Leftist Groups Enjoy IRS Tax-Exempt Status While Tea Party Suffers

Campaign finance zealots and free speech regulators have sought to stifle the freedom of conservative organizations, such as the Tea Party, by falsely claiming they are “political” while giving a pass to leftist groups that still enjoy unimpaired 501(c) IRS tax-exempt status. As the IRS attacked Tea Party groups, it left hundreds of leftist activist groups alone. A quick review of just eight of those leftist, tax-exempt activist groups demonstrates the IRS's hypocrisy.

Americans United for Change

Americans United for Change enjoys 501(c)4 tax-exempt status. The organization exists, according to its own website, “to amplify the progressive message--to contribute to a grass roots groundswell for progressive policies. Progressives need to redefine ‘common sense’--by reasserting the primacy of the traditional progressive values that resonate with most Americans.”

The group spent $4.7 million in 2009 “redefining” common sense and, according to their IRS form 990, on “advocacy and education about public policy issues.” Americans United for Change directly engaged Republican senators facing reelection in 2008, running television advertisements against them. Naturally, no Democrat complained. Nor did the IRS revoke its 501(c) status.

Ruckus Society

The Ruckus Society (photo above) is part of the Occupy Movement--and donations to this 501(c)3 organization are tax deductible. The George Soros-funded organization’s purpose reads like a parody of the modern Left.

The Ruckus Society provides environmental, human rights, and social justice organizers with the tools, training, and support needed to achieve their goals through the strategic use of creative, nonviolent direct action.

Ruckus also evidently organizes criminal trespass:

The Brass Liberation Orchestra accompanied a second round of the “I Will Survive…Capitalism” flashmob before leading the crowd of over 1,000 people onto the Bank of America, and deployed a giant balloon banner with our friends at [Rainforest Action Network] reading “Defend Human Dignity: Challenge Corporate Power”...The day of course culminated in the truly mass marches to the Port of Oakland to shut down all operations at the Ports for the night. Some reports say 50,000 people marched and danced the three miles to the ports from Camp, and it was truly an unforgettable experience, marching in a sea of thousands at sunset.

None of this seems to attract any IRS attention. Ruckus's 2011 IRS Form 990 indicates that it has maintained undisturbed 501(c)3 status. The form states Ruckus “provides environmental, human rights, and social justice organizers with the tools, training and support needed to achieve their goals.”

The Ruckus training offers the manual “Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution” and provides suggestions for direct action such as “take over intersections and use for community activities,” give “fake parking tickets on SUV’s,” “Occupy Bank Foreclosed Homes,” and “rip out rancher’s fences” to free livestock.

Planning illegal acts is incompatible with 501(c)3 status. Ruckus is run by Megan Swoboda.

Just a few of the hundreds of Leftist activist groups that enjoy tax exempt status (I'm looking at you, Tides Foundation, Ford Foundation, etc.)

Women’s Action for New Directions
New World Foundation
Fierce
Black Alliance for Just Immigration
Brennan Center for Justice
Voto Latino

Pro-marriage group thinks IRS employee leaked Mitt Romney’s donor info to Human Rights Campaign

This happens to be a crime.

It is likely that someone at the Internal Revenue Service illegally leaked confidential donor information showing a contribution from Mitt Romney’s political action committee to the National Organization for Marriage, says the group.

In a letter exclusively obtained by The Daily Caller, the organization has asked the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration to “investigate and learn the source of the breach and prosecute those responsible to the fullest extent of the law.” It also provided evidence suggesting the leak might have been the result of “IRS employee misconduct.”

The dispute stems from a March 30 post on the pro-gay Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) website, which boasted that it had obtained documents revealing that Mitt Romney “donated $10,000 to the National Organization for Marriage [NOM] in 2008 …”

Tax-exempt organizations like NOM are required file Form 990 with the IRS annually, which includes a schedule of donors who contribute at least $5,000 during a reporting period. This information is filed solely with the IRS, and the Internal Revenue Code requires the agency to keep the information confidential.

"Sorry" is no longer sufficient.  This is a pattern of criminal activity and reaches the White House.  Indictments, trials and jail time are now required.

Emails of top Obama appointees remain a mystery ("E-mailGate")

Like the IRS scandal, they claim it's all done for the sake of efficiency.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Some of President Barack Obama's political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press.

The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees' email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.

Shall we call this "e-mailGate?"

11-Yr-Old Suspended From School For Merely TALKING About Guns

Sending your kids to public school is a form of child abuse.

Bruce Henkelman of Huntingtown says his son, a sixth grader at Northern Middle School in Owings, was talking with friends about the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre when the bus driver hauled him back to school to be questioned by the principal, Darrel Prioleau.

"The principal told me that with what happened at Sandy Hook if you say the word 'gun' in my school you are going to get suspended for 10 days," Henkelman said in an interview with WMAL.com.

So what did the boy say? According to his father, he neither threatened nor bullied anyone.

"He said, I wish I had a gun to protect everyone. He wanted to defeat the bad guys. That's the context of what he said," Henkelman said. "He wanted to be the hero."

Tar and feathers is too good for Principal Darrel Prioleau.

White House Counsel Robert Bauer: Architect of IRS Abuse?

J. Christian Adams on suspects in the IRS scandal. A few excerpts; read the whole thing.

When the FBI finally fires up its criminal investigation of the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups, there is one person the special agent in charge better be sure to interview — former White House Counsel Robert Bauer. The FBI may discover the whole IRS mess leads through the land of campaign finance “reform” and an obsession with speech regulation, an obsession shared by Bauer....

Robert Bauer had the motive to direct IRS policy against Tea Party groups. He is a longtime opponent of First Amendment freedoms and an advocate of government-speech regulation. He also can’t stand the work the Tea Party is conducting to monitor and eradicate voter fraud, work the Republican Party and national campaigns have utterly failed to perform.

During the 2008 election, while representing the Obama campaign, Bauer sent a threatening letter to the Justice Department demanding criminal investigations of people who had the audacity to speak about voter fraud. Bauer even singled out Sarah Palin in the letter. Anyone who “developed or disseminated” information about voter fraud, to Bauer, deserved the heavy boot of a criminal investigation. Read the letter; it reveals a nasty, thuggish, and lawless attitude toward political opposition.

To Bauer, those merely speaking about voter fraud were worthy of criminal investigation. Sound familiar?

Hindsight reveals why Bauer was so agitated. Two Obama campaign staffers, Amy Little and Yolanda Hippensteele, later pleaded guilty to voter fraud. We also know, courtesy of John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky, that a Minnesota election for U.S. Senate was decided by voter fraud in 2008. And who can forget Melowese Richardson, the Obama activist and poll official in Ohio who said on camera that she voted multiple times for President Obama in 2008? I could go on and on with multiple examples of voter fraud from 2008 where candidate Obama was the beneficiary.

No wonder Bauer was so anxious back in 2008 to shut everyone up. ...

