Lefty Damon Linker thinks "The Flight 93 Election" is radical when it's hardly radical enough

The "conservative" world conceived of by the author of "The Flight 93 Election" isn't radical, it's unimaginative.

Being the good leftist that he his, however, Damon Linker senses the inherent weakness and flogs the man as a "reactionary" just for thinking about getting his feet wet, almost daring the author to defend what he knows he probably would not.

Struggling swimmer in the water. Shark arrives. 

The weakness of the anonymous author, Publius Decius Mus, is illustrated by the closing which imagines what actually lassoing the moon would look like in his mind: a return to constitutionalism, limited government and a top marginal income tax rate of 28%. Really?

You won't get either of the first two while keeping the third. And the income tax wasn't "constitutional". 

It doesn't occur to our anonymous author that through the income tax is how big government in this country made a big splash in the first place, and that it was necessary for progressives to eradicate the constitution's self-limitation expressed in its direct taxation handcuffs in order to achieve that big government.

In effect repudiating "constitutionalism" was necessary. And that's what the progressive era achieved, sweeping away the defenses of the constitution through the amendment process, bringing us woman's suffrage, the direct election of senators and the income tax. It made the country sick enough, but only enough to cut off the fourth leg of the progressive stool by repealing Prohibition.

So it works both ways. We can change our minds. The task of conservatism in our time ought to be to wake up the country to the possibilities of more repeal, to the conviction that we can correct our mistakes, whether it's the income tax, direct election of senators, or the vote of 18-year olds. And to the possibilities of ratification, say of Article the First.

Being "reactionary" isn't a bug, it's a feature, and thoroughly American.

Unless you're a communist. Or Damon Linker. But I repeat myself.

So Paul Combetta of Platte River Networks deleted Hillary's emails in March 2015, but he has immunity

How very convenient.

The New York Times reports here.

Dear Rush Limbaugh: Publius Decius Mus doesn't get it at all, and neither do you

From the conclusion of the anonymous conservative intellectual, here:

"The possibilities would seem to be: Caesarism, secession/crack-up, collapse, or managerial Davoisie liberalism as far as the eye can see … which, since nothing human lasts forever, at some point will give way to one of the other three. Oh, and, I suppose, for those who like to pour a tall one and dream big, a second American Revolution that restores Constitutionalism, limited government, and a 28% top marginal rate."

A 28% top marginal rate?

He must be kidding.

The income tax is the cornerstone of the contemporary part of the anti-American revolution which made big government and rabid anti-constitutionalism not just possible but plausible. The 16th Amendment shredded the intent of the Founders, so why not shred the rest? They have, and they will.

Dreaming big means shedding the shredding, and along with that the imperial presidency and the Leviathan State implied by that, which was bequeathed to us by Abraham Lincoln.

But the followers of Harry Jaffa will never be able to imagine that, which makes them nothing more than the hollow men of Conservatism Inc.

Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson asks "What is Aleppo"?

Well, not a long lost Marx brother.

Story here.

Roger L. Simon calls on John McLaughlin's Person of the Year for 2015 to resign, for the good of the country

James Comey.

Here.

"I am hugely angry at Comey, as you can see, but he still could perform a great service. He actually could resign and shine a light of truth on this horrific situation before it is too late. The Democratic Party, unlike the Republicans under Nixon, apparently doesn't have the courage to face what they have wrought. Perhaps, just perhaps, Comey does.  It would be a great act of patriotism."

That lying bitch Hillary on headers last night: None of my emails had a 'classified material' header

That's because she made sure they were removed, disproving her claim to the FBI that she was ignorant of what the markings meant.

(See here for Hillary's bald-faced lying to a US Navy veteran at last night's Commander in Chief forum.)

When Jake Sullivan complained in 2011 that he couldn't send something to Hillary because of a classified material header, she told him to remove it and send it non-secure, as recounted by HotAir already in early January here, where the email is reproduced. It took her all of four minutes to commit a crime.

