Mark Levin won't tell you Ronald Reagan expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit in the 1986 tax reform

Hey Mark, does that make Reagan someone who "sold out his principles" for liberalism?

Well does it?

Dilbert thinks Hillary just became unelectable

Here.

Mark Levin tonight said something about populism being the province of Congress, not the Executive

Well yes, that's the idea from an originalist point of view, isn't it? Yes it is.

But what did the Congress do in the 1920s?

It tried to limit its own natural growth as required by the Constitution by fixing its number at 435 in the House, thinking that it could thereby enhance its own power. But by doing so it became less and less populist and more and more elitist, so that today no one in a given congressional district is confident his or her congressman knows their own name, let alone represents what they think on Capitol Hill.

So ever since we've been stuck with 435 representatives, and the Census has simply functioned to decide which state gets more and which fewer representatives based on population shifts.

Well that's not how it's supposed to be, dammit! (cue the shouting)

Now we have supremely powerful individuals in the House, like the Speaker and the committee chairmen, who function like co-presidents or consuls on the Roman model. The Romans had two consuls by the way, elected every year to one year terms. At least if we had that we'd have more influence over affairs, but as it is the people have no representative, which is why . . .

Donald Trump.

Fix representation, folks.

To have a ratio of one congressman per 50,000 of population, a House of Representatives numbering 6,460 is called for, instead of the current, elitist, unresponsive House of 435 apportioned in a ratio of one representative to 743,000 people per district on average.

That's the crisis of the Republic. Not the quixotic Donald Trump actually figuring out how to be the voice of so many millions of forgotten Americans.

To be a reactionary is to answer action with action . . . it is the virile part to react

The only salvation is in the recognition of some superior guiding and dividing law of just rule and right subordination, in the perception, that is, of something permanent within the flux. ...

The saying has gone abroad that strength means joy in change and that he who would question change is reactionary and effeminate; and so in the name of progress and virility we drift supinely with the current. If by reactionary is understood only the man who shudders at all innovation and who cries out for some impossible restoration of the past, the charge is well made. Such a man in the social realm corresponds to the metaphysician who would deny the existence of change and the many for an exclusive and sterile idealism of the one. But reaction may be, and in the true sense is, something utterly different from this futile dreaming; it is essentially to answer action with action, to oppose to the welter of circumstance the force of discrimination and selection, to direct the aimless tide of change by reference to the co-existing law of the immutable fact, to carry the experience of the past into the diverse impulses of the present, and so to move forward in an orderly progression. If any young man, feeling now within himself the power of accomplishment, hesitates to be called a reactionary, in this better use of the term, because of the charge of effeminacy, let him take courage. The world is not contradicted with impunity, and he who sets himself against the world's belief will have need of all a man's endurance and all a man's strength. The adventurous soul who to-day against the reigning scientific and pragmatic dogma would maintain no vague and equally one-sided idealism, but the true duality of the one and the many, the absolute and the relative, the permanent and the mutable, will find himself subjected to an intellectual isolation and contempt almost as terrible as the penalties of the inquisition, and quite as effective in producing a silent conformity. If a man doubts this, let him try, and learn. Submission to the philosophy of change is the real effeminacy; it is the virile part to react.

-- Paul Elmer More, SHELBURNE ESSAYS, Seventh Series: Victorian Literature (The Philosophy of Change), 1910, pp. 267ff.

Hillary's doctor Lisa Bardack said Sunday she diagnosed Hillary with pneumonia on Friday

Yea, that's the ticket.

Story here.

Clinton at gay fundraiser: Half of Trump's supporters are deplorable

Yeah, but ALL of Hillary's are.

Bloomberg reproduces the remarks here:

Clinton told an audience of gay-rights supporters at a fundraiser Friday night in New York City: “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it.”

Video of Hillary this morning nearly collapsing after leaving 911 event early due to illness

There's something seriously wrong with this woman's health. They propped her up against the pillar to keep her from falling while waiting for the transport to arrive, and basically had to manhandle her into the van.

Video here.

On 9/11/16 Rasmussen has Clinton +4, LA Times/USC has Clinton +1.4

Rasmussen: Clinton 43%, Trump 39%.

LATimes/USC: Clinton 45%, Trump 43.6%.

The Real Clear Politics average shows Clinton +3.1 from eight recent polls, with an average margin of error of 3.5.

The traitor in the Oval Office has weakened us, hobbled us and aided our enemies

Dick and Liz Cheney in The Wall Street Journal, here:

Defeating our enemies has been made significantly more difficult by the policies of Barack Obama. No American president has done more to weaken the U.S., hobble our defenses or aid our adversaries. ...

Fifteen years after 3,000 Americans were killed by Islamic terrorists, America’s commander in chief has become the money launderer in chief for the world’s leading state sponsor of terror.

Clinton insults millions: You know it's a new world when Real Clear Politics has a sidebar story which is a Donald Trump tweet

"Clinton insults millions" lights up Trump's Twitter feed

Age discrimination update: Unemployment rate for those 55+ estimated to be 12%, 2.5 million want to work but can't get hired

Reported by Reuters, here:

Further, if you add jobless workers who gave up looking after more than four weeks, the 55-plus unemployment rate is a whopping 12 percent, SCEPA [Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School] analysis shows. Looked at another way, 2.5 million older Americans want a job but do not have one.

The last time banks failed and the economy tanked while a Republican was president, "Dunkirk" meant this

Hoover, 1932: 59 electoral votes

Landon, 1936:  8 electoral votes

Willkie, 1940: 82 electoral votes

Dewey, 1944: 99 electoral votes

Dewey, 1948: 189 electoral votes 

McCain, 2008: 173 electoral votes

Romney, 2012: 206 electoral votes

NeverTrump, 2016:

Publius Decius Mus has appeared before, at The Unz Review, and had his own blog

Before his Claremont piece, Publius Decius Mus made an appearance in March at The Unz Review, here, and had his own blog, here, since shut down after only four months of operation.

Ben Shapiro, of Michelle Fields infamy, says it may be Dunkirk for conservatives, but not Shanksville

Here at The Daily Wire, where he is much too sanguine about conservative "victories":

"Publius’ oddest argument is that conservatives have been losing, and only losing, for decades. This is historically ignorant."

Actually that's what an earnest young man of 32 would be expected to say, and you have to give him credit for that, even if he is wrong.

Publius Decius Mus is getting bashed here and there for writing anonymously . . .

. . . but it's a fine old American, patriotic and anti-federalist tradition, as explained here.

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."