Obama’s approval rating and race

The New Neo Posted on by

The latest Gallup poll on Obama’s job approval rating among whites, blacks, and Hispanics highlights the continuing huge differential in opinion between whites and blacks: 38% of whites presently approve of the job Obama is doing while 88% of blacks approve. Hispanics hover in-between, and are closer to the approval figure for whites than for blacks.

Here’s the chart:

obamaapprovalrace.gif

At the beginning of the Obama administration, the three groups started out not all that far apart from each other: 88% job approval from blacks, 74% from Hispanics, and 66% from whites. But a fall-off in approval from the highs of the earlier months of Obama’s term of office is clear for all three groups. For blacks, the slope of the drop is very small—from consistent highs in the low 90s to 88%—but it nevertheless exists. For Hispanics, the drop is steeper—from a starting point of 74% and a high shortly thereafter of 84%, the figure has gone more or less steadily downward to the present 54%, a rather startlingly low number considering how assiduously Obama has courted and catered to Hispanics lately (could it possibly be that many of our Hispanic citizens aren’t so all-fired happy about Obama’s championing of their illegal brethren?).

The slope for whites is the steepest of all. It is the only group that has experienced a continual drop, with only a single minor 1-point uptick along the way. Down, down, down, it’s dropped, at a steady pace that can be graphed almost as a straight line pointing southward, a sort of long ramp.

Did I say “straight line pointing southward?” That’s the shape of Obama’s overall job approval rating, as well:

obamaapprovaloverall.gif

What does it all mean? It seems significant to me that Obama’s job approval ratings don’t seem to have the up and down fluctuations that might reflect approval or disapproval of the policy du jour. Does the steady downward slope in all groups represent a far more basic and global disillusionment with this particular president?

Robert Gibbs and Obama—they feel your pain…

The New Neo Posted on by

…not.

Asked what it means that voters in Missouri would vote against the federal mandate, Gibbs said: “Nothing.”

As I wrote last Saturday:

…[Obama] ignores the wishes of the American people, something neither FDR nor Clinton would ever do…Obama sees the public as his enemy, a stumbling block that he needs to get around if he is ever to reach his goals. For Obama, the public is an entity to deceive and manipulate if possible, and he regards it contemptuously rather than respectfully. He no longer needs to inspire people. He just needs to exercise power over them.

And the despicable Gibbs is the perfect mouthpiece for that sentiment.

Missouri says no to individual mandate

The New Neo Posted on by

Proposition C was roundly defeated in Missouri yesterday, with 71% of voters saying they don’t need no steenking Obamacare individual mandate.

The results may be a bit less overwhelming than one might think, however, because (a) it’s unclear whether this will have any legal effect at all; (b) turnout was relatively light; and (c) more voters seem to have been drawn to the ballot on the Republican side because the Missouri Republican primary was more competitive than the Democratic one.

Since Missouri has an open primary in which voters are not restricted to voting for their own party, it’s hard to say what the breakdown of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents was among the voters yesterday. What we do know is that about 65% of the participants voted on the Republican ballot. The 71% overall pro-Prop C figure means that a significant number of those voting on the Democrat side must have approved of the measure, as well.

We also can assume that the vote for Proposition C yesterday was evidence that there are a lot of disgruntled ex-Obama voters right now in Missouri. In the 2008 election, McCain won Missouri, but only by a hair: 49.4% to 49.3%. Missouri’s nickname is the “show-me” state; it seems Obama has shown them quite a bit in the last year and a half, and they’re not liking what they see.

[NOTE: Other states are planning similar votes on the individual mandate. Legal scholars seem to be saying such states’ rights protest votes are unenforceable and merely symbolic. Although I’ve seen many articles that mention this, I’ve seen no actual discussions on the merits, nor links to such discussions. If more states go the Missouri route, I would imagine we’ll see more debate on the subject.]

Obama the great bamboozler

The New Neo Posted on by

One of the most perverse things about Obama is that, when he’s trying to get tough with the opposition, what he says about them is often the best clue to what he’s actually doing, or planning to do.

Case in point—his latest declaration about the Republicans (video here):

…[T]hey’re betting on amnesia. That’s what they’re counting on. They’re counting on that you all forgot. They think that they can run the okey-doke on you. Bamboozle you.

Like many of Obama’s most revealing remarks, these were made at a Democratic fundraiser, this time in Atlanta. And the word “bamboozle” is an especially nice touch, harking back to a famous scene in Spike Lee’s film “Malcolm X,” a reference that would most likely be recognized by a great many people in his Atlanta audience.

I said the speech appears in the film; Malcolm X never actually said the words in real life. But since movies about history have largely become a substitute for history, these cinematic words may be more famous than any the historical figure of Malcolm X actually uttered. The movie context was a speech made by Malcolm in Harlem, on the subject of the white man. Rest assured that Obama (who has used these phrases quite a few times to describe his enemies) is aware of the racial code he’s employing, and what it means to many of the black people in his audience.

Here’s Spike Lee’s version of Malcolm X:

So I have to stand here today as what I was when I was born: A black man.

Before there was any such thing as a Republican or a Democrat, we were black.

Before there was any such thing as a Mason or an Elk, we were black.

Before there was any such thing as a Jew or a Christian, we were black people!

In fact, before there was any such place as America, we were black!

And after America has long passed from the scene, there will still be black people.

I’m gonna tell you like it really is. Every election year these politicians are sent up here to pacify us! They’re sent here and setup here by the White Man!

This is what they do!

They send drugs in Harlem down here to pacify us!

They send alcohol down here to pacify us!

They send prostitution down here to pacify us!

Why you can’t even get drugs in Harlem without the White Man’s permission!

You can’t get prostitution in Harlem without the White Man’s permission!

You can’t get gambling in Harlem without the White Man’s permission!

Every time you break the seal on that liquor bottle, that’s a Government seal you’re breaking!

Oh, I say and I say it again, ya been had!

Ya been took!

Ya been hoodwinked!

Bamboozled!

Led astray!

Run amok!

This is what He does….

And this is what Obama does—sows the seeds of racial hatred while maintaining a facade of plausible deniability (the following footage of Obama is from 2008).

[NOTE: Obama has been called on this before, during the 2008 campaign, when he used “bamboozled” and “hoodwinked” repeatedly to describe the actions of opponents (see also this).]

The GOP, the Fourteenth Amendment, and those anchor babies

The New Neo Posted on by

Mitch McConnell has stirred up a hornet’s nest on the left (see, for example, the comments here) by suggesting that we should hold hearings on the question of whether every child born in the US, even if his/her parents have come here illegally, should be entitled to full US citizenship.

The left’s response has been the predictable hue and cry that the racist GOP wants to repeal the 14th Amendment. But the Fourteenth Amendment was not meant to explicitly grant citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants—its purpose was to make sure that former slaves were not blocked from receiving citizenship. The operative words are in the so-called citizenship clause, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The history of the clause also includes the following:

There are varying interpretations of the original intent of Congress, based on statements made during the congressional debate over the amendment. During the original debate over the amendment Senator Jacob M. Howard of Michigan””the author of the Citizenship Clause””described the clause as excluding Indians, who maintain their tribal ties, and “persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.” He was supported by other senators, including Edgar Cowan, Reverdy Johnson, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lyman Trumbull…

The provisions in Section 1 have been interpreted to the effect that children born on United States soil, with very few exceptions, are U.S. citizens. This type of guarantee””legally termed jus soli, or “right of the territory””” does not exist in most of Europe, Asia or the Middle East, although it is part of English common law and is common in the Americas. The phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” indicates that there are some exceptions to the universal rule that birth on U.S. soil automatically grants citizenship.

The Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868. At the time, it could not have been meant to apply to illegal immigrants, for the simple reason that in 1868 there were few if any restraints on immigration, and therefore virtually all immigration was legal. Back then, the situation re immigration was exceedingly different from today’s. Unlike now, much of the country was still largely unsettled and immigrants were greatly desired to facilitate expansion, especially in the west.

Immigration to this country had not yet reached the enormous levels it achieved later in the 19th century and the early part of the twentieth. Most of the immigrants prior to that came from western Europe, and were considered to be part of the same cultural groups that had founded this country. The very un-PC thought that the US should strive to preserve that cultural mix as much as possible was commonplace then, and was also responsible for some of the laws that were passed later in the 19th century that put brakes and limits on legal immigration.

For example, just to name a few, one of the first was the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act; then later on a series of quota systems based on national origins were enacted between 1917 and 1924; more quotas were established in 1952. These laws setting limits based on national origins remained firmly in place until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished the national quotas and replaced them with a general quota instead.

That’s a very brief overview of a very complex system. The most important points in terms of the issues at hand are that, when the Fourteenth Amendment was passed, virtually all immigration was legal; and then afterward (and until quite recently) the bulk of immigration could be controlled and monitored much more easily than now because it occurred by ocean vessel, either from Europe or Asia. The authors of the Fourteenth Amendment clearly never envisioned the situation we are facing today, when the country reaches from sea to sea, the vast influx of immigrants are illegal and come across the Mexican border clandestinely, some are dealing in drugs and violence, the federal government has no interest in policing the situation, the citizens already here are outraged about it, and an unknown number of these illegal Mexican immigrants are alleged to be coming here while pregnant for the express purpose of taking advantage of the Citizenship Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment and having so-called “anchor babies.”

[NOTE: The history of immigration from Mexico to this country is a long and fascinating one, with a push-pull between the perceived need for laborers (mainly agricultural ones) and the need to control the influx of them—how many to allow in legally, how long they should be allowed to stay, and what to do with illegals. For example, many Mexican workers whose illegal presence here had been previously tolerated in times of plenty were deported during the Great Depression. The Bracero program, which later established rules for Mexican workers to come here temporarily and legally during WWII and a time of labor shortages in this country, was eliminated in the 60s. Then the influx of illegals began to accelerate (with a few reversals such as 1954’s Operation Wetback), ultimately reaching the huge numbers we have today.]

Another wedding

The New Neo Posted on by

It probably did not escape your notice that Chelsea Clinton got married this past weekend.

The bride and groom and her parents seemed happy. I’m all for that.

And I really don’t care how much they spent on the wedding, as long as it was their own money and not mine. I’m just that big a capitalist.

But it got me thinking. And when I think, I Google. And when I Google, I find this:

hillbillwedding.jpg

And this:

hillbillwedding2.jpg

The House, ethics, and race

The New Neo Posted on by

Four members of the House of Representatives are being investigated on ethics violations, and two (Maxine Waters of California and Charles Rangel of New York) seem intent on defending themselves in public trials before the House ethics committee.

All four are Democrats and all four are African-Americans. This Politico piece focuses on the resultant inevitable question:

The question of whether black lawmakers are now being singled out for scrutiny has been simmering throughout the 111th Congress, with the Office of Congressional Ethics a focal point of the concerns. At one point earlier this year, all eight lawmakers under formal investigation by the House ethics committee, including Rangel and Waters, were black Democrats. All those investigations originated with the OCE, which can make recommendations ”” but take no final actions ”” on such cases.

There’s a “dual standard, one for most members and one for African-Americans,” said one member of the Congressional Black Caucus, speaking on condition of anonymity.

We are becoming exceedingly familiar with this sort of defense based on accusations of racism. It’s not new, either; for quite some time, whenever there appears to be an over- or under-abundance of a minority in a category deemed undesirable—whether it be criminals, underachieving students, or terrorists—the cries of “discrimination” go up.

The idea behind such a defense (usually mounted by liberals/progressives) is that, if ethnic and racial groups were actually treated exactly equally and discrimination did not exist, all the races and/or ethnicities would be distributed in every category (bad or good) in the same percentages as their distributions in the general population. Achievement would be equal and representational, job hiring likewise, and criminal and other bad behavior would likewise be equal, among the groups.

To believe otherwise would require people either to believe that there are some innate differences between groups, or to believe that there are cultural differences or other environmental differences other than victimization and racism that can account for the variation, or perhaps a bit of both. The environmental explanation is at least marginally more PC than the innate explanation, but neither are acceptable (or useful) to those who prefer to play the racial victim card.

But life is not like that, and distributions do not follow the liberal playbook. And when life does not follow the PC rules, the explanation at hand is racism on the part of those doing the selecting, whether it be the employer, the lender, the teacher—or the House ethics committee.

What is the House ethics committee—otherwise known as the Office of Congressional Standards—and who is on it? To avoid charges of political bias, this particular committee is composed (unlike others) of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, and none of the current ten members are African-Americans, which of course is hardly evidence of bias. At any rate, in the cases of the four black House members currently charged or under investigation, it’s not the House ethics committee that started the whole thing. The charges against two—Rangel and Waters—originated with another body, the “OCE” mentioned in the Politico quote above. And the investigations of the alleged offenses committed by Weeks and Jesse Jackson Jr. originated in criminal probes by the Justice Department (Weeks was caught up during an investigation of some Queens, NY politicians, and Jackson was implicated in the Blagojevich case, hardly an operation that can be said to have been aimed at an African-American target).

So, what is this Office of Congressional Ethics OCE, otherwise known as the Office of Congressional Ethics?:

[It] is an independent, non-partisan entity charged with reviewing allegations of misconduct against members of the House of Representatives and their staff and, when appropriate, referring matters to the United States House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (commonly referred to as the Ethics Committee).

The OCE was created by House Resolution 895 of the 110th Congress in March 2008. Governed by an eight-person Board of Directors, Members of the OCE Board are private citizens and cannot serve as members of Congress or work for the federal government.

The OCE is an entity created by the Democratic Congress during the last months of the Bush presidency. There are eight current members, four from each party, most of them former House members: David Skaggs, Porter Goss, Yvonne Burke, Jay Eagen, Karan English, William Frenzel, Allison Hayward, Abner Mikva. Two names seem especially interesting to me in terms of the racism charge: Burke, an African-American former House member from California who has recently been active in local Los Angeles politics (and who faced her own more minor and local ethics accusations in 2007); and Mikva of Chicago, a judge and former House member who was an early mentor and fervent supporter of one Barack Obama. Neither would be especially vulnerable to charges of anti-black racism.

No, it would appear that the reason the four House members are under suspicion at present is that they have done things that appear suspicious. And, should they be found guilty, one might indeed wonder why it is that African-Americans appear to be disproportionately involved in these sort of violations.

My personal opinion is that the racial aspects are rather incidental, and that other factors are more likely to be at work. A great many black House members are Democrats from highly urban areas, districts in which winning the Democratic nomination is tantamount to winning the whole shebang. Once they become the nominees, they are elected, and ordinarily can continue to be re-elected quite easily as long as they might choose to run. This is a situation that tends to resemble what used to be known as machine politics, and which especially lends itself to corruption. (For example, Chicago politics has become practically synonymous with this sort of thing.)

White politicians are by no means immune to the temptations of political corruption, and many are the mighty who have fallen. What is unavailable to them, however, is the defense that they have been falsely accused because of racism.

[NOTE: A previous effort to rein in the OCE was mounted by Marcia Fudge and nineteen other members of the Congressional Black Caucus back in June (and by the way, can you imagine if there was a parallel group called the Congressional White Caucus?). There has also been a fair amount of bipartisan criticism of the OCE—perhaps because both parties feel potentially threatened by its power to investigate them. Before the OCE was established, the House ethics committee was the name of the game, and it often appears to have downplayed Congress members’ violations:

Yet even Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) acknowledges that the House may have to take a second look at the powers of this outside ethics office, which has the authority to publicize its inquiries, unlike the formal House ethics panel, which is much more secretive.

The [June 2010 CBC] resolution would curtail the OCE’s power to comment publicly on cases that it dismisses; preclude the release of OCE findings if the ethics committee dismisses a complaint; prevent the ethics committee from receiving reports from the OCE in the 60-day window before a primary or general election involving an accused member and require public complaints to come from witnesses with firsthand knowledge of alleged wrongdoing.

Under current rules, the OCE can initiate investigations into lawmakers and aides based on news reports or complaints ”” even anonymous ones ”” from the public. It can recommend that the House ethics committee, a bipartisan panel composed of members, undertake its own investigation into a matter. If the OCE makes such a recommendation and the ethics committee dismisses the complaint, the OCE can release its full report to the public.

Pelosi said that the CBC suggestions to curtail the OCE will be deferred till the beginning of next session; I guess by then the swamp won’t need as much draining. But the Waters/Rangel scandals and possible trials (which could occur this fall, before the 2010 election) are the sort of thing the CBC and Pelosi might indeed wish to prevent in the future.]

[NOTE II: In further news today, House whip and Democrat of South Carolina James E. Clyburn:

…said it was inevitable that some political opponents would try to turn the ethics questions into a race issue. “Those Tea Party people that showed up at the health care debate, they will not hesitate for one moment to racialize something,” said Mr. Clyburn, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. “They did, and they will.”

Ah yes, those racists Tea Partiers, the carefully-constructed false meme that keeps on giving. Mr. Clyburn, of course, would never stoop so low as to racialize anything.]

The chance of Obama’s resigning…

The New Neo Posted on by

…some time during his first term is virtually nil, IMHO, although it’s been discussed at times in the comments section of this blog and others.

I don’t think there’s even a small chance of his resigning from office before the next election, unless he is about to be impeached and conviction looks absolutely inevitable, or something equally devastating and politically destructive seems very likely to happen to him. I don’t foresee the impeachment/conviction scenario happening either, even if Republicans take control of both chambers; they wouldn’t have the Senate numbers to succeed in getting the two-thirds vote for conviction, unless perhaps Obama is caught unequivocally red-handed, as it were.

No, he will stay his term—if only to block the new bills and/or repeals of the bills voted in by any Republican Congress that might be elected in 2010, to consolidate his tremendous gains (such as HCR), and to make further fundamental changes via various extra-legislative back-door routes (amnesty for illegals, anyone?). After that, however, if the writing on the wall is crystal clear that he’s on the way out, he might choose not to run in 2012.

However, if he does pull an LBJ/68 in 2012, it will most likely be for strategic reasons—to make way for a more electable candidate with the same far left agenda to run as head of the Democratic ticket (although that candidate will hide his/her far left agenda, something Obama will have lost the ability to do), one the public hasn’t yet turned against.

Still not getting it about Obama

The New Neo Posted on by

On reading two recent pieces about Obama—this one by Jeff Shesol for The Daily Beast, and this by Jay Cost of HorseRaceBlog—I get the idea that both authors are still struggling to understand the guy and still not quite getting it.

That’s unsurprising. To a certain extent Obama is inscrutable, I believe purposely so. What’s more, IMHO, to understand him requires thinking outside the box. If a person approaches the task with the idea that Obama is just a politician, or in the mold of past presidents of this country (whether admired or detested), that person isn’t going to understand what’s actually happening here.

Cost writes about Obama’s vanity, and declares that it “makes him do silly things like appear on The View” and “strips him of a sense of self-awareness,” causing him to make obviously insincere statements like “We shouldn’t be campaigning all the time” during his stint in front of the show’s cameras.

Cost goes on:

Obama ran for and won [the Democratic] nomination based upon the claim that he could sell the party’s ideas to Americans who regularly hesitate to pull the lever for Democrats. He is failing to do that, and his vanity is one reason why…The party is going to need crafty, deft leadership if it hopes to avoid ceding further ground to the Republicans. I have my doubts that this President – overcome as he seems to be with self-adoration – can supply it.

Cost is right to doubt that Obama can supply that leadership to the party, but he’s wrong in thinking that it might be a priority of Obama’s to do so. And while I agree with Cost that Obama is vain, I disagree with the idea that it’s a garden-variety type of vanity that is an obstacle to Obama’s political success and could be overcome with more awareness on his part.

No. Obama’s vanity is more on the order of grandiosity of the type common to tyrants, a sense of his own power and superiority to all surrounding him. It makes him believe he has the right to jettison the usual checks and balances of government in his quest to have his way. And saying something as absurd as “we shouldn’t be campaigning all the time” in the face of the bald fact that he, almost more than any other president, has been in continual campaign mode since the day he was inaugurated is more in the nature of the Big Lie than anything else.

Obama lies with the smooth and unruffled mien of the con man. There is little reason for him to stop now, nor could he. Most of his life he has gotten away with lying and benefited from it. What’s more, if he abandoned lying, he would have almost nothing left except the truth about himself and his intentions—which he knows the American public would reject. So what else is he supposed to do?

Like Cost, Shesol also misses the mark. He thinks—along with Joy Behar on The View, Maureen Dowd in a recent column, and Bob Shrum—that Obama’s problem is that he’s “lost control of the narrative,” and needs “a compelling framework” to grab the nation’s attention.

Shesol is a former Clinton speechwriter, and an expert on the history of FDR’s term of office. He counsels Obama to take a leaf from the book of the latter and to present an animating vision that can speak to America and inspire it with renewed faith in him. What Shesol does not understand is that Obama is very far from being FDR or Clinton. One of his strongest characteristics—one that has often puzzled both left and right—is the fact that he ignores the wishes of the American people, something neither FDR nor Clinton would ever do.

What’s more, the public—or much of the public, anyway—has caught on to that fact. Obama sees the public as his enemy, a stumbling block that he needs to get around if he is ever to reach his goals. For Obama, the public is an entity to deceive and manipulate if possible, and he regards it contemptuously rather than respectfully. He no longer needs to inspire people. He just needs to exercise power over them.

Pelosi’s most ethical Congress ever…

The New Neo Posted on by

…is planning two trials of long-time House members:

The expected trial [of Democrat Maxine Waters of California], coming just after the start of a similar proceeding on Thursday for Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, would be a modern-day precedent for the House, Congressional officials said. At no time in at least the last two decades have two sitting House members faced a public hearing detailing allegations against them.

It would also be an embarrassment for the Congressional Black Caucus. Ms. Waters and Mr. Rangel are two of its most revered and long-standing members, and both have spent decades as key leaders in banking and financial services issues in the House.

Power corrupts—if not inevitably, then certainly often. Both Waters and Rangel are claiming innocence, of course, and it’s possible that they actually are. But somehow I suspect not. And President Obama isn’t waiting for a trial, at least in Rangel’s case—it’s under the bus with him:

“I think Charlie Rangel served a very long time and served his constituents very well. But these allegations are very troubling,” Obama said on the “CBS Evening News” in his first comments on the Rangel scandal.

“He’s somebody who’s at the end of his career. Eighty years old. I’m sure that what he wants is to be able to end his career with dignity. And my hope is that it happens.”

Looking at that quote again I’d like to revise my remarks; maybe it’s not so much that Obama is throwing him under the bus as asking him to crawl there himself. Neither Rangel nor Waters seems inclined to do so; they are both choosing (at least so far) to fight the charges.