Poll on the size of government

The New Neo Posted on by

This might be encouraging news, depending on how you interpret it:

According to the survey, just four in 10 registered voters believe the government should promote traditional values, down from 53% in 2010 and 57% in 2008…

Six in 10 say the government is doing too much that should be left to individuals and businesses.

The article says the first response could favor Democrats, and I suppose this could be true if the Republican in question is a Sanotrum-type social con. It also says that the second response would favor Republicans.

But it’s also possible that both responses express a libertarian point of view.

It’s also hard to see how the results could square with support of Obama, who is nothing if not for big government. But it would depend on how many people see Romney as supporting the idea that “government should promote traditional values.” I would say he’s more in favor of the notion that government shouldn’t interfere with traditional values—but hey, that’s just me.

The potential significance of the 2007 Obama Hampton video…

The New Neo Posted on by

…is that it shows Obama misrepresenting facts to a black audience in order to stir up racial resentment.

But like so many other things that Obama has said and done that belie the image he has carefully cultivated of “we’re all in this thing together” reasonableness, it will be ignored and/or dismissed by the MSM, and its messengers will be the ones accused of racism.

The problematic remarks are here:

Now here’s the thing, when 9/11 happened in New York City, they waived the Stafford Act ”” said, ”˜This is too serious a problem. We can’t expect New York City to rebuild on its own. Forget that dollar you got to put in. Well, here’s 10 dollars.’ And that was the right thing to do. When Hurricane Andrew struck in Florida, people said, ”˜Look at this devastation. We don’t expect you to come up with y’own money, here. Here’s the money to rebuild. We’re not going to wait for you to scratch it together ”” because you’re part of the American family.’ ”¦ What’s happening down in New Orleans? Where’s your dollar? Where’s your Stafford Act money? Makes no sense. Tells me that somehow, the people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much.”

But just weeks before Obama gave this speech, the Stafford Act had been waived by Congress for Katrina relief. Obama, you may recall, was a member of Congress, and knew or should have known this [emphasis mine]:

by January 2007, six months before Obama’s Hampton speech, the federal government had sent at least $110 billion to areas damaged by Katrina. This was more than five times the money that the Bush administration pledged to New York City after 9/11.

Moreover, says the DC, the federal government did at times waive the Stafford Act during its New Orleans reconstruction efforts. On May 25, 2007, just weeks before Obama’s speech, the Bush administration sent an additional $6.9 billion to Katrina-affected areas with no strings attached.

So when Obama asks the crowd, “Where’s your dollar? Where’s your Stafford Act money?” he knew or should have known the answer, but chose instead to whip the audience up into (yes, there’s no other way to put it) the sort of victimization mentality that Mitt Romney was talking about in his notorious 47% speech.

To be fair (which I always try to be), in his Hampton speech Obama also explicitly disavowed the idea that race had anything to do with the federal government’s policies that he alleges were discriminatory against New Orleans. This, I think, is a fascinating demonstration of Obama’s remarkable ability to talk out of both sides of his mouth on this and so many other issues—to pander to racial resentment while simultaneously denying he’s doing so, and to ignore the contradictions and hope his audience will do so as well.

So in the same speech Obama also stated:

People ask me whether I thought race was the reason the response was so slow,” Obama said. “I said, ”˜No. This Administration was colorblind in its incompetence.’ But everyone here knows the disaster and the poverty happened long before that hurricane hit.

I’ve been having difficulty getting a transcript of his remarks that includes the off-script ones (that’s where the controversy lay), although I assume one exists. So I’m not sure which came first, the accusations or the disclaimer. But the explanation for the contradiction is that the accusations were ad-libbed whereas the disclaimer was scripted (here’s the text of his prepared remarks, which in general have a loftier tone than his spontaneous ones).

In general it’s true that extemporaneous declarations are much more likely to be heartfelt expressions than written ones would be. But in Obama’s case I’m not sure that either represent his true feelings and his true thoughts. I think his entire public persona is a series of masks adopted for purely pragmatic and strategic reasons.

That’s the significance of the accent so many people have remarked on that Obama uses for this speech, one that he often adopts when addressing largely black audiences. It is just another mask. That sort of phoniness doesn’t concern me nearly as much the content of his words, and especially his actions as president, which concern me most of all. I see the adoption of this accent as a response to the biggest defeat of Obama’s life, the 2000 Chicago primary race in which Bobby Rush trounced Obama by flashing his own superior black credentials:

Rush portrayed Obama, the Harvard-educated civil rights lecturer at the University of Chicago, as out of touch.

“He went to Harvard and became an educated fool,” Rush said then in an interview with the alternative newspaper Chicago Reader. “We’re not impressed with these folks with these Eastern elite degrees.”

Another opponent, state Sen. Donne Trotter, said Obama was seen as “the white man in blackface.”…

Chicago City Council member Toni Preckwinkle, an early Obama supporter, said, “I think he took a hard look at himself after that campaign and became a much better campaigner, more at ease on the campaign trail.”

That “long hard look” almost undoubtedly included a change to a more ethnic and less professorial type of speech when campaigning in front of black audiences. Not really a surprise.

I don’t think this video is some sort of unprecedented smoking gun. People who would be shocked by it just haven’t been paying much attention, and there’s no reason to believe they’d start paying attention now. I also think that most people have already bought the line that Katrina relief was inadequate, and so Obama’s charges will have a certain amount of resonance with them. A person needs to know some boring facts (such as the timing of the waiver of the Stafford Act for Katrina) to understand why his remarks were offensive.

It’s an interesting prelude to the debate tonight, though. Perhaps the biggest effect it might have would be to rattle Obama and put him a bit off his game. We’ll see.

And now Reuters…

The New Neo Posted on by

…joins the crew of media outlets on the left that seems to be willing to report some of the truth about the Benghazi attacks and the administration coverup that has followed.

As I’ve written before, something about this incident has motivated some MSM sources usually in the administration’s pocket to go against the tide. I’m not sure why, although I’ve speculated that it may be because they know most people don’t care enough about it to change their vote. But if you have any other and better ideas, please feel free to voice them here.

Holocaust remembrance tattoos

The New Neo Posted on by

This describes a pretty ghastly, though thankfully rare, way that a some descendents of Holocaust survivors are paying tribute to their aging relatives: having the elderly survivors’ camp numbers tattooed on their own arms.

The 10 tattooed descendants interviewed for this article echoed one another’s motivations: they wanted to be intimately, eternally bonded to their survivor-relative. And they wanted to live the mantra “Never forget” with something that would constantly provoke questions and conversation.

It seems repellent and almost ghoulish, a form of histrionic appropriation of another’s suffering (and also a violation of the Jewish prohibition on tattooing the body), although on reading the entire article I could also see it as a form of love, and a desire to not let the world forget. But the world will forget—in fact, a great deal of the world has already forgotten, or never was outraged by the Holocaust in the first place.

And the Nazis knew that this would happen. I remember reading several books about the Holocaust—including, if I recall correctly, Primo Levi’s masterpiece Survival in Aushwitz, which I highly recommend—that mentioned that one of the ways the Nazis running the camps used to torture the inmates was through constant reminders that in the unlikely event the prisoners managed to survive, no one would ever believe their story, or care.

One of the tattooed young people says that among the comments she’s gotten is “a man who called her ‘pathetic,’ saying of her grandfather, ‘You’re trying to be him and take his suffering.'” I don’t know what the man who said that was thinking, but it struck me that he could have been using the word “pathetic” not in a negative sense, but in a more archaic way, as in the expression “pathetic fallacy”:

The pathetic fallacy is the treatment of inanimate objects as if they had human feelings, thought, or sensations. The word ‘pathetic’ in this use is related to ‘pathos’ or ’empathy’ (capability of feeling), and is not pejorative. In the discussion of literature, the pathetic fallacy is similar to personification.

So yes, her tattoo is “pathetic” in the sense of empathic. And “You’re trying to be him and take his suffering” is merely descriptive.

It’s not possible to do so, of course. History moves on, the Holocaust generation will die out, and young people cannot appropriate what was not their experience, despite their love for their relatives and their fears for the future.

Garbage in, garbage out

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: commenter “holmes”]

Great piece in the National Review’s Corner, dealing with the newest Obama ad that features none other than Romney’s former garbage man.

Yes, you heard me right. Please read the whole thing.

Question: how many will see and/or hear of the ad vs. the number who will read and/or hear of the National Review article?

Romney’s awful campaign

The New Neo Posted on by

Lately I’ve heard a lot of people saying Romney is running one of the worst campaigns ever. At the same time they’re saying this, they’re also saying that media coverage is completely biased against Romney.

And so I wonder how would they even know what sort of campaign Romney is running, because the entire undertaking has been filtered through the media coverage, and the media only reports (and hammers home) things that it judges to be unfavorable to Romney, like his 47% remark or his criticism of the Cairo embassy’s apology. For Obama, it’s the opposite.

Right now it seems that Romney’s campaign appearances such as these recent ones are in a lull in preparation for the debate, although Paul Ryan is soldiering on. I don’t know much about TV ads because I hardly watch TV, and the few times I have I’ve not seen an ad for either candidate.

I do know that for the first few months of the campaign Romney was hitting Obama pretty hard. I also know that conservatives were very fired up when he picked Ryan. But then the MSM swung into full gear, and has been quite successful with an incessant drumbeat of negatives and outright lies about both men. It takes a great deal to counter that no matter who you are.

Reagan managed to do it in 1980. But back then the media wasn’t quite as ruthless, the candidate himself was unusually charismatic (neither Romney, nor most politicians, could compete with Reagan in that department) and the composition of the electorate and perhaps even the basic beliefs and values of Americans have changed so much that I’m not at all sure Reagan could get elected were he to run today.

People point to Reagan’s race in 1980 as proof that Romney can pull it out. And it’s widely accepted that Reagan’s debate with Carter turned the tide for him and gave the public a chance to see him unfiltered by the media. But although Romney could do the same, it is also the case that Romney is no Reagan—and when I say that it’s not really a criticism of Romney, because Reagan was sui generis.

I also wonder whether the American public pays as much attention to the debates as it used to. My sense—and it’s just a gut sense, but it’s a strong one—is that political decisions have become more surface and shallow than ever, and the public has become more susceptible to propaganda.

Or maybe twas ever thus.

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.

And if Romney manages to pull it out (which I believe is possible) I will be heartened and encouraged, although I have no illusions that Romney’s election would stem the Gramscian tide. But it would be a beginning, and it would buy us time.

Obama the debater

The New Neo Posted on by

Obama is trying to lower expectations about his upcoming performance in the debates:

“Governor Romney – he’s a good debater,” said the president. “I’m just okay.”…

“[Obama] has had less time to prepare than we anticipated,” said [Obama campaign press secretary] Psaki. “It’s difficult to schedule significant blocks of time when you’re the president, regardless of your party.”…

In rare praise of Romney, the Obama campaign spokeswoman said: “He’s been disciplined and has been able to give short answers, so we know that’s a strength.”

One thing you can count on is that Obama doesn’t think he’s “just okay” as a debater. The phoniness of his rare attempt at humility is transparent, and I’m not even sure it’s meant to fool many people. Maybe instead it’s intended as sarcasm; I don’t know, because I haven’t heard the audio.

I don’t know about you, but as I’ve written before, I dislike political debates and speeches. My preferred mode of processing such information is not auditory. So I usually find watching the debates a chore.

But it’s worse than that. I long ago learned that with debates, the winner is in the eye of the beholder. So many times I’d find myself thinking my guy had won, only to hear that there was hardly ever any objectivity, and people tended to think their guy had won no matter what. The press likewise, and since the vast majority are deep in the tank for Obama, their opinion on the debates is a foregone conclusion.

I suppose they could surprise me, although I doubt it.

Debates make me very nervous. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is my over-active imagination; I can’t help but put myself in their places, and knowing how nervous I would be be under similar circumstances, it always amazes me that they can muster up the cojones to speak at all. This, I know, is an absurd reaction on my part, because this is what politicians do—it’s their meat and potatoes, and they are both probably quite at home in the venue.

But my nervousness goes beyond projecting myself into their places. It always seems to me that the debates don’t mean a whole lot—sound bites and surface answers to surface questions—but offer vast opportunities to put one’s foot in it in a way that, although often meaningless, can have hugely negative repercussions. Think of Ford and Poland, Bush I glancing at his watch, or Dukakis and the death penalty for his wife’s hypothetical rapist/murderer.

So I tend to be on edge while I listen, pacing around and almost unable to watch. Add to that the fact that, if you believe the polls (and although I don’t necessarily believe the extent of the Obama lead, I do believe he’s slightly ahead and that the debates could loom large for Romney and the undecideds), it seems Romney must make a good showing in the debates, whereas Obama only has to avoid major slip-ups.

The debates are one of those occasions when I wish I were a drinking person.

[NOTE: Think Ford made a major boo-boo when he said, during a debate against Carter, that “There is no Soviet dominance of Eastern Europe”? It’s widely thought that the remark cost him the election.

In 1989, Ford explained what had seemed truly inexplicable:

Well, you may have read the little piece I did, the op-ed piece for the Washington Post about a month ago which I was very pleased to write at the request of Meg Greenfield who said to me on the phone, “well, I think you got a bad deal from the press and with all the things that are happening, would you like to write an op-ed piece?” And I said I’d love to. Well, in that piece I go into the details of what happened as the debate moved along. There’s no question I did not adequately explain what I was thinking. I felt very strongly, and I, of course, do so today, that regardless of the number of Soviet armored divisions in Poland, the Russians would never dominate the Polish spirit. That’s what I should have said. I simply left out the fact that at that time in 1976, the Russians had about 10 to 15 divisions in Poland. Well, of course the presence of those divisions indicates a domination physically of the Poles, but despite that military occupation of Poland by the Soviets, it never in any way ever destroyed the strong, nationalistic spirit of the Polish people. And I felt, and of course, I’m pleased now, the Poles are going to throw the Russians out. And, the quicker they do it, the better. And I’m proud of what they’re doing, and, of course, I get a little satisfaction that maybe I was right in 1976.

Ford was not a seasoned campaigner on the national front. He’d been catapulted into the presidency by a series of errors on the part of the previous administration: VP Agnew’s forced resignation, Ford’s own appointment by Nixon to fill the spot, and then Watergate, which (I believe, unless I’m forgetting something) made him the first and still the only president to achieve the office without having been part of a national campaign. He was not an especially popular president, nor did he have much debate experience. It’s not surprising that he wasn’t especially good at articulating what he actually meant.

Another interesting fact about Ford, at least according to this interview he gave, is that around the time of the Republican Convention in 1976 he was thirty-one points behind Carter in the polls. Wow. He said that was why in his acceptance speech he challenged Carter to a debate, the first presidential one since the famous Nixon-Kennedy debates in 1960.

One could say it’s ironic, except that it’s also true that Ford rapidly closed the gap with Carter and the result was remarkably close. So I wonder about the common wisdom that that debate hurt him so much:

In the end, Carter won the election, receiving 50.1% of the popular vote and 297 electoral votes compared with 48.0% and 240 electoral votes for Ford. The election was close enough that had fewer than 25,000 votes shifted in Ohio and Wisconsin ”“ both of which neighbored his home state ”“ Ford would have won the electoral vote with 276 votes to 261 for Carter. Though he lost, in the three months between the Republican National Convention and the election Ford managed to close what was once a 34-point Carter lead to a 2-point margin. Despite his defeat, Ford carried 27 states versus 23 carried by Carter.

See this for more about the course of the 1976, and whether the debates helped or hurt Ford.]

Proof positive…

The New Neo Posted on by

…that Obama’s election has improved our standing around the world.

And I would submit that, although I agree with the headline that this is an endorsement Obama “doesn’t want,” I’d amend it to say that what he actually doesn’t want is for this particular type of support to be made public. He certainly has courted the support otherwise (see this, for example).

[NOTE: For a more in-depth analysis of the Obama/Chavez link, see this.

Also, recall that one of the earliest presidential actions of Obama in foreign policy—and one that unfortunately has gone largely down the memory hole—are his actions vis a vis Honduras. See this and this for a small refresher course.]

That shalt covet

The New Neo Posted on by

In the continuing press effort to turn people against Romney because he’s rich, here’s the latest effort.

If the first few comments there are any indication, though, it seems that the article isn’t resonating with its target audience.

That annoying video

The New Neo Posted on by

I just noticed that when the main page on the blog opens, the video in this post starts playing automatically.

That’s the sort of thing that sets my teeth on edge. I don’t know how to fix it (any suggestions?), and don’t have time right now to try, but my apologies. Just click on the button in its lower left corner to make it shut up.

[ADDENDUM: Thanks for the suggestions. Changing the code didn’t work, though, so I think I’ll just do what “sdferr” suggested and put it below the fold.]

Open thread

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter KL Smith writes:

Neo: slightly OT but, since you’ve mentioned another blogger ”¦ I think getting a post/discussion going on Ann Althouse’s meltdown over the Obamaphone lady video would be very interesting. I’d like to see what your regular commenters think.

Now, it just so happens that (a) I read that piece of Althouse’s last night and did some research on related issues and wrote a rough draft of some things I want to say about them; (b) I’m too busy to fix it and publish it right now, although I plan to; and (c) I noticed that her post (and several related posts on her blog from today) has about 700 comments right now.

Clearly a nerve has been touched. And so now, with KL Smith’s request, I thought I’d provide this open thread for you to talk about it while I go do some stuff. Hopefully, some fun stuff.

You don’t have to talk about the Althouse post, either. Talk about whatever you want to talk about. There’s no dearth of topics, that’s for sure.