Wednesday, September 4, 2013

The RNC Embraces Open Borders

The RNC Embraces Open Borders
Reince Priebus joins the White House in pandering to the open-borders crowd.

RNC chair Reince Preibus

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus had a message last week for outspoken conservatives who support strict immigration-enforcement policies: Shut up.
Yes, the head of the RNC is more concerned about protecting the party’s Hispanic vote-pandering campaign than about protecting law-abiding citizens from the devastating consequences of illegal immigration.
At the RNC’s annual summer meeting in Boston, Priebus complained that openly advocating self-deportation policies during last year’s election season was “horrific” and that rule-of-law rhetoric “hurts us.” Yes, really.

So is it okay to discuss during off-year election cycles? Leap years? Weekends? Holidays? Can the GOP sensitivity police let us in on their approved immigration-discussion calendar?
Priebus has yet to explain what exactly is “horrific” about telling foreign rule-breakers that they shouldn’t wait for the government to eject them and that the right thing for them to do would be to abide by our laws and go home on their own. This is an exceedingly and ridiculously polite policy suggestion, given how most other countries treat illegal line-jumpers, border-crossers, visa overstayers, and deportation fugitives.
But Priebus treats the idea as if it were an international human-rights violation.
Tellingly, the RNC chair has no response to the families of all races, classes, and creeds who have raised their voices against America’s perilous deportation abyss, systematic non-enforcement, and coddling of illegal-alien DREAMers who have wreaked violence and havoc on their lives.
The relatives of murdered Los Angeles teen Jamiel Shaw posed a question to Priebus on Twitter after the RNC chairman’s remarks at the GOP event last week touting minority outreach and diversity: “How many Americans Have U Talked To Whose Kids were Killed by illegals?”
Priebus has not answered.
As I first reported in 2008, 17-year-old Jamiel was gunned down by 19-year-old illegal-alien Mexican gang member Pedro Espinoza. Young Espinoza was smuggled into the U.S. illegally when he was a toddler, just like all of the DREAMers the open-borders propagandists are always extolling in sweeping terms.
One day after he was released from jail for serving time for assault with a deadly weapon, this known illegal-alien gang-banger was back on the streets. The feds failed to deport him. Local authorities failed to detain him. Espinoza celebrated his freedom by shooting star student-athlete Jamiel execution-style in the head for carrying a red Spider-Man backpack, which the Latino 18th Street Gang thug mistook for gang colors. Jamiel’s mother, Army sergeant Anita Shaw, had to travel home from serving in Iraq on her second tour of duty to join her family in burying her son.
Illegal-alien teen-killer Espinoza was sentenced to death last fall. Grieving parents Anita and Jamiel Sr. and their loved ones have valiantly kept Jamiel’s memory alive by supporting efforts to repeal dangerous illegal-alien sanctuary laws, spotlighting lapses in detention and deportation policy, calling attention to violent illegal-alien gangs targeting blacks in L.A, and opposing reckless bipartisan amnesty proposals.
As Mr. Shaw told Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle: “Just because you were brought here under no fault of your own doesn’t mean you give amnesty to everybody.” Amen. And instead of phony promises of enforcement later for blanket amnesty now, we need immediate reform of our bloodstained, loophole-ridden, underfunded, and systemically sabotaged criminal-alien detention and deportation system. Pronto.
Jamiel Shaw’s family members are vigilant community organizers against illegal immigration. But their activism will never be hailed by Hollywood, the New York Times op-ed page, the White House, or the RNC’s elitist open-borders outreach panderers. Mr. Shaw, who testified earlier this summer at a House GOP panel hearing on the horrific consequences of our failed deportation policies, warns astutely that Republicans are “up to something” as they prepare to cut deals with open-borders Democrats in conference.
I think he’s right. I also believe it’s no coincidence that the RNC is now publicly marginalizing those who dare to challenge the rose-colored DREAMer propaganda of McCain-Graham-Rubio-Ryan–Mark Zuckerberg–La Raza — just as the forces of Amnesty Incorporated conspire behind closed doors.
Question: Why won’t Priebus acknowledge the horrific suffering of the Shaws and countless other families who have been harmed by illegal-alien nightmares? The political timing is inconveeeenient. Innocent lives be damned.
— Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies. © 2013 Creators.com

http://nationalreview.com/article/356324/rnc-embraces-open-borders-michelle-malkin

Is Obama the worst president ever?

By HUGH HEWITT |

Topics: Barack Obama President

"If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan." — President Obama, Aug. 11, 2009
So said President Obama again and again through 2009 and 2010 as he sold Obamacare to the country. He promised. He put his personal integrity on the line. His word.

“

If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.

”

How many UPS employees voted for the president in 2008 and again in 2012? Because on Friday, UPS announced it was dumping 15,000 spouses of UPS employees from their UPS health plans despite the president's many, many promises to the contrary.

The UPS spouse-dump followed by a few days the news from New Jersey that Obamacare's rollout there will end the low-cost, high-deductible plan that more than 106,00 Jersey folks liked and which presumably many of them would have preferred to keep.
Oh, and the cost of individual plans are set to rise on average 41 percent in Ohio, and another major insurance company, Anthem Blue Cross, has pulled out of the California market for small businesses.
Let a thousand stink bombs go kaboom. Obamacare is the train wreck that just keeps arriving on an ever-more prolonged schedule.
Most Mainstream Media refuse to catalogue the consequences of the epic bill that went unread when it was passed without a single Republican vote in 2009. Most journalists just avert their eyes.
But now that that the bodies of hundreds of gassed Syrian children are piling up in Damascus and scores of Christian churches are burned-out shells in Egypt, it is getting harder and harder to find anything to write about the president that doesn't underscore his incompetence.
Obama's tenure is a vast desert of anti-achievement, a landscape of waste and ruin on every front at home and abroad, save on the ability to mobilize voters who don't know or don't care about the state of the country or the world.
The president rolled to re-election on the strength of technologies that enabled his minions to tap and turn out folks who simply are clueless that that nice fellow in the White House hasn't the foggiest idea of how to run the country.
Perhaps by the time you read this, the president will have ordered a few cruise missiles to fall on Damascus, and the anti-Sisi rhetoric will have been toned down in recognition that the general running Egypt is likely to be there far longer than the president is living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
But the prospect of 39 more months of the anti-president at the helm is daunting. No plans for anything except bus tours and college campus speeches, no idea how to invigorate a sputtering economy or trim a bloated budget.
Just miles and miles to go before we can can all sleep without the prospect of seeing him the next day, yet again, making another meaningless speech or filibustering another softball question from a kept White House press.
Many will argue that Stanley Baldwin was the worst of the modern British Prime Ministers, though a few remonstrate half-heartedly for Edward Heath, but Heath did not leave his country vulnerable to war and direct attack that killed hundreds of thousands.
Since 1979 and the acquiescence of the transfer of Iran to religious zealots with world-enders and Hidden Imam-summoners among them, I didn't think it was possible for an American president to be ranked below Jimmy Carter on the competence list.
But now we have Obama, with double the years that Carter had to more than double the wreckage of the Carter era. Obama is working on his place in history every day, and every day he is making that ranking more secure.
HUGH HEWITT, Washington Examiner columnist, is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/is-obama-the-worst-president-ever/article/2534688

DoD Training Manual: ‘Extremist’ Founding Fathers ‘Would Not Be Welcome In Today’s Military’

- Infowars - http://www.infowars.com -

DoD Training Manual: ‘Extremist’ Founding Fathers ‘Would Not Be Welcome In Today’s Military’

Manual lists people concerned with “individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place” as potential extremists
Adan Salazar
Infowars.com
Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch recently obtained a Department of Defense training manual which lists people who embrace “individual liberties” and honor “states’ rights,” among other characteristics, as potential “extremists” who are likely to be members of “hate groups.”

Marked “for training purposes only,” the documents, obtained Thursday through a Freedom of Information Act request submitted in April, include PowerPoint slides and lesson plans, among which is a January 2013 Air Force “student guide” distributed by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute simply entitled “Extremism.”
Judicial Watch’s FOIA request asked for “Any and all records concerning, regarding, or related to the preparation and presentation of training materials on hate groups or hate crimes distributed or used by the Air Force.”
As the group notes, “The document defines extremists as ‘a person who advocates the use of force or violence; advocates supremacist causes based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or national origin; or otherwise engages to illegally deprive individuals or groups of their civil rights.’”
The manual goes on to bar military personnel from “active participation” in such extremist organization activities as “publicly demonstrating,” “rallying,” “fundraising” and “organizing,” basically denying active-duty military from exercising the rights they so ardently fight to defend.
It begins its introduction of a section titled, “Extremist ideologies,” by describing the American colonists who sought independence from British rule as a historical example of extremism.
“In U.S. history, there are many examples of extremist ideologies and movements. The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule and the Confederate states who sought to secede from the Northern states are just two examples,” according to the training guide.
In a section drawing inspiration from a 1992 book titled “Nazis, Communists, Klansmen, and Others on the Fringe: Political Extremism in America,” the manual also lists “Doomsday thinking” under “traits or behaviors that tend to represent the extremist style.”

Extremists often predict dire or catastrophic consequences from a situation or from a failure to follow a specific course, and they tend to exhibit a kind of crisis-mindedness. It can be a Communist takeover, a Nazi revival, nuclear war, earthquakes, floods, or the wrath of God. Whatever it is, it is just around the corner unless we follow their program and listen to their special insight and wisdom, to which only the truly enlightened have access. For extremists, any setback or defeat is the beginning of the end.

“Nowadays,” the manual explains, “instead of dressing in sheets or publicly espousing hate messages, many extremists will talk of individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place.”
Adan Salazar
Infowars.com
August 24, 2013 (page 2 of 2)
Judicial Watch also acknowledges the Southern Poverty Law Center “is listed as a resource for information on hate groups and referenced several times throughout the guide,” even though the group itself was directly responsible for a “hate crime” perpetrated on the Family Research Council after it was listed on the SPLC’s “hate map.”
Infowars readers will find much of the training guide’s contents unsurprising as they merely reinforce what we have exhaustively documented in the past.
In 2009, Infowars obtained the “law enforcement sensitive” contents of a Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) report entitled “The Modern Militia Movement” which listed supporters of presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr as potential “militia” influenced terrorists.
Also, in July 2012 Infowars blew the lid on a Department of Homeland Security-funded study, produced by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland, that characterized Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority,” and “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists.
Indeed, the latest report echoes scenes from Alex Jones’ prescient documentary 9/11: The Road to Tyranny, made over a decade ago, which covered the fact that FEMA and other government bureaus have for years been training law enforcement agencies to regard people who espouse conservative ideologies, such as those represented by the Founding Fathers, as terrorists.

It can no longer be denied that military and local law enforcement crosshairs have gradually been realigned from targeting phantom terrorists overseas to targeting domestic “extremists,” a broad, all-encompassing term that accommodates anyone generally challenging or questioning the status quo.
As Judicial Watch notes, although the documents were obtained through the Air Force, the fact that they originated in a DOD office means they have likely been distributed throughout the government’s various agencies.
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton concluded that the documents fall in line with the Obama administration’s “nasty habit of equating basic conservative values with terrorism,” and that the language closely “echoes the IRS targeting language of conservative and Tea Party investigations.” “And now… its Defense Department suggests that the Founding Fathers, and many conservative Americans, would not be welcome in today’s military… After reviewing this document, one can’t help but worry for the future and morale of our nation’s armed forces.”

Article printed from Infowars: http://www.infowars.com
URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/dod-training-manual-suggests-extremist-founding-fathers-would-not-be-welcome-in-todays-military/

