Andy McCarthy calls out Mad King Ludwig and his supine Congress

 

 Andy McCarthy Shreds Trump for Giving ‘Aid and Comfort’ to Putin in Scorching Column — Demands Congress Investigate Immediately

 ... “Putin’s war of aggression and hoped-for conquest against Ukraine, like his war of aggression and conquest in Georgia (swaths of which he has occupied for nearly two decades), is part of his quest to reconstitute America’s Soviet enemy,” McCarthy wrote. “And President Donald Trump is giving him aid and comfort.”

McCarthy added, “In a properly functioning republic, there would be immediate hearings about this week’s shocking escalation of the Trump–Putin alliance. Since the start of Trump’s second term, it has been excruciating to watch America’s president blame the victim, our ally Ukraine, for Putin’s war of aggression.”

... “This week, in lunatic public statements … the president again blamed Ukraine for the war and gratuitously insulted Zelensky,” McCarthy said. 

... “If we … allow common sense to enter the equation, too many dark signs point in the direction of an American administration — at the very moment it was seeking Ukraine’s capitulation and threatening to leave it defenseless by denying intelligence — taking conscious action that left Ukraine exposed to an intense attack, which Russia just happens to have conducted right at the perfect time,” McCarthy wrote. “This is dark. It demands answers. Now.” 

Conservatism in 2026 according to National Review

 

Nothing screams conservatism like production and consumption

 FDR merely gave you a check every month in your retirement, but conservatives gave you gas.

My favorite phrase from this essay: "To the extent that there’s an intellectual foundation for Trumpism . . ."

Very amusing.

There's a lot riding on the outcome of the Hungarian elections for certain "conservatives" next week. 

 Meet the MAGA Intellectual on Hungary’s Payroll: A political theorist who once prophesized a Queen Melania is Viktor Orbán’s envoy to the court of Trump

It's mostly about Gladden Pappin, but is useful for describing the connections between Hungary and other American figures like J. D. Vance, and also the Danube Institute bankrolling Rod Dreher (unmentioned), helmed by National Review veteran John O'Sullivan:

Another English-speaking member of this species is John O’Sullivan, a former speechwriter for Margaret Thatcher. O’Sullivan is the founder and president of the Danube Institute, which receives funding from Orbán’s government and stays relentlessly on message. Last year, the institute put on an event called Is Transgenderism Dying?” With nearly two weeks to go before the election on April 12, the institute hosted a summit featuring a video address by the deputy U.S. secretary of state, Christopher Landau, and in-person remarks from one of his advisers. Weeks earlier, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had traveled to Budapest and told Orbán, “Your success is our success.” The Danube Institute event reinforced that message by giving U.S. diplomats pride of place in the program. “It’s very comforting to know that we have allies like you,” an institute employee told the Americans at the conference’s conclusion.  

When Conservatism Inc. ™️ thinks the politics of personal destruction is a legitimate substitute for legislative victories, it has become what it has always said it hates

 

I wonder how much Heritage Foundation paid National Review to publish this populist-conservative fusionist screed in the pages of the magazine infamous for purging dissenters

 ... As Heritage Board Chairman Barb Gaby and President Kevin Roberts wrote in their note to staff, alumni, and the many friends gained over the past 52 years:

Ed believed in addition, not subtraction. Unity, not uniformity. One of his favorite mantras was ‘You win through multiplication and addition, not through division and subtraction.’ His legacy is not just the institution he built, but the movement he helped grow — a movement rooted in faith, family, freedom, and the Founding.

Feulner’s words contain practical wisdom. In this era of political polarization and cultural fragmentation, they continue to serve us as a powerful tactical roadmap. In the spirit of self-governance, they call for a movement that grows by building coalitions, not by purging dissent; that persuades rather than polarizes; and that unites Americans around shared values rather than dividing them by ideology. ...

More. 

 

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