Trump-Russia

Impeachment Talk

M. Noonan50 Comments

New articles of impeachment have been filed in the House. I’m thinking that just about every two years someone files articles of impeachment against every President – but, most of the time, it is mere boilerplate. This time, it might have more to it. The Democrats will do everything they can to harm Trump, of course. They won’t hold back from impeachment based upon the facts of the case or simple decency: if they do it, then it is because they calculated it works best for them.

It won’t happen tomorrow. First, Mueller has to drop his report – which will have nothing, but will hint darkly at this and that horrible thing the President may have done. Then the House will hold well-televised hearings and MSNBC will have to talk shop it for a few news cycles. So, not before, say, April, at the earliest.

The Democrats have the votes to impeach – if Pelosi allows it to come to the floor, then the President will go on trial before the Senate. It is highly unlikely that Democrats will find 20 Republican Senators willing to commit political suicide by voting to remove the President. But, I don’t think that would be the Democrats real desire (they’d take it if they could get it, of course). All they’d really be hoping for is for 51 Senators to vote to convict. While that would not remove Trump from office, it would be devastating to him. The Democrat talking point would be “a majority wanted him removed from office”. Trouble is, I don’t think even Mitt Romney would go along with it. Susan Collins is up for re-election in 2020 and while she wins by attracting Democrats, she does need a united GOP to get over the top. Murkowski isn’t up until 2022, so she might be a possibility – but, once again, she’d risk a pretty ferocious backlash at home should she vote to convict Trump. Democrats would need to find four Republican Senators to get to that 51, and I just don’t see where they get the four.

And that, right there, might get Pelosi to spike any impeachment move. A Senate which voted by a majority to acquit Trump would work out to a vindication of the “witch hunt” accusation. It may boomerang very hard against Democrats – especially as they’ll have no legislative accomplishments to burnish their record heading into 2020. On the other hand, the Democrat base – which, according to polls, believes that Trump got elected because Russia switched votes in 2016 – would be quite furious if Trump isn’t impeached. The Democrats have dangled the red meat of Trump’s removal in front of their base for two years…will they be satisfied with anything less?

Personally, I think the Democrats made a strategic mistake when they followed along with the Team Hillary idea that Trump’s victory was illegitimate. They could have more effectively fought him on policy – what they’ve been fighting him on is his mere existence. His continued existence works out to defeat for the Democrats – and by not accepting him as legitimate, they’ve fairly well foreclosed any possibility of negotiating with him. They’ll have to go into 2020 without having gotten rid of Trump, and without having anything else to show for their efforts.

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The Flynn Injustice

M. Noonan5 Comments

Somewhere during the travesty which was the Flynn hearing today, something broke inside me. I’ve now had a real change in how I’m looking at things – and I think some very hard times are coming for our country. In fact, our country may not survive the times that our coming.

A lot can be said about Flynn and what he did or may have done – but the struck me is that even if he’s guilty not just of a crime, but of intending to do wrong (there is a difference), there are probably a thousand other people infesting DC who are worse. Our nation is the most powerful nation, ever. And as the most powerful nation, every other nation on Earth, great or small, has a vested interest in moving US policy in a manner favorable to themselves. The only thing that stops a nation from trying to influence the United States is lack of cash. It probably is true that the Democratic Republic of the Congo (population, 84 million) would like to have as much pull in DC as, say, Saudi Arabia (population, 33 million), but the pragmatic facts of life are that Saudi has cash, Congo doesn’t. And, so, we’re always talking about Saudi Arabia while most Americans are probably unaware of the existence of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And, for all we know, the Congo might have more useful stuff, and a more friendly-to-us population, than Saudi does. But, money talks…everything else walks. There are buckets of Americans – right and left – who are influenced by this foreign cash. But Flynn isn’t being punished for taking the foreign cash – the taking of the foreign cash is being used against Flynn because he picked the wrong guy to support for President.

