Here come da judge!

Three cheers and a tiger for Judge Roy Moore!!! To no-one's surprise (except perhaps the Republican establishment), the firebrand former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court soundly defeated Senator Luther Strange in a special primary runoff yesterday.

Since Alabama is about as solidly Republican as it's possible to be, Judge Moore's election to the United States Senate in December is now just a formality.

The New York Times calls the outcome of the closely watched race "a humbling blow to President Trump and other party leaders days after the president pleaded with voters in the state to back Mr. Strange." It is not.

To be sure, Judge Moore was opposed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republican grandees who have opposed and obstructed President Trump. What was strange (pun intended) was Mr Trump's endorsement of Senator Strange. It's never easy to read the President's mind, but I think we can put this down to loyalty. During his short term in the upper house of Congress, Senator Strange was a strong supporter of the President, voting the right way as and when required. The President's endorsement recognized that.

But... a couple of days ago President Trump uttered an aside -- almost a throw-away line -- to the effect that his endorsement of Judge Moore might have been a mistake. I don't think it was. I think (and I am waiting for Scott Adams to say something similar) that Mr Trump gave Senator Strange his stamp of approval knowing that doing so would: a) placate the Republican establishment and show himself to be a team player, b) confuse the progressives and snowflakes who can't imagine voting for anyone that Mr Trump likes, and c) fire up the populists and hard right (Hello, Steve Bannon!) and make them work even harder to get Judge Moore elected. Which is exactly what happened!

To me, the selection of Judge Roy Moore bodes well for the future of the USA since it shows that voters are not as concerned as the liberals, SJWs and lamestream media... not to mention the United States Supreme Court... about the separation of church and state. Judge Moore stood up for Christian values -- the values on which America was founded -- on issues such as "gay marriage". In 2014, in an interview with AP, he declared, "The moral foundation of our country is under attack," and that the "government has become oppressive, and judges are warping the law."

Judge Moore is also famous for his refusal to remove from his courtroom a plaque showing the Ten Commandments. (The statue shown in the picture came later.) He told the Montgomery Advertiser that his intention in hanging the plaque was to indicate the importance of the laws given by God to man. It was not his intention to create controversy, he said, but "I wanted to establish the moral foundation of our law."

What is law but the expression of a set of principles and beliefs? Certain things are right; certain things are wrong. The question to be answered is which set of principles and beliefs should have the force of law in our society.

Do you want to live your life according to the customs and practices of Islam? Then you have no problem with Sharia law (but see "Sharia Law: Saudi king pardons gang-rape victim", WWW 26/9/17). Do you think the code of laws which govern our daily behaviour should have no reference to any religious creed? What you want then, is a legal code based on secular humanism, which is just as much a religion (belief system) for the liberals and progressives as Islam is for the Muslims or Christianity for traditional Catholics and evangelical Protestants.

Judge Moore stands for and stands up for the old-time religion, the Christian values on which the USA was founded, which, if restored to their rightful place in its courts and legislatures can indeed Make America Great Again. God bless him!

Fred Reed explains "why Trump must be stopped!"

I admit to having forgotten about Fred Reed. Agent 17 told me about his blog years ago, and I followed it for awhile. I love the rantings of Americans who are so pissed off with the State of the Union that they desert the sinking ship. (For realistic advice about moving to Canada if Trump wins, check out this video.) But in the course of relocating, upgrading computers and other disruptive activities, I lost Fred's bookmark and... well...

Now Agent 6 has sent along a link to a piece by Fred which appears on a new (to Walt) site called LewRockwell.com, which boasts that it is anti-state, anti-war and pro-market. My sentiments exactly! I could add another half dozen antis and pros, but those three will do for a start. I see Lew also features articles by Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan and Laurence Vance, so I know I'm in good libertarian company!

Fred's piece is called "The Mask Comes Off: Putrefaction Most Foul". It's about the conspiracy of the Republican and Democratic Establishments to secure the GOP nomination for Donald Trump. I wrote about the Republican insiders' motives just yesterday. Fred's style owes a lot to Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, so it's a pretty scathing screed, but it's way too long to be reposted here in full. I'll just give you a couple of excerpts and the conclusion.

I love it: Donald Trump’s campaign reveals the establishment for what it is, a swamp of corruption as fetid as those of Latin America. It is better entertainment than Vaudeville. The frantic scramble to rig the primaries, change the rules, and thwart the voters–anything to defend their cozy entanglement of political tapeworms–makes absurd any pretense of democracy.

The Republicans try desperately to ditch the only Republican candidate who could win the Presidency because…Hillary is one of them. Because, as every sentient being has by now noticed, the Republicans and Democrats are members of the same corrupt club of blood-sucking parasites, the action arm of the corporations, Wall Street, the Israeli lobby, and those who want the US to control the world at any cost–except, of course, to them. They are panicked at the rise of someone who might put first the interests of America. Better Hillary, a fellow parasite, than Trump, who isn’t.

If the Republicans deep-six Trump, and Hillary runs against Kasich, or Cruz, or some other derelict, what then? Our choices will be not to vote, which will make no difference, to vote for either of the party candidates, which will make no difference, or to vote for Trump if he runs as a third party, which will make no difference. But at least we will have seen under the log, the squishy pale creatures scurrying. They will keep their grip on the country, but the world will know them for what they are.

It is to preserve these overflowing rice bowl [= the troughs from which the insider pigs feed. Walt] that we have elections without substance between candidates without a difference. Hillary is just Jeb Bush in a dress, Biden a universally applicable cipher, Cruz a compliant applicant for membership in the club. Since the parties collude in avoiding issues that people care about, the contest becomes a popularity contest of the sort found in middle school. Whoever wins, the Insiders win.

Of course, Trump also is a billionaire,but he is a turncoat, a class traitor, the Benedict Arnold of billionaires. He addresses the issues that the Insiders want to remain unaddressed. He is indeed dangerous. He threatens the endless (immensely profitable) wars, the endless (immensely profitable) shipping of American jobs to China, the endless (immensely profitable) importation of cheap Mexican labor. He threatens the sacred rice bowls.

It is why he must be stopped.

Which presidential candidate is "unloved and unstoppable"?

Did you really have to look? The description comes a briefing in the current issue of The Economist. [Why does The Economist call itself a "newspaper" when it's obviously a magazine? Just wonderin'. Ed.] The cartoon of Hellery heading towards her inevitable coronation is the work of the Globe and Mail's estimable Brian Gable.

The Economist's characterization of Ms Clinton as "unloved and unstoppable" is mild compared with some of the things being said about her by fellow Democrats. The Economist quotes a certain Dr Paul Song: "Medicare-for-all will never happen if we continue to elect corporate Democratic whores who are beholden to big pharma and the private insurance industry instead of us." Indeed. Dr Song is obviously a Sanders supporter.

The Economist had some unkind words for Donald Trump too, calling him a "foul-mouthed celebrity builder". But, they concede, the breadth of the Donald's victory in the New York primary was "impressive". Moreover, their analysis gives the lie to "the idea that it is mostly poorer, less educated voters who are attracted to Mr Trump..." They interpret exit polling from other state primaries as showing "that better-paid and better-educated voters have always formed as big a part of Mr Trump's base as those at the lower end of the scale..."

Today Republicans vote in primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. The Economist expects Mr Trump to win all five. Walt concurs. Lifetime pct .988.

German anti-immigrant party makes big gains: the meaning for the USA

In 1990, an American attorney and free speech advocate named Mike Godwin propounded a "rule of Nazi analogies", now known as Godwin's Law. In Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age (MIT Press), Mr. Goodwin posited that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1", i.e. if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler or Nazism.

Now applied to any threaded online discussion, such as Internet forums, chat rooms, and comment threads, as well as to speeches, articles, and other rhetoric, Godwin's law applies especially to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one's opponent) with Nazis – often referred to as "playing the Hitler card".

In the increasingly turbulent campaign for the US presidensity, we are seeing the Hitler card played almost every day by the opponents of Donald Trump, particularly after the Donald called on his supporters to raise their right hands and promise to vote for him.

Those who have implicitly or explicitly likened Mr. Trump to Hitler need to learn not just Godwin's Law but its corollary: He who plays the Hitler card has already lost the argument! As The Economist reports, "Mr Trump won [Mississippi and Michigan] handsomely, despite...leading a crowd in Orlando in a pledge of allegiance to himself, accompanied by a fascist-style salute."

The results of yesterday's elections in three German states should also be instructive to Mr. Trump's detractors. Supporters of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's policy of "Willkommenskultur" -- welcoming 1000s of Muslim "refugees" -- were shocked by the strong showing of the "neo-Nazi" Alternativ für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany), led by Frauke Petry, who the lamestream media have already likened to... wait for it... Hitler.

The main plank in the AfD's platform -- some would say the only plank -- was a promise to stop the "Asylchaos" caused by the invasion of the Fatherland by over a million unassimilable Muslim "refugees" and "asylum-seekers" -- something about which the Donald warned in January.

The AfD made huge gains in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, taking a quarter of the vote to become the second-biggest party in the state legislature. In Baden-Württemberg, Frau Merkel's CDU lost a third of its support, reaching a historic low of 27%, while the AfD gained about 15% of the vote. In Rhineland-Palatinate the Social Democrats maintained their position as the strongest party, the CDU came second - in a state they had hoped to win - and the AfD came fourth with 12.5%.

Those who hurl epithets like "Hitler" at their opponents would do well to remember that Hitler was elected democratically, on a wave of popular support for his promise to make Germany great again. The German people wanted their country to be great again, just as Americans want the USA to be great again. Draw your own conclusions.

Note from Ed.: So far, Frau Petry seems to have avoided having her picture taken with her right arm raised in the air!