…or demand the House expel Bullying Bob Etheridge?
And since we’re on the subject of the delusional…
“Going after our economy”…”going after our unity as a nation”?!? Hells bells, Hillary’s confusing the Russians with Obama and the Dimocratic Party!
C’mon, Hillary; even CNN gets it:
This poor, deluded dimwit’s got more excuses than Jake Blues:
For those interested in the specific number, The Daily Caller’s kept count:
And for those who didn’t have to endure the Clinton years, the “vast right-wing conspiracy” was Hillary’s explanation for the “forces” who were “falsely” accusing her husband of precisely the sins to which he ultimately admitted. Yeah,…some conspiracy!
First up, another picture worth far more than a mere thousand words:
As Deroy Murdock notes of the accord in which “Obama trampled the rule of law by ignoring Congress and single-handedly roping this anvil around America’s collective neck”
“…Even if one sincerely believes that Earth is on the verge of boiling in a cauldron of carbon dioxide, the Paris Agreement and CPP do amazingly close to nothing to help. If all goes perfectly — and China and India quit coal, cold turkey — CPP would curb predicted warming in 2050 by a whopping 0.02 degrees Fahrenheit.This is like spinning a thermostat dial from 72 degrees way, way, way down to 71.98 degrees. If incinerating $993 billion in GDP buys this little global cooling through 2040, a one-degree Fahrenheit reduction in anticipated temperature growth between 2015 and 2050 would cost Americans $70 trillion.
The Paris Agreement is science fiction…”
The Left’s understandably gone ape-sh*t over Trump’s retreat from what was an unratified, and thus manifestly unconstitutional treaty, but the ACLU’s reaction takes the cake:
As has often been noted of Progressives in the past, were life on earth extinguished by a meteor, with their last breaths Liberals would claim “women and minorities hurt hardest”.
Here’s hoping Cuba and the similarly-unconstitutional Iran deal are now at the top of Trump’s foreign policy agenda. We don’t mention moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem because, as the WSJ correctly concludes…
“…No one forced Mr. Trump to make his pledge. He chose to make it a campaign issue. The Israelis will be disappointed but are still delighted to have a President who is friendlier than his predecessor. The Palestinians will pocket this concession and hold out for more.“
So much for the supposed skills of the Great Negotiator.
Next up, writing at NRO, David French makes a point with which we must respectfully disagree:
“…There is a profound lack of unity in America. In fact, let’s ask a key question: Is there a single significant cultural, political, social, or religious trend that is pulling Americans together more than it is pushing us apart?
The fragmentation of media, geographic separation, and the natural unwillingness to expose ourselves to unpleasant ideas means that many of us live in bubbles, where we not only don’t truly know those who disagree but we often can’t even truly understand the facts or arguments that inform their perspective.
The politicization of everything means that even sports broadcasts are increasingly tainted by political controversy, and the menu of television shows you watch is almost as predictive of your voting behavior as is the county where you live or the church you attend.
Intolerance of faith and ignorance of religion means that our first liberty — religious liberty — is typed with scare quotes, as if assertions of this fundamental freedom were somehow inherently bigoted and disingenuous. Political controversies are treated as battles between the forces of light and darkness rather than as what they typically are — contests between flawed people seeking many of the same goals.
Indeed, Americans often hate their political opponents so much that they’re willing to reflexively defend gadflies, conmen, and even thugs on their own side rather than concede an inch to their ideological foes.
What we lack is context. What we need is perspective…
…Each and every Memorial Day should remind us — in the long row of tombstones marking the graves of Americans from every race, creed, and religion — that we remain in this thing together, and even as we use strong words and speak with deep conviction, we will, at the very least, seek to understand opposing views and, always, defend for others rights that we would like to exercise ourselves…”
…When it comes to our national future, we are the problem.We are unmaking the nation that our forefathers made.“
While Jim Geraghty agrees with French…
“If you really believe America is fighting a second Civil War… what do you do with people who disagree with you? Shoot them? Blow them up? Imprison them? Keep them in prisoner of war camps? Call our current conflict with the Left what you like – but it’s not war.”
In his latest column, Dennis Prager vociferously disagrees:
“…I have concluded that there are a few reasons that explain conservatives who were Never-Trumpers during the election, and who remain anti-Trump today.
The first and, by far, the greatest reason is this: They do not believe that America is engaged in a civil war, with the survival of America as we know it at stake.
While they strongly differ with the left, they do not regard the left-right battle as an existential battle for preserving our nation. On the other hand, I, and other conservative Trump supporters, do.
That is why, after vigorously opposing Trump’s candidacy during the Republican primaries, I vigorously supported him once he won the nomination. I believed then, as I do now, that America was doomed if a Democrat had been elected president. With the Supreme Court and hundreds of additional federal judgeships in the balance; with the Democrats’ relentless push toward European-style socialism — completely undoing the unique American value of limited government; the misuse of the government to suppress conservative speech; the continuing degradation of our universities and high schools; the weakening of the American military; and so much more, America, as envisioned by the Founders, would have been lost, perhaps irreversibly. The “fundamental transformation” that candidate Barack Obama promised in 2008 would have been completed by Hillary Clinton in 2016.
To my amazement, no anti-Trump conservative writer sees it that way. They all thought during the election, and still think, that while it would not have been a good thing if Hillary Clinton had won, it wouldn’t have been a catastrophe either.
That’s it, in a nutshell. Many conservatives, including me, believe that it would have been close to over for America as America if the Republican candidate, who happened to be a flawed man named Donald Trump, had not won. Moreover, I am certain that only Donald Trump would have defeated Hillary Clinton…”
“…From the opposition to Trump’s first 100 days, we can sense where the Clinton agenda was headed: a Supreme Court pick further to the left than Merrick Garland; expanded race/class/gender themes across cabinet offices; a likely single-payer health system; higher taxes and more regulations, a radical climate change menu, and increased identity politics.
Any presidential election is a zero-sum game; a Republican staying home was a vote for Clinton in the fashion of a Sanders supporter sitting out 2016 was a vote for Trump. Far from a Clinton victory being a catharsis, it would have green lighted more illegal immigration, expanded the themes of the Eric Holder/Loretta Lynch Justice Department, and lost the Supreme Court for 20 years.
As far as a catharsis, it has already occurred though perhaps in ways not anticipated. A reported 92 percent of Republicans voted for Donald Trump, even if in some cases on the low-bar assumption that 51 percent of something was better than the alternative.
A Never Trump movement, I think it is fair to say, had absolutely no influence on the 2016 election. In theory, elites may have convinced a few key Republican voters in swing states to stay home or to vote for Hillary Clinton; but in reality they were far outnumbered by huge numbers of new Republican voters who saw in Trump hope that they did not in far more experienced and sober men of character.
Like it or not, a Rubio or Cruz nominee likely would have not won these swing voters and thus likely would have lost the election, and with it ensured at least 12 and likely 16 years of a hard progressive government…”
Here’s the juice: we are second to none in our admiration of both David French and Jim Geraghty, but they’re trying to participate in a street brawl playing by the Marquess of Queensbury rules…which is as effective as a peacock flashing its feathers at a python.
James Cameron inadvertently offered the most accurate assessment of Progressives when he described the Terminator:
Progressives slaughter the unborn in the same manner Der Fuhrer dealt with Der Juden and other undesirable untermenschen; is there any question whatsoever, given the unbridled power granted Hitler The Left wouldn’t act in similar fashion?!? You bet your life they would.
As Carl von Clausewitz so famously observed, “War is the continuation of politics by other means.” It’s our opinion we just haven’t got to the shooting part yet.
Though to borrow a phrase from Inspector Harry Callahan, there’s nothing wrong with shooting…as long as the right people get shot!
Since we mentioned the great VDH, here’s his take on…
“…Such smart, capable, self-assured, and haughty people are the stuff of Greek tragedy, and its warnings about the descent from hubris (overweening arrogance) (See Campaign 2008/2016) to atê (unhinged madness) (If Hillary’s not madly unhinged, we’ve never seen anyone who is!) to nemesis (divine retribution and downfall) (Any questions?!?).
