Real Men Of Genius!

Battlespace prep

Posted on December 4, 2020December 4, 2020 by Mike

People get ready.

Joe Biden is asked about his disagreements with Kamala Harris on certain issues:

"Like I told Barack, if I reach something where there's a fundamental disagreement we have based on a moral principle, I'll develop some disease and say I have to resign." pic.twitter.com/SLcvrwaPCA

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 4, 2020

Ace quips:

Confused Old Man: If I Have a Disagreement With Kamala I’ll Just Pretend I Have Advanced Cognitive Decline and Resign as Being Mentally Incompetent to Serve as President
—Ace

Well, that’s the gist of Biden’s statement.

The media is saying “No big deal, this is just a joke.”

Oh, a joke?

Weird. As Julie Kelly pointed out, one time Trump made a joke about Hillary’s deleted emails and he got a three year FBI/Special Counsel investigation for it.

But Democrats are permitted to tell jokes?

Interesting.

Oh, it’s a joke all right. I’m sure what Gropey should have said was, “of course I’ll do whatever my handlers tell me to do, up to and including stepping aside to make way for the Real President.” That would be a lot more accurate and honest.

Larger than life

Posted on December 3, 2020December 3, 2020 by Mike

This. This. Right. Here.

Although Donald Trump has not conceded defeat, pundits and Republicanpoliticians are already debating the man’s legacy as though he were part of the past.

A recurring theme is that of “Trumpism without Trump.” If we’re being honest, this is a bit of an extravagant and presumptuous notion. Without Trump? We are talking about Donald Trump, yes?

As far as I can tell, Trump is not a philosopher. He has never written a treatise or a manifesto. The “America First” platform is valuable, and one certainly hopes that it leaves a mark, but unless I am mistaken, Trump supporters do not love the man chiefly for his ideas.

Perhaps the most well-known advocate of “Trumpism without Trump” is Ann Coulter, known for her doctrinaire criticism of Trump’s putative failures to deliver on the “America First” agenda. But others, who cannot be considered hardcore nationalists, have latched onto the concept as well.

That is not much of a surprise, given the abundance of pseudo-Trumpists in that part of the conservative punditocracy that prizes respectability above all. For these, Trump was useful as a muse for waxing about some generic form of “populism” but not much more than that. They’ll be glad to be rid of him.

But can’t we first recognize what an extraordinary person Trump is, before we discard the man for an abstraction?

Oh, I’m gonna be stomping all over Fair Use with this one.

“Trumpism” is a vague thing, and the Republian establishment and the kept Right are eager to jettison Trump and leave us with an ersatz version of his movement. Trump’s primary achievement, says Rubio, is that he made the Republican Party the home of a “multi-racial working class.” But this elides an essential part of Trump’s rise, which was that he acknowledged American whites who had felt put upon and alienated in an increasingly hostile regime. Any “Trumpism” that lacks the courage to push back against the relentless, anti-white sentiment of the Left is counterfeit.

Trump’s movement is a genuine revolution. Like any revolution, it is liable to corruption and change. This has happened with many movements before: the momentum gets lost, and it turns into a husk of its former self. If we’re being unsparingly honest, it is possible that Trump’s movement dies with him. History does not always offer second chances.

If Trump’s downfall really is a fait accompli, then millions of Americans will take his loss like a deathblow to America. If that is cultism, count me in. We are lucky to have Trump. He is an American hero, the best—the only—real defender we have had in generations. We should say this without shame or reservation, and if things do not go our way, we should not flinch from the difficulties that lie ahead without him.

As I’ve so often said, Trump proved to be one of the best Presidents this country was ever blessed to have, perhaps THE best. Certainly the best in my lifetime, hands down. I was on board the Trump Train from that fabled escalator ride, and predicted he would win before almost anyone else, back in the earliest days of the GOP primary stretch. That said, even I didn’t expect the man to deliver the goods to the extent that he has. Considering the devious, conniving opposition he’s faced from every side, the political-neophyte outsider’s many achievements start to look not only exceptional, but downright staggering.

Yes, the struggle will go on, with or without him. But it’ll go much, much better with him, no doubt about it. If there’s such a thing as a truly Irreplaceable Man, Trump at this singular moment in American history would have to come as close to it as anybody ever did. “Trumpism without Trump” is horseshit on stilts, arrant nonsense peddled by Lilliputian mediocrities hoping to make themselves appear bigger via hitching a ride on the shoulders of the bona fide giant they had worked so feverishly to tie down.

Appeasement, then and now

Posted on November 27, 2020 by Mike

Never go full Neville.

The Bell of Treason, by P.E. Caquet, is gripping but painful reading. It tells the story of the Munich deal from a viewpoint we rarely hear it: that of the Czechs. Instead of focusing on the fears of the French or the British, it shows us the steely resolve, and tragic patriotic fervor, of the liberty-loving Czechs. They could never believe that their allies would throw them under the bus. Nor did the German generals who plotted to overthrow Hitler rather than start a war they couldn’t win.

And that’s the point: The Germans were far too weak to win a war in 1938. They had fewer tanks than France, and most of them were inferior. They were incapable of blowing up Allied tanks, but vulnerable to their shells. The Luftwaffe at the time was more hype than reality. The U-boats that would later devastate British shipping still hadn’t been built.

Meanwhile the Czech military was almost half as strong as Germany’s. It had solid, realistic plans for resisting until the French could bail it out. English and French appeasers warned against massive German bombing of their cities — which wouldn’t even be possible for two more years. Powerful Czech fortresses guarded its mountainous borders. Poland was still unconquered, and posed a threat to the German rear. The Soviet Union hadn’t yet switched to ally itself with Hitler, and might have intervened.

In every way, the prospects of a war against Nazi Germany were better in 1938 than they’d prove in 1940, when Germany finally chose the moment to blitzkrieg its way into France. The much stronger Panzers that would roll then into Paris were made … in factories taken over from the Czechs, after Hitler’s bloodless conquest.

With all this in mind, I’d like my fellow patriots to consider: If this vote fraud was real, and leading Democrats are really so disdainful of democracy, is the time for taking extraordinary means to stop them now? Or once they fully control the U.S. military, the FBI, the NSA, the CIA, the IRS and the Secret Service? Once the last flickers of free speech have flickered out on social media, and the last cable network switched sides, as Fox News just did? Once courts have essentially nullified the Second Amendment, and millions of our timid neighbors have dutifully turned in their guns? Once ANTIFA expands into every American city?

Just read this catalog of tyrannical, punitive measures prominent Trump opponents have called for even before the election has been settled.

Appeasement doesn’t prevent a war. It just postpones it. Abandoning your allies and champions is a great way to ensure that you’ll fight alone.

And what do we do if God forbid we learn that the voter fraud was all too real, but can’t prove it in time to stop a gang of thieves from constitutionally taking power? I really don’t have answer to this last one. I hope Donald Trump does.

Actually, we all DO have the answer, and most of us are well aware of what it entails. But reluctance to wage war until there is simply no other alternative is a most human trait; even though it can exact a steep toll, it isn’t entirely a bad thing. Clinging to denial and self-deception until reality brings us face to face with the brutal truth is a story as old as Time itself.

“The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance”

Posted on November 7, 2020November 7, 2020 by Mike

I never heard before of the guy who coined my title quote, I must confess. From the sound of it, it appears I’ve been missing out on something wonderful.

Paul Johnson will be 90 on November 2nd. He is one of the most prolific British writers of the last half-century and a superb chronicler of the past. He deserves the honors and plaudits coming his way as he crosses the threshold of his tenth decade.

Johnson’s perspective is often described as “conservative,” but I find his work simply good, factual reporting of history, unvarnished by ideology. He doesn’t cherry-pick the evidence to support a preconception, let alone a misconception. Conventional wisdom (which is to say, “left-leaning”) suggests you’re “mainstream” and “objective” if you claim with the flimsiest of documentation that Franklin Roosevelt saved America from the Great Depression and that you’re a “conservative ideologue” if you just report the facts. Johnson reports the facts, so he gets the label his “progressive” critics hope will deter readers rather than enlighten them.

In his early days, Johnson’s political outlook was, by his own admission, leftist or “progressive.” But this is a man who not only writes history, he learns from it. The more Johnson learned, the less credible the progressive perspective was. By the mid-1970s, he was a cogent critic of the Left and its union allies, who were bringing Britain to its knees. He later became a friend, advisor, and speechwriter to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Johnson is himself a consummate intellectual, the honest and scholarly kind committed to truth for the sake of it—unlike the charlatans, hypocrites, and monsters he writes about. He proves that you can be an intellectual without falling hopelessly in love with yourself, tossing self-awareness to the wind, or fancying yourself God’s gift to a stupid humanity in need of your wisdom. Of the more delusional ones, he offers a cogent insight:

What conclusions should be drawn? Readers will judge for themselves. But I think I detect today a certain public skepticism when intellectuals stand up to preach to us, a growing tendency among ordinary people to dispute the right of academics, writers and philosophers, eminent though they may be, to tell us how to behave and conduct our affairs. The belief seems to be spreading that intellectuals are no wiser as mentors, or worthier as exemplars, than the witch doctors or priests of old. I share that skepticism. A dozen people picked at random on the street are at least as likely to offer sensible views on moral and political matters as a cross-section of the intelligentsia. But I would go further. One of the principal lessons of our tragic century, which has seen so many millions of innocent lives sacrificed in schemes to improve the lot of humanity, is—beware intellectuals. Not merely should they be kept away from the levers of power, they should also be objects of particular suspicion when they seek to offer collective advice.

Heady stuff for sure. But now we get to the part I most wanted to excerpt.

