Archive for 2013
May 25, 2013
SHAKEDOWN: The H Street Project.
JAMES TARANTO: See You in the Funny Papers: A tribute to an anti-mentor. “That, it seems to us, is the central story of our time. The left-liberal elite that attained cultural dominance between the 1960s and the 1980s–and that since 2008 has seen itself as being on the cusp of political dominance as well–is undergoing a crisis of authority, and its defenses are increasingly ferocious and unprincipled. Journalists lie or ignore important but politically uncongenial stories. Scientists suppress alternative hypotheses. Political organizations bully apolitical charities. The Internal Revenue Service persecutes dissenters. And campus censorship goes on still.”
PRIORITIES: Reason-Rupe Poll: Congress Should Cut Spending, Forget Gun Control. “Fifty-four percent of Americans say Congress should cut spending from current levels and 62 percent say Congress should forget about gun control and move on to other issues. Social Security is widely popular, with 65 percent having a favorable view of the retirement portions of the program. But it’s also widely misunderstood as an individual retirement account rather than a transfer payment financed by current tax dollars.”
ONE CHARISMATIC ORATOR TO ANOTHER: How JFK secretly ADMIRED Hitler: Explosive book reveals former President’s praise for the Nazis as he travelled through Germany before Second World War. A lot of influential Americans of the political class admired Hitler at some point.
Related: Cornelius Vanderbilt IV meets Hitler:
Vanderbilt toured Europe with two French cameramen, and managed to interview the day’s notorious newsmakers, including Benito Mussolini and Josef Stalin. But the plutocrat-cum-journalist set his sights on a man even more dangerous. When he had a chance to sit down with the former Crown Prince of Germany, in Berlin, he asked, “Strange, isn’t it, that you Hohenzollerns are so much easier to see than Hitler?”
On March 5, 1933, the day elections gave the Nazis a parliamentary plurality, a triumphant Adolf Hitler addressed a hysterical crowd at the Sports Palace in Berlin. From the wings of the stage, Vanderbilt managed a brief audience with the new Reich Chancellor. According to Vanderbilt’s account, he introduced himself, in German, and then Hitler, with a motion to the throngs that awaited, began speaking: “Tell the Americans that life moves forward, always forward, irrevocably forward. Tell them that Adolf Hitler is the man of the hour, not because he has been appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg but because no one else could have been appointed Chancellor instead. Tell them that he was sent by the Almighty to a nation that had been threatened with disintegration and loss of honor for fifteen long years.” Vanderbilt, an all-American blue blood, risked a final question. He shouted, “And what about the Jews, Your Excellency?” Hitler brushed it off—“My people are waiting for me!”—and pointed Vanderbilt toward Dr. Ernst Hanfstaengl, his Harvard-educated (and Anglo-acclimated) foreign press chief. “He will tell you about the Jews and all the other things that seem to bother America.” Hanfstaengl proved mostly interested in Vanderbilt’s money.
The old-money Vanderbilt seems to have been more discerning about Hitler than the new-money Kennedy. Tragedy that he didn’t shoot him.
UPDATE: Reader Matt Gilbert emails:
Hi Glenn – I laughed out loud at this: “pity he didn’t shoot him”.
My German-speaking grand-dad was the AP reporter based in London who was sent to cover Hitler’s election. He met him twice. I never knew this (neither did my mother – his own daughter) until I asked him what his biggest regret in life was. He told his story then reached out his hands and said, “my biggest regret was not strangling that man when I had the chance….” I’d never seen my no-drama Grand-dad so animated. He died two years later. His best friend was the AP photographer sent with him to the event. Afterwards they took 2 weeks and toured the continent. We found those sepia photographs in my Granddad’s things after he passed…pictures of pre-ww2 Europe, pre-destruction Germany and then right there: my granddad standing next to the most notorious man of the 20th century. It was bone chilling.
Some people just need killin’, as the Scots-Irish used to say. Okay, still do.
DO TELL: Petraeus Biographer Regrets Affair.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Student Loan Problems: One Third Of Millennials Regret Going To College.
Here’s an indication of how burdensome student loans have become: About one-third of millennials say they would have been better off working, instead of going to college and paying tuition.
That’s a according to a new Wells Fargo WFC +0.57% study which surveyed 1,414 millennials between the ages of 22 and 32. More than half of them financed their education through student loans, and many say the if they had $10,000 the “first thing” they’d do is pay down their student loan or credit card debt.
That’s no surprise when you consider student borrowing topped the $100 billion threshold for the first time in 2010, and total outstanding loans exceeded $1 trillion for the first time in 2011. Student loan debt now exceeds credit card debt in the U.S. which stands at about $798 billion.
Delinquencies are also on the rise. The number of borrowers who are at least 90 days late on student loan payments has jumped from 8.5% in 2011 to 11.7% today, according to a study by the New York Federal Reserve.
The problem sometimes is that not all college educations are worth their cost since they can’t guarantee a high-paying job to help pay off that student debt.