Leaving aside, for the moment, the proof this provides of our two-tiered justice system, just how much of the foreign cash flowing through DC do you think might want to hamper or remove Trump? After all, there’s only one way that foreign cash can actually work to shape US policy: if that policy is not strictly America First. You won’t find foreign cash lobbying DC to protect American industries; you won’t find foreign cash lobbying for an American defense build up; you won’t find foreign cash, per se, lobbying to have American forces withdrawn from foreign countries (it does lobby to have Americans forces withdrawn from, or sent to, particular foreign countries in service of foreign policy desires); foreign cash certainly won’t lobby DC for a border wall, nor a reduction in immigration to the United States. Foreign cash is all for making the United States carry out the wishes of foreign powers – and it stands to reason that, outside Israel and a couple other places, no one is interested in having an American President who tells everyone to pound sand and looks after strictly American interests.

It is a huge amount of money – to take it out of today’s partisan atmosphere, this report from 2014 indicates that in 2013, the United Arab Emirates spent $14.2 million dollars influencing American policy. And, remember, this is what is reported because it has to be: when you are directly lobbying for a foreign power, you have to report it. But, if you’re not, you don’t. Money flows very easily through all cracks in the law. And $14.2 million doesn’t sound like a lot – but it is only one country, and if someone had just a million to spare for 2019, The Weekly Standard would have stayed in business. Just as there is more than one way to skin a cat, so there’s more than one way to spread cash around to people you want to control. You can give them speaking fees. Sinecure jobs. Help market things like books. On and on and on it can go…and no one really pays attention, but at the end of the day a large number of people with influence are pushing policies which may only incidentally be in our favor, but are definitely desired by foreign powers.

All of this came into my head in a flash as I watched Twitter reactions to the Flynn hearing – and a rage boiled inside me. My nation is bought and sold and those who are pledged to Justice are perverting the very concept in order to punish those who picked Trump. Which means, of course, that if they ever feel the need to direct that power against me, they will. And their pious intonations of patriotism while they are doing this nauseating hit job just made me even madder. The people going after Flynn – or delighting in his destruction – are, for the most part, not made up of people who deployed for six months to the Persian Gulf; nor hiked through the mountains of Afghanistan wearing our uniform; nor are they people who work our farms and ranches; they don’t man our factories; they don’t fix leaking pipes or drive trucks…they are just money-grubbers on the make. Their money tells them that Trump is a threat (their money is right about that) and so they go after the target picked by the money. They don’t give a sh** about what happens to America – all they want is their pay.

And how do we get rid of them? I had hoped that Trump would, indeed, drain the swamp…but can it be drained? For it to be drained, quite a large number of people (and at least 35% of them GOPers, by my guess) would have to go to jail. Who is going to prosecute them? And even if you found a prosecutor willing to do it, how are you going to get a jury in DC – where almost everyone who isn’t already on the take, wants to be – to convict? Trump can pardon Flynn (I hope he does, and soon) – and he can also pardon everyone associated with his campaign. But that doesn’t get rid of the crooks. And, meanwhile, at the State level (especially in New York) Democrats under the cloak of office are determined to use State law to punish Trump people in a way that Trump can’t stop. What are we to do? Roll over for them?

Thanks to Ryan’s cowardly leadership (which I believe was intentional: he wanted Trump to fail), we now no longer have the ability to legislate any changes. Certainly not any changes which would put any Democrat at risk. Can Trump get an AG who will find the (quite possibly few) people at Justice who are willing to enforce the law? I don’t know. But I hope he can – because if he can’t, then Civil War will come. I won’t want it to come. I’ll hate it when it comes. But it will come – because one thing people on our side are learning is that there is no justice for us. Unless at least some major Democrats are set in Flynn’s position, we’ll know that there is zero chance of a fair outcome…and people who are convinced that all outcomes will be unfair to them will start to take vigorous and direct action against their oppressors.

There is still a small window of opportunity for justice to prevail – I hope it does. But if Injustice is our fate, then I do believe that enough Americans will draw the logical conclusion from that.

Open Thread

M. Noonan44 Comments

Its been busy the last few days. Lots of stuff happening. Let’s take a glance:

California is considering a tax on texting.

No, really. They are.

Congressman Ted Lieu (D-People’s Republic of California) wants to ban free speech.

No, I’m not kidding.

Trump cancels the White House Christmas party for the press. Seriously: would you want to hang out with them for a couple hours? Could you be polite to people who know are not merely stupid, but wicked?

Mueller’s office scrubbed the cell phones of Strzok and Page. Why would he do that except to cover up crimes? The only question I have: did Mueller know about the crimes before they happened? Mueller is a corrupt, Deep State hack and his real purpose is to cover up the crimes – he’d like to get Trump, too; but he’s far more set upon making sure no one finds out how this Trump/Russia thing got started.

We’re pulling out of the INF nuclear weapons treaty because the Russians are breaking it. They’ve been breaking it for a while, of course, but only Trump – the Russian stooge – has had the guts to do anything about it. More and more, you really start to wonder if Trump’s critics are stupid, or just too embarrassed to admit they were wrong?

Netanyahu points out that the Khashoggi killing is horrible, but given the realities of the Middle East, better to let it slide. This is all that really needs be said of the matter – the ME is a binary choice between Iranian dominance and no Iranian dominance. Pick which result you want and act accordingly.

The defense being offered for the FBI entrapping Flynn is that they do it all the time. I don’t think the FBI’s defenders realize how bad that sounds.

Study indicates that millennial men are kinda, well, weak. My view: this is the result of so many men being raised in female-headed households. And, don’t get me wrong, there might be a little upside in here as it is good that men care more about others…but, on the other hand, we still need someone to change tires and carry a rifle from time to time.

Trump is going to cut funds for UN peacekeeping missions in Africa. This is good. First off, it treats the Africans like children who can’t manage their own affairs. I, for one, think they are fully capable of settling matters on their own – and only if they directly ask us for assistance do I think we should offer them any. Secondly, UN peacekeepers are, well, kinda creepy.

Gary Sinise continues to prove he’s one heck of a good guy.

Keith Richards says he’s giving up drinking. Now the guy will live to 120.

Boy Scouts face bankruptcy.

Twitter users start to switch to Parler to get away from Twitter’s rather Maoist actions. Gab tried to be the alternative to Twitter, but it really hasn’t taken off. The cool thing about Twitter is that when you follow a few hundred people, you start to get a TL that is constantly updating…you’re getting, news, jokes, remarks, links coming at you in rapid succession. Gab just gets people posting one or two things a day…and it became heavily infested with genuine Nazis which were disgusting to come across. I’m still on it, but only a few times a day. We’ll see if Parler pans out. Something will eventually replace Twitter and Facebook…because no one wants to be on a site where you have to worry about what you say.

Things Are Moving Fast

M. Noonan29 Comments

Just a lot going on, huh? But let’s start with something a bit smaller in the grand scheme of things – mostly because I expected it.

Megyn Kelly is learning a harsh lesson. Remember, her audience at Fox was right of center but then she got into a fight with Trump and became a critic of the President. Presto!, she’s hired by NBC…who were hoping she’d be a right of center voice attacking the President on a popular show. Well, turns out that there isn’t much of a market for rightwing critics of the President and her show didn’t so much tank in the ratings as never had ratings to begin with. But, she did have the $69 million contract. What to do?

The staff at Megyn Kelly Today got a chance to speak with human resources on Wednesday, and voice their concerns about the host of their show.

An NBC insider tells DailyMail.com that employees on the show made it very clear to that they were ‘disgusted’ by Kelly’s blackface comments and ‘didn’t like her personally.’

Staffers were also informed by NBC that they were members of the Today team at a time when (their) jobs appeared to be on the line.

Meanwhile, a member of the NBC team tells DailyMail.com that there will be another meeting on Thursday at 10am after NBC made the decision to keep Kelly off the air for the remainder of the week.

‘Given the circumstances, Megyn Kelly Today will be on tape the rest of the week,’ said an NBC spokesperson.

When this first blew up, I didn’t even bother looking into what she said – knowing in advance that whatever she said wasn’t remotely racist. The Mrs finally looked it up and played it for me: yep, not racist. But, that is beside the point. The point is that she’s a barnacle for NBC and as she’s not a leftist, she has to go. And go without getting all of her $69 million (they’ll have to pay her a hefty sum, I’m sure…but it won’t be near the full amount, I’ll bet – but, even if they have to shell out the full amount, it still benefits as they can possibly get a money-maker in that time slot). Now, had Kelly been a lifetime leftist, this wouldn’t have happened: the left keeps all manner of failed shows on TV because they meet a particular leftwing demand. But Kelly wasn’t one of them – she’s now learning that if you are non-left, you have no friends on the left. Ever. The left will use you, but it won’t love you – and it’ll knife you as soon as you no longer serve as an anti-right tool. Never Trump should take note – but they won’t: like all appeasers, they are only hoping the alligator eats them last.

Nothing really new about the whole bomb thing – just more yadda, yadda, yadda about how it means we’re supposed to surrender to the left. To which all of us are saying: “Yeah, no”. Legal Insurrection has a good run-down on it. My guess: leftwing hoax designed to hammer the GOP. I know a lot of people push back against that – but, remember, we’re dealing with people who really have made stuff up in the past for political reasons. From “racist” notes on receipts to “hands up, don’t shoot” inspired riots. Fake bombs are simply not outside the realm of possibility for the left.

Still seeing more good news for the GOP in early voting, but I’m getting suspicious that everyone, right and left, is just confirming their biases. Because of various actions I still expect the GOP to do pretty well on the 6th – it is clearly not going the way the Democrats were expecting even a month ago – but I think, in the end, we’re all just going to have to wait for the votes to be counted before we can be sure. It is notoriously difficult to predict how mid-terms go because you never know what the electorate will look like. I discount the polls because I simply don’t expect the electorate to be 42% independents voting 60/40 for the Democrats. I could be like that, and if it is, the GOP will get slaughtered. But, I don’t expect it. I expect the breakdown to be more 35% GOP, 32% Dem, 37% Independent…but with the independents breaking slightly GOP and more Dems voting GOP than GOPers voting Dem. But, we’ll see.

UPDATE: Watch this clip of an MSMer complaining about having “Fake News” shouted at him by a random person. Important bit: it happened in Queens. Not exactly a MAGA stronghold. If people in Queens are following the President on this, I can only suspect a very large shift in national attitudes which may well show up surprisingly on the 6th.

Stocks took another dump yesterday but are rebounding a bit, so far, today. To me, this looks like a mere market correction. If so, there could be another 10% downside for the Dow (ie, a total drop of about 2,500 more points). Nothing to get worked up about – also, the market doesn’t like uncertainty and until the mid-terms are sorted out, no one really knows what the next two years will be like.

I haven’t said much about the Khashoggi murder mostly because I don’t care about it. Meaning: I do care that a fellow human being was killed and I do hope those who did it are punished…but I don’t care in the sense that I don’t see this as something Americans or America needs to get bent out of shape about. It seems to me that the real intent behind blowing this murder up to epic proportions is to drive a wedge between the United States and Saudi Arabia. The parties who would benefit from this would be Turkey and Iran – and especially Iran. I’ve written in the past about Saudi Arabia – I don’t really like it. It is, to me, a sort of Mafia family which got control of a nation (one of the funniest jokes made on this was along the lines of “Khashoggi was going to be made, but there was a problem and there’s nothing we could do about it” – taken from that famous scene in Goodfellas). But, Iran is a much larger problem than Saudi Arabia and Turkey is rapidly turning into a full-blown enemy of the United States. I’m not prepared to allow Iran and Turkey to take over the Middle East because the less-dangerous Mafia family did something wrong.

And as long as we’re on the subject – ISIS has issued new threats to carry out knife and gun attacks in “Crusader nations”. Which means they’ll pick soft targets and murder as many unarmed people as they can. Safest place: any American gun show or shooting range. They won’t show up there.

The Trump/Russia thing continues to grind on. Sharyl Attkisson has some interesting things about it:

…there’s now an impressive body of public evidence to address another facet of this international controversy: collusion against Trump.

Evidence on this matter has trickled out slowly over the course of about two years. It has come in the form of sworn testimony from witnesses interviewed by Congress, information revealed by the Justice Department’s inspector general, government documents and text messages, and court files.

Taken together in context, the evidence points to two important findings. First, U.S. government insiders, colluding with numerous foreign citizens and governments, conspired to interfere in the 2016 election. Second, after the election, these figures conspired to undermine, oust, and perhaps even frame Trump and some of his associates.

I figure Mueller will shut it down after the mid-terms. If the Democrats win the House, with some sort of recommendation for impeachment of Trump. If GOP wins the House, then with a scathing statement of how bad Trump is, but no recommendation either way. If the GOP does win the House, then that is probably the best outcome for the GOP and for Trump…and toothless shriek. If it comes out that way, then I was wrong to urge Trump to fire Mueller.

Open Thread

M. Noonan8 Comments

Rachel Rollins won the Democrat primary for Suffolk County, MA District Attorney…and, given the nature of things, this means she’s the new DA. She’s promised to “decline to prosecute”, unless a supervisor’s permission is obtained, such crimes as trespassing, shoplifting, disorderly conduct, receiving stolen property, driving without a license, minor in possession of alcohol, drug possession with intent to distribute. Everything old is new, again – especially for liberals, who haven’t had a new idea in a century. This is precisely what did starting in the 1950’s – going easy on “minor” crimes because, well, they were being committed by poor boys who were simply acting out of frustration over poverty and lack of opportunity. The result was our murder rate in the 1970’s. This is just the per usual virtue signalling from leftists who will never, ever spend the night in a crime infested neighborhood.

Some Lefty rando on Twitter decided to get into Robert O’Neill’s face when O’Neill mildly pointed out that Obama still can’t say “Radical Islam”. The Lefty said:

He kinda killed Osama Bin Laden, so….

Thing is, O’Neill was part of Seal Team 6, which took out Bin Laden…the rest of the Lefty rando’s day didn’t go so well on Twitter.

Papadopoulos got 14 days. Trump pointed out that it cost $28 million to get to this…$2 million per day spent in jail.

Corey Stewart wants to have an ICE Tea Party on September 15th outside the Fairfax, VA ICE office.

Woman gets dumped, and Robert Stacy McCain has an interesting take on it.

Open Thread

M. Noonan19 Comments

California passed a bill to require all corporate boards to have at least one woman – because you tender, little ladies just can’t get there on your own, I guess.

Robert Stacy McCain notes the “wilding” problem in Chicago – and links to this article:

After spending the day at Oak Street Beach, the girlfriend claims she and her boyfriend were walking back to their car at around 6 p.m. in the vicinity of the 900 block of North Lake Shore Drive when they were surrounded by “20-to-25 offenders who gathered around them,” Hopkins said.

“She described a completely unprovoked attack with no warning. Her and her boyfriend were enjoying the day on the beach. They were walking back to their car minding their own business and, with no warning at all, they were surrounded by this large group and they did absolutely nothing to provoke it,” Hopkins said.

“They started a confrontation and, at some point, the victim was struck in the head and fell to the ground.”

Civilization is a thing veneer, folks. And lots of very bad people figured that out a long time ago – mostly notable Lenin, Hitler and Stalin. You rip the lid off, and people will do the most astonishingly savage things. Not all of them – but enough will. People just take peace for granted – security of life and property. But the general security we enjoyed in our cities wasn’t a natural event. It grew over a thousand years during which time everyone went around armed and punishments for even relatively minor crimes were brutal: in 18th century London, most men carried a sword and you could be flogged for petty theft. The idea that one shouldn’t commit a crime didn’t come naturally: it was literally beaten into the population. Its been a long time since the pound of flesh has really been extracted and, meanwhile, we’ve been essentially telling the rising generations that being a criminal is cool. What happened in that article is the natural result – and the natural result of that will be everyone eventually going around armed and a return to savage punishments for even minor offenses. And don’t think this all “just happened”…as I said, bad people long ago figured out that civilization is a weak reed…and those who hate our civilization (and they are legion among us) see things like the “wilding” as just another means of tearing down the hated civilization.

What is the Trump/Russia thing? Don Surber puts it all in a very complete nutshell:

The real news was the breakfast itself, which was relegated to Paragraph 14: “One of the meetings he recounted was a Washington breakfast attended by Steele, a Steele associate and Ohr. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, who worked for Fusion GPS, the political research firm that hired Steele, attended at least part of it.”

Ohr was not only married to a woman who worked for the company Hillary and the DNC hired to get dirt on Donald John Trump, but Ohr was meeting with the man in charge of delivering the dossier.

The only collusion with Russians was Steele and his sources at the Kremlin getting together to put together a dossier aimed at bringing down a duly elected American president.

It is all anyone needs to know – the Trump/Russia thing was cooked up by people determined to get Trump. The end. Shut it down – fire Mueller.

The reason we don’t have a Democracy is because our Founders knew that a full Democracy was too risky – remember, all the Athenians had to do to win the Peloponnesian War was not vote to execute a batch of successful admirals. The Founders kept the people away from full power, and that is a good thing, because popular passions can get out of hand. On the other hand, those yapping about “saving Democracy” under Trump dislike Democracy as much as the Founders did…especially as a fully functioning Democracy would probably force into exile most of those now claiming to be Democracy’s defenders.

The Never-Ending Trump-Russia Conspiracy Theory

M. Noonan6 Comments

The House Intel committee came to it’s conclusion:

The House Intelligence Committee has released findings from its upcoming report on the Trump-Russia affair — and its main conclusion is that it has discovered no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.

“We have found no evidence of collusion, coordination, or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians,” the committee said in a one-page summary of its findings released Monday afternoon.

In addition, the committee took issue with the intelligence community assessment of Russian motivations in the 2016 election. The committee agrees with the assessment that the Russians did, in fact, try to interfere — the findings cite “Russian cyberattacks on U.S. political institutions in 2015-2016 and their use of social media to sow discord.” But the committee disagrees with the intelligence community judgment that Russian President Vladimir Putin specifically tried to help President Trump win the election.

Of course, we all knew this, already. These findings, though resulting from an exhaustive investigation, won’t convince our Progressives nor the Never Trumpers that there’s nothing to see here. They are all too invested in it, and they are invested in it because all of them were deeply invested in Hillary winning. Not just in the sense of her, personally, winning but in her winning proving conclusive that everyone who backed Trump was a complete idiot. Make no mistake about it: there is a lot of ego involved here.

You might recall that I predicted the 2006 mid-term elections not just wrong – but so incredibly, stupidly wrong that, in hindsight, I had to be a complete fool not to have seen it coming. I had, in that time, let the wish become the father of the thought. I didn’t want the Democrats to win, and so I went about for months finding reasons to justify my pre-conceived notion. Everyone can fall prey to this. But, for me, it was an excellent learning experience. I mostly learned that things can always go very different from what you expect. From that day to this, you might have noticed that I don’t make hard and fast political predictions. I always hedge my statements – “may”, “might”, “could be”, and so on. I made my mistake, took my lumps and moved on – because I’m not an egoist. The Progressives and the Never Trumpers very much are. And they are hanging on to Trump-Russia because as long as it exists, it explains away their mistake. They weren’t wrong, you see? Russia colluded with Trump! That’s how Trump won!

Now, to be sure, you can’t nail these guys down. As Ace points out, they are like the “soft” 9/11 Truthers…they won’t specifically state what they believe, but they’ll glide around hinting at this or that statement which backs up the main part of the theory (in 9/11 Trutherism, that Bush knew about and/or planned the 9/11 attacks). If you ask Trump-Russia theorists to fill in the blanks: “Putin did (blank) to help Trump win in return for (blank)”, you’ll never get them to fill them in. They can’t – they don’t dare because anything put into those blanks is going to be so clearly absurd as to be laughable. There was nothing Putin could do to alter the election and there was nothing Trump could do that would help Putin. Period. But the true believers keep at it – because it is their security blanket. Their assurance that they didn’t just get it wrong.

Getting it wrong is about the worst feeling you can have, after all. When you’ve done something bone-headed, you just feel the worst. You’d rather have been caught robbing a bank or something. Nothing is worse than looking like a fool – at least, for most of us. A few saints have risen above such things, but most of us are slaves to our dignity…to our pride. Not seeing the obvious in 2016 – that Trump was running a campaign tailor-made to pull in disaffected Democrats and thus would likely get him over 270 – is a bitter pill to swallow. Only one Never Trumper I know has really swallowed it – he freely admitted after the election that he simply refused to see the proof that Trump at least had a solid shot (what he missed, most egregiously, was the massive shift in voter registration to the GOP in Pennsylvania).

The longer anyone keeps with a mistake, the more invested they get in defending the mistake. So we can rely on it that the people who still believe in Trump-Russia will keep on believing it. Twenty years from now they’ll still bring it up from time to time. Just as we still have people mumbling about 9/11, so we’ll hear mumbles about Trump-Russia forever. Fortunately, most of us can ignore it, if we haven’t already. There’s nothing to find because there’s no possibility it can be true. And the really good news is that people who are lashed themselves to the mast of stupidity will keep on being stupid, thus making it more likely we’ll win in years to come.