Conservatrolling Topic

[Tails82]

blog.heritage.org/2013/08/09/morning-bell-obamacare-the-next-threat-to-your-privacy/

The Next Threat to Your Privacy

Who has access to your Social Security number, your bank information, and your tax records?

When Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges open, your data could be exposed to shysters and hackers, thanks to serious vulnerabilities in the system.

HHS will not require navigators to undergo “minimum eligibility criteria and background checks.” The Administration’s training program does not require navigators to participate in anti-fraud classes. And many states do not have plans for investigating unscrupulous navigators who may attempt to prey on vulnerable and unsuspecting Americans. Even California’s Democratic insurance commissioner—a strong supporter of Obamacare—admitted “we can have a real disaster on our hands” if scam artists posing as navigators get access to applicants’ Social Security numbers, bank accounts, and other personal information.

The HHS inspector general recently released a report highlighting major delays in implementation of Obamacare’s data hub. The report amplifies what former HHS officials have been saying for months: The Administration has been cutting corners on data privacy for the exchanges, raising major questions about whether the data on the hub can be certified as secure—or whether Obamacare will place Americans’ tax and other personal information at risk.

The Obama Administration’s shoddy, slapdash approach to Obamacare implementation is placing the sensitive personal data of millions of Americans at risk. It’s one more reason why Congress should refuse to spend a single dime implementing this unfair, unworkable, and unpopular law.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323838204579000830652806204.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories

Anti-U.S. Hostility Ramps Up in Egypt

But Obamba was gonna heal the planet and everyone would love us

America, he says, has few fans in the country after the 2011 overthrow of U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak and last month's military ouster of Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Mohammed Morsi. "We're caught in a situation of having to essentially try to find a balance between our values and our interests. It satisfies nobody," Mr. Nasr said. "The Mubarak people are unhappy with the way he was shoved off without a thank you. The military thinks we coddled the Brotherhood and didn't intervene to control them. And the Brotherhood thinks that we never supported them when they needed support, and then gave the green light to the military."

The latest anti-American hysteria is a throwback to Mr. Mubarak's three decades of rule, when state-owned media fixated on a common enemy such as Israel or the U.S. in what critics called a bid to rally the nation and deflect from government shortcomings...Years of state-cultivated xenophobia have left Egyptians suspicious of foreign policy and America's interests in Egypt, said Mr. Qassem, who is now starting up his own newspaper and news channel.

The demonization of America in Egyptian state media has the potential to play out in dangerous ways that can't be reined in by the government, some observers said.

In the past few months, two U.S. citizens were stabbed on Egyptian streets—one fatally—with one of the attackers telling police that he had traveled from afar to Cairo in search of an American to kill. Last fall, thousands of protesters stormed the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, some scaling the walls of the fortified compound, tearing down the American flag and replacing it with an Islamist one.

Mr. Elwishee, 51 years old, said he is a dual U.S.-Egyptian citizen with a wife and three children who live in Missouri. He now spends his time holding anti-American placards in Tahrir Square, one with Mr. Obama's face crossed out with red.

"In general, Egyptians want America out of Egyptian affairs. For the U.S. to take the Brotherhood's side is not goodwill. They have a deal to give power to the Brotherhood in Egypt and in exchange the U.S. will give Sinai to Israel," Mr. Elwishee said with a slight American accent.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324522504579000792763966698.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_BelowLEFTSecond

Washington's Latest Special Favor

Of the nation's 143 refineries, one was exempted from the EPA's ethanol mandate. Why?

For a glimpse at the secret, special-favors factory that Washington has become under President Obama, check out this week's big news out of the Environmental Protection Agency. Or rather, look beyond the headlines to the corporate handout hidden within.

The big news was that the EPA issued—finally—its infamous annual quota for renewable fuels. That mandate tells the nation's refineries how much renewable fuel (ethanol) must be blended annually into gasoline, a quota that is becoming a pernicious driver of gas prices. The EPA was supposed to release the 2013 quota last November but decided to leave the industry in panicked uncertainty until now.

The 89-page rule is dull reading, until you get to page 11. Tucked on that page is one short sentence, which reads: "EPA has approved a single small refinery/small refiner exemption for 2013, so an adjustment has been made to the standards to account for this exemption." In English: Of the nation's 143 refineries, one (and only one) lucky player somehow had the pull to win itself a free pass from this government burden. Not only that, the rest of the industry gets to pick up its slack.

An exemption is no small privilege. Congress, in its limited wisdom (and fealty to corn farmers), passed legislation in 2007 requiring that the U.S. use of renewable fuels increase to 36 billion gallons annually by 2022. This year's EPA quota is 16.5 billion gallons, and the requirements keep ratcheting up even though U.S. gasoline use is falling.

This matters because for refineries to stuff ballooning amounts of ethanol into a static gas pool, they must blend it at levels of more than 10%. Since the nation's auto makers have declared they will void the warranties of cars using gas with more than 10% ethanol, refineries face lawsuits. Most have instead turned to buying federal renewable "credits" to make up for the ethanol they don't blend.

As demand for these credits skyrockets, so has the price—jumping from a few pennies a gallon last year to close to $1 a gallon today. Oil refiner Valero has said the credits could raise its cost by a stunning $750 million this year, a hit that will be passed on to consumers. PBF Energy just told investors that its disappointing second-quarter earnings were rooted in the mandate, noting that the $200 million it expects to fork over for ethanol credits this year will exceed the salaries and wages that it pays to operate all three of its refineries.

Some refineries are lowering production simply to mitigate the credit costs. Others are beginning to export products to avoid the mandate. Both moves could tighten U.S. supplies and lead to higher prices at the pump. Most every refinery is hurt by this rule.

So an exemption from today's mandate is far more than a perk—it is a lifeline, an outright payday. Making this indulgence even more curious is that it is being issued by the Obama EPA, an agency that isn't exactly known for doing favors for beastly carbon producers.

So who is the lucky dog? Who could make this happen? That's the best part. The EPA won't say. The agency not only refused to name the refinery in its rule, but also obscured certain numbers in the document to hide the beneficiary's identity. An EPA press officer would not give me the name, citing "confidentiality restrictions."

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/08/obamacare_cannot_work_by_design

Obamacare Cannot Work (By Design)

Hill.com: "Obamacare’s cost-cutting board -- memorably called a 'death panel' by Sarah Palin -- is facing growing opposition from Democrats who say it will harm people on Medicare. Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean drew attention to the board designed to limit Medicare cost growth when he called for its repeal in an op-ed late last month. ... But the former Vermont governor is not the only Democrat looking to kill the panel. A wave of vulnerable Democrats over the past three months has signed on to bills repealing the board’s powers...highlighting the stakes and the political angst surrounding the healthcare measure."

And so now you've got a bunch of Democrats saying, "Wait a minute. Death panels? We don't want to deal with -- this is going to hurt Medicare." Why would it hurt Medicare? Because the death panel has the ultimate power to determine who gets treated and who doesn't. Not covered; treated. The death panel determines who is going to get treated. Medicare pays for the elderly to be treated. The death panel trumps Medicare in Obamacare. Medicare has been gutted to boot.

From CybercastNewsService.com: "Blue Cross, Aetna, United, Humana Flee Obamacare Exchanges." One, two, three, four insurance companies have pulled out of the Obamacare exchanges. It's all part of the plan. Private insurers are being forced out of the market. This is part of the Obamacare long-term plan to make it so that only government has insurance to sell.

Washington Examiner: "Most of the Health care co-ops, the exchanges created under Obamacare are in danger of running out of money before they even open, running out of money before they even begin offering health insurance to consumers. This according to the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services." Now, California got $900 million, I think. They've blown through it almost. They're almost out of money before they even open.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324522504579000560184822956.html

Rationing Health Care in Oregon

Liberal states often preview health-care central planning before the same regulations go national, which ought to make an Oregon cost-control commission especially scary. On Thursday a state board could change Oregon's Medicaid program to deny costly care to poor patients who need it most.

Like most such panels, including the Affordable Care Act's Independent Payment Advisory Board, the Oregon Health Evidence Review Commission, or HERC, claims to be merely concerned with what supposedly works and what doesn't. Their real targets are usually advanced, costly treatments. That's why HERC, for example, proposed in May that Medicaid should not cover "treatment with intent to prolong survival" for cancer patients who likely have fewer than two years left to live. HERC presents an example to show their reasoning for such a decision: "In no instance can it be justified to spend $100,000 in public resources to increase an individual's expected survival by three months when hundreds of thousands of Oregonians are without any form of health insurance."

Amazingly enough, the Affordable Care Act quashed that one. The law says coverage decisions cannot discriminate against people because of their diagnoses and life expectancies.

So HERC changed a few words of its proposal. Before, the plan would have limited treatment based on life expectancy. Now, the plan will determine whether an individual continues to receive potentially life-saving treatment based on the severity of the illness, using ambiguous performance statuses, a scale that tries to quantify a cancer patient's well-being. Some difference.

This is a recurring theme in HERC's Medicaid overhaul. The commission also suggested guidelines that would limit to once a week the number of times some diabetics could check their blood sugar, down from the three tests a day the American Diabetes Association recommends now. Outrage from diabetics, not to mention medical experts, forced the commission to postpone that vote.

The public isn't receiving the cancer proposal any better. In a letter to HERC, a Willamette Valley Cancer Institute and Research Center patient navigator, a trained health-care worker responsible for educating cancer patients and guiding them through various treatment options, writes that "patients deserve treatment that is available based on the best evidence, not on a timeline." We'll learn today if HERC is willing to restrict potentially life-saving treatment in favor of the left's one-size-fits-all health approach.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/08/barack_obama_makes_more_gaffes_than_george_w_bush_and_sarah_palin_combined

Let's go to the audio sound bites. Here is Obama. This guy makes more gaffes than George Bush and Sarah Palin combined and is never called on it. This is Obama struggling to remember the name of the wife of the vice president.

OBAMA: Keeping our military strong means keepin' our families strong. Michelle and vice ... president... uh... uh... eh... The, uh... Joe Biden's wife, Dr. Jill Biden, they've made this their mission.

RUSH: Folks, you let that be George W. Bush, you let that be Ronald Reagan, and the stories today are, "Is Alzheimer's setting in? Do we have dementia?" I'm not kidding. They would have psychiatrists and psychologists on TV, and they would be analyzing this, and they'd be looking for any indication that a declining mental capacity is taking place.

"Look, we have to deepen our ports all along the gulf, places like Charleston, South Carolina, which is on the Atlantic ocean. Savannah, Georgia, on the Atlantic ocean, Jacksonville, Florida, on the Atlantic ocean. None of these are on the Gulf.

Now, you remember what grief Sarah Palin got when she said she could see Russia from her house. You remember that? And you remember how that statement, maybe at the top of the list, that statement from Sarah Palin was the primary means by which the media set out to destroy her, her intelligence, her credibility. And here is Barack Obama, not knowing what he's talking about, sounding so sure of himself. In fact, the AP has written about this and doesn't even mention the gaffe. They are whitewashing it. They have written a story that essentially praises Obama's brilliance for understanding that we need to deepen the ports. They don't even touch on the gaffe. This kind of stuff genuinely ticks me off...I tell you, the degree to which the people of this country are being dumbed down on purpose every day is striking. And all for the expression purpose of maintaining in power a political party which seeks a permanent underclass and as many dependent people on government as possible. As many uninformed, missinformed, know-nothings as they can get.

By the way, folks, just to remind you: Sarah Palin never, ever said that she could see Russia from her house. Tina Fey said it on Saturday Night Live impersonating Palin, and it became popularly assumed by people that Palin actually said it.

Here we have a legitimate statement of gaffe proportions -- and by the way, there were three or four of them on Leno and they're unremarked upon. The AP, in their effort to whitewash Obama's gaffe, actually added words to their report to cover for the guy. The AP printed, quote, "If we don't deepen our ports along the Gulf (and in) places like..."

In another gaffe, Obama said that Putin, Vladimir Putin, used to head the KGB. Putin did not head the KGB, never has. Putin was a mid-level nobody there.

You can say, "Meh, we're making a little bit too much of it, because he was in the ballpark or whatever." My only point with all of this is that the media tries to destroy Republicans who make little faux pas like that and they start telling everybody how dumb and stupid or uncaring they are. They're so self-absorbed, so selfish and so forth. With Obama, it's always, "There's nothing to see here, because he's a dream of a guy to begin with" and all that.

"He missed the Gulf of Mexico? So what! He thinks there are 57 states? Big deal! At least he's trying; at least he cares," is the way it goes.

Obama's non-gaffes are just as bad. Remember when he said he would not add one dime to the deficit or he wouldn't raise taxes on anybody making less than $200,000 a year or, "If you like your insurance plan, you can keep it"? Or that Obamacare was going to drive premiums down, or the private sector is doing fine? This guy's non-gaffes are just as dangerous.

[Chromeo]

has anyone ever told you brevity is wit

[Tails82]

It's too bad Obama's terrible policies are too numerous for me to be brief about them.

[Jordan Ω]

Aug 9, 2013 11:42:45 GMT -5 Chromeo said:

has anyone ever told you brevity is wit

I think Shakespeare does. It's the soul

[Pyro ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ ✔]

Whats Obamacare and why does Tailscare so much about it?

[Tails82]

Obamacare is socalized medicine, massive spending, over a thousand pages of Democrat wet dreams rammed through under a supermajority, with job-killing conscience-violating mandates that are driving unemployment and causing employers to switch from full time to part time jobs. Democrat architects themselves are now calling it a train wreck, job-killing, death panels and rationing. Instead of repealing this because it'd look bad for Obama's ego, he keeps delaying implementation until after elections because it remains unpopular no matter how many speeches Obama gives and Democrats don't want to deal with political fallout.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323477604579003033948563004.html

Quote-Unquote, the Law

President Obama left town for Martha's Vineyard on Friday, but not before holding a late-afternoon press conference that explained a lot about his governing philosophy, and not in a good way. A reporter asked the President about his decision to delay for one year the Affordable Care Act's insurance mandate for businesses, in violation of the law's legally effective date.

