NYT Benghazi Whitewash

What Difference Does It Make?
December 30th, 2013 - 10:08 am

 Andrew Klavin

When, a year ago, then-incompetent-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton implied to a Senate committee that it made no difference how or why Americans were murdered at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi Libya in September 2012, she gave the impression that she was trying to cover up for her previous dishonesty in blaming the attack on some obscure video that insulted the beliefs of scabrous, wild-eyed, fanatical murderers. The woman who had lost her promised shot at the presidency to a dishonest neophyte Chicago radical had disgraced herself and betrayed our founding values by promising the father of a heroic SEAL killed in the attack that she would bring justice, not to those who had done the killing, but to the schmuck who’d made the obscure video ridiculing the small-minded, bigoted followers of an ideology currently responsible for a majority of the armed conflicts on earth.

Now — in what may be an effort to protect the presidential hopes of the woman who once tried to cover up her husband’s infidelities by lying about a vast conspiracy of her political opponents — the New York Times, a former newspaper, is reporting that yes, indeed, the well-planned September 11, 2012 al-Qaeda attack on the American consulate was not a well-planned al-Qaeda attack but was inspired by an obscure video that no one saw but which insulted those who believe in a vicious and despicable god and kill their fellow man in his name. The maker of the video was sent to prison under pressure from the White House. The killers of the Americans remain unpunished.

But my question to the New York Times is this: What difference does it make?

Either the incompetent Mrs. Clinton engaged in a shameful cover-up of the truth or she shamefully sold out our values for the values of murderous scum. If the attack was committed by terrorists and she knew it, she’s a liar. If the murderers killed because someone insulted their filthy and violent creed with a video, she’s a collaborator with evil. Disgusting in either case.

But thanks for playing, New York Times. Please try again.

America 3.0

America 3.0: The Coming Reinvention of America

By James C. Bennett and Michael J. Lotus Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Filed under: Big Ideas

 

America is currently in a painful transition period, but once it emerges, it will be more prosperous and free than ever before.

 

 

The United States of America is in crisis. The economy is supposedly in recovery, but it is the slowest and most painful economic rebound since the Great Depression. Unemployment is high and millions have dropped out of the workforce entirely. Many American families have suffered a collapse in their net worth since 2009. During the current administration, America’s debt has increased from ten trillion to sixteen trillion dollars. American businesses face a regulatory burden of well over a trillion dollars per year. Investment in start-up businesses is thwarted and innovation is far short of what it should be. The government is abusing its powers and attacking basic liberties.

All this bad news makes it easy to despair and to worry that the decline might just be permanent. But as bad as things are today — and they will likely get worse for some years to come — the future will be bright for the United States because we are, in fact, in a period of transformation, not decline.

  Transformation not Disintegration

America has already once made a change on the scale of that which is happening now. That was when it transformed itself from the rural and agrarian society of the founding era — which we call America 1.0 — to the urban and industrial society that peaked in the mid-20th century — which we call America 2.0. That earlier transition, from roughly 1860 to 1920, was more painful than most people think. Yet the transformed, industrial America became the wonder of the world.

The American political and economic regime now in crisis was built for the world of America 2.0. Today, we are in the midst of a dramatic transition to a new technological and political configuration — which we call America 3.0. Institutions that once looked permanent are cracking at the foundations. Technology will drive the transition, and the shape of future technology can only be known in broad outline.

Most importantly, the cultural foundation of America, based on its unique type of family life, will remain intact. This is the continuous thread linking each of the three “versions” of America. Our deeply rooted orientation toward personal and economic freedom will allow us to dismantle America 2.0 and build a better, freer, and more prosperous America 3.0 in its place.

American Exceptionalism: Based on the American Family

American exceptionalism is based on our family structure, which has the following characteristics.

• Individuals freely select their own spouses. There are no arranged marriages and very few limitations on whom a person can marry; essentially, only marriage to close relatives is forbidden.

• Women enjoy a high degree of freedom, autonomy, and equality.

• Parents are free to give more or less financial assistance to different children, and they are not required to treat their children equally.

• Grown children leave their parents’ homes, marry, form new households, and create new families of their own.

• Extended families are weak. People have no right to help from relatives.

These things seem normal to Americans, but many cultures have dramatically different customs. For example, in some cultures extended families act as protective networks and their members have a duty of loyalty and assistance to one another.
As a result of our family structure, American culture has the following characteristics.

• Americans Are Individualistic. The American family pushes Americans to be autonomous, self-reliant, and freedom-loving.
• Americans Value Liberty. Americans expect to be on their own, choosing their own spouses, making their own way in the world, and managing their own affairs. 
• Americans Are Non-Egalitarian. Americans have a comparatively low interest in economic equality. 
• Americans Are Competitive. Americans generally consider an economy with winners and losers to be fair. They believe in a minimal safety net compared to other communities. 
• Americans Are Enterprising. The family has been the engine of economic progress in America, creating America’s well-known “go-getting” and “hustling” spirit. 
• Americans Are Mobile. Americans form their own families, acquire their own homes, and have always been willing to move to where the work is. 
• Americans Volunteer. Because Americans do not have extended family networks, they have formed voluntary associations as the foundation of the economy and of civil society.  
• Americans Have Middle-Class Values. Most Americans, whatever their actual wealth, consider themselves to be middle class, and they are interested in public order and safety for their families and property. 
• Americans Have an Instrumental View of Government. They see the government as a tool to accomplish things that benefit them and protect the interests of the middle class.

These factors led to one of America’s greatest achievements: the creation of suburbia. A house that fits one family and provides some comfort and privacy is the heart of the American dream.

Where did these cultural patterns come from? The short answer: England. America inherited its family structure from its mother country. It has been a critical factor in many of the political, legal, economic, and cultural developments in England, and then in America, for 1,500 years. 

America 1.0, America 2.0

When English practices were transplanted to North America, the settlers simplified them into a versatile template to convert expanses of raw land into new, functioning, self-governing communities. Soon after their arrival, Americans were able to act as citizens, jurors, legislators, militiamen, congregation members, and entrepreneurs.

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are justly famous, but the Founders also provided a clear legal framework for the division of North America into real estate parcels sufficient to support English-style families. As a result, in early America millions of ordinary people achieved a prosperous and self-sufficient life. This was America 1.0, a world of family farms, small businesses, small towns, and limited government.

The Civil War launched America into a new age: one of a modern industrial economy, big cities, big railroads, big factories, and big businesses employing thousands of workers. This was America 2.0.

Revolutionary changes swept through American life, providing benefits to many but also removing most Americans’ capacity to be self-sufficient. Middle-class American life came to mean getting a “good job.” Millions of Americans suffered severe hardship during the frequent economic panics and downturns. The Great Depression was the great turning point, leading to the New Deal and to a permanently larger role for the federal government. President Johnson’s Great Society and President Nixon’s expansion of the regulatory state further solidified the growth of government power. 

In recent years, American government has become increasingly dysfunctional and crushingly expensive. Moreover, it is failing to fulfill many of its most basic obligations. The America 2.0 template no longer fits and no longer works.

The Emergence of America 3.0

As the 2.0 state fails, we are seeing increasing awareness, urgency, and activism in response to a deepening crisis. The emerging America 3.0 will reverse several key characteristics of the 2.0 state: decentralization versus centralization; diversity and voluntarism rather than compulsion and uniformity; emergent solutions from markets and voluntary networks rather than top-down, elite-driven commands. Strong opposition to the rise of America 3.0 is inevitable, including heavy-handed, abusive, and authoritarian attempts to prop up the existing order. But this “doubling down” approach is doomed. It is incompatible with both the emerging technology and the underlying cultural framework that will predominate in America 3.0.

Political change is likely to lead to real policy change in the governance of America. The existing system is likely to be replaced by pro-growth laws and regulations that will lead to a vibrant and growing economy. A key theme of any such policy proposals will be a radical decentralization of power to increase the options of individuals, families, businesses, communities, and states to choose their own paths. Economic regulation and taxation will vary across jurisdictions, permitting Americans to select the regime they want to live under. Historically, this type of “regulatory arbitrage” has been a great force for freedom and prosperity.

A major first step for successful reform must be the creation of an open and accountable process to unwind current government obligations at all levels, with protection to the extent possible for older Americans who have relied on government promises. This “Big Haircut” will likely require a one time, across the board debt restructuring, accompanied with realistic measures to get entitlements under control and unleash American productivity. The danger lies in being too timid or too tardy, not in being too bold.

