Klavan on Barack's Lies (Crap)

Barack Obama’s Narrative Illusions

Posted By Andrew Klavan On November 1, 2013 @ 8:53 am In Uncategorized | 53 Comments

For the past few days I have been regretting my inability to sell two op-eds I wrote when Barack Obama was first running for president.
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Both failed to win the favor of the editors of the Wall Street Journal and other fine venues — I suspect because they were, essentially, novelistic insights offered as journalism. But as it turned out (since I’m really quite a good novelist ^[1]!) they were both rather perspicacious and I wish I had gotten them into print.

One of them was about the peculiar way Barack Obama lies, which is not like the way other politicians lie. Our own Roger Simon ^[2] has just posted a thoughtful and insightful essay on this very subject. And I, when I couldn’t sell my op-ed, put some of my observations into my Klavan on the Culture video series “Talking Crap” (see above). So the idea is now pretty well covered.

The other unpublished op-ed, however, is more to the point of the present moment. It was based on Obama’s answer to the usual campaign question: “Why do you want to be president?” His answer, which I can no longer find to quote verbatim, had to do with how inspiring it would be to black children to see him sworn in on Inauguration Day.

That, I wrote at the time, is not a reason to be president. It’s a reason to play the president, as an actor plays a role. In this long-ago unpublished op-ed, I used my novelistic x-ray vision to look into the then-candidate’s soul and point out that this was not a man who actually wanted to do — or was even capable of doing — the work of a chief executive. He just thought it would be an all around Good Thing if he could live out his fantasy of being in that part.

It is now apparent to any honest observer that Obama is a rank incompetent too arrogant and foolish to alter his political philosophy even after reality has proven it false. As his record at the time of his original candidacy should have warned us, he has no business in the Oval Office. He simply isn’t up for the job.

And what is extra tragicomical about Obama’s spectacular failure is that so many of the journalists who cover him are ALSO content to have him play rather than be the president — just as they themselves are content to play at heroically helping the poor and minorities even as their left-wing policies make the poor even poorer and the marginalized more marginalized still.

The reason for this is that both Obama and many of our journalists were trained in the post-modern academy where they were taught that there is no such thing as moral truth but only culturally inculcated narratives. In such a world, the moral narrative that can be drummed into the head of the populace is the truth that wins. Convincing people that a good has been achieved is the same as achieving
it.

Within the narrative cloud created by these journalists, Obama remains safe in his illusions while the rest of us suffer the consequences.
 
He believes that playing the president and being the president are much the same thing. It is as if Bruce Willis believed he could save a skyscraper full of people by jumping off the roof clutching a fire hose.
For those of us who face the world head on? We don’t need Mulder and Scully to tell us:  the truth is out there. Obama has lost the gains of the Iraq war and sacrificed the lives of our soldiers in Afghanistan to no purpose. He has alienated our allies in Germany, France and, God help us, Saudi Arabia, while playing the fool for our enemies in Iran and Russia. He has ruthlessly curtailed free speech by abusing the powers of the IRS against his political opponents, spying on and persecuting journalists, and encouraging the imprisonment of a video maker to suit his political ends. He has brutally hobbled our economy with anti-business regulations written by the very legislators who brought on the recession in the first place. And now, through lies and corrupt political machinations, he has saddled us with a chaotic and overbearing health care law that, even when operational, will never be worth its weight in debt and curtailed liberties.

He has done all that — and when his second term is over, he can look forward to a life of making speeches to students and waving at crowds and giving interviews to fawning journalists who will all be charmed into historical ignorance by what they feel was his Oscar-worthy performance as President of the United States.

But in this left-wing country of the blind, even a one-eyed man can see: Obama’s political achievements, like Hillary Clinton’s political achievements, like Ben Kingsley’s role in freeing India from British rule, are all of a piece — a narrative illusion fostered on us by those who do not believe there is any truth to tell.

The Turning Point - (Goodbye RINO's)

The Turning Point

Posted By Michael Walsh On September 25, 2013 @ 7:57 pm In Democrats,Health Care,Obama | 19 Comments

King Pyrrhus: No we can’t.

In the decades to come, historians may well look back on the partisan passage of Obamacare during President Obama’s first term and its disastrous implementation in the second as a Pyrrhic victory, the beginning of the end of the Progressive project to “fundamentally transform” the United States of America. Whether Senator Ted Cruz ultimately succeeds in his quest to defund Obamacare this time, his electrifying quasi-filibuster yesterday and today nevertheless marks a turning point in modern American political history — the day when conservatives turned their back on the collaborationist Republican Party and finally fought back.

It’s been a long time coming. The tottering bonzes of the GOP were so mesmerized and intimated by a young upstart named Barack Hussein Obama back in 2008 — even though they should have seen him coming as long ago as 2004, when he became the inevitable nominee of a party that could finally put its money where its mouth had long been — that they were utterly incapable of mounting any effective opposition to him. What little pushback there was came, almost by accident, from Sarah Palin, John McCain’s running mate, who was quickly muzzled by the establishment apparatchiks and then marginalized by a compliant and vicious media. The Permanent

Bipartisan Fusion Party protects its own:

John McCain’s former senior adviser Steve Schmidt says he has “deep regret” for helping to create a “freak show” wing of the Republican Party when he had a hand in bringing former McCain running mate Sarah Palin to the national stage.