Mr. Obama replied that "in a normal political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up the Speaker and say, you know what? This is a tweak that doesn't go to the essence of the law. . . . That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do, but we're not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to, quote-unquote, ObamaCare." He blamed his need to act unilaterally on Republicans for their "ideological fixation."

Which is weird, because the House passed a bill on July 17 giving him that specific power. In fact, 229 Republicans and 35 Democrats passed the Authority for Mandate Delay Act, sponsored by Tim Griffin of Arkansas. Mr. Obama knows this because before the vote the White House issued a formal veto threat saying it "strongly opposes" H.R. 2667 and calling it "unnecessary."

If Mr. Obama has changed his mind, he ought to call Senate Democrats and persuade them to pass that bill. He could also suggest that they read and consider a companion House bill that would delay the individual insurance purchase mandate for ordinary Americans too, if they want to be fair. Once the bill has cleared both chambers of Congress, it can travel to Mr. Obama's desk and he can sign it. In a normal political environment, such a remedial lesson in how laws are made would be unnecessary for a President.

Speaking of normal political environments and ideological fixations, until ObamaCare one party had not rushed through a new entitlement on a straight partisan vote over mass public condemnation. The Democratic rush to do so has led to many technical mistakes and failures, and the authors of such a bill are not then entitled to lecture the other party about fixing the problems their law created.

In his Friday remarks, Mr. Obama also claimed that he had the "executive authority" for the mandate delay. But if he really believes that, then why did he say he would normally ask for a legislative "tweak." Either the fix requires legislation or it doesn't.

His comments are certainly revealing about his attitudes on Presidential power and the constraints of the U.S. Constitution. Article II, Section 3 instructs him to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, not merely what he thinks is "the essence" of laws.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/09/the_regime_plans_to_diversify_your_neighborhood

Now, here's another example where I printed it out and it doesn't give me the source. I'll have to click on the link. It doesn't matter. It's legit. "Obama Administration Makes New Rule to Compel Diversity in Neighborhoods."

Now, before the election, I remember we highlighted a couple of pieces that were written by a guy named Stanley Kurtz at National Review online, and he had a well-developed theory on Obama and his deep resentment of the suburbs, deep resentment of people who fled the cities for the suburbs because they could. They could flee to the suburbs and establish their own enclaves, as Obama would look at it, where they hung around with people only like each other and they didn't have to face people of color and they didn't have to face people in poverty and they didn't have to face dire economic consequences.

They didn't have to take mass transit and they didn't have to take the subway. They just fled urban areas and left people basically alone and suffering in these sewers, and as such Obama has had a deep resentment...the left is enamored of Europe [because] everybody uses mass transit. And because of that, they don't have the travel freedom or luxuries that Americans have. They're more constrained and they're more controllable and people are more able to herd them and keep them together.

This mindset doesn't believe in suburbia, doesn't like suburbia, doesn't like the freedom of it, doesn't like the flight aspect of it. They want people congregated in the cities. Stanley Kurtz is exactly right. Suburbia, by the way, is also an electoral threat to Obama. You go take a look at where Obama and the Democrats win elections, and it's deep urban areas, large population centers. The spread out. You take a look at that map where you've seen county by county and that map is all red. The map that Bush wins and the map that voted for Romney. The map of the Continental 48 is all red except for New York, LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Detroit. Outside of that, this country is red.

Obama doesn't like all that red. Liberals don't like all that red. I thought Kurtz was honest. It was a little esoteric to make it an election issue, but it was still interesting.

"In a move some claim is tantamount to social engineering, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is imposing a new rule that would allow the feds to track diversity in America’s neighborhoods and then push policies to change those it deems discriminatory." So the federal government wants control over the diversity of neighborhoods and they want to define it. They want to define what proper diversity is and they want the power to somehow engineer it.

"The policy is called, 'Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.' It will require HUD to gather data on segregation and discrimination in every single neighborhood and try to remedy it." Can I tell you this again? "The policy is called, 'Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.' It will require HUD to gather data on segregation and discrimination in every single neighborhood and try to remedy it." Remedy it? How?...I don't know. But, folks, it's the federal government and the power to compel, there's any number of things they can do. Regulation, intimidation, denial of services, you name it. There's all kinds of things the federal government can do to punish, say, a neighborhood that's not diverse as they want it to be. And don't believe that these people won't do it.

Now, they're going to portray this as something wonderful and great and it's going to make America great. "Diversity is the key to anything involving humanity being successful." And of course, that's a crock. It's all about control. It's all about you not living your life the way Barack Obama or Michael Bloomberg, or take your pick, any Democrat, you're not living your life the way they think you should. You have been warned.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323968704578652291680883634.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau performed a genuine public service this week by alerting taxpayers to the tidal wave of student loan defaults coming their way. Too bad the intention was also to alert student borrowers to ways they can avoid repaying those loans.

A new analysis by the bureau shows federal-backed student loan debt surpassing $1 trillion, which is nearly double what it was at the start of the Obama Presidency. As college costs have continued to balloon in tandem with federal loan and grant subsidies, students have assumed more debt. Many jobless Americans have also sought asylum from the Obama economy by returning to school.

A lot of these student borrowers upon entering the real world find themselves unable to make payments on their gargantuan loans, notwithstanding low interest rates...All told, about 40% of out-of-school borrowers have defaulted or delayed their payments, which is a de facto default. The government's reported default rate will likely climb when borrowers whose temporary amnesty expires have to resume payments on their loans, which in the meantime are accruing interest.

Graduates entering "public service" (i.e., government or 501(c)(3) nonprofit employment) get an even sweeter deal since they can discharge their loans entirely after a mere 10 years of making regular payments. That's right. Take out a big loan, work 10 years for the government repaying as little as possible, and then have your debt entirely forgiven.

The consumer bureau laments that only 1.6 million borrowers of federal direct loans have signed up for one of these plans, notwithstanding the Obama Administration's aggressive advertising. The White House goal is to goose consumer spending and the real-estate market by helping low-income borrowers with huge student loans deleverage on the backs of taxpayers.

The problem is that these income-based repayment plans merely encourage student-loan borrowers to disregard the cost of their education, thus relieving pressure on colleges to make tuition more affordable. They also provide incentives to take nonprofit and government jobs rather than pursue more productive and often better paying work in the private economy. Then again, maybe these consequences were not completely unintended.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/09/the_democrat_language_manual_advises_100_emotional_manipulation

Now, do you remember a Democrat wordsmith, a professor at the University of California, George Lakoff (rhymes with)? I'm sure you do. George Lakoff (rhymes with) was a guy, still is a guy, who advised Democrats on the way to structure their language on the political stump, the campaign trail and in ads in order to appeal to voters. Well, there's a story, Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner uncovered a document of 80 pages, 80-page talking points titled "Preventing gun violence through effective messaging." And it's written by three Democrat political operatives. James Taranto at the Best of the Web today, the Wall Street Journal, also highlighted this, what Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner had found.

When you go through this, what you have here is the Democrat playbook in print, in black and white. I guess the way to characterize this, what they're attempting to do is incite moral panic. They want moral panic. That is the way that Democrats are being advised to reach voters. This is how they're reaching the young and this is how they're reaching women. Now, what's interesting is if you read this thing, you quickly figure out something that you and I both know. They can't win in the arena of ideas. They cannot win a debate of their ideas versus ours.

So what they have to do is come up with fake imagery and words, if you will, to incite emotions to get their way. They do not even try to win a debate of ideas. The point of this 80-page talking points, it's called a monograph, written by these political operatives. The purpose is to teach Democrats how to engage in campaigns and the first thing that you come away with is do not go anywhere near real ideas. Don't debate them. Don't talk them about seriously. All they're to do here is package everything in a hyper moral sense. And it is said in this piece that it works best with women and 18 to 26-year-old young people.

And as Taranto characterizes it, it is a how-to book on inciting moral panic. The do's and don't are consistent with this advice. "'When talking to broader audiences, we want to meet them where they are,' the authors advise. 'That means emphasizing emotion over policy prescriptions," or fixes. Don't talk policy. Don't use think-tank lingo. Don't talk about anything to do with policy and how to fix a problem. Don't talk about facts. Don't get into that. "Make the case simple and direct. Avoid arguments that leave people thinking they don't know enough about the topic to weigh in." The purpose of this is to overcome people, "Well, wait a minute, I don't know enough to decide." That's not going to be an obstacle if these people get their way.

For example, power language. In this how-to manual, this is what Democrats are being advised to say, three different things here. "It breaks my heart that every day in our country (state or city) children wake up worried and frightened about getting shot." Another one: "Just imagine the pain that a mother or father feels when their young child is gunned down." Another one: "The real outrage--the thing that makes this violence so unforgivable--is that we know how to stop it and we're not getting it done."

Republican operatives, if they really want to differentiate themselves from Democrats, need to be looking at this because the Democrats have just admitted it here. Issues doesn't matter. Facts don't matter. Right and wrong doesn't matter. What we want is all that matters, and how can we make people feel the way they need to feel in order to agree with us? Total, 100% emotional manipulation, which, again, is called moral panic.

[Tails82]

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324653004578649873008273796.html

Pressured by South African President Jacob Zuma, the veteran Zimbabwean opposition leader ignored calls to boycott last week's rushed, rigged elections against Robert Mugabe. Not surprisingly, Mr. Tsvangirai lost. Worse, his participation gave the 89-year-old incumbent's dictatorship a veneer of electoral legitimacy and wiped out the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC ).

Earlier this summer "Mad Bob" Mugabe called a snap election, bypassing the MDC-run parliament. As part of an uneasy 2009 accord, Mr. Tsvangirai served as a prime minister with limited powers. Mugabe had broken promises to make the press free and reform the country's security services, which are a de facto personal Mugabe army.

Mr. Tsvangirai harbored no illusions about the election's fairness but he led in the polls and hoped that a strong showing might force the older man into retirement. Mr. Tsvangirai had won the most votes in the first round of the 2008 elections, before pulling out of the runoff when Mugabe thugs killed hundreds of MDC supporters.

This time Mugabe's Zanu-PF party avoided surprises by cooking the voter rolls. As many as one million deceased people were registered to vote, according to a non-governmental group in Harare that examined the rolls. Up to two million, mostly young, urban Zimbabweans weren't allowed to register. With turnout a million higher than in 2008, the nearly nonagenarian dictator "won" a million more votes. How about that. Zanu-PF also took back control of parliament, sending the local stock market reeling. Running economic policy since 2009, the MDC had at least helped to stop hyperinflation, revive growth and stave off plans to nationalize banks and mines.

Zimbabwe's neighbors abetted Mugabe's return. As long as voting day was peaceful, the African Union's monitoring mission declared the election "fairly credible." South African President Zuma offered Mugabe "profound congratulations" after Zimbabweans "once again demonstrated their trust and confidence in the Zanu-PF and your party leadership."

Not long ago, the African National Congress begged for the world's support in its struggle against apartheid. Mr. Zuma holds Mugabe to a different democratic standard. Botswana, an exceptional African democracy, on Tuesday broke ranks with the other Africans, saying "what has been revealed so far by our observers cannot be considered as an acceptable standard for free and fair elections." On Friday the MDC challenged the result in Zimbabwe's highest court, and it could use some outside support.

The U.S. and EU had suspended some of the targeted sanctions against the Mugabe regime this spring, hoping against dictatorial type for democratic progress. The sanctions ought to be reimposed and strengthened after this "deeply flawed" election, in the words of Secretary of State John Kerry.

[Tails82]

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324522504579000612374776976.html

The crisis of liberal state and city government is arriving, with Detroit in bankruptcy and now no less a Democratic potentate than Mayor Rahm Emanuel warning about the fiscal mess in Chicago. The partnership of public unions and liberal politicians is hitting the wall.

In its recent Annual Financial Analysis, the Windy City disclosed that it faces a $368 million budget deficit next year and as much as $1.5 billion by 2016. Moody's in July downgraded Chicago's credit rating three levels with a negative future outlook, citing the city's "very large and growing pension liabilities."

Chicago has chronically underfunded its pensions, and starting next year it will have to meet a state-mandated schedule raising the city's pension payments to $479 million in 2014 and then to $1.07 billion in 2015. Chicago's four pension systems are only 36% funded, with an overall unfunded liability of $19.5 billion this year and growing.

One reason Mr. Emanuel can't afford these pension contributions is because he's locked into unaffordable union contracts for city workers. Personnel costs currently make up 78% of Chicago government expenditures, and base salaries alone make up two-thirds. Between 2003 and 2012, the city cut its workforce by 20% but personnel costs have still gone up 15%.

Nine of 10 current city employees are unionized, and Mr. Emanuel's team estimates that city workers (not including police and fire) got 16% pay raises between 2005 and 2012. That's not quite as lofty as the 16% pay raise over four years that the Chicago teachers union negotiated last year, but it adds up. Chicago's average annual cost per employee (including salary, health care and overtime) rose to $95,406 in 2012 from $58,299 in 2003.

Mayor Emanuel is the guy who rolled over last September for that new teachers contract rather than ride out an illegal strike that might have hurt President Obama, but he's had plenty of political accomplices. Chicago is required under state law to have its pensions 90% funded by 2040, but the state also says the city can't reform its pension obligations without consent from the dysfunction junction that is Springfield.

In May 2012 Mr. Emanuel asked the state to raise by five years a retirement age that can be as low as 50 depending on tenure and the kind of job; eliminate automatic cost-of-living increases for current retirees for 10 years; and have city workers raise their contribution to their retirement to 14% of salary from 9%. He also suggested giving younger workers the option to choose a 401(k) plan instead of a pension. Imagine that: a choice.

The mayor has been routed by the public unions that own the Democrats who run the state legislature. A state pension committee convened by Governor Pat Quinn has failed to come up with even a modest reform, leading the Governor to suspend lawmakers' salaries. House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton are suing for back pay but they still won't act on pensions.

Something has to give, and a likely candidate is city services. Mr. Emanuel recently laid off 2,100 Chicago education employees, including 1,000 teachers, and he blamed the layoffs on Springfield's pension failures. The pension benefits that unions have negotiated are now killing the jobs of their fellow union members. As in Washington, D.C., the entitlement excesses of liberalism are jeopardizing current liberal priorities.

Many people have been predicting this crack-up for years, the inevitable result of a political alliance in which unions elect Democrats who pad benefits for unions, which then spend to re-elect Democrats, who repeat the cycle. The music stops only when the taxpayers are tapped out or the city and state can't borrow any more. Detroit had its reckoning last month, and Chicago may be headed the same way unless its liberal politicians decide that a crisis of their own creation is a terrible thing to waste.

The old problem with socialism and using other peoples' money. It has to be propped up by those who actually work, until at some point no one can work anymore.

blog.heritage.org/2013/08/09/charged-for-insulting-government-authority-venezuela-supreme-court-crosses-the-line/

Charged for Insulting Government Authority? Venezuela Supreme Court Crosses the Line

earlier this week, Venezuela’s Supreme Court launched a criminal investigation into one of Venezuela’s main opposition candidates simply for claiming election fraud.

On Wednesday, the court rejected the legal challenge launched by former presidential opposition candidate Henrique Capriles questioning the outcome of the April 14 presidential election. To add insult to injury, the court has also ordered Capriles to pay a $1,698 fine for insulting government authority and accusing the judicial system of bias in favor of the government.

And if that wasn’t enough, the court then went on to order the national prosecutor to open a formal criminal investigation into Capriles. The charges: offending the authority of government institutions and making unfounded charges of favoritism against government officials.

Venezuela is no stranger to un-free and unfair elections. However, the Supreme Court decision and the introduction of potentially criminal charges against a political opposition leader demonstrate the continued erosion of democratic institutions in Venezuela.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324522504579005692840544038.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Edward Snowden must be smiling. Fresh from gaining asylum from Vladimir Putin, the self-admitted stealer of U.S. security secrets can now boast that he has caused an American President to retreat on his core powers as Commander in Chief.

That's the import of President Obama's announcement late Friday, before he left for Martha's Vineyard, that he wants to overhaul the intelligence and data collection programs he inherited from George W. Bush and has used since he took office. Mr. Obama invited Congress to tie him and future Presidents down with new oversight and limits on a surveillance program that no one has found to have been abused in a single instance.

Mr. Obama's overture is dangerous politically and as policy. A President should explain to the American people why these programs are necessary against a terrorist threat that is far from defeated. As Mr. Obama spoke, the U.S. still had 19 embassies or consulates closed around the world for fear against a terror attack. While most have since been reopened, the uses of surveillance in warning of the potential attack would seem to be clear. Surveillance saves American lives.

Yet Mr. Obama has now joined the debate on his backfoot, conceding that new bureaucratic intrusions are needed to interfere and limit his own war fighters. "It's not enough for me, as President, to have confidence in these programs. The American people need to have confidence in them as well," Mr. Obama said. Well, yes, but a President's job is to give them that confidence, not to undermine that confidence at the start by saying the critics are right.

Laurence Silberman, a former deputy Attorney General who is now a federal judge, warned in Congressional testimony in 1978 after having inspected the files of J. Edgar Hoover and others that "I am convinced that the single most important deterrent to executive branch malfeasance is the prospect of subsequent disclosure." The introduction of judicial approval into such war powers as surveillance for national security, he said by contrast, makes the executive less accountable because it offers an excuse for bad decisions or abuse: The judges said it was OK.

So the same liberals who created the FISC as a cure-all now blame it for not constraining the President enough. Mr. Obama is also dodging responsibility by now proposing a fix for the FISC, in large part as a way to shield himself from liberal criticism.

Some of us warned in the 1970s, and have warned since, that such an executive branch role for the judiciary violated the Constitution's separation of powers and would lead to precisely such political complications. We even hear complaints now from the left and libertarian right that the FISC's proceedings are secret. No kidding.

Perhaps the real Barack Obama isn't the President of the first term who used the Bush antiterror policies to pound al Qaeda. Maybe he really believes that he is the only President who can be trusted with such security powers, and so now he is going to use the controversy inspired by Mr. Snowden to hamstring his successors.

Snowden could be a plant...just saying
See: Fast and Furious

blog.heritage.org/2013/08/09/elections-in-argentina-may-determine-the-future-of-democracy-in-the-nation/

Elections in Argentina May Determine the Future of Democracy in the Nation

Late last year, Argentinian President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner sparked protests across Buenos Aires when she suggested changes to the constitution to allow her to run for a third term. The move would require a vote by a two-thirds majority in both the Chamber of Deputies (Argentina’s equivalent to the House of Representatives) and the Senate.

At the moment, Kirchner’s party, the Frente para la Victoria (Front for Victory, or FPV), and its allies control both houses. Half of the seats in the Chamber and one-third in the Senate will now be up for reelection. The vast majority of the open seats, at least in the Chamber, are currently held by the opposition.

Opposition parties in the Chamber will have to repeat their exceptional performance from 2009, when they last defeated the FPV, simply to maintain the status quo...Already, in her first six years in office, President Kirchner has made numerous assaults on democracy and freedom in her country. Indeed, as Wall Street Journal columnist Mary O’Grady explained, “Mrs. Kirchner has made no secret of her admiration for the [Hugo] Chávez model of governance.”

In February, the Kirchner government was censured by the International Monetary Fund for cooking the statistical books and underreporting rampant inflation, allowing the government to pocket an extra $6.8 billion. The country has also been working hard to dodge its debt. Unsurprising, really, that the country is ranked 160 out of 177 in the Index of Economic Freedom.

In April, with the outspoken support of President Kirchner, judicial reforms were passed that legal analysts warn will grant extensive control over the legislature...These reforms came in lockstep with Kirchner’s attempts to weaken el Grupo Clarin, the country’s lone independent telecommunications outlet and one of the few remaining sources of print media able to voice opposition to the “Kirchnerists.” Then, of course, there are also the repeated attempts of the Kirchner administration to claim control of the Falkland Islands, despite a referendum held on the island in March in which 99.8 percent of the residents voted to remain under British rule.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323477604579000933006361834.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

The Budget Sequester Is a Success

The Obama spending blitz is over and the deficit is heading below 4% of GDP.

The biggest underreported story out of Washington this year is that the federal budget is shrinking and much more than anyone in either party expected.

Consider the numbers: According to the Congressional Budget Office, annual outlays peaked at $3.598 trillion in fiscal 2011. After President Obama's first two years in office, many in Washington expected that number to hit $4 trillion by 2014. Instead, spending fell to $3.537 trillion in fiscal 2012, and is on pace to fall below $3.45 trillion by the end of this fiscal year (Sept. 30). The $150 billion budget decline of 4% is the first time federal expenditures have fallen for two consecutive years since the end of the Korean War.

This reversal from the spending binge in 2009 and 2010 began with the debt-ceiling agreement between Mr. Obama and House Speaker John Boehner in 2011. The agreement set $2 trillion in tight caps on spending over a decade and created this year's budget sequester, which will save more than $50 billion in fiscal 2013.

As long as Republicans don't foolishly undo this amazing progress by agreeing to Mr. Obama's demands for a "balanced approach" to the 2014 budget in exchange for calling off the sequester, additional expenditure cuts will continue automatically. Those cuts are built into the current budget law.

In other words, Mr. Obama has inadvertently chained himself to fiscal restraints that could flatten federal spending for the rest of his presidency. If the country sees any normal acceleration of economic growth (from the anemic 1.4% growth rate so far this year), the deficit is on a path to drop steadily at least through 2015. Already the deficit has fallen from its Mount Everest peak of 10.2% of gross domestic product in 2009, to about 4% this year. That's a bullish six percentage points less of the GDP of new federal debt each year.

Discretionary spending soared to $1.347 billion in fiscal 2011, according to the CBO, but was then cut by $62 billion in 2012 and another $72 billion this year. That's an impressive 10% shrinkage. And these are real cuts, not pixie-dust reductions off some sham baseline. Discretionary spending as a share of the economy hit 9.4% of GDP in fiscal 2010 but fell to 7.6% this year and is scheduled to slide to 6.4% in Mr. Obama's last year in office.

The sequester is squeezing the very programs liberals care most about—including the National Endowment for the Arts, green-energy subsidies, the Environmental Protection Agency and National Public Radio. Outside Washington, the sequester is forcing a fiscal retrenchment for such liberal special-interest groups as Planned Parenthood and the National Council of La Raza, which have grown dependent on government largess.

But the fiscal story isn't all rosy. The major entitlements remain on autopilot and are roaring toward insolvency. Thanks in large part to Mr. Obama's aversion to practical fixes, the Congressional Budget Office calculates that through July of this year Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid spending are up $73 billion from just last year. This doesn't include ObamaCare, which is scheduled to add $1 trillion of new costs over the next decade.

Liberals had hoped that re-electing Mr. Obama, the most pro-spending president since LBJ, would unleash another four years of Great Society government expansion. Instead, spending caps and the sequester are squashing these progressive dreams. Welcome to the new fiscal reality in Washington. All Republicans need to do is enforce the budget laws Mr. Obama has already agreed to. Entitlement reforms will come when liberals realize that the unhappy alternative is to allow every program they cherish to keep shrinking.

Another global warming-style apocalypse we're still waiting to see, Dems.

www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/harry-reid-and-tom-coburn-agree-obamacare-was-designed-fail-pave-way-single-payer_745908.html

Harry Reid and Tom Coburn Agree: Obamacare Was Designed to Fail, Pave Way for Single-Payer

And so we have a rare moment of bipartisan agreement in the United States Senate. Reid now appears to concur with Republican senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who has has been warning for quite some time that Obamacare was "rigged to fail" in order to pave the way for a total government takeover of the health insurance industry.

As liberal Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein said in 2008, organizations on the left pushing for health care reform were pursuing a "sneaky strategy" to "put in place something that over time the natural incentives ... move it to single payer."

So the big question on the left and right isn't really whether or not Obamacare will eventually fail, but what comes after it fails.

Just so you know, I enjoy being right, but I don't particularly enjoy this. It's like if a Jew said "I knew I was right about Hitler" as they were taking him away.

[Tails82]

Rich people problems

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323585604579008802563619722.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

Wah, wah, every white guy on the street is out to be racist against wealthy snobs and our poor persecuted perfect president who no one would criticize ever except because he's black, wah, wah

www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/holder-seeks-to-avert-mandatory-minimum-sentences-for-some-low-level-drug-offenders/2013/08/11/343850c2-012c-11e3-96a8-d3b921c0924a_story.html

Holder seeks to avert mandatory minimum sentences for some low-level drug offenders

The attorney general can make some changes to drug policy on his own. He is giving new instructions to federal prosecutors on how they should write their criminal complaints when charging low-level drug offenders, to avoid triggering the mandatory minimum sentences.

Brother gotta help a homie out. Let's just give criminals a pass on everything. No word yet on whether Holder's people asked for it. Maybe they were doing dope while they were wielding nightsticks against non-felon voters, who knows.

dailycaller.com/2013/08/05/imprisoned-innocence-of-muslims-producer-nakoula-nakoula-i-want-the-world-to-see-the-truth/

In an exclusive interview following his supervised release from prison, the filmmaker behind “Innocence of Muslims” told The Daily Caller that he “has no regrets” and promises more films and books about Islam.

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula is the only person who has been imprisoned in the aftermath of the organized Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which the ambassador and three other Americans were killed. He was wholly unconnected to the attack and was imprisoned on technical probation violations.

The interview was arranged after multiple letters to his former prison in El Paso, Texas. Nakoula is currently targeted with assassination from several Muslim clerics, including the head of Hezbollah, who have put fatwas on his head. He spoke from an undisclosed location in Southern California.

The U.S. State Department and the White House, which characterize the amateur video as “hate speech” or “Islamophobic” have pressured Google to remove the trailer for Nakoula’s film.

Nakoula hopes to complete the film and has made storyboards of other scenes that he hopes to include, showing Mohammed on jihad and engaging in sex acts — all based, he told TheDC, on Islamic books and evidence from the time period.

Nakoula described himself as “proud” for having written his script, which he is now turning into a book.

Nakoula, who is a Coptic Christian, also opposes the double standard that is tolerant of Islam but not Christianity.

“We can see mosques everywhere all over the world but we can’t see churches in Saudi Arabia,” he wrote. “[The Muslims] are saying it is holy land. I say also New York is a holy land. [Almost] 3,000 Americans get killed on this land. [Muslims] want to build an Islamic center on Ground Zero, no problem. But they won’t let us build churches in Saudi Arabia. They even burn down the churches in other Islamic countries, like Egypt.”

Charles Woods, the father of Navy SEAL killed in Benghazi, told Glenn Beck in October that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told him the Administration “will make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.”

American authorities were not the only ones who went after Nakoula. A court in Cairo tried and sentenced Nakoula and six other Egyptian Christians to death for participating in the filming of his movie. The court said the filmmakers insulted “the Islamic religion through participating in producing and offering a movie that insults Islam and its prophet.”

President Obama last month began describing Benghazi as one of a number of “phony scandals” currently engulfing his administration. On Thursday CNN reported that the CIA had 21 or more agents in the embassy compound during the attack and is engaged in an “unprecedented” effort to conceal details of the incident.

Brennan, who told the Islamic Society of North America, “I don’t use the term jihadist to refer to terrorists” and extemporized in English and Arabic about the beauty of Islam in a speech to the Islamic Society of New York, is now director of the CIA. In his 1980 graduate thesis at the University of Texas at Austin, Brennan denied the existence of “absolute human rights” and argued in favor of censorship on the part of the Egyptian dictatorship.

