Pudding Brain

Open Thread

Mark Noonan40 Comments

Elon Musk announced that he was going to release the info about how the Hunter laptop story was suppressed on Twitter and everyone got al excited. Except me.

The crucial thing we need to know – the only thing we need to know – about how Twitter suppressed the story is who outside Twitter ordered it done. Now, do I have proof that someone outside Twitter gave the order? Of course not. But the bottom line is that as soon as the Post released the story federal law enforcement, almost all the MSM and all major social media platforms suppressed it. You don’t get that sort of uniformity of action without coordination – and you can’t coordinate that sort of action on the fly. People way up high in power in the USA were aware at least some days in advance that the Post story was coming and they swung into action to make sure it had as little effect as possible. They had their talking points all lined up – it was Russian disinformation. They got 50 former intel guys to sign a letter stating it was a Russian op. Doing this sort of thing takes a few calls, ya know?

So what I want to know is who called Twitter. Someone did. There’s no way it didn’t happen. If I can find out who made the call then I can find out who was ultimately behind the suppression effort by working backwards from that person and seeing who they did or do work for. And I called it before Musk released the info – 100-1 against us getting that crucial bit of information. And, sure enough, when the data was dropped, it lacked that. All it told us was what we already knew – that Twitter came up with an absurd excuse out of the Safety group and the story was gone.

Now, to be sure, they did say that political operatives – including some Republicans – had made various requests to suppress this or that account. But they still didn’t name any names. Likely because if we had an idea who had been calling before Laptop, we could eventually figure out who called for Laptop. Because as far as that goes, it had to be someone who knew about it – so, likely DOJ and/or Team Pudding Brain made that call.

And keep in mind that even if you want to say that fraud played no role in 2020, the suppression of this story did. It is absolutely hideous. Had it been about Don, Jr then Trump would have been lucky to crack 40% on election day. China Joe’s son is hip deep in federal crimes based on info on that laptop…and the pictures are downright disgusting. It was a candidacy-killer. Had it been given the normal play a story like that gets, these days Joe’s lawyers would be arguing he’s senile and so isn’t fit to stand trial. It was killed because to save Biden and get Trump out, it had to be killed. And, yes, this does make it even money that senior GOPers played a role in suppressing the story.

Until we get that info, its all pretty pointless. Musk says there is more to come – so, let’s hope. But I have my doubts that the truth will come out…because, remember, a lot of laws get broken in campaign offices and law enforcement agencies when you coordinate with media to favor one party over the other in a political campaign. A lot of well-placed people will be in jeopardy if it all comes out.

Apple CEO Tim Cook dodged questions about Apple’s relationship with China – because what else could he do? You do business in China and the Chinese own you. They have your factory. They control your labor force and supplies. If you don’t toe the PRC line, you’ll lose everything. And that is before the PRC gets you in-country, indulges any perversions you have and gets it all on video.

I’ve thought for decades that America having relations with tyrannical regimes is a huge mistake – we poison ourselves when we do that. Either we believe in our Declaration or we don’t. If we do, then we can’t hold that the PRC is a legitimate government – it is a mafia with an army. And you can’t make honest deals with the mob. We should, step by step, de-couple ourselves from all unfree nations.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan82 Comments

Trump announces for 2024, McConnell gets re-elected as Senate GOP leader, the GOP takes the House.

A lot of people are saying a lot of things about what this means and making their stout assertions of what will happen. Spoiler: nobody has the first clue. If the election we just had didn’t tell you that you can’t predict things, then nothing will. As for me, I predict nothing. I will pay no attention to any poll. I will pay no heed to the Experts telling us how it will go. It will be as it will be and we’ll find out after it is over how it went.

That said, there is still much we can say. And of course I’ll say it!

Trump’s speech last night was rather low key, wasn’t it? I’ve never subscribed to the view that Trump is unscripted: I’m pretty confident that he plans everything out to the last detail. So, that was the effect he wanted to present. Why? Could be because after last week’s disaster, being too rah rah would look ridiculous. Could also be that he’s trying to overall strike a new tone: “look, guys, it is bad: we can fix it, here’s how”. Could also be influenced by the potential GOP field…you know, look weak and see who strikes first and then your response is a counter-attack which, no matter how blistering it is, always seems fair turnabout by regular folks.

As for myself, I have decided not to commit myself to anyone this early on. I’m going to see how it plays out. As we get to the end of 2023 I’ll probably decide who my candidate is but even that is subject to change based on circumstances. I really don’t think anyone is wise to commit this early. Once you start getting invested in a thing, you start to blind yourself to possible alternatives. I’m keeping my powder dry.

A lot of Never Trump is now gleeful thinking that the Bad Orange Man is done. He may be! But don’t count on anything. Certainly don’t count Trump out given what we’re getting in the Senate. The bottom line is that a huge portion of the GOP base despises the GOP leadership – and the Senate GOP leadership in particular. I have had a lot of respect for McConnell but I do believe his time is done and he’s making a mistake by hanging on – and if it starts to look like he only hung on thwart Trump, then Trump’s stock with the GOP base will only grow and solidify. McConnell is very much the past presiding over the councils of the present – and his post election statement about finding ways to work with Biden caused immediate outrage. We didn’t send GOPers to Congress to pull Biden’s chestnuts out of the fire! McCarthy, set to be Speaker, seems to at least understand this a bit. He’s a squish, but he also doesn’t hold the base in contempt the way McConnell does. With Mitch there making deals with Biden, Trump will have the perfect foil for a GOP primary – and his opponents will be faced with the stark choice of denouncing McConnell or being seen as Establishment tools.

I make no predictions but I’m working on the assumption that we’re going to lose 2024. Always hard to pry the incumbent Party out of the White House, no matter. Absent a complete economic meltdown (a 50/50 prospect at the moment), let’s just say we’re gonna lose. This, first off, will make any defeat feel less bad – and it can also impel us to try things. Zeldin is pushing to be RNC chair and he has it right: you fight in every precinct. You don’t resign any of the board to the enemy. I think that if we discard the worn out notions of the past and simply try new things we might get some remarkable results. As we can’t change the early voting laws in Blue/Purple States, use them (it is already being done to great effect in NY and CA – and Newsom, the Democrat’s rising star, is way underperforming what was expected because of it). Find a guy or gal to run in the Deep Blue. Mike Garcia is apparently the Giga-Chad: I guess he won a Biden +8 district in 2020 so the Democrats decided to get rid of him by making his district Biden +12..and he still won easily. While voting in the House like he represents Alabama! One jokester said “its 2032, Democrats redistrict Garcia into downtown Los Angeles and swear they’ll get him this time!”. Mostly what it shows is that if you try and find the right message and messenger, no place is really off the table.

That is the attitude I want us to carry into 2024: lets just fight. Do our best. Try something new. It can’t possibly go any worse than it just did!

What I’m also thinking is that DeSantis should think carefully here. I don’t go with the Trumpsters who think he’s just a GOPe mole. He came out of the GOPe, but his fights against woke Corporations show that he’s learned the lesson. Mitch and Co might think that RDS is their ticket back…but they may find that, as the GOPe did with TR, that they just made that damned cowboy President. My concern is that if 2024 is a loser, then we don’t want to expend RDS in a bruising fight to beat Trump and then have him lose the White House. If I were an RDS advisor, I’d be thinking long and hard about telling my guy to back away from 2024. Or make only a token run and then get behind Trump. It works like this:

If you get behind Trump and work your tail off for him, you’ll build up huge goodwill with the Trumpsters. They won’t forget: they’ll be in your pocket for 2028. This works out even if Trump loses. If, however, Trump were to win then its still just 4 years, Trump can’t run again and you’ve not only got the Trumpsters in your pocket, you’ve got the President clearing your path in the primaries in 2028. Plus if we do win in 2024, we’ll almost certainly be coming in during a time of severe economic pain that will take years to dig out of. Might be better to let Trump tackle that: he’ll be free to piss people off, after all.

Anyways, that is mostly where my thinking is right now. I will add one last thing: the only people I’ll pay no attention to at all are those who say they won’t back the GOP nominee unless it is their choice. Such people – and there are Trumpist and Never-Trump people like this – are not only useless, they are destructive. I’ll vote in 2024 for whomever is on the GOP ticket because that person will always be the moral and intellectual superior of the Democrat. If a person can’t commit to that, then get out: we got better things to do.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan46 Comments

There are two realities about the status of Campaign 2022 at the moment:

  1. Nobody knows what will happen.
  2. What will happen is already happening.

I’ve seen lots of election Experts changing their race ratings over the past few days – from “leans this” to “tilt that” and so on. It is all drivel. Only marginal changes in voting intention take place in the last couple weeks. When we talk about “late deciders broke thus and such” what we really mean is “these people were 99% going to go the way they did, we just didn’t know it until it was over”. It is hard to get granular with polling – they try to make it seem like they can, but in a sample of 1,001 people the sample you get which represents the “late deciders” is tiny and, therefore, useless except by accident. You might get some marginal changes in the vote – and in a very tight race, that may make the difference. But for most races which will be decided by 1 or more percentage points, its already over: the votes are being cast and the winners and losers are almost all baked in by this point.

