Oh, let’s not and say we did.
Milk-alkali syndrome is making a comeback
Our drive to be healthy can backfire. Witness the return—after a lengthy period of absence—of milk-alkali syndrome, now also known as calcium-alkali syndrome. In the past the ingestion of too much milk was part of its etiology, whereas now it’s often caused by taking too many calcium carbonate pills to prevent osteoporosis, sometimes combined with antacids and vitamin D supplements which exacerbate the problem.
The modern version of milk-alkali syndrome is now known as calcium-alkali syndrome. This evolution in terminology reflects the current pathogenesis of the disorder, which is related to excess calcium supplementation or calcium containing antacids…
Many of the patients reported consuming less than 2 g of elemental calcium per day in the form of calcium carbonate. With the caveat that self-reported calcium ingestion may not be accurate, the amount described is much lower than the usual minimum 4 g of calcium intake that was previously associated with the milk-alkali syndrome. The lower threshold for calcium intake associated with calcium-alkali syndrome may be due to increased vitamin D intake resulting in enhanced intestinal calcium absorption…
Whereas the traditional milk-alkali syndrome affected younger male patients with peptic ulcer disease, the demographics have changed to post-menopausal women, solid organ transplant recipients, pregnant women, bulimic patients, and those on dialysis. Post-menopausal women and solid organ transplant recipients are encouraged to take calcium supplementation along with vitamin D for the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis…
The syndrome is not innocuous. It can cause permanent kidney damage and even death. It originally arose as a consequence of a certain type of ulcer treatment in the early days of the 20th century; now it has returned as overzealous patients medicate themselves with tons of supplements in an effort to keep their bones healthy.
It’s not just the calcium, either, that causes it. It’s calcium and an alkali. Calcium carbonate, the most comment and cheapest form or calcium supplementation, manages to supply both at once. Calcium carbonate is also what Tums are made of, and often quite a bit of it. For example, each of these extra-strength Tums contains 400 mg. calcium. You can see how easy it would be to exceed the limit (especially the way some people pop Tums, and especially if a person was also taking calcium supplements). Pregnant women exhibit symptoms at a lower threshold, too. Note the instructions not to exceed 7 tablets in 24 hours, or 6 tablets in 24 hours for pregnant women. I bet a lot of people have no idea that the consequences of violating that caveat can be so severe.
Sharansky asks: when did America forget it was America?
I’m not sure whether the question is rhetorical or not:
The Obama administration apparently believes that only after a nuclear agreement is signed can the free world expect Iran to stop its attempts at regional domination, improve its human rights record and, in general, behave like the civilized state it hopes the world will recognize it to be.
As a former Soviet dissident, I cannot help but compare this approach to that of the United States during its decades-long negotiations with the Soviet Union, which at the time was a global superpower and a existential threat to the free world. The differences are striking and revealing…
Imagine what would have happened if instead, after completing a round of negotiations over disarmament, the Soviet Union had declared that its right to expand communism across the continent was not up for discussion. This would have spelled the end of the talks. Yet today, Iran feels no need to tone down its rhetoric calling for the death of America and wiping Israel off the map.
Sharansky seems to know the what, but not the when or the how or the deeper why:
I am afraid that the real reason for the U.S. stance is not its assessment, however incorrect, of the two sides’ respective interests but rather a tragic loss of moral self-confidence. While negotiating with the Soviet Union, U.S. administrations of all stripes felt certain of the moral superiority of their political system over the Soviet one. They felt they were speaking in the name of their people and the free world as a whole, while the leaders of the Soviet regime could speak for no one but themselves and the declining number of true believers still loyal to their ideology.
But in today’s postmodern world, when asserting the superiority of liberal democracy over other regimes seems like the quaint relic of a colonialist past, even the United States appears to have lost the courage of its convictions.
For those unaware of who Sharansky is, see this for his history as a noted Soviet dissident and current Israeli. He’s someone who knows a great deal about the value of Western democracy and culture. It must be very puzzling to him how the West managed to stand up to the Soviets and yet a mere quarter-century after the USSR’s fall cannot even stand up to a nation like Iran, and is capitulating voluntarily rather than being forced.
Or maybe he’s not puzzled. Maybe he has noticed the slow but steady (and steadily accelerating) Gramscian march through all the institutions that used to be the bedrock of Western civilization both here and in Western Europe: the schools, the church, the press. Maybe he recognizes the hand of the left, but can’t bear to acknowledge it. After all these years and all these fights—and all these victories—to surrender? His entire being must cry out: why?
