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SCOTUS Girls Gone Wile: The Right to Crap in the Streets

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Two more votes and they’d destroy every town in America

On MSNBC, they’re convinced that the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity will finally usher in the long-feared Trump Dictatorship, though I’m almost certain the Supreme Court explicitly limited the immunity to presidential acts authorized, or even required, by the Constitution.

Staging a coup would not be covered. Neither would murdering political opponents.

(One of the most alarmed guests was former CIA chief John Brennan. Wasn’t he involved in a bit of unauthorized surveillance of American citizens, as well as lying to Congress about it?)

MSNBC: What if Mohamed Atta were president? According to SCOTUS, EVERYTHING HE DID WOULD HAVE BEEN PERFECTLY LEGAL!

     What if TED BUNDY had been elected president? But for a few votes in a few precincts, he could have been … OH MY GOD!!!

Where on Earth did Clarence Thomas get the idea that raping and bludgeoning coeds is part of a president’s core functions? That’s CRAZY!

As liberals carry on about the conservative majority on the court, I direct your attention to the three liberals on the court, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — aka “Girls in Robes Gone Wild”  and what a majority of them would mean for our country.

In City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the court was asked to decide whether the “homeless” (in the sense that “I am Hope Diamondless”) have a constitutional right to camp anywhere they please. Thankfully, a majority of justices found no such right in the Constitution.

But the dissenters concluded, Yes! Mentally ill drug addicts have total immunity from any local health and safety ordinances.

To illustrate how bonkers this is, consider that both the crazily woke governor of California, Gavin Newsom, and the certifiably woke mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, pleaded with the Supreme Court to allow them to shut down homeless encampments. That has been impossible since 2019, when the 9th Circuit — and the 9th Circuit alone  ruled in Martin v. Boise that “the Eighth Amendment prohibits the imposition of criminal penalties for sitting, sleeping or lying outside on public property for homeless individuals.”

No other circuit in the nation agreed. Almost immediately, homelessness exploded in cities and towns throughout the 9th Circuit.

We don’t have to speculate about the unintended consequences the liberal justices’ policy preferences would unleash on the country. Less than 20% of the U.S. population lives within the 9th circuit, but 42% of the “homeless” do. In Boise alone, homelessness doubled within two years of the ruling in Martin. Boise!

Contrary to the three justices comfortably ensconced in their chambers 2,000 miles away, governors and mayors, such as Newsom and Breed, say the homeless encampments are hotbeds of sexual assault and sex trafficking, that they proliferate in the “poorest and most vulnerable neighborhoods,” and that they pose a particular danger to children and the disabled who have to navigate sidewalks jam-packed with drugged-out freaks. (I would add that the homeless are notoriously bad at separating their recyclables.)

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     How nuts are the three liberal justices? They’re well to the left of a California Democrat.

But these robed dingbats think they know better than governors, mayors, district attorneys and sheriffs — you know, the people who actually have to deal with the homeless on a daily basis. (It seems relevant at this juncture to recall that Harvard Law professor Larry Tribe warned President Barack Obama that Sotomayor is “not nearly as smart as she seems to think she is.”)

Sotomayor claimed that “homelessness,” as we now call rank degeneracy, is “due to complex and interconnected issues, including crippling debt and stagnant wages; … and rising housing costs coupled with declining affordable housing options.” Elsewhere, she blamed homelessness on “[n]atural disasters … climate events … floods … and snowstorms.”

Um, hello? Did we forget “systemic anti-homelessism”?

Back on planet Earth, “homelessness” is pretty much due to indolence, mental illness and drug use — mostly drug use, which causes both mental illness and a lack of industriousness. Talk about “intersectionality”! Look at the intersectionality of not having a job, not paying your bills, and getting stoned out of your mind all day long, every single day of your life.

After clearing a homeless encampment along the Santa Ana River in 2018, the Orange County clean-up crew had to haul away thousands of pounds of human waste, almost 14,000 hypodermic needles and more than 400 tons of garbage.

Was it a lack of “affordable housing options” that drove these otherwise responsible adults to defecate in public, toss their garbage on the ground and inject themselves with illegal narcotics? Show me the decision tree that leads from “a snowstorm” to living on the street and shooting fentanyl.

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     Sotomayor reached her legal conclusion through the sort of sophistry that just makes a normal person angry.

It goes like this: The Eighth Amendment prohibits the infliction of “cruel and unusual punishments”; being a homeless drug addict is a “status” completely out of the control of the homeless drug addict; and because sleep is a biological necessity, to punish the “homeless” for sleeping outside is punishing them for their status, which is “cruel and unusual” under the Eighth Amendment.

See? You want to strangle her. (But don’t do it. Only a sitting president has the legal right to strangle a Supreme Court justice.)

This is wrong on every possible level. First, the punishment — the allegedly “cruel and unusual” punishment — happens to be a series of fines, leading, eventually, to 30 days in jail. You heard me right: The punishment for lying in a pool of your own excrement on a public sidewalk is 30 days in a clean, comfortable cell with a toilet, a cot, a blanket, showers and three squares a day. What’s the punishment for repeat offenders? Summering at George Clooney’s villa on Lake Como?

