Our stark future

Wow.  Was this NYT feature on how there are lots of women in American colleges who are as comfortable with the hookup culture as men ever indicative of what we're becoming.

The hookup culture was already established by the mid-70s, when I was in college.  Back then, though, it was mostly hippie-type chicks who went in for random encounters.

Apparently the norm now is the driven, career-focused gal:

Ask her why she hasn’t had a relationship at Penn, and she won’t complain about thedeath of courtship or men who won’t commit. Instead, she’ll talk about “cost-benefit” analyses and the “low risk and low investment costs” of hooking up.

“I positioned myself in college in such a way that I can’t have a meaningful romantic relationship, because I’m always busy and the people that I am interested in are always busy, too,” she said.

“And I know everyone says, ‘Make time, make time,’ ” said the woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity but agreed to be identified by her middle initial, which is A. “But there are so many other things going on in my life that I find so important that I just, like, can’t make time, and I don’t want to make time.”

Clearly, this is making everybody hard - and, no, I don't mean it that way.  In fact, quite the opposite.  This attitude is not exactly conducive to rising libido, let alone good old romantic feelings:

 Some women also want to wait to see how men turn out as they advance through their 20s.

A., for example, said that she did not want to settle down until she could choose a partner knowing that his goals and values were fixed.“‘I’ve always heard this phrase, ‘Oh, marriage is great, or relationships are great — you get to go on this journey of change together,’ ” she said. “That sounds terrible.“I don’t want to go through those changes with you. I want you to have changed and become enough of your own person so that when you meet me, we can have a stable life and be very happy.”In the meantime, from A.’s perspective, she was in charge of her own sexuality.“I definitely wouldn’t say I’ve regretted any of my one-night stands,” she said.“I’m a true feminist,” she added. “I’m a strong woman. I know what I want.”

What kinds of guys do they find to hook up with?  I'd venture to say any guy who participates in a midnight tryst with the likes of these ladies has to be operating from a premise of at least a little misogyny.  You know, "She's hot and a great lay, but, man, is she a tough competitor in our business-case-study class.  I can't blink when we're presenting projects."  Gratifying at night, an opposing gladiator by day.

There's the future of post-America.  Technocratic young cell phone addicts networking and jockeying for position in the world of high achievement, while the rate of family formation and population replacement plummets to the levels of Greece or Italy.  Automatons who "fit sex in" the way they do workouts or errands like picking up the dry cleaning or getting the oil in their cars changed.  A generation so consumed with grabbing what it has always been told is the quality life that it can't bear to face the question of whether that life has any purpose whatsoever.

The reactions commence

Some are real humdingers:

New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz tweets that "George Zimmerman doesn't last a year before the hood catches up with him."

Beyonce calls for a moment of silence for Trayvon at her concert in Nashville.

NAACP calls on DoJ to pursue "civil rights charges."


Jesse Jackson says Trayvon was denied a jury of his peers because - well, do you really need LITD to spell out for you why Jesse has this view?

This wouldn't have happened when we were the United States of America

By now, you'v no doubt heard about the Community Relations Service, an obscure little agency within the Department of Justice, going to Sanford, Florida last year to, well, basically, stoke the racial angle of the Zimmerman case.  John Fund at NRO has the best coverage I've seen of what was really going on.

The website for the CRS claims it “does not take sides among disputing parties” and only provides “impartial conciliation and mediation services.” But the evidence of its activities in Sanford shows that it placed a large thumb on the scales of justice in the Zimmerman case. What can providing support for a “March for Trayvon Martin” rally headlined by the rabble-rousing Reverend Al Sharpton have to do with “conciliation and mediation”?

As Fund points out, this is Alinskyite community organizing, pure and simple.  Being done on your dime by the one department of the federal government we count on above all to be impartial.

It is so very late in the day.

So let them call us obstructionist

Here's an item on another subject (FHer-care) that demonstrates why Boehner's apparent position that the House "must do something" about immigration is so much ding-dong.

MSM poo-bahs like Chick Todd are calling Pubs obstructionist for not helping FHers to implement FHer-care.

And exactly why should we feel obligated to do so?  The public hates it and always has.  None of our folks supported it.  And

Since when do Republicans have some moral obligation to lay down their arms and embrace a destructive policy they oppose in their bones?  Do liberals ever behave this way?  Think of their furious response to the successful Iraq surge, their fight against Prop 8, their failed recall attempt in Wisconsin, and their disruptive abortion horde in Austin.  Atypical opposition is fine, so long as the Left’s wielding it.

Why?

Why "must" the House "do something" about immigration, as John Boehner apparently told a closed-door gathering of House Pubs?

Did any of those present ask this question, and, if not, why not?

We must consider the possibility that it is too late

It won't brighten your day, but David Solway's piece at PJ Media today is essential reading.  He's not the first to pose the question of whether we are at the tipping point, but he takes probably the broadest and deepest range of factors into consideration of any such thinker I've encountered.

The difference between history’s winners and losers obviously depends on the criteria we adopt to discriminate between success and failure on the level of nation, culture and civilization. For the purposes of this article, I will leave the display of military splendor and the creation of great art out of the equation. Neither military parades in a public square nor architectural wonders constitute a boon for ordinary people, even if they produce a feeling of national pride. Rather, I define success as a function of three complementary factors: the ability to survive intact for extended periods; the achievement of approximate prosperity in a largely impoverished world; and the fostering of a relatively free, confident and vigorous citizenry. 

He quotes fellow PJ Media writer Roger L. Simon at a particularly chilling juncture in the examination he develops (emphasis mine):

When one examines the social and political conduct of the United States today, one sees both anarchy and absolutism at work: a divided citizenry, giving the impression that America comprises really two — or more — competing nations, with the threat of secession floating in the air and economic chaos in the offing; and an increasingly autocratic political administration governing via executive privilege, the bypassing of Congress, the proliferation of draconian laws and regulations, internal espionage, stygian secrecy, constitutional delinquency, bureaucratic engorgement and the assumption of elitist privilege converging in the person of a “great leader.” The octopal state has its tentacles everywhere and its citizenry is subject to the invasive probing of a panoptic and all-encompassing entity. “1984 is here,” writes Roger Simon, “Someone is watching me, monitoring whatever I do. If I make a mistake, I will pay for it. My future will be bleak.” “And here’s the big problem,” he continues, “it’s hard to see how it’s going to get better.” 

There is a person in the comment thread underneath who chimes in a few times, trying to assume an offhand demeanor and hew to a "now-let's-not-get-all-doom-and-gloom-here" message, but his (or her, I suppose) choice of substantiation comes across as pinched and shallow in comparison to the fullness of Solway's perspective:

When people talk of "America in decline," just what are they referring to?

In an absolute sense, America continues to lead the world. The whole world uses Microsoft/Adobe software, Apple computers, Boeing aircraft.

But in a relative sense, the rest of the world is catching up. China and Japan are manufacturing powerhouses. India is starting to be a software development powerhouse. But we know how to fix that. We need to do more to improve our own economy, infrastructure, and education of the young, just as they are doing. 

So why are folks on PJ Media so upset?

In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon (who ran as a conservative Republican) had proposed universal catastrophic health insurance based on guess what? An employer mandate, and Medicaid cost sharing with the states! What Nixon was proposing wasn't all that different from ObamaCare today.

So why are some conservatives freaking out over ObamaCare? They didn't freak out over Nixon's similar proposal.

What I think is upsetting folks around here is not that America is in decline. It's that *Reaganism* is in decline. The voters re-elected Obama who is trying his best to end the Reagan free-market approach. Even in the GOP there is growing disenchantment with globalization.

For one thing, this commenter displays a very basic ignorance.  Nixon neither ran nor governed as a conservative.  More to the point, though, this technocratic view of what American (or Japanese) success consists of completely overlooks Solway's criteria for a successful civilization.  Japan and India and China hardly embody the fealty to freedom that distinguishes America from every other of history's nation-states, kingdoms or empires.  As I've said before here, a populace of IT whizzes and engineers and Six Sigma black belts hardly tells us whether the nation in which that populace lives has the spiritual fortification to thrive.

But that's the kind of "meh"-type shrugging that passes for deep examination these days.

Fortunately, real intellects like Solway continue to look into this matter of how long we have, and what might be done.

Why the IRS needs to be dismantled pronto - today's edition

In addition to the deliberate repression it engages in, it f---s up in really unacceptable ways, such as inadvertently posting 100,000 Social Security numbers on one of its websites.

Pubs have had a number of opportunities lately to torpedo FHer-care, but this one is the best yet

Last Friday's document-dump-style announcement that HHS will rely on people's own assertions about their eligibility for the "exchanges."

If Republicans were smart, they’d draft a bill based on the following mantra: “No Subsidization Without Verification.” That is, they should take a stand that nobody can receive subsidies through Obamacare before the government has a system in place that can independently verify the information as accurate.

If such a piece of legislation becomes law, it would effectively delay one of the central provisions of Obamacare indefinitely, because after more than three years, the government has not been able to figure out a way to meet the technological challenge of verification. As stated in the HHS rule published Friday: “After reviewing and considering the appropriate public comments and completing a technical analysis, we have concluded that the service described in the proposed rule is not feasible for implementation for the first year of operations. This service would involve a large amount of systems development on both the state and federal side, which cannot occur in time for October 1, 2013.”

Of course, Obama and his fellow Democrats would likely block such an attempt by Republicans. If they do so, they will be put into the position of explaining to the American people why they are willing to hand out aover a trillion dollars of taxpayer subsidies without proper procedures in place to prevent fraud. Preventing fraud in government programs can easily be a 70/30 issue with the American public. What makes this an especially indefensible position for Obama and Congressional Democrats is that they are already on record supporting tougher anti-fraud measures than the ones HHS just adopted, which is why they were originally a part of Obamacare. These anti-fraud measures are only being abandoned in the mad rush to shove as much taxpayer money out the door as quickly as possible.

Let's hope we hear from a Pub legislator on this real soon.

A wrench in the works

The al-Nour party, the only Islamist group to back Morsi's ouster in Egypt, is pulling out of talks with the military about structuring a return to civilian government.  It's in response to the massacre of Islamists. Two years ago, the party was a ragtag startup, but today, it wields considerable influence - and ability to complicate any moves toward democracy:

The party played a starring role in the military’s choreographed presentation of its takeover as the chance to reunify a country on the brink of civil war between opponents and supporters of Mr. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood. But while Al Nour’s leaders say they intend to build bridges, some liberals say the party is pushing potentially divisive demands, from picking a new prime minister to keeping Islam prominent in any new constitution.

Over the weekend, Al Nour tested its leverage for the first time to force the retraction of an announced plan to name a liberal icon, the Nobel Prize-winning diplomat Mohamed ElBaradei, as interim prime minister.

“You just can’t do something like that, after we had appeared right next to you on the scene” at the televised announcement, Younis Makhyoun, a Nour party leader, said on Sunday. “We have grass roots,” Mr. Makhyoun added, “and they don’t agree on the choice of ElBaradei.”

Instead, state news media outlets reported on Sunday that the interim government was close to naming as acting prime minister Ziad Bahaa el-Din, a former head of Egypt’s investment authority. A Nour leader blessed him in a radio interview as “one of the liberal figures that we greatly respect.”

The party’s ability to block Mr. ElBaradei from the premiership raised new alarms from liberals about what the ultraconservatives, known as Salafis, might demand next, even after the expulsion of the more moderate Brotherhood.

“This stage of the revolution was against this type of Islamist party,” said Shady el-Ghazaly Harb, one of the organizers of the anti-Morsi protests. “We will not have any concessions when it comes to writing the constitution, and we will die for that,” he added, vowing that the charter should include “a separation of religion and politics, because parties should not be built on religion.”

And that's the thing about Arab countries.  Even their "moderates" are bad news for the West.  El Baradei, you'll recall, was the IAEA guy who helped doctor that agency's findings about Iran's nuclear program to make it look harmless.

So, if it has an acting general counsel, it doesn't need a quorum?

Kimberly Strassel at the WSJ on the autocratic style of the National Labor Relations Board's acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon.

In the last half-year, two Circuit Courts of Appeals have declared the NLRB's ability to issue rulings null and void, because the Most Equal Comrade's appointments to the board were unconstitutional.  That hasn't deterred Mr. Solomon.

The NLRB issued 550 decisions with just two board members before the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in New Process Steel that the NLRB must have a three-person board quorum to operate. Mr. Solomon brags that of these 550, only about 100 were "impacted" by the Supreme Court's ruling—which, he writes, proves that the NLRB is justified in continuing to operate even at times when its "authority" has been challenged.

Mr. Solomon is in fact celebrating that of the 550 outfits harassed by an illegal, two-member board, only about 100 later decided they had the money, time and wherewithal to spend years relitigating in front of the labor goon squad. The NLRB is counting on the same outcome in Cablevision and other recent actions.

The board will push through as many rulings and complaints against companies as it can before the Supreme Court rules on its legitimacy. And it will trust that the firms it has attacked and drained will be too weary to then try for reversals. This is why the Obama administration waited so long to petition the Supreme Court to reverse Noel Canning. The longer this process takes, the more damage the NLRB can inflict on behalf of its union taskmasters.

Forget Congress.  The edicts of the NLRB, the EPA, the HHS Department and a sprawl of similar agencies, boards and departments answerable only to the overlords  is where the action is.

An idea worth dying for

Mr. Jefferson's document is a bit like the Bible: it loses none of its thunder with the passing of years.

The endgame of leftism: reinventing the definition of the human being

Robert Oscar Lopez at The American Thinker has a piece that, in layers, covers the implications of the newly energized push for normalization of homosexuality: judicial activism trumping legislative action, the further depletion of state and federal resources to subsidize sperm banks, the expansion - that is, distortion to the point of unrecognizability - of the notion of rights to include the "right" to parenthood, no matter by what route, and, finally, the blurring of gender distinctions to the point where identifying people as male or female is invalidated.

"Genetics is neither necessary nor sufficient."  That's a universalizing statement, and it points to a swollen state apparatus that will deem what is necessary and sufficient for parentage.  There's no mystery as to which interest groups will likely hold decisive sway over the government entities empowered to "assign" parentage in a world where parents are no longer the mother and father who produced a child by making love.

That's the essence of the matter.  By annihilating basic aspects of human identity, we're not merely redefining marriage and family, we're abolishing them, because we are assigning a new definition made up out of whole cloth to an even more basic term: love.


It's as ugly a world as anyone could imagine, and it's what we're rushing headlong into.

Our bloodthirsty partners in patty-cake - today's edition

The Taliban shoots up a Kabul guest house for US engineers and defense contractors, killing eight, in a pre-dawn attack.

That would be the same Taliban that the MEC regime intends to negotiate one-on-one with, a move which infuriated Karzai and caused him to pull out of talks about security arrangements for US troop drawdown.

Exactly why the whole damn thing needs to be scrapped

So the regime has decided, on its own, as it does in most situations, without involving the legislative branch, to delay FHer-care's employer mandate until 2015.  Isn't that convenient?  Takes a major problem with the whole undertaking off the table for the midterm election.  Except that planners at America's companies will take the delay in implementation into account, thereby perpetuating the on-hold status of much of the nation's business activity.

It's like the ultimate waiver, of which the regime has already dispensed many.

You bet this bunch is engaged in orchestrated decline.  They know their policies hobble America.  It's implementing them in a way that's at least minimally palatable that requires a bit of art and timing.

The individual mandate stays in place, though.  Any healthy twenty-something who, say, two years ago, did a bit of shopping for a health insurance policy and has a spectrum of numbers and options to compare is in for a major sticker shock when he or she does another round of shopping.  It's a different ballgame, now that he or she is made to subsidize a wave of older, less robust comrades.  I doubt if America's young adults are stupid enough to swallow that one.

Secretary Global Test's - and the MEC's - obsession with small potatoes in a time of multiple crises

There's Syria, Iran, Egypt, Snowden, to name the top-tier examples.

But what has Global Test all energized?  Flogging the dead horse of renewed peace efforts between Israel and Fatah and / or Hamas:

 he’s making it clear that he either doesn’t care much about what are obviously far more critical problems or illustrating that the president has given him the green light to concentrate on a dead-end diplomatic shuttle because in this administration the secretary of state doesn’t have much influence on American foreign policy.

The simplistic and vulgar appeal to demographic victimhood is not carrying the day in this instance

Andrew C. McCarthy at PJ Media on why the prosecution's case in the Zimmerman trial is collapsing like a cheap card table.