Nat'l Rev Online NRO

4/14 finally broke down and made separate category for the blog (split on cliven bundy?)

tag?

see rich lowry

hosted but also crit prager

big fox ad, gun rights grift?] 2 22

Some Thoughts about Kooks

By KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

November 5, 2020

President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Ocala International Airport in Ocala, Fla., October 16, 2020. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

The only incontrovertibly true sentence I can remember Donald Trump ever having spoken is: “Bad things happen in Philadelphia.”

(There may be others, but I cannot think of any.)

Considering the matter of election fraud, Dennis Prager took to the radio Thursday to complain that Republicans get painted as conspiracy kooks. I sympathize with his complaint, I do.

But the main reason that the Republican Party gets painted as a haven for conspiracy kooks is the fact that the Republican Party is a haven for conspiracy kooks. It would seem less full of conspiracy kooks if it were less full of conspiracy kooks. The GOP needs to read Cicero: Esse quam videri.

The kookery of the GOP goes all the way to the top. Donald Trump is many things, and one of those things is a big-league conspiracy kook. He was bigly into the Obama birth-certificate stuff but also has dabbled in anti-vaccine kookery and 9/11 kookery. He publicizes QAnon kookery when he isn’t helping QAnon kooks get elected to office as Republicans.

Newly elected Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene? QAnon kook. Jo Rae Perkins, who just got beat like a rented mule in the Oregon U.S. Senate race? QAnon kook. Mike Cargile, who got pummeled in that House race in California? Big ol’ QAnon kook.

There are more.

Pretty much the entire talk-radio/Fox News conversation is conspiracy kookery: the “Deep State,” which is the slightly more respectable version of the Luciferian pedophile cult of QAnon kookery.

“Cultural Marxism”? Kooks gonna kook.

Republicans—lots of them—will tell you that climate change is not something about which we have a policy disagreement but a hoax, scientists and crypto-Marxists colluding to ruin the U.S. economy on behalf of China or Russia or whomever. They’ll tell you that evolution is a hoax, too, and the scientific journals are colluding to defend it from the devastating scientific critiques of some lawyer in Palm Beach who has figured it all out.

Right-wing social media and some of those half-assed conservative “news” sites are right now trafficking in bumf about election fraud. Why? Because they are conspiracy kooks. It’s their business model.

The thing is, there is election fraud.

We know this. People go to jail for it from time to time.[1/22 trms 4 whit guys voted for dead relatives and one went public to support big lie/coup, one got 3 days vs black parolee 6 years?! It probably doesn’t throw many elections, but it may—there’s a pretty good case that fraud cost Norm Coleman of Minnesota a U.S. Senate seat in 2008. There may be shenanigans under way right now. But whose word are you going to take on that? Donald Trump’s? Marjorie Taylor Greene’s?

You can’t send a conspiracy kook to the White House and more conspiracy kooks to Congress and then complain when people say your party is full of conspiracy kooks. Because it is full of conspiracy kooks.

Oh, now you’re serious, Republicans? Please. The Republicans are the party that cried “wolf,” and it’s no wonder that people who aren’t already on board aren’t very readily persuaded by claims of widespread ballot fraud.

Which is a shame. Because Philly has guys named Joe Cheeseboro registered to vote with a home address that is, in fact, a 7-Eleven. (Mr. Cheeseboro is listed as living in apartment No. 711, a witty touch). Philadelphia has voters whose addresses are vacant lots. A former judge of elections recently was convicted of taking bribes to stuff ballot boxes on behalf of Democratic patrons.

That wasn’t ancient history—that was May. https://www.inquirer.com/news/voter-fraud-philadelphia-ward-leader-judge-of-elections-domenick-demuro-guilty-plea-20200521.html

max 50 votes in judge elections?]

Bad things happen in Philadelphia. Here’s U.S. Attorney William McSwain on that corrupt judge of elections, Dominick Demuro: “DeMuro fraudulently stuffed the ballot box by literally standing in a voting booth and voting over and over, as fast as he could, while he thought the coast was clear.” He sold this service for as little as $300 in some cases.

Bad, dumb, low-rent things happen in Philadelphia.

There is corruption. There are abuses of power. There are coverups. There isn’t an underground pedophile cult secretly running things from behind the scenes guided by the ghost of Saul Alinsky and the Frankfurt School. This has been a problem for the Right since the days when the John Birch Society was claiming that Dwight Eisenhower—Ike himself!—was a “conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist conspiracy.” The Birchers may have had some good points about other stuff, but nobody took them seriously, because they didn’t deserve to be taken seriously, because they were kooks.

If Trump loses this election, as seems likely, there’s going to be a lot more kookery afoot. Kookery isn’t the solution—it’s the problem.

KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON is a fellow at National Review Institute, the roving correspondent for National Review, and the author of BIG WHITE GHETTO: DEAD BROKE, STONE-COLD STUPID, AND HIGH ON RAGE IN THE DANK WOOLLY WILDS OF THE 'REAL AMERICA.'

819 AN

no linx

Naval War College professor details the ‘nervous breakdown’ of Trump sycophants: ‘They’re screwed and know it’

Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story August 14, 2019

The conservative National Review, a longtime cornerstone of the conservative movement’s intellectual wing, quickly fell in with President Donald Trump after his election, and most recently has published a series of pieces clashing with Never Trump conservative Max Boot over the American right’s white supremacy problem — calling him and his supporters “self-loathing whites … paralyzed by intersectional deference.”

As another Never Trump conservative, Naval War College Professor Tom Nichols, put it, this is a microcosm of the “Trump-compliant right’s” realization that there is no way to divorce their supposed principles from Trumpism — and the future of their place in conservative thought looks bleak.

Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

From the attack on @MaxBoot in @NRO to the latest faux-Gibbon raving from Michael Anton pumped out by @ClaremontInst, the Trump-compliant right is having a nervous breakdown - as it should. Many conservatives once saw themselves as part of an intellectual movement. Now? No. /1

@RadioFreeTom

Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

For years, intellectual conservatives thought: "Look, we're smart, we're conservative, the liberals are just wrong." (Hell, I still feel that way most days.) But the intellectual cons who have surrendered to Trumpist populism are screwed and know it. /2

746

4:02 PM - Aug 13, 2019

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Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

Replying to @RadioFreeTom

Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

These intellectuals tried to adopt the camouflage of bib-overalls and Hee Haw straw hats; this was a very, very bad gamble. They now know, without a doubt, that they're in a shrinking minority, dead-ended, and stranded with no way back. /3

Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

Replying to @RadioFreeTom

Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

Sure, they figured they could tough it out, get their judges, and then disavow Trump when he self-destructed. They partied with the rubes in hopes no one would notice the college degrees and the cufflinks. But Trump ate the movement before they could bail out. /4

Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

When today's conservative writers signed up in the 1980s and 1990s, they could imagine their core audience being well-off and educated people politely having dinner at the Union Club while hearing a lecture on an important subject from a intelligent person. /5

Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

By the time this is over, all that'll be left is Gorka, Anton, and the last few editors of NR at CPAC trying to clap along gamely while someone explains how Q is going to swoop in and arrest the abortion-loving gays during their attempts to make stem cells into omelettes. /6x

===

Perhaps it was only a matter of time before the opinion page began parroting the talking points of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Over the past 18 months, conservative publications ranging from the Weekly Standard to the National Review have, at various junctures, embraced the Republican standard-bearer, even after the latter outlet ran an entire issue "Against Trump." But as the august Wall Street Journal's descent into authoritarianism and deranged conspiracy theory reveals, no corner of right-wing media is immune from the disease of Trumpism.

steyn:

mann case: since split? not at NRO

Case No 2012 CA 008263 B

Judge: Frederick H Weisberg

NATIONAL REVIEW, INC )

215 Lexington Avenue )

New York, NY 10016, )

)

and - )

)

COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE )

1899 L Street, NW )

Washington, DC 20036, )

)

and - )

)

RAND SIMBERG )

c/o Competitive Enterprise )

Institute )

1899 L Street, NW )

Washington, DC 20036, )

)

and - )

)

MARK STEYN, )

Box 30 )

Woodsville, NH 03785 )

)

Defendants.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/30/climate-scientists-lawsuit-could-wipe-out-conservative-national-review-magazine/

The National Review magazine, longstanding house news organ of the establishment right, is facing a lawsuit that could shutter the publication permanently. According to The Week, a suit by a climate scientist threatens to bankrupt the already financially shaky publication and its website, the National Review Online (NRO).

