Hillary above the law

Cultural Appropriation or Black Racism

King of the GOP vs. King of Bureaucracy

Charles Hurt on Trump and Sanders

In this brief cessation of hostilities between enemy forces on both sides of the political divide, it is a good time to take stock of where primary voters have taken the two parties.

Real estate magnate and political neophyte Donald Trump is on the cusp of truly revolutionizing the Republican Party. He has slain the establishment GOP and awakened long-dormant voters dissatisfied with everything Washington and its politicians have been up to for decades.

Over halfway through the nomination process, Mr. Trump stands to walk into the Republican Convention in Cleveland with a sizable plurality — if not an outright majority — of votes from primary voters. It will be his first priority to unify the party around him, the new king of the Grand Old Party.

Across the aisle, Washington’s longtime political gadfly, Sen. Bernard Sanders, is on fire with elite Democratic voters. By that, of course, we mean elderly white professors, united with out-of-work young “progressives.” And by “progressive,” of course, we mean those who support utterly regressive totalitarian regimes led by great “progressives” such as Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong and Che Guevara.

Funnily enough, Mr. Sanders insists on describing himself as a “democratic socialist.” Why he insists on repeating himself I cannot tell you.

Anyway, the media is all agog over finding comparisons between the Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders.

It is true, both candidates have their highly enthusiastic supporters. But that should hardly be unique in politics. Only the rarest of political candidates are able to inspire the kind of apathy spawned by Mitt Romney, Jeb! Bush and Hillary Clinton.

Also, supporters of both Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders share a few policy positions such as distrust of global trade. But even in that, there are differences. Trump supporters lament the loss of jobs they would like to work while Sanders supporters have never actually worked a job outside of academia or maybe as a part-time barista at the campus Starbucks.

The truth is, Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders could hardly be more different from one another.

Mr. Trump’s entire campaign is that of a highly disruptive outsider. Sure, he is not the conservative firebrand many Republicans would like. But, really, who can you most likely imagine actually abolishing the federal Department of Education and firing all those bureaucrats?

And every new day, Mr. Trump shocks the Washington political garden party by insisting that, yes, he really does intended to build that wall and, no, he is not kidding when he says Mexico will pay for it.

Mr. Sanders, meanwhile, is a deeply entrenched barnacle of the Washington establishment and federal bureaucracy. He has, last I checked, been in Congress for 573 years, first as a member of the House and now the Senate.

His greatest (only) accomplishment was “reforming” the Veterans Affairs Department. Truly, its never been the same ever since.

Just ask any wounded vet how great that bureaucratic overhaul by the King of Bureaucracy has worked out. I can think of another 2,000 vets you might ask, but they have all committed suicide waiting for the VA to help them.

A Blizzard of Special Snowflakes

From my vantage point, this is not the behavior of people who’ve been oppressed; these are convenient and dictatorial temper tantrums from post-pubescent infants who have been spoiled beyond all reason. Maybe they aren’t fragile at all—perchance they’re tyrants hiding behind a facade of weakness in order to acquire power and bludgeon others with it. One is tempted to really give them something to cry about.

When they are disgorged like fetal cannonballs from the warm womb of modern college life, one would hope they quickly learn the meaning of real pain and suffering. I would like nothing more than to peer out my window one day and watch all these special snowflakes melt the moment they hit the ground.

Milo Yiannopolous on Trump

Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

Matthew 28:

1 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. 

2 And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. 

3 His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: 

4 And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. 

5 And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. 

6 He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. 

7 And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you. 

8 And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word. 

9 And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him. 

10 Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me.

The Report of the Guard

11 Now when they were going, behold, some of the watch came into the city, and shewed unto the chief priests all the things that were done. 

12 And when they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, 

13 Saying, Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept. 

14 And if this come to the governor's ears, we will persuade him, and secure you. 

15 So they took the money, and did as they were taught: and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day.

Jesus Commissions the Eleven

16 Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. 

17 And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted. 

18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. 19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: 

20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

ISIS Supporters Release Video with Exploding Eiffel Tower

A new video posted online by ISIS supporters shows the Eiffel Tower exploding and crashing to the ground in stylized, video game animation.

The video begins with a river of blood pooling and dripping off a wooden table filled with stacks of American money, guns, knives and bullets.

It's ripped from a video game, as betrayed by the name of a video game designer with a U.S. company carved in the wood of the animated table.

The video is titled "A message to the Western Kafir [Disbelievers] from the Supporters of the Caliphate." It's narrated in English and subtitled in Arabic, and was posted on YouTube and other file-sharing sites.

But we are assured that ISIS is not an existential threat.

Raids uncover evidence of Europe-wide jihadist cell

New evidence shows disturbing evidence of just how big the terror network is across Europe.

But we are reassured that there is no existential threat.

Organisers cancel Sunday's Brussels attacks 'March Against Fear'

March against fear cancelled because of fears.  Good thing Islam is not an existential threat.

Belgian nuclear research centre security guard murdered amid concerns terrorists are plotting an attack on power station

You have blood on your hands

What’s Wrong with the Establishment? - a reply to Jonathan Tobin

Why are they unable to come to grips with the fact that people have finally turned on them?  Part of the establishment – its Left wing – is always ready to ask, after each terrorist attack: “why do they hate us?”  It’s actually not a bad question.  It helps to understand your enemy and what motivates them.  But the Left asks the question because it believes that American history and its people are wicked and wants to atone for its manifold sins. 

But the Jonathan Tobin wing – the neo-conservative wing of the establishment - has not really bothered to ask that question: “why do so many of the American people rise up against us?”  It makes the unsupported assumption that its policies and attitudes are the right ones and those who disagree are wrong. 

The latest Tobin article is a case in point.  Trump’s Tweets and American Honor begins with the time-honored tradition of accusing your opponents of being bigoted racists who are also stupid.

Like a lot of other conservative political writers who are critical of Donald Trump, I get a lot of interesting comments from his fans. Some are profane. Others are anti-Semitic. Those comments demonstrate how much cognitive dissonance some people have to deal with. The fact that a lot of bigots and racists think Trump is grand in spite of his Jewish grandchildren and willingness to toe the line for Israel in his speech to AIPAC is inexplicable.

The problem with Tobin’s analysis – I prefer to call it dismissal – of the people he labels as bigots and racist is that he has the same understanding of character as writers of third-rate books and plays; cartoon cut-outs wearing black or white hats.  Anything more complex, more nuanced, does not compute.

And while you have your boogie-man handy, why not smear your target?

But, of course, their views are no more contradictory than those of their idol, a man who dog whistles about race and bias and encourages violence against foes while also claiming to be a guardian of the Constitution.

“Dog whistles” are one of those tools that were once the province of Liberals who label words like “hard work” to be racist.  Now that they have found a common enemy they have picked up the dog whistle tool and are “working hard” to use it. 

Note the other tool that Tobin borrows from the Leftist weapons cache, ignoring the riot but condemning the reaction to it.  For the record, Trump has been the victim of thugs (“thugs” is another “dog whistle” according to those in the know) who have violently disrupted peaceful rallies of Trump supporters.  Trump told his security people to remove the disrupters and said that at other times they would have been “carried out on a stretcher.”  After much provocation, one member of the Trump audience actually struck one of the thugs.  Apparently, Trump is not very good at encouraging violence if that’s all that happened after so much provocation.   But in Tobin’s world Trump is the violent one.

When asked for reasons other than the fact that Trump supporters are all racist bigots, Tobin explains that he’s wrong, wrong, wrong:

But the more interesting comments from Trump fans are those that seek an explanation for my aversion to their hero. The easy answer to their question has come in dozens of pieces in which I’ve examined his lack of understanding of the issues, his substituting empty slogans for policy, his lack of respect for the Constitution, and his wrongheaded approach to foreign policy and economic issues. While he doesn’t seem to have any firm principles or ideology, he does seem to gravitate toward dangerous isolationist and protectionist ideas that are a prescription for disaster.

Which really doesn’t get to the question of why Trump is popular.  In between being just plain wrong about everything, is Trump addressing issues that Tobin as left unaddressed?  Despite the endless pieces that Tobin says he’s written that are right about the issues, he still has not managed to convince Trump supporters that he – Tobin – has the answers, the solutions that Trump supporters want. 

But wait, we’re not through.  Not only is Trump wrong, wrong, dangerously wrong on the issues.  He’s just not “our kind.”  Think I’m kidding?  Here’s Tobin:

But some readers dismiss these substantive disagreements and demand that I tell them what’s really eating at me about Trump. They also wonder if I’m judging them by treating the man of the hour as beneath my standards.

It’s evident that Tobin is not a big fan of democracy or elections.  Now, after Obama’s election, I was unhappy with the result.  I believed then that Obama was elected because he was a blank canvas, using “Hope and change” as a slogan into which anyone could project their own wishes.  However, Tobin exhibits exactly the kind of moral and intellectual superiority that has made his class despised.  He accuses Trump of gaining popularity on the backs of weak-minded individuals.  Let’s face it, what Tobin is referring to is White working class people.  These are people who had been abandoned by both the Left and the Right in favor of appealing to Latino and Black constituencies.  How many times have we heard that white working class (often labelled “angry white men”) are the past; the future belongs to Latino, Black, Muslim – the wave of the future. 

That Trump has harnessed the anger of a lot of voters may justify his behavior for some, but I don’t follow that reasoning. The Founders of our republic worried about the people being swayed by those who preyed upon the weaknesses of their fellow citizens.

You can be sure that if Jeb! had gotten the kind of pol numbers that Trump has, Tobin would have hailed the wisdom of his backers.

 

So, yes, dear Trump fans, it’s not just that your candidate is wrong on the issues. Sure, Obama is a terrible president on vacation from history, and Hillary Clinton has legal issues and is utterly inauthentic, as well as wrong on most of the issues. We’ve always had our share of lousy leaders, and we’re sure to get more. Democracy is like that. But Americans should also want a president who is a man of honor that deserves respect in the mold of the greats that we rightly revere. At the very least, we should want someone that will try to follow in their footsteps and treat the office and the political process with dignity and decency. Character should also count. If we don’t think that’s important anymore, then the fault is not only with Trump but also with us.

Who’s this “us” Tobin?  The fault is with you.  The reason that revolutions occur is that the Ruling Class forgets what the country class suffer.  People who write magazine articles would not be caught dead working on an assembly line for a living.  So when the assembly line – the job that paid the food and the mortgage moves to Mexico – it destroys the livelihood of the worker.  For the theoretician, the magazine writer, it’s the idea for another article.

The idea that Tobin’s kids make a living stocking the shelves at Kroger would make his hair stand on end.  They assumed that they were the natural leaders of the people, and when the people no longer follow, it’s the people’s fault. 

Yes, we want distinguished, nice, dignified people in office.  But Romney lost.  And it was largely because he was nice, dignified and completely out of touch with the concerns those people on the assembly line, the store shelf stockers, the truck drivers had. 

We are living in dangerous times with mass migration from some of the most dangerous parts of the planet.  Politically these are revolutionary times because the Ruling Class can’t seem to cope or denies there’s a problem.  Getting blown up is not an existential threat to President Obama with his lifetime protective detail.  It is to ordinary people getting on a train or a plane, or sitting down at a party. 

Sometimes revolutions are managed by the political aristocracy.  But they often attract a rough crowd, people who have lost it all and have nothing more to lose.  People who have been told they are the past and are no longer important.  People who have been yelled at and spit at, who have seen too many middle fingers thrust in their faces by people who have been pandered to by the Ruling Class.  And when they strike back, even once, they are accused by the Tobins of this world being the violent ones. 

Here's a clue to Jonathan Tobin, even though you may think of yourself as a conservative gunslinger, here's what people are asking as you pen your latest article ...

America to Establishment: Who the hell are you people?

To paraphrase a famous line from The Princess Bride: “inexplicable?”  Jonathan,  I don’t think that word means what you think it means. 

Feminist Whores for Islam

For anyone who missed it, Pat Condell put together a particularly pointed commentary on this exact subject mere hours before the Brussels attacks. Of course, in the bright new Europe of the Future such circumstances will be less suspiciously coincidental, as it will always "a few hours before a Muslim attrocity".

The Myth of the Tiny Radical Muslim Minority

Stop Whining About Islamophobia And Start Focusing On Islamic Jihadis

Some at the Federalist have stopped whining about Trump long enough to notice that there are other subjects that should be addressed.  Like Muslims killing infidels.

Even before ISIS claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack in Brussels that broke early Tuesday morning, folks on Twitter, including members of the leftist media, immediately began offering condolences to Muslims, blaming bigotry, and making other ridiculous apologies.

After San Bernardino, Paris, and now Brussels, to name just a few recent cities attacked by the same global terrorist network that shares one religious identity, it’s intellectually dishonest at best and evil-enabling at worst to focus on Islamophobia rather than examine Islamic jihadism for what it is. By Islamophobia, of course, I mean what the Left means when it essentially accuses people of bigotry for expressing valid concerns about radical Islam.

Emily Hauser is a perfect example: Liberal, literary, desperately signalling her virtue, lover of all things Obama and Jewish.  Terribly upset by Trump's address to AIPAC.

 

Emily L. Hauser‏@emilylhauser

To my Muslim sisters & brothers: I know horrible things will be said about you & Islam today - I am so, so sorry. Please know I stand w you.

• RETWEETS654
• LIKES753
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5:55 AM - 22 Mar 2016

Help, I must be drowning! Because science.

Falling Sea Level

PSST:  Don't tell the editors at the Virginian Pilot.

Sea level has been falling on the Atlantic seaboard for the past six years.

8534720 Atlantic City, New Jersey

DRUDGE on Terror is Europe

Fears grow for priest 'kidnapped by ISIS' who may be crucified on Good Friday...
OBAMA DEFENDS STRATEGY...
PASSENGERS COULD FACE SECURITY SCANNERS AT AIRPORT DOORS...
'Hunted' Brussels suicide brothers abandoned crime for jihad...
Quantity of Explosive Surprises Officials...
Fighter: My Dream is to Live Under Islamic Caliphate in Europe...

400 TRAINED FOR 'WAVE OF BLOODSHED'

When the Liberal Ladies of The View start saying they agree with Trump you know the ground is shifting under the feet of the Inevitable Hillary

Joy Behar, an outspoken critic of Trump, pointed out that the Republican was “right” about the Iraq invasion being a “huge mistake” and everyone seemed to be in agreement that Trump accurately noted in January that “there’s something bad going on” in Brussels.