Similarly, structural reform should include a “peace treaty” in the culture wars. In the future, cultural norms will not be imposed on a nationwide basis and communities will be allowed genuine diversity in the way they govern themselves. This will allow true diversity and a full range of options, so that the 400 million Americans of tomorrow can pursue their happiness freely. This is what our Founders intended.

America 3.0’s reforms will come to pass in the coming years because they are consistent with the technological changes that are undermining the employment and manufacturing foundations of America 2.0, or what is left of it in the private sector. Just as 1.0 institutions no longer met the needs of the industrialized America of 1913, 2.0 solutions are failing the emerging 3.0 America today. America is fortunate to have deep-rooted social characteristics that are inherently compatible with the needs of the emerging 3.0 society.

A New Morning 

We guesstimate that by 2040, America 3.0 will be in full flower. The painful transition period will be over and 400 million Americans will be living in a prosperous and free society marked by rapid and exciting technological change. We anticipate many such changes, including:

• Network technology will allow us to work anywhere, and with anyone, remotely. Individual- and family-scale businesses will be far more common and immensely more productive.

• Driverless cars and other innovations in transportation will revolutionize how we travel and where we live and work, allowing us to disperse across the continent into exurban and semi-rural living.

• 3D printing and related technologies will lead to an “internet of atoms” with localized and even in-home manufacturing. There will be a manufacturing renaissance in the United States and the factory floor will be everywhere.

• Medical technology will transform health care, with great gains in health and longevity achieved through enhanced diagnostics, custom-tailored drugs, and fewer medical emergencies.

• Education will be delivered through a variety of media and methods, and traditional brick and mortar schools will be far less important than they are today.

The foregoing are only a few, rather conservative, guesses about the future economy. Moore’s Law will remain in effect, allowing technologies we cannot even imagine today. We can only guess what productive breakthroughs lie a few decades before us, waiting to be awakened by the creative powers of the American people.

Without some sort of major shock, external or self-inflicted, an unreformed America might drift on for quite a while — certainly another 25 or 30 years — without facing and tackling the fundamental problems facing it. The institutions of America 2.0 can survive a while longer by borrowing irresponsibly, defaulting silently on creditors through inflation, squeezing taxpayers with more thorough intrusion and coercion, confiscating the private savings of Americans in the guise of “rescuing” them, eating our seed corn by confiscating medical facilities and running them down without proper reinvestment, and in general stripping and looting the country.

But the political and economic model we now live under cannot go on forever. Some shock may force reform. Let us hope disaster doesn’t strike before we can replace and rebuild our current rickety system. The best course would be for the American people to find the will and the leadership to build something better.

We will get through the painful transition to a new economic and technological age, as we have done before. And the bedrock of our freedom-loving and hard-working culture will remain, evolving but continuous, as it has for over a thousand years.

James C. Bennett is a writer and entrepreneur who has written extensively on technology, culture, and society. Michael J. Lotus writes as “Lexington Green” for the Chicago Boyz blog on history, politics, and books. He practices law in Chicago.

Why Liberals Are Panicking - Krauthammer

November 14, 2013 8:00 PM

 

Why Liberals Are Panicking
 

The future of entitlement-state progressivism hinges on Obamacare.

             By Charles Krauthammer

“Even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government 
made to those people and let them keep what they got.”
          
       –Former President Bill Clinton, November 12



So the former president asserts that the current president continues to dishonor his “you like your plan, you can keep your plan” pledge.

And calls for the Affordable Care Act to be changed, despite furious White House resistance to the very idea.

Coming from the dean of the Democratic Party, this one line marked the breaching of the dam. It legitimized the brewing rebellion of panicked Democrats against Obamacare. Within hours, that rebellion went loudly public. By Thursday, President Obama had been forced into a rearguard holding action, asking insurers to grant a one-year extension of current plans.

 

The damage to the Obama presidency, however, is already done. His approval rating has fallen to 39 percent, his lowest ever. And, for the first time, a majority considers him untrustworthy. That bond is not easily repaired.

At stake, however, is more than the fate of one presidency or of the current Democratic majority in the Senate. At stake is the new, more ambitious, social-democratic brand of American liberalism introduced by Obama, of which Obamacare is both symbol and concrete embodiment.

Precisely when the GOP was returning to a more constitutionalist conservatism committed to reforming, restructuring, and reining in the welfare state (see, for example, the Paul Ryan Medicare reform passed by House Republicans with near unanimity), Obama offered a transformational liberalism designed to expand the role of government, enlarge the welfare state, and create yet new entitlements (see, for example, his call for universal preschool in his most recent State of the Union address).The centerpiece of this vision is, of course, Obamacare, the most sweeping social reform in the last half-century, affecting one-sixth of the economy and directly touching the most vital area of life of every citizen.

As the only socially transformational legislation in modern American history to be enacted on a straight party-line vote, Obamacare is wholly owned by the Democrats. Its unraveling would catastrophically undermine their underlying ideology of ever-expansive central government providing cradle-to-grave care for an ever-grateful citizenry.

For four years, this debate has been theoretical. Now it’s real. And for Democrats, it’s a disaster.

It begins with the bungled rollout. If Washington can’t even do the website — the literal portal to this brave new world — how does it propose to regulate the vast ecosystem of American medicine? Second, arrogance. Five million freely chosen, freely purchased, freely renewed health-care plans are summarily canceled. Why? Because they don’t meet some arbitrary standard set by the experts in Washington.

For all his news-conference gyrations about not deliberately deceiving people with his “if you like it” promise, the law Obama so triumphantly gave us allows you to keep your plan only if he likes it. That’s the very definition of paternalism.

Lastly, deception. The essence of the entitlement state is government giving away free stuff. Hence Obamacare would provide insurance for 30 million uninsured, while giving everybody tons of free medical services — without adding “one dime to our deficits,” promised Obama. This being inherently impossible, there had to be a catch. Now we know it: hidden subsidies. Toss millions of the insured off their plans and onto the Obamacare “exchanges” where they would be forced into more expensive insurance packed with coverage they don’t want and don’t need — so that the overcharge can be used to subsidize others.

The reaction to the incompetence, arrogance, and deception has ranged from ridicule to anger. But more is in jeopardy than just panicked congressional Democrats. This is the signature legislative achievement of the Obama presidency, the embodiment of his new entitlement-state liberalism. If Obamacare goes down, there will be little left of its underlying ideology.

Perhaps it won’t go down. Perhaps the web portal hums beautifully on November 30. Perhaps they’ll find a way to restore the canceled policies without wrecking the financial underpinning of the exchanges.

Perhaps. The more likely scenario, however, is that Obamacare does fail. It either fails politically, renounced by a wide consensus that includes a growing number of Democrats. Or it succumbs to the financial complications (the insurance “death spiral”) of the very amendments desperately tacked on to save it.

If it does fail, the effect will be historic. Obamacare will take down with it more than Mary Landrieu and Co. It will discredit Obama’s new liberalism for years to come.

— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2013 the Washington Post Writers Group

Allen West on Benghazi

Tuesday, December 31, 2013  

Allen B. West

 

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla., December 30, 2013 — The story of what happened that night when Americans were abandoned in Benghazi to die will not go away. Despite the appearance of Susan Rice on 60 Minutes two weeks ago, and a New York Times article yesterday reviving the fable that a video was to blame, disturbing questions remain.

• Why was U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi on 9-11? It should be standard practice that high value targets do not move around in hostile terrorist territory, which Benghazi was on that day.
  
• When the message came that the consulate was under attack, why were all immediate resources not allocated? As a former career Soldier who sat on the House Armed Services Committee, I am well aware of security protocols. Why weren’t they followed?
  
• Where was President Obama the evening of the attack? We were treated to all the White House situation room pictures of the raid on Osama bin Laden — but where are the photos from that night?
  
• According to the president, he ordered Secretary of Defense Panetta and CJCS General Dempsey to get the Americans in Benghazi the support they needed. If true, then who disobeyed the president’s order, and why did Obama never follow up with Panetta and Dempsey?
  
• Who came up with the video scapegoat excuse, and why was the U.N. ambassador called out for the Sunday shows and not the person responsible, the secretary of state?
  
