Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
Bubble-Wrapped Americans: How the U.S. Became Obsessed with Physical and Emotional Safety
It’s a common refrain: We have bubble-wrapped the world. Americans in particular are obsessed with “safety.” The simplest way to get any law passed in America, be it a zoning law or a sweeping reform of the intelligence community, is to invoke a simple sentence: “A kid might get hurt.”
Almost no one is opposed to reasonable efforts at making the world a safer place. But the operating word here is “reasonable.” Banning lawn darts, for example, rather than just telling people that they can be dangerous when used by unsupervised children, is a perfect example of a craving for safety gone too far.
Beyond the realm of legislation, this has begun to infect our very culture. Think of things like “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces.” These are part of broader cultural trends in search of a kind of “emotional safety” – a purported right to never be disturbed or offended by anything. This is by no means confined to the sphere of academia, but is also in our popular culture, both in “extremely online” and more mainstream variants.
Why are Americans so obsessed with safety? What is the endgame of those who would bubble wrap the world, both physically and emotionally? Perhaps most importantly, what can we do to turn back the tide and reclaim our culture of self-reliance, mental toughness, and giving one another the benefit of the doubt so that we don’t “bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security,” as President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about?
Coddling and Splintering: The Transformation of the American Mind
Two books published in 2018 provide parallel insights into the problems presented by the safety obsession of American culture: The Splintering of the American Mind by William Egginton, focused on the tendency of Americans to tunnel themselves off into self-selected bubbles, and The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, which deals more with the tendency to avoid any uncomfortable or unpleasant information.
There is an interesting phenomenon involved in coddling: Australian psychologist Nick Haskam first coined the term “concept creep.” Basically, this means that terms are often elastic and expand past the point of meaning. Take, for example, the concept of “trauma.” This used to have a very limited meaning. However, “trauma” quickly became expanded to mean even slight physical or emotional harm or discomfort. Thus the increasing belief among the far left that words can be “violence” – not “violent,” mind you, but actual, literal violence.
In the other direction, the definition of “hero” has been expanded to mean just about anything. Every teacher, firefighter and police officer is now considered a “hero.” This isn’t to downplay or minimize the importance of these roles in our society. It’s simply to point out that “hero” just doesn’t mean what it used to 100 or even 30 years ago.
Once this expansion of a term occurs, there is never any kind of retraction. Trauma now means just about anything, and violence will soon be expanded to include lawful, peaceful speech that one disapproves of. Once this happens, there will be no going back. In the words of Sam Harris:
“We (as a society) have to be committed to defending free speech however impolitic, or unpopular, or even wrong because defending that is the only barrier to violence. That's because the only way we can influence one another short of physical violence is through speech, through communicating ideas. The moment you say certain ideas can't be communicated you create a circumstance where people have no alternative but to go hands on you.”
It is extremely dangerous to begin labelling everything as violence for reasons of free speech, but perhaps even more dangerous is the notion that when anything is violence, nothing is violence. Redefining words as “violence” means that we have little recourse for when actual violence occurs.
The Coddling of the American Mind notes some other concepts that are important as we speak of America’s obsession with “safety” above all else. First, that coddling combined with splintering means that people’s political views are much more like fanatical religious views than anything. They don’t see themselves as having to debate ideas or seek common ground. Rather, the opposing side and its proponents are seen as “dangerous” and must be discredited at all costs. It is worth noting that this is much more common among the left than the right or the center, which has now become more the place where “live and let live” types congregate.
The problem with this goes beyond simply being irritated by irrational people barking at you or at someone else: There is an entire generation of people who are seriously lacking in critical thinking skills. They think that labelling people and name-calling are excuses for a reasoned argument. In the words of Voltaire, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
These problems are hardly confined to political radicalism or academia. Indeed, the corporate sector is no stranger to this kind of safety obsession. There is the phenomenon of “woke capital,” where the corporations find the latest celebrity cause-du-jour and use it as a marketing strategy.
There is currently an extreme risk aversion in management science. Companies will now do basically anything to avoid “a kid getting hurt” or someone’s delicate sensibilities being offended.
Education from kindergarten up to the universities is increasingly about teaching doctrines and ideology, rather than critical thinking and problem solving skills. All of this is a dangerous admixture that combines the full weight of the academic, cultural and business elites in this country. And its consequences are far reaching.
Trigger Warnings and Safe Spaces
For
those unaware, a “trigger warning” is a person’s advisory that
disturbing content is going to be posted. However, in an example of
concept creep, the meaning of “disturbing” has become expanded to mean,
well, just about anything that might offend a leftist. It is also
sometimes known as a “content warning,” “TW” or “CW.”
A similar concept is that of a “safe space.” What used to be a term used for a place where people in actual danger of physical harm could express themselves, a “safe space” now means a place where there is no room for disagreement or questions because language is literally violence.
This might all sound very silly and we definitely agree that it is. However, it is quickly becoming de rigeur not just in academia, which is increasingly functioning as a bizarre combination of a daycare center for 21 year olds and an indoctrination program, but also in the corporate world and in the media.
It’s not surprising that such foolishness has reached our corporate elites, because so many figures within that world come from the Ivy League. Harvard Law, for example, was the center of a controversy where they were urged not to teach rape law or even use the word “violate” (which makes it pretty hard to talk about violations of the law). A Harvard professor argued that greater anxiety among students to discuss complicated and nuanced séxual assault cases was impeding the ability of professors to adequately teach their students. This in turn would lead to poorly prepared attorneys for rape victims in the future.
Beyond a simple discussion in the academic sphere, there are student groups on campus who urge students not to attend or participate in class discussions focused on séxual violence. The same student groups advocate for warning students in advance so they can skip out on class and even to exclude “triggering” material from tests. Once again, the real victims here are the victims of séxual assault whose attorneys will be ill-prepared to advise them, to say nothing of the cumulative effect on the prosecutorial environment.
Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis was subject to a lengthy investigation by a kangaroo court and frivolous Title IX complaints over an article she wrote for The Chronicle of Higher Education about campus séx panics. Top comedians like Chris Rock now refuse to perform on college campuses, a place that has typically been their bread and butter.
Another key term to understand here is “microaggressions” which means just about anything. Offensive statements under this umbrella include things like “I don’t see race,” “America is the land of opportunity” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.”
To readers of Generation X or older, this all might sound like a resurgence of political correctness and, indeed, to some extent it is. However, there is something different about the current anti-speech craze sweeping not just campuses, but also boardrooms: Political correctness was, at least in theory, about the elimination of so-called “hate speech” (for example, using “mentally disabled” instead of “retarded” or “little person” instead of “midget”) and also about broadening the canon of literature to include more women and minorities.
One doesn’t need to agree with either objective or be as generous as we are to see that the West has entered a new, accelerated and intensified version of the old political correctness that is qualitatively more dangerous. The “safe spaces” phase of this is about eliminating anything and everything that might be emotionally troubling to students on campus.
This assumes a high degree of fragility among American college students. But perhaps this assumption isn’t totally off base.
The Road to Safety Obsession
If
you were born before 1985 or so, your childhood was vastly different
than of those born after you. As a child, you probably came and went as
you pleased, letting your parents know where you were going, who you
would be with and when you might be home. You rode your bike without a
helmet and if you were bullied at school there’s a good chance that you
view this as a character-building experience, not one of deep emotional
trauma.
So what happened?
A few things. First, in 1984, the “missing child” milk carton was introduced. America became obsessed with child abduction in response to several high-profile child kidnappings over the period of a few years. Etan Platz, Adam Walsh and Johnny Gosch are just three of the names known to Americans during this time period. In September 1984, the Des Moines, Iowa-based Anderson Erickson Dairy began printing the pictures of Johnny Gosch and Eugene Martin on milk cartons. Chicago followed suit, then the entire state of California. In December 1984, a nationwide program was launched to keep the faces of abducted children front and center in the American mind.
The milk cartons didn’t find many kids, but they did create the panic of “stranger danger,” where children were taught to fear strangers even though the lion’s share of child abduction, molestation and abuse comes from friends, family and other trusted figures such as public school teachers or camp counselors. Most missing children in America are runaways and in 99 percent of all child abductions, the perpetrator is a non-custodial father. There is at least one case of “stranger danger” being harmful – a lost 11-year-old Boy Scout who thought his rescuers were looking to kidnap him.
Some of the protocols established out of this were useful, such as AMBER Alerts and Code Adam. Awareness of child abduction in general was raised and as a result there’s significantly fewer child abductions today than there were in 1980. Indeed, stranger abduction is incredibly rare in the United States. But this has come with a dark side.
You might be familiar with the myriad of cases in suburban America where children playing alone are arrested by the police because they don’t have adult supervision. The parents are then questioned by the police or, in some cases, the state’s Child Protective Services.
There was also the panic after the mass shooting at Columbine High School, which led to the bubble wrapping of schools alongside the home. “Zero tolerance” policies were implemented alongside school-wide peanut butter bans.
And so the result is that there are at least two generations of American children raised in a protective net so tight that they not only have trouble expressing themselves, but also being exposed to failure and discomfort. What began as a good-faith effort to prevent child abduction and increase overall child welfare has ended up, as a side effect, creating a world where children were raised in such safety that they can’t even handle being upset.
This has not only insulated children from the consequences of their own actions and the normal pains of growing up, but also gives the impression that no matter what their problems, “adults” are ready to step in and save the day at any moment.
It’s worth noting that, in recent years, there has been a sharp rise in mental illness among young people, both on campus and off, including those with severe mental health problems.
Cops and the 24-Hour News Cycle
There are two other cultural phenomena worth exploring: The television series Cops and the 24-hour cable news cycle. As of April 2020, Cops is still on the air, having moved from Fox to Spike TV in 2013.
Cops was more than just a TV series, it was a cultural phenomenon that changed television. The cinéma vérité style used by the show was to be copied in the 90s by virtually every reality show you can name. Curiously, it came out around the same time that crime rates had plummeted comparatively to the 70s and 80s. And just at that time, people started having the worst in human behavior beamed into their homes for entertainment every Saturday night.
At the same time, CNN was bringing news into your home 24 hours a day without end. This meant they had to fill programming around the clock – and most news is bad news. So in addition to a hugely popular program centered around chasing criminals in the act, Americans also had a constant stream of bad news and dangerous events pumped into their homes. The result was the end of the “free range child,” the kind who learned through play and discovered risk management through trial and error. This was replaced with children whose entire existence was micromanaged by adults, with little to no unsupervised play time.
The ability to learn through failure is a well-established principle going back to the Greeks, who called it pathemata mathemata (“guide your learning through pain”). The knowledge and wisdom gained through failure and pain are arguably more lasting and valuable than those learned in school.
The Generation Gap: Millennials and Gen Z
Older generations (Generation X and Baby Boomers) have a tendency to conflate Millennials and Gen Z (also known as “Zoomers”). However, there are two key differences, one cultural and one clinical: First, Zoomers are much more digital natives than their Millennial counterparts. They didn’t get constant internet access or mobile access at college. They’ve had it since they were in middle school in many cases.
While this is bound to create secondary cultural differences, we know of one clinical difference between Millennials and Zoomers: Zoomers are much more prone to mental illness, specifically depression, anxiety, alcoholism and self-harm.
Depression and anxiety in particular are through the roof for girls, with moderate increases for boys. While self-reported cases are up, we also have harder clinical data: There has been a 62 percent increase in hospital admissions.
The Baby Boomers and Gen Xers created an environment where it is safer than ever to be a child, but at what cost? There has been widespread and verifiable psychological damage done to the younger generation, which is likely being compounded by the coddling taking place in our nation’s universities.
Screen Time and Social Media
“Screen time” is the new obsession for parents, especially among, ironically, those who work in high-tech Silicon Valley jobs such as Steve Jobs, father of the iPhone. But there seems to be an emerging consensus among those who have actually studied the topic that the problem isn’t “screen time” per se, but rather the more specific use of it in the form of social media. This has been identified as the cause of depression and anxiety, particularly among girls.
Why is social media usage particularly impactful among girls? Dr. Haidt and others postulate that it’s because they are more sensitive to the “perfect” lives being lived by beautiful social media influencers – at least the lives that they lead online. What’s more, there is a lot of exclusion and bullying taking place on social media. In days past, you only heard about the party you didn’t get invited to, but now you get to watch it unfold in real time on Snapchat or other platforms. And cyberbullying is much harder to track and police than its real world equivalent.
There’s a related bubble wrapping going on with regard to a different sort of screen time: Kids today are often forbidden from playing with plastic guns or even finger guns. There is the notorious case of the 7-year-old child who was suspended for biting a Pop Tart toaster pastry into the shape of a gun. But millions of children come home (from the same schools where finger guns can warrant a suspension) to play Grand Theft Auto for hours on end.
Indeed, there is some evidence that suggests that violent movies and video games can trigger violent thoughts in some, but not all, people who view them. The National Institute of Mental Health has done an extensive study detailing the impact that violent media has on those who view it.
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
Book Review: Don Surber Hits It Out Of The Park With "Trump The Press"
When I first received my review copy of Don Surber's "Trump The Press" I was expecting something good, having read his stuff before. But this one, quite simply is off the charts.
"Trump The Press" is Surber's scintillating chronicle of the Trump phenomenon, and especially of the mainstream press and the elite punditocracy's frantic attempts to torpedo it. And in addition to that, he explains their abject failure to come close to doing so, as well as the reasons why they failed and why Trump won out against all the odds. "Trump The Press" is superb political commentary at its best.
Surber lays this out with the experienced eye of a journalist with thirty years experience, as well as a writer with a wonderful feeling for the absurd. Even I had forgotten some of this stuff and I couldn't help but laugh out loud in quite a few places.
