I Kind of Believe It: A Large Number of Our Fellow Citizens Would Rather Subject Themselves to Painful Electric Shocks Than To Sit Alone With Their Thoughts

—Ace

They find thinking so unpleasant they'd prefer external pain to that internal pain.

Now, this sounds like another hyped-up, silly psychological study which will be debunked in three weeks but we'll still hear people citing it sixty five years from now.

But, on the other hand, my opinion of my fellow American has sunk to such hellish depths I'm kinda buying it.

You know, to celebrate July 4th, let's officially make this Hellish Dystopia Day. I've got another semi-creepy sci-fi story coming next.

People, and especially men, hate being alone with their thoughts so much that they’d rather be in pain. In a study published in Science Thursday on the ability of people to let their minds "wander" -- that is, for them to sit and do nothing but think -- researchers found that about a quarter of women and two-thirds of men chose electric shocks over their own company.

...

When it became clear that people were desperate for distractions, the researchers decided to give them one. "It dawned on us: If people find this so difficult," Wilson said, "would they prefer negative stimulations to boredom?" He gave them access to a device that would provide a small electrical shock by pressing a button. It wasn’t a very strong shock, as the device was built around a 9 volt battery. "But we weren’t even sure it was worth doing," he said. "I mean, no one was going to shock themselves by choice."

But they did....

One guy shocked himself 190 times. But he was an outlier and they tossed his data out of the group.

Of course that was a dude, and I can guess why he was doing that.

Hm! Was the Department of Defense Funding FaceBook's Emotion-Tracking-and-Manipulation Experiment?

—Ace

Very interesting idea hatched at this site, "DefenseOne.com."

I have no idea if this is true, but it sounds plausible.

Critics have targeted a recent study on how emotions spread on the popular social network site Facebook, complaining that some 600,000 Facebook users did not know that they were taking part in an experiment. Somewhat more disturbing, the researchers deliberately manipulated users' feelings to measure an effect called emotional contagion.

Though Cornell University, home to at least one of the researchers, said the study received no external funding, but it turns out that the university is currently receiving Defense Department money for some extremely similar-sounding research -- the analysis of social network posts for "sentiment," i.e. how people are feeling, in the hopes of identifying social "tipping points."

The tipping points in question include "the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the 2011 Russian Duma elections, the 2012 Nigerian fuel subsidy crisis and the 2013 Gazi park protests in Turkey," according to the website of the Minerva Initiative, a Defense Department social science project.

It’s the sort of work that the U.S. military has been funding for years, most famously via the open-source indicators program, an Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) program that looked at Twitter to predict social unrest.

If you have huge amounts of data from millions of people, you can predict a lot of things, or detect subtle things, like, for example, a more virulent strain of the flu breaking out in the South. If you have huge amounts of data, you can see that more people are complaining of the flu, and complaining longer, etc.

But you need huge amounts of data to do this.

Previously, there did not exist a platform in which millions upon millions of people voluntarily self-reported their emotional states, states of health, consumer interests, political leanings, or attitudes towards the government, police, and various other forces of government control.

But now, of course, there is.

As the article suggests, expect more of this. A lot more.

My initial guess on the FaceBook scandal was that it was funded by think-tanks serving corporations, and that they were trying to discover the emotional state that would most likely lead to a sale. I've seen feminists, for example, claiming that advertisers deliberately alarm women or make them feel bad, believing that if someone is depressed or worried, they will make an impromptu purchase in order to comfort themselves.

It might still be that, but now I'm thinking it's likely this Not-So-Distant Early Warning intelligence operation.

Actually it could well be both -- I imagine these psychological insights are useful for both intelligence analysts and corporate sales teams.

Creepy, and also very interesting.

Cynical Truth of the Day: Thanks to Dedicated 10nther, this aphorism offered by someone calling himself "blue_beetle:"

"If you're not paying for something, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold."

Hilary Clinton: The Relationship Between Britain and Myself is "So Special To Me, Personally;" Indeed, My Understanding of Britain is So Deep That I Believe The Two Main Parties in the UK Are "The Conservatives" and "The Tories"

—Ace

Stolen from Instapundit, but I need to put something up.

More: Ed Morrissey points out that while Hillary was asked about the "special relationship" between Britain and America, she launches into a weird, clumsily pandering jag about the special relationship between that country and herself.

Indeed, while I don't imagine she hasn't heard of "The Special Relationship," it sure sounds like she hasn't heard of it, and she's guessing at the meaning by literally parsing each word, and deciding that this interviewer was asking her if she fancied the UK and would like to date it.

Thursday Morning News Dump

—BenK

• By The Way, The DC Circuit Might Nuke Obamacare Tomorrow
• The Civil War Of 1776
• Another Hillary Gaffe
• NY Insurers Seek Double Digit Hike In Premiums
• Christie Vetoes Gun Control Bill
• The Real Government Jobs Scandal
• The Case For Libertarian Populism
• School Board President Makes Great Point About Michelle's School Lunch Initiative, Who Elected Her?
• GE Sponsored Site Accused Israel Of War Crimes
• How Obama Lost The Middle East
• Hobby Lobby Doublethink
• Failed President Now Helpfully Offering GOP Advice
• Spurned Woman Denied Sex Pulls Knife
• Badass Kangaroo
• Ace Of Spades Lifestyle

Tweet.

Top Headline Comments 7-3-14

—Gabriel Malor

Happy Thursday.

You've mostly heard all this, but Megan McArdle's write-up on Hobby Lobby is good reading and good for a share with your confused leftist auntie on Facebook.

Aereo is pretty much out of options, except to petition Congress, which is just what the CEO is asking people to do.

New York insurers want to hike health insurance premiums by as much as 20 percent next year.

Tropical Storm Arthur (tmi3rd)

—Open Blogger

Good evening, Morons and Moronettes. If I'm sticking my head in, it must mean we've got some tropical weather to talk about. While I don't think this is going to be anything particularly dramatic, that's easy for me to say, as I'm not in its path.

More details below the fold...

Overnight Open Thread (7-2-2014)

—Maetenloch

So I've been thinking about my vacation plans for later in the year and was able to briefly borrow Ace's time machine to go scope out September 2014.

Verdict: Eh. Decent but not great. So if you've already made plans, I wouldn't bother changing them.

The Other IRS Scandal

In 2012 the IRS illegally released tax documents for the National Organization for Marriage including the names and addresses of all of its donors to the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign. This was so egregious that the IRS settled out of court rather than go to trial. And the criminal investigation? Not-gonna-happen because Eric Holder.

In the absence of a special prosecutor, the best opportunity for piercing the veil of secrecy and evasion that surrounds the IRS handling of groups perceived as enemies of the Obama administration lies in civil litigation.  The National Organization for Marriage has just obtained a $50,000 settlement from the IRS for its criminal release of confidential donor information to an opposition group. But so far Eric Holder's Justice Department is not pursuing inquiries into who feloniously released that information.

Because Profit is BAD

People intensely dislike profits. The belief that turning a profit is tantamount to operating some sort of con is disturbingly common. In their paper "Is Profit Evil? Associations of Profit with Social Harm," Amit Bhattacharjee, Jason Dana, and Jonathan Baron asked research subjects to guess at the profitability of certain firms (e.g., Visa, Barnes & Noble) and certain classes of firms (e.g., oil companies, professional sports teams), and to estimate the social value of those companies and enterprises. The findings were not qualitatively surprising - the bias against profit in popular thinking is well-established - but they are quantitatively surprising: The correlation between perceived profitability and perceived social value was negative .62 for individual companies and negative .67 for classes of companies. (The always-insightful Bryan Caplan's thoughts on the matter are here.) Identical economic tasks were judged very differently when the actor in question was identified as a nonprofit rather than a for-profit firm. It is worth noting that the anti-profit bias generally persists across party identification and political affiliation.

