This was so successful the first time…

The New Neo Posted on by

…let’s do it again!—says the Obama administration:

The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place.

President Obama’s economic advisers and outside experts say the nation’s much-celebrated housing rebound is leaving too many people behind, including young people looking to buy their first homes and individuals with credit records weakened by the recession.

In response, administration officials say they are working to get banks to lend to a wider range of borrowers by taking advantage of taxpayer-backed programs ”” including those offered by the Federal Housing Administration ”” that insure home loans against default.

Housing officials are urging the Justice Department to provide assurances to banks, which have become increasingly cautious, that they will not face legal or financial recriminations if they make loans to riskier borrowers who meet government standards but later default.

Fool or knave?

Knave.

The AP has a way to solve the “illegal immigrant” problem

The New Neo Posted on by

They just won’t be called that any more.

After all, we wouldn’t want to offend anyone or hurt their feelings.

The article is a bit mum on what should replace the term, which is supposedly being jettisoned because it characterizes the people as illegal rather than their method of arrival in this country. And yet, strangely enough, NY Times public editor Margaret Sullivan says that that paper is thinking of substituting “undocumented” or “unauthorized” instead, which uses exactly the same grammatical device.

Make no mistake about it; this sort of thing may seem trivial but it matters. Words help shape attitudes. If we refuse to use the term “illegal,” it’s part of the process by which illegal immigration itself becomes no big whoop.

[ADDENDUM: In a comment somewhere I saw a suggestion for a new term to replace it the old one: future Democratic voter.]

More on taking Obama seriously

The New Neo Posted on by

Two days ago I wrote a post on why Obama should be taken seriously in which I said, among other things, that Obama is an “excellent, ruthless, and very smart politician.”

Many commenters disagreed, which has happened every time I’ve made such an assertion, and I’ve made it quite a few times.

Now, I can take disagreement; if I couldn’t, I’d better get out of the blogging biz. And of course I respect your right to disagree, yada yada yada. But I’m going to make another effort to convince those who disagree, or at least make an attempt to clarify a bit more about the reasons behind my assertions.

First, let’s look at one of the comments on that earlier thread (from commenter “Ann”):

I noted in that article you linked to that Emil Jones Jr., a Democratic mover and shaker in Illinois and one of the two people Palmer came in behind in that Congressional primary, became Obama’s mentor after Obama was elected to fill Palmer’s Illinois Senate seat. Which leads me to wonder if he had a hand in how Obama dealt with Palmer and how much of Obama’s subsequent political moves were influenced by Jones. Wikipedia says that he played a large part in Obama’s 2004 election as U.S. senator, for instance.

I do believe Obama is totally without scruples, but I’m loath to give him credit for anything more than average smarts, so I hope I’m not just grasping at straws here!

Ann presents a plausible theory, one of many variations on the “Obama’s nothing special; he’s more or less a puppet” theme.

I’ve read a great deal about Obama—not just his national political career or his early life, or even his schooling, but his early- and mid-adult career trajectory. A lot of this reading is a bit rusty, since I did it mostly in 2008, and some of the articles have (interestingly enough) disappeared, most particularly a long April 3, 2007 Chicago Tribune piece called “Obama knows his way around a ballot,” about Obama’s very first political primary, the one in which he showed his stuff by disqualifying Alice Palmer and three other candidates and ran unopposed. [UPDATE: The article appears in a PDF file here.]

The impression I get—and it’s a very strong one—is of a smart and ruthless guy who knows exactly what he wants to do, and who it is who will be able to best help him along the way. And yes, Democratic “operatives” assisted and advised him (although Emil Jones didn’t get into the act till later), but Obama was in charge.

Again, to clarify: when I say “smart,” I’m not talking about book-smart, although I think Obama has quite a fair amount of that sort of intelligence as well, nothing extraordinary but certainly enough to get through college and Harvard Law on his own steam (although his election as Law Review President was more of a popularity contest). And yes, as he himself has acknowledged, affirmative action was operating to give him a significant amount of help. But a person still has to meet some sort of minimal standard, and I believe Obama had no trouble doing that.