“He was right, so his foreign policy isn’t so outrageous,” co-host Sunny Hostin said. She later added, “I can’t believe I’m feeling this way, but he seems reasonable today.”

Trump Yarmulkes Are Biggest Seller at AIPAC Conference

 

If yarmulke sales are any indication of voter attitudes, Donald Trump was the clear winner at AIPAC on Monday night.

Marc Daniels, a vendor selling campaign logo kippas outside the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in Washington, D.C. on Monday evening, said the “Donald Trump 2016” cap was his most popular item by far.

Court rebukes IRS for tea party targeting, orders release of secret list

The Sixty Circuit Court of Appeals is slowly forcing Team Obama to disclose how it successfully blocked its political opponents using the IRS in time for the 2012 election.

The judges ordered the IRS to quickly turn over the full list of groups it targeted so that a class-action lawsuit, filed by the NorCal Tea Party Patriots, can proceed. The judges also accused the Justice Department lawyers, who are representing the IRS in the case, of acting in bad faith — compounding the initial targeting — by fighting the disclosure.

The judges ordered the IRS to quickly turn over the full list of groups it targeted so that a class-action lawsuit, filed by the NorCal Tea Party Patriots, can proceed. The judges also accused the Justice Department lawyers, who are representing the IRS in the case, of acting in bad faith — compounding the initial targeting — by fighting the disclosure.

Judge Kethledge, however, said that turned the law on its head.

“Section 6103 was enacted to protect taxpayers from the IRS, not the IRS from taxpayers,” he wrote.

The lawyer for the Tea Party groups said that they will look at the pattern of investigation as the IRS began its cover-up.

He said they suspect the IRS, aware that the inspector general was looking into the tax agency’s behavior, began adding in other groups to try to muddle the perception that only conservatives were being targeted.

A little pet humor

Crazy women are like a box of chocolates ... they'll kill your dog if you're not careful

Police officer Brandon Tatum talks about his experience at the Donald Trump rally in Tucson, AZ.

Staying in touch with the American people from a $12.2 million perch.

Woman shot dead at wedding for refusing to marry her cousin

Germany today. Thanks Frau Merkel.

The father of the 21-year-old, who has been identified only as Shilan, posted an image to his Facebook page of his daughter lying in a pool in Hanover, Germany, of blood and demanded justice.

Who Gets To Set The Rules in A Society?

If the answer is not "the people" that society is not made up of free people and that society has a Ruling Class every bit as much as a Kingdom.

Do the French, British, Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Americans and Australians have the right to decide for themselves whether or not to perpetuate their cultures, institutions and ways of life? Or will these questions be decided for them (and against their will) by transnational elites (through ideologically partisan interpretations of global human rights) and/or by millions of migrants from the developing world “voting with their feet” and arriving without the consent of the host nation’s citizens? The American conservative thinker Willmoore Kendall once wrote that the greatest political “right” of all was not any individual right, but the right of a free people to rule themselves.

Whatever one’s political viewpoint, it is clear that we are facing, not pragmatism, but a question of ideology par excellence. Put otherwise, we are facing a capital W, capital H, World Historical question: Does Western-style government by consent of the governed have the moral right of societal reproduction in the twenty-first century? The immediate migration issue and the continuing immigration-assimilation question tells us that the contemporary West is not living in a Kojevian post-historical world with “pragmatic” civil servants adjusting bureaucratic post-national rules because all the big questions have been settled (Francis Fukuyama) or because “the ideological age has ended” in the West (Daniel Bell). Instead we are still addressing Hegelian big issues, specifically, the most important question of political philosophy: Who should govern, and by what moral authority?

Ideas have consequences. Ideology, whether democratic or non-democratic, Western or non-Western, positive or negative, continues to shape history as much as so-called material factors.

Can Islam be Reformed?

No, says the author.  If we go that route, we are misinformed.

We need to remember that Islam may be recessive at times, active at others, but its essence cannot be changed. It is like a volcano that never goes extinct and we are wrong to regard its dormant phases as final. It is always ready to erupt. You cannot reform or re-interpret a volcano, and unless you keep a distance you always risk being buried in the lava of its natal ferocity.

In effect, the reformers succeed only in turning the credulous and ignorant among us into sitting ducks utterly unprepared for the invasive potential of a world-historical, theo-political system that has set its sights upon the increasingly vulnerable West. Admittedly, the reformers wish to do good; unfortunately they manage only to do harm. Many, if not all, are decent men and women whose reluctance to surrender the faith that has become an integral part of their spiritual and cultural lives has led them into the practice of inadvertent disingenuousness. Indeed, I suspect that the reformers are preoccupied not so much with saving the West as with preserving a form of Islam for themselves. After all, how can they recite the Shahada, the Muslim profession of faith, and not cleave to the beating heart of Islam?

Dear Snowflakes, here’s what oppression REALLY looks like

precious snowflake Otto Warmbier, UVA class of 2031

Why would anyone, much less a college student want to take a trip to North Korea?  And why are they so stupid as to think that American leniency applies there?

