Obama the “negotiator”

The New Neo Posted on by

Marco Rubio, among others, thinks that Obama is a bad negotiator:

I don’t know what his intentions are. His foreign policy is at a minimum naive, and perhaps even truly counterproductive to the future of democracy in the region.

Just last week we imposed sanctions on human rights violators in Venezuela, but the people who are supporting the Venezuelans in conducting those violations — literally the Cubans have taken over the Venezuela government, we’re actually lifting sanctions on them.

How absurd is that? And it’s just par for the course, all of these tyrants around the world know the United States can be had. At a minimum I will say this, the president is the worst negotiator we’ve had as president since at least Jimmy Carter and perhaps in the modern era.

But Rubio is wrong; Obama is not a bad negotiator at all. He is a faux negotiator.

And perhaps Rubio even knows this (the hint being “at a minimum”) but feels he can’t say it or he will be labeled a kook.

But I can say it: Obama’s intentions here were to prop up the Castro government and concede to them, and the negotiations were an excuse to do that. There were no reluctant concessions on the part of Obama, there were eager concessions.

As Rich Lowry writes, it’s not so much about whether it was time to loosen economic sanctions or not (reasonable people differ on this), it’s about how it was done:

The rest of Obama’s sweeping revisions ”” diplomatic relations and the loosening of every economic sanction he can plausibly change on his own ”” are freely granted, no questions asked. It is quid with no pro quo. Even if you oppose the isolation of Cuba, this is not a good trade.

After waiting out 10 other U.S. presidents, the Castro regime finally hit the jackpot in Obama…

Every dictator around the world must be waiting anxiously for a call or a postcard from Obama. The leader of the free world comes bearing gifts and understanding. He is willing to overlook human-rights abuses. And his idea of burnishing his legacy is to clinch deals with his country’s enemies.

Anyone who has observed Obama over the years ought to know that. It is not subtle, it is obvious. Whether it be Iran, the Afghan Taliban (Bergdahl swap), or Cuba, this is his m.o. for “negotiating” (wink, wink) with tyrants.

I was saying to a friend the other day that comparing Obama to Carter is an insult to Carter, who was a liberal but a patriot with good intentions. Obama is not a patriot and does not have good intentions, unless your idea of what’s good for the world is to bring America down, hurt its allies, and help its enemies. There are many people on the left who believe exactly that.

Obama on Cuba

The New Neo Posted on by

In retrospect, Obama’s push to normalize relations with Cuba shouldn’t have been any sort of surprise. As a leftist and a statist he is ideologically simpatico, and such a move would also appear to be supported by a majority of Americans, at least according to this poll from last February.

It’s the details that have that special Obama flair. The fact that this was done in secret, representing the fruit of 18 months of labor that we knew nothing about, is unsettling but again, not surprising (wonder what else is going on in secret? I sure do, and I bet it involves Iran). The fact that it involved a prisoner swap of three guilty Cubans we held for one innocent American (and which the administration has taken pains to insist is not a swap) is another. Another is the little phone chat Obama had with Castro yesterday, the first such contact between a president and Castro since the latter took office in the late 50s.

One surprise is that, at least for now, Obama is acknowledging that he does not have the right to completely lift the embargo by executive order, because that was an act of Congress. He’s definitely relaxing it, though. But I have little doubt that he’s only deferring to Congress on this issue because it’s not all that important to him; I firmly believe he would declare the embargo null and void under some sort of prosecutorial discretion argument if he really cared to have another big hassle about it.

Some members of Congress are up in arms, but I predict they will be powerless to stop it, as they have been powerless so far against this administration (and not all of those opposing this are Republicans, either). Note the screaming hypocrisy/irony of Obama’s statement [emphasis mine] in the second paragraph following:

Some Republicans and Democrats vowed to oppose Obama’s new policy, which will also include making it easier for Americans to travel to the Socialist-run island 90 miles from Florida beaches and return with consumer goods ”“ including Cuba’s fabled rum and iconic cigars.

“To those who oppose the steps I’m announcing today, let me say that I respect your passion and share your commitment to liberty and democracy,” Obama said.

Right.

Jackie enters Stephen Glass and Catfish territory

The New Neo Posted on by

You have to hand it to “Jackie” of the Rolling Stone UVA story—she dedicated an awful lot of creative energy to her hoax. Although I suspect that on first telling her main motivation was to earn the attention, sympathy, and romantic interest of her friend “Randall” (real name: Ryan Duffin), the story snowballed as she got more of what is known as secondary gains from it.