But that is not the same as saying he is especially gifted academically. Where I think Obama is extremely gifted is about politics, in particular propaganda and the use of his own persona to appeal to the public and to further his goals and those of his helpers and supporters. And yes, let me reiterate that he certainly did not do it alone; he has had helpers and supporters along the way, and almost certainly was long ago recognized by the left as their perfect instrument—and a not-unwilling one at that, being a leftist himself.

Many many people who met him way back then recognized his enormous political potential, almost on a visceral level—you either feel it or you don’t. One of the most interesting things about Obama’s early resume is how many people who met him would be struck almost immediately by the thought “this man could be the first black president!” Much of the time they mention (I don’t have a lot of cites, because I read most of this a long time ago) that they don’t even know why; something about his demeanor plus of course his race. The thought just seems to hit them like a bolt out of the blue.

David Brooks famously talked about his own version of it when he spoke as though he were enamored of the crease in Obama’s pants on first meeting him:

I remember distinctly an image of””we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant,” Brooks says, “and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.”

This is bizarre, but it is also no accident; Obama knows that a little tailoring goes a long way. But I don’t think Brooks is that stupid, either; it wasn’t really the pants leg, although it helped. In the same piece, the fact that Brooks and Obama were talking about Edmund Burke is mentioned, and Brooks is quoted as later saying, “Obama sees himself as a Burkean,”

Why is that significant? Not because Obama is a Burkean, which I highly doubt, but because Brooks is. In a book I happen to own called Why I Turned Right, Brooks chronicles his own political journey from left to right (or semi-right, or middling, or pretend-right, or whatever Brooks is these days) and makes it clear that Burke was instrumental in Brooks’ own political change, and that he considers himself to be an “inner Burkean.”

So it wasn’t just about the pants crease, although that’s a particularly silly part of the Brooks infatuation with Obama. That vision was embedded in a larger conversation about Burke, one of the ways to Brooks’ heart.

How did Obama know this would be so? Perhaps he studied up on Brooks before the interview. Perhaps it was Brooks who brought up Burke. Whatever it was, Obama demonstrated enough knowledge or surface-knowledge on the subject of Burke to not only convince Brooks (who, whatever you think about him, has studied Burke in some depth) that Obama knew a lot about Burke but that he was himself a Burkean and therefore a kindred spirit with Brooks.

Why am I going into this in such exhaustive detail? It’s not because I think Brooks is so important. It’s because I think Brooks’ experience is probably typical, and it demonstrates several things. One is that Obama has enough intelligence to do this and do it well—whether it’s at the behest of others or his own idea. He has to be able to perform this way and impress his listener, and whether he studies up on each subject or not, and whether it’s his own idea to do so or not, he has to have the intelligence to pull it off and the ability to maintain his calm while doing so. The other is that the Brooks incident is highly unlikely to be unique; it’s a clue to how Obama works his magic. He has probably done a version of this thousands of times to thousands of people—or, rather, to many millions of people, if you count the general public. When he says he’s a “blank screen” on which people project what they want to see, he’s being misleading—he actually cleverly fills in that blank screen with what people want to see, an ever-shifting picture that fits what he perceives to be their desires and interests of the moment.

The late Tony Blankely saw this clearly quite early in the game. On the occasion of Obama’s first inauguration he wrote (and please do yourself a favor and read the entire essay):

President Obama is a beguiling but confounding figure. As he has said of himself: “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” (”The Audacity of Hope.”) It is indeed audacious that he should proclaim this consciously disingenuous attribute. And, as one reads his inaugural address, it is hard not to conclude that it was shrewdly crafted to perpetuate such confusion.

Run-of-the-mill politicians try to hide their duplicity. Only the most gifted of that profession brag that they intend to confound and confuse the public. Such an effort is beyond ingenious – it is brazenly ingenuous.

These abilities are not ordinary, and they take intelligence, although it’s not necessarily the type of intelligence we want to see in our politicians.

But back to “Ann’s” comment and Emil Jones. Years ago I remember reading a lengthy article that described Obama’s early political career, and it mentioned that Jones was very impressed with what Obama had done during the Alice Palmer episode at the very beginning of that career—impressed, that is, with Obama’s boldness and ruthlessness and aggression. It reminded me of nothing so much as The Godfather stories (without the murders), in which the young Don Corleone wows and intimidates others in the mob early on by showing the extreme coldbloodedness of which he’s capable. And there’s never been any suggestion that Jones was behind that part of Obama’s life prior to that election, although he did become his mentor once Obama reached the legislature, and facilitated his political climb after that by directing legislation his way.

I don’t think this is the exact article, but it’s the closest I can find, and I recommend you read it if you haven’t already. A lot of it is about Obama’s early political career in Chicago, and shows what a strong and ruthless character he was from the start, and how many people he alienated along the way. There’s nothing in there that indicates to me that by the time he was running for president (and much earlier) he was not completely his own man. Yes, others saw in Obama an instrument to accomplish their own goals, too. But why do you think that was? It was because he brought his own very formidable political skills, ruthlessness, and savvy to the table. He made a single prominent political mistake, which was to run against Bobby Rush in 2000. But he learned from it, and has made very few since.

We do ourselves no favors underestimating Obama or the left. They are players in the game, and he is a player in the game rather than a puppet.

And let’s not get bogged down by words like “genius” and whether they’re appropriate. You might note that I don’t tend to use that word about Obama except when quoting others, or sometimes with scare quotes. But I don’t minimize Obama’s own capabilities, either. He’s a very gifted guy in a certain direction, one that has paid off for him, big time.

Academia’s hire-a-terrorist movement

The New Neo Posted on by

It can be hard to get a job if you’ve got a record, but universities are doing their bit—if the ex-con was a terrorist, that is. Professors Dohrn and Ayers are not certainly not anomalies; Kathy Boudin has found a home in academia, too.

Not only is that no surprise whatsoever, but the location of that home is no surprise, either—Columbia University:

Former Weather Underground radical Kathy Boudin – who spent 22 years in prison for an armored-car robbery that killed two cops and a Brinks guard – now holds a prestigious adjunct professorship at Columbia University’s School of Social Work, The Post has learned.

Boudin, 69, this year won another academic laurel – being named the Sheinberg Scholar-in-Residence at NYU Law School, where last month she gave a lecture on “the politics of parole and re-entry.”

Boudin was hired as an expert on “the issues facing convicts and their families when a person is released from prison.” I doubt she recommends her own solution; Columbia certainly can’t employ all of them.

The university reports that very few of Boudin’s students have “expressed qualms” about her criminal history. After all, this is the Columbia School of Social Work we’re talking about.

And not only is Boudin employed there, but other universities are vying for her hand; she was appointed Sheinberg Scholar-in-Residence at NYU Law School as well.

Of course, these schools have a right to hire anyone they want. They’ve been hotbeds of leftism for a long, long time, and I wouldn’t expect that to change. But I wonder whether most people are yet aware—and especially most parents who send their children there to be educated—of how pervasive the leftist agenda there (and in so many other universities) actually is.

More:

One Friday, a criminal-justice conference at the school will feature keynote address by Angela Davis, another infamous radical, and later this month Boudin is scheduled to speak at Columbia Law School’s conference on child and family advocacy.

Here’s Boudin’s bio, if you’re not already familiar with it. I have been unable to find anything to indicate what might be called “repentance” on Boudin’s part; neither has John Hinderaker of Powerline. And indeed, there’s absolutely no reason to think she has any regrets about what she did. Boudin comes from a long line of prominent leftists (and especially lawyers), and although the rest of them don’t seem to have been terrorists, in her politics she’s really just been following the family business.

[NOTE: There’s a movement to romanticize terrorists of the 60s, and this film seems to be part of it. I think part of this is due to the increasing leftism of the Obama era.]

If you’re going to Chicago, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair

The New Neo Posted on by

Will the current spate of violence in Chicago hurt tourism?

Not if the news doesn’t get around.

I refer to this article on the fact that the Chicago murder rate for the first three months of 2013 was down to 70 from 120 last year. Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and Mayor Rahm Emanuel patted themselves on the back for putting more officers on the street, which they believe accounted for the drop.

All very well and good; I applaud it. So what am I grousing about? This, from the same article [emphasis mine]:

Emanuel and McCarthy also fielded questions about weekend troubles in downtown Chicago, when a group of young women attacked another woman on a train and several young people ”” in full view of shoppers and tourists ”” jostled passers-by and fought each other on Michigan Avenue. More than two-dozen young people were arrested.

Several young people? I wrote about the incident yesterday, but here’s a description in case you didn’t see it [emphasis mine]:

The warmest day of the year so far brought hundreds of teens to Michigan Avenue on Saturday. Police were calling it “mob action.”

CBS 2 has learned about multiple incidents in at least four different locations along the Magnificent Mile and in the Gold Coast, yielding a slew of arrests. In all, 25 juveniles and three adults were charged.

Many innocent shoppers and tourists became caught in the middle of a very chaotic situation. Hundreds of teens littered Michigan Avenue and State Street near Chicago…

Community activist Andrew Holmes witnessed some of the problems, while shopping with his family.

“You had a group of teens, close to maybe 500. They assaulted a Chicago police officer that was mounted on a horse and all of a sudden they assaulted a citizen walking the streets, just a normal citizen shopping and enjoying the weather,” said Holmes.

Here’s the mayor with some further spin:

Emanuel said police have increased their presence there, particularly at night and on the weekends, and that he did not believe what happened over the weekend would affect tourism.

“We have a big (police) presence on Michigan Avenue and the moment something happened the police were on it and people got arrested,” the mayor told the AP.

See? Nothing to worry about.

Like this:

Sealing the deal

The New Neo Posted on by

President Obama has proclaimed his intention of changing the unofficial motto of the United States, e pluribus unum, on the Seal of the President.

Here’s its history:

E pluribus unum ”” Latin for “Out of many, one” (alternatively translated as “One out of many” or “One from many”) ”” is a phrase on the Seal of the United States, along with Annuit cÅ“ptis and Novus ordo seclorum, and adopted by an Act of Congress in 1782. Never codified by law, E pluribus unum was considered a de facto motto of the United States until 1956 when the United States Congress passed an act (H. J. Resolution 396), adopting “In God We Trust” as the official motto.

Not only does e pluribus unum appear on the Seal of the United States, it also appears on the Seal of the President as well as other official US seals (those of the House and Senate, for example). But although an act of Congress established the original e pluribus unum on the Seal of the United States in 1782, the application of the motto to the other seals was not sealed (as it were) by the legislature.

As far as its appearance on the Seal of the President goes, it has developed through custom, based on the official Seal of the US scheme, with Presidents Truman and Eisenhower solidifying the design by executive orders during their administrations (Eisenhower added the stars for Alaska and Hawaii to the circle of stars surrounding the eagle to make fifty). So there’s no need for new legislation to change it; Obama can do it by executive fiat.

Here’s the Seal in use today; you can see the motto prominently displayed:

SealPres

It’s not the first time Obama has played with the seal. You may recall that during his 2008 campaign he was mocked for using a campaign seal that mimicked the Seal of the President, although it was simpler and contained a different motto above the eagle’s head, “Vero Possumus,” which translates more or less as ‘Yes we can.”

Here’s what it looked like:

Obamaseal

Today Obama explained:

When I campaigned in 2008 I used a campaign seal that said “Yes, we can” in Latin. When I became president I used the seal that the forty-three presidents before me had used. I am a great respecter of tradition, but I believe that in honor of my new term I need a new motto. I thought to take the old campaign slogan’s Latin version of “yes, we can” and merely change it to the Latin for “yes, we did,” which would be “Vero Fecimus.”

But then I had a better idea, which is to use “E Unum Pluribus” instead. Our old motto meant “out of many, one.” It was a good motto, appropriate for its times. But our new one—“out of one, many“—is appropriate for our times. And the new one has the same number of letters, so it can fit on the seal exactly where the old one went.

The new motto has two meanings. The first is obvious; it’s meant to honor the great diversity of this nation and the fact that we no longer feel the need to arrogantly force new arrivals to give up their old cultures and merge into the prevailing one. The second meaning is more subtle; it refers to my nickname, The One, and the many achievements I’ve accomplished during my many years in office, as well as the many things I plan to do during the remaining years of my term.

We’ve only just begun. E Unum Pluribus!

[BUMPED UP.]

[ADDENDUM: Scott Johnson is much better at Latin than I.]

Concealed carry and Chicago wildings

The New Neo Posted on by

Would a concealed carry law in Illinois help prevent rampages such as this recent one in Chicago?

Here’s a proposal (2/25/2012). Note this quote:

Chicago aldermen, Chicago police officers, and even the head of Cook County government all told state lawmakers Friday morning that while the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that concealed carry should be legalized, Illinois lawmakers can craft a very tough law.

“Elementary, secondary and higher education buildings should be a gun-free zone,” Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle told lawmakers. “Government owned and operated buildings should be gun-free zones. ”¦ One should not be able to possess a weapon in a hospital or a nursing home. Houses of worship should be gun-free zones.”

Preckwinkle also wants local governments, notably Cook County and the city of Chicago, to be able to opt out of any statewide concealed-carry law.

“There are 102 counties in the state of Illinois,” Preckwinkle said. “Given the special circumstances in Cook County, it might be something we would want to consider.”

That announcement seems to be saying to potential mass murderers (or those bent not on murder but merely on destructive “wilding” and “mischief“—although the adjective “mischievous” seems to have been scrubbed from the article in which it originally appeared) exactly where they’ll be able to go for maximum effect. Why should they take the risk of being stopped by a bullet?

And as far as mass murderers are concerned, schools and churches and hospitals contain the most vulnerable victims whose deaths would be guaranteed to summon the maximum pathos and the maximum publicity. Also, if there’s one thing we should have learned from Newtowne, it’s that a determined killer can probably get through any barricade or lock we have been able to devise.

And I’d love to know what those Chicago “special circumstances” are to which Preckwinkle refers. My guess is that she’s referring to the high crime rate, although I can’t see that a law against carrying a concealed weapon would stop most criminals. After all, they’re by definition lawbreakers. It seems logical that those who would be most easily deterred from carrying a weapon illegally would be the law-abiding.

And yes, I’m well aware of the position of John Lott that concealed carry reduces crime. I went through a period several years ago of extensive reading on that subject, and could come to no definitive conclusion. I refer you to this webpage if you want to immerse yourself in the pros and cons.

But no matter what, the city of Chicago better get its act together. These “kids” know they can destroy property and attack people without consequences to themselves that they would regard as serious.

And what did the assaulted cop do to defend himself? I’d love to know. Did he use mace? If not, how did he deflect the attack despite being outnumbered?

Against a crowd, police are only superior by dint of their superior firepower and/or other weaponry, because the crowd usually has superior numbers. Had the police officers used guns, or other violent means of control, they would no doubt have become the poster children for targeting “innocent” (and presumably black—all the videos seem to indicate that, although the MSM articles are for the most part careful not to mention it) teenagers.

This is hardly the first time this has happened in Chicago. The lack of discipline—parental and societal and official—has emboldened these young people, and social media has allowed them to coordinate as never before. Social media can be used to organize fun things like dancing flash mobs. It can also be used to foment a coup (as in Egypt), or to coordinate acts of criminal, pointless, meaningless, nihilistic destruction, as in Chicago. Vandalism used to be the province of individuals or small groups of teenagers or adults. Now large ones be assembled rather easily, and in this case many women (girls? what should we call them these days?) got into the act.

If this doesn’t get under control, the whole thing is a prescription for a riot. Law-abiding people—white, black, or any color of the rainbow—are getting very very tired of being intimidated by thugs, and of having their order-keeping forces neutered. A civil society depends on a civil contract that peace will be kept, or it becomes the Wild West and each person must keep his/her own peace. And remember what they carried in the Wild West.

Cyprus: less is more

The New Neo Posted on by

The latest on the Cyprus banking crisis:

Depositors in Cyprus with savings of more than 100,000 euros ($128,000) could face losses of up to 60 percent, under tough conditions attached to an international bailout, Finance Minister Michalis Sarris said Saturday…

A mandatory one-off tax on deposits of more than 100,000 euros in return for shares in Bank of Cyprus would bring a 37.5 percent decrease in value.

Depositors could also lose an additional 22.5 percent, Sarris told RIK state television, if it is determined that more funds are needed to save the bank.

The small eurozone member avoided a financial meltdown this past week by sealing a 10 billion-euro bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

President Nicos Anastasiades on Friday said Cyprus would not leave the eurozone after banks returned to normal opening hours under strict capital controls to prevent a run on deposits.

So they get shares in the banks, for what that’s worth.

And the EU remains intact. Pity.

There’s no way of avoiding some sort of hardship in the Cyprus situation. The question is who should bear the biggest burden, and what are the longer-term consequences of each approach in dealing with it.

