TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 954.
Archive for 2015
December 19, 2015
“WHOEVER THE NEXT PRESIDENT IS, PLEASE DON’T DO THIS:” Watch a U.S. Marine open the door for R2-D2 at the White House (video).
CBS NEWS: Data dispute rips open Democrats’ race before debate.
There’s a civil war inside the Democratic Party.
Hillary Clinton is accusing Bernie Sanders’ campaign of theft, saying the Vermont senator’s aides stole millions of dollars’ worth of voter data held by the Democratic National Committee.
The breach of information led to a suspension for the Sanders campaign, which then sued the DNC, but late Friday night, a deal was reached to clear up the mess ahead of Saturday night’s Democratic debate.
CBS News’ Julianna Goldman reports this dispute has laid bare tensions between the DNC and the Sanders campaign that had been simmering for months.
The Sanders campaign is accusing party officials of trying to undermine his campaign and to help Clinton.
Well, that’s because they are. I think Bernie should mount an independent run.
UPDATE: And I guess Hillary’s worried about that too: DNC, Sanders Reach Deal Restoring Access To Voter Data.
Related: Dem Rivalry Takes Nasty Turn.
The long-simmering notion among many grassroots liberals that the national party is in the tank for Hillary Clinton spilled into public view on Friday, as a nasty fight between Bernie Sanders and the Democratic National Committee tore into the open.
Some liberals have long held that the DNC’s sanctioning of fewer debates this cycle, with half of those debates taking place over a weekend, was an attempt by the national party to shield Clinton from scrutiny and ease the path to the nomination for the prohibitive front-runner.
But the Sanders campaign and supporting liberal activist groups didn’t start making that case publicly until Friday, when controversy erupted over the DNC’s handling of revelations that a Sanders staffer had been fired for inappropriately accessing Clinton voter files housed on a central party server.
Some Democrats believe that bringing the hammer down on Sanders — his campaign has been shut off from its own database of voter files until the situation is ironed out — hands grassroots liberals the ammunition they needed in a war they’ve been agitating for.
It’s clear that the DNC is just an arm of Hillary’s campaign.
NOW HE TELLS US: Former SecDef Chuck Hagel Blasts Obama Foreign Policy Failures:
Specifically, Hagel criticized the “red line” incident in Syria (“There’s no question in my mind that it hurt the credibility of the president’s word when this occurred”), the Administration’s handling of Russia (“I think we should have done more, could have done more,” with regard to Ukraine), and micromanagement. And as Micah Zenko notes on the CFR’s blog, sometimes what Hagel didn’t say was as damning as what he did. One of his comments makes it clear, for instance, that the Obama Administration had never reached a clear decision on whether we would defend friendly rebels in Syria before Hagel gave vital Congressional testimony on the subject.
Furthermore, as Foreign Policy notes, these are not isolated criticisms:
Hagel’s predecessors, Gates and Panetta, as well as Michèle Flournoy, the former No. 3 official at the Pentagon, have all criticized the White House’s centralized decision-making and interference with the workings of the Defense Department.
And other high-level officials, including Ambassadors Robert Ford and Martin Indyk, have also spoken at length about the Administration’s foreign policy follies. The sense that emerges from all the criticism by President Obama’s closest, most senior ex-officials is: The President is a terrible foreign policy president who has made serious and serial mistakes. Has any American president in the history of the Republic taken this much flak from ex-officials at the highest level?
Worst. President. Ever. I mean, even Woodrow Wilson won a war.
UPDATE: From the comments: “To be fair, he’s a terrible domestic polcy president, too.” Good point!
NATIONAL REVIEW EDITORS ON THE OMNIBUS: What were Republican leaders thinking? Don’t be too hard on them. The NSA probably has lots of dirt.
WELL, I FEEL SAFER. HOW ‘BOUT YOU? Mexico Foreign Secretary: Immigrants Not ‘Security Concerns.’
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AS ALWAYS, LIFE IMITATES TOM WOLFE: Students at Lena Dunham’s college offended by lack of fried chicken:
Gastronomically correct students at Oberlin College — alma mater of Lena Dunham — are filling the school newspaper with complaints and demanding meetings with campus dining officials and even the college president.
General Tso’s chicken was made with steamed chicken instead of fried — which is not authentically Chinese, and simply “weird,” one student bellyached in the Oberlin Review.
Others were up in arms over banh mi Vietnamese sandwiches served with coleslaw instead of pickled vegetables, and on ciabatta bread, rather than the traditional French baguette.
“It was ridiculous,” gripes Diep Nguyen, a freshman who is a Vietnam native.
Worse, the sushi rice was undercooked in a way that was, according to one student, “disrespectful” of her culture. Tomoyo Joshi, a junior from Japan, was highly offended by this flagrant violation of her rice. “I f people not from that heritage take food, modify it and serve it as ‘authentic,’ it is appropriative,” she said.
Oberlin’s black student union joined in the fray this month by staging a protest outside Afrikan Heritage House, an on-campus dorm.
The cafeteria there wasn’t serving enough vegan and vegetarian options and had failed to make fried chicken a permanent feature on the Sunday night menu, the school newspaper reported.
The whole article is a riot, and reads like outtakes from I Am Charlotte Simmons. But then, I’m from a simpler era — I don’t recall General Tso’s Chicken, sushi and vegan options in my school’s cafeteria, which largely doled out barely edible food that seemed like Civil War surplus. Has there ever been a generation of college crybullies simultaneously so spoiled, and so angry?
DO IT, BERNIE! Why This Latest DNC Flap Could Make Bernie Go Third Party.
OBAMA AND FRIENDS’ INCREDIBLE MALFEASANCE ON IRAN: “It’s official: on October 10, Iran tested an Emad ballistic missile that can carry a nuclear warhead…Iran is also known to have tested yet another nuclear-capable missile on November 21,” P. David Hornik writes, asking, “Why are Obama and his allies so gung-ho to get the deal moving, and the sanctions lifted, at any conceivable price?”
“And for the other answer, you have to follow the money. The lifting of sanctions will mean Iran gets its hands on up to $150 billion in unfrozen assets. That’s a huge infusion for doing business with eager European and Russian entities that have already been trooping to Tehran, intoxicated by the smell of ink — that is, the inking of business deals — in the air.”
Read the whole thing.
THAT MOST SCHOOL CHILDREN LEARN THIS REVERSED IS A SCANDAL: This Day in History… Republicans Pass Anti-KKK Act – Outlawing Democratic Terrorist Groups.
BYRON YORK: What If Democrats Had A National Security Debate?
The Democratic presidential field, such as it is, gathers for its third debate Saturday, in Manchester, N.H. Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine it were devoted entirely to national security.
The Republican debate in Las Vegas Tuesday night focused almost exclusively on security and foreign policy. The CNN moderators had not originally billed the debate that way, but after Paris, San Bernardino, the Islamic State and more, that’s what it became. . . .
Bernie Sanders, for example, has not been able to hide his annoyance that questions of terrorism and security have imposed themselves on his campaign. Sanders prefers to talk about corrupt billionaires, universal healthcare, and evil super PACs, but troubling world events keep happening.
Earlier this month, Sanders appeared in Baltimore for a discussion of economic inequality and the Black Lives Matter movement. Before Sanders talked to reporters, his press secretary warned, “Don’t ask about ISIS today.”
Of course that didn’t work. So Sanders told the assembled journalists, “You want to ask me about ISIS? We will talk about ISIS. But what I have said … is that obviously ISIS and terrorism are a huge national issue that we have got to address, but so is poverty, so is unemployment, so is education, so is healthcare, so is the need to protect working families. And I will continue to talk about those issues.”
That is not a man who wants to talk about national security threats. Hillary Clinton, as a former secretary of state, is more comfortable discussing terrorism. But she, too, sticks more to domestic issues — in part because that’s what her base voters want.
Also, Hillary doesn’t really want to discuss — much less debate — anything.
IT’S GOT ELECTROLYTES: Welcome to 2015, the world envisioned by Idiocracy. “It will be up to Republican voters, beginning in February, to determine just how far down the road to Idiocracy the GOP has traveled. Trump is clearly betting we’re almost there.”
HMM: HGTV, Fox News Among Only Top Cable Networks to Boost Ratings This Year. “ESPN averaged 2.1 million viewers, an 8% drop compared with last year when it averaged 2.3 million viewers.”
MESSAGE: GOOD HOLIDAY NEWS FOR GUN RETAILERS. Obama Poised to Tighten Gun Laws After Holidays.
Senior congressional aides and sources in the gun-control community expect the White House to use its executive powers to tighten federal gun laws shortly after President Barack Obama returns from a Hawaiian vacation in early January.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday he anticipates a legal review to continue through the holidays.
Since the deadly shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., White House officials have been, as Earnest has put it, “scrubbing through the law” to determine whether and how Obama can use his constitutional authorities to make it harder for terrorists and other potential mass shooters to legally obtain firearms.
On both sides of the Capitol, sources involved in the guns debate say, as one senior House GOP leadership aide put it, “something is brewing on guns.”
The hot-button issue returned to the front burner of American politics following the lethal Islamic State-inspired California shooting.
Since, however, Republican lawmakers have blocked Democratic measures on stiffening gun laws; and Democrats have kept a mental health bill the GOP has tied to mass shootings from passing, saying they would rather close loopholes in gun laws first.
A recent CNN/ORC poll suggests the American public is siding with GOP arguments. The survey found a majority (52 percent) of those polled oppose tighter gun laws. And a Washington Post/ABC News poll found 53 percent are against the assault weapons ban the White House has endorsed.
I think the more the Democrats talk about gun control, the happier the GOP should be. And, to be fair, it’s one of the relatively few areas where the GOP hasn’t sold its constituents down the river, probably because it knows that gun-rights folks are attentive and unforgiving.
IT’S ALWAYS BEEN A NOISY MINORITY, GINNED-UP BY “STUDENT LIFE” AND GRIEVANCE-STUDIES EDUCRATS TO DEMAND MORE MONEY FOR “STUDENT LIFE” AND GRIEVANCE-STUDIES EDUCRATS: New Poll Shows College Students Reject Absurd “Microagression” Culture, Black Lives Matter.
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN CITIES SUCH HELLHOLES OF CORRUPTION, RACISM, VIOLENCE — AND SEXISM? Barriers to prenatal health care in DC endanger women.
GANGSTER GOVERNMENT: Ukrainian officials feel betrayed by President Barack Obama’s support for a key anti-corruption prosecutor in their government who is closely tied to Russian corporate interests in Ukraine. “Ukrainian officials are also disillusioned that Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, is on the board of one of those interests, Ukraine’s biggest privately owned gas company, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.”
NOT THE ONION: Obama Ends Press Conference So He Can Go Watch Star Wars (Video).
Semi-retired President Chauncey Gardiner certainly is a voracious consumer of pop culture escapism, isn’t he? No wonder his handlers likely demanded that the Times expunge its reference on Thursday night that “Mr. Obama indicated that he did not see enough cable television to fully appreciate the anxiety after the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino.”
(Say it with me — unexpectedly.)
ROGER SIMON ON Angela Merkel, Paul Ryan, and the Islamization of America:
Can you imagine Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton saying such a thing [as Merkel recently did] about the sainted “multiculturalism”? Obviously not. They wouldn’t dare risk alienating their voters or questioning their own sclerotic ideologies — this even though Europe’s problem with Islamic immigration is far greater than ours… for now.
Get ready, however. I have always been milder in my criticism of GOP lawmakers than some, but nothing appalls me more than the latest démarche by Paul Ryan et al in acquiescing to Obama’s immigration strategy vis-a-vis the Muslim world. This is all the more reprehensible since the GOP surrender occurred after the Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks and before any even remotely effective programs have been put in place to separate out those inclined to blow up innocent citizens in the name of Allah, let alone to integrate other Muslims into our society in a manner consonant with our values and not Sharia law.
Shame on Ryan.
Read the whole thing.
Incidentally, I’m not at all sure anybody remembers the early ’60s James Garner/Julie Andrews movie The Americanization of Emily, but that’s what popped into my head when Roger told me his headline. Fortunately, I was able to find images of Merkel and Ryan in the same poses as Garner and Andrews to Photoshop the poster.
ACTUALLY, AFTER WHAT HAPPENED THIS WEEK MCCONNELL NEEDS TO PERSUADE REPUBLICANS THAT IT MATTERS WHETHER GOP CANDIDATES WIN: Leader McConnell warns GOP voters: We need candidates ‘who can win.’
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Friday warned Republican voters to steer clear of nominating Tea Party candidates who can’t win in next year’s general election.
“The way you have a good election year is to nominate people who can win,” he told reporters during his final Capitol Hill press conference of 2015.
He urged Republican primary voters to avoid the mistakes of the past, mentioning several Tea Party candidates who went down in flames in recent Senate elections.
“What we did in 2014 was we didn’t have more Christine O’Donnell’s, Sharron Angles, Richard Mourdocks or Todd Akins. The people that were nominated [last year] were electable,” he said of the last mid-term election.
“That will happen again in 2016. We will not nominate anybody for the United States Senate on the Republican side who’s not appealing to a general-election audience,” he added.
Can we elect people who won’t fold to the Democrats and vote for more pork?
Related: Roll Call: Pelosi’s Victory Lap.
WHAT ISIS SHOULD REMEMBER: We maybe be slow to action, but… (from facebook.)
BY THEIR FRUITS: Wherever ISIS [trans:Daeshbags] go, disease and pestilence follow.
I STILL PREFER PRIVATE INITIATIVES: But if this will make us less dependent on Soviet goodwill to get to the international space station… Congress wants to give NASA $19.3 billion next year, even more than Obama asked for.