THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Trigger-Happy White House Staffer Resigns Amid Assault Charges.
Archive for 2015
September 4, 2015
SURFING IN HIGH HEELS requires exceptional coordination.
Pro-surfer Maude Le Car dons a LBD with HEELs and totally shreds it http://t.co/dh4bIiALne pic.twitter.com/6KkA3kH5W2
— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) September 3, 2015
AT AMAZON, deals on Airsoft.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: 2 North Carolina teens hit with child porn charges after consensual sexting. They’re too young to consent to naked pictures, but not too young to have their lives ruined for doing so.
WAPO: Michael Gerson: The horrific results of Obama’s failure in Syria.
One little boy in a red T-shirt, lying face down, drowned, on a Turkish beach, is a tragedy. More than 200,000 dead in Syria, 4 million fleeing refugees and 7.6 million displaced from their homes are statistics. But they represent a collective failure of massive proportions.
For four years, the Obama administration has engaged in what Frederic Hof, former special adviser for transition in Syria, calls a “pantomime of outrage.” Four years of strongly worded protests, and urgent meetings and calls for negotiation — the whole drama a sickening substitute for useful action. People talking and talking to drown out the voice of their own conscience. And blaming. In 2013, President Obama lectured the U.N. Security Council for having “demonstrated no inclination to act at all.” Psychological projection on a global stage. . . .
This was not some humanitarian problem distant from the center of U.S. interests. It was a crisis at the heart of the Middle East that produced a vacuum of sovereignty that has attracted and empowered some of the worst people in the world. Inaction was a conscious, determined choice on the part of the Obama White House.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and CIA Director David Petraeus advocated arming favorable proxies. Sunni friends and allies in the region asked, then begged, for U.S. leadership. All were overruled or ignored.
In the process, Syria has become the graveyard of U.S. credibility.
Worst President ever.
SETH MANDEL: Inside Hillary’s Tinfoil-Hat Brigade. “Set aside the questions about Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server and her mishandling of classified information: The content of her mail exposes the fact that the advice Hillary seeks out from her most trusted confidants is often just plain weird.”
JOSH BLACKMAN & RANDY BARNETT: The Next Justices: A guide for GOP candidates on how to fill Court vacancies. A must read.
BECAUSE IT’S BEING REGULATED TO DEATH: “America’s Once Magical–Now Mundane–Love Affair With Cars.” This Washington Post piece is a classic lamestream media outcome-oriented approach to an issue. The writer, Marc Fisher, starts with his thesis–that Americans aren’t passionate about cars anymore–and then proceeds to prove his thesis with some data showing driver’s license decline, professors with silly theories, and anecdotal stories. He gives only passing consideration to the possibility that “it’s the regulation, stupid.”
“The automobile just isn’t that important to people’s lives anymore,” says Mike Berger, a historian who studies the social effect of the car. “The automobile provided the means for teenagers to live their own lives. Social media blows any limits out of the water. You don’t need the car to go find friends.”
Much of the emotional meaning of the car, especially to young adults, has transferred to the smartphone, says Mark Lizewskie, executive director of the Antique Automobile Club of America Museum in Hershey, Pa. “Instead of Ford versus Chevy, it’s Apple versus Android, and instead of customizing their ride, they customize their phones with covers and apps,” he says. “You express yourself through your phone, whereas lately, cars have become more like appliances, with 100,000-mile warranties.” . . .
The number of vehicles on American roads soared every year until the recession hit in 2008. Then the number plummeted. Recently, it’s crept back up. Similarly, the number of drivers has leveled off.
“In the near future, cars will control the driver instead of the other way around,” says John Heitmann, a historian at the University of Dayton who studies Americans’ relationship with automobiles. (He also is restoring a 1971 Porsche 911T Targa.) “And the way we live now, especially on the coasts, it’s a bother to own a car. For young people, and not just the urban elite, there’s not even a desire to drive.”
