Taqiyya for Easter

As always, Mark Steyn says it best.

Let's say a fire breaks out at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris at the start of Holy Week, and just after two of the city's other most prominent houses of worship - St Sulpice and the Basilica of St Denis - have been attacked and vandalized.

Well, I think we can all confidently say as the first flames are beginning to lick the ceiling that it's undoubtedly an accident. Cigarette butt. Or maybe computer glitch. Probably just an overheated smart phone. We don't need to get in there and sift through the debris. We can just announce it.

Read the whole column here.

Torches and Pitchforks in Wisconsin?

It appears that Paul Ryan may be in trouble. From Breitbart:

Following a new primary election poll showing that House Speaker Paul  Ryan has plummeted to well below 50 percent in his home district,   Ryan is out with new mailers assuring Wisconsin voters of his desire to secure the border, and urging them to support him in his contentious August 9th primary election. 

The new mailers touting Ryan’s support for border security is interesting given that just last year, Ryan championed a spending bill that fully funded President Obama’s open borders agenda– including funding sanctuary cities, executive amnesty, and the release of criminal aliens. The mailers also come amid new reports indicating that, one month after his election, Ryan plans to bring up “criminal sentencing” measures that could release thousands of criminal illegal aliens from prison onto the streets.

*snip*

“The only thing more disturbing than Paul Ryan’s refusal to secure the border is the extent to which he is comfortable lying about it,” Nehlen said.

“As long as Paul Ryan is in Congress, immigration will never be reduced, the border will never be secured, radical Islam will never be kept off our shores, and our children will never be safe,” Nehlen continued. “He is wholly owned by his donors, and his donors want open borders. When was the last time Ryan ever fought hard for something that his donors opposed? If Ryan remains, we can kiss our borders, our safety, and our sovereignty goodbye.” 

I admit that Ryan has been a huge disappointment to me.  Power and money are always seductive. Ryan didn't have the moral fiber to resist their siren song, and now Wisconsin voters will determine his fate.

The Conservative Media Meltdown

Wherein David Cole loads a Mac-9 magazine into his keyboard and shoots everybody.

"...I told him, “The alt-right is basically made up of people who are willing to say the kind of things about blacks and Hispanics that you’ll only allow said about Muslims.” 

Oof. And more:

The Trump candidacy has (in my opinion accidentally) led to a permanent end to that détente. Fragmentation, hostility, and side-taking will continue until the Trump coronation or the Trump Waterloo, and there’ll be no returning to normal afterward. Someone at National Review might, at some point in the future, say, “Sorry for that whole ‘white working-class communities deserve to die’ thing,” and someone at Breitbart might say, “Sorry we were kinda acting like paid shills for Trump.” But it won’t matter. Alt-rightists are tired of being relegated to the part of the bus they believe should be reserved for blacks. And with people like Yiannopoulos at Breitbart essentially saying “Let them move up to the front,” and people like Kevin Williamson at National Review basically saying, “Kick them to the gutter and run ’em over,” a rift has been formed that will not and cannot be healed by compromise.

Cole concludes:

Even Andrew Breitbart himself would not be able to set things right at this point. And frankly, it’s probably for the best that he didn’t live to see the demise of his noble dream of a vibrant and unified right-leaning “new media” composed of people who, despite their differences, are single-mindedly focused on battling the left rather than each other.

All the fist-swinging and eye-gouging being played out by (what we thought was) the mainstream right has most of America looking at them with open-mouthed disbelief.  The sillier and stupider they act, the more people turn away in embarrassment.  Credibility, meet toilet.  *flush*  

Is the alt-right really "alt"?  Or are they the same tea-party voters sitting in the same chair,  drinking the same beer, wondering when the conservative media abandoned ship? 

Things to ponder, my friends. Things to ponder.

Another Good Reason To Diversify?

And by "diversify" I mean gold and silver buried in the back yard...or better yet, in a nearby national forest. 

From Zero Hedge: 

1) Borrowing retirement funds is becoming a popular tactic.

Forced loans have been a common tactic of bankrupt governments throughout history.

Plus there’s recent precedent all over the world; Hungary, France, Ireland, and Poland are among many governments that have resorted to ‘borrowing’ public and private pension funds.

2) The US government has already done this with federal pension funds.

During the multiple debt ceiling fiascos since 2011, the Treasury Department resorted to “extraordinary measures” at least twice in order to continue funding the government.

What exactly were these extraordinary measures?

They dipped into federal retirement funds and borrowed what they needed to tide them over.

In fact, the debt ceiling debacles were only resolved because the Treasury Department had fully depleted available retirement funds.

3) They’ve been paving the way to borrow your retirement savings for a long time.

Two years ago the government launched a new initiative to ‘help Americans save for retirement.’

It’s called MyRA. And the idea is for people to invest retirement savings ‘in the safety and security of US government bonds’.

Since then they’ve gone on a marketing offensive involving the President, Treasury Secretary, and other prominent politicians.

(Most recently Nancy Pelosi published an Op-Ed in the San Francisco Chronicle a few days ago promoting the program.)

They’ve also proposed a number of legislative reforms to ‘encourage’ American businesses to sign their employees up for MyRA.

Just last week, Congress introduced the “Making Your Retirement Accessible”, or MyRA Act, which would charge a penalty to employers whose workers don’t have a retirement account.

The proposed penalty is $100. Per worker. Per day.

Imagine a small business with, say, 10 employees who don’t have retirement accounts. The penalty to Uncle Sam would be a whopping $30,000 PER MONTH.

There’s a word for this. It’s called extortion.

Obviously when facing a $30,000 monthly penalty, an employer will pick the easiest option.

Given the absurd amount of government regulation on the rest of the financial industry, MyRA is the fastest choice.

Hot Off The Presses of Middle Finger News

Who Be the Stupid Ones?

                                                  Middle Finger News Guest Editorial
                                                           By Dr. Jonathan Gruber

I’m not the egomaniacal, deceptive monster you think I am.

Making the rounds on the internet is an unflattering video of me speaking at an academic conference, a place where great minds share the fruits of scholarship. To the uninformed viewer, one of my remarks may seem disparaging, as if I were suggesting American voters suffer from below-average intelligence. The 22-second clip if often viewed out of context, and it’s a far cry from what I was clumsily trying to express, which was simply this:

You stupid. Me not stupid.

                                               

Read it all here. 

Cliven Bundy: Under the Bus

I've been watching the whole Nevada/grazing fees/militarized federal response/civilian militia kerfuffle with a skeptical eye. I've spent many years living and working near BLM land that is allotted to ranchers for grazing purposes, and have experienced first hand the possessiveness exhibited by said ranchers towards hunters and hikers. The attitude of some of these guys is asshole-ish in the extreme, so it's been difficult for me to feel much outrage on behalf of Bundy.

However, the response by the feds to a problem that has gone on for decades is straight from the Twilight Zone. What changed? The guy hasn't paid his fees for years; why the armed invasion to kill his cows? It's downright weird. Obviously, there is more going on. The demented nincompoop Harry Reid appears to be chin-deep in cowshit when it comes to this land. It's obvious that something about this episode gave him a super-sized wedgie. But what, at this point, does it matter? (*channeling Shillery*) It's not news that Reid is a corrupt little man. It's not news that our politicians use federal assets for their own benefit, whether monetary or political.

Now Bundy has stumbled into the gooey, stinking tar pit of Political Correctness. Everyone has jumped on the band wagon. It's positively stunning. Perhaps he could have phrased his off-the-cuff comments a bit differently, but were his comments racist? I've made similar observations in the past; the black family has been utterly decimated in our inner cities. Lifelong welfare and handouts, penalties for daring to have an intact family with a working father, the wholesale slaughter of black children by Planned Parenthood and other baby-slaying entities, have left a path of destruction across several generations. These people have indeed traded one brand of slavery for another, and it's not just black families. Rural Appalachia has seen similar devastation. Is it particularly courageous of me to make these observations? Will Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rand Paul and other shrieking apologists point a shaky, rage-filled finger in my general direction? Bah. What a bunch of cowardly jackwagons. We'll never be a true melting pot until we actually have an honest discussion about failed liberal policies, and until we quit heeding and feeding the race hustlers.

So, it's under the bus for dear old Cliven Bundy. The politicians and the "conservative" lip flappers have grabbed his legs and arms and joyfully tossed him between the oversized Bluebird tires. Thump. Thump thump.

For many of the rest of us, we'll simply turn the radio dial from talk to an oldies station, and reexamine who shall receive our political donations in the future.

Peace Prize Winner To Make A Case For Bombing Syria To Smithereens

The Commander-In-Chief (God help us) is giving interviews tomorrow; six of them. No word yet on whether he'll be forced to reschedule his tee-time on the links.

President Obama will sit for interviews Monday with six TV networks as he makes his case to the nation for military intervention in Syria.

Obama will tape interviews Monday afternoon with anchors from ABC, CBS and NBC, as well as with PBS, CNN and Fox News, the White House said.

The interviews will be conducted by ABC's Diane Sawyer, CBS's Scott Pelley, CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Fox's Chris Wallace, NBC's Brian Williams and PBS's Gwen Ifill.

The interviews will air that night, ahead of Obama's Tuesday speech on Syria.

 I have no earthly idea what his "strategy" is; it will be interesting to compare the different episodes of "patty-cake with the press". It's too bad that Wolfie is pitching for CNN rather than the hard-hitting Jake Tapper, and I'd much rather see Bret Baier than Wallace.

Althouse has a few thoughts. What do you think? Is Obama about to jump the shark?