We don’t yet know who engineered the illegal, criminal, and disgusting IRS shakedown of Tea Party and conservative groups. But one thing is certain: Robert Bauer had the motive, the opportunity, and the means to do it. The good folks at the FBI are now busy preparing names of people to interview. They better not leave Mr. Bauer off the list, or his stream of visitors.

Bauer is part of the Party of the Ruling Class who want to shut down the opposition to their rule. I am told that the only TV coverage of the IRS abuse hearings yesterday was on FOX. So far the MSM is playing its role as Obama's watch dog. Nothing to see folks, move along.

Forum on civil rights sparks protest rally for free speech

"Jackbooted thugs" draw protesters.

MANCHESTER, Tenn. -

A forum set up to promote discussion on tolerance and understanding did not go as planned Tuesday night in Manchester.

Those that were part of "Public Discourse in a Diverse Society" open forum were met with very vocal opposition at the Manchester-Coffee County Conference Center.

The event was described by Bill Killian, U.S. Attorney of East Tennessee and guest speaker, as an educational effort about civil rights laws as they relate to freedom of religion, specifically the Muslim religion. The forum was also to inform the public of the federal laws regarding civil rights and the consequences of violating those laws.

However, critics saw the forum as an effort to crackdown on anti-Muslim speech.

Prior to the forum, hundreds of protestors rallied outside the conference center, organized by Pamela Geller, a well-known author, blogger, and political activist.

Many protestors held signs with messages of free speech.

The peaceful protest got heated when numerous protestors were turned away as the center reached capacity.

Those that made it inside showed a sign of unity when the forum began with the Pledge of Allegiance. But that unity was fleeting.

When Killian approached the podium, people booed and hissed.

When he tried to talk about hate crimes, he was nearly shutdown.

"Folks, I'm not going to fight this," he said.

The remark brought cheers.

Killian continued to speak.

His attempt to discuss the First Amendment as a right guaranteed to all citizens seemed to miss the mark.

The crowd cheered after Killian said, "In this country, hateful speech is allowed."

Killian went on to say, "But if that speech makes threats, it is not protected."

No mention of the Tea Party but I suspect that the same people were involved.

MICHELLE O MEETS THE HECKLERS: LISTEN, OR I'M LEAVING!

Unlike the script when Left wing hecklers take over a meeting, this time the audience sided with the speaker.

Most notable part of the event was an interruption from a protester about 12 minutes into the 20-minute speech. A pro-LGBT rights individual standing at the front began shouting for an executive order on gay rights. (Pool did not hear exactly what.)

"One of the things I don't do well is this," replied FLOTUS to loud applause. She left the lectern and moved over to the protester, saying they could "listen to me or you can take the mic, but I'm leaving. You all decide. You have one choice."

Crowd started shouting that they wanted FLOTUS to stay.

"You need to go!" said one woman near the protester.

Meet Karen Kenney, the first in what will undoubtedly be a parade of victims of the intimidation tactics of the IRS aimed at conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. Twitchy captures Kenney’s statement and the immediate Twitter reaction to it. With President Obama attempting to pre-empt the hearing with an odd live statement on judicial nominations — usually a matter left to press releases — coverage of the hearing has been spotty, but this needs to be seen and read in full:

My personal favorite was question No. 33, which in relation to protests asked for a listing of our “committed violations of local ordinances, breaches of public order or arrests” then requested details on how we “conduct or promote” illegal activities.

I think the IRS needs to fix its labeling machine: We’re the San Fernando Valley Patriots, not Occupy Oakland.

Let’s let Becky Gerritson, whose group was one of three to get a signed Lois Lerner letter as part of the harassment resulting from their application, have the last word on the Democratic Party’s decision to shield the IRS

The Democrats are tryin got shield the IRS. See John Eastman’s ferocious, angry rebuttal to two other Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee.

John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, addressed Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon first. Blumenauer had just finished arguing that the groups before the committee were political and should not be considered social-welfare organizations.

“It’s your kind of statements that have empowered IRS agents to make determinations about which organizations qualify for the public good and which don’t,” Eastman said to a round of applause. “The notion that defending traditional marriage doesn’t qualify as a defense of the public good is preposterous.”

Detroit Sold For Scrap

It looks like The Onion was only a few years ahead of its time.

DETROIT—Detroit, a former industrial metropolis in southeastern Michigan with a population of just under 1 million, was sold at auction Tuesday to bulk scrap dealers and smelting foundries across the United States.

Site of the former Detroit Museum of African-American History, which took in over $135.

"This is what's best for Detroit," Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick said. "We must act now, while we can still get a little something for it."

Once dismantled and processed, Detroit is expected to yield nearly 14 million tons of steel, 2.85 million tons of aluminum, and approximately 837,000 tons of copper.

The decision to demolish and cull Detroit for scrap was approved last month by a 6-3 City Council vote after a cost-benefit analysis revealed that, as a functioning urban area, it held a negative cash value.

Read the whole thing.

Breaching the Gates of Paris and Memphis: Dhimmis Bow and Scrape as Jihadis Sharpen Knives

The Diplomad 2.0 discusses the long war.

Twice, once in 1529 and again in 1683, Christian armies stopped the Ottomans at the Gates of Vienna. In between those dates, in 1571, a multinational Catholic fleet sank the Muslim fleet in the great Battle of Lepanto. Along with the 1492 expulsion from Iberia, and, of course, the even earlier loss at the Battle of Tours in 732, the Muslim world has not forgotten those and the many other defeats since then. Make no mistake. That Muslim world seeks "revenge." The Muslims blame the West for their own failures, and point to their past "greatness" and to alleged past sins of the West as justification to commit atrocities today. Islam's war against the West that began in the seventh century continues--and for the first time since the longest war began, we are losing thanks to self-inflicted wounds....

In the 1930s, it took people with a clear vision and guts to speak up against the Nazi and Soviet threats to the West. Now, we need people to speak up again for the values of the West; people who understand that in the U.S. our Constitution is not a suicide pact, and that we, and the French, the English and the Swedes, have the right to national defense from a murderous totalitarian ideology that passes itself off as just another religion. We are being led by a bunch of cowardly Dhimmis. Do they really believe that nonsense about how tolerant the Muslims once were in Spain and elsewhere towards Christians and Jews? When will our "leaders" realize that we are dealing with an enemy who considers any place where Islam once was or now is, as part of the Muslim world. That, in fact, the entire world belongs to Islam, and those of us who are not Muslim are to be converted, enslaved, or killed.

Read the whole thing.

Press Shakedown? Labor Dept. Wanted $1M from AP

One way the government has of keeping people from getting the information they are entitled to is not to say "no" but to charge so much they they can't afford it. It didn't work when they tried it on the AP, but an individual or a smaller organization would have been scared off.

In the latest blow to the Obama administration’s claim to be the “openness administration,” word emerged today that the Department of Labor sought to charge a news organization more than $1 million for information.

According to the Associated Press, which reported today on the widespread use by government officials of secret email accounts, Labor demanded that AP pay $1.03 million for costs the department said were involved in retrieving email addresses for political appointees.

Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan : "Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off."

Proving once again that if you elect a tyrant you end up with one-man one-vote once.  Turks are protesting their government as it becomes more and more authoritarian.  Erdoğan believes that his is the perfect end-point of political development.  In that he has a lot in common with the other practitioners of Islam as well as of Liberalism in the West.  In the US, Team Obama and its media, academic and cultural partners want to cement their power far into the future and if it takes the IRS, the FBI, the EPA and other agencies of government, that's fine.  Erdoğan believes that his regime is the stop at which democracy gets off.   That's why injuring thousands and killing others is worth the price.

Riding high and dominating all branches of government, the charismatic Mr. Erdoğan dispensed with political compromise and doubled down on Islamism and old vendettas. He antagonized Turkey's minority Alevi population—one-quarter of Turkey's 75 million citizens—by naming the new Istanbul bridge now under construction after Selim I, a 16th-century sultan who massacred 40,000 Alevis. The proposed skyline-dominating mosque antagonized secularists, and new laws that would dramatically restrict the purchase and drinking of alcohol in Istanbul's Western-leaning districts provoked liberals. So on May 31, when Mr. Erdoğan dismissed the environmentalist protesters as "marginal elements" after the first police assault, for many it was the last straw.

Washington over the past decade has made a habit of celebrating Turkey as a model of Muslim democracy. But from Turks' perspective, economic and political freedom have become increasingly elusive.

In a related essay, Richard Fernandez makes the point that information flow is now multi-directional.

Erdogan is now caught on the horns of the dilemma. Turkey’s recent economic progress has provided the cash for people to buy smartphones. Now can you sell them on an 8th century ideal?

You can have one of two things: a free information flow or repression. The way the establishment fudges the dilemma is by resort to the Narrative. The Narrative — an artificially constructed and commonly agreed fiction — keeps people from thinking about the truth of their condition by distracting them with and endless succession of squirrels. Talk about gay boy scouts, Global Warming, hatred for Israel, “reality” TV and you can postpone the choice for a time. But once the population begins to focus on the relevant facts, the Narrative must give way to more kinetic modes of control.

Laugh Lines and the IRS

The latest scandal involving the Internal Revenue Service is a serious matter, involving as it does an agency of the government using its awesome powers to quash the free speech rights of a significant portion of the country, but there’s something undeniably comical about the excuses being offered.

There was the heartfelt apology from the IRS, offered in all sincerity just moments before an inspector general’s report was about to expose the misdeeds, and then the president’s strongly worded indignation that anyone in his government would ever do harm to his political enemies. This was followed by the explanation that only a few rogue employees in a far-flung Ohio office were involved, that although subsequent testimony showed the practices were ordered from Washington it did not go any higher than the middle levels of the bureaucracy there, that the agents were only demanding extra paperwork and extraordinary questions of conservative groups because the IRS was understaffed and over-worked, and that in any case those damnable Tea Party types had it coming. The lattermost explanation was somewhat undermined by the strongly worded indignation of the president, who insisted that much like Will Rogers he only knew what he read in the papers, and although it has since been revealed that his closest aides were aware of the outrages long before they hit the papers we are assured that they just didn’t want to bother him with such trivialities.

Just as it seemed that the scandal couldn’t become any more farcical, along comes David Plouffe. The former senior advisor to President Barack Obama took to the airwaves on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to trot out the latest lines, and somehow maintained a straight face as he assured the viewers that “This was not a political pursuit.”

 

David Plouffe's defense? “This was no an effort driven by the White House. It would be the dumbest political effort of all time. OK?”

Even if it were dumb to target conservative groups, that’s no reason to believe that the White House wouldn’t do it. It was dumb to sell guns to Mexican drug gangs, and loan hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars to unviable “green” companies that had contributed to the president’s campaign, and restructure the American health care system along lines that will raise premiums and discourage employers from hiring anyone for more than 29 hours of work a week, and any number of other policies that a reasonably well-informed critic could think of, but in each case the White House went ahead and did it.

Why would Team Obama think they coulkd get away with it? Well, they did because they stifled the Tea party for the 2012 election. Second, because when you have the press running interference for you, why not break a few laws?

The political consequences were always mild, thanks to the complacency of a supportive press, and there was no reason anyone at the White House should have expected for this scandal to be any different. They might just get away with it yet again, always a possibility given the complacency of the general public, but in the meantime they’re provoking some unintended laughs that can’t be good for business.

IRS acting chief Danny Werfel vows to fix ‘trust’ in agency

I'm not holding my breath while a Democrat is president.

The new Internal Revenue Service chief said Monday that his agency broke trust with the American people, and he vowed a speedy investigation to expose who approved the program that led to conservative groups being subjected to unwarranted questions while finding out if any other offices have engaged in similar political targeting.

As Congress began another week of hearings on the IRS scandal, more details emerged, including that the employees at the key office in Cincinnati refused to tell investigators who made the decision to put tea party groups under the microscope.

Acting Commissioner Danny Werfel, who President Obama moved from the White House budget office over to the IRS to clean house, said he will push to have the agency finish deciding on applications from dozens of groups still waiting to hear whether they will be granted tax-exempt status — including some that have been waiting for three years.

Werfel belabors the obvious.  Crimes were committed and people need to be prosecuted, not just put on paid administrative leave or fired.

Black racists demand control of Roxbury Community College

This is how Detroit became what it is today.

Kambon now spearheads a group called “Friends of Roxbury Community College.” The group has written an outrageous letter to Governor Deval Patrick. Kambon is incensed because the newly appointed chairman of the board of RCC, Gerald Chertavian, is white. This, to Kambon and company, is an outrage. ...

Chertavian is a great choice to head the board. After a successful career on Wall Street, he began a highly regarded job training program for young people of color who struggled in traditional educational settings — exactly the constituency RCC serves. He is strategic, thoughtful, and the most unassuming zillionaire I’ve ever met....

Throughout the turmoil at RCC, there has been a persistent undercurrent that outside forces are somehow conspiring to deprive Roxbury of control over the college. Obviously, accusing Patrick of racism is beyond ludicrous, but there is still resentment among people who care more about turf than education.

And this is really about turf. The RCC administration — most of which remains in place — has failed at virtually every aspect of running a college. But none of that ever outraged Kambon and his followers — not a graduation rate in the low single digits, not the financial aid problems, not the unreported campus crimes, not the attempt to keep quiet a student’s report of sexual assault by a professor. No protests, no letters to the governor, about any of that.

No, the real focus of their outrage is that this white guy might not view the incompetents who turned RCC into an educational and bureaucratic mess as untouchable. That’s what the “Friends of Roxbury Community College” find intolerable. They have an unbroken record of being upset about everything except RCC’s real problems.

Obama appointees using secret e-mail accounts.

Of course government officials want to use secret accounts. Crooks prefer to work without being seen.

The AP asked for the addresses following last year's disclosures that the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency had used separate email accounts at work. The practice is separate from officials who use personal, non-government email accounts for work, which generally is discouraged - but often happens anyway - due to laws requiring that most federal records be preserved.

The secret email accounts complicate an agency's legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails in response to congressional or internal investigations, civil lawsuits or public records requests because employees assigned to compile such responses would necessarily need to know about the accounts to search them. Secret accounts also drive perceptions that government officials are trying to hide actions or decisions.

"What happens when that person doesn't work there anymore? He leaves and someone makes a request (to review emails) in two years," said Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, an open government group. "Who's going to know to search the other accounts? You would hope that agencies doing this would keep a list of aliases in a desk drawer, but you know that isn't happening."

The Most Transparent Administration In History.   It's beginning to appear that Team Obama is doing the exact opposite of what it says it's doing.  Remember "you can keep your health insurance if you want to?"

IRS: Cheapest Obamacare Plan Will Be $20,000 Per Family

Makoing medical care affordable.

In a final regulation issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year.

Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS.

Center For American Progress President Shares Part In Obamacare: "I Helped Write The Bill"

NEERA TANDEN, PRESIDENT OF CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: If I were a conservative, I would just say, 'I won.' Okay? They have a centrist plan, there's competition.

JAMES POULOS, HUFFINGTON POST & FORBES : You have everything that's wrong with capitalism and everything that's wrong with big government. Big business and big government partnering together to create this hodgepodge of a thing --

TANDEN: Why is that a hodgepodge? Why do you keep saying these words like hodgepodge?

POULOS: Have you read the bill?

TANDEN: Yes. I helped write the bill. So yes, I read the bill. I read all 2,200 pages of the bill.

IRS victims testify as new agency scandal emerges

For more than 18 months during the 2010 and 2012 election campaigns, IRS agents in a Cincinnati office singled out tea party and other conservative groups for additional scrutiny when they sought tax-exempt status, according to a report by J. Russell George, the Treasury Department inspector general for tax administration.

The report said tea party groups were asked inappropriate questions about their donors, their political affiliations and their positions on political issues. The additional scrutiny delayed applications for an average of nearly two years, making it difficult for many of the groups to raise money.

George was scheduled to release another report Tuesday, one that said the IRS spent $50 million to hold at least 220 conferences for employees between 2010 and 2012.

The conference spending included $4 million for an August 2010 gathering in Anaheim, Calif., for which the agency did not negotiate lower room rates, even though that is standard government practice, according to a statement by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which requested the report.

Instead, some of the 2,600 attendees received benefits, including baseball tickets and stays in presidential suites that normally cost $1,500 to $3,500 a night. In addition, 15 outside speakers were paid a total of $135,000 in fees, with one paid $17,000 to talk about "leadership through art," the committee said.

Your tax dollars at work while millions lost their jobs and Team Obama added trillions to the debt.

U.S. publishes details of missile base Israel wanted kept secret

The Choom Gang rides again.  Will Holder go after the leaker?

What excuse do intelligent people have for backing Obama?

Richard Fernandez discussing the no-win situation in Syria that Obama is in swerves on the screw-ups by the so-called smart set.

Even the liberal press, which recently discovered it was being spied upon and manipulated, is now beginning to wake up. Glenn Reynold’s discusses Peggy Noonan’s realization that Barack Obama’s presidency has been both a policy disaster and a threat to civil liberties. He is sympathetic, but one of his own commenters believe Reynold’s isn’t being hard enough on Noonan.

People like you knew and told people (repeatedly) what was coming if Obama won. You didn’t know the exact detail of the abuses of power that would come but you knew they were coming. People like Peggy Noonan, David Brooks and Christopher Buckley, on the other hand, assured us that John McCain was too unpredictable for the Presidency and Sarah Palin not worthy of the Vice-Presidency. Barry, on the other hand, had the look of a president and certainly could be trusted with the levers of power. He went to an Ivy League school, after all.

Noonan looked down her nose at us in the flyover country and tut-tutted to her Beltway friends about how us slope-foreheads didn’t know how to judge politicians like those in the political class knew how to judge them.

Look what you gave us, Peggy-O.

There is a ring of truth to this. The blame for Barack Obama’s accession to power can hardly be blamed on Obama himself. He would of course have spun things his way and fought his own corner. He would naturally want the reins of power. The more serious responsibility lay with the Gatekeepers; with those who should have known better and still gave him a pass to the White House.

The low-information types at least have the excuse of being what they are. But what excuse do the intelligent have?

In the dramatic climax of the movie “Judgment at Nuremberg” the eminent jurist Dr. Ernst Janning, played by Burt Lancaster, makes the same point. The Janning character rejects the efforts of his own defense counsel to invoke his eminence by pleading guilty as charged. Turning to his co-accused Janning says words to the effect that ‘I am more culpable than these men because they were idiots. But unlike them I clearly knew right from wrong. I could see through things and my reputation would convince others to think, well if Janning goes along then it is alright. But it was not alright and therefore I am not only guilty as charged but more guilty than any of these my co-accused. I made my life an excrement because I walked with them.’

Reasonable people would like to think that after Obama screws up so royally that the system begins to collapse, his syncopants will fall away.  Unfortunately that is unlikely to happen.  After all, people cried when they heard Stalin was dead.

The worst of it is that altogether too many members of the Gatekeeping class are still of the belief that more of this Obama BS will see things through. It won’t. When you’re in a hole, stop digging. Whatever one can say of Noonan it must be said that though she learned late, she learned.

Rediscovered: The First American Anti-Nazi Film, Banned by U.S. Censors and Forgotten for 80 Years

What Vanderbilt saw first-hand and chronicled in his film is mild in comparison to what was to come. Nevertheless, his take was prescient. He describes his anxious but partially successful endeavor to smuggle footage across the German border, prefacing the story by saying “there isn’t money enough in Hollywood to get me to go through it again.” (The scene above is a reenactment, as is, quite obviously, the scene of Vanderbilt’s meeting with Hitler.) Asked about his impressions of Hitler, Vanderbilt has this to say:

Unquestionably he is a man of real ability, of force. But the way I sized him up after interviewing him is that he is a strange combination of Huey Long, Billy Sunday, and Al Capone…. I had never heard a man so able to sway people…. In the hour and a half that Hitler talked to that packed audience that night, he was as effective as a barker in a sideshow traveling with a circus.

Vanderbilt says above that the rising Nazi tide, “demanded revenge” and would not rest until they had it, to which his interviewer responds, “It all seems a ghastly, incredible nightmare.” Vanderbilt’s vision seemed like a sensationalistic fever dream to his critics as well.

Media Having Trouble Finding Right Angle On Obama's Double-Homicide

From the Onion.

WASHINGTON—More than a week after President Barack Obama's cold-blooded killing of a local couple, members of the American news media admitted Tuesday that they were still trying to find the best angle for covering the gruesome crime.

"I know there's a story in there somewhere," said Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, referring to Obama's home invasion and execution-style slaying of Jeff and Sue Finowicz on Apr. 8. "Right now though, it's probably best to just sit back and wait for more information to come in. After all, the only thing we know for sure is that our president senselessly murdered two unsuspecting Americans without emotion or hesitation."

Added Meacham, "It's not so cut and dried."

Since the killings took place, reporters across the country have struggled to come up with an appropriate take on the ruthless crime, with some wondering whether it warrants front-page coverage, and others questioning its relevance in a fast-changing media landscape.

"What exactly is the news hook here?" asked Rick Kaplan, executive producer of the CBS Evening News. "Is this an upbeat human-interest story about a 'day in the life' of a bloodthirsty president who likes to kill people? Or is it more of an examination of how Obama's unusual upbringing in Hawaii helped to shape the way he would one day viciously butcher two helpless citizens in their own home?"

"Or maybe the story is just that murder is cool now," Kaplan continued. "I don't know. There are a million different angles on this one."

So far, the president's double-homicide has not been covered by any major news outlets. The only two mentions of the heinous tragedy have been a 100-word blurb on the Associated Press wire and an obituary on page E7 of this week's edition of the Lake County Examiner.

While Obama has expressed no remorse for the grisly murders—point-blank shootings with an unregistered .38-caliber revolver—many journalists said it would be irresponsible for the press to sensationalize the story.

Read the whole thing. It's a perfect representaion of the MSM.

Millions Take Part As Traditional Marriage Movement Sweeps Through France

AMAZING

Fighting education fanatics (Glenn Reynolds)

Is sending your child to public school parental malpractice?

For a while, I've been wondering if it's parental malpractice to put your kids in public schools. More and more, it's gone beyond wondering. For example, last week the Washington Post reported a nasty case of abusive behavior by school officials in Calvert County, Maryland: A five-year-old who brought a cowboy-style cap pistol on a school bus -- orange-tipped, and something that no one could possibly mistake for a real gun -- was interrogated for two hours (an interrogation that was so long, or so stressful, that he wet his pants) and then suspended for 10 days. Who treats a five-year-old that way?

[snip]

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, another kindergartner was punished for bringing a tiny Lego gun -- the illustration in the Boston Herald places it next to a quarter coin -- with detention, and forced to write a letter of apology to the school bus driver. For bringing a tiny piece of plastic.

What's up with this? It's not based on any concern with safety. Lego guns, cap guns, bubble guns, nibbled Pop Tarts, and fingers are no threat to safety. And the wild overreaction in these cases says there's more going on here than simple school discipline. As I said, who treats a 5-year-old this way? It smacks of fanaticism.

In fact, it seems like a kind of quasi-religious fanaticism. I think it's about the administrative class -- which runs the schools with as little input from parents as possible -- doing its best to exterminate the very idea of guns. It's some sort of wacky moral-purity crusade. If a few toddlers have to suffer along the way, that's tough. You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

Read the whole thing.

Turkish riots continue

Daily Mail: Britons warned to steer clear of Turkey as 1,700 protesters arrested after riots rock the country for a third day


For some reason the MSM is calling the imposition of Sharia "conservative."

From AlJazeera

Peggy Noonan: Why This Scandal Is Different

Peggy Noonan was gaga over Obama in 2008 so her judgement and opinion is questionable. However, she thinks that this IRS scandal is different because the IRS is being manipulated to go against the small fry rather than fat cats. She may have a point in term of the optics, but the IRS should not "go after" anyone based on their politics. They should be above that. Unfortunately, they're being exposed as a bunch of partisan hacks with unlimited powers to destroy you.

But my friend got to the essence. He wrote, “The left likes to say, ‘Watergate was worse!’ Watergate was bad—don’t get me wrong. But it was elites using the machinery of government to spy on elites. . . . It’s something quite different when elites use the machinery of government against ordinary people. It’s a whole different ball game.”

It is.

That’s exactly what I meant.

In previous IRS scandals it was the powerful abusing the powerful—a White House moving against prominent financial or journalistic figures who, because of their own particular status or the machineries at their disposal, could pretty much take care of themselves. A scandal erupts, there are headlines, and then people go on their way. The dreadful thing about this scandal, what makes it ominous, is that this is the elites versus regular citizens. It’s the mighty versus normal people. It’s the all-powerful directors of the administrative state training their eyes and moving on uppity and relatively undefended Americans.

Donors to GOP Group Drew IRS Scrutiny

Via the Wall Street Journal

At the same time the Internal Revenue Service was targeting tea-party groups, the tax agency took the unusual step of trying to impose gift taxes on donors to a prominent conservative advocacy group formed in 2007 to build support for President George W. Bush's Iraq troop surge.

The probe of the group, Freedom's Watch, began in the unit led by Lois Lerner, the IRS official already under scrutiny for her role in the more recent targeting of conservative groups.

It’s perfectly proper for the IRS to make sure the tax laws are not being flouted. What’s wrong is selective enforcement. If Liberal groups get a pass while Conservative groups get audited and fined, we have the essence of despotism. If this is a leadership problem it's serious; if it's widespread at the individual level it's even more serious.  In the latter case, the entire IRS may need to be replaced.  

The Arc of History

Note: I exchanged a few comments and replies on the Volokh blog with a gentleman who used the phrase "Arc of history" bending toward justice and liberty.  I disagreed and thought that my last comment was worth posting.

I’m beginning to be curious about where this “arc or history” meme began. I heard Obama use it which means his speech writers read about it. I read that it may have originated with Martin Luther King but with all due respect to him , this is questionable as either history or as a guide to the future. Your examples and the examples of everyone who uses this expression defend it by using their own beginning and end points. It’s a common problem in financial reports or advertisements. Mutual fund organizations are always touting their #1 status when their statistics look great for 1, 5 or 10 years but these results are totally dependent on picking the right beginning and end points. You say that Russia today is freer than under Stalin, Lenin or the Czar. Let’s examine that but change the end points. Is the Russian freer today than 1000 years ago? You would have to study the history of that area. It’s a fairly interesting study of tribal society followed by medieval dynasties (better or worse?), of the Mongol invasion (better or worse?), of the domination of Moscow (better or worse?), of the Czars (better or worse?) followed by a revolution that was taken over by a tyranny that killed more of its citizens that the Czars ever did and which only recently gave its citizens some freedom which even now is being taken away. That’s not an arc pointing in any direction, that’s human history.

 

Want another example? Try Rome. Some free tribes got together and a formed a kingdom, which was turned into a Republic that became a hereditary empire which dissolved into fragments run by local kings ruling by divine right that spawned a dictatorship that lost its last war.

Many people talking about the “arc of history” seem to begin with the founding of the American republic and assume that we have reached a pinnacle from which we cannot descend. As a student of history I find that viewpoint unfortunately short sighted. It assumes that there is an impersonal force that will over time make us more and more free. I reject that. Was the Russian peasant under the Czar better or worse off than under Stalin? Was the average Frenchman better off under the Kings or under Napoleon? Under the rule of Sun King he was not marching on Moscow.

