The Times whips up its party’s fury

The New Neo Posted on by

A couple of days ago I wrote about a NY Times editorial that seemed on the surface to be critical of Obama’s foreign policy, but was really a cleverly crafted apologia for him. Make no mistake about it: the Times is abandoning neither President Obama nor its own devotion to leftism, although every now and then it must make a small concession to a smidgen of truth-telling just to keep up appearances.

But even that much must have been too much, because today the Times has come back with a full-throated expression of the meme du jour on the Benghazi Select Committee. In Bryan Preston’s words, today’s editorial “may be the most outrageous text to appear in the New York Times since Walter Duranty covered up the Soviet famine.”

I think that’s hyperbole. But not by all that much. And the Times editors are hardly alone; countless other politicians and pundits of the liberal and/or left persuasion have fastened on the idea that the GOP concern over Benghazi is a politically-motivated farce that’s beneath contempt:

When Jay Carney was grilled at length by Jonathan Karl of ABC News over an email outlining administration talking points in the wake of the 2012 Benghazi attack, it was not, by the reckoning of many observers, the White House press secretary’s finest hour…But Carney needn’t have worried. He had plenty of backup.

He had The New Republic’s Brian Beutler dismissing Benghazi as “nonsense.” He had Slate’s David Weigel, along with The Washington Post’s Plum Line blog, debunking any claim that the new email was a “smoking gun.” Media Matters for America labeled Benghazi a “hoax.” Salon wrote that the GOP had a “demented Benghazi disease.” Daily Kos featured the headline: “Here’s Why the GOP Is Fired Up About Benghazi””and Here’s Why They’re Wrong.” The Huffington Post offered “Three Reasons Why Reviving Benghazi Is Stupid””for the GOP.”

The left must think this is a winning hand. Or perhaps it’s the only hand they’ve got. Or perhaps both. Will it work? Darned if I know, but it certainly seems to have worked beautifully so far with the rank-and-file, who are repeating the charges of “ridiculous” and worse in comment sections all around the MSM and the blogosphere.

But today’s Times’ editorial “Center Ring at the Republican Circus” is especially curious. It’s written in a style that is as juvenile and loaded with snark as a post on any blog, and that’s saying quite a bit. Take a look, for example, at the opening paragraph:

The hottest competition in Washington this week is among House Republicans vying for a seat on the Benghazi kangaroo court, also known as the Select House Committee to Inflate a Tragedy Into a Scandal. Half the House has asked to “serve” on the committee, which is understandable since it’s the perfect opportunity to avoid any real work while waving frantically to right-wing voters stomping their feet in the grandstand.

Now, I don’t read the Times every day, but I generally try to keep up with it, for reasons I’ve explained before: it’s still very influential, both with its readers and in setting the approach for other periodicals on the left. So perhaps this is the sort of tone the Times has come to adopt more and more in recent years. But to me there seems to be something different about this one, with the pureness of the propaganda coming through minus the sober gray-lady veneer.

The Times editors go on…and on. But I’ll just give you another example from paragraph two:

The day before, [House Republicans] voted to hold in contempt Lois Lerner, the former Internal Revenue Service official whom they would love to blame for the administration’s crackdown on conservative groups, if only they could prove there was a crackdown, which they can’t, because there wasn’t.

So, why the juvenile, shrill, and snarky tone? I think the editors spill the beans on themselves in the very next paragraph, although of course, as is their wont, they ascribe their motives to their enemies instead:

Both actions stem from the same impulse: a need to rouse the most fervent anti-Obama wing of the party and keep it angry enough to deliver its donations and votes to Republicans in the November elections.

Just substitute the phrase “anti-Republican” for “anti-Obama” in that sentence, and then “Democrats” for “Republicans,” and you’ve got it. Another thing fueling the Times’ fury is that in the case of Benghazi it sees a threat not only to Obama but to Hillary in 2016. Whipping up hatred and contempt for Republicans is a tried-and-true method that worked in 2012 and could work again.

The last sentence of the Times editorial tips its hand once more:

Little nuisances like…basic facts can’t be allowed to stand in the way when House Republicans need to whip up their party’s fury.

Just substitute “Democrats” or “the editors of the NY Times” for “House Republicans” and you have exactly what’s happening here.

[NOTE: By the way, both the Benghazi Select Committee and the Lois Lerner contempt votes had some bipartisan support. But the only crossover votes were from Democrats who concurred with the Republicans. So, were they hateful Republican tools, too?

Here’s the Benghazi Select Committee vote roll call, and here are the roll calls on the Lois Lerner contempt charge and then for calling for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Note that there were 7 crossover Democratic votes for the first (Benghazi Committee), 6 for the second (Lerner contempt), but 26 for the third (IRS special counsel). There were no Republican crossover votes.]

Baffled By the Lyrics

The New Neo Posted on by

Surely you remember the Manfred Mann mid-70s hit “Blinded By the Light.” It’s a pretty nifty song, with an earworm-inducing hook.

But the rest of the lyrics are unintelligible. It doesn’t really matter, because it’s so catchy. But no, that second line is not “wrapped up like a douche”—although it sounds for all the world like the lead singer is saying exactly that:

The actual lyrics are here, but knowing them won’t help a lot in figuring out what the song is about. The song is about the song, that’s what it’s about.

But I didn’t know, until I did some research for this post, that it was written by Bruce Springsteen and performed by him on his very first studio album. When he sang it, that second line of the chorus was “cut loose” instead of “revved up.” His version didn’t just have a few different words, though, as you’ll see; the tone was very different, too. The same armature was there, but the clay he built up around it made a figure that’s almost unrecognizable.

This was back when Springsteen was considered a contender in the “who’s most like Bob Dylan?” sweepstakes:

Springsteen’s answer as to what the lyrics were about was, “the rhyming dictionary was on fire.”

[NOTE: Here’s a funny song by Loudon Wainwright III about what it was like to be one of those Bob Dylan clones, what he calls Dylan’s “dumbass kid brothers.” The verse in question starts at 1:23:

Some more trivia about “Blinded By the Light”—when former-Anita-Hill-bashing David Brock wrote his political right-to-left “change” book, he borrowed from the song to title it Blinded By the Right.]

As SOS, Hillary Clinton gave Boko Haram a pass

The New Neo Posted on by

Hillary Clinton had plenty of chances to condemn Boko Haram back when she was Secretary of State:

…[Clinton’s] own State Department refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011, after the group bombed the U.N. headquarters in Abuja. The refusal came despite the urging of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and over a dozen senators and congressmen.

“The one thing she could have done, the one tool she had at her disposal, she didn’t use. And nobody can say she wasn’t urged to do it. It’s gross hypocrisy,” said a former senior U.S. official who was involved in the debate. “The FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department really wanted Boko Haram designated, they wanted the authorities that would provide to go after them, and they voiced that repeatedly to elected officials.”

…Being placed on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations allows U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to use certain tools and authorities, including several found in the Patriot Act. The designation makes it illegal for any U.S. entities to do business with the group in question. It cuts off access to the U.S. financial system for the organization and anyone associating with it. And the designation also serves to stigmatize and isolate foreign organizations by encouraging other nations to take similar measures.

The State Department’s refusal to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization prevented U.S. law enforcement agencies from fully addressing the growing Boko Haram threat in those crucial two years, multiple GOP lawmakers told The Daily Beast.

So, why the refusal under Clinton? It doesn’t seem to have been a set-in-stone policy of the Obama administration, either, because when John Kerry became Secretary of State after Hillary, he finally did list Boko Haram as a terrorist organization. Republicans in Congress had written “letter after letter” urging Clinton to do it, and were joined by some Democrats as well, but she desisted.

Here’s the reason that’s being given:

In 2012, more than 20 prominent U.S. academics in African studies wrote to Clinton, urging her to not to label Bok Haram as a foreign terrorist organization. “An FTO designation would internationalize Boko Haram’s standing and enhance its status among radical organizations elsewhere,” the scholars said.

Inside the Clinton State Department, the most vocal official opposing designating Boko Haram was Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson, who served in that position from 2009 to 2013. Several officials said that the Nigerian government was opposed to the designation and Carson was focused on preserving the relationship between Washington and Abuja.

But that doesn’t make a lot of sense either. If giving Boko Haram the FTO designation would enhance it, wouldn’t that be true of practically any organization receiving such a designation? Then why do it at all, except for groups that are already hugely well-known and international in scope, such as al Qaeda?

And wasn’t the Nigerian government at least nominally fighting Boko Haram? So why would they oppose the designation?

To sum: what’s the point of an FTO designation if not for cases such as this one?

Some people think the failure was part of the Obama administration’s effort to give the impression that it had defeated terrorist groups like al Qaeda and that terrorism was much weakened (the same motivation for their role in the Benghazi debacle). But if so, why would Kerry act as he did in 2013? Was it because, now that the election of 2012 was over, the fiction no longer had to be maintained?

I confess that I’m somewhat puzzled by this whole timeline, but that’s the best explanation I can come up with.

[NOTE: I suppose it’s long past the time I should have added a “Hillary Clinton” category in the right sidebar, so I’m doing so now.]

Obama unleashes the left

The New Neo Posted on by

From Daniel Henninger today in the WSJ:

All of a sudden, the left has hit ramming speed across a broad swath of American life””in the universities, in politics and in government. People fingered as out of line with the far left’s increasingly bizarre claims are being hit and hit hard…

The trigger event was an agreement signed last May between the federal government and the University of Montana to resolve a Title IX dispute over a sexual-assault case.

Every college administrator in the U.S. knows about this agreement. Indeed, there are three separate, detailed “Montana” documents that were signed jointly””and this is unusual””by the civil-rights divisions of the Justice and Education Departments. Remarked DoJ’s Joceyln Samuels, “The government is stronger when we speak with one voice.”

That’s real muscle. But read the agreement. It is Orwellian.

The agreement orders the school to retain an “Equity Consultant” (yes, there is such a thing) to advise it indefinitely on compliance. The school must, with the equity consultant, conduct “annual climate surveys.” It will submit the results “to the United States.”

The agreement describes compliance in mind-numbing detail, but in fact the actual definitional world it creates is vague. It says: “The term ‘sexual harassment’ means unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.” But there are also definitions for sexual assault and gender-based harassment. All of this detailed writ is called “guidance.” As in missile.

No constitutional lawyer could read this agreement and not see in it the mind of the Queen of Hearts: “Sentence first, verdict afterwards!” Indeed, the U.S. Education Department felt obliged to assert that the agreement is “entirely consistent with the First Amendment.”

First Amendment? It’s more like a fatwa. The Obama administration has issued a federal hunting license to deputize fanatics at any university in America. They will define who gets accused, and on what basis.

I agree that Obama has “unleashed” the forces of the left and empowered them. It’s the sort of thing I’ve been saying here for years. But the way was paved long before this; whatever is in the “Montana” agreements is only the latest step in a long process of preparation.

Read Allan Bloom on what happened at Cornell (and other universities) during the 60s—the failure of professors and administrators to defend freedom of speech on campus, and the caving to the special interests of aggrieved victim groups. Think about how American students have for decades been told that the definition of sexual harassment in the workplace or school is whatever might make them feel threatened or uncomfortable, and that speech that does this must be stamped out. Note the long long process of leftist professors hiring leftist professors to create a near-unanimity of leftist thought among faculty. And understand that this sort of PC thought-control and speech-control by the thought police has been normed so much and for so long that it’s likely that most students today see absolutely nothing wrong with it and don’t even understand the foundation of the arguments against it.

That the Obama DOJ has wormed itself ever more firmly into the process was inevitable. We are in big trouble, but we have been for a long, long time.

[ADDENDUM: And take a look at this.]

