And these people still insist that you engage them like sane grown-ups

Greenies have jumped the shark, no doubt about it.  The results of a study have been published in the new issue of the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and they assert that rates for violent crimes like rape are going to go up throughout this century as a result of global warming.

Hey, careful!  You're getting nostril-coffee blowback all over your keyboard!

And just where do the Koch brothers rank among muckety-muck donors to political/ideological causes?

59th, per the Center for Responsive Politics.

There was no rebound

We were originally told by our overlords that the economy grew at an annualized rate of 3.2% in the fourth quarter of 2013.

Oopsie.  It was only 2.4%.

Just like here in post-America, Christians in Syria are under the thumb of the crazed totalitarian mob

In the case of these Syrian Christians, when crunch time came, they folded.  Will post-American Christians do likewise?

Christian leaders in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, captured by an organization formerly affiliated with al-Qaeda, have signed a submission document this week banning them from practicing Christianity in public in return for protection by their Islamist rulers.

The document, dated Sunday and disseminated through Islamist Twitter accounts, states that the Christian community in the province of Raqqa, captured last March by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), was recently given three options: to convert to Islam; to remain Christian but pledge submission to Islam; or to “face the sword.” They opted for the second of those choices, known as dhimmitude.

The UN is a toxic sewer of appeasement and rudderlessness - today's edition

It held off on issuing a report full of vital information on the planet's most existentially pressing issue:

 The U.N. nuclear watchdog planned a major report on Iran that might have revealed more of its suspected atomic bomb research, but held off as Tehran's relations with the outside world thawed, sources familiar with the matter said.

Such a report - to have been prepared last year - would almost certainly have angered Iran and complicated efforts to settle a decade-old dispute over its atomic aspirations, moves which accelerated after pragmatic President Hassan Rouhani took office in August.

According to the sources, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has apparently dropped the idea of a new report, at least for the time being.

Why the hell are we still in this shameful outfit?

"Gay person" and "leftist" are not synonymous terms

Three examples:

Tammy Bruce at the Washington Times

This bill, like others across the country, was thought necessary because of the emergence of business, large and small, being attacked by the gay left for either espousing Christian values or acting on their Christian faith. Ranging from a bakery to a photographer, individuals were being sued for refusing to violate their religious beliefs. Having been a liberal “community organizer” in my past, I immediately recognized the strategy being employed. This is an effort to condition the public into automatically equating faith with bigotry. To make faith in the public square illegal and dangerous, you need legal cases and publicity. Voila, lawsuits against small business resting on the notion that acting on genuinely held faith is bigotry per se.

Under these rules, freedom of conscience is squashed under the jackboot of liberals, all in the Orwellian name of “equality and fairness.” Here we are dealing with not just forcing someone to do something for you, but forcing them in the process to violate a sacrament of their faith as well. If we are able to coerce someone, via the threat of lawsuit and personal destruction, to provide a service, how is that not slavery? If we insist that you must violate your faith specifically in that slavish action, how is that not abject tyranny?

Of all the people in the world who should understand the scourge of living under constant threat of losing life, liberty or the ability to make a living because of who you are, it’s gays. It has been disgusting to watch supposed gay “leadership” drag young gays and lesbians through an indoctrination that insists that in order to have equality, you must force other people to do your will, make them betray who they are, and punish them if they offend you.

Horribly, the gay civil rights movement has morphed into a Gay Gestapo. Its ranks will now do the punishing of those who dare to be different or dissent from the approved leftist dogma. To all the young gays who tweet and email me that this is about “equality,” how exactly? Forcing someone to do something against their faith has nothing to do with equality for you, has nothing to do with bigotry and has everything to do with a personal, spiritual understanding of right and wrong.

Chapman at Chapman GOP

and a great post at Gay Patriot, in which he turns the floor over to one of his commenters:

Maybe the response for florists, bakers and photographers is to tell gay couples if they hire their services for their weddings that they will be donating 100% of the profits to a sanctity of marriage group.

Drops the bomb right into the laps of those who for whatever reason want to force religious bakers to bake cakes and photographers to take pictures.

Pretty slick idea, don't you think?

Rich Lowry nails it

From his column today at Politico:

A religious freedom statute doesn’t give anyone carte blanche to do whatever he wants in the name of religion. It simply allows him to make his case in court that a law or a lawsuit substantially burdens his religion and that there is no compelling governmental interest to justify the burden.

For critics of the Arizona bill, the substance was almost an afterthought. They recoiled at the very idea that someone might have moral objections to homosexuality or gay marriage.

Indeed.  As in the cases of hate crimes legislation, or the recent executive-fiat change to FHer-care that stipulates that a business must prove that it didn't downsize its staff because of FHer-care, the overlords insist on getting inside your head, parsing your motives for your thoughts and actions.  Complying with their edicts behaviorally is not enough.  They will X-ray your mind and heart to determine whether you have absolute fealty to their program.

The post-American legal system and the crazed mob that that the Left has become

Can't express you patriotism in school because, you know, there might be trouble:

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Officials at a Northern California high school acted appropriately when they ordered students wearing American flag T-shirts to turn the garments inside out during the Mexican heritage celebrationCinco de Mayo, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the officials' concerns of racial violence outweighed students' freedom of expression rights. Administrators feared the American-flag shirts would enflame the passions of Latino students celebrating the Mexican holiday. Live Oak High School, in the San Jose suburb of Morgan Hill, had a history of problems between white and Latino students on that day.

The unanimous three-judge panel said past problems gave school officials sufficient and justifiable reasons for their actions. The court said schools have wide latitude in curbing certain civil rights to ensure campus safety.

