Justifying tyranny

The New Neo Posted on by

Obama is attempting to rely on people’s ignorance about the makeup of our government, and why it’s structured the way it is, when he argues that he has every right to ignore a duly-passed law on immigration just because he happens to feel like it. And Eugene Robinson, one of Obama’s loyal Ministers of Propaganda, is relying on that ignorance of the public as well when he writes this column in favor of such action.

This is how the propagandists for tyranny argue:

Oh, please. All the melodramatic Republican outrage isn’t fooling anybody. The only reason President Obama has to act on immigration reform is that House Speaker John Boehner won’t.

I repeat: That’s the only reason. The issue could have been settled a year ago. It could be settled in an afternoon. The problem is that Boehner refuses to do his job, preferring instead to spend his time huffing and puffing in simulated indignation.

The rest of the piece is a discussion of how wonderful the Senate immigration bill was, and how the House should and would pass it if it came up for a vote. I don’t even think it would get past the new Senate, much less the new House. But of course Robinson ignores the fact that he’s wanting to push this through a lame duck Congress because time is about to run out.

At any rate, all of that is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter why the bill hasn’t come to a vote in the House. It doesn’t even matter that Harry Reid has done the same stalling thing to countless bills in the Senate since Republicans came to control the House. The point is that Congress is Congress and does what Congress does, and the president is a president and must stick to what presidents do.

The only one throwing the hissy fit is Obama. “I’ve run out of patience” is not a justification for tossing out the Constitution. Neither Obama nor Robinson has even tried to explain what the big rush is—but of course we know what the rush is. Obama had to postpone the action till after the 2014 election in hopes that we stupid Americans wouldn’t catch on to the game, and now he has to race to finish it before the new Congress is sworn in, because that would make it even more likely that they would defy him in some way. What he’s really hoping for is that his bullying of Congress will successfully intimidate them into passing the law before the next session begins, but it’s not going to happen. Even Republicans in the House aren’t that stupid (at least, I think they aren’t).

Robinson ends with this: ” If House Republicans won’t consider the national interest, Obama has no choice but to act.”

No choice. The Republicans made him do it, see?

That rang in me a distant, fading bell of recognition, and I realized it recalled the very first astoundingly awful thing I ever noticed Obama doing, back in June of 2008, when he broke his campaign finance pledge. Remember that? It wasn’t so much that he went back on his word; I could handle that if he acknowledged it and took responsibility. Instead, what did he do? Why, blamed Republicans, that what:

It’s not just that he reneged, either”“it’s how he reneged. Who’s to blame, according to Obama? Why, John McCain and the nasty Republicans, that’s who. James Joyner writes that this charge of Obama’s does take “a bit of gall.” I’d say it takes substantially more than a bit, as well as a heavy dose of the whining, blaming, audacity in which the holier-than-thou Obama tends to specialize:

“‘The public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who’ve become masters at gaming this broken system,’ Mr. Obama said. ‘John McCain’s campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs. And we’ve already seen that he’s not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations.’”

As they used to say in the schoolyard, takes one to know one. Actually, it’s Obama’s campaign that’s been doing virtually all of the latter, as Jim Kuhnhenn of the AP points out:

“Despite that claim, few Republican-leaning groups have weighed into the presidential contest so far. In fact, Obama allies such as MoveOn.org are the ones that have been spending money on advertising against McCain.”

But Obama doesn’t want to let a little thing like this fact get in the way of a good argument, or at least an argument that sounds good. And once again, he’s relying on the American people not to know or care””and, if the comments by his supporters are any indication, he could be right…

Note the occurrence of three themes back then that we’ve become very very used to in the six years since it happened. The first is the choice of the word “broken” to describe the system Obama’s aiming to flout. The second is the blaming of the opposition rather than taking responsibility for his own choice. The third is a lie about what that opposition is actually doing.

Back then, what Obama was proposing wasn’t unconstitutional, of course. What he’s proposing to do now is far, far worse. Back then, much of the MSM defended him, too. I remember understanding that it meant they were in his corner for the long haul, and would go far in abasing themselves on his behalf.

And so they did.

