Holder’s a holdover

The New Neo Posted on by

In Obama’s second term, Eric Holder is a holdover, according to Ben Smith at Buzzfeed, who calls Holder Obama’s “heat shield.

The reason he stays, despite his unpopularity? Holder (like Obama) is a completely political animal, and is Obama’s man:

In choosing Holder, a well-respected but low-profile Washington lawyer and former Deputy Attorney General who joined his presidential campaign early, Obama chose trust over symbolism. The Attorney General wields immense and independent power. A high-profile political figure chosen, like most Cabinet secretaries, for traditional reasons of politics, may act independently and do the president real harm…[Holder] carries no brief for Obama’s staff, and has clashed with the likes of David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel. But he is extremely close to the president.

…Holder lacks the independence of Bush A.G. John Ashcroft and the professionalism of Holder’s immediate predecessor, former federal judge Michael Mukasey. “Holder is and remains very much about politics.”…

And those politics are exactly and precisely whatever Obama wants them to be.

This is something my gut told me a long time ago (if you want to read the whole thing, it’s still pretty apropos). I’ll repeat here what I wrote then:

So I would like to clarify: by using the word “proxy” in Holder’s case, I meant something different than the usual Cabinet appointee, the usual presidential representative. I could be wrong about this, but my gut senses a close identification between Obama and Holder, an almost-Vulcan-mind-meld between them on the legal issues involved in fighting terrorism. This is not a compliment to either man; I think both are sadly misguided.

Holder serves a purpose for Obama. If there is an issue on which the President is somewhat loathe to express his opinion fully, perhaps because he knows it will be unpopular or controversial, I believe that Obama purposely uses Holder as cover, to draw the opposition’s criticism and deflect it from himself.

That’s that “heat shield” thing that Smith is talking about when he writes:

“One thing that people never understood about Holder’s importance in this administration is how he has absorbed so many attacks that could otherwise land in the White House,” said one former administration official who admires the Attorney General…

“He’s got the scars to show for it, but it’s better to have a Cabinet official take those hits than have them land on the president. After all, the Attorney General’s not on the ballot,” the former official said…

“President Obama probably could not have found a more pliant attorney general,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, who accused Holder of looking the other way on Administration scandals.

Indeed.

[NOTE: Obama’s Cabinet as a whole is shaping up about as expected, isn’t it? Jonah Goldberg has a good word (actually, two) for at least part of what motivates Obama when he nominated Hagel: spite, and pettiness. Obama is actually the first president I can personally remember to whom I’d say those two words apply. Perhaps Nixon, in some sense, at least privately—but not in his public moves, such as his Cabinet appointments.]

Yes, he can: executive orders on guns?

The New Neo Posted on by

Ace points out the same thing that commenter “carl in atlanta” alluded to a moment ago—that this administration has declared some interesting intentions on gun control:

“The president is going to act,” said Biden, giving some comments to the press before a meeting with victims of gun violence. “There are executives orders, there’s executive action that can be taken. We haven’t decided what that is yet. But we’re compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and the rest of the cabinet members as well as legislative action that we believe is required.”

“Executive orders” and “executive action” on guns? That should come as no surprise, if it does happen. That’s the way around the legislative process, and if Obama can get away with it he will—on any topic.

That has been clear for a long, long time, and I’ve been expecting much more of it in his second term. I remember writing (although I can’t seem to find the post) a year or two into Obama’s first term that the prospect of his getting a second one was frightening, since he would no longer be restrained by the need to appeal to the public because he had to be mindful of re-election. He would essentially be unchecked.

Who’s going to stop him if he wants to do something by executive order? Congress? When the Senate is in Democratic hands? The Supreme Court? Don’t make me laugh.

To paraphrase Stalin, how many divisions does the Court have?

That isn’t to say that recently the Court has been especially weak on Second Amendment rights so far (see this, for example; although that wasn’t exactly the same Court as now, it was a Court with a similar number of liberals and conservatives). But in recent years Obama has been successful in his campaign of Court intimidation, and I don’t think the Court would have the courage to defy him.

At any rate, how much longer can all the conservative Justices, and Anthony Kennedy, hold onto their health? None of them is exceptionally old. But nobody’s getting any younger.

Same old topics, same old story

The New Neo Posted on by

You may notice that I’ve been writing a somewhat higher proportion of my posts on topics that are not all that political. There’s a reason for that.

Every morning I go to certain sites to read the stories of the day—for example, memeorandum. Ever since the election it’s been pretty much the same thing (actually, even before the election it was pretty much the same thing): Obama’s latest attempts to outrage the opposition and demonize it, the MSM’s fawning support of him, and the left’s chortling and crowing and celebrating in the end zone about it all. Plus a heavy does of people saying what a bunch of disorganized, angry, racist, nasty, permanent-and-forever losers the Republicans are.

That’s the left’s prerogative, of course. After all, They Won. There will be a lot more of that sort of thing from them in the next four years—and, if they’re right about the future of conservatism, for the foreseeable future.

