Finally

The United States is untethered from the mortally dangerous and supremely humiliating JCPOA.

The regime that has its grip on Iran's throat has been at war with the United States since it came to power in 1979. There was never any basis for interacting with it other than as a mortal enemy.

Oh, come on. Didn't that kind of waver back and forth a bit over the years?

No.

In 2014, as the Most Equal Comrade and Secretary Global-Test were making their narcissistic aims to be visionary peacemakers ushering in an unprecedented era of unicorns and rainbows visible to all - and that was after a couple of happy-new-year letters from the MEC to Supreme Ayatollah Khameini as well as sitting on his hands during the Green Movement uprising of 2009 - said ayatollah was making it clear where his regime stood:

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, all but said on Sunday that negotiations over the country’s illicit nuclear program are over and that the Islamic Republic’s ideals include destroying America.

“Those (Iranians) who want to promote negotiation and surrender to the oppressors and blame the Islamic Republic as a warmonger in reality commit treason,” Khamenei told a meeting of members of parliament, according to the regime’s Fars News Agency.

Khamenei emphasized that without a combative mindset, the regime cannot reach its higher Islamic role against the “oppressors’ front.”

Or there's this, from the same time frame, from General Firouzabadi:

As U.S. leaders signal a willingness to partner with Iran in the fight against Iraqi terrorists, senior military officials in Tehran are warning of repercussions for the United States if it meddles in Iraq.

The head of Iran’s armed forces on Tuesday called the United States "supporters of terrorists" and warned the Obama administration against any intervention in Iraq, where extremist terrorists are seeking to depose the American-backed government.

Iran’s warning came less than a day after senior Obama administration officials expressed optimismabout partnering with Tehran and signals that the White House may be misreading Iran’s intentions in Iraq.
The State Department in recent days has taken heat for ignoring its own warning about Iran’s efforts to destabilize Iraq. U.S. official have instead conducted a full court press to convince the nation that Iran and America have a "shared interest" in the region.

Senior Iranian military and political officials do not share this rosy view and are now issuing warnings to U.S. leaders as the violence in Iraq hits new highs.
Iranian General Hassan Firouzabadi, chief of staff of the country’s armed forces, slammed the United States and blamed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for sponsoring terrorist groups in Iraq and the region.

"By any meddling and military intervention in Iraq, the Americans are seeking to attain ungracious goals, at the top of which undermining the elections in Iraq, and the crocodile tears of the Americans should not receive any attention, as they are still the allies of the sponsors and supporters of terrorists in the region," Firouzabadi was quoted as saying in Tehran on Tuesday by the country’s state-run press.

Clinton’s State Department, the general claimed, "created terrorist groups" and is now "displeased with the results of the recent elections in Iraq and is cancel election results." 

Again, also from 2014, from Khameini:

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stated on Wednesday that the only solutionfor the region is the destruction of Israel, and that the armed confrontation must expand beyond Gaza.

And this is the behavior of a regime Global-Test puked all over himself into the "international community":

Iran has failed to provide information sought by the International Atomic Energy Agency on suspected military dimensions to its nuclear program, a top UN official said this week.

Quoted in The New York Times, director-general of the IAEA Yukiya Amano said that Iran’s leadership had stopped answering questions on past efforts to weaponize nuclear material to build atomic bombs.

This is Iran's idea of being a member of the "international community":

The 'proxy' war is escalating very rapidly. As AP reports, Navy officials confirm that the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt is headed to Yemeni waters to intercept an Iranian weapons shipments. Just as we warned 10 days ago, the probability of a major escalation over the latest proxy Middle Eastern civil war escalated substantially when Iran parked two warships off the Yemeni coast.

It seems the Most Equal Comrade was  out of the loop on this one. Or -  dare we consider it? - perhaps he was being a bit mendacious?

With only one month left before a deadline to complete a nuclear deal with Iran, international inspectors have reported that Tehran’s stockpile of nuclear fuel increased about 20 percent over the last 18 months of negotiations, partially undercutting the Obama administration’s contention that the Iranian program had been “frozen” during that period…

The 2013 plan for capping the stockpile relied on Iran’s stated plan to build a “conversion plant” at its sprawling nuclear complex at Isfahan. The plant was intended to turn newly enriched uranium into oxide powder, the first step toward making reactor fuel rods. In other words, while the stockpile would not be reduced, it also should not have grown…

What remains unknown is the cause of the bottleneck at the new plant: technical problems, Iranian foot-dragging, or some combination of the two. The Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington research group, wrote in an analysis on Friday that Iranian officials say the plant’s final stage “did not work properly,” prompting the delay…

Presiding over the plant’s opening last August, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, said Iran had successfully overcome industrial sabotage, a long rumored way the West has sought to slow Tehran’s nuclear program.

Says Andrew Stiles, if today’s story only “partially” undercuts Obama’s claims, what would have to happen to totally undercut it?

These folks were not exactly being transparent about key considerations as we approached the culmination of the patty-cake:

Top Iranian Brigadier General Massaoud Jazzayeri stresses on Sunday that no foreign national would ever be allowed to inspect Iranian military sites.
Fars News reported:

Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Brigadier General Massoud Jazzayeri underlined that no foreign national would ever be allowed to visit or inspect Iran’s military sites.

“We reiterate that the permission will definitely never be issued for any kind of access to the military centers, even if it runs counter to the acceptance of the additional protocol (to the NPT),” General Jazzayeri said on Sunday.
He noted that the Iranian Armed Forces and the country’s Air Defense System are tasked with safeguarding the country’s interests and security, and said, “Foreigners’ visit to defense and military centers as well as obtaining information about the related equipment and tactics is against the orders (of commander-in-chief Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei) and also the demands of the entire Iranian nation.”

General Jazzayeri underlined the need for vigilance in defending the Iranian nations’ rights in different fields, and said, “No protocol should disturb our country’s national security.” 

For crying out loud, even the NYT's Thomas Friedman could see it:

 . . . for the past year every time there is a sticking point — like whether Iran should have to ship its enriched uranium out of the country or account for its previous nuclear bomb-making activities — it keeps feeling as if it’s always our side looking to accommodate Iran’s needs. I wish we had walked out just once. When you signal to the guy on the other side of the table that you’re not willing to either blow him up or blow him off — to get up and walk away — you reduce yourself to just an equal and get the best bad deal nonviolence can buy.
Diplomatic negotiations in the end always reflect the balance of power, notes the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy specialist Michael Mandelbaum, writing in The American Interest. “In the current negotiations … the United States is far stronger than Iran, yet it is the United States that has made major concessions. After beginning the negotiations by insisting that the Tehran regime relinquish all its suspect enrichment facilities and cease all its nuclear activities relevant to making a bomb, the Obama administration has ended by permitting Iran to keep virtually all of those facilities and continue some of those activities.”

How did this happen? “Part of the explanation may lie in Barack Obama’s personal faith in the transformative power of exposure to the global economy.” But, adds Mandelbaum, “Surely the main reason … is that, while there is a vast disparity in power between the two parties, the United States is not willing to use the ultimate form of power and the Iranian leaders know this.” 

On the eve of the deal, they were still playing post-America for a fool:

Senior Obama administration officials are defending Iranian nuclear violations in the aftermath of a bombshell report published Wednesday by the United Nations indicating that Iran has failed to live up to its nuclear-related obligations, according to sources apprised of the situation.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) disclosed yesterday that Iran has failedto meet its commitments under the interim Joint Plan of Action to convert recently enriched uranium gas to powder.

While Iran has reduced the amount of enriched uranium gas in its stockpiles, it has failed to dispose of these materials in a way that satisfies the requirements of the nuclear accord struck with the United States and other powers in 2013.

Secretary of State John Kerry declared last summer that Iran would be forced to comply with such restrictions, and State Department officials were assuring reporters as recently as last month that the Iranians would meet their obligations.

Wednesday’s disclosure by the IAEA sent the State Department rushing to downplay the Iranian violation.

And Iran had a very resolute take on its partner in patty-cake:

A senior Iranian military official said Sunday that despite the emerging nuclear dealbetween Iran and the US-led P5+1 group of world powers, America will remain Tehran's enemy.

Iranian Ground Force Commander Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan said that even if a nuclear deal comes to fruition in Vienna, where Iranian and western negotiators are currently trying to reach an agreement by a Tuesday deadline, Tehran and Washington will not become friends.

"The US might arrive at some agreements with us within the framework of the Group 5+1 (the US, Russia, China, Britain and France plus Germany), but we should never hold a positive view over the enemy,"  Iran's Fars News Agency quoted Pourdastan as saying.

"Our enmity with them is over the principles and is rooted because we are after the truth and nations' freedom, but they seek exploiting nations and putting them in chains," he explained further.

All that is before the deal - not a treaty, as it was never submitted to Congress for ratification - was inked.

Since then, we've seen many more declarations from these people that the US remains Iran's enemy. We saw the capture of a US naval crew - on the day that the Most Equal Comrade was to give the State of the Union address - and the photos of crew members on their knees with their hands behind their heads. By the way, their cell phones and laptops were confiscated. We've seen multiple missile tests. Evidence of aid to Yemen's Houthi rebels.

The Iranian regime is a garbage regime and the only way forward is to deal with it as such.

 

Amazon kowtows to the jackboots at the Southern Poverty Law Center

God-hatred and Western civilization-hatred just put some points on the board:

Amazon kicked out a leading American pro-life organization from its charitable fundraising site this week based on the recommendation of a radical liberal group.

The colossal online retailer told Alliance Defending Freedom that it can no longer participate in its AmazonSmile program, which raises money for non-profit organizations, according to ADF.

What’s more, Amazon told ADF that it relied on the recommendation of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a radical pro-abortion group, in making its decision.

“ADF is one of the nation’s most respected and successful Supreme Court advocates, working to preserve our fundamental freedoms of speech, religion, and conscience for people from all walks of life,” said President, CEO and General Counsel Michael Farris. “SPLC is not a neutral watchdog organization. Instead, it raises money by slandering people and organizations who disagree with its views.”

Farris said he sent a letter to Amazon on Thursday asking for a meeting to discuss the decision.

He wrote in the letter:

Once the SPLC identifies an ideological opponent, its goal is to ruin them. As SPLC Senior Fellow Mark Potok said: “Sometimes the press will describe us as monitoring hate crimes and so on … I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.” That is the group’s mindset toward those whose views it doesn’t like. Unfortunately, it is aided and abetted by businesses like Amazon that uncritically accept SPLC’s slander and use it as a basis for its own business decisions.

This is Alinsky-style thuggery. This is right out of the Kirk and Madsen textbook.

And excuse me, readers from elsewhere, but I must go local for a moment here. The human rights commission in the small midwestern city where I live is hosting a speaker from the SPLC at its annual meeting:

The outreach director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups and other extremists, will be the keynote speaker at the Columbus Human Rights Commission dinner.

The dinner will be at 6:30 p.m. May 17 at The Commons, 300 Washington St.

Lecia Brooks plans to discuss topics including immigration, and hate and extremism.

Brooks travels nationally to give presentations on behalf of the center that emphasize tolerance, inclusion and diversity, as well as promoting the center’s mission to eradicate hatred and bigotry and to seek justice for society’s most vulnerable members.

During her time at the Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Montgomery, Alabama, she has participated in and managed several important projects, including the Mix It Up Lunch Day program through Teaching Tolerance and the center’s documentary “Bullied: A Student, a School, and a Case that Made History.”

