The history of Obama’s historical ignorance

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an interesting piece in Commentary by Seth Mandel on Obama’s ignorance of history. It’s part of the old “knave/fool” dilemma that’s been discussed so much already on this blog. Although the article emphasizes the “fool” aspect in regard to historical knowledge, it does not ignore the “knave” part either, when Mandel writes: “We talk a lot about the defects of the president’s ideology, but not about his ignorance. The two are related…”

Obama’s historical ignorance is so widespread as to be, in Mandel’s word, “comprehensive.” Some specific areas Mandel lists are Putin’s resume, the basis for Israel’s claim to its territory, and the Crusades.

Obama’s historical ignorance was one of the first things I noticed about him. I wrote a post about it back in May of 2008, before he was elected. It’s interesting and revealing to me to look back now, with so much more information about Obama, and read what I wrote at the time:

I have long lamented the decline of the teaching of history and of critical thinking. One can be a highly intelligent intellectual today and know almost nothing about either.

This is where it’s led us. A Democratic nominee this ignorant, and a populace who can’t tell the difference.

Obama is the least qualified serious contender for the Presidency from either party that I can recall in my lifetime.

The word “this” links back to a piece at Hot Air discussing the fact that Obama had said that Iran doesn’t “pose a serious threat to us in the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us.” Note the subject matter of the error here: denial that Iran is a serious threat, a denial that has been consistent to this day.

I now believe that the “knave” factor in Obama’s view of Iran was much greater than the “fool” factor, and that he denies Iran’s leaders’ intentions and character not necessarily through ignorance but because he has made up his mind to favor Iran. This preference for Iran—you might even call it a “pro-Iran” stance—has become more and more apparent lately to more and more people; there’s been a flurry of recent articles on the subject. But it is not a recent development, not at all; it simply has become more obvious to more people.

What Obama actually said back then was that Iran was less of a threat than the USSR had been because Iran is tiny compared to the Soviet Union, a statement so odd that I wrote another piece on the subject. I began this way:

I used to think it might be a good thing for Obama to continue to make egregious errors. It would allow people to see his feet of clay and to understand the dangers of his naive and uninformed views.

But, as he’s made goof after goof and none of his myriad supporters””including his enablers in the MSM””seem to notice or care, it’s become more frightening. Now I’m hoping he smartens up, but fast””especially if he wins the election.

The post was entitled, “Obama’s ignorance: this is getting scary,” and it was written on May 20, 2008, quite early in the game. I’m not pointing out any of these old quotes of mine to say how perceptive and far-seeing I was, because I don’t think what I noticed was difficult to see. Actually I think it was (or should have been) easy to see, and I made it clear in that piece that I had hoped and expected that a large number of voters would notice and that it would matter.

I was wrong about that part. As the British poet Philip Larkin wrote after WWI, “never such innocence again.” We’ve all learned quite a bit from Obama’s presidency, and much of it hasn’t even been about Obama.

To get back to Mandel’s article—it seems to me that his emphasis is incorrect. Yes, Obama is historically ignorant (or at least seems to be; one never knows whether it’s a pose and he really knows the truth but is just misrepresenting it to the public in order to sway them to his preferred position). But if he is ignorant, the reason for it is not just that he was poorly educated in these subjects, although I believe that is true, and true of many educated people today. It’s not even a general lack of motivation on his part, as in laziness; Obama is quite motivated in some areas. I believe it isn’t even just his own arrogance about being the smartest person in the room, although that’s certainly how he feels. Nor is it the fact that he likes to choose advisors who are admiring yes-men and yes-women, quite a few of whom share a similar lack of historical curiosity.

I think the most important reason for his historical ignorance is that Obama has an agenda—or, as Mandel puts it “defects in ideology.” It is his ideology that drives this, combined with the ignorance, arrogance, etc.. But the ideology comes first, because if you have a firm belief that you want to favor Iran, for example, and that belief has been held for a long, long time, and most of your moves as president have been predicated on that belief (and you also happen to think you’re incredibly brilliant), what possible motivation would you have to seek out or listen to information that contradicts what you think you know?

I’ve written a great deal on this blog about how difficult it is to take in new information and change your mind. This is true even for people far less arrogant, far less invested, and far less ideologically driven than Obama. You have to be open to the fact that you were wrong, and curious about truth, in order to learn and change in that way. Obama is neither. His ideology is set in stone and would be resistant to new information even if it happens to come his way.

Illegals and amnesty: loopholes, schmoopholes

The New Neo Posted on by

If there anyone on earth who is surprised at this news?:

President Obama’s temporary deportation amnesty will make it easier for illegal immigrants to improperly register and vote in elections, state elections officials testified to Congress on Thursday, saying that the driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers they will be granted create a major voting loophole.

While stressing that it remains illegal for noncitizens to vote, secretaries of state from Ohio and Kansas said they won’t have the tools to sniff out illegal immigrants who register anyway, ignoring stiff penalties to fill out the registration forms that are easily available at shopping malls, motor vehicle bureaus and in curbside registration drives.

The article contains quotes from various Democrats with the usual “no one will actually do this so there’s nothing to worry about” as well as the “oh, they could already do it anyway” routine. Yes, of course, people who’ve been here illegally for years with all that implies wouldn’t risk breaking the law! And certainly no one would ever offer them money to do this, either! Not to mention those who might actually think that their new status confers on them the bona fide right to vote.

Is this really an unintended “loophole” through which the purpose of the law can be evaded? No, no, a thousand times no. It is a feature rather than a bug as far as Obama and the Democrats are concerned. There was and will be no effort to make it difficult for illegals to vote, although this could have been easily done. The fact that the secretaries of state “don’t have the tools to sniff out illegal immigrants who register” is no accident whatsoever; they have been purposely kept from having them by Democrats.

Not sure, though, whether the following are unintentional loopholes or not. But I doubt they are anything that Obama is upset about. They are things that would probably have been ironed out if these laws had been passed by Congress, but of course that was never going to happen, and so Obama took up his pen and phone and didn’t bother with all those pesky details (or was actually pleased with those details):

…[There is] a perverse incentive created by Obamacare that would make newly legalized workers more attractive to some businesses than American workers and complications with the tax code.

The newly legalized workers can apply for back refunds from the IRS even for years when they didn’t file their taxes, agency Commissioner John Koskinen told Congress on Wednesday.

Mr. Koskinen [of the IRS] said the White House never spoke with him about potential consequences before Mr. Obama announced his policy changes. The secretaries of state who testified to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Thursday said they too never heard from Mr. Obama ahead of time.

The MSM (and his party, of course) lets Obama get away with this sort of thing, so it reinforces the behavior because there have been no serious consequences.

The last paragraph of the article is of some interest, too:

Only four states require proof of citizenship before someone registers to vote, Mr. Kobach said. And even in those states, the federal government offers voter registration cards that don’t require proof of citizenship, giving determined illegal immigrants a way to circumvent checks.

Wonderful.

The comments section of the article features a lot of angry conservatives demanding that the newly-elected GOP DO SOMETHING!!! My response is that, even if the Republicans were united on what to do (which they are not), their options without a 2/3 majority in the Senate to override a veto (or to convict if impeached) are limited, and involve government shutdowns or defunding Homeland Security or similar moves that remain highly unpopular with the American public although popular with conservatives. Obama was always highly confident that not only did the Republicans lack the will to stop him, but that even if they could muster the will the majority of the American people would back him in any sort of standoff.

You or I may think the GOP should do it anyway, but you can’t pretend it’s not a very real and very difficult dilemma for them, even for those who want to stop Obama’s amnesty.

[NOTE: One thing Republicans can do that’s not directly related but is somewhat related is to pass a strong border security bill. Of course, Obama would either veto it or make sure it’s not enforced. But they need to do it anyway.]

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

There is a lot of other news today but I’ve run out of time to write about it right now, so here’s a roundup:

A ceasefire in Ukraine—for the moment (see also this).

Chris Cuomo shows his ignorance of a very basic premise of the Declaration of Independence. I would wager his point of view has become very, very common.

Rep. Brooks of Alabama suggests the GOP eliminate the filibuster on spending bills, just as the Democrats eliminated it for judicial nominations. There is no question in my mind that the Democrats would do it in a heartbeat—in fact, will do it next time they come to power and it gets in their way. Performed now, the action would get the GOP out of a current bind, allowing them “to pass a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security while simultaneously revoking President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.” I predict they won’t do it, though.

They’re starting to be afraid of Tom Cotton

The New Neo Posted on by

Which means it’s time to up the attacks on him at the national level.

Here’s one way it will go: “Sarah Palin with a Harvard degree.”

Interesting. Unquestionably, one of the approaches to Scott Walker (who also frightens the left) is and will remain the fact that he has no college degree. Cotton most definitely has one, and from an Ivy League school of sterling reputation at that (as did that stupidhead George W. Bush). But Cotton’s Harvard degree will be paired with comparisons to Sarah Palin, with the insinuation that you can’t put Ivy League lipstick on a pig.

[NOTE: I wrote about Cotton here.]

I’m having cell phone transition angst

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I got a new cell phone, something I’d been meaning to do for months.

My old one had essentially died. The battery was losing power at an alarming clip, but that wasn’t even the biggest problem. The thing that forced my hand was that recently the little thingee into which you plug the charger wasn’t working any more. This meant that, unless I spent a ton of money to fix my old phone (not worth it; probably almost as much as a new phone would cost), the charge that phone had right now would be its very last.

So yesterday was the big day. I went into the store thinking I’d go from my Samsung Galaxy S3 to an iPhone6, but in the end I walked out with the Galaxy S5, for a number of reasons that seemed very reasonable in the store and probably are, at least theoretically. In addition, I had the weak hope that the transition would be easier because a Galaxy is a Galaxy is a Galaxy.

Right? Well, it might be right. But that doesn’t make any sort of change in technology easy for a techno-naif like me.

As the young guy in the store who waited on me said, in an effort to be reassuring: Don’t feel bad; you’re by no means the worst I’ve ever seen.

Well, I know that; I know some 100-year-old ladies, too. But I can’t hold a candle to your average 12-year-old—or even 21-year-old or 30-year-old, whose hands seem made to hold and manipulate a phone at the speed of light.

For me, the transition process yields headaches, literal and metaphoric. Samsung might call both the S3 and the S5 “Galaxy,” and they have strong resemblances to each other, but the road to “new, improved!” involves some pretty hefty changes.

I am now engaged in the process of assimilating those changes. The time spent (and wasted in fruitless searching) is extraordinary. Going back to the cell phone store to ask that nice young man for help is good in theory but not in practice. For starters, it’s a long drive. More importantly, I don’t yet know what I don’t know, and I need to know the right questions to ask before I can get the answers. So I will be watching some of those hour-long tutorials on YouTube and hoping they do the trick. Unfortunately, they tend to be geared to those who are already pretty sophisticated at this sort of thing—in other words, your average young person.

Meanwhile, patience is the word of the day—a trait of mine that’s gotten weaker over time.

Jews and politics

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s an old and un-PC saying coined by Jewish sociolographer and neocon Milton Himmelfarb:

Jews earn like Episcopalians, and vote like Puerto Ricans.

Commenter “John Dough” may or may not be aware of Himmelfarb’s barb, but he has a related question when he observes:

I continue to be amazed at the American Jewish community continued support for the liberal position. This Islamic sympathizing president is doing his best to foment another holocaust. Quoting from “Back to the Future” ”¦”¦ “Hello, is anybody home”?

Himmelfarb was speaking more of personal economics vs political affiliation; J. Dough was referring to a more existential dilemma. But the basic question is the same: why are Jews liberals?

The question is so puzzling, and the answer so complex, that another neocon—Norman Podhoretz—wrote an entire book on the subject a few years ago. It’s on my list of “must-reads,” but I’m sorry to say I haven’t gotten around to it (the list is long). The Amazon blurb mentions that it was the question Podhoretz was asked most often in his long career, and I can well believe it.

I said I have not read the book, but I’m pretty sure it’s well worth reading (Podhoretz usually is). From the descriptions at Amazon, it seems he’s saying that Jews historically supported liberalism because it favored the end of persecution, and that originally Democrats were big supporters of Israel. That ended quite some time ago, as did the pro-Israel stance of the left—or, as, Ruth Wisse put it in her review of his book, “Part of the answer comes in [Podhoretz’s] survey of the historical connection between the Jews and liberalism, the rest in his up-to-date analysis of how liberalism became a proxy for Judaism.”

That last phrase (“liberalism became a proxy for Judaism”) is, in my opinion, the key. My answer to John Dough and anyone who would ask the question he asked is that most (not all) of the Jews who support the left politically are Jews in the ethnic and perhaps cultural but not the deeply religious sense (I’ve already discussed the phenomenon of “Jews who are not Jews” here).

Religious Jews have very different politics. In fact, they tend to be Republicans:

Politically, Orthodox Jews are far more conservative than other Jews. For example, 57% of Orthodox Jews describe themselves as Republicans or say they lean toward the Republican Party, while 36% are Democrats or lean Democratic. Among Jews as a whole, the balance tilts strongly in the other direction: 70% of Jews overall are Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party, while just 22% are Republican or lean Republican.

Orthodox Jews, however, are in the minority among American Jews. Some statistics here:

[A 2003 Harris] survey found that of the 4.3 million strongly connected Jews, 46% belong to a synagogue. Among those households who belong to a synagogue, 38% are members of Reform synagogues, 33% Conservative, 22% Orthodox, 2% Reconstructionist, and 5% other types…

The 2008 American Religious Identification Survey found that around 3.4 million American Jews call themselves religious out of a general Jewish population of about 5.4 million [some claim the Jewish population in the US is actually a million more than that, depending on how you define it]. The number of Jews who identify themselves as only culturally Jewish has risen from 20% in 1990 to 37% in 2008, according to the study.

If you add Reform Jews to non-religious Jews, you get over 54% (by my admittedly speedy calculations). That says a lot right there. Particularly for the non-religious Jews (37% of the total), and also for many Reform Jews (38% of the observant 46%, or 17%), identification with Israel is low. In fact, many Jews have absorbed the prevailing leftist idea that after the Six-Day War Israel made some sort of change that meant it was no longer on the side of good but had turned into something bad (we won’t get into the specifics here, but that was a turning point where the left began to see Israel as a colonizer and exploiter rather than a nice noble socialist nation).

You might wonder why these Jews don’t understand that in an atmosphere of growing anti-Semitism they, too, would be at risk. The capacity of the human being for denial is large, and secular Jews in particular have a tendency to think this couldn’t or wouldn’t happen to them. They feel quite secure in their ability to demonize Israel because they do not identify strongly with it or its fate.* In the words of Mitchell Bard, “Jews have devoted themselves to politics with almost religious fervor.” Some of that fervor is the fervor that used to be given to religion itself.

[* NOTE: In another survey, even many so-called “religious” Jews are mostly secular:

…62% [of Jews surveyed] say being Jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry and culture, while just 15% say it is mainly a matter of religion. Even among Jews by religion, more than half (55%) say being Jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry and culture…

More details here

”¢ 61 percent of American Jews agree that “there a way for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully. Compare this to 50 percent of the American public.

Ӣ The biggest supporters of a two-state solution are secular Jews (72 percent), Conservative Jews (62 percent) and Reform Jews (58 percent).

”¢ The biggest skeptics are Orthodox Jews (30 percent) and white Evangelical Christian (42 percent)…

”¢ 60 percent of Jews say they approve of Obama’s policy toward Israel. This is highest among Jews over 65 (at 66 percent) and Reform Jews (65 percent). Conservative Jews are also supportive (60 percent), with secular Jews a touch less so (54 percent).

”¢ Support is lowest among Christian groups; 38 percent of American Christians support Obama’s Israel policy, including just 26 percent of white Evangelical Christians.

”¢ The most critical Jewish group is Orthodox Jews, 36 percent of whom approve of Obama’s approach to Israel…

”¢ Pew came up with nine different traits commonly associated with Jewish identity and asked Jewish respondents to answer whether each is “essential to being Jewish.” Among those nine traits, “caring about Israel” was the fifth most likely to be selected. 43 percent called this essential.

”¢ Traits more likely to be considered “essential to being Jewish” than caring about Israel, from most to least popular: Remembering the Holocaust, leading an ethical and moral life, working for justice/equality, being intellectually curious.

Ӣ Among religious Jews, 49 percent called caring about Israel an essential Jewish trait. It still ranks fifth for this group.

”¢ Among secular Jews, only 23 percent called caring about Israel an essential Jewish trait. It ranks sixth, behind “having a good sense of humor.”

It’s very telling, I think.

I would add that most American Jews live in the strongly liberal enclaves of New York City and Los Angleles. These cities are liberal in part because they have so many Jews, of course, but there are plenty of other US cities without such huge Jewish populations that are just as strongly liberal. It is highly possible that the Jews of NY and LA are so strongly liberal for many of the same reasons that the non-Jewish populations in large urban coastal centers are so strongly liberal.]