HHS Bars Congressman from Seeing Immigrant Children

HHS "Brown Shirts" Threaten To Arrest Doctors & Nurses Treating Illegals If They Talk About Medical Risks

And no the term 'Brown Shirts' isn't an exaggeration - that's what the HHS security forces call themselves. Apparently irony is dead in government.

Plus Why All the Illegal Children Are Going to Get Green Cards

"Special Immigrant Juvenile Status is something that we attorneys on the border have been getting CLE training in for a while, but largely it has not been well known outside of CPS attorney work.

With the invasion now taking place, it is going to explode.  No parents means that any immigrant child under 18 can apply for a Green Card as soon as they are deemed "abandoned" by their parents for 6 months by the court system.  There are some other minor rules, but that is the big one..

The bill renewal was the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008.  It modified and exempted application of certain rules which would normally result in inadmissibility..  Also, it set up an "expedited" review schedule that USCIS is REQUIRED to adjudicate SIJ petitions within 180 days of filing, and that interviews may be WAIVED for SIJ petitioners under 14 years of age or when it is determined that an interview is unnecessary.

...What nobody is talking about (or maybe nobody has realized yet) is that this is going to flood the child welfare courts FIRST, before they get to the USCIS (certain findings of fact which can only be made by the state are prerequisites to SIJS applications) with a sudden influx of "abandoned" children, and put a strain on the CPS system like nothing that has ever been seen."

Today's Meme: Obama is Giving Up

—Ace

AB Stoddard offered that opinion on Bret Baier's show.

She added that the president is "getting bored in the cocoon," "bolting from the building to go to Starbucks and Chipotle," and "planning his post-presidency." Stoddard also reported that the president has at times preferred to talk about the NBA playoffs instead of "policies or politics" because he'd rather talk about "anything but his job."

I'm glad she made that point.

Andrew Malcolm said something similar, though not exactly similar.

Tuesday Obama called his Cabinet over again for a photo-op, so media could hear him issue instructions like a real executive.

"I wanted," Obama declared for the cameras, "to bring the Cabinet together today to underscore for them my belief I think shared by most Americans that we can’t wait for Congress."

At every opportunity, Obama repeats his vow to circumvent the legislative branch, despite court warnings and a threatened House lawsuit over unrestrained executive actions. "Sue me!" he defiantly told one crowd Tuesday.

Here's what such bluster means in politics, as well as families: He's in trouble. And he knows it. Like a lame duck puffing up and flapping its wings to cover its weakness. A dead giveaway.

Zogby looks at the polls and asks, "Is it all over for Obama?"

President Obama's approval numbers are in the cellar, a new Quinnipiac University survey just dubbed him the worst president in six decades, so maybe it's no surprise that analyst and pollster John Zogby is asking: "Is it all over for him?"

Armed with new numbers that are depressing to an already deflated White House, Zogby on Wednesday found that most don't believe that Obama can lead the country...

"Mr. Obama finds himself in the uncomfortable position where every age group, independents, and whites all agree that the public has given up on his ability to accomplish anything before the end of his term," said Zogby in releasing his latest numbers.

"In short, we see a president in full salvage mode. He is not only racing for his legacy but for his relevancy," Zogby added.

So: Americans are weary of President Obama and Obama is weary of President Obama.

Oh: And Charles Krauthammer says Obama's checked out, too.

Dear Emptyheaded Left Wing Writers

—Ace

Please stop saying that a corporation is a "fictitious person" as part of your case in chief against the Hobby Lobby decision.

For one thing, you sound stupid. Not because this is untrue, but rather because it is obviously true, and 90% of all literate people not only know "corporations are fictitious people" but in fact have known this since long before you apparently did.

You sound like 8 year olds who just learned a FunFact (TM) about koalas and can't stop repeating it. Didja know that koala bears are not in fact bears but odd creatures called "marsupials"?!!? Didja? Didja?!!?

Yes, we all knew that. In second grade. But Welcome to the World, I guess.

It's a big place. You'll want to take notes about it until you get your bearings.

Secondly, and here I fear I will lose you completely because this is going to get slightly abstract and logical, the fact that "corporations are fictitious persons" actually destroys your arguments, rather than strengthens them, which, if you'd bother to have read the Hobby Lobby case, which you have not and will not, ever, you'd already know.

See, a corporation is a fictitious person. It is a made-up designation, created by state law, to permit business concerns to live longer than the lifespan of a natural person.

It is a fictitious person. It is not a real person. Fictitious -- an imaginary construct of the law.

Think about what that means.

This means that in a closely-held corporation -- where five or fewer people control the majority of shares (and in fact usually control all of it) -- the "corporation" does not exist in any real way, except for its listing in the tax records of a state.

In a small closely-held corporation, "the corporation" only means "these five guys right here."

The Supreme Court did not acknowledge that corporations qua corporations (look up "qua" on your own time, idiots) have "religious freedoms." Rather, it recognized the obvious -- that in the case of a closely-held corporation, the corporation being a fictitious entity and all, an imposition of a duty on "the corporation" is in reality just an imposition of a duty on the five or fewer people (often one or two) who own it.

Thus, when we say the Hobby Lobby corporation must provide abortifacient drugs to its employees, this is precisely the same as laying this responsibility on the five or fewer individual persons (who definitely have the right to religious freedom) to provide abortifacient drugs to their employees.

Given that the corporation is a fictitious entity of no tangible presence (something you seem so delighted to have recently learned), forcing the corporation to provide abortions is precisely the same as forcing the family who owns Hobby Lobby to provide them.

You see? You see what your problem is here?

I mean, one of your problems. You have many, beginning with the facts that 1 you are not terribly well educated and 2 you seem to believe you are extremely well educated.

Now, in a very large corporation, what we call a "publicly traded" corporation, wherein many thousands (or even millions) of persons might have shares and thus ownership interests in this fictitious person, one could very easily make the case that each individual shareholder is so attenuated from actual control of the corporation that to impose a duty on the corporation does not implicate the individual shareholder at all, or implicates him so slightly, so trivially, that we can round down and simply say "Forcing Exxon to provide abortion drugs should not offend the conscience of Exxon's thousands of owners."

We could say in that case that an imposition on the corporation has no real implication for the individual owner. He would own, what, one thousand shares out of over ten million shares of the decision to provide abortion services?

A very diffuse responsibility indeed.

But you cannot make this claim when a family of four owns almost all of the stock in a corporation. In that case, the burdens placed on this fictitious entity are actually burdens on the people -- Unless you idiots want to make the case that this fictitious entity that has so mesmerized you actually has the tangible quality of being a real person whose actions do not implicate its real-person owners.

But then in that case you shouldn't keep saying it's a fictitious person-- you should be arguing it's close enough to a real person to be treated as such.

You should be arguing that a corporation is so close to real that we should say a burden on it means nothing at all to its owners-- who are just third-parties with barely anything at all to do with the real person being burdened. The real person being burdened (in this argument) is the corporation, which is basically a totes real person, and no other people are burdened at all.

The Supreme Court agrees with your actual statements about corporations being fictitious persons. In fact, they agree with it so much they based their decision on it.

They're saying "A corporation, being a fictitious construct with no real existence in the context of a closely-held corporation, is too slight and gossamer a thing to put any weight upon as far as distinguishing burdens placed on it and burdens placed on its owners."

By the way, idiots, partnerships (also small collections of people) have always had these rights to religious freedom, as they are obviously Just People and do not surrender their humanity by choosing to form a business partnership with another.

All the court did was say that a closely-held corporation is sufficiently similar to a partnership for the same rule to attach.

"Attach" means "apply" in this contest, dummies. I don't mean they glued the rule to them.

I know you'll all thank me for clearing up your latest stupidity so allow me to say, in salutation,

You're Welcome, Imbeciles,

Your Buddy,

Ace

PS-- "SCOTUSblog" is not the Supreme Court's personal web-log. It's just some guys who follow the court.