"Our role is not to second-guess the decision to have a Cinco de Mayo celebration or the precautions put in place to avoid violence," Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote for the panel. The past events "made it reasonable for school officials to proceed as though the threat of a potentially violent disturbance was real," she wrote.

The case garnered national attention as many expressed outrage that students were barred from wearing patriotic clothing. The Ann Arbor, Mich.-based American Freedom Law Center, a politically conservative legal aid foundation, and other similar organizations took up the students' case and sued the high school and the school district.

William Becker, one of the lawyers representing the students, said he plans to ask a special 11-judge panel of the appeals court to rehear the case. Becker said he would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if he loses again.

"The 9th Circuit upheld the rights of Mexican students celebrating a holiday of another country over U.S. student proudly supporting this country," Becker said.

It is so very late in the day.

Freedom-Hater-care: Experience with it is not making for a more positive consensus

The post-American masses are weighing in:

In a surprising change, CBS This Morning journalists on Thursday devoted almost five minutes to investigating the "debacle" of ObamaCare and the administration's "frantic efforts" to save it from total failure. Co-host Norah O'Donnell even went so far as to inform viewers of a new network poll: "...Forty two percent want the law repealed. Only six percent think it's working well." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

O'Donnell and Charlie Rose talked to Steven Brill, who has written a cover for Time magazine "on the failed roll out of HealthCare.gov and the White House's desperate effort to fix the web site."  A CBS graphic explained, "Rebooting ObamaCare: Inside the Frantic Attempts to Save HealthCare.gov." 

The regime's propaganda arm  is beginning to have to swallow hard and report the unavoidable truth.

And post-America is but a bystander

Now that the Olympics are over, Putin's Russia seems to be all done with any pretense of a smiley-face image on the world stage.

Armed men have seized Crimea's parliament building and hoisted the Russian flag.

Russian military jets are patrolling the border with Ukraine.

And a Russian warship has docked in Havana without any explanation from the Cuban government.

Ben Shapiro nails it

At Breitbart, he lists and elaborates on the seven myths about the Arizona bill Brewer - she of the federally-funded expansion-of- Medicaid - just vetoed.

Read the whole thing, but the seven myths are

• Arizona’s Law Loosens Discrimination Against Gays and Lesbians in The State.
• The Government’s Recognition of a Right to Religious Practice “Allows” Discrimination.
• Allowing Private Businesses to Discriminate Among Customers Is Like Jim Crow.
• Immorality and Illegality Should Be Identical.
• Race and Homosexuality Are Analogous.
• America Is a Nasty Place.
• The Left Will Leave Your Church Alone.

For the moment, at least, the myths seem to be holding sway.

Your head starts to clear when you spit out the Kool-Aid

Interesting testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee:

Patrick Moore, a Canadian ecologist who was a member of Greenpeace from 1971-86, told members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee environmental groups like Greenpeace use faulty computer models and scare tactics in further promoting a political agenda, Fox News reported.

“There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years,” Mr. Moore said. “Today, we live in an unusually cold period in the history of life on earth and there is no reason to believe that a warmer climate would be anything but beneficial for humans and the majority of other species.

“It is important to recognize, in the face of dire predictions about a [two degrees Celsius] rise in global average temperature, that humans are a tropical species,” he continued. “We evolved at the equator in a climate where freezing weather did not exist. The only reasons we can survive these cold climates are fire, clothing, and housing.

“The fact that we had both higher temperatures and an ice age at a time when CO2 emissions were 10 times higher than they are today fundamentally contradicts the certainty that human-caused CO2 emissions are the main cause of global warming,” he said.

Mr. Moore left Greenpeace in 1986, accusing the organization of political activism.

“After 15 years in the top committee I had to leave as Greenpeace took a sharp turn to the political left, and began to adopt policies that I could not accept from my scientific perspective,” he said. “Climate change was not an issue when I abandoned Greenpeace, but it certainly is now.”

He's hip to the down-is-up strategy of the Freedom-Haters.

How widely will this be covered?

This couldn't happen a minute too soon:

On February 25th a group of eleven renowned law professors from around the country sent a letter to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) warning that SB1062—the bill "which amends Arizona's Religious Freedom Restoration Act" (RFRA)—has been "egregiously misrepresented by many of its critics." 

The mix of eleven professors consists of Republicans and Democrats, religious and non-religious, "some...[who] oppose same-sex marriage [and] some... who support it." Their letter was obtained exclusively by Breitbart News ahead of its public release.

Their letter focuses on the important role RFRA plays in "[enacting] a uniform standard to be interpreted and applied to individual cases." And the professors said such a "standard makes sense" as "we should not punish people for practicing their religions unless we have very good reason."

SB1062 amends Arizona's RFRA in two ways: 

1. "It provides that people are covered when state or local government requires them to violate their religion in the conduct of their business."

2. "It would provide that people are covered when sued by a private citizen invoking state or local law to demand that they violate their religion."

Countering misrepresentations, the professors pointed out that "SB1062 does not say that businesses can discriminate for religious reasons."

In concluding, they urged Gov. Brewer to be sure SB1062 is "accurately considered," so that in passing judgment on it she is not "misled by uniformed critics." 

The linked Breitbart story lists the signatories and where they teach.

The week when post-America's death rattle became audible

Well, the Arizona Republic chimed in with an editorial on that state's bill about protecting businesses from lawsuits forcing them to violate the core tenets of their religious faith.  It wants Brewer to veto it.  The reasons cited - harm to the tourism industry, harm to other industries' ability to attract talent - are similar to those put forth here in Indiana by major universities and corporations regarding our own HJR-3.