None of Johnson’s subjects can match Karl Marx for sheer loathsomeness and shameless fakery. He was a virulent racist and anti-Semite with a vicious temper (“Jewish n****r” was one of his favorite epithets). On a good day, he enjoyed threatening those who disagreed with him by blurting, “I will annihilate you!” His personal hygiene was, well, suffice it to say he had none. He was heartlessly cruel to his family and anyone who crossed him. This is the same man who postured as a thinker whose ideas would save humanity.

We learn in (Johnson’s book) Intellectuals that the chef who cooked up communism professed to be “scientific.” In reality, Johnson argues, “there was nothing scientific about him; indeed, in all that matters he was anti-scientific.” His most famous lines—including “religion is the opiate of the masses” and workers “have nothing to lose but their chains”—were flagrantly ripped off from other authors. He “never set foot in a mill, factory, mine or other industrial workplace in the whole of his life,” steadfastly abjured invitations to do so, and denounced fellow revolutionaries who did. He never let a fact or a glimmer of reality stem the flow of poison from his pen. He had no money because he refused to work for it, then cursed those who had it and didn’t share it with him. His own mother said she wished her son “would accumulate some capital instead of just writing about it.”

Johnson’s lancing of the suppurating boil on the ass of humankind that was Karl Marx is appropriately merciless, and, as Reed says, “that’s for starters.” Read all of it. As mentioned in the article, Johnson also has a website which looks to be chock-full of more rich buttery goodness (“from 1971 onwards,” according to the archive page), which I’m definitely bookmarking for further perusal as and when I get the op’ratunity.

(Via Insty)

Peace is breaking out all over

Posted on October 24, 2020October 24, 2020 by Mike

Remarkable.

Sudan will be removed from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list and will begin a partnership with the United States and Israel, President Donald Trump announced on Friday.

“HUGE win today for the United States and for peace in the world. Sudan has agreed to a peace and normalization agreement with Israel! With the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, that’s THREE Arab countries to have done so in only a matter of weeks. More will follow!” he tweeted.

The agreement comes just weeks after Trump secured two other historic peace deals in the Middle East through the signing of The Abraham Accords with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, which established full diplomatic relations of the countries with Israel. These deals facilitated by the Trump Administration are meant to bring “stability, security, and prosperity” in the region.

“It is a new world,” Netanyahu said on the phone with reporters in the Oval Office. “We are cooperating with everyone. Building a better future for all of us.”

Trump also signaled his intent to continue negotiating deals with other Middle East countries, saying there are at least five others, including Saudi Arabia, that want in.

Not too shabby for a POTUS who has either been a disastrous failure or has accomplished nothing whatsoever in his first term, depending on which passel of idiots is talking at the moment. Scott Adams’s take puts that bushwa to bed:

How would you like to run for president against an incumbent who did so well on foreign policy that the debates don't even need to include that topic? That's actually happening.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) October 22, 2020

It’s not so much that they didn’t need to; the Powers That Be types running the shitshow “debates” couldn’t include it. Against all expectations, Trump has done truly astounding things on the world stage. His deft, skillful efforts are literally making the world a better place. The Left/ NeverTrumpTard/Swamp coalition can’t afford to bring that sort of thing up; it’s the last thing in the world they want people to be talking about.

A brand new day, a brand new way

Posted on October 22, 2020October 22, 2020 by Mike

Y’know, you wonder sometimes why Trump continues to give any of these asswipes the time of day. And then he shows you.

Trump Releases Raw Video of ’60 Minutes’ Interview and It’s Everything You Thought It Would Be

Oh, it’s that, and much, much more.

Trump’s reasoning for the move has been that the media doesn’t represent him honestly, and he wanted to make sure the people could see the full footage and make their own judgments.

Watching back the video, it is obvious they made the right choice. Stahl came in loaded for bear and set up the interview by asking the President if he was “ready for some tough questions.” Trump responded with a shrug.

Trump:Just be fair
LS: But last time I remember you saying ‘bring it on. Bring it on’
Trump: No I’m not looking for that. I’m looking for fairness. That’s all.
LS:You’re going to get fairness. But you’re ok with tough questions?
Trump: You don’t ask Biden tough questions.

It didn’t get much better from there.

The hell you say; I think it gets LOTS better from there. A couple-three more good ‘uns over at RS, all of which you should read. Ace also has plenty of delicious examples of our no quarter, no holds barred POTUS giving shitlib propagandaist Stahl the full brass-knuckles-to-the-mouth treatment, including:

STAHL: Can you characterize your supporters?

TRUMP: Yeah, I think I can: people who love our country.

And:

This exchange between Trump and Lesley Stahl is insane. She repeatedly insists the Biden laptops can’t be verified, so reporters shouldn’t talk about it.

Trump asks her why it can’t be verified.

Her answer: Because it can’t be verified.

Oh, izzat so, bitch?

My name is Tony Bobulinski.

The facts set forth below are true and accurate; they are not any form of domestic or foreign disinformation. Any suggestion to the contrary is false and offensive.

