Liberal Ideas of Economic Success

"Obama claims his economy is a success" reads the headline of a Daily Caller article about Obama's economic speech yesterday. Here's what Obama's idea of "economic success" means for the rest of us, courtesy John Hinderaker at powerlineblog.com.

Median Family Income is still below 2005 levels:

Part-time employment (red line) still outpaces full-time employment (blue line):

The economic recovery under Obama's policies (blue line) versus the 1981 economic recovery under President Reagan's policies (red line):

Warning Young Women on Campuses

The real danger to young women on campuses isn't the 'rape culture', writes Camille Paglia, who argues that the majority of incidents "carelessly described as sexual assault are not felonious rape but oafish hookup melodramas..."

The true danger is "the ancient crime of abduction and murder." She points to "the disappearance of UVa sophomore Hannah Graham two weeks ago" as "the latest in a long series of girls-gone-missing cases that often end tragically." (Paglia notes that Hannah's fate remains unknown, although a 32-year-old, 270 pound former football player has been charged with 'abduction with intent to defile'.)

Too many young middleclass women, raised far from the urban streets, seem to expect adult life to be an extension of their comfortable, overprotected homes. But the world remains a wilderness. The price of women’s modern freedoms is personal responsibility for vigilance and self-defense. [snip]

There is a ritualistic symbolism at work in sex crime that most women do not grasp and therefore cannot arm themselves against. It is well-established that the visual faculties play a bigger role in male sexuality, which accounts for the greater male interest in pornography. The sexual stalker, who is often an alienated loser consumed with his own failures, is motivated by an atavistic hunting reflex. He is called a predator precisely because he turns his victims into prey.

It's On Us Plays Women for Fools

The left’s vaginal obsession has evolved into a genuine embarrassment to American women.  Its latest lunacy is playing out in California, where feminists seek a unique government intervention into a crisis of college culture that radical liberal-progressives are largely responsible for creating in the first place.

A recent government study found that 1 in 5 women can be expected to be sexually assaulted during their college years.  That is shocking if true, but not surprising.

For years, radical feminists have insisted on coed dormitories and bathrooms, free condoms, Sex Fairs, Vagina-Day, sex-themed coursework, and a campus hook-up culture that teaches responsibility-free sex as a form of casual entertainment for both men and women. 

With female students suffering more consequences of this culture than male students, liberals are calling on government to step in and fix the problem.  California’s state legislature sent to Gov. Jerry Brown a bill requiring their taxpayer-funded colleges to mandate that students give “active consent” to one another before and during all sexual activity, including kissing … and including sexual activity between married partners.

What, exactly, “active consent” means is anyone’s guess.  An advisor at UCLA’s freshman orientation this fall urged partners engaged in sexual activity to ask each other “Are you ok?” every few minutes because, you know, women can change their minds in a moment’s notice.  “You’re the one at risk of committing sexual violence or sexual assault,” she warned. “If your partner goes silent at any point, just stop.”

With amazing coincidence, the White House last week launched an anti-campus assault campaign of its own.  Called It’s On Us, the campaign, which targets men in particular, will organize a nationwide sign-up to combat the campus rape culture. One supporter praised the campaign for inviting men, not indicting them, to join the conversation.

The White House campaign is rich in ironies. Those signing up for It’s On Us will have their names, emails and zip codes collected by Generation Progress, the youth outreach arm of the liberal Center for American Progress advocacy group, just in time for the 2014 mid-term elections. 

IRS: a Weapon in the Hands of the Left

Politico's exclusive report on its sympathetic interview of former IRS official Lois Lerner two days ago has been widely and justifiably criticized. The Washington Free Beacon dubbed it an "epic fail" in journalism. David Harsanyi, in "Sorry, Politico, But Lois Lerner is Not a Victim," pointed out, among other things, that Lois Lerner is already guilty of targeting conservative groups by her own admission and apology.

Lerner told Politico's interviewer:

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Lerner said in her first press interview since the scandal broke 16 months ago. “I’m proud of my career and the job I did for this country.”

In an fair and unbiased world, this claim would be astounding, knowing what we now know of Lerner's acts and misdeeds.

But what if Lerner's world wasn't fair and unbiased?  What if the Internal Revenue Service where she worked for so long no longer treated all taxpayers equally, fairly or just?  What if Lerner is really saying, quite honestly, "I didn't do anything wrong" according to my coworkers in the heavily politicized left-leaning culture that now exists in the IRS?

Cleta Mitchell, who represents several conservative organizations targeted by the IRS, discusses why she believes that the IRS has become too corrupt to be saved and how it has become a bully of an agency and a weapon in the hands of the Democratic Party.


Ms. Mitchell's full remarks and rationale can be viewed here.

A 3-Minute Video: Why ACA Cancelled Health Insurance Plans

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University makes the complex easy in this three-minute video explaining why Obamacare caused so many health insurance plans to be cancelled.  The legislative stupidity of it is astounding!

Petition - Allow Fence Jumper to Live in White House

Reuters photo: Scene Outside White House Friday

The man who illegally jumped the fence on Sept. 19 to enter the White House is no different than illegal immigrants jumping the southern border to enter the U.S, and he should be allowed amnesty to live in the White House, argues "a tongue in cheek petition posted at the White House website" (reported by the Daily Caller).

Headlined "Grant Comprehensive Executive Amnesty & Residency to Migrant Omar J. Gonzalez & His Family," the petition continues:

We urge President Obama to immediately and publicly recognize that Mr. Omar J. Gonzalez, an oppressed migrant, was merely looking for a better life when he entered the White House after going over the classist, divisive and needless fence.

In the interest of White House diversity and what will surely result in adding to the rich tapestry of love and community, we further demand that the President reform the mean-spirited laws regulating access to the People's House. For justice and peace, upon his next return from the back-nine, Mr. Obama must award permanent lawful WH residency to Mr. Gonzalez and his family, along with a permit to work there.

Are Video Games Sexist?

Christina Hoff Sommers explores this question in this episode of the Factual Feminist. She drills down into a recent Entertainment Software Association study that feminists' are using to make the claim that video games "perpetuate a culture of sexism and misogyny."

Sommers' discoveries in the data are surprising.