Interesting. Of course, America – and the world – has changed a lot since then:
Richard Nixon fought the chaos of the New Left and won a 49-state landslide. He dismantled the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground. And he saw the threat of the permanent bureaucracy.
As I explain in a new film, Richard Nixon, despite his flaws, has much to teach us: pic.twitter.com/YefQyAfQYg
— Christopher F. Rufo ?? (@realchrisrufo) October 5, 2023
It’s the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, and the Palestinians are celebrating their favorite way: attacking Israel and Israelis in a huge terror operation. You can find news here, here, here, here, here, and here.
From the latter:
Who is behind the Palestinians’ attack on Israel? Iran, for one. The London Times minces no words:
“The British government believes that Iran is linked to the Hamas attack on Israel and that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is likely to have played a role in training and the supply of weapons (Dipesh Gadher writes).
“A Whitehall source said: ‘The Revolutionary Guards have their fingerprints all over this multifaceted attack. Hamas is just another tool in Iran’s campaign against the West.’”
Where would Iran get the money to finance the Palestinians’ war? Oh, that’s right. We just gave them $6 billion.
One can speculate that the timing of this war is not unrelated to the fact that we have a senile buffoon for a president. A senile buffoon who doesn’t much like Israel …
Of all the things the Obama/Biden faction has done, its enabling of Iran is up there as one of the worst. I’m going to assume this action by Hamas was planned some time before the money transfer, but that Iran knew the money was almost certainly coming and was able to plan accordingly.
The details of this attack are horrendous, with civilian targets and civilian kidnappings. In addition, there’s this:
Hamas and Hezbollah want to derail the much-rumored normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which will marginalize Hamas and Hezbollah to some extent.
No doubt Hamas expects — and likely hopes for — a strong Israeli response against them in Gaza …
Why does Hamas hope for a strong response against them in Gaza? Propaganda purposes. Propaganda is biggest export of the Palestinians, having disseminated it all over the world with no small success.
In recent years, when I’ve written about Israel it’s been almost entirely about internal Israeli politics. But when I first began blogging, most of the news about Israel was about terrorist attacks and the reaction of the Western left, which was to champion the Palestinians. Sadly, we seem to be entering that territory again.
NOTE: You can find updates on the news from Israel by checking here periodically.
The Federalist has an article about a Louisiana’s Republican state representative Laurie Schlegel’s successful fight to block online porn from children in the state. The article makes several important points:
(1) Online porn today is mostly brutal and violent, far far different from the old Playboy centerfold type.
(2) Children have widespread access to it.
(3) It has an addictive quality for many people, but for young children and teens it has the added effect of helping to form their ideas about sex when they are young and vulnerable.
There’s one important thing the article doesn’t discuss, however, which is the role that child access to online porn plays in the escalation of the transgender phenomenon among young girls. I have been struck at how often this factor is mentioned among detransitioners, who are often consumers of online porn in their youth and are so troubled by it that they decide to retreat from womanhood, since being a woman and sexual contact in general is associated with being the recipient of violent abuse.
Online porn is not so great for young boys, either, as this article in Psychology Today (not a bastion of right-wing thought) describes:
When an adolescent boy compulsively views pornography, his brain chemistry can become shaped around the attitudes and situations that he is watching. Sadly, pornography paints an unrealistic picture of sexuality and relationships that can create an expectation for real-life experiences that will never be fulfilled. …
Pornography shows us a world where relationships mean nothing and immediate sexual gratification means everything. Therefore, the adolescent viewer’s brain is being wired to expect that sex and relationships are separate from one another, and that men and women’s bodies should be sexually exaggerated as they are in porn–which can lead to shame about one’s own body as well as failure to be aroused by the bodies of others.
Pornography on the Internet can be inexpensive, easy to access, and easy to hide. Many adolescents look at pornography when their parents think they are doing homework. While masturbating to porn, the adolescent brain is being shaped around a sexual experience that is isolating, visceral, and completely void of any love or compassion.
