…has been looking pretty good during the border crisis, unlike nearly everyone else. Perry handled Obama’s visit with just the right combination of cooperation and challenge, courtesy and criticism. And prior to that, a couple of weeks ago he took matters into Texas’ own hands and stepped up local patrolling of the border, without waiting for the motionless Obama to do anything.
And speaking of looking good, I still approve of the eyeglasses.
And it’s fitting somehow that it’s happening in Berkeley:
The city of Berkeley will require medical marijuana dispensaries to give away two percent of the amount of cannabis they sell each year free to low-income patients.
The City Council voted unanimously at Tuesday’s meeting to amend the city’s medical pot rules, which would also allow for a fourth dispensary in Berkeley.
“Basically, the city council wants to make sure that low-income, homeless, indigent folks have access to their medical marijuana, their medicine,” said Berkeley City Councilmember Darryl Moore.
Under the proposal, at least two percent of all medical weed dispensed at a club would have to be provided at no cost to very low-income members ”” and it must be the same quality that’s dispensed to regular paying customers.
“We think this is the responsible thing to do for those less fortunate in our community,” said Moore.
It would be one thing if a significant portion of the people in California with medical marijuana prescriptions actually had a bona fide medical need for weed (hmm; is there a slogan there: “I Need Weed!”?) that could not be fulfilled by other medicines or treatments. There is some research, for example, that indicates this could be true for a small percentage of oncology patients, epileptics, and those experiencing intractable pain.
But I have little doubt that most people receiving scripts for medical marijuana in California do not fall into those categories. There are prescription mills that cater to those who merely want to get marijuana legally and are very liberal in writing scripts for it, and the state is happy to oblige. So now poor people, including the homeless, will be getting theirs, too—for “free”—at least in good olde Berkeley.
Obamacare does not cover medical marijuana yet, nor does Medicaid—although in ten years or so I bet both will do so, and coverage might even be mandated.
Reading this story conjured up a memory from my ’50s childhood, of this ancient Tom Lehrer ditty—particularly the line “He gives the kids free samples, because he knows full well…”:
[Hat tip: Gabriel Malor at Ace’s.]
Megyn wins hands down, no contest:
[ADDENDUM: I noticed a discussion in the comments section about how it is that someone like Pelosi retains her power and manages to fool so many voters.
My impression—gleaned mainly from liberal friends of mine, particularly women but not limited to women—is that most people do not follow the topics closely and therefore take what Pelosi is saying at face value, as a fair statement of the facts of the SCOTUS decision or anything else she might describing. After all, isn’t she a woman? (These liberal friends are predisposed to trust women more than men, although I see no evidence of why that should be.) Isn’t she a liberal Democrat? (This likewise defines her as better and more trustworthy than a conservative Republican, although I see no evidence of why that should be.) Isn’t she a woman and liberal Democrat who rose to a very high position and is therefore particularly capable? (This defines her as especially intelligent, although I see no evidence of why that should be.) And if she were lying, wouldn’t the MSM point that out? (This defines the MSM as truthful, although I see no evidence of why that should be).
And Faux News? It can be discounted and never watched, and is only mentioned in order to be mocked.]
…appears to be a completely unreliable witness.
As I’ve said before, closing those open primaries would stop at least some of these shenanigans. I wish it would happen, because I think it’s all very destructive to the right, but I think it’s highly unlikely. I also happen to support McDaniel, but if Cochran remains the nominee I’d reluctantly vote for him if I lived in Mississippi.
And yes, I know that a lot of you disagree.
I happened to catch this on TV the other night. Powers is pure emotion on this issue. I’ve featured her talking about it before, here, but if anything I think she’s gotten more feverish about it:
Powers is no dummy; she’s an intelligent woman who can at times be very articulate. Something about this issue makes her short-circuit. This seems to be fairly common these days, and not just for Powers. Here are some of the things that seem to completely escape her and others who hold a similar position:
(1) Countries have borders for a reason, and they have a right and an obligation to set up rules and standards for immigrants in order to protect themselves.
(2) The US doesn’t have an endless supply of money.
(3) This is not a spontaneous refugee situation; it is a crafted and organized one.
(4) Christianity does not require that either a person or a country take on all comers and support them.
(5) If you take in huge numbers of people who’ve broken a basic and important law (we’re not talking about a traffic violation here) you will get people who are lawbreakers in other important ways.
