The embodiment of everything that drives the Freedom-Haters up the wall

I've long tried to parse just what it is about the Koch brothers that brings the Left's stuff up so violently. As we know, they contribute to arts organizations along with conservative and libertarian groups.  They finance hospital wings.  They're pleasant individuals, by all appearances.

We may get some clues now that they have raised $889 million for the next campaign cycle.  This, of course, is sinister in the extreme as far as the Left is concerned.

But Rich Lowry, writing at Politico, says the lefties brought it on themselves:

For all that campaign reformers hate the Kochs, the brothers’ network is, in part, their creation. “This is the natural consequence,” campaign-finance reformer Lawrence Lessig griped to POLITICO about the $889 million, “of a regime with essentially no contribution limits.”

Actually, it is the inevitable — and long-ago predicted — consequence of contribution limits. The campaign-finance reformers knee-capped the political parties with malice aforethought and then are stunned that, in a free country, political activity has found other outlets.

If Reince Priebus and Debbie Wasserman Schultz are limited to raising $32,400 per donor annually, they will inevitably lose ground to outside groups.

But perverse consequences are a specialty of the campaign-finance reformers. They made it so difficult for candidates to raise money ($2,600 per donor per election) that politicians have to spend an inordinate amount of time raising money. The soul-deadening fundraising grind that afflicts almost every federal officeholder is a bitter fruit of campaign-finance regulations.

Advocates of greater regulation want to spread the pain by making it as difficult, or perhaps even impossible, for everyone else to raise and spend money on politics. The only obstacle to this ambition is — damn you, George Mason — the Bill of Rights, specifically the First Amendment.

The Kochs' main focus is freedom, and the Freedom-Haters know it.  David and Charles speak about, and spend money on organizations and politicians that speak about, liberating human activity from the fetters of regulation as much as possible.  The FHers try to make it about money and power, but that's because power is their chief preoccupation.  Most folks, the Kochs included, just want to get up in the morning and do great things.

Inflexibility and contempt from yet another of the Most Equal Comrade's patty-cake partners

Are all the leftists still going to be giddy over rapprochement with Cuba after the island dictatorships terms have been specified to this extent?

The good news: The discomfort over the embargo of Cuba has led to a good bargaining position in talks with the US. The bad news: Raul Castro’s the one that thinks so. Far from being grateful for the diplomatic overture from Barack Obama, Castro wants the US to pay reparations for the economic damage that Castro says the embargo caused, plus the immediate return of control over Guantanamo Bay, as the opening ante for normalizing relations:

Cuban President Raul Castro demanded on Wednesday that the United States return the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, lift the half-century trade embargo on Cuba and compensate his country for damages before the two nations re-establish normal relations.

Castro told a summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States that Cuba and the U.S. are working toward full diplomatic relations but “if these problems aren’t resolved, this diplomatic rapprochement wouldn’t make any sense.”

So much for the yearning of the Cuban people for normalcy, eh? As far as Obama’s suggestion that engagement will bring about reform in Cuba, Castro has another demand:

Without establishing specific conditions, Castro’s government has increasingly linked the negotiations with the U.S. to a set of longstanding demands that include an end to U.S. support for Cuban dissidents and Cuba’s removal from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

On Wednesday, Castro emphasized an even broader list of Cuban demands, saying that while diplomatic ties may be re-established, normal relations with the U.S. depend on a series of concessions that appear highly unlikely in the near future.

Only if one believes that these conditions will discourage Obama. He’s desperate for a foreign-policy achievement that will allow him to claim a legacy, and Castro knows it.

To answer my question above, of course they will.  They think his demands are perfectly reasonable.

What we're learning about Loretta

Her presumptive-Holder-replacement hearings in the Senate are underway, and a few matters are getting clarified.

Here's where she stands on tilting jihadists back and putting some water up their noses to get them to sing about plots for catastrophic attacks.

Here's where she stands on illegal aliens working.  (Tells us volumes about her sense of the definition of the most fundamental legal term of all: right.)

Here's where she stands on the issue of weed legalization.

I get the sense that she's less given to demagoguery than Holder, but I don't think there's a lot of daylight between their ideological leanings.

Creepy goings-on in Argentina

The recent death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman may be mysterious principally because President Kirchner wants it that way.

It seems her inner circle is rather keen to focus suspicion on an aide to Nisman:

“This kid’s situation is starting to look worrisome,” Aníbal Fernández, the president’s chief of staff, told reporters here Wednesday morning, referring to the aide, Diego Lagomarsino, 35.
Mr. Lagomarsino worked in the prosecutor’s investigative unit as an information technology consultant and lent Mr. Nisman the .22-caliber Bersa pistol used in his death, investigators say.

It's pretty well known that Nisman was working on tying Kirchner associates to a deal with Iran that would exonerate Iran from implications in the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center.

And it helps to know that around 8o percent of Argentine media is controlled by Kirchner's administration.  The main player that is not in its clutches is the Clarin group.

And it's being implicated in this mess:

In a speech on Monday night, Mrs. Kirchner accused Mr. Lagomarsino of being an opponent of her government, based on an analysis of his Twitter account. She connected him to Clarín, a powerful media group with which the president has long sparred. She based her argument on an assertion that Mr. Lagomarsino’s brother works at a law firm with ties to Clarín.
A spokesman for Clarín said that Mr. Lagomarsino never had any ties to the media group, including one of Argentina’s influential daily newspapers.

Kirchner seems to have a Nixonian kind of disdain for any forces that don't play ball with her:

Mr. Berensztein argued that Mrs. Kirchner’s approach fit a common strategy of tackling scandals here. “She applies the same model to every problem,” he said, referring to issues like Argentina’s debt battle with foreign creditors. “Reduce it to a simple conflict: her, the good person, against all the bad ones.”

Cliff May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies says that we need to understand the backstory to make sense of the recent twists and turns:

Mr. Nisman, 51, was an Argentine federal prosecutor, chief investigator of the 1994 bombing of AMIA, a Jewish cultural center, in Buenos Aires. Eighty-five people were killed in that terrorist attack.

In 2006, Mr. Nisman formally accused the rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran of directing the bombing, and of deploying Hezbollah, Tehran’s terrorist foreign legion, to carry it out.

Argentine courts demanded the extradition of seven Iranians, including former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former defense minister Ahmad Vahidi and Iran's former cultural attaché in Buenos Aires, Mohsen Rabbani. Iranian authorities ignored the demand. One year later, Interpol entered the names of five Iranians on its Red Notice list – the closest thing to an international arrest warrant. For the Iranians, it was an irritation and an inconvenience.

Over the years that followed, Mr. Nisman doggedly continued his investigation. Then, in January of 2013, Argentine President Christina Fernández de Kirchnersigned an agreement with Tehran setting up a “truth commission” to investigate who was “really” responsible for the bombing. To call that Orwellian would be another gross understatement.

In July, the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security invited Mr. Nisman to come to the U.S to present testimony. Mrs. Kirchner’s government denied him permission to travel. The hearing took place anyway. An empty chair was reserved for the South American prosecutor.

Finally, this month, Mr. Nisman filed a 300-page criminal complaint with the Argentine Supreme Court accusing Mrs. Kirchner and her foreign minister, Héctor Timerman, of conspiring to cover up Iranian involvement in the 1994 terrorist bombing, of agreeing to negotiate immunity for Iranian suspects and help get their names removed from the Interpol list. Iranian oil was to flow to Argentina in exchange, and Iran was to purchase large quantities of Argentine grain. 

So the creepiness extends to the level of playing footsie with a very evil nuclear aspirant:

According to the Argentine newspaper, La Nacion, opposition lawmaker Patricia Bullrich said Mr. Nisman told her he also had wire taps of phone calls in which an Argentine intelligence agent revealed details about his family to one of the Iranians charged in connection with the AMIA bombing. “He told me that it was an arrow to his heart,” Ms. Bullrich recalled.

Seems credible when you consider that we're talking about a regime that does this sort of thing:

Iran is encouraging its terror allies to pursue the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s children by publishing personal information about them, including photographs of the kids lined up in crosshairs, and declaring, “We must await the hunt of Hezbollah.”

The publication of the personal information and biographies of Netanyahu’s children follows an Israeli airstrike last week that killed several key Hezbollah leaders and an Iranian commander affiliated with the country’s hardline Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Iranian military leaders affiliated with the IRGC threatened in recent days harsh retaliation for the strike and promised to amp up support for Hezbollah as well as Palestinian terrorist organizations.

The information was originally published in Farsi by an Iranian website affiliated with the IRGC and quickly republished by Iran’s state-controlled Fars News Agency.

In addition to biographical details and pictures of Netanyahu’s children, the Iranians provided details about the families of former prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Ariel Sharon.

Regional experts with knowledge of the IRGC said this type of public threat is meant to intimidate the Israelis and act as a deterrent against possible military action.

“Here, we have organized a list of prominent Israeli Aghazadehs,” or children, according to the original post by the hardline Iranian website Mashregh, which has since removed the article. The Fars reproduction is still available online in Farsi.

Netanyahu’s children are acceptable targets for assassination due to their affiliation with top Israeli leaders, according to the article, which is titled, “The file of the Zionist Children.”

And then consider that the Most Equal Comrade and Secretary Global-Test want to keep playing nuclear patty-cake with a regime up to its eyeballs in worldwide evil.  Couldn't someone from the post-American regime at least ask some hard questions about why President Kirchner doesn't try a bit harder to pass the smell test?

 

 

 

A noteworthy utterance from a determined jihadist

Bracing words from a sword-wielding savage:

“Know, oh Obama, that we will reach America. Know also that we will cut off your head in the White House and transform America into a Muslim province,” said an ISIS fighter in a video obtained by MEMRI, before beheading a Kurdish soldier.

The statement was delivered from a street in Mosul, Iraq, which ISIS fighters have taken and where U.S. Marines formerly battled Al Qaeda.

If I were the Most Equal Comrade, that would get my attention.  But, alas, I'm not, and his way of seeing the world could not be more different.

Post-America's second most fearsome tool of tyranny (after the IRS) has the Pope's ear

Gina McCarthy in catching a plane for the Mediterranean, to pow-wow with Francis over the "moral" dimension of a fiction concocted for duplicitous reasons:

Radical Pope Francis said he was going to make global warming junk science his pet issuethis year.
Via The National Catholic Reporter:

The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is scheduled to make a brief Vatican visit at the end of the week on the topic of addressing climate change.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy will meet there Friday with senior officials, among them Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. She is also slated to meet with Catholic journalists Friday morning and business leaders in Rome that afternoon.

The agency initiated the meeting through U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Ken Hackett, viewing it as a unique opportunity to directly engage the Vatican.

Speaking to NCR ahead of her trip, McCarthy, an Irish Catholic from Massachusetts, described the Vatican stop as “the most important” on a five-day trip that will also have her visiting Geneva (Thursday), Rome (Friday) and Florence (Monday). She said the meetings will focus on discussing President Barack Obama’s climate action plan and EPA’s role in addressing the effects of climate change both domestically and internationally.

“Clearly, climate change is an issue that is impactful in terms of how we’re not just going to protect the most vulnerable but also take responsibility for protecting God’s natural resources,” McCarthy said.

“I think that the president and myself agree that climate change is indeed a moral issue,” she said. “It is about protecting those most vulnerable, and EPA’s job, as focusing on public health and environmental protection, always tasked ourselves to look at those most vulnerable and to ensure that when we’re taking action we’re addressing their needs most effectively.”

Sure. The EPA is thinking of the “most vulnerable.” That’s why their policies are a “dagger in the heart” of the poor and Middle Class the most.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, the truth is still donning its trousers.

More righty non-love for Mike

Yesterday, I posted about Indiana governor Pence's creation of a state-run news outlet.  He's already attempting to walk that back, given that it's being called "Pravda on the Prairie" and roundly castigated pretty much everywhere.

He's further eroding his righty bona fides today with the announcement of a program that is Medicaid in everything but name only (Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0).

There are two articles devoted to the boneheadedness of the idea at The Federalist.

John Daniel Davidson explains that there was a first version of HIP, conceived during the Mitch Daniels era.  It at least had a few free-market elements.  HIP 2.0, not so much:

It dragoons the entire non-disabled Medicaid population into the expansion scheme, not just those above the poverty line, and offers them a choice between a HIP Basic and a HIP Plus plan (some can also choose a plan that supplements employer coverage, a long-standing feature of traditional Medicaid), both of which feature a health savings account with a $2,500 deductible funded almost entirely by taxpayers.

The basic plan essentially requires nothing of enrollees. They get a health savings account and can either pay into it or not—the state will still cover the entire cost of the deductible and copayments will be limited to 5 percent of income, as they are for all Medicaid programs everywhere.

The HIP Plus plan includes vision and dental coverage, comprehensive prescription drug coverage, and requires no cost-sharing as long as enrollees keep up with monthly contributions to their account, which range from $3 to $25 a month. If an enrollee stops paying into the account, they won’t be kicked out of the program but simply get put on the basic plan. 

Davidson says that HIP 2.0 runs precisely counter to the basic conservative principle of fostering initiative and ambition:

 Consider than under Pence’s plan, a Hoosier earning $16,104 (or 138 percent of the federal poverty level, the income limit for Medicaid expansion under Obamacare) will pay a maximum of $322 a year for very generous HIP 2.0 coverage with no other out-of-pocket costs. If this person’s income increases at all, he loses his HIP account and will be forced to buy coverage on the Obamacare exchange, where his healthcare costs will skyrocket to nearly $2,800 a year in deductibles and copays for the benchmark silver plan.

Faced with such a choice, who would ever choose to earn more? In his statement, Pence said his goal is “to ensure that low-income Hoosiers have access to a health care plan that empowers them to take charge of their health and prepares them to move to private insurance as they improve their lives.” Yet the incentives built into his Medicaid scheme almost guarantee that poor Hoosiers will never opt to move to private insurance. They will instead become permanent dependents of Indiana’s expanding welfare system.

Joy Pullman expands on that point.  She describes the comfortably middle-class circumstances of her family, and the absurdity of qualifying for HIP 2.0:

We have a high-deductible health plan, so we pay essentially all of our medical bills in cash. And we have never had a problem affording that, despite having also paid cash for our three kids’ births, although affording health care does entail taking the kids to immunization clinics instead of pediatricians to cut costs and visiting quick-care clinics instead of emergency rooms when we have a malady that requires medical attention. But we don’t pay subsidized rates at the clinics. We pay the full cost. As my husband explained to the puzzled nurse once, “We can afford to pay.” If we can, so can lots of people Pence just told to stick their bills to taxpayers.

The clinic nurse was so confused as to why someone would turn down government “aid.” Apparently, my “conservative” governor feels the same way. Why pay for things yourself when you can use government force to compel other people to pay for you? Why encourage thrift and hard work in your citizenry when you can make yourself feel compassionate by giving away other people’s money? Never mind if it encourages poor people to stay poor. Never mind if you or your succeeding governor must raise taxes on working people like me, “poor” and otherwise, to pay for healthy people who choose not to work (or work very much). I mean, 284,000 of the 350,000 uninsured peoplewhom this plan will scoop into the arms of already overburdened taxpayers are able-bodied, childless adults. Apparently it’s enough to dub yourself “conservative” and let others pay the tab for believing it.

And she quite effectively makes the moral case against redistribution generally:

We should certainly not tell able-bodied people they deserve their neighbors’ hard-earned income because they earn less than 60 percent of their neighbors do. All this does is breed hopelessness and resentment among the dwindling number of “poor people” who, like me, do their darndest to pay their own way and instead of enjoying the fruits of their labor have to see it taxed away for people who will not similarly put their shoulders behind the wheel.

This is like telling the Little Red Hen that she has to make her cake from seed but everyone else gets to eat it anyway. If I were her, I’d either hide my cake or forget about making it at all. 

Once again, Mike has some big-time explaining to do.

 

When the "president" is the enemy

The list of Gitmo detainee releases without any quid pro quo is lengthy and shameful.  Among others, there are the savages we sent to Uruguay, where they're free to do what they damn well please, including head back to the middle east.  There were the five released to Oman and Estonia earlier this month.

And, of course, there was Bowe Berghdal, he of the parents who stood with the Most Equal Comrade in the Rose Garden and who was exchanged for five vicious jihadists. He's been charged by the Army with desertion.  Not exactly an even exchange.  Actually, the charge happened a while back.  Why are we just finding out about it now?

