Well, I *Choose* To Ignore This Idiocy

This would be laughable if it weren't offered up in all seriousness.  (Via the always-interesting Maggie's Farm.)

Ask Not For Whom the IRS Trolls. It Trolls For Thee.

While everybody in a justified uproar about the IRS scandal (and the hearings this week only made its wretched "leadership" look worse), there's a new response/"defense" making the rounds on social media, and I just have to shake my head.  Some lefty people are actually defending the IRS.  They do this despite the fact that the IRS confessed to purposefully going after particular organizations based specifically on their political (and now apparently even religious) convictions.  And you don't think this sort of behavior is wrong?  Really?  Really?

Apparently these folks are fine with the capricious abuse of power as long as it's their team doing the abusing.  The overarching principle that "abuse of power is bad" seems to go right past them.  Partisan ideology makes people blind, blind, blind.  Guys, the government beast that today bites the neighbor whom you hate can tomorrow just as easily bite you.

I've give you this as the quote of the day:

The IRS targeting citizens for political reasons is not simply another Washington scandal. At issue is something that strikes at the very heart of who we are as a people, what we believe as Americans and what this country has always stood for. 

The First Amendment was written to protect many different types of expression. But the Founding Fathers' primary concern -- and a first principle for every generation of Americans that followed -- was the protection of political speech. Apparently, the IRS was even targeting people who criticized how the country was being run. 

Protecting citizens' right to speak out against their government has always been an integral part of what separates us from tyrannical regimes. What the IRS did is how the KGB used to target dissidents. It is how they deal with troublemakers in China. 

It is not how we treat American citizens. Our Constitution guarantees it. 

... This is not about Republican vs. Democrat or conservative vs. liberal. It is about arrogant and unrestrained government vs. the rule of law. 

Preach!

May Day

Since 2007, Ilya Somin has treated today as a day to remember the victims of Communism.  Let us continue and join in.

(I can't help adding that one of my friends actually flaunted the hammer and sickle today.  I felt sick.  Geez, woman!  Would you so blithely flaunt the swastika?)  

The French Philosopher vs. the Venezuelan Strongman

Bernard-Henri Lévy takes on Hugo Chavez and the useful idiots who are his fans.  Here's a taste of it: "to pretend that the overall record of Chavezism has been positive is an insult to the Venezuelan people."

Worst Op-ed of 2012 Is ... *Drum Roll* ...

TA-DA!!  Coming in at the last possible minute, this thing takes the cake.  Honestly, at first I thought this had to be something by the Onion.  I mean, a constitutional law professor saying we should chuck the Constitution.  Hahaha - Oh, you're serious. I am further bemused/amused to see this. (Scroll down to realize that Glenn Greenwald and I are actually on the same page. LOL!)  Anyway:

Just in under the wire, a clear winner for dumbest and most incoherent NYT Op-ed of 2012:is.gd/DCMMbp
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald)

Quote of the Day: Insta-Prof on Communists

The eminent law prof seems rather peppery:

Communists are no better than Nazis. Refusing to hire Communists is on the same moral plane as refusing to hire Nazis. Which is to say: It’s a good and admirable thing, not a sin. Go broke and starve, commies. It’s what you deserve for being eager, willing servants of totalitarianism.

Don't hold back, now.  Tell us what you really think!

Totalitarian Communism Loses Another Useful Idiot

My opinion of historian and unrepentant Communist cheerleader and apologist Eric Hobsbawm is a matter of public record here.  Two weeks ago he shuffled off this mortal coil, and I didn't bother saying good riddance.  Still, here's an interesting little piece wondering whether you can be both a good historian and a Stalinist.  I think the real issue is how so many people didn't think that Hobsbawm's Communist totalitarian sympathies mattered.  Imagine, if you will, if he were an unrepentant Nazi apologist or Holocaust denier.  Nobody respectable in his august academic circles would dream of giving him the time of day ... well, almost nobody.

Yet Another Fool Confirms Foolishness via Twitter

My, my, my, Twitter's turning out to be a really convenient way to figure out if certain individuals are idiots or not.  I'm not even going to explain the latest revelation.  Just read this.

How to Not to Conduct Diplomatic Public Relations on Twitter

This one's going into the history books for all the wrong reasons.  How bad is it and the fallout?  Even the White House has thrown this one under the bus.  One more thing: why does Cairo senior public affairs officer Larry Schwartz still have his job?  

It reminds me of the first Mission Impossible movie's hapless official who was on the job when Ethan Hunt broke into his high-security installation; the boss replied with this instant demotion: "I want him manning a radar tower in Alaska by the end of the day. Just mail him his clothes." 

Quote of the Day: Friedman's Fresh Folly

Indeed: "Let our mockery of Thomas Friedman reach the very heavens."

"This Is the Dumbest Thing Ever"

Thus spake La Parisienne when she emailed me this story, and the lady -- as usual -- is absolutely right.  WORDS FAIL ME.

The Worst Song of All Time

Pretty much, yeah.  I think that I've ranted before about how much I hate "Imagine," but in you case you were unsure, I freaking hate this song.

Blog Post Title of the Day: "Thomas Friedman, You Pitiful Fool."

Is Tom Friedman a useful idiot and a pitiful fool?  Absolutely.  Now read this essay about Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, about whom I have posted before here and here.

"Apologists For Communist Totalitarianism: I Hate Those Guys"

Yes.  RELATED: Deplorable UN is deplorable.

Idiocy of the Day: the AP on the Kim Dynasty

AP stands not for "Associated Press" but for "Asinine Puffery."  Look at this:

Kim Jong Il inherited power after his father, revered North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, died in 1994.

There is nothing to revere about the founder of that brutal totalitarian slave state.  Whoever wrote that word gets the "dipstick du jour" tag.  Disgusting.  Or maybe, just maybe, it's an autocorrect error and that word is really supposed to be "reviled"?

LOL: The Pampered Poseurs of "Occupy Harvard"

This is hilarious.

Taiwanese News Animators Vs. NY Times Op-Ed

I won't bother discussing this now-infamously disgusting and contemptible New York Times opinion piece that advocates literally selling out Taiwan (you can read this take, this by a law professor, Business Insider's response, Foreign Policy's first reply, and the Atlantic wondering if this is some kind of sick joke), but I will give you the Taiwanese news animators' riposte.  Their blurb is hilarious even before the video begins and gives that opinion piece the mockery it deserves:

"Commie pandas must have slipped something into the water cooler at the New York Times yesterday, because the paper ran a shockingly ignorant and naïve op-ed suggesting that the US sell out Taiwan to China if Beijing would write off the US$1.14 trillion in American debt it currently holds."

As for the video, here it is:

UPDATE: A bad joke?

Nerd News: Protesting Professor Mankiw's Economics 10 Class

OWS sympathizers disrupt a Harvard economics class.  In the words of the econ prof himself, "Here's what happened: About 5 to 10 percent of the class participated in the walk-out. At the same time, some previous ec 10 students came in to sit in the lecture as counter-protesters. The lecture then proceeded as planned."  I say good on the class alums who returned as counter-protesters.  

Professor Mankiw links to coverage by the Harvard paper.  I like this bit from an op-ed in the Crimson:

The Occupy movement has become known for its many, and often contradictory, faces. Now we can add a new group of faces to that list—Ec 10 students.  Students in the popular introductory economics class walked out fifteen minutes into the class yesterday in a gesture of solidarity with the Occupy movement and to protest what the event organizers consider a class that promotes a “strongly conservative neoliberal ideology.”  We find it troubling that students would protest a class because of its supposed ideological bent at an institution dedicated to academic integrity.  Such an action sets a dangerous precedent of ideological discrimination against professors. 

... Furthermore, the students’ attempt to connect their classroom protestations to the Occupy movement illustrates the disjointed and often unfocused nature of the movement.  Indeed, it seems ironic that students in an introductory economics course at Harvard feel that by walking out of their completely optional lecture taught by a famous economist on the theme of income inequality feel that their actions ought to be considered a sign of solidarity with the Occupy movement.  Such protests don’t show solidarity, they show ignorance and a lack of self-awareness. 

You don't say!  (Also, Crimson editors, please fix that comma splice.)


UPDATE:  "... one major criticism of the Occupy movement is that protesters do not generally seem to be well-informed on the economic issues they care so strongly about. Walking out of an economics lecture will do little to quell this stereotype."  HEH!  Note that all this happened at Hahvahd.  Smart people can be idiots too -- a very special kind of idiot.

Ah, Irony. Thy Name is Corporate Ice Cream

Heh.

Biden's Dipstick "Understanding" of China's Brutal One-Child Policy

Read this.  So the VP "understands" forced abortions, forced sterilizations, the ongoing violence against rural Chinese women, mass gendercide, and the demographic time bomb that's been the result?  Remember this and this?  Biden's a galaxy-class buffoon.  Won't someone tell him to keep his mouth shut?