Scientist Michael Mann is suing the Review over statements made by Canadian right-wing polemicist and occasional radio stand-in for Rush Limbaugh, Mark Steyn. Steyn was writing on the topic of climate change when he accused Mann of falsifying data and perpetuating intellectual fraud through his research.

Steyn went on to quote paid anti-climate science operative Rand Simberg — an employee of the right-wing think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute — who compared Mann to Penn State’s convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky.

Mann, Simberg said, is “the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data.”

Mann sued for defamation. Steyn and the Review vowed to fight the suit, given that defamation is notoriously difficult to prove in court.

“My advice to poor Michael is to go away and bother someone else,” said Review editor Rich Lowry. “If he doesn’t have the good sense to do that, we look forward to teaching him a thing or two about the law and about how free debate works in a free country.”

As the case has played out, however, Lowry’s hubris has proven to be unwarranted.

“In July,” wrote The Week’s Damon Linker, “Judge Natalia Combs Greene rejected a motion to dismiss the suit. The defendants appealed, and last week D.C. Superior Court Judge Frederick Weisberg rejected the motion again, opening the door for the discovery phase of the lawsuit to begin.”

The Review, which has run at a loss since it was founded on money inherited by William F. Buckley, Jr. in 1955, appealed to readers and supporters for help paying its rapidly mounting legal bills.

Lowry wrote:

As many of you know, National Review is not a non-profit — we are just not profitable. A lawsuit is not something we can fund with money we don’t have. Of course, we’ll do whatever we have to do to find ourselves victorious in court and Professor Mann thoroughly defeated, as he so richly deserves to be. Meanwhile, we have to hire attorneys, which ain’t cheap.

The bills are already mounting.

This is our fight, legally. But with the global-warming extremists going all-out to silence critics, it’s your fight too, morally. When we were sued, we heard from many of you who expressed a desire to help underwrite our legal defense. We deeply appreciated the outpouring of promised help.

Now we really need it.

Then, at Christmastime, Steyn abruptly fired the legal team representing him and the magazine, white shoe firm Steptoe and Johnson, after an argument over a highly inflammatory — and appallingly typed — NRO post about Judge Combs Greene. Steyn accused her of “staggering incompetence,” called her stupid, and accused her of deliberate obtuseness regarding the Mann suit.

Now, Steyn is representing himself against Mann and he and the Review have parted ways.

Steyn wrote to Mother Jones, saying that he was simply no longer able to contain his sense of disdain for the federal judge and her decision not to dismiss Mann’s suit.

“I spent the first months attempting to conceal my contempt for Judge Combs Greene’s court,” said Steyn. “But really, it’s not worth the effort.”

On his personal blog, Steyn wrote, “As readers may have deduced from my absence at National Review Online and my termination of our joint representation, there have been a few differences between me and the rest of the team.”

Now, as the suit grinds onward, the Review faces fairly dismal prospects. The suit could eventually be dismissed, but that is looking less likely. What’s looking more likely is that Mann could win a substantial judgment in court or the magazine could settle out of court.

The Week doubts that the publication could financially survive either of those outcomes. In 2005, before his death, Buckley estimated that the Review had lost more than $25 million in its 50 years of operation. It has never enjoyed a single moment of robust financial health competing in the “free market of ideas,” but has relied on reader contributions and bailouts from wealthy donors for the entirety of its history.

Conservatives like to point Buckley’s legacy and the Review as the reasonable, moderate edge of an regressive, reactionary party. In its history, the magazine has consistently staked out far-right positions that favor whites over nonwhites and plutocrats over the middle and working classes.

National Review authors have railed against racial integration, called Hitler a left-wing radical, and argued with a straight face that African-Americans are inherently more violent and less civilized than whites.

Lowry himself famously declared “We’re winning” the War in Iraq just before catastrophic waves of sectarian violence engulfed the country and permanently scuttled the American-led reconstruction effort.

Lately contributor Mona Charen has authored a series of wildly LGBT-phobic articles, lamenting the mainstreaming of “unusual sexual identities” and accusing parents who allow their transgender children to be themselves of “child abuse.”

big ad http://www.chevron.com/Ecuador/?utm_source=nro&utm_medium=banner&utm_content=loc_en_ecuador_rico_300x250&utm_campaign=ecuador

http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore

http://mediamatters.org/tags/greg-pollowitz

http://www.nationalreview.com/author/victor-davis-hanson google rec

The National Review based in New York City and founded by William F. Buckley, Jr., considered one of the godfathers of American conservatism, is one of the oldest and most influential conservative magazines in the United States. It regularly publishes the work of some of the nation's leading conservatives. National Review Online provides some of the articles from the print publication online as well as original material. In the early 1990s they had, with theHeritage Foundation, a joint venture called 'Town Hall'. This BBS became a forum on Compuserve in 1994 and in June 1995 the web site 'townhall.com' went live. Townhall.com became a project of the Heritage Foundation until it was purchased in 2006 by Salem Communications Corporation. The current director of the National Review is Jeff Sandefer, President of the Texas-based energy investment firm Sandefer Capital.

[hide]

Quoting industry reps & targeting activists

Editorials featured in the National Review are reliably right wing, corporate and industry friendly with frequent use of excessive rhetoric. Editorials also source and reference industry lobbies such as Center for Consumer Freedom. ^[1]See also Wesley J. Smith, sections 2 & 3.

Staff

President - Dusty Rhodes

Contributors

wiki

...

Lopez grew up in the Chelsea section of Manhattan,^[3] and graduated from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where she studied philosophy and politics. Before joining National Review in New York, she worked at the Heritage Foundation on Capitol Hill.

Career

Besides National Review and NRO, her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, The Women's Quarterly, The National Catholic Register, Our Sunday Visitor, American Outlook, New York Press, and The Human Life Review, among other publications.

She writes often on bioethics, religion, feminism, abortion, education, politics. Of NRO's writers, she tends to be a proponent of pro-life, marriage and family issues from a Catholic perspective. She also advocates strong leadership within the Church, and was a supporter of the election of Pope Benedict XVI.

She was a strong supporter of President George W. Bush's reelection bid in the 2004 Presidential election campaign. On the day of the election, when afternoon exit polls showed Bush losing, she relayed information from Bush campaign insiders that cast doubt on the poll methodology.^[4] Afterwards, she supported preventing Arlen Specter from replacing Orrin Hatch as head of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary during the period between the 2004 elections and the beginning of the new Senate term in January 2005. Later in 2005, Lopez criticized the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers. She has taken positions against gender quotas, e.g., for university admissions. In 2006, she supported the unsuccessful re-election campaign of Rick Santorum to the United States Senate. She was also a vocal supporter of Mitt Romney's bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.

Lopez has appeared on CNN, C-SPAN, the Fox News Channel, MSNBC, and Oxygen and is a frequent guest on radio and TV shows, including Hugh Hewitt's nationally syndicated program and Vatican Radio.

National Review Online

A popular feature of National Review is the web version of the magazine, National Review Online ("N.R.O."), which includes a digital version of the magazine, with articles updated daily by National Review writers, and conservative blogs. The on-line version is called N.R.O. to distinguish it from the paper magazine (referred to as "N.R.O.D.T." or National Review On Dead Tree.) The site's editor is Kathryn Jean Lopez, known to the N.R.O. community as "K-Lo". The web-site receives about one million hits per day—more than all other conservative-magazine websites combined.^[citation ^needed] Each day, the site posts new content consisting of conservative, libertarian, neoconservative, and neoliberal opinion articles. It also features several blogs:

The Corner^[26] (postings from many of the site's editors and affiliated writers discussing the issues of the day).
The Campaign Spot^[27] (formerly The Kerry Spot/TKS written by Jim Geraghty).
David Calling^[28] (updated by writer David Pryce-Jones).
Bench Memos^[29] (legal and judicial news).
The Agenda^[30] (analysis updated by Reihan Salam).
Media Blog^[31] (media news).
Planet Gore^[32] (global warming news).
Phi Beta Cons^[33] (University news).

Markos Moulitsas, who runs the liberal Daily Kos web-site, told reporters in August 2007 that he does not read conservative blogs, with the exception of those on N.R.O.: "I do like the blogs at the National Review—I do think their writers are the best in the [conservative] blogosphere," he said.^[34]

National Review Institute

The N.R.I. works in policy development and helping establish new advocates in the conservative movement. National Review Institute was founded by William F. Buckley Jr. in 1991 to engage in policy development, public education, and advocacy that would advance the conservative principles he championed.^[35]

Finances

As with most political opinion magazines in the United States, National Review carries little corporate advertising. The magazine stays afloat by donations from subscribers and black-tie fund raisers around the country. The magazine also sponsors cruises featuring National Review editors and contributors as lecturers.^[25][36]

Buckley said in 2005 that the magazine had lost about $25,000,000 over fifty years.^[37]

Notable current contributors

Current and past contributors to National Review magazine, National Review Online, or both:

Jed Babbin
Bruce Bartlett
Myrna Blyth
Denis Boyles
Richard Brookhiser, senior editor (joined staff in the 1970s)
Mona Charen
Charles C. W. Cooke
Robert Costa
Dinesh D'Souza
Jack Dunphy (pseudonym)
Daniel Foster, News Editor
David Freddoso
Roman Genn
Jim Geraghty, The Campaign Spot (formerly The Kerry Spot)
Jonah Goldberg, N.R.O. editor-at-large.
Mark M. Goldblatt
Michael Graham
Victor Davis Hanson
Jeffrey Hart, N.R. senior editor
Paul Johnson
Phil Kerpen, N.R.O. financial contributing editor
Roger Kimball
Florence King
Dave Kopel, N.R.O. columnist
Charles Krauthammer
Larry Kudlow, N.R.O. economics editor
Stanley Kurtz
Michael Ledeen
Mark Levin, N.R.O. contributing editor/syndicated radio talk show host
James Lileks
Rob Long, N.R. contributing editor
Kathryn Jean Lopez, N.R.O. editor
Rich Lowry, N.R. editor
Donald Luskin, N.R.O. financial contributing editor
Jim Manzi
Clifford May
Andrew C. McCarthy
John J. Miller N.R. national political reporter
Stephen Moore, financial columnist
Deroy Murdock
Jay Nordlinger
Michael Novak
Kate O'Beirne, Washington, D.C. editor
John O'Sullivan, N.R. editor-at-large
Ramesh Ponnuru
Dennis Prager
David Pryce-Jones
David B. Rivkin
James S. Robbins
Claudia Rosett
Pat Sajak
Joseph Morrison Skelly
Thomas Sowell
Stephen Spruiell
Mark Steyn
Jim Talent, former Senator from Missouri
R.

===

Right-wing media are fanning the flames of a conflict between a federal agency and their new hero -- a scofflaw Nevada rancher who's threatening a violent range war against the federal government.

Cliven Bundy, a cattle rancher in Nevada, has been fighting the government over grazing rights on public land for nearly a quarter century. In 1993, Bundy began refusing to pay government fees required to allow his cattle to exploit public lands. In 1998, the government issued a court order telling Bundy to remove his cows from the land, as part of an effort to protect the endangered desert tortoise located there. And in July 2013, a federal court ordered Bundy to get his cattle off public land within 45 days or they would be confiscated. The confiscation began this month, and the cattle will be sold to pay off the $1 million in fees and trespassing fines Bundy owes.

Conservative media have held the confiscation out as a big government invasion of private property rights and have repeatedly hyped the rancher and his family as victims being intimidated by a heavily armed force of federal agents who are escalating the situation into the realm of notorious and deadly standoffs like Ruby Ridge and Waco.

Fox News hosted the rancher on the April 9 edition of Hannity, where Sean Hannity sympathized with Bundy's claims against the government and argued that allowing Bundy's cattle to graze on public lands "keeps the price of meat down for every American consumer."

Fox & Friends highlighted the situation and complained about the protections for the desert tortoise. Co-host Brian Kilmeade said, "We're not anti-turtle, but we are pro-logic and tradition."

Meanwhile, Glenn Beck's TheBlaze.com played up the fact that the federal agents confiscating Bundy's cattle were armed. Alex Jones' Infowars.com posited that the government was attempting to "enslave us in an [United Nations] Agenda 21 future where we have no property and no rights." During an April 9 edition of Jones' conspiracy theory radio show, Jones said of Bundy, "So your bottom line, like Paul Revere, you're making your stand, you're telling folks we're being overrun by an out of control tyranny."

National Review Online's Kevin Williamson called the presence of armed agents "inflammatory" and described the government's actions as a "siege." The conservative American Thinker accused Attorney Gen. Eric Holder of enforcing the law against Bundy for racial reasons. ...

http://mediamatters.org/search/index?qstring=national+review+online+&x=0&y=0

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