Sunday roundup: absurdities abound in Obamaworld

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s Mark Steyn’s succinct take on McChrystal’s plight:

Stanley McChrystal is a liberal who voted for Obama and banned Fox News from his HQ TV. Which may at least partly explain how he became the first U.S. general to be lost in combat while giving an interview to Rolling Stone: They’ll be studying that one in war colleges around the world for decades.

The rest of Steyn’s column tries to answer that age-old question about Obama, “Who is this guy? ” On this forum we’ve pretty much resolved that, for now, as “at least knave, and perhaps both knave and fool.” But others are still attempting to puzzle it out.

For example, re the unused skimmers in the Gulf oil spill:

Sen. Lemieux found the president unengaged, and uninformed. “He doesn’t seem to know the situation about foreign skimmers and domestic skimmers,” reported the senator.

He doesn’t seem to know, and he doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t care. “It can seem that at the heart of Barack Obama’s foreign policy is no heart at all,” wrote Richard Cohen in The Washington Post last week. “For instance, it’s not clear that Obama is appalled by China’s appalling human-rights record. He seems hardly stirred about continued repression in Russia.”

I dunno, but it seems to me that all of these otherwise-inexplicable stances can be explained quite simply by positing an over-arching philosophy on Obama’s part that is hostile to liberty, capitalism, and the US, and friendly to socialism around the world. What’s so complicated and mysterious about that?

Nothing, except that the mind finds it difficult to wrap itself around the idea that this would be true of the president of the United States. And then, to voice that idea is to ally oneself with fringe elements such as Glenn Beck, and other assorted and sundry supposed-wackos.

Even Steyn stops short of such a conclusion in his piece, expressing merely the idea that Obama is an opportunistic narcissist. And while that certainly appears true, it is not inconsistent with a commitment to Marxist ideology.

In other news, we have Mike Huckabee saying that he’s the best challenger for Obama in 2012. If that is so, then heaven help the Republican Party, and the US.

And then there’s Joe Biden. There’s always Joe Biden:

The following, however, can’t really be blamed on Obama. So we’ll just have to blame Bush, I guess. Or perhaps Beyonce herself, for whose fashion choice here I have no ready explanation:

beyonce.jpg

One year later: in memory of FredHJr

The New Neo Posted on by

It hardly seems possible that a year has passed since the tragic and untimely death of FredHJr, one of the most memorable and prolific commenters here. His loss to this community is a great one, and I miss him still. We could sorely use a large dose of his wit and wisdom.

The loss his family feels is far greater, and I am thinking of them today and hoping they have found comfort in the memory of his love and faith.

And now I will reprise some words I wrote last year when I first heard of Fred’s death:

Even though none of us actually met Fred in the real world, most of the regulars here knew FredHjr as I knew him””a brilliant mind containing knowledge of unusual depth and breadth, and demonstrating a rare ability to articulate his thoughts with precision, grace, and logic; a staunch patriot and passionate defender of liberty who never pulled his punches; a “changer” who had been a Marxist in his youth and held a vast storehouse of expertise on how the Left thinks and operates; a seeker of truth with an almost inexhaustible interest in the world around him; and a man of strong religious faith and great and abiding love for his family.

The news of his extremely untimely and tragic death comes as a great shock. It’s also a reminder that people here can become an important part of our lives; we feel as though we know them, even though our knowledge of them is only of the virtual sort. But minds meeting minds is a very powerful thing nonetheless.

[NOTE: Here is Fred’s obituary.]

The WaPo ombudsman is terribly terribly sorry Weigel got caught

The New Neo Posted on by

If you take a look at the last paragraph of the piece in which WaPo ombudsman Andy Alexander tackles the Weigel imbroglio, it’s hard to escape the notion seems that he places most of the blame for the entire episode on the person or persons from Journolist who ratted Weigel out.

After quoting the lament of Ezra Klein—creator of the listserv, who has closed it down in response to what happened to Weigel—that such discussions can be “dangerous” because they lull members into thinking that they are private when they are not, Alexander adds:

Alas, it took only one listserv participant to bundle up Weigel’s archived comments and start leaking them outside the group. The result is that Weigel lost his job. But the bigger loss is The Post’s standing among conservatives.

Alas, indeed. Clearly, Alexander would have preferred that Weigel and the WaPo have been allowed to go on pretending that Weigel was able to give conservatives a fair and objective shake, while remaining a man filled with hatred for them who saw fit to freely spew his bile only in the comfort of a (supposedly) private club of like-minded folks.

Alexander defends the WaPo by saying that it vetted Weigel as it does any of its writers, by looking at his published work and checking his references. Alexander quotes WaPo managing editor Raju Narisetti, who oversees the paper’s website, as saying:

But we’re living in an era when maybe we need to add a level…It may be in our interests to ask potential reporters: ”˜In private… have you expressed any opinions that would make it difficult for you to do your job.’

Again, it appears that the emphasis is on avoiding detection and not leaving a paper or cyber trail, not on insuring an actual objectivity of thought. And perhaps that makes sense, because true objectivity in politically interested people is most often a polite (or impolite) fiction, very difficult and rare—although newspapers and their reporters would like to pretend differently, at least to a gullible public. Far better, however, (as Alexander ponders at another point in his column, in response to a suggestion by Dan Gainor, a VP at the conservative Media Research Center) to acknowledge bias if it cannot be avoided.

But even then, Alexander doesn’t get it (or pretends not to). He writes [emphasis mine]:

The Post might consider two: one conservative with a[n] ideological bent, and another who can cover the conservative movement in the role of a truly neutral reporter.

And who, pray tell, might that latter person be? Practically no one, and it does no good to pretend otherwise. Far better to either drop all pretense of objectivity and identify the paper as liberal or conservative, and write accordingly. Or, if the best approximation of objectivity is desired, then attempt to hire a roughly equal number of equivalently excellent conservative and liberal journalists. Fat chance, right?

But either solution would blow the cover of the MSM itself, which for the most part continues to attempt to maintain its increasingly threadbare facade of objectivity.

[NOTE: Neil Patel of The Daily Caller asks a pertinent question:

Why did Klein and other JournoList contributors who work for the Washington Post stand by and allow their newspaper’s readers to be conned into thinking that Weigel was an objective reporter with no axe to grind when they knew for a fact that wasn’t true?

Perhaps Patel’s question was rhetorical, and he knows the answer already. But if not, I can offer one up right now: it is standard operating procedure. Yes, there are opinion journalists on the left, such as Klein himself, who are upfront about writing from the liberal point of view. But the entire MSM in its present form rests on feigning (wink, wink) an objectivity that does not exist in its reportage.

And one other thing—how could Weigel have thought his emails were inviolate, even on a liberal listserv? It’s another example of a bizarre amount of naivete.]

Off the record?

The New Neo Posted on by

If this is true, then McChrystal should have lost his job for an excess of misplaced and shockingly naive trust, if nothing else:

A U.S. military spokesman in Kabul, Air Force Lt. Col. Edward T. Sholtis, acknowledged that Hastings, like other reporters who have interviewed McChrystal over the past year, was not required to sign written ground rules. “We typically manage ground rules on a verbal basis,” Sholtis said. “We trust in the professionalism of the people we’re working with.”

That was mistake number 2. Mistake number 1 was the entire idea of giving a reporter from Rolling Stone that sort of off-the-record access in the first place. Or perhaps that should read “any reporter.”

It reminds me of the story of…oh, let’s just listen to the song:

Spambot of the day

The New Neo Posted on by

Verbose, reflective spambot poised on the brink of change:

“It seems as though you’ve captured the right nitty-gritty of the state of affairs at hand. While many another look to have missed the crucial detail of it, when it was expressed before is plain and consice. Clearly I don”t sounding out that I harmonise along all points; yet, you did afforded me cause to ponder many of the charges that I believed that I carried as steadfast beliefs in that attentivenesses. Well stated, and it is now time for someone like myself to ponder a bit more along a couple of the outstanding concepts. All At Once I have to think you have did a job well done..”

Weigel resigns

The New Neo Posted on by

I haven’t covered this story so far, but for those who have been following it, the news is that Weigel has resigned from his WaPo post. Ace offers a great deal of background. Here’s more.

There’s an awful lot of this resignation stuff going around lately, isn’t there?

[ADDENDUM: On further reflection, I’d say that Weigel makes someone like Keith Olbermann look good. At least the latter is up-front about his viciousness and his biases. Weigel was pretending to be something he was not, and then he had the stupidity to trust that the emails relating his real feelings would never leave the confines of the liberal clique in which they were originally circulated.]

Hanson on Obama’s hubris/nemesis

The New Neo Posted on by

Another must-read column by Victor Davis Hanson.

And, on a slightly different (although related) topic, here’s an interesting comment to the Hanson piece, from Jason S. on June 24 at 11: 32 AM. Its subject is political change, and it gives me hope:

I wonder how someone with such thin skin would react when seeing the faded Obama bumper stickers, with slogans that seem so silly in retrospect, being removed from the vehicles of embarrassed saps who fell for this empty suit. My liberal parents, who were so eager to talk about Obama until recently, even going so far as to hang a picture of him in the office, now appear a little sheepish when the topic arises. Katrina is no longer remembered as a natural disaster exacerbated by Bush but is instead used as a gauge for the “unconscionable ineptitude” of the great experiment known as Obama. Americans were arrogant to think we could elect “anyone but Bush”, without regard for qualifications, and maintain our status in the world (not perceived status by pining, disgruntled Europeans but real status, measured by influence and effectiveness). My parents are hopelessly liberal but they love their country, and I don’t think they were quite ready for the postAmerican world Obama has tried to foist upon us. The logic that comes with being liberal politically but stuck in the real world without an ivy league degree or political connections, is beginning to open their eyes. They cannot seem to reconcile between the pretty words that sound so lovely being relayed from the teleprompter and the events happening in the real world. Buyer’s remorse? No, it’s much stronger than that. My folks, God love ’em, are actually beginning to look deep inside themselves and question their long-held beliefs. Knowing them as well as I do and how closely they have held these beliefs for so long, I sense that there are many more like them who are beginning to acknowledge, if only on a subconscious level, the disconnect between the promises of those pretty words and the dimal, real-world effects of the political philosophy behind them.

Disclosing the Disclose Act

The New Neo Posted on by

So much bad stuff is happening every day that bills such as this one tend to slip in under the wire without much fanfare. It was just passed by the House, giving the Citizens United decision that “special” Democrat touch that we’ve grown to know and love.

Democrats favoring big unions? Check.

Democrats passing a bill supported only by Democrats (the sole Republican exceptions are Cao of LA, who hails from a Democrat district, and Castle of DE, likewise), and not even all of those (thirty-six defections)? Check.

Democrats introducing and passing an important bill with little advance notice and almost no debate? Check.

The financial overhaul bill: brought to you by Dodd and Frank

The New Neo Posted on by

I hope that this isn’t another bill we’ll have to pass to find out what’s in it. But that appears to be the case.

The much-touted compromise that’s finally been reached is an agreement mostly among Democrats. A spokesperson for Republicans, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, says:

“This legislation is a failure on both counts,” Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) said in a statement that denounced the compromise as failing to address “shoddy underwriting practices” or problems with the government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. “It will not encourage much-needed stability and confidence in our financial markets. It will not significantly reduce systemic risk in our financial sector.”

Here are some of those rumored changes involving derivatives:

…[F]inancial houses could continue interest rate, currency, gold and silver derivatives trading, as well as to hold derivatives that offset balance sheet risk. They are still required to “spin off only their riskiest derivatives trades, including particular forms of credit-default swaps, which are complex financial bets that exacerbated the financial crisis…In addition, banks will have two years to spin-off their derivatives trading, and can retain the operations under independently capitalized affiliates. This latter might do some good if it keeps the riskiest products off the balance sheets of the biggest banks ”” effectively creating a good bank / bad bank situation in advance…

And oops—getting back to my first sentence—there’s this, from a “teary-eyed” Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who sponsored the bill and whose name it bears, along with that of Barney Frank (there goes that word “ironic” again, because both are widely felt to have been instrumental in creating, supporting, and defending many of the conditions that led to the meltdown in the first place, especially the Fannie/Freddie excesses) [emphasis mine]:

It’s a great moment. I’m proud to have been here…No one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we’ve done something that has been needed for a long time.

We may not know how it will work, but the Wall Street Journal has helpfully provided a guide to its best guess at the provisions. I am not one who believes in completely unfettered laissez-faire capitalism, but I must say that I am extremely distrustful of the federal government’s (much less any bill designed by Chris Dodd and Barney Frank) ability to regulate financial institutions in a way that will not make matters worse. The fact that this bill ignores Fannie/Freddie does nothing to allay my fears.

If you take a look at the comments to the WSJ article, you’ll see that many remark on the latter omission, plus a chilling effect this bill might have on the mortgage market in general. I have no way to evaluate predictions such as this one by commenter “David Eyke,” for example, but those of you with greater expertise can talk amongst yourselves:

“PRE-EMPTION: Would allow states to impose their own stricter consumer protection laws on national banks. ”

This will make national mid-tier banks obsolete eventually. They won’t be able to afford to comply with disparate laws in fifty states in twenty years. The result will be we will be left with a few massive banks with the resources to comply with disparate rules and … credit unions.

Time to sell 5/3 and others of that size range. In time, our money supply will be almost completely dependant [sic] on four super banks.

There’s more in this article in The Street. One point it mentions is that the bill would re-institute a version of the Glass-Steagall rule (the so-called “Volcker rule”)—something I’ve suggested several times on this blog. So I can hardly be critical, can I?

However, if Joshua Brown is correct, I can, because he says the Volcker Rule in the Dodd-Frank bill is Glass-Steagall Lite:

The “teeth” of the Volcker Rule have been kicked in and there are enough holes elsewhere for White & Case to exploit on behalf of their clientele til the cows come home. The Dems unanimously voted for it. Interestingly, Republicans all voted against it. They didn’t think the final version was strict enough or that it did enough to prevent Too Big To Fail.

Hmmm—sounds like the two parties have exchanged roles this time, hasn’t it?

But I’ll leave the last word (for the moment, anyway) to the always-insightful Richard Fernandez:

Financial risk cannot be legislated away. Like energy, once in existence risk cannot be destroyed. It can only be moved around; assumed by someone. When it assumed for a fee the risk transfer is called insurance. When it is assumed by the taxpayer the result is something like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Yet public or private the it remains in the system for so long as the transactions which gave rise to it are allowed. It is the distribution of risks that is affected by the bill. In that sense the spin-offs on derivatives trading mandated by Blanche Lincoln do not reduce total risk within the system. They simply prohibit banks from assuming it, assuming they do not simply reallow under other color through loopholes.

Ordering with Amazon

The New Neo Posted on by

Back when I first announced my affiliation with Amazon and then placed the advertising widgets on the blog (see right sidebar), several people wanted to know whether Kindle books were included. At the time, they were not. But I’m happy to report that they now are. So if you want to click through on the widgets and order Kindle books or Kindle devices through this blog, please be my guest!

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.