Jackie now appears to have fleshed out her tale a la Stephen Glass—the New Republic wunderkind who created fake notes and fake phone numbers and even got his brother to pretend to be a source—by setting up fake phone accounts for her fake boyfriend who fake-raped her, in order to have him appear to text her friends. I think this should be enough to convince the lingering Jackie-defenders that the woman has been running a con.

Of course, some are still officially undecided, including the three friends she seems to have thrown under the bus in the Rolling Stone story. I can understand their hesitation, though, because a con artist can be intensely compelling, and it’s very hard to admit you were conned by a friend. Fortunately, most people don’t operate the way Jackie did, and so it can be quite a leap for those not naturally inclined to cynicism to understand how they’ve been taken for a ride by someone they knew and liked.

I don’t know whether Jackie is just a garden-variety sociopath, or whether her mental/emotional troubles are of a more sympathetic kind. At any rate, she was a mere freshman in college when this all began to go down, and at least at the outset she appears not to have intended to go national with her story. That happened step by awful step, as she got deeper and deeper into campus anti-rape politics, and then met up with Sabrina Rubin Erdely, reporter for Rolling Stone. It was Erdely who was older, presumably wiser, and who had a professional duty to fact-check Jackie’s story. Erdely was extremely negligent in failing to do so, and her career should be absolutely finished (I also wonder whether someone at UVA—perhaps the accused fraternity—can sue her for damages).

So both Jackie and Erdely bear guilt, and a lot of it. But strangely enough, I would consider the editors of Rolling Stone even more guilty, because I hold them to a higher standard (I know; how foolish of me). But they are supposed to be the authorities, the last check on irresponsible journalism, the skeptical ones who need to always be suspicious. After all, fact-checking standards exist for a reason, and the reason is to make sure that a publication prints what used to quaintly be known as the truth. Printing fake stories as a result of a combination of lack of due diligence plus ideological fervor is not something new, of course. But in the last couple of decades it seems to have become more and more common.

Federal judge rules Obama’s executive amnesty orders unconstitutional

The New Neo Posted on by

This is good news, but it’s probably just the beginning of the battle:

Earlier Tuesday, a federal court in Pennsylvania declared aspects of President Obama’s executive actions on immigration policy unconstitutional.

According to the opinion by Judge Arthur Schwab, the president’s policy goes “beyond prosecutorial discretion” in that it provides a relatively rigid framework for considering applications for deferred action, thus obviating any meaningful case-by-case determination as prosecutorial discretion requires, and provides substantive rights to applicable individuals. As a consequence, Schwab concluded, the action exceeds the scope of executive authority.

Jonathan Adler, who wrote the piece, adds that he’s not sure whether states (such as Texas, mounting a suit) will be found to have standing to challenge Obama’s order in the courts. But he thinks this case proves that even if states don’t have standing, there are other ways to get a foot in the courtroom door on this issue.

I keep harping on the importance of electing Republicans in order to appoint more federal judges who are on the right rather than the left, because the judicial system is a huge player in the fight against encroaching leftism and its tyranny. Judge Schwab was appointed by George W. Bush, so this is another indication of that fact.

And don’t give me the old “sometimes the judges Republicans appoint aren’t all that conservative” business. Although that happens, it is very very seldom, and the judges Republicans appoint are always more conservative than those liberals appoint. It matters.

Pakistini Taliban attack school, kill 140+ children and teachers

The New Neo Posted on by

Another outrageously evil attack in which Islamist terrorists target children, this time in Pakistan:

Militants from the Pakistani Taliban have attacked an army-run school in Peshawar, killing 141 people, 132 of them children, the military say.

Officials say the attack in the north-western city is over, with all the attackers killed. Seven militants took part in all, according to the army.

Gunman methodically went from room to room and shot most of the victims in the head. The terrorists are reported to have been wearing suicide vests, and this article indicates that some of those vests were set off after Pakistani security forces came to the scene. The school appears to have had its own security, but:

The gunmen, who several students said communicated with each other in a foreign language, possibly Arabic, managed to slip past the school’s tight security because at least some of them were wearing Pakistani military uniforms, some witnesses said.

When I wrote the introductory sentence to this post, I was careful to say that this attack involved the targeting of children. It is important to state that the killing of children was completely intentional and the main goal of the operation, rather than children being accidental collateral damage in an attack on other people. This is an important distinction, a line the terrorists’ (and the left) purposely blur in statements such as this:

“We selected the army’s school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females,” said Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani. “We want them to feel the pain.”

I would bet a large amount of money that the Pakistani government does not “target” their families and females, although some have probably been killed as collateral damage. But there is no question that children were targeted here, and that this is often the terrorists’ m.o.. We’ve seen it a great deal when Palestinian terrorists work in Israel, for example. Here the rationale, if you can call it that, was that a lot of these victims were children of army personnel; in Israel, the Palestinians often say that since all Israelis serve in the armed forces, all children are fair game as targets because they grow up to be soldiers. It’s evil sophistry, but many Western leftists will parrot these arguments with approval.

President Obama used the word “depraved” to describe the attack. It’s an old-fashioned term but it fits the situation well. But that doesn’t mean this was a random act of insanity. It is a purposeful approach, one with that of ISIS and other Muslim terrorist groups who want to sow fear and the deepest grief possible.

Of course, by doing so they might motivate the Pakistini government and its people to step up the fight against them. Perhaps they don’t care, or perhaps that’s what they want, because they think that they are on the side of righteousness and will prevail.

It’s another demonstration of just how twisted human beings can become.

Another day, another MSM hoax

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, at least Jessica Pressler and New York Magazine appear to have done a bit more fact-checking on this story than Erdely and Rolling Stone did on theirs.

And yet, duped again:

In the most recent edition of New York, its annual Reasons to Love New York issue, the magazine published this story about a Stuyvesant High School senior named Mohammed Islam, who was rumored to have made $72 million trading stocks. Islam said his net worth was in the “high eight figures.” As part of the research process, the magazine sent a fact-checker to Stuyvesant, where Islam produced a document that appeared to be a Chase bank statement attesting to an eight-figure bank account. After the story’s publication, people questioned the $72 million figure in the headline, which was written by editors based on the rumored figure. The headline was amended. But in an interview with the New York Observer last night, Islam now says his entire story was made up.

Here’s the New York Observer article in which Islam acknowledged the deception.

Note a couple of things about all of this.

These recent hoax stories have appeared predominantly in the liberal media. That’s not to say that media on the right doesn’t make errors and can’t be fooled. But so far the episodes have clustered on the other side. Of course, let’s not forget that there are more media outlets on the left, so the law of averages would dictate it. But still, it makes sense to conclude on the basis of recent evidence that the right is more concerned than the left with getting the story right in terms of research and/or less inclined than the left to decide a story is just too good to fact-check rigorously.

This fits in quite nicely with the observation that the left is more dedicated to ends justifying means than the right is, and more contemptuous of its readers’ ability to discern truth from falsehood. Thus, these articles.

The New York Magazine article about Mohammed Islam, the Stuyvesant High student with the multi-million stock market win, does not appear to have been driven by a leftist ideological or political agenda, unlike Erdely’s UVA rape article. It seems to have been more of a fun human interest story, although I suppose the Muslim angle might have been a small part of the draw.

[NOTE: Speaking of the Muslim angle, Mohammed Islam is not an Arab, he’s a Kazakh.]

Elizabeth Warren, flanking Hillary from the left

The New Neo Posted on by

Elizabeth Warren made a speech condemning a provision in the new CRomnibus bill that gives banks more leeway about a rather small class of risky derivatives, and the media and the left have anointed her the new Democratic frontrunner, the younger woman to Hillary’s tired and worn-out has-been.

Warren is 65 to Clinton’s 67, so I’m speaking only metaphorically here when I write “younger.” Warren is seen as a fresh face and a viable alternative to the baggage Hillary carries, for nearly the same reason that Barack Obama was: she’s done little in the way of things that would give her the sort of experience required to be president, she’s a freshman senator who’s a pretty good speaker, and she’s a member of a group of people (in his case, blacks; in hers, women and perhaps even native Americans if she wants to really stretch it) whose time is assumed to have come in terms of the presidency.

It’s as though the Democratic Party asked Central Casting to send them a Hillary type, only better and more like Barack Obama, and more obviously to the left on economic matters.

As a result we have fawning pieces such as this one at HuffPo entitled “The Speech That Could Make Elizabeth Warren the Next President of the United States.” Barack Obama has already established that speeches should be the main criteria for selecting a president, so this may not seem so far-fetched to those who voted for him.

Here are some excerpts from her speech:

Democrats don’t like Wall Street bailouts. Republicans don’t like Wall Street bailouts. The American people are disgusted by Wall Street bailouts

And yet here we are, five years after Dodd-Frank with Congress on the verge of ramming through a provision that would do nothing for the middle class, do nothing for community banks, do nothing but raise the risk that taxpayers will have to bail out the biggest banks once again…

Few conservatives would disagree. But while conservatives would be against a bailout because they feel that such banks should suffer the logical consequences of their behavior—in other words, because bailouts create what’s known as a “moral hazard”—you won’t hear that phrase in Warren’s speech. Her remedy is always more government regulation, not less. If big business is the problem, big government is her invariable solution.

By the way, I don’t for a moment believe Warren isn’t thinking very very seriously of running for president in 2016.

Sydney hostage crisis over…

The New Neo Posted on by

…with the gunman dead in an early-morning police raid.

Unfortunately, two of the hostages are reported to have been killed in the rescue, although there’s a lack of information as yet on how it happened.

The gunman was an Islamic cleric of Iranian origin who has lived in Australia for almost two decades, and was previously charged with multiple sexual assaults and possibly murdered his ex-wife:

[Haron] Monis was born in Iran as Manteghi Bourjerdi and migrated to Australia in 1996, according to Australia’s 9News. In 2013 he made headlines when he pleaded guilty to sending letters to the families of fallen Australian servicemen in which he called the soldiers “murderers” and child killers. Monis was sentenced to community service.

Australian media reported more recently that Monis had been accused of dozens of counts of sexual assault while he was working as a “spiritual healer” and was allegedly linked to the brutal murder of an ex-wife.

The report also says that Monis had been reported to Sydney police, although it doesn’t say what for:

Dr. Jamal Rifi, a Sydney Muslim community leader, told 9News that the Muslim community had approached police about Monis before.

“We’re not going to let thugs or radicals or the racists decide our society for us,” he said.

Sounds as though the authorities may have been trying to build a case against him when for some reason (still not clearly stated) he decided to go the taking-of-hostages route.

How did Monis originally get admitted to Australia in 1996, the year he emigrated there? Political asylum. But he’s been in a heap of trouble lately:

He is well known to the Australian police and is currently on bail for being an accessory to the murder of his ex-wife.

He is also facing more than 40 sexual and indecent assault charges.

These relate to time allegedly spent as a self-proclaimed “spiritual healer” who dealt with so-called black magic at a premises in western Sydney, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Monis has previously been convicted of sending offensive letters to the families of deceased Australian soldiers.

Nice guy. Why was he out on bail? Hard to say, although I suppose the murder case against him wasn’t strong enough, even combined with previous convictions:

Man Haron Monis, 49, was charged in November with being an accessory before and after the fact to the murder of mother-of-two Noleen Hayson Pal.

His current partner, Amirah Droudis, 34, has been charged with the murder after 30-year-old Ms Pal was stabbed multiple times and set alight in a western Sydney unit block.

The accused pair were given bail at Penrith Local Court today after a bail application hearing that lasted more than three hours.

…Magistrate Darryl Pearce said there were significant flaws in the Crown’s case against the pair.

“It is a weak case,” he said.

This prognostication turns out to have been wrong:

Each of the accused had an alibi, the witness statements varied significantly, they didn’t have anywhere else to go and they weren’t a threat to the public, the magistrate said.

“If there is a threat it was to this woman who was murdered.”

Monis’ activities were suspicious on the day Pal—with whom he’d been engaged in a bitter custody battle—was murdered (read the article for the details).

Here is a photo of the murdered woman in happier days, pictured with her brother:

pal

Monis may have actually been a lone wolf in terms of the act of taking hostages, but he was an “ideological fanatic” according to his own lawyer.

[ADDENDUM: Patrick Poole calls it “Known Wolf Syndrome.” In the case of Monis, though, it’s hard to see what else could have been done, except to deny him bail, and that was a judgment call. I have a question, though: was he a citizen of Australia? If not, could he have been deported?]

[ADDENDUM II: Michael Totten on the gunman’s message.]

The holidays are coming: order from Amazon through neo-neocon!

The New Neo Posted on by

[BUMPED UP]

Yes, it’s that time. Again.

It’s almost Thanksgiving. And that means that Christmas, Chanukah, and whatever other holiday might suit your diverse fancies are all coming up sooner than you think.

So I’m encouraging you to feel their hot panting breaths on your neck, and to solve all your gift-giving dilemmas by turning to that online colossus, Amazon.

And if you use those widgets on my right sidebar to click through for all your Amazon purchases (now and at any other time of year) you will also be giving a small but still not insignificant gift to neo-neocon (it adds up, folks), and all without spending any extra money yourself. What could be more wonderful?

I thank you all in advance.

[NOTE: In case you have ad blocker or something of that sort, and the Amazon widgets don’t show up on your computer, go here. You can also click on any Amazon book link within a post and anything you order during that click-through gets credited to me. I believe it’s true even for things you put in your cart but don’t order till a bit later, although there’s a time limit on how long they can be there and still get credited when ordered (I’m not sure what that limit is, though, so best to order sooner rather than later).]

In profile

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve always liked this portrait of Madame X by John Singer Sargent:

madameX

Here’s the story of the painting, thought quite scandalous at the time. The original was even more scandalous, because it featured the lady with a strap falling off her shoulder (quelle horreur!). Only a photo of that version survives, because Sargent decided to be safe and paint over it:

strapdownMadameX

Madame X’s (real name: Mde. Gautreau) long body lines and graceful neck are justly famous, but that doesn’t mean people haven’t been mesmerized by her profile. No little button nose for Madame! The following comparison of the portrait to an actual photo of the model shows how Sargent exagerrated the sharpness of nose and chin, almost to caricature but stopping short of it and somehow creating a pleasingly dramatic intensity. This is a woman who knows her worth and will not be trifled with.

photoMadameX

For me, the profile immediately conjures up another graceful person, the NYC Ballet dancer Tanaquil Le Clerc. I’ve written briefly about her dancing and her life before, here (her career was tragically cut short by contracting polio and becoming paralyzed from the waist down), but now I want to draw attention to her nose:

tannyprofile

The above photo was taken by a man who loved Le Clerc, Jerome Robbins, during her hospitalization and recuperation from polio. You may know Robbins as the choreographer and director of “West Side Story,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” and many other greats of the American musical theater, but he was also a ballet dancer and choreographer of equal greatness, and a fascinating person in his own right.

It is often said that Robbins was homosexual, but if there is such a thing as bisexuality he certainly exhibited it. He must have been an exceptionally compelling human being, because the list of men and women with whom he had affairs—and many of them were real love affairs, not shallow dalliances—reads like a list of the most creative people of the 20th century. What’s more, his lovers usually continued to love him as friends long after the affair had ended; Le Clerc was definitely one of the people in the world who was closest to him. You can see the love he felt for her in the photos he took while visiting her during her time of great physical travail.

[NOTE: This is an excellent biography for anyone interested in Robbins’ life and times. A large portion of the book is dedicated to his musical theater efforts; you will be amazed at how influential he was in shaping a huge number of our most beloved musicals.]

On the function of a police force

The New Neo Posted on by

Did you know? The police have a new function [emphasis mine]:

Scarborough argued that police activity in minority communities is based on crime data.

“If you’re a black cop and you see me walking down the street, and you see an 18-year-old black guy walking down the street in the south Bronx, and you’re told to stop and frisk, your job is to stop crime based on data,” Scarborough said, “What do you do as a black cop? Do you go, ‘I’m going to go across the street and frisk the white dude who looks like he lives in Connecticut?'”

Guest Dorian Warren, an assistant professor at Columbia University, countered that policies such as stop-and-frisk are flawed and skew the crime data.

“I would say the white dude is in that neighborhood to buy drugs,” Warren said.

Co-host Mika Brzezinski said both men in Scarborough’s scenario should be frisked.

“It should not be based on the data,” Brzezinski said. “It should be based on moving society forward, and treating whites and blacks equally.”

“A cop is not out on the street going, ”˜You know what I’m going to do today? I’m going to move our society forward,’” Scarborough screamed. “A cop on the street has one job: to protect the people in that neighborhood. It is not to make a statement that makes prime-time people on MSNBC feel better about America.”

Maybe we should just throw some random white people in jail so that their percentages of incarceration equal those of blacks. And let’s frisk everyone, so no one feels singled out.

After all, everybody’s here to “move society forward.” The press should do that rather than report the news accurately. Social scientists should repress any research that doesn’t yield results that are PC. People who contribute to non-PC causes should be hounded from their jobs. And so on, till we reach that wonderful utopia we’re all striving for:

[NOTE: By the way, I would guess that nowadays no white guy from Connecticut has to journey all the way to the south Bronx to buy drugs. They’re readily available almost anywhere. Progress.]