Second, homelessness is not just bad luck, like being struck by lightning. It’s the result of a dissolute lifestyle, taking drugs and stubbornly refusing to get a job.

Third, the Eighth Amendment forbids certain punishments; it doesn’t say anything about what can be made a crime.  The “cruel and unusual” language comes from a clause in Britain’s 1689 Bill of Rights that was a response to the Spanish Inquisition. Criminalize whatever you want, but the punishment absolutely cannot be the rack, the wheel, knee splitters, thumb screws and so on.

That’s it.

But with just two more votes on the court, these deranged justices would turn every city in America into a dystopian nightmare where zombie drug addicts crap outdoors and get high all day.

Of course, that’s nothing compared to Trump dropping MOAB bombs on his political opponents — so get back to those fascinating hypotheticals, American journalists.

     COPYRIGHT 2024 ANN COULTER

The Moscow-Delhi Axis

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From Arktos.

Modi and Putin are currently defining the structure of the Moscow-Delhi axis, one of the most crucial pillars of a multipolar world order. Bharat (also known as India) is a state-civilization. Russia-Eurasia is another state-civilization. Clarifying their relations in terms of geopolitics, economics, and culture is fundamental.

We are all now learning to think in multipolar terms, which is a nonlinear system.

Empirically, I have developed a hypothesis: for the stability of a multipolar system, each pole should have no more than one main opponent. If our main opponent is the West, all other poles should be allies. This principle should guide all others in forming their alliances. Only those who aim to be global hegemons and seek to establish a unipolar dominance can afford to have more than one opponent. However, this will ultimately lead to their downfall.

From a pragmatic standpoint, it is crucial for the hegemon to ensure that other poles have more than one opponent, preferably excluding the West. This strategy makes it easier to control such poles.

India has issues with China and, to a lesser extent, with the Islamic world mainly through Pakistan, but not exclusively). This drives India closer to the West, with which it also has historical grievances (such as colonialism). Therefore, India needs to understand the logic of multipolarity more clearly, and Russia, with which India has no conflicts, can greatly assist in this.

Russia is currently on the front line of the conflict with the hegemon, making the construction of multipolarity and the promotion of its philosophy our natural mission.

(translated by Constantin von Hoffmeister)

JTA on the French Election

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JTA: “French voters reject far right — but elevate left-wing alliance with history of antisemitism allegations”

In a surprise outcome, French voters rejected a far-right party with antisemitic roots — but elevated a left-wing alliance that has faced antisemitism allegations of its own.

The country’s most prominent far-left politician (Mélencon), meanwhile, vowed in his victory speech to push to recognize a Palestinian state. …

“We will have a prime minister from the New Popular Front,” Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the French far-left leader, posted on X on Sunday night. “We will be able to decide many things by decree. On the international level, we will have to agree to recognize the State of Palestine.” [Of course, this is interpreted by Jews as anti-Semitism. The left seems to be more of a problem for Jews in France than in the U.S. Imagine a serious  Democrat presidential candidate saying the U.S. should support a Palestinian state.]

…

The result is a setback for Le Pen’s party and a relief to the many Jews who consider it radioactive. The party’s founders include Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has been repeatedly convicted of hate speech and Holocaust denial, and Pierre Bousequet, who served in the Nazi Party’s Waffen-SS. Candidates in this election had also been accused of antisemitism.

But Sunday marked a triumph for Mélenchon, the leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, who has been accused of dog whistling, echoing antisemitic stereotypes and dismissing the threat of antisemitism. Even as the French government has reported a surge in attacks on Jews — including more than 360 incidents in the first three months of 2024, a 300% increase from 2023 — Mélenchon called antisemitism in France “residual” and also repeatedly criticized those demonstrating against antisemitism.

The vote, and result, put many French Jews in an uncomfortable position. Political scientist Jean-Yves Camus said before the vote that he felt “trapped” by the far left, especially as the more moderate Socialists entered into a coalition with Mélenchon’s party. (The leader of France’s center-right party had likewise made waves by endorsing National Rally.)

“We are quite angry and disappointed,” Camus told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “As Jews, we feel betrayed and we think it would have been much better if the Socialist party had not entered into this kind of alliance with the far left.”

Many French Jews say that rhetoric from the far left has opened a door to antisemitism. According to a poll from the American Jewish Committee in Europe, 92% of French Jews believe that France Unbowed has “contributed” to rising antisemitism.

Now, deadlock appears to be in France’s future and may domiate the remaining years of Macron’s term, which ends in 2027. Following the race, centrist Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who has Jewish roots, said he planned to step down.

…

A shock for some French Jews came in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, when several far-left politicians refused to explicitly condemn Hamas’ attack on Israel. Le Pen, meanwhile, has sought to detoxify her party’s image, renouncing antisemitism, denouncing the Hamas attack and pushing a pro-Israel position. The party now emphasizes anti-immigration and Euro-sceptic stances.

