Venus is in the eye of the beholder

The New Neo Posted on by

In a German cave known as Hohle Fels, archeologists have found the earliest sculpture known (35,000 years old), a tiny (2.4 inch) ivory figurine that appears to be part of an ancient tradition of portraying ample figures of female bounty:

venusschelklingen.jpg

I first encountered one of these forms, the well-known Venus of Willendorf, in an art history class my freshman year of college:

willendorf.jpg
Except for the fact that she’s made of limestone instead of ivory, is two inches taller than her new-found sister, has a head (but no features except for some sort of braided hair), and is at least ten thousand years her junior, Willendorf is remarkably like the Hohle Fels figurine. Yes, the ivory gal has perkier breasts, but otherwise they are extraordinarily similar: heavy with flesh and emphasis of the female characteristics, probably even pregnant.

But these two go the “barefoot and pregnant” notion one better—both are not only shoeless but footless, and scholars say they were made that way. Their little arms are placed across their ample middles—in Willendorf’s case on the breasts themselves, whereas for Hohle Fels it’s the stomach (see this for a better look at the latter). My guess is that in this way the sculptors sought to avoid the problem of breakage that occurs when limbs are free of the body.

Scientists differ as to the figures’ meaning and significance. Sex and fertility, of course; but did one take primacy over the other?

The archaeologists agreed the [Hohle Fels] sculpture’s age and features invite speculation about its purpose and the preoccupations of the culture that produced it.

Cook suggested it could be symbol of fertility, perhaps even portrayed in the act of giving birth.

Mellars suggested a more basic motivation for the carving: “These people were obsessed with sex.”

Conard said the differing opinions reinforced the connection between the ancient artist and modern viewer.

“How we interpret it tells us just as much about ourselves as about people 40,000 years ago,” he said.

Perhaps more.

Obama reversal on the abuse photos

The New Neo Posted on by

This is very interesting: Obama has reversed himself on the release of the photos of alleged abuse of prisoners by our military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The reason? Obama was advised by military commanders, who “warned that the images could stoke anti-American sentiment and endanger U.S. troops.”

Ya think? That fact, of course, was completely and totally obvious before, and if Obama has any intelligence at all, he certainly didn’t need to be told something so basic. But bucking the ACLU—the group so intent on the world’s seeing these photos—isn’t something Obama would do lightly. So what’s the reason he is now willing to challenge their release on national security grounds, when he wasn’t before?

Logic dictates that the answer is closely related to Obama’s new offensive in Afghanistan. It appears that it was okay to stoke anti-American sentiment and endanger US troops when it was Bush in charge, such as during the Abu Ghraib incident. And, since the photos in question now are of acts that occurred under Bush’s watch, it would seem that Obama would allow or even favor their release.

That was, in fact, his previous position; he declined to challenge the court’s decision to release them in the suit won by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act. But now that Obama will own whatever happens in Afghanistan, it behooves him to be more careful, doesn’t it?

Even if the reasons for Obama’s change of heart are at least partly self-serving, his decision is the correct one. And if I sound cynical about the man’s motivations, it’s because he’s earned it.

Your doctor’s future

The New Neo Posted on by

Is this a description of your doctor’s future under ObamaCare?

Doctors will consolidate into larger practices to spread overhead costs, and they’ll cram more patients into tight schedules to make up in volume what’s lost in margin. Visits will be shortened and new appointments harder to secure…Right or wrong, more doctors will close their practices to new patients, especially patients carrying lower paying insurance such as Medicaid. Some doctors will opt out of the system entirely, going “cash only.” If too many doctors take this route the government could step in—as in Canada, for example—to effectively outlaw private-only medical practice.

Please read the whole thing.

And then there’s the little matter of the missing money to pay for the proposed changes. Even if estimates indicate that it might solve some of the problems, Obama is reluctant to limit the tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance because he criticized John McCain for suggesting such a move during the campaign.

Change: the short and the long of the “e” in “the”—and the Great Vowel Shift

The New Neo Posted on by

The Anchoress wants to know the answer to a burning question of great import:

Growing up, I was taught that when you are following the word T-H-E with a word that begins with a vowel, then the correct (and, to my ear) more pleasant pronunciation was “thee” – long e…I notice an increasing trend the other way, though…It grates on my ears…Am I too fussy? What do you say? When it precedes a word beginning in a vowel, do you go with “thee” or “thuh?”