EMASCULATED, AS A MATTER OF POLICY: Britain: “We are admiring these women, but implicit in our admiration is the question — let’s speak it out loud — Where are the men?”
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? The Government Wants A Backdoor Into Your Communications. “According to the New York Times, President Obama is ‘on the verge of backing’ a proposal by the FBI to introduce legislation dramatically expanding the reach of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. CALEA forces telephone companies to provide backdoors to the government so that it can spy on users after obtaining court approval, and was expanded in 2006 to reach Internet technologies like VoIP. The new proposal reportedly allows the FBI to listen in on any conversation online, regardless of the technology used, by mandating engineers build “backdoors” into communications software.”
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Americans Spent Less Per Student on Public Schools. “The amount of money spent per public school student fell in 2011 for the first time since the Census Bureau began keeping records more than three decades earlier, as economic woes finally caught up with educational realities. . . . ‘There (have) actually been declines in education employment, which is really different than in prior recessions, where state and local government has actually protected employment more.'”
All is proceeding as I have foreseen.
MICKEY KAUS: Does welfare cause terrorism, Part XVIII.
How long before we find out that “alleged” Woolwich murderer Michael Adebolajo was on some kind of welfare? Or else his household was on welfare. The Tsarnaevs received various kinds of welfare too, of course, as have numerous other terrorists. This is not a coincidence:
“In fact, there’s a good argument that “welfare benefits + ethnic antagonism” is the universal recipe for an underclass with an angry, oppositional culture. The social logic is simple: Ethnic differences make it easy for those outside of, for example, French Arab neighborhoods to discriminate against those inside, and easy for those inside to resent the mainstream culture around them. [Update: See also, Sweden.] Meanwhile, relatively generous welfare benefits enable those in the ethnic ghetto to stay there, stay unemployed, and seethe. Without government subsidies, they would have to overcome the prejudice against them and integrate into the mainstream working culture. Work, in this sense, is anti-terrorist medicine. (And if you work all day, there’s less time to dream up ways and reasons to kill infidels.)”
If Adebolajo turns out to have earned his own living, I’ll be surprised and chastened. Will post update in this space.
You’re betting with the odds, Mickey.
JOHN HINDERAKER: The Inevitable Decline Of Great Britain (cont’d). “The average American household is better armed than a London policeman, and as a result, it was left to a few women from the crowd of bystanders to try to deal with cleaver-wielding murderers. But that doesn’t mean the British are entirely lax with respect to law enforcement. No, not at all: it just depends which laws you are talking about. If you mean laws against carving up innocent people on the street with knives, well, the Brits have a problem. But if you complain about such an outrage on Facebook or Twitter, you’re going to be crushed by the full majesty of the law.”
May 24, 2013
A BAD REVIEW FOR OBAMA’S SPEECH: “He’s actually getting worse. This president will not admit that we are in a war.”
IN RESPONSE TO MY EARLIER POST ABOUT TRUE THE VOTE SUING THE IRS AGENTS WHO HARASSED IT, READER BLAINE MILLER WRITES:
I believe you have a bit of hypocrisy here. Your comment on the thuggish campaign of Barack Obama in 08 and then you highlight a story of True Vote going to sue the IRS employees. Granted the IRS scandal is outrageous but suing the IRS employees is intimidation, pure and simple.
There’s no equivalence here. Punishing someone for wrongdoing — which is what True The Vote is doing — is not the same as punishing someone for political opposition, which is what the IRS was doing.
UPDATE: Reader Douglas Hufnagel writes: “Isn’t intimidating government thugs exactly what we want? Shouldn’t we use any methods possible to absolutely crush those who would attack us with such blatantly illegal methods?” I wouldn’t go so far as an “any means necessary’ approach. But accountability does matter.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Rod Sanders emails:
To the idea that suing the individual IRS employees is intimidation:
Maybe it is. But it is, nonetheless, the correct reaction.
There seems to be the idea among many government employees that invoking the ‘I was only following orders’ argument somehow magically insulates them from their bad behavior.
If the people on the ground are held much more accountable for their actions, it may become harder for those calling the shots to use them as foot soldiers in their political games.
A moral individual would refuse to follow an order that is illegal or unethical. Most, if not all, of the front line employees involved here did not refuse. In fact, they likely agreed with the goal.
They shouldn’t get off just because someone like Lerner called the shots.
Indeed.
MORE: Reader Andy Freeman writes: “If the IRS employees were ‘just following orders’ then they’ll be willing to document said orders and testify in court as to who gave them.” You’d think.
Plus, a longtime reader emails:
Since I am a federal employee please don’t use my name if you quote me.
In my branch of federal government I am reminded via mandatory annual training that I can be held individually accountable both criminally and civilly for violations of the law. So I reject that these lawsuits are intimidation. They are the proper response and a reminder of the law.
It is not bullying to hold people accountable.
No, it’s not.
BUY A GUN: 911 Dispatcher Tells Woman About To Be Sexually Assaulted There Are No Cops To Help Her Due To Budget Cuts. “You know, obviously, if he comes inside the residence and assaults you, can you ask him to go away?”