CRIF, an umbrella organization of French Jews, has urged the community to reject both the far right and far left. But ahead of Sunday’s vote, faced with the rise of France Unbowed, some prominent Jewish voices called for the community to vote for Le Pen’s party instead. One striking expression of support for National Rally came from Serge Klarsfeld, a French Holocaust survivor famed for hunting down Nazi criminals and pressing for their prosecution.

“The National Rally supports Jews, supports the state of Israel,” Klarsfeld, 88, said in a nationally televised interview last month. “When there is an anti-Jewish party and a pro-Jewish party, I will vote for the pro-Jewish party.”

Alain Finkielkraut, a prominent French philosopher, also said in the magazine Le Point that he would “consider the nightmare of having to vote for the National Rally to block antisemitism.” Meanwhile, a group of French Jewish community leaders met with Le Pen on Monday.

But elements of National Rally’s antisemitic history resurfaced during the election. Ludivine Daoudi, a National Rally candidate in Normandy, was forced to withdraw from the second round of voting when a photo surfaced of her wearing a Nazi cap emblazoned with a swastika — after she won nearly 20% of votes in the first round. Other candidates circulated antisemitic and racist posts on social media.

It is difficult to ascertain how Jews voted nationally, since France bans collecting data on the religion and ethnicity of its citizens. But some areas with large Jewish communities showcased the dilemma Jews faced in this election.

The Parisian suburb of Sarcelles, for example, has both a Jewish neighborhood that has traditionally voted right wing and an immigrant neighborhood that usually votes for the left. (Many of the residents, both Jewish and Muslim, are immigrants from North Africa). Sarcelles handed 27% of its votes to National Rally in the election’s first round — less than the party’s vote share nationwide, but nearly double its support in the district two years ago. In the second round, however, a far-left candidate, Romain Eskenazi, won the area with more than 60% of the vote.

Eskenazi, who himself has a Jewish father, chose to campaign in Sarcelles even though his centrist predecessor believed it would go for the right, according to a report in La Vie, a Franch newsmagazine. He was heckled at a synagogue and told by a Jewish voter, “You are associated with evil. I voted for you two years ago, but now I won’t be able to,” according to the report.

“What if you are in a constituency where there is no moderate candidate, and you have a choice between Mélenchon’s party and the National Rally?” said Camus, the political scientist, ahead of the vote. “What do you do? Do you stay at home? Just say, ‘It’s none of my business?’”

 

