Yemen…

The New Neo Posted on by

…was touted as a success story by President Obama a mere four months ago.

Now, not so much:

The Yemeni foreign minister is asking several Gulf Arab neighbors for military intervention to stop territorial advances by Houthi fighters in his embattled country, after the U.N. special envoy for Yemen warned the U.N. Security Council that events appear to be leading the country “to the edge of civil war.”

The Houthi rebels opposed to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi are threatening the country’s security, Yemeni foreign minister Riyadh Yaseen suggested Monday.

“They’re expanding in territory, occupying airports and cities, attacking Aden with planes, detaining whom they please, threatening and gathering their forces,” Yaseen told Al Jazeera TV.

As a consequence, the US and the Brits have pulled out of the country:

Over the weekend, the United States evacuated the last of its special operations forces — including Navy SEALs and Army Delta Force troops — amid the deteriorating security situation in the country, the U.S. State Department said.

On Monday, a security source in the region familiar with the situation in Yemen told CNN’s Nic Robertson that British special forces had also left Yemen in the last few days…

Yemen has been a key U.S. ally in the fight against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, allowing U.S. drones and special operations forces to stalk terrorists in the country. Now, that arrangement is in tatters, along with any semblance of peace in the Middle Eastern nation.

Or in the Middle East as a whole, I might add.

Meanwhile, Obama goes blithely on, pursuing the great white Iranian whale of his megalomaniacal fantasies. Of course, that’s not a good metaphor; as a Moby Dick fan, I realize that Ahab wanted to destroy the whale, not to give in to accommodate, placate, and empower it.

[ADDENDUM: Michael Totten weighs in:

Far more likely than a comprehensive Houthi takeover is a new and more dangerous phase of Yemen’s endless self-cannibalization””more dangerous because this otherwise parochial and irrelevant conflict has been internationalized, with ISIS, the Saudis, and Iran squaring off against each other in yet another regional proxy war.

The Houthi movement is named after Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, an insurrection leader killed by the former government in 2004. They are Shias, but unlike the “Twelver” Shia Muslims of Iran””who revere eleven imams and await the birth of the occluded twelfth””most of Yemen’s Shias are “Fivers.” Iran doesn’t mind. From its point of view, better the odd “Fiver” Shias than Sunnis, but all that really matters is that the Houthis are willing to say yes to Tehran, its weapon shipments, and its top-notch military advisors and trainers…

The US has few friends and even less leverage, especially now that it’s all falling apart, so Washington is washing its hands and bringing everyone home. All we can really hope for there is less instability, not so much because Yemen’s local squabbling affects us””until now they hardly registered outside the country””but because dangerous adversaries that threaten the West are hoping to expand their base of operations and their ability to export malfeasance everywhere else.

We’re in the very best of hands.]

The road ahead

The New Neo Posted on by

I think that this comment from “Eric,” our resident strategist, is worth highlighting:

…[I]t’s up to the Republicans to counter the Democrats. It’s up to the Right to counter the Left.

Yes, the Democrats have been taken over by the Left, but it’s a matter of scope. The Left operates in larger scope than the Dems’ elected-office scope, ie, the social-activist scope, which is beyond the scope of the GOP.

In order for the GOP to effectively counter the Democratic wing of the larger Left, the Right must effectively counter the Left across the broader spectrum of the social cultural/political arena, and by the same token, develop the leverage to hold the GOP accountable, if not take over the GOP like the Left has taken over the Dems.

I think that says it quite succinctly.

In addition to all the anger at the GOP, there’s been quite a bit of reactive “I’m ready to give up on politics” sentiment on the right lately—a theme of depression and withdrawal. To those who say, “we vote for conservatives, but what’s the point?,” I’d answer that although I think that attitude is understandable, it could be a recipe for the triumph of evil. We don’t know what has been different as a result of voting for conservatives because we don’t know what would have happened if, for example, Congress and the presidency had been totally dominated by liberals all those years when they were not.

