Saturday, August 30, 2014
Criminalizing Conservatism
Criminalizing Conservatism
In Scott Walker’s Wisconsin, prosecutors would shut down all conservative activity.
By Jon Cassidy – 8.29.14
Wisconsin has created a new type of political supervillain by combining the most reprehensible attributes of this nation’s two most infamous ogres of the last century — Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon.
Start with McCarthy’s reckless and unsubstantiated allegations against random names on a list, his endless investigations that produced nothing but press coverage and ruined lives. Then take Nixon’s vindictiveness, his desire to use the mechanisms of state to crush his political enemies, and remove the legal impediments that kept him from doing much about it. Give him laws like Wisconsin’s.
There never would have been any Cubans breaking into the Watergate to take a look at the files of the Democratic National Committee or plant bugs. G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt could have just written subpoenas for whatever they wanted without restriction. When there’s nobody to stop them, it turns out that what they want to look at is everything.
Newly unsealed federal court documents show that a crew of local prosecutors — Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, a Democrat, his assistants, Bruce Landgraf and David Robles, a figurehead special prosecutor named Francis Schmitz, and a contract investigator named Dean Nickel — have exploited state law to seize “more or less all” the records of the Wisconsin Club for Growth and every other conservative group in the state dating back to 2009 as part of a boundless investigation of their own wild hunches.
Despite their unhindered access to the complete inner workings of the conservative movement in Wisconsin, these prosecutors have come up with nothing. They say they’re looking into campaign finance violations, but the facts they’ve compiled don’t even amount to “probable cause” to believe a crime has taken place, according to the state court that finally halted the investigation earlier this year. For one reason, the “issue ads” that the Wisconsin Club for Growth ran in defense of the state’s collective bargaining reforms “cannot be and are not subject to Wisconsin’s campaign finance laws,” according to a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph T. Randa.
But prosecutors knew that before they started. In a sense, they’re trying to prove murder when they know nobody died. The distinction between issue advocacy, which is constitutionally protected free speech, and express advocacy of a candidate, which may be regulated to prevent corruption, has been around since 1976, and is understood by just about everyone, even these prosecutors. The local media don’t get it, but what else is new?
The prosecutors’ real intent in having armed officers in flak vests storming homes at dawn and in issuing as many as 100 subpoenas to 29 different right-of-center organizations is to shut down conservatives in Wisconsin, according to the plaintiffs. And in that, they’ve been wildly successful, as all of the most active conservative groups are off the airwaves and taking few phone calls from their fellows, lest they get hit with new subpoenas and criminal accusations.
In February, the Wisconsin Club for Growth and its founder, Eric O’Keefe, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit, arguing that the prosecutors were abusing their offices and targeting them for their expression of political opinions. Randa seems inclined to agree, and he dismissed the prosecutors’ argument that they were protected by absolute sovereign immunity for a fitting reason: apparently, if you haven’t established probable cause to go kicking in someone’s door, there’s a chance you might be held liable for your intrusions.
In legal briefs, O’Keefe’s attorneys compare the prosecutors to officials in Louisiana under Jim Crow, taking passages from a 1965 Supreme Court ruling that are perfectly apt here. In that case,
[T]he Court acted to enjoin state officials from prosecuting or threatening to prosecute a civil rights group and its leaders as part of “a plan to employ arrests, seizures, and threats of prosecution under color of the statutes to harass appellants and discourage them and their supporters from asserting and attempting to vindicate the constitutional rights of Negro citizens of Louisiana.” These actions, the Court held, were undertaken specifically to impose a “chilling effect on free expression.” In particular, the state officials’ actions were calculated to “frighten off potential members and contributors”; their “[s]eizures of documents and records have paralyzed operations and threatened exposure of the identity of adherents to a locally unpopular cause”; and “the continuing threat of prosecution portends further arrests and seizures, some of which may be upheld and all of which will cause the organization inconvenience or worse.”
So add a little Bull Connor to our McCarthy/Nixon hybrid, and
Krauthammer Shocked by Obama's "No Strategy" for ISIS"
Krauthammer Shocked by Obama's "No Strategy" for ISIS"
Responding to the President Obama’s announcement in a news conference Thursday that he had "no strategy" for dealing with ISIS in Syria, Charles Krauthammer condemned the president’s “do nothing” foreign policy and advised him that if he really doesn’t have a strategy, at very least don’t broadcast it to the world.
On “Special Report with Breit Baier” Thursday, a “shocked” Krauthammer slammed the president for getting in front of cameras and announcing to the world his lack of a plan for addressing ISIS in Syria:
I thought that the president could no longer surprise me. I was wrong. He shocked me today. The President of the United States, in the middle of a real crisis, a few days after the beheading of an American—deliberately sort of spiting in the face of the country and demonstrating its cruelty—the president gets in front of the world and says, “I don't have a strategy.” If that is true, don't say anything. Why do you announce you don't have a strategy?
Krauthammer argued that what was even worse was the president’s inaction on Ukraine, where he has let yet another “red line” be crossed with no real consequences, allowing Russia to orchestrate an “incursion” (the Obama administration refuses now to use the term “invasion”) with only the passive announcement Thursday that he was waiting to “chat with allies next week”:
He basically said on Ukraine, “I do have a strategy. The strategy is to do absolutely nothing.” He said, you know. “Russia is only hurting itself. I can see that”—the rest of the world probably will see it later, but he can see that. “Russia has stupidly declined to take all the off-ramps I’ve offered it in Ukraine, it’s only losing, it’s more isolated in Ukraine.” And he basically said, we're going to do nothing, “I'll wait until I chat with the allies next week."
I though he had a phone. How about picking up the phone and talking with the allies? You know, the phone is a way to communicate rather rapidly.
Krauthammer went on to argue that Russia’s “incursion” was “obviously an invasion,” and one in response to which Obama should have at least announced the sanctions he’s been threatening “for months” instead of further reinforcing the dangerous international message that his administration is content to sit on the sidelines.
Obama said there's nothing new here, move along - as if the sending of a column of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and self-repelled artillery into Ukraine is not what it obviously is—it's an invasion.
Responding to the President Obama’s announcement in a news conference Thursday that he had "no strategy" for dealing with ISIS in Syria, Charles Krauthammer condemned the president’s “do nothing” foreign policy and advised him that if he really doesn’t have a strategy, at very least don’t broadcast it to the world.
On “Special Report with Breit Baier” Thursday, a “shocked” Krauthammer slammed the president for getting in front of cameras and announcing to the world his lack of a plan for addressing ISIS in Syria:
I thought that the president could no longer surprise me. I was wrong. He shocked me today. The President of the United States, in the middle of a real crisis, a few days after the beheading of an American—deliberately sort of spiting in the face of the country and demonstrating its cruelty—the president gets in front of the world and says, “I don't have a strategy.” If that is true, don't say anything. Why do you announce you don't have a strategy?
Krauthammer argued that what was even worse was the president’s inaction on Ukraine, where he has let yet another “red line” be crossed with no real consequences, allowing Russia to orchestrate an “incursion” (the Obama administration refuses now to use the term “invasion”) with only the passive announcement Thursday that he was waiting to “chat with allies next week”:
He basically said on Ukraine, “I do have a strategy. The strategy is to do absolutely nothing.” He said, you know. “Russia is only hurting itself. I can see that”—the rest of the world probably will see it later, but he can see that. “Russia has stupidly declined to take all the off-ramps I’ve offered it in Ukraine, it’s only losing, it’s more isolated in Ukraine.” And he basically said, we're going to do nothing, “I'll wait until I chat with the allies next week."
I though he had a phone. How about picking up the phone and talking with the allies? You know, the phone is a way to communicate rather rapidly.
Krauthammer went on to argue that Russia’s “incursion” was “obviously an invasion,” and one in response to which Obama should have at least announced the sanctions he’s been threatening “for months” instead of further reinforcing the dangerous international message that his administration is content to sit on the sidelines.
Obama said there's nothing new here, move along - as if the sending of a column of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and self-repelled artillery into Ukraine is not what it obviously is—it's an invasion.
You're The Problem, America ...
You're The Problem, America ...
A few weeks back, when Secretary of State Kerry was defending the administration’s impenetrably “nuanced” position on the Israel/Hamas unpleasantness, he, in a fit of pique, asked rhetorically if the US wanted to go back to the Bush years. I must confess a twinge of sympathy for the man. We voted for this nonsense. Twice.
This is not directed to anyone who voted for McCain in 2008 or Romney in 2012. This is for all “undecideds,” independents, purist holier-than-thou conservatives and delusional Ronulan libertarians who think perfect Randian objectivism and our current society with its attendant welfare state can co-exist. What, exactly, did you think was going to happen with this President leading this incarnation of the Democratic party which essentially tore this country in two over the Iraq War? Your support of the Dems and belief in the erstwhile “missteps” of the Bush administration or your abstention at the voting booth caused this mess.
Do not blame the media. Do not blame the “hype” which oversold this man to you. One word: “Google.” That’s it. Even a cursory look at President Obama’s background would disqualify him from a lowly “secret” security clearance - never mind the rarefied air of an SCI clearance. It’s the subtext of virtually every press conference or interview with an admin official. You can read it in their faces when asked about ISIS or Afghanistan or Hamas: “What exactly did you think I was going to do?”
Iraq. The accepted wisdom on the subject, accepted even by some conservatives who were upset over the lack of WMD stockpiles and that fostering a consensual society in the Middle East wasn’t over in two weeks at the cost of $3 million and no casualties, was that it was THE. WORST. THING. to happen. Ever. Was there any doubt he’d declare victory and just leave the field? Vietnam and now Iraq - two wars won on the battlefield which were then lost due to a certain party’s predilection toward defeat as the only form of martial virtue. We can only thank God that the America of the 1950s was the society that it was - otherwise we’d see a “united” [read: totalitarian slave state] Korea.
Afghanistan. When listening to Obama rail about Afghanistan as the “real” war - what amount of credulity would be needed to take the man at his word? To say the man is deeply skeptical about America’s role in the world is to understate the facts. We can expect dyed-in-the-wool Dems-wealthy champagne socialists and the intergenerational poor to pull the lever for the guy with a “D” next to his name; but all others on the fence that voted for this nullity cannot be let off the hook so easily. Democracy only works if voters inform themselves, not rail about how no member of the media came to your house in October 2008 or October 2012 and gave you a PowerPoint presentation on the man’s ideological background.
The “recovery.” Never has a man done so little with so much and claimed more undeserved credit. Here’s the thing: If President Obama, the Congress and most of the government simply went home in January 2009 there was going to be a recovery. And the recovery would’ve been much stronger than the meager one we experienced. It’s a dirty little secret that the government doesn’t want you to know about- the free [ish] market economy is pretty much on autopilot. The government’s main role is to cut taxes, lessen regulation and watch prosperity follow. However, the President knows he can borrow a trillion dollars, impair the sinews of capitalism, pay back his union and public sector constituencies and still call it an “investment” [remember , the government doesn’t spend, it “invests”] or a “stimulus” package.
Healthcare? Where to begin? There are no perfect options. The pre-ACA system had flaws. Most of these flaws were due to government and insurance company interference in the market- hence you don’t know what anything really costs. However, paying completely out of pocket or a barter system [per Sharron Angle] are not going to work for most of us with 21st Century medicine. I understand that malpractice liability, government regulations and mandates and insurance company overhead may inflate the price of surgery- but I can’t see retaining a world class surgeon for an operation on a payment installment plan or having providers market themselves like car dealers in order to win your healthcare dollar. So the status quo was as good as could be hoped for.
But President Obama and Hillary Clinton ran on the premise that most Americans, specifically all the ones with the with good sense to vote for them, could pay less in taxes, create no more doctors, not ration care and cover EVERYBODY! Voters - electioneering perfidy and mainstream media obsequiousness aside - does this sound even remotely credible to you? Be adults. Engage your critical faculties and vote accordingly.
Michael Dansen is the nom de plume for a political media professional based in Washington, DC.
David Cameron: ‘We Need to Tackle the Ideology of Islamist Extremism Head On’
David Cameron: ‘We Need to Tackle the Ideology of Islamist Extremism Head On’
By Charles C. W. Cooke
August 29, 2014
British Prime Minister David Cameron today addressed growing concerns about ISIL, noting that the British government had raised its threat level from “substantial” to “severe.” While declining to endorse military action, Cameron struck a serious pose.
“What we are facing in Iraq now with ISIL,” he continued, “is a greater and deeper threat to our security than what we have known before.”
On more than on occasion he suggested that that threat “comes from the poisonous narrative of Islamist extremism” and not from the fallout of the Iraq War or from global poverty. Moreover, Cameron suggested that the “mistakes” of the past should not be seen as an indication that force was always inappropriate. On the contrary:
” ISIL, he suggested, cannot be “appeased,” adding that the civilized world cannot permit the existence of a “terrorist state on the shores of the Mediterranean.”
Cameron also noted that “openness” does not accommodate “intolerance,” and hinted that there is no place for people in Britain who won’t assimilate. “Adhering to British values,” he said, “is not an option or a choice, it is a duty for those living in these islands.”
Advice on Strategy From DilbertAdvice on Strategy From Dilbert
Posted on August 29, 2014 by John Hinderaker in Obama Foreign Policy
Advice on Strategy From Dilbert
President Obama can’t come up with a strategy to deal with ISIS. It’s just so…complicated. Here’s an idea: how about if we kill them?
I don’t suppose Obama will go with that one. But hey: even Dilbert has a better grasp of strategy than our clueless president:
OK, it may not be optimal, but it’s better than anything the Obama administration has come up with!
Reassurance From Alfred E. Obama
Reassurance From Alfred E. Obama
Our 'What, Me Worry' President reassures his well-heeled supporters that these current foreign policy distractions are just distractions:
Obama: Media makes you think ‘world is falling apart’
President Obama on Friday said social media and the nightly news are partly to blame for the sense that “the world is falling apart.”
"I can see why a lot of folks are troubled," Obama told a group of donors gathered at a Democratic National Committee barbecue in Purchase, N.Y.
But the president said that current foreign policy crises across the world are not comparable to the challenges the U.S. faced during the Cold War.
Acknowledging "the barbarity" of Islamist militants and Russia "reasserting the notion that might means right," Obama, though, dismissed the notion that he was facing unprecedented challenges.
“The world’s always been messy ... we’re just noticing now in part because of social media,” he said, according to a White House pool report.
“If you watch the nightly news, it feels like the world is falling apart,” said Obama.
He's right! The original Cold War is over, and we aren't protesting the Vietnam war or eyeballing Russia over nukes in Cuba (or Germany)! So, per Obama, are you better off now than you were forty years ago?
And please - don't ask whether we seem safer now than we were three years ago, when Obama claimed "we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq", or six - the world has always been messy. Russia invading a neighbor that borders NATO? Been there! An Islamic terror state in the heart of the Middle East? Done that! There is nothing that Barry hasn't seen before, so chillax. Like him.
And did I hear a question about ISIS? Don't ask. In Britain they are raising the terror alert level because so many ISIS members have British passports, but not over here:
The alarm in Britain contrasted with reassurances in the United States, where Mr. Obama told supporters at a fund-raiser in Newport, R.I., that the tumult in the Middle East did not “immediately threaten the homeland” and added that the country had hardened its defenses since Sept. 11, 2001, so that it is “pretty safe.”
We're "pretty safe"! Well, Obama certainly is - he has the Secret Service and I guess there is no intel suggesting ISIS has managed to plant IEDs on golf carts. Send in the clowns? We have to wake them up first.
The WaPo editors are exhorting Obama to talk to his own team, including his Secretary of State and Attorney General:
Similarly, his senior advisers uniformly have warned of the unprecedented threat to America and Americans represented by Islamic extremists in Syria and Iraq. But Mr. Obama didn’t seem to agree. “Now, ISIL [the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] poses an immediate threat to the people of Iraq and to people throughout the region,” he said. “My priority at this point is to make sure that the gains that ISIL made in Iraq are rolled back.” Contrast that ambition with this vow from Secretary of State John F. Kerry: “And make no mistake: We will continue to confront ISIL wherever it tries to spread its despicable hatred. The world must know that the United States of America will never back down in the face of such evil.”
The discrepancies raise the question of whether Mr. Obama controls his own administration, but that’s not the most disturbing element. His advisers are only stating the obvious: Russia has invaded Ukraine. The Islamic State and the Americans it is training are a danger to the United States. When Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. says the threat they pose is “in some ways . . . more frightening than anything I think I’ve seen as attorney general,” it’s not because he is a warmonger or an alarmist. He’s describing the world as he sees it. When Mr. Obama refuses to acknowledge the reality, allies naturally wonder whether he will also refuse to respond to it.