There’s not really all that much to say about the actual articles any more, at least nothing that’s not been said about a hundred times here (although I’ll probably continue to say it). For example, today this Politico piece caught my eye as a fine and somewhat subtle example of the genre. With a straight face (if an article can be said to have a face), it treats the president’s bellicosity towards Republicans as something new and different, something that just began as a result of Obama’s victory and higher approval rating, and his recent negotiations with Republicans.

This gives you a bit of the flavor, in case you don’t want to read the whole piece:

Obama, the same president who campaigned twice on breaking the cycle of conflict in Washington, sees the utility ”” even the necessity ”” of rattling Republican cages as he plunges into a succession of upcoming battles…Obama’s willingness to take a more overtly adversarial stance is, in part, a nod to the reality that he’s about to start his second term with solid approval numbers…

But it would be a mistake to attribute all of Obama’s actions to dispassionate tactics. After four-plus years of embittered partisan combat, he views his GOP bargaining partners with more than a little contempt, and he momentarily vanquished enemies who just can’t say “yes” to him.

His apparent conclusion, after watching the implosion of the House GOP’s effort to pass a modest tax increase before the final fiscal cliff deal, is that the best way to deal with the Capitol is to throw rocks at it ”” then send Vice President Joe Biden in to clean up the glass.

No more Mr. Nice Guy, that Obama. Finally, he’s taking off the gloves and viewing those “bargaining partners” who “just can’t say ‘yes’ to him” with contempt.

Where do the authors of the piece think we’ve been for the last four years? Reading Politico, that’s where.

[NOTE: As an aside, what is the phrase “bargaining partner” supposed to mean? Does it not imply an actual give-and-take between the two sides, rather than one side just saying “yes” to the other? But long ago, Obama re-defined the idea of the bargain as “my way or the highway—and at the same time I’ll get the press to say I’m actually the one willing to concede and that my opponents are the intransigent ones.”

Nothing like the confidence that comes from having the press parked firmly in your corner.]

From Luby’s to the legislature

The New Neo Posted on by

I didn’t know this woman’s sad but impressive story before, but I came across it the other day.

Here’s a video:

The title of this post is the title of Hupp’s book, which I have not read.

The Luby’s shooter, by the way, had about twelve minutes of uninterrupted and methodical shooting before armed policemen arrived on the scene. They managed to shoot and wound him. It was then, and only then, that the perpetrator killed himself.

More from the obesity police

The New Neo Posted on by

Dr. Natalie Muth, author and expert in childhood obesity, has some advice for parents who want to avoid starting their kids along the road to overweight:

[She says that] a common parental practice that could lead to childhood weight gain is the “clean plate club.” When parents require their children to eat everything on the plate, kids then lose the ability to use their own feelings of hunger and fullness to decide how much to eat. “And that habit stays with that child for their whole life,” says Dr. Muth.

I beg to differ. Strongly. In my family we were never told to clean our plates, because we pretty much did that anyway. We were what is known as “good eaters” (plus, the food was usually pretty darn tasty). And we continued to be good eaters; we just like food.

Same thing with various other families I’ve observed. I also know quite a few people forced as children to finish the food on their plates against their will, and it had the effect of making them less likely to eat up as adults, not more. They were picky eaters then, and remain picky eaters now (and not all of them are thin, either, although some are—and some in the “clean plate” club are skinny. So there.)

Dr. Muth doesn’t cite any research on this (although she might in her book, I suppose). I suspect, however, that there isn’t any.

And then there’s this:

How parents try to get their children to eat vegetables may also lead to problems down the road. A classic mistake that parents may make is to tell their children that if they eat the vegetables, they can then have dessert. All of a sudden, the dessert becomes a reward.

“It starts early, with our preschoolers. We set them up to rely on food-usually unhealthy food-to make them feel good,” notes Dr. Muth.

All of a sudden, dessert becomes a reward? But most children need no encouragement whatsoever to figure out that sweets “make them feel good.” I love vegetables, but there’s just something about sweets that make them almost irresistible, although I must resist. I well remember watching my son take has first piece of candy; I think he was about two and a half or three at the time, and when he put it in his mouth his whole face lit up in a new way. Although there is indeed a certain small percentage of people who don’t like sweets (I’ve even known a couple of them), for most people it’s love at first bite.

And I wonder whether Dr. Muth is familiar with this sort of thing:

“We know that the newborn can detect sweet and will actually prefer sweeter solutions to less sweet ones. The basic biology of the child is that they don’t have to learn to like sweet or salt. It’s there from before birth,” explains Julie Mennella of the Monell Chemical Senses Center.

Unlike adults, who often find overly sugary things unpleasant, Mennella says kids are actually living in different sensory worlds than adults when it comes to basic tastes.

“They prefer much more intense sweetness and saltiness than the adult, and it doesn’t decrease until late adolescence. And we have some evidence they may be more sensitive to bitter taste,” Mennella says.

A reason for this may be that a preference for sweet, caloric substances during rapid growth may have given children as an evolutionary advantage when calories were scarce. That notion is supported by the fact that sugar doesn’t just taste good to children -”“ it actually makes them feel good, too.

Mennella’s research has shown that sugar is a natural pain reliever in children…

I also wonder whether Muth has ever tried saying to kids “eat your dessert, and then you can have your vegetables” and seen how many children consider those veggies a reward and the dessert a laborious chore. My guess would be: not many.

Obama’s right: we don’t have a spending problem

The New Neo Posted on by

Got your attention, didn’t I?

It’s not that I agree with Obama when he said to John Boehner that the US doesn’t have a spending problem.

But it’s all in how you look at it. If you believe certain things, you can really convince yourself we don’t have a spending problem—or at least we wouldn’t if only—if only!—we could implement certain solutions.

For example, a person who had maxed out on his/her credit cards to the tune of twenty thousand dollars would appear to have a spending problem. But if that person could come up with the money, he/she wouldn’t have a spending problem. So you could reframe the whole thing and call it a cash-flow problem, or maybe a revenue-raising problem.

One remedy might be for that person to win the lottery. Another might be to get a really really good job.

Another might be to rob a bank.

If one (or all!) of these things happened, that could mean there wouldn’t be any spending problem at all.

Obama thinks we have a revenue problem. What’s the solution? Well, we could print more money, but that would raise problems of its own. Or, we could stimulate the economy more and more and more, and then (according to a certain school of thought) that would raise employment and productivity and incomes and thus the government would obtain more revenue through taxes without even raising the tax rate—although of course raising the rates would make it even better. The left—and Obama—believe that we could raise the tax rates more and more and more—and have people finally pay their “fair share,” which would be defined as whatever the government needs to take to make up for its non-existent spending problem—and voila! No spending problem.

I know, I know; Obama is ignoring the evidence that there is a very real spending problem, one that can’t be wished or away or banished rhetorically (see this, this—“the US is ‘the healthiest horse in the glue factory'”—and this.)

The real question for Obama is: does he actually believe what he professes to believe? Does he think that if he implements these solutions it will solve our fiscal difficulties, and therefore that there’s no real “spending problem”? Or is he lying, and is it really that he’s just not interested in the spending problem? Is creating a more “fair” society (i.e. income redistribution) his first and greatest priority, and is he intent on seizing this opportunity to do so, calculating that subsequent presidents can just bloody well deal with the deficit if they’re so inclined?

Some of…

The New Neo Posted on by

…Hagel’s best friends are Jews.

The Sun doesn’t care.

Neither do I.

The Sun’s editorial staff writes:

His private views are not what we care about. What we care about is the policy line to which Mr. Hagel would hew were he to get a chance to run the defense department and advise the President…

But we’ve been covering his antics for years, and where we’ve come out is that he’s just over his head in terms of policy…

It’s not that Israel is our only test. We’ve been writing editorials in support of Congressman Ron Paul’s Liberty Campaign. We didn’t make an endorsement. But we’ve been defending him, even though he has a record that has convinced many that he has a personal animus in respect of Israel. We see a big difference between, say, Dr. Paul and Mr. Hagel. Dr. Paul has, over more than the 35 years that we’ve covered him, exhibited a commitment to certain libertarian, constitutional principles, most of which we share and all of which we respect.

By what deep principles is Senator Hagel guided in his long years of hanging back from anything that could be construed as helpful to the Jewish state or unhelpful to her enemies? He’s made no life’s work of sound money. He’s made no life’s work of constitutional fundamentals. We can’t think of a single over-riding principle in his career, save for an abiding sneer at Israel, in which he seems to take a certain mischievous glee…

It looks like Mr. Hagel’s anti-Israel record is the very raison d’etre of the nomination. It looks like the nomination is about the President’s determination to block Israel from going to its own defense against a regime that, in Iran, is preparing, by its own account, an attempt to annihilate the Jewish state. Imagine what Mr. Hagel would be like if he actually did have a problem with the Jews.

The public and the fiscal cliff negotiations

The New Neo Posted on by

Who does America blame (actually, disapprove of) in the recent fiscal cliff negotiations?

Boehner, of course—but not by so very much, and certainly not by as big a margin as I expected:

Fifty-one percent disapproved of Boehner’s efforts in budget talks, with 52 percent approving of Obama’s stance.

And the difference between those who blame Boehner and those who blame Obama seems to rest mostly on the fact that Democrats are much more united in favoring Obama than Republicans are in favoring Boehner.

No surprise there, right?

More:

Disapproval of the Speaker was roughly even across party lines, with 56 percent of Democrats, 52 percent of independents and even 49 percent of Republicans saying they did not approve of his handling of the negotiations…

Unlike Boehner, there was a strong partisan divide for the president: While 81 percent of Democrats and 46 percent of independents supported his actions, only 27 percent of Republicans did so.

As I said, Obama could strangle a brace of puppies…

As for the end result of the negotiations, Americans say “meh”:

Overall, Americans seem to favor the deal ”” albeit not by an overwhelming margin. While 45 percent say they approve of the fiscal-cliff agreement, 38 percent say they disapprove. That result is driven mostly by Democrats, two-thirds of whom say they like the deal. By contrast, only four in 10 independents and 26 percent of Republicans say the same thing.

I wonder, though, how many people read much about the negotiations at all, and how many know what was decided. Maybe polls should come with a quiz? It might be illuminating.