Midday Dump
— Ace

Sean Trende estimates an 80% chance that the GOP will take the Senate.

The CIA allegedly spied on Congress' viewing of documents.

That leftist Frank Thomas I mentioned earlier marks the passing of Harold Ramis by calling his comedies some sort of crypto-fascist Reaganite propaganda or something.

This is part of the reason I try to put the brakes on going too far with cultural rejectivism. At some point, one just sounds absurd. No one listens to anything someone says once the speaker has been characterized as "just plain ol' silly."

Obama is appearing on every tv outlet he can. Alas, he even showed up to introduce Cosmos, thus immediately politicizing the very thing (science) which the show is attempting to depoliticize.

Obama talked a good game about our shared national commitment to exploring the planets, to fulfilling our deepest dreams as humans. I guess he forgot to mention he's cutting funding for that. Of course, when the government spending is now up to 70% direct wealth transfers -- that is, 70% of its spending is just taking income from one citizen and writing a check to another -- you're just not going to have very much money for those shared national commitments to fulfill our deepest dreams as humans.

Mostly you're just going to be arguing about expanding the "risk corridors" for socialized insurance corporations.

Finally, Nancy Pelosi has a Republican "friend" (or "colleague") who tells her secrets.

I asked a Republican friend why his party remains so opposed to extending the vital lifelines for struggling families and really hungry children. This colleagueÂ’s response was telling in its blunt nature and itÂ’s stunning in its honestly. What he said was to the Republican caucus, these people you are talking about are invisible, and the Republican caucus is indifferent to them. Invisible and indifferent. This is just plain wrong. That is not the leadership the American people deserve and it is up to us to demonstrate clearly how Democrats are different.

@ConArtCritic will be starting his election coverage a little later for the Florida 13th special election between Alex Sink (D) and David Jolly (R). It's viewed as a bellwether, an early indicator of each party's relative strength going into November.

So he'll be on later to cover that, with some new bells and whistles.

Until then, Open Thread.

Posted by: Ace at 02:13 PM | Comments (169)
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Ron Fournier: President Obama "Blinded by [Self-] Righteousness" on Foreign Policy
— Ace

It's not the flaws we know of that are usually our undoing. It's the flaws we hide from ourselves and call virtues.

Days before Vladimir Putin's troops invaded Ukraine, National Security Adviser Susan Rice dismissed suggestions that Russia was about to pounce. "It's in nobody's interest," she said. Days later, President Obama declared the invasion to be illegal. "In 2014," he said, "we are well beyond the days when borders can be drawn over the heads of democratic leaders."

Two things strike me about those quotes. First, they were right. From the viewpoint of the United States and its allies, invading Crimea made no sense, legally or strategically. Second, it didn't matter: Putin plays by his own set of rules, and it's dangerously naive not to realize that.

I have no idea what Fournier is talking about here, as far as invading Crimean making "no sense." It is a standard goal of nations to hold militarily-advantageous ground, and a warm weather port is a classic example of such.

I certainly don't wish to say Putin was justified to invade a country in order to play his Empire Games. But anyone who says that standard imperial behavior "makes no sense" ought to read a history book.

Any history book. Any single one of them will do.*

Fournier is here attempting the old game of mixing criticism with Obama with an embarrassing level of sycophancy towards him.

Ukraine is illustrative of a flaw in Obama's worldview that consistently undermines his agenda, both foreign and domestic. He thinks being right is good enough. From fights with Congress over the federal budget and his nominations, to gun control, immigration reform, health care, and Syria, the president displays tunnel-vision conviction, an almost blinding righteousness. I'm right. They're wrong. Why isn't that enough?

With such certitude, Obama finds it hard to see why anybody would oppose him, which makes it almost impossible to earn new allies. He's also slow to realize when some fault lies with him. The result is Obama's legacy of "Right, but Â…" moments.

He then goes on to list Obama's strategic errors, both domestic and foreign, in which, per Fournier's thesis, Obama has acted as if merely Thinking The Right Thing was enough.

Spoiler alert: Fournier basically agrees that everything Obama thinks is in fact Thinking the Right Thing.

Interestingly -- or perhaps inevitably -- Fournier maybe exposes more of the left's worldview than he intends with this criticism. Perhaps the left should not be credited (as they credit themselves) for merely Thinking the Right Thing.

Perhaps they should be required, as humans have throughout history, to also act the right way, and achieve positive results.

Perhaps the cult of "Thinking the Right Thing" -- with no particular urgency on the left regarding, for example, undertaking charitable efforts to help the poor -- is a petty vanity that excuses failure to match words with deeds and justifies bad results.

Or: Nah. I'm sure "Thinking the Right Thing" is all that's really required.

