<\/p>\n
News of the Week for August 4th<\/sup>, 2013<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n No, the IRS Did Not Target Progressives Like It Targeted Conservatives <\/a> E-mails Suggest Collusion Between FEC, IRS to Target Conservative Groups <\/a> Obama\u2019s IRS Scandal Sure Looks to Run a Lot Deeper Than Reported<\/a> Documents: IRS targeting of pro-life groups continues<\/a> <\/p>\n Gun Owners, Segregationists, and Jim Sleeper <\/a> Piers Morgan to gun-rights advocate: How can we trust George Zimmerman to own another gun?<\/a> Yale\u2019s Declaration On Rape Proves Why Collegiate Females Should Be Allowed To Carry<\/a> The Three Rings of the Climate Circus<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n People Of All Ages Sign Petition For Mandatory Euthanasia For Senior Citizens Under Obamacare <\/a> Look out below! Work more, get less in Obamacare ‘cliff’<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Unisex Uniforms Debut As Army Opens Units To Women<\/a> <\/p>\n Nader: Obama \u2018Corporatist Under Liberal Sheen\u2019 <\/a> Matt Slick on The Daily Show, June 17, 2013<\/a> Pro-Life Congresswoman Delivers ‘Miracle’ Baby<\/a> The Obama-Zinn connection<\/a> Appeals court upholds ruling slapping down Mayor Bloomberg’s soda ban<\/a> Regionalism: Obama\u2019s Quiet Anti-Suburban Revolution <\/a> San Antonio May Impose Anti-Christian Viewpoint Discrimination<\/a> San Antonio Proposal Could Bar Christians From City Council<\/a> Gov’t Knows Best? White House creates ‘nudge squad’ to shape behavior<\/a> Dave Camp weighing Michigan Senate bid<\/a> Demented California Bill Has Children Selecting Their Gender<\/a> Ark.’s Cotton to run for US Senate<\/a> Armed agents raid animal shelter for baby deer<\/a> Seattle Looks to Ban \u2018Potentially Offensive\u2019 Language <\/a> Obama\u2019s Regionalist Revolution, Step Two <\/a> Psychology Prof Murdered His Family: Career Unaffected<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n DOOM: Sag mir, wo die DOOMen sind?<\/a> Signs of declining economic security <\/a> Economy not on Organizing for Action\u2019s \u2018Action August\u2019 agenda<\/a> This is What Budget Cuts Have Done to Detroit … And It’s Freaking Awesome <\/a> Going For Broke: Is Los Angeles Headed in the Same Direction as Detroit?<\/a> China slowdown digs a hole for US industrials<\/a> Obama\u2019s Economics \u2013 Equality At The Zero<\/a> Los Angeles: The Poster City for Finding New Ways to Waste Money<\/a> Econo-genius Matt Yglesias: In business, taxes are \u2018irrelevant to pricing\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n The Saddest Chart: Young Americans Are Simply Dropping Out<\/a> Obama: Top Tax Rate Should Be 28% for Corporations, 40% for Small Businesses<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Egypt unrest: ‘Scores killed’ in Cairo protest<\/a> South Australian Parliament rejects state-based same-sex marriage<\/a> South African White ANC MP Assaulted and Strangled by Black Criminals<\/a> Cambodian Election Turmoil Spells Trouble for China<\/a> Pakistan’s Musharraf to Face Bhutto Murder Charge <\/a> Man who revealed tattoo is arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred <\/a> U.K.: ‘Armageddon’ speech prepared for queen Natalie DiBlasio, USA TODAY <\/a> Assad regime ammunition goes up in a huge fireball<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Patterico\u2019s Rules for Talking to White People About Race, Or, Why I\u2019m Not Interested in a \u201cNational Conversation\u201d About Race<\/a> Obama quietly pushes forward with anti-suburban campaign<\/a> Ashamed of Patriotism <\/a> Hispanic win: \u2018California can be Republican again\u2019<\/a> Who Can Deny It? Obamacare Is Accelerating U.S. Towards A Part-Time Nation<\/a> \u2018No-Government\u2019 Conservatives and the Meta-Narrative <\/a> Obama’s Eternal Critique<\/a> Obama’s ‘Grand Bargain’ With Obama <\/a> Mitch Daniels’s Gift to Academic Freedom <\/a> Detroit\u2019s death by democracy<\/a> How Coleman Young Ruined Detroit<\/a> It’s Always Selma Again <\/a> The Beholden State: Reclaiming California’s Lost Promise<\/a> Friedrich Engels Was an Entitled Jerk<\/a>\n
<\/a>Obama Scandals<\/h1>\n
