This sort of thing is the reason conservatives detest Jeb Bush

The New Neo Posted on by

Actually, it’s just one of the many reasons. But it’s a pretty big one, IMHO:

Jeb Bush says that the Senate should confirm the nomination of Loretta Lynch, President Barack Obama’s choice for attorney general. A number of Senate Republicans oppose her nomination.

“I think presidents have the right to pick their team,” Bush said, according to reports of his stop at the “Politics and Pie” forum in Concord, New Hampshire, on Thursday night.

The former Florida governor made sure to get in a few digs at current Attorney General Eric Holder, saying that Republicans should consider that the longer it takes to confirm Lynch, the longer Holder stays.

Now, what’s wrong with Bush’s statement? Nothing much—that is, if it were the olden (pre-Bork) days. The Bork nomination in 1987 is often considered the beginning of the current hyper-partisan attitude towards nominations, be they Supreme Court or otherwise:

Within 45 minutes of Bork’s nomination to the Court, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) took to the Senate floor with a strong condemnation of Bork in a nationally televised speech, declaring,

“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens.”

A brief was prepared for Joe Biden, head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the Biden Report. Bork later said in his best-selling book The Tempting of America* that the report “so thoroughly misrepresented a plain record that it easily qualifies as world class in the category of scurrility”. TV ads narrated by Gregory Peck attacked Bork as an extremist, and Kennedy’s speech successfully fueled widespread public skepticism of Bork’s nomination. The rapid response of Kennedy’s “Robert Bork’s America” speech stunned the Reagan White House; though conservatives considered Kennedy’s accusations slanderous, the attacks went unanswered for two and a half months.

Note the players, including Joe Biden. Note, also, how flatfooted the Reagan administration was. They had an excuse, though; the no-holds-barred virulence of the attack was relatively new—not to American politics, which had had periods (even in its earliest days) in which that sort of thing was relatively commonplace, at least for political opponents. But it was new in the mid-Twentieth century, which had been marked by a more civil tone.

Jeb Bush appears to be living in that world—which would be nice, if the left, liberals, and the Democratic Party were still living in it, too. They are not—and the left never was.

It may just be that the biggest difference between the moderate Republicans who conservatives do not support and those they do is this: whether or not a candidate understands that the left is playing hardball. Bush isn’t bringing a knife to a gunfight; it’s worse than that. He’s bringing a peashooter to a gunfight.

[* NOTE: Bork’s book sounds like a good read.]

In Georgia, dance is a combat sport

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a great rehearsal video of some Georgian (the Russian Georgia, not the US one) dancers [hat tip: commenter “g6loq”]. Usually they wear costumes that make it more difficult to see their bodies. It creates a nice illusion but hides their feats (not their feet) to a certain extent. You can see the full effort that creates the pyrotechnics here

And ordinarily when they’re doing this stuff, at least some of them are holding—and throwing—knives. Real ones, as far as I can tell.

One of ballet choreographer George Balanchine’s (also a Georgian, by the way) famous sayings was “ballet is woman.” He was expressing his own thoughts as a heterosexual man, as well as a genius choreographer. I beg to differ; there’s a big big place for men in ballet, and not just as porters. But yes, there is something about ballet that particularly highlights the grace and line of the woman. Ballet is not egalitarian, either; the differences in the male and female bodies and what they do best in terms of movement and expression is profound, and ballet exploits them rather than hiding them.

If ballet is woman, though, Georgian dance is even more man. The video makes that crystal clear, I think. Dancing is not an effeminate pursuit; in most cultures, au contraire. It’s one of the ways men show their bravery, daring, strength, virility, power, you name it. And these Georgian guys? They’ve got “it” to the nth degree, and they flaunt it.

Tom Cotton on nuclear war and Iran; Goldberg on Iraq

The New Neo Posted on by

This is a good interview with Tom Cotton on the Iran “deal.” In it, he suggests better alternatives, and speculates on the possible consequences of the deal as it’s currently being described by the administration. I suggest you read the whole thing.

The intervewer is Jeffrey Goldberg. I submit the following question of Goldberg’s as a demonstration of one (or several) of the many things wrong with the press today:

But we also talked about America’s role in the world and President Obama’s understanding of America’s role in the world, and we autopsied the Iraq War as well. Cotton did not take away from the Iraq War a lesson I learned, and that many Republicans also learned, which is that America is not expert at fighting long wars on complicated Middle East battlefields.

