The New Neo

How it works when you’re Pravda

Posted on March 7, 2014 by neoMarch 8, 2014

Before I get into the details of this, let me just state that the NY Times knows exactly what it’s doing. You may think the manipulation and/or lies of the editors are transparent, but not for a lot of its readers. Propaganda works, or writers wouldn’t bother to compose it. You can lead your audience to certain conclusions by distortion, and then repetition of that distortion, and they read and absorb it without thinking all that much about it because they trust you as a source. And after all, most of your friends, and all the smart people you know and hear, agree.

It’s actually a lot of work to read something and challenge it as you read it and then after you read it. It takes more than intelligence, too; intelligence doesn’t even begin to cut it, although a certain basic amount is necessary. And “intelligence” is not the same as book learning or credentials. In fact, book learning—which in academia all too often means swallowing what some authority says and spitting it back in order to get a grade—can even be quite counterproductive, and conducive to the swallowing of propaganda if the source is a trusted one.

It takes not only work to question things you read, but motivation. We may ridicule the NY Times, and people often ask me why I bother with it, but my answer is always that for many many people, including many movers and shakers in the world, it is still the great authority with all the news that’s fit to print, and challenging it proves to them that the person who does so is a crackpot.

So without further ado, we have the Times on the topic of President Obama’s newly-announced 2-year extension of the delays in cancellations of the non-Obamacare-compliant individual policies. The temptation is to include the entire thing and fisk it line by line, because it’s a true masterpiece. I mean that; I’m in awe of the editors’ skill at doing what they can with the mess they’re facing—doing what they can to explain that (a) the Republicans made Obama do it; (b) everything will be just fine with Obamacare; and (c) Obama and the NY Times know much better than you do what’s good for you.

Here are a few high/lowlights of the editorial, with my comments in brackets and highlighted in bold:

The Obama administration announced a new policy on Wednesday that will allow many people to renew their existing insurance policies for two more years even though the policies don’t provide the comprehensive coverage and consumer protections [much of which is useless and unneeded and unwanted by the person purchasing the policy, and responsible for raising its price] required by the Affordable Care Act. The move is designed to provide political cover for Democratic senators facing tough re-election campaigns in Republican-leaning states where the president is especially unpopular [this seems like an admission of something negative about why the administration is doing this—for political reasons—but wait, the Times will correct that possibly negative notion later in the editorial and turn it around on the Republicans].

The Democrats have been hit with a barrage of attack ads from conservative political-action groups highlighting the cases of individuals who complained that they faced higher premiums when their old (less comprehensive) policies were canceled and they were forced to buy new (and better) policies on the health care exchanges established by the reform law [without actually saying all those people are lying, the Times is telling us that the new policies are better, whatever those misguided people might think. Of course, if they’re better, why postpone them? Why not have people experience them, so the Democrats can make ads with people saying how they loved their old policies and thought they were better, but now that they’ve experienced the new ones they realize how much more comprehensive and better Obamacare really is? The better plans will speak for themselves, and convince the foot-draggers—won’t they?] Now the last date for renewing the old policies has been pushed past the 2014 midterm elections, reducing the likelihood of complaints on the eve of voting.

This policy change had the immediate, unfortunate effect of giving Republicans another convenient excuse to bash the Affordable Care Act as a failure that should be repealed [it’s “unfortunate” when Republicans tell the truth, if the truth hurts the administration, the NY Times, and the Democratic Party. Oh, and by the way, Republicans don’t just “criticize,” they “bash.” Nasty bashers.] In truth [“in truth” means that we have to emphasize that we’re about to tell truth, because the veracity of the next few points we’re about to make is especially shaky], it poses no threat to health care reform and will have no impact on the vast majority of Americans, who are covered by employer plans or public programs. The impact on people who buy their own insurance on the individual market is hard to gauge but is likely to be small and vary from state to state [just a few million, no problem at all—and by the way, if the impact would be so very small, why are Obama and the Democrats so worried about the effect that the change in policies would have in the 2014 election?]…

There are drawbacks to allowing continuation of these policies. For starters, some people who have skimpy coverage may be in for a rude shock if they develop a costly illness [ignoring the fact that “some” people—perhaps many more—would get a similar or even worse shock on Obamacare. Note also that the Times assumes an abysmal ignorance on the part of the consumer who has purchased the original individual policy and in some cases has had it for many years, an assumption by the Times that needs neither to be proven nor justified nor quantified, merely stated]….

There’s much, much more, but I’ll skip to what I think may be the most masterful part, the ending:

Ideally, President Obama would not have extended the period for retaining the less-comprehensive policies, but in the current political environment, he opted to take a step to protect health care reform against a Republican takeover in the Senate [he didn’t want to do this, but the Republicans made him. It’s too bad that Republicans make him compromise his ideals and those of the NY Times, forcing them to write this crummy editorial.].

Extending the old policies will allow some individuals more time to look at the options on the exchanges. They may be pleasantly surprised at the comprehensive coverage and the availability of subsidies for people with modest incomes [“they may be”; even the Times sounds uncertain about that one. Of course, the editors push the ideas of the subsidies—that’s Obamacare’s big selling point—without going into the knotty question of where that money comes from. The editors also ignore all the “you can keep your doctor, keep your hospital” issues that come with the new policies and are part of the reason that even people with “modest” incomes, eligible for subsidies, may be in for a very rude surprise. Another surprise might come from the high deductibles and out-of-pocket costs of these wonderfully “comprehensive” and “better” polices. And again, if the policies are so wonderful, why not force people into them and have them see for themselves how great they are? Just think of the great pro-Obamacare ads that could be made if that were to happen!].

Although I’m mocking this editorial, it’s a dark humor on my part. I have deep respect for the skill of its writers and their ability to take the sow’s ear of what’s happening with Obamacare and make it into, if not a silk purse, then an artifact convincing enough to pass for one with a lot of people.

Will it be good enough to allow Democrats to hold onto the Senate in 2014? I freely admit that I don’t know. But it was enough to allow Obama to be re-elected in 2012 despite his abysmal record, so I don’t rule anything out.

Spambot of the day

Posted on March 6, 2014 by neoMarch 6, 2014

Relieved bot:

Yes! Finally someone writes about many.

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Did Obama stab John Kerry in the back?

Posted on March 6, 2014 by neoMarch 6, 2014

Or is this even true? Is it actually one of those “good-cop/bad-cop” tales instead?

I don’t know, but I vote for “true.” I think very little of John Kerry, but I think more of him than I do of Obama. The following seems characteristic of the president:

An Israeli newspaper is reporting that two officials close to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry are quietly accusing President Barack Obama of sabotaging Middle East peace efforts after giving an interview in which he sharply criticized Israeli government policy.

The unnamed officials also claim that Kerry was never given a heads-up that the president had planned an interview with reporter Jeffrey Goldberg of Bloomberg View ”“ just days before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrival in Washington ”” on the subject of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Eli Bardenstein, diplomatic correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Maariv, reported Wednesday that “those close to Secretary of State John Kerry claim in private conversations that President Barack Obama sabotaged Kerry’s efforts to reach agreements over the framework agreement, in the aggressive interview he gave” Goldberg.

“Maariv has learned that the White House hid even from Kerry the very existence of the interview, in a way that is unacceptable in the U.S. capital,” the Israeli reporter added.

Why do I think it’s true? It is consistent with Obama’s arrogance, his go-it-alone sense of self. He has alienated even many of his friends and supporters—certainly quite a few of the Democrats in Congress—on a personal level by having very little to do with them, not asking their advice, and not even letting them know what he’s planning before he does it.

I’m especially fond of this part of the article:

Though Kerry allegedly wasn’t aware of the interview, Maariv’s unnamed D.C. sources speculated that Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett took an active part in arranging the Bloomberg interview.

One unnamed source told the paper, “It’s possible that Obama wasn’t fully up to date on the special cooperation that Kerry had achieved with Netanyahu and his team with the Israeli team. It’s also possible he ignored it.”

Anything’s possible, I guess—except that Obama had Israel’s or America’s interests at heart.

