Silence the Critics

Devil's Due
The education proposal reflects the Obama modus operandi. First, identify an American industry that long ago made a Faustian bargain for federal support, such as hospitals and housing. Then describe the subsidy-dependent industry's inevitable bloat and inefficiency in images so stark no reasonable person could disagree. "Burdened with tens of thousands of dollars" in student debt, Mr. Obama said at Binghamton University in New York, "they have to put off buying a home, or starting a business, or starting a family." [Footnote: That was federal student debt.] Then after getting buy-in from the mortified industry, he imposes the solution—on his terms. (Daniel Henninger, WSJ, 8/28/2013)

This is brilliant analysis. We have nothing to add. 


Cause and Effect
Here’s how deterrence works in the Middle East. Syria, long committed to the destruction of Israel, has not engaged Israel militarily in 30 years. Why? Because it recognizes Israel as a serious adversary with serious policies.

This year alone, Israel has four times conducted airstrikes in Syria. No Syrian response. How did Israel get away with it? Israel had announced that it would not tolerate Assad acquiring or transferring to Hezbollah advanced weaponry. No grandiloquent speeches by the Israeli foreign minister. No leaked target lists. Indeed, the Israelis didn’t acknowledge the strikes even after they had carried them out. Unlike the American president, they have no interest in basking in perceived toughness. They care only about effect. They care about just one audience — the party to be deterred, namely Assad and his allies. Assad knows who did it. He didn’t have to see the Israeli prime minister preening about it on world television. (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 9/5/2013)

Speaking of brilliant analysis, we have Charles, yet again. 

By the way, for a hoot be sure to read the reader comments in the Washington Post whenever Krauthammer or George Will write. The Liberals go crazy. Usually the commentary runs to personal attacks and complaints that Krauthammer/Will cannot be taken seriously because they never liked Obama. Liberals will NEVER argue based on the facts.  


Torn and Frayed
Congressional Democrats, torn over involving the United States in another unpredictable Middle East war, are emerging as a major barrier to President Obama’s plan to strike Syria. (NYT, 9/4/2013)

Further fueling discontent were Mr. Obama's Wednesday comments that Congress's "credibility" is at stake. Democrats were already frustrated that Mr. Obama had demanded they share his red line. It is one thing for a president to ask his party to support him in a tough moment, but it is quite another for that president to tell voters it is congressional Democrats—not him—who now own his foreign-policy mess. The steam was practically rising from Capitol Hill. (Kimberley A. Strassel, WSJ, 9/5/2013)

After months (years?) of hearing about divisions within Republican ranks, it is interesting to hear the same about Dems.


Tick Tock
He chose his home state as the venue, and did not refrain from ticking off several problems he saw with the law. But former President Bill Clinton on Wednesday made a meticulous, if wonkish, case for Americans of all political leanings to embrace the Obama health care law.
...
Mr. Clinton made the speech at the request of the White House, but on his own terms. He chose to deliver it at the glass building in downtown Little Rock that houses his presidential library. The venue allowed him to lend a hand to Senator Mark Pryor, a Democrat who is facing a difficult re-election fight here...
...
Mr. Pryor did not attend the event for risk of being too closely associated with the health care law, according to one person with knowledge of his plans, but who was not authorized to discuss them publicly. A campaign spokesman has said that Mr. Pryor had a scheduling conflict. (NYT, 9/4/2013)

This is priceless! Clinton endorses Obamacare while lending support to a local politician. Such politician who does not want his support for Obamacare to be widely known in a state where the law is not popular. And who does not show up for the event.


Slights
The nation’s employers added 169,000 jobs in August, slightly below what economists were expecting, and the unemployment rate ticked down to 7.3 percent from 7.4 percent. (NYT, 9/6/2013)

More proof for all you cynics out there that the Obama economic plan is working. Unemployment is now projected to be below 5% sometime during Obama's fourteenth term.


Of Course
Just in case you missed it, the New York Times features a story today called "Putting the Sex Back in Homosexuality." Actually you cannot miss it because it is a featured story with a photo in the INSIDE NYTIMES.COM section and then the lead story in the Arts Section and also the lead story in the Movie Section. The Times continues to be the paper of record for the .01% of the population that is homosexual.