“Since the press can play such an influential role in determining the perceptions of the masses, I am in favor of some degree of government censorship,” Brennan wrote. “Inflamatory [sic] articles can provoke mass opposition and possible violence, especially in developing political systems.”

Brooke Goldstein, a human rights attorney from the Lawfare Project, sees Brennan’s pro-censorship views as part of a wider campaign of suppression of speech critical of Islam.

“The lengths this administration has gone to subjugate public dialogue and constitutionally protected speech on the very real and imminent threat of militant Islam, is astounding,” Goldstein told TheDC.

Goldstein is especially critical of U.S. officials, who “were paraded one by one in front of the world to act as film critics, proliferating the ridiculous lie that one U.S. resident’s constitutionally protected expression was somehow the but-for cause of murder thousands of miles away.”

She cites several examples, including the U.S. Embassy in Cairo’s press release curiously condemning “the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims,” as well as Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s description of Nakoula’s film as “disgusting and reprehensible.”

So while Holder's giving out blanket pardons to his drug dealing friends in the hood, no one can blaspheme the big holy prophet of Islam or King Hussein's gonna crack down. Our Social Justice Department at work, folks.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324769704579009192424814878.html

South Africa has Nelson Mandela, Poland has John Paul II, and Burma has Aung San Suu Kyi: Though the measure isn't exact, one way to judge a nation is by looking at its heroes. So what does it say about a prospective state of Palestine that among its heroes is Salah Ibrahim Ahmad Mugdad?

Mugdad is among 104 prisoners Israel intends to release as part of a deal orchestrated by Secretary of State John Kerry to resume peace talks with the Palestinians. In 1993, Mugdad killed hotel security guard Israel Tenenbaum "by beating him in the head with a steel rod," according to the Times of Israel. Tenenbaum was 72 at the time of his murder.

Also being released is Salameh Abdallah Musleh, imprisoned for the murder of convenience-store owner Reuven David. "Abdallah, together with an accomplice, entered David's convenience store on May 20, 1991, bound David's arms and legs and beat him to death, before locking the store and fleeing the scene," the Times reports.

Ditto for other Palestinian prisoners...it says something about the current Palestinian leadership that it has made the release of killers a condition of peace talks. It also says something about the moral values of too many Palestinians that they should treat the returning prisoners not as pariahs but as heroes.

The Israeli decision to release the prisoners was shortly followed by the approval of additional construction permits for housing in East Jerusalem and West Bank settlements. The move elicited howls of condemnation from the usual suspects, as if building houses is more objectionable than murdering people in cold blood. Perhaps the larger question is why anyone should expect that a peace process that begins by setting murderers free is likely to result in peace.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323477604579000571334113350.html

The Clinton-Era Roots of the Financial Crisis

Affordable-housing goals established in the 1990s led to a massive increase in risky, subprime mortgages.

Simply put, the financial crisis of 2008 was caused by a lot of banks making a lot of loans to a lot of people who either could not or would not pay the money back. But this explanation raises two key questions. Why did private lenders, whose job it was to assess credit risk, make those loans? And why did the army of financial regulators, with massive enforcement powers, allow 28 million high-risk loans to be made?

There's a strong case that the answers can be traced to Sept. 12, 1992. On that day presidential candidate Bill Clinton proposed, in his campaign book "Putting People First," using private pension funds to "invest" in government priorities, such as affordable housing, to "generate long-term, broad based economic benefits." Seldom has such a radical proposal been so ignored during a campaign only to later lead to such devastating consequences.

After his election, President Clinton tapped Labor Secretary Robert Reich to lead the effort to extract, as Mr. Reich put it in 1994 congressional testimony, "social, ancillary, economic benefits" from private pension investments. Mr. Reich called on pension funds to join the administration's "Economically Targeted Investment" effort. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros assured participants that "pension investments in affordable housing are as safe as pension investments in stocks and bonds."

Six pension funds ultimately agreed to invest in public housing that was backed by $100 million in federal grants and guarantees, but the program never took off. In the end, even unions and their pension funds rejected the effort to direct any part of their retirement savings toward someone else's welfare.

The Clinton administration lost the battle to use pensions to fund low-income housing, but it succeeded in winning the war by drafting Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the commercial banking system into the affordable-housing effort. It did so by exploiting a minor provision in a 1977 housing bill, the Community Reinvestment Act, that simply required banks to meet local credit needs.

Bank regulators began to pressure banks to make subprime loans. Guidelines became mandates as each bank was assigned a letter grade on CRA loans. Banks could not even open ATMs or branches, much less acquire another bank, without a passing grade—and getting a passing grade was no longer about meeting local credit needs. As then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testified to Congress in 2008, "the early stages of the subprime [mortgage] market . . . essentially emerged out of the CRA."

Effective in January 1993, the 1992 housing bill required Fannie and Freddie to make 30% of their mortgage purchases affordable-housing loans. The quota was raised to 40% in 1996, 42% in 1997, and in 2000 the Department of Housing and Urban Development ordered the quota raised to 50%. The Bush administration continued to raise the affordable-housing goals. Freddie and Fannie dutifully met those goals each and every year until the subprime crisis erupted. By 2008, when both government-sponsored enterprises collapsed, the quota had reached 56%. An internal Fannie document made public after the financial crisis ("HUD Housing Goals," March 2003) clearly shows that by 2002 Fannie officials knew perfectly well that these quotas were promoting irresponsible policy: "The challenge freaked out the business side of the house [Fannie] . . . the tenseness around meeting the goals meant that we . . . did deals at risks and prices we would not have otherwise done."

The mortgage market shows the dramatic results of this shift in policy. According to the nonprofit National Community Reinvestment Coalition, total CRA lending rose to $4.5 trillion in 2007 from $8 billion in 1991. The American Enterprise Institute's Ed Pinto found that in 1990 80% of the residential mortgage loans acquired by Fannie and Freddie were solid prime loans with healthy down payments and a well-documented capacity by borrowers to make mortgage payments. By 1999 only 45% of their acquisitions met this standard. That number fell to 15% by 2007. By 2008, roughly half of all outstanding mortgages in America were high-risk loans. In 1990, very few subprime loans were securitized. By 2007 almost all of them were.

Everything appeared to work fine as long as accommodative monetary policy and capital inflows from developing countries continued to fuel the upward float of housing prices. Home ownership grew to 69% in 2006 from 64% in 1993, but when monetary policy tightened the housing bubble broke and the mortgage-default rate soared.

It is stunning that, to this day, no one has explained how 28 million high-risk loans (the number calculated by the American Enterprise Institute's Peter Wallison) got around the "safety and soundness" rules that dominate federal and state banking laws. What happened to the enforcement army, with its laws and regulations, its power to investigate and mandate corrective action, and its ability to fine and imprison violators?

The people who destroyed lending standards by driving subprime lending blamed banks, greed and deregulation for causing the financial crisis. But a review of the banking laws adopted since 1980 reveals that not one single safety and soundness measure was repealed.

Whatever went on inside the various agencies, financial regulators—whose job it was to enforce safety and soundness regulations—in the end deferred to government affordable-housing goals. Conflicted laws created conflicted regulations and conflicted regulators. Safety and soundness considerations required that regulators step on the brake. Affordable-housing goals required them to step on the gas.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324653004578649983817604830.html

The Islamic Republic, one of the most brutal regimes in the world, stands at the threshold of a nuclear-weapons capability. The thought of dictators who disregard the value of human life at home and pledge genocide abroad having a nuclear weapon should frighten every American.

To be clear: Iran did not hold a free and fair election earlier this summer. The Iranian people were forced to choose between a select group of regime insiders who had been carefully vetted and hand-picked by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. More than 600 would-be candidates were disqualified. Reformists were kept under house arrest. The Internet was tightly controlled in the weeks leading up to the vote.

In the end, Mr. Rouhani won. Though the word "moderate" often precedes his name in news stories, Iran's new president is no reformer. For more than two decades, he served as the supreme leader's personal representative to Iran's national security council. The council oversees a range of illicit activities—from cracking down on student protestors at home to supporting terrorist groups, like Hezbollah, abroad. During a 2004 speech Mr. Rouhani boasted about how his rope-a-dope negotiating strategy with the West enabled Iran to stall while advancing its nuclear program.

As President Rouhani calls for "serious" talks with the West, Iran's centrifuges spin, its test missiles launch, its terrorist proxies plot, and its human-rights abuses escalate. The Pentagon reports that Iran could flight test an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. by 2015. Just last month, the nonpartisan Institute for Science and International Security, using data provided by United Nations inspectors, estimated that Iran would achieve nuclear critical capability—the technical know-how to produce sufficient weapon-grade uranium for a nuclear explosive without being detected—by the middle of 2014.

We believe the U.S. must exhaust all nonmilitary options to prevent Iran from achieving critical capability. Our most effective tool for avoiding a military strike is enacting harsher sanctions.

In 2011, Congress implemented sanctions targeting Iran's central bank and oil exports. A year later, the U.S. blacklisted Iran's shipping, shipbuilding and energy sectors. The result? Since December 2011, Iran's currency lost more than two-thirds of its value while the regime's oil revenues were cut in half. So sanctions are working. But loopholes remain, and the pressure is nowhere near maximum levels.

American resolve is critical, especially in the next few months. By bringing the regime to the verge of economic collapse, the U.S. can convert that leverage into a diplomatic solution, forcing Iran to comply with all international obligations, including suspending all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities.

We can go a long way toward achieving that goal by taking the rest of Iran's oil exports off the market, cutting off access to its overseas reserves, and blacklisting strategic sectors of the Iranian economy. The House voted 400 to 20 last month to approve such measures. It's time for the Senate to act.

By strengthening sanctions, we are not calling for an end to diplomacy. But after many years of fruitless negotiations, it is clear that talks will only succeed if the regime feels pressure to change course—and not as a result of misplaced optimism over a new face for the same regime that has not wavered in its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Obama's hometown - well, after Hawaii - well, after Kenya - could be the next Detroit?

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324085304579008642469317778.html

Witness Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn's announcement this weekend calling off his party's annual rally at the state fair. It's usually an occasion for Democrats and unions to collectively beat up on Republicans. Last year, however, the governor's one-time labor friends used the rally to beat up on him for backing pension reforms.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton, Mr. Quinn's Democratic adversaries, have united against the governor to achieve a common purpose: being paid. In the spring, Messrs. Cullerton and Madigan knocked heads over pension reforms, which led to a legislative stalemate. But now Mr. Quinn is withholding lawmakers' paychecks until they fix the state's pension mess. That's unlikely to happen anytime soon. So the legislative leaders are suing the governor for remuneration.

In a side plot, Mr. Madigan is trying to contain the fallout from a patronage scandal. The House speaker allegedly sought raises for donors working at Illinois's Metra transit system. When Metra's ex-CEO Alex Clifford refused to follow the don's orders, the Metra board fired him. Mr. Clifford was paid a $718,000 "severance" package to stay quiet about the patronage. Four Metra board members have since resigned, and more heads are expected to roll.

Mr. Madigan—who has presided over the House for nearly 30 years and chairs the state Democratic Party—has thus far managed to avoid being embroiled in the scandal, though all roads lead in his direction. Of course, it helps that many high-ranking Democrats in Springfield are in hock to him. It's also convenient that his daughter Lisa Madigan is the state Attorney General.

The House speaker's political salvation may depend on retaining his daughter as attorney general, where she can keep a lid on complaints of corruption. Ms. Madigan intends to run for a fourth term in 2014.

[Tails82]

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324085304579010743875400898.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

President Obama asserted the unilateral power to "tweak" inconvenient laws in last Friday's news conference, underscoring his Administration's increasingly cavalier notions about law enforcement. So it's good that the judiciary—a coequal branch of government, in case the Administration forgot—is starting to check the White House.

In a major rebuke on Tuesday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an unusual writ of mandamus, which is a direct judicial order compelling the government to fulfill a legal obligation. This "extraordinary remedy" is nominally about nuclear waste, writes Judge Brett Kavanaugh for the 2-1 majority, yet the case "raises significant questions about the scope of the Executive's authority to disregard federal statutes."

Mr. Obama promised to kill Yucca as a candidate and the Energy Department tried to yank the license application after his election. But an NRC safety board made up of administrative judges ruled unanimously that this was illegal unless Congress passed a law authorizing it. Mr. Obama then teamed up with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada to stack the NRC with anti-Yucca appointees.

Although Congress appropriated money to conduct the review, the NRC flat-out refused, in violation of the three-year statutory deadline. "By its own admission, the Commission has no current intention of complying with the law," writes Judge Kavanaugh, despite a 2011 ruling from a separate D.C. Circuit panel instructing the NRC to follow through. The ruling also invited Congress "to clarify this issue if it wished to do so."

Congress did not amend the 1983 statute. "As things stand, therefore, the Commission is simply flouting the law," Judge Kavanaugh continues. "In light of the constitutional respect owed to Congress, and having fully exhausted the alternatives available to us," the court had no option other than the mandamus writ.

So ponder that one: A federal court is stating, overtly, that federal regulators are behaving as if they are a law unto themselves. Judge A. Raymond Randolph notes in a concurrence that former NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko, who has since resigned, "orchestrated a systematic campaign of noncompliance." If Mr. Jaczko worked on Wall Street he'd be indicted.

Judge Kavanaugh then offers some remedial legal education in "basic constitutional principles" for the President who used to be a constitutional law professor. Under Article II and Supreme Court precedents, the President must enforce mandates when Congress appropriates money, as well as abide by prohibitions. If he objects on constitutional grounds, he may decline to enforce a statute until the case is adjudicated in the courts. "But the President may not decline to follow a statutory mandate or prohibition simply because of policy objections," writes the court.

All of this highlights that Mr. Obama is not merely redefining this or that statute as he goes but also the architecture of the U.S. political system. As with the judicial slapdowns on his non-recess recess appointments that the Supreme Court will hear next term, Judge Kavanaugh warns that endorsing the NRC's legal position "would gravely upset the balance of powers between the Branches and represent a major and unwarranted expansion of the Executive's power."

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/13/obama_s_dramatic_violation_of_the_constitution

[Obama] can't grant these waivers. He can't do all these exemptions. He can't just decide, "I'm going to delay that part of the bill that I signed into law." He cannot write legislation, other than during the process, of course, he has a liaison with Congress and they might work, but after it's signed into law, he can't go in and change it. This is not how this happens. This is extraconstitutional, meaning outside the Constitution. It's the law of the land now. He just can't decide willy-nilly when it is and when it isn't...So what we have here is another change in Obamacare, which we're told is now the law, and therefore can't be changed, we're told we can't repeal it. Obama himself said, "We can't repeal it," and the Republicans don't want anybody to have health care and all those lies that he tells. We can't repeal it 'cause it's the law of the land. Well, he is. He is in effect repealing or delaying parts of it that are harmful to him politically. Can't do this. Suing him? Somebody should. You let a Republican president try to do this, change legislation to benefit him at the next election. You wait and see how far he'd get.

One other thing to this, folks. This move today of delaying this whole business on the caps, out-of-pocket caps, expenses and so forth, this is going to really increase the profitability of insurance companies, for just this next year. The insurance companies are gonna be paying out far less. Their profits are gonna skyrocket. Now, I expect it will not be long until a bunch of far left extremist kook networks and websites figure this out, and they are going to start screaming bloody murder, and Obama knows this.

The thing about this, when I first learned of this today, that was the main point that confused me, because what Obama is doing here, make no mistake, he is delaying this implementation of consumer cost protections. Stop and think of that for just a second, now. In relationship to the elections in 2014, the Democrats want to win the House, hold the Senate, of course, he is delaying consumer cost protections. He is increasing insurance company profits. Why? How in the world is that going to help the Democrats? That's gonna anger a lot of people...There must be something worse. What's worse than this?

What's the other side? The other side is if this is not delayed, everybody's premiums are going to skyrocket. And it is clear to me that Obama has made his own cost benefit analysis, and the Democrats have decided that there is less damage to their electoral chances by delaying all this and making sure that insurance premiums don't skyrocket than the other way. So insurance company profits are going to be much higher this year when the left wing, all the pajama clad bloggers and the anonymous lunatics that post comments to their websites and the dummkopfs at MSNBC, I mean, profit is like showing Dracula the cross. Insurance companies are among the most hated of all capitalistic entities on the left.

So you combine increased profit for the hated insurance companies, and you are gonna have a bunch of really ticked off leftists. Then you tell them that the insurance company profits are gonna skyrocket because consumer cost protections are being delayed, you've gotta recipe here for genuine anger and disgust on the left. But on the other side of it, skyrocketing premiums for everybody. And they've obviously made the judgment that not delaying this presents them less of an obstacle than delaying it.

Now, go back to our last caller. Legally this can't be done. I'm alarmed at how many people simply sit here and accept it. "Oh, gonna delay that? Okay, fine." The president cannot do this. Our Constitution does not permit the president of the United States to willy-nilly decide what parts of a law he's gonna employ or implement and not. This is not legal, what Obama is doing and has done on three major previous occasions where this law is concerned. And while that's happening, the Republicans, some of them, are making noise about repealing it by way of not funding it in the next continuing resolution fight at the end of September. And the Democrats say, "You can't do that. It's the law of land. You can't tamper with it like that." Obama's even saying that, "You can't cancel a law. It's the law of the land. You can't defund it."

Why not? The president can decide the parts that hurt him politically are not gonna be implemented right now, can delay 'em. This is banana republic kind of stuff, folks, it really is...this is a dramatic violation of the Constitution.

Obama has already delayed more than one-third of the deadlines in Obamacare, and for a host of reasons. A, they can't meet them. B, it would be too damaging politically. And the media runs around, "Well, Obama, he's only doing it for the people. He's only doing it for everybody's benefit. There's nothing really to see here." You let any Republican president try this. You let a Republican president say, "I'm gonna delay that increase in food stamps. We can't afford it right now. I'm just gonna delay that." There would be smoke and fire and hell to pay, in the Democrat Party and in the media. And this is serious. This is a serious violation of law. This is a serious violation of the Constitution, to do this willy-nilly. And then you add to it Obama's doing it for his party's political benefit. That's the only reason this is being done.

And then the final point to be made is, here's this wonderful health care reform law that's supposed to be just compassionate and finally makes sense and be beneficial for everybody and make it accessible and affordable, it's so damn good, we can't dare let it be implemented. Maybe it isn't so damn good. Maybe it is an absolute disaster, and as long as there is an election out there in the future, we're gonna delay the disaster until after the election so that you people voting do not have the full scope of information at your disposal to make the decision on how you're gonna vote. This is what is going on. It is pure, raw partisanship and unconstitutionality. It really is.

So on one hand we have the insurance company profit. We're supposed to hate business if it makes money. Then on the other hand we have the typical employer cutting down and going part-time because they're losing profit. We're supposed to hate them for that too. We're supposed to hate business no matter what it does. The solution from King Hussein and his leftist friends is bring it all under government, then it's ok to redistribute to friends and get rid of enemies, because the state is their god who can do no wrong. When a business does anything, that's bad. But if it was turned into a branch of government, everyone gets buddy-buddy with the state, it'd magically be perfect and sunshine and rainbows just like Obama's scandal-free presidency.

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/13/Report-Zero-Attendees-at-OFA-Climate-Change-Rally

Report: Zero Attendees at Organizing for America Climate Change Rally

The event was part of the group's "Action August" activities that are seeking to promote policies Obama has indicated he will push for in his second term. OFA kicked off its "Action August" with a pro-Obamacare rally in Virginia that did a tad better--one person showed up to that rally.

The invitation to the Washington, D.C. rally has also been removed from OFA's website.

Looks like there's consensus here.

Some of that effective Obama-style spending at work. Someone must've forgot they needed to bus in unionists.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324653004578652012572932072.html

Get Ready for Sequester No. 2.

Democrats are willfully blowing the budget caps in a law they supported.

Only a few short months have passed since administration officials canvassed the country lamenting how automatic, across-the-board spending cuts would constrict important government services. We were told that programs like Head Start and food safety hung in the balance as the spending reductions known as sequestration kicked in (to do what Congress wasn't able to do through budget cutting).

Unfortunately, Senate Democrats seem to have forgotten their warnings because they are now all but ensuring that there will be a second act to this drama later this year.

The Democratic-controlled Senate Appropriations Committee is spending $91 billion above and beyond levels agreed to in the Budget Control Act of 2011. This irresponsible behavior sends us careening toward a new round of sequester cuts and fails to fulfill our obligation to responsibly allocate taxpayer dollars, opting instead to keep spending beyond our means.

The Budget Control Act didn't impose arbitrary caps. These are legal levels that all but two of the 16 Democrats on the Appropriations Committee voted for in 2011. Under the law, if the government spends more than the allotted limits set forth in the Budget Control Act, automatic government-wide spending cuts will be triggered—blindly trimming nearly every government account by the same margin, without regard for the services affected.

"We passed the Budget Control Act," Majority Leader Harry Reid said less than one year ago. "We've agreed to all those numbers. They're done." Yet Appropriations Committee members in the majority party are ignoring the law they supported, willfully blowing the budget caps.

The Senate's Democratic majority has decided to forego the only responsible way to "turn off the sequester," which would be to make the tough spending choices as each appropriations bill works through the committee. Instead, they have taken the easy way out and put us on a path toward another round of the very cuts the president spent much of this year railing against.

When this happens, I'm confident the administration and its allies will renew those dire warnings about severe spending cuts looming over their agencies. And when they do, they'll know just who to blame. The Senate Democrats will own the next sequester.

President Obama has called on Congress to use a scalpel rather than an ax to address government spending. That is exactly what my Republican colleagues and I have advocated as members of the Appropriations Committee. But the idea was rejected by the Democratic majority in favor of overspending. I hope members of the president's own party remember this when they tell Americans why we're facing another round of avoidable sequester cuts.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324769704579010883098257024.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

New Frontiers in Sexual Equality

Lauren Rankin of TruthOut.com has a curious idea about how to broaden the appeal of the pro-abortion cause. "Abortion rights activists have overlooked and dismissed a very important reality," Rankin writes: "Not everyone who has an abortion is a woman." (A hat tip to Jack Coleman of NewsBusters.com for the tip.)

Our first thought was that someone needs to have a talk with her about the birds and the bees, or maybe sit her down to watch "South Park." But it turns out she doesn't quite mean it literally:

"Prior to a deeper understanding and problematizing of gender and the way that it works, in our social construction, only women had abortions because only women could get pregnant. But in 2013, we should know better, and we need to do better.

"At this crucial moment for reproductive freedom and abortion access, the abortion rights movement stands at yet another crossroads: How do we adequately address and include those who have abortions but are not women?

"We must acknowledge and come to terms with the implicit cissexism in assuming that only women have abortions. Trans men have abortions. People who do not identify as women have abortions. They deserve to be represented in our advocacy and activist framework."

She goes on to describe the abortion-having nonwomen as "gender-non-conforming people and others who were Designated Female at Birth (DFAB)." In other words, they're women who're confused about their sexual identity. (What do they call themselves if they give birth? Fathers? Mothers? How about "others"?) Anyway, apparently Rankin thinks the idea of such persons having children will persuade broad segments of the American electorate to put aside their misgivings about abortion.

I'd recommend she get her head examined, before she starts spouting off about how unicorns need abortions too.

Really is sad how woman's rights have gone from suffrage to things like this. Instead of turning to solve other problems, we have to suffer through retards who invent new races/sexes just to cause problems, and make a mockery out of civil rights in the process.

[Tails82]

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324139404579012742246337448.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories

The relationship between the U.S. and Egypt's military government is breaking down, diminishing Washington's influence as the country's leadership violently routs its opposition and narrowing the Obama administration's options.

Egyptian officials, as well as many other Arab leaders, say they believe the U.S. misunderstands the Brotherhood's threat, and what they said is the movement's unwillingness to responsibly engage in Egypt's political process.

Many Egyptian officials argue that the Brotherhood is a terrorist organization that is playing a direct role in stoking violence, which the Brotherhood denies. These officials say the Brotherhood refused to call off sit-ins, which in part precipitated Wednesday's crackdown by the Egyptian security forces on opposition encampments.

A senior Egyptian official in Cairo called the U.S. position "ridiculous. They need to understand the situation on the ground, and that people here are scared," the official said. "The Muslim Brotherhood has committed political suicide."

Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, said in an interview that the crackdown compelled the U.S. to cut off military aid and underlined what he called a "colossal failure" by the Obama administration in influencing Egypt's generals, who have been "basically ignoring us."

Washington's closest allies in the Middle East, including Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, meanwhile, don't want the U.S. to cut off support.

Israel has argued to the Obama administration that support for the Egyptian military is a fundamental part of the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement. Arab leaders, meanwhile, believe the Muslim Brotherhood poses a threat to secular governments throughout the region.

Senior U.S. officials said they intensified efforts over the past week to engage Egypt's military and political opposition to try to find a path out of the political impasse and avert violence...Egyptian officials said they reached the opposite conclusion. "We bent over backwards to bring in the Brotherhood," said the Egyptian official in Cairo. "No responsible government could take any more of this."

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/14/liberal_reaction_to_the_missouri_rodeo_clown_is_akin_to_the_radical_muslim_response_to_a_mohammed_cartoon

Liberal Reaction to the Missouri Rodeo Clown is Akin to the Radical Muslim Response to a Mohammed Cartoon

It is as though President Obama is a messiah or is a god and this little thing that happened at the Missouri State Fair is a defamation, a denunciation, almost a religious sacrilege that took place...I mean, this is over the top. And the way people are caving on this in Missouri, instead of standing up and pointing out this for what it is. This wasn't a sacrilege; it's a joke, for crying out loud. And presidents are laughed at, and they're poked fun of. Ask George W. Bush. Ask Ronald Reagan...What do we have, a president of the United States who is above all this? We have a president who's above criticism, above being mocked, above being laughed at? We have not just a president, we have an entire Democrat political party and the American left which thinks that they are so damn special that they cannot be mocked, they cannot be made fun of.

You people on the left, I know you don't have the capacity for shame, but this is just absolutely -- a clown now fearing for his life? Everybody involved in the fair quitting. The state of Missouri acting like it's profoundly embarrassed to be alive. A bunch of people with nothing better on their hands to do, running around trying to make a federal, big, gigantic issue out of this.

And I said not long ago, don't look for some major tsunami type, tumultuous political event. It isn't gonna be that. And then I told a little j ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ ✔oke, no doubt irritated the left. I said, it's gonna be something along the lines of Obama dissing the latest CD from Justin Timberlake and ticking off the low-information crowd. Folks, there are series of things out there -- I'll go into them in some detail. Yesterday, we had the audio of Kris Jenner, the Kardashian mother ripping into Obama for making fun of her daughter. Obama was holding up her daughter and her husband as examples of how not to be.

So the president can dish it out, but he can't take it, and his defenders can't take it, and his party can't take it. You imagine being wound so damn tight that what happens at the State Fair in Missouri...We've got people out there that are -- do we have a call about this? Somebody called and said it was like the KKK out there? Jennifer, thanks for the call. I appreciate it. Somebody that was at the state fair is describing it like a KKK rally. Now, come on, folks. This is getting so far out of hand. This, as I said at the top of the program, this clown has now been banned for life. We have put a man in jail for supposedly producing an anti-Muslim video that caused four deaths in Benghazi, that he had nothing to do with. In the Netherlands, we had the Mohammed cartoons, and all hell broke loose. These are the people out there preaching tolerance. We've gotta be tolerant of gay marriage. We have to be tolerant of this, tolerant of that, tolerant of all this crap.

They are the most intolerant, and they have absolutely no sense of humor. They cannot take a punch. They cannot take a joke. And not only can they not take it, they then embark on an effort to ruin the lives of people who do nothing more than harmlessly offend them. Full disclosure, I have not seen anything but a still picture of this clown. I've not seen the act, I haven't watched any video, 'cause I'm not big on website video. It's just me. I've not watched it. Just seen the still. And it's clear to me what this is all about. This is all about race. And it's all about the fact that we're not gonna make fun of the first black president. If this were Bill Clinton in the White House and that clown had put on a Clinton mask, this would not have even been a story.

Now we've got these people running around, everybody scared to death, running around in literal fear if they don't get on the bandwagon that the clown needs to be destroyed the fair needs to be shut down, and Missouri needs to secede from the country. This is no different than this irrational reaction to the Mohammed cartoons. It's exactly what this is. This is just absurd. This is so over the top. It really bothers me, the whole scope of censorship and the First Amendment.

A rodeo clown has been banned for life...So here's another job destroyed because of Obama, which we ought to be used to by now.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/14/uk_telegraph_is_rush_limbaugh_guest_editing_the_new_york_times

The UK Telegraph asks today if I am editing the New York Times. Yes, they do. The UK Telegraph, that's the lead story in a big story. The New York Times, for some reason, has done a thorough expose on the Clinton Global Initiative. They have ripped the Clinton charity to shreds in the New York Times. I'm telling you, I don't want to make too big a deal out of any one of these things, but there are a lot of little, bitty things starting to align. Is Rush Limbaugh editing the New York Times? This piece essentially points out that this thing is losing money left and right, it raises money out the wazoo, it's running deficits, and the Clintons are getting rich.

The New York Times is pointing out that the Clintons seem to be one of the few bunches of people that get wealthy giving money away. Most philanthropy is people giving money away, donating. The Clintons are getting rich doing it. It is a fascinating thing. Now, when the UK Telegraph asks, "Is Rush Limbaugh editing the New York Times?" can I translate that for you? What that means is, "Is the New York Times telling the truth about something? Is the New York Times actually doing news?" is what that means...it's one of the most amazing things. People throw money at this guy, and obviously this foundation has as one of its purposes a stage setter for a Hillary presidency or presidential campaign. The New York Times also suggests that while the Clinton charity, the Clinton Foundation is running huge deficits despite all these donations, the Clintons always seem to be doing very well. The Clintons always find a way to profit from the philanthropy.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324139404579012873110584750.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Within days of President Obama's decision last week to appoint a civil-liberties "adversary" inside the U.S.'s antiterrorism surveillance program, a federal judge created a "monitor" to oversee the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk anticrime program. Both these decisions, if allowed to take full effect, run a significant risk that violence will return or increase—as the terrorism of al Qaeda or as murder and assault in New York City.

If that happens—and don't bet against it—a liberal president and a liberal federal judge will have brought back to life one of modern liberalism's worst nightmares: the belief that Democrats can't be trusted with national security or the control of violent crime. They're soft on security.

In New York City a handful of Democrats—canaries in the party's mine shaft—are competing to succeed Mike Bloomberg. For months, New Yorkers of all political persuasions have been asking sotto voce if the city's 20-year miracle of urban tranquility under Rudy Giuliani and Mr. Bloomberg will vanish if a left-wing Democrat (the city allows no other kind) becomes mayor.

The subject can't be avoided because the city's irrepressible, activist left made weakening the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policies a litmus test for winning the Democratic primary next month. All the Democratic candidates have saluted the movement to downgrade stop-and-frisk.

A liberal Democratic mayor is unsettling for New Yorkers who've lived in the city long enough not to have to Google the meaning of "Bernhard Goetz" or explain the legendary New York Post headline—"Dave, Do Something!" (shown nearby).

Mr. Goetz was the vigilante who shot several muggers on a subway train in 1984. "Dave" was Mayor David Dinkins, who in the early 1990s presided over a city in the grip of civic disorder.

A totemic figure from this dystopian period was an Upper West Side mental patient named Larry Hogue. I've always thought that Larry Hogue got Rudy Giuliani elected. Hogue, a deinstitutionalized psychotic, prowled the famously liberal Upper West Side streets off and on for 20 years, hurling concrete at car windshields and once shoving a girl in front of a truck. The city couldn't or wouldn't do anything about him. There's no way former federal prosecutor Giuliani could have become mayor in 1994 unless a lot of Upper West Siders voted for Rudy—then walked outside to tell their friends, "Of course, I voted for Dinkins."

U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin decided not to wait for the November mayoral election to bring back the 1980s, or even the 1960s. That's when criticism of liberal belief on security matters emerged, notably in Richard Nixon's victorious 1968 "law and order" campaign. This critique argues that when liberals weigh the reality of physical threat to home and hearth against hyper-abstract interpretations of constitutional rights, abstraction wins. The Scheindlin decision, handed down Monday, is a classic of liberal abstraction on security.

New York has its lowest murder rate since the early 1960s, a big reason for the city's 50 million meandering tourists last year. This tranquility of pedestrian life is presumably one point of an effective policing strategy. Ask Chicago. Not so for Judge Scheindlin, who discusses murder in footnote 210. She describes a "17% drop in index crime reports between 2003 and 2012, and a 30% drop in reported murders." No matter. "I emphasize again," the judge insists, "that this Opinion takes no position on whether stop and frisk contributed to the decline in crime."...Rather than strike a balance, a modus vivendi, liberals compulsively pull back too far on security. That's what Judge Scheindlin has done on urban crime and what Mr. Obama now looks to be doing on terror.

In the 1990s, New York City's voters tossed out Democrats ideologically unable to provide security. Voters know that crime and terror are real. And that unopposed, violent crime and terror always return.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/14/nbc_news_just_found_out_obamacare_costs_jobs

NBC News Just Found Out Obamacare Costs Jobs

HOLT: We're learning more tonight about some of the unintended consequences of the Affordable Care Act, which the president himself now calls Obamacare. Some workers who thought it meant they'd finally get some health insurance are instead getting hit with a double whammy: no insurance and a pay cut.

RUSH: By the way, this is another thing that is starting to happen. Now, these guys are how many months late to this? But they're getting there now. And I've got a story here from St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I mean, this paper would probably lead the movement to have Missouri kick the state fair out of the state. The Post-Dispatch, they're just a good old liberal paper. And even they: "Low Premium, High Deductible Health Plans Are Endangered by Affordable Care Act." What that means is, if you like your plan, if you like your insurance, you're not gonna get to keep it.

Now, granted, they are years late. And this is why they're dying. They used to be first in discovering this stuff and telling people about it. But now they're part of the regime and driving the regime's agenda. So, anyway, here's Lisa Myers, and we have two sound bites. She is the investigative correspondent, and we have two bites on her report. Here's the first one.

MYERS: Luke Perfect has worked at a Subway franchise in Maine for a decade. But he recently was told his hours would be cut to 29 a week.

PERFECT: It's very tough. I’m scratching by as it is with overtime.

MYERS: Luke's boss, Loren Goodridge, who owns 21 Subway franchises, says it's all because of the new health care law. Employers must provide health insurance to anyone working 30 or more hours a week. Goodridge says his small business can't afford that.

...

MYERS: At St. Petersburg College in Florida, 250 part-time professors have had their hours reduced.

BILL LAW: It has been the hardest decision I've had to make, and I hope that we can work our way through it to a better answer than we're able to give today.

MYERS: Part-time math professor Tracy Sullivan lost half her income.

TRACY SULLIVAN: I never thought it would impact me directly. I was stunned when I got the e-mail.

RUSH: A part-time math professor didn't know that Obamacare was gonna convert her job to part-time. It's stunning. And furthermore, insult to injury, she found out in an e-mail.

She could have found out watching the news or listening to this show. She could have found out this was gonna happen months ago. Just boggles the mind. That's why I try to pretend to be one of these people when they first learn about this. They're thinking it's gonna be free. Look what she said. "I never thought it would impact me. I never thought all this stuff was gonna impact me. And then I got the e-mail, and I said, 'Whoa.'"

www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2013/08/13/bono-capitalism-not-aid

U2 lead singer Bono isn't the typical celebrity when it comes to politics, even if he's as outspoken as any of his fellow stars. He's heaped praise on former President George W. Bush for the leader's efforts to help the African continent in its battle against AIDS, as politically incorrect a position as one can take in famous circles.

Now, Bono is speaking up in a manner that would make his famous peers go slack-jawed. He says capitalism is the key to helping the poor, not merely handouts.

“Aid is just a stopgap,” he said. “Commerce [and] entrepreneurial capitalism take more people out of poverty than aid. We need Africa to become an economic powerhouse.”

[Tails82]

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324823804579014750170179112.html

Did the IRS Ever Stop Targeting?

The Internal Revenue Service still isn't processing tea party applications for tax-exempt status, according to an IRS agent recently interviewed by the House Ways and Means Committee.

Despite President Obama's promise to "put in place safeguards to make sure this kind of behavior can't happen again," it's unclear whether any new safeguards have been applied at all. The agent, whose job is to screen applications for potential political activity, said he and his coworkers have not been given new guidance on how to process such applications.

Yes, Mr. Obama made a show of telling the IRS and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to end the targeting, but the president in recent speeches has also taken to dismissing what he calls Washington's "phony scandals." That's a clear message to IRS staff—both political and professional—about how seriously they should take the work of reform.

The only phony thing I see is an illegitimate president.

blog.heritage.org/2013/08/15/planned-parenthood-to-receive-over-655000-as-navigators-for-obamacare/

This morning, the Obama Administration announced the award of over $655,000 in taxpayer grants to three Planned Parenthood affiliates to act as “navigators,” helping enroll Americans in federally facilitated insurance exchanges under Obamacare. Those grants are part of $67 million in federal funds that will go to over 100 organizations to help promote the health care law.

Planned Parenthood clinics across the country could stand to receive even larger influxes of taxpayer dollars from state and federal coffers as more of Obamacare is implemented. As Heritage’s Alyene Senger points out, fears of low enrollment in Obamacare exchanges have prompted both federal and state governments to begin funding an army of taxpayer-compensated community groups that will facilitate entrance into the health care marketplaces.

Just this week, the District of Columbia announced it would give $375,000 in taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan D.C. to act as an “assister” by enrolling citizens in the District’s health care exchange. The local affiliate was one of 35 community groups to receive a total of over $6 million in government funding to promote the health care law within the District.

At Planned Parenthood’s annual fundraising gala this year, President Obama lauded the group’s efforts in helping pass the coercive health care law. He particularly praised the group’s work in developing the preventative services mandate that is currently trampling on many employers’ fundamental freedoms by forcing them to provide coverage of abortion-inducing drugs and contraception in their health plans.

With over half a billion in current government funding in one year alone, Planned Parenthood hardly needs additional taxpayer dollars, especially as it faces mounting accusations of fraud, allegedly neglects the safety of women, and expands its provision of abortion services.

An organization that calls killing people "health care" wants to force millions of Americans on these "health care" exchanges.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324085304579010952028179612.html

Arbitrary Antitrust

The shareholders of American Airlines and US Airways LCC -2.86% must wonder what hit them. The same antitrust gnomes who waved through the mergers of Delta and Northwest, as well as United and Continental, are now trying to block the creation of a merged competitor. The airlines can be forgiven if they feel aggrieved by arbitrary antitrust enforcement.

The Delta-Northwest and United-Continental combines had about the same amount of route overlap as do American Airlines and US Airways. And the merger of low-cost competitors Southwest Airlines and AirTran, which Justice also allowed, had more overlap.

As for international travel, the two airlines seeking to merge have struggled to compete for global corporate business against the extensive international networks of Delta and United-Continental. As a combined entity, American and US Airways could leverage their position in the U.S. market to create more international competition. Doesn't the U.S. want three globally competitive U.S. airlines?

All of this suggests that Justice's real motivation is that airlines are finally profitable again, which must mean something nefarious is going on. Assistant Attorney General for antitrust William Baer declared this week that "neither airline needs this merger to succeed." Since when is that a standard for antitrust law, and how would he know?

The airline deregulation of the 1970s has been a great success for consumers, with fares still lower after inflation than under the price controls set by the Civil Aeronautics Board. Yet for the airline industry this has meant periods of profitability followed by losses and often bankruptcy (195 bankruptcies since 1978). The bankrupts then often dump pension benefits on the taxpayers via the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. American's parent, AMR Corp., hasn't even emerged from its 2011 bankruptcy filing.

In 2001, Justice blocked the planned merger of U.S. Airways and United because the antitrust seers claimed the deal would reduce service, raise prices and limit competition. By the end of 2002, both airlines were in Chapter 11, which was hardly a boon to competition.

It's true that after the recent mergers and as the economy has recovered, planes are fuller and fares are up. But industry competition is increasing as fewer but stronger competitors compete in more markets. The Journal's Scott McCartney found that over a recent 12-year period airline ticket prices rose more slowly than general inflation, even while fuel prices were rising.

The U.S. airline market has long had excess capacity, and neither service nor availability have been helped by the boom-and-bust airline cycle. Especially with Delta and United strengthened, airline competition will be enhanced by a third global competitor, along with JetBlue, Southwest and various strong regional players. Even the unions agree and support this merger.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323477604579001313575250006.html

The brilliant and charming foreign-policy analyst Roberta Wohlstetter, who passed away in 2007 at age 94, knew how to coin a phrase..."What has interested me from the beginning," she wrote in the essay, "is the role the victim often plays in deceiving himself." This deception, she reasoned, has something to do with the discomfort of recognizing the truth. To avoid such discomfort, the victim deludes himself to explain away a threat.

The British, she wrote, were masters of self-deception throughout the interwar years (1919-38). In a period characterized by wholesale naval disarmament and an international treaty outlawing war, British planners needed a reason to keep their defense budget down. They found one in the "Ten Year Rule," adopted in August 1919.

