I think in all the holiday hullabaloo I forgot to write a post thanking everyone who made a purchase through my Amazon portal.
So thank you very very much, one and all! It may seem like a small thing to you, but it adds up.
And of course, you don’t have to wait for the holidays. If you use neo-neocon for your Amazon purchases year-round, I’d be much obliged.
Obama tells Senate Democrats he will be playing offense for the next two years, prepared to veto legislation and to use executive action to get what he wants despite the will of the American people.
Actually, he didn’t say that bit about despite the will of the American people. But it’s true.
Most presidents, faced with a Congress controlled by the opposite party, are ready to do some compromising. The people have expressed themselves, and most presidents (Republican or Democrat) actually care about things like that and look for common ground.
Obama, however, is a leftist ideologue and a preening, nasty, aggressive narcissist. He is dedicated to putting as much of his agenda in place as possible, by hook or by crook or by any means that can’t be stopped. To do this, he needs most of the Democrats on board, because it’s the Democrats who have the power to stop him. Republicans need quite a few Democrats to join them to override Obama’s planned vetoes. Thus, this pep rally by Obama.
This is embarrassing, but since I don’t think Obama or Kerry are the least bit embarrassed, we’ll be embarrassed for them:
To make up for America skipping last week’s Paris Unity march, Secretary of State John Kerry had James Taylor sing his 1971 hit “You’ve Got a Friend,” to the French…
…He laid wreaths at the sites of the attacks and, as promised, shared “a big hug” with Hollande.
A hug from Kerry would not be my idea of a good thing, but perhaps Hollande has a different opinion.
As for the James Taylor performance, it seems absurd to me—the song expressing in lyrics the sentiment that the Obama administration does not act out in the real world. Then again, the French are reported to like Jerry Lewis, so perhaps…
[ADDENDUM: I can’t find a way to embed this video, so you’ll have to play it here, but Doug Mataconis of Outside the Beltway points out that the Simpsons did it first.
Life imitates art.]
…out of the Jews’ dilemma:
…as well as totally clueless about Obama.
Gelb is a liberal whose foreign policy credentials are impressive if you like this sort of thing. At the age of 77, his resume includes “former correspondent for The New York Times and …currently President Emeritus and Board Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations,” assistant to Jacob Javits, Carter’s Assistant Secretary of State, and plenty more that would warm the cockles of most Democrats’ hearts.
But Gelb writes as though he were Rip Van Winkle just waking up from a long, long and very deep sleep, one that lasted from January of 2009 till now and encompassed Obama’s entire presidency so far.
How else to explain this sort of thing?:
The failure of Obama or Biden to show up in Paris made clear that most of the president’s team can’t be trusted to conduct U.S national security policy and must be replaced””at once.
Republicans have been thinking that for a long long time—welcome to our world, Gelb. But we’re not delusional enough to think it could ever happen. The people Obama has place there are exactly the people he wants. They do his bidding, and he has no sense that he’s failed.
More from Gelb:
[Obama’s failure to attend the Paris march] demonstrated beyond argument that the Obama team lacks the basic instincts and judgment necessary to conduct U.S. national security policy in the next two years. It’s simply too dangerous to let Mr. Obama continue as is””with his current team and his way of making decisions. America, its allies, and friends could be heading into one of the most dangerous periods since the height of the Cold War.
I’m a bit puzzled as to why this particular inaction of Obama’s has riled Gelb so much; after all, I could list hundreds more things Obama has done that seem a great deal worse to me. Perhaps Gelb is incensed at this because he’s old enough to remember when all presidents, Democrat or Republican, knew what was necessary diplomatically on the world stage, even though they might have disagreed with each other on some of the details. And Gelb remembers a world when, for the most part, people actually recognized when things weren’t going well, admitted that they needed a change of personnel, and wanted aides under them who knew their stuff.
Obama—as we’ve discussed many times—wants people who don’t know their stuff in terms of world events, yes-men and yes-women who will not challenge him.
And Gelb cannot possibly be serious here, if he knows anything about Obama at all:
Mr. Obama will have to excuse most of his inner core, especially in the White House. He will have to replace them with strong and strategic people of proven foreign policy experience. He’ll also need to seed the Defense and State Departments with new top people serving directly as senior advisers to the secretaries. And he also will need to set up regular consultations””not the usual phony ones””with the two key Senate leaders in this field, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker and Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, two people who can really improve his decisions and bolster his credibility. Many will be tempted to dismiss these crash solutions as several bridges too far, as simply unrealistic. But hear me out. It can be made much more plausible than it seems at first blush. What’s more, if Mr. Obama doesn’t do something along the lines of what’s proposed here, he and we are in for unmanageable trouble.
Before I continue, I have to tell you that I’ve never made such extreme and far-reaching proposals in all my years in this business. I’ve never proposed such a drastic overhaul. But if you think hard about how Mr. Obama and his team handled this weekend in Paris, I think you’ll see I’m not enjoying a foreign policy neurological breakdown.
Gelb goes on to blame Obama’s staff for Obama’s non-attendance at the march (“oh, if only Stalin knew!”). Then he suggests the following:
First, Mr. Obama will have to thank his senior National Security Council team and replace them. The must-gos include National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, chief speech writer/adviser Ben Rhodes, and foreign policy guru without portfolio Valerie Jarrett. They can all be replaced right away, and their successors won’t require senatorial confirmation.
Obama fire Jarrett? Delusional, risible. Obama would be more likely to cut off his own right arm.
This piece by Ezra Klein may describe the way the power of Congress used to work. But it certainly isn’t the way it’s worked during the Obama administration.
How is Klein wrong? Let me count the ways. One:
The real power in American politics resides in Congress, not in the presidency.
People say the president has the power to set the agenda, and it’s true. But presidents only set agendas they think Congress might pass, or at least consider. The president leads ”” but only where he thinks Congress will follow.
It’s Congress that writes bills and Congress that passes them. It’s Congress that can spend money and declare war. Congress, with a sufficient majority, could govern aggressively without the president’s cooperation ”” they simply need to overturn his vetoes.
“Simply?” Does Klein have a clue how many times in the 20th-21st centuries the Republican Party has had enough members of Congress to override a Democratic president’s vetoes without a very significant number of Democrats joining in? I’ll give him the answer: Zero. Usually when a party is very strong in Congress—and that party is usually the Democratic Party—the president has been from the same party. FDR’s Congresses are an excellent example of the latter phenomenon—they were overwhelmingly Democratic, but FDR was a Democrat, too.
The three times Democrats have been really close to controlling 2/3 of Congress when a Republican is president, and have only needed a small number of Republicans to join them in order to override a presidential veto, have been during the Ford administration (Ford, having been appointed, was an atypical president), the latter years of Reagan’s administration, and during Bush 1’s term (the Democratic majority was stronger in the House than the Senate for both Reagan and Bush I). If you want to see which vetoes by presidents have been overridden by Congress, take a look at this chart, which indicates it’s much more common to override vetoes by Republican presidents than by Democratic ones.
Two:
Conversely, there’s little the president can do without congressional cooperation. When the president proposes an agenda that Congress refuses to consider then, like the tree in the forest, no one really cares whether it makes a sound. Anyone remember the health-reform plan that was the centerpiece of President George W. Bush’s 2006 State of the Union?
I guess that used to be true. In general (although not always), presidents had more respect for the principle of separation of powers, and more fear of what the public would do if they overstepped the usual bounds. Obama has demonstrated no such concerns. He has explicitly said, over and over, if Congress doesn’t do it, he will. And that’s exactly what he’s done.
Three:
[Paul] Ryan doesn’t want to be team captain [i.e. president]. He wants to be the guy preparing the legislation the next Republican president will sign into law.
At least Klein acknowledges a bit of reality here: it would take a Republican president for the Republican Congress to get anything accomplished. If a Democrat is elected, Paul Ryan can plan all he wants but his plans will probably come to naught. What are the chances of a Republican being elected? I doubt Klein thinks they’re very good.
…are the brothers of Phi Kappa Psi, and truth.
However, the members of Phi Psi are mouthing the PC message that they don’t consider themselves victims:
Scipione and Fontenot said that the Phi Psi brothers experienced a difficult fall semester but said no one should consider the fraternity members as “victims.”
“We don’t want to take away from the real victims, which are the victims of sexual assault,” Fontenot said. “We think it is incredibly unfair that the Rolling Stone article could in any way take away their credibility and the support they need.”…
University officials said that Phi Psi was the first fraternity to sign the updated agreements, and Phi Psi leaders said the fraternity has instituted a sexual-assault education and awareness program that is mandatory for new members. Spring rush, an annual recruitment period, is scheduled to begin here Thursday night…
“Sexual assault on college campuses is a real problem, and it needs to be addressed. And just because one story from Rolling Stone dropped the ball doesn’t mean we can dismiss it,” Fontenot said.
Dismiss it? Who on earth is dismissing it? I haven’t heard anyone say that sexual assault doesn’t exist, or that it should be ignored when it does. That’s a strawman argument.
However, the questions we should be asking about it are:
(1) How common is sexual assault on campus?
(2) How should it be defined?
(3) How should it be handled, and by what authorities?
(4) What can be done to prevent it?
The issue is not just that the Rolling Stone article was fake. It’s that journalistic standards have generally gone by the wayside. It’s that the police should handle allegations of serious assault. It’s that alleged perpetrators should get a fair hearing. And it’s that the statistic commonly used to answer question #1 is inflated and was arrived at through poor research methods (see this and this).
[Hat tip: Ace.]
[ADDENDUM: And speaking of victims and false allegations, please read about what is happening to Alan Dershowitz. “Kafkaesque” hardly begins to describe it:
I now stand accused of crimes I did not commit, by an unnamed woman who I don’t know and never met. I am also being sued for defaming my accusers. I still have no opportunity to respond in court to the false charges, though I am now seeking to intervene in the lawsuit in which the accusation was filed. I have submitted a sworn statement denying the accusations with great specificity. The court has not yet decided whether to accept my motion.
I feel like a victim of a drive-by shooting or the object of scribbled graffiti on the wall of a bathroom stall. I may never have the opportunity to prove my innocence, or to have my accusers prove the false charges, in any court of law. But because I am relatively well known””a double-edge sword in these situations””I can at least fight back in the court of public opinion, though at the very high cost””in legal fees, loss of insurance coverage and the possibility of a large monetary judgment against me.
Imagine the same thing happening to a person who did not have the resources to fight back.
There is a gaping hole in our legal system that allows lawyers to bring irrelevant accusations against innocent nonparties in court papers that insulate them from any consequences, and to deny the falsely accused any opportunity to respond.]
Regular readers of this blog know that I supported Mitt Romney heavily in the 2012 election. I think he’s a smart guy, and also more conservative that many other people believe.
I’m not going to rehash those arguments; we did that ad nauseam during the run-up to the election. But I really, really hope I don’t have to go through it again, because I really really hope Romney doesn’t run in 2016. Or, if he does run, I hope someone else gets the nomination, and I strongly hope that “someone else” is not Jeb Bush.
Whatever made Romney a weaker-than-required candidate in 2012 would still be operating. Plus, the conservative base is even more alienated from him than before, if such a thing be possible. If he ran and was nominated I would vote for him, but I’d much rather someone like Scott Walker or any number of other more conservative, personable, smart, younger candidates became the Republican nominee.
I understand why Romney may declare. His loss in 2012 must rankle, especially since he was right about so many things then. In addition, Bush’s entry into the race means that Romney must throw his hat into the ring sooner rather than later if he wants to challenge Bush for the big donors.
But Romney’s time has come and gone, in my opinion (and Bush’s time never was). Romney would do much better as elder statesman and advisor at this point. That said, I repeat: if he is the nominee I will vote for him.
[NOTE: Oh, dear. Does this mean I have to start a new category, “Election 2016”?]
I don’t like this development:
France ordered prosecutors around the country to crack down on hate speech, anti-Semitism and those glorifying terrorism…
Authorities said 54 people had been arrested for hate speech and defending terrorism since terror attacks killed 20 people in Paris last week, including three gunmen…
Like many European countries, France has strong laws against hate speech, especially anti-Semitism in the wake of the Holocaust.
The Justice Ministry sent a letter to all French prosecutors and judges urging more aggressive tactics against racist or anti-Semitic speech or acts.
“Speech or acts“—there’s a big, big difference. Acts can be more easily criminalized, speech, no—although of course it depends on what the speech is. To be legally actionable, the speech had better be the rough equivalent of yelling “fire” in a crowded auditorium. I’ve long been disturbed by laws against hate speech itself in the absence of clear-cut incitement, because the libertarian in me believes in protecting freedom of speech.
Vandalism and violence are acts, as is joining a terrorist organization, and should be actionable. But none of that is mere speech. Freedom of speech means that we protect even speech we find offensive, and it seems contradictory to me for the French and other Europeans to champion the right of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists to mock Mohammed but to later arrest this man for his jokes.
Ever since I covered the al Durah trials in Paris many years ago (see this) I’ve known that the European attitude towards free speech is much less free than ours (or at least, than ours used to be). European hate speech laws are one part of it. Of course, it was Europe that experienced the horror of the Holocaust—and in many instances, including that of France, non-German Europeans significantly collaborated in facilitating those horrors. It’s understandable that they don’t want a repeat. But they are much closer to a repeat right now than the US is, despite the US’s lack of hate speech laws.
You’ve all had it happen. You do your laundry, and although you started out with several matching pairs of socks you wind up with a singleton or two.
What happened? I’ve read a number of explanations, including that the socks often get sucked into the washer, but I’m not sure I believed it until today when, using a front-loading machine, I saved one of my socks from oblivion.
When the cycle was finished and I was removing my clothes to put them into the dryer, there it was: a black sock, same color as the machine’s innards, caught in a slot near the opening with only an inch or so peeking out, like a character in those old movies who starts sinking into quicksand and winds up with only his head peeking out.
I pulled, and the entire sock emerged. It was sopping wet, never having partaken properly of the spin cycle, since it had been hiding within the depths of the machine.
It wasn’t much of an accomplishment. But somehow it gave me an inordinate amount of satisfaction.
The following passage appears in Barack Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention [emphasis mine]:
That is the true genius of America, a faith…a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution; and that our votes will be counted — or at least, most of the time.
At the time, Obama was nominating John Kerry. That’s more [emphasis mine]:
John Kerry believes in an America where hard work is rewarded. So instead of offering tax breaks to companies shipping jobs overseas, he offers them to companies creating jobs here at home.
John Kerry believes in an America where all Americans can afford the same health coverage our politicians in Washington have for themselves.
John Kerry believes in energy independence, so we aren’t held hostage to the profits of oil companies or the sabotage of foreign oil fields…
And John Kerry believes that in a dangerous world, war must be an option sometimes, but it should never be the first option…
When we send our young men and women into harm’s way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they are going, to care for their families while they’re gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return and to never, ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace and earn the respect of the world.
Now, let me be clear. Let me be clear. We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued. And they must be defeated.
I didn’t listen to Obama’s 2004 speech, or much of either convention that year; I’m not a big fan of speeches in general. But reading it now I could almost weep, because it is so deceptive, so unlike the Barack Obama we’ve come to know so well. If the guy portrayed in that speech had won an election, the result probably wouldn’t have been half bad. But that guy never existed; he was an actor reading his lines. 2004 was his first performance on the national stage, and he ought to have won an Oscar for it.
Here’s an excellent article on the sad, complex, and mysterious phenomenon known as re-adoption, which occurs when a parent or parents adopt a child and they later give that child up and hope that it is adopted by another family.
On first hearing, it sounds heinous and unforgivable. But you may change your mind after you read the article.