Mexico

Open Thread

Mark Noonan7 Comments

Invoking the Home Rule Act, Trump has decided to take over law enforcement in Washington, DC. This will cause shrieks from the Democrats and probably a raft of lawsuits…but Trump is totally within his power to do this. Good to keep in mind that in DC, like in all major Blue cities, the reason crime is rampant stems from two things:

  1. The Leninist conviction that all crime is a result of social injustice (ie, the real criminals are those who sustain the system – that is, you and me).
  2. If you’re a Blue city mayor, DA or what have you, the last thing you want to do is arrest a lot of POC. They are who are doing most of the crime in the Blue cities, but there is no electoral upside here – and not just with POC voters, but with the upper class whites who tend to be the decisive vote in electing governments in Blue cities. Basically, you have to pretend the problem is anything but POC – and so you’ll come up with “alternatives to policing” and a host of other eyewash programs to pretend you’re doing something about it when you aren’t because you can’t.

But people don’t like that – they might not be able to totally articulate it, but nobody likes a lot of street crime. And not just out of concern for personal property and safety…nobody likes to see streets filled with litter and zombie-like drug addicts with criminals prowling around looking for the next victim. The people like to see clean, safe streets. Trump is going to try to give it to the people of DC.

Can’t emphasize enough how important it is that this work – because all of our crime-ridden cities are crime-ridden by choice. The leadership of the cities, like that in DC, made the political choice to allow crime to be rampant. If Trump can clean up DC then it’ll show that every city can be cleaned up…you just have to arrest the people committing crimes. It is like border security – Trump has shown that every President could have just done it. Closed it of. Stopped the flow. It just had be ordered done. It wasn’t – and for the same reason the government of DC doesn’t order the crime stopped…the political and social desires of those in charge are best served by business as usual.

The WNBA is going to install “anti foreign object netting” around the basketball court…if you don’t know why, then just Google … heck, don’t know how to write that on a family website! Anyways, just look around social media for the latest WNBA memes and you’ll quickly see which foreign object the WNBA is trying to stop. This is becoming ground zero in the culture war. The WNBA was created as a payoff, in my view: feminist groups were given this league by the NBA in order to take the heat of NBA players who were…not always total gentlemen with the ladies. Basically it is the #MeToo fine the NBA is paying. A whole infrastructure was built up to make it seem like it was an organic sport…something that people wanted. But it was mostly just ignored…and then Caitlin Clark became a thing and the WNBA had their first organic star…whom the other players proceeded to treat like garbage. It has all been so clearly mere jealousy…people who simply aren’t as good as Clark fouling her for being good. People saw this and now the previously-ignored WNBA is the currently-despised WNBA.

The league loses on average $10 million a year – chump change for an NBA with $10 billion in annual revenue. The pragmatic facts of life are that even someone as good as Clark probably isn’t good enough to sit on an NBA bench. As playing spreads among young girls there will grow an ever stronger group of female players and we will probably see some ladies being just good enough to in theory play for the NBA. But the play will never be NBA level – it can’t be because of those inherent physical differences between men and women (you know, that we’re supposed to pretend don’t exist). How much are people going to pay for something that doesn’t even work out to a AAA for the NBA? Not much. Sure, if you just love basketball as a thing and like to see a game, you’ll go watch WNBA…if nothing else is available. And in this it is sort of like AAA ball…which does get some people in the stands but, let’s face it, not that much…and certainly not a MLB prices.

I don’t care about the league at all – not a basketball fan. But the attempt to force it into a major league has been silly from the start. And now that people are really looking at it for the first time, they don’t see what they like. So, anti-foreign object netting…

Trump has apparently given the order to have our military go after the Cartels. The Mexican government objects. On the other hand, there really is no Mexican government. Sure, the go through the motions but the bottom line is that the Cartels totally control Mexico. You’d probably be better off thinking that the government is another Cartel…and probably the junior partner. Mexico has always been hopelessly corrupt…the only difference is how much corruption is going on at any given time. Keep in mind that there wasn’t a popular uprising to bring an end to Spanish rule in Mexico…it was upper class people who just wanted their own country to play with and they took advantage of a Spain gravely weakened by the Napoleonic Wars. Since that time, it has been one sort of oppression after another to keep the contraption together (lost in the records is the fact that as Zachary Taylor’s army moved deeper into Mexico during the Mexican-American War province after province asked him to get them into the American Union). The PRI for decades held it together via a mix of bribery and mild political repression…and the sort of political leader they developed was a coward merely looking for the next payoff. These people had no chance against the Cartels. The Mexican people might want to fight the Cartels but the Mexican government won’t arm the people…because they know that as soon as the Cartels are knocked off, those guns would be turned against the government.

This is still going to be a very tricky business. Make no mistake about it! Mexican’s do have a very prickly pride especially when we gringos are involved. But it has to be done – we can’t have Cartels dominating our southern neighbor. They have to go.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan88 Comments

Senator Kennedy asked a Biden judicial nominee a pretty basic legal question (the sort you’d expect to be learned in pre-law) and the nominee had no idea what Kennedy was asking about. A lot of people are all, “what in heck are they teaching?” about it…but all with the assumption that law schools are still, well, law schools.

Now, to be fair, I have been set a little bit straight by a Twitter friend who stoutly asserts that in the law schools there are professors who vigorously teach law even if they, themselves, are far Left nutjobs. I trust the guy who told me this so I have to assume a blanket assertion I made on Twitter wasn’t true – that being that they don’t teach law, at all, in law school. So, I take my correction: they still do teach some law. That said, as we can see from this Biden nominee, they don’t teach much law…and I still vigorously assert that there is a negative selection in people brought into the government to ensure against any possibility of a real lawyer being appointed to a senior law enforcement or judicial position.

There are two factors as work here. The first is the need for “diversity”. The race hustlers are insisting that we have vast numbers of non-male, non-white lawyers. Whether or not there is a sufficiently large pool of such is irrelevant and I’m certain that its racist to even ask. They are going to get their diversity, folks: that is baked in. And not just diversity in admission, but diversity in result. No law school out there is going to have their graduating class be less than, say, 20 percent black…and if this means they have to graduate people who aren’t capable, they’ll do it. And, yes, I’m quite confident that when it comes to grading bar exams, the people doing so are also going to make certain that the “right” percentage of each diversity quota makes it (anyways, I understand from a lawyer friend that the bar has never been a straight up pass or fail: there has always been a little fudging in deciding just what constitutes passing and failing: easy, then, to rig the system to get the result you want). So, what we’ve got is a built in system which will ensure that a certain percentage of people will have no business at all being lawyers, but lawyers they shall be.

And that brings us to the second factor: the need for certainty. This is something which stems from Leninist legal practice – and it would amaze even many Conservatives to find out how much of Progressive legal and social policy is based on Leninism. It really has taken over the Left in the United States. Took decades to get it done, but it has been accomplished. In this instance, Leninist legal principle is that there is no “both sides” in the law – the law is to advance the cause or it isn’t law. In Lenin’s parlance it would be to advance the cause of the Working Class…but our modern Leninists don’t really like workers (Lenin didn’t either, of course) and so the cause now is the Victim…the racial, sexual, gender, what have you victim of the Racist, Sexist, Homophobic, Imperialist, Genocidal AmeriKKKa. The law is to advance the cause of the Victim or it isn’t law. Whatever happens, the designated victim must prevail in court – and as the victim is always pre-determined by the DNC Narrative of the moment, the Progressive lawyers and judges know how to rule. This is why law isn’t really taught, or at least isn’t taught to those being groomed for senior judicial positions: the Left needs certainty. The absolute assurance that when their legal cases are brought forth, everyone involved will follow the Party Line on who is the Victim. Can’t get that out of anyone who really knows the law or has an ounce of self respect: you can only get certainty out of mindless, Party hacks. And, so, that is what we get…and so Biden’s nominee who doesn’t know a basic aspect of law. But he’ll be confirmed and for decades he’ll be ruling however the Progressives tell him to.

As of this moment, nobody has a clue about Trump’s indictment. Which shows, if nothing else has, how flimsy it all is. As I said a long while ago: if Trump had really broken any law, they could have got him on it long ago. Say whatever you want about the man, but he keeps his legal affairs in order. And as I also observed, this makes sense: working the New York real estate market is a minefield of legal hazard and anyone who is successful at it gets first rate legal advice on just what can and can’t be done within the law. Trump’s been at this for decades…I’ll bet he’s one of the few rich people in the world who can stand up to legal scrutiny.

Uganda voted to ban homosexuality. The Left is still trying to figure out what to do about a bunch of black people who are victims of colonialism not going along with white Progressives. Of course the Left wants to hammer them over this – and the Left is also chock full of neo-imperialists trying to impose Western morals on Africa – but this was a democratic vote in the Ugandan parliament…they’re going to have a rough time with this one.

I’m just going to laugh about it, myself.

Mexico’s President condemns Biden and the USA on human rights grounds – including pointing out how wrong it is for the Democrats to seek the indictment of their political opponent. He’s right. And we look absurd. It is a moment of national humiliation that I’m not only lectured to by the President of Mexico, but I can’t punch back because I have no grounds.

DeSantis after a very good run has now backtracked on Ukraine and is taking a more neo-con line. To me, this is an unforced error for RDS – the base is pacifist and, also, this is the Democrat’s war and they are going to lose it. All GOPers should stay the heck away so that when this blows up, it blows up only in Democrat faces. The last thing we need is for the GOP to take ownership of this war…especially as the moment we do, the Democrats will go back to being anti-war, accusing us of war crimes and they’ll suddenly discover that their darling Zelensky is a corrupt thug. I hope that RDS backtracks on his backtrack.

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 Noonan5 Comments

Democrats have started a pre-emptive campaign against possible Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. Their choice of tactic seems to be vicious, anti-Catholic bigotry. I don’t think this will work out for them as well as they think.

Their real worry is that on the matter of jurisprudence, Barrett seems unimpressed with the legal reasoning behind Roe and other such decisions. This is natural as the reasoning was specious, at best. Democrats are trying to fire up their base – and scare off a few hand-wringing GOP Senators – by raising the specter of a ban on abortion. Thing is, they are lying, as usual. Even if Roe is overturned entirely (doubtful: Justices like to keep precedent going), all it would do is return the issue to the States, or to the people (you know, where the 10th Amendment left it). My bet is that all but a few States would keep it legal, at least in the first trimester. I’d still be pleased by this because any move towards ending it is a good thing…but we’re a long, long way from any sort of political coalition which would outright ban abortion nationwide. More than likely, all any future Court will do, however, is allow States to impose various regulatory requirements on abortion – bans on late-term abortions; requirements for fully informed consent; that sort of thing.

The Experts are still uniformly predicting a good mid-term for the Democrats – from moderate Democrat gains to a gigantic, Democrat wave. They’ve got their polls and analysis of the off-year elections we’ve had coupled with historic trends. It is all very impressive…but, I just don’t see it. I’m fully prepared to be absolutely wrong, but I just don’t see it happening. All I can say is that primary turnout doesn’t indicate a massively large and enthusiastic Democrat base; it also doesn’t indicate a complacent or dispirited GOP base. The RNC is awash in money while the DNC is effectively broke. True, the Democrat House and Senate campaign committees are in good shape, but so are the GOP committees…on balance, the amount of money the RNC has to throw at races places the money advantage squarely with the GOP…and it makes me wonder: if the GOP is doomed and dispirited and Democrats are all fired up, why this money gap? I’ve read stories claiming big GOP donors are done with Trump’s GOP…and I believe them; but, still, the GOP has more money, overall. Where’s it coming from? Is it from people who didn’t used to be GOP donors, thus indicating that there’s a new infusion of supporters for the GOP? Is the DNC being broke an indicator that many long-term Democrats are moving away from the Democrats? Time will tell – personally, I think the GOP will win in November, perhaps win big. But, we can really only wait and see.

Mexico has elected an idiot President in a landslide. He’s like a caricature of the Third World socialist we’re all familiar with…everything is the fault of American Imperialism and if he’s just given full power, everyone will get rich. I get why Mexicans voted for him: if you think our Ruling Class is corrupt and out of touch, then let’s just say that compared to Mexico’s, our nitwits are verily reincarnations of Cincinnatus. For 100 years, Mexico has been ruled by corrupt politicians. Frustration led to the election of the one guy who seemed to be against it – except that some of his team are clearly involved in it. I predict utter disaster for Mexico…the good news it that Mexico’s Constitution says a person can only serve one term as President. The bad news is that leftists like this guy never pay much attention to what a Constitution says. Now is really the time to build the wall.

Don Surber has been keeping track of those who crossed Trump and then had their lives go south. It is a long list.

Robert Stacy McCain’s brother is having medical and insurance troubles – if you can spare a bit, maybe kick in a couple bucks?

Fast and Furious Body Count: 200

Mark Noonan3 Comments

From Townhall:

In a conference call this morning with Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Darrell Issa, reporters were told the Attorney General in Mexico has confirmed at least 200 murders south of the border happened as a result of Operation Fast and Furious.

“I would be remiss if I didn’t mention, as the Attorney General in Mexico is so concerned, she’s made the point that at least 200 Mexicans have been killed with these weapons and probably countless more,” Issa said.

Eleven crimes in the United States have been linked to Operation Fast and Furious up to this point. Issa said he expects as the investigation in the operation continues, more crimes connected to Fast and Furious will come to light and be exposed. This is not surprising, considering out of 2500 weapons the Obama Justice Department allowed to “walk,” and that only 600 have been recovered…

This, my fellow Americans, is a stain upon our national honor – it was we, through our government, which allowed these weapons to flow to Mexico.  We did it deliberately – and, why?  My view, as I’ve said before, is that it was a sick attempt to reinvigorate the gun control forces in this nation.  Not being able to get any traction as all the gun control ideology has proven false, someone cooked up a plan to arm Mexican criminals and then blame honest, innocent American gun dealers for the weapons…we were never supposed to find out that the weapons were purchased by the US government and illegally transferred to the drug gangs.

In order to restore our national honor in this matter we simply must get to the bottom of it – we must find out exactly who ordered this program to go forward and, in the best case scenario, ensure they see the inside of a jail cell.  People are dead because someone in DC made an egregiously stupid decision…we owe it to the dead to punish the guilty and ensure it never happens again.

Yet Another Incursion By the Mexican Military

Mark Noonan33 Comments

From the Houston Chronicle:

A Mexican military helicopter landed Saturday afternoon at Laredo International Airport by mistake, said a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Mucia Dovalina, the uniform public affairs officer for the Laredo Port of Entry, said the helicopter landed about 3 p.m., but she couldn’t share details such as the number of occupants or whether they were armed.

Dovalina said that, following protocol, CBP officers checked out the helicopter’s occupants, then allowed them to return to Mexico in the aircraft.

“The only thing that I can tell you is that they did land here,” she said. “It was by mistake. They were processed and they were returned to Mexico.”…

We seem to be getting a lot of mistakes by the Mexican military…seems the poor guys can’t tell north from south and often find themselves on our side of the border.  The airport, itself, is two or three miles north of the Mexican border…which is, of course, the Rio Grande river..one does wonder how the pilot missed that in the old landmarks?  Not like the river moves around a lot…unless this was the pilot’s first flight – and he didn’t have a compass – I’m mighty suspicious of this “mistake”.

My concern is that these incursions of the Mexican military are actually to assist the criminal element in Mexico – basically challenging our forces to stay out of the way so that the drug cartels can gain de-facto control of the ground.  The next time a Mexican military force crosses, we should hold the men and the materials until we’ve had a chance to thoroughly investigate the matter…and we should insist upon compensation from the Mexican government for the violation of our national sovereignty (yes, we do have that…just like all other nations, we really do have a right to keep foreign military forces out of our nation).

Enough is enough, already…time to let the Mexicans know there is a border, and they can’t cross it without our permission.