Joe Biden to base: stop whining

The New Neo Posted on by

Joe Biden has asked the base to stop whining.
You might as well ask the sun to stop shining.
It’s not a great way to get them all voting,
But let’s not indulge in premature gloating,
Though right now I’d guess Barack’s looking around
Beneath that huge bus for more space to be found
About the right size for a guy who’s named Joe.
With friends like that, who is in need of a foe?

Well, Joe Biden has really put his foot in it this time. His gaffe may not be a big f**king deal, but it couldn’t have come at a worse time. Just when Obama and the Democrats are trying to rally the troops, Biden insults them by insinuating they are complaining babies with nothing to complain about.

And this from an administration that boasts one of the whiniest presidents ever: Barack Obama. When will they learn that insulting potential voters—be they Republicans, Independents, Tea Partiers, or Democrats—is not a good way to win friends and influence people?

[NOTE: In related news, Obama told a NY fundraiser crowd recently, “Don’t compare us to the Almighty, compare us to the alternative.”

I say live by the sword, die by the sword. If the crowd compares you to the deity, it’s probably because you encouraged them to do so.

And now Obama is reduced to saying, “Well, at least the Democrats and I are better than the Republicans and Bush.” Ah, how the mighty have fallen.]

Ingrid Betancourt, Che, and FARC

The New Neo Posted on by

In 2002, Ingrid Betancourt was running for Colombia’s presidency when she was kidnapped by leftist FARC guerillas and held in difficult captivity for six years along with fourteen other hostages. The group was freed by Colombian soldiers in the summer in 2008, and Betancourt has just published a book about her ordeal.

Betancourt is from an old and patrician Colombian family, and she has managed to rub a lot of people the wrong way. She tried to sue the Colombian government for damages for failing to prevent her kidnapping, despite the fact that it was that government who ultimately rescued her. Some of her fellow hostages have spoken out against her, a highly unusual practice for fellow-captives:

Clara Rojas, who was kidnapped with Betancourt in 2002, has claimed [Betancourt’s] book contains “lies and spite” regarding Ms. Rojas’s decision to have a child while held captive.

Rojas isn’t the only one with a bone to pick with Betancourt:

One of the American prisoners claimed that she was haughty, self-absorbed, stole their food, hoarded books, and risked their lives by informing the guards that they were CIA.

Keith Stansell, 44, a former Marine, told Associated Press: “I watched her try to take over the camp with an arrogance that was out of control. Some of the guards treated us better than she did.”

But for me, this was one of the more telling comments by Betancourt:

Betancourt says her time in captivity dispelled any romantic illusions she had about the FARC and their mission. “I am of a generation where we like Che Guevara, you know, the very romantic kind of revolution thing,” she says. “And in a way, I thought that the FARC was kind of a romantic rebellion against a system that I didn’t like either.”

But in captivity, she says she came to realize that the FARC was nothing more than the military wing of Colombia’s drug cartels. “It was as corrupt as the system; it wasn’t a response to the problems we have in Colombia.”

Lucky for her she wasn’t captured by Che himself. I am stunned at the woman’s previous ignorance and naivete; she seems to be one of those people who might say “Tengo una remera del Che y no sé por qué” (“I have a Che T-shirt and I don’t know why”). As I wrote :

That seems to be what it’s come down to: Che as poster boy (literally). Vargas Llosa calls him “the socialist heartthrob in his beret.” Perhaps that’s all he is now to most of those who sport his dark and brooding image on their “mugs, hoodies, lighters, key chains, wallets, baseball caps, toques, bandannas, tank tops, club shirts, couture bags, denim jeans, herbal tea, and of course those omnipresent T-shirts.”

Che’s visage has had remarkable staying power; I remember it was already in vogue when I was in college. He’s been dead for thirty-eight years now, and the legend only grows”“although, if he hadn’t been good-looking and photogenic, he’d probably be an obscure footnote to history by this time.

Although Che is far from forgotten, his true history is. How many of those sporting reproductions of his photo as a fashion statement know much about what he actually stood for and the crimes he perpetrated? For in fact, as the article’s title indicates, he was quite the “killing machine.”

I wonder whether Betancourt still finds Guevara to be a romantic and likable figure, or whether she’s brushed up on her historical awareness of the actual man and not the image.

And, in a delicious irony, some of her rescuers—who posed as aid workers and fellow guerillas in a clever operation designed to trick FARC into thinking they were confederates undertaking a transfer of the hostages to a new location—wore Che Guevara T-shirts:

As [Betancourt] looked closer, she saw that the men from the helicopter were wearing shirts emblazoned with the likeness of Che Guevara, the Argentine hero of the Cuban revolution. “I thought, this is FARC,” she said.

Placed in handcuffs, Betancourt got into the helicopter, still unaware of what was happening. “They closed the helicopter doors, the helicopter started flying and suddenly there was something happening,” she said.

“Suddenly I saw the commander who, during four years, had been at the head of our team, who so many times was so cruel and humiliated me, and I saw him on the floor naked with bound eyes.”

Then, the reality of her liberation hit home.

[Hat tip: Althouse.]

Good news from Venezuela

The New Neo Posted on by

The results are in from Venezuela’s election: Chavez wins, but loses.

That’s not a riddle; let me explain. For quite some time, Hugo Chavez has enjoyed a supermajority in Venezuela’s legislature, which has enabled him to do almost anything he wants there. Although after this election he still holds a majority, he has lost his supermajority. By uniting against Chavez, the opposition managed to thwart him. And this occurred despite the fact that Chavez’s forces had gerrymandered voting districts in their own favor.

Venezuela is hardly out of the woods, though. Chavez will continue to command a large majority for at least five more years, until the next Congressional election. And just as the United States faces a possibly dangerous, power-mad lame duck session between November and January even if Democrats are voted out, so will Chavez enjoy his supermajority in Venezuela’s legislature until the new session is seated in January. An awful lot of damage can be done in that amount of time.

Obama and reviving the youth vote

The New Neo Posted on by

Obama would like to energize the people who were instrumental in putting him over the top in 2008, the youth vote.

When a person is accustomed to having the magic touch, it’s hard for him to perceive that the gift he’s always relied on has deserted him. One of Obama’s greatest strengths was his appeal to naive youth, who were starry-eyed over his promise and his promises. But Obama now seems to be having a difficult time grasping the notion that, not only is Velma Hart exhausted, but those youths who fell in love with him two years ago aren’t so starry-eyed anymore. Reality bites, indeed.

What Obama may also be forgetting—or perhaps he never really appreciated—is that the youth vote is notoriously difficult to motivate to actually get to the polls. And the erstwhile Obamaphiles are no exception to that rule. It was 2008 that appears to have been the anomaly:

Another [University of Wisconsin] student, Madeline Coyne, 21, said she waited in line to see Obama when he spoke on campus in 2008. Now, she said, “the euphoria has dimmed down.”

Still, would she vote on Nov. 2?

“At the midterm elections?” Coyne asked. “Probably not.”

However, let’s not be too sanguine. Democratic strategists are not being altogether stupid in appealing to the youth vote. They know that Obama and the Democrats have lost the Independents, the group candidates usually need to win. The alternative path to victory is to significantly energize the base and increase turnout. And only a small increase can make a large difference in the ordinarily low-turnout midterm elections.

The key, however, is that word “ordinarily.” This is not an ordinary year. It’s the Republicans and Independents who are energized to vote and to turn out in large numbers, not the Democrats.

At least, let’s hope so.

Don’t forget The Forgotten Man

The New Neo Posted on by

Note the following, from a 2007 (that is: pre-Obama, pre-financial meltdown) review of The Forgotten Man, the Amity Shlaes book on the Great Depression:

As Shlaes emphasizes, the New Dealers tended to see business as an institution to be squeezed rather than as a source of investment, invention, and growth. Their moves against private enterprise, and their threats to regulate large sectors of the economy, created a political climate hostile to investment.

Hmmm—sound familiar?

Also this:

Having seen at first hand the danger posed by federal intervention in the economy, Willkie won a large following with books, articles, and speeches challenging the anti-business premises of the New Deal and arguing that production and growth fit the needs and wishes of Americans far better than did redistribution. The idea of America, Willkie argued, was to encourage private enterprise, not to make war on it. So compelling was his case that he persuaded the Republican convention to nominate him in 1940 to run against Roosevelt on the issue of the government’s proper role in the economy…

Throughout this volume, Shlaes makes a brief not for those on the receiving end of government programs, to whom FDR constantly appealed, but rather for the Americans who received no such benefits but had to pay for them with taxes and the erosion of their freedom. Such “forgotten” men and women, as Willkie said, wanted not just benefits from government but the liberty “to take part in our great American adventure.”

History never repeats itself, but it does rhyme. Let’s just hope it diverges in 2012, when Obama— unlike FDR—is defeated.

Kerry: the electorate’s too stupid and uninformed to understand…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and appreciate how wonderful the Democrats are.

And we were, fortunately, just too stupid and uninformed to understand your overwhelming superiority back in 2004.

I like the first comment to the article, which goes like this:

Not all of us are bright enough to be C students at Yale, John. Nor are we smart enough to marry a deceased colleague’s billionaire widow. Please excuse us for being so dumb.

America doesn’t want to eat its vegetables

The New Neo Posted on by

broccoli.gif

Lady Bird Johnson was out to beautify America by planting flowers. Nancy Reagan wanted us to Just Say No to drugs. And Michelle Obama would like Americans to eat more healthfully and nutritiously, and to include more fresh vegetables in their diet.

A laudable goal, no doubt. But a long-elusive one, as the above cartoon, from the New Yorker during the 20s, shows.

Now, I happen to love vegetables. I eat quite a few every day, and my favorite cuisine—Middle Eastern—features them in many delicious guises. I’ve even written a tribute to some unaccountably neglected ones.

But then, I’m a little weird, and atypical in that respect. Most people just aren’t all that interested:

This month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a comprehensive nationwide behavioral study of fruit and vegetable consumption. Only 26 percent of the nation’s adults eat vegetables three or more times a day, it concluded. (And no, that does not include French fries.)

These results fell far short of health objectives set by the federal government a decade ago. The amount of vegetables Americans eat is less than half of what public health officials had hoped. Worse, it has barely budged since 2000.

“It is disappointing,” said Dr. Jennifer Foltz, a pediatrician who helped compile the report. She, like other public health officials dedicated to improving the American diet, concedes that perhaps simply telling people to eat more vegetables isn’t working.

Many people have bad associations with vegetables, especially the canned or overcooked army-green variety. And fresh vegetables are extraordinarily expensive.

As the articles says, Doritos are a lot simpler. And anyway, some people would say they contain a sort-of veggie—or is it a grain?—corn.

If people won’t listen to reason and they won’t listen to pleading, what will they listen to? If this NYC proposal to fine added salt in restaurants is any indication, the nanny state may decide some day to encourage us to eat vegetables by taxing or fining “junk” foods such as Doritos that crowd them out of the diet.

The NY Times article isn’t saying exactly how this might be done. But this quote indicates that something like the anti-salt initiative would not be outside the realm of possibility:

But clear guidance probably isn’t enough. Health officials now concede that convincing a nation that shuns vegetables means making vegetables more affordable and more available.

“We have to make the healthy choice the easy choice,” Dr. Foltz said. And the choices need to become ingrained.

As Nurse Nancy Pelosi said the other day, the projected savings that will finance HCR are expected to come from preventive care and the health benefits it will supposedly create. Since preventive care rests to no small extent on lifestyle changes, and since it’s clear that the “guidance” of education “is not enough,” this could pave the way for other measures. Wonder what they will be?

How the Senate races stack up

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a recent roundup of Senate races and how they stand.

And here’s some other news from Ohio that can’t possibly warm the cockles of Obama’s heart. Remember how close and how important Ohio was in ’04, determining the outcome of the presidential election? And then in 2008, Ohio went to Obama by four percentage points. But Ohio isn’t very happy with him—or the Democrats—now.

Axelrod and Emanuel…

The New Neo Posted on by

…are apparently leaving for Chicago soon.

Axelrod will be in charge of Obama’s re-election campaign from afar, and Emanuel plans to run for mayor of the city. Robert Gibbs is rumored to be Axelrod’s replacement as Senior Adviser.

Axelrod and Gibbs are about equally loathsome, and probably quite interchangeable. But for all the criticism leveled at Emanuel, he was my favorite in the Obama inner circle. Not just because of his ballet background, but because he seemed to be the only one with a grip on public opinion, and how far Obama could go without alienating the American people.

With Emanuel gone and the completely tone-deaf Gibbs elevated to a higher position than before, it is likely that Obama will become even more disconnected from the reality of voter reaction, if such a thing be possible. That could mean he might swing ever further to the left, which would at least have the benefit of making his bid for re-election even less likely to succeed.

Of course, it might depend on who Obama picks to fill Emanuel’s Chief of Staff position. I haven’t seen too many rumors, but Doug Shoen’s speculation that it will be an insider would appear to ring true, if previous actions of Obama are any guide:

For Obama, the choice comes down to promoting a trusted aide familiar with the rhythms of the White House or, in a bit of a gamble, tapping an outside candidate with the stature and independence to tell the president candidly what’s working and what’s not.

“The candidates that I’ve seen floated are good, decent people, but internal candidates,” said Douglas Schoen, a former pollster for President Clinton, touting the second option. “What the president needs and would benefit most from is someone who has independent credibility and can just walk into the Oval Office and say, ‘No, Mr. President.’ ”

Could the new candidate be Denis McDonough, as rumored here? If so, this certainly doesn’t sound like someone who’ll be saying “no” to the president very often:

The two men are close . “Obama and McDonough seem to idolize each other,” a source told the Chicago Sun Times. “It’s safe to say they are very close. Adoration may be in the mix.”

Ick.

Coates’s testimony on the Black Panther case

The New Neo Posted on by

Today former Department of Justice voting rights section chief Christopher Coates testified before the Civil Rights Commission about the Black Panther voter intimidation case. This is what Scott at Powerline had to say on the matter:

Coates’s testimony is a bombshell. It exposes a couple of Obama administration scandals at once. One involves the Obama administration’s attempt to cover up the rationale for burying the case against the NBPP. The other involves the Obama administration’s support for the racially based administration of justice.

If this is (or should be) a bombshell, so far it has landed in the MSM not with a bang but a whimper. I just did a search for Coates’s name at the NY Times, the Washington Post, and the LA Times. Nada, zip, zilch—crickets chirping. We’ll see if this ever gets covered by the non-conservative press at all.

[NOTE: Please read Ace’s lengthier discussion of the case. PJ has posted Coates’s testimony in full, plus this article on the subject.]

To Nancy Pelosi: I do not think that word means…

The New Neo Posted on by

…what you think it means:

Pelosi’s word, by the way, is “momentum.” I think she’s using it to mean, “nowhere to go but up.” The phrase occurs around 8:10 here:I listened to the whole thing, quite fascinated with Pelosi’s arguments that HCR is wonderful, that it will be paid for by all the savings coming from preventive health care (which she seems to think the HCR bill invented), and that those amputation-hungry doctors will be stopped in their tracks..

Pelosi seems to either have a complete lack of understanding of how insurance works, or she pretends to incomprehension for strategic reasons. Which it is I do not know. But if a person buys the idea that insurance companies set rates capriciously or “frivolously” (another word that may not mean what she thinks it means), then I guess that person might think that Pelosi and Congress have the right and the ability to dictate those companies to ratchet their rates down even while raising and extending coverage—and that said companies will be able to do so without going bankrupt.

Or maybe, for Pelosi, bankruptcy is part of the plan.

I used the word “ratchet” deliberately because Nancy Pelosi has long reminded me of Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. That impression has not been dispelled by listening to the above interview. Those frivolous exploitative insurance companies had better take their medicine or else—or else they’ll be left out of the exchanges (a word that sounds vaguely Orwellian, or is it Huxleyan?).