Channeling Catholic convert Newt Gingrich, Charles C. W. Cooke, who thinks Trump is a lunatic and Joe Biden an asshole, spends a whole column telling us how Harris is an idiot

In Cooke's telling, the three constitute a "trilogy", which is about as implausible as it is witless.

The dismissive spleen is the point of all this, because no one listens to National Review anymore. "We are the arbiters, dammit", and Kamala Harris Is An Idiot.

On the contrary, Harris is a left wing, doctrinaire ideologue, who knows her creed but clearly isn't a theoretician. On the rare occasions when she has been confronted about its content, or with deviations from that creed, she has simply reasserted it in its defense, or stressed her good intentions, eschewing reason, like any good dyed in the wool Christian would quote from the catechism, not write a new one, and stress that you too can be saved. Join us joyful followers!

It is the primary reason that her campaign representatives are tasked with saying that her well known leftist positions are old hat, from 2019, burbling something about that was then, this is the new Kamala. Maintaining silence from her is the point, and all the true believers know she hasn't changed one whit. She knows it and they know it.

Her leftism must be shielded from public view.

Lying is the modus operandi of leftism. The media, who are all on her side to one degree or another, are thus tasked with not asking any uncomfortable questions, and are practiced in the art of lying by omission. They don't probe their candidate too deeply, while it's open season on the other side.

So no, Kamala isn't simply an idiot, any more than Joe Biden is simply an asshole, or Donald Trump simply a lunatic. This "idiot" still has a very good chance of winning, which says more about the country than it does about her.

These Cooke eruptions meanwhile are Papal Bans from the Church of National Review, which is one thing which hasn't changed much since the days when William F. Buckley Jr. founded the magazine, except in their effectiveness. NR is nothing if not an excommunication machine.

Against this NeverTrump catechist, Mr. Cooke, however, because that is who he is, one commenter actually broke through and nailed some theses on his Wittenberg door for a change.

One loves to see it.

 

 

Biden's radical, Supreme-Court-packing, power-grabbing proposals sound like somebody else entirely wrote them, because he once opposed them all quite publicly and vehemently

Is Biden another "Body Snatchers" president? 

 

The wretched, envious Kevin Williamson drips with disdain for the kinder, gentler Kevin Williamson known as JD Vance, and for his kin

  I’d been writing about lower-class, mainly white dysfunction for a few years at that point, and Vance had just published his famous book, which I had reviewed in Commentary. I admired his work tremendously—and, naturally, envied him some, too. We had a good conversation. 

Watching his descent into … whatever it is he has become … has been dispiriting. ...

Vance did what poor white trash types who do not wish to remain poor white trash do: He got out, in his case by joining the Marine Corps, one of the great exemplars of American meritocracy. He went to a good state college and an Ivy League law school, he married a woman from an immigrant family with values superior to the ones exhibited by the Real Americans™ who brought him into the world, took a job that paid a lot of money, and made the kind of social and economic connections that give a man options in life.

Read the rest here.

J. D. Vance is the kinder, gentler version of National Review's Kevin Williamson about the hopelessness of his own people

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. 

 

-- Kevin Williamson, March 2016

And it's interesting that all of the people that I talk about in my book that grew up in this chaos that ended up having successful home lives and successful marriages - they married an outsider.

They married someone like I did who didn't grow up with these lessons, who didn't grow up with these experiences, and because of that, knew how to manage the people that they were married to and knew how to not respond in kind. As I write in the book, you put two of me in the same marriage, and I don't think it works.

But you put one of me, who's maybe a little self-reflective, in a marriage with somebody who hasn't faced that trauma - then I think you have a good chance. And that's one of the lessons of my life.

-- J. D. Vance, from the NPR interview, August 2016, here

When do all these disgraceful, disloyal Democrats start calling themselves NeverBiden?

 

Brought to you by the traitors who fired Peter Brimelow, Pat Buchanan, Joe Sobran, et alia

 

Biden's Lawless Mass Amnesty

National Review

Kristen Clarke, Biden's Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and promoter of anti-semitic black supremacist Anthony Martin, now revealed to have lied under oath at Senate confirmation

  

 

She had attacked her ex-husband with a knife but lied about her arrest.

Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke admitted Wednesday that she was arrested and chose not to disclose the legal matter during her Senate confirmation process because it had been expunged from her record.

More.

Her appointment stank in 2021, and it reeks now. She aggressively prosecutes peaceful abortion protesters but turns a blind eye to actual violent attacks on pro-life facilities.

Clarke not only invited notorious anti-Semite and black supremacist quack Anthony Martin — whose racist theories happen to comport perfectly with the ones she presented in her letter — to speak at Harvard, but also praised his intelligence and the veracity of his work. In her letter, Clarke specifically points to a doctor named Carol Barnes to claim “melanin theory” is what gives “Blacks their superior physical and mental abilities.” In those days, bigoted pseudo-intellectuals such as Martin and Leonard Jeffries were quite popular on campuses.

-- National Review reported. 

 

DC civil jury of six finds Mark Steyn defamed Michael Mann, who plans to go after National Review next

 Jury awards climate scientist Michael Mann $1 million in defamation lawsuit

During the trial, Steyn represented himself, but said through his manager Melissa Howes that he would be appealing the $1 million award in punitive damages, saying it would have to face “due process scrutiny.”

NeverWin National Review is taking heavy incoming for telling Oliver Anthony to write a different song

Lefty Matt Yglesias chimed in with the Uniparty's disapproval of the new Underparty anthem.

LOL, National Review reports AOC expels protesters at her own townhall in Queens, characteristically buried on the Friday night of the summer's first big holiday weekend to minimize such things

 

‘American Citizens before Migrants’: Protesters Heckle AOC at NYC Town Hall

Brittany BernsteinMay 27, 2023 11:06 AM

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) speaks at a U.S. House Financial Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., December 13, 2022. (Sarah Silbiger/Reuters)none

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Protesters booed and heckled Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a town hall she held in Queens, N.Y., on Friday night.

A man holding small American flags approached the progressive “Squad” member and shouted, “American citizens before migrants.”

“Where are you on the migrant issue? You’re a piece of s***,” he added.

Ocasio-Cortez said, “OK,” as the man was escorted off.

New York governor Kathy Hochul (D.) declared a state of emergency in New York after the expiration of Title 42 earlier this month. The state has roughly 60,000 asylum seekers relying on social services. New York City has gotten so overwhelmed with the influx of migrants that the city has begun sending them to the suburbs. Hochul said she is “looking at all state assets to help ameliorate the problem that is at a crisis level here in the City of New York,” which could includes housing migrants at SUNY campuses, closed psychiatric centers, large parks and parking lots.

Protesters at the town hall held signs concerning a number of issues: “America First. Vetted legal migrants only,” “Stop funding Ukraine,” “AOC: An Obvious Criminal,” and “AOC: Stop pushing drag queen story hour,”

More protesters came forward throughout the evening, including a woman who was critical of Ocasio-Cortez’s support for U.S. funding in Ukraine. The New York Democrat voted to send $40 billion in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine last year.

“Stop funding this war, there’s a lot of communities that need help and need that money,” another woman said as she was removed from the event.

Ocasio-Cortez was met with both boos and cheers from the crowd when she suggested the Biden administration should abolish the debt limit, as a June 5 debt default deadline looms.

“$100 billion for Ukraine that you voted for!” one man shouted in response to Ocasio-Cortez’s comments on the debt ceiling.

The progressive lawmaker said earlier this week that the “stakes of a default cannot be understated.”

“The chaos that would ensue and the impact on people’s everyday lives would likely be immediate and it is one of the reasons why we need to take default off the table,” she said.

Send a tip to the news team at NR.

 

 

The Dingbat meant overstated, not understated.

And there it is

 Trump's Pollster: DeSantis Leading Biden -- And Biden Leading Trump...

Michael Anton may be right that National Review's Reductio ad Hitlerum is relatively recent, but NR has been ostracizing right-wingers since it was founded

 I stopped reading in 2008, after subscribing since about 1980, so I really don't know about the Nazi smears. I had a long paid-up subscription which I was relieved to have finally run-out, coincidentally when Buckley did.

At any rate, National Review is indeed the enemy in the Socratic sense.

Don't help them.

National Review's Ignorant Nazi Smear

Michael Anton, American Mind

The only undergraduate college in this 10-page list requiring four units in a foreign language to graduate is Bard College

 Many require no foreign language at all at the undergraduate level, and as a consequence . . .

Presently, 23 U.S. states do not require the two years of foreign language study that is required for admittance into many colleges.

Check it out.

Meanwhile the chowderheads at Princeton's Classics Department have dropped the Greek and Latin requirement entirely for Classics majors.

The basic idea there is to invite the barbarians in, to make Classics better, you know, as in the fall of the Roman Empire to the Visigoths in 410 AD better:

“Having people who come in who might not have studied classics in high school and might not have had a previous exposure to Greek and Latin, we think that having those students in the department will make it a more vibrant intellectual community.” 

 

 Thankfully, the Visigoths at Princeton still have some standards. They require German majors to pass 2-3 courses actually taught in German.

Rod Dreher goes hunting a confederacy of dunces, bags prey from The Week, National Review, Religion News Service, The New Republic, Reason, NYMag, and Vox

 

LOL Kevin Williamson: He had a such good sermon going and then suddenly took the inevitable left turn with it and crashed it into a ditch filled with gobbledygook

We who have been exiles must be the new mothers and new fathers to exiles. We who have been poor and hungry, who have been powerless, who have been dependent on the kindness of others, must be splendid in our own generosity. And we who have benefited from the example of the meekest of all the men who were upon the face of the Earth — we must not forget our true heritage — must not consent to be called the sons of Pharaoh’s daughter. This pilgrim republic, fearfully and wonderfully made, was made for better things and higher things. Wealth, power, reputation — these are, at best, means to some higher end, to be used judiciously and with gratitude but never with awe. These are our instruments — they must not be our gods.

Come out from among them, and be ye separate, Americans. Come home. 

More.

It never occurs to Williamson that America as the New Israel pretty much did what the Old Israel did, invading the land flowing with milk and honey where they slew all the Canaanites.

Well, almost all of them. The failure of nerve which plagues America still, most obviously in Williamson, was present already at the beginning. Now the roles are reversed and it is the Injuns who ply US with alcohol and take all our money at the casinos.

Some analogies just shouldn't be pressed too hard unless you want to join the left in wringing your hands over what our forefathers did. Doing so only leads in one other direction: The Biblical imagery coheres better with the alt-right vision of America.

Cancel, or keep getting canceled until the country is no longer yours and your posterity's.

Protestant "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God" gets a hearing in Roman Catholic/Jewish dominated National Review

From the story, which draws a straight line from the human equality and freedom in Christ taught in St. Paul's Letter to the Romans right on through St. Augustine and Martin Luther to the American Revolution:

 

In the years leading up to the American Revolution, Jonathan Mayhew preached a widely disseminated sermon justifying rebellion against tyranny. His text was Romans, Chapter 13 — Paul’s instruction to believers to submit to political authorities: 

 

Thus, upon a careful review of the apostle’s reasoning in this passage, it appears that his arguments to enforce submission, are of such a nature, as to conclude only in favor of submission to such rulers as he himself describes, i.e., such as rule for the good of society, which is the only end of their institution. Common tyrants, and public oppressors, are not entitled to obedience from their subjects, by virtue of anything here laid down by the inspired apostle.

 

John Adams, reflecting on the origins of the Revolution years later, cited Mayhew’s sermon as a factor in persuading pious believers of the legitimacy of political resistance. Mayhew may also have persuaded the more secular-minded Ben Franklin, whose proposed motto for the American seal was “rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

 

Today's Tuesday conservatism over at Real Clear Politics is so ho-hum

In the line-up today at Real Clear Politics is one Buck Sexton, who tells us in "Following Rush Limbaugh" . . . not very much.

Is there any there there? is the question I have after reading this introduction to the man who is supposed to be the conservative in the duo taking over for Rush Limbaugh.

Since radio is a word business and this piece reads more like an apologia for his elevation to his new role than a taste of what to expect, it's not a good sign that this Buckaroo calls Rush's opening monologues "severely entertaining".

Is Buck Sexton a Mormon? I mean, this sounds like Mitt Romney, who trotted out his wife to assure Republicans that he was a conservative, and not long after addressed CPAC and called himself "a severely conservative Republican governor".

I know, I know. It's just a coincidence that this Jesuit-trained fellow sounds like the Mormon. But if you have to tell people you thought Rush was severely entertaining, maybe to you he really wasn't. At any rate, severe is not a word which ever came to mind when listening to Rush Limbaugh. 

Then there's Stephen L. Miller, whose Twitter feed is enormously entertaining @redsteeze , but whose prose offerings are, shall we say, stilted? The guy writes like he's got a brick up his ass.

Taking yet another much-deserved whack at CNN's Brian Stelter, Miller not entertainingly resorts to wooden stock phrases like "petty star-gazing", "it should raise eyebrows", "not becoming of anyone", "all fine and good", "all well and good", and "for anyone wondering . . . look no further". With all this lumber neatly stacked in a pile, the final paragraph ends with mistakes like "gleamed off" for "gleaned off" and "who claim to be just as a rigorous and dedicated journalist as Brian".

Yes, Stelter falls far short as a journalist. It's good that a mediocre writer points it out to all the people who obviously ignore Brian Stelter by the millions. It's an easy beat for Miller to cover, but maybe he should move on.

Miller claims to be good at hockey. I hear Clay Travis has left an opening somewhere.

Then there's a Democrat over at The Hill wondering "whatever happened to conservatism?"

When you get to paragraph seven you'll learn that Jan 6 was an "armed insurrection" and, if you're living in reality, you'll stop reading there.

But if you are a glutton for punishment and read to the end, you'll learn that the answer is The John Birch Society finally won the battle for the soul of the Republican Party.

I'm sure the five people still alive who ever knew an actual John Bircher will find that extremely amusing, if for no other reason than "that's what they WANT you to think".

Have a day.

Democrats are squealing like pigs over Cocaine Mitch's supposed Supreme Court hypocrisy, but there isn't any

Americans put Republicans in control of the US Senate again in 2018, with Trump in the White House, so Democrats have no one to blame but themselves for what's about to happen, and Harry Reid in particular for trashing the filibuster rule for judicial appointments.  

From the story here, which explains it all:

The reason is simple, and was explained by Mitch McConnell at the time. Historically, throughout American history, when their party controls the Senate, presidents get to fill Supreme Court vacancies at any time — even in a presidential election year, even in a lameduck session after the election, even after defeat. Historically, when the opposite party controls the Senate, the Senate gets to block Supreme Court nominees sent up in a presidential election year, and hold the seat open for the winner. Both of those precedents are settled by experience as old as the republic. Republicans should not create a brand-new precedent to deviate from them.

Sanders is desperately trying to unfart as we speak and Conservatism Inc. still thinks he's formidable

Senior writer at National Review really got the pulse of the people here, there and everywhere. #smdh

Bernie tanked after saying he'd let criminals vote and has not recovered from that.

It's gonna be Joe for the blow.

To Kevin Williamson and National Review conservatism is materialism, and you damn families and your schools in Kentucky and Oklahoma are the problem

It's Kevin Williamson with the mulish refusal to consider and deal with the world as we actually find it. You can spend decades trying to beat the nesting instinct out of mothers but all you'll have to show for it in the end is a different set of mothers to replace them, and a different country. Conservatives would prefer to stick with the one we've got. Libertarians should move . . . out.

Job Security Is Not Coming Back:

[I]t is better that we are not governed by poets. Our policymakers must deal with the world as it is, and our schools and families should prepare children for the world as it is, not as we might wish it were. Imagination and creativity are ... a mulish refusal to consider and deal with the world as we actually find it.