Schmidt said Monday on MSNBC’s “Hardball” that it’s time for the GOP to stand up to the “asininity” embodied by Palin and others.

“For the last couple of years, we’ve had this wing of the party running roughshod over the rest of the party. Tossing out terms like RINO, saying we’re going to purge, you know, the moderates out of the party,” Schmidt said. “We’ve lost five U.S. Senate seats over the last two election cycles. And fundamentally we need Republicans, whether they’re running for president, whether they’re in the leadership of the Congress, to stand up against a lot of this asininity.”

Well, one man’s asininity is another man’s principles, but principles are something the PBFP doesn’t much understand. The only principle that counts to them is maintenance of office; long ago they realized there’s no percentage in bucking the system. Far better (for Republicans) to pretend to be “conservative” during election season — especially in the Senate — only to return to “Senate comity” once safely past the shoals of the electorate. In the winter, they’re Buddhists, in the summer they’re nudists, to quote the late Joe Gould.

No longer — Cruz’s “filibuster” has changed all that. For Republicans, the year is suddenly 1968 and they are in the same position the Democrats were back then. This time, there’s no pitched battles in the streets of Chicago as Obama’s mentor, Bill Ayers, and others went up against Mayor Daley’s pigs and came out broken, bloodied but unbowed as they fought for control of the party of slavery, segregation, sedition and secularism. Four years later, they had replaced Hubert Humphrey with George McGovern as part of their long march through the institutions.

Marx: The god that failed.

Something similar is happening right now to the GOP — although this being the Republicans, the fighting is symbolic and not visceral.

But the hatred is. It speaks well of Senator Cruz that, even before his stunt, he was widely loathed by the PBFP establishment, whose cowardly members couldn’t wait to knife him, anonymously, to Chris Wallace of Fox News. But happening it is. Earlier today, over at NRO, I posted some bullets points regarding how I think things stand on the right side of the aisle at this moment. Some excerpts:

• After his disgraceful attacks on Cruz, including his reach-across-the-aisle, dog-in-the-manger response today, this should be the end of Senator John McCain as a voice of influence in the Republican Party. Ditto his mini-me, Senator Lindsey Graham. Indeed, the entire Old Guard of business-as-usual “comity” fans passeth. When you care more about what the other side thinks, it’s probably time either to switch teams or step down.
• There is new leadership in the GOP, whether the party wants to admit it or not: Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Jeff Sessions, and the others who stepped into the breach to spell the senator from Texas.
• The Cruz faction in the Senate, and its allies in the House (whose leadership is now up for grabs), must now press their advantage. The louder the Democrats squawk, the more they are wounded; the one thing they’ve long feared is a direct assault on their core beliefs as translated into actions, and the deleterious effects of Obamacare, just now being felt by the population, are the most vivid proof of the failure of Progressivism that conservatives could wish for.
• Win or lose, the battle is now joined: First the struggle for the GOP and then the battle for control of Congress and the presidency. Cruz just struck at the kings he could reach — the Republican “leadership” — and has most likely dealt them a fatal blow. Now the Tea Party hordes must back him up by eliminating his opponents (who tend to be geriatrics, and thus “leaders” by longevity rather than talent or commitment) through the primary process wherever possible. If he can carry off this coup, he and Senator Paul will very quickly find themselves elevated from back-benchers to commanders.

Finally, this:

• Any party that cannot successfully sell freedom and personal liberty doesn’t deserve power. The trick will be to explain — by word and deed — that the Democrats’ Manichean choice (Big Brother or the orphanage) is a false one, that less can be more, and that the restoration of a Republic of self-reliant citizens will benefit all Americans — not simply the government class and its clients.

And this is the key. I’ve been out of the country for the past several months, so I’m just now catching up to my good friend Mark Levin’s wonderful new book, The Liberty Amendments, which strikes at the heart of the great divide in our current political system: the gradual and deliberate corruption of the Constitution at the hands of the “progressives” and the concomitant reduction of personal liberty and individual aspiration in the name of a Marxist “collective good.” (It speaks well of the dishonest genius of the Left that crude, mid-19th century atheism can be successfully repackaged as quasi -Christian do-gooderism and practically no one the wiser.)

Here we are, more than 20 years after the complete collapse of Marxism-Leninism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and we’re still having the same argument.

The Minuteman: Yes, we did.

So how to end this — as end this we must if the survival of the United States of America as founded is to be secured? Remember that “fundamental transformation” is ostensibly meant to contribute toward a “more perfect Union,” but it of course does nothing of the sort. Under Progressivism — a combination ideological movement and criminal enrichment racket — the country is less united, less happy, less free. And, like any movement composed of True Believers, Progressivism brooks no opposition, ascribes no good motives to its opponents, and will impose its way in a heartbeat when given half the chance. The Democrats’ fierce, desperate contortions to sneak Obamacare through the Congress should stand as a monument to how the system can be abused and manipulated by a group of unscrupulous politicians — and care needs to be taken that such a travesty can never happen again.

This doesn’t mean, as the Left would have you believe, that the choice is between Orwell’s Big Brother and Oliver Twist’s workhouse.

I can’t name a single Republican senator who opposes some kind of healthcare “reform” (a misnomer, since the law has to do with insurance, not healthcare). But the reforms on the Right mostly concern the liberated operation of free markets across the country, not a top-down, imposed, statist solution that only aggrandizes more power and wealth in Washington while doing little or nothing about medical care. Only a child, a moron, or a Democrat could believe that you could take a system as complex as medical care/insurance, impose a collectivist solution to a non-existent problem upon it, and expect the markets to function as before, only this time cheaper.

