Rebranding.

it's ok

"You're killing us out here."

Hello

devastating

Two of the most effective attack ads of the campaign so far. The first from the Ron Paul Campaign and the other from Restore Our Future, a super PAC.

endorsements

-The Des Moines Register-

Sobriety, wisdom and judgment. Those are qualities Mitt Romney said he looks for in a leader. Those are qualities Romney himself has demonstrated in his career in business, public service and government. Those qualities help the former Massachusetts governor stand out as the most qualified Republican candidate competing in the Iowa caucuses.

Sobriety: While other candidates have pandered to extremes with attacks on the courts and sermons on Christian values, Romney has pointedly refrained from reckless rhetoric and moralizing. He may be accused of being too cautious, but choosing words carefully is a skill essential for anyone who could be sitting in the White House and reacting to world events.

Wisdom: Romney obviously is very smart. He graduated as valedictorian at Brigham Young University and finished in the top 5 percent in his MBA class at Harvard, where he also earned a law degree. Romney also exhibits the wisdom of a man who listened and learned from his father and his mother, from his church and from his own trials and errors in life. He does not lack self confidence, but he is not afraid to admit when he has been wrong.

Judgment: Romney disagrees with Democrats on most issues, but he offers smart and well-reasoned alternatives rather than simply proposing to swing a wrecking ball in Washington. He is a serious student of public policy who examines the data before making a decision. His detailed policy paper on the economy contains 87 pages of carefully crafted positions on taxes, energy, trade and regulatory policy, complete with 127 footnotes.

Rebuilding the economy is the nation’s top priority, and Romney makes the best case among the Republicans that he could do that.

He stands out in the current field of Republican candidates. He has solid credentials in a career that includes running and starting successful businesses, turning around the 2002 Winter Olympics and working with both political parties as Massachusetts governor to pass important initiatives. He stands out especially among candidates now in the top tier: Newt Gingrich is an undisciplined partisan who would alienate, not unite, if he reverts to mean-spirited attacks on display as House speaker.

This ability to see the merits of tough issues from something other than a knee-jerk, ideological perspective suggests that Mitt Romney would be willing to bridge the political divide in Washington. Americans are desperate for the Republicans and Democrats to work together. His record of ignoring partisan labels to pass important legislation when he was governor of Massachusetts suggests he is capable to making that happen.  - The Des Moines Register editors

the bad Newt

I have a confession to make. I have been on the Newt Gingrich mailing list from the beginning and I will remain so if only to keep tabs on what he's up to. I've been on the mailing list since he founded "American Solutions" several years ago. I've always regarded him a conservative visionary but I realize now that I was not fully aware of the full spectrum of both good and "bad" Newt. And we are certainly seeing the bad Newt now, and in spades.

Throwing Paul Ryan under the bus should have been the first sign of trouble but in general I gave him a mulligan on that. (Such charity I would later learn to regret.) Gingrich grandiosely declared Paul Ryan's forward looking and visionary way of saving Medicare "right wing social engineering" when apparently he needed to cater to what he imagined was a left leaning audience. He later quasi- backed off that statement. Whatever.

His latest attack on Romney is what pushes me well over the edge and even if I had one foot ever in his camp I cannot now.

In response to Romney's idea that perhaps Gingrich should give back the tax payer money he earned when he was profiting essentially off of what led to the financial crisis by peddling his DC influence to Freddie Mac, Gingrich called for Romney to return, one wonders to whom, the money he made from reconstituting companies in the private sector while a member of Bain Capital. Clearly this is the line of attack that those on the left have lamely adopted on countless occasions. Gingrich seems to have let on that he's at least willing to use the rhetoric of the left when he feels threatened. Such vanity is not an endearing quality.

With one sentence I think Newt may have jumped the shark. With no real memory of 90's politics and giving him a break on the throwing of Paul Ryan under the bus I was buying into the Potemkin village version of Newt, the facade. I was mistaken and naive.

We can only hope the rest of the party catches on before it's too late.

whatever weapon comes to hand

differences

collectivist

Some of my left leaning friends have done their best to dissemble and disavow the term collectivist vis a vis President Obama but I'm seeing a certain philosophical approach being applied here:

"I am here to say they are wrong [advocates of free market capitalism]. I'm here in Kansas to reaffirm my deep conviction that we're greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules. " - Barack Obama 12/6/11

Unlike maybe some others I'm not discarding the above Obama quote as meaningless rhetoric. I take it seriously as statement of his worldview. I think it's clear that the most charitable way to describe the political philosophy of Barack Obama is collectivism.

All of this is within the broader context of an enduring point of mine. For the sake of clarity, I'd like those on the political left to own their own political philosophy as robustly as the right does. Rather than running away from a label, own it. People on the right are striving to be able to call themselves conservatives, and in some cases like with Mitt Romney with limited success are they even allowed to claim that mantle. Meanwhile on the left most, certainly amongst my friends, consider themselves centrists or moderates somehow. My father who hails from England has the courage to proudly call himself a socialist. I can respect that. At least I know where the man stands even if he can't tolerate much debate with me, but that's another (regrettable) matter. In this country, liberals don't want to be called liberals, and to even come close to considering any American politician other than Bernie Sanders a socialist is considered beyond the pale by the mainstream left. Which is why I'm trying to see if anyone on the left, anyone, will admit that the term collectivist applies. It's the most mild term I can possibly think of to describe a certain political worldview currently at odds with the advocates of free market capitalism. But I find it telling that even that has to be rejected. It speaks to what ostensibly seems like at least a reticence if not an outright fear to actually advocate the worldview that most of modern left leaning rhetoric seems to emulate.

