How Democrats kill them. While lying (perhaps even to themselves) about how they’re creating them.
The IRS Abuse
The fix is in:
Unlike Chris Christie’s Bridgegate, which hardly anyone cares about, a majority of the American people have consistently believed that the IRS targeting was deliberate and political. Obama himself said it “outraged” him, before he fake-fired the interim IRS chief and put the fix in place by appointing one of his own political contributors, Barbara Bosserman, to “investigate” it. Now his political contributor says “Nothing to see here, move along.” His Treasury secretary, Jack Lew, calls the abuse a “fake scandal.” So much for the president’s alleged outrage.
Across all these revelations, just 10 of the 41 groups that the American Center for Law and Justice is representing in the IRS abuse case have even been contacted by the FBI. Just 10. Ever.
That’s not an investigation, but it was never intended to be an investigation. The fix was always in on this thing.
I don’t think that Issa is going to let this go.
Millennials
Is this the year they finally get fed up with big government?
These ads depict millennials as emotional, instinctive animals acting on appetites, impulses, and desires rather than moral and intellectual beings capable of acting according to reason and prudence. The liberal poster child is a product of the state, dependent on cradle-to-grave government support, to which free birth control is a higher end than a well-paying job or — heaven forbid — starting a family.
For many millennials, the scales have fallen. They realize that the future of Obamacare depends on their signing up to pay higher insurance premiums and deductibles. In the era of iPhones and PS4s, they realize that a government that can’t design a website can’t be expected to manage the intricacies of the entire health-care industry. In the wake of the news that the NSA collects mountains of metadata, they also fret that the government that wants you to talk about health care could (with a warrant) listen in on that very conversation.
Given the bleak reality for many millennials today, it’s obvious that the Democratic party can’t talk straight to them. Instead, it manufactures witty, tongue-in-cheek social-media campaigns and faux controversies like the “war on women.” (As with most faux liberal controversies, the data seem to suggest the opposite — in 2009 women became a majority of the work force for the first time ever, while 2013 saw women under 30 earn a higher median income than their male counterparts did.)
These tricks worked in 2008; they worked again, albeit to a far lesser degree, in 2012; but in 2014, it appears the magic has finally worn off. Many millennials see through the catchy rhetoric to the empty promises.
Let’s hope. As I’ve said in the past, I’d like to see a poll that asks if people would be more, or less likely to vote Republican if they promised to repeal and replace Barack Obama next year.
[Update a while later]
ObamaCare flops with the young.
Well, big surprise. What’s in it for them?
Income Inequality
Republicans should own the issue, with competition and markets, and fighting cronyism:
Well, no. Inequality has increased across advanced economies. Macro factors such as globalization and technology deserve most — but maybe not all — of the “blame.” Big Government loves to pick winners and losers in the private sector. Some lucky ducks owe their place in the 1 percent or 0.1 percent or 0.01 percent to federal favoritism. Conservatives shouldn’t mind at all when value-creating innovators and entrepreneurs strike it rich while crony capitalists do not. The precious tax breaks and subsidies that go to rent seekers, such as those in the agriculture and alternative-energy sectors, should get the ax. Sorry, Big Sugar and Big Solar.
Unfortunately, they don’t mind cronyism that much, as long at it’s their cronyism.
The Miracles Of Climate Change
Apparently, it turns women into hookers.
A “Zero-Gravity Space Chamber”
No, New York Post, there’s no such thing. If they shot her b00bs in weightlessness, it was probably in a parabolic aircraft.
SCOTUS On Recess Appointments
Looking like this lawless administration getting shot down in court again is the way to bet:
Even liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, who was perhaps most favorable to the president’s case, expressed puzzlement at the administration’s claim that Congress was actually in a lengthy recess at the time Obama acted. Breyer noted that if the Senate recessed it ran afoul of the Constitution by failing to notify the House.
“Would you write an opinion that [says] the Senate of the United States has violated two provisions of the Constitution?” Breyer asked Verrilli.
Of course, at some point, they’ll just start defying the Supreme Court as well. The only real Constitutional solution to this president is impeachment and removal.
[Update a while later]
I don’t know who has the tougher job when it comes to defending this administration, Carney or Verilli.
Cancer Deaths
A new protein that could prevent 90% of them?
“We’ve found a way to dispatch an army of killer white blood cells that cause apoptosis — the cancer cell’s own death — obliterating them from the bloodstream. When surrounded by these guys, it becomes nearly impossible for the cancer cell to escape,” said King.
Faster, please.
Our Prussian School System
More thoughts from Glenn Reynolds on the public-school disaster, over at the Daily Caller.
[Update a few minutes later]
Related: Meanwhile, back in the Fatherland:
Got that? Let me repeat it just in case. A German judge took children away from their parents because “he family might move to another country and homeschool, posing a ‘concrete endangerment’ to the children.”
In August, 20 armed police, equipped with a battering ram just in case, arrived at the door of this Darmstadt family and forcibly took four children, ages 7 to 14.
Was there anything wrong with the children? Nope. The judge — whose name, by the way, is Marcus Malkmus, in case you have a voodoo doll handy or wish to burn him in effigy — the judge admitted that the children were 1) academically proficient and 2) well adjusted socially.
He just didn’t like homeschooling.
Why? Pay attention now: this takes us deep into the heart of a leftist: because he feared that “the children would grow up in a parallel society without having learned to be integrated or to have a dialogue with those who think differently and facing them in the sense of practicing tolerance.”
The invocation of “tolerance” is especially cute, don’t you think?
As Glenn writes: “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. Gleichschaltung!”
The Aldridge Commission
In researching a piece on tomorrow’s VSE anniversary, I just started to reread the commission report. You know what isn’t mentioned in the Executive Summary of recommendations? Heavy lift.