The subtle thuggery of Billy Jeff the Zipper

J. Christian Adams (a former DoJ attorney), writing at PJ Media, says there's no reason not to take AG Lynch at her word re: what she and Billy Jeff discussed on the tarmac:

Many won’t believe Lynch and Clinton only discussed grandkids and golf in her cozy jet. But I do.

That’s all they needed to discuss for Bill to interfere with a criminal prosecution. Sophisticated insiders don’t need to use clumsy and explicit language. Merely having the tarmac summit interferes with the investigation, even if golf and grandkids were the only topics discussed.

The tarmac summit sent a signal. It is a signal to all of the hardworking FBI agents who have the goods on Hillary.

The attorney general has made it clear what team she is on. The attorney general isn’t on the side of justice. She’s on the Democratic Party team.

This is the unspoken message from Lynch to all of the FBI agents on the case and to all the front-line lawyers at the Justice Department:

When you send your recommendation to refer Hillary’s case to the grand jury, you had better realize your burden to convince me I should sign off on a grand jury request is higher than you thought. These are my friends.

And so two titans of Freedom-Hatred seal the deal.

Desperation can put people in humiliating situations

Christians are, by definition, keenly interested in closing the deal with anyone who even casually mentions an interest in salvation. This is a good thing in and of itself, but it's important not to let that zeal get ahead of a sense of whether the interested person is actually stepping up to the plate.

James Dobson is learning this the hard way:

Last week, the highly respected Dr. James Dobson made an absolute sucker of himself by uncritically passing along his belief that Donald Trump was a recent born-again Christian. Dobson's remarks were widely ridiculed as the statement of an uncritical partisan dupe, and Dobson does not seem to have taken it too well.

As Erick notes, Dobson is now walking back his original remarks, which I guess is a good thing, but the bad thing is that Dobson revealed the source that initially led him to believe Trump's conversion story in the first place. And, as you might have guessed, it isn't pretty:

Dobson now says he does not know for sure and, more importantly, he claims that the person who supposedly led Donald Trump to the Lord is noted prosperity gospel heretic Paula White.

White, you may recall, was under investigation by the IRS and was also accused of having an inappropriate relationship with fellow charlatan Benny Hinn.

Why in the world would James Dobson have uncritically passed along information from such a widely known fraud as Paula White about Trump's alleged conversion to Christianity? This makes him look like even more of a sucker. If Paula White approached me and said the sun rises in the east, I would not repeat that in public without performing an independent verification first. And nobody should be more aware of this than James Dobson.

I'll bet that prosperity gospel stuff had great appeal for the head of Trump University and Trump Steaks.

This may be a reason why we continue to experience jihadist attacks

You expect, indeed, endorse, your hard-earned tax dollars going for national security functions, but are you cool with their being spent on the likes of this?

The intelligence community held 12 seminars on diversity and inclusion last year, including “unconscious bias” training and a women’s summit that focused on “emotional intelligence.”

An employee resource group on “Islamic Culture” is also offered for employees of the National Security Agency to provide “cultural sensitivity.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released its annual demographics report this month, which detailed the number of community-wide events the intelligence community held during fiscal year 2015.

One event, last September, was run by the former “Global Diversity and Talent Program Manager” for Google, Judith Williams.

Williams, who is now the “first global diversity chief” for Dropbox, talked about “Google’s journey in developing unconscious bias training” during the seminar.

“Dr. Williams was impressed by the similarities between the [intelligence community] and Google both being focused on diversity as a mission imperative,” the report said.

Unconscious bias training rests on the theory that “everyone is a little bit racist or sexist.” The training “encourages people to feel comfortable calling out and being held accountable for unconscious bias.”

Williams trained J.J. Abrams and his production crew before they filmed Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Google has used the training to expose “biased culture,” such as conference rooms named after male scientists. The training also led to senior executives yelling “unconscious bias!” after a man asked two employees who were sharing an office, “Which one of you does the dishes?”

The Justice Department is also using “implicit bias” training, announcing Monday that over 30,000 agents will undergo training to prevent “unconscious bias from influencing their law enforcement decisions.”

In addition to learning how “unconscious bias” affects their spying abilities, the intelligence community held numerous other events on diversity.

An intelligence community career fair used “online diversity booths” to answer diversity questions, and the government held a summit for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Allies.

“More than 260 IC employees, including many senior executives, participated in person and through video teleconferencing,” the report said of the summit. The theme was “Advancing Diversity and Inclusion by Telling Our Story.”

The government recently held its Fifth Annual Intelligence Community Pride Summit, where employees participated in breakout sessions on “Getting Inclusive,” “Building Trans Inclusivity,” and “Boots to Rainbow Suits.”
The intelligence community held two women’s summits, including one that included sessions on “The Perception of Parenthood in the Workplace, and the Retention of Women.”
Another women’s summit “focused on recognizing supervisor and employee perceptions of women in the workforce, taking ‘stretch’ assignments, emotional intelligence, incorporating transparency in career growth, and establishing strategies to career success.”
The report also lists employee resource groups that are available to intelligence community employees. At the top of the list are the Agency Network of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Officers and Allies (ANGLE), and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Officers and Straight Allies (IMPACT).
Other groups available to FBI and CIA employees include “Life Inclusion for Everyone” and a group on “Islamic Culture.”
The Islamic Culture group is offered to employees of the National Security Agency, a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told the Washington Free Beacon.

Have you ever stopped to consider what a Herculean task it would be to re-transform post-America into the United States of America?

Occasionally I think about it, but then I start getting depressed and find something else to focus on.

 

More on just how shameful the Benghazi debacle was

Yesterday's report had much to say about the security situation on the ground - or, rather, lack thereof:

By all accounts, the security conditions at the State Department's consular facility in Libya were "deplorable," as the House Benghazi committee's final summary report described it. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been warned a month before the attack that violence was "on an upward trend" and "unpredictable;" "lawlessness was increasing," and local militia groups that were providing security in many areas were at the same time "undercutting it in others."
One of those local militia groups just happened to be in charge of providing interior armed security at the Benghazi Mission compound: the February 17 Martyrs Brigade militia.
Yes, we entrusted armed Islamic strongmen -- linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, supportive of al-Qaida, and financed by the Libyan defense ministry -- to guard our diplomats. No, this is not an Onion parody.

Instead of serving as a "quick reaction force" as they were contracted to do, the Muslim militiamen fled. (What's Arabic for "cut and run force"?) Two days before Ambassador Chris Stevens was scheduled to arrive in Benghazi, the "martyrs" informed State's Diplomatic Security Agents that they would no long provide off-compound security during transport or meetings off-site. "The meeting underscored that the militias in Benghazi controlled what little security environment existed there," the House Benghazi final report noted.

Eventually, these clowns will get us all murdered in our beds.

 

The Most Equal Comrade's team's approach to foreign policy: a fetid stew of evil and incompetence

Per the Benghazi report:

The much anticipated Benghazi Select Committee report released early Tuesday morning reveals former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta order military assets to be deployed to Benghazi, but they never arrived. Two unarmed drones, showing a live feed of the attack, did.

Military assets sat for hours while Americans were under attack and while President Obama's team at the White House debated getting YouTube to take down a video offensive to Muslims, which was of course used as an excuse for the attack. 

"You can read this report in less time than our fellow Americans were under attack in Benghazi" Select Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy said during a press conference Tuesday. 

Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed eight hours into the attack. Doherty self-deployed with a small team to Benghazi from Tripoli after hearing about the attack. 

"Team Tripoli,  which  included military  personnel based  at  the Tripoli  Annex,  acted  with  purpose, precision and  ingenuity that  night. The Secretary and  the  Joint  Staff  did  not  know  those personnel  were  in Tripoli, much less were they considered as one of the potential assets to respond to the  events  in  Benghazi," the report states. "In  fact, they represent  the  only military 'asset' to  reach  Benghazi  during  the  attacks. They deployed  themselves because fellow Americans needed them."

The world's mightiest defense apparatus was not ready to deal with a major act of jihad:

"When  the  attacks in  Benghazi  began, the  Defense  Department was unprepared to respond. Despite there being a missing U.S. Ambassador, its response—from  the start  of  the  attack  at  9:42 p.m. in  Libya,  to  the amount of time it took for the forces to actually deploy until late the next morning in Libya at best illustrates a rusty bureaucratic  process  not in keeping  with  the gravity  and urgency  of  the  events  happening  on  the ground. The  decisions  made  earlier  in  the  year  by  senior  State  Department  officials to maintain a presence in Benghazi without adequate security forces and  an  inadequately  fortified Mission compound contributed  to  what amounted  to  a worst  case  scenario of  circumstances  that  would  test the military’s preparedness and ability to respond," the report states. "Nevertheless, the Defense Department did not pass the test. Whether this failure is shouldered by it alone,  or  rests  in  part  on  decisions  made  by  the  State  Department  in Washington D.C. or with the White House who presided over a two hour meeting  where  half  of  the  action  items  related  to  an  anti-Muslim video wholly unconnected to the attacks, is one of the lingering questions about Benghazi."
"What is  clear  is  the Secretary  of  Defense testified  he was  clear on both what the President ordered and what he ordered subsequent to the initial attack. Yet,  no  asset  was  ever  ordered  to  respond  to  Benghazi  and  the decisions made and  not  made coupled  with  a  lack  of  urgency in Washington D.C. delayed  the  response even, in some  instances, with an Ambassador missing," the report continues. 

To the pointy-headed scribes of the regime's propaganda wing it's all a big yawn:

Here’s the opening paragraph of the New York Times’s story on the report:

Ending one of the longest, costliest and most bitterly partisan congressional investigations in history, the House Select Committee on Benghazi issued its final report on Tuesday, finding no new evidence of culpability or wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton in the 2012 attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead.

And here’s the Washington Post on the report:

A final report issued by the Republican majority that investigated the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, found fault with virtually every element of the executive branch response to the attacks but provided no new evidence of specific wrongdoing by then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

This is an extraordinary response to a report that comprehensively details one of the most shameful episodes in recent American diplomatic and military history. 

That's the deeply sinister way the regime's propaganda arm plays: make that which is evil seem banal and overblown.

Jihad never sleeps - today's edition

A day after the Al-Shabaab attack on the Mogadishu hotel that killed 35 comes this:

-- At least 10 people have been killed and 20 others injured in the attack at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport, Turkey's Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag told CNN. 

The two suicide bombers were also killed. Bozdag said one attacker "first opened fire with a Kalashnikov then detonated himself" at the airport entrance.

In total two bombs exploded. One of them was located just outside the terminal on the pavement, the other was at the security gate at the entrance to the airport.

Authorities said no bombs exploded within the airport building itself, according to the minister

-- A Turkish official told CNN that police fired shots at suspects near the international terminal in an effort to neutralize them. 

-- Videos posted on social media show travelers sitting on the airport floor. A man shouts, "Get down! Get down!" Someone cries as a gunshot rings out.

-- The U.S. embassy in Ankara, the Turkish capital, is sending consular officers to the airport to account for any potential U.S. victims. But there are no indications of any American casualties at this point, a senior State Department official told CNN's Elise Labott. 

-- The attacks happened on a warm summer night at the airport, east of Istanbul, that is the 11th busiest in the world in terms of passenger traffic. CNN's Ali Veshi says it is a modern, sophisticated airport. "There are all of the major European and American boutiques there," said Velshi, who has traveled through Turkey many times. "... You see people of all shapes and colors, in all sorts of dress. If you want to target the cosmopolitan nature of Istanbul, this is possibly the most cosmopolitan, heavily populated part. You can target tourist areas, but this is the part where the world comes together."

We're not winning.

Monday afternoon roundup

Al-Shabaab-associated terrorists attack a hotel in Mogadishu, killing 35.

The post-American SCOTUS shows that it is just as pro-fetal-death as the 1972 court, striking down a Texas law requiring abortion clinics to meet the same building and cleanliness standards as ambulatory surgical centers.

Richard Posner, a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, actually wrote this:

I see absolutely no value to a judge of spending decades, years, months, weeks, day, hours, minutes, or seconds studying the Constitution, the history of its enactment, its amendments, and its implementation (across the centuries—well, just a little more than two centuries, and of course less for many of the amendments). Eighteenth-century guys, however smart, could not foresee the culture, technology, etc., of the 21stcentury. Which means that the original Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the post–Civil War amendments (including the 14th), do not speak to today. 

And maybe the biggest jaw-dropper for today:

The foreign ministers of France and Germany are due to reveal a blueprint to effectively do away with individual member states in what is being described as an “ultimatum”. 

Under the radical proposals EU countries will lose the right to have their own army, criminal law, taxation system or central bank, with all those powers being transferred to Brussels.

Controversially member states would also lose what few controls they have left over their own borders, including the procedure for admitting and relocating refugees. 

The plot has sparked fury and panic in Poland - a traditional ally of Britain in the fight against federalism - after being leaked to Polish news channel TVP Info.  

The public broadcaster reports that the bombshell proposal will be presented to a meeting of the Visegrad group of countries - made up of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia - by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier later today.
Excerpts of the nine-page report were published today as the leaders of Germany, France and Italy met in Berlin for Brexit crisis talks.
In the preamble to the text the two ministers write: "Our countries share a common destiny and a common set of values ??that give rise to an even closer union between our citizens. We will therefore strive for a political union in Europe and invite the next Europeans to participate in this venture."
The revelations come just days after Britain shook the Brussels establishment by voting to leave the European Union in a move some have predicted could leave to the break-up of the EU. 

And the cultural jackboots have gotten to Justin Timberlake. He apologizes for "appropriating black culture."   His next album ought to be a real doozy.

And here's what passes for values in the land that is post-America's partner in patty-cake:

An Iranian prosecutor has declared war on Western culture by systematically executing dogs owned by local pet owners.

Mohsen Boosaidi, the prosecutor for the Iranian town of Shahin Share, directed his officers to round-up the town’s pet dogs under the guise that they were being taken to the veterinarian for vaccinations. But as many owners would later find out, the dogs were actually being killed.

“They came in and took away our dogs under the pretext of vaccination. Ever since our dog was taken away, you only hear the sound of crying and sobbing in our house,” said one unnamed dog owner to Iran’s Shahrvand newspaper.

This is what the Most Equal Comrade and Secretary Global-Test think merits legitimization on the world stage.

 

How advanced is the rot? - today's edition

This advanced:

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill issued a guide this week which instructs students that Christmas vacations and telling a woman “I love your shoes!” are “microagressions.”

The taxpayer-funded guide — entitled “Career corner: Understanding microaggressions” — also identifies golf outings and the words “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” as microagressions.

The UNC Chapel Hill guide, published on Thursday, covers a wide range of menacing microaggressions — which are everyday words that radical leftists have decided to be angry or frustrated about.

Christmas vacations are a microagression, the public university pontificates, because “academic calendars and encouraged vacations” which “are organized around major religious observances” centralize “the Christian faith” and diminish “non-Christian spiritual rituals and observances.”

 

And you'd best zip it with the footwear compliments, And listen up, you bourgeoise pig, the proletariat has had it with your golf outings:

The microagression of liking shoes occurs when someone says “I love your shoes!” “to a woman in leadership during a Q & A after a speech.” So it’s a very specific microagression. The problem, the University of North Carolina document declares, is that the shoe admirer values appearances “more than” “intellectual contributions.”

Similarly, the public school pronounces, interrupting any woman who is speaking is a microagression.

Golf outings are also a microagression, the University of North Carolina says, because suggesting a “staff retreat at the country club” or even just “a round of golf” “assumes employees have the financial resources” to participate in the “fairly expensive and inaccessible sport.”

Quite obviously we're going to have to pass on the great canon of the works of Western literature, philosophy, history and scientific discovery by some means other than the university model. The jackboots have been wildly successful in their quest to ruin it.

 

Down is up and up is down at every level in this world

Faye Voshell at The American Thinker examines another reason besides Putin's geo-strategic designs for strained relations between Russia and post-America/ It seems that on a cultural level there's been a big switcheroo:

At the core of the continued antagonism between the West and Russia is the breathtaking shift in ideologies that have occurred in America during the Obama administration and in Russia during Putin’s ascendance to power. 

While Russia has embraced a spiritual revival that includes the re-establishment of the ancient Russian Orthodox Church and its Christian values; and while Putin is committed to Russia the nation, the Obama administration has committed itself to an anti-Christian ideology characterized by extreme aggression toward the majority Christian community and its values; and has its gaze set on a radically secularist global world order that disregards nation states.

In brief, there has been a nearly complete role reversal since the 1970s, with some leaders of the West now devoted to a radical secularism that marginalizes and excoriates the Christian majority of the United States in systematic ways once unthinkable.

For example, rejecting the Christian concept of what it means to be human beings created in the image of God, the Obama administration has committed itself to the transgender movement, which at heart represents a view of the human being so extreme as to go against observable and scientific reality. Transgenderism has devoted itself to a concept of “equality” so dangerously reductionist that it threatens the very foundations of Western civilization. 

The sexual revolution now spearheaded by transgenderism rejects the binary nature of humanity, and thus is far more radical than the French and Bolshevik Revolutions, which at least recognized the distinctions between men and women. It is at heart nihilistic and anarchical, as it jettisons reality and strikes at any and every foundation for law and order influenced by Christianity. Total destruction of everyone and everything that stands in the way of final annihilation of Western Christian foundations is the goal of the sexual revolutionaries. A brave new global order presently only vaguely imagined is then to be built on the ruins of formerly Christianized nations -- the very concept of nations being anathema to the new revolutionaries.

President Obama is wholly committed to the transgender movement.  In fact, one could term him a proselytizer in chief for the transgender cause.

What rapprochement is possible between Russia and the West while such a radical viewpoint is embraced by leaders of Western democracies?  What hope is there for diplomatic agreements between America and Russia when the current administration of the United States, and quite possibly a future administration under Hillary Clinton, is committed to a utopian world order that requires the death of nation states and the eradication of any Christian framework for law and order? Shall these radical notions be the standard for Russia, just as she is committing herself to rediscovery of her national and religious heritage?

No wonder there is talk of a new Cold War when there is such a radical ideological reversal.

She goes on to point out that there is a significant sentiment among the Russian populace to prevent the kind of nihilism with which cultural rot has infected the Western soul from taking hold there. It does have a foothold, witness the antics of the punk band Pussy Riot, but there is resistance to its further encroachment.

How ironic that the less democratic of the two world powers is the one yearning for a revival of the faith that enlivened so much of the world prior to the present age.

It's important to see Putin as a Russian first, which is why he gives the nod to his countrymen's desire for a faith-permeated society.  The Most Equal Comrade, by contrast, sees himself as a World Citizen first, and would just as soon Christian faith wither and blow away in post-America.

A bracing report from the programs' own trustees

Social Security and Medicare are headed for the precipice:

Concerning entitlements, an issue that’s fallen by the wayside since the horrific Orlando attacks, there’s more bad news. Social Security will dole out additional money to beneficiaries. Is that a good thing? Not really—it’s only increasing by a whopping $2.50, which The Associated Press aptly noted is enough to maybe buy a gallon of gas. It’s Medicare; that’s where the cliff becomes more apparent after 10 years (via AP):

Meanwhile, Medicare is expected to go bankrupt sooner than expected – 12 years from now. And some beneficiaries could face higher monthly premiums next year.

The annual report from the trustees of the government’s two bedrock retirement programs warned that politically gridlocked Washington needs to act sooner, rather than later, to shore up finances and avoid upending the lives of millions of retirees and their families.

Social Security’s trust funds are expected to be depleted in 2034, unchanged from the trustees’ projection a year ago. Medicare’s trust fund for inpatient care will be exhausted in 2028, two years earlier than previously projected.

If Congress allows either fund to run dry, millions of Americans living on fixed incomes would face steep cuts in benefits.

[…]

After Social Security’s trust funds are depleted, the program would collect enough in payroll taxes to pay only 79 percent of benefits.

Medicare’s problem is more immediate, and more complicated, because health care costs can change in unpredictable ways.

Friendly reminder that 10,000 baby boomers today, tomorrow, and over the next two decades become eligible for their states’ respective Medicare and Social Security rolls. The ship of state sees the iceberg ahead—and we’re going to hit it unless we do something. 

And, at the risk of being the skunk at the garden party, allow me to say that "do something" means restructuring them in the direction of privatization.

Brexit vote roundup

Roiled markets, Cameron's resignation, pro-EU Scotland once again feeling out of sync with the rest of the UK . . . world response to this tectonic shift got underway pretty much immediately.

Caleb Howe at RedState stresses that Squirrel-Hair is a peripheral figure in this and don't let anybody tell you otherwise:

It is not about Donald Trump. But Donald Trump will try to make it about him. The refugee crisis and the problems of massive immigration are more pronounced there than here, but if liberals had their way we'd catch up quick. Ordinary citizens, and especially those with age and wisdom, see the folly of the "take it all forever" politicians who would destroy borders and, subsequently, nations. Every American politician should at least keep that in mind.

Joseph Schatz at Politico likewise says parallels between the sentiment behind the Brit majority vote and the S-H phenomenon here in post-America are sketchy at best:

 . . . rhetorical similarities to “Make America Great Again” aside, Boris Johnson is not Donald Trump. And for all the common misgivings about globalization in both countries, and the parallels being made between Great Britain’s nativist-tinged debate over leaving the EU and the rise of conservative populism in the United States, a vote for “Brexit” doesn’t exactly equal a vote for Trump.

In the end, all politics is still local.
It’s worth remembering that the British debate over the United Kingdom’s proper relationship with the EU is not new—certainly not as new as the broad-based backlash to free trade that’s helping to drive the 2016 American election. Not even close. And more than likely, it won’t end with Thursday’s vote.

Carrie Lukas at NRO detects a sense among some Europeans that Germany - particularly Merkel - may have been a factor in Britain's vote going as it did:

One of the more thoughtful commentaries today is from Torsten Krauel in the right-of-center Die Welt.  Krauel asks whether German Chancellor Merkel is partially to blame for the Brexit and concludes her asylum policy almost certainly played a major role.  And indeed, the spectacle of Germany unilaterally deciding to change the face and future of the European Union by announcing Berlin had opened the doors to all comers – regardless of the wishes of or the impact this would have on other EU states – has been a powerful symbol of elite disconnect with the concerns of average Europeans and an uncomfortable reminder that Germany has come to dominate the union.  Krauel also points out Dover, the British end of the Channel Tunnel to the continent, voted 60 percent to leave.  Maybe this has something to do with the thousands of North African migrants seeking to storm the tunnel and cross to England? 

While loathe to admit it, Germans at some level suspect their country’s role in the discontent in Britain.  Speaking to German friends over the past several years, it’s been difficult not to come away with the sense many view the EU as an extension of Germany policy and as a respectable outlet for German nationalism that has been suppressed since the end of World War II.  A new path to German greatness, if you will, camouflaged by warm and fuzzy words about “Europeaness” and immune to complaints of skeptics, all of whom immediately are labeled as right-wing extremists – the kiss of death in German politics. 

Rick Moran at The American Thinker says the EU has already been dead for some time and just doesn't know it yet.

The survival of the EU is actually of little consequence. The union is dead and will probably be in its death throes for years. Germany, France, and a few other northern European countries will keep the dream of a united Europe alive, but on the periphery - especially the southern European nations of Italy, Greece, Spain, and Portugal - the writing is already on the wall. 

 My own sense is that the stratum of the postmodern world in which multinational corporations, international bodies setting standards for "process control" and applying them to an ever-expanding sphere of human activity, global-scale foundations, and  the universities preparing people for roles in that stratum have not removed the basic human yearning for a sense of place. It may be the second-most common theme of song lyrics after romantic love.

What seems like a natural way to live is like the blade of grass poking through the concrete of the not-so-natural mode of operation the central planners are trying to impose on us.

James Burnam would find al this completely understandable.

R

By such measures does history's greatest experiment in human liberty become just another Cuba

Leviathan wants a file on you:

Few jobs used to require an occupational license or certificate, but now quite a few do. (Though perhaps some good things are finally happeningon this front.) The White House Council of Economic Advisers explains why this is a bad thing:

While licensing and certification seek to ensure that workers have the necessary qualifications, especially for occupations impacting consumer safety and well-being, overly-broad application of licensing requirements can create costly and unnecessary barriers to entering a profession. Licensing can lead to higher wages for those able to obtain a license, but can also lead to inefficiency and unfairness, including reducing employment opportunities and depressing wages for excluded workers, reducing workers’ mobility across State lines, and increasing costs for consumers.

Burdensome occupational licensing is also something sort of contrary to the American way of doing things. From “The Americans: The Colonial Experience” by Daniel Boorstin in a chapter titled “The Fluidity of Professions”:

By the 18th century in Europe the department of thought had been frozen into professional categories, into the private domains of different guilds, city companies, and associations of masters; and the professions separated the areas of thought.

Every professional field of learning bore a “No Trespassing” sign duly erected by legal or customary authority.

In the newer culture of America few such signs had been erected; from the sheer lack of organized monopolists, all monopolies could not be perpetuated. America broke down distinctions: where life was full of surprises, of unexplored wilderness, and of unpredictable problems, its tasks could not be neatly divided for legal distribution.

Any man who preferred the even tenor of his way, who wished to pursue his licensed trade without the competition of amateurs, intruders, or vagrants, or who was unwilling to do jobs for which he had not been legally certified was better off in England. …

The last serious colonial effort to set up a guild in the medieval mold took place in Philadelphia in 1718. Next the occupational guilds, the most important agencies for monopolizing knowledge in the Old World had been the ancient educational institutions, but those too were lacking in America, and the New World thaws the categories of thought.

Lots of jobs today require these licenses, from landscapers to barbers and hairstylists to manicurists to florists and more, to the tune of one in four jobs, up from one in 20 in the 1950s.

For more on this, a talk, “Why do you need a license to braid hair?” given by Melony Armstrong, who had to fight her state’s cosmetology board to open her business and whose efforts led to significant change in state laws and hundreds of new businesses.

Why? So paper-shuffling dweebs can have sufficient partying money and still make rent. And so, should you get uppity about it, they can sick Leviathan's monopoly on the legitimate use of force on you.

Clearly I'm not God, but I don't see how He can forgive post-America

If this is transpiring, there is obviously no critical mass of the post-American public that can mount an effective resistance to the insanity that now reigns:

Doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies may soon face lawsuits for treating male and female patients according to their biological sex, thanks to a health care rule finalized in May as part of the Affordable Care Act.

On the same day President Barack Obama announced his controversial transgender school bathroom policy last month, a somewhat more sinister mandate was finalized by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with consequences for health care providers, insurance companies, and American taxpayers.

The rule contains an explicit definition of gender identity that states a person can claim to be male, female, neither, both, or some combination of the two, said Roger Severino, director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at the Heritage Foundation.
“It’s now federal policy that you could be both male and female in some combination,” he said.  “That’s a pretty radical statement, and impossible to know what it really means.”

If a medical doctor, based on biological evidence, sees a male patient, but the patient claims to be a female, the doctor must treat the patient as a female. Failure to do so could leave the doctor vulnerable to lawsuits, lost federal funding, and federal investigation by the Office of Civil Rights, the HHS arm implementing this policy. 

The regulations provide an example of how a doctor could discriminate against a transgender patient, Severino said. If two people are both candidates for a hysterectomy, one a woman with uterine cancer and the other a woman who wants fewer woman parts to look more like a man but is otherwise perfectly healthy, the doctor could be found to be discriminating against the second woman by choosing to treat the woman with cancer instead. The rule states all the second woman would need to attempt to force the surgeon to perform an elective hysterectomy is a note from a psychologist affirming her desire to become a man, Severino said.

This essentially takes away a physician’s independent medical judgement, Severino said: “[doctors] shouldn’t be put in the position to violate their conscience or their medical judgment… Lawyers, not doctors, will decide if something is medically appropriate.”
According to HHS’ Office of Civil Rights,the rule (Section 1557) emanates from the nondiscrimination provision of the Affordable Care Act that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability in certain health programs or activities. The rule claims to build on federal civil rights laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Age Discrimination Act of 1975.
The rule will take effect on July 18. A HHS summary sheet describes the rule’s intent: “The rule makes clear that sex discrimination prohibited under Section 1557 includes discrimination based on an individual’s sex; pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions; gender identity; and sex stereotyping. Individuals cannot be denied health care or health care coverage based on their sex, including their gender identity.”

One more example of why all of us must devise ways to proceed with what we're doing in this world without taking that first federal dollar. It is that thread of dependence that permits them to work their totalitarian machinations.

Resist. 

 

 

Big victory for the diversity jackboots

SCOTUS upholds affirmative action in college admissions:

The Supreme Court on Thursday said University of Texas admission officials may consider the race of student applicants in a limited way to build a diverse student body.

The 4-to-3 decision was a surprising win for advocates of affirmative action, who say the benefits of diversity at the nation’s colleges and universities are worth the intrusion on the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection that generally forbids the government from making decisions based on racial classifications.

“The University of Texas at Austin has a special opportunity to learn and to teach” others about how to achieve diversity, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in the court’s majority opinion.

Kennedy had never before voted to uphold a race-conscious plan, but he also had been reluctant to say race may never be used. He was joined by three of the courts liberal justices: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. Justice Elena Kagan recused herself.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote a 51-page dissent and summarized it by saying the majority’s conclusion is “remarkable — and remarkably wrong.” Alito was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Clarence Thomas.

The specific case was brought in 2008 by Abigail Fisher, a white woman who was denied admission to the university. Her suit was organized and funded by a conservative legal organization that opposes racial preferences in government and brought the challenge that resulted in the justices striking a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in 2013.

Is there any point, after this decision, on top of the way he decided in last Junes Obergefell v. Hodges case, in calling Kennedy a swing vote?

 

Albion's wrenching choice

Charles C.W. Cooke at NRO makes some interesting sociocultural observations on the tensions in his native Britain over today's Brexit vote.

Almost all of my more cosmopolitan friends are for Britain’s staying in, and, when I express the opposite view, have a tendency to condescend. “Really?” they ask, eyebrows raised. “Really?” And then, their irritation rising, they look at me with a sort of detached fascination, as if I had just suggested putting erotically shaped ice cubes into the Pinot Noir. One woman, who has been a friend since we were both eleven, told me over coffee that I should reconsider my position because “all the smart people” are pro-Remain. Another, an extremely sharp pediatrician whom I would trust with my life, has been berating her pro-Brexit siblings for “canceling out” the “sensible votes” that she and her husband hope to cast. The charges of smugness, it seems, have not been overblown.

Nor, I notice, have the reports of reticence from the other side. Perhaps because they are expecting precisely the reaction I got, the Leavers of my acquaintance tend to start their explanations with an apology. “I’m sorry,” they say, “but . . . ”; “I just think that . . . ”; “I understand that this is tricky, however . . . ” Such is the cultural power of the BBC and the political class — both of which have done their level best to make Brexit seem outré — that some people I speak to pretend that they are on the fence when they are clearly not, and relax only when I volunteer that I’m pro-leaving and have been for as long as I remember. “Oh,” they say with a furtive look around, “well in that case.”

On the train from Huntingdon to London, I see these divisions in full bloom. Almost everyone is reading a newspaper — it feels a little as if I’ve stepped backwards in time, to the 1950s — and their choices betray their politics. Running my eyes across the carriage, I feel as if I am attending a bizarre, hyper-ecumenical protest march, at which anybody with a strong, 40-point-font opinion is welcome. From seat level, the front pages resemble low-slung protest signs: “Leave!” “Remain!” “Leave!” “Remain!” “Leave!” It is possible, I suppose, that the people sitting behind these slogans are less sure of their views than it appears, but you certainly wouldn’t know it from their conversations with each other, full as they are of hard-headed assurances and mild exasperation at any expression of dissent. The phrase, “no, but you see” is used a lot, along with the insistence — repeated as if by rote and used by both sides — that “they are just trying to scare you.” On the surface it is all very polite, as Britons typically are. But there is an edge this time — an edge I haven’t seen for a long time.

He cautions against making demographic assumptions about who is for and against:

As one might expect, the rural area from which I hail is adamantly pro-Leave — around my village you see nothing but anti-EU signs; anything else would be treason — but so are swathes of the industrial North and the urban midlands: places in which voters wouldn’t return a conservative if their lives depended on it.

Of course, post-American Squirrel-Hair-bots would no doubt rush to proclaim an outburst of "nationalism" all over the West, and I suppose there's a kernel of truth in such spin. I think there's something very English - and therefore something of the finest of a Western sentiment - about a deep sense of keeping things as local as possible, right down to personal sovereignty. It is the thread of continuity that has informed such developments as the Magna Carta, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and our own Revolution here in what was at the time the United States of America.

There is something in a naturally developed human being that does not cotton to pointy-headed bureaucrats in distant places making key decisions that ought to be one's own to make.

Infantile grandstanding reaches a new low - on the House floor

A little gaggle of Freedom-Hater representatives got their knickers in a twist because all the F-Her gun-control proposals since the Orlando act of jihad have gone nowhere, so they sat right down on the House floor - yeah, a good old fashion sit-in, like the campus Marxist-Leninists did in the 1960s over US involvement in Vietnam. Took selfies and put them on Twitter. Made grandiose pronouncements about "history." Screamed when the Pubs turned off the House cameras.

Lest anyone try to compare these antics to Pubs' 2008 response to San Fran Nan over not bringing offshore drilling to a vote, Brandon Morse at RedState heads that one off at the pass:

The difference here is the GOP was handling the situation as elected officials, not toddlers. They didn't sit down on the floor like spoiled children denied a toy. They revolted, yes, but it didn't look like something you'd see out of Nanny 911. 

If Democrats feel the need to complain, they should remember they have zero legs to stand on...though, I guess standing is the wrong word to use here.  Thing is, this isn't a good look for us. It's one thing to revolt, it's another to broadcast the leaders of the free world throwing self-satisfying sulk-fests on the literal floor.

He also says Speaker Ryan should have been more resolute in dealing with it:

. . .  he should scold - on camera - the offending Democrats who have embarrassed us all.  So what is he waiting for? If Ryan wants to really show that he's not the rollover squish his predecessor was, then he should take action now, and have that floor cleared of this ridiculous display.  

The FHers have indeed embarrassed us all. World-stage players - allies, adversaries and enemies - take note of something like this.

Good on ya, Marco

Marco Rubio has made the bid to get reelected to his Senate seat official. I appreciate the candor with which he lays out his reason for his decision:

as we begin the next chapter in the history of our nation, there’s another role for the Senate that could end up being its most important in the years to come: The Constitutional power to act as a check and balance on the excesses of a president.

Control of the Senate may very well come down to the race in Florida. That means the future of the Supreme Court will be determined by the Florida Senate seat. It means the future of the disastrous Iran nuclear deal will be determined by the Florida Senate seat. It means the direction of our country’s fiscal and economic policies will be determined by this Senate seat. The stakes for our nation could not be higher.

There’s also something else. No matter who is elected president, there is reason for worry.

With Hillary Clinton, we would have four more years of the same failed economic policies that have left us with a stagnant economy. We would have four more years of the same failed foreign policy that has allowed radical Islam to spread, and terrorists to be released from Guantanamo. And even worse, if Clinton were president and her party took control of Congress, she would govern without Congressional oversight or limit. It would be a repeat of the early years of the current administration, when we got Obamacare, the failed stimulus and a record debt.

The prospect of a Trump presidency is also worrisome to me. It is no secret that I have significant disagreements with Donald Trump. His positions on many key issues are still unknown. And some of his statements, especially about women and minorities, I find not just offensive but unacceptable. If he is elected, we will need Senators willing to encourage him in the right direction, and if necessary, stand up to him. I’ve proven a willingness to do both. In the days ahead, America will continue to face serious challenges – the possibility of terrorist attacks at home and abroad, a declining military, anemic economic growth and low wages, assaults on our rights and values, outdated health care, education and pension programs in desperate need of reform – that face backward or uncertain responses from either Clinton or Trump.

No matter who wins the White House, we need a strong group of principled, persuasive leaders in Congress who will not only advance limited government, free enterprise and a strong national defense, but also explain to Americans how it makes life better for them and their families. I ultimately changed my mind about this race because on that front, and in that fight, I believe I have something to offer.

He made one disappointing move, back in 2013 (exploring the possibility of common ground with Schumer re: immigration; that was a perilously close call with Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome), but he's the wiser now regarding the folly of thinking you can ever find common ground with Freedom-Haters. But for that move, he was vilified by those who in short order became slavish Squirrel-Hair-bots, and he was irreparably harmed for primary season.

But he's a great conservative, and a key asset in the Senate.

It may get to the point where we have to avert our gaze

Squirrel-Hair's speech this morning got real where Hillionaire was concerned. He spared no ammo, bringing up the under-fire-on-the-Bosnia-tarmac claim, pay-for-play at the Clinton Foundation, adversaries hacking into her private email server. Granted, he had to color his salvos with his signature narcissism ("I know these problems can all be fixed, but not by Hillary Clinton — only by me"). Still, he served notice that he'll be unsparing.

It follows Hillionaire's Tuesday speech in Columbus, Ohio, in which she, quite accurately, said that S-H was "reckless and careless . . . [and] proud of it."

Obviously, this is only going to get more raw and ugly the longer these two are the presumptive Dem and Pub candidates, respectively (which a lot of folks are resigned to concluding is going to be until the first Tuesday in November, when one of them becomes president-elect; me, I'm still holding out for the success of some kind of Hail Mary). It just occurred to me why this is so: They will both be telling the truth about each other. 

When both are viewed unfavorably by a majority of post-Americans, and for good reason, there will be no need to embellish reality or resort to fabrications. They can point out how each other is manifestly unfit for the office they're aspiring to, and drill down deeper with each speech.

I guess this will accomplish what I have come to conclude is the best-case scenario if they are still the grim set of options we're facing in November: a situation in which they are both so ruined, so delegitimized, so politically disemboweled that whichever one of them emerges victorious, he or she is rendered incapable of being effective at anything from day one.

That leaves us as a nation subject to the whims of the breezes blowing through our time, with no one's hand on the tiller, but that is five percent better than either of those hands on the tiller, directing us right onto the barrier reef at full speed.

One thing is for certain: This is going to get real savage.

Squirrel-Hair's-meeting-with-evangelical-leaders roundup

Tim Alberta at NRO reports that, on a collective level, S-H failed to seal the deal:

After all the hype, nothing was said or done to fundamentally alter the uneasy relationship between Trump and the Christian Right. In interviews with a dozen attendees, the most common assessment of Trump’s performance was a shrug. He checked boxes on policy issues, they said, and played to the crowd’s greatest insecurity by repeatedly referencing the Supreme Court as a reminder of what’s at stake in November. Some activists reluctantly acknowledged afterward that they personally plan to vote for him. But many of these individuals were present Tuesday due to their leadership roles in large, grassroots-oriented organizations; strikingly, none of them are yet willing to extend Trump an endorsement that could mobilize their constituents on his behalf.

Leon Wolf at RedState says the room was full of saps:

I just got forwarded the most embarrassing statement from the AFA regarding the meeting Donald Trump had today with "Evangelical leaders." The AFA has done some good things over the years, but this statement could not possibly be more naive or willfully blind to the fact that Trump has habitually lied about everything he has said over the years.

Dear [Recipient],
I just wanted to report back to you about the meeting in New York today between GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump and Christian leaders from across the country.

Franklin Graham prayed to open the event. Dr. Ben Carson spoke and told us about the Donald Trump he had come to appreciate. Gov. Mike Huckabee served as moderator and sat across from Mr. Trump. Trump entertained questions from the likes of Dr. David Jeremiah, Dr. James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Kelly Shackelford and Sammy Rodriguez. The questions were about religious freedom, Israel, potential Supreme Court nominees and abortion. I thought his strongest answers were about the type of judges he would appoint. I believe he fully understands the importance of this issue and said all his judges would be vetted by the Federalist Society -- a stalwart conservative organization. To me, this may be the most important issue of this campaign from the perspective of AFA and our supporters. After all, the next president will likely appoint two or more Supreme Court justices in the next four years. As we have seen over the last few years, it doesn't matter how many good laws are passed if the courts are going to strike them down.

Trump's weakness is that he did not clearly state his views in answer to the questions asked by Perkins and Shackelford about when religious freedom and the LGBT movement come into conflict, other than to say that these matters will be decided by the courts. He repeatedly said he was for religious freedom and his fallback position was that he would appoint judges who would defend religious freedom.

Mr. Trump also said he was tired of the political correctness surrounding matters of our Christian heritage and used Christmas an an example. He said companies want to profit of Christmas but then don't want to use the word "Christmas." He said he says "Merry Christmas" and thinks the PC crowd just wants to change the greeting to something more generic because it's another attempt to diminish the role of Christianity in America. (This made me wonder if he's been reading the AFA Journal. Ha!)

Trump answered Dr. Jeremiah's question about Israel saying he would be a strong supporter of the nation of Israel and never understood Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats who don't support Israel. Trump also understands the threat to our country by Islamic jihadism. He has taken a lot of heat from the liberal media for criticizing the problems within Islam.

On a personal note, I met several people who have known Donald Trump personally for several years and said he is not the brash, arrogant, sometimes rude person he appears to be on television. I will say without the media cameras in his face, he was pleasant, relaxed, funny and more thoughtful.

I think it was admirable and honorable for Trump to meet with Christian leaders. He is not our enemy. I believe he has instincts that are reverent and patriotic. He's 69 years old and remembers an America that was once a great country but has lost her way. But he also comes from a very secular world and that way of thinking is a part of who he is. In some ways, he strikes me as an enigma, a man still searching for spiritual answers in his life. But that's just my opinion. I will say this, he is listening to some great men of God that I have a lot of respect for, and that's a good thing.

To conclude, who but the Lord knows what lies ahead for Donald Trump? He wasn't my first choice for president but the majority of GOP voters chose him. Now either he or Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States of America. So if one of them shows genuine interest in understanding Christians better and says he will be our friend, I believe we should tell him what we think and where we stand. To use a sports word, I think he's coachable.

I'm glad I came to New York. It was worth it. I would ask you to pray for Mr. Trump and our country.

Tim
Tim Wildmon, President
American Family Association

What a bunch of ridiculous blather. I'm not going to go into the number of times that Trump has lied to people's face during the course of the campaign because I don't have several years to compile the list. Plus, there's no point in beating a dead horse: Trump lies. He does it as naturally as breathing.

When it comes to the issue of judges, Trump has already lied and made a number of different pledges, which he has already broken. In fact, this bit about him "vetting" his judges with the American Federalist Society is in fact news because that no longer means that he is even pretending to hew to the much-ballyhooed list that he released last month in an effort to dupe the rubes in the social conservative movement. The fact that Wildmon would put any credence at all in his new promise to vet judges with the FedSoc is evidence that he has willfully defenestrated his critical thinking skills.

And why? To quote Wildmon, "He wasn't my first choice for president but the majority of GOP voters chose him." Question for the AFA, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (and thus, by law, nonpartisan) organization: why is it relevant or binding on you what "the majority (sic) of GOP voters chose"?

Nothing, by the way, is more ludicrous than the assertion that the 70-year-old Trump is "coachable." Ask Reince Priebus or Paul Ryan or anyone in the GOP how that is going these days. Last time they tried, Trump spent a solid week making racist comments about a judge presiding over the case in which he is credibly accused of defrauding people out of their life savings. Oh by the way, you're associated with those comments now.

Wolf also makes note of the photo op of S-H with Jerry Falwell, Jr. and his wife in S-H's office, in front of a wall festooned with magazine covers featuring S-H, including the issue of Playboy in which S-H was interviewed.

Michael Ferris at the Christian Post says the meeting signifies that it's all over for the movement known as the Christian Right.