Leviathan and the subverted post-American family

Reason number gazillion and seventeen why letting the state get its paws on post-Americans before the age of five - let alone after that - is a bad idea.   Gives them a running start on amassing a file on the little tykes:

Bureaucrats from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will weigh and measure children in daycare as part of a study mandated by First Lady Michelle Obama’s Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act.

The agency published a notice in the Federal Register on Friday proposing data collection on what meals are served in professional and home daycare facilities and how much physical activity children perform.

Aside from assessing how healthy the food in daycare is, the USDA will also check the weight and height of roughly 3,000 children.

“Children will be asked to cooperate with study staff who will weigh and measure them for the Standing Height and Weight Form,” the notice said.

The study is required by section 223 of Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, which was championed by Mrs. Obama and passed in 2010. The main aspect of the law implemented new standards for school lunches.

A lesser-known requirement of the law is the “Study on Nutrition and Wellness Quality in Childcare Settings (SNAQCS),” which the USDA announced Friday. The public will have 60 days to comment.

The USDA said the data collection is important since more than 30 million kids are in daycare.

“Good nutrition is a key to proper childhood development, but not enough is known about the food children are eating in childcare and related programs,” the agency said. “In 2011, 32.7 million children were in a regular childcare arrangement while their parents worked or pursued other activities outside of the home, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.”

The study will collect data on the “nutritional quality of foods offered, physical activity, sedentary activity, and barriers to” healthy food and exercise in childcare.

We're seeing the same combination of jackboots and pointy-headed specialists that collaborate in every society that moves toward totalitarianism.

It's quite clear what the agenda is:  steer the cultural and economic levels of society toward an assumption that two-working-parent families are far more the norm than those in which one parent - generally the mom - stays home with young children.  Get the kids in an institutional setting as early as possible.  And then monitor, measure, record and study every little aspect of their beings, so as to better design developmental paths that prepare the cattle-masses for their roles in a brave new post-American society.

Just about the time you start wondering if ISIS is losing its momentum . . .

You get this:

ISIS today claimed responsibility for the Wednesday massacre at the Bardo Museum in Tunisia that killed 22 people, many of them Western tourists, and the two attackers. 

In a 3 minute, 10 second audio message disseminated on twitter accounts associated with ISIS, the terror group said that the two dead gunmen, who it named Abu Zakaria al-Tunisi and Abu Anas al-Tunisi, “launched and were heavily equipped with machine guns and hand grenades to target Bardo Museum.”

“The blessed immersing operation led to killing and wounding dozens of Crusaders and apostates,” the message said, “and the failed security forces did not dare to approach but after the two heroes ran out of ammunition.”

ISIS also threatened more attacks to come, saying “what you have seen today is the first drop of the rain, Allah permitting. You will not enjoy security nor be pleased with peace while the Islamic State has men like these who do not sleep amidst grievances.”

And this:

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for today's bomb attacks in Yemen that sources say have killed 126 people - and vowed to carry out more assaults on the Shi'ite Muslim Houthi group that has seized control of the government.
"God willing, this operation is only a part of a coming flood," the group said in a statement posted by supporters on Twitter.

One suicide bomber struck inside Badr mosque in southern Sanaa while another targeted worshippers as they fled outside, witnesses said. 

And this:

By joining ISIS, Nigerian-based Islamic terror group Boko Haram has likely gained unprecedented power, resources and reach, according to intelligence experts.

Boko Haram, which has driven some 3 million people from their homes in northeast Africa over the last five years, slaughtering whole villages, taking women and children slaves, and setting off lethal explosions in densely populated areas, made the announcement it was joining the Middle Eastern group on March 7 on an audio track translated into French and English. Leading terror experts in the U.S. and Africa said the announcement to become a part of ISIS, a group that has horrified the world by beheading, crucifying, stoning, pushing to their death and even burning alive innocent civilians across Syria, Iraq, Libya, Algeria, the Sinai Peninsula, and other parts of the Middle East, has far greater implications than just being a mere symbolic act.

“Boko Haram has entered the realm of international jihadism, and by so doing will gain prestige among the vast supporters of Islamic State,” said Veryan Khan, editorial director of Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium (TRAC).

Conversely, ISIS, also known as Islamic State, will gain its first real step into Africa beyond mere cells, individual loyalties, and smaller less well-known groups, she said. 

The West is up to its eyeballs in enemies.

Is the legislative branch finding its spine?

Another chamber, another letter:

Represenative Eliot Engel of New York, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said he and Republican Chairman Ed Royce of California were sending a letter to President Barack Obama expressing their concerns about what needs to be in an Iran nuclear deal. 

A draft of the letter emphasizes that permanent sanctions relief, which Iran has repeatedly requested during the Geneva negotiations, would require new legislation.

"In reviewing such an agreement, Congress must be convinced that its terms foreclose any pathway to a bomb," the lawmakers wrote, adding that "Iran's role in fomenting instability in the region ... demonstrates the risks of negotiating with a partner we cannot trust."
A spokesman for Engel told VOA that 363 House members, Republicans and Democrats, signed the letter.
"It’s truly a very bipartisan letter expressing Congress’ strong feelings about things that need to be in the agreement," Engel said during the committee hearing. "Congress really needs to play a very active and vital role in this whole process, and any attempts to sidestep Congress will be resisted on both sides of the aisle [ by both Democrats and Republicans]."
The West has accused Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, but Iran insists its nuclear activity is solely for peaceful, civilian purposes, such as medical research and generating power.

The House letter came after a more controversial letter that was sent to Iranian leaders last week. That letter, signed by 47 Senate Republicans, cautioned Tehran that any deal might not last after Obama leaves office. 

Indeed.  The Most Equal Comrade and Secretary Global-Test can't just lift sanctions by sitting at the table with the Iranians.  That has to be done at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

As night follows day . . .

 . . . so does patty-cake with our mortal enemy reach another impasse:

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. The talks between Iran and the P5+1 group over Tehran’s attempts to create nuclear weapons have stalled again as the Iranian negotiators escalated their demands for sanctions relief. Instead of phasing out sanctions — after several large concessions on economic pressure just to get Iran to the table — the Iranians now demand an end to sanctions at the front end of the deal.

The West has balked at the demand. For now, at least:

The U.S. and its European allies are demanding the U.N.’s sanctions be suspended or terminated in a phased time-frame over years.

They believe sanctions relief should only come after Iran addresses concerns about its past nuclear work and is given a clean bill of health by the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The Iranians “say it’s a deal breaker. They don’t want it at all,” said a senior European diplomat involved in the Lausanne talks, referring to Iran’s position on the U.N. sanctions. “There’s no way that we would give up on that…. No way.”

The official said it would take much more than a year or two for U.N. sanctions to be lifted.

“If you’re talking about the IAEA certifying that the Iranian program is clean, I think it will take years by any measure,” the European official said. U.S. officials on Thursday voiced the same position.

Welcome to Iranian Negotiations 101. This has been going on for more than a decade, and the only people who don’t grasp what Iran is doing are in the White House. Iran pretends to negotiate for a while, and then finds reasons to stall talks and blame the West for the impasse. Then, while the West spends several months trying to find incentives to restart the process all over again, Iran has time to continue its progress on developing nuclear weapons.

Memo to Secretary Global-Test: Give it up, pal.  You ain't gonna get any legacy as a visionary statesman ushering in a grand new age of unicorns, rainbows, tofu and sprouts.  Quit wasting my tax dollars and putting Western civilization in mortal peril.

On Iran, post-Americans are not with the Most Equal Comrade

As all the elements - the final dash in the talks between the P5+1 and Iran, the Netanyahu speech to Congress, Netanyahu's election victory, the rumblings about post-America changing the way it stands up for Israel at the UN -  of the current juncture shake themselves out, it's clear that the threat of the worlds most menacing regime getting a nuclear arsenal is sufficiently plain to the post-American public that it is quite concerned about what is going on:

 . . . the reason the president is facing such bipartisan backlash is that an overwhelming number of voters are deeply worried about the direction of the negotiations. Think about how rare, in these polarized times, mobilizing a veto-proof majority of congressional Republicans and Democrats is for any significant legislation. Yet despite all the distractions, Congress is close to achieving that goal: requiring the administration to go to Congress for approval of any deal.

