Sunday, November 29, 2015

Yet another goofy utterance for Hillionaire to live down

Look for this to show up in various kinds of Pub ads:

Clinton: "It is time we get back to where we were before the Republicans came in and messed it up again."
Yo, Hillionaire. How far are you going back? Obviously, you're taking in a bigger scope than the last seven years.

Maybe you're talking about the Golden Age prior to 1860?

Let's hope there's a bounty of such bleatings yet to come.


The identity-politics jackboots storm another campus's administrative offices

Harmony, integration and judging people on the content of their characters is not what this bunch is after:

A mob of black students at one of Canada’s liberal arts colleges has been caught on camera intimidating white administrators, including an Associate Vice-President, yelling, “You will give us the respect that we ask of you,” and presenting a list of segregationist demands.

Brenda Whiteside, Associate Vice-President of Student Affairs at the University of Guelph, was trapped in her office by a gang of protesters who whooped and clicked their fingers as two of their number accused the college of being “rooted in anti-black racism.”
The footage, which appeared briefly on LiveLeak.com before being taken down, has not previously been published. It shows a large group of black students surrounding two white college administrators while their leaders jab their fingers and shout at Whiteside, demanding more black support and academic staff. 
The University of Guelph’s Assistant Vice President for Human Rights and Equity, Jane Ngobia, is a black woman.
The Guelph video shows how odd the language of campus protest has become. “How many racialised [sic] students do we have?” asks one protester. “White students can go in and talk to a white counsellor. What about us?” The first adds: “Are you even around racialised people?”
Also disturbing are the plainly segregationist demands the students make. They appear to tell administrators they cannot be represented or “validated” by white staff and that only black staff can cater to their needs. “We’re not being acknowledged. And that’s fundamentally problematic,” says a boy who identifies himself as a campus athlete.
The athlete says he has, “Never left my campus and not thought [racial abuse] is gonna happen. And for me to just implicitly feel that’s comfortable is problematic.” The word “problematic” is echoed around the protesting students as a sort of mantra.
Another student agrees that she is “scared to go out.” The University of Guelph is one of Canada’s most liberal educational institutions. 
Well, U of G, there's your problem right there: having an Assistant Vice President for Human Rights and Equity. It just indulges these goose-steppers' belief that they have some kind of legitimate gripe. You should have foreseen that it would come back to bite you.


Meanwhile, let us remember that we also have a Shiite enemy

It's proper - urgent, in fact - that we put a great deal of focus on ISIS. But we must be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Iran's pursuit of its aims has not wavered:

“Paramilitary forces from Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard have held a war game simulating the capture of Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque from Israeli control,” the Associated Press reports.
…thousands of members of the Basij, the paramilitary unit of the Guard, participated in Friday’s exercise outside the holy city of Qom in central Iran.
The symbolic operations were backed up by Guard helicopters, drones and Tucano planes that bombed hypothetical enemy positions before ground troops captured the replica of the mosque set up at the top of a mountain….
Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who heads the Guard’s aerospace division, said his force deployed Shahed-129, or Witness-129, drones during the war games. The drone, unveiled in 2013, has a range of 1,700 kilometers (1,050 miles), a 24-hour nonstop flight capability and can carry eight bombs or missiles.
AP then informs us that it’s not really anything to worry about:
Even so, the exercise appeared to be largely for show. Iranian commanders have not said how they would be able to deploy large numbers of forces against Israel, located 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) away, or overcome Israel’s powerful and technologically advanced military.
Actually, there are ways that they can do that. One is to use the immense windfall they stand to reap from last July’s nuclear deal, in the form of lifted sanctions and boosted trade and oil sales, to build up their capabilities. Another is to create a land bridge westward to the Mediterranean, something they’re striving to do at all times.
And another is to rely on the Western preoccupation with the Islamic State, and increasing tendency to treat Iran as a strategic ally and stabilizing force, to keep pursuing their plans relatively untrammeled.
Ehud Yaari, a veteran Israeli Middle East analyst, takes Iran’s aims seriously enough that he devoted a long analysis to them called “How Iran Plans to Destroy Israel.” “The Islamic Republic of Iran,” Yaari notes, “has been committed for the past 36 years to a doctrine aimed at wiping Israel off the map. Statements to this effect still pour out of Tehran almost daily.”
For one thing,Iran is relying on its rapidly growing arsenal of long-range missiles…. [T]he leaders have long emphasized to Iranian military commanders the need to develop missiles that can reach Israel in particular. This began with [Supreme Leader] Khamenei’s order for missiles with a 1,000-kilometer range that, if launched from Iran’s western border, could hit Israel. Still later, Khamenei instructed his commanders to acquire missiles with a 2,000-kilometer range, allowing for a successful hit on Israel from most of Iran’s territory. And later still Khamenei personally ordered that the accuracy of the missiles should be dramatically improved.
What about Iranian forces reaching Israel itself, as in the Revolutionary Guard’s Al-Aqsa drill? Yaari acknowledges that, apart from its missile arsenal, at present Iran’s air force, navy, and ground forces have only limited capabilities. But “all this may change if Iran decides to allocate resources, derived from [the] nuclear deal, to a major effort to project military power beyond its borders.”
Of course, for any meaningful addressing of this. we will have to wait until, hopefully, post-America is fundamentally un-transformed into the United States of America, with a president who understands the primacy of an alliance with Israel, rather than a dictator who hates Israel and thinks it is somehow visionary to appease Iran.


How evil and how determined is ISIS?

For how evil they are, consult the Yazidi women who have escaped enslavement.



"Every time a woman escapes we learn more about how they are using Yazidi women," he said. 
Domle said the women, especially those who end up in ISIS strongholds in Syria, tend to be traded or sold three or four times as fighters move to different locations and leave the women behind. 
"Some are sold for weapons, or for just $10, or 10 cigarettes," Domle said.
For how determined they are, consult their latest video taunting and threatening the West. 

Thoughts on the Paris climate summit

Delusional zealots, power-seekers, and leaders of various nations who feel obliged to attend so that they can try to prevent their countries from bearing the cost of whatever is agreed to are all flying in now and checking into their hotels.

And re: those national leaders thinking about the cost: I'll bet a few of them, even if they can't admit it publicly, know that incurring it is utterly pointless:

A new peer-reviewed paper by Dr. Bjorn Lomborg published in the Global Policy journal measures the actual impact of all significant climate promises made ahead of the Paris climate summit.
Governments have publicly outlined their post-2020 climate commitments in the build-up to the December’s meeting. These promises are known as “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions” (INDCs).
Dr. Lomborg’s research reveals:
  • The climate impact of all Paris INDC promises is minuscule: if we measure the impact of every nation fulfilling every promise by 2030, the total temperature reduction will be 0.048°C (0.086°F) by 2100.
  • Even if we assume that these promises would be extended for another 70 years, there is still little impact: if every nation fulfills every promise by 2030, and continues to fulfill these promises faithfully until the end of the century, and there is no ‘CO₂ leakage’ to non-committed nations, the entirety of the Paris promises will reduce temperature rises by just 0.17°C (0.306°F) by 2100.
  • US climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.031°C (0.057°F) by 2100.
  • EU climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.053°C (0.096°F) by 2100.
  • China climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.048°C (0.086°F) by 2100.
  • The rest of the world’s climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.036°C (0.064°F) by 2100.
And consider the complete failure of previous pow-wows of this sort, going back to Kyoto.

So there will be tense, round-the-clock meetings in Paris, with the world's media breathlessly reporting each minute signal of the remote possibility of a breakthrough.

Some kind of document - certainly not anything that's legally binding according to the laws of the participating nations - will eventually be hammered out.

The Most Equal Comrade will bring his copy of it back to post-America. By that time, Congress will know enough of the details that those legislators with a lick of sense and at least of modicum of devotion to freedom will insist that it be considered a treaty and voted on.

The MEC will say it's not a treaty and come up with some cockamamie term for it and forge ahead with imposing its obligations on this sad, deteriorating, gravely imperiled nation.

There will be more measures along the lines of prosecuting Exxon for its atmospheric research not drawing regime-approved conclusions,  of outfits like the Children's Trust Fund, which gets kids to file lawsuits against the government to force action on climate change, of imposition of the Next Generation of Science Standards in schools, to make sure that those kids are good and indoctrinated, of astronomically costly EPA ozone regulations , of presidential task forces issuing reports on how communities across post-America can / should / will be forced to "prepare for climate change," of the Union of Concerned Scientists proposing a National Food Policy.

And meanwhile, Iran will be cheating on the nuke "deal," ISIS will be finalizing plans for a catastrophic attack on post-America, tensions between NATO and Russia will continue to build, China will continue its South China Sea aggression, and most of the post-American cattle-masses will distract themselves with sports and entertainment obsessions.

Sound like a dire scenario?

Then fight. Speak up. Argue. Vote. Attend rallies. Persuade your fellow citizens.

It is very late in the day.


Saturday, November 28, 2015

Why the odds of Western civilization surviving are not good

Tom Tancredo at Breitbart encapsulates in a few paragraphs the sum total of this blog's raison d'ĂȘtre.


If we are honest we must face a very dark and sobering fact: The outcome of this war is far from certain. We are proud of being a nation of can-do optimists, but we are also a nation in denial about a culture in a tailspin.
  • The real enemy is not “over there” in Syria and Iraq, or in Paris or London. The enemy is already here in our homeland, and I am not speaking of terrorist cells, Syrian refugees, or radical imams. I am speaking of the accelerating rot in our own culture.
Our secular culture is adrift in a sea of relativism, escapism, and self-indulgent inanities, with our media and entertainment elites leading the parade.
  • “Where were you, Daddy, when we were waging the war on terror?” Oh, well, I was watching reality TV. On TV, the good guys always defeat the bad guys. And I can always change the channel.
In this besotted condition, we are ill equipped to fight an enemy full of passion, idealism and self-confidence. Islamist suicide bombers believe they are dying for a higher purpose, the greater glory of Allah.  What, exactly, are our ideals? The freedom to enjoy pornography and polygamy and 24-hour pizza delivery?

It is indeed very late in the day.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Yikes!

Of course, the big question is whether this is an Archduke Ferdinand moment.

It's pretty big, in any case. It exposes yet more fault lines in the Syrian mess, possibly pitting NATO against Russia.

It's not every day that Turkey shoots down a Russian fighter jet, and then someone shoots down the rescue helicopter that comes to the scene.

Putin calls it a "stab in the back."

While Erdogan is hardly a defensible figure, one can see how he had just about had it with Russian incursions into Turkish airspace.

Also consider that Putin was just in Tehran, visiting not just with government officials, but the Ayatollah Khomeini.

This thing is a real bag of snakes.

I'm praying - genuinely, literally praying - that this is a decisive trend

Per a new Quinnipiac poll, Ted Cruz has surged to a virtual tie with Squirrel-Hair in Iowa.

Jazz Shaw at Hot Air sees this and another recent poll as indicators that, as national security moves to the fore among the nation's concerns, there's some shaking-out going on:

This move seems to be turning into a trend rather than a blip. The last CBS poll from Fridayalready had Cruz moving into a very solid second place behind Trump (30 to 21) and the Q-Poll numbers only solidify and continue the same arc.
Recent events in Paris and Syria seem to be driving the election cycle for now and that may explain a lot of what we’re seeing. First, it’s worth noting that while Trump is down a bit from two weeks ago, it’s not by much. Almost all of Cruz’s surge seems to have come at the expense of Ben Carson. Looking at national opinion polls regarding America’s view of Barack Obama’s dismal handling of ISIS and national concerns over Syrian refugees, should we really be surprised at who is doing well in Iowa? Trump and Cruz have been two of the strongest advocates for American strength in this crisis who have managed to do so without shooting themselves in the foot constantly. (Sorry, Dr. Carson.)
I’ve been waiting quite a while to see a big move by Cruz. His performances at each and every debate have been extremely solid and he’s looked (at least to me) like one of the most consistently presidential figures on the stage. Still, that didn’t seem to resonate with the public as all the attention remained focused on the Trump vs Carson battle. It may have taken a true moment of clear and present danger to the nation for the candidates to get a chance to strut their stuff and lay out their vision for protecting the nation. Cruz seems to have finally caught the attention of at least the Iowa voters in that regard.

