Outrage at ISIS

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve already discussed how flat and emotionless President Obama was when he gave his speech on ISIS Wednesday evening.

But what I didn’t mention was that most Americans, if called on to talk extemporaneously about the subject, could have easily conjured up the requisite emotion that Obama lacked. The violence and outright sadism of ISIS have aroused a special intensity of rage in the average citizen, if not in our cool president.

It wasn’t just his speech, either. There was a great deal of shock and disappointment earlier, even among Obama’s supporters, at Obama’s announcing James Foley’s murder and then going off to play golf. There were almost no pundits defending such callousness. And it’s not just the so-called “optics” that are off. This rot goes much deeper.

Last night I was watching a portion of a cable news show on Fox (I don’t remember which it was, but maybe Greta van Susteren’s?) featuring interviews with George Washington University students, asking them what anniversary was coming up (the answer, of course, was 9/11) and whether they’d heard about ISIS beheading two American journalists and could name the men who had been killed.

As with most of these surveys, some knew the facts. But it wasn’t hard to find students who were so out of touch that they failed to think of the first, and/or failed to come up with the names of the second. There was one young man who especially caught my attention. He not only didn’t know Foley’s or Sotloff’s names, but he hadn’t even gotten the news about their beheadings by ISIS, didn’t know the events had occurred. When the interviewer told him about it, the student looked at him in stunned disbelief.

I’m not showing the video to point out how uniformed this listener was, although it’s certainly true that he was very ignorant of what’s been going on. But we’re used to seeing that sort of thing in these clips (Watter’s World on Bill O’Reilly makes a specialty of interviews with voters whose information level is so low that they’re funny/sad). My point is that, even though this man obviously pays a minimum of attention to the news, he still knows enough to know this event was really, really bad, and to be deeply affected by it.

This is the quintessential low information voter. But even he feels this on an emotional level (his interview starts at around 1:37; he’s the one with the hat):

And that is one of the reasons people have turned away from Obama. His reaction to what’s been happening is just wrong. It’s off, and anyone who’s been watching and listening (still a sizable portion of the country’s citizens) can see that, whether they be on right or left.

Most people of different political persuasions can get riled up about religious fanatic barbarian punks sawing off the heads of journalists and videotaping the event proudly for all the world to see, in order to recruit more religious fanatic barbarian punks who find this all to be a great inspiration. Even people who aren’t usually disposed towards using the word “evil” find that it fits the definition, and they are roused to anger. And a president who sounds neither roused nor angry just doesn’t seem right.

[NOTE: Looking at the text of Obama’s speech, you’ll see that, for Obama, it employs strong language. He calls ISIS “terrorists,” who are “unique in their brutality,” who have threatened a group with “genocide,” and who have committed “acts of barbarism.” All true (although maybe not the “uniqueness”). But if you do a search for the word “evil” in his speech, you will only find this: “We cannot erase every trace of evil from the world, and small groups of killers have the capacity to do great harm,” a curiously passive and negative statement, although also a very true one.

Now, I’m not saying Obama has to call ISIS “evil” to be credible in this fight. But I think his failure to do so is evidence of a deep and personal reluctance to think in those sorts of traditional moral terms, or to echo George Bush with his “axis of evil” speech. If there is an axis of evil (and I believe there is), then ISIS is certainly a hub, so why not call it that, and with some outrage in your voice? Failure to do so has political consequences, as I think Obama is currently discovering. And I think those consequences are international.

That’s not to say that if Obama could talk the talk at this point people would believe he that could walk the walk. There have been too many missteps, wafflings, backtrackings, and support of the wrong groups and failure to support the right groups. Too much display of weakness. People no longer believe Obama’s words; only his acts will count.]

We…

The New Neo Posted on by

…are screwed:

Over one-third of Likely U.S. Voters remain unaware which political party controls the House of Representatives and which has a majority in the Senate – less than two months before an election that may put one party in charge of both.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 63% are aware that Republicans have majority control of the House. An identical number (63%) know that Democrats run the Senate.

Twenty percent (20%) mistakenly believe Democrats control the House, while 17% are not sure. Similarly, 18% think the GOP is in charge in the Senate, but 19% are not sure.

And 31% don’t know what the House and Senate are.

Yeah, I made that last sentence up. But I wonder.

I wonder.

Jacksonian Americans

The New Neo Posted on by

Ben Domenech thinks Americans have remained consistently Jacksonian:

Despite the opinion of elites on either extreme ”“ whether motivated by humanitarian or democracy project aims ”“ the fact is that, 13 years after 9/11, it’s remarkable how coherent and consistent the views of Americans really are. It’s the Obama view that is incoherent, bouncing between the sentiments of elites and uncomfortable in a position of leadership. Americans, for most of the 20th and 21st centuries, have been remarkably consistent in their views.

The American people are innately Jacksonian. They rejected the elite pushes on Syria and Libya for the same reason they now want to destroy ISIS ”“ because they believe the purpose of the American military shouldn’t be to nation build or police countries, but to kill and destroy evildoers who threaten us and our interests. That’s why the humanitarian agenda and the democracy agenda couldn’t take hold in Syria ”“ Assad was smart enough not to chop heads off Americans (that doesn’t make for good Vogue profile material, after all).

One of the problems with looking at it this way is that it takes an awful lot to wake the sleeping Jacksonian giant. An ounce or two of prevention of ISIS would have done a great deal a year ago, but not only was Obama not even remotely ready to do it, but were the American people ready to support bombing back then? I have my doubts. If groups such as ISIS have to metastasize in order to get our attention, and even then all we’re willing to support is air strikes, how Jacksonian is that?

Just to clarify: my “neocon” moniker does not mean I’m for war merely in order to effect regime change. I’ve explained what I mean by “neocon” in many previous articles, but the summary version is this:

(a) a newly-hatched conservative; and

(b) one who believes that liberal (in the classic sense) democracies, with protection of liberties and human rights, are the best form of government and should be promoted whenever possible and whenever the ground for them seems ripe for them. However, that promotion should only take the form of military action when our own security or that of our allies is profoundly threatened.

That last sentence makes me a Jacksonian.

9/11: Thirteen years

The New Neo Posted on by

If you’re the superstitious type, thirteen is an ominous number. But we don’t need superstition to feel bad about what’s been going on in the world lately.

For a few years not all that long ago, the threat of terrorism was able to recede in our minds, even though it never really receded in actuality. But now it’s come back to the forefront, in plenty of time for this solemn anniversary.

Bookworm writes that, for her, 9/11 represented “a bright line that breaks my world view into two entirely disparate segments.” Prior to that date she felt confident and safe in America, and afterwards that sense had dissipated, never to return. I’m older than Bookworm, and as a child who grew up in the 50s/60s, with its duck-and-cover drills and fallout shelters, and the Cuban missile crisis making us feel that nuclear war was imminent, I never quite had that sense of safety to begin with.

I’ve described 9/11 as a watershed event, but for me it meant that an old feeling had suddenly come back, although the details were different. There was also something very personal about it, because most of the terrorists had started in New England, taken flights from Boston to Los Angeles that were routes I’d taken many times myself, and crashed into buildings in the city in which I’d grown up.

Time has passed since then, a lot of time. But everything that has happened politically in this country has been a reflection of that day, and could not have occurred without it. I don’t think this country and its people are the better for it, either.

Next time I visit New York I plan to go to the 9/11 museum. It’s sobering to think that the children who visit there will have no personal memory of 9/11. To remember the day at all, one would have to be at least a teenager. As time passes, personal memories will become more rare, and history will write page after new page that is now blank. Will we finally rise to the occasion, and be worthy of this battle for our lives and our civilization? From the start, it was clear that was the magnitude of the fight we face.

Did you know these 9/11 stories?

The New Neo Posted on by

I didn’t—or at least, I didn’t remember them after thirteen years:

By most accounts, Danny Lewin was the first victim of 9/11. Seated in seat 9B aboard American Airlines flight 11, he saw Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz al-Omari, sitting just in front of him, rise and make their way to the cockpit. According to calls from flight attendants to air traffic officials, later documented in the 9/11 Commission’s report, Lewin wasted no time in acting. Having served as an officer in Sayeret Matkal, the Israel Defense Forces’ top unit, he moved to tackle the terrorists. The man in 10B, Satam al-Suqami, moved, too, producing a knife and slitting Lewin’s throat. Less than 30 minutes later, at 8:46 a.m., the plane crashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower.

Also reading this, I learned for the first time that some of the hijackers on 9/11 were tagged by a screening program called CAPPS as being high-risk for various reasons. But the selection had no consequences at the time other than that their checked bags were not loaded onto the plane until it was ascertained that the suspicious men were on board. Failure of imagination; suicide hijackers were outside the realm of what security had envisioned as a possibility.

In addition, the carry-on bags of two of the hijackers set off metal detector alarms, and then were passed through a second metal detector without incident, and the men and their bags were waved forward. Another hijacker “set off the alarms for both the first and second metal detectors and was then hand-wanded before being passed.” The security person who checked him through didn’t seem curious about what had set off the alarms in the first place; his work was described as “marginal at best.”

I also did not know that at the time cockpit doors were locked; for some reason I was under the impression they were not. So although we don’t know for sure how the terrorists gained access to the cockpit, there are guesses:

[Flight attendent] Ong speculated that they had “jammed their way” in. Perhaps the terrorists stabbed the flight attendants to get a cockpit key, to force one of them to open the cockpit door, or to lure the captain or first officer out of the cockpit.