Being somewhat of a grammar fussbudget myself (although you may have observed that as soon as a person makes such an assertion, it’s almost inevitably followed by the commission of some glaring grammatical error), I have to say that of course I go with “thee.”

I must admit that I’d not noted the creeping ascension of the “thuh” crowd before—although, now that The Anchoress has pointed it out, the trend hardly surprises me. There have been many changes of this nature taking over lately. I wrote at some length about one of them—the widespread confusion between “it’s” and “its”—here.

Now I know that language and its conventions are an ever-shifting work in progress; try reading Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the original if you don’t agree. But when the older versions just sound better to the ear (such as the “thee” of which The Anchoress speaks), or make a certain amount of sense (such as “it’s” as a contraction for “it is,” to distinguish it from the possessive “its” which resembles “his” and “hers”), it’s difficult to accept that the change is anything but for the worse. Not that the next generation cares what I think, or what I accept.

Speaking of change (and Canterbury Tales), did people feel the same about all of this around Chaucer’s day? I ask the question because any current transformation of the pronunciation of “the” is small potatoes (very small potatoes indeed) compared to such upheavals as the Great Vowel Shift that occurred after Chaucer’s time:

Chaucer’s generation of English-speakers was among the last to pronounce e at the end of words (so for Chaucer the word “care” was pronounced [kaːrÉ™], not as the [kÉ›(r)] found in modern English)…The pronunciation of Chaucer’s writing otherwise differs most prominently from Modern English in that his language had not undergone the Great Vowel Shift: pronouncing Chaucer’s vowels as they would be pronounced today in European languages like Italian, Spanish or German generally produces pronunciations more like Chaucer’s own than Modern English pronunciation would.

The Great Vowel Shift was [emphasis mine]:

…a massive sound change affecting the long vowels of English during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. Basically, the long vowels shifted upwards; that is, a vowel that used to be pronounced in one place in the mouth would be pronounced in a different place, higher up in the mouth…[It] did not happen overnight. At any given time, people of different ages and from different regions would have different pronunciations of the same word. Older, more conservative speakers would retain one pronunciation while younger, more advanced speakers were moving to a new one; some people would be able to pronounce the same word two or more different ways.

Hmmm—“older, more conservative speakers;” that rings a faint bell of recognition, although I hardly would call the “thuh” newcomers “more advanced speakers.” But perhaps they are, if “advanced” means “looking towards the future” (see definitions 3 and 4 here).

If some of you are still a bit puzzled as to the particulars of the Great Vowel Shift, perhaps this will help out with some examples (and there’s a lot more here, in case your appetite remains unslaked):

This means that the vowel in the English word “date” was in Middle English pronounced [aː] (similar to modern dart); the vowel in “feet” was [eː] (similar to modern fate); the vowel in “wipe” was [iː] (similar to modern weep); the vowel in “boot” was [oː] (similar to modern boat); and the vowel in “house” was [uː] (similar to modern whose).

Isn’t it fortunate that we don’t have to learn this stuff consciously, but instead imbibe it effortlessly when we are mere babes? Otherwise, it would probably be just too difficult.

But why, oh why, the Great Vowel Shift? And for that matter, why oh why the un-great “thee and thuh” shift? The latter may just be a trend towards standardization and simplicity rather than diversification: instead of two, we would now have one pronunciation for the word “the” that doesn’t vary.

But the cause of the former remains a mystery, although theorizing abounds, naturally. The gist of it is that the Great Shift occurred in a time of upheaval and migration after the Black Death, and seems to have also represented a trend towards standardization of vowel sounds.

One thing seems clear: the changes were not haphazard. Although there were exceptions and peculiarities, the pattern of change was in one direction only. The short vowels were unaffected, as were the basic consonants. It was the long vowel sounds that changed, from a Romance and/or Latinate language pattern to one in which the tongue’s position consistently came more forward and higher in the mouth. And no one really knows why.

[NOTE: It occurs to me that, although this post may seem like a digression from my usual themes, it’s really not. I guess the topic of change just happens to fascinate me.

And for those who so desire, here’s the T-shirt:

voweltshirt.jpg

[ADDENDUM: And if you want to hear some even older poetry recited, go here.]

Jello treat of the month

The New Neo Posted on by

In my continuing quest to give you relief from the stresses that face us all, here’s another taste of Jello fun: the jello ring.

Yes, that’s what I said: ring, as in a ring to wear on the finger.

The Japanese—whose sense of fashion and flair is something I understand not at all—have come up with these pieces of edible jewelry, among others:

jelloring.jpg

The adornments are made by a firm called “Honey Bunny,” which is currently:

…filling the lives of Tokyo kids with delectable pieces from a yummy utopian world of sweet fashion…[C]reators Hansel and GR, as they like to be called, started whipping up batches of goodness about 2 years ago when they saw a shortage of sweet treats to wear and share. Since then the sweet accessory look has boomed in Japan…

I’ll leave you to digest this news in piece. My only additional comment is, why is this “yummy world of sweet fashion” labeled “utopian?” Anyone who wishes to tackle that important question is welcome—nay, urged—to do so.

Afghan change: when will Obama own it—or the economy?

The New Neo Posted on by

When Barack Obama was a senator and a presidential candidate, he hated the Iraq war and every move George Bush made there.

This included the highly successful surge. In fact, Obama denied the positives of the surge—not only back when it was first proposed and almost everyone except Bush, McCain, and Petraeus was down on it—but also long after it was obvious that it had been one of the best decisions made by the Bush administration.

Now Obama, with the help of his Bush-era holdover Defense Secretary Robert Gates, has made a change in Afghanistan, asking for the resignation of Gen. David McKiernan, the head of the Afghan campaign for the last year. He is to be replaced by Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who previously had been head of special operation forces in Iraq.

Almost every article on the subject agrees that McKiernan didn’t really do anything blatantly wrong, but the problem was that he didn’t do much that was right either. The difference between the two generals is one of training, philosophy, and approach: McKiernan’s experience is old school conventional warfare, MChrystal is modern-day counterinsurgency.

In other words, Obama and Gates are emphasizing surge-like tactics/strategy in Afghanistan.

I’m all for that. I supported the Petraeus approach in Iraq, and I support it in Afghanistan. I consider it ironic that Obama has made this decision, but at least it shows that he understands the value of the tactics and strategy of the program he so deplored when that attitude suited his political purposes.

I also doubt very much, now that Obama is president, that the press will mount the sort of negative propaganda effort it pushed against similar policies when Bush was advocating them. But, if things don’t go well in Afghanistan now (and I certainly hope they do go well), at what point will Obama stop blaming his predecessor?

My answer: never. Although I suppose the more important question would be at what point the electorate would stop blaming his predecessor.

The same issue is relevant to the economy. In fact, Wesley Pruden of the Washington Times raises it today:

Anticipating D-Day, Peter Orszag, the president’s budget director, said Monday that the scarier than expected economic news—the deficit out of control, tax receipts down and costs of bailouts and “stimulus” plans up—is all the fault of George W. Bush: “It’s an economic crisis President Obama inherited.”

But Mr. Obama has already been president for more than a hundred days, and passing the hundred-day mark, irrelevant milestone as it may be, was cited as dead-solid proof that the president is the messiah he told everyone he was. Reality, however, has begun to cast a shadow over the White House, still as faint as the bright golden haze on the meadow but visible enough. “Blaming George” still makes a tingle run up the legs of all the hymn-singing true believers, but outside the embrace of the cult, that tingle is beginning to sting instead. This is Mr. Obama’s government now.

Pruden believes that slowly but surely the members of Congress and the populace will start blaming Obama for whatever failures ensue under his administration. I wonder, though. I wondered on the day of Obama’s inauguration, and I’m still wondering, nearly four months and many setbacks later, with Obama’s popularity remaining fairly high. Will the man ever be blamed for anything he says and does?

The inevitability of health care rationing

The New Neo Posted on by

This WSJ article points out that:

The private groups [who have announced their “cooperation” with Obama’s health care cost-cutting] are calculating that they can better influence this year’s bill if they’re “partners” instead of villains. They’ve no doubt seen what happened to Wall Street and Chrysler bondholders. All the same, they must surely know they have made a Faustian bargain that in time will result in price controls and restrictions on care.

Obama’s extreme hardball tactics with the auto companies have put health care (and everyone else on whom he’s set his sights) on notice: you can do this voluntarily, or we can twist your arms. But in the end you will do it, and then we will take over because you won’t be doing it to our satisfaction.

As for the rest of us—well, if you liked managed care and “utilization reviews” you’ll love ObamaCare. The article quotes Obama’s budget chief Peter Orzag, who’s keen on what’s called “comparative effectiveness research,” which studies:

…the patterns of clinical practice to determine which drugs and treatments work best. The Administration thinks it can use such analysis to weed out wasteful or unnecessary care by paying more “if the treatment has been shown to be effective and a little less if not,” as Mr. Orszag recently told the New Yorker.

A little less? Don’t count on it. Not to mention the start-up costs of the overhaul.

In addition, one of the things we most want from our doctors is to be treated as the unique people we are. My strong hunch is that the results of such studies tend to be contradictory, confusing, and ever-changing, as is true of so much medical research. And when the cost-cutters are in charge of medical decisions (even—or maybe especially, with the help of such research), there’s trouble ahead.

Cost reductions and hard choices of this sort are inevitable, of course, except for the super-rich. But I’d rather those decisions be made by my doctor—or even my insurance company, which I at least ostensibly have chosen after mulling over my options—than by the government. How about you?

Obama laughs at wishing Limbaugh dead

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve said before that Obama lacks a sense of humor.

But I stand corrected: he does have a sense of humor. It’s just that it’s vicious and decidedly unfunny.

You be the judge. Take a look at this video of Obama reacting at the White House Press Corp dinner to the fervently expressed hope that Rush Limbaugh will die of kidney failure:

So funny I forgot to laugh—but Obama didn’t forget

[Hat tip: Ann Althouse.]

Health insurance overhaul: the preview

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s no surprise here; Obama’s proposals for health care upheaval will come with a hefty price tag [emphasis mine]:

The upfront tab could reach $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion over 10 years, while expected savings from wringing waste and inefficiency from the health care system may take longer to show.

Details of the health legislation have not been written, but the broad outlines of the overhaul are known. Economists and other experts say the $634 billion that Obama’s budget sets aside for health care will pay perhaps half the cost.

Obama is hoping the Senate comes up with a bipartisan compromise that would give him political cover for disagreeable decisions to raise more money, such as taxing some health insurance benefits. In the 2008 campaign, Obama went after his Republican presidential rival, Arizona Sen. John McCain, for proposing a large-scale version of that idea…

The U.S. spends about $2.5 trillion a year on health care…Experts estimate that at least one-third of that spending goes for services that provide little or no benefit to patients. So theoretically, there’s enough money in the system to cover everybody, including an estimated 50 million uninsured.

But one person’s wasteful spending is someone else’s bread and butter.

The office visits, tests, procedures and medications that the experts question represent a lot of money for doctors, hospitals, drug companies and other service providers. Dialing them back won’t be easy. Providers will resist. Patients might complain their care is getting rationed.

So let’s see: costs will go up rather than down at first. Obama wants his support to be bipartisan (after saying “screw you” to Republicans on almost everything else) in order to provide him political cover for doing what he reviled McCain for proposing. Oh, and there will be rationing, but they’ll try to convince us otherwise.

The simple truth is that the reason universal health care hasn’t passed is that it is very expensive, and rationing is inevitable (see this for an earlier post about the health care dilemma).

In related news, the NY Times reports today that the health care industry is promising to voluntarily cut costs in an effort to stave off price constraints in the new national health care (the signers of the pledge are officials of the Advanced Medical Technology Association, the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and the Service Employees International Union).

Let’s see what’s planned:

…large amounts [of money] could be saved by aggressive efforts to prevent obesity, coordinate care, manage chronic illnesses and curtail unnecessary tests and procedures; by standardizing insurance claim forms; and by increasing the use of information technology, like electronic medical records.

I’ve got no particular beef with the last two on the list, or with “coordinate care” or “manage chronic illness” (and aren’t we already trying to do those things?). But “aggressive efforts to prevent obesity?” Good luck on that one. And what does it even mean, especially in terms of civil liberties? And how will those efforts be successful when it is well known that it is extraordinarily difficult to lose weight and keep it off, no matter how hard people try or what method they use?

Then there’s the little phrase “curtail unnecessary tests and procedures.” That, of course, is where rationing comes in. Who’s to decide, and what criteria will be used? I don’t exactly trust government to make these decisions in my best interest. Do you?

The real Obama has stood up

The New Neo Posted on by

Two days ago I wrote a post in which I quoted and emphasized this line:

It is now evident that Obama’s words bear no relation to his intended actions.

And although that’s true, it’s also false—because Obama has said a lot of words that contradict each other. People who voted for him were willing to pick and choose which of them to accept and which to reject; which words were (in their eyes) just campaign hot air and which were the real Obama, the one who would emerge once elected.

This phenomenon had four basic elements: Obama’s words were (and still are) often self-contradictory, sometimes even within the same speech; even during the campaign he showed a propensity for breaking important promises (about campaign financing, for example) and using sophistry to pretend he wasn’t doing so; his history of acts (the best way to judge a person) was slim; and his rhetorical gifts and even-tempered demeanor (charismatic to some; not to me) made people want to believe the best of him despite evidence to the contrary.

That’s why an article such as this one—reporting that many of Obama’s rich supporters are suddenly surprised that he’s fomenting class war—makes sense even though it seems to make no sense. After all, how could anyone just be noticing this now? How could anyone who was paying attention during the campaign and in the months that followed have failed to note Obama’s income redistrubution plans, or his knocking of the rich?

Wishful thinking, that’s how—carefully orchestrated by Obama himself. You can fool many of the people much of the time—and when they wise up, it may be too late to stop you:

Wealthy Wall Street financiers and other business figures provided crucial support for Mr Obama during the election, backing him over the Republican candidate John McCain as the right leader to rescue the collapsing US economy.

But it is now dawning on many among them that Mr Obama was serious about his campaign trail promises to bring root and branch reform to corporate America—and that they were more than just election rhetoric.

A top Obama fundraiser and hedge fund manager said: “I’m appalled at the anti-Wall Street rhetoric. It was OK on the campaign but now it’s the real world. I’m surprised that Obama is turning out to be so left-wing. He’s a real class warrior.”

It’s this sentence that appalls me: “It was OK on the campaign but now it’s the real world.” Yes, politicians often make promises they can’t keep, paint a rosier picture than is possible, and exaggerate what they might be able or willing to accomplish. But anyone who failed to note that some of Obama’s campaign rhetoric was unusually radical and based on class warfare, and to sense that this would probably have significance when and if he became elected, was guilty of self-delusion.

In a post I wrote back in October entitled “Will the real Obama please stand up?”, I quoted this article by Tony Blankley, whose predictions were considered needlessly alarmist at the time by so many of the “hopefuls.” Reading it now (and please read the whole thing), his words don’t seem all that much like fearmongering, do they?:

But of course, throughout history when dangerous, radical men have offered themselves up for leadership, their moderate supporters have rationalized their early support by hoping that the dangerous man is really a sensible man like them and doesn’t believe some of those wild things he has said to his more fervent followers.

But as the campaign clock ticks down to its last days and hours, prudent people have to consider the possibility that beneath that easy manner and calming voice is the pulsating heart of a genuine man of the radical left.

Not enough people considered that possibility—or, if they did, they rejected it as absurd (I never rejected it; I just hoped I’d be proven wrong in warning about it). Well, they’re considering it now, although there isn’t very much they can do about it except wring their hands and make excuses for themselves. As Blankley said at the end of his piece: God save the republic.

Happy Mother’s Day: mothers and babies

The New Neo Posted on by

Okay, who are these three dark beauties?

A hint: one of them is the very first picture you’ve ever seen on this blog of neo-neocon, sans apple. Not that you’d recognize me, of course. Even my own mother might not recognize me from this photo.

My own mother, you say? Of course she would. Ah, but she’s here too, looking a bit different than she does today—Mother’s Day—at ninety-five years of age. Just a bit; maybe her own mother wouldn’t recognize her, either.

Her own mother? She’s the one who’s all dressed up, with longer hair than the rest of us.

The photo of my grandmother was taken in the 1880’s; the one of my mother in the teens of the twentieth century; and the one of me, of course, in the 1950s.

Heredity, ain’t it great? My mother and grandmother are both sitting for formal portraits at a professional photographer’s studio, but by the time I came around amateur snapshots were easy to take with a smallish Brownie camera. My mother is sitting on the knee of her own grandfather, my grandmother’s father, a dapper gentleman who was always very well-turned out. I’m next to my older brother, who’s reading a book to me but is cropped out of this photo. My grandmother sits alone in all her finery.

We all not only resemble each other greatly in our features and coloring, but in our solemnity. My mother’s and grandmother’s seriousness is probably explained by the strange and formal setting; mine is due to my concentration on the book, which was Peter Pan (my brother was only pretending to read it, since he couldn’t read yet, but I didn’t know that at the time). My mother’s resemblance to me is enhanced by our similar hairdos (or lack thereof), although hers was short because it hadn’t really grown in yet, and mine was short because she purposely kept it that way (easier to deal with).

My grandmother not only has the pretty ruffled dress and the long flowing locks, but if you look really closely you can see a tiny earring dangling from her earlobe. When I was young, she showed me her baby earrings; several miniature, delicate pairs. It astounded me that they’d actually pierced a baby’s ears (and that my grandmother had let the holes close up later on, and couldn’t wear pierced earrings any more), whereas I had to fight for the right to have mine done in my early teens.

I’m not sure what my mother’s wearing; some sort of baby smock. But I know what I have on: my brother’s hand-me-down pajamas, and I was none too happy about it, of that you can be sure.

So, a very happy Mother’s Day to you all! What would mothers be without babies…and mothers…and babies….and mothers….?

[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post.]

Obama and the 9/11 and Cole families

The New Neo Posted on by

Debra Burlingame, sister of the pilot of doomed Flight 77, says that Obama paid only lip service—and hardly even that—to the concerns of 9/11 and Cole bombing families in a February meeting about the closing of Guantanamo and the slowness of the grinding wheels of justice.

Obama wanted to hear a “diversity of views?” Offered remarks “full of platitudes?” “Glossed over the legal complexities? Gave a “vague summary” of what he might do about it? Hardly surprising.

He also was his usual dismissive and arrogant self [emphasis mine]:

Many family members pressed for Guantanamo to remain open and for the military commissions to go forward. Mr. Obama allowed that the detention center had been unfairly confused with Abu Ghraib, but when asked why he wouldn’t rehabilitate its image rather than shut it down, he silently shrugged. Next question.

But Obama’s formidable people skills were also on display, and he provided enough reassurance, vague though it might have been, that many of the families were hopeful:

“I did not vote for the man, but the way he talks to you, you can’t help but believe in him,” said John Clodfelter to the New York Times. His son, Kenneth, was killed in the Cole bombing. “[Mr. Obama] left me with a very positive feeling that he’s going to get this done right.”

“This isn’t goodbye,” said the president, signing autographs and posing for pictures before leaving for his next appointment, “this is hello.” His national security staff would have an open-door policy.

Believe . . . feel . . . hope.

We’d been had.

A mere seventeen days after the hopey-changey meeting, Obama released one of the terrorist suspects against the families’ protests. And that open-door policy for the families was about as phony as you might expect:

…the White House liaison to 9/11 and Cole families refused to answer questions about the circumstances surrounding the decision to repatriate Mohamed, including whether he would be freed in Great Britain.

Kirk Lippold, commanding officer of the USS Cole and leader of the Cole families group, had this to say to Burlingame about President Obama: “At best, he manipulated the families. At worst, he misrepresented his true intentions.”

I don’t see that there’s a whole lot of difference between the two, actually. And I have very little doubt that both are true.

Subsequent and more recent events have only continued the pattern that alarms Ms. Burlingame and the other family members. Obama is bent on releasing more detainees, and plea bargaining with others, and is giving the families’ concerns short shrift. Ms. Burlingame and the group are sadder but wiser:

Given all the developments since our meeting with the president, it is now evident that his words to us bore no relation to his intended actions on national security policy and detainee issues. But the narrative about Mr. Obama’s successful meeting with 9/11 and Cole families has been written, and the press has moved on.

The Obama team has established a pattern that should be plain for all to see. When controversy erupts or legitimate policy differences are presented by well-meaning people, send out the celebrity president to flatter and charm.”

That’s a pretty good summary of this adminstration’s modus operandi. It’s certainly not limited to dealing with terrorists and terrorism, either. It bears repeating:

It is now evident that Obama’s words bear no relation to his intended actions.