Polls

Open Thread

Mark Noonan36 Comments

I hope you guys like my fiction more than my non-fiction…because I’m definitely liking fiction more! Nearly done with Battles, the sequel to Secrets (last night I did a big bit on the final battle between the good guys and the bad guys; its quite exciting!) and I’m already way into Shadow Army, which takes our heroes six years after Battles and continues the story. Shadow Army came up because the Mrs invented the evil creatures in it…she just suddenly thought about them and before I knew it, I had 25,000 words down.

The Democrats and the MSM (but I repeat myself) are sticking to the 2016 script relentlessly. They are even now on “GOP insiders say Trump is looking for a graceful exit and a symbolic win”. Hey, who knows? Maybe they’re on to something this time…but I suspect they are just churning out what they are told to churn out by the DNC.

I’m thinking we need to ban political polling: just get rid of it. It doesn’t inform any more, if it ever did. It is now a mere tool to drive a Narrative and try to convince people that reality is different from what they can see right in front of them. If we did that, then the Experts would actually have to go out and see what’s happening before they could tell us what they think is going on. Now, they just refer to the polls and call it a day – and call you an idiot if you don’t respect the Holy Polls.

Trump’s White House speech as called a “peaceful protest in favor of law and order”…and as we know peaceful protests can’t spread the ‘Rona, it was all good. And it was also pretty amazing: mostly because of the number of “Blexit” people involved (Black Exit: black people leaving the Democrats. We’ll see how that comes out: there are some indicators that Trump will score pretty high in minority communities. But, unlike the Experts, I think I’ll wait for the votes to be cast and counted before deciding what will happen.

Joe says we voters “don’t deserve” to know his views on court packing. Which, of course, means we know: he’ll pack it in an instant if given the chance. But, it doesn’t poll well: it really is just a tiny minority of really butt hurt liberals upset that Trump got to appoint 3, so they want to appoint 4. Joking aside, it is a danger to the Republic because if they did pack it to a 7/6 liberal majority, that Court would rule any way the Democrats wanted at the moment. Better to avoid that by keeping Trump in the White House and Cocaine Mitch running the Senate. This issue is causing some heartburn for Democrats – in both the AZ and CO Senate races, the GOP incumbents scored pretty heavily in debate by getting both their Democrat opponents to refuse to answer the question. I just have to think that voters aren’t going to like this “you don’t deserve to know” attitude. Could make some tight races flip our way.

Seems like the kooks set up by the FBI in the “kidnap Whitmer” scheme have one thing in common: they don’t like Trump. No surprise: real 2A, Conservative militia types are law-abiding patriots. We will fight if our lives and liberty depend on it, but we’re not lunatics…you know, like liberals are. My view of this is that the FBI got wind of these losers and then egged them on until they broke a law…all so they could blame Trump. As far as that goes, it worked: to the end of time, liberals will assert that MAGA-hatted Trumpsters plotted to kidnap Whitmer.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan36 Comments

So, the IG report came out – and after spending hundreds of pages revealing how many things were done wrong, it concluded with an essentially, “hey, sorry; my bad” statement. This is drivel – no one is that incompetent; what was done to engineer the spying on Trump was obviously criminal…and downright un-American. I hope that Barr and his crew will go after these people. Some statements made after the release of the report indicate he might. We’ll have to wait and see. As for me, I’m more convinced than ever that the FBI has to go. It simply can’t be trusted.

Rumor has it that the House will settle on two articles of impeachment: Obstructing Congress and Abuse of Power. Which is garbage. The Executive can’t obstruct Congress no more than Congress and obstruct the President. They are co-equal branches of government and neither has to bend the knee to the other. As for Abuse of Power…it sounds like something, but it isn’t. Note that colluding and bribery and so forth won’t make an appearance. Which means even after the Democrats rigged hearings to ensure something bad about Trump came out, they still came up with nothing.

