Ron DeSantis

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.

Up, Up and Away Open Thread

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Did not have “Chinese balloon rings death knell for the USA” on my bingo card.

Jesse Kelly points out that this is all our own fault – we have paid for the rise of China from worthless Commie backwater to evil Commie superpower. And when you really think back on it all, just what was the point of normalizing relations with China? It is held up as Nixon’s signal foreign policy triumph but what, really, was the benefit of it? And I mean to the USA, to China and to the world?

It sure in heck didn’t help us in Vietnam. Nixon went to China in 1972 and that didn’t stop North Vietnamese tanks from rolling into Saigon in 1975.

It didn’t help bring down the USSR. “Play the China card” was supposed to be some super-trump in global foreign relations…but as far as getting rid of the USSR, China might as well not even been there.

China’s ruthless exploitation of poor and naive third world nations isn’t doing anyone any good.

China’s ruthless dumping of third rate goods and fentanyl into the USA is kinda a bad thing, right?

China’s corruption of the global Ruling Class is probably not working out as a net plus.

And then there is China, as such. Sure: Marco Polo bringing back the concept of pasta did wonders for dinner. Paper money? Maybe not such a good thing. Chinese music, art and architecture can’t hold a candle to the West. Philosophy? Confucius wrote down copy-book maxims designed to perpetuate his class in power…China has nothing to compare to Aristotle or Aquinas…not even anything as good as Ashoka or Averroes. Just what are we supposed to get out of China? Where’s the benefit? They’ve grafted onto the stump of Maoism the industrial Midwest…goody for them. What’s in it for us?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there is no point in the United States having relations with nations like China. It is poison. Perhaps a free China would be worthwhile, but while China is under tyranny, we should be completely separate from them.

Pudding Brain’s people are claiming 517k new jobs in January.

This did not happen.

I’m telling ya: they’re just making the numbers up. We had report after report of major corporations downsizing all month and they pop up with 517k. Yeah, right. Keep in mind that even under the honest, the jobs number is a guess based on particular assumptions…for the dishonest, its any number they want…and in this case they wanted a number for China Joe to puff for his SOTU next week.

The MSM is already getting into “DeSantis is worse than Trump”. We all knew this was coming – the only question is how ready RDS is for it? Especially if it looks like he’ll be the nominee, they will pour garbage all over him…and he will be the subject of multiple federal and State criminal investigations. It doesn’t matter what about – they made it all up about Trump, they’ll make it all up about RDS. It will take real guts to overcome it – and we’ll see if RDS has that.

It is Black History Month and I guess Disney is running a bit for the kiddies asserting that America was built by slaves and other 1619 Project drivel. If you are not in favor of eliminating Woke corporations then you haven’t been paying attention.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan20 Comments

The very phrases “gender affirming care” and “assigned at birth” have to be banned and those in official positions who use them should be jailed.

So, Mark, why bring that up?

Because I saw yet another of those RINO statements we see about, “we’re better than that” and “you know, if we use government to coerce, it’ll be used against us!”.

As if it wasn’t already – and, no, we can’t be “better than that.”

The fundamental problem we have – and I’m not the only one seeing it – is that our side doesn’t realize that it is a fight to the finish. Either our dogmas will prevail or theirs will. And the losing side loses everything. There is no mid-point between “there are two genders” and “there are three (or more) genders”. There is no possible compromise between those who think that children should attend drag shows and those who think they shouldn’t. There is no way to reconcile “all men are created equal and are endowed with certain unalienable rights” and “abortion to birth, and maybe even for a few hours after”. We either become all that they demand, or they become all what we demand.

Now, because we aren’t Leftists – and thus not rat bastards – we’re never going to massacre those who hate us. But we must remove them from all positions of power and influence. They must be forced out of office. Terminated from their positions in the bureaucracy, corporations and educational institutions. Their tax free NGO’s shuttered and the funds confiscated.

There is no other way – a house divided against itself cannot stand. It must become all one thing, or all the other.

