Tag: politics

The permanent opposition

Even when they’re in power. Jerry Pournelle excoriates the Senate Republicans:

The Senate is busily proving that Republicans can’t rule; they’re not even a Party. They’re a collection of losers whose jobs were safer when they were in the opposition and they could blame national misrule on someone else. They could say “We don’t control the House”. When they got that, they could say “We don’t have a majority in the Senate.” When that resulted in nothing much about slowing the train to national disaster, they could say “We don’t have the President.” When they nominated and elected a President, they could say “We don’t have enough of the Senate.” Clearly that is fudge, because the rumor is they can’t even muster a majority vote to obliterate Obamacare, a provable national disaster.

What more do they want? But we have had this problem since Lyndon Johnson and even before. Country club Republicans were satisfied to be the loyal opposition. The Democrats slyly gave them perks for being a permanent minority, and many took the bait. The only thing likely to keep these “we can’t quite do it” scoundrels in office is the – admittedly terrifying prospect – of Nanny Pelosi returning as Speaker; they’re willing to do without most of the perks of a “majority party” – which they are not – for permanent jobs on Capitol Hill. And God help us, it works: I sure don’t want to see Speaker Nancy Pelosi ever night – or even every week – on my nightly news. (I don’t want enhanced Obamacare either, or any of the other deficit enhancing free stuff entitlements the Democrats will bring“ in to assure their majority status if they ever take control. So we are obliged to work to keep this bumbling inept crew in charge.

So here we have it: the Democrats hold fewer national and state offices than ever before, but they continue to rule. And bringing them back will make things far worse; and a bloc of country club Republicans really want to become “loyal opposition with benefits” and be rid of the burden of ruling. And a business oriented unsophisticated but very rich President can’t even get confirmation of his own team with a House and Senate majority.

I hope that when I reach Jerry’s age, I’ll be as observant and perspicacious as he is. Truly a remarkable man.

Three Fake News scalps

CNN throws three employees under the bus, hopes that you’ll believe they’re totally reporting the truth now:

Three CNN employees have handed in their resignations over a retracted story linking President Trump to Russia, the network announced Monday. The article was removed from CNN.com on Friday after the network decided it could no longer stand by its reporting.

“In the aftermath of the retraction of a story published on CNN.com, CNN has accepted the resignation of the employees involved in the story’s publication,” a network spokesperson told TheWrap in a statement.

On Thursday, CNN investigative reporter Thomas Frank published a story involving an investigation into a Russian investment fund with possible ties to several Trump associates.

According to the network, an internal investigation found that “some standard editorial processes were not followed when the article was published.”

Citing a single unnamed source, the story reported that Congress was investigating a “Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials.” The story, which only appeared on the network’s site, was quickly disputed on Friday, as one Trump ally Anthony Scaramucci — who was mentioned in the story — pushed back on  Frank’s reporting, insisting he “did nothing wrong.”

“Once it was determined that editorial processes were not followed, CNN deleted the story from CNN.com,” the network said Friday on its site. “Soon thereafter, the story was officially retracted and replaced with an editor’s note.” The piece “did not meet CNN’s editorial standards and has been retracted,” the note said. “Links to the story have been disabled.”

CNN blamed the mistake on a “breakdown in editorial workflow,” explaining that that “these types of stories” did not go through the usual departments such as fact-checkers, journalism standards experts and lawyers.

The gaffe cost three employees their jobs: Frank, who wrote the story, Eric Lichtblau, a unit editor, and the person in charge of the unit, Lex Haris.

The network’s investigative unit was told during a meeting on Monday that the retraction did not necessarily mean the facts of the story were wrong. But, rather, “the story wasn’t solid enough to publish as-is,” according CNN.com.

Haris, Lichtblau and Frank had solid reputations among their colleagues.

Frank worked as reporter for USA Today and Newsday before joining CNN. Lichtblau is a former New York Times Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter. And Haris was a former executive editor of CNNMoney.

