Posse Incitatus

Pedestal of Losers

CNN is truly a pathetic network. It continues to pretend it's an authentic news network while actually serving as a 24/7 Trump-bashing propaganda machine. Its ratings are so low, on any given night it has around 760,000 viewers during primetime. That's about 0.3 percent of the adult population.

In addition to having a staff full of left-wing sympathizers who have no objectivity and limited professionalism, CNN has a sophomoric habit of putting ridiculous "experts" on the air to bolster its flimsy case against President Trump for the RUSSIA!™ hysteria.

A few months ago, it was slip-and-fall LOYA Michael Avenatti and porn star Stormy Daniels. Max Boot, a largely discredited hack pundit who's wrong as often as Bill Kristol, is a CNN "analyst." Let's put it this way: Boot is a Washington Post columnist! That tells  you all you need to know.

The latest idiot to be put up on a pedestal, revered by CNN's brain-dead fans, is convicted felon John Dean, White House Counsel under Richard M. Nixon (that's 46 years ago, for those who are counting). Apparently, because he obstructed justice, Dean is an expert who will shed light on Trump's alleged obstruction of justice.

To give you an idea how inane Dean's "analysis" is, he compares Nixon's firing of Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox to Trump's firing of former FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. News flash: President Bill Clinton obstructed justice, and that was only 20 years ago. Far more people know who he was. But it would be a cold day in hell before he would come on and speculate about Trump obstructing justice. That would be beyond the pale.

Hate to burst your bubble, CNN, but most people these days don't know John Dean from Adam. Putting him up on a pedestal as a big gun in the analytical annals is tantamount to boasting about an exclusive interview with the "Fifth Beatle" -- Pete Best? Stuart Sutcliffe? Whatever. It's largely irrelevant, as is Dean.

CNN's business model -- bash Trump all day, every day and attempt to drive down his poll ratings so much that he's not a viable candidate for re-election -- is failing. But rather than be wise and change course, they double down by parading out piss-poor "experts" and useless hacks whom they put on the air 'round the clock. 

The behavior of CNN reminds me of the corporations my esteemed co-blogger has mentioned that pursue policies that hurt their bottom line just so they can engage in feel-good virtue-signaling. Collusion flopped; obstruction of justice will, too. Now Dean is dusting off the old Watergate analogies. 

CNN, like so many hysterical loons on the left, will just keep throwing as much shit against the wall as it can, in hopes some will stick. It's truly a sad state of affairs, but then, often those who need help the most are the least aware of it. Denial, as they say, is not a river in Africa.

The social conservative rebellion

Sohrab Ahmari’s frontal assault on David French seems to have been the spark that lit the powderkeg.  The pile-on from the right is reaching epic proportions.

The newly rebooted Human Events has taken up the sword, hacking away at David French-ism in general and National Review in particular.

Over at American Greatness, Julie Kelly came flying off the top rope to pin French to the mat, while her colleague Matthew Boose metaphorically swatted the stunned Pharisee with a folding chair when he tried to get up.

The response of French and his acolytes is both predictable and revealing.

Naturally, French doubled-down on his virtue, and his followers were quick to remind everyone of the things they already knew (because he keeps bringing it up) about his family life and military service.  This was the predictable part.

What was revealing was that French also began playing the “beware a Christian theocracy” card, which is a staple of the liberal left, even as it makes nuns pay for birth control and persecutes Christian bakers and florists.

Since French was making a liberal argument, naturally the liberals have applauded and the usual suspects who normally bash National Review and French are now portraying them as the “good guys” and the “reasonable” wing of the conservative movement.

So far, this is little more than a catfight among the swamp creatures who dwell inside the beltway, but out in the hinterland, something else happened.

For the first time I can recall, a Catholic bishop has formally denied Holy Communion to nominally Catholic politicians for their voting record.

Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield put out a public statement that the President of the Illinois Senate and the state Speaker of the House (both Democrats, naturally) were barred from Communion because of their support for legislation legalizing virtually all abortion up to the moment of birth.  The Bishop also included any other nominal Catholic politicians in his diocese who voted for the vile measures.

This hard line against “cafeteria Catholics” is a long time coming and demonstrates that the frustration of Ahmari is not unique.  For decades Catholics have tolerated politicians who profess to share their faith and then vote to undermine and persecute it at every opportunity.

All of these events make clear that social conservatives are tired of being used by the corporatist liberals who run Conservatism, Inc. 

For decades the “social liberal but fiscal conservative” recipe has been pitched as the key to a successful GOP majority.  It has failed utterly.

I think a crucial step in cracking this coalition was the failure of the GOP leadership to defund Planned Parenthood when Republicans controlled both branches of Congress and the presidency.  This was an easy thing to do, and – given the horrible news that Planned Parenthood made money selling off baby parts – utterly defensible.

But instead Congress could only rouse itself for corporate tax cuts.  Actually keeping its pledge to the Right to Life movement was too much to ask.

These people may have claimed to support conservative positions, but they were always liberals at heart.

