Roe

Open Thread

Mark Noonan46 Comments

The assertion about the mid-terms is that the Dobbs decision is motivating female voters to turn out for Democrats. Is there any truth to this claim? Only in polling. But, as I’ve pointed out before, polling is the political metric most open to manipulation.

This also leaves out the fact that not all women back abortion. I know the the MSM will never cover such a thing, but the bottom line is that women have been leading the charge against Roe ever since the decision was handed down. Would not their victory against overwhelming odds and after so many years of struggle motivate them to cement their achievement into a pro-life Congress?

For me, I just don’t see abortion as being that great a motivator for the Democrats outside of the urban and suburban upper class white women who were going to vote for them anyway. Might get a few more of them to actually show up in November, but not in any numbers necessary to save Democrat bacon.

I stand by my prediction – made months ago – that the GOP is heading for a blowout win on November 8th. Could I be wrong? Of course I could. I’m human! But we’re in a recession. Food prices are high. Crime is rising. Foreign affairs are a mess. Its the first midterm for the Democrats since their victory. The GOP gained House seats in 2020. They only need a few to claim a majority. Voter registration and primary participation numbers (even after Dobbs) clearly favor the GOP all around the country (it won’t matter because the State is so Democrat, but in Hawaii the GOP primary turnout was up like 125% or some such).

And lets think about something – if you’re a Democrat you sure in heck don’t want to talk about the economy or crime or foreign affairs. But you have to talk about something. Sure, you’re talking Trump…but you can’t just talk about him, right? So, what? How about abortion? That’s the ticket – talk abortion. Maybe frame it to scare our halfwit female voters (something like 36% of college educated white women agree with the sentence “some men can get pregnant”; rely on it, the number of GOP women included in that 36% is next to zero)? Goose that turnout and maybe turn a few narrow, suburban losses into holds? And then, hey preseto, here comes a bunch of polls saying that women are talking 24/7 about abortion and, buddy let me tell you, they’re gonna make the GOP pay for it! Convenient how everything in the Establishment comes together just the way the Democrats would want, right?

Now, maybe women are fired up to save Roe? Could be. I guess. If so, then we on the right have a far larger problem than we suspected. We’ll find out for sure on November 8th…but I’m sticking with my prediction.

Over in Pennsylvania Dr Oz is doing all he can to win – he’s barnstorming the State while Fetterman apparently still has a long way to go on recovery from his recent stroke. As I’ve been saying for a while, Pennsylvania is the next Florida. Voter registration trends have been massive for the GOP year after year. It might seem like the State is still favorable to Democrats, but that is an illusion mostly brought about by habit and really, really bad polling. Remember, in 2018 4 of the last 5 polls in Florida showed a substantial lead in the governors race for Gillum…only to have DeSantis win. And it wasn’t like the polls were close – the day before the election Quinninpiac had Gillum up by 7. So, I take those polls showing Fetterman (who can barely speak) up by 10 over Oz with a truckload of salt. Same, too, with the governors race in PA. Some people got mad the other day when Oz said he would have voted to certify the 2020 results…but I didn’t. I pointed out early on that Oz will have to go off-MAGA on at least some issues to be electorally viable in a State trending Red but not quite there yet. Taking a contrary position on the 2020 election result is the most meaningless off-MAGA gesture he could make.

Latinos are trending GOP. Hard. And Democrats are starting to notice and it is really pissing them off. So, what do you think they’re doing about it? Reassessing how they approach the community? Reconsidering things like Latinx and telling school kids they can change gender? Maybe concentrate on policies which will provide the sort of well-paid, blue collar jobs which sustain most Latino families these days? Oh, heck no! What made you think they’d do anything like that?

What they’re doing in response to the GOP gains in the Latino community is figuring that the GOP is lying to them and that Latinos are too stupid to figure this out:

There is nobody quite so racist as a white liberal – they simply cannot believe that any POC would disagree with them and if they do, it is because they’re stupid…and so need white liberals to speak for them.

I do believe – and it is one of the reasons for my prediction of a GOP blowout win – that Latinos will show that they want something different in November. This vote will not necessarily be an endorsement of the GOP: it will be far more, in my view, a rejection of the Left than anything else. To secure the long term loyalty of Latino voters, the GOP will have to do the concrete things necessary to show them we’re serious – a strong economy; low crime; good schools. That sort of thing. As for the Democrats, their party strength is in upper class white women and black women in general. This is not enough to sustain them in power. If they lose Latinos (and they are) and if support among black males starts to crumble (there is some indication of this) then Democrats will be reduced to an urban rump incapable of winning national power.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan4 Comments

There still persists in GOP/Conservatives circles a lack of understanding of the situation. You know what I mean: those on our side who still think there is a path to compromise and that the Left wants what we want, just by different means. But, and I’m very pleased by this, the numbers of such are decreasing, and I think rapidly.

