismissed – and in such a way that the buckets of liberal money she got via Gofundme may end up being transferred to Trump. I like that. It has been noted that this may be the first time a prostitute paid a politician.

In addition to Kanye, the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten has gotten on the MAGA bandwagon. Has everyone started to notice that Trump and his people are starting to have lots and lots of fun? This is important. The side that’s having fun is the side that is winning.

Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat running for Senate in Arizona, has had a bad couple weeks. Things keep coming out about how much she, apparently, hates Arizona, hates America…but now she’s gone full weird: seems she called on witches for aid once upon a time. Its been said that the best thing about the Trump Era is the way he’s forced the left to take off the mask. It isn’t actually surprising that a Democrat – Party of Science, yo! – is ok with witchcraft. Lots and lots of Democrats believe that stuff, even if they call it some other name to not look obviously like idiots. But they are also relentlessly anti-American and hold their own people in contempt. The more the mask slips, the better for us.

We’re supposed to care deeply about the Khashoggi murder. I’m still trying to figure out why. I mean, sorry it happened, and all…but I don’t get why the big heartache about it.

Generic ballot in the battlegrounds is R+1. Don’t get cocky. Get out and vote.

More from Salena Zito about the upcoming mid-terms. She was the reporter who was right about 2016, all along.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Been getting a lot of Progressives Christiansplaining to me about how God’s command to welcome the stranger means I’m wrong about immigration. I’m not buying it – I will welcome the stranger to my front door…I’ll be less welcoming to a guy I find in my backyard uninvited. Any stranger who wishes to knock on my door in the daytime will find me all full of welcome…just as I believe that we, as a people, should graciously welcome any stranger who presents him or herself at a US Consulate, Embassy or Port of Entry. Meanwhile, strangers trying to sneak in should be greeted differently.

Schumer wants Trump to nominate Garland to heal the national divide – Instapundit noted that all such calls to unify involve the GOP giving the Democrats whatever it is they want. Outside the idiocy of Schumer’s suggestion, it illustrates just how whacked out the left is these days. You might not know it if you are wise enough to stay off Social Media, but the left is obsessive about Garland. Of course, 99 out of 100 of them probably couldn’t pick him out of a lineup – but that doesn’t stop them from feeling psychic pain over the fact that they didn’t get to replace Scalia with a liberal. They had been waiting for the happy situation to arise where one of the Court’s real Conservatives retired or died while a Democrat was President. McConnell took that away from them and they are incensed!

Meanwhile, in keeping with the Left’s sole purpose of getting everyone non-left to wear a MAGA hat by 2020, the left seems to want a fight over Barrett’s Catholicism. If Trump nominates her, he’ll have to report the Democrat reaction as an in-kind donation to his 2020 re-election effort. According to exit polls, 52% of Catholics went Trump in 2016: a fight like this would get Trump to 65% of the Catholic vote in 2020.

Pruitt is out at EPA – he was doing a bang up job reigning in that out of control agency, but his personal actions as Director ensured that as Progressives smelled blood in the water, there was no one around to defend him. It is unfair and yet inescapably true that a GOPer trying to reform anything in DC must not make stupid mistakes…Pruitt should be an object lesson for the future.