Low Down
One of Mr. Obama’s ambitions on taking office was to forge a new, more positive American image in the Muslim world. But the drone strikes, along with the president’s failure to carry out his promise to close the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba, have helped drive the United States’ approval rating to new lows in many Muslim countries. In Pakistan, for instance, 19 percent of those surveyed by the Pew Research Center had a positive view of the United States in the last year of George W. Bush’s presidency. By last year, the approval rating had fallen to 12 percent. (NYT, 5/21/2013)
We could cite this as yet another failure of the Obama presidency, but that misses the real issues. First, a foreign policy should not be built around "getting other countries to like us." Second, Muslims in the Middle Eastern countries are never going to like us.
Starstruck
Anthony D. Weiner, once a rising star of New York politics whose career cratered over revelations of his sexually explicit life online, announced an improbable bid on Wednesday for the job he has long coveted: mayor.
...
In the new campaign video, Mr. Weiner describes himself as a champion of the city’s middle class, and decries rising rents, inadequate schools, overregulated neighborhood businesses, and a paucity of “good jobs with benefits.”
...
Last year, though, Mr. Weiner moved from Forest Hills, Queens, to Gramercy Park in Manhattan, where he lives in a four-bedroom luxury apartment with Ms. Abedin and Jordan. (NYT, 5/22/2013)
How excited are you that Weiner is back? Us, too. It should be just a very short time before new pictures of Weiner's awesome pecs show up.
New Yorkers are understandably thrilled that Weiner is going to fight for the middle class....from his four bedroom luxury apartment.
Ghostly
Even the panel’s fiery chairman, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, after blasting Apple for creating “ghost companies” that diverted billions of tax dollars from American coffers and caused needy seniors to go without meals, had some kind words for Mr. Cook and his company.
“We love the iPhone and the iPad,” Mr. Levin said, going on to commend Mr. Cook and two other executives for voluntarily appearing before the Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations. “I know it’s not easy to come in front of a spotlight but it’s important for us.” (NYT, 5/21/2013)
Next up before Levin, the Koch brothers, who can expect similar praise from the chairman. Just kidding!
Limits
The claim that the ongoing IRS scandal is limited to low level employees is falling apart.
...
Former Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller… retires
Joseph Grant, Commissioner of Tax Exempt and Government Entities... retires.
Lois Lerner, Head of Exempt Organization…says she will invoke her 5th amendment right to not incriminate herself when called before Congress on Wednesday.
Holly Paz, Director of Exempt Organizations, subpoenaed to Washington to be interviewed by members of Congress.
All of this IRS leadership, in Washington D.C.
Then one level down is Cindy Thomas, the highest ranking employee in Cincinnati in this Tax Exempt and Government Entities Department that no one in Congress is talking to... yet. (Fox19.com, 5/21/2013)
The Washington Post's Richard Cohen wrote an entire column yesterday claiming that Republicans were picking on the IRS when it was really all about overworked low level employees (there's that phrase again) who he - using a fictional composite - named Mitzie. No word from Cohen today yet.
Weighs, Leaps, Stints
As he weighs whether to leap into the race for mayor this year, Mr. Weiner’s lucrative stint in business could serve as a compelling campaign credential, blunting efforts to portray him as a career politician, even as it raises uncomfortable questions about the speed with which he cashed in on his government connections. (NYT, 4/29/2013)
The New York Times in 2011: "As he weighs whether to leap into the race for president this year, Mr. Romney's lucrative stint in business could serve as a compelling campaign credential...."
Just kidding!
Evidentiary
President Obama on Tuesday said there will be no rush to judgment on escalating U.S. intervention in Syria until there is hard evidence of the use of chemical weapons by the government.
“We now have evidence that chemical weapons have been used inside of Syria,” he said in a wide-ranging news conference at the White House. “But we don’t know when they were used, how they were used, or who used them [...] If we end up rushing to judgment without hard, effective evidence, then we can find ourselves where we can’t mobilize the international community to support what we do." (Washington Post, 4/30/2013)
The administration will go from arguing that it's too soon to intervene in Syria, to arguing that it's too late.
...
Mr. Obama will treat evidence of Iran's impending nuclearization the way he has looked at Syria's use of chemical weapons, demanding a standard of proof that will be impossible to meet until it is too late to do much about it. (Bret Stephens, WSJ, 4/29/2013)
Great prescient column by Stephens which actually faults both Obama and Netanyahu for dithering on Iran.
Convincing
When the ghastly news from Boylston Street first hit, there was an immediate divide between those who were sure the attack was a form of Islamic terrorism and those just as convinced that it was organized by domestic, right-wing extremists. April 15 was Tax Day, after all.
...
My faith in a tolerant, pluralistic America made me worry that hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Muslim citizens could become the victims of our anger — much as Italian Americans were stereotyped in the days of Sacco and Vanzetti.
...
I also found it disturbing that we have given scant attention to the April 17 explosion at the fertilizer plant in West, Tex., that killed 15 people and injured more than 200.
As the labor writer Mike Elk pointed out this week in a Post commentary, industrial accidents are far more common than are acts of terror. We have more control over how we enforce worker-safety laws than we do over random acts of violence. Yet we have allowed the Texas story to be buried beneath all our speculation about the Tsarnaev brothers. (E.J. Dionne Jr, Washington Post, 4/24/2013)
Just getting around to E.J.'s column from last week. And what a column it was!
First we get the old head fake: "Maybe the Boston bombing was the militias!" Which nobody except E.J. thought for more than four seconds.
Then we get: "Let's not blame the Muslims..." Turns out it was the Muslims.
Then - bizarrely - we get: "Don't forget the Texas fertilizer explosion."
It's official, E.J. is now rivaling Charles Blow for the title: Funniest Liberal Columnist.
Consider This
Former Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy and Kevin Sabet, President Obama’s previous senior advisor at the Office of National Drug Control and Policy, spoke out Thursday against marijuana deregulation efforts under consideration in the Vermont Legislature. (VTDiggers.org, 4/25/2013)
Even a Kennedy argues against pot. Good for Patrick Kennedy!
Nickle Here, There
Gov. Peter Shumlin on Monday afternoon signed the transportation budget bill that contains a new gas tax, meaning the tax will go into effect Wednesday. The tax is a net increase of 5.9 cents per gallon. (Burlington Free Press, 4/29/2013)
On behalf of the plumbers, electricians, contractors, painters, teachers and all other working class people in Vermont: "Thanks for nothing Shummy!"
Vote him out.
Lynch Pin
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) scheduled a showdown vote for Wednesday, putting the linchpin of Democrats' gun-control efforts on the line even while Democrats appeared short of the votes needed to pass it. The bipartisan proposal, from Sens. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R., Pa.), would broaden background checks to all online and gun-show sales. Currently, only federally licensed dealers are required to conduct checks, which aim to screen for people with criminal and mental-health histories that make them ineligible to buy guns. (WSJ, 4/16/2013)
With respect to proposed gun legislation, the question that must be asked is this: Would this legislation have prevented the Newtown massacre? Given that the answer is no, what is the point? It is just politicians chasing their tails while pretending to be useful.
Here are some questions which might get to the heart of Newtown:
- Why did a mother use guns in an attempt to bond with her mentally ill son?
- Why were the guns not locked up?
- Why was the killer not institutionalized?
- What was the role of the violent video games found in the killer's basement on his mental health?
- Would an armed guard at the school have prevented or lessened the tragedy?
Now we are talking.
Spiraling
Problem is, the Wal-Mart model of employment and service not only reflects but also reinforces the declining economic prospects of the majority of Americans. The nation’s largest private-sector employer has used its market power to impose its low-wage model all along its supply chain, leaving millions of Americans with no shopping option other than the kind of discount, and frustrating, experience that Wal-Mart provides. The U.S. economy that Wal-Mart has built — with plenty of help from Wall Street and the government — is in the shape of a downward spiral, and it will take all our ingenuity, and a mass movement for worker power, to free ourselves from that path. (Harold Meyerson, Washington Post, 4/16/2013)
Read an article - any article - about the ouster of J.C. Penney's CEO and the story is the same: Ron Johnson's ill-fated attempt to move the company away from the cycle of high nominal prices offset by discounts and couponing. Now along comes Liberal Op-ed writer Meyerson to set us straight. The real problem with J.C. Penney, Wal-Mart and other retailers? Not enough workers and low wages to boot! With analytical skills like this, the Washington Post had better make sure that the credit desk at Goldman Sachs doesn't recruit Meyerson away.
We might have suggested that whatever problems retailers might be having could be tied to the sluggish economy and continuing concerns about the costs to companies of Obamacare. Who knew the answer was simply to hire more workers and pay them more?
Bury Thee
At Ludgate Circus, close to St. Paul’s, a small group of protesters gathered, some with banners reading: “Now bury Thatcherism.” Some jeered and shouted, “good riddance.” (NYT, 4/17/2013)
Some day former President Jimmy Carter will pass. Whatever our differences with the former president, we will NOT dance on his grave.
No Show
The official American delegation named by the White House is led by two more former secretaries of state, George P. Shultz and James A. Baker 3d. But some British Conservatives have complained that President Obama did not send a senior serving member of his administration. (NYT, 4/17/2013)
First, he returned the Churchill bust and then he snubs Thatcher. This is how Obama treats our stalwart ally.
Rank and File
Anthony D. Weiner has not yet said whether he will run for mayor of New York. But he already ranks among the leading Democratic candidates in the race, trailing only one other contender, Christine C. Quinn, in a poll of voters released on Tuesday. (NYT, 4/17/2013)
Run Weiner, Run!
The Pervs
As he considers a potential mayoral run in the wake of an online sex scandal, former Representative Anthony D. Weiner has won a vote of confidence from a politician who can identify with his predicament: Eliot Spitzer.
Mr. Spitzer, who resigned in 2008 as governor of New York amid revelations that he had solicited prostitutes, said in a radio interview that Mr. Weiner “will make it as a serious candidate if he plunges in, as I think he will.” (NYT, 4/13/2013)
We won't even make this a partisan issue because we would include South Carolina's Mark Sanford: politicians are among the lowest forms of life on the planet. Whore-monger Spitzer endorses Trench-coat flasher Weiner. That is priceless!
Soda Break
It had been building since mid-2011, when the president, in private negotiations with Speaker John A. Boehner, tentatively agreed to the new formula for calculating cost-of-living adjustments in Social Security; economists recommend the formula as more accurate, but it would mean smaller increases for Social Security beneficiaries. Even so, Democrats in Congress and the White House agree that the party would have supported Mr. Obama back then if a compromise deal had come to a vote. (NYT, 4/13/2013)
Here is what the proposed formula tweak for Social Security will do: it will slow the rate of future cost-of-living adjustments. That's it. It won't reduce any current recipient's payment one nickel. That is what has Liberals and Oregon Republican Greg Walden so outraged.
Grossly
President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama paid $112,214 in federal income taxes for 2012 on adjusted gross income of $608,611, an effective rate of 18.4%, the White House said. (WSJ, 4/12/2013)
We just had an national election which centered almost entirely on Mitt Romney's tax rate (14%). Now we find out that Obama paid 18%. Are Liberals satisfied with that? Is the Legitimate Media outraged?
Armed
As federal and state legislators continue to debate gun control and school safety measures in the months after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., communities around the country are wasting little time taking safety issues into their own hands. Some schools have hired armed guards. Others have implemented buzzer systems at their doors. (NYT, 4/14/2013)
At last, some common sense on guns and school safety. Liberals proudly proclaimed their schools as "gun-free zones" thus giving free reign to mass murderers. Let's try it a different way and see what happens.
The article is remiss in not mentioning the many cities (Houston, St. Louis, Los Angeles) where armed security is already in place.
From the same article we get the following excerpt which reminds coastal Liberals of how things are in the rest of the country:
By the time they are 6, many young boys and girls already have learned how to safely handle a weapon and have shot their first deer. Some live in homes where guns are not under lock and key, or on vast prairies where they shoot skeet with their families. (NYT, 4/14/2013)