You may have heard the horrid story of the 10 year old Ohio girl who sought an abortion in Indiana – initially, most of us had our doubts as to the veracity of the story because (a) it was too perfect a fit to the Democrat Narrative and (b) it would have been legal in Ohio to obtain an abortion under those circumstances. Now that the perpetrator of the rape has been arrested, the Left went, for a moment, “told you so”, but then just about everyone on the Right – even the wets – pointed out that the rapist is an illegal immigrant (I’ve also heard rumors that the mother of the ten year old was trying to protect the rapist by getting the abortion in a different State: that isn’t confirmed, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least). Because of the pushback, the Left is dropping it – the last thing they need is national attention on the story of an illegal immigrant raping a ten year old.

Side note: the rapist, who is 27, was listed as a minor on the documents regarding the abortion. This is more confirmation in my mind that the trip to Indiana was a cover up, very likely by people who know both the rapist and the girl. This is what abortion is, by the way: the nauseating effort to allow very lousy men to do disgusting things.

Another example of this is the latest AOC fracas – she was rudely accosted by a man outside the Capitol who made crude remarks about her appearance. A few wets popped up with the “while I disagree with AOC, we must not tolerate this sort of behavior blah, blah, blah”, but most were completely disdainful of AOC’s alleged wounded honor. This is the person, we recall, who figures that harassing Supreme Court Justices at home is A-OK. To be sure, I’d never do a thing like that to any woman – and 99% of us on the Right never would. But to pretend that someone like AOC has an honor which can be offended is just absurd – she’s a stupid, corrupt, wicked woman who is out to destroy the United States because she figures she can get rich off the process (and she’s already obtained a tidy sum). She learned that if you play the Progressive song and dance you can get into office and steal to your heart’s content…because only very rarely is the law enforced against the Left. She’s a garbage person – and you can’t insult garbage. She does not get to clothe herself in the residual honor of past members of Congress while spitting on America and her people.

Flying mostly under the radar, a great deal of the election fraud of 2020 has been exposed and, where the GOP can, it is being remedied. This is why I don’t go with the doomsayers – I think that we’ve now got in enough States and localities the means whereby the Democrats can’t cheat sufficient to alter the result. They’ll still cheat like mad where they are totally dominate (Los Angeles looks to be heading back into Covid lockdown…likely in anticipation of November: and, yes, they are worried about the deep Blue areas – it is at least 50/50 that Dina Titus (D-NV) loses her re-election bid in what is at least a D+8 district), but they can’t cheat in enough areas to win the whole thing. The Never Trump people have been very stout in condemning Trump’s efforts to expose this – but that is simply because Never Trump knows very well the Democrats cheated to get Biden in: they just liked the result.

Yep:

Posting that made me realize that a lot of you aren’t on Twitter and so don’t get the best part of it: memes. So, here’s a few:

Open Thread

Mark Noonan105 Comments

I was actually going to include a bit about the J6 “bombshell” but I think we’re hashing that out pretty well in the previous post. So, I’ll just state this:

The January 6th hearings are an attempt by Democrats and Never Trump to make Trump toxic for 2024. Make no mistake about it – they are terrified of his running again and they know they can’t beat him: the methods they used to cheat in 2020 will not be available especially in the Battleground States in 2024 because of various legal changes over the past 18 months. They might try to bring back the Pandemic to justify mailing out millions of ballots…but they won’t have nearly the success they had in 2020. Laws have been changed, people are watching…and the man who gained 12 million votes between 2016 and 2020 is almost certain to gain even more between 2020 and 2024.

Here’s how 2024 is already going:

In 2008 the Democrats enjoyed a 1.2 million voter registration advantage over Republicans in Pennsylvania – as of 2022, that advantage has shrunk to about 540k….and it continues to shrink, rapidly. Since 2020, a net of about 1 million people have switched to the GOP from the Democrat party. This isn’t new voters – this is people taking the time to actually change their party registration from one to the other (the net is because some people have switched from GOP to Dem…but overall the stampede is to the GOP from the Democrats). It turns out that a Party keyed to the deepest concerns of urban/suburban upper class, college educated white women lacks broad appeal.