A quick example. In in the old Soviet Union taxis were cheap and closely regulated by the central government. Result: almost no taxis on the streets of Moscow, anywhere. Instead, civilians freelanced as taxi drivers, and the way you got one was either by holding up a pack of Marlboros (the effective currency in the U.S.S.R.) or one or two fingers to signal how many packs you were willing to pay for a ride. Rarely did you have to wait more than a couple of minutes before a car stopped for you.

The revolution that Cruz and his Senate cohort are leading can win — but only if the GOP jettisons its current leadership (who do not believe in it, anyway) and adopts the tactics and techniques of the Left to put it across. (Gee, someone should write a book about that.)

But this means learning how to seize and control the Narrative, to make the personal political, to turn the culture in the direction of the spin. How a political party cannot sell Freedom and Liberty and Leave Me Alone to a formerly free people is beyond me, but if anyone can’t do it, that would be Mitch McConnell, Orrin Hatch and John McCain. The sooner they all go the better, and clear the way for Cruz & Co. before they, too, become corrupted by the Beltway system, and while they still have plenty of fight left in them.

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Article printed from Unexamined Premises: http://pjmedia.com/michaelwalsh

When Did Normal Become EXTREME Weather ????

The Age of Hyperbole: How Normal Weather Became ‘Extreme’

                        Posted By Dr. Tim Ball and Tom Harris On July 30, 2013  

Said Thomas Jefferson: “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” Jefferson’s comment may be expanded to include most of today’s mass media; this is especially true of television. As American linguist Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa said: “In the age of television, image becomes more important than substance.” It is effectively visual lying, dictated by Marshall McLuhan’s observation: “The medium is the message.” For example, TV news programs often illustrate air pollution with a smoke stack emitting water vapor, implying it is pollution when it is anything but.

Distortion and deception are accentuated by hyperbole. Television news and documentaries frequently report normal weather as “extreme weather,” implying it is abnormal and caused by human activity. But while a hurricane, for example, may inflict serious damage to our structures and cause major loss of life, it is a normal event in hurricane-prone regions, where it is foolish to live without preparing for the weather patterns of the area.

The problem is accentuated when supposedly prestigious newspapers like the New York Times present provably false information. “Summer’s Beast is Loose ^[1],” published in the Times on July 16, was an obvious attempt to sensationalize warm, but normal, summer temperatures:

Humans have always been used to the normal fluctuations in weather — including the anomalies that seem to confirm the norm. But now, to the routine, cyclic variations of weather, there has been added a more or less steady, more or less linear change, the result of the way we are altering our climate.

It appears that the Times editorial board didn’t bother to look at the historic climate record — or hoped none of their readers would. Aside from a slight year-to-year increase in temperature variation, the graph of temperatures for July for New York State ^[2] shows no meaningful overall trend, warming or cooling, since 1900:

Figure 1. Source NOAA National Climate Data Center
^[3]

Before expressing their opinion that today’s weather is unusual, you would think that the Times’ editors would have also looked at some basic research, an example being weather expert Dr. David Ludlum’s ^[4] fascinating works: Early American Tornadoes, 1586-1870 and Early American Hurricanes, 1492-1870. The Times clearly knew of Dr. Ludlum, praising him as “the nation’s foremost historian of American weather” in his obituary ^[5] published by the newspaper in 1996.  But they pay no attention to what Dr. Ludlum actually wrote.

Here is a challenge for New York Times editors – identify the year from which the following statistics are derived:

In the U.S. 254 people died in tornadoes: 30 in Marquette Kansas; 87 in Snyder Oklahoma; 97 in Southwest Oklahoma; and 40 in Montague Texas. In addition, 40 people died in a November storm in Minnesota.

Globally, typhoons struck the Philippines in July, August, and September; a June typhoon in the Marshall Islands with 500 reported deaths; a storm killed 33 in the Republic of Salvador; severe storms and flooding in Ireland.

Record low temperatures occurred as follows: February 13, -33°C at Pond, Arkansas, -40°C at Lebanon, Kansas, and –40°C at Warsaw, Missouri. In Sydney, Australia lowest monthly averages in September and October joined the lowest spring minimums.

Record high temperatures: An estimated 91 people died of a July heat wave in New York City. On July 7th Parker, Arizona recorded 53°C. Rivadivia, Argentina recorded 49°C on 11th December. The heat caused an outbreak of the tropical disease Yellow Fever in New Orleans that spread north to Indiana.

Precipitation: Flooding in Ireland; Taylor Texas, received 2.4 inches in fifteen minutes on April 29th; on July 29th 11 inches of rain in southwest Connecticut resulted in extensive flooding that caused a dam to burst.

Arctic ice retreated dramatically allowing an explorer to be the first to enter waters previously inaccessible.

The year was 1905. Note that 254 people died from tornadoes, when the population density was much less than today.

