In the San Bernardino attacks we seem to have had the trifecta of perpetrators: US-born Islamic terrorist of Pakistani descent, plus foreign-born Islamic terrorist recently arrived through the visa program—and now Enrique Marquez, the newly-charged home-grown Islamic-convert terrorist of Hispanic descent. We still have no idea how Marquez’s parents (we know he lived with his mother; very little has been said about a father) got to this country—was it legally or illegally?—but his mother appears to be an immigrant as well.
Marquez has been singing like the proverbial canary ever since the police sprung him from the psychiatric facility where he’d been residing since shortly after the murders:
Early on the day after the shooting, he called 911 and said, “My neighbor. He did the San Bernardino shooting.” Later during that call, he said that Mr. Farook “used my gun in the shooting,” and “they can trace all the guns back to me.”
Later that day, Dec. 3, he entered the emergency room of Harbor-U.C.L.A. Medical Center in Torrance, some 60 miles west of his home, apparently drunk and upset, telling doctors that he had just drunk nine beers. He was placed in the psychiatric ward and held involuntarily.
Marquez is in a heap of trouble. Not only did he buy the guns for Farook and wife, which is illegal, but he plotted a mass murder with buddy Farook a couple of years ago and then thought better of it, and he married his Russian bride for money. How was Marquez employed till the attack? As a Walmart security guard, which makes me feel a bit insecure.
Take a look at this interview, in which Trump practically defines mindless moral relativism. No doubt Trump supporters can figure out a way to justify it; perhaps something like this: “Oh, Trump doesn’t want to offend Putin, because if he’s president some day he might have to work a deal with him.” Yeah, right. And speaking of cynicism, dealing with Putin requires making a moral equivalence between US and Russian killing?:
Scarborough pointed to Putin’s status as a notorious strongman.
“Well, I mean, it’s also a person who kills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries. Obviously that would be a concern, would it not?” Scarborough asked.
“He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader,” Trump replied. “Unlike what we have in this country.”
“But again: He kills journalists that don’t agree with him,” Scarborough said.
The Republican presidential front-runner said there was “a lot of killing going on” around the world and then suggested that Scarborough had asked him a different question.
“I think our country does plenty of killing, also, Joe, so, you know,” Trump replied. “There’s a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on. A lot of stupidity. And that’s the way it is. But you didn’t ask me [that] question, you asked me a different question. So that’s fine.”
A whole lot of killing going on.
Which reminds me—to change the subject almost entirely—of this, of all things. Interestingly enough, they called this guy the Killer, back in the day. And he’s got quite a hair thing going on, too, although not exactly a Trumpian coif. This was pretty risque in 1957, with enough energy to light up a small city:
Lewis also had an “interesting” private life—so Byzantine that I can’t even summarize it without starting a whole new post (see this and this). Of Lewis’ piano playing, Elvis said that “if he could play the piano like Lewis, he would quit singing.”
Jerry Lee is still around. Maybe Trump could enlist him for the tour. He’s still got the semi-Trumpian hair (at 80 years of age), and there’s still some shakin’ goin’ on, although it’s a bit shaky, as is the voice (I’ve cued this video up to start at the beginning of the song):
Yesterday Cornhead reported the following conversation from his experience at Hillary’s Iowa appearance:
I was talking to some old, rich, liberal white women in the line. It was freezing cold and they were talking about their winter vacations in the Tropics and summers in Vermont.
I asked them about Trump. He is “icky.”
I then cited the stat that 40% of voters think Hillary is dishonest. One argued with me about what section of the electorate did the 40% come from. I didn’t know. Looked it up later. Turns out it is 60% of all voters.
But one of them spun my stat and claimed that 80% of voters think ALL politicians are dishonest so therefore Hillary was only half as bad.
I was with the true believers and it was discouraging on many levels.
I wrote about this phenomenon a while back. Hillary is well aware of this cynicism, I think, and counts on it to help her out. Here’s a repeat of the post I wrote then, which still seems topical—more topical than ever, perhaps. It was written almost three years ago.
