Posse Incitatus

The progressive pharisees of National Review

It’s pretty well established that much of the left substitutes politics for religion.  What they lack in faith they make up for in ideology, which is why someone who disagrees with them on an issue is not merely wrong but objectively evil.

A leftist who urges a policy change flirts with heresy.

All of this has been true for a long time.

What is not as well known is that a certain brand of conservative has likewise substituted religion for politics.  Just as leftists see policy preferences as a path of secular salvation, these conservatives see religious preferences as a path of policy guidance – and people who disagree are (as in the above example) not merely wrong but objectively evil.

Similarly, those on their own side who don’t share their beliefs are heretics to be chastised and burned, not reasoned with.

I was too busy last week to write about this, but National Review-sponsored Quisling Never Trumper David French (and his wife) have been on a roll lately, denouncing their nominal political allies and co-religionists for supporting Donald Trump instead of (wait for it) Mitt Romney, that paragon of defeatist virtue.

The increasingly indispensable American Greatness has an excellent summary and rejoinder to French and his fellow Calvinist scolds (no really, French has used John Calvin as his Twitter avatar – no pretension there!) by Chris Buskirk.  It’s very much worth a read, but Buskirk misses the essential basis for French’s argument, which is that actual results are immaterial, what is important is the purity of one’s beliefs.

This is the mirror image of the left’s obsession with virtue-signaling.  For example, the left doesn’t care if gun control works, it is a moral imperative – or as they like to say: “Who we are.”

The same goes for open borders, tolerating violence (and excrement) on the street, and dozens of other policies that harm the people they are supposed to save.

Again, this has long been known, but it’s not until now that I realized why the Quisling Never Trumpers are equally indifferent to the suffering of the people they are supposed to be helping.  This is why Kevin Williamson’s infamous response to rural decline was to tell people to learn to code, or give up their good-paying manufacturing or mining job to be a greeter at Wal Mart.

Williamson’s callousness is essential to his moral conception of himself because virtue-signaling is all that matters.  Just like Hillary, the Never Trumpers regard the working classes as “deplorable,” whose individual well-being is less important than their salvation through suffering.

Another similarity between the FredoCons and their erstwhile enemies is their use of identity politics. 

Just as a progressive has to list all their qualifiers (gay, trans, ethnic, sexual) before speaking, David French likes to remind everyone that he’s an “Iraq War veteran” and that one of his three children was adopted.

Frankly, I think it’s pretty low to run around bragging about an adopted child as if it’s a trophy or resume item.  I’ve also noted many times that French was no Audie Murphy – he served as a lawyer, not an actual soldier.  (Indeed, JAG officers don’t even have to go through basic training.)

Now a cynic might also note that like his progressive counterparts, French figures he personally will never suffer hardship for his policies.  That’s for the impure.

One might further note that someone is paying French and his co-religionists a lot of money to hector their erstwhile allies.  Again, like progressivism it is a grift, but one that makes the recipients feel good about themselves.

Certainly Jonah Goldberg has been banging this drum for three years, demanding that people name Trump’s virtues and then ignoring the answers.  There’s a point where this repetition crosses the line from willfully obtuse to simply cashing a paycheck for hectoring religious people.

Perhaps the biggest indictment I can levy against these would-be pharisees is the fact that for all their moral sermonizing, they’re not only comfortable with putting far worse sinners in charge, but have zero problem spreading lies and slanders of their own in pursuit of the cause.

None of these people hesitated at all to spread the obviously fake dossier and they spent years passing taking hits from the same RUSSIA conspiracy bong that the Democrats were hitting so heavily.

Trump's trade war isn't hurting growth, it's causing it

As if record-low unemployment isn’t enough, President Trump’s economic team is now moving to hit even more Chinese good with hefty tariffs.

According the Chamber of Commerce types, this is a disaster for the common man.  They continue to pitch the Free Trade Lie that tariffs are always and everywhere an unmitigated evil and that allowing countries with distorted economies access to our markets is an unalloyed good.

In truth, tariffs are morally neutral and their utility varies upon the circumstance.  A protective tariff is not only appropriate but necessary when another nation undertakes predatory trading practices. 

Yet the Quisling Never Trumpers and their globalist allies continue to spread the falsehood that boosting the cost of cut-rate consumer goods assembled by slave labor in unsafe and heavily polluting factories is somehow a crime against the free market.

They give the game away when they announce that “American consumers” will pay the heaviest costs.

Nope.  China will.

