You say “stimulus,” I hear “syphilis.”
By Mark Steyn
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is on TV explaining the (at this point the congregation shall fall to its knees and prostrate itself) “stimulus.” “How,” asks the lady from CBS, “does $335 million in STD prevention stimulate the economy?”
“I’ll tell you how,” says Speaker Pelosi. “I’m a big believer in prevention. And we have, er, there is a part of the bill on the House side that is about prevention. It’s about it being less expensive to the states to do these measures.”
Makes a lot of sense. If we have more STD prevention, it will be safer for loose women to go into bars and pick up feckless men, thus stimulating the critical beer and nuts and jukebox industries. To do this, we need trillion-dollar deficits, which our children and grandchildren will have to pay off—but, with sufficient investment in prevention measures, there won’t be any children or grandchildren, so there’s that problem solved.
The more interviews Speaker Pelosi gives explaining how vital the STD industry is to restarting the U.S. economy, the more I find myself hearing “syphilis” every time she says “stimulus.” In late September, America was showing the first signs of “primary stimulus”—a few billion lesions popping up on the rarely glimpsed naughty bits of the economy: the subprime mortgage racket, the leverage kings. Now, the condition has metastasized in a mere four months into the advanced stages of “tertiary stimulus,” with trillions of hideous, ever more inflamed pustules sprouting in every nook and cranny as the central nervous system of the body politic crumbles into total insanity—until it seems entirely normal for the second-in-line of presidential succession to be on TV gibbering away about how vital the federalization of condom distribution is to economic recovery.
The rules in this new “post-partisan” era are pretty simple: If the Democratic party wants it, it’s “stimulus.” If the Republican party opposes it, it’s “politics”—as in headlines like this: “Obama Urges GOP To Keep Politics To A Minimum On Stimulus.” These are serious times: As the president says, it’s the worst economic crisis since the Thirties. So politicians need to put politics behind them and immediately lavish $4.19 billion on his community-organizing pals at the highly inventive “voter registration” group ACORN for “neighborhood stabilization activities.”
“Neighborhood stabilization activities.” That sounds like a line item from the Baath-party budget when Saddam sends the lads in to gas the Kurds. What does it mean in a non-totalitarian sense? Do you need a federally subsidized condom to do it? If so, will a pathetic $4.19 billion be enough?
“Stimulus” comes from the verb stimulare, which is Latin for “transfer massive sums of money from what remains of the dynamic sector of the economy to the special interests of the Democratic party.” No, hang on, my mistake. Stimulare means “to goad.” And, on that front, the Democrats are doing an excellent job. They’ve managed to goad 58 percent of the American people into opposing the “stimulus” package. They’ve managed to goad all 177 Republicans in the House into unpacking their mothballed cojones and voting against the bill. And they’ve managed to goad the rest of the world into ending the Obama honeymoon in nothing flat. Headline from the London Daily Telegraph: “US-EU Trade War Looms As Barack Obama Bill Urges ‘Buy American.’ ”
That would be the provision in the Senate bill prohibiting any foreign-made goods from being used in “stimulus” projects. So, if you own a rubber plantation in Malaysia and you’re hoping for a piece of Nancy Pelosi’s condom action, forget it. The EU trade commissioner is outraged at the swaggering cowboy Obama shooting from the hip and unilaterally banning European goods from American soil. But so are American companies such as General Electric. Bill Lane, an executive honcho with Caterpillar (the tenth biggest U.S. investor in the United Kingdom), says, “We are students of history. A major reason a very deep recession turned into the Great Depression was the fact that countries turned inward.” Ah, yes. The Buy American Act of 1933. How’d that work out?
Even without Speaker Pelosi talking STD on the evening news, there is danger here for the new administration. Setting aside the more messianic effusions (“We needed him. And out of that great need,” gushed Maya Angelou, “Barack Obama came.”) as unbecoming to the freeborn citizens of a constitutional republic, it seems clear that large numbers of people voted for this president because they wanted something different, something other than “politics as usual.” Not just something pseudo-different like the dreary maverickiness of John McCain “reaching across the aisle” (one of those dead phrases no one outside the Beltway gives a hoot about), but something really different. But the “stimulus” package is just politics as usual with a few extra zeroes on the end. Will you notice anything? No. Don’t get your hopes up. If you’re broke now, you’ll be broke in October. The Congressional Budget Office estimates only 25 percent of it will be spent by early next year. The other 75 percent is as stimulating as the gal in the Nancy Pelosi Pussycat Lounge telling you she had such a good time she’s penciled in a second date for spring 2010. A third of all the spending won’t come until after 2011.
In a media age, politics is a battle of language, and “stimulus” is too good a word to cede to porked-up statist hacks. “Stimulus” has to stimulate—i.e., it’s short-term, like, say, an immediate cut in payroll taxes that will put real actual money in your pocket in next month’s paycheck. That way, you don’t need to wait for ACORN: You can start “stabilizing” your own “neighborhood” right now.
But, if this fraudulent “stimulus” does pass, it will, in fact, de-stimulate, and much more than the disastrous protectionist measures of the Thirties did: Back then, America was dealing with a far less globalized economy, and with far fewer competitors. “In the long run, we are all dead,” Lord Keynes, the newly fashionable economist, famously said. But, if this bill passes, in the medium term, we’re all dead. It’s a massive expansion of the state in the same direction that has brought sclerosis to Europe. A report issued last week in London found that government spending now accounts for 49 percent of the U.K. economy—and in the Celtic corners of the kingdom the state’s share of the economy is way higher, from 71.6 percent in Wales to 77.6 percent in Northern Ireland. In the western world, countries that were once the crucible of freedom are slipping remorselessly into a thinly disguised serfdom in which an ever-higher proportion of your assets are annexed by the state as super-landlord. Big government is where nations go to die—not in Keynes’ “long run,” but sooner than you think.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
My Bipartisan Stimulus
Let's cut taxes, as I want, and spend more, as Obama would like.
By Rush Limbaugh
Thursday, January 29, 2009
There's a serious debate in this country as to how best to end the recession. The average recession will last five to 11 months; the average recovery will last six years. Recessions will end on their own if they're left alone. What can make the recession worse is the wrong kind of government intervention.
I believe the wrong kind is precisely what President Barack Obama has proposed. I don't believe his is a "stimulus plan" at all -- I don't think it stimulates anything but the Democratic Party. This "porkulus" bill is designed to repair the Democratic Party's power losses from the 1990s forward, and to cement the party's majority power for decades.
Keynesian economists believe government spending on "shovel-ready" infrastructure projects -- schools, roads, bridges -- is the best way to stimulate our staggering economy. Supply-side economists make an equally persuasive case that tax cuts are the surest and quickest way to create permanent jobs and cause an economy to rebound. That happened under JFK, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. We know that when tax rates are cut in a recession, it brings an economy back.
Recent polling indicates that the American people are in favor of both approaches.
Notwithstanding the media blitz in support of the Obama stimulus plan, most Americans, according to a new Rasmussen poll, are skeptical. Rasmussen finds that 59% fear that Congress and the president will increase government spending too much. Only 17% worry they will cut taxes too much. Since the American people are not certain that the Obama stimulus plan is the way to go, it seems to me there's an opportunity for genuine compromise. At the same time, we can garner evidence on how to deal with future recessions, so every occurrence will no longer become a matter of partisan debate.
Congress is currently haggling over how to spend $900 billion generated by American taxpayers in the private sector. (It's important to remember that it's the people's money, not Washington's.) In a Jan. 23 meeting between President Obama and Republican leaders, Rep. Eric Cantor (R., Va.) proposed a moderate tax cut plan. President Obama responded, "I won. I'm going to trump you on that."
Yes, elections have consequences. But where's the bipartisanship, Mr. Obama? This does not have to be a divisive issue. My proposal is a genuine compromise.
Fifty-three percent of American voters voted for Barack Obama; 46% voted for John McCain, and 1% voted for wackos. Give that 1% to President Obama. Let's say the vote was 54% to 46%. As a way to bring the country together and at the same time determine the most effective way to deal with recessions, under the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009: 54% of the $900 billion -- $486 billion -- will be spent on infrastructure and pork as defined by Mr. Obama and the Democrats; 46% -- $414 billion -- will be directed toward tax cuts, as determined by me.
Then we compare. We see which stimulus actually works. This is bipartisanship! It would satisfy the American people's wishes, as polls currently note; and it would also serve as a measurable test as to which approach best stimulates job growth.
I say, cut the U.S. corporate tax rate -- at 35%, among the highest of all industrialized nations -- in half. Suspend the capital gains tax for a year to incentivize new investment, after which it would be reimposed at 10%. Then get out of the way! Once Wall Street starts ticking up 500 points a day, the rest of the private sector will follow. There's no reason to tell the American people their future is bleak. There's no reason, as the administration is doing, to depress their hopes. There's no reason to insist that recovery can't happen quickly, because it can.
In this new era of responsibility, let's use both Keynesians and supply-siders to responsibly determine which theory best stimulates our economy -- and if elements of both work, so much the better. The American people are made up of Republicans, Democrats, independents and moderates, but our economy doesn't know the difference. This is about jobs now.
The economic crisis is an opportunity to unify people, if we set aside the politics. The leader of the Democrats and the leader of the Republicans (me, according to Mr. Obama) can get it done. This will have the overwhelming support of the American people. Let's stop the acrimony. Let's start solving our problems, together. Why wait one more day?
By Rush Limbaugh
Thursday, January 29, 2009
There's a serious debate in this country as to how best to end the recession. The average recession will last five to 11 months; the average recovery will last six years. Recessions will end on their own if they're left alone. What can make the recession worse is the wrong kind of government intervention.
I believe the wrong kind is precisely what President Barack Obama has proposed. I don't believe his is a "stimulus plan" at all -- I don't think it stimulates anything but the Democratic Party. This "porkulus" bill is designed to repair the Democratic Party's power losses from the 1990s forward, and to cement the party's majority power for decades.
Keynesian economists believe government spending on "shovel-ready" infrastructure projects -- schools, roads, bridges -- is the best way to stimulate our staggering economy. Supply-side economists make an equally persuasive case that tax cuts are the surest and quickest way to create permanent jobs and cause an economy to rebound. That happened under JFK, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. We know that when tax rates are cut in a recession, it brings an economy back.
Recent polling indicates that the American people are in favor of both approaches.
Notwithstanding the media blitz in support of the Obama stimulus plan, most Americans, according to a new Rasmussen poll, are skeptical. Rasmussen finds that 59% fear that Congress and the president will increase government spending too much. Only 17% worry they will cut taxes too much. Since the American people are not certain that the Obama stimulus plan is the way to go, it seems to me there's an opportunity for genuine compromise. At the same time, we can garner evidence on how to deal with future recessions, so every occurrence will no longer become a matter of partisan debate.
Congress is currently haggling over how to spend $900 billion generated by American taxpayers in the private sector. (It's important to remember that it's the people's money, not Washington's.) In a Jan. 23 meeting between President Obama and Republican leaders, Rep. Eric Cantor (R., Va.) proposed a moderate tax cut plan. President Obama responded, "I won. I'm going to trump you on that."
Yes, elections have consequences. But where's the bipartisanship, Mr. Obama? This does not have to be a divisive issue. My proposal is a genuine compromise.
Fifty-three percent of American voters voted for Barack Obama; 46% voted for John McCain, and 1% voted for wackos. Give that 1% to President Obama. Let's say the vote was 54% to 46%. As a way to bring the country together and at the same time determine the most effective way to deal with recessions, under the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009: 54% of the $900 billion -- $486 billion -- will be spent on infrastructure and pork as defined by Mr. Obama and the Democrats; 46% -- $414 billion -- will be directed toward tax cuts, as determined by me.
Then we compare. We see which stimulus actually works. This is bipartisanship! It would satisfy the American people's wishes, as polls currently note; and it would also serve as a measurable test as to which approach best stimulates job growth.
I say, cut the U.S. corporate tax rate -- at 35%, among the highest of all industrialized nations -- in half. Suspend the capital gains tax for a year to incentivize new investment, after which it would be reimposed at 10%. Then get out of the way! Once Wall Street starts ticking up 500 points a day, the rest of the private sector will follow. There's no reason to tell the American people their future is bleak. There's no reason, as the administration is doing, to depress their hopes. There's no reason to insist that recovery can't happen quickly, because it can.
In this new era of responsibility, let's use both Keynesians and supply-siders to responsibly determine which theory best stimulates our economy -- and if elements of both work, so much the better. The American people are made up of Republicans, Democrats, independents and moderates, but our economy doesn't know the difference. This is about jobs now.
The economic crisis is an opportunity to unify people, if we set aside the politics. The leader of the Democrats and the leader of the Republicans (me, according to Mr. Obama) can get it done. This will have the overwhelming support of the American people. Let's stop the acrimony. Let's start solving our problems, together. Why wait one more day?
The Slobbering Sycophants of the MSM
Burt Prelutsky
Friday, January 30, 2009
It wasn’t that long ago that my friend Bernard Goldberg told me he was never going to write another book. It was just a lot of hard work, he complained, and while he was working on one, virtually all joy was sucked out of his life. It made perfect sense to me. Besides, books take a lot of time to write and Bernie, who wishes he’d grown another foot-and-a-half so he could have competed in the NBA, still needs to work on his hook shot.
Well, he lied. But at least it was in a good cause. I just read his latest slice-and-dice of the liberal media, “A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (and Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media),” and I was reminded what a travesty the MSM made of the 1st amendment in its desire to ensure Obama’s victory.
There was a time, after all, when Americans actually had a rather high opinion of those who brought us the news in a fair and reasonably objective manner, and when editors and publishers didn’t allow their opinions to bleed all over the rest of the newspaper. But those days are long gone. Today, nobody trusts print or TV journalists. Liberals may have been delighted to find the MSM working overtime to get their guy elected last year, but in the final analysis nobody respects a whore. Americans, whatever their politics, have no more reason to believe what they’re told by the members of the fourth estate than the Russians had when their news source was Pravda, Stalin’s propaganda machine.
As Goldberg makes clear, the shame of the MSM during the presidential election wasn’t simply that they couldn’t mention Barack Obama’s name without swooning, although it did get awfully embarrassing. Giggly teenage girls at a Jonas Brothers concert behaved with more restraint than Chris Matthews.
Worse yet was the way the media kept anything negative about their Lochinvar under wraps. So it was that although Rolling Stone, as early as February, 2007, in a profile of Sen. Obama, wrote about his friend and religious mentor, the loony racist, Jeremiah Wright, the MSM totally ignored the connection until bloggers and Sean Hannity forced the issue. Even then, the media merely took its lead from Obama. When the candidate claimed that in 20 years, he’d never heard his minister say anything hateful about America or white people, they went along with it. When Obama dismissed Wright’s rants as sound bites taken out of context, that was good enough for the MSM. When Obama said that he would never turn his back on Wright, they praised him for his loyalty. Then, when Wright kept repeating those “sound bites” and Obama hurled his worthless carcass under the bus, the MSM praised him for his resolve.
When some people questioned how Obama could have sat in that cesspool of a church for a thousand Sundays, Obama said that anyone who would ask such a rude question was obviously a racist, knowing full well that the MSM, aka the amen corner, could be counted on not only to parrot his words, but to clap hands and shout “Hallelujah!”
If some of us began to confuse news stories about Obama with his campaign press releases, it’s because they were interchangeable, although the press releases tended to be more restrained and, usually, better written.
When Geraldine Ferraro dared to point out that if he were white, the inexperienced Obama would not be running for president, there was such a firestorm of media outrage that Hillary Clinton had to toss her under the bus. Clearly, though, when 90% of blacks were voting for Obama when he was running against someone as liberal as Sen. Clinton, it should have been pretty obvious to one and all that the allegedly post-racial candidate was about as post-racial as Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson or Jeremiah Wright. Considering how cynical the members of the press like to consider themselves, it’s rather amusing how naive and, well, slobbering the members of the press can be when they really put their minds to it.
The members of the MSM, as Goldberg makes perfectly clear in 173 very readable pages, went completely in the tank to ensure that Obama would be the 44th president of the United States. But they paid a terrible price. They showed themselves to be nothing more than partisan hacks. And in the end, Obama owed his victory more to the financial meltdown than to their ethical meltdown.
Is it any wonder that newspapers are barely hanging on, that network news shows are seeing their audiences evaporate like the morning dew, and that MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann could double their ratings if only they could finally convince their fathers to tune in?
The MSM reminds me of Marlon Brando’s character in “On the Waterfront.” By taking a dive, they’ve forfeited their chance to be contenders…for our respect. Instead, like Terry Malloy, they’re just bums.
Friday, January 30, 2009
It wasn’t that long ago that my friend Bernard Goldberg told me he was never going to write another book. It was just a lot of hard work, he complained, and while he was working on one, virtually all joy was sucked out of his life. It made perfect sense to me. Besides, books take a lot of time to write and Bernie, who wishes he’d grown another foot-and-a-half so he could have competed in the NBA, still needs to work on his hook shot.
Well, he lied. But at least it was in a good cause. I just read his latest slice-and-dice of the liberal media, “A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (and Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media),” and I was reminded what a travesty the MSM made of the 1st amendment in its desire to ensure Obama’s victory.
There was a time, after all, when Americans actually had a rather high opinion of those who brought us the news in a fair and reasonably objective manner, and when editors and publishers didn’t allow their opinions to bleed all over the rest of the newspaper. But those days are long gone. Today, nobody trusts print or TV journalists. Liberals may have been delighted to find the MSM working overtime to get their guy elected last year, but in the final analysis nobody respects a whore. Americans, whatever their politics, have no more reason to believe what they’re told by the members of the fourth estate than the Russians had when their news source was Pravda, Stalin’s propaganda machine.
