"We will not open or operate retail stores in California." (Marcus Lemonis, Bed, Bath, and Beyond)
Even Scarborough sees through the clown.
Now if you really want to learn something, please pay close attention to this nine minute video by Victor Davis Hanson entitled Gavin Newsom's 250 Mil Redistricting Power Grab.
Opinions differ.
On a podcast last week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D–NY, claimed, “I walk around all the time. I wake up early in the morning … And I feel perfectly safe.” He dismissed Republican concerns about safety as “full of it,” but, of course, Schumer doesn’t go anywhere without his security detail. In a similar vein, D.C. Councilmember Charles Allen called the federalization of law enforcement “unnecessary, unwarranted,” and the D.C. Council emphasized that crime rates are at “the lowest rates we’ve seen in 30 years.”
John Lott goes on to argue that "D.C.’s murder rate ran 169 percent higher than Louisiana’s, the deadliest state, and an astonishing 523 percent higher than that of the average state."
Lott is one of those who invariably talks sense in stark contrast to our political enemies.
The Dems are a contemptible bunch. I could easily list ten reasons. Two near the top are their breathtaking mendacity and their casual attitude toward criminality. And they lie about both.
Open records show an acquaintance between Epstein and Mr. Trump many years ago. That relationship ended when Mr. Trump reportedly banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago, long before becoming president. I have seen nothing that would suggest anything improper or even questionable by Mr. Trump.
It is clear from the evidence that Epstein committed suicide. What isn’t clear is whether he was assisted by jail personnel. That seems likely to me, based on the evidence of allegedly broken cameras, transfer of his cellmate and the absence of guards during relevant time periods.
I have absolutely no doubt that Epstein never worked for any intelligence agency. If he had, he would surely have told me and his other lawyers, who would have used that information to get him a better deal. (He wasn’t satisfied with the so-called sweetheart deal he got, which required him to spend 1½ years in a local jail and register as a sex offender.) My sources in Israel have confirmed to me that he had no connection to Israeli intelligence. That false story—recently peddled by Tucker Carlson—probably emanated from credible allegations that Robert Maxwell (1923-91), father of Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, worked with the Mossad.
Conspiracy stories attract readers, viewers and listeners. They are also fodder for political attacks. The Epstein case has generated more than its share of such theories, and there is nothing more annoying to gossip mongers than when stubborn facts (or the absence of facts) get in the way of a juicy theory. Sorry to disappoint you, but there is really nothing much to see here, beyond what has already been disclosed.
Politics in hyperdrive. Who can keep up? And to what extent should one keep up? Here are a couple of articles that caught my eye:
The Islamic Republic's New Lease on Life. Mercifully brief, and very interesting. In Foreign Affairs, by one Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar. I'd be interested in Caiati's and Soriano's comments.
Elon Musk is America's Dumbest Smart Person. Roger Kimball is right, and he is a very good writer to boot, unlike so many journo-punks now churning out bad prose. How do I know Kimball is a good writer? It takes one to know one.
It's a funny world. My opinion of the 'pre-historic' Fetterman has gone up during the same period that my opinion of the engineering genius Musk has gone down.
I would put it like this. Donald Trump has injected the 'art of the deal' into politics. He has brought the transactional skills of a consummate businessman to bear with impressive results. He was politically naive but the seemingly providential interregnum provided him with a 'sabbatical' during which to 'bone up' with the help of brilliant advisors. That, and the stark contrast with the mentally inept, morally corrupt 'Traitor Joe' Biden have brought the Orange Man to power. Maybe God had a hand in it, or we just got lucky. I prefer not to bluster about the unknowable.
Musk, on the other hand, remains politically naive. You can't engineer politics.
As for how much time should be spent following the events of the day, see my Is it Rational to be Politically Ignorant?
Musk's third party doesn't have a chance, and in any case, Third Parties are nothing but discussion societies in political drag, as I argue over at the Stack.