Will they vote on them? Remains to be seen. Could be that they went with two very nebulous articles so that if a vote is held, the trial in the Senate is over quickly. Those two articles can be done in a day because there’s not much to say about them, on either side…and it is at least a chance that things like the Bidens won’t even be brought up in such a trial.

Its polls, but as our Experts still seem to live and die by them, this poll has to be giving them fits: it shows Trump surging in the battleground States. Make of it what you will – and even if we start to see lots of Trump-positive polls, don’t take them to heart. Work next year like we’re down by ten and only a miracle of effort will scrape Trump through.

Seems that Prince Andrew invited both Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein to his daughter’s 18th birthday party back in 2006. That grosses you out because of what you know, now…but what really nauseated me was the description of the party. A little girl’s 18th birthday – it cost 400,000 pounds. They were awash in champagne and food and had an orchestra. Who the heck are these people? Where did they come from? Why are we allowing them to keep living like that?

Open Thread

Mark Noonan95 Comments

Polls are meh, but there is a poll which says that Trump’s approval among Hispanics is at 37% and African-Americans at 26%. If so, the Democrats are doomed. But, once again, it is a poll. On the other hand, I’ve seen various news stories indicating that Team Trump is rolling out a very sophisticated voter outreach program…not just designed to do the usual stuff, but do things like bring people into voting who haven’t voted before or not very often. If they can really pull off something like that, then the 2020 results might be the shocker of all shocks…and other than a few bits and pieces fed to MSMers (some of which will be deliberate misdirection), most people won’t see it until it happens.

Beto decided to hand the GOP a gift in the form of admitting that liberals like him are after gun confiscation. Beto knows he won’t be the nominee – and he also knows that he has no real future in Texas politics. So, he’s just setting fire to things because it will generate attention and money and allow him to live well. But the bottom line is that a Democrat President for candidate has called for confiscation…and you can rely on it that none of the others will really dissent from that view. They can’t: they’ve told their mostly-mindless base that guns are bad and for a Progressive, all bad things must be utterly destroyed. Just that one assertion might get Trump two or three million more votes in 2020.

Democrats want to impeach Trump – because they’ve been told that Orange Man Bad and, once again, all bad things must be destroyed. However, the Democrat leaders know that doing such a thing absent a half dozen GOP Senators willing to vote with them is political suicide…and that wouldn’t happen unless Trump’s approval among GOP voters drops below, say, 75% (latest poll shows him at about 94% approval among GOP voters). So, they are trying to have it both ways – telling their base that they are super serial gonna get that guy Trump, but behind the scenes not actually doing anything. Well, Trump’s DOJ is calling them out on it – essentially telling them to sh** or get off the pot; which boxes the Democrats in nicely. They’ll eventually either have to drop it or drive forward…either way it would be a political disaster for them.

Abortion “doctor” kept body parts of his victims…you know, like serial killers do. This is not at all surprising – no decent doctor would perform an elective abortion. Only the dregs of the medical field would go into that as a primary means of making money…and the dregs tend to be low caliber people. Like this house of horrors abortionist.

China has some food problems:

…lifting the tariffs, China has just admitted it cannot produce enough protein for national consumption, both as a staple or as a preferred meat. Imagine a US shortage of wheat and chicken, with no real access to corn or beef, and a couple dozen urban areas of 20 millions or more with just a third arable land as now. That’s China.

So, what’s the problem with China’s agricultural industry? Basically, they simply do not have enough land to grow the volume of soy they need; and, their pork production is highly diffused and is ravaged by a massive and seemingly uncontrollable swine flu epidemic. In fact, it is estimated that up to 60% of China’s pigs are infected with the flu.

To compound a bad situation to worse, Chinese officials are both incapable of enforcing a quarantine and too corrupt to stop the spread of the flu.