As Goldberg makes clear, the shame of the MSM during the presidential election wasn’t simply that they couldn’t mention Barack Obama’s name without swooning, although it did get awfully embarrassing. Giggly teenage girls at a Jonas Brothers concert behaved with more restraint than Chris Matthews.
Worse yet was the way the media kept anything negative about their Lochinvar under wraps. So it was that although Rolling Stone, as early as February, 2007, in a profile of Sen. Obama, wrote about his friend and religious mentor, the loony racist, Jeremiah Wright, the MSM totally ignored the connection until bloggers and Sean Hannity forced the issue. Even then, the media merely took its lead from Obama. When the candidate claimed that in 20 years, he’d never heard his minister say anything hateful about America or white people, they went along with it. When Obama dismissed Wright’s rants as sound bites taken out of context, that was good enough for the MSM. When Obama said that he would never turn his back on Wright, they praised him for his loyalty. Then, when Wright kept repeating those “sound bites” and Obama hurled his worthless carcass under the bus, the MSM praised him for his resolve.
When some people questioned how Obama could have sat in that cesspool of a church for a thousand Sundays, Obama said that anyone who would ask such a rude question was obviously a racist, knowing full well that the MSM, aka the amen corner, could be counted on not only to parrot his words, but to clap hands and shout “Hallelujah!”
If some of us began to confuse news stories about Obama with his campaign press releases, it’s because they were interchangeable, although the press releases tended to be more restrained and, usually, better written.
When Geraldine Ferraro dared to point out that if he were white, the inexperienced Obama would not be running for president, there was such a firestorm of media outrage that Hillary Clinton had to toss her under the bus. Clearly, though, when 90% of blacks were voting for Obama when he was running against someone as liberal as Sen. Clinton, it should have been pretty obvious to one and all that the allegedly post-racial candidate was about as post-racial as Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson or Jeremiah Wright. Considering how cynical the members of the press like to consider themselves, it’s rather amusing how naive and, well, slobbering the members of the press can be when they really put their minds to it.
The members of the MSM, as Goldberg makes perfectly clear in 173 very readable pages, went completely in the tank to ensure that Obama would be the 44th president of the United States. But they paid a terrible price. They showed themselves to be nothing more than partisan hacks. And in the end, Obama owed his victory more to the financial meltdown than to their ethical meltdown.
Is it any wonder that newspapers are barely hanging on, that network news shows are seeing their audiences evaporate like the morning dew, and that MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann could double their ratings if only they could finally convince their fathers to tune in?
The MSM reminds me of Marlon Brando’s character in “On the Waterfront.” By taking a dive, they’ve forfeited their chance to be contenders…for our respect. Instead, like Terry Malloy, they’re just bums.
Palestinian Myth Machine
Mona Charen
Friday, January 30, 2009
"Israel has committed the war crime of the 21st century," cried a Palestinian representative. Using massive force against a crowded refugee camp, Saeb Erakat claimed, the Israelis had "massacred" hundreds of Palestinian civilians. A CNN reporter used the figure of 300-400 dead. Peter Hansen, the commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) told a Danish newspaper that 300-400 Palestinians had been killed.
The place was not Gaza in 2009, but Jenin in 2002. The great Jenin massacre turned out to be another in a long series of false atrocity stories manufactured by the Palestinians and credulously repeated by the international press (which likes nothing so much as the image of vicious Israelis). Cartoonists across Europe delighted in drawing Israelis in Nazi uniforms. Le Monde ran a cartoon comparing the destruction of Jenin with the Nazi destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto.
In fact, in August 2002, the United Nations and Human Rights Watch (neither very friendly to Israel) put the final fatality figures at 26 Palestinian fighters, 26 civilians and 23 Israeli soldiers. The Israeli casualty figures were comparatively high because the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) decided to fight street by street with soldiers on foot instead of using air power or tanks precisely to minimize civilian casualties. The houses in Jenin were booby-trapped. The terrorists surrounded themselves with civilians.
Now we are told that Gaza suffered 1,300 killed and up to 4,000 wounded. These numbers come exclusively from Hamas sources and have not been independently verified. In fact, the numbers have been challenged by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, which put the number of dead at between 500 and 600, the majority of whom were young men. Others suggest that as many as 1,000 may have been killed, the majority Hamas fighters.
Certainly the humanitarian crisis in Gaza evokes sympathy. But the full and complete responsibility for that crisis lies at the feet of Hamas. The Palestinian daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (published on the West Bank) reported on the Abd Rabbo family. The Abd Rabbos had the misfortune to own a farm that overlooked the Israeli town of Sderot. This, the newspaper reports, turned it into an ideal military position for the Palestinian fighters, from which they have launched hundreds of rockets into southern Israel during the last few years. "The Abd Rabbo family members emphasize that they are not (Hamas) activists and that they are still loyal to the Fatah movement, but that they were unable to prevent the armed squads from entering their neighborhood at night. One family member, Hadi (age 22) said: 'You can't say anything to the resistance (fighters), or they will accuse you of collaborating (with Israel) and shoot you in the legs.'"
As in Jenin, Israel took extraordinary measures to limit civilian casualties in Gaza. Reporting in the Weekly Standard, Max Boot notes that the IDF made hundreds of thousands of phone calls and dropped hundreds of thousands of leaflets warning civilians to vacate sites of impending attacks. "When the Israeli Air Force detected Palestinian civilians atop buildings," Boot writes, "it dropped tiny bombs designed to cause little damage. Only when the civilians had cleared off did the air force drop larger munitions that flattened the structure."
Unlike the Israelis, Hamas was keen to increase Palestinian casualties of violence. Gaza is full of munitions, smuggling tunnels, and incitement videos exhorting the faithful to kill Jews, but it's nearly impossible to find a bomb shelter in the Strip. By contrast, the Israeli town of Sderot, where my 12-year-old son visited last week, is covered with them. He sat in the living room of an 80-year-old woman whose son had urged her to take cover in the newly built bomb shelter in her basement. Five minutes after she reluctantly rose from her sofa and left the room a Kassam rocket crashed through the ceiling.
Sderot is home to 23,000 long-suffering people. Boot reports that at no time during the past eight years has Sderot enjoyed more than four consecutive days without a missile attack. I cannot imagine how they bear the anxiety. I felt a tiny shred of what they must go through when I worried about my son's recent visit.
Operation Cast Lead has brought a respite. In the face of an enemy like Hamas, it is the only way.
Friday, January 30, 2009
"Israel has committed the war crime of the 21st century," cried a Palestinian representative. Using massive force against a crowded refugee camp, Saeb Erakat claimed, the Israelis had "massacred" hundreds of Palestinian civilians. A CNN reporter used the figure of 300-400 dead. Peter Hansen, the commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) told a Danish newspaper that 300-400 Palestinians had been killed.
The place was not Gaza in 2009, but Jenin in 2002. The great Jenin massacre turned out to be another in a long series of false atrocity stories manufactured by the Palestinians and credulously repeated by the international press (which likes nothing so much as the image of vicious Israelis). Cartoonists across Europe delighted in drawing Israelis in Nazi uniforms. Le Monde ran a cartoon comparing the destruction of Jenin with the Nazi destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto.
In fact, in August 2002, the United Nations and Human Rights Watch (neither very friendly to Israel) put the final fatality figures at 26 Palestinian fighters, 26 civilians and 23 Israeli soldiers. The Israeli casualty figures were comparatively high because the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) decided to fight street by street with soldiers on foot instead of using air power or tanks precisely to minimize civilian casualties. The houses in Jenin were booby-trapped. The terrorists surrounded themselves with civilians.
Now we are told that Gaza suffered 1,300 killed and up to 4,000 wounded. These numbers come exclusively from Hamas sources and have not been independently verified. In fact, the numbers have been challenged by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, which put the number of dead at between 500 and 600, the majority of whom were young men. Others suggest that as many as 1,000 may have been killed, the majority Hamas fighters.
Certainly the humanitarian crisis in Gaza evokes sympathy. But the full and complete responsibility for that crisis lies at the feet of Hamas. The Palestinian daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (published on the West Bank) reported on the Abd Rabbo family. The Abd Rabbos had the misfortune to own a farm that overlooked the Israeli town of Sderot. This, the newspaper reports, turned it into an ideal military position for the Palestinian fighters, from which they have launched hundreds of rockets into southern Israel during the last few years. "The Abd Rabbo family members emphasize that they are not (Hamas) activists and that they are still loyal to the Fatah movement, but that they were unable to prevent the armed squads from entering their neighborhood at night. One family member, Hadi (age 22) said: 'You can't say anything to the resistance (fighters), or they will accuse you of collaborating (with Israel) and shoot you in the legs.'"
As in Jenin, Israel took extraordinary measures to limit civilian casualties in Gaza. Reporting in the Weekly Standard, Max Boot notes that the IDF made hundreds of thousands of phone calls and dropped hundreds of thousands of leaflets warning civilians to vacate sites of impending attacks. "When the Israeli Air Force detected Palestinian civilians atop buildings," Boot writes, "it dropped tiny bombs designed to cause little damage. Only when the civilians had cleared off did the air force drop larger munitions that flattened the structure."
Unlike the Israelis, Hamas was keen to increase Palestinian casualties of violence. Gaza is full of munitions, smuggling tunnels, and incitement videos exhorting the faithful to kill Jews, but it's nearly impossible to find a bomb shelter in the Strip. By contrast, the Israeli town of Sderot, where my 12-year-old son visited last week, is covered with them. He sat in the living room of an 80-year-old woman whose son had urged her to take cover in the newly built bomb shelter in her basement. Five minutes after she reluctantly rose from her sofa and left the room a Kassam rocket crashed through the ceiling.
Sderot is home to 23,000 long-suffering people. Boot reports that at no time during the past eight years has Sderot enjoyed more than four consecutive days without a missile attack. I cannot imagine how they bear the anxiety. I felt a tiny shred of what they must go through when I worried about my son's recent visit.
Operation Cast Lead has brought a respite. In the face of an enemy like Hamas, it is the only way.
Hawaii's Universal Health Insurance Lesson
Carrie Lukas
Friday, January 30, 2009
When President Obama signs the "Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009," (which passed the Senate by a vote of 66-32 last night) he will take the country on the first of what are likely to be several steps during his Administration toward "universal" health insurance.
I haven't seen any polling, but I bet "universal" is a word that appeals to most Americans. We all want people to have access to good things like health insurance and quality medical care. Yet Americans should recognize that when politicians talk about "universal" insurance, they're really talking about "government" insurance. And, as government takes over the insurance aspect of healthcare, it will inevitably take over other aspects as well. Politicians lambast private insurance companies for measures taken to manage costs and discourage medical over-consumption, but you can be sure that Uncle Sam will be most aggressive in these areas. Look to countries with government-run healthcare to get a glimpse into the long-waiting lines for medical procedures and government-imposed rationing that Americans can expect once we move fully to a single-payer system.
Those who already have quality healthcare may assume that this debate really doesn't have much to do with them. After all, as a candidate, President Obama promised "if you like your current health insurance, nothing changes." Yet Americans should consider the dynamic that would occur as the government provides more and more publicly subsidized insurance options.
The experience of Hawaii in launching the first state-based "universal" child health insurance program is instructive. The program was created in hopes of helping the island state's uninsured children (estimated to number between 3,500 and 16,000) by providing free health insurance coverage and access to doctor's visits for just a $7 co-pay.
What lawmakers soon learned was that it isn't just the existing pool of uninsured who wants to take advantage of a free government alternative; many parents dropped their private coverage in order to qualify for the government-funded plan. A staggering 85 percent of those who enrolled previously had health insurance. Dr. Kenny Fink, an administrator at Hawaii's Department of Human Services, summed up what was happening: "People who were already able to afford healthcare began to stop paying for it so they could get it for free. I don't believe that was the intent of the program." Just seven months after the program's launch, government officials decided to shut it down.
Maybe encouraging people to switch from private to government-provided insurance wasn't the intention of Hawaii's universal children's health insurance initiative, but that result certainly shouldn't have come as a surprise. When a free alternative becomes available, it's sensible for families to reevaluate if they should continue paying for a service on their own. This dynamic will hold true whether the federal government starts offering preschool through the government-run public school system (another Democratic priority) or if they expand eligibility for government-subsidized healthcare.
The Heritage Foundation estimated that about half of children who would obtain health insurance through SCHIP if eligibility is raised above 200 percent of the poverty line would have previously had private insurance. Other economists have placed the estimate even higher. As more families decide to stop paying for private insurance and switch to the government system, some children may actually end up having worse healthcare coverage than they did before the government generously offered taxpayer-funded support.
The migration from the private insurance marketplace to government programs will have consequences beyond the effects on individual families and even beyond the price tag that will have to be borne by taxpayers. Private insurers will be losing business to the public system and will have increased difficulty offering their services at the same prices. They may have to find ways to cut costs or reduce expenses. As their services become comparatively less attractive, more people will make the switch. Employers who today help pay for employees' health insurance may begin to decide it isn't worth the investment and that employees would rather have money in their pockets and make the leap into the government program.
President Obama may sincerely not want Americans currently happy with their health insurance to be affected by new government policies. But such policies have consequences beyond their most visible beneficiaries. Americans would be wise to understand that whether they like it or not change may be coming their way.
Friday, January 30, 2009
When President Obama signs the "Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009," (which passed the Senate by a vote of 66-32 last night) he will take the country on the first of what are likely to be several steps during his Administration toward "universal" health insurance.
I haven't seen any polling, but I bet "universal" is a word that appeals to most Americans. We all want people to have access to good things like health insurance and quality medical care. Yet Americans should recognize that when politicians talk about "universal" insurance, they're really talking about "government" insurance. And, as government takes over the insurance aspect of healthcare, it will inevitably take over other aspects as well. Politicians lambast private insurance companies for measures taken to manage costs and discourage medical over-consumption, but you can be sure that Uncle Sam will be most aggressive in these areas. Look to countries with government-run healthcare to get a glimpse into the long-waiting lines for medical procedures and government-imposed rationing that Americans can expect once we move fully to a single-payer system.
Those who already have quality healthcare may assume that this debate really doesn't have much to do with them. After all, as a candidate, President Obama promised "if you like your current health insurance, nothing changes." Yet Americans should consider the dynamic that would occur as the government provides more and more publicly subsidized insurance options.
The experience of Hawaii in launching the first state-based "universal" child health insurance program is instructive. The program was created in hopes of helping the island state's uninsured children (estimated to number between 3,500 and 16,000) by providing free health insurance coverage and access to doctor's visits for just a $7 co-pay.
What lawmakers soon learned was that it isn't just the existing pool of uninsured who wants to take advantage of a free government alternative; many parents dropped their private coverage in order to qualify for the government-funded plan. A staggering 85 percent of those who enrolled previously had health insurance. Dr. Kenny Fink, an administrator at Hawaii's Department of Human Services, summed up what was happening: "People who were already able to afford healthcare began to stop paying for it so they could get it for free. I don't believe that was the intent of the program." Just seven months after the program's launch, government officials decided to shut it down.
Maybe encouraging people to switch from private to government-provided insurance wasn't the intention of Hawaii's universal children's health insurance initiative, but that result certainly shouldn't have come as a surprise. When a free alternative becomes available, it's sensible for families to reevaluate if they should continue paying for a service on their own. This dynamic will hold true whether the federal government starts offering preschool through the government-run public school system (another Democratic priority) or if they expand eligibility for government-subsidized healthcare.
The Heritage Foundation estimated that about half of children who would obtain health insurance through SCHIP if eligibility is raised above 200 percent of the poverty line would have previously had private insurance. Other economists have placed the estimate even higher. As more families decide to stop paying for private insurance and switch to the government system, some children may actually end up having worse healthcare coverage than they did before the government generously offered taxpayer-funded support.
The migration from the private insurance marketplace to government programs will have consequences beyond the effects on individual families and even beyond the price tag that will have to be borne by taxpayers. Private insurers will be losing business to the public system and will have increased difficulty offering their services at the same prices. They may have to find ways to cut costs or reduce expenses. As their services become comparatively less attractive, more people will make the switch. Employers who today help pay for employees' health insurance may begin to decide it isn't worth the investment and that employees would rather have money in their pockets and make the leap into the government program.
President Obama may sincerely not want Americans currently happy with their health insurance to be affected by new government policies. But such policies have consequences beyond their most visible beneficiaries. Americans would be wise to understand that whether they like it or not change may be coming their way.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Departing Kristol
Emmett Tyrrell
Thursday, January 29, 2009
WASHINGTON -- Let us put an end to the dark murmurings over why The New York Times did not renew its contract with its lone conservative columnist, Bill Kristol. Some say it was a matter of politics. Kristol is a Republican. The Times is Obamist. For a certitude, the political disagreement was there, but politics were not the ultimate cause of Kristol's departure.
I can report on copper-bottom authority that The New York Times let Kristol go owing to public health concerns. As the Times' financial condition has grown fragile, the publisher of the Times, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., has become apprehensive that Kristol's conservative views could endanger the health of some of the newspaper's neurotic liberal readers. During the past year, readers unexpectedly encountering Kristol in the otherwise lenitive company of Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert have complained on the correspondence page of various discomforts. None appeared life-threatening, but what if an aged environmentalist or an infirm McGovernite lost in reveries of 1972 actually suffered a coronary? The trial lawyers would move upon the Times in an instant. Sulzberger might not survive.
Of course, the Times might not survive anyway. It labors under $1.1 billion of debt. So precarious are its finances that it recently had to accept a $250 million loan from a Mexican with the unlikely name of Carlos Slim. Whether he really is a Mexican is not clear, and the Times' team of investigative reporters is now so tiny that Executive Editor Bill Keller has not been able to spare even one reporter to inquire. As far as I have been able to ascertain, no reporter even has Googled to verify Slim's nationality. He might be Portuguese. He could be dangerously overweight. Actually, I am told that investigative reporters at the Times now, in an effort to economize, rarely leave their offices and conduct many of their investigations on the telephone. Sulzberger likes them to call collect.
