News of the Week for August 4th, 2013
- Obama Scandals
- Gun Rights
- Hide the Decline
- Obamacare
- War & Terror
- National News
- Economy & Taxes
- International News
- Opinion
Obama Scandals
No, the IRS Did Not Target Progressives Like It Targeted Conservatives
NPR’s politics blog has published a chart — compiled from a House Ways and Means staff analysis — of the different levels of IRS targeting between conservative and progressive groups. Bottom line? Far more conservative groups faced IRS scrutiny, they faced more questions, and were approved at a much lower rate than progressives. The chart is based on the IRS’s now-discredited “BOLO” (be on the lookout) lists.
E-mails Suggest Collusion Between FEC, IRS to Target Conservative Groups
Embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner and an attorney in the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel’s office appear to have twice colluded to influence the record before the FEC’s vote in the case of a conservative non-profit organization, according to e-mails unearthed by the House Ways and Means Committee and obtained exclusively by National Review Online.
Obama’s IRS Scandal Sure Looks to Run a Lot Deeper Than Reported
Phony scandal, huh? We now know that IRS honchos shared information about conservative groups with other agencies, using the vast data in the IRS databanks to help other federal officials make cases against conservatives. Now we need to know how much, how often and what kind.
Documents: IRS targeting of pro-life groups continues
The Internal Revenue Service continues to target pro-life conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status despite pending investigations into the IRS targeting scandal, according to documents obtained by The Daily Caller.
Gun Rights
Gun Owners, Segregationists, and Jim Sleeper
Jim Sleeper, a “lecturer in political science” at Yale, wrote the following in today’s Huffington Post
Piers Morgan to gun-rights advocate: How can we trust George Zimmerman to own another gun?
Worth watching as a demonstration of the impenetrability of the “Zimmerman is a murderer” narrative. Morgan’s point is simple: Why on earth would we trust a guy with a gun who stalked an unarmed teenager, “decided to engage him in the street,” and then shot him dead while claiming self-defense? Good question. Why would we trust a guy like that? His guest patiently responds — more than once, because evidently it’s necessary — that that’s not what happened according to both Florida police and a Florida jury. Zimmerman was entitled to shoot because he was getting his head beat against the sidewalk. (Zimmerman also claims it was Martin who “engaged” him, not vice versa.) Presumably Morgan thinks he should have laid there, swallowed his worries that his skull would be cracked, and hoped for the best.
Yale’s Declaration On Rape Proves Why Collegiate Females Should Be Allowed To Carry
It’s like progressive women are just now discovering the brutally high college rape statistics.
Hide the Decline
Environment &
“Green Energy”
The Three Rings of the Climate Circus
Late next month the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will begin releasing its massive Fifth Assessment Report (AR5 in the trade), starting with the report of Working Group I, on the science of climate change. The reports of Working Groups II and III will dribble out in 2014. In previous assessment reports, the entire report with the findings of all three working groups came out at once. I suspect this change may be an attempt to be sure there are three chances to make headlines, especially since the media is losing interest in the subject. Power Line will be all over the report when it comes out. As we’ve reported here before, this next IPCC report will have to do some fancy footwork to explain the increasing anomalies of recent temperature trends. I’m sure they’re up to the job.
Obamacare
Government in Healthcare
People Of All Ages Sign Petition For Mandatory Euthanasia For Senior Citizens Under Obamacare
Media analyst and author Mark Dice heads out to see if Californians will sign a petition for mandatory euthanasia program for seniors and terminally ill people in order to cut costs in Obamacare. Some of these people are the most calloused people I’ve ever seen. Dice asks random people if they’ll sign a petition for “mandatory” euthanasia provision in Obama Care to help keep healthcare costs down by putting senior citizens to sleep.
Look out below! Work more, get less in Obamacare ‘cliff’
Be careful you don’t fall off the Obamacare “cliff” when the boss asks you to put in some overtime.
War & Terror
Unisex Uniforms Debut As Army Opens Units To Women
A new combat uniform with special consideration to the female body is now available at Fort Gordon, almost a month after the Army announced plans to open all units and military jobs to women by 2016.
National
Nader: Obama ‘Corporatist Under Liberal Sheen’
Five-time third-party presidential candidate Ralph Nader pulled no punches this morning, blasting both President Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
Matt Slick on The Daily Show, June 17, 2013
For those who actually believed what the Daily Show presented (a comedy show that people take seriously?) I have three quick comments.
First, please consider reading this article and find out how the Daily Show misrepresented me, in direct contradiction to what they said they would do.
Second, they edited me in such a way as to get me to say the opposite of what I actually said.
Third, below is the actual transcript of what I said. It is taken from my audio recording.
