Assorted

1. "Ostensibly"

This piece should make it clear why I consider Mike Hendrix of Cold Fury one of the Blogosphere's chief ornaments. A snippet:

The Zimmerman trial is ostensibly not a reverse-racist farce ginned up by howling con artists, the ostensibly unbiased press, and various other ignorant, ass-covering screechmonkeys for the purposes of pursuing a politically-correct agenda and supporting a false narrative, rather than a quest for justice and the truth.

And ostensibly the Department of Education is tasked with education; the Department of Energy is supposed to be helping to ensure plenty of affordable energy to what was once a booming, thriving economy; the Department of Justice works to fight crime instead of committing it themselves, and to guarantee the proper meting out of justice rather than the railroading of citizens guilty only of self-defense or branding patriotic Americans “terrorists” and hounding them into silence; and the IRS is supposed to fairly and impartially collect revenues rather than persecute people and groups with the temerity to think improper and unapproved thoughts and exercise their former First Amendment right to express them and petition the government for redress. Ostensibly.

Please read the whole thing. You'll thank me, I promise.

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2. The return of slavery...with the races reversed.

Certain "commentators," particularly on MSNBC, are all too obviously chosen according to two overriding criteria:

• Skin dark enough to qualify them as "minorities;"
• Possession of rabidly bigoted -- racially bigoted -- opinions they're not at all shy about spewing.

Joy Reid is one, as the following should surely demonstrate:

On Thursday’s “NOW w/Alex Wagner” on MSNBC, MSNBC contributor and managing editor of The Grio Joy Reid charged that Republicans oppose elements of the controversial immigration reform bill out of desire for indentured servitude and to prevent what she called “brown people” from becoming U.S. citizens.

“I mean, didn’t we do this before?” Reid said at the opening of the show. “Wasn’t it called indentured servitude, right, where you come and pay all this money out and you are not a citizen, but you’re legally allowed to work on the farm?

Host Wagner concurred. PJ Media's Ed Driscoll presents a similar snippet from MSNBC's favorite dark-skinned racist, Melissa Harris-Perry:

Didn’t we do this before? Why yes we did. Just this past April, when MSNBC seemed pretty darn cool with the notion of indentured servitude. Or as host Melissa Harris-Perry said in an ad promoting her network, “We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents:”

[MSNBC weekend host Melissa Harris-Perry's] statement wasn’t an aside on live television. She didn’t misspeak. The spot was shot, produced, and aired without, apparently, raising any alarm bells. No one with influence raised his or her hand and said, “Should we really broadcast something that sounds so outlandish?”

The foundation of the Harris-Perry view is that society is a large-scale kibbutz. The title of Hillary Clinton’s bestseller in the 1990s expressed the same point in comforting folk wisdom: “It Takes a Village.”

As the ultimate private institution, the family is a stubborn obstacle to the great collective effort. Insofar as people invest in their own families, they are holding out on the state and unacceptably privileging their own kids over the children of others. These parents are selfish, small-minded, and backward. “Once it’s everybody’s responsibility,” Harris-Perry said of child-rearing, “and not just the households, then we start making better investments.”

Don't avert your eyes, Gentle Reader. Yes, it's upsetting to confront this much hatred of privacy, parental rights, and Americanism generally. Condemn it and its promoters, by all means...but don't deny, to yourself or anyone else, that it's out there, bold, brassy, and in quantity, at that.

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3. Oh, to be an illegal alien!

They do seem to get a lot of breaks, don't they:

Howard is a tax examiner at the IRS’s ITIN processing center in Austin, Texas.

The large, unmarked building in south Austin is where the IRS decides whether to issue an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number to the millions of illegal immigrants who apply for them. An ITIN allows undocumented workers to file tax returns and pay taxes, a legal requirement for those who earn income in the United States … even those who come to the country illegally.

But 13 Investigates discovered the ITIN system is plagued by abuse and fraud.

. . . .

“We were being told by upper management to ignore fraud, to assign ITIN numbers and … pay out refunds to people who are lying,” Howard explained. “It’s a license to steal when you allow that.”

Howard and five other tax examiners at the ITIN processing center in Austin all told WTHR the same thing: for years, IRS managers have instructed them to “look the other way” while processing ITIN applications that appear to be filed fraudulently – even when those applications contain clear signs of criminal activity.

For example, Howard received a stack of ITIN applications for dozens of children attending the same school in South Carolina. (Adult tax filers can request an ITIN for a child if they want to claim that child as a dependent in order to get child tax credits and a larger tax refund.) When he researched that school, he discovered it didn’t even exist. When Howard reported the apparent scam to his bosses, he claims his managers ordered him to approve the applications anyway.

Courtesy of Patterico's Pontifications.

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4. Book Notes.

I've been in correspondence with Jodi Taylor, the delightful author of the equally delightful Just One Damned Thing After Another, and just this morning she's informed me that the sequel, which will continue the action-filled saga of the intrepid historians of St. Mary's, is near to completion. However, that book will have a price -- "a small charge" -- so start saving your lunch money now.

Apropos of which, for those of you slavering uncontrollably over the prospect of a sequel to Freedom's Scion, I'm about 15% done with the first draft, and Gentle Reader, my characters have already stolen the plot from me. Oh, for some sort of digital scourge with which to punish the creations of my mind for their flagrant insubordination! But they'd probably find a way to wrest it away and use it on me.