Well, that is just more media noise, and why Holder and Kerry are contributing to it I don't know. And for whatever reaason, Kerry takes up space in the NY Times (on the Saturday of a holiday weekend) to spread a message of fear:
IN a polarized region and a complicated world, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria presents a unifying threat to a broad array of countries, including the United States. What’s needed to confront its nihilistic vision and genocidal agenda is a global coalition using political, humanitarian, economic, law enforcement and intelligence tools to support military force.
In addition to its beheadings, crucifixions and other acts of sheer evil, which have killed thousands of innocents in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, including Sunni Muslims whose faith it purports to represent, ISIS (which the United States government calls ISIL, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) poses a threat well beyond the region.
He leaves us laughing:
Coalition building is hard work, but it is the best way to tackle a common enemy. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the first President George Bush and Secretary of State James A. Baker III did not act alone or in haste. They methodically assembled a coalition of countries whose concerted action brought a quick victory.
Extremists are defeated only when responsible nations and their peoples unite to oppose them.
Bush, Baker and Thatcher - do we see their like today? And if memory serves (and I know it does!), Kerry felt obliged to vote for the war in Iraq in 2003 because he voted against the Bush coalition in 1990. Say it with me - he was against the Bush Middle East coalition beofe he was for it.
Friday, August 29, 2014
Obama’s animus (Towards Israel)
Posted on August 28, 2014 by Scott Johnson in Arab Israel conflict, Barack Obama, Israel
Obama’s animus
No surprise here, but I had overlooked what Peter Wehner has extracted from the Jerusalem Post:
Speaking extensively on US relations with Jerusalem since the end of the latest round of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians last April, and throughout Operation Protective Edge, a candid [former US special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations Martin] Indyk said at times US President Barack Obama has become “enraged” at the Israeli government, both for its actions and for its treatment of his chief diplomat, US Secretary of State John Kerry… Gaza has had “very negative impact” on US-Israel relations, he continued. “The personal relationship between the president and the prime minister has been fraught for some time and it’s become more complicated by recent events.”
Wehner comments:
Think about this for a moment. In a neighborhood featuring Hamas, ISIS, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran, just to name a few of the actors, President Obama was “enraged” at … Israel. That’s right, Israel–our stalwart ally, a lighthouse of liberty, lawfulness, and human rights in a region characterized by despotism, and a nation filled with people who long for peace and have done so much for so long to sacrifice for it (including repeatedly returning and offering to return its land in exchange for peace).
Yet Mr. Obama–a man renowned for his lack of strong feelings, his emotional equanimity, his disengagement and distance from events, who New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd refers to as “Spock” for his Vulcan-like detachment–is not just upset but “enraged” at Israel.
Wehner adds: “It’s clear to me, and by now it should be to others, that there is something sinister in Barack Obama’s constant anger aimed at Israel.” As I say, no surprise — Obama’s animus against Israel is unsavory and overdetermined — but it is good to have Wehner say it right out loud (whole thing here).
Obama’s animus
No surprise here, but I had overlooked what Peter Wehner has extracted from the Jerusalem Post:
Speaking extensively on US relations with Jerusalem since the end of the latest round of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians last April, and throughout Operation Protective Edge, a candid [former US special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations Martin] Indyk said at times US President Barack Obama has become “enraged” at the Israeli government, both for its actions and for its treatment of his chief diplomat, US Secretary of State John Kerry… Gaza has had “very negative impact” on US-Israel relations, he continued. “The personal relationship between the president and the prime minister has been fraught for some time and it’s become more complicated by recent events.”
Wehner comments:
Think about this for a moment. In a neighborhood featuring Hamas, ISIS, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran, just to name a few of the actors, President Obama was “enraged” at … Israel. That’s right, Israel–our stalwart ally, a lighthouse of liberty, lawfulness, and human rights in a region characterized by despotism, and a nation filled with people who long for peace and have done so much for so long to sacrifice for it (including repeatedly returning and offering to return its land in exchange for peace).
Yet Mr. Obama–a man renowned for his lack of strong feelings, his emotional equanimity, his disengagement and distance from events, who New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd refers to as “Spock” for his Vulcan-like detachment–is not just upset but “enraged” at Israel.
Wehner adds: “It’s clear to me, and by now it should be to others, that there is something sinister in Barack Obama’s constant anger aimed at Israel.” As I say, no surprise — Obama’s animus against Israel is unsavory and overdetermined — but it is good to have Wehner say it right out loud (whole thing here).
Politics Trumps Governance
Good politics trumps good governance, again
Bruce A Babcock | The Hill
August 27, 2014
Article Highlights
• The 2014 farm bill provides a timely case study of the relevance of Becker’s theory. Tweet Thi
• Indirect damage arises from lost opportunities to reduce tax burdens or to fund programs that serve
both farmers’ & the public’s interest. Tweet This
• No economic problem is solved by subsidizing farmers. Tweet This
• Farm programs exist not because the public’s interest is being served but because the private interests
of Congress are being served Tweet This
The current so-called “do-nothing Congress” has an impressive resume of legislation left on the table: corporate tax reform, the budget, and the border crisis. Yet it was able to pass a trillion dollar 2014 farm bill. Why did the farm bill pass when so many other pieces of legislation didn’t?
It would be nice if Congress’s passage of the 2014 farm bill—and its creation of two new subsidy programs—indicated the arrival at a cost-effective solution to a problem that required federal involvement. Unfortunately, it seems that good politics trumped good governance—and there’s an explanation as to why.
About thirty years ago Nobel Prize recipient Gary Becker developed a theory explaining the two attributes political programs that gain enough political support to pass will have. First, they will do less damage to the economy than alternatives because economic damage gives political ammunition to opponents. Second, they can be disguised as good governance rather than good politics to deflect criticisms of their true purpose.
The 2014 farm bill, that substituted two new farm subsidy programs for two old ones, provides a timely case study of the relevance of Becker’s theory. The new programs the bill created—Price Loss Coverage and Agricultural Risk Coverage—were largely designed by House and Senate leadership with direct input from representatives of the beneficiaries of the programs.
Frank Lucas, chairman of the House Ag Committee (R-Okla.) stated the rationale for farm programs widely adopted by subsidy supporters:
“While they (farmers) do the hard work of producing our food, we have to do our part to support them. Without a safety net, a few bad seasons can put a farm out of business. When we lose that source of production, we don’t usually get it back. So maybe instead of speaking about this as a farm safety net, we need to start calling it a food safety net. Perhaps that will get the message out that commodity support keeps farmers in business, which keeps food on our plates.”
His rationale is easy to state and understand, and it allows supporters to argue that farm programs deserved taxpayer support because the public interest is served.
Yet in resolving the dilemma over whether the new subsidy programs would be tied to current crops and acreage or to a fixed number of acres based on what crops were previously planted, Lucas’s rationale was not implemented. His rationale for farm safety net programs would predict use of current acres because that would best compensate farmers for current financial losses. Becker’s rationale for farm programs, however, would predict that the new programs would use historical acreage because farmers would not have an incentive to plant for the program; thus economic damage—and the resulting political opposition—would be limited. The final decision to use historical plantings, insisted upon by leading Senate members of the 2014 farm bill conference committee, is consistent with Becker’s prediction of the importance of economic damage in determining the extent of political opposition.
Becker’s prediction that actual economic damage from new farm programs would be limited is borne out. But indirect damage arises from lost opportunities to reduce tax burdens or to fund programs that serve both farmers’ and the public’s interest. Examples include agricultural research, agricultural pollution prevention, invasive species control, transportation investments, food quality and food safety inspections, and nutrition programs.
This moves us to the second part of Becker’s theory: good politics disguised as good governance. A lack of food supply doesn’t seem to be a problem. Record crop income in recent years and subsequent record high land prices make it absurd to argue that crop subsidies are needed to maintain agricultural production capabilities in the United States. The argument that food security depends on crop subsidies is belied by the 50 percent of US corn production diverted to ethanol and exports and the 50 percent of US wheat production that is exported.
The fact that no economic problem is solved by subsidizing farmers demonstrates that farm programs exist not because the public’s interest is being served but rather because the private interests of Congress are being served. It is no wonder that record farm income had no real impact on the question of whether farm subsidies would continue.
Becker would predict that cutting farm subsidies to better serve the broad public interest will not happen without a dramatic increase in the political power of groups advocating for the public good. This is not likely to happen, given the diffuse nature of public good benefits and the highly targeted nature of the current subsidy programs to a relatively small number of farm households.
The 2014 farm bill limited visible economic damage, as Becker predicts. This kept the political climate amenable to its passage. But the many indirect economic damages show that the bill is better politics than better governance. Just as Becker’s theory states,
Congress abdicated its responsibility to serve the public interest because politics demanded that private influential interests be served first.
Babcock is a professor of economics at Iowa State University and a contributor for the American Enterprise Institute’s agricultural policy research program.
Bruce A Babcock | The Hill
August 27, 2014
Article Highlights
• The 2014 farm bill provides a timely case study of the relevance of Becker’s theory. Tweet Thi
• Indirect damage arises from lost opportunities to reduce tax burdens or to fund programs that serve
both farmers’ & the public’s interest. Tweet This
• No economic problem is solved by subsidizing farmers. Tweet This
• Farm programs exist not because the public’s interest is being served but because the private interests
of Congress are being served Tweet This
The current so-called “do-nothing Congress” has an impressive resume of legislation left on the table: corporate tax reform, the budget, and the border crisis. Yet it was able to pass a trillion dollar 2014 farm bill. Why did the farm bill pass when so many other pieces of legislation didn’t?
It would be nice if Congress’s passage of the 2014 farm bill—and its creation of two new subsidy programs—indicated the arrival at a cost-effective solution to a problem that required federal involvement. Unfortunately, it seems that good politics trumped good governance—and there’s an explanation as to why.
About thirty years ago Nobel Prize recipient Gary Becker developed a theory explaining the two attributes political programs that gain enough political support to pass will have. First, they will do less damage to the economy than alternatives because economic damage gives political ammunition to opponents. Second, they can be disguised as good governance rather than good politics to deflect criticisms of their true purpose.
The 2014 farm bill, that substituted two new farm subsidy programs for two old ones, provides a timely case study of the relevance of Becker’s theory. The new programs the bill created—Price Loss Coverage and Agricultural Risk Coverage—were largely designed by House and Senate leadership with direct input from representatives of the beneficiaries of the programs.
Frank Lucas, chairman of the House Ag Committee (R-Okla.) stated the rationale for farm programs widely adopted by subsidy supporters:
“While they (farmers) do the hard work of producing our food, we have to do our part to support them. Without a safety net, a few bad seasons can put a farm out of business. When we lose that source of production, we don’t usually get it back. So maybe instead of speaking about this as a farm safety net, we need to start calling it a food safety net. Perhaps that will get the message out that commodity support keeps farmers in business, which keeps food on our plates.”
His rationale is easy to state and understand, and it allows supporters to argue that farm programs deserved taxpayer support because the public interest is served.
Yet in resolving the dilemma over whether the new subsidy programs would be tied to current crops and acreage or to a fixed number of acres based on what crops were previously planted, Lucas’s rationale was not implemented. His rationale for farm safety net programs would predict use of current acres because that would best compensate farmers for current financial losses. Becker’s rationale for farm programs, however, would predict that the new programs would use historical acreage because farmers would not have an incentive to plant for the program; thus economic damage—and the resulting political opposition—would be limited. The final decision to use historical plantings, insisted upon by leading Senate members of the 2014 farm bill conference committee, is consistent with Becker’s prediction of the importance of economic damage in determining the extent of political opposition.
Becker’s prediction that actual economic damage from new farm programs would be limited is borne out. But indirect damage arises from lost opportunities to reduce tax burdens or to fund programs that serve both farmers’ and the public’s interest. Examples include agricultural research, agricultural pollution prevention, invasive species control, transportation investments, food quality and food safety inspections, and nutrition programs.
This moves us to the second part of Becker’s theory: good politics disguised as good governance. A lack of food supply doesn’t seem to be a problem. Record crop income in recent years and subsequent record high land prices make it absurd to argue that crop subsidies are needed to maintain agricultural production capabilities in the United States. The argument that food security depends on crop subsidies is belied by the 50 percent of US corn production diverted to ethanol and exports and the 50 percent of US wheat production that is exported.
The fact that no economic problem is solved by subsidizing farmers demonstrates that farm programs exist not because the public’s interest is being served but rather because the private interests of Congress are being served. It is no wonder that record farm income had no real impact on the question of whether farm subsidies would continue.
Becker would predict that cutting farm subsidies to better serve the broad public interest will not happen without a dramatic increase in the political power of groups advocating for the public good. This is not likely to happen, given the diffuse nature of public good benefits and the highly targeted nature of the current subsidy programs to a relatively small number of farm households.
The 2014 farm bill limited visible economic damage, as Becker predicts. This kept the political climate amenable to its passage. But the many indirect economic damages show that the bill is better politics than better governance. Just as Becker’s theory states,
Congress abdicated its responsibility to serve the public interest because politics demanded that private influential interests be served first.
Babcock is a professor of economics at Iowa State University and a contributor for the American Enterprise Institute’s agricultural policy research program.
Thursday, August 28, 2014
Obama Poor Sense Of History Keeps Him From Acting With Moral Courage
August 27, 2014
Obama Poor Sense Of History Keeps Him From Acting With Moral Courage
By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Victor Davis Hanson
President Obama doesn't know much about history.
In his therapeutic 2009 Cairo speech, Obama outlined all sorts of Islamic intellectual and technological pedigrees, several of which were undeserved.
He exaggerated Muslim contributions to printing and medicine, for example, and was flat-out wrong about the catalysts for the European Renaissance and Enlightenment.
He also believes history follows some predetermined course, as if things always get better on their own. Obama often praises those he pronounces to be on the "right side of history." He also chastises others for being on the "wrong side of history" — as if evil is vanished and the good thrives on autopilot.
When in 2009 millions of Iranians took to the streets to protest the thuggish theocracy, they wanted immediate U.S. support. Instead, Obama belatedly offered them banalities, suggesting that in the end they would end up "on the right side of history."
Iranian reformers may indeed end up there, but it will not be because of some righteous inanimate force of history, or the prognostications of Barack Obama.
Obama often parrots Martin Luther King Jr.'s phrase about the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice.
But King used that metaphor as an incentive to act, not as reassurance that matters will follow an inevitably positive course.
Another of Obama's historical refrains is his frequent sermon about behavior that doesn't belong in the 21st century. At various times he has lectured that the barbarous aggression of Vladimir Putin or ISIS has no place in our century and will "ultimately fail" — as if we are all now sophisticates of an age that has at last transcended retrograde brutality and savagery.
In Obama's hazy sense of the end of history, things always must get better in the manner that updated models of iPhones and iPads are glitzier than the last.
In fact, history is morally cyclical. Even technological progress is ethically neutral. It is a way either to bring more good things to more people or to facilitate evil all that much more quickly and effectively.
In the viciously modern 20th century — when more lives may have been lost to war than in all prior centuries combined — some 6 million Jews were put to death through high technology in a way well beyond the savagery of Attila the Hun or Tamerlane.
Beheading in the Islamic world is as common in the 21st century as it was in the eighth century — and as it will probably be in the 22nd. The carnage of the Somme and Dresden trumped anything that the Greeks, Romans, Franks, Turks or Venetians could have imagined.
What explains Obama's confusion? A lack of knowledge of basic history explains a lot.
Obama along with his speechwriters have often seemed confused about the liberation of Auschwitz, "Polish death camps," the political history of Texas or the linguistic relationship between Austria and Germany.
Obama reassured us during the Bowe Bergdahl affair that George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt all similarly got American prisoners back when their wars ended — except that none of them were in office when the Revolutionary War, Civil War and World War II officially ended.
Contrary to Obama's assertion, President Rutherford B. Hayes never dismissed the potential of the telephone. Obama once praised the city of Cordoba as part of a proud Islamic tradition of tolerance during the brutal Spanish Inquisition — forgetting that by the beginning of the Inquisition an almost exclusively Christian Cordoba had few Muslims left.
A Pollyannaish belief in historical predetermination seems to substitute for action. If Obama believes that evil should be absent in the 21st century, or that the arc of the moral universe must always bend toward justice, or that being on the wrong side of history has consequences, then he may think inanimate forces can take care of things as we need merely watch.
In truth, history is messier. Unfortunately, only force will stop seventh-century monsters such as ISIS from killing thousands more innocents. Obama may think that reminding Putin that he is now in the 21st century will so embarrass the dictator that he will back off from Ukraine. But the brutish Putin may think that not being labeled a 21st-century civilized sophisticate is a compliment.
In 1935, French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval warned Josef Stalin that the pope would admonish him to go easy on Catholics — as if such moral lectures worked in the supposedly civilized 20th century. Stalin quickly disabused Laval of that naivete. "The pope?" Stalin asked, "How many divisions has he got?"
There is little evidence that human nature has changed over the centuries, despite massive government efforts to make us think and act nicer. What drives Putin, Boko Haram or ISIS are the same age-old passions, fears and sense of honor that over the centuries also moved Genghis Khan, the Sudanese Mahdists and the Barbary pirates.
Obama's naive belief in predetermined history — especially when his facts are often wrong — is a poor substitute for concrete moral action.
•
Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution and Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost — From Ancient Greece to Iraq."
SPONSORS
(Ads will not print)
Obama Poor Sense Of History Keeps Him From Acting With Moral Courage
By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Victor Davis Hanson
President Obama doesn't know much about history.
In his therapeutic 2009 Cairo speech, Obama outlined all sorts of Islamic intellectual and technological pedigrees, several of which were undeserved.
He exaggerated Muslim contributions to printing and medicine, for example, and was flat-out wrong about the catalysts for the European Renaissance and Enlightenment.
He also believes history follows some predetermined course, as if things always get better on their own. Obama often praises those he pronounces to be on the "right side of history." He also chastises others for being on the "wrong side of history" — as if evil is vanished and the good thrives on autopilot.
When in 2009 millions of Iranians took to the streets to protest the thuggish theocracy, they wanted immediate U.S. support. Instead, Obama belatedly offered them banalities, suggesting that in the end they would end up "on the right side of history."
Iranian reformers may indeed end up there, but it will not be because of some righteous inanimate force of history, or the prognostications of Barack Obama.
Obama often parrots Martin Luther King Jr.'s phrase about the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice.
But King used that metaphor as an incentive to act, not as reassurance that matters will follow an inevitably positive course.
Another of Obama's historical refrains is his frequent sermon about behavior that doesn't belong in the 21st century. At various times he has lectured that the barbarous aggression of Vladimir Putin or ISIS has no place in our century and will "ultimately fail" — as if we are all now sophisticates of an age that has at last transcended retrograde brutality and savagery.
In Obama's hazy sense of the end of history, things always must get better in the manner that updated models of iPhones and iPads are glitzier than the last.
In fact, history is morally cyclical. Even technological progress is ethically neutral. It is a way either to bring more good things to more people or to facilitate evil all that much more quickly and effectively.
In the viciously modern 20th century — when more lives may have been lost to war than in all prior centuries combined — some 6 million Jews were put to death through high technology in a way well beyond the savagery of Attila the Hun or Tamerlane.
Beheading in the Islamic world is as common in the 21st century as it was in the eighth century — and as it will probably be in the 22nd. The carnage of the Somme and Dresden trumped anything that the Greeks, Romans, Franks, Turks or Venetians could have imagined.
What explains Obama's confusion? A lack of knowledge of basic history explains a lot.
Obama along with his speechwriters have often seemed confused about the liberation of Auschwitz, "Polish death camps," the political history of Texas or the linguistic relationship between Austria and Germany.
Obama reassured us during the Bowe Bergdahl affair that George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt all similarly got American prisoners back when their wars ended — except that none of them were in office when the Revolutionary War, Civil War and World War II officially ended.
Contrary to Obama's assertion, President Rutherford B. Hayes never dismissed the potential of the telephone. Obama once praised the city of Cordoba as part of a proud Islamic tradition of tolerance during the brutal Spanish Inquisition — forgetting that by the beginning of the Inquisition an almost exclusively Christian Cordoba had few Muslims left.
A Pollyannaish belief in historical predetermination seems to substitute for action. If Obama believes that evil should be absent in the 21st century, or that the arc of the moral universe must always bend toward justice, or that being on the wrong side of history has consequences, then he may think inanimate forces can take care of things as we need merely watch.
In truth, history is messier. Unfortunately, only force will stop seventh-century monsters such as ISIS from killing thousands more innocents. Obama may think that reminding Putin that he is now in the 21st century will so embarrass the dictator that he will back off from Ukraine. But the brutish Putin may think that not being labeled a 21st-century civilized sophisticate is a compliment.
In 1935, French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval warned Josef Stalin that the pope would admonish him to go easy on Catholics — as if such moral lectures worked in the supposedly civilized 20th century. Stalin quickly disabused Laval of that naivete. "The pope?" Stalin asked, "How many divisions has he got?"
There is little evidence that human nature has changed over the centuries, despite massive government efforts to make us think and act nicer. What drives Putin, Boko Haram or ISIS are the same age-old passions, fears and sense of honor that over the centuries also moved Genghis Khan, the Sudanese Mahdists and the Barbary pirates.
Obama's naive belief in predetermined history — especially when his facts are often wrong — is a poor substitute for concrete moral action.
•
Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution and Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost — From Ancient Greece to Iraq."
SPONSORS
(Ads will not print)
Obama describes a happy, thriving America to veterans, who know better
August 27, 2014
Obama describes a happy, thriving America to veterans, who know better
By Andrew Malcolm
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
President Obama is enduring an awful summer of domestic troubles, foreign tragedies and a lost national narrative that's put him on the defensive. He'll try to recapture control of the country's political dialogue next month by igniting an emotional controversy over legalizing illegal aliens.
But Tuesday the Democrat was in Charlotte to describe to American Legion members an exotic foreign land where November voters should be delighted to keep his party members in office. Obama's full text is available here.
We've gathered some excerpts with our comments in italics to provide a flavor of the alien land this president sees through his bullet-proof windows. He doesn't seem so much detached as delusional:
"Even as we face, yes, the hard tasks of our time, we should never lose sight of our progress as a people or the strength of our leadership in the world. ( Just take my word for it.) ....We are stronger at home. (What?) Over the past 53 months, our businesses have added nearly 10 million new jobs....
"Construction and housing are rebounding. Our auto industry and manufacturing are booming. Our high school graduation rate is at a record high. More young people are earning their college degrees than ever before. Millions more Americans now have quality, affordable healthcare (although the premium increases will surprise many). We've cut the deficit by more than half (from my own ridiculous trillion-dollar-plus deficits)....
"And just as we're stronger at home, the United States is better positioned to lead in the 21st century than any nation on Earth. It’s not even close. We have the most powerful military in history -- that’s certainly not close. ( Although I am cutting it to mid-20th century levels). From Europe to Asia, our alliances are unrivaled. Our economy is the most dynamic.
"We've got the best workers. We’ve got the best businesses. We have the best universities and the best scientists. With our domestic energy revolution, including more renewable energy, we're more energy independent. Our technologies connect the world. (Because I have not secured the borders) our freedoms and opportunities attract (millions of illegal) immigrants....
"And moreover, nobody else can do what we do. No other nation does more to underwrite the security and prosperity on which the world depends. In times of crisis, no other nation can rally such broad coalitions to stand up for international norms and peace. ( Take Libya, for instance, where we assembled a coalition to oust Moammar Gaddafi and create yet another failed state for terrorist bands to roam)....
Pool
"That's why the United States is and will remain the one indispensable nation in the world.
"Now, sustaining our leadership, keeping America strong and secure, means we have to use our power wisely. ....You know the United States has to lead with strength and confidence and wisdom. And that's why, after incredible sacrifice by so many of our men and women in uniform, we removed more than 140,000 troops from Iraq (leaving the vacuum that ISIL now inhabits)....
"As we go forward, we'll continue to partner with Afghans so their country can never again be used to launch attacks against the United States. Now, as I've always made clear, the blows we've struck against al Qaeda's leadership don’t mean the end to the terrorist threat. ( To be honest, I've always made clear that Al Qaeda was "on the run", "decimated" and "on the path to defeat." I left out the ongoing threat part because of the 2012 election)....
"As Commander-in-Chief, the security of the American people is my highest priority, and that's why, with the brutal terrorist group ISIL advancing in Iraq, I have (belatedly) authorized targeted strikes to protect our diplomats and military advisors....
"Our message to anyone who harms our people is simple: America does not forget. Our reach is long. We are patient. Justice will be done. We have proved time and time again we will do what’s necessary to capture those who harm Americans ( which is why two years after the Benghazi murders we've already captured one of the attack leaders who've been interviewed so often by U.S. media)....
"Rooting out a cancer like ISIL won't be easy and it won't be quick. But tyrants and murderers before them should recognize that kind of hateful vision ultimately is no match for the strength and hopes of people who stand together for the security and dignity and freedom that is the birthright of every human being. (Although modern weapons seem to play a more important role than I like to admit).
"Even as our war in Afghanistan comes to an end, we will stay vigilant....When I was here at the Legion three years ago, I said that the bond between our forces and our citizens has to be a sacred trust, and that for me, for my administration, upholding our trust with our veterans is not just a matter of policy, it is a moral obligation. (Which is why I took no real VA reform steps until CNN began exposing chronic abuses throughout the medical system last year)....
"We’ve been able to accomplish historic increases to veterans funding (because as a Democrat, I measure success solely by money spent)....But what we’ve come to learn (by reading the media) is the misconduct we've seen at too many facilities -- with long wait times, and veterans denied care, and folks cooking the books -- is outrageous and inexcusable.
"As soon as it was disclosed (or within several months anyway), I got before the American people and I said we would not tolerate it....And we will not..... We are going to get to the bottom of these problems ( that I campaigned against seven long years ago). We're going to fix what is wrong....That is a solemn pledge and commitment that I’m making to you here ( just as I repeatedly promised that all Americans could keep their doctor and insurance plans under ObamaCare)....
"Already (nearly one year after initial disclosures), we're making sure that those responsible for manipulating or falsifying records are held accountable.....
"We're in the midst of a new wave of veterans -- more than a million service members returning to civilian life (because we're so drastically cutting national defense)....So we have to do more to uphold that sacred trust not just this year or next year, but for decades to come....
"We're also going to keep helping our troops transition to civilian life. Because of the work we’ve done together, if you already have a military truck driver's license, every state now waives the skills test, so it's easier for you to get a commercial driver's license....
"Every American needs to join us in taking care of those who've taken care of us. Because only 1 percent of Americans may be fighting our wars, but 100 percent of Americans benefit from that 1 percent....
"A hundred percent need to be supporting our military families." ( Which is why during the recent funeral of the first U.S. general officer combat casualty in decades, I was playing golf.)
Obama describes a happy, thriving America to veterans, who know better
By Andrew Malcolm
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
President Obama is enduring an awful summer of domestic troubles, foreign tragedies and a lost national narrative that's put him on the defensive. He'll try to recapture control of the country's political dialogue next month by igniting an emotional controversy over legalizing illegal aliens.
But Tuesday the Democrat was in Charlotte to describe to American Legion members an exotic foreign land where November voters should be delighted to keep his party members in office. Obama's full text is available here.
We've gathered some excerpts with our comments in italics to provide a flavor of the alien land this president sees through his bullet-proof windows. He doesn't seem so much detached as delusional:
"Even as we face, yes, the hard tasks of our time, we should never lose sight of our progress as a people or the strength of our leadership in the world. ( Just take my word for it.) ....We are stronger at home. (What?) Over the past 53 months, our businesses have added nearly 10 million new jobs....
"Construction and housing are rebounding. Our auto industry and manufacturing are booming. Our high school graduation rate is at a record high. More young people are earning their college degrees than ever before. Millions more Americans now have quality, affordable healthcare (although the premium increases will surprise many). We've cut the deficit by more than half (from my own ridiculous trillion-dollar-plus deficits)....
"And just as we're stronger at home, the United States is better positioned to lead in the 21st century than any nation on Earth. It’s not even close. We have the most powerful military in history -- that’s certainly not close. ( Although I am cutting it to mid-20th century levels). From Europe to Asia, our alliances are unrivaled. Our economy is the most dynamic.
"We've got the best workers. We’ve got the best businesses. We have the best universities and the best scientists. With our domestic energy revolution, including more renewable energy, we're more energy independent. Our technologies connect the world. (Because I have not secured the borders) our freedoms and opportunities attract (millions of illegal) immigrants....
"And moreover, nobody else can do what we do. No other nation does more to underwrite the security and prosperity on which the world depends. In times of crisis, no other nation can rally such broad coalitions to stand up for international norms and peace. ( Take Libya, for instance, where we assembled a coalition to oust Moammar Gaddafi and create yet another failed state for terrorist bands to roam)....
Pool
"That's why the United States is and will remain the one indispensable nation in the world.
"Now, sustaining our leadership, keeping America strong and secure, means we have to use our power wisely. ....You know the United States has to lead with strength and confidence and wisdom. And that's why, after incredible sacrifice by so many of our men and women in uniform, we removed more than 140,000 troops from Iraq (leaving the vacuum that ISIL now inhabits)....
"As we go forward, we'll continue to partner with Afghans so their country can never again be used to launch attacks against the United States. Now, as I've always made clear, the blows we've struck against al Qaeda's leadership don’t mean the end to the terrorist threat. ( To be honest, I've always made clear that Al Qaeda was "on the run", "decimated" and "on the path to defeat." I left out the ongoing threat part because of the 2012 election)....
"As Commander-in-Chief, the security of the American people is my highest priority, and that's why, with the brutal terrorist group ISIL advancing in Iraq, I have (belatedly) authorized targeted strikes to protect our diplomats and military advisors....
"Our message to anyone who harms our people is simple: America does not forget. Our reach is long. We are patient. Justice will be done. We have proved time and time again we will do what’s necessary to capture those who harm Americans ( which is why two years after the Benghazi murders we've already captured one of the attack leaders who've been interviewed so often by U.S. media)....
"Rooting out a cancer like ISIL won't be easy and it won't be quick. But tyrants and murderers before them should recognize that kind of hateful vision ultimately is no match for the strength and hopes of people who stand together for the security and dignity and freedom that is the birthright of every human being. (Although modern weapons seem to play a more important role than I like to admit).
"Even as our war in Afghanistan comes to an end, we will stay vigilant....When I was here at the Legion three years ago, I said that the bond between our forces and our citizens has to be a sacred trust, and that for me, for my administration, upholding our trust with our veterans is not just a matter of policy, it is a moral obligation. (Which is why I took no real VA reform steps until CNN began exposing chronic abuses throughout the medical system last year)....
"We’ve been able to accomplish historic increases to veterans funding (because as a Democrat, I measure success solely by money spent)....But what we’ve come to learn (by reading the media) is the misconduct we've seen at too many facilities -- with long wait times, and veterans denied care, and folks cooking the books -- is outrageous and inexcusable.
"As soon as it was disclosed (or within several months anyway), I got before the American people and I said we would not tolerate it....And we will not..... We are going to get to the bottom of these problems ( that I campaigned against seven long years ago). We're going to fix what is wrong....That is a solemn pledge and commitment that I’m making to you here ( just as I repeatedly promised that all Americans could keep their doctor and insurance plans under ObamaCare)....
"Already (nearly one year after initial disclosures), we're making sure that those responsible for manipulating or falsifying records are held accountable.....
"We're in the midst of a new wave of veterans -- more than a million service members returning to civilian life (because we're so drastically cutting national defense)....So we have to do more to uphold that sacred trust not just this year or next year, but for decades to come....
"We're also going to keep helping our troops transition to civilian life. Because of the work we’ve done together, if you already have a military truck driver's license, every state now waives the skills test, so it's easier for you to get a commercial driver's license....
"Every American needs to join us in taking care of those who've taken care of us. Because only 1 percent of Americans may be fighting our wars, but 100 percent of Americans benefit from that 1 percent....
"A hundred percent need to be supporting our military families." ( Which is why during the recent funeral of the first U.S. general officer combat casualty in decades, I was playing golf.)
The Real Story of the IRS Scandal
June 18, 2014 12:00 AM
The Real Story of the IRS Scandal
The media focus should be on the administration’s behavior, not on Republicans’ reaction to it.
By Jonah Goldberg
‘Congressional investigators are fuming over revelations that the Internal Revenue Service has lost a trove of emails to and from a central figure in the agency’s tea-party controversy.”
That’s the opening sentence of the Associated Press story on the IRS’s claim that it lost an unknown number of e-mails over two years relating to the agency’s alleged targeting of political groups hostile to the president.
But note how the AP casts the story: The investigators — Republican lawmakers — are outraged.
Is it really so hard to imagine that if this were a Republican administration, the story wouldn’t be the frustration of partisan critics of the president? It would be all about that administration’s behavior. With the exception of National Journal’s Ron Fournier, who called for a special prosecutor to bypass the White House’s “stonewalling,” and former CBS correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, it’s hard to find a non-conservative journalist who thinks this is a big deal.
Let’s back up for a moment. In 2013, IRS official Lois Lerner planted a question from an audience member at an American Bar Association meeting. She used her answer to apologize for — and favorably spin — the agency’s actions, and then later claimed that the apology came as an unprompted response to a question.
Lerner laid the blame for the inappropriate targeting of tea-party and other groups on a few low-level bureaucrats in Cincinnati. That was a lie. Senior officials in the IRS knew and helped to coordinate the effort. She said she only heard about the problem when tea-party groups protested. The targeting, in fact, had already been under internal and external investigation.
In short, Lerner worked hard at denying her agency’s tactics on applications for nonprofit status from groups deemed to be hostile to the president’s agenda. According to IRS officials’ congressional testimony, agents were told to “be on the lookout” for groups that “criticized how the government is being run.” Lerner even joked to colleagues that she should get a job at Obama’s activist group Organizing for Action.
President Obama insists he didn’t know about any of this until he was briefed on it the way he’s briefed on so many issues: from news reports. Nevertheless, we’ve since learned that White House officials were aware earlier.
Lerner, who was forced to resign, took the Fifth Amendment rather than clear the air.
In the June issue of Commentary, Noah Rothman notes that the mainstream media initially treated the IRS story as a very big deal. ABC’s Terry Moran dubbed it a “truly Nixonian abuse of power by the Obama administration.” But as Rothman notes, the media were just as quick to buy the story that this was a minor bureaucratic screw-up being whipped up into what the president called yet another “phony scandal.”
More recently, Obama proclaimed there was not even a “smidgen” of corruption at the IRS, despite the fact that his administration’s own investigations are still underway. Obama’s assurance seemed good enough for most of the media.
This is one of the great public-relations turnaround stories of all time. Liberal groups successfully spun the incident as a well-intentioned mistake by a government agency trying to deal with a deluge of new applications from right-wing crazies let loose by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. The “real” story was — again — Republican overreach.
Never mind that there was no evidence for such an “uptick” in applications — Lerner’s word. Indeed, evidence suggests that Lerner went looking for that evidence as an excuse for abuses she had already undertaken.
So now the IRS claims that a computer crash has irrevocably erased pertinent e-mails (an excuse I will remember when I am audited). National Review’s John Fund reports that the IRS manual says backups must exist. If e-mails — which exist on servers, clouds, and elsewhere — can be destroyed this way, someone should tell the NSA that there’s a cheaper way to encrypt data.
The storied City News Bureau of Chicago famously lived by the motto “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.” The bureau closed down several years ago. Perhaps that kind of skepticism died with it.
— Jonah Goldberg is the author of The Tyranny of Clichés, now on sale in paperback. You can write to him by e-mail at goldbergcolumn@gmail.com, or via Twitter @JonahNRO. © 2014 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
The Real Story of the IRS Scandal
The media focus should be on the administration’s behavior, not on Republicans’ reaction to it.
By Jonah Goldberg
‘Congressional investigators are fuming over revelations that the Internal Revenue Service has lost a trove of emails to and from a central figure in the agency’s tea-party controversy.”
That’s the opening sentence of the Associated Press story on the IRS’s claim that it lost an unknown number of e-mails over two years relating to the agency’s alleged targeting of political groups hostile to the president.
But note how the AP casts the story: The investigators — Republican lawmakers — are outraged.
Is it really so hard to imagine that if this were a Republican administration, the story wouldn’t be the frustration of partisan critics of the president? It would be all about that administration’s behavior. With the exception of National Journal’s Ron Fournier, who called for a special prosecutor to bypass the White House’s “stonewalling,” and former CBS correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, it’s hard to find a non-conservative journalist who thinks this is a big deal.
Let’s back up for a moment. In 2013, IRS official Lois Lerner planted a question from an audience member at an American Bar Association meeting. She used her answer to apologize for — and favorably spin — the agency’s actions, and then later claimed that the apology came as an unprompted response to a question.
Lerner laid the blame for the inappropriate targeting of tea-party and other groups on a few low-level bureaucrats in Cincinnati. That was a lie. Senior officials in the IRS knew and helped to coordinate the effort. She said she only heard about the problem when tea-party groups protested. The targeting, in fact, had already been under internal and external investigation.
In short, Lerner worked hard at denying her agency’s tactics on applications for nonprofit status from groups deemed to be hostile to the president’s agenda. According to IRS officials’ congressional testimony, agents were told to “be on the lookout” for groups that “criticized how the government is being run.” Lerner even joked to colleagues that she should get a job at Obama’s activist group Organizing for Action.
President Obama insists he didn’t know about any of this until he was briefed on it the way he’s briefed on so many issues: from news reports. Nevertheless, we’ve since learned that White House officials were aware earlier.
Lerner, who was forced to resign, took the Fifth Amendment rather than clear the air.
In the June issue of Commentary, Noah Rothman notes that the mainstream media initially treated the IRS story as a very big deal. ABC’s Terry Moran dubbed it a “truly Nixonian abuse of power by the Obama administration.” But as Rothman notes, the media were just as quick to buy the story that this was a minor bureaucratic screw-up being whipped up into what the president called yet another “phony scandal.”
More recently, Obama proclaimed there was not even a “smidgen” of corruption at the IRS, despite the fact that his administration’s own investigations are still underway. Obama’s assurance seemed good enough for most of the media.
This is one of the great public-relations turnaround stories of all time. Liberal groups successfully spun the incident as a well-intentioned mistake by a government agency trying to deal with a deluge of new applications from right-wing crazies let loose by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. The “real” story was — again — Republican overreach.
Never mind that there was no evidence for such an “uptick” in applications — Lerner’s word. Indeed, evidence suggests that Lerner went looking for that evidence as an excuse for abuses she had already undertaken.
So now the IRS claims that a computer crash has irrevocably erased pertinent e-mails (an excuse I will remember when I am audited). National Review’s John Fund reports that the IRS manual says backups must exist. If e-mails — which exist on servers, clouds, and elsewhere — can be destroyed this way, someone should tell the NSA that there’s a cheaper way to encrypt data.
The storied City News Bureau of Chicago famously lived by the motto “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.” The bureau closed down several years ago. Perhaps that kind of skepticism died with it.
— Jonah Goldberg is the author of The Tyranny of Clichés, now on sale in paperback. You can write to him by e-mail at goldbergcolumn@gmail.com, or via Twitter @JonahNRO. © 2014 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
Is The Left Approaching a Kool-Aid Moment?
Posted on August 27, 2014 by Steven Hayward in Socialism
Is The Left Approaching a Kool-Aid Moment?
We noted here the other day (“Propping Up Obama”) the agony of the left over Obama’s miserable performance of late. But there are other signs that leftism is falling apart just about everywhere.
Item: Leftist French President Francois Hollande has dissolved the government and is trying to reform a new government that is a few micrometers closer to the center in the interest of minimal reform to get the economy growing. From the AP:
France has had effectively no economic growth this year, unemployment is hovering around 10 percent and Hollande’s approval ratings are sunk in the teens.
This is what happens when you run out of other people’s money. Funny how that always seems to happen to socialists. It’s what we call bad luck.
Item: There’s suddenly a hot race for president of Brazil with the rapid ascent of a new Socialist Party candidate, Marina Silva, who replaced the previous boring party standard bearer who did the party a favor by dying in a plane crash. According to the Wall Street Journal, Silva would beat the incumbent president Dilma Rousseff of the Workers Party in a runoff.
Wait—stop the tape! Brazil has a Workers Party and a Socialist Party? Why do you need both? I thought all socialist parties were on the side of workers, by definition. That’s why there’s always been a Socialist Workers Party, no? What next: The Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea?
I guess this is what happens when you run out of other people’s money: thieves fall out among themselves on how to divide up the dwindling spoils. Should be fun to watch. Almost as much fun as watching Argentina thrash around—once the fourth richest nation in the world a century ago before the country caught the socialist bug. Maybe it was just bad luck, like those decades of Soviet grain harvests.
Not to worry. I’m sure Venezuela or Cuba can send them foreign aid.
Is The Left Approaching a Kool-Aid Moment?
We noted here the other day (“Propping Up Obama”) the agony of the left over Obama’s miserable performance of late. But there are other signs that leftism is falling apart just about everywhere.
Item: Leftist French President Francois Hollande has dissolved the government and is trying to reform a new government that is a few micrometers closer to the center in the interest of minimal reform to get the economy growing. From the AP:
France has had effectively no economic growth this year, unemployment is hovering around 10 percent and Hollande’s approval ratings are sunk in the teens.
This is what happens when you run out of other people’s money. Funny how that always seems to happen to socialists. It’s what we call bad luck.
Item: There’s suddenly a hot race for president of Brazil with the rapid ascent of a new Socialist Party candidate, Marina Silva, who replaced the previous boring party standard bearer who did the party a favor by dying in a plane crash. According to the Wall Street Journal, Silva would beat the incumbent president Dilma Rousseff of the Workers Party in a runoff.
Wait—stop the tape! Brazil has a Workers Party and a Socialist Party? Why do you need both? I thought all socialist parties were on the side of workers, by definition. That’s why there’s always been a Socialist Workers Party, no? What next: The Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea?
I guess this is what happens when you run out of other people’s money: thieves fall out among themselves on how to divide up the dwindling spoils. Should be fun to watch. Almost as much fun as watching Argentina thrash around—once the fourth richest nation in the world a century ago before the country caught the socialist bug. Maybe it was just bad luck, like those decades of Soviet grain harvests.
Not to worry. I’m sure Venezuela or Cuba can send them foreign aid.
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Here’s the Best Way to Pay for Ending the Corporate Tax Altogether
By Veronique de Rugy
August 27, 2014 6:18 PM
Corporate inversions are in the news again after Burger King’s announcement that it will be buying the Canadian chain Tim Hortons. I wrote about why American firms would do something this dramatic a few weeks ago: The U.S. happens to have a highly uncompetitive corporate-income-tax system. And not surprisingly, the Burger King move has revived the debate about the need to reform the corporate income tax — in particular, the idea that we should get rid of the corporate tax system altogether. NR’s editors noted yesterday that Harvard’s Greg Mankiw suggested on Saturday in the New York Times on Saturday that we need to repeal the whole corporate tax altogether.
But we usually don’t get anywhere with this idea because money-hungry lawmakers don’t want to deal with the loss of revenue that would result, even though the revenue the corporate tax generates is relatively small. But Stan Collender, writing in Forbes, has a solution to this problem:. Pay for it by ending all corporate welfare!
He writes:
The usual assumption and recommendation is that it be eliminated but replaced with other taxes. Mankiw, for example, recommended that a consumption tax be considered.
But there is a way to change the debate substantially: Don’t just repeal the corporate income tax;, repeal it and at the same time eliminate all federal support for corporations on the spending side of the budget.
There is clearly $300 billion of subsides and other kinds of support for corporations in the federal budget in fiscal 2014. In fact, if you define federal corporate support broadly and include direct support, insurance, indirect subsidies and other types of payments to all industries, the amount of spending is at at least that level. It could be substantially higher.
This would create a serious debate within the corporate community that hasn’t existed so far and would likely pit the companies and industries that don’t want to pay taxes against those that get significant spending side payments and subsidies.
It would also create a serious problem for the accounting profession where some of the largest firms make a significant amount of their revenue from helping corporations comply with the tax laws. These firms could, therefore, find themselves opposing their largest clients on the issue. Add in tax lobbyists, professors and those companies that have currently have a competitive advantage because they don’t pay any federal corporate income tax and the politics of the debate would change profoundly.
Now, that’s what I call a win-win.
The Jihadi Serial Killer No One’s Talking About
The Jihadi Serial Killer No One’s Talking About
[plus: read the charging documents]
By Michelle Malkin • August 22, 2014
The Jihadi Serial Killer No One’s Talking About
by Michelle Malkin
For two bloody months, an armed jihadist serial killer ran loose across the country. At least four innocent men died this spring and summer as acts of “vengeance” on behalf of aggrieved Muslims, the self-confessed murderer has now proclaimed. Have you heard about this horror? Probably not.
The usual suspects who decry hate crimes and gun violence haven’t uttered a peep. Why? Like O.J.’s glove: If the narrative don’t fit, you must acquit. The admitted killer will be cast as just another “lone wolf” whose familiar grievances and bloodthirsty Islamic invocations mean nothing.
I say: Enough with the whitewashing. Meet Ali Muhammad Brown. His homicidal Islamic terror spree took him from coast to coast. The 29-year-old career thug admitted to killing Leroy Henderson in Seattle in April; Ahmed Said and Dwone Anderson-Young in Seattle on June 1; and college student Brendan Tevlin, 19, in Essex County, New Jersey, on June 25. Tevlin was gunned down in his family Jeep on his way home from a friend’s house. Ballistics and other evidence linked all the victims to Muhammad Brown. Police apprehended him last month hiding in an encampment near the Watchung Mountains of West Orange, New Jersey.
While he was on the run, he disguised himself in a Muslim keffiyeh. He carried a notebook with jihadist scribblings and advice on evading detection. I obtained the latest charging documents filed in Washington state, which detail the defiant domestic terrorist’s motives.
READ THE CHARGING DOCUMENT HERE: 20140820145129074
Muhammad Brown told investigators that Tevlin’s slaying was a “just kill.” The devout Islamic adherent proclaimed: “My mission is vengeance. For the lives, millions of lives are lost every day.” Echoing jihadist Fort Hood mass killer Nidal Hasan, Muhammad Brown cited Muslim deaths in “Iraq, Syria, (and) Afghanistan” as the catalysts for his one-man Islamic terror campaign. “All these lives are taken every single day by America, by this government. So a life for a life.”
When a detective asked him to clarify whether all four murders were “done for vengeance for the actions of the United States in the Middle East,” Muhammad Brown stated unequivocally: “Yes.” He added that he was “just doing (his) small part.”
Seattle’s left-wing mayor, Ed Murray, rushed to issue a statement — which might as well have sported an insipid “Coexist” bumper sticker across the page — asserting that Muhammad Brown’s seething, deadly hatred did “not reflect the values of Muslims.” But the fact is Ali Muhammad Brown has plenty of company. Seattle alone has been a long-festering hotbed of anti-American, anti-Semitic jihadism.
In 2011, a Muslim terror ring led by Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif and Walli Mujahidh plotted “to kill officers and employees of the Department of Defense who worked at the (Military Entrance Processing Stations) located in the Federal Center South building in Seattle, Washington, and to kill other persons assisting such officers and employees in the performance of their duties” using “fully-automatic weapons pistols, and fragmentation grenades.”
In 2007, Seattle jihadist James Ujaama pleaded guilty to terrorism charges related to his plan to establish a terror-training ground in Bly, Oregon. He had previously pleaded guilty to aiding the Taliban.
In 2006, Everett, Washington Islamic revenge-seeker Naveed Haq shot six innocent women and killed one at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle building while spewing anti-Israel hatred and Muslim diatribes.
In 2002, James Ujaama’s mosque leader, Abdul Raheem Al Arshad Ali of the radical Dar-us-Salaam mosque in Seattle’s Central District, was first arrested on illegal weapons charges. He had provided arms to fellow Seattle-area Muslim cleric, Semi Osman. The ethnic Lebanese born in Sierra Leone had served in a naval reserve fueling unit based in Tacoma, Washington. Osman had access to fuel trucks similar to the type used by al-Qaida in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers, which killed 19 U.S. airmen and wounded nearly 400 other Americans. Osman later pleaded guilty to illegal weapons possession.
Another militant Seattle jihadist, Muslim convert Ruben Shumpert (aka Amir Abdul Muhaimin) was arrested after an FBI raid in 2004 for his role in a terror-financing scheme. He skipped out on his sentencing hearing and turned up in Somalia, where he was killed fighting the U.S. military. Terror group al Shabaab hailed Muhaimin as a martyr.
Which brings us back to Ali Muhammad Brown, who had been arrested 10 years ago as part of Muhaimin’s suspected terror-financing ring. A decade later, despite being on the feds’ radar screen, four innocent men are dead at Muhammad Brown’s hand.
These homegrown Muslim haters don’t want to coexist. They want to kill and help fund and train other Islamic killers. They are living and working among us, embedded in local mosques and inside our military. Where are our political leaders? Making Kumbaya excuses, sitting on the sidelines and golfing while homegrown and global jihad burn.
[plus: read the charging documents]
By Michelle Malkin • August 22, 2014
The Jihadi Serial Killer No One’s Talking About
by Michelle Malkin
For two bloody months, an armed jihadist serial killer ran loose across the country. At least four innocent men died this spring and summer as acts of “vengeance” on behalf of aggrieved Muslims, the self-confessed murderer has now proclaimed. Have you heard about this horror? Probably not.
The usual suspects who decry hate crimes and gun violence haven’t uttered a peep. Why? Like O.J.’s glove: If the narrative don’t fit, you must acquit. The admitted killer will be cast as just another “lone wolf” whose familiar grievances and bloodthirsty Islamic invocations mean nothing.
I say: Enough with the whitewashing. Meet Ali Muhammad Brown. His homicidal Islamic terror spree took him from coast to coast. The 29-year-old career thug admitted to killing Leroy Henderson in Seattle in April; Ahmed Said and Dwone Anderson-Young in Seattle on June 1; and college student Brendan Tevlin, 19, in Essex County, New Jersey, on June 25. Tevlin was gunned down in his family Jeep on his way home from a friend’s house. Ballistics and other evidence linked all the victims to Muhammad Brown. Police apprehended him last month hiding in an encampment near the Watchung Mountains of West Orange, New Jersey.
While he was on the run, he disguised himself in a Muslim keffiyeh. He carried a notebook with jihadist scribblings and advice on evading detection. I obtained the latest charging documents filed in Washington state, which detail the defiant domestic terrorist’s motives.
READ THE CHARGING DOCUMENT HERE: 20140820145129074
Muhammad Brown told investigators that Tevlin’s slaying was a “just kill.” The devout Islamic adherent proclaimed: “My mission is vengeance. For the lives, millions of lives are lost every day.” Echoing jihadist Fort Hood mass killer Nidal Hasan, Muhammad Brown cited Muslim deaths in “Iraq, Syria, (and) Afghanistan” as the catalysts for his one-man Islamic terror campaign. “All these lives are taken every single day by America, by this government. So a life for a life.”
When a detective asked him to clarify whether all four murders were “done for vengeance for the actions of the United States in the Middle East,” Muhammad Brown stated unequivocally: “Yes.” He added that he was “just doing (his) small part.”
Seattle’s left-wing mayor, Ed Murray, rushed to issue a statement — which might as well have sported an insipid “Coexist” bumper sticker across the page — asserting that Muhammad Brown’s seething, deadly hatred did “not reflect the values of Muslims.” But the fact is Ali Muhammad Brown has plenty of company. Seattle alone has been a long-festering hotbed of anti-American, anti-Semitic jihadism.
In 2011, a Muslim terror ring led by Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif and Walli Mujahidh plotted “to kill officers and employees of the Department of Defense who worked at the (Military Entrance Processing Stations) located in the Federal Center South building in Seattle, Washington, and to kill other persons assisting such officers and employees in the performance of their duties” using “fully-automatic weapons pistols, and fragmentation grenades.”
In 2007, Seattle jihadist James Ujaama pleaded guilty to terrorism charges related to his plan to establish a terror-training ground in Bly, Oregon. He had previously pleaded guilty to aiding the Taliban.
In 2006, Everett, Washington Islamic revenge-seeker Naveed Haq shot six innocent women and killed one at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle building while spewing anti-Israel hatred and Muslim diatribes.
In 2002, James Ujaama’s mosque leader, Abdul Raheem Al Arshad Ali of the radical Dar-us-Salaam mosque in Seattle’s Central District, was first arrested on illegal weapons charges. He had provided arms to fellow Seattle-area Muslim cleric, Semi Osman. The ethnic Lebanese born in Sierra Leone had served in a naval reserve fueling unit based in Tacoma, Washington. Osman had access to fuel trucks similar to the type used by al-Qaida in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers, which killed 19 U.S. airmen and wounded nearly 400 other Americans. Osman later pleaded guilty to illegal weapons possession.
Another militant Seattle jihadist, Muslim convert Ruben Shumpert (aka Amir Abdul Muhaimin) was arrested after an FBI raid in 2004 for his role in a terror-financing scheme. He skipped out on his sentencing hearing and turned up in Somalia, where he was killed fighting the U.S. military. Terror group al Shabaab hailed Muhaimin as a martyr.
Which brings us back to Ali Muhammad Brown, who had been arrested 10 years ago as part of Muhaimin’s suspected terror-financing ring. A decade later, despite being on the feds’ radar screen, four innocent men are dead at Muhammad Brown’s hand.
These homegrown Muslim haters don’t want to coexist. They want to kill and help fund and train other Islamic killers. They are living and working among us, embedded in local mosques and inside our military. Where are our political leaders? Making Kumbaya excuses, sitting on the sidelines and golfing while homegrown and global jihad burn.
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
College board mandates left-wing narrative for AP U.S. History
Posted on August 26, 2014 by Paul Mirengoff in Education, History, Leftism
College board mandates left-wing narrative for AP U.S. History
The College Board, the private company that produces the SAT test and the various Advanced Placement exams, is effectively requiring that AP U.S. History be taught from a hard-left perspective. It is doing so through a newly-issued “Framework” for its AP U.S. History exam. I warned of this development here.
Stanley Kurtz provides the back story. He points out that the co-chairs of the committee that redesigned the AP U.S. History Framework, Suzanne Sinke and Ted Dickson, worked closely together on a project whose goal was to reshape the U.S. History Survey Course along the lines recommended by Thomas Bender and the La Pietra Report.
Bender, a history professor at NYU, is (in Kurtz’s words) “the leading spokesman for the movement to internationalize the U.S. History curriculum at every educational level.” He is also a leading critic of “American exceptionalism,” which celebrates America as a model, vindicator, and at times the chief defender of ordered liberty and self-government in the world.
By contrast, Bender views America as (in his words) just “a province among the provinces that make up the world.” It is this view (and worse) that he has successfully urged the College Board to coerce high schools into teaching to our nation’s best young history students.
The La Pietra Report was the fruit of a project to create an internationalized U.S. history curriculum. Kurtz says that approximately one-third of the participants who forged the new curriculum were non-Americans. One of them was Cuban.
The co-chairs of the committee that redesigned the AP U.S. History Framework are also enthusiasts of the “internationalization” of U.S. history and enemies of American exceptionalism. According to Kurtz, Dickson was an original member of the joint panel seeking to advance the goals of the La Pietra Report.
On behalf of a joint advisory board of the Organization of American Historians and the AP (OAH-AP Joint Advisory Board), he co-edited a book called America on the World Stage: A Global Approach to U.S. History. Bender wrote the introduction, in which he explained the philosophy behind the La Pietra Report.
As for Sinke, a history professor at Florida State, she wrote the portion of the AP Framework on immigration. Kurtz reports that she tells the tale of an early 20th Century ethnically Dutch woman who immigrated to America, merely to leave and go elsewhere. She says her goal is to teach us “to think beyond national histories and the terms that are caught up in them.”
In other words, we shouldn’t get caught up in the idea that there was something exceptional about America that induced immigrants to come here. We were just another place to go — “just another pleasant country somewhere on the UN Roll Call between Albania and Zimbabwe,” to borrow a phrase used by both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton to mock those who deny American exceptionalism.
Lawrence Charap, the College Board’s AP Curriculum and Content Development Director who was in overall charge of the AP U.S. History redesign process, also holds the United States in low esteem. Kurtz notes that he contributed a piece on American cultural imperialism to America on the World Stage: A Global Approach to U.S. History:
Charap’s essay highlights America’s commercial advertisements and anti-Soviet propaganda efforts in the Middle East during the Cold War. Charap seeks out off-putting examples of American propaganda and then suggests that students to put themselves in the places of people in the Soviet block or developing world as they respond to the American presence.
This, indeed, is teaching students to see their country through the eyes of its alleged “victims” and enemies.
And for Charap, our “victims” include the people in Central and Eastern Europe who were oppressed by the Soviet Union. This narrative goes beyond denying American exceptionalism. It is squarely anti-American.
The College Board’s “curricular coup” occurred soon after it selected David Coleman as its new president. Coleman is the architect of the Common Core. There should be no doubt that the Common Core is driven by a leftist agenda.
Americans have started to figure out, albeit belatedly, the harms associated with that project, and they are beginning to fight back. But how do we fight back against the anti-American U.S. History curriculum being imposed by the College Board?
States can reject the common core. But if high schools want to offer AP U.S. History (and it is to their advantage and the advantage of students that they do so), they must teach it as the College Board prescribes. Otherwise, students will be at a severe disadvantage when they take the end-of-the-year exam upon which college credit may depend.
As Kurtz concludes:
The brief five-page conceptual guideline [that] the Framework replaced allowed sufficient flexibility for teachers to approach U.S. History from a wide variety of perspectives. Liberals, conservatives, and anyone in-between could teach U.S. history their way, and still see their students do well on the AP Test.
The College Board’s new and vastly more detailed guidelines can only be interpreted as an attempt to hijack the teaching of U.S. history on behalf of a leftist political and ideological perspective.
One way or another, this cannot be allowed to stand.
College board mandates left-wing narrative for AP U.S. History
The College Board, the private company that produces the SAT test and the various Advanced Placement exams, is effectively requiring that AP U.S. History be taught from a hard-left perspective. It is doing so through a newly-issued “Framework” for its AP U.S. History exam. I warned of this development here.
Stanley Kurtz provides the back story. He points out that the co-chairs of the committee that redesigned the AP U.S. History Framework, Suzanne Sinke and Ted Dickson, worked closely together on a project whose goal was to reshape the U.S. History Survey Course along the lines recommended by Thomas Bender and the La Pietra Report.
Bender, a history professor at NYU, is (in Kurtz’s words) “the leading spokesman for the movement to internationalize the U.S. History curriculum at every educational level.” He is also a leading critic of “American exceptionalism,” which celebrates America as a model, vindicator, and at times the chief defender of ordered liberty and self-government in the world.
By contrast, Bender views America as (in his words) just “a province among the provinces that make up the world.” It is this view (and worse) that he has successfully urged the College Board to coerce high schools into teaching to our nation’s best young history students.
The La Pietra Report was the fruit of a project to create an internationalized U.S. history curriculum. Kurtz says that approximately one-third of the participants who forged the new curriculum were non-Americans. One of them was Cuban.
The co-chairs of the committee that redesigned the AP U.S. History Framework are also enthusiasts of the “internationalization” of U.S. history and enemies of American exceptionalism. According to Kurtz, Dickson was an original member of the joint panel seeking to advance the goals of the La Pietra Report.
On behalf of a joint advisory board of the Organization of American Historians and the AP (OAH-AP Joint Advisory Board), he co-edited a book called America on the World Stage: A Global Approach to U.S. History. Bender wrote the introduction, in which he explained the philosophy behind the La Pietra Report.
As for Sinke, a history professor at Florida State, she wrote the portion of the AP Framework on immigration. Kurtz reports that she tells the tale of an early 20th Century ethnically Dutch woman who immigrated to America, merely to leave and go elsewhere. She says her goal is to teach us “to think beyond national histories and the terms that are caught up in them.”
In other words, we shouldn’t get caught up in the idea that there was something exceptional about America that induced immigrants to come here. We were just another place to go — “just another pleasant country somewhere on the UN Roll Call between Albania and Zimbabwe,” to borrow a phrase used by both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton to mock those who deny American exceptionalism.
Lawrence Charap, the College Board’s AP Curriculum and Content Development Director who was in overall charge of the AP U.S. History redesign process, also holds the United States in low esteem. Kurtz notes that he contributed a piece on American cultural imperialism to America on the World Stage: A Global Approach to U.S. History:
Charap’s essay highlights America’s commercial advertisements and anti-Soviet propaganda efforts in the Middle East during the Cold War. Charap seeks out off-putting examples of American propaganda and then suggests that students to put themselves in the places of people in the Soviet block or developing world as they respond to the American presence.
This, indeed, is teaching students to see their country through the eyes of its alleged “victims” and enemies.
And for Charap, our “victims” include the people in Central and Eastern Europe who were oppressed by the Soviet Union. This narrative goes beyond denying American exceptionalism. It is squarely anti-American.
The College Board’s “curricular coup” occurred soon after it selected David Coleman as its new president. Coleman is the architect of the Common Core. There should be no doubt that the Common Core is driven by a leftist agenda.
Americans have started to figure out, albeit belatedly, the harms associated with that project, and they are beginning to fight back. But how do we fight back against the anti-American U.S. History curriculum being imposed by the College Board?
States can reject the common core. But if high schools want to offer AP U.S. History (and it is to their advantage and the advantage of students that they do so), they must teach it as the College Board prescribes. Otherwise, students will be at a severe disadvantage when they take the end-of-the-year exam upon which college credit may depend.
As Kurtz concludes:
The brief five-page conceptual guideline [that] the Framework replaced allowed sufficient flexibility for teachers to approach U.S. History from a wide variety of perspectives. Liberals, conservatives, and anyone in-between could teach U.S. history their way, and still see their students do well on the AP Test.
The College Board’s new and vastly more detailed guidelines can only be interpreted as an attempt to hijack the teaching of U.S. history on behalf of a leftist political and ideological perspective.
One way or another, this cannot be allowed to stand.
Sharpton: The New Rev. Jerimiah Wright
August 25, 2014
Sharpton's Growing Influence Inside The White House Disturbing
Racial Politics: If you count the Rev. Al Sharpton, the White House sent four officials to pay their respects at Michael Brown's funeral, a VIP turnout that families of slain American soldiers never see.
Marlon Marshall and Heather Foster of the White House Office of Public Engagement joined Broderick Johnson of the White House's My Brother's Keeper Task Force at Brown's funeral in St. Louis. They gave presidential imprimatur to Sharpton's tub-thumping eulogy for Brown.
Not that he needed it. Sharpton earlier this year headlined the president's "My Brother's Keeper" event creating the $300 million public-private task force that hopes to remove "barriers" to young black men, including "discriminatory discipline policies" in schools.
Sharpton also stood by Obama in the Oval Office as he signed an executive order creating the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans, another program whose central goal, again, involves pressuring schools to ease up on disciplining young black men. Yet Brown's case, like Trayvon Martin's before, screams for more discipline — not less.
Even the New York Times reports the 18-year-old Brown "was no angel," noting the 6-4, 300-pound Brown not only robbed a liquor store but once assaulted a neighbor. He also was accused of stealing at his high school, and was bounced from one school to the next. The paper confirms he did drugs and hung out with gang-bangers. And the college he reportedly was supposed to attend was in fact a trade school that can't confirm he ever enrolled there.
It appears Brown was a victim not of racism but of a pervasive gang culture in the black community. But pointing that out doesn't advance the grievance agenda of Sharpton and Obama. So they focus on racism.
"Michael Brown's blood is crying for justice," Sharpton bellowed. "Those police that are wrong need to be dealt with," alluding to Officer Darren Wilson, who police say shot Brown in self defense.
He called for laws making it harder for police to stop blacks for "low-level crimes," claiming Brown was shot simply for "walking in the middle of the street."
The easy access and growing influence this racial arsonist has in the West Wing is shocking. According to Politico.com, Sharpton often visits, and when he's not there, he's texting or emailing Obama consigliere Valerie Jarrett or Attorney General Eric Holder.
"There's a trust factor with The Rev from the Oval Office on down," a White House official said. "He gets it."
"Getting it" apparently means seeing the country as Obama's long-time preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright saw it, as "this racist United States of America." A place where police wage war on black males. Such escapist myth-making helps no one, least of all young black men.
Sharpton's Growing Influence Inside The White House Disturbing
Racial Politics: If you count the Rev. Al Sharpton, the White House sent four officials to pay their respects at Michael Brown's funeral, a VIP turnout that families of slain American soldiers never see.
Marlon Marshall and Heather Foster of the White House Office of Public Engagement joined Broderick Johnson of the White House's My Brother's Keeper Task Force at Brown's funeral in St. Louis. They gave presidential imprimatur to Sharpton's tub-thumping eulogy for Brown.
Not that he needed it. Sharpton earlier this year headlined the president's "My Brother's Keeper" event creating the $300 million public-private task force that hopes to remove "barriers" to young black men, including "discriminatory discipline policies" in schools.
Sharpton also stood by Obama in the Oval Office as he signed an executive order creating the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans, another program whose central goal, again, involves pressuring schools to ease up on disciplining young black men. Yet Brown's case, like Trayvon Martin's before, screams for more discipline — not less.
Even the New York Times reports the 18-year-old Brown "was no angel," noting the 6-4, 300-pound Brown not only robbed a liquor store but once assaulted a neighbor. He also was accused of stealing at his high school, and was bounced from one school to the next. The paper confirms he did drugs and hung out with gang-bangers. And the college he reportedly was supposed to attend was in fact a trade school that can't confirm he ever enrolled there.
It appears Brown was a victim not of racism but of a pervasive gang culture in the black community. But pointing that out doesn't advance the grievance agenda of Sharpton and Obama. So they focus on racism.
"Michael Brown's blood is crying for justice," Sharpton bellowed. "Those police that are wrong need to be dealt with," alluding to Officer Darren Wilson, who police say shot Brown in self defense.
He called for laws making it harder for police to stop blacks for "low-level crimes," claiming Brown was shot simply for "walking in the middle of the street."
The easy access and growing influence this racial arsonist has in the West Wing is shocking. According to Politico.com, Sharpton often visits, and when he's not there, he's texting or emailing Obama consigliere Valerie Jarrett or Attorney General Eric Holder.
"There's a trust factor with The Rev from the Oval Office on down," a White House official said. "He gets it."
"Getting it" apparently means seeing the country as Obama's long-time preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright saw it, as "this racist United States of America." A place where police wage war on black males. Such escapist myth-making helps no one, least of all young black men.