I'd wager that she will indeed veto it.  The pressure has built to a level she can't withstand.

This situation is a microcosm of what has killed America: obscuring of the core issue, the ubiquity of the "diversity" meme, and fever-pitch emotionalism as an irresistible rhetorical weapon.

The core issue has nothing to do with homosexuality.  It is, like the situation with the Little Sisters of the Poor and contraception coverage, whether Americans can be coerced into violating the central precepts of their faith.

Ascribing some kind of inherent virtue to the notion of "diversity" has made possible not only the dizzying pace with which the post-American public has become willing to change the definition of one of the oldest institutions in human history, but the indulgence on the part of schools, corporations and municipalities of all manner of self-invented sexual identifications that would have been considered cartoonishly outlandish a mere ten years ago.  We now give a serious airing to a woman who becomes a man via surgery and hormone therapy and then decides it wants to bear a child.

I have posed, in various forums of debate, this question: "Where is the shortcoming in the free-market solution to this?  A homosexual couple takes its wedding-cake business to a baker eager to serve, and the Christian baker is left alone."  No one will directly answer it.  Not one person.

Because this battle in the war for America's soul is about the Freedom-Haters stamping out the Judeo-Christian foundation of our society.  What I have seen in the way of non-responses to my question is a disturbing trend.  These FHers, who preen and self-congratulate and bask in their self-perceived superior virtue, wind up positing in one form of expression or another that these service-providers must be made to get over their silly religiosity because it is wrong and hateful.

More  chilling yet is the zeal to humiliate and marginalize on the part of the FHers.  They point to emerging trends in courts and state legislatures, the message being, "It's coming.  Might as well surrender now."

At the outset of every totalitarian takeover of a nation there has been a silencing of the last voices of dissent by a savage mob that is satisfied with nothing less than utter extermination of even the consideration of freedom.  That is where we are this week

Memo to Freedom-Haters: You own post-America.  It's going to be very dark and you will experience the darkness no less than those of us who warned about it.  The mob is shouting for Barrabas to be freed, and Pilate has washed his hands.

Does anyone still doubt that the Most Equal Comrade is a declinist?

 MacKubin Thomas Owens at NRO says that the point of the Hagel - MEC military cuts announced last week was to take post-America down a peg:

President Obama has embarked on a grand strategy that seems to relegate the United States to the status of just “one among many.” The president has firmly rejected the idea of American exceptionalism and the status of the United States as the “indispensable nation” that must provide the “public good” of security. His actions with regard to the domestic economy have also made it difficult, if not impossible, for the United States to increase defense spending in the future if such a response becomes necessary. This is a radical shift and a dangerous one.

And let's put to rest the idea that the defense budget is big enough that this makes no difference:

Critics of U.S. defense spending shrug their shoulders, arguing that the United States spends more on defense than the next ten countries in the world. But this is misleading. U.S. defense spending reflects the role that America has played in the world since the end of World War II: U.S. military forces essentially have provided an international “public good” by underwriting the security on which global stability, interdependence, and ultimately prosperity depend.
It has been the United States that ensured access to the “global commons” — especially freedom of navigation, which is essential to the prosperity arising from free trade and commerce — and airspace. It has been the United States that has deterred the behavior of potential aggressors in the international system. If the U.S. forces that provide this public good are stretched too thin because they are underfunded, the result will be a decline in global stability and prosperity, something already evident over the past few years. World War I illustrates how rapidly an interdependent world order can collapse if the rise of aggressive powers is not checked.

The United States has underwritten international security with a defense budget that, while high in absolute terms, nonetheless represents only about 4 percent of gross domestic product and about 15 percent of the federal budget. But under the present administration, the defense budget has been asked to bear the burden of any proposed cuts. For example, the sequester imposed 50 percent of spending reductions on defense. And the Obama administration has chosen to cut defense spending while doing nothing about the continuing expansion of entitlement programs, which make up 80 percent of the federal budget. 

By the way, I'd forgotten that Chuck Hagel was a signatory to the Global Zero report recommending reductions in US and Russian nuclear forces to 450 apiece.

Black pastors push for Eric Holder's impeachment

They're disgusted like the rest of us with his selective enforcement of laws and his intent to impose the homosexual-activist agenda on states:

A coalition of black pastors announced on Tuesday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. that they are launching a campaign to gather one million signatures on a petition calling for the impeachment of Attorney General Eric Holder for violating his oath of office by trying "to coerce states to fall in line with the same-sex 'marriage' agenda."

"President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have turned their backs on the values the American people hold dear, values particularly cherished in the black community: values like marriage, which should be strengthened and promoted, rather than weakened and undermined," says a statement by the Coalition of African American Pastors that has been posted online with their impeachment petition.

"Our nation calls for the building up of a healthier marriage culture; instead, our elected leaders are bent on destroying marriage, remaking it as a genderless institution and reorienting it to be all about the desires of adults rather than the needs of children," says the coalition.

