Libya CIA revelations: Obama supporter shocked—shocked!

The New Neo Posted on by

A few Obama supporters and generalized liberal/leftist others are discovering that Obama lied about the extent of our involvement in Libya, having already (allegedly) authorized covert CIA operatives to offer support—and, I would sincerely hope, to figure out who the rebels are and see what might actually be going on there. Boots on the ground and all that.

Andrew Sullivan is so stunned by the news that he’s practically gone silent, which takes a lot of doing. Others don’t seem stunned; merely angry (see also this).

JammieWearingFool has a nice way of describing the stunned ones:

“Useful Idiot Shocked Over Obama’s Covert Actions in Libya”

They’re usually the last ones to figure out they’ve been duped.

How sad.

That “how sad” is sarcasm, but it’s also true. People do have a highly unfortunate tendency to overlook evidence that their idols have feet of clay, right up to the point when the idol’s feet crumble and the statue falls over and crashes right onto them (and onto the rest of us as well).

Sullivan is in a state of cognitive dissonance so great he may have trouble recovering:

It’s so surreal, so discordant with what the president has told the American people, so fantastically contrary to everything he campaigned on, that I will simply wait for more confirmation than this before commenting further. I simply cannot believe it. I know the president is not against all wars – just dumb ones. But could any war be dumber than this – in a place with no potential for civil society, wrecked by totalitarianism, riven by tribalism, in defense of rebels we do not know and who are clearly insufficient to the task?

Apparently Sullivan has either ignored all previous “discordances” between what Obama has promised and what he has done, or rationalized them away.

You may wonder why I focus on Sullivan, who has lost so much credibility himself over the years. The answer is that I see him as somewhat typical of a certain type of liberal thinking that’s fairly common—and not even limited to the left, although I find it a lot more prevalent there. Sullivan, after all, used to be a centrist of sorts—at least temporarily, until the cause of gay marriage and the Abu Ghraib scandal drove him leftward.

You can see—in Sullivan’s emphasis on the word “dumb”—another shock: what’s a smart president like Obama doing in such a dumb place? Therein lies the wounded yet still-beating heart of a great deal of Obama’s support among supposed intellectuals: he was felt to be so much smarter than anyone else who’d occupied the office recently, even Clinton the Rhodes scholar, and smart people don’t do dumb things.

Leaving aside the question of whether there was much evidence for this belief about his intellectual firepower, the conviction was and still is quite firmly entrenched in many of Obama’s supporters. But they are ignoring the fact that “smart” people quite often do dumb things in the real world, especially the world of war, especially if they are almost totally inexperienced in said world. Has Obama—or Sullivan—never heard of “the best and the brightest?” If not, it’s time for a history lesson.

As for me, I have no illusions about Obama. But as far as sending the CIA goes, I’m for it. If we’re going to support the rebels to the tune of billions of dollars we don’t have, it would be great to find out who they are and whether they’re worthy of support.

[NOTE: Michael Totten offers an interview with a woman who says she knows who the rebels are and is part of a group called Shabakat that has extensive contacts with them, and that they’re nice urban educated guys who want democracy and freedom.

Although I’d like this to be true, I’m exceedingly skeptical. Not of Totten, whom I trust implicitly, but of the rest. And even if it’s true, I can’t imagine that such forces would be a match for Qaddafi’s supporters, even with our clandestine help on the ground and air support.]

[ADDENDUM: Victor Davis Hanson on Obama and Libya. As usual, Hanson is well worth reading, and the essay brings to mind the fact that he is, after all, a military historian. Many of the comments are good, too (hat tip: “T”).

Walmart and the women and the law

The New Neo Posted on by

The Supreme Court has been hearing arguments on whether a class action suit on behalf of women employed by Walmart can go forward. Here’s a fairly good summary of the issues involved at this stage, which boil down to whether a class action suit is the proper remedy or whether the women involved should sue the company on an individual basis.

Unfortunately, questions of law such as this sound very boring and picayune. In fact, they are pretty boring and picayune. But they are nonetheless important. If this is allowed to go forward as a class action, it sets a ludicrously broad standard for huge lawsuits of this type, which threaten to financially destroy companies that don’t have a strict quota system for promotion on representative racial and/or gender lines.

There is really no evidence of a discriminatory policy on the part of Walmart, either. In fact, Walmart’s official policy is explicitly non-discriminatory, but promotion decisions are de-centralized and made through individual discretion. The plaintiffs contend that, through some sort of oozing osmosis, these individual decisions become saturated with gender discrimination that flows down from above and is therefore Walmart management’s responsibility.