It’s not an accident. And its crowning achievement was the election of Barack Obama, and particularly his re-election in 2012—which freed him up (as he told Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev in March of 2012) to have more flexibility. Obama is showing that “flexibility” now.
American voters showed their own lack of discernment and judgment when they supported Obama’s abandonment of traditional attitudes about our place in the world and how to negotiate with sworn enemies, as well as the use of force if necessary. But the vote was very very close (even closer if you think there was substantial cheating).
Did America vote for the Obama it sees now? I contend that most voters did not. I think most people feel shocked and powerless to stop Obama, however, and that’s part of the problem. To rely on Congress for that purpose is not exactly a winning proposition, but for the moment it’s the best we’ve got.
A look ahead to our withdrawal from Iraq
[NOTE: I happened across this post from 2006 when I was looking for something today. It struck me so forcibly—and sadly—that I thought it would be a good idea to publish it again. Note especially the prescient quotes from the David Warren article. I’ve also added some new observations of mine in brackets.]
Here’s another demonstration of the Law of Thirds (via Pajamas Media)
It’s a post by Bill Roggio that analyzes what the midterm election might mean in terms of future policy on the Iraq War. He cites STRATFOR analyst Fred Burton, who mentions polls suggesting that, whereas two-thirds of US citizens “disapprove” of the war in Iraq, only one-third seems to favor a full withdrawal of troops.
Polls are polls, of course, and subject to all sorts of criticism. In my training and experience as a social science researcher, I learned just how easy it is to find flaws in all such studies. However, I’ve also noticed–over and over–the Law of Thirds operating. And here it is again; only a third seem to advocate the most radical solution, while two-thirds are more moderate. Which group will be heeded by our new Congress? [NOTE 4/20/15: It turned out that Congress was not the branch of government making the pullout decision; it was Obama, against the advice of all his military advisors. But of course, he knew better than they.]
For myself, I can’t quite imagine answering “approve” to a question about the war. One can agree with the decision to go to war given the facts we had at our disposal and the alternatives. One can think things are going better there than the MSM regularly reports. I fall into both these categories, and yet even I would not have answered “approve” if polled–war is too terrible, and there are too many ways in which the war could have been executed better (or at least we think so, with the benefits of 50/50 hindsight and the knowledge that, since we have no authority to implement our suggestions, our thoughts on the matter will never be subjected to the harsh light of reality. )
Like most of the two-thirds who answered “disapprove” to that poll, I’ve had quarrels with the conduct of the aftermath. It started with a terrible disquiet I felt at the outset, when widespread looting occurred and was allowed to continue. It set a tone of anarchy and lawlessness when a crackdown would have sent a different message. Yes, I understand the troops were busy fighting a war and wanted to ingratiate themselves with a population that they thought was only giving vent to anger at Saddam. Yes, they wanted to avoid the appearance of an occupation. But it seemed to give the wrong message, which was that anything goes.
As I’ve said many times before, I never expected this war to be easy or short. Actually, I fully expected it to be much worse than it has been; both in terms of initial casualties, and the subsequent battle. Whether you want to call that subsequent battle an insurgency, guerilla war, civil war, or terrorist war, I expected it to go on for a long time and to cause a great deal of suffering, as all such conflicts do.
As for mistakes in planning, failure to anticipate future events, and whether the administration expected the war and its aftermath to be easy or difficult, I’ve written at some length, here and here, about these questions, including the “cakewalk” issue. Please read both pieces; I have no wish to reiterate what I said then. Suffice to say that it’s impossible to anticipate these things fully, and of course the administration did not.
What I never expected, however (and should have expected) was the way the media—and some Democrats and Republicans, just to be bipartisan—demonstrated a lack of knowledge of the nature of war and wars. We’ve been spoiled, both by our ideals (who doesn’t want a cleaner war, one in which hardly anyone gets hurt? Count me in on that one) and our recent history (the Gulf War as the template, rather than World War II).
There is no question that if we expect perfection and give up if the going gets hard, we will become unable to fight any war. Some would say that’s wonderful. If we give up on war, all will be peace and light. I say: tell it to the jihadis.
