They smell weakness - today's edition

Bill Gertz at the Washington Times spells out the details of the uptick in momentum of missile tests by our enemies and adversaries in recent weeks:

U.S. intelligence agencies that monitor foreign missile tests have been working overtime in the past several weeks keeping tabs on test firings by China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

The surge in missile tests began April 12 in central China with Beijing’s newest and longest-range intercontinental ballistic missile, the DF-41. The missile carried two dummy warheads that are the latest feature of China’s large-scale nuclear buildup — the addition of multiple, independently targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs, to its forces.

The Pentagon was silent on the test, but China’s Defense Ministry confirmed the test on April 21, describing the launch as a “normal” scientific experiment.

Then on April 19, Russia tested a revolutionary new hypersonic glide vehicle that travels at several thousand miles per hour and is capable of maneuvering to defeat missile defenses. The Yu-71 was launched atop an SS-19 long-range missile from a base in central Russia and flew east.
On the same day, Iran conducted the first test launch of what the Pentagon says is a covert long-range missile known as Simorgh. Iran has called the rocket a space launcher. The missile, which is believed to contain North Korean missile technology and equipment shipped to Iran in the past year, was fired from a launch facility at Semnan, located about 125 miles east of Tehran.

Defense officials said the missile landed within Iranian territory and did not send any objects into orbit, as would be expected. Iranian media were silent on the launch, which the State Department said might have violated the U.N. Security Council resolution on the Iran nuclear deal. The resolution calls on Iran to refrain from any rocket development that could have applications for long-range missiles. 

The Iranian rocket launch was following by Saturday’s test of a North Korean submarine-launched ballistic missile aboard a Gorae-class submarine in the Sea of Japan.
Intelligence analysts judged the launch a partial success since the missile, known as the KN-11 by the Pentagon, was launched from underwater at a depth of about 45 feet but only flew about 17 miles. Still, it is considered a significant step forward in Pyongyang’s drive for an underwater-launched nuclear weapon delivery system.
Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the flurry of recent launches is an indication of the growing ballistic missile threat and is “something that we take very seriously with regard to all those countries.”
The spokesman added, “Clearly these countries have decided this is a moment to test those capabilities and enhance those capabilities and we see that as a concern, obviously, particularly in those cases when they are violating U.N. resolutions.”

That's because the Most Equal Comrade, the dictator of post-America, architect of the Great Leveling Project, thinks foreign policy can be conducted with the mindset of a senior seminar panel. Meanwhile, the real world rolls on as it has throughout the history of this fallen species.

 

 

The Pence endorsement

Noah Rothman at Commentary and Streiff at Red State both arrive at the same attribution of a motive.

Interestingly, both use the word "tepid" to describe the endorsement.

Rothman entitles his explanation "It's Not Resignation; It's Fear," while Strieff goes for a more plain-spoken way of expressing it: "Is Pence Really This Much of a P---y?" Likewise, Rothman is more willing see what Pence is up against politically, while Strieff concludes it was just plain shameful.

While I understand that he opposed some of W's mushier initiatives and was active in the Republican Study Committee while in the House, and before that forthrightly offered bracing conservative opinions on a statewide talk show in Indiana, I'm inclined toward Strieff's view. I say that as someone who has had lunch with him one-on-one (when he led a statewide think tank) and knows some of his family.

As Eliana Johnson points out at NRO, he knows what the stakes are and what a morally rotten person Donald Trump is:

He loathes Trump, and genuinely believes that Cruz and Trump are fighting for the soul of the Republican party. Echoing Ronald Reagan’s endorsement of Barry Goldwater in 1964, he said Wednesday that the race represents “a time for choosing.” So the choice for him was always between backing Cruz and staying on the sidelines. But sources familiar with his decision say his advisers by and large counseled him against an endorsement, arguing it would hurt his chances in a tough reelection battle this fall, and the 2016 race has certainly raised the question of how much endorsements matter. At the same time, Pence came under intense pressure from conservative donors, politicians, and media figures — many of them close personal friends — to back Cruz. The result was a lukewarm endorsement that left both sides unsatisfied. Throughout, he sounded more like a man copping to intense pressure than an advocate offering his unqualified support. 

She goes on to discuss the pressure the Ricketts family - owners of the Chicago Cubs, and backers of both Pence and Cruz - futon Pence to endorse. One senses that they were frustrated with his lack of resoluteness in response.

Oh, and there's that term - "tepid" - again n Johnson's article.

To get a sense of how tepid, compare it to the forthright and enthusiastic endorsement Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker wrote in the op-ed page of the Indianapolis Star.

If you're really terrified that the fates of the conservative movement, he Republican party and America hang n the balance, then you act on principle, without a molecule of equivocation.

The heartening backlash against Target

It's encouraging to see that not everyone in post-America is on board with hatred for the way God designed the universe:

Target’s stock price and its favorability among shoppers are crashing as the public rebukes the retail giant for ignoring their vigorous protest against mixed-sex changing rooms and bathrooms. 

The company’s stock was two cents shy of $84 on August 19, when it revealed it would not allow shoppers to use single-sex bathrooms or changing rooms. Instead, all rooms were opened up to anyone claiming to be of either sex. As of 4.00 p.m. Friday, the stock had dropped almost $4.50, down to $79.50.

That’s a huge loss of 5 percent in stock value, costing shareholders roughly $2.5 billion in company value.

In between those two dates, more than one million people had signed a boycott petitionsponsored by the American Family Association. Public opinion also shifted strongly in favor of single-sex bathrooms.

The damage to Target’s favorability is also being tracked by YouGov’s BrandIndex service. 

By April 27, “The percentage of consumers who would consider buying items at Target the next time they want to go shopping at a department store dropped from 42% to 38% over the past two weeks,” YouGov reported April 29. That’s a 10 percent drop, likely fueled by social-media conversations via Facebook and various news sites.

Worse, YouGov showed that Target was hit by a 40 percent drop — from roughly 19 percent down to 11 percent — when consumers were indirectly asked if they planned to buy at Target. “When you are in the market next to purchase items in this particular category, from which of the following brands would you consider purchasing?” YouGov asked.
YouGov also reported customers were hearing bad news about the company. When asked, “If you’ve heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news or word of mouth, was it positive or negative?” the positive “Buzz” score of 19 fell down to 11. The score fell by 10 points among men but 12 points among women, YouGov reported. 