Ferguson Postmortem - MSM (VDH)
Ferguson Postmortem
Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On August 24, 2014
The backstory of Ferguson was that out of the millions of arrests each year only about 100 African-American suspects are shot fatally by white police. And yet we were falsely and ad nauseam told that Michael Brown was proof of an epidemic. There may well be an epidemic of blacks killing blacks, of African-Americans engaging in the knock-out game against non-blacks or flash-mobbing stores. But as far as rare interracial gun violence goes, in 2014 it is more commonly black on white. Ferguson is an anomaly that did not warrant hundreds of reporters who gladly skipped the real dramas of a world on the verge of blowing apart as it had in 1939.
In short, the only reason Ferguson erupted was because the police officer in question was white; had he been black and shot either a white or black suspect, there would have been no civil unrest, no visit by Eric Holder, but instead, liberal calls to ensure due process and not to rush to judgment.
Almost no one believes [1] the myths concocted at the beginning of the Ferguson controversy. That is not to say that we know what happened, only that we most certainly know that what we were told did not happen.
Michael Brown, the “young boy” and “gentle giant” and shy college-bound student, tragically was not simply minding his own business on his way to granny’s as we were told. As in the case of Tawana Brawley [2], as in the case of the Duke stripper, as in the case of Trayvon Martin [3], the mythographies finally were unsustainable: Brown had just committed a strong-armed robbery and was lucky that he was not shot by an armed guard or clerk. He appears on the video as a brutal thug, who uses his size to intimidate and, in cowardly fashion, to bully a much smaller clerk. The world of Michael Brown in that store is the world of barbarism, where there is no law and the strong dictate without mercy to the weak as they see fit. And for that matter, the star eyewitness of the street Mr. Johnson, with a criminal past, should have been arrested as an accomplice in strong-arm robbery when he accompanied Mr. Brown into the store — as well as arrested for deliberately filing (another) false witness report.
Brown was walking down the middle of the street under the influence of marijuana and so he was lucky that he was not hit by a car. He struck an officer — no one denies that — which in itself is another felony. He was not shot in the back as the community insisted and still dreams. All that suggests many of the eyewitnesses fabricated stories, the media misled the public, and the race industry likewise serially lied. We are back to the doctored videos, altered transcripts, and fabricated vocabulary of the treatment accorded George Zimmerman [4] or the mythologies at Duke [5] or of the O.J. trial.
It was a hard call whether Missouri Gov. Nixon [6] or Attorney General Eric Holder proved the greater disgrace in their efforts to prejudge the case. The latter of “cowards” and “my people” infamy almost immediately talked up his racial fides among African-Americans while all but damning the police, while the former proved our version of a hapless Ray Nagin, in his jabbering about prosecuting Officer Wilson without an indictment.
So what is left? The predetermined indictment, prosecution, and conviction of Officer Wilson are apparently a necessary sacrifice [7] to ensure calm on the streets and pacify the mob. To further that goal, after the initial myths vanished, community anger will now focus on the fact that the battered cop shot too many times at a charging 6’4” robbery suspect (are six shots too many for someone that large?) and the unfortunate fact that the body of Mr. Brown was left on the street too long. But as in the other myths, these narratives too may soon change.
Americans who watch all this know enough to suspend judgment about guilt or innocence until all the facts have been gathered and adjudicated. But for the time being they have been told to believe, by both activists and media, something that in their own lives they know is quite impossible: namely, that entering a store while under the influence of marijuana, strong-arming the clerk [8], stealing merchandise [9], walking down the center of a street, and, when stopped, striking a police officer in the face all should not necessarily illicit a quite dangerous response from an officer. Every American at one time or another has encountered an obnoxious police officer who gratuitously emphasized his authority; and most Americans know enough to keep quiet and take their medicine until the ticket or warning process is over.
The assorted media soon outnumbered the shrinking groups of demonstrators, and prowled the streets desperately looking for some sort of newsworthy incident to confirm their own predetermined narratives. Each time they interviewed a participant in the demonstrations to capture the personal anguish side of the story, they seemed to cut short the dialogue once it became clear that the interviewee had no intention of allowing due process for the officer.
Another strange note: largely white reporters blend into largely African-American crowds, turn on their cameras and sound, often with eyes darting about on those around them, and then try to present a story that is supposedly balanced but also does not bring them physical harm [10]. (Cf. the hasty retreat of the two white protestors who had signs calling for a suspension of judgment until the facts were in). When behind police lines, journalists’ narratives often markedly veered from those when on the barricades. Fairly or not, viewers receive the impression that if reporters were to question the premises of the demonstrations while among the demonstrators, they then would get a quite different reaction from that of questioning police tactics among the police. Their reporting reminds me of journalists in Gaza spinning therapeutic narratives on the understanding that Hamas treats unfavorable news quite differently [11] from the fashion of the Israelis.
We are back to an O.J./Duke Lacrosse/Trayvon landscape, in which larger and mostly unsolvable issues loom — and yet cannot be discussed: the one side silently seethes: “Please, do not commit 50% of the violent crime in America at rates four times your demographic, and, please, stop shooting nearly 7,000 fellow African-Americans a year, to ensure that there is less likelihood to encounter the police — in other words, restore the family, cease the violent and misogynist hero worship, and be wary of government dependence.” And the other side simmers: “Create for us the economic and social conditions in which we have equal opportunity without prejudice and stop the police from inordinately harassing us.” Amid that growing divide, which is now some 60 years old, all the trillions of dollars of the Great Society [12], Jesse Jackson [13], Al Sharpton [14], and an array of “activists,” all the latest criminological and sociopolitical theories, and trillions of man-hours of social work have come apparently to naught.
Another irony is a sort of Sidwell Friends liberalism: the elite censors in politics and the media who with frowns and creased brows lament the lack of diversity and de facto segregation that frame this controversy usually give no evidence that in their own lives that they are committed to living among those of a quite different economic status, sometimes checkered criminal backgrounds, and a different race — as evidenced by where they choose to live, school their children, or recreate.
Yet if our power brokers chose to live in the inner city, to enroll their children in public schools, and to visit local neighborhood establishments, perhaps they could marry their often loud abstract anguish with quiet concrete experience. Instead, we get the impressions that the Michael Browns and Trayvon Martins of America are the sort of fodder that the race industry elite and the white liberal grandees devour for their own respective careerist and psychological purposes. Because of inner-city pathologies and disparities, affirmative action is now perpetual and yet largely benefits those elites who have little in common with those who commit 50% of the nation’s homicides, while privileged liberals understand that if they don’t transmogrify Ferguson, Missouri, into Bull Connor [15] and Lester Maddox [16], then their own apartheid existence and abstract anguish are called into question.
In the end, our censors in the media and politics find psychological redemption for their own separateness by loudly denouncing in the abstract racism, police excess, and the supposed illiberal nature of whites less sophisticated than themselves.
Amid such mythologies and fantasies, a sense of ennui sets in, a sort of boredom from the acknowledgment that nothing much changes, and nothing much will change, as people continue to self-segregate. In about a year or two we will see another Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown, another set of mythologies, and another Eric Holder intervention.
This is not going to end well, as long as the Sharptons, Jacksons, Shabbazes, and white media magnificoes do not ask self-introspective questions.
The problem is not just that white America is tiring of all this, but that Asian and Hispanic America is too, and will sadly and quietly make the necessary adjustments in their own lives to reflect that dissatisfaction.
(Artwork created using multiple Shutterstock.com [17] images.)
Article printed from Works and Days: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/ferguson-postmortem/
Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On August 24, 2014
The backstory of Ferguson was that out of the millions of arrests each year only about 100 African-American suspects are shot fatally by white police. And yet we were falsely and ad nauseam told that Michael Brown was proof of an epidemic. There may well be an epidemic of blacks killing blacks, of African-Americans engaging in the knock-out game against non-blacks or flash-mobbing stores. But as far as rare interracial gun violence goes, in 2014 it is more commonly black on white. Ferguson is an anomaly that did not warrant hundreds of reporters who gladly skipped the real dramas of a world on the verge of blowing apart as it had in 1939.
In short, the only reason Ferguson erupted was because the police officer in question was white; had he been black and shot either a white or black suspect, there would have been no civil unrest, no visit by Eric Holder, but instead, liberal calls to ensure due process and not to rush to judgment.
Almost no one believes [1] the myths concocted at the beginning of the Ferguson controversy. That is not to say that we know what happened, only that we most certainly know that what we were told did not happen.
Michael Brown, the “young boy” and “gentle giant” and shy college-bound student, tragically was not simply minding his own business on his way to granny’s as we were told. As in the case of Tawana Brawley [2], as in the case of the Duke stripper, as in the case of Trayvon Martin [3], the mythographies finally were unsustainable: Brown had just committed a strong-armed robbery and was lucky that he was not shot by an armed guard or clerk. He appears on the video as a brutal thug, who uses his size to intimidate and, in cowardly fashion, to bully a much smaller clerk. The world of Michael Brown in that store is the world of barbarism, where there is no law and the strong dictate without mercy to the weak as they see fit. And for that matter, the star eyewitness of the street Mr. Johnson, with a criminal past, should have been arrested as an accomplice in strong-arm robbery when he accompanied Mr. Brown into the store — as well as arrested for deliberately filing (another) false witness report.
Brown was walking down the middle of the street under the influence of marijuana and so he was lucky that he was not hit by a car. He struck an officer — no one denies that — which in itself is another felony. He was not shot in the back as the community insisted and still dreams. All that suggests many of the eyewitnesses fabricated stories, the media misled the public, and the race industry likewise serially lied. We are back to the doctored videos, altered transcripts, and fabricated vocabulary of the treatment accorded George Zimmerman [4] or the mythologies at Duke [5] or of the O.J. trial.
It was a hard call whether Missouri Gov. Nixon [6] or Attorney General Eric Holder proved the greater disgrace in their efforts to prejudge the case. The latter of “cowards” and “my people” infamy almost immediately talked up his racial fides among African-Americans while all but damning the police, while the former proved our version of a hapless Ray Nagin, in his jabbering about prosecuting Officer Wilson without an indictment.
So what is left? The predetermined indictment, prosecution, and conviction of Officer Wilson are apparently a necessary sacrifice [7] to ensure calm on the streets and pacify the mob. To further that goal, after the initial myths vanished, community anger will now focus on the fact that the battered cop shot too many times at a charging 6’4” robbery suspect (are six shots too many for someone that large?) and the unfortunate fact that the body of Mr. Brown was left on the street too long. But as in the other myths, these narratives too may soon change.
Americans who watch all this know enough to suspend judgment about guilt or innocence until all the facts have been gathered and adjudicated. But for the time being they have been told to believe, by both activists and media, something that in their own lives they know is quite impossible: namely, that entering a store while under the influence of marijuana, strong-arming the clerk [8], stealing merchandise [9], walking down the center of a street, and, when stopped, striking a police officer in the face all should not necessarily illicit a quite dangerous response from an officer. Every American at one time or another has encountered an obnoxious police officer who gratuitously emphasized his authority; and most Americans know enough to keep quiet and take their medicine until the ticket or warning process is over.
The assorted media soon outnumbered the shrinking groups of demonstrators, and prowled the streets desperately looking for some sort of newsworthy incident to confirm their own predetermined narratives. Each time they interviewed a participant in the demonstrations to capture the personal anguish side of the story, they seemed to cut short the dialogue once it became clear that the interviewee had no intention of allowing due process for the officer.
Another strange note: largely white reporters blend into largely African-American crowds, turn on their cameras and sound, often with eyes darting about on those around them, and then try to present a story that is supposedly balanced but also does not bring them physical harm [10]. (Cf. the hasty retreat of the two white protestors who had signs calling for a suspension of judgment until the facts were in). When behind police lines, journalists’ narratives often markedly veered from those when on the barricades. Fairly or not, viewers receive the impression that if reporters were to question the premises of the demonstrations while among the demonstrators, they then would get a quite different reaction from that of questioning police tactics among the police. Their reporting reminds me of journalists in Gaza spinning therapeutic narratives on the understanding that Hamas treats unfavorable news quite differently [11] from the fashion of the Israelis.
We are back to an O.J./Duke Lacrosse/Trayvon landscape, in which larger and mostly unsolvable issues loom — and yet cannot be discussed: the one side silently seethes: “Please, do not commit 50% of the violent crime in America at rates four times your demographic, and, please, stop shooting nearly 7,000 fellow African-Americans a year, to ensure that there is less likelihood to encounter the police — in other words, restore the family, cease the violent and misogynist hero worship, and be wary of government dependence.” And the other side simmers: “Create for us the economic and social conditions in which we have equal opportunity without prejudice and stop the police from inordinately harassing us.” Amid that growing divide, which is now some 60 years old, all the trillions of dollars of the Great Society [12], Jesse Jackson [13], Al Sharpton [14], and an array of “activists,” all the latest criminological and sociopolitical theories, and trillions of man-hours of social work have come apparently to naught.
Another irony is a sort of Sidwell Friends liberalism: the elite censors in politics and the media who with frowns and creased brows lament the lack of diversity and de facto segregation that frame this controversy usually give no evidence that in their own lives that they are committed to living among those of a quite different economic status, sometimes checkered criminal backgrounds, and a different race — as evidenced by where they choose to live, school their children, or recreate.
Yet if our power brokers chose to live in the inner city, to enroll their children in public schools, and to visit local neighborhood establishments, perhaps they could marry their often loud abstract anguish with quiet concrete experience. Instead, we get the impressions that the Michael Browns and Trayvon Martins of America are the sort of fodder that the race industry elite and the white liberal grandees devour for their own respective careerist and psychological purposes. Because of inner-city pathologies and disparities, affirmative action is now perpetual and yet largely benefits those elites who have little in common with those who commit 50% of the nation’s homicides, while privileged liberals understand that if they don’t transmogrify Ferguson, Missouri, into Bull Connor [15] and Lester Maddox [16], then their own apartheid existence and abstract anguish are called into question.
In the end, our censors in the media and politics find psychological redemption for their own separateness by loudly denouncing in the abstract racism, police excess, and the supposed illiberal nature of whites less sophisticated than themselves.
Amid such mythologies and fantasies, a sense of ennui sets in, a sort of boredom from the acknowledgment that nothing much changes, and nothing much will change, as people continue to self-segregate. In about a year or two we will see another Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown, another set of mythologies, and another Eric Holder intervention.
This is not going to end well, as long as the Sharptons, Jacksons, Shabbazes, and white media magnificoes do not ask self-introspective questions.
The problem is not just that white America is tiring of all this, but that Asian and Hispanic America is too, and will sadly and quietly make the necessary adjustments in their own lives to reflect that dissatisfaction.
(Artwork created using multiple Shutterstock.com [17] images.)
Article printed from Works and Days: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/ferguson-postmortem/
Monday, August 25, 2014
Decline and Fall of Obama’s America
Ben Stein's Diary
Decline and Fall of Obama’s America
The whole world knows that Mr. Obama is a disaster.
By Ben Stein – 8.23.14
Friday
One of the great privileges that any literate man or woman or transgender can have is to read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I had that privilege — at least to read it in an abridged form — about thirty-five years ago when I was confined to bed in
Aspen, Colorado. The book, as witty and sarcastic as it is learned, makes the point — among many others — that Rome was doomed when its Emperors became steadily more stupid, cowardly, self-obsessed, short sighted, lazy, and grandiose.
Starting roughly 150 years A.D., the emperors were so bad that when each emperor died — often by murder — the citizens would rejoice. They thought that the old emperor was so bad that the new one would have to be better. Within a few months, they would be longing to have the old emperor back.
This is exactly what we are now seeing in Barack Obama’s America. We are seeing a President so bad that he makes even the worst prior ones look good (except for Jimmy Carter, who is beyond redemption). I would like to humbly offer a few examples.
My favorite is that immediately upon giving an emotional speech about the horrors of the Islamists’ slow beheading of an American journalist named Foley, a few days ago, immediately upon swearing revenge and retribution, our President went out to play his eighth round of golf in 11 days. He is rapidly closing in on playing 200 rounds since he took office. While David Cameron, PM of the UK, returned from a vacation in Portugal to deal with the horror as best he could (the murderer was apparently an Afghan who had lived in Britain for a time), our President went onto the golf course on the exclusive island of Martha’s Vineyard. He then played 18 holes of golf to prove to the murderers that he could stay cool.
This man is not cool. This man is unwell. Imagine how the family of the victim must feel. Imagine how we all feel. This man takes sociopathic self-absorption to a terrifying new level. He is our President and he’s a self-absorbed con man.
Exhibit two.
President Obama appointed Chuck “Mullet” Hagel to be Secretary of Defense. He appointed Gen. Martin Dempsey to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These two worthies gave a press conference after the murder of Mr. Foley. They said ISIS was the main threat to America now and must be stopped in Syria, where it began its career fighting against the super killer dictator, Bashir Assad, and where its bases lie. Great news.
However, neither Mr. Hagel nor Gen. Dempsey gave one single specific of how they would fight ISIS in Syria. Not one word. Now, Bashir Assad has a powerful army, up to date Russian-made weapons, one of the top air forces in the world. He has poison gas and will and has used it. Yet even he has not been able to stop ISIS.
For Messrs. Obama, Hagel, and Dempsey to say they will fight it in Syria and stop it there is a terrible joke. If Assad can’t stop it, we sure as heck cannot stop it. Why pretend?
And by the way, does all of this mean we are now on the side of the mass murderer Assad? If so, where are the demonstrations and riots? Oh, I forgot. They only happen if Jews are to be blamed.
Item three. We are rapidly disarming unilaterally even as our enemies — Russia, China, the Arab terrorists, Iran — grow stronger. When did we have a referendum calling for unilateral disarmament? When did it pass? For Mr. Obama to be planning to castrate this great country in a world as dangerous as it has ever been since 1945 apparently is a plan that he and Bill Ayers hatched some time ago. It does not have any sense to it at all except for working out Mr Obama’s hatred of the country that has exalted him.
Oh, well. Enough on that. The whole world knows that Mr. Obama is a disaster and phony who could not govern Grenada, let alone the USA. I leave him to Fox News.
One more little thing. Let’s not fall into the trap of thinking that the black man who attacked the policeman in Ferguson was “unarmed.” He was a hopped up, hyper muscular 6'4" drugged up loon attacking a policeman in his car. The youth was not “unarmed.” He was armed with his muscles and his fists and his rage. He was trying to get the policeman’s gun. If that isn’t enough to scare a policeman into using his weapon, what is?
By the way, my pals at the BBC gleefully tell me that the rioters in Ferguson now claim the Hamas as their blood brothers. And so they are: foolish, bent on killing, unable to face truth. Brothers indeed.
Well, that is far, far away. I am in Sandpoint. Summer is over, at least for today. A powerful wind blew down from the Selkirks, this morning, along the Pendoreille River, past the frame houses on Route 200, across the Sand Creek, over the BNSF railroad tracks, and smashed into our home. It was a cold wind but it felt clean and good. I left the windows open so the wind could blow clean through our home and out onto Lake Pendoreille, where it made endless whitecaps and gulls soared upon it. The wind felt invigorating as it cleaned away my fears.
My wife and I sleep a lot. We slept until noon and then I did an interview with The 700 Club by radio about how prayer and fellowship work better than drugs. Then Thomas’s English Muffins, butter, and marmalade and then out to the Wells Fargo bank, to the Sandpoint Super Care drug store, to the post office, to Vanderford’s for my Wall Street Journal, to the Bricks and Barley pizza house, to the best restaurant in Sandpoint, Ivano’s, and then home, and then to Hope to eat at Ivano’s on the lake, a relatively new part of Ivano’s. Then back to the Dairy Depot for milkshakes — chocolate for me, pralines and pecans for Alex. A perfect vacation day. I am not President. I am allowed to be on vacation.
As I said, I was dreading this summer. I did not know what I would do all summer far from my dogs and my speeches and my 12-step meetings and Phil DeMuth and Paul Hyman. I was especially worried about the stock market and about money matters not for now but for ten years from now.
And yet, this turned out to be one of the best summers ever. Why?
Because Sandpoint is the friendliest, most outgoing, most loving spot on earth and because I was with a genuine divinity named Alex.
Because when Tim Farmin and Alex and I went over to Bottle Bay for lunch, all of the young men and women who work there made certain my Bottle Bay Burger was perfect. Because Cassidy, the clerk responsible for pumping boat fuel, was always on the job with a smile. Because every time I left, they all waved goodbye as if I were going off to war.
Today, when I went to the bank, a woman V.P. told me I had saved her 18 years ago when a group of boys were beating her up at City Beach to steal her phone. Did I really do that? She said I did.
Because everyone in town calls me “Ben” as he passes by in his truck or his skateboard. At Bricks’n’Barley the waitress, Allie, politely waited until I tasted my pizza and was satisfied before she went to fetch my Diet Coke.
Because the staff at Vanderford’s guards my WSJ as if it were gold (which it is). Because the waiters and the cooks at Ivano’s and at the other best restaurant in town, Trinity on the lake, are not happy unless I am happy. Because Gavin, the server at Ivano’s, is the child of an economist and the new server, Sierra, is a dancer, and they want to help.
The druggists and clerks and assistants at Sandpoint Super Care take immaculate care of my many prescriptions. I never have to argue or wait. The goods are there, waiting to fix me. Everything I could want is on the shelves, from chocolates to electric drills. It is old fashioned and works for the customers. I could easily bring in a cot and live there.
This is not even to mention Walmart. People sneer at Walmart, but it’s a great store with staff who go out of their way to help. Then there’s the Safeway and Starbucks, where I am not a number. I am a person they call “Ben.” Where every single time in line is a time to talk to a sane person who just wants to shoot the breeze, not to brag or to ask me to get her an agent. This is the small town I always dreamed of. Not so much a municipality as a family. At the Safeway, at Walmart, I do business with men and women I have known since I first came here twenty-two years ago — people who ask about my son. People who remember my son when he was five years old and I had to tell him a Ren and Stimpy story to make him sleep at the Edgewater.
There’s Tim, ace boatman, superb mechanic, crack shot, and his smart, pretty wife, Penny. There are Bill and Scott and the other people who work at our resort.
And then there’s Ivano’s Del Lago, a haunting platform over the east end of a tiny point at the top of the lake. There’s Samantha and Jake and everyone else at the Resort who make sure every meal there is a feast. I see the sun setting over the marina and the boats and the water and it’s like what I always wanted my life to be like. It is like the Alpha Delta Phi in 1966, only on a lake.
This summer I read and reread A Moveable Feast, Hemingway’s memoir, his astoundingly brilliant memoir, of his early years in Paris as a starving writer. I think I took from it a lesson. It is not important to be rich. It is not vital to be on TV. It is important to do one’s best work and to enjoy the moment and the future will — at least to some extent — take care of itself. Hemingway was wildly happy when he lived for the day and nights with his wife, Hadley, and mornings in a cold flat writing as well as he could. If he were stuck, he would say to himself, “Write the truest sentence you can write and go on from there.” (Paraphrase.)
My sentence was that I was not on TV, was not getting rich, but was getting to spend the most time I ever have with the most wonderful woman on this planet, my wife, Alexandra Denman, the most forgiving, elegant lady of them all. And we are spending that time in a place of beautiful scenery and kind people. Alex and I got to spend this summer far from Erbil, far from the madness in New York, far from the freeways and the shopping centers and the billboards along Route 10. I was dreading this summer but I got to spend it among magnificent scenery, an endless lake, Mr. Buffett’s train set, and next to God’s gift to mankind, my wife. This has been a great summer. I hope to spend more time here and grow old among good people.
Decline and Fall of Obama’s America
The whole world knows that Mr. Obama is a disaster.
By Ben Stein – 8.23.14
Friday
One of the great privileges that any literate man or woman or transgender can have is to read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I had that privilege — at least to read it in an abridged form — about thirty-five years ago when I was confined to bed in
Aspen, Colorado. The book, as witty and sarcastic as it is learned, makes the point — among many others — that Rome was doomed when its Emperors became steadily more stupid, cowardly, self-obsessed, short sighted, lazy, and grandiose.
Starting roughly 150 years A.D., the emperors were so bad that when each emperor died — often by murder — the citizens would rejoice. They thought that the old emperor was so bad that the new one would have to be better. Within a few months, they would be longing to have the old emperor back.
This is exactly what we are now seeing in Barack Obama’s America. We are seeing a President so bad that he makes even the worst prior ones look good (except for Jimmy Carter, who is beyond redemption). I would like to humbly offer a few examples.
My favorite is that immediately upon giving an emotional speech about the horrors of the Islamists’ slow beheading of an American journalist named Foley, a few days ago, immediately upon swearing revenge and retribution, our President went out to play his eighth round of golf in 11 days. He is rapidly closing in on playing 200 rounds since he took office. While David Cameron, PM of the UK, returned from a vacation in Portugal to deal with the horror as best he could (the murderer was apparently an Afghan who had lived in Britain for a time), our President went onto the golf course on the exclusive island of Martha’s Vineyard. He then played 18 holes of golf to prove to the murderers that he could stay cool.
This man is not cool. This man is unwell. Imagine how the family of the victim must feel. Imagine how we all feel. This man takes sociopathic self-absorption to a terrifying new level. He is our President and he’s a self-absorbed con man.
Exhibit two.
President Obama appointed Chuck “Mullet” Hagel to be Secretary of Defense. He appointed Gen. Martin Dempsey to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These two worthies gave a press conference after the murder of Mr. Foley. They said ISIS was the main threat to America now and must be stopped in Syria, where it began its career fighting against the super killer dictator, Bashir Assad, and where its bases lie. Great news.
However, neither Mr. Hagel nor Gen. Dempsey gave one single specific of how they would fight ISIS in Syria. Not one word. Now, Bashir Assad has a powerful army, up to date Russian-made weapons, one of the top air forces in the world. He has poison gas and will and has used it. Yet even he has not been able to stop ISIS.
For Messrs. Obama, Hagel, and Dempsey to say they will fight it in Syria and stop it there is a terrible joke. If Assad can’t stop it, we sure as heck cannot stop it. Why pretend?
And by the way, does all of this mean we are now on the side of the mass murderer Assad? If so, where are the demonstrations and riots? Oh, I forgot. They only happen if Jews are to be blamed.
Item three. We are rapidly disarming unilaterally even as our enemies — Russia, China, the Arab terrorists, Iran — grow stronger. When did we have a referendum calling for unilateral disarmament? When did it pass? For Mr. Obama to be planning to castrate this great country in a world as dangerous as it has ever been since 1945 apparently is a plan that he and Bill Ayers hatched some time ago. It does not have any sense to it at all except for working out Mr Obama’s hatred of the country that has exalted him.
Oh, well. Enough on that. The whole world knows that Mr. Obama is a disaster and phony who could not govern Grenada, let alone the USA. I leave him to Fox News.
One more little thing. Let’s not fall into the trap of thinking that the black man who attacked the policeman in Ferguson was “unarmed.” He was a hopped up, hyper muscular 6'4" drugged up loon attacking a policeman in his car. The youth was not “unarmed.” He was armed with his muscles and his fists and his rage. He was trying to get the policeman’s gun. If that isn’t enough to scare a policeman into using his weapon, what is?
By the way, my pals at the BBC gleefully tell me that the rioters in Ferguson now claim the Hamas as their blood brothers. And so they are: foolish, bent on killing, unable to face truth. Brothers indeed.
Well, that is far, far away. I am in Sandpoint. Summer is over, at least for today. A powerful wind blew down from the Selkirks, this morning, along the Pendoreille River, past the frame houses on Route 200, across the Sand Creek, over the BNSF railroad tracks, and smashed into our home. It was a cold wind but it felt clean and good. I left the windows open so the wind could blow clean through our home and out onto Lake Pendoreille, where it made endless whitecaps and gulls soared upon it. The wind felt invigorating as it cleaned away my fears.
My wife and I sleep a lot. We slept until noon and then I did an interview with The 700 Club by radio about how prayer and fellowship work better than drugs. Then Thomas’s English Muffins, butter, and marmalade and then out to the Wells Fargo bank, to the Sandpoint Super Care drug store, to the post office, to Vanderford’s for my Wall Street Journal, to the Bricks and Barley pizza house, to the best restaurant in Sandpoint, Ivano’s, and then home, and then to Hope to eat at Ivano’s on the lake, a relatively new part of Ivano’s. Then back to the Dairy Depot for milkshakes — chocolate for me, pralines and pecans for Alex. A perfect vacation day. I am not President. I am allowed to be on vacation.
As I said, I was dreading this summer. I did not know what I would do all summer far from my dogs and my speeches and my 12-step meetings and Phil DeMuth and Paul Hyman. I was especially worried about the stock market and about money matters not for now but for ten years from now.
And yet, this turned out to be one of the best summers ever. Why?
Because Sandpoint is the friendliest, most outgoing, most loving spot on earth and because I was with a genuine divinity named Alex.
Because when Tim Farmin and Alex and I went over to Bottle Bay for lunch, all of the young men and women who work there made certain my Bottle Bay Burger was perfect. Because Cassidy, the clerk responsible for pumping boat fuel, was always on the job with a smile. Because every time I left, they all waved goodbye as if I were going off to war.
Today, when I went to the bank, a woman V.P. told me I had saved her 18 years ago when a group of boys were beating her up at City Beach to steal her phone. Did I really do that? She said I did.
Because everyone in town calls me “Ben” as he passes by in his truck or his skateboard. At Bricks’n’Barley the waitress, Allie, politely waited until I tasted my pizza and was satisfied before she went to fetch my Diet Coke.
Because the staff at Vanderford’s guards my WSJ as if it were gold (which it is). Because the waiters and the cooks at Ivano’s and at the other best restaurant in town, Trinity on the lake, are not happy unless I am happy. Because Gavin, the server at Ivano’s, is the child of an economist and the new server, Sierra, is a dancer, and they want to help.
The druggists and clerks and assistants at Sandpoint Super Care take immaculate care of my many prescriptions. I never have to argue or wait. The goods are there, waiting to fix me. Everything I could want is on the shelves, from chocolates to electric drills. It is old fashioned and works for the customers. I could easily bring in a cot and live there.
This is not even to mention Walmart. People sneer at Walmart, but it’s a great store with staff who go out of their way to help. Then there’s the Safeway and Starbucks, where I am not a number. I am a person they call “Ben.” Where every single time in line is a time to talk to a sane person who just wants to shoot the breeze, not to brag or to ask me to get her an agent. This is the small town I always dreamed of. Not so much a municipality as a family. At the Safeway, at Walmart, I do business with men and women I have known since I first came here twenty-two years ago — people who ask about my son. People who remember my son when he was five years old and I had to tell him a Ren and Stimpy story to make him sleep at the Edgewater.
There’s Tim, ace boatman, superb mechanic, crack shot, and his smart, pretty wife, Penny. There are Bill and Scott and the other people who work at our resort.
And then there’s Ivano’s Del Lago, a haunting platform over the east end of a tiny point at the top of the lake. There’s Samantha and Jake and everyone else at the Resort who make sure every meal there is a feast. I see the sun setting over the marina and the boats and the water and it’s like what I always wanted my life to be like. It is like the Alpha Delta Phi in 1966, only on a lake.
This summer I read and reread A Moveable Feast, Hemingway’s memoir, his astoundingly brilliant memoir, of his early years in Paris as a starving writer. I think I took from it a lesson. It is not important to be rich. It is not vital to be on TV. It is important to do one’s best work and to enjoy the moment and the future will — at least to some extent — take care of itself. Hemingway was wildly happy when he lived for the day and nights with his wife, Hadley, and mornings in a cold flat writing as well as he could. If he were stuck, he would say to himself, “Write the truest sentence you can write and go on from there.” (Paraphrase.)
My sentence was that I was not on TV, was not getting rich, but was getting to spend the most time I ever have with the most wonderful woman on this planet, my wife, Alexandra Denman, the most forgiving, elegant lady of them all. And we are spending that time in a place of beautiful scenery and kind people. Alex and I got to spend this summer far from Erbil, far from the madness in New York, far from the freeways and the shopping centers and the billboards along Route 10. I was dreading this summer but I got to spend it among magnificent scenery, an endless lake, Mr. Buffett’s train set, and next to God’s gift to mankind, my wife. This has been a great summer. I hope to spend more time here and grow old among good people.
DOJ's Lynch Mob
August 22, 2014
Lynch Mob: DOJ Ferguson Unit Has Tainted Past
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Due Process: The Criminal Section of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division that is handling the shooting of Michael Brown was once smacked down by a federal judge for gross prosecutorial misconduct.
Demonstrating the same relentless pursuit of truth and justice that occurred after the New Black Panther voter-intimidation case or the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in Fast and Furious, Attorney General Eric Holder and his team of leftist lawyers and ideologues have descended on Ferguson, Mo., to assure, as Gov. Jay Nixon put it, justice is done for Brown and his family.
Justice for Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson is another thing, as it was for five members of the New Orleans Police Department. They faced federal charges for, and were convicted of, shooting suspected looters on New Orleans' Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The presumption of innocence was also cast aside in that case, and the end of finding the officers guilty of civil rights violations justified any means.
As Hans von Spakovsky has documented in National Review Online, antics by Justice Department lawyers from the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division included: leaking supposedly secret grand jury proceedings and conducting a PR campaign to influence the jury and inflame public opinion that included blogging on the website of the Times-Picayune newspaper.