Another thing "Trump The Press" reveals, almost by accident is why the mainstream press and the professional punditocracy have lost all credibility. As Michael Goodwin wrote yesterday in the New York Post, what we're experiencing here is American journalism collapsing before our eyes.
That is a dangerous place for the press of a free republic to be, and it usually signals a loss of that freedom when it happens.
And unfortunately, that isn't going to end with the campaign no matter who wins. Mrs. Clinton's serial dishonesty,incompetence and greed will be concealed to the degree it is possible if she becomes president. And a President Trump? well, he'll have to contend with something Haim Shine writes about in Israel Hayom about that country's Leftist press and their attempted demonization of Likud Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu...a journalist's revenge (emphasis mine):
Those who were convinced beyond reasonable doubt that they had control over public opinion and the popular agenda discovered they are simply part of a marginal movement that has been serving an outdated elite with no choice but to clear the way for the new forces rising and flourishing in Israeli society. These new forces, infused with the breath of youth, are pushing aside the entitled individuals who have grown tired prematurely.
There is no revenge like that of a reporter who made a mistake. It is a boundless vengeance that lacks even basic integrity -- it is pure fire. It is a bonfire of hatred, burning Netanyahu, his family, his party and his government; and everyone is welcome to add fuel to this leftist fire.
Aside from being a thoroughly entertaining read (I couldn't put it down and finished it in one sitting) Don Surber's must read book raises a question he may or may not have intended...how can you have a free country without a free, objective press? And what can be done about it?
Five stars plus. Available though Create Space or here on Amazon.
Tuesday, February 09, 2016
A Few Words About New Hampshire
New Hampshire, the first real national primary of 2016 is now history. As most of you know by now, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders ran away with it.
Trump ended up with a whopping 35%, almost 100,000 votes and most of the delegates. The nearest challenger, John Kasich ended up with 16%, less than half of Donald Trump's total, with Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush coming in third and fourth respectively and Marco Rubio just edging out Chris Christie for fifth.
While Donald Trump was expected to win New Hampshire all along, no one predicted this kind of spread. It does demonstrate the Donald's cross over appeal as well as his appeal to working class voters. New Hampshire is not Iowa, but it's not exactly diversity city' either. It's a small, mostly white semi-rural state rather like Iowa in some ways. We'll have to wait until South Carolina to see if Trump can repeat what he's done in New Hampshire. If he does, I think he's got a serious chance at being the GOP nominee whether the Republican establishment likes it or not. What's going on now is not so much an election as much as a rebellion, and Donald Trump is benefiting from picking up on that early and becoming its spokesperson.
I can't resist pointing something out here. Various mainstream, establishment Republicans have been saying all along that the GOP needs to broaden its base, reach out to different groups. This is pretty much along the lines of the constituency Donald Trump has assembled, and it's a coalition the Republican Party could have had for itself a long time ago.
It was their idea to avoid reigning in Barack Obama's agenda, which is what they were elected for. They were the ones who chose to do did nothing about ObamaCare, nothing to control this president's amnesty for illegal aliens, nothing about the out of control budget. Oh, they said the right things to the hicks they not so secretly despised come election time, but that was as far as it went. Politics, like nature abohrs a vacuum, and it was Donald Trump who saw that and was the first one in to take the high ground the Republicans so willingly abandoned. And now, they're panicking. One thing Trump still has in his favor is the fear and disarray of the establishment, who are wondering what to do to stop him and Ted Cruz, whom they despise even more than Donald Trump. And while sme of the marginal characters are headed for the wings,enough claimants fighting to be the banner bearer for the GOP establishment are still in this to prevent any real, unified opposition to the insurgents.
For John Kasich, this was essentially a life preserver that will allow him to stay afloat. How well he does in South Carolina will be a good indication on whether he has enough gas to go much further. His goal here was to knock off Marco Rubio and vie for the title of GOP establishment standard bearer and he largely succeeded, with a helping hand from Rubio's abysmal, even comic debate performance that got a lot of attention in New Hampshire. If Rubio does poorly in South Carolina and Kasich laps him again, Rubio is going to be in a tough spot.
Ted Cruz's attitude, as always, is on to the next game. He's a long haul kind of campaigner. He never expected to win here, and even a decent second in South Carolina could revitalize him nicely.
The Democrats had their own drama tonight, with Bernie Sanders decisively trouncing Hillary Clinton almost two to one, 60% to 38%. Due to the backroom nature of Democrat campaigns the delegate total was a lot closer then the GOP's with Sanders taking 14 delegates to Mrs. Clinton's 9.
I'll simply repeat here what I said about Iowa. For Bernie Sanders, New Hampshire, a state with demographics like Iowa's right next door to his home state of Vermont will be his high point. It all goes all downhill from here.
Aside from the fact that the Clinton machine will call in every favor and pull every string to ensure that the votes go her way and the media plays the song she likes, New Hampshire is the last state for awhile where retail campaigning is important, something Mrs. Clinton despises unless it's thoroughly scripted. And in South Carolina, Bernie Sanders will face, for the first time, an electorate with a substantial amount of black Democrat voters. Along with Muslims, blacks are an increasingly important part of the Democrat coalition. Irreligious and anti-Israel he may be, but Sanders still can't erase the fact of being born a Jew no matter how hard he tries.
The last time the Democrats put a Jew on a national ticket was in 2000 with Joseph Lieberman. George W. Bush carried 40% of the Muslim vote that year and that might very well have cost the Democrats Florida and the election. They won't make that mistake again. And according to the Pew Trust, aside from Muslims blacks are the most likely group of Americans to harbor anti-semitic attitudes.
Mrs. Clinton is already exploiting those attitudes and is calling in favors and mustering the troops.
Sanders is doing his best to counteract this and has actually gotten a few endorsements, but a lot of them are from left wing black academics whom the average black Democrat has never heard of. Both he and Mrs. Clinton are spending serious time on their knees in front of race pimp, tax cheat and anti-semite Al Sharpton but it's Mrs Clinton who has the inside track with an MSNBC interview with Rev Al this weekend that will air right before the primary. The odds are pretty good that she takes South Carolina by a comfortable majority.
Monday, January 04, 2016
After Question About Mr. Bill, Hillary Lashes Out At Rape Survivor
This pretty much speaks for itself. Aside from showing off Mrs. Clinton's incredible hypocrisy, the best part is when the shameless CNN shill tries to brand this woman, New Hampshire State Rep. Katherine Prudhomme-O’Brien as irrelevant because she's a Republican.
With tears in her eyes, she lets him know that she used to be a Democrat but became a Republican for this very reason, because as a rape survivor herself the issue is not former President Clinton's infidelity but Mrs. Clinton's role in bullying Mr. Bill's victims into silence...while posing as a women's candidate and saying all rape victims should be believed.
Monday, December 28, 2015
Proof That Jeb Bush Is Absolutely Desperate
I had to laugh at this one. Jeb Bush's campaign is in such dire condition that he's been reduced to issuing schoolyard challenges to GOP front runner Donald Trump!
Please pack it in Governor Bush, and at least salvage some dignity. It would be, ummm, an act of love wouldn't it?
Saturday, December 05, 2015
How Donald Trump May Just Have Blown His Election Chances
Donald Trump may have just done himself some serious damage politically.
Last Thursday, Trump delivered a speech to the Republican Jewish coalition that revealed a lot of ignorance of the Middle East and Israel with some highly questionable remarks.
He started out well before a sympathetic crowd, joking about how his daughter Ivanka, a convert to Orthodox Judaism is no longer reachable on the Jewish Sabbath and was greeted with warm applause and laughter. And then he went nuts:
Peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority "has to do with Israel and whether or not Israel's willing to sacrifice certain things," Trump told the Jewish Republican Coalition. This, despite his acknowledgement that Israel had already made many difficult moves for the sake of a peace agreement.[...]
Later he said, not antagonistically, “Is there anyone in this room who doesn’t negotiate deals? Probably more than any room I’ve ever spoken." He added that the Jews would not support him for president "even though you know I’m the best thing that could ever happen to Israel… You're not going to support me because I don’t want your money.”
These remarks by Trump doubled down on ones he made in an AP interview ( which, since it's the AP might have been selectively edited) implying that he intends to force negotiations between Israel and the PLO and that he feels the onus is on Israel:
"I have a real question as to whether or not both sides want to make it," Trump told The Associated Press, clarifying that he has more concerns regarding "one side in particular."
"A lot will have to do with Israel and whether or not Israel wants to make the deal - whether or not Israel's willing to sacrifice certain things," Trump said. "They may not be, and I understand that, and I'm OK with that. But then you're just not going to have a deal."
He also refused to rule out dividing Jerusalem as part of any peace settlement.
Both Ted Cruz,Mike Huckabee and Marco Rubio have stated explicitly that they recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capitol and would move the US embassy there from Tel Aviv in accordance with a bill congress passed years ago. I believe Cruz and Huckabee.
Let's go over what these remarks reveal about Donald Trump. And let me start out by saying that certain allegations of 'anti-semitism' by the Anti-Defamation League (a largely Democrat Jewish version of the NAACP)are abysmally stupid. Trump is no Jew hater, although his phrasing of his remarks about 'Jewish money' were equally dumb and self-defeating. What sense did it make to make these remarks in front of a friendly audience like the Republican Jewish Coalition? He may not need their money, but both Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of Israel tend to have a lot of political influence on both sides of the aisle. Alienating them as an unforced error is a huge mistake.
And those Israeli concessions Trump expects to negotiate? I notice he didn't mention negotiating any concessions with Abbas and the PLO. He may even realize that Abbas has time and time again said he's not making any concessions, ever.Now, with Obama, being the anti-Israel ideologue he is, it's understandable that Hamas and the PLO would literally be allowed to get away with murder. I would have expected Trump to be more sensible, or to hire an adviser that was. Obviously I was mistaken.
The Israelis have already made quite a few concessions for peace, and none of them mattered, because the basic cause of the violence is that Abbas,Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and others simply reject the very existence of Israel and indeed Jews in the Middle East. That's the bottom line.Does anyone really think that even if Israel gave Abbas everything he wants (and idiots like former Israeli PM/felon Ehud Olmert came pretty close) that the violence and the attempt to drive the Jews into the sea would cease? It would simply increase. The 'peace' the Arabs intend for the Jews of Israel is the peace of the grave.
Negotiate that, Mr.Trump!
That's the end game, and any concessions Israel is stupid enough to give them are only a means to that intended end.
And as others have found out before Trump, Israel is never going to agree to redividing Jerusalem - ever. Nor should they. During the 19 years Jordan illegally controlled East Jerusalem after they and the British ethnically cleansed what was a Jewish majority in that part of the city, no Jews were allowed in East Jerusalem, not even to visit any of their Holy sites. Nor were any claims ever paid for their stolen homes. Twenty eight historical synagogues were burned the ground, others were used as latrines and stables and the Kotel, the Western Wall was used as a garbage dump. Jewish cemeteries like the one on the Mount of Olives had the graves desecrated and the gravestones, some dating back centuries used as paving stones.
If that wasn't reason enough in view of the PLO's consistent support and abetting of terrorist attacks on Jews before during and since Oslo, would any sensible person expect Israel to give Abbas and the PLO a closer base to launch attacks from?
Trump's stance also reveals an ignorance of the Middle East I find surprising. Israel is an integral US ally in the region, especially now. Chuck Hagel, Obama's former Secretary of Defense who used to be fairly anti-Israel had an epiphany once he got the job, and realized this. In fact, his changed views cost him his job, simply for following normal procedure in shipping arms to Israel during the Gaza War against Hamas via the Pentagon. President Obama fired him for not clearing it through the White House first and cut off all arms shipments to Israel for the remainder of the war, the first time a US president has ever done that since Israel became a US ally during the Nixon Administration.
As Hagel learned, a weakened Israel is a major detriment to US security. And the US gets nothing from a third 'Palestinian' state whatsoever. Any serious candidate for office ought to realize that before he opens his mouth the way Trump did.
Trump's remarks also make little sense from a political standpoint. While a lot of leftist, secular Jews have and will continue to vote Democrat, recent events, especially when it comes to a questionable candidate like Hillary Clinton as well as certain trends within the Democrat party are making changes in some quarters. Not only that, but frankly, much of Israel's support in America comes from non-Jews. There are plenty of them, especially but not exclusively among Evangelicals, Mormons, and conservative Catholics.
Trump just gave a lot of these people a reason to sit on their hands and stay home if he's the nominee. And that includes a lot of people like me who were warming to him but are now having second thoughts.
Regardless of how you might feel about Jews and Israel, electing someone capable of making this kind of unforced error as president merits serious thought.
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Biden Bails As Obama And Hillary Come To Terms
As I predicted here, Joe Biden finally issued a formal statement today that he is not running for president in 2016.
It's no secret that the Clintons and the Obamas despise each other, so t his didn't take any crystal ball to figure out...all you had to do was to piece together certain events to realize that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had come to a rapprochement.
The amount of media coverage given to the scandal surrounding the Clinton's 'charitable foundation', the e-mail servers scandal and the scads of articles championing 'good old likable honest Joe Biden' as the Democrat savior from the usual suspects all had to have been done at the bidding of the Obama regime, as usual. otherwise, none of it would have happened.
But as I've written elsewhere, Mrs. Clinton had a few cards of her own to play. Just having her attorneys offer congress candid testimony on a number of things in exchange for immunity from prosecution could make Barack Hussein Obama's final months in office a nightmare.
And she also had another convenient weapon. It shouldn't be any surprise, but the Democrats choose their nominee via an extremely undemocratic process. Instead of the party's voters picking their nominee via votes in the primaries, the real power is in the hands of a large number of party insiders called 'super delegates' whom have the power to override whatever choices the voters in the primary might make. That's why Mrs. Clinton wasn't the nominee in 2008.
It's become known that a number of the female super delegates who are in positions of power in the party have anointed Hillary based on her gender and have let it be known that any attempt to sideline her would have extreme consequences.
Even Barack Obama has to deal with reality sometimes. So the two sat down and had a chat, probably a few days or so before the debate, or perhaps Mr. Bill made a quick trip to the White House.
Then, despite a number of voter polls showing that Bernie Sanders won that debate, the usual media suspects trumpet it as a Clinton triumph, often in surprisingly similar language using terms like 'polished performance'... not that they'd ever collude on something like that, right?
And just like magic, all the noise about a Biden candidacy suddenly subsided into silence, and President Obama took steps to curtail the FBI investigation into the Clinton e-mail scandal and the almost certain breaches of national security involved. After all, the FBI works for him.
Biden got the call from the White House and now, he's bowing out after a suitable interval to preserve appearances. He'll endorse Hillary when he's told it's time for him to do so.
Poor old Bernie! Even an irascible, ranting old Commie should have known better than to think that the Dems would ever put a Jew on the national ticket, even an irreligious, anti-Israel one. The last time they made that mistake was in 2000 with Joe Lieberman, and it cost them the Muslim vote and likely the election.
So what did Mrs. Clinton or her husband offer Obama in return?
Author and media figure Ed Klein is a source I personally view with a certain amount of skepticism. But he had a story out not too long ago that sounds fairly plausible. According to Klein, he was told by someone at the White House that President Obama's terms for endorsing Biden and campaigning for him included Biden allowing the president to choose Biden's running mate and a commitment from Biden to agree to serve only one term.
According to Klein, Obama's choice for Biden's running mate was former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. Aside from being black, Governor Patrick does share Barack Obama's ideology, so that much makes sense.
If that was what Barack Obama wanted, I have no doubt the Clintons would make that deal in a New York minute.
Thursday, October 01, 2015
Interesting Video - Hannity Grills House Speaker Candidate Kevin McCarthy
Sean Hannity does a good job here of grilling House Speaker candidate Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on how he'd be different than John Boehner, and McCarthy actually holds his own fairly well.
He's definitely right about Mitch McConnell and the Senate's primary responsibility in failing to pass a number of good legislation that's made it through the House.
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Donkey Kong Politics - The Democrat Field
Hillary Rodham Clinton remains by far the Democrat frontrunner. She's raised far more money than any of the other candidates, more than all of them combined. And she has far more name recognition than any of them. Mrs. Clinton has indeed been with us a long time. To add to these advantages, she has her own built in grievance group appeal because she possesses a vagina and can work the 'first woman president' angle for all it's worth.
Unfortunately for her, she's run into significant problems on the way to the coronation.
The biggest stumbling block to Hillary Clinton has been her own persona. When she first starting her obvious toying with announcing her candidacy after resigning her job as Secretary of State, she had record high approval ratings. At that time, I wrote on these pages that as soon as she began to run, people would remember all the things they disliked about her. And I put her chances at getting the nomination at no more than 50/50, about which more later.
As Secretary of State, Hillary was mostly cut out of the loop. President Obama assigned all of the juicy diplomatic roles to 'special presidential envoys' and Mrs. Clinton was reduced to administrative tasks and a role as messenger girl when needed. Even the UN was taken away from her, as President Obama made it a Cabinet post reporting directly to him and put Obama loyalist Susan Rice in the slot.
The public has a notoriously short memory, especially with Clinton minions like George Stephanopoulos in the media talking her up while making sure nothing problematic really made the news. So Secretary Clinton was largely seen as benign, a reminder of the supposed Good Old Days of the Clinton presidency.
The first reminder of the real Hillary came out in the wake of the Benghazi scandal when it was revealed that she and the Obama regime collaborated on blatantly phoney talking points to blame a totally unknown video and an out of hand 'protest' for a well planned terrorist attack in which a US ambassador and three others were murdered. That one was too big for her media allies to contain, especially after America saw her temper tantrum on national TV when she was confronted with her lies by congress and revealed her hideously amoral core by screaming that it made no difference.
Still, she was protected by the Obama regime for its own reasons. They classified all records of the attack including drone and on ground videos of what happened, threatened the eyewitnesses whom survived so they wouldn't testify to congress and stonewalled the requests of congress for information. And as time went on, the media cooperated by burying the story. So people tired of hearing about it and many, especially the True Believers moved on and as she announced her candidacy, she was still very much the Queen in waiting.
The next shoe that dropped was our finding out that while she had no major foreign policy accomplishments, Secretary Clinton wasn't nearly so benign and idle as we supposed. She used her time in office to enrich herself and her husband through the corrupt Clinton Foundation, selling influence and access as a well-researched best seller "The Clinton Cash Machine" documented. Not only that, but it came out that $6 billion from the State Department budget Mrs. Clinton was responsible for allocating mysteriously went missing.No one to this day knows what happened to the money.
And now its been revealed that Hillary egregiously broke the law (and endangered America's national security) by storing classified documents on a private server located in her home that was almost certainly hacked by foreign governments, refusing to release those documents to the US Department of State and destroying the server. Given who's in the White House she likely won't be prosecuted for that, but again, this sort of thing reminds people of whom Hillary Clinton is and why they dislike her.
Aside from her cold, secretive and imperious personality, she's a corrupt serial liar whose tall tales are so easily found out that it outrages many of the intended recipients that she apparently thinks they're stupid enough to swallow them. There is simply not a truthful bone in her body and again, you have a lot of people recalling why they dislike her...just as I predicted.
She reminds me of an old girl friend of mine who likewise lied in that particularly manic fashion. After catching her out the first couple of times and getting that deer in the headlights look, I learned never to take her seriously or believe a word she said and to just enjoy the carnal aspects of the relationship. But then, she wasn't running for president.Hillary Clinton is.
Another problem Hillary Clinton has to deal with in her march to the White House is one beyond her control. The party's base has simply moved far to the Left of her...or at least far to the Left of what she would like the American people to perceive. Hillary Clinton and her husband have always been a lot more radical in reality than they projected to the American voting public. They are what Emmett J. Tyrrell Jr. famously called 'coat and tie radicals.' They were willing to drop the obvious trappings and positions of the Left to a certain extent to infiltrate the System they despised from within for power and profit.
They largely succeeded, thanks to Bill Clinton's undeniable skill as a politician in 'triangulating' - running ever so carefully to the Left to get the nomination and back towards the center in the general election to capture the flag. Hillary's problem is that the Democrat Party George Soros and Barack Obama have created is simply too far Left to allow her to do that easily. She will either have to run hard to the Left to capture her party's base or to the center, hoping that a combination of her gender and the fact that the alternative is one of the Hated Republicans will be enough.
While I still say that the nomination is largely hers for the taking, the chances of her getting it are only 50/50/. Her health is poor, and she is already polling equal or behind some of the GOP clown show, a trend that's likely to continue. The Democrat's system of super delegates - party movers and shakers unelected by any particular state - gives us at least the possibility that at some point, if her poll numbers keep dropping, they'll have a little talk with her. And she'll drop out and someone like Elizabeth Warren will drop in. Again, I see this as at least a 50/50 possibility.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist, is Hillary Clinton's chief competition at this point. His class warfare meme and his regular guy persona play well with the Democrat's base and while still far behind Hillary, in Iowa and New Hampshire he's currently polling in the 30's. Nationally, he's polling slightly more than half that against Hillary Clinton.
In spite of all the noise, I don't see him winning in the least.
Iowa and New Hampshire are mainly white states. Bernie Sanders has a shot at winning there, but once the campaign moves to states with significant amount of black and Hispanic Democrats, it's all over. They will vote for Hillary Clinton.
Sanders' problem is that however irreligious and Leftist he may be, he is still a Jew. A significant part of the Democratic coalition as it's now composed involves blacks and Muslims, many of whom have certain attitudes, shall we say, about Jews and will not vote for one. George W. Bush's razor thin 2000 win can be attributed in part to this factor.The GOP carried the Muslim vote that year...when there was a guy named Joe Lieberman on the Democrat ticket.
This is even more true today then it was in 2008. Simply put, Barack Obama has made 'anti-Zionism' and anti-semitism respectable viewpoints in Democrat circles, provided they're nuanced ever so slightly. We saw ample evidence of that at the 2012 convention. I would say at least a third of the party holds those attitudes, and possibly more.
Think I'm exaggerating? Listen to NPR host Diane Rehm use the age old anti-semitic smear and accuse Sanders of 'dual loyalty':
There was no outrage over this is official Democrat circles, although Rehm issued a statement the next day. She 'apologized' for not fact checking whether Sanders actually had joint Israeli-US citizenship, not for the anti-semitic slur itself.
The list she speaks of is one I've seen and is wildly inaccurate, supposedly labeling Jews in congress who have dual US-Israeli citizenship. It even includes California Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein,whom isn't Jewish at all but is married to one as well as a number of Democrats with Jewish-sounding names who are markedly anti-Israel. For that matter, Bernie Sanders is far from pro-Israel and was one of the members of Congress whom boycotted Israeli PM Netanyahu's speech. Apparently that wasn't enough to establish his far Left credentials.
Rehm, by the way is a notoriously anti-semitic Arab-American who was awarded the National Humanities Medal from Obama last year, where he praised her for her "keen insights" at the ceremony.
Sanders also has major baggage when it comes to gun confiscation, a cause dear to Democrat hearts. It's not well known, but Vermont has some of the most pro Second Amendment firearms laws in the country.Vermonters like their guns, and any Vermont politician advocating the sort of restrictions Democrats in most blue states love would get booted out at the next election. Sooner or later, Bernie Sanders is going to be asked to take a stand on this and justify his largely pro-NRA stance. It will not sit well with the base.
Finally, Bernie Sanders' big issue is the plight of American workers, whom he claims have been targeted since the 1970's. He's correct about that, even if he is more than somewhat off target about the cause. But in order to get a fighting chance at the nomination he's also had to pander and come out big time for amnesty for illegal migrants and more guest worker visas. The first time someone asks him in a debate or other high visibility occasion how he can justify his stance championing the American worker and higher minimum wages with being an advocate of one of the major causes of static wages and high unemployment, you can stick a fork in him. He's done.
Former Mayor of Baltimore and Governor of Maryland Martin O'Malley is the only Democrat candidate under sixty. And he has something Mrs. Clinton and Bernie Sanders lack - actual executive experience. Unfortunately, it's the kind of executive experience sensible people would run away from.
True, Maryland's official unemployment rate is somewhat below the national average, but that's largely attributable to Baltimore and much of the rest of the state's proximity to the greater DC metro area, where the expansion of the federal government makes it one of the few Blue State areas where jobs are readily available. Federal spending in Maryland also contributes to this. But when it comes to private sector jobs, Maryland fell way behind during O'Mally's tenure.
Taxes in Maryland were high to begin with, and O'Malley raised them substantially while also raising government spending. There's a reason that after two terms of O'Malley, Republican Larry Hogan pulled off an upset when he ran in a solid Blue state against O'Malley's Attorney General.
O'Malley checks off a lot of the Democrat base's boxes. He could be labeled Obama in white face, at least as far as his policies are concerned. Unfortunately, that doesn't translate into much support, even though O'Malley is an old hand at pandering. Here's O'Malley at the Net Roots Presidential town hall in Phoenix, Arizona about ten days ago, being interviewed by illegal migrant celebrity Jose Antonio Vargas. While the whole shameful performance bears watching, check out the action at about 21:00 when the 'black lives matter' crowd takes control:
After almost getting booed off the stage for simply saying that 'all lives matter,' his tearful apology the next day was something to behold. Even imagining someone like this negotiating with Putin or the Iranians ought to be enough to make most Americans fall over with laughter.
In terms of getting the nomination, Martin O'Malley's chief problem is that as of yet, hardly anyone outside of Maryland or hard core political junkies has even heard of him. At this point, to stay in he'll have to raise enough money to last and to rack up a couple of good finishes in the primaries.
I include Jim Webb in this survey simply because he's an anomaly when it comes to the Democrat field. The 69-year-old former Senator from Virginia has also served as Secretary of the Navy and Assistant Secretary of Defense, so he brings considerable executive experience with him. He's also a former Marine Corps combat veteran, with a chest full of medals including the Navy Cross and the Silver Star. His Navy Cross citation is hair raising. I'm surprised he didn't get the Medal of Honor.
He taught literature at the United States Naval Academy and was a Fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics, as well as being the author of ten books, many of them on foreign policy, and an Emmy-award winning journalist.
He's also a defense hawk who is one of the handful of Democrats to point out the shortcomings of the Obama Administration's Iran deal. And to criticize the Obama regime harshly for its illegal war in Libya. He calls for revamping our military and strengthening our alliances in Asia and the Middle East.
He calls for reforming the tax code, lowering taxes on earned income across the board while eliminating corporate loopholes that reward the outsourcing of American jobs. He also calls for a national equivalent of the Depression Era CCC to rebuild US infrastructure, for releasing non-violent drug offenders and/or putting together a job training program for them, and most interestingly for a restructuring of the traditional relationship between the executive and legislative branch of government, among other things.
He favors securing America's borders, creating a tamper proof US ID card, stricter enforcement against employers, a path to citizenship for illegal migrants, curtailing U.S. immigration, voted no on the Senate's Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill and yes on making English America's official language and eliminating an important non-immigrant guest worker program.
He's obviously an intelligent man who's done a lot of thinking, and a patriot. A lot of his agenda make sense, and he's the one person on this list I'd consider voting for.
He hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell in today's Democrat Party.
These four candidates comprise the choices thus far. It remains to be seen if any of them are able to challenge Hillary Clinton's position as front runner.
Friday, June 13, 2014
Meet The Blogger Who Predicted Eric Cantor's Defeat
That would be my good friend and Watcher's Council colleague Tom White from VA Right!, as Tom Schaefer over at Newsmax relates:
The mainstream media is claiming no one could have foreseen Dave Brat's stunning defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in Tuesday's Virginia 7th Congressional District GOP primary, but one man did, and detailed it all in a blog post one day earlier.
"Perhaps not since the Chicago Daily Tribune’s infamous 'Dewey Defeats Truman' headline has the political press been so badly blindsided by an election result," Paul Fahri wrote Wednesday in a nuanced mea culpa in The Washington Post.
As Fahri's "political press" was missing the story, a veteran Virginia conservative activist was writing a startlingly accurate description of just why Cantor was in trouble and just how good the chances were that he could lose.
Tom White, editor of the Virginia Right! blog, is a longtime conservative activist who proudly boasts that he has lived in that state's Hanover County since 1983.
In an eerily precise post on the site Monday night titled "Predicting Tomorrow's Dave Brat/Eric Cantor Primary Race," White mentioned the difficulty in forecasting primary elections before getting right to his point: Cantor's seat was in danger.
"This race is not easy to predict by polls. We know it is not a landslide for either side. But I promise you, Eric Cantor is nervous and has every reason to be. And Dave Brat should be cautiously optimistic — and has every reason for the optimism," White wrote.
He then called the very outcome that in the end spelled doom for Cantor.
"I can say with 100% certainty that the people who turned out in 2012 and voted for Eric Cantor will not be doing so in 2014," White wrote.
White listed several reasons for Cantor's lack of appeal to 7th District voters.
"A majority of Dave Brat’s supporters voted for Eric Cantor in 2012. And there are quite a few Cantor supporters that are unhappy with Cantor’s stance on Amnesty, his failure to take away funding from Obamacare and Cantor’s lack of participation in the community. Many of Cantor’s supporters are angered and embarrassed by Cantor’s use of "slating" to disenfranchise Republican voters. And many of them feel Cantor does not deserve their vote. So they will stay home."
"Slating is the process of taking away the votes of a large number of delegates and giving them to a handful of hand-picked individuals," White explained to watchdog.org in May. "In the Virginia Beach [convention] case, more than 1,000 delegates had their votes stripped away and given to 34 people handpicked by the Cantor team."
The move, which was overturned on appeal, increased antipathy for Cantor among grassroots Republicans.
"I think it is a safe bet that the 37,000 votes Cantor received in 2012 will be far more than he will receive tomorrow," White concluded in his prediction post.
More at the link.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
WH Spokeshole Carney Embarrassed Into Silence When Asked About Obama's Support For OWS
Now, this is one worth remembering...President Obama's Press Secretary Jay Carney is so embarrassed by FOX's Senior White House Correspondent Wendell Goler asking him about the president's support for the OWS creeps that he is actually stunned into silence as he tries desperately to spin and come up with some kind of creditable lie to cover for it:
Carney, like George Stephanopoulos before him will almost definitely get offered a contract as a Lefty talking head for one of the alphabet networks. Let's make sure we remember Jay Carney's regard for the truth when that happens.
Wendell Goler: The President has voiced support for the Occupy folks in the past, or at least their goals, did their actions in Chicago sour his support?
Jay Carney: Well I think you’re making broad comparisons between uh uh different groups, what the President has said in the past is uh he has understood uh the frustrations Americans have about ((pause)) the ((pause)) failure in particular of Wall Street in some cases to uh uh, (pause) well obviously Wall Street’s role in the financial crisis that precipitated the worst recession since the Great Depression.
Tuesday, May 01, 2012
Monday, April 30, 2012
Navy SEALs Slam Obama For Using Them As 'Ammunition' In Political Ad Taking Credit For Bin-Laden hit
Yes, they're not at all pleased.
A serving SEAL Team member said: ‘Obama wasn’t in the field, at risk, carrying a gun. As president, at every turn he should be thanking the guys who put their lives on the line to do this. He does so in his official speeches because he speechwriters are smart.
‘But the more he tries to take the credit for it, the more the ground operators are saying, “Come on, man!” It really didn’t matter who was president. At the end of the day, they were going to go.’
Chris Kyle, a former SEAL sniper with 160 confirmed and another 95 unconfirmed kills to his credit, said: ‘The operation itself was great and the nation felt immense pride. It was great that we did it.
‘But bin Laden was just a figurehead. The war on terror continues. Taking him out didn’t really change anything as far as the war on terror is concerned and using it as a political attack is a cheap shot.
‘In years to come there is going to be information that will come out that Obama was not the man who made the call. He can say he did and the people who really know what happened are inside the Pentagon, are in the military and the military isn’t allowed to speak out against the commander- in-chief so his secret is safe.’ {...}
Senior military figures have said that Admiral William McRaven, a former SEAL who was then head of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) made the decision to take bin Laden out. Tactical decisions were delegated even further down the chain of command.
Mr Kyle added: ‘He's trying to say that Romney wouldn't have made the same call? Anyone who is patriotic to this country would have made that exact call, Democrat or Republican. Obama is taking more credit than he is due but it's going to get him some pretty good mileage.’
A former intelligence official who was serving in the US government when bin Laden was killed said that the Obama administration knew about the al-Qaeda leader’s whereabouts in October 2010 but delayed taking action and risked letting him escape.
‘In the end, Obama was forced to make a decision and do it. He knew that if he didn’t do it the political risks in not taking action were huge. Mitt Romney would have made the call but he would have made it earlier – as would George W. Bush.’
Brandon Webb, a former SEAL who spent 13 years on active duty and served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said: ‘Bush should get partial credit for putting the system in place.
Clint Bruce, who gave up the chance of an NFL career to serve as a SEAL officer before retiring as a lieutenant after nine years, said: ‘We were extremely surprised and discouraged by the publicity because it compromises the ability of those guys to operate.
‘It’s a waste of time to speculate about who would and wouldn’t have made that decision. It was a symphony of opportunity and intelligence that allowed this administration to give the green light. We want to acknowledge that they made that decision.
‘Politicians should let the public know where they stand on national security but not in the play-by-play, detailed way that has been done recently. The intricacies of national security should not become part of stump speeches.’
Note that this appeared in a British paper.I doubt you'll see it in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post or on the alphabet networks.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Iowa Comes Down ToThe Wire
The latest polls show Mitt Romney in a statistical dead heat with Ron Paul, followed by Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich. Michele Bachmann is bringing up the rear, having fallen to single digits.
Romney campaigned in Des Moines today, stumping with New Jersey governor Chris Christie on a cold wet day with temperatures in the twenties. Considering the weather, Romeny drew a decent crowd as he mocked President Obama and his $4 million Hawaiian vacation.
"We’re out in the cold and the rain and the wind because we care about America. He just finished his 90th round of golf.”
Governor Christie: “You people disappoint me on Tuesday, you don’t do what you’re supposed to do on Tuesday for Mitt Romney I will be back, Jersey-style, people. I will be back,” he joked.
Rick Santorum is moving up in the polls as Newt Gingrich has been falling. A lot of evangelicals are reportedly giving him a second look. He's invested a great deal of time here in Iowa and he needs a strong finish here to keep his campaign viable.
Michele Bachmann has perhaps the saddest story of all. After winning the Ames straw poll, she suffered perhaps a terminal blow when her Iowa campaign chair defected to Ron Paul without giving her any warning whatsoever.
As much as I like Michele Bachmann, I think what we're seeing here is an indication that her campaign was hurried and perhaps premature. She's only been in Congress four years,and hopefully she can make another try for top job when she's had a little more seasoning and time to process what went wrong this time.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Herman Cain: 'Maybe I Did, But Ain't Nobody's Business'
Herman Cain is reportedly 'reassessing' his campaign after the latest allegations of a 13 year affair with Ginger White, an Atlanta woman surfaced yesterday.
White went public in an interview with an Atlanta TV station, describing the sex as consensual and admitting that she knew Cain was married and that she’s “not proud” of what she described as a long-running affair with the married GOP candidate. “It was pretty simple,” Ms. White said in the interview. “It wasn’t complicated. I was aware that he was married. And I was also aware I was involved in a very inappropriate situation, relationship.”
She also said that Cain had given her money on occasion and produced cellphone bills that included 61 phone calls or text messages to and from a number she said was for Herman Cain’s private cellphone. When the station sent a text message to the number, Cain called back and acknowledged knowing Ms. White.
He then went on to issue the following statement, in an attempt to get out in front of the storm:
Mr. Cain has been informed today that your television station plans to broadcast a story this evening in which a female will make an accusation that she engaged in a 13-year long physical relationship with Mr. Cain. This is not an accusation of harassment in the workplace – this is not an accusation of an assault - which are subject matters of legitimate inquiry to a political candidate.
Rather, this appears to be an accusation of private, alleged consensual conduct between adults - a subject matter which is not a proper subject of inquiry by the media or the public. No individual, whether a private citizen, a candidate for public office or a public official, should be questioned about his or her private sexual life. The public's right to know and the media's right to report has boundaries and most certainly those boundaries end outside of one's bedroom door.
Mr. Cain has alerted his wife to this new accusation and discussed it with her. He has no obligation to discuss these types of accusations publicly with the media and he will not do so even if his principled position is viewed unfavorably by members of the media.
In other words, if you read between the lines, Cain was saying 'maybe I did, but it's nobody's business and I won't discuss it'. One of his handlers obviously got hold of him shortly afterwards and slapped some sense into him and he's since issued an outright denial, essentially saying that either his supporters are going to believe him or Ginger White, which doesn't explain a lot.
It's pretty obvious to me that at least some of the allegations about Cain's zipper problem are true, and I actually agree with him that it isn't anyone else's business - except that's not how presidential campaigns work, and someone cheating on his spouse matters to a lot of people.
In 'The Prince', Machiavelli famously said that only the prince she be allowed to lie as a tool of governing. What he didn't say but ought to be obvious is that the Prince must be able to lie well enough to appear credible, ala' Mr. Clinton.
Cain appears to have failed this elementary test of leadership, as he has so many others.
If he bails, it will be interesting to see where his supporters end up going - to Newt Gingrich or to Michele Bachmann.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Obama And Iran - Wag The Dog?
The Iranians have formally denied any participation in the attempt to murder the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.
As usual, they're probably lying. We actually have one of the perps in custody.
But what they may not be lying about is the rationale for the ramping up of rhetoric by the Obama administration ( emphasis mine) :
An aide to Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday denied US allegations that the Islamic republic was involved in a plot to kill the Saudi envoy to Washington.
“This is a prefabricated scenario to turn public attention away from domestic problems within the United States,” Ali Akbar Javanfekr, the president’s press adviser, told AFP.
“The US government and the CIA have a lot of experience in diverting public attention from domestic problems in the United States. We have to wait now to know the details of this prefabricated scenario to know the US government’s objectives,” he said.
Let's examine a few things.
Iran is a rogue nation and state supporter of terrorism who has been in a state of war with us since 1978. They or their proxies have killed US troops in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan, supplied weapons to our enemies. There's even some credible evidence they may have helped facilitate 9/11.
They actually engaged in a shooting war with the U.S. in the Persian Gulf back in the 1980's, and then there's their illegal nuclear program, the constant threats and bluster and their direct arming of our enemies.
President Barack Obama has been an enabler and appeaser of Iran ever since he took office (and to be honest, so was President Bush before him to a large degree). Nothing I mentioned above ever caused him to falter a single bit in 'engaging' with the mullahs or extending what he called 'an unclenched fist' in their direction, no matter how often they spat in his hand.
Now, all of a sudden, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are pounding their chests and issuing war cries about an 'unacceptable escalation'? Why now?
What's changed, of course is the president's poll numbers. With an election coming on, President Obama might just see some forceful engagement in Iran as a way to boost those ol' approval numbers. It wouldn't surprise me one bit.
This president frequently channels Jimmy Carter, and you may recall the boost in President Carter's popularity when the Iran Hostage crisis began. Before that, he failure to show even a semblence of acumen in running the U.S. economy or its foreign policy had him doomed to be a one term president.
But once the mullahs moved against our diplomats, the American people rallied around him - at least until they finally figured out that an incredibly weak president was going to be as feckless with the Iranians as he had with the commies and virtually everyone else. Then his ratings plummeted again. Meanwhile the mullahs were smart enough to release the hostages the day President Reagan took office even at terms that were actually far less than what they had been demanding of Carter.
If our current miserable excuse for a commander-in-chief has ideas of taking on Iran to bolster his political future, I applaud the action if not the motivation, provided it's done properly...which it likely won't be with President Obama in charge. A few things to consider:
The president is also likely to face hardline pressure from Putin to back off from Iran - something Obama has been notably deficient in dealing with in the past. In fact, the only real allies we're likely to have will be Australia and Israel, with maybe the Saudis and the Gulf nations in support roles. Given president Obama's hostility towards Israel, is he going to be prepared to make use of our mosy loyal ally in the Middle East?
These are all things I hope President Obama is considering if he's contemplating a wag the dog moment.Frankly, I wonder if he has.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Proof The GOP Is Going To Win The White House
Absolute, concrete, bet-real-money-on-it proof.
Yes, Bob Shrum is now predicting that President Obama wins re-election handily from 'the crazies' as he calls them.
When a partisan, ignorant political hack with the political acumen and judgment gained from having run or had major responsibility for the presidential campaigns of Ted Kenedy, Ed Muskie, George McGovern Dick Gephart, Michael Dukakis, Bob Kerrey, Al Gore, and John Kerry makes a prediction like the one above, it's practically time to break out the champagne.
0 and 8, no wins or draws.
Perhaps both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama's smartest move was making sure that Bob Shrum had nothing to do whatever in any capacity with their campaigns.