I am the recipient of the email published seven days ago by the New York Post which showed a copy to Hunter Biden and Rob Walker. That email is genuine.

This afternoon I received a request from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs and the Senate Committee on Finance requesting all documents relating to my business affairs with the Biden family as well as various foreign entities and individuals. I have extensive relevant records and communications and I intend to produce those items to both Committees in the immediate future.

That’s verification aplenty, without even tossing the FBI, the DoJ, and the DNI into the “verified” pot as well. Clearly, when the liar Stahl says “it can’t be verified,” what she really means is it WON’T be verified—not by her, not by CBS News, by any and every other Praetorian Media outlet. And that’s because the “news business” Gorgon isn’t actually in the business of reporting the news at all, and hasn’t been for a very long time.

The historic popularity and profitability of Tucker’s show raises a simple, yet important question: why have none of the major networks, including Fox, attempted to copy his success?

Wouldn’t the fabled “marketplace of ideas” dictate a certain convergence toward the topics and styles that draw the biggest audiences?

Perhaps the ad boycotts aimed at Tucker have scared off would-be copycats. But this simply raises the question of why companies would leave money on the table by refusing to advertise on television’s most popular cable news show. Something is off here, and it suggests that the media industry does not work according to a simple profit motive.

What if the true goal of a media conglomerate is not to produce a reliable and entertaining news service tailored to its audience, but rather to influence that audience on behalf of third parties? What if the purpose of a media company is not to be profitable for its own sake, but influential for the sake of others?

Business models aren’t always what they present themselves to be. Movie theaters make money not from ticket sales, but from concession stands. Airlines likewise need to sell tickets, but they make more profit from frequent flier rewards programs. Supermarkets are increasingly big data collectors for insurance companies.

This does not mean that profit is irrelevant to a media company. In Tucker’s case, his stratospheric ratings are a great tool of leverage, and without profit, a company must continually court new investors. But the point remains that for a serious media enterprise, profit is always secondary to influence.

Just as a social media company’s true product is its user data, the true product of a major media company is the flow of narratives that shape the perception of reality. Wielding influence over the public mind will always be more valuable than any profit that could be generated by optimizing the news to suit public tastes.

Major media companies are not about profits, but influence — there is no “marketplace of ideas” that functions in the way people might imagine. And this applies to any industry that has a profound effect on the narratives and beliefs that shape the public’s perception of reality, including movies and video games.

In our increasingly corrupt society, every institution is a scam, and there is often a vast disconnect between the generally understood purpose of an institution and its actual purpose.

Indeed. If that sorta reminds of you of the NeverTrumpTard GOPe too, well, it damned well ought to. But as I’ve said so many times already: the greatest service Trump has done, will do, or could EVER do for this country has been to rip the mask off these underhanded s’faccim and expose them for what they really are, in a way that none but the willfully obtuse, the witless, or the nefarious can deny any longer.

Stand by, and stand ready

Posted on October 1, 2020October 1, 2020 by Mike

As I always say: we could use a lot more like ’em.

The crucial moment in Tuesday night’s debate was near the end when Joe Biden invited President Trump to throw the Proud Boys under the bus, and the president refused to do it. The president was asked by moderator Chris Wallace “to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw in Kenosha and as we’ve seen in Portland.” Trump replied, “Sure, I’m willing to do that,” but then added that “almost everything I see” in terms of violence “is from the left-wing, not from the right-wing. I’m willing to do anything.… I want to see peace.”

After further back-and-forth, Trump said, “Give me a name,” and Biden said, “Proud Boys.” To this, Trump replied: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by, but I’ll tell you what, somebody’s gotta do something about Antifa and the Left, because this is not a right-wing problem, this is a left-wing problem.”

Because I personally know both Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes and the group’s current chairman Enrique Tarrio, I was pleased by that response. The idea that the Proud Boys are a dangerous “white supremacist” organization is a myth created by the left-wing media, and it took courage for the president of the United States to stand tough in that moment.

The liberal media, of course, was scandalized, but who is rioting in Portland? Who attacked police and set up an “autonomous zone” in Seattle? Who has engaged in looting and arson in New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, and other major cities in the past several weeks? Hint: not the Proud Boys.

The Proud Boys, of course, were ecstatic over the president’s shout-out. They took the president’s words — “Stand back and stand by” — and incorporated it into their group’s logo. Oregon’s Democratic Gov. Kate Brown, who has allowed Antifa mobs to riot in Portland for months, took her cue to again denounce the Proud Boys as “white supremacists.” What Democrats don’t seem to understand is that there are millions of Americans who are sick and tired of being called racists, and these American voters know which party hates them. It’s Joe Biden’s party.

Dig that logo:

Say, that there would look most righteous on a black tee, would it not? Of course, the idea that the Proud Boys are anything resembling a “white supremacist” group is nothing but a bald-faced lie promulgated by manipulative propagandists.

It turns out not everybody believes the Proud Boys are white supremacists, including a prominent Black professor at a historically Black university.

Wilfred Reilly, associate professor of political science at Kentucky State University, said Wednesday that “the Proud Boys aren’t white supremacists,” describing the right-wing group’s beliefs as “Western chauvinist” and noting that their international chairman, Enrique Tarrio, is Black.

Mr. Reilly said that about 10% to 20% of Proud Boys activists are people of color, a diverse racial composition that is “extremely well-known in law enforcement,” based on his research.

“Enrique Tarrio, their overall leader, is a Black Cuban dude. The Proud Boys explicitly say they’re not racist,” Mr. Reilly told The Washington Times. “They are an openly right-leaning group and they’ll openly fight you — they don’t deny any of this — but saying they’re White supremacist: If you’re talking about a group of people more than 10% people of color and headed by an Afro-Latino guy, that doesn’t make sense.”

Facts, truth, and basic decency being of little use and no concern to Leftist scum the lies will continue, as the follow-up quotes included in the above article—shat forth from the cakeholes of putrescent pustules like Chuck Schemer and Cadaver Joe, among others—serve to confirm. But as quotes go, I like this one best:

“We’re a drinking club with a patriot problem,” Mr. Tarrio told CNN at a Sept. 26 rally in Portland. “As Proud Boys, I think our main objective is to defend the West.”

Preach it, brother. And bash on, until the last PantiFa pantywaist is just a pile of bloody goo lying unconscious in the gutter.

American Renaissance

Posted on September 26, 2020September 26, 2020 by Mike

AOSHQ COB KT mentions the Gipper’s farewell address in 1989, and his excerpt rang sharply enough in my head that I went looking for a transcript of the whole thing. Which, irony of ironies, I found tucked away in the online archives of…the NYT?!?

It’s stunning how familiar so much of this speech sounds today. Better go download the PDF now, before some NYT trog realizes their blunder and deep-sixes all reference to it.

Well, back in 1980, when I was running for President, it was all so different. Some pundits said our programs would result in catastrophe. Our views on foreign affairs would cause war, our plans for the economy would cause inflation to soar and bring about economic collapse. I even remember one highly respected economist saying, back in 1982, that “The engines of economic growth have shut down here and they’re likely to stay that way for years to come.”

Well, he – and the other “opinion leaders” – were wrong. The fact is, what they called “radical” was really “right”; what they called “dangerous” was just “desperately needed.”

And in all that time I won a nickname – “The Great Communicator.” But I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference – it was the content. I wasn’t a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn’t spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation – from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries.

They called it the Reagan Revolution, and I’ll accept that, but for me it always seemed more like the Great Rediscovery: a rediscovery of our values and our common sense.

I think we have stopped a lot of what needed stopping. And I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts.

Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American, and we absorbed almost in the air a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn’t get these things from your family you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed, you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid-Sixties.

Our spirit is back, but we haven’t reinstitutionalized it. We’ve got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom – freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise – and freedom is special and rare. It’s fragile; it needs protection.

We’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but what’s important: Why the pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant. You know, four years ago, on the 40th anniversary of D-Day. I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late father, who’d fought on Omaha Beach. Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, we will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did. Well, let’s help her keep her word.

If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I am warning of an eradication of that – of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.

Familiar? All too, I’d say. Every word of it was true then, and is equally true today. And the Left still reacts to those eternal truths as a vampire does to a splash of Holy Water in the face—the only difference between then and now being how much more vicious, violent, and just plain bold they’ve become while Real Americans fitfully slumbered.

This is quite heady and essential stuff: music to the American ear, of a tone and timbre we heard no more of in the long, dark years after. Until Trump entered the arena, that is. Is it really any wonder why they hate him so fanatically?

“Small masters of not so small betrayals”

Posted on September 22, 2020September 22, 2020 by Mike

Codevilla calls ’em all out.

Understandably, senators such as Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who have made careers of talking conservative while doing their utmost not to displease the ruling class that despises us, don’t want further to energize opposition to their reelection. Hence, they kind of promise to vote “no” now while kind of promising to vote “yes” after the election.

The question before President Trump and McConnell is whether to identify with these small masters of not so small betrayals. If they do, they would discredit themselves and their party. Why should voters believe that, all together, they will do after the election what they have the power to do now but refuse? What is the difference between before the election and after the election?

There is only one difference, namely: to act before an election is to submit one’s actions to immediate judgment by the sovereign people. As you act, you must explain to the voters why it is right to act as you do. The voters then decide on you.

And why would a worthy nominee agree to undergo the certainty of vilification by the Left knowing that, after the election, the newly reelected weak Republicans would be stronger than ever in pressing the concerns of their ruling class donors against Trump, newly a lame-duck, regardless of voters whom they would not have to face for another six years?

Angelo recommends one day of hearings, a total ban on Democrat-Socialist carnival acts and freakshows, and limited floor debate, none of which ought to be considered in any way radical or outrageous. The Repubs hold a majority in the Senate; if they refuse to start acting like it, they won’t for much longer. This is an opportunity for the RINOs to redeem themselves, at least somewhat. If they let it pass them by, it will cost them dearly. And it certainly should.

Happily, though, it looks as if Lindsey v2.0 might be making a most welcome comeback.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham on Monday night said his party has enough votes to confirm a new Supreme Court justice before the November election.

“We’ve got the votes to confirm Justice [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg’s replacement before the election,” Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity.

“We’re going to move forward in the committee, we’re going to report the nomination out of the committee to the floor of the United States Senate so we can vote before the election.”

Bold mine, and quite encouraging words they are too. Even better:

Yesterday, Graham sent a letter to his Democratic colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee politely informing them that he’s here to kick a** and chew gum, and he just ran out of gum. Here is a quote from the end of the letter:

“Lastly, after the treatment of Justice Kavanaugh I now have a different view of the judicial-nomination process. Compare the treatment of Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh to that of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, and it’s clear that there is already one set of rules for a Republican president and one set of rules for a Democrat president. I therefore think it is important that we proceed expeditiously to process any nomination made by President Trump to fill this vacancy. I am certain that if the shoe were on the other foot, you would do the same.”

OK then. It’s on.

Good stuff all, to be sure, but now we come to something truly astounding.

The Constitution gives the President the power to nominate and the Senate the authority to provide advice and consent on Supreme Court nominees. Accordingly, I intend to follow the Constitution and precedent in considering the President’s nominee. If the nominee reaches the Senate floor, I intend to vote based upon their qualifications.

Simple, direct, rational, and perfectly reasonable. So who said it?

Better sit down for it, folks. Trust me.

Game-changer

Posted on September 15, 2020September 15, 2020 by Mike

Walk a mile in my shoes.

A video from 2015 has gone viral, showing a black anti-police activist accepting an invitation from Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona to participate in police use of force simulation training sessions to better understand the stresses and split-second decisions police officers are faced with on a daily basis.

Was Sheriff Joe Arpaio still in charge in Maricopa back then? Ah well, no matter. Onwards.

Reverend Jarrett Maupin, who organized #BlackLivesMatter protests following the officer-involved shooting in Ferguson, participated in three scenarios, each one followed by a discussion of when he sensed a threat and why he chose to draw his weapon.

In the first scenario, Maupin approached a suspect in a parking lot and was ‘shot’ almost instantly. In the second, the reverend approached two men fighting, and fired his weapon when one of the men charged him.

“I shot because he was in that zone,” Maupin explained to a police trainer. “I felt that was an imminent threat – I didn’t necessarily see him armed but he came clearly to do some harm to the officer – to my person.”

The man who Maupin shot at was unarmed.

In the third scenario, Maupin received a call about a possible burglary and was able to get the suspect to the ground, without any shots fired.

Maupin stated that the training scenarios changed his way of thinking, saying, “I didn’t understand how important compliance was… people need to comply with the orders of law enforcement officers, for their own safety.”

Somehow I missed this back in June when Hoft first posted it, but I’m glad to have finally run across it….via The People’s Cube, of all places.

Trump should be pushing hard for the implementation of this program in his second term, and provide any amount of federal money to support it too. In fact, it ought to be a mandatory course of instruction for every ghetto hood-rat arrested for crimes against either property or person, before bail is even set, all across America. If he did so, this country could possibly end up looking like a completely different place after only a few short years.

Of course you’re not going to change every mind with this program, nor will every Negro heart be liberated from the inchoate hatred and mistrust of da po-po instilled so meticulously by Proggy and his Pet Media. In fact, it may well be that it wouldn’t make much real difference at all in the end. But if it didn’t, well, so what? We can always give “midnight basketball” another try.

Trump train rolling

Posted on September 12, 2020September 12, 2020 by Mike

Truly remarkable. Also: UNEXPECTED!™

The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 11, 2020
PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP HAS BROKERED A HISTORIC DEAL BETWEEN ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OF BAHRAIN

“Now that the ice has been broken, I expect more Arab and Muslim countries will follow the United Arab Emirates’ lead.” – President Donald J. Trump

SECURING ANOTHER HISTORIC AGREEMENT: President Donald J. Trump has brokered a deal to establish full diplomatic relations between Bahrain and Israel – the second such agreement between Israel and an Arab nation in less than one month.

Israel and Bahrain have committed to begin the exchange of embassies and ambassadors, start direct flights between their countries, and launch cooperation initiatives across a broad range of sectors.

 

This peace deal is a significant step forward for both Israel and Bahrain.

  + It further enhances their security while creating opportunities for them to deepen their economic ties. 

This deal comes on the heels of the historic normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

  + The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are the first Arab nations to normalize relations with Israel in more than 25 years. 

The United States will continue to support the people of Bahrain as they work to counter terrorism and extremism, develop economically, and build new peaceful partnerships across the region.

WOW. An unqualified success, an unlooked-for leap forward, an undeniable boon for all mankind. Now tell me again all about how Trump has done nothing, achieved nothing, whydon’tcha.

During his first term, that would be.

Yes, yes, yes, YES!!!

Posted on August 20, 2020August 23, 2020 by Mike

THIS. This, x amillionbillionzillionkajillion.

Fuck you

Saw this beauty flying proudly from a pickup bed earlier today, and I couldn’t keep myself from whooping right out loud. Available for purchase here, for anyone out there who can actually hear those big, brass ‘uns a-clanking when they walk.

Another historic achievement

Posted on August 14, 2020August 15, 2020 by Mike

Know how some Dissident Right folks have begun whining lately that Trump has accomplished nothing whatever during his first term, even going so far as to join chinless Quislings like Bill French and David Kristol in endorsing Biden?

Yeah. About all that.

While it is not unusual in political circles to describe something as a historic breakthrough, it is unusual when the term is justified. Yet that is the right way to describe the three-way agreement announced Thursday by the Trump White House, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

Based on its immediate impact alone, you can even call this one an earthquake. In an instant, regional fault lines are redrawn and the door is thrown open for Israel to normalize its relations with other Arab states.

The agreement also dramatically turns up the heat on the Palestinians to make a deal, lest they find themselves further isolated in their standoff with Israel.

“It means they either have to finally come to the negotiating table, or keep going where they’ve been going,” Jared Kushner, the top American official involved in crafting the terms, told me.

Indeed, there is a sweetener in the deal aimed at the Palestinians. Israel’s agreement to suspend its plan to assert sovereignty over much of the West Bank is a huge concession that buys time for the Palestinians, but not endlessly. Kushner defined the suspension as covering the “foreseeable future.”

He said UAE leaders were concerned that the Israeli move would be a “big setback in relationships” and thus pushed for the suspension.

Meanwhile, establishing formal diplomatic relations and starting direct airline flights means Muslims from the UAE will be able to fly to Israel and visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. That opening shreds the claim from Islamists that Israel prevents them from worshiping at the mosques, among Islam’s holiest sites.

The enormous trade-offs vindicate President Trump’s policy of strengthening America’s alliance with Israel and countering Muslim extremists. The usual critics, including Democrats, most European governments and United Nations bureaucrats, predicted that Trump’s decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognize Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights would lead to greater Arab unity and possibly war.

In effect, the critics were endorsing the very policy the Obama-Biden administration pursued, which yielded only negative results. The former team gave Israel, Saudi Arabia and other traditional allies the back of the hand while wooing the Palestinians and Iran. In exchange, it got nothing except Palestinian intransigence and an emboldened and aggressive Iran.

By going in the opposite direction, Trump, Kushner and Ambassador David Friedman are using strengthened American-Israeli ties as a rallying point for Arab states who fear Iran more than Israel.

As they damned well should. Like Real Americans here at home, all Israel really wants from her neighboring Arab antagonists is just to be left alone; granted that, the Israelis are perfectly willing to return the favor. Personally, all I need to know about the agreement is: 1) whey-faced rectal polyp Rashida Tlaib, miscellaneous Ogabe junta Iran-baglappers, and the PLO swine are all unhappy about it, and B) Senile Uncle Gropey immediately committed another act of plagiarism, sort of, to glom credit for himself. With all those bitter malefactors left scrambling and flailing witlessly about, how could it NOT be a very good thing?

Hell, as Glenn says, this one is so damned big even the NYT’s pinko ChiCom pom-pom girl Tom Friedman can’t find a way to downplay it.

For once, I am going to agree with President Trump in his use of his favorite adjective: “huge.”

The agreement brokered by the Trump administration for the United Arab Emirates to establish full normalization of relations with Israel, in return for the Jewish state forgoing, for now, any annexation of the West Bank, was exactly what Trump said it was in his tweet: a “HUGE breakthrough.”…

Just go down the scorecard, and you see how this deal affects every major party in the region — with those in the pro-American, pro-moderate Islam, pro-ending-the-conflict-with-Israel-once-and-for-all camp benefiting the most and those in the radical pro-Iran, anti-American, pro-Islamist permanent-struggle-with-Israel camp all becoming more isolated and left behind.

It’s a geopolitical earthquake.

To fully appreciate why, you need to start with the internal dynamics of the deal. It was Trump’s peace plan drawn up by Jared Kushner, and their willingness to stick with it, that actually created the raw material for this breakthrough.

As far as I know, unlike the previous deals with Egypt and Jordan, this agreement is the first wherein an Arab state expicitly acknowledges Israel’s right to exist without sidestepping that crucial issue. That alone qualifies as historic. I know I registered a complaint about Kushner’s influence in the Trump admin not long ago; knowing what his ideological leanings are, I remain highly skeptical of the guy. But he appears to have done some truly fine and important work on this one, and I doff my cap to him.

Update! Not quite as momentous, admittedly, but still not “nothing” either.

Seth Borenstein, an environmental whack job at the Associated Press, filed a story, “Let it flow: Trump administration eases shower-head rules.”

In it, Borenstein took cheap shots at President Donald John Trump for daring to reverse Obama’s draconian and arbitrary rules on how much water can come out of a shower head.

According to the story, Congress gave the federal government the power to dictate the water flow. This was done to conserve water, which makes no sense because there is plenty of fresh water in the Great Lakes and most if the rest of the nation.

Of course, millions of people chose to live in the deserts of Arizona and Nevada. They have a problem with water supplies. That gave the government the excuse to regulate showers.

In his story, Borenstein wrote, “Publicly talking about the need to keep his hair ‘perfect,’ President Donald Trump has made increasing water flow and dialing back long held appliance conservation standards — from light bulbs to toilets to dishwashers — a personal issue.

Loosening the grip of meddlesome, intrusive tyranny, one tentacle at a time. If the shitlibs, environazis, Jurassic-media “journalists,” and Deep Staters are howling, then it’s a win. And hey, I’ll take it.

War all the time

Posted on August 8, 2020 by Mike

An evening with Charles Bukowski, my own personal Poet Laureate.

The drunken, womanizing, raucously incorrect world of Charles Bukowski may seem out of touch with contemporary sensibilities. Yet, most of us in these quarantine times can learn how an uncensored night at home could be well spent from “You Never Had It — An Evening With Charles Bukowski,” coming to Kino Marquee virtual cinemas in the Bay Area starting Friday, Aug. 7.

Less than an hour long, this conversational documentary with the prurient poet of Los Angeles’ lower depths is remarkably rich with insights into the writing craft and business, sex and love, humanity’s lack of humanity, and more.

Unlike at his often rowdy and combative public readings, Bukowski comes off as a gently growling, even cordial host here. He’s funny as hell, knows it and is pleased to prove it. All while consuming copious amounts of wine and skinny, Indian bidi cigarettes.

Among many gems that came out of Bukowski’s mouth that January evening:

“Writers are very despicable people; plumbers are better people,” following a revelation that he declined an invitation to meet Jean-Paul Sartre while on a book tour in Paris. “I’m a writer.”

“Why is everything sex?” during a stretch of playful, if morbid, back-and-forth on their cream-colored couch with his future wife, Linda Lee Beighle. “Can’t I ride a bicycle down the street without thinking about sex?”

“Take all these people in the world,” he says at one point, chillingly foreshadowing what a lot of us have just come to realize in the last several years. “They’re more full of hate than they are love. This is our society. Let’s go with the flow, let’s not kid ourselves.”

This is one flick I’ll have to see, since I’ve been a huge fan of Bukowski’s work for many, many years now. I’ve always found his bloody-knuckled insights on the writing life to be arresting, pungent, and penetrating—maybe even more so than his other stuff, which doesn’t exactly pull any punches either. Exhibit A:

get a large typewriter

and as the footsteps go up and down

outside your window

hit that thing

hit it hard

make it a heavyweight fight

make it the bull when he first charges in

and remember the old dogs

who fought so well:

Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.

If you think they didn’t go crazy

in tiny rooms

just like you’re doing now

without women

without food

without hope

then you’re not ready.

Oof. Still makes the hair on back of my neck stand up, even after long years of familiarity with the man’s work and decades of dabbling myself in writing professionally, albeit writing of a very different style and sort. There are a few other poets I like a lot too, but only Bukowski can hit hard enough to stand you straight up and lay you out flat like that.

How Big Government ruins everything

Posted on July 30, 2020July 30, 2020 by Mike

By just being what it is, doing what it does: metastasizing and expanding; strangling creativity and innovation; introducing unneccessary and exorbitant costs through bureaucracy, overregulation, and outright corruption.

Government is needed for some things, a necessary evil for certain strictly-defined functions. But it never stops grabbing for more, and therefore must be constantly monitored and reined in. Like any other noxious weed, if it is allowed to flourish unrestrained the garden will eventually become overrun, and will soon perish.

Meanwhile, the private sector leads the way.

This week, American astronauts returned to earth. Their trip to the space station was the first manned launch from the U.S. in 10 years.

By NASA? No. Of course, not.

This space flight happened because the government was not in charge.

An Obama administration committee had concluded that launching such a vehicle would take 12 years and cost $36 billion.

But this rocket was finished in half that time — for less than $1 billion (1/36th the predicted cost).

Meanwhile, NASA has become just another hapless, bloated bureaucracy, pathetically incapable of performing its own core mission, slowly fading into a sad irrelevance. Stossel’s closer:

The private sector always comes up with ways to do things that politicians cannot imagine.

The government didn’t invent affordable cars, airplanes, iPhones, etc. It took competing entrepreneurs, pursuing profit, to nurture them into the good things we have now.

Get rid of government monopolies.

For-profit competition brings us the best things in life.

Amazing how, in a nation supposedly founded on those very ideals, we keep having to relearn that basic truth over and over again, innit?

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