Post-debate thoughts

The New Neo Posted on by

I didn’t watch much of the fray tonight (my usual debate-phobia). But from what I did see, I found Biden’s behavior not just disrespectful and undignified, but bizarre. He did everything but pound a shoe on a table. I’m trying to think of any major American politician—president, vice president, speaker, Democrat or Republican—who’s ever exhibited anything akin to Biden’s inappropriate affect, his derisive laughter when the opponent is speaking, or just his all-around strangeness.

Biden was like the drunken blowhard you meet at a bar, the guy everybody is entertained by for a just little bit (especially if they’ve been drinking, too) and then it’s more than enough. Laughing and telling stories, talking too much, and then saying the drinks are on him and by the way he can lick everybody in the place.

Does anyone want this man to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? Seriously, folks, I think that even were I a Democrat, I’d be frightened of Biden coming to any kind of power.

It says a lot about Obama that he chose him. It says a lot about Obama that he kept him. Obama likes to be surrounded by people who are mediocre and loyal to him. They won’t show him up, and they’ll do his dirty work as bidden. Biden is the epitome of this; he’s exactly and precisely what Obama wants in a VP.

I become more and more convinced that this election will be a test of the American people and their judgment. We will either pass it or fail it.

[ADDENDUM: Biden wasn’t just un-presidential. He was un-vice-presidential.]

[ADDENDUM: Bookworm has much the same thing to say:

Joe was the bloviating, obnoxious drunk at the bar who had grabbed Ryan by his lapel and wouldn’t let go. You could practically see Ryan’s hair melt from the noxious odors wafting out from behind Joe’s peculiarly whitened dentures.

I do not know that I have ever before seen such a loathsome spectacle at the national level. ]

Getting ready…

The New Neo Posted on by

…for tonight’s VP debate?

I think the media will declare Biden the winner, “unexpectedly.”

Good old Joe. In 2008 he just made stuff up, and it was perfectly fine with the MSM, because he was debating the nefarious Sarah Palin, who actually didn’t make stuff up.

Lemann on Romney: Transaction Man

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s a curious piece on Mitt Romney in The New Yorker, by Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism.

It’s called “Transaction Man,” and the first half of it (approximately) is just about what you’d expect, although with a milder tone than the more fire-breathing writers on the left employ. The usual bases are covered: the bane of Bain, the 47% remark, Romney’s atypically privileged youth, the otherness of Mormons, and his abysmal failure to fire up crowds (the article was written before the debate). But then it abruptly veers into other territory, and that’s when it becomes quite different from anything else I’ve ever read about Romney.

Lemann decided to interview the candidate (this occurs on page 7 of the 11-page article), and most of the rest of the piece merely reports what Romney said in response. Lemann explains:

Because Romney’s answers to the standard political questions are usually scripted and unrevealing, I asked him about business. Why had General Motors, the economic titan of his youth, fallen so low?

It turned out to be an inspired decision on Lemann’s part. Romney is off and running—as Lemann writes:

Romney clearly loved talking about this, and he was showing how he thinks about running things, including the federal government.

The answers are not only interesting and highly intelligent, they’re intelligent in an unusual way, especially for a politician (this is probably because Romney is not primarily a politician). The contrast between Obama and Romney could not be more stark; I would describe it as insubstantial abstraction coupled with emotional appeals versus solution-focused pragmatism grounded in concrete experience.

I also got the impression that Lemann himself had trouble reconciling his own liberalism with his actual experience of Romney when he talked to him one on one. I would go so far as to say he liked and respected him, and was even impressed by him. I’m putting words into Lemann’s mouth, though; he doesn’t really say that, he just backs off from saying much of anything, except that Romney has trouble conveying his ideas to large crowds as effectively as in this more personal venue.

I’ll excerpt a little of what Romney said, just to give you an idea of its flavor:

[Romney] led into a discussion of politics by talking about the strategic myopia of many business executives. “They agree to actions which are good on a short-term basis but may be more hazardous long term. And so, for instance, if you’re the chief executive officer of General Motors back in the nineteen-seventies and a contract comes forward which has onerous legacy costs, why, you know that those costs are not going to be borne on your term, because it’s going to be done for future retirees. And so you might agree to something that is harmful to the company long term but, by the way, beneficial short term, because who wants to take a strike, to prevent a provision that’s going to hurt ten years or twenty years down the road?

“This is particularly true, by the way, in politics,” he went on, “where politicians regularly agree to huge contracts with back-end-loaded benefits, and the day of reckoning finally comes, but they’re long gone.” He allowed a hint of sarcasm to creep into his voice. “While they were there, everything was great. But look at the contracts they entered into!”

I asked whether it was possible to run the vast, diffuse American government the way you would run a business. “The private sector is less forgiving,” he said. “If you make serious mistakes in the private sector, you’ll lose your job, or, if you’re in a position of responsibility, you might lose other people’s jobs. In politics, politicians make mistakes all the time and blame their opposition, or borrow more money, or raise taxes to pay for their mistake. In the business world, the ability to speak fast and convincingly is of very little value. I remember the first time I met Jack Welch. I expected him to be a super-salesman. Instead, he spoke quietly, somewhat haltingly, but brilliantly. Stuff matters a lot more than fluff in the private sector.”

Red the whole thing—or at least read from page seven till the end. You’ll get a much better idea than you had before of the type of mind Romney has.

Why did Obama lie so blatantly about Benghazi?

The New Neo Posted on by

I noticed today that Ann Althouse asks a series of questions about why Obama decided to put out such a blatant, easily debunked, lie about Benghazi. Her queries are similar to those I was planning to ask in a post today. So I needn’t bother to ask them myself; I’ll just link to her, and offer my answers.

First, her questions in a nutshell:

Quite aside from the wrongness of lying, generally and specifically, in this case, and quite aside from the motivation to lie ”” I’m going to presume, without more, it was campaign politics ”” why did Obama think he could get away with this lie long enough, and why was he not daunted by the risk entailed in going on and on, doubling down on the lie, and even lying in a U.N. speech? How did he have the nerve to co-opt our U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, and subvert her credibility and honor? How did he get this millstone around the neck of Hillary Clinton, who has such a strong interest in her independent career and who knows a thing or two about the devastation of getting caught lying?…

It wasn’t respectful at all to promote this caricature of Muslims as people who look at a stupid video and lose their minds, take to the streets, and work themselves up into a murderous rage. The video story could only work as a cover for the truth if it could be leveraged on an offensive stereotype of Muslims. It is the story about the response to the video ”” far more the video itself ”” that has “a deeply cynical purpose, to denigrate a great religion”! Why didn’t Obama care that he was insulting Muslims in this weird charade about caring for Muslims?

Answers?

Obama thought he could get away with the lie because he always has. There was no reason for him to think the media would hold his feet to the fire on this particular issue; why would he? Unless I’m forgetting something, for the most part (if you exclude Jake Tapper and the media on the right, which hardly counts in the scheme of things), when have they ever done so?

So it was in a sense a no-brainer for him, because to have admitted the truth would have been to admit that his approach to the Middle East Islamists/terrorists is wrong.

As for the co-option of Rice and Clinton, Hillary lost all credibility with me as Secretary of State long ago—probably from the moment she took on the job, which is clearly above her pay grade. Among Obama’s very first foreign policy acts was his stance on Honduras, which remains one of his worst (although the press basically ignored it or covered for him). If that didn’t cause her resignation or protest, she has no integrity left. She has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Obama, as has her husband. Whatever they may be plotting behind the scenes, that is the case at the moment.

Rice is more of an unknown. Perhaps she was misled; perhaps not. Perhaps she was being a good diplomat and saying what the administration told her to.

As for Obama’s view on Muslims, he has been very consistent in parroting the PC party line, which is that no insult to Islam is allowed, and it is to be expected that they will riot as a result. The entire approach of the left to the behavior of what used to be called “the Muslim street” is that their acts of rage are justified, and if that position infantilizes them then so be it. It’s a very small price to pay, one the left probably doesn’t even recognize as an issue. Remember the PC Commandments, from 2005? If you don’t, here’s a refresher:

1. America is uniquely evil.
2. America is never justified in defending itself.
3. Illiterate people from poor societies are superior to Americans.
4. The Earth would be better off without human beings.
5. Making a profit is always immoral.
6. Differences between individuals or groups are unfair.
7. For Designated Victim Groups, strong feelings excuse all behavior.
8. Policies informed by Judé¦o-Christian principles are inherently suspect.
9. Conservatives are hypocrites; liberals are sincere.
10. There are no acts of God; there are only acts of Government.
11) We defend the right to free speech for ourselves, but anyone else whose speech hurts our feelings must be censored.
12) In any conflict between a third-world nation and a first-world nation, the third-world nation is always right.
13) Tyranny in third-world countries is not our concern unless the US (or Israel) can be blamed in some way.
14) All criticism or disagreement with any policy of a third-world nation, culture, or person is, by definition, racism.

I have some questions of my own to add: has Obama finally gotten into significant trouble for this? How deeply has it penetrated the public consciousness, and will it matter? I keep thinking his polls should be in the 20s right about now. But although they’ve moved downward, it’s been a small shift considering the magnitude of his offenses. How many people are even following the story? Will that number increase as time goes on, or will the media minimize and excuse?

In other words, will Obama’s gamble pay off?

It’s all how you look at it

The New Neo Posted on by

I noticed that Fox News is offering some live coverage of the Benghazi hearings.

CNN? So far, crickets chirping (at least when I’ve looked).

I know it goes without saying—but if George Bush had presided over a similar incident, even the networks would be covering the hearings live.

More on the hearings here.

Obama is an easy grader

The New Neo Posted on by

On himself, that is.

He thought he had won last Wednesday’s debate until aides broke the bad news to him.

But really, is that so surprising? This is the president who had given himself a “good, solid B-plus” when Oprah Winfrey asked him how he was doing back in December of 2009. He might have done well to give himself an “incomplete” at the time, but instead he:

…credited his administration with getting the economy on track, winding down the Iraq war and making the right call for a temporary surge in Afghanistan.

He also said America has “reset” its prestige in the world and made progress toward halting development of nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea.

Passage of health care reform would boost his grade to an A-, he said.

Funny thing, though, he’s extended the grading deadline over and over on the economy, and still qualifies himself for an “incomplete” there:

In a 2012 interview with ABC’s the View, Obama refused to give himself a letter grade other than “still incomplete.”

In a 2011 interview with Jake Tapper, Obama said that he would only give himself a “incomplete” because “the work that we started is not yet done, but the fact is that the American people are rightly frustrated over what they see as a system in which responsibility is not always rewarded, where people who have done the right thing all their lives still seem to be struggling, that sense that the American dream is slipping away.”

And in a 2010 interview with CBS’ “Sunday Morning,” Obama also gave himself an incomplete.

That’s a reversal on his original projection for the grading deadline:

I’m making light of this somewhat, but there’s really nothing funny about it. Obama’s over-valuation of his own abilities, and his near-disconnect with the reality of his non-accomplishments, is pathological. That wouldn’t be a problem for anyone but himself and his family if it weren’t for the fact that he’s president, and his hubris has gotten us all into trouble. If he is re-elected, that trouble will deepen.

But getting back to the debate, I wonder if his aides have managed to impress on him that he needs to do a bit more work this time. I’m sure he was angry when he listened to some of the post-debate moaning and groaning on the left, especially since he’s used to basking in their praise. It may have been a rude awakening for him.

On the other hand, narcissists are somewhat resistant to rude awakenings. They tend to blame others for their own errors. What’s more, to prepare for his next debate, some hard work will be involved on Obama’s part. Perhaps the desire to show Romney (whom he seems to hate) who’s boss next time will motivate him. Perhaps not.

[NOTE: And then there’s the Dunning-Kruger effect (hat tip: Ace):

The Dunning”“Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes.

Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. As Kruger and Dunning conclude, “the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.”

Obama never, never, never makes the error of assuming others are more competent than they are. Au contraire.]

Down with pantyhose

The New Neo Posted on by

In the Ann Romney Jay Leno outfit thread, quite a few people criticized the currently fashionable bare leg look for women.

Random Thoughts also dissed the usual alternative, pantyhose:

I absolutely detest pantyhose, and am beyond thankful that they are no longer “de rigeur.” I can’t think of a more dated, uncomfortable and useless piece of female apparel, unless it’s shoulder pads in blouses.

I agree on the pantyhose, although I do prefer the look of some sort of stockings to bare legs, especially for older women (disagree on the shoulder pads—how can they be uncomfortable? And they’re flattering if you have narrow shoulders. But I digress.)

Pantyhose are one of the worst fashion innovations ever. It’s almost humorous that they are/were touted as an advance over old-fashioned stockings with garters, when they are a huge negative in the comfort arena. They became popular when miniskirts came in, because the skirts had become too short for gartered stockings. It seems there was no turning back, except as an occasional novelty in the bedroom.

The problems? Getting into them is awful. When one leg gets a run, you have to throw the entire apparatus out. The choice of what size to purchase is a never-ending coin toss. Don’t get me started on the bathroom issues.

And did I say they were uncomfortable?

Looking it up for historical accuracy, I find that yes, my memory is correct, pantyhose were (was?) popularized during the 60s—the era that which was supposed to be about freedom and non-encumbrance. Hrumph. And the Wiki entry lists scads of health problems that come from pantyhose. You can skip that, too, if you like.

But if anyone wants to know why so many women seem to be jettisoning the pantyhose and all the alternatives and going au natural, it’s no mystery. Although come to think of it, maybe it is a mystery, because women certainly wear a ton of other fashion items that are remarkably uncomfortable—such as, just to take one small example, heels so high that walking becomes a perilous and painful undertaking.

The “Obama doesn’t want to win” meme

The New Neo Posted on by

“Obama doesn’t really want to be president any more” is a popular explanation for his lackluster performance in the October 3 debate—one that, unlike some of the others, actually makes a certain amount of sense and doesn’t involve accusing Romney of anything.

Is it true? I don’t pretend to have the inside info, but I’d say “Partly yes, but basically no. He wants to be re-elected.”

Note my emphasis: Obama wants to be re-elected. His ego demands it, although his ego would come up with a lot of self-absolving buck-passing excuses if he were to lose. Obama doesn’t like the work of actually being president, however; he likes the perks and the power.

Why would he like the work? It’s a tough job, and he’s never been a workaholic. Obama would prefer to be king and be able to command rather than lead, and he thinks he’d be a remarkably benevolent despot. He’d prefer to do everything by executive fiat and never have to ask Congress for anything at all. He disdains getting his hands messy, and he’s tired.

Tired. A great many people—many of them supporters—have noticed that. Why would Obama, one of our youngest presidents, and a seemingly healthy man, be so tired? One of the many notable things about Wednesday’s debate was the relative energy of the 65-year-old Romney compared the 51-year-old Obama. That’s somewhat odd. But the last four years have been a double-edged sword for Obama, giving him the power and adulation he craves but in a format that’s been more difficult than he expected.

I still firmly believe he wants to be re-elected, and that he believes a second term will be easier since he won’t have to worry about what the people think. But some part of him—what we might call the animal spirits part of him—is discouraged and enervated.

[NOTE: The tendency to be easily exhausted was one of the very first things I ever noted about him (see the date on this post). And Byron York makes the excellent point that Obama has always been easily bored.]

Obama’s illegal campaign contributions?

The New Neo Posted on by

Breitbart.com calls it a bombshell.

And it should be, it should be:

…[T]he Obama.com website is not owned by the president’s campaign but rather by Obama bundler Robert Roche, a U.S. citizen living in Shanghai, China. Roche is the chairman of a Chinese infomercial company, Acorn International, with ties to state-controlled banks that allow it to “gain revenue through credit card transactions with Chinese banks.”

There’s more.

The unusual Obama.com website redirects traffic directly to a donation page on the Obama campaign’s official website, my.barackobama.com, which does not require donors to enter their credit card security code (known as the CVV code), thereby increasing the likelihood of foreign or fraudulent donations. The website is managed by a small web development firm, Wicked Global, in Maine. One of Wicked Global’s employees, Greg Dorr, lists on his LinkedIn page his additional employment with Peace Action Maine and Maine Voices for Palestinian Rights. According to the GAI report, 68 percent of all Internet traffic to Obama.com comes from foreign visitors.

Please read the whole thing.

There’s also this:

The FEC does not require basic security for Internet donations. And in the case of the Obama campaign the gate appears to be wide open. You need to use the CVV security code on your credit card to buy an Obama hoodie, but not to make a donation. And there is very real evidence that the campaign is not using the address verification system (AVS) in any real way. There are simply too many contributions they accept with either no zip code or an incorrect zip code. To make matters worse, donations under $200 don’t even need to be disclosed. Twenty years ago that might not matter but in the era of robo-donations its a huge problem.

I think it’s especially telling that you need the CVV security code to buy merchandise, but not for donations. I can’t quite think of any reason for that except to make sure the former are on the up-and-up and to wink at (or facilitate) fraud in the latter.

It’s a tired cliche, but I have to say it again: imagine if these facts were true of the Romney campaign. Then you would see them in screaming headlines on the front page of every newspaper. The candidate would be dogged with reporters questioning him about it at every turn. But since it’s Obama—and since this sort of thing was already known about Obama’s website back in 2008 (minus the names, as I recall), to the sound of chirping crickets—I wonder whether this bombshell will fail to explode.

That’s one of the scariest things about the Obama phenomenon—the complete and utter abdication of any sense of responsibility or fairness on the part of the press, to a degree previously unattained. I would be very happy to be proven wrong on this prognostication, by the way; very happy.