It is according to the author of a TNR article. I don't disagree. After all, the bad hombres are being held against their will in one place prior to their deportation. The conclusion to draw, of course, is that some concentration camps are morally justified. This one is also legally justified. President Trump is merely upholding the rule of law, unlike the Dems who love to mouth that phrase, but don't mean what they say. "No one is above the law," Nancy Pelosi and her followers intoned again and again. Did she and they mean that? No. They meant: no one is above the law except our guys and gals.
POTUS is legally justified in building a concentration camp in the middle of the Everglades for the housing of illegal aliens prior to their lawful deportation. What was legally unjustified was the Biden-Mayorkas invitation of an invasion of illegal aliens into our country. Those 'gentlemen' were in dereliction of duty and should both have been impeached and removed from office, at the very least.
Some say, quite reasonably, that they should both now be in prison.
If you think my use of 'invasion' two paragraphs supra is an exaggeration, consider that in December 2024, during the Biden-Harris (mal)administration, there were 301, 981 Southwest Land Border Encounters according to official U. S. statistics. For the same year there were over two million total such encounters. Under Trump, border encounters have dropped dramatically. In June of this year there were zero. Again, these are official stats.
If you are against detention centers, then you must also be against prisons. Is your name Zohran Mamdani?
What I like about the winner of the New York City mayoral Democrat primary is that he is not a 'stealth ideologue' a phrase I have been using for years to characterize the likes of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. Mamdani, unlike the mendacious foursome just mentioned, comes clean about what he and the Dems intend:
Mamdani is now the mainstream of the once great Democratic Party.
The only difference is that Mamdani isn’t afraid to say what other Democratic politicians try to hide.
Think about what Mamdani has proposed or supported:
- A yearlong freeze on rent
- A $30 minimum wage
- Free bus service
- City-owned grocery stores
- Defunding the police
- Calling Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide.
“Mainstream Democrats” support every one of these positions in one way or another.
With the advent of Mamdani it will be more difficult now to remain a Useful Idiot as so many of the supporters of the Dems are. You know these people. We have them in our families and in our neighborhoods and workplaces. A lot of them are the "college-educated white women" of a certain age. They rescue cats and dogs and support what they sincerely believe are good causes. But they are lazy and inattentive and too wrapped up in their private lives to pay proper attention to current events. Their loving and nurturing feminine nature impairs their political judgment and makes them easy marks for the fraudulent come-ons of professional pols like Phony Joe Biden who has 40 years of experience of looking into the camera, smiling, and making an emotional appeal. The women think, "He's a nice man!" They cannot see past the polished style to the lack of substance. Conversely they cannot see past Trump's off-putting style to his genuine and salutary substance. In the case of pretty boy Gavin Newsom, they are so taken by his style that the question of substance doesn't even arise. I had to agree with Sean Hannity one night when he remarked that Joy Behar of The View has a "crush" on him. Joy Behar, that well-fed paragon of wisdom and insight!
But old men, too, are part of the Useful Idiot contingent. Lazy, inattentive, superannuated and superficial, pissing their lives away hitting little white balls into holes and — worst of all — living in the past. Mamdani, as a sort of Fidel redivivus, may help these Rip van Winkles wake up.
One more thing. It is good that the battle lines are clearly laid out. Let the battle begin, the battle for the soul of America. Mamdani is a Great Clarifier as is our boy Trump. John Catsimatidis, billionaire, said on Stuart Varney's show this morning that Trump has God on his side. How would he know? Does the billionaire have a hot line to the divine? What is within the range of our knowledge, however, is that Trump's the man to save the Republic, and make the whole world a safer place, as he already has.
Related: Should Mamdani be Deported?
It is blindingly evident that Ayatollah Khamenei and the rest of the radical Islamists in control of Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Donald Trump has been clear and consistent about this during the ten years he has been in the political spotlight. He may speak of diplomacy and agreements but he understands that a piece of of paper will not deter such savages.
Unlike the feckless and demented Joe Biden, Trump has excellent threat-assessment skills. He understands that the greatest threat to humanity is not 'white supremacy' or 'climate change,' but nuclear war. And unlike his impotent predecessors Obama and Biden, he knows better than to make idle threats. He gave Khamenei 60 days. On the 61st all hell broke loose.
So what DJT has to do is supply the Israelis with the bunker buster bombs and delivery systems (B-2s) to annihilate the infrastructure needed to develop the nukes. [Corrigendum 6/19: I am assuming, probably falsely, that the USA can simply supply the Israelis with the bunker-busting GBU-57s and the B-2s so that the IDF can do the job.]
But there is dissension in the MAGA ranks. I wonder if Tucker Carlson is aware of the distinction between preventing the present Iranian regime from acquiring nukes and forcing the Iranians to adopt a Western form of government. I am for the first, against the second. The Iranians have the right to any government of their choosing, including an Islamic theocracy as long as it does not support such terrorist surrogates and proxies as Hamas and Hezbollah, and as along as it does not develop nuclear weapons.
As my respect for Carlson goes down, my assessment of Fetterman goes up. Funny world.
The Neo-Con mistake was to think that we can teach the peoples of the Middle East how to live by invasion, occupation, and nation-building. Utter folly. But that is not what Trump is about. Preventing Khamenei and his gang from acquiring nukes is entirely consistent with Trump's non-interventionist foreign policy. [On second thought, a great power such as the USA cannot be purely non-interventionist if it is to succeed in protecting its own interests. Here non-interventionism meets its limit. In the present emergency, an exception must be made: the USA must intervene to prevent the rogue state from acquiring nukes. The preceding sentence smacks of Schmitt: I am currently immersed, critically of course, in his works.]
"The Romans, foreseeing troubles, dealt with them at once, and, even to avoid a war, would not let them come to a head, for they knew that war is not to be avoided, but is only put off to the advantage of others." (— Nicolo Machiavelli, in "The Prince.")
Applying Machiavelli's point to the present: War to the death cannot be avoided with Khamenei's Iran. So let's get it it over with. Khamenei is stalling; he thinks he can survive the current Israeli onslaught, develop his nukes, and fight later. (This is essentially General Jack Keane's analysis. Sounds right to me!) So what DJT has to do is supply the Israelis with the bunker buster bombs and delivery systems (B-2s) to annihilate the infrastructure needed to develop the nukes. [Not right. See my first corrigendum supra.] This may ignite a popular uprising against the clerical thugs, which could only be good. Trump and Netanyahu have made it clear that the Iranian people are not the enemy.
Addendum 6/19. What I wrote above leaves something to be desired: political theory is not my wheelhouse. It takes a bloody long time to "study everything" as my masthead motto recommends. See the comment thread and in particular the linked articles for a nuanced overview of the entire geopolitical shit-scape.
The corpulent cow's self-deportation has put many a mile between her and the object of her hatred, and many a smile upon conservative faces. Curiously, her spatial distance from the Orange Man seems only to have exacerbated her animosity. Given the quality of the Dem field, she should be considered for 2028.
Justice demands the death penalty in certain cases. Anyone who opposes said penalty in principle I consider morally obtuse. As for Mangione, he deserves it. The editors of the Boston Herald demur:
The death penalty should be off the table for Luigi Mangione, accused killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. And not for any reason sympathetic to Mangione.
Attaching the death penalty to Mangione’s trial would only make a martyr out of an accused killer who has already inspired zealous support among legions of fans.
Tell me what you think of this sort of moral reasoning. I don't have time to weigh in, or to lay out my arguments for the death penalty in general or for Mangione's execution in particular. But I do have one Substack article on the topic that may be of interest: Fetal Rights and the Death Penalty: Consistent or Inconsistent?
The Veep's performance was impressive. The man has excellent public speaking skills, is considerably more articulate than his boss, and displays natural political talent. He will make a fine successor. On the down side, he, unlike Trump, is a professional politician. I don't have to explain what that means. Trump's astonishing effectiveness is in large part due to the fact that the man does not need the job and can't be bought. The same goes for his right-hand man, Elon Musk. Contrary to the filthy slandering of him by our political enemies, he is not in this for the money. (As if to mock these moral and intellectual incompetents, Elon has given new life to the Hitler salute by introducing the chainsaw variant. I call it 'blue-baiting.')
