Category Archives: Politics – international

The media’s favourite Republican

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This post is about Chris Christie but let me start with these items from Drudge:

‘THIS IS A VERY, VERY BAD DEAL’…
Furious Israel confronts USA…
Obama secretly lifted Iran sanctions months ago…
IRAN: Will Not Give Up Right to Enrich Uranium…
Israel abandoned…
‘Deal of the century’…

And then this:

OCT. UNEMPLOYMENT: 7.3%…
+204,000 JOBS
720,000 Americans leave work force…
Record low for women…

And then across the top of the page there’s this:

GALLUP: UNINSURED REJECT OBAMACARE

Everything related to the United States is falling apart and for much of this disintegration the problem is the American president. The 2008 presidential election was pivotal but the damage could still have been contained. 2012 was the disaster and it is a disaster for which there is little evidence that it can be or will be contained.

The US did not elect Mitt Romney and while the look at the electoral college might make you think it was a runaway, it was a very close election. Pivotal in that last week was “Superstorm Sandy” during which a number of events occurred, the most significant one being the over-the-top support given to Barack Obama by Chris Christie in that crucial last week of the election. Let me take you back to this which is a quote taken from an article I did in Quadrant on the US election:

A week before the election, the in-the-tank-for-Obama MSM was deeply worried that Romney was going to beat their guy, so they played up Superstorm Sandy and the game-changing effect it was having on the election for all it was worth … the MSM would prefer that Americans forget that a freak storm probably averted an Obama loss. Obviously, such a loss would entirely pre-empt ‘Operation Demoralize’, and the only thing the MSM enjoys more than helping elect Democrats is predicting doom and despair for Republicans.

‘Operation Demoralize’ completely falls apart if one considers just how close the margin of victory was for Obama in the four swing states that decided the election, and how Superstorm Sandy almost certainly moved enough votes from Romney to Obama to provide the election victory. In Florida, with nearly 8.3 million ballots cast, the margin of victory was a mere 52,000 votes. Because this US presidential election was a two-person race, a takeaway by one candidate from another represents a two-vote swing. Accordingly, if somewhere in the order of 26,000 Floridians, out of 8.3 million, decided that they were changing their vote from Romney to Obama based on his supposed ‘heckuva job’ in relation to the storm response, those voters alone decided Florida’s 29 electoral votes. Given the AP exit poll and its 42% figure for those who claimed the storm influenced their decision to vote for Obama, it’s safe to say that Superstorm Sandy threw far more than 26,000 voters into Obama’s column and out of Romney’s.

The same argument can be made in Ohio. 5.3 million votes cast, margin of victory: 103,000. If the storm flipped about 52,000 votes or more from Romney to Obama, then no storm meant Ohio would have been a Romney win on election day.

In Virginia, 3.7 million votes cast, margin of victory: 107,000. If the storm influenced 54,000 voters or more to abandon Romney for Obama, the storm was decisive in converting a Romney win in Virginia to an Obama win.

In Colorado, nearly 2.4 million votes cast, margin of victory: 113,000. If 57,000 voters or more moved from the Romney camp to the Obama camp based on the storm, then Obama doesn’t win the state if the storm never happens.

A Romney win in these four states would have given him the election.

With this in mind, here is a quote from a contemporary account dated 30 October 2012:

Christie told news outlets that the president’s response had been ‘outstanding,’ said that coordinating with the administration had been ‘wonderful,’ and remarked that ‘the president has been all over this and he deserves great credit.’ He even told Fox News the president had done a ‘great job for New Jersey’ while staying above the fray about politics: ‘I’ve got a job to do here in New Jersey that’s much bigger than presidential politics, and I could care less about any of that stuff. I have a job to do. I’ve got 2.4 million people out of power. I’ve got devastation on the Shore. I’ve got floods in the northern part of my state. If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don’t know me.’

I do know Christie and he does give a damn about presidential politics. If Romney had won in 2012 he could not run in 2016. You can argue about whether Sandy or Christie made the difference but you can’t argue about which candidate Christie’s words and deeds were of assistance to.

The media’s favourite Republican. Is there anything else you need to know?

Taken for fools

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It’s not that they are asking the tough questions but if you mention Obamacare to Obama you are immediately into massive incompetence and dishonesty. They don’t want to push him on it, as this NBC interview shows, but once you say a thing there is no alternative but the mud will stick deep and fast.

Obama never apologises for what he did – admits no fault – but here is the closest approximation you might ever find. There’s an extended video at this link.

“I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me,” he told NBC News in an exclusive interview at the White House.

“We’ve got to work hard to make sure that they know we hear them and we are going to do everything we can to deal with folks who find themselves in a tough position as a consequence of this.”

“This” not “me”. Mr Narcissism himself cannot find it within him to say that he is at fault for anything. Mere innocent bystander undermined by those people who work over there in the White House. But the lying doesn’t stop. From the same story:

After the initial NBC News report, the administration insisted that the president did not mislead Americans, arguing that the law could not have accounted for insurers altering existing plans after passage of the law.

How depraved can you get! The level of disgust amongst people who didn’t vote for him and are now losing their insurance may even be less than for the people who are losing their insurance and did vote for him. Not only has their health care been undermined, but they have been taken for fools, which is what they are.

Knowing when to take a hard line

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In Toronto, my native born city, they elect a mayor of a more libertarian persuasion so he is hassled and harried for smoking crack cocaine as captured on a video something like a year ago. He has, in fact, been hassled and harried by the good and the just since the day he took office. I’m not even sure he can be prosecuted for what he did, but that won’t get the dogs called off.

The Mayor can be removed from office only if incarcerated or through a defeat at the polls, legal experts said. Police have said there is nothing in the images that could lead to an arrest.

Something of the nature of Rob Ford’s politics might be discerned from this which have just now come back into fashion:

Yes! Toronto’s underground hit of 2010, our exclusive Vote For Rob Ford – He’s Not A Communist shirts are back, by popular demand (thanks to a mayor who can’t stay out of the news). Unofficially issued in limited numbers during Ford’s winning election campaign, this one has been unavailable since then. Members of Ford Nation can show their support for their beleaguered Mayor by buying one and wearing it around ‘left-wing pinkos’! (as Don Cherry puts it).

Meanwhile, in New York, there is a story of another mayor who has just been elected. At long last a Democrat and a breath of fresh air as this story reports a version of which you can find in just about any media story anywhere in the US and here as well.

De Blasio has campaigned hard against the yawning gulf between rich and poor, ‘a tale of two cities’ and for minority rights.

He has traded heavily on his family.

Like the Clintons, he and his wife, Chirlane McCray, have run as a package. Poet, editor, feminist and activist, she is a constant fixture by his side.

Their 16-year-old son Dante, instantly recognisable by his halo of Afro hair, has been credited with helping to turn around the campaign with an emotive TV ad about how great his dad is.

Deeply touching, heartwarming no doubt. But for a more nuanced approach, you might try this from a less than mainstream source:

Described by CNN as the ‘unabashed liberal,’ de Blasio is actually to the left of Barack Obama, in the sense that de Blasio didn’t disavow his communist background once it came to light. At least Obama tried to cover up his ties to communist Frank Marshall Davis.

De Blasio had scrubbed the Marxist connections from his campaign website, an omission that momentarily captured the attention of The New York Times. But once these connections and controversies came to light, he embraced his sordid history. He still embraces liberation theology and his work for the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

He’ll fit right in with the new breed of American politician and he will certainly get a good press. Glen Reynolds has the right attitude:

PUTTING TOGETHER A FILM FESTIVAL IN HONOR OF DE BLASIO’S ELECTION AS MAYOR OF NEW YORK. So far I’m planning to show Death Wish, Taxi Driver, Fort Apache, the Bronx, and Escape From New York. And maybe Serpico. Any other suggestions? . . .

But there are still scandals and the media are maintaining their proud tradition of holding politicians to an appropriately high standard as shown here:

The Washington Times newspaper announced that it is ending a regular column by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul following a series of plagiarism charges against his work. . . .

‘We expect our columnists to submit original work and to properly attribute material, and we appreciate that the senator and his staff have taken responsibility for an oversight in one column,’ said Times Editor John Solomon in the piece announcing the decision. [I have added the bolding.]

As is well known, every politician researches and writes their own speeches and newspaper columns. Unlike lying to the public over the IRS, Benghazi, the NSA, the effect of changes to a major piece of legislation affecting the health of a nation, an oversight of this magnitude is a hanging offence and they were of course absolutely right to take the hard line they took.

The fog of scandal

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It’s a mid-sized story on Drudge, the video is with Glenn Beck who couldn’t even hold his job at Fox, and it is obviously a zero story across the media in the US or here, but still this does have to make you think. The article title is, “Obama Secret Service Agent: ‘It’s Worse Than People Know… and I’m Not Trying to Scare You Either'”. C’mon, who’d be scared by this:

Dan Bongino has protected numerous Presidents over his career, including President Obama. He has been within ear-shot of many a discussion in the Oval Office, but up until this administration has stayed out of the lime light. Apparently, however, the activities of this administration are so abhorrent that he could no longer keep quiet.