(6) Rewarding a behavior encourages more of the same. If you want to see the floodgates really open, just keep on accepting these people.
People are wondering about Obama—even his supporters, or maybe especially his supporters. He seems distracted, confused, passive, and even more cool and aloof than ever.
I have no idea why any of that would be a surprise. But it is, especially to those who bought into and also encouraged Obama’s own narcissistic myth.
All of them could learn a lot by reading up on narcissism. If they did their homework, they would discover that narcissists are grandiose and have delusions of omnipotence, and that if the world doesn’t step up and acknowledge their wonderfulness they suffer a re-opening of the narcissistic wound. The pain that results is almost unendurable, and narcissists will go to great lengths to avoid facing it.
Obama is a special case even among narcissists, because the world has long surrounded him with the sort of adulation that has fed into his narcissistic feelings in a way that most narcissists can only dream about. Deserved or not, he’s grown so used to the constant adulation, success, and honors that he considers them his due and believes even more deeply in his own innate power, whether it be to make the oceans rise or to make Putin into a pussycat.
From the start, anyone paying attention would have had to have known that Obama was no happy warrior. His personality as projected in public appearances rarely seemed truly joyful and often seemed petulant, even during his first campaign. There was his tendency to blame others, one of the first things I ever noticed about him.
And there was perhaps the most telling, and certainly the most strange thing: the statement (which I wrote about three days ago) made by the woman who was and still is probably his closest advisor, Valerie Jarrett, claiming that Obama has had a lifelong trait of boredom. Simply put, Obama has been disappointed with life, which bores him. And Jarrett locates the wellspring of that feeling in his narcissism, although she doesn’t call it that. She (and he) believes him too smart for almost anything he takes his hand to, and that leads to boredom.
Of course, it needn’t—except for the narcissist. For the latter, no deference can be enough and no reward high enough to satisfy. Obama is fated to be disappointed, because the locus of his problem lies in himself rather than in the world. The narcissistic wound, which underlies everything for narcissists and which they feel most acutely when they face failure and criticism rather than praise from the world at large, is experienced as so painful that it must be evaded at all costs:
The narcissist constantly consumes (really, preys upon) adoration, admiration, approval, applause, attention and other forms of Narcissistic Supply. When lacking or deficient, a Narcissistic Deficiency Dysphoria sets in. The narcissist then appears to be depressed, his movements slow down, his sleep patterns are disordered (he either sleeps too much or becomes insomniac), his eating patterns change (he gorges on food or is avoids it altogether).
He is be constantly dysphoric (sad) and anhedonic (finds no pleasure in anything, including his former pursuits, hobbies, and interests). He is subjected to violent mood swings (mainly rage attacks) and all his (visible and painful) efforts at self-control fail. He may compulsively and ritually resort to an alternative addiction ”“ alcohol, drugs, reckless driving, shopaholism.
This gradual disintegration is the narcissist’s futile effort both to escape his predicament and to sublimate his aggressive urges. His whole behaviour seems constrained, artificial, and effortful. The narcissist gradually turns more and more mechanical, detached, and “unreal”. His thoughts constantly wander or become obsessive and repetitive, his speech may falter, he appears to be far away, in a world of his narcissistic fantasies, where Narcissistic Supply is aplenty.
He withdraws from his painful existence, where others fail to appreciate his greatness, special skills and talents, potential, or achievements. The narcissist thus ceases to bestow himself upon a cruel universe, punishing it for its shortcomings, its inability to realise how unique he is.
When narcissism thus fails as a defense mechanism, the narcissist develops paranoid delusions: self-directed confabulations which place him at the center of others’ allegedly malign attention. The narcissist becomes his own audience and self-sufficient as his own, sometimes exclusive, source of narcissistic supply.
The narcissist goes into a schizoid mode: he isolates himself, a hermit in the kingdom of his hurt. He minimises his social interactions and uses “messengers” to communicate with the outside. Devoid of energy, the narcissist can no longer pretend to succumb to social conventions. His former compliance gives way to open withdrawal (a rebellion of sorts). Smiles are transformed to frowns, courtesy becomes rudeness, emphasised etiquette used as a weapon, an outlet of aggression, an act of violence.
The article goes on to describe what can happen if these mechanisms fail to adequately protect the narcissist. What can follow is not pretty, and can include severe depression leading to self-destructive behaviors such as drug addiction and suicide, and/or psychotic breaks. Short of that, though (and I don’t think Obama is even close to reaching that point), the other defenses work, albeit shakily.
Doesn’t this explain a lot? The last paragraph of the quote in particular certainly explains why Obama wouldn’t even do something as simple as a border photo-op during his trip to Texas, something that on balance probably would have scored political points, even though it would have put him on the spot in other ways. Obama would much rather surround himself with rich admirers, smiling and patting him on the back and getting out their checkbooks to give him vast sums of money.
Right now, to the rest of the world he is saying a big FU. At this point, his very equanimity may depend on shielding himself from too much exposure to reality, and the sycophantic worshipers who advise him agree.
Tired of reading about politics and the decline of the republic? Here’s a palate refresher, and something of a mind-blower:
The one and only known Pelagornis sandersi fossil’s wings stretch a whopping 6.4 meters (or 20.99 feet) ”“ about twice that of the royal albatross, among the largest living birds capable of taking to the skies. It sported strange tooth-like cones that protruded from its beak. The remarkable bones were actually discovered in 1983 near Charleston Airport in South Carolina, but they remained hidden in a drawer at the Charleston Museum until study author Daniel Ksepka, a paleontologist then at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, came across them about three decades later.
“I was not expecting this bird when I went down there,” said Ksepka, now at the Bruce Museum in Connecticut
Let us pause for a moment and contemplate the understated beauty of that sentence: I was not expecting this bird when I went down there.
Indeed. It was thought that such a wingspan was not possible in a bird, but apparently there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
The above article says 21 feet for the bird’s wingspan, but this one says it was 24 feet. The bird presented scientists with a problem: how did it fly?:
Even though it would have weighed up to 180lbs (81.5kg), the researchers said they have no doubt P sandersi flew.
Its paper-thin hollow bones, stumpy legs and wing shape made it similar to birds that fly today, and this would have made it awkward when on land…
But, because it exceeded the 15ft (4.5 metre) wingspan previous studies have claimed is the maximum for birds to fly, the researchers were unsure how it managed to take off and stay aloft.
Scientists think it took off by “taking a running jump downhill into a headwind,” and after that it flew like a glider.
But here’s a creature that makes Pelagornis look like a piker:
Quetzalcoatlus, a pterosaur that may have had a wingspan of at least 33-36 feet. Did it fly? Scientists are still duking it out on that one, but the majority answer in the affirmative.
You might say this is fulsome. But I think—well, modesty keeps me from saying what I think:
You’re the ideal web site owner. The positioning launching pace can be astounding. Them almost can feel that you’ll be doing every one of a kind trick. Furthermore, Your subject matter usually are masterwork. you could have carried out an incredible course of action during this topic!
You know, one thing I’ve always been secretly proud of is my positioning launching pace. I’m glad someone has finally noticed it.
And as for my tricks—why, they are all very kind. Or are they all one of a kind?
The BBC already had groupthink to a large extent. But I guess that wasn’t quite enough; they felt the need to stamp out the tiny bit of remaining time they gave to points of view that didn’t conform to the prevailing leftist ethos:
The BBC Trust on Thursday published a progress report into the corporation’s science coverage which was criticised in 2012 for giving too much air-time to critics who oppose non-contentious issues.
The report found that there was still an ”˜over-rigid application of editorial guidelines on impartiality’ which sought to give the ”˜other side’ of the argument, even if that viewpoint was widely dismissed.
Some 200 staff have already attended seminars and workshops and more will be invited on courses in the coming months to stop them giving ”˜undue attention to marginal opinion.’
It’s not just about global warming, either, although that was the focus.
As for groupthink, it goes like this:
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people, in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints, by actively suppressing dissenting viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences.
The press does that to itself. It would like to do that to the British and American people in general, and to a large extent it has.
Hillary Clinton is smart, and she’s a lawyer. So of course she knows better than this statement she made about the Hobby Lobby SCOTUS decision:
It’s very troubling that a salesclerk at Hobby Lobby who needs contraception, which is pretty expensive, is not going to get that service through her employer’s health care plan because her employer doesn’t think she should be using contraception.
Politifact rates Clinton’s statement as Mostly False. The WaPo‘s fact-checker gave it 2 Pinocchios.
But although both articles say Clinton is dissembling to a certain extent, they both give Clinton’s statement a more generous interpretation than it deserves, with the WaPo even insinuating that her error might have been inadvertent. Absurd; as I said, Clinton is a razor-sharp lawyer when she wants to be. She should have gotten the maximum number of Pinocchios and then some.
But I’m not writing this post to rail against Politifact or even the WaPo. I don’t expect them to do anything other than protect Hillary as much as they can get away with, and in fact I’m even surprised they criticized her at all. I’m writing to point out how pernicious her statement was, how purposely and cleverly duplicitous, shameless demagoguery of the worst sort. And the women (or men) who might fall for it are ignorant and manipulable. But that’s the way it went in 2012, and that’s the way Democrats hope if will go in 2012 and 2014.
Politifact and the WaPo rightly point out that Hobby Lobby offers 16 of 20 kinds of contraception coverage, and they base their criticism of Hillary’s statement mainly on that. What they fail to mention is another purposeful (and IMHO even more pernicious) lie Hillary tells in that same sentence, one that I have yet to see anyone point out. It’s contained in her phrase “her employer doesn’t think she should be using contraception.”
This not only incorrectly insinuates that all types of contraception were at issue here (they were not), but it incorporates the larger lie that the case was about employers judging their employees negatively for using certain types of birth control. But that obscures the actual issue in the case, which was that Hobby Lobby did not want to be forced by the government to participate in paying for, and therefore being complicit in, the use of particular types of birth control that violated its own religious beliefs.
Nowhere did Hobby Lobby express any interest in judging whether its employees should be using those or any other forms of contraception. And it was very clear that even IUDs and the morning-after pill, the methods being questioned, would in fact end up being provided cost-free to Hobby Lobby’s employees. Hobby Lobby merely asked to not be required to foot the bill itself for something that violated the religious conscience and beliefs of its owners.
But Hillary Clinton knows that opposing religious freedom—which is what she is actually doing here—is nowhere near as popular a stance as fighting supposed attempts to stop women from having contraception. Although no one is actually attempting that, it makes good copy for the fight against the War on Women on which she believes the success of her candidacy depends. She will lie shamelessly to manipulate the women for whom she obviously has a great deal of contempt into believing that’s what’s going on.
Katrina was, after all, a natural disasster. No, it’s closer to being Obama’s Mariel boatlift.
And even then it’s not the same. The difference between the border crisis and the Mariel boatlift is that Carter’s policies were not responsible for the boatlift, unless you can call international weakness a policy. But Obama’s executive order implementing a version of the otherwise-unpassable DREAM Act started the current flood of people streaming across the borders. Though it seems to have been the result of a misunderstanding (his order only applied to those who had come before 2007), his lack of border policing allowed it to happen, and the misunderstanding may have been encouraged.
Neither thing was true for Carter. At the time of the Mariel boatlift, the US policy towards Cuban exiles had been an open-door one, and that was not controversial since Cuban refugees were widely seen as freedom-loving prospective citizens with initiative and drive. It was Castro who decided to up the ante when many would-be emigrants took refuge in the Peruvian embassy in Havana after one group intent on escaping had been safely sheltered there:
Initially, the Carter administration had an open-arms policy in regard to Cuban immigrants. Cubans were immediately granted refugee status and all the rights that went with it. Additionally, public opinion towards Cuban refugees was initially favorable.
This situation changed when it was discovered that the refugees included criminals and people from Cuba’s mental hospitals. Castro arranged for the inclusion of criminals and people with mental illness (who were still stigmatized at the time) among the political and economic refugees in order to rid Cuba of undesirables and to damage the image of Cuban exiles.
The US isolated out the criminal and mental illness elements and about half the rest were absorbed into Miami life (there were about 125,000 in all, less than have already arrived from Central America) and the Cuban exile community there. Others were held in detention camps in other parts of the country, which angered some residents in the communities involved. This is the biggest resemblance to the current crisis:
Crowded conditions in South Florida immigration processing centers forced U.S. federal agencies to move many of the Marielitos to other centers in Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, Camp Santiago, Puerto Rico, and Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. Federal civilian police agencies such as the General Services Administration’s Federal Protective Service provided officers to maintain order inside the gates of the relocation centers. Riots occurred at the Fort Chaffee center and some detainees escaped which became a campaign issue in the re-election defeat of Governor Bill Clinton.