How else to explain their sudden eagerness to hop in board the gay marriage bandwagon?  It’s telling that Ahmari’s example of degeneracy (a drag queen reading to young children) draw such a vehement defense from French, who insisted that really, there was nothing to be done to stop it other than ask nicely.

I’ve been using the phrase Quisling Never Trumper for a while now, but it’s clear the treason goes well beyond the advent of the Trumpening.  These people kept losing not because they were too principled to fight, but because they secretly internalized all of the lies of the left.

They were always liberals.

And now they've been revealed.  The super-religiousity was a blind to dupe their fellow Christians into confusing "nice" with "faith."

For example, early on, Ahmari was asked if he "loved his enemies" in regards to the liberal left.

You see, if he didn't, he was a hypocrite and UnChristian.

Note that no one asks David French if he loves Donald Trump.  Mr. Super-Christian can dump hate on him all day long and that's okay because it's righteous, liberal hate.

At any rate, the curtain has now been pulled aside and social conservatives are acting accordingly.

The Longest Day

What better headline than the title of a book and movie, both all-time classics, about the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, 75 years ago today?

When I contemplate the enormity of the D-Day invasion, it overwhelms me. Some 160,000 troops. The complex logistics; the months of planning; the military leadership; and America's industrial sector transforming itself into a unified producer of military weapons and equipment ... Superseding all of that was the courage and valor of the troops, the staggering toll in terms of lives lost and grievous injuries -- these are incredible in the annals of human history. Today's technology means there will never be another land battle tantamount to Normandy or Gettysburg, and that's something for which to be grateful ... UNTIL one considers the possibility of nuclear war. But not to get off track...

Too many people these days do not realize what a prodigious clash this was: Liberty Vs. Tyranny. The preservation of Western Civilization. Human rights vs. human atrocities. The evil Nazi fortress of the Normandy bluffs -- batteries, mortars, machine guns, pillboxes and bunkers, and untold machine guns, cannons, grenades, and minefields ... This hellish arsenal was a tangible representation of the heinous, malevolent Nazi ideology.

The Americans brilliantly fooled the Germans into thinking the main amphibious landing would be near the French port city of Calais, where the Germans installed three massive gun batteries. Even after the bloody beachhead invasion, there were months of bitter battles amidst the hedgerows and ditches further inland. France would prove to be a major killing field, but it was also the turning point of World War II. 

There are plenty of good books and movies describing the heroism, the suffering, the grit and determination of the Allied forces. It is my sincere hope that the young people of America, many of whom have little knowledge of history because of the schools they attended, will take an interest in this topic and desire to learn more about it -- through books, movies, museums, and maybe even by visiting Normandy. And to this day, millions of French people are grateful for what the Americans did. We read and hear a lot about snobbish, elitist French who look down on Americans. But these are like our coastal elites: Not truly representative of their fellow citizens.

Patriotism, sadly, is waning in America. Whiny victimhood, identity politics and "blame America first" attitudes are on the rise. Just a little bit of knowledge about the suffering and sacrifice of Normandy would make most decent people ashamed that they ever whined about poor cellular service, a power outage or bad service at a restaurant.

Would that today's millennials realized that there were no "safe spaces" for the Allied soldiers, who faced a barrage of gunfire rather than politically incorrect speech or Twitter shaming. There were no "trigger warnings" -- only triggers pulled to unleash a barrage of bullets. And "micro-agressions"? Not when we're talking machine guns and heavy artillery.

We owe an unending debt of gratitude to our American heroes. There are still a few American veterans alive who fought at Normandy. But their numbers have dwindled to a precious few. We need to ensure them of our gratitude and remind them of their crucial role in American history -- part of a special, forever heralded group that showed uncommon bravery and valiancy. Call it the greatest generation of the greatest nation.

Thank you, heroes, and Godspeed!

 

Case in Point...

Belatedly, I would like to extend my condolences and prayers to the victims and those who lost loved ones Friday when a City of Virginia Beach engineer opened fire on coworkers at the end of the workday, killing 12 and injuring four before being killed himself in a gun battle with police.

I have a brother-in-law who has worked for 15 years in the same municipal complex where the shootings occurred, and I even had a job interview there back in 2004, so I am well familiar with those buildings. On Friday afternoon, I texted Charlie and was concerned when I hadn't heard back from him in an hour. My son, who is close to his Uncle Charlie, had the good sense to call him. After he spoke with him, he called my wife and gave us the good news that Charlie was okay. Shortly after that, Charlie called me, and I expressed my profound relief that he was safe, but our conversation was brief as he needed to call others, and his sister was on the other line. 

It is always tempting for leftists to pigeonhole criminals and regurgitate tiresome talking points when it comes to firearms related mass killings such as Friday's horror.

But more often than not, there is nuance involved with perpetrators of such crimes, and it is easy to decimate liberal arguments for gun control, gun free zones and expanded background checks. Liberals are champing at the bit for a shooter to be an angry white male, a Christian, a Trump supporter, a racist neo-Nazi skinhead, a right-wing social media blowhard. This feeds their hateful, spiteful narrative about the political opposition. It's deeply disappointing to them when the perpetrator turns out to be a black man, as was the case here, or has any other characteristics that don't fit the left-wing narrative.

It's also, to use Al Gore's term, an "inconvenient truth" when background checks and a gun-free zone failed to prevent the horrible slaughter. The perpetrator in Friday's atrocity was a seemingly straight-laced 40-year-old with no criminal record. He had a bachelor's degree in civil engineering and had served in the Army National Guard. But he apparently did not engage in social media, and was not known for being outspoken about politics.

But he did acquire some firearms in the months leading up to the shootings, and given that he had served in the military, I'm willing to bet he could shoot well. So again, beefed up background checks would not have deterred this crime, nor would they have revealed whatever demons were troubling the perpetrator.

As for the matter of gun-free zones, it's obvious to anyone with common sense that such areas represent soft targets that are highly desirable for those bent on shooting and killing as many innocent people as possible, with little or no chance of opposition.

The Commonwealth of Virginia operates on a "shall issue" policy for concealed carry permits. Supposing a few people in the building the gunman hit had been armed when the assault went down. There's a good chance lives would have been saved. Now, it's always possible an innocent person -- or several -- could have been hit in the crossfire when a good citizen attempted to shoot the gunman. But I still say fewer people would have been killed if armed resistance had preceded the arrival of the police.

In this case, we were fortunate that the Virginia Beach Police Department Headquarters is located only a few hundred yards from the municipal complex, meaning a quick response, or many more people might have died. But there's no questions that many other mass killings in recent years would not have taken so many lives had armed opposition been present as soon as shots rang out.

Mass murders, whether committed by guns, bombs, planes used as missiles, or trucks driven through crowds, often have at their root hatred, insanity and / or undiagnosed severe mental illness. Perpetrators of mass murder through firearms don't care that there are thousands of gun control laws on the books. They flagrantly disobey these laws. Gun-free zones, expanded background checks and absurd rules that restrict magazine capacity for semi-automatic rifles are largely ineffective. (In the case of the magazines, the vast majority of firearm homicides involve handguns, but since when do liberals let logic and facts get in the way of their emotions and virtue-signaling?)

As the Daily Caller points out, the Democrats -- er, DEMAGOGUES -- were quick to politicize this horrible Virginia Beach crime, turning it into another futile plea for more gun control. Some things never change. Some people choose to remain willfully dense. Guess we'll just have to learn to live with it.

 

 

 

Right on cue: Salesforce moves against firearms retailers

The core problem with the David French Quisling Never Turmpers is that they refuse to acknowledge what is going on:  we are in a war.  It is not a war we wanted, but is a war we must fight and win.

Trying to adhere to the old rules and hope that by presenting an example of civility and decorum we will motivate our enemies to a higher morality is a path to sure defeat.

A cynic might observe that the David French faction is fine with that.  They already serve as the controlled opposition and will have to do so indefinitely.

But those who actually take their rights and beliefs seriously cannot accept such a state of dependent servitude.

Salesforce's move against gun retailers is the latest example.  In a truly free marketplace, Salesforces' decision to bar its clients from selling certain items would cause it to look marketshare.  Other competitors would move in and their revenue would suffer.

But we no longer have a free marketplace.  In each tech sector, monopolists or oligarchs openly band together to crush the competition and limit customer choice.

And the David French faction praises them for this.  Government intervention would be the cure that is worse than the disease to these useless, self-righteous tools.

But that is a proper exercise of government.  These are unelected and increasingly unaccountable private entities that use their market power to restrict trade and limit the civil rights of others.  

Now one might ponder the irony of the left deciding that government by vulture capitalists is now suddenly a good thing, but the left has never let consistency or morality get in the way of what it wants.

The David Frenchists would have us believe that to effectively fight back with the tools at our disposal - specifically government regulation and anti-trust actions - would make us no better than our enemies.

This is of course utterly wrong - those laws are in place for precisely this purpose.  Their use is essential to maintaining the liberty that the David Frenchists insist is their lodestar.

What makes this even more hilarious is that French was once a soldier (a fact he reminds us of all the time) and as such, he should be fine with the concept of returning incoming fire.  Of course he didn't serve in a combat arm - in fact his job with to nitpick the soldiers doing the actual fighting.   It's interesting that Kurt Schlichter, who was a real no-kidding line officer - is on the opposite side of this issue with French.  That's because French knows nothing about how to win a war, only a court case where the rules are strictly enforced for both sides.

Schlichter knows that the battlefield isn't a courtroom, and the enemy will constantly create new weapons and tactics.  Battles aren't supposed to be fair.  In fact, the more lop-sided they are (for your side) the better.

The left is fully exploiting this.  They are changing the rules on the fly and refuse to accept that any ground is neutral.  People who believe the personal is political have no regard for anything.  Appealing to the humanity of ghouls who demand the "right" to kill children at the moment of birth and happily call for the murder of high school students wearing red hats cannot be reasoned with or placated.  

They aren't even interested in converts, they want their enemies destroyed.

This is why David Frenchism must be declared anathema.  It is a Fifth Column, sapping our resources and will to resist.