There is a movie I’m going to miss about a White House butler who served across a number of administrations but now it is a secret service agent who has served in a number of administrations who is trying to tell us something no one wants to hear. He’s apparently written a book for which no one is seeking the movie rights and intends to run for Congress, so immediately it will be possible to ignore it all as a self-interested account to get a bit of traction. But still, he does say what he says, and I am still conscious that the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court changed his vote in the middle of writing a decision to bring the Affordable Care Act down. Think about that as you read the following:

You give the government information and it will be abused. It is not a matter of if it’ll be abused, it’s only a matter of when…

When the line between the personal self and the public self… when that line is determined by the government that keeps your information in a trove for release any time they need it, how are you free?

..the bottom line is, having worked inside the government, it will be abused. It is only a matter of time.
…

We are all doing something wrong. The catch is not ‘if’ we’re doing something wrong. It is ‘are your private wrongs impacting on my civil liberties?’ If not, the government has no business in your life… it’s a red herring…

If you’re not doing something wrong? The question is only whether your private wrongs that have no effect on anyone else become exposed for the government’s benefit.

…It’s only a matter of time before someone slaps an email on your desk from fifteen years ago… and says ‘look what we got against you.’

He describes the fantastic array of impeachable offenses by the Obama administration as a “fog of scandal”. It’s like Stalin’s line about one death is a tragedy but a million deaths are a statistic. The number of scandals is now so large each seems to push the others from the front page and limit our ability to focus on the totality of what is being done.

The president from a parallel universe

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The president from a parallel universe that we were fated not to have. And these words from the speech say everything that needs to be said about why Mitt Romney is not President of the United States today.

Of course rules of fairness have to be enforced because what other safeguards do we have besides the press. [Drawing a big laugh and applause from the crowd.] Now I never suggest the press is biased. I recognise they have their job to do and I have my job to do. My job is to lay out a positive vision for the future of the country, and their job is to make sure no one else finds out about it. [Drawing an even bigger laugh and even more applause.]

FURTHER THOUGHTS: I of course put this post up because it is one year ago today that Obama was re-elected. There would be few here who would not have vastly preferred Romney to Obama at the time but in the twelve months since, you really do have to wonder how Obama has a supporter left. But he does because he represents a mentality that is hard to truly fathom, the religion of the left where actual accomplishments and dealing with our problems in a realistic way is a distant second to being virtuous and pure of heart. Not all on the left are like this, but the socialist ideal taps into a form of mental derangement that makes a large difference when the votes are counted. To most of us, Obama is beyond compare the worst imaginable president. To others, there is literally nothing he could conceivably do that would alienate them or their votes. Clinton sought to end welfare as we know it and actually legislated these changes into law. Obama exactly reversed what Clinton had done and has made millions dependent on the state. But they love Clinton and they love Obama because they have nothing else but the politics of virtue to sustain them.

Would you buy a used car from this man?

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obamacare cartoon

In politics you have little to trade with other than your word and your ability to bring others along with you. You can be the smartest guy in the room but if no one wants to follow where you want to lead than you are, politically speaking, a failure. But if your word cannot be trusted even by people on your own side, specially by people on your own side, then you are utterly done for, washed up and a cipher. The disintegration of Barack Obama’s presidency continues.

It of course does not matter that I and others like me do not trust the American president. That distrust goes back to virtually the day I first learned anything about him. But it has taken a while for the American electorate in general to even begin to have an inkling of just how dangerous to their own future health and welfare having elected Obama as president has been. And it has been the lies he told to get his most important single piece of legislation through Congress that is doing him in. With his friends in the media, there is no reason to be certain that this will remain a problem into the longer term but it is a problem for now.

A quite remarkable assessment has been offered by Marc Thiessen who was a speech writer in the GWB White House. The article is titled quietly enough, A dishonest presidency but it truly brings home just how much damage Obama has brought upon himself.

It’s not easy to get a lie into a presidential speech. Every draft address is circulated to the White House senior staff and key Cabinet officials in something called the ‘staffing process.’ Every line is reviewed by dozens of senior officials, who offer comments and factual corrections. During this process, it turns out, some of Obama’s policy advisers objected to the ‘you can keep your plan’ pledge, pointing out that it was untrue. But it stayed in the speech. That does not happen by accident. It requires a willful intent to deceive.

A willful intent to deceive is a lie. You cannot trust Obama on anything. He is a flimflam man, con artist, a flake and two-bit hustler. You may think such lies are common in politics but they are in fact quite rare. Gillard never overcame her false promise that there would never be a carbon tax under a government she led just as George Bush Snr never outlived, “read my lips, no new taxes”.

But what does Obama care? His constituency is made up of the lofo voters, the one’s who are made dependent on the state and for whom nothing matters but the free stuff that must continue to flow.

Under continual assault by Chinese hackers!

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The following passage is a throwaway from a chapter in a new book on the 2012 American election campaign. This is from the chapter on Mitt Romney’s search for a Vice President. The only background knowledge you need is that Beth Myers led the search for Romney’s VP.

Myers set up her operation in a third-floor office on Boston’s Commercial Street that became known as ‘the clean room.’ Because the Romney campaign’s servers were under continual assault by Chinese hackers, the computers in the clean room were not connected to the Internet. [My bolding]

Are these Chinese hackers just so much the way things are that it is not even worth dwelling on? Is this just the way things are today, that even a candidate for President finds it almost impossible to prevent hacking by the Chinese – which Chinese, I’d like to know, and for what purpose?

The entire link tells a story which mostly focuses on Chris Christie. The choice of Paul Ryan seems on the telling to come from nowhere and most of what I would have liked to know are not dealt with. But what really comes across is how many major issues have to be handled in such short spaces of time. And as much as I already dislike Christie this story makes him even more repugnant than everything I already knew had already made him appear.

Why are they mentioning it now?

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china nuclear strike range

The headline of the story that goes with this picture is “Inside China: Nuclear submarines capable of widespread attack on U.S.“. The first two paras read as follows:

Chinese state-run media revealed for the first time this week that Beijing’s nuclear submarines can attack American cities as a means to counterbalance U.S. nuclear deterrence in the Pacific.

On Monday, leading media outlets including China Central TV, the People’s Daily, the Global Times, the PLA Daily, the China Youth Daily and the Guangmin Daily ran identical, top-headlined reports about the “awesomeness” of the People’s Liberation Army navy’s strategic submarine force.

That is the map that accompanied the story. There are many many ways in which Obama as president is a disaster with this being near the top. Meanwhile Gillard took our defence expenditure down below where it was in 1938. Now picture the geo-political world twenty years from today.

UPDATE: Two further stories on Drudge about American foreign policy idiocies.

Top generals: Obama ‘purging military’…

Israel ‘furious’ with White House for leak on Syria strike…

From the first:

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Patrick Brady, recipient of the U.S. military’s highest decoration, the Medal of Honor, as well as other top retired officers, say President Obama’s agenda is decimating the morale of the U.S. ranks to the point members no longer feel prepared to fight or have the desire to win.

“There is no doubt he (Obama) is intent on emasculating the military and will fire anyone who disagrees with him” over such issues as “homosexuals, women in foxholes, the Obama sequester,” Brady told WND.

And from the second:

Israel is fuming with the White House for confirming that it was the Israeli Air Force that struck a military base near the Syrian port city of Latakia on Wednesday, hitting weaponry that was set to be transferred to Hezbollah.

It is more than just incompetence although there’s plenty of that as well.

The answer is don’t get sick

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I had a doctor friend one time who told me about how much his practice was supported by the old ladies who would fill their days by going from doctor to doctor in the area with the same non problems. A form of social work for him but very costly for the rest of us. So I see this headline, Reform Health Cover or Collapse, which remarkably is about Australian, and think of him and of how expensive health care has become everywhere.

But there is nowhere that collapse may be more just around the corner than in the US. Watching the “health care” debate from this relatively safe distance is one more example of the great disaster that socialism in all its forms brings with it. But the debate in the US is remarkable for the lack of good will, specially if I may say so, on the side of the Democrats. The president’s no-compromise-on-anything attitude has brought on a train wreck.

There is partisanship and then there is partisanship but then there is the indefensible. I don’t think you can watch the defenders of the insane Affordable Care Act in the US without really appreciating just how deep the divide is, but it’s not a divide over good policy but has been sheer Democrat stubborness in not taking on board a single Republican suggestion during the entire period since the process began. James Taranto has a go at the kinds of defence of the now indefensible we see with a discussion of the various attempts to justify – not apologise for but justify – the actual harm being caused.

Taranto has, as one example, a discussion on why men are being forced to buy maternity care from which they had been previously exempt. Not the only anomaly. People are being kicked off their previous plans because they do not include a host of mandated forms of coverage that constitute the legislated bare minimum but male maternity coverage is pretty clear cut. So Kathleen Sebelius, the Health Secretary, has been defending these mandates in Congress where she pointed out that men often have wives who need maternity coverage. Taranto goes on:

Sebelius’s point is actually a reasonable one, as far as it goes: A male policyholder can benefit from maternity coverage if his plan covers his wife as well as him. But the exchange reveals two other ObamaCare oddities.

First, it’s not only men who are forced to buy maternity coverage they are physically incapable of using. So are women in the stage of life between childbearing age and Medicare eligibility.

Second, under-30s are exempt. That’s right, the geniuses who wrote ObamaCare are forcing everyone to buy maternity care except the age cohort that includes women at peak fertility.

Geniuses every one.