Memo to Walmart: quit puking all over yourself trying to appease the Freedom-Haters

The fruits of the big minimum-wage gesture:

This month store managers announced they were cutting employee hours to pay for the pay increase.
Bloomberg reported, via Every Joe:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., in the midst of spending $1 billion to raise employees’ wages and give them extra training, has been cutting the number of hours some of them work in a bid to keep costs in check.

Regional executives told store managers at the retailer’s annual holiday planning meeting this month to rein in expenses by cutting worker hours they’ve added beyond those allocated to them based on sales projections.

CEO Doug McMillon says that increased costs have nibbled in on earnings.

It was ever thus, you clueless, spineless pointy-heads

 

 

Eugene Pulliam looks down from heaven and weeps

The Indianapolis Star has abnegated all claims to being an organ of journalism:

The email, sent personally by Karen Ferguson Fuson, President and Publisher of the Star, was sent early this morning to an undisclosed list of business and media elites, together with gay rights activists. It pulls no punches in its scope or its goals. The email, in its unedited entirety reads as follows:

Dear Friends:

The IndyStar is preparing this fall to launch an ambitious and aggressive Editorial Board campaign designed to persuade the governor and state lawmakers to expand Indiana’s civil rights law to include protections for sexual orientation and gender identity.

We would like to privately brief you on our plans for the campaign, to explain ways in which you and your organization can partner with us, to answer your questions, and to hear your thoughts and possible concerns. Please join us for a meeting with community leaders on September 22, from 8:00 – 9:30 am at our offices, 130 S. Meridian St.

We believe that it is critical for all of us to work together to drive this important change and to further the recovery from damage done to our state by the RFRA controversy.

Please join us as we prepare to continue this vital conversation about the future of Indiana. To RSVP, email [redacted]

Karen Ferguson Fuson

Group President, Gannett Domestic Publishing

President & Publisher, IndyStar

Once one of America’s most dominant mass circulation metropolitan daily newspapers, The Indianapolis Star has seen both its circulation and advertising revenues plummet since it was purchased by Gannett for $1.1 billion in 1999. Under Gannett ownership, the Star’s paid daily circulation has fallen more than two-thirds to less than 100,000 sold copies per day.

It is now an instrument of advocacy - specifically, advocacy of the destruction of the Judeo-Christian underpinnings of Western civilization.

The sewer that is the contemporary post-American university - today's edition

The rot at Washington State University has reached a very advanced stage:

The PAC-12 punching bag in the rural eastern part of the state boasts at least three students who are intent on either suppressing student speech or discriminating against white people this semester.

In his “Introduction to Multicultural Literature,” for example, professor John Streamas informs students in his syllabus that he expects white students who want “to do well in this class” to “reflect” their “grasp of history and social relations” by “deferring to the experiences of people of color.”

The taxpayer-funded critical studies professor also writes in his syllabus that Glenn Beck is a member of a group of “insensitive whites.”

Streamas, who obtained his Ph.D. at Bowling Green State University, is most notable because he told a student who supports limits on illegal immigration: “You are just a white shitbag.”

The insulted student responded by saying, “You have no right to call me a shitbag,” as a lengthy complaint investigation compiled by a Washington State administrator explains. Streamas then apologized to the student. This apology was captured on video. (The investigation also spends several paragraphs pondering the meaning of the phrase “white shitbag.”)

A second Washington State faculty member, Selena Lester Breikss, warns students in her “Women & Popular Culture” course this semester that they risk “failure for the semester” if they use the terms “male” or “female.”

The Daily Caller is not making this up.

Breikss, a taxpayer-funded graduate assistant who does not have a faculty page, declares in her syllabus that the words “females” and “males” constitute “gross generalizations” and “derogatory/oppressive language”

And factual characterizations have no place in this hellish madhouse:

Finally, not to be outdone, Washington State American studies professor Rebecca Fowler similarly warns students that she will lower their grades if they utter the phrase “illegal alien” at any time in her “Introduction to Comparative Ethnic Studies” course.
The taxpayer-funded Fowler proclaims that she bans students from using the phrase “illegal alien” because the Associated Press stylebook “no longer sanctions the term.”
The Associated Press stylebook is purely an advisory publication for professional journalists. It has no force of law whatsoever.
Nevertheless, Fowler orders, students must say “‘undocumented’ migrants/immigrants/persons” and not “‘illegal alien’ or ‘illegals'” because of the media outlet’s preference.
Public university students who dare to use the phrase “illegal alien” “will suffer a deduction of one point per incident,” Fowler warns.

Seriously, how do we rescue a civilization that is this far gone?

Pubs get a clue re: Planned Parenthood

This is an encouraging development indeed:

House Republican leaders are planning a vote to freeze funding for Planned Parenthood this fall, according to GOP aides, a move that could help mitigate an inter-party battle and avoid a government shutdown.

“We’re encouraged to know there will be a vote this fall, whether it’s our bill or something that is similar,” a spokesman for Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) said Friday.

A bill to defund Planned Parenthood is expected to come up for a vote shortly after lawmakers return from recess, aides said. It would likely take the form of legislation from Black which would block federal funding to Planned Parenthood for one year, although leaders are still weighing their options.

“There’s a couple specific possibilities being discussed,” the spokesman said.A vote to defund Planned Parenthood comes amid an intensifying debate among congressional Republicans who are split about the prospects of a government shutdown over the health provider.

At least 18 Republicans in the House, as well as a small coalition in the upper chamber led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), have said they will refuse to back a budget deal that includes federal dollars for Planned Parenthood. 

Of course, the big dog, John Ted-Cruz-is-a-jackass  Boehner, is declining to comment at present, saying the fall legislative schedule is not yet set.

But the videos are having an effect.

It all comes tumbling down if the subsidies disappear

The propping-up of the play-like energy sector by the Most Equal Comrade's regime is a fetid stew of Cloward-Piven planned decline and financial gain by a few on the backs of tax[payers generally.

Solyndra, for instance, was predicated on a flat-out lie:

The Department of Energy’s Inspector General revealed last week that the legendary solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra—a poster baby of the Obama stimulus—lied to the feds to get a $535 million loan guarantee before going bust in 2011. Solyndra is a cautionary tale, but the Obama Administration is still throwing caution to the sun. 

The IG report, which follows a four-year investigation by the IG and FBI, describes how Solyndra engaged in a “pattern of false and misleading assertions,” including inflating the value of corporate contracts and sales, to win a giant loan guarantee in 2009. 

All evidence suggests that DOE was a willing victim. The IG notes that DOE loan officers felt “tremendous pressure” from the White House and Congress to rush through loan-guarantee applications. In their haste DOE officials failed “to ask specific questions, and require specific assurances” and overlooked major red flags.

***

The larger problem is that the White House is more concerned with boosting the politically favored solar industry than protecting taxpayer dollars. More troubling, the solar industry may be growing too big to fail, and the Administration is assisting another taxpayer solar scam.

Here's what's really going on behind the supposed growth of the solar-energy sector:

Solar installations increased 30% last year thanks partly to cheaper photovoltaic panels, but also a rush to cash in on the 30% federal investment tax credit that expires next year. The largest tax credit beneficiaries are big businesses like Wal-Mart and Google, solar-leasing companies and their investors. The financiers of SolarCity,which installs and leases rooftop panels, include Goldman Sachs,Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase—the guys Mr. Obama loves to hate.
As the President dryly remarked, these businesses are “not doing this just out of altruism.” The real reason: Solar leases are a high-yield political investment.
Here’s how this dubious business works. Solar-leasing companies install rooftop systems (which often cost tens of thousands of dollars) at no upfront consumer cost. Homeowners rent the panels for 20 years at rates that typically escalate over time but are initially cheaper than power from the grid. Investors get to pocket the myriad state and federal subsidies while homeowners are promised hundreds of dollars annually in savings on their electric bills.

Sounds fantastic. The catch is that the teaser rates could shoot up if government subsidies are scaled back. 

Do not be intimidated out of speaking the plain truth: free-market economics and dense, plentiful energy sources are the obviously grown-up, truly beneficial way to proceed with regard to post-America's energy needs.

The Most Equal Comrade outdoes himself

Much has been written, here and elsewhere, about how Trump's political style and the resulting adulation he's receiving, coming as it does on the heels of a similar phenomenon over the past seven or eight years with the Most Equal Comrade as the focal point, raises the nasty possibility that post-America has entered an age of Caesarism.

Lately, given the scale on which Trump has been consuming oxygen, it's been understandable that the MEC's doubling down on his uniquely warped brand of tyranny has not had the exposure it should be getting.

Let us here contribute to that exposure by passing along the news that the MEC - the Lightworker-in-Chief, he who would quell the rise of the oceans - has unilaterally renamed Mount McKinley.  That's right. Henceforth, its official name is to be Denali, which means "the high one" in the  Athabascan language.

Obama's move to strip the mountain of its name honoring former President William McKinley, a son of Ohio, drew loud condemnations from Ohio lawmakers, including House Speaker John Boehner, who said he was "deeply disappointed" in the decision.

"This political stunt is insulting to all Ohioans, and I will be working with the House Committee on Natural Resources to determine what can be done to prevent this action," added Rep. Bob Gibbs, R-Ohio.

The announcement comes as he embarks on a trip to Alaska, where he will grandstand about melting permafrost and receding glaciers and preen about the supposedly moral decision to keep Alaskans from extracting oil from ANWR. (By the way, the lie that the global climate is in any kind of trouble grows more flimsy by the day.)

Tell the Inupiat people, particularly Benjamin Nageak, about how moral and wonderful that decision is.

The Inupiat people, who live in ANWR on the northern coastal plain, also oppose Mr. Obama’s proposal because they support energy development on their own lands. Arctic Slope Regional Corp., an Alaska Native regional corporation, owns subsurface rights to land within ANWR, and Kaktovik Inupiat Corp. owns the surface rights.

Alaska state Rep. Benjamin Nageak, a Barrow Democrat who was born in ANWR and is a member of the Inupiat tribe, objected to the president’s proposal when it was announced earlier this year.

“We have thousands and thousands of acres of land that our people in the state of Alaska, especially in ANWR, have title to, and [they] cannot even use that resource to enrich themselves,” Mr. Nageak said. “That is wrong. When you give the people the ability to enrich themselves, you don’t lock up their lands so they don’t do anything else but just sit on it, and nothing comes out of it except the renewable resources that we depend on.”