The Bill Cosby rape allegations

The New Neo Posted on by

My thoughts on the subject of the multiple rape allegations against Bill Cosby:

(1) I have no idea whether Bill Cosby is guilty of rape. Neither do you, and neither does anybody except Cosby, and each woman who has accused him. And each woman only knows about her own case, not the others.

(2) Rape is one of the most difficult crimes to deal with in the evidentiary sense, unless the woman goes immediately to the authorities and semen is found. Even then, the question of consent arises, unless she’s been abducted and beaten or otherwise physically injured. Not all rapes match that set of circumstances, and without such things the case becomes a “he said, she said” nightmare.

(3) There are plenty of sociopaths willing to lie about a celebrity to make a buck and get their 15 minutes of fame.

(4) On the other hand, there are plenty of sociopaths who present a good facade and yet are capable of committing such a crime.

(5) One of the most important elements of these cases is when it was that each woman came forward. Their veracity is especially suspect if they came forward after it became public knowledge that the first woman had accused Cosby of rape and and the idea of a lawsuit and a settlement was in the air. If they came forward before those facts were known, the chances that they are telling the truth is improved, although it certainly is not proven. I haven’t read anything that answers my question of “when?,” but I’m guessing they all came forward after.

(6) Demeanor matters—although again, it proves nothing. I watched two of the accusers tell their tales on TV, and if I had to guess (and it would only be a guess), I’d say that they are lying. But, to repeat #1, I really do not know.

(7) Despite all of this, many people feel absolutely sure that Cosby is guilty.

RIP Susanna Merry Hanson

The New Neo Posted on by

Victor Davis Hanson has lost his beautiful and accomplished daughter Susanna, 27 years old. It is heartbreaking to see the photos of this vibrant young woman and know that her life was cut short. I offer my condolences to the entire Hanson family.

I want to add that at the end of the piece Hanson writes:

Remembrances may be sent to The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (340 W Fallbrook Ave Suite 101, Fresno, CA 93711).

I am highlighting that because I know quite a few people with one or the other of those diseases, and the cause has special meaning to me.

Not enough Democratic votes to pass Keystone

The New Neo Posted on by

I can’t help but conclude that the Democrats don’t really care all that much whether they have one more senator or one less during the next Congress, because they failed to get behind Mary Landrieu’s rather transparent bid to appear to have some influence over her party.

She most assuredly does not, or Keystone would have come to a vote in the Senate long ago. This vote was embarrassing: 59 to 41.

Keystone is very popular with the American people. It’s not the least bit popular with President Obama, however, who almost certainly would have vetoed it had it managed to pass.

My guess is that not only was the bill brought to a vote as a manipulative, unserious bid, not only would Obama have vetoed it if it had passed, but the 59-41 vote total (just one shy of the number needed) was orchestrated as well, in order to avoid embarrassing the president by his vetoing it.

It’s almost as though the Democrats wanted to embarrass Landrieu, though. Why bring the bill to a vote if it wouldn’t be passed? As for protecting the president from the need to veto it, won’t that veto happen anyway during the next session? It’s even possible that come January, Republicans will be able to muster enough Democratic votes to override the veto, making them look like the party of “yes.”

None of it makes much sense to me as a Democratic strategy unless—as becomes increasingly apparent—Democrats think the American people (or at least the voters of Louisiana) are really, really, really stupid.

Connectivity issues

The New Neo Posted on by

I just spent the last hour and a half arguing with Comcast about their lousy service and their lousy efforts at finding out what’s wrong with their lousy service. I’ve been dealing with connectivity issues off and on for several months, and today the whole thing seemed to get considerably worse, to the point of no connectivity at all (I’m at a friend’s house for the moment in order to be able to post this).

I plan to do a little more posting later today, but right now I’ve got other obligations to tend to.

So, here’s the question for all you techies: Comcast gave me a new modem about a month ago, and now they say they’ll come and give me another new modem. But how can the first one go bad so soon? I doubt that the modem is the problem. I think it’s just Comcast trying to kick the can down the road.

My computer seems fine; it works well in other places. For a while Comcast tried to tell me my computer must have a virus, and even sicced me onto some terrible computer analysis people, and then all those people did was to very aggressively try to sell me some $150 antivirus or anti-spyware program.