This is what happens when you put your trust in the reliability of Team NeverTrump. The problem is that if this newfound sense of journalistic integrity caused CNN to force the resignation of three employees every time they published Fake News, they’d soon have none left. Of course, they have learned nothing.

CNN boss Jeff Zucker says despite Donald Trump’s war on the network and what the president says is “fake news,” he is certain that CNN maintains the trust of its viewers, as it extends into digital brands to attract a younger audience.

Speaking at Cannes Lions, he said, “CNN has been around for 37 years, our trustworthiness today is the same as it was a year ago, before people in high offices started questioning it. We know that through our own brand research. Just because somebody says you are not trustworthy, that doesn’t mean it is so … CNN’s brand equity is built over 37 years doing hard work in very dangerous places … those who rely on CNN trust CNN more than ever.”

CNN is dying. No one watches it. Because it is Fake News posing as real news.

Primetime viewers in millions: FNC: 2.346 | CNN: 827 | MSNBC: 1.705

Anti-white hate crime

Trump supporter stabbed nine times in California:

The pro-Trump supporter Tony Forman was right in the middle of a recent protest in Cathay where emotions ran hot over the sanctuary city controversy, but nothing like the violence that’s left Foreman now fighting for his life.

“This was politically motivated. That’s a concern because he is a good friend of mine,” Omar Navarro said. “I’m just really shocked someone would do this. What happened to free speech?”

Navarro is running to unseat the long time Democrat Maxine Waters in the 43rd District of the U.S. Congress, and there are also accusations coming from others.

The stabbing attack on Foreman is a hate crime because of his outspoken support for President Trump and the conservative agenda. “We don’t know if it is politically motivated or racially motivated, but we do know there were some racial slurs for him being white that were said to him,” Tim Gionet, a friend of Foreman, said.

Santa Monica police did not mention a politically motivated crime, only confirming they arrested  two suspects.

As I have pointed out in recent darkstreams, it is time to take your own rhetoric seriously. This is a cultural cold war that is in the process of turning hot. Prepare accordingly. If you’re going to take part in protests and public events, be equipped and prepared for the possibility of violence and don’t operate under the mistaken impression that the police are going to somehow magically protect you.

The God-Emperor wins again

Funny, is it not, that Donald Trump keeps winning these “national referendums” on his presidency, even when the media’s polls predict otherwise.

Republican Karen Handel won the special congressional election in Georgia on Tuesday, fending off a challenge from Democrat Jon Ossoff in the heavily Republican House district.

Handel’s victory in the closely fought contest, which drew national interest and was the most expensive House race ever at over $50 million spent by both sides, comes as good news for President Donald Trump. Democrats had promoted the contest as a referendum on the president.

With 99 percent of the vote counted, Handel leads Ossoff 53 percent to 47 percent in a race that many expected to be much closer. Handel had 127,021 votes to the Democrat’s 114,390 ballots.

The thing is, even if Ossoff had won, that would have changed precisely nothing, except the media would be crowing rather than falling into a surly silence. Except that we would not have further proof that the media’s polls are reliably unreliable and we’re back to the old days of needing to reweight their reports four or five points in the Republican’s direction to predict the result.

Tired? Or still not tired?

Tory disaster in the UK

Theresa May’s electoral gamble turned out to be as stupid and disastrous as her feeble response to the Muslim attacks in Manchester and London.

A shaky Theresa May vowed to fight on today despite suffering catastrophic losses as her election gamble humiliatingly backfired – leaving a hung parliament just 10 days before Brexit talks are due to start.

As the Tories’ Commons majority was brutally stripped away by voters, Mrs May faced open calls from her own MPs to ‘consider her position’ as a jubilant Jeremy Corbyn demanded she make way for him to become PM.

But an ashen-faced Mrs May, who called the contest three years early in a bid to capitalise on sky-high poll ratings, insisted the Conservatives were still the largest party with an expected 319 seats. She insisted the country needed a ‘period of stability’, adding: ‘It is incumbent on us to ensure that we have that.’

