Ron DeSantis

Open Thread

Mark Noonan34 Comments

My view on the GOP Primary is: I will support the nominee. I will not engage in nasty fights with fellow GOPers or GOP-leaning voters.

With RDS now officially in, the shape of the race is clear; it is mostly Trump vs DeSantis with Trump enjoying a huge amount of loyal Trumpster support while RDS is looking for a way to draw some of that vote over to himself. The rest of the pack is probably kidding itself about getting the nomination and, on balance, they probably help Trump by splitting up the anti-Trump vote. Of course, some of these also-rans likely won’t make it to January…the money battle is important right now. Not for Trump and RDS who functionally have unlimited amounts, but for the rest…any of them who want to be around past South Carolina had better come up with some hefty bucks. Those who can’t will likely bow out before the Iowa caucuses.

Do keep in mind that the Democrats are very likely paying for GOP division. We have seen over and over again how relative peanuts will get people to alter their views. It would cost only, say, $100,000 to get a prominent Trumpster pundit to start going “only Trump” as a means of keeping Trumpsters home if Trump doesn’t get the nomination. It wouldn’t cost any more to pay a DeSantis pundit to start going “only DeSantis” for the same reason. The Democrats very much need a divided and weakened GOP for 2024 because that is the only way they drag Biden’s senile carcass into a second term.

As I’ve said for a while, I’m not at all confident of GOP victory in 2024 – because of those divisions being diligently fostered. But I have had a little bit of a mental shift; there is a chance. What I see is that Biden – who has never been loved – is losing what popularity he had. Inflation continues to bite as does overall economic anxiety. We’re already in a recession which is being hidden by number juggling. And now the Culture War has taken an interesting turn. From Biden on down, they are all-in on the transgender thing especially for kids…but outside a few lunatic Blue enclaves, parents are rejecting this. What we might have is a perfect storm brewing where Democrats are set to become unpopular both on economics and social issues…hammering on abortion just barely scraped them by in 2022…that issue is a lot less salient for 2024 while other social issues are coming to the forefront. It could be a very interesting year.

CNN Headline: “Minorities, immigrants and now members of the LGBTQ community are being warned of the risks of visiting Florida after the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group issued a travel advisory following newly passed laws and policies”

Reminder: this lie is not pitched at you. They don’t care about you. They know you’ll never vote Democrat. This lie is for Democrats. And it doesn’t require them to actually believe there’s tyranny in Florida…but what it does tell them is that this is what they have to say is happening in Florida. This is to keep the conversation within the Party Line. That is, to keep them voting Democrat no matter how bad it gets.

Trump and MAGA Won’t Go Away

Mark Noonan60 Comments

I didn’t watch the Trump town hall on CNN because, well, it was on CNN and I’ll be dead and in the cold, cold ground before I give them any ratings. But I did monitor the reactions on Twitter.

The MAGA folks were, of course, entirely thrilled with Trump’s performance. Discount that: that could easily be just partisan confirmation bias.

Never Trump: from the first minute were calling it an unmitigated disaster. Discount that: just as easily confirmation bias. But I did notice something…as the night wore on, the later Never Trump comments about it were “well, he talked too much about the 2020 election and nobody cares about that” and “Trump is doomed because everyone cares about January 6th.”

That was all extreme wish-casting. I don’t know how many people actually care about the 2020 vote…but even those who don’t care, if they aren’t committed anti-Trumpers, all pretty much agree that there was quite a lot of illegality and impropriety in the vote. People believe this because it was obvious. As I’ve asked people (and never get a response on), “they covered up the windows in the counting rooms because ____?”. They can’t answer it. They never will answer it. Because the only answer to “why did you hide the count?” is “because we were stuffing the ballot boxes”.

Nobody cares about January 6th. The Democrats and their MSM lapdogs (seconded by the chihuahua-like yapping of Never Trump types) tried to make the J6 hearings into another Watergate and nobody cared. Mostly nobody cares because nothing really happened that day save for the unfortunate shooting of an unarmed and peaceful demonstrator (which, of course, the J6 boosters never talk about). At the end of the day, with a little bit of rowdiness early on, the Establishment got what they wanted on J6: Pudding Brain certified as the winner. You’re not allowed to complain about things going your way: and the complaints they make about J6 merely seem like pathetic whining.