And Ron DeSantis is doing it. Trump issued a statement as well on this subject. There are more and more people coming to the understanding – shocking as it may be – that those who call us Nazis and who think the USA is inherently racist don’t wish us well.

They did a show called Velma – a spin off of the Scooby Doo franchise – and it has bombed. I guess they made Velma a woke lesbian and made the show a bunch of woke preaching. The insidious part of this is the attempt to rewrite everything to fit the modern Left’s vision of the world – there is no room for non-Left; everything must be converted to the new religion. The pathetic part of this is that the show isn’t pitched at 6 year olds – you know, the target audience of Scooby Doo. I loved the show – when I was a little kid. I wouldn’t bother with it today (or, indeed, any time after, say, my 10th birthday) because it is a silly and childish show not suited for even teenage intellects, let alone adult. What sort of adult cares about Scooby Doo? Only pyschos, in my view. That any adult looked at the Scooby Doo material and said, “hey, we need a lesbian Velma spinoff for adults” is someone fit only for the loony bin. What’s next, Yosemite Sam comes out as gay and opens up a flower shop?

Nothing is more funny than the Woke putting up illegal immigrants at high end hotels and then, when its time to leave, finding that those illegals don’t want to leave their swell digs.

Hey, guys: masks don’t work. And I mean, at all. Here’s the report proving it…but the fact that we needed a report shows how far gone we are. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of biology knew that masks don’t stop viruses. They can’t stop viruses. Viruses are too small. It was with mask mandates that I realized we were being conned – and that medical professionals (who know better) eagerly pushed masks demonstrated just how degraded our supposedly neutral professionals are.

The Trump vs DeSantis battle heats up. I’ll support the nominee no matter, but there is great rancor growing between supporters of the two…and I suspect grifters paid by the DNC are fanning the flames. I am unsure if the GOP can united in 2024.

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 Noonan19 Comments

Got into a long debate about gun control over on Twitter. Not a bad one, either. I mean, the people arguing with me were ignorant of basic facts and had imbibed a great deal of Progressive lies, but the debate was civil and it did open the eyes a bit on my side: they really are convinced that being armed is not something human beings are supposed to be…at least, not armed in any way that would give a distinct advantage. Maybe it stems from a Progressive desire to be fair? Don’t really know. But we’re never going to convince these people: they’ll have to be mugged by reality. As some of them have been as I’ve seen stories of Progressives in San Francisco quietly purchasing firearms as all police protection has been withdrawn.

To that end, Chesa Boudin, the communist DA of SF, is in deep trouble – he fully implemented the Marxist-Leninist ideal of criminal justice and it really, really sucks. One of the unknown stories about the old USSR was how crime-ridden it was. Those who read The Gulag Archipelago know, but most people don’t…and it is simply because Soviet media didn’t cover it and Western media followed suit. But the basics of Soviet criminal law – that all crime is the result of social injustice – combined with a complete disarming of the Russian people meant that crime ran wild. You’d get 25 years for speaking ill of Communism, 10 years for murder…usually with time off for good behavior. While the bosses were tightly protected (sound familiar?) the common people were at the mercy of criminals. But unlike in the USSR, there is a recall possible in San Francisco – and nothing will spotlight the toxic environment for Democrats than the scion of the far Left getting the boot.

US Intel says that Putin is on the ropes. Given US Intel’s track record, I expect Russian tanks in Paris by next week.

The GOP continues to earn it’s title as The Stupid Party – with gas and food prices rising, a border crisis and Biden risking WWIII…they’re putting together a plan to reduce greenhouse gases. Got a newsflash for ya, GOPe – nobody gives a damn about Climate Change except those who are paid to give a damn about it.

Tampa Bay Rays went woke over the recent shootings…and DeSantis is vetoing a $35 million taxpayer give away to them. That is how its done.

Only Super Trump Can Beat Trump

Mark Noonan23 Comments

There is much talk about Trump. This is in itself astonishing – never has the guy who allegedly lost a Presidential election commanded this much attention a year later. That he’s still a massive topic of discussion shows the historic nature of his Presidency.

A lot of the talk is a bit of whistling past the graveyard. Especially a lot of Never Trump who didn’t go Full Democrat are certain that Trump is a fading commodity and we can all just move on from him. For the moment, their eyes are fixed firmly on Ron DeSantis…whom I think we all agree would be a fine President, but we also have our doubts about him. Not on basic policy, but on attitude. And that, I think, is why Trump stubbornly won’t fade away.

We on the right do want a good policy President. And we’d like a President who is much better at picking staff than Trump proved. And we don’t need daily drama. OTOH, we also know that more than ever, we need a fighter. Someone who will, day in and day out, go toe to toe with our opponents and never let up for a minute. Is DeSantis that guy? He does fight pretty well…but are we sure that when push comes to shove he’ll choose us rather than the Ruling Class? I think for DeSantis, or anyone other than Trump, they are going to have to really prove it to us.

Now, if Trump decides not to run – he will be 78, after all – then all bets are off. The race will be anyone’s for the taking. But even there, the person who gets the nod will be the person who most firmly convinces us that they are unafraid of a four year long slog of fighting. Because we have to have a fight. We can’t afford to compromise even a bit. We win, they lose: that has to be our goal.

The best and easiest way for any putative standard-bearer to make their mark is to simply defend the 1/6 defendants. Even Trump hasn’t been out front on that – and if he runs, the only way anyone will be able to attack Trump successfully will be from the right. As I said in 2016 when Trump was the front runner, the only way to beat Trump is to out-Trump him. Cruz tried, but I think he tried too late. But if you want to be the man, you have to beat the man…and nobody is going to beat Trump by going softer than Trump.

The crucial thing to know is that the old rules don’t apply. They really haven’t applied since the Democrats cooked up Watergate into a Presidency-destroying scandal. I mean, what is Watergate compared to Gore taking sacks of cash from monks pledged to poverty? You get the picture: whatever was wrong about Watergate, it wasn’t anything to get too worked up about. But that is when the Democrats, using their cat’s paws in the MSM, started making all political battles scorched Earth battles. But from Watergate to Trump, the GOP never engaged. We worked on the assumption that Democrats, like us, want what is best for America. Uh, no: what Democrats want is what is best for Democrats. All other considerations come in a distant second. They do this because they sincerely believe that basic human decency requires Democrats to be in charge. That we see it differently doesn’t matter – and is irrelevant. What we must do in response is what we’ve always had to do but refused: sincerely believe that basic human decency requires the GOP to be in charge.

It isn’t a very large mental shift, but it is a necessary one – because it builds into the mind the need to always thwart the Democrats and always advance the GOP. Never compromise. Never give anything and if you really are forced to give them something, make certain that you get ten times as much for yourself. Never attack your own side; abandon those found to be corrupt, but don’t attack them. Ignore them. If asked about one of ours who goes wrong, immediately launch into an attack on a Democrat who did similar. Always cast Democrat programs in the darkest possible terms – it is easy to do because all their supposed social programs are mere grift to payoff donors. What is being done against CRT is the template – the old GOP might have merely quibbled around the edges while essentially conceding the main point. But the people battling CRT started with the assertion that CRT is evil…and they’ve forced the Democrats into the untenable position of defending the worst aspects of CRT…and it is working for us. It played a huge role in winning Virginia.

It is all a very long way to 2024, but I think I can be safe in saying that how it will come out won’t be in anyone’s predictive model. We’re in flux. We’re in danger of civil war, actually. None of the old political certainties are holding up. Liberals in San Francisco are buying guns while working class Latino voters are for the first time casting GOP votes. Meanwhile, upper class white people with a college degree become even stronger for the Democrats. Victory and disaster stare us in the face: we’ll get one or the other. And only a fighter – backed by fighters – can prevail.