KORI SCHAKE: What really causes international conflicts? It’s not what you think. “A central tenet of realist theory is that states seek to maximize their power; Blainey makes no claims to state motivation; he considers it unimportant. Perceptions of relative strength, rather, are the motivation for warfare.” If correct, that’s bad news for America at this particular moment in history.
Archive for 2014
January 24, 2014
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 260.
JOHN FUND ON PREVENTING VOTER FRAUD:
We were reminded just this week of problems associated with absentee ballots. Guerrilla videographer James O’Keefe released an undercover video of a meeting of Battleground Texas, a leftist group working to elect Wendy Davis, the Democratic candidate for Texas governor. The video shows the Davis supporters ignoring questions about whether forging a signature on a relative’s absentee ballot was legal. “People do that all the time,” said Lisa Wortham, pretending to cover her ears. Wortham is an attorney and a deputy voter registrar working with the group. A volunteer from the group adds her opinion: “I don’t think that’s legal, I’ll do like Lisa did — I didn’t hear you say that.” Other Battleground Texas workers agree but jokingly cover their ears and also pretend not to hear.
Democrats, as matter of electoral strategy, rely on a lot of voter fraud, so it’s best for them to pretend it doesn’t exist, and to loudly scream racism when people point out that it does.
MY TOURNIQUET POST the other day produced this email from David Kirkham:
If you are interested in having a tourniquet in your car I’ll get you the latest and greatest. This was invented by my brother who has spent a long time in combat. We helped him refine the aluminum parts. It is light and can be applied with one arm. When I asked him why that was important he responded, “Sometimes that’s all you have.”
The tourniquet is fast and extremely effective. Combat proven.
I’m going to take a look, though I have not plans to give one a full-scale trial. . . .
MANN V. STEYN: A status report. I am disturbed to hear that Steyn is acting as his own lawyer. He’s a very smart guy, but that wouldn’t be a good idea even if he were a lawyer himself, which he is not.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Chris Bowyer: The First Person In My Family Not To Go To College. “The word ‘college,’ for many of us, conjures up feelings of integrity and learning, of expanding one’s knowledge and promise, and of a collaborative process by which the learned people in society help the next generation achieve what they did. But the reality is not so grand. Colleges are a business, and they have no qualms about doing what is necessary to extract as much from prospective students and their families as possible.”
AT AMAZON, Deals on Bestsellers in Tools & Home Improvement.
Also, coupons galore in Industrial & Scientific.
Plus, today only: Up to 73% off Computer Backpacks from SwissGear.
ANN ALTHOUSE: Is the prosecution of Dinesh d’Souza politically motivated? Is there anything this administration does that isn’t politically motivated?
From the comments:
It’s a violation of federal campaign financing law to accept donations from non-US citizens as I understand it.
During both the 2008 & ’12 campaigns, Obama’s web site solicited small donations below the threshold for name and address reporting (200?), and, more interestingly, disabled the credit card country of origin information.
No curiosity by the mainstream media or the DOJ.
[What] we are seeing is the “Chicagoization” of national government, whereby the Democrat party uses the power of government to destroy political opponents.
Yes. Plus: “Apparently old Eric has become more of a stickler for rules since his Marc Rich days.” Ouch.
UPDATE: At Ace’s place, co-blogger Maetenloch sees a pattern of political abuse of power.
Coincidence: Hollywood’s only conservative group is getting close IRS nonprofit scrutiny
Another Coincidence: James O’Keefe Group Being Audited by NY. Again.
Yet Another Coincidence: Dinesh D’Souza Indicted For Election Fraud
Still Another Coincidence: IRS Proposes New 501(c)(4) Rules That Just Happen to Cover Most Tea Party Groups
Judge Strikes Down Wisconsin’s ‘John Doe’ Subpoenas
Secret investigations targeted coincidentally at most prominent conservative groups in WI who can only now legally talk about their harassment. If you want to see what American fascism would look like, well this is it.
As a great man says, punch back twice as hard.
TED CRUZ WRITES ERIC HOLDER: Appoint an Independent Prosecutor in IRS Scandal.
For public consumption, as Cruz observes, both the president and the attorney general spouted indignantly about how “intolerable and inexcusable” and “outrageous and unacceptable” the IRS’s undeniable targeting of conservative groups was. But then they conducted an “investigation” under the direction of an Obama campaign donor in which law enforcement did not bother to interview the harassment victims. Meanwhile, the administration has not only stonewalled Congress (the familiar Obama M.O.) but, Cruz notes, is actively seeking new IRS rules that would validate and provide for systematic use of these “intolerable, inexcusable, outrageous and unacceptable” tactics.
Well, they got Obama elected in 2012. And now they’re doing battlespace preparation for 2014 and 2016.
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, RACISM WOULD GET SO BAD THAT EVEN THE NAACP WOULD BE SMEARING BLACK POLITICIANS. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! James Taranto: The Smearing of Tim Scott: A racial slur from an NAACP leader.
But Barber drew national attention for his comments about South Carolina’s junior senator, Tim Scott, who is Congress’s lone black Republican and one of only two black senators. Elected to the House in 2010, Scott was tapped by Gov. Nikki Haley to replace Sen. Jim DeMint, who resigned at the start of last year to become president of the Heritage Foundation. As a conservative politician in a conservative state, Scott is expected to prevail easily in this November’s special election to serve out the two years that will remain in the term.
The NAACP is a liberal group, so you wouldn’t expect its leaders to see eye to eye on politics with Tim Scott. But the manner in which Barber expressed his disagreement was remarkably disagreeable. “A ventriloquist can always find a good dummy,” Barber said. “The extreme right wing down here finds a black guy to be senator and claims he’s the first black senator since Reconstruction and then he goes to Washington, D.C., and articulates the agenda of the Tea Party.”
Scott is in fact the South’s first black senator since Reconstruction, but of course what’s invidious here is Barber’s characterization of Scott as a ventriloquist’s “dummy.” And the Washington Times notes that the NAACP stood behind Barber’s comment, saying in a statement: “Dr. King emphasized love and justice rather than extremism. Unless we stand for justice we cannot claim allegiance to or pay homage to Dr. King. In a state such as South Carolina, politicians, whether they be black or white, should not be echoing the position of the far right.”
Fox News reports that Scott, in an appearance on “The Kelly File,” described Barber’s attack as an example of “philosophical bigotry”–a rather gentle characterization of what inescapably is also a racial stereotype.
Really enjoying the hopey, changey, post-racial Obama presidency.
TIM CARNEY: Too Christian to excite the Left, and too foreign to excite the Right — Christian persecution in the Middle East. Actually, I see a fair number of people on the right talking about it.
SMOKE, MEET MIRROR: The Mirage Behind Brazil’s Economic Miracle.
YEAH, THE GRASSROOTS HAVE HAD EVERYTHING THEIR WAY FOR TOO LONG: RNC moves toward 2016 changes despite conservative outrage. I mean, can’t let the Tea Party nominate another Romney or McCain.
#NARRATIVEFAIL: Contrary to pronouncements, economic mobility not actually getting worse. “Children growing up in America today are just as likely — no more, no less — to climb the economic ladder as children born more than a half-century ago, a team of economists reported Thursday.”
WILL BAUDE: Originalism Is A Big Tent. “I think non-originalists sometimes expect originalism to have some sort of catechism that lays out ‘the originalist position’ on a bunch of these issues. But originalism is an interpretive method, not a party platform, and on many of these issues there is no such consensus.”
That is precisely the point I made in my Sex, Lies & Jurisprudence: Robert Bork, Griswold, and the Philosophy of Original Understanding, 31 Ga. L. Rev. 1045 (1990).
JACOB SULLUM: Is Rick Perry ‘More Liberal’ on Marijuana Than Barack Obama? Certainly moreso than Obama prior to the last election.
THE MORE THEY TALK ABOUT EQUALITY, THE MORE THEY ACT LIKE AN ARISTOCRACY: Dems Discuss ‘Income Inequality’ at Grammys, Posh St. Regis.
Democrats have made the issue of “income inequality” the cornerstone of their platform going into the November elections. In less than two months, the House Democrats will discuss this and other issues at the swanky and posh St. Regis hotel in Manhattan. Rooms start at $695 a night if you would like to join them.
Of course, you can’t simply show up at the DCCC’s “Issues Conference.” According to the email invitation, “[t]his annual Issues Conference is open to 2014 DCCC Business and Labor Council Platinum Members and to our 2014 Chairman’s Council Members.” I’m not certain what it takes to be a “plantinum member,” but I imagine it takes the kind of money that doesn’t blink at a $695 hotel room. Helpfully, the DCCC says you can contact them to determine one’s “eligibility.”
For those fortunate enough to attend, “the St. Regis New York has unveiled a bold new era of glamour at Manhattan’s best address,” according to the hotel’s website. Recently renovated, the hotel says the redesign’s “fresh and sophisticated approach has married original design elements, such as the crystal Waterford chandeliers and elegant crown moldings, with beautiful, large-format photographic artwork, vibrant-hued fabrics and stunning beveled mirrors.”
Union bigwigs representing some of the nation’s lowest paid workers are holding their annual board meeting at one of Florida’s ritziest resorts just months after increasing membership dues.
The United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents 1.4 million workers, is holding its annual board meeting at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort, where “Victorian elegance meets modern sophistication.”
Two-hundred-fifty union officials are attending the 11-day conference ending Jan. 25, although not all are staying at the Grand Floridian. Resort rooms start at $488 per night before taxes and can exceed $2,000 if officials opt for a two Bedroom Club Level suite.
When UFCW officials are not meeting to discuss the union’s progress in its battle against Walmart, they can “relax in the sumptuous lobby as the live orchestra plays ragtime, jazz and popular Disney tunes. Bask on the white-sand beach, indulge in a luxurious massage and watch the fireworks light up the sky over Cinderella Castle.”
Sticking it to the man, at $2000 a night.
Also: Millionaire Congresswoman: Income Inequality is ‘Existential Threat’ to U.S. “In November 2013, the website Celebrity Networth listed DeLauro’s fortune at $20 million in its ‘Richest Politicians’ category.”
HOPEY-CHANGEY: Report: Global Freedom Has Been Declining for Nearly a Decade. “In 2013, for the eighth year in a row, more countries registered declines in political rights and civil liberties than gains. Even as the number of electoral democracies in the world increased, nations like the Central African Republic, Mali, and Ukraine suffered devastating democratic setbacks. Thirty-five percent of the world’s population, living in 25 percent of the polities on the planet, found themselves in countries that aren’t free. As we enter a year in which more people will vote in elections than ever before, democracy appears to be in a holding pattern around the world—if not outright retreat.”
Things aren’t so great here, either.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Kansas Judge Demands Sperm Donor Pay Child Support. The judge is female, so I’m blaming sexism.
January 23, 2014
NOW JUSTIN BIEBER’S REALLY IN TROUBLE: Wait! It says he caused backed up traffic. That’s Chris Christie level moral turpitude!
“JUST ASK GARY HARTPENCE:” Will Wendy Davis’ Phony Lifestory Hurt Her Campaign?
I’M GOING TO GO WITH “YES” ON THAT: Was the Obama administration suit against S&P revenge for US credit down grade?