Americans drive fewer miles per year — down about 9 percent over the past two decades. The percentage of 19-year-olds with driver’s licenses has dropped from 87 percent two decades ago to 70 percent last year. Most teens now do not get licensed within a year of becoming eligible, according to a study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. . . .
The return of young people to city centers brings a permanent pivot in how people think about getting around, says Gabe Klein, a Zipcar founder who went on to run the city transportation departments in Chicago and Washington.
Klein, 44, says cars have become a burden, a symbol of a model of living gone sour. “We were sold a bill of goods by the government,” he says, “by real estate developers who wanted to sell tract housing far from the city, by car companies who sold us this new lifestyle of living in the suburbs and commuting in.”
That suburban model is not something to rebuild from the ravages of recession, but rather a lifestyle that technology will let Americans discard, Klein argues. “Car culture is really a brief 50- or 60-year blip in history,” he says.
None of this is wrong, exactly, as it’s mostly just the opinion of some liberals/progressives, combined with some data showing that there has been small decline in the number of young people obtaining driver’s licenses.
But the overall thesis of the piece–that Americans are no longer passionate about cars–is, at best premature, and likely wrong. The rate of driver’s licenses for young people is declining because of the incredible regulatory hoops they now have to jump through in order to get a license. It is virtually impossible in many States to get your driver’s license on your 16th birthday, as I (and probably many readers) did. Here in Florida, for example, youngsters must hold their learner’s permit for a full 12 months before applying for a driver’s license, and the learner’s permit requires passing a difficult written test and a substance abuse course. Few public schools here offer a driver’s ed course, so the burden of teaching young adults how to drive falls solely on the parents, or the parents must spring for expensive private lessons.
I’m not complaining about these rules, per se. Ensuring that young people know the rules of the road before getting behind the wheel is a good thing overall, but it does impact whether and how quickly they begin to drive. The high cost of gasoline, insurance, and cars themselves are further deterrents to young people. Today’s cars are highly regulated, complex machines and consequently very expensive. And once one saves up the money to afford today’s cars, one cannot simply change the oil and filters by one’s self. Heck, my car has a giant cover over the entire engine that must be removed before one could even figure out where the oil stick is. Jumping the battery requires a Ph.D.
It seems to me that all of the costs and regulations are sapping the passion to drive, not mobile phones or a love of public transportation. If you regulate any activity (other than items for which there is inelastic demand, and driving is not one of those), the activity will decline commensurate with the level of regulation/cost increase.
IN THE MAIL: From Todd Moss, Minute Zero.
Plus, today only at Amazon: 55% Off Mizuno Men’s and Women’s Running Shoes.
And, also today only: Up to 60% Off Panasonic Arc 5 Electric Razors.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 848.
SELF-DESTRUCTIVE ECONOMICS: Minimum Wage Hike Would Hit Manufacturing Hardest.
There is no shortage of reasons to be skeptical of the intensifying push, now formally endorsed by the Democratic Party, to raise the national minimum wage to $15 per hour. This magnitude of such a hike is unprecedented; city-level $15 minimums have not exactly been roaring successes; restaurants could respond to a wage hike by automating more jobs; and the minimum wage movement, as currently constituted, is facilitating outrageous union malfeasance. And, of course, trying to set one national minimum wage is foolish policy when cost of living varies from place to place.
But if one more were needed, Adam Ozimek offers yet another compelling reason for concern in a piece at Moody’s: a $15 dollar minimum wage would be especially damaging to U.S. manufacturing, an industry that has recently started to make a small and fragile comeback.
Minimum wage debates typically focus on the service, hospitality, or retail industries, and it’s easy to see why: The majority of workers making under $8 per hour work in one of these sectors. An increase to, say, $9 dollars per hour probably would have the biggest impact on service and retail. But Ozimek argues that an increase of the magnitude currently being considered would also have a strong impact on the manufacturing sector. He crunches the numbers and finds that 35 percent of manufacturing workers—5.3 million people—are currently earning less than $15 per hour. “Lifting the minimum wage to $15 an hour”, he notes, “would not just be quantitatively larger than previous U.S. experience, but qualitatively different in that it would affect a different set of workers and industries.”