The boy she loves is a Romeo

The New Neo Posted on by

Want a break from politics? Let’s take a look at that 1965 song “Back in My Arms Again,” one of my favorites by the Supremes. Note how subtle and classy the sexuality of their performance is compared to today’s pop singers*:

One line from the song has always puzzled me. It occurs at minute 2:23, “And Flo, she don’t know, cause the boy she loves is a Romeo.”

What did that phrase mean? By the time I first heard the song, I’d already studied Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” in depth (in junior high, I might add). And so I knew that, at the beginning of the play, Romeo thinks he’s in love with Rosaline, and seems to be pining away for her. But then he spies Juliet at the dance, and declares, “”Did my heart love ’til now? Forswear it, sight / For I ne’er saw true beauty ’til this night.”

Once Romeo loves Juliet, that’s it for him. Although we don’t know if he would have remained faithful had they lived out their normal lifespans, in the context of the play Romeo’s love for Roseline versus his love for Juliet contrasts a love that’s superficial with a love that’s deep and true.

So Romeo is an exemplar of both kinds of love: superficial versus lasting. And when a person is called a “Romeo,” which is being referred to? Does the expression mean a dilettante with the ladies, a casual charmer who can’t be trusted? Or does it mean a true and faithful lover who cleaves to one person only?

Now, you might think I’m somewhat crazy to even give a moment’s thought to what the phrase might mean in the context of this song. All I can say is that I’ve been puzzled about it for well-nigh fifty years, and so I throw out the question to you.

Also, it gives me a chance to put a Supremes video up there.

I’m not making up the dilemma, though. The term “Romeo” when used to refer to a guy has an inherent double meaning, and the choice of which meaning applies can only be determined by the context:

You can describe a man as a Romeo if you want to indicate that he is very much in love with a woman, or that he frequently has sexual relationships with different women.

In Shakespeare’s play, Friar Laurence isn’t sure at first, either. He says it exceedingly well:

Romeo. Then plainly know my heart’s dear love is set
On the fair daughter of rich Capulet:
As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine;
And all combined, save what thou must combine
By holy marriage: when and where and how
We met, we woo’d and made exchange of vow,
I’ll tell thee as we pass; but this I pray,
That thou consent to marry us to-day.

Friar Laurence. Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here!
Is Rosaline, whom thou didst love so dear,
So soon forsaken? young men’s love then lies
Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.
Jesu Maria, what a deal of brine
Hath wash’d thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!
How much salt water thrown away in waste,
To season love, that of it doth not taste!
The sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears,
Thy old groans ring yet in my ancient ears;
Lo, here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit
Of an old tear that is not wash’d off yet:
If e’er thou wast thyself and these woes thine,
Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline:
And art thou changed? pronounce this sentence then,
Women may fall, when there’s no strength in men.

Later in the scene Romeo convinces him (the “she” in the first line of the following exchange refers to Juliet; “the other” in the third line refers to Rosaline, as does Friar Laurence’s use of the word “she”):

Romeo. I pray thee, chide not; she whom I love now
Doth grace for grace and love for love allow;
The other did not so.

Friar Laurence. O, she knew well
Thy love did read by rote and could not spell.

In other words, Laurence recognizes that Romeo’s love for Rosaline wasn’t the real thing, and Rosaline recognized it too.

And every time I take a look at virtually any part of “Romeo and Juliet,” I am struck anew by what an extraordinary masterpiece it is.

[NOTE *: The classiness of the Supremes was no accident. It was a conscious plan:

The Supremes became the first black female performers of the rock era to embrace a more feminine image. Much of this was accomplished at the behest of Motown chief Berry Gordy and Maxine Powell, who ran Motown’s in-house finishing school and Artist Development department. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Ross sang in a thin, calm voice, and her vocal styling was matched by having all three women embellish their femininity instead of imitate the qualities of male groups. Eschewing plain appearances and basic dance routines, The Supremes appeared onstage in detailed make-up and high-fashion gowns and wigs, and performed graceful choreography created by Motown choreographer Cholly Atkins. Powell told the group to “be prepared to perform before kings and queens.” Gordy wanted the Supremes, like all of his performers, to be equally appealing to black and white audiences, and he sought to erase the image of black performers as being unrefined or lacking class.

It worked; the Supremes became the “the most commercially successful of Motown’s acts and are, to date, America’s most successful vocal group.” Not bad for three girls from the public housing projects of Detroit.]

[NOTE II: I think this post may have set a record for being indexed under the highest number of categories ever on the sidebar.]

Harry Reid’s war against the Kochs

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the latest installment in Harry Reid’s two minutes hate against the Koch Brothers:

Charles and David Koch are one of the “main causes” of climate change, charged Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on the Senate floor.

“While the Koch brothers admit to not being experts on the matter, these billionaire oil tycoons are certainly experts at contributing to climate change. That’s what they do very well. They are one of the main causes of this. Not a cause, one of the main causes,” Reid said.

You might ask how anyone can listen to and believe something that preposterous, something that obviously disconnected from reality or any scientific possibility, and yet simultaneously continue to believe him/herself to be a member of the party of both tolerance and scientific realism?

But that mind trick is performed almost effortlessly every day. Human beings have a vast capacity for self-deception and acceptance of propaganda, and demonizing the opposition is a tried-and-true method. After all, Alinsky’s Rule 12 was, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

But I can’t recall another politician at the level of Senate Majority Leader or higher using his/her position to attack private citizens like this before Obama came to office. It’s one of the things the Obama administration has perfected, encouraged, and unleashed, and it’s one of the most pernicious of its developments.

Scott Johnson wrote a post about Reid and the Kochs a few weeks ago, and that’s where I found this video demonstrating the relentless and repetitive nature of Reid’s anti-Koch campaign:

Tea Party problem: too many choices

The New Neo Posted on by

What happened in North Carolina last night? I think that blogger CAC at Ace’s hits the nail on the head in this post, and points out a problem that GOP conservatives had better figure out a solution to or they’ll be griping even more about the vast-RINO-conspiracy against them:

I’ve seen a lot of hemming and hawing about how the villainous Karl Rove and his band of toads flooded the zone and dragged “their guy” Tillis across the finish line in yesterday’s North Carolina primary. Thom Tillis was the establishment’s pick, and he won- just under 46% per the last county updates I’ve seen. However, the establishment is what it is, and how it has enjoyed wins in important primaries, both Senatorial and Presidential, isn’t thanks to their spending or some deal in a smoke-filled room. It is far simpler than that.

How can I say this? Because over 54% of Republican primary voters did not vote for Tillis. Had these other voters consolidated behind a single candidate, as the establishment always does even if they have to switch gears to do so (see the maneuvering to push Christie out and test Bush), Brannon or Harris would be the one facing Senator Hagan.

Conservatives jump from candidate to candidate in a lot of these races, and the more who throw their hat into the ring, the further it dilutes their voice in the primary.

CAC calls it the Baskin-Robbins problem (read the whole thing to find out why). But whatever you want to call it, it consists of the fact that the Tea Party, a group of individualists, must somehow coalesce behind the best conservative candidate in each race if it is going to both maximize its power and choose an individual who actually has a chance of winning in the general.

And that latter point is the point, which is a point that conservatives sometimes lose sight of in their need to find someone that agrees with them on all measures. But I do not share their favored “stab-in-the-back” theories to explain their losses. Yes, there are some powerful RINO Republicans who are working against Tea Party interests. But when I look at the actual Tea Party candidates and the actual races they actually lose and how and why, there’s no need to invoke some nefarious conspiracy. The candidates they field had better be smart, appealing, and not so numerous that they split the conservative vote. That’s not rocket science to figure out, although it’s not all that easy to accomplish.

So stop whining about what victims you are and start figuring out how to win.

One more thing: Democratic candidates have figured all of this out, and their new tack (which they attempted in their campaign against Tillis, who they—rightly, I believe—saw as their most dangerous opposition) is to fund ads aimed at convincing conservatives that the strongest GOP candidate is too moderate and is really a RINO. It didn’t work effectively enough against Tillis last night, but it’s worked before in other races and has led directly to Democratic victories. Divide and conquer.

You had me at hello

The New Neo Posted on by

I remember reading decades ago about how quickly we judge people when we first meet them. Yes or no, stay or move on?

This 1986 book said the judgments all happen within four minutes, but my impression is that it’s usually much much sooner than that. We are instantaneously and constantly evaluating almost countless bits of information being received, not just about superficial looks (although there’s that, too) but about body language (gesture, posture, movement, tension), expression, scent, intelligence, humor, health, and much more.

I’ve always been one to have strong and quick reactions to people (both pro and con), so strong and so quick it can be almost dizzying. For me, one puzzling aspect has been that my impressions have been nearly as strong even when only meeting someone for the first time over the phone. And those first impressions have almost never (or maybe even never ever) been wrong, on the occasions when I’ve had a chance to check them out in person later.

I first noticed this two decades ago, when I was in graduate school. I worked in a clinic where the staff fielded the initial phone calls from clients and did a short intake, then passed the clients on to the therapist, who had to make a contact call. At the point of making that first call I already knew a bit about the clients—most often a couple or family—but really not all that much. I’d have in front of me a sheet of paper with the names in the family, their ages, and a sentence or two about the presenting problem as the family member who had made the initial agency contact defined it.

But as soon as the person answered the phone and said “hello” I would get a feeling so powerful that it couldn’t be denied. I either knew it would be relatively easy to work with this person or family, or felt an ominous “oh-oh” that would make the hair on the back of my neck stand up, telling me that something was very, very wrong and I was in for a rough ride. These impressions always panned out when I worked with people.

Now, you could say it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. But I don’t think so. It’s a bit like another thing I’ve noticed, which is that when I’ve gotten massages, I can tell the moment the person first touches me whether this will be a good massage or a bad one. And that perception is independent of whether I’ve liked them or not during those first four minutes of meeting face to face. Sometimes I like them very much, but when the first touch happens I think “Oh no, that won’t do.” Sometimes I’m not all that keen on them, but it’s clear the moment the massage starts that this is going to work out very well. In other words, there seems to be no correlation.

Which brings us to this article:

Remember that famous line in the movie Jerry Maguire where Renee Zellweger says to Tom Cruise, “You had me at ‘hello’ “? Well it turns out there is some scientific evidence to back this up. People use voices to instantly judge people, researchers say.

Of course.

McAleer recorded 64 people, men and women, from Glasgow, reading a paragraph that included the word “hello.” He then extracted all the hellos and got 320 participants to listen to the different voices and rate them on 10 different personality traits, such as trustworthiness, aggressiveness, confidence, dominance and warmth.

What he found was that the participants largely agreed on which voice matched which personality trait. One male voice was overwhelmingly voted the least trustworthy, “the sort of guy you’d want to avoid,” McAleer says. The pitch of the untrustworthy voice was much lower than the male deemed most trustworthy. McAleer says this is probably because a higher pitched male voice is closer to the natural pitch of a female, making the men sound less aggressive and friendlier than the lower male voices.

What makes females sound more trustworthy is whether their voices rise or fall at the end of the word, says McAleer. “Probably the trustworthy female, when she drops her voice at the end, is showing a degree of certainty and so can be trusted.”

So, you gals—and guys, as you’ll see from this video—who constantly uptalk, beware!

My obligatory Monica Lewinsky post

The New Neo Posted on by

Why Monica, why now?:

After 10 years of virtual silence (“So silent, in fact,” she writes, “that the buzz in some circles has been that the Clintons must have paid me off; why else would I have refrained from speaking out? I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth”), Lewinsky, 40, says it is time to stop “tiptoeing around my past””and other people’s futures. I am determined to have a different ending to my story. I’ve decided, finally, to stick my head above the parapet so that I can take back my narrative and give a purpose to my past. (What this will cost me, I will soon find out.)”

With a curiously old-fashioned air (“parapet”), Monica comes out of her self-imposed hiding/silence and tells her side of the story. Since it’s behind a paywall I haven’t read it. But I’ve read summaries and excerpts, and it doesn’t sound as though it breaks any new ground.

Of course, everyone’s real angle on the story is: is it good or bad for Hillary? I think it’s so early in game that it’s not especially one or the other—her article will blow over (as it were) by the time it might matter. Lewinksy’s getting it over with now because it’s almost inevitable she’ll be pursued by the press if Hillary runs. But in general, the Lewinsky episode itself is a net negative for the Clintons, because—although for some, it engenders sympathy for Hillary—it reminds America of Bill’s sordidness.

Why Obama can’t seem to catch a break

The New Neo Posted on by

No, this article giving six reasons for the above phenomenon did not appear in the Onion.

My favorites are numbers three, four, and six: Obama’s been stymied by the vast and controlling “conservative media complex”; he’s had too much “policy success”; he’s been too unwilling “to promote and sell his policies.”

You can’t make this stuff up. But apparently Julian Zelizer, Princeton professor and the article’s author, can.

It’s that last point, number six, that interests me the most. I’ve been hearing it from pundits on the left almost since Obama became president, despite the fact that he’s been selling his policies assiduously from the beginning, “communicating” up a storm.

What’s behind argument six? In some cases it’s just propaganda, but in others (and my guess is that Zelizer may fall into this camp) the writer really believes it. If a person accepts as a self-evident truth the fact that Obama is a brilliant man and a great communicator and persuader, and that his cause is just, then his failure to persuade the American people can only have one possible explanation, which is that he just hasn’t tried hard enough to do so.

Nigerian jihadist terrorist group kidnapped hundreds of young girls and plans to sell them

The New Neo Posted on by

One would think that this would be enormous news, and should have been from the moment the girls were kidnapped:

Fears for the fate of more than 200 Nigerian girls [kidnapped from school on April 14, almost 3 weeks ago] turned even more nightmarish Monday when the leader of the Islamist militant [sic: terrorist] group that kidnapped them announced plans to sell them.

“I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah,” a man claiming to be Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said in a video first obtained by Agence France-Presse.

“There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell. He commands me to sell. I will sell women. I sell women,” he continued, according to a CNN translation from the local Hausa language.

Boko Haram is a terrorist group receiving training from al Qaeda affiliates, according to U.S. officials. Its name means “Western education is sin.” In his nearly hourlong, rambling video, Shekau repeatedly called for Western education to end.

“Girls, you should go and get married,” he said.

War on women, anyone? And this sort of thing has been going on for quite some time; for example, I wrote about Boko Haram at some length in this post from nearly a year ago. The group is composed of fundamentalist Islamic terrorists who are especially against the education of women, although education of the secular variety for any child or young person in Nigeria is their target as well, and they will murder or sell into sexual slavery (let’s not mince words here) anyone they can get their hands on, all in the name of their religion. Special targets are often Christians, but Muslims are hardly except from their violence.

More here:

Gunmen abducted the girls from their dormitories at the Government Girls Secondary school in Chibok. One girl told the New Yorker that militants dressed in Nigerian military uniforms came into their dorms and told the girls they were being taken to a safe space.

From the start there’s been little doubt who did it and what their intention is. After all, Boko Haram’s goal is to wipe secular education out in Nigeria, both for Christians and for Muslims, and to establish “a ‘pure’ Islamic state ruled by sharia law.” To this end the group has committed thousands of murders, as well as many kidnappings and assassinations.

With the help of al Qaeda (which tends to think big), Boko Haram has stepped up the scale of its terrorism in recent years. The large number of victims involved in this recent kidnapping is probably the only reason it’s getting international press in the first place. That’s how common Boko Haram’s predations have become.