The Holy Grail about everything, I guess.
Oh yes, the genius of the community organizer, more regulations that will assuredly create more jobs, at least for the IRS. This little clinker stuffed into the legislation unread by the Democrats and signed unread by Obama between vacations and soul music concerts is so bad that it can't possibly last.
This stupidity and burden will not go unnoticed by millions of voters if this is not withdrawn. Let's keep it in till 2012.
__________________________
Lost in Taxation
The IRS's vast new ObamaCare powers.
If it seems as if the tax code was conceived by graphic artist M.C. Escher, wait until you meet the new and not improved Internal Revenue Service created by ObamaCare. What, you're not already on a first-name basis with your local IRS agent?
President Barack Obama drives home the importance of passing the unemployment insurance extension.
National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, who operates inside the IRS, highlighted the agency's new mission in her annual report to Congress last week. Look out below. She notes that the IRS is already "greatly taxed"—pun intended?—"by the additional role it is playing in delivering social benefits and programs to the American public," like tax credits for first-time homebuyers or purchasing electric cars. Yet with ObamaCare, the agency is now responsible for "the most extensive social benefit program the IRS has been asked to implement in recent history." And without "sufficient funding" it won't be able to discharge these new duties.
That wouldn't be tragic, given that those new duties include audits to determine who has the insurance "as required by law" and collecting penalties from Americans who don't. Companies that don't sponsor health plans will also be punished. This crackdown will "involve nearly every division and function of the IRS," Ms. Olson reports.
Well, well. Republicans argued during the health debate that the IRS would have to hire hundreds of new agents and staff to enforce ObamaCare. They were brushed off by Democrats and the press corps as if they believed the President was born on the moon. The IRS says it hasn't figured out how much extra money and manpower it will need but admits that both numbers are greater than zero.
Ms. Olson also exposed a damaging provision that she estimates will hit some 30 million sole proprietorships and subchapter S corporations, two million farms and one million charities and other tax-exempt organizations. Prior to ObamaCare, businesses only had to tell the IRS the value of services they purchase. But starting in 2013 they will also have to report the value of goods they buy from a single vendor that total more than $600 annually—including office supplies and the like.
Democrats snuck in this obligation to narrow the mythical "tax gap" of unreported business income, but Ms. Olson says that the tracking costs for small businesses will be "disproportionate as compared with any resulting improvement in tax compliance." Job creation, here we come . . . at least for the accountants who will attempt to comply with a vast new 1099 reporting burden.
In a Monday letter, even Democratic Senators Mark Begich (Alaska), Ben Nelson (Nebraska), Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire) and Evan Bayh (Indiana) denounce this new "burden" on small businesses and insist that the IRS use its discretion to find "better ways to structure this reporting requirement." In other words, they want regulators to fix one problem among many that all four Senators created by voting for ObamaCare.
We never thought anyone would be nostalgic for the tax system of a few months ago, but post-ObamaCare, here we are.
WSJ
"This little clinker stuffed into the legislation unread by the Democrats and
ReplyDeletesigned unread by Obama between vacations and soul music concerts is so bad that it can't possibly last."
---
Back to the subject on which I was censored for my "racist" comments:
This "man's" "work habits" have been on display on national media for over a year and a half.
Anyone who still believes that he produced the finished work of that book most likely written by William Ayers is a fool.
...but many here foolishly turn themselves into useful idiots by regularly exposing themselves to the MSM alternate reality machine.
Very obvious to those of us who don't.
...and a nation that submitted themselves to the MSM fare is the nation that voted in this cold blooded Marxist Sociopath.
ReplyDeleteThanks, guys.
Don't blame me; I voted for the Nut.
ReplyDeleteWhen were you censored?
ReplyDeleteI think every honest person is fed up with the advanced colored people who when challenged on anything reach into their hat and pull out the racist card and wave it as if it were a piece of kryptonite.
It is astounding to see Obama and his cabal of incompetents doing the political hokey pokey, first firing and then rehiring Ms. Jerrod.
Obama: Nothing like being decisive. Good thing it wasn't a missile launch either incoming or outgoing. Same difference.
Ms Sherrod is no racialist angnostic. She simply did not say what was portrayed on the video. She did say some other things that shows she has as many racial hangups as most other people.
The advanced colored people are phony race hustling hypocrites. It is way past time for us to tolerate racial preferential designations and groups such as The Black Congressional Conference. They deserve nothing except reproach.
Don't blame me; I voted for the Nut.
ReplyDeleteDon't blame me, I voted for Bob Barr, Libertarian, so I could bitch no matter which mainstream candidate won. It wasn't like the Soviet of Washington was going to come down to a nailbiter between Obongo and Gramps.
While we are at it has anyone found evidence that some Tea Party supporter actually called Kingfish Clyburn a "ni**er"?
ReplyDeleteAs far as iI can tell, that is a vicious slandering lie, repeated time and time again with no evidence whatsoever. The difference is Congressman Clyburn, a Congressional black cau cau too, is a very advanced colored person and never ever questioned about his motivations and never ever censored for his racial phobias.
A vote for Barr was a vote for the Marxist.
ReplyDeleteThe Vast Left-Wing Media Conspiracy
ReplyDeleteEveryone knew most of the press corps was hoping for Obama in 2008.
Newly released emails show that hundreds of them were actively working to promote him.
This week, Mr. Carlson produced a series of JournoList emails from April 2008, when Barack Obama's presidential bid was in serious jeopardy. Videos of the antiwhite, anti-American sermons of his Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, had surfaced, first on ABC and then other networks.
JournoList contributors discussed strategies to aid Mr. Obama by deflecting the controversy. They went public with a letter criticizing an ABC interview of Mr. Obama that dwelled on his association with Mr. Wright. Then, Spencer Ackerman of The Washington Independent proposed attacking Mr. Obama's critics as racists. He wrote:
"If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us. Instead, take one of them—Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares—and call them racists. . . . This makes them 'sputter' with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction."
---
I think JournoList is—or was—fundamentally different, and not simply because one of its members proposed to make palpably false accusations.
As best I can tell, those involved in JournoList considered themselves part of a team. And their goal was to make sure the team won. In 2008, this was Mr. Obama's team. More recently, the goal seems to have been to defeat the conservative team.
I saw this coming and at the time I was a democrat...
ReplyDeleteOnce of the benefits of being loud?
People know who I backed...
I did not back this lazy, illegal squatter to be our POTUS
Powerline on Clyburn
ReplyDeleteThere are precisely three witnesses to the alleged incident that occurred in the course of a public demonstration on Capitol Hill on March 20: Reps. Andre Carson, John Lewis, and Emanuel Cleaver. House majority James Clyburn immediately jumped on board to amplify the story and make sure it took off, as it did most notably in McClatchy's "Tea party protesters scream 'nigger' at black congressmen." According to Carson et al., protesters abused them with racial epithets while demonstrating against Obamacare on Capitol Hill on March 20.
There is one problem with the story: It did'nt happen. We believe that we demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt over the course of our 18-part "Don't leave it to Cleaver" series that it didn't happen.The congressmen's story was a fabrication intended to defame the Tea Party movement and distract attention from the resistance to Obamacare.
Under circumstances where such evidence would exist if the incident had occurred, no audio or video recording corroborates it, despite Andrew Breitbart's offer of a $100,000 reward to anyone producing such evidence. And no independent journalist or other eyewitness has stepped forward to vouch for the congressmen's story -- because it didn't happen.
For months on end 'Rat railed about the Wright story not being viable, impotent, those of us who wrote about it were fools.
ReplyDeleteTurns out it was never used, either by McNut or the MSM conspiracy.
Kind of hard to prove something that never happened didn't work.
Let's have Kingfish put up or shut up.
ReplyDeleteJohn Lewis is regarded as a legend.
ReplyDeleteTo me he is scum.
Your comment is illegitimate, Deuce:
ReplyDeleteRufus will never trust Breitbart again.
He is a douchbag according to Trish.
Likewise Limbaugh and many other Truthtellers.
Don't regularly hear such put downs here about the Dem/MSM machine that spins lies and defamations daily.
I hold MY team to a much higher standard, Doug.
ReplyDeleteThis one catches me by Surprise: Lincoln MKX Hybrid to sell at Same Price as straight gas model.
ReplyDeleteDon't blame me, I voted for Sarah Palin.
ReplyDeleteBut starting in 2013 they will also have to report
Sneaky bastards.
Congress Ranks Last in Confidence in Institutions
ReplyDeleteFifty percent "little"/"no" confidence in Congress reading is record high
by Lydia SaadPage: 12 PRINCETON, NJ -- Gallup's 2010 Confidence in Institutions poll finds Congress ranking dead last out of the 16 institutions rated this year. Eleven percent of Americans say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in Congress, down from 17% in 2009 and a percentage point lower than the previous low for Congress, recorded in 2008.
Military Still No. 1
The military continues its long-standing run as the highest-rated U.S. institution. Small business and the police occupy second and third places, respectively. These three top-tier institutions all earn high confidence from a majority of Americans, something no other institution achieves this year.
The military has been No. 1 in Gallup's annual Confidence in Institutions list continuously since 1998, and has ranked No.1 or No. 2 almost every year since its initial 1975 measure.
The high level of confidence in small business contrasts with the low level of confidence in big business; the latter is tied with HMOs at 19% for next-to-last place. Confidence in organized religion is similar to where it has been since 2002, but is significantly lower than in prior years.
The medical system is in fourth place, but that will be changing in years to come.
POLITICAL COLUMN
ReplyDeleteSarah Palin is at the top of her party
More than 13 months ago, I wrote a column that began: “Sarah Palin can be the Republican nominee in 2012. I am not saying she will be, but she can be. Those who underestimate her do so at their own risk.”
It was not the most popular column I ever wrote. I remember snickering and mockery from those who could not find actual vegetables to throw.
