What’s going on with the National Park Service? And the country?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Ymarsakar” puts his finger on one of the more disturbing developments that has come to light because of the shutdown:

…[T]he park service [used to be] your friendly friends at parks.

Until Obama ordered them to put the rod down on the peasants, and many of them obeyed, though not all.

It has struck me that this is an indication of both human nature (see Milgram’s research on obedience to authority) and what our country has become in recent years. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I don’t think the Greatest Generation would have been nearly as compliant.

Unhappy Anniversary: it’s almost 50 years since the JFK assassination

The New Neo Posted on by

This essay by George F. Will reminds me that in about six weeks we’re going to be commemorating the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination.

I’ve been dreading it for quite some time, in no small measure because the usual trickle of essays on the subject is going to become a tsunami. The occasion will undoubtedly bring all the conspiracy theorists out of the woodwork to parade their pet notions of whodunit and why and how.

I’ve written a few pieces myself on the subject of the assassination, and I probably will recycle some of them as the day comes around. But right now, prompted by the Will essay, I’m wondering about something in particular: how many people in this country today would be able to correctly identify the political affiliation of Lee Harvey Oswald as Communist? My guess is: not so many.

Will points out that the story of the Kennedy assassination started to be rewritten almost from the moment it occurred, and that even after Oswald was captured and known to be a dedicated leftist, the killing of JFK was often described as a story of the effects of right-wing hatred. That serves the approved narrative much better than the truth.

Although conspiracy theorists have their own manifold and sundry motivations for believing all the things they believe, part of the effect of the cacophony of possibilities is to absolve the true culprit—the far left—of responsibility, and to assign guilt to almost anyone other than the person who actually did it. The need is to blame the right, the government, the CIA, the FBI, the Vice President, the Mafia, the Jews (we couldn’t leave them out, could we?), Castro (at least he’s on the left), and even Officer Tippit, one of Oswald’s victims. And that’s just the tip of the conspiracy iceberg.

It’s not innocuous, and it boggles the mind that even now, when the evidence of Oswald’s sole guilt is so clear and compelling that it is virtually a certainty, polls show that the majority of Americans still doubt it. In fact, belief in his guilt was never very high at any point:

According to the AP-GfK survey, conducted in mid-April, 59 percent of Americans think multiple people were involved in a conspiracy to kill the president, while 24 percent think Oswald acted alone, and 16 percent are unsure. A 2003 Gallup poll found that 75 percent of Americans felt there was a conspiracy.

The Oswald-acted-alone results, meanwhile, are the highest since the period three years after the assassination, when 36 percent said one man was responsible for Kennedy’s death.

A pathetic lack of critical thinking, I’m afraid.

[NOTE: I fully expect an outcry of disagreement from people coming to this blog in order to spout their favorite conspiracy theories. I’m not going to reinvent the wheel, so I’ll just refer them to some previous posts I’ve written on the subject (including comments): this, this, and this. Also please see the text of the Vincent Bugliosi tome about the assassination, Reclaiming History, the text of which is online and searchable. Read it, or at least selected parts of it, and you’ll learn a great deal.]

Libyan…

The New Neo Posted on by

…chaos:

Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zidan was snatched by gunmen before dawn Thursday from a Tripoli hotel where he resides, the government said. The abduction appeared to be in retaliation for the U.S. special forces raid over the weekend that seized a Libyan al-Qaida suspect from the streets of the capital.

Zidan’s abduction reflected the weakness of Libya’s government, which is virtually held hostage by powerful militias, many of which are made up of Islamic militants. Militants were angered by the U.S. capture of the suspected militant, known as Abu Anas al-Libi, and accused the government of colluding in or allowing the raid.

In a sign of Libya’s chaos, Zidan’s seizure was depicted by various sources as either an “arrest” or an abduction.

That is because the militias are interwoven in Libya’s fragmented power structure. With the police and army in disarray, many are enlisted to serve in state security agencies, though their loyalty is more to their own commanders than to government officials and they have often intimidated or threatened officials. The militias are rooted in the brigades that fought in the uprising that toppled autocrat Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, and are often referred to as “revolutionaries.”

It doesn’t seem coincidental to me that the kidnapping came not long after the New York Times helpfully reported that the two recent US operations against terrorists were accomplished with the cooperation of the Libyan government. Nice going, NY Times, and whoever in the Obama administration leaked the information to you.

Not that it matters all that much, I suppose, given what the government of Libya is like these days (or any other days). That reminds me of the question I kept asking towards the beginning of the Libyan conflict in early 2011:

Does anyone knows what’s really going on with Libya?…

Although we keep hearing about the Libyan rebels, I have yet to see a good description of who they are and what they are striving for, except the elimination of the current regime. I assume they’re better than Qaddafi (which would not too difficult), but such assumptions can be dangerous. I sincerely hope the State Department has more information on that than I do, but sometimes I wonder.

I would say it’s been clear for quite some time that they’re no better than Qaddafi. Perhaps worse.

The story reminds me that it’s been a little over a year since the Benghazi attack that killed Ambassador Stevens. As far as the press and much of the public goes, it’s almost as though it never happened.

I have another question: will Zidan’s kidnappers offer him in exchange for the captured terrorist al-Libi?

And an observation: if I were a conspiracy theorist sort, I’d say this kidnapping appears to have been pulled off rather easily. For example, the bodyguards were just beaten up and not killed. So, was this a staged kidnapping, accomplished with Zidan’s cooperation? Almost nothing would surprise me at this point, although I can’t quite figure out what Zidan would gain by allowing himself to be the victim of a fake kidnapping.

Raising the debt ceiling: Obama’s refusal to negotiate

The New Neo Posted on by

So which will it be: catastrophe or no? And if it’s catastrophe, how soon will that happen?

I will say at the outset: I don’t know the answer to either question. And what’s more, I don’t think anyone knows. That doesn’t stop everyone from offering an opinion, of course. I think that people on the left are ramping up the fear, and people on the right are trying to minimize it, both for obvious tactical purposes of their own. But failure to raise the debt ceiling is uncharted territory, and the best opinions are just guesses—although if it fails to be raised by the October 17 deadline, I guess we’ll find out whose prognostications were right and whose wrong.

Even that will not be completely clear, though, because predictions can function as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and fear is contagious.

One thing that is clear to me is that Paul Ryan is correct when he writes in the WSJ:

The president says he “will not negotiate” on the debt ceiling. He claims that such negotiations would be unprecedented. But many presidents have negotiated on the debt ceiling””including him.

Obama would like the public to think he can’t negotiate and that to do so would be unheard of. But in this, as in so many other things, he’s lying. What is actually going on here is that, in the past, presidents who have had to deal with divided government (as Obama is; the House is in Republican hands) have always known that in such a situation they must negotiate. Whichever party they have been affiliated with, and whether you think they were good presidents or bad ones, they have kept faith with the basic gentleman’s/woman’s agreement on which our government has always run, and that is that if the other side was duly elected to be in control of another branch of government, that group has some legitimate power and must be negotiated with.

Obama is different. He had the brilliant idea that, although Republicans are in control of the House right now, they have no power unless they agree with him, and it is okay for him to defy them because it will have no repercussions on either him or his party (which is largely aligned with him). Therefore he can Just Say No to whatever Republican demands might be, and blame them for the failure to come to any sort of agreement. And the reason he is able to get away with this is a simple one: he knows the media will not call him on it, but will instead support him and amplify his message.

It’s a toxic combination, and that’s what’s “unprecedented”—at least in this country.

[NOTE: I have a question: if the debt ceiling must always be raised every time it is asked for, what’s the point of having Congress vote on it at all? The argument that it must be raised by a vote seems strange on that level alone, if it is absolutely necessary to have automatic approval or the country’s economy collapses.]

[ADDENDUM: I just noticed that Eric Cantor has a piece in the WaPo today on the topic of how bipartisan negotiations are necessary in a divided government.]

All you Snowden fans…

The New Neo Posted on by

…are you still liking him after this news? Or do you think that’s all just hype?

I have said from the start that Snowden is a dangerous guy who should have actually gone the whistleblower route if he wanted to be an actual whistleblower, rather than teaming up with the Guardian and Glenn Greenwald and then ending up in Russia.

[NOTE: For more background, please see this and these.]

Happy 25th birthday, Midnight Run!

The New Neo Posted on by

Actually, it’s Happy Belated Birthday.

But I still have to write (again) about one of my favorite movies of all time, “Midnight Run”, in honor of its 25th birthday, which occurred a few months ago.

On paper, there’s nothing about the movie I should like. It’s a buddy/action movie, a genre that’s not my style at all. It stars Robert De Niro in a comic role, and although I think he’s a great actor I don’t think comedy tends to be his best genre. His sidekick is the obnoxious Charles Grodin. And every other word is the f-word, and I mean almost literally every other word.

