Orson Scott Card goes nuclear on the EneMedia

Wow. Just wow. The author of “Ender’s Game” takes no prisoners. Read the whole thing for yourself. ANd keep in mind: OSC is not a Republican or conservative, but an old-school Democrat.

To you newspeople at CBS, CNN, ABC, NBC. To you journalists at the New York Times, the Washington Post, at newspapers all over America.

You did it. You won. You were able to get Barack Obama his second term.

You knew that if you told the American people the truth, they would not have reelected this man.

Americans don’t vote to reelect a commander-in-chief who abandons our soldiers and agents and ambassadors when they’re under enemy fire.

But you, confident that you are much wiser than the American people, you decided we had no reason to think about this during the election.

[…]

Barack Obama is still a liar — you didn’t change that, you merely hid it.

Barack Obama is still the selfish, cowardly commander-in-chief who abandons American public servants — you didn’t change him, nor did you give him any reason to change.

[…] Even though his administration, his FEMA, did at least as badly as the Bush administration did after Katrina, and with far less excuse, you did not run endless coverage of the people’s suffering, the way you did with Bush.

We have an exact comparison now. We know that you air negative video and print negative stories only when you don’t like the president involved; when you support the president, when he’s on your team, you downplay the negatives, you find other people to blame. You become “impartial.”

[…] There are still a few real news outlets — a few reporters, a few stations, a few newspapers, and one cable news network that remember what journalism used to mean.

You have to attack Fox News and sneer at them and accuse them of bias, don’t you — because they’re actually doing the job you merely pretend to do. They shame you by their genuinely balanced coverage, so you have to lie and accuse them of being what you are: ideological hacks, providing propaganda in order to advance a cause, while hiding the unhelpful truth.

So let me ask you a question[…]:

If Barack Obama had a propaganda minister with the power to shut you down if you ran stories that embarrassed him or his administration, would your station, your network, your newspaper, your magazine still be in business?

[…]Everybody at Fox News would have been jailed, and Fox News would have been shut down. But you already do everything you can to get people not to listen to Fox, so the actions of such a propaganda minister would merely make official what you already try to accomplish by other means.

Don’t you dare say I’m lying or exaggerating, because the Democrats did try to shut down conservative talk radio, and you supported them in that effort, allowing them to get away with calling the proposed action “fairness.”

You go along with the big lie every day. You did it obviously and openly in these last weeks before the election, allowing Barack Obama to conceal, cover up, lie — all because, like good obedient party flacks, you knew that nothing was more important than keeping the Beloved Leader in power.

If Barack Obama were a dictator with the power to control the media, you would not have to change your news coverage in any way.

[…] Democracy only works when the people have enough true information to make their own choices. But when somebody decides that an informed public might not make the right choice, and so withholds from them the information that would lead them to make “mistakes” and elect the “wrong people” — well, we don’t actually have democracy, do we?

We have rule by an elite that makes our decisions for us, and keeps us from knowing information that “isn’t good for us.”

Because you know best, don’t you? You and your friends who all think alike and hate and fear anyone who thinks differently from you — while priding yourselves on “tolerance.” You will dismiss what I’m saying here as “bitterness” because my candidate did not win the election.

What you don’t get is that [Romney] was not my candidate. He was merely the only choice left to me, once I understood that the Beloved Leader is the most incompetent and untrustworthy commander-in-chief that America has ever had.

Once I understood that the Beloved Leader will lie about decisions of his that killed people, and that you would help him cover up his high crimes and misdemeanors — then whom else could I turn to, but the candidate the Republicans offered to replace him?

By sheer luck, the Republicans transcended themselves and offered us a decent, intelligent, moderate, honest man of proven ability.

But you helped support the Beloved Leader in his lies and attacks on that decent man, and enough people believed those lies and attacks that the Beloved Leader held onto power.

Next time the Republicans will probably offer one of their usual clowns. But then we’ll take him gratefully, because by then we’ll be fed up with the consequences of the ideologically-driven, arrogant, dishonest Beloved Leader that you foisted on us.

So yes, CBS, CNN, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post, and all the rest of you in the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda: You won. [Wikipedia link mine — NCT]

But we know you now. We know just how low you’ll go, how compliant you will be with the Beloved Leader.

Just because brown-shirted thugs aren’t beating your opponents in the streets doesn’t mean you aren’t every bit as much the enemies of democracy as any Nazi or Bolshevik ever was.

Telling us the truth and letting us make informed decisions — that was your job. That’s why the press gets special protection in the Constitution. That’s why you’re called “the fourth estate.”

Democracy did not fail us in the presidential election of 2012.

You did.

As Steven Brill put it way back: When it comes to arrogance, power, and lack of accountability, journalists are probably the only people on the planet who make lawyers look good.

Now what? The long game and the short game

Like many of us, I was heartsick over the election. Not because “our team” lost, but because what is without doubt the worst president in living memory, after a term in office that reads like a litany of disasters and miserable failures, managed to secure reelection despite at least two major scandals that would have brought down any Republican president — who, of course, would not benefit from a gleichgeschaltete press.

I’ve read plenty of “we are doomed” articles over the last few days, and certainly understand the despair speaking through them. John Hinderaker struck a backhanded positive note: namely, that the person dealing with the damage wrought by the first 0bama term will be none other than Barack Hussein 0bama. (Clementine Churchill “Winston, this may be a blessing in disguise.” Winston Churchill: “At this moment it seems quite effectively disguised.”)

I am not sure we’re lost or doomed, but I think we have to play two games at once: a short game (on economics) and a long game (on social/moral issues). Forgive me the “stream of consciousness draft” nature of what follows.

A number of pundits have struck a “two tribes” or “one nation divided” theme: America nearly equally split into two nations. Actually, I’d go even further: two nations that don’t even speak each other’s language. I don’t agree with, say, Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum on many issues but I share enough of a reference framework with them that I understand what makes them tick. Your average MTV-head (or, for that matter, the indie rock-fan bashing “eMpTyV”) won’t even get where Romney or Santorum come from — and they tend to be so low-information on anything not immediately relevant to their daily lives that they are easy targets for media manipulation.

It’s like — as happened to me the other day — somebody walks in on you listening in obvious bliss to music on headphones, and just hearing cymbal noise and what sounds like vocal shouting because nothing else leaks from the headphones. The person coming in thinks you like crap noise, while you are actually hearing Deep Purple’s “In Rock” album in all its sonic glory.

To some kid that’s been brainwashed by entertainment TV on “hookups”, consequence-free s3x, and glorification of non-heterosexual s3x, somebody like Romney is never going to be able to explain his position (ahem) on marriage, let alone on abortion. (I’m not even thinking of Santorum’s, and don’t get me started on Todd Akin, an embarrassment that managed to blow a shoo-in Senate seat). Even when the kid might be open to the idea that a foetus is not just some clump of tissues that can be flushed at will until right before birth (and even when born alive after a botched abortion, according to some extremists such as a certain former Illinois state senator), they are vulnerable to all the “back-alley abortions” “steal your lady parts” etc. propaganda of the other side. And here’s the clincher — women from the more so-con side, even when personally atheist or agnostic (like Dr. Helen Smith, a.k.a. “Instawife”) won’t even get why the women from the other side aren’t turned off by this obviously simplistic, manipulative, and patronizing propaganda.

It used to be that positions, liberal or conservative, might have been taught in school in a relatively dispassionate fashion, leaving people (comparatively) free to make up their own minds. What happens now is that kids get little or no actual information in school (and whatever they do get is thin on information and heavy on propaganda), and nothing but propaganda (glorifying one perspective and demonizing another) through the popular culture. As Sarah Hoyt pointed out, outliers can exist in the latter, but only after they have already become established and feared in some niche — Brad Thor, for example, can be an outspoken conservative, or some Justin Bieber-type singer can be an evangelical, or Bob Dylan can be a quasi-Orthodox Jew [though even he has to at least be seen as genuflecting to the hipster orthodoxy once in a while].

Therefore, on social and cultural issues, only the long game can be played. I am not even talking about persuading people, simply of convincing them that there is another perspective at least as valid as the therapeutic left-liberal one they take for granted. It is high time to make the culture celebrate “diversity” beyond the skin-deep kind of race and ethnicity, but this is a slow game that (Bill Whittle makes this point masterfully) requires essentially the patient building-up of a competing popular media infrastructure.

So much for the long game. On economic issues, however, the short game can and should be played, if only because we are so close to the economic abyss that the daily consequences will hit very soon and very hard, way beyond the extent that they are already hitting many people. At some point very soon “other people’s money” will run out, and the “blue model” discussed at great length by Walter Russell Mead will crash. If 0bama weren’t such an economic innumerate, he’d (quietly, so as not to upset environmental extremists) push for maximum development of US oil resources to have an export commodity available for “the day after” Arab oil runs out — because nanny statism of the type he envisages can only be financed (while it lasts) if you’re literally sitting on a gold mine with the whole world lining up to buy.

In other words: the only message that the GOP can, in the short term, preach outside the choir is the economic one of “we have no more money and better do something about it before it all comes crashing down”. This message should be stated clearly, forcefully, and insistently. This will not fall on kind ears — as the hysterical reactions to the ‘Ryan plan’ illustrate — and entrenched interests will do all they can to demonize the GOP here too. But here the GOP has been able to score at least tactical victories at the local or regional level (note Scott Walker in WI), and in the short-to-medium term, their best ally are “the cold equations”: either the GOP will be ignored in the short term and then gain new respect as “the gods of the copybook headings with [financial] terror and slaughter return”, or they will be hearkened to and in the process become stronger, or adult leadership will come back to the D party and it will adopt modified forms of GOP solutions and then claim their ownership, justifying itself to its base by explaining how much worse the medicine would taste if the GOP did it. (The latter outcome may take the wind out of the GOP’s sails in the short run but may actually benefit it in the long run — as it will be seen as a responsible partner by supporting effectively GOP-lite policies from the opposition benches.)

In both long and short game — as the late lamented Andrew Breitbart understood better than anybody else — the legacy media is Enemy Number One and this should be kept in mind at all times. Covering for D presidents may not be something new (think of FDR and JFK), but the blatancy, near-universality, and shamelessness of today is something unprecedented. Insty has referred to them over and over as “DNC operatives with bylines” — if they aren’t actual operatives, they have become functionally equivalents thereof. As veterans of the Chicago Machine, the 0bama consiglieres will know how to reward their friends: I am willing to bet nearly my bottom dollar on an overt or covert bailout or subsidy of the legacy media “in the public interest”. Treating them as ‘the enemy’ does not always mean being confrontational or aggressive: Breitbart was at his most devastating to them when playing mental jujitsu games with them.

Us obsessive newsbloggers/newsblog readers are making the mistake of targeting high-information voters. A president (and his followers) behaving like middle schoolers just won re-election — because that is the level of information and maturity of half the electorate! Therefore, we must target our message simultaneously to all levels of information and attention span, and in such a way that the consumer can choose their level without feeling patronized.

You may call me a dreamer, but I can’t believe I’m the only one.

On a final note: there is one subject notably absent from the above, immigration. With the economy in the current doldrums, the wave of illegal immigration from South of the border appears to be petering out as even menial work “that Americans won’t do” is no longer abundantly available. As much as the stories described by Victor Davis Hanson make my blood boil, nothing will put a more effective end to these than (for lack of any fiscal alternative) severely curtailing transfer payments to the ‘documented’ and ‘undocumented’ alike. For good reason, Milton Friedman was an advocate of both minimum-government and  open borders: one can easily (and only) afford the latter if one has the former.

UPDATE: Megan McArdle (one of the very few redeeming features of the execrable Daily Beast) had predicted an 0bama win, but in the short-to-medium term foresees a fracturing of the ‘permanent’ D coalition  as the money runs out and it will be impossible to continue paying off all interest groups at the same time, forcing difficult choices between them. She uses the term ‘Hobbesian war of all against all’: I might have chosen the term Ragnarok.

0bama increasingly making middle-schoolers look poised and mature in comparison

It seems that either the campaign is desperate or they have lulled themselves into thinking that the only two demographics that matter are “grievance studies” and “hipster D-bags”. (That’s what echo chambers will do to you.)

In any case, at a campaign appearance in Springfield, OH (not the namesake in IL), 0bama urged voters to “take revenge” on election day. The Romney campaign wasted no time in pouncing on this, asking voters “”Are you voting for Revenge Or Love Of Country?”

 

Seriously, 0bama and his campaign are increasingly making middle-schoolers look poised and mature in comparison.

Or they are plain desperate. Just gleaning from my twitter feed:

• a voter event in Cleveland, OH with a free Stevie Wonder concert, for G-d’s sake, pulled in less than 200 (two hundred) people. (And how many of those just came for Stevie and won’t vote at all or vote for R&R?)
• Not just PENNSYLVANIA, but even freaking MINNESOTA (yes, the only state pulled by Walter Mondale in 1984!) somehow became battleground states #dontgetcocky
• New poll by Tampa Bay Times & Miami Herald: Romney leads 51-45 in Florida http://hotair.com/archives/2012/11/03/romney-up-6-in-florida/ … via @hotairblog #Mitt2012#dontgetcocky
• Another example of “confidence”: 4 men arrested in Perrysburg, OH for stealing Romney signs while driving sheet metal union truck http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/156686/ …

As Insty put it memorably: “Don’t forget to change your clocks tonight, and your president on Tuesday”.

Has the preference cascade reached the media? Romney leading in newspaper endorsements

Ann Althouse notes that, most unlike McCain in 2008, Romney is currently leading 0bama in newspaper endorsements by a sizeable margin — and that no less than 28 papers switched from 0bama to Romney this election cycle. Via the comments, here is a detailed list of endorsements., from which we learn that only six papers made the reverse switch.

Does this mean that the “preference cascade” has now spread to a quintessential bulwark of the New Class, the legacy media? (To be sure, the Pravda-on-the-Hudson and the Izvestia-on-the=Potomac are still endorsing the Naked Emperor, the NYT orgasmically so, the WaPo less enthusiastically.)

The winner in the “don’t hold back, tell us how you really feel” category must surely be the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “Benghazi blunder: Obama unworthy commander-in-chief“. These lines deserve being shouted out to the world:

This administration is an embarrassment on foreign policy and incompetent at best on the economy – though a more careful analysis shows what can only be a perverse and willful attempt to destroy our prosperity. […]

[Mr. Obama’s] behaviors go far beyond “spin.” They amount to a pack of lies. To return to office a narcissistic amateur who seeks to ride this nation’s economy and international esteem to oblivion, like Slim Pickens riding the nuclear bomb to its target at the end of the movie “Dr. Strangelove,” would be disastrous.

Candidate Obama said if he couldn’t fix the economy in four years, his would be a one-term presidency.

Mitt Romney is [a] moral, capable and responsible man. Just this once, it’s time to hold Barack Obama to his word. Maybe we can all do something about that, come Tuesday.

Indeed.

WaPo reports on… the 0bama defectors

OK, there must be something to this preference cascade, because (via Elizabeth Price Foley @ instapundit) the WaPo, of all places, has an article on the 0bama “defectors”. This graph is probably the most interesting part of the piece:

The standout statistic is of course the very top entry: 13% of all 2008 0bama voters are planning to vote for Romney. 13% of 52% is 6.8%: if 0bama really only will poll about 45% this time then it will be at least a mini-landslide. Assuming that even half of those eventually stay home rather than vote for the other guy, 0bama will still be toast.

If the poll is to be believed, liberal democrats and blacks still stick to Zero like glue. Equally unsurprisingly, over half of the 2008 “Republicans for 0bama” are going for Romney this time. But gee, I really have no idea why 19% of white Catholic 0bama voters, or 21% of working class whites, have developed buyer’s remorse? 😉 Or why nearly one-third of his white evangelical voters have decided to turn their back on him? Governing like a Chicago ward heeler, and campaigning like only the “hipster douchebag” demographic decides elections, have consequences.

But perhaps even more important is that, among white college grads (a suppsedly reliably liberal demographic), 17% of men and 12% of women are crossing the aisle. This is not a phenomenon of just one or two special interest groups.

Let us hope that the top statistic line is correct, and that the 0bama regime will soon be just a bad memory. “Y’all can keep the change.”

0bama and Bloomberg: case studies in defense mechanisms of incompetent managers #Omustgo

Like all of us who have dealt with managers and/or work(ed) in management ourselves, I have witnessed on numerous occasions two defense mechanisms of incompetent and/or out-of-their-depth managers. Both of these are on ample display in the political environment today.

The two mechanisms are seemingly opposite but in fact closely related — both are misdirection/displacement/”red herring” tactics.

The first is: faced with large and seemingly unsurmountable problems, the outclassed manager instead focuses on some detail problem that (s)he judges manageable and declares this THE top priority, so that (s)he can “solve” it and declare victory. For example, the pathetic joke of a president suddenly declaring that not the $16T and swelling federal deficit, not the crash-and-burn of an Islamo-appeaser foreign policy, not an on-paper employment of 8% (out of an ever shrinking labor force), but… bullying or homosexual ‘marriage’ are the most important issue of the day.

The second mechanism takes an opposite tack: it instead redirects attention to some super-issue in comparison to which all other problems become trivial — so why waste time on them? For example, in Israeli politics, the agenda of the day is understandably dominated by the issue of ‘hamatzav’ (the [security] situation) — and any politician who wants public attention without the thankless hard work of writing and passing legislation that deals with mundane things like roads, crime, still pervasive oligopolies,… can instead pontificate about ‘the situation’/’the peace process’/… (Another such ‘super-issue’ there, albeit a distant second to ‘hamatzav’, are synagogue-state relations.)

Similarly, the pathetic joke of a New York mayor, rather than deal with the bed bug epidemic, a city that isn’t as safe as it was under his predecessor, or the vulnerability of the city’s infrastructure to man-made or (most recently) natural disasters — starts pontificating about ‘global warming’, and declares that we have to re-elect the Worst President In Living Memory because he has the ‘correct’ position on global warming.

I’ve dealt with incompetent managers who applied either tactic: more commonly they engage in both, like Bloomberg who also finds it necessary to regulate the size of sodas. They may be people that never belonged in any managerial role of any kind but wormed their way into one based on superficial, glib manipulation skills — like our president whom we at last have a chance to fire come next Tuesday.

Or they may actually be people who, based on their success at one managerial task, get appointed to one where they are manifestly out of their depths: Bloomberg’s manifest success in creating and building his financial news company clearly did not translate to anything resembling success in the unrelated field of running the municipal services of a metropolis. Here we actually see Peter’s Principle in action: people competent at lower-level managerial jobs (or those merely able to pass as such) eventually get promoted to their level of absolute incompetence.

But in private business, when a manager is clearly not delivering, (s)he gets sent packing. And Clint Eastwood was quite right in pointing out that it doesn’t matter that (s)he is a nice person or has a desirable social profile: “when somebody does not do the job, we got to let them go.”On Tuesday we have an opportunity to let go a chief executive whose main ‘achievement’ has been to stop the hapless Jimmy Carter from being the worst president in living memory. And #dontgetcocky, but… the polls suggest we have a very real chance of doing so — if we show up in numbers to do it. Let us do so in great numbers and send the fallen-upward empty chair back to the shady Chicago furniture store where he belongs.UPDATE: Walter Russell Mead:

Admittedly, getting public support and finding the money for flood protection would be hard, but it is exactly that kind of hard job that governments are supposed to do. Leadership is getting the important things done, not looking busy on secondary tasks while the real needs of the city go quietly unmet.

The problem with nanny state governance isn’t just that it’s intrusive. It isn’t just that it stifles business with over-regulation, and it isn’t just that it empowers busybodies and costs money. It’s that it distracts government from the really big jobs that it ought to be doing.

Mayor Bloomberg has done an admirable job under great pressure as the city reels from Sandy’s attack. But an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure. The city needed flood protection for its subways and electricity grid—and it didn’t get it. If the Mayor had spent less time and less of his political capital focusing on minutiae, this storm could have played out very differently.

Bibi gives 0bama a Mideast history lesson (video)

Must-see (via Gateway Pundit):

On the other hand, Walter Russell Mead analyzes the non-Israel parts of 0bama’s speech, and says he’s (however reluctantly) embracing the Bush doctrine. (Here is a roundup of more reactions.)

Just minutes ago I got an Email from a Washington acquaintance (and Jewish 0bama supporter) who appears to be even more confused than I am. Is 0bama really throwing Israel under the bus, or did he seriously think he could bully Netanyahu (no slouch at dirty politics himself) into doing his bidding? Or do both sides know that a return to 1967 borders (read: pre-Six Day War borders, since I assume for Israel to reoccupy the Sinai is not the idea ;-)) is not realistic, but staged the disagreement just for show?

In any case, Netanyahu, whatever my misgivings about him as an actual leader are, has always been an impressive spokesman for his people, and together put in possibly the best performance of his career. Without benefit of teleprompters, may I add.

Atlas is shrugging already

(via Instapundit). I am no Randian, and Ayn Rand’s style isn’t my cup of tea. But Atlas Shrugged‘s message against collectivism and, often overlooked, against crony capitalism has perhaps never been more relevant.

Innumeracy and wordsmith “intellectuals”

Insty today hit a raw nerve:

TAXING THE RICH: The math just doesn’t work. But as we’ve seen, Obama and the dems seem deep in the grip of innumeracy — or, alternatively, they hope the voters are.

It goes further than just the 0bama administration. In the circles of “wordsmith” intellectuals, who live or die by their pen, articulateness is all too often confused with intelligence. When one engages some of these people (say, J’ism school grads) in discussion on nonverbal subjects — including totally apolitical ones — one often encounters astonishingly limited minds in the numerical (and, to a lesser extent visuospatial) realm. The word “innumeracy” is only a mild poetic exaggeration in many cases, and dead-on accurate in some others. A school and college system that increasingly allows pupils/students to avoid grappling with math and science only makes things worse.

 

Are unions evil? No, just obsolete

The absolutely despicable behavior displayed by the pro-union thugs in Wisconsin (check out the Althouse-Meade team’s citizen journalism straight from Madison) has turned out to be everything the make-believe media claimedf the Tea Party was. It may be seductive to some on the right to think that unions are evil, and one could be forgiven for thinking the WI public sector unions were following the book by Draco Carnegie (Dale Carnegie’s evil twin): “How to lose friends and alienate people”.

Unlike some conservatives, I do not harbor starry-eyed illusions that bosses never exploit workers, and that workers never need represesntation or protection. This is not because of any residual liberal convictions but because — like any good conservative — I realize entrepreneurs are humans too and no human flaws will be alien to them.

Once upon a time, unions did a lot of good in remedying intolerable working conditions. However, when the “sweatshops” and slave-labor mines of old fell before the twin onslaught of worker activism and technological progress (many “progressives” are incapable of admitting that technological progress has done more to empower non-privileged individuals than all social engineering schemes ever devised together), the unions saw themselves faced with the need to either reinvent themselves or fade away.

Sometimes, as discussed in this golden oldie by Steven den Beste, an organization that outlives the problem it is meant to address will successfully reinvent itself. Far more commonly, the organization will artificially seek to perpetuate a problem in order to justify its continued existence and expansion, or try to inflate residual isolated problems into grand societal challenges . The UNRWA is a tragic example; an organization like SPLC a merely farcical one.

Robert Samuelson has a must-read article in the Washington Post today. Get thee over there, but let me share with you some data from the article that really floored me.

How much of the workforce do unions represent? Turns out, just 11.9% nationwide. In the private sector, thiis drops to just 6.9% (!), while in the public sector, 36.2% of workers is unionized. (These numbers, actually, imply that 17.1% of the American workforce works in the public sector.)

In other words, as Samuelson argues, unions are becoming largely irrelevant in the private sector, and are essentially becoming a public-sector phenomenon. Which is why attempts to curtail their influence in their last remaining bulwark are (correctly) perceived by union leadership as an existential threat.

Moreover, Simon at Power and Control (crosspost at Classical Values) points to data suggesting that the unions are in dire financial shape.  They “went for broke” in supporting 0bama, in the hope that he would oversee either a massive expansion of the governmental workforce, or introduce union-friendly “card check” legislation restoring their power base in the private sector, or both.

Ironically, Federal government employees (as distinct from state and local ones) have greatly curtailed collective bargaining rights:

While labor unions that represent federal workers do have some collective bargaining rights, provisions in the Civil Service Reform Act passed under President Carter in 1978 restrict federal employees from using it for pay or pensions and federal workers cannot be forced into a union or required to pay dues.

Pournelle’s Iron Law states that any bureaucratic organization will eventually become dominated by people that work not for its stated ends, but for the organization for its own sake and for the sake of their own private bureaucratic empires. Precisely this is what happened to unions in the USA.

Using the Oscars to rewrite the history of the subprime crisis

Zombie writes at length on this year’s Oscar winner for best documentary:

Whenever I visit Berkeley — in particular certain upscale areas populated by academics and wealthy intellectuals — practically everyone I see has this creepy look on his or her face. […] In an instant, the Berkeley expression communicates to everyone in the vicinity, “Isn’t it great that you and I and all of us here are morally superior to the rest of the world?” […]

Charles Ferguson’s[…]  winning documentary was called Inside Job, which traces the history of the financial meltdown of 2008, and places the blame entirely on greedy Wall Street insiders who scammed the world out of trillions of dollars. Every year, the Academy voters feel compelled to make some kind of political statement with an Oscar, and this year they chose Inside Job as their statement. Predictable.

I had pretty much already forgotten about the Oscars when I opened my morning paper yesterday to discover an explanation for Charles Ferguson’s instantly identifiable facial expression — he really is from Berkeley!

At first I simply found it amusing that one can pinpoint someone’s hometown simply by their smug expression — just as Sherlock Holmes could identify the village you came from by the color of the mud splatters on your trouser cuffs — but as I continued to read the article, my mood took a decidedly political turn when I encountered this passage:

Robert Gnaizda, former president of Berkeley’s Greenlining Institute, says some of the responsibility lies with the current White House.

“There’s an unwillingness by the Obama administration to effectively criticize ‘too big to fail’ institutions,” said Gnaizda, who is featured in the documentary vainly warning successive Federal Reserve Board chairmen about the kind of doomed-to-fail loans Countrywide Financial and others were making.

Whoa whoa whoa — stop right there. Am I reading this correctly? The head of the Greenlining Institute is in the film warning against subprime loans???

As it happens, Zombie had written an essay in September 2008 on the role that the Greenlining Institute (which really ought to be called the “redlining institute”) had in creating the subprime crisis:

This short post not only posits the exact opposite theory than does Inside Job, but it actually points the finger of blame at Robert Gnaizda’s Greenlining Institute as the ultimate cause of the problem, rather than as the heroes who tried to prevent the crisis.I know I’m tilting at windmills here: the budget of my original post was exactly $0, and I’m up against an Academy-Award-winning film with a production budget of $2 million and which took over two years to complete. Furthermore, the narrative pushed by the film is the narrative favored and relentlessly affirmed by almost the entire media and all of academia, and it is therefore the narrative that the general public has come to accept.

But upon re-reading my own post (which even I had half-forgotten about), I was amazed at how still current it remains, and how the points I made two and half years ago seem to have had been written to specifically rebut the thesis of Inside Job, a film which hadn’t even been made yet.

Rather than paraphrase my earlier essay, I’ll just quote part of it here and let you judge for yourself:

…The Greenlining Institute existed solely to bully banks and financial institutions into giving loans to otherwise unqualified minority borrowers.
…

There’s been a lot of finger-pointing on all sides about this financial crisis, but much of it misses the point. The off-topic details about CEO salaries and bond markets and mergers and bailouts and who voted for what all chase the horse after it’s already left the barn. The key question is this:

Once upon a time, banks only loaned money to individuals who could qualify for a home mortgage; and then sometime recently, they changed their practices and started loaning money to a lot of people who didn’t qualify and could not afford to pay back the loans. And when they started defaulting, and when real estate values starting dropping, the entire industry collapsed, because there was no equity to pay back the loans. The banks lost money, the customers lost money, and it all went down the toilet. Which, of course, many people had predicted. So the question is: Why? Why did banks start making countless risky untenable loans to unqualified customers?

And the answer is: Because they were afraid of being called racists by the legal bullies at the Greenlining Institute and other similar “community organizers.”

It all started with The Community Reinvestment Act, a federal law originally passed during the Carter administration and then ramped up during the Clinton years, that was originally designed to prevent racist lending practices by banks who wouldn’t loan money to minorities, even if they were qualified. Which was a fine idea. But over time the law was twisted to force banks to make loans to minorities even if they weren’t qualified — which all may sound very peachy keen in Fantasy Utopia Land but which inevitably spells long-term financial suicide for a bank.

The Greenlining Institute’s self-appointed role is to identify those banks which by Greenlining’s reckoning haven’t doled out enough money to underqualified minority borrowers, and then threaten them with lawsuits, protests, and accusations of institutional racism if the banks don’t start opening their wallets ASAP. And the banks caved. Greenlining brags that they have unparalleled access to banking boardrooms, and they successfully squeezed $2.4 trillion (yes, trillion) in “CRA commitments” (i.e. loans to unqualified borrowers) out of terrified banks. Nearly every bank and financial institution you’ve ever heard of seems to kowtow to Greenlining.

[…G]roups like the Greenlining Institute saw the banks as potential agents of economic restructuring: If banks could be forced to grant homeownership to poor people, then that would be the first step for the lower classes to climb out of poverty, since everyone knows that owning one’s own home instills a sense of pride, self-worth, and self-reliance.And so, using the bullying tactics described above (and in the original article which first inspired my post), the Greenlining Institute (and similar groups) twisted the banks’ arms to make risky loans, for the purpose of “social justice,” to use the activists’ own terminology.

A then-young community organizer named Barack Hussein 0bama also features in the narrative.

Forced into this situation, the banks then went to great lengths to disguise the risk they had foolishly assumed; to fob the bad loans off on unsuspecting other investors, they devised convoluted financial instruments that obscured the danger of the investments; and so on.

At this point, the sorry mess developed a momentum of its own, as subprime mortgages became available to everybody (not just the targeted group) and house-flipping became a national hobby. Read the whole thing. And weep.  In related news,

The unfunded liabilities of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid already exceed $106 trillion. That’s well over $300,000 for every man, woman and child in America (and exceeds the combined value of every U.S. bank account, stock certificate, building and piece of personal or public property).

“A funeral dirge for eyes gone blind“.

Incidentally, one of the contenders “Inside Job” beat out was “Waiting for Superman” about the dysfunctional public education system. It was made by the director of “An Inconvenient Truth” but, unlike the crockumentary of that name, actually tells exactly that.  The moviemaker set out to document everything every liberal likes to believe about public schools, found the reality rather… different, and, surprisingly, had the guts to kick against some left-wing houses of the holy. (Education, in the old-fashioned sense of the word, is one cause in which some New Class liberals believe sufficiently strongly that they sometimes find themselves on the same side as conservatives.) Of course, the bien-pensant Anointed “cannot have that”…

Government cyber-astroturf project

Via Insty:

U.S. Gov‘t Software Creates ’Fake People’ to Spread Message via Social Networking. “The US government is offering private intelligence companies contracts to create software to manage “fake people” on social media sites and create the illusion of consensus on controversial issues. The contract calls for the development of ‘Persona Management Software’ which would help the user create and manage a variety of distinct fake profiles online. The job listing was discussed in recently leaked emails from the private security firm HBGary after an attack by internet activist last week.”

Un-freaking-believable. Yet the only way some phenomena I have seen can be rationalized.

Presidents Day

Abraham Lincoln, 1863: Government of the people. by the people, for the people.

Barack Hussein 0bama, 2011: Government of the people, by the New Class, for the New Class and its adopted mascots.

Happy Presidents Day.

BREAKING: Mubarak to step down, xfer power to military junta. UPDATE: xferring authority but staying on until September

Fox News reports:

President Hosni Mubarak will step down shortly and transfer authority to the Egyptian Higher Council of the Armed Forces, a senior Egyptian official confirmed to Fox News on Thursday.

The group is comprised of the minister of defense, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi — who stands atop the military hierarchy — along with the military’s chief of staff, the chief of operations, and commanders of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Air Defenses.

The source pointed out that the transfer of power will occur “outside of the constitutional framework” because under the Egyptian constitution, Mubarak’s resignation ordinarily would mean that the speaker of the house would become president and elections would be held within 60 days. […] The source did not know how long the military would reign nor what mechanism or timetable would be put in place to end the military’s administration of power, but said that “when (the transfer of power from Mubarak) does happen, they will presumably indicate the direction of the country.”

The source drew parallels with the Army coup of 1952, and the removal of King Faroukh, noting that it took six months before the monarchy was dissolved and the modern republic formed.

[…] The source predicted, without certainty, that Mubarak will retire to Sharm el-Sheikh and lead an “isolated” existence.

The official also expressed criticism of the Obama administration and the American press for short-changing the reform process that Mubarak and Suleiman had begun to put in place, and which the official claimed had been moving along “fine” in “very rapid” fashion.

As a case in point, the official cited the committee to amend the constitution that had been formed, including with opposition membership, and which he said had agreed swiftly on the six article[s] of the constitution to be reformed.

The official said the “constant requests for more measures, to be undertaken more quickly, more rapidly … the constant push” and “lack of recognition” for the reform measures being undertaken in good faith all conspired to create a “national consensus” in Egypt that forced Mubarak’s ouster.

“They did not give too much room for the (reform) process to move forward,” the official said of the Obama administration.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Mubarak announced that, while he is transferring authority to his newly-minted VP Omar Suleiman, he will remain president until September.

Jerry Pournelle on Egypt

Jerry Pournelle:

It’s getting more clear: the Egyptian Army is waiting things out. The US official policy is idealism: the US supports democracy and freedom, and opposes oppression, and —

The realistic appraisal is a bit different. And exactly what is democracy? The Egyptian middle class doesn’t think that a modern country chases a President into exile at the demands of a mob. Neither does the Army. The Army doesn’t want to fire on the populace. The silly test of crowd resolve, a bunch of civil servants and tourist guide union people “armed” with riding corps riding into the square, showed that the crowd wouldn’t disperse without serious action by the Army. Having the cops shoot people wasn’t in the cards. The Army told Mubarak to retire, with honor, and he has agreed to; luckily for all his term ends shortly anyway. The mob refuses to disperse; the Army waits. It hasn’t yet said it is time to go home, but many Egyptians would like to have an economy again. The feeling among many of the middle class is “He will retire, his son won’t run for office, well have a technocrat as the next President. What more do we want? We don’t like the Jews, but we don’t want another war either.”

There will be elements who want to provoke the Army, and there are reports of shooting at the bridges.

The Al Jazeera footage shows night fighting with night sights on weapons; that’s probably the police. It wasn’t indiscriminate firing. Unlikely to be the Army.

Assuming that things don’t boil, Mubarak will leave in the fall. With military honors, and he will take up residence somewhere near government house, probably with a role much like Clinton has.

That will be in Fall. There is enough time to have some organization of a “loyal opposition” and that will probably happen. Meanwhile there are food riots across the Arab world, and the US continues to subsidize burning corn in automobiles so we can avoid importing oil from countries that pay for wheat and maize.

Read also his earlier entries on the same page. But do not worry. The country is in the very best of hands.

UPDATE: Clarice Feldman (via Insty): The Incredible Lightness of Obama.

The Egyptian, an 82-year-old with terminal cancer, easily bested the community organizer, the man elected by people who quite clearly confused the last presidential election with an American idol contest. While many who elected the American president probably do not yet realize it, it is lucky for them that he lost the showdown, for had he not, the results would have created worldwide havoc and devastation.

And also:

The man who in 2009 in Cairo said, “So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed on one nation by any other” was now dictating to Mubarak the kind of government Egypt should have and when it should have it.  Mubarak noted only the obvious: that if he stepped down immediately, the situation would devolve into chaos.  The rulers of Egypt have a stake in its continued existence which supersedes Obama’s adolescent moral preening.  Had Obama any real interest in democracy in Egypt, he would have followed Bush’s lead and done something to help bring that about before this.[…]

I think it’s a good rule of thumb that whenever Obama begins a statement with “Let me be clear,” he means quite the opposite of whatever follows.  And someone might whisper in his ear that if you run around the world bowing deeply before foreign rulers and undermining your country’s moral position and standing in the world, you cannot expect to have your imperious demands be taken seriously abroad.

Ouch.

Barry Rubin: Whole world gone nuts, so why shouldn’t Egypt?

Barry Rubin:

First, the White House is now calling for a smooth transition in Egypt. In other words, after one week of not-so-gigantic demonstrations, President Barack Obama is openly calling for the downfall of a 60-year-old regime that has been allied with the United States for about 40 years in the most important country in the Arab world.

It’s one thing for the president to urge moderation, no violence, and efforts at compromise. It’s another to push the Egyptian government out of power and possibly usher in a new era of catastrophe for the Middle East and the world.

Couldn’t the U.S. government wait a bit and see what happens? Couldn’t it express public support for the regime and privately urge reforms and a change of personnel? Doesn’t it have any sense of the danger of anarchy or anti-American forces coming to power in Egypt?

It could, of course, be that the US intelligence services know things we don’t know about “the day after”, and that Washington can afford wanting to be seen as being on the right side of history. I am afraid that interpretation is too charitable, however.

Yet on Fox News, the usually astute Charles Krauthammer was predicting that in the next couple of days the Egyptian army would give Mubarak the final push and put forward an alternative leader in order to preserve its own position. This could be one scenario in which a (G-d forbid) Muslim Brotherhood regime could be forestalled.

Remember, it doesn’t have to be an Islamist regime. It can be an Islamist-radical nationalist government with a moderate front man. The outcome could make Iran’s revolution look like a picnic. While that last sentence is perhaps excessively alarmist, it is intended to wake up people from this daydream of Egypt becoming a stable, moderate, democratic state given the actual situation in Egypt.

Second, naivete has reached epidemic proportions. What sets me off here as an example is the Washington Post which, under the headline “Muslim Brotherhood says it is only a minor player in Egyptian protests,” tells us about this group. Of course, it says it is not important. Just as the Big Bad Wolf wore granny’s clothes — “All the better to eat you.” Why should the Western media pick up the revolutionary Islamists’ disinformation themes?

In fact, and I’m not exaggerating, the article tells us that the Brotherhood is no threat and accuses it of wimping out:

It is not the organization of radical jihadists that it is sometimes made out to be. But its caution in dealing with Mubarak has made it appear recently that it is more concerned with protecting itself than with improving the nation.

The article tells us two historical facts about the Brotherhood: it was inspired by the YMCA and was brutally repressed by the Egyptian government in the 1950s.

Sigh. And what does it leave out? That it seeks to transform Egypt into an Islamist state, reduce the Christians to third-class citizens (they are already second-class citizens), do away with rights for women, impose sharia law, drive America out of the Middle East, and wage a war of genocide against Israel.Oh, and then there’s the history of the Brotherhood: it was financed by the Nazis from the 1930s on and tried to deliver Egypt to them in World War Two, used the Nazi weapons it had been given in 1942 to try to destroy Israel in the 1948 war, had a terrorist wing and assassinated a number of officials including an Egyptian prime minister, was repressed because it tried to kill President Gamal Abdel Nasser, supports terrorism not only against Israel but also U.S. forces in Iraq, and has a current leader who calls for a jihad against the United States.

Has anyone in the Western media or governments ever read anything from Brotherhood leaders’ speeches or publications? Apparently not. In fact, regarding the media I have seen zero evidence that it has any idea what these people say every day.[…]

Let’s next listen to A[r]i Shavit of Haaretz, expressing not only what Israelis think but in this case also what all of the Arabs are thinking:

Obama’s betrayal of Hosni Mubarak is not just the betrayal of a moderate Egyptian president who remained loyal to the United States, promoted stability and encouraged moderation. Obama’s betrayal of Mubarak symbolizes the betrayal of every strategic ally in the Third World. Throughout Asia, Africa and South America, leaders are now looking at what is going on between Washington and Cairo.

Everyone grasps the message: America’s word is worthless; an alliance with America is unreliable; American has lost it. A result of this understanding will be a turn toward China, Russia and regional powers such as Iran, Turkey and Brazil….The second result of this insight will be a series of international conflagrations that will result from the loss of America’s deterrent power. But the general result will be America’s rapid disappearance as a superpower….The policy setback which Washington will experience will be no less dramatic than the regime debacle which Cairo is experiencing.

This is the course of the Obama administration and what I’ve been warning about since it took office. Now the moment of anti-glory has arrived. Who is dumb enough to want to be a U.S. ally under these conditions?

Let me stress that the Mubarak regime has been repressive and corrupt. It is understandable that the people of Egypt want more freedom and a better life. So did the people of Russia in 1917, those of Germany in 1932 (they had a republic but most of them hated it), those of Iran in 1978, and those in the Gaza Strip in 2006. One can only sympathize with their situation.

But we are tottering on the edge of catastrophe here and the Obama administration is pushing Egypt into the chasm.

Barry quotes “Cole Porter”: “The world has gone mad today, and good’s bad today.” A much older writer put it diufferently: “Woe unto those that call evil good, and good evil.” (Isaiah 5:20)

Why they’d rather talk about Sarah Palin

Insty has a new running gag/meme: “Why they’d rather talk about Sarah Palin (cont’d)”

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): Investors Have Been Fleeing Municipal Bonds. “A few factors can be blamed for this sudden retreat, but the one making all the headlines is the fear that cash-strapped states and municipalities issuing the bonds will renege on promises to investors.”

Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 17, 2011 at 7:03 am Link

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): America: Paydown Problems.

As it stands today, the US borrows about 40 cents of every dollar it spends. Curbing the budget deficit has been the stated mission of Mr Ryan, a rising Republican star, for several years. But such calls for action have multiplied in Washington in recent months, igniting what some say is the fiercest debate over fiscal and budgetary policy in decades.

The risks are big. If the government rushes into austerity, cutting too much and too quickly, it could stunt economic recovery. But if the political system cannot forge some kind of consensus on steps to restore US deficits to sustainable levels, the danger is potentially even greater: a sovereign debt crisis in the world’s largest economy.

Fortunately, the country’s in the very best of hands.

Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 17, 2011 at 2:42 am Link

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): Unemployment In The U.S. Is Actually Worse Than Pakistan. “The Eurozone is at similar levels to the US, but when most of the countries that have a higher unemployment rate than the US are collectively referred to as PIGS, it’s not very encouraging.”

Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 16, 2011 at 11:28 pm Link

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): “We’re fine at the moment, and we’re screwed long term.” Well, ordinarily I’d be worried. But with the best and the brightest at the helm, I foresee nothing but smooth sailing.

Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 16, 2011 at 10:54 pm Link

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): Soaring Global Food Prices.

Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 16, 2011 at 10:37 pm Link

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): Holiday Spending Record Not As Good As It Looks.

This past season’s revenue marked a 5.7 percent increase over holiday 2009. That’s the strongest gain since 2004. While encouraging, that doesn’t mean shoppers have recovered from the loss of $11 trillion in household wealth. From consumers’ perspective, the economy hasn’t improved dramatically from last year, as credit remains tight, unemployment hasn’t budged below 9 percent, and home values are still depressed. Consumer confidence is hovering at the same level as a year ago and well below the point that signals a stable economy. . . .

In several categories, spending on gifts fell short of shoppers’ 2007 outlay. In 2010, consumers spent $50.7 billion on clothing and accessories like shoes and scarves; in 2007, that figure was $51.3 billion even before adjusting for inflation. Holiday revenue at department stores was $45.3 billion last year, much less than the $50.4 billion that traded hands in 2007.

Read the whole thing. It’s better than last year, but it’s not exactly “Happy days are here again.”

Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 16, 2011 at 8:00 am Link

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): U.S. Satisfaction Remains Near 12-Month Low. “Gallup finds 19% of Americans satisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time — essentially on par with the lowest level of the past 12 months, 17%, registered in December. . . . The current low level of satisfaction is likely tied primarily to the economy.”

Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 15, 2011 at 11:25 pm Link

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): Munis Crashing For Third Straight Day, And This Is The Worst Yet.

Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 14, 2011 at 11:49 pm Link

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): The Worst Combo: Consumer Spending Is Mediocre, Gas Prices Rising, And Retailers Have No Pricing Power. “Things are starting to look a little stagflationary.”

UPDATE: Consumer Confidence Slips Surprisingly on Jobs, Fuel Costs.

Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 14, 2011 at 12:59 pm Link

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): Inflation rate headed up? The impact of higher food, energy prices.

Related: Producer Prices Up the Most in 11 Months in December.

Americans frantically buying silver coins?

Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 14, 2011 at 8:43 am Link

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): AP: Over 1 million Americans seen losing homes in 2011. “The bleakest year in the foreclosure crisis has only just begun. . . . Lenders are poised to take back more homes this year than any other since the U.S. housing meltdown began in 2006. About 5 million borrowers are at least two months behind on their mortgages and industry experts say more people will miss payments because of job losses and also loans that exceed the value of the homes they are living in.”

Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 14, 2011 at 8:10 am Link

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): $5 a gallon gas? Washington insiders are wondering if the next real economic crisis facing President Obama is when gasoline prices spike to $4 or $5 per gallon. At today’s press briefing, a White House press spokesman rebuffed queries about the possibility saying ‘there are many people that would get upset at me if I started to opine on oil and gas prices, so I won’t.’”

Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 13, 2011 at 11:15 pm Link
Comments Off.

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): Jobless claims jump, wholesale food costs surge. More thoughts here.

Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 13, 2011 at 4:13 pm Link
Comments Off.

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): U.S. On The Way To Losing AAA Credit Rating.

Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 13, 2011 at 8:47 am Link
Comments Off.

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): How a housing slump will slow the jobs train.

It seems impolite to ask, what with employment growth sucking wind already. Companies added just around 100,000 jobs a month over the past year, a rate Fed chief Ben Bernanke dismissed Friday as “insufficient to materially reduce the unemployment rate.”

Not a pretty picture.

But it gets worse. Economists at Bank of America Merrill Lynch say one key to a jobs recovery is an improvement in housing — because so much job creation is driven by new businesses that have in recent years been financed in part by home equity borrowing.

This sort of job creation has been missing the last couple years, thanks to the housing crash. If U.S. house prices embark as expected on a new decline, the long-awaited hiring renaissance could be put on hold yet again.

“There has been an adverse feedback loop where low home prices lead to tight credit, hurting jobs and prolonging the housing recession,” writes economist Michelle Meyer.

Much of the concern about another housing downturn revolves around the banks. A sharp house-price decline could lead to more foreclosures, hammering profits and reducing lending, such as it is.

But Meyer points to another effect that could be equally powerful for the jobs market. She notes that falling house prices hit home equity, preventing small business owners from tapping a key source of financing.

It’s a reverse “wealth effect.” Hope and change!

UPDATE: Reader John Murrey emails:

I’ve been a real estate agent with my own business and now work for a Top 10 national bank. The other problem that’s going to occur is a drop in labor mobility that will limit job growth and full employment as workers are trapped in homes they can’t afford, can’t sell in areas where job growth is non existent or negative. This will go a long way towards making lending even tighter as people walk away from those homes or are locked in with few affordable resources to finance a business.

Yes, it’s a vicious spiral.

Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 13, 2011 at 7:00 am Link
Comments Off.

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): Man the Lifeboats! Oil Prices Could Scuttle Recovery. I’m paying $3.25 for gas now. I notice that the big rise in gas prices hasn’t gotten much press attention, though.

Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 12, 2011 at 2:26 pm Link
Comments Off.

CHANGE: HOUSING MARKET SLIPS INTO DEPRESSION TERRITORY. No wonder they’d rather talk about Sarah Palin.

Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 12, 2011 at 8:43 am Link

Psychological defense mechanism or red herring? Methinks, a bit of both.

FAIL to the Chief: 0bama dumps his job on Clinton

While I was traveling, the White House saw possibly the most surrealistic event in the history of the US Presidency (or at least since we have media documentation).

Ed Driscoll (whose title I couldn’t resist swiping) sums it up :

Mr. I’ll Stop the Rise of the Seas handed the presidency to one of his predecessors on Friday.  During a press conference in the White House briefing room, the President of the United States handed the bully pulpit over to Bill Clinton.  Obama and Clinton had just held a closed door meeting regarding the Bush tax cut deal and presumably discussed what Obama must do now that he faces a Republican majority in the House. The pair of presidents decided to hold an impromptu press conference.  A few minutes in, Obama walks out, leaving Clinton to hold court with the White House press corps.

Clinton hasn’t been POTUS now for about 10 years, but he showed that he’s still the wonk he always was, citing facts and figures and selling the Obama deal better than Obama has bothered to try.  But Clinton’s performance isn’t the most important part of the story.  The important parts are what Friday’s moment says and what it symbolizes.  As a former President of the United States, Clinton is entitled to be addressed as “Mr. President,” and that’s of course how the press addressed him, which only added to Friday’s confusion: With Obama off to meet his wife and attend a Christmas party, Clinton got to play President for a Day.

Adds Ed Driscoll:

[…W]hat does this moment from Friday communicate to the world?

I doubt that the symbolism of Friday’s presser was intentional. I don’t think that Obama believed that his walking out would be seen as the abdication of leadership that it was. Like the Greek columns and the Berlin speech, Obama probably intended to the imagery to say one thing, but it accidentally said something else entirely. Friday’s press conference struck me as another sign of disrespect for the office he holds, and another of Barack Obama’s misuses of the power with which he has been entrusted. He intended to show unity with the former and still popular President, but actually told the world that he’s no longer up to his job and won’t even bother trying to pretend he is. Roger wrote over the weekend that it showed that America doesn’t have a leader now. That’s right, and it’s very dangerous.

The image that Obama broadcast on Friday was one of serious, and perhaps incurable, weakness. The moment looked like what happens in a corporate setting, when an experienced hand steps in to temporarily take over for a inexperienced executive who has botched a big job and needs time to get his mind right. What happens next in the corporate world is that the junior exec gets some training, or gets sidelined, or gets fired. But we’re not talking about a junior exec. There’s no training available, no sideline to run to, and his contract lasts a couple more years.

Obama has taken the presidency to a moment of such weakness that we have to reach back to Watergate for a comparison, but Obama’s moment wasn’t brought on by scandal. It’s the result of his personality and his lack of preparation for the job, “first class temperament” notwithstanding. And it’s also the result of how he views the job, as a symbol of authority rather than the fact and exercise of authority.

Kim Jong-Il and his successor son are watching, as are Vlad Putin, the Chinese Communists, al Qaeda, the mullahcracy in Iran and every other potential threat or challenger on the planet. If Obama can’t handle his own party or a simple press conference, can he handle Somali pirates, Hugo Chavez or that shopworn 3 am crisis?

On Friday, when he exited the stage and left Bill Clinton temporarily in charge, Barack Obama told the world that he can no longer handle any of that.

No-one at the bridge…

UPDATE: Victor Davis Hanson: Our “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” moment

Which is the bigger turkey?

http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/IGallery.aspx?GalleryID=212&Index=0

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Jonathan Last: 0bama, American Narcissus

Jonathan Last’s cover story for the Weekly Standard lays out Barack Hussein 0bama’s obsession with his favorite subject: himself.

See also this postscript. (And Bill Kristol: “What about compliments?”) The Naked Emperor doesn’t just have the huge ego that seems to be an occupational disease of politicians (regardless of party): there is something pathological going on. Pity the nation ruled by narcissists.

UPDATE: via Correspondence Committee, the following gag-inducing comment from one of the narcissist’s chief enablers:

David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, quotes White House senior adviser and longtime Obama friend Valerie Jarrett: “I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. … He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. … So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. … He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”

Yeah, and I am the Queen of England.