People like the Clintons—or for that matter Euripides’s characters such as Jason (Medea) or King Pentheus (Bacchae)—are oblivious to the ultimate and preordained trajectories of their fates. Hillary Clinton has ended up a two-time failed presidential candidate, stained with money grubbing scandals and chronic deceit, who blew huge leads in 2008 and 2016, despite being the beneficiary of unprecedented cash, campaign consultants, and party endorsements. She has sacrificed her health, her reputation, and her very life to do everything politically right, which was not only ethically wrong but also proved, in good Athenian tragic fashion, politically disastrous.(Tragic figures, remember, do anything and everything they can to pursue an ambitious sense of self—and thereby only ensure that they can never obtain it.)
A gaunt Dorian Gray-like Bill Clinton in his twilight is indeed tragic. He may have the sins of the flesh written all over his face, but he had also convinced himself at one point in his life that his undeniable political cunning, education, and folksy charm could be put to use for noble purposes beyond the tawdry sex, chronic lying, and narcissism that were his brands.But after the scandals, the impeachment, the pardons, the Foundation miasma, the quid pro quo speaking fees, the Lolita Express, the disastrous campaign interventions for Hillary from 2008 to thetarmac scene with Loretta Lynch, the petty rivalries and double-dealing, optics reflect that there is nothing much left of a once dynamic president but an empty shell.
At the denouement of most tragedies. the figures who survive the wrath of the gods—and who are not themselves beheaded or slain by their own hands—are sometimes enlightened by their destruction, rediscover some purpose, acquire an appreciation of pathei mathos (wisdom through pain) and find peaceful redemption. And perhaps Bill and Hillary, after the wreckage of 2016, might still earn pity and end up like an elderly but sympatheticOedipus at Colonus.(We wouldn’t put any money on it.)
The departing Obamas should study and learn from the Clinton dual tragedies…”
We wouldn’t put any money on it.
Speaking of the legacies of two failed First Families, also courtesy of NRO, Kevin Williamson makes the argument…
“Tim McVeigh was God’s gift to the Left, and the Left will forever keep his memory alive, tending it like a kind of sacred flame.
Al-Qaeda attacks the United States on September 11, 2001? Yes, but don’t forget about McVeigh. Omar Mateen lets loose an “Allahu akbar!” before massacring 49 people at a gay bar in Orlando? Yes, but remember McVeigh. Salman Abedi and his pack of “lone” wolves get a jump on Ramadan by nail-bombing a bunch of little girls and their grandmothers at a concert in Manchester? Terrible, of course, but let us not forget about the real threat: right-wing terrorism on the McVeigh model.
…The Venn-diagram overlap between the world’s Muslims and the world’s terrorists may be small, but it is not trivial, and the confrontation between the Islamic world and the West puts a cold light on areas of concern beyond political violence. In the Islamic world itself, we see a heritage of high culture and great civilizational achievements, but a great deal of it looks like Karachi at the high end and rural Yemen at the low end: violent, backward, cruel, and uninterested in progress to the extent that “progress” is synonymous with Westernization — which, multiculturalist pieties notwithstanding, it is.Even if you set aside the propensity of certain Muslim fanatics to bomb pizza shops and to name public plazas in celebration of fanatics who bomb pizza shops, there’s still a lot of real life as lived in Afghanistan or Egypt that just isn’t going to fly in Chicago. In places such as Minneapolis, we have done a fairly poor job integrating the relatively small number of Muslim immigrants we already have.
And that is of some intense concern in light of the experiences of the many Western European metropolises that are today home to large and poorly assimilated Muslim minority populations, immigrants and the children and grandchildren of immigrants, a non-trivial number of whom are not especially interested in becoming German, Dutch, Swedish, French, or British.It is from among this population that international terrorist networks are able to recruit their local boots on the ground, maladjusted misfits and losers (for once, the president’s penchant for insults is appropriate) such as Omar Mateen and Salman Abedi and the Tsarnaev brothers. It may very well be the case that 99 out of 100 members of Muslim immigrant communities reject jihadism and Islamic supremacism, but the 100th man is Salman Abedi.If you happened to live in a city that does not have a significant, poorly assimilated Muslim minority population on the Malmö model, would you want one? Why?Maybe there is invidious prejudice in that, but that is not all there is to it.