Oh, by the way, today when I asked the Comcast person to connect me to a supervisor, she acquiesced and then I was disconnected. Favorite and clever ploy; who wants to go through all the preliminaries (which take about 20 minutes) again?

Jonathan Turley agrees to represent Congress in lawsuit against Obama’s usurption of power

The New Neo Posted on by

I admire law professor Jonathan Turley. I’ve written about him before, and called him a principled liberal/libertarian.

Therefore it is extremely satisfying to read Turley’s announcement that he will be taking on a new challenge, on an issue he’s thought about long and hard:

…I have previously testified, written, and litigated in opposition to the rise of executive power and the countervailing decline in congressional power in our tripartite system. I have also spent years encouraging Congress, under both Democratic and Republican presidents, to more actively defend its authority, including seeking judicial review in separation of powers conflicts. For that reason, it may come as little surprise this morning that I have agreed to represent the United States House of Representatives in its challenge of unilateral, unconstitutional actions taken by the Obama Administration with respect to implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

This case is being taken very seriously if Turley is being hired.

This is not, I repeat not, a challenge to whatever executive action Obama is threatening to take regarding immigration, although of course it is in the same general ballpark. As Turley writes, in his usual clear manner:

As many on this blog know, I support national health care and voted for President Obama in his first presidential campaign. However, as I have often stressed before Congress, in the Madisonian system it is as important how you do something as what you do. And, the Executive is barred from usurping the Legislative Branch’s Article I powers, no matter how politically attractive or expedient it is to do so. Unilateral, unchecked Executive action is precisely the danger that the Framers sought to avoid in our constitutional system. This case represents a long-overdue effort by Congress to resolve fundamental Separation of Powers issues. In that sense, it has more to do with constitutional law than health care law. Without judicial review of unconstitutional actions by the Executive, the trend toward a dominant presidential model of government will continue in this country in direct conflict with the original design and guarantees of our Constitution. Our constitutional system as a whole (as well as our political system) would benefit greatly by courts reinforcing the lines of separation between the respective branches.

Turley is one of the last of a dying breed: people who will act to defend basic overarching principle even if the result goes against their personal policy preferences. But perhaps I misspoke there; perhaps this breed isn’t really dying. Perhaps it never was all that common.

[Hat tip: Ace.]

Latest terrorist attack in Israel kills four rabbis

The New Neo Posted on by

Three of the dead are Americans (one with Boston ties), and one is British. All had dual citizenship.

According to police, the two suspected Palestinian terrorists, armed with a gun and axes, attacked worshipers after entering the “Kehilat Yaakov” synagogue on Agasi Street in the capital’s Har Nof neighborhood. Two police officers quickly arrived to the scene and exchanged fire with the suspects, killing them.

Palestinian sources reported that the two suspects from the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabel Mukabaer were cousins.

So, the perpetrators were local Palestinians. I wonder whether they targeted these victims because of their nationalities, or whether that was a random occurrence. Note, also, the use of axes as one of the weapons. This may indicate the influence of ISIS’s methods on the terrorist sensibility. The may figure that, the more bloody and grisly the death, the more terror it sows, and the more violence it inspires in those sympathetic to their cause.

In other news, Obama goes on being Obama

The New Neo Posted on by

Obama gives Jonathan Gruber the Wright-Ayers treatment: what was that guy’s name again?

And Obama was sort of against illegal immigration before he was for it. At least, that’s what he said in The Audacity of Hope:

“The number of immigrants added to the labor force every year is of a magnitude not seen in this country for over a century,” Obama noted. “If this huge influx of mostly low-skill workers provides some benefits to the economy as a whole””especially by keeping our workforce young, in contrast to an increasingly geriatric Europe and Japan””it also threatens to depress further the wages of blue-collar Americans and put strains on an already overburdened safety net.”

Another thing I thought about recently—although this has little to do with Obama, the subject matter of this post—is that if Hillary Clinton runs in 2016, her opponent should create a series of ads leaning heavily on excerpts from these audiotapes.

Matt Taylor and his shirt

The New Neo Posted on by

I have a lot more to say about the furor over Matt Taylor’s shirt, but I don’t have time for a longer post at the moment, although I might write one later.

But for now I’ll just say that I agree with this guy (except for the fact that I didn’t watch the clip; but I’ve followed the story):

I watched that clip of Dr Taylor’s apology ”“ at the moment of his supreme professional triumph ”“ and I felt the red mist come down. It was like something from the show trials of Stalin, or from the sobbing testimony of the enemies of Kim Il-sung, before they were taken away and shot. It was like a scene from Mao’s cultural revolution when weeping intellectuals were forced to confess their crimes against the people.

Why was he forced into this humiliation? Because he was subjected to an unrelenting tweetstorm of abuse. He was bombarded across the internet with a hurtling dustcloud of hate, orchestrated by lobby groups and politically correct media organisations.

Boris Johnson, the author, is presently the mayor of London, by the way. He’s a conservative who replaced the abominable Ken Livingstone, and Johnson has a very interesting history, to say the least.

But I digress.

One thing Johnson leaves out—but I’m a blogger, so I can say it—is that the firestorm against Taylor was orchestrated by feminist women and those of either gender (or should I say “any gender”?) who sympathize with them. Let it also be said that I, who am old enough to remember the actual discrimination women used to sometimes face in the workplace, am in favor of the non-discriminatory goal of feminism (although not the preference for woman that constitutes an overreach) but am almost completely alienated from the rest of its agenda.

And I am also well aware of the left’s enormous role in feminism, both historically and presently. That’s why it’s no accident that Boris Johnson’s three analogies were from Communist countries. That totalitarian thought-control impulse is strong among those feminists who would have there be nothing in the world that runs counter to their vision of what it should be, and who are feeling their own power more and more.

Ebola news: Salia, Hickox

The New Neo Posted on by

Last night when I heard that Dr. Martin Salia, a Sierra Leone native who is married to a US citizen and who contacted ebola while treating patients in his native country, had been flown here for treatment and was in “very critical” condition, I thought “boy, if we can cure him, then American medicine is really onto something in the treatment of ebola.”

Sadly, it was not to be: Dr. Salia has died of the disease. He was very very far gone when he arrived:

“He was placed on dialysis, a ventilator and multiple medications to support his organ systems in an effort to help his body fight the disease. He also received a dose of convalescent plasma and ZMapp therapy was initiated on Saturday,” the hospital said in a statement.

“We used every possible treatment available to give Dr. Salia every possible opportunity for survival,” Smith said. “As we have learned, early treatment with these patients is essential. In Dr. Salia’s case, his disease was already extremely advanced by the time he came here for treatment.”

Regular readers here know that I’ve written a great deal about ebola and in the process I’ve learned quite a bit about it. So based on that prior research I’m highlighting two very salient facts about Dr. Salia. The first is that he never knew how he got ebola; he was a general surgeon in Sierra Leone and was not specifically treating ebola patients. This reflects something I learned a while ago and have written about before: that ebola is not always easy to spot, even for medical personnel who are well-versed in its diagnosis and are treating patients in areas where it is endemic, and therefore would be on high alert for it. That is one of the many many dangers of the disease, and you may recall that the same thing happened with Dr. Rick Sacra, who was treated here much earlier in the disease’s course than Salia and has survived.

The second thing I’d like to highlight is that it took four (or five; I’ve read differing accounts) full days after Dr. Salia first showed ebola symptoms for his blood test to become positive for the disease. By that time he was extremely sick indeed. The loss of those days of possible treatment here may have made a big difference. Here is the story:

When Martin Salia’s Ebola test came back negative, his friends and colleagues threw their arms around him. They shook his hand. They patted him on the back. They removed their protective gear and cried.

But when his symptoms remained nearly a week later, Salia took another test, on Nov. 10. This one came back positive, sending the Sierra Leonean doctor with ties to Maryland on a desperate, belated quest for treatment and forcing the colleagues who had embraced him into quarantine.

We were celebrating. If the test says you are Ebola-free, we assume you are Ebola-free,” said Komba Songu M’Briwa, who cared for Salia at the Hastings Ebola Treatment Center in Freetown. “Then everything fell apart.”…

The doctors who tended to him in Freetown appeared to be unaware that an early Ebola test ”” taken within the first three days of the illness ”” is often inconclusive. In a country where information about the disease continues to move slowly, it was another potentially tragic mistake.