Leaders in the actual-energy-rather-than-play-like energy industry, as well as in Alaskan government see plainly that the Most Equal Comrade is in no-longer-have-to-give-a-s--- mode:

“There has been a very clear shift in the administration’s position,” said Louis Finkel, vice president of government relations at the American Petroleum Institute. “In the first four years, you heard a lot of rhetoric about an ‘all of the above’ energy policy. The administration’s lost sight of that. The administration clearly is looking at everything they do through a Paris lens.”
Alaska Gov. Bill Walker said he wants to talk to the president about the state’s “economic climate change,” a reference to the drop in global oil prices and the resulting hit to the state’s budget. The governor has been pushing the Obama administration to allow more oil and gas production in Alaska, and has accused Mr. Obama of “declaring war on Alaska’s future” by seeking to block oil and gas exploration in huge swaths of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

“We have an excellent pipeline in Alaska, except it is three-quarters empty,” Mr. Walker, a Republican-turned-independent, told reporters last week. “So I’ll talk to him about what we need to do to put more oil in the pipeline.” 

Anybody with a modicum of perceptivity could see this coming years ago.

Take heed, post-America. Learn how to smell a love of personal power and run like hell in the other direction when you smell it.

Regulation zealots, keep your hands off Uber!

These DC interviewees know what's what:

A D.C. resident said some state and local governments are attempting to crack down on Uber and Lyft because they are more reliable than taxis.

“Uber is going to beat them there every time,” he said in a video interview at Union Station in Washington. “No, I think since they are freelance, they should stay freelance. They are not cabs, are they? They’re Uber. Let Uber do their thing.”

Another D.C. resident agreed that taxis and app-based car services should not be subject to the same requirements.

“I don’t think they should necessarily have to because I think the taxis are a little bit older, so they may not play by the same rules or adhere to the same guidelines as Uber,” she said.

A tourist from Russia said overregulation has hurt his home country’s economy. He argued that Uber should be free to compete with taxis.

“I firmly believe that any regulation of the economy is evil. It creates deficits. It creates corruption and it lowers the quality of services available to people so unless criminal damage to the passenger is done, no regulations,” he said. “Uber should work, city taxis should work, they should compete, they should be different.”

Free market economics, baby!

Brad Thor rocks!

It's about time somebody did this:

Bestselling thriller novelist Brad Thor has issued a challenge to billionaire and would-be Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump - a debate on conservative issues.

Thor says that while he understands why people may be attracted to Trump, his record shows he is not a conservative. The author of Code of Conduct took to Twitter to issue his challenge, even calling for conservative radio legend Rush Limbaugh to moderate.

Says if Trump takes him up on it, he'll donate $100,000 to Young Americans for Freedom.

Why we call them Freedom-Haters - today's edition

The Most Equal Comrade's instruments of tyranny are many: the EPA, the IRS, the DoJ, to name a few.

But the NLRB surely has to rank among the most sinister:

The Obama administration is redefining what it means to be an employer.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Thursday handed down one of its biggest decisions of President Obama’s tenure, ruling that companies can be held responsible for labor violations committed by their contractors.

While the ruling from the independent agency specifically deals with the waste management firm Browning-Ferris, the so-called “joint employer” decision could have broad repercussions for the business world, particularly for franchise companies.

Opponents of the action warn the ruling could hurt businesses as diverse as restaurants, retailers, manufacturers and construction firms, as well as hotels, cleaning services and staffing agencies.“This decision has broad implications, as it appears to upend decades of settled law defining who the employer is under the National Labor Relations Act,” said Randy Johnson, a senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Restaurants could see the biggest changes. Fast food chains such as McDonald’s and Burger King will likely assert more authority over — or even cut ties altogether with — local franchise owners, business advocates say.
At issue in the case was whether Browning-Ferris was responsible for the treatment of contracted employees. The Houston-based company hired Leadpoint Business Services to staff a recycling facility in California.
The labor board determined Browning-Ferris should be considered a "joint employer" with the Phoenix-based staffing agency. As a result, the company can be pulled into collective bargaining negotiations with those employees and held liable for any labor violations committed against them.
The NLRB ruling is a sharp departure from previous decisions that stated companies were only responsible for employees who were under their direct control. Without the power to set hours, wages or job responsibilities, the earlier rulings held, companies could not be held responsible for the labor practices of the contractors.

But the National Labor Relations Board charted a new course Thursday, saying the old standard is “increasingly out of step with changing economic circumstances.” 

As someone whose income streams are nearly all of an independent-contractor nature, this is chilling stuff indeed.

It's also antiquated thinking. To believe that in the world of 2015, with everything moving as it is to micro-level provision of human effort, "the man" is out there gunning for ways to exploit "the worker" is to ignore facts on the ground.

Ignoring facts on the ground seems to be a common theme running through most developments these days, does it not?

How crude and infantile has political rhetoric become in post-America?

Donald Trump may be the king of reckless pronouncements (he's the king of everything, is he not? That's the impression he leaves with his every public appearance), but he doesn't have a monopoly on it.

Hillionaire is no slouch when it comes to wild utterances:

Republicans are reacting furiously to Hillary Clinton linking terrorists and anti-abortion GOPs in a Cleveland speech today.

Clinton referenced Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich in saying that Republicans would ban abortion without exceptions. “Now extreme views about women, we expect that from some of the terrorist groups, we expect that from people who don’t want to live in the modern world, but it’s a little hard to take coming from Republicans who want to be the president of the United States,” she said. “Yet they espouse out of touch, out of date policies. They are dead wrong for 21st century America.”

Republican National Committee press secretary Allison Moore said in a statement: “For Hillary Clinton to equate her political opponents to terrorists is a new low for her flailing campaign. She should apologize immediately for her inflammatory rhetoric.”

There is a certain type of Republican who can dish it out pretty handily, too:

Juicy, but I don’t know how scandalized we should be at learning that Boehner holds a view we all assumed he held in the first place. Next we’ll find out that Mitch McConnell thinks Cruz is a jackass too.

This isn’t the first time he’s been accused of saying something privately to fundraisers that he wouldn’t dare dream of saying publicly. Remember when he allegedly told a bunch of donor-class amnesty fans that he was “hellbent” on passing comprehensive immigration reform in 2014? Two months later Dave Brat upset Eric Cantor in their House primary by running hard against illegal immigration. Alas, the elusive dream of more cheap labor for corporate America had to be postponed again.

At a Steamboat Springs event for GOP Rep. Scott Tipton, the Ohio Republican quipped that he likes how Cruz’s presidential campaign keeps “that jackass” out of Washington, and from telling Boehner how to do his job…

“I don’t think it’s terribly speaker-like, and I think it kind of goes against everything that Reagan ever said about disparaging Republicans,” said Ed MacArthur, the president of Native Excavating, who attended the fundraiser…

Another Steamboat Springs resident confirmed Boehner’s remark: “I about fell on the floor.”

“To build coalitions to work together in Washington, D.C., you don’t start it out by calling your colleague a ‘jackass,’” she said.

Turns out the GOP leadership hates grassroots favorites just as much as the grassroots hates the GOP leadership. Dare we assume that Boehner also holds Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh in low regard?

If one is interested in elevating the level of discourse, winnowing the field of not just presidential candidates but admirable public figures generally becomes easier.

We can be fierce in defense of our principles, but let us not leave ourselves vulnerable to charges of going off half-cocked by lobbing the kinds of ill-advised salvos to which the rudderless increasingly resort.

With diplomats like ours, why shouldn't the world smell weakness?

Post-America's UN ambassador Samantha Powers is concerned about our nation's loss of cred on the world stage should Congress 86 the Iran deal:

First, if the United States rejects this deal, we would instantly isolate ourselves from the countries that spent nearly two years working with American negotiators to hammer out its toughest provisions. Those partners believe that this is a sound deal—with a rigorous set of inspection measures that would allow us to know if Iran is not playing by the rules. And those countries have been very clear that they are not prepared to walk away from this deal to try to secure different terms. So if we walk away, there is no diplomatic door number two. No do over. No rewrite of the deal on the table. We would go from a situation in which Iran is isolated to one in which the United States is isolated. That would not be ideal under any circumstances, but it would be particularly damaging in a context in which Iran continues to pose a profound threat to international peace and security, against which global unity and pressure will be critical. 

Second, well beyond the consequences vis-a-vis Iran itself, rejecting this deal would likely undermine our ability to use sanctions in other circumstances. At the UN I routinely encounter countries that do not want to impose sanctions or even to enforce those already on the books. The hard-line sanctions skeptics have their own self-interested reasons for opposing sanctions, but they ground their opposition in claims that America uses sanctions to inflict punishment for punishment’s sake. In response, I tell foreign diplomats that sanctions are not an end in themselves, but a means of marrying coercive measures with diplomacy to try to change behavior—whether that behavior threatens international security or inflicts widespread human suffering. And I tell those diplomats that when diplomatic paths seem to emerge, America will pursue them, and we will ease the pressure if the grounds for imposing sanctions are addressed. 

In the case of Iran, the United States persuaded other countries to apply pressure for a purpose—in order to secure significant, long-term constraints that would cut off all of Iran’s pathways to a nuclear weapon. If we move the goalpost now—arguing, for example, that there should not be sanctions relief until Iran stops supporting terrorist proxies or until it permanently gives up nuclear enrichment for peaceful purposes—we would give detractors a powerful tool to try to obstruct our future efforts on issues unrelated to Iran. Our efforts to reach this deal have affirmed the view of the United States as a tough but principled leader; rejecting it would be read in many quarters as a superpower intent on inflicting pain for its own sake. 

A few indications of her world view stick out like sore thumbs here. There's her ironclad confidence that sanctions snapback would  would be a snap:

 . . . businesses that had already signed new contracts in Iran . . . would have to phase out their contracts or face penalties for violating sanction

Then there's her tacit acknowledgement that this deal allows Iran to continue to foment terrorism.

Then there's her saddening belief that "shared values" rank higher with German, Turkish and Russian businesses - and the governments that give them the green light to sign deals with Tehran - than opportunity for lucrative commerce.

While . . . soft power is built in many ways, two of its most important sources are the belief among other countries’ leaders and publics that we share similar values, and that America delivers on its commitments.

Let's look at Russia in particular, since it is a rather unavoidable force among the nation-states that crafted this "deal." Does it really share our values, or believe that America delivers on its commitments?

The evidence suggests otherwise:

On September 5, 2014, Russian agents crossed into Estonia and kidnapped an Estonian security official. Last week, after a closed trial, Russia sentenced him to 15 years.

The reaction? The State Department issued a statement. The NATO secretary-general issued a tweet. Neither did anything. The European Union (reports the Wall Street Journal) said it was too early to discuss any possible action.

The timing of this brazen violation of NATO territory — two days after President Obama visited Estonia to symbolize America’s commitment to its security — is testimony to Vladimir Putin’s contempt for the American president. He knows Obama will do nothing. Why should he think otherwise?

Putin breaks the arms embargo to Iran by lifting the hold on selling it S-300 missiles. Obama responds by excusing him, saying it wasn’t technically illegal and adding, with a tip of the hat to Putin’s patience: “I’m frankly surprised that it held this long.”

Russia mousetraps Obama at the eleventh hour of the Iran negotiations, joining Iran in demanding that the conventional-weapons and ballistic-missile embargos be dropped. Obama caves.

Putin invades Ukraine, annexes Crimea, breaks two Minsk cease-fire agreements, and erases the Russia–Ukraine border. Obama’s response? Pinprick sanctions, empty threats, and a continuing refusal to supply Ukraine with defensive weaponry, lest he provoke Putin.

It's extremely difficult to take Powers seriously in light of the actual facts on the ground.

What most of the world sees is a patsy former superpower that will do nothing to prevent shortsighted opportunists from exploiting a situation that's going to be profitable in the short term, but, beyond that time frame, is going to wind up facilitating an apocalyptic scenario we can scarcely bear to contemplate.

Reality is the damnedest thing

Parsing the crosscurrents of the moment in post-America requires a deftness on which there is a premium. Even if one deigns to delve deep into the weeds, the prospect of making sense of any minutiae, let alone the big picture, seems elusive. About the the time you think you've found a champion, you also find a caveat.

The supremely unfortunate Trump phenomenon provides a surfeit of examples of what I'm talking about.

There's the Jorge Ramos situation. It is gratifying to see a common assessment form across the spectrum that Ramos behaved like a jerk and blew his credentials as a journalist to smithereens. If one wants to peel back some intriguing layers, one of course finds that his daughter is working on Hillionaire's campaign. But, conversely, let us remember that the incident would not have happened had not Trump couched the immigration issue in such raw terms.

Or consider the matter of trade.

Not only does LITD adhere to pretty much free trade purism, this site has an entire category of posts called "Corporate Acquiescence to the Left." Peruse it and you'll find rants against corporate America's obsequious signing-on to government-imposed emissions standards, its slavish "diversity and inclusion," its fondness for buzz phrases, and indeed its disregard for the concept of national sovereignty. We are not fond of the Chamber of Commerce in most circumstances.

But this kind of bluster and cartoonish extra-Constitutionalism is not the antidote:

• “I would say very simply, ‘Fellas, sorry, you gotta move back.’”
• “I’ll call them up and say, ‘Gotta go. I don’t want you in Mexico.’”
• “I would say to the head of Ford, ‘Sorry, I’m not gonna approve. You’re gonna pay a tax, for every car and every truck and every part that comes across that southern border, you’re gonna pay a 35% tax, OK?’ That’s what’s gonna happen.”

Conspicuously absent is any mention of the legislative branch's involvement. George Will is spot-on to call this Caesarism.

Then, on the Left, there is the phenomenon of a supposedly coronation-headed Hillionaire running out of gas, plagued by deadly serious legal and national-security problems, but still polling ahead of her even-more-out-of-gas rivals.

She's in an intriguing pickle, is she not? She has to tack leftward to prevent Sanders and O'Malley from co-opting her base, but, because she is indeed beholden to big investor-class donors, must be careful not to alienate them. What's an Alinsky disciple to do?

Especially if Uncle Joe decides to jump in the fray.

It's enough to make a three-pillared conservative's head swim.

Which gets to what is surely the best course to stick with at a juncture such as this.

Adhere fiercely to the core set of tenets and promote them tirelessly whenever the opportunity arises.

Hard to do given the buzz-saw din, but prayer and resolve can go far in drowning that out.

A champion of freedom punches back at one of freedom's greatest enemies

The Most Equal Comrade was in Las Vegas, laying the three-cheers-for-tyranny message on thick:

The president drew applause when he said: “[Y]ou start seeing massive lobbying efforts backed by fossil fuel interests, or conservative think tanks, or the Koch brothers pushing for new laws to roll back renewable energy standards or prevent new clean energy businesses from succeeding — that’s a problem.”

The MEC crafted an alternate reality in which down is up and everything is backwards:

Obama said of those who try to thwart policies intended to boost clean energy: “That’s not the American way. That’s not progress. That’s not innovation. That’s rent seeking, and trying to protect old ways of doing business and standing in the way of the future.”
Obama continued: “I mean, think about this. Ordinarily, these are groups that tout themselves as champions of the free market. If you start talking to them about providing health care for folks who don’t have health insurance, they’re going crazy: ‘This is socialism, this is going to destroy America.’ But in this situation, they’re trying to undermine competition in the marketplace, and choke off consumer choice, and threaten an industry that’s churning out new jobs at a fast pace.”

So Charles Koch had to straighten him out:

Koch said his company also opposes subsidies for fossil fuels. And he portrayed Obama’s remarks as an unwarranted personal attack.
“I was absolutely flabbergasted that he could say so many things about us that were the opposite of the truth,” Koch said. “I was really dumbfounded. And I know he was there with Harry Reid. So we expect that with Harry Reid, but I didn’t expect that from the president.”
Koch said he has never met Obama. “The only thing I can think of is he was there with Harry Reid, and it was kind of a farewell gesture to help Harry Reid,” Koch added. “I can think of no other reason to single us out in his remarks in his efforts to promote his favorite forms of energy.”
Koch said his company is “opposed to renewable energy subsidies of all kinds — as we are all subsidies, whether they benefit or help us.”
“We are not trying to prevent new clean energy businesses from succeeding,” Koch continued. “Any business that’s economical, that can succeed in the marketplace, any form of energy, we’re all for. As a matter of fact, we’re investing in quite a number of them, ourselves — whether that’s ethanol, renewable fuel oil. … We’re investing a tremendous amount in research to make those more efficient and create higher-value products.”

Koch added: “But it’s not going to help the country to be subsidizing uneconomical forms of energy — whether you call them ‘green,’ ‘renewable’ or whatever. In that case, the cure is worse than the disease. And there is a big debate on whether you have a real disease or something that’s not that serious. I recognize there is a big debate about that. But whatever it is, the cure is to do things in the marketplace, and to let individuals and companies innovate, to come up with alternatives that will deal with whatever the problem may be in an economical way so we don’t squander resources on uneconomic approaches.”

It's not like the MEC is misinformed or confused. The bastard knows exactly what he's doing. It's his base that he wants misinformed and confused.

That "churning out jobs at a fast pace" nonsense was a particularly rich touch on the MEC's part.

Clearly one of the most jolting moments in television history

Not going to say a whole lot about the shooting of the WDBJ reporters and their interviewee right now, except to point out the multiple cultural and spiritual layers involved.

There is, of course, the power of social media and broadcast media to facilitate the take-an-evil-route-to-stardom inclinations of someone on the brink. There's guns and race. There's the nature of workplace relations.

At the core, there is the ignoring of God, always a dangerous condition in this world.

Yes, let's find out if this is as stinky as it looks - and soon

With a threat as menacing as ISIS, you don't want this kind of manipulation going on:

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s inspector general is investigating allegations that military officials have skewed intelligence assessments about the United States-led campaign in Iraq against the Islamic State to provide a more optimistic account of progress, according to several officials familiar with the inquiry.

The investigation began after at least one civilian Defense Intelligence Agency analyst told the authorities that he had evidence that officials at United States Central Command — the military headquarters overseeing the American bombing campaign and other efforts against the Islamic State — were improperly reworking the conclusions of intelligence assessments prepared for policy makers, including President Obama, the government officials said.

Fuller details of the claims were not available, including when the assessments were said to have been altered and who at Central Command, or Centcom, the analyst said was responsible. The officials, speaking only on the condition of anonymity about classified matters, said that the recently opened investigation focused on whether military officials had changed the conclusions of draft intelligence assessments during a review process and then passed them on.

The prospect of skewed intelligence raises new questions about the direction of the government’s war with the Islamic State, and could help explain why pronouncements about the progress of the campaign have varied widely.
Legitimate differences of opinion are common and encouraged among national security officials, so the inspector general’s investigation is an unusual move and suggests that the allegations go beyond typical intelligence disputes. Government rules state that intelligence assessments “must not be distorted” by agency agendas or policy views. Analysts are required to cite the sources that back up their conclusions and to acknowledge differing viewpoints.
Under federal law, intelligence officials can bring claims of wrongdoing to the intelligence community’s inspector general, a position created in 2011. If officials find the claims credible, they are required to advise the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. That occurred in the past several weeks, the officials said, and the Pentagon’s inspector general decided to open an investigation into the matter.

Spokeswomen for both inspectors general declined to comment for this article. The Defense Intelligence Agency and the White House also declined to comment. 

Let's get to the bottom of this pronto. David French at NRO has it right when he spells out the stakes:

Every day that ISIS is allowed to consolidate its hold over northern Syria and north and western Iraq is a day that it recruits new members, encourages ”lone wolf” attacks, and plans new offensives.  I keep getting the ominous feeling that the clock is ticking on a truly significant terror attack, one that will leave our political leadership answering to the American people — why didn’t you do more to defeat the enemy? And if one answer is that Pentagon officials lied about success against ISIS, then courts-martial should be the response.

Quite so.

 

China's free fall only partially explains it

The Dow and the S&P 500 went on a wild ride coincident and commensurate with that of Chinese markets late last week and early this week, and much of it was due to contagion.

There was a uniquely post-American factor as well, though:

the fact of the matter is that Wall Street's steep sell-off wouldn't have happened to the degree it did if the U.S. economy were running at full throttle.

Job creation has been anemic. Economic growth has been stuck in the 2 percent range. Consumer spending is nothing to write home about. Wages remain flat, the retail sector is weak, and the housing sector is stuck in neutral.

The Commerce Department announced Tuesday that new home sales came in at around 481,000 last month, less than the 510,000 housing economists had forecast.

These and other disappointing developments have sent America's economic confidence into a nose dive, Gallup says.

"Americans' perceptions of the economy's direction became more pessimistic last week, as the outlook component score fell six points to -21, the lowest weekly average since the end of July 2014," the polling firm said.

Gallup's latest survey found that only 37 percent of Americans say the economy is "getting better", while 58 percent said it is "getting worse."

Predictably, as global markets began falling last week, U.S. investors followed suit on Monday, fearing the worst.

The stock market wasn't the only number in a free fall. President Obama's job approval polls sank to 45 percent this week. And 51 percent now say they disapprove of his job performance as president.

As for Obama's insistence that the unemployment rate has fallen into the low five percent range, Gallup's daily job polls paint a darker employment picture.

A devastating 14.7 percent of part-time Americans are "underemployed" and need full-time work, but can't find one.

The blame falls squarely on the Most Equal Comrade's agenda of planned decline.

But listen to me, post-America, and listen carefully: The solution is not a manically narcissistic, utterly incoherent, shallow, vulgar pop-culture icon.

There is a bench of candidates who understand, and have fealty to, the free market. For once, post-America, I implore you, let's make one of them president.

Phillip Hammond is one dangerous SOB

For a Conservative Party member with a private-sector career studded with solid accomplishments, he sure is susceptible to the toxic effects of the first sip of Kool-Aid:

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, who met Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in Tehran on Monday, said the two countries shared common ground despite a "deep legacy of distrust."

He said they agreed on the need to defeat the Islamic State group, and to stop opium from Afghanistan reaching Europe.

Hammond told the BBC that "Iran is too large a player, too important a player in this region, to simply leave in isolation."

Yes, indeed! That's the ticket! Sign them up as an ally!

Get a clue, dumbass. You may have met the Ayatollah in person, but apparently you've missed coverage of his many pronouncements via Twitter or at numerous death-to-America-and-Israel rallies. You may not be aware of Iran's stockpile of long-range missiles, or its ongoing support for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

Are you on board with this s---, Prime Minister Cameron?

The sticky wicket that is Section I of the Fourteenth Amendment

Hey, all of you out there who shout "bingo!" as you point to the phrase "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof," I'm right there with you.

But Howard Foster, writing at NRO today, says"not so fast."

As everyone knows from the history of that era, Congress passed the amendment to enfranchise the former slaves in the South. The first sentence of the amendment states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof [emphasis mine] are citizens of the United States.” I’ve read the congressional debates over that sentence, and its meaning is ambiguous. Yes, as Edward Erler pointed out Wednesday in a piece in National Review, Senator Jacob Howard (R., Mich.), the amendment’s sponsor, said “foreigners” were excluded from citizenship. But, in response to a question from Democratic senator John Conness of California, an Irish immigrant, as to whether the children of Chinese laborers, then pouring into his state, would be citizens from birth, Senator Lyman Trumbull (R., Ill.), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which had approved it, said they would be. Conness voted for the amendment based on that assurance, but his support for the Chinese immigrant community, then very unpopular in California, cost him reelection. The only group that everyone seemed to agree would be excluded were Indians living on reservations.

Judicial conservatives are usually skeptical of legislative history in interpreting statutes. And this is a perfect example of why that skepticism is just. As we’ve seen, senators made inconsistent statements about the amendment. Then there is the additional question of why, if Senator Howard really believed his amendment would exclude “foreigners,” he failed to say so in the text? By 1868 members of Congress had almost a century of experience with activist federal judges disagreeing over the meaning of several provisions of the Constitution: the Necessary and Proper Clause, the meaning of “freedom of the press,” and of course, the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which was incorporated into the second sentence of the new 14th Amendment. 

Senator Howard could have worded his amendment any way he wanted. Consider that the 1866 Civil Rights statute, enacted two years before the 14th Amendment and largely the work of Howard and Trumbull, began with this statement: “All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power . . . are citizens.” That clearly excludes aliens. But that phrase was replaced with the more ambiguous “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the amendment. Why? Did the amendment mean something broader? It would seem so.

Subsequent Supreme Court cases demonstrated that there is an element of mystery as to Senator Howard's thinking, leading to more than one school of thought about where he was coming from.  Myself, I think that if we're going to be guided by what the author of a law has committed to written word, we have to conclude that he meant that that children born to parents who still had allegiance to foreign governments were in fact not US citizens.

I like Foster's recommendation to solve this matter with regard to the current illegal-alien flood and the offspring that result. Pass a law defining those offspring as definite foreigners, and word it in such a way as to make responses to court challenges as airtight as possible.

But this situation clearly shows that bingo moments in Constitutional parsing can always be countered with gotcha moments.

When crafting rules by which Americans are going to have to live, let us always write as plainly as possible.

An odd recommendation to Republicans

Bill Kristol is the kind of political observer who by turns impresses me, confounds me and frustrates me. Today at the Weekly Standard he does the latter two.

First, there's his invitation to us to consider the possibility that the Pubs once again have a lackluster field. Excuse me while I scratch my head. Who else sees it that way?

Are we sure the GOP isn't on course to nominating their very own Dukakis? Are we confident one of the current field is up to the job of winning—and governing?

Perhaps one of the current candidates will prove to be just fine. Perhaps we're getting a distorted view of the quality of the field because of the tidal wave that is Donald Trump. Perhaps the other candidates haven't therefore been able to emerge as clearly and impressively as might otherwise have been the case. Perhaps over the next couple of months Marco Rubio or Scott Walker or Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush, or someone else currently in the field, will turn out to fit the bill. 

On the other hand, it may be that the lesson of the Trump surge—like that of the shorter-lived Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann boomlets in 2011—is that the rest of the field isn't what it should be. We'll have a better sense of that in a couple of months. But what if come October all we have is Bushies lacking all conviction, Trumpers full of passionate intensity, and a bunch of uninspiring also-rans? I devoutly hope this isn't the case. But what if it is?

On what basis is he even seeing this scenario as a possibility?

This weekend, at the Defending the American Dream Summit, I heard two of the best presidential candidates the Pubs have fielded in decades: Ted Cruz and Bobby Jindal. I heard two others that are almost of that caliber: Rick Perry and Marco Rubio. These are all principled devotees of freedom and American greatness. Forthright Christians. Men of accomplishment. The current field also includes Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson, who have surprised all with their ability to surmount the inherent challenges of the complete-outsider status.