Consider a tariff that raises the price of toasters by a couple of dollars.  Will that crush the wallets of American workers?  Hardly.  But that incremental increase changes the production curve so that American workers and factories now become more profitable than overseas locations.  This in turn boosts American prosperity and cuts the trade deficit.

Now consider the counter-example, which we lived through for decades:  Toasters get a little cheaper, but the plant employing hundreds of workers has now closed.  So does the steel mill, and the ore mine.

All the businesses that served those workers go next, and soon we are in a downward spiral of collapsing tax revenue, rising welfare costs and increased crime and drug abuse.

This is the world that paid shills like Jonah Goldberg have tried to convince us we want to live in.  It is a world that benefits the elite and crushes everyone else.

Protection for American industry from foreign competition and higher wages for American wages are bedrock principles of the Republican Party dating back to Abraham Lincoln.  It’s strange that so many True Conservatives have turned their backs on them.

The Rule of Law returns to Massachusetts

It's fascinating to see how our political parties are returning to their historical roots.

Trump's GOP is once again in favor of raising the wages of American workers and protecting American industry.  This goes back to the foundation of the party.  When Quisling Never Trumpers whine about Trump being unprecedented, they're lying.  What was unprecedented was the GOP deciding to support endless immigration and de-industrialization.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are once again embracing nullification as a response to federal laws they don't like.  The most egregious case is the Massachusetts state judge who actually smuggled a federal fugitive out of her court room to avoid his arrest by a waiting federal agent.

Naturally, the usual suspects (ACLU, other state officials) are outraged that a JUDGE is being held accountable for violating federal law.  What is the world coming to!  Judges are supposed to be part of the aristocracy and therefore immune from legal consequences for their actions.

This article has a link to the indictment, which spells out just how duplicitous the judge and her court officers were.  They even went to the extreme of shutting off the court recording camera so they could hatch their criminal conspiracy in privacy.

I've seen some deluded souls argue that helping a repeat offender escape is somehow like helping Anne Frank escape the Nazis.

Uh, no.

In the first case, they guy had already been deported twice.  For the analogy to hold, the Frank family would have had to repeatedly invade Nazi-occupied territory - the exact opposite of what is happening here.

The modern left has convinced itself that the purity of their intentions should shield them from any negative consequences of their actions.

Not only is this morally abhorrent, in practice it will destroy civilization because it breaks the crucial link between cause and effect.

Happily, there are still a few adults who understand this.  Strange that for all the venom directed at Trump, he's the most adult person in Washington.

About that Trump recession...

It must be tough being Paul Krugman.

Sure, he's probably got a good income, and there are a bunch of beta-boys who seem to hang on his every word.

But he's also wrong almost all the time.  After a while, it doesn't matter how many titles you've accumulated, when push comes to shove you're still a Former Enron Advisor who blows almost every prediction.

Strangely, Donald Trump's economic team seems to be on a hot streak.  It's interesting to contrast the steadiness and competence of this group compared to other parts of the administration.  Still, one can't find fault with the results.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating:  The recession of 2009 didn't end until Trump took office.

Oh, the statisticians cranked out numbers and claimed the economy was growing, but that growth was dwarfed by the increase in the federal debt.  

What Trump's team has done is unleash all that aggregate demand and it is continuing to surge forward.  The US has almost an entire decade of growth to make up, which is why things are going to boom for a while.

Not only that, Trump is changing the rules of the game, bringing manufacturing jobs home.  Those jobs in turn create even more jobs and small towns across the country are seeing the kind of economic revivals we were assured by the likes of Kevin Williamson could never happen.

This is Trump's strongest argument for re-election and one he will hit home again and again.  Whoever he is up against is going to face the question of how many jobs they want to export to Mexico or China.  No amount of smoke-blowing will obscure that fact.

With the Mueller Report out of the way, Trump can finally act

The release of the Mueller report is shockingly anti-climactic.  One would expect that there would be at least one shocking revelation contained within its 400+ pages, but almost every episode, suspect and incident has been in the public domain for two years.

This makes the Democrat insistence on maintaining the Collusion Delusion that much more inexplicable.  Time was, Democrat politicians would recognize when the trade winds were against them and adjust their sails accordingly.

Now they’re only play is to double-down and push more chips onto ever weaker hands.  The current talking point – demanding to see redactions required by law – is pathetically weak.

The real action is yet to come.  Mueller’s investigation was always a delaying tactic and desperate attempt to catch Trump in a process crime.  To his credit, he didn’t take the bait and none of his close aides did, either.

That fact alone should destroy the “Trump White House in Chaos!1!” meme, but of course it won’t because the media is incapable of reform.  It is stuck on stupid.

With Mueller now out of the way, it will be interesting to see where the Attorney General goes next.  Rod Rosenstein’s usefulness has expired and I suspect he was retained on condition of giving up each and every one of his colleagues.  His demeanor has that “I’ll be good,” look of someone who entered into a sealed cooperation agreement and is determined to see it executed fully.

Indeed, the big question to my mind is when the indictments start flying.  We know criminal referrals have been submitted and others are on the way.  It will be particularly interesting if reporters who trafficked in classified information will also face charges.  We know from the IG report that extensive bribes were offered to FBI officials in return for leaks.

Sundance at the Conservative Treehouse rendered his blog virtually unreadable because no charges were immediately filed, but he ignored the fact that Mueller was in the way.  I wonder how many of those so compromised were hiding on his team under the theory that charging them for their crimes would be the long-sought obstruction?

But all that's over, gone with the wind.  It's Trump's move now.  I'm interested to see what he does.

The Trump Economy

Now that RUSSIA is unwinding, it's interesting to see how Trump's economic policies are helping Main Street Americans.

Economic growth continues to surge while unemployment is cratering.  Not only that, but real wages are rising for the first time in many years.

Strangely, the Federal Reserve took this to mean that inflation was imminent.  The fact that actual wage growth can be misinterpreted in this way speaks volumes about the prejudices of the managerial elites.  They take it as a given that wages should be flat or in decline and that the American economy will be services-oriented from now on.  It cannot enter their Ivy League-brainwashed skulls that by altering trade agreements and slowing immigration, the US economy can both create a resurgence in manufacturing AND raise worker pay.

This is going to make a big difference come election time.  Many of the plant expansions that started last year are only now nearly completion.  By next spring, a new wave of vocational school graduates will be happily making good money at those plants, undermining the traditional Democrat control of the "youth vote."

Indeed, the Dem candidates are continuing to indulge in a terminal virtue cycle that can only end with their self-immolation.  Racial reparations, post-birth abortion, gun confiscation, open borders - it's hard to find a single position these people hold that doesn't command massive majority opposition.

Of course, not all sectors of the economy are booming.  The Quisling Never Trump niche seems to be profoundly overcrowded at the moment and I'm curious as to whether National Review will go down like it rival or purge its ranks ala Red State.  Jonah Goldberg's departure may be a harbinger of things to come.

Why did the Dems pick Russia as the big villain in their Trump conspiracy?

As the Dems continue to gnaw on the putrid entrails of their RUSSIA conspiracy theory, it's worth looking at why RUSSIA was the villain of choice.

There are two reasons for this.

The first is that Democrats always project.  The Clintons famously took a lot of Russian money in the Uranium One affair and the Podestas were deeply involved with Russian oligarchs.  By claiming that Donald Trump was a tool of the Kremlin, this pre-empted him from making the same charge, particularly since the media could be reliably expected to take Clinton's side.

The other reason was to try to demoralize Trump's base.  The Dems have long tried to use false-flag operations to create "principled opposition" within the GOP's ranks.  Indeed, it's since come out that a lot of the social media chatter against Roy Moore in Alabama was actually created by progressives trying to drive down support and turnout by creating the illusion of internal opposition.

Picking RUSSIA as an arch-villain pulling Trump's strings allowed the Dems to use the same strategy and their Quisling Conservatives were happy to jump on board.

Neocon uber-hawks like Max Boot and Bill Kristol and of course John McCain could dust off all the hoary old slogans from the pre-1989 era and argue that Trump was a Manchurian Candidate.

The Dems of course never had a problem with RUSSIA even during the height of the Cold War, but I'm sure they got a kick out of pretending to be McCarthy-ite super-patriots.

Of course, there was nothing to it.  Having read some of the commentary by Trump's legal team, it seems likely that the Mueller report's 300 pages are mostly exhibits (transcripts, documents, and the like) to back up a fairly short summary of the findings.  Some of this will be redacted, but the core content will confirm Trump's innocence because he is innocent.

What will be interesting is what else we learn regarding the investigation, in particular the still-secret instructions given to Rosenstein.  Speaking of which, didn't he resign?  Why is he still hanging around?

The investigation into the real scandal is just beginning and I expect the Dems will rue the day that they picked this particular hill to fight on.

The Trump Counteroffensive

It's now clear that Donald Trump was playing the waiting game with regards to Mueller.  He feinted several times at attempting to undercut the investigation's premise by declassifying documents, but always held back at the last moment.

Many Trump allied grew frustrated that his tactics didn't follow their recommendations.  I admit I stopped reading the Conservative Treehouse because of the constant refrain of "If only Trump would listen to me!!!"

As it turned out, once again Trump played the situation perfectly.  No indictments, and while the Dems are screaming for the full report to be released, at this point it's irrelevant.  Other than the sexually inadequate Quisling Never Trumpers, everyone else in the GOP is getting on the Trump train and embracing the demand for a comprehensive investigatio of the FBI, DoJ and another look at how Hillary Clinton avoided any charges for multiple flagrant violations of the law.

The pathetic charade around Trump's executive order building the wall has come to its predictable end, with the House lacking the votes to override his veto.  The court case will similarly go nowhere since that the was the appropriate remedy for Congress' claim that the order was unconstitutional.

To be sure, some ambitious would-be dictator and a black robe might try to come up with a convoluted argument challenging the move, but the courts are far more Trump-friendly than before.  That means that rogue judges who continue to damage the credibility of the judicial branch might find themselves facing internal sanctions.

All in all, it's already been a good - and clarifying - week for Trump.  Even the fact that hate-crime hoaxer Jussie Smollett is having 16 charges dropped in exhange for two work days at Jesse Jackson's book store and a $10,000 fine is positive insofar as it provides yet more proof that corrupt elites enjoy taking a dump on the common man, the law and basic morality.

The strange drip drip drip of declassified documents in DC

As the Mueller investigation lurches to an uncertain ending, we're seeing a steady flow of hitherto restricted document coming from House Republicans.

The leftwing press isn't much interested in them because it hurts their cause, but they're out their availability will have a considerable impact on pending judicial action.

The facts likely don't come as a surprise to anyone involved.  We now know that the press was working hand-in-glove with the FBI to leak anti-Trump stories and further the deep state conspiracy against him.

Bob Mueller also has been exposed as exactly the partisan hack people thought he was.  He went after people for process crimes and used dawn raids to intimidate them all the while giving Democrats who did the exact same thing a pass. 

Again, all of this was already known in DC, though the politicians are pretending (as they always do) that each release is a total shock and surprise to them.

No, what's intriguing is the timing and the method of the release.

Donald Trump could have put all this information out and more well before the fall elections.  Yet he's still behaving like a onlooker, cheering each release but also remaining independent of it.

I've seen some conservatives berate him for this, but that too misses the point.  Trump wanted the information out, but didn't want to release it himself.  The reason is obvious: the Dems - and their Grand Inquisitor - would insist that the president using his lawful authority was somehow "obstructing justice."

Indeed, this whole shitshow has been an attempt to turn Trump's decision to fire the sanctimonious lying hack James Comey into a Constitutional crisis, despite the fact that Trump has both the right to do it and Comey absolutely deserved it.

All of which is to say:  things are coming out in a manner Trump desires and at a time of his choosing.  This leads me to believe that other things will progress in a similar manner.

It's going to be interesting to see what he has in mind.

If India and Pakistan nuke each other, the lead story will still be RUSSIA

If there was any lingering doubt as to the pathetic, miserable, myopic and dim-witted nature of American media, today dispelled it.

Given a story with profound global implications - a military confrontation between to long-time enemies armed with nuclear weapons - you'd think that would be main news event.  For the first time since 1971, India and Pakistan indulged in air-to-air combat.  This is important.

But no, the useless Democrat media was instead focused on the additional lies spread by an admitted perjurer coached by Hillary Clinton's legal time.

Because Trump.

India and Pakistan's leaders aren't gossiping on Twitter, so no one from Washington knows or cares what's going on, but it far more consequential than the latest eternal installment of "Walls are closing in on Trump" story that has now been running for two f*cking years.

In the event of a global conflagration, I imagine the last signals to flicker across social media from these morons will be questions on how it affects Mueller's investigation

BONUS QUISLING NEVER TRUMP STUPIDITY:  Combat Lawyer David French felt compelled to let everyone on Twitter know that he would never, ever, ever vote for Trump. 

So I guess Mr. Painfully Evangelical Christian will be fine voting for a Democrat who favors murdering babies at birth and persecuting Christians, because that's pretty much what we're going to get.

What a useless tool.