• Ambassador Stevens had met with a Turkish representative in Benghazi, but why were his requests for additional security denied, and by whom?
   

Here is my assessment: Ambassador Chris Stevens was sent into the heart of Islamic terrorist badlands, where the black al-Qaeda flags flew prominently, to negotiate an arms transfer from the Libyan rebels, al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood-supported terrorists groups through Turkey and into Syria to support those Islamic terrorist, rebel groups. Something went awry since intelligence chatter had picked up al-Qaeda leader al-Zawahiri calling for retribution attacks after the drone killing of an al-Qaeda leader.

There is widespread support for a select committee to help answer these questions. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., has brought forth a resolution, H.Res. 36 which has 178 cosponsors, yet Speaker of the House John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor refuse to bring it to the House floor for a vote. Is there something they know that they prefer not come to light?

Earlier this month, Rep. Wolf announced his retirement from Congressional service. Is this a similar coincidence to General Carter Ham, Commander of USAFRICOM, and his retirement?

Two weeks ago when Leslie Stahl interviewed current National Security Advisor Susan Rice on 60 Minutes regarding Benghazi, Rice said she didn’t have time for “false controversies.”
 
In that moment we were given a vision into a heartless, callous, and despicable person. To think that the interview segment showed Rice spending time with her children, yet she showed no remorse in her dismissive response considering the widow and child of former U.S. Navy SEAL Ty Woods or the mother of State Department IT Specialist Sean Smith.

When asked why she was sent out on five Sunday talk shows she responded that it had been a painful and stressful week for then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

It would be painful and stressful to look the surviving family members of Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glenn Doherty, and Ty Woods in the eye and knowingly lie to them. And if that was a stressful week for Clinton, then she has certainly disqualified herself from ever being Commander-in-Chief, among many other reasons.

This weekend, David D. Kirkpatrick, writing in the New York Times, is attempting to revive the debunked fable that Benghazi was the result of an anti-Islam video. For this individual to insult the intelligence of the American people is offensive. People don’t show up for a spontaneous demonstration with heavy arms, including mortars that were fired with precision accuracy.
  
Kirkpatrick also tries to separate any ties of this attack to al-Qaeda, which illustrates the naive comprehension of progressive socialists when it comes to Islamic totalitarianism. To them, if some jihadist does not walk up, give them a business card, and say, “Hi, I’m from al-Qaeda and I’m here to kill you,” then the threat isn’t real and can be pushed aside.

The fact lost on Kirkpatrick is that Ansar-al-Sharia is an Islamic terrorist organization — one of their founders was a GITMO released detainee — just as Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Aqsa Martyrs, Abu Sayyaf, Jemaat-al-Islamiya, Islamic Jihad, and the Muslim Brotherhood are, and they all pose a clear and present danger, regardless of their name. It is their common purpose that unifies them.

So why did Kirkpatrick write this piece at this time?

Obviously the specter of Benghazi is not going away. It is causing the liberal progressives of the Democratic Party and their media propaganda arm grave concern. Something happened in Benghazi that would make the Iran-Contra scandal look like Romper Room.
Benghazi is not a phony scandal. It is certainly not a false controversy; four Americans are dead because of it.

The shadow of Benghazi — lies, deception, abandonment, and murder — hangs over Washington, and especially the White House. The number one lie for 2012 should have been an anti-Islam video being responsible for the Benghazi attacks, but the media was too busy propagandizing in order to win an election.

Benghazi is a deep stain, an unwashed sin on the Obama administration, on Hillary Clinton, and on willing accomplice Susan Rice.

Justice will be served. They know it, and it scares them, all of them.

 

Obama on "Income Inequality"

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

              James Pethakucis

Why Obama frets about income inequality, not family breakdown

The Obama White House argues hard that rising US income inequality makes it tougher for Americans to climb the economic ladder.

When President Obama gave a big speech on “social mobility” earlier this month – liberal pundits called it the “most important” of his presidency – he mentioned inequality more than two dozen times to pound the point home. And Team Obama has much publicized its chart illustrating the “Great Gatsby Curve” which suggests strong correlation globally between high income inequality and low earnings mobility.

How many times in such an important speech did Obama mention anything about American family breakdown perhaps impeding economic mobility? Just a couple of passing references.

Yet the issue of family breakdown deserves at least as much attention, if not more, from Obama than income inequality. Using data on local jobs markets from the Equality of Opportunity Project, e21 economist Scott Winship can’t find much of a statistical relationship between inequality – particularly of the 1% vs. 99% sort — and economic mobility. The EOP authors also find “a high concentration of income in the top 1% was not highly correlated with mobility patterns.”

e21

What does seem to be highly correlated with mobility is family structure. In these communities, the share of families with single moms predicts mobility levels “quite well all by itself,” according to Winship’s analysis.  Again, this result is not real surprising. Researchers on the left and right have found that kids raised by both biological parents fare better financially, educationally, and emotionally. And as the EOP scholars conclude: “Some of the strongest predictors of upward mobility are correlates of social capital and family structure.”




A cynic might suggest emphasizing family dysfunction, particularly among those without a college or high school diploma, doesn’t fit into the Democrats narrative as neatly as blaming Republicans for slashing taxes and weakening labor unions – both of which Obama mentioned in that speech.

If true, that’s too bad since one thing most Americans agree on is the ability of kids to climb the ladder should depend more on their skills and will than parents’ investment portfolios.  And one thing most economists agree on is that US economic mobility could be better. While the US middle class is fairly mobile, not so much for kids born at the very top and bottom.  Even the smartest kids have only a 1-in-4 chance of making it from the bottom fifth to the top fifth.

Or maybe Obama simply doesn’t believe there is anything government can do to reverse the decline of the two-parent family where it’s struggling the most. As social scientist Lane Kenworthy writes in his new book, Social Democratic America, the “best bet with respect to family decline … is to offset the adverse impacts.” Kenworthy goes to advocate a broad and bold progressive agenda including universal early education and one-year paid parental leave. Kenworthy: “I believe our array of social programs will increasingly come to resemble those of the Nordic countries. It is in this sense that I say America’s future is a social democratic one.” Interestingly, Kenworthy thinks too much emphasis is placed on income inequality and taxing the 1% rather than raising living standards at the bottom via social programs financed through a value-added tax.

If that’s where Obama and Washington progressives believe America should be headed, they should explicitly say so. Of course, calling for massive new government spending financed by massive new taxes on the middle class might not win the Democrats too many elections any time soon. Much easier, I guess, to bash the rich and the Republicans.

Led to Benghazi - Adam Garfinkle (The American Interest)

Published on December 30, 2013

Greater Mideast Roundup Of Photo-Opportunism and Hazmat Garbage Collection
As we teeter on the cusp of 2014, a whirlwind and partial summary, not so much on what’s been happening lately across the Middle East, but on what it all really means.

As we teeter on the cusp of 2014 (according to a highly arbitrary christiological calendar—see tomorrow’s article on a “guide to what you’re celebrating”), I realize that it’s been a while since I’ve commented on core Middle Eastern issues. So herewith a whirlwind and partial summary, not so much on what’s been happening lately, which anyone can read in the newspapers and the other information sources we have to hand, but on what it means.

Libya

Yesterday’s New York Times ran a Pulitzer-nomination scale feature by David Kirkpatrick on the September 2012 Benghazi episode. It’s based on interviews and apparently some painstaking analysis. While there are flaws in the story—of which more anon—it’s definitely worth reading if you care about this sort of thing.  The key conclusions (which ring true): Yes, that incendiary video made by a rightwing Copt did too play a role in the Libyan events as news of it seeped through from Cairo; no, the attack had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, but was locally inspired; and yes, U.S. intelligence failed because it focused overly much on al-Qaeda and ignored local dynamics, despite having a pretty large CIA and DIA presence on the ground; and yes, Ambassador Stevens and others had a deeply flawed understanding of how intelligible and pliable a post-Qaddafi Libya would be to American influence.

I was gratified to see this analysis because it vindicates points I made at the time and thereafter. (We bloggers welcome vindication.) Some readers took pleasure in pricking me with criticism after it seemed to be the case that the video had played no role in the Libya episode. Well, prick right back at you.