Yet, to return to Kristol's departure, frankly I shall miss him. During this past year, he rarely filed a boring column, which doubtlessly offended many of his colleagues on the op-ed page. "Boredom is a virtue" is their motto, and the only other Times columnist who regularly breaks with the general tedium is that perpetual high-school rowdy, Maureen Dowd, who often mistakes a cackle for a syllogism. Moreover, Kristol's conservatism is usually sound, solidly reasoned and often amusing. This has led to charges from unnamed journalists in a Washington Post column by Howard Kurtz that Kristol was "predictable." This is a charge liberals often file against conservatives, giving us still more evidence of their double standard. The adherence to principle that renders a conservative "predictable" in the eyes of liberals is exalted as "highly principled" and even "heroic" when exhibited by a liberal.
Another charge against Kristol from unnamed journalists is that he has been cavalier about facts. Kurtz writes that Kristol "had to correct three factual errors," presumably during the past year. What the errors were Kurtz does not say, but the Times' "Corrections" section overflows daily, rarely with Kristol's name. Once, a Times reporter had to interview me in an attempt to correct errors in a news story that I had broken in The New York Sun. When the "correction" appeared, is was still inaccurate.
Kurtz also reports that Kristol -- at least when he has written in The Washington Post -- has been "controversial." Well, at least he was not predictable, or was he? Kurtz reports that in the summer of 2007, Kristol wrote that the presidency of George W. Bush "will probably be a successful one." On that judgment, I would side with the herd of unnamed journalists, though by using selective criteria, Kristol can make a case. Elsewhere, Kurtz -- apparently in consultation with the herd -- adjudges "controversial" Kristol's 2007 observation that "military progress on the ground in Iraq in the past few months has been greater than even surge proponents like me expected." I cannot find anything controversial about that.
This is not the first time Kristol has departed the mainstream media. In the late 1990s, he was a regular with George Stephanopoulos, Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson in a round-table discussion on ABC's "This Week." He left amid rumors that ABC thought him too involved in politics. After a period of reorganizing, ABC put Stephanopoulos in charge of the whole show. Stephanopoulos had been a Democratic political apparatchik all his adult life, before joining ABC as a "political analyst." What prepared him for journalism at ABC? In his 1999 autobiography, he admitted that while serving as a senior adviser to Bill Clinton, he would "spin" the press, beginning with the Gennifer Flowers tape. Looking back on his years of spinning, Stephanopoulos lamented, "I have been willing to suspend my disbelief about some of (Clinton's) more suspect denials." Suspension of disbelief -- there is the mark of a great American journalist!
Kristol simply does not measure up.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
WASHINGTON -- Let us put an end to the dark murmurings over why The New York Times did not renew its contract with its lone conservative columnist, Bill Kristol. Some say it was a matter of politics. Kristol is a Republican. The Times is Obamist. For a certitude, the political disagreement was there, but politics were not the ultimate cause of Kristol's departure.
I can report on copper-bottom authority that The New York Times let Kristol go owing to public health concerns. As the Times' financial condition has grown fragile, the publisher of the Times, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., has become apprehensive that Kristol's conservative views could endanger the health of some of the newspaper's neurotic liberal readers. During the past year, readers unexpectedly encountering Kristol in the otherwise lenitive company of Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert have complained on the correspondence page of various discomforts. None appeared life-threatening, but what if an aged environmentalist or an infirm McGovernite lost in reveries of 1972 actually suffered a coronary? The trial lawyers would move upon the Times in an instant. Sulzberger might not survive.
Of course, the Times might not survive anyway. It labors under $1.1 billion of debt. So precarious are its finances that it recently had to accept a $250 million loan from a Mexican with the unlikely name of Carlos Slim. Whether he really is a Mexican is not clear, and the Times' team of investigative reporters is now so tiny that Executive Editor Bill Keller has not been able to spare even one reporter to inquire. As far as I have been able to ascertain, no reporter even has Googled to verify Slim's nationality. He might be Portuguese. He could be dangerously overweight. Actually, I am told that investigative reporters at the Times now, in an effort to economize, rarely leave their offices and conduct many of their investigations on the telephone. Sulzberger likes them to call collect.
Yet, to return to Kristol's departure, frankly I shall miss him. During this past year, he rarely filed a boring column, which doubtlessly offended many of his colleagues on the op-ed page. "Boredom is a virtue" is their motto, and the only other Times columnist who regularly breaks with the general tedium is that perpetual high-school rowdy, Maureen Dowd, who often mistakes a cackle for a syllogism. Moreover, Kristol's conservatism is usually sound, solidly reasoned and often amusing. This has led to charges from unnamed journalists in a Washington Post column by Howard Kurtz that Kristol was "predictable." This is a charge liberals often file against conservatives, giving us still more evidence of their double standard. The adherence to principle that renders a conservative "predictable" in the eyes of liberals is exalted as "highly principled" and even "heroic" when exhibited by a liberal.
Another charge against Kristol from unnamed journalists is that he has been cavalier about facts. Kurtz writes that Kristol "had to correct three factual errors," presumably during the past year. What the errors were Kurtz does not say, but the Times' "Corrections" section overflows daily, rarely with Kristol's name. Once, a Times reporter had to interview me in an attempt to correct errors in a news story that I had broken in The New York Sun. When the "correction" appeared, is was still inaccurate.
Kurtz also reports that Kristol -- at least when he has written in The Washington Post -- has been "controversial." Well, at least he was not predictable, or was he? Kurtz reports that in the summer of 2007, Kristol wrote that the presidency of George W. Bush "will probably be a successful one." On that judgment, I would side with the herd of unnamed journalists, though by using selective criteria, Kristol can make a case. Elsewhere, Kurtz -- apparently in consultation with the herd -- adjudges "controversial" Kristol's 2007 observation that "military progress on the ground in Iraq in the past few months has been greater than even surge proponents like me expected." I cannot find anything controversial about that.
This is not the first time Kristol has departed the mainstream media. In the late 1990s, he was a regular with George Stephanopoulos, Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson in a round-table discussion on ABC's "This Week." He left amid rumors that ABC thought him too involved in politics. After a period of reorganizing, ABC put Stephanopoulos in charge of the whole show. Stephanopoulos had been a Democratic political apparatchik all his adult life, before joining ABC as a "political analyst." What prepared him for journalism at ABC? In his 1999 autobiography, he admitted that while serving as a senior adviser to Bill Clinton, he would "spin" the press, beginning with the Gennifer Flowers tape. Looking back on his years of spinning, Stephanopoulos lamented, "I have been willing to suspend my disbelief about some of (Clinton's) more suspect denials." Suspension of disbelief -- there is the mark of a great American journalist!
Kristol simply does not measure up.
Obama and the Arabs
Paul Edwards
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Consider these facts: Barack Obama is the first president in history to directly address the Muslim world in an inaugural address. His first phone call to a foreign head of state was to the Palestinian Authority’s Ahmoud Abbas. And then came the word that the honor of his first sit-down interview as president had gone to Al Arabiya—self-described as “the leading news channel in the Arab world.”
With all of the issues vying for action by the president, both foreign and domestic, why has President Obama made a priority of communicating with the Muslim world this early and this often in his first week in office? Certainly the Middle East conflict requires the attention of the United States, but why has this president chosen to enter that process by speaking first with the party the United States has historically viewed as the instigator of the conflict?
The media would answer the question by suggesting that the “cowboy diplomacy” of George W. Bush has tarnished America’s image in the Arab world, therefore Obama can waste no time reaching out to them in an effort to restore our credibility. Never mind that the Bush Doctrine actually liberated 50 million people in the Muslim world. Pay no attention to the fact that young girls and women are now being educated in Afghanistan because President Bush took decisive action to root out the oppressive Taliban regime there.
Rather than use his interview with Arab television to point the Arab world to the positive results America has achieved for them, President Obama used this opportunity to throw America under the bus. If you actually heard his interview with Al Arabiya, it would be difficult to conclude that President Obama did anything other than point to America as the source of the problem in the Arab world rather than a collaborator with them in finding a solution.
The interview wasn’t into its first two minutes before Obama tells the Arab interviewer that, when it comes to the on-going Arab-Israeli conflict in Gaza, the United States has acted more like an ignorant dictator:
…what I told (Special Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell) is start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating—in the past on some of these issues—and we don't always know all the factors that are involved.
It’s all downhill from there, with President Obama later implying that the United States hasn’t been respectful in its treatment of the Muslim world: “Now, my job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect.”
He also implied that the American people have a prejudiced view of Muslims, owing to the attacks of September 11, and therefore do not understand the Muslim world: “My job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives.”
But what should be of utmost concern to Americans is the way Obama redefined the priorities of the president:
And I think that what you will see over the next several years is that I’m not going to agree with everything that some Muslim leader may say, or what’s on a television station in the Arab world—but I think that what you'll see is somebody who is listening, who is respectful, and who is trying to promote the interests not just of the United States, but also ordinary people who right now are suffering from poverty and a lack of opportunity. I want to make sure that I’m speaking to them, as well.
Obama believes that equal to the interests of the United States, the president must also promote the interests of “ordinary people” in the Muslim world. This is a radical departure from the president’s oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The president isn’t the president of the world, or even limited constituencies within the world. He is President of the United States—and nothing is equal to his constitutional responsibilities to the people of this country.
President Obama seems to think himself uniquely qualified to address the Muslim world because he has lived among them: “I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries … the largest one, Indonesia.”
Some have even questioned whether or not he is—or at least was—one of them. When his Muslim father enrolled him in school in Indonesia he recorded Barack’s religion as “Islam.” In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos during the campaign Obama referred to “my Muslim faith.” The media wrote it off as “a slip of the tongue.”
Throughout his campaign for president Obama insisted that he was a Christian, and the American people took him at his word. But so what if President Obama really is a Muslim? America is a pluralistic society that guarantees the freedom of religion as a fundamental right. The “so what” may have just been answered in this interview.
After hearing the American president speak in negative tones about his country to the largest Arab television audience in the world, it is fair to ask whether or not this president really sees protecting the interests of his country as his first priority.
Is it possible that Obama’s haste to speak with the Muslim world has more to do with his affinity with them than it does America’s supposed marred image among them? The Al Arabiya interview leaves one wondering if Obama’s foreign policy isn’t influenced by a view that it is somehow he and Muslims against the United States.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Consider these facts: Barack Obama is the first president in history to directly address the Muslim world in an inaugural address. His first phone call to a foreign head of state was to the Palestinian Authority’s Ahmoud Abbas. And then came the word that the honor of his first sit-down interview as president had gone to Al Arabiya—self-described as “the leading news channel in the Arab world.”
With all of the issues vying for action by the president, both foreign and domestic, why has President Obama made a priority of communicating with the Muslim world this early and this often in his first week in office? Certainly the Middle East conflict requires the attention of the United States, but why has this president chosen to enter that process by speaking first with the party the United States has historically viewed as the instigator of the conflict?
The media would answer the question by suggesting that the “cowboy diplomacy” of George W. Bush has tarnished America’s image in the Arab world, therefore Obama can waste no time reaching out to them in an effort to restore our credibility. Never mind that the Bush Doctrine actually liberated 50 million people in the Muslim world. Pay no attention to the fact that young girls and women are now being educated in Afghanistan because President Bush took decisive action to root out the oppressive Taliban regime there.
Rather than use his interview with Arab television to point the Arab world to the positive results America has achieved for them, President Obama used this opportunity to throw America under the bus. If you actually heard his interview with Al Arabiya, it would be difficult to conclude that President Obama did anything other than point to America as the source of the problem in the Arab world rather than a collaborator with them in finding a solution.
The interview wasn’t into its first two minutes before Obama tells the Arab interviewer that, when it comes to the on-going Arab-Israeli conflict in Gaza, the United States has acted more like an ignorant dictator:
…what I told (Special Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell) is start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating—in the past on some of these issues—and we don't always know all the factors that are involved.
It’s all downhill from there, with President Obama later implying that the United States hasn’t been respectful in its treatment of the Muslim world: “Now, my job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect.”
He also implied that the American people have a prejudiced view of Muslims, owing to the attacks of September 11, and therefore do not understand the Muslim world: “My job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives.”
But what should be of utmost concern to Americans is the way Obama redefined the priorities of the president:
And I think that what you will see over the next several years is that I’m not going to agree with everything that some Muslim leader may say, or what’s on a television station in the Arab world—but I think that what you'll see is somebody who is listening, who is respectful, and who is trying to promote the interests not just of the United States, but also ordinary people who right now are suffering from poverty and a lack of opportunity. I want to make sure that I’m speaking to them, as well.
Obama believes that equal to the interests of the United States, the president must also promote the interests of “ordinary people” in the Muslim world. This is a radical departure from the president’s oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The president isn’t the president of the world, or even limited constituencies within the world. He is President of the United States—and nothing is equal to his constitutional responsibilities to the people of this country.
President Obama seems to think himself uniquely qualified to address the Muslim world because he has lived among them: “I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries … the largest one, Indonesia.”
Some have even questioned whether or not he is—or at least was—one of them. When his Muslim father enrolled him in school in Indonesia he recorded Barack’s religion as “Islam.” In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos during the campaign Obama referred to “my Muslim faith.” The media wrote it off as “a slip of the tongue.”
Throughout his campaign for president Obama insisted that he was a Christian, and the American people took him at his word. But so what if President Obama really is a Muslim? America is a pluralistic society that guarantees the freedom of religion as a fundamental right. The “so what” may have just been answered in this interview.
After hearing the American president speak in negative tones about his country to the largest Arab television audience in the world, it is fair to ask whether or not this president really sees protecting the interests of his country as his first priority.
Is it possible that Obama’s haste to speak with the Muslim world has more to do with his affinity with them than it does America’s supposed marred image among them? The Al Arabiya interview leaves one wondering if Obama’s foreign policy isn’t influenced by a view that it is somehow he and Muslims against the United States.
Welcome to the Brave New World
Frank Pastore
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Socialist governments ration healthcare when demand exceeds supply—when there’s simply not enough money or medical resources available to provide health care services to all of the people all of the time. What they end up with is either coverage for all of the people some of the time, or for some of the people all of the time.
This sounds great to lots of people, mostly Democrats, until they think about being one of those whom the government decides is too old or too sick to get the rationed treatment. If the procedure or the treatment is too expensive, or if the state decides there’s a more qualified or more deserving candidate, you’re out of luck. In the name of “what’s good for the people,” you end up not getting what you need to stay healthy—or, in some cases, stay alive.
Often, these systems don’t allow you to buy that procedure or treatment on your own because that would be unfair to those who can’t afford it. “Why only the privileged classes would get quality healthcare, and the poor would go without, why that’s so selfish!”—which, in large part, is the motivation to have socialized medicine in the first place.
Consider that in Canada it’s now illegal for a doctor to provide services outside of the system. Which explains, of course, why you see so many Canadians in America getting healthcare.
All this makes perfect sense, or rather, perfect cents, from a purely rational choice/supply and demand point of view.
Now, let’s go to the next logical step.
Consider this past Sunday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi appeared on ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos and had the following exchange:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?
PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those—one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?
PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.
So, according to the person third in line for the presidency, spending money on contraception is a good economic stimulus because it will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government. After a public outcry, the contraception provision was dropped from the bill that passed the House on Wednesday, but the Speaker’s comments were revealing—and alarming.
The position that she articulated scares me.
It’s like something out of a science fiction movie.
Today, it looks like a very short step for a government leader to say something like this:
Due to the ongoing economic crisis, state and federal governments are now forced to further ration public services because increasing demand continues to outpace diminishing supply. We can’t raise taxes high enough and fast enough on taxpayers to generate enough revenue to adequately increase services.
Therefore, we’re forced to take drastic steps to reduce the aggregate demand from tax spenders—those who pay little or nothing in state and federal taxes. Since children of tax payers are not a significant drag on the economy, we are targeting limiting the number of children of tax spenders.
Beginning immediately, we will institute policies to reduce the number of children born to tax spenders.
Therefore, we will target increased contraception and abortion spending in our urban centers. Public schools will now institute mandatory pregnancy tests and off campus abortion care if necessary. Any woman choosing to become a mother must submit a Parental Candidate Application and receive her federal Parenting License before the state will approve her pregnancy.
Sadly, we’re forced to now ration childbirth along with our other medical and social services.
Thank you, and may God Bless America.
For this week and in this bill, the bill that passed the House did not have cost-cutting reproductive services. Speaker Pelosi was too honest with her intentions and backed off under the bright lights of media scrutiny and public outrage. But, unless we change course, this is where we’re headed.
And you thought Aldous Huxley was writing science fiction. Welcome to the Brave New World.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Socialist governments ration healthcare when demand exceeds supply—when there’s simply not enough money or medical resources available to provide health care services to all of the people all of the time. What they end up with is either coverage for all of the people some of the time, or for some of the people all of the time.
This sounds great to lots of people, mostly Democrats, until they think about being one of those whom the government decides is too old or too sick to get the rationed treatment. If the procedure or the treatment is too expensive, or if the state decides there’s a more qualified or more deserving candidate, you’re out of luck. In the name of “what’s good for the people,” you end up not getting what you need to stay healthy—or, in some cases, stay alive.
Often, these systems don’t allow you to buy that procedure or treatment on your own because that would be unfair to those who can’t afford it. “Why only the privileged classes would get quality healthcare, and the poor would go without, why that’s so selfish!”—which, in large part, is the motivation to have socialized medicine in the first place.
Consider that in Canada it’s now illegal for a doctor to provide services outside of the system. Which explains, of course, why you see so many Canadians in America getting healthcare.
All this makes perfect sense, or rather, perfect cents, from a purely rational choice/supply and demand point of view.
Now, let’s go to the next logical step.
Consider this past Sunday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi appeared on ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos and had the following exchange:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?
PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those—one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?
PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.
So, according to the person third in line for the presidency, spending money on contraception is a good economic stimulus because it will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government. After a public outcry, the contraception provision was dropped from the bill that passed the House on Wednesday, but the Speaker’s comments were revealing—and alarming.
The position that she articulated scares me.
It’s like something out of a science fiction movie.
Today, it looks like a very short step for a government leader to say something like this:
Due to the ongoing economic crisis, state and federal governments are now forced to further ration public services because increasing demand continues to outpace diminishing supply. We can’t raise taxes high enough and fast enough on taxpayers to generate enough revenue to adequately increase services.
Therefore, we’re forced to take drastic steps to reduce the aggregate demand from tax spenders—those who pay little or nothing in state and federal taxes. Since children of tax payers are not a significant drag on the economy, we are targeting limiting the number of children of tax spenders.
Beginning immediately, we will institute policies to reduce the number of children born to tax spenders.
Therefore, we will target increased contraception and abortion spending in our urban centers. Public schools will now institute mandatory pregnancy tests and off campus abortion care if necessary. Any woman choosing to become a mother must submit a Parental Candidate Application and receive her federal Parenting License before the state will approve her pregnancy.
Sadly, we’re forced to now ration childbirth along with our other medical and social services.
Thank you, and may God Bless America.
For this week and in this bill, the bill that passed the House did not have cost-cutting reproductive services. Speaker Pelosi was too honest with her intentions and backed off under the bright lights of media scrutiny and public outrage. But, unless we change course, this is where we’re headed.
And you thought Aldous Huxley was writing science fiction. Welcome to the Brave New World.
Is This the Job of the President of the United States?
Diana West
Thursday, January 29, 2009
It all just went by in a flash: The very first TV interview Barack Obama gave as president went to Saudi -- backed, Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television. Missed it? The interview aired too late Monday night to make the morning papers (in most of the United States, anyway), transforming its initial burst of coverage into a second-day follow-up story (at least in the United States). It was as if the people (Americans) who put Obama into office were so much, well, chopped liver.
Is that halal? Couldn't say. But the target audience for this first Obama interview was anything but kosher. The whole event, however, was a huge surprise.
According to Time magazine, Al-Arabiya reporter "(Hisham) Melhem's bosses in Dubai got a feeler from the White House on Sunday." That image alone -- a White House "feeler" to "bosses in Dubai" is sci-fi fantastic. That is, it's easy to see why Obama would bypass Fox News, for example, but how could he do this to his Main Squeeze Media (MSM)?
On Monday, the White House contacted the Washington bureau of Al-Arabiya, but even then Melhem wasn't expecting anything greater than an interview with the new envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell. "Would you like to chat with the president about 5 p.m. today?" a White House caller asked the reporter. And that was how this precedent-shattering interview came about.
But why did it come about? I'm guessing Barack Now-You-See-Hussein-Now-You-Don't Obama chose to sit down for this first interview before the Muslim world for an important reason. He wanted to appeal to what he seems to regard as his new constituency.
No kidding. Obama spoke quite deliberately about the requirements of his new "job" as commander in chief, many of which are unprecedented. "My job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language has to be the language of respect."
That's the job of the president of the United States?
"I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries," Obama continued, simply speaking about his Islamic connections, indulging in what he condemned as "scare tactics" on the campaign trail. Now these connections are job credentials. "My job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives."
That's the job of the president of the United States?
Obama continued. "My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect. But if you look at the track record -- as you say, America was not born as a colonial power -- and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there's no reason why we can't restore that."
What golden age of American-Islamic "respect and partnership" (circa 1979 or 1989) Obama is talking about I have no idea. But mark his words to describe Islam and the United States: "People who just want to see their children live better lives" versus a country that isn't "perfect" and sometimes makes "mistakes." This is one reprehensible way for an American president to frame the relationship between the repressive, jihad-exporting Sharia cultures of Islam and the liberty-and-justice-for-all-based USA.
"I'm not going to agree with everything that some Muslim leader may say, or what's on a television station in the Arab world," he continued, quite possibly but also quite opaquely referring to the genocidal yearnings and hatreds expressed from Iran to Syria to the Palestinian Authority by both leadership and state-run media. "But I think that what you'll see is somebody who is listening, who is respectful" -- there's that word again -- "and who is trying to promote the interests not just of the United States, but also ordinary people who right now are suffering from poverty and a lack of opportunity. I want to make sure I am speaking to them as well."
This wasn't just one of those beacon-of-freedom pep talks U.S. presidents have given in the past. This was something different. Indeed, not since Napoleon has a leader of a Western superpower made so unabashed a political pitch to the people of the Muslim world.
Commenting on CNN, Islam apologist Reza Aslan called himself "giddy" over the interview, explaining: Obama "is essentially setting himself up as a bridge between the Muslim world, between the United States and the Middle East. It's a grand gesture, and I think it's going to be taken very well."
In the Muslim world, anyway. But again, that's precisely where Obama was aiming.
At one point, the interviewer mentioned Osama bin Laden and his henchman Ayman al-Zawahiri.
"They seem nervous," Obama interjected.
When asked why they should be "more nervous," the president replied: "Well, I think that when you look at the rhetoric they've been using against me before I even took office, what that tells me is that their ideas are bankrupt."
Excuse me, Mr. President: You mean before they used rhetoric against you, their ideas were not bankrupt? But I digress. What's worth noting here is the possible glimmering of a presidential inference that he, Barack Hussein Obama, poses an alternative to Al Qaeda in the eyes of the Muslim world. (Mehlem insists Obama doesn't put Hamas and Hezbollah in the same category as Al Qaeda.)
Obama continued: "There's no actions that they've taken that, say, a child in the Muslim world is getting a better education because of them, or has better health care because of them. ... And over time, I think the Muslim world has recognized that that path is leading no place, except more death and destruction."
Mehlem later interpreted these comments as I did above -- as the Obama alternative to Al Qaeda for Muslims. As Mehlem put it to theatlantic.com, "He's closing down Guantanamo, sending Mitchell, pulling out of Iraq, and ... I hope he would show Palestinians and Israelis tough love. Do you want to tell me that bin Laden and all these nuts" -- excluding Hamas and Hezbollah, in Mehlem's eyes -- "are not going to be nervous about him?"
In other words, the new president of the United States is vying for the affections of the Muslim world, and this is making jihadists "nervous." Aslan's comments seemed to underscore this same point. "I'm sure that wherever Zawahiri and bin Laden are right now, they're scrambling to try to figure out a way to answer this comment. When the president of the United States says, `My family is Muslim,' what are you supposed to respond to that? How do you -- how do you criticize that?"
I'll agree that it does tend to leave one speechless.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
It all just went by in a flash: The very first TV interview Barack Obama gave as president went to Saudi -- backed, Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television. Missed it? The interview aired too late Monday night to make the morning papers (in most of the United States, anyway), transforming its initial burst of coverage into a second-day follow-up story (at least in the United States). It was as if the people (Americans) who put Obama into office were so much, well, chopped liver.
Is that halal? Couldn't say. But the target audience for this first Obama interview was anything but kosher. The whole event, however, was a huge surprise.
According to Time magazine, Al-Arabiya reporter "(Hisham) Melhem's bosses in Dubai got a feeler from the White House on Sunday." That image alone -- a White House "feeler" to "bosses in Dubai" is sci-fi fantastic. That is, it's easy to see why Obama would bypass Fox News, for example, but how could he do this to his Main Squeeze Media (MSM)?
On Monday, the White House contacted the Washington bureau of Al-Arabiya, but even then Melhem wasn't expecting anything greater than an interview with the new envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell. "Would you like to chat with the president about 5 p.m. today?" a White House caller asked the reporter. And that was how this precedent-shattering interview came about.
But why did it come about? I'm guessing Barack Now-You-See-Hussein-Now-You-Don't Obama chose to sit down for this first interview before the Muslim world for an important reason. He wanted to appeal to what he seems to regard as his new constituency.
No kidding. Obama spoke quite deliberately about the requirements of his new "job" as commander in chief, many of which are unprecedented. "My job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language has to be the language of respect."
That's the job of the president of the United States?
"I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries," Obama continued, simply speaking about his Islamic connections, indulging in what he condemned as "scare tactics" on the campaign trail. Now these connections are job credentials. "My job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives."
That's the job of the president of the United States?
Obama continued. "My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect. But if you look at the track record -- as you say, America was not born as a colonial power -- and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there's no reason why we can't restore that."
What golden age of American-Islamic "respect and partnership" (circa 1979 or 1989) Obama is talking about I have no idea. But mark his words to describe Islam and the United States: "People who just want to see their children live better lives" versus a country that isn't "perfect" and sometimes makes "mistakes." This is one reprehensible way for an American president to frame the relationship between the repressive, jihad-exporting Sharia cultures of Islam and the liberty-and-justice-for-all-based USA.
"I'm not going to agree with everything that some Muslim leader may say, or what's on a television station in the Arab world," he continued, quite possibly but also quite opaquely referring to the genocidal yearnings and hatreds expressed from Iran to Syria to the Palestinian Authority by both leadership and state-run media. "But I think that what you'll see is somebody who is listening, who is respectful" -- there's that word again -- "and who is trying to promote the interests not just of the United States, but also ordinary people who right now are suffering from poverty and a lack of opportunity. I want to make sure I am speaking to them as well."
This wasn't just one of those beacon-of-freedom pep talks U.S. presidents have given in the past. This was something different. Indeed, not since Napoleon has a leader of a Western superpower made so unabashed a political pitch to the people of the Muslim world.
Commenting on CNN, Islam apologist Reza Aslan called himself "giddy" over the interview, explaining: Obama "is essentially setting himself up as a bridge between the Muslim world, between the United States and the Middle East. It's a grand gesture, and I think it's going to be taken very well."
In the Muslim world, anyway. But again, that's precisely where Obama was aiming.
At one point, the interviewer mentioned Osama bin Laden and his henchman Ayman al-Zawahiri.
"They seem nervous," Obama interjected.
When asked why they should be "more nervous," the president replied: "Well, I think that when you look at the rhetoric they've been using against me before I even took office, what that tells me is that their ideas are bankrupt."
Excuse me, Mr. President: You mean before they used rhetoric against you, their ideas were not bankrupt? But I digress. What's worth noting here is the possible glimmering of a presidential inference that he, Barack Hussein Obama, poses an alternative to Al Qaeda in the eyes of the Muslim world. (Mehlem insists Obama doesn't put Hamas and Hezbollah in the same category as Al Qaeda.)
Obama continued: "There's no actions that they've taken that, say, a child in the Muslim world is getting a better education because of them, or has better health care because of them. ... And over time, I think the Muslim world has recognized that that path is leading no place, except more death and destruction."
Mehlem later interpreted these comments as I did above -- as the Obama alternative to Al Qaeda for Muslims. As Mehlem put it to theatlantic.com, "He's closing down Guantanamo, sending Mitchell, pulling out of Iraq, and ... I hope he would show Palestinians and Israelis tough love. Do you want to tell me that bin Laden and all these nuts" -- excluding Hamas and Hezbollah, in Mehlem's eyes -- "are not going to be nervous about him?"
In other words, the new president of the United States is vying for the affections of the Muslim world, and this is making jihadists "nervous." Aslan's comments seemed to underscore this same point. "I'm sure that wherever Zawahiri and bin Laden are right now, they're scrambling to try to figure out a way to answer this comment. When the president of the United States says, `My family is Muslim,' what are you supposed to respond to that? How do you -- how do you criticize that?"
I'll agree that it does tend to leave one speechless.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
The Day America Lost the War on Terror
Ben Shapiro
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
On Nov. 4, 2008, America lost the war on terror. President Barack Obama’s feckless, pathetically apologetic perspective on foreign policy spells the end of the quest for liberty in the Middle East. It spells the end of America’s moral leadership in the global war for freedom. And it spells the end of a hard-fought campaign to protect America. Our enemies must be happily celebrating their great good fortune in America’s election of this platitudinous, morally relativistic, Jimmy Carter carbon copy in the midst of battle.
On Jan. 26, 2009, Obama granted his first television interview as president of the United States to Al Arabiya, the Dubai-based television network part-owned by the Saudi government. In the interview, he demonstrated with the utmost clarity that his understanding is inversely proportional to his arrogance.
He started by humbling America before the world. “(A)ll too often the United States starts by dictating,” Obama said, shame for his country dripping from his lips. “So let’s listen.” There was no call for the Muslim world, which has sponsored genocide after genocide, terrorist group upon terrorist group, to listen.
Obama apologized for President Bush’s “Islamic fascism” terminology, equating Muslim terrorism with nonexistent terrorism by Jews and Christians: “the language we use matters. And what we need to understand is, is that there are extremist organizations -- whether Muslim or any other faith in the past -- that will use faith as a justification for violence. We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith's name.” There was no call for the Muslim world to actively fight terrorism -- honesty is not the Obama administration’s policy.
Obama repeated the Clintonian line that the Palestinian Arab-Israeli conflict could be solved by pressing Israel into negotiations with terrorists -- a foolish conceit that has cost Israeli and Palestinian lives. He talked about getting rid of “preconceptions” regarding the Israeli-Arab conflict -- code for embracing negotiations with Hamas. He pledged to talk with Iran -- on the same day that Iran’s government spokesman branded the Holocaust “a big lie.” He bought into the Muslim-sponsored notion that the Palestinian Arab-Israeli conflict lies at the heart of all trouble in the Middle East. He praised the one-sided Saudi peace plan as an act of “great courage.”
Most sickeningly, Obama openly jettisoned his constitutional role as the caretaker for America’s national interest. Instead, Obama posed himself as an honest broker between America and the Muslim world. “(T)he United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect,” he said. “I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.” Obama didn’t stop there. He stated that his job is to speak for the Muslim world, defending them from Americans’ negative perceptions: “And my job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives.”
No, Mr. President. Your job is not to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world harbors us no ill will. That is their job. The Muslim world must demonstrate with its words and actions that they do not wish America replaced with an Islamic state. They must demonstrate that they do not support terrorism against America and our allies.
Your job is to protect and defend the United States of America. That is your sworn duty.
And you abrogate your sworn duty every time you go on Arab television stations and apologize for America’s foreign policy. You abrogate your sworn duty every time you force American allies to negotiate with terrorists. You abrogate your sworn duty every time you pledge to protect the interests “not just of the United States, but also ordinary people who right now are suffering from poverty and a lack of opportunity” -- the same ordinary people who elect Hamas, prop up the Ayatollahs, supported the Taliban, recruit for al-Qaida, and live off of the beneficence of Hezbollah. Not all Muslims are “extraordinary people,” and the interests of suffering Muslims do not always align with American interests.
On Nov. 4, 2008, Americans elected their first international president. They elected a man who does not seek to preserve American values. Leftists perceived George W. Bush as an imperialist for American interests; by the same token, Obama is an imperialist for “global interests.” In a war to save America from implacable foes, Obama’s Global Interest Imperialism dooms American exceptionalism to the ash heap of history. With it may go the last, best hope of Earth.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
On Nov. 4, 2008, America lost the war on terror. President Barack Obama’s feckless, pathetically apologetic perspective on foreign policy spells the end of the quest for liberty in the Middle East. It spells the end of America’s moral leadership in the global war for freedom. And it spells the end of a hard-fought campaign to protect America. Our enemies must be happily celebrating their great good fortune in America’s election of this platitudinous, morally relativistic, Jimmy Carter carbon copy in the midst of battle.
On Jan. 26, 2009, Obama granted his first television interview as president of the United States to Al Arabiya, the Dubai-based television network part-owned by the Saudi government. In the interview, he demonstrated with the utmost clarity that his understanding is inversely proportional to his arrogance.
He started by humbling America before the world. “(A)ll too often the United States starts by dictating,” Obama said, shame for his country dripping from his lips. “So let’s listen.” There was no call for the Muslim world, which has sponsored genocide after genocide, terrorist group upon terrorist group, to listen.
Obama apologized for President Bush’s “Islamic fascism” terminology, equating Muslim terrorism with nonexistent terrorism by Jews and Christians: “the language we use matters. And what we need to understand is, is that there are extremist organizations -- whether Muslim or any other faith in the past -- that will use faith as a justification for violence. We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith's name.” There was no call for the Muslim world to actively fight terrorism -- honesty is not the Obama administration’s policy.
Obama repeated the Clintonian line that the Palestinian Arab-Israeli conflict could be solved by pressing Israel into negotiations with terrorists -- a foolish conceit that has cost Israeli and Palestinian lives. He talked about getting rid of “preconceptions” regarding the Israeli-Arab conflict -- code for embracing negotiations with Hamas. He pledged to talk with Iran -- on the same day that Iran’s government spokesman branded the Holocaust “a big lie.” He bought into the Muslim-sponsored notion that the Palestinian Arab-Israeli conflict lies at the heart of all trouble in the Middle East. He praised the one-sided Saudi peace plan as an act of “great courage.”
Most sickeningly, Obama openly jettisoned his constitutional role as the caretaker for America’s national interest. Instead, Obama posed himself as an honest broker between America and the Muslim world. “(T)he United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect,” he said. “I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.” Obama didn’t stop there. He stated that his job is to speak for the Muslim world, defending them from Americans’ negative perceptions: “And my job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives.”
No, Mr. President. Your job is not to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world harbors us no ill will. That is their job. The Muslim world must demonstrate with its words and actions that they do not wish America replaced with an Islamic state. They must demonstrate that they do not support terrorism against America and our allies.
Your job is to protect and defend the United States of America. That is your sworn duty.
And you abrogate your sworn duty every time you go on Arab television stations and apologize for America’s foreign policy. You abrogate your sworn duty every time you force American allies to negotiate with terrorists. You abrogate your sworn duty every time you pledge to protect the interests “not just of the United States, but also ordinary people who right now are suffering from poverty and a lack of opportunity” -- the same ordinary people who elect Hamas, prop up the Ayatollahs, supported the Taliban, recruit for al-Qaida, and live off of the beneficence of Hezbollah. Not all Muslims are “extraordinary people,” and the interests of suffering Muslims do not always align with American interests.
On Nov. 4, 2008, Americans elected their first international president. They elected a man who does not seek to preserve American values. Leftists perceived George W. Bush as an imperialist for American interests; by the same token, Obama is an imperialist for “global interests.” In a war to save America from implacable foes, Obama’s Global Interest Imperialism dooms American exceptionalism to the ash heap of history. With it may go the last, best hope of Earth.
Will Obama Emulate The Century's Worst President?
Michael Medved
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
How worthless is Jimmy Carter?
Haley Barbour, Governor of Mississippi, makes the point that when an opposition party seizes control of the White House from its rival, that party almost always holds the Presidency for two terms at least. This means that the odds heavily favor Barack Obama’s reelection in 2012.
In the last 112 years, an opposition party took over the presidency eleven times (McKinley in 1896, Wilson in 1912, Harding in 1920, FDR in 1932, Eisenhower in 1952, Kennedy in 1960, Nixon in 1968, Carter in 1976, Reagan in 1980, Clinton in 1992, George W. Bush in 2000). In ten out of those eleven instances the new White House party maintained control of the executive branch for at least two terms.
Only once in 112 years – since the distant days of William McKinley – did a new president turn out to be so feckless, so incompetent, so sanctimonious, so repellant, so self-destructive, so….well, worthless….that his party lost the White House (big time!) after only one term.
Now, can we guess who this appalling loser might be?
In the sweep of recent history, James Earl Carter, Jr., stands utterly alone in leading his party to capture the White House with overwhelming Congressional majorities (61 Senators, 292 members of the House – far bigger margins than Obama!) and then, after a brief four year demonstration of almost unimaginable ineptitude, handing the reins of government back to the opposition.
In looking ahead to the Obama administration, no one wants an economic or foreign policy repetition of the nightmarish Carter years – the Republic can hardly afford that sort of long-term damage.
But GOP loyalists should legitimately hope that the new president does manage to follow Little Jimmy’s political example – repeating the Carteresque feat of losing the presidency for his party after a single term of office.
In this regard, President Obama’s first week has already provided a promising start—displaying some of the nastiness, small-mindedness, insecurity, and self-righteousness that notably characterized the Georgia Peanut. The Inaugural Address included graceless digs at President Bush that undermined the promised theme of “unity,” while touchy, grumpy comments to the White House press corps stunned reporters who had previously displayed their infatuation with the new president. The odd remarks scolding Republicans with a reminder that “I won” and warning them not to listen to Rush Limbaugh, hardly characterize a self-confident, optimistic, coalition-building leader in the style of FDR, JFK or Ronald Reagan.
Of course, it’s still much too early to say that Barack Obama has chosen to follow the disastrous path of Carterism, but it’s worth noting that the appallingly loathsome 39th President is still very much on the scene and is out promoting a new book in which he offers the current incumbent his misguided advice on Middle East Peace.
If President Obama chooses to invite the Worthless One to any sort of White House meeting, then Republicans can take encouragement from the interaction and nurture renewed hope for a big comeback within four years.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
How worthless is Jimmy Carter?
Haley Barbour, Governor of Mississippi, makes the point that when an opposition party seizes control of the White House from its rival, that party almost always holds the Presidency for two terms at least. This means that the odds heavily favor Barack Obama’s reelection in 2012.
In the last 112 years, an opposition party took over the presidency eleven times (McKinley in 1896, Wilson in 1912, Harding in 1920, FDR in 1932, Eisenhower in 1952, Kennedy in 1960, Nixon in 1968, Carter in 1976, Reagan in 1980, Clinton in 1992, George W. Bush in 2000). In ten out of those eleven instances the new White House party maintained control of the executive branch for at least two terms.
Only once in 112 years – since the distant days of William McKinley – did a new president turn out to be so feckless, so incompetent, so sanctimonious, so repellant, so self-destructive, so….well, worthless….that his party lost the White House (big time!) after only one term.
Now, can we guess who this appalling loser might be?
In the sweep of recent history, James Earl Carter, Jr., stands utterly alone in leading his party to capture the White House with overwhelming Congressional majorities (61 Senators, 292 members of the House – far bigger margins than Obama!) and then, after a brief four year demonstration of almost unimaginable ineptitude, handing the reins of government back to the opposition.
In looking ahead to the Obama administration, no one wants an economic or foreign policy repetition of the nightmarish Carter years – the Republic can hardly afford that sort of long-term damage.
But GOP loyalists should legitimately hope that the new president does manage to follow Little Jimmy’s political example – repeating the Carteresque feat of losing the presidency for his party after a single term of office.
In this regard, President Obama’s first week has already provided a promising start—displaying some of the nastiness, small-mindedness, insecurity, and self-righteousness that notably characterized the Georgia Peanut. The Inaugural Address included graceless digs at President Bush that undermined the promised theme of “unity,” while touchy, grumpy comments to the White House press corps stunned reporters who had previously displayed their infatuation with the new president. The odd remarks scolding Republicans with a reminder that “I won” and warning them not to listen to Rush Limbaugh, hardly characterize a self-confident, optimistic, coalition-building leader in the style of FDR, JFK or Ronald Reagan.
Of course, it’s still much too early to say that Barack Obama has chosen to follow the disastrous path of Carterism, but it’s worth noting that the appallingly loathsome 39th President is still very much on the scene and is out promoting a new book in which he offers the current incumbent his misguided advice on Middle East Peace.
If President Obama chooses to invite the Worthless One to any sort of White House meeting, then Republicans can take encouragement from the interaction and nurture renewed hope for a big comeback within four years.
Obama's Collectivist Nationalism
Tony Blankley
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
President Barack Obama is a beguiling but confounding figure. As he said of himself in "The Audacity of Hope," "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." It is indeed audacious that he should proclaim this consciously disingenuous attribute. And as one reads his inaugural address, it is hard not to conclude that it was crafted shrewdly to perpetuate such confusion.
Run-of-the-mill politicians try to hide their duplicity. Only the most gifted of that profession brag that they intend to confound and confuse the public. Such an effort is beyond ingenious; it is brazenly ingenuous.
And it is working. Many of my fellow conservative commentators are embarrassingly eager to search Obama's words, groveling for hopeful signs that he is not a radical intent on changing the face and nature of our republic. Some of our Tory conservatives have clung to his words ("hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old; these things are true") as evidence of a deep conservatism.
Other smitten conservative commentators take false comfort from his reference to George Washington's "small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river."
Free market conservatives point hopefully, pathetically, to the first clauses of these words he said: "Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control." That "watchful eye" he calls for may be as benign as Teddy Roosevelt's anti-monopoly policies, or it could be as constricting as French Socialism -- or worse. Obama offers philosophical hope to all.
And how easily (willingly?) some of our fellow conservative commentators are seduced to believe the good parts and hope away the bad bits.
What are we to make of the following dismissive assertion by Obama? "On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics. We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness."
And then a few paragraphs on, he concludes the thought with the assertion that "what the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them -- that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply."
What exactly are the "petty grievances," the "worn-out dogmas" and the "stale political arguments that have consumed us"? Well, as the most liberal senator in Washington, as a man who has called for redistributive justice and who told Joe the Plumber, "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," it is a fair guess that free markets, low tax rates and a respect for private property are the worn-out dogmas, petty grievances and childish things that he believes we cynics must move beyond. One man's worn-out dogmas are another man's philosophical lodestars.
I believe that Obama intends to craft a new nationalism, using the disassembled timber of our traditional values to build a new, more collectivist and less individualistic ship of state. The planks will look vaguely familiar, but the ship will be quite different. It is as if he would disassemble the warship Old Ironsides and build with its timbers a collectivist's ark.
Oddly, my suspicion is confirmed by my liberal friend, scholar and columnist for The Washington Post E.J. Dionne, who wrote last week that "President Obama intends to use conservative values for progressive ends. He will cast extreme individualism as an infantile approach to politics that must be supplanted by a more adult sense of personal and collective responsibility. And in trying to do all these things, he will confuse a lot of people."
Perhaps E.J., hopefully, and I, suspiciously, both have misread Obama. But one is entitled to be suspicious of a politician who openly brags, "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." That strikes me as a conscious intent to deceive in order to diffuse opposition to his designs until it is too late to block them. Ronald Reagan never hid his policy intentions from public view. Neither, in fairness, did Lyndon Johnson or Walter Mondale or Barney Frank or Nancy Pelosi.
A politician who will not sail under his own flag sails, in effect, against all flags. Such a strategy may, in time, undercut his support from increasingly suspicious progressives, liberals, moderates and conservatives -- once they recognize the deception.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
President Barack Obama is a beguiling but confounding figure. As he said of himself in "The Audacity of Hope," "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." It is indeed audacious that he should proclaim this consciously disingenuous attribute. And as one reads his inaugural address, it is hard not to conclude that it was crafted shrewdly to perpetuate such confusion.
Run-of-the-mill politicians try to hide their duplicity. Only the most gifted of that profession brag that they intend to confound and confuse the public. Such an effort is beyond ingenious; it is brazenly ingenuous.
And it is working. Many of my fellow conservative commentators are embarrassingly eager to search Obama's words, groveling for hopeful signs that he is not a radical intent on changing the face and nature of our republic. Some of our Tory conservatives have clung to his words ("hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old; these things are true") as evidence of a deep conservatism.
Other smitten conservative commentators take false comfort from his reference to George Washington's "small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river."
Free market conservatives point hopefully, pathetically, to the first clauses of these words he said: "Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control." That "watchful eye" he calls for may be as benign as Teddy Roosevelt's anti-monopoly policies, or it could be as constricting as French Socialism -- or worse. Obama offers philosophical hope to all.
And how easily (willingly?) some of our fellow conservative commentators are seduced to believe the good parts and hope away the bad bits.
What are we to make of the following dismissive assertion by Obama? "On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics. We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness."
And then a few paragraphs on, he concludes the thought with the assertion that "what the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them -- that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply."
What exactly are the "petty grievances," the "worn-out dogmas" and the "stale political arguments that have consumed us"? Well, as the most liberal senator in Washington, as a man who has called for redistributive justice and who told Joe the Plumber, "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," it is a fair guess that free markets, low tax rates and a respect for private property are the worn-out dogmas, petty grievances and childish things that he believes we cynics must move beyond. One man's worn-out dogmas are another man's philosophical lodestars.
I believe that Obama intends to craft a new nationalism, using the disassembled timber of our traditional values to build a new, more collectivist and less individualistic ship of state. The planks will look vaguely familiar, but the ship will be quite different. It is as if he would disassemble the warship Old Ironsides and build with its timbers a collectivist's ark.
Oddly, my suspicion is confirmed by my liberal friend, scholar and columnist for The Washington Post E.J. Dionne, who wrote last week that "President Obama intends to use conservative values for progressive ends. He will cast extreme individualism as an infantile approach to politics that must be supplanted by a more adult sense of personal and collective responsibility. And in trying to do all these things, he will confuse a lot of people."
Perhaps E.J., hopefully, and I, suspiciously, both have misread Obama. But one is entitled to be suspicious of a politician who openly brags, "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." That strikes me as a conscious intent to deceive in order to diffuse opposition to his designs until it is too late to block them. Ronald Reagan never hid his policy intentions from public view. Neither, in fairness, did Lyndon Johnson or Walter Mondale or Barney Frank or Nancy Pelosi.
A politician who will not sail under his own flag sails, in effect, against all flags. Such a strategy may, in time, undercut his support from increasingly suspicious progressives, liberals, moderates and conservatives -- once they recognize the deception.
Obama and Post-Racist America
Dinesh D'Souza
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Yes, everyone is going ga-ga over Obama, and there is a reason for it. The reason has nothing to do with Obama’s promise to introduce “change” to America, since it remains unclear what kind of change Obama will introduce, and whether this will actually improve our economy and make us safer. Recognizing that Obama is untested material, the media has been focusing on the historic significance of Obama’s presidency. Never mind, we hear, that he gave a pedestrian inauguration speech without a single memorable line. As several pundits observed, the real significance was in who Obama is and on what his inauguration represented.
As I watched Obama take the oath of office, I was moved, along with many others, but I also felt a sense of vindication. In 1995 I published a controversial book The End of Racism. The meaning of the title was not that there was no more racism in America. Certainly in a big country one can find many examples of racism. My argument was that racism, which once used to be systematic, had now become episodic. In other words, racism existed, but it no longer controlled the lives of blacks and other minorities. Indeed racial discrimination could not explain why some groups succeeded in America and why other groups did not.
The old civil rights model held that groups at the top of society got there through discrimination. Yet the empirical evidence showed that the two most successful groups in America were Asian Americans and Jews. Certainly these two groups didn’t succeed by keeping everyone else down; rather, they succeeded by out-competing everyone else. Moreover, these were minority groups that had not allowed discrimination to keep them down. As for African Americans, their position near the bottom rung of the ladder could be better explained by cultural factors than by racial victimization.
One of the new terms that The End of Racism coined was the idea of “rational discrimination.” The basic idea here is that there are two kinds of discrimination: one is based on prejudice, and the other is based on conclusions. If groups are hated just for their skin color, then this is irrational discrimination. But if groups provoke hostility on account of their behavior, then this is rational discrimination. The implication of this idea is that it is not racist to be wary of African Americans who behave badly, as long as you are well disposed toward African Americans who conduct themselves admirably.
When I first published these arguments, they produced a maelstrom of controversy. My book came out around the time of the O.J. Simpson verdict, exonerating him for killing his ex-wife, and also the Million Man March on Washington. (Since we lived in the nation’s capital at the time, I prudently skipped town during the weekend of the Million Man March.) So the racial atmosphere in the country was a bit raw, and even some conservatives were unnerved by my claims.
I may have been ahead of my time, but it now seems that I was not wrong. Here we get to the real significance of Obama’s election and his ascendancy to the presidency. Consider the oceans of ink that have been spilled over the past couple of decades about how America is a racist society, how bigotry runs in the veins of white America, how little real progress has been made, how far we still have to go, and so on. A few years ago I debated Jesse Jackson at Stanford University and he couldn’t give any evidence that contemporary racism had kept his children down. At the same time, he said that precisely the absence of evidence is what worried him the most. Jackson’s argument was that racism, once overt, had now become covert. In other words, racism hadn’t decreased in the slightest but it now worked in ever-more-subtle ways to deny African Americans their share of the American dream.
Would anyone who had been drinking this intellectual Kool-Aid for the past several years have been prepared for Obama’s election? True, Obama is no Jesse Jackson. But precisely the difference between the two shows that it is individual conduct and demeanor that is decisive here, not skin color. Obama doesn’t come across as a race-hustler. He doesn’t seek to turn victimization into profit. Rather, he makes his claims on the merits and he appeals to shared American ideals. To borrow a line from Martin Luther King, Obama seeks to be judged not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character. And Americans have responded to that, so that King’s dream has become a tangible reality in Obama’s life. “Rational discrimination”? You be the judge.
If Obama’s election means anything, it means that we are now living in post-racist America. That’s why even those of us who didn’t vote for Obama have good reason to celebrate.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Yes, everyone is going ga-ga over Obama, and there is a reason for it. The reason has nothing to do with Obama’s promise to introduce “change” to America, since it remains unclear what kind of change Obama will introduce, and whether this will actually improve our economy and make us safer. Recognizing that Obama is untested material, the media has been focusing on the historic significance of Obama’s presidency. Never mind, we hear, that he gave a pedestrian inauguration speech without a single memorable line. As several pundits observed, the real significance was in who Obama is and on what his inauguration represented.
As I watched Obama take the oath of office, I was moved, along with many others, but I also felt a sense of vindication. In 1995 I published a controversial book The End of Racism. The meaning of the title was not that there was no more racism in America. Certainly in a big country one can find many examples of racism. My argument was that racism, which once used to be systematic, had now become episodic. In other words, racism existed, but it no longer controlled the lives of blacks and other minorities. Indeed racial discrimination could not explain why some groups succeeded in America and why other groups did not.
The old civil rights model held that groups at the top of society got there through discrimination. Yet the empirical evidence showed that the two most successful groups in America were Asian Americans and Jews. Certainly these two groups didn’t succeed by keeping everyone else down; rather, they succeeded by out-competing everyone else. Moreover, these were minority groups that had not allowed discrimination to keep them down. As for African Americans, their position near the bottom rung of the ladder could be better explained by cultural factors than by racial victimization.
One of the new terms that The End of Racism coined was the idea of “rational discrimination.” The basic idea here is that there are two kinds of discrimination: one is based on prejudice, and the other is based on conclusions. If groups are hated just for their skin color, then this is irrational discrimination. But if groups provoke hostility on account of their behavior, then this is rational discrimination. The implication of this idea is that it is not racist to be wary of African Americans who behave badly, as long as you are well disposed toward African Americans who conduct themselves admirably.
When I first published these arguments, they produced a maelstrom of controversy. My book came out around the time of the O.J. Simpson verdict, exonerating him for killing his ex-wife, and also the Million Man March on Washington. (Since we lived in the nation’s capital at the time, I prudently skipped town during the weekend of the Million Man March.) So the racial atmosphere in the country was a bit raw, and even some conservatives were unnerved by my claims.