But there are some indications of how it is going. Early voting can be useful but it is also flawed: it can never tell you how many people will vote on election day, nor the partisan makeup of that bloc of voters. Rule of thumb (which has so far been correct) is that Democrats vote early, Republicans vote late. That trend will continue until it doesn’t. Will 2022 be the year it breaks down? We won’t know until the votes are counted. But, so far, early voting has not given Democrats much to cheer about – if Democrats are voting early (and are voting Democrat: just because a Democrat returned a ballot does not mean it is 100% for certain a Democrat vote), they aren’t voting in the numbers you would expect if this was to be a purple year, which the Experts have been telling us it will be (based on anger over Roe and Democrats distancing themselves from the toxic Joe Biden). But there are other places you can look.

For instance, you can look at the House race for NY-25. It is a D+8 district which Pudding Brain won 60-37 in 2020. So, pretty solid Democrat, right? GOP doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance, right?

Except the Democrats House Majority Pac just earmarked $275,000 in ad buys for the district.

D+8

Joe won it by 23 points.

The incumbent Democrat got 59% of the vote in 2020.

Whatever else is said, when cash is put on the line, there’s a reason for it – and the only reason they’d lay down this cash is because they’re desperately afraid that a Democrat +8 district is slipping away.

What does it mean? That Democrats are in trouble. A lot of trouble.

We’re supposed to be sympathetic to Paul Pelosi – 80 year old guy. Whacked with a hammer.

Yeah, no. He’s fabulously wealthy due to his political connections and while he did fall victim to a crime (so we think), the fact of the matter is that the policies he backed while raking in his millions have caused untold numbers of assaults, rapes and murders among the poor of America’s cities…and, so, my sympathy is a bit limited.

It was revealed that the suppression of dissent on line in 2020 was fully coordinated between federal law enforcement and the tech giants – also revealed is that the government is going to heavily focus on preventing we, the people, from seeing “toxic narratives”. Rely on it, they are also working with the major news outlets. I honestly lend more credence to stories at World Socialist Web these days than I do from CNN or the New York Times – they’re commies, but at least not owned (so far).

Open Thread

Mark Noonan17 Comments

So, we had a hideous inflation report…and then the 1/6 nimrods subpoenaed Trump. This allowed the MSM to universally drop the Bad For Democrat Narrative and pick up the…well, what they think is the Bad For Trump Narrative. They are so utterly predictable.

Naturally, the Resist (!) Left went into onanistic overdrive on the news – fantasizing about Trump refusing it and the DOJ frog-marching him out of Mar a Lago…because none of them know how things work. Trump will, of course, throw up legal objections (all legitimate as the committee has no real authority to do what they think they’re doing) and then the election will happen and on January 3rd a Republican majority will dispense with it. And it is highly doubtful that even as nasty a partisan as Garland will try to set a precedent which would allow Trump or DeSantis to arrest Biden on January 21st, 2025.

The 1/6 Committee isn’t really about the mid-terms any longer. They had hoped that their friendly MSM Narrative would make people so hate Trump that it would help them at the polls…but the reality is the story that was buried today: inflation. It is rising very fast and while various entities are still trying to hide the effects, they can only do that for a little while. Once November 8th is past they’ll give it up and let inflation run its course – with the hope (for them) that it will abate and the resultant intensified recession will end long enough in front of 2024 to give the Democrats a shot.

It was revealed by the Saudis that Pudding Brain attempted to pressure them into keeping production high in front of the mid-terms. Think about that – with many decades of proven reserves in the ground (and 200 years worth altogether) Team Biden still won’t even consider increasing American production and instead opted to try a sordid deal with the Saudis. And merely to save their political bacon. These people really do hate the United States and her people – they just want power and the wealth it brings to them.

Fetterman is clearly suffering some bad effects from his stroke a little while back and the Dem/MSM Narrative on it switched from “there’s nothing wrong” to “you’re an abelist bigot if you mention it”. I feel a little sad for the man – I’m pretty sure it is just his people (and his consultants making bank no matter how the election goes) keeping him at it. My father had a stroke and I know how difficult it is for a person to bounce back from them, if they ever fully can. Dad never quite got back and had a speech impediment for the rest of his life – looks like Fetterman will, too. This doesn’t mean that Fetterman can’t have a long and productive life, but the bottom line is that the recovery time from a stroke is not the time to be running for Senate. It is cruel to keep him at it. It may end up killing him – and the Democrats don’t care: they figure that Shapiro has a 70/30 shot at getting re-elected and will be able to name Fetterman’s replacement (personally, I think its about a 52/48 shot – I still hold that polls are massively underestimating the coming GOP turnout while at the same time massively overestimating the likely Democrat turnout).

Meanwhile, Democrats have rung the alarm bell in…Oregon. I guess there’s just so much Antifa a place can take and then they’ll even (((shudder))) give the GOP a shot: we’re looking pretty good for the governorship and even have an outside shot at a legislative majority. Meanwhile, over in Washington Patty Murray appears to be in some trouble – I’ll still rate that “lean Democrat” because they have so much power (and ability to cheat) in Seattle…but, clearly, Democrats are in some trouble. What we saw in 2021 was a pretty nearly uniform swing in VA and NJ of ten points from the Democrats to the GOP…if that holds true in 2022, a huge GOP year is coming…but there’s is a chance that the swing will be even larger. Meanwhile, Ron Jonson looks like a lock in the WI Senate rate while Kemp appears similarly situated in the Georgia governorship (don’t even talk about FL – Governor and Senate races will be called at poll closing in the Panhandle). What I can’t see is a huge divergence between PA and WI…they tend to flow together being States with a lot of demographic similarities. We’re about to clean up in WI but fail in PA? Could happen – but PA is trending Red much more rapidly than WI (voter registration changes in favor of the GOP mark out PA as the next FL). We’ll see what happens – but I’m expecting some pretty big wins in PA. Michigan? Officially, everyone says that Whitmer has it in a lock…and it would take a pretty big GOP wave to get the GOP over the top there. But we might have that.

I Forgive Your Debts Open Thread (All Praise to Our Magic Wand!)

Mark Noonan94 Comments

How well is Pudding Brain’s student loan scam going over? Well, three endangered Democrat Senators have already come out against it – including Cortez-Masto here in Nevada, who is already being roasted by GOP candidate Adam Laxalt about it.

I really can’t think of a more maladroit move in recent years – 10k is a pittance, most of it is going to go to the rich, the action is probably not legal and so may be reversed in court after a bunch of people think they’ve skated on debt. Nobody really likes this other than Social Media bot accounts paid to praise whatever it is that Democrats are doing (they’ve all gone silent on praising the raid on Trump’s home, if you want to know how that went over with the public). You might think that they should have gone through Congress but that 3 Democrat Senators have already condemned it shows how that would fare – especially as House Democrats likely wouldn’t vote for anything less than 100% cancellation. It is also so clearly and easily seen as a cynical, political ploy with the mid-terms in mind.

But, also, pay attention to what Cortez-Masto and other Democrats are doing. Remember – and you’ve heard some liberal commenters here say it – the Narrative is that Joe “Shades” Biden has masterfully turned things around. Pivoting from the GOP’s disastrous end of Roe, he’s now got “big legislative wins” which are building towards a remarkably strong Democrat showing in November. And NY-19 proved it! Don’t know if you followed the Social Media meltdown on that one last night…but it was where a Democrat district shifted 9 points to the GOP but the Democrat still won, so this means the GOP is doomed – DOOMED, I TELL YA!!!! – in November. But, meanwhile, there’s not a Democrat out there who wants Pudding Brain on the campaign trail with them (though in Florida the Democrats are in full Kamikaze Mode and may invite him down to seal the deal of a 15 point plus GOP win)…and out here in Nevada’s 4th District, the Democrat is running working class hero ads where he doesn’t mention that he’s a Democrat and, funny, isn’t touting Biden’s “big legislative wins” nor making any promise to restore Roe.

Two rules about politics in 2022:

  1. Whatever is in the MSM is a lie.
  2. Never look at what people say: watch what they do.

Meanwhile: actual harbinger – the GOP flipped school boards all over Florida yesterday. A lot of school boards. This is where the pushback actually starts. We’re winning school boards and county commissions. No longer will we allow hard Leftists to rule these incredibly powerful institutions under the guise of being “non-partisan”. They are partisan – and we’re taking them back.

California will ban new sales of gasoline powered cars by 2035. This is supposed to set the trend for the end of the internal combustion engine…but as California’s population is collapsing (some estimates are that they screwed with the Census numbers pretty badly and that CA should have lost 3 rather than 1 House seat) and this will merely accelerate that trend, I don’t think this will be a trendsetter. The bottom line is that the internal combustion engine works. It is vastly more efficient and durable than it has ever been and we can get even more miles for even less gasoline out of it. Until electric cars cost no more than 5% more than non-electric, can go 350 miles on a charge costing no more than a tank of gas and take no more than ten minutes to recharge, they simply can’t replace internal combustion and all efforts to force the pace will end in disaster.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan18 Comments

This song becomes more meaningful to me every year as I get older…but only today did I realize it came out 35 years ago! I know, I know – some of you heathens don’t like Rush. But that is a serious moral failing on your part, not mine:

The knives are being sharpened – more and more MSM stories pondering if Pudding Brain is too old. He was, of course, too old in 2020. Heck, in 2008 when Barry picked him, he was too old. For goodness sake, he was only picked because Team Obama knew nobody would ever move against Obama to make Biden President. But, really, he’s got to go: he’s delaying his Middle East trip – seriously – because he has to rest up after his European trip. Meanwhile, Trump is barnstorming around the country giving speeches.

We either made a serious mistake in 2020 or are the victims of the biggest rip off in human history (Spoiler: it was a rip off).

On the other hand, if the Democrats hadn’t cheated in 2020 they’d be heading for a solid mid-term victory in 2022 and a likely strong Trifecta in 2024. As it is, at best Joe is polling around 40% and the Democrats might be heading for generational wipe out. And not only that – they’re going to be defeated by a GOP which is vastly more MAGA than it was in 2020 and which is already firmly engaging in the Culture War.

This could get real painful for them. I’ll shed a tear when I find the time.

But it has to get painful for them – and every more painful. Here’s the story of a elderly man who was beaten to death by feral savages let loose by Democrat policy in New York City. And, remember, the Democrats did this on purpose. Don’t let them off the hook. It isn’t a mistake. It isn’t an unintended consequence: they want this level of crime of violence to punish us for being American. Because we’re racists and sexists and we’re too rich and we are too powerful and blah, blah, blah whatever the heck it is the Left is whining about. But, do note that the victim here is a black man.

In case you were wondering what a real insurrection looks like, here’s Sri Lanka where they’ve chased the government out of power and burned the Prime Minister’s house. It all started because Sri Lanka’s Ruling Class wanted to curry favor with the Global Ruling Class, so they essentially destroyed Sri Lanka’s economy in the name of living Green. Turns out people with out food get rather angry.

So, how are the store shelves in your area?

Paranoid conspiracy interlude: I’ve seen the stories of food processing facilities going up in smoke in the past few months. Wonder: is someone in the Ruling Class trying to create shortages which will lead to revolt which they think they can crush once and for all? Do not put this sort of thing past them: remember, the dying Czarist Ruling Class got Russia into both the Russo-Japanese War and World War One on the theory that chaos and destruction would also them to continue to rule.

If you’ve never seen the movie Zulu, you should do so. Here’s a write up explaining why. I like it because it is a soldier’s story and while war is hideous, we must never take away the glory of those who stand up to it and do their duty. There’s a scene in the movie just before the first Zulu attack where a young and obviously very frightened soldier asks “why us?” To which the old sergeant replies – as old sergeants have probably replied for thousands of years – “because we’re here and there isn’t anybody else”. Because we’re here – it is why we do our duty in any field.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan79 Comments

Biden falling off his bike is the perfect symbol of his Administration. Really hope it was voter fraud because if 81 million voted for him, we’re doomed.

I’ve been getting a bit doom and gloom about the economy – the official stats are still showing health out there, but inflation is galloping (official 8.6% is bogus – using the 1980 formula, its about 17%…and that is what we’re all seeing at the pump and the grocery check out), housing is looking more and more like a bubble (and Team Pudding Brain is doing bubble things now to encourage more home ownership among those who can least afford it – shades of 2008), we can’t make anything (the MSM lauds shipments of baby formula to us as if its a good thing that the United States has to import food)…it is all just falling apart. I’m genuinely concerned about the onset of a Great Depression with more than a quarter of the population out of work. I hope it doesn’t get that bad – but I think it might.

That aside, the political prospects for the GOP continue to brighten. Winning TX-34 is the writing on the wall – a majority-Latino district going GOP in the first time since forever. Democrats are trying to ignore it by saying it was a special election and so not predictive…which is just what people say when politics predicts their demise. They’re doomed, they know it – and they don’t seem to care. As things come crashing down, Democrats are set to die on the “drag queen story time” hill. It has continually amazed me how fast the most radical parts of transgenderism have become dogma on the Left. It is something which they not only can’t question but which they must loudly support. Team Pudding Brain is set to officially approve providing hormones and surgery to trans kids as young as 14…this while they are urging a ban on rifle purchases to 21. So, you’re old enough to decide if you want to be a different gender seven years before you can decide if you’ll defend yourself. It makes no sense. It is, in fact, insane.

But that’s where we’ve been heading, isn’t it? Some Lefty on Twitter was upset that San Francisco has several times the homeless population of Detroit. The assertion was greedy landowners in San Francisco not doing what was necessary to end homelessness…no consideration that when you subsidize homelessness (as SF does) you’ll get more of it. There is also no consideration on the Left about how monstrously cruel it is to allow people to live in the streets, wallowing in their own filth and making life unlivable for everyone else. I get it – even lunatic, tweaking, homeless people have rights…and I demand those rights be respected. But you don’t have a right to be whacked out on drugs and sh** on the sidewalk. And if you do that, I have the right – and the moral obligation – to restrain you until you no longer hit the crack pipe and figure the corner of Fifth and Main is your bathroom. It is sheer insanity that we allow insane, drug-addled people to ruin the public square. Sanity – and the dignity of the homeless crackhead – requires that we stop them from doing that. But, we don’t – we instead allow grifters to build “low income housing” which won’t, of course, help the insane crackhead because, being an insane crackhead, he doesn’t want to live in a house. Can’t live in a house. Would like as not wreck the house in short order if by some means he could be induced to move in.

We’re essentially allowing insane people (ie, those who set up “drag queen story time” and who allow lunatics to defecate on the street) to run our lives. And Democrats can’t pull back from it – the least failure to support the most insane thing leads to immediate social destruction. And, so, here we are: hoping not just for a big GOP win, but that the GOP winners will see the problem and proceed to legislate a ban on insanity from being in power.

The American Bar Association is proposing an end to testing for law school admissions. Standards are being dropped everywhere because where there are standards you cannot ensure that today, at this very minute, your school or corporation has the proper level of diversity. That’s what it is all about. If, however, you dispense with standards, then you don’t have to worry about who can do the job – you only have to make sure you check off all the diversity boxes. That is, that you have the “correct” number of POC, gay, trans or whatever the heck group it is the Left is whining about at the moment. This isn’t the death of expertise: it is a suicide.

But here’s the problem – it isn’t just getting them access which requires you to drop standards. You must also get the proper results. If the American population is 13 percent black, then you’d damn well better have 13 percent of the lawyers at your firm be black…and if there aren’t enough qualified black attorneys to make up that number, then you’d better fill the slots with unqualified. And even if they’re unqualified, they better be given the prestige assignments that qualified people get. See where this is heading? In the name of diversity, whether or not you’ll have a qualified person will start to be a roll of the dice. But eventually it’ll be a certainty that nobody is qualified…because any qualified person simply won’t put up with it and will find something else to do. And this doesn’t just stop with law – it is already moving into medicine and engineering and the firm designing bridges for us better have the “right” number of diversity hires and they better work on the prestige projects…which means you’ll eventually be getting products designed by incompetents and finding out your doctor is functionally illiterate. I’ve been saying that if we let this continue, we’ll eventually be treating cancer with goat entrails…and we’re moving right along on that.

China has launched her first domestically designed aircraft carrier. It is significantly smaller than a Nimitz or Ford class carrier – and not much is known about the specifications. But it shows that (a) propaganda against carriers is likely orchestrated by Chinese agents who want us to abandon them and (b) that China is building a fleet with the sole purpose of challenging American naval supremacy. China is still about ten years away from a credible challenge to us – but, also, maybe sooner as our own Navy decays from neglect. They want us gone. And understandably so – heck, if Catalina Island was a breakaway part of the United States and a foreign power was able to patrol at will off our west coast, we’d probably want to do something about it. I get it: I’ve no complaint about China doing what its doing. It is precisely what I’d do if I were Chinese.

But, I’m American…and I recognize that American naval supremacy is key to ensuring that war doesn’t come to American shores. And so much as I understand and even sympathize with Chinese ambitions, I want them stopped. But, right now, there is no will to stop them…and each year we lack the will the take up the challenge, the weaker we become in relation to China. We’re rapidly approaching the point where we cannot physically stop an invasion of Taiwan. A few years from now, we might not be able to stop an invasion of Guam and a few years after that, Hawaii.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan48 Comments

Fox News ran a report about a family with a transgender child and this caused some controversy – but what struck me as most important was Andrew Sullivan stating that, as Conservatives, it is our job to accept this reality and work it into the system. But, that is just absurd – it is also, though, how these social issue debates work. An assertion is made and we are required to accept the underlying assumptions without question. Love is love, right? But, it can’t work that way – and now that it involves children, we must not allow it to work that way.

The reality is that no child knows they are trans – they can’t. They lack the relevant knowledge to even conceptualize it. Children never have anything in their heads outside of what adults put into them. There is no latent knowledge – what we know was imparted to us. Outside of the rare genius, it is only as we get to adulthood – and really, not until we’re in our 30’s – that we develop the capacity to really think on our own…to take the knowledge imparted to us and reconfigure it via our own reason. Certainly, a child under the age of 12 simply has no capacity to determine if they aren’t their biological gender. The story Fox broadcast asserted that the child before speech was already informing the parents of trans status…this is patently ridiculous. The parents made a conscious choice for their child and then imposed it. To the objection that no parent would do such a thing I respond: are you stupid? Have you not seen what parents will do to gain vicarious fame through their children? Insane and evil people will do all sorts of things – and that they might appear to be nice people on the surface doesn’t alter their insanity or their evil…psychopaths are great at pretending to be other than themselves.

We must draw the line: and not just on surgery and drugs. No child under the age of 12 – which is what we used to call the age of reason – can be allowed to live in other than their biological gender and any person suggesting they should do otherwise needs to be jailed. There is zero chance that any person telling a 10 year old they’re trans is doing it for the benefit of the child.

The attempted assassination of Justice Kavanaugh has been successfully suppressed by the MSM – they had to as it was something which shot the Narrative to pieces. The MSM is nothing more than a propaganda arm of the DNC – and we do have to response to this. We can’t allow a purportedly neutral entity to act without restraint when their real goal is to advance Democrats to power. Freedom of the press shall not be abridged…but lying partisanship can’t just be allowed to go on without a response. Legal means must be found to at least force the MSM to acknowledge in a very public way that what the report is mere DNC propaganda.

The Democrats put their January 6th hearings on prime time and nobody watched. Because nobody cares. Because everyone outside dyed-in-the-wool Democrats know the whole thing is just a hatched job.

Biden is cratering in the polls – and as Varad Mehta (whom you should follow on Twitter), points out there is a huge difference between improving from 42 to 47 and improving from 37 to 42…getting to 47 would be helpful, getting to 42 doesn’t really matter. Pudding Brain is getting into the 30’s so even if things turn around for him over the next four months, it won’t really matter. I don’t think the Democrats really understand the catastrophe heading their way – and fudging the inflation number to 8.6% when its really above 15% won’t help. We can see the prices. I went out and bought some soda, water and a few items at the store today and it cost me $75. This wasn’t my weekly grocery shopping trip…I wasn’t buying steak and lobster. I just bought a few items…thing which would have put me back $40 a year ago. Gasoline is now $5 a gallon nationally and no sign the price will ease before $6. When people start paying $100 to gas up, it’ll cross a psychological line which will be just awful for the Democrats.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan20 Comments

8.5% inflation, but you know it is a lot higher than that – they’ve clearly fudged the numbers. My guess is that it is closer to 20%: prices are just out of control. The Fed says inflation may have peaked in March…but, that’s just a lie and the Fed knows it. As long as we’re pouring money out while also not producing at home, inflation will continue to rise. Might have a few ups and downs going forward, but the only way to stop this is to choke off the money supply – in other words, we have to go into a recession to stop inflation. And we only get out of the resultant recession by increasing domestic production on all levels, but especially energy. Side note: Team Pudding Brain is absolutely opposed to increasing domestic energy production.

Oh, they’ll say they want to switch to green energy but that stuff doesn’t work. It isn’t easy to find news reports about it, but solar just sucks. Uncle Sam kicked in more than $700 million for the solar plant in Tonopah, NV (with his nephew the Nevada State government kicking in a bit more than $100 million more) and the damned thing never worked. It is now shut down (after emitting poison gas and frying untold numbers of birds) and in bankruptcy.

And I do get the appeal of solar energy – the sun does shine, after all! But not brightly everywhere all the time. At best, something like solar can be a supplement. And it seems to me that if we’re going to shell out taxpayer funds for it, they should go to put solar panels on residential roofs – especially in the desert southwest. But, that doesn’t really work, now does it? If the panels are on my roof, how does the power company profit from it? So, build the 100 acre blight on the desert and have the power sent to my home…if the thing works. One thing I’ll bet about that plant in Tonopah is that everyone who made money off it was connected to Harry Reid and his machine.

Meanwhile, supply shortages continue – and not just in energy. I read that there’s a shortage of baby formula. How does the United States ever have a food shortage? We’ve never had one except in a few areas of the South during the depths of the Civil War – and that wasn’t really a shortage of food but the inability of the crumbling Southern economy to transport the food to where it was needed. This is the land of plenty. We have something like 500,000 square miles of arable land in the United States – and that’s without bringing anything like all arable land under cultivation. And American farm land is good – it is, for the most part, very fertile and either naturally well watered or easily watered by irrigation. Its why we have been – until just recently – the bread basket of the world. And here we don’t even have enough food for infants!

And this looks to get worse. I’m sure you’ve seen your local store out of or low on very common items – but various disruptions, including the war in Ukraine, look to cause all sorts of production and transport problems as the year progresses.

And what is Team Pudding Brain up to? Blaming the inflation on Putin and getting set to green-light an absolute flood of illegal immigrants over the southern border. It is just insane.

As a result of all this, the Democrats are in trouble? How deep? They’re heading towards wipeout territory. One recent poll Joe in the 30’s on approval rating – and in the midterms, the party in power’s vote share usually mirrors the incumbent’s approval rating. Now, to be sure, some are convinced that the Democrats are serenely pushing ahead with the Progressive insanity because they’ve already rigged the mid-term vote for a Democrat win. But that isn’t possible in this circumstance. To rig a vote, you have to have total control not just of the count, but of resolving all disputes about the count. Democrats have this total control in the deep Blue cities, of course, but not much else – Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona have all done at least a bit to tighten up voting controls. They won’t, that is, get away with 2020 in those States again. Personally, I think Democrats are going Full Progressive for two reasons:

  1. The people actually running things for Joe don’t care about the upcoming vote.
  2. Those who do care figure might as well quadruple down and at least hold the enthusiasm of the big cities.

The guy who shot up the subway in NYC was on the FBI radar, has been arrested multiple times and posted insane, violent rants on You Tube. Too bad he wasn’t a middle class housewife who complained to the school board – might have been able to do something about this. I mean, the FBI only has so many people – think of all the strings attached to garage doors which would have gone uninvestigated if the FBI was spending time on the NYC shooter?

Open Thread

Mark Noonan33 Comments

Some recent polling indicates an impending disaster for the Democrats – but outside polling, the RNC is now targeting about 70 Democrat House seats. Sure, there is some bluster always built into such things, but that large a number shows the GOP knows that if there’s a year to just have someone running, this is it. A lot of seats can fall our way just because we’re not the Democrats.

In response to the dire political picture, the Democrats seem set on fighting over Florida’s law to ban teaching sexuality to kindergartners. I don’t think this will work out as well as they hoped – though there is a chance that such a thing is merely to keep suburban white women on board. In other words: to prevent a 40 seat loss from turning into a 70 seat blowout. You know: “hey, we know that prices are through the roof and crime is rising, but don’t vote GOP! Don’t want your neighbors to think you’re a homophobe, do you?”.

Other than that, the issue is a real loser for the Democrats. The line has been crossed and people don’t want any of it. Polling on it shows massive public support with even pluralities of Democrats not keen on teachers talking sexuality with little kids without parental knowledge or consent. Even a lot of gay people are coming out forthrightly in favor of the law: because everyone knows that when you’re six years old, you don’t have a sexuality…and they further know that it is absurd to provide life altering chemicals and surgery to kids because they allegedly are trans.

All of a sudden, both the New York Times and the Washington Post confirm the Hunter Biden laptop story. Everyone is asking: why this and why now? After all, the lie was already sold and did its job. The Democrat base remained convinced that the laptop was bogus. So, why even bring it up again?

Various theories are put forward: Putin is about to release a lot of dirt, so get ahead of that. There are investigations going and they may result in indictments in spite of strenuous efforts by DOJ to avoid it, so get in front of that. They’re going to 25th Joe out and this will be the leverage to get Team Pudding Brain to go along with that. I simply don’t know – but whatever reason they’ve brought it back up again, it bodes ill for the Democrats.

The bottom line is that the e mails are authentic – and that means that Hunter Biden is massively compromised by foreign powers and “the Big Guy” probably is as well. How this is to be managed if it comes out in a way that even the MSM can’t cover it up for the Democrat base is going to be tricky.

San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin – yes, the son of the Commie murderers of yore – is facing a recall effort. Think about that: a Commie son of Commie murderers is facing recall in San Francisco. Trump woke us on the right up to how bad things are – but Pudding Brain and his like at the local level in the post-Trump world is now starting to wake up urban Progressives. This is not to say that I expect San Francisco to vote GOP any time soon…but gun ownership is rising and, very quietly and only among trusted friends, these urban Progressives are now starting to question aspects of the Progressive religion. I’ve seen several bits written by such – and they freely admit that they’ve always hated Republicans, assuming such are ignorant racists, and that they, the Progressives, were on the right side of history leading the world to a future of peace, prosperity and justice. But that was before they had their car broken into a dozen times and had to step over mounds of feces on the sidewalk outside their zillion dollar home.

Revolutions happen slowly and then all at once. Think about the Russian revolution – on the whole, actually, things were better than they had been in Russia in times past. Even with the war – which Russia had de-facto already won (only to lose it because of the revolution) – things ground along pretty well. There was more freedom of speech than ever before. Political engagement was increasing. There was a rising class of independent farmers. The government was fairly competent and staffed by mostly honest men. But then, without warning, people just decided they had enough – that, while better than olden times, they simply couldn’t endure the Czar and his system any longer. It was nearly universal: hardly anyone stepped up to defend monarchy: from nobleman to laborer, everyone simply agreed that whatever else happened, the Czar had to go. And so it was done and a 300 year old dynasty was swept away in a couple days. I think it may be like that here – that our total Ruling Class (which includes a lot of GOPers, of course) will find that they’ve worn out their welcome. That even if things aren’t horribly bad, they have to go, even if we don’t agree about what comes next.