[snip]

On Tuesday, Holder told a gathering of state attorneys-general that it's okay if they don't defend laws in their states that prohibit same-sex marriage:
"Now, any decisions at any level not to defend individual laws must be exceedingly rare. They must be reserved only for exceptional – truly exceptional – circumstances.  And they must never stem merely from policy or political disagreements, hinging instead only on firm constitutional grounds," Holder said.
“But in general, I believe we must be suspicious of legal classifications based solely on sexual orientation. And we must endeavor in all of our efforts to uphold and advance the values that once led our forebears to declare unequivocally that all are created equal and entitled to equal opportunity."
The CAAP petition for the impeachment of Holder is addressed directly to the U.S. Congress.
“I write today to urge you to take immediate action against the Attorney General of the United States for his lawless attempts to undermine states sovereign laws regarding marriage,” says the CAAP petition. “Attorney General Holder should be impeached for abandoning his duty to uphold and defend the law and for pushing a radical agenda on the states in a manner out of keeping with the obligations of his office.”
“I urge you to bring impeachment against Eric Holder for his reckless attempts to undermine our states’ constitutional marriage laws and the voices and values of millions of voters,” the petition says.

Add that to Fast and Furious, voter-ID meddling and the multitude of other tyrannical transgression, and you have a rap sheet that, in a sane world, would have him gone yet this afternoon.

Why we call them Freedom-Haters - todays edition

Meet Sandra Korn, Harvard senior and steaming chunk of dog vomit.

Leftist terminology is generally so useless

For instance, what the hell is a "cycle of violence"?  Samantha Powers tweets about as much after meeting Daniel Pearl's parents.

Sewers of indoctrination

Going back at least as far as Alan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind, and perhaps as far back as Buckley's God and Man at Yale, there's been no shortage of expressions of dismay over what has been happening to American higher education.

But just how bad is it at small, liberal-arts colleges in 2014?  Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution has the grim facts:

Our top-ranked liberal arts colleges have eviscerated the core curriculum.  Of the Top 25, ACTA reports, “only two require an economics course. Only three require a survey in U.S. history.  Only five require a survey course in literature.” Amherst College, Grinnell College, Hamilton College, Middlebury College, and Vassar College have open curricula with no requirements. Bates College, Bowdoin College, Haverford College, Oberlin College, Smith College, Swarthmore College, Wesleyan University, and Williams College do not require undergraduates to study literature, American history, the principles of American politics, or economics.

Our top-ranked liberal arts colleges, while aggressively promoting multiculturism, have incongruously demoted language study. The majority of them do not require students to achieve even intermediate-level proficiency—the equivalent of three college semesters of study—in a foreign language.

Our top-ranked liberal arts colleges have discouraged the free exchange of ideas and free inquiry. According to a study by the redoubtable Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, incorporated by ACTA into its report, all of the top liberal arts colleges seriously impair freedom of speech. Fourteen—including Carleton College, Colgate University, Middlebury College, and Wellesley College—have in place “at least one policy that clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech.” Several punish “offensive speech.” Some American college and universities have actually banished unfettered expression to designated “free speech zones”—a dodge reminiscent of how Russia marginalized protesters during the Winter Olympics.

He offers a prescription for reversal, but the feasibility of recommendations depends on just how late in the day it really is.

The international implications of the Ukrainian upheaval

Mark Almond at the UK Daily Mail explains a few things such as that, for all the common-folk protestors involved in the overthrow of Yanukovich, what will emerge in terms of a governmental structure will be decided, as is usually the case, by those with guns.

Sadly, Ukraine’s peaceful protesters are being marginalised by the reality that in a revolution, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. 

When Klitschko tried to persuade them to accept the EU-brokered compromise deal, he was booed off the stage in Kiev.

And Western hopes that the Russian naval base in Crimea might, as a result of gradual Russian acceptance, be turned over to Ukraine are not founded on what is likely.

Nato has never wanted Russia’s forces in the Crimea, but nor does Washington want to see any violent effort to force them out.Bill Clinton famously declared that keeping Crimea in Ukraine and away from Russia was in America’s national interest. But he hoped that over time Russia would accept an independent Ukraine and withdraw its fleet.Today, when ethnic Russians are rallying in Crimea and other parts of Eastern Ukraine, the risk of a clash between radicals on both sides is rising. 

Almond also mentions Ukraine's possible credit default, as the fact that no other potential contenders for the presidential election set for May besides Yulia Tymoshenko.

Putin has been handed a bad hand of cards at present, but it's pretty certain that he's not going to be passive about what unfolds in Ukraine from here.

Sean Noble's not taking the bait

The head of the Center to Protect Patient Rights refuses to accept ProPublica's insistence that he nail Jell-O to the wall to prove that the money his group receives from the Koch Foundation isn't "dark."

The ProPublica authors repeatedly use the term “dark money” so as to scandalize the Center to Protect Patient Rights and make legal and compliant activities seem improper. If the money were truly “dark,” these “reporters” and the public would not have broad access to information about the funds granted by CPPR and similar organizations. The public tax records referenced by ProPublica include significant details about organizational details, activities, priorities, and spending.

The truth, while much less intriguing than the tale woven by ProPublica, is that CPPR and the other non-profits mentioned in the article operate in full compliance with the law. Even the authors of the piece admit, “There’s no indication that Noble or the center are under scrutiny by authorities for violating tax or election laws.”

ProPublica hopes to bully CPPR and other conservative groups out of existence because we’ve been effective. Thanks to President Barack Obama’s mismanagement of the country, particularly the failure of “Obamacare,” liberals know they can’t win against us in a fair fight of issues and ideas.

Instead, the left must resort to intimidation. Their tactics include boycotts, threatening businesses, digging through divorce records to personally embarrass and hurt the families of those with whom they disagree, etc. But, before they can employ these methods, they need to know who to target. This is why they demand the disclosure of donors to conservative causes.

