(via Vanderleun, among many others)

“I will not be forced to vote for somebody I don’t want to.”

I guess Clem here got up off the couch and joined the GOP earlier this year when Donald J. Trump the Savior suddenly appeared on the political event horizon.

Trumpkins like Clem are naturally angry and upset. Donald Trump came in on top in a number of primaries and currently possesses a plurality in the delegate count. That obviously means that he is entitled to keep winning and the Republican Party ought to make him the nominee. But now the tide has begun to turn against him, and that is completely unfair.

Who wouldn’t be upset?

I guess old Clem (in the Cabela’s t-shirt) has never in his long life been previously disappointed in the candidate nominated by the GOP. Unlike myself, Clem must have rejoiced when they put up Nixon in ’68 and ’72. I couldn’t vote in ’68, but in ’72, faced with the nauseating choice of Nixon or (commie) George McGovern, I voted sarcastically for Bircher John Schmitz, who believed in the Illuminati Conspiracy.

Presumably it was OK with Clem when the evil and unconservative Republican Establishment denied the nomination in 1976 to the demigod Ronald Reagan and gave it to the inevitable loser Gerald Ford. I was disappointed, and being of Lithuanian extraction, I was actively angry that Ford clumsily misspoke during a debate with the peanut farmer seemingly denying that the countries of Eastern Europe were “captive nations” under Soviet domination, but I nonetheless grudgingly pulled the lever for Ford.

There was no problem for me, or presumably for Clem (if he actually voted) in 1980, or 1984, or 1988. The Republican choices of Ronald Reagan and then his Vice President George H.W. Bush were not controversial for most of us.

But (obviously led to self-destruction by some Greek god) George H.W. Bush flagrantly broke his campaign promise (“Read my lips: No new taxes!”), and conservatives were incensed. I voted for Pat Buchanan in the GOP Primary, and wrote in “Donald Duck” in the general election. Clearly, though, things were still hunky dory with Clem.

In 1996, I strongly preferred a conservative candidate like Steve Forbes or Phil Gramm. The Party nominated tired old, moderate old Bob Dole, a business-as-usual, Establishment Republican if there ever was one. I voted for him, but we still got hosed.

2000 was shaping up to be a Republican victory. I was still for Forbes, but George W. Bush, if not a shining light, seemed tolerably conservative, and I supported him. I was more enthusiastically behind GWB in 2004, as he was running against the Vietnam War traitor and consummate shit John Kerry.

In the course of my own long lifetime, I’ve only ever twice seen the GOP nominate guys I was in wholehearted support of: Barry Goldwater in 1964, when I was much too young to vote, and Ronald Reagan. I’ve been sufficiently hostile to GOP nominees twice (Nixon in ’72 and George H.W. Bush the oath-breaker in ’92) that I refused to vote for them. But I never gave up on the two-party system or burned my Republican registration card, because I didn’t get my way one particular year.

Personally, I always figured that people intelligent enough to be conservative were more or less bound to find themselves generally in the minority, and I recognized long ago that victories in national elections are not something we can hope to gain with any kind of real assurance. Conservatives have to look at politics the way Addison’s Cato the Elder did:

“’Tis not in mortals to command success, But we’ll do more, Sempronius; we’ll deserve it.”

You simply do not have a gifted and principled national figure like Ronald Reagan available to run every four years. And even when you do, the timeservers, functionaries, and trimmers are liable to beat you, the way they beat us in ’76.

So, no, I do not have a lot of respect for Clem’s position or perspective. Screw him.

I will say though that all this Trump business is depressing, because a lot of more significant and talented people than Clem have lost their grip and joined the Trump Movement. There are a lot of conservative bloggers I follow and like dancing along in the wake of Donald the Blue-Suited-and-tied-excessively-long-necktied Piper. I’m making something of an heroic effort these days to restrain myself from saying the cruelest things I can possibly say, because I think they are inevitably going to lose, and I don’t really want to alienate many of them. I don’t think the Conservative Movement or the Conservative Blogosphere can do without them. Unlike Clem there, in the Cabela’s t-shirt. To hell with Clem.

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UPDATE:

Cabela Clem is really one Larry Wayne Lindsey, and his story is bogus according to folks from Colorado.

It appears that Trump supporters who have rallied behind Larry Wayne Lindsey have been schlonged.

Lindsey became an overnight sensation after the Trump Report Drudge Report highlighted a video of the wannabe Trump delegate burning his Republican party registration after pro-Cruz political insiders cast him aside. The trouble with Larry’s story is that it is a big fat lie.

Larry did not attend the county caucus, which is where he needed to go in order to get elected as a delegate to the state convention. …

NBC News actually reported that Larry was shut out likely due to his own “lack of familiarity with the process.”

“But a sign-in sheet from his county’s March 19 assembly, the second step of the process where delegates were elected to the statewide assembly, reveals that Lindsey never showed up to that meeting, and an alternate signed in for him instead.”

And when confronted with the fact that he did not attend the correct meeting, Larry Wayne Lindsey, who regularly posts Prntly articles headlining Ted Cruz’s alleged sexual exploits and supposed ineligibility, “admits he may have missed a meeting,” but following in the footsteps of his dear leader, shockingly blames one of the “many Cruz supporters who deliberately tried to mislead him on several occasions, including on dates and times of meetings.”

In the old days, people would die for their convictions. Protestants and Catholics alike suffered themselves to be racked, torn with irons, and burned alive to uphold the truth as they perceived it. You can still see scorch marks on the door of Balliol College from the burning of Latimer, Cranmer, and Ridley.

Brendan O’Neill, in National Review, describes how the confrontation between Heresy and Orthodoxy plays out in our own time. No scorch marks for Ian McEwan!

For a worldview that claims to be all about freedom and choice and “being oneself,” transgenderism sure is tetchy and intolerant. Consider what has just happened to the celebrated British novelist Ian McEwan. Last week, during a speech at the Royal Institution in London, McEwan took a genteel swipe at the politics of identity. He said identity politics is becoming increasingly consumerist, where we now pluck a ready-made “self” from “the shelves of a personal-identity supermarket.” The making up of one’s identity has gone so far that “some men in full possession of a penis are identifying as women and demanding entry to women-only colleges,” he said. Then came his killer line: “Call me old-fashioned, but I tend to think of people with penises as men.”

Can you guess what happened next? Yes, McEwan was subjected to a Twitch hunt, to that 21st-century bloodsport in which anyone who expresses an unpopular view or makes a less than PC utterance or simply misspeaks a little will be “called out” (shamed) by the bedroom-bound, Twitter-living, self-styled guardians of correct thinking. Twits went berserk over his apparently perverse linking of penises with maleness. They branded him a bigot, weird, a transphobe. Trans-rights activists put the boot in, too. Stonewall, the LGBT activist group, slammed McEwan for being “uninformed” and said his weird worldview doesn’t only “denigrate the trans experience, it denies its very existence.” Paris Lees, a trans woman and journalist, scolded McEwan, telling him his “ideas about penises are outdated.” He should apologize, the mob said.

And he did. All the virtual tomato-throwing at this heretic who dared to say that people with penises are men had the desired effect. It elicited a public backtrack. In an open letter in the Guardian, McEwan accused some of his critics of being “righteous and cross,” yet he then bowed and scraped before the trans religion. Transgenderism “should be respected,” he said. Then, most strikingly, he obediently expressed the key tenet of the trans ideology: “Biology is not always destiny.” Remarkable. In the space of a few days, he went from raising interesting, awkward questions about trans identity to repeating in a national newspaper the trans mantra that “biology is not destiny.” For those of us who believe in freedom of thought, it was an ugly sight, reminiscent of those poor souls dragged before the Inquisition and set free only when they dutifully bought into their inquisitors’ belief system and publicly declared: “I believe in Jesus Christ.”

Read the whole thing.

Fred Trump (1905-1999). Put another 50 lbs. on him, dye his hair blonde, dye his skin orange, give him a comb-over, remove the vest and put him in a dark blue suit with a necktie tied too long, and you have Donald.

Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio identifies the male influences, including his father, who trained Donald Trump in his “Law of the Jungle” philosophy and convinced him that bullying works and only success matters.

[F]or those of us who have followed Trump’s career from the start, the worldview he has trotted out to the public is no surprise. Some people seem shocked that he embraces torture without compunction; openly admires the suppression of freedom by Chinese and Russian dictators; and shows little grasp of ethics, governance or constitutionalism, as evidenced by his insistence that the U.S. openly engage in war crimes (by killing the families of terrorists). Or that he often seems ignorant of history and the economic benefits of free trade, dismissing the U.S. alliance and trading system that won the Cold War as “obsolete,” calling regularly for punitive tariffs and insisting over and over again, “We never win anymore,” as if trade were a zero-sum game (which it is not). Or that he relishes the idea that people at his rallies punch each other, suggesting that his supporters “knock the crap out of” any disrupters.

But, as Trump’s biographer, I can tell you these views fundamentally define the man. And if you’re looking—or perhaps hoping—for something more, you shouldn’t expect to find it. If you are seeking reassurance that the man who could be the next president of the United States possesses a coherent political philosophy or ethical foundation other than this rather pre-Enlightenment code of behavior—that he subscribes to the ideals of the Founders, or has studied and understood American democracy, human rights and our Constitutional system—you won’t get it.

Rare if not unique in American politics, Trump’s views and provocations are consistent with his biography.

Quite a story here. When you read this, you realize that Donald Trump is really a character right out of an old-time Harold Robbins novel.

Theodore Roosevelt (Progressive Party), William H. Taft (Republican), Woodrow Wilson (Democrat). Miss Columbia hands out the presidency.

Joseph Cummins reminded us, at Politico last month, that the country has a long history of scurrilous and unseemly presidential election contests. Take the 1912 Election, for instance…

[O]ne of the great American presidential manliness taunters in American history was Teddy Roosevelt. Henry James called him “a monstrous embodiment of unprecedented and resounding noise,” and he is the presidential candidate whose bombast most resembles that of Donald Trump. During the election of 1904, he called the president of Venezuela “a villainous little monkey” and tagged his Democratic opponent, Judge Alton Parker, “that neutral-tinted individual”—the “low-energy” charge of its time. In 1912, during the historic election that split the Republican Party and handed the presidency to Woodrow Wilson and the Democrats (sound familiar?), Roosevelt (who would run as a Progressive “Bull Moose” Republican) showed up at the contested convention wearing a sombrero, smoking a cigar and calling President William Howard Taft a “rat in a corner.” (Unmanned, Taft could only respond weakly that Roosevelt was “neurotic.”) During that same fractious election, after letters came to light that seemed to indicate that the married Woodrow Wilson might be having an affair, Teddy sneered: “It wouldn’t work. You can’t cast a man as Romeo who looks and acts so much like an apothecary clerk.”

Read the whole thing.

Mark Steyn makes mincemeat of bien pensant liberals former UN Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour and historian Simon Schama in this debate excerpt.

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Full debate here.

Peter Nicolai Arbo, Asgårdsreien [The Wild Hunt], 1872, Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo

Victor Sharpe and Robert Vincent marvel at how accustomed we have all become to the staggering level of mainstream media bias in favor of democrats.

t seems that most Americans operate on the assumption that the media is making a good-faith, if imperfect, effort at objectively informing its audience. That so few are genuinely aware of the outrageous manipulation of public opinion now taking place is the single greatest threat to the republic, to the extent that we can even say that our republic still exists. A glaring example of this would be the treatment of Nixon 42 years ago over Watergate compared with the treatment of Obama today over any one of several far worse scandals.

It was recently reported in the WSJ that Obama used the NSA to spy on Congress during the deliberations related to the Iran nuclear deal. It was reported on at one time, but this story has now disappeared completely from media coverage. Consider the implications.

In the former case, Nixon apparently directed or sat by and knowingly let his immediate subordinates direct a third-rate burglary of the campaign headquarters of an election opponent. In the latter case, Obama authorized one of the most sophisticated intelligence-gathering organizations in the world to spy on American legislators, en masse, in pursuit of the most important – and egregiously flawed – international agreement impacting American national security and world stability – namely, with the chief sponsor of international terrorism: the Islamic Republic of Iran.

This is a thousand times worse than Watergate! Where is the media? Where are today’s equivalents of Woodward and Bernstein? The media doesn’t focus on this outrage at all, so to the overwhelming majority of the public, it is as though this never even happened. And this is only one of several comparable scandals we could name. …

[I]n 2012, during an unintentional “open mic” moment, we overheard Obama making assurances to Russian president Medvedev that once he was able to get past the election, he would have “more flexibility.”

Here we have a sitting U.S. president apparently ready to make some huge concession to America’s most important major power rival on the world stage, a concession so drastic that it apparently couldn’t even be revealed until after the election. And the media did not hound him over this.

Could one imagine a President Nixon, or a President Reagan, making such a statement during arms control negotiations with the USSR and the media simply giving it a pass?. …

How about the qualifications of Bernie Sanders, who did not so much as earn a regular paycheck until he was 40, who ran for Congress while collecting unemployment, who supported himself for a time writing about masturbation and rape fantasies for leftist publications, who has served in Congress for 25 years without having written even one piece of legislation that ever passed?

Read the whole thing.

Outside:

Mike Miller’s proposal to train wolverines to search for—and help rescue—avalanche survivors has raised some eyebrows around his corner of Alaska, near Anchorage.

“New ideas normally do sound ridiculous,” Miller says from his office at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, about an hour south of Anchorage in a valley popular with backcountry adventurers. The organization, which Miller founded two decades ago, houses hundreds of displaced or orphaned animals and has worked on big projects like reintroducing the Wood Bison to the Alaskan wilderness and repatriating condors from the San Diego Zoo. But what’s got Miller excited these days is training and breeding Kayla and Kasper, the two wolverines he’s recently acquire.

“Anything you can train a dog to do, you can train a wolverine to do, five times quicker,” Miller says.

Miller is fully aware that his plan sounds a little ridiculous. When I emailed him to ask about his idea, he felt compelled to defend it preemptively. “One hundred years ago, people who suggested using dogs for avalanche victim search were thought to be crazy,” he wrote. “I hope your readers understand that we are professional and serious.”

On the phone, Miller’s pitch is compelling. Right now, avalanche search and rescue or recovery is carried out by dogs—usually shepherds or retrievers—who walk the avalanche site with trainers, hectare by hectare, hunting for the scent of buried humans. Wolverines, Miller says, were born to do this; smelling a creature 20 feet below the snow is instinctive for them. They’re known to run along avalanche lines searching for dinner among the animals buried deep in the slide. The squat, bear-like member of the weasel family is famed for powering up difficult terrain that would require professional climbing equipment for humans.

Read the whole thing.

Wolverines dig faster than dogs, and then, when he finds a victim, your wolverine rapidly consumes the body, thus saving the deceased’s family all those funeral costs. The trick is bound to be: how do you stop him from eating the avalanche victim found still alive?