In a piece found at The Corner, a reader sounds a warning:
It seems to me that Americans believe wars end when we say they end. Whether we win (WWII), lose (Vietnam), or draw (Korea), our wars have ended when we said they ended. The defeated Germans, victorious North Vietnamese, or stalemated North Koreans never came after America when hostilities ended. But the jihadists are coming, no matter what happens in Iraq. Make no mistake..
Have we lost the will for any fight that’s difficult or at all uncertain, that takes longer than a few weeks, that involves ambiguities and unknowns? I think we have. I hope we have not.
I hope the words of David Warren aren’t true:
…in trying to build a secular democracy over the ruin of Saddam’s regime, the Americans tried something they had not the stomach for. From the outset, they imposed upon themselves restrictions that would make that fight unwinnable. As in Vietnam, they adopted a purely defensive posture.
So far as President Bush can be blamed, it should be for showing insufficient ruthlessness in a task that could not be accomplished by half-measures. Alternatively, for failing to grasp that America was psychologically unprepared for real war, not only by the memory of Vietnam, but by the grim advance of “liberal” decadence in domestic life over the generation since.
Read the whole thing. Read the whole thing. And then read it again. And then hope and pray that Warren is a lousy prognosticator:
If Iraq is abandoned, the credibility of America and the West is lost. Iran’s hopes of regional hegemony are assured. The Americans will have cut and run after enduring less than one-twentieth of the casualties they suffered in Vietnam; and from a battle more consequential, for it is against an Islamist enemy that is rising, instead of a Communist enemy in decline…
…the consequences of abandoning Iraq will come home to the United States and the West, in a way Vietnam never touched us.
[ADDENDUM: I don’t mean to imply that decisions in war ought to be made by reading polls. However, since the majority of Americans don’t appear to want an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, if the Democratic leadership thinks they do and acts on that supposition, they may find themselves out of office next time round.
Many people (even among those who don’t want an immediate pullout) seem to have lost touch with the difficulties and uncertainties, as well as the inevitable mistakes, that are part and parcel of any war, and demand that wars be easier and faster than they ever are. This means that many wars–and the Iraq war is among them–are fought with half measures, and with the knowledge that public opinion is fickle and that people don’t have the stamina for the long haul. This can lead to decisions that are not strategically sound, because of knowledge of the impatience of the public. And our enemies know that, and count on it, and act accordingly.]
[4/20/2015 new ADDENDUM added: Looking back at that David Warren article just now, I decided to add an excerpt from its conclusion:
It was a Democrat-controlled Congress that decided to sink free South Vietnam, by cutting off its supplies even of rifle ammunition after the peace treaty signed by Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho in 1973. It was Congress that ordered all U.S. bombing halted — air strikes that could have made mincemeat of the regular North Vietnamese army, marching openly along the South’s main highways in 1974. The U.S. never lost the war militarily, and could easily have won it without self-imposed restraints. But the enemy was more ruthless, and the allied will to fight evaporated…
My 21st birthday happened to coincide with the final evacuation of Saigon. From my modest experience on the ground in that country, I knew what was coming next. The boat people were no surprise to me. I think that was the day I fully realized, in adult terms, that evil often prevails in this world. So this is nothing new.
The fate that will befall all those millions of courageous Iraqis, showing the dye on their fingers after they had voted — in defiance of all the terror threats — will not come as a surprise to me, either. They are being sold out, as the Vietnamese were before them. But the consequences of abandoning Iraq will come home to the United States and the West, in a way Vietnam never touched us.]
On the immigration crisis and governments untethered from the people’s wishes
These days the US government—executive and legislative branches alike—doesn’t seem to be able to follow the will of the people to block unwanted and illegal immigration. The newspapers, the illegal immigration activists, and the Democratic Party won’t even let us use that word illegal. Not only that, they don’t seem to understand the word “legal” either, accusing opponents of illegal immigration of being against immigration in general. The left pretends to be unwilling or unable to make distinctions between the legal and illegal if it suits their purposes to ignore them.
But the inability of the government to stem the tide of illegal immigration is hardly limited to the US. It’s true in most of western Europe as well, and Italy is having a particularly acute problem with the refugees from Syria and Libya who are currently arriving in boats from those strife-filed, war-torn, terrorist-laden countries.
Italy and the entire west face a tremendous dilemma. On the one hand, there’s the humanitarian impulse to take in refugees from war, although this varies from country to country. A nation like Italy, which is geographically the closest to the African countries in question, has been especially hard-hit. Italy knows that the more people it welcomes, the more people will follow.