The administration is so focused on process and protocol in attacking the opposition because it's a useful distraction from how unpopular the administration's eagerness to strike any deal with Iran has become.

Consider the polling: In this month's NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 71 percent of respondents said they believed a deal would not prevent the Iranians from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Earlier in March, a Fox News poll found that a 57 percent majority believed the U.S. wasn't being "aggressive enough" in preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear program, while nearly two-thirds supported military action as a last resort. In a February Gallup Poll, 77 percent of Americans said they believed Iran's development of nuclear weapons posed a "critical threat" to the United States.

The one recent outlier was CNN's survey, which found a surprisingly large 68 percent majority of voters—most Republicans included—supporting negotiations "in an attempt to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons." But the phrasing of the question skewed the results. The question assumes that the end result of the negotiation is preventing Iran from getting nukes. But the reason for the growing opposition is that many voters don't believe the agreement will come close to stopping Iran's nuclear program, a point that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu underscored in his congressional address.

Does any of this matter to the MEC, Secretary Globla-Test, Wendy Sherman or Susan Rice?

Hell, no.

Sizing up the Clintons early on

Paul Greenberg at Townhall reveals the heretofore private observations of a legendary Arkansas Democrat:

The latest exploration of Dale Bumpers' papers at the University of Arkansas reveals that senior statesman and former U.S. senator to be an acute -- and early -- analyst of Bill Clinton et femme. Complete with their essential lack of the one quality that may be most important in real leaders: character.

It seems that early on, in 1982, Sen. Bumpers had diagnosed the big trouble with the Clintons, Mr. and Mrs., when he called them "the most manic obsessive people I have ever known in my life, and perhaps even the most insensitive to everybody else's feelings. ... Everything centers around them and their ambitions. It is precisely the reason Bill got beat (when he ran for re-election as governor) in 1980. People felt, and correctly, that they were being manipulated."

Naturally enough, the Bumpers family, great Friends of Bill in general, expresses some doubts about the authenticity of the senior Bumpers' candid comments in 1982.

But the thoughts expressed in his diary have the ring of the Dale Bumpers all have long admired -- not to mention the ring of truth. As he commented the same day he and David Pryor, another prominent Arkansas Democrat, introduced Bill Clinton to a big crowd in Little Rock: "Clinton ought to be most grateful to both of us, but he never is. You can never do quite enough for him and Hillary. I know they blame David and me both at least partially for their defeat in 1980 (when Clinton was running against Frank White for re-election as governor)."

Sen. Bumpers also notes that his wife, Betty, after meeting Bill Clinton for the first time, noted that he "had no character," and described him as essentially a chauvinist. Three months earlier, her husband had a long conversation with Bill Clinton, who would become known as Slick Willie, and concluded:

"Bill Clinton is a truly tragic figure. I doubt that I've ever known anybody as manicly (sic) ambitious for political office, but who simply doesn't have the judgment or character to deal with it once he gets it. I know of two or three exceedingly dirty tricks his campaign pulled in this (race) and they're things that if they ever came to light would simply further confirm the suspicion people in Arkansas have of him.

"They like him, but they know he'll do anything to get the office. He's bright, his heart's in the right place, he's energetic, he really wants to make a difference, and he cares deeply about his state. He just simply cannot sort it all out when character is required to make the right decision." 

Talk about prescient.

The 2016 election cycle is going to shed light on the central question of our time: Do the American people still set store by character and  humanity, or has that been trumped by narrative indoctrination and identity politics?

L'affaire Mair

The Walker campaign's canning of Liz Mair is eliciting a variety of responses.

I'm inclined to see the viewpoint that she indulged in an unnecessary degree of snark about Iowans.

But, per the post below about government favorites-playing, was she not spot-on to go after ethanol subsidies?

 . . on January 22nd she tweeted, “Morons across America are astounded to learn that people from *IOWA* grow up rather government-dependent. #agsubsidies #ethanol #brainless.”

As I've said before, we live in a messy world.  She has the correct position on ag subsidies, but is asking for it with such an acerbic tone.

To add yet another layer of consideration onto the matter, Erick Erickson, an undeniably sharp and thoughtful observer (and activist), rather strongly defends her as a highly seasoned professional and a personal friend:

 Scott Walker, it is just not worth tossing a well qualified person because she tweeted a personal opinion before being hired. Out the people who screw up on the campaigns, not the people not on campaigns. But as it stands, a whole lot of people who’ve screwed up the last several GOP campaigns are getting promotions and commissions while we’re lining up the circular firing squad over someone who will have no impact on shaping policy, but is quite effective at communicating it.

This habitual absolutist finds himself in the position of seeing both viewpoints.

One clear lesson can be drawn, and it's one we're seeing with increasing frequency these days: Those social-media posts can come back to getcha.  

The inevitable consequence of gummint interference in the free market

The Small Business Administration is one of those agencies the existence of which I never quite got.  It always seemed to me to have a skewing effect on the natural web of economic interactions by which investors and entrepreneurs find each other, products are developed and marketed, and ventures rise and fall according to their efficacy.  Also seemed like a playground for identity-politics mischief.

Still, it had become the kind of fixture on the national landscape that, the occasional attempt of Pub-controlled Congresses to pull the plug on notwithstanding, was destined to be with us always, much like the "farm bill" that has perpetuated itself in roughly five-year cycles since 1933, or the National Endowment for the Arts, the questioning of which draws howls from the self-appointed arbiters of aesthetic merit.

But it turns out it's a gravy train for well-established purveyors of luxury:

A new report on federal spending reveals that the Small Business Administration has funded luxury brands like Rolex, Lamborghini and helped exclusive beach clubs, wineries, pet resorts, country clubs and even a gun club over the past several years.

The report from the American Transparency has won the attention of a taxpayer watchdog group that is giving SBA a "Golden Fleece" Award.

"It appears the Small Business Administration is bilking the American taxpayers to play favorites and bail out companies that can't make it in the marketplace," said Diana Banister, director of Citizens for the Republic. "The upscale companies benefiting from taxpayer largesse should get loans from their own bank."

 Now that budget discussions are underway again, how about it, folks?  Time for an agency-ectomy, perhaps?

Narrative, feelings and identity politics are tough to combat with principles

That must be why Hillary, despite the email scandal, the foreign donors to the Clinton Global Initiative, last summer's abysmal book tour, the "we were broke" gaffe, Benghazi, the reset button, and the ghost of 1990s misadventures, is still polling well at the moment.

Miss CJ at Chicks on the Right thinks so, taking an unflinchingly dim view of the typical post-American:

We can sit here and talk about issues and statistics and corruption until we're blue in the face - but the truth is that REGULAR PEOPLE DO NOT GIVE A FLYING DONKEY FART ABOUT ANY OF IT! They like Obama and they like Hillary because the media and Hollywood like them. They like the Democrats because the Democrats are seen to care about the poor and the downtrodden (even though every shred of history and evidence points to the Democrats being racist elitist pigs). And they hate Republicans and conservatives because we're supposed to be a bunch of rich white guys who hate the poor and the victimized and eat babies and kick puppies and deny access to birth control.

So, do we cook up narratives ourselves, play their game?

Let's not. Let's be what we're defending.  If we have to tailor appeals to Miss CJ's "regular people," let's paint the scenarios of what the logical conclusion of Freedom-Hater policy looks like.

Then again, that hinges on the "regular person" still harboring a cherishing of his or her freedom, and my certainty that he or she does waxes and wanes at this late date.

Still, there is no alternative to pushing the boulder to the mountaintop.

Jihad never sleeps

19 dead as jihadists shoot up the Tunisian parliament and a neighboring museum.

The fine art of the manageable buzz

Stephen Green on how to have multiple third cocktails.

I had drinks with him about a year and a half ago, at the hotel bar when I attended the Americans for Prosperity Emerging Leaders Summit in Orlando, Florida.  I'd just come back to the hotel after hearing Michelle Malkin speak in a sweltering amphitheater on the grounds of the Universal theme park.  Most attendees were still there; I bailed early because I was melting.  Got back to the hotel and stopped in the lounge for a manhattan and noticed a familiar-looking guy next to me, sipping a martini and fiddling with his phone.  Finally said, "You're the PJ Media Vodka Pundit, aren't you?"

We had a wide-ranging conversation - over the course of three cocktails (for me; I think he'd had a few more third cocktails).

How do you remain glib and together if you like a well-lubricated evening?  Herewith his guidelines:

There are two tricks, and only two tricks, to being a seriously good serious drinker.

The first trick is hardly a trick at all, it’s so easy: Drink those first three cocktails quickly. I don’t mean you should guzzle them down like some freshman frat boy with his first beer bong and a team of sadistic sophomores cheering him on. A cocktail, after all, is ideally a civilized and civilizing experience. But don’t dawdle, either. Don’t let your martini get warm, or let your ice melt, or let your scotch just sit there feeling lonesome and unloved. (I once knew a delightful Catholic priest who told me there’s a special rung in Hell for people who orphan good scotch.)

It’s the second trick where things become… trickier.

It is then, at the finish of your third cocktail, when D’Agostino correctly states that “you’re having the time of your life,” that you must keep your wits about you just enough to slow things down.

Pause after your third cocktail. Spend some quality time with that “water back” you ordered with good intentions, but which you’ve left untouched thus far all evening. Step outside with that one friend who still smokes and steal a few drags or maybe even a whole ciggie. Make conversation, make friends, make for the appetizer menu. You’re in the Third Cocktail Zone — enjoy it.

Let your liver do its thing and metabolize some of that alcohol you pounded down over the last hour or so. Let your BA count, count down a few tenths. Then, and only then, do you order your fourth cocktail.

Your fourth cocktail is the one Chris Jones in the same Esquire piece says is “the gateway drink, the point of no return.” But if you take that refreshing pause, your fourth cocktail won’t be your fourth cocktail — it will be, and this is very important, your second third cocktail.

Now perhaps “second third cocktail” sounds to you like the kind of notion only a serious drinker, maybe even an incipient alcoholic, would come up with. And maybe you’re right, but I find it’s a vital distinction from “fourth cocktail,” which we can all agree really is nothing but trouble.

Your second third cocktail isn’t a point of no return — it’s an extension of that “thrilling place to be.” The second third cocktail doesn’t come easy — I was aiming for just that and overshooting it for years and years before I finally got good at hitting it. Youth and inexperience have lead many, perhaps millions, to going over the edge to the fourth cocktail when what they really wanted and needed was a second third.

But these days I only have a fourth cocktail — and then a fifth and a sixth and a seventh and an uh-oh — when I mean to have a fourth cocktail. But mostly I enjoy a second third cocktail, and sometimes a third third cocktail. If I started very early in the day, I might even enjoy a fourth third cocktail. Your mileage may vary; closed course, professional drinker and all that.

So, if spiritous beverages  are among your pleasures, cultivate the art of the pace.

Individuals in anointed-victim demographics must sacrifice the freedom to form their own value systems

A pair of formerly revered Italian fashion designers are coming in for a barrage of vitriol:

The fashion community and its celebrity devotees see themselves as free-thinking, liberal-minded individuals, but in fact, artistic types tend to cling to politically correct groupthink. So when one of their number goes against the grain on a particular issue, the others often unite in disproportionate outrage.

In a recent interview with the Italian magazine Panorama, designer icons Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana drew protests from the gay community with their declaration that “the only family is the traditional one.” Children born through artificial insemination or egg donors are “children of chemistry, synthetic children,” said Dolce. “Uteruses for rent, semen chosen from a catalog.” Procreation “must be an act of love.”

“The family is not a fad,” Gabbana told the interviewer. “In it there is a supernatural sense of belonging… Life has its natural course, there are things that must not be changed. And one of these is the family.”

This outspoken defense of the traditional family unit sparked swift disapproval. In an article entitled, “Dolce and Gabbana Launch Tirade Against ‘Nontraditional Families’,” the gay news magazine The Advocate condemned the designers for this “salvo against equality… a rant against so-called nontraditional families.” Of course, the interview comments were neither a tirade nor a rant, but labeling them as such, and as a “salvo against equality,” helped pump up the outrage in its readers.

Things escalated from there. The website LGBT News Italia called for a boycott of D&G. Sir Elton John, who has two children with partner David Furnish, called for one as well on Instagram . . . 

Ricky Martin and Courtney Love, too.

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

Orwellian to the gazillionth degree.

The goose-stepping jackboots at the EPA want to shame you - while you're alone and naked - into modifying your behavior:

It’s a good thing Uncle Sam is looking out for your best interests. If it weren’t for them, you might spend too long in the shower next time you stay at a hotel. 

Wait… what?

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants hotels to monitor how much time its guests spend in the shower.

The agency is spending $15,000 to create a wireless system that will track how much water a hotel guest uses to get them to “modify their behavior.”

“Hotels consume a significant amount of water in the U.S. and around the world,” an EPA grant to the University of Tulsa reads. “Most hotels do not monitor individual guest water usage and as a result, millions of gallons of potable water are wasted every year by hotel guests.”

“The proposed work aims to develop a novel low cost wireless device for monitoring water use from hotel guest room showers,” it said. “This device will be designed to fit most new and existing hotel shower fixtures and will wirelessly transmit hotel guest water usage data to a central hotel accounting system.”

The grant language doesn’t specify exactly how the government would “modify your behavior” in terms of water usage, but it’s not hard to speculate. I imagine we’ll be seeing a warning at check-in saying that “x” number of gallons of water usage in the room per night is the standard covered by your reservation. Any more than that will result in a surcharge, with a portion of that going to the government and the remainder going to the hotel. (You need to do that in order to get the hotel owners’ associations to buy in and lobby on behalf of the EPA.)

This instrument of tyranny needs to be dismantled yet this morning.

The West still has a chance

Its towering champion has emerged victorious in Israel election.

It looked precarious mere days ago.  One began to wonder why he had orchestrated such an environment of risk for himself.

Here's why:

Although Netanyahu’s Likud Party only won about half the number of seats needed to secure a majority in Israel’s parliament, it did so much better than anyone expected (including Bibi) that he seems to have triumphed in the goal he had set for himself last December when he broke up the government he had formed in 2013 and called new elections.

He did that because he wanted to strengthen his own hand and rid himself of two hostile coalition partners at the same time. This was a risky strategy, and it looked for quite a while like a disastrous one.

Throughout the final weeks, polling suggested Likud had fallen behind the center-left opposition, the Zionist Unon.

If Likud had come in second Tuesday night, the ZU might have been given the first crack at forming a new government — and though it would have had profound difficulties assembling that new government, it’s possible the ZU might have succeeded.

But had it failed, Bibi would then have been left with the horrid task of slapping together some kind of nightmarish contraption coalition to secure the 61 seats necessary for a majority. He would have been weak and his government would have been on the verge of collapse from the moment it was assembled.

Something else — something entirely unexpected — happened. Bibi’s Likud was expected to secure 20 to 22 seats in the Knesset Tuesday night. That’s what all the polls showed. Instead, it appears Likud won 29, maybe 30 seats.

Not only was that shockingly good for Likud, it was a far stronger showing than in the last election, because in 2013, the party had merged with another called Yisrael Beytenu. 

So Israel will continue speaking to the world with a unified voice.

Is there any chance that post-America, a much larger nation in terms of both population and land mass, can similarly regain its moral bearings and move past the hand-wringing over Jeb's big-money donors and the percentage of Freedom-Haters who are not bothered by Hillary's email scandal?  Can it snap out of its perpetual adolescence and realize that it faces actual crises and challenges and put aside the silly faux issues and join with its natural friend to dispel the darkness and secure real peace and freedom for this age?