It’s what Obama didn’t say

The New Neo Posted on by

We’re very used to Obama denying that the Muslim religion has any connection with terrorism. But in the president’s interview with Matt Yglesias of Vox he also declined to state the obvious fact that in the Paris grocery attack the victims were selected because they were Jewish.

Obama’s verbal gymnastics around this were so awkward that they caused widespread comment as well as puzzlement and criticism. Here’s what he said:

It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you’ve got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.

In the conflagration that has ensued, instead of merely saying “of course the president knows they were targeted because they were Jews,” spokespeople Josh Earnest and Jen Psaki first spent some agonizing minutes (there are videos) trying to claim the grocery shooting really was “random,” and then ultimately tweeting that of course the shooting was anti-Semitic and that the administration has always said that.

And they are correct that the State Department has been saying that for quite some time. But not Obama, curiously enough. In fact, the only time Obama referred to anti-Semitism as a motive in the attack (at least that I could locate, and I tried pretty hard) was in this short press release that was written rather than spoken, and sent to the UN on the occasion of a conference specifically on the topic of anti-Semitism. It mentions the attack as an example.

The word in the Yglesias interview that seems to have garnered all the fuss is “random,” and Earnest and Psaki spent a good deal of their efforts on explaining how the victims were randomly chosen among the customers in the grocery store (some have referred to it as a “deli,” as the president did, but I’m going with “grocery store” because that’s what it seems to have actually been). That seems an odd point—that they weren’t called out by name and assassinated—but even their randomness is in question.

Reports are that at least two of the victims were chosen by the terrorist Coulibaly from among the hostages because those two had performed particularly heroic actions:

Yohan Cohen, aged 22, and Yoav Hattab, aged 21, were hailed as heroes by their fellow hostages, as they were murdered by Coulibaly while seeking to overcome him and free the other hostages in the store. Coulibaly reportedly abandoned one of his weapons on a counter-top in the store as he entered, after it had jammed. After Coulibaly proceeded to threaten a customer with a small child at the beginning of the attack, Cohen, an employee, attempted to grab the abandoned weapon with the help of Hattab, and take down Coulibaly. When the malfunctioning gun jammed on Cohen at that moment, Coulibaly shot Cohen in the head, and then proceeded to shoot Hattab.

But I think it’s wrong to nitpick over the word “random”—although the attack, in a kosher grocery on Friday, right before the Sabbath when most observant Jews would be shopping in preparation for the holiday, and in which the killer specifically stated he targeted Jews, was clearly not random. What is more important is what Obama didn’t say. After all, how hard is it to use the words “kosher” or “Jewish” or “anti-Semitism”to describe the attack? These things are clear and obvious; you have to go out of your way to create weird constructions in order to not use the words.

So it wasn’t the word “random” that was such a problem, although it appeared to be at first glance. It was the absence of the word “Jew” or something of the sort. To illustrate my point, do a thought experiment: if Obama had said “randomly shoot a bunch of Jews in a deli in Paris,” would there have been a similar hue and cry? I doubt it, because we would have known just what he meant. It was the use of the word “random” combined with the absence of any words like kosher or Jewish, and the strange phrase “bunch of folks.” The sidestepping is extreme enough—and consistent enough (I have been unable to locate a single spoken statement in which he mentions Jews or Jewishness or anti-Semitism in connection with the attack)—as to seem an intentional avoidance on Obama’s part.

So–why can’t Obama say the obvious?

Here are the possibilities: (1) Obama doesn’t want to stir up any sympathy for Jews, either for geopolitical reasons involving his antipathy for Israel, or because he really is anti-Semitic (2) The more he identifies Jews as the intended victims, the more people will link the terrorists with religious motivations involving Islam, which he wants to discourage (3) He is so in the habit of using obfuscatory speech about religion for Islamic terrorists that phrases like “a bunch of folks,” and the leaving out of the word “kosher,” are nearly-reflexive and automatic edits of religious content (he lacks a similar reluctance when speaking of Christianity and the Crusades, of course).

At the time of the kosher supermarket killings, Jonathan S. Tobin wrote in Commentary:

Not mentioning anti-Semitism when Islamist killers specifically seek out Jews to slaughter ”” as if anyone could possibly believe a terrorist assault on a kosher market in Paris could be mere happenstance ”” is more than insensitive. It is a sign that this administration does not take the many attacks on French and European Jews seriously. It is also a message to the Muslim world that the United States does not take the issue of anti-Semitic violence seriously. To his credit, French President Francois Hollande did specifically condemn the attack as an act of anti-Semitism, a statement President Obama should have echoed.

Obama’s Yglesias interview signals that his attitude and message has not changed in the month since Tobin wrote those words. I submit that it is unlikely to change.

On the death of Kayla Mueller and ISIS propaganda

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t for a moment think that Jordanian air strikes caused the death of Kayla Mueller, as ISIS has claimed. But even if such air strikes had been the cause, the full responsibility for her death would still lie with ISIS, the group that kidnapped her and placed her in that position.

Let’s assume, though, that ISIS murdered her, and probably quite some time ago. This would be consistent with their behavior so far towards other American hostages. What is inconsistent, however, is their not using a film of the process for propaganda purposes.

So—understanding that this is all highly speculative—I’ve wondered why they would not have done the same with Mueller’s death as they have with the murders of her hostage predecessors. In other words, why no video? Here are some possibilities:

(1) It’s a different branch of ISIS with a different m.o..

(2) ISIS is beginning to think these videos are backfiring. Either they’re not helping with recruitment, or there is new fear that they will arouse a response like the Jordanian one, which took them by surprise and has inflicted harm.

(3) ISIS has no reluctance to enslave, rape, murder, or torture women. But I don’t recall them releasing any propaganda videos of the beheading or burning of a woman so far. Unless I’m forgetting something, all the hostage murder videos up to this point have been of men. It may be that ISIS has decided recently that there would be a backlash against a similar Mueller video because she was a woman, and that therefore the best propaganda use of her death would be to try to blame it on the Jordanians.

When the Nazis committed horrendous and sadistic crimes against innocents, they usually considered it best to perform these acts in relative secret because they felt it could inflame their own population against them. Of course, some of the knowledge of concentration and death camps seeped out, but there was an effort to hide them from the German people as much as possible rather than to flaunt them, and although the Nazis even did some filming of these things it was not for public dissemination or propaganda. It is not a sign of human progress that the sadists of ISIS now consider it a good idea to broadcast the murders they commit, the more torturous the better, in order to attract those of like mind.

[NOTE: This article claims that ISIS “sentenced” Mueller to death last year.]

Smiley face in space

The New Neo Posted on by

Wow. Just wow:

smiley

What is causing the illusion? Something as marvelous as the face itself:

In this case, the cosmic “face” is actually caused by a neat galactic phenomenon as well: gravitational lensing. Large galaxy clusters sometimes produce such a strong gravitational pull that they warp the time and space around them. This can be a great thing for scientists on Earth, because that warping can act as a natural “lens” and magnify faraway objects behind the clusters, making them more visible to space telescopes. But the magnification also warps the objects.

The ring that makes up the “face” is called an Einstein Ring, and it’s produced by a very particular view of one such warped galactic cluster. Another line of warping forms a lopsided smile.

Inside the ring, two bright galaxies are perfectly positioned as eyes, completing the illusion.

Kayla Mueller’s death announced

The New Neo Posted on by

ISIS has been holding American aid worker Kayla Mueller hostage, but her death has just been confirmed by President Obama.

It is unclear how many details the government knows. But as yet the public doesn’t know how she died, when she died, or what proof of her death was provided.

Although ISIS claims that Jordanian air raids were responsible, that is both unlikely and irrelevant, the latter because ISIS is responsible no matter what the mode and agency of her actual death.

Kayla Mueller was 26 years old, a well-traveled activist and idealist who had worked for many causes (AIDS, domestic abuse) and who was motivated by the plight of the Syrian people to work there, too. She had been kidnapped in Syria while “working along the Turkish-Syrian border with a group from Doctors Without Borders”:

On the morning that she was supposed to catch a bus in Aleppo for the return to Turkey she became one of “the disappeared.” And for all these months, from the summer of 2013 to last week, her parents along with a few family friends and the United States government wondered, worried, and worked at gaining her release; that, every hour of every day.

That’s a very long time and a lot of suffering. My heart goes out to them for what they have endured and are still enduring.

Not only is the mode of Mueller’s death unclear as yet (although the government may have gotten some information on that), but the time of it is unknown as well. It may even have occurred a while ago and ISIS was just waiting for a propitious moment to capitalize on her death with some propaganda, and saw its opportunity in the Jordan raids. If so, I doubt very much they will succeed in convincing anyone that Jordan is to blame.

RIP, Kayla Mueller.

[ADDENDUM: Mueller’s family has released a touching letter she wrote to them from captivity.

The full text is even more profoundly touching. This was an extraordinary young woman.]

Axelrod admits Obama lied, nation yawns

The New Neo Posted on by

David Axelrod has made an admission in his new book:

Barack Obama misled Americans for his own political benefit when he claimed in the 2008 election to oppose same sex marriage for religious reasons, his former political strategist David Axelrod writes in a new book, Believer: My Forty Years in Politics.

“I’m just not very good at bullshitting,” Obama told Axelrod, after an event where he stated his opposition to same-sex marriage, according to the book.

Axelrod writes that he knew Obama was in favor of same-sex marriages during the first presidential campaign, even as Obama publicly said he only supported civil unions, not full marriages. Axelrod also admits to counseling Obama to conceal that position for political reasons. “Opposition to gay marriage was particularly strong in the black church, and as he ran for higher office, he grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a ”˜sacred union,’ ” Axelrod writes.

So, let’s recap. Axelrod admits that (a) Obama lied (b) mainly to his religious black supporters (c) about not only his opposition to gay marriage, but about his religious beliefs (d) in order to win election. And then he lied about his change of heart, which was no change at all but a strategic move. And Axelrod admits this in a book called, ironically Believer (I haven’t read the book, but from the title it appears the “believer” is Axelrod as a political animal).

I contend that this changes nothing, and that the lack of change is a mark of the deep cynicism of the American public. For the most part Obama’s supporters will applaud (and many are already doing so, if the comments on this blog are any example). Good on him, if it helped him get elected! is a common reaction, as well as approval that his heart was always in the right place. His critics care—especially because he lied about his religious beliefs, a matter of principle—but this is only just one more offense of Obama’s, and not a surprising one at that.

Many of Obama’s critics either already supported gay marriage in 2008, or have come to support it since 2008, or have come to accept that gay marriage is here to stay whether they support it or not (or will be here to stay when SCOTUS takes it up). Gay marriage, pro or con, is not the issue here. Lying about a material fact, and especially about religious beliefs, in order to deceive the American public—that is the issue.

Over the years Americans have become cynical about lying presidents. Some date that cynicism—or at least a great leap forward for that cynicism—to the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal and the fact that Clinton survived it. The left, of course, says “Bush lied” about WMDs, but the right points out that Bush relied on intelligence reports around the world that were mistaken, and that is different than a lie, and that a lie would have been wrong.

The case of Obama and gay marriage is different in several ways. There is no question this was a lie, a falsehood told for political gain about a matter of principle, and the people Obama intended to fool were among his most fervent supporters—black voters. And yet I predict it will make hardly a ripple now.

Axelrod quotes Obama as having told Axelrod “I’m just not very good at bullshitting.” Perhaps Obama didn’t say it, and perhaps it’s just Axelrod’s way of presenting him now as having been sincere in the middle of his lying—as a reluctant, poor liar and therefore really a truth-teller in his heart, with a noble cause. Or perhaps Obama really did say it—but if so he was lying (or mistaken, or too modest) about that because he’s actually an excellent bullshitter.

But he was correct about one thing: he was not such a good bullshitter about that particular topic. I’m not sure how many people Obama’s original lie really convinced at the time he first told it. My guess is that it was enough people to make the lie worth his while to tell.

It occurs to me, watching this video of Obama stating his religious opposition to gay marriage in 2008 at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, that another group of people Obama may have fooled at the time (besides the black churchgoers Axelrod cited) were a fair number of white evangelicals who then went on to vote for him.

You be the judge of how good a bullshitter he was on this issue:

Obama admitted long ago that for many people he acted as a blank screen on which they projected their own views. But the screen isn’t always so blank. He has often carefully projected on that screen whatever he thinks might be a pragmatic image of himself at the time he says it.

Most politicians do that to a certain extent, but Obama does it to a greater degree, and he has become much more open about the fact that he lies, because he realizes that most of America just doesn’t seem to care. This seems relatively new, and bodes ill for the future of the country, because the less we demand of our politicians the less we will get.

[NOTE: I haven’t seen any reactions from the black religious community yet, but it’s possible they might be quite displeased at this news. It’s one thing to change your mind on something; it’s another to lie to religious people about your religious beliefs.]