Many college kids nowadays are really insufferable.

They complain because their homework is getting in the way of their activism. They freak out because a speaker they disagree with steps foot on their campus. They cry that they “can’t breathe” because of some nebulous “institutionalized racism.” With the support and tutelage of their professors, they decry their campuses — and indeed the entire United States of America — as oppressive.

Well, I have a message for these special snowflakes. Do you want to know what REAL oppression looks like? How about 15 years hard labor for attempting to steal a poster? How about being imprisoned in a jail where you’re so hungry that eating corn out of cow dung or, if you’re really lucky – catching a mouse – is considered a meal. How about being served “justice” by a court not ruled by a jury of your peers but rather a totalitarian government that cares less than nothing for your tears?

Enter the world of 21-year-old University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier, who was just sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for trying to nick a political banner from a hotel in Pyongyang, capital of the North Korea communist regime.

If the media is trying to start a race war, they’re doing a very good job of it.

As I’ve already noted after attending a Trump rally in Atlanta, the topic of race was not mentioned once during the entire event, yet nearly all of the bile tossed at Trump—at least the rhetoric that does not directly assail his hair and his penis—focuses exclusively on dubbing him as a “racist.” Pardon me for getting all paranoid and suspecting that his critics would prefer to stir fears about Trump being the New Hitler rather than ever mention his legitimate complaints about the nation’s toxic inflow of illegal immigrants and economically suicidal outsourcing of jobs and industry.

And as I watched the live footage unfolding of smirking, scruffy dupes of globalist totalitarian financiers swinging fists, screaming at cops, and harassing the fuck out of Trump supporters who were merely trying to leave the event peacefully without being jumped, I bit my lip as one CNN reporter after the next all blamed it on Trump.

Great article at Taki's magazine

They claimed that it was Trump’s words that led to the violence—not the conscious decisions of those who couldn’t emotionally handle his words and therefore made a conscious decision to attend his rally and “shut it down” while “fucking shit up.” When they threw bottles at cops and swung fists at Trump supporters, they were in no way responsible for their behavior. And by preventing Trump from speaking and letting him know he wasn’t welcome in Chicago and there should be no forum for people such as him to speak, they were only exercising their free speech, and you’re a stupid knuckle-dragging redneck if you don’t see the logic in that.

If the media is trying to start a race war, they’re doing a very good job of it.

The Great Chicago Trump Shutdown occurred after weeks of desperate turd-flinging against Trump by both major political parties and mainstream media across the political spectrum. And yet the same tools who insist that gullible fanatics can be easily whipped up into violence by mere rhetoric took not a wisp of responsibility for possibly triggering hordes of their special snowflakes with endless propaganda about how Donald Trump is the secret love child of Adolf Hitler and the KKK.

But who exactly are acting like the intrusive brownshirts in this equation? Which side is aggressively flouting all known rules of decorum and civility and is openly messing with the other side?

It’s certainly not the fascist redneck hordes that have allegedly been hypnotized by Trump. A few seconds of Googling yielded the following results:

• “protesters disrupt sanders rally” … 5 results

• “protesters disrupt clinton rally” … 10 results

• “protesters disrupt trump rally” … 24,500 results

The punch line is that in every case of protestors disrupting Clinton and Sanders rallies, the perps were the cretinous and embarrassingly innumerate goons of Black Lives Matter, harassing their fellow leftists for not being leftist enough.

Although I allow the possibility of isolated incidents, I could find no evidence of Trump supporters even bothering to attend a Clinton or Sanders rally, much less disrupt it or shut it down.

No Safe Space for the Wicked

One of the most inane verbal constructions in the modern leftist lexicon—right up there with “rape culture,” “white privilege,” and “transphobia”—is the idea that the piteous lambs who constantly squirm under Evil White Maledom’s pale, oppressive thumb require “safe spaces” wherein they can segregate themselves without fear of reprisal.

Read the whole thing.

Never A Spontaneous Demonstration

On one side are the spoiled children of privilege who've never been threatened with getting callouses on their soft hands, and who for their own amusement spend their idle hours scheming on how to stir up the dumbasses to go out and riot in the fucking streets. Just exactly like 1968, and for that matter 1789, when Denis Diderot and Voltaire and the other descendants of that idiot Rousseau lolled around in silk-lined 18th-century drawing rooms and speculated how best to inspire the hoi polloi to spill its own blood in the streets. And yes, I hate those little cocksuckers, just like I saw through them in 1968 when they inspired people I loved to go get their heads cracked in Lincoln Park to disrupt the Chicago convention and get it blamed on the cops.

There has categorically never in the history of the world been a "spontaneous" demonstration that wasn't carefully planned and instigated by a very few people who had absolutely none of their own skin in the game. That little punk Billy Dohrn-Ayers woke up this morning with a diamond-cutter hardon over the memory of getting to throw one last tantrum on the living-room floor of his imagined parents.

Brownshirts, boys and girls. You're watching it live and in color.

EVERY REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE IS HITLER

 

In the Iran-Contra trial, Oliver North was accused of “following Adolf Hitler’s official strategy”. What did one have to do with the other? Nothing. But this sort of lazy accusation had become typical and routine. William Shirer, who had also compared Nixon’s bombing of Hanoi to the Holocaust and called Nixon an “apt pupil” of Hitler (Pentagon spokesman Jerry Friedheim was Goebbels), compared Reagan to Hitler for intervening in Grenada. Then Shirer compared Bush I to Hitler for trying to outlaw flag burning.

By the Reagan years, the left had achieved a banality of Hitler analogies. Everything Reagan did was just like Hitler. All of Reagan’s associates were just like Hitler. It was Hitlers all the way down.

President George W. Bush inherited this banality of Hitlers. To left-wing Truthers, open and covert, 9/11 was the Reichstag fire, the Patriot Act was the beginning of a national dictatorship and Bush was a dictator. As Kurt Vonnegut quipped, “The only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected.” Hitler wasn’t elected, Bush was, but you can’t expect a left-wing loudmouth to know history.

Congressman Charles Rangel compared the Iraq War to the Holocaust. “This is just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed." (Rangel had also claimed that the Contract with America was worse than Hitler.) Senator Durbin compared Gitmo to Nazi concentration camps. Senator John Glenn compared Republican arguments to Nazi propaganda. “It’s the old Hitler business… if you hear something repeated, repeated, you start to believe it.” Like repeatedly accusing Republicans of Nazism.

What do we know for sure?

And so the only thing we can truly be certain of is that any Republican nominee will be Hitler. It doesn’t matter what he believes. It doesn’t matter if Democrats considered him a moderate 5 minutes ago. Accusations of Nazism remain the default argument for a Democratic Party turned far to the left.

Republicans aren’t progressive. Therefore they’re Hitler. It’s really that simple.

Optimists thought that the Democrats had reached “Peak Hitler” under Bush. But for the left there is no Peak Hitler. The same tired line of attack has been trotted out for fifty years. It will go on limping around the liberal corral for another fifty years or a hundred years. The Big Lie will continue being repeated to indoctrinate each new politically active progressive with the conviction that anyone to the right is Hitler and that every election is a brand new battle to stop Hitler 2.0 from taking over America.

Goldwater was Hitler. Nixon was Hitler. Reagan was Hitler. Bush was Hitler. None of the latter three men declared the Fourth Reich, made themselves dictators for life and ran concentration camps. But the Big Lie retroactively rewrites the past by claiming that last decade’s Hitler was a decent moderate while the latest Republican Hitler is a terrifying monster. Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan were all resurrected as moderate contrasts to each other and then to Bush. The process of recreating Bush as a moderate has already begun. And so each Republican makes the electoral journey from Hitler to a political moderate whom a latter generation of liberals mourns while complaining that this latest Republican really is Hitler.

Read the whole thing.

Does the President Have A Duty To Nominate Supreme Court Candidates? Does the Senate Have A Duty To Consider Nominees?

Short answer: NO.

Longer answer:

The position that a President has a duty to put forward a Supreme Court nominee is narrowly elitist and overtly judicial-centric. Nothing distinguishes the President in his role here in regard to nominating Supreme Court nominees from (1) his role in regard to nominating other judicial nominees and (2) his coordinate role in regard to nominating persons for any and every other office (however humble) within the President’s orbit. If the President fails to nominate a person to one of these less prominent offices who would say that the President failed in his constitutional duty? I think few, and perhaps no commentators would make such an argument. And if you will not make that argument for each and every one of the less prominent positions subject to presidential nomination, I think there is no good reasoned basis for making it for Supreme Court vacancies—except that the great & good all think the Supreme Court was, is, and must be the center of our attention and political life. In other words, this Supreme Court-centered view is exactly the position that Antonin Scalia fought tooth-and-nail. He was right to do so.

When the Red Hats came for the Muslims,

When the Red Hats came for the Muslims,

I remained silent;

I was not a Muslim.

When they came for the Mexicans,

I remained silent;

I was not a Mexican.

When they came for the fourth estate,

I did not speak out;

I was not a journalist.

And then they stopped coming because a lot of problems were solved, I cracked open a beer, and started to Make America Great Again.

Obama's hope for Cuba

Bud Norman on Obama's hopes for Cuba

Our guess is that he admires its socialized welfare system and press restraints and ability to to send dissidents to the torture chambers, and hopes that his much admired rapprochement with the totalitarian government will nudge us ever closer to that model.

He did, after all, dream of his father who admired the Communist socialist model.

Trump’s ability to tap into the fears of those who feel marginalized is hardly unique to the United States.

The Globalist dislikes Trump intensely and thinks that what's been going on in terms of companies moving their factories offshore is great, they admit that it's not all beer and skittles in, for example, China.

While an unprecedented number of Chinese tourists have flocked overseas to shop at some of the world’s toniest stores and Chinese investors are key players in global markets, the divide between those who are accumulating wealth and those barely scraping by continues to widen rapidly.

The leadership in Beijing has actually emulated its big capitalist brother in Washington by essentially paying mere lip service to correcting the widening gap between those who have gained from globalization and those who are losing as a result.

It seems that China has a particularly virulent brand of Crony Capitalism. Of course it's easier to do when you don't have to disguise the cronyism because political opposition is not allowed. But if you don't give enough of the spoils to the peasants, pretty soon you won't have enough police and military to prevent a "preference cascade" for a different gang of rulers.

Protesters storm Brazilian capital after bugged phone call goes public which reveals President gave senior government position to her predecessor so he could avoid arrest over corruption

It seems other corrupt administrations are also having problems.

Protests have erupted in Brazil's capital after a recorded phone call between President Dilma Rousseff and her once-popular predecessor was released, suggesting that she appointed him to her cabinet to spare him from arrest for corruption.

Rousseff appointed Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as her chief of staff on Wednesday hoping that his political prowess can save her administration.

The president is battling an impeachment attempt, a deep recession, and the fallout of an explosive corruption scandal at state oil giant Petrobras.

DRUDGE on the election

Dems sound alarm against Trump...
Dangerous and unprecedented threat...
Obama increasingly involved in campaign...
Kremlin Condemns Trump Video for 'Demonizing' Russia...

CRUZ KEEPS GOING
NEEDS 87% OF REMAINING DELEGATES

Trump Towers

Trump's ad shows Hillary barking like a dog

Pro-Life Ad

Ooops!!

Obama will sign an executive order allowing the use of federal tax revenue to fund and promote unrestrained infanticide around the globe. Most telling about Mr. Obama is the fact that a lion’s share of these funds will be used to murder the young in his homeland of Africa. And clearly, it is a high priority for him on this, his third day in office.

‘Best Trump ad I’ve seen in my life’

Does the Media want Trump to be Killed? It would be good for ratings!

Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert cartoons and explainer of Trump) on the media and killing Trump.

In May 1997 he predicted ...

In the future, the media will kill famous people to generate news that people will care about. – The Dilbert Future (May 1997)

Three months later, the media chased Princess Di into a tunnel and created a dangerous situation that killed her but was terrific for television news ratings. The media didn’t plot to kill anyone, but they created a situation that made it likely someone important would die because of the way their business model works. That was the basis for my prediction.

Fast-forward to today and we see the media priming the public to try to kill Trump, or at least create some photogenic mayhem at a public event. Again, no one is sitting in a room plotting Trump’s death, but – let’s be honest – at least half of the media believes Trump is the next Hitler, and a Hitler assassination would be morally justified. Also great for ratings. The media would not be charged with any crime for triggering some nut to act. There would be no smoking gun. No guilt. No repercussions. Just better ratings and bonuses all around.

His post was picked up by Ann Althouse who got this response in a comment:

The media has been building the narrative that angry Republicans are dangerous for quite a while.

McCain rallies, Palin rallies were both deemed very dangerous. "Terrorist!" "Kill Him!"-- remember the reporters saying they heard that? There was such a dangerous level of anger.

The Tea Party protests were labeled racist. Sitting Congressmen lied about being spit on, and hearing the N word hurled at them.

It was reported as fact.

And now, here we are again, hearing yet again about how dangerous angry conservatives are.

Yet....people were arrested before the 2008 elections for hoarding buckets of urine they were planning to pour on Republicans. GWB had oranges thrown at his limo in his first inauguration. Occupy wasn't peaceful, and it was worldwide. Wisconsin's capitol was overtaken for days.  Ferguson wan't peaceful. BLM shuts down streets and stores. Baltimore burned down buildings. Young people here in Chicago are thrilled they were able to shut down a legitimate political rally.

I mean...it seems only one side is allowed to have "righteous" anger. And that, in turn, feeds the Trump phenomenon.

.... it seems only one side is allowed to have "righteous" anger.

Those crazy right wingers and their desire to save nuns the cost of contraceptive coverage

Bud Norman (no fan of Donald Trump) but otherwise a good Republican curmudgeon out of Kansas reviews a new book of revisionist history about Bill Clinton's Presidency in a n article entitled The Future of Bill Clinton's Past.

Now no less a liberal pundit as Thomas Franks is lamenting “Bill Clinton’s odious presidency” in his telling of “the real history of the ’90s,” and it’s something to see. The author of the national best-selling book “What’s the Matter with Kansas?,” which explained that Kansans tend to vote Republican because they’re too crazed by Christianity to embrace the truth faith of socialism, and which was the worst book we ever read on Kansas politics, has a new title out that explains how Clinton’s tenure was a disaster for a liberals. He grudgingly concedes that Clinton achieved modest increases in the minimum wage and top tax tax brackets, and made a failed attempt at health care reform, but notes that the rest of what he’s remembered for was mostly the doing of the hated House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his fellow right-wingers and that even the economic good times were largely a matter of accounting tricks and Enron-schemes and dot-com bubbles.

As much as we’re delighted to hear such a left-winger as Franks at long last acknowledge these points, it is of course in service of the liberal agenda. Those tawdry sex scandals are now conceded, but that’s only because the religious right is now reduced to fighting for the right not to participate or same-sex weddings and saving nuns the cost of contraceptive coverage, and the woman who defended her husband’s serial abuses is now out on the campaign trail saying that any woman who alleges a sexual assault should be believed. Those tough-on-crime measures saved thousands of black lives, but now there’s a Black Lives Matter movement that is more concerned about the mass incarceration of murderers of black men and women. Don’t mention trade deals on a Democratic campaign trail, either, or even a Republican one, because those are now out of fashion, no matter what economic benefits they’ve brought. That welfare reform bill that proved so popular and effective prior to its repeal-by-executive-action under President Barack Obama is now described as “the repeal of welfare,” and the distaff Clinton is to be tarred with that as well. There’s no mention of the awful affordable housing policies that drove a housing bubble whose popping popped the entire economy, which of course is all blamed on those de-regulations, or how the lack of concern with Middle Eastern terrorism might have manifested itself a few months into Clinton’s successor’s first term, so it’s not an altogether satisfying revisionism.

Bud's always a good read, especially when he's off his hobby horse of Trump bashing.

HUNGER GAMES, AMERICAN STYLE

Sasha and Malia Obama Wore $20K Dresses to the Canada State Dinner

While their mother opted for a custom strapless number from one of her favorite designers, Jason Wu, her daughters went with Naeem Khan. Malia, 17, who was seated next to Saturday Night Live’s Lorne Michaels and actress Sandra Oh, wore a strapless faille gown with crystal beading from the pre-fall 2015 collection. The 100 percent silk piece is no longer available for purchase, but it originally retailed for $17,990. The embellished piece didn’t need any more bling, so she went without jewelry.

Glenn Reynolds comments:

When teenagers wear dresses that cost more than many Americans make, it’s easy to see why Bernie and Donald are getting traction.

When you're part of the Ruling Class, it's all good.  But watch out for the peasants with pitchforks.  Does anyone feel that the the French revolution may be waiting in the wings?  

Attempted Attack on Trump at Dayton Ohio rally March 12, 2016

An Open Letter to the Conservative Media Explaining Why I Have Left the Movement

Let me say up front that I am a life-long Republican and conservative. I have never voted for a Democrat in my life and have voted in every presidential and midterm election since 1988. I have never in my life considered myself anything but a conservative. I am pained to admit that the conservative media and many conservatives’ reaction to Donald Trump has caused me to no longer consider myself part of the movement. I would suggest to you that if you have lost people like me, and I am not alone, you might want to reconsider your reaction to Donald Trump. Let me explain why....

Second, it doesn’t appear to me that conservatives calling on people to reject Trump have any idea what it actually means to be a “conservative.” The word seems to have become a brand that some people attach to a set of partisan policy preferences, rather than the set of underlying principles about government and society it once was. Conservatism has become a dog’s breakfast of Wilsonian internationalism brought over from the Democratic Party after the New Left took it over, coupled with fanatical libertarian economics and religiously-driven positions on various culture war issues. No one seems to have any idea or concern for how these positions are consistent or reflect anything other than a general hatred for Democrats and the Left.

Lost in all of this is the older strain of conservatism. The one I grew up with and thought was reflective of the movement. This strain of conservatism believed in the free market and capitalism but did not fetishize them the way so many libertarians do. This strain understood that a situation where every country in the world but the US acts in its own interests on matters of international trade and engages in all kinds of skulduggery in support of their interests is not free trade by any rational definition. This strain understood that a government’s first loyalty was to its citizens and the national interest. And also understood that the preservation of our culture and our civil institutions was a necessity.

All of this seems to have been lost. Conservatives have become some sort of schizophrenic sect of libertarians who love freedom (but hate potheads and abortion) and feel the US should be the policeman of the world. The same people who daily fret over the effects of leaving our society to the mercy of Hollywood and the mass culture have somehow decided leaving it to the mercies of the international markets is required.

Read the whole thing. 

German state elections: Success for right-wing AfD, losses for Merkel's CDU

It's not just the US that's ready for a change.  On no, Bernie, it's not the socialist rvolution you're selling.

Exit polls suggest significant success for the populist right-wing AfD in three key state elections. Chancellor Merkel's CDU saw losses in two out of three states, which have been attributed to her refugee policies.

 

The right-leaning AfD managed to enter all three state parliaments, winning double-digit percentage results in Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt.

More than 12 million Germans were eligible to vote in the polls to elect new regional parliaments in the three states.

They came out of nowhere, just like Trump.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."