Primatial Divine Liturgy, Nativity of the Theotokos

Tucker Carlson

I used to like watching him back in the days when he was a relatively sane conservative sparring on CNN and elsewhere. Now he seems to have gone off to whatever plain of reality is home to QAnon, MAGA, and outright Nazi apologists. All in all, rather depressing.

UK: New Law to Remove Last of Hereditary Lords from Parliament

The government is proposing to banish all remaining hereditary peers from the House of Lords in the biggest shake-up of parliament in a quarter century.

The UK’s 92 remaining hereditary peers – who have inherited their titles from their parents – will lose their right to sit and vote in the upper chamber under proposals put forward by ministers on Thursday.

The move would complete reforms first made by Tony Blair’s government, which revoked the 700-year-old right of all hereditary peers to sit in the Lords in 1999. Just 92 of them, elected from the whole group, were allowed to remain until an agreement could be reached to phase them out altogether.

All 92 hereditary peers who now hold seats in the Lords are white men, and their average age is just under 70. They have continued to top up their numbers by holding byelections when one of them retires or dies.

Campaigners have long called for the system to be overhauled. In its manifesto, Labour said the continued existence of hereditary peers was “indefensible”.

The government’s bill will mean that there will no longer be any hereditary peers in the upper chamber. The earl marshal and the lord great chamberlain, who had been expected to keep their seats because of their ceremonial functions, will also be removed.

The bill is likely to become law sometime next year, and will fulfil a Labour manifesto commitment.

Read the rest here.

If Republicans Want to Win, Trump Must Lose — Big

Accepting his party’s nomination in 1984, Democrat Walter Mondale vowed to cut the deficit with a memorable line about the tough medicine either he or Ronald Reagan would have to administer to the country.

“Let’s tell the truth,” Mondale said, “Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.”

Now, as Labor Day marks the final stretch of another presidential campaign, it’s time for another round of truth-telling.

The best possible outcome in November for the future of the Republican Party is for former President Donald Trump to lose and lose soundly. GOP leaders won’t tell you that on the record. I just did.

Trump will never concede defeat, no matter how thorough his loss. Yet the more decisively Vice President Kamala Harris wins the popular vote and electoral college the less political oxygen he’ll have to reprise his 2020 antics; and, importantly, the faster Republicans can begin building a post-Trump party.

Harris is less a doctrinaire progressive than she is up for grabs on policy, but any liberal course she takes would be constrained by a GOP-held Senate. No, that’s not a sure thing, but it’s the safest electoral bet in this turbulent election. What is virtually certain come January is that conservatives will have a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court, which will also serve as a check on the law and rulemaking coming out of a Democratic White House.

Harris is effectively an emergency nominee, has few policy proposals, scant governing history in Washington and a history of churning through staff. Oh, and she would be the first Democrat to enter the presidency since 1884 without majorities in both chambers, should Republicans flip the Senate.

That adds up to a recipe for gridlock — and perhaps some deal-making to fund the government and avoid across-the-board tax hikes — but not a Scandinavian social welfare state.

2026 would represent the sixth year of one party holding the presidency, always a promising midterm for the opposition. Those conditions, along with a diminished, twice-defeated Trump, would make it easier for Republicans to recruit Senate candidates.

Consider just the governors: Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin, Georgia’s Brian Kemp and New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu would all be prime targets for Senate Republicans. As one GOP senator put it to me in hoping for Trump’s defeat: Who do you think would have a tougher 2026 reelection, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) under Harris or Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) under Trump?

A Democratic House majority would also be far easier for Republicans to reverse under Harris than Trump. And the GOP would almost certainly find more success in the 36 governors’ races taking place that year if they were running against the so-called six-year-itch.

For most Republicans who’ve not converted to the Church of MAGA, this scenario is barely even provocative. In fact, asking around with Republicans last week, the most fervent private debate I came across in the party was how best to accelerate Trump’s exit to the 19th Hole.

Read the rest here.

Old New York

From the turn of the previous century.

From the crime blotter

"Eight persons were arrested this morning for gambling at 136 Anthony Street and breaking the Sabbath. They were held to bail and to answer."

Source

How far have we sunk?

Russia is signaling it could take out the West's internet and GPS.

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, issued a stark warning in June.

The undersea cables that enable global communications had become a legitimate target for Russia, he said.

Medvedev's warning came after Nord Stream 2, a pipeline that transfers gas from Russia to Germany, was blown up. Russian officials believed the West had been involved in the attack. (Recent reports suggest Ukraine was actually behind the attack.)

"If we proceed from the proven complicity of Western countries in blowing up the Nord Streams, then we have no constraints - even moral - left to prevent us from destroying the ocean floor cable communications of our enemies," Medvedev posted on Telegram.

Medvedev, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has a long history of making incendiary claims.

But some analysts say this wasn't just another idle threat.

The vast network of undersea fiber-optic cables that transfer data between continents is indeed vulnerable to hostile powers, including Russia, the Center for Strategic and International Studies warned in a report this month.

In May, NATO's intelligence chief David Cattler warned that Russia may be planning to target the cables in retribution for the West's support for Ukraine in its war against Russia.

It's a scenario that has NATO's planners increasingly worried.

If the cables are seriously damaged or disabled, swaths of the internet services we take for granted and that our economies rely on, including calls, financial transactions, and streaming, would be wiped out.

Carl-Oskar Bohlin, Sweden's minister for civil defense, said damage to a telecommunications cable running under the Baltic Sea in 2023 was the result of "external force or tampering," though he did not provide details.

And in June, NATO stepped up aircraft patrols off the coast of Ireland amid concerns about Russian submarine activity, The Sunday Times reported.

Read the rest here.

David French on the persecution (or not) of Christians

This June, I was invited on a friend’s podcast to answer a question I’ve been asked over and over again in the Trump era. Are Christians really persecuted in the United States of America? Millions of my fellow evangelicals believe we are, or they believe we’re one election away from a crackdown. This sense of dread and despair helps tie conservative Christians, people who center their lives on the church and the institutions of the church, to Donald Trump — the man they believe will fight to keep faith alive.

As I told my friend, the short answer is no, not by any meaningful historical definition of persecution. American Christians enjoy an immense amount of liberty and power.

But that’s not the only answer. American history tells the story of two competing factions that possess very different visions of the role of faith in American public life. Both of them torment each other, and both of them have made constitutional mistakes that have triggered deep cultural conflict.

One of the most valuable and humbling experiences in life is to experience an American community as part of the in-group and as part of the out-group. I spent most of my life living in the cultural and political center of American evangelical Christianity, but in the past nine years I’ve been relentlessly pushed to the periphery. The process has been painful. Even so, I’m grateful for my new perspective.

When you’re inside evangelicalism, Christian media is full of stories of Christians under threat — of universities discriminating against Christian student groups, of a Catholic foster care agency denied city contracts because of its stance on marriage or of churches that faced discriminatory treatment during Covid, when secular gatherings were often privileged over religious worship.

Combine those stories with the personal tales of Christians who faced death threats, intimidation and online harassment for their views, and it’s easy to tell a story of American backsliding — a nation that once respected or even revered Christianity now persecutes Christians. If the left is angry at conservatives for seeking the protection of a man like Trump, then it has only itself to blame.

Read the rest here.

Memory Eternal

 

New Illinois law bans religious groups from firing employee for having an abortion

Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a law that will prohibit religious and mission-based institutions from hiring or firing employees for having had an abortion.

Earlier this month, Pritzker signed HB 4867, an amendment to the Illinois Human Rights Act, as part of a package of abortion-related laws, including one that forces all insurers to cover abortions. The state’s “Human Rights Act” is now amended to outlaw “discrimination” in employment and other scenarios based on “reproductive health care decisions.”

This means that religious employers such as Catholic parishes and schools would be unable to fire an employee who shows through the abortion of an unborn child or pursuit of in vitro fertilization that they are fundamentally at odds with their employer’s mission and principles.

Read the rest here.

HT: Dr. Tighe

Democrats Have a Josh Shapiro Problem

One reason Kamala Harris is on the Democratic ticket is because of her identity. One reason Josh Shapiro isn’t on the ticket is because of his.

In March 2020, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden declared that he would choose a woman as his running mate. The following month, after Mr. Biden became the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, multiple news outlets started reporting on the “pressure” influential Democrats were applying to ensure that the woman he chose would be Black.

Ms. Harris’s race and gender were not the only reasons Mr. Biden chose her. She served as attorney general of the country’s most populous state and had been a senator for four years.

But it’s disingenuous to argue that race and gender played no role in her advancement.

The matter of identity arose again in this year’s Democratic veep stakes, but in a subtler, more insidious way. In this case, the candidate in question doesn’t possess an identity trait preferred by the left, but one the left increasingly views with suspicion.

Among the possible reasons Ms. Harris chose Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota over Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, according to a report in The Times, was that Mr. Shapiro’s selection could “inflame the left.” And chief among the reasons given for this potential inferno was Mr. Shapiro’s allegedly extreme pro-Israel views. An article in The New Republic called Mr. Shapiro “the one vice-presidential pick who could ruin Democratic unity” and claimed that he “stands out among the current field of potential running mates as being egregiously bad on Palestine.” A writer for Jacobin, a socialist magazine, labeled him a “genocide apologist.” A group of far-left congressional staffers and the Democratic Socialists of America teamed up to produce an open letter demanding that Ms. Harris “say no to Genocide Josh Shapiro for vice president.”

Read the rest here.

While I substantively agree with the article, I disagree with its title (from the source). The Democrats don't have a problem with Josh Shapiro. They have an antisemitism problem. 

Elon Musk Sues His Critics into Silence. So Much for ‘Free Speech.’

Despite his posturing as a defender of free expression, Musk is one of the nation’s most vexatious litigants against anybody who exercises their First Amendment rights in a way he doesn’t like. His latest target is GARM, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, an industry association of advertisers on online platforms of which X, formerly known as Twitter, is still a member. The lawsuit also targets several of GARM’s members for the supposed crime of declining to purchase ads on Musk’s website.

X’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, posted a video on Tuesday explaining that the suit is part of the company’s noble pursuit of preserving “the global town square … the one place that you can express yourself freely and openly.” Yaccarino wore a pendant around her neck that read “FREE SPEECH.”

On Thursday, GARM, citing its inability to handle legal fees that would likely run into the seven figures, simply shut its doors, ending all operations. Musk’s censorial bullying worked — abusing the legal system to shut down his critics.

Musk’s argument against GARM fits a long-running pattern for him: attacks on free speech wrapped in the rhetoric of defending free speech.

Major corporations generally do not want to pay for ads running next to posts praising Adolf Hitler, among other noxious content that has flourished on X under Musk’s ownership. It’s hardly an unreasonable position, and GARM worked to promulgate shared standards companies can adopt for this type of brand safety. This, Musk alleges, amounted to a violation of antitrust laws.

Read the rest here.

Contra Sola Scriptura

See also this.

Feast of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos

UCLA can’t allow protesters to block Jewish students from campus

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the University of California, Los Angeles, cannot allow pro-Palestinian protesters to block Jewish students from accessing classes and other parts of campus.

The preliminary injunction marks the first time a US judge has ruled against a university over the demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war on college campuses earlier this year.

US District Judge Mark Scarsi’s ruling came in a lawsuit filed in June by three Jewish students at UCLA. The students alleged that they experienced discrimination on campus during the protest because of their faith and that UCLA failed to ensure access to campus for all Jewish students.

“In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith.” Scarsi wrote.

UCLA argued that it has no legal responsibility over the issue because protesters, not the university, blocked Jewish students’ access to the school. The university also worked with law enforcement to thwart attempts to set up new protest camps.

Scarsi ruled that the university is prohibited from providing classes and access to buildings on campus if Jewish students are blocked from it.

Read the rest here

Read the court order here. It's actually quite scathing.

Ross Douthat: The Biden Scandal has not gone away

One of the Biden White House’s greatest achievements, from the perspective of its staffers, if not necessarily the country, has been to deny the press the kind of juicy leaks that were constant under Donald Trump and frequent under his predecessors. Save for a very narrow period of time, that is, when there was a push to force an aging president toward the exits: Then and only then we got a drip-drip-drip of fascinating inside information.

For instance, we learned that Biden hadn’t held a full cabinet meeting since last October and that his handlers expected scripted questions from his cabinet officials. We learned that his capacities peak between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. and diminish outside that six-hour window. We learned that congressional Democrats, liberal donors and some journalists all had exposure to Biden’s decline that they didn’t discuss publicly until the debacle of the June debate. We learned that none other than Hunter Biden was acting as a close adviser to his father in the crucial days after that debate.

We even learned that from early in his presidency, the first lady’s closest aides worked to shield her husband from the staff that serves the first family in its living quarters, even as the aides themselves were given unusual access to the residence — as though it were essential to create a cocoon of loyalty and silence around the nation’s chief executive even when he isn’t on the job.

These are all interesting and pertinent facts about the man who officially leads the United States in a time of global danger — and they have not ceased to be pertinent because that president is no longer running for re-election.

For a few weeks the media coverage of the Biden White House built up the idea that there was a major scandal here, implicating the inner circle that encouraged the president to run for re-election and practiced deception amid his obvious decline.

Read the rest here.

Quote of the day...

"I do not propose to be buried until I am dead."

-Daniel Webster upon declining the offer of the vice-presidential nomination of the Whig party in 1840

Historical trivia

Britain's crazy old money system...

The Prisoner Swap

While I rejoice for those freed, I also mourn for those who will suffer because of our continued policy of appeasement and rewarding hostage taking. Who will be the next to be arrested and held on obviously trumped up charges until we hand over legitimate criminals and/or spies? 

Our policy should be to expel five Russian diplomats for every American seized as a hostage. And if that doesn't work, then simply break diplomatic relations and impose a Cuba like trade embargo on Russia. But of course we won't do anything so drastic, because, well you know, we have to "keep talking" no matter the provocation.

Putin has our number and knows there is basically nothing he can do that will push us too far. I for one, am sick of kowtowing to this thug. 

Fred Rich And His Orchestra - I'm Wishing (1938)

The Evolution of the Republican Party Under Donald Trump

...During the time I served in three Republican administrations (Reagan and both Bushes), the party was hawkish and unrelentingly critical of the Soviet Union and then Russia. It was supportive of NATO. It condemned anti-American dictators and authoritarian leaders. It was deeply committed to “the common task of strengthening democracy throughout the world,” as Reagan said in 1982. And it argued that it was in America’s interest to provide global leadership.

The Republican Party championed free trade and fiscal discipline, though in practice it often fell short. It was welcoming of legal immigrants and refugees. Republicans argued that reforming entitlement programs was vital. Many of its leading figures insisted that moral character was an essential trait for political leaders and especially for presidents. Republicans warned, too, that a cruel, squalid political culture undermined a decent society.

Today, the Republican Party has jettisoned every one of these commitments.

