politics

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News/Politics 5-13-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. The court has taken action in the Hillary email scandal. 

From FoxNews  “A federal judge has agreed to reopen a lawsuit that seeks access to emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server. 

The federal judge’s decision marks the first time a court has taken action in the email scandal.

Judge Andrew Napolitano explained the particulars behind the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit this morning. 

Judicial Watch and the State Department – usually on opposite sides in these types of cases – are actually in agreement, with both asking Judge Reggie B. Walton for the documents to be turned over. 

Napolitano called Walton a “tough cookie” and “probably the last judge in Washington, D.C., [Clinton] wanted this issue to be in front of.””

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2. The First- and a half- Amendment. 

From NationalReview  “Free speech and artistic and intellectual expression have been controversial Western traditions since the rise of the classical-Greek city-state. When our Founding Fathers introduced guarantees of such freedoms to our new nation, they were never intended to protect thinkers whom we all admire or traditionalists who produce beloved movies like The Sound of Music.

The First Amendment to the Constitution instead was designed to protect the obnoxious, the provocative, the uncouth, and the creepy — on the principle that if the foulmouths can say or express what they wish and the public can put up with it, then everyone else is assured of free speech.”

“Apparently there is no longer a First Amendment as our Founders wrote it, but instead something like an Orwellian Amendment 1.5, which reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press — except if someone finds some speech hurtful, controversial, or not helpful.”

Cowardice abounds. When artists and writers mock Mormonism in a Broadway play like the Book of Mormon or use urine or excrement to deface Christian symbols, no Christian gang seeks to curb such distasteful expression — much less to kill anyone. Every religion but Islam knows that its iconography is fair game for caricature in the United States; none sanctions assassins. Jihadists seek to make this asymmetry quite clear to Western societies and thereby provide deterrence that gives Islam special exemption from Western satire and criticism in a way not accorded to other religions. And they are enabled by Westerners who prefer tranquility to freedom of expression.”

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3. Jonah Goldberg points out an uncomfortable truth about the left. They love anti-religious art, as long as it’s anti-Christian. 

From NationalReview  “Why aren’t liberals offering Pamela Geller a federal subsidy? Geller is the blogger-activist who organized the “Draw Muhammad” exhibition in Garland, Texas, which inspired some DIY jihadists to attack the event. The would-be terrorists chose poorly: They were cut down by Texas lawmen shortly after wounding a security guard.

Let’s hop in the WayBack Machine for a moment.

In 1986, the National Endowment of Arts paid about $20,000 for Andreas Serrano’s “Piss Christ.” Serrano peed in a glass, plunked a plastic icon of Jesus on the cross into it, and then snapped a picture. I will say the lighting was lovely. But, as strange as it seemed to the “arts community,” some people were offended.”

“But whenever Congress attempted to curtail funding of offensive art, editorial pages, faculty lounges, and museum boards launched a nationwide elite freak-out. In 1989, when the Senate voted to restrict some funding for offensive art, Richard Koshalek, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, told the New York Times that he felt that the vote was “a form of psychological tyranny, trying to put the art world into a state of terror.” Painter Robert Motherwell exclaimed that “for Congress to act as censor is outrageous. The ultimate end is fascism.”

“Note: None of the critics said such work should be banned. They said it shouldn’t be publicly showcased on their dime. And yet, opposition to a taxpayer subsidy was almost universally seen as unambiguous censorship and violence against the First Amendment. Another interesting tidbit: Christians didn’t try to murder these artists. Nor did Christian organizations exhort their members to do so.”

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4. Is classical mythology too “triggering” to teach to college students? Or is it just too much to bear for these special little snowflakes? Or do they just need to shut up and stop whining? I’m goin’ with C. Final answer. 

From Reason.com  “In Columbia University’s student newspaper, four members of the school’s student Multicultural Affairs Advisory Board call on professors to be more sensitive when teaching provocative or controversial material… such as the Roman classical poet Ovid.

Ovid is best known for The Metamorphoses, a 15-book narrative poem that covers more than 250 mythological stories. Written entirely in dactylic hexameter, The Metamorphoses inspired future writers from Dante to Chaucer to Shakespeare. Whether or not it’s something today’s students should spend time on may be up for debate, but I think most people can understand why an instructor teaching it would focus on things like the language and imagery invoked. 

Not these Columbia students, however. See, some of the myths Ovid recounts involve sexual violence. Zeus’ daughter Persephone (aka Prosperina), for instance, is kidnapped, raped, and taken as a bride by Hades, king of the underworld. The op-ed writers suggest this ancient Greek and Roman myth is too triggering to be taught in today’s classroom: 

During the week spent on Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” the class was instructed to read the myths of Persephone and Daphne, both of which include vivid depictions of rape and sexual assault. As a survivor of sexual assault, the student described being triggered while reading such detailed accounts of rape throughout the work. However, the student said her professor focused on the beauty of the language and the splendor of the imagery when lecturing on the text. As a result, the student completely disengaged from the class discussion as a means of self-preservation. She did not feel safe in the class. When she approached her professor after class, the student said she was essentially dismissed, and her concerns were ignored.

Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” is a fixture of Lit Hum, but like so many texts in the Western canon, it contains triggering and offensive material that marginalizes student identities in the classroom. These texts, wrought with histories and narratives of exclusion and oppression, can be difficult to read and discuss as a survivor, a person of color, or a student from a low-income background.”

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5. To finish up, we’ll let Kirsten Powers explain how liberals ruined college, but I think you already have an idea how after #4. 

From TheDailyBeast  “The root of nearly every free-speech infringement on campuses across the country is that someone—almost always a liberal—has been offended or has sniffed out a potential offense in the making. Then, the silencing campaign begins. The offender must be punished, not just for justice’s sake, but also to send the message to anyone else on campus that should he or she stray off the leftist script, they too might find themselves investigated, harassed, ostracized, or even expelled. If the illiberal left can preemptively silence opposing speakers or opposing groups— such as getting a speech or event canceled, or denying campus recognition for a group—even better.

In a 2014 interview with New York magazine, comedian Chris Rock told journalist Frank Rich that he had stopped playing college campuses because of how easily the audiences were offended. Rock said he realized some time around 2006 that “This is not as much fun as it used to be” and noted George Carlin had felt the same way before he died. Rock attributed it to “Kids raised on a culture of ‘We’re not going to keep score in the game because we don’t want anybody to lose.’ Or just ignoring race to a fault. You can’t say ‘the black kid over there.’ No, it’s ‘the guy with the red shoes.’ You can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive.” Sadly, Rock admitted that the climate of hypersensitivity had forced him and other comedians into self-censorship.

This Orwellian climate of intimidation and fear chills free speech and thought. On college campuses it is particularly insidious. Higher education should provide an environment to test new ideas, debate theories, encounter challenging information, and figure out what one believes. Campuses should be places where students are able to make mistakes without fear of retribution. If there is no margin for error, it is impossible to receive a meaningful education.

Instead, the politically correct university is a world of land mines, where faculty and students have no idea what innocuous comment might be seen as an offense. In December 2014, the president of Smith College, Kathleen McCartney, sent an email to the student body in the wake of the outcry over two different grand juries failing to indict police officers who killed African-American men. The subject heading read “All Lives Matter” and the email opened with, “As members of the Smith community we are struggling, and we are hurting.” She wrote, “We raise our voices in protest.” She outlined campus actions that would be taken to “heal those in pain” and to “teach, learn and share what we know” and to “work for equity and justice.””

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by

News/Politics 5-12-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. The problem with “hate speech” laws is that sooner or later, people you disagree with will be the ones deciding what is and isn’t “hate speech.” Why don’t liberals get that?

From HotAir  “Wonderful news. Not the charges themselves; those are terrible. What’s wonderful is that, hopefully, the more the American left finds its own pet causes targeted as “hate speech” abroad, the less eager they’ll be to encourage an awful European-style hate-speech legal regime at home. They’re going to learn a hard lesson here about what can happen when the state gains the power to criminalize “hate.”

In January, Canada’s then foreign affairs minister, John Baird, signed a “memorandum of understanding” with Israeli authorities in Jerusalem, pledging to combat BDS. It described the movement as “the new face of anti-Semitism.”…

[I]n response to specific questions about what “zero tolerance” of BDS means, and how it will be enforced, [Public Safety Minister Steven] Blaney aide Josee Sirois gave CBC News a much clearer picture of the government’s intent.

She highlighted what she termed “hate propaganda” provisions in the Criminal Code criminalizing the promotion of hatred against an identifiable group, and further noted that “identifiable group” now includes any section of the public distinguished by “among other characteristics, religion or national or ethnic origin.”

Encouraging a boycott of Saudi-owned businesses because you object to how the Kingdom treats religious minorities would presumably also be criminal “hate” based on national origin. I wonder how Canadian law would treat a boycott of a Christian-owned business organized by gay-rights activists if the proprietor refused to cater a gay wedding. Is the business owner guilty of discrimination or are the boycotters guilty of “hate” based on religion, another “identifiable group” protected by Canadian law? Or both?”

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2. Democrats on the FEC commission are seeking to limit conservative websites and super PACs. Like the story above, they seek to limit the free speech of their political enemies. And they’re mad that the opposition won’t play along. 

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “Bristling at claims that GOP opposition has made the Federal Election Commission “worse than dysfunctional” in the eyes of the Democratic chairwoman, Republicans counter-charge that the left is frustrated because it hasn’t succeeded in regulating conservative Internet sites, media and right-leaning super PACs.

In an escalating fight on the politically-divided FEC, the former Republican chairman on Monday charged his Democratic replacement with playing politics and trying to belittle foes to get her way.

“In Washington, people have a way of vilifying anything they disagree with in the most unflattering labels,” wrote Republican Commissioner Lee E. Goodman in a column for Politico. It was in response to claims by Democratic Chair Ann Ravel that the GOP is thwarting her bid to clean up politics.

“Commissioner Ravel believes that there are too many instances where the commissioners have evenly divided their votes, and that the bipartisan safeguards that prevent one party from politicizing or misusing the agency to punish political enemies stand in the way of meaningful enforcement,” wrote Goodman.”

“But Goodman provided figures which dismissed that charge. Under his chairmanship, he said, the commission acted in a bipartisan manner 93 percent of the time, including several votes with the GOP by Ravel. However on key issues like Democratic targeting of conservative media, possibly including conservative websites like the Drudge Report, the sides deadlocked.”

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3. Cop killings in the US have nearly doubled in the last year. I can’t help but think the current administration’s policies and approach to anti-police groups have something to do with it. 

From TheNYPost  “The number of cops killed in the line of duty during violent acts has almost doubled in the past year, the FBI said.

In 2014, 51 cops were killed in a felony crime — up from just 27 the year before, which marked a 35-year low,according to preliminary data released Monday by the FBI.

By region, eight cops were killed during the commission of a crime in the Northeast, 17 in the South, 14 in the West, eight in the Midwest and four in Puerto Rico.

An average of 64 officers were killed per year nationwide from 1980 to 2014 in felony cases, the FBI said.

The data come amid spiking tensions between law enforcement and minority communities after deaths of unarmed black men and boys at the hands of cops in Baltimore, Staten Island and Ferguson, Mo.”

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4. How sad for these young women, and especially their children. 

From CNSNews  “Forty-five percent of American mothers in their twenties have never been married, according to data that the Census Bureau released leading into the Mother’s Day weekend.

As of June 2014, according to the Census Bureau, there were 8,118,000 American women who were mothers and were from 20 to 29 years of age. Of these 8,118,000 American mothers in their twenties, 3,689,000 had never been married. That is 45.4 percent.

“In comparison with all mothers, young mothers are more likely to have had their first birth when they were neither married nor cohabiting,” states the Census. “Among young mothers who had their first birth between 2005 and June of 2012, 38 percent were neither married nor cohabiting at the time of the first birth.”

While the percentage of babies who are born to unmarried mothers is increasing, the average number of babies born per woman is declining.”

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by

News/Politics 5-11-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. The Obama admin continues it’s amnesty program, despite a court order not to. Laws are for the commoners. 

From TheWashingtonTimes  “President Obama’s lawyers admitted to a federal judge late Thursday that they had broken the court’s injunction halting the administration’s new deportation amnesty, issuing thousands of work permits even after Judge Andrew S. Hanen had ordered the program stopped.

The stunning admission, filed just before midnight in Texas, where the case is being heard, is the latest misstep for the administration’s lawyers, who are facing possible sanctions by Judge Hanen for their continued problems in arguing the case.

The Justice Department lawyers said Homeland Security, which is the defendant in the case, told them Wednesday that an immigration agency had approved about 2,000 applications for three-year work permits, which was part of Mr. Obama’s new amnesty, even after Judge Hanen issued his Feb. 16 injunction halting the entire program.

Top Obama officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, had repeatedly assured Congress they had fully halted the program and were complying with the order.”

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2. Shockingly, the Obama admin continues to stonewall on the Benghazi probe. 

From RollCall  “The Republican chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi on Friday defended the pace of his panel’s year-old investigation into the 2012 terror attack and announced plans to interview three top aides to former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., in a 15-page “Interim Progress Update” released on the one-year-anniversary of the committee’s creation, blamed the Obama administration for delays in the panel’s probe.

“It is difficult to conduct a fact-centric congressional investigation when the Administration impedes the Committee’s progress by repeatedly failing to answer the Committee’s requests or to provide information in a timely manner,” wrote the South Carolina Republican.

“The largest impediment to being able to write the final, definitive accounting of what happened before, during and after the terrorist attacks in Benghazi is the Executive Branch itself.”

But Gowdy, who also has asked Clinton to appear before his panel, credits his committee with uncovering thousands of new emails and documents related to the administration’s handling of the attack that left four Americans dead.

Gowdy also said the panel wants to interview at least 60 more current and former officials, including Clinton, Susan Rice, Patrick Kennedy and three of Clinton’s top aides during her tenure as secretary of State: Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan and Huma Abedin.”

Good. Subpoena them and put ’em under oath. 

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3. The Clinton Foundation – the more we know, the worse it gets. 

From Breitbart  “Shocking revelations show that at least four Clinton Foundation board of directors have either been charged or convicted of financial crimes, including bribery and fraud.

This newest, startling revelation is just one more of many in Peter Schweizer’s bombshell book Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, the book that has sent the Hillary Clinton campaign and the media scrambling.

The book shows that there are many problems with the Clinton charity. In fact, the Clinton Foundation is so unlike a real charity that even charity watchdog group Charity Navigatorrefuses to rate the Clinton Foundation because of its “atypical business model.”

One of those problems is the fact that the Clintons put big donors and close pals on the board for reasons that are hard to fathom. In fact, at least four of these “board members” have either been charged or convicted of serious financial irregularities, crimes including bribery and fraud.”

Hey, if you’re gonna run a scam foundation of this magnitude, you need experienced people who can hide the fraud best, right?

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by

News/Politics 5-8-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. You know this is coming. 

From TheFederalist  “While most commentators are still focused upon marriage and federal versus state power, the actual questions before the United States Supreme Court on its gay marriage decision show consequences that were once dismissed as alarmist now seem prescient.

In the oral arguments for Obergefell v. Hodges last week, counsel told Justice Alito that if the court found a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, then religious institutions’ tax-exempt status is “certainly going to be an issue.” I concur with this reaction from Michael Greve:

[I]f the tax exemption jazz becomes ‘an issue,’ it’s decided the minute gay marriage becomes the constitutional baseline. Because everyone knows that. Because the LBGT folks already have those complaints and briefs in their drawers, to be filed (almost ‘certainly’) on July 1. And because DoJ and the IRS and OCR, in their last remaining eighteen months in office, are in a hurry to roll over to their constituencies and to hammer the hold-outs, in meticulous observance of the law. A hallmark of this administration. Or maybe they’ll hand out waivers. ‘I don’t deny that’ says ‘dare me. It’s not going to hurt me in this case, and I’ll plant a flag for the next cases.’

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2. The Faustian Bargain Between Church and State

From TheAtlantic  “It was Pulpit Freedom Sunday in early October, when preachers who’ve signed up to trespass into electoral politics go well beyond the limits their churches have agreed upon when accepting tax-exempt status. Organized by the conservative movement Alliance Defending Freedom, they praise or condemn candidates. They urge parishioners to avoid this politician or that one; Barack Obama was a regular target, even in a few black churches such as Hope Christian, because of his support for gay marriage and abortion rights. Occasionally, favored politicians are even invited to a service to be anointed by the minister’s endorsement.

Some pastors tread nervously onto this forbidden ground, because they don’t want to lose their churches’ tax exemptions. But others zealously hope for just that. They are trying to provoke the Internal Revenue Service into an adverse ruling so they can challenge the constitutionality of the law, which they believe violates the First Amendment. For many years, the IRS has refrained from taking the bait, and citizen complaints against churches’s electioneering have disappeared into the agency’s bureaucratic abyss.”

“The ban on electioneering by tax-exempt charities may seem high-minded, but it was enacted for crass political reasons. It may be a principle of good government to protect taxpayers from subsidizing candidates’ supporters, but the prohibition was added to the law to protect one candidate, Lyndon B. Johnson, who faced extreme right-wing opposition in his reelection bid for the Senate. On July 2, 1954, he rose on the Senate floor to propose amending section 501(c)(3), which already restricted lobbying. Now he asked that the ban be extended to political campaigning. “The whole thing was over in a matter of minutes,” writes the sociologist James D. Davidson. “There was no discussion, and the amendment was passed on voice vote.”

“Without the tax exemption, his center is hobbled. Donations can still be received, but the donors won’t get tax deductions. The organization would have to pay taxes on its income. But the larger result will not be silence, he promises. “The thing about a political movement is that people who are in it for the long haul like me do the best to adhere to the rules and regulations,” he said. “The government can’t take away our right to free speech by denying us a forum … If they say we can’t assemble under this umbrella, then we’re going to assemble under another. They’re not going to stop the true believers.””

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3. The assassin’s veto. 

From HotAir  “New York Daily News columnist Harry Siegel may not be a fan of Pamela Geller, but he’s much less a fan of those rushing to condemn her for her speech rather than lay blame at the feet of terrorists seeking to silence her. Having lived through the last round of Mohammed cartoon publications, Siegel blasts the media elite for missing the real threat while stroking their own egos by prioritizing their sneering at Geller over the threat to freedom of speech. In doing so, they are embracing the assassin’s veto, Siegel warns — after indulging in a short bout of sneering himself:

But the assassin’s veto, as historian Timothy Garton Ash termed “the use of violence to impose your taboos,” is pointed at her neck. The nastiness of her words, about “the savages” trying to impose Sharia law here, is no longer the issue.

The threat to Geller’s life for speaking is.

Yet many among the literati, who typically fancy themselves truth tellers and idol smashers, spent the last week competing to disdain the obvious and explain why the murdered Charlie Hebdo cartoonists weren’t worthy recipients of an award from a group dedicated to “defend(ing) writers endangered because of their work.”

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4. Here we go again…..

From TheGuardian  “Only a couple of hundred yards away, cars rushed along the Anzalduas international bridge, gateway to one of several legitimate ports of entry in the area.

But spring and summer are peak seasons for crossings by other means. A couple of minutes earlier a border patrol van drove under the bridge along a bone-jangling rutted single-track path, carrying 13 women and children from Guatemala and Honduras who had turned themselves in to border patrol agents.

“Every day we’re getting more women and children than the day before,” said Cabrera, 41, a local border patrol union representative. He estimated that 60% of those apprehended are turning themselves in.”

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by

News/Politics 5-7-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. Oh look, the Senate is actually doing it’s job again. With Harry Reid no longer in charge, they actually have a budget for the first time since 2009. 

From HotAir  “Republicans promised to restore order to a dysfunctional Congress in the midterm elections. Yesterday, they delivered on that campaign promise, passing the first regular-order budget framework since 2009. It didn’t come easy, though:

The 51-48 vote capped weeks of work by Republican leaders in the House and Senate, who shepherded the blueprint through a messy debate over defense spending that at times threatened to split their conferences. …

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had ripped Democrats for years over their failure to pass a budget, and said Tuesday’s vote shows his GOP majority is getting the Senate working again.

“No budget will ever be perfect, but this is a budget that sensibly addresses the concerns of many different members. It reflects honest compromise from many different members with many different priorities,” the Kentucky Republican said on the Senate floor.

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2. About those charges against the Baltimore police officers…..

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3. The corruption of bi-partisanship. 

From TheAtlantic  “People say they want more bipartisanship. In poll after poll after poll, they decry the polarized atmosphere in Washington and say they want their leaders to work together.

To which the people of New York and New Jersey might reply: seriously?

It’s indictment-and-arrest season in the tri-state region. Monday morning, New York State Senate Leader Dean Skelos, a Republican, and his son Adam were arrested on federal charges of extortion, fraud, and soliciting bribes. It’s been just three months since State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, washimself arrested on federal corruption charges. Meanwhile, across the Hudson River in New Jersey, Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni, two former top allies of Governor Chris Christie, pleaded not guilty to nine counts apiece including wire fraud and conspiracy in the George Washington Bridge Scandal. On Friday, David Wildstein, a Christie appointee, pleaded guilty to two conspiracy charges in the same scandal.

What New York and New Jersey share, besides oft-imitated accents and embarrassing reputations for political corruption, is bipartisan governance. It wasn’t that long ago—before the bridge scandal, credit downgrades, and collapse of Atlantic City—that Christie seemed like a model of a Republican who could work with Democrats and achieve his priorities. Christie forged an alliance with Jersey Democratic boss George Norcross and his protege Steve Sweeney, the Democratic president of the State Senate. Christie even managed to gain many Democratic endorsements in his 2013 run for reelection. In fact, prosecutors say it was his aides’ overzealous attempt to squeeze an endorsement from the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee that led to the bridge closure that now threatens to undo his career.

Something similar was going on in Albany. Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, became extremely close with Silver and Skelos, even though Skelos was a Republican. In his January State of the State address—the day before Silver’s arrest, it turned out—he described his relationship with the two as “the three amigos.” The alliance drove some other New York Democrats nuts. Even though Cuomo had delivered two major progressive priorities in passing gun control and legalizing gay marriage, he governed far too close to the center for liberals’ taste on economic issues. But that allowed Cuomo to run the state government smoothly and implement his agenda.”

Careful what you wish for.

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4. More on that “safe space” nonsense. 

From USAToday  “Christina Hoff Sommers has been speaking on college campuses for two decades challenging students to embrace what she calls “equity feminism” over “gender feminism.” In her view, the former is focused on legal equality between men and women, the latter on disempowering women by portraying them as perpetual victims of the patriarchy.

This heretical view now requires campus security.

Prior to a mid-April lecture at Georgetown University, the American Enterprise Institutescholar was deemed a “rape apologist” by campus feminists for challenging statistics that she says overstate the rate of rape on campus. “The postings were so frantic that Georgetown sent undercover security into the audience,” Sommers told me.

An Oberlin College lecture a few days later met the same fate. The Oberlin Reviewpublished an open letter, “In Response to Christina Sommers’ Talk: A Love Letter to Ourselves” two days before Sommers’ visit. Usually people wait to offer a “response” until after an event has occurred, but not so in our Brave New World. The students wrote that Sommers’ presence on campus was “harmful,” and lamented that “her talk is happening, so let’s pull together in the face of this violence.”

In case you missed that: A differing viewpoint is an act of violence.

A sign outside the lecture read “Rape Culture Hall of Fame” with the names of past and present members of the libertarian and Republican student group that invited Sommers. The Oberlin Review reported that “activists organized a safe space … (that) was attended by approximately 35 students and one dog” as Sommers spoke.”The irony is (the complaining students) postings were so extreme that the administration provided me with security,” Sommers said.”

And now you know why Rush refers to them as Femi-Nazis. 

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by

News/Politics 5-6-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. An excellent read about how the issue isn’t really the issue.

Gay Marriage; A Trojan Horse Movement

From AmericanThinker  “The Left doesn’t care about gay rights, any more than they care about civil rights, welfare rights, minority rights, animal rights or any other “rights.” According to the Left, “the issue is never the issue; the issue is always the revolution.” The various “rights” the Left has aggressively promoted over the years are merely vehicles to advance the Left’s power.

Consider: the welfare “rights” movement, founded by the notorious socialists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, was not established to guarantee welfare to the poor. As they said, their purpose was to pack the welfare rolls with so many beneficiaries that the government would collapse of its own weight. In the ensuing riots, they hoped policy makers would be driven to accept their socialist solution. In short, they sought anarchy, using a militant poor as their foot soldiers. They couldn’t care less what happened to the poor in prosecuting this agenda, and they said so. Doubt me? Just look at the status of the poor today. There are more people on welfare than at any time in history. And the crime and degeneracy that accompany it are epidemic.

Look at our country today. With manufactured crisis Strategist-in-Chief Obama, we are almost there, and Cloward and Piven’s intellectual descendants were out in force in Ferguson. The communist agitators seeking “social justice” for Michael Brown burned down much of the neighborhood. Do black lives matter to them? Apparently not. And they have even said so. The issue is not the issue.

Occupy Wall Street’s black anarchist organizer Nelini Stamp’s new group, Dream Defenders, popularized the slogan “Hands Up Don’t Shoot!” But prior to Ferguson there was Trayvon Martin. Working with Eric Holder’s DOJ, Stamp’s group was responsible for getting Sanford, Florida police chief Bill Lee fired. This despite the fact the FBI agreed with Lee’s assessment that there was no case against Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman. Did Stamp care about “Justice for Trayvon?” Not according to Stamp. “We are actually trying to change the capitalist system we have today, because it’s not working for any of us,” she said.

The Left uses “rights” agendas to wrap itself in the mantle of righteousness and seize the moral high ground, tactically putting us on the defense in the process. But they couldn’t care less about the actual issue except in its ability to facilitate their path to power.”

Click the link to read it all. All these professional agitators have one of two things in common. They started with ACORN or their front group, the Working Families Party. They’re all Obama type community organizers. 

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2. Here’s yet another example of the dishonest left at work. First they mock the right for not being diverse enough, now they mock the diversity of the right. Some people are just never happy. So they want everyone else to wallow in their misery with them. No thanks. 

From HotAir  “It’s almost like the left’s commitment to diversity is a dishonest political vehicle aimed only at delegitimizing their opponents. Almost.

In 2012, the GOP presidential field’s lack of diversity — perhaps the least interesting form of diversity, but one which nevertheless enjoys near religious devotion from the left — did not go unmentioned by partisan Democrats.

As early as 2009, the left was salivating at the opportunity to see Barack Obama challenge what looked likely to be a field of predominantly white, aging, and nearly exclusively male candidates. While the smug, self-satisfied liberal elite was robbed of a cherished opportunity for self-congratulations by the lack of a purely monochromatic GOP field in 2012, the Republican Party’s defeats in that election year nevertheless buoyed the left’s hopes for the future.

Today, however, the GOP has remarkably self-corrected. To borrow a ubiquitous phrase that Democrats deployed with abandon in 2012, the GOP presidential field looks a lot more like the America they are hoping to represent.”

“And, with that, the goalposts that were once here are now over there… somewhere. Whereas the slate of Republican candidates were once so unrepresentative of America that they couldn’t be taken seriously, now it is the fact that the white majority is generally more supportive of Republicans than Democrats that is the GOP’s true political obstacle. Do you sense a common thread here yet?”

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3. Anybody shocked?

Me neither…..

From CBSNews  “Sixty-one percent of Americans now say race relations in the United States are bad, the highest percentage since 1992, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll, which finds that majorities of both whites and blacks now view race relations negatively.

Meanwhile, 79 percent of African Americans think police are more likely to use deadly force against a black person than a white person, but 53 percent of whites say race does not play a role in such instances.

The survey found that blacks are more likely than whites to report that their local police make them feel anxious rather than safe.

In the wake of the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore and the unrest that followed, Americans’ views on race relations in the U.S. have grown significantly more pessimistic. Sixty-one percent now say race relations are generally bad, up 23 points from earlier this year. It is the first time a majority has held this view since the 1990s. Just a third of Americans now say race relations are good. These opinions are the most negative this poll has found since 1992, when riots broke out in Los Angeles following the acquittal of police officers in the beating of Rodney King.”

So the whole “post-racial president” thing has been a complete failure. Kinda sums up his presidency. 

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4. And speaking of failures…… 

Here’s a costly one.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “The IRS doled out more than $5 billion in potentially bogus college aid payments in 2012 under an Obama stimulus tax credit, according to a report Tuesday from the agency’s inspector general that said the administration still doesn’t have a good handle on how to root out erroneous claims.

Nearly 4 million students had questionable claims, totaling more than $5.6 billion in that one year alone, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said. At least half of the students never provided tuition statements showing what they paid, while others attended schools that didn’t qualify them for the tax credit.

Other students claimed the credit for more than four years, which should have automatically earned a rejection, the investigators said.

“The IRS still does not have effective processes to identify erroneous claims for education credits,” said Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George, who said he has warned the IRS repeatedly about the problem, but “many of the deficiencies TIGTA previously identified still exist.””

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