In the case of many terrorist incidents in the West, immigration and travel to and from Islamist hot spots abroad is a part of the equation: San Bernardino, Manchester, 9/11, Orlando, 7/7. The Trump administration is trying, in its habitually incompetent way, to take that fact into consideration, twice failing to impose travel restrictions that fall well within the president’s statutory powers under U.S. immigration law. If anything, the administration does not go far enough.Anti-terrorism considerations should be a substantial part of our public policy not only where visitors’ visas and the like are concerned, but especially in the matter of immigration. The responsibility of the American government is to the American people, as sympathetic as many of those Syrian refugees might be.We do not seem to have much of a well-developed policy on them at the moment, but the most intelligent and decent onewould be seeing to it that they are reasonably well looked after — in Syria, or in one of the bordering countries…”
We’re of the opinion an grossly overstepping federal judiciary has far more to do with the failure of Trump’s travel restrictions than Oval Office incompetence, particularly in the case of the second order, but we couldn’t agree more with the rest of Williamson’s assertions.
In a related item, courtesy of Breeze Gould, if Barry had a son, he’d no doubt be the spittin’ image of…
“Here is what Americans this week were told counted as “news”: Jared Kushner’s past meetings. Russians. James Comey’s upcoming testimony. Russians. Hillary Clinton’s latest conspiracy theories. Russians. Bob Mueller’s as-yet-nonexistent investigation (into Russians). Kathy Griffin, Mr. Met and, of course, “covfefe.” Total words printed on these subjects? At least a duodecillion.
Here’s what actually happened this week, the “news” that holds real consequences for real Americans:
• Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke signed an order to begin reopening Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve to oil and gas exploration, reversing the Obama administration’s ideologically driven 2013 shutdown. The order even aims at opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to production—a move that is decades overdue. This could not only buck up the listless Alaskan economy but cement the U.S. as an oil and gas powerhouse.
• In related news, the Dakota Access Pipeline finally went live.
• The Fish and Wildlife Service took steps that may stop the Obama administration’s last-minute endangered-species listing for the Texas Hornshell, a freshwater mussel. That listing, based on outdated science, threatens significant harm to the Texas economy and was done over the protest of state officials and local industry.
• Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross surprisingly said that he was open to completing the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, a far-reaching trade agreement being negotiated with the European Union.
• Sen. John Thune, the upper chamber’s third-ranking Republican, said his caucus had moved beyond meetings and on to “drafting” the base language of an ObamaCare replacement. The No. 2 Republican, John Cornyn, vowed the Senate would “absolutely” have a bill by “the end of July at the latest.”
And on and on. The Environmental Protection Agency stayed crushing regulations. The U.S. tested the first ground-based system for intercepting ballistic missiles. New numbers showed the private economy adding a rip-roaring 253,000 jobs in May.
Who is to blame for this real-news blackout? The press, obviously.But the co-culprit: Donald Trump…
…Mr. Trump’s Twitter handle may be the most powerful communications tool on the planet. He has the awesome ability, unlike any president in history, to force the press to focus on his agenda by putting it out into the world every morning (or late night, as it may be). He could use that tool to set the daily discussion.Instead, he’s using it to undermine his own administration.
Mr. Trump also has at his disposal an array of famous surrogates who could spread his message. He has all the free media he could ever hope for, if only he used it in a strategic fashion. He has activist groups to help push for his reforms, but they can’t compete amid the crazy headlines.
Team Trump owes it to voters to get the real news out about its agenda and successes. But that will require doing more than complaining about the press. This White House needs to set and define the daily debate. It’s that, or Russia headlines through 2018.“
One last note: as of tomorrow, we’ll be taking some time off to unwind with TLJ. We hope to back in business by the the 21st of June, so ’til then…
In the meantime, assuming the wireless networks supposedly available work as advertised, we trust you’ll enjoy a sampling of some of our favorite archived offerings.
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