That was written in 2011, and since then the role of violence in these images has become dominant and even more destructive to normal functioning. For example, this was written in 2021 by the parent of a teen girl who suddenly announced a desire to become a boy. When she gave her parent (I’m assuming a mother, but it’s not clear) access to her devices, this is what the parent found:
The history on every device was filled with pornography, and the porn was mostly guy-on-guy. It was violent porn. It was anime porn with rape scenes, pregnant cartoon men being sodomized, gang bangs with cartoon children. There were internet sites that contained written porn, with beatings, followed by forgiveness and sex.
My daughter had been sucked into the dark web.
She was only 13.
There were searches for ball gags, hand-cuffs, whips and leather outfits. There were surveys to determine what deviant sex acts she would partake in. There were Discord and Instagram chatrooms where girls discussed whether they are bottoms or tops, givers or receivers, abusers or abused. There were discussions of turn-ons with weaponry. There were images of cartoon dogs giving oral sex. My daughter started drawing penises on her walls in her room, her shoes and her pants.
More at the link. It is very very disturbing and I suggest you read the whole thing.
The difference between the atmosphere in which children are raised today, and their possible exposure to hardcore porn, and the atmospher in which older adults were raised is enormous. I included the above excerpt as an illustration of the sort of thing we’re talking about. And even if a parent manages to block such things on a home computer or on a child’s phone, there are other friends with other phones and other computers.
A very serious problem.
Shortly after Trump was elected in 2016 – and even during the campaign – I noticed that anyone who wore a MAGA hat was being demonized as a racist and a violent extremist. This seemed like a very ominous turn to me. After all, “Make America Great Again” is a perfectly okay slogan, and nothing Trump had done or said seemed all that terrible to me, although at the time I was wary and had opposed Trump during the primaries, preferring a different GOP nominee.
During Trump’s presidency, it got worse and worse. There were even incidents such as Jussie Smollet’s faked hate crime that supposedly was perpetrated by men in MAGA hats. Biden escalated matters with rhetoric such as his “Red Wedding” speech, and of course the persecution of the J6 defendants and the characterization of that demonstration as a “deadly insurrection.”
Therefore it’s not a new thing that the FBI has been pursuing people on the right, claiming they are dangerous terrorists. So this news is really only a slight escalation of an ongoing action:
The federal government believes that the threat of violence and major civil disturbances around the 2024 U.S. presidential election is so great that it has quietly created a new category of extremists that it seeks to track and counter: Donald Trump’s army of MAGA followers.
When last I checked, that’s half the country.
More:
The challenge for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the primary federal agency charged with law enforcement, is to pursue and prevent what it calls domestic terrorism without direct reference to political parties or affiliations—even though the vast majority of its current “anti-government” investigations are of Trump supporters, according to classified data obtained by Newsweek.
So to summarize: they’re going after one side, but they want somehow to convey the idea that they’re being even-handed. Good luck with that. Actually, people on the right already know they’re being targeted as the dangerous enemy, and people on the left think that’s what the right deserves.
More:
“Especially at a time when the White House is facing Congressional Republican opposition claiming that the Biden administration has ‘weaponized’ the Bureau against the right wing, it has to tread very carefully,” says the [unnamed FBI] official.
Earth to unnamed FBI official: it’s not just the Republican opposition “claiming” it; it’s acknowledged far more widely than that, because it’s obviously true.
And right on schedule, Hillary Clinton chimes in with an oh-so-helpful suggestion:
“I mean, we had very strong partisans in both parties in the past, and we had very bitter battles over all kinds of things: gun control, and climate change, and the economy, and taxes,” Clinton said. “But there wasn’t this little tail of extremism wagging the dog of the Republican Party as it is today, and sadly, so many of those extremists, those MAGA extremists, take their marching orders from Donald Trump, who has no credibility left by any measure.”
“He’s only in it for himself. He’s now defending himself in civil actions and criminal actions, and when do they break with him? You know, because, at some point, you know, maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members. But something needs to happen,” she added.
I especially like that word “formal.” Will the deprogrammers wear tuxedos, or will they belong to a special unit, or what?
Ah, but she didn’t mean anything so very pernicious by it. She just meant they should lose the election:
When asked how this “deprogramming” could be done, Clinton said the defeat of Trump and candidates aligned with him was the solution. Clinton, who had alleged her election loss in 2016 was illegitimate, also blasted “election deniers.”
Losing an election is always known as “formal deprogramming.” Sure thing.
And of course, there are plenty of videos of Hillary herself denying the results of the 2016 election.
Presidents often own pets, in particular dogs. It humanizes them, makes them seem like regular guys. And of course, many of them just like dogs and have always had them.
And then there’s President Biden. What gives? The reports are that Biden’s dogs have been biters, and that Biden may have been mistreating them by hitting and kicking them. A Freedom of Information Act has been filed by Judicial Watch in order to find out. If it’s true, it’s certainly not a good sign about Biden – but only one of so very many.
You can see a history of presidential pets here. I think that, so far, the most famous one was FDR’s Fala, a Scottie he mentioned in this well-known speech, and is featured in a DC statue. It’s worth having a listen to FDR talking about Fala:
(An aside – whenever I see FDR during his days as president, it startles me that he looked so much like my grandmother.)
Trump was one of the rare presidents who didn’t have any pets, and was quite frank about the fact that, although it might be politically expedient to own one, he just didn’t want one.
Remember when Romney was the GOP nominee in 2012, and was accused of having mistreated a dog years earlier by putting it in a crate on the roof of his car? And LBJ made headlines by hoisting his beagle by the ears. You can read about it here, including LBJ’s tone-deaf comment, “”It does them good to let them yelp.” Yikes!
An idea whose time has apparently come:
The Biden administration has paved the way for the construction of a new wall along the southern border in Texas by waiving more than a dozen federal laws in a stark reversal of its previous stance on the physical barrier.
The Department of Homeland Security announced the plan to bypass long drawn-out environmental reviews in order to expedite border wall construction in Starr County, TX as the administration struggles to handle an ongoing migrant crisis that has strained local and federal resources. …
“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” Alejandro Mayorkas, the DHS secretary, said in a notice posted on the US Federal Registry.
The Democratic administration is picking up where former President Donald Trump left off.
What gives? The cries of woe from the non-border states that have received a recent influx of illegal aliens (I’ve decided to use that older term, which has the advantages of accuracy and clarity) must have been practically deafening in the ears of the Biden administration. And my guess is that the polls were very worrying as well. Those are the only reasons I can think of for the issuing of this order at this point.
Question: will the environmental groups that have been so active in opposing the wall in the past start suing this administration now?
I’ve read so many differing reports about who ordered Pelosi out of her office and why. Here’s the latest:
We wrote earlier about how one of the first orders of business for speaker pro tempore Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) in the aftermath of the House’s ousting of Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as Speaker was to notify former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that she needed to immediately remove her things and vacate her hideaway office. …
In an update to this story, we’re learning that it wasn’t McHenry but McCarthy himself who was behind the call to get Pelosi kicked out of her hideaway office, something few on the House side have outside of high-ranking members. Further, the person who will be utilizing that office will be … McCarthy …
Interesting.
I also want to call your attention to this comment by “former legislator.” If you haven’t seen it yet, please take a look.
As just about everyone who reads this blog already knows, the mechanism Gaetz used to get rid of McCarthy as Speaker was basically to allow the Democrats and a small GOP group to remove a Republican Speaker through the alliance of eight Republicans and every single Democrat.