The more I think about Hillary Clinton’s question yesterday—“what difference does it make?”—the more important it becomes; a sort of leitmotif, not only for this administration, but for our times in general.
For the moment, let’s not talk about Benghazi itself. Let’s just mull over the fact that the priorities of the majority of Americans seem to have shifted. If the public doesn’t care about a certain tree falling in the forest, does it actually make a sound, even if the right is fussing about it?
The right has been outraged by a sequence of events and statements that have occurred under Obama’s watch, beginning with his 2008 campaign. Some are rather trivial (“corpse-man”) and some important (“bankrupt” the coal plants; “spread the wealth”). All have gained traction only on the right, because a majority (perhaps a small majority, but a majority nonetheless, and I believe a growing one) has answered the question “what difference does it make?” with the words “none at all.”
These are things that would have outraged an earlier generation. In fact, they have outraged an earlier generation; older people did not vote for Obama in large numbers (among voters 65 and older, Romney won 56% to 44%). But Hillary is correct; to most voters, Benghazi, and a host of other things that used to be considered important, make no difference at all.
One reason, which may seem somewhat paradoxical but really is not, is widespread cynicism. If the public doesn’t expect integrity or truth from what used to be called our public servants (what a quaint phrase!), then lies and strategic stonewalling will not bother most people at all. What matters is what those public servants can get for you, and what they can scare you into thinking the opposition will take away from you (tampons, anyone?)
I began to realize how exceedingly widespread this attitude of cynicism had become, and its effect on public perceptions about Benghazi, around the time of the 2012 election. I wrote about the incident afterward, here:
The American people do not seem to be “concerned,” [about Benghazi] either, not at all. Major Garrett can ask all the questions he wants…but few people except us blogophiles on the right are listening, and Carney and Obama have learned that simply thumbing their noses at the American people is an excellent way to get the people to shrug…
I discovered this myself a few days after the election, when I had dinner with an old friend who is an intelligent, moderate, non-leftist Democrat with some conservative tendencies. This friend just didn’t care about Benghazi or the administration’s handling of it, didn’t know the details and was cynically dismissive of the topic because “all politicians lie.”
Well, they surely do””but not this brazenly, because most politicians at least have the fear of being called to account by the media and then the American people…
Another big factor at work here is our decades-long education in moral relativism. What is truth, and can it be determined? Way way too many people answer “no,” and so they’ve given up trying or caring. And if they don’t care, why should our public officials answer inopportune and potentially embarrassing questions? No; what’s important is feelings, and so it made perfect sense for Hillary to act as though the best way to show concern about the deaths in Benghazi was to raise her voice in frustration and anger at the questions and cite her determination to “figure out what happened,” rather than actually exhibit that determination by answering questions about her own possible negligence in fostering conditions that may have contributed to those deaths. As for the subsequent cover-up of the reasons for the deaths, she’s implying that it’s just political business as usual, no biggee. And most Americans will nod, if they’re paying attention at all.
This administration has been stonewalling right from the start on whatever it just doesn’t feel like answering. Although previous administrations have done a little bit of that here and there, with Obama it is his recurrent m.o., made possible by the MSM’s abdication of its traditional role as questioner and challenger, and its adoption of the mantle of enabler.
A terrible development, to be sure. But it would not be possible if the American people didn’t allow it.
Any surprise at this shows a certain amount of poor judgment, I’d say. On Hagel’s part:
It was Aug. 30, 2013, and the U.S. military was poised for war. Obama had publicly warned Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad that his regime would face consequences if it crossed a “red line” by employing chemical weapons against its own people. Assad did it anyway, and Hagel had spent the day approving final plans for a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missile strikes against Damascus. U.S. naval destroyers were in the Mediterranean, awaiting orders to fire.
