We return to a persistent subject with the lead subject of today’s Five Quick Things — that being the utterly insufficient and generally useless quality of a majority of the Republicans in the U.S. Senate. I’ve said here and there, and I especially said it in the runup to, and promotion of, my 2022 book, The Revivalist Manifesto, that I no longer consider myself a conservative. I’m with the Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson, who six weeks or so ago wrote a piece noting that the old “three-legged stool” of conservatism has devolved into a three-legged stool of abject failure. Self-styled conservatives, like the editors at National Review or the David Frenches and Quin Hillyers of the world, are the people who have consistently devolved the status quo by failing to ever go on offense or even to mount a vigorous defense of principle while the Left has aggressively broken down America’s cultural, economic, and political norms over the past 80 years or so. And now, after having run off the vast majority of their former supporters as the public has recognized how toothless the “conservative” leadership is, these tend to be the people pot-shotting not just at Donald Trump but, far more importantly, Trump’s supporters. I’ll confess that back in 2016 I was not a Trump guy. I was a Ted Cruz guy. But I was a Cruz guy for the same reasons the Trump people were for Trump. Cruz was the new kid in the Senate who insisted on pushing the GOP’s chips into the middle on a government shutdown to force the Obama administration to back off its left-wing aggressions, which looked a lot to me like the kind of brash, iconoclastic leadership we needed atop the Republican Party if we were going to get the proper level of backlash against the eight years of rapid decline in constitutional governance Barack Obama represented. Trump promised that, too. I wasn’t sold that Trump was truly committed to the project. But he did deliver, and so I’m with him even if I still from time to time see things I’d prefer not to out of his camp. The one thing the Cruz people and the Trump people, who have pretty much unified since the spring of 2016, agree on is that the Republican establishment, the “conservatives” who took Ronald Reagan’s legacy and dragged it through 30 years of Bush family mud until “conservatism” essentially meant starting stupid wars while surrendering on fiscal policy, the culture and corporate-fascist economics, simply cannot be the standard bearers of a future for the Right in America. My formulation, which I outlined in The Revivalist Manifesto and will expand upon in my next book The Revivalist Agenda, which I’m planning on having out for public consumption before this fall’s election, is to stop using conservatism as the word to describe the philosophy of an America First/MAGA movement that aims to drain the Washington Swamp and return our culture, politics, and economics to something productive and sustainable. The folks I’m describing, and I’m including myself in their number, obviously, are Revivalists. It’s not as evident as it ought to be in the House, because there simply aren’t enough votes for it in a paltry 219-vote GOP majority. Even still, most of the House Republicans are more Revivalist than conservative at this point. There was evidence of that Thursday in the meeting Trump had on Capitol Hill. But we’re still very, very short of the number of Revivalists we’re going to need in the Senate. 1. They Should All Be Lining Up Behind Vance, Lee, and the Others How is this not the open position of the entire Senate GOP Caucus? Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and Senate Republicans on Thursday announced a hold policy on numerous President Joe Biden nominees in response to the 46th president’s “radical lawfare” against former President Donald Trump and other political opponents. Vance led an effort alongside Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), and Eric Schmitt (R-MO) to block swift confirmation of roughly four dozen of Biden’s nominees throughout various positions of the government. This includes judicial nominees, a nominee for deputy undersecretary for the Treasury Department, and a general counsel nominee for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Under the blockade, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) would have to waste significant time to confirm the nominees. Only five senators signed on to that effort. So far, at least of this writing, the other 44 haven’t said a word. My guess is that’s more logistical than ideological or political, and Vance and the others may have simply run out there with an announcement and others would have (and likely will) signed on. But Vance shouldn’t be the guy leading this. Mitch McConnell is the leader of the Senate GOP caucus. He should be doing it. But Morphine Mitch couldn’t be bothered. Maybe he’s busy sundowning. He hasn’t earned the benefit of the doubt, though. McConnell has done everything he possibly can to sabotage the Revivalist cause, and even now, having declared his impending retirement as the caucus leader at the end of the current term (instead of just doing it now so the new leader can get a head start on charting a new course for the caucus and, more importantly, play a leading role in the GOP’s efforts to retake the Senate), he’s standing in the way. A couple of weeks ago, the Daily Caller had a story on the Republican senators who still haven’t endorsed Trump: Despite Trump’s positive polling and historic fundraising numbers since a New York City jury found Trump guilty on all 34 counts against him, there are still several Republicans who will not say whether or not they will be supporting Trump in November. The Caller reached out to every Senate Republican who has yet to endorse Trump, to ask why