J. D. Vance wants you to believe white people got Reagan elected in 1984 but not Nixon in 1972, among other fantasies

In any case he's going with "we're more like Nixon than Reagan".

Alrighty then.

I think they'll be a LOT more like Nixon after November.

Watergate a Story of How the Deep State Took Down Nixon

VP Vance, Nixon Library

 

It's not a story, it's a statement of an opinion: "Watergate is a story ...".

 

Like the remark about whites, the Deep State remark is just another one-off Vance burbles more than he argues.

 

Some call this knowing how to get in the headlines, others call it dog-whistling.

 

But let's talk substance instead. 

 

The actual luminaries of the Deep State in 1974 turned out to be Richard Hofstadter's 1964 practitioner of the paranoid style himself, the father of the conservative movement, Senator Barry Goldwater, and a moderate Republican Senator, Howard Baker from Tennessee, Nixon's would-be protector.

 

Goldwater was the one who had to break it to Nixon on August 7, 1974 that once impeached by the House there were not 34 votes to acquit in the U.S. Senate, not even half that, and maybe not even his vote. He was 1974's John Thune of 2026, who doesn't have the votes for Trump's election interference bill.

 

Baker's June 1973 question, "What did the president know, and when did he know it?", asked 53 years ago tomorrow, unintentionally became the opportunity for White House Counsel John Dean to detail Nixon conversations which implicated Nixon in the cover-up of his aides' Baker-styled "rogue activity", the Watergate break-in. 

 

It didn't take long for Baker to realize Nixon also was guilty.

 

At length seven Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee joined all the Democrats in voting to impeach Nixon by July 1974.

 

Had Nixon not taped himself, however, there would have been no Smoking Gun tape from June 23, 1972, which showed that the president ordered H. R. Haldeman to use the CIA to stop the FBI's investigation into the Watergate break-in six days earlier.

 

It doesn't get more Deep State than that. 

 

The release of its transcript on August 5, 1974 convinced everybody that Nixon obstructed justice and covered it up. That's what sent Goldwater & Co. to the White House on August 7th.

 

Nixon announced his resignation the very next day and left office August 9, 1974. 

 

Nobody took down Richard Nixon except Richard Nixon. 

 

By August 1974 66% of the country had joined this so-called Deep State conspiracy against Nixon, which marked an astounding reversal from the 67% who had approved of him in January 1973. 

 

Trump's not far behind Nixon at 58.6% disapproval just one month ago.

 

We'll see what mood the country is in to get rid of him shortly. The November election will be a referendum on this. 

 

A healthy republic repents of its mistakes, and a Christian society accepts that repentance. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

J. D. Vance: Barry Goldwater was the Deep State lol

 Vance: Watergate Is A "Story Of How The Deep State Took Down Nixon"

 

Will Trump be tried for murdering drug traffickers like former Philippine president Duterte is being tried?

 

... Duterte was arrested in March by Philippine authorities on a warrant issued by the ICC. He is now being held at an ICC facility in the Netherlands.

Supporters of Duterte criticized the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Duterte's political rival, for arresting and surrendering the former leader to a court whose jurisdiction his supporters dispute. ...

More. 

I suppose it depends on a future president giving Trump up to arrest by the International Criminal Court somehow.

... The strikes on Venezuelan narcoterror smuggling boats provide one possible avenue. Shortly after the U.S. Navy destroyed the first such vessel, Ken Roth, a former head of Human Rights Watch, endorsed ICC intervention. “Trump just did what the International Criminal Court has charged former Philippines Pres. Duterte with doing—ordering the summary execution of alleged drug traffickers,” Mr. Roth tweeted. Venezuela is a Rome Statute party, which in the court’s thinking gives it jurisdiction over U.S. officials and servicemen involved in the attacks. The ICC has already launched an investigation against a nonmember state (Israel) based on a single boarding of a vessel flagged by a member state, so it has all the precedents it needs.

Mr. Trump has thus far taken an incremental approach to the ICC. He revived a first-term executive order authorizing sanctions against the court and applied it against four ICC officials. None of this has significantly reduced the risk to the U.S. or led the ICC to change its ways.

The ICC’s supporters don’t see the existing sanctions as an “existential threat.” The tribunal can easily ride it out by lying low until a Democratic president lifts the sanctions, as Joe Biden did. The court takes a long view—its prosecutors and judges have nine-year terms, and its other staffers are part of a global deep state who can expect to remain at their jobs indefinitely.

International lawyers are already developing multiple lines of attack against the administration and its officials. ...

More.