Instead, Obama told a stunned Hagel to stand down. Assad’s Aug. 21 chemical attack in a Damascus suburb had killed hundreds of civilians, but the president said the United States wasn’t going to take any military action against the Syrian government. The president had decided to ignore his own red line ”” a decision, Hagel believes, that dealt a severe blow to the credibility of both Obama and the United States…
In the days and months afterward, Hagel’s counterparts around the world told him their confidence in Washington had been shaken over Obama’s sudden about-face. And the former defense secretary said he still hears complaints to this day from foreign leaders.
“A president’s word is a big thing, and when the president says things, that’s a big deal,” he said…
The 69-year-old former Nebraska senator and Vietnam War veteran, speaking for the first time about his treatment by the Obama administration, said the Pentagon was subject to debilitating meddling and micromanagement by the White House ”” echoing criticism made by his predecessors, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta.
Looking back on his tenure, Hagel said in the Dec. 10 interview that he remains puzzled as to why some administration officials sought to “destroy” him personally in his final days in office, castigating him in anonymous comments to newspapers even after he had handed in his resignation…
Hagel’s biggest hurdle, though, was that he was never fully embraced by Obama’s tight inner circle.
By the time Hagel was confirmed he should have been aware that (a) Obama was never going to order that sort of response in Syria, no matter what he said for public consumption (b) one of Obama’s goals is to destroy the credibility of the United States so that other nations do not trust it in the future (c) the hallmark of this administration has long been “debilitating meddling and micromanagement” of the military, as his predecessors have said (d) personal destruction has long been an Obama tactic; and (e) no one is “fully embraced by Obama’s tight inner circle” except Obama’s tight inner circle—that’s what makes it tight.
People don’t like to change their minds, and they particularly don’t like to have to reorder a belief system they’ve held for years or a lifetime. With increasing attacks of the Paris and San Bernardino type, liberals are faced with a dilemma: hold onto their beliefs about terrorism and how to fight it, or descend into what they see as a pit of despair, chaos, and retaliatory violence or tyranny. Which would you choose? To hold onto your beliefs, of course, if you could.
For people looking at the world and events like the Paris and San Bernardino attacks, these are some of the choices
(1) There is either something about Islam that is leading to this, or it has nothing to do with Islam.
(2) Terrorists are either forces of evil and chaos, or they are people with a grievance.
(3) We can solve this either by being nicer to them and more self-abasing, and then they’ll stop hating us, or we can solve it by warring with them in a host of ways that are violent, nasty, brutal, distasteful, and/or tragic, and that don’t always work.
(4) We can be tolerant and loving or start hating those who hate us and want to murder us.
Leftist thought offers a way out. Answering “nothing to do with Islam” to number 1 allows a person to feel tolerant and loving—which would lead to a solution for number 4 as well. Tolerance and the avoidance of even the appearance or hint of anything remotely resembling bigotry is one of the biggest goals of young people today, who have been taught that those things are the worst of sins and make a person into a moral pariah. Answering “people with grievances” for number 2 allows a person to be much less afraid, and to establish the world as a rational orderly place, filled with dangerous people who sometimes seem evil but really aren’t. Answering “nicer and more self-abasing” to number 3 allows us to sit tight and enjoy our lives as is, and not have to make any hard sacrifices.
It’s really a no-brainer. I’m not sure what it would take at this point to change minds, either. Even a much greater and more dangerous conflagration might not do it for that many people.
Our country has now come to a political place that, right after 9/11, I did not dream would be our destination in such a short time. And yet—both initially in the reactions of the left to 9/11 and Iraq, and then more definitively with the election of Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, and now the widely-supported 2016 candidacy of Hillary Clinton—I have become more and more convinced over those fourteen years that the majority of people cling to their previous beliefs in order to maintain a rosier picture.
I always knew that, in general. In fact, I began this blog in late 2004 with the premise that changing one’s mind on a large political subject is both difficult and rare. And yet I’ve come to believe it’s even more difficult and more rare than I thought it was back then.
I keep encountering the statement from Trump supporters that Trump appeals to a lot Democrats, more than the other Republican candidates do, and enough to make a difference in the general.
Except for the fact that, if you look at all the polls, Trump is not appealing to Democrats, and is doing worse than the other Republican candidates against Clinton. He also has the highest unfavorables. And those statistics have been pretty consistent for Trump right along.
So, asserting he will do well against Clinton appears to be an article of faith, unsupported by anything but personal conviction (and perhaps anecdotal evidence about some Democrat a person might know who likes him, which is basically irrelevant). It’s a conviction I definitely don’t share.
About a month ago I spent a lot of time trying to find a poll measuring Trump’s support among Democrats and Independents vs. the support from that same group towards the other Republican candidates. I found only one poll back then, and I noticed that in it Trump did worse than most of the other Republican candidates with Democrats and Independents. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to locate it again to check it out and write about it in more detail, and I haven’t found another since then that even discusses the issue. Looking for one is somewhat labor-intensive, because it requires delving deep into the actual questions asked and the breakdown of the answers; for example, this poll might contain the information but I can only find a lengthy report rather than the full results, and the shorter but fairly comprehensive report doesn’t even discuss it.
So, why do people think Trump would do well with Democrats and against Hillary, short of any actual data that supports it, and in the face of some data (particularly the face-to-face with Hillary polls, and Trump’s high unfavorables) that argues against it? Well, there’s Trump’s own claims. But short of that it seems to me it’s just an example of wishful thinking on the part of Trump supporters at this point.
Who does best against Hillary? It’s Rubio all the way, and has been for a long time. I imagine that Trump supporters in particular would be especially annoyed with this news. Many conservatives—and particularly the group that has come to support Trump—have come to detest Rubio, and consider him the establishment substitute for the failing Bush.
I don’t agree. I have made no secret of the fact that Rubio is not one of my favorite candidates in terms of policy. I initially liked Walker, then I switched to Cruz and Fiorina, and now I’m pretty much with Cruz. But I have not ruled out Rubio (or Christie, for that matter). Rubio is far far more conservative than Hillary—in fact, he’s far more conservative than Trump as well, but I know Trump supporters don’t see it that way and/or couldn’t care less. And Rubio has the added plus (a potentially big one) of looking like he could beat her.
I don’t usually talk about “electability” in elections. But in this case I’m going to talk about it, because I see it as more of an issue than ever in this 2016 campaign. If a candidate can’t beat Hillary, I’m not interested (that’s not the reason I don’t like Trump, as my readers probably already know). And yes, although Rubio’s not my front runner I’m somewhat more interested in him than I otherwise would be, because I think he can beat Hillary. And no, I don’t think he’ll let in the floodgates on immigration, although he’s not as tough on it as I would prefer even now, and I understand that his Senate history on this gives me pause.
I realize these mildly pro-Rubio statements will probably unleash a flood of condemnation in the comments section. But I cannot lie about it; that’s what I’m seeing right now in the race for 2016. It could change in the future, of course; there’s lots and lots of time. But at the moment, that’s what polls are telling me and have been telling me consistently for quite a while, and that’s what my gut is telling me. Both are important.
And no, I don’t think all the pollsters are in a conspiracy to put the supposed establishment candidate Rubio in the driver’s seat. In fact, I’ve noticed in the past that US polls (particularly poll averages) have been much better at predicting most elections—especially national ones—than a lot of people seen to think they are. Pollsters actually have an investment in being correct, because it enhances their reputations if they have been good at predicting election results.
Officer Porter is, of course, subject to re-trial on all four charges: involuntary manslaughter, second degree assault, reckless endangerment, and misconduct in office. (Update: It’s being reported that the parties will meet before an administrative judge tomorrow to set a date for the retrial of Officer Porter.)
The mistrial must be seen as a stinging rebuke to State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who rushed to charge Porter and six other officers before the police investigation into the matter had even completed. Many legal experts, including myself, have been of the opinion that not only were the prospects for a conviction slight, but that the charges should never have been brought in the first place…
The trial of Officer Porter itself was notable for a lack of State’s evidence, other than speculation by their medical examiner, and a wealth of defense testimony that not only generated enormous reasonable doubt but also suggested that if anything Porter had gone above and beyond his duty in dealing with Gray.
These are largely politically-motivated show trials, designed to placate an angry crowd whipped up by the press and the local leaders. The other police officers’ trials are slated to go ahead as planned.
[NOTE: Legal Insurrection has had excellent coverage of the trial, written by attorney Andrew Branca.]
Why indeed? After all, 9/11 was far, far worse. There were many more victims. The attacks themselves during 9/11 were far more high-tech and fiendishly clever, as well.
And perhaps that’s one clue. 9/11 was so spectacular, so creative in a near-diabolical way, that it seemed almost otherworldly or like science fiction.
Paris and San Bernardino were relatively pedestrian, as evil inspiration goes. They involved the sort of places we go to every day: random cafes and restaurants, a stadium, a concert hall, a business meeting and holiday party. Places to relax and enjoy, the sort of places nearly all urban people go to on a regular basis, or at least on occasion. It took very little imagination to put ourselves in the place of the unlucky (and mostly young) people who lost their lives there.
John Kerry was his usual flatfooted, offensive self when he seemed to offer a distinction between two Paris attacks: the Charlie Hebdo murders and the recent Friday the 13th massacres:
There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo, and I think everybody would feel that. There was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of — not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, ‘OK, they’re really angry because of this and that,'” Kerry said during remarks at the U.S. Embassy in Paris.
“This Friday was absolutely indiscriminate. It wasn’t to aggrieve one particular sense of wrong. It was to terrorize people. It was to attack everything that we do stand for. That’s not an exaggeration,” Kerry added.
“Legitimacy” sounds like an apology—a rationale, if you will—for attacks that are unforgivable. But, without excusing Kerry in the least, I have to say that he has put his finger, albeit clumsily, on an important distinction that explains why people seem more deeply upset by the recent attacks. It’s not just the ordinariness of the venues— it’s their randomness.
The Charlie Hebdo murders were many things, but “random” was not one of them. The victims were targeted for their behavior, and although it was behavior that Western societies defend as free speech, it still was behavior that was very different than attendance at any one of thousands of restaurants in Paris or going to a workplace. It was something most people could avoid without putting much of a crimp in their lifestyles. Not so with the Friday the 13th victims, or those in San Bernardino.
There are other reasons those later attacks struck more deeply at the heart and soul of Europe and America and the West. Prior to 9/11, if you were to quiz 100 people on the street, perhaps only one or two would have heard of Al Qaeda or would know anything about it. But by the time of the Friday the 13th attacks and of San Bernardino, the vast majority of people in the West had come to know much more about ISIS and exactly how bloodthirsty and savage its members could be. ISIS coming to Europe and America was something greatly feared because of this knowledge.
In addition, not long before these attacks occurred, the West had been rocked by a massive influx of so-called “refugees” from Syria—home of ISIS—and the concomitant fears about who they were and why they were on the move from the relative safety of their refugee camps in Turkey and other Muslim countries. Europeans and Americans feel helpless in the face of their leaders’ failure to protect them, or to even acknowledge there might be something wrong with accepting all these refugees at this point.
In short, they—and we—feel vulnerable, unacknowledged, not listened to, betrayed, and literally disarmed in the face of a hidden enemy that has been revealed to have been as ruthless and bloodthirsty as the villains in a terrible nightmare. Only this nightmare is real.
The Fed has announced a raise in the interest rate for the first time since 2006.
The new target will go from 0 percent to 0.25 percent to 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent. Most members expect the new rate to coalesce around .375 percent before the next hike, according to a chart showing individual member expectations.
The decision, given the official stamp of approval from the Federal Open Market Committee, marks the first increase since the panel pushed the key rate to 5.25 percent on June 29, 2006…
…[T]he FOMC took the rate to zero exactly seven years ago, on Dec. 16, 2008.
And well do I remember it. That 5.25 percent seems like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? Now an average of .375 percent is big news.
“The premise behind today’s rate hike to me feels a little stagflationary. They didn’t raise rates today because real growth got a lot strong. In fact, if anything it got weaker, but they raised them anyway,” said Jim Paulsen, chief market strategist at Wells Capital Management, following the decision. “If we go through 2016 where real growth doesn’t pick up but wage and price pressures do because we’re in full employment, that’s stagflationary.”
Despite the history-making move, the road back to normalcy will be a long one. FOMC officials made it excessively clear in post-meeting documents that the pace of increases will be gradual and dependent on the quality of economic data.
I watched most (not all) of the debate last night. Regular readers may recall that I detest political debates in general, but this one bothered me especially much. Mulling over why that might be, I’ve come to the conclusion that—at least to me—just about everyone looked small, petty, and nitpicky when they weren’t being sanctimonious and cliched.
Actually, I didn’t think Ben Carson looked that way. But I don’t see him as having the right experience, and I don’t think he could win the nomination at this point anyway, so I can’t get excited about him. I was particularly studying the people I consider the front runners: Trump, Cruz, and Rubio. Trump was Trump (which to me is not a good thing, for reasons I’ve already explained ad nauseam), and he was particularly awful when doing his childish schoolyard taunt bit (and no, I don’t mind fighting words, but he sounds like a boastful, teasy fourth-grader). Cruz: there is always something off about him for me, and that makes me doubt he could win the general, because of that seemingly important “likability” factor. With Rubio there are just too many things for him to explain away that the base will never forgive him for.
At the end of the debate I had the gloomy sensation that Hillary is going to win no matter what. Now, that feeling could be a function of a lot of things other than prescient judgment. One is that this time of year it gets dark almost as soon as I get out of bed to start my day. Yeah, that’s hyperbole, but it does get dark way way too early for my tastes. So maybe it’s that.
In addition, yesterday afternoon I had spoken to a liberal but relatively apolitical friend of mine, and she mentioned casually that she would be busy that night, having volunteered to do phoning for the Hillary Clinton campaign. This shocked me, although it shouldn’t have. The reason it did, though, was that this particular friend has (unlike some) always been respectful of my point of view, sometimes asks me questions about it, listens with interest and without condemnation, and sometimes even agrees with me. I know she’s been disturbed by many things that have happened under Obama, particularly in the field of foreign policy. And yet here she is, phone-banking for Hillary.
I was so taken aback that I couldn’t come up with a thing to say. But it reminded me of something I didn’t think I needed reminding about: that a mind is a difficult thing to change, and that a person has to be motivated and engaged in order to do the work to change his/her mind, and that few people—even seemingly intelligent and reasonable people—are going to do it, no matter how dire things are and no matter how bad the candidate their party supports.
We were lucky in America for a great many years. Candidates didn’t think snark would go over well with the American people, and they were expected to be well-prepared. Voters didn’t get off on petulance and anger (although a little judicious dose of it was all right), nor did they expect candidates to be perfectly aligned with their point of view on all issues. I’ve never liked politicians all that much, with just a couple of exceptions, but now I like them even less. And the irony is that we need a competent, honest, bold and wise person as president even more than in the past, because the Obama administration and the left have trashed so much that used to be taken for granted by both parties that I sometimes despair that even the finest president could ever undo the damage, because it is global, societal, cultural, personal. And of course I’m aware that a president can’t just wave a hand and change things—it takes political office-holders, too, as well as bureaucrats, and in particular a people willing to support that change. Just as Obama could not possibly have done what he’s done alone, neither can it be undone alone.
Yeah, I know. All of this is not what I wanted to write, either. Maybe this down feeling is just a passing phase.
And speaking of passing phases, the sun has already started to set later in the day. That’s a turning point—literally.