The best way for ProPublica and others to make this happen is by launching complaints about the political activities of non-profits. The true purpose of this piece wasn’t to scream for transparency on behalf of American voters. It was to attack me and taint the law-abiding work of all non-profits on the right. After all, if ProPublica really believed voters have a right to know who’s paying for political activity, they’d have the same concern for their readers and not rely so heavily on unnamed “sources.”

Noble's none too happy with the Arizona Republic for using the ProPublic piece as objective reporting, either.  Read the whole thing.

We're not obligated to nail Jell-o to the wall in defense of our beliefs

Derek Hunter has a Townhall.com column this morning that speaks directly to something that has preoccupied me this last week.

First, I'll get as much mileage as I can from his money paragraphs, and then expand on those thoughts:

Ted Nugent, someone I grew up with on the radio in Detroit, called the president a “subhuman mongrel” at an event for Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott of Texas. The offended class in the media sprang into action, drooling like heroin junkies when they hear that flame hit the bottom of the spoon.

It was deemed one of the worst things ever said, by people who make their living declaring things said by others awful – one of the few growth industries in Obama’s economy.

CNN dedicated hour upon hour of coverage to the words of a man whose actions for charity they’ve ignored for decades. Current Texas Gov. Rick Perry went on with Wolf Blitzer and was badgered for 2 1/2 minutes to denounce these words, then denounce them in stronger terms, and again, as if Perry has said them himself. Republicans were nearly trampled by “journalists” demanding they react to and answer for something said in an entirely different time zone.

Meanwhile, taking a break from calling Republicans all manner of potty-mouth names, Bill Maher has made the rounds of cable television as if he knows anything about this beyond what he read on Daily Kos. Imagine the feigned outrage if Maher talked about progressives – any progressives – the way he has talked about Sarah Palin and her children.

This misogynistic bigot gives $1 million to President Obama’s reelection PAC, yet he is greeted as an insightful and unbiased commentator by Blitzer and others. And no progressives – not him nor any of the others – ever is demanded to denounce his attacks. When it comes to progressive racism, misogyny, hatred and violent rhetoric, the referees swallow their whistles, as they say in basketball.

Greg Abbott and Rick Perry are no more responsible for the words of Ted Nugent than progressives are for the words of Bill Maher. But although Abbott and Perry were forced to answer for Nugent, President Obama cashes Maher’s check and his cabinet secretaries, advisors and elected Democrats from Nancy Pelosi on down beat a path to the stage of the man who calls conservative women “c@nt” without question or repercussion.

That’s what happens when you are the one who gets to choose what is offensive. As Mel Brooks said, “It’s good to be the king.”
Republicans need to recognize this and do more than complain about it. They need to refuse to play by these rigged rules. They should start by calling out the gatekeepers of outrage when forced to answer for others. Newt Gingrich scared the hell out of moderators in the 2012 primaries by simply calling a garbage question what it was. If you don’t play the progressives’ game, their rules don’t matter. No matter how often they change them.
A simple, “Did you invite me here to talk about something I had nothing to do with? It wasn’t me, I wasn’t there. I’ll answer for something I had nothing to do with when you answer for Dan Rather. Until then, how about we talk about jobs?” would go a long way toward shutting up these arbiters of offense.
The new rules are there are no rules. The other side is making them up as they go along. Conservatives can’t control the questions they’re asked, but they can control the answers they give. Quick thinking and preparation can turn the tables on the outraged media class, turn the tables on their inquisitors and expose them for the frauds they are.
Of course, it also would be nice if people would stop saying stupid things.

Yesterday, I came across an item in my Facebook newsfeed in which I was mentioned by name, in the context of my assertion that racism is a negligible factor in modern American society. THe poster's launching point was the noose recently hung around the neck of the James Meredith stature.  After satisfying herself that she had rendered my assertion worthy of dismissal, she went right into the talking points about Pubs hating the Most Equal Comrade because of his race.

I haven't responded yet, but I'm going to post the link to Hunter's column.  

I have recently become ensnared in a couple of quite lengthy and contentious FB threads on various matters, and it's gotten me to thinking about the nature of pissing matches.  Let's take the environment, for example.  You can state that the planet isn't in any trouble, that the whole climate-change pseudo-issue serves the dual purposes of distracting people from the true and measurable decline of our civilization, and justifying ever-greater government control of our lives. The next comment you see will be some link full of charts and graphs and atmospheric-science lingo.  You'll bone up on what your sources say and post them.  The thread will devolve into a back-and-forth volley of ever-more arcane, eyes-glazing-over substantiations of each sides' claims, with your FHer opponent finding some source that will connect every kind of weather phenomenon, from droughts to blizzards, to human activity.  Finally there will come a stage at which the FHer side goes to the "look-who-funds-your-think-tanks-and-activists" level.

 

One of the workshops at the Americans for Prosperity Defending the American Dream Summit last summer was called "Getting Past the Gotchas."  It was moderated by Dana Loesch and Lars Larson.  I'm looking at my notes right now.  A big takeaway point was that you have to know all the arguments on both sides and then stay true to what you know to be true.

Which brings Mr. Nugent back into the conversation.  We can't afford to let unfortunate remarks slip out of our mouths.  We can't have a sharpness level that is anything less than maximum.  Freedom-Haters are getting ever-more crafty.

It really comes down to living what you say you believe.

Western civilization cannibalizes itself

Fully let this statistic in:  More black babies are aborted than born in New York City.

Where the real intolerance lies

The law that the Arizona legislature just passed would protect business owners from lawsuits if they refuse to offer their services in situations that would violate the precepts of their faith.

It's a simple protection of freedom.

A scroll through the Facebook feed makes clear that the so-called inclusion crowd is fueled by pure venom in its response. I've even seen a Hitler mustache on a Jan Brewer photo.