Pro-Life Congresswoman Delivers ‘Miracle’ Baby
Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) announced the birth of her daughter on Facebook Monday; Abigail Rose Beutler was supposed to die just moments after birth but is now two weeks old.
The Obama-Zinn connection
From time to time, we have noted President Obama’s lack of knowledge about American history. The most recent manifestation — his claim that Ho Chi Minh was inspired by America’s Founding Fathers — suggests that Obama’s ignorance is to some extent willful.
Appeals court upholds ruling slapping down Mayor Bloomberg’s soda ban
An appeals court today dealt another blow to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposed soda ban, calling the controversial regulation “invalid” because it violates “the principle of separation of powers.”
Regionalism: Obama’s Quiet Anti-Suburban Revolution
The consensus response to President Obama’s Knox College speech on the economy is that the administration has been reduced to pushing a menu of stale and timid policies that, in any case, won’t be enacted. But what if the administration isn’t actually out of ideas? What if Obama’s boldest policy initiative is merely something he’d rather not discuss? And what if that initiative is being enacted right now?
San Antonio May Impose Anti-Christian Viewpoint Discrimination
Homosexuals constitute a tiny fragment of the population, and in a morally degenerating culture, have very little to complain about. Why is their agenda suddenly such an urgent priority for the leftists running the government and media? Because as community organizers like to say, the issue is never the issue. The “gay rights” jihad isn’t about perverted sexual practices; it is about the power to impose an ideology by government force. It is also about crushing Christianity, a traditional bulwark against the tyranny of statism.
San Antonio Proposal Could Bar Christians From City Council
Churches across San Antonio are expressing outrage over a proposed anti-discrimination law that would protect LGBT workers but would not provide a religious exemption and would effectively prohibit anyone who opposes homosexuality from holding public office or getting a city contract.
Gov’t Knows Best? White House creates ‘nudge squad’ to shape behavior
The federal government is hiring what it calls a “Behavioral Insights Team” that will look for ways to subtly influence people’s behavior, according to a document describing the program obtained by FoxNews.com. Critics warn there could be unintended consequences to such policies, while supporters say the team could make government and society more efficient.
Dave Camp weighing Michigan Senate bid
GOP Rep. Dave Camp is considering a possible Senate run in Michigan in 2014, a move that could put in play another Democratic seat heading into next year’s midterm elections.
Demented California Bill Has Children Selecting Their Gender
Political correctness doesn’t strive to destroy American civilization only at a surface level. The poison targets the very roots of our identity, so that we will doubt not only our morality, our history, or traditions, and our patriotism, but our very physical bodies. A new bill indicates how the campaign against sexual sanity is progressing in the liberal dystopia of California. As always with perverts and their liberal champions, a heavy emphasis is placed on corrupting children.
Ark.’s Cotton to run for US Senate
Arkansas Republican Rep. Tom Cotton plans to announce his bid next week to challenge two-term incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor in next year’s elections, according to a person familiar with the congressman’s plans.
Armed agents raid animal shelter for baby deer
WISN 12 News investigates an operation raising questions about the use of government resources and the state policy that meant a death sentence for a fawn.
Seattle Looks to Ban ‘Potentially Offensive’ Language
From now on, words and phrases such as “brown bag lunch” and “citizens” will be off-limits for Seattle government employees. The city’s Office of Civil Rights sent out a memo this week advising employees to refrain from using “potentially offensive” language in the workplace and in official government documents.
Obama’s Regionalist Revolution, Step Two
Earlier this week I wrote about California’s new regionalist initiative, Plan Bay Area, as a harbinger of President Obama’s attempt to densify America’s cities and undercut the political and economic independence of the suburbs.
Psychology Prof Murdered His Family: Career Unaffected
James St. James of Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois didn’t bomb NYPD headquarters, the Capitol, and the Pentagon or mentor Barack Hussein Obama like prominent education profession Bill Ayers, but his history comes close:
Last week a Texas newspaper reported that psychology Professor James St. James shot and killed his father, mother and teenage sister in 1967. He was 15-years-old at the time.
Economy
& Taxes
DOOM: Sag mir, wo die DOOMen sind?
It’s been a long time since the last DOOM, my groovy babies. It’s not due to any lack of DOOM to report, I assure you. It’s just that my Kyrgyz prison cell did not have internet access. But now that I have escaped my unjust bondage, I am free once again to bring the DOOM train to your cities and towns, bearing a heavy load of bad economic news.
Signs of declining economic security
Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.
Economy not on Organizing for Action’s ‘Action August’ agenda
Organizing for Action, the nonprofit organization assembled from the remnants of President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, is pushing for the president’s second-term agenda during a month-long “Action August” of advocacy and fundraising — but don’t expect to hear about the economy.
This is What Budget Cuts Have Done to Detroit … And It’s Freaking Awesome
The language of budget cuts, austerity, and sequestration seem to dominate the media’s landscape these days, instilling fear into Americans of vital government services being cut and chaos ensuing if governments aren’t allowed to spend and borrow infinitely. Conservatives decry supposed cuts to the military-industrial-complex, and liberals bemoan that without government welfare transfer programs, there would be social Darwinism. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) even blamed the Benghazi scandal on — wait for it — budget cuts and the sequester.
Going For Broke: Is Los Angeles Headed in the Same Direction as Detroit?
California Pension Reform President Dan Pellissier thinks our pension liabilities could have us filing for chapter eleven in two to three years. City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana isn’t so sure
China slowdown digs a hole for US industrials
Industrial companies from Caterpillar to Norfolk Southern have felt the effects of the China economic slowdown and the knock-on effects it is having on commodities.
Obama’s Economics – Equality At The Zero
If It Isn’t Growing It Is Probably Dying
Los Angeles: The Poster City for Finding New Ways to Waste Money
Los Angeles’ Department of Water and Power has paid thousands of employees a total of $35.5 million since 2010 in extra sick days under an unusual program that the utility’s top executive acknowledges has been vulnerable to abuse.
Econo-genius Matt Yglesias: In business, taxes are ‘irrelevant to pricing’
The Saddest Chart: Young Americans Are Simply Dropping Out
How might we describe, in general terms, American young adulthood? For anyone inclined to despair of humanity’s future in the postwar period, Americans 25 to 35 have proved the great savior. In Greece, they’re eating mother’s moussaka. In France, they are in les rues wearing tight t-shirts and protesting unfair tuition prices. In Russia, they are drunk. In America, they’re working incredibly hard to get ahead. As though ahead were somewhere desirable! When I travel overseas and meet folks my age (27) the same telling confusion pops up, every time: they make reference to their house–inviting us over for drinks, or something–which prompts me, impressed, to say “Congratulations–so what do you do?” And they reply, “I mean my parents’ house.” “Ah.”
Obama: Top Tax Rate Should Be 28% for Corporations, 40% for Small Businesses
The New York Times reports that President Obama is reviving an old proposal to lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent (and 25 percent for manufacturers). Obama’s push to lower the corporate tax rate to 28 percent comes less than a year after he raised the top individual income tax rate, paid by many small businesses, to 39.6 percent.
International
Egypt unrest: ‘Scores killed’ in Cairo protest
More than 100 people have been killed at a protest supporting ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi in Cairo, doctors say.
South Australian Parliament rejects state-based same-sex marriage
The South Australia Parliament today voted down a private members’ bill for state-based same-sex marriage.
South African White ANC MP Assaulted and Strangled by Black Criminals
One of South Africa’s current white ANC Members of Parliament, Sue van der Merwe, 58, is recovering after being attacked and strangled to unconsciousness in her luxury Cape Town home, police in that city have said.
Cambodian Election Turmoil Spells Trouble for China
Cambodians went to the polls this weekend, and a surprisingly large number of them voted against the party of Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has been in power for 28 years and is a former junior commander in the Khmer Rouge. The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, led by Sam Rainsy, a human rights activist who recently returned to his country after almost a decade in exile, more than doubled its number of seats in parliament from 26 to 55, while Hun Sen’s party lost 22 seats, its worst defeat to date.
Pakistan’s Musharraf to Face Bhutto Murder Charge
Former President Will Be Charged Next Week, Lawyer Says
Man who revealed tattoo is arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred
A spokesman for West Midlands police said: ‘A 39-year-old man has been arrested in South Tyneside on behalf of West Midlands Police on suspicion of using words or behavior, or displaying written material with intent to stir up racial hatred.’
U.K.: ‘Armageddon’ speech prepared for queen Natalie DiBlasio, USA TODAY
If a nuclear war had broken out in 1983, Queen Elizabeth II would have known just what to say.
Assad regime ammunition goes up in a huge fireball
A stockpile of ammunition which was earmarked for the destruction of Homs city goes up in a huge fireball.
Opinion
Patterico’s Rules for Talking to White People About Race, Or, Why I’m Not Interested in a “National Conversation” About Race
So yesterday I saw this tweet from Slate‘s Will Saletan. I went to the linked article, by Jenée Desmond-Harris of TheRoot.com, a black online magazine run in part by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. with corporate ties to Slate and the Washington Post. It is a “nonexhaustive list of ground rules and reminders” for conducting our “national conversation on race.” Given the site where it appeared, you will probably not be surprised to learn that Ms. Desmond-Harris’s piece reads like a list of things white people had better not say to black people.
Obama quietly pushes forward with anti-suburban campaign
I wrote here about President Obama’s plans to redistribute wealth from the suburbs to the cities, as exposed by Stanley Kurtz in his book Spreading The Wealth: How Obama Is Robbing The Suburbs To Pay For the Cites. Stanley returns to this theme in a post about the latest element of the president’s regionalist policy — the July 19 publication of a Department of Housing and Urban Development regulation broadening the obligation of recipients of federal aid to “affirmatively further fair housing.”
Ashamed of Patriotism
The 9/11 museum director’s revulsion at patriotism is part of a larger collapse in national confidence.
Hispanic win: ‘California can be Republican again’
According to the logic of politics, Leticia Perez should have handily won the heavily Democratic and Hispanic district in California’s central valley, and her failure to do so has Republicans eager to develop a victory template for struggling GOP candidates elsewhere in the deep-blue state and across the country.
Who Can Deny It? Obamacare Is Accelerating U.S. Towards A Part-Time Nation
Denialism may be too strong a term. But there seem to be a lot of people arguing that Obamacare has little or nothing to do with the rise in part-time employment. Some deny the rise is even happening, while others are content to deny that Obamacare is the culprit. Admittedly, it takes a little detective work, but if we systematically review the available empirical evidence in an even-handed fashion, the conclusion seems inescapable: Obamacare is accelerating a disturbing trend towards “a nation of part-timers.” This is not good news for America.
‘No-Government’ Conservatives and the Meta-Narrative
The key to understanding the Left is knowing that they inhabit a Manichean fantasy world in which history is controlled by roiling, magical forces, in which signs, symbols, and portents are more important than empirical reality and in which their opponents are not just wrong but evil. They see life as a zero-sum game of winners and losers, with themselves cast as the heroes of their own overarching ur-Narrative, from which all other their other dialectic narratives (rich vs. poor, black vs. white, “privileged” vs. the undeserving poor, the “war on women,” etc.) flow.
Obama’s Eternal Critique
“Critique” has a specific meaning and I intend that meaning. As Marx said of his plan for an endless critique of the German social order, so as to undermine it, and permit the conditions for revolution
Obama’s ‘Grand Bargain’ With Obama
He proposes tax reform with higher taxes and not much reform.
Mitch Daniels’s Gift to Academic Freedom
His skepticism about the merits of a sacrosanct liberal history textbook has sparked an overdue debate.
Detroit’s death by democracy
In 1860, an uneasy Charles Darwin confided in a letter to a friend: “I had no intention to write atheistically” but “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.” What appalled him had fascinated entomologist William Kirby (1759-1850): The ichneumon fly inserts an egg in a caterpillar, and the larva hatched from the egg, he said, “gnaws the inside of the caterpillar, and though at last it has devoured almost every part of it except the skin and intestines, carefully all this time avoids injuring the vital organs, as if aware that its own existence depends on that of the insect on which it preys!”
How Coleman Young Ruined Detroit
Many observers, including us, have written about how Detroit’s slavish devotion to liberalism, unions and the Democratic Party ruined that once-great city. But one malefactor stands out above all others: Coleman Young, former organizer for the UAW, whom the union booted for being too radical, and who went on to become Detroit’s long-time mayor.
It’s Always Selma Again
On the cheapening of civil-rights history.
The Beholden State: Reclaiming California’s Lost Promise
California is at a tipping point. Severe budget deficits, unsustainable pension costs, heavy taxes, cumbersome regulation, struggling cities, and distressed public schools are but a few of the challenges that policymakers must address for the state to remain a beacon of business innovation and economic opportunity. In this video, the cracks in California’s flawed policy plans are displayed and analyzed by a diverse set of experts in the state’s design.
Friedrich Engels Was an Entitled Jerk
Nice cravat. Prussian louse Friedrich Engels, you probably recall from an ornery high school history teacher pining for his resurrection, was one of the fathers of communism. That’s a common way to describe Engels, but it’s even more accurate when you recall that Engels bankrolled the perpetually financially floundering Karl Marx. They did co-author The Communist Manifesto together, but the relationship seemed, more or less, to be one in which Engels constantly made donations to the Karl Marx Charity Fund.
Frederick Douglass Republicans Are Fighting To Win Hearts, Minds & The Masses
Meet the messenger bringing the Grandfather of the Civil Rights Movement’s message back to the Republican Party
The Underloved Reginald Heber
Reginald Heber was from 1823 to 1826, when he died prematurely at age 42, the Anglican Church’s Bishop of Calcutta. He was also a more or less superb lyricist. Although he wrote the “Holy, Holy, Holy” still used on certain days in the Anglican rite, most of his poetic output has been–I don’t want to say lost to the ages, because nothing has been lost. What has happened is that much of Heber, once a staple of boys’ textbooks all over the British Empire, has simply been censored. But what’s a touch of provincialism next to a glistening verse style, I always say.
