The UK's Probable Future Prime Minister Was Hounded by America's IRS For So Long That, in Disgust, He Renounced His Dual American Citizenship Last Year

Thanks to the IRS, one of Britain's most famous politicians — indeed, following Brexit, London's former mayor is on the frontline to becoming the UK's next prime minister — was hounded into renouncing his American citizenship last year, reported The Economist in February 2015 (bumped).

BORIS JOHNSON, [then] the mayor of London, is British-American by birth—and by temperament. He mixes the can-do frontier spirit with self-deprecating wit. After being sacked as a shadow cabinet minister, he said: “There are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.” He is relentlessly optimistic. “Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3,” he once promised.

Yet Mr Johnson (pictured) is so fed up with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that he is renouncing his US citizenship. He says he wants to affirm his commitment to Britain—a wise move for a man who hopes to be prime minister some day. But he has also talked of “getting a divorce from America” because of its “incredible doctrine of global taxation”. He became American by “an accident of birth”: his father was studying in New York. Half a century later this made Johnson junior liable for American capital-gains tax on the sale of his primary home, in north London; Britain levies no such tax. He harrumphed last year that this was “absolutely outrageous” and said he wouldn’t pay. (He later settled for an undisclosed sum.)

The number of Americans giving up their passports has shot up, from less than 1,000 a year in the late 2000s to a record 3,415 in 2014. A new spur is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) of 2010, which makes it a lot harder for Americans overseas to get (or keep) bank accounts, pensions and mortgages, because foreign financial firms don’t want the administrative hassles that FATCA throws up. The law also increases filing requirements for citizens—and thus stokes fears that honest mistakes will be punished.

A neighbour of this correspondent, who was born in America but moved to Britain as a child, recently received a huge bill from the IRS, out of the blue, for many years of unfiled taxes. He had not realised that he owed anything; he had always paid taxes promptly in Britain. The IRS was so aggressive that he feared he might lose his technology business; he even discussed divorce with his wife as a way to shield their assets. In the end, he settled for a six-figure sum. He, too, has since renounced his citizenship.

Related: • Keeping the IRS happy grew ever more time-consuming and costly, until it became intolerable
• A massive breach of the Fourth Amendment: The vast majority of those renouncing citizenship are middle-class Americans, living overseas, fully compliant with their U.S. tax obligations

Moreover: Check out 46 photographs of Boris Johnson
to see whether he appears more British or more American

Following David Cameron's Resignation in the Wake of the Brexit Debacle, Who Will Be the UK's Next Prime Minister?

The Daily Telegraph explains how the conservatives will choose their next leader and the country's next prime minister.

Related: Boris Johnson, The UK's Probable Future Prime Minister, Was Hounded by America's IRS For So Long That, in Disgust, He Renounced His Dual American Citizenship Last Year

Update: the last time a partly-American PM lorded over No. 10, it was a fellow by the name of Winston…

America's Savior and the World's Last Hope, According to German Magazine: "Hillary Clinton must protect the world from Donald Trump"

Here is what THE MISSION is, according to Der Spiegel:

Hillary Clinton must protect the world from Donald Trump

This is of course what the MSM, both in America and abroad, has been hoping as well as working for — giving Trump $2 billion in free advertising, ending the GOP debates after The Donald emerged ahead — finding a Republican candidate so awful that whomever the Democrats nominated would look good (like a savior) in comparison.

Bill Clinton's wife is AMERICA'S LAST HOPE, explains Holger Stark:

The bloody Orlando attack has enabled Donald Trump's candidacy of fear and escalation.  Hillary Clinton is the only one, who can stop him — however, her election campaign is not igniting, as the people distrust her.

More Spiegel coverage over the years…

The MSM does not want to admit that the Orlando attack was homo-on-homo violence—as well as Muslim-on-homo violence and Democrat-on-homo violence

It doesn't matter who goes on a killing rampage

notes Benny Huang acidly,

liberals will scapegoat Christian conservatives.

Zack Ford of the ThinkProgress blog really ought to invest in a dictionary. As the editor of the left-wing blog’s LGBT section, he took the lead in blaming Christians, conservatives, and traditionalists for the deaths of 49 people in Orlando last week while simultaneously braying about conservatives “scapegoating” radical Islam.

Note to Zack Ford: it’s not scapegoating to blame radical Islam when a radical Islamist shoots up a nightclub. It is scapegoating to blame Christians when a radical Islamist shoots up a night club. Scapegoating, by definition, is blaming the innocent.

His revolting article represents everything that’s wrong with the American Left condensed into ten paragraphs. Ford’s diatribe with what may be a “white privilege” claim, a charge of hypocrisy, or both. “On Sunday, police arrested a man by the name of James Wesley Howell as he was on his way to the Los Angeles Pride festival in West Hollywood,” Ford wrote. “In his car were three assault rifles, high-capacity magazines, a stockpile of ammunition, and the ingredients necessary to make an explosive device…Howell is white, and he’s from Indiana.”

Yes, that’s all true. On the same day that Omar Mateen carried out the biggest mass shooting in American history, another completely unrelated massacre was planned for another homosexual event on the other side of the country. But Ford’s conclusion isn’t immediately evident. Is he suggesting that conservatives don’t care about terrorism when the perp is a white guy from a red state? I would counter that no one really cares about foiled terrorist attacks, especially when there’s a successful one in the news. If Howell had succeeded and Mateen had failed, we’d be talking about Howell instead. Or is he suggesting that Howell’s plot proves that the Orlando attack could just as easily have been carried out by a right-wing white guy? I suspect that his point is the latter.

Ford neglects to tell his readers that James Wesley Howell is in fact bisexual and apparently an accused child molester. Howell’s bisexuality is not the subject of rumor. He has openly dated men and once pointed a gun at one of his boyfriends. Howell is also no conservative but in fact a supporter of the insurgent Bernie Sanders. (No surprise there—Bernie fans are notoriously violent.) By failing to mention these pertinent facts, Ford leaves the impression that Howell is some kind of heartland “homophobe.” Readers are left to draw their own conclusions as to his religious affiliation, but what religion do most white Midwesterners ascribe to? If that’s not scapegoating, nothing is.
 
But back to the terrorist attack that wasn’t prevented. The story of what happened at the Pulse nightclub appeared at first to be ready-made for the Left to demagogue. The targeted demographic—homosexuals—was clearly and immediately recognized as a certified victim group. But as the facts rolled in it became more and more difficult for the Left to paint the picture it wanted. The shooter was a religious bigot, which the narrative demanded, but of the wrong religion. Liberals were hoping for a Southern Baptist or a Mormon perhaps—two denominations which have never, to my knowledge, carried out any terrorist attacks. A Muslim wouldn’t fit the bill because Muslims are also on the Left’s list of designated victim groups. It just doesn’t work to have members of multiple grievance constituencies on opposite sides of a shooting.

Then we learned that Mateen was a registered Democrat. Well that’s, uh, problematic. Even worse, he was also the son of Afghan immigrants and almost certainly homosexual or bisexual. All indicators suggest that Omar Mateen lived a furtive double life—married to a woman while cruising for men on the side. Besides having a “gay” dating app on his phone, he was apparently a regular at Pulse where witnesses say he tried picking up guys. One man who knew Mateen during his time at Indian River State College says that Mateen asked him out romantically. They apparently went to “gay” bars after class. According to Mateen’s ex-wife he also had “homosexual tendencies.”

It’s difficult to make all of these pieces fit together just the way the Left wants them to but that isn’t stopping them from giving it the old college try. Anderson Cooper, himself a homosexual, grilled Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi about the shooting, casting blame on her because she defended Florida’s traditional marriage amendment in court—which she was legally obligated to do—and because her Twitter account hadn’t been sufficiently celebratory during Gay Pride Month. It’s all her fault—and your fault, my fault, Pat McCrory’s fault, and so on. If you are a traditionalist of any kind (except the Muslim kind, I guess) you’re to blame.

If Anderson Cooper were a reporter rather than an agenda-pushing homosexual activist, he might inform his viewers of what really happened. But he’s a hack, completely devoid of professionalism. No wonder he’s gotten so far in the journalism field.

Here’s what a real reporter would have said: on June 12, 2016, two “gay” Democrats, acting independently of each other, attempted to create carnage at two homosexual gatherings on opposite coasts. One attack was thwarted, the other wasn’t. One of these “gay” Democrats was a Muslim, which is relevant because he apparently phoned the police in the midst of his killing spree to pledge his allegiance to ISIS. The other “gay” Democrat terrorist was not a Muslim.

Why is that so difficult to say? Because Anderson Cooper doesn’t want to admit that the Orlando attack was homo-on-homo violence—as well as Muslim-on-homo violence and Democrat-on-homo violence. People might get the impression that homosexuals have more to fear from their own community than from the windmills they have traditionally tilted at—the pro-family movement, Maggie Gallagher, the Catholic Church, etc.

But the conclusion is inescapable. Besides the danger homosexuals face of contracting AIDS and other diseases from people who supposedly “love” them, there’s also the fact that the homosexual underworld is seedy and dangerous, replete with shady characters who struggle with mental health and substance abuse issues. Jeffrey Dahmer, anyone? He killed seventeen “gay” men all by himself—which is seventeen more than Jerry Falwell ever killed. John Wayne Gacy killed 33 young men, most of whom were lured to his home with free drinks.

Perhaps the most famous victim of faux “homophobia” is Matthew Shepard, the meth-saturated party boy from Wyoming who was murdered in 1998. Though the media originally reported his slaying as a crime of bigotry, he was actually killed by another meth-head who had probably once been Shepard’s sexual partner.

Related: The story of Matthew Shepard's life and death bears no resemblance to what actually happened

The true story of Matthew Shepard was uncovered by the “gay” journalist Stephen Jimenez in his 2013 book “The Book of Matt.” … Neither [of his killers] was a “homophobe” and [the one who dealt the deadly blows, Aaron McKinney] was actually a homosexual. He was known to engage in acts of prostitution with men in order to raise money for his habit and apparently felt guilty that he took some enjoyment in it.

Related: Jedi Mind Tricks and Two Sides to the Delusional Coin:
On the one hand liberals embrace lies as truth,
while on the other they reject truth as lies

 … Matthew Shepard wasn’t murdered for being “gay.” He was murdered because he traveled in the local drug scene as well as the local “gay” scene—which often overlapped. He spent his time with lowlifes and was eventually killed by one of them. It’s still a sad story but without the “homophobia” angle it’s just another unremarkable murder among 16,974 that same year.

Related: “Fake but accurate” seems to be the liberals' guiding philosophy—
usually cultivated at the expense of actual people, their lives, and their reputations

The Orlando spree killing happened only a week ago and already it’s being used for maximum effect to demonize opponents of the homosexual agenda. Remind me again—how is it my fault when a “gay” Muslim Democrat goes on a rampage? There’s no conceivable rationalization that could make Omar Mateen’s guilt stick to me.

If the homosexual community wants to lash out at someone in their time of mourning, they should look to the Islamists, or better yet they could look inward at the rot that pervades their own community. Fat chance, I know.

But Isn't Being a SJW Supposed to Get Oppressed Females Interested in You and (Thereby) Get You Laid?!

Through the pen of Scott Adams, a Social Justice Warrior in Dilbert's office wishes to show an attractive co-worker (Alice) to what extent he makes common cause with women…

Who Are the True Authoritarians? People on the Right or People on the Left?

Listen to their words and watch their actions

writes a shocked Benny Huang. It turns out that

there's nothing liberal about "liberals."

In what is being called “the mother of all corrections,” the American Journal of Political Science has  admitted that the results of a study it published were unintentionally misrepresented. The study, “Correlation not Causation: The Relationship between Personality Traits and Political Ideologies,” purported to show that conservatives are marked by an authoritarian streak. After the study had garnered much scholarly attention, Steven Ludeke and Stig H. R. Rasmussen of the University of Southern Denmark noticed that the data did not support the published results. The correct conclusion is that liberals, particularly economic liberals, lean toward authoritarianism.

This study, which was found worthy enough to be cited 45 times before the correction, will probably disappear down the old memory hole. It doesn’t fit the narrative—and for that it must die.

Not that I put much stock in the study; not now and not before the erroneous conclusion was noticed and corrected. …

Study or no study, people on the Left clearly exhibit symptoms of authoritarianism. Did we really need the American Journal of Political Science to tell us that? I certainly didn’t. To know the Left’s true nature just listen to their words and, more importantly, watch their actions. As columnist George Will once wrote:

“[S]ince the 1960s, liberalism has been concerned with who thinks what, who acts when, who lives where and who feels how.” 

Brilliant!

If you want to observe authoritarian liberals in their natural habitat just visit New York City. The government there has tried, and in many cases succeeded, in clamping down on everything from Big Gulps to baby formula. Exercising your Second Amendment right is laborious and expensive. It’s illegal to donate prepared food to homeless shelters because the city government can’t determine the salt, fat, and fiber content. Smoking is illegal almost everywhere, cigarettes cost more than $13 a pack, and e-cigarettes, which have no harmful externalities, are also banned in many public places. You can be slapped with a $250,000 fine for “misgendering” someone. It’s illegal to refuse to serve alcohol to a pregnant woman. Urinating in public, on the other hand, has been decriminalized because laws against it are, you guessed it, racist.

Now do you believe the results of the study?

The question remains of how the study’s conclusions could have been so badly blundered. The answer, I believe, is confirmation bias. The authors admitted that they expected “P” scores (measuring psychoticism) to be associated with “conservative political attitudes, particularly for militarism and social conservatism.” Seek and ye shall find!

 … “liberal” [is] an ill-fitting adjective, one that I stopped using for a little while because the thugs who claim it don’t deserve it. I dropped my boycott of the word “liberal” after realizing that, in order to communicate effectively, I had to use words as they are commonly understood. It’s just another example of how our lexicon has been perverted to portray people on the Left in a positive light.

How about referring to them as drama queens?

Language is often deliberately altered to avoid associating authoritarianism with the Left. Ever wonder why the Nazis are so rarely referred to by their full name—the National Socialist German Workers’ Party? Whether or not the Nazis were a left-wing party is a debate for another day but the fact remains that that was their name.

People on the Left avoid using it because they wouldn’t want any of the Nazis’ hard-earned toxicity to rub off on two of their most beloved words—socialist and worker. They dismiss the party’s name with the help of the No True Scotsman fallacy—it’s literally impossible for authoritarians to be on the Left, you see, because people on the Left can’t be authoritarian. Authoritarians are always and everywhere right-wingers.

The notion (or misconception, really) that conservatives are little Gestapo agents at heart emerged not long after the end of World War II. …

See also: Every Republican Presidential Candidate Is Hitler (How to Prevent America from Becoming a Totalitarian State)
and: Mitt Hitler and Double Standards
(Godwin's Law Applies to Thee, But Not to Me)

… How it must disconcert some people to have a new study conclude that liberals are the real authoritarians. Anyone who thought the study had value before is now stuck with the revised conclusion. It’s science!

The study tells us, for example, that economic liberals—those most obsessed with banishing economic inequality—tend to exhibit authoritarian tendencies. That doesn’t surprise me at all. Class warriors like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders aren’t heroic. Their policies are wrong-headed and they don’t care how many eggs they have to crack to make their elusive omelet.

What’s so wrong with economic equality? Besides the fact that it not nearly as fair as it sounds, it also has an adversarial relationship to freedom. …

 … The brutal and endless process of economic leveling cannot be achieved without the heavy hand of the state to act as its enforcement mechanism. Economic equality requires a perpetual policing of people’s decisions, mandating nearly as much as it prohibits. This person must hire that person and must pay her this hourly wage. This person must pay for that person’s birth control pills. That person must lend this person this much money at this interest rate. This person must not earn more than this sum of money in a given year or else pay exorbitant taxes. This person must pay for his own college education but also that person’s college education because that person can’t afford it.

 … This is what authoritarianism looks like. It’s petty, it’s suffocating, and it’s done by people who consider themselves to be a force for good.

Displaying His Cleverness, Smarter-Than-Thou SJW Character Finds Racism in the Scott Adams Dilbert Office

Thanks to Scott Adams, Dilbert's office welcomes a Social Justice Warrior

Disney is sharing the keys to its new Magic Kingdom in Shanghai with China's Communist Party

On Thursday,

the Walt Disney Company … opened its $5.5 billion Shanghai Disney Resort, a theme park and hotel complex that represents a hard-fought victory in China for the singularly American entertainment conglomerate

reports Brooks Barnes in the New York Times.

The park — Disney’s first on the Chinese mainland — was held up as nothing less than a historic symbol of United States-China relations. … So far, the park here has suffered none of the cultural missteps that marred Disney openings in France and Hong Kong over the decades.

In a previous lengthy report (slideshow) written by Barnes with David Barboza, it turns out that several rides were left out.

Disney substantially dialed back its demands. In addition to handing over a large piece of the profit, the control-obsessed company would give the government a role in running the park. Disney was also prepared to drop its longstanding insistence on a television channel.

 … But Disney is sharing the keys to the Magic Kingdom with the Communist Party. While that partnership has made it easier to get things done in China, it has also given the government influence over everything from the price of admission to the types of rides at the park.

 … Worried that importing classic rides would reek of cultural imperialism, Disney left out stalwarts such as Space Mountain, the Jungle Cruise and It’s a Small World. Instead, 80 percent of the Shanghai rides, like the “Tron” lightcycle roller coaster, are unique, a move that pleased executives at the company’s Chinese partner, the state-owned Shanghai Shendi Group, who made multiple trips to Disney headquarters in California to hash out blueprint details.

Disney then ran with the idea, infusing the park with Chinese elements. The Shanghai resort’s signature restaurant, the Wandering Moon Teahouse has rooms designed to represent different areas of the country. The restaurant is billed as honoring the “restless, creative spirit” of Chinese poets.

From a more general viewpoint,

the Chinese government is growing more assertive and nationalistic. Emboldened by the size and breadth of its economy, China is stepping up its demands, pressuring companies to lower their prices, hand over proprietary technology and help advance the country’s development goals, even if that means financing the growth of local rivals.IBM has promised to share technology with China. 

LinkedIn has agreed to censor content inside the country. Even Google has been scrounging for a way back into China, after withdrawing in 2010 in the face of accusations of government censorship and intrusions by state-backed hackers

 … In October 1998, Mr. Eisner met Zhu Rongji, who had just been named prime minister, at China’s leadership compound in Beijing. [Disney’s chief executive at the time, Michael D. Eisner,] apologized for “Kundun,” calling it a “stupid mistake,” according to a transcript of the meeting.

“This film was a form of insult to our friends, but other than journalists, very few people in the world ever saw it,” Mr. Eisner said during the meeting. (“Kundun” bombed, taking in just $5.7 million against a production budget of about $30 million.)

Mr. Eisner said the company had learned a lesson. And he introduced Mr. Iger, then Disney’s international president, as the person who would carry on negotiations for a theme park. The Chinese prime minister responded favorably. Land in Shanghai, he said, had already been set aside.

… Disney needs to avoid getting lost in translation, an especially difficult proposition in China. It is a deeply American brand trying to break into a country where the government wants to suppress Western ideals.

 … Disney is going to extraordinary lengths to prove its commitment to China and the Communist Party. During a 2010 meeting with China’s propaganda minister, Mr. Iger pledged to use the company’s global platform to “introduce more about China to the world.” And he has done just that.

 … “When global brands ask me what they need to do to improve their chances in China, I often paraphrase John F. Kennedy: Ask not what China can do for your business, but what your business can do for China,” said John A. Quelch, who teaches at Harvard Business School and has extensive experience in China. “They need to demonstrate that they are willing to promote things the government is interested in.”

Mr. Iger is trying especially to give Shanghai Disney some Chinese flair. He instructed park designers to infuse as many Chinese elements as possible.

 … Mr. Iger even came up with a new slogan for the Shanghai resort, calling it “authentically Disney and distinctly Chinese.” He repeats the phrase constantly when talking about the site, and Disney executives in Shanghai have posted it around their offices. It is supposed to be a sign of respect for China and its people.

Apologizing for a(n allegedly) Chinese-unfriendly film?! That is life in Hollywood for ya. (While continuing the unending line of movies bashing American conservatives, naturally…)

You can read all about it in Hollywood's Offerings Promise Only to Get More Anti-American.

"It's fascinating to listen to people’s interpretations of your story" [Steven Soderbergh] — except when they are conservative Americans!

And especially when they are members of the communist bureaucracy's élite.

The easiest thing for MSM reporters to check and know for sure—that this was another attack in a gun free zone—is mentioned nowhere in the media

Friday singer Christina Grimmie’s was murdered in a gun-free zone in Orlando

writes the Crime Prevention Research Center.

Early [Sunday] morning, at least 50 people were fatally shot at an Orlando night club — also a gun-free zone.  In both cases the media has yet to report that these attacks occurred where general citizens couldn’t defend themselves.

Since at least 1950, only slightly over 1 percent of mass public shootings have occurred where general citizens have been able to defend themselves. Police are extremely important in stopping crime, but even if they had been present at the time of the nightclub shooting, they may have had a very difficult time stopping the attack. Attackers will generally shoot first at any uniformed guards or officers who are present (the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris last year illustrates that point). Alternatively, they will move on to another place without uniformed officers.

In this particular case the police only arrived on the scene after the attack occurred. That illustrates another point: it is simply impossible for the police to protect all possible targets.

It is hard to ignore how these mass public shooters consciously pick targets where they know victims won’t be able to defend themselves (here, here, and here).

 … Media discussions today on assault weapons, background checks, but not relevant to the case here.  But the easiest thing for these reporters to check and know for sure, that this was another attack in a gun free zone, is never mentioned once anywhere in the media.  Hillary Clinton and President Obama both used the attack to call for more gun control. 

Related: my dispassionate in-depth examination of the history of gun control —
What Is to Blame for the Shootings? Does the Blame Lie with
the Right to Bear Arms Or Can It Be Found Elsewhere?

Doesn't the Number of 50 Dead at the Orlando Nightclub Turn Out to Be Misleading?

Are you (somewhat) surprised about the round number of exactly 50 dead from the Orlando nightclub?

So am I.

A coincidence like that is not unheard of, of course, but it turns out that the number is (slightly) misleading.

A day after the massacre, it turns out the number of dead was actually 49.

Not much of a change, agreed, but still: Why the number 50, then?

The media seem to have decided again to include the mass murderer among the "victims."

(Which is technically true, insofar as you are counting the "dead" per se.)

Now why would I use the word "again"?

Don't you remember United Airlines Flight 93? It took forever to design a memorial for the 40 heroes aboard the plane who fought back against the hijackers on September 11, 2001, making it crash in a Pennsylvania field instead of on its intended target.

And when a design was finally chosen, not only did it seem to resemble, deliberately or not, a red crescent, it seems like the number chosen to honor the victims was 44.

Why? Because among the dead were the four terrorists, naturally…

Apart form that, Dalrock points out on his website that When seconds counted, the police were only three hours away:

… so far it looks to me that whoever was in charge failed in a major way.  My guess is that he or she became fixated on the idea that this was just another hostage scenario, and ignored all evidence that this was a terror attack for a full three hours. … Something doesn’t make sense here, and I strongly suspect we are going to learn in the coming days that the police response was terribly botched.  

In the meantime, let us get back to the Apologizer-in-Chief. In the wake numerous instances of political correctness (shookhran to Ed Driscoll and Stephen Green of Instapundit), the New York Post's John Podhoretz laments that

Here again, and horribly, we have an unmistakable indication that Obama finds it astonishingly easy to divorce himself from a reality he doesn’t like — the reality of the Islamist terror war against the United States and how it is moving to our shores in the form of lone-wolf attacks.

He called it “terror,” which it is. But using the word “terror” without a limiting and defining adjective is like a doctor calling a disease “cancer” without making note of the affected area of the body — because if he doesn’t know where the cancer is and what form it takes, he cannot attack it effectively and seek to extirpate it.

So determined is the president to avoid the subject of Islamist, ISIS-inspired or ISIS-directed terrorism that he concluded his remarks with an astonishing insistence that “we need the strength and courage to change” our attitudes toward the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

That’s just disgusting. There’s no other word for it.

America’s national attitude toward LGBT people didn’t shoot up the Pulse nightclub. This country’s national attitude has undergone a sea change in the past 20 years, by the way, in case the president hasn’t noticed.

An Islamist terrorist waging war against the United States killed and injured 103 people on our soil. We Americans do not bear collective responsibility for this attack. Quite the opposite.

The attack on the Pulse nightclub was an attack on us all, no less than the World Trade Center attack.

To suggest we must look inward to explain this is not only unseemly but practically an act of conscious misdirection on the president’ s part to direct out attention away from Omar Mateen’s phone call [in which he called the cops to pledge his fealty to ISIS].

True to form, the president spoke more words about the scourge of guns than about the threat of terror. In doing so, he actually retards rather than advances the cause of gun control he so passionately advocates.

Related: my dispassionate in-depth examination of the history of gun control —
What Is to Blame for the Shootings? Does the Blame Lie with
the Right to Bear Arms Or Can It Be Found Elsewhere?

Ted Cruz: "The next few days will be sadly predictable; Democrats will try to use this attack to change the subject"

“Enough is enough. What we need is for every American – Democrat and Republican – to come together, abandon political correctness, and unite in defeating radical Islamic terrorism.”

Polistick's Matthew K. Burke shows how Ted Cruz (who in November introduced a bill that would prohibit refugees from any country which is controlled in part by a terror group from entering the United States) gets straight to the point:

Ted Cruz issued a statement on Sunday in response to the Islamic terrorist attack against attendees at a homosexual nightclub in Orlando over the weekend, declaring that “our nation is at war” and that Democrats and Republicans should unite around the common goal of defeating radical Islamic terrorism.

Ted Cruz predicted in his statement that “The next few days will be sadly predictable,” that Democrats Obama and Hillary Clinton will continue to be unwilling to mouth the words “radical Islamic terrorism” and that they will use the terrorist attack in Orlando, like they have others before it, towards their goal of eventually eliminating rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The next few days will be sadly predictable. Democrats will try to use this attack to change the subject. As a matter of rigid ideology, far too many Democrats – from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton – will refuse to utter the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ They will claim this attack, like they claimed every previous attack, was isolated and had nothing to do with the vicious Islamist theology that is daily waging war on us across the globe. And they will try to exploit this terror attack to undermine the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms of law-abiding Americans.

Even though Cruz’s prediction was delivered in a timely manner on Sunday, his prophecy was already fulfilled after Democrat after Democrat, as well as the Democrat Media Complex, repeatedly blamed “the gun” for the terrorist attack — or anything other than radical Islam.

After offering his condolences to the victims and their families, Cruz called for a “time of action” and proclaimed that “all of America stands in solidarity with the people of Orlando.”
Cruz also pushed for passage of the Expatriate Terrorist Act, “so that ISIS terrorists cannot use U.S. passports to return to America and wage jihad.”

 Progressive leftist news and commentary websites were licking their chops on Sunday, salivating over another opportunity push for the obliteration of Second Amendment rights, after…

Read Ted Cruz’s entire statement below: 

It is a time for action. We need a Commander in Chief who will speak the truth, and who will unleash the full force and fury of the American military to utterly destroy ISIS and its affiliates. We need to pass the Expatriate Terrorist Act, so that known ISIS terrorists cannot use U.S. passports to return to America and wage jihad. We need a President who is serious – who will identify the enemy by name and do everything necessary to defeat it.

The next few days will be sadly predictable. Democrats will try to use this attack to change the subject. As a matter of rigid ideology, far too many Democrats – from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton – will refuse to utter the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ They will claim this attack, like they claimed every previous attack, was isolated and had nothing to do with the vicious Islamist theology that is daily waging war on us across the globe. And they will try to exploit this terror attack to undermine the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms of law-abiding Americans.

Enough is enough. What we need is for every American – Democrat and Republican – to come together, abandon political correctness, and unite in defeating radical Islamic terrorism.

ISIS doesn’t just target soldiers. They don’t just target Republicans. Or Jews. They also target Christians and fellow Muslims. They target each and every one of us. As we saw this morning, they target the gay and lesbian community. Their objective, which they broadcast worldwide, is to murder or forcibly convert every single American.

For all the Democrats who are loud champions of the gay and lesbian community whenever there is a culture battle waging, now is the opportunity to speak out against an ideology that calls for the murder of gays and lesbians. ISIS and the theocracy in Iran (supported with American taxpayer dollars) regularly murder homosexuals, throwing them from buildings and burying them under rocks. This is wrong, it is evil, and we must all stand against it. Every human being has a right to live according to his or her faith and conscience, and nobody has a right to murder someone who doesn’t share their faith or sexual orientation. If you’re a Democratic politician and you really want to stand for LGBT, show real courage and stand up against the vicious ideology that has targeted our fellow Americans for murder.

Today, all of America stands in solidarity with the people of Orlando. All of us should lift them up in prayer, demand action, and if you have any information about the Orlando shooter or potential radical Islamic terror plots, please act to keep us safe by using the FBI tips website: https://tips.fbi.gov.

Meanwhile, Red State's Susan Wright notes that

Saturday night’s mass shooting at the Pulse Orlando nightclub in Florida has created a sticky predicament for social justice warriors …

Abandon political correctness.

That one had to go down hard for liberals. …

Texas senator has voiced the position Democrats and social justice warriors are faced with: Do they stand up for one special interest group – LGBT individuals – and condemn the ideology that calls for their murder, or do they stand for the Muslim community and the religious system that drove Omar Mateen to commit this heinous crime against the LGBT community?

I’m envisioning fevered, secret meetings in someone’s safe space, as they decide which group they’re more willing to hang out to dry.

Either way, as they wring their hands and desperately try to find some way to blame this on Christians, ISIS are likely planning their next attack.

Related: my dispassionate in-depth examination of the history of gun control —
What Is to Blame for the Shootings? Does the Blame Lie with
the Right to Bear Arms Or Can It Be Found Elsewhere?

Build more luscious public toilets, recommends a Danish Sexologist, so more people will feel comfortable using them to masturbate

Think about this the next time liberals call you a hater or a reactionary for not giving into the craze of allowing transgenders (i.e., men) into public bathrooms.

WARNING while scrolling (sloooowly) down: 
Photo from Danish newspaper below (at end of text) NSFW!!!

According to a Danish poll, reports Metro Express, 11% of Danish men have masturbated in public bathrooms, as have 9% of their female counterparts. Meanwhile, one Danish man in 8 and 9% of Danish women have had sex with a partner in a public toilet.

And just when you didn't think you could get a more "open" society, a Danish sexologist says it's a shame we don't build our public bathrooms accordingly:

We should build some luscious public toilets, which could act as aphrodisiac booths or masturbation-loos, so women too would feel comfortable masturbating inside. Indeed, more women than men feel stressed out, and when we get orgasms we secrete brain substances that work in an anti stressful manner. 

Brave new world…

Det er en skam mener sexologen:

Man burde lave nogle lækre offentlige toiletter, som kunne fungere som elskovsbokse eller onani-lokummer, så kvinder også gad onanere på de offentlige toiletter. Der er nemlig flere kvinder end mænd, der stresser, og når vi får orgasme udskiller hjernen stoffer, der virker antistressende.

Det siger Jakob Olrik.

Calvin & Hobbes: Bill Watterson's Comment on the 26th Amendment

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

Complete androgyny is the Left’s ultimate goal even if some of their useful idiots don’t know it yet

We're entering a sexless world where men and women are meaningless categories 

says Benny Huang (a tip o' the hat to Maggie's Farm's Bird Dog).

Using the “wrong” pronoun in casual conversation can cost you big bucks these days—even when it happens to be the right one. Gresham-Barlow School District in Oregon was forced to cough up $60,000 to a teacher who prefers the pronoun “they” because she “identifies” as neither male nor female. The teacher, Leo Soell, was granted damages in order to compensate her for the emotional distress of being “misgendered.” For the uninitiated, “misgendering” is nothing more than using the correct pronoun to refer to a person who prefers to be called something else. In the old days we just called it good grammar.

 … “Civil rights” is no longer about parity between men and women or the moral equivalence of same-sex relationships vis-à-vis opposite-sex relationships. Even the idea that men can be women (and vice versa) has lost its novelty. Now it’s about the abolition of sex itself.

For everyone’s sake I hope we have finally reached peak insanity.

There are a million variations on the concept of gender identity with exciting new ones being introduced all the time. Besides men who think they are women (and vice versa), there are also genderqueer, two-spirit, and intersex people. There are transmasculine people, who are not the same as transmen, just as there are transfeminine people, who are not the same as transwomen.

Most of my female readers will be shocked to learn that they’re actually ciswomen. A ciswoman is a woman who believes she’s a woman. Nearly every woman you’ve ever met is a ciswoman, which makes you wonder what the superfluous prefix is for.

Answer: to drive home the idea that there are different kinds of women, some of whom are male. We call those transwomen. Ciswomen and transwomen are two equally valid categories of women with neither group considered more deserving of the “woman” title than the other.

This whole movement, I am convinced, can only lead to complete androgyny—that ambiguous gray area between the masculine and feminine spheres. It is the Left’s ultimate goal even if some of their useful idiots don’t know it yet. We’ll get there one Lifetime television special at a time.

 … Feminists absolutely abhor masculinity, except among women. They attack all symbols of masculinity as exclusionary, misogynistic, and chauvinistic. They seek out boys clubs to annihilate them, often by the brute force of slanderous rape claims. See the Rolling Stone rape hoax or the Duke Lacrosse rape hoax. Nor do feminists care for femininity, except among men. Anything that is soft, pink, or glittery sends them into fits of rage—which kind of makes me wonder why they’re called “feminists” in the first place.


In order to understand just how we got here and where we’re going, allow me to invoke a metaphor. Think of men as forks and women as spoons. Within the last hundred years or so we have come to see the two utensils as different in form and function but nonetheless a complementary matched set. But then along came the feminists who declared that spoons can do anything that forks can do! That statement isn’t technically true (and neither is its inverse) but we accepted it because every time we disputed it we were accused of hating spoons. We defended ourselves from the charge only to have our pleas fall on deaf ears.

Then came the homosexuals who decided that forks and spoons weren’t really complementary at all. Two forks or two spoons were just as good as the traditional fork-spoon combo because, in the final analysis, they’re all just tableware. This assertion was a tougher sell because most people could see that forks and spoons are inherently different. The homosexuals dismissed these substantive differences by comparing them to superficial differences such as the color of the eating utensils. So now when we sit down to eat we no longer expect to find a fork and spoon on the table and we blush with embarrassment to think that we ever did.
 
Then came the transgenders who proclaimed that sometimes a fork can actually be a spoon and vice versa. Looking like a fork, with all the defining characteristics of a fork, doesn’t necessarily mean that a utensil is a fork. Utensils are now free to “identify” as one or the other. Cut off the tines if that’s what it takes, or just leave them on—it doesn’t matter. From the moment the fork decides it’s a spoon that’s what it is. Each utensil’s word is final. All of us will be forced to use the fork as a spoon, to refer to it as a spoon, and to store it alongside the other spoons in the silverware drawer. If some of the other spoons don’t like it they need to get with the times.

As crazy as that sounds, we’re not done yet. The next step is to abolish the concepts of forkness and spoonness altogether. From now on we will all use sporks! Sporks are wonderful things because they’re interchangeable. No more messing around with two separate utensils when one will do the trick.

Call me old fashioned but I don’t want to eat all my meals with a spork. Sporks remind me of meals I’ve eaten at sketchy fried chicken restaurants. I want to live in a world in which all the forks are forks, all the spoons are spoons, and everyone knows the difference. They’re both beautiful in their own way and they both serve a purpose. Sporks are a lousy substitute.

If Hillary loses, America fails the progress test; It’s basically the Obama con job all over again, using sex rather than race

Hillary Clinton would have you believe she's the underdog in this race simply because she's a woman

writes Benny Huang (a tip o' the hat to Maggie's Farm's Bird Dog).

Hillary Clinton breathed new life into her “girl power” campaign when she complained last week in a New York Magazine interview about latent sexism. According to Mrs. Clinton, she’d encountered people at campaign events who told her

“I really admire you, I really like you, I just don’t know if I can vote for a woman to be president.”

Yeah—said no one ever. It’s as if someone said to her “You’re awesome, I love you, but I’m just too sexist to check the box next to your name.” We’re supposed to believe that sexism is now so pervasive that even her supporters are affected. I’m sorry, but I’m not taking Hillary’s word for it.

But she wasn’t done fishing for pity. “Unpacking this, understanding it, is for writers like you,” she told the interviewer, Rebecca Traister. “I’m just trying to cope with it. Deal with it. Live through it.” Oh, okay. So now Hillary wants a medal for bravery too. It must be hard remaining stoic in the face of all the imaginary slights she is forced to endure on a daily basis.

Her anecdote has got to be one of the most self-serving I have ever heard, just too perfect to be genuine. Stories like this one cast her as the underdog taking on the sexist establishment. Who would ever guess that she is the establishment and arguably the most powerful woman who’s ever lived? Poor Hillary, she’s up against tough odds; you know, with the Democratic superdelegates lined up to vote for her and corporate America bankrolling her campaign.

In order for her candidacy to be a notable “first,” Hillary Clinton must be seen as smashing through the proverbial glass ceiling. Otherwise, where’s the accomplishment? The solution is to invent sexism where it doesn’t really exist; hence the invented quote she relayed to New York Magazine. She’s trying to turn the 2016 election into a test of how far we have progressed as a nation in terms of women’s rights. If she loses, America fails the test. It’s basically the Obama con job all over again, using sex rather than race.

 … If the New York Magazine interview is any indicator, the sex-based campaign is back like Freddy Krueger. I guess when all you’ve got is the woman card, you just keep playing it over and over again. Every moment she spends discussing the historic “first” that awaits us if we just have the courage to elect her is a moment she doesn’t have to spend talking about her email server, Benghazi, the Clinton Foundation, the Lolita Express, her speeches to Wall Street execs, or her voting record.

 … But let’s unravel what [Nancy] Pelosi’s saying. Apparently Hillary has a great record on national security—except for the biggest national security vote of her life when she signed on to a “grotesque mistake.” But no matter! The important thing here is that we elect a woman, regardless of her voting record. Girl power!

 … For the remainder of the campaign, Hillary is going to stick with what she knows—identity politics. She’s come so far and the future’s looking bright for her. Only two things stand between her and the White House—the FBI and a very weak candidate named Donald Trump. From now until November—and likely for the rest of her political career—Hillary Clinton will do nothing but play that tattered woman card, ceaselessly and without shame.

This Will Be the Longest Day

The story of D-Day. Ed Driscoll reminds us of Ronald Reagan’s two great speeches on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day…

Democrats don't support voter fraud; they just worry about disenfranchising the deceased

Democrats don't support voter fraud

notes Benny Huang wryly;

they just worry about disenfranchising the deceased.

Who says there’s no such thing as life after death? If voting rolls are any indicator, dead people these days are living very active lifestyles. According to an investigative report by CBS2, Los Angeles’s CBS affiliate, some dead people continue to vote years after meeting their maker.

The investigation revealed that 265 dead voters across five counties in southern California voted in recent elections, 215 of them in Los Angeles County. Some of the deceased cast ballots in multiple elections. Thirty-two of those deceased voters were found to have voted eight times since kicking the bucket. One woman who died in 1988 managed to vote in 2014.

I can think of only two explanations—either the Zombie Apocalypse is upon us or someone’s been cheatin’. I lean toward the latter.

Don’t let anyone tell you that voter fraud is a victimless crime. Every ballot illegitimately cast cancels out someone else’s vote. It’s no different than reaching into the ballot box and removing a ballot. It’s a suckerpunch to the democratic process and should be punished severely.

Oddly enough, some people seem to react to voter fraud and voter suppression very differently, as if they’re different phenomena meriting different responses. Voter suppression is considered such a heinous crime that no incident of it will be tolerated—unless perpetrated by billy-club wielding black racists, of course—while voter fraud is considered regrettable but ultimately immaterial. After all, what’s a few votes here and there? Is it really going to tip an election one way or the other? The answer, in some instances, is yes; though that’s not really the point. There’s a principle at stake here and the principle applies whether the margin of victory is a handful of votes or a million.

Any attempt to root out corruption in the electoral process is bound to meet stiff resistance from so-called “civil rights” groups that will invariably stir up racial fears. Voter ID laws, the reformers’ tool of choice for combatting voter fraud, have been painted as an attempt to resurrect Jim Crow. Minority voters lack suitable forms of identification, they say, and making them obtain an ID amounts to an unconstitutional poll tax. It’s a weak argument made even weaker by the fact that some states provide IDs for free.

Some notable “civil rights” organizations continue to oppose voter ID, grasping at increasingly ephemeral straws to justify their position. Nothing will satisfy them except anarchy at the polling stations—no controls, no verification, and no integrity in the final tally. That’s the way they like it.

Cleaning up voter rolls, however, is not the same as voter ID. What objection could there possibly be? You guess it—cleaning up voter rolls is raaaaacist! Or at least that’s the contention of the corrupt, disreputable NAACP. A recent attempt by Florida Governor Rick Scott, a Republican, to weed out noncitizens and other people who have no legal right to vote has been challenged by the NAACP and members of the opposition party. Florida House Minority Leader Mark Pattford weighed in: “[Governor Scott] can probably find more reports of UFOs and space aliens in Florida than there are reports of fraudulent voting in the state.”
 
Pattford surely knows that Miami, which is about an hour south of his district in West Palm Beach, was rocked with one of the biggest voter fraud cases in American history less than twenty years ago. The city’s Democratic mayor, Xavier Suarez, was removed from office in 1998 when it was discovered that his campaign had won the previous year’s primary by tampering with absentee ballots. Among the 895 ballots examined, 197 were found to be suspicious. Some were cast by, you guessed it, dead people.

 … The argument against cleaning up voter rolls seems to be that any attempt to purge ineligible voters will, either by happenstance or design, purge eligible voters too—and minorities disproportionately. So just to be on the safe side, let’s not purge any.

Here we are back at the flawed premise that no one is harmed when voter fraud is tolerated. Let’s examine for a moment the dead voters discovered in the CBS2 investigation to see just how wrongheaded that notion is. According to their investigation, 32 dead voters voted in at least eight elections; that’s 256 illegally cast ballots. We also know that the other 233 dead voters voted at least once. By combining the two we know that 489 ballots were illegally cast and the same number of voters were disenfranchised. Again, that’s a minimum. But rather than doing something about it some people prefer not to see a problem and compare the whole affair to UFO sightings.

The states’ voting rolls are saturated with names that don’t belong there—noncitizens, the deceased, people who have moved away, and in some cases, fictitious people.

 … This is the stuff of banana republics.

Related: Voting rights, voting wrongs:

To take another (far worse) crime, how prevalent is murder? Not very, if you take the statistics in percentage (something like 0.0048 %). Well, no matter how rare murder is, you still need to criminalize it as much for justice — to bring perpetrators (however rare they may be) to justice — as for prevention — to prevent people from being tempted to use it.

The last I heard, one needs some sort of poll card to cast a ballot in Britain, as indeed one does in every other democracy on this planet. Due to the Democrats' hysterical race-baiting, we have been subjected to the (absurd) spectacle of being the only country where having this (common-sense) requirement can only be viewed as vile, outrageous prejudice. Well, if it is racist to require voter ID in America, then Britain and every other democracy on the planet (including, of course, in Africa) can only qualify as racist as well.

School Bans "Whistles" from Playground for Being Too "Aggressive"

A [British] school has banned whistles to signal the end of playtime as staff are worried the “aggressive” noise will scare children

reports the Daily Telegraph's Elizabeth Roberts (cheers for the Instapundit link, mate).

Staff at St Monica's Catholic Primary School in Milton Keynes must instead raise a hand in the air to get the attention of pupils at the end of break time.

A teaching assistant at the school, Pamela Cunningham, attacked the ban in a letter to Country Life Magazine.

She said that she keeps her hand-carved whistle in her pocket 'just in case' children don't spot her hand in an emergency.

Professor Alan Smithers, of Buckingham University, branded the move as “crazy” telling the Sunday Times:

“We have become extraordinarily over-sensitive. Does this mean children are not going to be able to play football and hockey because the referees use whistles?”

St Monica’s is a voluntary aided school for boys and girls between the ages of three and eleven, with 467 children on roll.

The move comes after students at Christ the King, a Catholic primary school in Leeds, were banned from playing tag (also known as tig) in the playground.

The head teacher claimed children have become upset amid the rough and tumble of the traditional chasing game.

Meanwhile students celebrating graduation from the University of East Anglia are no longer allowed to throw their mortarboards in the air.

The university blamed health and safety concerns, saying a number of graduates have been hurt by falling hats in recent years.

As you can expect, the controversy is an object of concern to all but the people directly involved, i.e., the very children, not a single one of whom, apparently, has even dreamed of raising his or her voice in complaint. Bringing to mind the controversy in America over the Redskins sports team, which has everybody in a fizzy, everybody, that is, except the redskins — sorry, except the Indians — themselves.

The move was criticized by Emma Kenny, a leading child psychologist, who said she has yet to meet a child who was afraid of the whistles. She added: “I think we are at a time where health and safety is eradicating childhood.”

Teddy's Rough Riders Sing Garryowen As They Head Towards the Battlefield

There are only a handful of war movies and/or historical films that portray the men that fight battles realistically, and two of them — both "starring" Theodore Roosevelt (The Wind and the Lion and Rough Riders) — are by John Milius. "Rough Riders" is an unforgettable film on the events of the Spanish-American War and it is too bad that more movies cannot be like this or like films such as Zulu, Gettysburg, or The Longest Day.

In this brilliant outtake that shows the pathos of the departure to the front, the troops of Teddy Roosevelt's (Tom Berenger's) 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry fall in under the orders of Captain Bucky O'Neill (Sam Elliott) for the train ride east across the South to Florida (for embarkation to Cuba), discovering in the process that the wounds of the Civil War (or the War Between the States, to make everybody happy) have started to heal, all to the tune of Garryowen, stunningly sung by Elan Oberon (who happens to be Milius' wife).

If there are DVDs that all Americans (hell, that all people everywhere) should own, this is one of them — don't miss other outstanding portrayals, notably Marshall Teague as Black Jack Pershing and Gary Busey, utterly outstanding in the role of Fighting Joe Wheeler.

(Thanks to Hervé for all his work in creating this video)

(Bumped)

Ken Loach objects to welfare state cuts, but the fact remains that if today’s welfare state is affordable at all, t'is thanks to the free enterprise system that he hates

Ken Loach’s new film I, Daniel Blake, which has … earned him his second Palme d’Or at Cannes, tells the story of a middle-aged man and a single mother struggling with Britain’s modern welfare system

writes Sam Bowman in the Daily Telegraph.

Like many of his other films it’s a story of people being mistreated by faceless bureaucrats in  an unfeeling, capitalistic state.

Now I confess I share some of his despair.  Trying to get the local council to do something as simple as collect rubbish on my street is a process that makes me reach for my revolver. To depend on such institutions for money to feed myself while jumping through a host of pointless hoops to prove that I really need it – as Loach’s characters do – would be soul-destroying.

Where Loach is wrong is to suppose that this is a failing of modern capitalism. Far from it: the worst bureaucracies are the ones run by the state that we cannot escape.

Remember the process of getting a new phone line? You applied to the Post Office and waited six months to get one. If you were out when the engineers came over you’d have to wait another couple of months. Today the process takes a day or two, because there are half a dozen or more firms competing with each other .

Or think about the hassle that the supposed pleasure of going on holiday once involved. Today, travel agents exist to offer cheap package holidays they’ve bought in bulk. Just 20 years ago, they existed because the airline and hotel industries were so bureaucratic that no ordinary person could deal with them directly. Nowadays the really crushing part of travelling is replacing a lost passport or applying for a visa – the two last big holdouts of government “service”. 
 
In these as in so many other consumer areas, bureaucrats have been scrubbed from our daily lives. Trade and competition – the sort of competition that involves seducing customers from rivals by offering something better – have driven a phenomenal betterment in the lives of everyone, including the protagonists of Ken Loach’s dramas. Both government and business can be bureaucratic, but only businesses have an incentive to improve.

It’s hard to capture all this in statistics. How could any bureaucrat measure the added value a person gets from seeing their newborn grandson through a live, free video call from the other side of the world, rather than waiting weeks to see a few photos? How can statistics capture the value of having the sum of human knowledge and every musical recording ever made in our pockets for the price of a few adverts?

Perhaps it’s unfair to compare consumer products with state bureaucracies. But the less we have to deal with private bureaucrats, the less we tolerate their government counterparts pushing us around.

 … There is one other important point. Loach seems to think that the welfare state has been hollowed out and cut to historically low levels. Actually, since the release of his first great triumph, Cathy Come Home in 1966, welfare payments have become larger and larger in absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP.

 … The kind of economic growth needed to pay for this would be unthinkable under any other economic system than capitalism. Loach objects to cuts, but the fact is that today’s welfare state is only affordable at all thanks to the free enterprise system that he hates.