Obama looks great in comparison

The New Neo Posted on by

To a lot of Americans, that is:

President Barack Obama’s approval rating stands at 55% in a new CNN/ORC poll, the highest mark of his second term, and matching his best at any time since his first year in office.
The new rating outpaces his previous second-term high — reached just after a Democratic convention that extolled the successes of his presidency — by one point, and hits a level he’s reached just twice since the end of his first year in office: In January 2013 just before his second inauguration and in January 2011.

The new poll continues a streak in which Obama’s approval rating has been at 50% or higher in CNN/ORC polls since February, a seven month run that is his longest since 2009. And taken together, Obama’s approval ratings in 2016 average 51% so far in CNN/ORC polls, his best mark since that first year in office.

It’s mind-boggling to those of us who see it very differently. But it’s hard to deny that the candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump make the presidency of Obama seem better to an awful lot of people. Especially if those people are forgetful, or haven’t been paying close attention in the first place, or are predisposed to forgive Obama anything anyway.

Trump makes Obama look and sound like a kindly, thoughtful, measured, even-handed statesman. And Hillary Clinton makes Obama look and sound very “likable”—famously more likable than the “likable enough” Hillary who’s grown even more unlikable since 2008 when Obama originally said that.

Another reason Obama’s ratings have gone up is that there haven’t been any big big crises or revelations lately about him. You may think I’m wrong to say that; just as one example, wasn’t it revealed that he lied about not knowing about Hillary’s private email/server? Well, yes, but if you quizzed 100 people in the street I would guess that at least 99 would have never heard about it.

The fallout from Obama’s climbing approval is probably that it enhances Clinton’s chances of being elected president. Despite her personality differences from Obama, many see her election as his third term. And if you liked the first two, well then…

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons

The New Neo Posted on by

The other day I went to the drugstore and indulged in one of my favorite pastimes, buying makeup.

Hey, we all have our small vices.

I bought a new tube of undereye circle concealer of my favorite kind (see this post for the reason why I need it). I now possess three of these tubes of the same type and color: here it is, inexpensive and highly recommended for the woman in your life who might be a bit undereye-challenged.

These tubes also tend to last a long long time, even with heavy users such as myself, and that’s another one of their most fabulous traits. I bought a third one because I’ve become afraid that the manufacturer will stop making it. I’ve tried about a hundred other types, and this is the best one for me. It has managed to replace my previously favored concealer another manufacturer (Clinique) had precipitously stopped making, leaving me high and dry (and very dark-circled) till I finally found this one.

But after I had bought the tube, taken it home, and placed it in a little drawer with its fellows-in-waiting, I began to wonder how long these three will last. In other words, will they take me to the end of my life?

I’ve had that kind of thought before when purchasing products, in particular with a brand of walking shoes I liked so much that I bought about four pairs in case they stopped making that particular model. And of course there’s the line from the T. S. Eliot poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” which I quoted in the title of this post. Even as a young person—which is when I first read the poem—it gave me a little creepy chill:

…Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all””…

T. S. Eliot must have been born old, because he was very very young (an undergraduate) when he wrote that poem. But I’m considerably older than that, and certainly old enough to wonder what might constitute “a lifetime supply” of something.

But it’s always been hard for me to finish things, to put them away, to throw them out, although I do it. When I was pregnant, I didn’t buy a whole lot of baby clothes prior to my son’s birth. I didn’t know the sex of the child (in those days amniocentesis was not standard), although I suspected a boy. But I was content to wait to find out. However, I did buy two little terrycloth onesies in the smallest size for the newborn, and of course some diapers.

When my son was born he weighed seven pounds. But within about two weeks he’d gained so much weight that he’d grown out of the smallest of the outfits. I remember the outfit well; it was turquoise and had a tiny little rainbow on the upper left hand part, and the usual snaps to fasten it. Cute.

As I folded it and put it away, I cried. I had just bought it! He had just been born! And here I was retiring his first garment.

When one is a parent, one has to learn to say goodbye to every stage of a child’s life and to welcome the new stages with joy. I learned to do it, but it didn’t come easy to me.

The Clinton emails: that’s quite an immunity deal you’ve got there

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s hard to know what to say about this, except that apparently one cannot get cynical enough to keep up with reality:

Immunity deals for two top Hillary Clinton aides included a side arrangement obliging the FBI to destroy their laptops after reviewing the devices, House Judiciary Committee sources told Fox News on Monday.