I may have been ahead of my time, but it now seems that I was not wrong. Here we get to the real significance of Obama’s election and his ascendancy to the presidency. Consider the oceans of ink that have been spilled over the past couple of decades about how America is a racist society, how bigotry runs in the veins of white America, how little real progress has been made, how far we still have to go, and so on. A few years ago I debated Jesse Jackson at Stanford University and he couldn’t give any evidence that contemporary racism had kept his children down. At the same time, he said that precisely the absence of evidence is what worried him the most. Jackson’s argument was that racism, once overt, had now become covert. In other words, racism hadn’t decreased in the slightest but it now worked in ever-more-subtle ways to deny African Americans their share of the American dream.
Would anyone who had been drinking this intellectual Kool-Aid for the past several years have been prepared for Obama’s election? True, Obama is no Jesse Jackson. But precisely the difference between the two shows that it is individual conduct and demeanor that is decisive here, not skin color. Obama doesn’t come across as a race-hustler. He doesn’t seek to turn victimization into profit. Rather, he makes his claims on the merits and he appeals to shared American ideals. To borrow a line from Martin Luther King, Obama seeks to be judged not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character. And Americans have responded to that, so that King’s dream has become a tangible reality in Obama’s life. “Rational discrimination”? You be the judge.
If Obama’s election means anything, it means that we are now living in post-racist America. That’s why even those of us who didn’t vote for Obama have good reason to celebrate.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
California college student: Terror is the New Communism
Dennis Prager
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
As they say on the TV show “24,” the following took place last week between 9 and 10 p.m. on a flight from Los Angeles to Denver.
I spoke for a few minutes to the 20-year-old woman seated across the aisle from me.
She: What brings you to Denver?”
Me: I am giving a speech.
She: What do you do?
Me: I'm a radio talk show host.
She: Who did you vote for?
Me: McCain
She: Why?
Me: Smaller government and the war on terror.
She: Terror is the new communism.
Me: Communism killed about a hundred million people. And who do you think attacked and killed 3,000 of us on Sept. 11?
She: The government.
For the record, as I believe this to be essential to understanding this young woman’s views, she is a student attending the University of California Santa Barbara.
Truth is she had to be a student at a major university. She would never have come up with “Terror is the new Communism” on her own. It is a moral obscenity that one has to learn.
Of course, there is an irony to this statement. Meant in the opposite way she meant it, I could largely assent to the proposition that terror is the new communism. Communism was an enslaving and murderous threat in its time and the Jihadism is such a threat in our lifetime.
But that is not how this young woman meant the statement. As she has learned history and the contemporary world, communism was a bogeyman in its time and terror is a bogeyman in our time.
When I told her that communism had killed 100 million people, I could not tell if she even processed the words. It was as if had I uttered a series of nonsense syllables. She either didn’t believe me or didn’t care.
On the assumption that I had met a person with a normal conscience, the only rational explanation for her non-reaction is that she didn’t believe me and regarded what I said as right-wing propaganda (just as the belief in that Islamist terror threatens us).
In her belief that neither communism nor terror were/are real threats, I suspect this young woman represents many college students. If one wants to understand what left-wing dominance in university social sciences departments produces, one merely had to meet this young woman.
At most universities, communism is a non-evil, indeed, largely a non-issue. The most enslaving and murderous movement in history is almost never taught as such. When communism is mentioned at all, it is usually solely in order to show how vile anti-communists were. Thus, as little as students may know about McCarthyism, most students far more readily identify it with evil than they do communism. Indeed, more could probably identify Joseph McCarthy than Joseph Stalin.
Nor is this a matter of students not being taught to label anything as evil. They have no problem labeling Nazism, Fascism, George W. Bush, slavery, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia, and tobacco companies as evil. It’s just that they won’t label communism as such.
Does one in 10.000 students know of the communist terror-famine that took about 6 million Ukarainian lives. How many know about the communist Pol Pot, who butchered nearly one-third of his fellow Cambodians? Or how many innocents were murdered in the Gulag Archipelago (or could even identify it)? Or that China’s communist tyrant Mao Zedong killed about 60 million of his fellow Chinese? Or that Communist North Korea is essentially a concentration camp in the guise of a country?
The answer to all these questions is very few.
And that, quite frankly, breaks my heart. I am currently reading “Mao: The Secret Life,” almost universally regarded, even in the mainstream media, as the most important book on Mao ever written. According to the authors, in 1930-31 alone, Mao and his gang developed 120 types of torture for use on innocent people he wanted to force into phony confessions so as to rule by terror. They included burning the vaginas of wives of opponents and pulling wires through men’s penises, which were then attached to their ears and plucked.
These poor souls have no memorial. Least of all at an American university.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
As they say on the TV show “24,” the following took place last week between 9 and 10 p.m. on a flight from Los Angeles to Denver.
I spoke for a few minutes to the 20-year-old woman seated across the aisle from me.
She: What brings you to Denver?”
Me: I am giving a speech.
She: What do you do?
Me: I'm a radio talk show host.
She: Who did you vote for?
Me: McCain
She: Why?
Me: Smaller government and the war on terror.
She: Terror is the new communism.
Me: Communism killed about a hundred million people. And who do you think attacked and killed 3,000 of us on Sept. 11?
She: The government.
For the record, as I believe this to be essential to understanding this young woman’s views, she is a student attending the University of California Santa Barbara.
Truth is she had to be a student at a major university. She would never have come up with “Terror is the new Communism” on her own. It is a moral obscenity that one has to learn.
Of course, there is an irony to this statement. Meant in the opposite way she meant it, I could largely assent to the proposition that terror is the new communism. Communism was an enslaving and murderous threat in its time and the Jihadism is such a threat in our lifetime.
But that is not how this young woman meant the statement. As she has learned history and the contemporary world, communism was a bogeyman in its time and terror is a bogeyman in our time.
When I told her that communism had killed 100 million people, I could not tell if she even processed the words. It was as if had I uttered a series of nonsense syllables. She either didn’t believe me or didn’t care.
On the assumption that I had met a person with a normal conscience, the only rational explanation for her non-reaction is that she didn’t believe me and regarded what I said as right-wing propaganda (just as the belief in that Islamist terror threatens us).
In her belief that neither communism nor terror were/are real threats, I suspect this young woman represents many college students. If one wants to understand what left-wing dominance in university social sciences departments produces, one merely had to meet this young woman.
At most universities, communism is a non-evil, indeed, largely a non-issue. The most enslaving and murderous movement in history is almost never taught as such. When communism is mentioned at all, it is usually solely in order to show how vile anti-communists were. Thus, as little as students may know about McCarthyism, most students far more readily identify it with evil than they do communism. Indeed, more could probably identify Joseph McCarthy than Joseph Stalin.
Nor is this a matter of students not being taught to label anything as evil. They have no problem labeling Nazism, Fascism, George W. Bush, slavery, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia, and tobacco companies as evil. It’s just that they won’t label communism as such.
Does one in 10.000 students know of the communist terror-famine that took about 6 million Ukarainian lives. How many know about the communist Pol Pot, who butchered nearly one-third of his fellow Cambodians? Or how many innocents were murdered in the Gulag Archipelago (or could even identify it)? Or that China’s communist tyrant Mao Zedong killed about 60 million of his fellow Chinese? Or that Communist North Korea is essentially a concentration camp in the guise of a country?
The answer to all these questions is very few.
And that, quite frankly, breaks my heart. I am currently reading “Mao: The Secret Life,” almost universally regarded, even in the mainstream media, as the most important book on Mao ever written. According to the authors, in 1930-31 alone, Mao and his gang developed 120 types of torture for use on innocent people he wanted to force into phony confessions so as to rule by terror. They included burning the vaginas of wives of opponents and pulling wires through men’s penises, which were then attached to their ears and plucked.
These poor souls have no memorial. Least of all at an American university.
Fight Back Against the Tolerance Fascists
John Hawkins
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Despite America's inspirational legacy, this has not always been an exceptionally tolerant nation and there are few Americans who would deny that. That being said, we've now gone so far in the opposite direction that it has become problematic as well. Tolerance taken to an extreme has actually impeded our ability to rationally discuss vitally important issues that will determine whether our country continues to be successful and prosperous over the long haul.
For example, the debate over gay marriage consists largely of one side talking about thousands of years of human experience and a potential devaluing of marriage that could lead to more society-damaging out-of-wedlock births in the future -- while the opponents of traditional marriage throw tantrums, try to get people fired for disagreeing with them, and shriek "homophobe" at the top of their lungs. This is highly ironic given that twenty years ago, most gay activists denied, publicly at least, that gay marriage was even on their radar at all.
A related issue is single mothers. Although we all know single mothers who work hard and are fantastic parents, if you look at statistics, it is absolutely undeniable that two parent households, on the whole, do a much, much better job of raising children. That's why it's desirable for our society to discourage single motherhood as much as possible -- but, if you point that out, you get howling feminists complaining that you must be a misogynist who hates women.
Then there's immigration. The whole point of allowing people to immigrate to this country is to benefit the people who are already here. Yet, if you try to have any sort of substantive conversation about how many people we are allowing into the country each year, where they should be coming from, or how we should choose them, the screaming starts again. "Why do you hate immigrants?"
It has gotten so bad that we can't even have a real discussion about how we should handle illegal immigrants any more. We have a coalition of business groups that benefit from hiring illegal aliens, Republicans who think they can pull in more Hispanic voters, and liberals who think illegals will become citizens and vote for them -- all essentially crying "You hate Hispanics!" any time someone opposes allowing an unlimited flow of illegal immigrants to enter our country and become American citizens. In other words, the only way to avoid being labeled a bigot is to oppose increased security measures any time they come up while always supporting the legalization of more illegals.
Then there's the dilemma posed to us by the war on terror. Most Muslims are moderate and are not hostile to our country. However, there is no reliable way to tell the moderate Muslims from the Islamic radicals who want to see us dead. Moreover, the moderate Muslims are usually very silent about the actions of the radicals and even tend to quietly support them when they engage in objectionable practices that have been previously held in contempt by Western civilization. In European nations, we've seen unconscionable restrictions imposed on free speech, Sharia tacitly accepted as the law of the land in certain areas, significant Islam related increases in rape and violence, and in some cases, non-Muslim women forced to take up the veil for their own protection. Shouldn't we be having a real back-and-forth exchange, free of shouts of "Islamophobia" -- about how to avoid importing the problems we're seeing in France, Britain, and the Netherlands into our country?
If you'll notice, these are all extraordinarily important issues that will ultimately have a great deal to do with whether our children live in a nation as great as the one we grew up in. Can we continue to be the pre-eminent nation in the world if we give the short-shrift to these momentous topics just because a few people claim to be offended?
Here's the reality: 95% of the time, if not more, when people yowl about racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, hatred of the poor, the environment, old people, etc., it's not true. Worse yet, most of the people doing the shouting KNOW IT'S NOT TRUE. They're merely crying wolf for political gain because they believe they may benefit personally from it -- or in the case of organizations like the NAACP, La Raza, GLAAD, CAIR, NOW and the alphabet soup of other groups that make a living off of having grievances, because it keeps them rolling in money and publicity.
Unfortunately, since the people benefiting from continually playing the tolerance card are unlikely to give it up any time soon, those of us who put our country first are going to have to be bolder about confronting them, drawing attention to the real issues, and sticking up for people who have the courage not to be cowed by political correctness. Whether our country remains a shining city on a hill or becomes just another unremarkable slum basking in its faded glory will depend on how successful we are at that task.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Despite America's inspirational legacy, this has not always been an exceptionally tolerant nation and there are few Americans who would deny that. That being said, we've now gone so far in the opposite direction that it has become problematic as well. Tolerance taken to an extreme has actually impeded our ability to rationally discuss vitally important issues that will determine whether our country continues to be successful and prosperous over the long haul.
For example, the debate over gay marriage consists largely of one side talking about thousands of years of human experience and a potential devaluing of marriage that could lead to more society-damaging out-of-wedlock births in the future -- while the opponents of traditional marriage throw tantrums, try to get people fired for disagreeing with them, and shriek "homophobe" at the top of their lungs. This is highly ironic given that twenty years ago, most gay activists denied, publicly at least, that gay marriage was even on their radar at all.
A related issue is single mothers. Although we all know single mothers who work hard and are fantastic parents, if you look at statistics, it is absolutely undeniable that two parent households, on the whole, do a much, much better job of raising children. That's why it's desirable for our society to discourage single motherhood as much as possible -- but, if you point that out, you get howling feminists complaining that you must be a misogynist who hates women.
Then there's immigration. The whole point of allowing people to immigrate to this country is to benefit the people who are already here. Yet, if you try to have any sort of substantive conversation about how many people we are allowing into the country each year, where they should be coming from, or how we should choose them, the screaming starts again. "Why do you hate immigrants?"
It has gotten so bad that we can't even have a real discussion about how we should handle illegal immigrants any more. We have a coalition of business groups that benefit from hiring illegal aliens, Republicans who think they can pull in more Hispanic voters, and liberals who think illegals will become citizens and vote for them -- all essentially crying "You hate Hispanics!" any time someone opposes allowing an unlimited flow of illegal immigrants to enter our country and become American citizens. In other words, the only way to avoid being labeled a bigot is to oppose increased security measures any time they come up while always supporting the legalization of more illegals.
Then there's the dilemma posed to us by the war on terror. Most Muslims are moderate and are not hostile to our country. However, there is no reliable way to tell the moderate Muslims from the Islamic radicals who want to see us dead. Moreover, the moderate Muslims are usually very silent about the actions of the radicals and even tend to quietly support them when they engage in objectionable practices that have been previously held in contempt by Western civilization. In European nations, we've seen unconscionable restrictions imposed on free speech, Sharia tacitly accepted as the law of the land in certain areas, significant Islam related increases in rape and violence, and in some cases, non-Muslim women forced to take up the veil for their own protection. Shouldn't we be having a real back-and-forth exchange, free of shouts of "Islamophobia" -- about how to avoid importing the problems we're seeing in France, Britain, and the Netherlands into our country?
If you'll notice, these are all extraordinarily important issues that will ultimately have a great deal to do with whether our children live in a nation as great as the one we grew up in. Can we continue to be the pre-eminent nation in the world if we give the short-shrift to these momentous topics just because a few people claim to be offended?
Here's the reality: 95% of the time, if not more, when people yowl about racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, hatred of the poor, the environment, old people, etc., it's not true. Worse yet, most of the people doing the shouting KNOW IT'S NOT TRUE. They're merely crying wolf for political gain because they believe they may benefit personally from it -- or in the case of organizations like the NAACP, La Raza, GLAAD, CAIR, NOW and the alphabet soup of other groups that make a living off of having grievances, because it keeps them rolling in money and publicity.
Unfortunately, since the people benefiting from continually playing the tolerance card are unlikely to give it up any time soon, those of us who put our country first are going to have to be bolder about confronting them, drawing attention to the real issues, and sticking up for people who have the courage not to be cowed by political correctness. Whether our country remains a shining city on a hill or becomes just another unremarkable slum basking in its faded glory will depend on how successful we are at that task.
Supreme Court to Hear New Haven Race Case
La Shawn Barber
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
New Haven firefighter Frank Ricci did what he was supposed to do. He bought the recommended books and studied for a promotion exam. Despite his dyslexia, Ricci scored high enough to qualify for a promotion, but the department threw out all test results. No blacks and only two Hispanics scored high enough to be promoted.
Over a dozen white firefighters and one Hispanic filed suit against the city in 2004, claiming it violated their constitutional rights and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by discriminating against them based on race. Had the fire department certified the test results, however, the lower scorers likely would have sued the city under Title VII's "disparate impact" provision. The fire department was damned if it did and damned if it didn't.
The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the city and dismissed the case. A three-judge panel of a federal appeals court affirmed the dismissal. Bush-appointed judges sought to have the case re-heard, but the court declined by a vote of 7 to 6. Judge Jose Cabranes, a Clinton appointee who dissented, defined the issue this way:
"May a municipal employer disregard the results of a qualifying examination, which was carefully constructed to ensure race-neutrality, on the ground that the results of that examination yielded too many qualified applicants of one race and not enough of another?"
In denying the rehearing, the court contended that a government employer "faced with a prima facie case of disparate-impact liability under Title VII" does not violate the title or the Equal Protection clause by taking facially neutral, but race conscious, measures to avoid liability. With a collective straight face, the court claimed that throwing out the test because too many whites passed it was "facially race-neutral."
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. The disparate impact theory of liability will be front and center. Thirty-eight years ago, the Supreme Court held in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. that for purposes of hiring, an employer's use of a high school diploma requirement and two standardized written tests violated the Civil Rights Act. Black applicants disproportionately lacked diplomas or failed the tests. Griggs laid out the disparate impact analysis for employment. Absence of discriminatory intent is not the end of the discussion. Even if an employment practice is "facially neutral," (a scored test, for instance) it is suspect if it has a disparate impact on members of a protected class. To avoid liability, businesses would have to demonstrate that such tests are a justified "business necessity" or related to job performance.
The court in Ricci also will take up the issue of skin deep-only diversity. In 2003, the Supreme Court held in Grutter v. Bollinger that racial diversity is a "compelling state interest" that justifies race preferences in college admissions. (Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the practice won't be necessary in 25 years.) The presence of a so-called critical mass of minority students provides educational benefits for other students.
Granting preferences to and discriminating against individuals on the basis of race are two practices that should have been tossed out of the government decades ago. Is ensuring racial diversity in a fire department a compelling state interest that justifies tossing out test scores because black firefighters failed to make the grade? They need more training and better study habits, not lower standard hand-holding.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
New Haven firefighter Frank Ricci did what he was supposed to do. He bought the recommended books and studied for a promotion exam. Despite his dyslexia, Ricci scored high enough to qualify for a promotion, but the department threw out all test results. No blacks and only two Hispanics scored high enough to be promoted.
Over a dozen white firefighters and one Hispanic filed suit against the city in 2004, claiming it violated their constitutional rights and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by discriminating against them based on race. Had the fire department certified the test results, however, the lower scorers likely would have sued the city under Title VII's "disparate impact" provision. The fire department was damned if it did and damned if it didn't.
The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the city and dismissed the case. A three-judge panel of a federal appeals court affirmed the dismissal. Bush-appointed judges sought to have the case re-heard, but the court declined by a vote of 7 to 6. Judge Jose Cabranes, a Clinton appointee who dissented, defined the issue this way:
"May a municipal employer disregard the results of a qualifying examination, which was carefully constructed to ensure race-neutrality, on the ground that the results of that examination yielded too many qualified applicants of one race and not enough of another?"
In denying the rehearing, the court contended that a government employer "faced with a prima facie case of disparate-impact liability under Title VII" does not violate the title or the Equal Protection clause by taking facially neutral, but race conscious, measures to avoid liability. With a collective straight face, the court claimed that throwing out the test because too many whites passed it was "facially race-neutral."
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. The disparate impact theory of liability will be front and center. Thirty-eight years ago, the Supreme Court held in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. that for purposes of hiring, an employer's use of a high school diploma requirement and two standardized written tests violated the Civil Rights Act. Black applicants disproportionately lacked diplomas or failed the tests. Griggs laid out the disparate impact analysis for employment. Absence of discriminatory intent is not the end of the discussion. Even if an employment practice is "facially neutral," (a scored test, for instance) it is suspect if it has a disparate impact on members of a protected class. To avoid liability, businesses would have to demonstrate that such tests are a justified "business necessity" or related to job performance.
The court in Ricci also will take up the issue of skin deep-only diversity. In 2003, the Supreme Court held in Grutter v. Bollinger that racial diversity is a "compelling state interest" that justifies race preferences in college admissions. (Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the practice won't be necessary in 25 years.) The presence of a so-called critical mass of minority students provides educational benefits for other students.
Granting preferences to and discriminating against individuals on the basis of race are two practices that should have been tossed out of the government decades ago. Is ensuring racial diversity in a fire department a compelling state interest that justifies tossing out test scores because black firefighters failed to make the grade? They need more training and better study habits, not lower standard hand-holding.
Monday, January 26, 2009
What "World Opinion" Is Worth
By Carol Platt Liebau
Monday, January 26, 2009
From the files of almost-too-laughable-to-believe-but-not-quite:
EU members are willing to take prisoners from Guantanamo, so long as they are certified pose no threat to their new "host" countries -- in other words, so long as it's certain they're not terrorists.
So let me get this straight: "The world" applauds Barack Obama's plan to close down Guantanamo. That means, of course, that the prisoners have to go somewhere.
That means that, according to "the world," it's A-OK -- nay, even desirable -- for Americans to have Islamic terrorists roosting within the borders of their country. But for the EU? Nah, not so much. It's not apparently enough that the US is the country who has actually caught the terrorists, thereby taking them out of world circulation. We should have to harbor them in our domestic jails, as well.
Perhaps this little episode offers President Obama an insight on just what "world opinion" is worth.
Monday, January 26, 2009
From the files of almost-too-laughable-to-believe-but-not-quite:
EU members are willing to take prisoners from Guantanamo, so long as they are certified pose no threat to their new "host" countries -- in other words, so long as it's certain they're not terrorists.
So let me get this straight: "The world" applauds Barack Obama's plan to close down Guantanamo. That means, of course, that the prisoners have to go somewhere.
That means that, according to "the world," it's A-OK -- nay, even desirable -- for Americans to have Islamic terrorists roosting within the borders of their country. But for the EU? Nah, not so much. It's not apparently enough that the US is the country who has actually caught the terrorists, thereby taking them out of world circulation. We should have to harbor them in our domestic jails, as well.
Perhaps this little episode offers President Obama an insight on just what "world opinion" is worth.
My New Spread the Wealth Grading Policy
Mike S. Adams
Monday, January 26, 2009
Good afternoon students! I’m writing you this email to announce that I’m making some changes in the grading policies I announced two weeks ago when I sent an email with an attached course syllabus. As you know, we now have a new president and I thought it would be nice to align our class policies with some of the policies he will be implementing over the next four years. These will be changes you can believe in and, I hope, changes that will inspire hope, which is our most important American value.
Previously, I announced that I would use a ten-point grading scale, which means that 90% of 100 is an “A,” 80% is a “B,” 70% is a “C,” and 60% is enough for a passing grade of “D.” I also announced that I will refrain from using a “plus/minus” system – even though the faculty handbook gives me that option.
The new policy I am announcing today is that those who score above 90 on the first exam will have points deducted and given to students at the bottom of the grade distribution. For example, if a student gets a 99, I will then deduct nine points and give them to the person with the lowest grade. If a person scores 95 I will then deduct five points and give them to the person with the second lowest grade. If someone scores 93 I will then deduct three points and give them to the next lowest person. And so on.
My point, rather obviously, is that any points above 90 are really not needed since you have an “A” regardless of whether you score 90 or 99. Nor am I convinced that you need to “save” those points for a rainy day. Those who are failing, however, need the points – not unlike the failing banks and automakers that need money to avoid the danger of bankruptcy.
After our second examination, I intend to take a more complex approach to the practice of grade redistribution. I will not be looking at your second test scores but, instead, at the average of your first two test scores. In the process, I may well decide to start taking some points from students in the “B” range. For example, if someone has an average of 85 after two tests I may take a few points and give them away to someone who is failing or who is in danger of failing. I think this is fair because the person with an 85 average is probably unlikely to climb up to an “A” or fall down to a “C.” I may be wrong in some individual cases but, of course, my principal concern is not the individual.
By the end of the semester I will abandon any formal guidelines and just redistribute points in a way that seems just, or fair, to me. I will not rely upon any standards other than my very strong and passionate feelings concerning social justice. In the process, I will not merely seek to eliminate inequality. I will also seek to eliminate the possibility of failure.
I know some are concerned that my system may impact their lives in a very profound way. Grade redistribution will undoubtedly cause some grade point average redistribution. And this, in turn, will mean that some people will not get into the law school or medical school of their choice. Or maybe some day you will be represented by a lawyer – or operated on by a doctor – who is not of the highest quality.
These are all, of course, legitimate long-term concerns. But I believe we need to remain focused on the short term. I think my new system will immediately help the self-esteem of those failing or in danger of failing. It should also help the self-esteem of those who are not in danger of failing. After all, it just feels good to give – even if the giving is compelled and not really “giving” in the literal sense.
Finally, I want to note that this idea was also inspired by a former presidential candidate named George McGovern. In a debate with the late William F. Buckley, McGovern said that people who earn more money should pay more taxes. Buckley replied that the rich do pay more in taxes – and more as a percentage of their income. McGovern looked confused.
But I don’t think there’s anything confusing about our pending social responsibilities. Whether we are talking about income or grades it does not matter how much or what percentage we are giving. The question is and should always be “Can we give more?”
Monday, January 26, 2009
Good afternoon students! I’m writing you this email to announce that I’m making some changes in the grading policies I announced two weeks ago when I sent an email with an attached course syllabus. As you know, we now have a new president and I thought it would be nice to align our class policies with some of the policies he will be implementing over the next four years. These will be changes you can believe in and, I hope, changes that will inspire hope, which is our most important American value.
Previously, I announced that I would use a ten-point grading scale, which means that 90% of 100 is an “A,” 80% is a “B,” 70% is a “C,” and 60% is enough for a passing grade of “D.” I also announced that I will refrain from using a “plus/minus” system – even though the faculty handbook gives me that option.
The new policy I am announcing today is that those who score above 90 on the first exam will have points deducted and given to students at the bottom of the grade distribution. For example, if a student gets a 99, I will then deduct nine points and give them to the person with the lowest grade. If a person scores 95 I will then deduct five points and give them to the person with the second lowest grade. If someone scores 93 I will then deduct three points and give them to the next lowest person. And so on.
My point, rather obviously, is that any points above 90 are really not needed since you have an “A” regardless of whether you score 90 or 99. Nor am I convinced that you need to “save” those points for a rainy day. Those who are failing, however, need the points – not unlike the failing banks and automakers that need money to avoid the danger of bankruptcy.
After our second examination, I intend to take a more complex approach to the practice of grade redistribution. I will not be looking at your second test scores but, instead, at the average of your first two test scores. In the process, I may well decide to start taking some points from students in the “B” range. For example, if someone has an average of 85 after two tests I may take a few points and give them away to someone who is failing or who is in danger of failing. I think this is fair because the person with an 85 average is probably unlikely to climb up to an “A” or fall down to a “C.” I may be wrong in some individual cases but, of course, my principal concern is not the individual.
By the end of the semester I will abandon any formal guidelines and just redistribute points in a way that seems just, or fair, to me. I will not rely upon any standards other than my very strong and passionate feelings concerning social justice. In the process, I will not merely seek to eliminate inequality. I will also seek to eliminate the possibility of failure.
I know some are concerned that my system may impact their lives in a very profound way. Grade redistribution will undoubtedly cause some grade point average redistribution. And this, in turn, will mean that some people will not get into the law school or medical school of their choice. Or maybe some day you will be represented by a lawyer – or operated on by a doctor – who is not of the highest quality.
These are all, of course, legitimate long-term concerns. But I believe we need to remain focused on the short term. I think my new system will immediately help the self-esteem of those failing or in danger of failing. It should also help the self-esteem of those who are not in danger of failing. After all, it just feels good to give – even if the giving is compelled and not really “giving” in the literal sense.
Finally, I want to note that this idea was also inspired by a former presidential candidate named George McGovern. In a debate with the late William F. Buckley, McGovern said that people who earn more money should pay more taxes. Buckley replied that the rich do pay more in taxes – and more as a percentage of their income. McGovern looked confused.
But I don’t think there’s anything confusing about our pending social responsibilities. Whether we are talking about income or grades it does not matter how much or what percentage we are giving. The question is and should always be “Can we give more?”
Liberals in Love - Interview With Bernard Goldberg
Bill Steigerwald
Monday, January 26, 2009
Award-winning network TV reporter Bernard Goldberg first hit pay dirt in the book world with "Bias," his 2001 best-seller exposing how the news we saw was distorted by the liberal bias of the journalists he worked with during his long career with CBS News. Several media books later, Goldberg is back with "A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media." The Regnery Publishing book, which goes on sale Monday, indicts mainstream print and electronic journalists not for having liberal biases, which are a given, but for becoming open and unapologetic activists for Obama.
Q: What's your 60-second synopsis of your book?
A: This is not a book about the same old media bias. This time journalists cross a very bright line. This time they stopped being witnesses to history and they were intent on helping to shape history. They moved from media bias to media activism. In my whole life I have never seen the media get on board for one candidate the way they did this time around and -- this is very important -- they did it without even a hint of embarrassment.
It isn't just conservatives that feel this way. Lots of people feel the media was in the tank for Barack Obama. They were because he was young, because he was cool, because he was black and because he was liberal. There's no way in the world we would have seen this kind of slobbering if we would had just inaugurated the first black president who was conservative and Republican.
Q: You're not talking about opinion writers and pundits, you're talking about news coverage?
A: I'm talking about two things. In terms of news coverage, forget about what I say. There are polls conducted by nonpartisan groups that said the media was way, way more positive in its Obama coverage than its McCain coverage. In other words, everybody has seen what I've seen. I'm not the only one. The media who were on Obama's team, they didn't just put a thumb on the scale; this time they sat on the scale.
But we're talking about lots of supposedly hard-news reporters, but even in opinion -- and this is an important point that I'm glad you brought up -- I think opinion has to be relatively intelligent. I mean, Chris Matthews saying he had "a thrill running up his leg" when he heard Barack Obama speak. And Matthews said "You're not an American if you don't cry when you hear Obama speak."
This isn't political commentary. This is a man crush. This is embarrassing. He is by far the most embarrassing commentator on television. I want to make it clear -- commentators are allowed to comment. I get that. But the commentary has to have a semblance of intelligence to it, and Chris Matthews has become the single biggest embarrassment in all of the media in terms of this campaign coverage.
Q: So is he the most egregious example -
A: Let me give you two. Chris Matthews is the most egregious example of media slobbering I have ever seen.... Chris Matthews is an embarrassment of the first order. But I'll tell you something else -- and this is the single most embarrassing sentence I have ever seen in the Washington Post. This is a story on Christmas morning, Page 1, Washington Post, about Barack Obama's exercise regimen. I'm going to read you the line and I don't blame you if you think I am making it up. I swear to God I'm not: "The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weight-lifting sessions each week and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games."
Let me tell you something. If there has been a more embarrassing sentence ever published in the Washington Post, please, somebody tell me what it is. You'd read something like this in a romance novel with Fabio on the cover. This is the kind of slobbering I'm talking about. This is not the same old, same old. They jumped the shark this time. They really took sides and they didn't care who knew it. That's different from anything that happened in the past.
Q: You already knew the way the media tilts, so were you just waiting for this to happen or did it shock even you?
Q: That's a very interesting question. It's the latter. I figured it was going to be the same old thing. Of course they were going to root for the Democrat. They always root for the Democrat, the more liberal the better. That I expected. And believe me, I wasn't going to sit down and write a book about that. But the more I looked at it, the more I watched, I said, "I can't actually be seeing what I am seeing. I can't believe I'm reading what I'm reading." What pushed me over the edge in terms of wanting to write a book about it was the incredible lack of concern for what anybody thought. Even Howard Kurtz in today's Washington Post said it's not just conservatives who think the media rolled over for Barack Obama -- and they better change.
Q: Hillary Clinton has to be pretty annoyed at the media.
A: She's the biggest single loser in all of this. If the media had done its job early on, Hillary Clinton would have been the nominee for president of the United States and probably elected president of the United States.
Q: What are you trying to prove and who are you trying to persuade with this book?
A: Because I am a journalist, I want to document things that I think are important. And since the only group mentioned in the Constitution with constitutional protections that is a real business is the press, the media. I think they are worth taking a look at. It's not what I am trying to prove; it's that as a reporter, as a journalist, I like to write about things that I think are important. And I think how the media behaves in a free society is very important. It's not enough to simply have a free press; you have to have a fair press. That's what I am trying to document.
The second part of the question is, "Who am I trying to persuade?" I'm going to be perfectly honest with you. I reach out to liberals in my books. They criticize not liberals but they criticize liberal biases or liberal insanity or liberals going too far, or whatever. I would love for liberals to also read this book, in addition to conservatives, and say, "Hey, he's making a good point." But the fact is, too many liberals, while they acknowledge the bias of the media -- and they do -- they don't care. I can't deal with that. If they are willing to accept corruption because the corruption helped their guy get elected, that's on them, not me.
Q: What you said is absolutely true - I've seen it: even if journalists recognize it, they don't care.
A: They don't care because the press is also liberal like they are. But what they don't understand -- because they haven't even thought about this for a second -- is that the only institution in America that has constitutional protections is the media; but that is for only one reason - to keep an eye on a very powerful government. Well, if nobody trusts the media anymore - and one poll indicated that 90 percent of Republicans thought that the press wanted Obama to win and 62 percent of Democrats and independents thought the very same thing - what's going to happen when they sound a real alarm for a real crisis? ... That's the danger that these idiots put us into this time around, with what went way beyond bias and was actually media activism.... We're not going to listen to them when they bark the next time. They're the watchdogs? When the watchdogs bark, nobody's going to be paying attention.
Q: Which media institution -- print or electronic -- should be most ashamed of its coverage?
A: Oh that's easy. Thank you. That's a softball. MSNBC. Not even close.
Q: And we all know where Chris Matthews works, right?
A: (Laughs) That's right. By the way, I was asked by Bill O'Reilly a week ago, "Do you think it's a mental disease or do you think it's business?" - He was actually talking about the general Bush-hating. I immediately said "It's a mental disorder, because don't underestimate the power of insanity. 'Bush-derangement syndrome' is for real." But in the case of MSNBC, it's also business. They have made a conscious business decision to corrupt an entire news organization in order to jump on a liberal bandwagon. That's a journalistic sin. That's not just the old bias. That's a kind of corruption that runs very deep and is hurting the NBC news brand.
Q: A defender of MSNBC might say, "Well, they are just trying to be the liberal version of Fox News."
A: I have heard that, but it's not true and I'll tell you why. If you turn on Fox - and I recommend this to my liberal friends - pick a day in the future - next Sunday, it doesn't matter - and listen as long as you can. You will hear liberal opinion throughout the day. They have liberals and conservatives on all day long. Even the most conservative show on Fox, Sean Hannity's show, has liberals on all the time. Listen to Keith Olbermann, and you will never hear a conservative voice - ever. So MSNBC is trying to be a magnet for the Bush-hating left, and in a very, very, very small way it is doing that. But it doesn't even pretend to present a balanced view. Its opinion shows don't have to, I grant you that. But Fox's opinion shows do; MSNBC's don't.
Q: Not counting Fox, were there any honorable exceptions among what we call the liberal mainstream media that did not swoon over Obama?
A: I'll give you a couple from MSNBC, interestingly, to show that I am trying to be fair. Chuck Todd -- the political director for NBC who was on MSNBC every day during the campaign? I thought he was fair. I thought he was reasonable. The morning show on MSNBC -- "Morning Joe"? There are more liberals on it than conservatives, that's for sure. Most of the people who were on there during the campaign wanted Barack Obama to win, but Joe Scarborough injects a little diversity of opinion.
Q: Pat Buchanan was always there, too.
A: Buchanan is one of those conservatives who hate Republicans, in my view. He's a safe Republican. He's been rejected by the voters three times. He's no fan of Republicans. He's safe. I can name a whole bunch of conservatives that would make MSNBC much more interesting, but I'm not in the habit of wasting my breath.
Q: Have you seen any improvement in the coverage of Obama since you finished your book?
A: Absolutely not. If anything, the slobbering has continued. The question when I finished writing my book was, "Will the slobbering continue?" I thought it would. It has. And the best example of the worst kind of slobbering is that line in The Washington Post that said "The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals ... ." And this was after he got elected. So the slobbering continues. And by the way, I don't see an end in sight.
Q: Who can we trust to provide us with fair and balanced reporting on the Obama era before us?
A: I know everyone has jobs, everyone is busy. But I think the best thing you could do is read as many sources as you can. If you are going to read a liberal newspaper like the New York Times, check out the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal. If you are going to watch MSNBC, please, do yourself a favor - watch Fox. And not because Fox is conservative while MSNBC is liberal. But while Fox has a conservative tilt, it presents both points of view all day long. So I would suggest that you watch or read as much as you can and don't get stuck in a niche where you are only reading one thing with one point of view because then you'll never know what's going on in the world.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Award-winning network TV reporter Bernard Goldberg first hit pay dirt in the book world with "Bias," his 2001 best-seller exposing how the news we saw was distorted by the liberal bias of the journalists he worked with during his long career with CBS News. Several media books later, Goldberg is back with "A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media." The Regnery Publishing book, which goes on sale Monday, indicts mainstream print and electronic journalists not for having liberal biases, which are a given, but for becoming open and unapologetic activists for Obama.
Q: What's your 60-second synopsis of your book?
A: This is not a book about the same old media bias. This time journalists cross a very bright line. This time they stopped being witnesses to history and they were intent on helping to shape history. They moved from media bias to media activism. In my whole life I have never seen the media get on board for one candidate the way they did this time around and -- this is very important -- they did it without even a hint of embarrassment.
It isn't just conservatives that feel this way. Lots of people feel the media was in the tank for Barack Obama. They were because he was young, because he was cool, because he was black and because he was liberal. There's no way in the world we would have seen this kind of slobbering if we would had just inaugurated the first black president who was conservative and Republican.
Q: You're not talking about opinion writers and pundits, you're talking about news coverage?
A: I'm talking about two things. In terms of news coverage, forget about what I say. There are polls conducted by nonpartisan groups that said the media was way, way more positive in its Obama coverage than its McCain coverage. In other words, everybody has seen what I've seen. I'm not the only one. The media who were on Obama's team, they didn't just put a thumb on the scale; this time they sat on the scale.
But we're talking about lots of supposedly hard-news reporters, but even in opinion -- and this is an important point that I'm glad you brought up -- I think opinion has to be relatively intelligent. I mean, Chris Matthews saying he had "a thrill running up his leg" when he heard Barack Obama speak. And Matthews said "You're not an American if you don't cry when you hear Obama speak."
This isn't political commentary. This is a man crush. This is embarrassing. He is by far the most embarrassing commentator on television. I want to make it clear -- commentators are allowed to comment. I get that. But the commentary has to have a semblance of intelligence to it, and Chris Matthews has become the single biggest embarrassment in all of the media in terms of this campaign coverage.
Q: So is he the most egregious example -
A: Let me give you two. Chris Matthews is the most egregious example of media slobbering I have ever seen.... Chris Matthews is an embarrassment of the first order. But I'll tell you something else -- and this is the single most embarrassing sentence I have ever seen in the Washington Post. This is a story on Christmas morning, Page 1, Washington Post, about Barack Obama's exercise regimen. I'm going to read you the line and I don't blame you if you think I am making it up. I swear to God I'm not: "The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weight-lifting sessions each week and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games."
Let me tell you something. If there has been a more embarrassing sentence ever published in the Washington Post, please, somebody tell me what it is. You'd read something like this in a romance novel with Fabio on the cover. This is the kind of slobbering I'm talking about. This is not the same old, same old. They jumped the shark this time. They really took sides and they didn't care who knew it. That's different from anything that happened in the past.
Q: You already knew the way the media tilts, so were you just waiting for this to happen or did it shock even you?
Q: That's a very interesting question. It's the latter. I figured it was going to be the same old thing. Of course they were going to root for the Democrat. They always root for the Democrat, the more liberal the better. That I expected. And believe me, I wasn't going to sit down and write a book about that. But the more I looked at it, the more I watched, I said, "I can't actually be seeing what I am seeing. I can't believe I'm reading what I'm reading." What pushed me over the edge in terms of wanting to write a book about it was the incredible lack of concern for what anybody thought. Even Howard Kurtz in today's Washington Post said it's not just conservatives who think the media rolled over for Barack Obama -- and they better change.
Q: Hillary Clinton has to be pretty annoyed at the media.
A: She's the biggest single loser in all of this. If the media had done its job early on, Hillary Clinton would have been the nominee for president of the United States and probably elected president of the United States.
Q: What are you trying to prove and who are you trying to persuade with this book?
A: Because I am a journalist, I want to document things that I think are important. And since the only group mentioned in the Constitution with constitutional protections that is a real business is the press, the media. I think they are worth taking a look at. It's not what I am trying to prove; it's that as a reporter, as a journalist, I like to write about things that I think are important. And I think how the media behaves in a free society is very important. It's not enough to simply have a free press; you have to have a fair press. That's what I am trying to document.
The second part of the question is, "Who am I trying to persuade?" I'm going to be perfectly honest with you. I reach out to liberals in my books. They criticize not liberals but they criticize liberal biases or liberal insanity or liberals going too far, or whatever. I would love for liberals to also read this book, in addition to conservatives, and say, "Hey, he's making a good point." But the fact is, too many liberals, while they acknowledge the bias of the media -- and they do -- they don't care. I can't deal with that. If they are willing to accept corruption because the corruption helped their guy get elected, that's on them, not me.
Q: What you said is absolutely true - I've seen it: even if journalists recognize it, they don't care.
A: They don't care because the press is also liberal like they are. But what they don't understand -- because they haven't even thought about this for a second -- is that the only institution in America that has constitutional protections is the media; but that is for only one reason - to keep an eye on a very powerful government. Well, if nobody trusts the media anymore - and one poll indicated that 90 percent of Republicans thought that the press wanted Obama to win and 62 percent of Democrats and independents thought the very same thing - what's going to happen when they sound a real alarm for a real crisis? ... That's the danger that these idiots put us into this time around, with what went way beyond bias and was actually media activism.... We're not going to listen to them when they bark the next time. They're the watchdogs? When the watchdogs bark, nobody's going to be paying attention.
Q: Which media institution -- print or electronic -- should be most ashamed of its coverage?
A: Oh that's easy. Thank you. That's a softball. MSNBC. Not even close.
Q: And we all know where Chris Matthews works, right?
A: (Laughs) That's right. By the way, I was asked by Bill O'Reilly a week ago, "Do you think it's a mental disease or do you think it's business?" - He was actually talking about the general Bush-hating. I immediately said "It's a mental disorder, because don't underestimate the power of insanity. 'Bush-derangement syndrome' is for real." But in the case of MSNBC, it's also business. They have made a conscious business decision to corrupt an entire news organization in order to jump on a liberal bandwagon. That's a journalistic sin. That's not just the old bias. That's a kind of corruption that runs very deep and is hurting the NBC news brand.
Q: A defender of MSNBC might say, "Well, they are just trying to be the liberal version of Fox News."
A: I have heard that, but it's not true and I'll tell you why. If you turn on Fox - and I recommend this to my liberal friends - pick a day in the future - next Sunday, it doesn't matter - and listen as long as you can. You will hear liberal opinion throughout the day. They have liberals and conservatives on all day long. Even the most conservative show on Fox, Sean Hannity's show, has liberals on all the time. Listen to Keith Olbermann, and you will never hear a conservative voice - ever. So MSNBC is trying to be a magnet for the Bush-hating left, and in a very, very, very small way it is doing that. But it doesn't even pretend to present a balanced view. Its opinion shows don't have to, I grant you that. But Fox's opinion shows do; MSNBC's don't.
Q: Not counting Fox, were there any honorable exceptions among what we call the liberal mainstream media that did not swoon over Obama?
A: I'll give you a couple from MSNBC, interestingly, to show that I am trying to be fair. Chuck Todd -- the political director for NBC who was on MSNBC every day during the campaign? I thought he was fair. I thought he was reasonable. The morning show on MSNBC -- "Morning Joe"? There are more liberals on it than conservatives, that's for sure. Most of the people who were on there during the campaign wanted Barack Obama to win, but Joe Scarborough injects a little diversity of opinion.
Q: Pat Buchanan was always there, too.
A: Buchanan is one of those conservatives who hate Republicans, in my view. He's a safe Republican. He's been rejected by the voters three times. He's no fan of Republicans. He's safe. I can name a whole bunch of conservatives that would make MSNBC much more interesting, but I'm not in the habit of wasting my breath.
Q: Have you seen any improvement in the coverage of Obama since you finished your book?
A: Absolutely not. If anything, the slobbering has continued. The question when I finished writing my book was, "Will the slobbering continue?" I thought it would. It has. And the best example of the worst kind of slobbering is that line in The Washington Post that said "The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals ... ." And this was after he got elected. So the slobbering continues. And by the way, I don't see an end in sight.
Q: Who can we trust to provide us with fair and balanced reporting on the Obama era before us?
A: I know everyone has jobs, everyone is busy. But I think the best thing you could do is read as many sources as you can. If you are going to read a liberal newspaper like the New York Times, check out the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal. If you are going to watch MSNBC, please, do yourself a favor - watch Fox. And not because Fox is conservative while MSNBC is liberal. But while Fox has a conservative tilt, it presents both points of view all day long. So I would suggest that you watch or read as much as you can and don't get stuck in a niche where you are only reading one thing with one point of view because then you'll never know what's going on in the world.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Hope and Change?
Kevin McCullough
Sunday, January 25, 2009
In the historic week that fulfilled the dream of Dr Martin Luther King Jr, the worst instincts possible from within America’s black community rained down foolishness upon America. Foolishness so great that even the non-violent Dr.King would be likely to reconsider corporal punishment.
According to CNN, African Americans across the nation, by a majority of 69%, see the dream that King spoke of with such clarity as having been achieved in the rise to the Oval Office.
The inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as our nation’s 44th president should have been an occasion of historic optimism and hope. The net result of this historic week has actually rendered greater levels of racism in America, and furthered horrific persecution of the innocent abroad. President Obama is solely responsible for the latter, and is guilty of the former through his silence. What should be an occasion of historic joy and achievement has instead been marred by an ugliness that we have only President Obama to thank for.
During the festivities in Washington DC this week, rappers Jay-Z and Young Jeezy took to the mic amongst a teeming DC crowd to assault all who were present with shrieks of racism, profanity, and anti-patriotic displays. These expressions were present only because Barack Obama had been elected to the office of President. Setting aside the rampant use of the “N” word, the rappers, lacing their tirades with numerous F-bombs, hurled insults at white America with impunity.
This type of behavior is expected from Young Jeezy. Thugs who are raised to believe that women are sex objects, and that all white people are to be distrusted are expected to engage in animalistic, juvenile, and grossly hate-filled behavior. Perhaps when President Obama gets around to expanding the hate-crimes laws in the way he so wishes to, there will be a clause directed straight at the ignorant hip-hoppers who love the bling.
Jay-Z, on the other hand is a different story.
Jay-Z and his wife, singer Beyonce, had been guests of honor at President and Michelle Obama’s inaugural events.
When the need for votes from white Americans was the business of the campaign, Senator Obama repeatedly renounced associations with such profane expression. Nearly one week after the fact, Obama has yet to distance himself from this “celebration” that “honored” his ascendance to power. In his silence, as it pertains to his invited guests who made public displays and attributions to his election, he has allowed the advancement of ideas that are more racist and unjust than many of the expressions of segregation that were pervasive in his childhood.
Hope and Change?
The decision to remain silent on the performance of the potty-mouthed guttersnipes was, however, the less offensive, and even less problematic of the damaging decisions made this past week.
Not yet in office a full seven days, President Obama put his signature to an executive order that reinstated the liability of we the people as taxpayers for the deaths of hundreds of children across the globe. You get no say in this. There is no “opt-out” box to check. The tax bill you submit will inextricably link you directly to the systematic deaths of these children. Their cries will not be heard, and no leftist, progressive political group will rally in Washington to end the violence against them.
When President Obama signed the executive order forcing us as taxpayers to once again fund the Mexico City Policy, celebrations in feminist and pro-abortion offices resounded across America.
How perverted is that?
American women were shrieking with delight at the reality of you and I being forced to join in procedures, and to strongly intimidate through suggestive means, the killing of a mother’s child.
How does one celebrate that?
In other countries, many of them third world, a family’s child is one of the few sources of joy a home can know. By reissuing this policy, Barack Obama has sentenced more Latin and Black children to death than if he had simply ordered an invasion of Mexico or Somalia.
For all of his campaign rhetoric promoting the ideas of Hope an Change, such callous and calculated policies fly directly in the face of his care for women, his desire for justice, his profession of fairness, and his faith in God.
As a pundit, I had repeatedly expressed my well wishes and desires for our President to succeed during his days in Office. I am vested in my President succeeding for the good of my country. Thus, to extend fairness, and even goodwill to the new commander in Chief, I resisted the inclination to speculate on likelihoods, and pledged to wait on the formation of policies before leveling criticisms.
Mr. President, I was prepared to give you longer than four days.
Both your apathy and your actions in only your first week in office demonstrate your hardened ambivalence to both those who seek racial equity and to those who love children as Christ instructed them to.
Unlike your supporters, we do not wish, nor will we seek to brandish your term in office as one of racial dishonesty. Your achievement this week was historic. Your reaction in light of it is both sickening and disheartening.
Let’s hope for a better week two...
Sunday, January 25, 2009
In the historic week that fulfilled the dream of Dr Martin Luther King Jr, the worst instincts possible from within America’s black community rained down foolishness upon America. Foolishness so great that even the non-violent Dr.King would be likely to reconsider corporal punishment.
According to CNN, African Americans across the nation, by a majority of 69%, see the dream that King spoke of with such clarity as having been achieved in the rise to the Oval Office.
The inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as our nation’s 44th president should have been an occasion of historic optimism and hope. The net result of this historic week has actually rendered greater levels of racism in America, and furthered horrific persecution of the innocent abroad. President Obama is solely responsible for the latter, and is guilty of the former through his silence. What should be an occasion of historic joy and achievement has instead been marred by an ugliness that we have only President Obama to thank for.
During the festivities in Washington DC this week, rappers Jay-Z and Young Jeezy took to the mic amongst a teeming DC crowd to assault all who were present with shrieks of racism, profanity, and anti-patriotic displays. These expressions were present only because Barack Obama had been elected to the office of President. Setting aside the rampant use of the “N” word, the rappers, lacing their tirades with numerous F-bombs, hurled insults at white America with impunity.
This type of behavior is expected from Young Jeezy. Thugs who are raised to believe that women are sex objects, and that all white people are to be distrusted are expected to engage in animalistic, juvenile, and grossly hate-filled behavior. Perhaps when President Obama gets around to expanding the hate-crimes laws in the way he so wishes to, there will be a clause directed straight at the ignorant hip-hoppers who love the bling.
Jay-Z, on the other hand is a different story.
Jay-Z and his wife, singer Beyonce, had been guests of honor at President and Michelle Obama’s inaugural events.
When the need for votes from white Americans was the business of the campaign, Senator Obama repeatedly renounced associations with such profane expression. Nearly one week after the fact, Obama has yet to distance himself from this “celebration” that “honored” his ascendance to power. In his silence, as it pertains to his invited guests who made public displays and attributions to his election, he has allowed the advancement of ideas that are more racist and unjust than many of the expressions of segregation that were pervasive in his childhood.
Hope and Change?
The decision to remain silent on the performance of the potty-mouthed guttersnipes was, however, the less offensive, and even less problematic of the damaging decisions made this past week.
Not yet in office a full seven days, President Obama put his signature to an executive order that reinstated the liability of we the people as taxpayers for the deaths of hundreds of children across the globe. You get no say in this. There is no “opt-out” box to check. The tax bill you submit will inextricably link you directly to the systematic deaths of these children. Their cries will not be heard, and no leftist, progressive political group will rally in Washington to end the violence against them.
When President Obama signed the executive order forcing us as taxpayers to once again fund the Mexico City Policy, celebrations in feminist and pro-abortion offices resounded across America.
How perverted is that?
American women were shrieking with delight at the reality of you and I being forced to join in procedures, and to strongly intimidate through suggestive means, the killing of a mother’s child.
How does one celebrate that?
In other countries, many of them third world, a family’s child is one of the few sources of joy a home can know. By reissuing this policy, Barack Obama has sentenced more Latin and Black children to death than if he had simply ordered an invasion of Mexico or Somalia.
For all of his campaign rhetoric promoting the ideas of Hope an Change, such callous and calculated policies fly directly in the face of his care for women, his desire for justice, his profession of fairness, and his faith in God.
As a pundit, I had repeatedly expressed my well wishes and desires for our President to succeed during his days in Office. I am vested in my President succeeding for the good of my country. Thus, to extend fairness, and even goodwill to the new commander in Chief, I resisted the inclination to speculate on likelihoods, and pledged to wait on the formation of policies before leveling criticisms.
Mr. President, I was prepared to give you longer than four days.
Both your apathy and your actions in only your first week in office demonstrate your hardened ambivalence to both those who seek racial equity and to those who love children as Christ instructed them to.
Unlike your supporters, we do not wish, nor will we seek to brandish your term in office as one of racial dishonesty. Your achievement this week was historic. Your reaction in light of it is both sickening and disheartening.
Let’s hope for a better week two...
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