The New Neo

The OPM security breach: how bad could it be?

Posted on June 12, 2015 by neoJune 12, 2015

Bad.

It turns out that the breach of OPM security was much worse than previously reported. There are a bunch of good posts on the topic at Ace’s (see this, this, and this for some details).

For example, it wasn’t discovered for a long time:

The massive hack into federal systems announced last week was far deeper and potentially more problematic than publicly acknowledged, with hackers believed to be from China moving through government databases undetected for more than a year, sources briefed on the matter told ABC News.

“If [only] they knew the full extent of it,” one U.S. official said about those affected by the intrusion into the Office of Personnel Management’s information systems.

If only.

And it wasn’t the government that finally made the discovery of the breach, although we’d been led to believe that was the case. Apparently, it was actually discovered by accident by a private company:

According to a Wall Street Journal report, the breach was indeed discovered in April. But according to sources who spoke to the WS”s Damian Paletta and Siobhan Hughes, it was in fact discovered during a sales demonstration of a network forensics software package called CyFIR by its developer, CyTech Services. “CyTech, trying to show OPM how its cybersecurity product worked, ran a diagnostics study on OPM’s network and discovered malware was embedded on the network,” Paletta and Hughes reported.

Even the most elementary precautions had not been followed.

“We believe that Social Security numbers were not encrypted, a cybersecurity failure that is absolutely indefensible and outrageous,” Cox said in the letter. The [government employees’] union called the breach “an abysmal failure on the part of the agency to guard data that has been entrusted to it by the federal workforce.”…

Cox complained in the letter that “very little substantive information has been shared with us, despite the fact that we represent more than 670,000 federal employees in departments and agencies throughout the executive branch.”…

Mike Rogers, the former chairman of the House intelligence committee, said last week that Chinese intelligence agencies have for some time been seeking to assemble a database of information about Americans. Those personal details can be used for blackmail, or also to shape bogus emails designed to appear legitimate while injecting spyware on the networks of government agencies or businesses Chinese hackers are trying to penetrate.

U.S. intelligence officials say China, like the U.S., spies for national security advantage. Unlike the U.S., they say, China also engages in large-scale theft of corporate secrets for the benefit of state-sponsored enterprises that compete with Western companies. Nearly every major U.S. company has been hacked from China, they say.

More here:

The OPM had no IT security staff until 2013, and it showed. The agency was harshly criticized for its lax security in an inspector general’s report released last November that cited its lack of encryption and the agency’s failure to track its equipment. Investigators found that the OPM failed to maintain an inventory list of all of its servers and databases and didn’t even know all the systems that were connected to its networks. The agency also failed to use multi-factor authentication for workers accessing the systems remotely from home or on the road.

Sort of reminds me of the Obamacare website debacle, only worse.

Remember when companies and governments somehow managed to be run without the aid of computers? When spies had to either enter the facilities, or worm their way into them, or use blackmail (or sex) on someone who worked there to get the information, and the amount of data was limited by how much they could carry? Those were the days, my friend.

Passing for black

Posted on June 12, 2015 by neoJune 12, 2015

Years ago, it used to be pretty common for light-skinned blacks to try to “pass” for white. When black people faced a tremendous amount of prejudice it made a certain amount of sense to do so, although I would assume it was not an easy decision.

Fast forward to now, and we have the case of Rachel Dolezal, president of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP, who has a different approach. She’s apparently been falsely claiming to be black.

Well, why not? This opened doors for her that might have been more difficult to budge had she presented herself as a garden-variety white-bread white-privilege type. It’s not unheard of for people to falsely (or sometimes mistakenly) claim a certain status or identity in order to get some special consideration (Elizabeth Warren, are you listening?). There’s everything from fake racial claims to fake illnesses (Munchausen’s syndrome) to fake children’s illnesses (Munchausen’s by proxy) to fake disability claims to fake professional credentials, and on and on and on.

Apparently it’s not so hard to do if a person is sufficiently determined. Dolezal appears to have availed herself of a perm and some makeup or spray tan, and voila:

White people are allowed to join the NAACP (especially in Spokane, Washington, where there aren’t all that many black people to begin with). They are even allowed to hold office in it, and sometimes they do. But deception is a no-no. However, that’s not the worst of Dolezal’s probable deceptions. She appears to be quite the fabricator, and although her level of detail isn’t in the Stephen Glass-ish range, she’s pretty creative and prolific:

To get the whole story, read this article, but here are some excerpts:

Dolezal, a multi-media artist, professor of Africana studies at Eastern Washington University and former instructor at North Idaho College in Coeur d’Alene, has reportedly made similar ethnicity claims to local media outlets. In recent years, she has portrayed herself physically, and on social media platforms, as a woman of black African-American heritage.

However, her parents, Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal, who are both white and live in the Troy/Libby area in Montana, told The Press their daughter is not African-American. They backed up the claim with a copy of their daughter’s birth certificate and photos. The images show a younger, pale, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Dolezal who looks much different than the woman with caramel-colored skin now leading the Spokane NAACP and helping review claims of police misconduct in that city.

“Rachel is very good at using her artistic skills to transform herself,” Ruthanne said in a recent telephone interview…

n a February issue of the Easterner, EWU’s student-run newspaper, Dolezal reportedly told a reporter that the man who raised her with her mother is her stepfather. In January, a photo of Dolezal and a black man appeared on the Spokane NAACP’s Facebook page with the message: “President Dolezal’s father announced today that he will be coming to town for January 19th ribbon-cutting ceremony for the NAACP office … and is expected to speak at the 7 p.m. MLK tribute membership meeting.”

But the man in the photo is not her father. The person in the photo is Albert Wilkerson – a black man who lived in North Idaho and volunteered at the Human Rights Education Institute several years ago when Dolezal was in charge of the organization’s education programs. A similar picture was posted on Dolezal’s personal Facebook page in December, with a comment made from Dolezal’s account on the social media platform: “L-R: Me, my oldest son Izaiah, and my Dad.”

Dolezal’s mother said she has never met Albert Wilkerson and Rachel does not have a stepfather. She said her daughter’s father is Larry Dolezal, a former Lincoln County Commissioner in Montana. Ruthanne and Larry just celebrated their 41st wedding anniversary on Monday, she said.

“Anybody who lives in the town of Troy or Libby knows that Larry is her father,” Ruthanne said.

Wilkerson, who has since moved away from the area, could not be reached for comment.

Dolezal’s birth certificate filed in Lincoln County, Montana in 1977 states that Ruthanne is her mother and Lawrence Albert Dolezal is her father.

Ruthanne also clarified that Izaiah, who Dolezal often says is her son, is actually Dolezal’s adopted brother. Between 1993 and 1995, Ruthanne and Larry adopted four black infants: Ezra, Izaiah, Zachariah and Esther.

The story is pretty Byzantine, but it also involves a great many allegations by Dolezal of hate crimes against her, mainly involving nooses placed on her property and that sort of thing—that for various reasons are now considered to be highly suspect allegations.

Dolezal is, of course, denying that she’s done anything wrong. But she has a funny way of doing so:

KREM 2 asked to address the public sentiment that she misrepresented her race.

“I can understand that. And like I said, it’s more important to me to clarify that to the black community, and with my executive board, than it really is for me to explain it to a community that I quite frankly don’t think understands the definitions of race and ethnicity,” said Dolezal.

Her parent’s explanation for her behavior seems as good as any, at least in the psychological sense:

Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal said their daughter has always identified with the African American culture and had black siblings who were adopted. They said she went to school in Mississippi and was part of a primarily African American community.

The Dolezal’s said Rachel married and later divorced a black man. They said after the divorce in 2004 Rachel began identifying differently. She started claiming to be partially African American and the daughter of bi-racial parents. They said they have noticed her change in physical appearance but do not know how she did so.

“Rachel has wanted to be somebody she’s not. She’s chosen not to just be herself but to represent herself as an African American woman or a biracial person. And that’s simply not true,” said Ruthanne Dolezal.

The Dolezal’s said they do not have a problem with Rachel advocating for a civil rights group for African Americans, rather that she is being deceptive about it.

Rachel’s parents said she distanced herself from them and has not talked to them recently…

Rachel said she does not consider her biological parents her real parents.

That’s the psychological part, which I believe is true. But there’s also a practical part: getting perks (jobs, appointments, attention) that she otherwise wouldn’t have had access to.

Quite a few people have made analogies to the Bruce/Kaitlin Jenner transformation. After all, both are cases of a person feeling and/or thinking that he/she is something he/she is not, or at least was not at birth.

It’s true, for people who look physically as though they could be either white or black, that a racial identity really is to a certain extent a constructed identity, a matter of self-identification. In the biological sense, race is a cluster of traits (such as dark skin) which exist on a continuum within a race with no definite dividing line, and also exist across races—for example, there are Caucasians with far darker skin than many American blacks.

But someone such as Dolezal, who was born to white parents and is genetically white but is clearly trying to give the impression that she is black in more than the “constructed narrative” sense, has apparently been perpetrating a deception. The analogy to Jenner, who is not being deceptive and who acknowledges having been born biologically (and genetically) male, breaks down.

[NOTE: One thing I wonder is how Dolezal thought she could keep this secret forever. Did she think her parents would never speak up? Or did she think they would not be believed if they did?]

Obama and HUD: you can run, but you can’t hide

Posted on June 11, 2015 by neoJune 11, 2015

Obama wants to end neighborhoods of privilege, under some sort of “disparate impact” rule (sound familiar?) combined with an executive order that bypasses Congress (also sound familiar?).

The goal is “diversity”, and here’s the way it would work:

A final Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) rule due out this month is aimed at ending decades of deep-rooted segregation around the country.

The regulations would use grant money as an incentive for communities to build affordable housing in more affluent areas while also taking steps to upgrade poorer areas with better schools, parks, libraries, grocery stores and transportation routes as part of a gentrification of those communities…

This is something resembling the ill-fated school busing policies in Boston during the 1970s, although in that case part of the deal was that not only were black kids bused into mostly-white schools, but white kids (from poor communities—not the rich white kids, who were spared) were also bused into mostly-black schools. I wrote at length about the ensuing havoc created in both communities here.

This would be social engineering at its very finest. And it involves (among other things) the pretense that the only reason a person would want to live in a rich, protected community would be racial prejudice—rather than the fact that such communities are safer, have better schools, and more law-abiding people.

And forget about liberty—what’s that?

The way the camel got its nose inside the tent is through HUD. The directive would apply to communities that get HUD funds, which is a lot of communities (about 1250):

HUD says it is obligated to take the action under the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibited direct and intentional housing discrimination, such as a real estate agent not showing a home in a wealthy neighborhood to a black family or a bank not providing a loan based on someone’s race.

The agency is also looking to root out more subtle forms of discrimination that take shape in local government policies that unintentionally harm minority communities, known as “disparate impact.”…

To qualify for certain funds under the regulations, cities would be required to examine patterns of segregation in neighborhoods and develop plans to address it. Those that don’t could see the funds they use to improve blighted neighborhoods disappear, critics of the rule say…

Critics of the rule say it would allow HUD to assert authority over local zoning laws. The agency could dictate what types of homes are built where and who can live in those homes, said Gosar, who believes local communities should make those decisions for themselves rather than relying on the federal government.

If enacted, the rule could depress property values as cheaper homes crop up in wealthy neighborhoods and raise taxes, Gosar warned.

It could also tilt the balance of political power as more minorities are funneled into Republican-leaning neighborhoods, he suggested.

All of this—all—is a feature, not a bug, in the eyes of the Obama administration. It’s part of the fundamental transformation of America.

One would think most Americans would be against this. But how many Americans even know about it? How much coverage is this getting from the MSM? I’m not seeing it; the only articles I see are from the right.

Republicans in the House have not been idle on this:

Republicans are trying to block the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule. Before passing HUD’s funding bill this week, the GOP-led House approved Gosar’s amendment prohibiting the agency from following through with the rule.

What if HUD decides to defy it and follows through with the rule anyway? What could be done to stop them, I wonder, and will it be done?

[NOTE: Much more here.

By the way, this is been in the works for years, somewhat under the radar. See this.

I bet after Obama leaves the White House, though, he’d be living in a neighborhood that’s unaffected by it.]

How the Jeb Bush campaign went astray

Posted on June 11, 2015 by neoJune 11, 2015

There’s a loooong article in the WaPo about how Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign has failed to ignite much enthusiasm, and why that might be so. It focuses on errors of strategy and tactics, and the decisions made around those things

But the real explanation, IMHO, is much much simpler: Bush is an unappealing candidate.

Very few Republicans, and no conservatives (otherwise known as “the base”) think much of him. They don’t like his attitude about immigration. They don’t like the fact that he’s another Bush, and they are sick of Bushes.

Jeb also comes across as energyless. I’ve watched him speak a few times, and he’s a big snooze.

So, why would anyone (other than some financial backers who have a long association with the Bush family and think it’s in their interest to support Jeb) be interested in furthering his candidacy? There’s a huge slate of candidates this year—most of whom are conservative, articulate, young, and full of energy. Nearly all of them (or maybe all of them) seem better than Bush.

The only way Bush wins the nomination is if the sheer number of opponents splits the conservative vote into many little pieces. Even then, I don’t see how he’d get enough votes to win outright, and we’d probably end up with a brokered convention. As time goes on, I think some of the weaker candidates will end up dropping out, and this will help. I really wish it would be Bush who would drop out, but it appears he has enough money to keep going for a long time.

The Germanwings co-pilot and patient privacy laws

Posted on June 11, 2015 by neoJune 11, 2015

It seems that several doctors seen by Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz before his suicidal/homicidal crash felt that he should be grounded, but their hands were tied by strict doctor/patient privacy laws in Germany:

…[Lubitz] had seen seven doctors within the month before the March 24 crash, including three appointments with a psychiatrist.

Robin says that some of the doctors felt Lubitz was psychologically unstable, and some felt he was unfit to fly, but “unfortunately that information was not reported because of medical secrecy requirements.”

In Germany, doctors risk prison if they disclose information about their patients to anyone unless there is evidence they intend to commit a serious crime or harm themselves.

I understand the problem here, because we don’t want to make it so that pilots are afraid to go for help when they need it, out of fear they’d lose their jobs. On the other hand, the situation as reported above is absurd. An unstable pilot (or bus driver, for that matter, or anyone whose job involves carrying a lot of passengers and being responsible for their safety) does not have to talk about wanting to commit a specific crime or to kill him/herself to be extremely dangerous to the health and the lives of enormous numbers of people. The threshhold for reporting that unfitness and instability should be less than the standard for others.

In addition, prison as a penalty for doctors reporting without enough evidence has a tremendously chilling effect on the likelihood of doing so, leading almost inevitably to preventable tragedies like the one that occurred for Lubitz’s passengers and their families.

Obama does not ♥ Israel

Posted on June 11, 2015 by neoJune 11, 2015

John Podhoretz describes a new book written by Michael Oren:

It’s called “Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide,” and I’m not sure that in the annals of diplomatic history there’s ever been anything quite like this astonishing account of Oren’s four years (2009-2013) as Israel’s ambassador in Washington…

It’s not that there’s lots of breaking news in “Ally” that will startle people. Rather, it makes news on almost every page with its incredibly detailed account of the root hostility of the Obama administration toward the Jewish state.

What makes the details especially credible is that Oren is no flame-breathing Israeli right-winger but very much (and at times distressingly) an Establishment creature and one, moreover, who makes it clear he drank the Obama hope-and-change Kool-Aid in 2008. (Indeed, he now serves in Israel’s Knesset not as a member of Bibi Netanyahu’s Likud but of the new centrist Kulanu party.)

So, it seems the Oren started out as an admirer of Obama, but soon learned how mistaken he was. I wonder why he ever thought Obama wasn’t hostile to Israel; was it just Obama’s pro-Israel rhetoric, and didn’t Oren look any deeper into Obama’s past? I suppose I’ll have to read Oren’s book to find the answer.

Here’s more about the Obama administration’s treatment of Israel and of Oren:

Example: The Palestinian Authority made moves toward seeking a declaration of statehood at the United Nations in 2011, which would’ve triggered a law shutting down their US mission and suspending all aid to the PA and to UN agencies that recognized Palestine.

In response, Deputy Secretary of State Tom Nides called Oren into his fancy Foggy Bottom office and screamed at him: “You don’t want the f”Š-”Š-”Š-”Šing UN to collapse because of your f”Š-”Š-”Š-”Šing conflict with the Palestinians, and you don’t want the f”Š-”Š-”Š-”Šing Palestinian Authority to fall apart either.”

Class act.

Oren also writes about bizarrely petty offenses. In 2010, Obama left Israel off a list of countries he mentioned as having helped in the wake of the Haiti earthquake when it was the first nation in the world to dispatch relief teams and get them to the disaster sites ”” because the president was angry about something having to do with the peace process.

But Obama specializes in “bizarrely petty offenses.” Why would anyone be surprised at this?

Lastly, we have:

Throughout his tenure, Oren believed he was uniquely well-equipped to explain Israel to Americans and America to the Israelis. But how to explain a president who recently said that the Israel he admires is the Israel of kibbutzim and Golda Meir ”” a ludicrously rosy and unrealistic image of the Jewish state on par with wanting to look like Disneyland’s Main Street USA?

But if Obama’s statement is true, it’s really no mystery at all. Obama is first and foremost a man of the left. The left used to love Israel during its early years, when Israel was a leftist country founded by leftists, and the kibbutzim were part of that movement. Meir herself was a leftist through and through:

In 1913 she returned to North Division High, graduating in 1915. While there, she became an active member of Young Poale Zion, which later became Habonim, the Labor Zionist youth movement. She spoke at public meetings, embraced Socialist Zionism and hosted visitors from Palestine…

n 1913 she had begun dating Morris Meyerson. She was a committed Labor Zionist and he was a dedicated socialist. Together, they left their jobs to join a kibbutz in Palestine in 1921…

In the British Mandate of Palestine, Meir and Meyerson joined a kibbutz. Their first application to kibbutz Merhavia in the Jezreel Valley was rejected, but later on they were accepted. Her duties included picking almonds, planting trees, working in the chicken coops, and running the kitchen. Recognizing her leadership abilities, the kibbutz chose her as its representative to the Histadrut, the General Federation of Labour…

In 1934, when Meir returned from the United States, she joined the Executive Committee of the Histadrut and she moved up the ranks to become the head of its Political Department. This appointment was important training for her future role in Israeli leadership…

Meir was a member of the Mapai Party, “a left-wing political party…[that] was the dominant force in Israeli politics until its merger into the modern-day Israeli Labor Party in 1968.” The party presided over an establishment of a welfare state in Israel, and Meir was instrumental in the task.

That is the Israel that Obama liked, if he liked any Israel at all.

Baltimore prosecutor Mosby ordered increased policing in the area where Freddie Gray was apprehended

Posted on June 10, 2015 by neoJune 10, 2015

The plot thickens with Mosby:

Roughly three weeks before Baltimore police officers arrested Gray for possession of an illegal knife Mosby herself was strongly advocating for substantially increased policing in the very neighborhood where Gray would be taken into custody, according to a report by the Baltimore Sun.

Lt. Kenneth Butler, a shift commander for more than a decade, and a representative for an advocacy group for women and minority officers, is quoted in the Sun report as saying that he had never before seen such orders come from the state’s attorney’s office. Further, he expressed no uncertainty about what the consequences would be: “Once you’re given an order, you have to carry it out. It’s just that simple.” And in terms of the tactics that would necessarily be involved? ” They want increased productivity, whether it be car stops, field interviews, arrests ”” that’s what they mean by measurables. You have to use whatever tools you have ”” whether it be bike officers, cameras, foot officers, whatever you have ”” to abate that problem. So you’re going to have to be aggressive.”

The original source of the order is Mosby herself, according to emails unearthed by the defense counsel that were sent to the six police officers criminally charged in Gray’s death.

So the six cops were following orders from Mosby herself, and they were warned that they would need to produce “daily measurables” to document their performance in carrying out the orders.

Mosby should be recused, for that and a host of other reasons.

And I bet at this point she’s wishing she’d followed Hillary Clinton’s lead and used her own private email address and her own server.

RIP Vincent Bugliosi

Posted on June 10, 2015 by neoJune 10, 2015

Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor who gained fame with the Tate murder prosecutions of Manson and his gang, and who wrote an excellent book on the subject, has died at the age of 80.

The obituary mentions many books that Bugliosi wrote (including one that was highly anti-Bush), but it says that the book of which he was proudest was his painstaking examination and debunking of the conspiracy theories regarding President Kennedy’s assassination, entitled Reclaiming History.

The book is a tome, too big and heavy for most people to even contemplate reading. I’ve read about half of it (including the summary chapters, which run about 500 pages or so and are riveting), and highly recommend taking a look if you’re interested in the subject. I’ve written about the book before, here and here, and most of the text of the book is available for free online here.

TV and our changing culture

Posted on June 10, 2015 by neoJune 10, 2015

There’s been a “silent cultural revolution” in the past few years that has changed Americans’ attitudes towards gay people, gay marriage, and now is working towards changing attitudes about transgendered people, according to the NY Post’s Kyle Smith.

I don’t know why he calls it “silent,” though. It seems to me it’s been pretty loudly vocal. But I agree that it has occurred.

Smith mentions that one of the reasons it’s happened is that older and more traditionally-minded Americans are dying off. But he doesn’t focus on what’s been happening within the schools, which seems to me to be extremely important influence in shaping the minds of young people growing up today. However, he does single out popular entertainment as a huge factor, and with that I agree.

I say this as a person who tends to the libertarian side of things myself as far as gay marriage is concerned (as long as it’s left to the states; I’m not in favor of the courts imposing it as a federal matter and do not think it’s a right embodied in the Constitution). But as a person who also respects the views of Christians, I am deeply alarmed at the animus directed towards those who oppose gay marriage on religious grounds.

We tend to make light of popular entertainment—sitcoms, movies, reality shows. But they influence enormous numbers of Americans in ways both subtle and extreme. The battle for public opinion often begins there, and works on the public year after year after year until critical mass is reached. This is neither right nor wrong; it’s just a fact, one the right needs to think about and counter if it ever wants to reach the public, too.

That’s why reality shows such as Duck Dynasty and the Duggars are not only important, but important targets for the left. If Josh Duggar’s childhood sex offenses hadn’t existed, the forces arrayed against the Duggars would have found—and exposed—something else. People like the Robertson family or the Duggars, whose reality shows reach millions and offer an alternative (and Christian) point of view, must be discredited.

That’s why Lena Dunham’s and Josh Duggar’s childhood behavior were treated so very differently by the left. Dunham’s show furthers the narrative, the Duggars’ counters the narrative, so the first is okay and the second not okay.

[NOTE: By the way, my point of view about Lena Dunham and Josh Duggar’s sexual activities as youngsters is the same for both, expressed here and here.]

“Is Obama trying to sway the Supreme Court?”…

Posted on June 10, 2015 by neoJune 10, 2015

…asks Atlantic writer Russell Berman:

…[Obama’s] decision to champion his signature achievement in such pointed terms just weeks before the high court’s ruling is due raised the question of whether Obama was trying to jawbone the justices at the 11th hour.

…“It seems so cynical,” he said, “to want to take coverage away from millions of people; to take care away from people who need it the most; to punish millions with higher costs of care and unravel what’s now been woven into the fabric of America.”…

The speech came a day after the president, in response to a reporter’s question, commented directly on the case before the justices…”Under well-established precedent, there is no reason why the existing exchanges should be overturned through a court case,” Obama said. “This should be an easy case. Frankly, it probably shouldn’t even have been taken up,” he added…

[In 2012, Obama had] sharply warned the Court not to rule against his healthcare law the first time around. “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,” Obama said then.

So of course he’s trying to influence the Supreme Court; the question itself is rather absurd, because the answer is clear, despite Harvard law professor Charles Fried’s statement to the contrary, “I can’t imagine it’ll make any difference, and I can’t imagine he thinks it’ll make any difference.” Fried has a particularly impoverished imagination if he can’t imagine the latter, because Obama has made it crystal clear from the very first days of his presidency that he thinks his powers of persuasion (coupled, although unmentioned by him, with powers of arm-twisting and/or threats) are extraordinary. What’s more, it’s fairly clear from the way the opinions were written in Sebelius that something had persuaded Justice Roberts to change his mind at the last minute, whether it was mere persuasion, pressure, or (as some theorize) blackmail.

But persuading the justices (or one justice, which is what I think it boils down to) is only one motive for Obama’s words. Another motive is to undermine the public’s regard and respect for the Supreme Court—particularly when it disagrees with Obama, or when it takes away an entitlement of any sort that has been “woven into the fabric of America.” He’s not talking about the law there or an interpretation of the law, he’s saying that nothing once given can be taken away, and that the liberal/left agenda for America should be unstoppable no matter what the law says.

There’s more, too. When Obama speaks about SCOTUS he’s also donning the mantle of his “constitutional scholar” background, harking back to when he taught Con Law at the University of Chicago long ago. He has discussed that history enough that he assumes the listener will remember that he’s not just speaking as president but as someone who is supposed to be an expert on the matter. Of course, that doesn’t ever stop him from misstating the law, because in fact the “well-established precedent” about the interpretation of the wording of statutes (which is what King v. Burwell involves) tends to fall on the side of invalidating the federal subsidies, although there’s plenty of room for argument (there always is, with lawyers). But pretending that the law is obviously in favor of the Obama position is just that, pretense.

[NOTE: See this, this, and this, for examples of the legal arguments against Obama’s position.]

Racist police: the media shapes the message

Posted on June 9, 2015 by neoJune 9, 2015

Commenter “Ray” writes:

Black lives matter, except when they don’t. I live outside Washington DC and last weekend 10 people were shot and 10 knifed. What did the Washington Post have on the front page? A story and pictures of the white cop manhandling the black teen age girl at the pool party in the town outside Dallas. Another evil racist white cop victimizing blacks. The slaughter in DC didn’t matter because those people were shot and knifed by other blacks. The murder rate in Baltimore has reached unprecedented levels and nobody cares because it’s all black on black.

Anyone who thinks the MSM is passé isn’t paying attention. There is an influential loop whereby the MSM and liberal cable news stations feed into each other. Social media either starts the meme or picks up on it and follows it, amplifying and spreading the message. These groups decide what is important and what is not, and the masses (an appropriate word in this case because it’s a leftist word) generally follow.

Remember back in the summer of 2001 when the news was all about shark attacks? It was the vogue in what was a slow news season—pretty much the last slow news season we’ve seen since September of 2001. But did it reflect any actual increase in shark attacks? No (from John Stoessel):

Instead of putting risks in proportion, we [reporters] hype interesting ones. Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, and countless others called 2001 the “summer of the shark.” […] In truth, there wasn’t a remarkable surge in shark attacks in 2001. There were about as many in 1995 and 2000, but 1995 was the year of the O.J. Simpson trial, and 2000 was an election year. The summer of 2001 was a little dull, so reporters focused on sharks.

What’s going on now with the “racist white cops” meme is very, very different, because it’s not a result of a dull news season. Although we may be weary of some of the news (Obama and just about everything he says, danger from terrorists, Hillary’s corruption) it’s not that things are either slow or unimportant, it’s that they’re discouraging, disheartening, and repetitive. But although the racist cop meme almost certainly shares with the shark bites the fact that there is probably no increase in such incidents despite increased coverage, focus on them (unlike the sharks) is orchestrated towards a political goal: furthering the cause of the left.

It’s not that such incidents are made up. It would be very odd indeed if all cops were perfect, or perfectly wonderful, or non-racist. The question is how many or few of them behave this way, and what significance that has in the lives of black people compared to the violence that black Americans both perpetrate and encounter as victims—after all, most black criminals prey on those in their own community, and black parents wanting to raise successful and law-abiding children in the inner city ghettos have a tough road ahead of them with many obstacles along the way.

But it serves the purposes of both the Obama administration and the left to emphasize the negative, to make it seem as though racism runs rampant in police forces (even those with a large number of minority officers; it’s the “culture of racism” that somehow taints them, too), and to ultimately take control of those police forces after doing a study that shows racism based on the suspect theory of disparate impact. It serves their purposes to encourage black people to feel like perpetual victims, to make them even angrier about it, to convince them that big government is their only salvation—and to keep them voting for liberal Democrats.

[NOTE: This book by Heather MacDonald (which I’ve not read) sounds interesting. It’s called Are Cops Racist?, and it was written in 2010.]

This post is not about Hillary Clinton

Posted on June 9, 2015 by neoJune 9, 2015

It’s about collars.

The other day, Ann Althouse asked a question about this collar, which happens to have been worn by Hillary Clinton:

Can anybody explain Hillary’s giant-gaping-collar costume?

It’s like an old-fashioned satin blouse for a person with an insanely giant neck… perhaps the Incredible Hulk on a day when he’s feeling girly and is tired of the color green.

There were so many answers that a new thread was started to accommodate them. From Emil Jannings in “The Blue Angel” to Alan Shepard to Star Trek, they’re pretty funny.

The collar is rather unfortunate on Hillary, to be sure. But I think it’s a style that would be very hard to wear no matter who you are—unless you happen to be Jackie Kennedy or Audrey Hepburn, whom I think it really is meaning to hark back to.

Jackie K. and Audrey H. were not Everywoman, nor were they “of a certain age.” They could pull it off because they were slender and beautiful (I almost wrote “petite,” but that was wrong; both women were rather tall, Jackie 5′ 7″ and Audrey the same but even thinner). Both women had what was called “impeccable style”; they knew what looked good on them. And although just about anything looked good on them, they opted for a classic, timeless, elegant simplicity.

This is what I remember: