Manchin

Open Thread

Mark Noonan25 Comments

Time flies when you’re painting the house!

Anyways, Mark Kelly (D-AZ) announced he will vote to kill the filibuster…which means his pollster told him he’s doomed in November and so now is going for the MSNBC gig. So far, Sinema and Manchin are firm in keeping it, but Schumer is going to keep trying. At least some people – but not nearly enough – are openly saying that this whole “voting rights” effort is merely an effort to secure Democrat voter fraud forever. They want to win by cheating. To become what the PRI was to Mexico for 70 years – a Ruling Party which engages in sham elections to lend itself a patina of legitimacy. We’ll see if they are able to do it. Their strategy right now is to call Sinema a white supremacist. Not sure this will work.

Absent this, it looks like the Democrats are in for a blow out loss in November. Think in terms of anything D+10 or less being vulnerable. So far, 28 House Democrats have announced they won’t seek re-election.

NPR reported that Gorsuch and Sotomayor were feuding over mask wearing. Turns out this was Fake News. Because that is all NPR does.

Commies on American campuses are removing statues. You know, just like Chinese commies are doing in Hong Kong. Birds of a feather.

Insane person pushes a woman into the path of an oncoming subway train and everyone is all shocked. How can you be? We decided (well, “we” as in a few lawyers and judges) back in the 70’s that being insane isn’t sufficient cause to place a person into protective custody. That really was the first shot across the bow on where we were heading…that sane people could not, except for a very short period, put restrictions on the insane was a signpost to societal destruction. We’re all sympathetic. We don’t want insane people denied due process, abused or left to rot in filth (as all too often happened in the past) but the answer to poor care at insane asylums was to improve the asylums…not let raving nutters out. People who cannot perform basic life functions such as maintain personal cleanliness and normal social interaction belong under care…not wandering through the streets. It is brutal and inhuman to let these poor people try to take care of themselves when their mental condition is such that they cannot.

UPDATE: Well, they failed – at the end of the day, both Sinema and Manchin stood up and voted very definitely against a rules change. This not only preserves the filibuster for now, it may retain it in our system for quite a long while…but mostly because we’ll probably have 54 GOP Senators come January next and then it is probably 3 or 4 cycles before the Democrats have a realistic shot at a Senate majority.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan57 Comments

Social media can be a bit of a treasure – sometimes what passes through your TL is amazing.

A little earlier today I came across a USA Today thread discussing how we need to differentiate between pedophiles and those who abuse children. No, I’m not kidding. What this is, of course, is an attempt to start normalizing pedophilia. They have to, you see? That is, they have to do this before they all get caught. They are going to “love is love” their way into legalizing the sexual abuse of children.

Then I came across a Financial Times article written by a member of the American Enterprise Institute – you know, the libertarian think tank – which asserted that the government needs to engage in psy-ops against us to protect us from political radicalization. This article, naturally, is because the pys-ops are being exposed and they are now trying to get out in front and claim it was all for our own good.

Then a guy pointed out that at this time in 2008 Obama was saying that marriage is something between a man and a woman while here in 2022 we’ve got people seriously asserting that refusal to date a trans person is bigotry.

We are moving very fast.

They sent Pudding Brain to Georgia to give a voting rights speech – given that the Dawgs won the national championship last night you can rely on it that nobody in Georgia was paying any attention. Doubt that anyone else is, either. And key Georgia Democrats begged off from the event as they have crucial things to do…the most crucial being staying the hell away from the politically toxic Joe Biden.

So far, Manchin and Sinema are standing firm against nuking the filibuster. And Senator Kelly is also saying he has his doubt about it. Amazing what running for re-election in a purple State will do for some Democrats, huh? Some say that Schumer doesn’t even have 44 Democrat votes to kill the filibuster…it is just that they are keeping a low profile and hoping that Manchin’s opposition keeps them from having to take a stand on it. OTOH, Schumer is making noises about forcing a vote on the rules change – which is dumb on two levels. One: without Manchin and Sinema, its pointless. Two: by holding the vote he’ll force purple State Democrats to choose between giving ammo to their GOP opponents or infuriating the base. And the far left base of the Democrats is furious that they haven’t jettisoned the filibuster. My only question here is how many filing deadlines have passed: Schumer pulls the trigger too soon and a half dozen Democrats could end up drawing a far left primary opponent who will be massively funded by Blue State leftists.

Sucks to be Schumer.

Long and very good article about the opposition to paleogenetic research. This is research carried out to find DNA markers on ancient remains to see how human beings moved around. A great deal has been learned in this field and, as it turns out, humans have moved around a lot. So, why should anyone be opposed to finding this out? Because the Narrative of native tribes it that the land they were on when the crackers first showed up had always been their land. Their sacred spaces, polluted by the cruel and rapacious white man. Yeah, turns out that is all bull. The Natives moved around as much as anyone else in a fierce competition for resources. Some tribes didn’t arrive in their “ancestral” lands until after the Europeans arrived…as tribes desperately sought contact with the Europeans for trade opportunities. Often, Native tribes would fight each other for access. So, there’s your reason – we’re going to kill off this valuable and interesting science because some people who are financially invested in a garbage story about pre-Columbian North America don’t want their meal ticket taken away. Side note: the author expresses sympathy for the basic concept of respecting Native traditions. For me, I’ll respect the people living by their ancient traditions but this idea that because you have X percent pre-Columbian blood you get veto power over science is drivel. People are people; always have been, always will be. Nobody is all good. Nobody is all bad. And we should find out all about everything, if we can.

Our man Matt lays out the failure of Biden’s Covid policies.

Hollywood is burning itself alive on the altar of political correctness. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving of creeps.

I have no sympathy at all – not for any of them working. I hope they all go bankrupt and have to panhandle on the street. But, that said, there is still a market for movies – we on the right should seriously consider raising some billions of dollars and starting a movie studio. Not in Hollywood! Not in California or any of the traditional entertainment area. Maybe Tulsa or some such place. A complete new start. Now, do we go and make preachy, rightwing movies? No. But we make movies. You know: fantasy entertainment designed to divert people away from their daily lives. I can easily think of a dozen movies which range from fantasy to love story to war movies to western which, well made, would be highly successful and, perhaps, even spawn a few franchises. And I’m not just talking about my books! Though that would be cool. But here’s an example: Ann Bassett. She was an Old West rancher and some time associate of Butch Cassidy. Her basic story was fighting off other cattle barons to protect her late father’s ranch. It just screams “make a movie out of me”. Heck, imagine a top flight female star and then your supporting male role is a guy playing Butch Cassidy. Blockbuster all over it. That’s the kind of movie we should make – what hasn’t been done but which can be made fun and interesting. If it can be done, all that entertainment money stops flowing Left and starts flowing Right. Think of the possibilities.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan39 Comments

Secret Service is saying that $100 billion in Covid relief has be stolen. Rely on it: it is orders of magnitude higher than that. We do have to fault Trump a bit here as well – as this thing came in, the money spigot was turned on full blast. Pudding Brain has put that into overdrive, but we have to admit where it started.

Of course the money was going to be stolen. The primary purpose, for those in the know, was to steal. We didn’t really need to spend much on this – we did, after all, have a perfectly functioning economy and health care system when this started. At most we just needed a slight boost in what we were already spending. But the bonanza of cash simply thrown out the Treasury windows was and is the opportunity of a life time. Couple years from now and we will see a few indictments – people who stole beyond their station or who didn’t divvy up the way the bosses wanted. But my bet is that half, at least, of what has and will be spent was nothing but graft.

The dirty little secret of our government is that it spends so much money that nobody really knows what is going on. How can anyone keep an eye on trillions of dollars being spent? Do you realize how easy it is to divert hundreds of billions when you’ve got a flood of money that large?

Some rumors that Team Hillary is in Durham’s crosshairs. Hope so, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Cocaine Mitch, talking with Hugh Hewitt, basically said he’s asking Manchin to switch to the GOP – adding that he’s discussing whether Manchin would keep his chairmanship of Energy. I’m a bit surprised – not that it might be happening, but that it would happen now. I’d have thought Mitch would wait until well into 2022. OTOH, the Democrats are already a toxic brand and McConnell back in the Majority Leader spot shuts down all Democrat legislative programs. We’ll see how it comes out.

Donald Trump says he’ll hold a press conference on January 6th. A lot of people are downright frightened of this – I’m not. What better way to take the entire spotlight away from whatever the DNC/MSM will be doing that day? If he calls for the release of the 1/6 detainees, then I’ll figure its for sure that he’s running in 2024.

Since Covid hit, 5 million Americans obtained firearms. The people are arming in a replay of the Great Fear of 1789 in France. America is a tinder box right now – keeping in mind that our side is mostly made up of people who just want to be left alone. The problem – for the Left – is that if such people ever decide it is time to fight or die, then they tend to be quite brutal in settling accounts.

China bought Hollywood and then helped Hollywood destroy itself. It is the Chinese business model. China merely wanted to get itself going – so that it can provide pop-culture product on the global market…not so American pop-culture could come to dominate China. Now that China has got what it wanted, the Hollywood dreams of releasing American movies in the Chinese market have faded away. Hopefully this will force American studios to start making product designed for specifically for the American market. No more Superman who refuses to fight for the American way, as it were.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan50 Comments

Getting that time of year where I like to have pea soup – and what I like to have with my pea soup is muenster cheese. Sure, not the most popular sort of cheese in the world, but also not some rare commodity. No muenster cheese in the grocery store. No beef bologna, either.