We know a surprising amount about 9/11, and we knew much of it shortly after the event. But some things will remain a mystery.

Obama’s speech

The New Neo Posted on by

I was out when President Obama gave his speech tonight, so I didn’t hear it live. I rarely listen to political speeches anyway, and certainly not often to his; I prefer to read them (for the reasons stated here).

But turning on the TV just now when I got home, I’ve heard a few minutes of a repeat of his speech, and I’m struck—as I often am when listening to Obama—by the absence of force in his voice. It’s as though someone else wrote his speech (which in fact is almost certainly the case) and he is seeing it for the first time. Conviction? Strength? Resolve? I don’t hear a particle of any of it.

What’s more, I’ve never understood the claims that Obama is a good orator. I’ve always heard this emptiness in his voice, the same emptiness I hear now, although it’s gotten worse over time.

I’m not even dealing with content at the moment. This is merely affect I’m speaking about, and it’s lacking. I’m not asking for fire and brimstone, but let’s have a little vigor. Megyn Kelly had more force in her words introducing Obama’s speech than he had in giving it.

They say that if you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made. I hear no sincerity in Obama’s voice. But there’s really no reason why I should.

Update on Mandy Nagy, Liberty Chick

The New Neo Posted on by

Some encouraging news from William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection on Mandy Nagy’s condition:

Update 2:45 p.m. 9-10-2014 ”” Mandy’s mom conveys: She’s doing better today. The swelling in both her eyes has gone down. She is much more active today than she was yesterday. She is moving her left side often and she’s even trying to talk. It’s going to take a long time. But I’m glad she’s made some progress.

Let’s hope she makes a full recovery.

The Vietnamization of Iraq

The New Neo Posted on by

Here was the Left’s plan for defeat in Iraq, in their own words. I wrote about it in the early days of this blog.

They were planning to get Congress to cut funding, but that turned out to be unnecessary. They got their antiwar candidate, Obama, elected instead. And it didn’t matter that the war was basically won, they managed to lose it anyway.

Where there’s a will there’s a way.

Except it’s much, much worse. With Vietnam, “only” the people of Vietnam and Cambodia suffered after our involvement in the war was ended. With Iraq, many more will suffer before this is through, I’m afraid. And although the post-war carnage in neither Vietnam nor Cambodia directly and intimately affected us (although it was dreadful to read and hear about), this time the Islamist terrorists of ISIS would like to make the killings up close and personal.

History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and betrayal, the second time as greater tragedy and betrayal. Sorry, but I fail to see the farce.

Those Obama approval polls are interesting, but…

The New Neo Posted on by

…not especially important.

We keep reading about how Obama’s approval ratings are “hovering near all-time lows.”

Only 43% now consider him a strong leader. Only? That 43% figure apparently represents the number of Americans who don’t read the news and/or don’t care, and/or who are so firmly planted in the Democratic camp that nothing could dislodge them.

It is not an encouraging statistic. It should be in single digits.

What’s more, why would Obama care about his rating? He will never run for office again (if the 22nd Amendment holds up). And although he doesn’t enjoy disapproval—he’d much prefer the wild adulation he’s accustomed to—he can take it, because both his narcissism and his staff (and the perks of his office, like vacations and golf) shield him from it. The only reason he would care about this level of disapproval is if it makes it harder for him to do what he wants to do in his next two and a half years of office.

Disapproval would make it harder for Obama to do things—if in fact he was making any attempt to cater to the wishes of the American people, or at least to cajole and fool them into thinking he is. But for Obama, bucking the majority opinion on a number of fronts, both foreign and domestic, is nothing new. It’s actually been a hallmark of his presidency, Obamacare being one of the earliest and most prominent examples. The bill was never popular, but that never mattered to him or his Democratic leaders in Congress; it was going to be happen anyway, by hook or by crook. Same with amnesty, same with whatever else he might have in mind. The dilemma for Obama is how to present it to the American people in such a way that they don’t elect a Congress in 2014 that is so overwhelmingly Republican that it could veto or somehow otherwise block what he wants to do.

Even if that were to happen, Obama figures he can get around such a Congress through executive action. You can bet he has a team of lawyers working hard to figure out the best way to do that without running afoul of the Supreme Court. You can also bet he wouldn’t mind if something really really bad happened to one of the conservative SCOTUS justices during the remainder of his term, so he could also get to change the current makeup of the Court and swing it to a more liberal direction for the foreseeable future.

As a check on Obama, there’s always the power of Congress to impeach and convict (impeachment is nothing without conviction), which would depend on how many votes there would be for conviction in the Senate. And that’s another reason Obama might be paying at least a tiny bit of lip service to soothing the American people prior to that 2014 election. Even then, for conviction in the Senate a two-thirds (67) vote would be necessary.

It is certainly theoretically possible for there to be enough votes in the Senate as a result of the 2014 election to convict Obama, although it is highly unlikely. Currently there are 45 Republicans in the Senate, with 53 Democrats and 2 Independents who caucus with the Democrats, making a grand total of 55 for the Democrats. However, 21 Democratic Senate seats are up for grabs in 2014, as opposed to 15 Republican ones. If the impossible were to happen and Republicans won all of the contested Democratic seats and lost none of their own, Republicans would still have only 66 Senate seats, and would need one Democrat to cross over and join them in order to convict.

But of course, there is almost no chance of such a sweep happening in the first place. So any effort to impeach and convict Obama, even if Republicans gain a majority that’s realistic for them, would require significantly more Democratic crossover votes than one. It is hard to imagine a scenario where enough Democrats would be willing to do that.

Therefore, the last direct power the American people had over Obama was the 2012 election, and they blew it. Now they are stuck, and Obama knows it, which gives him freedom as defined in the song “Me and Bobby McGee”: nothin’ left to lose.

Obamacare “benchmark” premiums are not going up

The New Neo Posted on by

But that’s because they’re protected by the reinsurance scheme sheltering insurance companies from losses, an arrangement that was set up as part of Obamacare to sweeten the deal, and is due to expire in 2017. Premium rates are not being set in the manner of a normal insurance market, for that and several other reasons (read the whole thing to find out the details), because Obamacare is nothing like a normal insurance market.

The whole thing is a big old shell game, designed to bring money to the coffers of the insurance companies and deceive the voters for as long as possible about what’s really happening with Obamacare. Cool.

But of course, you already knew that.

Every so often there’s a spate of articles with headlines like, “See, Obamacare is working, and the Republicans are angry that they were so wrong.” The writers point to things like “premiums aren’t so high after all,” as though premiums tell the story—what about narrow networks, for example? Or they write that tons of people are enrolled, neglecting to mention how much fewer it is than were projected, and how many remain uninsured, and how many of the enrolled were kicked off previous insurance by Obamacare.

And then there’s the future: what will happen when the whole shebang starts applying to businesses? That’s another can that’s been kicked down the road so far.

You think David Brat was unusual? Meet Micah Edmond

The New Neo Posted on by

The victory of economics/ethics professor David Brat over Eric Cantor in Virginia’s 7th District about three months ago featured a surprising win for an unusual candidate. But if you think that was strange, turn to Virginia’s District 8, where Micah Edmond is the Republican nominee for the House of Representatives.

Edmond is not only that somewhat rara avis, a black Republican, but he’s something even less common: a black Republican Jew. How many people can there be with that particular combination of traits, much less people with that particular combination of traits who are running for major political office? Add to that “observant Orthodox Jew,” and you have Micah Edmond.

Oh, and a Williams graduate. And Marine.

Edmond is very unlikely to win. The 8th is a strongly liberal Democrat district where a lot of federal government employees live. His opponent, former lieutenant governor Don Beyer is heavily favored.

But after Brat’s victory, I wouldn’t say it’s totally impossible that Edmond could at least make a stronger showing than one might ordinarily expect. Beyer is closely connected to President Obama and to money, having been Obama’s Mid-Atlantic finance chairman in 2008, and he’s from a family that owns a lot of well-known auto dealerships. Obama rewarded him by making him ambassador to Switzerland and Lichtenstein, which sounds like a nice gig. You get the picture. But in November, will the voters find the Obama association quite as fabulous as they once did?

[NOTE: If you’re wondering how it is that Edmond came to be Jewish, he is a convert, and this is his story:

“When I was in high school, my biological mother just left me,” he said. At that time, he had a close friend who was Jewish, and he sometimes attended services with the whole family. They ended up adopting him but didn’t insist he become Jewish.

“With my parents, it was up to me whether or not I wanted to convert,” he recalled. However, Edmond liked what he saw, particularly the “study, dedication and value system of not leaving anybody behind in the good deeds you do.”]

In his elements

The New Neo Posted on by

I was raised on the songs of Tom Lehrer. I knew the song “The Elements” from the version appearing on this record, which I had pretty much memorized in childhood (the other songs, that is; “The Elements” went too fast for me to master, although I was able to conquer parts of it).

But I’m amazed to see that Lehrer sounds at least as fast or even faster in this live performance, and he does it while seeming oh-so-relaxed (don’t miss the coda he tacks on, either, which occurs at around 2:09):

And here’s Jim Parsons of “The Big Bang Theory” on trying to learn the song. Parsons is known for his ability to rattle off fast dialogue. But with this song he apparently met his match, and then some: