Politics

Last week, Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) hosted their National Conservative Student Conference with more than 350 attendees from all across America (and parts of Ireland). While Cockburn already mentioned this event in another article, it's worth expanding a bit on what was an interesting right-wing confab. The conference itself had a total of 29 speakers, ranging from Oliver North to Dr. Ben Carson to Zuby. It was held in the local JW Marriott hotel, and conducted via a tight, almost straitjacketing schedule. Staff were constantly hurrying people along to the next event, so much so that the attendees ended up with little free time.

Something is happening across the world right now, something that deserves more attention than it's getting. First, to the Netherlands, where farmers have been protesting, blockading roads with their tractors and staging enormous rallies. The demonstrations have been going on and off since 2019, when the Dutch legislature proposed a crackdown on nitrogen emissions. Nitrogen is heavily emitted by livestock and fertilizer, which means the regulations are hitting Dutch agriculture especially hard. But it wasn't until July that the protests garnered international attention. The Dutch government announced plans in compliance with a court order to cut nitrogen emissions by 50 percent.

Cockburn watched in awe from the cheap seats at the Congressional Baseball Game last night as the Republicans swept the Democrats 10 to nil — hopefully a forecast for the midterms. Clutching his $12 Michelob Ultra, Cockburn was on the edge of his seat all night. One of the feats of athletic prowess was Democrat Representative Linda Sanchez’s lead-off walk in the sixth inning. Walks, for non-baseball fans, require almost zero work on behalf of the batter. When she took her base, she decided to throw decorum out the window as she flipped off the Republican dugout. After her no-work walk, a pinch runner came to take her place. The congresswoman didn’t have to swing or to run — pure Democrat athleticism! https://twitter.

Since the latest growth numbers have come out, much ink has been spilled over the question of whether the economy is in a recession. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Biden administration tried to get out ahead of Thursday’s release with a press statement noting that back-to-back quarters of negative growth doesn't necessarily mean a recession. Also predictably, Republicans strongly rebuked the idea, saying, “You can’t change reality by arguing over definitions.” Both sides of the debate will continue to play out, and both sides will continue to miss the point. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter very much whether growth goes up or down by 0.2 percent. What matters is the general trajectory of the economy. And on that front, the Biden track record is mixed at best.

Cast your mind back to the 1990s for a moment. The left, dispirited at their generation-long rout at the hands of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and enraged by the ratification of limited-government trends at the hands of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, were looking for a new rallying point. By the end of the decade, the intellectual left had settled upon a new epithet: “neoliberalism.” Although the term was not brand new, it exploded in popularity in left academic journals and soon in left media too. Simply put, “neoliberalism” means “democratic capitalism.

We don't really negotiate much in the US and so we're bad at it. The American style of negotiating is to demand everything and settle for nothing less. We ask for an outrageously large amount and "bargain down" after the other side offers an equally outrageous small amount. Starting anywhere near your actual number is considered a sign of weakness. We don't like gray areas and we don't like to feel like we've lost out on something. So being asked to support something that on its face seems reasonable, like allowing two people in love living together in a home they co-own to marry, means buying into a whole LGBTQIA2+ agenda that somehow includes forcing kids to listen to drag queens read stories aloud about sexually ambitious caterpillars and their same-sex tadpole pals.

Recession? What recession? Magical thinking has long dominated the Biden White House’s approach to economics. Egregious examples include the president’s insistence that there is no relationship between public spending and inflation, or the related nonsensical notion that a massive multi-trillion-dollar spending package will actually help bring prices down. The third, and perhaps the most notorious, inflation-related mistruth: that it would only be a short-term blemish on an otherwise booming economy. Then there’s the especially risible idea that, by virtue of the fact that most emergency pandemic spending automatically expired on Biden’s watch, he deserves to viewed as one of the toughest book-balancing budget hawks in US history. These arguments all share two crucial traits.

My brothers, my sisters, hold it right there. Thank you. We’re missing a major point, howsoever understandably. All this media chitchat coupling Joe Biden’s political incapacities to his undoubtedly advanced age and slowing gait requires, in my estimation, some context. Nor do I suggest the president’s recently acquired case of Covid — from which we all pray he recovers speedily and fully — lends point and pith to the discussion. I suggest that the problem with Joe Biden isn’t age as such, nor the infirmities that go with having lived back when Cokes cost a nickel and Ed Sullivan was king of TV.

On Thursday, a man jumped onstage and tried to kill one of the two candidates running for New York governor. Fortunately, he failed. Even so, the incident was terrifying, not only because it endangered Representative Lee Zeldin but because it underscores two grave problems facing America. One is the failure of our law enforcement system to treat serious crimes seriously, both to deter them and punish the offenders. This failure makes it a misnomer to speak of our “criminal justice” system. It’s not providing justice, and it's not deterring crime, especially violent crime. The second is the danger violence poses to our established constitutional order, beyond its danger to any individual.

Joe Biden and Bennie Thompson may be laid up with Covid, but the January 6 committee, to borrow a phrase from Donald Trump, was ready to fight like hell on Thursday. “Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued, the dam has begun to break,” declared Representative Liz Cheney at the outset. “He chose not to act,” added Representative Adam Kinzinger, slamming “Trump’s dishonor and dereliction of duty.” Speaking of slamming, it was the footage of Trump smacking the lectern on January 7, as he stumbled through a video intended to display his displeasure with the violence that he fomented, that displayed the real Trump. Vexed, exasperated, distressed. “Yesterday’s a hard word for me,” he announced. “I don’t want to say the election is over.