Our Ruling Class and the corporate class are deliberately making America a land of shortages so that prices will go higher and we’ll get used to being poor. They hate American prosperity. Makes us independent and willing to fight…they want us all barely scraping by so that our only concern is daily survival.

Pudding Brain is having great difficulty getting his agenda passed – mostly because the Left is acting like they won a 1932-style victory last year and have been given carte blanche to do whatever they want. They have run up against the reality that when you only have 50 Senators and some of yours are extremely vulnerable, you can’t do anything unless you get the other side on board. They’ve done nothing to get the GOP on board (and it wouldn’t be hard: just throw us a bone or two) and so Cocaine Mitch has said, “work it out amongst yourselves”. We’ll see how they do.

Sinema and Manchin are ever more the Bad Guys in this morality play of the Left: they are furious the pair won’t go along. But as I noted before, SineManchin is just the front for a larger body of Senate Dems who want nothing to do with this. But, even if they were, the reality is that Manchin represents a State that went 40 points for Trump last year and even putting the most rosy Dem picture on AZ, it is a swing State. Anyone who goes too far Left is going to lose. Manchin has point blank said he’s not a liberal, never has been. Sinema is more of the Left than Manchin, but she’s also not entirely easy to categorize and, worse for Dems, she doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks of her. Most pols who go to DC become desperate for the approval of other pols and power players. Sinema doesn’t seem to have this psychosis. Don’t, of course, trust her on policy – but our job is to work with her where we can.

New Zealand has had some of the tightest restrictions in the world since Covid began. Now, cases are spreading…and their reaction is to impose even tighter restrictions. Its almost like the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing hoping for a different result.

Over in Australia they are essentially under a military dictatorship – and Big Tech has taken to censoring on the sly any videos of Australian cops beating the sh** out of people to keep them healthy. Make no mistake about it: the Global Ruling Class is, indeed, Global. They are all alike everywhere. The only reason every government (outside a few run by people who are sane – such as Brazil) isn’t treating us like the CCP treats the Chinese is that they don’t think they can. Yet. Their goal is to do to us exactly what has happened in China. They don’t want any of us peons pestering them further.

Trans weightlifter named female sportswomen of the year. This is really on you ladies: just how long will you put up with this?

Playboy’s October cover features a man. We’re supposed to be all shocked about this. Mostly, we’re bored. But, also, talk about losing the plot! Hugh Hefner’s program – a rather vile program – was to make it socially acceptable for middle aged men to seduce young women. The path to this was a magazine which featured boobs and interesting articles (and, yes ladies, we did read the articles…only after the boobs, of course: but back in the day, they did feature a variety of interesting articles). Nobody – not a single person – is interested in a man dressed in a bunny suit. I’m gonna bet that even gay men and women – if they had to choose – would rather see a good looking man on the cover rather than a skinny dude in a bunny costume.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan27 Comments

October already! Time flies. Of course, the reason why it flies is that as each year goes by, each of them is a smaller percentage of our life. To a ten year old, a year is 10% of life…seems like forever. At my age of 56, it is 1.7% of my life. Bad news: you’re much closer to dying.

But, cheer up! I’m still writing. Actually on the first draft of Book VIII of the Mirrors series. The other day, my granddaughter insisted that I needed a dragon…and this has now started to generate the children’s book, Aleste and the IceCrystal Dragons. Amazing the imagination abilities of children! I’ve ripped it from the Mirrors series with Aleste being the daughter of one of the main characters and so set it in Lontaria. It’ll be Princess Aleste and her two friends as they play with the IceCrystal dragons and thwart the designs of an evil witch yet to be named.

Nancy and Chuck are having some difficulty getting their Graft and Socialism Act of 2021 passed – Democrats came in with this idea that they would just do what they wanted as they had won an astounding victory in 2020. Never mind the fraud! But even if we want to call the election legit, the fact of the matter is they barely won…and unless Pudding Brain remained popular, getting anything large through was doing to be difficult as Purple District/State Democrats warily eyed the 2022 midterms. I’ve loved watching Left Twitter explain that this midterm would be different because Reasons and so those Democrats need not worry. I don’t now if these morons believed it, or simply hoped the at-risk Democrats would. Well, they’re not.

Officially, all problems rest on the shoulders of Manchin and Sinema – but that is just a dodge. They actually represent about 5 Democrat Senators in total and about 20 House Democrats…those most at risk of getting destroyed in 2022 if the Progressives agenda becomes law. Naturally, Democrats have been looking for an assist from the GOP…to get enough Republicans on board to allow cover to these Democrats in peril. But, so far, even people like Romney and Murkowski have shown little interest in pulling Democrat bacon out of the fire. And, honestly, why should they? Sure, they’d get a glowing write up in the Post, but that’s worn thin. They know that it actually harms them with the base to get a glowing write up in the Post. Eventually, something is going to pass – but I bet it is a lot smaller than the $3.5 trillion Bolshevik Boondoggle the Progressives want. There are already rumors out there that Nancy is promising a vote on the Prog agenda in 2022 in return for their votes today. Like that would happen in an election year!

An eco-terrorist has been confirmed by the Senate as head of the BLM: so, look for us here in the West to take huge hits in the timber and ranching interests as this nitwit tries to Save the Planet.

Team Pudding Brain is really determined to end Trump’s remain in Mexico policy, even if it means working around Court orders. This, to me, is where we see Leftist ideology trump reality. The policy is reasonable. it makes sure that real refugees can get in while keeping out the line jumpers and the criminals who prey upon them. But that it was created by the Bad Orange Man is all that matters…it has to go, no matter how popular it was with the public and how horribly unpopular Biden gets on border security. It is like the Democrats want us to have a massive triumph next year in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

Durham seems to be chugging along. Now, I’m confident that Biden’s “Justice” department will sabotage any prosecution…but props to the man for keeping at it.

Bush’s 2004 campaign guy, Dowd, is running for Lt Governor of Texas as a liberal Democrat. A wag asked the other day if any of Bush’s people, including Bush, are still Republican? Honestly, other than Condi Rice and a couple others, not many. We really do know why we kept mostly losing – and why, even when we won, we never got anything: all of our “Conservative” leaders were actually liberals who merely told us what we wanted to hear.

Meanwhile, the Latino vote in Texas and California continues to swing towards the GOP. And I mean, a lot. In Texas, it could lead to a rare political triumph next year…in California, it is just starting to pick up steam. It seems that Latino voters don’t like being called “Latinx”, aren’t in favor of open borders, and would rather have jobs, good schools and police protection rather than carefully crafted pronouns. Make no mistake about it, guys, to really nail down the Latino vote, we will have to go along with some Big State items…but our future depends on a coalition of white rural and Latino/POC urban voters.

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.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan23 Comments

I don’t put much stock in polls, but it is interesting that this poll shows Millenials moving away from the Democrats. Makes sense – when all you offer is identity politics and outragey outrage, kinda gets dull. Now, I know a lot of my fellow Conservatives will attack me on this, but let’s nail these kids down for our side for a generation: annul the student loan debt. Or, at least allow kids to go bankrupt on it. The whole thing was merely a scam to get utra-liberal Colleges rolling in dough which they would then use against us. Get rid of it – and get the kids out of debt.

The Israeli Mossad apparently carried out the intelligence coup of all time – getting a massive amount of documents detailing Iran’s nuclear program. The most important thing about it is that it shows Obama was either a fool or an idiot to enter the Iran Deal (but, you already knew that).

Seems that FDR was also looking for a settlement of the “Jewish Question.” Now, to be sure, FDR didn’t even imagine anything along the lines of Hitler’s settlement, but it is interesting to note just how Progressives viewed (and continue to view) things…how eerily akin it all is to the worst aspects of fascist and Communist thinking. For those of us on the right, there never was a “Jewish Question”. Jews are people and are entitled to all the rights and privileges of everyone else…the only “settlement” is to ensure that Jews, and everyone else, enjoys their God-given rights. What they do with them, after that, is up to them. But Progressives don’t look at it like that – people are a “problem” that needs solution. Naturally, they are the only people equipped to solve the problem.

With the possibility of peace looming in Korea, it is important that you get to North Korea before Capitalism ruins it: Kim Jong-un wants a McDonald’s in Pyongyang. To me, this is a disastrously bad idea that only a Communist tyrant could think of. McDonald’s being just terrible! Joking aside, I don’t know how this Korea peace move will work out. I’ve just gotta figure that the North Korean’s are working an angle. But in and among that angle there just might be a desire to no longer be poor and miserable. Reports over the past couple years indicate that even the elites are not getting as much as they used to. Kim Jong-un may believe he can pull off what Deng Xiaoping did in China back in the 70s: keep his regime firmly in control while allowing sufficient economic openness to allow for real growth. South Korea, on the other hand, would be willing to give up a lot, I think, to permanently remove the North Korean threat to their own prosperity. As an America, I’m willing to also give up quite a lot if it really means no nuclear weapons in North Korea. Let’s hope for the best.

Donald Surber takes a look at the upcoming West Virginia Senate battle…and notes that Manchin may end up having trouble against a GOP candidate who was blamed for the deaths of 29 miners. If so, it would indicate the Democrat party is dead in West Virginia.

Ace looks at Jake Tapper’s new novel and it is rather brutal. I hope mine comes off better. Doing the second draft, now, with some extremely valuable input from some people I highly respect. To me, its a good story about to become a great story. But, we’ll see. Hope Ace likes it.