Same old, same old, which I enliven with predictions for the next twelve months *UPDATED*

by 6 Comments

bored-baby

Here’s an old joke:

An established comedian invited a friend to join him at a very exclusive “comedian’s club.”  The guest instantly noticed something peculiar.  In the main room, a person would periodically stand up and shout out a number.  “57,” one would say, and a few people in the room would chuckle.  After a moment’s silence, someone would holler, “18,” and be rewarded with a chorus of good-natured “boos.”

This pattern continued for a while, until someone shouted out “77.”  While a few people let out a short bark of laughter, one guy in the corner was utterly beside himself.  He roared with laughter, until tears were rolling down his face.

The guest turned to his host and asked, “What gives?  What is it with these numbers?”

“Well,” the host explained, “it’s like this.  We’re all professional comedians here and, to be honest, there are only so many jokes around.  It got tiring and boring for someone to tell a joke that everyone already knew, so we started assigning them numbers.  It’s kind of like a joke short-hand.  People still laugh — if they want — but it definitely saves time.”

“Okay,” said the guest.  “I get that.  But what about that guy in the corner who collapsed with laughter when someone shouted out ’77′.”

Oh, him,” answered the host.  “I guess he hadn’t heard that joke before.”

Yes, it’s a surreal joke, but it also explains why I’m having problems blogging lately.  When I read a story about Obamacare, I can’t add much to posts I’ve written going all the way back to 2009.  I predicted then what would happen now.  “You’ll find that in posts 384, 943, 6749, and 34052.”  Events in the Middle East?  I foresaw those too, including Obama’s love affair with Iran, and Israel’s and Saudi Arabia’s entirely predictable coming together against that common enemy.  “See posts 3489 and 9492.”  Government data manipulation?  We covered that too, as we did with gun control, amnesty, foreign policy, etc.

I’ve moved out of fresh and into “I told you so.”  As a writer, “I told you so” is boring.  It’s also especially boring for all of you, because you were right there with me, making the same predictions.  We all saw all of this coming.

The only thing that’s kind of newsy now is watching the oh-so-smart Leftists figure out that they’ve been had.  It’s not actually real news, of course, because we all saw this coming too, but it’s still fun to watch.  As to these Obamabots, it’s not just that a specific politician has “had” them.  Their entire ideology is disintegrating in front of their eyes.  Most, of course, will plunge into frenetic denial.  That’s old stuff too.  For 100 years, communists have been saying that communism is perfect; it’s the implementation that’s flawed.  When today’s Leftist’s rant against the president, the party, and the people, they’re foll0wing an old script.

A few Leftists, however, will draw back and say, “We were wrong.  We were wrong about everything.”  That’s been done too.  They’ll be joining David Horowitz, Michael Medved, Thomas Lifson, David Mamet, Sally Zelikovsky, the Power Line guys, and scores of other people who already had their Road to Damascus moment when they realized that Leftism isn’t poorly implemented; it is, instead, fundamentally flawed.  I certainly won’t think as highly of these new converts as I do of the older generation.  The older generation didn’t need to see America’s economic collapse and her fade into international irrelevance to see which way the wind was blowing.

Since everything seems to be “same old, same old,” except even more so, what would be new and exciting news for a blase blogger in the next twelve months?

1.  Obamacare’s repeal, although unscrambling that egg will be virtually impossible.  Even if they wanted to, huge institutions such as heavily-regulated insurance companies and hospitals cannot turn on a dime.  The somewhat functioning market will have been destroyed, which nothing lined up to take its place.  Worse, we know that Republicans politicians are incapable of using the headwinds of repeal to revitalize the free market.  (Remember:  Democrats have bad ideas and effective politicians; and Republicans have good ideas and brain-dead cretins in office.)

2.  A groundswell of popular support for Obama’s impeachment.  Of course, that would leave Biden in charge, which is not a pretty thought.  The likelihood is that, if he could, he’d move Elizabeth Warren into the Veep seat to stymie Hillary.  It would be amusing, but just as bad for America as Obama himself.

3.  Israel’s alliance with the Gulf States to launch a devastating attack against Iran’s missile systems and nuclear centers.  With strong American leadership, this could actually have a good outcome, freeing Iranians from decades of appalling Islamist repression and destabilizing tyrannies in a way that leads to genuine freedom throughout the Middle East.  With our current leadership, a leadership that will have made such an attack necessary in the first place, one can only imagine that the Middle East, the entire Middle East, will manage simultaneously to implode and explode.  The human costs will exceed imagination and, because of oil, those costs will encompass the entire planet.  Canada, Brazil, the US, and other places may be coming up as major oil producers, but losing Middle Eastern oil in a single day would have incalculable consequences on modern life.

4.  The 2014 elections resulting in a Republican sweep the likes of which has never been seen in America.  In a way, though, coming as it would midway through Obama’s so-far disastrous second term, this would also be ho-hum news, even if both House and Senate changed hands.  What would be more interesting would be to see places such as Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and San Francisco jettison their Democrat ruling class.  I’m not holding my breath on that one.  The residents in those cities routinely use elections to double down on failure.

5.  Obama comes out of the closet.  (And, come on, you know he’s in there.)  That wouldn’t affect anything politically, but it would make for great headlines, especially if Hillary refuses to be one-upped and comes out too.

6.  Schadenfreude here, but I will enjoy watching New York in the first year of the de Blasio administration.  I should start running a pool taking bets as to how long it will take de Blasio to reduce New York to its 1970s status.  We all know that it’s easier and faster to tear down and destroy something than it is to renew and revitalize.

7.  The New York Times will declare bankruptcy.  I see that as inevitable, although would actually be surprised if it happened in the next twelve months.

8.  People definitively reject anthropogenic global warming.  As with the New York Times’ bankruptcy, this is inevitable.  I just don’t see it happening in only 12 months.

9.  Oprah recants and announces that she’s no longer calling for the genocide of “racist” people who don’t support Obama.

10.  Palestinians lay down their arms.  The previous nine hoped-for headlines all have a possibility, even a small one, of coming true.  This one does not, but it sure would be great news, and it would snap me completely out of my writer’s doldrums.

And, for those joining me in ennui, some music:

UPDATE: Hmmm. A James O’Keefe tweet suggests that tomorrow may bring some news we haven’t already heard before.

An Elizabeth Warren presidential candidacy

by 11 Comments

Elizabeth Warren quotation

The two top names currently being bandied about for the Democrat presidential slate in 2016 are Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren.  Democrats are saying that Hillary is “inevitable.”  I recall them saying the same thing in 2008, and that was before she had the Benghazi albatross hanging about her neck.  My suspicion is that, just as happened in 2008, were she to run, the media would roll out the red carpet for her, and she’d soil it within a few months.

No matter what Hillary does, she cannot get past the fact that, at some visceral, lizard-brain level, people who are not true believers neither like nor trust her.  And I do mean visceral.  We here are informed about what a squirrelly person she is, both personally and politically, whether one looks at Benghazi, lesbianism, political and economic ties to antisemitic Arab leagues, or whatever else.  Most Americans neither know nor care.  They just don’t like her.

And what about Elizabeth Warren?  Well, Americans neither know nor will they care that Warren’s Senatorial race proved that she’s a liar.  As Democrat politicians get caught in increasingly egregious lies, it’s rather ironic that people care less, not more.  “That’s just what politicians do,” they say, when what they really should be saying is “That’s what Democrat politicians do, so why the Hell are we voting for them?”

I’m embarrassed to admit this about the American people, but I suspect even Obama’s manifest, gross, far-reaching lies about Obamacare will eventually get nothing more than shrugs from Americans.  Those who are ideologically blind will even add “The Republicans made him do it.”  So Warren’s lies won’t get her.

I suspect that what will destroy Warren in the end is the same thing that wiped out Hillary:  she’s not likable.  Exactly like Hillary, Warren is angry, smug, and condescending.  Obama is too, but he was clever enough to hide that on the campaign trail.  Hillary couldn’t and Warren can’t.

My own outdated experience with having Warren as a law professor some decades ago is that she’s also a terribly bad communicator.  Like Obama, she does fine with the prepared speech, but she’s incoherent when she’s off the cuff.  And unlike Obama, she’s not black nor does she have a photogenic smile nor “ripped abs” to help her out.  Ask her the right question, meaning an important question for which she doesn’t have a pre-packaged answer, and all you’ll get is a boatload of angry BS.

William Jacobson, of Legal Insurrection, thinks as I do about Warren, and therefore devoutly hopes that she runs, because he’s assuming that she will collapse before a Republican candidate.  I’d like to agree with him, but I fear greatly that Republicans will, as always, destroy themselves.  With our luck, rather than having Ted Cruz, or Bill Lee, Alan West, or even Chris Christie (whom I’ve come to dislike but whose still more conservative than not) on the ballot, Republican primaries are going to result in our having John McCain on the ballot.  Indeed, with Open Primaries now in major states such as California, the best tactic the Democrats could use would be to put John McCain or Lindsay Graham or some other self-hating “conservative” on the ballot against Warren or whomever else the Democrats run with.

Yet another ferocious attack from the Wall Street Journal against President Obama

by 2 Comments

Yesterday I directed your attention to one of the angriest editorial opinions I’ve ever seen in the normally temperate Wall Street Journal.  What I missed was that Daniel Henninger, who’s also a normally temperate writer, also leveled a huge mortar round of ugly facts against our President:

We should admit the obvious: Barack Obama is the most anti-political president the United States has had in the post-war era. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter (even), Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush. All practiced politics inside the tensions between Congress and the presidency that were designed into the system by the Founding Fathers. Not Barack Obama. He told us he was different. He is.

Mr. Obama doesn’t do Washington’s politics. Disappointed acolytes say it is because he is “passive.” That underestimates him. For Mr. Obama, the affairs of state are wholly a function of whatever is inside his mind.

Some things remain in his mind, like the economic benefits of public infrastructure spending, which appeared one more time in Monday’s post-Navy Yard speech on the lessons of the financial crisis and Congress’s obligations to agree with him. Some things enter his mind and then depart, like red lines in the Syrian sand.

From where he sits, it is the job of the political world outside to adjust and conform to the course of the president’s mental orbit. Those who won’t adjust are dealt with by the president himself. They are attacked publicly until they are too weak politically to oppose what is on his mind.

This is the unique Obama M.O. For historians of the Obama presidency, this September has been a case study in the 44th president’s modus operandi.

Please read the whole thing here.

As with climate change, I feel vindicated — but a fat lot of good vindication does me.  The damage is already done whether to our economy or our national security.

Voters duped by a Leftist media first gave us two years of unbridled Progressive politics, then at least four years of divided politics (2010-2014, or maybe 2016), and another three plus years of Barack Hussein Obama.  Eight years is a long time within which destructive forces can do their dirty work.  The turnaround won’t be instant and won’t even be eight years.  If conservative principles do take hold again, it may take decades to undo the damage.  And given the current infighting amongst those who call themselves Republicans, it looks as if the somewhat more conservative party in America is once again setting up its circular firing squad.

Sometimes I think that the only thing that will save the Right in 2016 is the fact that Democrats are also going to have a presidential primary.  No matter how the actual election goes, I’ve got the popcorn and chocolate ice cream ready for the delightful spectacle of Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Elizabeth Warren, three of the worst liars in politics today, squaring off against each other.

Some articles about Ted Cruz that speak to what I like about him and what I worry about him

by 2 Comments

Rich Lowry wrote a great article today about the Democrats’ enormous frustration with Ted Cruz:  Cruz ought to be one of them, since he’s manifestly brilliant and hyper-educated . . . except that he refuses to be one of them.  I especially liked this bit:

Democrats and liberal pundits would surely dislike Cruz no matter where he went to school, but his pedigree adds an extra element of shocked disbelief to the disdain. “Princeton and Harvard should be disgraced,” former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell exclaimed on MSNBC, as if graduating a constitutionalist conservative who rises to national prominence is a violation of the schools’ mission statements.

It almost is. Princeton and Harvard aren’t quite the École Nationale d’Administration, the French school that trains that country’s political class, but they are close.

Andrew Stiles assembled a list of quotations from Democrats anxious to destroy Cruz before he gets a solid footing as a national candidate.  They realize that he’s Obama’s mirror image — Ivy League-educated, intelligent, a minority, and appealing to the masses — except that in Cruz’s case, he actually is intelligent and has the Ivy League grades and the work resume to prove it.  More than that, Cruz has a great deal of experience with the federal government, something Obama lacked.

Cruz is, in other words, the un-Sarah Palin.  He cannot be demeaned in order to be destroyed.  Because Cruz’s credentials hold up to scrutiny, and because he’s been very careful about making his life an open book, unlike the secretive Obama, Democrats are left with two lines of attack:  Cruz isn’t really a minority (because he doesn’t support Democrat policies, which is the litmus test for all minorities) and he must be insane or evil:

The liberal media are obsessed with Texas’s freshman senator Ted Cruz. The most recent outbreak includes a Daily Beast hit piece about his “creepy” college years at Princeton, as well as a flurry of articles about whether his Canadian-American dual citizenship could complicate a potential run for the White House in 2016.

[snip]

“I don’t think he should be defined as a Hispanic,” former governor Bill Richardson (D., N.M.) said in response to a question about Cruz’s view on immigration. Richardson later said his remarks were “misinterpreted.”

I’m not just relying on pundits, of course.  From everything I’ve seen of Cruz, he is admirable:  He’s personable; able to articulate conservative principles in clear, accessible language; consistent; funny; and just all around an appealing candidate, at least for true-believers.

Having said all that, here’s the one thing that worries me about Cruz — he seems to be a bit of a hot-head, who likes to make waves but doesn’t always think through those wave’s consequences.  Here’s Lowry again:

None of this is to endorse all of Cruz’s tactical judgments or to deny he can irk his own side of the aisle at times.

His push to defund Obamacare this fall is a grass roots-pleasing slogan in search of a realistic path to legislative fruition. Cruz never explains how a government shutdown fight would bring about the desired end. The strategy seems tantamount to believing that if Republican politicians clicked their wing tips together and wished it so, President Barack Obama would collapse in a heap and surrender on his party’s most cherished accomplishment.

In a field dominated with exciting, fairly young conservatives — Cruz, Mike Lee, Allen West (and even Rand Paul) — I think Cruz is someone to watch, admire, and appreciate.  Can’t you just imagine heads exploding all over if there were a Cruz/West ticket?  Having said that, though, I’m not inclined to manufacture a ticket this early in the game, nor do I like the idea of putting a ticket together just to watch Progressive heads explode.  I want to wait a year or two, and then hope (devoutly) that the media hasn’t destroyed every viable conservative candidate by nitpicking over bullying incidents in pre-school or silly spoonerisms on the campaign trail.  And then, since I’m assuming a Biden versus Hillary fight on the Left, I want to throw my wholehearted support behind any candidate who can defeat either of those two.

Barack Obama and the new world of the permanent campaign

by 7 Comments

I wasn’t paying attention, but it seems that the New York Times now has a dedicated Hillary reporter, even though the elections is more than three years away.  Does this mean that we can finally abandon the pretense of media impartiality?  This far in advance, having that kind of round-the-clock, individualized coverage from what many still consider (Gawd knows why) the premier paper in America, amounts to three years worth of non-cash campaign contributions.

Here’s one question for you, though:  Do you think that a dedicated reporter will be able, not just to cover, but to cover for Hillary for an entire three years?  It’s almost impossible to believe that, considering their own actions, their cronies’ actions, and their Foundation’s financial shenanigans, Hillary will be able to keep her nose clean.

And I haven’t forgotten that the National Enquirer, which doesn’t lie anymore about famous figures since the Carol Burnett lawsuit, claims that she’s working on a tell-all biography in which she finally admits that she’s been lying to Americans for decades by pretending she’s not a lesbian.  In that regard, it’s not the lesbianism that I mind, it’s the lying.  More than that, having her hold such a potentially embarrassing secret while she was First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State, raises the distinct possibility that unfriendly world players, such as Russia, have been able to blackmail her, her husband, and her political allies, over the years.

By the way, Seth Mandel has a much deeper, and more thoughtful, post about the ramifications of the Times’ decision.

Government of the people, by the people, and for the people has perished in America

by 36 Comments

Sometimes distance provides perspective.  My travels meant that, rather than being enveloped by news as I usually am, I read it only intermittently, and often through the New York Times’ filter, since that was the only news to which I had access for many days at a time.  The few stories I was able to follow put me strongly in mind of the Gettysburg Address, and how far away from those principles our current government has come.  Some of this is directly attributable to the current Democrat presidency, and some is an unpleasant by-product of a bureaucracy that has taken on a life of its own, independent of its creators’ ideas and energies.

Lincoln’s genius was that he was able to reduce to the smallest number of words the revolutionary principles that drove the Founding Fathers, as expressed in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution:  “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Do we still have a government “of the people, by the people [and] for the people?”  No.  Our political and bureaucratic classes no longer believe that the people have anything to do with their continued existence (that is, they do not view themselves as parts of a government “by the people”); they do not believe that they have anything in common with the people whose lives they dictate (in other words, they are not part of a government “of the people”); and nothing they do benefits the people who are trapped in their web of laws and regulations (so that they are not part of a government “for the people”).

America has ceased to be a representative democracy and has, instead, become an oligarchy:  We, the People, are controlled by a proportionately small number of people who claim all entitlement to themselves and who, through laws, lawlessness, and unbridled bureaucracy (with a bureaucracy made up of people entirely beholden to the oligarchy for their continued well-being), control every aspect of our lives.  This oligarchy is separate from and unrelated to the constitutional, representative democracy Lincoln believed was the necessary underpinning for a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

A handful of stories upon my return forcefully brought home the vast chasm that has formed between “we, the People” and those who no longer represent us but who, instead, simply govern us.

1.  The people have long loathed ObamaCare, and by a significant and unchanging percentage too.  Even the President’s water carriers are getting nervous.  Those charged with enforcing it against us will not use it for themselves, nor will those who imposed it upon us.  It is a product of the oligarchy, with the benefits, but not the burdens, flowing solely to the oligarchy.  It was imposed upon the People, not through a true democratic process, but through dirty political dealing.  This is neither government by the people nor for the people.

2.  Despite the stagnant economy, the high unemployment, the rise of part-time jobs (i.e., no living wage), the number of young people stuck at home, and the continuing bankruptcy of our country’s business and economy, our President and his family continue to live like Nero or Marie Antoinette.  The Nero analogy was most recently demonstrated with the story that Obama is golfing while the world burns down around us.  The Marie Antoinette analogy can be seen in the endless round of A-list partying and multi-millionaire style vacations the Obamas enjoy, using our money (White House facilities for parties, taxpayer-funded air transport and security for offsite pleasures), even as ordinary citizens struggling to make ends meet.  Obama, however, is worse than either Nero or Marie Antoinette, or any other analogous political figures (both historic and present day) who rob from the people to fund their lavish personal lifestyles.  This is because Obama is the only one of these figures who is — in theory, at least, an elected representative who is supposed to be only first among equals.  Obama’s grandiosity, however, shows that he no longer considers himself one of the people.  Worse, he is abetted in this historic break from a constitutional presidency by a ruling political and media class that has a vested economic and social interest in breaking with a constitutional republican democracy.

3.  The current government has abandoned the notion that government belongs to the people (“of, by, and for”) and holds, instead, the belief that the people and everything that they possess belong to the government.  Rep. Keith Ellison, a black, Muslim convert who is a darling of the Left, articulated this sentiment with startling clarity:  “The bottom line is we’re not broke, there’s plenty of money, it’s just the government doesn’t have it. . . . The government has a right, the government and the people of the United States have a right to run the programs of the United States. Health, welfare, housing – all these things.”  Government unions are a subset of this mindset.  In private industries, both management and the unions are negotiating with real money, real products, and real labor.  In the government sector, they negotiate with other people’s money regarding intangible products and services that are of dubious value.  (Think about the fact that California alone has more than 500 different agencies, a spectacular percentage of which are duplicative, and an even larger number of which do not serve the California taxpayers, but instead are directed at steering special interest groups into the government fold.)

4.  The bureaucracy has become an entity of itself.  It is no longer a subset of American government.  It is its own special interest group, and it advances its own agenda.  This fact can be attributed in significant part to government unions which, as noted above, sever government employees from the Peoples’ economic and practical needs.  Moreover, as the IRS scandal shows, the government bureaucracies no longer need political guidance to go after citizens who have the potential to disrupt their bureaucratic livelihood.  With little or no prompting from the political class, the bureaucracies abandoned their obligation to impose the law impartially and, instead, attacked what they perceived as threats.  If this seems familiar to you, you have only to think of innumerable science fiction books or movies (e.g., Terminator III), in which robots become sentient and turn on their human creators.

5.  Our next election is already predetermined.  Sadly, Myrna Adams makes the best argument for why Hillary Clinton will win in 2016 — and you’ll notice that none of her points have anything whatsoever to do with the will of the people or the state of America and the world, either now or in 2016.  Instead, Adams points to the political machinery which has broken down, with the dial perpetually set to “Democrat.”  Neither Hillary’s and her teams’ lack of any accomplishments to speak of nor the fact that Hillary herself is an undistinguished and inspiring human being will matter.  The oligarchy, made up of politicians, monied interests, government bureaucracies, media players, and academics, has spoken.  It’s Hillary’s turn now. After all, in 2008 and again in 2012, Obama was a candidate without accomplishments or, when off the teleprompter, charisma.  The robots — er, oligarchs . . . er, political class . . . er, media — anointed him and he won.  “We, the People” — our needs, desires, and existence — have become entirely expendable.

In the next election, democracy will be just as meaningful as it was in the old Soviet Union when 100% of the voters “freely” cast their votes for the Communist party candidate.  The Soviet Union was a nominal democracy in that the people “voted,” but it totally by-passed Lincoln’s requirement that a government worth saving must be “of the people, by the people, [and] for the people” in order to ensure that a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” shall not “perish from the earth.”

 

Because this seems like a good day for another scandal: Is Hillary planning to admit to some of her lies?

by 12 Comments

Hillary gets an eyeful of Christina Aguilera's breasts'

The National Enquirer led off this story with the news that Hillary will finally admit she’s lesbian.  I found more interesting the fact that she might be exposing the Obama White House’s secrets, everything from alcoholism and martial woes, to Valerie Jarrett’s tight control.  Here’s the post I did at Mr. Conservative about the National Enquirer’s scoop:

**********

For those of you who always thought that Hillary was lying about everything, you’re about to be proven right. Moreover, the news is going to come from a very unexpected source: Hillary herself.

The National Enquirer, which has stuck very close to honest reporting since getting burned in a long-ago libel suit, reports that Hillary has decided to stop the lies and tell the truth in an upcoming memoir. Simon & Schuster will pay her $25 million for writing the book, which she hopes will inoculate her 2016 presidential run against any future ugly revelations.

According to the National Enquirer’s source, a person who is allegedly one of Hillary’s close friends, “By writing this tell-all, Hillary will settle old scores and get revenge on her enemies.” Those enemies apparently include Barack and Michelle Obama, since pre-publication rumors have it that Hillary will report about Barack’s drinking problem and the Obamas’ serious marital problems. Hillary also plans to attack Valeria Jarrett, who is Obama’s right-hand woman and the person many believe is the real power in the White House.

Hillary also intends to admit what many have known for years, but which her friends and ex-lovers have never confirmed: she’s bisexual and has had lesbian affairs. The National Enquirier smugly notes that the memoir will confirm one of its past reports that a veterinarian who came to the White House to treat Socks, the White House cat, caught Hillary in a steamy (and adulterous) embrace with another woman.

It will be interesting to see whether Hillary addresses the rumors that one of her lovers is Huma Abedin. Abedin is an interesting character, since she is Hillary’s closest confidant and aid; is married to Anthony Weiner, the Democrat politician who sent naked pictures of himself to women; and comes from a family tied closely to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton

According to a source the National Enquirier identifies as a “family insider,” Hillary’s admission that she is a lesbian isn’t a sign that she repents her life of lies. Instead, it’s part of her cold-blooded political calculation:

“Bill and Hillary are the consummate politi­cians, and they realize the LGBT community is a huge voting bloc,” said a family insider.

“They want lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people behind Hillary in the 2016 campaign. So Hillary’s going to come clean for the votes. She’ll admit that she’s bisexual and has had lesbian relationships.”

Hillary will also admit that, when she suddenly vanished from the scene last December amidst State Department assurances that nothing bad was the matter, these assurances were yet another Clinton lie. In fact, after a fall, she was discovered to have a blood clot between her brain and her right ear, which was putting pressure on her brain. In the lead-up to the diagnosis, Hillary thought she had brain cancer, just as Teddy Kennedy did, and began saying good-bye to friends and families.

Hillary lying to a House investigative committee:

For those who still care about Monica Lewinsky, whose sexual shenanigans with Bill almost lost Bill and Hillary the White House, Hillary will finally talk about her version of those events. According to Hillary’s view of things, Monica got word to Hillary that Bill was in love with Monica and wanted to start a family with him (and that she was even planning on getting pregnant without Bill’s consent). Hillary’s response to this news was to throw up in a White House bathroom.

The book isn’t just about the personal. As part of her attack on the Obamas, Hillary will detail her battles with Valerie Jarrett, “Obama’s brain,” to get a green light on attacking Osama bin Laden. Hillary also plans to detail the fight she had with the White House over Osama’s bloodied, bullet-ridden corpse. Hillary claims that she wanted it returned to the U.S. as proof that he was dead. Obama instead opted for a secret burial at sea (and Hillary promises to reveal the real location) so as not to inflame Muslim sensibilities.

Hillary’s plan is that this book, by telling all her dirty little secrets in advance, will clear the way for a 2016 presidential run since none of her opponents will have any dirt to spill on her. The mere fact that she feels compelled to write this book indicates that the Obamas have already gathered this information and, moreover, that they would have used it if Hillary had looked set to sweep the Democrat primaries in 2008. Releasing dirt on his Democrat opponents as a way to clear the field is, after all, vintage Obama.

Party partisans will no doubt applaud Hillary for her bravery in “coming out” (not that it’s very brave if everyone you care about thinks it’s a wonderful thing to do). It will be more interesting to see how ordinary Americans feel when they discover that the woman seeking the White House has lied to them every step of the way for decades.

Some random factoids about Lois Lerner, the gal who was the head of the IRS exempt organization’s division

by 13 Comments

Lois Lerner

A little more than a week ago, no one had heard of Lois Lerner.  Now she is the poster child for government machinery run amok.  She first thrust herself into our awareness with her clumsily staged revelation that, “Oh, by the way, the IRS persecuted conservatives, but really, there’s nothing to worry about….”  Since then, it’s only gotten worse, with Lois being exposed as a serial liar.  Finally, today, she announced in advance that, if called before Congress, she would plead the Fifth, so please don’t embarrass her by calling her.  I say “Call away” and, so far, Committee Head Issa agrees.

Now that Lois has emblazoned herself as a household name, people are starting to look at her very closely.  It turns out that her hostility towards conservatives predates her tenure at the IRS, and goes back to her FEC days.  She may have failed math, but she gets an “A” in harassment.

Conservatives are doing the logical thing, which is to try to link her to Obama.  As Walter Olson at Overlawyered points out, however, the only linkage currently available is truly a link bridge to far — it’s so tenuous as to be silly.

One of my friends, who does not want to be known as a conspiracy theorist (and I can vouch that this friend wouldn’t be seen near a tin-foil hat), wondered if Lois’ anti-conservative propensities put her in an orbit other than the Obama’s.  My friend sent me this email, and assures me, as I assure you, that it’s idle speculation rather than a breaking story:

Listening to Michael Savage the other day, he brought up the intriguing questions about the IRS scandal: “Why now?” and “Who leaked it?”

One caller raised the possible theory that Hillary Clinton was behind it trying to deflect Benghazi criticism that was beginning to zoom in on her, to an Obama-centric scandal.

I was intrigued.  Here is what a quick Google search has taught me so far:

  1. The official who brought up the scandal is Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS Exempt Organizations unit
  2. Lois Lerner husband, is Michael R. Miles, a partner at the law firm Sutherland Asbill & Brennan.
  3. I saw some articles linking Sutherland Asbill & Brennan to hosting an Obama campaign event, but…
  4. What has not been reported is that in 1993 Bill Clinton appointed Hillary’s good friend, Margaret “Peggy” Richardon, as IRS Commissioner (http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/24/business/clinton-picks-lawyer-to-be-irs-chief.html). 
  5. This is where it gets a bit interesting.  Peggy Richardson was also a partner at Sutherland Asbill & Brennan.  (Oddly enough, Sutherland Asbill & Brennan had one other partner as IRS Commissioner – Randolph Thrower, appointed by Nixon…).
  6. Peggy Richardson, is (allegedly) no stranger to quashing inconvenient investigations against the Clintons (http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2006/01/hillary-silent-clinton-presidencys-latest-cover/)
  7. This is where it turns highly speculative.  I could not find, in the limited time I searched, a link between Peggy Richardson and Lois Lerner or her husband.  But one would think that partners in the same very illustrious law firm would know each other and would know a lot about each other.
  8. This is all capped by the just breaking news that Lois Lerner is going to take the Fifth in her (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/05/21/irs-official-lois-lerner-to-plead-the-fifth/) and choose not to testify before the House Oversight Committee.

Conspiracy theories or not my favorites, but when it comes to the Clintons I am less reluctant to explore them.

No answers, but some awfully good questions.

I also have a little (a very little) of my own information to add.  Since my brain instantly shuts down even at the word “taxes,” I have no idea if I’ve found smoking guns or death rays of irrelevant boredom.  Nevertheless, here are my two contributions to the Lois Lerner saga:

Item The First is a transcript of the prepared remarks Lois Lerner gave in April 12 at Georgetown University Law School.  It makes no sense to me (tax stuff, you know), but some of you may be able to glean some pearls of wisdom.

Item The Second is a lawyer’s analysis of a question-and-answer period with Lerner at the ABA’s Tax Section meeting in September 2012.  The lawyer who asked the questions posted the transcript on his firm’s website, along with his interlineations.  Again, I would be delighted if the tax savvy amongst you could translate it into normal people talk.  (Incidentally, I came across that transcript at the website for The Center for Media and Democracy’s PR Watch website.  The Center for Media and Democracy is, as you may know, a very Left activist organization, fat with George Soros funds.)

Meanwhile, the view of the scandals from the Left

by 26 Comments

I really love Facebook.  It helps me hone my epigrammatic skills, since I believe it demands some brevity; it allows me, in sneaky fashion, to expose my liberal friends to articles and ideas that don’t normally appear on their horizons; and it allows me to get a window into what ordinary liberals (as opposed to internet activist liberals) are thinking.

For the past week, as scandal after scandal emerged — Benghazi, AP, IRS — my friends have been conspicuously silent.  They’re starting to re-group, as the memes beginning to flow.  I’m not seeing the overwhelming deluge of posters that they latched onto after Todd Akin opened his mouth, but they’re definitely headed somewhere.

On the Benghazi scandal, we have this one:

Trying to relitigate Iraq

Who cares that the intelligence leading up to the Iraq War was the best available at the time? Who cares that much of it proved to be true? Who cares that Plame and Wilson were inveterate liars and self-promoters?

For the Left, Bush is the magic inoculation: Because Bush was once president, there is nothing Obama can do wrong because no matter his culpability or wrongdoing, Bush was worse.  Nyah!  The fact that the Benghazi incident reveals politically-motivated failures, lies, and negligence simply doesn’t matter, because Bush was worse.

Even if one accepts, solely for the sake of argument, that Bush indeed was exactly as morally culpable for carelessness and cover-ups, that’s a dreadful standard.  “Hey, I know I killed those two guys, but you can’t arrest or imprison me, because Charles Manson was worse.”  “Yeah, okay, so I killed millions of my own countrymen, but what are you going to do?  Mao killed more.”

The fact is, though, that Bush was never guilty of anything more than relying on bad intelligence — or for making bad decisions based upon good intelligence.  Nothing he did was done behind the scenes, nor did he walk away during the night, leaving Americans to die.  And there’s no evidence whatsoever of a cover-up.  After all, post-Watergate, it’s been received wisdom that it’s not the act, it’s the cover-up that’s the problem.

The other thing my Leftist friends are finally catching up with is the umbrella thing.  This poster is now making the rounds:

Umbrellas and presidents

When one of my Facebook friends posted that image, and repeated the question (“What’s the difference?”) I politely pointed out several differences:  First, the other umbrella holders are not Marines. They’re Army or aides, and they’re clearly along to lend a hand, not stand guard. Second, Marines do not carry umbrellas, and for the Commander in Chief to demand that they violate standing orders is bad. Third, Marines only carry umbrellas for women, which makes the president look wussy in the midst of scandals that have even his acolytes questioning his leadership abilities (because he’s either ineffective or corrupt, so they’ve chose ineffective). And fourth, the President’s own words were dreadful: “They’re going to look good next to us.”

(Incidentally, after Hillary’s famous, dishonest, prevaricating, cover-up question “what difference at this point does it make?” I would suggest that Democrats/Progressives henceforth avoid that question entirely.  It invariably means that it makes a big difference, and not one that looks good for them.)

Those words yield themselves to two interpretations, both dreadful. Either Obama thinks of the Marines as props (which is entirely possible given how Michelle framed herself with troops in dress uniform when she handed out the Best Picture Oscar) or he actually thinks that his overwhelming God-like-ness will make the Marines — the Marines! — look better. Or, as some wit showed in a poster:

Obama the Marines and an umbrella

The one thing that none of my liberal Facebook friends has dared to touch is the IRS scandal. I know why, too. Doing so would force them to admit one of two unpalatable things: (1) either they think it’s okay for the IRS to be used for partisan purposes or (2) they would have to acknowledge that conservatives were right that Obama’s administration is corrupt and that big government is a dangerous infringement on individual liberties. They choose silence.

Nailing the heart of Benghazi

by 6 Comments

I wrote a lovely post, right here, last night.  Cheerfully hit the “publish” button and went to bed — only to wake up this morning to discover that the post not only didn’t get published, it vanished entirely.  I’m not sure I can replicate it, but I’ll try.

The point I was trying to make was about the morality that can or should undermine political systems.  I’d had a talk with a very mature, thoughtful teen, whose parents raised her to revile capitalism as an evil system that needs to be tempered by big government.  I said that it needed to be tempered by morality.  I pointed out that Adam Smith came up with his “invisible hand” theory at a highly religiously moral time, when it was inconceivable that any government would exist in a moral vacuum.  He knew, of course, that there were hard, cruel people who had no truck with morality, but it was also probably inconceivable to him that there could a paradigm without an overarching moral sense.

Texas booms, I suggested, not just because it’s capitalist, but because it’s in the Bible Belt.  China has slave labor, practically slave labor, and tainted goods (melanin in foods, antibiotics in bees, etc.) because it’s capitalism without a moral paradigm.  The State has no room for morality and when the state is the only thing Left, morality leaves society.

The next day, I read Darren Jonescu’s scathing indictment of the particular brand of evil that Hillary and Obama exemplify.  I’m quoting a lot, but there is a lot more to read, and I urge you to read it all:

In the first months after the Benghazi attack, the most urgent question, and one only rarely asked, was “What were Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton doing during the seven and a half hours between the initial emergency communications from Benghazi and the final American deaths?” A negative answer was provided in February by Leon Panetta: they were not engaging with their subordinates; they were not contacting anyone to discuss options; they were giving no orders for action; they remained entirely uninvolved.

We are left to speculate about the positive answer to that question. Were they sleeping? Curled up by the fire with a good manifesto? Playing poker with Huma and the gang? Practicing jokes for a fundraising speech? Your guess is as good as mine.

And none of these guesses really matter in the end, compared to the looming horror that attends any of thepossibilities, namely this: the president and secretary of state of the most powerful nation on Earth are impervious to shame. They can do — they have done — what you hope you could never do, what you pray your children will never be able to do, what psychologists fill academic journals attempting to explain. They were informed that their countrymen — their appointees — were being attacked, were issuing repeated cries for help, and, if nothing were done to intercede, were likely to be killed. Knowing this, and knowing, further, that they had at their disposal the most powerful military in the world, no risk of personal harm, and many subordinates prepared to leap into action at their word, they blithely walked away from the desperate men pleading for their help, and carried on with whatever they happened to be doing that night. They let other men suffer unto death without lifting a finger to help, or even indicating a moment’s regret for their inaction after the fact.

They demonstrated a cold lack of interest in the suffering of others — not the abstract, theoretical suffering of collective interest groups, such as “the poor” or “gays” or “women,” but the real physical pain and mortal terror-style suffering of individual human beings in mortal crisis.

Walking home one evening, you hear men across the street shouting for help, as they are in the process of being overwhelmed by a gang of thugs. You walk away, unconcerned with their cries or the sounds of bats smacking down on their flesh. You do not call the police or volunteer any assistance. You go to bed and sleep well. The next day, and each subsequent day, you carry on with your life of fun, friends, and self-indulgence, never giving a second thought to the men who died because you did not care to help. If a neighborhood reporter asks you about the crime, you put on your gravest voice and say, “Gosh, that’s so sad; I hope they find the creeps who did it.”

Right.  What he said.  Both Hillary and Obama claim to have been raised religiously.  Hillary showed up for church in her days as First Lady, but doesn’t seem to bother to do so now.  Obama gave up the pretense of religion the moment was elected.  For both, there are only two Gods:  the state and their particular political needs at the moment.  Neither has a sense of right or wrong independent of their particular pragmatic concerns at any given time.

I’ve mentioned before a year 2000 movie called The Contender, about an upstanding Democrat woman whom the evil Republicans falsely accuse of group sex to derail her appointment to fill a vacant Vice Presidency.  The most interest part of the movie comes when the woman, played by Joan Allen, makes her statement to Congress, a bastion of wholesome Democrats and foul Republicans:

And, Mr. Chairman, I stand for the separation of Church and State, and the reason that I stand for that is the same reason that I believe our forefathers did. It is not there to protect religion from the grasp of government but to protect our government from the grasp of religious fanaticism.

[The Founders could not have made it more clear that Freedom of Religion, which is contained in the First Amendment, protects religion from government, not vice versa.  The Amendment's language is unequivocal:  "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." There's nothing in there mandating that no religious person can serve in Congress or have a say in America's government.]

Now, I may be an atheist, but that does not mean I do not go to church. I do go to church. The church I go to is the one that emancipated the slaves [that would be the Republican sect of the church], that gave women the right to vote, that gave us every freedom that we hold dear. My church is this very Chapel of Democracy that we sit in together, and I do not need God to tell me what are my moral absolutes. I need my heart, my brain, and this church.  [And there you have it -- President Obama's creed writ large:  "I do not need God to tell me what are my moral absolutes.  I need my heart, my brain, and this (Progressive) church.]

Found it on Facebook — what came out of the Benghazi hearings today

by 16 Comments

One of my Facebook friends who is, like me, a refugee from the Left, put together a perfect summary of what came out of today’s testimony.  If you’re on Facebook, please share this article or just block and copy this summary and send it around:

What the Obama administration did to America's ambassador

What the Obama administration did to America’s ambassador

What have we learned so far the from Benghazi hearing:

1. Security support was denied before and during the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the US Benghazi Consulate by the State department.

2. Ambassador Stevens’ last words “Greg, we are under attack!” [To Greg Hicks - his second in command in Tripoli]

3. It was clear to everyone in Libya that this was a coordinated attack – NOT a demonstration over an obscure YouTube anti Islam video.

4. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talked to Mr. Hicks – then the top diplomat in Libya – during and after the attack. She knew exactly what was going on.

5. During the attack, President Obama did not speak once with the Pentagon, and most likely went to bed while a US embassy was under attack.

6. Five days later UN ambassador Susan Rice in a media campaign orchestrated by State tells the world repeatedly that this was a demonstration over the anti Islam video – no one consulted Gerg Hicks – now the top diplomat in Libya over the talking points.

7. The obscure movie maker is jailed (and is still in jail in California)

8. Greg Hicks – the top diplomat in Libya – is shocked and embarrassed by Susan Rice’s appearances. When he raises the issue with his superiors at State they turn hostile.

9. When a congressional investigation team comes to Libya, Greg Hicks – still the top diplomat in Libya – is ordered by State Department lawyers for the first time in his 22 year long career not to talk to a Congressional committee. A State Department lawyer is sent along with the committee to make sure Hicks is kept away.

10. When he does talk to the committee, a furious Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, calls Hicks and demands an explanation and a report.

11. Gregory Hicks – a diplomat with a stellar record – has been harassed by the State Department and has not had an appointment since the Benghazi affair.

To which I will add what I’ve said before, this is Watergate (crime and cover-up), Iran-Contra (probable arms running), and a possible new one — an American president and Commander in Chief who deserves to be court-martialed for gross dereliction of duty.

Obama is trying to focus attention on gun control, but Special Forces haven’t forgotten their own

by 1 Comment

(This is another Mr. Conservative post that perfectly reflects my views on the subject.  If you’d like to join the Special Operations Speaks’ petition, you can find it here.)

For the past several months, the administration has worked hard to keep the public focused on gun control and gay marriage, with all its attendant fascist hysteria. By doing so, it has kept the public from paying attention to what is the biggest scandal of the Obama administration: the September 11, 2012, Benghazi attack that saw four Americans, including a U.S. Ambassador, die horribly at terrorist hands.

After the Benghazi attack, the administration lied repeatedly to the American people. At first, it appeared that these lies were to hide the fact that al Qaeda, rather than being as dead as Obama had stated just days before, was very much alive. It then appeared that the lies were intended to obscure the disgraceful news that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been warned about the upcoming attacks, but had done nothing to increase security. Recently, though, it’s begun to appear that the lies came about because the administration was covering-up its use of the Benghazi outpost as the operations base for an illegal gun running scheme into Syria.

Two of the men who died in Benghazi – Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty – were former U.S. Navy SEALS. Not only may they have saved dozens of American and friendly-Libyan lives (we don’t know because the administration is silencing survivors), but they also took out unknown numbers of terrorists before they died themselves. While Obama’s administration has been trying to brush these men aside, their fellow Special Operations comrades have not forgotten them.

More than 700 Special Operations veterans, gathered together under the umbrella of a group called “Special Operations Speaks,” have put their names and reputations behind Sen. Lindsey Graham’s flagging effort to get information about Benghazi. They have sent a letter to Congress urging that it start a special probe into the Benghazi attack. The signatories set out their purpose clearly:

The purpose of this letter is to encourage all members of the US House of Representatives to support H.Res. 36, which will create a House Select Committee on the Terrorist Attack in Benghazi. It is essential that a full accounting of the events of September 11, 2012, be provided and that the American public be fully informed regarding this egregious terrorist attack on US diplomatic personnel and facilities. We owe that truth to the American people and the families of the fallen.

The letter identifies sixteen specific topics they believe Congress should investigate, including the absence of a military response, the actual number of Americans injured, the location of the survivors, the identity of those present in the White House situation room for the full 8-hour duration of the attack, the failure to even consider sending F-16 fighters stationed only 2 hours away in Italy, the presence or absence of strike aircraft that could have responded to SEAL Tyrone Woods’ use of a laser to designate targets, and the nature of Ambassador’s Stevens’ business in Libya when the attack occurred.

These former Special Operations veterans may find that fighting a Democrat-controlled Senate and White House is one of the hardest battles of their careers. The stakes here aren’t spilled blood, but are possibly much higher: impeachable, and possibly criminal, corruption at the highest echelons of American government. Cornered corrupt politicians are as vicious in their own way as the most hardened terrorist. We wish Special Operations Speaks, and all its members, the best of luck with this battle.

Proportional response in the Obama era — “Let’s pretend it never happened”

by 14 Comments

Congressional Republicans have been working hard lately at something we all should care about — talking to the Benghazi survivors.  Sen. Lindsay Graham has been making it something of a personal crusade.  As far as he’s concerned, there’s a cover-up going on:

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, in an extensive interview with Fox News, alleged that the injured survivors of the Benghazi terror attack have been “told to be quiet” and feel they can’t come forward to tell their stories — as he urged the House to subpoena the administration for details if necessary.

The South Carolina senator said he’s “had contact” with some of the survivors, calling their story “chilling.” He told Fox News that “the bottom line is they feel that they can’t come forth, they’ve been told to be quiet.”

I have no doubt but that this is true.  I mean, this is the same administration that lied for weeks about what happened in Benghazi.  If they’d lied a a ruse to lure the attackers out from cover to kill them, that would be one thing.  But the administration, from Obama on down, seems to have lied solely to hide two facts:  (a) contrary to Obama boasts, al Qaeda is not dead, and (b) Hillary is incompetent.

Hillary is also hiding what went on.  When she appeared before the Senate to testify about Benghazi, and was asked about the fact that four men died on her watch, her response was the equivalent of “Come on!  Stop crying over spilled milk.”

The fact is we had four dead Americans! Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?

To answer Hillary’s question (not that she wanted an answer), it makes a big difference.  It makes a difference because we should weed out incompetents before it happens again; it makes a difference because the dead deserve justice; and it makes a difference because the living deserve justice.

If this seems like I’m rehashing an old issue . . . well, maybe I am.  But it’s back in the news because of Sen. Graham’s push for info.  It’s also back in my mind for a funny reason.

My kids love the TV show Psych, which they watch on Netflix. Every kid in the neighborhood loves Psych.  It’s a cute show about a flaky, extremely observant young man (James Roday) who pretends to be psychic to help solve crimes, and his knowledgeable eccentric sidekick (Dulé Hill). The kids especially love Hill’s character, and it’s no wonder that they do. He’s a charming comedic presence, and he and Roday work well together.

If Dulé Hill’s name seems familiar to you, you might remember him as the president’s personal assistant in the Aaron Sorkin TV Show The West Wing.  That show, of course, was about the perfect Democrat president.  As far as Sorkin was concerned, President Bartlet was Bill Clinton without the character flaws and with all of his past mistakes corrected.

My kids wanted to see a young Hill, so we managed to find (again on Netflix) the episode in which Hill first appeared.  He did a nice job, but what really captured my attention was a bit of dialogue that Sorkin put in the mouth of the “perfect Democrat president.”  The episode is entitled “A proportional response” and one of its plot points revolves around the fact that Bartlett is figuring out how to respond to a terrorist attack in the Middle East that brought down a plane on which his personal physician was flying:

President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) is furious about a plane carrying his personal physician being downed in the Middle East. After initially requesting a retaliatory attack that would kill a great many people, Bartlet’s military advisors try to convince him to take a more cautionary maneuver.

So, keep that in mind — one American dead in an attack against an American plane.  Here is what Sorkin would have the perfect Democrat president do under those circumstances (emphasis mine):

Bartlet: What’s the virtue of the proportional response?
Admiral Fitzwallace: I’m sorry?
Bartlet: What is the virtue of a proportional response? Why’s it good? They hit an airplane, so we hit a transmitter, right? That’s a proportional response.
Admiral Fitzwallace: Sir, in the case of Pericles 1 –
Bartlet: [talking over him] They hit a barracks, so we hit two transmitters.
Admiral Fitzwallace: That’s roughly it, yes, sir.
Bartlet: This is what we do. I mean, this is what we do.
Leo: Yes, sir, it’s what we do. It’s what we’ve always done.
Bartlet: Well, if it’s what we do, if it’s what we’ve always done, don’t they know we’re going to do it?
Leo: Sir, if you’d turn your attention to Pericles 1 –
Bartlet: I have turned my attention to Pericles 1. It’s two ammo dumps, an abandoned railroad bridge and a Syrian intelligence agency.
Admiral Fitzwallace: Those are four highly-rated targets, sir.
Bartlet: But they know we’re gonna do that. They know we’re gonna do that! Those areas have been abandoned for three days now. We know that from the satellite, right? We have the intelligence. [over Leo's attempt to speak up] They did that, so we did this. It’s the cost of doing business. It’s been factored in, right?
Leo: Mr. President –
Bartlet: Am I right, or am I missing something here?
Admiral Fitzwallace: No, sir. You’re right, sir.
Bartlet: Then I ask again, what is the virtue of a proportional response?
Admiral Fitzwallace: It isn’t virtuous, Mr. President. It’s all there is, sir.
Bartlet: It is not all there is.
Leo: Sir, Admiral Fitzwallace –
Admiral Fitzwallace: Excuse me, Leo…pardon me, Mr. President, just what else is there?
Bartlet: The disproportional response. Let the word ring forth, from this time and this place, gentlemen, you kill an American, any American, we don’t come back with a proportional response. We come back with total disaster! [He bangs the table]
General: Are you suggesting that we carpet-bomb Damascus?
Bartlet: I am suggesting, General, that you, and Admiral Fitzwallace, and Secretary Hutchinson, and the rest of the National Security Team take the next sixty minutes and put together an American response scenario that doesn’t make me think we’re just docking somebody’s damn allowance!

President Obama might want to start studying a few old episodes of The West Wing. Maybe if he familiarizes himself with it, he’ll figure out that it’s no response at all, let alone a “proportional one” to let the deaths of four Americans, including an Ambassador, get buried in order to hide the President’s (and his team’s) lies and mistakes.

By the way, if you have followed Sorkin’s career, you’ll know that he’s a drug-fueled genius with a true gift for words and a passion for using TV and movies to convince people of the Democrat Party’s virtues.  He also runs to the well a few too many times:

Feminist, leftist propaganda in the public school classroom

by 10 Comments

Earlier today, while my kids were still at school, I wrote about the way in which unions pushed a Leftist agenda into the classroom.  I should not have been surprised, therefore, when Little Bookworm came home from high school and told me that, because one of the teachers was absent, they spent classroom time watching Miss Representation instead.  Little Bookworm was not pleased with the movie.  Why not?  Because, according to Little Bookworm, the movie claimed that there had been a right wing takeover of media, and that Fox was a terrible, corrupting influence on the media.

Wow!  Really?

I recall reading about Miss Representation when it first came out, and thinking that it was rather foolish, with its usual Regressive . . . uh, Progressive worldview, one that’s rooted firmly in the early 1970s.  In Regressive-land, blacks are perpetually in the back of the bus, while women are barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.  (Which is why it’s such a hoot when an arch Regressive such as Paul Krugman tries to ascend the “reality based” soapbox to accuse the Right of factual ignorance.  I mean, this is the guy who thinks you can solve the deficit by minting a trillion dollar coin.)

Where was I?

Oh, right — Miss Representation.

Since it seems that Miss Representation isn’t just some silly 1970s retread, I decided to check it out.  First, the cast, which already tells you that this is propaganda from one side of the political aisle and not the other:

Cory Booker … Himself
Margaret Cho … Herself
Katie Couric … Herself
Geena Davis … Herself
Rosario Dawson … Herself
Dianne Feinstein … Herself (as Sen. Dianne Feinstein)
Jane Fonda … Herself
Paul Haggis … Himself
Catherine Hardwicke … Herself
Dolores Huerta … Herself
Jackson Katz … Himself
Jean Kilbourne … Herself
Martha Lauzen … Herself
Lisa Ling … Herself
Rachel Maddow … Herself
Pat Mitchell … Herself
Gavin Newsom … Himself
Nancy Pelosi … Herself
Jennifer Pozner
Condoleezza Rice … Herself
Gloria Steinem … Herself
Jim Steyer … Himself
Jennifer Todd … Herself
Jan Yanehiro … Herself
Daphne Zuniga … Herself

Is it just me or, with the exception of Condi rice, are conservatives missing from this list of media and political luminaries? Except for Condi (and I don’t know how she stumbled into this crew of knaves and cutthroats), the speakers in this “documentary” all come from the Left or, failing that, the Far Left, with some of them even emerging from under those rocks that shelter the truly loony Left.

But maybe I’m just being nasty and judgmental.  Maybe this stellar cast of Progressive thinkers (ahem) was able to pull a Fox and present a “fair and balanced” approach to the issue of women in the media.  As far as I can tell from the reviews that people put on IMDB, the movie is the usual stuff about a male hegemony that deprives women of high visibility roles, which is funny coming from a film that features the highly visible, well-paid Katie Couric, Rachel Maddow, Gloria Steinem, Jan Yanehiro, Dianne Feinstein, and Geena Davis, to name but a few of the downtrodden women who regularly appear on American airwaves and are very, very, very rich.

The movie also earnestly explains how TV makes women feel ugly, because it’s filled with images of unnaturally beautiful women.  Yeah, like that’s never happened before in history:

Minoan statue from Crete 1600 BC

Venus de Milo

Gabrielle d Estrees & sister, mistresses to the French king, 1594

Madame de Pompadour

American Fashion print 1866

Edward VII’s mistress, Lillie Langtry

Clara Bow

Marilyn Monroe wishes President Kennedy a happy birthday.

Beyonce is not attired for the board room.

My point, of course, is that, at all times, in all places, women have been objectified for men’s pleasure.  And when men strut around in uncomfortable suits of armor, or ride off to the battlefield, or get their body’s tattooed, they too are preening for the opposite sex.  That’s nature, not prejudice.

Moreover, as Thomas Sowell explains in simple (not simplistic) terms in Economic Facts and Fallacies, 2nd edition, is that women fall off the career track, not because of institutional misogyny, but because they have babies.  A large number of women, probably the majority, when given the choice, elect to stay at home raising their children.  While their husband’s spend 18 years honing their careers (learning skills, climbing the corporate ladder, making contacts), women spend those same 18 years nurturing the up-and-coming generation.  It’s a Herculean and important task but, at the end of 18 years, they cannot simply walk into an office an demand a job at the same status and pay as their male counterparts who stayed in the office for those 18 years.

All of the above, in the context of Miss Representation, is the usual squawking that comes from a tired old feminism that, all real world experience to the contrary, continues to demand equality of outcome, rather than equality of opportunity.

The only area in which the movie seemed to try for some sanity was in its attempt to liken the media’s treatment of Hillary Clinton with that of Sarah Palin.  I haven’t seen the movie, but this sounds somewhat apples and orangey.  Back in the 1990s, Hillary did get challenged, but those challenges came from the right, which had no media outlets, not from the Left.  I was there and I remember how Hillary was lauded.  She was trumpeted as a career woman and a co-president.  She got a 60 Minute segment to forthrightly explain (to media hurrahs) that she wasn’t there just to bake cookies.  When the Lewinsky excrement hit the fan, the media loudly and proudly supported this valiant woman.

During the 2008 campaign, the media supported Hillary wholeheartedly, right until they turned against her.  But they didn’t turn against her because she was a woman.  They turned against her because they’d discovered an even more exciting, more politically correct candidate, and one with a drool-worthy body to boot.  (And yes, the media went crazy sexualizing Obama, with New York Times articles detailing women’s Obama-centered sexual fantasies, with photo spreads about his pecs and abs, and with icky stories about female reporters on the plane begging Obama to showcase his manly assets.)  Having found an even sexier candidate than Hillary, all that they could do was turn their back on her with stories about her temper.  Boo-hoo.

What happened to Hillary was utterly unlike the savagery unleashed against Sarah Palin.  She was persecuted in a way hitherto unknown in politics, from garbage can trolling, to mail hacking, to scurrilous rumors about her pregnancies, to unending attacks on her intellect, and on and on and on.  This wasn’t because Palin was female, in which case her beauty would have been lauded as a campaign attribute.  This was because Palin was a conservative female.  She therefore had to be destroyed and, more importantly, her femininity had to be destroyed.

Comparing the media’s treatment of Hillary and Sarah is false equivalency with a vengeance.  It elevates Hillary without ever rescuing Sarah.

What really got my knickers in a twist, and what will have me contacting the school tomorrow, is that Little Bookworm told me that the movie aggressively attacks Fox news as emblematic of what the movie claims is a conservative takeover of the news media. Little Bookworm wasn’t exaggerating:

Numbers don’t lie: Women make up 51 per cent of the population, yet comprise just 17 per cent of Congress. That is just one of the facts director Jennifer Siebel Newsom highlights in her debut documentary “Miss Representation.”

The film strings together statistics and interviews with women leaders to underline what it sees as a barrage of criticism and deluge of negative imagery the media rolls out on a daily basis.

“Unfortunately, the media and our culture is sending back to us the message that a woman’s value lies in her beauty and sexuality, and not in her capacity to lead,” Newsom told ABC News’ “Top Line” today.

Mainstream media, Newsom said, is particularly guilty.

The film highlights a jarring headline from New York Magazine juxtaposing Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin: “The Bitch and The Ditz.”

Fox News appears to be a repeat offender. The film shows a montage of the cable news network’s anchors and guests zeroing in on the physical appearance or mood swings of political female leaders.

Fox News is a “repeat offender” only because Ms. Newsom (who is married to San Francisco’s stylishly metrosexual ex-mayor Gavin Newsom) focused on Fox in much the same way that Jon Stewart, as partisan a comedian as one can find, focuses obsessively on Fox coverage, while carefully avoiding the drive-by media’s slavish devotion to Obama, fixation on celebrity (and everybody else’s) sex and sexuality, and general “race to the bottom” culture.  I’ll just note that the Leftist media was fascinated by General Petraeus’ fall from grace, but couldn’t be bothered to cover Obama’s drone war or his malfeasance in Benghazi.

Movies such as Miss Representation might have some good points.  However, to the extent that they are carried along on a wave of Leftist rhetoric, faulty statistics, a denial of human biology and its real world effects, and a deep and abiding hatred for the single somewhat conservative media outlet in America, they have no place in public school classrooms.

 

Hillary underestimated just how bad Obama would be at 3 a.m.

by 4 Comments

Hillary told voters that, when the 3 a.m. phone call came and the White House answered that call, she would have better qualifications to deal with whatever emergency awaited the President:

I don’t think even Hillary could have envisioned that Obama would ignore the call entirely:

The White House left Ambassador Chris Stevens, Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods, and Sean Smith on their own on September 11 in Benghazi. That is the upshot of today’s Capitol Hill hearing featuring Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey.

After a pre-scheduled afternoon meeting, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta testified that he never heard from President Obama the night of September 11. In fact, Panetta said, he had no further communication from the White House that night—even as the attack turned deadly. This is truly extraordinary—and appalling.

And both Panetta and Dempsey admitted in today’s hearing that they were not in touch with Clinton at all the evening of 9/11. “[W]e never received a request for support from the State Department,” Dempsey said, explaining why the American military had not made any attempt to save the endangered Americans.

So the Cabinet officials weren’t in touch with each other, and the president wasn’t in touch with anyone.

The irony, of course, given the portentous warning in the ad, is that Hillary was also MIA when the phone call came through — and had been for some months before that blooding night.

What difference does it make? As Bill Whittle explains, it makes a big difference

by 2 Comments

Every time I watch a Bill Whittle video, I think to myself “This is incredibly good.  It can’t get better than this.”  And every time I’m wrong, because Bill Whittle’s astounding gift for powerful, honest insight and analysis keeps growing.

Whittle reaches the top of his game — again! — in this video “What difference does it make?” in which he rips apart Hillary’s loathsome statement dismissing the deaths of four men who died, not just on her watch, but because of her watch.

Undaunted by slow progress, I continue to empty my spindle (aka my email backlog)

by 5 Comments

I will never give up — or at least I won’t give up until I’m down to the last 30 emails.  Before I dive into that, though, I want to encourage any conservative woman to consider joining the National Federation of Republican Women.  You can find your local chapter here, and then connect with conservative women (and their husbands or other interested family members) in your community.

Funnily enough, when you think about it, conservatives used to be joiners.  They joined the Masons, and the Elks, and the Shriners, and the Kiwanis, and they were active in community politics.  When did conservatives get chased away from community political organizations?  Or is my view warped because I grew up in the Bay Area?  Please weigh in on this one.  I’m interested.

This is an old post from Doug Powers chastising Democrat media hack Joe Klein for insisting as late as the end of November that Benghazi was nothing more than a bad movie review run amok.  It makes for interesting reading in light of Hillary’s prevarications before the Senate today.  Here’s what Hillary knows:  It doesn’t matter what she knew or what she did regarding Benghazi. If she’s still the media’s darling in 2016, the subject will be buried so deep you can’t even smell it.  And if she’s not the media’s darling (as happened to her in 2008) nothing matters anyway, because they’ll work to elect her Democrat-rival.  In other words, there’s no downside to lying, bobbing, and weaving.

Going through my emails reminded my that, with the gun debate raging, I was terribly remiss not to direct you to Stately McDaniel Manor.  Its proprietor, Mike McDaniel, is a blogger who could readily enter any “most knowledgeable about guns” contest.  Add to that knowledge a lovely writing “voice,” a sharp and informed mind, and a stinging wit, and . . . well, I need to be beaten around the head for a while for hiding him from you.  However, on the principle that, when it comes to the important factual and ideological stuff, it’s never too late, I’d like to recommend his “A good day for children.”

Speaking of my smart friends, have you bought your copy of Laer Pearce’s Crazifornia: Tales from the Tarnished State – How California is Destroying Itself and Why it Matters to America yet?  I know it’s about California, but with four more years of Obama to come, it’s also a good preview of coming attractions for the rest of America.  Would I sound hysterical if I said “be afraid; be very afraid”?

One can always tell when a society has gotten too successful:  non-procreational sexuality comes to the fore.  Because we are rich, we have the luxury of onanism (isn’t that a nice, old-fashioned world) and homosexuality, two practices that have no place in a society where the next generation must be born to keep the current generation from starving.  Which leaves one with a question:  when America collapses financially, and our reproductive rate is too low to replace the producers, will gay rights vanish?  Will gays vanish?  As to that second, I’d say that “practicing” gays will vanish.  There will be too much societal pressure (assuming some sort of coherent society) to allow for it.

Whew!  I’m down to 110 emails and still finding plenty of good stuff.  I’ve got to be a mom, though, so I’ll leave you with one picture, and continue this intellectual smorgasbord later today, or perhaps first thing tomorrow.

I got this from a friend who freely confesses that he doesn’t know where the data came from.  I don’t either.  But it sure looks good:

Death in America

The cult of personality trumped ordinary considerations

by 11 Comments

I do believe that vote fraud had an effect on this election, although I don’t know if it was big enough in swing states to change the outcome.  Abe Greenwald’s theory makes a lot more sense when it comes to explaining how conservatives could have so completely misread the election outcome:

Barack Obama ushered in America’s first large-scale experiment in personality-cult politics. The experiment continues apace. Obama got reelected because he enjoys a degree of personal popularity disconnected from his record. No modern president has ever been returned to office with employment figures and right-track-wrong-track numbers as poor as those Obama has achieved.

Obama couldn’t run on his record, which proved to be no problem—Americans didn’t vote on his record. According to exit polls, 77 percent of voters said the economy is bad and only 25 percent said they’re better off than they were four years ago. But since six in ten voters claimed the economy as their number one issue, it’s clear this election wasn’t about issues at all.

The president’s reelection is not evidence of a new liberal America, but rather of the illogical and confused experience that is infatuation. For multiple reasons, Americans continue to have a crush on Barack Obama even after his universally panned first term. No longer quite head over heels, they’re at the “I know he’s no good for me, but I can change him” phase. Whatever this means, it surely doesn’t suggest conservatives would be wise to move closer to policies that aren’t even popular among Obama supporters.

(Read more here.)

What we saw on election day was the continuing power of the old media.  Indeed, it is flush with power.  This year, the old media abandoned any pretense of objectivity and still shaped an election.  That’s quite something.  For decades, the old media hid its partisanship, believing that doing so was the only way to sway the American people.  This year, it learned that it could be hyper-partisan because it is still the gatekeeper.

We in the blogosphere were deluding ourselves about our reach and ability to change the dialog.  By ignoring some stories (Benghazi, for example, or the scope of Sandy’s disaster) and by hyping other story’s (Romney’s offshore accounts or dog driving), it kept Obama in office despite the fact that he has failed to fulfill every promise he made and left the country in a perilous state.

I know that the economic numbers were creeping up ever so slightly before the election (improved stock market, slightly improved job numbers), but those would have been irrelevant if the press had been hostile to Obama.  This was indeed a “cult of personality” election, as I see regularly on my Facebook page.

There certainly were issues that excited Democrat voters — the elite voted on social issues grounds (lady parts and gay marriage being the things they trumpet most triumphantly) and the 47% vote to keep their government benefits — but those issues were of paramount importance to them because the media colluded with the Obama administration to hide from the public the scope of the coming economic disaster.  Had the American people better understood the economy, the elite might have decided that lady parts and gay marriage could wait a while, and the 47% might have realized that no government money means no government benefits.

Here’s the good news, though:  Next election, the media doesn’t have Obama to elevate any more.  We won’t have Romney, who is a a truly nice man, but whom the media demonized to the proportions of Sarah Palin, who is a truly nice woman.  The press will still demonize the Republican candidate, but I’m not certain they’ll have anyone to anoint as the second coming.  Neither Hillary nor Elizabeth Warren lend themselves to a personality cult.  This hagiography worked once with Obama.  I doubt it will work twice with someone else.  The American population might be in a “fool me twice, shame on you” frame of mind.

Or, of course, Obama could bring in a new Golden Age in the next four years, in which case all of us will have to retire our animus and rejigger our political views.  Currently, I’m not holding my breath on that one.

As the Benghazi scandal heats up, evidence that Obama himself denied extra security

by 16 Comments

How reliable is Edward Klein?  I don’t know.  I don’t believe anyone challenged the facts in his book The Amateur, even if they disagreed with their import.  One thing that was immediately clear from reading The Amateur was that Klein got a lot of his information from Hillary Clinton’s camp.  Klein’s reliability is very important today, because he now claims that he’s gotten some new information from the Hillary camp, and this information, if true, is staggering in its implications:  lawyers close to Hillary claim that Hillary asked for more security in Benghazi and that the Obama White House denied that request.

According to Klein’s sources, Hillary has been keeping mum about this to stay loyal to the Democrat party, while Bill has been urging her to go public with the information to save her reputation.  Here’s what I think happened:

Events played out exactly as Hillary’s leakers claim.  Hillary was silent about the White House’s culpability when it still looked as if Obama could win, because she needed to be on Obama’s good side in the event he won the election.  Now that Obama has the stale smell of failure about him, two things have happened.  First, Hillary doesn’t believe that Obama’s coat tails will be very useful.  And second, the Democrats are launching a preemptive strike against Bill Clinton, claiming that it was his bad advice that led to Obama’s disastrous campaign decisions.

The Obama administration won’t be the first to learn that you don’t mess with Bill Clinton, especially if there’s nothing in it for Bill.  And so the leaks begin.  This way, Hillary still looks loyal, but Bill gets to destroy someone who is trying to destroy him.  Even if it’s not war in the Middle East, there’s going to be a war in Washington, D.C.

This leaked report also makes sense from both a military and a security standpoint, as Wolf Howling explains:

Why should we believe this might be true? I have enough experience in the military and with providing security with weapons loaded to know that the people administratively charged with making decisions on security would not possibly have denied the requests absent a policy decision made at a much higher level. And indeed, I cannot see any career employee in the chain of command denying a request for more security in Benghazi, given the availability of assets and all that was known about the deteriorating situation. In other words, I would bet my last dollar that the decision to deny more security was made pursuant to a policy decision in the political chain of command – and that means Clinton and / or Obama. And if there is any truth to the story above, then that person was Obama.

(You can, and should, read the rest of Wolf Howling’s analysis here.)

Assuming that concrete evidence surfaces quickly, the real story is whether the MSM will be able to sit on this story until after the election.  If the media can’t control the narrative, this story should be the last nail in the Obama campaign coffin.

UPDATE:  My post about today’s news — that the administrrefuse refused to send help — is here.)

More thoughts on the second presidential debate, including why Romney won a tie

by 4 Comments

Romney’s main problem is a chronic one.  While he intuitively understands what Bush Sr. used to call “the vision thing,” he can’t articulate it. He’ll spell out all the details, but he’s incapable of explaining to Americans that, if the government takes all their money, not only does it mean they don’t have it, it means the marketplace doesn’t have it.  What’s worse, Obama’s administration has provided perfect evidence that, once the government has all the money, it spends it badly, making dumb choices and pandering to special interests. With that simplistic explanation, Romney’s wonkery would have made more sense.  As it was, since I was watching on CNN which had a little chart showing real-time responses from some men and women, I could see that every time Romney got too into details, people lost interest.  (I actually found the chart irritating.  It was like watching a monitor in the ICU, breathlessly fearing that the monitor might show a flatline.)

The other problem, of course, was that Romney was in a two-against-one fight. He was game, but it was hard for him to land his punches when one attacker was off limits (for appearances sake, he couldn’t attack Crowley), while the other attacker was spouting lies left and right — and then being covered by the off-limits gal. Even if Romney had been more articulate, this was an almost impossible scenario. Gingrich might have handled it, but I’m not sure….

Michael Filozof noticed something important that I missed completely:

In all the analysis and spin in the media about Tuesday night’s debate, one item seems to have escaped scrutiny— but it struck me at the moment that Obama said it as a statement of such remarkable arrogance and hubris that I had to check the transcript today to make sure he’d actually said what I’d heard.

He did.

When queried about the lack of security at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that resulted in the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, Obama responded:

“Well, let me first of all talk about our diplomats, because they serve all around the world and do an incredible job in a very dangerous situation.”

“Our” diplomats. That’s the perfunctory throwaway line. What followed was truly astonishing:

“And these aren’t just representatives of the United States, they are my representatives. I send them there, oftentimes into harm’s way.”

Whoa! Wait a second! “These aren’t ‘just’ representatives of the United States?”

Just?

“They are my representatives. I send them there” – as if that’s the more important, bigger deal? America’s Ambassadors represent the country – not the man. Article II of the Constitution says that the President “by and with” — with, mind you! — “the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors…”

Filozof goes on to analyze just how bad Obama’s unconscious arrogance really was.

Yuval Levin also put his finger on something that was bothering me about the “undecided voters’” questions.  Almost without exception, the questions assumed a liberal world view.  They assumed that women get paid $0.72 on the dollar, which is true only because women like their children and, if they can, try to do part-time or flex-time jobs that pay less.  Romney sort of alluded to that flex-time principle but, as I noted above, he’s a details guy who gets, but can’t articulate, the big picture.

The questions assumed that illegal immigrants should get to stay here.  Romney, bless his heart, tried not to pander on this one.  He almost sounded hard-line about having a meaningful border (although, again, he couldn’t explain why sovereignty matters).  Interestingly, the tougher he talked, the higher that little graph ticked up.  It’s easy to like illegal immigrants in flush times; in lean times, they’re competitors for jobs.

One of the questions assumed that guns are bad.  Romney, after a little struggle with that one, based upon anti-assault weapon legislation he signed while governor, managed to focus on people, not guns, causing crime.  Obama focused on guns, and then remembered that there are people holding those weapons.

As for the Benghazi question, I actually assumed that Crowley wrote that question, since it was clearly intended as an opening for Obama to man up and take responsibility after letting Hillary fall on her sword (after first softening the blow by blaming her security experts).  Of course, Obama blew that opportunity by lying, turning what should have been a manly confession into an embarrassing (for him and Crowley) confrontation.

But Levin has a different theory about those questions:

When the debate commission announced that this year’s town-hall debate—in which questioners would be selected from among undecided voters in the surrounding region—would be held in Long Island, N.Y., rather than in a swing state, it raised a few eyebrows. Undecided voters in Nassau County generally aren’t like undecided voters in Ohio or Virginia. They tend to be people who start from a liberal foundation but may be a little too populist to be comfortably Democratic voters these days, and so in some respects a kind of mirror image of what we normally think of as swing voters. The questions in Tuesday night’s town-hall debate certainly reflected that character. These were, on the whole, questions from disappointed Democrats. That didn’t necessarily advantage one candidate over the other: It meant some of the subjects taken up in the debate heavily favored Obama but it also meant that the tone of the questioners was almost uniformly disappointed with Obama, which is probably the most dangerous of all attitudes for the incumbent president.

[snip]

Many of the questions were about the sorts of things liberals would want debates to be about. Given a chance to address the presidential candidates, would many swing voters in the battleground states in this election ask about pay equity (and ground their question in false liberal talking points on the subject)? Are they concerned about gun control? Do they think about immigration the way the debate questioner on that subject did? No. Yet at the same time many of the questioners approached Obama with an underlying sense of disappointment, and seemed to look at Romney with an eye to whether he might be a less disappointing president. I suspect this combination made this debate less interesting to undecided voters in undecided states, but that on the whole it helped Romney a bit more than Obama. Disappointment with the incumbent combined with a sense that the challenger is a reasonably plausible president is how you unseat a president, and tonight’s debate enabled Romney to advance both elements a bit even though Obama was much stronger than he was in Denver two weeks ago.

Standing on its own, the debate was probably a tie.  Obama proved he has a pulse, and Romney did okay.  That means Romney won.  As William McGurn pointed out yesterday, the only thing Obama had going into office was charisma.  He exploded that aura in his first debate, and could only have won by regaining his mystique in the second debate.  But Obama didn’t revisit the magic.  His pinched, high-pitched delivery, his vicious personal attacks on Romney, and his complete inability to state a vision or purpose for his second term (everything he said was a rehash of his first-term “vision thing”), established conclusively that “what’s done cannot be undone.”  Once you destroy something as precious and intangible as charm (and I’ll concede for this argument that Obama’s fans found him charming), you stand before the world unmasked and unarmed.

Barring massive fraud, I now believe Romney will win.  And if you’re reading this in Missouri, vote for Todd Akin.  He may have some wacky ideas, but he’s still better than Claire McCaskill and Romney needs to own the Senate to undo Obama’s and the Democrats’ first two years of damage.

UPDATE:  Just want to throw in that Wolf Howling, whose opinion I greatly respect, thinks Romney won.  And Bruce Kesler points out the most important thing, which is that voters, the ultimate critics, side with Romney on the economy and other things about which they (not the media) really care.

King Obama the Insane — is Obama still living the big lie, or has he slipped round the bend?

by 45 Comments

Albert Einstein allegedly defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Austin O’Malley looked at the process of insanity: “A sane man often reasons from sound premises; an insane man commonly reasons as well, but the premises are unsound.” And Guy de Maupassant examined that peculiar phenomenon we now call monomania:

I have seen mad people, and I have known some who were quite intelligent, lucid, even clear-sighted in every concern of life, except on one point. They could speak clearly, readily, profoundly on everything; till their thoughts were caught in the breakers of their delusions and went to pieces there, were dispersed and swamped in that furious and terrible sea of fogs and squalls which is called MADNESS.

The common thread in these quotations is the fact that the insane person is disconnected from reality. He doesn’t understand cause and effect, his factual premises are ludicrous, and his inability to deal with reality may be centered a specific subject, so that he appears lucid as to other things.

With Obama’s most recent speech about the economy, the one in which he cited approvingly to an immediately discredited study claiming that he’s been one of the most frugal presidents in history, a new meme sprang up in the blogosphere — “Obama the Insane.”

Of course, no one has stated it with that level of clarity.  More and more writers, however, are commenting upon (1) Obama’s belief that if he keeps spending more and more money, he will magically reverse the fact that his existing spending binge has already caused inestimable harm to the U.S. economy; (2) his reliance on manifestly false facts; and (3) the way in which, even as he is cogent on other subjects (his family, rap parties, etc.), Obama’s focus on those things that most deeply affect Americans, such as the economy, foreign affairs, national security, bears no relationship to the facts on the ground.

Here are three respected writers, each of whom expresses serious concern about President Obama’s increasingly obvious disconnect from the reality of his presidency and his policies.

Peggy Noonan politely calls the presidency a “house of cards”:

There is, now, a house-of-cards feel about this administration.

It became apparent some weeks ago when the president talked on the stump—where else?—about an essay by a fellow who said spending growth is actually lower than that of previous presidents. This was startling to a lot of people, who looked into it and found the man had left out most spending from 2009, the first year of Mr. Obama’s presidency. People sneered: The president was deliberately using a misleading argument to paint a false picture! But you know, why would he go out there waving an article that could immediately be debunked? Maybe because he thought it was true. That’s more alarming, isn’t it, the idea that he knows so little about the effects of his own economic program that he thinks he really is a low spender.

Peter Ferrara is also dismayed by the President’s inability to recognize economic reality, although he believes the president is simply being deceptive. After quoting with approval the Noonan passage, above, Ferrara goes on to chide Obama for lying:

What this shows most importantly is that the recognition is starting to break through to the general public regarding the President’s rhetorical strategy that I’ve have been calling Calculated Deception. The latter is deliberately using a misleading argument to paint a false picture. That has been a central Obama practice not only throughout his entire presidency, but also as the foundation of his 2008 campaign strategy, and actually throughout his whole career.

Rest assured, Ms. Noonan, that the President is not as nuts as he may seem at times. He knows very well that he is not a careful spender. His whole mission is to transform the U.S. not into a Big Government country, but a Huge Government country, because only a country run by a Huge Government can be satisfactorily controlled by superior, all wise and beneficent individuals like himself. That is why he is at minimum a Swedish socialist, if not worse. Notice, though, how far behind the times he and his weak minded supporters are, as even the Swedes have abandoned Swedish socialism as a failure.

Mark Steyn speaks in terms of soaring rhetoric unconnected to earthbound problems:

Take, for example, the attempt at soaring rhetoric: “That’s how we built this country — together. We constructed railroads and highways, the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge. We did those things together,” he said, in a passage that was presumably meant to be inspirational but was delivered with the faintly petulant air of a great man resentful at having to point out the obvious, yet again. “Together, we touched the surface of the moon, unlocked the mystery of the atom, connected the world through our own science and imagination. We haven’t done these things as Democrats or Republicans. We’ve done them as Americans.”

Beyond the cheap dissembling, there was a bleak, tragic quality to this paragraph. Does anyone really believe a second-term Obama administration is going to build anything? Yes, you, madam, the gullible sap at the back in the faded hope’n’change T-shirt. You seriously think your guy is going to put up another Hoover Dam? Let me quote one Deanna Archuleta, Obama’s deputy assistant secretary of the interior, in a speech to Democrat environmentalists in Nevada:

“You will never see another federal dam.”

Ever.

All three essays are worth reading in their entirety. All three struggle with the vast chasm between Obama’s words and actual reality. Although Ferrara calls Obama a liar to his face, Ferrara’s take on the matter is the most generous of the three, because he believes that Obama is a con man, not an insane man.

I wonder. Certainly if Obama is a con man, he’s a very bad one, in that he’s letting his audience in on the trick. A good con man would never rely upon such an easily proven set of numbers. If this is what Obama did, he’s once again proven himself to be the un-Churchill.

Why do I say that? It’s because of a story I once read that Churchill’s assistant told about the great man. I don’t know if it’s a true story, but it perfectly illustrates what a good con should be:

Churchill was invited to speak to a group of manufacturers about the future of their industry. He asked his assistant to research for him information about the probably economic future of this industry. The assistant returned to him and said that there were so many variables that it was impossible to put together a coherent picture of the industry’s future in the coming year, let alone the coming decade. To the assistant’s great surprise, the very next day, he heard Churchill give a speech replete with numbers, analyses, and estimates projecting out a good ten years. After the speech, the assistant approached Churchill and asked “How did you do that?” “Simple, my boy,” Churchill replied. “I made it up. You told me that there were too many variables to reach a conclusion or make a prediction about even the immediate future. That means that it will take years to prove my statements wrong, by which time there will have been so many intervening factors, no one will look back on what I said.”

Now that’s a con. What is not a con is to state as truth an absolute falsehood, and one that, moreover, has already been conclusively proven to be false.  The man who does that is either the most clumsy of all lies, or a monomaniac who has become unmoored from factual reality and drifted off into an economic realm all his own.

From the moment Obama appeared on the national political scene, many writers (including me) have been harping on Obama’s malignant narcissism.  The important thing to remember is that a malignant narcissist has built around an empty emotional core a carefully constructed, quite superior persona.  In order to keep that illusion alive, the narcissistic must constantly assert his superiority.  We’ve seen Obama do that over and over again.  Here are a few examples:

Marion Berry recounted meetings with White House officials, reminiscent of some during the Clinton days, where he and others urged them not to force Blue Dogs “off into that swamp” of supporting bills that would be unpopular with voters back home.

“I’ve been doing that with this White House, and they just don’t seem to give it any credibility at all,” Berry said. “They just kept telling us how good it was going to be. The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, ‘Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.’ We’re going to see how much difference that makes now.”

******

President Obama met yesterday with “about 20 Conservative Jewish community leaders, thanking them for the work they do to improve communities around the country and discussed their shared commitment to rebuilding the U.S. economy,” Haaretz reports.

In the meeting, Obama reportedly boasted about his knowledge of Judaism, telling the leaders that he thinks he knows more “about Judaism” than all past presidents. He said he gained this knowledge of Judaism from reading.

“Obama … stressed he probably knows about Judaism more than any other president, because he read about it,” Haaretz reports.

******


When it comes to piloting, Barack Obama seems to think he’s the political equivalent of Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Yeager and—in a “Fly Me to the Moon” sort of way—Nat King Cole rolled into one. “I think I’m a better speech writer than my speech writers,” he reportedly told an aide in 2008. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m . . . a better political director than my political director.”

The flip side of this constant self-assurance is the need to deny other people their due.  Narcissists are offensive.  That too is an Obama trait:

Asked in the Saturday Democratic debate about her dearth of “likability,” Clinton offered an answer both artful and sweet — first, demurely saying her feelings were hurt and mock-heroically adding that she would try to carry on regardless, then generously conceding that Obama is very likable and “I don’t think I’m that bad.”

At which point, Obama, yielding to some inexplicable impulse, gave the other memorable unscripted moment of the New Hampshire campaign — the gratuitous self-indicting aside: “You’re likable enough, Hillary.” He said it looking down and with not a smile but a smirk.

******

Obama poked fun of McCain and Palin’s new “change” mantra.

“You can put lipstick on a pig,” he said as the crowd cheered. “It’s still a pig.”

“You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still gonna stink.”

“We’ve had enough of the same old thing.”

******

The president defended his talks with Gulf fishermen and oil spill experts, saying their purpose was not academic – rather, they were an exercise in asserting where the presidential boot should be administered, “so I know whose ass to kick”.

******

President Barack Obama says police in Cambridge, Mass., acted “stupidly” this week when they arrested Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, someone they knew was in his own home.

The big question, of course, is what happens to a malignant narcissist when reality is so overwhelming that his normal coping mechanisms — self-aggrandizement and the denigration of others — no longer work?  Obama is being soundly slapped in the face by economic reality, by statistics, by an aggressive political opponent (You go, Mitt!), and by a disillusioned, although still loyal, media.

One could say that insanity is the last refuge of a narcissist.  If the real world will no longer conform to his self-image, he’ll deny the real world, and come up with a better one that allows him to boast to his heart’s content, not just about his own alleged qualities, but about larger, objective reality.

Obama’s intellectual and emotional collapse would normally be a sad sight, indeed.  Because of his peculiarly exalted position, though, a mad President Obama is just as unnerving and dangerous for the State as any mad monarch of old.

Lynn Woolsey, unconstrained by reelection, lets loose, and it’s not pretty

by 11 Comments

There’s nothing like a Progressive who’s not worrying about reelection.  If you thought Barney Frank’s moobs were repellent, wait until you get a look inside Lynn Woolsey’s brain.  The 10-term House Democrat from Marin County is retiring this year, so she finally feels that she can speak freely.  It’s not pretty.

For example, we learn why Woolsey doesn’t like Michelle Bachmann, who holds, not just a JD, but an LL.M. from the prestigious William & Mary School of Law:

“[S]he’s an idiot,” Woolsey said. “It’s not very politic to say that of another member of Congress, but she is.”

As it happens, I’m not overly impressed with academic credentials, since I think they often train people away from decency, logic and common sense, but I feel obligated to point out here that Woolsey’s education consists of . . . well, it’s unclear.  According to Wikipedia, she attended a lot of schools, but doesn’t seem to have emerged with any discernible degrees.  That’s okay.  She clearly had enough education to lose her decency, logic and common sense anyway.

Woolsey doesn’t like Newt Gingrich either:

“He would be the worst president on earth.”

She does concede, though, that he’s got a brain, which would make him more dangerous than the “idiot” Michelle Bachmann.

The Tea Party crowd don’t fare well in Woolsey world, since she sees them as an impediment to saving the world from climate change (never mind that the climate change narrative is unraveling before Woolsey’s eyes):

“Half of them have never held an elected office in their lives; they don’t know nothing,” Woolsey said. “They don’t know why they’re against what they’re against. They don’t know what is happening to our environment. All they know is it’s not something they’re supposed to support.”

Poor Lynn.  She apparently missed the poll showing a wide-spread belief that Tea Party members are better informed than your average 10-term member of the House of Representatives.  I guess it’s axiomatic that the ill-informed are always the last to know to that particular truth about themselves.

Lynn may not like Tea Partiers, but she does love the Occupy crowd:

“I love the Occupiers,” Woolsey said. “They’re such a breath of fresh air for me. I’ve been waiting for them for a long time.”

There’s nothing like a gang of Apple computer toting, drug-taking, dirty, vomiting, defecating, raping, murderous thugs to excite an aging Progressive politician.

Interestingly, Woolsey is not a Barack Obama fan.  Not only is he too conservative for her (“He’s a moderate president. He’s not a progressive.”), she thinks he’s not a very nice person:

“He is kind of a cold, aloof guy.”

Back in 2008, she was rooting for Hillary, both because she thinks Hillary is a more principled Progressive than Obama (there’s a scary thought), but also because she thinks Hillary has the cajones Obama lacks.

Woosley, apparently, isn’t the only one who isn’t thrilled about Barry.  Although Woolsey was speaking to an “overwhelmingly liberal” crowd, I think she sensed a certain chill in the air when it came to Obama.  How else to explain the fact that she felt compelled to tell those in attendance that they must vote for him in 2012:

“Do not stay home,” she said. “Any one of those other people — we thought George Bush was a problem, huh.”

I wish I’d been at Woolsey’s talk.  Seeing the Progressive mind unfettered is kind of like wading in an old swamp.  It looks ugly and smells bad, but there are still interesting things swimming in the depths.

Only megalomanics need apply

by 3 Comments

Let’s see if I’ve got this right, based upon the evidence currently available:

  1. Obama is a grandiose narcissist
  2. Newt is an egomaniac
  3. Hillary is a compulsive liar
  4. Mitt seems vaguely asperger-ish, with a weather vane in place of his spine
  5. Herman is a serial womanizer (assuming, for the sake of argument, that the claims against him are true)
  6. Rick is manic (so can depressive be far behind)
  7. Michelle is an abused wife (or is she married to an abused husband?  I forget)

And on the list goes.  Giving personality disorder labels to presidential candidates is like shooting fish in a barrel — it’s just too easy.  But think about it:  What person in his (or her) right mind would want to run for president or be president in the early years of the 21st century.  Not only is there the burden of governing a superpower in an explosive world, but our manic media ensures that, if you’re a Republican candidate, you’ll be subject to routine, public colonoscopies,  while if you’re a Democratic candidate, you receive the kind of fawning sycophancy that created the same delusions of grandeur that drove many European monarchs mad.

Any job description for the job of president in 2012 should end with the words “only megalomaniacs need apply.”  No sane person would want the job, including a sane patriot, and that fact may go a long to explaining why our candidates are so deeply flawed.

In honor of this realization, I’d like to propose a new presidential song, which is much more apt and meaningful than “Hail to the Chief”:

(Or see here.)

Connecting the dots re Huma Abedin *UPDATE*

by 27 Comments

Just the facts, and you get to reach your own conclusion:

  • Huma Abedin spent her formative years in Saudi Arabia.
  • Huma’s mother is a member of the female branch of the Muslim Brotherhood
  • While Huma was growing up, her father was a member of an organization closely linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
  • Huma’s brother works closely with members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
  • Huma is herself a practicing Muslim.
  • Muslim women cannot marry non-Muslim men.  If the man doesn’t convert, the marriage is not recognized.
  • Anthony Weiner was raised Jewish and not publicly disavowed his faith.
  • Bill Clinton officiated at Huma’s wedding to Anthony Weiner.
  • Anthony Weiner was until recently a member of Congress.
  • There is no way to know when Weiner started engaging in inappropriate sexual behavior.
  • Huma is so tight with Hillary Clinton that, for many years, there were rumors that the two were lovers.
  • Hillary Clinton is America’s Secretary of State, one of the most powerful international positions in the world.

(I’m too lazy and rushed to collected links, but each of the above statements is verifiable.)

UPDATE:  One last fact — The Muslim Brotherhood is not friendly towards America.

UPDATE II:  Robert Avrech reports on a deeply disturbing aspect of the whole Huma/Weiner thing, which again shows a complicit media — although it’s a little hard to tell whether it’s complicit in something solidly dangerous or just complicit in the usual dhimmitude that passes for reporting nowadays.  Add People Magazine to the list of products I’d stop buying if I actually bought them in the first place.