And regarding the argument that there is some kind of parallel with pre-civil-rights refusal in Southern dining establishments to serve blacks, I cede the floor to the great Dennis Prager:

There is no relevant difference between black people and white people, while there are enormous differences between males and females. Second, no great moral tradition or thinker ever forbade interracial marriages (interreligious marriages were sometimes forbidden). Moses, for example, married a black woman, and neither the Bible nor God hinted that it was wrong.

And Ken Shepherd at Newsbusters shows why any comparisons to Jim Crow laws are apples-to-oranges.

In the Jim Crow South, a free market remedy to discrimination was impossible thanks to government requiring all business owners of all races to discriminate and/or segregate in some manner. By contrast, laws being considered in Kansas and Arizona would leave plenty of room for competitors to open their doors wides to all comers and pick up the business both of gay persons and straight individuals who would rather not patronize a business which refuses to work with gays and lesbians.

But people who take their scripture seriously are the extremists now.

Down is up, up is down.

Comrade Vlad face-plants sixteen times

A lot of history has been going down in Ukraine in the last few hours.  Rather fluid for trying to draw solid conclusions.  One thing that's not solid, for sure, is the multitude of Lenin statues throughout the country that have been toppled.  Go here for some cool footage of some of them.

An interesting factoid

Leopoldo Lopez, the currently-jailed anti-Maduro protest leader in Venezuela, is a descendant of Simon Bolivar.

Gavin Newsom sees the light

California's lieutenant governor parts ways with his boss Jerry Brown and opposes a high-speed rail system for the state.

Newsom first revealed his flip-flop on high-speed rail to a Seattle radio station last week,according to the San Francisco Chronicle. "I am not the only Democrat that feels this way. I am one of the few that just said it publicly," Newsom is quoted as saying, adding that many other Democrats feel the same way but are afraid to defy Gov. Brown and President Barack Obama, who has also strongly supported high-speed rail development.

Polls now show that most Californians now oppose the high-speed rail project. 

He may be a Bay Area FHer, but he apparently has the intelligence to see the utter silliness of this expenditure.

It would seem that it is already happening in real time

David P. Goldman at PJ Media says that history dictates a partition of Ukraine:

  [Ukraine] never was a country but an almalgam of provinces left over from failed empires–Russian, Austrian, Lithuanian, Ottoman–cobbled together into a Soviet “republic” and cast adrift after the collapse of Communism. Lviv (Lemberg) was a German-speaking city, part of Silesia; before World War II a quarter of its people were Jews. Jews were two-fifths of the population of Odessa.

A fifth of the population, mainly in the East, are ethnic Russians; a tenth, mainly in the West, are Uniate Catholics, who have a special place in Catholic policy since the papacy of John Paul II. Ukrainian nationality is as dubious as Byelorussian nationality: neither of them had a dictionary of their language until 1918. 

The country also is a basket case. At its present fertility rate (1.3 children per female), its 47 million people will shrink to only 15 million by the end of the century. There are presently 11 million Ukrainian women aged 15 to 49 (although a very large number are working abroad); by the end of the century this will fall to just 2.8 million. There were 52 million Ukrainian citizens when Communism fell in 1989. Its GDP at about $157 billion is a fifth of Turkey’s and half of Switzerland’s.  Ukrainians want to join the European Union rather than Russia so they can emigrate.  It is of no strategic, economic, or demographic importance to the West.

That may already be underway:

"The regime has begun active military action against people. Dozens of people have been killed in Kiev and hundreds have been wounded. Fulfilling the will of society, the executive committee of the Lviv region's council, the People's Rada, is assuming full responsibility for the fate of the region and its citizens," read a statement.

The executive committee was led by Petro Kolodiy, chairman of the Lviv region's council.

Lviv lies close to the border with Poland and was one of the venues for the Euro 2012 football tournament. Over the past months, the city has become a powerful engine driving the insurgency against president Viktor Yanukovich.

The region, which is traditionally hostile to the easterner Yanukovich and favours closer ties with the European Union, has a population of 2.5 million.

Resist!

 

Mr. Way-Behind-on-Turning-Over-His-Chemical-Weapons has a big shout out for Brother Nick

Assad expresses the Syrian people's solidarity with the Maduro regime in Venezuela and its efforts to crush the pro-freedom uprising there.

The scandal of harassing our groups is not all that's wrong at the IRS

The agency is such a byzantine tangle of inefficiency that it has given up on "customer" service:

An internal review from the IRS reports that its customer service representatives are answering fewer "customer" calls and keeping callers on hold for longer periods.

The IRS' response to this finding is even more concerning. Its solution? IRS customer service representatives are directed to stop answering taxpayers' more complicated, and hence more time-consuming, questions.

That’s right: The federal government created a terribly complicated tax code and then decided that it will take its time answering taxpayers’ hardest questions about the whole mess. Meanwhile, if you mess up your tax forms, it won't hesitate to call you for answers.

What's worse, the IRS hates competition. In 2012, the agency took steps to squeeze out small tax-prep companies by imposing onerous (and unnecessary) education and licensing requirements. Thankfully, as Reason Magazine's Katherine Mangu-Ward explains, “The libertarian legal outfit Institute for Justice helped mom-and-pop tax prep firms challenge the new regs.”

In this case, the good guys won. News arrived a few days ago that the "D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the IRS had no legal authority to impose a nationwide licensing scheme on tax-return preparers.” For now, you can at least seek prompt, affordable, tax assistance from private firms while the IRS gets its customer service act together. However, this victory is merely one small riposte against the IRS' disturbing broader power grab.

The response - even from our people - to suggestions of simplifying the tax code to the point where an IRS would no longer be necessary has always been, "It will never happen given Beltway culture."  Maybe now that the agency's intrinsic rottenness is ever-more apparent, such a proposal increases in feasibility.

Newt refuses to go along with the down-is-up strategy

On CNN's Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer tries to get Newt to focus on Ted Nugent's characterization of the Most Equal Comrade as a "subhuman mongrel" and puke all over himself condemning it.

Newt didn't take the bait:

I always love selective media outrage. As the party of Hollywood, the Democrats have lots of donors and supporters who say truly stupid things. Truly outrageous things. But let's go right to the heart of the Democratic party. The Saturday before the 2000 election, Al Gore went to a black church and charged that George W. Bush would appoint judges to return blacks to be counted as three-fifths of a person. In 2012 Vice President Biden went to a black audience and said if the Republicans win within 100 days, they will put you back in chains. Now why isn't there some accountability for tremendously outrageous, vicious, and racist  statements by Democratic elected officials, not just entertainers? And I just think there's a double standard here. What Ted Nugent said was stupid. I don't support it. He's a big supporter of the Second Amendment, which I am. But in this case, it's not a smart thing to do. But I do think the level of selective outrage, particularly on the entertainment left, where they often day after day say much more vicious things about Republicans, it's just kind of funny to watch.

[snip]

I would love to have the media condemn a major Democrat for some of the vicious things they have said. I have never seen it done. I don't expect to see it done in my lifetime. I think this is entirely selective outrage. Again, I'm not defending Ted Nugent. I think what he said was wrong and he shouldn't have said it. But I also think that the outrage is remarkably selective.

The propaganda arm of the regime would like you to believe that the way Ted Nugent talks is representative of typical conservative rhetoric.

What would make for an interesting study if someone had the time and money is a comparison of the number of times a Freedom-Hater is publicly taken to task  for outrageous utterings versus the frequency with which conservatives rebuke their own for such talk.  I'm not sure how you'd go about such a study in any scientific way.  I guess you'd have to limit it to television appearances, columns, blog posts.

I do know that I have seen plenty of enthusiastic Facebook postings of Bill Maher's verbal sewage.  You'll have to trust me on this, but I never see the pronouncements of righties who have gone overboard used to make points on my newsfeed.

But when one of ours does go overboard, we are all expected to drop the main point of discussion and publicly wash our hands of any kind of association.

Down is up and up is down - today's edition

23-year-old skier David Wise is a married churchgoer and father of a a two-year-old girl.  He attributes his winning Olympic gold to the way he has structured his life.  NBC characterizes it as an "alternative lifestyle."  Says "at such a young age, Wise has the lifestyle of an adult."

Doesn't he realize you're supposed to be single and living in your parents' basement with your hands glued to a game console at that age?

Race-card hypocrisy as an emblem of the FHer technique of reversing reality to reinforce a meme

There are so many examples of race-card hypocrisy in our society that I tend to be judicious about zeroing on on any of them to make points about ideology, but this one is so clear-cut that it bears mentioning.

17-year-old white guy Marley Lion was shot and killed in Charleston, South Carolina by three black guys.  Lion had done nothing to make his assailants think they were in danger.  This was an instance of a type of crime that, demographically speaking, is 39 times more likely to occur than the reverse scenario.

But Brittney Cooper at Salon is so incensed that Michael Dunn was not convicted of first-degree murder in the shooting of Jordan Davis that she wonders in print whether it might be time for a violent racial uprising.

So identity politics becomes yet more pervasive, and it becomes that much easier for the low-information comrade to believe that there is some sort of systematic tracking down of young black males in our society.

It's just the racial manifestation of the overall leftist strategy.  We see it in the perpetuation of the climate-change fantasy, the entrenchment of the notion that anywhere near a majority of minimum-wage earners are trying to support families, that the number of uninsured people showing up at the nation's ERs was so big it required radically restructuring the way health care is delivered.

Up is down, down is up.  As I said yesterday, "Orwellian" would be apt for any one of these examples, except that it's been applied so much - properly so - that it has lost some of its power to properly alarm us.

I doubt if she'd claim our mantle, but she sure talks like a conservative

Camille Paglia has to be on anybody's short list of shrewdest cultural observers active today.  Her insights into the implications of various phenomena separate bone from marrow.

She's a lesbian, but she completely understands the threat to religious liberty in post-America:

She recently spoke out in support of Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson, supporting his right to express homophobic views.

‘In a democratic country, people have the right to be homophobic as well as they have the right to support homosexuality – as I one hundred percent do. 

'If people are basing their views against gays on the Bible, again, they have a right of religious freedom there.' she told Laura Ingraham’s radio show last week.

She understand the danger to our society resulting from the isolation of the military ethos:

‘The entire elite class now, in finance, in politics and so on, none of them have military service - hardly anyone, there are a few. But there is no prestige attached to it anymore. That is a recipe for disaster,’ she said. ‘These people don't think in military ways, so there's this illusion out there that people are basically nice, people are basically kind, if we're just nice and benevolent to everyone they'll be nice too. They literally don't have any sense of evil or criminality.’

Read the entire linked piece.  It offers many more gems, such as her view that elite upper class women have sentenced themselves to 30 years of pilates, her affinity for the guys who call in to sports talk radio shows (saying sports talk shows are the last bastion of comfortable masculinity in our culture), and her assertion that Lady Gaga has done much to obliterate genuine eroticism from our artistic life.

