Tag: politics

The neocons were wrong

They were wrong about Iraq. They are wrong about Iran. They are always wrong and they don’t give a damn about the national security of the United States, the American people, or the foreigners about whom they profess such concern.

According to press reports last weekend, Fallujah is now under the control of al-Qaeda affiliates. The Anbar province, where Fallujah is located, is under siege by al-Qaeda. During the 2007 “surge,” more than 1,000 US troops were killed “pacifying” the Anbar province.  Although al-Qaeda was not in Iraq before the US invasion, it is now conducting its own surge in Anbar.

For Iraq, the US “liberation” is proving far worse than the authoritarianism of Saddam Hussein, and it keeps getting worse. Last year was Iraq’s deadliest in five years. In 2013, fighting and bomb blasts claimed the lives of 7,818 civilians and 1,050 members of the security forces. In December alone nearly a thousand people were killed.

I remember sitting through many hearings in the House International Relations Committee praising the “surge,” which we were told secured a US victory in Iraq. They also praised the so-called “Awakening,” which was really an agreement by insurgents to stop fighting in exchange for US dollars. I always wondered what would happen when those dollars stopped coming.

Where are the surge and awakening cheerleaders now?

One of them, Richard Perle, was interviewed last year on NPR and asked whether the Iraq invasion that he pushed was worth it. He replied:

I’ve got to say I think that is not a reasonable question. What we did at the time was done in the belief that it was necessary to protect this nation. You can’t a decade later go back and say, well, we shouldn’t have done that.

Many of us were saying all along that we shouldn’t have done that – before we did it. Unfortunately the Bush Administration took the advice of the neocons pushing for war and promising it would be a “cakewalk.” We continue to see the results of that terrible mistake, and it is only getting worse.

That quote from Richard Perle is all you need to know about the neocons to understand that they are fundamentally evil people who don’t give a damn about history or anything else. It is not reasonable to reconsider your actions in light of their consequences? That isn’t merely evil, that isn’t merely stupid, that’s freaking insane.

Dumber than the GOP

It’s really remarkable when you can find a modern political party anywhere in the world more tone-deaf than the Republican Party. But there is one in the United Kingdom:

Nick Clegg is to launch an ‘aggressive’ defence of the European Union in a direct challenge to the rise of the UK Independence Party. The Liberal Democrat leader will use his New Year message next week to pitch his party as the only one ‘fully committed’ to Britain remaining in the EU. He will argue that with a tide of Eurosceptism engulfing the Tories and Labour wavering about even promising a referendum, only the Lib Dems will make the case as the ‘party of in’.

The Liberal Democrats have long been a joke. And while Clegg is a confirmed Europhile, this strategy strikes me as so stupid that it must be a purely cynical grab for cash from the European Commission. It won’t win the Lib Dems any votes, but it will guarantee Clegg a handsome payday and a cushy post-political retirement.

It tends to remind one of the squatty demon in Spawn, watching the teenage devil-worshippers and lamenting the way in which their followers tended to be morons.

Pajamaboy!

Little known fact: Pajamaboy served in the IDF. You do NOT want to mess with him. He may look harmless, effete, and completely uninterested in women, but the heart of a true desert warrior beats inside.

Of course, this ad for Obamacare might look astonishingly asinine, but don’t be fooled. In truth, it is just one more brilliant meisterspiel by the greatest genius in the history of American politics and that is exactly what he wants you to think!

Boycotting Israel

I have to admit, I’m of two minds concerning the various academic and corporate boycotts of Israel.

An American organization of professors on Monday announced a boycott of
Israeli academic institutions to protest Israel’s treatment of
Palestinians, signaling that a movement to isolate and pressure Israel
that is gaining ground in Europe has begun to make strides in the United
States.

On the one hand, it is egregiously unfair to single out Israel for its unfair treatment of the Palestinians. Israel does not treat its non-Jewish citizens as equals, but the Palestinians still have it better than many people in many other countries. I have absolutely no problem with Jews possessing a Jewish state and practicing an Israeli form of apartheid in order to maintain it.

On the other hand, it is fitting to see those who were anti-South African apartheid getting a taste of their own medicine. Despite the ties between the two so-called pariah countries, many Israelis were vociferously supportive of the South African boycotts and even of the ANC’s terrorist activities. For example, Arthur Goldreich was the head of the ANC’s logistics committee and provided weapons to the terrorist arm of the ANC. Since so many Jews have actively worked to undermine white apartheid, to deny the Boers a Boer state, and to end American segregation over the years, it’s hard to feel any pity for them when observing that the anti-apartheid machinery they helped create has now turned on them.

In war or in politics, the challenge is that the other side always learns from the successes of the other. And the effective strategist should never lose sight of the fact that he will eventually have to face whatever weapon he first directs against the opposition.

The December verdict

As some will recall, on November 2nd Porky predicted that all the suckers were wrong and that the political supergenius and giant leap forward in human evolution that is Obama was simply luring everyone in with his suspiciously underachieving web site before leaping like a tiger and making his critics look like fools again:

Suckered again, I see. Are you incapable of seeing that the Obamacare rollout was a planned failure? Do you not understand the progressive tactic of lowered expectations?

The website will be functioning reasonably well by December (I suspect they’ve had the fix all along) at which time Obama will announce his glorious Christmas gift to humanity is “not perfect, but it’s improving every day and children and pregnant women are safe now.” The argument will have been successfully shifted from “should there even be socialized medicine” to “how can we make socialized medicine work.”

Mission accomplished. Another brilliant progressive tactic made possible by the type of foolishness we see in the OP. Call ’em savages if you want to. But they are playing this game like a grandmaster plays a patzer.  What’s that old saying about looking for the sucker in the room? If you don’t see him it’s probably you.

A readily testable prediction. It is now December. And how is the glorious Christmas gift to humanity doing? According to CNN, not so well.

GEORGE HOWELL, HOST: We know the first thing you have to do when you
go to this website you have to select your state. Is that working?
ALISON
KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: And what’s funny is I was talking
with Matt, and, yeah, that seemed to work, right, when you logged on.
But then came the road blocks. So tell me about what happened, because
we’re getting another error message here, and it’s supposed to be
running smoothly. We’re just not seeing that.
MATT SLOANE, CNN MEDICAL PRODUCER: Yeah, so, you know, we’ve been
trying to get into the site since October 1 on and off again. I have to
say it did work a lot more smoothly this morning. I got through. I
picked my state. I put in all of my information and I got through the
whole process in eight minutes. And then it said my status was in
progress. So I went to refresh it and I got the error message.

Ah, but it is entirely obvious that the progressives at CNN must be in on the great critic-trap! The fact that it is December and the website still isn’t working is only further proof of the superlative strategic brilliance of the progressive masterminds whose fearsome capabilities it is futile to resist, doubt, or even question.

In any event, this should suffice to demolish Porky’s tedious political wise-man act. Let that be a lesson to all: if you’re going to insist on calling everyone suckers and fools, and strike poses as if you are the only one who has cracked the code of American politics, then you run the risk of drawing my attention long enough for me to systematically destroy your credibility and expose your pretensions.

It’s only fair. I’m held accountable for all of my failed predictions, which is why I no longer attempt to predict how Americans will vote or the specific timing of expected economic events no matter how many people ask me to do so. I’ll stick to those areas where my predictions have been reliable. Now, if you think you know what’s going on, by all means, share your opinion with everyone here. If you have a new take on current events or an original hypothesis, I hope you will run it by us. But if you’re so convinced you, and only you, are correct that you’re constantly sneering and denigrating others, well, then you had better actually be correct.

Destroying the working class

A capitalist betrays class unconsciousness in writing to Zerohedge on behalf of his employees about the way Obamacare is transforming the working class into the subservient class:

My company, based in California, employs 600. We used to insure about 250 of our employees. The rest opted out. The company paid 50% of their premiums for about $750,000/yr. Under obamacare, none can opt out without penalty, and the rates are double or triple, depending upon the plan. Our 750k for 250 employees is going to $2 million per year for 600 employees.

By mandate, we have to pay 91.5% of the premium or more up from the 50% we used to pay. Our employees share of the premium goes from $7/week for the cheapest plan to $30/week. 95% of my employees were on that plan.  Remember, we used to pay 50% now we pay 91.5% and the premiums still go up that much!!

The  cheapest plan now has a deductible of $6350! Before it was $150. Employees making $9 to $10/hr, have to pay $30/wk and have a $6350 deductible!!! What!!!! They can’t afford that to be sure. Obamacare will kill their propensity to seek medical care. More money for less care? How does that help them?

Here is the craziest part. Employees who qualify for mediCAL (the California version of Medicare), which is most of my employees, will automatically be enrolled in the Federal SNAP program. They cannot opt out. They cannot decline. They will be automatically enrolled in the Federal food stamp program based upon their level of Obamacare qualification. Remember, these people work full time, living in a small town in California. They are not seeking assistance.

People constantly seem to be surprised to learn that politicians lie. I’m a little surprised to have to so often remind grown men and women that sometimes people say things that are not true. And they say things that are not true on a regular basis.

The American people were told that they had to bail out the banks to prevent the economy from collapsing. That wasn’t true. They were told that the various measures to stabilize the housing market were to help mortgaged homeowners. That wasn’t true. They were told that the Affordable Care Act was to help the uninsured and make insurance more affordable. That wasn’t true.

Are you starting to notice a pattern here? The reason provided by politicians to justify their actions are seldom related to the real motivations. This is particularly true when the reason given is “helping people”. While it is true certain people are being helped, it is almost never the people who are identified as the official reason.

Accounting for the Unaccountable

Does the Rule of Law survive in America circa 2013? What happens when no one is watching the watchers? We’re about to find out, as House Republicans are reportedly getting serious about trying to hold Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder accountable for some of his many alleged crimes.

From Reuters: “Republicans in the House of Representatives plan to introduce articles of impeachment against Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday, in the hopes of removing a cabinet member they say has lied to Congress as well as failed to uphold federal law…. According to an outline, the first article is based on “Operation Fast and Furious” a bungled attempt to build cases against major gun traffickers who supplied firearms to Mexican drug cartels, while electing not to immediately prosecute low-level traffickers even as they bought 2,000 potentially illegal guns.”

Read the rest at Absolute Rights. Also on the topic of the Obama administration, you may be interested in a previous post there concerning Obama’s Strategic Retreat from Obamacare, in which I conclude:

Obama is not backing down. In fact, Republicans would have been much
wiser to force Americans to live with the law imposed upon them by the
incompetent Obama administration; a year of complete chaos in the health
care system, complete with millions of policy cancellations, would have
likely led to a Republican takeover of the Senate and a powerful
majority in the House.

Instead, they have bought Obama another year to work the media and
sell its lies to the American people. By staving off the collapse of
Obamacare, Republicans are helping ensure that they will have to refight
the battle in a year’s time against an enemy who will presumably have
learned a few lessons from the initial failure.

Hey, you voted for him

Walter Russell Mead piles on:

All this has plunged the White House into the deepest hole of the Obama presidency to date, but the biggest shock isn’t about the cruddy rollout, the kludgy law or the disingenuous sales job by which it was passed. The biggest shock and the most damning revelation came in the President’s hasty and awkward press conference when President Obama responded to a reporter’s question about his knowledge of the website’s problems:

 “OK. On the website, I was not informed directly that the website would not be working as — the way it was supposed to. Ha[d] I been informed, I wouldn’t be going out saying, boy, this is going to be great. You know, I’m accused of a lot of things, but I don’t think I’m stupid enough to go around saying, this is going to be like shopping on Amazon or Travelocity, a week before the website opens, if I thought that it wasn’t going to work.”

This was eyepopping. Obamacare is the single most important initiative of his presidency. The website rollout was, as the President himself has repeatedly stated, the most important element of the law’s debut. Domestically speaking there was no higher priority for the President and his staff than getting this right. And the President is telling the world that a week before the disaster he had no idea how that website was doing.

However, Instapundit cruelly, but necessarily, points out that Mead voted for the guy:

“And much as I love Walter Russell Mead, I note that he voted for this guy, and blandly assumed that an Ivy League pedigree was some sort of assurance of competence. Not so much. And it’s not as if the signs weren’t there, for those able to see them.”

I can only assume Mead hasn’t had much contact with Ivy League graduates. For the most part, their uselessness is only surpassed by how impressed they are with their own academic credentials. And the more Affirmative Action the Ivy League graduate, the more hopelessly inept they tend to be. Think about what knobs your class president and valedictorian were. Then recall that with the exception of Brown and Dartmouth, the Ivy League universities are absolutely full of class presidents and valedictorians who are firmly convinced that, as Chiefs, they don’t have to know anything about how all that Indian stuff works.

The rule of law

It’s fascinating to see how the sacred and inviolate law proves to be so mutable in practice:

Bowing to pressure, President Barack Obama intends to permit continued
sale of individual insurance plans that have been canceled because they
failed to meet coverage standards under the health care law, officials
said Thursday.


The decision was designed to ease the impact on millions of consumers
who have received cancellation notices in recent weeks, and also to try
to redeem a presidential promise that anyone who wanted to keep his
coverage under the law would be allowed to do so.


An announcement was expected in late morning.


Officials said the president would announce that insurers could continue
to sell existing individual policies to current customers for 2014,
even in cases of plans that had been ruled inadequate.

In other words, he’s buying the techs a year to fix the system. Then everyone will lose their coverage again. Truly, this is conclusive evidence of Obama’s political mastery. No one, NO ONE, saw this fiendishly clever move coming.

Police your institutions

This is more evidence that it is absolutely necessary to strictly police your organizations for hostile ideologies. It’s very hard for normal people to comprehend this, but leftist parasites will readily devote years, even decades, to quietly worming their way in before showing their true colors.

The editor of Guns & Ammo magazine apologized to readers and resigned shortly after the writer of a column advocating gun control was fired this week.

Dick Metcalf, a well-known television host and gun writer, was canned after penning a column in favour of gun control in the magazine’s December issue. The outrage then prompted editor Jim Bequette to issue an apology and resign.

In the apology, Mr Bequette said he hoped the column ‘would generate a healthy exchange of ideas on gun rights,’ but then said he was wrong and asked for forgiveness.

Mr Metcalfe, widely visible in the gun community, has written about guns and hosted gun-oriented television shows for decades, but that did not save him from reader backlash.

Whether it is a smug-faced atheist schoolboy infiltrating a nominally Christian school or a gun-grabber seeking to become the voice of the gun media, the techniques and the tactics are always the same. And they are active in your church, in your synagogue, in your school, and in your place of work.

If you don’t actively look for them and root them out, sooner or later, they will take over. Always pay particular attention to those who are unusually eager to help and happy to lend a hand. Being driven by ideology, they often have the motivation to take on all the dirty little jobs that no one else wants to do and secure their positions by making themselves indispensable. They usually present as being non-ideological, but put some pressure on to determine their real views and they’ll usually reveal themselves.

Notice how Bequette tries to present a non-ideological justification: a healthy exchange of ideas. They always hide behind a facade of being reasonable.