The British assumed, on an annual basis, that no major war would break out in the subsequent 10 years. They ran that assumption right up to the onset of World War II, Roberta explained. British intelligence's estimate of the number of German aircraft was kept low because making it higher would require not-so-pleasurable action of countering the looming threat, and the war-weary British were focused on domestic issues. Their reluctance to recognize that, by the mid-1930s, Hitler had rather openly amassed an astonishing air-power advantage almost proved their undoing.

This near-catastrophe, Roberta concluded, had to do with the "cherished beliefs and comforting assumptions about the good faith and common interests" of potential adversaries. In effect, the British failed to separate the signal from the noise.

Today, it is the United States that is war weary...President Obama assures us that the core of al Qaeda is on a path to defeat, that it is now a "diffuse" threat, dispersed from Syria to Somalia to Yemen to the Maghreb and wreaking havoc largely in those lands.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the victory party. The enemy fought back. Islamic radicals took quick advantage of a strategic shift in the battle and flooded into the power vacuum created by the Arab Spring. With force and guile, they push toward their objective: Get the U.S. out of the region and take over a state. What better way to further that goal than to attack the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing four Americans on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America.

So why, after two years of chaos caused by the Arab Spring, was the Obama administration unable to separate the Benghazi signal from the noise? We now know that there was a flood of advance warning about the danger to U.S. interests across the region before the attack on the U.S. consulate. Those CIA "cable(s) to stations on 9/11 security," referenced obliquely in White House emails, may hold evidence to the severity of the threat.

For those in the Obama administration who want to believe the world is no longer a dangerous place, holding close to "cherished beliefs and comforting assumptions" about the nature of radical Islam can indeed provide respite from the war on terror.

But in the brutal world of the Islamic radical, not everyone can be trusted to act with reason. The scramble to close 19 embassies from West Africa to South Asia and airlift dozens of Americans out of Yemen last week raises the awkward question of who has who on the run? It also exposes the essence of the administration's strategic confusion about the nature of the conflict.

In this case, the proposition "the war is over" is what Roberta called a "self-annihilating prophecy." Such prophecies, she wrote, can be suicidal in two ways: They endanger both the prophecy and the prophet.

I really feel sorry for Obama voters who thought he was the messiah coming to cure the world and stop all fighting with his magic negro powers. It gets sadder every day to see the deluded, egotistical nut in the white house still believe in it himself.

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WUHAN, China—On a visit here in July, Chinese President Xi Jinping went to a lakeside villa where Mao Zedong spent summers in the 1950s enjoying such luxuries as a swimming pool and air conditioning. Opening a new exhibition there that makes no mention of the millions who died under Mao's leadership, Mr. Xi declared that the villa should be a center for educating youth about patriotism and revolution.

A week earlier, he went to a village from which Mao attacked Beijing in 1949. There, Mr. Xi vowed that "our red nation will never change color."

It isn't just Mr. Xi's rhetoric that has taken on a Maoist tinge in recent months. He has borrowed from Mao's tactical playbook, launching a "rectification" campaign to purify the Communist Party, while tightening limits on discussion of ideas such as democracy, rule of law and enforcement of the constitution.

Mr. Xi's apparent lurch to the left comes as Chinese authorities prepare for the coming trial of Bo Xilai, the former party rising star who led a Maoist revival movement until his dramatic downfall last year. Two of Mr. Bo's lawyers said they expected the trial where he faces corruption charges to take place next week. Before he was detained, Mr. Bo rejected allegations of corruption.

The Chinese president's Maoist leanings have dismayed many advocates of political reform, who hoped that Mr. Bo's downfall signaled a repudiation of his autocratic leadership style and might lead to a strengthening of the rule of law and other limits on party power.

Mr. Xi's use of Maoist imagery, rhetoric and strategy sets him apart from his two predecessors—who both emphasized collective leadership—and suggests to many party insiders that he won't pursue meaningful political reform during the 10 years he is expected to stay in power.

In fact, he appears to be doubling down on China's authoritarian political model, while borrowing elements of Mr. Bo's Maoist revivalism and media-savvy politics to boost his own stature and revive public support for the party, according to political insiders and analysts.

Last month Mr. Xi launched a yearlong campaign to strengthen and purify the party that for many insiders is a conscious echo of Mao's "rectification" movements to purge rivals and enforce ideological discipline.

The new Chinese leadership has also ordered officials to combat the spread of "seven serious problems" including universal values, press freedom, civil society and judicial independence.

At the same time, state media have published a series of attacks on civil society and "constitutionalism"—the idea that the party's power be limited by China's existing constitution.

Human-rights groups say police have detained dozens of political activists in recent weeks, including Xu Zhiyong, a constitutional lawyer who has called for officials to declare their financial assets publicly. The government hasn't commented on Mr. Xu's detention.

Mr. Xi's attitude toward political reform is a critical issue in China today because the country may be entering a prolonged period of slower economic growth and mounting public discontent over environmental problems, patchy public services and widespread corruption.

Mr. Xi spent much of his first few months in office trying to reunify the party by appealing to different interest groups, including advocates of limited political reform such as the sons of Hu Yaobang, a reformist party chief who was close to Mr. Xi's father but was ousted by hard-liners in 1987.

But people in the latter camp were alarmed when Mr. Xi made a speech in December in which he declared that the Soviet Union had collapsed because of a lack of ideological conviction among its leaders, and because there was no "real man" to stop the process.

If America will not lead, who will?

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/16/america_s_divide_is_cultural_not_racial

The Washington Post says, "Obama Rodeo Clown Incident Illustrates Nation's Continued Racial Divide." Now, the purpose of this story in the Washington Post is to show what a bunch of redneck, right-wing, racist hicks were at the fair. One of the most telling signs that there were a bunch of redneck, right-wing, racists at the Missouri State Fair was this: "The Wednesday crowd at the fair, which lasts 11 days in remote Sedalia, was overwhelmingly white. Some vendors played right-wing talk radio from boom boxes at their tents."

Weeeeeeell, there you have it.

They had boom boxes with talk radio on it! They had to be racist. If they'da had boom boxes with Jay-Z playing out there about hos and b-i-itches, it wouldn't have been racist, would it? No, it would have been art. That would have been high culture...It's really striking. You know, the divide in this country is not racial, it's cultural. On one side, you have these holier-than-thou, phony, pseudo-intellectual elites who look with contempt on everybody who's different than they are, all the while preaching tolerance and understanding for the minorities of our country...So you have the Missouri State Fair, and there's a rodeo tradition, and it's been done with every president. Bush 41, many other presidents, celebrities.

I must say, even the AP managed to report this part a couple of days ago, and they got fairly close to it. It's been ignored, but the AP did report it..."They often dress as sitting presidents," Mr. Berry said. That's even in the AP story, and the joke is not that the clown was the president. That's not the joke. They drag out this clown, this person dressed like a dummy, and all of a sudden the dummy just takes off running, frightened by an onrushing bull, and the clowns always dress up as political figures...

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/16/cnn_ropes_me_into_the_rodeo_clown_story

JONES: The Missouri chapter of the NAACP wants the Secret Service and the Justice Department to investigate the incident. (back in studio) I spoke with the Secret Service about this, and a spokesman there told me they're aware of the incident but they've determined that this behavior does not rise to the level of a threat. The Justice Department has declined to comment at this time.

RUSH: They had to call the Secret Service! They had to call the Secret Service to find out that this act does not rise to the level of a threat? The NAACP is calling this a hate crime. It's a clown! Anyway, another little clarification. I haven't spent much time defending the act of the clown. What gets me is this insane, irrational overreaction to it. Now that, my friends, has been my focus.

Because, to me, the way the left in this country is behaving is no different than radical Islamists when they see Mohammed being made fun of in cartoons. That's how irrational the left in this country is being over this This is a nothing thing. Clowns make fun of things! Clowns are comedians! And the clown goes out wearing an Obama mask, and because Obama happens to be African-American, we've got a hate crime now?

Of course all this is done on purpose. This is all about silencing and eliminating any opposition. This is embarrassing. This is a national embarrassment, the reaction to this...We also have a Washington Post story: "Obama Rodeo Clown Incident Illustrates Nation's Continued Racial Divide." It does no such thing!

It indicates the absolute intolerance and Stalin-like mentality of the American left!...Here's the head of the Missouri NAALCP, the National Association for the Advancement of Liberal Colored People, yesterday in Las Vegas, talking about the situation with the rodeo clown. She is named Mary Ratliff, and here's what she had to say about the clown wearing the Obama mask.

RATLIFF: It is an outrage. Obama has been treated certainly than any other president. I think that a hate crime occurred. I think a hate crime occurs when you use a person's race to despict (sic) who they are and to make degrading comments, gestures, et cetera against them.

RUSH: See? It's not possible therefore to not be racist if you're gonna put on an Obama mask, and there are plenty sold for Halloween. How can you not wear an Obama mask that makes him look like an African-American?

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323977304579000790062317098.html

A strong candidate for the most expensive policy blunder of recent years would have to be the mandate to blend corn ethanol and other biofuels into the nation's gasoline supply. This month even the Environmental Protection Agency essentially acknowledged that the program is increasingly unworkable and costly to consumers. The EPA just won't do much to fix it.

When these mandates were enacted in 2007 under George W. Bush, biofuels were sold as the wonder-fuel of the future: a cheap and plentiful domestic energy source to compete with OPEC oil and reduce global warming. Six years later none of those predictions have panned out.

One of the biggest debacles has been the law's requirement that the oil and gas industry mix cellulosic ethanol—made from the likes of switch grass and wood chips—into gasoline. The original law mandated the use of one billion gallons of cellulosic fuel in 2013, with even higher levels through 2022. This may have been the worst government forecast in history, which is saying something. Even with taxpayer subsidies, total cellulosic volume in 2012 was about 20,000 gallons. The government was off by a mere 99.9%.

In its annual program review this month, EPA reduced the mandate to six million gallons from 14 million. But even that is several million gallons above what can be bought anywhere. So the oil and gas industry has to pay what amounts to a fine (mostly passed on to consumers) for not buying enough cellulosic fuel that doesn't exist.

In January the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down EPA's 2012 cellulosic mandate as unrealistically high. The court also slapped EPA's enforcement as: "Do a good job, cellulosic fuel producers. If you fail, we'll fine your customers." The program should be terminated.

The EPA also updated its corn ethanol mandates. This year the overall biofuel quota stands at 16.55 billion gallons, up from 15.2 billion in 2012. As we explained in "The Ethanol Tax" on July 20, because gasoline consumption over the past six years has been much lower that the government predicted, refiners are now nearing a "blend wall" of a maximum 10% ethanol (E10) per gallon.

A survey by AAA found that only 5% of vehicles are approved for higher levels of ethanol under manufacturer warranty, so many motorists won't buy gas with higher ethanol content. In order to comply with the federal law, the oil and gas industry has to buy credits that spiked at more than $1 a gallon for the ethanol it can't use. This raises the cost of gasoline at the pump by an estimated five to 10 cents a gallon.

The EPA acknowledged that its ethanol mandate exceeds the level that can be reasonably blended, but it told refiners: tough luck, buy credits on the market. This is a back-door tax on gasoline and Congress should call the Administration on it...If ethanol is the miracle fuel its defenders say it is, why must its use be mandated? The effect of the quotas has been to raise gas prices and make food more expensive as corn goes to fuel rather than food. A rash of studies also shows no net reduction or even an increase in greenhouse gas emissions from corn ethanol.

But no matter how indefensible the program, no one in the White House and few in Congress want to take on Big Corn. Americans should remember whom to thank the next time they pay $4 a gallon at the pump.

As if we needed any more evidence that the equality movement is insane: I hope you like the idea of partially blind law enforcement!

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324823804579015142279963258.html

For the latest bureaucratic folly courtesy of the Obama administration, look no further than the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which in its liberal wisdom ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation last month to hire a partially blind G-man. So now the bureaucrats know better than doctors who can safely handle a gun?

Jeremy Nathan, a 1993 West Point graduate with a distinguished service record, developed an eye condition during his Army service. Multiple surgeries failed, and in 1997, doctors gave him an artificial right eye. After an honorable discharge and law school, Mr. Nathan applied to work as a Special Agent for the FBI. He received a conditional offer of employment, which was rescinded when he failed his medical exam.

Mr. Nathan filed an EEOC appeal, claiming discrimination under the 1973 Rehabilitation Act and that he could compensate for his blind spot by turning his head. After years of litigation, the matter landed before the EEOC commission. In a party-line 3-2 vote, the commission last month ordered the FBI to "reinstate" Mr. Nathan's job offer, commence a background check on him and notify him on "upcoming New Agent training classes."

Their logic? EEOC Chairwoman Jacqueline Berrien, along with Democratic colleagues Chai Feldblum and Jenny Yang, claim the FBI didn't perform an adequate "individualized assessment," essentially ignoring the testimony of the FBI Training Academy's Program Manager and long-standing FBI procedures. They also claimed Mr. Nathan had "special skills" from his Army service, without explaining how those skills eliminate the threat the FBI believes a partially blind man with a gun would pose to himself and his colleagues in the field.

In an unusual public dissent, Republican Commissioner Constance Barker wrote that "this decision is particularly disturbing to me because of the implications it will have for other law enforcement agencies," such as the Secret Service, Marshal Service and Customs and Border Patrol—all of which have "vision standards." If the EEOC is unilaterally raising the standards for "individual assessments" of disabilities, the Nathan decision could have implications for federal, state and local law enforcement agencies across the country, never mind the fees lawyers will rake in as they litigate those disputes.

The Berrien EEOC is increasingly acting as a law unto itself, remaking antidiscrimination law in the image that it sees fit. Then again, what else do you expect from a commission whose majority now includes a former NAACP lawyer, a former ACLU attorney, and a former partner at a prominent class action law firm?

It was Orson Scott Card who compared gay marriage to blind people being given drivers licenses. I suppose Obama would think that's a good idea too, in light of this. Once you throw out all standards, toss reason out the window as this administration did a long time ago, why not?

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Progressive Property Crimes

Bloomberg View's Matthew Klein offers an amusing application of Keynesian logic. He notes a New York Post story about a ritzy Park Avenue apartment building that has been the target of several burglaries. While conceding that "crime is destructive to the social order and discourages people from making long-term investments," Klein argues that the short-term effect of large-dollar property crimes is stimulative for the economy:

"When the thief fences $10,000 or $100,000 in jewelry from an heir who barely knows what he owns, the thief will feel much richer and spend most of that money. Maybe he will buy a new car, or go on a bender at strip clubs, or rent a villa in a beleaguered European country. The heir might be somewhat upset, but it's hard to believe that he will suddenly cut back on his spending because he needs to recoup a relatively small loss. In fact, the heir might end up spending more money as he tries to make his apartment safer from future robberies."

Klein acknowledges the argument isn't original. He quotes the economist John Cochrane, who in 2009 made essentially the same argument with respect to a massive fraud: "If you believe the Keynesian argument for stimulus, you should think Bernie Madoff is a hero. He took money from people who were saving it, and gave it to people who most assuredly were going to spend it."

This is all somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but Klein's conclusion seems serious:

"Cochrane writes as if our moral revulsion at Madoff's fraud will overwhelm the logic of his interpretation of Keynes. I can't help but wonder whether redistributing a little bit of wealth from those who have more money than they know what to do with to those who are eager to spend whatever they can get would make the rest of us better off--at least temporarily. Maybe we could accomplish the same sort of effect by tweaking the tax code. At least that way we could avoid rewarding people who break the law."

Behold, a Keynesian proof that taxation is theft.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324769704579006594068764238.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Lincoln vs Obama

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Egypt Rebukes Foreign Press for 'Biased' Coverage

State Information Service Says Reports Have Favored Morsi Supporters

"Egypt is feeling severe bitterness towards some Western media coverage that is biased to the Muslim Brotherhood and ignores shedding light on violent and terror acts that are perpetrated by this group in the form of intimidation operations and terrorizing citizens," said the unsigned statement.

Mr. Hegazi also praised the Egyptian military and police's handling of two bloody incidents in the past week -- breaking up two Cairo protest camps on Wednesday and ending a standoff at a mosque on Saturday. At least 600 people died as the camps were dispersed, and 173 died in clashes on Friday and Saturday.

Anger against the foreign press is of a piece with the growing preoccupation among Egyptians over foreign governments' recent criticism of security forces' deadly crackdowns on Islamists.

President Barack Obama's decision on Thursday to cancel bi-annual military exercises with Egypt after the crackdown on the pro-Morsi encampments was met with widespread hostility here.

When authorities ousted Mr. Morsi on July 3, they moved immediately to shut down the Islamist channels that had often adopted pro-Morsi editorial lines.

The Egyptian public has since been treated to vitriolic anti-Islamist messages from both the public and private media. Television stations regualry refer to the Brotherhood as "terrorists" while accusing them of using heavy weapons against security forces and of associating with international terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda.

Such media outlets -- particularly the private channels owned by prominent businessmen with connections to the former regime of Hosni Mubarak -- have also helped fan anti-foreigner sentiment.

Guests on the privately owned satellite channels have reguarly accused foreign journalists of deliberately waging a disinformation campaign to aid Mr. Morsi's Islamist backers.

"The world was going to love us" number 582719

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323455104579014772169287210.html?mod=trending_now_4

Here is a sign that life is getting complicated for U.S. taxpayers with assets abroad: More of them are deciding they are better off cutting official ties with America.

In the first half of 2013, 1,809 people renounced their American citizenship or permanent-resident status, according to a tally by Andrew Mitchel, a tax lawyer who tracks U.S. data. At that pace, the 2013 total would double the previous high of 1,781 renunciations in 2011.

Daniel Kuettel, a Colorado native who lives near Zurich, says he gave up his U.S. citizenship in October because he feared he wouldn't be able to get a mortgage now that some Swiss banks are cutting ties with American clients.

"It was a really difficult decision. I had to think about what was best for me and my family, to reduce the risk," says Mr. Kuettel, a 41-year-old software developer. He says his income was below the limit the U.S. allows overseas taxpayers to exempt and he owed no U.S. taxes.

The increase in renunciations is one sign that ordinary Americans who have lived and worked abroad for years, as well as green-card holders in the U.S. and overseas, believe they are at growing risk because of the intensifying government pursuit of undeclared foreign assets.

U.S. officials are enforcing rules established by Congress—some widely ignored for years, and others added more recently—that threaten stiff penalties and even prison for failure to comply. The crackdown has brought more than $6 billion in taxes and penalties into U.S. coffers, and experts say another $5 billion is in the pipeline. A representative for the IRS declined to comment.

Much of the money comes from well-heeled taxpayers...But many U.S. taxpayers who aren't wealthy also are finding it harder to attend to routine financial matters abroad, because some foreign institutions don't want to face the cost of complying with U.S. requirements.

Unlike almost all other countries, the U.S. taxes citizens and permanent residents on all income, wherever it is earned in the world. So a U.S. taxpayer living in India could owe U.S. levies on income from a British investment.

While U.S. taxes on world-wide income have existed for decades, experts say laws regarding such income were seldom enforced.

That changed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in part because of concerns about terrorism...U.S. officials ramped up their campaign after the 2009 settlement with UBS. As part of the deal, the Swiss bank turned over the names of more than 4,000 U.S. taxpayers with secret accounts. Other banks have since made payments to the U.S. and named names.

If it happened under Bush, I suppose the biased press would call him an imperialist for spying on foreigners, and we'd have stories about how bad it was that people were renouncing their citizenship and how it was a sign that the whole world hated Bush and that he should step down.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323514404578650531794981790.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_RIGHTBelowPepperandSalt

NBC Parrots Iranian Propaganda: New 'Moderate' President 'Promising Sweeping Change'

On Monday's NBC Today, correspondent Ann Curry reported from Tehran on the installation of new Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, touting how the cleric "promises to change virtually everything Mahmoud Ahmandinejad has done."

In a similar report for Sunday's Nightly News, Curry declared that the transfer of power "appears full of goodwill" while teeing up Rouhani addressing the Iranian parliament. Wrapping up the segment, she proclaimed: "After his remarks, President Rouhani immediately named his entire cabinet, most fellow moderates. He was clearly signaling the direction he wants Iran to go and how fast."

Perhaps as significant as the new president's message is today's orchestration of the international press. This inauguration has turned into a world press event and really only for one reason – the world is worried Iran could soon have the bomb. And Iran gave the media a show. Its modern parliament a setting for a television spectacular.

While Curry cheered the post-Ahmadinejad era in Iran, she seemed to forget the fawning interview she conducted with the former Iranian dictator in 2011. At that time, she sympathized with Ahmadinejad's "grueling schedule" and asked him: "Why do you work so hard?"

Rouhani's supposed moderation has already been called into question. On Friday he launched into an anti-Israel rant: "The Zionist regime is a wound inflicted for years on the body of the Muslim world that must be cleansed."

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Hillary Clinton began her 2016 march to the White House last week, and it wasn't a promising debut. The former first lady and Senator used her first big policy speech since leaving the State Department to portray American election laws as fundamentally racist. The speech was longer on anecdotes than statistics, so allow us to fill in some of the holes.

"In 2013, so far, more than 80 bills restricting voting rights have been introduced in 31 states," Mrs. Clinton told her political base of lawyers at the American Bar Association. She portrayed these laws as part of an effort reaching back years to "disproportionately impact African-Americans, Latino and young voters." And she threw the Supreme Court in as part of this racist conspiracy, assailing its recent decision finding the "preclearance" section of the Voting Rights Act to be unconstitutional.

She claimed the High Court had "struck at the heart" of the law, though all it did was eliminate a section that had forced such states as Mississippi to meet higher legal burdens for election laws than other states with a worse current record of minority voter participation. "Now not every obstacle is related to race," Mrs. Clinton added, "but anyone who says that racial discrimination is no longer a problem in American elections must not be paying attention."

No one thinks racial discrimination has vanished from American life or the human condition. But as for minority voting, Mrs. Clinton is the one who hasn't been paying attention...black turnout has jumped in each of the last four presidential elections. In 2012, black turnout as a share of all eligible voters exceeded the turnout of non-Hispanic white voters—66.2% to 64.1%. Nearly five million more African-Americans voted in 2012 (17.8 million) than voted in 2000 (12.9 million). In both 2008 and 2012, black voters even exceeded their share of the eligible black voting age population. In 2012, blacks made up 12.5% of the eligible electorate but 13.4% of those voting.

Mrs. Clinton ignores all of this and focuses instead on anecdotes...North Carolina, she says, has this year "pushed through a bill that reads like the greatest hits of voter suppression." But that supposed horror show merely reduces early voting by a week, and bars same-day registration and extending voting hours by political whim. All of these are designed to preserve ballot integrity, which is as vital as voter access to public confidence in honest elections. Voters without an ID can get one free at the Department of Motor Vehicles and they can also cast a provisional ballot pending confirmation that they are legally registered.

By the way, Georgia, Indiana and Tennessee have some of the strictest voter ID laws of the more than 30 states that have such laws, yet the Census report says black turnout exceeded that of non-Hispanic whites in 2012 in all three. Where is the evidence that voter ID laws keep minorities from voting?

The disconnect between these facts and Mrs. Clinton's assertions suggests that she is the one playing racial politics. The current narrow Democratic majority is largely a coalition based on gender and racial identity. It requires big turnout among single women and non-whites. As the Obama era winds down, the fear among Democrats is that these voters won't have the same enthusiasm.

Mrs. Clinton can play the "first woman President" card, but she also needs large minority turnout. If she can't motivate that turnout based on rising economic optimism or opportunity, which is hard given the Obama economic record, she and Democrats will play to racial fears to drive it. She wants a racially polarized electorate.

Mrs. Clinton billed her speech last week as the first of a series addressing what she called "eroding public trust" in government. Government could use the help, though note the irony that Mrs. Clinton's party has been running the government even as its reputation sinks. In any case, stoking racial fears based on imaginary government racism won't make Americans feel better about politics or government.

blog.heritage.org/2013/08/16/fueling-cronyism/

No one knows how much ethanol Americans would use if the fuel didn’t receive preferential treatment. Would we use any at all?

We do know it has drawbacks as compared to gasoline. Ethanol has less energy, so it reduces fuel efficiency and increases costs. It can damage small engines such as lawn mowers and chain saws. And America’s ethanol policy requires the use of tons of corn that could otherwise be eaten by people and animals, so it drives up the price of food. The amount of corn we burn could feed an estimated 570 million people annually.

The federal government mandates the use of renewable fuels, which has largely been met by corn-based ethanol. That’s a form of cronyism, as Washington picks a small set of winners (such as corn growers and biofuel plants) and punishes a larger set of losers: refineries, motorists, restaurants, the environment, chicken and cattle farmers, food consumers. The list goes on. But it turns out there’s cronyism even within the cronyism.

Kimberly Strassel at The Wall Street Journal has been following a curious case. Last week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued its annual orders telling each refinery in the United States how much ethanol it needs to use in the next year. The EPA noted it was exempting a single refinery—one out of 143—and allowing it to refine gasoline without ethanol.

Why the special treatment? The EPA won’t say. “We are to trust that it did the right thing,” Strassel writes. “Yet this is the same Obama Administration that has spent years doling out billions in grants and loans to politically connected energy companies and junking federal rules to help favored players.”

It turns out the refinery’s owners, Alon USA Energy, spent some $60,000 lobbying on the issue of “renewable fuel standards” (that’s principally ethanol) earlier this year.

Cronyism isn’t the only problem with the ethanol mandates. There’s also the question of whether bureaucrats are overreaching. In 2007, Congress enacted a law requiring refiners to use 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2022, with corn-based ethanol capping out at 15 billion gallons of that mandate. But since Americans have been using less gasoline, the EPA may soon unilaterally reduce the amount of ethanol it requires refineries to blend into their gasoline.

“There are no problems that can’t be fixed administratively,” declares Brooke Coleman of the pro-ethanol Advanced Ethanol Council. Ah, but only Congress may pass laws. Bureaucrats at the EPA don’t have the constitutional authority to change acts of Congress, however misguided those laws may be.

Lawmakers need to take action and should and repeal ethanol mandates for everyone—not just favored refiners. Market forces should determine how much ethanol and other renewable fuel should be produced. But as long as we have ethanol mandates and a Renewable Fuel Standard, we will never know what that will be, and as a result, American families will suffer.

Ending the plantation:

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324769704579008610480772286.html

The dismantling of public housing projects across America has been one of the most astonishing federal initiatives of the past 20 years. After spending billions of dollars to build public housing in every major city, many small ones and some rural areas over a six-decade period, the U.S. government reversed course in the early 1990s and started financing demolition rather than construction. Some 260,000 units out of 1.3 million nationally have been demolished or removed from the public-housing inventory since that time. The government also rescinded long-standing restrictions, such as the requirement that demolished units be replaced one-for-one, and encouraged cities to decrease not only the density of buildings but the actual numbers of public-housing apartments. It has been nothing less than a revolution in the public understanding of how government can best house economically disadvantaged residents.

The offensive against public housing has been led by prominent African-Americans, such as Renée Glover, head of the Atlanta Housing Authority, who has argued that it created a "self-defeating system" that "institutionalized low expectations and virtually guaranteed chronic failure." Ms. Glover is unyielding in her critique of the old public housing that her agency has demolished. She calls her work in Atlanta "the Third Wave of the Civil Rights Movement." That's because, she said in a recent interview, "public housing was not a channel of upward mobility for African-Americans. The projects were places of horrible living environments, where predators set up shop."