Besides categorizing normal weather events as extreme, terms were created to increase the impression of abnormality. For example, the below map used by ^[6] Alex Sosnowski, the so-called “expert senior meteorologist” at Accuweather, shows very high temperatures. But it is pure deception:

^[7]

Most readers would naturally assume that actual air temperatures are being shown, but they are being tricked. Instead, a contrived measure called the “heat index” ^[8] is displayed. Heat index, a statistic Sosnowski refers as the “RealFeel” temperature, is created by combining air temperature and relative humidity. It presumably reflects the capability of sweat to cool the body — but it ignores wind speed, which is a critical cooling agent that makes it seem less hot than it actually is. Of course, in the winter, media meteorologists always cite the “wind chill,” since that makes low temperatures seem even lower. Both heat index and wind chill are simply propaganda tools designed to make viewers think conditions are more extreme than they really are.

The following sensational and misleading illustration also appears in Sosnowski’s article:

^[9]

It is completely inappropriate to title the figure “Heat is more lethal.” In reality, more people die from the cold ^[10] each year than do from the heat.

It may very well be true that there was a higher “percent of increase of death rates” due to heat waves than due to cold periods in whatever time period Sosnowski is speaking of (he does not define the time frame). But this has nothing to do with the actual numbers of deaths. For example, in the warming period from 1980 to 1997, the percentage of heat wave deaths would logically increase more than cold wave deaths, even though cold weather deaths still vastly exceeded deaths due to hot weather.

National energy policies based on deceptions such as this have devastating consequences. Because of President Barack Obama’s dangerously misguided “war on coal,” America’s least expensive and most important source of electric power, electricity costs are rising — making the poor less able to afford air conditioning. This is especially true of those living in poverty in inner city areas where temperatures are already higher because of the urban heat island effect. This situation will only worsen as Obama implements his plan to eliminate coal stations and power costs consequently soar.

The distortion and outright lying in the media’s coverage of weather and climate change have increased dramatically in the past year.

This is because the global warming narrative has been exposed as false, making it harder to sell without resorting to hyperbole and cherry-picking data that supports the alarmist agenda. So, publications such as the New York Times are not reporting news any more when it comes to weather and climate. Instead, they are spinning a false narrative to create their version of the news, much like the state-controlled media of communist China.

Sadly, most of the public has been taken in by mainstream media’s climate propaganda. The latest Rasmussen polls show the highest level of support for global warming alarmism since 2008. We can therefore expect Obama to take advantage of the public’s misunderstanding to bring in even more draconian controls on conventional energy sources to “stop extreme weather and climate change.”

If the U.S. eventually collapses into energy poverty, broad sweeping unemployment, and bankruptcy, we will know who to blame.

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Article printed from PJ Media: http://pjmedia.com
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-age-of-hyperbole/
URLs in this post:

[1] Summer’s Beast is Loose: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/17/opinion/summers-beast-is-loose.html?_r=0

[2] July for New York State: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/

[3] Image: http://pjmedia.com/files/2013/07/a1.jpg

[4] David Ludlum’s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Ludlum

[5] his obituary: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/29/nyregion/david-ludlum-weather-expert-dies-at-86.html

[6] used by: http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/summers-worst-week-of-heat-nyc/15290909

[7] Image: http://pjmedia.com/files/2013/07/b.jpg

[8] “heat index”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_index

[9] Image: http://pjmedia.com/files/2013/07/c.jpg

[10] more people die from the cold: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/19/some-facts-about-deaths-due-to-heat-waves/

Barach's "Arab Spring - Egypt": A Mess

Obama’s ‘New Beginning’ in Cairo Now a Knee-Deep Mess

                         Posted By Bridget Johnson On July 1, 2013  

The White House reaction to the historic outpouring of Egyptians calling for the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi can be summed up as thus: Don’t turn attention away from President Obama’s heavily touted African tour.

As Obama flew to his last stop on the three-nation swing, Tanzania, Tamarod (Arabic for “rebel”) once again stole his thunder: The protesters won as the powerful Egyptian military announced a 48-hour ultimatum for an agreement to be reached on their demands.

Otherwise, they’ll provide a “road map” for a post-Morsi country.

Still, the White House inundated reporters with fact sheets on Obama’s trade initiatives, health and power investments and efforts to combat wildlife trafficking in Africa, along with his new Young African Leaders Initiative.

But the Obama administration is facing uncomfortable truths that dwarf the opposition protesters’ inconvenient timing.
First, the protesters, who ranged from niqab-clad women decrying the Muslim Brotherhood’s lack of religious tolerance to Coptic Christian nuns, were openly expressing their disgust with Obama and U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson for propping up and backing Morsi. “Obama and Patterson support terrorism in Egypt,” read one large banner bearing pictures of the two. Another sign showed Patterson happily shaking hands with Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie.

“Anne Paterson will likely go down in history as the most unpopular US ambassador ever for the people in her host country,” tweeted Cairo writer Bassem Sabry.

Not exactly the impression Obama hoped to impart upon Cairo with his 2009 “new beginning” speech to the Muslim world from here.

Second, the protesters are right. Obama welcomed Morsi into office as a democratically elected leader — Morsi won slightly over 50 percent of the vote with around 43 percent turnout in 2012 — while knowing full well the undemocratic aims of the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi’s anti-Semitic remarks about “apes and pigs” were condemned yet ultimately forgiven. Today, even after the months of Muslim Brotherhood repression, after attacks on Coptic churches, after the conviction of 16 Americans by an Egyptian court for promoting democracy, Obama was practicing a policy of go along to get along.

“Our commitment to Egypt has never been around any particular individual or party. Our commitment has been to a process,” Obama said at a joint press conference with President Jakaya Kikwete in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. “…They went through an election process that, by all accounts, were legitimate. And Mr. Morsi was elected. And the U.S. government’s attitude has been we would deal with a democratically elected government.”

Obama said his administration has “encouraged” the Muslim Brotherhood government “to reach out to the opposition and work through these issues in a political process.”

“It’s not the U.S.’s job to determine what that process is. But what we have said is, go through processes that are legitimate and observe rule of law,” he continued. “…I do think that if the situation is going to resolve itself for the benefit of Egypt over the long term, then all the parties there have to step back from maximalist positions. Democracies don’t work when everybody says it’s the other person’s fault and I want 100 percent of what I want.”

Obama boasted that the U.S. was used to compromise in its democracy because “we’ve had 200-plus years of practice at it.”

“But our position has always been it’s not our job to choose who Egypt’s leaders are,” he added. ”We do want to make sure that all the voices are heard and it’s done in a peaceful way.”

A third truth weighing on the administration is that a government which was quietly slipped $1.3 billion in military aid by Secretary of State John Kerry a matter of weeks ago is on the verge of going under. Will Muslim Brotherhood loyalists be armed with more than just sticks if the ultimatum is ignored and the Islamist “National Alliance” becomes Morsi’s ragtag army? AlHayat TV reported this evening that the Muslim Brotherhood rejected the deadline, saying the rulers don’t need to take commands from the army.

It’s ammunition for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has been urging the White House and State Department from the advent of Morsi’s rule to stop sending fighter jets and tanks to the Islamist government. It also brings into question how Obama might similarly support a secular government not viewed in Washington’s eyes as legitimately elected but in need of support to fend off Islamist challenges.

And even though scattering from the Beltway for the July Fourth recess, lawmakers fired off concerns to Obama that his lack of foreign policy prowess could continue to mangle the U.S. reaction in another hotspot.

Every member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, led by Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and Ranking Member Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), signed on to a letter to Obama on Friday cautioning the president to turn a highly skeptical eye toward new Iranian leader Hassan Rouhani.

Far from a free and fair election, they noted, “more than 600 potential candidates were disqualified by an unelected body of Islamic jurists, leaving only those approved by government-appointed clerics.”

“Iran’s election unfortunately has done nothing to suggest a reversal of Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapons capacity,” the lawmakers wrote. “…Decisions about Iran’s nuclear program and foreign policy rest mainly in the hands of Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamene’i. Khamene’i has recently reiterated his view that Iran has no reason to normalize relations with the United States.”

The letter expresses the omnipresent congressional anxiety that Obama doesn’t have a grasp on the acceleration of Iran’s nuclear program or the wherewithal to accept no less than a totally dismantled nuclear program — theirs, not ours.

“For this outcome to be realized, Iran must face intensifying pressure. This means the full implementation of current sanctions available to your administration, and further legislative steps to close loopholes and broaden our sanction’s reach,” the committee wrote. “…An added positive action would be extending sector-based sanctions to the mining, engineering, and construction-based sectors of Iran.”

“It is important that you leave no doubt in the minds of the Iranian government that the United States will do all it can to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.”

Perhaps Congress’ fear is stirred by indications, only highlighted by the past couple of days, that yet another tyrannical force will enjoy, in Washington’s eyes, the status of a legitimate government.

“We respect the vote of the Iranian people and congratulate them for their participation in the political process, and their courage in making their voices heard,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement after the mid-June vote. “…It is our hope that the Iranian government will heed the will of the Iranian people and make responsible choices that create a better future for all Iranians. The United States remains ready to engage the Iranian government directly in order to reach a diplomatic solution that will fully address the international community’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear program.”

Are We There Yet??? Like a Rolling Stone

Bob Dylan Like A Rolling Stone Lyrics

 

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"
You thought they were all kiddin' you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You've gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find out you're gonna have to get used to it
You said you'd never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but know you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And say do you want to make a deal?

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain't no good
You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you
You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain't it hard when you discover that
He really wasn't where it's at
After he took from you everything he could steal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They're drinkin', thinkin' that they got it made
Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things
But you'd better lift your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse
When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Roger's Rules: A Little Wisdom from Benjamin Franklin

A Little Wisdom from Benjamin Franklin

Posted By Roger Kimball On June 10, 2013 @ 6:43 am In Uncategorized | 50 Comments

I am contemplating the train wreck revolving around the revelations about our National Security Agency’s appetite for spying on U.S. citizens, along with the train wreck that swirls around the revelations about the deployment of the IRS for partisan vengeance, along with the train wreck that is the fiscal, administrative, and, ultimately, medical catastrophe called ObamaCare (aka, the un-affordable “Affordable Care Act”), not to mention the train wreck that was the administration’s reaction (“What difference does it make?”) to the murderous Islamic terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi, along with  . . . well, you get the picture.

Thinking just about the first, the NSA part of the current entertainment, I am reminded of a friend’s note to me about how it fits in with the administration’s gradual transformation of itself into an unaccountable nomenklatura with more or less unlimited powers.  The concomitant transformation, it does not quite go without saying, is the transformation of us citizens — formerly the employers of all those “public servants” (it sounds funny now, doesn’t it: “public servants” forsooth!) swanning about in Washington on our money — the transformation, I say, of us citizens into serfs, i.e., slaves working for a feudal master. My friend quoted Obama’s statement about the behavior of the NSA when it came to your phone/internet/banking/whatever data. “It’s important to recognize,” said the leader of the formerly free world,

that you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. We’re going to have to make some choices as a society. And whatI can say is that in evaluating these programs, they make a difference in our capacity to anticipate and prevent possible terrorist activity.