How did it come to this? How did we get to the point of ignoring actual policy and looking only at equality of outcome as the indicator of what a policy might be? This is the way the “argument” goes [emphasis mine]:

A plaintiff can prove a “pattern and practice” of employment discrimination by showing an unexplained statistical disparity between the composition of the employer’s workforce and the composition of the qualified labor pool from which the employer draws its workforce. A nondiscriminating employer would wind up with a workforce that reflects the demographics of the relevant labor market, absent some unusual circumstances. Of course, that’s just where the analysis starts: If fewer women are qualified for or interested in the jobs in question, the imbalance wouldn’t suggest discrimination. Sophisticated statistical methods can take account of the other factors that might contribute to disparities, like differences in qualifications, interest, or availability.

Once such legitimate factors have been taken into account, it’s reasonable to conclude that any remaining disparity is the result of discrimination.

I’m not so sure how reasonable it is. There are intangibles that are part of promotion decisions that are not gender-based. What’s more, even if is “reasonable” to conclude that the remaining disparity is the result of discrimination, is that conclusion reasonable enough and certain enough to support a legal decision that affects millions of people and could bankrupt a company, as well as leading other companies to promote a number of women beyond their competence level (and in the process discriminate against men) in a frantic effort to avoid a similar fate for themselves?

What happened to the Tea Party?

The New Neo Posted on by

Michael Barone reports that Wisconsin is turning on Governor Walker, and the electorate there might be poised to recall a number of the Republican legislators who stood with him in his fight against the public unions and for a more balanced budget. Governors Kasich in Ohio and Corbett in Pennsylvania are in trouble, and polls indicate that Tea Party support is down in general, or at least among low-income voters.

What’s the problem? How has the worm turned so very suddenly? After all, the election was only last November.

An answer I happen to agree with is provided by commenter “paul1149” at Hot Air:

Walker has been magnificent, but he and our side have failed to get the message out. It was and is a message that will resound with most people ”“ it’s a winner ”“ but if people do not have basic economics explained to them they just don’t know what’s going on. Such is the level of citizenship at this point in time…

Too much was assumed. This is a nation, after all, that place[d] Barack Obama in office…

Barone agrees, although he offers a bit more cause for optimism, as do certain polls in which rephrased questions draw different responses:

There’s an assumption by many Republicans, seemingly shared by Walker, that voters settled these issues definitively in the November elections. But the IWV poll suggests that voters are not necessarily well-informed and have been swayed by those who frame the issue as collective bargaining “rights.”

Respondents become more favorable to Walker’s position when informed that public employees are paid 45 percent more than private-sector union members and that union dues have been automatically deducted and go to support candidates workers may not favor.

In New Jersey, a more Democratic state than Wisconsin, Gov. Chris Christie has won majority support in his struggles with public employee unions by making his case repeatedly, with facts and figures, and with a forcefulness that has made his town hall appearances a YouTube hit.

But Christie is sui generis, a YouTube sensation who has a unique ability to get to the heart of the matter in an entertaining way. He’s like the rare star teacher who commands a spellbound classroom with the sheer force of his intelligence, eloquence, and personality. We can’t expect all Republican governors and legislators to have these skills; it’s unrealistic.

But short of a Christie cloning, how to get the message out? Not only is the MSM failing to cooperate, it’s bound and determined to foist a competing message on the public. The school system, for the most part, likewise. In addition, there’s a natural backlash to the message of austerity the Tea Party wing of the GOP is trying to put out right now. Everyone wants a free lunch, and no one wants his or her own lunch money cut.

It’s all very well and good to talk about budget cuts in general. It’s the particulars that smart. And if the public is factually ignorant and/or economically illiterate, the game is over before it has begun, and the forces of misinformation find it easy to win.

Dancing With the Stars: still a kid

The New Neo Posted on by

Those of you who are not into frivolity, skip this one. But as for me, I welcome the chance to watch Ralph Macchio, the long-ago “Karate Kid,” do a credible jive on “Dancing With the Stars.”

He’s fun to watch. And the most amazing, astounding thing is that he still looks like a kid despite his age (which I which reveal after the clip—no peeking!):

Macchio will turn fifty this November 4th.

On supporting the rebels and striking at a king

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s not been a good day for the Libyan rebels, whoever they might be. Despite air support from the coalition, they have lost some ground.

Qaddafi has some words to say on their identity. There’s no reason to believe him, of course, although it would be highly ironic if he turned out in this case to be correct:

In an open letter to the international community, meanwhile, Gadhafi called for a halt to the “monstrous assault” on Libya and maintained that that the rebels were supported by the al-Qaida terrorist network.

“What is happening now is providing a cover for al-Qaida through airstrikes and missiles to enable al-Qaida to control North Africa and turn it into a new Afghanistan,” he said…

I wonder whether the Obama administration has pondered what would be the result if Qaddafi holds out. He has shown himself to be no stranger to the support of terrorism himself, and he might be even more strongly motivated to retaliate by supporting terrorism against Western countries who aided and abetted those who tried to unseat him. Have Obama and his advisers considered the old adage “when you strike at a king you must kill him” in deciding to go against Qaddafi without seeking his death?

[NOTE: I had long thought that quote came from Machiavelli or some other cynical realist who specialized in the study of the workings of power in the world. It surprised me to discover it was actually said by Ralph Waldo Emerson to Oliver Wendell Holmes, in response to an essay by the latter critiquing Plato.]

Does it really matter if Obama didn’t write Dreams?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Parker” asks a question I often see:

Does it matter who wrote Obama’s books? Even if Obama was not the author and it could be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt would the MSM care? Would the MSM cover such a story? Would the legions of Obama worshippers care? Its Obama’s association with people like Ayers, Dohrn, Wright, Pfleger, etc. that matters because that is what formed his socialist ideology and fuels his narcissistic personality. Ayers, etc. (and the MSM) are what psychologists term ”˜enablers’.

…In the end I don’t care who wrote Obama’s books, I want him out of the oval office come January 20, 2012.

So, would people care? My answer is that it depends on how strong and incontrovertible the proof is, and who the people are.

Anything less than a smoking gun would, just as Parker says, convince no one who is not already convinced that Obama is a poseur and an incompetent anyway, and therefore does not matter. But if extraordinarily strong evidence were to surface, it would cast waves of doubt through at least some people, the more naive ones who had truly believed in him as an intelligent and righteous man. Some of these people still exist, and some of them are independent swing voters, and so they matter quite a bit.

Trust is supported by a foundation that can come down all at once, like the proverbial house of cards. And although other political figures have certainly been shown to have had their books gostwritten—some have been up-front about this fact, while some have hidden it—no previous political figure’s ghostwritten book (at least to my knowledge) has had two characteristics that would be true of Obama’s: (a) the book is not incidental to their reputation, but instead is an important part of the evidence for their qualification for office; and (b) the ghostwriter is both an avowed terrorist and a person the politician has claimed to barely know.

In Obama’s case, each thing matters (at least, theoretically) more than usual, due to the suspicions already floating around that he is not all that qualified or experienced, and that he “palled around” with terrorists such as Ayers. He already has spent so much time denying those things that proof of them would be likely to hit quite a few people and cause a shockwave.

Once that sort of doubt is introduced about who Obama really is, and once his ability to lie with a straight face is fully perceived, there comes an almost inevitable speculation on just how many people were covering up for Obama and who these helpers and groomers might have been. If what was heretofore seen as a fringe element on the right (we could call them the “bookers” rather than the “birthers”) were to be proven correct, it opens the door to all sorts of other doubts about the information coming from the left and the MSM, and can cause a cascade of change.

How many people would actually have such an experience? I don’t know. I’ve written a great deal about the process of political change, and it’s my contention that only some people are capable of really taking in the information that would allow them to acknowledge they’ve been duped and/or mistaken, and to accept the need to revise their thinking. But real proof that Ayers wrote Dreams would be exactly the sort of catalyst that could spark such change in what I believe would be a significant number of people.

[NOTE: Although I’ve speculated here on “what if,” I don’t think definitive proof of this sort will ever be forthcoming.]

Natalie Portman, Vivien Leigh, and the dance double

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s a bit funny to me that the film “Black Swan” is about doubling—a woman taken over by another self—and that Portman is being haunted by a double in real life: Sarah Lane, the woman who alleges she did 95% of Portman’s actual dancing (see also this and this).
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The studio says otherwise, that Portman did about 85% of her own dancing. Well, I guess it depends how one defines “dancing.” Is it backbends and arm movements? Or is it the whole package? Because when I saw the movie, I was paying attention to what Portman was and wasn’t doing, and it was clear to me (when I was not being distracted by gore) that a lot of the dancing was not Portman.

That’s because the legs and body of a working dancer in tip-top shape are different from those of an ordinary person, even an elite athlete (which Portman is not) or a thin person who’s in shape and has had some ballet lessons (which Portman is). It was clear to me that the majority of the full body shots of Portman’s character dancing on stage in performance—as opposed to upper-body shots or even some full-body shots of movement in rehearsal—were of someone else.

I knew it without any need to look at the head, which was grafted on in a special effect anyway. The carriage of the dancer is different and more upright and strong and yet pliant; Portman’s is either slightly languid or slightly rigid. The legs are more spectacularly muscled; Portman’s are more frail. The center of gravity is like a plumb line through the body, something one can almost draw; Portman lacks this quality.

It can’t be faked, nor can it be learned in a year of training. I’m sure Portman did as well as anyone could have, but it simply is not possible to do what they are alleging she did and be able to perform such feats, unless her previous training had made her close to professional ballet soloist material in the first place.

One of the beefs I had with the film was that the dancer they used, Sarah Lane, although gifted and competent and a soloist with American Ballet Theater, was not of the spectacular star quality the film describes and demands. That’s perhaps a small quibble—and it would have cost them a lot more to hire a true star in the ballet firmament, rather than Lane. No disrespect meant to Lane, who’s been slighted enough by the filmmakers and Portman already. But although she’s a wonderful dancer and has a worthy career, she’s not dancing leads such as the Swan Queen yet in her regular dancing gig.

At this point you may wonder how Vivien Leigh got into the title of this post. The topic of ballet in films reminded me of one of my favorite tear-jerkers, “Waterloo Bridge,” in which Leigh plays a ballet dancer who falls in love with an officer right before he goes off to WWI and she falls on hard times. Thanks to YouTube, we have a clip of a scene where Leigh is supposed to be dancing in a ballet that’s supposed to be “Swan Lake,” without the aid of technical wizardry as in “Black Swan.”

Unlike “Black Swan,” the dancing in “Waterloo Bridge” is purely incidental to the plot. Not only is there no real attempt to make it seem as though Leigh is especially skilled, but the film doesn’t even use the actual choreography of the well-known “Swan Lake,” just a pastiche of excerpts from the music and some generic moves, with dancers garbed in costumes that are a cross between those of “Les Sylphides” and the headdresses of the swan corps.

But Leigh does a game job of waving her arms around, looking slim and pretty, and making goo-goo eyes at Robert Taylor at the same time. Dance-wise, the most authentic thing about the movie is the stern and nasty dance mistress, shades of a number of old-time dance teachers I’ve known. She was played in the film by Maria Ouspenskaya, a Russian emigre actress who actually ran a dance school in Hollywood in the 30s, among whose pupils was the future Marge Champion.

Enjoy the esthetic of yesteryear—the technical wizardry was zippo, but the rest of it was pretty fine:

Is Ayers admitting he wrote “Dreams From My Father?”

The New Neo Posted on by

The short answer is: no, he’s making a joke.

Jack Cashill, whose book Deconstructing Obama has come out recently, believes that the joke (or, as he puts it, the final “retreat into irony”) hides the preceeding truthful admission:

With his final comment, the Ayers-friendly audience laughed in relief. The media will laugh nervously upon seeing the video as well. The White House will not.

Watch the clip yourself and see what you think of Ayers’ affect:

I think that at the very least the clip is interesting. Ayers is a highly intelligent and wily guy who likes to put things over on all of us. His statement about his legal status in an interview with David Horowitz in the early 80s, “Guilty as hell, free as a bird””America is a great country,” says a lot about his attitude towards guilt, innocence, admission of guilt and innocence, and joking.

Does his admission in the clip mean he really wrote Obama’s memoir? Of course not. But his behavior is certainly ambiguous. Note that the questioner does not bring up the topic of the questioned authorship—Ayers does, and we know the best defense is a good offense. Note also how quick Ayers is to praise Dreams—before the man finishes asking his question. And note how eager Ayers is to differentiate the supposedly excellent Dreams from Obama’s later hack work, The Audacity of Hope. Is he trying to disavow any connection with the latter?

Ayers’ delivery is deadpan. He smiles only at the end, after the audience has finally gotten that it’s a joke and laughed. Earlier, you can hear the original questioner’s surprised, “You wrote that?” in response to Ayers’ “joke,” which he doesn’t seem to get is a joke. That’s because Ayers’ deadpan demeanor is very convincing; he seems completely serious. Is that because he is, or is he just a comedian with great delivery?

And is Ayers’ smile at the end just a mockery of the silliness of those who would believe he wrote Obama’s book? Or a mockery of those who think he did not?