Who are these people? No one seems to be able to say for sure. My guess is that the majority of them are bona fide refugees, desperate to get out of those dreadful places. Wouldn’t you be? But some are not; some are likely to be terrorists or criminals or people otherwise up to no good. How to vet them? And what to do with them?
I was already drafting a post on this topic even before I read of the sinking of a Libyan boat loaded with 700 refugees, most of whom are presumed drowned. This is terribly sad in human terms, and ironic as well:
The boat is believed to have capsized when the migrants shifted to one side of the overcrowded vessel as a merchant ship approached.
“The first details came from one of the survivors who spoke English and who said that at least 700 people, if not more, were on board. The boat capsized because people moved to one side when another vessel that they hoped would rescue them approached,” said Carlotta Sami, a UNHCR spokeswoman.
You can read of calls from European leaders asking for safe corridors and a more welcoming response; that includes Pope Francis. You can also read of:
…calls to stop the boats from leaving and even to destroy them.
The leader of the anti-immigrant Northern League party, Matteo Salvini, called for an immediate naval blockade of the coast of Libya while Daniela Santanche, a prominent member of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party said Italy’s navy must “sink all the boats.”
Both sets of responses are understandable, and some version of both can definitely exist in the same person: sympathy as well as the desire to protect Europe from the influx of a vast number of traumatized, non-Western, mostly uneducated, third-world arrivals, some of whom may be terrorists and/or criminals and many of whom are devotees of an intolerant creed that neither understands nor supports human rights.
[NOTE: They’re not just fleeing to Italy and Europe, either. The rest of the Middle East has taken on a vast number, many now in refugee camps.
In the article on the boat sinking, I noticed arguments in the comments section between those who rightly pointed out that Obama bears no small responsibility for this mess and those who parried with “blame Bush!”]
Obama’s lies…
…are of no interest to the press.
Free the president from the bonds of Congress!
Wealthy financier and opinion writer Steven Rattner is a long-time mover and shaker in the Democratic Party, although he never held any political position in a Democratic administration until he became Obama’s auto czar for a while. How important have Rattner (and his wife, a former national financial chair of the DNC) been to the Democratic Party? This important:
…[T]he Rattners were””and are””considered to be among the very top Democratic Party benefactors, often holding lavish candidate fund-raisers at their palatial apartment at 998 Fifth Avenue, overlooking the Metropolitan Museum, and at their secluded 15,000-square-foot mansion on Martha’s Vineyard, to which Rattner flies regularly on a Dassault Falcon 2000 jet he pilots himself. Because they have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates around the country and to the party itself, they have been described as the “D.N.C.’s A.T.M.”
This Vanity Fair article is worth reading if you’re interested in more about Rattner, his wealth, his maneuverings, and his personal aspirations (a failed decades-long goal of becoming Treasury Secretary never came to fruition). This guy is about money and power, and he has had both. When he was appointed car czar, it seemed an odd choice (which I wrote about at the time) because he had no experience in the auto industry and knew little about the restructuring process.
So, why am I prattling on about Steven Rattner? He has written an op-ed for the NY Times that says that a “dsyfunctional” Congress should stop tying Obama’s hands. It is worth quoting:
Last week’s news from Washington: A dysfunctional Congress managed to function just long enough to bludgeon President Obama into ceding his prerogative to enter into an executive agreement with Iran regarding its nuclear program.
That’s unfortunate. I wish the president had had the votes to hang tough on this important right, in part because of the precedent it sets for future executive agreements and the pall it casts over his fight for the legality of his recent executive orders on immigration, climate change and other matters.
Note the hyperbolic violence of “bludgeon.” Note also the absence of any mention of the bipartisan nature of this terrible, unfair “bludgeoning” of Obama. Note also the acceptance of the notion that Obama has the right to enter into an “executive agreement” with Iran that is really a treaty of the type that traditionally and constitutionally has been the right of Congress, as well as his usurpation of the laws on immigration that are currently being challenged in the legal system.
Rattner doesn’t bother to confront the constitutionality of those things head-on, nor does he even mention the treaty/executive agreement distinction. He acts as though the inability to pass a law is a bad thing, and the ability to pass one is a good thing. Why should we have to wait for a bunch of people to agree on something, when we can get one person to simply order it? It’s so, so, so much simpler.