Vance was right to point out the blow Trump has struck for religious liberty for all faiths. He didn't mention Executive Order 14182 of 25 January, but I will. Enforcing the Hyde Amendment is an effective counterpunch against the corrupt and self-serving Joe Biden who, you will recall, reversed himself on his quondam support for the amendment:
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:
Section 1 . Purpose and Policy. For nearly five decades, the Congress has annually enacted the Hyde Amendment and similar laws that prevent Federal funding of elective abortion, reflecting a longstanding consensus that American taxpayers should not be forced to pay for that practice. However, the previous administration disregarded this established, commonsense policy by embedding forced taxpayer funding of elective abortions in a wide variety of Federal programs.
It is the policy of the United States, consistent with the Hyde Amendment, to end the forced use of Federal taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion.
Now unless you are morally obtuse, or a Democrat (whichever comes first), you should be able to see right away that it is wrong for the federal government to force roughly half the taxpayers to support what they consider to be a moral outrage. It is wrong even if abortion right up to the moment of birth ought to be legal. I am not saying that it ought to be legal. I am saying that, even if it ought to be legal, and becomes legal, it would be wrong to compel taxpayers to pay for it. For that compulsion violates their conscience and moral judgment, a judgment that has the support of a battery of powerful arguments. (That the average Joe and Jane lack the intellectual 'chops' to produce these arguments, arguments which, by the way, needn't rely on any specifically religious premises, is not to the point; some of us can. Do you remember that RINO mediocrity George W. Bush? He would often say, in his flat-footed way, that "Marriage is between a man and a woman." He was right, but that's all he could muster: he lacked the mental equipment to defend his position in an articulate manner. He reminded me of the affable jocks I'd have in my logic classes. In this respect Bush was like too many conservatives. They have sound intuitions but cannot rise to their argumentative defense.)
In roughly the second half of his speech, Vice President Vance became repetitive, and what is worse, 'squishy' in the style of the 'liberal,' in his positive statements about the current pope. It is too bad that the man is dying, and perhaps we should pray for the man. But should we pray that his papacy continue? That is not obvious. I'd say it is the exact opposite of obvious. I don't believe I am very far off if I say that Bergoglio is to the RCC what Biden was to the USA, a disaster.
It follows that if you pray for the man, you should not pray that he continue to live. For if he continues to live, his destructive papacy will continue. His papacy ought to end, which is not to say that the papacy ought to end. You should pray that Bergoglio get his spiritual affairs in order, admit the damage he has done, confess his sins of omission and commission, and ask for forgiveness, lest he end up in hell, or in purgatory for a hell of a long time.
Here is the Veep's speech.
Here.
From 20 January through 18 February.
Beautiful. This tsunami of common sense will swamp the Swamp Critters and drive them to blind reaction. Flailing about, they will sink deeper into the cesspool of their futile negativity, to their despair while we who are sane and reasonable sit back and enjoy the show.
Can you say Schadenfreude?
Perhaps the most satisfying is EO #2 in which Trump revokes Joe Dementia's abominations.
I don't pretend to understand Trump's battle plan, but it may be that this guy does:
The Trump Team fooled everybody, including me. As last week’s various lawsuits sprouted restraining orders like early buds emerging all over the willow trees in springtime, most commenters expected Trump to take a necessary pause for defensive retrenchment. Surely, we all thought, it would take Trump’s anti-bureaucrats some time to clear the judicial logjam. But all of us were wrong.
A brief pause to clear past the TROs wasn’t Trump’s strategy at all. No pauses! Instead, yesterday Trump tripled down, jamming the battle tank’s accelerator into overdrive and smashing ahead in a whole different direction. His new battlefield banner unfurled yesterday afternoon in the form of one executive order plus three separate press conferences, which together sent a just-relaxing Deep State enemy racing for the bunkers with its trousers still half off.
And don't fool yourselves, muchachos: this is a fight to the death:
Some people will regard my title as hyperbole.It is not.Trump, I believe, understands he is in a fight to the death.The American establishment tried to discredit and ruin him, to imprison him, to assassinate him.They stole his 2020 reelection from him. They tried to steal his NY properties. It is not possible for Trump to have illusions about what he is up against. He is up against evil.
Trump knows that the fight is not just about him. It is about America. For decades a corrupt American establishment has been running the government for their benefit at the expense of the American people. Trump says he intends to take government out of the corrupt establishment’s hands and put it back in the hands of the people.That is the last place the establishment wants it.For them the struggle Trump began in 2015 is existential. If Trump loses, America loses, and the establishment wins. Civil liberties will disappear, especially for “racist” white people and for people who think there are only two genders. Censorship and false narratives will prevail, and we will live in a belief system constructed for us by the establishment and the whore media for whom government is a profit center.
I don’t know how many of Trump’s appointees understand that they are in a fight to the death. How strong are they?If Trump doesn’t win, their careers are over. The establishment will see to that. If the Establishment proves to be stronger, will Trump’s appointees change sides and abandon the fight?
I don’t know how many MAGA Americans understand the stakes. How many of them think that the fight ended with the election victory and now President Trump will put everything right? If this delusion prevails, the emergency extra-legal steps Trump must take if he is to prevail will lack support among his followers.The whore media will paint a picture of Trump as a tyrant.
Addendum (2/14)
Report Card on Trump's First '100' Days. He promised to hit the ground running, and he did. His accomplishments so far have been astonishing. If his propensity for hubris doesn't do him in, he's headed for Mount Rushmore. His interregnum did him a world of good. His getting nixed* in 2020 redounded to his benefit. His cabinet choices were outstanding and all have been or will be confirmed. A truly diverse and inclusive bunch in the proper senses of these terms, and no 'equity' in sight. 'Equity' is unjust and can get you killed. Individual MERIT rules as it must and by right: fight, Fight, FIGHT! that it be restored. The obstructionist crapweasel Dementocrats haven't learned their lesson yet, but they will in the end. They had better, or they are done for. They way they are going, 2025 may be their last year.
As I have recently opined, however, we do need an opposition party to insure checks and balances all up and down the line. The Dems would do just fine if they could thoroughly reform themselves by purging the hard-Left scum and getting back to basic sanity and moral decency. But that's a big 'if.'
_________
*An allusion to the outcome of the Kennedy-Nixon contest of 1960.
Hubris Comes From Ancient Greece
English picked up both the concept of hubris and the term for that particular brand of cockiness from the ancient Greeks, who considered hubris a dangerous character flaw capable of provoking the wrath of the gods. In classical Greek tragedy, hubris was often a fatal shortcoming that brought about the fall of the tragic hero. Typically, overconfidence led the hero to attempt to overstep the boundaries of human limitations and assume a godlike status, and the gods inevitably humbled the offender with a sharp reminder of their his mortality.
It is an index of the extreme polarization of our time that there are those who are quite sure that Trump enjoys divine protection. They speak, irresponsibly, of the 'miracle' of his escaping death by assassination at Butler, PA. But how could anyone know, and confidently claim, that God intervened to save his life? I am not saying that God did not intervene in this instance, or that divine intervention in nature is impossible; I am saying that you are guilty of epistemic pretense if you pretend to know what cannot be known, but can only, at most, be reasonably believed.
Hubris or providential protection? You are free to believe what you like, but in a case like this, the wise man suspends judgment.
The ever-helpful Dave Lull informs me that our friend Edward Feser has weighed in on the Gaza matter with an article in National Catholic Register, Trump's Gaza Proposal is Gravely Immoral.
I need to bone up before I weigh in. If I ever do.
Steve Sailer puts the point with pith and precision: America First or Americans First? (Sailer via Malcolm Pollack).
But see Roger Simon, The Great Fake H1-B Controversy.
Political pathologies are not to be multiplied praeter necessitatem, but given the praeter-natural lunacy of the Left, a certain amount of quasi-psychiatry is tolerable, and perhaps even helpful unto political salvation and national sanitation. Move over, TDS.
I now hand off to Roger Kimball.
