Gonna Saddle Old Paint For the Last Time and Ride

Dear Weekend Jolter,

Is it a torch, or a baton? Whatever it is, this missive passes next week to the care of the exceptional Judd Berger, NRO's managing editor. He will give it the dignity, savoir faire, and keen insight it deserves, but, sadly, never got with your Regularly Scheduled Carnival Barker.

Why this change? It is precipitated by Your Humble Correspondent's retirement from NR, that place founded 65 years ago by William F. Buckley Jr. It would be a staggering understatement to describe working for him as a mere "honor." Or for Rich Lowry.

Having been employed here for over three decades, in lieu of a customary gold watch, the only thing desired was the chance to say good-bye to the readers and supporters, many of whom — courtesy of previous duties as Publisher and Cruise Director — have become fond friends and welcome acquaintances. That wish was kindly granted: NR has published an au revoir, and if you care to read it, you will find it here.

Should you choose not to read it . . . heading for the exits (the final day is Friday, April 30 — if you are reading this on May 1 the exits have been gone through), advantage will be taken of the current location of your eyeballs for a direct purpose: If you love NR half as much as This Poor Schlub has over these three decades past, and if you agree that it would be a good thing for NR to still be standing athwart three decades hence, please make a contribution, here.

From Heaven's heights, my buddy Bill would look kindly on your doing this.

To those who have shown selfless camaraderie, who have sent succor to NR, no matter if it compared to the Widow's Mite or the Billionaire's Pocket Money, Your Departing Blatherer says thank you. For that and so much more. The appreciation is very real. It will last until the last day.

The keyboard is getting soggy, so let us get on with the Jolt by considering the top piece on NRO this Friday morning, Charlie Cooke's Biden’s Con against America. The entire thing is worth your read (we note with happiness that CCWC is once again full-time writing), but since the article is behind a paywall (wouldja get NRPLUS already?), here's a healthy snippet:

Talk like a moderate; act like a radical. Talk about normality; act like a revolutionary. And, at all stages, aggressively hide the ball. Progressive pundits have taken to saying that Biden poses a problem for conservatives because he is so "boring." That's one way of looking at it, certainly. Another is that he is a fraud. The man who ran on a return to normalcy — and whose party avoided unified Republican government by only 90,000 votes — now says he wants to be FDR. Heaven help us all.

If anyone truly thinks that Biden is "boring," it is because, having been intoxicated by the Trump Show, they are looking only at this president's style. One-hundred days into Biden's presidency, and there is scarcely a single part of American life that the man isn't trying to change. At the latest count, he wants to spend six-trillion new dollars; to raise taxes to their highest level in three decades; to raise the minimum wage to $15 nationally; to turn the Senate into the House and turn the Supreme Court into the Senate; to oversee a federal takeover of elections and the police; to force as many workers as possible into unions, while banning right-to-work; to prohibit the most commonly owned rifle in the United States; and much more besides. Some of this, Biden is now open about. Much of it, however, he is still not. That $2 trillion "COVID relief" bill you've heard about? It wasn't really about COVID relief. The "Infrastructure" bill? It's not really about infrastructure. The "Families" bill? You get the picture. Nor are the contents described accurately. Two-hundred-billion dollars in new spending on Obamacare. That's a "tax cut," apparently. "No increase" in the estate tax? Well, unless you count the step-up basis, which is really the whole game. It's as if, having finally been elected president after 50 years in politics, Joe Biden has decided to push every priority his party ever failed to get through.

To those who find this outcome surprising (and not in a Gomer Pyle way), and to those who were all too invested in letting their political illiteracy get the better of them in the 2020 presidential campaign, well, you were warned (it was obvious to even This Charmless Pontificator) about the horror show awaiting America, and the mendacious Delawarean who would front for the nasty things which Mr. Cooke catalogues.

Come May, 2021, it's a little late for Katy bar the door talk.

Now let us away to this week's bounty.

NAME. RANK. LINK.

EDITORIALS

It will come back to bite-cha: Biden Capital-Gains Tax Hike Is Vindictive Policy

You want snake oil? Joe's got snake oil: Biden's Address Was a Dishonest Sales Pitch for a Radical Agenda

Federalizing law enforcement is criminal: Democrats Should Stop Posturing on Police Reform

ARTICLES

Rich Lowry: Joe Biden's Radical Gambit

Alexandra DeSanctis: Biden Spends His First 100 Days Hellbent on Expanding Abortion

Alexandra DeSanctis: Washington Post Misses the Mark on Holy Joe, Catholic Church, and Abortion

Jerry Davis: Uncle Same Does Not Belong in Girls' Dorms or Showers

David Harsanyi: Tim Scott Speech Reaction: Ugly, Telling

John McCormack: Tim Scott: Happy Warrior's State of the Union Response Triggers the Left

Philip Klein: Biden 's Speech: Health Care Deception

Doug Brake: Biden's Broadband Boondoggle

Rich Lowry: Border Crisis an Avoidable Mess of Joe Biden's Own Making

Michael Brendan Dougherty: Why Isn't John Brennan in Prison?

David Harsanyi: John Kerry Is Protected by a Double Standard

David Harsanyi: Biden First 100 Days: Press Becomes State-Run Media

Michael Brendan Dougherty: Millennials Eclipse Boomers and Push New Policies

Brian Allen: Museums Fail Public in Coronavirus Lockdown Year

Kaj Relwof: Dr. Nowzaradan of My 600-lb Life Is a Conservative Hero

CAPITAL MATTERS

Kevin Hassett and John Cochrane warn about what's cooking: Federal Reserve Dismisses Risk, Risks Repeat of 1970s Stagflation

Jonathan Williams and Dave Trabert on the locals going loco: Excessive Property Tax Bills Are Prompting Citizen Reform

Dan Kim finds Big Brother wants to disown company owners: SEC Reforms Would Overrule Shareholder-Voting Process

Brian Riedl busts out the quartet: A Conservative Infrastructure Alternative

LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.

Armond White considers the versus: Them and Hollywood's White-Exploitation Movement

More Armond, who loves the tough love: Concrete Cowboy: Black Fathers Matter

Kyle Smith explains a horrible night: Academy Awards: Depressingly Woke and Dull

More Armond, who seconds Kyle's motion: Oscars Show Hollywood's Ideological Arrogance

FROM THE NEW MAY 17, 2021 ISSUE OF NR

Christopher Caldwell: The Inequality of 'Equity'

Nicholas Eberstadt: How Biden Can Reduce the North Korean Threat

Andrew C. McCarthy: Due Process Matters

David Mamet: The Woke Teacher as Bully

OUR POTATOES HAVE NO LUMPS, BUT ARE CHOCK FULL OF DELICIOUS LINKS AND YUMMY EXCERPTS

Editorials

1. The Democrats are playing games while Tim Scott is proposing sound ideas. From the editorial:

Set aside race for a moment, and we see this reasoning for the absurdity it is. By the Democrats' lights, if more men than women are subjected to law-enforcement stops, that means "disparate impact" and thus "profiling," because police are supposed to pretend that men do not commit vastly more crime than women. Yet, nobody would seriously dispute that the disparate rates of male arrest and incarceration are due to disparate rates of male crime — and, for that matter, young male crime. In fact, following their own logic to their own bizarre end, the bill even penalizes disparate impacts on the basis of gender. That could compel police departments to either greatly restrict stops of men, or expand stops of women for no good reason.

The same is true when applied to race. The majority of crime is reported to the police, not observed by the police. We know who is committing crimes not because of police suspicions but from victim reports, the bulk of them filed by people of the same race as the perpetrator. The remorseless fact is that young black men violate the law at rates that are themselves disparate to their share of the overall population — and perpetrate most of that crime against their own neighbors.

This is just one of countless ways "disparate impact" theory warps policy. Rather than grafting it onto our law, we should be purging it. As applied here, it would hopelessly distort honest police work and spawn endless litigation and enrichment of the trial bar. The bill is also, like most things to come from Nancy Pelosi's Democrats, designed to funnel taxpayer money to left-wing activist groups, by appointing them to give "training" to police.

Tim Scott's JUSTICE Act offers better policy ideas, including some sensible overlap with the Democrats' proposals, and Democrats acted shamefully by filibustering Scott's bill last year instead of engaging with him. As Scott observed Wednesday night, they "seemed to want ... READ MORE