No great surprise that Rattner, with his history, would be in favor of greater and greater executive power. It’s especially no surprise since he’s been one of the earliest and strongest supporters of Hillary Clinton, and has raised an enormous amount of money for her in the past. If Hillary becomes president, Rattner stands an excellent chance of finally, after all these years, achieving his long-held ambition of becoming Treasury Secretary.
He closes his piece by saying that there should be greater presidential power whether the president is a Republican or a Democrat. But does anyone really think he’d be writing this op-ed if George Bush were president? I did a search for something like that in his output while Bush was president, and although it’s possible I missed something, I haven’t been able to find a word about it.
As I said, it’s not surprising that Rattner would be in favor of increased presidential power for Obama and presumably for Hillary. What is more depressing is to read the comments to his Times piece. I quit after growing weary of looking at them, but most of the commenters I saw seem to agree wholeheartedly with him.
I continue to conclude that very very few people seem interested in the Constitution, and very very many seem inclined towards being ruled by dictators.
And our dictators can’t even make the trains run on time.
[NOTE: None of Rattner’s history described in this post appears in the short blurb about him after his Times column, which reads “Steven Rattner is a Wall Street executive and a contributing opinion writer.” The reader could be forgiven for being completely unaware of his history and personal investment in the issue of executive power. The Times is certainly aware of it, however.]
Ramadi appears about to fall…
…and the Obama administration says it doesn’t matter much:
…Ramadi’s looming collapse has long been predictable. After all, it’s not exactly a secret that ISIS wants to control the arterial roads that connect central Syria with central Iraq (if you want to see the strategic importance of those highways, just look on Google maps). Neither is it a secret that ISIS wants to dominate the Euphrates river from northern Syria into central Iraq. Or that it wants to dismember the governance structures in Anbar province. Its strategy is vested in the domination of territory and the appropriation of Sunni populations under its banner…
The simple fact is that if Ramadi collapses, the Islamic State will symbolically and physically crown itself the ruler of Anbar. Propaganda being central to its strategic narrative ”” that which it uses to gain resources and recruits ”” the seizure of Ramadi would be an extraordinary victory. It would also be an extraordinary defeat for the struggling Iraqi government…
It is for these reasons that the administration’s downplaying of Ramadi’s significance is so galling. While General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has long been advising President Obama for more comprehensive action against the Islamic State, he’s wrong to suggest that Ramadi isn’t that important. It most certainly is. We should have been supporting (as I explained here) the Anbar tribes with military support and political empowerment for months now. But there’s also an American moral issue at stake here. A better future for Ramadi ”” that which it had before the Islamic State’s rise ”” was built with American sweat and blood. It was in Anbar that Marines fought so valiantly and so successfully to win the Sunni tribes to their side, and together crush al-Qaeda in Iraq.
But Tom Rogan, author of the above, is speaking to an administration that is deaf to his plea. It’s not that they don’t understand it, it’s that they (a) don’t much care; (b) are completely unwilling to commit to any action that would have a good chance of changing things, since it would be neither politically expedient nor in line with their philosophy; and (c) know that, except for the right, most Americans have accepted the narrative that it’s all Bush and the Republicans’ fault, so Obama and the Democrats won’t be left holding the bag.
The left’s plan to make Iraq into another Vietnam has succeeded. One big difference, though, is that although the fall of Vietnam to the Communists caused widespread suffering and bloodshed in that region of the world, and undermined our worldwide reputation for being able to follow through and win a lasting victory and lasting peace, the winners in Vietnam were not planning to come to America soon and commit mass murder here. ISIS is.
Wednesday was Holocaust Remembrance Day
Wednesday was Holocaust Remembrance Day. Netanyahu gave a speech in honor of the occasion:
Israel reserves the right to defend itself against a nuclear Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday night as he compared its regime with that of the Nazis in his address at the annual state Holocaust commemoration at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
“Even if we are forced to stand alone against Iran, we will not fear. In every circumstance we will preserve our right and our ability to defend ourselves,” Netanyahu said…
The fanatic regime in Iran is suppressing its own people, and its aggressive actions through the region have “drowned in blood” innocent people in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and the Golan border, he said.
“The Nazis sought to crush civilization and have a master race rule the Earth while destroying the Jewish people. In that same way, Iran seeks to dominate the region and to spread outward from there, with the declared intention of destroying the Jewish state,” he said.
