JOHN MCGINNIS: What Makes Immigrants Unwelcome? Progressivism.

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IT DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU MEAN BY FIT: Can You Be ‘Fat but Fit’?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Dr. Theodore Dalrymple asks, “Do Happy People Live Longer?”

THOMAS SOWELL ON THE LEFT’S CENTRAL DELUSION — “Its devotion to central planning has endured from the French Revolution to Obamacare:”

The French Revolution was their chance to show what they could do when they got the power they sought. In contrast to what they promised — “liberty, equality, fraternity” — what they actually produced were food shortages, mob violence, and dictatorial powers that included arbitrary executions, extending even to their own leaders, such as Robespierre, who died under the guillotine.

In the 20th century, the most sweeping vision of the Left — Communism — spread over vast regions of the world and encompassed well over a billion human beings. Of these, millions died of starvation in the Soviet Union under Stalin and tens of millions in China under Mao.

Milder versions of socialism, with central planning of national economies, took root in India and in various European democracies.

If the preconceptions of the Left were correct, central planning by educated elites who had vast amounts of statistical data at their fingertips and expertise readily available, and were backed by the power of government, should have been more successful than market economies where millions of individuals pursued their own individual interests willy-nilly.

But, by the end of the 20th century, even socialist and communist governments began abandoning central planning and allowing more market competition. Yet this quiet capitulation to inescapable realities did not end the noisy claims of the Left.

In the United States, those claims and policies have reached new heights, epitomized by government takeovers of whole sectors of the economy and unprecedented intrusions into the lives of Americans, of which Obamacare has been only the most obvious example.

Which brings us to this recent AP headline: “PARIS CLIMATE GOALS MEAN EMISSIONS NEED TO DROP BELOW ZERO.”

If we’re going to return to the premodern era in terms of not just thought but eliminating technology as well, shouldn’t AP set the example for the rest of us and close its doors first?

SO MUCH FOR PRIVACY: The New York Slimes Times editorial board laments that “Political Dark Money Just Got Darker.”  After (again) bashing the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, the NYT editors focus on the liberal/progressive campaign finance cause du jour: mandating disclosure of the identity of donors to 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations, such as some tea party groups, the National Organization for Women, AARP, various ACLU chapters, right to life committees, kennel clubs, Rotary clubs, environmental groups, fan clubs, and voting rights organizations.

The rationale for such disclosure? So-called “dark” money. In the words of the NYT editors:

In the new budget bill, Republicans inserted a provision blocking the Internal Revenue Service from creating rules to curb the growing abuse of the tax law by thinly veiled political machines posing as “social welfare” organizations. These groups are financed by rich special-interest donors who do not have to reveal their identities under the tax law. So much for effective disclosure at the I.R.S.

In another move to keep the public blindfolded about who is writing big corporate checks for federal candidates, the Republicans barred the Securities and Exchange Commission from finalizing rules requiring corporations to disclose their campaign spending to investors. It was Citizens United that foolishly envisioned a world in which: “Shareholders can determine whether their corporation’s political speech advances the corporation’s interest in making profits, and citizens can see whether elected officials are ‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests.”

In acting to seal that pocket and hobble the I.R.S., congressional Republicans are advancing what has become the dark age of plutocratic money in campaign spending. At every turn, they are veiling the truth about the special-interest ties they have with rich donors shopping for favors. Since the Citizens United decision in January 2010, politicians have collected more than $500 million in dark money from phantom donors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, with hundreds of millions more expected in the current campaign.

Since the people’s elected representatives have so foolishly thwarted the liberals’/progressives’ attempt to invade individual privacy in the guise of “disclosure,” the NYT editors have this modest proposal:

Is there any ray of light in this moneyed darkness?

For two years, President Obama has dithered and withheld the one blow he could easily strike for greater political transparency: the signing of an executive order requiring government contractors to disclose their campaign spending. This would not solve the overall problem, but in mandating new disclosures in time for the 2016 elections it would help affirm that democracy is about transparency. Mr. Obama should sign the order now. If Republicans want to make an issue of this, let them — and let them defend the scourge of dark money before the voters on the campaign trail.

That’s classic. An iconic liberal/progressive newspaper’s editorial board, frustrated by the “inaction” (i.e., disagreement) by Congress on its liberal/progressive agenda, is demanding that the President “go around” Congress to issue an executive order mandating disclosure of the identities of donors to 501(c)(4) organizations that have government contracts.

I guess liberals/progressives only value individual privacy when it comes in the form of de-identified metadata about cell phone calls and “democracy” only when it creates results with which it agrees. Big Brother wants to know to whom you are giving your money, so that it can bring you out of the “darkness” of privacy.  And if the people’s elected representatives won’t force you out of the “darkness,” one person–the President–should do it unilaterally. Nice.

SHAMING OF THE SHREW: Hillary Clinton’s Vulgarity Makes Trump Look Like Shakespeare!

AND DON’T EVEN GET THEM STARTED ON TED CRUZ’S DAUGHTERS: On the day after Christmas, Washington Post editors choose to publish letter from reader headlined “We, Earth’s people, are a ‘bad’ virus.”

“Progressives” consigning their fellow man to the state of “a ‘bad’ virus?” What could go wrong?

AP-TIMES SQUARE ALLIANCE POLL: MASS SHOOTINGS, TERROR ATTACKS GAVE AMERICANS BLEAK OUTLOOK ON 2015.

Funny how we’re now looking at the era in which AP famously wrote that “Everything Seemingly is Spinning Out of Control” as the Good Ol’ Days, prior to hope, change, and fundamental transformation.

HOW IT WORKS: Some cool firearms GIFs.

NOAH FELDMAN: One God for Christians, Muslims and Jews? Good Question.

What the administration of Wheaton College believes is that the distinctive features of the Christian God — in particular, the mystery of the Trinity and the incarnation of God as Jesus Christ — are so different from the Islamic conception of God as to make the two no longer the same.

This, too, is a perfectly logical view, if logic is the right word to discuss such matters of faith. Islam affirms God’s radical unity. Tawhid, the Arabic word for that affirmation, is at the core of Islamic theology. The Koran treats Jesus as a servant of God, but not God’s son, and certainly not as an element of the Godhead.

So if you think that the triune nature and incarnation are essential elements of the Christian God, you could easily conclude that Allah and the Christian deity are not the same. If you can feel the pull of that argument, then you should be able to understand what the Wheaton College administration is thinking.

If I recall correctly, in the early days of Islam it wasn’t clear to everyone that it wasn’t a heretical Christian sect, a hardcore version of monophysitism. The other thing I seem to recall is that the rampaging armies of Islam in those early years of conquest were actually heavily Christian, because it was cheaper to pay the discriminatory dhimmi tax than to pay the existing taxes levied by the Byzantine Empire and other rulers.

And one way of thinking about Islam — from a memetic-engineering standpoint rather than a strictly theological one — is that it was an ideology that did well in appealing to marginalized people, especially men, in a rigid, bureaucratic, emasculating, high-tax/low-opportunity society. Luckily, things are very different now.

HMMM: Did Obama Just Throw Hillary Under the Bus With His Immigration Announcement?

It does seem very strange — and claims that Obama is playing ninth-dimensional chess and Batman gambits have long reached their expiration date. So what is the political goal here?

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 961.

WASHINGTON POST CARTOON INADVERTENTLY SHOWS WHY KIDS SHOULD BE OFF LIMITS: “Saying that Cruz’s children are fair game because he thrust them into the spotlight would mean punishing innocent kids for the actions of their father. So, if you accept Telnaes’ argument, the case against the cartoon becomes even stronger.”

Nahh. They’re not children – they’re Republicans.

I GUESS WE’RE SHOVING OUR COLONIALIST IDEOLOGY DOWN HIS THROAT OR SOMETHING: US man ‘tries to join Al Qaeda in protest at his country’s gay marriage laws.’

Adam Shafi, 22, said the country was ‘heading in the wrong direction’ after the Supreme Court ruled to allow equal marriage in all 51 [sic] states.

Authorities claim the Californian tried to board a flight to Turkey to join the terrorist group’s Syrian branch, al Nusra, after backing out of joining Daesh (Islamic State) last year, the Daily Beast reports.

His alleged rationale for this was that Daesh was too brutal and killed too many fellow Muslims, but Al Qaeda were more moderate.

So Obama’s strategy of empowering moderate Muslims is working!

UPDATE: Taliban Asked Bergdahl: “Is Obama gay and sleeps with men?”

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Sorry, Socialists, But Capitalism Is Killing Absolute Poverty. “That’s right. Capitalism — not big government — is killing poverty. Socialism talks about poverty, but capitalism actually does something about it.”

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SHOWTIME:

Even if [“Truth,” featuring Robert Redford as Dan Rather] bombed at the box office, it will live on in the database of Netflix (and others) so generations hence may come to believe that Rather and his team of fearless producers and researchers were brought down by powerful forces who were either in the pocket of George Bush or, alternatively, had him theirs. People will believe this because they saw it in the movie and not knowing much else about this story, it will become their emotional truth. These days we all get to have one – an emotional truth, that is – and it often comes out of the movies we see. And like.

* * * * * * *

[The recently announced film reenactment of Chappaquiddick is] again, is a novel sort of take for a movie script. Ms. Kopechne was the little person, here; the innocent victim of powerful forces and personalities and a well-orchestrated cover-up. If you were setting out to dramatize those events, you might think of Ted Kennedy as the heavy (literally) of the piece; not as someone who ‘became entangled’ in something, like an innocent bystander and witness to an assassination who must flee for his life and struggle to get the truth out into the light of day.

This film, like Truth, is an effort to revise history so that it conforms to the Zeitgeist, according to which Ted Kennedy is one of the good guys. One in which Mary Jo Kopechne gets the same kind of treatment she received in the last hours of her real life, where she was too small to matter.

1984’s Ministry of Truth was never meant to be a how-to guide for historians.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Trump campaign: Hillary bullied women to hide Bill’s ‘sexist secrets.’

EVERGREEN HEADLINES: Clinton Casts Wider Net For Cash.

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is building the most expansive fundraising network in recent memory, taking its prospecting far beyond the usual Democratic strongholds on the East and West coasts.

Those familiar with Clinton’s fundraising operation say she’s tapping smaller cities to avoid running dry in California and New York, which have only so many Hollywood producers and trial lawyers.

One source familiar with her schedule noted that many of the places Clinton is mining for cash are in Super Tuesday states, allowing her to double up with campaign events and fundraisers.

“Killing two birds,” summarized one Clinton fundraiser. “It’s a smart strategy on a couple of levels. It helps fundraising and the organizational structure.”

The strategy avoids “wear and tear” in the bigger cities, the fundraiser added.

A Clinton working tirelessly to hit people up for cash? Stop the presses!

THE CRISIS OF CHARACTER: Brendan O’Neill on identity politics and the death of the individual:

What the NYT and many others describe as new era of identity politics is in fact an era in which the historical, traditional underpinnings of identity have been ruptured, or even destroyed, unleashing an often desperate search for new identities, a rush for self-identification, for shallow identity construction. The subjectivity of human identity in the 21st century is striking, and alarming.

Read the whole thing, which serves as the flip-side to the headline and lede of an article by Michael Ledeen from September of 2014: “Why Do They Join the Jihad? Because it gives meaning to life, that’s why.”

WHY HAS LINKEDIN BECOME such a cesspool of man-hating claptrap?

REMINDER: IF YOU’RE A CONSERVATIVE OR LIBERTARIAN, BUZZFEED REALLY HATES YOUR GUTS:

[Milo] Yiannopoulos, who rode the angry gusts of GamerGate to become the inaugural technology editor of the far-right Breitbart.com, has sensed the potential of the Chanterculture better than anyone. He gives it a champion in the professional media. In an extraordinary November post called “Why I’m Winning,” he attributed his sudden rise in popularity to his willingness to go against the grain of a reflexively liberal internet media in thrall to the chilling forces of political correctness. And then he made a telling appeal to his audience:

“If you have ever felt bullied, or victimised, or harassed, or marginalised – not by bullshit imaginary concepts like the ‘patriarchy’ but by people who want to stop you expressing yourself and who call you a loser, a manbaby, a shitlord, a privileged cishet white male – then Milo Yiannopoulos is for you.”

Think for a moment about the demographic Yiannopoulos is appealing to as victims: young English-speaking white men, perhaps the least victimized group of people in the world, to whom popular and consumer culture have long catered and who are now angry because they are not doing so quite so much as they were, gosh, a year ago. This kind of reverse victimization politics feels more like the rhetoric you’d hear on the campaign trail (“Milo Yiannopoulos is for you”) than in the tech media. Now it’s everywhere.

I’ll bet this trolling Twitter update from Milo must have really struck fear in the hearts of BuzzFeed bullpen when it first appeared:

And they could certainly use him — just as a reminder: “[Editor In Chief] Ben Smith: BuzzFeed Is Pro-Gay Marriage — Neutral On Shariah.”

A SECOND CHAPTER FOR BLACK LIVES MATTER?

The police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., resulted in nationwide Black Lives Matter protests. The demonstrations that turned into unrest in many cities featured the chant “hands up, don’t shoot,” which was awarded four Pinocchios by the Washington Post fact-checker.

Whatever the result of their passion, Black Lives Matter supporters have pointed America’s attention toward police officers who seemed to be out of bureaucratic control. The Black Lives Matter protests also gave President Obama the incentive to stop the Pentagon from granting surplus military equipment to local police departments.

Now, Richard R. Boykin, a Cook County, Ill., commissioner, and William Julius Wilson, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a center-left research and lobbying organization, are calling on Black Lives Matter to start protesting all black lives cut down by violence, instead of just those lost in confrontations with police officers.

I doubt the Democrat-Media Complex wants to spotlight how spectacularly successful they’ve been at Defining Deviancy Downward.