More Hypocrisy at Justice, natch

It turns out that while DOJ fights picture IDs for voting, it requires picture IDs of anyone who talks to it.  Bottom line:  it's opposition isn't principled, it's goal is simply to elect more Democrats.  At the bottom of every Federal policy is not principle, but the lust for power.  In a word, it's fascist.

Note to states such as Alabama, South Carolina, and Texas that will no doubt soon be fighting the Holder Justice Department over their new voter-ID laws: Andrew McCarthy brings word that the Civil Rights Division is co-sponsoring a conference at George Washington University on Oct. 19 titled “Confronting Discrimination in the Post-9/11 Era.” According to McCarthy, the event features the president of the Islamic Society of North America, an unindicted coconspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing conspiracy.

What I found fascinating about the notice of the event from the ISNA newsletter was that it specifically says that to attend, you must register — kind of like registering to vote. And the notice then says that “a photo ID is required on site to confirm registration.” So the Civil Rights Division requires you to have a photo ID to confirm your registration and attend its event at George Washington University. Additionally, as someone who worked at the Justice Department, I can tell you that you are similarly required to show a government-issued photo ID to get into the main Justice building. So if you want to exercise your First Amendment right to petition the government (DOJ) for “a redress of grievances,” you can’t do it without a photo ID.
Of course, that makes perfect sense — as does requiring a photo ID to vote. But those states that will soon be battling the division over this issue might want to ask the division lawyers who claim that ID requirements are discriminatory why you are required to show a photo ID to get into a Justice Department conference or to get into the main Justice building for a meeting. In other words, representative of groups such as the NAACP, the ACLU, and others who have called on the Justice Department to object to the states’ new photo ID laws will have to show photo ID to get into any meetings they arrange with the division lawyers to complain about photo-ID requirements.

Always have open conversations

My Mom taught me this - I wish I was better at it.  From Seth Godin.


A guy walks into a shop that sells ties. He's opened the conversation by walking in.
Salesman says, "can I help you?"
The conversation is now closed. The prospect can politely say, "no thanks, just looking."
Consider the alternative: "That's a [insert adjective here] tie you're wearing, sir. Where did you buy it?"
Conversation is now open. Attention has been paid, a rapport can be built. They can talk about ties. And good taste.
Or consider a patron at a fancy restaurant. He was served an old piece of fish, something hardly worth the place's reputation. On the way out, he says to the chef,
"It must be hard to get great fish on Mondays. I'm afraid the filet I was served had turned."
If the chef says, "I'm sorry you didn't enjoy your meal..." then the conversation is over. The patron has been rebuffed, the feedback considered merely whining and a matter of personal perspective.
What if the chef said instead, "what kind of fish was it?" What if the chef invited the patron back into the kitchen to take a look at the process and was asked for feedback?
Open conversations generate loyalty, sales and most of all, learning... for both sides.

This is what happens when a man who has never faced serious adversity gets a tough job. I'll bet he's good at folding...shirts.

The president’s workdays are said to end early, often at 4 p.m. He usually has dinner in the family residence with his wife and daughters, then retreats to a private office. One person said he takes a stack of briefing books. Others aren’t sure what he does.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/10/things-arent-going-obamas-way-and-hes-having-trouble-dealing-with-it/#ixzz1aUzCgjz1

Fascist is as fascist does

No surprise here.  To be progressive is to never have to say your sorry for state oppression.

CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR JERRY BROWN sides with red-light camera companies. There’s a surprise.

JERRY BROWN VETOES BILL, thus allowing warrantless phone searches. “The Sunday veto means that when police arrest anybody in the Golden State, they may search that person’s mobile phone — which in the digital age likely means the contents of persons’ e-mail, call records, text messages, photos, banking activity, cloud-storage services, and even where the phone has traveled.”

UPDATE: A reader notes that the article fails to mention anywhere that Brown is a Democrat. It does, however, mention that the author of the bill is a Dem.

Never Mind, the Progressives said

Now that they've met the New Boss and he's behaving just like the Old Boss our avatars of progressivism have gotten quiet as church mice.  Will someone kill all of those damned crickets?  HT NRO

In reading about Democratic and liberal uneasiness with Obama, one theme seems constant. There is a sort of repressed anger that Obama has somehow embarrassed many of his supporters, as if their ecstasy of 2008 now seems almost adolescent. 

The shaming, I think, focuses on two issues. One is the War on Terror. We learn that two lawyers who had criticized George W. Bush for supposed overreach recently drafted authorization to assassinate a U.S. citizen, the traitorous and dangerous Anwar al-Awlaki. This follows Bush critic and former Yale Dean Harold Koh’s various briefs authorizing elements of the Obama War on Terror, among them sanction to join the Anglo-French war against Qaddafi without U.S. congressional approval — something Bush obtained for both Afghanistan and Iraq.

The chief symptom of this embarrassment is silence. Gone are the sloppy charges of “war criminal,” the Hollywood movies, the outbursts by celebrities, the anguished op-eds. It is almost as if the 2,000-plus suspected terrorists killed by Predators put a complete stop to all the talk of Guantanamo as a gulag or the water-boarding of three known terrorists as war crimes or any of the other harangues about supposed constitution-shredding. True, for many the hypocrisy is just the stuff of politics, but for others there is a quiet anger that they have been taken for a ride. Fairly or not, it is as if an entire corpus of prior written work, public rants, and activism between 2003 and 2008 — even if sincere — has now been exposed as mere partisan politics.
The second source of shame is the current anger over Wall Street, a furor that ironically was first seen with the Tea Party’s middle-class animus over retirement accounts that had crashed while many of those responsible for crashing them were bailed out by government money. Nonetheless, for the left it is somewhat hard to join in the Wall Street protests when a hard-left Democratic candidate like Barack Obama, who ran on populist rhetoric and persists in Huey Long sloganeering, has proven to be a president fascinated by Wall Street power, cash, and perks.

Most of his advisers were itinerant economists whose lives were often a three-way revolving door between high academia/institutes, Wall Street, and top government jobs — e.g., Peter Orszag, Larry Summers, or Timothy Geithner. Obama out-raised John McCain among the really big monied interests, and was the chief recipient of BP and Goldman Sachs cash. Easy Wall Street money led him to be the first presidential candidate to renounce public campaign financing in the general election — $1 billion in campaign money cuts a lot of prior principled assertions. And, of course, the first family’s personal tastes since assuming the presidency are certainly more akin to Citigroup executives than Trumanesque.

The effect of all this is that fierce critics of the Bush-Cheney War on Terror, or the 2008 excesses on Wall Street, have had to grow quiet, inasmuch as any continued criticism would hurt Barack Obama. But silence does not mean that his supporters appreciate the embarrassment, and that is precisely why there is unease among his base — and why in the last four weeks the president has once more tried to rev up the class-warfare rhetoric, albeit in a day-late, dollar-short fashion.

Barack Milhous Obama - In the Bunker. Alone.

I always assumed that the Democrat 'Wise Men' would take the callow, ignorant, naive Obama in hand and make sure he didn't completely screw things up.  Evidently I was wrong.  If this is true, then we are well and truly screwed.  From Jim Geraghty.

Over at the New York Post, columnist Michael Goodwin gives us our chill for the day:

The reports are not good, disturbing even. I have heard basically the same story four times in the last 10 days, and the people doing the talking are in New York and Washington and are spread across the political spectrum.

The gist is this: President Obama has become a lone wolf, a stranger to his own government. He talks mostly, and sometimes only, to friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett and to David Axelrod, his political strategist.

Everybody else, including members of his Cabinet, have little face time with him except for brief meetings that serve as photo ops. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner both have complained, according to people who have talked to them, that they are shut out of important decisions.

Is this what Oprah Winfrey meant when she said he was "The One"? As in, he's all alone up there?

Eliminationist Rhetoric

Why is it that one must go to English Papers to get honest news about American politics?  From BOTW:

London's Daily Mail has a photo of something else no one has ever seen at a Tea Party: a man in New York defecating on a police car. Krugman's Army marches on its stomach too. And if the general's own paper is to be believed, the Mail photo isn't an isolated incident: "Mike Keane, who owns O'Hara's Restaurant and Pub, said that the theft of soap and toilet paper had soared and that one protester had used the bathroom but had failed to properly use the toilet," the New York Times reports.

Remember when Krugman was making up lies about conservatives employing "eliminationist rhetoric"? He now commands an army that is engaged in a campaign of actual elimination.

Cynicism thy name is Obama

Commentary Contentions talks about the disconnect between Obama's Wall Street Bashing and his Wall Street Leaching.  BHO:  Biggest Wall Street Tool Evah!

Just to add a little context to Obama’s fiery anti-Wall Street populism, the Daily Caller reminds us that his 2008 campaign took more cash from Wall Street than any other president during the past two decades:

In 2008, Wall Street’s largesse accounted for 20 percent of Obama’s total take, according to Reuters.

When asked by the Daily Caller to comment about President Obama’s credibility when it comes to criticizing Wall Street, the White House declined to reply.

The hypocrisy doesn’t end there. While Obama’s been blasting Bank of Americaduring media appearances, he’s failed to mention that he is the bank’s favorite candidate of the past 20 years:

In fact, the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks lobbyist spending and influence in both parties, found that President Obama has received more money from Bank of America than any other candidate dating back to 1991.

The saddest aspect of this story is that the president gets away with saying things like this at press conferences like this, without the media calling him out on something as simple and straightforward as his contradictory campaign donations.

Barack Milhous Obama

"I am not a fool"

Educational Malpractice

Eliot Picard:

In observing the Occupy protests, including milling about the crowds in Boston near my office, it is quite apparent that the student loan debt bomb is probably the main impetus for these actions. It goes without saying that the students and former students facing non-bankruptable debt and minimal job prospects have a legitimate grievance although we may certainly disagree on what needs to be done. One question that keeps occurring to me is whether the colleges and universities that encourage degrees in various useless humanities disciplines bear some significant responsibility for this crisis.

One can only assume that presidents, deans, provosts, etc. know fully well that there is a limited market for degrees in Wommyn’s Studies, Language Arts and the like. My mother, ever the incisive wit, G-d bless her, called the graduates of such programs “unemployable at a higher level”. Indeed, when I finished a double major B.A. in Biology and Philosophy (Rensselaer Polytech, class of 1990) and expressed interest in graduate level philosophy I was told that the school had shut down the Ph.D. program to discourage students from doing much more in the field that I had done already. Clearly RPI knew that allowing and encouraging such a path of study was tantamount to academic malpractice. This sort of sane pedagogical judgement, from which I benefitted in my impetuous youth, has been missing across the rest of academia.

Is there some room for legal action to “claw back” arguably misspent tuition dollars from the universities (IANAL so forgive my obvious misuse of that term). I cannot but think that there has to be some sanction against those universities and their officials who were more than happy to take the big tuition checks while failing to look after the interests of the students in their charge.

Progressive 'Logic' in one simple chart

I am shocked, shocked that elite Law Schools reinforce class distinctions and reward the wealthy

Why is it that our supposedly most 'egalitarian' institutions are in fact our most elitist and stratifying?  Why is it that no one remarks on this incredible hypocrisy?  Oh, that's right, because we're talking about the elite and they write the news, set the tone, make the laws and they want to be known as egalitarian.

Even when they're not.

LOOKING AT THE INFLUENCE OF class in American legal education. “The vast majority of American law students come from relatively elite backgrounds; this is especially true at the most prestigious law schools . . . Although racial diversity has increased sharply during the intervening decades, the great majority of non-white law students are, like whites, from relatively elite backgrounds. . . . Law school admission policies use very large and relatively mechanical racial preferences, but appear to generally ignore SES considerations. Some law school policies militate against the admission of low- and moderate-SES applicants. Even in awarding grants and scholarships, law schools apparently generally ignore need; low-SES whites receive half as much scholarship aid as do high-SES whites.”

The

All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than other

Left protests don't require permits, and don't have to live by the rules.  They don't get the same scrutiny by the press either.  Orwell was right about the left.

CITY AUTHORITIES PLAYING FAVORITES ON PROTESTS: “The Hub’s hands-off approach to unpermitted Occupy Boston protests has Tea Partiers up in arms and has even rankled a top civil libertarian who said all groups should be subject to the same rules — regardless of the cause. . . . Organizers of the Occupy Boston tent city in Dewey Square have never sought nor received any permits from the state, the city or the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, which controls the property.”

The Obama administration: Epic, world record uncertainty

Many people have been pointing out that regime uncertainty has been depressing investment and risk taking which has kept the economy from recovering the way that it should.  Well now we have an estimate of just how much uncertainty has been created by our state saviors around the world.  While not all of the uncertainty is Federal Government related, it will surprise no one that record setting levels of  uncertainty have been achieved under the regime of 'hope' and 'change'.  Hattip NRO

Buffet won't release his Tax Returns unless Murdoch does....

But Murdoch hasn't been preening dishonestly on national TV about how 'selfless' he is.  The Homespun Humbug needs to put up or shut up.

What a fraud.

The man who inspired President Obama’s millionaires’ tax said he is willing to make his federal tax returns public — if fellow rich guy Rupert Murdoch does the same.
That’s right, billionaire investor Warren Buffett challenged the owner of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal to a financial-public relations duel of sorts.
The Berkshire Hathaway chairman has claimed he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary and earlier this year urged the government to stop “coddling” his super-rich friends and raise their taxes.
That prompted Mr. Obama to propose what he is calling the “Buffett rule” of higher taxes for those making a million dollars a year or more.
Some conservatives, including the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, have disputed Mr. Buffett’s claim and called on him to release his tax returns.
Asked if he would do so at a conference in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Tuesday, Buffett told questioner Carol Loomis of Fortune Magazine to “ask the Journal’s boss Rupert Murdoch,”according to TheWrap.com. Murdoch is the chairman of News Corp., which owns Fox, the Journal and a host of other media outlets.

Occupy Sesame Street getting out of hand.

It’s a good sign that the #OccupyWallStreet protesters are already being brilliantly mocked on Twitter. Check out the #OccupySesameStreet hashtag:

“Truly outrageous that 99% of the cookies are consumed by 1% of the monsters on PBS.#OccupySesameStreet”
“Police beat vampire who kept counting how many people they were arresting. #OccupySesameStreet”
“Some of us are living in garbage cans. We have every right to be grouchy. #OccupySesameStreet”

This meme has spawned some hilarious images of the “police getting involved in the #OccupySesameStreet protests.”  Hattip media blog

Finally, someone asks Buffet a hard question

I wonder what would happen if the Homespun Humbug actually received a hard grilling and investigation from our "Mainstream Media" of which this video is just a small, mild taste.  Personally, I think if he ever got real scrutiny that less fashionable businessmen get, he'd fold like a cheap suit.  His aura is maintained by all of the effort he puts into his PR campaign to be the "People's Plutocrat".

But no matter how much you try, Warren, we know that you're still just a Crony.

The latest Crime Against the State: Educational Theft

Most of the laws that we have on the books are not crimes against private property or persons but transgressions against the peculiar way that state elites have rigged the system for their benefit.  In the Soviet Union they used to call these things "Crimes Against the State" by "antisocial elements".  Take for example the new practice of putting parents in jail for trying to get their children a better 'free' education.  The system is organized to benefit the state elites and crony capitalist friends.  For the rest of us, the state is just a destructive, oppressive enemy.

From today's WSJ editorial by Michael Flaherty, president and cofounder of Walden Media, which coproduced the 2010 documentary Waiting for "Superman":

"In case you needed further proof of the American education system's failings, especially in poor and minority communities, consider the latest crime to spread across the country: educational theft. That's the charge that has landed several parents in jail this year. 

From California to Massachusetts, districts are hiring special investigators to follow children from school to their homes to determine their true residences and decide if they "belong" at high-achieving public schools. School districts in Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey all boasted recently about new address-verification programs designed to pull up their drawbridges and keep "illegal students" from entering their gates. 

Other school districts use services like VerifyResidence.com, which provides "the latest in covert video technology and digital photographic equipment to photograph, videotape, and document" children going from their house to school. School districts can enroll in the company's rewards program, which awards anonymous tipsters $250 checks for reporting out-of-district students. 

Only in a world where irony is dead could people not marvel at concerned parents being prosecuted for stealing a free public education for their children." 

The capital strike in one chart

Way to go, Barry.

Competitive Markets vs. State Oligopolies

Here's what happens to prices (and consumer value) in a competitive market:

And here's what happens in sectors where the state tries to make things more affordable.

Or how about this one:


Note that the Feds began their big time 'reform' agenda for schools starting in the 70s accelerated it in the mid 80s and then reignited 'reform' during late Clinton and Early Bush.  And test scores?  Flatter than a pancake.

Everything the Feds touch turns to shit.  Everything.  Hattip Hattip Carpe Diem