The analysis in the NYT is deficient on two major counts, however—not for what it says, but rather for what it leaves unsaid.  First, like all of its coverage (and not just its coverage), it fails to peel back the onion to March 2011, when the United States help start the war against Libya. It talks about how the Administration messed up on process issues close to the September 2012 incident, and how the Republicans got it wrong as well—all true; but it ignores the fact that none of this would have happened if we’d left Qaddafi alone in his sandy cage.

Second, if you read the account all the way through you’ll see that Kirkpatrick spends a lot of time talking about Ahmed abu Khatallah, who’s been discussed in this space many times. (You’ll even see that the NYT analysis states specifically that SOCOM had a shot at this guy, but the White House prevented the SOF guys from pulling the trigger at State Department behest, because we were still imagining that the Libya government, such as it is, could arrest this guy, and of course we didn’t want to humiliate or harm the government in the eyes of the Libyan people. I was very gratified to see this, because it’s exactly what I suggested had happened in an earlier, May 3, post.) But it also talks about other militia leaders, and gives accounts of what they were doing before, during and after the attack on the U.S. compound. If you read the account carefully, you’ll be struck as I was by the ambiguity and vacillation of these leaders’ statements and actions. But Kirkpatrick gives the reader no key to explain their behavior.
Alas, the words “Cyrenaica” and “tribe” never appear in Kirkpatrick’s article. These guys all knew each other, Kirkpatrick tells us, from being in prison together and then fighting together against the Qaddafi regime. What he never mentions is tribal affinities in Cyrenaica.

These guys in Benghazi have been dealing with each other as representatives of sometimes allied, sometimes antagonistic tribes, clans and families for their whole lives. They calculate whom to help and whom to oppose based on these protracted relationships of balanced opposition, which are in one sense very stable but in another very fluid. I’m no expert in Libyan tribal networks, intermarriages, business and land-ownership relations and the rest, so I cannot reverse-engineer for you other militia leaders’ precise relationships to abu Khatallah as they existed on September 11, 2012. But that’s the right drill if you want to figure out allegiances and behavior at a moment like that.

Finally on this point, why does the American MSM almost never mention tribes, except occasionally as an afterthought, and never speak about how countries like Libya are organized socially, and how that affects their politics? There are so many examples of this that it cannot simply be a coincidence. This is not the place to go into detail, but it comes down, I think, to a form of political correctness that tacitly prohibits any mention of what might be taken even to imply that Libyans (or Yemenis or Syrians or Egyptians, or Pashtuns, or…) might in some way be pre-modern, as we understand the term. (Actually, they’re less aptly described as pre-modern than simply as different, but lowest-common-denominator Enlightenment universalism is very bad at acknowledging the dignity of difference.) That kind of appellation is considered just this side of racist in the higher etiquette of American Enlightenment liberalism, deeply dented, as it has been, by the nonsense of anti-“Orientalism” regnant now for more than a generation in academe. Yes, it was at university where our elite press reporters and their august editors learned this stuffYes, it was at university where our elite press reporters and their august editors learned this stuff.

As long as our elite press censors itself in this manner, an objective socio-political description of these (and other) countries will remain impossible, and a distorted understanding will inevitably feed misbegotten policy adventures like the Libya war. I would like to be able to assure you that what ails the academy and the press does not afflict the clear-eyed professionals at the CIA and the State Department and USAID and the NSC and the officer corps of the uniformed military. Yes, I would like to… but a lot of these guys went to those same universities.

Afghanistan

While yesterday’s NYT front page focused in on Libya, the Washington Post instead aimed its gaze at Afghanistan. A new NIE, we’re told, predicts a “grim future” after the U.S. withdrawal, especially so—and much faster—if we cannot manage to agree with Kabul on a follow-on security arrangement.

It sounds strange to say, maybe, but it’s actually refreshing to hear such pessimism from the intelligence community. I prefer clearheaded pessimism to goo-goo-eyed fantasy, which is mainly what the Obama Administration and U.S. military spokesmen have been feeding us lately. And indeed, the WP article cites several Administration sources, all anonymous, who think the intelligence community’s assessment is too dour.

Now, as I’ve pointed out before, optimism is inherent in government work of this sort. It’s your job to make the policy work, and if you don’t believe it can succeed, you can’t really do you job properly. That’s why, as they say in that old song, “the one who cares the most is always the last to know.” (Well, sure, the song is really about something a little less policy-oriented, but you get the idea.) Still, at some point the penny hits the bottom of the well and even the most optimistic toiler must acknowledge the bad news.

Actually, the NIE seems to be somewhat off point, as best I can tell from a declassified summary. In a sense, it’s not pessimistic enough, or rather it’s pessimistic for the wrong reasons. If you’re a loyal TAI reader, you already know this. The U.S. government still has not come to terms with why the Afghanistan “surge” failed: It failed, as Frances Brown brilliantly pointed out in the November/December 2012 issue, because of our own incoherent bureaucracy working at cross-purposes with itself. And as Pauline Baker argues in the current issue, it’s a mistake to look at Afghanistan though a counter-insurgency or counter-terror lens, as the NIE apparently does; we need instead to look at it through a failed-state lens, because that is what U.S. policy, from the Bonn conference on, has inadvertently created. When we pull the plug on this over-centralized, money-soaked monstrosity of a governance structure, one that was never suited to Afghan history, ethnography or experience, the whole flimsy whim of a would-be state will collapse in a heap.

I can barely wait to find out how the post-collapse narrative will go here in the United States.  The “who lost Afghanistan” story is destined to be a wild and wooly one, if earlier China and Vietnam and even Iraq episodes are any guide. Democrats and Republicans will blame each other. Civilian and military types will, too. We will blame the locals, and the locals will blame us—but they’ll be right.

It will not occur to many Americans, least of all the people who were most deeply involved in the policy, that the foundational assumptions of the policy going in were simply wrong, and they were wrong partly because of a blinding political correctness that prevented us from appreciating the real contours of the society into which we were intervening.

Iran

Today’s news carries a report that the technical groups aiming to implement the P5+1/Iran agreement from November 24 are meeting again today in Geneva. This time the Iranian chief negotiator is optimistic that details will all get ironed out by early next year. This strikes a very different tone from the earlier sessions, in which the Iranians characterized themselves as pessimistic, and then staged a walkout ostensibly over U.S. actions (Executive and Legislative Branch actions) related to sanctions.

There are at least a half dozen ways to read these particular tea leaves. Maybe the Iranians tried to extract more concessions via a white-knuckle delay, and now they’ve changed their tune either because they succeeded (in ways not public) or because the Obama Administration held firm on the sanctions and the Iranians now know they can’t get any more cheapies from stock histrionics. Or maybe the political mood changed in Tehran. Whatever the case, it still strikes me as passing strange—and not at all a good idea—to have announced agreement to such flourishes on November 24 without having actually finished the negotiations. That disproportionately puts pressure on us, the open democratic society, to close the gap to get to agreement. Why do that, unless you’re desperately and incompetently looking for a bright and shining headline?

As to the agreement itself, assuming it can be implemented, I’m still ambivalent about it. Judging just by what is within the four corners of the text, the deal, if carried out, is probably more likely to lead to an Iranian weapon than notJudging just by what is within the four corners of the text, the deal, if carried out, is probably more likely to lead to an Iranian weapon than not. Why? Because of a combination of two aspects: It allows enrichment on Iranian soil, spitting in the eye of seven UNSC resolutions, and it bears an expiration date. The Iranians can make lots of progress and then toss out any constraints on further progress when it suits them—unless
we exert ourselves to pay for the same horse a second, third, and fourth time over.

The only way such a flawed deal can be remedied is by recourse to developments outside the four corners of the text. If the agreement presages a real change of Iranian attitudes, and is a harbinger of a useful if tense normalization of relations with the United States, then the benefits of major changes in the context of the deal could possibly trump the deficiencies of the deal itself.

That, of course, remains very much to be seen. If and when it is ever seen, it will have to involve a dissolution of the false and untenable divide between the nuclear-program business and all the rest of Iran’s mischief-making in and beyond the region. Normalization, if we ever get close to that with Iran, will have to face the whole range of issues on which we mutually engage. How likely is that? There’s no way to know for sure, but diplomatic history is not entirely bereft of rapprochements.

Now, in the give-and-take that would inevitably be required to produce a U.S.-Iranian rapprochement would Sunni Arab interests suffer? Yes, but so what (from a U.S. interests point of view)? Would Israeli interests suffer? Maybe but not necessarily: Remember, Iran, along with Turkey and Ethiopia, were part of Ben Gurion’s original periphery strategy. The Iranian Revolution arguably upset Israeli strategic well being even more than it did that of the United States. It may take a generation, and the road may be very rocky and perilous, but the idea of an eventual normalization of Israeli-Iranian relations, pioneered, so to speak, by the United States, should not be dismissed out of hand. Israeli interests beg a better relationship with Iran if one can be had. Stranger things, after all, have happened (Nixon went to China, Sadat went to Jerusalem…). So we wait, we watch and, of course, we worry.

So do I want these technical discussions to succeed, thus allowing the deal to begin actual implementation? Or would I prefer them to fail? If they succeed, we get to find out if there’s a future without some kind of war over this issue. If they don’t, the chances of some kind of kinetic outcome go way up, with consequences intended and unintended alike. So I hope they succeed.
Egypt

A TAI colleague sent me a Buzzfeed article the other day featuring an unnamed U.S. diplomat complaining that the Obama Administration doesn’t have an Egypt policy. The gist was that day by day the Egyptian government is ramping up its authoritarian muscle, including the formal designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, while we in Washington go merrily on repeating the empty mantra that the “restoration” of Egyptian democracy is on track. The “road map” is being traversed, the State Department insists. Oh, where have we heard that one before

The unnamed diplomat also complained that the terrific ideas of U.S. diplomats expert in Egypt and the Middle East are not being heard in the Oval Office—the State Department in Washington isn’t letting them through to the NSC, and/or the NSC staff isn’t letting them through to Susan Rice and the President. Well, there’s another old story for you.  Maybe these diplomats have good ideas, and just as likely they don’t. But they certainly think that “their” part of the world is critical like no other. Again, that’s part of the job in a way.

And it’s so easy to complain anonymously to an omnivorous gossip-seeking press. In recent decades that’s become part of the job, unfortunately.

And it’s true: Since pointlessly sequestering a smidgen of Egypt’s military aid some months ago, the Administration has kept pretty quiet about Egypt. Every once in a while Secretary Kerry will make some preposterous remark about how well things are going, amid a feckless verbal wrist-slap here and there, but that’s about it. What’s going on here? Do we really not have a policy?

We might not. One can easily adduce an argument that between the President’s lack of interest, the Secretary of State’s obsession with other Middle Eastern portfolios, and the deterioration of the policy process under Susan Rice (compared with Tom Donilon), a combination of apathy, distraction and incoherence has resulted in a “policy” so removed from reality that it’s either no policy at all (if you’re in a generous mood) or an out-and-out embarrassment (if you’re not).

Adding weight to this interpretation is an assumption, taken on by some, that the President is operating under a theory of the case in foreign policy that sees too much U.S. activism as preventing the coalescence of a natural ordered balance in the world’s regions. Our interests, while real, are not vital in Egypt or anywhere else in the greater Middle East, and a new regional balance can take care of them well enough, if only we stop acting like a bunch of control freaks.

Maybe. But there is another way to think about this. Maybe the President, the man who assiduously avoided the “c”-word back in early July, is not entirely bent out of shape that General al-Sisi is running the showMaybe the President, the man who assiduously avoided the “c”-word back in early July, is not entirely bent out of shape that General al-Sisi is running the show. We may think al-Sisi unwise for being so illiberal as to bring on or worsen the problems he seeks to outrun, but President Obama, however mysteriously inconsistent he has been on these matters, has never seemed to me at heart to be a dyed-in-the-wool democracy promoter. Maybe, just possibly, his evocation of Reinhold Niebuhr wasn’t entirely a speechwriter’s flourish.

President Obama seems instead to be a semi-detached photo-opportunist on these matters. So when the Egyptian generals decided to throw Mubarak & Son over the side, we were there for the photo op. When it looked like Morsi was going to be elected president, we were close by for that photo op, too. When about a year later “the people” routed Morsi, conveniently using the Egyptian Army to do so, we refused to call it a coup, and the President sent his Secretary of State to Cairo pretty soon for another photo-op.  (Same in Syria, by the way: When it looked like Assad was a goner, Obama called for his fall; when he looked like he was not a goner, we made a deal with him through the Russians. The cameras whirred, click, click, click.) Maybe the best way to describe this is postmodern foreign policy realism: flip or flop, juke or jive, as the moment demands, all the while having faith that no one will remember what happened or what was said two weeks ago anyhow.

Ah, but there’s a bit more to a hypothetical policy of let-Sisi-be-Sisi than that. We are in one helluva spat with the Saudis, and it concerns Egypt as much as it does Syria and Iran. Our influence in Egypt has been outbid by the Saudis, and even as distracted a White House as this one has to understand that by now.

For all the enthusiasm in some quarters for fracking, it’ll be a long time before Saudi energy policy becomes a trivial concern for us, so this is one of those relationships any President has to pay attention to, at least episodically. Having “no policy” toward Egypt—which means in practice having no harping and futile pro-democracy policy—is therefore conducive to ameliorating the deterioration of the relationship with Riyadh. That’s not no policy. It’s just a policy some State Department Arabists either don’t understand or don’t like.

So do we have no policy toward Egypt or do we have a quiet, minimalist policy the less spoken about publicly the better, for the time being at least? Unfortunately, the President does not confide in me, so I’m really not sure. I’d like to think that the folks over in the NSC machine room know what they’re doing. Let me go on thinking that for a while, please.

Syria

Today’s news also carries new information on the effort to implement the CW deal. When I left off talking about this, back on December 2, I was mystified by the Administration’s decision to detox 1,000 tons of mostly obsolete chemical gunk aboard U.S. Navy ships, since no other government would agree to do the job on land. Did we even have such a capability, I wondered? (I know a fair bit about the U.S. Navy for a civilian, having ship-ridden two vessels in international waters, and I knew of no such capability.) Off whose littoral would we dare do this? How would we dispose of the “safe” gunk left over? What would this cost and who and how would we pay for it and, above all, why, after all, were we doing the Syrian regime such a favor anyway—essentially offering ourselves up as hazmat garbage collectors to a bunch of mass murderers?

So what’s the news? Not an ounce of Syria’s CW has yet been moved since September 26, when the deal was inked. Not one atom even—and the deadline to get this stuff out of there is tomorrow. The Russians have reportedly supplied armored vehicles for the trip to Tartus, in Latakia province, and Norwegian and Danish ships are on hand to transport the first 20 tons to a U.S. Navy vessel anchored in Italy. There is also reportedly a naval escort ready to escort these ships courtesy of Norway, Denmark and, I swear this is what I read, China.

So far there is no information on what U.S. Navy ship this is and how it is decked out. There is no information on where this operation is going to take place. There is no information on what, if anything, we’ve told the Italians. If environmental studies have been done, there is no mention of them. Where will the resultant “safe” gunk go? Who’s paying, how much, out of what budget? Zero information about any of that, at least that I’ve seen so far. Does the press think these questions are too boring to bother with? Just wondering.

Meanwhile, insofar as there is any other news about Syria—aside from more gruesome atrocities or signs that civil war is spreading into Lebanon—it’s all about Geneva. Unless the rebels decide to give up—and who could blame them at this point, really, given how we and others have diddled them?—Geneva will accomplish nothing. It will only lead, very predictably, to more dead bodies as all sides try to improve their battlefield situation in advance of the conclave. Indeed, it’s already doing that. A lot of clueless American liberals may not understand that diplomacy cannot achieve things that reality outside the negotiating room will not abet, but no one involved in the Syrian civil war is a liberal, so they’re real clear on the relationship.

If the rebels do give up and Geneva produces some sort of transition that isn’t actually a transition to anything so long as Bashir al-Assad remains in power, then the entire region will read the result as a win for Iran, Russia and bestial-level brutality, and as a loss for the United States. And the U.S. government should agree to be complicit in such an outcome because… why? Well, no one ever claimed that garbage collectors are, in the main, all that bright.

Tunisia

Finally some good news, though not good news easy to find in the American MSM.  Not too many days ago the Ennahda government fell and was replaced by a non-Islamist coalition led by Mehdi Joma’a, a former Industry Minister in the previous government—a technocrat, in other words. This is the first time an actually ruling Islamist government (Ennahda is very roughly the Tunisian equivalent of the Muslim Brotherhood, but only very roughly) was voted out of office and left power without notable incident. Only in

Tunisia, probably, a country that is truly sui generis in the Arab world (but then they all are, each in their own ways), for reasons I commented on in earlier posts.