An encouraging move

House Pub budget calls for total repeal of Freedom-Hater-care and increased defense spending.  Puts food stamps on a block-grants-to-states basis.  Cuts $5.5 trillion over 10 years.

Let's see more of that spirit, how about it, people?

Welcome to post-America, where false narratives successfully compete with truth

Two case studies in this phenomenon for your consideration.

There is this development in Wisconsin.  How many of your kids' teachers belong to the NEA?

A militant Wisconsin group funded heavily by the National Education Association — America’s largest teachers union — unfurled a banner declaring “ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS” at an anti-police protest last week.

The group, Wisconsin Jobs Now, organized the protest on Wednesday, EAGnews.org reports.

Despite the name “Wisconsin Jobs Now,” the small, radical group has spent considerable time and energy in recent months protesting police tactics.

Wisconsin Jobs Now has long targeted the Milwaukee police department. It has now branched some 80 miles west to Madison.

Incidentally, the other major donor to Wisconsin Jobs Now is the SEIU.

This banner was undoubtedly primarily inspired by the recent incident in Madison.  A little backstory is important to a full understanding of that:

The Wednesday protest occurred a few days after a Madison police officer shot and killed Tony Robinson. Police say Robinson, 19, assaulted the officer. He also pleaded guilty to armed robbery just last year.

Then there's this tiresome-in-the-extreme development that puts the lie to Eric Holder's charge that America never talks about race:

 Fortune reports on what might just be the worst entry in the long history of bad corporate ideas, as the Starbucks coffee chain announces a “race relations initiative” that will include baristas hassling customers about racism:

Starbucks published a full page ad in the New York Times on Sunday — a stark, black, page with a tiny caption “Shall We Overcome?” in the middle, and the words “RaceTogether” with the company logo, on the bottom right. The ad, along with a similar one on Monday in USA Today, is part of an initiative launched this week by the coffee store chain to stimulate conversation and debate about the race in America by getting employees to engage with customers about the perennially hot button subject.

Beginning on Monday, Starbucks baristas will have the option as they serve customers to hand cups on which they’ve handwritten the words “Race Together” and start a discussion about race. This Friday, each copy of USA Today— which has a daily print circulation of almost 2 million and is a partner of Starbucks in this initiative — will have the first of a series of insert with information about race relations, including a variety of perspectives on race. Starbucks coffee shops will also stock the insert.

In a video addressing Starbucks’ nearly 200,000 workers, 40% of whom are members of a racial minority, [Starbucks CEO Howard] Schultz dismissed the notion that race was too hot a topic business-wise for Starbucks to tackle.

“I reject that. I reject that completely,” he said in the video address. “It’s an emotional issue. But it is so vitally important to the country,” he continued, pointing to that the United States is “so much better” than what the current state of race relations portray it to be.

There will be no escape from politics in America, good citizens. Your consciousness will be raised every time you walk into a room, unwrap a package, engage any form of communications device, or even accept a cup of coffee. Enjoy your evening’s rest while you can, until left-wingers figure out a way to beam political messages into your dreams.

I repeat my invitation to post-American society:  How about if we really and truly, yet this afternoon, knock it off with the race talk?  We could, you know.  Just drop it.  When we read about an individual who, according to reports from the scene, assaulted a police officer and got shot in response, we just look at him as an individual.  When we read about the hair-raisingly alarmingly high percentage of fatherless young men with no job skills in our inner cities, we merely discuss the behavior and life-choice options available to them and the need for these individuals to cultivate some character.  We could knock it off with the television networks and congressional caucuses based on racial identity.  We could quit counting the number of people of a particular race in various occupations.  We could dismantle all the campus offices of diversity and inclusion across the land.

We could, but we won't.  We're told that the "perceptions" of bigotry-based disparity are too strong.

Here's another invitation:  Let's have a look at who it is that is telling us that, and what's in it for them.