I guess the Iranians were correct…

The New Neo Posted on by

…when they said the Obama administration lied about its deal with them.

It’s a sad thing that, on hearing those Iranian claims, I was already inclined to believe their version more than Obama’s. That’s how little meaning his word has these days. And now the WaPo, not known for dissing Obama, has published an editorial that begins:

The fact sheet distributed by the Obama administration about the nuclear agreement with Iran is notable for its omissions.

I suppose Obama misspoke again, because somehow the WaPo manages to write the entire piece without once directly accusing him of lying, and also without once citing the Iranian claims of mendacity that almost certainly sparked the WaPo’s examination of the terms of the agreement.

Here’s the way the editorial deals with the central issue of enrichment:

Though White House officials and Secretary of State John F. Kerry repeatedly said that Iran’s assertion of a “right to enrich” uranium would not be recognized in an interim deal, the text says the “comprehensive solution” will “involve a mutually defined enrichment program with mutually agreed parameters.” In other words, the United States and its partners have already agreed that Iranian enrichment activity will continue indefinitely. In contrast, a long-standing U.S. demand that an underground enrichment facility be closed is not mentioned.

But that’s not even the worst of it, according to the WaPo:

The most troubling part of the document provides for what amounts to a sunset clause in the comprehensive agreement. It says the final deal will “have a specified long-term duration to be agreed upon,” and that once that time period is complete, “the Iranian nuclear program will be treated in the same manner as that of any non-nuclear weapon state party” to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran thus could look forward to a time when there would be no sanctions and no special restrictions on its nuclear capacity; it could install an unlimited number of centrifuges and produce plutonium without violating any international accord.

Administration officials say they regard Iran’s agreement to the words “long-term” in the sunset clause as a significant concession. In theory, this might mean 15 to 20 years. Iran, however, has proposed a far shorter period; we are told it was three to five years.

The piece is so delicately and carefully worded to avoid accusing Obama of actually lying that it seems to have been composed by diplomats itself, rather than being an editorial about diplomacy.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a slightly-edited repeat of a previous post]

I wish all of you a wonderful Thanksgiving. Here’s some corny American pictorial propaganda in honor of the occasion, one of my favorite holidays:

This painting was not originally created for the Thanksgiving holiday. It was part of Rockwell’s “Four Freedoms” series of 1941. Inspired by a post-Pearl Harbor speech of FDR’s about the war effort and why we were fighting, and designed to help sell war bonds, this particular one illustrated “Freedom from Want.”

So on this Thanksgiving Day I’ll reiterate the sentiment: may we all have freedom—of religion, of speech, from want, from fear.

This year, it just so happens that today is an extraordinarily singular day: the first day of Chanukah begins on Thanksgiving, making it Thanksgivukkah.

ThanksCandles

The cranberry sauce speaks

The New Neo Posted on by

And it’s got a lot to say:

I’m a legitimate part of the meal, and it’s about time I was treated as such…Look, do you think I don’t see what you see? I’m repulsive. I stick out like a sore thumb. A red, wobbly sore thumb. Plopped down on this table with the ridges from my can still branded into my side, othering me, shaming me…

Confession: I can’t stand the jellied type of cranberry sauce. When I have Thanksgiving at my place, or when it happens at my brother’s, we always do it ourself. Cranberry sauce is so delicious and so stupendously easy to make—cranberries, water, sugar, simmer for a while till it tastes good—that I don’t see why everyone doesn’t make it. My sister-in-law also does a cranberry chutney that is amazingly addictive.

Don’t have the recipe, but I’ll try to get it and post it.

Lessons from the Sandy Hook report

The New Neo Posted on by

There don’t seem to be any, except that some acts of evil are inscrutable and beyond our understanding.

Many of the assumptions people had about Adam Lanza and his murders are undermined by the official report, according to Jacob Sullum at Reason. For example, Lanza had played a lot of video games but only some were violent. He had Asperger’s, but had never threatened or even hinted at a desire to harm people, and Asperger’s is not linked to an increased incidence of violence anyway. His mother had the guns legally, but banning them would not have prevented his acts or even slowed him down, because his rate of fire was not particularly fast.

Lanza was from a family of divorce, but many such killers are not (for example, Columbine’s dark duo were from intact families) and divorce is common although mass murderers are not. Lanza did consider Columbine an inspiration, but that’s more a symptom of his troubles than a cause.

Were antidepressants a factor? The report indicates there were no drugs in Lanza’s system, and he was not on any drugs regularly, antidepressants or otherwise:

Reportedly the shooter did not drink alcohol, take drugs, prescription or otherwise, and hated the thought of doing any of those things.

Although I haven’t read the report itself, except for a tiny bit (it’s very long), I came across two paragraphs that contain quite a bit of information:

The mother did the shooter’s laundry on a daily basis as the shooter often changed clothing during the day. She was not allowed in the shooter’s room, however, even to clean. No one was allowed in his room.

The shooter disliked birthdays, Christmas and holidays. He would not allow his mother to put up a Christmas tree. The mother explained it by saying that shooter had no emotions or feelings.

Note the phrase “would not allow.” Lanza was twenty years old and lived in his mother’s home, but it seems he dictated quite a bit and his mother acquiesced in order to keep the peace. She may even have done this on the advice of a health professional.

But it’s not at all clear that any other approach Lanza’s mother could have adopted towards him would have helped or changed a thing. I offer as evidence that last sentence in the above quote: “shooter had no emotions or feelings.” Emotions and feelings cannot be taught if a person lacks them, nor are their absence the result of anything a parent has done or not done. If Lanza was a sociopath/psycopath—and it appears he probably was—and secretly inclined to violence but giving no indication of it, it is unlikely that anything could have been done to prevent his crime.

Next on Obama’s “to do” list

The New Neo Posted on by

This?:

The US and Hezbollah are in secret indirect talks managed by London dealing with the fight against Al-Qaida, regional stability and other Lebanese political issues.

Senior British diplomatic sources, quoted in a report in Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai on Wednesday, said British diplomats are holding discussions with leaders of the Lebanese organization and transferring the information to the Americans.

…Because the US, unlike the UK, recognizes both the political and military wings of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and refuses to distinguish between them, US officials cannot legally meet with any member of the party. But according to the sources, the US is willing to hear the views of the party and “warm up to a direct relationship in the future.”

Three years left of Obama’s term is a long time, and no doubt a lot can be accomplished, especially with secret talks.

All the news that’s fit to print: the NY Times, the nipple, and the Jewish star tattoo

The New Neo Posted on by

The Times chose to illustrate an article about genetic testing for breast cancer in Israel, a country with a high rate of the disease, with this photo:

timesTattoo

There’s been a lot of flak about the nipple—or to be more accurate, the half-aureole. Is it appropriate for the front page of the Times? In today’s world, I suppose so, because there are no standards anymore, and the paper is trying to generate controversy and the resultant readership.

I get it. Even bloggers know that some T and A will get you a few hits, if that’s what you’re looking for. Apparently that’s what the Times is looking for, even in a breast cancer story.

But there’s more, lots more. Anyone who knows history knows that the tattoo is reminiscent of two things: the yellow Jewish stars the Jews were forced to wear in many Nazi countries, and the more permanent marks—the tattoos—that inmates of many concentration camps were forced to endure.

That’s the limit of most of the buzz in the media about objections to the photo, which has been considerable: the sexual aspects and the Holocaust references.

But I first saw the photo today in the actual newspaper—that’s right, dead tree version—because I’m at the home of relatives in New York for Thanksgiving. It struck me that, in addition to those two obvious controversies, there’s a more subtle one. Because the image the woman is wearing is both a Jewish star and a tattoo, it would most likely be doubly offensive to more strictly religious Jews who observe the Jewish laws about tattooing:

The source of this prohibition is Leviticus 19:28: “You shall not etch a tattoo on yourselves.” This prohibition applies to all tattoos besides those made for medical purposes, such as to guide a surgeon making an incision…

The human body is G”‘d’s creation, and it is therefore unbefitting to mutilate G”‘d’s handiwork…In ancient times, it was customary for idol-worshippers to tattoo themselves as a sign of commitment to their deity””much like an animal that is branded by its owner…The covenant of circumcision is unique in its being a sign in our bodies of our relationship with G”‘d.

The NY Times is hardly known for its religiosity, but it certainly can’t plead ignorance of this Jewish teaching, because it published a lengthy article on this very subject in 2008, illustrated with another photo of a Jew with a tattoo designed to offend Jews of a more religious bent:
kosher

White House: the healthcare.gov website is like, totally ready for December first…

The New Neo Posted on by

…but please don’t go there.

A “big health care marketing campaign” had been planned for December (at your expense, you lucky taxpayers!) to further sell the program to the reluctant public. But that’s been postponed for fear it would be too successful and actually drive too many people to the site and cause embarrassing crashes. How many is “too many”? The article says the site can take 50,000 users at a time, which doesn’t seem like a whole lot to me for a national website of such magnitude.

But what the article doesn’t state is whether the website can actually handle sign-ups and then integrate the information accurately to the insurance companies who ultimately must be heavily involved. My recollection is that this “back-end” part of the website was a particular problem, not just the front end of people gaining access to it.

To show you what a big problem this could remain, even Matt Yglesias, no right-winger, remains puzzled and concerned about it and calls the administration’s messaging on this issue “pretty cagey.”

Nor does the White House seem to be breathing a word about the serious security problems that have plagued the site and whether they have been fixed. However, the White House manages to have the time and energy to castigate those states which have refused the Medicaid expansion and to call their motivations for doing so completely political (itself a purely political argument—but hey, projection’s the name of the game):

“Nearly half of states are so locked into the politics of Obamacare that they’re willing to leave nearly 5.4 million of their own people uninsured,” the White House website says…

“There is no justification for continuing to block Medicaid expansion,” Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman, said last week in a conference call for Kansas journalists.

It’s one thing to disagree with the justification, which is fiscal: the governors who have refused do not trust the government to continue to foot the bill, and since they have to shoulder the burden if the feds reneg on their end of the deal (can’t imagine why they’d think there’s any chance of that), they are exercising their SCOTUS-protected right to push back against the federal government’s desire to force them to do so. The White House’s statement condemning not just their decisions but their motivations for those decisions is just business as usual for the Obama and company.

I was thinking today that Obama and his helpmates lie so often and so globally and reflexively that I wonder if they can even discern when they are lying and when they are not.

[ADDENDUM: Oh, and by the way, says the White House—you small businesses, there’s no need to rush to the website at all. In fact, we’re delaying your online sign-ups at the federal exchanges for a year.]

First the Israelis, now the Vatican

The New Neo Posted on by

Another day, another religious group offended. All in a day’s work for Obama; including the lies about it:

The Obama administration, in what’s been called an egregious slap in the face to the Vatican, has moved to shut down the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See ”” a free-standing facility ”” and relocate offices onto the grounds of the larger American Embassy in Italy…

And while U.S. officials are touting the relocation as a security measure that’s a cautionary reaction to last year’s attacks on America’s facility in Benghazi, several former American envoys are raising the red flag.

It’s a “massive downgrade of U.S.-Vatican ties,” said former U.S. Ambassador James Nicholson in the National Catholic Reporter. “It’s turning this embassy into a stepchild of the embassy to Italy. The Holy See is a pivot point for international affairs and a major listening post for the United States, and ”¦ [it’s] an insult to American Catholics and to the Vatican.”

Mr. Nicholson ”” whose views were echoed by former envoys Francis Rooney, Mary Ann Glendon, Raymond Flynn and Thomas Melady ”” also called the justification for closing the existing facility a “smokescreen,” Breitbart reported.

“That’s like saying people get killed on highways because they drive cars on them,” he said in the report. “We’re not a pauper nation ”¦ if we want to secure an embassy, we certainly can.”

Moreover, the existing facility has “state of the art” security, he said.

And of course we all know what a huge terrorist threat the Vatican is, compared to all our other embassies around the world.

It’s almost as though Obama were going for the maximum number of people and groups he can outrage, particularly religious groups of the non-Muslim variety.

I now have a very clean iPod

The New Neo Posted on by

The other day I did my laundry.

As usual, I looked through all my pockets before I consigned my clothing to the wash. I’ve had too much previous experience with washing Kleenex, for example, although I’ve noticed that in recent years that they seem to have made Kleenex stronger and almost washing-machine-proof.

This time, as I began to transfer my clean but wet clothing from washer to dryer, I noticed my iPod and earbuds lying layered between some sweatpants and a towel.

I stared at it for a minute, unbelieving. But I’d checked the pockets! My iPod couldn’t have gone through the wash! And yet I must have missed a pocket because there it sat, and as I rescued it from the laundry I saw tiny drops of water glistening on the inside of its transparent little screen.

Well, what did I expect when an iPod goes through the washer? That it would stay dry? I tried to turn it on (a mistake, as I later discovered, because apparently it can damage it further) and of course it was unresponsive.

Then again, I couldn’t possibly be the only person who’d inadvertently laundered an iPod. And sure enough, I discovered that others had passed this way before me, and they had a world of advice to offer. The gist of it was to dry the iPod under a light bulb for up to five hours, and then put it to sleep in a bed of rice for between two to seven days, then plug it in to charge and see if it lit up. If that happens, you’ve got a healed iPod. If not, well, at least it’s clean. But you won’t be hearing its music ever again.

I decided to let mine rest for a week. At the moment of truth, it felt like a mini missile launch. Would my iPod work again or would the whole endeavor be a bust?

It lit up. Mission accomplished. The internet’s a fabulous thing, isn’t it?

Further thoughts on the nuclear option

The New Neo Posted on by

The cloture and filibuster rules of the Senate have been instrumental in keeping our government from careening wildly back and forth between two extremes. In other words, they have given us stability and forced a certain amount of bipartisanship on us. I never was for the nuclear option no matter who was proposing it, left or right. Sometimes what Madison referred to as the “overbearing majority” will consist of one side, sometimes the other (unless Democrats manage to create the permanent majority they think they see ahead). But the result of activating the nuclear option will always be extreme, and always tend toward the more tyrannical.

The framers were smart and tried their best to prevent this from happening—for example, by originally having senators be appointed by the states. But the country has been edging more and more in the opposite direction, step by step, for the last 200 years.

The only thing that kept the line from being crossed was the reasonableness of our elected officials. Each side realized it was in its own best interests to step back from the brink, and each side did step back from the brink—until now. But Reid and Obama (who definitely was behind it, as well) jumped over the brink, and nearly all the rest of the Democrats followed them, lemming-like.

It makes me think of this:

So here we are; I don’t think it’s possible to ever go back once the precedent is set. Each side, when in power, would have to be supremely noble to relinquish the simple majority vote, and would have to trust the other side not to cross the line all over again when they were in power.

One of three exceptions to the Democrat leap was Carl Levin, who’s about 80 and retiring, although he would have won his Michigan seat handily had he not announced he was stepping down. He spoke out strongly against the action taken by his own party:

Yet for all the one-sidedness of Levin’s speech, it was still fundamentally sound, grounded in principles once shared by leaders who understood the danger of unchecked majoritarianism. In 2005, then-Sen. Obama declared that “majoritarian absolute power on either side” was “not what the founders intended.” Those sentiments, like most Obama pronouncements, were false. Carl Levin, by contrast, is true to his word.

Why did Levin do it? Was it because he could risk offending Reid because he’s leaving the Senate? Or was it that rarest of political motivations, integrity and sincerity? If so, he may be one of the few left: a dinosaur about to become extinct.

And although the WaPo took the same obligatory swipes at the awful Republicans as Levin did, its editorial board surprised me by really scolding the Democrats, too. A little bit of integrity at the WaPo?:

Democrats who are celebrating will soon enough regret their decision. The radical action, a product of poisonous partisanship, will also be an accelerant of poisonous partisanship.

The Chicago Tribune is even harder on the Democrats than the WaPo. But funny thing, what the MSM doesn’t realize (assuming it’s sincere in these editorials) is that those who perpetrated this power play laugh in their faces. They know the press can’t hurt them; the press has put them where they are today, and will continue (even in these editorials) to support them as opposed to the Republicans.

So, how many divisions does the MSM have, again? Forget that “pen is mightier than the sword” business. The press was an enabler in all this when it abdicated its pens, or rather, when it used them in the service of the administration. They have no one to thank but themselves.

The only power of the press was to tell the truth, and they muffed it. They thought they were kingmakers, but they were the ones who were being used.

[NOTE: Would the Republicans have done the same in 2014 if they won: activated the nuclear option? I don’t know, but my guess is that they would not have, although they might have threatened it, as in the past.]

Article roundup on the Iran deal

The New Neo Posted on by

Good piece by Jonathan S. Tobin: what are Obama’s Jewish supporters to do?

In other articles on the Iran deal and its effects (particularly on Israel), see this by William Jacobson.

In contrast to many previous foreign policy initiatives (or Hamlet-like lacks thereof) under the Obama administration, Obama micromanaged the Iran deal. And I wonder what the input of Valerie Jarrett may have been, as well.

Charels Krauthammer:

“This is a sham from beginning to end. It’s the worst deal since Munich,” Krauthammer said on Fox News “Special Report” on Monday. “It’s really hard to watch the president and the secretary of state and not think how they cannot be embarrassed by this deal.”

Krauthammer’s uncharacteristically confusing wording there “not think how they cannot be embarrassed” suggests to me how flummoxed he is by the boldness with which Obama sold Israel down the river. But this has clearly been a dream of Obama’s for a long time, telegraphed by his treatment of Netanyahu from the start. Nor does he care the least bit that the American people are not behind him, because he considers himself immune from their judgment.

Embarrassed? Hardly. In fact, the more the American people begin to desert him, the more boldly he will assert his own—opposed—agenda—without shame or hesitation. And this is true on both the foreign and the domestic front.