After all, as was widely believed at the time, Sarah Palin was an idiot. Her interview with CBS’s Katie Couric had proved that. And Palin’s approval rating as governor of Alaska, once so high, had plunged to 54 percent. (An approval rating I suspect President Barack Obama would love to have today.)
Sarah Palin was a hick and a rube. She was a gun-toting, snow machine-riding pitbull with lipstick, with a family that was portrayed as somewhere between a reality show and white trash.
Now, more than a year later, I have not changed my mind about Palin’s political potential. This is not based on the polls — especially a recent one showing her in a 46 percent to 46 percent tie with Obama in a hypothetical 2012 face-off. I don’t believe such polls tell us anything meaningful.
I am basing my belief now, as back then, on Palin’s ability to connect with the base of her party. Name a bigger name in the Republican Party today. Heck, name any name in the Republican Party today.
SARAH!
I think if we nominate Sarah Palin, we are sunk. She would be no worse than Bush or Obama and probably better.
ReplyDeleteShe cannot get elected. She has too many negatives. She is not in the top tier of what we need to run this country. She got snookered by the incredibly second rate mindless perky tweet, Katie Couric.
If you cannot get past Katie Couric...
ReplyDeleteKatie Couric: Palinator.
ReplyDelete"I am basing my belief now, as back then, on Palin’s ability to connect with the base of her party. Name a bigger name in the Republican Party today."
ReplyDeleteAs John Cole would say: Full of win.
Goodmorning, Trish :)
ReplyDeleteI never did watch the Couric interview, but it seems to me Palin's problem isn't some old interview, surely she has gotten better, but her Christian convictions about abortion, sincerly held, which puts her at odds with the pragmatic desires of the majority of Americans, men and women, these days. Not that abortion rights are going away, whoever is elected, but it's a politcal cross she has to bear. I do think she could be elected, and think she'd make a good Pres. After all, a Pres makes a couple big decisions, and sets a tone. Bush made one decision, really, to go into Iraq.
ReplyDeleteNow let's 'change the subject'.
In The Land of Mao, Christianity Rising
ReplyDeleteWhat a world, back and forth, around and around.
Don't think I din't know you were baiting me with the Wasilla Wing nut. Bob.
ReplyDeleteI like the potential presidential primary narrative: Holy Warrior Mama Grizzly v. All The Castrated Conservatives.
That's a DFH party begging to be thrown if ever there was.
Your premise, as regards the right honorable reverend Wright, doug-o, is off base.
ReplyDeleteHe is not a radical preacher.
Exemplified by Oprah, the most popular woman in the USA, in 2008.
Oprah, who also spent 20 years in the pews of reverend Wright's church.
She who well represents the "Center", of the population of the various States.
Besides religious creed is not really a political rally point, in the USA.
The Founders succeeded in achieving that goal.
"...but many here foolishly turn themselves into useful idiots by regularly exposing themselves to the MSM alternate reality machine."
ReplyDeleteLiberals and Progs and such like creatures also hold the MSM in contempt and also have their own universe of political media.
You should get out more.
I can make recommendations.
You could get all inside their OODA loop.
ReplyDeleteOr should I say our OODA loop?
Well, anyway, you can't know your enemy by having everything filtered through the cozy world of right wing media, can you?
Go to where the Lefties actually are.
In local news of interest to no one but myself--
ReplyDeleteEx--Aryan Nations Lawyer Faces New Federal Charges
AP Coeur d'Alene--A former lawyer for the Aryan Nations has been indicted on three additional federal charges in an alleged murder-for-hire plot.
Edgar J. Steele, 64, pleaded not guilty on June 15 in an alleged plot to kill his wife, Cynthia Steele, and her mother. The new charges include tampering with a victim, use of explosive material to commit a felony and possession of a destructive device in relation to a crime of violence.
Steele, known for his unsuccessful defense of the Aryan Nations in a 2000 lawsuit, is being housed at the Spokane County Jail.
This is the guy that defended Richard Butler, refugee from California, Grand General of the Aryan Nations, in Hayden. A losing proposition.
I'll bite: Whoo OODA?
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop
ReplyDeleteI added Red's OODA chart to the top of the post. Study it and we will have a Q&A session at 21:30 ZULU.
ReplyDeleteReading about that OODA loop sounds to me like what basketball and football players all over America do by nature thoughtlessly.
ReplyDeletedesert rat said...
ReplyDeleteYour premise, as regards the right honorable reverend Wright, doug-o, is off base.
He is not a radical preacher.
Exemplified by Oprah, the most popular woman in the USA, in 2008.
Oprah, who also spent 20 years in the pews of reverend Wright's church.
She who well represents the "Center", of the population of the various States.
Besides religious creed is not really a political rally point, in the USA.
The Founders succeeded in achieving that goal.
The Rat can spin shit....
I guess he did stay in a Holiday Inn last night...
Oprah saw the error of her ways and threw Rev Wright under the bus....