Polls: you may have already seen some of them. Ignore them – they’re doing absurd things now to come up with poll results which fit the Democrat Narrative, especially over the abortion issue. The only poll that matters is the prices of gas and food. Absent a miracle, Democrats are going to lose Congress and a large number of State government seats as well…the only question is whether this win will be on the magnitude of 2010, or something we’ve just never seen before in American politics. Looking at some polling and taking into consideration their MOE and how Democrat-heavy their samples are, a credible case can be made that Biden’s approval has slipped into the 20’s.

The Democrat response? They’ve introduced a Transgender Bill of Rights.

The return of Stagflation. This probably won’t help Democrats in the Fall.

And the Tweet of the day:

The Triumph of Life

Mark Noonan115 Comments

Rather says it all in one picture.

And it was posted today on Twitter and it is the perfect response to the Leftist shrieks since Friday.

For goodness sake, just a little bit of common sense and some self control and your chances of having an unwanted pregnancy drop to near zero. And yet 63 million abortions have been performed in the United States…which shows that in our modern society responsibility is rejected. A pro-choice Righty I know on Twitter posted an article from a British newspaper about a woman with a 50 year old Down’s Syndrome child who states she wishes she had aborted: the comment on it was, “why don’t you pro-lifers think about this?”. As if we don’t. As if we hadn’t already worked that into the calculation. We are none of us promised an easy trip from the cradle to the grave – life, at times, can be very painful. And at the end of it, you die. Even those of us with strong faith don’t like that thing coming down the pike – because for all our faith, we don’t know. We’re not allowed certainty. But in doubt or in faith, we’re going to die. It is a bit of suffering we all must endure – so why do people think they can opt out of suffering? It is part of life. It is how you deal with it that reveals what sort of person you are. My parents could have institutionalized my autistic brother – that was the recommendation of the medical professionals. But, they couldn’t – as flawed as my parents were, they just couldn’t see consigning their child to a faceless, uncaring institution just so life would be a little easier for them at home. This is what humans are supposed to do – to reach out in pity and mercy when things are bad…not run and hide.

And, so, the picture – the smug, wealthy Westerner who holds all the right positions and is always in favor of The Current Thing…demanding not a moment of suffering. Zero sacrifice…all the while literally sitting on the backs of a horde of suffering people who provide the comforts the Westerner believes are a birthright. It really is sickening.

There’s another part of it, too: the people, allegedly on the Right, most of them, warning us that now we’ve won, we’re doomed! Doomed, they say! We’ve awakened the Sleeping Giant! Now instead of a Red Wave in November it will turn Blue as a surge of people rush to the polls to affirm their support for abortion, which is wildly popular and only opposed by a few inbred, hick morons. Never saw such amazing stupidity.

First of all, it is the gas prices, stupid. Yesterday, the lady in front of me at the grocery checkout put back several items after she was rung up because it ended up being more than she could afford. She wasn’t buying steak and lobster – her cart was nothing but common staples. And she had to make a hard and fast choice of which common items she would do without for a week. That is the reality – that is the working and middle classes being crushed and that is what will be on the mind in November.

But, absent that, was anyone paying attention? Over a 50 year period the Pro-Life movement worked for this moment – with massive social and political opposition from the most powerful people and institutions in America. And with their own supposedly pro-life leaders in politics stabbing them in the back every time they could (we still haven’t defunded Planned Parenthood, after all). They triumphed over it all because, at the end of the day, they were the more powerful political coalition. Make no mistake about it, if America really was a majority Pro-Choice nation, Roe would never go down…because there wouldn’t have been the GOP votes to put into the Supreme Court the necessary Justices to do so. Meanwhile, what of the Pro-Choice movement? Didn’t they fight? No, they didn’t – they coasted, coddled by a Ruling Class and MSM which never challenged them…so the point where most Americans still don’t know that the abortion laws of France and Sweden are vastly more restrictive than Roe…in fact, more restrictive than the Alabama law which was the instrument of Roe’s downfall.

Now the fight shifts to the States and Democrats are going to be asked if there are any legitimate restrictions on abortion – and they’ll have to dodge, because instead of fighting for 50 years like the Pro-Life movement, they coasted on Roe and their ability to say they were just defending “a woman’s right to choose”. Now they’re going to have to defend slaughtering a child in the birth canal…and they (and the world) will find out that while there probably isn’t a majority in favor of a nationwide ban on abortion, there is even a small number willing to fight for abortion on demand to the moment of birth.

We’re going to win, my friends. We were always going to win. It was never going to be easy. It might take even another century before we have a Culture of Life codified into American law – but we’re going to win. We’ll have setbacks and will suffer a lot on the way, but we’re used to that and are ok with it. We’re just going to keep rolling along, standing firm on the ideal that a human life is precious, regardless of condition.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan12 Comments

Feeling better! Covid does take it out of you. But, now I’m down to a cough and some general tiredness – sense of taste and smell is back.

That said…

The Democrat insanity on abortion has been on display all week and I think for many people it is their first real look at how Democrats – or at least their fanatic base – views the matter: they actually held a useless vote in the Senate to write Roe on steroids into law…it failed but their plan was to federally fund it on demand to the moment of birth with no conscience exemptions for medical providers. Thing would have been ripped to shreds at the Supreme Court had it passed. But that they even tried this useless thing – on a platform that, at best, has about 20% support – shows how insane they are about it. They’ve spent 50 years defending a Court ruling which, even if you’re pro-choice, is clearly unconstitutional and just horribly immoral…even liberal countries like France only allow abortion up to 14 weeks…and then only after two medical consults.

Meanwhile, China Joe and the Democrats continue to sink in the polls…and we’re starting to see that in primary voting, GOP enthusiasm is massively outpacing Democrat. We could be on the run up to a very large GOP victory.

Not that the GOP won’t do their best to blow it. I get people being sympathetic to Ukraine and disliking Putin’s Russia. I understand a desire to help them out – but for the majority of House GOPers to vote in favor of $40 billion no-strings-attached to Ukraine is just stupid. We know huge amounts of it will be siphoned off in graft. Meanwhile, here at home we’ve got an invasion at the southern border and our supply chains are so jacked up that in some areas there are shortages of baby formula.

Our domestic problems are large enough. And our foreign problems are China and drug cartels…even Islamist extremism simply isn’t worth our while to concentrate on at the moment. We have to get our house in order…not send billions to a Ukraine war which at any moment could drag us into open conflict with Russia. But there goes the Congressional GOP, nodding along with a Democrat/MSM Narrative. Wouldn’t be so bad if we could find a principal, but you just know they’re so in the Beltway that they’re seriously afraid we’ll think they’re Putin Puppets if they don’t go along with this boondoggle.

People are furiously fighting over Oz and, now, Barnette in the Pennsylvania Senate race. Lots of ostensibly pro-Trump voices being raised against them – in both cases over statements they made or may have made in the past. As I said regarding Oz, I won’t hold anyone to statements made in the past: especially if the statements are pre-2018 or so. We’ve all had a massive education these past few years and all of us view things a bit differently. As I pointed out on Twitter – what’s worse: a person who made ant-MAGA statements in the past, or a person who talks MAGA all day long and then knifes us? Plenty of the GOPers who voted for Ukraine aid probably have impeccable Conservative GOP credentials. I take everyone at face value these days: what do you propose right now? And sure I know that con artists will try to take advantage of this…but I’m at no more risk, and maybe a lot less risk, rolling the dice on a newly-minted MAGA than I am on the GOPe which has betrayed me for decades.

In the end, it is up to the votes of Pennsylvania to sort it out – but my advice to everyone is don’t take anyone’s word for it. Look it up yourself. We know that the most fierce voices are raised against those who fight for us – Trump, Greene, etc. And that tells me something: somebody doesn’t want me to have a champion. So, my first inclination when someone is attacked from the right is to question the attacker’s motives.

Court ruled that California’s ban on gun sales to under-21 is unconstitutional. Which, of course, is “no duh”. And I hate to break it to you, but as soon as someone sues on the cigarette and booze bans, they’ll go down as well. An adult is an adult. Period. Personally, I think we should never have lowered the age to 18 – stupid mistake. But if you make 18 the age where you can vote and enter into contracts, then that covers everything an adult is able to do…so, if you want your ban on booze to 19 year olds to stick, better amend the Constitution to return the voting age to 21.