 

Technology has made most of us better off. We are better fed, clothed, housed and medicated. But we are not more free politically today, at least in the US, than we were 100 or 200 years ago. M.L. King may dispute me in reference to slavery, but then the Indians would dispute both of us. For the vast majority of the American people the idea that the government should have control of air, water, food, medicine, finance and the flush of our toilets would seem bizarre and if you told that 19th century man that he would be more free because of it he would laugh and call you a despot. The arc of history is a wonderful rhetorical device, but as a historical fact or a guide to the future, let’s just say it’s unreliable.

 

 

My view of history is not only informed by studying it, but by a tragic view of human nature. Mankind‘s basic nature is not improved with the passage of time. If you want a better phrase to use than the “arc of history bending toward justice and liberty” I suggest you remember that history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

E.W. Jackson

DRUDGE 15 years ago

Issa: Carney Is a 'Paid Liar'

The interviewer is Candy Crowley who ran interference for Obama during his debate with Romney on Benghazi. She's busy protecting the President again.

Michael Douglas: oral sex caused my cancer

Too much information.

Obama's Student Loan Rate Proposal Saves Average Borrower 25¢ Per Day

Typically the important information is in the footnotes.

However, the chart included with the plan shows that the average savings for student loan borrowers is actually $1,126. Despite tweets from the White House that seem to suggest the savings are annual ("Last year, President Obama helped students save an average of $1,000 on their college loans"), the footnote to the chart explains that the savings assumes the borrower "repays the loans over the expected period of 12 years." A savings of $1,126 over twelve years is $94 per year, or about 25¢ a day.

Wealth of most Americans down 55% since recession

I figured that the "recovery" in personal wealth was a little strange because the single largest asset that most people have is their home.   Home prices have stopped dropping but they have not recovered.

(MoneyWatch) Increasing housing prices and the stock market''s posting all-time highs haven't helped the plight most Americans. The average U.S. household has recovered only 45 percent of the wealth they lost during the recession, according to a report released yesterday from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

This finding is a very different picture than one painted in a report earlier this year by the Fed that calculated Americans as a whole had regained 91 percent of their losses. The writers of the report released yesterday point out that the earlier number is based on aggregate household-net-worth data. However, this isn't adjusted for inflation, population growth or the nature of the wealth. Further, they say much of recovery in net worth is because of the stock market, which means most of the improvement has been a boon only to wealthy families.

The "Obama Recovery" has benefited the upper classes while the "little people" are out of luck. it's almost as if that was the plan all along.

The report says almost two-thirds of the increase in aggregate household wealth is due to rising stock prices. This has disproportionately benefited the richest households: About 80 percent of stocks are held by the wealthiest 10 percent of the population.

Much of the total wealth of middle- and lower-income households is based on home values, not stocks. Even though home prices have increased nearly 11 percent in the past year, they remain about 30 percent below their peak.

While Americans continue to pay down their debt, the report says debt levels and problems with rebuilding net worth are the main reasons the recovery has been so slow. Also, the people who bore the brunt of the recession through job losses and reduced income were the ones who had borrowed the most.

The report found that members of the households that suffered the most financially were less educated, relatively young or black or Hispanic, or some combination of these factors. Those families tended to have low savings and high debt, with much of their wealth based on housing.

Leaving them poor and needy makes them easier to control.

Protesters return to Turkey's Taksim Square

When I read a few years ago that the Islamist government of Turkey was purging the solidly secular army, I had a bad feeling about the direction of this country.

This is not going to end well.

Love at No. 10

Obama's War on the Constitution

A. Barton Hinkle on Obama and the threat to the constitution.

A physician’s expertise makes him capable of inflicting great harm, noted Plato a couple thousand years ago, and no one is better positioned to steal than a guard. So perhaps we should not be surprised that the most conspicuous foe of liberty and the Bill of Rights turns out to be a former professor of constitutional law....

The Rosen matter alone would suffice to disqualify the administration from any Friends-of-the-First Amendment society. Yet it is only one of several such assaults. Others include the administration’s campaign, through its insistence on a contraception mandate underObamacare, against religious liberty, and the president’s suggestion after Citizens United that “we need to seriously consider mobilizing a constitutional amendment process” to limit the free-speech rights of persons who incorporate their social organizations; and its thuggish targeting of its political opponents.

Read the wholew thing.

After purging the military, the Turkish government begins ti implement Islamic practice.

The Islamist government of Turkey first had to purge the secular military leadership so they could have a free hand to transform Turkey from a secular to a Islamic state.

Now the time has come for the next step.

Mr Erdogan has been in power since 2002 and some in Turkey have complained that his government is becoming increasingly authoritarian.

Last week, Turkey's parliament approved legislation restricting the sale and consumption of alcoholic drinks.

The regulations would prohibit retail sales between 22:00 and 06:00, ban all alcohol advertising and promotion, and stop new shops and bars from opening within 100m (330ft) of schools and mosques.

Mr Erdogan said he wanted to stop young Turks from "wandering about in a state of inebriation" and was not trying to impose Islamic values.

The prime minister's Justice and Development (AK) Party has its roots in political Islam, but he says he is committed to Turkey's state secularism.

In two totally unrelated development, Eric Holder said he is in favor of a free press and the IRS says that it only targeted conservative groups to improve customer service.

IRS focus on Conservatives goes beyond the Tea Party

You were on their little list if you were a patriot, against abortion, wanted honest elections, or support other conservative causes.

A group of anti-abortion activists in Iowa had to promise the Internal Revenue Service it wouldn’t picket in front of Planned Parenthood.

Catherine Engelbrecht’s family and business in Texas were audited by the government after her voting-rights group sought tax-exempt status from the IRS.

Retired military veteran Mark Drabik of Nebraska became active in and donated to conservative causes, then found the IRS challenging his church donations.

Read the whole thing, then read the comments by the junior Brown Shirts who think this is perfectly fine.

Journalism professor calls for firing squad, missile attacks at NRA

It explains a lot of the articles we see in the our newspapers.

The NRA advocates armed rebellion against the duly elected government of the United States of America. That's treason, and it's worthy of the firing squad. The B.S. needs a serious gut check. We are not a tin pot banana republic where machine gun toting rebel groups storm the palace and depose the dictator.

We put the president in the White House. To support the new NRA president's agenda of arming the populace for confrontation with the government is bloody treason. And many invite it gladly as if the African-American president we voted for is somehow infringing on their Constitutional rights.

Normally, I am a peaceable man, but in this case, I am willing to answer the call to defend the country. From them.

To turn the song lyric they so love to quote back on them, "We'll put a boot in your ---, it's the American way."

Except it won't be a boot. It'll be an M1A Abrams tank, supported by an F22 Raptor squadron with Hellfire missiles. Try treason on for size. See how that suits. And their assault arsenal and RPGs won't do them any good.

It is a good illustration of how you get your name in the papers.

Former IRS Chief's Wife Works for Leftist Campaign Finance Reform Group

Well, it's not illegal but it does explain a lot.

On Friday, reports broke that Former IRS chief Doug Shulman’s wife works with a liberal lobbying group, Public Campaign, where she is the senior program advisor. Public Campaign is an “organization dedicated to sweeping campaign reform that aims to dramatically reduce the role of big special interest money in American politics.”

The goal of Public Campaign is to target political groups like the conservative non-profits at issue in the IRS scandal. The Campaign says it “is laying the foundation for reform by working with a broad range of organizations, including local community groups, around the country that are fighting for change and national organizations whose members are not fairly represented under the current campaign finance system.”

CEO of Public Campaign Nick Nyhart has offered words of support for the IRS’ targeting: “There are legitimate questions to be asked about political groups that are hiding behind a 501(c)4 status. It’s unfortunate a few bad apples at the IRS will make it harder for those questions to be asked without claims of bias.”

Public Campaign gets its cash from labor unions like AFL-CIO, AFSCME, SEIU, and Move On.

Detroit Heads to the Pawn Shop

Russell Mead on the result of corrupt and stupidity that defined the ruling Democrats of Detroit.

Last week, Emergency Manager (and bankruptcy lawyer) Kevyn Orr decided to list the holdings of the Detroit Institute of Arts among the city’s assets in preparation for a possible bankruptcy. If the city goes through with it, it could be forced to sell off any of its assets—which now include the museum’s collection.

Museum administrators are outraged, but the choice may be keeping the art or paying for vital public services. According to Orr, the city has “long-term obligations of at least $15 billion, unsustainable cash flow shortages and miserably low credit ratings that make it difficult to borrow.” But as the WSJ reports, the city may not have a choice...

The collection, which include treasures by Bruegel, Rodin and van Gogh as well as Diego Rivera’s famous “Detroit Industry” murals, is ostensibly worth billions of dollars, but those measures can’t really capture what such artistic treasures mean to a community.

Unfortunately the city is already struggling to keep the lights on. Local businesses recently had to step in to buy the city police cars and ambulances. Meanwhile, Detroit has closed nearly a quarter of the city’s firehouses, and the department’s equipment is beginning to fall apart. At this point, the city may need the money more than it needs the art.

This is another grim reminder of just how destructive Detroit’s corrupt machine politics have been. At one time, Detroit was the manufacturing capital of America and one of the country’s great cities; today it’s trying to stave off a kind of modern-day bonfire of the vanities.

Every time Detroit seems like it’s about to hit rock bottom, a trap door opens to reveal yet another howling abyss.

There are many parasites that live off their hosts. It takes a particularly stupid parasite to kill it's host. It looks like the Democrats fit that description.  They have taken to manufacturing capital of Michigan, in fact the manufacturing capital of the country ; the fountainhead of the auto industry and reduced it to rubble as surely as if they had declared war and lost. Detroit today is a third world country due to the corruption, the venality and the rank stupidity of the Democrats that ran it into the ground and sowed salt on the ruins.

NYT's David Carr: "Middle Places" Home Of "Low-Sloping Foreheads"

It's time to remind everyone what the people who work for the NY Times think of you.  Drug addict and NY Times columnist David Carr explains.

New York Times columnist David Carr responds to Bill Maher implying Alabama and Kansas are not the "smart states."

David Carr: "If it's Kansas, Missouri, no big deal. You know, that's the dance of the low-sloping foreheads. The middle places, right? [pause] Did I just say that aloud?"

James Lileks neatly summed up the attitude of coastal “progressives,”

Once upon a time the major media at least pretended that the heart & soul of the country was a porch in Kansas with an American flag. Now it’s the outlands, the Strange Beyond. They vote for Bush, they believe in God, they’d have to drive 2 hours for decent Thai. Who are these people?

Americans deserve the truth on presidential scandals.

Well, yes.

"Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence." – variously attributed.

"We're portrayed by Republicans as either being lying or idiots. It's actually closer to us being idiots." – anonymous White House aide involved in creating the mendacious post-Benghazi talking points to Sharyl Attkisson, CBS News.

Those may ultimately be the administration’s best, most benign defenses of President Barack Obama’s multiple scandals. But, since his voters presumably didn’t think they were electing an incompetent idiot, it’s difficult for most Americans to take reassurance from either.

House/State Department’s Benghazi cover-up, IRS harassment of conservative groups and media intimidation and intrusions by the Justice Department are currently the most prominent, but don’t overlook other new or unresolved scandals.

Those include: “Fast and Furious” gunrunning into Mexico that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Mexicans and two American lawmen; Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is alleged to have raised money illegally from organizations her agency regulates; Obama's EPA levied selective fines and used fake e-mail accounts to avoid detection of secret coordination between the agency head and radical environmentalists; drones targeted American citizens abroad without due process.

[snip]

Some Obama administration actions invite its description as a criminal enterprise. Allowing the administration to blow off real events with distractions and unsupported, superficial declarations of innocence is unacceptable. America deserves the truth.

Wouldn’t an innocent administration want us to have it?

Washington Post: The Justice Department has allowed us to say AG Holder supports press freedom

Isn't that nice.

A Message for the Class of 2013

Rob LaZebnik, a writer for “The Simpsons,” tells WSJ’s Gary Rosen what he would have said to the Class of 2013—if anyone had considered him remotely qualified to address smart, high-achieving, oversexed young people.
.

Thank you, President and Trustees.

I have to confess that coming here to speak today raised a question in my mind: Now that high-school students are so accomplished and work so hard, would I even be admitted today to this eminent liberal arts school, from which I graduated 25 years ago? I was curious enough about this that I contacted an admissions officer here. I asked her to dig up my old application and give me a quick opinion.

This turned out to be a grave mistake. Not only was her answer "absolutely not," but a few days later I received a letter informing me that I had been retroactively denied admission to my own alma mater. To make matters worse, they culled through the entire cabinet of applications from my year and decided to revoke admission for 73% of my classmates.

If that includes any parents here today, I'm really sorry. I've printed out the non-admit list, and after my speech I'll nail it to the door of our 300-year-old memorial church, which has recently been transformed into the student-run coffee shop Jitters and Beans.

If it happens that you're on the list, you will have the opportunity to reapply, so you'll probably want to work on bulking up your application right away. A good start would be to show up tomorrow at 8 a.m. for dorm cleaning crew. And maybe this summer you'll want to get an unpaid internship at the charity that you pretend to care about the most.

My own sudden lack of credentials caused me to reflect on the fact that I—and apparently most of your parents—couldn't hold a candle to you when we were applying to college. So I want to pay tribute to the spectacular collection of new graduates sitting here today.

In high school you were National Merit Scholars, student council presidents and captains of your fencing teams. You took dozens of practice SATs, practiced viola for thousands of hours (violinists are a dime a dozen) and French-braided the hair of homeless veterans.

You masterfully tied together a set of emotional symptoms that looked enough like attention deficit disorder to buy you extra time on all your finals and standardized tests. Plus, you got to take the exams in special quiet rooms, where a test facilitator would sharpen the pencils outside, because the grinding sound triggered your acute sensory overload. (Which somehow didn't preclude your part-time summer job at Blenders Juicery.)

You hired private college advisers to read your essays and hone your interview skills. Just think back to those valuable sessions where you learned to practically leap out of the chair talking about your passion for writing one-act plays in Cherokee, or how your heart raced that summer on the Mongolian steppes when you first spotted an ovoo monitor lizard, once thought to be extinct.

And you learned to deftly walk the college interviewer through your many achievements while still showing carefully modulated self-effacement: "Yes, I helped design the CO2 scrubber that will save humanity from global warming, but it was totally a team effort."

Then you arrived at this great institution, where you dabbled in a couple of your passions, only to quit them after freshman year because you found new ones: playing hundreds of rounds of "Settlers of Catan" and having long debates into the night over which Stark son is hotter on "Game of Thrones."

The keys of your $20,000 Powell flute became rusted shut after it was put to use as a bong for the last two years. Your Wilson Pro H22 tennis racquet quickly became a drying rack for your underwear once you found out that the college tennis team was filled with power-hitting recruits from Estonia and the Ukraine who could knock a flash drive off the top of your head with a backhand.

So you relaxed into college life—a well-deserved break after the exhausting race to get here. You've spent four years percolating in a warm stew of beer, gender studies and online pornography—which led to the subject of your senior thesis, "Jacobean Dramatic Tropes in Modern 'Massage Surprise' Videos."

Fortunately, your parents, who had become so accustomed to guiding you through the myriad decisions you had to make to get into this place, have been able to stay in constant smartphone contact. You've been able to call them when you were at the salad bar and couldn't remember which salad dressing you like. You were able to email them your sociology paper—and luckily, Dad's colleague Elliot at the firm had an M.A. in sociology and was able to make a few helpful suggestions, such as the central argument, supporting evidence and the pull-it-all-together conclusion.

Mostly, though, you've spent your last four years being ... well, at home.

When I said goodbye to my son at freshman drop-off day, I was thrown into a black despair over how much I'd miss him. But as it turned out, he had so few weeks of actually being at college that I never had time to miss him. Misty-eyed, when the rest of the family was having dinner, I'd say, "I wonder what Johnny's doing right now," and then I'd hear him call from the family room, "I'm watching 'Arrested Development.'"

But let's not understate the big achievements you've racked up during the 70 or so days you've actually spent on campus. The first, and perhaps finest accomplishment, is having persuaded your parents to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to extend your childhood for four years.

Let's also not forget how hard you've worked to find something to protest against. In my day, it was apartheid in South Africa. In yours, it's championing people who wanted the God-given right to use a gender-neutral bathroom. Thrillingly, you petitioned the President and Trustees and won: Now guys can make both bathrooms on every dorm floor equally disgusting.

But there is another huge achievement that your generation will take away from college. A great stroke of genius that you have collectively devised, marshaling all of the intelligence and drive that got you admitted here in the first place: the hookup culture.

You've had vast amounts of sex—weekends upon weekends of bed-swapping that began on Thursday nights. There is not a single bed, couch, lab counter, library desk, football end zone, university founder's statue, Henry Moore sculpture or monkey research cage on top of which you, the outstanding class of 2013, haven't copulated.

And you young straight men, in particular, have had amazing advantages. This school, like every other liberal arts institution today, is 60% women. Factor in a gay population of 8% to 10%, and the odds were massively, groaningly in your favor.

In my day, the male/female ratio was 50-50. Sadly, it was decades before women saw "The Social Network" and realized that by inviting the awkward kid next to them at the cafeteria's gluten-free station to bed, they could get in on the ground floor of a Zuckerberg or even a Winklevoss.

We didn't have a hookup culture. We had a dating culture. And even that was a culture I was on the periphery of, much like Jane Goodall watching chimpanzees through binoculars—hopeful that the chimps would invite her over but more terrified that they would rip her face off.

So I stand here, looking at this beautiful, 60% female crowd, and wonder what the hookup culture would have meant to me if I'd been in school today. I suspect it would have given me many more opportunities to be the only person not having sex.

I want all of you to take a moment and honor yourselves for this signature sexual revolution. Take heart in the idea that no matter how hard things get, no matter what failures you endure, you will always have the memories of the night when you and a drunk sophomore did it on top of two passed-out lacrosse players.

Unfortunately, those are memories you'll have to cling to a lot, because here is your dilemma: You, the best-prepared college generation ever, have just spent four of the most formative years of your lives in an environment that's the exact opposite of the real world. Every room you've walked into here was filled with ambitious, fascinating people who shared your interests in which pizza places took online orders and what your zombie kill count was in "Call of Duty: Black Ops II."

Your life has been a nonstop ride of work, study and fun. Now, though, you're about to walk out of those iron gates and … what? You're headed into the most challenging labor market of the last 80 years.

Because you're driven and have been told over and over in speeches like this one to follow your passion, you're going to write eye-catching job query letters and send them with bulging resumes to the heads of Greenpeace, the Aspen Music Festival, ESPN, the Clinton Global Initiative, "The Colbert Report" and Tesla Motors TSLA -6.85% .

That will take three days. Then you're going to have months and possibly years of free time ahead of you. Free time that you won't know how to fill, because you've never really had any before.

Here's where I'd like to give you some concrete suggestions. One: Write a movie or graphic novel (six months, minimum) and then put it on Kickstarter, asking for $25,000 to put it into production. That will give you another t30 days to track the progress of your contributions from friends and relatives, who secretly hope your goal won't be reached so they won't have to fork over the money, read your book or see your film.

Idea two: On the social media app Foursquare, a person who spends the most time in a venue becomes its "mayor." Achieve this distinction at your local Starbucks, SBUX -0.52% beating out the guy who's constantly on his cellphone trying to sell medical office furniture and the woman in the corner who makes doll house furniture out of wooden coffee stirrers.

Idea three: Constantly monitor news sites for breaking stories and then try to be the first to tweet an edgy joke about what's happening. Speed is of the essence here, because within minutes others will carpet bomb the same territory with comedy, but if you're first out of the gate, you'll get the retweets. This won't land you a job or get you paid, but you can't underestimate bragging rights at friends' engagement parties.

A final idea is to go to the least expensive graduate school you can find and just hunker down. You'll want to look as young as possible when actual good jobs come in three to seven years and you're competing against new grads, so try not to get any wrinkles—stay out of the sun and don't smoke or react facially to anything, even if the Cubs win the World Series or if they find out that Amelia Earhart ate her navigator Fred Noonan.

I know that I haven't given you the keys to happiness in this speech today, but what more can you expect from someone who's just lost his B.A.? I believe that because most commencement speakers have been so successful, they think they can identify the ingredients that led them to success. But they tend to discount the major role that simple good fortune and timing played in their prosperity. So I advise you to ignore all the clichés of the typical commencement speech and do what your generation does best: get lucky.