fed's failed war on drugs

baked in the cake

defining moment

Uber political strategist Dick Morris called this Mitt Romney's "defining moment". I call it the moment he makes a liberal's head explode. Others have noted that the question was "right in his wheelhouse". And then some, I would add. Just imagine what it might be like to have a President who understands how business works.

the cain mutiny

Is the Herman Cain sexual harassment saga a complicated conspiracy or is it Occam's razor where "the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one"? Maybe it's both. The simplest explanation is perhaps to understand that there is at least some element of truth to the allegations. But the timing or something intangible about the whole situation sets off the desire to want to at least entertain conspiracy theories. So long as we are all doing that there are at least three possible conspiracy scenarios that I can think of:

Scenario 1: The story was planted by Democrats and it's the liberal media's natural inclination to want to run hard with the story because for various reasons some having to do with race and how Cain does not fit the stereotypical way the left imagines a black man should act, that this is somehow a boon to Democratic/left leaning fortunes and then therefor this is Democratic party doing with the happy participation of a liberal mainstream media already pre-disposed to want to trash Cain.  Perhaps you can tell my delivery that I don't put all that much stock into this explanation which has typically been advanced by right wing talk radio and lately, by the campaign itself. As has been pointed out by some of my left leaning friends, it just doesn't seem to be in the Obama campaign's and then therefore Democrat's best interests to try to torpedo the Cain candidacy this early and in the primary.

Scenario 2: The story was planted by GOP operatives in either the Perry or Romney campaigns or from another primary candidate's campaign or possibly by other murkier forces in the GOP "establishment" that don't want Cain as the nominee for whatever reason possibly but not likely having to do with race but that he is ultimately seen as either unelectable on his own or seen as unable to beat Obama in the general election. While this scenario seems more likely than scenario 1, I still don't buy it. Initially the Cain campaign accused the Perry campaign of planting the story with basically no proof and then the Perry campaign went on to reflexively point the finger of blame at the Romney campaign with absolutely no proof. This kind of stuff isn't exactly helpful to a GOP who should rather be focussed on matters of substance/ attacking Obama. In the last two weeks the Cain campaign has backed off of these type of fellow GOP accusations and instead gone with a narrative closer to scenario 1.

Let me preface with a warning to whoever it is behind this if it is a conspiracy to bring down Cain: You better be sure this doesn't backfire. While watching some highlights of the Cain press conference it occurred to me that this entire controversy has in a way made him seem more presidential. This press conference today was one of the most anticipated press conferences and media events probably of the presidential campaign so far.

Scenario 3: The story was planted by the Cain campaign itself or at least.... forces sympathetic to the campaign. Think about it, who stands to gain the most if all of these charges are proven to be false or somehow go away or Cain can somehow otherwise brush this off? The answer of course is Cain. This could be a downright Machiavellian masterstroke of political genius if there's even a shred of truth or validity to this theory assuming it works out. The public would naturally rally around a man so egregiously and wrongly accused.

I'm sure there are other possible conspiracy scenarios that are conceivable other than simply saying the main is guilty so believe what you will but the bottom line is that I now see a pathway for Herman Cain towards getting the nomination whereas before this entire controversy it never really existed.

mutually assured destruction

The Romney campaign would be well advised to begin creating ads that highlight the countless times Obama has had a wholesale change of position on any issue. They could start here.

trouncing a room of liberals

"We do not want more stasis in our education system"

In this video Paul Ryan trounces a round table of liberal pundits and governors with his sheer policy knowledge and optimistic, quintessentially American vision. I'm glad that as the general election campaign chairman he is not allowed to endorse anyone in the GOP presidential nomination process. He won't have to have his conservatism questioned for endorsing who I suspect he would endorse.

proxies

In the coming weeks and months team Obama and its minions will be trying just whatever they can to vilify Mitt Romney. The Washington Post highlights all the misleading information contained within just one ad in the venomous attack ad blitz to come from Obama proxies. Then there's this New York Times article about how other Obama proxies are trying to fire up the liberal base by enraging them over what they infer to be Romney's stance on a theoretical personhood amendment. Thankfully the article goes on to explain that this too is basically a dishonest attack. If this is to be the case for the general election it will redound to Romney's benefit. All he will really need to do in that case is keep talking about the economy and things that matter and let Obama and his proxies use the kitchen sink strategy of character assassination in a desperate attempt to bring up any other issue than the main issues of the day on which they have no standing, i.e. the economy and jobs. Voters will see who is interested in talking about what and vote accordingly.

stirring up mindlessness

Nothing being proposed would effect the person featured in this ad. AARP is using member dues for this patently absurd ad which desperately tries to drum up a general kind of mindless fear that AARP hopes will scare voters into being against ever tackling the matter of entitlement reform. Anyone with any common sense can see that it may be time to raise the retirement age, for example, amongst a wide bonanza of other reform theories. Every economist acknowledges that these programs are on a collision course with financial ruination and/or are unsustainable in their current form and therefor need to be somehow restructured. I would think this to be elementary. And I'm not aware of a single proposal that would effect current beneficiaries. To imagine that they are the target as this ad does is just laughable. The AARP should be ashamed of its own unhelpful posture on this issue.

in the real world

shell game

Proponents of Obamacare often like to point out that many of the individual pieces of Obamacare are very popular with the public according to polling data. So then, they conclude, the fact that a majority of the public doesn't like the overall proposal must therefore be merely a matter of messaging. Since the individual elements of Obamacare are popular it's really only a matter of explaining it better to get everyone on board with the entire law, they assure themselves and us.

Of course, this kind of rationale is not only highly disingenuous, it's really quite silly as I am about to demonstrate.

The parts of Obamacare that people like are the the good parts, the carrots, the giveaways. The parts people don't like are the bad parts like the mandate and fines, the sticks. Of course, in reality the carrots cannot be extricated from the sticks. They are specifically designed to work in concert, there is no getting the good without the bad.

Let's use the analogy of a cruise. Let's say the government is proposing that everyone should go on a one week cruise on a cruise ship because it would be beneficial to society at large. On this cruise there will be free food and beverage, free entertainment, and a free limo ride for everyone to the cruise terminal. However, in order to lower the costs of all of these items every American will be mandated to go on the cruise whether they want to or not and pay $2000 each.

Proponents of this cruise plan could then conclude that despite the public's apparent distaste for the entire plan surely the overall plan is great by pointing to polling data on the individual features of the plan. Not surprisingly they would find that the free food and beverage polls well, as does the free entertainment and free limo ride. They could say that yes, the part of the plan where we force everyone to take part is widely despised and it costs too much, but look at how popular the free stuff part of the plan is!

So yes, that some of the individual parts of Obamacare are popular is immaterial in an argument attempting to rationalize the entire law. That the lettuce and tomato are still good in a sandwich with rotted meat does not make the sandwich worth eating.

Triangulation

This is Obama's first of possibly many triangulation speeches. His framing of the tax cut issue is pure triangulation. He's essentially saying, "The left wants this here, and the right wants that there and I hover above it all and do what's best for the American people."

The endless campaign

During the 2008 campaign, President Obama promised over and over not to raise taxes on the middle class, which he defined as families making less than $250,000. It was, arguably, a centerpiece of his campaign. A cure all elixir designed to sooth away the compelling conservative argument that the election of Barack Obama would result in an increase in taxes for all Americans. "Look" his supporters said, "...he's promised not to raise taxes on those making under $250 K." That was somehow that. 

Also during the campaign, Obama vociferously attacked first Hillary Clinton and then John McCain for their proposals to tax the most expensive health insurance plans, the gold plated "Cadillac" health care plans, in order to help pay for wider health care reform. 

It seems as if many of the underpinnings of the Obama campaign are becoming well, unpinned. Not that the campaign ever ended of course. 

The monstrosity of Obamacare "legislation" that is attempting to make its way through Congress at the moment represents a massive tax increase on the middle class and it taxes the most expensive health care benefits. These facts are demonstrably true. Obama has therefor begun the process of finding a way to dissatisfy both the fiscally hawkish blue dogs and the far left bastion of the labor unions, each representing a separate wing of the Democratic party. Not that there is anything close to an actual piece of legislation to concretely object to anyway, Obamacare at present is a highly nebulous collection of theoretical rules, regulations, and mandates held together with a liberal dose of fudged numbers. The Max Baucus "bill" is a wizardly crafted collection of cost hiding measures and budget gimmickry. Again, demonstrably true. I especially admire the craftiness of talking in terms of cost over the next ten years when in reality the legislation doesn't actually start taking effect for another two years. Furthermore, the only reason the non partisan Congressional Budget Office was able to somehow, through some sort of tortured logic, predict that it wouldn't add to the deficit is because there is no actual legislative language yet. There are no real numbers behind the pie in the sky numbers. At this very moment, the "bill" is being hammered out in a secretive congressional session of horse trading and influence peddling. The Opacity of Hope at work. Interestingly, there was a time when the Obama Administration promised to showcase a bill on-line for 72 hours before letting it be voted on. That promise went out the window about the the time when the Democratically controlled congress crammed a questionably effective stimulus bill down our throat without even reading it before they voted on it. 

The rubber is finally starting to meet the road for The Bamster. All of the impossible sounding promises are, one by one, crashing to earth and reality.  Even SNL and the other normally left leaning late night comedians are not covering for their boy anymore, and actually generating some decent comedy in the process.

Yet the campaign never ends.

The Obama campaign has declared war on Fox News in an attempt to subvert any arguments it can't win on the merits and they are using tax dollars to travel primarily to the 2012 election battleground states whenever it is that Obama is doing his used car salesman/ snake oil salesman routine for health "insurance" reform.

Cash for Clunkers, it strikes me, is a great way to sum up the Obama presidency so far. He takes our cash and attempts to promulgate clunker after clunker of pieces of legislation on a largely unwilling public.

However, I don't see how he gets there from here on healthcare reform. Even proponents of Obamacare have conceded that we are months away from seeing a final bill. Months away from seeing the final product of something that was supposed to have been signed into law in August. So months from now, even after the Democrats theoretically manage to coalesce around a single piece of legislation only then does the general public get to voice their opinion on Obamacare in earnest. Assuming that is even allowed in this "transparent" era of hope and change. In any event, I see Obama being able to live up to his arbitrary promise of closing Guantanamo Bay before passing health care reform. After all, closing Gitmo doesn't involve the wrangling of untold special interest groups and the remaking 1/6 of the economy while in a recession.

So far, even the far left would concede, Obama has committed the ultimate transgression for a used car salesman to commit. He's over promised and under delivered.

At some point perhaps, the time for campaigning will end and give way to a time for governing. Until that time, the Obama presidency AKA "cash for clunkers" will remain an endless campaign. At a time when we need Ronald Reagan we're getting Billy Mays on an endless sales call.

The (anti) Obama Chronicles

BARACK OBAMA ran an impressively disciplined presidential campaign. He has presided over a notably cohesive White House. But in the past fortnight things have started to go wrong. His latest review of strategy in the Afghan war has prompted charges that this president dithers while American soldiers die, and has provoked a rare public quarrel between the politicians and the military men. The timetable for reforming health care slips and slips, as does the effort to get a climate-change bill through Congress. And in the middle of all this Mr Obama and his wife Michelle found time last week to make a quixotic overnight dash to Copenhagen in the hope of winning the 2016 Olympics for his adopted city of Chicago.