 

In a nation that has myriad symptoms of total madness, this is wonderful to see.

Bread and circuses and the subsequent darkness

Well, it's quite a juncture at which we find ourselves in post-America on this Friday on late April 2016, isn't it?

In case you still, at this late date, had any doubts that the Most Equal Comrade's agenda was one of planned decline and not good intentions paired with misguided policy, consider the facts as laid out in this IBD editorial. Key line: "Delusional doesn't begin to cut it." Well, that and the line toward the end that I have put in boldface:

The same day the 0.5% GDP growth came out, President Obama is quoted in the New York Times saying the country has done “better” than “any large economy on Earth in modern history.” Delusional doesn’t begin to cut it.

The only real problem with the economy, as far as Obama is concerned, is that he hasn’t been selling his successful policies aggressively enough.

“We were moving so fast early on that we couldn’t take victory laps. We couldn’t explain everything we were doing. I mean, one day we’re saving the banks; the next day we’re saving the auto industry; the next day we’re trying to see whether we can have some impact on the housing market,” he told the Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin.

Never mind that Obama didn’t “save” either industries. Obama’s only contribution to GM and Chrysler’s bankruptcy process was to protect union interests at taxpayer’s expense. Dodd-Frank didn’t save banks; in fact it’s killed multitudes of community banks. His stimulus was a massively expensive bust.

The rest of Obama’s boasts aren’t on any firmer ground.

Obama talks about 14.4 million new jobs since 2010, without noting that working age population grew by 15.8 million over those same months.

He touts the 5% unemployment rate, but fails to mention that it would be more like 10% if millions of Americans hadn’t given up looking for work altogether.

Obama does admit the recovery has been sluggish, but when he isn’t blaming Republicans he says blames the “wrenching financial crises,” saying it inevitably lead to unusually slow growth.

Obama might think that, but a Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta analysis concluded that “U.S. history provides no support” for such a claim.

Even Sorkin, who is clearly trying to help Obama burnish his economic legacy, notes out that Obama’s two biggest legislative achievements — ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank — hurt economic growth. He also pokes Obama for his green energy policies, noting that the heavily subsidized Florida battery factory where Obama recently gave a speech is 100% foreign owned and losing money.

More remarkable is the disdain for the public that Obama unintentionally reveals in the Times piece. Basically, he thinks that people can’t be trusted to form their own opinions about the economy based on their own experiences.

In that sense, Obama is like Chico in the Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup, who when caught red handed in a lie said: “Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”

Granted, most of the post-American cattle-masses still don't like economic malaise, deliberate or otherwise.

So, it would stand to reason that they would be focusing on which of the presidential candidates has the clearest understanding of how to reverse all this damage. Wouldn't it?

Alas, with Cruz still not sealing the deal in his upcoming Alamo primary in Indiana, that appears not to be the case. You are an LITD reader. You know that none of the others has even a foggy, faint glimpse of what economic liberty is and how it is the only economic model that can remedy our situation.

Hopefully, adding Carly to his arsenal can turn that around, but I full understand that I may be hoping against hope.

No, the front-runner in the party that ostensibly stands for economic liberty, as well as a foreign policy based on an understanding of the indispensable role of the United States in preserving the West, not to mention ostensibly being based on Judeo-Christian values, is a guy who, no sooner than he engenders consideration of the possibility that he might have a subatomic particle of seriousness in his makeup with his foreign-policy speech, turns around and obliterates that possibility with this:

During one of his abrupt verbal asides on the political stump Wednesday night in Indianapolis, Donald Trump proudly noted another endorsement from the sports world.

Mike Tyson.

The former heavyweight champion, of course, has a history in Indianapolis. It was here where he was convicted of raping beauty pageant contestant Desiree Washington in 1992 — and subsequently spent three years in prison.

"Mike Tyson endorsed me," Trump told the crowd. "I love it. He sent out a tweet. Mike. Iron Mike. You know, all the tough guys endorse me. I like that, OK?

"But Mike said, 'I love Trump. I endorse Trump.' And that's the end. I'm sure he doesn't know about your economic situation in Indiana. But when I get endorsed by the tough ones, I like it, because you know what? We need toughness now. We need toughness."

Trump was a supporter of Tyson's after the conviction, saying that "to a large extent" he was "railroaded." Trump had a financial interest in the case because Tyson's fights made money for his hotels.

In an NBC News interview from Feb. 21, 1992, obtained by Buzzfeed and posted recently, Trump described the case this way: “You have a young woman that was in his hotel room late in the evening at her own will. You have a young woman seen dancing for the beauty contest — dancing with a big smile on her face, looked happy as can be.”

Yes sir, all the tough guys endorse him.

Tell it to Greg Garrison, Indianapolis talk show host and former prosecutor. He came to national attention as the guy who sent Tyson away for that rape, and he was pretty steamed and disgusted on his show the other day.

Speaking of talk shows, in a recent post here at LITD, I discuss how I am fed up with talk-show hosts assuming the pose of the oh-so-objective analyst when discussing Trump, when by definition they are in the business of opining, of taking definite stances.

Rush Limbaugh was up to this again yesterday, when, at the end of an overly-long, vacuous buildup, he came to what he sees as the only relevant line of Squirrel-Hair's foreign policy address:

But as usual there's just way too much analysis.  People overanalyze this and apply their own biases, prejudices or whatever to what Trump is doing, and there's just really one takeaway.  If you want to know whether or not Trump's speech yesterday was a hit with the voters that he has energized, all you have to know is Trump said the following:  We will no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism.  That's it.  Everything before and after is irrelevant.  That line made the speech one of the greatest ever. 

That line, as far as Trump supporters are concerned, was all they needed to hear. That was awesome. That was right on the money. We're gonna take it to 'em. We're not gonna play second fiddle anymore. We're not gonna sell American interests out. We're gonna put America first. We're gonna get rid of the globalists.  And I guarantee you that's all they needed to hear. 

Of course, what he's saying is that rank populism - disdain for "pointy-headed wonkery and theory" - has supplanted fealty to conservatism among the crucial crucial mass of Republican voters.

Mona Charen, at a Townhall column column today entitled "Reaganism Is Dead," comes to the same conclusion, but she doesn't try to be the objective analyst about it. She laments it openly:

Republicans are not voting on issues; they are voting on personality and attitude, and thus revealing themselves to have fallen for one of the worst errors of the left: the progressive belief that all will be well provided the "right" people, the "best" people, if you will, are running the government.

"This is the end of Reaganism," former Sen. Tom Coburn, a conservative hero, told me. The three-legged stool of strong defense, small government and conservatism on social issues has been smashed. Republicans, or at least a plurality of Republican primary voters, no longer distrust government per se; they simply distrust this government. They dislike Obama and the Republican leadership. But they're ready to believe that an outsider will be able to bring his annealing touch to the economy, to the culture and to national greatness. If a Republican politician today were to tell the joke about "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you" -- a reliable punch line in the Reagan repertoire -- he or she would be greeted by incomprehension. This is a signal victory for the left: the triumph of faith in the state. Trumpites are reprising Barack Obama's "Yes We Can" with a new lead. 

This is why I have recently openly expressed my doubts that this nation still has God's blessing. The one obvious way out of our grim state of affairs is not only getting its typical short shrift, it's disappearing.

We are truly on our own.

Delivered in (mostly) complete sentences, but still the same old Squirrel-Hair

Noah Rothman at Commentary invites us to look at the inconsistency with which Trump's foreign-policy address is riddled:

There were a number of references to the old pre-World War II Isolationist movement slogan “America First,” denunciations of the “false song of globalism,” whatever that means, and the assertion that Americans “feel they come second to the citizens of a foreign country.” This brand of paranoid nationalism was intermingled with pledges to transform the world’s only superpower and the world’s preeminent defender of democracy into history’s most powerful protection racket. But what was most striking, and also revealing about why this campaign cannot ever be retooled into something broadly palatable to traditional Republican policy experts, is how replete the speech was with contradictions. Trump has made such a hash of his worldview that there will never be any way to reconcile some of his most cherished policy preferences with others.

Trump began this foray into fatuousness with a nod to the “greatest generation” that “beat back the Nazis and Japanese imperialists” and “saved the world.” But within a handful of sentences, he repudiated their greatest work: the creation of what we refer to today as the Western world. He engaged in this ill-advised bloviating amid an attempt to attack America’s approach to post-September 11 counter-terrorism efforts. “It all began with a dangerous idea that we could make western democracies out of countries that had no experience or interests in becoming a western democracy,” he noted. These same tired and debunked ideas were said to apply to the alien Japanese pre-War culture and a Germany that had only ever known Prussian militarism. These were not democracies; how could we be so prideful as to think we could remake them in our own image? And yet, after much sacrifice and decades of commitment, that was what was done.

“Our allies are not paying their fair share,” Trump threateningly implied, “and I’ve been talking about this recently a lot. Our allies must contribute toward their financial, political, and human costs, have to do it, of our tremendous security burden.” He added that the United States “must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves.”

Trump noted that only four of America’s NATO allies meet the requisite goal of spending the equivalent of 2 percent of GDP on defense – as of 2015, the number was actually five: the United States, the United Kingdom, Greece, Poland, and Estonia. Trump doesn’t seem to have given much thought to the fact that those are nations most threatened in their neighborhoods – Greece by neighboring Turkey, Poland and Estonia by Russia, and Britain and the United States by their commitments to security and peace around the world. Nor has he given much thought to the benefits and dividends associated with peace, including the unimpeded global commerce that makes consumer goods cheap and increases living standards – phenomena he seems to see as threats to rather than facets of American prosperity. Perhaps this inconsistency is because Trump doesn’t see threats to American security outside of the Muslim world. On Russia, in particular, the celebrity candidate has insisted that the world has nothing to fear.

“I believe an easing of tensions, and improved relations with Russia from a position of strength only is possible, absolutely possible,” Trump contended. “Common sense says this cycle, this horrible cycle of hostility must end and ideally will end soon.” To create a moral equivalence between the West and Vladimir Putin’s Moscow is grotesque and ignorant. There is no comparison between the Western world and its support for allies who merely aspire to ascend to membership in the Atlantic Alliance and a country that invades and illegally annexes sovereign territory. The notion that Russia is an ally in the war on radical Islamic terrorism is often betrayed, primarily by its support for the Assad regime that has facilitated the growth of ISIS. Trump’s vision of strength in regard to Moscow is a declaration of unilateral surrender in the face of competition and hostility.

“They look at the United States as weak and forgiving and feel no obligation to honor their agreements with us,” Trump said of America’s allies. But while he contends that the U.S. must exact concessions from its allies while making concessions to its adversaries, he also insists that the Obama administration must be rejected for doing precisely the same thing. “We pick fights with our oldest friends, and now they’re starting to look elsewhere for help,” Trump lamented. “Not good.” So, which is it?

Often, Trump criticized the Obama administration for simultaneously being too muscular in relation to the use of force as a diplomatic tool while also being too soft. The celebrity candidate promised to be different, but while also being similar. After again demonstrating that he doesn’t know what a trade deficit is by contending that it should be balanced “quickly,” he asserted that the world should “look at what China is doing in the South China Sea.” Without defining what that is, he noted: “they’re not supposed to be doing it.” You’ve heard the same turn of phrase from Secretary of State John Kerry when he’s utterly flummoxed by the actions of American adversaries and has no way to counter them.

Leaders of other nations, be they allies, adversaries or enemies, will be hard-pressed to discern a pattern here from which they can formulate policy toward post-America. This speech looks like a formula for continuing the sidelining of post-America that has begun under the Most Equal Comrade's rule.

UPDATE: Heather Wilhelm at RCP offers the pathetic, predictable responses of some leading lights of Trump-bottery:

Sen. Jeff Sessions found the speech “electrifying.” Newt Gingrich called it “a serious foreign policy speech” “worth reading and thinking about.” Radio host Laura Ingraham labeled it “one of the most consequential foreign policy speeches since 1981.” Media gadfly Ann Coulter, not to be outdone, called it the “GREATEST FOREIGN POLICY SPEECH SINCE WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL ADDRESS,” because she’s not crazy at all.

Dog vomit where their souls should be.

The explanation for conservatism's current crisis cannot be found in wonky analysis of worldly factors

I've been thinking about a piece I read at NRO yesterday morning for the past twenty-four hours. It is by George Nash, who in 1976 wrote The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945.

This piece brings his overview up to the present. First, he reviews developments through the publication of his book: the evolving strains of thought that became the three pillars, roughly represented by Hayek on economics, Russell Kirk on traditional values, and the neoconservatives on a foreign policy predicated on freedom's primacy.

He talks about how, while there is a discernible three-pillared conservatism, there has never been a monolithic adherence to it. Factions that emphasize one or two of the pillars at the expense of others have tussled for decades.

But he concludes by noting the rise of something unprecedented:

What I did not foresee before last summer was the volcanic eruption in 2015 of a new and even angrier brand of populism, a hybrid that I will call Trumpism.

Politically, Trumpism’s antecedents may be found in the presidential campaigns of Ross Perot and Patrick Buchanan in the 1990s. Intellectually, Trumpism bears a striking resemblance to the anti-interventionist, anti-globalist, immigration-restrictionist, America First worldview propounded by various paleoconservatives during the 1990s and ever since. It is no accident that Buchanan, for example, is overjoyed by Donald Trump’s candidacy. Instead of venting anger exclusively at left-wing elites, as conservative populism in its Reaganite and tea-party variants has done, the Trumpist brand of populism is simultaneously assailing conservative elites, including the Buckley-Reagan conservative intellectual movement that I described earlier. In particular, Trumpism is deliberately breaking with the conservative internationalism of the Cold War era and with the pro-free-trade, supply-side-economics orthodoxy that has dominated Republican policymaking since 1980.

So what manner of “rough beast” is this, “its hour come round at last”? Speaking analytically, I believe we are witnessing in an inchoate form the birth of a political phenomenon never before seen in this country: an ideologically muddled, “nationalist-populist” major party combining both left-wing and right-wing elements. In its fundamental outlook and public-policy concerns, it is somewhat akin to the National Front in France, the United Kingdom Independence Party in Great Britain, the Alternative for Germany party, and similar protest movements in Europe. Most of these insurgent parties are conventionally labeled right-wing, but some of them are noticeably statist and welfare-statist in their economics — as is Trumpism in certain respects. Nearly all of them are responding to persistent economic stagnation, massively disruptive global migration patterns, and terrorist fanatics with global designs and lethal capabilities. In Europe as well as America, the natives are restless — and for much the same reasons.

Trumpism and its European analogues are also being driven by something else: a deepening conviction that the governing elites have neither the competence nor the will to make things better. When Donald Trump burst onto the political scene last summer, many observers noticed that one source of his instant appeal was his brash transgression of the boundaries of acceptable political discourse. The more he transgressed them, the more his popularity seemed to grow, particularly among those who lack a college education.

What was happening here? The rise of Trumpism in the past year has laid bare a potentially dangerous chasm in our politics: not so much between the traditional Left and Right but rather (as someone has put it) between those above and those below on the socio-economic scale. In Donald Trump, many of those “below” have found a voice for their outrage at what they consider to be the cluelessness and condescension of their “betters.”

In the last year, these tensions have flared into an ideological civil war on the right. As the debate has unfolded, many conservative intellectuals have attempted to accommodate what they see as the legitimate grievances expressed by Trump’s supporters. But conservatives diverge profoundly in their appraisal of the phenomenon itself and of the man who has become its champion. To conservatives in the “Never Trump” movement, who have vowed never to vote for him under any circumstances, Trump is an ignoramus and carnival barker at best, and a bullying proto-Fascist at worst. To many on the other side of the Great Divide, it is not Trump but an allegedly decadent and intransigent conservative “establishment” that is the threat, and they are attacking it savagely. Joining the effort to radically reconfigure conservatism on nationalist-populist lines is an array of aggressive dissenters called the “alternative right” or “alt-right,” many of whom openly espouse white nationalism and white-identity politics.

It is a remarkable development, one that has now led to what can only be described as a struggle for the mind and soul of American conservatism. In these stormy circumstances, it would be foolish to prophesy the outcome. Suffice it to say that in all my years as a historian of conservatism, I have never observed as much dissension on the Right as there is at present. 

A question has lingered since I read this: Why? Why does disgust at "decadence and intransigence" within our ranks have to translate into giving raw populism a look?

Conservatism is about immutable principles. That's what distinguishes us. If something was good and right and true in the 1980s, or in the 300s B.C., it is no less so in the present moment.

I understand that Nash is in the position of an objective analyst, desiring as he does to comprehensively present all the factors involved. But I am just about fed up with objective analysis from those who are on the right. It's infected the talk-radio world and the work of more than a few print pundits.

The basic explanation for why the principled three-pillar conservative in this presidential race can't surmount the poll numbers, primary victories and delegate count of a charlatan, an embarrassment, a buffoon with no principles beyond self-aggrandizement is spiritual.

It's quite clear that we have become a stiff-necked people, that this nation no longer enjoys the blessing of almighty God.

As the Old Testament demonstrates, that need not be a permanent condition. Our Lord is slow to anger, and takes note of real repentance.

But we have an active role to play in the matter. We must demonstrate the contrition and the yearning to be blessed once again for us to experience anything but the grim darkness that at this point looks like our fate.

We must purge the Trumpness from our hearts and ask forgiveness.