So one TAI reader, someone who tries to follow Tunisia closely for professional reasons, contacted me to express puzzlement at the very bland comments of the U.S. Ambassador in Tunis over this epochal event. The Ambassador, Jake Walles, an FSO pro, did not have a lot to say, really. He wasn’t especially upbeat; he just remarked that the U.S. government supports the democratic process in

Tunisia and otherwise we do not pick or play favorites. And then the Ambassador went off to have lunch, or whatever it is that Ambassadors do in the middle of the day in places like Tunis. I think my interlocutor was hoping for something a little more energetically anti-Islamist.

My response to him was that I found Ambassador Walles’s remarks unexceptional and wise. The only problem, I explained, was that there are too many possible ways to explain them.

First way: We and the Europeans (read: the French and, possibly, the aspiring Italians) have been instrumental in trying to put a non-Islamist government together that will be stable and keep the Ennahda bastards out of power, but because of widespread suspicions in Tunisia that we did precisely that, we want to distance ourselves in public lest we create gratuitous trouble for the new guys.

Second way: It is standard trope to support the democratic process but stay away from partisan leanings, because that is the right thing to do and also the tactically most shrewd thing to do in situations where you never know who’ll be on top two weeks from now.

Third way: We really support the MB types in Tunis, because of some theory that democratization for the long run has to run through the “moderate” Islamists, a theory that makes the least possible amount of sense in Tunisia (and not a whole lot of sense elsewhere, just by the by).

Fourth way: The Ambassador stayed bland because he failed to receive instructions to do otherwise—because there’s disagreement in Washington on the third way, or because it was the holidays and no one was around to give instructions. (Don’t laugh; I’ve seen exactly such a thing happen before my very own eyes.)

Fifth way: The Ambassador is enthralled with a classical definition of a diplomat—“Someone who thinks twice about saying nothing”—and wants to be the quip’s new poster child.

Seriously, I think that somewhere between the second and the fourth ways we probably have our explanation.

So, Libya, Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia—and I mentioned in passing Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and even Israel. Yes, even Israel. Now watch: Something like 75 percent of all the comments made on this post will be about Israel. Oh, that Chosen People…

Turkey's Economy (and Erdogon) Tumble

The End of Erdogan’s Cave of Wonders: An I-Told-You-So

Posted By David P. Goldman On December 27, 2013 

Turkey is coming apart. The Islamist coalition that crushed the secular military and political establishment–between Tayip Erdogan’s ruling AK Party and the Islamist movement around Fethullah Gulen–has cracked. The Gulenists, who predominate in the security forces, have arrested the sons of top government ministers for helping Iran to launder money and circumvent sanctions, and ten members of Erdogan’s cabinet have resigned. Turkey’s currency is in free fall, and that’s just the beginning of the country’s troubles: about two-fifths of corporate debt is in foreign currencies, so the cost of servicing it jumps whenever the Turkish lira declines. Turkish stocks have crashed (and were down another 5% in dollar terms in early trading Friday). As the charts below illustrate, so much for Turkey’s miracle economy.

Two years ago I predicted a Turkish economic crash. Erdogan’s much-vaunted economic miracle stemmed mainly from vast credit expansion to fuel an import boom, leaving the country with a current account deficit of 7 % of GDP (about the same as Greece before it went bankrupt) and a mushrooming pile of short-term foreign debt. The Gulf states kept financing Erdogan’s import bill, evidently because they wanted to keep a Sunni power in business as a counterweight to Iran; perhaps they have tired of Turkey’s double-dealing with the Persians. And credulous investors kept piling into Turkish stocks.

I reiterated my warning that Turkey would unravel at regular intervals, for example here.

No more. Turkey is a mediocre economy at best with a poorly educated workforce, no high-tech capacity, and shrinking markets in depressed Europe and the unstable Arab world. Its future might well be as an economic tributary of China, as the “New Silk Road” extends high-speed rail lines to the Bosporus.

For the past ten years we have heard ad nauseum about the “Turkish model” of “Muslim democracy.” The George W. Bush administration courted Erdogan even before he became prime minister, and Obama went out of his way to make Erdogan his principal pal in foreign policy. I have been ridiculing this notion for years, for example in this 2010 essay for Tablet.

The whole notion was flawed from top to bottom. Turkey was not in line to become an economic power of any kind: it lacked the people and skills to do anything better than medium-tech manufacturing. Its Islamists never were democrats. Worst of all, its demographics are as bad as Europe’s. Ethnic Turks have a fertility rate close to 1.5 children per family, while the Kurdish minority is having 4 children per family. Within a generation half of Turkey’s young men will come from families where Kurdish is the first language.

Our foreign policy establishment, Democratic and Republican, was so enamored of the notion of Muslim democracy that it mistook Erdogan’s incipient dictatorship and bubble economy for the object of its desire.  In June 2012, for example, David Ignatius of the Washington Post bragged that Obama’s embrace of Erdogan had “paid big dividends.” Said Ignatius:

As President Barack Obama was feeling his way in foreign policy during his first months in office, he decided to cultivate a friendship with Turkey’s headstrong prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Over the past year, this investment in Turkey has begun to pay some big dividends – anchoring the policy of the United States in a region that sometimes seems adrift.
Erdogan’s clout was on display this week as he hosted a meeting in Istanbul of the World Economic Forum that celebrated the stability of the “Turkish model” of Muslim democracy amid the turmoil of the Arab Spring. One panel had the enraptured title “Turkey as a Source of Inspiration.”

Now the hashish smoke has cleared, Erdogan’s Cave of Wonders has turned back into a sandpit, and the foreign policy establishment has nothing to show for years of propitiation of this Anatolian wannabe except a headache.

Now that Turkey is coming unstuck, along with Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, we should conclude that the entire project of bringing stability to the Muslim world was a hookah-dream to begin with. Except for the state of Israel and a couple of Sunni monarchies that survive by dint of their oil wealth, we are witnessing the unraveling of the Middle East. The best we can do is to insulate ourselves from the spillover effect.

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Article printed from Spengler: http://pjmedia.com/spengler

Who are the losers in the 'Duck Dynasty' flap?

By CHARLES HOSKINSON | DECEMBER 27, 2013 AT 10:47 PM 

Now that A&E executives have surrendered to the will of hundreds of thousands of "Duck Dynasty" fans and welcomed Phil Robertson back to the show nearly 10 days after creating a firestorm when they suspended him for expressing views about sexuality that are pretty much shared by many other conservative Christians, it's time to see who the winners and losers are.

The winners: Robertson and his family.They held fast to their values and learned how deep their fan base really is. The family's admission of regret about his statements to GQ was no surrender, given that his comments were never about hate as opponents had insinuated.

The losers: A&E executives, of course, who knew all along that the Robertson family members were conservative Christians, yet did the world's worst imitation of Claude Rains in "Casablanca" when gay groups complained.

And while we're on that subject, the other big loser is GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination, which showed how far it had strayed off the path of encouraging tolerance into the dark woods where conformity is enforced by witchhunts and demands for blood sacrifices. GLAAD's intolerance sparked what its leaders called the worst backlash they'd ever seen -- a backlash that included prominent members of the gay community such as Andrew Sullivan and Camille Paglia.

That's right: Two groups of smug, urban sophisticates got outsmarted by a backwoodsman who shoots ducks for a living.

Heckuva job, folks.

2013 by the Numbers

Intriguing Year-End Data Show A Nation In Flux

By ROBERT J. SAMUELSON
Posted 12/27/2013 

It's a journalistic ritual. At the end of the year, we do lists and rankings. There's the year's biggest news stories, the best photos, the most notable deaths, the best books, the funniest cartoons, the best (and worst) movies.

Now let me add another item: the year's most interesting statistics.

Truth be told, the idea comes from my friend Ben Beach, a recovering journalist who, for years, has included some of the year's intriguing stats on the back of his family holiday card.

This year, Ben's list had six items. I've added four more. They appear below in no particular order. (The sources are in parentheses.)

• On a typical day, 3,300 American teenagers smoke their first cigarette (Washington Post, Dec. 10).