As my friend noted, Obama leans toward the security side of the equation, and he does so with, so to speak, a vengeance. Right: we have to debate this issue, “but he puts his thumb on the scale. And because of the secrecy involved, no one outside his top-secret circle can make an informed judgment about the efficacy of these powers.”  Just like those unpleasant chaps in Orwell’s 1984, the fact that we are now and apparently ever shall be on a war footing means that we are living in a state of perpetual emergency, which in turn means that he, the man in charge, can do pretty much whatever he wants to whomever he wants, and so can his minions. Either you’re part of the nomenklatura, or you’re not.

Few people, I think, would deny that extraordinary situations call for extraordinary measures.  Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War and, in my view, he was right to do so.  But what we have here is the fabrication of perpetual emergency in order to justify the unlimited and permanent expansion of of government power. The other word for that process is tyranny. It doesn’t happen all at once. But it’s happening pretty fast. Even the reporters at the Associated Press, whose data was sifted and snooped upon, ought to recognize that.

My friend ended with a famous quote from Benjamin Franklin that ought to be one everyone’s lips when they hear the president of the United States tell us that he must “inconvenience” them more or less forever by taking away their Constitutional rights in order to keep them safe. “Those who would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety,” said Franklin, “deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

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Article printed from Roger’s Rules: http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball

Ready to Support the Rebels in Syria???

The West’s New Syrian War

Posted By Barry Rubin On June 11, 2013 @ 3:18 pm In History | 8 Comments

One day people will ask how the United States and several European countries became involved in mass killings, genocide, corruption, arms smuggling, and the creation of another anti-Western and regionally destabilizing government. Even if a single Western soldier is never sent, the West is on the verge of serious intervention in Syria. The choices are unpalatable and decisions are very tough to make, but it appears to be still another in a long history of Western leaps in the dark, not based on a real consideration of the consequences.

At least people should be more aware of the dangers. As I titled a previous book on Iran (Paved with Good Intentions), the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. People are dying and suffering in Syria. That’s true. But will this make more people or fewer people die and suffer?

So now we are seeing the trial balloons rise. As the Bashar al-Assad regime proves to be holding on—but not recapturing the country or winning the war—the West is panicked into sending aid to the rebels.  In fact, the government is merely holding the northwest area (where the ruling Alawite group lives), the region along the Lebanese border (with Hizballah’s help), Damascus (where the best troops are based and there is a favorable strategic situation in the army holding the high ground), and part of Aleppo. It seems that U.S. decisionmakers are panicking over these relatively small gains. If the Syrian army plus Hizballah tries to advance too far, it will stretch its resources then and face a successful rebel counteroffensive.

Understandably, the opposition is demanding arms. If the opposition did not consist mostly of al-Qaeda, the Salafists, and the Muslim Brotherhood, that would be a good idea perhaps. But since the opposition is overwhelmingly radical—even the official “moderate” opposition politicians are mostly Muslim Brotherhood—this is a tragedy in which the West does not have a great incentive to say “yes.”
President Barack Obama is said to be close to sending weapons to carefully chosen rebel units who are moderates. Now, pay close attention here. The Western options for giving assistance are:

The Syrian Islamic Liberation Front. This is Muslim Brotherhood type people including, most importantly, the Farouk Brigades from the Homs area and Aleppo’s Tawhid Brigade. Around 50-60,000 fighters in total who are autonomous.

Do you want to give arms to them? Weapons that might soon end up in the hands of (other) terrorists? Weapons to be turned against not only Israel, but Jordan, Saudi Arabia, U.S. diplomats, and who knows who else?

Or perhaps you like the Syrian Islamic Front (SIF), an alliance of more hardline Islamist forces, including Ahrar al-Sham from the north.  Ahrar al-Sham is probably around 15,000 fighters; the SIF as a whole probably around 25,000.   These people are Salafists, meaning that the Brotherhood is too moderate for them. They are the kind of people who attack churches in Egypt, who want to wage jihad alongside Hamas, and so on.

Do you want to arm them so they can establish another Sharia state?

How about Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda franchise with around 6,000 fighters and reportedly the fastest growing militia?

Want to give guns to those who committed the September 11, 2001, attacks and the Benghazi attack?

Of course not! You want the Free Syrian Army (FSA), headed by the untested General Salim Idris, whom Senator John McCain met with. Now those are moderates who, after all, are just led by former officers in the repressive, historically anti-American Syrian army. And the FSA is just not a serious factor in military terms.  The West will say it supports the FSA; the FSA will be pushed aside by an Islamist regime if it wins, its Western-supplied weapons seized even during the course of the war. Moderates–even if we define radical Arab nationalists as moderates–don’t have the troops on the ground. It’s too late to organize and train a moderate force now. That should have been done two years ago.

On the political level, U.S. pressure failed to force the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated exile leadership to add the real political moderates! Even as financial aid is being (temporarily?) withheld, the “official” opposition won’t expand its base. How about withholding all money and aid until they yield or choosing a new official leadership?  If the United States can’t stop–or doesn’t want to stop–the Brotherhood from dominating an exile leadership, how is it ever going to do so after a victory in the civil war?