It didn’t help Carter either. But at least Carter’s motives were actually humanitarian; there is no evidence whatsoever he had a plan to flood the US with potential Democratic voters (most of the early Cuban refugees were Republicans, I seem to recall reading), or to overwhelm the system. What’s more, the Mariel flood finally ended when the US and Castro negotiated an agreement that Castro would do so. There is no indication that any such thing is even contemplated between the Obama administration and the Central American countries involved, or Mexico.
So the comparison between Obama and Carter, and the current crisis with the Mariel boatlift, is really very unfair to Carter. The situation we face today has far more potential for trouble, and Obama is far more implicated in its genesis and far less involved in finding any solution. In the current crisis, Obama seems to be playing the roles of Carter and Castro combined, and neither seems to be willing to negotiate with the other.
For the last couple of weeks, President Obama has been doing virtually nothing about the border crisis and giving out mixed signals about his intentions. The mixed signals are themselves intentional, meant to throw a few fish to each side while he goes about trying to achieve whatever his real goals might be.
An educated guess at the latter would be (a) placate his base, which very much includes advocates of virtually open borders (b) convince the rest of America that he’s really trying very hard to solve the problem and wants to deport most or all of the illegal newcomers (c) send an overt message to Central America that the influx must stop, but a covert one that it can continue (d) say it’s the Republicans’ fault; and (e) make sure most of these people stay and ultimately become Democratic voters.
That’s not so hard, is it? And mixed messages, as well as delay, suit the purpose quite admirably.
Meanwhile, why doesn’t Congress act? It doesn’t need Obama to do so. Why doesn’t at least the Republican-controlled House pass a bill repealing the 2008 law that treats Central American illegal immigrants with kid gloves? One representative is attempting to do exactly that, as early as next week:
An Arizona Congressman is set to propose legislation that would allow federal authorities to immediately return Central American illegal child immigrants apprehended at the U.S. border back to their home countries.
U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon will introduce the bill early this week, according to the Arizona Republic.
If passed, the bill would undo a part of a 2008 law that requires U.S. Customs and Border Protection to turn over unaccompanied immigrant children from countries that do not border the U.S. to the Department of Health and Human Services.
“I think the first step to fix it is to give our CBP guys the authority to immediately repatriate them back to their countries,” Salmon told the Arizona Republic.
But what about the bill’s chances? Without the Republican leadership behind it, will it even clear the House (and of course Harry Reid can easily just ignore it in the Senate)? Boehner has been mouthing support of “comprehensive” (i.e. what the Democrats want) immigration for quite some time, so there’s no real reason to trust him. However, oddly enough, it was in late June, when the immigration crisis was already heating up, that Boehner empowered Salmon by appointing him to a group making recommendations on what to do about the situation:
“Let’s face it: I’ve been a thorn in leadership’s side,” says Arizona Republican Rep. Matt Salmon, sitting at his desk in the Rayburn House Office Building.
Earlier that day, Salmon had just been named by Speaker John Boehner to a special “working group” on the crisis at the southern U.S. border, where tens of thousands of unaccompanied children are streaming into the country with hopes that President Obama will grant them amnesty.
Salmon is the most conservative member of the new group, and his selection by Boehner is surprising, to say the least, given that the Arizonan has been a leading critic of House leadership.
“Probably nobody was more shocked than me, but I was pleasantly surprised,” Salmon says.
What does this move mean? We can only guess at Boehner’s motives and his true intentions. Is the crisis making him see some opportunity for support for what ought to be the Republican point of view (expedited deportations)? Or is this just a way to make it seem as though he’s taking things seriously when he has no plan to do so?
Harry Reid’s position, on the other hand, is no mystery.
It’s not as though what Americans want is a mystery, either. Even before this current crisis, they’ve been clear for many years that their priority is to seal the border first. It would have been a winning hand for Republicans if they had strongly emphasized that’s what they’re for, and one would think that was in their own interests too. But it hasn’t been that way for the most part, almost certainly because their money comes from businesses who want the illegal immigration flood to continue. Thus, both parties (Democrats more than Republicans, but both parties) seem to be conspiring to thwart the will of the American people.
And the people are well aware of that: