NRO's The Corner: Obamacare ‘like a house on fire’ with more flammable parts yet to come

from that stop-Trump piece:

On its face, this theory is irrational to the point of absurdity — if I am told one more time that it makes sense to nominate a single-payer-supporting defender of Planned Parenthood because Congress’s repeal-and-defund bill was vetoed by the incumbent, I shall begin to order bourbon in bulk.

Lev Bronshtein • 5 minutes ago

National Review has spearheaded a GOP Establishment that is, in a nutshell, a traitorous cabal against the American people.

Offshoring our jobs, bringing in hordes of foreigners to undercut Americans on the jobs that are left--the GOPe is the only class to benefit.

Harry Holder Lev Bronshtein • 3 minutes ago

You act like jobs and your neighborhood turning into Guadalajara are more important than conservative talking points on free trade and open borders.

id du Lev Bronshtein • 3 minutes ago

I once had a malignant tumor that did nothing but lecture and belittle me. I had it forcibly removed.

•... Lev Bronshtein • 3 minutes ago

Unions and welfare state did that....nice rant though

enjoyed his use of 'redounded', 'pace' and the seven years war in a piece despairing of his party's base

"Melt down the fences if you have to" was also great in that regards.

trumpist revolt against neoconservatism/nro has been fascinating.

lotta trump fans are antisemites, if twitter is any measure

Trump, standing athwart NRO and telling it to stop

maybe the democrats will notice the nixon pact is unraveling and actually offer something to the underclass before they learn how to goosestep

"Mr. Gorbachev, melt down this fence."

Hmm. Doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it?

Earring wearer and civil rights history illiterate Kevin Williamson:

But, beyond that, the presidential blog post (what an odd thing to write!) and his previous statements remind us of something more fundamental: Barack Obama rejects the notion of the rule of law as such, and he nominates to the bench justices who also reject it, which is dangerous and corrosive. Contrary to the president’s insistence, yes, the law is — or is intended to be — a set of abstractions, a neutral body of rules that applies equally to everybody, be they gay, straight, black, white, old, single mother, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, or Methodists. That is the beauty of the rule of law — and it is, incidentally, the only thing that makes the rule of law useful to the poor and the marginalized.

President Obama and like-minded thinkers (“thinkers”) believe that the law should be a respecter of persons for purposes of restitution, putting a thumb on the scale in favor of the poor, the powerless, minorities, etc. There is good reason to object to that on principle — you either believe in equality under the law or you don’t — but there’s a practical reason to reject that, too: If the law is a respecter of persons, you can bet that it will have outsized respect for persons of wealth and power. Consider all of the economic policy over the last 60 years that has been, in theory, aimed at “leveling” some imaginary “playing field” (one of the great examples of mistaking the metaphor for the thing itself) or raising blue-collar wages, or promoting manufacturing, or stimulating the economy, etc. Who actually benefited from all that? In almost every case, it was the powerful and the politically connected, and generally the wealthy. (The owners of Solyndra thank you very much for your investment in their well-being.) The powerless, above all, should want a rule of law that is truly neutral — it is their best chance at achieving real justice.

thinkers (“thinkers”)

this just isn't how you do snarky scare quotes

http://twitchy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/KevinNR_fb1.png

Here's another beaut: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/431807/guantanamo-bay-detainees-why-not-shoot-them

Why Not Shoot Them?
A not-entirely-facetious consideration of the Gitmo conundrum

This takes us to a broader moral question about the use of execution per se. While U.S. military policy is not governed by Catholic teaching, it is worth considering Rome’s thinking on the question. If you listened only to U.S. bishops, who have an unfortunate weakness for peddling social-justice nostrums, you’d be tempted to conclude that the Catholic Church is categorically opposed to the practice of capital punishment. In fact, canon law is much more sophisticated than the Nerf-headed progressivism that dominates the American episcopal corpus, and it takes account of such relevant considerations as whether the sparing of an offender’s life might put innocents in mortal danger. We already have adjudicated that question: That the prisoners at Gitmo present a mortal danger both to U.S. forces abroad as well as civilians in the United States and around the world is precisely why they remain prisoners at Gitmo. Those who have been judged (often wrongly!) to present no future threat are discharged. Catholic or otherwise, the fact that these men are likely to commit unspeakable outrages of the sort that we have come to expect from the worldwide Islamic-supremacist movement is unavoidably relevant.

If the law is a respecter of persons, you can bet that it will have outsized respect for persons of wealth and power.

I love that Kevin Williamson takes as his default position the idea that in the USA the law is applied impartially, without respect to persons, and that wealth and power have no sway in our courts, but Obama threatens this ideal state of perfect justice.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CcMOlMEW8AAwf1x.jpg

close enough

@MediaBuzzFNC
On #Mediabuzz, @RichLowry says he & National Review haven't decided whether they could back Trump if he is nominee bit.ly/1oJkf5n

lol

Kevin Williamson:

Donald Trump, all the best people insist, represents something radical and new on the American political scene. There’s something to that, though it’s not entirely true: Woodrow Wilson had similar strong-man fantasies, and Franklin Roosevelt had admiring words for Benito Mussolini. But Donald Trump also represents something that should by now be utterly familiar. He is, of course, the second coming of Barack Obama.

As David French points out today, every election is a test of character, and Americans are just now giving every indication that they intend to flunk this test in spectacular fashion. Why shouldn’t they? They flunked the last two, too, for similar reasons.

Barack Obama had, and has, a remarkable ability to inspire irrational devotion among his minions, whom he holds in more or less open contempt. The Hollywood types were literally singing hymns to his name, you’ll recall. Trump inspires a similar abject devotion. Observe that his actual history in business suggests very strongly that he was lucky to inherit a great deal of money – 2006 was “a great time to start a mortgage company,” he insisted – or that the man himself has confessed to exaggerating his wealth, and you’ll get a stammering: “B-b-b-b-b-b-but, you’re not a billionaire!” Suggest that his fundamental rejection of basic things like property rights and free speech means that he isn’t a conservative, much less a constitutionalist, and they’ll scoff that you’re a purist. (The same people scoffing that you’re a purist also insist that such deviations from conservative orthodoxy as Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio have entertained are per se disqualifying.) Obama’s daft minions insisted that he was a “lightworker,” while Trump’s only boast that he is an “alpha male.” George H. W. Bush, who completed his flying mission in World War II with his airplane on fire after being shot in the head before bailing out over the Pacific and dodging angry Japanese intent on eating him? Meh. What’s that compared to playing a tough guy on television or throwing a temper tantrum about Macy’s?

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner

The NRO types who were literally insisting that the second GOP debate take place in Ronald Reagan's Air Force One.

George H. W. Bush, who completed his flying mission in World War II with his airplane on fire after being shot in the head before bailing out over the Pacific and dodging angry Japanese intent on eating him?

so Bush puking on the prime minister nearly 50 years later was revenge

surprising that Kev didn't also cite his idol Reagan liberating the concentration camps. oh wait

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cce5cihW0AUpG2I.jpg

haha, so their anti-Trump issue failed so spectacularly that they are falling back on the argument that Trump = Obama? Good luck with that one!

this is pretty good

http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11135756/donald-trump-nationalism

ymmv with yglesias explainer mode but the first two paras are like duuuuh of course

the anti-trump right trying to pin this all on obama or liberalism generally has been hilarious. so acrobatic, these guys

oh i put that on the wrong thread, whoops.

a more appropriate post: of all of the NRO stable i'm the most surprised that williamson isn't a trumpist -- the most cynical, the most pointlessly aggressive, etc.

They posted the John Oliver thing with no added commentary.

‏

@kathrynlopez 1h1 hour ago
The blessing in all this? A real nudge to consider what gifts we have and a renewed challenge to be good stewards & nurturers.

Kathryn Jean Lopez Retweeted
Richard Brookhiser ‏@RBrookhiser 17m17 minutes ago
"Be of good cheer. My religion steps in where my understanding falters and I feel faith as I lose confidence." Gouverneur Morris 6/13/1788

@kathrynlopez 12m12 minutes ago
Protect us, Lord, as we stay awake; watch over us as we sleep, that awake, we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep, rest in his peace.

Drink the blood of the unbelievers

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v87/Inuxx/gratuitoushatred_zpsqvkaqw1n.png

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v87/Inuxx/welcometoeurope_zpssq9neyaz.png

Jay Nordlinger March 1, 2016 6:53 PM @jaynordlinger

The GOP is suddenly smitten with hands. In his closing statement at the last debate, Ben Carson got all handsy: “Several years ago, a movie was made about these hands [i.e., his]. These hands, by the grace of God, have saved many lives and healed many families. And I’m asking you tonight, America, to join hands with me to heal, inspire, and revive America.”

Marco Rubio, most prominently, has been picking on Donald Trump’s hands. And here’s Trump, today: “I’ve always heard people say, ‘Donald, you have the most beautiful hands.’” Yeah, no doubt.

Anyway, if an anthropologist of the future peers at Republican politics in the ancient year of 2016, he might ask, “What was up with the hands?”

probly not the first thing they would ask

Tracer Hand / Chelsea Handler '20!

They can handle things!

"The prospect of a Trump-Clinton matchup therefore remains very real. That at this moment, with the country struggling to come to terms with its 21st-century circumstances, the two parties would reach for two 70-year-olds to save them from the future—both of them intensely unpopular, reckless with power, blinded by nostalgia, and devoid of vision—is awfully discouraging. And it leaves me wondering if the baby boomers, as voters and leaders, will ever stop wrecking the country."

damn

otm.

like the stopped clock that tells the right time once every geological era.

K-Lo:

I was e-mailing with a friend this week about an old favorite Bill speech of mine on “What Americanism Seeks to Be” and he responded: Bill Buckley, pray for us.

Dead people pray?

A current headline: "Meat Gave Us Marilyn Monroe"

It's true! Marilyn Monroe was made of meat!

Meat Is Marilyn

Who Grilled Marilyn?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CdR0hGzWAAEHX1N.jpg

i'm not an expert but

The Hulk would probably draw a lot of flags

The Hulk would however do notably far less than steroids than the _other_ Hulk gulped down to compete in professional sports.

Like Nancy Reagan and her husband's Alzheimer's, the right cares about "thuggish" behavior when it affects their own:

It is ludicrous to argue that, because the hard Left is primarily responsible for the outbreak of chaos and violence that caused Donald Trump’s Chicago rally to be canceled last night, it is wrong to condemn the thuggery Trump often encourages at his appearances.

Trump has encouraged physical battery at his campaign events, even telling supporters he’d pay their legal fees if they get arrested for assaulting dissenters. (See, e.g., Iowa event: ”So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of ‘em, would you? Seriously. Okay? Just knock the hell — I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise”; see also Las Vegas event: regarding an unruly protester removed by security, Trump tells crowd, “I’d like to punch him in the face. He’s smiling, having a good time.”) Trump has continued to fan these flames even after it has become obvious that some of his supporters are acting on the invitation to resort to violence. Incitement to violence is a crime; incitement to violence at a large rally is incitement to riot — a crime that can get people badly injured or even killed.

And it’s about more than incitement. As David has been chronicling, Trump’s top campaign guy, Corey Lewandowski, has been credibly accused of manhandling Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields. In case you haven’t noticed, one of the main tactics that has transformed Turkey, before our very eyes, from a reasonably democratic society into an authoritarian Islamist state is Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s green-light to his underlings to intimidate, assault, shut down, imprison, and trump up prosecutions against members of the press. Trump is not a conservative, so it is perhaps unknown to him that media hostility is something conservatives in a free society learn to deal with — even to become more effective communicators because of. What should really frighten people is that Breitbart is Trump-friendly media. It is unlikely that, at the time of the alleged assault, Mr. Lewandowski even knew for whom Ms. Fields worked … but it is highly likely that he knew she was a reporter. (And even if he didn’t, campaign officials don’t get to rough up non-media rally attendees, either.)

noted defender of the powerless Andrew McCarthy

jfc

“It is immoral because it perpetuates a lie: that the white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by outside forces,” the NR roving correspondent writes. “[N]obody did this to them. They failed themselves.”

“If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy—which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog—you will come to an awful realization. It wasn’t Beijing. It wasn’t even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn’t immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn’t any of that.”

“The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible,” the conservative writer says. “The white American under-class is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul. If you want to live, get out of Garbutt [a blue-collar town in New York].”

National Review Writer: Working-Class Communities ‘Deserve To Die’

beneath that post is a YouTube clip to something called "Leaders with Ginni Thomas."