China is a giant on spindly legs. We have far more leverage over them than we suspect – and we’ve never used it, until just recently. We’ll see how Trump does.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan17 Comments

Ace went off on a bit of a rant about the fact that both US and Brit intel people were passing messages back and forth wondering if both Brexit and Trump were the result of Russian interference:

These people are literally insane, and were in the grips of a hysterical delusion — “without evidence,” as the hysterical leftwing media might say — and they run the f***ing world without our consent and in secrecy.

These “intelligence officials” are so completely out-of-touch they cannot fathom even the possibility that the wider public might deviate from the BBC/MSM line that defines their reality, and immediately suspect RUSSIAN AGENTS must be behind any deviation from the expected left-liberal upper middle class consensus that they believe is the only mode of thought or possibility in the world.

Ace goes on to note that they are “pig-ignorant and stupid”. I fact checked that assertion and found it to be completely true. The people who run the world are mostly behind the scenes and man the corporate and government bureaucracies around the world. The all went to the same sort of schools and learned the same sort of things and are completely convinced they simply know better than everyone who isn’t in their clique. Trump, Brexit, Hungary, Poland…all these people and movements which propose to give regular folks a say are a terror to these people. They really do fear that if we secure power, we’ll immediately launch global nuclear war…that is, if we don’t immediately start committing genocide. They think we’re too stupid to be trusted with power…and so it came naturally to them to think that we dimwits were being fooled by someone into wanting Britain to be free or America to be great again. And we simply must get rid of them – the survival of our nation and civilization requires it. They have to go, by any means necessary.

Democrats are pretty much all-in on Medicare for All…but I don’t think it’ll play well with suburban voters. We’ll see.

Yes, the polls are biased:

While looking into this phenomenon in 2016, I contacted a number of polling groups. I knew that they “weight” and adjust their samples to make them reflect certain demographics of the U.S. population. In simple terms, if their sample ends up with too many young people, they assign greater weight to responses from older people. The methods they use to do so vary and are arcane, to say the least. For example, ABC states that it “adopted iterative weighting, also known as raking or rim weighting, in which the sample is weighted sequentially to Census targets one variable at a time, continuing until the optimum distribution is achieved.”

But one of the most interesting things I learned had to do with one big factor for which they typically don’t “weight” or adjust. It’s one that I think is arguably among the most important when it comes to polls measuring political issues: political affiliation. In other words, the national pollsters I spoke with told me that if they end up interviewing significantly more Democrats than Republicans — which is often the case — they don’t necessarily adjust the results to try to make the sample reflective of the U.S. voting population.

I also bet that, on the flip side, if they are finding significant numbers of Democrats who are going towards the Republicans, they toss that data out. It is how they missed PA and MI in 2016…they probably had somewhere in their data the indication that Trump was doing well in both States, but as it didn’t fit their pre-determined polling outcome, they just ignored it. Right now, except for a few outliers, all polling indicates that Trump is doomed – that there isn’t the slightest chance of him winning. They even have polling showing the Democrats are taking Texas. Now, I can’t say for certain, because I don’t have certain knowledge: but I will say I highly doubt all this polling. I doubt that Trump could raise the money and draw the crowds if he was in such bad shape that he was about to lose Texas. I also doubt that somewhat more than 25% of his 2016 Texas voters have suddenly discovered a desire for far-left Progressive policies. But, we’ll see…and what we’ll see, I’m guessing, will be a repeat of 2016.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan60 Comments

Our liberals are going nuts over Trump sending troops to the border…apparently working under the weird assumption that our army isn’t supposed to protect our borders. I guess that concept has gotten lost after 70 years of sending our troops into foreign shooting galleries under strict orders not to win.

President Trump is asking for $341,559.50 in legal fees from Team Stormy. No, I don’t know why they didn’t just round it up.

Its a small and very, very weird world:

In a really strange turn of events, it has been discovered that bombing suspect Cesar Sayoc worked at Ultra Gentleman’s Club in West Palm Beach, FL, the same strip club that Stormy Daniels performed at back in April, WPTV reported.

Jair Bolsonaro won the Presidency of Brazil with 56% of the vote and this is being described as a major blow against Democracy…because the people voted the wrong way, you see? The global elite is deathly afraid of that. Now, plenty of people on the right in the USA did laud the victory…but I’d hold off. Let’s see if he’s really the Tropical Trump he’s called, or if he’s a nut before we embrace him.

Victor Davis Hanson has an excellent article on the paradoxes of the immigrants – specifically, the caravan. Mostly centering around the oddity that they want to come here, but they don’t seem to particularly want to be American. I liken it to the barbarians outside Rome in the 5th century…they very much wanted to enjoy the good things of Rome, but they weren’t at all interested in preserving the social structures which produced the good things of Rome. The collapse of Western civilization (which was quite epic) from the 5th to the 10th centuries was simply because of this – and had the barbarians come in and humbly asked to be taught, it would have been a lot different. I’ve come around to the view that all immigration to the United States must cease for a period of at least 20 years. We need to kick out those who won’t assimilate and assimilate those who are willing. And only after that is accomplished can we afford to open the door again.

I didn’t know this – Don Surber notes that in order to get a poll response pool of 737 people, a total of 38,000 calls had to be made. That is a 1.94% response rate. Now, the pollsters tell you this doesn’t matter because those who hang up likely have the same overall opinions as those who don’t. Really? Seriously? I just can’t hold that to be credible – you might be missing some major trends out there. You know, like PA, MI and WI all breaking for Trump…

UPDATE: Trump secures Amazona’s vote for 2020:

President Donald Trump said in an interview that he plans to sign an executive order ending “birthright citizenship” for the children of non-American citizens who are born on U.S. soil, a move that would likely be challenged immediately in the courts over its constitutionality.

The first thing you think is that Democrats will challenge this in court…but, if they do, they have no assurance that the Supreme Court will back them. All they may end up doing is cementing Trump Administration policy. Also: my bet is that most Americans didn’t realize until just now that you can get citizenship merely by being born in the United States, even if of illegal immigrant parents. Democrats should be wary of fighting on this hill.

They won’t be, of course. Because they’re stupid.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan6 Comments

Well, Matt and I decided to write another book. Started working on it just yesterday and we hope to publish right around the 1st of November, 2019. Two guesses what the overall subject will be. Matt is actually doing double-duty as he’s also working a solo political book project. Meanwhile, I keep working on the third draft of the novel; which I think is getting to be a splendid story.

Bill Maher does the right thing: defend Alex Jones’ free speech rights. Most people on the left are simple partisans…but a few of them understand that unless all are free, none are free. Maher gets it.

Here’s a real problem:

Here’s the arithmetic: one in three potential recruits are disqualified from service because they’re overweight, one in four cannot meet minimal educational standards (a high school diploma or GED equivalent), and one in 10 have a criminal history. In plain terms, about 71 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds (the military’s target pool of potential recruits) are disqualified from the minute they enter a recruiting station: that’s 24 million out of 34 million Americans. The good news is that while the military takes pride in attracting those who are fit, educated, law abiding, and drug-free, they’re having difficulty finding them—manifestly because fewer of them actually exist.

Adding to the failure of many to meet requirements is the fact that in our now-booming economy, the military has less appeal to young men starting out in life.

But I’m not in a mood to despair over this. The overweight thing can be fixed, of course – and, in fact, 8 to 10 weeks of basic training would help just about anyone trim down to fighting weight. I’m also not too worried about the kids not having a high school diploma because having one doesn’t actually indicate being educated. The criminal history thing is a problem, but it is also not a 100% problem: in fact, a stint in the ranks might just be what the doctor ordered for a troubled youth who still hasn’t gone down the road to doing something truly horrible. We don’t want to lower standards, but I think that a revision of standards will allow us to get what we want…out of a nation of 317 million people with more than four million men reaching military age annually, we should be able to find the people to fill the services.

As long time readers know, I’m not in favor of conscription – not even in war time. If a nation can’t get volunteers to defend itself, then it isn’t worth defending. Revise the standards on weight to “what can a strict regime do for this kid’s weight in two months?”. Perhaps even start a pre-boot camp for the hefty kids: you can join if you drop X pounds by your induction date. Revise the high school diploma to a test to see if the kid can read, write and do basic sums. If he can, I don’t care if he failed to finish the third grade. Revise the criminal history thing to “as long as you weren’t convicted of a felony or ever charged with rape or murder”, you can join. Revise the drug use to “don’t care if you were high when you signed up, don’t do any more now that you’re in”. And then just train the hell out of the kids – push them, hard. All branches – everyone runs for miles, does lots and lots of pushups, learns how to use a rifle, how to fight hand to hand. Everyone, that is, becomes a warrior…or, they drop out of training and go home. No one is forced to stay: quit whenever you want. After they become lean, mean fighting machines, then they can learn their actual job in the military (be it remaining a lean, mean fighting machine in a Marine infantry battalion, or loading up missiles on the deck of a carrier. eg). And then keep the standards high – everyone has to requalify in physical fitness on a periodic basis…anyone who can’t cut the mustard: out. Do all this, and I think we’ll get just what we need.

The whole #MeToo thing ended just as soon as a senior Democrat got caught up in it during an election year. Always remember: Democrats don’t give a damn about people being harmed…all they care about is whether they can use something against a Republican.

As we’ve said for years, take all polls with a grain of salt – but there’s a poll out there saying Trump is more trusted than the Democrats. Here’s what I’ve been saying of late: if the MSM Narrative about Trump were true, CNN would be the highest rated cable news outfit.

Supreme Court, Etc Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

Never thought a Supreme Court vacancy could make so many people lose it – but if you were on Twitter yesterday, you watched the most epic leftwing meltdown, ever. Not excluding election night, 2016. However, as they say, there’s more! Or, at least, there may well be more…I saw a blurb on a recent poll showing that Millenial men have swung 23 points to the GOP since 2016…something like a 12 point Democrat advantage has now become an 11 point GOP advantage. If this holds true, then 2018 (and 2020) won’t be like anyone is expecting.

Another bit of polling supposedly shows a big jump in Latino support for Trump – which isn’t actually surprising. I think that Democrat Latino support is mostly concentrated among Latinos who are overtly Progressive plus immigrants/children of immigrants. By the time you get to the grandchildren of immigrants, you’re just dealing with everyday, average Americans for the most part. And such people have other concerns on their minds than what happens to illegal immigrants at the border.

Getting back to the vacancy: people who know seem to believe that any of the possible Justices on Trump’s list would be an excellent, strict Constitutionalist on the Court. You can’t know for certain, naturally: you never know when the itch for a legacy ruling will get hold of a judge. But, I think we can rely on it there’s a very good chance that whomever replaces Kennedy won’t have his talent for specious reasoning when it is time to ratify whatever the Progs are whining about in social issues (on things like the First and Second Amendments, on the other hand, Kennedy was pretty solid). The Democrats are all in a tizzy about losing Kennedy’s near-certain vote in favor of their social policy changes, but the real crisis will hit them when Ginsburg leaves the Court – which she is bound to do voluntarily or perforce before too many more years have passed. If she makes it to 2024, she’ll be 91.

But all that may become a moot point – remember, the Courts are only there (for our Progressives) as a last resort: what to do when they can’t get their policies through Congress. But if things go as they might, Democrats might be so bereft of power a couple years from now that the makeup of the Court won’t really matter too much…the real action will be in Congress. One of the rulings this week as the striking down of the requirement that government employees belong to – and pay for – government employee unions. This is what happened in Wisconsin now on a national scale. You can rely on it that a very large number of government employees will opt out of unionization. This will cause a gigantic loss of Democrat political funds – direct and indirect – and thus crimp their ability to influence politics. I note that Wisconsin went red in 2016 after Walker’s government employee reforms…it hadn’t gone red since 1984; and even then, only because it was the Reagan landslide.

We might be living in a very different political America as soon as January.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan34 Comments

There have been reports floating about that Saudi Arabia and the Vatican have agreed to build churches for Christians in Saudi Arabia. These reports are currently being denied by the Vatican:

The Vatican has denied making a deal with Saudi Arabia to build churches for Christian worshippers in the Arab country.

Reports in Middle Eastern media claimed a historic agreement had been made between Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran and Mohammed bin Abdel Karim Al-Issa of the Muslim World League.

But a spokesperson for the Vatican said the report was ‘false’…

But the fact that even rumors of such a thing exist indicate the sea-change which is currently taking place in Saudi Arabia under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. We can’t say for sure where all this is going, but it seems pretty clear to me that bin Salman wants to reform his Kingdom. Don’t expect pluralist democracy and casinos in Riyadh any time soon, folks. The Saudi people, themselves, are very conservative in outlook. But I think we will see ever more relaxation of the extremist Islamist activity which has ruled to social and political roost in Saudi Arabia for some decades now. It appears that once upon a time the Saudi monarchy cut a deal with the Islamists (ie, don’t try to overthrow the monarchy, we’ll let you be as Islamist as you like)…now, it seems that this deal is being undone.

There are quite a large number of Christians in Saudi Arabia. I once knew a priest who had actually said Mass for them. All very, very quiet – the Christians keep their heads down and as long as nothing is out in the open, the authorities look the other way. Most Christians there are foreign or children of foreigners…Saudi Arabia having quite a lot of immigrants who do the more difficult and dirty work of living. But, I also understand that even some Saudi natives have converted – which is something almost unheard of in history. Any attempt to actually open a Church in Saudi Arabia will be done with great care on both sides, to prevent an overt reaction. I’ve long said that the cure of Islamism is to have a Church in Saudi Arabia (a Synagogue, too…but let’s take it one step at a time). Once that happens, then there can be real peace between Islam and the West. I hope this all works. I think it will work; but, we’ll just have to see.

Rosie O’Donnell is alleged to have done the same sort of campaign finance violations that got Dinesh D’Souza arrested. We’ll see if there’s equal justice under law.

You know me and polls – but some recent polling indicates that Trump and the GOP are starting to rise against the Democrats. My view remains that the number of GOPers now exceeds the number of Democrats in the United States for the first time since the 1920’s. If I’m right, then the pundit class will be shocked in November. If I’m wrong…so, what? I don’t make my living by punditry.

You might have missed Judge Ellis ripping Mueller’s team a new one:

A federal judge on Friday sharply criticized Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s criminal case in Virginia against President Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and openly questioned whether Mueller exceeded his prosecutorial powers by bringing it.

“I don’t see what relationship this indictment has with anything the special counsel is authorized to investigate,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III in the Eastern District of Virginia said.

There’s nothing to investigate so, yes, Mueller is exceeding his authority – which was to investigate the paranoid delusion of Trump-Russia. So, anything he’s done is going to be outside the scope of that. Nice to see some judicial push back against Mueller’s flailing investigation.

Baghdad isn’t doing so badly these days. We did have a hand in this…and it shows what the Middle East still might become.

UPDATE: NY’s Attorney General has resigned over allegations of sexual misconduct. If you don’t have a Twitter account, you’re really missing out…we’ve got Tweets from Trump from years ago slamming the guy, we’ve got the AG’s Tweets about how he fights for women’s rights…and everyone is having a ball with it. More importantly, this is one of the guys who was supposed to get Trump. Seems to me that everyone who goes after Trump ends up losing.

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.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan81 Comments

Turns out, we now have a Secretary of Defense who is concerned about our war fighting capability:

Defense Secretary James Mattis said the new Pentagon policy that will remove service members who have not been deployable for a year or more is about fairly sharing the burden within the forces.