Please update your records, dum-dums.

PPS -- I don't know if "SCOTUSblog" is an incorporated fictitious person. You should get right on that yourselves, though. I'm sure that fact holds the key to this whole mystery.

New Media Darling & American Hero, Tim Howard, US Men's National Team Goalie, Is (Shhh) a Christian

—Ace

I was actually wondering about this. I had been reading about him, and I had gotten that vibe, but the news sources I was reading apparently didn't want to ask about something so weird and alienating.

Before we get to that, in case you didn't know, Howard is being celebrated for a heroic performance defending the net during the loss against Belgium. He successfully batted away sixteen shots on goal, a record in the World Cup, apparently (and a bit of indictment of his teammates who permitted Belgium so many shots on goal).

So, he's the most romantic sort of hero: The hero in a lost cause.

The thing that everyone's reporting today is that he is a lifelong sufferer from a mild case of Tourette's Syndrome. He does not have the verbal-outburst kind (which is a tiny fraction of Tourette's cases), but rather the uncontrollable-bodily-tic version of it.

Which is a hell of a thing to overcome for a professional athlete in position that is foundationally all about motor coordination and reflexes.

Everyone is copying this old Der Spiegel interview with Howard. And I do mean copying; I saw French newspapers pulling out almost all the quotes from it, and then the Washington Post did it again today.

So I'll copy their copying.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Howard, what distinguishes a goalkeeper with Tourette syndrome from a goalkeeper without?

Howard: While training and during a match, I may develop a pronounced twitch in one of my arms, or my neck or one of my eyes. It is usually very sudden. Sometimes I start coughing, or individual muscles contract.

SPIEGEL: In medicine, behavioral or emotional disorders of this kind are referred to as tics. How often do you have tics during a game?

Howard: I've never counted them. It happens all the time, without any warning, and it increases the nearer an important game draws. It always occurs more when I am particularly nervous.

SPIEGEL: How does your body respond when you are nervous?

Howard: It becomes more tense than usual, my muscles contract more often, and I make hasty movements more often. But that's a good thing because when that happens I know: Now it matters, now I have to pull myself together.

SPIEGEL: As a goalkeeper you can scarcely afford to make any mistakes. What do you do if your arm twitches uncontrollably during a game?

Howard: As long as the game is not happening right in front of my nose but somewhere in the midfield, I let it twitch. I don't try to suppress it, either.

SPIEGEL: And if the ball comes near you?

Howard: Then I am all there. It's strange. As soon as things get serious in front of the goal, I don't have any twitches; my muscles obey me then.

SPIEGEL: How do you do that?

Howard: I have no idea. Not even the doctors can explain it to me. It's probably because at that moment my concentration on the game is stronger than the Tourette syndrome.

SPIEGEL: Has a ball ever slipped out of your hands because of a tic?

Howard: I have dropped a number of balls during my career. But it has never been because of a tic.

His Tourette's Syndrome apparently spurred him into becoming an OCD sufferer as well; he used to collect rocks for no reason, straighten sticks, etc., and various other OCD sort of counting/straightening tics.

This is interesting: Tourette's can grant you an advantage, too.

SPIEGEL: A common accompanying feature of Tourette's is that the person affected has unusually swift reactions. Was that one of the reasons why you started playing basketball and football in high school?

Howard: No. It was not until I was 18 or 19 that I realized I was faster than others when it came to certain movements, and that these reflexes were linked to my disorder.

He is then asked a batch of questions about the insults he'd get while playing in England, being called "disabled," "the cursing goalkeeper" (even though he never actually curse), and other disparagements.

I should note at this point that everyone is claiming that he was "reportedly" called "retarded" by the British tabloid papers, but no one is able to come up with a link to any newspaper saying so. People just keep saying it "reportedly" happened, but there's no evidence for it.

I like how he answers this question:

SPIEGEL: During your three years at Manchester United you often lost your regular position to the second-string goalie, Roy Caroll. Did he ever have anything unkind to say to you in the course of your rivalry?

Howard: No, my Tourette's was never an issue for him or any other of my teammates. Besides, everyone knew that I was unmoved by ridicule.

By the way, that's the answer that made me think he was a Christian. People don't talk like that. That is an archaic (and elegant) way to put it; I immediately wondered what he was reading that put that sort of formulation into the active-sentence-construction part of his brain.

My third guess was "The Bible." It took me three guesses to get to the obvious one.

But that seems to be it.

Only one network transcript ever admitted Howard’s faith – in 2010, according to a Nexis search. On June 17, 2010, NBC "Nightly News" Reporter Ian Williams described Howard as "grounded by a strong Christian faith." Howard

Now being a skeptic, I wondered if that is just something an athlete says for PR purposes, and I still wonder that, but there seems to be evidence that it's real enough:

When Tim moved to England, he was no longer surrounded by all his Christian friends. He grew frustrated and discouraged while looking for a church. He had to survive a lean and lonely time and make new friends. Tim knew he had to get his faith out in the open.

In a country where people may not want to hear about Christianity, Tim is outspoken about his faith.

Tim tries to live out his faith in the daily grind, by his actions or sometimes in conversation. After the 2005 bombings in London, one teammate asked Tim, "If God is so good, how can He allow terrorists to hurt innocent people?" The question launched an intriguing spiritual discussion.

Whenever he is not traveling with the team, Tim volunteers with the L8r Club, the youth group at Bramhall Baptist Church. On Tuesdays, Tim plays soccer with the kids before and after a time of biblical discussion in the church parking lot -- even if he has a game the next day.

I'm not noting this because of any Christian triumphalism. I'm not a Christian. (Well, culturally I am.)

I'm just noting it because the chief transmitters of our culture are relentlessly hostile to Christians, and disparage them almost every single day (unless they're an "alternative" style Christian, like that tattooed lesbian preacher the media was so smitten with a few months back).

So it's interesting that their new Hero -- The One Who Will Make Elegant, European Soccer Popular Among the American Heathens -- is actually one of the American Heathens they despise.

And it's of course always nice to see the bigotries of the arrogant and powerful challenged and undermined.

Quinnipiac: Plurality of Public Now Says Obama Is An Asshole

—Ace

That's in a crosstab, somewhere.

Before getting into the poll, I'll note why I care. True, Obama isn't running again. And so this poll doesn't mean anything in particular for the future.

However, a large segment of the American public has been gaslit for the past seven years, fed a never-ending stream of false claims and ludicrous boasts about the leader of a demogoguic and frightening Cult of Personality.

Let me quote Wikipedia's definition of that:

A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized, heroic, and at times, worshipful image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Sociologist Max Weber developed a tripartite classification of authority; the cult of personality holds parallels with what Weber defined as "charismatic authority". A cult of personality is similar to hero worship, except that it is established by mass media and propaganda usually by the state, especially in totalitarian states.

A bit more:

Throughout history, monarchs and other heads of state were almost always held in enormous reverence. Through the principle of the divine right of kings, for example, rulers were said to hold office by the will of God. Ancient Egypt, Japan, the Inca, the Aztecs, Tibet, Siam (now Thailand), and the Roman Empire are especially noted for redefining monarchs as "god-kings".

The spread of democratic and secular ideas in Europe and North America in the 18th and 19th centuries made it increasingly difficult for monarchs to preserve this aura.
However, the subsequent development of photography, sound recording, film, and mass production, as well as public education and techniques used in commercial advertising, enabled political leaders to project a positive image as never before. It was from these circumstances in the 20th century that the best-known personality cults arose. Often these cults are a form of political religion.

Boy howdy, how true that is, Wikipedia.

It is cathartic and reassuring for We, The Gaslighted, to finally have the majority of the public agreeing that we were essentially right all along.

That shouldn't matter -- ideally, a man possessed of the truth should not care if his truth is popular or not -- but as a practical matter it does.

It is an altogether unpleasant experience to be separated from one's fellows and the greater culture by knowing a truth the masses consider unspeakable. And so then it is pleasant to see the mass of humanity regain its senses.

It is good to no longer be called "crazy" by people who are themselves overtaken by madness.

So the Cult of Personality is well and truly dead. Never again will we hear hoseannas about our Great Leader's supple mind, erotically throbbing pectoral muscles, or literary genius, except perhaps from our Great Leader himself or his whispering sycophant Valerie Jarrett.

This is good for America, as well: It is a stupid and frightening and shameful thing for a people to fall so hard for a ridiculous, false-on-its-face fairy tale about a Crusading Hero Who Will Deliver Us All. This is how nations die.

Perhaps America has learned some hard-won wisdom from its folly. Perhaps there will not be a Next Charismatic Cult of Personality Hero on a White Horse, at least for a generation.

Perhaps Obama will become a shorthand for a dreadful folly, like "Ozymandias" or "Icarus."

I could scarcely imagine a man more deserving of such a fate as the Failed God Obama.

But perhaps the American public is every bit as stupid as I think they are, and will fall for the next Man on a White Horse just as easily as it did for this one.

Well, at the moment, they're ten percent less stupid than they were five years ago. So at least that's something.

July 2, 2014 - Obama Is First As Worst President Since WWII, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; More Voters Say Romney Would Have Been Better

President Barack Obama is the worst president since World War II, 33 percent of American voters say in a Quinnipiac University National Poll released today. Another 28 percent pick President George W. Bush.

This is a bit bullshit, because the current president will always loom very large in the worst/best listings. Still, it's something, and Bush wasn't so very far long ago that people have forgotten him.

Ronald Reagan is the best president since WWII, 35 percent of voters say, with 18 percent for Bill Clinton, 15 percent for John F. Kennedy and 8 percent for Obama, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.

Now that is bad. As I said, the current occupant of the White House should loom unrealistically large in people's assessments of both the worst and best president.

But only 8% will give that honor to Obama!

You could find 8% of the public that believes that Hillary Clinton is capable of moving under her own power, for crying out loud.

Obama has been a better president than George W. Bush, 39 percent of voters say, while 40 percent say he is worse. Men say 43 - 36 percent that Obama is worse than Bush while women say 42 - 38 percent he is better.

Women barely give him the nod.

...

Voters say by a narrow 37 - 34 percent that Obama is better for the economy than Bush.

That's very close -- and Bush was blamed for the Great Recession. But now apparently the public believes Obama is just as bad.

This is heartening:

America would be better off if Republican Mitt Romney had won the 2012 presidential election, 45 percent of voters say, while 38 percent say the country would be worse off.

On competency:

American voters say 54 - 44 percent that the Obama Administration is not competent running the government. The president is paying attention to what his administration is doing, 47 percent say, while 48 percent say he does not pay enough attention.

The country is split on whether he's a liar, and says he's not a good leader:

The president gets mixed grades for character as voters say 48 - 48 percent that he is honest and trustworthy and 51 - 47 percent that he cares about their needs and problems. He gets a negative 47 - 51 percent for leadership qualities.

More at Quinnipiac and at the Hot Air digest.

Exit Question:

Isn't it time for at least one reporter in the media to do a piece on the possibility that what we've experienced for the past seven years was in fact a Cult of Personality?

And one particularly prevalent in the courtly/priestly castes of the media?

Or does that remain another one of those questions which is entirely too dangerous and heretical to even pose?

Of Course: Dracula, The Superhero Origin Story Movie

—Ace

In the future, all movies will be superhero origin story movies.

By the future, I mean this year.

Dracula's archenemy: The Turks. No really, it seems like they're his Hydra.

Burger King Launches Gay Whopper

—Ace

The Politicization of Everything, as Sonny Bunch calls it, now includes cheeseburgers.

Burger King has concocted yet another way to have it your way: a gay pride burger.

The Proud Whopper, as it's called, comes wrapped in a rainbow colored wrapper with this inscription: "We are all the same inside." It will be sold through Thursday at one Burger King restaurant on San Francisco's Market Street, that was at the heart of the route for last weekend's 44th annual San Francisco Pride Celebration & Parade.

Burger King on Wednesday morning at 8 a.m. EST plans to post a two-minute video about the Proud Whopper on its YouTube channel.

"It showcases who we are as a brand," says Fernando Machado, senior vice president of global brand management at Burger King. "It shows how we, as a brand, believe in self-expression."

The inspiration behind the unusual burger wrap and video, he says, is Burger King's localized efforts to put into motion actions that support its recently-tweaked slogan: "Be Your Way."

I don't know if the Gay Pride Whopper is any different than a regular Whopper, apart from the rainbow-foil packaging. I suppose the whole idea is that it shouldn't be any different. (It would be sort of funny if the slogan were "We're all the same inside" but then it turns out the Gay Pride Whopper has Thousand Island dressing on it or something.)

So they're just selling you some rainbow foil.

It's just strange to sell mundane items branded for identity politics -- why is there no Black Pride Whopper?

Does Burger King not support its black clientele?

Via @allahpundit.

What had been a joke in the mid-90s is now a reality.

Megan McArdle: If Lois Lerner's Computer Gave Her The "Blue Screen of Death," As a Witness Claims, That Means The Data On It The Hard Drive Was Probably Recoverable

—Ace

The system is willing, but the user is weak.

[T]he Blue Screen of Death is an operating system error. The operating system lives on the hard drive. Which raises a question: If Lerner’s hard drive was so thoroughly malfunctioning that no one could even get the data off of it, how was it booting up far enough for the operating system to malfunction? This is not the description of the problem that I would have expected to hear; I would have expected to hear that her computer wouldn’t really boot up at all, perhaps while horrible grinding noises emanated from its innards. In most cases, a computer displaying the Blue Screen of Death is a computer with a hard drive functioning well enough for data recovery. If I were Lerner's IT support person, I would waste no time in getting the hard drive to a working computer, where I’d connect it as a secondary drive and transfer off all the files, because the Blue Screen of Death is often a harbinger of future hard drive failure. But it was not, in my experience, usually a symptom of the actual failure.

Meanwhile, the Daily Caller suggests possible reason for Lois Lerner's hair-trigger on auditing Chuck Grassley: Grassley had just blocked a political appointee from taking over a powerful post at the IRS which would have made it harder for them to target conservatives.

Grassley made it more difficult for the IRS and DOJ to work together to target conservative groups by blocking Obama’s political appointee Mary L. Smith from taking over the DOJ Tax Division, which prosecutes criminal cases for the IRS. Grassley held up the nomination in early 2010, just as Lerner and fellow IRS officials were mapping out their targeting strategy. The White House later withdrew Smith's nomination.

The source confirmed to The Daily Caller that the White House and IRS officials "were very upset at Senator Grassley and Republicans for blocking a vote on Mary Smith’s nomination."

The IRS relies on the DOJ Tax Division to prosecute both criminal and civil cases, and has entire legal teams devoted to making DOJ referrals. Placing a political appointee as assistant attorney general for the DOJ Tax Division was a top priority for the Obama White House.

Of course it was. Grassley kept a non-political, career bureaucrat in the job for another two years.

Open Thread

—rdbrewer

Wednesday Morning News Dump

—BenK

• Four Lawsuits That Challenge College Censorship
• Reforming The Reform
• More On The IRS's Illegal Destruction Of Evidence
• What Does The Left Think The Supreme Court Is?
• It's Not Surprising That More Americans Increasingly Believe Freedom Is Overrated
• Argentina Enters Technical Default
• #SmartTake On Hobby Lobby Decision
• Pentagon Sends Attack Helicopters To Iraq
• Tragedy In Israel
• Poll: Obama Worst President Since WW 2
• Reason To Homeschool Part 3,233,421
• 85% Of Obamacare's Inconsistencies Can't Be Fixed
• 259 Painkiller Prescriptions Written In The US In 2012
• Sunnis, Kurds Shun Iraq Parliament
• Results From The First Day Of NHL Free Agency

Let me put my tweets in you.

Top Headline Comments 7-2-14

—Gabriel Malor

No links today.

Overnight Open Thread (7-1-2014)

—Maetenloch

Quote of the Day

"My boobs are fake, my hair's fake, but what is real is my voice and my heart."

-- Dolly Parton responding to rumors of lip-syncing at the Glastonbury Music Festival.

You can judge for yourself as she sings 'Jolene' here. [Compare it with her 40+ year-old original version. Oh and don't forget about the hit song that no one knows she wrote.]

True random fact: My parents and their friends used to occasionally play cards with Dolly and her husband back in the early 60s. They always spoke highly of them and were happy to see her get her big break in 1967 on the Porter Wagoner show.

He Who Controls the Past Weather Data, Controls the Future

So is or isn't July 1936 the hottest month in the US on record? Well given that NOAA has been caught fiddling with the raw historical record again who knows.

Here's a current example in eastern Kansas. The black temperatures are the raw values and the red temperatures are the NOAA 'adjusted' values. 'Zombie' stations are temperature stations that have been closed for years yet NOAA still estimates temperatures for. Notice anything about the 'adjustments' that NOAA applies? And guess what - NOAA has been 'adjusting' the historical data as well.

Rooting For Injuries Watch: Hillary Clinton vs. Ashley Madison

Heh. It's effective because in Hillary's case it's true and everyone in the country knows it.

Chris Hayes: Americans Don't Like Soccer Because They Can't Use Their Imperialistic Hegemony to Assert Their Dominance or Something

—Ace

Exactly, that's just what I was thinking.

Americans don't like soccer because of Euro-wannabee tools like Chris Hayes who take the game as some kind of metaphor for socialism.

Actually, it's worn as yet another badge by the self-presumed Aristocratic Class to distinguish themselves from their allegedly-common fellows.

The allegedly-common fellows correctly discern the intent of the tribalistic wearing of feathers, are are properly insulted and annoyed by it.

Americans chiefly dislike soccer because of progressive goons, who generally hate sports as an unpleasantly masculine affair, but pretend to like soccer because it is yet another silly Mark of Distinction for those with few real ones to cling to.

A man at MSNBC who has even worse ratings than Chris Hayes clumsily frigged the Political Superiority Erogenous Zones of his desperate-for-affirmation audience earlier today, too.

Commander-in-Chief and Defender of the Free World Takes Time Out of His Busy Schedule to Join Yet Another #TrendingOnTwitter Micropassion

—Ace

It's all he does -- talk about popular TV shows like #MadMen and #Homeland, fill out #NCAAbrackets, and play #TwitterHashtagGames.

At what point does the public hold it against him that he is less a President and more a Director of Fun at a Sandals resort?

Open Thread: Belgium Defeats US 2-1 in Overtime

—Ace

Update: In overtime, it's Belgium 2-1, with a few minutes left for the US to tie it up and force a penalty-kick tie breaker.

One minute left.

Old update:

At the half, it's 0-0, but Belgium has had the better of it -- more control of the ball, more shots on goal.

The US is lucky to be tied, and Belgium is disappointed to be.

However, Belgium is not so dominating that one can't imagine the US beating them in the second half.

Chris Christie on Hobby Lobby: "Who Knows?"

—Ace

Weak:

"The fact is that when you're an executive, your Supreme Court makes a ruling and you've got to live with it unless you can get the legislative body to change the law or change the Constitution. The point is: Why should I give an opinion as to whether they were right or wrong? At the end of the day, they did what they did. That's now the law of the land," he said.

Meanwhile, Matt Bowman of NRO notes that Hobby Lobby is not, despite some conservatives' claim to the contrary, only about the four types of birth control admitted by HHS to be possible abortifacients. Those were the specific types of birth control Hobby Lobby objected to paying for, but Catholics, for example, will object to a larger swath of birth control methods:

[T]he Supreme Court’s protections for religious freedom apply to those who object to all of the HHS Mandate, not just to those who object to some of it.

This is clear for several reasons. First, as I noted previously, the Supreme Court issued several orders Tuesday morning after ruling on Hobby Lobby, in which it upheld rulings in favor of other families and vacated rulings adverse to other families challenging this mandate. But all of those families happened to be Catholic, and they objected to any abortifacient, sterilization, or birth-control coverage.

Second, the Hobby Lobby ruling itself is not limited to objection only to certain abortifacient drugs and devices. In fact, in the "substantial burden" discussion of the ruling, it tells the government that it cannot parse a religious objector's beliefs.

Third, when the Court says the mandate fails the "least restrictive means" test, it points to the fact that the government is providing exemptions and different arrangements for other entities. But those exemptions and other arrangements include health plans that object to the entire HHS mandate, not just to parts of it.

...

Thus there’s no reason to interpret the Supreme Court’s ruling as only protecting objections to a few items considered to be abortifacients.

And meanwhile, the left is now writing songs about the Battle of Hobby Lobby.

As well as just generally behaving like prats (at the link).

Jonah Goldberg on the Epistemic Closure of the Left

—Ace

Charles Murray had written a piece distinguishing between "liberals" and "progressives," noting that while the former are in favor of state control over the economy, only the latter are outright in favor of state control over the citizen's mind. (One notes, however, that the former has always -- and will always -- necessarily lead to the latter.)

[P]hilosophically, the progressive movement at the turn of the 20th century had roots in German philosophy ( Hegel and Nietzsche were big favorites) and German public administration ( Woodrow Wilson's open reverence for Bismarck was typical among progressives). To simplify, progressive intellectuals were passionate advocates of rule by disinterested experts led by a strong unifying leader. They were in favor of using the state to mold social institutions in the interests of the collective. They thought that individualism and the Constitution were both outmoded.

That's not a description that Woodrow Wilson or the other leading progressive intellectuals would have argued with. They openly said it themselves.

It is that core philosophy extolling the urge to mold society that still animates progressives today--a mind-set that produces the shutdown of debate and growing intolerance that we are witnessing in today's America. Such thinking on the left also is behind the rationales for indulging President Obama in his anti-Constitutional use of executive power. If you want substantiation for what I'm saying, read Jonah Goldberg's 2008 book "Liberal Fascism," an erudite and closely argued exposition of American progressivism and its subsequent effects on liberalism. The title is all too accurate.

Jonah Goldberg, who literally wrote the book on this (as Murray notes), disagrees.

First, leftists refuse to raise their hands when called upon as such. Over the last ten years or so it has become very difficult for those of us on the right to tell the players apart in the opposing league.

Let me amplify that: Not only do the "leftists" (progressives, communists, socialists, other totalitarians of the mind) refuse to self-identify, but less totalitarian liberals lie on their behalves, absolutely rejecting the notion that any such persons exist as part of the liberal/Democratic coalition at all.

They do this for several reasons, including ideological loyalty and political strategy (leftists never admit that there are actual leftists among them, as their entire political strategy is based on covertly burrowing into non-leftist institutions).

So there is less of a split that Murray postulates -- yes, there are plenty of true liberals who are repelled by the hard left's totalitarian bent, but few so repelled as to call them out for it.

Goldberg goes no to note second major infirmity of this distinction: There is practically no disagreement on the left at all, except for minor bitchy catfight quibbles among self-important bloggers over tactics.

...

We talk a lot about fusionism on the right, but the real fusion has been on the left. Barack Obama’s intellectual lineage comes directly from the 1960s left (Ayers, Wright, Allinsky, Derrick Bell, SANE Freeze etc). But he is an altogether mainstream liberal today. To the extent mainstream liberals complain about Obama it is almost entirely about tactics and competence. When was the last time you heard a really serious ideological complaint about Obama from, say, EJ Dionne or the editorial board of the New York Times?

I'll go further. When was the last time you heard liberals have a really good, public, ideological fight about anything?

...

The best way to get the measure and value of ideological distinctions is to see what the ideologues are willing to fight for, in public, at some reputational risk. On the right today, those metrics are on full display. Not so on the left. Everyone gets along, all oars pull in the same direction. And what disagreements there are -- between liberals and leftists or liberals and progressives -- they’re overwhelmingly about tactics or insufficient zeal toward "common goals" and they are kept to a dull roar.

That's quite right -- while there are the usual bite-and-scratch fights over whether it is more important to stay united in pursuit of The Cause or to punish those who have strayed from The Cause, you'll rarely hear any disagreement at all over what, precisely, The Cause should be.

Indeed, due to their determination to hide the particulars of The Cause from the public, they rarely announce what The Cause is at all.

The fact that they largely refuse to discuss the actual mission of The Cause publicly (for fear their opponents will attack The Cause) aides the mission of keeping united by never actually having a fight over policy.

If one of your highest missions is to keep The Cause relatively secret, after all, this helps tamp down on any internal infighting about The Cause.

You can't fight about something you're barely even permitted to acknowledge.

Montana Newspaper The Billings Gazette Apologizes to Readers for Endorsing Obama in 2008

—Ace

Via Hot Air, some scales are beginning to fall from some eyes.

In 2012, a bunch of newspapers which had endorsed Obama in 2008 instead chose to endorse Romney in the past election. This is just a continuation of that trend, as millions of progressives wake up to the fact that whatever the merits of the Progressive Religion, Obama is a corrupt and lazy incompetent.

Gazette opinion: Obama earned the low [poll] ratings

Sometimes, you have to admit you're wrong.

And, we were wrong.

We said that things couldn't get much worse after the sub par presidency of George W. Bush.

But, President Barack Obama's administration has us yearning for the good ol' days when we were at least winning battles in Iraq.

[T]he number of bungled or blown policies in the Obama administration which lead us to believe Obama has earned every bit of an abysmal approval rating.

They run down a litany of Obama's scandals, snafus, and failures, including noting that Obama has completely broken his promise to run a transparent administration, comparing him to Nixon.

Then they add it all up:

These are all signs -- none of them definitive on their own, necessarily. However, when taken in completely, these demonstrate a disturbing trend of incompetence and failure.

Yup.

Meanwhile, the woman behind the failure, Valerie Jarret, continues to seem very pleased with herself.

Useful Idiot Carol Costello Pleads With Jeffery Toobin to Say Obama Didn't Really Lose at the Supreme Court

—Ace

He can't have lost, he just can't have! Please say he didn't lose!

She questioned whether Obama had really lost in the NLRB decision.

But Costello couldn't accept the defeat. "So as usual, Jeffrey Toobin, this is a more complicated decision," she said. "It's just not black and white. Cause I guess you could say the president lost . . . but did he?"

"Yeah, he lost," Toobin replied quickly. "There's no doubt."

"Well he lost in this particular case," she admitted plaintively. "But overall, right?"

"Well . . . no, he lost overall," Toobin insisted.

At the end, obviously defeated and struggling to find some upside to this, she asks Toobin if this means the Supreme Court is the bad guy -- specifically, she asks if those Supreme Court stupid-heads have "increased gridlock" by their decision. You know, "gridlock," the thing progressive media people hate when Congress is slowing down a progressive president, but which they're more of a fan of when Congress is slowing down a conservative.

Video at the link.

The most amusing thing yesterday was hundreds of Outraged! progressives tweeting their venom at SCOTUSblog, under the utterly-mistaken assumption that SCOTUSblog was actually Antonin Scalia's personal blog, or at least the official blog of the Supreme Court.

SCOTUSblog -- which has no actual relationship to the Supreme Court, just as Instapundit has no true relationship with things which are Insta -- retweeted these outraged comments all day, adding their own snarky responses, playing along with the stupidity of the crowd.

Funny stuff:

Or:

Here, one dummy insists that the Justices of the Supreme Court sign their tweets. You know, when the Justices tweet. That they should sign their tweets. Like Obama signs his tweets "-BO" when he actually writes them. (Allegedly.)

Open Thread

—rdbrewer

C'mon Guys, Hobby Lobby Was A Victory For Religious Americans

—Gabriel Malor

I've been knocking down the low-hanging fruit from leftists and the news media for months on Hobby Lobby, and I suspect I'll have more opportunities to do that for months and maybe years (gulp) to come. Yesterday's decision was a victory for religious freedom, but I'm seeing a few commentators for the right, perhaps just out of a sense of contrarianism, suggest that it is not.

For example, I was startled to see this read on the decision from Forbes' Avik Roy:

Roy's linked column suggests:

Pro-life activists—and Obamacare opponents—are cheering today. But when they sit down and reflect, they’ll realize that they haven’t won a thing.

He points out that one of the alternatives Justice Alito suggested to forcing businesses run according to their owners' religious beliefs to provide contraception or abortifacient coverage would be for the government to provide it. Roy thinks that is no victory:

Ah, but who finances the government? Taxpayers. In other words, while the government can’t compel Hobby Lobby to finance abortifacients, it can compel taxpayers to do so. Isn’t that a distinction without a difference?

I objected to this blunt equivalence. There is a vast difference between forcing an individual company to act in a morally objectionable way and requiring all taxpayers to pay taxes that may in some fraction be used in a manner with which the payer disagrees. Roy doubled down:

But even this economic equivalence is wrong for obvious reasons. Forcing a business to bear the entire burden of providing contraception coverage for its employees is quite different than forcing the business-as-taxpayer to pay for a fraction of that contraception coverage. Notably, taxpayers as a group include people who both support, oppose, or are indifferent to contraception coverage. That's an economic distinction, and it's also the foundation of a moral and a legal one.

We do not as a society now believe that the actions of government are morally or legally or economically equivalent to the actions of individual taxpayers and never have. The funding of war, opposed for religious and moral reasons, is the obvious example, but this principle extends to other government actions of dubious moral and religious quality, like funding capital punishment, abortion, property seizures, you name it.

Does Roy or anyone really believe that I am morally or legally or economically culpable for the President's drone assassination program in which civilian bystanders are killed? Of course not. I don't direct the program or have any way of preventing it, and my financial contribution to it is de minimis. Roy's contrarian theory of equivalence would treat pushing the button to kill an anonymous civilian as the same as paying my taxes, an obviously silly claim and one not shared, so much as I can tell, by many others.

Moreover, even for people who believe that fractionally financing objectionable government action by paying taxes comes with an equivalent fractional moral culpability, not having to directly and fully finance the objectionable action has to be counted an improvement.

Thus, upon reflection, yes those of us who support religious freedom really "won a thing" in yesterday's Hobby Lobby decision. As I have written several times, the case was never going to knock down Obamacare, but that wasn't its object. The case, despite what you'll see in the news media, was about religious liberty. And on that basis, Justice Alito's decision was a clear victory.

"The Tea Party Would Rather Burn Than Submit To Washington"

—DrewM.

That's the actual headline of a Washington Post op-ed by Richard Cohen. He may not have written it but it sums up his point...stupid "Tea Party" people won't accept reality when it comes to global warming because they are stupid and hate smart people.

My own eyes show rising ocean levels. They show the Arctic ice cap shrinking. They show massive beach erosion, homes toppling into the sea and meteorological records indicating steadily increasing temperatures. The Earth, our dear little planet, just had the hottest May on record.

...

Politics, not science, may firm up both sides of the debate. A Pew Research Center poll last November found that 67 percent of Americans think the planet is indisputably getting warmer. Among Democrats and Democratic leaners, however, the figure is 84 percent, but among tea party types it’s 25 percent. Maybe more to the point, only 9 percent of tea party members think “human activity” has contributed to global warming. For their own sake, they ought to get out of the sun.

Huh, I thought we just went through the coldest winter in the history of history and it killed the economy.

A few fun facts I'm sure you are already familiar with...despite dire predictions of an ice free arctic, ice coverage is the same as it's been for 30 years. The US, far from being the worst climate offender (as Cohen and his co-cultists seem to imagine us) actually met the carbon reductions goals of the holy Kyoto Protocols. In fact, we were the only major country to do so.

Oh, and no matter what Cohen's eyes see, there's been NO WARMING FOR OVER 17 YEARS.

I find it amusing that a guy who is attacking conservatives for living in their own version of reality is relying on polling as some sort of evidence for "climate change". What if there were a poll showing the vast majority of people don't believe in "climate change"? Would that alter the "science" or would he suddenly not care about polling? So it's "science, not opinion" that matters unless the science is inconvient for the cultists, then it's all personal observation and opinion polls.

Heads they win, tails you lose.

A handy rule of thumb...want to know what liberals really believe? Watch what they accuse conservatives of. Projection is their default setting.

But Cohen, or more likely his headline writer, does accurately encapsulate the purpose of "climate change" hysteria...power. They want you to bow down to the central planners in D.C. That's the only thing they care about.

Tuesday Morning News Dump

—BenK

• 6 Stupid Arguments About Hobby Lobby From Dumb Liberals
• In Search Of What You Resent
• Why Is The Media Ignoring Hillary Clinton?
• SCOTUS Ruling Could Cost Unions Tens Of Millions
• Majority Believe IS Destroyed E-mails To Cover Up Scandal
• Virginia Dem Charged With Child Porn
• Obama's Secret Neo-Con Agenda
• Pivot! Obama Now Rambling About Infrastructure
• What Do People Outside Of The Supreme Court Think Of Our Rights
• Three Kidnapped Israeli Teens Found Dead
• NOW Compares Hobby Lobby Decision To Jim Crow Laws
• GM Recalls 7.6 Million More Cars
• CIA Under Fire For Failures In Iraq
• IRS Spending 1970-2014

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light. The blue and the dim of the dark cloths, of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet; But I, being poor, have only my tweets; I have spread my tweets under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my tweets.

Top Headline Comments 7-1-14

—Gabriel Malor

Happy Tuesday.

The Hobby Lobby decision is already having an impact on the contraception mandate accommodation line of cases. These are cases arising all over the country in which non-profits argue the accommodation scheme the administration created enlists them in the provision of the very contraception coverage they object to. In one of those cases, raised by the Catholic cable channel EWTN, a district judge had denied a preliminary injunction against the accommodation scheme. Yesterday, within hours of the Hobby Lobby decision, the 11th Circuit stepped in and granted the preliminary injunction, relying in part on the reasoning of Hobby Lobby to conclude that EWTN has a substantial likelihood of success on the merits. That decision, which is a useful read, is here (PDF).

Also, after the victory for "partial public employees" in Harris yesterday, folks were wondering when public employees would get a chance at undoing the ridiculous fiction that their compelled dues aren't used to expand union ideological activity. Just such a case is already pending before the 9th Circuit. The case is Friedrichs v. California School Teachers Ass'n.

Overnight Open Thread (6-30-2014) – July Eve Edition

—Maetenloch

The Left Has a Freakout over the Hobby Lobby Decision

Of course OUTRAGE!!! doesn't requires any facts or understanding of the case.

Even if you're a US Senator.

And even Harry Reid got in on the insane outrage action.

But wait - the Supreme Court decision just upheld the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act as providing an exemption from the Obamacare contraception mandate. Hmm 'Religious Freedom' - that sounds kind of scary and conservative. Just what kind of rightwing monsters were supporting this RFRA back in 93?

Why this kind:

RFRA passed in 1993 with overwhelming bipartisan support. It was sponsored by Democrat N.Y. Sen. Charles Schumer and earned the votes of leading lib dinosaurs including Harry Reid, Dianne Feinstein, Patty Murray, and Barbara Boxer.

So twenty years ago a religious freedom exception to some laws was the orthodox liberal position - today it's the new fascism. But with the same old liberal faces bellowing and raging over it.

Heh

Quote of the Day

They must always have a Great Evil to crusade against, because only crusading against a Great Evil can excuse their own actions.

  -- Glenn Reynolds on the Left

Don't hate the party, become the party

—Brandon Finnigan

It's been almost a week since the runoff race was held in Mississippi. Some are calling for sabotaging the general, others are trying to gather energy and resources for the next major "battle", while still others are staggering about, naked and high on shrooms, wondering what happened. Here are a few thoughts.

Lets say a political party proclaims it is firmly against X, Y, and Z. Sometimes they may be a bit squishy, but since their opposition is firmly in favor of X, Y, Z, supporters of said party continue to vote for them. There are highs and lows in this, resentments and triumphs, but, for a little while, all seems well.

Now, as time goes on, and as political parties are prone to do, the demographics and interests of said party begin to change, there will still be pressure on base supporters to vote for their party's candidates, even if they start to get waffly on X, Y, or Z. Perhaps the powers that be run their party into electoral quicksand, passing the power baton to their opposition in the process.

The party may grow so bad and listless that an "insurgency" forms within, one which runs it's own candidates, candidates who are quite firm in their opposition of X, Y, and Z. It's rusty, new, untested. Some "leaders" turn out to be charlatans, some "experts" hacks, and some with promise wind up as duds.

But as a whole, the primaries become closer. The screams become louder. The situation grows so precarious for some incumbents in said party that they must resort to begging members in the opposing party to support them and openly rescinding their opposition to X, Y, and Z in the process.

The question, post-battle, becomes what to do about these guys, and how to handle a setback. Does the insurgency give up and walk away? Or do they double-down with the next race? Do they study and learn what worked and what didn't, and learn to use the tools within the party against those whom they feel are betraying it? David Brat certainly provided a way forward for challengers: his data team ran circles around the House Majority Leader at a fraction of his opponent's budget.

Insurgencies are a good thing for political parties. In fact, they're a necessity for their long-term survival. Demographics change. Challenges change. Interests change. Interest groups change. And the intricate coalitions of voters change as well. We haven't seen a major shift in party allegiance in decades, but it very well could be underway.

A meaningful change in the direction of a political party depends on the willpower of those determined to push it. If losses leave them spinning and spitting in a rage, it will make for great headlines and fundraising-by-tweets, but it will do a very poor job of dictating the terms of change. Matches and gasoline make for a great visual, but a terrible long-term solution for successfully altering a party.

The way forward for conservatives angry enough to overthrow the establishment figures they feel have wronged them, their party, and their country is difficult to carry out, but quite simple to explain: push on. Lose a race? Go to the next one. And the next one. And the next. And the next. A relentless pursuit, a long march through the party's infrastructure and elections, until "the powers that be" become the powers that were. Until the new boss is most definitely not the same as the old boss. It will require quite a lot of will, and the ending is impossible to see as the political drama plays out. You never know whose head you'll get to mount on a stick, that's the uncertainty.

Here's what is certain: you won't mount any if you walk away.

(Oh, and apologies to Jello Biafra for bastardizing his quote, but the spirit is the same.)

If the IUD and Plan B Aren't Abortifacents, Then Terry MacAuliffe Must Resign His Post as Governor of Virginia

—Ace

This is typical crap from the Left. Here's Sally Kohn:

And both companies say they don't object to all contraception, simply drugs or intrauterine devices that prevent pregnancy after fertilization, contraceptive methods that folks on the right mis-label and malign as "abortifacients." That characterization is factually, scientifically untrue.

Terry MacAuliffe's campaign for Virginia Governor ran almost exclusively that Ken Cuccinelli's personhood-at-conception bill would outlaw just these exact sorts of birth control, precisely because they might result in a fertilized egg being blocked from implanting in the uterus.