In many cases, a negative test at that stage means nothing because “there aren’t enough copies of the virus in the blood for the test to pick up,” said Ermias Belay, the head of the CDC’s Ebola response team in Sierra Leone.

As Dr.Salia worsened, he assumed he had malaria, as many with ebola in Africa do (think again of Thomas Duncan, who thought the woman he helped had either malaria or pregnancy complications, and relied on that—and he was just a layman). Dr. Salia prescribed malaria medication for himself, but it didn’t help:

He [then] called his colleague Alhali Osman Smith, who worked with him at Freetown’s Kissy United Methodist Hospital.

“He told me he thought he still might have Ebola,” Smith said, “in spite of what the test said.”

RIP, Dr. Salia.

Which brings us to the latest from the arrogant, offensive Kaci Hickox, who asks us to stop calling her “the ebola nurse”:

I never had Ebola. I never had symptoms of Ebola. I tested negative for Ebola the first night I stayed in New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s private prison in Newark. I am now past the incubation period ”“ meaning that I will not develop symptoms of Ebola.

I never had Ebola, so please stop calling me “the Ebola Nurse” ”“ now!

Love that tone, don’t you? I, for one, never called Hickox the ebola nurse. In fact, I went so far as to call her “America’s sweetheart,” but do I get any thanks? No!

I’ve already pointed out many things about Ms. Hickox, one of them being that it’s surprising that, although she’s a public health nurse, she doesn’t seem to understand the very concept of quarantine. Nor does she seem to understand that (a) she initially appeared to have a major symptom of early ebola, a fever; (b) she had just returned from treating ebola patients; and (c) her negative blood test that night was meaningless, as the story of Dr. Salia demonstrates all too graphically.

Hickox really isn’t the ebola nurse; for one thing, she hasn’t demonstrated that much knowledge about the disease. But she just might be the most detested nurse in America right now.

ISIS has beheaded another American

The New Neo Posted on by

A video has been released by ISIS proclaiming the beheading of an American, aid worker Peter Kassig. Kassig’s murder had been threatened in the most recent video prior to this.

The murder seems almost an afterthought, because, “The video also showed the gruesome simultaneous beheadings of at least 18 men described as Syrian military personnel, the latest in a series of mass executions and other atrocities carried out by IS in Syria and Iraq.” I believe that’s the main target; ISIS is well aware that Kassig’s murder wouldn’t stop the US from sending whatever troops it wants to send. They beheaded Kassig just to show how tough they are, and also to goad Obama, to show that they can, and because they get a kick out of the violence they perpetrate.

Everything I’ve said before about these beheadings applies to this one.

I notice, however, something a bit different:

Kassig was not shown alive in the footage, and no direct threats were made against other Western hostages.

That may mean they have no plans for the next beheading of a Westerner. Or maybe they do, and just aren’t talking about it.

By the way, Kassig was a Muslim convert, although of course that doesn’t matter much to ISIS, whose members appear just as eager to kill Muslims they’ve in disagreement with, as well as Christians and Yazidis and pretty much anyone that isn’t an ISIS member (for all I know, they are eager to kill each other as well).

Obama was moved to some strong rhetoric this time:

“Abdul-Rahman was taken from us in an act of pure evil by a terrorist group that the world rightly associates with inhumanity,” Obama said in a statement released aboard Air Force One as he flew back to the United States from an Asia tour.

Condolences to Kassig’s family, who must be suffering terribly. RIP, Peter Kassig.

[ADDENDUM: Looking at some of the comments, I see that I had missed the fact that Obama called Peter Kassig by his Muslim name. Here’s the quote:

“Today we offer our prayers and condolences to the parents and family of Abdul-Rahman Kassig, also known to us as Peter,” Mr. Obama’s statement said. The president used the Muslim name Mr. Kassig had adopted, making the point that the Islamic State had killed one of its own. He acknowledged the “anguish at this painful time” felt by Mr. Kassig’s family.

I can’t find the full text, but I’m curious about it. When I heard Obama had used Kassig’s Muslim name, I had several somewhat contradictory thoughts:
(1) It shows how respectful of Islam and how Islam-oriented Obama’s thought process is.
(2) It was done to emphasize that ISIS is killing Muslims, too.
(3) It was done at the request of Kassign’s family.

I don’t know which, if any, is (are) true.]