HALF-FULL REPORT 09/04/15: What Profiteth a Man?

 

The big thing is if McConnell is saying the GOP can never get what it wants unless it has 60 votes, there’s no point in voting for a GOP Senate candidate. There have never been 60 GOP Senators at the same time and you will never get 60 GOP votes in the Senate. Hell, even if you did, do you think there wouldn’t be a few traitors in the bunch who stick with the Democrats?

— Ace of Spades, “BREAKING: Failure Theater Alert! Iran Deal Will Survive Senate Vote“

If you’re a fan of outrage porn or kabuki theater, I ain’t your guy. Which makes me unfit for 90% of what passes for “news” these days. The treasonous sellout to Iran hit a new milestone; there are new Planned Parenthood videos; and the crook who managed to get herself kicked off of the Watergate Committee by another Democrat can’t get kicked off of her own farcical repetition quite so easily. Funny how life is.

We’ll mention some of that stuff, but as we cover the news we’re going to look past the symptoms. It’s becoming blindingly obvious that the federal GOP may die a suicide. Meanwhile, people talk about Trump, but what’s behind his rise? A familiar but unconventional source says that there’s much more to it than just the political landscape. Can doing the wrong thing legally be the right thing? Are we thinking the right way about education and about sex offender registries? Are we thinking the right way about the political war we’re caught in? We’ve got some provocative proposals and a masterclass for that last one. And at least one of your fellow Americans will make you very proud.

Let’s start abroad.

Foreign Affairs: Iran

To review: Negotiations and early concessions by Obama and his Iranian consigliere Valerie Jarrett destroyed any hope of international solidarity. Then the Failure Theater(TM) Corker-Menendez bill set things up so that Congress needed a 2/3 Senate supermajority it could never achieve. Sen Barbara Mikluski’s [D-MD] announcement this week confirmed that Obama can now veto any opposition to his plan to arm Iran with nukes and billions of dollars. Widespread nuclear proliferation in the Middle East will follow. As the number of unstable regimes with nuclear weapons rises, the odds of their use or transfer to jihadis rise as well. Welcome to our future.

Somehow, we failed to insist that Iran take all of the Kardashians as part of this bargain. They certainly did not release the Americans they hold hostage.

• Jim Geraghty explains the Senate procedure that the GOP could use in order to vote down the deal. It involves a resolution that the Iran deal is a treaty, followed by invoking the same filibuster-killing “nuclear option” used for Obamacare, followed by a majority vote on the resolution. Could the President veto this? Unclear. Given the headline-grabbing nature of the ploy, and the way it sets out illegality in stark terms, even a veto is a far better destination than GOPer Bob Corker’s playbook.

• All this despite an ongoing refusal by the Obama administration to show Congress the “side deals” involving the IAEA. Leaked documents say that they allow Iran to inspect its own nuclear facilities. “Officer, I looked in my car. No drugs here, duuude!”

• Daniel “Sultan Knish” Greenfield explains the continuing fight at home. As he explains: “We can’t change things until we stop letting ourselves be fooled. None of this means that we should stop fighting…” His advice transfers to many other issues.

• Caroline Glick explains why Israel fought a “glorious defeat,” and what the fight achieved for Israel. But there’s a very serious note in the middle, when she reveals that the IDF chief of General Staff and senior generals refused to draw up requested plans for a strike on Iran on 3 separate occasions. They were apparently supported by some Cabinet members, which explains why they still have their jobs. Israeli Cabinets are multi-party, so action against a Cabinet minister can endanger the governing coalition. You can expect that back-channel interference from the Obama administration was also involved in this.

• If Israel does want to act now, here’s why conventional weapons probably won’t do.

Foreign Affairs: Europe

Europe’s Camp of the Saints crisis continues.

• European elites have continued to insist that the Schengen accord, which allows borderless movement within the EU, is sacrosanct. If you interpreted this as “they’re going to back down soon,” we’ll see on Sept. 14th. My guess is that they’ll wimp out officially, but countries will start taking measures and no-one will do anything to stop them.

• Germany is the favored destination for these refugees, as it’s a cushier location (see Gatestone’s report for why). They don’t want to stop the flow, they want to negotiate “burden sharing” so other countries take in “their share.” UK PM Cameron is being Cameron, and caving. Hungary and Poland are saying no.

• Hungary is refusing to pass refugee trains through to Germany, deportations are expected to begin soon, and some pretty major laws about the army’s role are being changed. PM Viktor Orban said: “All countries have a right to decide whether they want to live with large numbers of Muslims in their countries. If they want to, they can. We don’t want to, and we have a right to decide we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country. We do not like the consequences of having large numbers of Muslim communities that we see in other countries…“

• Austria has passed a new law. All mosque sermons must be in German, all Korans must be in German, and no Muslim organization can receive foreign funding.

• Richard “Belmont Club” Fernandez sees the crisis as pampered Western elites finally having to confront personal costs for their policies. New term for you: Pathological Altruism.

States of America

• Most of you know the Dilbert comic strip, and its genius creator Scott Adams. He’s not a political junkie, but he has taken a lot of training in advanced persuasion. His x-rays of Donald Trump’s persuasion techniques are highly, highly recommended. Fascinating stuff – and read the comments, too, because Adams is using the same techniques himself and letting readers deconstruct them. The GOP is partly to blame for Trump, but he isn’t sucking all of the attention out of the room by accident.
  • Adams thinks Trump can win, and Trump’s full reversal of his favorable/unfavorable ratings suggests that Adams may be right. This past week, an email from Newt Gingrich made the same point. People are waking up to the fact that this is for real.
  • With all that said, Joel Wade’s 2012 article “Hypnotic Realities” remains an essential companion piece. Scott’s points are true, and so are Joel’s.

• Well, we can’t move to stop the erasure of the border with Mexico; we can’t move to defund Planned Parenthood, even as it sells baby organs; we can’t stop a deal that will fund terrorism against America and give Iran nukes. What can the GOP do? Find a way to re-authorize the crony capitalist Export-Import Bank! This “F- you!” brought to you by the GOP Donor Class.

• The Donor Class isn’t thinking that pissed off middle-class conservatives watching their own standard of living fall, and seeing donor money used against them all the time, may become a lot less attached to letting donors keep their wealth. It has happened in many other countries. But at least we know that Trump guy wouldn’t… oh, wait.

• 51% of legal & illegal immigrants on welfare, vs. 30% of birthright American citizens. Shame enforcement measures are too expensive.

• Eric Erickson and Ross Douthat, of all people, are now openly discussing the end of the federal Republican Party. I did watch this movie up in Canada, and a lot of things look familiar. Jack Kelly is right that the GOP needs its 24% of identified moderates to win, but it needs its 70% of identified conservatives to have a meaningful existence at all – and they are withdrawing that consent. Canada’s replacement for the “Progressive Conservative” party had a solid regional base, so they could never be crushed. But Canada didn’t face the same immigration invasion. The Excited States of America will play out differently. Buckle up.

• On the other side of the aisle, the wheels of government keep grinding slow but fine for Hillary. More released emails, a staffer saying he’d take the 5th, poll numbers getting worse. One wonders what was in the 30,000+ deleted emails, if this is what she kept: emails where Hillary explicitly says to send classified information outside classified networks! The fact that information has been talked about publicly doesn’t remove classification, so that’s game over unless lawlessness just gives her a pass, or she gets an explicit pardon from above. Hillary for Prison 2016 signs are popular, but there’s no Rule of Law in the current USA, and no one expects the same consequences that others have received for less serious violations. Daniel Greenfield says her punishment will come anyway, and he has a good point.

• Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis (Democrat, but a Christian) is placed in jail by a judge because she wouldn’t sign gay marriage certificates, or allow her deputies to sign them. Legally, I agree with Justice Scalia, who says you have to perform your duties or resign. But law doesn’t mean anything any more. Gay marriage proponents broke the law all the time, with no consequences. Other officials aren’t complying with Supreme Court rulings re: gun rights. No contempt charges. Davis forced the Feds to throw her in jail for being a Christian, and the episode points out that the federal government has effectively created a religious test for public office. Via a fiat judicial decision that didn’t even pretend to have legitimacy. The key audience here is Christians in the USA, who are beginning to understand. Legally wrong? Yes. But I don’t believe in being a sucker. The Left called the game – play it hard.

• Uh, those sex offender registries? Here’s the thing: they’re run by governments. At the level of competence and judgement you’d expect. So a 17 year-old sending a dick pic to his 17 year old girlfriend (not an unusual thing these days) ends up on the registry. For life. Unintended consequences and agent/trust problems don’t restrict themselves to Leftist policies. We’re victimizing people unjustly because we won’t punish the truly guilty properly, and want to feel better anyway.

• Prof. Raymond Wolters has studied education reform efforts in depth. If that field interests you, “Why School Reform Failed” explains how attempts to equalize ethnic tests scores has been a major driver of damaging fads in education, while yielding no success. The problem? He says it’s believing that the scores need to be equal in the first place. Simple, but most people are relentlessly conditioned to avoid considering that possibility. And look at the damage done. Very well documented article. Remember its lesson.

The good news is, nice things happen too. Remember when I talked about how libertarians and law-and-order conservatives needed each other? Here’s an exhibit:

Closing insights

An online gamer and sci-fi writer whose pseudonym is Vox Day has put out a book called “SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police.” It ranks in the Amazon Top 500, and is #1 in political philosophy. It’s worth the $5 Kindle price, and the author has kindly excerpted Chapter 7 for free public distribution as the SJW (Social Justice Warrior, i.e. cultural marxist) Attack Survival Guide. As its title indicates, it involves how to react to Leftist attack mobs, especially in your professional life. An excellent PDF file/ link to send to people you know.

We’ll have more to say about Vox and his book next week, but I thought you all deserved an immediate heads-up. Over to the Catholic magazine Crisis now, for some related points:

“It is time to step back and look at the broader picture of what is taking place here. When we do, we will realize that we have seen all this before, and we are making the same mistakes.

The attack is being waged by a small neo-bolshevik cadre of militants. They have momentum and organization, and they use relentless, quasi-bolshevik “salami tactics” to push their way to control over both the cultural institutions and the reins of political power.

The vast majority of people do not sympathize with the militants’ zeal, even after saturation media propaganda leads many to relent in polls or referenda. Moreover, Christians also have unifying beliefs and organization—neither of which they mobilize adequately. The agitators can be effectively neutralized, but it will require changes in the fixations and habits of conservative Christians—changes that are healthy in themselves and could regenerate the larger spiritual and civic health of the West. It will also demand leadership and courage beyond what has so far been demonstrated.“

— Stephen Baskerville, “The Pointless Campaign to “Save Marriage”“

Baskerville’s article is worth reading in full. I don’t know that his proposed steps are the right ones, but he’s thinking about the right problems in interesting ways. He misses the problem that the first target to take back will be our churches themselves. But he’s right that this is the best place to start.

The first step in fighting back, you see, is to seize or build appealing and credible ground to fight and organize from. The Left has always understood that, and made it the 1st order of business. Unless and until you begin creating this, there’s a potential train ticket out there with your name on it. Because the truth is, there is no country to “take back.” You haven’t owned it for a very long time – all that’s happening now is that the pretense is being dropped.

That’s a bad sign. Or maybe a good one. It depends. Depends on what?

Depends on you.

Your colleague in liberty,

Joe Katzman