But it was the Left comments which were most telling: they were ballistic over it. I mean completely unhinged. It was like their world was coming to an end…because Trump, to all appearances, was calm, cool, collected, funny and made some really telling points in response to the gotcha questions of the host.

Pay attention to that: if the Left is pissed off about it, then it worked out well for Trump.

I’ve said for a while now – and it remains true – and plenty of Trump voters are willing to move on. DeSantis is the obvious first choice with Vivek Ramaswamy being the surprising second choice. There is a rational case to make for dropping Trump in favor of some other tool we think may be better suited to break down the Establishment and restore America. But as I’ve also been saying – and I’ve said it since 2015 when I was opposing Trump for the nomination – that the only way to beat Trump is to out-Trump him.

One very particular thing came up in that town hall which is getting little play is Trump’s proposal to pardon most J6 detainees. This has caused monkey-screeches from the Left, of course, while the DeSantis people are (very reasonably) pointing out that Trump could have done that January 7th. But the really crucial thing about it is Trump rising to the defense of the J6 detainees. If DeSantis really wants to break down Trump’s core support – and DeSantis will have to do this to beat Trump – then it should have been DeSantis calling for this first. And that, in my view, is the breakdown in the DeSantis effort: for all the good things he’s doing (and they are fantastic, with the education reforms holding the most long-term potential for us), he’s yet to show to the Trumpsters that he will go to war with the Establishment. Going after Disney: Great. Going after Drag Queen Story Time: Wonderful. But these are fairly run-of-the-mill GOP positions now (being anti-Corporate has actually been taking hold on the right for about ten years). DeSantis needs to pick out a position which is so Trump-y that Trump hasn’t got there yet. The J6 people were the easiest. Now he’ll have to find something else.

What can DeSantis do? That will be up to him but if I were in his position, I’d announce that if elected, every person who illegally crossed the border after January 20th, 2021 will be deported regardless of circumstances. No refugees, no Dreamers: no nothing. I’d announce it as the only means to tell these people that they can’t take advantage of an Administration too corrupt to control the border. That no matter how well they try to blend in before January 20th, 2025, they will be deported. Alternately, DeSantis can call for a suspension of American aid to Ukraine by X Date unless Ukraine agrees to peace talks with Russia. The main thing here is to take something that the Establishment wants very badly (open borders, endless war, etc) and propose to take it away. That demonstrates a willingness to fight: and that is what DeSantis must do if he wants to transfer the love the Trumpsters feel over to himself.

Because that is the key to it all and so far nobody gets it. They call the Trumpsters “MAGAts” or “Trump Cultists” or what have you. They don’t realize that for these people, supporting Trump is an act of love. A pledge to America and to future greatness. You’ll only get them over to you if you give them a reason to love you more. And, hey, maybe they are misguided. Maybe they’re not seeing some crucial things. But anyone who has ever experienced love knows that you can’t talk someone out of it…you bend with it. But it is also important to understand that love – real love – is a matter of loving the beloved before they are lovable. The anti-Trump people keep trying to make Trump seem hateful when all that does is make those who love him love him even more. They see the flaws. They are not blind. But that doesn’t deter the lover. In fact, it makes the true lover even more devoted. You can’t break that by shouting insults. You can only break it by loving even more than they do.

This is why I pointed out to various people who have recently been calling for Trump to back out over his legal troubles that they are making a huge mistake. They aren’t helping their cause, at all. They are, in fact, shooting themselves in the foot. And in two ways:

  1. First off, they are essentially going along with a Democrat op. A “get Trump” effort which has entirely divorced itself from law or any sense of decency as it seeks to destroy Trump by any means necessary. Calling for Trump to back out is merely to play along with a smear. And if it actually worked, then that smear would then be turned on the next guy and the next and the next and the next.
  2. It is alienating Trump supporters. Every time a Never Trump Conservative calls for Trump to back out or be pushed out, it simply tightens up Trump’s support. It makes his supporters ever more willing to stick with him. The proper tactic to take here is to relentlessly attack the Democrat effort as the illegal, unjust and cruel effort it is. That way when you talk to Trumpsters, they’ll listen.