Why are we still rehashing this? Hillary should be under indictment, not running for office.

Hot Air:

In a thread from June 2011, Hillary exchanges e-mails with Jake Sullivan, then her deputy chief of staff and now her campaign foreign-policy adviser, in which she impatiently waits for a set of talking points. When Sullivan tells her that the source is having trouble with the secure fax, Hillary then orders Sullivan to have the data stripped of its markings and sent through a non-secure channel. ... “If they can’t, turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure.” That’s an order to violate the laws handling classified material. There is no other way to read that demand. Regardless of whether or not Sullivan complied, this demolishes Hillary’s claim to be ignorant of marking issues, as well as strongly suggests that the other thousand-plus instances where this did occur likely came under her direction.

Donald Trump Jr. stopped by Platte River Networks today to help look for Hillary's missing emails, but couldn't find any

Mark Levin becomes the new poster boy for "flip-flop": April 7th rips NeverTrump, April 8th joins NeverTrump, Sept. 6th pledges to vote for Trump

Well, five months is an eternity in the 24-hour news cycle isn't it?

The truth is few of us are immune from flip-flopping. Only about 30% of us can never tell a lie. The rest of us need THE TORAH to keep us on the straight and narrow.

We noted the intemperate Levin here in early April, who no sooner had ripped NeverTrump than joined it the next day. Newsmax also had a little fun at his expense here.

Yesterday Levin pledged to vote for Trump, as noted here at Real Clear Politics. I was listening last night for a change, and heard it live for myself, at about 7:23 pm Eastern, and I chuckled. I felt the same way about Mitt Romney and ended up voting for him anyway.

Yom Kippur is coming up October 11-12, so all of us who have failed to unify around Trump as we should have before, now have a wonderful opportunity to forgive each other and move on to the election of the Republican.

"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God". -- Romans 3:23

What globalists and libertarians agree on

The look Hillary's core supporters give her: What, no people of color?

Phyllis Schlafly passed away yesterday: The 1992 Illinois Mother of the year who almost single-handedly defeated the ERA

Ann Coulter remembers the woman without whom Goldwater and Reagan conservatism might never have been born, here:

Though conservative women in later generations are often compared to Schlafly, all of us combined could never match the titanic accomplishments of this remarkable woman. Schlafly is unquestionably one of the most important people of ... the twentieth century – and a good part of the twenty-first. Among her sex, she is rivaled only by Margaret Thatcher. 

Bill McGurn thinks the State Department, the IRS, and the FBI are rigged against us

In The Wall Street Journal story "Even Worse Than Hillary Clinton’s Emails".

New York Times opinion piece against age discrimination never once mentions the main reason for it: The young can be paid much less

The number one cost of doing business is employees, and employers will do anything they can to reduce it: fire the old and hire the young, ship the jobs overseas to cheaper labor markets, and the coming zinger, automate them out of existence.

From the story here:

The problem is ageism — discrimination on the basis of age. A dumb and destructive obsession with youth so extreme that experience has become a liability. In Silicon Valley, engineers are getting Botox and hair transplants before interviews — and these are skilled, educated, white guys in their 20s, so imagine the effect further down the food chain.

Age discrimination in employment is illegal, but two-thirds of older job seekers report encountering it. At 64, I’m fortunate not to have been one of them, as I work at the American Museum of Natural History, a truly all-age-friendly employer.

I write about ageism, though, so I hear stories all the time. The 51-year-old Uber driver taking me to Los Angeles International Airport at dawn a few weeks ago told me about a marketing position he thought he was eminently qualified for. He did his homework and nailed the interview. On his way out of the building he overheard, “Yeah, he’s perfect, but he’s too old.”

Through past recessions full-time jobs bounced back by 12 million on average, but not under Obama who is 9.6 million short

We're old right, not alt-right, in case you were wondering, because we have faith in God and fear him and they don't

And they will end badly, if they can even manage to end at all.

Alt-righter John Derbyshire, formerly welcome at National Review where he was a better and even somewhat beloved writer, explains the difference here: 

"As has often been noted, state ideologies, like the Cultural Marxism that currently holds sway in the West, key to the same social and psychological receptors as religions. Recall the late Larry Auster’s observation that blacks are sacred objects, criticism of which is received just as blasphemy used to be in the Age of Faith, and still is in places like Pakistan.

"Alt-Right types — all of them, though in many different ways — are reacting against this state ideology.

"What characterizes the Alt-Right is the rejection of Cultural Marxism; but while it characterizes us, it doesn’t unify us. That’s because we haven’t fled from the CultMarx pseudo-religion to some other, unifying faith. We don’t do faith." 

Substituting the truth with a lie doesn't make the truth a lie.

Byron York: Staff on the Clinton team destroyed material that was under subpoena (it's a crime called obstruction of justice)

Byron York unpacks the twists and turns in the Hillary e-mail scandal and coverup, here, from which he reaches this conclusion:

But even with the fragments now public — the Clinton 302, the overview report, but none of the many other witness interviews — it seems fair to conclude that staff on the Clinton team destroyed material that was under subpoena. Whether that was unwitting, or whether it was something else, is not known, at least publicly.

There's no doubt that Clinton intended to destroy her email archives after choosing which ones to send to the State Department. That's what Mills' December 2014 directive was apparently intended to do. Given that the Benghazi investigation was well under way and there had been multiple document requests and production agreements, the effect of Mills' directive, had it been carried out at the time she sent it, would have been to destroy the evidence that had not been handed over to the State Department before anyone knew to ask for it. But apparently the Platte River Networks staffer's carelessness led to the emails not being destroyed in December 2014, remaining in existence until March 2015, when their existence was publicly disclosed and another subpoena issued for them. Then they were destroyed.

Grand Rapids, Michigan August 2016 climate summary: 11th warmest since 1892 by average temperature

Average temperature was 73.5 degrees F. Normal is 70.2. The month ranked 11th warmest since 1892. The hottest August by average temperature was in 1947 at 77.7. August 2016 was 5.4% cooler than that.

The normal 8-month average temperature is 49.6. Year to date the average temperature is 52.6, about 6% warmer than normal due to the El Nino, which ended with the April-May-June measuring period. The warmest full year on record by average temperature was 2012, at 52.8. The 8-month year to date average temperature in 2012 was 55.6, 5.7% warmer than the 2016 year to date. The May-June-July Oceanic Nino Index value has fallen to 0.2.

August 2016 was the second wettest on record with 7.97 inches of rain. Normal is 3.05. Year to date 31.54 inches of rain have fallen. Normal is 22.74. We're cutting grass.

Cooling degree days totaled 274 in August, 45% above the normal 189. By CDD August 2016 was tied for 13th warmest August on record. The warmest August by CDD occurred in 1947 with 404 CDD. August 2016 was 32% lower than that.

Year to date CDD totals 831, 36% higher than the normal 612 for the year to date. The record for highest annual CDD was set in 1921 at 1200, for lowest annual CDD in 1992 at 316. Normal annual CDD is 694. Year to date CDD is already almost 20% above the normal annual, with fewer than 100 CDD normally added in the remaining four months of the year. Air conditioning has been more than welcome this summer. 

The Real Clear Politics average of nine polls shows Clinton at +3.9 today

The average margin of error is 3.2.

The so-called libertarian Gary Johnson gets all PC, objects to the use of "illegal immigrant" because it's "incendiary"

The better to light your joint with, Gary.

The statement is quoted here.

Where's the freedom, man?

Trump is +3 in the USC Dornsife/LA Times Presidential Election Daybreak Poll this morning

The poll is here.

Trump's biggest lead in the poll so far was +7.3 at the end of July.

Clinton's biggest lead so far was +4.7 in mid-August.

For reasons discussed here, the pollsters concede the poll may be skewed Republican by as much as two points, which could mean Trump is currently +1 not +3.

Rasmussen currently has Trump +1.