• Only 13% of two-year college students graduate in two years (New York Times, Sept. 8).

• David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox batted .688 in the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals (Washington Post, Oct. 31).

• A low-end iPhone has 240,000 times the memory of the computers on Voyager 1, which is now nearly 12 billion miles from Earth (New York Times, Sept. 13).

• The stock market has risen 30% for the year (through Dec. 24), representing a gain in paper wealth of $5.2 trillion. That's produced    all-time highs, second only to 1995, which had 91 (Wilshire Associates).

• A leaf blower with a two-stroke engine emits 299 times the hydrocarbons of a Ford Raptor pickup truck (Washington Post, Sept. 17).

• In October, there were almost 5.7 million "missing workers" — people who had dropped out of the labor force but, under trends prevailing before the Great Recession, would have had jobs or been looking for work. Counting them would have raised October's unemployment rate to about 10% instead of the reported 7% (the Economic Policy Institute).

• Half the Republicans in the House have served three years or less (Wall Street Journal, Sept. 23).

• After climbing steadily between 1990 and 2010, sales of diet soda took a 6.8% dive in 2013 (Wall Street Journal, Dec. 9).

• Almost three-quarters (72%) of online Americans use social networking sites, up from 8% in 2005. There are few differences by educational attainment: 67% of high-school dropouts are users vs. 72% of college graduates (Pew Internet & American Life Project).

For all of us numbers-lovers, 2013 was a very good year.

Who Will Speak For The Long-Neglected Middle Class?

Who Will Speak For The Long-Neglected Middle Class?

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Posted 12/27/2013 07:26 PM ET

Victor Davis Hanson

On almost every left-right issue that divides Democrats and Republicans — as well as Republicans themselves — there is a neglected populist constituency.

The result is that populist politics are largely caricatured as Tea Party extremism — and a voice for the middle class is largely absent.

The problem with ObamaCare is that its well-connected and influential supporters — pet businesses, unions and congressional insiders — have already won exemption from it.

The rich will always have their concierge doctors and Cadillac health plans. The poor can usually find low-cost care through Medicaid, federal clinics and emergency rooms.

In contrast, those who have lost their preferred individual plans, or will pay higher premiums and deductibles, are largely members of the self-employed middle class. They are too poor to have their own exclusive health care coverage but too wealthy for most government subsidies. So far, ObamaCare is falling hardest on the middle class.

Consider the trillion-dollar student loan mess. Millions of young people do not qualify for grants predicated on either income levels, ancestry or both. Nor are their parents wealthy enough to pay their tuition or room-and-board costs. The result is that the middle class — parents and students alike — has accrued a staggering level of student loan debt.

Universities are of no help. Their annual tuition costs have usually gone up faster than the rate of inflation. On too many campuses, vast increases in well-paid administrators and lower teaching loads for tenured professors — as well as snazzy new campus recreation facilities — were all predicated on students obtaining more federal loans and going into astronomical debt to pay for those less accountable and better off.

Illegal immigration also largely comes at the expense of the middle class. The supporters of amnesty tend to be poor foreign nationals who desire amnesty. Corporate employers and the elites of the identity-politics industry do not care under what legal circumstances foreign nationals enter the United States.

Instead, the two kindred pressure groups seek cheap and plentiful labor and plenty of ethnic constituents.

Lost in the debate over "comprehensive immigration reform" are citizen entry-level job seekers of all different races who cannot leverage employers for higher wages when millions of foreign nationals, residing illegally in the U.S., will work for less money.

Likewise, few worry about would-be legal immigrants without political clout who have played by the rules and are still waiting in line for a chance at citizenship.

Middle-class taxpayers are most responsible for providing parity in subsidized housing, legal costs, health care and education for those who entered the country illegally, especially once corporate employers have let their undocumented older or injured workers go.

There is a populist twist to proposed new federal gun-control legislation as well. The wealthy or politically influential, who often advocate stricter laws for others, usually take for granted their own expensive security details, many of them armed.
In contrast, new gun-control initiatives would mostly fall on the law-abiding who hunt and wish to defend their own families and homes with their own legal weapons.

Energy policy has become a boutique issue for the wealthy who push costly wind, solar and biofuels, subsidized mostly by the 53% of Americans who actually pay federal income taxes and are most pressed by the full costs of higher fuel, electricity and heating costs.
Yet the best friends of the middle class have been frackers and horizontal drillers taking their own risks on private lands. They — not the government, and not environmentalists that oppose such exploration — are mostly responsible for the recent drops in gasoline, natural gas and propane costs to the consumer.

The Federal Reserve's policy of quantitative easing and de facto zero interest rates have stampeded investors desperate for even modest returns from the stock market — to the delight of wealthy Wall Street grandees. The poor are eligible for both debt relief and cheap (and often subsidized) mortgage rates that remain near historic lows.

The real losers are frugal members of the middle class. For the last five years they have received almost no interest on their modest passbook savings accounts. In other words, we are punishing thrift and reminding modest savers that they might have been better off either borrowing or gambling on Wall Street.

In the last election, Republican Mitt Romney was caricatured as a voice of the wealthy pitted against Barack Obama, a redistributionist railing for more subsidies for the poor.

But millions of Americans in between are not so worried about capital gains cuts on stock sales, or more food stamps and free phones.

And no one in Washington seems to be listening to them.

Pajama Boy: Obama's Smirking Commissar

Pajama Boy: Obama's Smirking Commissar

Posted 12/27/2013 06:48 PM ET

Politics: The effete visage of the ObamaCare pitchman known as Pajama Boy already is a figure of fun. But now it comes to light that Ethan Krupp is more than just a smirking, turnoff face for an ad. He's a leftist extremist.

Krupp is more than just a hipster metrosexual cradling cocoa in his red onesie pajamas whose arch, supercilious expression is supposed to make young people want to run out and buy overpriced ObamaCare on government insurance exchanges.

In reality, he's a long-time Obama operative, one of the president's leftover campaign shock troops active in The One's permanent campaign organization known as Organizing for America.

"I'm a liberal f***," he wrote in the typical leftist vernacular on his now-deleted blog, according to research by the Daily Caller. "A liberal f*** is not a Democrat, but rather someone who combines political data and theory, extreme leftist views and sarcasm to win any argument while make (sic) the opponents feel terrible about themselves. I won every argument but one."

In other words, he knows more than you as he arches his eyebrows with smug certainty to "persuade" you to buy ObamaCare.

Apparently, he's been at it awhile and doesn't take kindly to thoughtful discussion or argument.

The Caller reported that he dismissed his critics in an interview with the Badger Herald of Wisconsin by saying he gave them "a huge middle finger." He summed up: "We have no morals, and we will attack you."

If this doesn't sum up the Obama administration's smoldering contempt for the vast majority of voters who are now suffering under the incompetence and cost of the ObamaCare he's now selling, what does?

Krupp's views are those of a left-wing extremist, one who is certain he knows what's better for voters than they do. We've seen his attitude in other pitches for ObamaCare, such as by Obama ally Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., who browbeat a group of students at Cal State Los Angeles earlier this month, and Internet ads that urge the young to buy ObamaCare by depicting a bunch of beer-swilling boobs.

Krupp wears soft, cuddly pajamas to appear presumably friendly, but based on his views stated elsewhere, he'd put you in a penal camp if he could.

The ends justify the means for someone who openly says he shuns morals. That's the sort of coercion the ObamaCare campaign is coming to.

Pajama Boy Nation

Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On December 22, 2013 @ 11:11 pm In Culture,Politics | 162 Comments

Will Kane of High Noon ^[1] Pajama Boy wasn’t. Somehow we as a nation went from the iconic Marlboro Man to Pajama Boy — from the noble individual with a bad habit to the ignoble without a good habit — without a blink in between.

There are lots of revolting things in the Pajama Boy ad. After all, how can you top all at once a nerdy-looking child-man dressed in infantile pajamas while cradling a cup of hot chocolate with the smug assurance that he is running your life more than you his?

The Liberal Body-Snatchers

Still, there are one or two even scarier thoughts.
One, did the Obama appendage, Organizing for Action, really believe that such a sad-sack image ^[2] might galvanize anyone about anything?  And two, did they really think that Pajama Boy would resonate with any young people outside of the New York-DC circus, as if to assume he would be persuasive: stay cool with retro geek glasses, pajamas, and hot chocolate like Pajama Boy, and then, presto, rush out to buy an Obamacare policy?

Out here in the rural middle of California — or most anywhere 30 miles inland from the coasts — Pajama Boy would last about two seconds pruning vines, or walking about the local Wal-Mart parking lot with his hot chocolate. Yet put him where his foot-padded pajamas bring dividends and for the last five years we all have lived out the consequences of his ilk’s ideological dreaming.

The great mystery of America today is how many of us have joined Pajama Boy nation — 20%, 40%, 60%? — and how many want nothing to do with such metrosexual visions of a huge state run by a nerdocracy, incompetently doling out other people’s money. How many were on board for Obamacare, more entitlements, and lectures from the apartheid elite on inequality and fairness, versus how many turn the channel at sound of His voice.

Sharpton Good — Duck Dynasty Not?

This past week the question of two Americas seems to be playing out even in the trivial psychodramas of bastardized popular culture. If Michelle Obama photo-ops ^[3] and consults with Al Sharpton — of Crown Heights riot, Freddie’s Fashion Mart, and Tawana Brawley notoriety ^[4] — is anything off-limits?

As I understand liberal popular culture as expressed in television and entertainment, David Letterman — cynical, dry, raised eyebrows at each ironic smirk — can pun on air that Sarah Palin’s 14-year-old daughter had sex with a baseball player ^[5] in the dugout.Or Martin Bashir rails ^[6] that Mrs. Palin should have excrement and urine inserted into her mouth, or Chris Rock suggests that the 4^th of July is “White People’s Day,” ^[7] or Jamie Foxx jokes about  how fun it was to play a character killing white people ^[8]. Fine, free speech is free speech. To each his own. Let the seller and buyer establish their own codes of speech. Live and let live and all that good stuff.

But, on the other hand, you must not, as a real-TV celebrity, dare to suggest off-camera that male sodomy is somehow less “normal” or perhaps less  ”moral” or hygienic than is heterosexual intercourse. (The downside of sodomy in this Miley Cyrus age ^[9] of anything goes rawness is oddly a taboo subject ^[10]).

The White Trash Zoo

How bizarre that the Duck Dynasty characters and Pajama Boy reverberated the same week ^[11]. I have never watched Duck Dynasty, and have only glanced at the expanding genre of white working class reality dramas, from tree cutters and gold miners to ice truckers and boat captains: Cussin’ good ol’ boys, who lose their temper when failing to start the generator, have big arms and bigger guts, and are to remind us (within limits) that once upon a time we all used to be more like them than Ezra Klein and Jay Carney ^[12].

Who watches these shows? Perhaps the majority of viewers ^[13] are those who still admire muscular strength and the earthy ability to make a living from nature (and not work for the Bureau of Labor Statistics or the local Department of Motor Vehicles), and a smaller percentage who find these aborigines odd, but also oddly compelling in their reminder that the people like themselves who run our country could not sharpen a chain saw, change the oil in their car, or unplug their own sewer line. This latter group is curious about the uncouth people who can do these things.

The A&E controversy grew even stranger in that pet white aborigines from the rural south are supposed to shock us by their blunt talk and religious hocus pocus, but only if they stay inside the bars of their zoo cage and thus only ham it up within the parameters of politically correct hillbilly-ese ^[14]. The Pajama Boy mob at A&E must know that the Ducks, should they speak like those in Silicon Valley or act in accordance with Upper West Side protocols, would have zero audience. Is the logic of Duck Dynasty that the few left in America of the 1940s can spout off in a neat way to us — but only without putting their paws and snouts too far through the bars of their cage?

Obama as Pajama Boy

Pajama Boy is the bookend to vero possumus, the faux-Greek columns, the Obama rainbow logo, cooling the planet and lowering the seas, hope and change, Forward!, “Yes, we can!”, the Nate Silver infatuation, Barbara Walters’ “messiah,” ^[15] David Brooks’ crease, Chris Matthews’ tingle, and the army of Silicon techies who can mobilize for Obama but not for Obamacare. These are the elites without identities who feed on the latest fad. They are the upper-crust versions of those who once mobbed stores to buy the last

Cabbage Patch Kids doll, or had to have a pet rock on their dresser. Obama, after all, was the lava lamp and Chia Pet ^[16] of the young urban progressive.

If I were to focus on just two of the many characteristics of Pajama Boy nation in the Age of Obama, one would be that the consequences of one’s ideology apply always to someone else. Obama obsesses on inequality, but cannot even go through the populist motions of avoiding Martha’s Vineyard, or not dressing like a nerd for golf at the latest tony course.

He is an arugula-eating man of the people who tries to bowl only during election season. Michelle rags on the 1%, but still hits Costa del Sol and Aspen. Obamacare for us; for congressional staffers and insiders something quite different. A Nobel Prize and a half a billion dollars for guru Al Gore; and dumping Current TV on a fossil-fuelled, anti-Semitic authoritarian Middle Eastern regime ^[17] to fund more good work of our green Elmer Gantry.  Amnesty for illegal aliens, but private academies for liberal kids far from the ensuing chaos of the public schools.  Pajama Boys are fiercely liberal so that they can fiercely avoid the people they so champion and are so afraid to live among.

Second, the architects of Pajama Boy nation always expect others to go on despite rather than because of them. The frackers must frack so that Obama can brag about their productivity, while he bites his lip and looks pained to billionaire coastal benefactors about pumping liquid into the bowels of their Mother Earth.

On Friday, Barack Obama was back out to again brag about his three supposed accomplishments: One, the deficit is shrinking; two, the gas and oil picture is brightening; and three, we are not witnessing anymore shut-downs of government over the debt ceiling. He should have added — “We do best when no one listens to me.”

Savings accrued from the sequester that was forced upon Obama by those Tea Party nuts in the House. Gas prices are dropping despite the efforts of Obama to stop fracking and horizontal drilling on federal lands.  Senator Obama himself voted to shut down the government under George W. Bush, rather than to raise the debt ceiling — having once passionately adopted the very stance that he now demonizes others for.

The Other Half

Half the country may have already tuned Pajama Boy nation out. Millions more or less don’t watch TV other than older movies and a few episodes of some serial like The Sopranos or Breaking Bad ^[18]. Most expect just three things of today’s Hollywood celebrities: they are mostly spoiled and uneducated; they are very rich; and in their boredom they will find a way to annoy those without their money.

We also find the grating nasal-twanged voices of our young talking heads on the news shows a tip-off that all their over-clever rhetoric is never grounded in reality. We have no idea whom MTV is awarding, or why, and couldn’t care less. We are sick of slick slightly pornographic commercials, and sicker still of the crude left-wing Victorians who push sex down our throats, but can’t handle a caricatured hick talking just as graphically as they do — but about sodomy in a way they don’t appreciate. Which is the cruder: to see a three-quarters naked Miley Cyrus on national television stick a huge foam finger toward the anus of one of her performers or to read that a bearded reality star in overalls finds vaginal sex preferable to anal sex — and then tells us why?

Most don’t watch Oprah. Rap is a sort of occasional bothersome grate overheard at the service station or parking lot. No one goes to the movies to watch another tired Hollywood script of a courageous liberal maverick who fights the cancer-causing, stream-polluting, CIA-intriguing [fill in the blanks] corporation — as the actor is paid millions by the corporation producing the movie ^[19] for his few hours of mediocre work. Company men and women don’t play renegades well anymore.

We accept that the law is mostly fluid, depending on whether you are one of the noble suffering or the bad and incessantly grasping: sanctuary cities are noble places where federal immigration laws can be safely ignored. Try that with the Second Amendment and you’ll be summarily jailed.

There is a growing tiredness with Pajama Boy nation. Millions are sick of being lectured, caricatured, and slandered for their supposed pathologies by the Sandra Flukes of the age and those in their pajamas who still grasp with two hands their hot chocolate. Add all their annoying Stalinist efforts up — to selectively going after Chick-fil-A or the Washington Redskins or Duck Dynasty — and the public is becoming tired of the shrill nerdocracy.

How many are revolting against Pajama Boy nation and his bunch, no one quite knows. But I’m beginning to think for the first time since 2009 that the rage and numbers of the disengaged have not crested yet, not quite yet.

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Article printed from Works and Days: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson