Finally, a bipartisan move

The New Neo Posted on by

This is certainly interesting:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Red vs. red in Congress

The New Neo Posted on by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unprecedented: Obama vs. Bibi

The New Neo Posted on by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Obama would love for the US to have mandatory voting

The New Neo Posted on by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Romney answers…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the question I asked the other day.

About that bout:

Romney cautioned that the [Holyfied] event “will not be a true bout. … I think there’ll be a lot of Democrats there paying good money to see me get beaten up,” he joked.

That clearly won’t happen. What’s not clear is whether Romney will strip down to a pair of boxing shorts for the match. He said Wednesday that this is his plan.

“You don’t go in there wearing a T-shirt, you know,” he said.

Now, that’s a brave man.

Nightowls

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve always been a night owl. It’s gotten more extreme as I’ve gotten older, and I’m beginning to think I have DSPS (delayed sleep phase syndrome), a condition about which I’d never heard until I read this article.

It was so extreme for me that even as a half-day kindergartener at the age of four, I much preferred the afternoon session to the morning. And don’t get me started on what it was like to have split sessions in high school, when my first class began at 7! I had to take a lengthy bus ride, too—municipal bus, by the way, crowded with rush-hour travelers, because there was no school bus—which meant getting up at something like 5:45 AM.

It may seem trivial, but forcing yourself to go against your biological clock isn’t easy, although of course it can be done if the motivation is there. When I was the mother of a young child—well, let’s just say the motivation was there, but I lived in a perpetual state of exhaustion. Now that I can pretty much set my own hours, I could be singing my own version of this song from “Guys and Dolls”:

[NOTE: By the way, that’s Robert Alda, Alan’s dad, who played Sky Masterson in the original.]

The Democrats’ shallow bench

The New Neo Posted on by

I seems true that the Democrats have a very shallow bench. But will it matter? After all, there may be enough people so seduced by the left and/or so beholden to big government that they are the proverbial yellow dog Democrats, willing to vote for anyone who bears the stamp.

That would mean that even most knavish/foolish/unappealing of Democratic presidential candidates will have a lock on the election. Or America may turn away:

If we look at all these factors, the common theme is that the Democrats have been undone by their most basic priority. Their lust for aggrandizing more power to government””increasing its scope, its cost, its reach, and its centralization””has undermined their ability to gain and hold the majorities necessary to wield that power. It was more important to them to push through a big new entitlement than to listen to the voters. It was more important for them to recruit what they believed would be a solid far-left bloc of minority constituencies than to show anything but contempt for those backward rednecks in the heartland. It was more important for them to aggrandize the power of a central individual (or couple) than to build a broad nationwide base of leadership. And it is more important for them to be reactionary guardians of the welfare and regulatory state than to contemplate any reform of it.

Call this the Paradox of Power. To the extent Democrats have hollowed out their party, it is because their greed for more government power has undermined their ability to hold on to it.

Boy do I hope that’s true. It really depends on the American public.

[Note: Somewhat related, but somewhat unrelated: there’s Obama’s failure in Asia, something I hadn’t heard much about before.

And Joe Lieberman (‘member him?) reminds us that there actually used to be Democrats who were moderate and relatively reasonable, with a concern for the Constitution. Of course, we know what happened to Joe Lieberman at the hands of his party.]

Just more evidence that the world has gone mad

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: Ace.]

Well, well, well, who could have possibly predicted this? And please, make sure you schedule in ten minutes of meditation before and after you read it, because it’s going to cause some serious upset:

Convinced traditional discipline is racist because blacks are suspended at higher rates than whites, New York City’s Department of Education has in all but the most serious and dangerous offenses replaced out-of-school suspensions with a touchy-feely alternative punishment called “restorative justice,” which isn’t really punishment at all. It’s therapy.

“Every reasonable effort must be made to correct student behavior through”¦restorative practices,” advises the city’s new 32-page discipline code.

Except everywhere it’s been tried, this softer approach has backfired.

Yes, other large urban school districts are reporting fewer suspensions since adopting the non-punitive approach. But that doesn’t necessarily mean fewer infractions.

In fact, many districts are seeing more classroom disruptions and violence ”” a national trend that ought to set off warning bells for New York school officials.

What’s more, the movement ”” which is driven by new race-based anti-discipline guidelines issued by the Obama administration ”” is creating friction between teachers unions and the liberal mayors they otherwise support…

Last month, for instance, the Chicago Teachers Union complained the city’s revised student-discipline code has left teachers struggling to control unruly kids.

“It’s just basically been a totally lawless few months,” one teacher told the Chicago Tribune.

Please read the whole thing. One more excerpt:

“I was terrified and bullied by a fourth-grade student,” a teacher at a Los Angeles Unified School District school recently noted on the Los Angeles Times website. “The black student told me to ”˜Back off, b””h.’ I told him to go to the office and he said, ”˜No, b””h, and no one can make me.’ ”…

In neighboring Orange County, teachers are dealing with increasingly violent and disrespectful student behavior since schools there also switched to the restorative strategy.

Recently mandated “positive interventions” have only exacerbated discipline problems in the largely minority Santa Ana public school district, where middle-school kids now regularly smoke pot in bathrooms ”” some even in class ”” and attack staff ”” spitting on teachers, pelting them with eggs, even threatening to stab them, according to the Orange County Register.

It goes on and on and on.

[NOTE: About a year and a half ago I wrote a post about how Obama and Holder were intent on transforming the schools in this way in order to make the stats work out they way they’d like them to.]

Congratulating Bibi

The New Neo Posted on by

The White House isn’t going to do it, but I will: congratulations to Netanyahu on his resounding win.

Liberals in general are very miffed at the Israeli election results. But they’ve been angry at Israel for a long, long time, ever since the Likud Party first came to power in 1977. Until then, Israel was a country that had always been governed from the left.

So it’s no surprise whatsoever that the left in the US is unhappy at Netanyahu’s continuing hold on power. To them, it’s just another sign that Israel is unworthy of support and worthy of condemnation. The left hates Netanyahu (and Israel) even more now, if that’s possible, because he is openly despised by their leader Obama, and because Netanyahu has had the temerity to say what everyone already must know: that at the moment there is no two-state solution possible.

As Paul Mirengoff writes:

In 2009, Netanyahu was probably motivated to endorse a two-state solution in part by a desire to please the new Obama administration. In 2015, Netanyahu understands that, for him, there is no pleasing Obama. His support of a two-state solution did not lead to decent relations with Obama; nor did it lead to fruitful negotiations with the Palestinians.

It is not, therefore, demagoguery for Netanyahu to change his stated position on a Palestinian state. Indeed, given the rise of radical Islam, it would be irresponsible of him to cling to the position he took six years ago under very different conditions. In all likelihood, that position has been a dead-letter for some time.

“Two-state” solution is one of those phrases that have become practically meaningless except as a signal to the left that one’s heart is in the right place. I’m for peace! I’m for justice! I’m for lifting the downtrodden up! At this point, however, it’s degenerated into empty posturing among leftists, with no possibility of achievement in the real world because Israel has no partner for peace, as the events of the Camp David Summit failure followed by the Second Intifada, and the subsequent and continuing Palestinian stance towards Israel, have made crystal clear to anyone who wasn’t already mired in leftist and/or anti-Israel thinking. Netanyahu is now stating those facts openly, because he needed to court the right in his country and because there is no longer any reason to hide them in order to try to placate Obama or Europe.

Netanyahu’s win was much bigger than expected. He should have no trouble forming a government.

[ADDENDUM: Josh Earnest said that Obama will be calling Netanyahu to congratulate him “in the comning days.” Sure; he has to attend to some pressing concerns in the meantime. Oh, and he’ll be reprimanding Netanyahu for mentioning the last-minute get-out-the-Arab-vote campaign that Obama may have helped pay for. The White House is “deeply concerned” about such “divisive rhetoric.” ]

Israeli election open thread

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a thread for commenting on the Israeli election as it develops now that the polls are closed.

Exit polls indicate a very close race, as predicted. Remember that this is a parliamentary election, with the likelihood that a coalition government will need to be formed and that therefore the Prime Minister may not be known right away, although there might be some strong indications of who it will be. But it could take a long, long time.

UPDATE 6:01 PM: Netanyahu declares a “great victory” for Likud because they’re tied with their rival party. As the Times of Israel puts it: “Likud ahead or level with Zionist Union in all 3 exit polls, better placed to build coalition; 71.8% turnout highest since 1999; delight in Likud, dismay in Zionist Union; Jewish Home slips.”

So—although it’s premature—I’d say it’s looking like (as so often has happened) when Obama backs a candidate the candidate doesn’t seem to do so well.

Too bad the same couldn’t have been said for Obama himself. The Israeli system is so complex, however, that I don’t really know if Netanyahu is out of the woods yet. But things look promising. More details here.

Oh, and by the way…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the Cotton letter signed by the 47 Republican Senators was never “sent” anywhere:

Cotton got 46 other senators to sign this letter in ink. “Because it was an open letter, it was not sent to Tehran but rather posted on Senator Cotton’s website and social-media accounts,” Caroline Rabbitt, Senator Cotton’s communications director, explained to me last week. Cotton & Co. never even dropped an envelope in the mail.

Not that the left will care.

Oh, and the little girl evil mean conservative Ted Cruz supposedly terrified was not frightened, according to the girl’s mother:

Julie’s mother, Michelle Trant, told a Boston radio station on Monday that the headlines about her daughter being frightened to death are simply not true.

“There was no tears,” she said, telling the show she told her daughter that “Ted Cruz is the one that will put this fire out. And then she then looked at him as a hero,” Politico reported.

“I’m telling you: She was quite happy,” Ms. Trant said. “She was like, ”˜oh? you’re going to put that out? We’re good. We’re good here.’”

In a separate interview, Ms. Trant told People magazine: “There was nothing scary that happened. I’m just so upset the way this has gone down.”

“I just feel like Ted Cruz deserves better than people making up a lie that a 3-year-old was terrified of him, because she was not. I just want to have the truth out there,” she said.

Ah, but what does the girl’s mother know? She’s just a—just a—Ted Cruz supporter.