Moreover, mandated wage increases in the manufacturing industry could imperil more American jobs than wage increases in the fast food industry because manufacturing is more mobile, and more subject to the forces of global economic competition.
If I had a factory, I’d be looking to relocate.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: More On Law School Tuition Discounting. “What you see is not what you get when it comes to law school tuition. In fact, the average law school discounts its published tuition price by an estimated 25 percent through grants and scholarships, according to a detailed analysis by preLaw magazine.”
AT AMAZON, fresh deals on bestselling products, updated every hour.
Also, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food.
Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.
And, Today’s Featured Digital Deal. The deals are brand new every day, so browse and save!
A SCHOOL’S RATIONALE FOR BANNING SUPERHERO LUNCHBOXES COULDN’T BE MORE MORALLY CONFUSED, Jonah Goldberg writes:
If you know anything about superheroes, the underlying morality is pretty much everything. Supervillains use their powers for evil ends. Superheroes use theirs to protect the vulnerable and uphold the good. Teaching kids that there’s no difference between the two is the very opposite of moral education.
It reminds me of William F. Buckley’s famous retort to those who claimed there was no moral distinction between the United States and the Soviet Union. If you have one man who pushes old ladies in front of oncoming buses, Buckley explained, and you have another man who pushes old ladies out of the way of oncoming buses, it simply will not do to describe them both as the sorts of men who push old ladies around.
A country, and a civilization, that actively chooses to render such distinctions meaningless has lost the confidence to sustain itself.
There’s an added irony here. Around the time little Laura’s school was cracking down on Wonder Woman lunchboxes, two women, Kristen Griest and Shaye Haver, passed the Army Ranger training course for the first time. The news was hailed across the country as a huge step forward for women.
Are these women role models or not? Are they heroes? Or should they be condemned for their willingness to use violence when necessary? Maybe Laura should get a Griest and Haver lunchbox and find out.
If there’s an upside, today’s kids are learning vital lessons in how political correctness works, and how it enables the Outer Party members serving in the Educational-Industrial Complex to toil without thinking. (Gentlemen, you can’t think independently here, this is a school system!) If today’s trends continue, little Laura will really have her eyes open when she arrives for freshman* orientation in college.
*If colleges of the future still use that highly problematic word, of course…
THOUGHTS ON FREEDOM, AND RESPECT FOR THE DIFFERENT, AND LARRY McMURTRY HAVING BEEN RIGHT ALL ALONG: Ace of Spades writes, “It has only been in the past couple of years, watching the full force of government melded, fascistically, with the social power of the elite class that I’ve begun remembering: ‘Hey, didn’t that old Larry McMurtry article [in TNR in response to the Clinton Administration’s assault on Waco] talk about the American habit of spitefulness and naked anger towards Weirdos who are Different…?’”
About 50 times in the past two years, I’ve thought to myself: “Yup, Larry McMurtry was right, and I didn’t listen.”
Today was another Larry McMurtry day for me, as I witnessed, yet again, the pure glee of vindictively enforcing rules against persons considered different and offensive.
Well, I looked up the article. I was shocked to see it’s actually still available online.
So if you want to read it, it’s here.
I recommend it.
Larry McMurtry was right. People are far too quick to become emotionally angry towards, and leap to violent means of coercion, against the Strange, against the Outcast, against the Different.
And we shouldn’t be doing that in America. This is not Germany; we have rules because we need rules. We do not have rules just because we love the rules themselves, and we love inflicting them on people.
Well, maybe a lot of the time we do.
But we shouldn’t.
Read the whole thing.
LIES ABOUT RAPE: Study includes ‘remarks about physical appearance’ to trump up sexual violence numbers. So if someone calls you ugly, you’re a “victim of sexual violence.”
One of the best tactics so-called researchers have used to conclude that fully one-fifth of college women will be sexually assaulted is to vastly expand the definition of what it is.
A new study, conducted at Rutgers University, relies heavily on this tactic to stoke fear and encourage witch hunts of college men across the country.
Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown dissects the study, noting the definition of “sexual assault” and “sexual violence” included everything from “remarks about physical appearance” and “persistent sexual advances that are undesired by the recipient” to “threats of force to get someone to engage in sexual behavior, as well as unwanted touching and unwanted oral, anal, or vaginal penetration or attempted penetration.”
There’s an ocean of difference between someone saying you look good today and someone physically pinning you down against your will. To include both under the category of “sexual assault” is just ludicrous, and certainly not a serious way of studying the issue.
It’s a naked power grab. Related: Ashe Schow: My warning to incoming and returning college students.
POLITICAL COVER: Top House Dems: Drop Planned Parenthood investigations.
The top Democrats on two committees investigating Planned Parenthood are calling on Republicans to drop the investigations, saying there is no evidence the organization has broken the law.
Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and John Conyers (D-Mich.) wrote a letter to the chairmen of the Judiciary and Oversight committees on Thursday calling on them to call off the investigations, or at least expand it to include an inquiry into the anti-abortion-rights group behind the recent undercover videos.
Of course.
ZIONISM—WHAT IS IT? WHY IS IT GETTING TRASHED? “In Europe, by now, anti-Zionism has spread from the elites to general populations—where, no doubt, it resonated considerably with traditional antisemitism,” P. David Hornik writes. “In America, the ‘elites’ haven’t yet succeeded—through the schools and universities, through the media—to spread anti-Zionism; but they’re trying.”
Read the whole thing.
MY WARNING TO INCOMING AND RETURNING COLLEGE STUDENTS: “As classes begin at colleges and universities across the country, incoming and returning students need to be keenly aware of the current culture surrounding sex on and off campus,” Ashe Schow writes at the Washington Examiner:
First and foremost, students can assume that they have no constitutional due process rights on their college campus, even in public institutions. One might think that they do, as those rights are guaranteed under the Constitution, but the truth today is that when you step foot on that campus you live by their rules.
That is because college campuses are now responsible for their own criminal justice system, thanks to an interpretation of a federal law. While colleges would never be expected to adjudicate a murder, they are now expected to adjudicate accusations of sexual assault. And the marching orders from Washington suggest that the goal of such adjudications should be to punish accused students, truth be damned.
And these campuses are not bound by the presumption of innocence or the rules of evidence or any other basic legal concepts. These days, an accusation almost ensures a finding of guilt and an expulsion. And the evidence used to justify the expulsion is becoming flimsier and flimsier.
As Iowahawk likes to say, “College: an oasis of totalitarianism in a desert of freedom.”
CHANGE: ‘Who needs this?’ Police recruits abandon dream amid anti-cop climate.
Police departments face a recruiting shortage amid a growing anti-cop mood that some fear has taken the pride out of peacekeeping and put targets on the backs of the men and women in blue.
Open calls for the killing of police have been followed by assassinations, including last week’s murder in Texas of a Harris County sheriff’s deputy. Instead of dialing back the incendiary rhetoric, groups including “Black Lives Matter” have instead doubled down at demonstrations with chants of “Pigs in a blanket, fry em like bacon.” Public safety officials fear the net effect has been to demonize police, and diminish the job.
“It’s a lot harder to sell now,” Jeff Roorda, business manager of the St. Louis Police Officers Association and former state representative, told FoxNews.com. “This is a very real phenomenon.”
Roorda’s colleagues witnessed the fierce, anti-police rioting that followed the police shooting last year of Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson, Missouri. Even though a grand jury and a federal Justice Department inquiry did not fault Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, debunked claims that the cop killed Brown as he held his hands up and begged for his life have animated the Black Lives Matter movement as it spread around the nation.
Roorda, who spoke in defense of police in the aftermath of the Ferguson shooting, said protesters took to Twitter to promote a #KillRoorda hashtag.
“You no longer just have to worry about your life while in uniform,” he said. “Now you have to be worried about the well-being of your family,” he said.
Who could have seen this coming?