House of cards

He huffed and he puffed and blew the cards down...

Rage Makes You Stupid

Rage Makes You Stupid
Kevin D. Williamson, National Review

People have the strongest feelings about the things they know the least about.

What are we supposed to think about political rage?

Before and after the arrest of Cesar Sayoc, the suspect in the recent string of bombs sent to prominent Democrats and media figures, we were treated to any number of homilies about “rage” and its origins in “toxic” political rhetoric. Many of these homilies were pointed directly or indirectly at President Donald Trump and his immoderate Twitter habits. That political rage is necessarily linked to political violence was assumed, and sometimes asserted, but rarely argued.

Five minutes before that, rage was all the rage. Rebecca Traister, an editor for New York magazine, has just published a book celebrating the “revolutionary power” of anger, which was celebrated at The Atlantic on 4 October under a headline noting the “seismic power” of “rage.” On 21 September, the Washington Post affirmed that “rage is healthy, rational, and necessary for America.” On Friday, NBC news praised a television show for depicting “anger as righteous and necessary.” Before that, it ran a segment encouraging certain political partisans to “embrace their rage.”

Earlier in the year, Leslie Jamison wrote a very interesting and intelligent essay for The New York Times Magazine exploring anger as a “tool to be used, part of a well-stocked arsenal.” Right as the bombing suspect was being arrested in Florida, Rewire shared “All the Rage That’s Fit To Print,” its assessment of four books on “fury.”

I’ve omitted the word “women” in several instances above, on the theory that we’re all adults here, and that we would recognize the obvious hypocrisy and illogic of any “my rage good, your rage bad, bad, bad,” construct.
Except . . .

On 28 September, the admirable Max Boot published a lamentation of “Republican rage” in the Washington Post, arguing that Howard Beale, Network’s embodiment of outrage, “would feel right at home in the Republican party.” On the same day, The Week, which may be the least intelligent non-pornographic publication in these United States, was also in a the mood for lamentation, anguished over “the rage of Brett Kavanaugh.” The day before, Esquire moaned that “This Was the Hour of White Male Rage.” On Thursday, the Washington Post tied incendiary devices to “incendiary rhetoric,” while Philippe Reines, who used to work for that weird lady who recently disavowed civility in quite specific terms, went on MSNBC to insist that “Donald Trump’s Rhetoric Can’t Be Ignored in Wake of Bombs.” Eugene Robinson encouraged Democrats to “get mad” and “get even” — “harness your rage,” as the headline in the Chicago Tribune put it — even though he blasted Brett Kavanaugh for being “rage-filled.” Ta-Nehisi Coates has written “in defense of political anger,” and Darryl Pinckney, writing in The New York Review of Books, gave readers 4,000 words on “The Anger of Ta-Nehisi Coates.”

And then there are the Subarus, legions of them with bumper-stickers reading: “If You Aren’t Outraged, You Aren’t Paying Attention.”

The signals, then, are decidedly mixed.

Put me in the anti-rage camp. Rage makes you stupid.

(Rage and Wild Turkey . . . . Well, enough said.)

I’m sometimes described as an angry writer, which always surprises me. I am much, much more frequently bored by American politics than outraged by it. (More than one cable-news producer has suggested to me that I should present with more outrage.) Senator Feinstein does not fill me with rage; she has the exact aspect of a woman who is very, very sad that the bingo game didn’t break her way this time, and it is difficult to be angry at that. I do not think she should be in the Senate, but I do hope that wherever she ends up, there’s someone there to make her a nice cup of hot tea.

Our politics is full of performative outrage, histrionics that are designed to imbue unserious people with an air moral seriousness and to keep the rubes emotionally invested long enough to get them to a commercial break. It almost inevitably is the case that people have the strongest feelings about the things they know the least about; people who actually know about any subject of genuine interest understand that such subjects tend to be complicated, and that expressions of outrage, however cathartic, do not render them any less recondite. Compare Paul Krugman on economics to Paul Krugman on politics and you’ll see what I mean.

I would suggest that we make a concerted effort to abolish cheap outrage from our political discourse, but that proposal would be stillborn: There’s just too much money in outrage. Instead, I would suggest taking a different attitude toward those histrionics, understanding that what people such as Sean Hannity and Chris Hayes are engaged in is not really political discourse at all, but something much more like sports commentary or The Real Housewives of Wherever: The emotional frisson is the point, and the political content is just a McGuffin, the ball in this cynical game of for-profit fetch.

At the very least, we do ourselves the favor of understanding that political rhetoric, however rage-filled or — dread cliché — “toxic,” belongs to an entirely separate category of human endeavor than sending people bombs in the mail, that exhortations to vote are a different thing from exhortations to violence, that Ann Coulter speaking on a college campus is a different thing from firebombing the building in which she is scheduled to speak. There are many voices in our politics that do in fact countenance violence, from Slavoj Žižek (“for the oppressed, violence is always legitimate”) to every dimwit who has promised to “Punch a Nazi.”

Sorting all that out sometimes requires careful thinking, which is difficult to manage when you are high on rage.

The caravan is an attack on America -- Stop the caravan now

Peace at the Mexican/Guatamala border...

The caravan is an attack on America -- Stop the caravan now
Newt Gingrich, Fox News

The caravan of about 4,000 migrants from Central America seeking to enter Mexico and then the United States illegally is attempting to invade and attack the U.S.

This assertion will almost certainly be denounced by the usual sources as being hateful or offensive, but it is long past time we stop letting the left prevent us from using words that clearly communicate reality.

The fact is: Thousands of people have openly stated their intention to break American law and invade our country. Other people, some of them Americans, are funding this deliberate effort to invade America.

If you think “invade” is too strong a word, watch this video of the caravan tearing down fences separating Guatemala and Mexico while waving the Honduran flag (the country these people no doubt plan to claim asylum from). How is this not an invasion?

We cannot allow ourselves to be intimidated by the heart-wrenching pictures and misleading words the left-wing media will doubtlessly manufacture if this caravan arrives at our border.

We also must reclaim our narrative from those on the left. We cannot allow them to demonize us and distort what we stand for and what we are trying to do.
Let me be clear about where I stand.

I strongly favor legal immigration. I am happy that America remains the most welcoming country in the world for legal immigrants.

According to Pew Research, in 2015 there were a little more than 30 million legal immigrants in the U.S. This is higher than the population of Texas – our second-most populous state. I think this is a great thing that makes America stronger. It is simply a lie to say I oppose immigration.

Furthermore, I have worked very hard to get sound, responsible immigration reform for decades.
In October 1986, when I served in the House, I voted for the Simpson-Mazzoli Immigration Reform Act, which granted amnesty to about 3 million people (originally estimated to be 300,000). I voted for the bill in return for two commitments: to control the border and to establish a guest worker program.

Similarly, President Reagan wrote in his diary that he would reluctantly sign the bill. “It’s high time we regained control of our borders and (Simpson’s) bill will do this,” the president wrote.

The harsh lesson of 1986 was that liberals took the amnesty for 3 million illegal immigrants and then broke their word on controlling the border and creating an effective guest worker program.
Finally, on a personal level, I spent much of my childhood living in foreign countries (my dad spent 27 years in the infantry, and I now live part-time in Rome, Italy).

I outline my record to make clear that I don’t fit any of the nasty stereotypes with which the left smears those who threaten them (see “the Kavanaugh effect”). And neither do the vast majority of Americans who want a functional immigration system that reflects American values.

The very idea that thousands of people believe (or are being told) they have a right to invade America and demand that we take care of them tells you how sick the system has become.
The time to draw the line and fight for an honest immigration and border control policy is now.
The caravan is the perfect symbol of the arrogance – the organized effort to destroy the rule of law – and the contempt for the American system that the left exhibits every day.

We have been so conditioned by a half-century of political correctness doctrine (developed and sustained by the liberal news media, college professors, and left-wing politicians) that we have forgotten how to tell the truth about illegal immigration.

The truth is: Illegal immigration has substantially increased the risk for Americans.

MS-13, the vicious El Salvadoran gang, killed 17 people on Long Island in New York in a 17-month period in 2016. The gang has an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 members in the United States.
Fentanyl and opioids also come across the uncontrolled southern border. Last year, more than 72,000 Americans died from drug overdoses – more than the number of Americans killed during the eight years of the Vietnam War.

There is a substantial safety impact of uncontrolled borders and the routine breaking of the law by illegal immigrants.

If America is to survive, we must win some key arguments about facts and prove that much of what left-wing politicians say – and what the liberal news media report – is simply wrong.
If America is to survive, we must heed George Orwell’s warning in his great essay “Politics and the English Language” that “political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible."
Nothing could more accurately characterize the left’s speech about political correctness and the unending effort of the left to shut down language that exposes the hypocrisy and falsehood of its members’ positions – especially when it comes to their animus toward American sovereignty and defending the border.

As I wrote in my New York Times best-seller “Trump’s America: The Truth About Our Nation’s Great Comeback,” the liberal media have actively participated in creating propaganda designed to manufacture sympathy for the lawbreakers and delegitimize those who would defend American sovereignty and the rule of law.

When House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., says to Harvard Kennedy School students that Democrats are for controlling our borders, she is simply lying. When she goes on to say, “we do need to guard our borders, and we do need to have immigration reform,” you have to wonder how stupid she thinks we are.

There is no evidence of any Democrat-backed program that would be effective in controlling illegal immigration. The Democrats oppose the border wall in any form. They would hobble or abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).

Democrats favor so-called sanctuary cities and states in order to shield illegal immigrants from the legal immigration process.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has introduced an open borders bill, which every Democratic Senate incumbent has co-sponsored.

The national vice chair of the Democratic Party campaigns in a T-shirt that says in Spanish “I don’t believe in borders.”

Democrats only ever favor complicated, impossible-to-implement legal systems, which create opportunities for people to enter and stay in America illegally.

Not only do Democrats oppose controlling the border and stopping illegal immigration, they welcome illegal immigrants as an offset to legal American voters.

Consider what Pelosi said in El Paso to immigration rights activists: “We believe that we will have leverage when we win in November. And why is that important? Because it gives leverage to every family” who came to America illegally.

Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate for governor in Georgia, is even clearer in her commitment to illegal immigrants. In a recent speech, she said the blue wave is comprised of “those who are documented and undocumented.” There could not be a clearer indication of the Democrats’ belief that illegal immigrants are an integral part of their coalition.

The San Francisco Democrats have even adopted a new regulation to allow illegal immigrants to vote in city elections.

The caravan invasion is a useful starting point to insist on an honest debate about our future as a country.

Every Democrat should be forced to answer these six questions before the election:

1. Do you think 4,000 or more people should be allowed to invade the United States whenever they want to, and, if so, how big and how frequent do you think the next caravans will be?  
2. Who do you think is paying for these efforts to undermine American sovereignty, break American laws, and impose foreign will on the United States?  
3. When you are told it is only a small number of people in this first caravan, how do you respond to the fact that we already have an estimated illegal immigrant population of 1.8 million Central Americans, 650,000 South Americans, and 425,000 immigrants from the Caribbean. Does that change the scale of the problem? If caravans are accepted the numbers will grow dramatically in a very short period.  
4. When you learn that the Gallup World Poll estimates that 29 percent of people in Latin America and the Caribbean (that would be about 197 million people) want to migrate – and 29 percent of those people (about 57 million) want to come to the United States – does this change your concern about controlling the border?  
5. When you learn that beyond our hemisphere, the Gallup World Poll estimates that millions more would come to the United States if they could, does that increase your interest in controlling the border?  
6. If you do not think this caravan should be allowed to illegally enter the United States as an invasion of our sovereign border, what would you do to stop it?

If Democrats really wanted to control the border, how do we have an estimated 11 million-plus illegal immigrants currently in the United States – and a system that can be gamed so easily that people have continued to brazenly and openly break the law?

This caravan attack is the right place to draw the line and say “no more.”

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is right. Congress should come back and pass the laws that would enable Americans to re-establish the rule of law at the border and protect our country with dignity and authority.

President Trump is right. Stop the caravan now.

If you want to defend America, let your House member and senators know how you feel.

Who Will Save Democrats from Their Leaders?

Who Will Save Democrats from Their Leaders?
Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review

In a better time, we would be talking not about Eric Holder but about real Democratic leaders.

‘When they go low” . . . that’s where they are sure to find Eric Holder.

Sometimes, the former attorney general is excusing hard-Left, unrepentant, anti-American FALN separatists by helping a Democratic president spring them from imprisonment for their terrorist crimes.

Sometimes, he is helping a Democratic president commute the sentences of hard-Left terrorists whose only regret was their failure to shoot it out against police who interrupted another bombing spree in their war against the United States.

Sometimes, he is volunteering his legal services and his status as a former top Justice Department official to file a “friend of the court” brief on behalf of the al Qaeda jihadist who was apprehended while plotting a second wave of 9/11 mass-murder attacks.

Sometimes, he is defying congressional committees investigating his Justice Department’s reckless, politically driven “gun-walking” scheme gone awry — the Fast and Furious “investigation” that armed murderous Mexican drug gangs and got a border-patrol officer killed.

Sometimes, he is sharing a podium with his friend Al Sharpton, who is threatening to incite mayhem — as Sharpton is wont to do — if police fail to trump up a racially charged case rather than let the evidence determine whether to indict.

Sometimes, he is trying to keep his story straight about that time when, as a Columbia undergrad, he proudly joined other campus radicals in occupying a building and the dean’s office — forcible intimidation to extort political concessions.

And sometimes, Holder is just engaged in old-fashioned political corruption: helping a Democratic president circumvent the Justice Department in carrying out the pay-to-play pardon of a notorious fugitive.

But if there is anyone who knows about “going low,” it is Mr. Holder. He is, after all, the first attorney general in American history to be held in contempt of Congress.

And low is exactly where Holder — along with Hillary “No Civility Unless We Win” Clinton and the rest of the social-justice arriére-garde — has taken a once-great political party.

In a better time, we would not be talking about Eric Holder. He would be dismissed as a fringe radical who endorses forcible, extortionist tactics against political adversaries (and then, in familiar Holder fashion, spends the next day pretending he didn’t say what he said). In a better time, we would be asking why anyone would care what Eric Holder says, about anything.

But today, Holder is important. Today, he is a mainstream Democratic leader. Today, his antics illustrate two things we fail to bear in mind at our peril.

First, the high-minded airs put on by the hard left are a fraud, and a dangerous one.

Note that the wind-up for Holder’s dimwitted pitch that Democrats must “kick” their Republican rivals was his invocation of Michelle Obama’s precious summons: “When they go low, we go high.” But that’s been a con job from the moment she said it.

Mrs. Obama rode into the White House on her husband’s admonition, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” That would be the same Barack Obama whose political coming-out party was held in the living room of his good friends, the “small ‘c’ communist,” unrepentant former terrorists Bernardine Dohrn (“The Weathermen dig Charles Manson”) and Bill Ayers (on his bomb for the Pentagon: “Everything was absolutely ideal. . . . The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them”).

That would also be the same Barack Obama who rationalized leveraging political advocacy with extortion — what “community organizers” like to call “direct action.” Here’s an excerpt from Obama’s 1990 encomium to radical icon Saul Alinksy:

The debate as to how black and other dispossessed people can forward their lot in America is not new. From W.E.B. DuBois to Booker T. Washington to Marcus Garvey to Malcolm X to Martin Luther King, this internal debate has raged between integration and nationalism, between accommodation and militancy, between sit-down strikes and boardroom negotiations. The lines between these strategies have never been simply drawn, and the most successful black leadership has recognized the need to bridge these seemingly divergent approaches.

Militancy? Yeah, the mob — the Democrats’ front line of shock troops — is still sorting out “the need to bridge” that “seemingly divergent approach” to ordinary politics in a pluralistic, ideologically diverse republic. Of course, it’s only a problem if you take Michelle’s “go high” nostrum seriously. Democrats don’t, because they understand it’s a game: The pursuit of “social justice” (translation: getting their way by shredding your liberties) is always considered “going high,” regardless of how militant the tactic. Don’t take my word for it. Just ask Steve Scalise and Rand Paul.

That brings us to the second point Eric Holder’s incitements should clarify.
The latest regression to the 1970s “any means necessary” politics that today’s Democrats have reincarnated was triggered by Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. But don’t be confused. The fact that Kavanaugh was the occasion for Democratic anarchy does not mean he was the cause.

This was not about Brett Kavanaugh. This was about power. The character assassination heaped on Kavanaugh would have been used against any President Trump nominee poised to shift the Supreme Court rightward. Remarkably, Democrats now kick themselves for not attacking the nominee even more viciously. Doesn’t matter who the nominee was. The real objective was not to destroy Kavanaugh but to convey what Democrats have in store for any conservative who seeks high public office. If you don’t grasp that, you’re not paying attention.

Most conservatives see government as a necessary evil; they would like a limited United States government that reflects this suspicion and the Framers’ emphasis on liberty. Most Democrats see government as a desirable good; they would like an active United States government that rights wrongs and addresses the complex challenges of modern, globally interconnected society. Many brilliant, able people have been that kind of Democrat — the kind of patriot who loves America as it is but strives to improve it, not radically alter it. The country needs those Democrats to take their party back.

ANDREW C. MCCARTHY — Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review. @andrewcmccarthy

It's one left-wing riot after another, but leftist leaders have decided the problem is YOU

It's one left-wing riot after another, but leftist leaders have decided the problem is YOU

Tucker Carlson, Fox News  

The crack political team over at The Washington Post has uncovered a brand new species of fake news they think you need to know about: Imaginary left-wing mobs.

In a piece posted this week, The Post explained that in order to win the midterm elections, those Republicans have "cast the Trump resistance movement as an angry mob."

Now, “cast” is, of course, used here as a synonym for misrepresented. The Washington Post wants you to know that these mobs are not real. They're an illusion. 

That may surprise you, because you may have recently seen videos of prominent Republicans being chased out of restaurants by screaming progressives. You may have even read news accounts about how a Republican congressman named Steve Scalise was shot with a high-powered rifle by a Bernie Sanders supporter.

You may have seen college campuses descend into rioting simply because conservatives showed up to talk.

And just this past weekend, you may have watched transfixed as groups of hysterical young people yelled at Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill and then pounded in rage on the front doors of the Supreme Court.

All of this may have given you the mistaken impression that there is a threat of disorder and lawlessness from the left building in this country, some of it funded by a man that The Washington Post neutrally describes as “philanthropist” George Soros.

Well, rest easy, says The Post. In fact, all of this talk of left-wing mobs "taps grievances about the nation's fast-moving cultural and demographic shifts." In other words, this is racism, and it's designed says, The Post, "for the benefit of white voters, particularly men."

Wow, so the angry left-wing mobs you thought you had been watching on television turn out to be merely a hallucination. They're a fever dream concocted by those diabolical magicians over at Fox News.

Thank heaven, you can wake up now. None of it is real. -- It's 1996 again.

But wait, has anyone told the angry left-wing mobs about this? They seem to believe that they exist.

In Portland, Oregon, they're still blocking traffic and breaking things and screaming at old ladies in wheelchairs.  Apparently, they don't get The Washington Post in Oregon.

I guess you just can’t believe your lying eyes.

Some reports - and there haven't been many reports, but some - describe these protesters as ANTIFA, others say they're Black Lives Matter. It doesn't matter. What you're actually looking at is the youth wing of the Democratic Party. These are their shock troops.

“Go to the Hill today," Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said recently. "Get up and please get up in the face of some Congress people.”

Added Rep. Maxine Waters: D-Calif.: “If you see anyone from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get up and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they are not welcome.”

Well, they obeyed. The left always obeys. Obedience is the whole point of their program. And now, normal people across the country, nevertheless, are becoming concerned.

“So many frankly unhinged people and unstable people out there," said Kelley Paul, wife of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who was attacked by a deranged neighbor over the summer. "And when they hear someone on their side telling them ‘get up in their face,‘ they take that literally, and they think that that gives them a license to be very aggressive, be harassing."

The senator's wife now sleeps with a loaded gun by her bedside. That's what it has come to as Hillary Clinton says there's no being civil with Republicans, and top Democratic lawmakers urge angry citizens to harass people who simply don't share their worldview.

But if you read the Washington Post, you might believe it was all your fault - and all in your head. 

Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue on "Tucker Carlson Tonight," Oct. 9, 2018.

THE KAVANAUGH SMEAR AND THE FBI: A CONNECTION?

Do you smell that fetid swamp smell? BH

THE KAVANAUGH SMEAR AND THE FBI: A CONNECTION?
John Hinderacker, Powerline

James Kunstler is a liberal who has a site called Clusterf*** Nation. Although a liberal, he casts a cold, intelligent eye on the follies of our time. The linked post begins by questioning why anyone would believe Christine Ford. What follows is an explosive theme:

I believe that the Christine Blasey Ford gambit was an extension of the sinister activities underway since early 2016 in the Department of Justice and the FBI to un-do the last presidential election, and that the real and truthful story about these seditious monkeyshines is going to blow wide open.

Stunning if true.

It turns out that the Deep State is a small world. Did you know that the lawyer sitting next to Dr. Ford in the Senate hearings, one Michael Bromwich, is also an attorney for Andrew McCabe, the former FBI Deputy Director fired for lying to investigators from his own agency and currently singing to a grand jury? What a coincidence. Out of all the lawyers in the most lawyer-infested corner of the USA, she just happened to hook up with him. 

It’s a matter of record that Dr. Ford traveled to Rehobeth Beach Delaware on July 26, where her Best Friend Forever and former room-mate, Monica McLean, lives, and that she spent the next four days there before sending a letter July 30 to Senator Diane Feinstein that kicked off the “sexual assault” circus. Did you know that Monica McClean was a retired FBI special agent, and that she worked in the US Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York under Preet Bharara, who had earlier worked for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer? 

Could Dr. Ford have spent those four days in July helping Christine Blasey Ford compose her letter to Mrs. Feinstein? Did you know that Monica McClean’s lawyer, one David Laufman is a former DOJ top lawyer who assisted former FBI counter-intel chief Peter Strozk on both the Clinton and Russia investigations before resigning in February this year — in fact, he sat in on the notorious “unsworn” interview with Hillary in 2016. Wow! What a really small swamp Washington is!

Of all the gin joints lawyers in all the towns in all the world, she walks in with one from the FBI. Funny coincidence.

None of this is trivial and the matter can’t possibly rest there. Too much of it has been unraveled by what remains of the news media. And meanwhile, of course, there is at least one grand jury listening to testimony from the whole cast-of-characters behind the botched Hillary investigation and Robert Mueller’s ever more dubious-looking Russian collusion inquiry: the aforementioned Strozk, Lisa Page, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Bill Priestap, et. al. I have a feeling that these matters are now approaching critical mass with the parallel unraveling of the Christine Blasey Ford “story.” 

The Democratic Party has its fingerprints all over this, as it does with the shenanigans over the Russia investigation. Not only do I not believe Dr. Ford’s story; I also don’t believe she acted on her own in this shady business. What’s happening with all these FBI and DOJ associated lawyers is an obvious circling of the wagons. They’ve generated too much animus in the process and they’re going to get nailed. These matters are far from over and a major battle is looming in the countdown to the midterm elections.

The Democrats’ Russia hoax and their smearing of Judge Kavanaugh are two of the most appalling episodes in recent political history. Are they, in some fashion, related? I have no idea. Stay tuned.

Michael Ramirez