The defendants justifiably petitioned for a new trial and on Nov. 26, 2012, in a scathing ruling unnoticed by the media, Louisiana Federal District Court Judge Kurt Englehardt reversed the convictions of the defendants, citing the "perfidy" and "skullduggery" of the Justice Department attorneys.
Spakovsky points out that in his order, Englehardt — who labeled the department's misconduct "grotesque" — noted the website postings "mocked the defense, attacked the defendants and their attorneys, were approbatory of the United States Department of Justice, declared the defendants obviously guilty, and discussed the jury's deliberations."
On Sept. 17, 2013, Englehardt ordered a new trial, noting that federal "prosecutors, acting with anonymity, used social media to circumvent ethical obligations, professional responsibilities, and even to commit violations of the Code of Federal Regulations."
In their words and actions, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon and Attorney General Eric Holder have similarly declared to the world their belief that Wilson is obviously guilty — and not of defending himself from a physical assault by someone who allegedly had just committed the strong-arm robbery of a convenience store, but of shooting an innocent teen out for a stroll.
As pointed out by J. Christian Adams, who now writes for PJ Media and once worked in Justice's Voting Rights Section, many of the Justice Department attorneys who participated in the New Orleans fiasco still work in the Civil Rights Division and the "anti-police biases of lawyers in this unit have resulted in gross prosecutorial misconduct against police officers."
Adams left Justice after Holder refused to pursue what looked like a clear case of voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers at a Philadelphia polling place in 2008.
As they say, someone's point of view often depends on whose ox is being gored. And if anyone wanted to know Holder's view of police officers, let's remember, as we have mentioned before, that the administration nominated Debo Adegbile to head the Civil Rights Division. His claim to fame was being the lawyer who fought to free from prison Mumia Abu-Jamal, the convicted killer of Philadelphia Police Officer Danny Faulkner.
Justice is supposed to be blind, and that includes being colorblind, and should take investigators where the facts lead them. Justice doesn't start with a predetermined verdict and actions that taint the jury pool. The track record of Holder and the Civil Rights Division does not speak well of any desire for true justice.
Lynch Mob: DOJ Ferguson Unit Has Tainted Past
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Due Process: The Criminal Section of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division that is handling the shooting of Michael Brown was once smacked down by a federal judge for gross prosecutorial misconduct.
Demonstrating the same relentless pursuit of truth and justice that occurred after the New Black Panther voter-intimidation case or the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in Fast and Furious, Attorney General Eric Holder and his team of leftist lawyers and ideologues have descended on Ferguson, Mo., to assure, as Gov. Jay Nixon put it, justice is done for Brown and his family.
Justice for Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson is another thing, as it was for five members of the New Orleans Police Department. They faced federal charges for, and were convicted of, shooting suspected looters on New Orleans' Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The presumption of innocence was also cast aside in that case, and the end of finding the officers guilty of civil rights violations justified any means.
As Hans von Spakovsky has documented in National Review Online, antics by Justice Department lawyers from the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division included: leaking supposedly secret grand jury proceedings and conducting a PR campaign to influence the jury and inflame public opinion that included blogging on the website of the Times-Picayune newspaper.
The defendants justifiably petitioned for a new trial and on Nov. 26, 2012, in a scathing ruling unnoticed by the media, Louisiana Federal District Court Judge Kurt Englehardt reversed the convictions of the defendants, citing the "perfidy" and "skullduggery" of the Justice Department attorneys.
Spakovsky points out that in his order, Englehardt — who labeled the department's misconduct "grotesque" — noted the website postings "mocked the defense, attacked the defendants and their attorneys, were approbatory of the United States Department of Justice, declared the defendants obviously guilty, and discussed the jury's deliberations."
On Sept. 17, 2013, Englehardt ordered a new trial, noting that federal "prosecutors, acting with anonymity, used social media to circumvent ethical obligations, professional responsibilities, and even to commit violations of the Code of Federal Regulations."
In their words and actions, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon and Attorney General Eric Holder have similarly declared to the world their belief that Wilson is obviously guilty — and not of defending himself from a physical assault by someone who allegedly had just committed the strong-arm robbery of a convenience store, but of shooting an innocent teen out for a stroll.
As pointed out by J. Christian Adams, who now writes for PJ Media and once worked in Justice's Voting Rights Section, many of the Justice Department attorneys who participated in the New Orleans fiasco still work in the Civil Rights Division and the "anti-police biases of lawyers in this unit have resulted in gross prosecutorial misconduct against police officers."
Adams left Justice after Holder refused to pursue what looked like a clear case of voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers at a Philadelphia polling place in 2008.
As they say, someone's point of view often depends on whose ox is being gored. And if anyone wanted to know Holder's view of police officers, let's remember, as we have mentioned before, that the administration nominated Debo Adegbile to head the Civil Rights Division. His claim to fame was being the lawyer who fought to free from prison Mumia Abu-Jamal, the convicted killer of Philadelphia Police Officer Danny Faulkner.
Justice is supposed to be blind, and that includes being colorblind, and should take investigators where the facts lead them. Justice doesn't start with a predetermined verdict and actions that taint the jury pool. The track record of Holder and the Civil Rights Division does not speak well of any desire for true justice.
Pentagon Advises Destroying Islamic State Obama Once Dismissed As "JV"
August 22, 2014
Pentagon Advises Destroying Islamic State Obama Once Dismissed As "JV"
Islamic State: A campaigning president assured us that al-Qaida was in retreat and its Syrian spin-off was just "JV." Now the Pentagon admits that this al-Qaida spawn is worse. The U.S. never had to allow this situation.
To get an idea of why this White House has placed America in what Senate Armed Services Committee ranking Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma calls "the most dangerous position we've ever been in as a nation," we turn to one of Obama's biggest mainstream media devotees.
In "The Promise," the fawning book about Obama's first year in office by ex-Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter, we read of a May 2009 meeting with the presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan on how to "Disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida."
Alter writes, "Nothing much concrete was accomplished ... . The session was kicked off not by a military officer or a diplomat but by the secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack," who discussed "water rights, slowing soil erosion, and planting new seeds. . .. It was one example of the administration's new thinking."
You just can't make this stuff up. No wonder the president in January was calling Islamic State "a JV team" lacking "the capacity and reach of a bin Laden."
That nonsense is fully exposed now, as Obama's own military advisers use public pressure to shake him out of his self-absorbed Martha's Vineyard complacency.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warns that IS "has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision" and "will eventually have to be defeated," necessitating "a coalition in the region."
Obama's own Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel, invoking the 9/11 attacks, warns that "ISIL is as sophisticated and well-funded as any group that we have seen," and we should take a "cold, steely hard look."
Even the New York Times, on its front page Friday, admitted that Obama has "not publicly articulated a detailed strategy to stop the group."
Marine Gen. John Allen, a top commander in Afghanistan now with the liberal Brookings Institution, in a Defense One article this month seemed to speak directly to Obama when noting the U.S. is "the only nation on the planet capable of exerting the kind of strategic leadership, influence and strike capacity to deal with IS."
"It's worth remembering the Taliban provided the perfect platform from which al-Qaida attacked the U.S.," Allen wrote, and they were "cavemen in comparison to IS."
Allen cautions that a broad alliance of Kurds, Sunnis and Free Syrian resistance groups will be needed to beat IS. Only the U.S. can orchestrate it.
Obama knew of the threat of this al-Qaida mutation last year but downplayed it. "I was elected to end wars, not start them," he said.
It simply may not be possible for such a nonleader to assemble and lead a regional coalition in war.
Pentagon Advises Destroying Islamic State Obama Once Dismissed As "JV"
Islamic State: A campaigning president assured us that al-Qaida was in retreat and its Syrian spin-off was just "JV." Now the Pentagon admits that this al-Qaida spawn is worse. The U.S. never had to allow this situation.
To get an idea of why this White House has placed America in what Senate Armed Services Committee ranking Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma calls "the most dangerous position we've ever been in as a nation," we turn to one of Obama's biggest mainstream media devotees.
In "The Promise," the fawning book about Obama's first year in office by ex-Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter, we read of a May 2009 meeting with the presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan on how to "Disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida."
Alter writes, "Nothing much concrete was accomplished ... . The session was kicked off not by a military officer or a diplomat but by the secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack," who discussed "water rights, slowing soil erosion, and planting new seeds. . .. It was one example of the administration's new thinking."
You just can't make this stuff up. No wonder the president in January was calling Islamic State "a JV team" lacking "the capacity and reach of a bin Laden."
That nonsense is fully exposed now, as Obama's own military advisers use public pressure to shake him out of his self-absorbed Martha's Vineyard complacency.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warns that IS "has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision" and "will eventually have to be defeated," necessitating "a coalition in the region."
Obama's own Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel, invoking the 9/11 attacks, warns that "ISIL is as sophisticated and well-funded as any group that we have seen," and we should take a "cold, steely hard look."
Even the New York Times, on its front page Friday, admitted that Obama has "not publicly articulated a detailed strategy to stop the group."
Marine Gen. John Allen, a top commander in Afghanistan now with the liberal Brookings Institution, in a Defense One article this month seemed to speak directly to Obama when noting the U.S. is "the only nation on the planet capable of exerting the kind of strategic leadership, influence and strike capacity to deal with IS."
"It's worth remembering the Taliban provided the perfect platform from which al-Qaida attacked the U.S.," Allen wrote, and they were "cavemen in comparison to IS."
Allen cautions that a broad alliance of Kurds, Sunnis and Free Syrian resistance groups will be needed to beat IS. Only the U.S. can orchestrate it.
Obama knew of the threat of this al-Qaida mutation last year but downplayed it. "I was elected to end wars, not start them," he said.
It simply may not be possible for such a nonleader to assemble and lead a regional coalition in war.
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Naive Mitt Romney Still Doesn’t Get It: Obama Does Not Make Policy ‘Mistakes’
Naive Mitt Romney Still Doesn’t Get It: Obama Does Not Make Policy ‘Mistakes’
Posted By Scott Ott On August 20, 2014
Mitt Romney, once again, proves himself unfit to be a candidate for president of the United States. That’s not to say he wouldn’t be a good president. We’ll never know.
Never.
Barack Obama, on the other hand (the left hand), has shown himself to be an excellent candidate, but a disastrous president.
With apologies to DC Comics, Romney is BizarrObama. Perhaps it’s more faithful to the Bizarro World storyline to say that Obama is BizarrOmney.
On the surface, Romney’s poll numbers climb with each step of Obama’s descending popularity. Where Romney demonstrates towering competence, Obama’s executive effectiveness inhabits the abyss–he’s abysmal. Romney sees the Russian threat clearly, and stands against it. Obama sends Putin a shiny red “Reset” button which, when pressed, reboots Soviet territorial ambitions.
But it goes deeper than that. Romney inhabits a spherical planet on the opposite side of the sun from Obama’s cube, leading him to say things like this…
I was not a big fan of the president’s policies, as you know, either domestically or internationally, but the results of his mistakes and errors, in my opinion, have been more severe than even I would have predicted.
The headline quote making the rounds is that Romney, at a West Virginia rally for GOP congressional candidates, said Obama is “a good deal worse than I ever expected.”
This can be explained only by positing the existence of Bizarro World, where everything is a flipped version of life on Earth. Otherwise, we’re left with the inexplicable scenario of a Romney who understands the darkness in the heart of Vlad the Impaler, but finds Barack Obama’s motives inscrutable.
Romney’s genteel locution that he’s not “a big fan of the president’s policies” constitutes a backhand where a punch to the bridge of the nose would be apropos. His attribution of those poisonous policies to “mistakes and errors” is naive approaching infantile.
President Obama does not make policy mistakes.
The 2012 election is over and, as he promised to Dmitry Medvedev, Obama has “more flexibility.” These were words of comfort which Dmitry intuitively understood and transmitted to Vladimir, who then waited and watched as the election-night returns rolled in. Putin has not been disappointed.
Obama’s first foreign speech, in Egypt, elevated a savage ideology and extended the hand of fellowship to people who sever hands, and heads. Now, ISIS rules an expanding caliphate in a U.S.-abandoned Iraq, Assad erases red lines with impunity, a U.S. major general and many others fall slain for a mission with no motive beyond a deadline for withdrawal from Afghanistan, and Israel shows itself out the servants’ entrance of the White House, stranded by President Scold.
Obama’s energy policy — a clusterdoggle of crony handouts and boot-on-the-neck regulations — is proceeding with effectiveness beyond Emperor Palpatine’s dreams.
Obamacare, which is Phase II of nationalized healthcare, has succeeded in forcing the responsible people to subsidize the others, in forcing companies to cancel policies and in forcing doctors into retirement. The clumsy roll-out looks like an error only if you posit goodwill on the part of the president. Barack Obama understands that freedom-loving Americans would not leap into universal, government-run, healthcare in a single bound.
First, cause the crisis, then offer the solution. Nothing goes to waste.
Democrats thrilled at the long-awaited rise of such a charismatic standard-bearer, but their ardor has cooled as even top Democrats find the man aloof, disengaged, and focused on his own leisure rather than on their perceived common cause. Their voter database and field force are now his. Organizing for Action (née Obama for America) can declare: “All your base are belong to us.”
President Obama does not make policy mistakes.
Any GOP presidential hopeful who fails to grasp this fundamental fact — gracious though he may be — is unworthy of the mantle of nominee.
Posted By Scott Ott On August 20, 2014
Mitt Romney, once again, proves himself unfit to be a candidate for president of the United States. That’s not to say he wouldn’t be a good president. We’ll never know.
Never.
Barack Obama, on the other hand (the left hand), has shown himself to be an excellent candidate, but a disastrous president.
With apologies to DC Comics, Romney is BizarrObama. Perhaps it’s more faithful to the Bizarro World storyline to say that Obama is BizarrOmney.
On the surface, Romney’s poll numbers climb with each step of Obama’s descending popularity. Where Romney demonstrates towering competence, Obama’s executive effectiveness inhabits the abyss–he’s abysmal. Romney sees the Russian threat clearly, and stands against it. Obama sends Putin a shiny red “Reset” button which, when pressed, reboots Soviet territorial ambitions.
But it goes deeper than that. Romney inhabits a spherical planet on the opposite side of the sun from Obama’s cube, leading him to say things like this…
I was not a big fan of the president’s policies, as you know, either domestically or internationally, but the results of his mistakes and errors, in my opinion, have been more severe than even I would have predicted.
The headline quote making the rounds is that Romney, at a West Virginia rally for GOP congressional candidates, said Obama is “a good deal worse than I ever expected.”
This can be explained only by positing the existence of Bizarro World, where everything is a flipped version of life on Earth. Otherwise, we’re left with the inexplicable scenario of a Romney who understands the darkness in the heart of Vlad the Impaler, but finds Barack Obama’s motives inscrutable.
Romney’s genteel locution that he’s not “a big fan of the president’s policies” constitutes a backhand where a punch to the bridge of the nose would be apropos. His attribution of those poisonous policies to “mistakes and errors” is naive approaching infantile.
President Obama does not make policy mistakes.
The 2012 election is over and, as he promised to Dmitry Medvedev, Obama has “more flexibility.” These were words of comfort which Dmitry intuitively understood and transmitted to Vladimir, who then waited and watched as the election-night returns rolled in. Putin has not been disappointed.
Obama’s first foreign speech, in Egypt, elevated a savage ideology and extended the hand of fellowship to people who sever hands, and heads. Now, ISIS rules an expanding caliphate in a U.S.-abandoned Iraq, Assad erases red lines with impunity, a U.S. major general and many others fall slain for a mission with no motive beyond a deadline for withdrawal from Afghanistan, and Israel shows itself out the servants’ entrance of the White House, stranded by President Scold.
Obama’s energy policy — a clusterdoggle of crony handouts and boot-on-the-neck regulations — is proceeding with effectiveness beyond Emperor Palpatine’s dreams.
Obamacare, which is Phase II of nationalized healthcare, has succeeded in forcing the responsible people to subsidize the others, in forcing companies to cancel policies and in forcing doctors into retirement. The clumsy roll-out looks like an error only if you posit goodwill on the part of the president. Barack Obama understands that freedom-loving Americans would not leap into universal, government-run, healthcare in a single bound.
First, cause the crisis, then offer the solution. Nothing goes to waste.
Democrats thrilled at the long-awaited rise of such a charismatic standard-bearer, but their ardor has cooled as even top Democrats find the man aloof, disengaged, and focused on his own leisure rather than on their perceived common cause. Their voter database and field force are now his. Organizing for Action (née Obama for America) can declare: “All your base are belong to us.”
President Obama does not make policy mistakes.
Any GOP presidential hopeful who fails to grasp this fundamental fact — gracious though he may be — is unworthy of the mantle of nominee.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)