Iran has a two-pronged plan of action, he said. The first is to develop its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capacity. The second is to use terrorism to take over large portions of the Middle East and to impose a Khomeini-style revolution, he said.
“This is clear to the naked eye,” he said. “This is all taking place in broad daylight in front of the cameras. And even so, there is still a great blindness,” he said…
“The determination that stemmed from the bloody lessons of 70 years ago have vanished and have been replaced today by the darkness and fog of reality,” he said.
“The civilized world has sunk into a coma” and is “lying on a bed of illusions,” he concluded.
I wish I could disagree with him. I find that I can’t.
Netanyahu added that he sees preventing another Holocaust as his responsibility. It does seem to be mostly on his shoulders, since the rest of the Western world appears to have abandoned Israel.
The details were different, but western Europe had abandoned Czechoslovakia at Munich in 1938:
Czechoslovakia was informed by Britain and France that it could either resist Nazi Germany alone or submit to the prescribed annexations. The Czechoslovak government, realizing the hopelessness of fighting the Nazis alone, reluctantly capitulated (30 September) and agreed to abide by the agreement. The settlement gave Germany the Sudetenland starting 10 October, and de facto control over the rest of Czechoslovakia as long as Hitler promised to go no further. On 30 September after some rest, Chamberlain went to Hitler and asked him to sign a peace treaty between the United Kingdom and Germany. After Hitler’s interpreter translated it for him, he happily agreed.
On 30 September, upon his return to Britain, Chamberlain delivered his infamous “peace for our time” speech to crowds in London.
Hitler wasn’t happy with the Munich Agreement, though. Some people are never satisfied. He wanted to be a military hero, and ultimately he made it his business to be one. However, he had come to a conclusion about Chamberlain and the rest of Europe:
Hitler was furious. He felt as though he had been forced into acting like a bourgeois politician by his diplomats and generals. He exclaimed furiously soon after the meeting with Chamberlain: “Gentlemen, this has been my first international conference and I can assure you that it will be my last”. Hitler now regarded Chamberlain with utter contempt. A British diplomat in Berlin was informed by reliable sources that Hitler viewed Chamberlain as “an impertinent busybody who spoke the ridiculous jargon of an outmoded democracy.
The Russians also took note of Munich, and learned their own lessons from it:
Joseph Stalin was also upset by the results of the Munich conference. The Soviets, who had a mutual military assistance treaty with Czechoslovakia, felt betrayed by France, who also had a mutual military assistance treaty with Czechoslovakia. The British and French, however, mostly used the Soviets as a threat to dangle over the Germans. Stalin concluded that the West had actively colluded with Hitler to hand over a Central European country to the Nazis, causing concern that they might do the same to the Soviet Union in the future, allowing the partition of the USSR between the western powers and the fascist Axis. This belief led the Soviet Union to reorient its foreign policy towards a rapprochement with Germany, which eventually led to the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939.
Some agreement. Some “peace.”
For a different Holocaust remembrance, read this.
And by the way, if you ever get a chance to see this extraordinarily excellent film, please do. There’s a trailer for the film at the link; it gives you a small idea of how good the film is, but it gives away some important plot elements. The film also makes it clear that the Poles suffered a great deal during the war, too, and that many of them were heroic and acted with great nobility of spirit.
It is not as universally known that Hitler planned to kill all the Poles after the Jews, and then most of the Slavs, too. The Jews were just the canaries in the mine, but he did succeed in making Europe pretty much Judenfrei. A significant number of the Jews of Europe today (in particular, France) are more recent refugees from Arab countries. Note the irony.
Rubio and the youth vote
John Hinderaker at Powerline notes that Rubio isn’t just young, he’s culturally youthful:
Not only is Rubio a knowledgeable sports fan, he actually listens to rap, hip-hop and similar abominations. Normally I wouldn’t think this sort of thing would impress young voters, but this TMZ video might suggest otherwise.
Watching the TMZ video at Powerline, I’d say it’s got a heavy dose of mockery, too. It’s understood that Rubio can’t be all that cool (or whatever the word is nowadays) if he’s a Republican.
Hinderaker also notes this:
I understand that TMZ, or another such outlet, also likes the fact that Rubio married a Miami Dolphins cheerleader. Qualifications for the presidency ”” they aren’t what they used to be.
Indeed, they are not. Or rather, the qualifications are still the same, but what the American public is attracted by and will vote for isn’t the same.
Of course, this isn’t quite new; think JFK versus Nixon. But the phenomenon accelerated with the candidacy of Barack Obama in 2008, and his re-election. Both campaigns pitted the young hip Obama against opponents who were about as unyoung and unhip as presidential nominees get, and Obama exploited those differences to the max. The GOP never understood his savvy ability to market himself to the young in venues the young like to watch.
Rubio might be able to exploit his own contrast with Hillary Clinton, with Clinton cast in the role of old and square, as well as white to Rubio’s Hispanic (although of course the Democrats will cast him as a “white” Hispanic, which means the “Hispanic” part doesn’t count).
Rubio also has a baby face, and looks young even for his age. In earlier years that probably would have counted against him in a presidential race, but these days it’s most likely an asset.
This sort of thing is the reason conservatives detest Jeb Bush
Actually, it’s just one of the many reasons. But it’s a pretty big one, IMHO:
Jeb Bush says that the Senate should confirm the nomination of Loretta Lynch, President Barack Obama’s choice for attorney general. A number of Senate Republicans oppose her nomination.
“I think presidents have the right to pick their team,” Bush said, according to reports of his stop at the “Politics and Pie” forum in Concord, New Hampshire, on Thursday night.
The former Florida governor made sure to get in a few digs at current Attorney General Eric Holder, saying that Republicans should consider that the longer it takes to confirm Lynch, the longer Holder stays.
Now, what’s wrong with Bush’s statement? Nothing much—that is, if it were the olden (pre-Bork) days. The Bork nomination in 1987 is often considered the beginning of the current hyper-partisan attitude towards nominations, be they Supreme Court or otherwise:
Within 45 minutes of Bork’s nomination to the Court, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) took to the Senate floor with a strong condemnation of Bork in a nationally televised speech, declaring,
“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens.”
A brief was prepared for Joe Biden, head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the Biden Report. Bork later said in his best-selling book The Tempting of America* that the report “so thoroughly misrepresented a plain record that it easily qualifies as world class in the category of scurrility”. TV ads narrated by Gregory Peck attacked Bork as an extremist, and Kennedy’s speech successfully fueled widespread public skepticism of Bork’s nomination. The rapid response of Kennedy’s “Robert Bork’s America” speech stunned the Reagan White House; though conservatives considered Kennedy’s accusations slanderous, the attacks went unanswered for two and a half months.
Note the players, including Joe Biden. Note, also, how flatfooted the Reagan administration was. They had an excuse, though; the no-holds-barred virulence of the attack was relatively new—not to American politics, which had had periods (even in its earliest days) in which that sort of thing was relatively commonplace, at least for political opponents. But it was new in the mid-Twentieth century, which had been marked by a more civil tone.
Jeb Bush appears to be living in that world—which would be nice, if the left, liberals, and the Democratic Party were still living in it, too. They are not—and the left never was.
It may just be that the biggest difference between the moderate Republicans who conservatives do not support and those they do is this: whether or not a candidate understands that the left is playing hardball. Bush isn’t bringing a knife to a gunfight; it’s worse than that. He’s bringing a peashooter to a gunfight.
[* NOTE: Bork’s book sounds like a good read.]
In Georgia, dance is a combat sport
Here’s a great rehearsal video of some Georgian (the Russian Georgia, not the US one) dancers [hat tip: commenter “g6loq”]. Usually they wear costumes that make it more difficult to see their bodies. It creates a nice illusion but hides their feats (not their feet) to a certain extent. You can see the full effort that creates the pyrotechnics here
And ordinarily when they’re doing this stuff, at least some of them are holding—and throwing—knives. Real ones, as far as I can tell.
One of ballet choreographer George Balanchine’s (also a Georgian, by the way) famous sayings was “ballet is woman.” He was expressing his own thoughts as a heterosexual man, as well as a genius choreographer. I beg to differ; there’s a big big place for men in ballet, and not just as porters. But yes, there is something about ballet that particularly highlights the grace and line of the woman. Ballet is not egalitarian, either; the differences in the male and female bodies and what they do best in terms of movement and expression is profound, and ballet exploits them rather than hiding them.
If ballet is woman, though, Georgian dance is even more man. The video makes that crystal clear, I think. Dancing is not an effeminate pursuit; in most cultures, au contraire. It’s one of the ways men show their bravery, daring, strength, virility, power, you name it. And these Georgian guys? They’ve got “it” to the nth degree, and they flaunt it.