What do I think should have happened? This (by Daniel Hannan):

Cyprus could copy Iceland, let its banks collapse, and leave their shareholders and bondholders to sustain the loss.

There is often a perception lag when it comes to foreign countries. Most people in the EU still have the idea that Iceland is in economic meltdown. In fact, as I have blogged many times before, it has bounced back impressively from the 2008 crash, and public opinion is solidly against EU membership. Icelanders are a canny people. They know that, though they have been through a dip, their standard of living is still higher than 24 of the EU’s 27 members, and is improving more rapidly than anywhere in the euro zone. All this despite the best efforts of their Green-Socialist coalition to penalise business through bizarre eco-regulations.

Why don’t Brussels leaders want Cyprus to follow the Icelandic model? Well, you can’t fault their honesty. The expropriations are necessary, admits the European Central Bank, to prevent ”˜worries over the reversibility of the euro resurfacing’. Cypriots, in other words, are being sacrificed to the greater goal of monetary union. They will become a second Greece, vassals to their EU creditors.

Hard-boiled

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve read about a thousand articles on how to boil eggs. Here’s another—in honor, of course, of Easter, which is tomorrow.

I’ve even written about hard-boiled eggs before (boy, I’ve been blogging a long time), especially the problem with peeling the eggs—which of course doesn’t occur if you’re not planning to eat them, but just want them to be decorative. It seems to have something to do with the way the egg has been processed, as well as how fresh it is; too fresh will make peeling difficult. Here’s the scoop on that, if you missed it the first time.

And here’s something to get you into that Easter spirit:

Eeggs

Take Obama seriously

The New Neo Posted on by

Boy, am I ever in agreement with this piece by John Podhoretz. For the most part, it echoes what I’ve been saying for a long time—which is that Obama is an excellent, ruthless, and very smart politician (please see this for one of my posts on the subject).

I agree with almost every point Podhoretz is making except that, unlike him, I think Obama actually is far more a radical than a typical liberal politician; I think he does have a far left agenda. But I agree with Podhoretz that since most people find that idea preposterous, those who’ve been saying it sound nuts and it therefore backfires against them.

Podhoretz also says those who urged people to vote for Romney because he would be a good manager were wrong. I agree that was probably wrong, but I was not one of those people. I thought people should vote for Romney because (a) he was better than Obama in almost every way; (b) he was more conservative than most people thought; and (c) he would create a good climate for business and economic recovery.

At any rate, the Romney part is moot now. The Obama part is still important because (as I’ve also said many times) the right underestimates him at their peril.

While strolling down memory lane to write this post I did, however, come across another passage I wrote in early October, 2012, that I think bears repeating:

One thing I believe is that, if Romney loses this election, the right will start tearing itself apart in anger. That’s another thing the left banks on, and””if indeed some of the polls are being rigged to favor Obama at present””it would also be one of the goals of such deception: to demoralize the right and cause the usual circular firing squad to begin. I already see some evidence of it in articles and comments from the right that accuse Romney of not wanting to win, of not going on the attack enough (as though that would elude the negative media spin), of not doing whatever it might be that the brilliant armchair strategists would be doing if they were running for president, an election they of course would win by dint of their brilliant strategy. If Romney loses, the RINO theme will rise again undiminished, and the hatred of the “Republican establishment.”

My opinion of what’s going on is quite different: if the American people re-elect Obama despite his failures, lies, betrayals, immaturity, gaffes, arrogance, destructive foreign policy, demonstrated leftism, small-mindedness, lack of leadership, executive power-grabs, fiscal irresponsibility, and a host of other negatives I may have forgotten to list but which have been operating for the last four years, then it will prove that the American people have fundamentally changed in the direction they want this country to take, and it will require some major upheaval to reverse that trend. We can’t wait around for the perfect candidate; a good-enough candidate like Romney should be good-enough to beat Obama, and if that’s not possible it says more about the country than the candidate.

Yep. It has.

Getting Dr. Carson, and the gotcha-Republican quotes du jour

The New Neo Posted on by

It had to happen, didn’t it? The MSM and the left (is that becoming redundant?) scours Republican utterances for evidence of bigotry on a daily (perhaps hourly?) basis. And sure enough, every now and then someone slips according to the PC rules in operation today.

No longer is it necessary to find actual bigotry—as in, acts of bigotry, or the advocacy of bigotry—mainly because few except some neo-Nazis somewhere are in fact advocating it. Now we have the variety of bigotry that relies on more subtle means of detection, sort of like a Geiger counter—mostly the use of forbidden words or phrases (macada; wetback)), which may or may not be evidence of actual bigotry on the part of the speaker. But who cares whether they are or not, as long as they can be used to show what bigoted rotters all Republicans are?

You be the judge (and remember as you read this that Rep. Young is 79 years old):

Young, an Alaska congressman, discussing the labor market during an interview with radio station KRBD in Ketchikan, Alaska, said that on his father’s ranch, “we used to have 50-60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes.” He said, “It takes two people to pick the same tomatoes now. It’s all done by machine.”

He added that during the interview, he had “discussed the compassion and understanding I have for these workers and the hurdles they face in obtaining citizenship” and said the country must tackle the issue of immigration reform.

“Shame on Don Young,” said Congressional Hispanic Caucus chairman Ruben Hinojosa, D-Texas. “It is deeply disheartening that in 2013, we are forced to have a discussion about a member of Congress using such hateful words and racial slurs.”

Oh, I very much doubt it’s “deeply disheartening” in the least. On the contrary, it’s deeply satisfying to trumpet the gotcha quote du jour and be able to further advance the cause of the gloriously bigotry-free Democratic Party. And with the cooperation of the press, it’s fairly easy to do that, as well as to minimize the very real racism in the history of certain older Democratic members of Congress only recently retired, and the verbal slips of present-day figures such as Harry Reid.

The charges against someone like Young gain traction, while any Democratic goofs go down the memory hole, because the former fit into a near-seamless media narrative of Republican bigotry whereas the latter are set against one of Democratic racial harmony and love. Never mind the reality, and never mind the ruthless attacks from the left on any black people so misguided as to leave the Democratic fold and become (gasp!) conservatives. They are no longer black people (just as Sarah Palin is no longer a woman), and so they can be safely savaged by the left.

Now, Don Young of the “wetback” remark is hardly my poster boy for who I would like to see in Congress. But I doubt he’s especially latino-hating, and I doubt he’d even have used the word if he’d been talking about something current rather than something in his far-off youth (he himself said he’d “used a term that was commonly used during my days growing up on a farm in central California” and it’s clear that for just a moment he was stepping back in memory and letting down his PC guard).

Which brings us to Dr. Ben Carson, he-who-had-to-be-destroyed. That was a bit trickier, because since Carson is black it probably couldn’t be on racial grounds. But it turned out to be pretty easy after all, because Carson said this the other day in an appearance on Sean Hannity’s show (unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a more complete transcript, so I don’t know the context):

My thoughts are that marriage is between a man and a woman. It’s a well-established, fundamental pillar of society and no group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality ”” it doesn’t matter what they are ”” they don’t get to change the definition.

Just a few short years ago these remarks would probably have been unremarkable. That was then, this is now.

And empirically speaking, those groups (at least the first one) do get to change the definition, if current trends continue. So Dr. Carson may be factually wrong in terms of what will happen.

But that’s not what the uproar was about. Liberals and the left are outraged because they say that Carson compared, and therefore equated (in their rhetoric, anyway) all these groups, thus insulting gay people by lumping them all together.

Of course. We all know that when a bunch of things are listed as having a single trait in common, those things are all being equated, right?—at least if it suits the purposes of those who are out to discredit someone. So Dr. Carson is saying that gays, NAMBLA, and those who think it’s fine to have sex with animals are all the same.

Of course he’s not. It’s as though a person were discussing (to take one example) the issue of black separatism, and said that black separatism was a bad idea no matter who advocated it—black people who are fed up with racism in white-dominated society, members of the KKK, or neo-Nazis. We’d all understand that the person had listed widely disparate groups who happen to unite on their opinions of that particular policy, not groups who were comparable in any other way.

The fact that Carson was largely correct about the similar long-term aim of some of these groups regarding the traditional definition of marriage and/or who can have sex (although IMHO he should have included polygamists on his list rather than the bestiality folks—who as far as I know do not as yet advocate marriage between humans and animals) does not change a thing. The left will do what the left will do, and one of the things the left will do is to destroy articulate black conservatives.

[NOTE: Looking at the text of the Johns Hopkins medical students’ petition to disinvite Carson as commencement speaker, I’m struck by how it fits in with my previous post here, in which I point out that until his prayer breakfast speech disagreeing with Obama (after which he became a goat) Carson was considered a hero to liberals. The commencement invitation was offered before that speech, and my guess is that the students have been looking for a way out ever since he dissed Obama. Now they have found one.]

[NOTE II: And just to underline the ubiquity of the term “wetback” when Rep. Young (who was born in 1933) was a child and young man, see the history of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service’s program officially designated Operation Wetback in 1954:

The effort began in California and Arizona in 1954 and coordinated 1,075 Border Patrol agents, along with state and local police agencies. Tactics employed included going house to house in Mexican-American neighborhoods and citizenship checks during standard traffic stops.

Some 750 agents targeted agricultural areas with a goal of 1,000 apprehensions per day. By the end of July, over 50,000 illegal aliens were caught in the two states. An estimated 488,000 illegal aliens are believed to have left voluntarily, for fear of being apprehended. By September, 80,000 had been taken into custody in Texas, and the INS estimated that 500,000 to 700,000 had left Texas of their own accord. To discourage illicit re-entry, buses and trains took many deportees deep within Mexican territory before releasing them.

Tens of thousands more were deported by two chartered ships: the Emancipation and the Mercurio. The ships ferried them from Port Isabel, Texas, to Veracruz, Mexico, more than 500 miles (800 km) to the south. Some were taken as far as 1,000 miles. Deportation by sea was ended after seven deportees jumped overboard from the Mercurio and drowned, provoking a mutiny that led to a public outcry in Mexico.

The tide of history has taken us in another direction, hasn’t it? Now it’s a huge scandal to use the word “wetback”—or even to suggest that these are illegal immigrants rather than “undocumented workers.” Funny thing was that Rep. Young’s words were not the least bit critical of these workers. But that doesn’t matter, of course.]

Why the EU is a really, really bad idea

The New Neo Posted on by

This article by Timothy Garton Ash goes into only part of the reason:

Why is Europe in this downward spiral of mutual resentment? Because of the basic design flaws of the euro, certainly. Also because of mistaken economic policies in some of the “peripheral” countries of the Eurozone and, more recently, in the northern core. Meanwhile, each short-term Eurozone fix sows the seeds of another Eurozone crisis. Thus, a 50% haircut for holders of Greek government bonds, agreed to in autumn 2011, helped topple Cypriot banks into the abyss.

Yet the deepest cause is the mismatch between a single currency area and 17 national polities. The economics are continental; the politics are still national. What is more, those politics are democratic. If this is not 1913, it is also not the 1930s. Instead of the “Europe of the dictators,” we have a Europe of democracies. Instead of Trotsky’s “permanent revolution,” we have permanent elections. Some leader somewhere in Europe is always having to trim the jib and pull in the mainsail because of an imminent vote.

All of this is true as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. It’s not just the design flaws of the Euro, it’s the design flaws of the EU. If elections are a problem in each country, at least those leaders are accountable to someone. How much more problematic is the lack of elections for the EU commissioners:

All these countries, you know, we joined this thing 30 years ago, you joined it 15 years ago – and we all thought we were joining a Europe where we trade together, cooperate together – they were the promises that were made. And now we find we have a European Commission, unelected by the people, unremovable, and they are the government of Europe.

Most of the laws that are made in your country every year come directly from those unelected European commissioners and what’s happening in every country in Europe is the politicians are moving in this direction, wanting more and more power, and the people are saying, ‘What’s going on? What’s happened to our democracy?’ So there is a big gap that is opening up.

Another design flaw is that most of the European welfare states are living beyond their economic means. And the EU (until now, anyway) has encouraged this rather than discouraging it, because of the perception that other EU countries have deep pockets that can be tapped into when the going gets rough.

[NOTE: The end of Ash’s article reads like this, “you can’t blame [the English] for the shemozzle of the Eurozone.”

Say what? I’d never heard that word before—although I’m familiar with “schlemozle” (a born loser) which is close (all these words have a gazillion different alternate spellings). Turns out that “shemozzle” is Yiddish for “a noisy confusion or dispute; uproar.”

Learn something new every day, sometimes from the most unexpected sources.]