Sources said the arrangement with former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills and ex-campaign staffer Heather Samuelson also limited the search to no later than Jan. 31, 2015. This meant investigators could not review documents for the period after the email server became public — in turn preventing the bureau from discovering if there was any evidence of obstruction of justice, sources said.

It’s worth reading the whole thing. It’s not long. And it’s very much worth reading Andrew C. McCarthy on the subject:

Why did the Justice Department make side deals in this case (which we’ve been told was treated like any other case . . . except, alas, when it wasn’t)? More fundamentally, as I’ve been arguing since we learned of the immunity agreements, why did the government grant immunity in the first place? Unfortunately, the question, at this point, is rhetorical. Immunity was granted because the Justice Department would not use the grand jury against Mrs. Clinton.

Patently, the highly politicized Obama Justice Department did this because commencing a grand-jury investigation suggests that a matter is very serious and an indictment (which only the grand jury can issue) is likely. In this case, the Justice Department was determined to maintain the illusion that Clinton and her underlings hadn’t committed crimes, so the grand jury was avoided.

The stakes were too high, the fish were too big—and most importantly, they were fish from the wrong party.

Pining for Pence

The New Neo Posted on by

I didn’t listen to the debate, although I did turn it on thinking I’d catch the end. But when I turned on the TV, I saw the two candidates get up and shake hands, and I figured: hey, what perfect timing!

But I did read about it, of course, and the consensus was the Kaine may have won the prize for unpleasant personalities in a campaign year that has featured the most obnoxious and off-putting characters ever; and that Pence appealed much more, not just to partisans but to those who were previously undecided (such as the Luntz focus groups).

So I was curious to see how the media would spin it. Here’s today’s page at Memeorandum, which compiles a sampler of media and blog reaction. Just glancing at the headlines, they don’t look too terribly biased compared to most media coverage of the election lately, although of course there is bias. Perhaps the relative lack is because the vice presidential debates ordinarily don’t matter much, if at all. Will this one? I doubt it. Despite the somewhat advanced age of both presidential contenders, and the possible ill health of one, Trump and Hillary are still the main attractions (?) by far.

If you study that Memeorandum list, you’ll see that one of the spins is that Pence did so well that he outclassed Trump. That’s not really spin, though, is it? It’s the truth.

The bar is very low for outclassing Trump, but Pence cleared it very easily, and what’s more he outclassed Kaine by a mile as well. And yes, a headline like “Republicans pine for Pence at the top of the ticket” doesn’t sound like spin either. I pine for almost anyone but Trump at the top of the ticket, although I realize that pining is not an especially productive activity.

Come to think of it, though, “I Pine for Pence” might make a nice bumper sticker.

C.S. Lewis: about Christianity and its importance

The New Neo Posted on by

First, the obligatory opening caveat: I’m not a Christian. Nor am I an expert on Christianity. But I have read more than a superficial bit about it, and I know and deeply respect Christians generally.

But one person who has always puzzled me is C. S. Lewis. Maybe “puzzled” isn’t exactly the right word, but I’m not sure what would be a more accurate way to describe my reaction to him. I’ve read lots of his works, at least in part; I can’t always bring myself to finish them because they just don’t resonate with me. I know he’s speaking English, I know he’s a very important writer who moves and convinces many people, but something about him doesn’t speak to me. I don’t even like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, so that tells you something.

The reason I bring Lewis up is a famous quote of Lewis’ that commenter “Frog” offered today in the Pope Francis thread:

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

I’ve seen the quote before. I’ve thought about it before. And it doesn’t make sense to me.

It seems to me that the question of the “importance” of Christianity—or any other religion, for that matter—must be defined in terms of what realm you’re talking about. To the believer in Christianity or in any other religion that posits an afterlife, particularly an eternal afterlife, of course that religion (be it Christianity or any other such religion) is of “infinite importance.”

I don’t quarrel with that—although it also depends whether the religion is one which also posits that it is the only path, the only way, to an eternal afterlife. Some religions say that, some say that all religions (or most) lead the way to an afterlife, and some don’t really focus on the afterlife piece of it all that much. So, to a religion that considers itself the only way to an afterlife, that particular religion is of “infinite importance,” whereas to a religion that says there are many ways to heaven, all such religions would be of “infinite importance.”

It is my understanding that Christians are somewhat divided on the issue of whether Christianity is the only way, but that generally they think it is. At any rate, it’s not something I know much about and in any event isn’t all that relevant to the “infinite importance” discussion. Christianity would be of “infinite importance” either way—particularly if it is the only religion that leads to an eternal afterlife in some sort of heaven, but also if it is one of several or even many religions that do, because they all would then be of infinite importance.

It’s the rest of the Lewis quote that gives me particular trouble: the idea that if this isn’t true—that is, let’s say, if atheists are correct about Christianity—then Christianity is of no importance and that it cannot be of moderate importance. For example, even though I am not a Christian, I believe Christianity to be of great importance and I am pretty sure that even if I were an atheist (I’m not) that I would continue to think so. That’s because I would be looking at the question of “importance” in terms of life on earth and in particular of human history both macro and micro.

Christianity has had an enormous influence on the history of the Western world and therefore of humanity. It has had and continues to have enormous influence on people’s lives and how they live them in the personal sense as well. It has also been responsible for vast quantities of art, music, and literature, at least as the inspiration for so many works of genius. It has even, in some cases, inspired many scientists (for example, Kepler).

Perhaps it can be argued that this influence is hardly “moderate.” But it’s certainly not “nothing,” and it’s certainly not “infinite,” so in that sense it would have to be “moderate” (that is, something in-between “nothing” and “infinite”). Did Lewis’ statement come from a belief that the only sphere to be considered was the infinite vs. non-infinite one, and that human history should be discounted in the equation? I suppose in contrast to eternal life, human history seems small. But it’s not nothing, and to non-believers it’s a lot (perhaps everything).

It seems to me that in Lewis’ statement he was really preaching mainly to the choir—almost literally.

So I would revise Lewis’ statement to go something like this:

Christianity, if false, is nevertheless of some importance, in its influence on people’s lives and on history. If true, Christianity is of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is of no importance—unless you think that human beings’ lives on earth and human history are of no importance.

Are you going to watch tonight’s vice-presidential debate?

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, are you?

I don’t think I will; certainly not the whole thing, anyway. As you probably know, I detest debates, and vice presidential debates just don’t ordinarily matter.

On the other hand, I imagine that most people who do decide to watch it will feel some sharp pangs at the fact that these two guys, not particularly well known before being tapped to be running mates and not even all that well-known after, are head and shoulders above the presidential nominees to whom they’re tethered.

Irony.

Neo’s not so neo

The New Neo Posted on by

At Instapundit, Ed Driscoll discusses a National Review article by Rachel Lu entitled, “Get Ready for the Neo-Neoconservatives.”

Lu thinks the time may be ripe:

As young liberals sour on what is to them the old world of the political and cultural Left, conservative ideas might have a real allure. For younger generations, tradition often has the benefit of feeling simultaneously time-tested and novel. We might generate considerable momentum by daring young radicals to embrace conservatism, a truly countercultural move that promises to drive their teachers (and parents?) crazy.

If she wants any advice, I can certainly offer some.

Ed Driscoll adds:

But why do I need to “get ready for the Neo-Neocons,” when I’ve known the original Neo-Neocon for over a decade?

Thanks, Ed! In all seriousness, it’s not the first time that other people have used the “neo-neocon” phrase. But yes, I was the first to use it (at least, I think I was).

And I’m not so “neo” anymore, am I? But, like a person nicknamed “junior” in his youth and still called “junior” when he’s an old graybeard, I guess I’m stuck with it.

I’ve thought of changing it, but to what? Any suggestions?

Not that I’ll necessarily take them.

Michael Totten on what’s been happening in Colombia lately

The New Neo Posted on by

Interesting:

By a razor-thin margin of less than half a percentage point, Colombian voters narrowly rejected a proposed peace plan that would have formally ended the longest-running war in the Western Hemisphere.

Almost everyone thought the referendum would pass…

For more than five decades, the Soviet- and narco-backed Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has waged a brutal insurgency against the Colombian government and its people. When Soviet largesse dried up at the end of the Cold War, the guerrillas turned to kidnapping and drug trafficking to fund their insurgency, and they’ve used just about every terrorist tactic short of suicide-bombings since the very beginning…

So why did a slim majority of the population vote “no” in a national referendum to end the war once and for all?

Because the peace deal was too nice to the FARC.

Amnesty was part of the package, of course. All the FARC leaders could have stayed out of prison if they confessed and made reparations. Worse, the peace treaty would have given the FARC ten seats in Congress””five in the Senate and five in the House””for ten years.

In other words, by a very narrow margin the Colombian people rejected too lenient and too conciliatory reconciliation terms.

Totten also writes that Medellin is now doing pretty well:

Even without a final peace treaty, violence in Colombia has dropped so sharply during the last couple of years that the country is becoming a must-visit tourist destination. The city of Medellé­n, once among the most violent and hellish on earth, has won a number of international awards for its urban dynamism…

That’s good to hear. I am so very old, though, that I remember when Medellin had not yet become “among the most violent and hellish” cities on earth. A relative of mine spent a year there during the early 60s, and reported it was great. Sure enough, when I just looked it up, FARC became established as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party in 1964.

Is Pope Francis…

The New Neo Posted on by

…channeling Ted Cruz?:

Pope Francis has urged almost 70million Catholics in the United States to study and pray and ‘choose with your conscience’ when considering who to vote for in November.

The pontiff was questioned by journalists following a visit to Azerbaijan. In a diplomatic answer, Pope Francis failed to endorse any particular candidate, although he has serious problems with both the Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton…

Pope Francis said: ‘You have asked me a question that describes a difficult choice because, according to you, there are difficulties with one and difficulties with the other.’

That’s certainly an understatement. Unlike the rest of us, though, the Pope is not going to have to choose.

Did you know…

The New Neo Posted on by

…that LeBron James is “the most influential person in the major swing state of Ohio”?

He’s endorsed Hillary Clinton, and when I clicked on that Business Insider article to which I just linked, I thought from the headline that they were being sarcastic about the influence part. But no; they seem completely serious, and believe that his backing could aid the Clinton campaign in that state.

And perhaps they’re right. The last time I followed basketball, the players wore tight short-shorts instead of long and baggy ones, and few if any had tattoos. The 70s, I’d say. So, what do I know?

The Times and Trump’s taxes

The New Neo Posted on by

monopoly

The New York Times would have you believe that it’s a big big story to learn that Donald Trump sometimes lost a lot of money and most likely took a tax write-off for it in accordance with the law.

Such a story should be a big yawn and an even bigger “so what?” But the Times is counting on its propaganda skills and its ability to manipulate enough readers to make a difference. And with the Times it’s not just its own readers, but its influence on readers of other publications and consumers of other news and social media.

What is the word they want to get out? Well, if they were honest, it would go something like this: Real estate mogul Donald Trump sometimes loses big, as you already know if you know his history or the real estate development business. 1995, the year for which we’ve obtained some tax records of Trump’s, was one of those years when he lost big. According to current tax laws, Trump (exactly like anyone else who might be in his position, including us or you if we were dealing in that sort of business) is entitled by those losses to a particular kind of write-off for a certain number of future years. And like all of us, he probably took the tax advantage to which the law entitles him. He would have been a fool not to, and his accountants would have been negligent not to advise him to do it.

But that doesn’t quite have the requisite punch, does it? The way the Times wrote the article was different [emphasis mine]:

The 1995 tax records, never before disclosed, reveal the extraordinary tax benefits that Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, derived from the financial wreckage he left behind in the early 1990s through mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.

Tax experts hired by The Times to analyze Mr. Trump’s 1995 records said that tax rules especially advantageous to wealthy filers would have allowed Mr. Trump to use his $916 million loss to cancel out an equivalent amount of taxable income over an 18-year period…

The $916 million loss certainly could have eliminated any federal income taxes Mr. Trump otherwise would have owed on the $50,000 to $100,000 he was paid for each episode of “The Apprentice,” or the roughly $45 million he was paid between 1995 and 2009 when he was chairman or chief executive of the publicly traded company he created to assume ownership of his troubled Atlantic City casinos. Ordinary investors in the new company, meanwhile, saw the value of their shares plunge to 17 cents from $35.50, while scores of contractors went unpaid for work on Mr. Trump’s casinos and casino bondholders received pennies on the dollar.

“He has a vast benefit from his destruction” in the early 1990s, said one of the experts, Joel Rosenfeld, an assistant professor at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate. Mr. Rosenfeld offered this description of what he would advise a client who came to him with a tax return like Mr. Trump’s: “Do you realize you can create $916 million in income without paying a nickel in taxes?”

There’s a lot going on there, isn’t there? I bow to no one in my detestation of Donald Trump, but following the tax laws is not one of the things for which I’m going to excoriate him. I’m not even so concerned that he didn’t always make good decisions in business; anyone who deals on that scale is going to have some “ill-fated” and “ill-timed” purchases. Hey, I’ve had some myself, although they’ve been confined to some “extraordinarily” small-scale dabbling in stocks.

It is quite obvious that the Times is creating a narrative of a rapacious top-hatted exploitative Rich Uncle Pennybags and using the tax story to push it. Now, Trump may indeed be a rapacious exploitative SOB (minus the top hat), but that has nothing whatsoever to do with the story of these completely legal tax returns and speculation on what would probably happen next in terms of deductions.

The Times is driving home three points. The first is that sometimes Trump failed at certain business endeavors, and they would like you to therefore see him as a failure. The second is that despite being a lousy businessman, Trump has too much money; in other words, the paper is trying to drum up class envy. The third is that if you put the first one and the second one together, you can see that Trump is rich despite his being incompetent, and that can only be explained by the fact that he’s a cheater and an exploiter of the people who work for him and those who invested with him. The fourth is that even though everything he did with his taxes was completely legal, it’s a form of cheating and ties in with Trump’s cheating in number three.

If anyone objects to that last bit, the proper remedy would be to change the tax code, of course, but the Times hasn’t bothered to explain why the law is written that way, or what would be the pros and cons of changing it. The Wall Street Journal attempts to give it some context here:

The tax treatment of losses, bound to become a subject of national debate, is a typically uncontroversial feature of the income-tax system. The government doesn’t pay net refunds when business owners lose money, but it lets taxpayers use those losses to smooth their tax payments as they make money. That reflects the fact that “the natural business cycle of a taxpayer may exceed 12 months,” according to a congressional report.

Typically, for federal returns, such net operating losses can be carried backward for two years to offset past income, then kept on a taxpayer’s books for 20 years. Mr. Trump’s losses could only qualify for a 15-year carryforward under the law at the time.

Real-estate developers can generate losses more easily than other taxpayers. They can take deductions for depreciation of their property and can also deduct interest when they borrow. Unlike investors in other businesses, they can use those losses to offset other income.

Tax law is nothing if not complicated, and it’s especially complicated if you get into the laws governing the very rich with many investments. Most of us have enough trouble understanding our own taxes without wading into the deep waters of the taxes of a typical large-scale real estate developer. But the Times considers that lack of understanding a feature, not a bug; an opportunity to push the propaganda line it favors. Trump has done them a favor, of course, by not disclosing all of this long ago, which would have at least stilled the part of the argument that hints that he’s hiding something even bigger. He probably has calculated that whatever is in his tax returns would upset the public, even if perfectly legal, and that it was smarter to withhold them. But it was inevitable that some of it would be leaked anyway.

Trump as candidate always had very unique vulnerabilities. The MSM, the left, the Times, Hillary Clinton, all of the above, are doing exactly what could have been (and was) easily predicted: bringing out this sort of thing at a timely juncture, just a few weeks before the election. They’ve got plenty more where that came from. Did anyone ever doubt they would be able to obtain access to some of Trump’s tax filings? And does anyone have any doubt that the following statements by Hillary Clinton during last week’s debate were probably the result of advance knowledge from the Times that the tax story was coming out?:

“There is something he is hiding,” Clinton said of Trump during the debate.

“Or maybe he doesn’t want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he’s paid nothing in federal taxes, because the only years that anybody’s ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax,” she said.

“That makes me smart,” Trump said.

Well, I wouldn’t go that far. At the very least, it makes him not-dumb. It also makes his tax accountants smart, or at least competent.

Neither the Times nor Hillary suggests what Trump might have done instead, of course. Not made money? Not lost it? Hired accountants who didn’t know their asses from their elbows? Donated many millions to the IRS of his own free will, over and above what was required?

Or remained a Democrat, perhaps? Then all would have been forgiven.