\nNPR\u2019s politics blog has published a chart \u2014 compiled from a House Ways and Means staff analysis \u2014 of the different levels of IRS targeting between conservative and progressive groups. Bottom line? Far more conservative groups faced IRS scrutiny, they faced more questions, and were approved at a much lower rate than progressives. The chart is based on the IRS\u2019s now-discredited \u201cBOLO\u201d (be on the lookout) lists.<\/p>\n
\nEmbattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner and an attorney in the Federal Election Commission\u2019s general counsel\u2019s office appear to have twice colluded to influence the record before the FEC\u2019s vote in the case of a conservative non-profit organization, according to e-mails unearthed by the House Ways and Means Committee and obtained exclusively by National Review Online.<\/p>\n
\nPhony scandal, huh? We now know that IRS honchos shared information about conservative groups with other agencies, using the vast data in the IRS databanks to help other federal officials make cases against conservatives. Now we need to know how much, how often and what kind.<\/p>\n
\nThe Internal Revenue Service continues to target pro-life conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status despite pending investigations into the IRS targeting scandal, according to documents obtained by The Daily Caller.<\/p>\n<\/a>Gun Rights<\/h1>\n
\nJim Sleeper, a \u201clecturer in political science\u201d at Yale, wrote the following in today\u2019s Huffington Post<\/p>\n
\nWorth watching as a demonstration of the impenetrability of the \u201cZimmerman is a murderer\u201d narrative. Morgan\u2019s point is simple: Why on earth would we trust a guy with a gun who stalked an unarmed teenager, \u201cdecided to engage him in the street,\u201d and then shot him dead while claiming self-defense? Good question. Why would we trust a guy like that? His guest patiently responds \u2014 more than once, because evidently it\u2019s necessary \u2014 that that\u2019s not what happened according to both Florida police and a Florida jury. Zimmerman was entitled to shoot because he was getting his head beat against the sidewalk. (Zimmerman also claims it was Martin who \u201cengaged\u201d him, not vice versa.) Presumably Morgan thinks he should have laid there, swallowed his worries that his skull would be cracked, and hoped for the best.<\/p>\n
\nIt\u2019s like progressive women are just now discovering the brutally high college rape statistics.<\/p>\n<\/a>Hide the Decline<\/h1>\n
Environment &
\n“Green Energy”<\/h2>\n
\nLate next month the UN\u2019s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will begin releasing its massive Fifth Assessment Report (AR5 in the trade), starting with the report of Working Group I, on the science of climate change. The reports of Working Groups II and III will dribble out in 2014. In previous assessment reports, the entire report with the findings of all three working groups came out at once. I suspect this change may be an attempt to be sure there are three chances to make headlines, especially since the media is losing interest in the subject. Power Line will be all over the report when it comes out. As we\u2019ve reported here before, this next IPCC report will have to do some fancy footwork to explain the increasing anomalies of recent temperature trends. I\u2019m sure they\u2019re up to the job.<\/p>\n<\/a>Obamacare<\/h1>\n
Government in Healthcare<\/h2>\n
\nMedia analyst and author Mark Dice heads out to see if Californians will sign a petition for mandatory euthanasia program for seniors and terminally ill people in order to cut costs in Obamacare. Some of these people are the most calloused people I\u2019ve ever seen. Dice asks random people if they\u2019ll sign a petition for \u201cmandatory\u201d euthanasia provision in Obama Care to help keep healthcare costs down by putting senior citizens to sleep.<\/p>\n
\nBe careful you don’t fall off the Obamacare “cliff” when the boss asks you to put in some overtime.<\/p>\n<\/a>War & Terror<\/h1>\n
\nA new combat uniform with special consideration to the female body is now available at Fort Gordon, almost a month after the Army announced plans to open all units and military jobs to women by 2016.<\/p>\n<\/a>National<\/h1>\n
\nFive-time third-party presidential candidate Ralph Nader pulled no punches this morning, blasting both President Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n
\nFor those who actually believed what the Daily Show presented (a comedy show that people take seriously?) I have three quick comments.
\nFirst, please consider reading this article and find out how the Daily Show misrepresented me, in direct contradiction to what they said they would do.
\nSecond, they edited me in such a way as to get me to say the opposite of what I actually said.
\nThird, below is the actual transcript of what I said. It is taken from my audio recording.<\/p>\n
\nCongresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) announced the birth of her daughter on Facebook Monday; Abigail Rose Beutler was supposed to die just moments after birth but is now two weeks old.<\/p>\n
\nFrom time to time, we have noted President Obama\u2019s lack of knowledge about American history. The most recent manifestation \u2014 his claim that Ho Chi Minh was inspired by America\u2019s Founding Fathers \u2014 suggests that Obama\u2019s ignorance is to some extent willful.<\/p>\n
\nAn appeals court today dealt another blow to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposed soda ban, calling the controversial regulation “invalid” because it violates “the principle of separation of powers.”<\/p>\n
\nThe consensus response to President Obama\u2019s Knox College speech on the economy is that the administration has been reduced to pushing a menu of stale and timid policies that, in any case, won\u2019t be enacted. But what if the administration isn\u2019t actually out of ideas? What if Obama\u2019s boldest policy initiative is merely something he\u2019d rather not discuss? And what if that initiative is being enacted right now?<\/p>\n
\nHomosexuals constitute a tiny fragment of the population, and in a morally degenerating culture, have very little to complain about. Why is their agenda suddenly such an urgent priority for the leftists running the government and media? Because as community organizers like to say, the issue is never the issue. The \u201cgay rights\u201d jihad isn\u2019t about perverted sexual practices; it is about the power to impose an ideology by government force. It is also about crushing Christianity, a traditional bulwark against the tyranny of statism.<\/p>\n
\nChurches across San Antonio are expressing outrage over a proposed anti-discrimination law that would protect LGBT workers but would not provide a religious exemption and would effectively prohibit anyone who opposes homosexuality from holding public office or getting a city contract.<\/p>\n
\nThe federal government is hiring what it calls a “Behavioral Insights Team” that will look for ways to subtly influence people’s behavior, according to a document describing the program obtained by FoxNews.com. Critics warn there could be unintended consequences to such policies, while supporters say the team could make government and society more efficient.<\/p>\n
\nGOP Rep. Dave Camp is considering a possible Senate run in Michigan in 2014, a move that could put in play another Democratic seat heading into next year\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n
\nPolitical correctness doesn\u2019t strive to destroy American civilization only at a surface level. The poison targets the very roots of our identity, so that we will doubt not only our morality, our history, or traditions, and our patriotism, but our very physical bodies. A new bill indicates how the campaign against sexual sanity is progressing in the liberal dystopia of California. As always with perverts and their liberal champions, a heavy emphasis is placed on corrupting children.<\/p>\n
\nArkansas Republican Rep. Tom Cotton plans to announce his bid next week to challenge two-term incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor in next year’s elections, according to a person familiar with the congressman’s plans.<\/p>\n
\nWISN 12 News investigates an operation raising questions about the use of government resources and the state policy that meant a death sentence for a fawn.<\/p>\n
\nFrom now on, words and phrases such as \u201cbrown bag lunch\u201d and \u201ccitizens\u201d will be off-limits for Seattle government employees. The city\u2019s Office of Civil Rights sent out a memo this week advising employees to refrain from using \u201cpotentially offensive\u201d language in the workplace and in official government documents.<\/p>\n
\nEarlier this week I wrote about California\u2019s new regionalist initiative, Plan Bay Area, as a harbinger of President Obama\u2019s attempt to densify America\u2019s cities and undercut the political and economic independence of the suburbs.<\/p>\n
\nJames St. James of Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois didn\u2019t bomb NYPD headquarters, the Capitol, and the Pentagon or mentor Barack Hussein Obama like prominent education profession Bill Ayers, but his history comes close:
\nLast week a Texas newspaper reported that psychology Professor James St. James shot and killed his father, mother and teenage sister in 1967. He was 15-years-old at the time.<\/p>\n<\/a>Economy
\n& Taxes<\/h1>\n
\nIt’s been a long time since the last DOOM, my groovy babies. It’s not due to any lack of DOOM to report, I assure you. It’s just that my Kyrgyz prison cell did not have internet access. But now that I have escaped my unjust bondage, I am free once again to bring the DOOM train to your cities and towns, bearing a heavy load of bad economic news.<\/p>\n
\nFour out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.<\/p>\n
\nOrganizing for Action, the nonprofit organization assembled from the remnants of President Obama\u2019s 2012 re-election campaign, is pushing for the president\u2019s second-term agenda during a month-long \u201cAction August\u201d of advocacy and fundraising \u2014 but don\u2019t expect to hear about the economy.<\/p>\n
\nThe language of budget cuts, austerity, and sequestration seem to dominate the media’s landscape these days, instilling fear into Americans of vital government services being cut and chaos ensuing if governments aren’t allowed to spend and borrow infinitely. Conservatives decry supposed cuts to the military-industrial-complex, and liberals bemoan that without government welfare transfer programs, there would be social Darwinism. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) even blamed the Benghazi scandal on \u2014 wait for it \u2014 budget cuts and the sequester.<\/p>\n
\nCalifornia Pension Reform President Dan Pellissier thinks our pension liabilities could have us filing for chapter eleven in two to three years. City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana isn\u2019t so sure<\/p>\n
\nIndustrial companies from Caterpillar to Norfolk Southern have felt the effects of the China economic slowdown and the knock-on effects it is having on commodities.<\/p>\n
\nIf It Isn\u2019t Growing It Is Probably Dying<\/p>\n
\nLos Angeles\u2019 Department of Water and Power has paid thousands of employees a total of $35.5 million since 2010 in extra sick days under an unusual program that the utility\u2019s top executive acknowledges has been vulnerable to abuse.<\/p>\n
\nHow might we describe, in general terms, American young adulthood? For anyone inclined to despair of humanity\u2019s future in the postwar period, Americans 25 to 35 have proved the great savior. In Greece, they\u2019re eating mother\u2019s moussaka. In France, they are in les rues wearing tight t-shirts and protesting unfair tuition prices. In Russia, they are drunk. In America, they\u2019re working incredibly hard to get ahead. As though ahead were somewhere desirable! When I travel overseas and meet folks my age (27) the same telling confusion pops up, every time: they make reference to their house\u2013inviting us over for drinks, or something\u2013which prompts me, impressed, to say \u201cCongratulations\u2013so what do you do?\u201d And they reply, \u201cI mean my parents\u2019 house.\u201d \u201cAh.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nThe New York Times reports that President Obama is reviving an old proposal to lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent (and 25 percent for manufacturers). Obama’s push to lower the corporate tax rate to 28 percent comes less than a year after he raised the top individual income tax rate, paid by many small businesses, to 39.6 percent.<\/p>\n<\/a>International<\/h1>\n
\nMore than 100 people have been killed at a protest supporting ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi in Cairo, doctors say.<\/p>\n
\nThe South Australia Parliament today voted down a private members\u2019 bill for state-based same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n
\nOne of South Africa\u2019s current white ANC Members of Parliament, Sue van der Merwe, 58, is recovering after being attacked and strangled to unconsciousness in her luxury Cape Town home, police in that city have said.<\/p>\n
\nCambodians went to the polls this weekend, and a surprisingly large number of them voted against the party of Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has been in power for 28 years and is a former junior commander in the Khmer Rouge. The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, led by Sam Rainsy, a human rights activist who recently returned to his country after almost a decade in exile, more than doubled its number of seats in parliament from 26 to 55, while Hun Sen\u2019s party lost 22 seats, its worst defeat to date.<\/p>\n
\nFormer President Will Be Charged Next Week, Lawyer Says<\/p>\n
\nA spokesman for West Midlands police said: ‘A 39-year-old man has been arrested in South Tyneside on behalf of West Midlands Police on suspicion of using words or behavior, or displaying written material with intent to stir up racial hatred.’<\/p>\n
\nIf a nuclear war had broken out in 1983, Queen Elizabeth II would have known just what to say.<\/p>\n
\nA stockpile of ammunition which was earmarked for the destruction of Homs city goes up in a huge fireball.<\/p>\n<\/a>Opinion<\/h1>\n
\nSo yesterday I saw this tweet from Slate\u2018s Will Saletan. I went to the linked article, by Jen\u00e9e Desmond-Harris of TheRoot.com, a black online magazine run in part by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. with corporate ties to Slate and the Washington Post. It is a \u201cnonexhaustive list of ground rules and reminders\u201d for conducting our \u201cnational conversation on race.\u201d Given the site where it appeared, you will probably not be surprised to learn that Ms. Desmond-Harris\u2019s piece reads like a list of things white people had better not say to black people.<\/p>\n
\nI wrote here about President Obama\u2019s plans to redistribute wealth from the suburbs to the cities, as exposed by Stanley Kurtz in his book Spreading The Wealth: How Obama Is Robbing The Suburbs To Pay For the Cites. Stanley returns to this theme in a post about the latest element of the president\u2019s regionalist policy \u2014 the July 19 publication of a Department of Housing and Urban Development regulation broadening the obligation of recipients of federal aid to \u201caffirmatively further fair housing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nThe 9\/11 museum director\u2019s revulsion at patriotism is part of a larger collapse in national confidence.<\/p>\n
\nAccording to the logic of politics, Leticia Perez should have handily won the heavily Democratic and Hispanic district in California\u2019s central valley, and her failure to do so has Republicans eager to develop a victory template for struggling GOP candidates elsewhere in the deep-blue state and across the country.<\/p>\n
\nDenialism may be too strong a term. But there seem to be a lot of people arguing that Obamacare has little or nothing to do with the rise in part-time employment. Some deny the rise is even happening, while others are content to deny that Obamacare is the culprit. Admittedly, it takes a little detective work, but if we systematically review the available empirical evidence in an even-handed fashion, the conclusion seems inescapable: Obamacare is accelerating a disturbing trend towards \u201ca nation of part-timers.\u201d This is not good news for America.<\/p>\n
\nThe key to understanding the Left is knowing that they inhabit a Manichean fantasy world in which history is controlled by roiling, magical forces, in which signs, symbols, and portents are more important than empirical reality and in which their opponents are not just wrong but evil. They see life as a zero-sum game of winners and losers, with themselves cast as the heroes of their own overarching ur-Narrative, from which all other their other dialectic narratives (rich vs. poor, black vs. white, \u201cprivileged\u201d vs. the undeserving poor, the \u201cwar on women,\u201d etc.) flow.<\/p>\n
\n“Critique” has a specific meaning and I intend that meaning. As Marx said of his plan for an endless critique of the German social order, so as to undermine it, and permit the conditions for revolution<\/p>\n
\nHe proposes tax reform with higher taxes and not much reform.<\/p>\n
\nHis skepticism about the merits of a sacrosanct liberal history textbook has sparked an overdue debate.<\/p>\n
\nIn 1860, an uneasy Charles Darwin confided in a letter to a friend: \u201cI had no intention to write atheistically\u201d but \u201cI cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.\u201d What appalled him had fascinated entomologist William Kirby (1759-1850): The ichneumon fly inserts an egg in a caterpillar, and the larva hatched from the egg, he said, \u201cgnaws the inside of the caterpillar, and though at last it has devoured almost every part of it except the skin and intestines, carefully all this time avoids injuring the vital organs, as if aware that its own existence depends on that of the insect on which it preys!\u201d<\/p>\n
\nMany observers, including us, have written about how Detroit\u2019s slavish devotion to liberalism, unions and the Democratic Party ruined that once-great city. But one malefactor stands out above all others: Coleman Young, former organizer for the UAW, whom the union booted for being too radical, and who went on to become Detroit\u2019s long-time mayor.<\/p>\n
\nOn the cheapening of civil-rights history.<\/p>\n
\nCalifornia is at a tipping point. Severe budget deficits, unsustainable pension costs, heavy taxes, cumbersome regulation, struggling cities, and distressed public schools are but a few of the challenges that policymakers must address for the state to remain a beacon of business innovation and economic opportunity. In this video, the cracks in California’s flawed policy plans are displayed and analyzed by a diverse set of experts in the state’s design.<\/p>\n
\nNice cravat. Prussian louse Friedrich Engels, you probably recall from an ornery high school history teacher pining for his resurrection, was one of the fathers of communism. That\u2019s a common way to describe Engels, but it\u2019s even more accurate when you recall that Engels bankrolled the perpetually financially floundering Karl Marx. They did co-author The Communist Manifesto together, but the relationship seemed, more or less, to be one in which Engels constantly made donations to the Karl Marx Charity Fund.<\/p>\n