This is the way it’s done: Noam Scheiber on the IRS scandal

The New Neo Posted on by

You know, I feel I need to thank the left for one thing. For much of my life, I’ve studied history but wondered how it was that certain things happened. How could people be so stupid, so gullible, so shortsighted, so (fill in the blanks) to believe in or support or make excuses for or ignore all the various forms of tyranny that have taken over in the 20th century?

How could they not see what was coming? How could they collude in the takeover, or at least not fight it with all their might? How, in particular, did so many of the leaders and the intelligentsia, who supposedly should have known better, and the man in the street who should have had more common sense, collude in their own downfall?

Well, I wonder no more. Whether or not our own left has actually gone the way of Nazis or the Gulag, whether they haven’t yet but give them time and they will, or whether they’ll never get that far but merely go the European socialism route, it’s no mystery how it happens.

It’s actually been evident for quite some time. But lately it’s become even more clear, as the left deals with the latest scandals in the most creative of ways, working all possible variations on the themes of illogic, distortion, obfuscation, projection, omission of important facts in order to make a point, and outright lies (I’m sure I’ve left out a few, but those will do). And then it’s brought home even more clearly by reading commenters on the left, and watching how they jump on board.

Case in point: Noam Scheiber’s article about the IRS scandal that just appeared in The New Republic. Noam’s theory, in a nutshell, is that the IRS overreach was the fault of the Republicans for cutting resources to government agencies, and the poor beleaguered IRS agents were just overwhelmed.

But Scheiber is not unique in coming up with that little act of jujitsu (which, by the way, reminds me of nothing so much as how my older brother used to tease me in time-honored fashion by grabbing my hand, jabbing it against my face, and asking, “What are you hitting yourself for?”). Other writers on left have said much the same. No, Scheiber’s most creative riff was that this was a form of purposeful entrapment on the part of the right:

And yet, when you take a step back from the IRS scandal, there does appear to be something slightly sinister going on. Except that the scheming is on the right and not the left. Since the Republican House takeover in 2010, conservatives have laid the groundwork for a cynical two-step: First, squeeze funding for government programs, making it harder for civil servants to do their jobs. Then, when the inevitable screw-up comes, use it as further justification for cuts. Against this backdrop, the IRS scandal looks like only the latest step in the conservative long-game.

Wow! Would that the conservatives even had a long-game.

Scheiber’s article should be laughable Onion-style stuff. Except that it’s not.

More evidence that the sun has not only set on the British empire,…

The New Neo Posted on by

…it has set on Britain as well:

If you’re thinking of getting steamed over [the Woolrich machete murder], don’t. Simon Jenkins, the former editor of the Times of London, cautioned against “mass hysteria” over “mundane acts of violence.”

That’s easy for him to say. Woolwich is an unfashionable part of town, and Sir Simon is unlikely to find himself there of an afternoon stroll. Drummer Rigby had less choice in the matter. Being jumped by barbarians with machetes is certainly “mundane” in Somalia and Sudan, but it’s the sort of thing that would once have been considered somewhat unusual on a sunny afternoon in south London…

That’s Mark Steyn writing, and he goes on to say a great deal that was already discussed here and elsewhere.

Jenkins’ use of the word “mundane” is positively stunning. We can assume that, as a former big shot editor, he is well aware of the meaning of words. But for the rest of us, let’s have a refresher on the meaning of “mundane”: “characterized by the practical, transitory, and ordinary : commonplace.”

Let’s hope Mr. Jenkins is not prescient, and that such acts never become either ordinary or commonplace in the West.

If you want to read Jenkins’ entire piece, see this, and make sure you read it to the end. It’s an interesting hybrid of things. For example, he’s certainly correct that part of the killers’ aim was to get lots of publicity, and if we somehow denied them publicity they wouldn’t be so inclined to do this sort of thing. But he ignores the fact that, when guys with cleavers hack apart a soldier on a London street in broad daylight, it’s already too late to keep it hush hush, or to moderate the response. If anything, the response was too mild, but Perkins would have us shrug and consider it a regular everyday murder, which it most assuredly was not.

What’s more, of course, he devotes quite a bit of space to ye olde terrorism explanation/excuse and the usual moral equivalence:

British and American operators indeed use drone missiles to kill Muslim soldiers, and inevitably civilians, on the streets of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. They deploy horrific airborne violence against communities, including in non-combatant countries. Retaliation for these killings may not be “justifiable” in our terms. But jihadists have no access to drones and must rely on car bombs, nail bombs, machetes and cleavers.

The result may appal Londoners, but there are no citizen journalists to witness the appalling impact of a drone attack on a Pashtun village. Can we be surprised when the other side (or its distant sympathisers) retaliates on London, where it gets so much more publicity than in Baghdad or Kabul? Of course, people should be able to walk peacefully down the street in London. They should also be able to walk peacefully in Kandahar, Yemen or Baluchistan.

This is the caliber of the kneejerk thinking among bigwigs in the MSM, there and here. Unfortunately, it has become quite “mundane” among the chattering classes.

Those generic rioting “youths” in Sweden

The New Neo Posted on by

I was going to write a long article about the press’s coverage of the riots by so-called “youths” in Sweden, but this article pretty much covers the same territory:

In addition to the horrendous beheading of a British soldier in Woolwich by Muslim terrorists, Stockholm’s suburbs have seen riots for the last four nights, with car burnings and crowds throwing rocks at the police, reminiscent of the recurring riots in France.

Who are these rioters? The story on the Huffington Post has the following descriptions: “Gangs of youth… Around 50 youths…The youths set light to a parking garage… masked youths hurling rocks…. One policeman was attacked by youths.”

On the Bloomberg article with a link on Drudge, the rioters are described as “stone-throwing youths.”

The Washington Post: “Some 200 youths hurled rocks at police…Six youths were arrested.”

As for the neighborhood, Huffington reports:

Around 80 percent of the roughly 11,000 people living in Husby – a drab, low-income neighborhood of apartment blocks west of Stockholm – are first or second generation immigrants. “I understand that people react like this,” said Rami Al-Khamisi from the organization Megafonen, which represents citizens in Stockholm’s suburbs.

The New York Times has a short piece, which refers only to “riots in immigrant neighborhoods.

The MSM has united to hide what’s going on, in their efforts to out-PC each other and win the Most Tolerant prize. I do think that Reuters’ Niklas Pollard and Philip O’Connor may have edged out the others in the competition, though, because their article adds a lengthy blame-the Swedes-for-not-being-accommodating-enough-to-the-immigrants section:

Conversations with residents of this immigrant neighborhood soon bring tales of fruitless job hunts, police harassment, racial taunts and a feeling of living at the margins that are at odds with Sweden’s reputation for openness and tolerance…

As one Asian diplomat puts it: “On the one hand Sweden has all these immigrants. On the other hand, where are they? It sometimes seems they are mostly selling hotdogs.”

In a further illustration of two very different worlds, the first riot happened as many Swedes celebrated winning the world ice hockey championship. Most immigrants play football – it is a common refrain that ice hockey kits are too expensive.

“The worst vandalism is not what we’ve experienced in recent days,” said community leader Arne Johansson at a protest rally in Husby. “It is the creeping, slow vandalism that this rightist government has exposed us to over the past seven years.”

Seven years of center-right Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt – who has labeled the rioters hooligans – have lowered taxes and reduced state benefits. That has helped economic growth outpace most of Europe but Sweden also has the fastest growing inequality of any OECD nation.

Professor of criminology at Stockholm University Jerzy Sarnecki said society has become much more segregated, with a large, poor immigrant population living in areas of major cities where unemployment is dramatically higher than elsewhere.

Polls show a majority of Swedes still welcome immigration. Sweden has a reputation for treating new arrivals well – providing housing, Swedish lessons and allowing asylum seekers to live with relatives.

So which is it, folks? Is Sweden bad to them or good to them? No matter how much, it’s never enough for the entitled and their enablers.

By the way, Stockholm’s population is now 23% immigrant. Good luck with that.

The European model for immigration really doesn’t work, though it’s not because they’re not nice enough to them. It combines almost-unlimited numbers of new arrivals with no ability to assimilate them—which would be almost impossible to do in such huge numbers anyway, and is especially difficult with populations that have such huge economic and cultural and social differences from the host countries, no desire to change their ways in the cultural sense, and little push by the host country to do so. At least the US has had a long history of having to deal with immigrants, a society that has always been at least somewhat ethnically diverse, and a preference for assimilation and acculturation which, sadly, has been evaporating in recent years as we adapt the European model of cultural separatism and nanny-statism. Like so much of what we see in Europe, it’s really nothing to emulate.

[ADDENDUM: This should be unbelievable.

Except it’s all too believable.]

More prayers in Oklahoma

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a sequel to yesterday’s post on prayers during the tornado.]

During the Moore tornado, teacher Anna Canady had a prayer [emphasis mine]:

She remembered that as the tornado bore down on this school in Moore, Okla., she and Simonds took the kids into the hall, among them her own daughter, 5-year-old Kali.

“I just grabbed as many kids as I could, eight of 10 kindergartners,” Canaday recalled.

Canaday took half the children and Simonds took the others. The teachers had them get down on their knees against the wall and cover their heads, just as they had often done in the school’s regular drills. The tornado roared ever near.

“We just held them and told them to keep their heads down,” Canaday remembered. “I kept telling them they were going to be just fine and God was going to take care of us. I prayed as loud as I could.”

The twister was right upon them in all its fury.

“When it hit it was so loud,” Canaday said. “I just kept telling the kids under me, ”˜It’s going to be OK.’ I prayed aloud”¦”˜Just take me instead because they’re the babies.’”

The story has a happy ending. Somehow, in the melee, a car that probably had been in the school parking lot was lifted up and came to rest on top of the huddled group as the school collapsed around them and over them. The vehicle acted as a shield, protecting them from the rest of the debris, and both teachers and all the children escaped with only very minor injuries.

And when Canaday’s distraught husband was reunited with his wife and daughter and learned they were okay, daughter Kali remembered that he’d emphasized to her to take good care of her glasses and not break them, because they were expensive. She apologetically explained:

“She said, ”˜Daddy, I’m OK, but my glasses broke when the school fell on me,’” he reports.

Somehow I bet he didn’t hold it against her.

It’s not Lerner’s first rodeo—or Obama’s

The New Neo Posted on by

John Fund points out that Lois Lerner has a pre-IRS history of overseeing the same sort of abuses she supervised when she later came to the IRS:

Conservatives have long tangled with Lerner, who was director of enforcement at the Federal Election Commission from 1986 until 2001, when she moved to the IRS.

“Everything we have seen at the IRS was reeled out first at the FEC,” says Jim Bopp, a noted election-law attorney who represented the Christian Coalition in its successful fight to quash the FEC’s attempt to impose a $5 million fine on the group for political activities. The FEC lost the case on summary judgment in a 1999 opinion written by a Jimmy Carter”“appointed judge.

“In a dozen out of the 81 depositions in the case, the FEC wanted to know about people’s religious beliefs or the content of their prayers,” Bopp told me. “Lerner took the speech-chilling culture she developed at the FEC right over to the IRS.”

And you can be pretty sure that whoever gave her the job knew about her accomplishments, and that they were considered a feature, not a bug.

And Kimberly A. Strassel at the WSJ has been doing great work in connecting the dots and pointing out that, whether Obama directly ordered this or not, it’s been his m.o.—and that of the left—for a long time. And no secret at all.

This is the sort of thing that drives those on the right who’ve been paying attention crazy. The connection is obvious, or should be, to anyone with more than a glancing, MSM-limited, exposure to Obama’s history. He has not only been a beneficiary of the “if only Stalin knew” excuse while his underlings practice the Chicago way, he has called the behavior forth, winked at it, and chosen those who practice it to work for him. Whether his aides and lawyers “protected” him from the exact details of the IRS scandal or not (and it is not clear whether they did), there is no question that he generally knew and approved, and rhetorically supported, all the excesses therein and more.

From Strassels’ piece:

The [Bob Bauer, general counsel for Obama’s 2008 campaign, and then counsel for Obama’s White House] onslaught was a big part of a new liberal strategy to thwart the rise of conservative groups. In early August 2008, the New York Times trumpeted the creation of a left-wing group (a 501(c)4) called Accountable America. Founded by Obama supporter and liberal activist Tom Mattzie, the group””as the story explained””would start by sending “warning” letters to 10,000 GOP donors, “hoping to create a chilling effect that will dry up contributions.” The letters would alert “right-wing groups to a variety of potential dangers, including legal trouble, public exposure and watchdog groups digging through their lives.” As Mr. Mattzie told Mother Jones: “We’re going to put them at risk.”

The Bauer letters were the Obama campaign’s high-profile contribution to this effort””though earlier, in the spring of 2008, Mr. Bauer filed a complaint with the FEC against the American Leadership Project, a group backing Hillary Clinton in the primary. “There’s going to be a reckoning here,” he had warned publicly. “It’s going to be rough””it’s going to be rough on the officers, it’s going to be rough on the employees, it’s going to be rough on the donors. . . Whether it’s at the FEC or in a broader criminal inquiry, those donors will be asked questions.” The campaign similarly attacked a group supporting John Edwards.

American Leadership head (and Democrat) Jason Kinney would rail that Mr. Bauer had gone from “credible legal authority” to “political hatchet man”””but the damage was done. As Politico reported in August 2008, Mr. Bauer’s words had “the effect of scaring [Clinton and Edwards] donors and consultants,” even if they hadn’t yet “result[ed] in any prosecution.”

As general counsel to the Obama re-election campaign, Mr. Bauer used the same tactics on pro-Romney groups. The Obama campaign targeted private citizens who had donated to Romney groups. Democratic senators demanded that the IRS investigate these organizations.

Note two things. The first is that Bauer’s initial targets were Obama’s opponents in the Democratic Party, exactly what I pointed out in this essay as Obama’s longstanding pattern when he’s been in contested primaries. The second is that Bauer’s tactics could not possibly have been a secret, and that he has worked for Obama in high positions since at least 2008 and was an integral part of his re-election campaign in 2012. No accident, no “if only Stalin knew.” Just the clever appearance of it.

For anyone who continues to think Obama might not have known about Bauer’s tactics or approved of them, take a look at a post I wrote in August of 2008 about Bauer’s tactics on behalf of Obama. If I knew it and was writing about it way back then, it was not even close to being a secret. Not only can Obama not deny knowing what his minions were doing, he obviously approved and kept Bauer on, never speaking a word against him, and perpetuating a sort of good-cop bad-cop routine that continues to this day.

Of course, both of these articles were published in periodicals that are allied with the right (the National Review) and the pretty much right (the WSJ). Preaching to the choir? The other drawback is that people have to care. I’ve become convinced that most liberals and even many in the middle don’t get why these things are dangerous, even if done to the Big Bad (demonized) Tea Party. The left, of course, applauds them. They feel safe because, despite their accusations of high corruption against the right, they know it tends to be far more politically naive, less ruthless, and more concerned with means than they are. The left also thinks that these tactics, if they use them effectively enough, will help them achieve the permanent hegemony in politics they so desire.

Well, now

The New Neo Posted on by

Holder signed off on the Rosen email seizure, according to “a law enforcement official.”

And today Obama had just put him in charge of “review[ing] Justice Department guidelines governing investigations that involve journalists.” Fox guarding the henhouse?

Note that the story was broken by Michael Isikoff of NBC news. Isikoff himself seems to have the usual liberal resume, although he apparently was the person who originally was going to break the Lewinsky scandal (Matt Drudge scooped him because Newsweek, for which Isikoff was writing at the time, decided to kill the story).

Anyone who’s been following Holder for a long should be unsurprised by the news of his signature. Will he say an underling signed for him? Do they have to check for his DNA? Will Holder finally find he wants to take some time off to spend with his family? (Remember, though, this is not the case from which he said he had recused himself; that was the AP case.) The bigger surprise is that NBC is actually doing some investigative reporting that reflects badly on the Obama administration, and is not killing the story.

Obama may learn (I hope!) that it’s not a good idea to piss off the press.

But oh, if only Obama knew!

When I first heard that Anthony Weiner was running for mayor of NY…

The New Neo Posted on by

…I wondered if he was nuts.

And his announcement today that more women might be coming forth with emails and photos from him of a sexual nature certainly seemed to validate that thought.

But then again, he probably figures that sort of thing didn’t hurt Bill Clinton any. So why should it hurt him? Well, I would submit that Bill Clinton has a lot more charm than Weiner.

And by the way, the double entendres in this post were completely unintentional. I was going to take them out. But then I decided it would be much more appropriate if they stayed in.

This stuff just writes itself.

The “it’s Ruemmler’s fault” narrative continues apace

The New Neo Posted on by

White House Counsel Ruemmler was just protecting the president, says the WaPo:

But they agreed that it would be best not to share it with President Obama until the independent audit was completed and made public, in part to protect him from even the appearance of trying to influence an investigation.

This account of how the White House tried to deal with the IRS inquiry ”” based on documents, public statements and interviews with multiple senior officials, including one directly involved in the discussions ”” shows how carefully Obama’s top aides were trying to shield him from any second-term scandal that might swamp his agenda or, worse, jeopardize his presidency.

Many of the commenters at the link seem to buy this entirely, which just goes to show you how gullible people can be when they want to believe—or how well they can follow the party line even if they’re not really all that gullible.

There are so many problems with this story it’s hard to know where to begin, but the first one is whether it’s believable at all; I don’t think so, but many people will believe it anyway. The second is whether the lawyer tasked with “advising [the president] on all legal aspects of policy questions…[and] ethical questions” would ever, or should ever, withhold such information, and why. Even the WaPo says that a goodly part of Ruemmler’s motivation would have been political, “to shield him from any second-term scandal that might swamp his agenda or, worse, jeopardize his presidency.”

My translation of those words is that Ruemmler wanted to afford Obama plausible deniability, and also to shield the American people from knowledge that might cause them to turn on the Democrats before the election. I actually don’t believe he was shielded, as I’ve said—I believe Obama was told, but there is no proof and never will be any proof, unless someone decides to spill the beans and has documentation to back it up. But even if he was shielded, a third issue would be: who created an atmosphere where the most important function of the administration was to protect the president from any knowledge that might harm him politically, rather than to help him actually govern knowledgeably and effectively? My answer would be: Obama himself.

Apparently, in the Obama White House, ignorance (or the appearance of ignorance) is bliss.

Words, knives, guns

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s hard to find words to describe yesterday’s murder of a soldier by machete-wielding Islamic terrorists in Woolwich (a part of greater London) who hacked him to death, so I’ll just let this article do the talking:

Witnesses told how the men drove a dark blue Vauxhall Tigra on to the pavement and knocked down the soldier.

He was wearing a T-shirt with the army charity Help for Heroes logo on it and was carrying a military issue rucksack. The men then leapt out of their car and ”˜hacked and chopped’ at their victim before dragging his bloodied body into the middle of the road.

This was the murderers’ explicit message to the British people:

”˜You people will never be safe. Remove your government. They don’t care about you.

”˜You think David Cameron is going to get caught in the street when we start busting our guns? You think your politicians are going to die? No, it’s going to be the average guy like you ”“ and your children.

So get rid of them ”“ tell them to bring our troops back so we can … so you can all live in peace.’

Ah yes. He’s just a different kind of peace activist.

The irony is sickening.

Richard Fernandez offers his own brilliant perspective on the deeper societal implications:

This incident illustrates, if nothing else, the endpoint of the social engineering of the West. It has been remarkably effective.

From a certain point of view, the British crowd behaved perfectly and this is the way “they” all want us to behave. The populace sheltered in place, didn’t do anything rash, talked to the perpetrators as people. They waited for the police to come and the hospital helicopter to take the corpse away. Some will doubtless get counseling to overcome their shattering experience.

And then they will congratulate themselves on how tough British society is; resilience and all that. The more caring will leave some flowers by a railing and hold a few candle vigils for healing and peace, until these wither and blow away and the news cycle washes up a new object of attention.

The attackers knew they were actors in a drama ”” as keenly watched in their communities as on the BBC. And in that other audience they were asking: “How will the locals behave?” We know now. And that other audience may derive an entirely different lesson from this tableau: “See? Only their women act like men. They follow orders. They are nothing any more ”” these Westerners. They are a civilization whose core has been destroyed.”

I would emphasize that a huge part of what was going on here is that the perpetrators had weapons and the people in the crowd did not. And the reason the people in the crowd did not is because they are banned so thoroughly. In fact, even had they had them (illegally, of course), and used them under this particular circumstance, they would rightly fear that they would stand a chance of being arrested for it. If you don’t believe me, read this.

So in Woolwich yesterday it was left to some women (who indeed were brave, but it’s a different kind of bravery, the kind “they”—the authorities—tolerate) to talk to the killers until the police came. The killers allowed the women to do this; they banned men from approaching.

You’ve all probably heard the expression about bringing a knife to a gun fight. Well, these women brought words to a knife (machete) fight (the killers had a rusty revolver, too, but it malfunctioned).

And then the police came. Finally—after twenty minutes. You know why it took so long? Embedded in the article is this telling sentence:

The two black men in their 20s, waited calmly for armed police to arrive before charging at officers brandishing a rusty revolver, knives and meat cleavers.

If you read that quickly or without much knowledge of British law (knowledge that I’d bet the terrorists didn’t lack), you might miss its significance. But note that word “armed”—not all police in Britain are armed, you see, and the delay was apparently because the special armed cops had to be called in.

And you know what? They finally brought guns to a knife fight, and they won that fight because of it.