It’s not that Goldberg’s statement is incorrect on the face of it—of course we are “not expert at fighting long wars on complicated Middle East battlefields.” But what he ignores is that no one is, and that it’s not even possible to be. We’re merely the most expert people in the entire Western world—and maybe in the entire world—at “fighting long wars on complicated Middle East battlefields.”

What, pray tell, is Goldberg’s own expert opinion on what would constitute “expert” at something so admittedly complex? Would it be going seamlessly from strength to strength with no errors and almost no casualties? In other words, would it have to be a “cakewalk” to qualify (and please read my previous post on the complexity of war decision-making, as well as “cakewalks“)? How about World War II, whose very early years featured a series disasters for the Allies? Good thing Goldberg wasn’t around back then.

Goldberg also ignores the fact that by the time Barack Obama became president, the war in Iraq was under pretty good control, as even Obama admitted at the time. A small force left in that country would have most likely preserved those very hard-fought gains, but Obama (not the US military, whose opinion he ignored) nevertheless made the decision to leave Iraq entirely and throw the country to the wolves.

The article is well worth reading anyway.

How Lois Lerner evaded charges

The New Neo Posted on by

It was really rather simple:

The Obama Administration’s latest gift to the former IRS tax-exempt chief came recently when U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ron Machen informed the House of Representatives that he would not file charges on its formal contempt citation against Ms. Lerner. This absolution, which shields Ms. Lerner from a grand jury probe, came on Mr. Machen’s final day on the job…

The House on May 7, 2014 held her in contempt of Congress and sent the citation to Mr. Machen.

The law clearly explains that the U.S. Attorney’s only “duty” “shall be” to “bring the matter before the grand jury for its action.” Mr. Machen instead sat on the contempt citation for 11 months, and on March 31 sent Speaker John Boehner a letter explaining he’d unilaterally decided not to investigate Ms. Lerner…

…the job of making these legal calls belonged to a grand jury””not Mr. Machen.

Good soldiers in the Obama administration don’t get indicted, thanks to other good soldiers.

And no doubt they get rewarded, too. As a commenter to the article wrote:

How convenient! Had Machen not resigned his position, as a presidential appointee he could have been impeached by the same House of Representatives. that was no doubt part of the calculus.

I can’t wait to see what his payoff is going to be.

Timing is everything.

That’s true not only for Machen, but for Obama. Run down the clock, and hope the American people forget. To care, they’d not only have to remember Lois Lerner and what she did, they’d have to learn what Machen did and what it signifies. And then for that to matter at all, they’d have to connect it to not just Holder but to Obama and his possible Democrat successor, and turn against them.

Otherwise, as a very well-known public official once said, what difference does it make?

What shlemiels these mortals be

The New Neo Posted on by

Yiddish is well-known for having a large number of words to describe various complex shadings of fool. The European Jewish culture that gave us Yiddish displayed an exquisite (and humorous) sensitivity to and perception about the failures and foibles of humankind, including our propensity to delude ourselves.

So here are some forty Yiddish words for fool—and I don’t think that’s all that exist, either. One wouldn’t think there were so many distinct types, but there are. For example, who hasn’t known examples of these two (although I’d never heard either Yiddish word before)?:

Nar: He left his law practice to become a clown.
Nayfish: A doormat. When he’s robbed, he apologizes for being short on cash.

As for Obama, try this one on for size:

Ongeblussen: A self-involved blowhard. If his last name is Moses, he thinks the Bible gave him a mention.

There’s also an entire strain of traditional Jewish humor that involves tales of the Jews of Chelm, who are portrayed as foolish:

The jokes were almost always centred on silly solutions to problems. Some of these solutions display “foolish wisdom” (reaching the correct answer by the wrong train of reasoning), while others are simply wrong.

[NOTE: The title of this post is a paraphrase of a line of Puck’s from one of my favorite plays, Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The original goes like this:

…Helena is here at hand;
And the youth, mistook by me,
Pleading for a lover’s fee.
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!]

On poets, celebrities, and politics

The New Neo Posted on by

During a 1976 interview, author and poet James Dickey said this about poets and celebrities pronouncing on politics:

INTERVIEWER

Some of your detractors have mentioned the fact that they felt that you should use your influence, your place in the world, for the “betterment of man.”

DICKEY

If I knew what it was, I might do that. But I don’t know. There’s this tendency in American life to assume that because someone is good or maybe just notorious or publicized in one realm that he’s a universal authority on everything. So, Frank Sinatra or John Wayne can tell you how to vote. What competence do they have in politics? Or that a poet can tell you about ecology or something of that sort. A poet is only a professional sensibility. His opinion in politics is no better than anyone else’s ninety-nine percent of the time. But they’re always being interviewed and always being asked their political opinion: what should we do with the military, what should we do with the economy, with government spending, et cetera. Poets don’t know anything about that. If they did, they wouldn’t be poets. This is not to say that they are precluded from knowing anything about it at all; it is to say, however, that just because they are poets their opinions should not be paid any more attention to than anybody else’s. It does not give them any privilege or any insight or any clairvoyance as to the political and economic and military future of America.

INTERVIEWER

You don’t feel, then, that since a poet has a highly developed sensitivity about our universe and about our place in the world and our society, he should make public pronouncements about the direction our society is taking?

DICKEY

I think in that way lies madness. No; all he’s got is his own sensibility and his own opinions as a private citizen. But he has no privilege. Insight, yes. Maybe a poet could come along who could solve all our problems, but I haven’t seen him yet. The history of poets pronouncing on public issues is notoriously dismal.

It was the poet Shelley who famously called poets the “unacknowledged legislators of the world.” These days any comparison to “legislators” might be considered an insult, but Shelley certainly didn’t mean it that way:

For Shelley, “poets … are not only the authors of language and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting; they are the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society…” Social and linguistic order are not the sole products of the rational faculty, as language is “arbitrarily produced by the imagination” and reveals “the before unapprehended relations of things and perpetuates their apprehension” of a higher beauty and truth. Shelley’s conclusive remark that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world” suggests his awareness of “the profound ambiguity inherent in linguistic means, which he considers at once as an instrument of intellectual freedom and a vehicle for political and social subjugation”

Shelley not only seemed to think poets have enormous influence in the world (poets were far more famous, and poetry generally more highly regarded, in his day than it is now). He also was himself a very politically active guy. And it should come as no surprise which political side he was on:

[Shelley’s father insisted] that [Shelley] renounce…his beliefs, which included atheism, vegetarianism, free love, and political radicalism; Shelley refused. The resulting estrangement from his father was completed when Shelley eloped with Harriet Westbrook, the 16-year-old daughter of a coffee-house keeper. Shelley now sought a vocation: he went to Ireland for a few months to campaign for political reform; his poem “Queen Mab” appeared in 1813. The following year he met his hero William Godwin, the author of Political Justice, and fell in love with his daughter Mary, a radical and an idealist like himself. The daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneering feminist who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary later wrote Frankenstein and The Last Man, two novels that remain popular and influential today. Taking along Mary’s step-sister Jane Clairmont (daughter of the second Mrs. Godwin), Mary and Percy eloped to Switzerland in July 1814.

Like quite a few leftist radicals, Shelley didn’t have to soil his hands like the common man. He had an inheritance:

An inheritance from his grandfather of £1000 per annum in 1815 alleviated Shelley’s financial difficulties, which were often caused by his generosity to others.

Shelley resembled certain other leftist radicals in the complexity of his domestic life, in which he threw off the yoke of tradition and lived pretty much the way he wished. His behavior may seem familiar today, but imagine how shocking it was in the early part of the nineteenth century:

…[Shelley’s] domestic situation became very complex: Harriet, who had already given him a daughter, Ianthe, bore a son, Charles, on Nov. 30, 1814, after Shelley had been living with Mary for several months. A few months later (Feb. 22, 1815) Mary bore a daughter, who lived only a few days, and in January 1816 their son William was born. In 1816, Percy, Mary, and Jane Clairmont (who had reinvented herself as Claire and become Lord Byron’s mistress) returned to Geneva, where they met Byron and his friend (and doctor) John Polidori…After they returned to England, Mary’s half-sister Fanny Imlay committed suicide in October, and less than a month later, Harriet (apparently pregnant by another man) drowned herself. Shelley married Mary in December but lost custody of his children by Harriet to her family.

During his life, Shelley was by no means as popular as his buddy Byron, who was a rock star. But despite this, a number of scholars believe that Shelley’s political views were very, very influential indeed:

Paul Foot, in his Red Shelley, has documented the pivotal role Shelley’s works ”“ especially Queen Mab ”” have played in the genesis of British radicalism. Although Shelley’s works were banned from respectable Victorian households, his political writings were pirated by men such as Richard Carlile who regularly went to jail for printing “seditious and blasphemous libel” (i.e. material proscribed by the government), and these cheap pirate editions reached hundreds of activists and workers throughout the nineteenth century.

In other countries such as India, Shelley’s works both in the original and in translation have influenced poets such as Rabindranath Tagore and Jibanananda Das. A pirated copy of Prometheus Unbound dated 1835 is said to have been seized in that year by customs at Bombay.