So that’s not a solution either. Because the FSA is closely aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood forces. Many of its soldiers are Brotherhood, Salafist, or even al-Qaeda sympathizers. Some have even been defecting to al-Qaeda, presumably with their weapons.

The FSA is not ideologically moderate, consistent, or—except for its officers—anti-Islamist. And it is very weak, weaker even then the al-Qaeda supporters.

Yet that’s not all. Given the mixing up of the groups and their strategic requirements, a weapons system that is given to the FSA may easily end up in the hands of the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front, Syrian Islamic Front, or Jabhat al-Nusra. That may happen due to the necessities of war or sheer bribery or defections.

And when the war is over or deadlocked, those arms are going to flow out of Syria to every terrorist group in the world. Here is a story about how al-Qaeda is training with weapons to shoot down civilian airliners which the rebels already possess in Syria.

Finally, how many arms will be needed to bring a rebel victory? You can predict what will happen: more and more will be demanded; if just a bigger force is supplied the rebels will promise victory. It’s a slippery slope. And then will the need for direct intervention be demanded since just the supply of weapons alone isn’t sufficient? How directly is the United States willing to confront Russia, Iran, and Hizballah? Is it prepared to do so? Maybe it should be, but it’s not.

So the supposedly simple concept—alas, two years too late—of “let’s support the moderates” doesn’t mean much anymore. Granted, if you want to find the least bad solution, backing the FSA sounds good. In the end, though, what will actually happen?
Ethnic massacres? How is the United States going to stop them? The Alawites, Shia (there are a few) Muslims, and Christians are in the greatest danger; so is anyone not sufficiently a pious Sunni Muslim, and perhaps also Kurds and Druze. The FSA cannot or will not prevent massive killings.

Wasn’t it UN Ambassador Samantha Power, the genocide expert (which shows how little you need to know to be hailed as an expert), who talked about “responsibility to protect”? Didn’t she, and U.S. government policy, begin by talking about saving Libyan civilians and end with a Libyan murder of American officials?

Meanwhile the UN has asked for $5 billion in humanitarian aid to Syria, much of which will go to neighboring countries to help refugees. There are now said to be 1.6 million refugees, with that number perhaps to double by the end of the year. The need is desperate. Up to half the population of the country needs help.

But who would administer that help? Presumably, no aid would be handed out to the regime to use in areas it controls, so other than Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon (to help refugees), the money would end up in the hands of al-Qaeda, the Salafists, and the Muslim Brotherhood (to steal, pay their own people salaries, and to use to consolidate their power over different areas).

The United States is considering taking in hundreds of thousands of people who would probably be mostly resettled in California, Illinois, Florida, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. Power and National Security Council director Susan Rice are known to favor receiving many refugees.

Yet the policy is based on an illusion. Let’s say that weapons are given to the rebels. Will they win the war? Will that reduce civilian casualties? Which side will kill more people? Is a rebel victory going to make Syria a better place, more of a democracy? How many more refugees would a rebel victory generate? Say about 30 percent are Alawites, Christians, and Druze who would be oppressed by a rebel triumph, as would relatively secular Sunni urban middle-class Muslims. They might flee the country. How many new wars will come out of the Syrian civil war?

This does not in any way mean one should want the Assad regime—which is a pro-Iran, pro-Hizballah, oppressive and anti-American government—to win. Yet it isn’t winning the war, but merely making local gains to control the minimum territory for its survival.

Let’s put it this way: a U.S. and Western intervention in Syria is more problematic than the interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya put together. It very well might produce a worse political solution than in Egypt (where cabinet members discuss how the United States is an enemy against which war might be waged) or Tunisia. It can almost be guaranteed to be worse than Iraq.

This is a very dangerous, risky, and likely failed policy that is being set in motion here.

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Article printed from Rubin Reports: http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin

Fighting the BIG LIE

The False Narratives of the Obama Campaign

Posted By Rand Simberg On September 5, 2012 @ 12:40 pm In economy,Elections 2012,History,Media,Politics,US News | 17 Comments

We know what we’re going to hear from the Democrats this week at their convention, and for the next nine weeks until the election. They clearly are having trouble making the case for their tenure, not even being able to articulate a consistent and coherent answer ^[1] to the question of whether we’re better off than we were four years ago.
So they are going to have to somehow make the voters fear the unknown over their recent bitter economic experience. We’ve already heard the talking point from the president himself: that Romney is proposing that we go back to the bad, old, failed Bush policies that created the mess we’re currently in. In fact (like much of the Obama campaign strategy), it is a retread from 2008, when (on zero basis) the theme was that a McCain victory would be a continuation of the Bush administration.
Accepting this argument requires that two premises be acknowledged: First, that it was the Bush policies that created the mess; and second, that Romney’s proposals are a return to them. Both of these premises are false, but the Republicans have done a poor job of pushing back against either of them. If they don’t do a better one, there is some danger that they will actually gain traction with swing voters.
The first premise is not just false, but actually turns things on their head.
While a lot of the Bush policies (e.g., expansion of Medicare, an indifference to the deficit and spending, letting Ted Kennedy write the education bill, an attempt at amnesty for illegal immigrants with no serious attempt to control the border, taxpayer subsidies for energy companies, etc.) were regrettable, and in fact part of the reason that the Republicans lost the Congress in 2006 as a result of anger about them among his own base, they were not the cause of the downturn in 2007 and the financial meltdown of 2008. In particular, to attempt to claim that low tax rates caused an economic downturn is economic insanity. I have yet to hear any Democrat explain how this can occur, yet they continue to claim that the Bush “tax cuts” (which were not tax cuts, but relative tax increases resulting from the economic growth created by the lowered rates ^[2]) are one of the causes of our current problems.
But it’s not enough to simply defend against the nonsense that Bush policies created our current problems. The Republicans need to go on the offensive and take back control of the narrative with the truth — that the downturn occurred as a result of policies primarily promulgated by the Democrats.
The real cause of the current mess (ignoring the upcoming fiscal disaster caused by uncontrolled spending and deficits) was the housing boom and bust. The boom was caused by policies going back decades to encourage people to buy houses they couldn’t afford and to coerce and extort banks to lend them the money to do so. While this had some support from Republicans, it was a policy primarily driven by Democrats. It wasn’t just the free hand given to Fannie and Freddie, something that the Bush administration attempted to rein in, but to no avail thanks to corrupt Democrats like Chris Dodd and Barney Frank. It was also the action of “community organizers” like Barack Obama, who himself sued Citibank in the 1990s ^[3] to compel them to give out loans to people who couldn’t afford them. As The Independent pointed out four years ago, Democratic fingerprints ^[4] were all over the housing crisis:

It’s true that the improvident lending was not initiated by Fannie and Freddie: their role in this was to buy these loans and sell them on – but then the music stopped. Cynical students of the American political system will note that the biggest recipient of campaign contributions from the munificent duo of Fannie and Freddie over the past 20 years was one Christopher Dodd, Democrat Chairman of the Senate’s Banking Committee.
Rather surprisingly, given that he has only been in the Senate for four of those years, the second biggest beneficiary was Barack Obama. In August the Washington Post reported that Obama’s presidential campaign team had sought the advice of Franklin Raines “on mortgage and housing policy matters”. Perhaps Mr Obama’s team just wanted to know where all the bodies are buried – there are rather a lot of them.

It should also not go unnoted that Fannie and Freddie had wide revolving doors for well-compensated “managers” with no apparent expertise other than being former Democratic officeholders.
But suppose you don’t buy this theory. Let’s instead just look at the empirical evidence. The Democrats like to pretend that the Republicans were in charge right up until The One™ came in to save us in 2009.
For instance, on The McLaughlin Group ^[5] Friday night, Michelle Bernard slipped one past, and no one called her on it:

I think most Americans sat back this week and listened, heard a lot of really smart rhetoric, and also sit back and can’t help but think to themselves the day Barack Obama got elected; we had a Republican Congress that decided that their answer to governing, with the taxpayer dollars that pay their salary, would be to say no.

Note she states that the Republicans controlled Congress the day that Obama was elected, when the reality is otherwise, but inconvenient to the narrative of the media and the Democrats.
Here’s a graph that provides a good guideline to the collapse of the economy.
^[6]
Average and median housing prices over the past three decades are a pretty good surrogate for the rise and fall of the housing market, whose collapse caused first the recession in 2007, as construction and durable goods orders dried up, and then the fiscal crisis as all of the bad mortgage paper came to light in the summer and fall of 2008.
Here is a very simple question for those who claim that it was Bush policies that caused this.
George Bush was in office from 2001 through 2009. If his policies were the cause of this, why did it take over six years, until late 2007, for the evil Bush to bear its poison fruit? Is there something else that happened around that time that might provide a better explanation? Let’s see, 2007, 2007…
Oh, wait! Wasn’t January 2007 when (Democrats) Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took over the Congress? Why, I think it was ^[7]!
And what did they do to fend off the impending fiscal crisis? Not only nothing, but they precipitated it ^[8]:

On Friday, regulators specifically fingered Schumer for IndyMac’s failure. The Office of Thrift Supervision said in its statement announcing the seizure that “the immediate cause of the closing was a deposit run that began and continued” after Schumer went public with his concerns.
“This institution failed due to a liquidity crisis,” OTS Director John Reich said Friday. “Although this institution was already in distress, I am troubled by any interference in the regulatory process,” a reference to Schumer.

Maybe it’s old news now, but it wasn’t covered well at the time, and it’s no older than Obama and the Democrats’ fantasies about Bush’s policies causing the problem.
As for the other false premise, that Romney will return to the Bush policies, well, yes, he wants to return to the policies that were working (keeping tax rates and regulation down, and get energy production up), and ditch the ones that were failures (e.g., loan guarantees). If he wants to wage war on this meme, it can be done very simply. All it requires is some healthy criticism of the Bush administration, the same kind that many Republicans were making in the summer and fall of 2006 that resulted in some of them staying home and allowing the disastrous Democratic takeover of the Congress, and explaining how his policies will be different. That would certainly cement my vote.
If Mitt Romney wants to fight back against the big lie, he needs to spend his newly freed ad money a) educating the public about the real history of our current fiscal mess, properly allocating the blame and b) pointing out the ways that he is not and will not be George Bush. The ad should feature the above graph, with a big tag on 2006 saying “Democrats Take Control Of Congress.”
Because he can count on the Democrats to continue with their own false narrative from now until November, with aid from their wholly owned subsidiary in the media. It’s all they have.