Jews leaving Obama

The New Neo Posted on by

The good news is that Jewish voters are abandoning Obama in higher percentages than any other demographic group:

…[O]ne of the surveys showing [Obama] with a lead in a tight race over Mitt Romney also provides a breakdown of the data that confirms predictions that he is losing up to a quarter of the Jewish votes he got in 2008. The Investors Business Daily/Christian Science Monitor/TIPP Poll gives a breakdown of religion along with other demographic groups and shows Obama leading among Jews by a margin of 59 to 35 percent with six percent undecided. While that is still a majority it is a dramatic decline from the 78 percent of the Jewish vote he got four years ago.

Obama has a 46-44 percent lead over Romney in the TIPP poll. That means Obama is suffering from a decline in support throughout the electorate from his 2008 victory when he won 53 percent of the vote. But the president’s loss of approximately 25 percent of Jewish voters this year is not matched by a similar decline in any other demographic group.

The bad news is that a majority of Jewish voters still support him.

Jewish voters are a very tiny portion of the electorate. But they tend to be a vocal one, and also a disproportionate number of Obama donors come from their ranks. And of course they matter quite a bit in important toss-up state Florida.

ADDENDUM: Here’s an example of why they might be leaving [hat tip: commenter “Curtis”):

Whatsamatter, don’t you like roller coaster rides?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m surprised that so many people are falling for the meme du jour, which is that Romney/Ryan have already lost the election.

I often get nervous about this election, because I think the stakes are so high. But unless my calender is profoundly awry, when last I checked we had about two months to go till November, and we can except the polls to go up and down and up and down before then.

People on the right appear to be just as susceptible to propaganda as those on the left. That really shouldn’t surprise me; propagandists are very good at what they do, and humans are humans. But discouragement is uncalled for at this point, although nervousness has always been appropriate.

What will almost certainly matter most this year—and what is exceedingly unpredictable, even to pollsters who might be trying with all their might to get it right—is turnout.

But how good are polls as prognosticators, especially in elections that will probably be somewhat close? Not very.

[ADDENDUM:

The designer dorm room

The New Neo Posted on by

In the “Republicans fooling themselves” thread, commenter “expat” reminisces:

I just saw a piece on Today about girls entering college who are spending thousands for classes about adjusting to college life, including how to get in to sororities. I got a hug and kiss from my parents before they drove off and left me to unpack my clothes and desk lamp (What? No fridge or microwave?).

I well remember my first day of college. My parents had driven me there and said goodbye in a room bare of everything except my clothes, my bed with some plain sheets and a blanket on it, a cork bulletin board (something I’d never used before), and a wooden desk and chair. There was two of every piece of furniture and the bulletin board, thoughtfully provided by the college. A lonely stranger in a very strange land, I sat and waited to meet my assigned roommate.

The idea was that the two of us would go together to pick out bedspreads and curtains. I don’t remember ever getting curtains; I think we just used the sheers provided by the college. But well do I remember our bedspreads, which I thought were great. It was the 60s, and the fabric was yellow/orange/brown Indian striped cotton, of a type that became ubiquitous later—so ubiquitous that I figured I could find a photo of something like it online even today.

And here you go:

Over my bed I later put a poster sans frame, of the Rousseau painting “The Sleeping Gypsy.” It was an odd choice, I suppose—rather disquieting and not really a depiction of restful sleep. But I loved it, and the stripes in the gypsy’s robe echoed the stripes in the bedspread (which was rarely on the bed, as it turned out; I was a lousy housekeeper):

And that, my friends, was it.

I was not alone in my minimalist decorations. Rich or poor, most of the girls kept it to some bedspreads and curtains, and maybe a poster or two. Dorms were a great leveler; the most extravagant act I remember on the part of any of my dorm-mates was the girl who sent her laundry home each week in a little container made expressly for that purpose. It came back in a few days, washed and neatly ironed.

We thought her and her family mad.

But now it’s come to this, apparently, at least for some students:

“It is extravagant,” Knight says. But “I wouldn’t see any other way to do it.”

Sure, dorm rooms in general are looking increasingly chic thanks to college-friendly offerings from outfits such as PB Teen (Pottery Barn Teen) and CB2 (an offshoot of Crate & Barrel). But a small group of students are taking it to a luxe level, doing as Mom and Dad do and enlisting the eye of experts—those who have decorated the family homestead or those based near school…

“It’s traumatic having a child going off to school,” says Knight, 54, a stay-at-home mom whose husband, Sonny, is an attorney. “Doing a finished, cozy, personalized dorm just makes it better for everyone.”

Has sharing a dorm room gone the way of the dodo as well?

I do envy the young those salad bars in the cafeteria, however. Our food was nearly inedible—which did not keep us from gaining the classic Freshman Fifteen.

[ADDENDUM: I put this in the comments section, but I thought you’d enjoy seeing it more prominently displayed:

Obama and the Ryan-insult excuse: all you ever needed to know about Obama…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and his devious weasel ways can be found here.

I’ve previously discussed Obama’s excuse for insulting Paul Ryan to his face:
‘

Obama seems to like to dress people down publicly; humiliating someone and watching him/her squirm (or try to suppress the squirm) is another way to assert power over another person and to feel superior oneself…I don’t actually believe Obama didn’t know about Ryan’s attendance [at the speech where Obama insulted him].

But at the time I wrote that, I was unaware that Ryan was sitting in the front row for the speech in question. That means that Obama has had to do some pretty tricky dancing in order to avoid admitting the fact that of course he knew Ryan was there when he made the speech. Let’s take a look at how he did it:

I’ll go ahead and say it—I think that I was not aware when I gave that speech that Jack [sic] Ryan was going to be sitting right there. And so I did feel, in retrospect, had I known—we literally didn’t know he was going to be there until—or I didn’t know, until I arrived. I might have modified some of it so that we would leave more negotiations open, because I do think that they felt like we were trying to embarrass him. We made a mistake.

As Ann Althouse points out, the first red flag is the word “think” in the phrase “I think that I was not aware.” It’s a very odd construction under the circumstances; people don’t speak like that unless they’re trying to fool the listener, or unless they’re remarkably inattentive to their own thought processes. He thinks he was not aware? Obama was either aware or not aware, and he’s the only one who would know it, outside his inner circle. If it was an aide who invited Ryan to attend the speech (as previously alleged), and Obama was not informed beforehand, then that’s something he should remember and not just “think” he remembers. It should have been a huge shock when he saw Ryan sitting there.

But it goes way beyond that. The reference to Jack Ryan instead of Paul Ryan is telling in the Freudian sense. I’m no Freudian, but that’s quite a slip; Jack Ryan is the guy Obama was running against in Illinois whose seamy divorce records were conveniently unsealed (either independently, or as a result of some string-pulling by Obama allies).

Obama says he was unaware of Ryan’s presence “when I gave that speech.” But even if Obama was unaware of Ryan’s presence before he took the podium, if Ryan was sitting in the front row, Obama became aware “when he gave that speech.” And if he was unaware under such circumstances, then he is extraordinarily and pathologically out of it.

Obama then contradicts himself and says first that “we” didn’t know beforehand (that would probably include his staff, unless he’s using the royal we). Then he catches himself, perhaps because he recalls that in the Woodward book the author says that Ryan was specifically invited to the speech by Obama staffers. So Obama corrects himself and says “I” didn’t know—“until I arrived.”

So, which is it, Barack? Did you not know when you gave the speech, or did you become aware when you arrived?

Obama then goes on to add what I think is his most curious statement of all: he acts as though he had no power whatsoever to change his speech once he saw Ryan sitting there. Perhaps he’s correct. After all, his reliance on prepared remarks and the teleprompter is legendary. Even had he wanted to temper his remarks (which I do not for a moment believe), are we really to understand that he had no ability to ad lib and override his own speechmakers, and was forced to insult a man sitting in front of him because Obama is a preprogrammed robot who cannot adjust to circumstances?

Now, that’s quite an admission.

You may have noted that I have a higher-than-usual degree of anger about this particular incident, even though it’s really a very small one in the scheme of things. Don’t a lot of politicians do this sort of thing? Yes. But Obama does it more blatantly, more arrogantly, and more consistently, with an incredibly inappropriate air of his own self-righteousness—and in large part he gets away with it.

Are Republicans fooling themselves?

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t get this Stanley Kurtz column at NRO.

It seems to me he’s making an awful lot of assumptions without illustrating them, and assuming we share them. He says that those who dismiss the Democratic convention as “relatively meaningless” are “fooling themselves,” but he never offers any evidence whatsoever that the convention itself is meaningful or has influenced anything.

He indicates that Republicans don’t seem to be aware of how leftward the nation has gone, but my impression is that they are very aware. And very concerned; I don’t know a single conservative who isn’t. Who’s Kurtz hanging out with? Not the folks at neo-neocon.

Kurtz blames Romney for keeping the gloves on:

Only the Romney campaign can cut through the cultural, educational, and media filters and force a debate over the Obama Democrats’ bogus redefinition of the American dream. The media can ignore what conservatives say, but they still have to cover the candidate. With the exception of his welfare ads, however, the Romney campaign has avoided an assault on Obama’s ideology. Romney’s entirely plausible strategy is to downplay the ideological battle (Ryan nomination notwithstanding).

Again, I must disagree. Why dismiss the Ryan nomination as being of no import? And the very hard-hitting Ryan speech at the convention? Has Kurtz missed where Romney pretty much called Obama a liar? And speeches such as this one?:

At the Republican convention, speaker after speaker talked about the growth of big government under the Democrats. Sure, they didn’t use the “leftist” word for Obama (at least, I don’t recall them doing so), which seems to be one of Kurtz’s beefs. It’s not one of mine; I don’t think that approach would resonate with most Americans who need to be persuaded. But the days of “Obama is a nice guy” are long gone, although on occasion Romney may continue to utter that phrase (which is basically condescending, if you think about it). But “Obama is a nice guy in over his head” is not the theme of the Romney campaign.

I think you’ll see plenty more hard-hitting ads and speeches from Romney/Ryan before Election Day that attack (sometimes more subtly than Kurtz would like) Obama’s ideology. Whether the American public is too far to the left to hear or care remains to be seen.

Altruism: what’s in it for me?

The New Neo Posted on by

A while back commenter “steve” wrote:

…seems to me the question is what is behind Romney’s unusual generosity. Is it altruism or is it enlightened self-interest or is it also a bit of a compulsion?…Motivation matters.

Right there is fodder for several books on ethics, plus maybe anthropology. I’ve already thought about these questions in general (not specifically about Romney) long and hard. My answer is that no, it doesn’t matter. Good is good, and we are human beings whose motives are never pure.

So I don’t much care about your secret motives for doing good. I don’t much care if you want accolades for your good deeds and even if you receive them. I don’t care if you perform good works because you think it will get you into heaven, or that it will make your girlfriend like you better, or if you feel compelled to do good because you feel guilty if you don’t.

Yes, I suppose it’s on a higher moral plane if you do good simply because you love the good, and are completely uninterested in anything connected with yourself that might be considered a reward, even the reward of personal satisfaction. I suppose, but I’m not entirely sure. It seems to me that if altruism and enlightened self-interest happen to coincide, and if people have “a bit of a compulsion” to do good, so much the better.

We are all part of the whole, and if we help another, we are really helping ourselves, and that’s just fine with me. I’m with John Donne:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

Me and I are angry, me and I are sad

The New Neo Posted on by

The exponential growth of I/me confusion is driving me nuts.

You hear it everywhere: “She gave it to he and I.” “Thanks for helping my son and I.” In conversations casual and formal, in real life and on TV, the cringe-inducing (to me) error has become so ubiquitous that to point it out to anyone would be churlish.

And yet here I am, doing so. Because it’s such a simple error to overcome. It nearly always goes in the direction of over-using the “I” rather than over-using the “me,” perhaps in an effort to sound more erudite and avoid the old “Him and me went to the store” (which you also hear on occasion).

And yes, sadly, I must say that I even heard it in Mitt Romney’s convention speech, in an otherwise moving passage:

But if you ask Ann and I what we’d give to break up just one more fight between the boys, or wake up in the morning and
discover a pile of kids asleep in a room — well every mom and dad knows the answer to that.

The thing about it is that the rule is actually so very simple. Just remove the other pronoun or name and the word “and,” and say the sentence without those things. I can’t imagine Romney ever saying “But if you ask I…”:

I know that language changes all the time. You might even say it evolves. But this change just doesn’t seem right to me.

Or to I.

[NOTE: And if this entry follows the rules of the usual nitpicky grammar post, I will have made at least one inadvertent grammar or spelling error in it.]

[ADDENDUM: The very worst example of this error I’ve ever heard occurred on the TV show “The Bachelorette,” (and yes, I sometimes watch it), when a contestant said something like, “Her and I’s relationship has gone to another level.”

Now, that’s creative.]

Spambot of the day

The New Neo Posted on by

Conscience-stricken bot and friends:

I as well as my guys were found to be taking note of the best thoughts on your website and the sudden came up with a horrible feeling I never expressed respect to the website owner for those secrets. The young men had been absolutely excited to read them and have in effect definitely been using those things. Our honest apologies for not expressing gratitude to earlier.

Perhaps he/she/it/they went to Catholic school?

Bob Woodward joins the anti-Obama crowd

The New Neo Posted on by

The anti-Obama wave continues, this time with a new book (ABC’s description here) by Bob Woodward entitled The Price of Politics and due to come out on September 11.

It focuses on the Obama administration’s attempts to deal with the economic crisis, in particular the president’s relations with Congress—focusing on, but not limited to, the debt negotiations. The information contained in it about Obama is astoundingly negative, but that’s been the drift lately.

I’m not sure how much I trust Woodward. But his account resonates with everything I’ve ever observed about Obama, both as a political being and as a human being. Woodward describes an incredibly disorganized Obama White House with no coherent management; and a clueless executive without the faintest idea of how to work with people, be they his own staff, his political opponents, or members of his own party.

It seems Obama is an equal-opportunity president: he’s managed to offend almost everyone.

Please read the whole thing; it’s well worth it. I was especially struck by this [emphasis mine]:

Larry Summers, a top economic adviser to Obama who also served as Treasury Secretary under President Clinton, identified a key distinction that he said impacted budget and spending talks.

“Obama doesn’t really have the joy of the game. Clinton basically loved negotiating with a bunch of pols, about anything,” Summers said. “Whereas, Obama, he really didn’t like these guys.”

Summers said that Obama’s “excessive pragmatism” was a problem. “I don’t think anybody has a sense of his deep feelings about things.” Summers said. “I don’t think anybody has a sense of his deep feelings about people. I don’t think people have a sense of his deep feelings around the public philosophy.”

Then there’s what Obama did to Paul Ryan, somewhat similar to the president’s State of the Union dissing of the Citizens United case while the SCOTUS justices were obliged to sit in the audience, silent and impassive, as he criticized their judgment. Obama seems to like to dress people down publicly; humiliating someone and watching him/her squirm (or try to suppress the squirm) is another way to assert power over another person and to feel superior oneself.

Here’s the Obama-Ryan story:

An example of the White House’s blundering came when he gave a speech on the debt crisis and ripped into House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan’s plan as “changing the basic social compact in America,” ”” not knowing that Ryan had been specifically invited along by an aide.

Ryan stormed out telling Obama’s economic adviser Gene Sperling “I can’t believe you poisoned the well like that,” as he left.

Obama told Woodward, he accepts that Ryan would have thought he was trying to embarrass him. “We made a mistake,” the president said.

I don’t actually believe Obama didn’t know about Ryan’s attendance, although if he really didn’t it would be just another example of the poor organization and communication between the president and his staff. As we’ve asked so many times before on this blog: Obama, fool or knave, or both? And does it even matter any more which it is?

Another Woodward book tidbit is this one, about a wealthy businessman named Seidenberg (a “progressive independent,” by the way) who was invited to the White House for Obama’s Super Bowl party:

Obama did little more than say hello, spending about 15 seconds with him. “Seidenberg felt he had been used as window dressing,” Woodward writes. “He complained to Valerie Jarrett, a close Obama aide. .”‰.”‰. Her response: Hey, you’re in the room with him. You should be happy.”

Jarrett’s remark crystallizes the near-worship that Obama not only accepts, but requires and craves. Jarrett, his oldest and closest adviser except for his wife, exemplifies that worship. One of the many reasons that Obama is incapable of facing the reality of his own flaws and learning from them is that he does not seem to want to.

[NOTE: Notice also, in this New Yorker article, an unnamed Democratic insider is quoted as saying that “Obama doesn’t really like very many people.” I believe it.

And not many people who actually know him seem to like him.]

Hillary and Biden: what a difference four years make

The New Neo Posted on by

It seemed to me Obama’s basic message last night was, You really can’t expect me to have figured this out in a mere four years, can you? I mean well (as opposed to the Republicans, who are just mean). So give me another chance to get this down.

Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, among others, seem to think that’s just fine. But four years ago, Biden and Bill’s wife Hillary sang quite a different tune:

If you can stomach the speeches tonight…

The New Neo Posted on by

…feel free to discuss them here.

I’ve listened to a few minutes of Biden, and it’s a few minutes too many for me.

It’s really a cult of personality, isn’t it? What a hero, what a rescuer, that Barack Obama is! “This man has courage in his soul, compassion in his heart, and a spine of steel.”

Give me a friggin break.

[ADDENDUM: It occurs to me that Biden’s speech must have needed to have Obama’s stamp of approval. Even to a narcissist like Obama, that line should have seemed ludicrously over-the-top. And if it didn’t, Obama is not only narcissistic but tone-deaf as well.

And if the speech wasn’t pre-approved, then he’s negligent.]