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It hurts me on the inside to watch this.
I’m glad we no longer have a stupid, bumbling president, otherwise this would be proof of his stupidity and of America’s ignorance of the world.
Apollo posted this at 11:58 PM HKT on Wednesday, May 25th, 2011 as CHANGE!, Excruciatingly Correct Behavior
Considering our president’s penchant for inviting people to his speeches and then insulting them or lying about them, I think W did the right thing here.
Apollo posted this at 9:19 PM HKT on Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011 as CHANGE!, George Bush Rules!
Seen today in Austin:
So, um, how’d that work out for you?
Apollo posted this at 7:03 PM HKT on Wednesday, April 6th, 2011 as Audacity of Hype, CHANGE!
So what’s worse: the administration refusing to seek Congressional approval for it’s Libya adventure (which, at least at the beginning of this fiasco, almost certainly would have been granted), or waiving around a March 1 Senate resolution that absolutely no one at the time thought authorized American military involvement as proof that Congress has approved this war? Is war now so mundane that Congress can be tricked into declaring it, like getting a road project for a Congressman’s district or rearranging a pet agency? And, um, anyone else notice that only one house of Congress voted on that resolution? Unlike Barry, I’ve never taught a constitutional law course, but I seem to recall there being two houses of Congress.
Apollo posted this at 10:04 PM HKT on Friday, April 1st, 2011 as CHANGE!, To the Shores of Tripoli, We don't need no stinkin' Constitution
Even the AP seems skeptical of what the president said last night. I particularly liked the last bit:
In his pre-presidential book “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama said the U.S. will lack international legitimacy if it intervenes militarily “without a well-articulated strategy that the public supports and the world understands.”
He questioned: “Why invade Iraq and not North Korea or Burma? Why intervene in Bosnia and not Darfur?”
So let’s go back to his famed 2002 anti-Iraq War speech. What conclusions do you think 2002 Obama would draw about 2011 Obama?
What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income — to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.
That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.
Now let me be clear — I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.
He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.
But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.
Why wasn’t the president’s speech last night effective? Aside from any problems of substance (it’s hard to give an effective speech when what you’re selling is nonsense), it simply wasn’t believable that Barrack Obama believed the things he was saying. We didn’t know much about this man when we elected him in 2008, but we knew he opposed the Iraq War because he didn’t think Saddam was a threat to us. Last night’s speech throws into doubt whether he was sincere then, whether he’s sincere now, whether he’s capable of sincerity, or whether he just did a piss-poor job of explaining what’s different this time.
At any rate, I think it’s impossible to reconcile what little we knew about pre-presidential Obama with the Obama who was on tv last night. A speaker cannot be effective when he undermines his own credibility.
Apollo posted this at 8:28 AM HKT on Tuesday, March 29th, 2011 as Barack Obama Couldn't Persuade a Bear to Crap in the Woods, CHANGE!
Kaus, on the implications of treating war as a routine occurrence. I’m of the same mind as him regarding whether what’s happening is good or bad:
I’m not sure whether humanitarian imperialism is a good or bad thing. The world might be a distinctly better place overall if the U.N. could overthrow every dictatorship the Security Council could muster a majority to overthrow. But the accompanying routinization of war is at least troubling, no?
Apollo posted this at 8:50 PM HKT on Sunday, March 27th, 2011 as CHANGE!, To the Shores of Tripoli
Fresh on the heels of news that the Libyan rebels are engaged in racial cleansing of some sort, we now learn that we’re on al Qeda’s side. This point is too important to miss: that report notes that the leader of the Libyan rebels fought against us in Afghanistan, was captured in Pakistan, and was later released.
I’ll adapt slightly from Mark Steyn’s closing snark here: Our first black president is using the American military to make Libya safe for anti-black racists and the same Islamist fighters who, elsewhere, kill American soldiers. It’s hard to think of ways in which this could get worse without entering the realm of the ludicrous – perhaps a company of Nazis, marooned in Libya since the surrender of the Afrika Korps, join up; vampire assassins helping the rebels during nighttime operations; specicidal aliens assisting the rebels to use captured Gadaffi fighters as test subject to develop a virus to wipeout mankind. Even then, the awful would only increase at the margins. How much worse is aiding a bunch of racist jihadist Nazi vampires than merely aiding a bunch of racist jihadists?
Apollo posted this at 9:45 AM HKT on Saturday, March 26th, 2011 as CHANGE!, To the Shores of Tripoli
To all those denizens of the left that spent much wasted ink bloviating about Bush II’s ham-fisted attempts to build a coalition I give you this.
Jamie posted this at 1:24 PM HKT on Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011 as CHANGE!
I’m still not sure what to think about the fact that we’ve just gone to war with Libya without a significant public debate, or without our president consulting the Congress (he went to the U.N. and the Arab League, but not the Congress).
That being said, I think I’m sure regarding the manner in which we should conduct our new war. First, this is plainly a war with Ghadaffi; there is a single individual whose actions have caused us to enter this war. Second, this is nothing other than us involving ourselves in a civil war.
It follows from these observations that the first, last, and only thing we ought to be doing is killing Momar Ghadaffi. We’ve determined that left to his own devices he will crush the rebels and slaughter civilians. If we merely involve ourselves enough to prevent the massacre of civilians but not enough to allow the rebels to win, then neither they nor Ghadaffi will drop out of the fight and a low-level civil war will continue into the indefinite future. This strikes me as obviously immoral – to enter a war that would have come to a short but bloody end, and use our power to convert it into a war that will drag on for years consuming, most likely, a similar number of lives but with disruption of civil society stretching out for years on end. Moreover, does anyone think we’re going to keep guarding the rebels for more than a few months? A year, at most? If we do nothing but cause a stalemate now, we’ll get tired of this sometime around election season, stop the bombing, and then Ghadaffi will slaughter the rebels as though we were never around. It’ll just take a lot longer and probably result in a greater loss of life. And if Ghadaffi wins despite significant Western involvement, it’ll be, at least, the worst hit to Western power since Vietnam.
No, we’ve weighed in on the side of the rebels, and we must ensure that the rebels win. In doing so, we could provide them justenough support to help them gradually push back Ghadaffi’s forces, ensuring a bloody struggle with the maximum destruction and casualties on each side. This strikes me as obviously immoral, and counterproductive to boot – the rebels would feel like we used them as a tool to get at Ghadaffi, and that they could probably have won without us.
If we’re going to be in this, we need to be in this to minimize death and destruction, and to maximize the degree to which the ensuing regime reflects our values (otherwise, WTH are we doing there? are missiles about to go out of style?).
So we kill Ghadaffi, and as many of his followers who feel like being around him when when the bombs come down. We eliminate the cause of our intervention, and we create maximum indebtedness to us for our intervention without having the bad effects of an occupation. The West: “We Cared Enough to Kill That Guy You Hated, but Not Enough to Occupy You.” TM. At that point, either they’re a people capable of self-government, in which case they’ll form a republic of some sort, or they’re not, in which case they’ll get what they deserve. At any rate, we’ll get out of there with minimum effort, having significantly reduced the amount of death and destruction and with our ultimate goal attained.
Three questions: 1. What is the problem with this plan? 2. Is there a chance in hell that this is what we intend to do? 3. Is it obvious to anyone else that we seem to be involving ourselves in a manner that will increase casualties, destruction, and resentment?
Apollo posted this at 2:52 PM HKT on Sunday, March 20th, 2011 as CHANGE!, To the Shores of Tripoli
The increasingly few of us who remember the world Before Barry (that is, before his presidency) might remember that he once opposed the “rush to war” in Iraq. Back in 2003, after several months of intense national debate, a national election that hinged on that debate, a Congressional vote that involved lots of debate, and several trips to the U.N. to debate the matter, lots of people, including a young, inexperienced Barack Obama, still thought we were “rushing” to war.
Since then, though, a bunch of people who weren’t me got together and voted to make Obama the president. Okay, whatever. But given this context you can imagine my surprise when I finished washing my car tonight and came inside to find that we’d gotten a resolution from the U.N. authorizing us to start bombing Libya.
