Winter in Raging-Whiner Nation

Today on NRO

ROGER CLEGG: The Supreme Court has a chance this week to strike down a pernicious policy. MLK and 'Disparate Impact'.

QUIN HILLYER: Obama's fiscal folly will leave every American taxpayer $1 million dollars in debt. More, More, More Spending, Obama Urges.

RYAN LOVELACE: There are allegations Loretta Lynch's U.S. Attorney's Office is keeping cases quiet. Loretta Lynch's Secret Docket.

DANIEL PIPES: The Egyptian president might not oppose all Islamism — just the violent form. Sisi and the Reform of Islam.

SLIDESHOW: American Snipers.

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty

January 19, 2015

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day; apparently I'm one of the few Americans who didn't see American Sniper this weekend.

Winter in Raging-Whiner Nation

This weekend in San Francisco, leftists turned on leftists:

Approximately 300 people shut down Castro Street on Saturday during the night when most people are going to bars. Activists chose the Castro "because it is a space dominated by white middle class men, and is symbolic of the racial divide within the LGBT community and gentrification in San Francisco in general."

Activists also wanted to draw attention to the fact that the Castro supports LGBT related organizations that are generally "apathetic" towards black and brown people.

Meanwhile, across the country . . .

Officials from the Massachusetts State Police and Easton Fire Department are reporting that an ambulance responding to violent car accident was blocked from traveling to a Boston hospital on Thursday.

Massachusetts State Police Superintendent Timothy P. Alben told reporters during a press conference that an Easton ambulance carrying car crash victims in serious condition had to be diverted to a lower-level hospital because of the protests.

About 11 people were arrested by police for blocking I-93 north near East Milton Square on Thursday as part of an action by the #BlackLivesMatter protest movement. The protesters blocked traffic by locking themselves together with the help of concrete filled barrel they transported to the site with a rented box truck.

Hey, protesters, #CrashVictimsLivesMatter.

Then of course, we have the brunch protesters:

In a twist on sit-in-style protests, civil rights activists entered several restaurants in New York City and Oakland, Calif., on Sunday in what organizers billed as "Black Brunch."

About three dozen people participated in demonstrations in New York, where they momentarily "disrupted" meals at popular midtown eateries, including Lallisse, Maialino and Pershing Square — places protesters identified as predominantly "white spaces."

Storming into bars and restaurants, locking themselves to concrete-filled-barrels and blocking Interstates . . . this is the progressive grassroots of 2015. This is the Left, capital-L. This is blind fury, lashing out at others for having the audacity to drink beverages, eat brunch, or commute in a manner that the self-appointed arbiters of justice on the left deem insufficiently down with the cause. There is no actual "activism" here. There is no attempt at persuasion here. There is no thought here. There is only resentment and anger and a desire to lash out at anybody who isn't one of them. There's no agenda or plan to actually improve things. There's no call to action. It's just rage-whining.

My fellow men and women of the Right . . . yes, we have our bad days. Yes, there are times somebody on our side embarrasses us or does something stupid. But we can all thank our lucky stars we don't have idiots, losers, and misanthropic rage-mongers like this claiming to act in the name in our cause.

Notice that there's not a single prominent member of the Democratic party willing to call out this idiocy for what it is. Notice that the furies are disrupting life in Oakland, Boston, San Francisco and New York City, places where Republicans, much less conservatives, are few and far between. The far Left is making life miserable for the rank-and-file Democrats, and Mayor de Blasio, Governors Andrew Cuomo and Jerry Brown, and President Obama are nowhere to be found and have nothing to say. They can't take the Left on too directly or too loudly.

There's not one of them willing to say, "You're not allowed to do this, because you're impeding on the rights of your fellow Americans, and you're making a mockery of the ideals you claim to uphold."

There's a long, colorful history of the lunatic, paranoid Left turning against the slightly-less Left. I was amused to read recently that a late-1960s radical feminist group called the "Redstockings" accused Gloria Steinem of being a CIA agent:

FACT: Gloria Steinem is a CIA Agent and everything she has ever done throughout her adult life has been under the direction of the CIA.

FACT: Gloria Steinem was recruited into the CIA before she even graduated high school.

Stupid leftists -- or we could call them "rage-whiners," whichever term you prefer -- aren't quite ruining this country, but they're throwing sand in the gears. There's an opening here for a real leader, for somebody who is willing to stand up and say, "The moment somebody gets in the way of a good person trying to get to work, arrest the bastard. The moment somebody starts disrupting a restaurant patrons just trying to eat their meal, call the cops and have them hauled out -- it's private property.

As our president asked, "Can't I just eat my waffle?"

Obama Proposes Taxing College-Savings Plans

Deep in the details of Obama's "Free Community College" plan:

Limit upside-down education savings incentives and consolidate them into a single benefit. The President's plan would consolidate education savings incentives into one vehicle and redirect the savings into the better targeted AOTC. Specifically, the President's plan will roll back expanded tax cuts for 529 education savings plans that were enacted in 2001 for new contributions, and -- like Chairman Camp's tax reform plan -- repeal tax incentives going forward for the much smaller Coverdell education savings program.

Oh, excuse me. You mean the 529 plans that just about every parent I know has, that are tax-free? The one where the whole point of the plan, and why people use it, is because it's tax-free? Americans for Tax Reform noticed:

Under current law, 529 plans work like Roth IRAs: you put money in, and the money grows tax-free for college. Distributions are tax-free provided they are to pay for college.

Under the Obama plan, earnings growth in a 529 plan would no longer be tax-free. Instead, earnings would face taxation upon withdrawal, even if the withdrawal is to pay for college. This was the law prior to 2001.

See if he mentions this little detail in Tuesday night's State of the Union Address.

Sorry, Governor Romney, But Old Video of You Thanking Gruber Hurts Bad

Does this video "end" the Romney 2016 campaign?

Well, it sure adds another complication, doesn't it? I hear a lot of folks saying "Eh, this is old news, people knew Romney worked with Gruber last time."

Yes, most Republicans were willing to avert their eyes from the similarity between Romneycare and Obamacare in 2012. But in the past year, Jonathan Gruber went from an obscure health-care wonk to the walking epitome of all that Republicans can't stand about Obamacare and the administration that forced its enactment. As Jonah put it . . .

Gruber is something special. He was supposed to be better, more pure than the fat cats. Touted by press and politicians alike as an objective and fair-minded arbiter of healthcare reform, the MIT economist was in fact a warrior for the cause, invested emotionally, politically and, it turns out, financially through undisclosed consulting arrangements. The people who relied on his expertise never bothered to second-guess his conflicts of interest because they, too, were warriors in the same fight.

In speeches and interviews, Gruber admitted he helped the Obama administration craft the law in such a way that it would seem like it didn't tax the American people when it did. Using insights gleaned in part from his status as an advisor to the Congressional Budget Office, Gruber helped construct an actuarial Trojan Horse that could smuggle a tax hike past the CBO bean counters. If the individual mandate was counted as a tax it would be a big political liability for President Obama (fortunately for Obamacare, the Supreme Court saw through the subterfuge and called it tax, rendering it constitutional).

Gruber then mocked the "stupidity of the American voter" for not seeing through the camouflage he helped design.

The big difference is that Republican primary voters know exactly who Jonathan Gruber is now, and they're going to recoil from video -- even old video -- of Romney giving Gruber a shout-out for his help in putting together Romney's signature accomplishment as a governor.

ADDENDA: Barring any sudden changes to the schedule, this morning I'll appear on Luke Russert's Shift show at MSNBC.com between 10-11 a.m. Eastern for a panel on the preview of the State of the Union.

www.NationalReview.com

Sail with National Review

Join your favorite writers for National Review's 2015 cruise to Alaska — a once in a lifetime opportunity for you and your family. Learn more here.

What National Review is reading — order your copy today!

Something Other Than God
By Jennifer Fulwiler

Love National Review online? Save 75% off the newsstand price and subscribe to National Review magazine — print or digital versions available!

Looking for the perfect gift for that special conservative in your life? Give the gift of National Review or shop the NR store!

To manage your National Review e-mail preferences, click here, or to read our privacy policy, click here.

This e-mail was sent by:
National Review, Inc.
215 Lexington Avenue, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10016

Search This Blog

Diogenes-Light

Winter in Raging-Whiner Nation

Winter in Raging-Whiner Nation

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Megyn Kelly -> Pete Hegseth responds to 2017 rape accusation. 🔥

FOLLOW THE MONEY - Billionaire tied to Epstein scandal funneled large donations to Ramaswamy & Democrats

Readworthy: This month’s best biographies & memoirs