Why lie when it’s so obvious that you’re lying?

The New Neo Posted on by

America heard Obama promise unequivocally, with no caveats or qualifications, that if you liked your health plan you could keep it, if you liked your doctor you could keep your doctor. Period.

So why would he say something as absurd as this?:

“…what we said was you could keep it, if it hasn’t changed since the law was passed.” But that’s not what he said, as even a child with a memory could tell. And the royal “we” is an unhelpful dodge, too.

Obama’s approach is almost incomprehensible—unless you remember that his personality is constructed in such a way as to make it almost literally impossible for him to admit error or wrongdoing.

It also helps to the concept known as doublethink. George Orwell wrote that “doublethink” requires that a person:

…forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed.

Obama has been caught in a lie so obvious and egregious and important that he may sense, perhaps for the first time in his life, that he’s in big trouble. So if he can’t fess up, what else can he do? Create a narrative and hope that by doing so he can revise history. If he says it often enough, he can create a new truth for enough people that it gets him off the hook. It also helps to believe that truth is merely relative—although videotape makes that a bit harder to pull off than it used to be.

Obama’s also cuing politicians and pundits on his side, giving them talking points for their public appearances. He’s expecting them to exercise doublethink and get with the program.
But Obama’s face and body language do not convey confidence in this approach, unlike in the past. They are tentative, and he looks shaky and glum.

[NOTE: In comic books, what Obama is doing is apparently called “retconning”:

This isn’t just an update. It’s a backwards revision. Obama is not just changing his claim going forward””he’s attempting to alter what he said in the past as well.]

Stopping Obama’s concessions to Iran

The New Neo Posted on by

An effort is being contemplated to put some limits on how much Obama can give Iran in the upcoming talks with its government:

An aide to Corker, R-Tenn., confirms to Fox News Corker is considering a proposal that would prohibit the White House from loosening sanctions on the Iranian regime unless it made major concessions on its missile and nuclear programs. Corker’s plans were first reported by The Daily Beast.

Corker’s legislation would require concessions far beyond those currently being considered ahead of Iran’s talks with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany in Geneva.

“We’ve crafted an amendment to freeze the administration in and make it so they are unable to reduce the sanctions unless certain things occur,” Corker told The Daily Beast. “They have the ability now to waive sanctions. But we’re very concerned that in their desire to make any deal that they may in fact do something that is very bad for our country.”

This is an interesting development (more details here). I don’t know whether Corker can muster the votes to pass something like that. I’m also not sure whether Obama would abide by such a rule even if passed. His response might be, “Just try and stop me.”

Obama is about executive power. He has been focusing on domestic policies lately, but that doesn’t mean that foreign policy isn’t important to him, especially Iran. Another one of his longed-for legacies would be some sort of “peace” in our times with that country.

Jay Carney foresees his dreadful future

The New Neo Posted on by

And yet, like Cassandra, he can’t prevent it.

Carney, speaking in 2006:

I first posted this video six months ago, and it’s only become more apropos since then. I have to avert my eyes now when clips of Carney come on. There is something mortifying about even about being a witness to such voluntary self-degradation.

[ADDENDUM: Carney is caught in a terrible dilemma, unless he is completely amoral (which I don’t think he is, but I certainly could be wrong about that). He either has to lie for the president, day after day, in the most public and embarrassing way possible, or he must publicly break away and become a traitor to his fellows, shunned and despised, and off the guest list at the best parties.

It may sound as though I’m making light of this, but I’m not. How many people have that sort of courage? How many would instead find themselves compromising bit by bit, until they find in the end that they have become something they once would have hated and despised? I don’t know the numbers, but I believe that last group is not small.

I have a dream. It’s a little fantasy I know will not occur. But I still like it. In my dream, Carney stops one day in mid-sentence, looks up at the press corps, and says, “You know, I just can’t do this anymore.” Then he walks out, and walks away from the job.

I know that, even were that to happen (which it will not), Obama would only hire a new liar. There would be many eager for the chance at the spotlight. But still, if Carney could do that, it would be a great moment, wouldn’t it?]

Insurance companies get insurance too

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, well, well. Another case of needing to pass the bill to find out what nuggets were hidden in its deep recesses:

If an exchange plan’s performance varies in either direction by more than 3 percent, it either collects a subsidy from federal taxpayers via the Department of Health and Human Services to recoup part (50 to 80 percent) of further losses, or it has to kick back a similar share of the excess profit.

Ideally, the money kicked back by profitable health plans can cover the subsidies for plans that lose. But unlike with the other two R’s, there is no legal requirement that the numbers balance or limit on what can be paid.

So imagine that we do enter a “death spiral” situation in which a large number of exchange health plans lose big and very few turn sizable profits…taxpayers potentially face a multi-billion dollar bailout of health insurers for losses outside the corridor.

Insurers are therefore safe. Politicians who back Obamacare may not be. If insurers’ costs do rise to the level that they require a taxpayer bailout, they will also be announcing massive hikes to their insurance premiums for calendar 2015.

This news may not get the widespread publicity it deserves unless the death spiral begins. But if it does, watch out.

It’s understandable that insurance companies wouldn’t want to go into this untried, untested experiment without this sort of assurance that they wouldn’t lose their shirts. Obama had to give it to them because he needed them aboard once he knew that neither single payer nor a public option could pass. And so this unstable alliance was born.

Interpreting the election results…

The New Neo Posted on by

…is somewhat of a fool’s errand.

People will use the results to say they send all sorts of messages. “See, a very conservative Tea Party candidate loses.” Or “See, a more moderate candidate wins.”

I don’t think that’s what they say at all. I think elections turn only somewhat on the stated political principles and stands of the candidates. The deciding factors are always something about people’s reactions to the candidates themselves on a more gut level, and other issues such as money and ads, and the demographics of a particular state.

In the Virginia race, the Republican civil war—among RINOs and soc-cons and libertarians—has been activated, big time. “The establishment didn’t go to bat for Cucinelli and that’s why he lost” (see this excellent post by Ace for some reflection on that argument). And while “The libertarians are at fault in Virginia; they took votes from Cucinelli” may indeed be true, one of the hallmarks of libertarians is always going to be their fierce independence from the GOP and their “plague on both your houses” attitude, which all too often ends up electing those with whom they are least simpatico (see this for a fuller discussion).

New York City is New York City, somewhat of a law unto itself. It will reap what it sows, and I don’t think the results there have much national significance, although they are sad for my hometown, which seems determined to commit economic suicide and to reverse all the gains of the last two decades in fighting crime. Here’s the mayor-elect De Blasio:

To maintain that greatness and to ensure that our brightest days are ahead of us, we must commit ourselves to progressive ideas that will lift us all.

Ah, yes; progressive ideas are well-known for being a rising tide that lifts all boats. De Blasio’s campaign was a very model of class warfare, PC condemnation of stop-and-frisk, and cluelessness on how to work with an Albany that is almost certain to oppose him. Should be interesting.

But before you can give De Blasio’s victory an interpretation like, “liberals are getting further and further to the left,” you have to look at Christie’s enormous victory in neighboring New Jersay. It proves my point, I think, which is that candidates’ personalities matter, not just their philosophies. Christie has a straight-shooter, man-of-the-people demeanor that people find really appealing. In New Jersey it has enabled him to transcend the usual categories. And before you say “What are you talking about, Christie’s no conservative,” let me just say that by New Jersey standards he’s an ultraconservative.

Cristie has the gift of seeming to be (and perhaps even actually being) the kind of person I was surrounded with where I grew up, a neighborhood that was heavily Italian and heavily working-class, and where people were very much in your face and called it like it is (and were pretty quick with the humor, as well). So to me, Christie’s like home.

The first time I ever saw him speak, I knew he was a great politician, a natural. Don’t knock it; it’s important, and very very very rare in Republicans. A lot of you will be mad at the media for building Christie up and “shoving him down your throat.” You also may not like his emphasis on working with Democrats, although it’s not just good politics, in a state like New Jersey it’s absolutely essential for any Republican. But I know much better than to try to talk anyone into anything with Christie; just watch and judge for yourself.

So, what conclusions can we draw from all of this that are more universal?

Personalities matter.

The Democrats play dirty; be prepared for it (i.e. the libertarian challenger in Virginia was bankrolled by an Obama bundler).

Obamacare hurt McAuliffe, just not fast enough and strongly enough to make a big enough difference. If things keep going poorly for Obamacare, it will matter in a lot of races.

And Republicans will keep fighting—each other, and deflecting precious energy from the more important battle. As for me, I think William F. Buckley’s rule still makes sense: in primaries, vote for the most conservative candidate with a chance of winning. The problem is figuring out who that might be.

David Horowitz: come back to tell you all

The New Neo Posted on by

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
———–T.S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

David Horowitz has written a new book, although it doesn’t have much in it that’s new. It’s composed of essays Horowitz has written over the last two and a half decades. He is a chronicler of the left, with a unique perspective that comes from having been one of its leaders until the mid-1970s, and then turning right and making an announcement to that effect in 1985.

Horowitz looks back, aghast but analytical, and tries to warn of the dangers for the future. It’s as though he were attempting to expiate his own political sins by sounding a clarion call to people to recognize and pay attention to the left’s methods and goals, and to realize that the left never, never, never ever gives up, even when it might appear to do so.

The title is The Black Book of the American Left, and Scott Johnson discusses it and offers a lengthy excerpt at Powerline. This following is from the book’s introduction (but please read the entire excerpt at Powerline):

The essays contained herein describe the left as I have known it; first from the inside as one of its “theorists,” and then as a nemesis confronting it with the real¬world consequences of its actions. In all these writings I was driven by two urgencies: a desire to persuade those still on the left of the destructive consequences of the ideas and causes they promoted; and second, the frustration I experienced with those conservatives who failed to understand the malignancy of the forces mobilized against them. Most conservatives habitually referred to leftists who were determined enemies of America’s social contract as “liberals.” In calling them liberals, conservatives failed to appreciate the Marxist foundations and religious dimensions of the radical faith or the hatreds it inspired. And they failed to appreciate the left’s brutal imposture in stealing the identity of the intellectually pragmatic, patriotic, anti¬totalitarian “Cold War liberals” whose influence in American political life they began killing off in 1972 with the McGovern coup inside the Democratic Party…

The first part of my life was spent as a member of the “New Left” and its Communist predecessor, in which my family had roots. After the consequences of those commitments became clear to me in the mid¬1970s, I came to know the left as an adversary; and if sheer volume were the measure, as its principal intellectual antagonist. Some have seen an obsession in my efforts to define the left and analyze what it intends. In a sense that is true; I had left the left, but the left had not left me. For better or worse, I have been condemned to spend the rest of my days attempting to understand how it pursues the agendas from which I have separated myself, and why.

I’ll close with another fragment of poetry, from Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”:

Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched
With a woful agony,
Which forced me to begin my tale;
And then it left me free.

Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns:
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.

I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.

Election results

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a thread for you to discuss tonight’s election results in Virginia and New Jersey.

Or anything else you want.

Christie’s victory was a foregone conclusion. And McAuliffe’s always seemed likely, too, although the margin was clearly shrinking. My guess is that, had the election been next week, Cucinelli might have even pulled it out.

I’ll probably have more to say about Christie and Cucinelli tomorrow.

Attitudes towards Obamacare: in the end, what it all boils down to…

The New Neo Posted on by

…may just be whether you believe health care insurance is redistributive justice, or whether you believe it’s, you know, health care insurance.

A lot of Obamacare opponents have said, “Don’t piss on my back and tell me it’s raining.”

I think it’s a lot worse than that. It’s more like, “Don’t piss on my back and tell me it’s wine.”

[NOTE: See this.]

Some of the deserving poor whom you’ll be subsidizing under Obamacare

The New Neo Posted on by

Ever since the Obamacare rollout I’ve been studying more of the details of Obamacare, including how subsidies will actually work. There’s so much information out there, so much of it shocking, that my posts just can’t keep up with my teeming brain.

I’ve probably got a hundred drafts for articles I haven’t published yet. Several of them deal with the issue I’m about to discuss, which boils down to the fact that assets are not considered when subsidies on the exchanges are determined. Family size and income, particularly line 37 of your federal income tax return, constitute the basis on which a person becomes eligible for subsidies. If your income is under 400% of the poverty level, you get them. If it’s over that, you don’t. All of that does not apply to people who already have employment-based insurance available to them; they have to play by different, more restrictive rules.

But let’s just concentrate on those without employer-based insurance who are shopping on the exchanges. When we look at them, we get anomalies like the Horsts. The Horsts have made a choice for a particular life-style—something they have every right to do—that happens to now end up qualifying them for a free ride in the new Obamacare world. And yet they might very well be asset-rich (the article doesn’t say), and they are mostly definitely highly-educated.

The Horsts didn’t make the choices they did because of Obamacare (they seem to have made the changes a few years before the law was passed), but they do get the benefits. My objection is not to the Horsts themselves. They don’t bother me at all; they’re not doing anything wrong. It’s Obamacare that bothers me. If people have major assets and are getting subsidies anyway, that bothers me. And more importantly, Obamacare opens the door to people purposely manipulating their financial situations in a big way in order to get subsidies when in fact they are fairly—or even extremely—well-to-do.

Here’s a video that could assist those who wish to change a few things in order to qualify in the future. It turns out it’s not all that hard to exploit what one might call the loopholes in the system. Be assured that it will happen. Again, this is not the fault of the people taking advantage of a law that allows them to. It is the fault of the law’s drafters [be patient; the video has been taking a longer time than usual to load, but it does load]:

Somehow I don’t think most people would be pleased if they were to find out about this.

Michelle Obama has a Halloween dream

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s that some day, children will go out trick or treating for fruits and vegetables:

First Lady Michelle Obama held a news conference last night, where she predicted that one day, children would go out on Halloween and beg for healthy food instead of candy.

No, not the Onion.

Michelle is ignoring, or trying to override, the fact that kids gravitate towards sweets even as babies. For most people the desire seems innate, a natural inclination that has some survival value.

Then again, as Katherine Hepburn’s character says to Humphrey Bogart’s in the fabulous “The African Queen”:


Progressives on a mission would often like to ignore the world as it is and make the world a better place—by their definition of “better,” of course. In this they resemble many crusaders, but crusaders would do well to take nature into consideration as much as possible. As far as sweets and children go, it might not be so nice to fool Mother Nature:

As any parent knows, children love sweet-tasting foods. Now, new research from the University of Washington and the Monell Center indicates that this heightened liking for sweetness has a biological basis and is related to children’s high growth rate.

“The relationship between sweet preference and growth makes intuitive sense because when growth is rapid, caloric demands increase. Children are programmed to like sweet taste because it fills a biological need by pushing them towards energy sources,” said Monell geneticist Danielle Reed, PhD, one of the study authors.

Across cultures, children prefer higher levels of sweetness in their foods as compared to adults, a pattern that declines during adolescence. To explore the biological underpinnings of this shift, Reed and University of Washington researcher Susan Coldwell, PhD, looked at sweet preference and biological measures of growth and physical maturation in 143 children between the ages of 11 and 15.

The findings, reported in the journal Physiology & Behavior, suggest that children’s heightened liking for sweet taste is related to their high growth rate and that sweet preferences decline as children’s physical growth slows and eventually stops

On Halloween we give out sweets because they are treats, something a bit forbidden and special. Why would children beg for fruits and vegetable instead, as the First Lady suggests? I can think of only one reason: if they’ve been deprived of them, or of food in general.

And since now I’ve got “The African Queen” on the brain, I’ve got to add this clip. Which has nothing to do with Michelle and sweets, but I like it (especially Hepburn’s masterful little chin quiver that begins at around 2:13)

[ADDENDUM: Commenter “Ann” provided a transcript of Michelle Obama’s speech. Apparently she didn’t explicitly make a Halloween reference in her remarks, although she did use the word “begging.” It was the newspaper headline that said she was referring to Halloween. The context was the date (Oct. 30).]

What Obama actually meant by “If you like your…”

The New Neo Posted on by

All is now explained.

When President Obama said, “”If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period” he actually meant to say “periods,” plural.

As in “…”, otherwise known as the ellipsis:

Ellipsis…is a series of dots that usually indicate an intentional omission of a word, sentence or whole section from the original text being quoted…Ellipses can also be used to indicate an unfinished thought or, at the end of a sentence, a trailing off into silence…When placed at the beginning or end of a sentence, the ellipsis can also inspire a feeling of melancholy or longing.

Obama is now filling in those missing words:

Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed.

Ah, now I remember that’s what Obama said. Of course. Dummy me.

Just like I don’t remember Clementis’ hat:

Orwell wrote that “doublethink” requires a person:

“”¦to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed.”