He is leaving the site for the same reasons, that I really have not been writing very much on this blog.
Quote:
Partisan media serves two masters, the truth and the cause. When they align, all is well. When they conflict, you choose. If you prioritize the truth, you’re a traitor; if you prioritize the cause, you’re a propagandist. One recent example of the latter is the left mocking Republicans who accepted PPP loans during the pandemic for opposing Biden’s student debt bailout. The differences between those two programs would be evident to a reasonably intelligent fourth-grader but the imperative to serve the cause by rationalizing Biden’s giveaway forced liberals to treat it as a smart own. I think some even talked themselves into believing it. Propagandists lie to others, then lie to themselves to justify propagating the original lie. Propaganda rots the brain, then the soul.
That’s one reason why, when I’ve been forced to choose, I preferred to be a traitor than a propagandist. Here’s another: What is the right’s “cause” at this point? What cause does the Republican Party presently serve? It has no meaningful policy agenda. It literally has no platform. The closest thing it has to a cause is justifying abuses of state power to own the libs and defending whatever Trump’s latest boorish or corrupt thought-fart happens to be. Imagine being a propagandist for a cause as impoverished as that. Many don’t need to imagine.
The GOP does have a cause. The cause is consolidating power. Overturn the rigged elections, purge the disloyal bureaucrats, smash the corrupt institutions that stand in the way. Give the leader a free hand. It’s plain as day to those who are willing to see where this is going, what the highest ambitions of this personality cult are. Those who support it without insisting on reform should at least stop pretending that they’re voting for anything else.
I agree with others who say that, fundamentally, the last six years have been a character test. Some conservatives became earnest converts to Trumpism, whatever that is. But too many who ditched their civic convictions did so for the most banal reasons, because there was something in it for them — profit, influence, proximity to power, the brainless tribalism required by audience capture. “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,” Eric Hoffer wrote. We’ve all gotten to see who the racketeers are.
I would rather fail as a writer than succeed if success means being some demagogue’s footstool. To the extent my work at Hot Air has made that clear, I’m happy with it.
Never forget, it’s not the 30 percent of Trump worshipers within the party who brought the GOP to what it is. It’s the next 50 percent, the look-what-the-libs-made-me-do zombie partisans, who could have said no but didn’t. I said no. Put it on my tombstone.
As much as I hate to admit it; he is absolutely correct. The Republican Party has become a shadow and bad parody of itself.
Gone are the days of the statesmen, like Ronald Reagan. Gone are the intellectual Conservatives, like William F. Buckley. Gone are the moderates like Jack Kemp. Gone are the real Conservatives like Patrick J. Buchanan, who actually loves America, and wants to keep American jobs. Unlike the two-bit phony like trump, who only cares about his supposed “Brand.”
On another aspect, it is truly the end of a blogging era. AllahPundit was a pen name, that was created in response to the 9/11 attacks in NYC. It was basically a parody of Islamic Fascism. Starting with “Allah’s in the House” blog and continuing with his writing over at HotAir.com.
It also represents a change in the landscape of the blogosphere. Where people like Michelle Malkin were the superstars of the Conservative Blogging world and the movement itself.’ Malkin has been relegated to the corner of the extremists. with her friendship with the “proud boys.” Strange case, that one was.
This is what happened after President Bush’s term ended, the right united against Obama. Then Trump ran and won. The cult of personality around trump was divided into two camps, Pro Trump and Anti-Trump. Alliances were destroyed, friendships ruined and the Conservative movement fractured badly. Now, the conservatives are slinging it out between anti and pro Trump camps and slinging mud at President Biden; who is by the way, the worst President since Jimmy Carter. In fact, Biden is much, much, worse.
Even I have changed in my political beliefs since starting blogging in 2006. I, in fact, started out as a Populist, but nothing like the Conservative Populism that Trump represents. More of this kind here. However, in the years since then, mainly because I have gotten older, (I turned 50 this year.) I have honestly come to realize that left wing politics is a dead end. Leftism is nothing more a religion of hate; black against white, Jews verses Gentiles, Poor against Rich, Haves against Have-nots.
It is all rather exhausting honestly and I got quite tired of being on the side of hate. Equally tiring is the battle of conservatives against each other. For goodness sake, are not we supposed to be fighting against the far left and their lunacy? Instead we are fighting against each other, over a man, who could give a wit about the Republican Party, Conservatism, and America in General. He has his money, and he really does not care about anyone or anything else. The White House was an ego thing for him, and that was it.
We should be fighting against the loony far left. We should be fighting back against Joe Biden and his idiotic policies, we should be fighting against assault against our freedoms, by the left. Instead conservatives are fighting each other, and media is obsessed, left and right; about a President that lost an election 2 years ago! Enough! The media, the conservative movement, and everyone else needs to move the hell on!
That is my opinion and I would like to know yours.
Before I begin here, I just wanted to inform my readers that I did vote Libertarian this time around and it was, I felt for a good reason. I was not about to vote for Trump this time around. When I voted for him in 2016; I thought he would do a much better job than Obama and I was wrong and I apologize to everyone for even remotely thinking he was going to a decent, honorable and a statesman type of President. This was my error and I own it.
I am truly sorry that Trump caught COVID-19. I hope that he fully recovers and serves out his term. I have seen the posts wishing that Trump dies; and I find that to be reprehensible. The worst was here, I will not comment on it, just go read. It is truly awful.
Former President Bill Clinton made a significant change to federal land management nearly 30 years ago that created the conditions necessary for massive wildfires to consume portions of the West Coast, according to one fire expert who predicted the problem years ago.
Shortly before leaving office in 2001, Clinton limited the ability of the United States Forest Service to thin out a dense thicket of foliage and downed trees on federal land to bring the West into a pristine state, Bob Zybach, an experienced forester with a PhD in environmental science, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. The former president’s decision created a ticking time bomb, Zybach argues.
“If you don’t start managing these forests, then they are going to start burning up. Thirty years later, they are still ignoring it,” said Zybach, who spent more than 20 years as a reforestation contractor. He was referring to warnings he made years ago, telling officials that warding off prescribed burns in Oregon and California creates kindling fuelling fires.
Such rules make it more difficult to deploy prescribed burns, which are controlled burns designed to cull all of the underbrush in forests to lessen the chance of massive fires, Zybach noted. Years of keeping these areas in their natural state result in dead trees and dried organic material settling on the forest floor, turning such material into matchsticks soaked in jet fuel during dry seasons, he said.
Wait, because there is more:
Shortly before leaving office, Clinton introduced the Roadless Rule that restricted the use of existing roads and construction of new roads on 49 million acres of National Forest, making it difficult for officials to scan the land for the kind of kindling that fuels massive conflagrations.
The move was part of the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP), a resolution adopted by Clinton in 1994 to protect forests from being over-logged.
Ten years before Clinton’s rule, the Fish and Wildlife Service placed the northern spotted owl on the Endangered Species Act, forcing the Forest Service to adopt a new policy that resulted in a greater reduction in timber harvests. The amount of timber removed from federal lands plummeted, according to data accumulated in 2015 by the Reason Foundation.
An average of 10 million feet of timber was removed each year from Forest Service land between 1960 and 1990, the data show. Those numbers dropped between 1991 and 2000 and continued dropping — an average of only 2.1 billion feet of timber was removed from the land between 2000 and 2013, according to the data. That’s an 80% decline.
“They’ve gone and left hundreds of thousands of acres of burnt timber, a fire bomb waiting to happen, standing in place because the black back woodpecker prefers that habitat,” Zybach said. “It’s great for lawyers, but it’s bad for people who breathe air or work in the woods.”
“The prescribed burns are an ancient form of management for keeping the fuels down so these events don’t happen,” Zybach added, referring to Native American Indians who used controlled burns to ward away pests and prevent wildfires from licking their homes.
The Clinton administration’s plan to turn forests in the West into pristine land free of human interference risked fueling “wildfires reminiscent of the Tillamook burn, the 1910 fires and the Yellowstone fire,” Zybach, who is based in Oregon, told Evergreen magazine in 1994, when the NWFP came into effect.
Western Oregon had one major fire above 10,000 acres between 1952 and 1987, reports show. The Silver Complex Fire of 1987 snapped that streak after torching more than 100,000 acres in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness area, killing rare plants and trees the federal government sought to protect from human activities.
As always, the Democrats and blaming the wrong thing.:
Former President Barack Obama suggested in a tweet Thursday that California’s wildfires are a result of climate change.
“The fires across the West Coast are just the latest examples of the very real ways our changing climate is changing our communities,” Obama wrote in a tweet that included pictures showing how soot and ash from the wildfires are turning San Francisco’s sky bright orange.
Obama isn’t the only prominent Democrat tying the fires to global warming.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, published a tweet Saturday that read: “The proof of the urgency of the climate crisis is literally in the air around us.” Schumer included a link to a Sept. 10 article from CBS blaming climate change for the fires.
Thankfully, the REALexpert is not buying into the Climate Change lie:
Zybach is not convinced. “The lack of active land management is almost 100 percent the cause,” he told the DCNF, noting that climate change has almost nothing to do with fire kindling gathering across the forest floors. Other researchers share his skepticism.
“Global warming may contribute slightly, but the key factors are mismanaged forests, years of fire suppression, increased population, people living where they should not, invasive flammable species, and the fact that California has always had fire,” University of Washington climate scientist Cliff Mass told TheDCNF in 2018.
Mass’s critique came as Mendocino Complex Fire was spreading across California on its way to becoming the largest wildfire in the state, engulfing more than 283,000 acres.
So, while the Democrats in California and in Washington D.C. play the Climate Change fiddle, California burns.
This is not going to be good for the President at all.
Mary Elizabeth Taylor approaches the lectern before Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch makes a keynote appearance at Trump International Hotel in September 2017 in Washington. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
A senior State Department official who has served in the Trump administration since its first day is resigning over President Trump’s recent handling of racial tensions across the country — saying that the president’s actions “cut sharply against my core values and convictions.”
Mary Elizabeth Taylor, assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, submitted her resignation Thursday. Taylor’s five-paragraph resignation letter, obtained by The Washington Post, serves as an indictment of Trump’s stewardship at a time of national unrest from one of the administration’s highest-ranking African Americans and an aide who was viewed as loyal and effective in serving his presidency.“
Moments of upheaval can change you, shift the trajectory of your life, and mold your character. The President’s comments and actions surrounding racial injustice and Black Americans cut sharply against my core values and convictions,” Taylor wrote in her resignation letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “I must follow the dictates of my conscience and resign as Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs.” — Source: Top State Department official Mary Elizabeth Taylor resigns in protest of Trump?s response to racial tensions in the country – The Washington
I believe that is quite obvious, that this woman; who by the way, is a lifelong Republican, is basically beginning to feel the same way, that a lot of conservatives probably are feeling or Republicans are feeling about this president… that he is not a Lincoln Republican. But rather someone who has taken the stance of the alt right.
Between this and what John Bolton has published, I believe the president of the United States is going to be soundly defeated in the November election.
It is sad to too, because I honestly thought that this president really had good potential. I thought maybe that his whole ego thing would be shoved aside and the good of the country would be put first and it started out that way; he did promise to get tough on trade, which he did. However, he ended up reneging on the promise and turns out, he was doing it simply for his reelection chances.
So truthfully, the only thing that Donald J trump was honestly interested in doing and that was making himself look good. Which is what happened after the George Boyd protests began. This is why he did the photo op and this is why the peaceful protests in front of the White House were basically gassed, because Donald Trump tried to put an appearance on of being tough to try and salvage his reelection in November.
Of course, this is turned out to be nothing but a futile mistake.
I hope everyone who is a conservative or Republican has enjoyed, especially the trump loyalists — what we got in the past 4 years. But. sadly I think it’s all going to end and it’s going to be sad to watch.
Because, I believe what’s going to happen at the convention is going to be a sad display and it could be like what happened with Richard Nixon or what happened in 1968 at the Democrat party convention
This also includes the Saudi Government as well. I say this, because of this piece of news here, via YNetNews.com:
A state-aligned Saudi newspaper is calling for “surgical” U.S. strikes in retaliation against alleged threats from Iran.
The Arab News published an editorial in English on Thursday, arguing that after incidents this week against Saudi energy targets, the next logical step “should be surgical strikes.”
The editorial says U.S. airstrikes in Syria, when the government there was suspected of using chemical weapons against civilians, “set a precedent.”
It added that it’s “clear that (U.S.) sanctions are not sending the right message” and that “they must be hit hard,” in reference to Iran, without elaborating on what specific targets should be struck.
The newspaper’s publisher is the Saudi Research and Marketing Group, a company that had long been chaired by various sons of King Salman until 2014 and is regarded as reflecting official position.
Donald Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton wants the United States to go to war with Iran.
We know this because he has been saying it for nearlytwodecades.
And everything that the Trump administration has done over its Iran policy, particularly since Bolton became Trump’s top foreign policy adviser in April of 2018, must be viewed through this lens, including the alarming US military posturing in the Middle East of the past two weeks.
Just after one month on the job, Bolton gave Trump the final push he needed to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement, which at the time was (and still is, for now) successfully boxing in Iran’s nuclear program and blocking all pathways for Iran to build a bomb. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – as the Iran deal is formally known – was the biggest obstacle to Bolton’s drive for a regime change war, because it eliminated a helpful pretext that served so useful to sell the war in Iraq 17 years ago.
Since walking away from the deal, the Trump administration has claimed that with a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, it can achieve a “better deal” that magically turns Iran into a Jeffersonian democracy bowing to every and any American wish. But this has always been a fantastically bad-faith argument meant to obscure the actual goal (regime change) and provide cover for the incremental steps – the crushing sanctions, bellicose rhetoric, and antagonizing military maneuvers – that have now put the United States closer to war with Iran than it has been since at least the latter half of the Bush administration, or perhaps ever.
In his White House statement 10 days ago announcing (an already pre-planned) carrier and bomber deployment to the Middle East, Bolton cited “a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” from Iran to justify the bolstered US military presence. But multiple sources who have seen the same intelligence have since said that Bolton and the Trump administration blew it “out of proportion, characterizing the threat as more significant than it actually was”. Even a British general operating in the region pushed back this week, saying he has seen no evidence of an increased Iranian threat.
After Venezuela’s army decided not to rise up and overthrow Nicholas Maduro, by Sunday night, it was Iran that was in our gun sights.
Bolton ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln, its carrier battle group and a bomber force to the Mideast “to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”
What “attack” was Bolton talking about?
According to Axios, Israel had alerted Bolton that an Iranian strike on U.S. interests in Iraq was imminent.
Flying to Finland, Pompeo echoed Bolton’s warning:
“We’ve seen escalatory actions from the Iranians, and … we will hold the Iranians accountable for attacks on American interests. … (If) these actions take place, if they do by some third-party proxy, whether that’s a Shia militia group or the Houthis or Hezbollah, we will hold the … Iranian leadership directly accountable for that.”
Taken together, the Bolton-Pompeo threats add up to an ultimatum that any attack by Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, or Iran-backed militias — on Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE or U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria or the Gulf states — will bring a U.S. retaliatory response on Iran itself.
Did President Donald Trump approve of this? For he appears to be going along. He has pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and re-imposed sanctions. Last week, he canceled waivers he had given eight nations to let them continue buying Iranian oil.
Purpose: Reduce Iran’s oil exports, 40% of GDP, to zero, to deepen an economic crisis that is already expected to cut Iran’s GDP this year by 6%.
Trump has also designated Iran a terrorist state and the Republican Guard a terrorist organization, the first time we have done that with the armed forces of a foreign nation. We don’t even do that with North Korea.
Iran responded last Tuesday by naming the U.S. a state sponsor of terror and designating U.S. forces in the Middle East as terrorists.
[…]
Today, Trump’s approval rating in the Gallup Poll has reached an all-time high, 46%, a level surely related to the astonishing performance of the U.S. economy following Trump’s tax cuts and sweeping deregulation.
While a Gulf war with Iran might be popular at the outset, what would it do for the U.S. economy or our ability to exit the forever war of the Middle East, as Trump has pledged to do?
In late April, in an interview with Fox News, Iran’s foreign minister identified those he believes truly want a U.S.-Iranian war.
Asked if Trump was seeking the confrontation and the “regime change” that Bolton championed before becoming his national security adviser, Mohammad Javad Zarif said no. “I do not believe President Trump wants to do that. I believe President Trump ran on a campaign promise of not bringing the United States into another war.
“President Trump himself has said that the U.S. spent $7 trillion in our region … and the only outcome of that was that we have more terror, we have more insecurity, and we have more instability.
“People in our region are making the determination that the presence of the United States is inherently destabilizing. I think President Trump agrees with that.”
But if it is not Trump pushing for confrontation and war with Iran, who is?
Said Zarif, “I believe ‘the B-team’ wants to actually push the United States, lure President Trump, into a confrontation that he doesn’t want.”
And who makes up “the B-team”?
Zarif identifies them: Bolton, Benjamin Netanyahu, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed.
Should the B-team succeed in its ambitions — it will be Trump’s war, and Trump’s presidency will pay the price.
After an exhausting two weeks, one is tempted to ask: How many quarrels, clashes and conflicts can even a superpower manage at one time? And is it not time for the United States, preoccupied with so many crises, to begin asking, “Why is this our problem?”
Perhaps the most serious issue is North Korea’s quest for nuclear-armed missiles that can reach the United States. But the reason Kim is developing missiles that can strike Seattle or LA is that 28,000 U.S. troops are in South Korea, committed to attack the North should war break out. That treaty commitment dates to a Korean War that ended in an armed truce 66 years ago.
If we cannot persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons in return for a lifting of sanctions, perhaps we should pull U.S. forces off the peninsula and let China deal with the possible acquisition of their own nuclear weapons by Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
Iran has no nukes or ICBMs. It wants no war with us. It does not threaten us. Why is Iran then our problem to solve rather than a problem for Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and the Sunni Arabs?
Nor does Russia’s annexation of Crimea threaten us. When Ronald Reagan strolled through Red Square with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988, all of Ukraine was ruled by Moscow.
The Venezuelan regime of Nicolas Maduro was established decades ago by his mentor, Hugo Chavez. When did that regime become so grave a threat that the U.S. should consider an invasion to remove it?
During the uprising in Caracas, Bolton cited the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. But according to President James Monroe, and Mike Pompeo’s predecessor John Quincy Adams, who wrote the message to Congress, under the Doctrine, while European powers were to keep their hands off our hemisphere — we would reciprocate and stay out of Europe’s quarrels and wars.
Wise folks, those Founding Fathers.
Bolton must go, if Trump wants to remain President. because those who elected him, who do not subscribe to the neocon foreign policy doctrine, will vote for someone else or not at all.
