Paul Ryan, Another Guy Who Never Built A Thing

Conservatism, Democracy, Donald Trump, Elections, Republicans

“Paul Ryan, Another Guy Who Never Built A Thing” is the current column, now on The Unz Review, America’s smartest webzine. An excerpt:

As of May 7, the outgoing neoconservative priestly cast had raised its game. Since Donald Trump has effectively clinched the Republican Party’s nomination, based on his America First platform, they had an ultimatum for him: Stop your nonsense and we’ll take you back.

If Trump quits denouncing George Bush and his Good War, and starts to blame only Barack Obama for Iraq—said commentator-cum-soldier-cum-global crusader Pete Hegseth to an exultant Gretchen Carlson at the Fox News Channel—all would be forgiven. Recall, Trump called Bush a liar and went on to win South Carolina … and Nevada. He continues to denounce the “made by Bush” Iraq war.

But now that Trump has won the nomination, the losing neoconservatives are insisting he get real, renounce the winning plank and perjure himself to The People.

Well, of course. To the losers belong the spoils. …

… Read the rest. “Paul Ryan, Another Guy Who Never Built A Thing” is the current column, now on The Unz Review, America’s smartest webzine.

UPDATED (6/9/016): Cathy Young’s Blood Libel* Against Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter, Anti-Semitism, IMMIGRATION, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Reason

I’m Jewish, with all the baggage that entails (truncated family tree, etc.). But according to Cathy Young’s poorly reasoned and badly written hodgepodge, “Ann Coulter’s Anti-Semitism Runs Deeper Than You Know,” I, too, would qualify as anti-Semitic for questioning liberal Jews (that includes practically ALL so-called conservatives): They insist that while Palestinians have no right of return to Israel (agreed); the world has a “global Right of Return to the US.”

As I put it in “American Rabbis For Israel First” (August 8, 2014):

Ask any left-liberal American Jew if he supports a “Right of Return” to Israel proper for every self-styled Palestinian refugee, and he’ll likely recoil: “Are you meshuga? Never! That’s a euphemism for Israel’s demise.” The very thing he rejects for Israel, the liberal Jew is inclined to champion for America: a global right of return to the US for citizens of the world.

In “American Rabbis For Israel First” and, before that, on October 1 2010, in “Mass Immigration ‘End Of Days’ Scenario,” I suggested the apparently anti-Semitic (because logical?) notion that “mass immigration into America be looked at as a global ‘right of return'”:

Friends of Israel in America are unequivocal in standing up for that country’s right to retain its Jewish identity. What would become of that identity if all self-styled Arab refugees were to be granted the so-called right of return? Hatched by Israel’s enemies, this scheme will see millions of such refugees granted the right to immigrate to Israel proper, where they will overwhelm the Jewish majority. Friends of Israel know that Jews must remain numerically preponderant in the Jewish state if the prosperous, progressive nature of the country and its liberal institutions is to endure.

Think of mass immigration into America as a global “right of return.”

Now Young accuses Ms. Coulter of the thought crime for which I’ve long been guilty, too, because Ann wrote the following in Adios (2015):

The Young woman is foolish. She needs to show that for Ann to want for the US what Israel has claimed for itself through law is anti-Semitic. Young has not proven or argued this convincingly. The Young woman’s libel has no foundation in reason and argument.

Can Cathy Young, moreover, truly claim that Albion’s Seed founded this Christian country, America, with the view that it may one day happily become majority Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist; African, Asian or Arabian? Rubbish.

*****
* Cathy Young would probably decree it anti-Semitic to turn the term “blood libel” on its head and use it to denote defamation against a generally philo-Semitic Christian.

UPDATE (6/9): America is for the world, but Israel is allowed to stay civilized. Oy!

Media’s ‘Dah’ Moment On Election 2016 And Demographics

Donald Trump, Elections, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Race

NPR (May 10, 2016): “… there is also the potential that this fall’s presidential battlegrounds could be re-sorted — pitting white, working-class voters, whom Trump is appealing to, against Latino voters, who appear to be in Clinton’s corner. Traditional ways of thinking about the map should and will be challenged.”

Wow. A year on, and the penny may be dropping.

And: “… at this point, polling is almost irrelevant. The cases have not been litigated yet; the campaigns have not been waged; neither candidate has even officially crossed the magic number to win his or her respective primaries yet.”

The Wrong-All-The-Time Media is “rethinking.” Does this mean slow Nate Silver will begin to ask why his numbers fit his hypothesis, but do not comport with reality? There’s another “genius.”

Looks Like Donald Has Been Duped By Megyn Kelly

Celebrity, Conservatism, Donald Trump, Media

By golly, Megyn Kelly is show-biz good. She got Donald Trump to heap praise on her on national TV for “reaching out,” to use millennial speak, when in fact she was the desperate party who, during the past year, placed her inflated ego before the journalistic obligation to suck it up and get the story.

So Trump has succumbed, and has exposed himself to this intellectual floozy’s much-hyped, yet-to-be screened interview. And what does Kelly ask him?

The same sort of question that started the Kelly-Trump feud: a deceptive probe; a question that in itself suggests certain things about the man’s character, veracity and emotional make-up.

“You seemed to stay angry for months. Was that real, or was that strategy?”

Kelly has deployed this method before, highlighted in “Megyn Kelly’s ‘Journalistic’ Method.” But Trump is not keeping up with her cunning ploys.

Trump’s response, as always, is truthful, candid. But his acquiescence in Kelly’s self-aggrandizement (plain for all to see) was unwise in the extreme.

“Well I’m a real person,” the real estate titan responded. “I have great respect for you that you were able to call me and say ‘Let’s get together, let’s talk.’ To me, I would not have done that,” he admitted further.

MORE Megalo-Megyn promo.