But who does Oprah really represent?
She threw her weight behind the big eared, islamic, illegal alien and now her ratings? Low, low, low...
Even Judge Judy now beats Oprah...
No one should criticize Judge Judy around my wife. I did once, almost lost my life.
ReplyDeleteAnd indeed, we've gained some practical knowledge from J. Judy about the apartment rental business. Did you know that a tenant, who is to move out at the end of the month, and does so, but leaves an old couch and bed, say, is responsible for additional rents until they remove same? We didn't, but it's true. Not that we've ever taken advantage of it. People do leave a bunch of crap behind sometimes, though.
ReplyDeleteApparently, Blue, you missed all those wild nights at Belmont when, following the lead of Wretchard and other blogger enthusiasts, whole teams of chronically sleep-deprived keyboard commandos fretted and frowned and fumed over the enemy OODA challenge while waiting for their morning BUB.
ReplyDeleteGood times.
It's a fancy way of describing basic athletics.
ReplyDeleteWhatever. Bob.
ReplyDeleteI call it the OODA Hoop Loop
ReplyDeleteA little light summer
ReplyDeleteafternoon music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvoeeq-BH4w&feature=related
Unfolding circumstances, unfolding interaction with the environment, observations, pass, fake, orient towards basket, pass back. feed forward, decision to drive, drive, stuff ball through basket. OODA Hoop Loop
ReplyDeleteI do your opposition research so you don't have to.
ReplyDeleteFrom Sadly, No!:
Shorter Mona Charen, America’s Shittiest Website™
The NAACP’s Descent
* Since nobody’s lynching Negroes anymore, the NAACP can just shut the fuck up and go away now and stop using bogus charges of “racism” to try to turn America into a communist country. Oh, and one more thing: colored people calling white people racist is even more offensive than white racism.
There were over twelve hundred comments on that particular post.
ReplyDeleteThere's so much more where that came from and it's available upon request.
Personally, I hope this has the lasting stink of a dead rat in a heating duct.
Or a corpse.
ReplyDeletemisdirection addresses me, not the fact that Oprah sat in the pews of reverend Wright's church for twenty years, and was, without doubt, the most popular woman in the USA in 2008.
ReplyDeleteMaking her, and reverend Wright by the same logical extension that is applied to Mr Obama, "MAINSTREAM".
Whenever he finds reality disturbing, he attacks the messenger.
So Greek.
When 43% of the electorate approve of the job a President is doing, he is still "MAINSTREAM".
ReplyDeleteNot radical
Not extreme
But MAINSTREAM.
Just like Reagan, Clinton and George Bush Sr.
This is interesting:
ReplyDeleteWASHINGTON — Some 750 boats drafted in to scoop up oil from the Gulf of Mexico are having "trouble" finding any crude in the sea, a top US official said Wednesday, almost a week after a busted well was capped.
"We are starting to have trouble finding oil," US pointman Admiral Thad Allen, who is in charge of handling the government's response, told reporters.
The boats, which have been drafted in to skim oil off the surface of the Gulf, are "really having to search for the oil in some cases" around the area of the capped well, he added.
What took so long?
ReplyDeleteA House investigative committee on Thursday charged New York Rep. Charles Rangel with multiple ethics violations, a blow to the former Ways and Means chairman and an election-year headache for Democrats.
But Charlie is such a likeable crook, I almost feel bad.
ReplyDeleteSarah continues to fight for the right, the good, and the true--
ReplyDeletePalin KO's Bloomberg on Ground Zero Mosque: "This is nothing close to 'religious intolerance,' it’s just common decency"
More demands for tolerance for a radically intolerant ideology.......
Kudos to Governor Palin for responding to a brutish sophomoric attack by an out-of-touch mayor Bloomberg concerning the 911 mega mosque at Ground Zero. Bloomberg is out of his league here. He is incapable of grasping the depth of this woman's heart, soul, good sense, and love of country. I have a piece coming out on Bloomberg's repugnant treatment of former vice-Presidential nominee Palin.
Bottom line, Bloomberg is a Democrat who stole the mayoral election by switching parties so that he could get into the race and get elected. Giuliani, the great hero of 911, could not run again because of term limits. It was Giuliani (who is opposed to the mosque) who anointed Bloomberg as his successor. Yes, the field of candidates was that pathetic. And Bloomberg won, because of Giuliani.
As soon as the Ayatollah Bloomberg got in, he routed term limits -- got that? That's why we are still stuck with this tool. How we wanted Giuliani, but if Rudy had done away with term limits, he would have been ripped to shreds by a propaganda press. But Bloomberg did it, with nary a murmur from a shill press pool.
Here is Sarah Palin's response to Bloomberg's blunder:
Earlier today, Mayor Bloomberg responded to my comments about the planned mosque at Ground Zero by suggesting that a decision not to allow the building of a mosque at that sacred place would somehow violate American principles of tolerance and openness.
No one is disputing that America stands for – and should stand for – religious tolerance. It is a foundation of our republic. This is not an issue of religious tolerance but of common moral sense. To build a mosque at Ground Zero is a stab in the heart of the families of the innocent victims of those horrific attacks. Just days after 9/11, the spiritual leader of the organization that wants to build the mosque, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, suggested that blame be placed on the innocents when he stated that the “United States’ policies were an accessory to the crime that happened” and that “in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA.” Rauf refuses to recognize that Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of our ally, Israel, and refuses to provide information about the sources of funding for the $100 million mosque. Rauf also plays a key role in a group behind the flotilla designed to provoke Israel in its justifiable blockade of Gaza. These are just a few of the points Americans are realizing as New York considers the proposed mosque just a stone’s throw away from 9/11’s sacred ground.
I agree with the sister of one of the 9/11 victims (and a New York resident) who said: “This is a place which is 600 feet from where almost 3,000 people were torn to pieces by Islamic extremists. I think that it is incredibly insensitive and audacious really for them to build a mosque, not only on that site, but to do it specifically so that they could be in proximity to where that atrocity happened.”
Many Americans, myself included, feel it would be an intolerable and tragic mistake to allow such a project sponsored by such an individual to go forward on such hallowed ground. This is nothing close to “religious intolerance,” it’s just common decency.
- Sarah Palin
Atlas Shrugs, who has a whole series of interesting articles about the Ground Zero mosque today
Educating The Really Confused About NBC
ReplyDeleteOnce Upon A Crime
Outside the Beltway:
ReplyDeleteMatt Yglesias, noting that even Ann Althouse has called the Daily Caller‘s releases on the JournoList brouhaha “weak” and “pretty mild stuff,” is even more to the point:
"At some point conservatives need to ask themselves about the larger meaning of this kind of conduct—and Andrew Breitbart’s—for their movement. Beyond the ethics of lying and smear one’s opponents, I would think conservatives would worry about the fact that a large portion of conservative media is dedicated to lying to conservatives. They regard their audience as marks to be misled and exploited, not as customers to be served with useful information."
As I’ve noted many times, I largely stopped watching and listening to broadcast news and political talk years ago. Not only do I get almost all my news and commentary online these days, I’ve almost completely abandoned sources that I consider too polemical or predictable. So, I mostly judge those other sources based on what bubbles up into the blogospheric discussion, which may not be representative of the whole.
But both Drum and Yglesias make excellent points. Far too much of conservative media seems to be a nakedly propagandistic exercise, designed to manufacture outrage. To be sure, the general direction of media, period — see Politico and HuffPo, for example — is to do whatever’s necessary to generate traffic or ratings...
[...]
I like to think of it as a never-ending game of Capture the Flag.
Rather, a never-ending series of them.
ReplyDeleteTPM:
ReplyDeleteI don't post every stupid thing Newt Gingrich says (it is after all at least his 16th consecutive year of claiming to be considering a run for President), but every once in a while Newt outdoes even Newt: "There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia."
--David Kurtz
Makes me feel a little guilty, doing this.
ReplyDeleteDid Andrew Breitbart actually say this?
ReplyDeleteMost likely, but I'm not bothering fact-checking.
From Crooks and Liars:
BREITBART: I just like doing things that are wrong, feeling like I can get in trouble.
"There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia."
ReplyDeleteNewt's exactly right.
On Hannity today, Karl Rove, the evil genius, had the pubs picking up at least 35 House seats, maybe up to 55, and eight Senate seats. Evil Karl said there's not much can change the direction now, all the factors seems to be built in.
Dick Morris has the pubs taking both House and Senate.
--
When I was a kid we used to play a game called OllyOllyOxenFree--
Olly olly oxen free (and similar spellings) is a catchphrase used in the children's game hide and seek to indicate that players who are hiding can come out into the open without losing the game. It is thought to derive from the phrase "All ye, all ye 'outs' in free;" in other words: all who are "out" may come in without penalty.[1] This is generally used as a ruse, in order to lure other children participating in the game out of hiding, only afterwards to renege on the promise of safety.
The phrase can also be used to coordinate hidden players in the game kick the can, in which a group of people hide within a given radius and a "seeker" is left to guard a can filled with rocks. The seeker has to try to find the "hiders" without allowing them to sneak in and kick the can. In many areas the phrase used is "All-y all-y in come free" which is a way to tell the remainder of hidden players that is time to regroup in order to restart the game. The phrase is announced by a hider who successfully sneaks in and kicks the can.
We'd also throw water balloons down on the cars from up in the cherry trees, on C Street, scramble down, and run like hell.
Where'd everyone go?
ReplyDeleteIOZ:
[...]
In any case, within the social circles of the American ruling class, there is plenty of comparative status anxiety, and I am sure that Pat Buchanan, who merely went to Georgetown, really does believe that Middle America suffers deep psychic wounds as a result of the Ivy League's failure to actively recruit more Cletuses and Lurlenes. (This Buchananian thesis is the ostensible jumping-off point for Douthat's column.) Douthat takes this spoonful of sugar and spins it into an airy pink cloud of cotton candy. Underrepresentation at Harvard is actually the proximate cause of race paranoia in the white middle- and underclass. I know the Ivies work hard to instill their culture of institutional narcicism in undergrads, but even from a guy like Douthat, this is a bit much.
White anxiety results from the economic pressures of post-industrial America, from the perception that changing demographics are reducing the relative importance of whites. The stagnation of real wages, the end of lifetime employment, the economic devastation of small cities and towns, and so on all contribute to the feeling that they are besieged. Racism and cultural resentment are whipped and manipulated by political and media elites--there is that word again--in order to forestall and undermine class solidarity. I mean, not to get too conspiratorial on you, but Martin Luther King didn't get shot when he was talking about Negroes; he got shot when he started talking about the poor. Cultural resentment is an institutional mechanism, perhaps the institutional mechanism, through which Douthat's elites maintain their status and refocus the energies of a restive public, who might otherwise be inclined to blow up the G-20 or what have you.
Today's Drudge-highlighted Buchanan:
"For though the black community remains solidly behind Obama and the white majority is shrinking toward minority status by 2042 or 2050, depending on which Census survey one uses, whites in America still outnumber blacks five to one. And if forced constantly to come down on one side or the other of a racial divide, most folks will wind up with their own."
Awesome, Pat.
Fucking Awesome.
Bloomberg is out of his league here. He is incapable of grasping the depth of this woman's heart, soul, good sense, and love of country.
ReplyDeleteAtlas Shrugs
"Newt's exactly right."
ReplyDeleteFarmer-Poet Bob.
You're awesome, too.
Obviously I am not going to make it to the Q & A.
ReplyDeleteTwo observations about the current political theater.
ReplyDelete1. Democrats are attempting to use the NAACP to smear the Tea Party.
B. Carville's diatribe against Obama re: Deepwater Horizon, signaled Clintonistas that it is open season on the One in the WH. SecState Clinton holds herself above the fray working night and day for whirled peas. If her calculations indicate favorable conditions, she'll resign to run possibly by November or December, otherwise, she work for a VP spot.
...otherwise she'll stay on with O and work for a VP spot.
ReplyDeleteboob does not believe in private property, nor the rights associated with that property.
ReplyDeleteHe believes, in his heart of hearts, that Planning Committees should have control of the uses of private real property.
He does not believe that the private owners of real property know what is in their own nor their communities best interests.
No he believes in the representatives of the collective knowing what is best for the land owners and their land usages.
What goes on in Saudi Arabia is of no concern when referencing the property rights of Americans, in the United States of America.
When a department official resigned in protest and went to the Civil Rights Commission to accuse officials at Justice of ordering staff attorneys not to pursue such cases, that explosive charge, too, was ignored by Justice......
ReplyDeleteAnd, for the first time in our lifetimes outside the South, white racial consciousness has visibly begun to rise.
Pat Buchanan
And no wonder.
"If her calculations indicate favorable conditions, she'll resign to run possibly by November or December..."
ReplyDelete: )
Not.
But she has been really, really good. Surprisingly so.
She is all about the work.
I think she's found her element.
ReplyDeletePresident Obama said Secretary Tom Vilsack rushed to judgment when he dismissed Shirley Sherrod from the Department of Agriculture amid charges of racism.
ReplyDelete"He jumped the gun, partly because we now live in this media culture where something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles," Obama told consumer correspondent Elisabeth Leamy in an exclusive “GMA” interview.
heh, course poor old Vilsack didn't do anything he wasn't ordered to do. jeez
Whit's got it right. Zvetlana called it that way too. She ain't hanging around no sinking ship, that Billary.
ReplyDeleteBillary works hard all right, her mind is always calculating.
Hillary's Army in Iraq--
ReplyDeleteWASHINGTON — Can diplomats field their own army? The State Department is laying plans to do precisely that in Iraq, in an unprecedented experiment that U.S. officials and some nervous lawmakers say could be risky.
In little more than a year, State Department contractors in Iraq could be driving armored vehicles, flying aircraft, operating surveillance systems, even retrieving casualties if there are violent incidents and disposing of unexploded ordnance.
Remember when Hillary had to dodge incoming at the airport there? Course it never happened, according to the press corps, even though she said it did.
68. wws
ReplyDeleteIf Hillary gets the nomination, she can’t win – Obama has poisoned the well for any future nominee besides himself.
Democrats can’t win without the black vote – but anyone who is seen as pushing Obama himself is going to have to face the walkout of the black electorate en masse. That’s why Hillary can’t win – and that’s the danger of race baiting politics, for those who engage in it.
Perceptive comment.
So all Sarah has to do is get the nomination, and she's in.
Unqualified Offerings:
ReplyDeleteJuly 22, 2010
Shirley Sherrod
By Thoreau
To over-simplify a bit, this is a speech by a black woman who discusses resentments that she had, and an episode in her life in which she ultimately learned to see the commonality between her struggles and those of a poor, rural, Southern, white couple. If you were to tell me that a white guy took this speech out of context to make political hay, I would guess that you’re talking about some white guy who wants everyone to know that racism is not the real problem these days*, and won’t somebody think about poor rural whites? I’d expect to hear the white guy holding her up as an example and asking people to stop talking about race.
I must admit that if I had read the speech before this story broke, I never in a million years would have predicted the subsequent course of events.
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.Why Are Spies So Hot?
ReplyDeleteOf the 11 alleged Russian spies arrested this week, Anna Chapman has garnered the most attention. The young, sexy redhead, who flashed a come-hither smile in photographs posted on social media websites, has become an internet sensation.
It's no huge secret why she's hot. For a work-a-day spy, beguiling looks are just one of the traits that can give you a leg up on your colleagues, so to speak.
"If you're an attractive person, who's incredibly smart, and is also seductive charming, you have a lot of power to get people to do what you want," said Patrick O'Donnell, a military historian and espionage expert, who has written several books on the world of spies.
Although hot members of both sexes make for successful spies, the targets of espionage tend to be powerful men who have access to important information, O'Donnell said, so employing beautiful women is one way government spy agencies have approached intelligence gathering.
Good looks won't get you very far, though, without the smarts and the charisma that are also needed to pull off a convincing act, O'Donnell said.
Successful seductress
One of the most successful seductresses ever was Elizabeth Pack, code-named Cynthia, who spied for America during World War II, O'Donnell said.
In one mission, Pack seduced a member of the French Embassy and in another, a member of the Italian Navy. The goal of both missions was to obtain access to code books that each man had.
"She had men eating out of her hand," O'Donnell said. Pack was a socialite who had been recruited by the Office of Strategic Services (the OSS was the predecessor to the CIA), and was in her late 20s at the time of these missions.
"She changed history," O'Donnell said. By using the code books she gained access to, the Allies were able gain knowledge of the position of Italian ships and carry out a bombing.
Confidence and the ability to take control of any situation are important too. Whether you need to convince a guard at a checkpoint to let you through, persuade someone to give you sensitive information or gain the trust of a would-be adversary, a self-assured demeanor helps.
American men seduced
American men, too, have fallen for the charms of fetching females. Christa Roy, who worked for the Nazi's during World War II, slept her way out of a jail sentence, O'Donnell said.
Roy was arrested after she seduced an American military officer to get information, and her hotness was recorded in official government documents.
The American officers tasked with jailing her were so taken, "they were unable to distinguish between their glandular and official functions," according to the official OSS papers detailing her case.
"It goes to show you the power of a woman who is attractive, intelligent and charismatic," O'Donnell said, who's most recent book "They Dared Return" (Perseus, 2010) includes the story of women who aided American spies during World War II.
And it's not always women who use their sexiness to lure the enemy. Dusko Popov, a Russian-British double agent who spied in America, was code-named Agent Tricycle because of his penchant for threesomes, according to British Intelligence papers made public in 2002.
But for those of us whose attractiveness, wit and charm don't exactly rival that of James Bond, there still may be situations where we'd make a good spy, because it could also be the case that good looks work against a spy, O'Donnell said.
"It all depends on what the mission is," he said. "A great spy can be someone who just blends in. It could be counterproductive to be attractive if it makes you stand out when you don't want to."
MOSCOW (AFP) – Two weeks after 10 Russian spies flew back from the United States to Moscow, the buzz of interest around the ring's most photogenic member, the feisty redhead Anna Chapman, shows no signs of receding.
ReplyDeleteWhile Chapman remains in an unknown location since her arrival in Moscow, reportedly being debriefed, she has apparently found time to write enigmatic Facebook updates and negotiate with journalists on her first interview.
Chapman has dominated coverage of the spy scandal, despite her apparently minor role, thanks to salacious revelations by her British ex-husband and to seductive photographs that she posted on social networking sites.
Russian tabloids call her "Agent 90-60-90" based on her hourglass figure, while the Washington Post called her the "hot one" in a jokey opinion piece.
But just hours later, followers of Chapman's Facebook page read an opaque message. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," she wrote, quoting Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities."
Chapman was an avid user of Facebook before her arrest, and her lack of security settings allowed journalists to pore over all her photographs and messages.
Her page has -- surprisingly -- been regularly updated ever since, with Chapman gaining dozens of new "friends," many of them journalists.
On July 14, she switched to an inspiring quote from Eleanor Roosevelt:
"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'"
Many wrote messages of support. Chapman responded with a "like" approval to a message from a woman named Cordelia, who wrote on Tuesday: "I miss you here in the Big Apple."
So far, Chapman has not given any interviews, and her Facebook page angrily denied a report in the New York Post on Monday that Chapman was "secretly shopping" for a 250,000-dollar interview deal, citing unnamed sources.
"This is an absolute lie," a comment read.
However, the tabloid daily Komsomolskaya Pravda claimed on Wednesday that Chapman asked the newspaper to name a price for an interview and said she had been offered at least 250,000 dollars by other media.
A journalist rang Chapman offering 25,000 dollars after she called an offer of 1,000 dollars "not serious," the newspaper claimed.
"I will call you back although I have been offered ten times more for something like this," it reported Chapman as saying.
Chapman did not call back and her cell-phone number was later blocked, the newspaper said, adding that it had a recording of the conversation.
Chapman would be obliged to hand all the proceeds from an interview about her case to the US government according to the terms of the plea bargain agreed by the spy ring members.
The founder of the Russian business social network Professionali.ru Nikita Khalyavin told AFP that he contacted Chapman on the Internet to ask for an interview and that she asked for payment.
"This is the first time I've been asked to pay to give someone another chance to promote themselves," he said in an e-mail.
As the buzz around the spies refuses to die down, a newspaper in her hometown of Volgograd launched a competition to write a song about Chapman.
One entry, titled "Anya will make contact," has the chorus "Hands off our Anya, Freedom for Anya Chapman," using a shortening for Anna, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.
Redheads obviously make the very best spies.
ReplyDeleteMel was in her glory after a month of not listening to her coffee house music in the car
ReplyDeleteAnd of course you can't go to sleep without hearing my new favorite artist
I don't have audio yet, but I've listened to more Willie Nelson than any man on earth, endless hours in the tractor.
ReplyDeleteStay there, I'm going over to Maggie's Farm for a sec, there's some girl sings in three voices.
Shakira
ReplyDeleteShe pulled out a harp.
ReplyDeleteA woman down the street had a yard sale not long ago, the best item was a Celtic harp, really neat looking, with lovely wood and ivory, not very big, about $700, I asked her if she could play it, she couldn't, but her friend there did.
So I ask my daughter have you ever heard of a Shakira? Yeah. She any good? OK, I quess.
ReplyDeleteNot exactly a ringing endorsement.
And we need to keep in mind that it's not a pure clown show. There are still a few lion tamers around. We can look to David Petraeus, Chesley Sullenberger, Sarah Palin, Scott Brown, and even, for that matter, Simon Cowell (it's a true sign of low appreciation for competence that Cowell's fair and blunt critiques were portrayed as cruel and sarcastic). So it's still possible to thrive even in an unfriendly environment. And after all, beating obstacles is what competent people are good at.
ReplyDeleteThe Age of the Yoyo
heh
What matters are the facts of the case. What matters is that a whistle-blowing attorney with a spotless record has sworn under oath that the Holder Justice Department acted dishonestly in dropping the Panther case and stonewalling questions about it, and that the Obama political appointees there encourage racialist (my word, not his) (non)enforcement of the law. And that a growing number of former DoJ officials back Mr. Adams' general description of affairs, two of them so far under oath.
ReplyDeleteI believe, and probably millions of other Americans by now agree, that the commission's study should indeed "bring Eric Holder down and really damage the president." It should do so if it does indeed show, as is starting to appear to be the situation, that Holder's DoJ, with at least tacit White House approval, is engaging in horrendous, immoral corruption.
Black Panther Case and the US Commission on Civil Rights
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ReplyDeleteHouse censures veteran Rep. Rangel for misconduct
Veteran Rep. Charles Rangel, the raspy-voiced, backslapping former chairman of one of Congress' most powerful committees, was censured by his House colleagues for financial misconduct Thursday in a solemn moment of humiliation in the sunset of his career.
"I brought it onto myself," Rangel told the House. But he also said politics was at work.
After the 333-79 vote, the 80-year-old Democrat from New York's Harlem stood silently at the front of the House and faced Speaker Nancy Pelosi as she read him the formal resolution of censure.
Then, in response, he admitted he had made mistakes, including his failure to pay all his taxes, filing misleading financial statements and improperly seeking money from corporate interests for a college center bearing his name.
But he also declared, "In my heart I truly feel good." He said, "A lot of it has to do with the fact that I know in my heart that I am not going to be judged by this Congress, but I am going to be judged by my life."
It was only the 23rd time in the nation's history that a House member received the most severe punishment short of expulsion. Aside from the embarrassment, censure carries no practical effect and ends the more than two-year ordeal for the congressman who was re-elected to a 21st term last month with more than 80 percent of the vote.
Relief and defiance took over the moment Rangel finished speaking. Somber, Pelosi quietly slipped out of the chamber, but some Democrats gave him a standing ovation. Rangel made it only a third of the way up the aisle when a phalanx of well-wishers stopped and hugged him; he responded by saying something that made them laugh. He was smiling for the rest of the 10 minutes or so that it took to get through his colleagues to exit the chamber, his humiliation past...
Charlie Censured
Charlie says he wasn't corrupt because he made no 'personal gain'. Perhaps true now; however, what about the taxes he wouldn't have paid if he hadn't been caught. Another indication of how they think in D.C.
Lead in the water?
Ah well, tomorrow is another day and all will be well in our own little OZ.
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