She also participated in a two-year effort to resolve complaints of race-based harassment at Alta High School in Utah in conjunction with an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and the NAACP.

The reason my city is of interest to you, general reader from anywhere, is that it is the hometown of Mike Pence, and a high-school senior recently organized a "pride festival" and got academic credit for it, and is on record as saying a main motivation was to poke Pence right in the eye.

The infection is everywhere, in other words.

It is very late in the day. What are you doing with the remaining microseconds as they tick away?

The unredacted House Intelligence Committee report should have been the document used all along

I haven't spent much LITD space remarking on the Mueller / Rosenstein / Comey / Nunes set of developments, for two main reasons. It strikes me as being mostly a distraction from the actual matters of import of the day, and it's fraught with arcane details upon which tribalists of one stripe or another are prone to hanging their hats for the purposes of gotcha.

The sounding of the "deep state" alarm bell is tiresome, but I think it's time to ask some serious questions about just how extensive the politicization is at the Justice Department and the FBI.

Need convincing? I offer Andrew McCarthy's piece in today's NRO.

Do read the whole thing, but let me attempt to summarize. The House Intelligence Committee has wanted to release its report on Russian interference in the 2016 election for some time, but was hampered by a back-and-forth with the DoJ and FBI over portions that those two entities wanted redacted, claiming national security risks. The committee finally released the basically blackout-free version Friday, and shortly thereafter the public was able to compare and contrast the two versions. The obvious conclusion when one does so is  . . .

Well, shortly after the redactions were lifted late on Friday, The Federalist’s Sean Davis got busy on Twitter, posting side-by-side comparisons of the original heavily redacted pages and the new, more transparent version. The disclosures are stunning. I know this will amaze you, but it turns out the redactions had absolutely nothing to do with concerns about the need to protect national security or pending investigations. Instead, the now-unredacted passages:

• Elaborate on why the FBI did not believe Flynn had lied, including quotations from Comey’s testimony.
• Reveal that for some period of time during 2016, the FBI conducted a counterintelligence (CI) investigation of Flynn.
• Note that top Obama Justice Department and FBI officials provided the committee with “conflicting testimony” about why the FBI interviewed Flynn as if he were a criminal suspect.
• Illustrate that the FBI and Justice Department originally insisted on concealment of facts helpful to Flynn that are already public.

Got that? General Flynn may well have been able to avoid his current troubles if the unmolested version had been available to the committee a long time ago.

The FBI justified its counterintelligence investigation into Flynn by claiming his behavior during the transition period had some kind of Logan Act-type treachery to it.

You can't help but detect the smell of politicization when you realize that

. . . the suggestion that his post-election contacts with Russia were improper, let alone unlawful, is absurd. Flynn was the designated national-security adviser for the incoming administration and a key member of the Trump transition team. To have communications with officials of foreign governments was a legitimate and necessary part of his job. Plus, Kislyak was a foreign agent subject to FISA surveillance, so the FBI had recordings of his communications with Flynn and knew that Flynn had done nothing improper. (It has been presumed that Flynn’s communications with Kislyak were intercepted because Kislyak, not Flynn, was the subject of a FISA warrant; now, with confirmation that Flynn was the subject of a counterintelligence investigation, we may need to revisit that presumption.)

McCarthy makes this supremely important point in his conclusion:

There is no Department of Justice in the Constitution. It is an executive-branch component created by Congress, funded with taxpayer funds appropriated by Congress, and subject to congressional oversight to ensure that its operations are conducted in accordance with their statutory purposes. Because of the sensitivity of their law-enforcement and intelligence missions, the Justice Department and its premier agency, the FBI, are shown great deference when lawmakers make requests — or even demands — for information. Contrary to what Justice Department leadership apparently believes, this deference is not an entitlement. It is result of respect earned over time by an institution that — its proud alumni like to believe — has a tradition of dealing honorably and transparently with peer branches of government.

Any law-enforcement entity, up to and including the DoJ and the FBI, is comprised of fallible human beings, so it's probably too much to ask that they never exhibit even a slight taint of ideological motivation. But that ought to be the standard so that egregious cases of it like this don't go this far.

And McCarthy's right. The president needs to quit acting like he has no power to deal with it other than whining on Twitter.

 

 

Saturday roundup

You may have heard that former Secretary of State Global-Test is going behind the US government's back, talking to Iran in an attempt to undermine current US policy about the JCPOA. Scott Johnson at Power Line poses an important question:

Isn’t this the kind of thing for which then Acting Attorney Sally Yates sicced the FBI on Michael Flynn? Because it allegedly violated the Logan Act? Why, yes, it is. 

Johnson reminds us that G-T got his start as a foreign-policy gadfly in 1971, as a representative of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, peddling lies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and even heading off to Paris to meet with America's Marxist-Leninist enemy. He could have also included a trip G-T took right after becoming a Senator himself. He hightailed it down to Nicaragua to meet with that country's Marxist-Leninist FSLN leadership - and undermine US policy.

FNC personality Neil Cavuto let the Very Stable Genius have it yesterday:

Even a Fox News host who’s unleashed has to be a *little* careful about how he addresses Trump, though. At one point here Cavuto says, “Now, I’m not saying you’re a liar — you’re president, you’re busy — I’m just having a devil of a time figuring out which news is ‘fake.'” Spoiler: He is, in fact, saying that Trump is a liar. A big one.

As did the WSJ editorial board:

What makes this extra interesting is the fact that another influential news outlet owned by Rupert Murdoch, the Wall Street Journal, also let Trump have it in an editorial last night. Headline: “The Stormy Daniels Damage: Does Trump want Americans to believe him in a genuine crisis?”

Mr. Trump’s public deceptions are surely relevant to his job as President, and the attempted cover-up has done greater harm than any affair would have. Mr. Trump asked Americans, not least his supporters, to believe his claims about the payments. They were false and conveniently so in putting the onus on Mr. Cohen. Now, as more of the story has emerged, he wants everyone to believe a new story that he could have told the first time.