Liberal bait-and-switch; FDR’s charity

Posted on March 6, 2014 by neoMarch 6, 2014

Be sure to read this article by William Voegeli in National Review detailing the history of Obama’s and the Democrats’ deceptions about Obamacare. If you think you’ve read tons before about the same thing—well, you probably have, but not quite like this one, which is especially fine.

For example:

Liberals rely on bait-and-switch tactics because they fear the results of describing their agenda clearly and candidly to voters, who can’t handle the truth. Even an elementary truth, such as the proposition that improving health care will cost money rather than save money, must be denied over and over, lest don’t-tread-on-me rubes start asking awkward questions about how much improving health care is going to cost and where the money will come from. Once a policy such as Obamacare is enacted and implemented, making the switch means admitting the obvious, and then claiming it’s so obvious ”” “everyone always knew” it would cost money and disrupt existing health-care arrangements ”” that it doesn’t really qualify as a switch. The villains in this story are not the liberals who spoke incontestable untruths when political circumstances called for telling people what they wanted to hear. The villains are conservatives who complain about the deceits by commission and omission.

But rather than discuss that sort of thing all over again, I want to focus on one quote about a figure from the past, FDR, that caught my eye. Voegeli writes:

Even though New Deal”“era dreams about a centrally planned economy have been abandoned, liberals refuse to accept that a decent society can rest on the alchemy that purports to turn private interests into the public interest. Franklin Roosevelt hailed Irish and Hibernian societies around the country on St. Patrick’s Day in 1937 for their fealty to the motto “Not for ourselves, but for others.” That spirit, he said, should animate not just charity but private and public life, given that “selfishness is without doubt the greatest danger that confronts our beloved country today.”

Which brought me to the question: did FDR give a lot to charity? In other words, did he practice what he preached?

FDR was undoubtedly an extremely rich man by the standards of his era. His wealth was inherited (estimated at the equivalent of about $60 million today), and his career was almost entirely in public service and especially politics, at which he was wildly successful.

Here’s an article that discusses FDR’s taxes and charitable giving:

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s returns harken back to an era when federal tax rates where considerably lower. In 1929, FDR paid about 11% in taxes and gave away 12.5% of his income. Interestingly, following a rate hike in 1932, his charitable giving dropped to about 3%. (A couple of the recipients of his largesse: the Will Rogers Memorial Fund, $100; the American Ornithological Union, $3.) As Reason notes, FDR wasn’t above trying to avoid paying his fair share of taxes, either: In 1937 he tried to talk the IRS into taxing him at 1933 rates.

So, that doesn’t sound all that bad or all that good. In those days the tax rate was low, although he wasn’t above trying to get it lowered for himself in 1937. His charitable contribution seems high-ish, although he wasn’t above lowering it when the tax rate went up.

But delving a bit further, we find a curious thing. If you scroll down a ways, you’ll come to some charts of presidents’ incomes and their contributions to charity, and you’ll see this:

The taxes, and the percentage of income given to charity, are only on income. FDR’s income at the time wasn’t all that great. Although it was not inconsiderable, it didn’t even begin to reflect his actual wealth. Looked at that way, his charitable contributions were pretty paltry. Perhaps FDR reasoned that he didn’t need to be personally charitable because he forced every person with substantial assets to be involuntarily charitable through increased taxes. If so, that wouldn’t be an unusual point of view among liberals.

Also, if you look at the charts, you’ll see that the Bushes, both George H.W. and George W., had very high charitable contributions in terms of percentage of their incomes. Again, this doesn’t reflect their actual wealth, which was far greater than their incomes. But their voluntary contributions certainly represent a good chunk of what they earned, particularly for Bush the Elder, who made well over a million dollars in 1991 and gave away about 62% of that to charity.

Acquainted with the White

Posted on March 6, 2014 by neoMarch 6, 2014

[NOTE: Gerard Vanderleun recycled an old post of his at American Digest, an ode to the rainy season in Seattle. Which reminds me that, way back when, I wrote an answering poem—only mine was an ode to snow season in New England. Which makes me think it just might be appropriate to recycle it now, too, because if anything, this season has been even more snowy. In fact, I’ve come to regard snow as the default position.]

The inspiration for this poem of mine: the snow, Robert Frost’s timeless “Acquainted with the Night,”and Gerard van Der Leun’s timely “Acquainted with the Blight.”

Just to make sure I receive full appreciation for the arduous work involved in writing it, I refer you to this. It explains terza rima, the convoluted rhyme scheme involved:

Terza rima is a three-line stanza using chain rhyme in the pattern a-b-a, b-c-b, c-d-c, d-e-d. There is no limit to the number of lines, but poems or sections of poems written in terza rima end with either a single line or couplet repeating the rhyme of the middle line of the final tercet…There is no set rhythm for terza rima, but in English, iambic pentameters are generally preferred.

So, without further ado, I bring you:

ACQUAINTED WITH THE WHITE

I have been one acquainted with the white.
I have walked out in snow–and back in snow.
I have watched drifts climb to impressive height.

I have felt blizzard winds that rage and blow.
I have shuffled my muklukked, booted feet
And sniffled wanly, crying, “Woe, oh woe!”

I’ve slipped on ice and skidded down the street
And heard those dying voices with my fall*
Then gone inside to fix myself a treat.

“Snow is design of whiteness to appall,”**
My favorite poet would say, with keen insight.
(Just note his name; he’s called “Frost,” after all.)

I’ve heard friends call me wrong, and far, far Right.
I have been one acquainted with the white.

*go here and scroll down to line 52

**go here and scroll down to the next to last line

I guess those canceled health insurance plans must have been not-so-very-junky after all…

Posted on March 5, 2014 by neoMarch 5, 2014

…because now they’re being extended until October of 2016—that is, until further notice from our fearless leader, Barack Obama.

The audacious transparency of this move is almost breathtaking. Obama must truly think the American people are incredibly stupid and won’t catch on to what he’s doing. Maybe he’s even correct, although I think they’re catching on—much too slowly, but catching on.

But it’s becoming ludicrously apparent that every decision this administration makes is political, and that the Constitution means nothing to President Obama.

Allahpundit writes:

It’s crucial to grasp that last point, that extending un-canceled plans hurts ObamaCare financially. There’s no way that Obama would do this without a pressing political reason; just as Phil Klein says, the whole point of making insurers cancel plans in the first place was to force healthy middle-class suckers into more expensive “comprehensive” plans so that their premiums could be redistributed to people with preexisting conditions. Allowing those suckers to stay on their old, cheaper pre-ObamaCare plans means that insurers will have to rely on less revenue than they thought, which means Uncle Sam will be under even more pressure to use the “risk corridor” mechanism as a bailout mechanism to cover unanticipated losses. Healthy people will stick with their old plans, sick people will stick with their new ObamaCare plans (replete with guaranteed issue and community rating), and insurers will tear their hair out wondering how to pay for it without billions of dollars from HHS to help. Quite simply, Obama was forced to choose between doing something that would help his party at the ballot box but hurt his signature health-care law and doing something that would help stabilize the law financially at the risk of generating a nasty backlash to his party from consumers with cancellations. He made the political choice. Which is exactly what O’s critics feared would happen as government insinuated itself further into the health-care industry via O-Care. Decisions on health-care policy are now a species of politics. You’re welcome, America.

Allahpundit also asserts—and I agree with him—that before October of 2016, Obama will just extend the deadline again, past the election in November.

However, I do have one correction to what Allahpundit said: I’m not sure that the new delay in the cancellations of the old policies will have quite as disastrous an effect on the Obamacare exchanges as he seems to think it will, because there are certainly some sick people who will choose to remain on their original un-canceled plans, if they think those plans are better than what they could get through Obamacare. Nevertheless, I believe he is correct in saying that the exchanges will probably be composed of a significantly higher percentage of sick people than was originally projected, because some sick people previously without health insurance (or those with grandfathered plans who will now get a nice fat subsidy on the exchanges and are therefore willing to voluntarily give up their old plans) will sign up on the exchanges.

A first? Enough Democrats in the Senate say no to Obama…

Posted on March 5, 2014 by neoMarch 5, 2014

…to defeat his nominee for the head of the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ, Debo Adegbile, a choice that raised an unusual amount of criticism because Adegbile had defended convicted cop-killer and leftist darling Mumial Abu-Jamal.

The LA Times calls the vote “a surprising defeat” and, strangely enough, that’s not hyperbole. It actually was surprising. There are a number of reasons why, the first being that Harry Reid doesn’t usually bring something up for a vote till he knows he’s got it in the bag. The other reason is that (at least as far as I know, and I could be wrong on this), although in the past Democrats have sometimes defected from the party line if it would be politically expedient in their state for them to do so (Obamacare would be a prime example), the number who defect is usually strictly controlled to make sure the desertions don’t defeat the bill.

This time somebody left the reservation unexpectedly, and nobody seems to know who it was. Well, nobody in the press, that is; the senators themselves must know (my guess is Coons).

By the way, this is one of the first confirmation votes that’s occurred since the filibuster was ended. Under the old rules, Adegbile’s nomination would probably never have even gotten to a vote, and Obama would have had to find someone a little less objectionable. The end of the filibuster for nominees must have emboldened him to choose Adegbile, but thinking he had the extra leeway may have backfired on Obama.

According to the LA Times, Adegbile’s nomination had been expected to pass “until recently.” My guess is that in this case “recently” means “until the vote itself.” Even before that, they knew it would be close, however; Joe Biden was standing by to vote in case he was needed to break a tie. But he wasn’t needed; even his vote would not have been enough to get Adegbile through.

This action today may or may not mean much. It really depends whether it will be followed by any more defiance of Obama’s wishes. Is it the first sign (however slight) of a revolt by moderate Democrats who are fed up with being sacrificial lambs for Obama, or is it just a one-shot deal?

In a fairly humorous side note, Harry Reid had earlier warned Republicans that “if Adegbile lost there would have to be a ‘broad discussion’ of civil rights in America.” This, of course, is because the topic of civil rights has never been brought up before, especially during Obama’s years in office.

In an ironic move, Reid changed his own vote to “no” at the last minute because he realized even with his vote the nomination would not be confirmed, and voting “no” apparently preserves (for technical reasons) his right to call another vote on the same subject later. I can only imagine the sorely twisted arms some Democratic senators will be enduring as he tries to persuade them a change of vote in the future might be a really good idea for them.

[NOTE: Adegbile, by the way, has an unusual resume in addition to his Mumia defense:

Born Adebowale Patrick Akande Adegbile in New York City, Adegbile is the son of a Nigerian father and an Irish immigrant mother. He was raised by his single mother. He also was a child actor on the children’s TV show Sesame Street during the 1970s, playing the character Debo and performing in episodes for nine years.

On a personal note, let me say that I don’t hold against Adegbile that fact that he filed “an amicus curiae brief with the United States Supreme Court in 2009, arguing that [Mumia’s] conviction was invalid because of racial discrimination in jury selection.” At the time, Adegbile was a lawyer for the NAACP, and that organization was in Mumia’s corner. If you believe in our legal system, someone had to defend Mumia and help him appeal his case, and it’s hardly surprising that the NAACP—and therefore Adegbile—would be part of that process. [See “ADDENDUM” below.]

However, if you want to protest Adegbile’s nomination because he worked for the NAACP and the NAACP has become a leftist, kneejerk, racemongering, divisive institution, that seems more valid to me. And, as Democratic Senator Coons said, to explain his vote of “no”:

…[A]t a time when the Civil Rights Division urgently needs better relations with the law enforcement community, I was troubled by the idea of voting for an Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights who would face such visceral opposition from law enforcement on his first day on the job…

Coons added that it was the toughest vote he’d taken as a senator. I don’t doubt it. And the story’s not over yet.]

[ADDENDUM: I just noticed this:

The widow of [slain] officer Danny Faulkner along with police organizations and other groups, objected to the nomination, arguing among other things, that Adegbile became a champion of Abu-Jamal beyond being his appellate lawyer.

That makes a great deal more sense to me as an objection than that Adegbile merely was Mumia’s appeals lawyer.

Here is part of the widow’s statement:

Mr. Adegbile previously led the Legal Defense Fund at the NAACP. In that position, Mr. Adegbile chose to throw the weight and resources of his organization behind Abu-Jamal. Attorneys working under Mr. Adegbile’s supervision have stood before rallies of Abu-Jamal supporters and openly professed that it was “an extreme honor” to represent the man who put a hollow based bullet into Officer Faulkner’s brain as he lay on the ground wounded, unarmed, and defenseless.

So Adegbile was an especially eager defender of Abu-Jamal, the guy in charge of the NAACP’s decision to defend him and to do so vigorously. Here’s the text of the widow’s entire statement.]

Being a liberal

Posted on March 5, 2014 by neoMarch 5, 2014

I wanted to highlight a discussion from yesterday’s comments section. First, from commenter “DNW”, who is quoting me and then asking a question:

neo-neocon Says:…

“Most of my friends are garden-variety liberals. And most are relatively apolitical, although they vote.

“I do have some friends who are more on the leftist end of things. But they are bleeding-heart leftists and really have very little idea what it actually is they’re supporting, for the most part, and are not particularly activist or even political. They are not of the hard left, although they are helping it without realizing what they’re helping.”

Neo ”¦ how could they not? How could it be that they [as liberals] imagine they can grasp the indirect and remote environmental effects of a burning incandescent bulb, yet not grasp the transformation the fascist “individual mandate” has worked on our most fundamental predicates of political association?

What matters to them, and makes their lives worthwhile? Where’s their focus? Brute satisfactions? Dancing in that G’damned circle you mentioned, ecstatically liberated from themselves, until the lights go permanently out?

How can the implications be missed, and the inferences not be drawn?

And, if they are not in fact unapologetic coercive collectivists, mustn’t they be ”¦ and I do hesitate to say it ”¦ the so-called “good Germans who (supposedly) didn’t know”?

How can they shrug at and be complicit in, the destruction of the only thing that made this country worthwhile in the first place: our freedom of self-direction and responsibility?

The world’s already full to the brim with stinking social hothouses where everyone runs around with their nose up everyone else’s ass; sniffing for traces privilege or advantage. Probably many of them have ancestors who fled from just such cultures.

And now they complacently point to these cultures as moral models to be emulated.

What, in God’s name, is going on ”¦

Here’s my response:

Have you read my “A mind is a difficult thing to change” pieces? Remember: I was a liberal for most of my life. I was raised one, nearly everyone I knew was one, all my media sources were liberal and I didn’t even know it, and although I knew something about history I didn’t know all that much (except for certain topics such as WWI and how it affected the culture). I was interested in all the arts and especially poetry, in people in general (friends, family), psychology, all sorts of things really. Politics seemed like a dirty nasty business, and although I kept up with it in a surface way I really didn’t go all that deep with it.

Most of my friends are some variation on that theme.

You ask, “How can the implications be missed, and the inferences not be drawn?” My answer is EASY. At least, earlier in my life, it was very easy. Obviously, something changed, beginning in 2001. I became interested, and these things seemed more intensely important. I realized there was a lot I had missed and needed to learn. But I have no problem whatsoever understanding how it is that many people still are more or less on automatic pilot. To know what’s happening and why it’s significant, you have to have a knowledge base and a context, or else it’s just blah-blah-blah noise.

And of course, there are some people I know who do know quite a bit about history, etc., and are still liberals. I think, however, that most of them have never been exposed to alternate sources of information. They don’t read conservative media or watch Fox or anything like that, although they hear about Faux News. Since everyone””almost literally everyone””they know agrees with them, and they know smart, educated people, why would they be curious?

And in a later comment on the same thread, I added that most of the liberals I know:

…do not think in terms of the “collective” or anything of the sort. Their politics could be described mainly as the desire to be nice, kind, peaceful, and generous, both at home and abroad. They conceptualize the things they support as leading to those goals, and Republicans as mean, stingy, racist, etc.. It’s really that propaganda has reached them and stuck in their minds, and they think it’s reality, and are focused on their own lives.

I will add that during the 2012 campaign, no sooner did the Democratic meme that Republicans and Romney were waging a “war on women” begin than I heard it thrown around among my friends. The absorption of the meme was quick, and accepted as self-evident truth. I have seen over and over how well propaganda works and how hard it is to challenge it when most people are not reading any more deeply than that. And to read more deeply than that, one would have to have the time and inclination, and be questioning one’s point of view in the first place. Why bother when all the smart and nice people agree with you, and it’s only weird outliers like neo who don’t?

Why did the intelligence community fail to predict Putin’s actions in Ukraine?

Posted on March 5, 2014 by neoMarch 5, 2014

Why was our intelligence community caught flat-footed about Putin’s moves? That’s a question being asked on Capitol Hill, and in Politico.

One answer is, “No, it wasn’t.” That one was given by James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, and CIA spokesman Todd Ebitz, who both made statements to the effect that the intelligence community “included warnings of possible scenarios for a Russian military intervention in Ukraine.” I have to say that James Clapper has a bit of a general credibility problem regarding statements to the American public about intelligence. And a warning of a “possible scenario” does not include whether this was considered a distant possibility or a likely one.

The Politico article goes on to mention a bunch of liberal MSM pundits who failed to predict it. Gee, is that some sort of surprise? The tone was set by our president and his entire administration, followed slavishly by most liberal journalists, who have spent a great deal of time and effort saying what a pussycat Putin is, and ridiculing as outdated (Obama to Romney: “the 1980s are calling to ask for their foreign policy back”) anyone who might say otherwise. This began in 2008 with mockery of Sarah Palin, and reached a crescendo with Romney during the 2012 campaign.

To take any other scenario seriously would mean giving credence to those troglodytes Palin and Romney, agreeing with them instead of mocking them, and admitting that the world hadn’t turned into the fantasyland that suited Obama’s, Democrats’, and the MSM’s own rhetorical and political purposes.

The Politico article seems to be blurring the distinction between the intelligence community’s predictions and the predictions of people such as The New Yorker’s David Remnick, who may be in some ways “intelligent” but are not part of that community. But maybe Politico actually has a point, because expectations and mental set help to determine what can be seen and noticed. If the intelligence community is following the lead of the administration, its mental set may be such that it doesn’t see what it might otherwise see. Or, if Clapper and Ebitz are telling the truth and the intelligence community did see this coming (and I’m not at all certain they are), then the intelligence community can say whatever it wants, but if the administration has other ideas it doesn’t much matter what intelligence says. The administration can ignore them.

Playing to the cheap seats

Posted on March 4, 2014 by neoMarch 4, 2014

Interesting article by David Weigel in Slate:

Romney was right. Why was Obama wrong? Because, I think, he was willfully blurring the distinction between “geopolitical” and other sorts of threats. He was playing to the cheap seats. Voters do not fear Russia, or particularly care about its movements in its sad, cold sphere of influence. They do care a lot about terrorism. And Obama would use any chance he had, in 2012, to remind voters that he was president when Osama Bin Laden was killed.

So you see the politics””they reveal Obama as the player of a cheap trick. Of course al-Qaida isn’t a “geopolitical threat” to the United States. It’s a terrorist organization, untethered to states or geography. Obama himself (like George W. Bush before him) repeatedly claimed that the organization was on the run. How could al-Qaida be the greatest threat to America and a pathetic coalition of losers? It couldn’t. Obama was spinning, hopefully faster than Romney could un-spin.

But I don’t want to spin for Obama. Romney really did maintain a more cynical long-run view of Russia than Obama did. Obama saw Russia as a declining power that he could do business with, as he did with the New START treaty. Romney, as he laid out in his pre-campaign book No Apology, saw Russia as a recovering power. Its “rediscovered ambition for superpower status,” he wrote, “is fueled by its massive energy reserves.” This wasn’t as sustainable as China’s free-enterprise empire strategy, but it was an empire strategy, and that was enough to get spooked about.

That’s almost the entire text of Weigel’s article. Why do I find it interesting? Well first of all, like a few others from current or former Obama-supporters (Weigel voted for him in 2008 and Kerry in 2004), it does concede an incontrovertible but very inconvenient truth: Romney was right, Obama wrong. That it concedes it at all is surprising.

But—like the other articles of its type that I’ve read—it treats that fact as though it exists in a vacuum. There are no larger conclusions drawn, and why would there be? To do that would be to concede far more than these authors could bear. To actually assimilate the information and try to integrate it into a world view might require that world view to change, and that (as we know) is very threatening and very hard, and can be very costly for a journalist (or even a regular person, as we also know).

Weigel might wonder how it was and why it was that Romney got it right and Obama wrong. Maybe Romney’s general outlook about the geopolitical world was actually more correct? Instead, Weigel assumed that Obama knew the truth but pretended he didn’t. However, if Obama was the “player of a cheap trick” in this regard, maybe that’s what he is: a bagful of cheap tricks, and a liar as well? Maybe that bag fooled Weigel and most of his illustrious colleagues? Maybe Obama’s not what he appeared to be at all?

[NOTE: Weigel himself is a strange bird politically; fairly liberal but with pockets of conservatism and especially libertarianism. He was a player on JournoList, which exposed his cover and made many think of him mainly as a liberal, but that’s not exactly the case.

Weigel is also 32 years old. Like so many journalists today, he is not only achingly young, but inexperienced in all fields except journalism, a career he entered right after graduation from Northwestern’s famed school of journalism, from which he received a BA.

Weigel did not vote for Obama in 2012—he went with the libertarian Johnson—but not because he really rejected Obama, he just thought him a “mediocre executive.” That seems to be the sum total of the motivation for Weigel’s turning away from Obama at the time. You can read his reasons here.]

The death of insurance companies

Posted on March 4, 2014 by neoMarch 4, 2014

Be careful what you wish for.

By Rahm’s brother Ezekiel.

A personal note: I sometimes have found insurance companies annoying, but in general they’ve done right by me. I don’t understand the generalized hatred of them. They’re a business, responding to business pressures and the need to make a profit at the same time they provide a service.

Here’s Emanuel’s Brave New World of the transformed and/or eliminated insurance company:

Some people may be concerned about the prospect of having to choose among large integrated delivery systems with selective physician and hospital networks. The worried well might wonder what happens if they contract a serious illness, such as cancer or some rare disease, will they be restricted only to the physicians in the delivery system? We should note that many people pick Kaiser or Group Health and get all of their care from those integrated systems, and they don’t seem to worry that they are not getting the highest-quality care. The real issue is not whether there is a selective network of physicians and hospitals; the real issue is whether the network is of high quality. Having the assurance of a high-quality network is the key. These integrated-delivery systems will begin competing with their objectively validated, high-quality networks.

More importantly, health systems have learned from the managed-care backlash; just saying “no” really aggravates people, especially well-off, powerful people. Although it may be cheaper in the short run, it can be expensive, especially in terms of reputation, in the longer term. There are better ways to approach this.

I suspect these integrated delivery systems of the future will adopt two strategies. For rare but serious conditions they will identify recognized centers of excellence””the absolute best places in the country”” and contract special arrangements for the referral and treatment of their patients. These centers of excellence may have slightly higher sticker prices, but forging these special arrangements will be worth it for integrated delivery systems because then they will be able to boast negotiated rates, better outcomes, and fewer complications. Second, richer and, thus, more expensive benefit packages, such as platinum plans in the exchanges, would cover second opinions. In addition, there will be a market for supplemental insurance that covers second opinions for serious conditions. The well-heeled and worried will be a prime target for such plans.

Kiss your choice goodbye—unless you’re rich. And remind me again why this is better—much much better—than just tweaking the health insurance system we had in place by making insurance portable and having a national high-risk pool?

But Obama…

Posted on March 3, 2014 by neoMarch 3, 2014

…takes a hard line on Israel.