TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1054.
Archive for 2016
March 28, 2016
TUNKU VARADARAJAN: Reverse Swing: After the horror in Brussels.
1. This isn’t the latest “chapter” of terrorist violence against a Western city by the Islamist death-cults that began a transnational jihad on September 11, 2001. It is the latest paragraph. Attacks are getting ever more frequent. It is ghoulish, I know, but I predict another Brussels-style assault on a soft urban European target within a month, especially as Islamic State continues to take a pounding on its own soil. The increased incidence of terrorism isn’t merely because IS is now alive to the ease with which acts of carnage can be conducted in open societies. It is also because IS is on the back foot in Iraq and Syria, and taking the war to the streets and subways of Europe makes tactical sense. . . .
5. The fight against terror needs to become more sophisticated. Even as there is — and must be — a drive to capture or kill Islamist terrorists, our combat must also include a war for Muslim minds. Bernard Lewis, the great historian of the Islamic world, once told me, “Women are half the world, and mothers of the other half.” The terrorists are men, but it is in women that we must place our faith. Efforts such as those by Edit Schlaffer, the Austrian founder of Women Without Borders, are priceless. Her NGO’s project, Mothers Against Extremism, recruits Muslim mothers as foot soldiers against jihad. Muslim mothers can shield their children from toxic ideologies and fight the myth of jihadi masculinity that fuels IS. Terrorism may be learned at radical mosques and training camps, but it can be fought most effectively at home.
You know, I used to feel strongly that way. Now I’m leaning more toward the Curtis LeMay approach, I’m afraid. I’m hoping that something will happen to make me feel more optimistic.
EXPLODING THE STEREOTYPES: “I went to Stanford, and I voted for Donald Trump. So did my husband. He went to Yale.”
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AN OPEN LETTER TO EMORY UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT JAMES WAGNER from Concerned Emory Alumni.
We are writing not to highlight the absurdity of those who believe they are physically harmed by encountering political speech with which they disagree, as this is, or should be, clear to any observer. Instead, we are writing to express our disappointment with the recent actions of the Emory administration. For the first time, we are embarrassed to call ourselves Emory graduates. . . .
No longer does Emory University serve as a beacon of intellectual diversity attracting some of the best and brightest young adults from across the world, much as it attracted us. Instead, Emory has become just another school in the well-documented pattern of universities that have surrendered to the demands of a vocal few that emotional comfort, ideological conformity and yes, “safe environments” trump fundamental notions of free speech. Critical thinking and exposure to other opinions are unwanted. But this does not have to be how the story ends. It is vitally important that we respond to this trend by reaffirming our foundational notions of freedom. Unfortunately, President Wagner and Emory University have thus far failed to rise to the challenge.
We call for President Wagner and the full administrative body of Emory University to publicly acknowledge the intrinsic value of free speech and the right of all to engage in spirited political debate. By letting a small cadre of overly sensitive students affect a heckler’s veto on a universal right, President Wagner and Emory University have contributed to the erosion of fundamental freedom in this country. It is incumbent on all to fight to protect free speech, especially speech that might be unpopular or viewed by some as “dangerous”. And fight we will.
Good.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, on the University of Tennessee campus. No reports of tears so far.
THAT WAS THE WEIRD WEEK THAT WAS.
HEADLINES FROM 1882: “Europe Might be Dying.”
(Classical allusion in headline.)
BRUSSELS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN LIBERALS DON’T PUSH IMMIGRANTS TO INTEGRATE.
And lack of integration is what happens when ruling class elites despise their countries — and wish to see them “fundamentally transformed,” to coin a phrase.
JACOB WEISBERG’S RONALD REAGAN BIOGRAPHY gets a surprisingly positive review over at Law & Liberty.
MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH: What Happens to Journalists When No One Wants to Print Their Words Anymore?
Actually, the real issue is that much of the country doesn’t want to read their words anymore. You can only say for so long, as the late Ginny Carroll, of the then-Washington Post-owned Newsweek, did via the button she wore at the 1992 Republican Convention, “Yeah, I’m with the Media — Screw You,” for so long, before the rest of the country says “screw you” right back. From the birth of the Drudge Report in the mid-‘90s until 2007, old media fought a continuing rear guard effort against the rise of a demassified new media.
In 2008, the plan shifted somewhat, as old media went all-in to elect Barack Obama, and the mask was off — it was plain to the nation that we’re reading not objective journalists, but Democrat activists with bylines. The goal that year was to just drag BHO over the finish line, and then hope against hope for the same sorts of bailouts that the banks and automakers were then lining up for and receiving from the federal government. Because, as Megan McArdle warned in 2009, by then, “the media death spiral” was in full swing:
I think we’re witnessing the end of the newspaper business, full stop, not the end of the newspaper business as we know it. The economics just aren’t there. At some point, industries enter a death spiral: too few consumers raises their average costs, meaning they eventually have to pass price increases onto their customers. That drives more customers away. Rinse and repeat . . .
For twenty years, newspapers have been trying to slow the process with increasingly desperate cost cutting, but almost all are at the end of that rope; they can’t cut their newsroom or production staff any further and still put out a newspaper. There just aren’t enough customers who are willing to pay for their product what it costs to produce it.
In a follow-up McArdle added that the goal was just to keep the lights on a little while longer. “A bunch of my journalist friends and I have decided that our new toast is ‘to 2010’. 2009 has so far been pretty disappointing for almost everyone I know, not to mention the country for which we all have great affection.”
Ahh, but that’s just it: ever since the late sixties, when the staff at Time magazine seemed baffled by its core readers — the very readers its then-recently deceased conservative founder had cultivated for nearly half a century — I’ve seen very little from the MSM that leads me to believe that it has great affection for either this country, or the majority of the people who inhabit it.
WHILE THE WORLD BURNS, PRESIDENT GOLFPANTS TAKES A MULLIGAN: 281st round: Obama plays at least 46 full days golf.
President Obama, fresh from his whirlwind spring break trip to Cuba and Argentina, hit the links for some R&R Saturday, playing his 281st round since becoming president. He was at Andrews for over five hours.
That is slightly more than three quarters of a year of days playing the presidential sport for Obama. The president typically plays for at least four hours, sometimes longer, putting his time at over 1,100 hours golfing, or at least 46 full 24-hour days.
Honestly, I think he does less harm when he’s on the links.
ABNORMAL IS THE NEW NORMAL, Richard Fernandez writes.
Read the whole thing.
Related: “Brussels is currently about 25 per cent Muslim and they’re mostly young. Conversely (as I pointed out in America Alone), the Flemings and Walloons are getting a bit long in the tooth. In any society, who provides the policemen and soldiers and security guards? The fit and healthy — ie, the young, the ones who can pass the physical. So increasingly the chaps responsible for keeping an eye out for Muslim terrorists will themselves be Muslim,” Mark Steyn warns. What could go wrong? (Read the rest of Mark’s column for some bracing statistics.)
TRACING THE ROOTS OF A MODERN POPULISM, by Salena Zito at Real Clear Politics:
And as for reporters and pundits and the political class all making fun of Trump, well, [62 year old Frank Bellamy, an Ohio-based black businessman and Trump supporter] said what they are doing in reality is making fun of the people who support them — “and they scratch their heads and wonder why folks have had enough.”
Read the whole thing.
TO CONTROL FOOD IS TO CONTROL LIFE: Obama Plays Castro’s Hunger Game.
THE HILL: Could Trump turn New York red? Possibly, but things would have to change a lot between now and November.
Related: Sanders: Superdelegates may now be eyeing switch from Clinton.
After three big wins out west, Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders said he thinks many of the party’s superdelegates who have pledged to rival Hillary Clinton will switch to his side.
“I think the momentum is with us,” Sanders said on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper on Sunday. “A lot of these superdelegates may rethink their positions with Secretary Clinton.”
They switched to Obama in 2008, but that was because of the excitement of electing America’s first black President. Our umpteenth old white man President may not have the same allure.
YOU BELONG TO THE GOVERNMENT, AND IT REALLY REALLY LOVES YOU.
Government’s just another word for those we oppress together.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Canadian “Bail-In” Provision Would Put Depositors On The Hook. It’s being sold as affecting “creditors,” but guess what — depositors are creditors. More here.
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Japan opens radar station close to disputed isles, drawing angry China response.
HIGH CRIMES AND FREDDY GOT FINGERED: Kevin D. Williamson writes that “Consequences are for Schmucks.”
It’s all fun and games and unspeakable amounts of graft for elite leftists until the Coming Middle Class Anarchy is a reality.
“STEALING?” It’s more like out-negotiating. Is Ted Cruz stealing delegates from Donald Trump? Cruz is just making better deals. . . .
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON CHARTS THE APOLOGY TOUR OF OUR NEXT PRESIDENT.
NATE COHN REVEALS DONALD TRUMP’S SECRET WEAPON:
Mr. Trump’s blue-state appeal is a little hard to explain. It’s well established that he fares best among less educated voters. Yet his strongest performance so far wasn’t in Mississippi, where he got 47 percent of the Republican vote, but in Massachusetts, a famously liberal state, where he won 49 percent of Republican voters.
His appeal in historically Democratic areas is a reflection of strength among new Republicans — whether they be white Southerners or white Roman Catholics and working-class voters in the North who would have had no place in the Republican Party a half-century ago.
Read the whole thing.
“Blue-state Republicans” were abandoned by the Democrats, and then taken for granted by the GOP. Hillary Clinton had to have been hoping to win them back over like Bill did in ’92 and ’96, but Trump might just have a lock — assuming he’s the nominee.
REPORT: Semi-retired president to be on hand when largest mosque in America, built with Turkish funds, opens this week.
Related: Two left feet: Obama’s week of ‘bad optics’ really just bad leadership.