Mr. Trump is compiling a record that increases the likelihood that few will believe him during a genuine crisis—say, a dispute over speaking with special counsel Robert Mueller or a nuclear showdown with Kim Jong Un. Mr. Trump should worry that Americans will stop believing anything he says.

It's come to this: consent apps.

Type in the sex act you want to perform with your potential hookup. Remember to be as graphically specific as possible to avoid all your weird fantasies being revealed later in court documents. (Much better to reveal them only to a total stranger in the bathroom of a nightclub which you stumbled into by mistake thinking it was the men’s room.) Then read what you wrote aloud (for optimal humiliation). Your partner types her answer to your request into her phone and a barcode is created. Tap your phones together (in an imitation of the act you are about to perform) and the information is stored to a secure cloud-based database (to be accessed at a later date by a potential employer).

We may need to stay in touch with China about various matters, but it is not our friend:

The Pentagon has confirmed that American military aircraft have been targeted by a "high power laser" when operating near China's military base in Djibouti. 

I don't know about you, but I could use an uplifting story. The government of Iowa provides us with just that:

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on Friday signed a law banning most abortions if a fetal heartbeat can be detected, or at around six weeks of pregnancy, marking the strictest abortion regulation in the nation — but setting the state up for a lengthy court fight.

The Republican governor signed the legislation in her formal office at the state Capitol as protesters gathered outside chanting, “My body, my choice!” Reynolds acknowledged that the new law would likely face litigation that could put it on hold, but said: “This is bigger than just a law, this is about life, and I’m not going to back down.”

Reynolds signed the law surrounded by children from a local Christian school and children related to supporters.

Glory to God!

If there's a must-read in today's roundup, it's this week's G-File by Jonah Goldberg at NRO. It asks the question, what would the MAGA crowd have us actual conservatives do?

 Life isn’t binary — and neither is politics. If you are adrift in the ocean, your enemy isn’t just sharks; it’s thirst, hunger, drowning, and despair itself. If you face your predicament assuming the only thing you have to worry about is being eaten by a shark, you might fend off the sharks, but you will also probably die. Indeed, by ignoring other threats, you’d probably make yourself more vulnerable to a shark attack.

I have no problem conceding that progressivism poses a greater threat to America than Trumpism. What I oppose are the conclusions people such as “John Ericsson” [a Federalist essayist writing under a pseudonym] draw from that. Those conclusions rest on a raft of unproven assumptions, starting with the idea that if only the Kristols, Ericksons, Goldbergs, Frenches, et al. stopped pointing out the manifest flaws, lies, trade-offs, and moral compromises inherent to 100 percent Trumpism, it would make a difference in Trump’s battle with progressivism. Would that it were true. In my more cynical moments, I sometimes suspect their real goal is not to guarantee a Trump victory but rather to guarantee that any defeat will be usefully shared and that no one will be able to say, “I told you so.”

But it goes deeper than that. Ericsson says that “ideas and persuasion” are almost comically insufficient in this war. What is required is a Colonel Kurtz–like will to do what is necessary. Maybe that’s true. But what, specifically, does he think I should be doing? Does he want me to lie? Sign up as an assistant to Sarah Huckabee Sanders so she can more artfully spin and prevaricate? Should David French radically reinterpret his Christian faith and defend shtupping porn stars while you have a wife and newborn at home? Must I rush to defend this deranged carbuncle [shown in a video clip inserted in Goldberg's piece] in his bid to send “Cocaine Mitch” packing? 

Does Ericsson think that, if literally every conservative went Full Gorka, Republicans would attract more voters? I’m going to need him to show his work.

More to the point, if the argument is that there’s no room on the right for people who want to stay in their lanes, make arguments, and try to persuade people, then the Right is doomed, and deservedly so. I have very little disdain for the paid GOP operatives trying to sell the main ingredients of sh** sandwiches as pâté. That’s their job, not mine. Nor do I condemn people who work in this administration trying to advance conservative policy. I applaud them, for the most part. But some people — like this guy — apparently think that everyone must mimic the worst tactics of the Left, grab the nearest club to hand, and fight for the leader of our tribe.

And let me be clear: This isn’t simply some Ivory Tower argument. I’ve been engaging in the arena for most of my adult life. I have no problem with the suggestion I should have the future of the conservative movement or even, to some limited extent, the future of the Republican party in mind. I work for a magazine that endorses politicians regularly. But another faulty assumption inherent to this binary-war jaw-jaw is that it will be better for the Republican party if everybody on the right gets on board and rows as one to the beat of Trump’s drum. This thinking assumes that Trump is the solution to the problems Ericsson lays out and that if you’re not part of Trump’s solution, you’re part of the problem. I think that’s silly and unserious. 

The US is set to overtake Saudi Arabia nest year as the world's top oil exporter. 

The true face of slavish Trump devotion

This post is going to be a lot of pasting of content from a post by Patterico at his own blog. He is one of the recently-fired Red State writers.

Let me begin by saying that I first saw the Kurt Schlichter tweet in question a couple of days ago.

I've discussed Schlichter a little bit before. He is an attorney, a National Guard veteran who served in Iraq and Kosovo, a freelance writer with a Townhall column, and he's worked as a standup comic.

Before he drank the VSG Kool-Aid, he was incisive, funny, and seemed to have his conservative principles in order.

That all changed upon the election of the Very Stable Genius. He quickly became a schoolyard bully who gets his kicks out of mocking conservatives who insist on valuing character, decorum and dignity.

I knew the day would come when he'd go this far:

Getting to the point where I'm actively glad that Trump used Stormy Daniels like a teenager on the internet uses handfuls of Kleenex, threw her away and tossed a few singles at her haggard ass just because it provokes liberal tears and Fredocon frenzies.

"Fredocons," in his lexicon, are the conservatives I describe above. Fredo was the Corleone brother in The Godfather who dishonored the family.

Patterico tweeted thusly in response:

This is as honest an explanation for why Trump fans applaud his immoral behavior as I have seen. Immoral and despicable behavior by Trump is a positive good, as long as it upsets Trump critics.

At his blog, Patterico expands. And he says one thing I find really perplexing ("whom I like in real life"). I asked him about it in a tweet but have not heard back.

Please note: Kurt — whom I like in real life — is not saying that he is amused by the fact that the adultery upsets critics. He is saying that he is getting to the point where he is “actively glad” that Trump committed adultery with Stormy Daniels. He takes special care to describe Daniels, and Trump’s treatment of her, in the most degrading fashion possible.

Kurt’s choices in that tweet — to actively praise the adultery itself, and to describe Daniels in the most demeaning way he could — are an evident attempt to upset Trump’s critics even more. 

And then came the cruel taunts from the hardcore MAGA crowd:

Less time worrying about POTUS, more time looking for a job. You can’t leech off unemployment benefits forever.

Don't you have an unemployment office to be at?  

Are you tweeting from your Obama phone?

Let the concept of "new rules" sink in:

No, this is the explanation. #NewRules @KurtSchlichter warned you one year ago you wouldn't like #Whataboutism You laughed at Kurt, @Patterico I bet you aren't laughing now. You got fired.

There are a couple of tweets that include photos of bikini-clad Karen McDougal writhing on a beach, with the caption, "My president tapped that? Awesome!"

There was plenty of whataboutism featuring Clinton and the Kennedys. The term "butthurt triggered snowflake" was used.

This is unprecedented. The nation's polemical exchanges have been getting more coarse for several years, but this is a quantum leap.

It was heartening to see support for Patterico - and decency in general - in the comment thread.

Still, one senses that the bar is now permanently lowered.

A nation that converses like this is not in good shape.

 

 

 

The definitive book on how to impose rot on the culture

I'd forgotten about this book, but it's the subject of Erick Erickson's Townhall column this morning, and we can see that one particular contingent of the hard left experienced spectacular success in systematically implementing the procedure outlined in it:

In the book "After the Ball," psychologist Marshall Kirk and ad man Hunter Madsen painted a picture of what the gay rights movement should do to normalize and advance their agenda in America. The book came out in 1990. Kirk and Madsen treated their book as a manifesto and we have witnessed their vision.

The propaganda effort the authors set out included inserting gay men and women into Hollywood to start writing shows with gay positive characters, then make gay characters normal characters on shows. They would get friends in the media to positively cover the gay rights movement. Advertisers would feature gay men and women in advertisements as an ideal. Gay celebrities would be championed. Churches, too, would be involved, with liberal churches rejecting Christian orthodoxy championed and those that kept the faith vilified.

"Constant talk builds the impression that public opinion is at least divided on the subject, and that a sizable bloc -- the most modern, up-to-date citizens -- accept or even practice homosexuality," they wrote. They wanted to be portrayed as victims, too. "The purpose of victim imagery is to make straights feel very uncomfortable; that is, to jam with shame the self-righteous pride that would ordinarily accompany and reward their antigay belligerence, and to lay groundwork for the process of conversion by helping straights identify with gays and sympathize with their underdog status."

Likewise, the very unproven idea of orientation as something you are born with, for which science still offers nothing, had to be normalized. The authors wrote, "To suggest in public that homosexuality might be chosen is to open the can of worms labeled 'moral choices and sin' and give the religious intransigents a stick to beat us with. Straights must be taught that it is as natural for some persons to be homosexual as it is for others to be heterosexual: wickedness and seduction have nothing to do with it."

All of this was written in 1989 and the book published in 1990. The implementation of their manifesto has been wildly successful. When people talk about sexual orientation as something we are all born with, we are fulfilling the wish of that manifesto, not talking about anything founded in science.

And now we're seeing the implementation of the next stage:

"At a later stage of the media campaign for gay rights -- long after other gay ads have become commonplace -- it will be time to get tough with remaining opponents," Kirk and Madsen wrote. "To be blunt, they must be vilified."

And other elements within the Left have taken their cue:

From transgenderism to guns to climate change, the left has moved straight to Kirk and Madsen's final solution: the vilification and ostracization of dissent.

They have had to go there rapidly because the new fronts in the efforts to change culture are running into common sense. It is hard to convince any sane person that boys can become girls or that snow in April is caused by global warming. So you must be bullied into belief. Bullies with well-funded public relations teams are upstream from culture. 

We could bring unemployment down to 1 percent and we'd still be in grave peril as a nation. This insidious force has convinced a critical mass of post-Americans that there is no God, human beings don't have souls, individuals aren't sovereign and observable principles of nature are an illusion.

It didn't come about haphazardly.

Now that we recognize that it was the result of single-minded focus, what shall be our response?

 

 

Principles and ideas only, because people inevitably disappoint

You'll notice that, in the last few days, LITD has pulled no punches when it comes to pointing out foibles committed on the right side of the sociopolitical spectrum: the cat Giuliani let out of the bag discussed in the post immediately below, Marco Rubio's seeming nod to populism in his latest remarks on tax policy, the horrible treatment Erick Erickson's family came in for at the hands of the harder-core elements of the MAGA crowd, Mike Pence's stupid remark lauding Joe Arpaio, Salem Media's purging of Red State.

Is something afoot? Is there some kind of ideological shift to be detected here?

No, and hell no.

In fact, I could and may well still fill one or more blog posts with the latest outrages from left of center: the Twitter hate directed at the Utah girl for her prom dress, Bernie Sanders' proposal for government jobs for all and any who want them, the California Episcopal church that held a "Beyonce mass," Dick's Sporting Goods hiring two gun-control lobbyists, the University of Texas - Austin's Counseling and Mental Health Center's poster campaign denigrating masculinity.

That garbage goes on apace, and it is the main reason post-America's prospects are not good.

But trying to get a handle on where to start resolving even some small corner of the present madhouse is an exercise of the herding-cats variety. We're not polarized in this country; we're splintered. Per what I say in the first paragraph, the Right has at least two camps that hold each other in contempt. On the Left, Michelle Wolf went even too far for a lot of the liberals in attendance at the White House Correspondents' dinner. Kanye West is in hot water. (Maxine Waters says he "talked out of turn.")

Some right-of-center pundits exhort conservatives to "get engaged on the cultural level."

Fine. Which culture? What album, movie, novel or painting that we'd create is going to reach anyone outside of the confirmation bias that would be its natural audience?

And on the political level, I can't think of a figure vying for any public office for whom I'd bust my tail end to drag over the finish line. All the candidates for the House and Senate in my district and state are competing with one another to associate themselves as closely as possible with the Very Stable Genius. All I have to say to any of them is "stop it." Ted Cruz was willing to write an essay for Time magazine that had a "you-have-to-hand-it-to-him-he's-making-good-on-his-=campaign-promises-and-people-are-happy" tone.

No, principles and ideas are all LITD is ever going to defend, beginning with the Three Pillars.

God never disappoints. Ordered liberty is essential if America is going to be recognizable. A good or service is worth what buyer and seller agree that it's worth. Period. No other entity, certainly not government, has any business being a party to that agreement. There are only two genders, and their distinguishing characteristics, when harnessed in a Godly fashion, are noble. It is impossible by definition for two people of the same gender to be married. Using government to redistribute wealth is tyranny. Systemic bigotry in 2018 is negligible. Appeasement of nation-states that have declared themselves to be enemies of the United States is always foolish.

That's all. Some people pretty consistently uphold all or at least most of these principles, and admiration is due them. But they are fallible and will surely disappoint.

The way forward for anyone concerned about our current juncture is clear: defend the principles and ideas, and be ready to point out instances where someone who seemed to understand them gets wobbly.

Further confirmation that The Very Stable Genius is devoid of character, not that it's going to matter to most post-Americans, particularly the MAGA crowd

There's no credible answer to the question Susan Wright poses twice in her latest Resurgent post other than that Donald Trump had extramarital sex with Stormy Daniels in 2006 - mere months after his third wife had given birth to their son - and almost assuredly concurrently with his ongoing affair with Karen McDougal (started at the same gold tournament at which he had the sex with Daniels).

And why did Rudy Giuliani want to put himself in the position he's now in by joining the VSG's legal team? Did he not see that he'd wind up acknowledging what he did on Hannity's show last night?

While appearing on Fox News’ Sean Hannity show on Wednesday night, Giuliani offered up that Trump had reimbursed the $130,000 paid by his longtime attorney/fixer, Michael Cohen to porn star, Stormy Daniels, through a series of payments.

This contradicts Trump’s claim from a month ago that he had no idea about the payoff.

“The president repaid it,’’ Giuliani told Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity.

Trump “didn’t know about the specifics of it, as far as I know. But he did know the general arrangement, that Michael would take care of things like this, like I take care of things like this with my clients,” Giuliani said. “I don’t burden them with every single thing that comes along. These are busy people.’’

But if there was no affair, why was she being paid, at all?

Giuliani later told the Washington Post that Trump’s repayments may have ended in 2017, or possibly even 2018.

“The president was always going to make sure he got it back, and enough money to pay the taxes,” Giuliani said. “There probably were other things of a personal nature that Michael took care of for which the president would have always trusted him as his lawyer . . . and that was paid back out of the rest of the money, and Michael earned a fee out of it.”

This is where you have to really suspend your disbelief for a moment, to just revel in the wonder of it all.

“It all” being how Giuliani will manage to not be fired by day’s end.

According to Giuliani, Trump only learned details of the Daniels payoff over the last couple of weeks, after the raid on Michael Cohen’s office and home by federal agents. Meanwhile, he’s been reimbursing Cohen for – something – for months.

Wouldn’t he have at least an elementary knowledge of what he’s paying that kind of money for? And again, why was Stormy Daniels getting paid, to begin with?

“I don’t know if he distinguished it from other things Cohen might have done for him during the campaign,” Giuliani said, adding, “He trusted Michael, and Michael trusted him.”

That’s a lousy, disjointed, irresponsible way to do business. And I don't trust anybody enough to just give them $130,000 and not ask why.

No wonder the guy has so many bankruptcies under his belt. 

The irony of it all is that post-Americans generally, and certainly the VSG's slavish devotees,  are so inured to moral turpitude that it wouldn't have mattered politically if this stuff had come out circa 2015 - 16:

The funny thing is, had Cohen not paid her, and had Daniels told her story, nothing would have come of it. We’ve seen that. Nearly 20 women stepped forward and voters blew it all off.

Look, none of this diminishes my being pleased with the following:

How many Republican presidential candidates over the years complained about the ban on drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, known as ANWR? Trump signed legislation to begin the process of repealing the ban. Trump successfully appointed more federal appellate judges than any first-year president in history. Trump lowered the corporate tax rate, once the highest statutory rate in the industrialized world. Trump, as promised, eliminated or delayed numerous job-killing regulations. He approved the construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.

The stock market has repeatedly reached all-time highs, and for the first time in years, polls show that Americans believe young peoples' lives will be better than their parents'. An April 2018 Gallup poll found 61 percent believe today's youth "will have a better life than their parents did," the highest mark since 2010. 

Excellent stuff, of course.

But two things about it:

1. Those achievements happened because actual conservatives pushed for them and convinced the VSG that he'd look like a "winner" if he supported them, and 
2. We'd therefore have achieved most if not all of them had we elected an actual conservative.

I realize that everything is a tradeoff in this fallen world. And I realize that the lowering of the bar got started with Bill Clinton (actually, John Kennedy, but, to his credit, he had a regard for presenting a dignified bearing in public, and understood that public awareness of what a cad he was would have undermined his policy-level ambitions). 

But Republicans, whose party was ostensibly the repository of the upholding of traditional values, went with this guy. 

Politically speaking, there is no high ground from which to mount a campaign to reverse this.

On the broader ideological level, Ben Shapiro's take is spot-on:

Culturally, this marks yet another odd moment for the conservative right that cannot stand cognitive dissonance. It’s one thing to say you like Trump’s policy and say that he is a rotten scoundrel with regard to women – that’s honest. It’s another thing to deny that he’s a rotten scoundrel with women by imitating the worst arguments of the Left circa 1998: “Everyone lies about sex! It’s just his personal life!” In that realm, the soul-suck of the conservative movement continues apace.

Yup.

Extremely poor judgement much?

Vice President Mike Pence, speaking at a tax policy event in Arizona, sees Joe Arpaio in the crows and said, "Honored to have you here." and calls him a tireless champion of strong borders and the rule of law."

Thanks for nothin', pal. You just handed the forces of darkness a chunk of pure gold.

And now, when he tries to walk it back, he'll do that head-nod thing he does, and offer his signature boilerplate politician-speak, sort of like when George Stephanopoulos ate him for lunch over signing the Indiana religious-freedom bill in 2013.

I know for a fact the guy's actually quite sharp, and he's a principled conservative, but man, can he ever blow it at crucial times.

The foolishness of the JCPOA is more apparent than ever

Despite the lame mockery of what Mossad has made available to the world by henchmen from the Most Equal Comrade's administration, the evidence is clear:

U.S. officials and congressional insiders view the disclosure Monday by Israel of Iran's ongoing efforts to develop a nuclear weapon as game over for the landmark nuclear deal, telling the Washington Free Beacon that new evidence of Iran's top secret nuclear workings makes it virtually impossible for President Donald Trump to remain in the agreement.

Senior Trump administration officials confirmed the findings as authentic and praised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's for disclosing thousands of secret documents proving Iran lied about its past work on a nuclear warhead, telling the Free Beacon the revelation was a "powerful presentation" by Israel outlining why the Iran deal must be fixed or killed.

U.S. officials who reviewed the secret documents confirmed their authenticity and said that Israel has shared the information fully with the United States, most likely to help build the case for Trump to abandon the nuclear deal, rather than try to fix what the White House views as a series of insurmountable flaws.

A State Department official confirmed to the Free Beacon Monday evening that it is "aware of the information just released" by Israel and is "examining it carefully."

"The United States has reviewed many of the documents Israel has obtained relating to Iran’s nuclear weapons program," an official confirmed to the Free Beacon. "We assess that the documents that we have reviewed are authentic."

The State Department further confirmed that "new details in this information are consistent with a large body of evidence and intelligence the U.S. government has amassed over many years on Iran’s past clandestine nuclear weapons program," according to the official.

While the administration's analysis of the document cache is "ongoing," officials said they "agree with the Israelis that…. this information provides new and compelling details about Iran's past efforts to develop nuclear weapons deliverable by a Shahab-3 ballistic missile."

In addition, the new "information indicates plans for Iran’s nuclear weapons program included building five nuclear weapons," the official said. "It demonstrates once again that Iranian leaders have for years lied to the world and their own citizens when they claim Iran has never pursued nuclear weapons."

Now, about that lame mockery:

Former Obama administration national-security spokesman Tommy Vietor: “After years of bashing U.S. intelligence agencies for getting Iraq WMD wrong, Trump is now cooking up intel with the Israelis to push us closer to a conflict with Iran. A scandal hiding in plain sight.”

Former Obama administration deputy national-security adviser Ben Rhodes: “By reminding everyone of the well-known pre-Iran Deal history, Netanyahu inadvertently made the case for why the Iran Deal needs to stay in place. Without it, all the restrictions on Iran’s program and the inspections regime that verify compliance go away.”

As John Cooper observed . . . pick one, guys. Bibi Netanyahu’s presentation can’t be made-up nonsense AND undisputed facts that everyone already knew. And the fact that two former Obama officials are offering two contradictory counter-arguments simultaneously suggests that they’re throwing everything up against the wall and seeing what sticks.

Iran deal defenders seem to think that repeating the phrase “stringent and invasive verification procedures” over and over again somehow changes the fact that Iran has said it will never allow inspections of its military sites. If outside inspectors are allowed to examine sites A, B, and C, and not allowed to inspect sites X, Y and Z, where do you think a regime would be tempted to research and develop nuclear weapons? This is like saying to a search warrant, “officer, you can look anywhere in my house except my bedroom.”

This is why Iran’s long history of lying, revealed in depth and detail by the Israeli intelligence operation, matters. It further reconfirms that we are dealing with a regime that wanted nuclear weapons for a long time and tried to hide its efforts. It cannot be disputed that if they have the opportunity to cheat, they will cheat. Deal defenders insist that the inspectors will be able to find anything that should concern us. That’s a giant gamble, with literally nuclear consequences. Iran got everything it wanted in the deal, including an end to sanctions and $1.7 billion in pallets of cash, in exchange for a promise to not develop nuclear weapons for eleven years and a limited system of inspections to verify they’re keeping that promise.

Vietor also called Ben Shapiro “Baby Bannon Ben” which suggests he’s . . . either not informed or gleefully dishonest about the openly hostile relationship between Shapiro and Steve Bannon. 

Uh, yeah, a little behind the curve on the state of Shapiro - Bannon relations, aren't we, Tommy?

And this is rich, coming from the gang that orchestrated this:

In his January 2016 speechannouncing the lifting of sanctions, Obama claimed that as a “reciprocal humanitarian gesture” the United States would release a number of Iranian-born “civilians” who “were not charged with terrorism or any violent offenses.”

Far from mere “civilians,” the administration was releasing Iranian spies whom the Justice Department had tagged as threats to national security. Of the 14 civilians, one was a top Hezbollah operative named Ali Fayad, who had not only been indicted in U.S. courts for planning to kill U.S. government employees but whom agents believed reported to Putin as a key supplier of weapons to Syria and Iraq. Another was serving an eight-year sentence for “conspiring to supply Iran with satellite technology and hardware.” Another, Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili, was charged with illegally conspiring to procure “thousands of parts with nuclear applications.” 

It gets even more shameful:

When the Iranians released American hostages in early 2016, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry claimed it was due to “the relationships forged and the diplomatic channels unlocked over the course of the nuclear talks.” In actuality, the Obama administration secretly airlifted more than $1.7 billion worth of cash as ransom to obtain the release of four Americans so as not to derail the Iranian deal. Because all of it was above-board and absolutely not a ransom payment, it was sent on wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs, and other currencies on an unmarked cargo plane.

History is not going to be kind to the folks who pushed for and inked this deal.

 

 

 

Tuesday roundup

Allahpundit's take at Hot Air on why Marco Rubio is dissing the tax-reform bill Congress passed a while back is excellent analysis:

What game is Rubio playing? Or is he playing a game at all? Remember, he tangled with leadership in December over the tax bill because he wanted the child tax credit for poor families to be larger. At one point he even threatened to tank the bill if McConnell didn’t comply. He won that fight, sort of. The credit was expanded but only modestly, which is less due to McConnell’s stinginess than to the realities of trying to hold together a razor-thin majority that includes dogmatic conservatives who frown at the idea of tax credits on principle. The point, though, is that Rubio was willing to make a minor fuss to “pour back into the American worker.” It’s not just talk.

The easy (and probably accurate) read is that he’s already thinking about 2024 and where the party’s likely to be. He’ll never be the populist choice in the primaries, particularly given the suspicions about his immigration policies after the Gang of Eight, but there are things he can do to make himself less offensive to populists and more appealing to the general electorate. Being the “blue-collar champion” among prominent Republicans is one thing. I don’t want to sell him short, though, by dismissing his interest in this subject as purely electoral. Rubio has always been suspect among doctrinaire righties for not being as doctrinaire as he was cracked up to be when he emerged as a star in 2010. He surfed the tea-party wave to victory that year; dogmatic conservatism was the path to populist support so he took that path and pulled a momentous upset in Florida. But even then, Rubio was cautious about not letting himself be too closely identified with the tea party. He didn’t thank them by name in his victory speech, the way a Ted Cruz might have. He’s always been more center-right domestically, most famously on immigration but not just on immigration, as today reminds us.

I think the Trump presidency has liberated him a bit in that regard. It feels strange to say that given how bitterly Rubio criticized POTUS during the primaries but Trump gave him a political gift by severing the connection between dogmatic conservatism and populism. Rubio’s not going to take nearly as much damage for his departures from conservative orthodoxy now as he would have even four years ago so long as errs in the direction of populism and, most importantly, remains on Trump’s good side. He has freedom to maneuver legislatively that he’d never have had under, say, President Cruz or even President Hillary. Now he needs to cross his fingers and hope that Trump doesn’t turn on him for badmouthing his big tax cuts win.

Condi Rice says - correctly - that we'll be just fine if we pull out of the Iran deal. She says - correctly - that it was garbage and never should have been signed. (I'll have an entire post on the latest on the Iran deal later.)

Facebook tried out an "internal test . . . to understand different types of speech." It put a question at the bottom of any and every public post, asking if the viewer saw any hate speech in it. Big oopsie: they hit the "go live with it" button and caused a major dustup.

Today's must-read" Dennis Prager's NRO piece, "Fear of the Left: The Most Powerful Force in America Today."

Peter Heck knocks one out of the park at The Resurgent with his explanation of the vital distinction between social justice and Biblical justice.

Consider the church preaching against abortion.

• The sin is objectively stated: killing an unborn child is wrong. 
• The sinner is specifically identified: the one who kills an unborn child or has their unborn child killed. 
• The action is quantifiable: an exact and precise offense was committed – the killing of an unborn child. 
• The sin is individualized: this isn’t guilt by association, it is guilt by chosen action.

Now contrast that with the often-cited injustices from those preaching social justice race reconciliation: unemployment disparity between blacks and whites, infant mortality rate disparity between blacks and whites, violent crime disparity between blacks and whites, incarceration rate disparity between blacks and whites. 

While there is certainly no questioning that racial disparities exist, notice the obvious distinction between these concerns and the Biblical understanding of injustice as demonstrated with abortion. With these injustices: 

• The sin is not objectively stated: no cause for the disparities is given or explained. 
• The sinner is not specifically identified: who is to blame specifically for these disparities? 
• The action is not quantifiable: there is no indication that any of these disparities were the result of sinful behavior. 
• The sin is not individualized: the implication is guilt by association (you’re part of a society where this happens), not guilt by chosen action.

With abortion, a sinner in the congregation could be made aware of what they have done, how it offended God, the redemption found in the Gospel, and Christ’s promise of a renewed mind. The intended objective appears to be repentance and a new hope. With social justice, the congregation is confused as to what they have done, how they are to blame, and they are left with either a vague feeling of white guilt or a stinging black resentment.

The American Enterprise Institute's Mark Thiessen on what Democrats could learn from Emmanuel Macron about how to respectfully and constructively work with someone with whom you have some sharp disagreements instead of playing gotcha at every turn.