Kristol offers for consideration some possible additional entries into the race:

Shouldn't Republicans be open to doing what Democrats are now considering? That is: Welcoming into the race, even drafting into the race if need be, one or two new and potentially superior candidates? After all, if a new candidate or new candidates didn't take off, the party would be no worse off, and someone from the current field would prevail. If the October surprise candidate caught fire, it would be all the better for the GOP--whether he ultimately prevailed or forced one of the existing candidates to up his game. 

Who could such a mysterious dark horse be? Well, it's not as if every well-qualified contender is already on the field. Mitch Daniels was probably the most successful Republican governor of recent times, with federal executive experience to boot. Paul Ryan is the intellectual leader of Republicans in the House of Representatives, with national campaign experience. The House also features young but tested leaders like Jim Jordan, Trey Gowdy and Mike Pompeo. There is the leading elected representative of the 9/11 generation who has also been a very impressive freshman senator, Tom Cotton. There could be a saner and sounder version of Trump—another businessman who hasn't held electoral office. And there are distinguished conservative leaders from outside politics; Justice Samuel Alito and General (ret.) Jack Keane come to mind. 

None of them now plans to run. None of them wants to run. None of them may be required to run for the sake of the country. But isn't it worth at this point pushing the door a bit ajar?

It may seem odd to suggest that the solution to an already unprecedentedly large field is to expand it further. But politics is full of oddities. And what would be truly odd would be to go into battle in 2016 with a candidate we settle on rather than a nominee the country can rally behind. The presidency would be a terrible thing to waste.      

All of these are interesting ideas (except one; more on that in a moment). Compelling arguments can be made for each.

But what is his problem with the six candidates I mentioned above?

I'd answer Kristol's question by saying, no, this is not the time to push the door ajar. I said we had six great candidates. Six. That's plenty to be consuming the oxygen left over after the unfortunate Trump mania. Let's focus on them, give their policy specifics a proper airing, track their polling trends for several more weeks.

Not sure what got into Bill to compel him to pose such a question. And, Bill, Paul Ryan's prez-candidate shelf life is over.

This is what results when you appease rogue states with nuclear ambitions

They keep the tension raised to a hair-raising pitch:

Seoul (AFP) - North Korea has mobilised dozens of submarines and doubled its artillery units along the border, South Korea said Sunday, accusing Pyongyang of undermining top-level talks aimed at averting a military confrontation.

A defense ministry spokesman said 70 percent of the North's total submarine fleet -- or around 50 vessels -- had left their bases and disappeared from Seoul's military radar.

The movement of such a large number of submarines was "unprecedented," the spokesman said, adding that Seoul and Washington were beefing up their military surveillance in response.

"The number is nearly 10 times the normal level... we take the situation very seriously," he said.

The North has also doubled the number of artillery units along the heavily-fortified land border with the South, he added.

The move came as top officials from both Koreas resumed a talks aimed at easing military tensions after a marathon negotiating session the night before ended without final agreement.

"The North is adopting a two-faced stance with the talks going on," said the spokesman.

Yonhap news agency, citing military officials, said the submarine deployment was the largest since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

"No one knows whether the North will attack our warships or commercial vessels... we are mobilising all our surveillance resources to locate them," it quoted one military official as saying.

The North operates more than 70 submarines -- one of the world's largest fleets -- compared to about 10 in the South, according to Seoul's latest defense white paper.

The grim fruits of the Agreed Framework and the Six-Way Talks. It's about to happen again with an equally evil regime that happens to be one of the world's major sources of oil.

Friday morning roundup

Some recommended reads:

Charles C.W. Cooke at NRO on Hillionaire's disastrous presser.

John Siciliano at Washington Examiner on the tsunami of EPA regs for which the gas and oil industries are bracing.

Roberto A. Ferdman at Washington Post on the cultural context for the phenomenon of record numbers of Americans dining alone. Reasons including shrinking size of households. Effects including online ordering-and-delivery services.

Ferguson redux - complete with armored vehicles rolling in to restore order at protests - in the St. Louis area.

North Korea shells South Korea and the South resounds in kind.

And that's how it is this fine mid-August day.

How insane is the Iran deal?

This insane:

Iran, in an unusual arrangement, will be allowed to use its own experts to inspect a site it allegedly used to develop nuclear arms under a secret agreement with the U.N. agency that normally carries out such work, according to a document seen by The Associated Press.

The revelation is sure to roil American and Israeli critics of the main Iran deal signed by the U.S., Iran and five world powers in July. Those critics have complained that the deal is built on trust of the Iranians, a claim the U.S. has denied.

The investigation of the Parchin nuclear site by the International Atomic Energy Agency is linked to a broader probe of allegations that Iran has worked on atomic weapons. That investigation is part of the overarching nuclear deal.

The Parchin deal is a separate, side agreement worked out between the IAEA and Iran. The United States and the five other world powers that signed the Iran nuclear deal were not party to this agreement but were briefed on it by the IAEA and endorsed it as part of the larger package.

Without divulging its contents, the Obama administration has described the document as nothing more than a routine technical arrangement between Iran and the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency on the particulars of inspecting the site.

Any IAEA member country must give the agency some insight into its nuclear program. Some countries are required to do no more than give a yearly accounting of the nuclear material they possess. But nations— like Iran — suspected of possible proliferation are under greater scrutiny that can include stringent inspections.

But the agreement diverges from normal inspection procedures between the IAEA and a member country by essentially ceding the agency’s investigative authority to Iran. It allows Tehran to employ its own experts and equipment in the search for evidence for activities that it has consistently denied — trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Talk about fox guarding hen house.