The New Neo

Putin: Obama who?

Posted on December 30, 2016 by neoDecember 30, 2016

This from Putin, in response to Obama’s sanctions on Russia, has got to hurt:

We regard the recent unfriendly steps taken by the outgoing US administration as provocative and aimed at further weakening the Russia-US relationship. …

Although we have the right to retaliate, we will not resort to irresponsible ”˜kitchen’ diplomacy but will plan our further steps to restore Russian-US relations based on the policies of the Trump Administration…

It is regrettable that the Obama Administration is ending its term in this manner. Nevertheless, I offer my New Year greetings to President Obama and his family.

My season’s greetings also to President-elect Trump and the American people.

Run along, Obama, says Putin. You’re no longer relevant.

And the Russian embassy in the UK tweets, “President Obama expels 35 ðŸ‡·ðŸ‡º diplomats in Cold War deja vu. As everybody, incl ðŸ‡ºðŸ‡¸ people, will be glad to see the last of this hapless Adm.”

Double ouch.

Of course, this really isn’t funny. Russia is—as Mitt Romney famously said in the third 2012 debate, a statement that Obama ridiculed—well, that’s just watch it again:

John Kerry: Vietnam and Israel

Posted on December 30, 2016 by neoDecember 30, 2016

A great many people seem to be noting that John Kerry is going out as he came in.

I mentioned it yesterday, and Jim Geraghty noted it as well:

John Kerry ends his long career in politics the same way he began it: disgracefully”¦

And Seth Lipsky of the NY Post seems to agree:

It looks like Secretary of State John Kerry is determined to go out the way he came in ”” wrapping himself in the flag while betraying the causes of both America and its allies. He came in by doing that to Vietnam and is going out by turning on Israel…

Just as he helped our enemies, years ago, in respect to Vietnam ”” another struggle that pitted the partisans of freedom and democracy against the allies of totalitarianism. That’s where perfidy started to glint in Kerry’s career.

It’s also where his actual career began—that is, his political career. It’s what made him a national figure when he was still in his twenties. I thought it might be interesting to point to some previous posts I’ve written on the subject of Kerry and his Vietnam testimony, as well as how it relates on his stance on Israel. I had actually forgotten some of the details of those posts, details that help explain Kerry’s Wednesday speech on the Israel/Palestine question.

First, take a look at some of Kerry’s Vietnam testimony itself, which can be found here. I don’t think most people who weren’t around back then realize how far Kerry went. See also this post of mine on Kerry’s infamous Winter Soldier hearings.

But now let’s get to the task at hand: Kerry and Israel. Kerry (who in my opinion is every bit the egotist that President Obama is, and more) has been working on a negotiated 2-state solution in the area for most of his term as Secretary of State. Like so many others before him, he would have dearly loved to have made some sort of peace pact the capstone of his career in public life. Two and a half years ago (April, 2014), Kerry had this to say on the subject:

If there’s no two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict soon, Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state,” Secretary of State John Kerry told a room of influential world leaders in a closed-door meeting Friday”¦

Kerry also said that at some point, he might unveil his own peace deal and tell both sides to “take it or leave it.”

“A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative. Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second-class citizens””or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state,” Kerry told the group of senior officials and experts from the U.S., Western Europe, Russia, and Japan.

This is virtually identical to what Kerry said in the most controversial line of his speech last Wednesday: “if the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic ”“ it cannot be both.” The only thing he left out on Wednesday was the characterization of Israel as “apartheid.” So these thoughts of Kerry’s were not at all new. The difference is that they were delivered to a far larger and more public forum, and delivered at a time when Kerry had run out of chances to effect any solution whatsoever.

In my 2014 post, I reflected:

So what are Kerry’s…remarks about? Some of it is merely a reflection of the relatively anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian attitude of the Obama administration. But some of it is probably Kerry’s own anger at how impotent he’s been in achieving anything in the Middle East negotiations so far. Narcissists tend to get especially frustrated when their expectations of their own power aren’t realized, and Kerry’s lack of success in the Middle East “peace process” would almost inevitably cause him to strike out in retaliation of the verbal sort. His remarks are a version of why can’t these stupid people see things clearly, like I do? Why don’t they just bow to my superior wisdom and “take” the peace plan I’ve worked so hard on?

In the two and a half years since that time, I would imagine that Kerry’s narcissistic rage has only grown, and settled squarely on Israel (where it seems to have originated in the first place).

This post of mine was written a few months later, in July of 2014. It contains this quote from a piece in The New Republic, which shows the ways in which Kerry sees his Vietnam days as impacting on his views about Israel/Palestine:

Netanyahu] opened the meeting [with Kerry] by playing Kerry a video on one of his favorite topics: Palestinian incitement. It showed Palestinian children in Gaza being taught to glorify martyrdom and seek Israel’s destruction. “This is the true obstacle to peace,” Netanyahu told Kerry.

“It’s a major issue,” Kerry replied. “And nothing justifies incitement. I hate it. I’ve read Abbas the riot act about it. You know I have. But it is worthwhile to try to understand what life looks like from the Palestinian point of view.”

“This has nothing to do with the occupation and the settlements,” said Netanyahu.

Kerry pressed on: “When I fought in Vietnam, I used to look at the faces of the local population and the looks they gave us. I’ll never forget it. It gave me clarity that we saw the situation in completely different ways.”

[Kerry goes on to add that the situation in Israel] “can’t be solved if you can’t see it how they see it.”

If Kerry really thinks that’s some sort of solution, and that his Vietnam experience is relevant—and I think that he does, if only because he believes in his superior perceptions of all situations—then his egotism and naivete are astounding (but of course, we already knew that). My July 2014 post continued this way:

Kerry was in Vietnam for barely four months over forty years ago and went home early, and his time there was spent on a Swift Boat. How many South Vietnamese did he get to encounter, and under what circumstances? And how could he possibly have a clue what they were really thinking when they looked at him (except for the ones he was shooting at), or why, or whether they “saw the situation in completely different ways” from him? How about the ones who fled the country after we left, or those who were killed or re-educated; how did they “see the situation”?

Kerry has long been fond of making sweeping pronouncements on what the South Vietnamese people wanted and didn’t want, and how they “saw the situation.” I guess he was a mind reader then, just as he’s a mind reader now. According to his 1971 Senate testimony on the subject, here’s what they thought:

We found most people didn’t even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart”¦

So that when we in fact state, let us say, that we will have a ceasefire or have a coalition government, most of the 2 million men you often hear quoted under arms, most of whom are regional popular reconnaissance forces, which is to say militia, and a very poor militia at that, will simply lay down their arms, if they haven’t done so already, and not fight. And I think you will find they will respond to whatever government evolves which answers their needs, and those needs quite simply are to be fed, to bury their dead in plots where their ancestors lived, to be allowed to extend their culture, to try and exist as human beings. And I think that is what will happen”¦

…you can satisfy [people’s] needs with almost any kind of political structure, giving it one name or the other. In this name it is democratic; in others it is communism; in others it is benevolent dictatorship. As long as those needs are satisfied, that structure will exist.

No biggee: democracy, Communism, whatever.

[NOTE: Kerry’s Wednesday speech seems to have annoyed Britain, too:

Britain backed a UN Security Council resolution calling for an end to Israel’s construction of settlements in the hotly-disputed region but Mr Kerry went further with his strongly-worded personal attack on Mr Netanyahu and his government.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said it was inappropriate of Mr Kerry, America’s top diplomat, to attack the make-up of the democratically-elected Israeli government ”“ a key ally of both the US and Britain.

Downing Street also rebuked Mr Kerry for focusing on the single issue of Israeli settlements and not the whole conflict.

And this was from a country that voted for the UN resolution. That’s how bad Kerry’s remarks were.]

If you want to talk about Nazis,…

Posted on December 29, 2016 by neoDecember 29, 2016

…who are the ones most akin to Nazis in this story?

Café 8 ½ in Honolulu, Hawaii, is facing harsh criticism for hanging a sign on its front door that tells voters who cast their ballot for President-elect Donald Trump to eat elsewhere.

“If you voted for Trump you cannot eat here! No Nazis,” reads the yellow sign, as reported by Fox News on Tuesday.

Obviously, it’s unenforceable—an excellent example of virtue-signaling, as the owner’s wife seems to admit:

Robert [the owner] just wants to express how much he doesn’t like Trump. … If people take it personally or it hurts them, we cannot help.

Now, why on earth would anyone take being called a Nazi personally?

For good measure, the owner’s wife added a kumbaya moment:

“We don’t want to create trouble,” she said. “There is enough trouble in the world.”

Peace. Love. Don’t come to our restaurant, you Nazi Trump-voters. You know who are are, because we certainly don’t.

[NOTE: Hawaii went for Clinton, 62% to 30%, so Trump received more votes there than I would have thought.]

One good side effect of the election of 2016…

Posted on December 29, 2016 by neoDecember 29, 2016

…is that several political careers are now over.

Hillary Clinton’s.

Barack Obama’s—although he apparently intends to continue his political activism, and others are begging him (and Democrats) to drop their usual benevolent kindness towards their opponents and finally take the gloves off:

Ever the institutionalist, Obama undoubtedly worries about the downsides of staying in the fight. Won’t it set a bad precedent? Won’t it further polarize America? Won’t it further degrade political norms?

Yes, yes, and yes. But these are questions that Republican leaders haven’t asked themselves for years, and they have a unified government to show for it. To fight back with any effectiveness, Democrats have got to be tougher. That means breaking a few norms themselves, if only to save others.

Noble of them, isn’t it?

Yesterday I was grateful to add the name of John Kerry to the group of people unlikely to hold office again. Kerry is a man I detested even back in my liberal Democrat days when he first became famous during the Vietnam era. And yesterday, Kerry once again proved himself to be the perfect vain and self-congratulatory self-important self-righteous fact-compromised toady to Obama, doing his bidding and selling Israel down the river while pretending not to. Hey, maybe Kerry will get a Nobel Peace Prize, too, which I have no doubt he would treasure.

But I will be very grateful to know that pretty soon he’ll be out of public life/office—I think.

You never really do know that sort of thing, I suppose. I thought it was over for him in 2004. And Massachusetts might decide to send him to the Senate again, if he wants to go. Kerry is 73 now, and although by the time a Trump first term is up he’ll be 77, I guess that’s not too late for some sort of appointment if the Democrats have a renascence in 2020.

[ADDENDUM: Jim Geraghty certainly seems to agree with me about Kerry:

John Kerry ends his long career in politics the same way he began it: disgracefully…

Kerry in 2013 was a perfect choice for Obama’s second secretary of state. For the better part of three decades on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry had spoken as if statecraft and international diplomacy were relatively easy tasks, and only the bunch of idiots in the current administration ”” Republican or Democrat ”” could mess it up like this. Finally, Kerry would get the chance to show everybody how it’s done.

We see the results today…

Arrogant and full of himself as ever, Kerry trashed this country and its military on the way in, and trashes Israel on the way out.]

Debbie Reynolds dies at 84…

Posted on December 29, 2016 by neoDecember 29, 2016

…one day after the death of her daughter, Carrie Fisher.

Carrie Fisher’s death came as a shock because she had not been ill until experiencing cardiac arrest during a flight, and at 60 she was still relatively young. Afterwards, on learning that her 84-year-old mother was still alive, it made sense to feel especially bad for Debbie. Losing a child is an almost unspeakably terrible experience.

But when one day later Reynolds herself dropped dead, the story catapulted into a deeper realm (there’s even some resemblance to the ancient myth of Demeter and Persephone in the sorrow of the grieving mother), evoking pathos:

The Greek word pathos means “suffering,” “experience,” or “emotion.” It was borrowed into English in the 16th century, and for English speakers, the term usually refers to the emotions produced by tragedy or a depiction of tragedy.

It’s like a kick to the gut when a person seems to die of heartbreak. Who would have thought of that as the fate of Reynolds, who kept it light in most of her roles as the wholesome and innocent (yet sassy and spunky) girl-next-door?

Debbie Reynolds was part of my own youth, because she became a star in the Fifties. The movie I remember seeing her in when I was a child wasn’t “Singin’ in the Rain.” It was “Tammy and the Bachelor,” which I must have viewed at least five times in summer sleep-away camp. On rainy days, that seemed to be the movie they always showed.

Reynolds’ life wasn’t an easy one, as you can see from the clip I’m about to present (she had three husbands who really did her wrong, and two of them cleaned her out financially as well). I’ve cued it up for a 5-minute clip from a lengthy interview Oprah did with both Reynolds and Fisher in 2011. In it you can see their relationship, a strong bond forged through years of hardship and humor:

Here’s a short bio Carrie made and narrated about her mother’s life:

And lastly, here’s a short and very touching (and to me, surprising) clip of Debbie and Carrie singing together. I had no idea that Carrie Fisher sang, although of course both of her parents did it for a living. Her mother mentions here that she’d encouraged Carrie to sing back when she was young, and Carrie adds that she had stopped singing for thirty years. I believe this was the first time Carrie had sung in public for a long, long time.

You’ll see how she does:

RIP.

[ADDENDUM: Via Althouse, I discovered this wonderful interview with Reynolds. Great stories; really quite fascinating.]

A stroll down memory lane with Barack Obama, candidate

Posted on December 28, 2016 by neoDecember 28, 2016

[Hat tip: commenter “Esther.”]

There once was a candidate named Barack Obama.

He was a breath of fresh air. He promised a lot of things. He promised hope and change.

And he promised this:

That was from a speech that candidate Obama made at AIPAC on June 4, 2008. The transcript can be found here, along with the following background:

The speech comes the day after he secured enough delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination and become the first African-American candidate for president. In these prepared remarks provided by his campaign, Obama tries to allay doubts that some Jewish voters have expressed about his candidacy.

A relevant excerpt, designed to soothe the worries of those Jewish voters:

Let me be clear. Israel’s security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive, and that allows them to prosper ”” but any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.

I have no illusions that this will be easy. It will require difficult decisions on both sides. But Israel is strong enough to achieve peace, if it has partners who are committed to the goal. Most Israelis and Palestinians want peace, and we must strengthen their hand. The United States must be a strong and consistent partner in this process ”” not to force concessions, but to help committed partners avoid stalemate and the kind of vacuums that are filled by violence. That’s what I commit to do as president of the United States.

[ADDENDUM: The above is relevant because of this quote from Kerry’s speech: “Jerusalem should be the internationally recognized capital of the two states” (Israel and Palestine, in a 2-state solution).

That runs counter to Obama’s 2008 promise and his “commitment,” and represents a statement that appears to be in agreement with the official UN position:

United Nations General Assembly resolution 181, passed on November 29, 1947, provided for the full territorial internationalisation of Jerusalem: “The City of Jerusalem shall be established as a corpus separatum under a special international regime and shall be administered by the United Nations.” This position was restated in the wake of the 1948 Arab”“Israeli War in UN General Assembly Resolution 303(IV) of 1949. According to a 1979 report prepared for and under the guidance of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, it would appear that the United Nations has maintained the principle that the legal status of Jerusalem is that of a corpus separatum.

The United Nations General Assembly does not recognize Israel’s proclamation of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which is, for example, reflected in the wording of General Assembly Resolution 63/30 of 2009 which states that “any actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power, to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the Holy City of Jerusalem are illegal and therefore null and void and have no validity whatsoever, and calls upon Israel to cease all such illegal and unilateral measures.”

Although the General Assembly cannot pass legally binding resolutions over international issues, the United Nations Security Council, which has the authority to do so, has passed a total of six Security Council resolutions on Israel on the matter, including UNSC resolution 478 which affirmed that the enactment of the 1980 Basic Jerusalem Law declaring unified Jerusalem as Israel’s “eternal and indivisible” capital, was a violation of international law.]

John Kerry’s speech on Israel and Palestine

Posted on December 28, 2016 by neoMay 25, 2019

Open thread. Live feed can be found here.

I’ll add commentary later today.

UPDATE 1:00 PM:

I can’t bear to listen to Kerry, so I’m reading summaries online. It appears from what I’ve read so far that the speech was a combination of defensiveness and justification of the Obama administration, along with paeans to the fiction of the peace process that blames the problems with finding a 2-state solution on the Israeli settlements. Cause and effect are backwards, history is ignored, and Israel bears the burden of Kerry’s/Obama’s blame.

Has any outgoing administration ever done anything remotely like this? Delivered a major foreign policy speech on an initiative that runs counter to that of the successor administration about to take office in three weeks? And done it without any particular crisis necessitating action? While simultaneously going against its own previous policies?

Without doing a ton of research on the matter, I think I’m safe saying “no, never; not even anything remotely like it.” But there’s never been an administration remotely like Obama’s in its basic duplicity.

It is no accident they’re doing this now, and it’s not just about Trump or even Netanyahu, or anything Israel has done recently. I believe this was always the plan from the moment Obama took office in 2008. It’s just that he wasn’t free to do this before. He only had a brief window of opportunity for it: between November 9 and January 20, the election and the inauguration. He had to wait for the first date to pass because he knew the American voter wouldn’t like it and it could cause an election loss for his side. And he had to squeeze it in before the second for obvious reasons: he loses power on that day.

I don’t think this is the end of what Obama has planned for us in the next three weeks.

UPDATE 2:10 PM

The money quote in the Kerry speech—the line everyone seems to be discussing the most—was “Israel can be either Jewish or democratic.” The fuller quote is this:

If the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic. It cannot be both, and it won’t ever really be at peace…

This seemed so strange to me that I went for the full transcript, which I found on C-SPAN (blame them for the all-caps; not my doing, I’m just cutting and pasting:

THEY CAN CHOOSE TO LIVE TOGETHER IN ONE STATE OR THEY CAN SEPARATE INTO TWO STATES. BUT HERE IS A FUNDAMENTAL REALITY. IF THE CHOICE IS ONE STATE, ISRAEL CAN EITHER BE JEWISH OR DEMOCRATIC. IT CANNOT BE BOTH. AND IT WON’T EVER REALLY BE AT PEACE. MOREOVER, THE PALESTINIANS WILL NEVER FULLY REALIZE THEIR VAST POTENTIAL IN A HOMELAND OF THEIR OWN WITH A ONE STATE SOLUTION. MOST, ON BOTH SIDES, UNDERSTAND THIS BASIC CHOICE AND THAT IS WHY IT IS IMPORTANT THAT POLLS SHOW THEIR IS STILL STRONG SUPPORT FOR THE TWO STATE SOLUTION. IN THEORY. THEY JUST DON’T BELIEVE IT CAN HAPPEN. AFTER DECADES OF CONFLICT, MANY NO LONGER SEE THE OTHER SIDE AS PEOPLE, ONLY AS THREATS AND ENEMIES. BOTH SIDES CONTINUE TO PUSH A NARRATIVE THAT PLAYS TO PEOPLE’S FEARS AND REINFORCES THE WORST STEREOTYPES RATHER THAN WORKING TO CHANGE PERCEPTIONS AND BUILD UP BELIEF IN THE POSSIBILITY OF PEACE.

Hard to know where to begin when criticizing his quoted remarks. But I may as well begin here with a tweet from Dan McLaughlin about “Jewish” and “democratic”:

@baseballcrank

Wow. Now there’s two things the United States government has not previously declared to be opposites.

Facts:

(1) Israel (the Jewish state) is the only democratic government in the area.

(2) Israel already has many citizens who are not Jewish, and who are in fact Arabs [emphasis mine]:

Arab citizens of Israel or Arab population of Israel are Israeli citizens, whose cultural and linguistic heritage or ethnic identity is Arab. The majority of the Arabs in Israel are Muslim but some are Christian or Druze. Many identify as Palestinian and commonly self-designate themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel…Most Arab citizens of Israel are functionally bilingual, their second language being Modern Hebrew. By religious affiliation, most are Muslim, particularly of the Sunni branch of Islam…

According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, the Arab population in 2013 was estimated at 1,658,000, representing 20.7% of the country’s population…

Most of the Arabs living in East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967 and later annexed, were offered Israeli citizenship, but most have refused, not wanting to recognize Israel’s claim to sovereignty. They became permanent residents instead. They have the right to apply for citizenship, are entitled to municipal services, and have municipal voting rights.

(3) The Arab countries in the region are Judenrein.

So Kerry’s comment was Orwellian.

Then we have this gem of a sentence from the Kerry quote, with its narrative about “narrative,” and its tit-for-tat equivalence:

Both sides continue to push a narrative that plays to people’s fears and reinforces the worst stereotypes rather than working to change perceptions and build up belief in the possibility of peace.

In some ways, that’s even worse than Kerry’s “cannot be both Jewish and democratic” quote. Anyone who has followed the Israeli/Palestinian conflict for the last few decades, and certainly those who have followed it from the beginning, should know that one side has been “continuing to push a narrative” that reinforces the worst stereotypes: it’s the Palestinians who teach their children that Jews are evil barbaric monkeys. It’s the Israelis who have made concession after concession for peace, and the Palestinians who refused to accept those offers and held on to the idea that they could obliterate the Jewish state with time if they just held out long enough.

Another charge against Trump: libido-crusher!

Posted on December 27, 2016 by neoDecember 27, 2016

Okay, now we’ve heard everything:

Sex therapist Kimberly Resnick Anderson claims Trump winning the presidency has led to a widespread loss of libido in the bedroom among her clients.

Dubbing it ‘The Trump Bedroom Backlash’ Resnick Anderson says she has seen it time and again in her office.

But she claims it is more widespread than just what she describes as the ‘mecca for progressives and liberals’.

The certified sex expert told DailyMail.com: ‘Since Trump won a common complaint in my office is that women get more easily annoyed when their husbands or boyfriends initiate sex.

‘There are so many women complaining about it, I dubbed it “The Trump Bedroom Backlash”.

Wow.

I have to say that this news surprised me. I had often assumed that political stress—which these woman are experiencing—might enhance the desire to bed down and get away from it all. Sort of like what sometimes happens in wartime, when people think their lives might end soon and they want to have a wild fling both to forget about it and to have some fun before the doors close.

Apparently not in this case:

‘One of my patients admitted, ‘Since Trump won, the thought of having sex is unappealing to me. All I can picture is him boasting about exploiting women”¦It makes me sick.’

‘This sentiment rings throughout my office on a frequently increasing basis.

That’s a clue right there. I think such women are coming up with a syllogism. You know the syllogism:

All men are mortal

Socrates is a man

Therefore Socrates is mortal

Of course, that’s not the syllogism operating here.. Now we have a syllogistic fallacy that probably goes something like this:

My husband is a man

Trump is a man

Therefore my husband is like Trump

And another clue can be found here:

‘Another patient lamented to me that since his wife discovered he was a Trump supporter, “she wants nothing to do with me in the bedroom. It’s as if I am suddenly the enemy.”‘

‘A couple sat in my office and she said, “If you support Trump in any way, shape or form, then we do not share core values. And if we do not share core values, it’s hard to be sexually attracted to you.”‘

I have no doubt that some of you are inclined to revile these women, or to laugh at them, or both. But understand one thing, which is that it has been drummed into their heads (and they sincerely believe) that Trump is Hitlerian. Almost the devil. Evil personified. If a person believes that, it’s not politics as usual, and it’s not okay if that person’s friends or spouse support evil.

I actually know one of these couples, although not at all well. In this case, a forty-plus year marriage is imperiled.

As Trump would say: Sad.

[ADDENDUM: Commenter “Brian E” doubted whether these relationships were healthy to begin with, and my answer is that I’m pretty sure some of the relationships weren’t healthy, but I’d bet that quite a few were healthy.

“Healthy,” that is, not in the sense of “perfect,” but in the sense of “pretty good.”

What if something very basic about the belief system of someone you married had changed? What if, for example, you married an atheist, you were an atheist, and later on the person became very religious and observant? Or, vice versa? You were both believers went to church together, volunteered for church things together, and then the person became an atheist and declared believers to be fools?

I could go on and on with more examples, but the point is that politics is very much a belief system—and a pretty basic one at that. For some people, it’s even a way of life. If two spouses were always on the same page together before this election, it could be a very profound shock when one leaves the fold.

This is especially true of supporting Trump, a man even his admirers admit is no ordinary candidate or ordinary politician, and who has a lot of offensive (or at the very least controversial) characteristics in terms of language and past behavior. Some of this was demonstrated on the campaign trail or brought out from the archives as a result of the campaign, and is now quite well-known. Znd some of it had a sexual content, as well.

For some women, the idea that a spouse who was formerly of like mind with them is now supporting THAT EVIL MAN is a very difficult one to swallow, even in a marriage that was previously peaceful and companionate. Or maybe especially in a marriage that was previously peaceful and companionate.]

Carrie Fisher dies at 60

Posted on December 27, 2016 by neoDecember 27, 2016

Carrie Fisher has died, four days after suffering a cardiac arrest on a flight from London to Los Angeles. My guess is that the damage was just too huge, both to brain and body, and further life support maintenance was not advised.

A sad event. Fisher was only sixty, which sounds young to me.

I was never a Star Wars fan—or paid all that much attention to Fisher, actually. But I know a lot of people really loved her. My sense of her was that she was a much better writer and wit than she was an actress. Sarcastic and funny, she was entertaining on talk shows and in her books, which were laced with biting and sometimes self-deprecating humor (I read this one long ago).

Fisher wrote candidly about her history of substance abuse. She was later diagnosed as being bipolar, which is an illness whose sufferers often are quite creative and also often turn to substances in a vain attempt to even out their wildly swinging moods. I would guess (although I doubt we’ll ever know) that this history may have contributed years later to her heart problems.

Fisher had enjoyed a renascence of sorts in recent years with her new roles and later Star Wars movies, and a new book. She was on a book promotion tour when she was felled by the cardiac arrest.

RIP.

Thomas Sowell is retiring from the column business

Posted on December 27, 2016 by neoJuly 3, 2019

I can understand it; after all, Sowell is 86. Writing a regular column takes a lot of dedication, and he’s been working hard all his life. Time for some relaxation while he still has enough health to enjoy it:

Even the best things come to an end. After enjoying a quarter of a century of writing this column for Creators Syndicate, I have decided to stop. Age 86 is well past the usual retirement age, so the question is not why I am quitting, but why I kept at it so long.

It was very fulfilling to be able to share my thoughts on the events unfolding around us, and to receive feedback from readers across the country – even if it was impossible to answer them all.

Being old-fashioned, I liked to know what the facts were before writing. That required not only a lot of research, it also required keeping up with what was being said in the media.

During a stay in Yosemite National Park last May, taking photos with a couple of my buddies, there were four consecutive days without seeing a newspaper or a television news program – and it felt wonderful. With the political news being so awful this year, it felt especially wonderful.

This made me decide to spend less time following politics and more time on my photography, adding more pictures to my website (www.tsowell.com).

As I said, I can understand. On the other hand, I’ll miss him.

Sowell has been one of the conservative voices that spoke to me the most convincingly when I was going through my political change and for a long long while afterward. What an incisive mind he had and still has, and what a remarkably clear way of expressing himself. Several of his books are among the best treatments I’ve ever read of the differences between right and left, and I highly recommend them if you’ve not encountered them before:

The Vision of the Anointed
The Quest for Cosmic Justice

I’ve recommended the above two books in particular for people who are liberals and want to know something about the right. For many liberals Sowell has a special clout because he is a black man of great achievement, and having been a liberal himself at one time—in fact, a leftist—he understands full well what motivates liberals and the more benign leftists, and can write of them and about them and to them with empathy.

That doesn’t mean that Sowell ever—ever ever ever—pulled his punches. Oh my, no! A sharp debater and speaker, he can be seen and heard in his prime on a large number of videos on YouTube; take your pick.

I’ve read Sowell’s autobiography, and reading it gave me a sense of the forces that shaped him into the tough and uncompromising thinker he was and is. But some of it is a mystery, as it is with all people. Sowell just seems to have been born with the stubborn strength to go his own way. That way was a different one, as you will see if you read the autobiography. It led him to, among other things, Harvard (undergrad) and U. of Chicago (PhD) degrees as an economist and then a career as renowned professor, and it led him from left to right when the facts (those stubborn things) didn’t fit his ideology.

I also recommend his book Intellectuals and Race—oh, and just about everything else he’s ever written, even though I certainly haven’t read all of his enormous output.

Have a great time, Thomas Sowell, and I can’t thank you enough.

Tallulah

Posted on December 26, 2016 by neoDecember 26, 2016

What a name she had: Tallulah Bankhead.

What a voice she had. Even among the many dramatic and flamboyant personalities who used to populate Hollywood and the theater in the 30s and 40s, Bankhead was more unpredictable than most as well as more licentious.

Here’s an example of that latter quality of hers. This anecdote is about something that occurred during the making of Bankhead’s very first film, the aptly-titled “Tarnished Lady,” made in 1931:

Bankhead behaved herself on the set and filming went smoothly, but she found film-making to be very boring and did not have the patience for it. She did not like Hollywood, either; when she met producer Irving Thalberg, she asked him, “How do you get laid in this dreadful place?” Thalberg retorted, “I’m sure you’ll have no problem. Ask anyone.”

Thalberg, by the way, was an extraordinarily remarkable man who basically made Hollywood what it was in its golden age, and did it all at a very young age (with compromised health) while charming the birds off the trees.

I only saw Bankhead in one film, and that was when I was a child: “Lifeboat.” But she made a deep impression on me in it (as did the fact that William Bendix, whom I knew from the TV comedy “Life of Riley,” played a serious role). I had found some great clips from the movie to put in this post, but in the last couple of days they seem to have disappeared, as these things are apt to do. Instead, here’s a documentary about the film, with a brief bit about Tallulah that I’ve highlighted. Note that John Steinbeck had the main writing credit:

You can watch most of the entire film for free here. Unfortunately, though, the last few minutes and the first few minutes are missing. Here’s a $2.99 version; I’m assuming it’s all there.

Hope and change: be thankful for the 22nd Amendment

Posted on December 26, 2016 by neoDecember 26, 2016

It strikes me (and not for the first time) that Obama must detest Hillary Clinton:

President Barack Obama still believes in the message of “hope and change” he campaigned on in 2008 ”” so much so that he believes it could have delivered him a third term over Donald Trump had the Constitution allowed him to run again.

“I am confident in this vision because I’m confident that if I ”” if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it,” Obama told his former senior adviser, David Axelrod, on Monday’s “Axe Files” podcast. “I know that in conversations that I’ve had with people around the country, even some people who disagreed with me, they would say the vision, the direction that you point towards is the right one.”

Poor old girl. She’s a hard worker, just like Trump said. But she just doesn’t have my pizazz.

By Obama’s assessment, Clinton performed “wonderfully under really tough circumstances.” But there were problems: Obama accused the media of “wildly” amplifying Clinton’s flaws because of a double standard…

Oh, there’s a double standard all right, President Obama, but I don’t think it’s the one you think it is (not that he really thinks that, by the way, but he’s hoping his acolytes will).

The funny thing—the really odd thing—is that “hope and change” is exactly what propelled Trump to victory too, although of course that wasn’t Trump’s explicit slogan. But “hope and change” has no specific meaning in terms of left or right. Hope for what? What sort of change? Trump campaigned on hope that the change would be towards the political right, towards the reinstatement of traditional American values of liberty, towards economic recovery, and towards America’s pre-Obama role in the international world as strong defender of liberty and the countries that foster it.