What a refreshing alternative to the parade of dreary outlooks and groupspeak that constitutes most of our societal discourse at this juncture in post-America.

To use the term "foreign policy" for what this regime puts forth is to take it way too seriously

Then again, even though it's not what grown-up students of human history, much less freedom-cherishing, West-venerating Americans, understand the term to mean, we should pay close attention to whatever the hell you call what they're doing.  Handing the Ukraine situation off to Russia?  That ought to work out well.  Not.

 As the streets burn in Ukraine, and with police cracking down on opposition protesters, Vice President Joe Biden, who has been handed the unpleasant Ukrainian situation to handle, called up Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich to express “grave concern” over the situation. He also told Yanukovich that the “United States condemns violence by any side, but that the government bears special responsibility to de-escalate the situation.” Jay Carney reiterated that message at the White House, stating, “We continue to condemn street violence and excessive use of force by either side. Force will not resolve the crisis.”

Then the White House went further on Wednesday: White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes explained, according to Reuters, that “the United States would like to see Russia support efforts to reduce tensions in Ukraine.”
Demonstrating precisely the sort of responsible attitude that has led the Obama administration to hand over America’s leading role with regard to Syria and Iran, the Russian government has responded by blaming the United States for the Ukrainian violence. Russian Foreign Ministry official Aleksandr Lukashevich has said that the US is attempting to craft a “Western vector of development” on Ukraine, and accused the Obama administration of “puppeteering” in the country.
America’s retreat from the global stage has meant more violence, not less; it has meant more power for America’s enemies, not less. Instead of an overall policy promoting American interests, the Obama administration has opted for the Little Jack Horner Doctrine: we stick our thumbs in the pie, and hope to pull out a plum. In the process, we spoil the pie.
America wants it both ways. On the one hand, we want Russia involved, because we are too weak to back anyone in the Ukrainian fight. Thanks to that non-participation, we have refused to offer incentives to current Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich to abandon his Russian connections; in fact, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly expressed sympathy for the Ukrainian opposition, even though members of that opposition are both connected to Russia and to open anti-Semites. That drove the Ukrainian administration deeper into the arms of Vladimir Putin.

That’s all well and good, except that the United States apparently also wants to micromanage the opposition. Just weeks ago, Russia revealed tape of the State Department’s Victoria Nuland telling US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt that the US perspective should be to “f*** the EU.” She was making the case that Vitali Klitschko, current opposition leader, former boxing champion, and European Union ally, should not enter the Ukrainian government: “I don’t think that Klitcschko should go into the government. I don’t think it is necessary. I don’t think it is a good idea….I think to help glue this thing and have the UN glue it and you know, f*** the EU.” Pyatt replied, “We’ve got to do something to make it stick together, because you can be pretty sure that if it does start to gain altitude the Russians will be working behind the scenes to try to torpedo it.”
If this sounds like incoherent policy, that’s because it is. The truth is that the major politicians in Ukraine always flirt with the Russian bear, because the Russians are next door and have resources at easy access. And it’s also true that both sides are filled with corrupt kleptocrats, as the country has found out over the last twenty years.

The whole world smells weakness, incoherence and self-hatred on the part of those leading post-America.  How can this end well?

 

Okay, let's sort this out

Yes, Michelle Malkin is correct that Donald Trump is a solipsistic blowhard with no discernible principles, certainly not conservative ones.  And it's also true that McKay Coppins is a childish ambush artist.

Kathleen Sibelius is a liar - today's edition

Her latest whopper immediately struck normal people as ludicrous, but it's still important to provide substantiation for the claim that it was a whopper.  That comes in a new report from the Advanced Medical Technology Association.

AdvaMed’s report, for which surveyed it all of its medical device and technology member companies in late 2013, paints a much different picture. Here are the top takeaways from the report.

1. Job losses

“The tax has resulted in employment reductions of approximately 14,000 industry workers and forgone hiring of 19,000 workers. The total job impact of the tax on industry employment was approximately 33,000.”

“The impact of the tax on indirect employment would be approximately 132,000 jobs, for a total job loss due to the tax of as many as 165,000 jobs.”

“We have restructured our business, including significant layoffs…We have reduced service levels to customers. We will consider adding headcount if there is a repeal,” said one company surveyed in the report.

2. Shipping jobs overseas

“Adding offices and employment outside US (EU and Asia) in lieu of US jobs. Modest numbers today, but will increase in upcoming years,” according to one company surveyed.

3. Companies cutting back on research and development

“Almost one-third of respondents (30.6%) said they had reduced R&D as the result of the tax.”

“Almost 10 percent of respondents said they had relocated manufacturing outside of the U.S. or expanded manufacturing abroad rather than in the U.S. because of the tax.”

4. 75 percent of member companies cutting back on investments, canceling plans for new facilities, and having trouble raising capital

“Three-quarters of respondents said they had taken one or more of the following actions in response to the tax: deferred or cancelled capital investments; deferred or cancelled plans to open new facilities; reduced investment in start-up companies; found it more difficult to raise capital (among start-up companies); reduced or deferred increases in employee compensation.”

5. More job cuts to come

“58% of respondents said they would consider reducing employment if the device tax were not repealed.”

“50% said they would consider reducing R&D investment if the device tax were not repealed.”

She's another one of those regime comandantes like Secretary Global Test who are starting to appear to be none too bright.  Did she think no one would come forth with readily available facts to blow her out of the water?

Did she not consider the possibility of a report such as this, or the fourth hospital closure in Georgia attributable to Freedom-Hater-care?