As the knives came out for Mrs May, former chancellor George Osborne lambasted her campaign performance as ‘wooden’ and her manifesto as a disaster, making clear he did not believe she could survive for long. Former minister Anna Soubry, who was reelected in Broxtowe, added her voice to calls for Mrs May to consider resigning. Asked exactly where the Tory campaign had gone wrong, Ms Soubry said bluntly: ‘Where do you want me to start?’ Another Tory MP, Nigel Evans, said the party had ‘shot ourselves in the head’.

With English and Welsh voters seemingly punishing Mrs May for calling the ballot unnecessarily, the only thing saving her from utter disaster was the Tory performance in Scotland. The party’s leader north of the border, Ruth Davidson, inspired a 12-seat surge that unseated the SNP’s former First Minister Alex Salmond in Gordon and Westminster leader Angus Robertson in Moray.

May has to resign. She’s less viable as a national leader than David Cameron after Brexit. The reason for the Conservative Party collapse is obvious: UKIP’s growth was, in part, the result of Labour voters voting for Brexit. That accomplished, they had no reason to vote for the Tories once May revealed herself to be a feckless multiculturalists who was too thick to run on a pro-Brexit, anti-immigration line.

Her response to the two Muslim attacks sealed the loss of her Parliamentary majority. Everyone knew that she wasn’t going to do a damn thing about it. Furthermore, the press had painted Jeremy Corbyn as such a no-hoper that people felt safe voting for Labour as a protest vote.

I’m not at all worried about Brexit. If the political class attempts to spin the lack of support for an anti-Brexit prime minister as support for going back to the European Union, they’ll soon find out how little control they actually possess.

Take her down, Boris. Now is the time.

UPDATE: Boris appears to know it has fallen to him to lead his nation to freedom. Greatness beckons, but will require boldness to seize it.

Boris Johnson is the favorite to be the next Tory leader – and has already refused to back Theresa May after her election nightmare. The outspoken Foreign Secretary was repeatedly asked if he believes Mrs May should be Prime Minister but would only say ‘it’s early days’ after retaining his Uxbridge seat. He also stayed silent when a reporter suggested that the Tory leader was ‘fatally wounded’.

UK election: final polls

We’ll see if they do any better than they did on Brexit.

Con: 43.7% (+5.9)
Lab: 36.1% (+4.9)
LDem: 8.1% (-)
UKIP: 4.4% (-8.5)
Grn: 2.2% (-1.6)

Labour, the LibDems, and UKIP all look too high to me.

The convergence of “conservatism”

Paul Gottfried, the man who named the Alternative Right, explains how cultural Marxism has converged the so-called “conservative movement”:

Not only does Cultural Marxism exist, but it now appears to be taking over Conservatism Inc. Thus even with Paris burning, National Review was still attacking the Right. In the second round of the French election, Tom Rogan urged a vote for Emmanuel Macron on the grounds Marine Le Pen is insufficiently hostile to Vladimir Putin and is a “socialist” because she “supports protectionism.” Macron’s actual onetime membership in the Socialist Party, and his view that there was no such thing as French culture, apparently was not a problem [French election: American Conservatives Should Support Macron, April 24, 2017].

Conservatism Inc. goes along because these goals are partially achieved through corporate capitalists, who actively push Leftist social agendas and punish entire communities if they’re insufficiently enthusiastic about gay marriage, gay scout leaders, transgendered rest rooms, sanctuary cities etc.. Wedded as it is to a clichéd defense of the “free market,” the Beltway Right not only won’t oppose this plutocratic agenda, but instead offers tax cuts to the wealthiest and most malevolent actors.

It is because Cultural Marxism can co-exist with our current economic and political structure that our so-called “conservatives” are far more likely to align with the New Left than the Old Right. The behavior of our own captains of industry shows the rot is deep and that multiculturalism is very much part of American “liberal democratic” thinking, even informing our bogus conservatism. “Conservatism” is now defined as waging endless wars in the name of universalist values that any other generation would have called radically leftist. And Cultural Marxists themselves now define what we call “Western values”—for example, accepting homosexuality

The takeover is so complete, we might even say “Cultural Marxism” has outlived its usefulness as a label or as a description of a hostile foreign ideology. Instead, we’re dealing with “conservatives,” who are, in many ways, more extreme and more destructive than the Frankfurt School itself.

Many conservatives seem to believe Cultural Marxism is just a foreign eccentricity somehow smuggled into our country. Allan Bloom’s “conservative” bestseller The Closing of the American Mind  contended that multiculturalism was just another example of “The German Connection.” This is ludicrous.

Case in point: unlike Horkheimer, or my onetime teacher Herbert Marcuse, leading writers within Conservatism Inc. are sympathetic to something like gay marriage.

These include:

Jonah Goldberg [Gay Marriage vs. goodwill, USA Today, April 1, 2013]
Jamie Kirchick, published at National Review and borderline hysterical on the issue
John Podhoretz [Why John Podhoretz is Wrong on Gay Marriage, by Matthew Schmitz, First Things, November 21, 2012]
David Brooks [The Power of Marriage, by David Brooks, New York Times, November 22, 2003]

Indeed, homosexual liberation is so central to modern conservatism that the Beltway Right’s pundits urge American soldiers to impose it at bayonet point around the world.

Conservatism doesn’t conserve. Alt-Right or else.

Bilderberg targets Trump

One wonders if the God-Emperor intends to return the favor if the globalists genuinely move against him.

Sources close to the elitist Bilderberg Group conference tell Infowars that globalists see their agenda as being in “deep trouble” and that Donald Trump poses a “dangerous” risk to the international order and must be brought to heel or turfed out of office.

Over the years, Infowars has developed sources close to the conference who feed us information ahead of time as to the real agenda behind the confab, not just the vague list of topics released officially by Bilderberg.

Given that this is the first year since both Brexit and Trump came to pass, the effort to derail both is very much the primary focus of discussion amongst globalists in attendance this week.

The reason that three members of the Trump administration – HR McMaster, Wilbur Ross and Chris Liddell have been invited to attend this year’s meeting in Chantilly, Virginia is that Bilderberg thinks there is still a chance to put pressure on Trump to force him to back down on his America-first agenda.

With the U.S. about to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, Trump is “dangerously obsessed” with derailing the current world order, according to one Bilderberger, a fear that has intensified since Trump chided world leaders at the G7 summit last week.

Globalists are baffled as to Trump’s “erratic” style of governance and are panicked that he could undo decades of work they put in to build the new world order.

The globalist elitists STILL haven’t figured out that their agenda isn’t in deep trouble due to Trump, or Duterte, or Babymetal, but because it simply isn’t viable and does not function the way they believed it does.

And if they are seriously conspiring to overthrow the legally elected President of the United States, well, that’s literal treason.

There will be no “blue wave”

A rare sane and sober Democrat considers his party’s prospects for the future:

Gianforte’s decisive victory over Democrat Rob Quist on Thursday has provoked a fresh round of soul-searching from the same people who made too damn much of the Montana election in the first place. We have been told that Democrats must field stronger candidates and commit more resources, that Bernie Sanders does not possess some magic elixir that attracts disgruntled white people and that Donald Trump remains popular in places where people really like him. If that’s not quite enough Captain Obvious, Washington Post columnist Greg Hohmann devoted an impressive amount of research and reporting to the Montana aftermath before arriving at the diagnosis that there is “a growing tribalism that contributes to the polarization of our political system.” You don’t say!

Let me be clear that I’m indicting myself here as well: I edit political coverage at Salon, and I followed the Montana news closely. I knew perfectly well how it was likely to turn out, but one can always be wrong about that (as we discovered last November), and I shared some dim sense that it might be cathartic to experience an insignificant proxy victory in a state I have never even visited. But when I ask myself why I felt that way, even a little, the answers are not edifying.