Even on abortion, things have changed. The Republican Party has been pro-life for decades, including in its party plank. But this month that plank was removed. Princeton’s Robert P. George, a significant figure in the pro-life movement, pointed out that that plank has been replaced by the claim that abortion policy is entirely the business of states, which may, if they wish, permit abortion up to birth. Mr. Trump succeeded in overturning Roe v. Wade, but now that the abortion issue is a political liability, he has thrown the “pro-life cause under the bus,” Mr. George wrote on Facebook. Mr. Trump has succeeded where liberal Republicans long failed.

So how should we understand what it means to be a Republican now?

Jonathan Rauch, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and my sometime co-author, told me that to begin to understand what has happened, you have to understand the difference between a personal political machine and a traditional political machine. Unlike normally functioning parties and their political machines, like Tammany Hall, Mr. Rauch said, a personal political machine is dedicated to the interests of an individual and that individual’s family, loyalists and operatives. It accepts only one person as leader and requires submission to that person. Today, Mr. Trump is that person.

Personal machines are different from party machines, Mr. Rauch added, because they’re inconsistent with democratic politics. Even a corrupt party machine maintains institutional interests separate from those of its leader. It rewards and punishes behavior based on the electoral interests of the party, prioritizing winning elections over personal loyalty to the boss. A party machine thus rewards followers by getting them elected and then sustaining them in office. By contrast, a personal machine is willing to lose elections rather than share power with other leaders or factions. It puts the leader ahead of the party, and it would rather the party lose elections than the leader lose control.

“Because a personal machine puts loyalty ahead of electability, it must resort to authoritarian and anti-democratic measures like coercion and intimidation to preserve its hold on the party,” Mr. Rauch said. “It may physically threaten those who do not play ball. And it will use propaganda and the party organization to build up the leader as the one and only true expression of the party. That’s why Trump’s Republican Party is a cult of personality.”

Read the rest here.

This is one of the better pieces I have read on the topic. 

The state of the Republican Party in one image

 

Venezuela

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev is suspended

Read the full story here.

HT: Blog reader John L.

My thoughts...

This is disturbing. Hilarion has a reputation as a staunch theological conservative. But, and this is extremely important, he is not believed to be a member of Putin's cheerleading squad. It has been hinted that this may have been the reason for his exile to Hungary. Over the last decade+ the ROC has become a de facto department of the government, serving as a religious propaganda agency for the Putin dictatorship. While not directly attacking Putin, that would have been dangerous (and not just politically), Hilarion has been notable for his public reticence on sensitive political subjects. Privately... well there have been a lot of rumors about his views on things like the war in Ukraine (not a supporter), political corruption and so on. And it is fair to note that Hilarion lives quite well. But this is not unusual among the princes of the Russian Church. 

For his part, Putin is an old KGB man. And one of their favorite tactics for dealing with clergy who wouldn't tow the party line from the old days in Soviet occupied Eastern Europe, was to accuse the priest of being homosexual. This was most commonly done with Roman Catholic priests because the Communist Party was never able to establish quite the same level of control over that church as they did over the ROC. Some church historians and biographers have suggested this as one of the reasons why John Paul II was so slow to act on the clergy abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. He had seen the secret police in Poland use that tactic to smear inconvenient members of the clergy on multiple occasions. 

To be clear, I don't have information that I would call coming from a credible source. And it's entirely possible that these allegations could be true. It would be foolish to think that the ROC is immune from clerical sex scandals. But I will make a couple observations. First, the ROC clearly holds a special status of high favor within Russia and enjoys the patronage and protection of the Putin regime, which the church repays with its full throated professions of loyalty. Secondly, nothing of any real consequence at that level of government, or quasi government institutions, happens without the Kremlin's discreet nod. Which is to say that scandals touching on prominent persons or institutions don't become public without the approval of the state. 

Could this be legitimate? Yes. One thing worth noting is that the principle accuser is not living in Russia. But it also has all the hallmarks of an old fashioned KGB character assassination plot. For now, I would adopt a wait and see approach while keeping in mind who really controls things in Russia, and by extension, its branch of the Orthodox Church.

Update: I got an email from a blog reader who points out, correctly, that the two scenarios discussed above are not mutually exclusive. The accusations could be true and the Russian government simply views this as an opportunity to be rid of a troublesome cleric. 

Religious Liberty in the States

Read the report here. 

Biden bows out

I don't think anyone needed a crystal ball to see that this was all but inevitable. On a human level I feel kinda bad for the man. But political parties exist to win elections. And politics broadly speaking is a full contact sport. If you can't take the hits you should stick to golf. 

I can so picture Nancy Pelosi channeling the Godfather when deciding that Biden had to go. "It's not personal Joe; it's strictly business."

The Republican Convention

“What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult or a corporation.”
— Eric Hoffer, “The Temper of Our Time” (1967)

Well, it's over. That's probably the kindest thing that can be said. Long time readers of this blog will know I am not a fan of what the GOP has become over the last decade-plus, so I will keep this brief. One would be hard pressed to find a similar example of near endless mendacity coupled with sheer idolatry in the context of a political rally, outside of totalitarian states like Russia, China and N. Korea. The only thing missing was a golden calf with Donald Trump's likeness for its head. Trump's acceptance speech was agonizingly long and rambling, even for him. Filled with his usual litany of lies and grievances, excepting his cult followers and sycophants in the right wing press/media, it is likely to be recorded as among the worst acceptance speeches in modern American political history. By contrast, and as much as I detest Trump, I have to concede that his 2016 speech was actually pretty good as political theatre. 

And then there is the mess in the Democratic Party. Sometimes, it is difficult not to conclude that this country is under some especially harsh divine judgement.

Who has shaped JD Vance's World View?

In a political party whose populist base has come to embrace conspiracy theorism coupled with a deep suspicion of intellectuals, who are generally lumped in with the much disdained but vaguely defined "elites," JD Vance stands out as something of a rarity. Unlike Donald Trump, who appears to be borderline illiterate, at least on subjects like history and social/political philosophy, Vance is well read and intellectually curious. Politico has an interesting piece listing some of the people who are known to have helped shape his world view.

Read it here. 

The Debt Delusion: Why Modern Monetary Theory Is a Luxury Belief

While Fed Chair Jerome Powell made the rounds on Capitol Hill this week, discussions about the Federal Reserve’s expectations for inflation have once again come to the forefront. Unsustainable government spending is raising inflationary pressures with potentially devastating consequences for the US economy. In this context, the belief that debt doesn’t matter, especially championed by proponents of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), appears more detached from reality than ever.

This notion, prevalent on the political left, claims that a government that issues its own currency can never run out of money in the same way a household or business might. Advocates argue that such a government can always print more money to pay off its debts, thereby sidestepping any constraints imposed by traditional fiscal discipline. While this might sound appealing, it’s a classic example of what sociologists call a “luxury belief”—an idea that is primarily held by those insulated from its real-world consequences.

“We are a sovereign currency, we can print all the money we want”—former House Budget Committee Chair John Yarmuth (D‑KY) at a congressional hearing.

Luxury beliefs, as sociologist Rob Henderson describes, are ideas that confer status on the rich while often burdening the less fortunate. The concept has traditionally been associated with cultural and social norms, but it applies equally well to economic theories like MMT. Proponents of this “magic money” theory, often shielded by their own economic stability, pay too little heed to how elegant theories on paper can lead to catastrophic outcomes in the real world.

A key argument against MMT’s false promise is that printing money for the sake of financing government spending leads to inflation. When a government prints money to cover excessive spending, it increases the money supply without a corresponding increase in goods and services. This creates an imbalance between available resources and the money available to purchase them, with the result being inflation—an increase in the price level that erodes the purchasing power of money. For the wealthy, this might mean adjustments to their investment portfolios or higher prices on certain items. For the poor and working class, however, inflation can be devastating.

Read the rest here.

Peter III of Antioch, the Filioque and Rome

Not going to excerpt this one. But it's well worth the read. 

J D Vance and the triumph of the isolationists

MILWAUKEE — Former President Donald Trump didn’t just select a running mate here – he doused political kerosene on the raging Republican fire over foreign policy.

By tapping the 39-year-old Sen. J.D. Vance, one of the party’s leading national security doves, Trump strengthened the hand of the isolationist forces eager to undo the hawkish GOP consensus that has endured since the Reagan era.

Should Trump prevail in November, the non-interventionists will have one of their most articulate advocates at Trump’s side. What worries the hawks is that Vance may also be the last adviser in the former president’s ear.

While toeing the party line and praising Vance in their public comments, in private the interventionists ranged from horrified to merely alarmed that one of the loudest critics of aiding Ukraine could soon be first in line for the presidency. The grimaces, sighs and whispered frustrations from the old guard as they made their way through the convention reception circuit were easy to find in the day after the selection.

Read the rest here.

In case further evidence was required that the Eisenhower Reagan era of Republican engagement with the world is over.

Some really bad numbers for Biden

There has been much talk lately about Biden's sinking poll numbers since the debate. Generally speaking, Democrats seem to already be conceding they are likely to lose the election with Biden at the top of the ticket. Republicans are publicly very confident. Privately, some are predicting a near landslide in electoral votes and have quietly begun vying for cabinet posts in the next administration. The recent attempt on Mr. Trump's life seems likely to add fuel to Trump's post-debate surge (or perhaps more accurately, Biden's collapse). 

Perusing the various statistics out there, I started looking at the states everybody is ignoring because they are never in play. (You would be correct; I have no life) And what I found in one really jarred me. 

Some states are so obvious that they don't generate a lot of polling. One of them is New York. The Empire State has not voted Republican since 1984, the year I cast my first vote for Ronald Reagan. Democrats in New York enjoy a roughly 2:1 advantage in voter registration over Republicans, who represent less than 30% of registered voters overall. To give you some perspective, Republicans have a slightly higher percentage of voters in California. New York is the definition of a one-party state with every branch of government and all statewide elected offices controlled by Democrats. 

As of this post, the last two state specific polls conducted in New York were done back in May and June, before Biden's debate meltdown. Those polls gave Biden a lead of 7 and 8% respectively. That averages out to 7.5%.

That is nuts.

In any state other than New York, that would be close enough to move the state from "safe Democrat," to "leans Democrat." But this is still New York, and no, it is not in play. There are enough people in that state who would vote for a cadaver in advanced state of decomposition over Donald Trump to keep it firmly in the Democratic column. 

But Biden should be polling a solid double digit lead there. The fact that even before the debate, his lead was only in the single digits in a state as blue as New York should be a flashing red alert for Democrats (and anti-Trumpers of every persuasion). To my mind, this is a very clear signal that Democrats may be heading for an election wipe out. 

Russia: The brutal cost of Putin's war

Lies, damned lies, and statistics. If anyone knows how to falsify figures to bolster weak causes, it is the Kremlin. 

From Stalin’s manipulation of Soviet productivity statistics during his Five Year Plans, to Khrushchev’s exaggeration in the Cold War of his missile numbers, no entity has proved as effective at fabricating facts to demoralise, unsettle and outmanoeuvre opponents.

Today, in a similar manner, Putin points at Russia’s 144 million citizens and argues, through his propaganda mouthpieces, that it is “impossible” for Kyiv to win his war, given Ukraine’s population is a paltry 37 million.

By this logic, figures released by British intelligence this week – that Russia lost more than 70,000 troops in the past two months, averaging daily conflict highs of 1,262 and 1,163 in May and June – become irrelevant. “Russia can always find more men”, one hears people say, justifying Western inaction.

Except it can’t. Raised on documentaries about the “unstoppable” Russian bear – capable of tearing its way through Eastern Europe, as it did in the Second World War – we forget that this is not possible in modern Russia. Nor is it even desirable for Moscow.

For one, while Putin has conducted several large-scale mobilisations, he remains cautious both in terms of the numbers of men he recruits and where they come from, prioritising conscripting in poorer communities far away from the power centres of Moscow and St Petersburg; often marginalised ethnic minorities. Already, some of these communities have given all they can, with reports of entire generations of men being wiped out in some towns and villages, triggering widespread, if localised (for now), protests.

Moscow’s caution in this regard means it is obliged to empty prisons, exonerating murderers and rapists so they can serve in the Russian army or mercenary outfits like Wagner. Again, this resource is not infinite: numbers are now said to be so low that Moscow is turning to women’s prisons. Given that, by design, women only make up 4 per cent of the Russian army, this is extremely telling.

But these are still relatively minor impediments when considered against broader trends. Russia’s fighting age population, at 14 million, is not gargantuan. With many not eligible or undesirable for recruitment for geographic reasons, the number shrinks further. Many of Russia’s young fled after the full-scale invasion: an estimated 300,000 by mid-March 2022, 500,000 by the end of August, and an additional 400,000 by early October. Estimates put the current number of the departed at over a million.

Then there’s the fact that the full-scale invasion deepened Russia’s demographic crisis. Deaths have outnumbered births in the country since 2000. That – two and half years into the full-scale invasion – as many as 350,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded is indicative of the scale of the catastrophe.

Read the rest here.

Trump v. US: With Great Power Comes Great Immunity

I have no end of uncharitable thoughts about recent American presidents; yet, when I’m cataloging their sins, the words “undue caution” have never sprung to mind. Could it fairly be said of any 21st-century president—George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, or Joe Biden—that his real flaw was being “unduly cautious in the discharge of his official duties”? When it comes to “the most powerful office in the world,” is “undue caution” a problem worth worrying about?

Chief Justice John Roberts insists that it is. In fact, the self-styled judicial “umpire” considers the specter of presidential risk aversion grave enough to justify rewriting the rules of the game. Toward that end, in Trump v. United States, Roberts conjures up a broad suite of criminal-process immunities previously unknown to our Constitution. The new privileges shield the president in the first instance, but they’re really for us—designed to ensure that we Americans will never suffer from an insufficiently energetic executive. Thanks.… I guess?

But if you think greater risks lie in presidential recklessness and contempt for the law, the president’s new immunities may give you pause. Just how much we should worry isn’t clear to me, in part because I’m not sure how much the historically remote threat of criminal prosecution has restrained presidents over the years. But what the Court’s just done definitely isn’t going to help.

I’m certain of this much at least: as a matter of constitutional exegesis, the chief justice’s majority opinion is creative lawyering at its worst. It’s the most flagrant instance of legislating from the bench since Harry Blackmun decamped to the Mayo Clinic medical library to bone up on obstetrics and write trimesters into the Constitution.

Read the rest here.

Prayers please

For all those effected by yesterday's violence. Lord have mercy!

Why Is the U.S. Still Pretending We Know Gender-Affirming Care Works?

Imagine a comprehensive review of research on a treatment for children found “remarkably weak evidence” that it was effective. Now imagine the medical establishment shrugged off the conclusions and continued providing the same unproven and life-altering treatment to its young patients.

This is where we are with gender medicine in the United States.

It’s been three months since the release of the Cass Review, an independent assessment of gender treatment for youths commissioned by England’s National Health Service. The four-year review of research, led by Dr. Hilary Cass, one of Britain’s top pediatricians, found no definitive proof that gender dysphoria in children or teenagers was resolved or alleviated by what advocates call gender-affirming care, in which a young person’s declared “gender identity” is affirmed and supported with social transition, puberty blockers and/or cross-sex hormones. Nor, she said, is there clear evidence that transitioning kids decreases the likelihood that gender dysphoric youths will turn to suicide, as adherents of gender-affirming care claim. These findings backed up what critics of this approach have been saying for years.

“The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress,” Cass concluded. Instead, she wrote, mental health providers and pediatricians should provide holistic psychological care and psychosocial support for young people without defaulting to gender reassignment treatments until further research is conducted.

After the release of Cass’s findings, the British government issued an emergency ban on puberty blockers for people under 18. Medical societies, government officials and legislative panels in Germany, France, Switzerland, Scotland, the Netherlands and Belgium have proposed moving away from a medical approach to gender issues, in some cases directly acknowledging the Cass Review. Scandinavian countries have been moving away from the gender-affirming model for the past few years. Reem Alsalem, the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, called the review’s recommendations “seminal” and said that policies on gender treatments have “breached fundamental principles” of children’s human rights, with “devastating consequences.”

But in the United States, federal agencies and professional associations that have staunchly supported the gender-affirming care model greeted the Cass Review with silence or utter disregard.

Read the rest here.

US & NATO accuse Russia of assassination plots and sabotage

US intelligence discovered earlier this year that the Russian government planned to assassinate the chief executive of a powerful German arms manufacturer that has been producing artillery shells and military vehicles for Ukraine, according to five US and western officials familiar with the episode.

The plot was one of a series of Russian plans to assassinate defense industry executives across Europe who were supporting Ukraine’s war effort, these sources said. The plan to kill Armin Papperger, a white-haired goliath who has led the German manufacturing charge in support of Kyiv, was the most mature.

When the Americans learned of the effort, they informed Germany, whose security services were then able to protect Papperger and foil the plot. A high-level German government official confirmed that Berlin was warned about the plot by the US.

For more than six months, Russia has been carrying out a sabotage campaign across Europe, largely by proxy. It has recruited local amateurs for everything from arson attacks on warehouses linked to arms for Ukraine to petty acts of vandalism — all designed to stymie the flow of weapons from the West to Ukraine and blunt public support for Kyiv.

But the intelligence suggesting that Russia was willing to assassinate private citizens underlined to Western officials just how far Moscow was willing to go in a parallel shadow war it is waging across the west.

Papperger was an obvious target: His company, Rheinmetall, is the largest and most successful German manufacturer of the vital 155mm artillery shells that have become the make-or-break weapon in Ukraine’s grinding war of attrition. The company is opening an armored vehicle plant inside of Ukraine in the coming weeks, an effort that one source familiar with the intelligence said was deeply concerning to Russia. After a series of gains earlier this year, Moscow’s war effort has once again stalled amid redoubled Ukrainian defenses and punishing losses in personnel.

Read the rest here.

Is Germany’s church tax ‘miracle’ over?

Each year, the journalist Peter Winnemöller noted, hundreds of thousands of people formally left the Catholic Church in Germany. But year after year, church tax income continued to grow.

But what Winnemöller facetiously called the “Kirchensteuerwunder” — the church tax miracle — may be over.

The German bishops’ conference announced July 8 that church tax revenue was 6.51 billion euros (around $7 billion) in 2023.

That’s a lot, of course, but it marked a 5% drop on the year before, when church tax income was a record 6.84 billion euros (roughly $7.4 billion).

What exactly is the church tax? How is the so-called miracle even possible? And is it truly coming to an end?

For many Catholics outside of Germany, the idea of a church tax is bizarre. But within Germany, it’s a largely unquestioned feature of Catholic life.

It’s telling that while Germany’s controversial “synodal way” produced 150 pages of resolutions calling for radical changes to Catholic teachings and practices, it did not offer a single proposal for reform of the Kirchensteuer. 

A cynic might say that’s because the tax helps to keep afloat the lay Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), which co-sponsored the synodal way alongside Germany’s bishops.

Perhaps, but it might simply be that few can imagine an alternative to a system that is rooted in the medieval practice of tithing but took on its present form in 1919.

In Germany today, religious communities that are corporations under public law have a right to levy taxes on their members. 

Every person in Germany — including foreigners — who says they are Catholic on an official registration form must pay an 8-9% surcharge on top of their income tax liability, depending on the state in which they live. 

This sum is collected directly from employees’ paychecks on the Church’s behalf by the state authorities, which claim roughly 3% of the total revenue.

The only way for baptized Catholics to opt out of the system is to declare formally that they are leaving the Church, after which they are told they may no longer receive the sacraments, hold Church posts, or serve as baptismal or confirmation sponsors.

Read the rest here.

HT: Dr. Tighe

Note: To the best of my knowledge, Orthodox Christians are not subject to the church tax in Germany. 

Cato Institute: The Court Went Too Far on Presidential Immunity

In Trump v. US, a majority of the Supreme Court has laid down an astonishingly broad view of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution over official actions, even those taken for heinous motives and with no show of justification. We should heed the warnings of dissenting Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, who charge the majority with concocting an “atextual, ahistorical, and unjustifiable” array of immunities that will too often place above the law a president bent on criminal misuse of his powers of office. 

Nowhere in the Constitution is there mention of executive immunity, which was a topic of peculiar interest to the Founders and Framers. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 69 that unlike the “king of Great Britain,” the chief executive of the United States would “be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law,” and in Federalist 77 named “subsequent prosecution in the common course of law,” in addition to impeachment, as checks on “abuse of the executive authority.”

Notwithstanding this history, it was probably foreordained that the court would find some degree of presidential immunity. The US Justice Department under administrations of both parties has long taken for granted an immunity of some dimension or other, and the current Department, former President Trump’s adversary here, did not retreat from that view in this case. Although the court had never had to rule on criminal immunity, a 5–4 majority in the 1982 case of Nixon v. Fitzgerald had recognized an immunity from civil claims, such as for wrongful dismissal, over official presidential actions.

However, the Fitzgerald Court explicitly recognized that immunity from criminal prosecution would raise entirely different issues because the public welfare is far more deeply implicated when a president commits a crime than when he may happen to commit, say, a tort.

Read the rest here.

UK General Election (seeing red)

There is an old saying in politics, that each election is different. Some years you are the windshield, and in others you're the bug. (Unless you're Donald Trump, in which case you never lose.)

Early reports from the UK where the polls have now closed, suggest that Labour is on track for a record majority while the Conservatives appear to have suffered their worst defeat in modern political history. Labour's massive win and the corresponding collapse of the Tories, appears to be at least in part due to the infighting on the right. Specifically, the rise of the new Reform Party and its rightwing populist leader Nigel Farage. Exit polls suggest that Reform, on track to win perhaps 13 seats, actually got a larger share of the popular vote than the Liberal Democrats, on track to win around 60 seats. That means that they are almost certainly responsible for a very large number of normally safe Conservative seats swinging to Labour. 

The other news, some might call it a silver lining in a very dark cloud, is that it looks like the SNP, Scotland's leftwing secessionist party, has been absolutely pasted.  The numbers are not firm as of this post, but exit polling suggests they are on track to lose around 80% of their seats in Westminster. In all cases the beneficiary being Labour. It should be noted that Scotland has a devolved parliament, and the SNP still controls the government there with the next Scottish election not scheduled for another two years. 

Supreme Court punts on a potentially huge sleeper case

The Supreme Court has declined to hear a case with potentially major repercussions. The case involves a man convicted decades ago of a fairly trivial non-violent crime that could have allowed for a prison sentence. However, he served no time and has not been in trouble with the law before or since. Current Federal law prohibits anyone convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year in prison, the customary definition of a felony, from ever being able to own or possess a firearm, irrespective of whether the crime was violent or not. He has sued to have his gun rights restored. The US Court of Appeals in a split decision sided with him and the state appealed to the Supreme Court. The high court returned the case in question to the lower courts for reconsideration in light of its recent decision upholding a ban on firearms ownership by someone under a domestic violence restraining order. In that case, the 8-1 decision specifically stated that the government had a legitimate right to disarm people who could be reasonably seen as a threat to others. If that is now the legal standard, then this could have far ranged consequences. 

It is long established in law that convicted felons can be deprived of some of their civil rights. Until fairly recent times most states routinely barred felons from voting, serving on juries or holding elective office. Today, 49 of the 50 states have laws that more or less automatically restore some of those rights. (Virginia is the outlier.)  The conditions vary from state to state, but typically the right to vote is restored after an offender satisfies the terms of their sentence. However, almost all states do not allow for guns to be owned by persons with a criminal record, and the Federal law has been on the books since the late 1960s. 

I don't see how the courts could go down this particular path without upending all of this. Are they going to elevate the right to own a gun above the right to vote etc.? Are they prepared to strike down centuries of legal precedent and affirm basic civil rights for anyone not actually in prison? 

For the most part, the press and media have given only passing attention to this case and seem to be missing entirely its broader ramifications. This could be the legal equivalent to a ticking bomb. 

Carl Bernstein: Biden's debate melt down was not a "one off"

Journalist Carl Bernstein is calling President Biden’s debate performance against former President Trump last week a “horror show” and said his sources close to the commander in chief say what happened is not a one-time problem.

Bernstein said he’s been talking to several sources who are near Biden, those who love him, support him and raised money for his reelection, but they are “adamant that what we saw the other night, the Joe Biden we saw, is not a one-off.”

“There have been 15 to 20 occasions in the last year and a half when the President has appeared somewhat as he did in that horror show that we witnessed,” Bernstein told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday evening. “And what’s so significant is that the people that this is coming from, and also how many people around the president are aware of such incidents.”

Read the rest here.

This can't go on. For the sake of the country, the president needs to stand aside and end his ill-considered bid for reelection. The decline in the president's health is clearly serious and likely to accelerate. Setting aside the obvious fact that he is unlikely to be able to defeat Donald Trump, which would be catastrophic, Mr. Biden is simply unfit to be president for another four years. The frantic denials from the White House are reminding me of 1944 when those around FDR knew he was gravely ill and went to great lengths to cover it up. In the increasingly improbable event that Biden is reelected, we should all understand that the next president is almost certain to be Kamala Harris. 

The Supreme Court Ruling

I'm a constitutional conservative and this was a very bad decision with no foundation in originalism. The Founders would be appalled. I expected a finding for some immunity, but that it would be very narrowly defined. The old academic "what if..." someone plants a nuclear bomb in a city and only he knows where it is. He is taking the 5th. Can the POTUS authorize torture? Yes, of course. But that is a much more extreme version of the old debate about whether it's OK to run a red light if you are rushing someone to the hospital with life threatening injuries. Any claim of immunity for a crime should be examined on a case-by-case basis and tested with the question; would failing to break the law result in grave harm to the country or substantial loss of life, and this being so obvious and self-evident that the president might be rightly regarded as derelict in their duty if they failed to act? This decision goes way too far.

Alice Linsley: Changing the Church by Stealth

The shrinking Episcopal Church welcomes all. It prides itself on diversity and inclusion. In 1976 the General Convention of ECUSA affirmed homosexual behavior when it passed the “we are children of God” resolution.

In 1977, Bishop Paul Moore (NY) ordained the lesbian Ellen Marie Barrett to the priesthood. She served as Integrity's first co-president along with the late Louie Crew.

Most Episcopalians slept through these changes, many of which were launched with great stealth, as Crew admits in this statement from his paper "Changing the Church": "More 'irregular' ordinations of women took place… after our convention. In Washington at the time, on a missionary journey to our new chapters in the east, Jim Wickliff and I yielded to the counsel of friends who advised that our visibility at the ordination might put in jeopardy lesbians among all early ordinands."

However, the consecration of Gene Robinson in November 2003 stirred many to wakefulness, but by then it was too late to reverse the disastrous course of the Episcopal Church.

There is a popular saying Lex orandi, lex credendi. It means that that there is a direct relationship between the law of praying (lex orandi) and the law of believing (lex credendi). Change the prayers of a community and you can change their beliefs. Innovation can direct people's thoughts away from the received tradition. That happened when the Episcopal Church introduced its 1979 prayer book. It should have been called "A Book of Alternative Services" as was done in other Anglican Provinces that introduced experimental liturgies in the 1970s.

By comparing the ECUSA/TEC prayer book to the Book of Common Prayer 1928 one sees the degradation of orthodox theology and the exultation of TEC's social justice agenda. Even advocates of the 1979 prayer book recognized that it presents heterodox theology, what Urban T. Holmes termed a "differentiated" theology. An Episcopal priest and theologian, Holmes understood that the liturgical revisions of the 1970s drew more on Process Theology and modern philosophy than on Scripture, Tradition, and the Church Fathers. In reference to the Episcopal Church 1979 Prayer Book, he wrote, "It is evident that Episcopalians as a whole are not clear about what has happened. The renewal movement in the 1970s, apart from the liturgical renewal, often reflects a nostalgia for a classical theology which many theologians know has not been viable for almost 200 years. The 1979 Book of Common Prayer is a product of a corporate, differentiated theological mind, which is not totally congruent with many of the inherited formularies of the last few centuries. This reality must soon ‘come home to roost’ in one way or another."

Holmes added, "The church has awakened to the demise of classical theology."

Holmes admitted that the 1979 prayer book is not orthodox, and it does not align with what Anglicans have always believed and how they have always prayed.

Read the rest here.

The New York Times calls on Biden to end his bid for re-election

To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race

The Debate: And the winner was...

Dean Phillips

Defund the Police has new supporters

House Republicans on Wednesday advanced legislation that would slash funding for the Department of Justice and U.S. attorneys’ offices across the country, the latest attempt by the G.O.P. to punish federal law enforcement agencies that they claim have been weaponized against conservatives, especially former President Donald J. Trump.

The spending bill, approved along party lines by a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, would cut funding for salaries and other expenses at the Justice Department by 20 percent, and for U.S. attorneys’ offices by 11 percent.

It comes as the Department of Justice is prosecuting two federal cases against the former president and presumptive 2024 Republican nominee, one related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the other concerning his retention of classified materials.

It is also an early example of how House Republicans are again trying to inject the annual government spending bills with partisan policy mandates aimed at amplifying political grievances and culture war issues. A similar process played out last year, but the most conservative measures were ultimately jettisoned in bipartisan negotiations with Senate Democrats and the White House.

Read the rest here.

Damian Thompson on the rumors from Rome

A month ago, 18,000 young people walked on pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres Cathedral in order to demonstrate their love of the Traditional Latin Mass — an intricate and solemn ceremony which, to the horror of Pope Francis, is attracting an unlikely following among Generation Z Catholics.

Inside the 800-year-old cathedral, the Mass was celebrated by Cardinal Gerhard Müller, once Pope Francis’s doctrinal chief and now one of his leading critics. His meticulous ritual actions were followed with rapt attention by the congregation.

Very few of them were born when this rite of Mass was mothballed after the Second Vatican Council in 1970. Even the 76-year-old Müller was ordained priest long after it had disappeared from parish life. He has only recently learned to say it, in response to an unprecedented demand created by Pope Benedict XVI’s bold decision in 2007 to make the Traditional Latin Mass or TLM available to Catholics everywhere.

But will the annual Chartres pilgrimage ever happen again? This week Rome is buzzing with rumours that Pope Francis — a veteran opponent of the old liturgy, which he regards as reactionary and effeminate — is planning to ban the Latin Mass from almost every Catholic church in the world.

Three years ago Francis instituted a partial ban that ejected TLM faithful from churches that, in some cases, they had paid to restore. The retired Benedict was grief-stricken by the decision but had taken a vow of silence. In the United States, the heartland of the Generation Z renaissance, many traditionalists can now hear the old Mass only in church halls, basements or school gyms.

The Vatican official responsible for enforcing Francis’s ruling, ironically entitled Traditonis Custodes (Guardians of Tradition), is his liturgy chief Cardinal Arthur Roche, a native of Batley, West Yorkshire, who has approached his task with Cromwellian zeal.

Read the rest here.

UK Election: Poll predicts huge win for Labour

A new poll commissioned by the right leaning Daily Telegraph suggests Labour is heading for a landslide win in the July 4th election. The poll puts Labour on course to win more than 500 seats in the next parliament, while the Conservatives may hold as few as 53 seats. If this proves even remotely accurate, it will deliver the largest electoral majority in British history and leave the Conservative Party on political life support. Among the secondary parties, the Liberal Democrats are predicted to be only a few seats short of the Tories while the secessionist Scottish National Party would see its numbers drop by 40 to just eight. More than half of current ministers are believed in danger of losing their seats, including Rishi Sunak who could become the first sitting Prime Minister to lose his seat in a general election. The right-wing Reform UK (formerly the Brexit Party) headed by Nigel Farage is not expected to win any seats but is likely to contribute to the Tory collapse. 

The poll is a bit of an outlier, with most others showing a big win for Labour but not quite the existential collapse of the Tories that this one is predicting. And the pollsters acknowledge that around 100 seats are close enough that some could remain Conservative. But even in a best-case scenario for the Conservatives, Labour is likely to walk away with a de facto election proof majority leaving them firmly in government for at least the next ten years.

Story here (paywalled)

Update: Another poll, this one from Sky News. It's also pretty grim for the Conservatives, if perhaps just a bit less apocalyptic. 

Report: Vatican considering crack down on Tridentine Mass

Rorate Caeli reports that "the most credible sources" are warning of an effort within the Holy See to impose what may amount to a near total ban on the pre-Vatican II Catholic Mass. Details, such as they are, can be found at the link.

Pope Francis is well known for his hostility to Catholic traditionalists and has already taken steps to restrict the use of the older sacramental rites. If the report is accurate, this would be a massive escalation of his campaign to suppress the ancient liturgical patrimony of the Western Church.

Update: There have been some follow-up posts over at Rorate that are worth a read. The contempt for traditionalist Catholics behind this movement is quite shocking. On which note, it bears repeating that any church that holds these kinds of views, or believes a single bishop has the right and authority to suppress the liturgical patrimony of more than a billion people, is one that we Orthodox can never be in communion with. 

Presbyterian troubles

And then there is this.

Ivory Coast Breaks with United Methodists

The Methodist Church in the Ivory Coast has broken with the United Methodist Church following the US church's adoption of pro-alphabet rules and guidelines at its recent general conference. This effectively removes around 1.2 million members from the global United Methodist Church at a stroke.

Back (sort of)

The most unpleasant road trip I can remember is over. What should have lasted three days turned into almost a week as I was stricken by a nasty case of what turned out to be Norovirus. For three full days I was flat on my back (when not dashing for the bathroom) in a Red Roof Inn off I 95 in a small town in Georgia. Thank God for the sympathetic staff at the hotel and the local urgent care clinic who, when I finally broke down and went, swiftly diagnosed the illness and hooked me up to an IV to help rehydrate me and mitigate the nausea. The illness has now passed but I am still extremely run down. I hope to catch up with the backlogged emails etc. over the next couple of days.

Traveling

I am traveling and expect little or no posting for the next few days. Please be patient with comment moderation or waiting for replies to emails. 

Libertarians Pass on Trump and RFK

The Libertarian Party chose one of its own as its presidential nominee on Sunday night, capping a grueling day of elimination voting and a boisterous four-day event, where both Donald J. Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unsuccessfully sought to court the group’s backing.

The nominee, Chase Oliver — an openly gay former Democrat who in 2022 forced a runoff in a race for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia — beat out nine other candidates at the party’s national convention in Washington, including Mr. Kennedy.

Mr. Kennedy, who was a late addition to the official list of potential nominees on Sunday morning, was eliminated in the first round of voting Sunday afternoon, with 19 votes — just 2 percent of the total. Mr. Trump, who was not an official candidate, received six write-in votes in the first round.

The Libertarian Party is among the better-established minor parties, with name recognition and placement on the majority of state ballots in November. The Libertarian nominee is guaranteed to be on the November ballot in at least 37 states, a number that party leaders say they expect to grow in the coming months.

With its emphasis on unfettered individual liberties and limited government, the party draws supporters from across the political spectrum. Libertarian Party faithful call for the dismantling of the regulatory state — including, for some, the abolition of the Internal Revenue Service and the F.B.I. — as well as the legalization of drugs and sex work. Broadly, the party has embraced cryptocurrency, opposed tariffs and foreign military spending, and called for the release of the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, who is being held in the U.K. and faces espionage charges in the U.S.

A theme of the party’s convention, displayed proudly on badges and signs at the convention, was: “Become Ungovernable.”

On Sunday, it almost was. The party took more than seven hours, and seven rounds of elimination voting, to get a presidential nominee — and even then the party nearly ended up without any candidate at all, as more than a third of the final voters cast ballots for “none of the above.”

Read the rest here.

Say what we will of the Libertarians, they just had a real political convention, complete with shouting, floor fights and multiple ballots to get a nominee. Neither the Democrats nor the GOP have had one in my lifetime. Their conventions are a tightly scripted three day long political commercial. 

On a side note, I have to give a very rare polite nod to Donald Trump, who actually stepped outside his cult bubble to address their convention. I have no idea what he was hoping to accomplish. But he went there and spoke to them. Not surprisingly, the most authoritarian and bigoted former president (and candidate) since Woodrow Wilson got a chilly reception from a party that is about as antithetical to Trumpism as any group I can think of. But he showed up, (Biden didn't although he was invited), and he kept his cool despite being heckled and getting his fair share of what we might call the "Bronx salute." 

Great Britain: Rishi Sunak vows to reinstate "National Service"

As the UK gears up for a general election on July 4th, the Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has vowed to reintroduce National Service (Britain's version of the draft) with an option for some kind of alternative community service. Britain has generally eschewed compulsory military service, except during the two world wars and the early years of the cold war. National Service was formally abolished in 1960. By contrast, military conscription remained in force in the United States until 1973. Polls show Labour with a commanding lead going into the election. 

Details.

Meanwhile, Labour is considering giving 16-year-olds the right to vote.

Catholic Priest Arrested Following Altercation During Communion

This is just bizarre and is getting a lot of coverage. Not surprisingly, most of the reports in the mainstream press/media are omitting important details. The woman was clearly behaving disruptively and attempted to forcibly take the sacrament when the priest, quite rightly, refused to commune her. 

On Campus, a New Social Litmus Test: Zionist or Not?

I'm not going to excerpt this. Read it here.

Eight in 10 New York towns and cities have lost population since 2020

Interesting statistical breakdown, but not terribly surprising.

From here.

Progressives Take a Hit in Oregon

The left took it on the chin in Oregon on Tuesday.

Major progressive figures had mobilized in a safe blue congressional district — and their preferred pick lost. Establishment Democrats, meanwhile, successfully blocked a more liberal candidate from winning the nomination for a key battleground seat.

That means Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s sister won’t be joining the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus in Washington next year. And that national Democrats get their candidate of choice to take on Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer — and avoid a rematch of a race they lost in 2022.

Many of the congressional primaries that were held across Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky and Oregon were for safe seats — meaning the victors are poised to cruise to victory come the fall. But a handful of battleground races were finalized Tuesday, setting up competitive races, particularly in Oregon.

In addition to establishment Democrats’ big win in the Republican-held 5th District, general election contests were also set between Democratic Rep. Val Hoyle and veteran Monique DeSpain in the 4th District, and between Democratic Rep. Andrea Salinas and repeat candidate Mike Erickson in the 6th.

Donald Trump-backed candidates had a good night, as did incumbents. But an abortion-rights playbook flopped for a former Democratic representative in Georgia, and the presidential candidates faced some of their final primary tests of their base appeal.

Here’s what happened in Tuesday’s primaries:

Read the rest here.

Historians on Donald Trump

When historians and political scientists rank presidents from best to worst, Donald Trump invariably comes out at the bottom.

This year, to give one example, the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project released the results of a survey of 154 current and former members of the presidents and executive politics section of the American Political Science Association.

The highest ranked included no surprises: on a scale of 0 to 100, Abraham Lincoln (95.03), Franklin Roosevelt (90.83), George Washington (90.32), Teddy Roosevelt (78.58) and Thomas Jefferson (77.53).

Dead last: Donald Trump (10.92), substantially below James Buchanan (16.71), Andrew Johnson (21.56), Franklin Pierce (24.6) and William Henry Harrison (26.01).

There are other ways to rank American presidents, however: How consequential were they?

By these standards, Trump no longer falls at the bottom of the pack. That’s not necessarily a good thing. My view is that Trump is a consequential president for all the wrong reasons.

After the nation rejected the presidential bids of George Wallace, Pat Buchanan and David Duke, Trump demonstrated that the contemporary American electorate would put a candidate who appeals to voters’ worst instincts in the White House.

Trump has capitalized on the anger, fears and resentments of a besieged but fundamentally decent working class to exacerbate ethnonationalist hostility to immigrants and minorities, creating a right-wing populist antidemocratic movement.

In the process of building this MAGA coalition, Trump has made explicit the racist, anti-immigrant themes that have underpinned the Republican Party for the past half-century.

Persistently, insistently repeating election lies, subverting election norms, raising doubts about election integrity and refusing to commit to accepting the 2020 — or 2024 — vote count, Trump is focused on transforming the Republican Party into a cult with adherents willing to support a nominee who openly plans to undermine — indeed ravage — American democracy.

In that sense, Trump ranks high as a transformative president.

Read the rest here.

Ireland, Norway and Spain Recognize Palestinian State

Ireland is not a surprise. They have never had a warm relationship with Israel. The implications of this could be significant. 

Story here.

Britain to Vote on 4th of July

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday set July 4 as the date for a national election that will determine who governs the U.K., choosing a day of good economic news to urge voters to give his governing Conservatives another chance.

“Now is the moment for Britain to choose its future,” Sunak said as he stood in heavy rain outside the prime minister’s residence.

Sunak’s center-right party has seen its support dwindle steadily after 14 years in power. It has struggled to overcome a series of crises including an economic slump, ethics scandals and a revolving door of leaders in the past two years.

The center-left Labour Party is strongly favored to defeat Sunak’s party.

The prime minister’s announcement was nearly drowned out by protesters blasting “Things Can Only Get Better,” a Labour campaign song from the Tony Blair era.

Bookies and pollsters rank Sunak as a long shot to stay in power. But he said he would “fight for every vote.”

Read the rest here.

Not a date generally associated with favorable events in British history.

Trump campaign to sue filmmakers behind ‘The Apprentice’

Former President Trump’s reelection campaign plans to sue the filmmakers behind the new biopic film, “The Apprentice,” which follows the former president’s early years in the real estate business, for including what it calls “blatantly false assertions.” 

“We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement to The Hill. “This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked. As with the illegal Biden Trials, this is election interference by Hollywood elites, who know that President Trump will retake the White House and beat their candidate of choice because nothing they have done has worked.”

“This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should not see the light of day, and doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store, it belongs in a dumpster fire,” Cheung continued.

Read the rest here.

Maybe I need to get out more. Until I saw this story, I'd never even heard of this movie.

Disregard previous post

Ack. I really need to pay closer attention to little things like dates. Thanks to Thomas in the commenst section for pointing that out.

John Stewart on Government Corruption

Slovak Prime Minister Gravely Wounded in Assassination Attempt

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico is in life-threatening condition after being wounded in a shooting after a political event Wednesday afternoon, according to his Facebook profile.

The populist, pro-Russian leader, 59, was hit in the stomach after four shots were fired outside the House of Culture in the town of Handlova, some 150 kilometers (93 miles) northeast of the capital where the leader was meeting with supporters, according to reports on TA3, a Slovak TV station. A suspect has been detained, the country’s president said in a televised statement.

A message posted to Fico’s Facebook account said that the leader “has been shot multiple times and is currently in life-threatening condition.”

Read the rest here.

This is the number one news story in almost the entire world... except for the US, where it has received scant coverage by any of the major news networks who remain obsessed with our own politics, Donald Trump's trial, and a just announced political debate set for June. The culture in all three of our 24 hour news networks is embarrassing. 

Archbishop Elpidophoros: Opposition to gay marriage is fascist

From here.

See also this.

This is simply scandalous. It is the sort of drivel I would expect from mainline Protestants, not the head of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in North America. The man is an open heretic and should be immediately deposed.  

Between the legitimately fascist ethno-nationalism being preached in Moscow and the byzantine rite Episcopalianism being embraced by the Greeks here in the US, the Church is clearly in a state of crisis. 

HT: Blog reader John L.

San Francisco is Giving Free Booze to Homeless Alcoholics

Words fail.

Donald Trump May Be Talking Himself Into Prison

Normally the sort of charges he is facing in New York would not result in a jail sentence for a variety of reasons. But, should he be convicted, Trump's repeated attacks on the court, judge, prosecutors, witnesses, and even jurors, with the obvious intent of perverting the course of justice and undermining the public's confidence in the fair administration of the law, can be held against him when considering an appropriate sentence.  Bluntly, his behavior has been so egregious that it could be fairly interpreted by the judge and prosecutors as demonstrating a complete lack of repentance and a near absolute contempt for the judicial system and the rule of law in general. 

And that will almost always land you in the crossbarred hotel.

A Thank-You Note to the Campus Protesters

Dear anti-Israel campus protesters:

Though it may take a few years before you realize it, supporters of Israel like me have reasons to give thanks to militant anti-Zionists like you.

Recently, a friend asked what I would have made of your protests if they had been less fervently one-sided. If, for instance, pro-Palestinian student groups at Harvard and Columbia hadn’t castigated Israel immediately following the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Or if Jewish students and professors hadn’t faced violence, harassment and antisemitic imagery from you or your allies from Harvard to Columbia to Berkeley to Stanford. Or if you had made a point of acknowledging the reality of the Oct. 7 rapes or the suffering of Israel’s hostages and their families while demanding their safe return. Or if you consistently condemned and distanced yourselves from Hamas. Or if all of you had simply followed rules that gave you every right to free expression without trampling on the rights of others to a safe and open campus.

In short, what if your protests had focused on Israel’s policies, whether in Gaza or the West Bank, rather than demanding the complete elimination of Israel as a Jewish state? What if you had avoided demonizing anyone who supports Israel’s right to exist — which includes a vast majority of Jews — as modern-day Nazis?

Read the rest here.