One thing that I think has changed is that, although conservatives don’t dominate the Republican Party, they do constitute a greater percentage of it than they did in recent decades. The solution to the problem of the GOP would be to support more conservatives, and work for that. I am quite puzzled as to why so many on the right appear to give up so easily and quickly. And if you say to me: what do you mean quickly?—I’ll point out that the left has been working for at least 150 years in order to reach the point it’s reached now, maybe even more. And working very very hard, too. I assure you they never give up, although there have been times when it must have looked to them like they were losing.

I realize that the left can point to a consistent record of long, slow victories—a steady march towards more government dependency, for instance. But that’s partly the nature of government in general and of human nature, as well as the left’s “end justifies the means” tactics.

The left has in many ways an easier road to go down because they are swimming with the tide—or what appears to be the tide—of human nature. The right has a harder task; the problem is baked in the cake, because it’s hard to convince government to control less, and to convince people to accept that government’s seductive promise to solve all its cares is a pipe dream. But it’s also human nature to desire independence. So all of this doesn’t mean that the right can’t someday reverse or at least slow and then halt that natural tendency of government and people to revert to what I’d call the “Grand Inquisitor” solution—although to halt it permanently requires more vigilance than the right has been able to exercise so far. As I wrote a while back:

There seems to be something in human nature that inclines societies in this direction. For every person who values liberty, how many are there who would prefer security (or at least what they perceive as security)? I don’t know the ratio and I think it varies over time and place, but right now the latter group appears to be markedly in the ascendance.

But the tendency is there in all times and places, and there are always those who would dearly love to exploit that tendency for the sake of power and control. Sometimes it’s done “for their own good,” and sometimes just for the sake of power and control itself and/or riches and/or glory, although they usually pretend to be more well-intended than that.

In this context, the classic passage from Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor keeps coming to mind. I’ve published it so many times on this blog I’ve lost count, but it never grows old and it never ceases to be relevant—unfortunately:

Oh, never, never can [people] feed themselves without us [the Inquisitors and controllers]! No science will give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.” They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious. Thou didst promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man?

Heed this from a man who thought that the forces of liberty could fight back against the forces of the Inquisitor, and who lived his life accordingly:

The band that just walked away Renee (Part I: the song)

The New Neo Posted on by

RIP, Michael Brown.

Who’s Michael Brown? you ask:

Michael Brown, a keyboardist and songwriter who at 16 was a writer of the 1966 hit “Walk Away Renee” for his band the Left Banke and composed “Pretty Ballerina” for it as well, died on Thursday at his home in Englewood, N.J. He was 65.

Therein lies a tale. The following is a post I drafted in 2010 and (like so many of my drafts) it has just sat around among my other unpublished posts because I never quite found the right time for it. This seems to be the right time.

I once wrote a post about songs with lyrics containing the words “street” and “walk.” But until a commenter reminded me of its existence, I’d forgotten one of the most famous of them all, the monster 1966 hit “Walk Away Renee.”

“Walk Away Renee” is one of the great breakup songs—perhaps the greatest breakup song—of all time. I hadn’t heard the song for decades, but when I listened to it on You Tube, I instantly was reminded of how much I’d once loved its moody tone, its minor key, and the poignant and haunting voice of its lead singer:

I’d always assumed—from perceiving some slight something in the lead singer’s voice—that its members were probably British (the Brits were really big back then). And both the tone and the lyrics seemed to speak of a resignation that seemed experienced and almost world-weary.

But it turns out that the Left Banke was actually a bunch of teenagers from Brooklyn—and almost shockingly young, as you can see from the following video:

The video almost seems bizarre; it doesn’t seem as though such sounds could possibly be emanating from these kids—and it’s not just because they’re lip-synching, either. The lead singer (and sorta Paul McCartney lookalike), with the mature and melancholy voice that contrasts so strongly with his cherubic baby-face and his bouncy manner, was only 18 at the time. He was the young Steve Martin (not that Steve Martin), originally named Carmelo Esteban Martin Caro, and the son of a flamenco guitarist and singer.

The tune was written by 16-year old Michael Lookofsky, who composed “Walk Away Renee” under the less ethnic moniker Michael Brown. Renee was the name of another band member’s teen-aged girlfriend, a pretty blond on whom Lookofsky/Brown had developed an unspoken and unconsummated crush.

Mike Brown/Lookofsky was a classically-trained pianist. His father Harry was a violinist who had a small recording studio where the group rehearsed and later recorded the song. The son played the harpsichord on the cut, while dad Harry Lookofsky filled in with the violin that is featured so touchingly and prominently in the background, echoing and complementing the sob hidden in the lead singer’s voice. This just might have been the first (and only?) time that a rock star-to-be elicited a father’s help as backup musician in what turned out to be a megahit.

From whence came such talent, and where did it go? It’s a mystery; we know very little else about the performers. The Left Banke subsequently delivered a couple of other good songs (“Pretty Ballerina” was one), but the band split up quickly and Brown, despite a few more efforts, faded into obscurity and seclusion—as did Martin, as far as I can tell.

As for the lyrics, that credit goes to Frank J. Sansone, another young man who has hardly ever been heard from again. The lead singer’s voice and the music are haunting and well-matched. But the song hits the trifecta, because the words are at least as extraordinary as the music and the singing. They are poetry, conveying a tense pull between sorrow and stoicism, yearning and renunciation, regret and acceptance. You don’t believe me? Tune in for Part II, the lyrics.

More red vs. red

The New Neo Posted on by

Leon H. Wolf writes:

This year, the predetermined attack on Walker as insufficiently ideologically pure converges with a critical mass of voter resentment over Republican failures of leadership in Congress. Scott Walker and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)82%, the only two candidates with obvious chances of taking down the admittedly much worse Jeb Bush…are both especially vulnerable to this impulse because they depend for their electoral success in this primary on the very people who are most susceptible to the siren call of “REJECT ANY CANDIDATE WHO IS LESS THAN 100% PURE ON ALL ISSUES.”

I wonder how long it will take us, as a movement, to learn from the strategic mistakes of our past. A major reason why we keep nominating moderates for the Presidency is that these kinds of attacks on viable conservative alternatives leave the moderate as the only plausible alternative standing. While conservatives are dividing their support into increasingly narrow slices, the moderate voters unify early behind a single candidate and don’t go to pieces over one or two differences of opinion.

I have noticed this and noticed this and noticed this over and over. As I wrote yesterday, the red-on-red war usually takes one of two forms:

One is nit-picking about each Republican candidate””even conservative ones””to see if he or she diverges in any way from the position the person would like the candidate to take, or has made any decisions with which the person disagrees. The other is at the Republican “establishment” in general and especially in Congress for betrayals previous and current, or perceived betrayals.

The quote from Wolf is of the first variety, with a quick reference to the second.

You can be mad at that “establishment” all you want, but it’s also obvious that the conservative vote usually gets split in the primaries among all the candidates. That’s normal, of course, but somehow conservatives have to be able to coalesce behind one early enough to make it count, and the vetting of candidates that must of course continue to go on (and is very important) has to be done in a less destructive and unrealistically perfectionist way.

I’m not sure how, or if, that can be accomplished. But I know it’s very important, despite the fact that conservatives tend to pride themselves on their rugged individualism and their devotion to principle, and are especially prickly about anything that smacks of being told what to do.

As for frontrunners and alternatives to Bush, Walker was starting to be that guy. I understand all the Democratic attacks on him through distortions of his record or focusing on trivia. But does the right have to help them quite so much?

Republicans playing hardball?

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, one can hope.

It’s a fairly small and circumscribed game of hardball, but I applaud it:

Ms. Lynch’s vote to become attorney general is on hold for precisely one reason: Democrats won’t play ball on a bill to combat human sex trafficking. This is legislation, note, that is as bipartisan as it comes. It was jointly authored by Republican John Cornyn and Democrat Amy Klobuchar, and co-sponsored by much of the Senate. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell followed regular order, and Democrats gave unanimous consent to move the bill.

Yet suddenly faced with the real prospect of doing something productive””after six, long years of hiding from votes””the Senate Democratic caucus wigged out. (Debate? Vote? How does one do those things?) Desperate to revert to comfortable dysfunction, Democrats suddenly “discovered” language in the bill that upholds a prohibition against the federal funding of abortions.

Yes, it is language that has been in law for 37 years and yes, it was in the bill all along, and yes, Democrats had voted for it unanimously in committee, and yes they had voted for it unanimously last year in an appropriations bill. But Minority Leader Harry Reid needed a reason to balk, and the abortion language had the side benefit of allowing Democrats to revive the Republican “war on women.” They filibustered.

At which point, something new happened. Mr. McConnell made clear that so long as he didn’t get his trafficking bill, Democrats didn’t get Ms. Lynch. He would devote the rest of this week to the Cornyn-Klobuchar legislation, next week would be about the budget, the week after that would be Easter recess, and so on. Let’s hope Ms. Lynch enjoys Sudoku. No give, no get.

I think the reason McConnell is doing this for this particular bill is that, as Strassel writes, it’s “as bipartisan as it comes.” Or at least it was, previously.

It would be nice if Republicans could publicize this Democratic intransigence really, really loudly. But how do they go over the heads of the MSM to do it?

Does getting older make you care less?

The New Neo Posted on by

By the time my mother reached her high 90s, she seemed to care less about everything. Part of this, I’m almost sure, is that she was experiencing a marked although mercifully slow cognitive decline. There were a few pluses, though, in addition to the negatives: she had always been a relatively anxious person, and now her general anxiety seemed almost gone.

I wondered about this, and I decided that in order to be anxious it probably helps to have a keen appreciation of time, because part of anxiety is anticipating the future. And my mother seemed to be less aware of time and the future.

She also had had so many losses of friends—after all, she survived nearly every single one of her contemporaries—that she became more and more philosophical or perhaps stoic on hearing of the death of some of the last ones. It’s not that it didn’t bother her, but seemingly not too much or for too long.

My mother had a thing about my hair, which is curly. She always thought it too messy, and for years and years and years every time I visited her she’d frown a little bit and ask if I could brush it and smooth it out. “No,” I’d say. “This is the way my hair is. If I brushed it more it would just get bushier.” It got to be our little dance, and as she got older and older and older it bothered me less. In the last few years it made me smile because it meant she still cared about stuff like that, which I considered a good sign.

I had often joked that I’d know things had really gotten bad if she stopped saying it. Well, a couple months before she died—during her last, more precipitous, decline—she stopped saying it. I knew what that meant, and it made me sad. What had been a joke was no joke at all any more.

As I’ve gotten older myself I’ve noticed that long before the stage my mother reached there is often a diminution of the intensity of the feelings of youth. Some people are happy about it because no longer are they storm-tossed by every disappointment and fear they experience. For others it can segue into too much of a flatness and even a depression. Others don’t experience it at all.

I’m not sure where I stand on this. I know I used to be more shy in social situations than I am now. But I know I can still get pretty intense about a lot of things, and even more intense about some—for example, politics.

Ah, politics! You knew that would rear its ugly head, didn’t you?

Which brings us to the first sentence of this comment by “Tonawanda” earlier today:

Fast approaching the undiscovered country (age-wise) it is for me less urgent what folks like BO do, however despicable.

“BO” is, of course, Barack Obama. “The undiscovered country (age-wise)” is a reference to Hamlet’s soliloquy “To be or not to be,” in which he refers to death as “The undiscover’d country from whose bourn/No traveller returns…” (“bourn” has an archaic meaning of destination, domain, or boundary).

I’ve seen and heard a lot of comments to that effect over the years in political discussions: “I’m old, so I hardly care anymore.” People sometimes say a variant of it, which is that their children can worry about it but they don’t all that much.

I understand the sentiment and I’m not condemning it, but I find that not only do I not share it, but that I seem to care more than ever. There’s something about what Obama is doing to trash the rule of law and the separation of powers, as well as specific actions of his such as the pact with Iran that is likely to give them permission to have nuclear arms, or his advocacy of terrible policies such as this one, that bother me intensely. There’s something about the idea of the possible death of the American republic that fills me with a personal, bitter, and sharp despair, whether I’d be around to see the event or not.

How about you?

Finally, a bipartisan move

The New Neo Posted on by

This is certainly interesting:

Represenative Eliot Engel of New York, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said he and Republican Chairman Ed Royce of California were sending a letter to President Barack Obama expressing their concerns about what needs to be in an Iran nuclear deal.

A draft of the letter emphasizes that permanent sanctions relief, which Iran has repeatedly requested during the Geneva negotiations, would require new legislation.

“In reviewing such an agreement, Congress must be convinced that its terms foreclose any pathway to a bomb,” the lawmakers wrote, adding that “Iran’s role in fomenting instability in the region ”¦ demonstrates the risks of negotiating with a partner we cannot trust.”

A spokesman for Engel told VOA that 363 House members, Republicans and Democrats, signed the letter.

363 is a lot of people, and a lot of Democrats must have been part of this. Now of course that doesn’t mean all of those Democrats would be willing to go against Obama if push came to shove. But it indicates that it is at least possible, if Obama’s deal with Iran is awful enough.

I’ve often wondered what on earth it would take for enough Democrats to turn against Obama to get to the all-important two-thirds of Congress in opposition, enough to override a veto or even convict him if impeached. Would handing nuclear weapons to Iran count? Obama certainly seems to wants it bad enough to risk the fallout, as it were.

Red vs. red in Congress

The New Neo Posted on by

I can’t help but notice a lot of anger on the right at the right, or at least at Republicans.

It seems to take two forms. One is nit-picking about each Republican candidate—even conservative ones—to see if he or she diverges in any way from the position the person would like the candidate to take, or has made any decisions with which the person disagrees. The other is at the Republican “establishment” in general and especially in Congress for betrayals previous and current, or perceived betrayals.

The anger expressed sometimes seems even greater—sometimes far greater—than the anger expressed at Obama and the left. In the past, I’ve written about this many many times. It was especially active on this blog during the Romney candidacy, as many of you might remember.

I’m tired of the battle. I’ve certainly put in my hours, and we’ve had some interesting discussions here. One of the things that makes me angry is when people put words into my mouth and say I’ve said things I haven’t said, or taken positions I haven’t taken. So because (despite my tiredness) I see it’s necessary to take up this topic again—and probably again and again and again—I want to state a couple of things very clearly at the outset.

The first is that I’m not a Republican. After I left the Democratic Party I haven’t had any inclination to identify that way again; I consider myself Independent. That said, I find that all the candidates I’ve supported in the last decade have in fact been Republicans. I don’t see that changing.

I don’t like all Republican candidates the same, of course. I find that the ones I like best tend to be the more conservative ones, but that’s not always the case (I rather liked Giuliani, for example, back during the 2008 season when he briefly ran for president, although I’m not sure I would have stayed with him had he kept in the race). I came out for Scott Walker two years ago, and to me he’s a conservative but one with a more general appeal (I’m hoping somewhat Reaganesque in that regard). My point is that I couldn’t care less about defending the establishment, I evaluate all candidates in my own way and for my own reasons. But I am not a purist, I don’t expect to agree with my candidate all the time or even close, and I am a very practical person about politics.

Part of my practicality is that I have few illusions about politicians. I’m not sure why that is, but I almost never have revered them—at least not past childhood, when I was very taken with JFK’s charm. Maybe that cynicism protects me somewhat against that feeling of having had my faith in them betrayed. I look at things in a more practical way: who agrees the most with me, have they kept their word in the past for the most part, and what can they realistically do if elected?

That’s the way I look at what’s happening in Congress today, which is the subject of this post (finally!).

The Republicans are the majority in both houses of this Congress, and I am happy that it happened. But I am aware that the Republicans in Congress are split between the conservatives and the others, and so they are not going to unify on all things (especially the tough topics) any more than pundits on the right will or blog commenters on the right will. Perhaps even less. Why would anyone expect a sudden transformation into unity, and in particular unity in the direction you would like to see?

In addition, Republicans in Congress cannot do what is impossible, even if you’d like them to and even if they wanted to do exactly whatever you want. They cannot, for example, pass any law they wish, even though they have the majority, even if they were completely united, because of the lack of 60 votes in the Senate. Cloture and Senate rules mean that the Democrats can hold up a vote a long as the Democrats have 40 votes to do so.

Even if the Republicans boldly changed the rules about that (which would have its own dangers) and made it so that things could come to a vote in the Senate by simple majority, guess what? That wouldn’t lead to Republican success in getting a law in place because the president happens to be a Democrat and he has vowed to veto everything they pass that he doesn’t like. The GOP lacks the votes to get past the veto. Do you really think they should undo the filibuster (a very radical step) merely for the sake of putting bills before Obama that he would then veto? Or should the Republicans use the option of holding back government funding in a battle that would ultimately lead to a government shutdown (not just of a single function, but of many, because Obama would veto every single bill that cut funding of any of his pet projects) that the people—carefully guided to this point of view by the MSM—would almost certainly blame on the Republicans, causing a backlash?

As we know, the Republican Party is currently split between conservatives and RINOS or “establishment” types, so is it any surprise that the latter group would not be fond of the two options I just outlined? Even some conservatives don’t like them, and I can’t say I blame them. I am torn about what I would do myself if I were a member of Congress.

If a party is split between two wings, they’re going to disagree with each other. Often, the results will end in compromise; that’s apparently what they’re trying to iron out with the budget right now. Why would this surprise anyone?

If you don’t like the fact that there are Republicans in Congress who won’t stand up for what you believe is right, why not work for a conservative takeover of the party? It doesn’t happen overnight, of course. But splitting off into a third party will only weaken both wings (and the “establishment” is likely to keep more of the reins of power that remain), and lead to Democratic victory and Democratic control for a long, long time to come. Conservatives often answer by saying they don’t care; they’ve been betrayed long enough and they’ve had it. I say, why quit when you’re actually gaining? I’ve never seen a better crop of new and upcoming conservatives, and I see the party as growing more conservative over time rather than less. Why on earth would you have a red on red bloodletting now, when the opposition has grown more leftist and more inclined to tyranny?

I can say one thing about the left: they have demonstrated far more patience, fortitude, and sheer ability to deal with the messy realities of politics than the right has.

[NOTE: There will be more posts here on the ongoing red-on-red battles. The topic is so huge I have to take it bit by bit.]

Unprecedented: Obama vs. Bibi

The New Neo Posted on by

Ah, so this is the way Obama will be playing the Israeli election:

After staying mum on Israeli issues in the run-up to the election, the White House on Wednesday broke its silence — answering Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s victory with fresh criticism and making clear that a new rift has opened between U.S. and Israeli leaders, this time over Palestinian statehood.

In its first public response to Netanyahu’s election triumph, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said President Obama still believes in a two-state solution. This was after Netanyahu, shortly before the vote, reversed his stance and stated he would not allow the creation of a Palestinian state.

Earnest acknowledged Wednesday that the U.S. would have to “re-evaluate” its position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in light of those comments. But he stressed that Obama believes a two-state solution is best. And State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki clarified that the administration “absolutely” will continue to push for this.

The idea that Obama had stayed “mum” on Israeli issues is risible—what is the Iran deal (and Netanyahu’s subsequent speech to Congress) if not a big Israeli issue? Netanyahu seemed to face two alternative approaches in the lead-in to this election: continue to mouth the polite, US-and-Western-Europe-backed fiction that the Israelis have a partner in peace in the Palestinians, or tell the truth and say they don’t. Neither approach was going to keep Obama in Netanyahu’s camp, either, because Obama had already turned into his outright opponent. So Netanyahu might as well tell the truth about that 2-state thing, and try to actually win the election.

So now Obama has found an excuse to open the rift wider and say his hand was forced by Netanyahu’s abandonment of the 2-state solution. The whole thing is some sort of verbal game in which both sides are pretending—and have been pretending for quite some time—a lot of things, including that there has even been a possibility of a two-state solution since at least 2000 (abandonment of Camp David and beginning of the Second Intifada) and probably much much earlier.

That word “unprecedented” keeps being used for things that Obama has done. It certainly seems to be an appropriate one for this act of a president’s reversing course on a long-held and bipartisan foreign policy without any pressure from Congress or the American people, all on his own, a change from supporting a long-term ally (over sixty-five years) to undermining it, all in a single administration. This reversal had actually happened before any announcement on the 2-state solution from Netanyahu, as was made crystal clear during Obama’s current push for the Iran deal, which also featured cozying up to a country that had been one of our biggest enemies for about forty-five years and which has not shown a single sign of stopping being one.

The closest thing I can think of is Nixon in China, but in that case what Nixon did was to open up the very beginning of relations with a heretofore shunned nation. He didn’t reverse course on general policy towards Communism (in fact, one of his rationales for the China visit was to strengthen his hand against the Soviets), China had already long been a nuclear power so their acquisition of nuclear weapons was a fait accompli, and most particularly he got assurances from the Chinese that Taiwan would be protected (so far that doesn’t seem to have gone too badly). Nor did he do it for personal reasons—either of dislike or affection—for the leaders of China.

I’m not suggesting that Obama’s hatred of Netanyahu is the sole reason for his shabby treatment of him and of Israel lately. But Obama is so often juvenile, petty, and personal in his reactions in general that it’s a good bet that it’s a factor. Another factor is undoubtedly that Netanyahu is a man of the right. My guess is that, in Obama’s mind, Netanyahu is something like the George Bush of Israel—a man for whom he most likely combines a personal and a political distaste.

If Israel had elected a nice accommodating leftist I assume that Obama would have called to congratulate him/her the instant the victory was declared, if not sooner. Instead, Obama is now considering abandoning Netanyahu at the UN in order to punish him and Israel. It will be very interesting to see what Congress does, if anything, although I’m not sure what they could do about it. And if any of the Democrats stand up and criticize Obama, will that person suddenly be slapped with a DOJ or IRS investigation?

[NOTE: In mulling over the origins of Obama’s anti-Israel venom, I kept thinking of Edward Said. I had some vague memory that Said had been teaching at Columbia when Obama was there, and that they later were friends or something of the sort. As quick as you can say “Google!,” up came a long list of articles about that very thing. The allegations are that Said was important in shaping Obama’s views of the region:

Prior to his death in 2003, Said was the leading anti-colonial thinker in the United States. Obama studied with Said at Columbia University and the two maintained a relationship over the next two decades. Obama attended a Palestinian fundraiser in Chicago in 1998 in which Said was the featured speaker, and Obama also befriended Said’s protege Rashid Khalidi, who currently occupies the Edward Said chair of Arab Studies at Columbia.

Said wasn’t a mere academic; for a time, he served as a member of the Palestine National Council. In this capacity he worked closely with Yasser Arafat. Said has been photographed throwing rocks at Israel to symbolize his support for armed resistance against the Jewish state; one Jewish magazine dubbed him a “Professor of Terror.”

More here and here. In summary, it is highly likely that Obama’s views on Israel have “evolved” during his administration in much the way that his views on gay marriage have: that is, that he was always considerably anti-Israel and pro-Palestine, but that until now he’s felt he had to dissemble about it until freed from the need to care what the US public thinks.]

Obama would love for the US to have mandatory voting

The New Neo Posted on by

It would be so transformative, you know. Hope and change:

“If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country,” Obama said, calling it “potentially transformative.” Not only that, Obama said, but universal voting would “counteract money more than anything.”…

Obama said he thought it would be “fun” for the U.S. to consider amending the Constitution to change the role that money plays in the electoral system. But don’t hold your breath.

“Realistically, given the requirements of that process, that would be a long-term proposition,” he said.

I’m surprised he’s even mentioning something as old-fashioned as an amendment. Surely he can think of something more creative, so we can join the following countries with mandatory voting laws that they actually enforce: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Cyprus, Ecuador, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Nauru, Peru, Singapore, Uruguay, and Schaffhausen canton in Switzerland.

I noticed four things about mandatory voting laws. The first is that only half the places that have them bother to enforce them. The second is that with the exception of Australia, the ones that do aren’t places you’d especially wish to emulate (although that canton in Switzerland might be nice). The third is that it seems to be a real vogue in Latin America, especially if you count the countries that have such laws but don’t enforce them. And the fourth is that they often contain exceptions for illiterate voters and the elderly, and I doubt Obama would want to allow that.

Needless to say, I am against compulsory voting laws. I’m libertarian enough to believe that people should have the liberty to vote or not vote, as they choose.