But it’s wildly entertaining, side-splittingly funny, surprisingly suspenseful, and genuinely moving. Not only are both De Niro and Grodin superb (as is the late Dennis Farina as a villain who manages to be both funny and chillingly frightening in equal measure), but so is every other actor and actress in the film, no matter how small the part. I’d say the script is great, too, except I’ve just learned that many of the best bits were improvised.

Here’s a medley of short clips:

I don’t know how much sense that made if you weren’t already familiar with the whole movie. But if you haven’t seen it, you should. And even if you have, it just might be a good time to watch it again.

Another question reporters could have asked Obama today, but didn’t

The New Neo Posted on by

Why was the Obamacare government website design outsourced to a Canadian firm?

And this is exactly and precisely the question I’ve been asking myself for days: “Why is healthcare.gov so bad, when Obama’s digital campaign was so good?”

Priorities, I guess. Although you’d think anything with the name “Obamacare” would be a high priority as well.

Sowell: the inarticulate Republicans

The New Neo Posted on by

Another excellent article in a long line of them by Thomas Sowell:

Boehner is not unique in having a blind spot when it comes to recognizing the importance of articulation and the need to put some serious time and effort into presenting your case in a way that people outside the Beltway would understand. On the contrary, he has been all too typical of Republican leaders in recent decades…

You might think that the stakes are high enough for Republicans to put in some serious time trying to clarify their message. As the great economist Alfred Marshall once said, facts do not speak for themselves. If we are waiting for the Republicans to do the speaking, the country is in big trouble.

Democrats, by contrast, are all talk. They could sell refrigerators to Eskimos before Republicans could sell them blankets…

It occurs to me that one of Reagan’s great gifts was that he knew how to speak to the public and be understood. He didn’t play the game of inside beltway baseball that so many Republicans such as Boehner are playing today. The same is true of Chris Christie—call him RINO or whatever you want, but he’s a clear and down-to-earth speaker who connects with people.

Sowell himself, although a PhD in economics and a brilliant, brilliant man, is exceptionally clear and accessible when he writes. He practices what he preaches. But alas, he’s never run for office, and at the age of 83 is highly unlikely to do so.

The Alinsky president has a press conference

The New Neo Posted on by

I won’t be watching it. My stomach’s not strong enough.

But others such as William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection are doing it for me, and highlighting the tweets of various people who also are watching.

Obama is reiterating his “no negotiations” stance and doubling down on his attacks on Republicans, even as he demonizes them for not negotiating. It’s our Orwellian and Alinskyite president at his finest (or worst).

And all of this after Obama said yesterday:

I have said from the start of the year that I’m happy to talk to Republicans about anything related to the budget. There’s not a subject that I am not willing to engage in — work on, negotiate and, come up with common sense compromises on.

He’s happy to talk to them on anything—that is, as long as they agree to give up what they want first, and do what he wants.

As Victor Davis Hanson wrote on October 6:

The media, of course, accepts that what Obama says on any given day will contradict what he has said or done earlier, or will be an exaggeration or caricature of his opponents’ position, or simply be detached from reality. But in their daily calculus, that resulting chaos is minor in comparison to the symbolic meaning of Obama. He is, after all, both the nation’s first African-American president and our first left-wing progressive since Franklin Roosevelt.

In comparison with those two facts, no others really matter.

[ADDENDUM: From before the press conference:

“The president sent strong signals to us which we find offensive,” says Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, the chairman of the House Rules Committee. “He’s not a dictator. We have a constitution,” he adds. “It’s unreasonable and very selfish,” adds Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah about the Democrats’ reticence…

“I think the American people are watching an unwillingness by one side to negotiate and compromise. I think they are watching the utterly vindictive actions of the administration to intensify the pain of the shutdown and I think they are watching the collapse of the administration’s signature program, Obamacare, as it unrolls and unravels before our very eyes,” says Representative Tom McClintock of California. ”The public awakening to what is happening here is going to ultimately compel the Democrats to negotiate and compromise.”

I wish I were as optimistic about what the American people are noticing. Obama’s press conference was called to counter this possibility; to give the perception that it’s the demon Republicans who are the problem, and that his non-negotiation stance is reasonable under the circumstances. Since it’s midday, relatively few people are probably listening. But he’s counting on his faithful shills in the media to spread the word, and they will.]

Kathleen Sebelius: good party apparatchik

The New Neo Posted on by

Either Kathleen Sebelius has a remarkably deadpan sense of humor, or she’s being serious in her piece in USA Today entitled, “HealthCare.gov simple, user-friendly.”

I doubt that even those who are in favor of Obamacare think the government website for the exchanges is “simple” or “user-friendly.” But Sebelius’ article is not meant as a joke, although she is not so stupid or deluded as to actually believe what she’s saying. It’s pap to placate the masses; she thinks we’re that stupid.

And perhaps she’s correct. Maybe we are just that stupid. After all, we elected Obama twice, the second time after he had pretty much revealed his character and modus operandi.

Sebelius wants to tell us that wait times at the website are shorter than they were before! Isn’t that fabulous? All the problems we had were merely because of high demand because Obamacare’s so great! She can name two actual people who are happier with their health insurance under the exchanges than what they had before!

Just think how much contempt Sebelius and company must have for the American public to be able to write at this point that the website is “simple and user-friendly, and the coverage is affordable.” Even the Obama administration’s mouthpiece CNN keeps finding huge problems. One might think that Sebelius and the administration would gain more credibility by admitting that the problems with the website are more serious than can be explained by high demand (a demand that could not possibly have been unexpected). But it’s important to realize why they want above all to avoid that perception, because if the government can’t manage to design a website properly with years of lead-in time, how can it even begin to handle a system as complex as Obamacare?

Sticker shock on Obamacare

The New Neo Posted on by

There are a lot of surprised people in California now that more Obamacare details are coming out:

In California, 1.9 million people buy plans on the open market, according to officials with Covered California, the state’s new health insurance exchange. And many of them are steaming mad.

“There’s going to be a number of people surprised” by their bills, said Jonathan Wu, a co-founder of ValuePenguin, a consumer finance website. “The upper-middle class are the people who are essentially being asked to foot the bill, and that’s true across the country.”

Covered California spokesman Dana Howard maintained that in public presentations the exchange has always made clear that there will be winners and losers under Obamacare.

“Some people will see an increase who are already on the individual market purchasing insurance,” he said, “but most people will not.”…

Both Vinson and Waschura have adjusted gross incomes greater than four times the federal poverty level — the cutoff for a tax credit. And while both said they anticipated their rates would go up, they didn’t realize they would rise so much.

“Of course, I want people to have health care,” Vinson said. “I just didn’t realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally.”

Raise your hand if you think Dana Howard has much of a clue how many people will actually see premiums go up and how many will see them go down. Also, the levels that premium payments are set this year are not necessarily what they will be next year, or the next—and those levels will to some measure depend on how many people sign up for Obamacare and how many people opt to pay the penalty instead—another unknown.

But it’s that last quote from Vinson that seems to encapsulate a common liberal mindset on Obamacare—or on government-funded benefits in general—that so infuriates conservatives. Who doesn’t “want people to have health care”? But the real question—and the real difference between the approaches of conservatives and liberals, inflammatory rhetoric aside—is how such a thing would be paid for, and especially whether it is possible to do so without putting an undue burden on the wage-earning tax-paying public.

Vinson, like so many people, uses the term “health care” to mean “health insurance,” but let’s gloss over that and stipulate that most people couldn’t afford the former (particularly if a major health problem were to arise) without having the latter. Vinson probably isn’t saying that she didn’t expect to pay for her own health insurance. She is saying that she expected to pay only for her own health insurance, not for the health insurance of those others she “of course” wants covered.

So the trillion-dollar question is: who did she expect would pay for their insurance?

It couldn’t have been the poor themselves who would pay. And if it wasn’t someone like Vinson, whose income clocks in at four times the poverty level—who would it have been? A good guess would be: people who are richer than Vinson.

It’s an interesting phenomenon that’s not at all uncommon among liberals; call it the “do it to Julia, not to me” phenomenon. In this case, something that is recognized as unfair and/or unwanted for oneself is acceptable if the responsibility is put on others instead, those people who for some reason are thought to deserve it more or to be able to absorb it better. But if it’s unfair for the first group, why is it suddenly fair for the second?

Perhaps some people such as Vinson haven’t thought it through even to that extent. Perhaps their thinking stops at the “Of course, I want people to have health care” point. That makes them good people in their own eyes: nice people, compassionate people, unlike those who disagree with them and are imagined to be mean people who do not “want people to have health care.” The idea that conservatives actually might also “want people to have health care” and yet be more realistic than liberals about the costs and benefits of such an undertaking, and might have different ideas about the best way to effect the greatest amount of health care for the greatest number of people, seems to be a foreign notion to many who think as Vinson does.

But hope springs eternal, even for them:

“I’m not against Obamacare,” Waschura said. “It’s just the initial shock. I’m holding out hope that there will be a correction over a handful of years.”

There’ll probably be a “correction” all right. It just might not be in the direction Waschura assumes.

[NOTE: Cross-posted at Legal Insurrection.]