So it’s possible that Shelley wasn’t just a megalomaniac, and that he did influence the course of political history. These days, poets seem to influence comparatively little—except for who will get published in poetry journals read moslty by their fellow poets in academia and aspirants to the club. Now it’s rock stars and movie stars who serve the function of shaping politics through the widespread influence of their point of view, which is almost always to the left.

I’m with Dickey on this.

On identity politics and the Hillary emails: I think Cokie’s overestimating

The New Neo Posted on by

Cokie Roberts thinks few people care about the Clinton email story, unless they already weren’t going to vote for her:

“The people who are not going to vote on Hillary Clinton based on e-mails are already not going to vote for her based on her email, which is about three people,” Roberts said.

She and the rest of the panel added the story could damage Clinton’s overall reputation, as it already seems to have dented her trustworthy numbers. “It plays into voters versus attitudes,” Roberts said. “It plays into that whole storyline of can you trust her? And can you trust the Clintons?”

But the panel returned to the theory that the story was unlikely to meaningfully shape the election. “If you like Hillary Clinton and are you a Democrat and you’re going to support the Democratic nominee, what she did or didn’t do with her server is probably irrelevant,” Katty Kay said.

That’s the way it is these days. Clinton’s support (and Obama’s support before her) is untethered from the usual things like performance, ethics, corruption, secrecy, mendacity. That’s one of the beautiful things about identity politics and identity candidates. If a candidate’s support rests not on what he/she accomplishes in office or qualities of character, but instead depends on inherent and fixed qualities such as race or gender, then things like this don’t matter and won’t drive away many voters.

Membership in the Democratic Party, of course, is required, as well as willingness to support its basic program or veer even further left. But that’s a given these days with all the Democrats; the only question is which Democrat will be nominated.

Hillary Clinton is a woman, an identity candidate. She also happens to be the only candidate the Democrats have got. So I offer a caveat: if the Democrats had another viable candidate, I think the emails would matter (as well as Hillary’ age and general unlikeability) and she would not be a shoo-in for the nomination. In 2008, one of the many things that happened was that Obama’s identity politics—as well as his youth, newness, and general “likeability” (although I’ve never really perceived that latter trait, it apparently exists)—trumped Hillary’s.

It matters more whether moderates will be less likely to vote for Hillary in 2016 because of the emails. Since “moderates” is often a code-word for “low-information voters,” I’m not at all sure they’ll be aware of the story, and certainly may not remember it by the time the election rolls around. But I continue to think that there are several Republican candidates—even ones who identify as conservatives—who could appeal mightily to this group. Two that come to mind are Scott Walker and Marco Rubio. Rubio, being Hispanic, even has his own version of identity politics, although of course to Democrats that makes him a fake (white?) Hispanic.

Russia and Iran, happy again

The New Neo Posted on by

Time to kiss and make up:

Russia paved the way on Monday for missile system deliveries to Iran and started an oil-for-goods swap, signaling that Moscow may have a head-start in the race to benefit from an eventual lifting of sanctions on Tehran.

The moves come after world powers, including Russia, reached an interim deal with Iran this month on curbing its nuclear program.

The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin signed a decree ending a self-imposed ban on delivering the S-300 anti-missile rocket system to Iran, removing a major irritant between the two after Moscow canceled a corresponding contract in 2010 under pressure from the West.

A senior government official said separately that Russia has started supplying grain, equipment and construction materials to Iran in exchange for crude oil under a barter deal.

Well, what did anyone think would happen? And yet the move has drawn “rebukes” from Israel and the US:

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf later told reporters that the U.S. has “certainly made our concerns with the sale of the S-300 system to Iran known for some time.”

“We don’t believe it’s constructive at this time for Russia to move forward with this,” she said Monday. “We think given Iran’s destabilizing actions in the region in places like Yemen or Syria or Lebanon that this isn’t the time to be selling these kinds of systems to them.”

I am sure—positively certain—that Putin is shaking and quaking in his boots at these stern words from Obama via Marie Harf.

Israel has a different way of putting it:

“This is a direct result of the legitimacy that Iran obtained from the emerging nuclear deal,” [Israel’s Cabinet minister] Steinitz said, according to The Associated Press. “Instead of demanding Iran stop its terror activities that it spreads in the Middle East and the entire world, it is being allowed to arm itself with advanced weapons that will only increase its aggression.”

These missiles are not long-range enough to be used to mount an attack. What they are very useful for, however, is thwarting an attack (by Israel, the US, or anyone else so inclined) on Iran’s nuclear installations.

The Iran deal—what could possibly go wrong?

Rubio’s…

The New Neo Posted on by

…hat is in the ring:

Rubio, however, is the original Tea Party candidate. His candidacy united the grassroots against the leadership and he won. The Washington crowd convinced themselves he could not win, but the grassroots proved they could pick a winner. Rubio was the first…

Monday in Miami, Marco Rubio will declare his candidacy for the presidency and of the three conservative Senators to run, he is most likely the Goldilocks of the bunch. He is not too tied to the grassroots to antagonize the establishment. He is not too tied to the civil libertarians to antagonize the conservatives. And he has not gone out of his way to reject the base of grassroots supporters who got him elected in order to curry favor with the leadership.

A lot of conservatives are still hopping mad at Rubio for his immigration stance a while back:

Rubio was part of the “Gang of Eight,” a bipartisan group of senators who authored a comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2013.

That bill included a legal pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, something hardline conservatives stringently oppose. Rubio’s support of the bill lost him a lot of favor in the tea party.

“People are furious about this,” activist David Caulkett told WPTV.

The measure passed the Senate but ultimately stalled in the House, and Rubio quickly began backtracking.

Last year, he told a group of immigration protesters, “You don’t have a right to illegally immigrate to the United States.”

Now, with the GOP nomination for president on the line, Rubio’s immigration rhetoric focuses more and more on border security.

Rubio told CPAC this year, “What I’ve learned, is that you can’t even have a conversation about that until people believe and know – not just believe, but it is proven to them – that future illegal immigration will be controlled.”

I don’t know if his history on this issue will hurt Rubio enough to make it impossible for him to be nominated. There are also quite a few other attractive candidates in the Republican field this year. But Rubio has a lot going for him: young, telegenic, intelligent, Hispanic, energetic, not afraid to criticize Obama, and with an inspiring and universally appealing biography.

The contrast with Hillary would be marked. And if he were to be nominated, it would be interesting if he were to choose Carly Fiorina as a running mate.

I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself.

Senate: about to make a deal on the Iran deal?

The New Neo Posted on by

Word is that a deal is in the making:

Senators on the Foreign Relations Committee said they had a deal Tuesday that could lead to a bipartisan vote in favor of giving Congress a vote to approve or disapprove a nuclear deal with Iran.

They would need a veto-proof majority, over 2/3, in order to make it stick despite a likely veto. That’s not easy to do. Here are the supposed terms, subject to further amendment:

Under the new timeline, Congress would have 30 days to review an agreement with Iran and pass a resolution of disapproval. The president would have 12 days to act on that resolution. Congress would then have an additional 10 days to respond to an expected veto, the aide explained…

The managers’ package will also include a requirement that the administration report regularly on Iran’s support of terrorist organizations and its pursuit of ballistic missile technology and capability, the aide said.

Those reporting requirements will replace a provision that would have required the administration to certify that Iran had renounced support for terrorism. The administration highlighted it as a major concern it had with the bill.

As I read this, I wonder how Congress would enforce such an agreement if Obama chose to ignore and/or defy it. After all (just to take one example), he ignored the 30-day notice to Congress requirement when he announced the release of the five Gitmo Taliban in the Bergdahl trade.

To take a hypothetical, what would Congress do if the administration failed to “report regularly on Iran’s support of terrorist organizations and its pursuit of ballistic missile technology”? Would it stomp its little feet? And what on earth would these “regular reports” accomplish, anyway? Chronicling the progress of Iran towards the bomb that a deal has made inevitable? What’s the remedy? Would Congress be ready to declare war on Iran?

It all seems to assume a degree of goodwill and cooperative spirit (or at the very least, of law-abiding propensity) on the part of the chief executive that simply does not exist in the case of Obama. And if such an act of Congress were to be defied, I wonder whether enough Democrats in the Senate would finally cross over the line and be willing to cooperate in an impeachment/conviction scenario—after all, it would be their own power that would have been usurped by the executive.

Somehow I doubt it. As I’ve written before, I have come to believe there is virtually nothing Obama could do (or fail to do) that would cause enough Democrats to turn on him that decisively.

However, this vote will be of interest if it can gain the 2/3 necessary to override a veto. That happens to be the same number needed for conviction in the Senate after an impeachment by majority vote in the House. Of course, voting “yea” on a bill like this is weak sauce indeed compared to removing a president from office. But it still would be a good sign if two-thirds of the Senate could be found who would be willing to support even a tiny act of defiance like this one.