For many people in, let’s say, the left-center quadrant of the American political spectrum — especially those who are not all that eager to confront the fractured and tormented state of the current Democratic Party — Montana and Georgia and 2018 seem(ed) to represent the opening chapters of a comeback narrative, the beginning of a happy ending. If what happened in 2016 was a nonsensical aberration, then maybe there’s a fix right around the corner, and normal, institutional politics can provide it.

First you chip away at Republican triumphalism, and the House majority, with a couple of special-election victories. Then it’s about organizing, recruiting the right candidates for the right seats, registering voters and ringing doorbells, right? Democrats picked up 31 seats in the George W. Bush midterms of 2006 — and will need 24 or so this time — so, hey, it could happen. For that matter, Republicans gained an astounding 63 seats in the Tea Party election of 2010, and many observers have speculated that Trump-revulsion might create that kind of cohesion on the left. So we sweep away Paul Ryan and his sneering goons, give Nancy Pelosi back her speaker’s gavel after eight long years, introduce the articles of impeachment and begin to set America back on the upward-trending path of political normalcy and niceness.

I suspect it’s pointless to list all the things that are wrong with that scenario, because either you agree with me that it’s a delusional fantasy built on seven different varieties of magical thinking or you don’t, and in the latter case I am not likely to convince you.

My position is that Donald Trump is a symptom of the fundamental brokenness of American politics, not the cause. Electing a Democratic House majority (which is 95 percent unlikely to happen) and impeaching Trump (which is 100 percent not going to happen) might feel good in the moment, but wouldn’t actually fix what is broken. Considered as a whole, the “blue wave” fantasy of November 2018 is a more elaborate and somewhat more realistic version of the “Hamilton elector” fantasy of December 2016: Something will happen soon to make this all go away.

The situation is actually worse for Democratic Party than most Democrats realize. The Asian-Hispanic alliance is already beginning to revolt against the Jewish-White-Black dominance of the Democrats, or as they will soon enough be known, the Not-American Party. And the Republican Party cannot easily return to its establishment cuckery, because the Alt-Right’s articulation of the dyscivilizational activities of the Not-Americans is continually pushing the Overton Window towards ethno-nationalism.

This is why I have repeatedly pointed out that the Alt-Right is inevitable. All of the trends, regional, national, and international, continue to point in that direction.

How many pizzas will $7,500 buy?

The New York Mayor’s staffer and president of the Manhattan Young Democrats was released on only $7,500 bail after being arrested with “a massive collection of child porn”. No word yet on whether he is a Star Trek fan or not.

A 29 year old staffer for NYC mayor Bill De Blasio’s office has been arrested and charged with two felonies after police found a massive collection of child porn on his laptop, according to court documents. The NYPD’s investigation began March 29th when Jacob Schwartz, 29, handed over his laptop – on which over 3,000 images and 89 videos were discovered depicting sexual acts with children as young as 6 months old.

Jacob Schwartz’s father is Arthur Schwartz, a prominent Manhattan attorney, community activist, and DNC operator. Schwartz served as council to Bernie Sanders during the 2016 election. He was also a delegate during Barack Obama’s 2008 run for president. Schwartz has also represented SEIU, several unions, and served as general council to ACORN from March of 2009 to October 2010. He also made a killing in NY real estate. Arthur Schwartz turned a 2003 investment of $499,000 into $20.89 million when he sold in 2014.

The elder Schwartz has called his son’s arrest “a personal tragedy,” and told the Post “He’s already in therapy for this.” The younger Schwartz is out on $7500 bail.

Remember, these are the people who claim to be your moral superiors. Speaking of Pizzagate, there is another Hillary Clinton connection: alleged pedophile Jacob Schwartz with Robby Mook, Hillary’s campaign manager.