Squirrel-Hair don't need no stinkin' image groomers

Yet another management upheaval in the S-H campaign:

There's trouble in paradise -- if "paradise" is "Donald Trump's historically-unpalatable and logistically-shambolic presidential campaign." After quite a bit of media tongue-wagging about how Trump was finally getting serious by bringing on some seasoned professionals and transitioning to a "more presidential" tone, Trump has reportedly rejected the advice of his top new seasoned professional, Paul Manafort, effectively stripping him of power. Politico has details:

Donald Trump is bristling at efforts to implement a more conventional presidential campaign strategy, and has expressed misgivings about the political guru behind them, Paul Manafort, for overstepping his bounds, multiple sources close to the campaign tell POLITICO...Now Trump is taking steps to return some authority to Manafort’s chief internal rival, campaign manager Corey Lewandowski...campaign insiders say it has become increasingly clear that Trump, for all his boasts about his ability to become more “presidential,” is simply unwilling or perhaps unable to follow through, and resents efforts to transform him...After Trump’s resounding victory in last week’s New York primary, for instance, Manafort handed the candidate a speech he’d written for him that aimed for a more presidential tone, according to two campaign sources. Trump took a quick look at it and told Manafort he’d consider using such a speech down the road, but in the glow of his huge win in his home state, he preferred to wing it...Multiple sources said that Trump in recent days has re-empowered Lewandowski to handle the campaign’s finances and make some hiring decisions, partially reversing changes Manafort laid out this month when seizing some decision-making authority from Lewandowski.

You might say that Lewandowski figuratively grabbed Manafort by the arm and yanked back some control of the campaign.  And thus, the legions of Trump followers who've spent the last week expressing great joy at how marvelous it was that "Mister Trump" was shifting to a new phase of the campaign by altering his tone and conduct (which the candidate himself confirmed was happening) are now doing virtual backflips that Trump is refusing to shift to a new phase of the campaign, declining to alter his tone and conduct.  In cults of personality, the central Hero Figure can do no wrong.  And speaking of the man who admittedly surrounds himself with "unsuccessful people" and never hires anyone who's smarter than he is, Politicoreports that Trump has become alarmed by some of Manafort's connections:

Around the same time, POLITICO revealed that Manafort brought in a handful of operatives who had ties to his lobbying firm, which had developed a niche representing a roster of controversial international clients who have been collectively described as “the torturers’ lobby.” In particular, multiple sources said Trump was bothered by news stories about Manafort’s representation of Saudi Arabia and for a group accused of being a front for Pakistani intelligence. “I don’t think he was aware of the extent of the work that Paul has done in foreign countries that have not always been friendly to the United States,” said a Washington operative with close relationships to the campaign.

So Trump was taken aback by easily-googleable facts about Manafort that he only discovered after hiring the guy to effectively take over his campaign? What a brilliant manager.  Trump is surely destined to make great deals, driven by his preternatural smarts and savvy assessment of complexities. 

This observation pretty much says it all:

"'That's Trump. If you try to force him into a box, he's going to climb out of the box just to prove it to you,' said one operative close to the campaign. 'If you say he's going to be more presidential, all you did is make him less presidential.'" 

But those post-Americans who aren't enamored of the Hillionaire-Bernie vision seem to be going for this in a big way, even though the other man still standing (no, I don't mean the mailman's son) is a principled three-pillared conservative, which is the subject of my next post.

 

As Ted says, the Department of Education must be dismantled pronto

It's this kind of dog vomit that is why it's on Ted's Five for Freedom list of agencies and departments he'd like to kill:

A top Obama appointee in the Department of Education personally assured a group of LGBT activists that the White House is “aggressively engaged” in the fight to allow transgender students use whichever bathroom they please at school.

DOE Assistant Secretary for the Office of Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon delivered the good news at an LGBT summit hosted by the White House in Michigan last Thursday, where she gave the keynote address.

The event was co-sponsored by activist group Equality Michigan, which has led a statewide charge to allow schoolchildren choose their name, gender and bathroom, all without parental knowledge or input. Officials from seven different federal agencies attended the event, according to the Equality Michigan website.

Equality Michigan executive director Steph White blasted out a giddy email to supporters after the event, which she called “a great catalyst that will propel our collective work forward.”  The email included an excerpt from Lhamon’s remarks, which White called “refreshingly clear.”

This is where we find ourselves when we spend a century inured to the expansion of government beyond its Constitutionally specified functions. It's not just the waste of taxpayer money on ever-metatstasizing bureaucracy. These agencies and departments become sinister tools in the Freedom-Hater goals of governing with an agenda, neutering the cattle-masses, and obliteration not only standards of decency but the basic understanding of nature that the human (or perhaps make that formerly human) species has always had.

Spiritual monsters.

Russia takes advantage of post-America's denial of reality

Most recent posts about Russia here at LITD have had to do with planes buzzing US planes and ships.

Ralph Peters explains the strategic benefits for Putin of such actions:

• He sends a message to NATO (especially, to its new, easternmost members) that, “Hey, the Americans won’t even defend themselves. You really think they’ll defend you?”
• He sends a message to Russians that it’s the American military, not Russia’s, that’s hollow and rotten. It’s great propaganda that titillates Ivan and Olga (the latter almost as much as his bare-chested selfies).
• His intelligence collectors study our electronic systems as they track the older jets that he sends out (he won’t reveal the signatures of his latest aircraft).
• He accustoms us to aggressive behavior, conditioning us not to “overreact.” Were it to come to a sudden war in the 21st century, the side that pulled the trigger first would win. He’s training us to hesitate.
• The Russians are well aware of the low morale in our scandal-plagued Navy. On top of that, they watched, enthralled, as the Iranians grabbed and tormented our sailors — only to be thanked by our secretary of state for resolving the crisis they created. Now the Russians believe that they can get away with anything, as long as Obama’s in office.
• And in those famous words from the 1968 Democratic convention, “The whole world’s watching!” Putin doesn’t care what our elites think of him. He plays to a global audience. And that audience sees him as bold and successful, while it sees us as afraid and ineffective.

Of course, the Most Equal Comrade doesn't give a flying diddly. He's the architect of the Great Leveling Project, the goal of which is to take post-America down a peg and bring it into some kind of "international community."

The United States of America was a Christian nation; post-America hates Christians

This is Cuba-level persecution:

A black doctor who was fired for supposedly inflammatory sermons unrelated to his medical work filed a lawsuit against the state of Georgia on Wednesday, claiming religious discrimination. This is particularly ironic, considering the governor of that state recently vetoed a religious liberty bill.

Dr. Eric Walsh previously served on President Obama's Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, was a board member of the Latino Health Collaborative, and started California's first city-run dental clinic for low-income families dealing with AIDS. Nevertheless, Walsh was fired only one week after being hired by Georgia's Department of Public Health. Right before Walsh was terminated, the department circulated his sermons, giving staffers the "assignment" of listening to them.

To make matters worse, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal vetoed a religious freedom bill this month which would have helped Walsh in his case. After being pressured by "Social Justice Warriors" to kill the legislation, the governor laughably declared that religious freedom violations were not an issue in his state. He argued that the bill would enable discrimination against homosexuals, even while his own administration had engaged in blatant religious discrimination on the other side of the issue.

"In vetoing the religious liberty bill earlier this month, Georgia Governor Deal indicated that he had seen no examples of religious discrimination in Georgia making that law necessary," Jeremy Dys told PJ Media in an email statement. Dys serves as senior counsel for the First Liberty Institute, the group representing Walsh in his lawsuit.

"Governor Deal needs to look no further than the Georgia Department of Public Health to find one of the most egregious cases of religious discrimination in the country -- the case of Dr. Walsh," Dys declared. "Had Governor Deal signed the religious liberty law into effect, we likely would have pled that law in our efforts to preserve Dr. Walsh's religious liberty."
Dr. Walsh accepted the position of director for the northwest part of Georgia at the state's Department of Public Health in May 2014. Only one week later, state officials request copies of sermons Walsh had given as a lay minister for the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

Government requesting sermons. Folks, this is why we call 'em Freedom-Haters.

BTW, Nathan Deal is a pathetic coward.

 

Sunday morning roundup

David Harsanyi at The Federalist on the garbage that passes for science education in government schools:

Have you experienced a school “science week” lately? You should.

The chances that you’ll find a student whose goal is to one day extract fossil fuels more effectively or use genetically modified crops—or any real innovation, for that matter—to help the fortunes of billions of impoverished humans around the world is around zero. Most students will mimic what they hear, and claim to want to turn pond scum or discarded plastic bottles into eco-fuel. They get an A for caring.

Many kids confuse science with environmental activism. Who can blame them? Science isn’t only the systematic study of structure and behavior in physical and natural world through observation and experimentation, but a moral elixir.

“Science” means “panic over climate change.” “Innovation” means pretending to deal with it. And so “science week” at your local public school is probably more like “green week”—which, in turn, is just part of green year. Because every day is Earth Day.

In many states science standards are plummeting, though the prevalence of green education programs is rising. Perhaps this is not coincidental. Children seem exceptionally concerned about overpopulation and a variation in the climate, which they are told portends dystopia despite all evidence to the contrary. “Science” means creating apprehension about human progress.

How many teachers do you think point out on Earth Day that human existence—despite our generally indifference to climate change—has quantifiably improved in almost every area? Do they know the world is effectively “drowning in oil”? How many kids understand that air and water are all cleaner today than they were when their teachers were kids?

How many comprehend that climate change is a mildly negative externality of the greatest poverty-killing project ever devised by man? Has anyone asked these kids if they believe a billion people should be deprived of basic modern necessities and be forced to continue live in destitution? How many teachers explain to their students that if innovators of the past had agonized over “environmental friendliness,” we’d be living in mud houses and most of us would be dead at the hands of untreated infections?

And, in the course of an article the main point of which is the complex and multilayered relationships among and between post-America and the major players of the Asian continent, Kevin Williamson at NRO pens today's how-do-we-go-about-hog-tying-Laura-Ingraham-and-making-her-read-this-aloud-on-her-show paragraph:

 . . . the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade-liberalization pact that Mrs. Clinton has been walking sideways away from for months. TPP is a proposal that is good and necessary in its generalities, worrisome and sometimes unpersuasive in its particulars, and currently caught between a Democratic electorate that hates free trade per se and a Republican electorate that is one-third composed of people who hate free trade per se and otherwise dominated by those who believe, not without some reason, that President Obama would not put forth such an agreement without a rascally purpose, occult though it may be. This leaves the United States in the very difficult position of needing to make the case for free trade abroad when it is a minority taste at home.

Kimberly Ross at Red State marvelously articulates the reason why real conservatives will remain #NeverTrump no matter what happens between now and the end of time:

 . . . let’s just say for now that Trump would beat Hillary. Congratulations, the Republican party has taken back the White House. But at what cost? It would be nothing but a Pyrrhic victory. Do we really want to set back conservatism? Trump has shown himself to be weak and substance-free on issues foreign, domestic, and social. It’s difficult to keep up with how often his so-called “policy stances” change. He is widely supported by those who are fueled by nothing but racist tendencies, as I’ve seen firsthand. He couldn’t care less about basic tenets of conservatism, like being 100% pro-life. And to top it off, he’s an immature individual who seems to be doing all this for fun, not to actually improve America, and certainly not promote conservative values.

Prince had been an opioid addict for his entire career:

Prince's former drug dealer has revealed the full extent of the late-star's secret drug addiction - telling how the superstar was hooked on powerful opiates for over 25 years.

Speaking exclusively to Daily Mail Online, the performer's long-time dealer - who asked to be named only as Doctor D - revealed the singer would spend up to $40,000 a time on six-month supplies of Dilaudid pills and Fentanyl patches - both highly addictive opioid pain killers.

Prince, who was found dead on Thursday at his home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was secretly cremated in an intimate ceremony at a nondescript funeral home in Minneapolis shortly after an autopsy was completed on Friday, Radar reports.

Prince's sister Tyka Nelson and another family member reportedly spent a few minutes saying goodbye at the First Memorial Waterston Chapel before the musician was cremated.

His death came just days after sources claimed he overdosed on the opiate Percocet.

Doctor D said the musician, who he described as 'majorly addicted', regularly bought drugs from him between 1984 and 2008. 

The dealer, often to the stars, said Prince suffered crippling stage fright and could not get on stage and perform without the drugs - but had a phobia of doctors so could not obtain a prescription legally.

Tragically, Doctor D suggests it could have been a physician that unknowingly contributed to Prince's death - by prescribing strong pain killers to the singer for his hip condition without knowing the extent of his secret opiate addiction.

He said: 'I first met Prince in 1984 while he was filming the movie Purple Rain and he was already majorly addicted to opiates - I didn't hook him on drugs he was already a really heavy user.'In the beginning he would buy speed as well as Dilaudid.'I would sell him black beauties which were a black pill and cross tops which were also speed pills.'He would use that as a counter balance to get back up again from taking opiates.'That lasted for a couple of years then he would just buy Dilaudid, which is a heroin based opiate. It is highly addictive.'As far as I knew he never took heroin - as that would leave you out of it for days whereas Dilaudid gives you an energy buzz as well as making you feel relaxed - so he preferred it.

And for two pull-no-punches takes on the Most Equal Comrade's edict to the UK that it must stay in the EU in order to get special-relationship-level trade benefits from post-America, check out Charles Moore at The Telegraph and  Peter Hitchens at the Daily Mail, who is so honked off that he has decided there never was a special relationship.

Squirrel Hair will readily admit to being a phony

One of the things that leaves those of us who understand how horrible Donald Trump is for America shaking our heads is how upfront he is about his own phoniness.

Jim Geraghty at NRO looks at how eager the MSM was to find a new "discipline" and "maturity" in the way Squirrel-Hair comports himself after his New York victory speech, and how short-lived any evidence of a new tone was:

. . . not 24 hours after his New York victory speech, Trump was back to his old self. “In the case of Lyin’ Ted Cruz — Lyin’ Ted — he brings the Bible, holds it high, puts it down, lies,” he said at a rally in Indianapolis. Thursday he declared that putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill was “pure political correctness,” and tweeted another taunt at his strongest rival. “Cruz said Kasich should leave because he couldn’t get to 1237,” he wrote. “Now he can’t get to 1237. Drop out LYIN’ Ted.”

 

 My, how different Trump seems!

Enough of this “new and improved Trump” nonsense. The media are so eager to announce the appearance of a matured Trump that all it takes for them to declare the metamorphosis complete is one speech avoiding the usual ad hominem guff. He’s set the bar so low that when he bothers to clear it for a minute there are plenty of pliant reporters ready to pipe up in amazement.

Perhaps the media’s credulity reflects the seemingly Svengali-like influence of Trump’s new campaign chief, Paul Manafort, who assured party insiders at this week’s RNC spring meeting in Florida that everything was about to change.

“That’s what’s important for you to understand: That he gets it, and that the part he’s been playing is evolving,” Manafort said. “The negatives are going to come down, the image is going to change, but Clinton is still going to be crooked Hillary.” 

But, as I say, the really astounding thing is how he readily admits that he employs particular personae as political weapons:

At a rally in Wisconsin on April 4, he mused that, “I can be presidential, but if I was presidential I would only have — about 20 percent of you would be here because it would be boring as hell, I will say.” During a Thursday appearance on NBC’s Today Show, he was more direct: “I will be so presidential, you will be so bored. You’ll say, ‘Can’t he have a little more energy?’”

The only genuine impulse he has is a desire to deem himself a "winner" in every  aspect of his life. The quotes around "winner" are deliberate; Squirrel-Hair's worldview is predicated on the notion that preferable sets of circumstances are a zero-sum game, that one attains them at the expense of some poor bastard who's just a "loser."

Dear God, stop his candidacy.

 

Ben Sasse, free market champion

This is what principled leadership looks like:

Sen. Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) is taking aim at an Obamacare program that is diverting billions of dollars in payments away from the U.S. Treasury and steering the money to major insurance companies involved with the health care law.

Sasse recently introduced legislationtackling the Transitional Reinsurance Program, one of three programs in Obamacare put into place to protect insurance companies from risks that could arise from entering the marketplace.

Under the reinsurance program, if an individual were to have an Obamacare-compliant plan and accrued medical costs between $45,000 and $250,000, HHS was slated to pay 80 percent of the large claims total back to the insurance companies.

However, HHS later announced that they were going to raise the payment rates for the insurance companies to 100 percent.

The secretary of HHS, under the law, is required to deposit a total of $5 billion between 2014 and 2016 to the Treasury. This amount was supposed to consist of a $2 billion payment in 2014, a $2 billion payment for 2015, and a $1 billion payment for 2016.

Treasury did not receive a single payment out of the $2 billion that they were supposed to receive in 2014, while the insurance companies were given the full $8 billion that they requested. Additionally, HHS carried over $1.7 billion to have on hand to give to insurance companies at a later time.

One of the more dastardly aspects of Freedom-Hater-care is that it reinforces the general notion that large corporations need to get in bed with government to remain viable in an increasingly regulated economic environment. Insurance companies had a vested interest in becoming dependent on Leviathan, just like the cattle-masses themselves.

I repeat something I propose nearly every time I write about the "A"CA: How about if we once and for all try the free-market model, where the value of a good or service is worth what buyer and seller agree that it's worth - period - and government is not in the business of "protecting" anybody from risks?

Why can't we have a Senate full of Ben Sasses?

UNESCO: Still a scum outfit

Yes, it lauded the liberation of Palmyra, but check out what it did immediately afterward:

Last month, UNESCO’s director general Irina Bokova issued a statement congratulating Russian- backed Syrian forces for liberating the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State (ISIS).
Bokova said Palmyra “carries the memory of the Syrian people, and the values of cultural diversity, tolerance and openness that have made this region a cradle of civilization.”
Bokova added, “The deliberate destruction of heritage is a war crime, and UNESCO will do everything in its power to document the damage so that these crimes do not go unpunished. I wish to remind all parties present of the absolute necessity to preserve this unique heritage as an essential condition for peace and the future of the region.”

Last week, UNESCO’s executive board passed a resolution unanimously outlining the steps the organization would take to rebuild the devastated site, whose major monuments were destroyed or damaged during the city’s 10 months under ISIS rule.
All of this, is all very well and nice.
The problem is that UNESCO commits the very crimes for which it condemns ISIS. Indeed, it committed the crime of seeking to wipe out history, whose preservation is “an essential condition for peace and the future of the region,” the day it passed its resolution on Palmyra.
Right after UNESCO’s board unanimously passed its resolution on Palmyra, it also passed a resolution whose goal is to erase Jewish history in the land of Israel.

The resolution, titled merely “Occupied Palestine,” (a country that doesn’t even exist), defined the Temple Mount, Judaism’s most sacred site, as an exclusively Muslim site. Jews who visit it were referred to derisively as “right wing extremists.” 

The Western Wall, Judaism’s second holiest site, was similarly referred to as an exclusively Islamic site.

The resolution reinstated a previous resolution’s false claim that the tombs of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people in Hebron and Bethlehem are mosques. The resolution, like the one from last week, was also a war crime, where UNESCO acted with malice to destroy the historical record. 

Your tax dollars are going for this blatant West-hatred.

How fast can a civilization rot?

Michael Brown at Townhall uses a recent two-day period to illustrate the intensification of transgender militancy on our society:

Within a 48-hour period this week, a Federal court ruled that a school could not require children to use the bathroom that corresponds to their biological sex, Target announced it was making all its bathrooms gender neutral, a school council in England sent out a letter to parents, telling them to encourage their 4-year-old children to choose the gender they most identify with before starting school, be it male, female, or something else, and baseball legend Curt Schilling was fired by ESPN for sharing an “anti-transgender” post. (Note that ESPN fired Schilling because it is an “inclusive” company. The Orwellian doublespeak continues.) 

Recall that this cascade of developments comes fairly closely on the heels of the North Carolina legislation and the reactions of Gavin Newsom, Andrew Cuomo and Bruce Springsteen. 

One of the causes of Western civilization's terminal illness is relativism, but it's moved  beyond the situational-ethics stage, or the embrace of moral equivalence in the international realm. Relativism has come to its confluence with narcissism for a new phase in which the psychotic New Age notion that one can create one's own reality is accepted en masse and is in fact reinforced by corporate policy and even law.

The synthesis of cultural movements has brought us to each step in our deterioration. The "peace" movement of the 1960s, 70s and 80s (which was really a nest of Communist front groups and fellow travelers) found common cause with feminism when those who enlisted the illumination of history pointed out that most generals, heads of state, inventors, artists, and, indeed, violent criminals had been men, by an overwhelming percentage. It may at first glance look unfair to those hesitant to acknowledge the profound differences between the masculine and feminine approaches to life, but there it is nonetheless. The peace folks and the feminists came together in a chorus to say, "That's why it's time for a brand-new way for humankind to do things."

Never mind that history also teaches us that brand-new ways never pan out. Human nature is fixed, even as the species advances materially.

Even at the margins, where such statistical necessities as homosexuality are found, human nature expresses itself with great predictability. Even before the 1969 Stonewall Inn riots that began the modern militant-homosexual movement, everyone knew that homosexual men gravitated toward certain occupational fields -  hair styling, arts administration, fashion design - as did lesbians (basketball, folk singing).

Again, there was a confluence of two cultural movements - feminism and homosexual militancy -  in the 1970s. By the middle of that decade, it was clear that such events as women's music festivals were mainly attended by, and the music performed by, lesbians.

This worked itself out in an uneasy equilibrium for a few years. Sectors of the economy that strongly represented particular demographics, to say nothing of public restrooms, didn't have to worry about being subjected to upheaval on the name of some sort of "justice." Folk singers and aeronautical engineers each found their niches and proceeded comfortably, generally speaking.

Lurking under the surface, however, was a a growing sense on the part of homosexuals that they were an aggrieved minority, in the same sense that black Americans had been able to claim that status.  It was no longer enough that one could work at a job for years and engage in civic life in one's community with everyone's tacit acknowledgement that the person of the same gender with whom you'd been living was in fact a companion and that your relationship with him or her involved intimacy and perhaps even commitment. Some of those in the mainstream of society so acknowledging may have had disapproving thoughts, some may have been indifferent, and some may have seen it as wonderful to witness. Whatever the reaction, people were entitled to have those thoughts privately.

This would now no longer do. Along came the wave of hate-crime legislation, which entitled the state to parse the workings of a citizen's mind.

And then came the first talk of homosexual "marriage."

And then came disparagement of the talk of slippery slopes. In hindsight, those pointing out slippery slopes seven, eight years ago used a less effective example when they brought up polygamy, which hasn't caught on in any big way at least yet, than if they'd used transgenderism. I would wager that the reason it took second place as an argument is that it seemed so way out.

But gender fluidity assumed legitimacy as a concept in university classrooms, and, of course, on any classroom-building hallway, there are restrooms.

It's significant that post-America was getting softened up by virtue of the other reality-denying narratives gaining ground simultaneously. Along with the idea that you can think yourself into being of the opposite gender, or having an identity at some point along a supposed continuum between the genders, lots of post-Americans swallowed such hooey as the endangerment of the polar bear population due to human industrial activity, or a legitimate role for government in the eating habits of individual citizens.

Post-Americans were getting softened up, and at the same time, being trained to hate the foundations of their way of life, particularly Christianity. Again, it was an unfolding process, starting with, "Oh, come on, you expect anyone to believe in a one-time appearance of a son of the Creator in one particular place for a lifespan on thirty-three years, beginning with a virgin conception and birth, and ending with a resurrection and ascension? I mean, if the guy existed historically, yes, he was a great moral teacher, but this other stuff . . . " And from there it reached the stage of "People who will swallow that are inclined to be so rigid as to be intolerant of those who have what Christians call sin as the core of their lifestyles." And then it was on to, "You can't do that."

Is it scary to imagine what comes next? Most definitely. In a year when, as Peggy Noonan puts it in her Wall Street Journal column today, "the great choice in a nation of 320 million may come down to Crazy Man versus Criminal," we ought to take a weirder and weirder future as a given.

It's not a consolation, but it is a perspective provider to realize that the civilizational peak we experienced over our lifetimes was a blip, that most societies and nation-states don't reach such a peak.

We are actually entering into more normal times, historically speaking, times in which people are on their own if they want to escape the smothering of a capricious and ubiquitous state.

If it is consolation one is looking for - well, as near as I can tell it comes in the basic message of the faith that is being outlawed in this darkening land: Our true home is in another realm.