What was intended to be another display of star power on a world stage ended in a flop. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) eliminated Chicago in the first round, for some reason rating the delights of Rio over those of the Windy City. Tall and athletic he may be, but in Copenhagen America’s president won nothing and the Olympic gold went to the portlier president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.


The Olympics, admittedly, are just games; the point, said the White House (afterwards), is that Mr Obama took the time to give Chicago’s bid his best shot. That has not stopped gleeful critics from depicting the failure as a symptom of bigger defects, notably Mr Obama’s overweening self-belief, and the naive trust they say he invests in unreliable foreigners, be they the bureaucrats of the IOC or the nuclear-arming ayatollahs of Iran. Rush Limbaugh, a conservative radio broadcaster, gloated that Mr Obama’s bad day in Copenhagen was the worst of his presidency, at least so far. “So much for improving America’s standing in the world, Barry O” sneered Erick Erickson, a blogger who runs the Red State website.

This debacle may not inflict lasting damage on Mr Obama. The delight some Republicans have shown in a setback for an American city could hurt them more than him. But the dash to Copenhagen was plainly under-prepared. It has bashed his reputation for a sure touch in public relations and added to the suspicion that he expects to achieve too much merely by deploying his celebrity power. Valerie Jarrett, a family friend from Chicago and one of the president’s very closest advisers in the White House, gushed before the Copenhagen trip that the Obamas would be a “dynamic duo” in Denmark. David Axelrod, another, complained afterwards of the IOC’s decision that there were “politics inside that room”. Isn’t the president of the United States supposed to know a thing or two about politics?

Nobody, however, can accuse Mr Obama of under-preparing for the far weightier decision he is pondering in Afghanistan. The administration has now spent several weeks conducting a methodical new review of its strategy, prompted by two deeply unwelcome developments: the crude rigging in favour of President Hamid Karzai in August’s flawed election and the leaked report from General Stanley McChrystal, concluding that the West faces certain defeat unless it adopts an ambitious new strategy, backed by a greater commitment of men (said to be 40,000, though the number has not yet been confirmed) and resources.

That General McChrystal’s report has divided the administration is no surprise: the war is now very unpopular among Democrats who have been encouraged by their success in imposing a rigid timetable for a full withdrawal from Iraq. The surprise is that it has prompted an unusually public quarrel. Vice-President Joe Biden rejects the call for an enlarged counter-insurgency campaign against the Taliban. His is said to be one of several voices inside the White House arguing for a smaller war directed mainly against al-Qaeda. But the merits of the case have now become ensnared in a debate about whether General McChrystal was insubordinate when he appeared to disparage the Biden idea in public. “You have to navigate from where you are, not where you wish to be,” the general told a questioner at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank in London. “A strategy that does not leave Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a short-sighted strategy.”

The charge of insubordination sizzled rapidly through the media and up the chain of command. Writing in the Washington Post, Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law at Yale University, went so far as to invoke the spectre of Douglas MacArthur facing off against Harry Truman over the Korean war. He accused General McChrystal of “a plain violation of the principle of civilian control”. Jim Jones, the National Security Adviser (and a former general), said a president should be given a range of options, not a fait accompli. Robert Gates, the defence secretary, expressed continuing confidence in General McChrystal, but added that everyone involved in the review of strategy should provide their advice “candidly but privately”.

Mr Obama acted this week to fend off Republican claims that fear of his own wavering allies on Capitol Hill is weakening his commitment to a fight that he has always called vital to America’s security, both during the election campaign and since assuming office. On October 6th he invited 30 congressional leaders from both parties to the White House and told them that although he had not decided whether to send extra troops he was contemplating no “dramatic” reduction. The next day his security team convened again to continue their review, focusing this time on conditions in Pakistan. A final decision, says Harry Reid, the Senate’s majority leader, would probably come in “weeks, not months”.

Whether the right description of this timetable is “leisurely” (Senator John McCain) or “thorough” (the administration), the process has certainly been messy. The spat with General McChrystal, Mr Obama’s own recent choice to command in Afghanistan, invites the charge that he is not giving his generals the resources they need. If he does not send the general his extra troops, senior Republicans who have so far restrained their criticism will charge that the president is appeasing his party by endangering America’s fighting men overseas. Mr McCain has already called on Mr Obama to give “great weight” to his commanders’ views. But wading deeper into a war that this week entered its ninth miserable year will stoke the fears of the Democratic leadership in Congress that Mr Obama is sinking into a new Vietnam.

It is a fateful choice, and history is likelier to remember the decision itself, not the circumstances in which it was made. But Mr Obama’s failure to keep General McChrystal in line has made the politics of it very much harder. From Kandahar and Copenhagen (where Mr Obama faces a second ordeal in December at the climate-change summit) a cold wind is blowing through the White House. -The Economist 10/8/09

Weak Himself, Obama Draws Strength From Bush
By Michael Barone
In trying to understand what is happening in the nation and world, we all employ narratives -- story lines that indicate where things are going and what is likely to happen next. We can check the validity of these narratives by observing whether events move in the indicated direction. If so, the narrative is confirmed. But if things seem to be moving in an entirely different direction, it's time to discard the narrative and look for another.

When Barack Obama took office, most Americans and certainly most of the press had a narrative in mind. Call it Narrative A. The financial crisis and the ensuing deep recession had removed the blinkers from voters' eyes and moved Americans away from reliance on markets and toward reliance on government.

The new president's call for hope and change would be followed by enactment of big government policies -- a big-spending stimulus package, government-led health care reform, restrictions on carbon emissions and the effective abolition of the secret ballot in unionization elections. The new president's powers of persuasion would sweep Republicans along and make for bipartisan change.

It certainly seemed plausible. New Deal historians had taught us that economic collapse increases support for big government. Opponents of the Obama program seemed incoherent and demoralized.

But Narrative A looks increasingly shaky. The unions' anti-secret ballot bill is going nowhere, and neither, it seems, is carbon emissions legislation. The stimulus package is widely regarded as a failure, and the Democrats' various health care bills are not winning majorities in polls. If anything, Americans are more leery of big government than they were a few years ago.

Moreover, the balance of enthusiasm has shifted. The tea parties and town halls have shown that millions of Americans are strongly opposed to big government measures. The Obama e-mail lists that brought in so much money and so many volunteers in 2008 now seem unable to get a few dozen people to a rally, and Democratic fundraising is alarmingly low for a party in power.

So it may be time to advance a Narrative B. It goes something like this. George W. Bush's inability to produce progress in Baghdad and New Orleans, along with floundering by congressional Republicans, led voters to give Democrats majorities in Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008. But the huge flow of dollars designed to staunch the financial crisis (TARP), finance bailouts and fund the stimulus package raised fears that government would crowd out private-sector growth.

In this narrative, Democrats' big congressional majorities owe more to perceived Republican incompetence and to the $400 million that labor unions poured into Democratic campaigns than to any change in fundamental attitudes toward the balance between markets and government.

Narrative B does a better job than Narrative A of explaining the unpopularity of the Democrats' big-government programs and the unwillingness of many Democratic officeholders, especially those facing voters in 2010, to support them. It does a better job of explaining the shift in the balance of enthusiasm from 2008 to 2009.

It still may be possible for Democrats to jam through some of their health care proposals, and tax rates are scheduled to go up when the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010. The Democrats may be able to make basic policy changes because of accidental advantages. In the framework of Narrative B, government-directed health insurance and vastly enhanced union power would be reactions to George W. Bush's inept handling of Iraq before the surge and his hapless response to Hurricane Katrina.

Narrative B doesn't explain all current developments satisfactorily. Voters still have a lingering distaste for Republican politicians and give higher (or less low) ratings to the Democratic than the Republican Party. Republican policy proposals, while not nonexistent as the Democrats charge, have not caught the public's attention and may prove no more popular than the Democrats' health insurance and cap-and-trade proposals. And Democratic proposals may turn out to be more popular than they are today.

But overall Narrative B has done a better job so far of explaining 2009 than Narrative A. Which suggests that it's time that fans of Narrative A who don't like Narrative B to come up with Narrative C.

Obama's Foreign Policy Suspends Disbelief
By George Will
WASHINGTON -- Last Thursday, the president's "engagement" with Iran began. This Wednesday, the U.S. war in Afghanistan will enter its ninth year. And U.S. foreign policy is entering a White Queen phase.

In "Through the Looking Glass," Alice says she is unable to believe the White Queen's claim to be 101. The Queen responds, "Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes." Alice: "There's no use trying, one can't believe impossible things." Queen: "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Regarding Afghanistan, the president might believe he can effect a Houdini-like escape, uninjured, from the box his words have built. Regarding Iran, he seems to believe its leaders can be talked or coerced (by economic sanctions) out of their long, costly pursuit of nuclear weapons by convincing them that such weapons do not serve Iran's "security."

On March 27, the president announced "a comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan." He said his "clear and focused goal" was to prevent the Taliban from toppling Afghanistan's government, and to prevent al-Qaeda from returning to Afghanistan or Pakistan. U.S. forces "will take the fight to the Taliban" in Afghanistan's "south" and "east" but "at the same time, we will shift the emphasis of our mission to training and increasing the size of Afghan security forces."

On Aug. 17, the president reiterated his belief that U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is "not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity." This was two months after he replaced the U.S. commander there with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, directing him to assess the resources required for the strategy. The general has done that. But the president does not yet want to discuss troop numbers. Why not?

The president's national security adviser, Jim Jones, a former four-star Marine general, told The Washington Post that before deciding on troop levels, the focus must be on strategy: "The bumper sticker here is strategy before resources." So, is the president reassessing his March 27 strategy? If so, why?

Perhaps because fraud devalued Afghanistan's election. But it was not a sunburst of new information that President Hamid Karzai is corrupt. Or did the president believe, as only the White Queen could, that Karzai had reformed?

Granted, counterinsurgency -- especially when it includes the nation-building implicit in McChrystal's assessment -- requires a reliable partner. But, again, Karzai was a known commodity on March 27. Besides, a presidential strategy is half-baked if its author decides it is dubious after its first collision with difficulty.

Regarding Iran, what did we learn when we learned about the secret nuclear facility in the tunnel? That Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons? We knew that. That Iran lies? We knew that, too. We did, however, learn something when the president, at the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, went public with his knowledge of the facility.

On one side of the president stood France's president. On the other side stood Britain's prime minister, who said Iran's behavior would "shock and anger the whole international community." Not quite. The leaders of Russia and China were not standing with the president.

China has contracted to provide Iran with gasoline, a commodity that could be central to what Defense Secretary Robert Gates calls "severe" sanctions that he thinks might cause Iran to change course. Russia's real leader, Vladimir Putin, was not even in Pittsburgh. Russia's Potemkin president, Dmitry Medvedev, did say something that only the White Queen could believe means that Russia will participate in serious pressure on Iran: Sanctions are not "the best means of obtaining results" but "if all possibilities" are exhausted, "we could consider international sanctions." Over to you, Queen.

Gates says "the only way" to prevent a nuclear-capable Iran "is for the Iranian government to decide that their security is diminished by having those weapons, as opposed to strengthened." But to accept that formulation requires accepting two propositions that would tax the White Queen's powers of belief.

One is that possession of nuclear weapons would make Iran less secure. Question: If Saddam Hussein had possessed nuclear weapons in March 2003, would the United States have invaded Iraq? Iran's leaders probably think they know the answer.

The other proposition is that Iran's regime seeks nuclear weapons merely to enhance the nation's security and not also for regional hegemony or the enjoyment of the enlarged status that comes from being a nuclear power. To believe that, draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.

Feckless

Joke and Chance

9-12

Van crashes, burns

Obama's "green job" Czar, Van Jones, resigned at midnight on a Saturday night during the long labor day weekend. The 9-11 truther and a race-baiter blamed a smear campaign against him rather than his own past comments and actions for his (un)timely demise. Hardcore Liberals are apoplectic about this resignation saying things like, "Whenever I got sick to my stomach at the thought of Obama's Team of Corporate Zombies - people like Rahm Emanuel, Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and Jim Messina - running the show, I was able to at least tell myself that hey, someone like Van Jones is at least in there somewhere fighting the good fight as he always has. "

I guess we'll have to see how it goes with the "corporate zombies".

The timing of the release of this news is about as blatant of an attempt to bury a story that I've ever seen. Another example of what I call 'The Opacity of Hope'. Things are really start to unravel for the Obama Campaign, er... Administration.

Things fall apart

Joe Lieberman thinks that now, during a recession, is not the time for a massive overhaul of 1/6th of the economy. He has opened the door for a Democratic retreat on the issue of health care reform.

I think we all realize now that attempting vilify or otherwise dismiss the town hall protesters was a colossal miscalculation. Team Obama found, unlike when they successfully made the Clintons the enemy during the campaign, that making regular American people out to be the enemy and somehow a product of some nefarious zombie influence doesn't work well at all.

At this point many fellow liberals are losing faith in Obama. At the liberal bastion Salon.com, left-leaning pundits are hand wringing and wondering what went wrong and at The New Republic: what could have been done differently.

The Democratic leadership cannot even get their story straight when it comes to whether or not a "public option" is or is not to be included in ObamaCare.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.

-William Butler Yeats

Face it, it's time to pull the plug on ObamaCare.

The Opacity of Hope

Comment Buster

This RFL post is going for the comment record.

Comment 90:

The Rube Goldberg approach of creating layers and layers of arbitrary regulatory nonsense and then claiming it will cut costs while at the same time covering millions of more Americans for free is not something people are buying into and therefore it will never work.

Have you dudes on the Left even figured out yet whether or not a "public option" is an essential part of reform?

Let us know when you figure that one out and then ram the legislation through already with no Republican support if its such a swell idea.

I'm happy to hang all these bad policies around Obama's neck. Let's get this era over with, The Opacity of Hope or whatever.

Funnier Than Jon Stewart

There's hope for you yet, Anderson Cooper

Perhaps CNN is starting to turn the corner.

Common Sense

The Beer Summit

The new CIA

The Center Cannot Hold

Some Democrats are not mad.

For the birds

Jon

Stand up guy

Leon Panetta actually seems to care about the agency he runs. Today he turned on Nancy Pelosi in defense of the integrity of the CIA. Bravo.

Even the Huffington Post seems to have turned on the erstwhile Lefty standard bearer, Ms. Pelosi.

"There are some people who project sincerity and integrity, but Pelosi's just the opposite. She comes across as a duplicitous partisan hack. A Tom Delay with tits, yet lacking the balls and efficiency. Whereas Delay was ruthless and resolute, Pelosi's simply an ineffective trainwreck."

Only the crass delivery gives away the fact that that was a quote from a Lefty Pundit.

serious leadership.

Hillary jumps the shark

I was actually buying into the new quasi bad-ass Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State until this moment when she devolved into a petty partisan attack as a pathetic attempt to distract from the matter at hand. Hillary appears to wise up and give a serious answer after the follow up question, but there's a shark over there and someone just jumped it.

It's a fascinating clip, I love how the moderator jumps in just in time to prevent us from learning what Hillary's actual position is on the full disclosure of all pertinent documents being discussed.

The perpetually angry left

The political left in this country has been angry for so long now that when the term "The Left" is used, it's understood that they're angry. The phrase, 'the angry Left' is redundant.

Just take the Left's childishly angry response to the recent Tea Party protests. The big thing for Lefty bloggers and pundits is to use the gay bashing term "tea baggers" to describe the protesters. Those protests, by the way, were probably some of the least angry protests in human history. The Left's reaction to the protests were far angrier than the actual protests. Lefty thinkers like Jeanie Garafolo's angry charge that every protester is merely a white supremacist had more vitriol and anger in it than the sum total of all the protests themselves. So it's childish gay bashing jokes and cartoon like levels of anger from the Left as usual in response to the Tea Party Protests.

And now the (far) Left is downright hysterical that Obama is hesitant to prosecute former members of the Bush administration for essentially being too successful in thwarting an attack on American soil in the immediate days following 9-11 by using enhanced interrogation techniques that were at the time fully legal. If the angry, backwards looking Left wants to conduct kangaroo courts and show trials like a banana republic regime persecuting those whom with which they disagree politically, I say bring it on. I can't wait to see what happens when the American people see that the Left has now taken to punishing and prosecuting certain public servants in the Bush Administration in order to satisfy a political vendetta. Public servants who were in good faith doing what they could to successfully protect us. The whole thing is pricelessly irrational.

