Posts
Anyone who celebrates this decision, wholly irrespective of where they fall on the issue of gay marriage, is an idiot who has no understanding of the law or the Constitution. If this stands, we are no longer are nation of laws; we are no longer a democracy.
Tweet
Showing posts with label Krauthammer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Krauthammer. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Krauthammer & The Tyranny of The Supreme Court
Monday, April 13, 2015
Charles Krauthammer Interview (Updated)
Several days ago, Bill Kristol interviewed today's preeminent conservative pundit, Charles Krauthammer. It is a fascinating look at both Krauthammer's personal journey from left to right as well his opinions on American politics of this day:
0:00 - Discussing his political journey to the right over the issues of national defense and foreign policy. He mentions his time as a writer at TNR and as a speech writer for Walter Mondale.
2:52 - Krauthammer found that he agreed with Reagan "from the start."
4:42 - Democrats lost all touch with of reality after they lost power in 1980. They agitated against taking any actions to counter the Soviets. "On every strategic issue," the left completely lost the plot. Krauthammer has some nice things to say about Pres. Carter.
10:00 - Krauthammer did not foresee the fall of the Soviet Union. It was a complete surprise. He describes it as "biblical." Their system was illogical, inhuman and overstretched. In hindsight, it's fall was inevitable. Pat Moynihan and Reagan are the only two who foresaw it.
13:55 - Describing Reagan. Krauthammer coined the phrase "the Reagan doctrine" in one of his columns as a way to clarify it for the Reagan administration itself, so that they could pursue it with coherence.
18:00 - Meets with Reagan for lunch. It took him years to realize that Reagan was a brilliant man who preferred to present himself as a simple man.
22:30 - George Bush was a man of tremendous courage. He was a man of convictions who was always willing to listen. In the end, he achieved his objectives in Iraq.
24:45 - A unipolar world emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We were the sole power left in the world, a situation not seen since the days of ancient Rome. The issue now is how to deal with challenges that are asymmetric. We tried to do it with the nuclear non-proliferation treaties, but that is now shredded.
31:00 - Nuclear proliferation among states is the great threat of our time. And we do not have an adequate answer yet. The Obama administration is hastening our step down from the top position in a unipolar world, inviting foreign adventurism and aggression.
32:50 - 9-11 marked the end of our "holiday from history" that began after the fall of the Soviet Union. For a time, during that period, we imagined that peace and prosperity are part of the air we breath, but every period of peace is in reality the result of a great nation imposing its will on the world.
36:58 - Bush responded effectively to jihadism, creating our response from scratch. Then we elected in Obama a President who believes that America is not exceptional and has no moral authority to act as the world's arbiter - a very dangerous proposition in a unipolar world. Iraq was won by Bush. It fell apart under Obama and the absence of any American influence.
40:20 - Decline as a nation is a choice. Clinton was wobbly about American power. Obama is ideologically opposed to American power. We are, in his eyes, a nation intrinsically flawed. Obama wanted an America diminished. We are not diminished in Krauthammer's eyes, though we are on that trajectory. We can come back. It is why the 2016 election is so important.
45:56 - Krauthammer doesn't know whether Hillary will continue the Obama "path of decline" should she become President. He doesn't know where she stands on any of the issues. Americans, other than the hard left, do not like America on this path. America has liberated more people, on more continents, than any other nation in the history of the world. We are seeing now, in 2015, the effects of the Obama's decision to retreat and withdrawal from our position of power beginning in 2008.
51:00 - Our nation can survive Obama domestically. We are stronger than our domestic problems make us seem. It only takes a strong leader to reverse the narrative. We get the leaders we deserve. Americans are rejecting Obama's European social model for our economy. 2016 election may well be a pivotal one in American history.
55:00 - Discussing his life growing up in Quebec. It was a European political culture. He was cleansed of political romanticism in a radicalized university and learned to love John Stuart Mills at Oxford. He discovered the history and politics of America through self study. There a reason America is still with its original Founding documents while France is on its Fifth Republic. Our Founders were practical and pragmatic men.
1:12:50 - Discussing his time in medical school and his practice of medicine. Seven years practicing in medicine gave him real world experience with humanity and human suffering. Marxism and Freudianism are the two great intellectual derangements of the 20th century. Both are completely discredited. The only place Marx is regularly taught today is in college English departments.
1:21:45 - Discussing Judaism, the Talmud and American law. The Talmud, commentaries on the Torah, shows majority rule and respect for dissenting opinions.
1:30:03 - Discussing Israel and Zionism. Jews have always been in Israel. The creation of Israel was not an act of colonization. It is a return. Jews are the only people who did not disappear from history after their exile. Hebrew is the only dead language restored. Zionism predated WWII by a hundred years. Krauthammer "doesn't believe in God but fears Him greatly." He rejects atheism as a religion, and a false one.
Saturday, November 9, 2013
America Goes To School On Obamacare & Socialism 101
Dr. Krauthammer does a superb job of describing the intent, arrogance and fraud of the Obamacare design.
Obamacare, sold on breathtaking lies (keep your insurance, keep your doctor, lower your healthcare premiums, better insurance, reduce the deficit) and built on a mountain of perverse incentives (part time work chief among them), is finally hitting home for the many Obama supporters. They are being schooled in Obamacare and socialism. Idiots.
Have we finally reached the point of far left overreach? I hope so, for the nation.
Many Democrat legislators who voted for Obamacare are now seeing their political obituaries written for 2014. They have no way to fix the Obamacare obscenity, but they are clamoring to put off Obamacare for another year - to get them past the next election. I have two thoughts on that. One, the damage is done, so Republicans agreeing to such an extension would be giving up very little. Two, they should only agree to that single change in exchange for medical malpractice tort reform - something that actually would stop defensive medicine and, if done properly, would actually bend down the cost curve of medical care. Other than that, let Obama and every naive idiot that voted for him - or indeed, any Democrat - twist on the end of the Obamacare rope.
Tweet
Thursday, October 31, 2013
The Future of Obamacare & "Liberalism"
We are sitting at the tip of the Obamacare nightmare. Virtually all of the horrible consequences forecast for this obscenity will come to pass.
According to Krauthammer, the Obamacare debacle could be the death knell for "liberalism."
And if the U.S. voters were rational, that would be true. But as 2012 taught us, they aren't. I hate to disagree with Krauthammer's assessment, but don't count on Obamacare or any big government program being killed off until our nation itself is in extremis.
One - no leftie will ever admit that their grand government programs have failed, regardless of the results. They will only go so far as to say that there are a few problems - often blamed on the opposition - and that just some slight tweeking of the laws may be needed to obtain perfection. This is a script replayed in a loop ad inifinitum.
Two - the left is utterly shameless and without a shred of intellectual integrity. What matters for them is only "socialist truth" - those claims, whether or not with any basis in reality, that advance their cause. They will never take any responsibility. They will shamelessly lie. In the vast majority of cases, they will do so with the complicity of the MSM. And the reality is that many, many people will believe them.
Three, the pathological alturism that sits at the heart of the leftwing movement is a siren's song. It paints a picture of rainbows and unicorns - a picture people want to believe.
And lastly, the left has made so many systemic changes over the past century to our form of government that act as safe harbors for them that it is doubtful they can be killed off. The left has found endless ways to funnel tax payer money to interest groups - unions, community organizing groups, Planned Parenthood, etc. - who cycle it back to the party in an endless loop. We are now governed by regulators whose "laws" bypass our elected representatives. And our courts have been used by the left to vastly change our nation for decades, with their decisions becoming effectively unchangable but by Constitutional amendment.
There will be a death knell in the end, but I think it more likely for our nation than the liberalism that will destroy it.
Tweet
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Obamacare: The Mother Of All Market Distortions (Updated)
Market distortion occurs when government imposes artificiality on markets through regulation. Such distortions always - always - always - cost the economy and individuals. I am not talking about laws of contract and fraud which set the parameters of the playing field for the operation of the free market, but rather regulations limiting free market decisions. Some are simply corrupt - i.e., the protection of vested interests. Others are more insidious and derive from the penultimate deceit of the left - that they are more intelligent than millions of individuals making their own decisions on how and what to purchase and sell.
Its hard to top the left's subprime housing crisis that brought our economy to its knees for market distortion. But that was a distortion that took fifteen years to bear its poisonous fruit. The biggest market distortion we are likely to see in our lifetimes and this side of the Soviet Union - one that is already bearing immediate fruit - is Obamacare. Healthcare is one sixth of our entire economy, and Obamacare is just starting to explode it.
The left has taken over our healthcare industry, mandating vastly expanded mandatory areas of coverage, from pregnancy, mental health, pre-existing conditions, "free" wellness checks, and "free" contraception, including the "morning after" abortion pill. They have mandated universal coverage - for supposedly an additional 30 million people - as well as subsidized coverage for lower and lower middle economic class. For this to work without adding to government debt, the middle and upper class are going to have to pay much more for their coverage, the young need to buy into the plans so as to subsidize the old and sick, and there is going to have to be a lot of new tax revenue to take up the slack for subsidies.
There is zero chance that this plan will work as advertised by Obama and the left. It will not save people money. It will not bend down the cost of health care. It will not provide universal coverage. It will not reduce the deficit. And of course, people who like their coverage will not be able to keep it at their choosing.
Some of these claims were knowing falsehoods.
Others seem to be attributable to the supreme conceit of the left, that they are smarter than the free market.
Because Obama has unilaterally put off the employer mandate to 2015, we are going to have to wait one more year to be able to take full stock of the near term impact of Obamacare in all of its 'glory.' But my full expectation is that it will add steeply to the deficit, that it will send the economy into even greater stagnation, if not outright recession, and jobs will further contract. It will be a far left trifecta.
The only good thing about this is that the far left owns this monstrosity. Whatever the right does, it should not agree to anything as a fix. Any attempt to put a band aid on this cancer will only extend out the pain. There is one answer only - repeal.
There will likely never be a greater experiment in socialist and Keynsian economic theory than the Obama administration policies in virtually all areas of government. The only question is whether the American people will ever take realistic stock of the outcomes.
Additional Updates: From Powerline on the higher costs of insurance under Obamacare:
And via Hot Air, there is Charles Krauthammer:For a succinct explanation of why Obamacare is making health insurance more expensive for millions of Americans, check out this short interview with Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini. Bertolini identifies three main factors: 1) Obamacare imposes a requirement that, on an actuarial basis, insurance cover at least 60% of health care costs. Currently, more than half of Americans who buy individual coverage are below 50%. 2) Obamacare imposes 4% to 5% additional cost in the form of new taxes and fees. Aetna alone will pass on $1 billion in Obamacare taxes and fees to its policyholders. 3) Obamacare mandates many coverages, whether customers want them or not, and requires insurers to provide subsidized coverage to those who are already sick.
Tweet
Monday, August 26, 2013
Krauthammer & O'Reilly: A Wholly Bankrupt "Civil Rights" Movement (Updated)
I normally don't require validation for my thoughts and beliefs, but when it comes from Charles Krauthammer, it is always welcome. He opines below about Obama's likely topic for the speech Obama will give on the 50 year anniversary of MLK's "I have a dream" speech - racist voting rights laws:
That is the drum I've been beating for years now. Blacks are being used by the left - and that includes their 'civil rights leaders' - in ways that give new meaning to the word "cynical." I credit blacks with the same intellectual capacity as all other beings on this earth. Indeed, many are smarter than I. But those blacks who are actually buying what the far left is selling them - that the biggest problems facing the black community today are "racist" voting rights laws and stand your ground laws - they are dumber than dirt. There just is no other possible conclusion.
For example, see:
Do Blacks Buy This Crap?
A Racial Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words
Black Civil Rights Leaders No Longer Have A Dream
Chris Lane: A Real "Trayvon" Case, But Where Are The Race Hustlers?
All Of The Stars Align - Time For Republicans To Court The Black Vote
Update: Bill O'Reilly hits the nail on the head:
My hats off to O'Reilly for making the plight of black America his focus and keeping at it for the past few weeks. The straw that broke the camel's back for O'Reilly on this were the race hustlers who went into overdrive in their efforts to lynch George Zimmerman on the alter of racial politics. It was their effort to portray America of today as not more than 1955 Mississippi writ large while wholly ignoring the real issues of black America that finally proved too much for O'Reilly.
Finally, finally, someone with a platform is saying the hard truths and doing so repeatedly. It is my sincerest hope that O'Reilly keeps this up - and that at least some blacks take the message to heart. As I have said over and over again, there is no excuse for black America to be lagging behind in this nation in the 21st century America. The problems in the black community - education, poverty, joblessness, family, crime - that these continue to exist today, are an obscenity.
Tweet
Friday, July 26, 2013
Krauthammer & McArdle Conduct Detroit Postmortems
From Dr. Krauthammer:
If there’s an iron rule in economics, it is Stein’s Law (named after Herb, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers): “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
Detroit, for example, can no longer go on borrowing, spending, raising taxes, and dangerously cutting such essential services as street lighting and police protection. So it stops. It goes bust.
Cause of death? Corruption, both legal and illegal, plus a classic case of reactionary liberalism in which the governing Democrats — there’s been no Republican mayor in half a century — simply refused to adapt to the straitened economic circumstances that followed the post–World War II auto boom. . . .
. . . The legal corruption was the cozy symbiosis of Democratic politicians and powerful unions, especially the public-sector unions that gave money to elect the politicians who negotiated their contracts — with wildly unsustainable health and pension benefits. . . .
McArdle's post-mortem finds a tsunami of causes. She is certainly right about the number of contributing causes, though I think that, from the standpoint of simple math, Krauthammer has it right. That said, this from Ms. McArdle:
If you listen to the interwebs, the answer is “terrible, Democratic-run urban politics.” Or “union-busting anti-labor policies” in Southern states that transformed solid middle-class jobs in the Midwest into near-minimum-wage jobs in states such as Alabama and Tennessee. Or maybe “racism.” Or “the urban underclass.”
All of these answers are impossibly reductive. The city of Detroit has no one problem; it has a constellation of them. Here, in no particular order, are some of the most important factors. . . .
The factors she lists:
- The decline of shipping along the Detroit River.
- The claim that the South stole high paying union jobs by allowing for non-union near minimum wage pay is a falsehood. There is little wage disparity between Michigan UAW workers and non-union workers in Southern Right To Work states. The three killers have been expansive health and pension benefits for UAW retirees, deeply inefficient union work rules, and competition.
- Post-WWII UAW Pattern Bargaining tactics failed when competition came to the auto industry. This was at least as big a problem for the UAW and the auto industry as the availability of jobs in Southern right to work states.
- Middle Class flight: This was a real problem for Detroit caused by a huge increase in crime during the 50's and 60's. It picked up even more in the wake of the 1967 race riots - the most violent in the nation.
- White Flight and Reverse Racism: A large chunk of the white population fled after the race riots. Those that were left were subject to a series of deeply anti-white black dominated city governments.
Tweet
Thursday, February 28, 2013
The Coming Calamitous Catastrophic Sequester (Updated)
Cartoonist Michael Ramierez does a superb job of putting not merely the out of control increase in federal spending in perspective, but the sequester. Allowed to go forward, this 2.4% reduction in growth of government spending (not cuts) over the next decade is being hyped by Obama as the penultimate threat to our economy and, indeed, our way of life. The scenarios he and his administration have painted are cataclysmic and utterly ridiculous:
Emergency responders like the ones who are here today — their ability to help communities respond to and recover from disasters will be degraded. Border Patrol agents will see their hours reduced. FBI agents will be furloughed. Federal prosecutors will have to close cases and let criminals go. Air traffic controllers and airport security will see cutbacks, which means more delays at airports across the country. Thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off. … Hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose access to primary care and preventive care like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings.
You know, we just survived the Mayan apocalypse three months ago fairly well. I am pretty sure we will make it through this next one okay. What is really going on here is Obama doing everything possible to prevent these cuts becoming part of the baseline budget before next month, when Congress should be crafting the budget. The worthless s.o.b. is willing to do or say anything in order to borrow and spend us into his version of the new America. It would be pathetic were it not so existential in its possible end result.
Update: From one of the top contestants for dumbest person sitting in Congress, race hustler Maxine Waters, speaking yesterday: "We don’t need to be having something like sequestration that’s going to cause these jobs losses, over 170 million jobs that could be lost."
And from Krauthammer:
Tweet
Monday, January 28, 2013
Seventy Five Minutes of Krauthammer
Perhaps our most insightful pundit on the right, Charles Krauthammer, recently gave a long talk at the NRO, recorded by CSPAN, on modern liberalism and a host of other topics. It is great to hear him speak in longer than a 1 to 2 minute soundbyte on Special Report. Unfortunately his talk cannot be embeded. You can find it here
His points paraphrased:
- The 2008 election reflected the desire of America to withdraw from the world stage, both as a function of economics and national will. The problem is that while we can freely ignore our enemies, they will not ignore us.
- Obama wants us to emulate European social democratic nations, with a much reduced military and far more spending on social welfare. Europe was able to do this after WWII because they were protected by the U.S. military. We do not have that option. If we reduce our military, we create a power vacuum.
- The end result of Obama's policies will be unmistakably negative for our country, and because of that, we will see a return to conservatism.
- 2010 was a pure ideological election on the relationship between citizen and state - between the big government leftism versus small government conservatism. That is why it was a wave election. The 2012 election was not a campaign based on ideology. Romney eschewed the ideological arguments and tried to run just on the state of the economy. That is why he lost.
- "Romney spoke conservatism as a second language."
- Krauthammer was once a communist. It only lasted a weekend during college, but it was "one hell of a weekend."
- Republicans should make no suicidal charges during the next two years. We can't govern from the House. We can and should block, as well as make small advances.
- Obama is going to use the regulatory bureaucracy to go around Congress because they would never approve his radical agenda. Moreover, some of Obama's executive orders have been lawless. The House should highlight these facts through hearings.
- Conservatism is not dead, and the Democratic theories of demographic Republican decline are not believable. The one troubling spot is that the Republicans have lost a natural constituency in Hispanics. We need to neutralize the immigration issue. Step one, stop illegals crossing our border by building a fence just like the Israelis did to stop the violence of the Second Intafada. Step two, then grant limited amnesty with a path to naturalization.
- Single women, the youth, and urban dwellers are natural liberal constituencies. So what. Conservatives have larger natural constituencies.
- Is our society devolving? The rise in births to unmarried women under 30 is troubling, but on the flip side, there has been a huge decrease in crime. We are in the midst of adapting to new social relationships that inevitably work themselves out in the end.
- Krauthammer, once a speech writer for Walter Mondale, moved to the right in the 1980's for two reasons. On foreign policy, the left became incredibly irresponsible, advocating such things as a nuclear freeze. On social policy, Krauthammer came to the realization that the social policies of the left were doing great damage to the constituencies they were put in place to help.
- A crime of American liberalism is consigning inner city children to a life of desperation because of the influence of teachers' unions. It is failing for lack of competition. There are a host of intractable problems troubling the inner city youths, but changing public education is simple and key.
- Affirmative action actually hurts more than it helps. It takes away the life chances of a large number of Americans by setting them up for failure.
- It is improper to call Obama a "socialist." Socialism is too broad a term. Obama is not a socialist in the totalitarian sense. He is in the ilk of a social Democrat in the post-WWII European sense.
Tweet
Friday, October 19, 2012
Krauthammer: The Foreign Policy Debate & The Wages Of Romney's Town Hall Flub
From Charles Krauthammer, a look at the Benghazi issue in light of Tuesday's Town Hall debate. Obama's ability to slip out from under that issue at the debate unscathed should, by all rights, be a Pyrrhic victory indeed. Krauthammer opines on this while pointing to an issue I have raised on this blog, that Obama failed to answer the critical questions asked of him at the debate, who denied the repeated requests for increased security and why:
The one thing Obama’s performance [at the Town Hall debate] did do is re-energize his demoralized base — the media, in particular. But at a price.
The rub for Obama comes, ironically enough, out of Romney’s biggest flub in the debate, the Libya question. That flub kept Romney from winning the evening outright. But Obama’s answer has left him a hostage to fortune. Missed by Romney, missed by the audience, missed by most of the commentariat, it was the biggest gaffe of the entire debate cycle: Substituting unctuousness for argument, Obama declared himself offended by the suggestion that anyone in his administration, including the U.N. ambassador, would “mislead” the country on Libya.
This bluster — unchallenged by Romney — helped Obama slither out of the Libya question unscathed. Unfortunately for Obama, there is one more debate — next week — entirely on foreign policy. The burning issue will be Libya and the scandalous parade of fictions told by this administration to explain away the debacle.
No one misled? . . .
But there was no gathering. There were no people. There was no fray. It was totally quiet outside the facility until terrorists stormed the compound and killed our ambassador and three others.
The video? A complete irrelevance. It was a coordinated, sophisticated terror attack, encouraged, if anything, by Osama bin Laden’s successor, giving orders from Pakistan to avenge the death of a Libyan jihadist.
Not wishing to admit that we had just been attacked by al-Qaeda affiliates perhaps answering to the successor of a man on whose grave Obama and the Democrats have been dancing for months, the administration relentlessly advanced the mob/video tale to distract from the truth.
And it wasn’t just his minions who misled the nation. A week after the attack, the president himself, asked by David Letterman about the ambassador’s murder, said it started with a video. False again.
Romney will be ready Monday.You are offended by this accusation, Mr. President? The country is offended that your press secretary, your U.N. ambassador, and you yourself have repeatedly misled the nation about the origin and nature of the Benghazi attack.
