IN THE MAIL: Banking on Failure: Fixing the Fiasco of Junk Banks, Government Bailouts, and Fiat Money.
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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 535.
THE ERASED BORDERS of the Middle East.
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon gave a wide-ranging and provocative interview to NPR earlier this week. Of particular interest was his recognition that the national borders that were created after World War I are dissolving. . . .
Ya’alon is right. As our own Adam Garfinkle concluded in June about Iraq: “The Iraqi state in its historic territorial configuration is gone—solid gone, and it ain’t coming back.” The region’s other “artificial nation-states” aren’t going to return to the status quo ante bellum either. Whatever comes out of the current war, it won’t look like the old landscape, and we shouldn’t imagine that there are natural nations waiting to be created out of the ethno-tribal-religious anarchy that the Middle East is witnessing.
It’s an area that has never really been stable or peaceful for long, and then only under a peace imposed by an outside party.
NO GADGETS ALLOWED: NYU Technology Prof Bans Student Use of Technology in His Classroom.
THIS IS PROBABLY WHY THE DEMOCRATS ON THE FEC ARE GOING AFTER ALTERNATIVE MEDIA: Democrats Face Disaster As Millennials Jump Ship.
A prominent Democratic pollster is warning that the election looks to be “a disaster” for Democrats because younger, so-called millennial voters, are abandoning President Obama’s party.
“Millennials could have the definitive impact on the election, and that impact could be from them not showing up,” warned Celinda Lake.
“They look to have the lowest turnout rates right now which would be a disaster for progressive candidates,” she added in an online interview for Harvard University’s Institute of Politics.
Lake, one of the Washington’s top pollsters, said that younger voters are frustrated with the Democrats and feel abandoned by politics.
The solution, obviously, is to quash any voices that might encourage that.
UPDATE: Austin Bay emails:
Over the last two years I have met dozens (scores?) of 20 somethings who are disgusted with their economic prospects. In the last year I noticed many of these young people were beginning to connect their disappointment to Obama. Who knows — are they finally connecting them to statist/socialist (crony( economic policies as pursued by the Democratic Party?
Conservatives need to start discussing America’s “economic generation gap” — and put the blame where it belongs: on statist and crony politics, to include an insanely complex tax code that begs for seeking favors.
Indeed.
THE HILL: Squadrons form for voter ID fight. “The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has state directors stationed across the country for its Voter Expansion Project. They help train poll workers, and work with local election officials to clarify how laws will be implemented.”
I wonder how many of those voters will be non-citizens? Answer: As many as they can manage.
CHANGE: Scandal-Plagued Ex-White House counsel withdraws from AG race.
Former White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler is withdrawing her name from consideration to succeed Attorney General Eric Holder after President Obama approached her about the job.
“We can confirm the president asked Kathy to consider this, and she was among those the president had been looking at,” a White House official said Friday.
“Kathy took this step this week on her own volition, as she always has done, putting the president and administration first.”
Ruemmler, who for years played a central advisory and policy role at the White House, was thought to be Obama’s favorite for the job.
But her nomination could have sparked a tough confirmation battle, especially after a recent Washington Post story raised questions about how thoroughly she investigated allegations a White House volunteer may have solicited a prostitute ahead of a presidential trip to Colombia.
The White House has defended her investigation as thorough and the volunteer maintains his innocence, but the issue would likely draw attention in a potential confirmation hearing.
We will undoubtedly get an AG nominee inclined to protect insiders and donors at the expense of working stiffs, but it’s better to get one who’s not quite so obviously about that.
THE CHILD I didn’t adopt.
CHANGE: Ebola Quarantines Seen As Barrier To Volunteers.
Yeah, well, this is kind of a barrier, too: Bellevue staffers call in ‘sick’ after Ebola arrives.
An extraordinary number of Bellevue Hospital staffers called in sick on Friday rather than treat the city’s first Ebola patient — and those who showed up were terrified to enter his isolation chamber, sources told The Post.
“The nurses on the floor are miserable with a ‘why me?’ attitude, scared to death and overworked because all their co-workers called out sick,” one source said.
“One nurse even went as far as to pretend she was having a stroke to get out of working there, but once they cleared her in the ER they sent her back up,” the source added.
Dr. Craig Spencer is being treated by nurses working in teams of two, “with one serving as a buddy watching the other,” said Health and Hospitals Corporation spokeswoman Ana Marengo, who denied there was a sickout.
The Doctors Without Borders volunteer — who is in stable condition — has even been putting his medical skills to use, lecturing the staff about proper treatment.
Well, I’d take his safety advice with a grain of salt. . . .
HOLMAN JENKINS: The Ebola Anti-Hysteria Hysteria: The average American is safe, but the choices may get ugly in the coming months.
People are irrational in their assessment of risks, blah, blah. Yes, we can find here and there examples of Americans overreacting to Ebola. But more in evidence has been media’s own anti-hysteria hysteria. This week a Bloomberg Radio host rudely and repeatedly (and uncharacteristically) hushed a Wall Street analyst for suggesting we still have things to learn about how the virus is transmitted. Guess what? This is true. What’s more the virus is subject to forces of natural selection, so even our broadly reliable generalizations about transmissibility are hardly written in stone.
The media, as if citing an iron law, keep telling us that (to use the New York Times formulation) “people infected with Ebola cannot spread the disease until they begin to display symptoms, and it cannot be spread through the air.”
Sorry, each clause of that sentence is subject to caveat, and the whole thought needs to be preceded with the words “government scientists believe . . . .”
A lack of plausibility of official explanations doesn’t help matters.
You want to encourage panic? Make it sound like your top priority is fighting panic, instead of Ebola.
EXTRA RESPECT FOR CANADA: Ottawa attack: MPs fashioned spears out of flags. “After they heard gunfire outside their meeting room door Wednesday, members of Parliament snapped close to 15 flagpoles to make weapons. Some positioned themselves on risers that flanked doors, ready to attack an assailant.”
GOOD. I NEVER LIKED THE OLD ONE. The University of Tennessee Has A New Logo.
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A GUN-CONTROL POLITICAL CALCULATION GONE AWRY: “The calculation when it was passed was people were going to get mad for a little while and then get over it. I don’t think people are getting over it.”
From the comments: “Sounds like ObamaCare.”
IT’S NOT ABOUT TRUTH, IT’S ABOUT DESPERATION AND TURNOUT-BOOSTING RACE-BAITING: Democrats Join The Ferguson Lynch Mob Right As The Case Against Officer Wilson Collapses.
Related: Democrat Ad Blames Thom Tillis For Trayvon Martin Shooting.
WHAT THEY DON’T TELL YOU ABOUT EGG-FREEZING: “I am a former patient of three clinics in the Bay area, all of which were happy to sell me services as long as I could pay the bill. I had multiple fresh and frozen embryo transfers. Instead of taking home a baby, I came away with tremendous heartache. And my experience is not unique. Around the world, there are an estimated 1.5 million IVF procedures each year, and 1.2 million fail.”
Related: “Women are now using technology to try to make themselves seem as much like man as possible…”
TEST DRIVE: 2015 Lexus NX300h Hybrid FWD.
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EUROPE’S MOMENT OF blinding strategic clarity. “What truth about Europe has now become undeniable? That Europe, with all its wealth and resources, remains strategically inert.”
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