I don’t know how this will come out. I’m still very certain that we’re going to lose next year. But this is primarily because I see the divisions in the Right. They are fostered by the Left and they are setting MAGA and anti-Trump at each other’s throats and convincing them to take Only Trump or Never Trump positions, respectively. Blood is getting up and heads are getting down and whomever emerges with the GOP nomination will find a fractured GOP going up against a united Democrat Party with endless supplies of money, the MSM and a paid army of influencers at every level. I think it will still end up a close race (Pudding Brain is monumentally unpopular), but I do believe that they shove him over the finish line…even if it once again takes some manufactured votes in key States (there will be less of this in 2024 than in 2020 because no Covid and some law changes…but there’s still just enough wiggle room in just enough States to allow some last-minute vote creation to tip the scales).

But however it comes out, the key to victory in 2024 or any future race will have to be the anti-Trump people making their peace with MAGA. This means ditching entirely all MSM talking points about Trump (after all, what the Trump haters hate about Trump is all stuff the MSM told them without having a shred of evidence to back it up). It means talking positively about MAGA. It means acknowledging – without any hedging – the good things Trump accomplished while at the same time agreeing with the obvious: he would have been able to do to a lot more if the GOP leadership and pundit classes had backed him up, as they were morally obligated to do.

Trump isn’t going away. His supporters aren’t going way. You can’t win without Trump and MAGA. It is just the plain facts of life. You can’t “move on” from Trump in the sense of ditching him and pretending he didn’t happen and that his voters will get back into the Neo-Con, Globalist loser fold. You have to show MAGA that you love them; that you want them; that you care about them and will do your best for them. This will require the adoption by everyone in the GOP of large aspects of Trumpist policy and attitudes. Or you can cope and seethe about it as you lose.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan37 Comments

Polling, as we know, is mostly useless – probably more useless now than its ever been. In the Trump vs DeSantis fight, they show Trump up big nationally, but DeSantis running neck and neck in State polling, especially Iowa. My thoughts: we’re being fed polls designed to please Trumpsters and DeSantis-stans so that internal bickering will increase and get people to stake out “Only Trump” or “Never Trump” positions which would help Pudding Brain next year.

Remember: it is always an op. What is put out for public consumption is designed to get you to believe what isn’t true and act against your own best interests. They are never telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Nothing is for free – and if the product is free, then you are actually the product. Someone paying for a poll and handing it to you “free” means they want you to believe a certain way…nobody puts up money just for the heck of it.

RFK, Jr got into the race. He’s got no chance. Not even if Pudding Brain kicks the bucket. He is far Left loon on a lot of a positions, but not on all of them and as the rich and corporations have gone ever more Woke, they are now key elements of the Democrat coalition – RFK does take stabs at them and they’ll never forgive him for doing that. He’s also in bad repute because he is a traditional Left anti-war Democrat, taking up the mantle of his father…while the Democrats are all pro-war over Ukraine and speak nary a word against the Military-Industrial Complex these days. His anti-vax ideology is also mostly absurd – but it worked out to be spot-on with the Covid vaccine so that will garner him some support among the more Libertarian parts of the Left. Not nearly enough to make a difference in the Democrat primaries.

OTOH hand, Newsom is making all sorts of moves which are clearly preparing for a White House run. Mostly low key but doing things like ripping on RDS and donating money to the Tennessee Democrat party are things you only do if you want support from Democrats in Florida and Tennessee…States Pudding Brain is catastrophically unpopular in and which a solid challenger might do some damage in a Democrat primary. Remember: LBJ was all set to run again in 1968 until he merely did worse than expected in New Hampshire. It wouldn’t take much to get the Democrat power people (who are all largely owned by either the Clinton or Obama machines) to dump China Joe. On the other, other hand Newsom might just be keeping an iron in the fire in case Joe goes so gaga or dies that the Democrats have to run others…and worse comes to worst, Newsom is positioning himself for 2028. He will definitely run for President – do not doubt that. He’s confident he can win (and he’s got a lot of reason to be confident – the MSM will puff him up like the Second Coming).

The most recent spate of shootings are clearly the result of Democrats pumping up apocalyptic rhetoric and just waiting for one of their deranged followers to explode. They’ll keep doing this. Oh, you think they wouldn’t do that? Rely on it, guys: people who favor abortion to birth don’t care about human life. They don’t have to order anyone to do it…they know, they’ve got a huge and growing crop of followers who are insane and who are driven to depression by unrelenting “the world is dying” and “GOP is Nazi” rhetoric.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan107 Comments

Yet another school shooting – this one they are having a little trouble with as the school is Christian and the shooter is Trans – one line they’re tying out – and I think they’ll settle on – is that this was provoked by GOP efforts to “ban transgender people”. Which, of course, is nothing of the sort. We GOPers are the most overly-tolerant people in the world. Vastly more so than any of those Left of center. We’re just kinda hung up on that whole mutilate minors with surgery and hormones thing. Sticks in the craw a bit.

But that is the Left: sheer evil. In response to one of their own who went off on shooting spree based on lies about us, they’re going to demand that we give up our guns and allow 12 year olds to have permanent, life-altering surgery. Nothing doing: fortunately, I’ve seen a lot of backbones today of people not sitting still for this drivel. But I also perceive that we’re still not pushing back all the way.

We need to start really calling these people out – Congresswoman Jayapal yesterday was on the House floor to condemn “MAGA extremist” attacks on LGBTQ youth. I Tweeted on top of that the fact that we’re not attacking LGBTQ youth: we’re attacking Jayapal and her sick and disgusting desire to mutilate minors and have perverts twerk in front of them. To pat myself on the back, that is the sort of line we have to start taking. These people aren’t merely wrong. They aren’t making mistakes. They aren’t doing good with unintended consequences: they are evil. They are bad. They are doing wrong things because they like wrong things and they get off on ruining lives.

We’ve talked for decades now about school shootings and it all comes back to the same thing: we allow lunatics free range. But now we must take it the next step back: the reason we have so many lunatics is because we have allowed the Left to deliberately and maliciously create an insane society…and they created this insane society by destroying morality. As I’ve said many times before – 80 years ago you could buy a machine gun by mail. Also back then you couldn’t even form the concept of “drag queen story time”. Fast forward to today and you have to jump though hoops to buy a semi-automatic weapon but we have drag queen story time. There is a connection, folks. We’re getting what the Left wanted – increasing restrictions on liberty along with government-subsidized license.

To nutshell it: don’t call them mistaken. Call them evil. They are wicked people trying to destroy. We push back on it that way and every time one of these horrors emerge, they’ll eventually be placed on the defensive…and then we can destroy them.

Fox News cut away to Pudding Brain expecting to see some comment about the school shooting and got some bizarre, senile ramble about ice cream. Now, he did eventually get around to spending a few seconds talking about the shooting, but then was back to yucking it up. The man is flat out senile and they clearly didn’t get his meds right today. The destiny of our nation is the feeble hands of a man who has gone gaga.

DeSantis is taking advantage of the fact that he holds executive power and has signed universal school choice in Florida. This will be a problem for Trump in the primary…all Trump can do is talk about doing things. RDS can do them.

One of Rand Paul’s staffers was brutally attacked in DC – no word yet on whether it was political or just Democrat City Life. Horrible all the same.

Matt Taibbi – the center-left journalist Musk has been allowing to write up the Twitter Files – got a sudden visit by IRS agents when he testified in Congress about the government orchestrated censorship and propaganda under the old Twitter ownership. Pardon me, guys: have you ever heard of an IRS agent making a visit? Senator Jordan wants some answers about it: spoiler, he won’t get them. This is bizarre and extremely frightening…and shows that Democrats have polling which shows this is something which could be turned on them devastatingly during an election year.

The Population Bomb didn’t go off – even far Left environmentalist whackos are now admitting the population will peak around 8.8 billion at midcentury and then rapidly decline. My bet – it’ll peak lower than that and decline much more rapidly than expected. My guesstimate is that it peaks around 2040 at a little over 8.5 billion. Birth rates are dropping like rocks everywhere…with the exception being among Mormons, ultra-Orthodox Jews and a few traditionalist Christian groups (which can range from Catholic to Protestant). So the really funny thing will be a new civilization arising starting around 2100 when, turns out, the only people alive at the time are believers because their parents decided to have kids.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan88 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Open Thread

Mark Noonan43 Comments

The Trump Indictment has turned into a horrible proxy fight between Trump and DeSantis supporters – which shows the real reason Trump is to be indicted. As I noted before, we do have to stop being suckers. Trump, in my view, is a bit more sinning in this than anyone else. I can sympathize as he’s the guy under the indictment gun…but he should be leading the way in making this a fight against the Democrats, as such, rather than taking swipes at DeSantis. We’ll just have to see how this plays out – but even with all the drama, I do believe this one will backfire on the Democrats as badly as their pushes to defund the cops and medically transition minors are starting to backfire on them.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is issuing an emergency regulation advising the medical profession that under Missouri law experimental medical procedures cannot be performed on children outside of very specific controls. This will almost entirely shut down medical transition of minors in Missouri. That’s the thing the Progressives don’t want anyone to notice: nobody has the first clue what these procedures will actually do to children long term – it only started a couple years ago base on “studies” which don’t rise to the level of junk science. We’re giving kids hormones and cutting off healthy parts not as a best practice medical procedure, but on a guess enforced by Progressive tyrants. The hope is that Missouri (and other States) will soon ban transitions for minors – as Bailey points out, plenty of European governments have already put a stop to the practice or severely restricted it. But until such time, Red State officials can and should use the laws on the books – and I’ll bet all 50 States have some species of law which hems in doing anything medical to a child outside of strict guidelines.

And this is how we do it – we should be using the power we have to the maximum extent possible. We can’t stop it in California and can only have limited effect on federal laws and regulations right now…but in the States we control, we can largely stop this savagery against defenseless children.

There is a horrific video out there which shows two people mercilessly beating a man in broad daylight – one armed with a bat, the other with a knife. Like all such videos it lacks full content: we don’t know what transpired before the video picks up with the lady holding the bat brutally swinging it at the victim’s head. But it doesn’t really matter: whatever the man may have done, he was down and surrendering and the thugs beating him could have just walked away (though I’ve heard the argument was over a parking spot). These people are savages – I do not consider them my social or political equals. Barbarians may never have the rights of civilized people. Barbarians are to be controlled by whatever means prove necessary. We will soon get to the point where all civilized people agree with me on this view; even quite liberal people. We simply can’t allow people to be mercilessly beaten without intervention.

But right now we are at the point where the civilized are simply too frightened to act. They still believe it will somehow get better on its own. Or that our increasingly incompetent and cowed police departments will get hold of the situation. It will not get better on its own: by the time you’ve got a bat-swinging maniac beating someone in broad daylight, you’re way past any easy cure. It will just get worse and worse and spread to any area where people are not armed and willing to shoot in self defense. The cure is to treat barbarians like barbarians – to understand that mercy requires that barbarians be compelled to good behavior even if by the whip and the branding iron. There’s a reason punishments a thousand years ago were brutal – they had to be in order to control a semi-barbaric population. That polite society you may remember from 50 years ago was the result of centuries of breaking people at the wheel, having them run the knout, hanging, drawing and quartering. Barbarians are not very good at calculating risks and rewards. They are driven entirely by appetite. They do whatever their impulses say and they keep doing it until stopped by superior force. Eventually, and I believe fairly soon, the people will have had enough.

How are the banks doing? Well, J P Morgan thought they had $1.3 million in nickel stored…turns out they have bags of rocks. Rocks. Like in your garden: rocks. These are the people in charge of our financial destiny. And its getting bad…kinda surprised at how low key everyone is being about Credit Suisse going under with $17 billion in their bonds just, poof!, declared to be worthless. This is a financial crisis which is already making 2008 look like nothing…but its all still being papered over with fiat money, unacknowledged defaults and banks moving money around to pretend there’s enough cash to cover everything (several major US banks have quietly started making big deposits in regional banks hoping that the word will get out just enough to prevent runs on those banks). Can they keep it up? Time will tell.

There’s this freaky dude out there who has pretended to be a woman for a year. A very creepy caricature of a woman…I won’t link to any of the videos but its like if you thought up the most insulting way to exaggerate some female mannerisms, that is what this guy has done. Naturally, the Vice President sent a letter congratulating this creep on being a woman for a year. Specifically, for “living authentically”. I know some women – trust me, I really do – none of them are happy with this sort of thing. The backlash on this is going to be astonishing…and may actually provide the leverage for a big GOP win as women make up such a crucially large segment of the Democrat vote.