I've posted more than once collections of S-H's bombastic outbursts and exhibitions of narcissism. I've also discussed what we can learn about his support base from the comment threads under news stories or opinion pieces about him. (Actually, you can sometimes find such revealing spewings in comment threads under stories that are tangentially, if at all, concerned with him.)

Here's an example from the thread under Shaw's piece:

Cruz is a lying POS.Pro-amnesty.pro-TPP-pro H1B visas.Typical lying politico who talks a great game but is still owned by the donor cronies.Will most definitely stay home next November if he is the nominee because any RINO is a threat to this country’s survival just as uch as a progressive socialist pig.Trump 2016 or nobody!
Yes, indeed, now there's someone who knows how to take the full measure of his fellow human being.

I'm going to go a bit out on a limb and assert that this is typical of the Squirrel-Hair enthusiast. The one-note johnny obsession with the single issue of immigration. The obvious ignorance, as demonstrated by the assertion that Cruz, the model of integrity, is a liar. The RINO accusation. (I guess this person was MIA when Cruz stood on the Senate floor and called Mitch McConnell a liar.) The vulgarity (we all know what the "s" in "POS" stands for.)The exclamation point. (I'm surprised nothing was in all caps. That's a standard feature of Trump-bot rantings.)

Something that distresses me a great deal is the clear excitement the S-H phenomenon has sparked among certain talk-show hosts I'd long admired as solid three-pillared conservatives. The worst is Laura Ingraham, who cannot contain her giddiness when sharing his latest poll numbers or rally attendance figures. In her case, at least, I can understand it to some degree, given that she had become a two-note johnny (trade and immigration) prior to the rise of S-H. It's clear that the ponderous tone of her program in the last year (repeating her canned phrases - "middle class Americans seeing stagnant wages," "manufacturing jobs going to China") is a deliberate move to position herself as a populist and not necessarily any longer a conservative. But Rush Limbaugh? If ever there was a public figure who was not reluctant to opine at the drop of a hat, it's El Rushbo. Yet he now devotes much if not most of his broadcasts now to gushing over the S-H phenomenon, always careful to qualify what he's doing with the veneer of objective analysis. Today, he played the Kasich and Jeb commercials that, with some, but not really much, overlap, offer soundbites of the ridiculous utterances of S-H from recent times. Including the one about how Hillionaire has "surrounded herself with some really smart people." Then Rush says, "They can run ads like this if they want to, but they're wasting their money. They think this will encourage Trump supporters to change their minds, as if this kind of talk bothers them."

How about saying that it ought to bother them?

Because it ought to bother them.

The scariest thing about the S-H phenomenon is that it, once again, just as when this country twice elected a problematic-in-the-extreme figure utterly devoid of substance, character or an understanding of America's essence (I'm speaking of the Most Equal Comrade), demonstrates the rot of the nation's character that has set in. Post-America is mortifyingly shallow. We go in for pretty-boy icons who mouth grandiose platitudes, or we go in for wild-man rock stars.

But maybe not ultimately.

Maybe a Constitutional scholar who puts God first, who speaks like a dignified grown-up, who opposes Freedom-Hater-care on every level and has sought to repeal and / or defund it at every opportunity, who  understands what a marriage is and isn't, who understands that fossil fuels are the only sensible energy forms for us to focus on, per the verdict of the free market, and, yes, who understands that illegal immigration erodes the rule of law, national sovereignty, economic opportunity, and American culture, is what we're gravitating toward after all.

Ted Cruz is clearly the best candidate that the GOP could nominate for president. A couple of others would be pretty good. A couple more would still be preferable to Hillionaire. Squirrel-Hair is in none of those categories.

Monday, November 23, 2015

Monday afternoon roundup

Be prepared to need to start cocktail hour after reading this.

Ask yourself if this is a civilization in any kind of shape to preserve itself.

Add Prince Charles to the list of wackjobs who think "climate change" is the root cause of the Syrian civil war.

Get your brain around this development:

The University of Ottawa in Canada has abruptly canceled the free yoga classes it has offered to students since 2008 over concerns that they amounted to “cultural appropriation” and were connected to “cultural genocide.” Jennifer Scharf, the practitioner who had offered the classes, told the Independent that she had suddenly received a message telling her that they’d be suspended because “there were some issues in terms of a formal complaint.” The decision to cancel the classes was made by the Ottawa Student Federation, the university’s independent student body. According to the Ottawa Sun, staff at the Centre for Students with Disabilities sent out an e-mail claiming that “while yoga is a really great idea and accessible and  great for students . . . there are cultural issues of implication involved in the practice.”
According to the centre, many of those cultures “have experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy . . . we need to be mindful of this and how we express ourselves while practicing yoga.”

And file this one under "the Left eats its own." One of the architects of American progressivism is now a villain at the university where he taught history and over which he presided:

A group of fifteen Princeton students occupied the office of the university president last week with a list of “demands.” Their word, not mine. They wanted racial/cultural indoctrination—sorry, re-education—courses for all college staff and faculty. They wanted “a cultural space on campus dedicated specifically to Black students.” (A commenter at the Daily Princetonianwondered if this space would come with its own water fountain.) But most of all, they wanted Woodrow Wilson expunged from the school.
[snip]

Care to guess how long this group of fifteen students had to protest before the school’s current president agreed to do his best to disappear Wilson? Twenty hours.
Here’s what Princeton president Christopher Eisgruber acceded to: He agreed to push to get rid of the Wilson mural and to have the school’s trustees take up the question of scrubbing Wilson’s name from the public policy school and the residential college. 

Of course, Professor Wilson was indeed a racist. But so are many other Freedom-Hater heroes. Can we look for Margaret Sanger to get similarly pilloried?


Clock Boy is suing the city of Irving, Texas for $15 million.

But there's no silliness factor in this next one. It's purely sinister:

Analysts at U.S. Central Command were pressured to ease off negative assessments about the Islamic State threat and were even told in an email to “cut it out,” Fox News has learned – as an investigation expands into whether intelligence reports were altered to present a more positive picture.  
Fox News is told by a source close to the CENTCOM analysts that the pressure on them included at least two emails saying they needed to “cut it out” and “toe the line.”
Separately, a former Pentagon official told Fox News there apparently was an attempt to destroy the communications. The Pentagon official said the email warnings were "not well received" by the analysts.
Those emails, among others, are now in the possession of the Pentagon inspector general. The IG’s probe is expanding into whether intelligence assessments were changed to give a more positive picture of the anti-ISIS campaign.
The former Pentagon official said there were “multiple assessments” from military intelligence and the CIA regarding the “rapid rise” of ISIS in Iraq and North Africa in the year leading up to the group’s territory grab in 2014.
Similar intelligence was included in the President’s Daily Brief, or PDB – the intelligence community’s most authoritative product -- during the same time period. Yet the official, who was part of the White House discussions, said the administration kept "kicking the can down the road." The official said there was no discussion of the military involvement needed to make a difference. 
Post-America - nice and softened up for the incineration of its cities.





At the confluence of government tyranny and its cultural facilitators

Your tax dollars are going for this dog vomit:

The Environmental Protection Agency has given $30,000 to a Unitarian church that preaches about “white privilege” and says that America is “structurally racist.”
The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Boca Raton, Florida, received an “environmental justice grant” for education and training about sea level rise and climate change, the agency announcedWednesday.
The grant is to provide “Replicable and Scalable Community Climate Resilience Building in Two Communities in Palm Beach County, Florida.”
“EPA’s environmental justice grants help communities across the country understand and address exposure to multiple environmental harms and risks at the local level,” said Matthew Tejada, the director of the Office of Environmental Justice.
“Addressing the impacts of climate change is a priority for EPA and the projects supported by this year’s grants will help communities prepare for and build resilience to localized climate impacts.”
The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Boca Raton is a “liberal religious community” that currently offers classes on “Being White,” and holds town meetings on Black Lives Matter. The church supports same-sex marriage and has a climate-change working group.
“I’d lived through the voter’s rights violence and marches of the late 1960s, but at that time I was wrapped in a cocoon of white privilege so I was not much affected by all of what went on,” wrote Carolyn Brown, a member of the church’s “Healing Justice” program, in its latest monthly newsletter.
“Blacks in our society lead diminished lives due to structural racism, an insidious disease that started eons ay, gives privilege to those of us who are ‘white.’ It’s just the way it is, the standard we have come to accept as normal. Sadly, many blacks have come to accept that standard as well.”
Brown said the church’s leader, the Rev. Ms. Harris Riordan, recently led the congregation on a “privilege walk.”
“In the first 2nd Hour Class On Being White led by Rev. Harris we did a privilege walk … and learned visually where we stand in terms of privilege,” she said. “Most of us fit squarely in the middle group: Neither Highly Privileged (the million-billionaires of society) nor among the impoverished locked out of society folk.”
“Clearly fitting into the privileged majority,” Brown said.
Riordan recently preached a sermon called “On Being White,” where she said she wants to become a “White Ally” to combat the “systemic, structural racism” of America.
“It has been and still is a system holding white supremacy in place,” she said.
“Sometimes when I have soul work to do, my body wants in,” Harris said. “I need to do something, to make something. I didn’t fold paper into a 1000 cranes, this time it was needle and thread. I am making a badge, that when it is done, I will wear on my robe.”
Tax dollars for which you busted your tail end are funding this insanity.

"Privilege walk."

"Soul work."

"Environmental justice."

The UU denomination is reliably on the wrong side of every issue on our society's radar screen.

Another example of how the post-American Left manages to combine silliness, tyranny, disconnect, and cultural influence way out of proportion to its size.







The sole reason cities have bike lanes and recycling: the overlords' gravy train

David Harsanyi at The Federalist says that the relentlessness with which those pressing the utter fiction of "climate change" as resulted in survey results in which most post-Americans respond, "Sure, I think it's a problem." Yet they don't change their lifestyles in response to the exhortations to do so.
So the overlords impose a lot of the changes on us by fiat. Such is the case with bike lanes, recycling and post-normalcy light bulbs:

A few years back, Obama’s transportation secretary told me that America would be transformed by an explosion of people cycling to work and to school. “Like China?” I wondered, not facetiously. Well, in 1980, 0.05 percent of Americans biked to work. Today, 0.06 percent of people do, according to Pew—though, for some unfathomable reason, there has been an explosion of intrusive and impractical bike lanes across the country.
So it’s not surprising that the only way to pretend to make a difference is by government coercion. You have to laugh when Pew tells us that one of “the most dramatic shifts in recent years has been the rapid decline of the once-ubiquitous incandescent light bulb.” Well, gee, how do you think that happened? Since the regulatory phase-out of standard incandescent bulbs began in 2012, the residential light-bulb market has cratered only because the state believes it should dictate what innocuous household items Americans can buy and use in their own homes.
The other big, inspiring advance in environmentalism has been recycling, which is probably useless, but still compelled by many municipalities.
Expect more such tyranny when the overlords get home from this month's Paris confab.

They'll keep chipping away at our understanding of the real world, keep hammering their narrative that human advancement is evil into our heads.

Oil, coal and natural gas will be all around us, but increasingly difficult to extract and use to make human life more safe, convenient and comfortable.

Rise and repeat after the Most Equal Comrade: Advancement is bad. Gender is fluid. The West is winning the struggle against jihad, which has never been more than a mild annoyance.

That will be all for now, cattle-masses. The line for your daily gruel forms on the left. 
 

Sunday, November 22, 2015

And now, for an antidote to the second-to-most-recent post

Ben Shapiro is one of the coolest people in post-America today:

On Thursday evening, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief and Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Ben Shapiro crashed the fascist safe space known as University of Missouri and delivered an incendiary set of remarks titled, "The Truth is a Microaggression."
Calling the concept of white privilege "bullshit" and pointing out to students that "facts don't care about your feelings," Shapiro connected the race hoaxes taking place on campus at Mizzou and around the country to past frauds-used-to-incite-violence from "St. Michael of the Gentle Giantedness" to "St. Trayvon of the Blessed Hoodie." According to Shapiro, the spirit of the KKK is, in fact, alive at Mizzou - alive in the spirit of Concerned Student 1950 and the other "Pantywaist Fascists" on campus who demand an end to any dissent and the creation of racially segregated "safe spaces." Such spaces, quipped Shapiro, "are both separate, and equal!" 

"Facts don't care about your feelings." Would love to see that become a viral meme.

The Most Equal Comrade's deliberate obliviousness is going to get us all murdered in our beds

Just fully take in this dog vomit:

Trying to reassure a nation on edge, President Barack Obama said Sunday the Islamic State group "cannot strike a mortal blow" against the U.S., and he warned that overreacting to the Paris attacks would play into extremists' hands. "We will destroy this terrorist organization," he vowed.
Ending a trip to Asia, Obama implored Americans not to let the specter of terror cause them to compromise their values or change the way they live.
"We do not succumb to fear," he said. "The most powerful tool we have to fight ISIL is to say that we're not afraid, to not elevate them, to somehow buy into their fantasy that they're doing something important," Obama said, using an acronym for the terrorist organization.
Since IS militants killed 130 in France nine days ago, Obama's strategy has come under repeated questioning. He dismissed the group's global prowess of IS and said, "They're a bunch of killers with good social media."
Rejecting the notion of an existential threat, Obama said IS "can't beat us on the battlefield, so they try to terrorize us into being afraid."
And contrast it to Senator Dianne Feinstein's response to a question on Face the nation this morning about a recent assertion by Secretary Global-Test that the current post-American approach to the ISIS threat is sufficient. She says it is most definitely not sufficient and that "we don't have years." 

The ever-increasing lunacy of the identity-politics jackboots

The three latest examples of identity-politics jackboots stomping the last vestiges of seriousness, maturity and dignity out of a nation destined to be conquered - and that includes the jackboots - by very serious jihadists.

At the University of Minnesota, you can no longer commemorate the worst enemy attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor:

The everything-is-offensive brand of campus activism has struck a new low: Students at the University of Minnesota killed a proposed moment of silence for 9/11 victims due to concerns—insulting, childish concerns—that Muslim students would be offended.
Has it truly come to this? Is feelings-protection now such an overriding goal that completely unreasonable fears win out, even if they have no basis in reality? Can we not even have a single moment to recognize legitimate victims of terrorism without worrying that someone will feel marginalized on campus?
Theo Menon, a Minnesota Student Association representative and member of the College Republicans, realized that the university wasn’t doing anything to memorialize 9/11; on Oct. 6, he introduced an MSA proposal to do just that. The very short resolution asked the university to institute a “moment of recognition” during the mornings of all future September 11ths.
The resolution proved weirdly controversial. According to The Minnesota Republic:
At-large MSA representative and Director of Diversity and Inclusion David Algadi voiced severe criticism of the resolution. He also made sure to emphasize 9/11’s status as a national tragedy in his response.
“The passing of this resolution might make a space that is unsafe for students on campus even more unsafe,” said Algadi. “Islamophobia and racism fueled through that are alive and well.”
To be clear, the resolution did not refer to Islam. It did not impugn Muslim students, or other Muslims. It did not require anyone to contemplate the fact that the terrorists responsible for 9/11 were Muslims. It said nothing about whether Islam itself is to blame for global terrorism. It merely stated that 9/11 has had a lasting effect on many students, and ought to be reflected upon for a single moment, once a year. 

And if you're going to eat an item of a particular culture's cuisine, you'd better not talk about it being authentic:

According to Social Justice Internet, it’s totally fine to enjoy foods from other cultures — as long as you don’t call the food “authentic,” act like it’s out of the ordinary, or forget to get upset about Islamophobia every time you eat hummus. Yep. According to “The Feminist Guide to Being a Foodie Without Being Culturally Appropriative,” it’s pretty damned hard for you to eat anything but a cheeseburger without its author, Rachel Kuo, thinking you’re being offensive. Have you ever gone to another country and tried an “authentic” version of that country’s cuisine? If you said yes, you’re already a racist. According to Kuo, the word “authentic” should never be used when discussing another culture’s food because “seeking ‘authenticity’ fetishizes the sustenance of another culture.” “The idea of the “authentic” food experience is separated from reality,” Kuo writes. “It also freezes a culture in a particular place in time.”
And at the University of Missouri, the College Republicans circulated a petition to keep the campus statue of Thomas Jefferson, the removal of which the jackboots of that student body had  petitioned for.

The young black lady among the College Republicans has come in for a barrage of vulgar verbal abuse:

When the race activists on campus saw that one of the College Republicans, Jasmine Wells, happened to be a woman of color, they began to deluge her with hate via social media.
The intolerant leftists did the very thing they claim to be fighting against.
They attacked Jasmine with racist taunts simply because they disagree with her and she is conservative.
Tweets about her being an Uncle Tom and having Stockholm Syndrome.

The point of all this kind of activity is to paralyze us, render us unable to act or speak about anything related to our principles.

We look like fools to our adversaries and enemies. They are taking note of the erosion of our sense that anything important is at stake.

That, even more than the imposition of their neurotic silliness, their infantile narcissism, is the harm they are doing.
 




Friday, November 20, 2015

Please wake me from this nightmare and tell me the post-American rot hasn't advanced this far

In my latest podcast (you are listening to the Barney Quick Show, aren't you?) , I spend a bit of time discussing corporate acquiescence to the Left. I cite some examples.

But I really had no idea it had gone this far:

In an email to employees, Intel CIO manager Andy Robbins said:
We are on track with our diversity hiring this year, and making good progress against our progression and retention goals. These are very encouraging results and we need to build on them by creating a fully inclusive work environment where each one of us can be at our best. 
To build on this ‘success’, Robbins called on all employees to sign up to diversity classes:
Some of you might already be familiar with the MicroInequities™ training offering that was first rolled out about ten years ago at Intel. This training will help inform, educate and inspire all of us to role model behaviors that make us all feel a strong sense of connection and belonging within the IT organization.
My ask of you is to take this training before the end of 2016 and join your peers in creating our best possible work environment. Classes are available now and will be supplemented with IT Intact training classes in 2016. In addition to MicroInequities™, Global Leadership and Learning (GLL) will be launching a new program called GROW that provides complimentary skills. Expect to see more information about GROW in early December.
Readers will no doubt want to know what “MicroInequities™” training is. A seminar document describes them as “hidden barriers to success; the subtle, usually subconscious messages we all send that devalue, discourage and ultimately impair performance in the workplace.”
The document also claims that “we send between 2,000 and 4,000 positive and negative micromessages each day” and that they “have a powerful influence on driving the behavior of all those with whom we interact.”
Are the people who cooked this up in reaction mode, heading off at the pass the inevitable storming of corporate culture by mobs now destroying the post-American university, or have those ate up with this Kool-Aid already been hired into the corporate world?

And are shareholders cool with this use of the enterprise's financial resources?


Thursday, November 19, 2015

The fruits of patty-cake - today's edition

Meanwhile, how are things going with our other Islamic enemy - the Shiite one?


President Obama's terrible Iran deal -- opposed by a bipartisan majority in Congress and the electorate -- is off to quite a start. Over the last two-plus months, the regime has imposed a sham conviction upon a Washington Post journalist, detained another American citizen, released five top-level Al Qaeda prisoners, and test fired a long-range ballistic missile in violation of international law -- including the new agreement.  Fortunately for Tehran, the Obama administration long ago severed nuclear pact talks from any Western concerns about Iran's human rights abuses and material support for terrorism, with Sec. Kerry even asserting that breaches of the deal's arms embargo- and missile program-related clauses would not constitute an actionable contravention of the overall agreement.  
But more to the point, it's growing rather than reducing its uranium stockpile:

New details from Business Insider:

Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium has increased in the past three months even though Tehran is supposed to reduce it significantly under a deal with major powers, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) determined in a confidential report Reuters saw on Wednesday afternoon...The Reuters report comes just a month after Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appeared to unilaterally alter the timeline for Iran meeting its obligations under the JCPOA. On October 21st, Khamenei, who is the country's highest political and spiritual authority under Iran's theocratic system of government, announced that Iran would not begin exporting its enriched uranium in order to reach the 300 kilogram limit until the IAEA had completed its investigation of Iran's past nuclear weaponization work, an inquiry that won't officially end until the agency issues a report in December...An increase in Iran's stockpile even after the signing of the JCPOA might show that Khamenei's conditions for the JCPOA — which allow Iran to determine the timeline and arrangements for the scale-down of its enriched uranium stock — are being implemented. The JCPOA won't officially be implemented until Iran scales its stockpile down 300 kilograms and makes various modifications to its nuclear infrasturcture. The growth of Iran's uranium stock wouldn't be the only recent piece of mixed news for the JCPOA. On October 11th, Iranian state media announced that the country had tested a new model of the Emad missile, a mid-range ballistic missile with the ability to deliver a nuclear warhead. The test violated a UN resolution...

MSM outlets like AP and Reuters are trying to bury this  information in stories that stress how much Iran has done to comply with the "agreement." A bit of detail sheds light on that:

The machines they've temporarily taken offline were already inactive, and their equipment is being temporarily disabled and mothballed, not permanently dismantled. 
Which one of our Islamic enemies will do us in first?
 

 


While we're on the subject of Freedom-Hater-care . . .

Here's what happens when the old and sick have a greater incentive to sign up for "insurance" than the young and healthy.

UnitedHealth Group, the largest insurance company in the U.S., on Thursday slashed its earnings outlook, citing new problems related to Obamacare, and told investors it may exit the program's exchanges.
"In recent weeks, growth expectations for individual exchange participation have tempered industrywide, co-operatives have failed, and market data has signaled higher risks and more difficulties while our own claims experience has deteriorated," Stephen J. Hemsley, chief executive officer of UnitedHealth Group, said in a press release.
The release added that, "UnitedHealthcare has pulled back on its marketing efforts for individual exchange products in 2016. The company is evaluating the viability of the insurance exchange product segment and will determine during the first half of 2016 to what extent it can continue to serve the public exchange markets in 2017."

As a solution to problems in the way health gets cared for in America, FHer-care has been a failure. As one of the Freedom-Hater party's key planned-decline projects, it's a huge success.

The baked-in failure of Freedom-Hater-care: the cattle-masses of post-America were sold a blatant lie

The Most Equal Comrade thought he could put one past you, that you would quit understanding the first rule of economics: that the money has to come from somewhere. Of course, given the fact that Freedom-Hater-care has been consistently underwater in public opinion polls since it was imposed on us, we know you didn't swallow his socialist hooey.

But once the overlords, made it "the law of the land," as they crowingly referred to it, we had no choice but to dive in and see how it was going to work out.

And now the dynamics of the monstrosity are bearing that first law out:


 as The New York Times reported this weekend, even the words “affordable” and “care” have turned out to be untrue as well. The sharp rise in premiums has garnered the most headlines in the first three open-enrollment seasons of Obamacare, but equally if not more pernicious has been the increase in deductibles. As Eric Pianin explained for The Fiscal Times on Monday, deductibles have increased an average of 11 percent on Bronze level plans for 2016, intended to be the most affordable of all options, and now average over $5700. For Silver level, deductibles rose 6 percent and now average over $3100.
Consumers have to pay both the premium and then thousands of dollars for care out of their own pocket before insurance takes effect.
When the media focused on skyrocketing premiums (rightly so, considering the large serial increases for health insurance on the individual exchanges since the introduction of the Affordable Care Act) its advocates defended the system by pointing out that many on the exchanges qualified for subsidies to absorb the costs. For instance, Obama himself promised, “Most Americans will find an option that costs less than $75 a month,” and HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell claimed that 80 percent of Americans would pay no more than $100 in premiums after the subsidies.
Those claims may be true, but those subsidies don’t just fall out of the trees; they come from higher taxes on providers and manufacturers, and eventually out of the pockets of consumers, as do all business taxes. However, that defense doesn’t work on deductibles, which insurance companies were forced to raise when the state and federal governments tried to squeeze premium increases for the exploding demand down to a dull roar.
As we know, in a truly free-market scenario, the only kind of health insurance that anyone would need would be for catastrophic care. The individual consumer would budget for anything else. Competition would keep medications, therapies, routine office visits, maintenance-type procedures - and the insurance itself -  affordable.

But what we have under FHer-care is coverage for the catastrophic stuff at an exorbitant cost because the government makes the insurers include all kinds of non-catastrophic stuff in the policies.


Consumers used to have an option for that kind of health insurance – catastrophic coverage, used to indemnify against unforeseen major health events. Those policies featured low premiums and left routine care for consumers to negotiate directly with providers on a cash basis. Combined with health-savings accounts (HSAs), those plans offered a rational approach to balancing health and economic requirements, especially for younger consumers who rarely need more than one or two clinic visits a year, which would cost far less than either comprehensive-coverage premiums or deductibles even in the pre-ACA era.
Instead of “affordable care” promised by President Obama and Democrats, consumers have instead discovered they have effectively been forced to pay for catastrophic health insurance at comprehensive-plan prices. They have become victims of a bait-and-switch scheme that the government would vigorously prosecute – if it wasn’t masterminding the scheme itself. The consumers interviewed by Robert Pear in The New York Times figured out that they’ve been had.

“Basically I was paying for insurance I could not afford to use,” said one Texas man who decided to drop his coverage. Another 60-year-old New Jersey man told Pear, “We have insurance, but can’t afford to use it,” thanks to a $3,000 deductible on top of his premiums. One woman told Pear that she’d be better off saving the money from her premiums as a form of self-insurance against catastrophe – since Obamacare no longer allows for low-premium catastrophic coverage in most cases.

Consider what a Colorado engineer who had just taken a new job that include pretty good health insurance as a benefit discovered when, just for grins, he decided to compare numbers between the plan he did have and what would be available if he opted to go with a gummint plan:

 I went to the eHealthInsurance commercial website and was able to get an account set up there. (Bear with me, we're getting to the punchline.) I looked for the least expensive, not to say cheapest, plan I could get. Here's a screen capture of the associated terms:
The actual premium: $468.33. But look at the terms: a $5000 deductible. Co-pay of 30 percent, but office visits are subject to that deductible, so you don't get the 70 percent discount until you've used up that five grand.
Of course, under the ACA, I get some things for "free" -- preventive care, like basic checkups (but not the lab work); and I get free GYN care and pediatric dentistry, so if I ever need to see a gynecologist for family planning, or have any pediatric dentistry needs as a 60-year-old single guy, I'm set.
Look further in the terms, and it turns out that drugs are covered, but subject to the deductible. Diabetic care supplies are covered, but only subject to the deductible.
Bottom line: this plan, for $468 a month, pays for an annual checkup but no labs, vaccinations on the approved list, which includes a flu shot but not the shingles or pneumonia vaccinations I could use now, and pretty much nothing else until I've gone out of pocket $5000. The maximum out of pocket is then $6500, so were I to get hit by a truck or have a heart attack, then hospitalization would be covered.
In other words, it's a catastrophic care plan. 

I have heard it said that economic freedom is the absence of an "ism." To speak of advocating it as embracing some kind of "ideology" is inaccurate. Individuals exchanging goods and services for prices they, on their own,  deem a good value is just what normal people do when the Leviathan state is left out of the equation.

Leftism is based on an immature fantasy, a wish that reality could be some other way than what it is. It's like New Age "spirituality."

It's why fraudulent hucksters looking to maximize their power absolutely love it.

So to those who respond to the battle cry to repeal this monstrosity with the snide question, "What kind of program would you replace it with?", you can, of course, present any of the myriad proposals from various free-market think tanks, but the essence to which all those boil down is this: human activity that enhances an individual's well-being does not lend itself to "programs."

Just leave people alone to do what is in their best interest, as they define that.

Can we please give that a try?






Wednesday, November 18, 2015

The latest case study in the self-imposed rot of the post-American college

LITD has covered - as, of course, thousands of outlets big and small - the outrageous militancy and pathetic capitulations at Mizzou, Yale and Dartmouth.

I found the tale of how it went down at Claremont McKenna particularly saddening because of the way the school was founded and what had been its essential nature until the last few years:

Founded in 1946 in a quiet town about 30 miles east of Los Angeles, Claremont McKenna College set out to make sense of a world shattered by depression, war and totalitarianism. The first classes consisted almost entirely of demobilized GIs from World War II, who found familiar the Quonset hut classrooms then in use. The school focused its curriculum on politics and economics, with a healthy skepticism about the latest New Deal-style nostrums and a high regard for the lessons of America’s constitutional experience.
Claremont McKenna never set out to be a true-blue conservative school. But it insisted that students hear conservative as well as liberal arguments, and its faculty eventually included some of the best students of Milton Friedman, James Buchanan and Leo Strauss. Their visibility, and the college’s promise to provide a genuine diversity, a diversity of reasonable ideas, meant that the college soon acquired a conservative reputation.
As the faculty expanded, however, it grew more hostile to the college’s original mission. The past two presidents encouraged the place to keep up with the spirit of the times. Now the examples of the University of Missouri and Yale have proved inspirational. Mizzou taught administrators that if they want to keep their jobs, they need to grovel early and often. Yale showed undergraduates that no matter how prestigious the college, the same rules applied, and that unloading F-bombs on professors, an act of incivility that once would have merited expulsion, is a trump card.
Unlike the hypothetical Halloween costumes that prompted the imbroglio at Yale, the dress-up that fanned the troubles at CMC actually happened. Two young women donned sombreros, ponchos and fake mustaches. A photo went up on someone’s Facebook page. Add this to a simmering controversy: After an aggrieved Mexican-American student complained that she felt out of place on campus, the dean of students wrote a poorly worded  email pledging that the college was “working on how we can better serve students, especially those who don’t fit our CMC mold.” 
On Nov. 10, Hiram Chodosh, CMC’s president, electrified the campus with an email saying he felt “very upset” about the Halloween-costume calamity. Remarkably, he called for a “sit-in in my office” to discuss things—perhaps the first time, as noted by historian Steven Hayward, that an administration ever called a sit-in to denounce itself. About 40 students showed up (of more than 1,200 in the student body). At 1:54 a.m. they emailed around a “Call to Action” with a list of demands and complaints of the students’ “feeling a strong pressure to assimilate and an inability to fully express their racial, ethnic, sexual, gender, and religious identity.”
That afternoon, President Chodosh replied with his own memo, announcing steps to satisfy the protesters, including two additional administrative positions on “diversity and inclusion”; a safe space to support new programming on the “campus climate”; “pro-active measures” to increase diversity in faculty hiring; and a “day of dialogue” in the spring, in preparation for which the administration “will provide in-depth facilitator training to faculty and staff in how to manage difficult conversations.” If not a complete embrace of the students’ demands, it came close. 
Whatever the wisdom of his concessions, there was no disputing their efficiency. In 24 hours he agreed to measures that his administration had been discussing with the same students, it emerged, for seven months. Within 48 hours, the dean of students had resigned and a rump session of the faculty had issued its own statement calling for “diversity training for faculty.” 
I'm familiar with the argument that one can go online to get degrees in fields such as industrial design, information technology, and an array of health-care specialties.

But the notion of the university that dates to the late Middle Ages, that of a repository for the best in thought and expression that Western civilization has produced. has been trampled by goons, like Polar Pop cups and Taco Bell wrappers .

It increasingly looks like a world of all swine and no pearls.
 

The serious people vs. the Freedom-Haters

I've said before that in post-America we're all on our own. FBI director James Comey certainly feels that way:


Officials familiar with the bureau’s preparations, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said Director James Comey has put a brave public face on the bureau’s fight against ISIS that masks significant tensions behind the scenes with the Obama administration.
Bureau officials are deeply worried they don’t have enough resources to track a growing number of radicalized Americans inspired by the Islamic State, with more possibly entering as President Obama opens the borders to thousands of Syrian refugees.
Those fears are also shared in Congress, where support is building for a measure by House Speaker Paul Ryan to temporarily halt any new refugees from entering the country.
Rep. Blake Farenthold, Texas Republican and a member of both of the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform Committees, told a Washington Times radio show Tuesday that the U.S. government does not have the resources to screen a new wave of Syrian refugees for terror ties as the administration has promised.
“They’re basically lying to you saying, ‘oh we’ve got this vetting process to make sure that their safe.’ But you had the FBI director testify before Congress, under oath saying that if they have no information on someone they have nothing to vet them against,” Mr. Farenthold said on the “Capitol Hill Show” with Tim Constantine.
Now, peruse your short-term memory files for that presser the Most Equal Comrade gave in Turkey a couple of days ago - his petulant attitude, his refusal to change a thing he's doing with regard to either ISIS in Syria or the Syrian refuge's he's bringing to post-America.

It is not inaccurate to call him the most poisonous figure in American history.
 

Monday, November 16, 2015

The spread continues

The campus jackboots bring their madness and cruelty to Dartmouth:


Students studying at the Dartmouth University library were interrupted by a group of Black Lives Matter protesters who reportedly shouted, harassed and hurled profanities at white students.
The Dartmouth Review student newspaper slammed the protesters for their “tactics, tone and words” used to stigmatize their own classmates.
 The paper describes the so-called protest that ended up in the library:
Black-clad protesters gathered in front of Dartmouth Hall, forming a crowd roughly one hundred fifty strong.  Ostensibly there to denounce the removal of shirts from a display in Collis, the Black Lives Matter collective began to sing songs and chant their eponymous catchphrase. Not content to merely demonstrate there for the night, the band descended from their high-water mark to march into Baker-Berry Library.
“F*** you, you filthy white f***s!” “F*** you and your comfort!” “F*** you, you racist s***!”
[…]
Throngs of protesters converged around fellow students who had not joined in their long march. They confronted students who bore “symbols of oppression”: “gangster hats” and Beats-brand headphones.  The flood of demonstrators self-consciously overstepped every boundary, opening the doors of study spaces with students reviewing for exams. Those who tried to close their doors were harassed further. One student abandoned the study room and ran out of the library. The protesters followed her out of the library, shouting obscenities the whole way.
Students who refused to listen to or join their outbursts were shouted down.  “Stand the f*** up!”  “You filthy racist white piece of s***!”  Men and women alike were pushed and shoved by the group.  “If we can’t have it, shut it down!” they cried.  Another woman was pinned to a wall by protesters who unleashed their insults, shouting “filthy white b****!” in her face.


 How's this for a particularly sadistic touch?

n a post on The Tab website, Charlie Lundquist claimed one protester made a girl cry and then shouted at her, “f*** your white tears!”
The full flowering of the FHer vision.