All of this anger and hysteria on the left begs the question, why in victory is the Left still so angry?

To answer that question let's consult an article penned by Byron York, frequent commentator on NPR, the ultra right wing talk radio network that I listen to daily.

These should be happy times for liberals and the Democratic party as a whole. They control the White House and both houses of Congress, while opposition Republicans are leaderless and lost. So why do some Democrats, particularly those farther to the left, appear so angry?

If you doubt it, just watch a few minutes of MSNBC, where the recent nationwide series of "tea parties" to protest federal spending and taxes set off an angry, almost manic response. The most telling came on Keith Olbermann's program, during which the actress Janeane Garofalo, who plays an FBI computer geek on “24,” denounced the tea parties as "racism straight up."

"Let's be very honest about what this is about," Garofalo said. "It's not about bashing Democrats. It's not about taxes…This is about hating a black man in the White House."

Garofalo linked the tea parties to what she described as a peculiar feature of the conservative brain. "The limbic brain inside a right-winger, or Republican, or conservative, or your average white power activist -- the limbic brain is much larger in their head space than in a reasonable person," she explained. "And it is pushing against the frontal lobe. So their synapses are misfiring." (The limbic brain is the deep portion of the brain that mediates, controls and expresses emotion.)

Now, it's possible Garofalo was joking; she used to do comedy. But she didn't seem to be joking, and her comments were consistent with a long and dishonorable history of attributing political conservatism to mental abnormality. And as she spoke about the alleged anger on the right, Garofalo herself seemed visibly angry. Why were she, and Olbermann, and many others on the left, so apparently troubled by a virtually powerless opposition?

I asked William Anderson, a friend who is a political conservative, a medical doctor, and a lecturer in psychiatry at Harvard. "They are angry, but I think they are also scared, and I think it's because they have a sense that their triumph is a precarious one," Anderson told me. Democrats won in 2008 in some part because of the cycles of American politics; Republicans were exhausted and it was the other party's turn. Now, having won, they are unsure of how long victory will last.

"They see that they have a very small window of opportunity to do all the things they want," Anderson continued. "They see the window of opportunity as small because they know in their deepest hearts that the vast majority of the American people wouldn't go for all of the things they want to do." So they are frantic to do as much as possible before the opposition coalesces. And the tea parties might be the beginning of that coalescence.

Then there is the question of self-image. Watching Garofalo and Olbermann discuss the tea parties, it was impossible to avoid the sense that they saw themselves as two good people talking about many bad people. "One of the things about narcissism is that it looks like people who are just proud of themselves and smug, but in fact narcissism is a very brittle and unstable state," Anderson told me. "People who are deeply invested in narcissism spend an awful lot of energy trying to maintain the illusion they have of themselves as being powerful and good, and they are exquisitely sensitive to anything that might prick that balloon."

Again, the tea parties could represent a threat. What if the protesters weren't racists, weren't violent, weren't mentally defective? What if their point was legitimate, or even partly legitimate? Those are questions better batted down than answered.
Finally, there is the sense of anxiety and fragility that stems from the liberals' newly-won power. They control everything in government, and some fear what the responsibility of governing is doing to them.

Their president of hope and change has chosen not to prosecute the authors of the Bush-era "torture memos." He is escalating the war in Afghanistan. He seems determined to bail out the nation's richest bankers. For some on the left, it can be difficult to abide those actions and still maintain the image of one's self atop the moral high ground. So they lash out at the easy target presented by the tea parties.

And that is how political triumph can produce anger and unhappiness. Don't be surprised if there is much more of both in the days to come.

-Byron York Washington Examiner 4/20/09

Ideology vs. pragmatism

If the left wants to define slapping someone in the face and putting a caterpillar in close proximity to someone as torture then they are watering down the term torture. If this is to be the new wussified definition of torture then I have no problem advocating torture as newly defined by those who incessantly seek to coddle our sworn enemies.

It's that simple. If these enhanced interrogation techniques are to somehow be considered torture, then I'm for torture.

Oh and newsflash for the zillionth time: The Geneva Conventions do not apply to enemy combatants seeking to kill civilians.

New Years Day

It's been a long, cold, and dreary Obama winter. Springtime...when my thoughts move from Obama to baseball, a slightly less controversial topic.

Pay to play part deux

inept/corrupt

Chris Dodd is corrupt. This is not a matter of wild eyed speculation, this is fact, plain and simple. Chris Dodd received tens of thousands dollars of campaign contributions from some of the very AIG executives that are theoretically in line for these controversial bonuses that you may have heard of. Dodd lied about knowing anything about any provisions pertaining to AIG bonuses that were included in the "stimulus" bill on Monday of this week, but by Wednesday he came clean and copped to authoring the amendment in question. So, crazily enough, he's both corrupt and inept.

That's not an easy combo to pull off. He's uniquely un-qualified to hold any position where he and the phrase "public trust" are to be mentioned in the same sentence.

If he and those like him are re-elected in 2010, our Republic is truly in danger.

The New York Times is even turning on him.

Sensitivity

"It wasn't under me that we started buying a whole bunch of shares of banks. It wasn't on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement prescription drug plan without a source of funding."

That's his argument? Obama is using as evidence that he's isn't a socialist that the previous administration was? In a vacuum, Obama's policies and those he intends to implement either are or are not socialist. Why is this concept so difficult to understand? If someone asks me if I'm a Red Sox fan, I don't start talking about other people I believe to be Red Sox fans. I either am or I am not a Red Sox fan.

Liberals are such relativists. They can't just answer the question based on the facts.

It's always, "Well I may be guilty of X, but what about this person over here?"

So lame. Obama and his followers are way too overly sensitive about this question of Obama being a socialist. If he can save the country's banking system, I think it's worth allowing some pundits to be able to call Obama a socialist. But Noooo, it's all about how Obama appears above all else. Can someone please remind Obama that the campaign is over? It's time govern, not whine about your predecessor.

Obama's gonna have to choose between ego and saving the country on this question of nationalizing the banks.

American Zombie

Maybe you didn't catch the news but three major financial institutions were renamed recently, or at least they should have been. From now on, until the administration comes up with a real solution for the banking crisis, the new names of these institutions will be:

Citi Zombie Group
American International Zombie Group
Zombie Bank of America

The banking crisis is the circumstance that is the cause and in fact the crux of this entire problem, but almost every other ancillary subject is being addressed first by team Obama. Somehow we have time to address the funding of manure odor control but haven't yet lifted a finger to arrest the free fall of the stock market. As a leading indicator of where the economy is heading, the stock market at this moment sees no upside in the policies that team Obama has promulgated thus far.

Starting with President Bush and now continuing with Obama, the government has been pursuing an ad hock, piece meal solution to the banking crisis. Drips and drabs of government bailouts going in every direction with seemingly little to no rhyme or reason. Bush didn't have a choice really, he had to at least hand Obama a banking industry on life support rather than handing him a dead banking system. But at this point the government is simply propping up these institutions that have long since stopped being viable as money making businesses. Welcome to the world of zombie banks. Remember Japan in the nineties? Well, we're basically there now. No use in denying it.

Another fact that there is no use in denying is that we have now advanced into the territory of socialism. This country has been slowly marching towards European style democratic socialism for a while. Now Obama is sprinting towards it with all this spending and proposed wealth redistribution. But for political reasons, Obama and his supporters have to deny that their policies even vaguely resemble socialism. I'm not sure what the big deal is, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...

It's socialism, so what. Maybe in this time of crisis we don't have a choice when it comes to resolving the problems caused in the banking sector because these institutions were allowed to become 'too big to fail'. So while Obama figures out a way to solve the banking crisis while not appearing to be socialist because he's afraid to be called that, I have the solution. Since I'm not a self-hating self denying socialist like Obama, I don't care if you call the plan I'm advocating socialist.

The only remaining solution to the banking crisis is temporary nationalization of the biggest most troubled banks. The share holders won't like it, but right now the entire market is in a free fall because there is no clear policy emanating from the White House. Is there any disputing that the lack of clarity is causing massive uncertainty in the markets? This should be elementary, but because team Obama has to play political games, they haven't embraced this obvious strategy yet.

This is what they will eventually do of course, just as soon as they devise a clever way of not letting it be called socialism somehow. So while America collectively watches their retirement funds evaporate into the ether, team Obama is busy calculating their own political appearance and concocting childish controversies about Rush Limbaugh.

Until Obama gets over his fears regarding what his detractors will be able to say about him, we will live in this new American Zombie economy.

Imperial IPA

As I write this I am enjoying quite possibly the best, most complex beer that I've ever had.

Harpoon Leviathan Imperial IPA. A whole new level.

At 12 bucks a 4 pack a whole new level of price too. But none of that matters now.

Here's a description of the taste from Beeradvocate.com:

Pours brassy in color, with bright golden hues and a thin, creamy lacing that sticks just a bit. Massive fruity esters in the nose, with strong notes of overripe pineapple and suggestions of something sweet and syrupy. Strong hop resins. Bread and caramel, too. Harsh fusel alcohols. Thick, viscous and chewy in the mouth with some smoothness and creaminess. Really fruity and sweet up front with more overripe pineapple and stone fruits. Smacking of citrus rinds. Drop of caramel in the malt sweetness. Hops are intense, coating the palate with resins, leaf and pine, and are a bit roasty and ashy around the edges with a deep, earthy flavor. The alcohol is quite noticeable: abrasive, spicy, warming and solvent-like. Some gummy flavors as things warm. The palate dries up with a raw, leafy, earthy and resiny linger that doesn't fade anytime soon.

The waves of booze wash over you after a few sips sink in and begin their magic. It's more refreshing that Harpoon IPA, yet almost infinitely more complex. And as I take another swig I conclude that this is probably the best beverage ever created as far as I'm concerned.

Manny being... stingy

Manny Ramirez today was offered his third deal of the off season for an eye-popping $45 million for a two year contract. It's the same money he was offered in the first place months ago, when maybe the economy wasn't as bad as it is now.

He should take this money and be happy. If he doesn't take this most recent offer, he's out of his mind.

Especially when you consider that no other team has made an offer yet.

The Age of Obama

In the dark of night

In the stimulus bill debacle, we've come a long way away from any notion of "transparency", that buzz word team Obama has thrown around ad nauseam.

We are at the point where we're borrowing a trillion dollars from China and spending it on things that our government doesn't imagine the American people deserve to know.

What sort of banana republic crap is this?

Let the tax payer know what we're being asked to pay for, for god's sake!

Please Listen!

I hereby demand that some kind of real middle class tax relief be included in this stimulus bill.

A one time payout, a "rebate check" is not a tax cut!

Cut the actual rate of taxation! The percentage has to go down!

A temporary payroll tax "holiday" is a good idea, summarily rejected by lady and lord Pelosi and Reid.

Barack Obama's first move as President was to let those two hardcore leftists author his first signature legislative proposal? Fire the person who allowed that to happen.

Where is Rahm Emmanual? Isn't he supposed to be the hard nosed politician who values winning over ideology? What was he smoking when he allowed Nancy Pelosi to have sole proprietorship of this bill from the get go?

What a botched job debacle this stimulus bill is.

Stagflation here we come.