The only reason I can see that this hadn’t occurred before was convention – plus it would be very difficult for such a tiny group to do it unless the majority margin was small. But it certainly might have happened. However, it was understood that, although legal, such a move might be suicidal, destructive, chaotic (whichever adjective you prefer) because basically any Speaker would be thus threatened if he or she disappointed even a very small number of his or her party members. With 221 Republicans in the House right now, it can almost be guaranteed that any Speaker would anger or disappoint or frustrate at least a tiny number of GOP members of the House. It’s basically inevitable.
Let’s put aside for a moment whether you think McCarthy was an okay Speaker or whether you think he dearly needed removal. My question is this: now that Gaetz has crossed the Rubicon, what’s to stop any other small group from doing the same thing? Power is intoxicating; how exciting to be able to exercise it with just a few colleagues! You might theorize that, in fact, Gaetz had more supporters than we know and that others would have voted with him if necessary. But that’s just a theory, and it’s irrelevant to my question because the removal could have been accomplished by that small group alone without any support or help at all from any other Republican. And I don’t think the Democrats would be at all reluctant to continue to cooperate with Republican chaos, and the removal of a succession of GOP Speakers.
Many people say, so what? The House GOP isn’t doing much anyway (and of course their power is limited by the fact that the Democrats control the Senate and the presidency). But a demonstration of that sort of continuing and repeated chaos and dissension on the part of Republicans would, IMHO, lead to them losing both houses in 2024. And if that happens, we’ll see just how different a Democrat legislature is from a Republican one, especially if the president is also a Democrat.
But back to my question: what’s to stop other small factions from doing the same to any GOP member who replaces McCarthy as Speaker? Is it just the fear that it would backfire on the right and enable the left? That certainly didn’t stop Gaetz.
And that’s assuming McCarthy can be replaced fairly quickly and without too much fuss. If that happens, and if the rest of the GOP manages to stay its hand and not follow in Gaetz’s footsteps in terms of Democrat-aided Speaker-removal, then this storm will pass. But if not? Well, He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.
As part of the discussion of Gaetz’s move yesterday, commenter “Sharon W” wrote (I’m pretty sure sarcastically):
Maybe Art Deco can enunciate for us all the gains conservatives experienced when the House, Senate and Presidency were in Republican hands.
Most people on the right – and I include myself – share some of that bitterness and frustration about how little was ever accomplished when “the House, Senate, and presidency were in Republican hands.” The anger is understandable, and it’s a large part of what is behind much of the support for Gaetz’s move.
But I think it’s also instructive to look back at the actual figures about Republican control, something I did in this post I wrote shortly before Trump – and a Republican Congress – took office. Please take a look. You may be surprised at how seldom since the days of Coolidge and Hoover that such a situation – the GOP controlling both houses and the presidency – existed. Here are a few excerpts:
If you study Congressional history in terms of party control (see this important chart), you will note that, ever since Coolidge and Hoover, Republicans have only had that “offense” opportunity (control of the presidency and both houses) twice. The first time (and then they barely had control) was in 1953-1955 under Eisenhower. That was a long long time ago, I think you would agree, and Eisenhower wasn’t exactly a conservative. Also, the reason I wrote “barely” is that the GOP’s “control” of the Senate balanced on a razor’s edge, with 48 Republicans to 47 Democrats plus one Independent (the Independent being Wayne Morse, who basically was no Republican).
The second time was much more recently, and it’s the one most present-day readers remember: under George W. Bush, and in particular the years 2005-2007. He also had majorities in 2003-2005, but a much weaker one (especially in the Senate), so weak it could be undermined by just a couple of senatorial RINOs. Those Bush years were also dominated by the war in Iraq, and unfortunately Republicans did not capitalize on their very rare moment of being in control and thus able to play “offense.”
That rankles, I know, and it does with me as well.
But I think it’s wrong to pretend there’s some long history of Republicans being in control and not taking advantage of it. I’ve just recounted the sum total of times Republicans have been in control of Congress and the presidency since the days of Hoover. What’s more, it’s actually the Democrats who’ve been in control of both far far more often ever since FDR, and therefore able to play real “offense” in the sense I’m talking about.
In addition, many times that the Democrats have held presidency and Congress, their majorities in both houses have been overwhelming, featuring numbers that Republicans haven’t rivaled since before FDR and have not come close to rivaling after (even during the Bush years when they did have control for a few years). All of the presidents in my lifetime whose party has held both houses at any time during their presidency (other than the aforementioned George W. Bush and briefly and weakly Eisenhower) were Democrats. All the ones who had very strong majorities for much of the time were Democrats as well. Besides FDR, we have Truman, JFK, LBJ, Carter, and early Clinton,. Actually, Clinton was the only post-FDR Democratic president who had to face a divided Congress for a substantial (at least half) portion of his presidency. The only one.
Check out the numbers; it’s quite astounding how large the Democratic margins in Congress were during the last two-thirds of the 20th Century. As an example, from 1935-1937 the Senate was about 72% Democratic and the House 74% under FDR, and those margins increased in 1937-1939 to 78% and 76%. Hard to see what Republicans could have done against that. During 1945-1947, Truman’s Congress was very close to 60% Democrat in the Senate and about 56% Democrat in the House (for the next two years he had to deal with a Republican Congress, however). JFK? 64% of the Senate was Democratic during his first two years, and that margin increased to 67% for the next two years (some of which, of course, became the LBJ years). At the same time, the House was 60% and 59% Democratic. The margins increased still again during LBJ’s first elected term, 1965-1967, to about 68% in both branches of Congress.
In contrast, Nixon (and then Ford) had to deal with an enormous Democratic majority of around 58% for both branches (although the margins reduced somewhat during the later years of his/their terms) the whole time he was in office. Carter was initially given a 61% lead in the Senate and almost 67% of the House, later reduced to a still-strong 57%/64%.
I’m doing all this math very quickly, so you might find errors, but that’s what I get when I try to figure it out.
Study it all you want, but you won’t find margins anything like that—not even remotely like that—for any Republican president since the days of Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, Harding, and Coolidge. And Coolidge only had 53% of the Senate and approximately 52% of the House at first, which went up a bit in the next election before it went down in the subsequent one, with the Senate Republican lead in the Senate fading to one vote. With Hoover, the Senate went back up to 58% GOP (then down again to a one-vote margin during the last two years of his term), while the House was 61% Republican and then down to a tie during those last two years.
So, that was the situation for Republicans controlling the presidency and Congress during the 20th Century, except for the aforementioned brief times during the Eisenhower years when they barely controlled Congress. And then in the 21st Century, more slight control for the GOP under Bush.
What a contrast! For nearly a hundred years Congress has mostly been in control of Democrats, often very strongly in control, and that’s also been when there’s a Democratic president. Republican control has been weak and extremely sporadic, and therefore most Republican presidents have faced an oppositional Congress.
What happened since I wrote that post? GOP control of both houses of Congress and the presidency only lasted for the first two years of Trump’s term, because in the midterms the control of the House flipped back to the Democrats. What’s more, even during those first two years, the GOP control of the Senate was balanced on a knife-edge, and that meant that just a couple of people such as John McCain sabotaged some of what the GOP was trying to do. During those first two years, there actually were two government shutdowns, but not much was accomplished by that means or by any other means except several SCOTUS appointments. So that short two year period is another cause for anger on the right, and yet government shutdowns didn’t do any good and may actually have helped lead to the Democrats gaining control of the House in the midterms.
I don’t have an answer as to what should be done at this point to improve things. But I think we need to be realistic about the problem, which includes the fact that the GOP has never – since Hoover’s first term – had the kind of definitive majority control numbers the Democrats regularly had, almost never had control of the legislative and executive branch at the same time, and the GOP doesn’t have that kind of control now.