Some commentary on the British election

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Tobias Langdon sent me an email with an article from Spectator, noting “it’s a case of shabbos goy out, shabbos goy in.” But he thinks that “Labour’s lunacies” may end up being “very helpful in the long run.” This could well be the case, as Matt Goodwin’s comments (via email) below illustrate (he emphasizes that Labour’s win is not anywhere near as decisive as it appears because of low voter turnout and the Reform Party taking away votes from Conservatives in many districts).
The big story of course is the elite class and their globalist, pro-immigration, pro-multicultural attitudes versus patriotic, nationalist, often working class voters—quite analogous to the Trump (his rhetoric at least) vs. the radical left Democrats in the U.S. It’s not clear whether there is a majority of such people in either country at this point, as both parties continue to import voters from the Third World. But what is clear is that an awful lot of White people are furious. Hyper-polarization will continue.
Why Jews returned to Labour, Jake Wallis Simons, editor of The Jewish Chronicle.
…
As the late Rabbi Lionel Blue said: ‘Jews are like everybody else but more so.’ This is especially true in politics, where radical movements that are subversive to western values inevitably come for the Jews first. [Nonsense.  Jews have been the backbone of the left, including the radical left, in Western societies throughout the twentieth century into the present. And “Western values” are interpreted by Jews as having nothing to do with preserving the historical Western peoples. What we are seeing here is a return of Jews to the Labour Party because Corbyn is long gone and Starmer with his Jewish wife are entirely kosher.]
A question that has been foremost in the minds of many British voters over the past six weeks has been whether Labour – and Sir Keir Starmer – have changed. Just five years ago, it was a party of cranks, extremists, bigots and anti-Semites [i.e., critics of Israel]. Just five years ago, Sir Keir appeared to do his utmost to put their hempy chieftain in No. 10. Could the country trust him and his party now? … [I’m omitting how Starmer waffled on Corbyn like a typical Western unprincipled politician.]
The years since 2015 have been painful for the Jews, particularly those on the left, who suffered the ignominy of having their political home reject them in the most vicious of ways.
After Corbyn’s defenestration, Jewish progressives felt a powerful desire to take Sir Keir at his word and return to the fold. But something held many of them back. To wish for Labour to have changed was all very well, but to allow that to cloud one’s judgment could lead to even greater ruination.
This uncertainty was evident as recently as two weeks ago, when despite a huge swing of 50 points to Labour, enough members of the community remained unconvinced enough to deprive Sir Keir of a majority in our polling. A week later, however, the matter seemed settled. Labour was kosher again.
Partly, this was due to the determined efforts of Sir Keir himself in ‘rooting out’ anti-Semitism from the party. Partly it was due to the way in which he steered Labour carefully but insistently back towards the centre; when parties veer to the radical fringes, it is never good for the Jews. [The Jews learned that their leadership in radical leftist movements
But it was also due to the Labour rank-and-file, who matched Sir Keir’s efforts with more quotidian goodwill gestures of their own. Sackman, a barrister specialising in environment-related cases who has been vice-chair of the Jewish Labour Movement for more than eight years, was an excellent choice of candidate for Finchley. She and her team worked hard to rebuild bridges. Last night, their efforts were rewarded.
The cumulative effect of a party’s culture can be a powerful thing, for bad as well as for good. God knows we have seen both from Labour over the last decade.
It would be a mistake to suggest that all the difficult questions about Sir Keir’s support for Corbyn have been adequately addressed
As the sun rises over a Labour Britain, I think of Dame Louise Ellman, the veteran MP for Liverpool Riverside, who was viciously hounded out of the party during the Corbyn years. I discussed the matter with her at some length a couple of months ago. At one point, she told me, local party members launched a project to ‘dehumanise’ her. Nobody used her name, referring to her instead as ‘the MP’. Nobody made eye contact with her. Whenever she entered a room, people walked out.
This was all because of her very reasonable lack of antipathy for Israel, her ancestral homeland. When brought to life with anecdotes like this, such blatant anti-Semitism makes the skin crawl. Dame Louise had more reason than anyone to stay away from Labour for the rest of her life; but in 2021, she rejoined it. ‘I am confident that, under the leadership of Keir Starmer, the party is once again led by a man of principle in whom the British people and Britain’s Jews can have trust’, she said at the time.
She wasn’t the only one. Last year, Luciana Berger – who had also suffered torrents of abuse at the hands of Corbynistas – also returned. If these brave women could show forgiveness and confidence in the new regime, the stage was set for other left-wing Jews to follow suit.
It would be a mistake to suggest that all the difficult questions about Sir Keir’s support for Corbyn have been adequately addressed. In politics, some things will never be fully understood. It is certain, however, that the majority of British Jews, particularly those inclined to the left, believe in Labour again. They have Sir Keir to thank for that.
As a result of Corbyn’s ascendency, Jews defected to the Conservative Party but now they are back in their natural home on the left after pushing the Conservatives toward the left on issues like immigration, resulting in its eventual disastrous defeat. As I noted in my second reply to Nathan Cofnas (April, 2018):
The acid test would be to see what happens if a political party begins to oppose Israel. We already know what is happening in the U.K. as a result of the Labour Party’s criticism of Israel under Jeremy Corbyn. Jews, who had been important funders of Labour (Jews as 0.5% of the population donated fully one-third of Labour’s budget as recently as 2015), have substantially withdrawn their financial support. Of course, Labour may receive some donations from pro-BDS-type Jews, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the donations that appear to be contingent on support for Israel. (Incidentally, this is an excellent reason to prioritize the study of the Israel Lobby over pro-BDS Jews.) I suspect that if the Democrats in the U.S. become as critical of Israel as Labour is now, Jewish financial contributions will dry up—even from Jews who appear to have other priorities at this time.
This is already happening in the U.S. Criticism of Israel has become a major issue among Democrats, resulting in huge money going to pro-Israel Democrats: “Next up, Cori Bush: After Jamaal Bowman defeat, pro-Israel donors pivot to Missouri.”  As always, money is the key to Jewish political clout.
Meanwhile, I suppose the results for the Reform Party are a bit encouraging. From Matt Goodwin (who is a Jewish conservative):

… But the real story at this election was elsewhere.

The striking Tory collapse was most dramatic in the most strongly pro-Brexit areas of the country where the party was completely smashed apart not by Labour or the Lib Dems but Nigel Farage and Reform UK.

As I’ve warned for months and months, in this Substack, the Reform revolt has now hit Rishi Sunak and the Tories much harder than the Tories ever expected.

While the Tory vote collapsed by 12 points in less strongly pro-Brexit seats, it collapsed, remarkably, by nearly 30 points in the most staunchly pro-Brexit areas.

In precisely those parts of the country that are filled with working-class, non-graduate, older, hardworking, and deeply patriotic people who have watched the evolution of the Tories since Brexit with a combination of shock, anger, and horror.

In these places, a massive chunk of the Tory electorate decamped en masse to Farage and Reform, with Farage essentially inheriting the post-Brexit realignment that Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak completely squandered.

In these areas, then, Farage has just picked up where he left off.

After all, it was Farage and the UK Independence Party, not the Tories, that first began cultivating these areas during the 2010-2015 parliament, when David Cameron mocked the Faragists as an assortment of ‘fruitcakes, loonies, and closet racists’.