Team Pudding Brain wants to turn American health care over to WHO – in the name of fighting the pandemic, but actually because (a) they hate the American people and (b) would love to be able to shrug and say “hey, we understand your anger here, but this is a WHO decision” whenever the global elite decides it is time to crush us under useless medical mandates.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan32 Comments

Sorry I haven’t been around, but the Chinese Bat Flu finally got me – felt my first symptoms on Saturday evening and tested positive on Monday morning. Basically, I’m ok – but it is a miserable cold. I seem to be pretty much past the fatigue/fever/ache part of it and am now in the cough/nasal congestion area – which is what I always hate the most about any cold. Anyways, not much inclination to write.

The leak of the supposed overturn of Roe is, in my mind, a desperate, last ditch attempt by Democrats to keep urban woman on board…as prices and shortages continue, there becomes less and less incentive for any Democrat constituency to show up in November and I guess they felt that it was slipping away so badly they needed to move on this now rather than wait for the decision to come in June.

And I think this leak is worse than a crime, it is an error. Democrats have been able to sustain a significant level of support for abortion by making sure nobody knows that Roe legalized it to the moment of birth. Poll after poll shows that solid majorities favor restrictions or bans on abortion after the first trimester. And, so, you never hear that talked about in the MSM…because the Democrats can’t afford to have people know that their abortion position is radical. Heck, the Alabama law in question only bans after 15 weeks…which makes it roughly line with France…hardly a hotbed of Christian fundamentalism (and in France you have to have two medical consults before the abortion is performed – which, to me, is still wrong, but it is at least reasonable).

Trump endorsed candidates swept the boards in Ohio…which shows the continuing power of Trump within the GOP. The sensible part of Never Trump (there really is such a thing) has been so desperately hoping that Trump was at last fading…but I’ve been pointing out to them that for a lot of people, the worse Team Pudding Brain gets, the more Trump will shine in hindsight. I really got under their skin a week or so ago by suggesting this will even most people to believe 2020 was stolen as nobody will want to admit they were suckered by the anti-Trump media op.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan47 Comments

They had the oral arguments for the challenge to Mississippi’s 15 week abortion ban. I read a lot of very smart takes on it, and some raving lunacy from the Left as well. Bottom line is that no one can say for certain how the Court will rule. Strike down? Narrowly uphold? Revoke Roe? Until the ruling comes down, we’re all guessing. Justice Thomas asked what is, to me, the key question: where is this in the Constitution? It isn’t, of course, and the Court’s decision to invent a right to abortion out of thin air was horrible…and it is a very key cause to the hatred in American politics these days. I do hope the Justices lance this boil. And some smart people think they might – that the lines of questioning have some thinking it will be 6-3 to strike Roe down…with Roberts merely going along with the majority. If it is struck down, I hope Thomas is the decision author. It will be his legacy to the United States.

Bank of America execs advise their staffers to “dress down” when they come into the office in NYC…to avoid being targeted by violent crime. This won’t, of course, stop BofA from being a reliable defender of the Ruling Class. The younger people don’t remember the crime wave of the 60’s to the 90’s…and this one is going to be vastly worse than the first because at least during the earlier crime wave, cops were trying to stop it. Now? A cop would be a fool to try and stop it…make the slightest mistake in making an arrest, and you’re life is ruined. The criminals know this. Criminals are cowards and they aren’t very bright – but they also know when it is open season.

Dr Oz announced he is running for Senate in Pennsylvania as a Conservative Republican…which is quite a surprise for a guy who got his start with Oprah. The bottom line is that he’s taken a large number of far Left positions over the years, most notably on gun control. This, naturally, caused the right to drop on him like a ton of bricks. Except for me: we’ve all had an education this past five years. All of us, no matter how knowledgeable or perceptive, have found that things we used to believe were false in whole or in part. Perhaps Dr Oz has had a bit of an awakening? I put it like this: I don’t care if you were wearing a Che shirt at an Antifa rally yesterday – if today you are saying the Left has to go: welcome to the party. I think we should listen to what Oz has to say and make the call on that…not hang him out to dry because of positions he took in the past.

Hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio likened China disappearing people to being “a strict parent”. The video is nauseating – and if you still wonder why I stopped being a supporter of Capitalism, here it is. For every Elon Musk – who seems a decent enough fellow – there are a score of Dalios: amoral, money-mad creeps who don’t give a damn what happens to people as long as they can make money. The only way to stop them – the only way – is to confiscate their money. People like this warp our debate and prevent a clean, clear view of the world. They keep us shackled to China as we slip ever further down into a deindustrialized, drug-addled dependency. In the end, they go or we do.

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?