Obama, meanwhile, is underwater in public polling on both the Ukraine and Russia, generally.

Meanwhile, in Crimea, the local parliament may vote to secede and then join the Russian Federation.

One odd little historical detail: There's an old, old treaty that says Crimea can't be part of Russia. Russia signed it with Turkey (well, the Ottoman Empire).

I'm sure this treaty "makes no sense." Empires never consider things which other empires may control major strategic ports.

* We talked about this on the last podcast with Matthew Continetti -- the press seems addicted to a narrative that excuses Obama on the Ukraine, by claiming, variously, "no one could have predicted this," "Putin is a madman and the new Hitler," "this makes no sense," and the like.

I hate to point this out to the media but the Dreaded Sarah Palin predicted it.

It's in fact not terribly hard to predict that dictators with expansionist appetites will take their meals where they can find them.

Funny Commenters:

40 Once again, I have failed Him.

Posted by: Reality

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More Carriers For The US Navy? Not Anytime Soon.
— DrewM

Mackenzie Eaglen and Bryan McGrath make the case that not only shouldn't the Navy be reducing its carrier fleet but should be expanding it.

The Navy has been trying to keep three aircraft carriers forward deployed in two operational hubs with ten carriers, accomplishing this through lengthening deployments and deferring maintenance, both of which are symptoms of approaching hollowness. People and platforms wear out more quickly, and short-term gains come at the cost of long-term availability.

In spite of these measures, the nation has been caught without aircraft carrier presence in the Mediterranean several times in the past few years, raising the need to once again fill a third deployment hub there.

No American aircraft carrier was in the Mediterranean at the outbreak of the conflict inLibya.  Nor was a US carrier in the Mediterranean when our Ambassador to Libya and three others were murdered. No American aircraft carrier was in the Mediterranean when Syriastepped over President Obama’s “red line” and attacked its own citizens with chemical weapons. And while international conventions would ordinarily limit a carrier’s presence in the Black Sea, the complete absence of one in the Mediterranean surely helped further embolden Mr. Putin in Ukraine.

I spoke with McGrath about this a bit during our podcast a few weeks ago and have written in the past about why I think shrinking the carrier fleet is a bad idea. That said, we're not increasing the number of carriers we buy anytime soon. Not simply because there's no political will to spend the money (which would be an enormous amount, $12 billion or so to build, not to mention millions more to equipped, operate and crew over 50 years) but also because the lead time to build a carrier is so long.

Realistically, there's no help on the horizon in terms of numbers (assuming you can fend off the calls to cut the current force size). So what's the solution?

One question I'd ask is, why do we have to have two carriers in the Persian Gulf at all times? We had two carriers there for well over a decade to enforce the no-fly zones over Iraq. Well, the no-fly zones are gone and yet two carriers are still routinely stationed there.

Yes Iran is still there but so what? It's been clear for quite sometime that we're not going to attack Iran. We might but as supporters of the carriers rightly point out, one major benefit of a carrier is it's mobile. You can take it out of the region but put another one back in if you need to.

Maybe there's some deep reason to keep two carriers in the Gulf forever and always but before asking the nation to make the kind of investment a new carrier would represent, the military needs to make that case. This is especially true given that reducing our presence in the region was one of the supposed side benefits of the Iraq war.

One extra carrier doesn't buy you the third hub Eaglen and McGrath argue for but it's better than nothing and you can get the flexibility/operational relief in a much shorter time frame than any new build will provide.

Instead of advocating for a carrier presence in the Mediterranean that isn't going to happen, advocates of a greater US role in that region are going to have to come up with something else. At the risk of playing armchair admiral, perhaps a combination of increased surface combatants, expeditionary strike groups, and increases in land based aircraft is a more realistic set of possible alternatives. But even these options require greater expense that a majority don't seem to support.

I understand why proponents of a muscular defense posture (especially sea power) are troubled by the direction our politics have taken but it's a necessary state of affairs. The financial path we are on as a nation is unsustainable. Should defense be at the head of the line? Yes, I believe that. But the American people in their wisdom have come to a different conclusion.

What's needed now is a realistic evaluation of what we are willing to pay for and what missions and operations we are willing to forgo. We must also be clear and honest about the risks these choices will entail. Some will say this is accepting a lesser America, I prefer to think of it as a more realistic America.

In the long run I think forcing this kid of choice on the American people will be for the better. Yes there will be costs associated with it (as there are with all choices) but we have to decide what we value as a nation. "Everything" simply isn't an option any longer. The sooner we accept that, the sooner we can we can deal with things the way they are, not how we'd wish them to be.

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Glenn Reynolds: Maybe It's Time To Return To Having A "Well-Regulated Militia"
— Ace

Interesting... and provocative.

Probably the most libertarian position one can take -- pushing the idea that even the armed forces ought to be made up of "the people," and hence, not necessarily at the command of government.

This is such a scary idea to statists (and, frankly, even libertarian-leaning people like myself) that I doubt it will get traction.

But it's interesting, and interesting things ought to be discussed.

Reynolds begins by noting the prefatory clause of the Second Amendment-- "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" -- and then considers the implications.

If a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, then where is ours? Because if a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, it follows that a state lacking such a militia is either insecure, or unfree, or possibly both.

...

Yale Law Professor Akhil Amar has likened the militia to jurors with guns because, like the jury, it was an institution made up of the people, through which the government must act, and one not susceptible to the kinds of corruption besetting professional institutions).

As Amar writes:

Like the militia, the jury was a local body countering imperial power — summoned by the government but standing outside it, representing the people, collectively. Like jury service, militia participation was both a right and a duty of qualified voters who were regularly summoned to discharge their public obligations. Like the jury, the militia was composed of amateurs arrayed against, and designed to check, permanent and professional government officials (judges and prosecutors, in the case of the jury; a standing army in the case of the militia). Like the jury, the militia embodied collective political action rather than private pursuits.

Reynolds goes on to trace the decline of the militias -- the militias balked at being sent into Mexico in 1912 (they said it was outside their constitutional duties), and the government worked to federalize and professionalize the militias, which ultimately evolved into the "state" National Guards (which are really under federal authority, ultimately).

BTW: Apologies, I'm under the weather, and I'm just going to be throwing up links today, pretty much. I may even conk out and just leave some thread open for some hours.

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— Ace

It all depends on whether the speaker of the racial slur is a Privileged or Disfavored Speaker, of course.

The left is of course hostile in a palpably racial way towards Ben Carson.

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Two Lefties Grouse About Obama at Salon, With One Suggesting He Might be a "Sociopath"
— Ace

I'm not sure this is anything, but you be the judge.

The bulk of the dialogue between Thomas "What's the Matter with Kansas?" Frank and a guy named Adolph Reed Jr is mostly about their upset that Obama isn't sufficiently pro-labor or pro-income redistribution.

I'll leave it up to you add to your own editorial punctuation to that sentence, but, for the lazy among you, here are some pre-written editorial punctuation marks you can just slip in there: (!), (?), (!!?), (????!!!!), (WTF, DUDE?!?!!)

Reed's central criticism of the contemporary left is that it has become focused on identity politics. As he says in the interview: "The problem with a notion of equality or social justice that's rooted in the perspectives of multiculturalism and diversity is that from those perspectives you can have a society that's perfectly just if less than 1 percent of the population controls 95 percent of the stuff, so long as that one percent is half women and 12 percent black, and 12 percent Latino and whatever the appropriate numbers are gay."

This he attributes to "electoralitis," the imperative of electing Democrats to public office. While Reed and Frank acknowledge that such an approach has been successful in some elections, they are scornful of it. Says Frank: "[Democrats] think they have an iron clad coalition behind them. They have this term for it: the Coalition for [actually 'of'] the Ascendent. I forget what it is. Made up of these groups, and labor is not one of them."

Reed disdains what he calls "the cult of the most oppressed," the idea "that there's something about the purity of these oppressed people that has the power to condense the mass uprising. I've often compared it to the cargo cults. . . . As my dad used to say, 'If oppression conferred heightened political consciousness there would be a People's Republic of Mississippi.' "

Go to Taranto (the link goes to BotW) for the discussion of "sociopathy." Reed analogizes Obama's "blank slate" persona to that of a sociopath, notoriously manipulative individuals who can become whatever their intended target needs them to be. He doesn't push on the idea too hard (and it does seem a bit overmuch), but I thought it would make for a good screaming headline.

The media taught me that!

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Breaking: People Who Love To Boss Other People Around Now Want to Make it a Crime to Call Them "Bossy"
— Ace

Go figure. The "#banbossy" meme is up and running. The publicity campaign is co-sponsored by the Girl Scouts.

Now they don't want to make it an actual against-the-law crime, but they do want to stigmatize the word, such that, you know, you've committed a social crime if you call the person who's trying to control your expression "bossy." There should be consequences, you see, for saying the B-word.

The new B-word I mean. The old one is still also out, of course.

Allah notes that this is done, it is alleged, to help girls. But it's not girls who are falling behind in education, and therefore falling behind on their career track.

It's boys.

Posted by: Ace at 07:37 AM | Comments (443)
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Republican “Super Lobbyist”: Conservatives Need To Shut Up And Listen To Republican Leaders
— DrewM

I love self-described “bi-partisan, super lobbyist” John Feehery. If you wanted to create a caricature of the out of touch, self-important, above it all Republican establishment class you’d have to invent him. Thankfully he already exists and he loves to take to the digital pages of The Hill every now and then to remind the rest of us who runs things.

TodayÂ’s sermon is dedicated to the joys of knowing your place if youÂ’re a conservative. You see according to Feehery the real problem in the GOP and our politics at large is too much individualism and not enough collectivism with a chosen few (not surprisingly he's among the few) leading the way. Sure it starts out as a bashing of millennials but he really only warms to the task when he gets to his frequent targetÂ…conservatives.

For our kind of democratic Republic to work, the people have to delegate certain powers to their elected representatives, and with that delegation comes a certain amount of trust. But if the people donÂ’t trust their fellow citizens, how can they trust their elected representatives?
And that is where you hit the limits of individualism.

We are seeing the fraying of the social contract in both political parties, but perhaps more acutely in the Republican Party today.

Sure, Barack Obama is unpopular with the conservative base, but almost as unpopular are Republican leaders John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. There is little patience to follow the leaders within the GOP. Trust has broken down. The movement will not be satisfied.

The Republican Party used to fall in line, but now, it is seemingly falling apart. The Tea Party insurgency is virulently distrustful of big government, big business and big labor. It despises the “Republican Establishment.” It has even declared war on the Chamber of Commerce.

The Democratic Party will not escape this chaos, as we hit the limits of individualism. The gender and racial political alliances upon which the modern party is built are not sturdy. One slip of the tongue, one off-color joke can end the career of a Democratic politician.

Liberals are even more anti-establishment than the Tea Party. They glorify Edward Snowden just as they call for the dismemberment of Wall Street. The Democrats are primarily a secular party that ignores, if not condemns, most church teachings (such as on abortion and gay marriage). The party has come unmoored from any religious values. It glorifies the individual, no matter what choices that individual might make.

Someone actually wrote with pride and a sense of loss that “the GOP used to fall in line”. And look where that got us. Bigger government, record debt, oh and the loss of the House, the Senate and the White House.

While those results might be cause for concern if you care about the future of the country more than a party, Feehery longs for those days. He seems very upset that conservatives arenÂ’t satisfied with a pat on the head for their volunteer efforts and votes. Now they want not just rhetoric but results? ItÂ’s terribly embarrassing for everyone when the help forgets their station.

I love the part where he’s absolutely flummoxed as to why conservatives would turn on the Chamber of Commerce so allow me to help… they supported Obama’s so-called “stimulus”, they are cutting deals with big labor to force amnesty on the country and exists basically to get as much money and regulatory favor from taxpayers via D.C. as possible.

What a bunch of ungrateful bastards these small government, pro liberty conservatives are. Why arenÂ’t showering the entrance of the ChamberÂ’s offices with rose petals?

This self-declared elite wasnÂ’t built in a day and it wonÂ’t be destroyed in one election cycle either. But when people wonder why I donÂ’t really care if the GOP wins the Senate or even the presidency (get in line and support Chris Christie! Or Jeb Bush!) guys like this are at or near the top of the list. Putting the same people back in power and expecting different results is a foolÂ’s errand.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:41 AM | Comments (314)
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Top Headline Comments (3-11-2014)
— andy

ICYMI, William "Wild Bill" Guarnere of "Band of Brothers" fame passed away over the weekend.

IÂ’ve lost my hero and my friend. Knowing him made me a better man and playing him was the greatest honor of my life. pic.twitter.com/8lvLzsUhaz

— Frank John Hughes (@frankjhughes) March 9, 2014

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Overnight Open Thread (3-10-2014)
— Maetenloch

Due to a customer emergency tonight's ONT will be skeletal.

"The Affair of the Sausages"

Apparently whether you were allowed to eat sausage during Lent was a big theological issue that led to the Reformation in Switzerland. Here's what Wikipedia says:

The Affair of the Sausages (1522) was the event that sparked the Reformation in Switzerland. Ulrich Zwingli, pastor of Grossmünster in Zurich, Switzerland, spearheaded the event by publicly speaking in favor of eating sausage during the Lenten fast. Zwingli defended this action in a sermon called Von Erkiesen und Freiheit der Speisen (Regarding the Choice and Freedom of Foods), in which he argued, from the basis of Martin Luther's doctrine of Sola Scriptura, that "Christians are free to fast or not to fast because the Bible does not prohibit the eating of meat during Lent."

So there you have it.

And it was this article that led me to look up the L'Affaire de Sausages: Repent of Lent: How Spiritual Disciplines Can Be Bad for Your Soul

[Link not necessarily an endorsement of his arguments]

more...

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