He and his allies ran these ads almost every minute of every day in the 2013 election.

This ad ran thousands of times during the election:

An Observation About Hobby Lobby & the Left

—Ace

David French writes:

[The left's hysterical reaction is] instructive because it demonstrates the extent to which the Left is emotionally and ideologically committed to the power of the regulatory state. For some time, the Left has been selling the public and the courts on the notion that somehow the act of forming a corporation and opening for business operates as an effective waiver of your most basic liberties, including free speech, free exercise of religion, and virtually the entire panoply of property rights. In effect, your business is not “your” business at all, but instead all aspects of its operations exist at the whim of the state, and if the state wants to draft you into its child-killing abortion crusade —-- or wants to muzzle you during political campaigns -- then you best salute and fall in line.

It occurs to me that the Left is attempting to create a system wherein there are two different classes of citizenship, one fully possessed of its right to speak and act politically, the other whose rights in this regard are sharply curtailed.

That's obvious, that's not the interesting part.

Here's the interesting part, I think: The Left, were it to have its way, would forbid anyone who is not primarily in the business of politics (or working for the government or university) from exercising their full political rights.

If you work in any other industry, your rights are substantially reduced.

Think how much this proposed rule would benefit the Left, were it fully accepted. (It is 85% accepted at the moment.)

The only people who would be permitted to speak on political issues, or at in accordance with their social/cultural/religious/political principles, would be the Political Class Itself, which is of course largely "progressive."

Shopkeeper? Nope, you're not a professional of the political class. Shut up. You have no right to run your business as your conscience dictates.

Baker? You're not a professional in the political class. Shut up and bake the cake.

And so on. By choosing an economically-productive trade which is not politics, you have ceded most of your rights in the political sphere, per this line of thinking.

The people who retain their full rights are the artists, the academics, the media class, the union officials, the teachers and other civil servants, and all the various functionaries of the permanent DC lobbying/think tank class.

This seems to me to be very congruent with the Left's conception of a cadre of people who will Do all the thinking for the rest of the country -- the revolutionary vanguard -- and the rest of the people who will actually generate the economic surpluses that the vanguard will then divvy up.

The Left continues to conceive of their idea of a Utopia in which some -- they themselves -- are the the thinkers, the plotters, the dreamers and the schemers -- and everyone else is merely a doer, a revenue-generating economic unit which is expected to follow the orders issued to them by the Thinking Class.

Obama: Congress' Refusal To Pass the Law I Like Grants Me The Power To Do Like Whatever

—Ace

The Constitutional Law Scholar in the White House (TM).

I rarely assume tyrannical power, but when I do, I prefer socialist tyrannical power.

Think about how stupid this is: Obama is claiming that Congress' choice not to pass a law constitutes an abandonment of constitutional power (rather than the exercise of it), and then that power flows precisely to the President.

Just how the Framers' designed it, huh?

You have refused to grant me the power of Imperium. Therefore, you have irresponsibly abandoned your exercise of that power, and the power to declare myself emperor flows into my own hands.

Grant me power, or I will seize it. The choice is yours.

Senator Ron Johnson and actual law professor Jonathan Turley address the crisis that Obama has created.

A growing crisis in our constitutional system threatens to fundamentally alter the balance of powers -- and accountability -- within our government. This crisis did not begin with Obama, but it has reached a constitutional tipping point during his presidency. Indeed, it is enough to bring the two of us -- a liberal academic and a conservative U.S. senator -- together in shared concern over the future of our 225-year-old constitutional system of self­governance.

...

First, we need to discuss the erosion of legislative authority within the evolving model of the federal government. There has been a dramatic shift of authority toward presidential powers and the emergence of what is essentially a fourth branch of government -- a vast network of federal agencies with expanded legislative and judicial power. While the federal bureaucracy is a hallmark of the modern administrative state, it presents a fundamental change to a system of three coequal branches designed to check and balance each other. The growing authority invested in federal agencies comes from a diminished Congress, which seems to have a dramatically reduced ability to actively monitor, let alone influence, agency actions.

...

The framers believed that members of each branch of government would transcend individual political ambitions to vigorously defend the power of their institutions. Presidents have persistently expanded their authority with considerable success. Congress has been largely passive or, worse, complicit in the draining of legislative authority. Judges have adopted doctrines of avoidance that have removed the courts from important conflicts between the branches. Now is the time for members of Congress and the judiciary to affirm their oaths to “support and defend the Constitution” and to work to re-establish our delicate constitutional balance.

Indeed, the Supreme Court has the Last Clear Chance of averting an actual coup.

White House Spokesman: "The Constitutional Lawyer in the White House" Disagrees with the Supreme Court

—Ace

TFG:

Although Josh Earnest repeated this formulation, it must be noted that it was actually a reporter who phrased the question by asking what the "constitutional lawyer who sits in the Oval Office" thinks about the Hobby Lobby decision.

They're still in love, I guess.

Meanwhile, the White House is workin' hard for the American people. Just last week it tried to introduce the meme that the president was "The Bear" and so people should tweet things like "OMG, the bear is loose!" when the President is out of the White House.

Today, the White House focuses on even more important matters:

Wow another #Hashtag twitter game. I never saw that coming.

Boehner: Immigration Reform Is Off The Table This Year; Obama Threatens Constitutional Crisis

—Ace

Israeli Army Finds the Bodies of Three Kidnapped Teenagers, Murdered, Near Homes of Kidnapping Suspects

—Ace

Now confirmed by the government.

Just a short while ago it was merely feared:

Sources from Al Jazeera and Abc said that the bodies were found near Hebron, the city where two suspects in the case -- Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Aisha -- lived.

...

Israeli officials have convened an emergency security cabinet meeting at 9.30 pm local time, amid new details in the ongoing search for the three teens with a statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expected afterwards.

Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) sent in troops in the Hebron area and set up roadblocks around the city, following the new developments in the investigation.

...

Sixteen-year-olds Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaar and 19-year-old Eyal Yifrach disappeared while hitchhiking at night from the Jewish settlement of Gush Etzion.

The time of death is believed to be at about the same time as the teenagers went missing:

One of the three teenagers, Naftali Frenkel, was a US citizen.

A Black Guy Named "Clinton Tucker" is Suing Benjamin Moore Paints for Selling a Paint with the "Racially Offensive" Name "Tucker Chocolate"

—Ace

The name "Tucker Chocolate" has nothing at all to do with him, of course. In 1798, a guy named St. George Tucker requested a particular shade of brown for his house. Benjamin Moore says their "Tucker Chocolate" recaptures that hue.

This guy, who formerly worked for Benjamin Moore, says that's "racially offensive," because his own name is Tucker. He is further outraged that they also market a color called "Clinton Brown," because that's his first name. He further says that when he brought up this outrage to coworkers, they thought "it" was funny.

I think they thought his crackpot conspiracy theories and sue-iness was funny.

But as they say: If only one man is offended...

Supreme Court Decision Day - Harris and Hobby Lobby

—Gabriel Malor

Whew, what a crazy last few weeks at the Supreme Court. Finishing the term, the Supreme Court has issued decisions in Harris v. Quinn and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, both of which are by J. Alito.

In Harris, the Supreme Court held, in a 5-4 decision by Justice Alito that "partial public employees" like the home healthcare aides here may not be compelled to pay union fees to a union they do not want to support. This is a limited loss for unions, but it does not sweep away prior precedent allowing compelled fees for normal public employees. That will have to wait on another case, oh, like a couple coming up out of California that are now pending at the 9th Cir.

That decision is here (PDF).

In Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court held that "closely held corporations" like the for-profit corporations here cannot be compelled under RFRA to provide contraception coverage in violation of their religious beliefs. This is another narrow, but crucial victory.

That decision is here (PDF).

I'll have more on these decisions in a bit.