The deploy-or-leave policy includes exceptions for pregnancy and wounded warriors. Robert Wilkie, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee last week that “on any given day, about 13 to 14 percent of the force is medically unable to deploy.”

The United States has a population of around 317 million. Our active duty armed forces are just under 1.3 million. This works out to 0.54% of our population being in the military. If we nearly doubled our active forces (which we probably should, given the challenges we face), then we’d be getting to 1% in the military…this ratio of military to population means we should very easily be able to select only the very best physical and mental recruits for our armed forces. There should be no one in there other than those injured in the line of duty who isn’t in peak condition. We have the population to allow us a force of superb soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines…and that is precisely what we should have.

Democrats may be Resisting themselves into a permanent minority:

Finally there’s Mr. Trump. Even with his recent bump in the polls, he remains divisive. But he’s not the only divisive politician who will figure in this election. The most recent Politico/Morning Consult poll suggests that Nancy Pelosi has pulled off a largely unheralded achievement: In the Age of Trump, she is arguably the most unpopular politician in America.

What does that mean for impeachment? Well, in 69 House districts surveyed by the Congressional Leadership Fund (a super PAC devoted to maintaining the GOP majority), Mrs. Pelosi is underwater in every one. She is also toxic among independents.

Take California’s 10th District, held by Republican Jeff Denham. Hillary Clinton carried this district in 2016, and Mr. Trump’s approval rating is at minus four. But again, Democrats are split among eight primary contenders. And the CLF survey showed that voters in Mr. Denham’s district prefer Paul Ryan as speaker to Mrs. Pelosi by 13 points.

I’ve been saying all along that I have grave doubts that dislike of Trump would translate into a desire to have Pelosi return to the Speaker’s chair. It could happen – but only if Pelosi and the Democrats came up with an agenda that speaks to the American people. Hating Trump and wanting impeachment wasn’t going to do it…choosing illegals over Americans and demanding gun control will be millstones around the Democrats’ necks come November. I don’t know how November will come out – but in my view, it is more likely that Republicans will make gains than Democrats will take back the House.

John Kasich is, in my view, laying the groundwork for a run for President as a Democrat:

If all the sudden you couldn’t buy an AR-15, what would you lose? Would you feel your second amendment rights would be eroded? These are the things that have to be looked at and action has to happen.

Next up will be a more “nuanced” position on abortion. Thing is, he’d actually be the strongest candidate Democrats could find to run against Trump…blue collar background; successful governor; from Ohio which could make that State back into a real battleground. He’d pull all the remaining NeverTrump over to the Democrats while at the same time having huge appeal in the suburbs of the Blue cities. But, the Democrat base will reject him – the whole old, white guy thing just won’t work. If he did get the Democrat nomination, the far left would run a Third Party candidate against him.

The Israeli solution to school shootings:

When terrorists attacked a school in Maalot in 1974, Israel did not declare every school a gun-free zone. It passed a law mandating armed security in schools, provided weapons training to teachers and today runs frequent active shooter drills. There have been only two school shootings since then, and both have ended with teachers killing the terrorists.

It is an approach that the Americans should take to end the constant slaughter of innocents.

San Francisco, the Progressive paradise:

As the Investigative Unit photographed nearly a dozen hypodermic needles scattered across one block, a group of preschool students happened to walk by on their way to an afternoon field trip to citiy hall.

“We see poop, we see pee, we see needles, and we see trash,” said teacher Adelita Orellana. “Sometimes they ask what is it, and that’s a conversation that’s a little difficult to have with a 2-year old, but we just let them know that those things are full of germs, that they are dangerous, and they should never be touched.”

In light of the dangerous conditions, part of Orellana’s responsibilities now include teaching young children how to avoid the contamination.

This is what the left wants to bring to the whole country. They simply don’t care about the lives of the people…all they care about is their social agenda of tearing down Western Civilization. If we have to live in a world where filth-borne disease becomes once again a regular occurrence, that is a price they are willing you should pay.