Wasn’t it just, like, this morning that we were still refusing to take action and allowing Gadaffi to crush the rebels? This revolt has been going on for some time, and it never seemed to me that we were serious about getting involved. Now, after very little warning or debate, Mr. “Stop This Rush to War” is getting us into a war without so much as Congressional approval.
Huh? I may or may not support us getting involved in Libya; honestly, I haven’t thought about it because our president has been giving the distinct impression that we weren’t going to get involved. But the next Democrat who ever mentions the “rush to war” in Iraq should be struck by lightning. This is ridiculous.
Apollo posted this at 11:00 PM HKT on Thursday, March 17th, 2011 as CHANGE!
Via Prof. Althouse:
Aren’t you forgetting a thing or 2? You’ve got them chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, Scott Walker has got to go” — but what do they know about Scott Walker? That he’s done something the teachers don’t like. So, maybe some day, when you do something they don’t like, some kid might start “Hey hey, ho ho, [TEACHER'S NAME] has got to go.” Today, you’re pleased to teach them “The children, united, will never be divided.” I’m picturing them repurposing that chant back in the classroom.
This confirms my long-standing observation that while you can’t dismiss a political cause because some jerk brings his kid to a rally, you can go a long way toward that when they start coordinating bringing their kids and teach them sloganeering.
Added: On reflection, I was entirely wrong to say parents shouldn’t bring their children. Bringing a child to a political rally so they can observe and learn about about our civic process is a laudable thing to do. However, the children depicted in this video are actively participating in the rally, indeed chanting “This is what democracy looks like!” in response to an adult’s call (I sure hope our democracy doesn’t look like a bunch of 3rd graders!).
Tom posted this at 9:05 AM HKT on Tuesday, March 15th, 2011 as An Insult to Drunken Sailors, CHANGE!, Excruciatingly Correct Behavior
Creepy thoughts from the White House.
How Mr. Obama manages to do that while also balancing American interests is a question that officials acknowledge will plague this historic president for months to come. Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China. As one official put it, “No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao’s words in Tahrir Square.”
I could say quite a bit about this, but I’d rather leave it on its own.
Apollo posted this at 4:23 PM HKT on Sunday, March 13th, 2011 as Barack Obama Couldn't Persuade a Bear to Crap in the Woods, CHANGE!, Commie Recrudescence
The U.S. Attorney General casually refers to “my people.” Meaning black people.
His contention that modern black-on-white voter intimidation is fine because 1960s Mississippi was worse should, at least, raise an eyebrow. And as a lawyers, the quickness with which Holder blurs lines leads me to believe he’s much to quick to present a political, rather than legal, view. The quote that the congressman read dealt with someone describing the worst incident of voter intimidation he’d seen, and he’d seen some voter intimidation in the South in the late Jim Crow era. Holder attempts to refute this by getting huffy that the overall system of voter intimidation in the South was incomparably worse.
True dat, I guess. But systemic oppression is different from episodal oppression. Holder’s response didn’t address the quote, it just allowed Holder to make it awkward for everyone involved by making the situation about his own blackness. I reckon Shelby Steele would have some commentary regarding an immensely powerful black man raising his race as a shield to protect himself from a white questioner. And I reckon that everyone who thought that electing Obama would usher in a new era of race relations should have to wear a sign of some sort.
Apollo posted this at 8:05 AM HKT on Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011 as CHANGE!, Race
This article on higher education – despite using my absolute least favorite metaphor in its title – is worthwhile. It’s not an overtly political article, but these question got me thinking:
What good does it do to increase the number of students in college if the ones who are already there are not learning much? Would it not make more sense to improve the quality of education before we increase the quantity of students?
On so many issues, the Obama administration has approached problems by just insisting that if we do a lot more of the same, things will work out. Education is one example: Our children is not learning? Send them all to college. There’s no concern about the quality of education, that students carefully select what career and educational path suits them, or that education costs too much. No, simply having more of it will fix the problem.
This is the preferred solution in other areas: Healthcare costs too much and not enough people have insurance? Well, we could address the underlying issues that are forcing the price of healthcare too high (hard), or we could just make everybody buy insurance (easy). Our massive deficit spending is draining capital from the economy and inhibiting growth? Well, we could analyze the budget and keep those programs that are genuinely productive while making cuts elsewhere that will free up capital and spur growth (hard), or we could just borrow more for investments while leaving current deficit levels alone (easy). The most heavily regulated industry in America, banking, has an utter meltdown and millions of people lose billions of dollars? Well, we could take a serious look at how the regulators failed and rearrange our system to reflect the understanding that the government cannot adequately monitor every single aspect of a free market and it shouldn’t let investors think that it can (hard), or we can blame it all on the greedy bankers, ignore the failings of the government, and add on significantly more regulation while telling everyone that we’ve fixed the problem and the market is safe again (easy).
It’s even apparent in the president’s political activities. Failing to convince the American people that your signature legislative policy is a good idea? Well, we could slow down the process, schedule a few carefully crafted speeches that take our opponents’ arguments seriously, and gradually advance a convincing argument (hard), or we could just have the president on every channel half a dozen times a day repeating the same talking points for months on end (easy). Trailing badly going into a midterm election? Well, we could consider the things about our administration that people don’t like and carefully coopt the issues that we think we can sensibly address without ticking off our base and make rational arguments for why our policies are a success (hard), or we could insist that we’ve done everything right and send the president out every single day to hammer into the minds of the American people the most important facts of this election: D stands for Drive, R stands for Reverse, and Republicans drink a lot of slurpees (easy).
Time and time again we see that this administration has an utter lack of imagination. Obama should be near the top of modern liberal intellectualism: two Ivy League degrees, married to a woman with two Ivy League degrees, community organizer, civil rights lawyer, race-conscious author, with his pick of advisers from among the most celebrated academics in the country. Every tenet of the modern Left tells us that this man should be among the most able men around.
And yet, I’m not sure I’ve seen a spark of original thinking, or a hint that he’s open to creative solutions, since his inauguration. There’s nothing wrong with the status quo that more of the status quo can’t fix.
Apollo posted this at 11:33 AM HKT on Saturday, February 26th, 2011 as Barack Obama Couldn't Persuade a Bear to Crap in the Woods, CHANGE!
Weird. I suggest reading the whole letter, but here’s what I take as the upshot:
This strikes me as a bizarre sort of posturing. First, there’s no independent basis for the president’s determination of constitutionality. It defers entirely to the judiciary’s standards of constitutionality. Despite what this letter claims, the judiciary is not “the final arbiter” of constitutionality; all three branches of the federal government have an independent duty to examine the constitutionality of laws, and our system is designed so that the American people will not be afflicted with any law that any branch considers unconstitutional. The Congress can revoke a law or refuse to fund its enforcement; the president can refuse to enforce it; and the courts can refuse to allow it to be enforced. For any one branch to base its interpretation solely on the interpretation of another branch deprives the American people of the constitutionally-created division of power.
Second, if the law’s unconstitutional, don’t enforce it. Why are they planning to continue enforcing an unconstitutional law? That strikes me as an impeachable offense. The president has a duty to see that the laws are faithfully enforced, but the Constitution is THE law; that’s the whole rationale, for example, behind judicial review, that in refusing to allow unconstitutional statutes to be enforced, the judiciary is actually enforcing the Constitution. If the president is enforcing a law he believes to be unconstitutional, he is not seeing that the most important law is enforced.
Third, the president is refusing to defend in court a law that he is actively enforcing. This is pure bad faith.
Fourth, the refusal to defend defensible laws – even if the president believes they are unconstitutional and refuses to enforce them – is the end of constitutional government. We the people, through previous Congresses and Presidents, have expressed our opinion that DOMA is constitutional, and we deserve to have our interests represented in court by our non-political lawyers in the DoJ. Otherwise, I look forward to the next president defaulting on Obamacare, as well as any other laws I dislike. I’ll start making a list.
Finally, a less-substantive point after the break: Read the rest of this entry »
Apollo posted this at 1:15 PM HKT on Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011 as CHANGE!, Kulturkampf, We don't need no stinkin' Constitution