 . . . the White House is stonewalling the Army’s charges on Bergdahl of desertion. Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, has been a liaison between the Pentagon and the White House and has led the effort to keep this news from getting out.

Senior ranking military officials said two weeks ago that they would release the ruling soon. Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer referred to the White House’s efforts as a “titanic struggle behind the scenes.”

“As a corporate entity, the Army has decided that they want to pursue Bergdahl for this violation,” Shaffer said. 

The delay in releasing the charges against Bergdahl could stem from when the five Taliban members released were never briefed by Army officials. The White House just wants to make the situation to go away.

 Then there's the dog vomit the MEC spewed at the SOTU address about halting Iran's nuke-program progress and making post-America and Israel more secure.

"Dog vomit" a little over-the-top, you may be thinking?  Consider these five ways Iran is cheating on what it supposedly has agreed to so far:

1. Trying to buy equipment for plutonium reactor at Arak, breaking commitment to suspend work. The Obama administration actually complained about the purchases to the UN Security Council, even as it told the world that Iran had “lived up to its end of the bargain.” Iran’s defense–adopted to some extent by the State Department, which is desperate to save the talks–is that the agreement did not apply to work offsite, or to onsite work unrelated to the reactor.

2. Feeding uranium hexafluoride gas into a plant where it had agreed to suspend nuclear enrichment. The Institute for Science and International Security noted that Iran had begun enrichment at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz. It notified the Obama administration, which complained to the Iranians, which then claimed to have stopped the enrichment activity. Whether that is true or not, this is another case of the Obama administration knowing Iran cheated.

3. Withholding camera footage of nuclear facilities, defying the International Atomic Energy Agency.  A leading International Atomic Energy Agency official recently said the agency was “not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran” (original emphasis). The interim deal was to provide surveillance footage of Iranian nuclear facilities–but Iran has only provided what it wants to reveal.

4. Testing new IR-8 centrifuges, advancing its enrichment program and making cheating much easier. A violation of the spirit, if not also the letter, of the agreement, the development of a new centrifuge that can work sixteen times fasterthan its first-generation centrifuges would make cheating far easier and verification far more difficult. The new device essentially nullifies the verification process agreed to in the interim deal (and which Obama promises to expand).

5. Exporting more energy than allowed under the interim agreement, blunting residual sanctions. The deal capped Iran’s exports of crude oil to 1 million barrels per day. But early on, Iran was already breaking that agreement, according to the International Energy Agency–nearly doubling the allowed amount. That means the effect of remaining sanctions has been seriously undermined, meaning Iran has broken the interim deal and reduced its need for another.

The MEC is so consumed with his self-image as history's greatest embodiment of the power to achieve global unity that he will permit post-American cities to get incinerated.  It's not a matter of a mere lack of patriotism.  He holds the country he rules in utter disdain.

If the MEC really gave a flying diddly about national security, we wouldn't be facing this:

The former vice chief of staff of the Army warned the Senate Armed Services Committee today that al-Qaeda has “grown fourfold in the last five years.”

“AQ and its affiliates exceeds Iran in beginning to dominate multiple countries,” retired four-star Gen. Jack Keane testified.

And three days of ISIS-supporter Twitter threats on US domestic flights.

A booming recovery would look and feel like a booming recovery

Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation bullet-points several reasons why the Most Equal Comrade was blowing smoke about a recovery during the SOTU.  They include these:

The $1 trillion growth gap. This economic recovery is the slowest in 50 years. If we had had the same pace of improvement since June 2009 when the recession ended as in an average recovery, national output and incomes would be more than $1 trillion larger today. In other words, we would have about $10,000 more income per family than we do.

The raiseless recovery. It’s been 10 years since Americans in the middle class got a pay raise that kept pace with inflation. Median income households today make $1,500 less than they did even since the recession officially ended. The recession really hasn’t ended for half of all families.

The myth that inflation is dead. By looking at what middle-income families have to buy — food, energy, tuition and health care — prices have been running two to three times the official rate. Low gas prices recently are helping, but health costs are rising again — despite the Obamacare promise to bend the cost curve down. Oops.

Inequality is worse. President Obama has made closing the gap between rich and poor his highest priority. Guess what? The Gini coefficient (as measured by the Census Bureau), the left’s favorite measure of income inequality, rose each of Mr. Obama’s first four years in office, breaking all-time highs in both 2011 and 2012, and it remains high.

Where are the new small businesses? According to an analysis by the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, the rate of business creation dipped to just 0.28 percent of all adults in 2013. It’s been since 2001 that business creation rates were this low. The latest available data from the Census Bureau (2012) shows business creation only slightly rebounding from the recession lows.

The American dream goes bust. A 2014 Pew Research Poll found only 34 percent of Americans think their children will be better off than they are.

The debt has grown by $7.3 trillion. When Mr. Obama entered office the national debt was under $11 trillion. Now it’s more than $18 trillion — more than $120,000 for each worker. It will be $19 trillion when he leaves office. Mr. Obama has added more debt to the nation than every president from George Washington through Bill Clinton. Who will pay these bills?

The kids are not all right. The percentage of Americans under 25 who are in the workforce has fallen to its lowest level since the early 1970s — and that was before women started entering the workforce in very large numbers. The percentage of Americans from 25 to 29 in the workforce is at the lowest level dating back to 1982 — the earliest data is provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The real unemployment rate in America is near 10 percent when accounting for these lost workers who have given up.

Families are still breaking up. A key to a healthy economy and rising incomes is keeping families intact. But marriages are breaking up and there is almost universal agreement that a big contributor to poverty is family break-up. Children living in homes without a father present are more than three times likely to live in poverty than intact families. Marriage is one of the greatest anti-poverty programs. W. Brad Wilcox of the American Enterprise Institute and Robert I. Lerman of the Urban Institute estimate that “young men and women from intact families enjoy an annual ‘intact-family premium’ that amounts to $6,500 and $4,700, respectively, over the incomes of their peers from single-parent families.” Yet since 1970, the percentage of children living in single-parent households has skyrocketed from near 12 percent to more than 25 percent. The unwed birth rate has remained at all-time highs of near 40 percent — a jump of nearly 10 percentage points since 2000.

Entitlement spending will nearly double. Spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare is expected to nearly double in 2024 compared to 2013.

But this looks like success to those for whom decline is on purpose.

Mike, you'd better explain this one fast and thoroughly

What the hell is Governor Pence thinking creating a state-run news outlet?   Talk about eroding his bona fides as a principled righty:

According to the report, Pence’s government “news” site, scheduled to start in late February, will be called “Just IN” and will feature stories written by state press secretaries. Former Indianapolis Star reporter Bill McCleery is reportedly overseeing the media site, along with a governance board composed of communications directors and an editorial board consisting of McCleery and Pence’s communications staff.

An information sheet reportedly distributed last week to communications directors for Indiana state agencies read, “At times, Just In will break news – publishing information ahead of any other news outlet. Strategies for determining how and when to give priority to such ‘exclusive’ coverage remain under discussion.”

Referring to the media site as “the Pence news service,” the Star reports that documents about “Just IN” say stories will “range from straightforward news to lighter features, including personality profiles.”

His natural base is livid:

A state-run, taxpayer funded news organization designed to compete with independent news outlets is a shocking development to many rank and file conservatives,” Dave Read of the Central Indiana Coalition of Tea Parties told Breitbart News. “To think it will be anything but a well crafted PR machine for the Governor’s Presidential aspirations is naive. Instead of naming it ‘Just In’ he might as well call it ‘Pravda’ and call it a day.”

Did he hatch this on his own?  If not, who was the fool who sold him on it?

 

The death rattle of the university - today's edition

By now you know about Arizona State's problem-with-whiteness course.  Perhaps you've even read some commentary on it.  For my money, the most salient point is made by Jazz Shaw at Hot Air:

I’d like to pretend that this is more shocking than it is, but these days it’s just business as usual. The oblivious groups who push this sort of social restructuring and societal realignment via our nations’ campuses have a very clear intent and message, but fail to see how patently offensive it is to so many people. None of them are claiming that there’s anything technically wrong with being white, and they want to be very clear about that. No, the problem is that you walk around being white every single day, waking up, making your coffee, going to work and trying to keep your bills paid, and you do all of that without once stopping to think that you would have none of those things if it weren’t for the way that you’ve helped oppress minorities for your entire life. 

The shorter version of all this is that your “problem” isn’t that you’re white… it’s that you act insufficiently guilty for being white.

Sadly, this is not uncommon enough at our universities to even raise an eyebrow. It may be time to just throw in the towel. Send your kids to technical school and teach them to weld or install heating and air conditioning. Heck, just send them to boot camp and have them do a stretch in the military. People like Campus Reform’s Lauren Clark are fighting a losing battle. The microcosm of the college campus is a lost cause and will probably not get over this sort of insanity until they finally collapse under their own weight.

The only problem is, how is our civilization (or what's left of it, anyway) going to pass on a proper appreciation of Aquinas, Descartes, Rembrandt and Shakespeare?

When you take a stand, you stir up a dust storm

A number of locales have been in the news the last few days: Paris, Davos, Iowa, to name a few.

Leipzig should be one of them.  Oliver Lane at Breitbart has an in-depth report on the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West (PEGIDA) demonstrations occurring there.  Media bias is a major element in the big picture of what's occurring.

A young Eritrean was murdered, and the European press rushed to raise suspicions that bigotry against Muslims was involved.  The actual story is a bit different:

Despite the fact police have now recovered the murder weapon, that Khaled’s former flat-mate, a fellow Eritrean has confessed to the crime, and “significant” amounts of drugs are said to be involved, the story has been dropped like a hot stone by the English-speaking media. Two days after the confession, and you’d hardly know from the mainstream British press: clearly mud sticks in a country which is still apologising for the early 20thcentury.

And the media depiction of PEGIDA as a throng of fire-breathing rabble-rousers is a deliberate clouding of the actual facts:

Outside the central railway station I meet a group of left wing school-age students. They are friendly, polite, and laugh about their journey to Leipzig, one of them carrying a sign that reads “Respect For Negroes”. When I ask them if they are concerned about the possibility of violence during the protest, the mood darkens. With complete sincerity one tells me they are desperate to fight PEGIDA and the police, remarking “we are ready”.

And fight they did:

I witness casualties lain out on the platforms of the tram station, the police searching and arresting dozens of young activists. A particularly large firework explodes outside the station just a dozen yards from where I am standing, and for a few moments the grand façade is shrouded in smoke. Later in the evening I speak to a group of police officers guarding the station and without hesitation one tells me all of the explosives and bottles thrown that evening were by the left-wing counter protesters.

The West's dire dilemma distilled on the streets of one city:  Those alarmed by their culture's rot from without facing the rocks and explosives of the other enemy, the one advancing the rot from within.   And the alarmed party doing its best to carry on with dignity and civilized conviction.

Every town is Ferguson now.

 

 

A tale of two speakers

Taken together, they encapsulate the dichotomy with which inhabitants of post America are presented all day, every day.

There was Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who chose to forego the gathering of probable Pub presidential candidates in Iowa to address an American Family Association convention in his home state:

 . . . he paced the stage in jeans, a blazer, and a TED-speech style microphone headset. He spoke of a high school friend who had told him that he would be missed when the friend and his family went to heaven but Jindal did not. Jindal recalled a girl in high school who said she wanted to grow up to be a Supreme Court justice, so she could "save innocent human lives" from abortion. He spoke of a revelation as he watched a video about Jesus dying on the cross. 

"Let's all go plant those seeds of the gospel," he said, describing how his conversion would not have occurred without the influence of his friends. "Share the good news with all whom we encounter."

"We can't just elect a candidate to fix what ails our country. We can't just pass a law and fix what ails our country," he said, "We need a spiritual revival to fix what ails our country."

Then there was Lena Dunham, participating in a panel discussion at the Sundance Festival:

When it came to a question from the audience about what political issues were of importance to her, the consistently vocal and avowed feminist Dunham talked about abortion and campus rape. “The idea that women can’t be complete and total citizens until they have control over the destiny of their own bodies,” she said of reproductive rights in America “It’s not just a political issue, it’s a lot about class, race and it feeds into all these other forms of inequality and injustice that exist in our country.” Dunham noted that women are “still fighting” for the right to terminate pregnancies 42 years after Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Court. 

Ah, Lena.  Still lying about the frequency with which campus rape occurs, even after the story in her own book was thoroughly debunked, even after the Rolling Stone story about UVA fell apart.  Still tying to make the fierce, ugly, nihilistic, solipsistic feminist stance into something noble and grand.

And if you read the entire Washington Post piece on Jindal, there's little doubt about where the supposedly objective writer, Rosalind Helderman, is coming from.  Before getting to the gist of Jindal's message, excerpted above, she devotes a paragraph to the protesters outside the hall, who claim that the American Family Association "discriminates against gays." For that matter, the headline calls the gathering a "controversial prayer rally."

This is where we are, folks.  One of these visions will prevail and the other will be subjugated.

And what are you doing with the remaining microseconds as they tick away?

Secretary Global-Test sets a new standard for worthlessness

Dispensing delusional pablum to the Davos crowd:

In a speech calling for a global effort against violent extremism, Kerry said it would be a mistake to link Islam to criminal conduct rooted in alienation, poverty, thrill-seeking and other factors.

“We have to keep our heads,” Kerry said. “The biggest error we could make would be to blame Muslims for crimes…that their faith utterly rejects,” he added.

“We will certainly not defeat our foes by vilifying potential partners,” the top U.S. diplomat said. “We may very well fuel the very fires that we want to put out.”

Kerry’s comments highlighted a rhetorical division between the U.S. and its closest allies. French President Francois Hollande told the same audience earlier Friday that Islamic extremism is a problem that must be opposed. On Thursday, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond stood next to Kerry and urged the defeat of what he called “the scourge of violent Islamist extremism.”

The Obama administration has come under criticism for its unwillingness to differentiate between Islamic extremism and other forms of extremist violence.

Earlier this week, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat from Hawaii and Iraq war veteran, said it was a “bipartisan concern” that Obama and his top aides don’t use the term “Islamic extremism.”

Would be easy to dismiss as silly were it not for the fact that it increases the likelihood of us all getting murdered in our beds.

Just become a Democrat, Mitt

One of the two Squish Titans of the upcoming presidential cycle just stepped on his own you-know-what, big time.

Former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, who’s contemplating another White House run, said climate change was real, that humans helped it along and that it was the responsibility of the world to turn back the environmental tide.

“I’m one of those Republicans who thinks we are getting warmer and that we contribute to that,” he said during a Wednesday night speech at an investment management conference, The Associated Press reported.

Tell you what, Mitt.  Change parties, take Renee Ellmers with you, and and give the Freedom-Haters a slightly less America-destroying option than the Hillary ticket.

 

I thought the Bloomberg News story this morning smelled like phony baloney

And the day's unfoldments bear me out:

The Israeli espionage agency, Mossad, in a rare public statement says that they do support Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu’s and US Congress’s effort to enhance sanctions on Iran.

Misinformation spread by the Obama White House earlier today, using Bloomberg News, had stated that the Mossad did not agree with Netanyahu’s stance on placing tougher sanctions against Iran.

Israel has argued that Iran is using “peace talks” as an excuse to develop both nuclear weapons and a delivery system for the nuclear weapons to attack Israel, Europe and the US.

The Mossad statement said: “Mossad chief Tamir Pardo met with a delegation of American senators on January 19, 2015. The meeting was held at the request of the senators and with the approval of the prime minister. Contrary to the report, the head of the Mossad did not say that he opposed additional sanctions on Iran. The Mossad chief emphasized in the meeting the remarkable efficacy of the sanctions imposed on Iran over the last few years in bringing Iran to the negotiating table.”

“The Mossad chief stated that when negotiating with Iran, the ‘carrots and sticks’ approach needs to be taken and at present, there aren’t enough ‘sticks.’ The Mossad chief noted that without strong pressure, it would not be possible to bring to meaningful compromises from the Iranian side.”

“As for the use of the term ‘grenade’, the Mossad director did not use that with regards to imposing sanctions, which, as mentioned, he considers to be the ‘sticks’ that would aid in achieving a good agreement. He used the term ‘grenade’ to describe the possibility of creating a temporary crisis in the talks, at the end of which the negotiations will be renewed under better terms. The Mossad chief specifically stated that the agreement currently being formulated with Iran is bad and might lead to a regional arms race.”

The inaccurate Bloomberg report was printed after US House Speaker John Boehner invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak in front of a joint session of Congress about the Iranian nuclear threat.

So the big question looms: Who the f--- cooked the story about a thumbs-down from Mossad up?

Methinks this is a definite message-sending gesture

Just as post-America begins to act on its new policy of patty-cake with Stalinists, another major player on the world stage weighs in:

In a throwback to the Cold War, a Russian spy ship caused a stir after unexpectedly docking in Havana on the eve of historic talks between the U.S. and Cuba.

There was nothing stealthy about the arrival of the Viktor Leonov CCB-175, which was moored to a pier in Old Havana where cruise ships often dock. 

But the visit was not officially announced by Cuban authorities.

The timing also raised eyebrows as it came on Tuesday, the eve of historic U.S-Cuba talks aimed at normalising diplomatic relations.

"US officials" are downplaying the significance of this, calling it "not unusual."  Okay.  But how about we consider it in the context of the unprecedented Russian air patrols of the Gulf?

It wasn't even like this one required all that much courage

Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist is fit to be tied, and you will be, too after you read her piece about  Renee Ellmers (R-NC) and her role in pulling the abortion bill.  It's a bill that had passed the previous House.  It bans most abortions after 20 weeks.

Hemingway cites the stats on how unpopular late-term abortions are - among Americans of all stripes.

So what happened?  Hemingway enumerates, and elaborates upon, a few reasons for this turn of events.  One is simple lack of courage:

In an essay at National Affairs, Michael Needham looks at the contrast between the grassroots and party establishment. He talks about the fight over the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, a fund for corporate welfare. The establishment fought against the grassroots tooth and nail in order to keep the bank. There have been similar fights over agriculture subsidies and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s influence in the housing market. The moneyed interests fight against the conservative insurgents — and the donor class usually wins. Needham asks:

Given the enormous challenges facing the nation, why bother with "small" issues like corporate welfare and concomitant insider politics? Why pick these fights with the donor base?

As the Tea Party sees it, if conservatives can't stand up for sound policy on "easy" fights like these — despite their relative insignificance compared to issues like entitlement reform — the Republican Party is unlikely to have the fortitude to take on the greatest challenges the country faces. More importantly, any party that contemplates cutting back welfare for needy individuals and families but embraces corporate welfare for the powerful lacks the moral authority to urge sacrifice of any sort.

Exactly. How will the Republicans lead the battle to fight against Obamacare if they’re not willing to go against the insurance lobby on even a small issue? Whether the issue is a legitimate campaign against the dehumanization of the unborn, higher education reform or an actual attempt to thwart the growth of the the administrative state, a Republican Party unable to accomplish an easy task is a Republican Party that will be completely incompetent and worse than useless in a big battle.

Other reasons include a complete lack of public relations skills and strategic ineptness.

But back to the courage aspect, Hemingway offers two videos, both from 2013, one showing Ellmers and one showing Pub House member from Indiana Jackie Walorski speaking in favor of the legislation - which has always contained the rape-reporting requirement that seems to have these two so spooked now.

Hemingway also has a rundown of today's MSM headlines couching this in terms of "moderate GOP women" balking, and crowing about Pub leadership "caving."

Along with the specific issue (extermination of fetal Americans), the reason this is a clarifying moment is that it demonstrates the insidiousness of squish.  Somebody got to Ellmers and Walorski.  Who knows if it was radical feminists hanging the threat of Palin-and-Bachmann demonization over their heads, or big-shot donors spelling out the consequences of acting on principle rather than on the backslaps of the country-club crowd.

It's not easy to stay steadfast regarding your principles once you enter the actual political arena.  The sting of vituperation is something one feels as a mere pundit / blogger, but once once runs for and wins a political office, the stakes are raised considerably.  Still, as Hemingway points out, this one wasn't even hard in terms of where public sentiment lay.

And this Ellmers has a track record as a problematic sort.  About a year ago, she came out as backing amnesty for illegal aliens and got quite testy on Laura Ingraham's radio show when called on it.

But she's really gone and done it this time.  Some Republican.

Bracing straight talk from a Senate Dem

Check this out:

At a hearing on Iran this morning, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) was unambiguous on where he stands regarding the administration’s Iran policy — despite President Obama’s attempted scolding last week of pro-sanctions Dems.

“The more I hear from the administration and its quotes, the more it sounds like talking points that come straight out of Tehran,” Menendez said. 

“And it feeds to the Iranian narrative of victimization, when they are the ones with original sin. An illicit nuclear weapons program going back over the course of 20 years, they’re unwilling to come clean on,” he continued. “So I don’t know why we feel compelled to make their case, when in fact … they get to cheat in a series of ways and we get to worry about their perceptions.”

He's stating exactly where we are.  The Most Equal Comrade's regime's first priority is not national security.

Because the river of gravy, by its nature, tends to flow out of its banks

Why a federal gasoline tax is a bad idea.  Well, it's another reason, along with the fact that Americans are just now seeing some relief from the sky-high prices of recent years.

Originally organized to finance the Interstate Highway System – a genuinely federal project if ever there was one – the fund now suffers from severe mission creep. About a quarter of its revenues aren’t even spent on highway projects, going, instead, to decidedly local concerns like mass transit or bicycle paths. According to congressional testimony from the Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards, that spending adds up to about $9 billion a year.
As John Marshall observed, “the power to tax is the power to destroy.” That’s why we regard any proposal for higher levies with caution. We believe that tax increases are only ever justified when the federal government can prove three things: 1) That it is only spending public money on legitimate public purposes; 2) that it is not spending public money on tasks better left to state and local governments; and 3) that it is spending public money efficiently. The Highway Trust Fund fails on all three counts.
Washington should tighten its belt and devolve financial responsibility for non-national projects back to state and local governments before taking more money out of taxpayers’ pockets.
We pay enough at the pump without having to subsidize Congress’ incompetence.

Get the mission creep straightened out, and then maybe we can talk.

A tale of two movies

So American Sniper is breaking box-office records and Selma is tanking.  LITD has already chimed in on Al Sharpton's outrage about the whiteness of this years. Oscar nominations.

Al can take heart in the peacenik wing of the Left stepping up to denigrate Sniper on anti-military grounds.  The Academy has enough members of that odor to prevent the film from garnering many, if any, awards.  Michael Moore is mincing no words, calling Chris Kyle, whose life is the subject of the movie, a coward.  Oooookay.

File this one under "eye-openingly unusual development": Jane Fonda tweets in praise of Sniper:

Just saw "American Sniper" Powerful. Another view of "Coming Home." Bradley Cooper sensational. Bravo Clint Eastwood. http://www.americansnipermovie.com/ 

I would imagine she's trying to bolster the public impression that she's in about-face mode, now that she's publicly apologized for the 1972 North Vietnam trip.

Then there's Selma, with its historical inaccuracies, particularly the portrayal of the MLK - LBJ relationship as acrimonious, which isn't sitting well with fans of the architect of the modern welfare state, causing the kind of rift that is inevitable on the left when identity politics reaches maximum thorniness (see post below on the latest in San Fran).

Let's not oversimplify, but I believe there is something to the fairly self-evident fact that Americans prefer pride to guilt.

The Most Equal Comrade's latest class-envy ploy

He plans to propose capital-gains and inheritance-tax increases at the SOTU, in order to "pay for" various "breaks" for the middle class, as well as "free" community college.

Jazz Shaw at Hot Air clarifies what this is and isn't:

Let’s just get one thing out of the way up front. This dog and pony show has zero to do with policy and everything to do with politics. Obama already knows that not one of these proposals will ever make it within smelling distance of the floor for a vote in either chamber. What’s being done here is essentially a hand-off of the baton to Hillary Clinton and all of the Democrat hopefuls with an eye toward the next election. This doesn’t make it a stupid idea for the President. He doesn’t need to jack up the tax rates to be successful. He just needs to make the Republicans refuse to jack up the tax rates.

This populist message is referred to as “populist” for a reason. People with less wealth are often hard pressed to resist feeling a bit of jealousy toward those who are more successful. Even if draining all the wealth from the wealthy won’t make any significant difference in their own lives, there is a nasty siren call associated with the idea of taking the fat cats down a peg or two. 

This is a message which can be countered, but only if it’s done intelligently. If there is one thing which is more powerful than jealousy, it’s aspiration. As far as the working class goes, they almost universally have one thing in common; they aspire to reach a higher, more comfortable status themselves. Traditionally we saw Americans who didn’t hate or even envy the rich to a great degree. They looked at that big house in the more expensive part of town and didn’t want to burn it down… they wanted a house like that for themselves. And if they did manage to make it up near the top of the ladder they certainly didn’t want a 75% tax rate bill waiting for them when they arrived.

Shaw recommends, as I do, staying positive, staying focused on the core conservative message, which is that freedom unleashes the inherent power and marvelousness of the sovereign individual.  The message needs to be, don't envy, aspire.

The embarrassing silliness to which identity politics inevitably leads

Try to keep the layers of this mess sorted out:

Approximately 300 people shut down Castro street on Saturday January 17th during the night when most people are going to bars. Activist's chose the Castro "because it is a space dominated by white middle class men, and is symbolic of the racial divide within the LGBT community and gentrification in San Francisco in general." 
Activists also wanted to draw attention to the fact that the Castro supports LGBT related organizations that are generally "apathetic" towards black and brown people.  
The protesters demands are:  
"1. Pressure San Francisco LGBT Center, Horizons Foundation, Equality CA, Human Rights Campaign, all mainstream LGBT organizations to take concrete action in support of black lives 

2. Donate money to efforts that support queer and trans black leadership including TGI Justice Project, Trans Women of Color Collective, and BreakOUT! 

3. Find alternatives to calling the police to keep our communities safe 

4. Establish safe spaces in the Castro for queer and trans black people

How does one "establish safe spaces" in public without involving the police?

How big is the "queer and trans black" demographic?

Just who is supposed to donate this money and how much?

So many questions!

Still, post-America's managerial class finds this bunch appealing for doing business deals

Some technical military details are now not nearly so classified as had been assumed:

Chinese spies stole key design information about the F-35 Lightening II multirole fighter, set to join the air force fleets of Australia, Japan and other U.S. allies, according to documents disclosed by former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Monday.

The report, citing new disclosures published by German magazine Der Spiegel, Chinese cyber spies stole huge volumes of sensitive military information, including "many terabytes of data" about the fighter such as details of its radar systems used to identify and track targets, according to a top secret U.S. National Security Agency presentation.

It is understood the main data breach took place at the prime contractor Lockheed Martin in 2007, predating orders for the F-35 Lightening II placed by Australia and Japan.

Both countries have already selected the F-35 Lightening II as the next generation fighter for their air forces. Japan has 42 of them on order, while Australia plans to acquire 72.

Although it has been previously alleged the joint strike fighter has been a target of Chinese cyber-espionage, the Snowden documents provide the first public confirmation of how much the highly sensitive data has been compromised, the Sydney Morning Herald said.

It said the leaked NSA briefings confirm that Australia has been informed of the "serious damage" caused by Chinese cyber-espionage relating to development of the F-35.

Not exactly "partner" behavior.