The problem wasn’t the video, the problem was policies for which you say you now accept responsibility. Then accept it, Mr. President. You were asked in the last debate why more security was denied our people in Libya despite the fact that they begged for it. You never answered that question, Mr. President. Or will you blame your Secretary of State?Esprit de l’escalier (“wit of the staircase”) is the French term for the devastating riposte that one should have given at dinner, but comes up with only on the way out at the bottom of the staircase. It’s Romney’s fortune that he’s invited to one more dinner. If he gets it right this time, Obama’s narrow victory in debate number two, salvaged by the mock umbrage that anyone could accuse him of misleading, will cost him dearly.
It was a huge gaffe. It is indelibly on the record. It will prove a very expensive expedient.
Tweet
Friday, September 21, 2012
Obama, 9-11-12 & The Collapse Of His Middle East Policy
Lots of posts and columns on the web today about the implosion of the Obama's "Cairo" doctrine, the Obama decision to use our tax dollars to fund an ad in Pakistan with Obama and Hillary attacking the "Innocence of Muslims" film trailer, and lastly, the implosion of the White House claims that the slaughter of our personnel in Benghazi was a spontaneous response to the film trailer.
Before addressing those points, let's note the elephant in the room. There is a huge scandal in this mix - the virtually non-existent security at our consulate in Benghazi on 9-11-12, site of previous attacks and a breeding ground for radicals. That lack of security was beyond negligent; it was criminally reckless. And that does not even begin to consider that no special precautions were taken on 9-11 to increase security there.
The person with the answers to this scandal is Hillary Clinton, which is I suspect why UN Ambassador Susan Rice, who would not even be in the loop on this issue, was offered up on all of the Sunday talk shows last Sunday to address it. She could prevaricate and obfuscate with at least some fall back claim to ignorance. Heads need to roll over this, and I strongly suspect that one of those heads is Hillary's.
The seminal critique of Obama's Middle East policy comes from Charles Krauthammer:
In the week following 9/11/12 something big happened: the collapse of the Cairo Doctrine, the centerpiece of President Obama’s foreign policy. It was to reset the very course of post-9/11 America, creating, after the (allegedly) brutal depredations of the Bush years, a profound rapprochement with the Islamic world.
On June 4, 2009, in Cairo, Obama promised “a new beginning” offering Muslims “mutual respect,” unsubtly implying previous disrespect. Curious, as over the previous 20 years, America had six times committed its military forces on behalf of oppressed Muslims, three times for reasons of pure humanitarianism (Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo), where no U.S. interests were at stake.
But no matter. Obama had come to remonstrate and restrain the hyperpower that, by his telling, had lost its way after 9/11, creating Guantanamo, practicing torture, imposing its will with arrogance and presumption.
. . . his policies of accommodation and concession would consolidate the gains: an outstretched hand to Iran’s mullahs, a first-time presidential admission of the U.S. role in a 1953 coup, a studied and stunning turning away from the Green Revolution; withdrawal from Iraq with no residual presence or influence; a fixed timetable for leaving Afghanistan; returning our ambassador to Damascus (with kind words for Bashar Assad — “a reformer,” suggested the secretary of state); deliberately creating distance between the U.S. and Israel.
These measures would raise our standing in the region, restore affection and respect for the United States, and elicit new cooperation from Muslim lands.
It’s now three years since the Cairo speech. Look around. The Islamic world is convulsed with an explosion of anti-Americanism. From Tunisia to Lebanon, American schools, businesses, and diplomatic facilities set ablaze. A U.S. ambassador and three others murdered in Benghazi. The black flag of Salafism, of which al-Qaeda is a prominent element, raised over our embassies in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Sudan.
The administration, staggered and confused, blames it all on a 14-minute trailer for a film no one has seen and which may not even exist. What else can it say? . . .
Islamists rise across North Africa from Mali to Egypt. Iran repeatedly defies U.S. demands on nuclear enrichment, then, as a measure of its contempt for what America thinks, openly admits that its Revolutionary Guards are deployed in Syria. Russia, after arming Assad, warns America to stay out, while the secretary of state delivers vapid lectures about Assad “meeting” his international “obligations.” The Gulf States beg America to act on Iran; Obama strains mightily to restrain . . . Israel.
Sovereign U.S. territory is breached and U.S. interests are burned. And what is the official response? One administration denunciation after another — of a movie trailer! A request to Google to “review” the trailer’s presence on YouTube. And sheriff’s deputies’ midnight “voluntary interview” with the suspected filmmaker. This in the land of the First Amendment.
What else can Obama do? At their convention, Democrats endlessly congratulated themselves on their one foreign-policy success: killing Osama bin Laden. A week later, the Salafist flag flies over four American embassies, even as the mob chants, “Obama, Obama, there are still a billion Osamas.”
A foreign policy in epic collapse. . . .
Do read the entire column.
Islam is a tool of politics and power in the Middle East - a tool that has not matured from its founding in the 7th century. I made the point here that what goes on in Muslim countries should not be countenanced in the civilized world, a point Rhymes with Right also makes in a very insightful post, Is Speech Against Islam A Crime Against Humanity -- Or Is Islam Itself?
The problem with Obama's Middle East policy is that it is wholly premised on fundamental conceits about the nature of Islam as practiced in the Middle East. Islam there is not rational, peaceful, or susceptible to compromise. It is not civilized. It is not benign. That Obama still bitterly clings to these conceits is the only way to explain why he would allow our State Dept. to spend $70,000 on an ad buy in Pakistan apologizing for and denouncing the "Innocence of Muslims." It is as damaging to America as it is pathetic.
The hypocrisy of Islamist's calls to respect the prophet, even as the Muslim religion is premised on the most fundamental of blasphemies against Christianity, is mind-boggling to me. But in any event, the last thing we should be doing is silencing the criticism of Islam, let alone apologizing for it as a nation.
Our government stance must always be that people have the right to peacefully practice whatever faith they choose inside of our borders free of government sanction. But our Constitutional responsibilities end there. It does not require us to refrain from criticizing a religion mired in the 7th century, that causes bloodshed on a grand scale, that maintains itself by the sword, and that wishes to conquer by the sword. I do not know if Obama actually does not understand that, or whether he is too afraid of kicking the hornets' nest, or whether this is simply the natural result of a drift into anti-semitism and pro-Arab sympathies by those on the left generally.
Lastly, hats off to CBS News for their superb reporting on what actually happened and is happening in Benghazi relating to the deaths of our Ambassador and three other Americans. This from CBS News:
As summarized by Guy Benson at Town Hall:
Let's count the revelations embedded within this minute-and-a-half long clip:
(1) "The FBI still hasn't made it to the crime scene in Benghazi." More on this later, but the fact that the administration is treating our sacked consulate as a "crime" scene is telling. This was a terrorist attack. An act of war. . . . We've dispatched criminal investigators to look into it, but they still haven't even made it to ground zero yet? Nine days after the fact? Why?
(2) "Witnesses tell CBS News that there was never an anti-American protest outside of the consulate. Instead, they say it came under planned attack." As I wrote this morning, the administration is at last beginning to acknowledge the latter fact, but the former element is crucial, too. If there really were no protests outside the consulate before the ambush began -- as multiple news outlets are now reporting -- even the premise of the administration's fictional account is false. CBS says the facts on the ground are in "direct contradiction" to the White House's statements. The administration is still saying that the raid could have spun out from spontaneous protests that didn't even exist.
(3) "What's clear...is that the public won't get a detailed account of what happened until after the presidential election." This conclusion strongly reinforces several of my theories about the White House's foot-dragging and misdirection on the Benghazi raid. We have a murdered ambassador and sensitive intelligence missing, and the administration is in pure political CYA mode.
Nice Deb also has an excellent round-up on these topics.
Dr. Sanity has returned to the blogging world (thankfully) and has a particularly insightful post on the administrations decision to run an ad in Pakistan denouncing the "Innocence of Muslims" film trailer, The Obama Apology Tour Continues:
I regret to inform those that support the constant apologizing, that the increasingly violent Islamic response to appeasement, solicitation, and understanding has always been completely predictable from a psychological perspective. Bullies will always push the envelope of bad behavior when they think they can get away with it.
Here's a tip for the clueless Obama Administration and their supporters:
Tweet
Monday, September 17, 2012
Spinning The Middle East & The Murder Of An Ambassador
In 2007, Obama claimed that, if he was elected, Muslim hostility would ease. As the events of the past week have brought home, we are, today, in worse shape in the Middle East than we were four years ago - and indeed, than we were on 9-11-01 - with radical Salafists now in or near control in most Arab countries.
That is a reality that puts a stake in the heart of Obama's narrative that he has been a foreign policy success. To obfuscate, the administration on Sunday trotted out UN Ambassador Susan Rice to make the case that the 9-11-12 violence in Cairo and the murder of our Ambassador in Benghazi were nothing more than a spontaneous response - on 9-11 no less - to an anti Muslim film trailer that, incidentally, had been on the internet for months. As Conn Carol writes {h/t Instapundit):
[N]o one outside the White House believes a single video caused the violence. Liberal commentator and Tufts University international politics professor Dan Drezner has called Obama’s decision to blame the YouTube clip a “radically incomplete and dishonest answer.” As The New York Times Ross Douthat points out, the riots have far more to do with internal power politics.
And Rep. Alen West minced no words in responding to Rice's contentions:
(H/T Bluegrass Pundit)
As Charles Krauthammer pointed out a few days ago, what is happening is that the Obama administration is agreeing with the rioters, throwing our First Amendment under the bus rather than admit that the administration's Middle East policies of apology by the U.S., justification of Arab victimhood, and disengagement have borne a poisonous fruit.
Other pundits have reached similar conclusions, each worth a read. The best analysis comes from Victor Davis Hanson at PJM
The worst response to radical Islam has unfortunately become the present administration’s postmodern, so-cool policy. The Cairo fable, the al Arabiya “Bush did it” interview, the euphemisms (e.g., “man-caused disasters”), the insanity that Maj. Hasan’s murdering threatens our diversity programs, trying KSM in New York, reading Mutallab his Miranda rights, serial trashing of Guantanamo, James Clapper’s laughable assurance that the Muslim Brotherhood is “secular,” NASA’s all-important Muslim outreach, etc., at best remind the Islamists that Westerners would hardly be so self-abasing if there were not something to be ashamed about.
Barry Rubin, also writing at PJM, notes that the "causes of these demonstrations are not some act of Islamophobia, but the agitation of revolutionary Islamist groups that work systematically every day to build anti-Americanism, hatred of the West, and the loathing of Jews and Christians." That is also the conclusion Fouad Ajami, writing at the Washington Post.
---------------
Update: Prof. Niall Ferguson also has an excellent article on the situation in the Middle East today, opining that "what is unfolding in the Middle East has the makings of the most perfect storm in American foreign policy since 1979."
---------------
But deflecting attention from reality of the Middle East exposed by the 9-11-12 violence has not been the only rear guard action the Obama administration has been engaging in this past week. There is also the attempt to wholly gloss over the scandalous lack of security in Benghazi on 9-11-12 that led directly to the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
To this end, the State Dept. is stonewalling, outrageously refusing to answer any more questions on the murders in Benghazi. Further the administration used Ambassador Susan Rice's appearance on on all of the Sunday talk shows to provide a complete defense of the administration. Rice insisted that security in Benghazi, which, on 9-11-12 consisted of a locked door and two American and four Libyan security personnel, was "strong" and "significant." This despite the fact that "terror cells in Benghazi had carried out five attacks since April, including one at the same consulate, a bombing at the same consulate in June." And despite the fact there was forewarning of the attack. And despite the fact that 9-11 is a date even an idiot knows is a very likely to be a day of violence directed at U.S. targets by Osama-loving Salafis.
Rice is lying shamelessly. The security plan in Benghazi was not "significant" or "strong," it was criminally reckless. Now, hold your breath until the MSM holds the Obama administration to account for this any time before Nov. 7.
Tweet
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
So How Do Islamic Radicals Celebrate 9-11?
They attack a few U.S. embassies, of course.
As I set forth below, Islamic radicals are today ascendant in the Middle East. The Arab Spring has been the victory of Salafists. And as I pointed out, Egypt has already taken the first big steps down the path followed by Iran in 1979 as it became a radical Islamic theocracy. So, shades of 1979, it is no surprise that our diplomatic posts in both Cairo and Libya were attacked on this 9-11. The ostensible reason for the attacks was that some private U.S. citizens, Egyptian ex-pats, made a video criticizing Islam. The film has been available to audiences in the Middle East since 1 July.
In Cairo:
Mainly ultraconservative protesters [read Salafi / Wahhabi Islamists and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood] climbed the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Egypt's capital Tuesday and brought down the American flag, replacing it with a black Islamist flag to protest a U.S.-produced film attacking the Prophet Muhammad. . . .
The unrest in Cairo began when hundreds of protesters marched to the downtown embassy, gathering outside its walls and chanting against the movie and the U.S. "Say it, don't fear: Their ambassador must leave," the crowd chanted. Dozens of protesters then scaled the embassy walls, and several went into the courtyard and took down the flag from a pole. They brought it back to the crowd outside, which tried to burn it, but failing that tore it apart. The protesters on the wall then raised on the flagpole a black flag with a Muslim declaration of faith, "There is no god but God and Muhammad is his prophet." The flag, similar to the banner used by Al Qaeda, is commonly used by ultraconservatives around the region. The crowd grew throughout the evening with thousands standing outside the embassy, chanting "Islamic, Islamic. The right of our prophet will not die." A group of women in black veils and robes that left only their eyes exposed chanted, "Worshippers of the Cross, leave the Prophet Muhammad alone." Dozens of riot police lined up along the embassy walls but did not stop protesters from climbing the wall. . . .
Instead of responding with outrage, not merely at the protests, but the failure of the new Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo to protect our embassy, the response from the Obama administration's State Department essentially 'apologized for blasphemy' by a person who has every right to free speech in the U.S.:
The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions,. . . Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others
That is utterly disgusting in its apologetic tone and counterproductive for its failure to defend Americans' freedoms. Moreover, it completely fails to hold the Egyptian government to account for their failure to defend the Embassy.
------------
Update: I couldn't agree more with this response from Charles Krauthammer:
And then there is this from Instapundit: "Advice to Obama: To stiffen your spine, imagine these were Tea Partiers instead of Islamic fundamentalists who hate America and all it stands for." Funny, but based all too much on reality.
------------
The attack on our diplomatic in Libya was more severe, involving what amounted to a full scale attack:
Libya's deputy interior minister Wanis al-Sharef told AFP: "One American official was killed and another injured in the hand. The other staff members were evacuated and are safe and sound."
He could not say if the dead man was a diplomat.
Abdelmonoem al-Horr, spokesman for the Libyan interior ministry's security commission, said rocket-propelled grenades were fired at the consulate from a nearby farm. Security forces and the interior ministry were trying to contain the situation, he added. . . .
"Demonstrators attacked the US consulate in Benghazi. They fired shots in the air before entering the building," Libya's deputy interior minister, Wanis al-Sharif Sharif, who is in charge of the country's eastern region, told AFP.
"Dozens of demonstrators attacked the consulate and set fire to it," said a Benghazi resident, who only gave his name as Omar, adding that he had seen the flames and heard shots in the vicinity.
Another Libyan witness said armed men had closed the streets leading up to the consulate, among them ultra-conservative Salafists. . . .
------------
UPDATE: The attack by Salafists on our Consulate in Benghazi, Libya is now confirmed to have taken the lives of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Embassy staff members.
------------
Consider these attacks the canary in the coal mine. We are, in many ways, in a much more precarious position vis-a-vis the Middle East than we were eleven years ago. The Salafists - those people whose ideology was shared by Osama bin Laden - now are in or close to control of most of the Arab nations of the Middle East. There will be blood.
Tweet
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Oiks & America's Revolting Unwashed Masses
James Taranto has a great column at the WSJ on "oikiphobia" - a recently coined term describing the modern liberal elite on both sides of the pond.
An Oik repudiates national loyalties and defines his goals and ideals against the nation, promoting transnational institutions over national governments, accepting and endorsing laws that are imposed on us from on high by the EU or the UN, . . . , and defining his political vision in terms of universal values that have been purified of all reference to the particular attachments of a real historical community.
Oiks have been around for a long time. One can find their beginnings among the groups identified by Orwell in his Notes on Nationalism. That said, both Orwell and Taranto miss that the modern left also have a distinct animus towards Christianity and Judaism. But with that proviso, this from Taranto:
If you think it's offensive for a Muslim group to exploit the 9/11 atrocity, you're an anti-Muslim bigot and un-American to boot. It is a claim so bizarre, so twisted, so utterly at odds with common sense that it's hard to believe anyone would assert it except as some sort of dark joke. Yet for the past few weeks, it has been put forward, apparently in all seriousness, by those who fancy themselves America's best and brightest, from the mayor of New York all the way down to Peter Beinart.
What accounts for this madness? Charles Krauthammer notes a pattern:Promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.
-- Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.
-- Disgust and alarm with the federal government's unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.
-- Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.
-- Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.
Now we know why the country has become "ungovernable," last year's excuse for the Democrats' failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?Krauthammer portrays this as a cynical game: "Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. . . . What's a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that preempts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument."
But this has its limits as a political strategy. Krauthammer writes that "the Democrats are going to get beaten badly in November," and no one will credit him for boldness in that prediction. Some may disagree with his reckoning as to the reason for that likely loss: that "a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them."
But can anyone argue that a show of contempt is a winning political strategy? The question answers itself and implies that the contempt is genuine.
What is the nature of this contempt? In part it is the snobbery of the cognitive elite, exemplified by a recent New York Times Web column by Timothy Egan called "Building a Nation of Know-Nothings"--or by the viciousness directed at Sarah Palin, whose folksy demeanor and state-college background seem terribly déclassé not just to liberals but to a good number of conservatives in places like New York City.
In more cerebral moments, the elitists of the left invoke a kind of Marxism Lite to explain away opinions and values that run counter to their own. Thus Barack Obama's notorious remark to the effect that economic deprivation embitters the proles, so that they cling to guns and religion. (Ironically, Obama recently said through a spokesman that he is Christian.) . . .
So if some Americans are afraid of people "who have what seem to be strange religions," it must be a totally irrational reaction to "economic insecurity." It couldn't possibly have anything to do with an act of mass murder committed in the name of the religion in question.
And Reich doesn't just fail to see the obvious. He dehumanizes his fellow Americans by treating their values, feelings and opinions as no more than reflexive reactions to material conditions. Americans in fact are a very tolerant people. Even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there was no serious backlash against Muslims. What makes them angry--what makes us angry--is the bigotry of the elites.
The Ground Zero mosque is an affront to the sensibilities of ordinary Americans. "The center's association with 9/11 is intentional and its location is no geographic coincidence," as the Associated Press has reported. That Americans would find this offensive is a matter of simple common sense. The liberal elites cannot comprehend common sense, and, incredibly, they think that's a virtue. After all, common sense is so common.
The British philosopher Roger Scruton has coined a term to describe this attitude:oikophobia. Xenophobia is fear of the alien; oikophobia is fear of the familiar: "the disposition, in any conflict, to side with 'them' against 'us', and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably 'ours.' " What a perfect description of the pro-mosque left.
Scruton was writing in 2004, and his focus was on Britain and Europe, not America. But his warning about the danger of oikophobes--whom he amusingly dubs "oiks"--is very pertinent on this side of the Atlantic today, and it illuminates how what are sometimes dismissed as mere matters of "culture" tie in with economic and social policy . . .
The oik is, in his own eyes, a defender of enlightened universalism against local chauvinism. And it is the rise of the oik that has led to the growing crisis of legitimacy in the nation states of Europe. For we are seeing a massive expansion of the legislative burden on the people of Europe, and a relentless assault on the only loyalties that would enable them voluntarily to bear it. The explosive effect of this has already been felt in Holland and France. It will be felt soon everywhere, and the result may not be what the oiks expect. . . .
Yet the oiks' vision of themselves as an intellectual aristocracy violates the first American principle ever articulated: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . ."
This cannot be reconciled with the elitist notion that most men are economically insecure bitter clinging intolerant bigots who need to be governed by an educated elite. Marxism Lite is not only false; it is, according to the American creed, self-evidently false. That is why the liberal elite finds Americans revolting.
Krauthammer On The Gospel According To Obama
Pinhead does his best Obama imitation:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In his column this week, Charles Krauthammer disects Obama's forays into the pontifical:
At the National Prayer Breakfast last week, seeking theological underpinning for his drive to raise taxes on the rich, President Obama invoked the highest possible authority. His policy, he testified “as a Christian,” “coincides with Jesus’s teaching that ‘for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.’ ”
Now, I’m no theologian, but I’m fairly certain that neither Jesus nor his rabbinic forebears, when speaking of giving, meant some obligation to the state. You tithe the priest, not the tax man.
The Judeo-Christian tradition commands personal generosity as represented, for example, by the biblical injunction against retrieving any sheaf left behind while harvesting one’s own field. That is for the gleaners — “the poor and the alien” (Leviticus 19:10). Like Ruth in the field of Boaz. As far as I can tell, that charitable transaction involved no mediation by the IRS.
. . . But this Gospel according to Obama has a rival — the newly revealed Gospel according to Sebelius, over which has erupted quite a contretemps. By some peculiar logic, it falls to the health and human services secretary to promulgate the definition of “religious” — for the purposes, for example, of exempting religious institutions from certain regulatory dictates.
Such exemptions are granted in grudging recognition that, whereas the rest of civil society may be broken to the will of the state’s regulators, our quaint Constitution grants special autonomy to religious institutions.
Accordingly, it would be a mockery of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment if, for example, the Catholic Church were required by law to freely provide such “health care services” (in secularist parlance) as contraception, sterilization and pharmacological abortion — to which Catholicism is doctrinally opposed as a grave contravention of its teachings about the sanctity of life.
Ah. But there would be no such Free Exercise violation if the institutions so mandated are deemed, by regulatory fiat, not religious.
And thus, the word came forth from Sebelius decreeing the exact criteria required (a) to meet her definition of “religious” and thus (b) to qualify for a modicum of independence from newly enacted state control of American health care, under which the aforementioned Sebelius and her phalanx of experts determine everything — from who is to be covered, to which treatments are to be guaranteed free of charge.
Criterion 1: A “religious institution” must have “the inculcation of religious values as its purpose.” But that’s not the purpose of Catholic charities; it’s to give succor to the poor. That’s not the purpose of Catholic hospitals; it’s to give succor to the sick. Therefore, they don’t qualify as “religious” — and therefore can be required, among other things, to provide free morning-after abortifacients.
Criterion 2: Any exempt institution must be one that “primarily employs” and “primarily serves persons who share its religious tenets.” Catholic soup kitchens do not demand religious IDs from either the hungry they feed or the custodians they employ. Catholic charities and hospitals — even Catholic schools — do not turn away Hindu or Jew.
Their vocation is universal, precisely the kind of universal love-thy-neighbor vocation that is the very definition of religiosity as celebrated by the Gospel of Obama. Yet according to the Gospel of Sebelius, these very same Catholic institutions are not religious at all — under the secularist assumption that religion is what happens on Sunday under some Gothic spire, while good works are “social services” properly rendered up unto Caesar.
. . . To flatter his faith-breakfast guests and justify his tax policies, Obama declares good works to be the essence of religiosity. Yet he turns around and, through Sebelius, tells the faithful who engage in good works that what they’re doing is not religion at all. You want to do religion? Get thee to a nunnery. You want shelter from the power of the state? Get out of your soup kitchen and back to your pews. Outside, Leviathan rules.
The contradiction is glaring, the hypocrisy breathtaking. But that’s not why Obama offered a hasty compromise on Friday. It’s because the firestorm of protest was becoming a threat to his reelection. Sure, health care, good works and religion are important. But reelection is divine.
Monday, January 30, 2012
"Fairness" - The Essence Of Marx
The worth of a good pundit is that they get to the essence of things with brevity and clarity. And here is Charles Krauthammer doing precisely that in his most recent article on Obama's State of the Union Flop:
Hope and change are long gone. It’s now equality and fairness.
That certainly is a large idea. Lenin and Mao went pretty far with it. As did Clement Attlee and his social-democratic counterparts in postwar Europe. . . .
Back in 2008, Obama was asked if he would still support raising the capital-gains tax rate (the intended effect of the Buffett Rule) if this would decrease government revenue.
Obama said yes. In the name of fairness.
This is redistribution for its own sake — the cost be damned. . . .
Sunday, January 22, 2012
The Prophecy Of Gingrich Aide Rick Tyler
In May, 2011, the pundits pronounced Newt Gingrich's candidacy, not merely dead, but in an advanced state of decomposition. Oh, ye of little faith! This from Fox documents the Gingrich candidacy memorial service presided over by Charles Krauthammer and attended by Juan Williams.
After the death certificate was delivered to Gingrich campaign H.Q, Gingrich aide Rick Tyler penned a press release so ridiculous, so over the top, that Stephen Colbert brought in John Lithgow to give it a dramatic reading on his show.
Lithgow does Newt (on Colbert) from wally danger on Vimeo.
In case you missed any of it, here is the body of Tyler's oft ridiculed press release:
The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding. Washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment's cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won't be intimated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces.
And as rdbrewer writes at Ace of Spades today;
That was all very funny at the time. At the time. Well, what did happen in South Carolina? Out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won't be intimidated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces!
Now I'm wondering who this political mastermind is. How could he have foreseen such a result? Does he travel through time? Can he get me some winning lottery numbers? And I'm thinking it looks like we all owe him an apology.
Heh. So let it be written. So let it be done.
(H/T Nice Deb)
Friday, December 9, 2011
Krauthammer On Obama's Class Warfare Strategy
Charles Krauthammer exposes the absurdity of Obama's class warfare strategy for reelection, likening it more to the mantle of Hugo Chavez than of the mantle of Teddy Roosevelt. This from Dr. Krauthammer:
In the first month of his presidency, Barack Obama averred that if in three years he hadn’t alleviated the nation’s economic pain, he’d be a “one-term proposition.”
When three-quarters of Americans think the country is on the “wrong track” and even Bill Clinton calls the economy “lousy,” how then to run for a second term? Traveling Tuesday to Osawatomie, Kan., site of a famous 1910 Teddy Roosevelt speech, Obama laid out the case.
It seems that he and his policies have nothing to do with the current state of things. Sure, presidents are ordinarily held accountable for economic growth, unemployment, national indebtedness (see Obama, above). But not this time. Responsibility, you see, lies with the rich.
Or, as the philosophers of Zuccotti Park call them, the 1 percent. For Obama, these rich are the ones holding back the 99 percent. The “breathtaking greed of a few” is crushing the middle class. If only the rich paid their “fair share,” the middle class would have a chance. Otherwise, government won’t have enough funds to “invest” in education and innovation, the golden path to the sunny uplands of economic growth and opportunity.
Where to begin? A country spending twice as much per capita on education as it did in 1970 with zero effect on test scores is not underinvesting in education. It’s mis-investing. As for federally directed spending on innovation — like Solyndra? Ethanol? The preposterously subsidized, flammable Chevy Volt?
Our current economic distress is attributable to myriad causes: globalization, expensive high-tech medicine, a huge debt burden, a burst housing bubble largely driven by precisely the egalitarian impulse that Obama is promoting (government aggressively pushing “affordable housing” that turned out to be disastrously unaffordable), an aging population straining the social safety net. Yes, growing inequality is a problem throughout the Western world. But Obama’s pretense that it is the root cause of this sick economy is ridiculous.
As is his solution, that old perennial: selective abolition of the Bush tax cuts. As if all that ails us, all that keeps the economy from humming and the middle class from advancing, is a 4.6-point hike in marginal tax rates for the rich.
This, in a country $15 trillion in debt with out-of-control entitlements systematically starving every other national need. This obsession with a sock-it-to-the-rich tax hike that, at most, would have reduced this year’s deficit from $1.30 trillion to $1.22 trillion is the classic reflex of reactionary liberalism — anything to avoid addressing the underlying structural problems, which would require modernizing the totemic programs of the New Deal and Great Society. . . .
In Kansas, Obama lamented that millions “are now forced to take their children to food banks.” You have to admire the audacity. That’s the kind of damning observation the opposition brings up when you’ve been in office three years. Yet Obama summoned it to make the case for his reelection!
Why? Because, you see, he bears no responsibility for the current economic distress. It’s the rich. And, like Horatius at the bridge, Obama stands with the American masses against the soulless plutocrats.
This is populism so crude that it channels not Teddy Roosevelt so much as Hugo Chavez. But with high unemployment, economic stagnation and unprecedented deficits, what else can Obama say?
He can’t run on stewardship. He can’t run on policy. His signature initiatives — the stimulus, Obamacare and the failed cap-and-trade — will go unmentioned in his campaign ads. Indeed, they will be the stuff of Republican ads.
What’s left? Class resentment. Got a better idea?
Friday, December 2, 2011
Three Tales Of Newt
Newt Gingrich is the hot topic now, for the left, the right and the undecided. Today, three major columns appear on Newt coming from three very different viewpoints.
As I noted in the post below, Newt is giving the left utter nightmares at the thought of him going up against the thin skinned Teleprompter in Chief in debates, and then the direction he would lead our nation once in power. Consequently, we are being treated to one leftie after another "welcoming" a Gingrich nomination and, in a true spirit of bipartisanship, warning conservatives that Gingrich is unelectable.
Today's left-wing offering comes from TNR's Jonathan Bernstein, who assures us that "Newt is still the same wildly unelectable candidate he was five minutes ago, and the polls that say otherwise are no better indicator of voters’ true preferences than a game of darts." Heh. He goes on to explain to his readers that the average Republican isn't paying attention to all of Newt's baggage and just isn't smart enough to know what is good for them. Thank you Mr. Bernstein.
On the other side of the aisle, former Congressman Robert Walker takes to the pages of the USA Today to explain why Newt is the man for the moment. In examining his record, Walker states:
Newt led Republicans to their first congressional majority in 40 years. His Contract With America led us to balanced budgets, debt reduction, welfare reform and 7.5 million jobs. By negotiating with a Democratic president, he attained conservative goals and unprecedented prosperity.
That leadership required focus and discipline. He created a policy framework and saw it through to completion. His critics called him undisciplined because he generated so many ideas, but the reality is he maintained an unrelenting commitment to conservative values and reform. Dozens of ethics charges were leveled against him; none proved credible. His four year speakership arguably was the most successful in decades.
Walker's view is what predominates in the polls today, it would seem. Yet a third note, intellectually honest and reflective, is sounded today by my favorite columnist, Charles Krauthammer.
In comparing Gingrich to Romney, Krauthammer notes that both have "flip flopped" on numerous issues, but that Gingrich has a shining record of conservative achievement. Thus are Gingrich's heresies forgiven by the base. Romney has no such conservative record of achievement, and thus is seen by the base as "ideologically unreliable." Nonetheless, Krauthammer sees in Gingrich a grandiosity surpassing even that of Obama, and as such, a man who could well step far out of the box in seeking solutions to our problems. Krauthammer strikes a cautionary note:
Two ideologically problematic finalists: [Romney] is a man of center-right temperament who has of late adopted a conservative agenda. [Gingrich] is a man more conservative by nature but possessed of an unbounded need for grand display that has already led him to unconservative places even he is at a loss to explain, and that as president would leave him in constant search of the out-of-box experience — the confoundedly brilliant Nixon-to-China flipperoo regarding his fancy of the day, be it health care, taxes, energy, foreign policy, whatever.
I think that a fair assessment. I think it also fair to say that we would be rolling the dice more by pulling the lever for Gingrich than for Romney and that, in a normal election year, Romney would likely be the first choice. But these are not normal times. There are decades of left wing legislation and regulation that need to be undone if we are to survive as a preeminent nation with a robust economy. Deep structural changes need to be made to everything from how our regulatory apparatus functions to the welfare state. We are very much at a crossroads in that regards. As Krauthammer rightly observes, "[i]f Obama wins, he will take the country to a place from which it will not be able to return . . ." And in terms of the foreign situation, we have the continued rise of radical Islam throughout the Muslim world, a nuclear Pakistan, and a soon to be nuclear Iran. These are not normal times. I think Gingrich much more likely to lead and find solutions to these near intractable problems than Romney.
That said, Krauthammer sees Romney as the safer choice, largely on his view of electability. He believes that the general electorate will not be forgiving of Gingrich's "baggage, ideological and otherwise" - and lord knows, the left will be in all out attack mode trumpeting that baggage. But where I differ from Krauthammer is that I think the debates, coupled with Gingrich's promise to follow and respond to everything Obama says during the election season - and all coupled with the horrendous damage done to our economy over the preceding three years - will far more than mitigate the baggage. Krauthammer does not explicitly reach that level of analysis in his column, and thus I think he is wrong in his assessment.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Krauthammer Dissects Obama's WTF Budget
Charles Krauthammer has read the proposed budget and gives us his bill of particulars:
. . . The budget touts a deficit reduction of $1.1 trillion over the next decade.
Where to begin? Even if you buy this number, Obama’s budget adds $7.2 trillion in new debt over that same decade.
But there’s a catch. The administration assumes economic-growth levels higher than private economists and the Congressional Budget Office predict. Without this rosy scenario — using CBO growth estimates — $1.7 trillion of revenue disappears and U.S. debt increases $9 trillion over the next decade. This is almost $1 trillion every year.
Assume you buy the rosy scenario. Of what does this $1.1 trillion in deficit reduction consist? Painful cuts? Think again. It consists of $1.6 trillion in tax hikes, plus an odd $328 billion of some mysterious bipartisan funding for a transportation trust fund (gas taxes, one supposes) — for a grand total of nearly $2 trillion in new taxes.
Classic Obama debt reduction: Add $2 trillion in new taxes, then add another $1 trillion in new spending and, presto, you’ve got $1 trillion of debt reduction. It’s the same kind of mad deficit accounting in Obamacare: It reduces debt by adding $540 billion in new spending, then adding $770 billion in new taxes. Presto: $230 billion of “debt reduction.” . . .
And what of those “painful cuts” Obama is making to programs he really cares about? The catch is that these “cuts” are from a hugely inflated new baseline created by the orgy of spending in Obama’s first two years. These were supposedly catastrophe-averting, anti-Depression emergency measures. But post-recession they remain in place. As a result, discretionary non-defense budget levels today are 24 percent higher than before Obama — 84 percent higher if you add in the stimulus money.
Which is why the supposedly painful cuts yield spending still at stratospheric levels. After all the cuts, Department of Education funding for 2012 remains 35 percent higher than in the last pre-emergency pre-Obama year, 2008. Environmental Protection Agency: 18 percent higher. Department of Energy: 22 percent higher. Consider even the biggest “painful cut” headline of all, the 50 percent cut in fuel subsidies for the poor. Barbaric, is it not? Except for the fact that the subsidies had been doubled from 2008 levels. The draconian cut is nothing but a return to normal pre-recession levels.
Yet all this is penny-ante stuff. The real money is in entitlements. And the real scandal of this budget is that Obama doesn’t touch them. Not Social Security. Not Medicaid. Not Medicare.
What about tax reform, the other major recommendation of the deficit commission? Nothing.
How about just a subset of that — corporate tax reform, on which Republicans have signaled they are eager to collaborate? The formula is simple: Eliminate the loopholes to broaden the tax base, then lower the rates for everyone, promoting both fairness and economic efficiency. What does the Obama budget do? Removes tax breaks — and then keeps the rate at 35 percent, among the highest in the industrialized world (more than twice Canada’s, for example).
Yet for all its gimmicks, this budget leaves the country at decade’s end saddled with publicly held debt triple what Obama inherited.
A more cynical budget is hard to imagine. This one ignores the looming debt crisis, shifts all responsibility for serious budget-cutting to the Republicans — for which Democrats are ready with a two-year, full-artillery demagogic assault — and sets Obama up perfectly for re-election in 2012. . . .
Whatever Obama may be, and I can think of numerous words and phrases to describe him, the words "leader" and "patriot" are not among their number. That is too bad, given his job description.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
