Find Bus, Throw Under

There is news about the alleged IRS targeting of conservative groups during the 2012 campaign. According to a Yahoo News article, President Obama has promised to punish any IRS personnel found guilty of politically motivated, asymmetric targeting of non-profit audits.

In Washington, this is called "throwing them under the bus." Anywhere else, they'd be sacrificial lambs. No matter, it's pretty much the same concept.

Happy Mother's Day

The entire staff of COTTonLINE (that's me and the other DrC) send Happy Mother's Day greetings to all COTTonLINE readers. Not just the mothers among you, but to all readers.

Mother's Day greetings are pertinent to every reader, as all of you have (or had) a mother. And nearly all of us harbor warm feelings for the first special lady in our life.

C02 Rising

Here at COTTonLINE we have taken a skeptical view of human-caused global warming, and we still do. On the other hand, we remain open to scientific evidence that points in the warming direction.

That said, you might want to take a look at an article in Scientific American about rising rates of C02 in the atmosphere. It seems to lack "the sky is falling" tone of many such articles.

The article reports that C02 levels are rising, period. It suggests there may be a link between such increase and warmer climate. Whatever your view of the climate change issue, this article may interest you.

Who knows, the DrsC may find it attractive to winter over in Wyoming if they live long enough to see serious warming ... an unlikely possibility. Of course, then we'd need to install air conditioning as the summers would be warmer too.

Pope Canonizes 813 Italians Who Refused Islam

The Pope today canonized 813 Italians who refused a demand that they convert to Islam and were beheaded by the Turks. I doubt this act will be well received by the Imams and mullahs. See the Associated Press article on My Way. Hat tip to Drudge Report for the link.

Tick, tick, tick ....

The press is turning on the Obama administration's handling of the Benghazi assassination affair and on the IRS using audits to pursue a political agenda. In this post I will put links to the Sunday articles saying, essentially, "oh my, look what we overlooked!"

Here is an article by the usually pro-Obama New Yorker saying that the Benghazi coverup is underway. They are a little late, but better late than never.

Joe Klein in Time is absolutely poisonous about the IRS attacks on conservative groups. Hat tip to Matt Drudge of Drudge Report for these two links.

The Washington Post weighs in on the IRS story.

News Busters has Kirsten Powers, the Deputy Assistant Trade Representative for Public Affairs in the Clinton administration saying on Fox News of the Benghazi attempted cover up:

Bill Clinton would not have gotten away with this.

Obama's Banana Republic Ethics

Using government agencies to harass political opponents is what we expect in a third world country like Bangladesh or Venezuela. Now our U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) apologizes for doing this reprehensible practice just last year, see the Associated Press story for details.

It placed particular emphasis on conservative groups, checking to see if their non-profit status was legitimate, during the lead-up to the 2012 election. No similar emphasis was given to liberal groups during the same heated, politically charged period.

In some ways, this is the ugliest thing the Obama administration has owned up to. Believe it or not, the normally pro-Obama Washington Post agrees. In an editorial they say:

If it was not partisanship, was it incompetence? Stupidity, on a breathtaking scale?

The Associated Press has a story indicating that senior people at the IRS knew of the targeting by the agency of conservative groups back in 2011.

An Echo of the Past

I have the mixed blessing of having lived long enough to remember how Watergate transpired. First there was the report of a minor break-in at the Democratic National headquarters in the Watergate complex.

This event was followed by almost no follow-up by the mainstream media, with the sole exception of two junior reporters at the Washington Post: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.  For months they plugged away at trying to make something bigger out of it.

Eventually they tied that break-in to people in the White House. A president (Richard Nixon) resigned and several people were imprisoned for conspiracy. At this point the mainstream media were all over the story.

There are parallels between Watergate and the terrorist-caused Benghazi deaths. In both, for months very little reporting happened in the mainstream media.

It appears that this week we may have turned a Watergate-like corner. Mainstream sources like ABC News, The Week and National Journal are beginning to pay attention to the politically motivated Benghazi cover-up, see their stories here, here and here.

There is one major difference between Watergate and "Benghazigate." This time a host of electronic alternative media have played the Woodward/Bernstein role, have kept the issue alive. 

Noonan on Benghazi

The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan watched the House hearings on the Benghazi murders and saw politics. Not Republican politics, rather she saw Democratic politics. Her column about this event is worth your time.

Noonan believes our governmental malfeasance was aimed at getting the President reelected, no more, no less. Obama was selling the line that Al Qaeda was pretty much dead in the wake of the assassination of Osama ben Laden.

If what happened in Benghazi was terrorism, was Al Qaeda-linked terrorism, then militant Islam was still very much an issue for the U.S. Which meant that Obama couldn't claim that the job of rooting out terrorism was finished. And his reelection was only eight weeks away.

What everybody believes, but nobody says, is that those four Americans died so that Barack Obama could be reelected. Military rescue was withheld so the President could not be accused of getting the U.S. involved in another Middle Eastern war.

I hope Ambassador Chris Stevens - an Obama supporter - felt the President was worth dying for. I wonder if Stevens' family agrees.

What Congress Probably Won't Do This Year

Caitlin Huey-Burns and Alexis Simendinger have a comprehensive survey of the possibilities of Congressional action this year, written for RealClearPolitics. A quick read suggests their short answer might be "Not much."

"Not much" isn't always bad; much of what Congress actually does is unfortunate. Another way of saying this is that a tie is better than a loss.

"Ideal Endgame"

On Monday we wrote that the U.S. has a Machiavellian interest in continued conflict in Syria. Apparently we weren't the only ones with this thought. See what Rachel Marsden wrote for Townhall.com:

One could argue that America's ideal endgame in Syria is a continuation of the status quo.

The Lucianne.com post for this article identifies it with the LA Times but the link doesn't work. A search of the LAT website finds no links to Marsden or this article. A search for the article finds it at Town Hall.

A Cluster of Pithy Quotes

Jay Nordlinger's "Impromptu" columns for National Review are always worth reading. Here he does a review of Roger Kimball's book The Fortunes of Permanence.

From the book he extracts an entire cluster of wonderful quotes attributed to various authors. Let me share some of my favorites with you:

It has long been obvious that ‘multiculturalism’ is an ornate synonym for ‘anti-Americanism.’ It is anti-Americanism on a peculiar moralistic jag. - Kimball
You are either American or you aren’t. Living here is the only entitlement you need. - Roger Ailes
There are simple answers. There are just no easy ones. - Ronald Reagan
The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin . . . would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities. - Theodore Roosevelt
“No taxation without representation” is a splendid demand. But so is “no immigration without assimilation.” - Kimball

I believe most of those quotes are different ways of gnawing on the same bone.

Missing Blog Post

You may have noticed that Travel Blogging XIII is missing. It was written and, I believed, posted. I was wrong about the posting part of that, it never happened. Now I no longer remember the content so it is truly gone. Sorry.

Another View

Americans try to identify the "good guys" and "bad guys" in a conflict. Making that determination in modern Syria hasn't been easy. The formal government of Assad looks bad but the jihadist involvement of many anti-government rebel groups also makes them uncomfortable partners for the U.S.

I've found an RealClearWorld article about this confusion in which author Shoshana Bryen labels what's going on "The Fourth War." Her formulation identifies World Wars I and II in the normal way, labels the Cold War as War III, and interestingly, identifies "The Fourth War" as the conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims with the U.S. having little direct role.

COTTonLINE has labeled the U.S. conflict with militant Islam as "the Long War," not a term invented here but one that describes a number of conflicts arising from the clash of western culture with strict Islam. Byren sidelines these and sees instead the Shia-Sunni conflict as being the main battle. I don't know that I agree, but her description of what's going on is certainly an interesting one, worth your time.

Americans for Whom No Jobs Exist

Writing for National Journal, Nancy Cook tackles the uncomfortably large number of Americans who have left the labor force in one way or another. Labor force participation has dropped to the lowest level it has held since 1979, when it was growing as large numbers of women joined the labor force.

The article's conclusion states a concern I've had for decades. Only when we reach full employment will we know:

If people have left the workforce because of the downturn in the economy, or if they’ve left forever because the economy fundamentally changed. If that’s the case, the U.S. officially will become a place where the labor market has little use for millions of Americans.

The low-level jobs we've exported to China and India previously employed low-ability Americans. The jobs are gone but the low-ability Americans are still here.

Partial Credit

Writing for National Journal, political analyst Ron Brownstein reaches the conclusion that both Democrats and Republicans are failing to meet major goals of their parties. To wit, Republicans seemingly cannot make the party more attractive to those now "outside the tent," and Democrats seemingly cannot improve the economy.

It is difficult to imagine conditions more conducive to a focus on the economy than those existing at the last election: high unemployment, low job growth, and lack of consumer confidence. Obama's "coalition of the ascendant" are not ascending, yet they vote for him. Brownstein doesn't say why.

He does a better job of saying why Republicans cannot do a better job of enlarging the group "under their tent." In particular, Republican primary voters are not in favor of the policy changes which attracting those new voters would require.

Brownstein needs to explain why the voters most injured by current economic failures are nevertheless voting for a party which has largely given up working to get them full-time jobs. Some other factor is at work, something he doesn't identify. That is the failure of Brownstein's article.

Travel Blogging XVI

Roma, Italia:  Why is it that any little bakery in Europe makes better bread than the best we can do in the States? Every time we're here we ask that same question.

We breakfasted on board the ship; since then we have holed up in our hotel room at the airport Marriott. About mid-afternoon the other DrC got peckish and set out to do something about it.

She sweet talked someone in the hotel bar and/or restaurant into giving her a bag of rolls and bread to bring back to the room. It was either leftovers from breakfast or what they'll serve at dinner, no matter which.

Good? Good doesn't begin to describe the flavor. Amazingly good ... but pretty much normal for European breads. Poppy seed rolls that defined why they put those funny little black things on rolls. Sesame seed rolls so soft and delicious ... wow! And the hard crusty sour-dough bread with a softer but still chewy center ... perfection.

I have the feeling they take such breads for granted here, expect them. Does nobody but the DrsC notice the difference? I can't believe that is true.

Okay, that is my rant for the day....

When Nothing Is Best

In Syria Arabs are killing Arabs. This is better than Arabs killing Americans or Arabs killing Israelis. What's wrong with the present outcome? Nothing.

A truly Machiavellian approach would be to covertly provide support to whatever side appears to be losing. A less evil and more morally supportable approach is what we are doing now. Nothing.

The longer the conflict goes on the more the Arab world gets wrapped up in civil war, one sect versus another. Our role: sympathetic spectators doing ... nothing.

Perhaps the Turks and the Persians and the Kurds will get involved too, even the Berbers. How sad.... When one's opponents in the Long War begin to fight each other, all we need do is watch approvingly and remember to do exactly ... nothing.

Quote of the Day

The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan, writing about President Obama's term two tribulations:

The president's position would be stronger now if more people believed he had one.

Travel Blogging XV

Roma, Italia: Known in English as Rome. The 30 day cruise is completed, it was perhaps a few days too long. I was beginning to burn out on cabin showers where the curtain sticks to your back, and the other downsides of living in roughly 200 sq. ft. As the other DrC tells people, we spent many summers doing that in a class C motorhome, so we"re used to it. We can still get tired of it, and do.

We fly out for home tomorrow morning, after a night in an airport Marriott. Flying back to SF is a very long day, as we chase the sun around the globe and gain many hours. I was surprised when I asked if we had a time change between Alexandria and Rome and found the answer was, of all things, no.

Through this entire cruise we had calm water, barely a wave anywhere..No complaints, but you tend to expect some tipsy days - not this trip. Honestly, we had more roughness flying SF to Tokyo than we had sailing from Singapore to Rome.

As we drove from port at Civitivecchia to Rome airport we remarked once again how much this terrain resembles coastal California. No wonder many Italians immigrated to CA. It required little climatic or scenic adjustment; it looked like home.

Travel Blogging XIV

Alexandria, Egypt: Most passengers are ashore, frantically trying to see northern Egypt. It is from here passengers venture south to see the pyramids and sphinx at Giza, just outside Cairo. On this shore excursion travelers also see the Egyptian Museum, which contains many wonders including the King Tut exhibit.

My favorite piece of antiquity is there, the perhaps 2' tall statue of Selket, one of four protectors of the sarcophagus of King Tut. She is a simply beautiful young woman, done all in gold.

Why do people rave about the Tut exhibit? Because it is literally the only royal tomb ever found intact, which is to say not visited earlier by tomb robbers. Tut was not a particularly important pharaoh, but the completeness of his burial goods makes him bigger in death than he was in life.

Another side trip from "Alex" is the run out west to the World War II battlefield at El Alamein. It was here that an early turning point in the war happened, when British general Montgomery defeated German general Rommel. What strikes one now are the three enormous cemeteries, one each for British, German, and Italians.

The DrsC are staying aboard enjoying the pleasures of a giant yacht with a wonderful crew underemployed in taking care the few of us remaining on shipboard. Now that is decadence at an affordable price.

Speaking of underemployment, Alexandria looks very underemployed too, the port is mostly idle. Egypt has two major sources of foreign exchange: the Suez Canal and tourism. The post-Arab Spring political troubles Egypt has suffered haven't encouraged tourism, quite the reverse.