Dear GOP: Stop Being Losers

Mark Noonan35 Comments

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

The primary reason we lose is because we’re losers. And we really need to stop being losers.

As the potential Trump indictment started to dominate the conversation did we see a fully unified GOP/Right condemning what would be an obvious act of merciless injustice? No: what we saw is Trumpsters and DeSantistans getting into a pissing match about who should be doing and saying what. For heaven’s sake, this was a golden opportunity to unite the party and fire up the base…and it so far is being wasted in internecine battles. And I do blame both sides.

To be sure, my bet is that the fight originated among people in the pay of the DNC – I am quite confident (because Democrats are really good at politics) that they have co-opted some of ours. People who might seem the most fervent Conservatives/GOPers who are nonetheless getting paid to sow division. To take any issue and make it a “you must back my guy or you’re a loser Commie” moment. From there, other voices just pick up the propaganda and run with it…before you know it, you’ve got people on the Right bitterly fighting it out on a matter of internal political purity while the Democrats are busily advancing their agenda. I would not at all be surprised to find out that the leak of a looming Trump indictment was done with just this sort of thing in mind…I’ll be certain of it if the indictment doesn’t happen (there are rumors that it won’t).

This isn’t about Trump. It isn’t about DeSantis. It isn’t about any particular policy prescription: it is about our ability to govern ourselves. The Democrats propose to take that away. Do you think they’ve dropped the idea of packing the Court and taking over State and local elections? They haven’t. Democrats never retreat from a position. They sometimes for tactical reasons put an issue on the backburner, but even there they still try to advance it. And they never forget it or give it up. If the Democrats secure enough power – and a divided GOP would hand it to them – they will pack the Courts, rule our liberties as unconstitutional and take over the election process to ensure we can never win again. They will do this. It isn’t a guess. It isn’t a worry. It is precisely what they’ll do because Democrats – and this has been true of them since Van Buren created the party – always believe that the survival of the United States requires Democrats to win all elections. Any election not won by Democrats was via evil machinations…all elections won by Democrats are forever. If we lose we lose forever; our choices will then be to submit, or break up the country.

What has happened to Trump since 2015 has been sheer evil. And none of it was his fault. Lots of anti-Trump GOPers like to say that if Trump wasn’t Trump then it would all have been different. No, it would not have. Trump has had 10,000 liars in government and the MSM out to get him since he came down the escalator. They never let any lies go and they always add new lies (most Democrats remain convinced that Trump is a Russian asset installed in 2016 via Putin switching votes from Hillary to Trump). The will do to anyone else what they did to Trump. They are already working up the lies to be used against DeSantis. So, when a partisan hack of a Democrat DA proposes to so much as investigate Trump, let alone charge him, the duty of all Conservatives/GOPers is to condemn the effort and stand shoulder to shoulder against it. The Democrats are the enemy.

But, we seem to prefer to fight each other. Perhaps because we’re too chicken to fight Democrats? They play dirty, GOPers don’t. But we must stop it. We must never punch right. Always punch left. Everyone needs to get on board. Sure, battle for your guy but once the guy is chosen, everyone gets on board. And while the battle to pick a guy is ongoing, any and all Democrat attacks against any of the candidates are to be met with ferocious scorn by all of us…not sotto-voiced agreed to in the hopes that that it’ll place our guy in a better position for the primaries.

The life of our nation is at risk. In the old saw: now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country. Now is most emphatically not the time to rip each other to shreds.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan29 Comments

I guess the city of Bakhmut, Ukraine has fallen and the Russians are hailing their victory while the Ukrainians are saying they never really wanted to hold it. The bottom line, for me, is that Russia has definitely resumed advancing and the Ukrainians aren’t able to stop it so far. No breakthrough, but a war of attrition where the Russians are just grinding the Ukrainians down…though such eventually does lead to a breakthrough as the weaker side can never sustain this kind of fight forever. Meanwhile, everyone on the Ukraine side gets ever more hysterical about how we have to support Ukraine. I think it is time for negotiations. Unless Zelensky has something big up his sleeve, offensive-wise, better to quit now rather than wait until there’s nothing left between the Russians and Kiev.

Argentina has ripped up its Falklands agreement with Britain and is demanding negotiations over sovereignty. This is what I mean about just staying the heck out of foreign problems: most of them are stupid. The bottom line is that whatever theoretical legal right Argentina received from Spain to the Islands, there never was a permanent, indigenous population of the Falklands until the Brits showed up in the 1830’s. The people who live there going back nearly two centuries have never had any connection to Argentina. They consider themselves British. The speak English. When asked in a plebiscite what they preferred, more than 98% voted to stay under British rule. But Argentina likes to get all fussy about it – and they are getting fussy about it shortly after HMS Queen Elizabeth became operational which means if they decide to start shooting over it, they’ll lose (the Royal Navy is a shadow of her formal self, but most of Argentina’s navy is laid up in port; and they don’t have a naval air arm to speak of). Amazing how stupid people can be, and for all the wrong reasons.

Kellyanne and George Conway have called it quits – which is kinda sad but very understandable. George acted like an a** during the Trump years and Kellyanne has allowed herself to be squired around by the likes of Cuomo recently. Really its all rather pathetic.

The Left is still trying to sell the notion that the Second Amendment only secured a right to bear arms to the Militia, which is now the National Guard. Of course it is absurd, but lots of people are fierce in their faith about the Militia having the right. It isn’t just propaganda doing this – it is propaganda directed a population which is barely literate and almost entirely ignorant of American history. We can’t get control of the schools fast enough. This is a terrible problem and it will harm us politically…but if we control the schools it is literally just a few years before the problem is fixed.

RDS has put out a video which is “I’m running” without saying the actual words, “I’m running”.

I’m increasingly positive that the Left overstepped on the trans issue – and it is women leading the backlash. Which is proper as women are being erased to accommodate trans women. It is very irritating, isn’t it? What is clearly a man winning women’s sporting contests, Hershey and other woke corporations using trans women as spokespeople for women’s issues. I mean, seriously: who thought this would be a good idea? Oh, yeah: Progressives did. Never forget that as ruthless and cruel as they are, they are also monumentally stupid.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan84 Comments

I do feel sorry for Fetterman – he nearly dies of a stroke and this his wife and friends, instead of caring whether he lives or dies, press him to keep running for an office he was manifestly unfit to serve in. Yes, shame on us for not being able to beat him, but it is simply a crime that he didn’t withdraw from the race. Keep that in mind: the Democrats will do anything to obtain power. They don’t care how much harm it causes…as long as they can get the power, its all good in their view.

The number of train derailments is getting beyond coincidence. If we had an actual FBI, they’d be looking into it to see if foreign actors were involved, directly or indirectly. This doesn’t mean, of course, that it definitely is an attack – but it could be, and we should find out. There is the chance, however, that it is just degraded infrastructure. Remember, the last thing a Democrat infrastructure bill does is provide infrastructure…it provides money for cronies and various BS projects nobody needs. There is no upside for Democrats if rail lines, roads, bridges, etc get built and repaired. There’s no payoff for them – but there’s a huge payoff if you can send a couple million for an anti-racist program to fight systemic racism in the construction industry. Meanwhile, the train derailment in Ohio isn’t the problem – the real problem is that we on the Right have noticed the derailment.

I guess the Democrats have some polling indicating that Haley has strength among some section of the voters because they are going hard after her – with the universal talking point being that she’s a race traitor who uses a “white” name in order to be acceptable to the racist GOP. Day by day, Democrats just get more inhuman an disgusting. I hope that it is turning off ever more people.

Al Sharpton and the Race-Baiter Brigade went down to Florida the other day to protest DeSantis’ education reforms…and it was as if nothing happened. Because, of course, nothing happened. Nothing could happen. DeSantis and the Florida GOP weren’t about to give in to any demands and any effort by Sharpton to gin up violence would have resulted in real arrests…with people going to jail rather than being let off entirely or given small fines. The best news we’ve had of late is that ever more GOPers simply don’t care if they’re called racists. At long last, that false accusation is losing it’s sting. Calling us racists is a stupid and insulting lie – but, they won’t stop it so all we can do is ignore and it and implement policy.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan22 Comments

That quake in Turkey looks really bad. Don’t forget to say some prayers for them.

Saw another one of those articles accusing Putin of war crimes – this on the basis of recruiting soldiers from occupied Ukrainian territory. This is, indeed, a direct violation of the Geneva Convention and other international treaties.

Its also worth about a fart in a hurricane.

One of the most baleful things of the past century was the Nuremburg trials is this misbegotten drivel that there is such a thing as international law or that there can be a neutral tribunal provided for a defeated enemy. It just doesn’t work that way. It only seemed that way after WWII because the enemy powers were utterly defeated and occupied. Absent that, just how are you going to serve your warrant for Putin’s arrest? Unless a Ukrainian or other non-Russian army arrives in Moscow, it just isn’t going to happen.

But even in the unique circumstances of World War Two, the trials were an absurdity. We put on trial Hans Fritzsche as a major war criminal – he was in the same dock as Goering. Of course you’ve never heard of him – he was a radio broadcaster. Sure, he broadcast Nazi lies – that was his job. But if we’re to charge everyone who broadcasts a lie as a war criminal, we’re going to be busy for a bit. We hung Alfred Jodl who didn’t really do that much to order or carry out war crimes but only passed out 12 years to Alfried Krupp who ran the sickest slave labor empire in Nazi Germany; and then we let him out after 3 and gave him all his money back. The Russians made a serious effort to pin the Katyn Massacre on the Germans and have it as one of the counts at Nuremberg – they didn’t succeed but the bottom line here is that both FDR and Churchill were advised early on that it was the Soviets who carried out that massacre and they killed the story so as to not offend Stalin. With, you know, the truth…but then we set up trials with the Soviets helping us judge Germans guilty of carrying out massacres.

This is not to say that the Nazis should have skated. As I’ve noted before, Churchill once mused that the best thing to do would be to haul out the Nazis one fine morning and just shoot them. That would have been just – and of far more moral worth than a charade trial which included a mass murderer among the judges.

But, it happened – and now pinheads are forever asking for a repeat. As if it would do anything. War is about power – who has the most and who can apply that power most effectively. If you want Putin in the dock, then you better gather a lot of power and march on Moscow. Good luck to you. If you get him, go ahead and hang him, if that makes you feel better about it. I’ve no complaint about someone who starts a war getting shot for putting the world to the trouble. But don’t preach international law at me: it doesn’t exist. If you do catch Putin then the trial you hold for him will be garbage – because there can’t be other than a guilty verdict and you’ll be charging him not with being evil, but with losing. International law is whatever the strong choose to enforce at any given time. And that is how it should be: if you defeat your enemy, he is at your disposal. Shoot him or make a deal with him, as you desire. But don’t pretend you caught a bank robber and that a trial will somehow right the scales of justice in the world.

The news report is from 2021 but I first heard it yesterday: the Orwell Estate has given permission for a re-write of 1984 from a feminist perspective. Think about it: the premier book about totalitarian propaganda is going to be re-written to fit current propaganda. And you just watch: once this new one comes out, the original will be condemned and removed from libraries. The Left hates 1984…because they know it is all about them.

They apparently had some sick, bizarre Satanist musical number at the Emmy’s. I didn’t watch it because why would any sane person watch drivel like an award show? But I guess some people are upset. Can’t say that I am – of course these nimrods are glorifying evil. Some of them are just evil, others are too stupid to realize the evil. The few pop culture people who do see through it all usually end up making really good art that doesn’t get a lot of play. Look for those gems – I’ve even found some fairly recent pop music which is darned good and interesting…gotta hunt for it, but it’s there. It isn’t the stuff that tops the charts for the most part. And some of it does make me suspect that pop culture has its secret dissidents from the Leftist Narrative.

Pudding Brain is going to do his SOTU and they’ve put the fences back up around the Capital. Because our government hates the American people.

DeSantis is pulling the plug on Disney’s private empire in Florida. Among the other benefits Disney was given in the 1960’s is that they can take property via eminent domain! Old Walt must have had one heck of a lobbyist back in the day! Anyway, that’s all over with now – a five person board appointed by the governor will look after things; the board being the method by which a Leftist local government is cut out of the process. RDS seems to really get the point: it is all about power and you don’t leave any of it lying around for the Left to use.