You can't win: State and local government employment is up 175k since January, which more than offsets federal employment down 69k

 The swamp is everywhere lol.

down 69k

up 119k

up 56k

Meanwhile Sean Davis' The Federalist is ground zero for the anti-war right, still ignoring what der Führer says

There isn't a single story on the front page right now at The Federalist about the Israeli-Iranian conflict, like it's not even news.

Americans Are Done With the Deep State's Forever Wars

Sean Davis, X

 

I search for "Iran" and get stuff like this:

 

‘Preventative War’ Against Iran Would Be Foolhardy And Unpopular With Americans

 

Why Conflict With Iran Over Iraq Can’t End Until America Withdraws

One of Elon Musk's DOGE wizards got the boot for finding that the government works and is not as inefficient as he was expecting

No good deed goes unpunished.

 

... “I would say the culture shock is mostly a lot of meetings, not a lot of decisions,” Lavingia told Fast Company in the piece, which also noted that he noticed the number of mission-driven people working in government. “But honestly, it’s kind of fine—because the government works. It’s not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest. I was hoping for more easy wins.” ...

More.

Federal employment is 1.1% of civilian population in April 2025: This is the swamp billionaires want to drain

 The worst it ever got was 2.4% in December 1952 while Truman was still president.

The leisure class of state capitalism has to have something to complain about. 

 

As predicted, the hubris of Elon Musk's promises of $2 trillion in DOGE savings now crashes on the rocks of reality as he promises only $150 billion in savings in FY 2026

 

 Have there been no savings from the Department of Defense, the costliest department in the federal government? No $1,000 toilet seats to be found? No savings from sex change operation eliminations? How about the $7 billion in military equipment left behind in Afghanistan, stuff like that? Didn't we get booted from Niger last year? Anything left behind there? You get the idea, but we've heard nothing about Department of Defense waste, fraud, and abuse.

I mean, where did Army Surplus come from in the first place?

Oh, by the way, the Pentagon failed its seventh audit in a row in November 2024. It has $4 trillion in assets in every US state and 4,500 locations worldwide, but Elon Musk couldn't find one thing to eliminate?

Yeah, but they're on track to fire 300,000 federal workers.

Meanwhile the $150 billion in claimed savings to come, if they actually do get here, is already gone, swallowed up by the Giant Squid. The deficit year to date is already $242 billion higher than it was last year at this time.

DOGE has been nothing but theatre, and Elon's just taking a bow as his gig comes to an end at the close of May.

Has anything in recent memory failed more spectacularly than this?

 

 

 

Federal outlays in fiscal 2025 will be almost 200% higher than the 1982 outlays adjusted forward to today's dollars

 I've heard the Drain the Swamp bullshit since Reagan's Grace Commission in 1982, when federal outlays were $745 billion.

That's the equivalent of ~$2.5 trillion today, yet actual outlays will be $7.3 trillion in fiscal 2025.

 

DOGE can't possibly close that gap.

 

It's not called Leviathan for nothing.

 

Only one thing can fix it.

 

 

 

J. D. Vance in September 2021, a year before becoming US Senator from Ohio, is the brains behind Trump seizing the administrative state and firing everybody, Elon Musk is just the henchman

 

Now the Trump administration is imitating the most odious revolutionary rhetoric of the Obama administration

 

WH's Karoline Leavitt: Trump "Is Fundamentally Transforming Our Country For The Better"

 

We are fundamentally transforming our country for the better, truly restoring our government, the 27-year old know-nothing says, when they're actually gutting it. 

These people all think they're so smart.

 

They think they're cutting something down to size which is already on its knees. Federal employment today has hardly been lower as a percentage of civilian population in the post-war. The low point was achieved already in 2018. The Leviathan State is a complete myth.

 

If Trump truly restored our government, he'd be hiring dramatically, not firing. 

For all of Trump’s and Musk’s talk of efficiency, their policies will likely slow down the government. The state needs capacity to perform core tasks, such as collecting revenue, taking care of veterans, tracking weather, and ensuring that travel, medicine, food, and workplaces are safe. But Trump seems intent on pushing more employees to leave and making the civil service more political and an even less inviting job option. He bullies federal employees, labeling them as “crooked” and likening their removal to “getting rid of all the cancer.” A smaller, terrified, and politicized public workforce will not be an effective one.

To start, let’s dispense with the notion that the government is too big. It is not. As a share of the workforce, federal employment has declined in the past several decades. Civilian employees represent about 1.5 percent of the population and account for less than 7 percent of total government spending. According to the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, seven out of 10 civilian employees work in organizations that deal with national security, including departments—such as Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security—that the public supports.

The reality is that the federal government has long faced a human-capital crisis. ...

More.

The country is $36 trillion in debt because it is not taxing enough, and hasn't been taxing enough since Ronald Reagan. We pretend we can borrow to infinity for what we want, but we can't afford it all anymore. That is why they're surrendering to Putin, and taking a meat cleaver to DC.

This is not a serious country, otherwise a South African wouldn't be running it.

 

 

 

 

 

Elon Musk and Donald Trump stop USAID payments authorized by Congress, some of which Marco Rubio used to be for before he became Secretary of Suck-Up and is now against

I expect a federal judge to intervene on this one perty quick like.

The sums involved are paltry, but Elon Musk amusingly makes a mountain out of this molehill and says “This is our shot. This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have,” he said. “Now or never.”

Seems more like an admission that it will be impossible to slay the federal leviathan.

Elon Musk says he and Trump are shutting down USAID

... Congress annually appropriates money for USAID to spend, primarily for foreign aid and internationally focused charities. Its budget for the 2023 fiscal year was about $40 billion, according to a report last month from the Congressional Research Service. That’s a tiny fraction of the overall federal discretionary spending of $1.7 trillion. ...

A 1974 federal law known as the Impoundment Control Act says that the president generally cannot withhold funds that Congress has approved. Some Trump aides argue that the law is unconstitutional, foreshadowing a potential fight in the courts. ... 

 

 

Trump's mission against the Swamp is far more grandiose than his mission to repeal Obamacare, but it will end up the same way

 

 And Roger Kimball should know better.

Kimball completely underestimates the role that will be played by the federal government employee unions in opposing Trump's efforts to axe them. And it's downright preposterous to think that the Leviathan State is going to be unraveled by July 4, 2026 when it took literally decades to erect it.

Trump will fail to drain the swamp, and it will consume all the valuable energy of his victory, too, keeping him from succeeding on the agenda items which are within his reach. His actions might even strengthen those unions. His own new Labor Secretary actually advocates for that!

Democrats should be encouraged by this.

They are going to have a field day litigating everything Musk and Ramaswamy try to shut down, which will drag everything out interminably. Liberals funded the hapless Kamala Harris to the tune of $1 billion, so I'm confident the Marc Eliases of the Democrat Party will shift the Resistance to this effort with a similar level of support because it has a high likelihood of hamstringing Trump in the same way Russia Russia Russia did.

It's disappointing that Republicans don't understand that Trump is a deeply divisive transitional figure, not a transformational one, but Democrats made the same mistake with Joe Biden, until it was too late, on whom they turned as on a dime.

Trump’s Mission To Dismantle the Administrative State

Roger Kimball, Am. Greatness

 

J. D. Vance gets his sorry ass back in the US Senate after missing critical confirmation votes on Monday and Tuesday which confirmed at least one horrible Biden nomination to a lifetime judicial position

 

 If all Republicans had shown up and Sen. John Fetterman’s (D-Pa.) absence held, the GOP would have defeated the nomination [of Embry Kidd] temporarily.

If all senators had shown up, including Fetterman, it would likely have forced a tiebreaking vote by Vice President Harris.

Adding to the drama, Harris left Washington for Hawaii on Tuesday, depriving Democrats of a potential ability to break a 50-50 tie.

Despite the math, GOP members were incensed at the no-shows, which stretched into Tuesday as Vance did not show up for the morning vote.

Other senators, including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), tagged along with Trump to the SpaceX Starship launch in Brownsville, Texas, further exacerbating the situation as Schumer prepared to hold another long night of nomination votes on Tuesday. ...

Vance, who missed all of Monday night’s votes in addition to the first one on Tuesday, received the lion’s share of criticism.

The outgoing Ohio senator initially defended his decision, saying that he was meeting with Trump as part of interviews for potential candidates to become FBI director and for other slots.

“I tend to think it’s more important to get an FBI director who will dismantle the deep state than it is for Republicans to lose a vote 49-46 rather than 49-45,” he added.

However, he backtracked and deleted his post on X. He also showed up for the pair of Senate votes during Tuesday’s afternoon session.

Full story here. 

Showing up is the easiest, most important thing senators can do, and they were too busy.

It's unforgivable.

 

Donald Trump is already hard at work making long lists of all the things he's not going to accomplish as president, which he'll foolishly fritter away his time on

 Ten points about The Swamp.

Seven points about The War on the Drug Cartels.

Trump's saying all this stuff and we don't even know yet if Republicans will win the US House, where they have 214 seats as of right now and lead narrowly in 8 undecided races. If they win them all they'll have 222 seats, with 218 needed for the majority.

If not, well that'll be the end of all ambition, now won't it?

222 at best is a very narrow margin to accomplish anything anyway, a mere continuation of the status quo where Republicans in the House must tread lightly to keep the caucus unified with a very similarly sized narrow majority (220).

What kind of sweep was this? Once again the Trump movement . . . isn't.

It would be easy to call this stuff hubris from Trump. Let's just say he still hasn't learned anything about how to accomplish anything of relatively permanent value. He has NO priorities when everything is a priority. He is, once again, unserious.

The Senate will be in Republican hands, so we'll at least get more judicial appointments who might advance traditional American principles of law and order.

The scuttlebutt is that the first agenda item in Congress will be making Trump's expiring tax reform permanent.

I can imagine him having to waste the entire first year on this. He'd be better off quickly settling for its extension for another ten years under reconciliation rules, and then move along smartly to immigration and energy reforms before the midterms are upon us in 2026, after which he'll be the lamest of lame ducks.

If there's any hope of boosting GDP and improving everyone's pocketbook they've got to make energy reform the priority. And mere immigration enforcement solves an untold number of other problems which bedevil the country, like illegal drugs, crime, and social spending.

Spending bills will come as they will, and should simply aim to starve the federal government of money to shrink it, as could have been the case last time but nothing changed. The beast grows naturally because permanent spending programs are indexed to inflation. That isn't going to be stopped. Growing the economy to pay the bills is therefore job one.

I'm expecting very little positive from this lot, but I do hope J. D. Vance will emerge at the end of it to take us to a better future.

Democrats who say they fear Trump because he's an authoritarian are absolutely comic. Watch for rogue judges to hamstring him just like last time, and Trump will bluster and fume and things will simply muddle along.

But, of course, unforeseen events like wars have a way of intruding and making mooks of us all. Let's hope Trump can finally make a deal to end and prevent them.

The left is having an apoplectic fit over the dagger the Supremes just put into the unaccountable administrative state, aka The Swamp: A massive blow

 What about our careers?!

 

ADL names most anti-semitic colleges: Harvard, MIT, MSU, Princeton, SUNY, Stanford, Swarthmore, Tufts, Universities of Chicago, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Virginia

 

Just two of 85 institutions met the minimum standard, meaning most institutions of higher learning in the United States are Not Safe For Jews.

The white supremacy over blacks and Jews the Democrats keep warning us lurks in the fever swamps of rural America is endemic to the most prestigious institutions Democrats control. 

The Hamas wing of the Democrat Party thrives in academia in the United States.

Reported here:

The campuses that received an "F" grade include Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Michigan State University, Princeton University, SUNY Purchase, SUNY Rockland Community College, Stanford University, Swarthmore College, Tufts University, University of Chicago, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the University of Virginia.

For a good time, call Angela: The Libertarian Party is very interested in RFK Jr for Election 2024 but not Justin Amash lol

 In July, Mr. Kennedy met privately with Angela McArdle, the chair of the Libertarian Party, at a conference they were both attending in Memphis — a meeting that has not previously been reported.

 “He emphasized that he was committed to running as a Democrat but said that he considered himself very libertarian,” Ms. McArdle said in an interview, adding that they agreed on several positions, including the threat of the “deep state” and the need for populist messaging. “We’re aligned on a lot of issues.”

 “My perspective is that we are going to stay in touch in case he does decide to run,” Ms. McArdle said. “And he can contact me at any time if that’s the case.”

More.

Scott Walker, who ought to know, urges DeSantis to spend less while remembering what made Trump's campaign unique

He's from Milwaukee. For president in 2016 he spent like he was blitzed on Blatz.

 Here:

From the moment he opened his mouth at the first presidential primary debate in Cleveland, he took command of the discussion. Every voter knew he was going to build the wall, drain the swamp, and prevent radical Islamic terrorists from coming to America.

Yeah, build the wall. 

Too bad about that.

 

Supremes slap down EPA meddling in property owners' wetlands under Clean Water Act, reversing yet another pestilent view of former justice Anthony Kennedy

A majority in Rapanos (2006) couldn’t agree on how to limit EPA’s authority over wetlands. Four Justices said the Clean Water Act’s scope extended to “only those relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water” such as oceans, rivers and lakes, and wetlands that were directly adjacent and “indistinguishable” from those waters.

However, the agencies and lower courts have adopted Justice Anthony Kennedy’s lone opinion that federal jurisdiction extends to land that has a “significant nexus” to a waterway. This test is as clear as a swamp.

While all nine Justices ruled for the Sacketts, they disagreed on the scope of federal power. The majority strips away the “significant nexus” ambiguity from Justice Kennedy’s Rapanos opinion, but reaffirms the conservative plurality’s view that a “wetland” must “be indistinguishably part of a body of water that itself constitutes ‘waters’ under the CWA.”

Ronald Reagan's worst appointment.

More.