and if they would be soon. Here Are The Senate Republicans Who Have Not Endorsed Trump:  Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski Utah Sen. Mitt Romney Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul Maine Sen. Susan Collins Indiana Sen. Todd Young Romney, Young, Collins and Murkowski have all said they would not be voting for Trump in 2024. Rand Paul might get a pass since he tends to be pretty good on Revivalist policy items. The rest? Suspect. McConnell’s endorsement was tepid and forced. He’s done nothing to help the cause. We are so far past the point where new leadership is needed that it’s acutely painful. If you’ve read those stories in legacy corporate media outlets about how endangered Senate Democrats are hanging on to leads in polling against their Republican opponents in red states like Ohio and Montana and you’ve been scratching your head as to how that could possibly happen, it’s not complicated. Mitch McConnell is the least popular politician in Washington, and the average voter associates his performance with the concept of a Republican majority in the Senate. And the average voter is not wrong to do that. McConnell is the personification of the problem, to be sure, but he isn’t the whole problem. Most of the problem is the caucus itself. 2. The Southern Poverty Defamation Center Is Dumping Employees As Charles Barkley would say, this is just turrible: The far-left smear factory the Southern Poverty Law Center reportedly terminated a quarter of its staff Wednesday, weakening and perhaps eliminating two of its departments amid a restructure that heavily hit its union members. The SPLC “gutted its staff by a quarter,” the organization’s union posted on X. (Yes, this nonprofit organization has its own labor union. If staff get tired of protesting Alliance Defending Freedom, they can protest management, instead.) The SPLC told more than 60 union members, including five union stewards and the union’s chair, that they would be losing their jobs. “We are devastated for our union and our colleagues,” the union posted. This might be my favorite tweet of all time: Today, @splcenter – an organization with nearly a billion dollars in reserves, given an F rating by CharityWatch for “hoarding” donations – gutted its staff by a quarter. — SPLC Union (@SPLCUnion) June 12, 2024 Is anybody sympathetic to these people? I hope not. The dark lining to this brilliant white cloud is that the leftist agitators being let go by the greedheads at the SPLC won’t go and get real jobs. Last week I had a story at The Hayride about the Left’s reaction to the new city of St. George, a previously unincorporated suburban area here in the Baton Rouge area that recently became a new city after a decade-long fight: apparently, for citizens of a non-declining area to form a city is “white fortressing,” according to a pair of “researchers” for the Soros-funded Urban Institute, writing at Bloomberg. One of the two “researchers” is a Mexican female named Luisa Godinez-Puig (I’m not calling her a Mexican because she’s Hispanic; she’s a Mexican import whose law degree comes from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México). And before Godinez-Puig landed at her current job, she was on the staff of Ibram X. Kendi’s idiotic Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University as a doctoral fellow. Kendi had to jettison a whole bunch of people lately because the money is running out. Whether Godinez-Puig was one of them or not, she nonetheless migrated to the Urban Institute and went right on calling regular Americans racists from a new sinecure at a different left-wing pseudo-academic political shop. So all this really means for the unionized race baiters being evacuated from the SPLC is a new line on their resumes. Still, any suffering is good suffering where they’re concerned. 3. At Least He Didn’t Drop a Deuce This Time We don’t need to apply too much commentary to this: Joe Biden wanders off and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had to go wrangle him back in.. pic.twitter.com/CAzunBqDkZ — Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 13, 2024 Can you imagine being Giorgia Meloni and having the “smart set” trash you as a right-wing loon, and then this potato-brained old man shows up to represent the United States, and the same “smart set” mob gives him the benefit of the doubt? That has to be irritating. One can’t help but think, though, that these persistent incidents — which are getting continuously more frequent and glaring by the day — won’t make for some growing problems for the Democrats. Stock up on popcorn and pudding. Or, as noted yesterday, beaver nuggets from Buc-ee’s, which might just be the official snack of Normie American schadenfreude in 2024. 4. Jake Sullivan Is to Blame for the Loss of the Petrodollar When the fallout from this really starts to hit, Sullivan, a longtime peddler of the Trump-Russia hoax and the architect of that disgusting mass lie told by some 50 intelligence community spooks about Hunter Biden’s laptop being Russian disinformation, is the one who should wear it. Sullivan was made national security adviser for having pulled off that Big Lie in front of the American people. Well, here’s how well that’s working out: The financial markets are bracing for disruption now that Saudi Arabia decided not to renew its 50-year petrodollar partnership with the United States, MSN reported. This opens the door for Saudi Arabia to sell oil and other goods — instead of exclusively in the U.S. dollar — in multiple other currencies, including the Chinese renminbi, and in euros, yen, and digital currencies such as bitcoin. Saudi Arabia’s shift to other currencies is expected to hasten the global movement away from the dollar. The contract, originally signed on June 8, 1974, expired on June 9, 2024, although the petrodollar system was established in 1972, when the U.S. decoupled its currency from gold. The 1974 security agreement that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia signed heralded close cooperation between the two countries by establishing two joint commissions, one on economic cooperation and the second on Saudi Arabia’s military needs. The United States’ goal was to motivate the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to ramp up its oil production and foster cooperation not only with that country but other Arab nations as well. We’re teetering on the brink of losing the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. When we do, we’re going to hit the federal government’s real debt limit — meaning that the financial markets will stop buying our government’s debentures. Sullivan was made the point man to get the Saudis to renew that deal, but the regime he’s a key part of made that impossible through stupid policy and worse diplomacy. What consequences should fall on him? The British used to shoot an admiral or two for gross incompetence, pour encourager les autres. I guess Sullivan can be glad he’s not British and this isn’t the 18th century. 5. The Best Ad of All Time This actually went up on local TV in North Carolina 15 years ago. I hadn’t seen it until a few days ago, but I couldn’t stop laughing. And it infused me with a deep love for my fellow man regardless of race. Surely it’ll have the same effect on you: The post Five Quick Things: Why Aren’t the Rest With J.D. Vance? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

In last week’s European Parliamentary elections, citizens in country after country rejected left-wing policies. Predictably, left-leaning major media outlets across the globe — the Associated Press, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Vox, Politico, the Guardian — decried these results as Europe “lurching” to the “far right.” Vox warned that the success of right-wing parties was the result of “increasing authoritarianism and non-democratic trends” throughout the world and warned that these trends were “deeply associated with fascism and Nazism.” Talk about gaslighting and projection. Oh, yeah — there’s plenty of “authoritarianism and non-democratic” activity going on in Europe (and in the United States). But it’s not coming from the political right. So, what do these election results mean? What do Europeans really want? 1. Self-determination and responsive elected officials. British voters voted to leave the European Union in 2016 not because they don’t consider themselves part of Europe but because they were (and are) sick and tired of having policies crammed down their throats by unelected Eurocrats. The rest of Europe is now sending a similar message: do what European citizens want or be defeated. 2. An end to the rampant migration of people from non-European nations. Much more so than America, European countries have distinct cultures tied to ethnicity and history. The influx of millions of people from countries with vastly different cultures — many of which are inconsistent with western European values — has impacted their cultural identity, compromised the safety of their citizens, created “no-go” zones of crime and violence, and strained their coffers to the breaking point. Europeans are tired of being told that people from other regions are entitled to be proud of their cultures but wanting to preserve their own culture is racist. 3. An end to bogus “climate change” policies that are thinly veiled justifications to return Europe to feudalism. Environmental regulations are strangling agriculture, and protests by farmers in Ireland, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, and Germany have made the public’s viewpoints clear. Clean air and water are fine; “carbon-neutral” aspirations will thrust the continent into famine, while those who spout this nonsense at tony conferences in Davos will continue to enjoy their Wagyu beef, private jets, yachts, and “sustainably sourced” diamonds. 4. An end to the war in Ukraine and the irresponsible saber-rattling at Russia that is intended to provoke yet another world war that will kill tens of millions of Europeans while it enriches international financiers and multinational defense contractors. Europeans don’t want war with Russia. Russia doesn’t want war with Europe. Just as Brexit was a preview of the 2016 presidential election in America, the 2024 European Parliamentary elections seem to mirror America’s political mood this year. So, what do Americans want? 1. Americans want a return to constitutional governance, law enforcement policies that reflect legitimate respect for the rule of law, and limits to federal power — particularly the unelected bureaucrats in the three-letter agencies (part of what is referred to as the “Deep State”). 2. We want national sovereignty on internal matters — including public health — and the elimination of any control globalist organizations like the United Nations or the World Economic Forum seek to impose. That means no absurd treaties ceding control to the World Health Organization for the next “pandemic” cooked up in China, Ukraine or anywhere else. 3. We want an immediate end to illegal immigration and an indefinite hiatus to legal immigration. All the blather about “climate-induced migration” is obfuscation; “open borders” is a fundamentally Marxist policy driven by a deep resentment of what Americans — including millions of Americans whose families arrived here from someplace else — have successfully created. (Remember former President Barack Obama’s infamous message to entrepreneurs and business owners in America? “You didn’t build that.”) The Biden administration is actually doubling down on Obama’s ideology vis-a-vis immigration; allowing unlimited numbers of the world’s poor to enter the United States and handing them benefits is just wealth redistribution writ large. Americans see it, and they are fed up. America’s veterans, our elderly, our homeless, our own poor, and those suffering with addiction and mental illness go without, while this administration hands billions of taxpayer dollars to foreigners who pour across the border. How serious are Americans on this issue? Poll after poll shows that immigration — not abortion or climate change — is the No. 1 issue for Americans going into the 2024 elections. And a recent CBS poll showed that 62 percent of registered voters support deporting all illegal immigrants. 4. Americans want policies that punish criminals and protect the innocent. While the Justice Department has been investigating Catholics who attend the Latin Mass, incarcerating J6 protesters without due process and sending 75-year-old grannies praying outside abortion clinics to prison, violent criminals (including the ones pouring across the border) are allowed back out on the streets, often without bail. 5. Americans also want an end to the “climate change” power grabs, including the elimination of federal and state regulations mandating electric vehicles and banning gas-powered appliances; avoidance of the failed agricultural policies being imposed in Europe (and that destroyed the agricultural production of Sri Lanka); and control over our own energy production and consumption. Like Europeans, Americans want a clean environment but refuse to believe we must destroy our economy, starve to death or hand control over every aspect of our lives to a bunch of aspiring dictators to get it. None of these demands are “far right” or unreasonable. What’s shocking is that ordinary people are having to fight their own governments to reestablish rights and standards of living that were once considered cornerstones of Western civilization. The 2024 elections are just the beginning. Authoritarians who have managed to entrench their control over the United States and countries in Europe need to be defeated once and for all, and the ideologies motivating them ripped out of our politics and our educational systems root and branch. To find out more about Laura Hollis and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post What Europeans and Americans Really Want appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

So Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop has now been introduced into the trial where Hunter has now been found guilty on three counts. Now what?  The infamous “laptop from hell” (as the New York Post’s crack reporter Miranda Devine called it) has now been used as hard, factual evidence in Hunter Biden’s recent trial in Delaware. The Washington Examiner reports as follows: IRS whistleblowers revealed the FBI verified the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop by November 2019, nearly a year before social media companies censored stories about it. They also said some laptop contents were withheld during their criminal investigation. The whistleblower claims came from two IRS agents who played key roles in the Hunter Biden investigation: Gary Shapley, a supervisory special agent with the IRS’s criminal investigation, and a yet-unnamed IRS case agent who is referred to as “Whistleblower X.” The whistleblowers said the laptop hard drive belonging to President Joe Biden’s son was quickly determined to be authentic, but there were limitations placed on what laptop contents they were allowed to use in their inquiry. So. Got all that? The FBI had verified the authenticity of the laptop all the way back in 2019. That would be a full year before the 2020 election and the revelation of the laptop’s existence by the New York Post. And what happened in 2020? When the New York Post published its scoop, Big Government and Big Tech went out of their way to shut down the story, close to effectively killing it. As Sean Hannity said this week, the FBI set about “pre-bunking” the story. Then there were those 51 so-called intelligence experts who brazenly lied about the authenticity of the laptop. In 2022, the New York Post ran a front page story headlined:   Spies who lie: 51 ‘intelligence’ experts refuse to apologize for discrediting true Hunter Biden story The Post pursued the 51, publishing their names in March of 2022, along with what they said individually to the Post when contacted.  I’ll list a mere six names and their responses to the Post to give you a flavor of how these people are playing the game:  Mike Hayden, former CIA director, now analyst for CNN: Didn’t respond. Jim Clapper, former director of national intelligence, now CNN pundit: “Yes, I stand by the statement made AT THE TIME, and would call attention to its 5th paragraph. I think sounding such a cautionary note AT THE TIME was appropriate.” Leon Panetta, former CIA director and defense secretary, now runs a public policy institute at California State University: Declined comment. John Brennan, former CIA director, now analyst for NBC and MSNBC: Didn’t respond. Thomas Fingar, former National Intelligence Council chair, now teaches at Stanford University: Didn’t respond. Rick Ledgett, former National Security Agency deputy director, now a director at M&T Bank: Didn’t respond. That’s a mere six of the 51 names. And as with the six I’ve just named, the other 45 are similarly listed by the Post as either not responding or declining to comment. Now.  This week in the Wall Street Journal, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell had an op-ed published. McConnell does not mention either the laptop or the coverup by the 51 intel experts and their lying. But you’ll get the connection. McConnell headlined his piece:  Mitch McConnell: Liberal Bureaucrats Threaten Democracy The administrative state thwarts the Constitution’s structure for keeping officials accountable. McConnell said this:  Democrats like to say that “democracy is at stake” in November. That may be true, but not in the way they think. Across all three branches of the federal government, liberals are working to undermine democratic accountability over their exercise of power. Their philosophy of the administrative state has one unifying thread: the abrogation of democratic legitimacy in deference to unelected bureaucrats. McConnell ends by saying:  The Constitution vests each branch of the federal government with an exclusive power, responsive to the people in elections. In each branch, liberals seek to remove that power from democratic accountability and vest it in unelected bureaucrats. This practice might come from a good-faith trust in “experts,” or a sincere belief that sound policy is too valuable to risk in elections. But at its core, it is a rejection of democratic accountability in favor of the administrative state. In short, the handling of the Hunter laptop by the FBI and the seemingly instinctive attack on the truthfulness of the laptop contents by those 51 intel experts? All of this combines to illustrate exactly Sen. McConnell’s sharply worded point that what was originally supposed to provide for democratic accountability has in fact now been vested in unelected bureaucrats.  Note well that, to this moment, no name has been provided as to who, specifically, inside the FBI, authorized the treatment of the Hunter Biden laptop. Over at the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, co-host Travis raised the same question. The American public simply doesn’t know who did this. And they have every right to know that person’s, as it were, name, rank, and serial number. Republicans control the House. It would seem, at a minimum, that they should be demanding the answer to that mystery.  That would be: Who did it? The post Who Did It? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

by Jim Hoft, The Gateway Pundit: The Biden DOJ convicted Paula Harlow last year of federal conspiracy against rights and FACE offenses for peacefully protesting an abortion clinic in DC back in 2020. US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton appointee, sentenced Harlow to 24 months in prison. She was the tenth defendant to be sentenced by […]

by Peter Schiff, Schiff Gold: China has called quits on its 18-month gold buying spree, causing precious metal prices to stumble this week as the world’s largest buyer unexpectedly closes its tab. In 2023, the People’s Bank of China purchased more gold than any of the world’s other central banks, swelling its reserves of the precious […]

In a sharp flip from the totalitarian COVID era, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is considering banning face masks in the New York City subway system. The Democrat governor cites people shielding their identities while committing antisemitic acts. Gov. Hochul considering banning people from wearing masks on NYC subways https://t.co/5HiSnb3OnE — Gothamist (@Gothamist) June 13, 2024 According to the New York Post, Hochul is working with legislators to reinstate an anti-masking law repealed during COVID-19. Gov. Hochul, Mayor Adams consider cracking down on masks on NYC subways https://t.co/POUPOFLXmv — New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) June 14, 2024 From the New York Post: Hochul said any masked policy would include reasonable carve-outs for health concerns, cultural events, religious reasons and Halloween. She drew a distinction between wearing an N95 mask for health reasons and donning a full-face covering to hide one’s identity. Banning masks at protests entirely carried freedom of speech complications, but she said protesters’ criminal and threatening behavior is a “different ballgame.” “You certainly have to say there are major exemptions,” she said. The governor didn’t lay out a timeline or say she would ask lawmakers to come back to Albany – a necessary step to reversing the ban on masks at protests, given that the legislative session ended last week and won’t reopen till next year. “My team is working on a solution, but on a subway, people should not be able to hide behind a mask to commit crimes,” Hochul said, according to Insider Paper. JUST IN – Gov. Hochul considering banning people from wearing masks on NYC subways: "My team is working on a solution, but on a subway, people should not be able to hide behind a mask to commit crimes.” pic.twitter.com/bR1aHBE3O9 — Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) June 13, 2024 Per the Associated Press: New York passed a law banning face masks in public in the 1800s as a response to protests over rent. It was suspended in 2020 by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo as part of a pandemic public health campaign, and masks were also made mandatory for subway riders until September 2022. The mask ban previously had drawn criticism from civil rights groups that argued it was selectively enforced to break up protests where people wanted to hide their identities to avoid legal or professional repercussions. “The Governor’s concerns about masks disguising criminal activity won’t be quelled by banning anonymous peaceful protest. Mask bans were originally developed to squash political protests and, like other laws that criminalize people, they will be selectively enforced — used to arrest, doxx, surveil, and silence people of color and protestors the police disagree with,” Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. “A mask ban would be easily violated by bad actors and, if someone’s engages in unlawful actions, the judgement should be made based on the criminal behavior, not their attire,” she said.