The Pentagon shooting: what’s the definition of “right-wing” these days?

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday John Patick Bedell walked up to the Pentagon and shot two officers there before being killed himself. Bedell hated George Bush and was a 9/11-truther. And yet Peter Grier of the Christian Science Monitor calls him he was a right-wing fanatic. Bedell hated the government and the armed forces, as well. Typical right-wing sentiments, of course!

Grier doesn’t even try to explain how it is that these things made Bedell a man of the right rather than the left (or even, perhaps, just a confused and demented man). Perhaps Grier thinks it’s self-explanatory, obvious to any thinking person: Bedell had a gun; he shot two people. Man of the right.

This sort of “reasoning” also was present in most coverage of the case of Joseph Stack, who killed himself and one other person when he flew his plane into an Austin IRS building and was widely described as a right-wing teabagger. Stack left a manifesto in which he “railed against the U.S. tax system, capitalist greed, his accountant, former President George W. Bush and others.” Most news outlets left out the fact that it also contained praise for communism and condemnation of the greed of capitalism. Typical right-wing stuff.

Obama and Holder reversal: will it be a military trial for KSM after all?

The New Neo Posted on by

It appears that a military trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is looking mighty good to the Obama administration right about now.

The strange thing is that those legal geniuses, Obama and Holder, didn’t see that to begin with. I’m not just being facetious; I do find it odd that their ideology blinded them to the astounding unpopularity which would inevitably greet their original decision. And now this subsequent flip-flop is likely to enrage the left, just as the original one outraged the right and middle. When Obama ends up being reasonable, it seems it’s only after he has offended and dismayed the largest number of people possible. That seems to be the extent of his bipartisanship.

But if he has to flip flop, it’s certainly a good thing that he ends up on the right (that is, the correct) side of the issue. And although it is true that Obama clung to this idea of a civilian KSM trial in NY for way too long, even he can apparently let go of something if the clamor is loud enough. It is ironic that Obama, a vocal critic of virtually everything George Bush did in his treatment of terrorists, has adopted so many of Bush’s policies, but only after trying the opposite and finding it inadvisable or even impossible. Perhaps if a fool persists in his folly he becomes wise. But in the meantime, damage is done, time is wasted, and the American people have lost faith in our president’s judgment.

But are things quite what they appear? Andy McCarthy, the original WTC trial prosecutor, is highly skeptical about this decision of Obama’s. It’s not that he thinks the story isn’t true. It’s just that McCarthy focuses on the fact that, according to the original WaPo article, it appears to be part of a quid pro quo in which Obama is seeking a compromise from Congressional Republicans that will help him close Gitmo. He’s giving up something small to get something bigger. In McCarthy’s opinion:

…[T]he public strongly opposes a civilian trial for the 9/11 plotters. There is only so much an administration can do against the will of the American people…But…Senator Graham and whoever else are treating the president like he has cards to play. Rather than just be quietly embarrassed over their loopy position that Gitmo causes terrorism, these senators are using that fiction as a reason for trading away Gitmo (i.e., a facility we need) in order to achieve military commission trials for enemy combatants (i.e., something we’d get anyway without the trade)…[This] would significantly increase the threat to U.S. military bases and geometrically increase the likelihood that federal judges will order that trained terrorists be released in the United States. There is no excuse for taking on these risks given that Gitmo is a top-flight, completely secure facility. It makes no sense to horse-trade when Obama was being pushed toward military commissions by reality.

Sounds convincing to me. Obama’s caving is unlikely to be part of any real change of mind or policy. It appears prmarily strategic, and moderate Republicans may be playing right into his hands.

Let’s hear it for parsnips

The New Neo Posted on by

Parsnips have gotten a bad rap. Although I’m not sure why they are so often either detested or ignored, I’ve got some ideas.

For starters, they look like wan and bleached-out versions of their cousin the carrot. But I think the real reason is their unfortunate name, which makes them sound like the dread turnip (which is actually fairly good too, if cooked correctly). But parsnips are sweeter and tastier than either, although you rarely see them on a restaurant menu and only tend to find them on the home dinner table at holiday time, if then.

If you hate parsnips, you are hardly alone, although I think you are wrong, wrong, wrong. I used to think I hated them, too, until I discovered I’d not ever tasted one. I also don’t like them mashed, the easiest and most common way to make them, as well as the most insipid.

Parsnips just plain sound nasty. But I had some the other day and they were marvelous, with a deep rich flavor that reminded me how very much I like them, even though I tend to forget they exist. They were in a pot roast with carrots, onions, and potatoes. They’re good roasted alone as well, or sauteed in oil or butter, and they can be the secret ingredient to give a special mysterious mild sweetness to a soup stock.

The parsnip used to be more ubiquitous before the potato came to Europe from the Western Hemisphere and supplanted it. Parsnips were relied on because they can be grown in cold climates—in fact, parsnips need some frost to flourish—and they have more nutrients than carrots. A parsnip can be eaten raw, although no one ever does. I’ve never even tried, but my guess is that it would be a tough and fibrous undertaking.

But did you know the Romans considered parsnips an aphrodisiac? Maybe if we spread the word around they’d suddenly become a lot more popular.

About those white coats around Obama

The New Neo Posted on by

Last fall Obama engineered a photo-op featuring an audience of white-coated doctors to show he had the support of the medical profession for health care reform. As he stood at the podium, he was also flanked by four more of the white-coats. Of course, the fact that one hundred and fifty doctors were rustled up to show their support in such a manner means absolutely nothing in terms of how many doctors actually do agree with Obamacare (or how many actually wear white coats outside of hospitals). But Obama is more interested in theater than in reality, as he has made clear many times.

But at least that cheap stunt made a certain amount of sense, since it was specifically a meeting of real-live doctors whom he was addressing. But yesterday in calling for still another push in Congress for health care reform legislation that has become markedly unpopular (including the suspect tactic of reconciliation), he repeated something akin to the arrangement, for no apparent reason other than his penchant for the borrowed gravitas and authority of white-coated lackeys. The inescapable conclusion is that Obama is trying to tell us to do what the doctors order and take our health care reform medicine for our own good, whether we like it or not.

I can’t seem to find a photo, but Gerard Vanderleun at American Digest has kindly provided a couple, complete with additions. And Glenn Beck (I barely ever watch him, but I was channel-surfing last night and happened to see the first five minutes) did a pretty funny riff on the theme. Here it is, beginning around 0:40:

[ADDENDUM: Meanwhile, this is good news. We’ll see. There will be many more twistings and turnings before this is over, and I don’t think anyone can predict how it will turn out in the end. ]

[ADDENDUM II: And my man Judd Gregg warns members of the House not to trust that if they pass the Senate bill it will be amended as promised through reconciliation. Why would the administration even bother? I would imagine his charge has some credibility since everyone is well aware of how much Obama’s promises are worth.)

[ADDENDUM III: A comment from Assistant Village Idiot made me think of this:]

Hypocrisy, thy name is Obama

The New Neo Posted on by

What a difference an election makes.

Obama used to sing quite a different tune on why a strong and bipartisan majority was needed to pass a transformative bill such as HCR. There are lots of previous Obama quotes to that effect offered in this post at Michelle Malkin’s (hat tip: commenter “adrian”). Here are a couple from 2007:

The bottom line is that our healthcare plans are similar, the question once again is, who can get it done? Who can build a movement for change? This is an area where we’re going to have to have a 60% majority in the Senate and the House in order to actually get a bill to my desk. We’re going to have to have a majority to get a bill to my desk. That is not just a fifty plus one majority…

You’ve got to break out of what I call the sort of fifty plus one pattern of presidential politics. Maybe you eke out a victory of fifty plus one. Then you can’t govern. You know, you get Air Force One, there are a lot of nice perks, but you can’t deliver on healthcare. We are not going to pass universal health care with a fifty plus one strategy.

But like almost everything else that comes out of Obama’s mouth, it turns out that it was all a lie. As Bernie Goldberg said a few minutes ago in an interview on Fox, “The hypocrisy is big enough to choke a horse.”

Or an elephant. And even a few donkeys.

Health care reform: ignoring the dangerous precedent of reconciliation

The New Neo Posted on by

Today’s thoroughly excellent WSJ editorial on using reconciliation to pass health care reform makes the point that Democrats’ comparisons to previous transformative bills such as Social Security, Medicare, and welfare reform are inappropriate, because all those measures enjoyed significant bipartisan support. Health care reform not only lacks bipartisan votes (it threatens to make a real Republican out of Maine’s Olympia Snowe), but it is actually being resorted to because it lacks Democratic support as well. This is simply unprecedented.

Here’s some of the history:

Social Security passed when Democrats controlled both Congress and the White House, yet 64% of Senate Republicans and 79% of the House GOP voted for it. More than half of the Senate Republican caucus voted for Medicare in 1965…Democrats often point to welfare reform in 1996 as a reconciliation precedent, yet that bill passed the Senate with 78 votes, including Joe Biden and half of the Democratic caucus. The children’s health insurance program in 1997 was steered through Congress with reconciliation, but it, too, was built on strong (if misguided) bipartisan support. The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 that created Schip passed 85-15, including 43 Republicans. Even President Bush’s 2001 tax cuts, another case in reconciliation point, were endorsed by 12 Senate Democrats…

The only precedent within historical shouting distance is Ronald Reagan’s 1981 budget, which was controversial because it reshaped dozens of programs. But the Senate wasn’t the problem””it ultimately passed the budget 80 to 14. The real dogfight was in the Democratically controlled House, where majority rules have always obtained, yet Reagan convinced 29 Democrats to buck Speaker Tip O’Neill.

One sentence in the WSJ piece that struck me as especially important was this seemingly obvious one:

Historically, major social legislation has always been bipartisan, because it reflects a durable political consensus.

Ever since reconciliation has become a strong possibility for this bill, I have wondered at the Democrats’ willingness to ignore that principle. If such an unpopular measure is passed by a simple majority of both houses (and barely passed, at that), what’s to stop it from being repealed in similar fashion, once Republicans get control, as it is predicted they will? And if Obama’s veto would stop such a thing from happening in 2010, why would it not occur in 2012?

And then what’s to stop Republicans from doing something similar, using reconciliation to pass their agenda, whatever it may be? The rules that slow things down in the Senate favor both parties; it is to the advantage of a party temporarily in power to respect such brakes on their power because someday they may be the ones on the outside looking in. Otherwise, we will experience a series of wild and frequent oscillations, the passage of extreme legislation and the subsequent repeal of such legislation, as the electorate gets whiplash watching.

As this article observes [emphasis mine]:

[This sort of restriction] has been a virtue of the American republic since “The Federalist Papers” defended the Constitution’s original design as one intended to keep factions from moving too quickly to dominate politics for short times of abrupt change.

But today’s Democrats appear to have no ability to see beyond their immediate needs, and no sense that they actually will lose, and then it will be payback time.

There are no dearth of theories to explain this—the leading one being that they will cook the elections and then it will be moot. A more benign explanation is that the Democrats believe repeal will be difficult even if they lose power, because the Republicans will still lack either the votes or the courage to undo the bill. Some Democrats also appear to sincerely believe that the American people will love Obamacare once it is in place, and that the perks will outweigh the negatives. In this, the growing economic crisis and unemployment actually helps them, because it drives more people away from the protection of job-associated health insurance and into the arms of the government dole.

Latest step in the Obama administration’s ongoing war against Britain

The New Neo Posted on by

It has become impossible to dismiss the idea that the Obama administration has decided that Britain is no longer to be treated as our ally. A series of disses, beginning with but hardly limited to the return of a bust of Churchill (one of the very first acts of the Obama presidency), the giving of a thoughtless and insulting gift to Prime Minister Brown, as well as inhospitable treatment on Brown’s visit to the US a year ago, have put the Brits on notice that they are no longer our special friends.

Now it’s become even more serious. Hillary Clinton—who, when I last checked, was still President Obama’s Secretary of State—has taken Argentina’s side in its long-lasting dispute with Britain over the Falkland Islands:

Argentina was celebrating a diplomatic coup yesterday in its attempt to force Britain to accept talks on the future of the Falkland Islands, after a two-hour meeting in Buenos Aires between Hillary Clinton and President Cristina Ferné¡ndez de Kirchner.

Responding to a request from Mrs Kirchner for “friendly mediation” between Britain and Argentina, Mrs Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said she agreed that talks were a sensible way forward and offered “to encourage both countries to sit down”.

Her intervention defied Britain’s longstanding position that there should be no negotiations unless the islands’ 3,000 inhabitants asked for them. It was hailed in Buenos Aires as a major diplomatic victory, but condemned in the Falklands.

Possible reasons for the Obama/Hillary stance include:

(1) Obama’s oft-repeated love of dialogue and talks without any preconditions or regard for the negative consequences.

(2) The desire to suck up to still another leftist leader of a Latin American country.

(3) Female-power bonding.

I am not completely joking about number three, either. Back during our own 2008 primaries, when Hillary was still officially running for president, I had prepared a draft of an article on Argentina’s President Cristina Kirchner, known at the time as “the Argentine Hillary.” I never did post it—too many more important events and subjects seemed to intervene—and I finally deleted it from my drafts folder, so it’s gone now. But I was reminded again of the similarities between the two when I saw this photo (powerful husband who has been in the number one spot, leftist sympathies, see this for more):

kirchclint.jpg

The Falklands may be small and relatively insignificant compared to all the other problems areas of the world. In fact, the 74-day 1982 Falklands War was treated almost as a joke by many people who heard of it. But it was certainly no comedy to the “255 British and 649 Argentine soldiers, sailors, and airmen, and three civilian Falklanders” who died during the conflict. And to the inhabitants of the Falklands, who overwhelmingly wish to remain British, it is also no laughing matter:

In the Falklands, reaction to the meeting ranged from dismay to fury. “It’s outrageous after all the support we have given the United States,” said Hattie Kilmartin, a sheepfarmer’s wife. “They are not looking at the people who are actually living here and what they want, and it’s crazy that they are even contemplating going against us.”

Yes Mrs. Kilmartin, get used to our outrageous and crazy president, who couldn’t care less about you and your neighbors, or even the over-two-hundred-year special relationship between the US and Great Britain.

This is no accident, either. It is part of Obama’s carefully planned program of topsy-turvy diplomacy. As far as I’m concerned, 2012 cannot come fast enough. How much damage will be done by then?

Advancing the “Emanuel the reasonable” meme

The New Neo Posted on by

This WaPO piece is another in a series of recent articles about how Rahm Emanuel is the only voice of practicality, incremental change, and reason in the Obama White House (I wrote about an earlier piece here).

I’m not at all sure why this particular meme is being pushed right now. Anger of the press at the other members of Obama’s Gang of Four (Gibbs, Jarrett, and Axelrod)? I doubt it’s love for Emanuel, who seems universally disliked for abrasiveness. But whatever the reason—and I invite you all to do the requisite Machiavellian speculation—I happen to think that the gist of it is the truth—although probably not the whole truth and nothing but.

Consdier that Emanuel has by far the most national and legislative experience of anyone in Obama’s inner circle, and that includes the president himself. Say what you will about Rahm, but he was actually a member of the House of Representatives from 2003-2009. He also served as a strategist in the Bill Clinton White House from 1993-1998, an administration ultimately known for a more incremental, poll-driven approach to policy and governing. Later, as the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he helped craft the Democrats’ congressional comeback of 2006. After that he was even considered for the post of Majority Whip.

Compare this experience to that of David Axelrod, whose entire background is in journalism, media, and campaign communication and organization. Or to Robert Gibbs, likewise, and Valerie Jarrett, a lawyer whose previous experience was limited to local Chicago politics as an aide to Mayors Washington and then Daley, and Chicago business.

These three are not just Obama’s consultants on campaigning; they appear to be his main advisors on nearly everything. I’m not surprised that they have given Obama poor advice, and that his agenda has been hampered as a result, or that he failed to listen to the cannier Emanuel. I have come to see Obama as a committed “progressive” socialist ideologue as well as a man who only listens to his inner Chicago circle of old and trusted advisers, to which Emanuel is a relative newcomer.

[ADDENDUM: Here’s more.]

What to do about long-term unemployment?

The New Neo Posted on by

I am not an expert in economics or business, nor do I play one on TV. But when Megan McArdle, who is both of those things, writes that there’s not much that government can do for the long-term unemployed, I both agree and disagree.

I agree with McArdle that stimulus money gives little bang for a huge buck that we can’t afford. In addition, as she points out, direct hiring by government, as in Roosevelt’s New Deal, would not do the trick now due to a changed workforce and atmosphere (more unions, less manual labor). And McArdle doesn’t even mention that it’s not at all clear that this latter effort was actually a significant factor in getting us out of that first Depression, although it did temporarily ease the plight of a significant number of workers in the meantime.

It seems to me that government can do one important thing, however: convince business that it’s their friend. The only way government can help to lower unemployment significantly is to encourage an economic climate in which businesses want to expand rather than contract. And it also seems to me that, if the Obama administration had wanted to design an approach that did the exact opposite, they could hardly have done better than they have during this past year.

Instead, they have added to the uncertainty and fear—not the least of it, fear of what the federal government will do to raise taxes and hamper business growth. They have mounted vigorous verbal attacks on the entire idea of business and profit, combined with halfhearted and unconvincing backtracks about how this administration is not hostile but is actually a friend to business and to capitalism.

They have focused huge amounts of energy on a series of health care reform bills that are likely to hamper (and then ultimately dismantle, years down the road) one of the perks of job ownership—private health insurance—by burdening it with further taxes and regulations that promise to cost businesses more, not less. And this is true even though a president and Congressional leaders whom business has come to profoundly distrust attempt to say otherwise.

In such an atmosphere, who would take a chance and hire?