It was then Farage, far more so than Boris Johnson, who then cultivated them further during the Brexit referendum, campaigning deep in the Labour heartlands, while much of the political establishment did not have any idea what was coming.

And it was then Farage and the Brexit Party, in 2019, which returned to these areas while much of the elite class was deriding their voters as thickoes, Gammons, and racists and trying to force them to vote again at a second referendum.

And now Farage and Reform, nearly ten years on from Brexit, have become the main beneficiary of all this, once again outflanking a Tory elite class that has consistently underestimated, ignored, or mocked the larger part of its post-Brexit coalition.

Labour’s vote, meanwhile, especially in England, has remained static.

As I’ve also been writing for months, and as the result of the election confirms, there really is no mass public enthusiasm for Keir Starmer and the Labour Party.

Yes, Labour now has an enormous majority.

But it is one that rests on just 35% of the national vote, lower than what Jeremy Corbyn attracted in 2017 and lower than anything Tony Blair achieved.

At the start of the election I said this would become the ‘None of the Above’ election and that is what’s happened, with millions of voters rejecting Labour and the Tories.

Turnout has slumped to the second lowest level since the 1880s, while the combined share of the vote for the two big parties has crashed to the lowest level since the modern two-party system began.

I discussed and successfully forecast much of this during our online Zoom Town Hall meeting with our paying subscribers the night before the general election.

In fact, no governing party has ever won a majority on a share of the vote as low as what Keir Starmer and the Labour Party just won.

Keir Starmer and his new Ministers might tell themselves they won back the working-class and ordinary people but, actually, their support in England remained static.

It barely moved at all.

This is one of the most important — yet so far neglected — aspects of the result.

Sir Keir’s massive majority owes more to the sheer scale of this Tory collapse than to any eruption of mass public enthusiasm for the Labour Party.

Labour’s share of the vote in England stayed as flat as a pancake, only increasing by 0.6 per cent, while it actually declined in Wales.

It was only in Scotland where Labour surged, which was, again, something I’ve been warning about for a long time.

In England, the big story was that Reform’s share of the vote increased by 13 points, inflicting enormous losses on the Tories in hundreds of seats.

Here’s just one statistic to consider.

Support for Reform was greater than the margin of defeat for the Tories in nearly 180 seats, underlining just how much damage Farage & Co. caused Conservatives.

While winning five seats, 4 million votes, and finishing second in around 100 seats (I predicted 1-3 seats, 5 million votes, and lots of second places), Reform not only cost the Tories seats but is now embedded as the opposition in lots of Labour heartlands.

“We are coming for Labour now”, said Farage, yesterday, pointing to this two-flank strategy. Keep hitting Tories in the south; open a second flank on Labour in the north.Reform’s second places (on right). Guardian data team

So, why did this happen?

Because, as I’ve written for the last three years, on this Substack, the Conservative Party no longer really knows what it is anymore.

It is completely lost.

It does not know who has been voting for it since the Brexit referendum, or why.

The Tories are critically ill, gripped by a full-blown identity crisis — no longer sure who they are, what they believe, or what they are meant to say.

Steadily but surely, ever since 2019, the Tories angered and alienated its core voters by doing the very opposite of what they said they would do.

They failed to control our borders.

They failed to lower legal immigration.

They failed to cut taxes and the size of the state.

They failed to take on woke, exposing our children to ideas with no basis in science.

And they failed to level-up the left behind regions.

That is why so many voters jumped ship to Farage, who after eight attempts now has a seat in the House of Commons, or simply stayed at home, refusing to vote at all.

The Tory coalition, as I said it would back in January, completely imploded under the weight of this betrayal, apathy, and widespread disillusionment.

And if you look at what Tory-to-Reform switchers want it is crystal clear, because I have asked them, surveying more than 3,000 of them for this Substack.

They want to stop the small boat invasion, which is making a mockery of our claim to be a self-governing, sovereign nation which can control its own borders.

And they want to dramatically lower legal mass immigration.

These are perfectly reasonable requests, and they are ones the Tories will now have to engage with if they are to stand any chance at rebuilding their coalition and surviving as a viable political party in the future.

Because remember this, too, the pro-Brexit, anti-immigration chunk of the new Tory electorate is MUCH bigger than the anti-Brexit, pro-immigration elite minority chunk that will now dominate the debate about where the Tories should go next.

What we will now hear, endlessly, from the likes of William Hague, Rory Stewart, George Osborne and other members of the Tory elite class is that the party must now “return to the centre”.

What they mean by “centre” is a place that only reflects the values, tastes, and priorities of elites like them but which, as we have shown for years, alienates and angers a much bigger part of the new, post-Brexit Tory electorate.

If you think the Tories can return to being a viable party by targeting the cities, university towns, and affluent parts of the commuter belt that were just taken over by Labour and the Liberal Democrats and have been trending leftwards for the last decade then good luck to you. That is the path to political extinction.

No. The only way forward for the Tories, if they are to survive, and there is no guarantee they will, is to re-engage fully with all those voters in non-London England.

To completely reinvent the party —its message, philosophy, ideology — so they can appeal to the large majority of voters in this country who desperately want an end to mass immigration, mass taxation and regulation, mass woke, and mass chaos.

Because if they don’t then Nigel Farage certainly will.

And make no mistake.

For the Tories— this really is a battle for political survival.

Because with Nigel Farage and Reform now ensconced in Westminster, with millions of voters looking for something different, the few Tories who remain in parliament are going to have to get their act together — and fast.

This means coming up with a credible, compelling, and clear response to voters’ sincerely held concerns over mass immigration and the borders.

It means coming up with a far more resonant and appealing brand of Conservatism that is more in tune with ordinary working people.

And, most of all, it means treating their voters with the respect and recognition they deserve.

Because if the Tories do not do these things, then they will soon find themselves not just on life support but heading to the morgue.

Senilitygate and Mrs. Alito’s Flags

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Can you imagine if The New York Times had covered the Biden White House as closely as it covered Justice Samuel Alito’s wife’s collection of novelty flags?

The media’s playing Praetorian Guard for one party isn’t good for democracy, but oddly, it’s not even good for the Democrats. Biden’s open-mouthed, faraway stare at a nationally televised debate isn’t the first shock revelation to rock a Democratic candidate in the middle of a presidential campaign.

Al Gore spent 20 years boasting about his service in Vietnam. “I took my turn regularly on the perimeter in these little firebases out in the boonies. Something would move, we’d fire first and ask questions later,” he told Vanity Fair, among other macho quotes. And then he decided to run for president, and we found out Gore had a personal bodyguard in Vietnam, the most dangerous weapon he carried was a typewriter, and he left after three months.

John Kerry claimed to be a valiant, Purple Heart-deserving Vietnam veteran who spent Christmas 1968 in Cambodia “despite President Nixon’s assurances that there was no combat action in this neutral territory” — all dutifully reported in the press. Then he ran for president, and it was suddenly discovered that more than 280 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth called Kerry a liar, his purple heart was based on a self-inflicted wound that required the life-saving application of a Band-Aid, his boat was never in Cambodia, and Nixon wasn’t president in 1968.

Right up until last Thursday, we’ve been assured by the entire media conglomerate that Joe Biden is the sharpest he’s ever been, “intellectually, analytically” — the words of MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough just last month.

Then 50 million people watching the first presidential debate found out the leader of the free world barely knows his shapes and colors. About halfway through the debate, the stenographer typing out the closed-captioning committed suicide.

Typical Biden sentence: “We’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the with the COVID, excuse me, with, um, dealing with everything we have to do with, uh, look, if. We finally beat Medicare.”

Cut to senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates: “President Biden takes round-the-world trips that reporters publicly call exhausting and has gone to two active war zones. [He] works around the clock and does many evening events.” Right. The only clock Biden works around is the one that tells him it’s time to take his meds.

Reporters’ suck-uppery to Democrats is the mirror opposite of what I describe in “Resistance Is Futile! How the Trump-Hating Left Lost Its Collective Mind,” The media’s hate-fueled attacks on Trump — He’s Hitler! He’s a rapist! He’s a Russian collaborator! — not only fall apart upon the slightest examination, but they keep helping him. At this point, Trump’s about one mug shot away from a landslide this November. Maybe journalists should try working through their rage with psychiatrists instead of in their reporting.

Has the debate fiasco finally led them to learn their lesson?

Nope!

In the least surprising opinion of the term, this week the Supreme Court found that the president has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts that are exclusively committed to him by the Constitution; presumptive immunity over all other official acts; and zero immunity for unofficial acts. Courts are to determine what is or isn’t an official act based on precedent, context, etc.

“Orders the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”

This demented interpretation was wholeheartedly endorsed by The New York Times and fanboyed by the rest of the media. Twitter and MSNBC have been chockablock with hysterical women claiming the opinion gives the president the right to be a dictator and assassinate rivals.

Try to grasp what they are saying. Their argument is: OMG! The courts are going to find that assassinating political rivals is within the president’s exclusive constitutional duties! Therefore, our only protection is to submit a president’s acts to the courts — the same courts that we expect to find a “The president shall assassinate political rivals” clause in the Constitution.

Liberals are incapable of thinking in abstract terms. They can’t conceive of life beyond the next election or the possibility that a rule of general applicability will also apply to one of their guys someday. (Anybody remember Bill Clinton?) Every court opinion is evaluated on a single metric: Will this help or hurt Trump right now?

Thus, for example, the Times editorial denounced the immunity ruling solely because the decision would allow presidents to “encourag[e] an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.”

No mention of presidents interning Japanese (FDR); expropriating gold from U.S. citizens (FDR); seizing the steel mills (Truman); using the CIA to spy on a rival’s political campaign, and the FBI to bug an opponent’s campaign plane (LBJ); bombing a foreign country on the eve of his scheduled impeachment (Clinton); or flinging open the border in direct violation of federal law (Obama, Biden).

But that’s not even the Times’ most ridiculous response to the immunity ruling. Moments after the (mundane) decision came out, the Times slapped this headline on its homepage:

“Thomas and Alito took part in the case, despite calls for their recusal.”

Yes, despite demands by utter imbeciles at the Times that Alito recuse himself because his wife collects novelty flags, and Thomas because the Democratic Party has never hated anyone so much … they declined.

It’s a wonder these media bloodhounds had no idea that the sitting president of the United States is a vegetable.

     COPYRIGHT 2024 ANN COULTER

“The Incredible Lightness of Biden”

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In my recent blog on the debate I contended that everyone knew Biden was impaired—even the big liberal media who were covering up for  him because they were satisfied that he was doing a great job because they were getting what they wanted out of him policy-wise because of the people around him who were actually running his administration. Yesterday’s appearance where he commented on the SCOTUS decision on presidential immunity isn’t going to change anyone’s minds. He read a teleprompter for 5 minutes and then left, taking no questions. Same for his North Carolina speech last Friday and a fund-raising talk in the Hamptons (where all the New York financial money lives).

But the other point was that Biden won’t quit because he is fundamentally a typical American sociopath politician who cannot possibly be moved by asking him to do something for the good of the country. Sociopaths are typically self-centered and narcissistic, and I mentioned an article that I couldn’t locate that showed this side of his character. Well, Tobias Langdon found it: “The Incredible Lightness of Biden,” by neocon John Podhoretz, August 19, 2012 in the New York Post. Notice that this was 12 years ago when he was 69. Biden is incoherent and in love with what’s coming out of his mouth to the point that he assumes people are hanging on his every word when they’re not. Not exactly an endorsement for his people skills. The big question is why Obama picked him for vice-president when, as Podhoretz notes, everyone in Washington has a similar story about Biden.

The incredible lightness of Biden

Everyone who has done time in Washington politics or media has a Joe Biden story, and every story is pretty much the same. Here’s mine:

A quarter-century ago, Sen. Joseph R. Biden of Delaware, then in his third term, came in for a lunch with a few editors and reporters at the newspaper where I worked. Its editor welcomed Biden and asked him a question about whatever story was at the top of the news agenda that day.

Biden started talking. And talking. And talking. He spoke and he gesticulated. He wandered off into secondary subjects, and secondary subjects of the secondary subjects. He conjured up a memory of his childhood, and then told a tale from his first campaign.

After 20 minutes without so much as a breath, it was clear to me and others around the table that there was something wrong — that our guest simply did not know how to conclude his peroration.

We shifted in our chairs. Someone coughed. Someone else sighed. The door loomed behind us, tormenting us with the blessings of an escape we simply could not make.

It was not until 45 minutes after he had begun that Joseph I. Biden simply ran out of gas. He came to no conclusion, no closing thought. He just stopped talking, looked down, and at last took a bite of food and drank some water.

I had never been through anything like it. Biden had displayed a literally clinical display of logorrhea, a term Google defines for me as “pathologically incoherent, repetitive speech.”

That condition has never gone away. On April 3 of this year, Biden appeared at a high school in Norfolk, Va., where he was asked a question about gas prices.

“I’m going to give you a brief answer,” he said. “I’m going to give it to you as quick and as straight as I can.”

He then proceeded to speak . . . for 11 minutes. You can watch the video. It’s a little bit like watching Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man.” Biden walked back and forth, making little eye contact with the audience, as his thoughts poured out of his mouth. Going on. And on.

He spent decades in the Senate doing just this, which was permissible since there are no limits imposed on the amount of time a senator may speak. In her book, “The Obamas,” Jodi Kantor tells a story about Barack Obama, in the first of his three years in the Senate, listening to an endless Biden oration. The future president scribbled a note to an aide. It said: “Kill. Me. Now.”

…

Some notes on Controlled opposition, spies and snitches.

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It is reasonable to assume that an article about this topic will be at some point read by a member of the controlled opposition. If this is you, relax: your name will not be mentioned!

The spy and the snitch concentrate on collecting information, but the controlled opposition concentrates ón putting ideas in your head.

It’s a tale as old as history. If the New Testament is accurate, Judas did the job two thousand years ago. They appear many times in history before and since. In the 1920s, the Soviets celebrated Judas and set up their own fake opposition amongst emigrant Russian communities around the world, snaring many an unwary and unfortunate person.

George Orwell described the kind, elderly man, nostalgic for the good old days, who turned a blind eye to the opposition meeting in his spare room. Surprise, surprise, even back then, the spare room had a hidden recording device…

A group fighting a legal case against McDonalds in the 1990s found out later that the majority of people attending their support ,meetings were snitches of one sort or another.

It is reasonable to assume that today there is massive use of controlled opposition. It is quite possible to be at an anti government meeting and for a majority of those present to be snitches. Wherever you are in the world, no doubt you can think of some suspicious characters who claim to oppose the government.

The Law of Unintended Consequences is one of the most inspiring and optimistic scientific laws ever discovered. They use controlled opposition to control us, but it has the seeds of its own destruction.

An East German Stasi agent reported that the early demonstrations against the regime included huge numbers of Stasi agents. They had to attend the protests to keep their cover as anti-government activists, but their attendance increased the numbers and encouraged more people to come out and protest.

Controlled opposition is better than no opposition at all. An agent must do some activism to maintain his cover as an activist. Anyone suspected of being an agent should be encouraged to do as much activism as possible.

Here is a categorization of different types of controlled opposition and some hints on how to counteract it:

The Spy Hunter: This character accuses others of being controlled opposition, often accurately. This gives the accuser credibility and promotes division.

The Obvious Spy: Even the kind, trusting and naïve among us notice there is something odd about this character—like the character parading around with a swastika at the Charlottesvill demonstration. This means we waste time thinking about him, and we do not notice the more subtle spy in our midst.

The Distractor: sends us looking the wrong direction at the wrong time. They will shout loudly about some horrific State crime from ten years ago, while exactly the same crime is being committed now.

The Dodgy Hero: This character says all the right things, and even does some of the right things. But his personal and professional life show him to have been dishonest and untrustworthy. This taints what truth he tells. Has he really reformed?

The Downer: As an intelligent person, perhaps you are aware that Things Are Bad? Mass vaccination, mass immigration, mass dumbing down and heavy Zionist influence in your politics, wherever you live, not excluding Gaza, Iran, Russia or China. But spend half an hour with the Downer, and you will realise things are even worse than that…His job is to frighten you with sometimes truthful information and reduce your will to resist: What’s the point? They are too powerful.

Dr Feel Good DoNothing Dude: Three main variants: There is a 5D chess games going on, OR the Good Aliens are coming to rescue us, OR even Jesus Christ himself is working behind the scenes to fix everything. They offer a similar solution: do nothing to publicly challenge the system.

The Hater: various philosophers over the millennia have warned of the danger to ourselves of overindulgence in the emotions of hate and anger, no matter how justified. These emotions warp our personalities and cloud our judgement. They are no doubt useful — in small, brief amounts — in warfare, punishment beatings, and torture, but any long term indulgence in these emotions is dangerous to the indulger. The Hater encourages us to hate and feel anger. The sensible person transmutes these emotions into determination to take useful action.

The Exaggerator (or the Bad Data guy): This character makes a truthful statement, but uses bad data to back it up. An example is a report by a qualified academic critcising the Covid nonsense, with various citations and quotes. When researched, the quotes were wrong or even non-existent! Someone went to a lot of trouble to fake dozens of false quotations, presumably to discredit the main argument.

* * *

One way of dealing with controlled opposition is to laugh at it! It is worth mentioning at all meetings: Hey guys, there’s a possibility that there is someone in this gathering who is a snitch. Our aim is to live such exemplary lives, that the snitch will switch over to our side. We also have a budget for snitches. Whatever they’re paying you, we’ll pay you double. Triple your money and double your fun.

Spies who have told their story often mention how nervous they are when the conversation turns to the topic of spies. Not surprising. It’s worth doing often, in a joking way, obviously without naming or even hinting at anyone. Discretely note reactions of suspicious persons…

By attending Controlled Opposition events, an honest man can make contact with other honest people. Any such event will be designed to fail, and the honest man can point out the failures in a light hearted and helpful way, naming no names, making no allegations, of course. This might embarrass the Controlled Opposition to make their next event less obviously designed to fail.

It is sometimes possible to cajole, and embarrass and joke the Controlled Opposition into taking effective action.

It’s probably a good idea to be on good terms personally with your local Controlled Opposition. The jovial smile, the manly embrace, cheerful conversation about topics of mutual interest. “Chickenfeed” is a useful term from the spy world: truthful information which the other side already knows or which is irrelevant. Never even hint at your suspicions, but occasionally talk in general terms about snitches, no names of course.

Being friendly with your local snitch(es) has personal advantages: Perhaps the snitch will leave your name and activities out of some of his reports. Perhaps your name will be at the end of the activists arrest list, not at the top. Perhaps he might even warn you ten minutes before the cops are due to arrest you.

Sometimes, very, very rarely, the snitch will switch.  This happened in a protest against a Shell gas pipeline in County Mayo (Ireland) some years back. An Englishman had spent a decade as a deep cover snitch in various protest movements, even starting a family with one unsuspecting lady. But he snapped. The Government wanted to jail two of the protestors. The snitch realised that he liked the protestors more than his paymasters. He went to court, gave evidence that he was a snitch, and that the protestors were innocent. Case dismissed!

Alexander Solzhenitsyn tells us how he was able to spot snitches amongst his fellow prisoners: He could sense them.  If you get an odd feeling about someone, pay careful attention to that feeling.

A friend suggests a “three strikes” approach. Notice one suspicious thing? Ok, keep observing. Three suspicious things, and you’ve got a definite!

As the Welsh say: Hwyl!

(translates as: Have Fun or Go Sailing.)