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

33 Shocking Facts Which Show How Badly The Economy Has Tanked Under Obama

by Tyler Durden

by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,

Barack Obama has been running around the country taking credit for an "economic recovery", but the truth is that things have not gotten better under Obama. Compared to when he first took office, a smaller percentage of the working age population is employed, the quality of our jobs has declined substantially and the middle class has been absolutely shredded. If we are really in the middle of an "economic recovery", why is the homeownership rate the lowest that it has been in 18 years? Why has the number of Americans on food stamps increased by nearly 50 percent while Obama has been in the White House? Why has the national debt gotten more than 6 trillion dollars larger during the Obama era? Obama should not be "taking credit" for anything when it comes to the economy. In fact, he should be deeply apologizing to the American people.
And of course Obama is being delusional if he thinks that he is actually "running the economy". The Federal Reserve has far more power over the U.S. economy and the U.S. financial system than he does. But the mainstream media loves to fixate on the presidency, so presidents always get far too much credit or far too much blame for economic conditions.
But if you do want to focus on "the change" that has taken place since Barack Obama entered the White House, there is no way in the world that you can claim that things have actually gotten better during that time frame. The cold, hard reality of the matter is that the U.S. economy has been steadily declining for over a decade, and this decline has continued while Obama has been living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
It is getting very tiring listening to Obama supporters try to claim that Obama has improved the economy. That is a false claim that is not even remotely close to reality. The following are 33 shocking facts which show how badly the U.S. economy has tanked since Obama became president...
#1 When Barack Obama entered the White House, 60.6 percent of working age Americans had a job. Today, only 58.7 percent of working age Americans have a job.
#2 Since Obama has been president, seven out of every eight jobs that have been "created" in the U.S. economy have been part-time jobs.
#3 The number of full-time workers in the United States is still nearly 6 million below the old record that was set back in 2007.
#4 It is hard to believe, but an astounding 53 percent of all American workers now make less than $30,000 a year.
#5 40 percent of all workers in the United States actually make less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968.
#6 When the Obama era began, the average duration of unemployment in this country was 19.8 weeks. Today, it is 36.6 weeks.
#7 During the first four years of Obama, the number of Americans "not in the labor force" soared by an astounding 8,332,000. That far exceeds any previous four year total.
#8 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the middle class is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before.
#9 When Obama was elected, the homeownership rate in the United States was 67.5 percent. Today, it is 65.0 percent. That is the lowest that it has been in 18 years.
#10 When Obama entered the White House, the mortgage delinquency rate was 7.85 percent. Today, it is 9.72 percent.
#11 In 2008, the U.S. trade deficit with China was 268 billion dollars. Last year, it was 315 billion dollars.
#12 When Obama first became president, 12.5 million Americans had manufacturing jobs. Today, only 11.9 million Americans have manufacturing jobs.
#13 Median household income in America has fallen for four consecutive years. Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during that time span.
#14 The poverty rate has shot up to 16.1 percent. That is actually higher than when the War on Poverty began in 1965.
#15 During Obama's first term, the number of Americans on food stamps increased by an average of about 11,000 per day.
#16 When Barack Obama entered the White House, there were about 32 million Americans on food stamps. Today, there are more than 47 million Americans on food stamps.
#17 At this point, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. This is the first time that has ever happened in our history. That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.
#18 When Barack Obama took office, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was $1.85. Today, it is $3.53.
#19 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
#20 Health insurance costs have risen by 29 percent since Barack Obama became president, and Obamacare is going to make things far worse.
#21 The United States has fallen in the global economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum for four years in a row.
#22 According to economist Tim Kane, the following is how the number of startup jobs per 1000 Americans breaks down by presidential administration...
Bush Sr.: 11.3
Clinton: 11.2
Bush Jr.: 10.8
Obama: 7.8
#23 In 2008, that total amount of student loan debt in this country was 440 billion dollars. At this point, it has shot up to about a trillion dollars.
#24 According to one recent survey, 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
#25 During Obama's first term, the number of Americans collecting federal disability insurance rose by more than 18 percent.
#26 The total amount of money that the federal government gives directly to the American people has grown by 32 percent since Barack Obama became president.
#27 According to the Survey of Income and Program Participation conducted by the U.S. Census, well over 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government.
#28 As I wrote about the other day, American households are now receiving more money directly from the federal government than they are paying to the government in taxes.
#29 Under Barack Obama, the velocity of money (a very important indicator of economic health) has plunged to a post-World War II low.
#30 At the end of 2008, the Federal Reserve held $475.9 billion worth of U.S. Treasury bonds. Today, Fed holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds have skyrocketed past the 2 trillion dollar mark.
#31 When Barack Obama was first elected, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio was under 70 percent. Today, it is up to 101 percent.
#32 During Obama's first term, the federal government accumulated more new debt than it did under the first 42 U.S presidents combined.
#33 When you break it down, the amount of new debt accumulated by the U.S. government during Obama's first term comes to approximately $50,521 for every single household in the United States. Are you able to pay your share?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-21/33-shocking-facts-which-show-how-badly-economy-has-tanked-under-obama

Don's Tuesday column

THE WAY I SEE IT by Don Polson Red Bluff Daily News 9/3/2013

Politicizing events; ObamaCare ‘real disaster’

Following the 50-year commemoration of the historic “I have a dream” speech by Martin Luther King in front of the Lincoln Memorial, I had inspiring, historically nostalgic, revealing and some outrageous, disappointing observations; little of what occurred last Wednesday rose to the level of uplifting, let alone inspiring. The meager, sub-20,000 person crowd seemed to convey the near-irrelevance of what happened 50 years ago to the current racial and political climate. For an uplifting account of that day, go to Powerlineblog.com and scroll down to the August 28 entry, “Remembering the Great Civil Rights March of 1963” by Paul Mirengoff, wherein he recounts the day he spent with his dad among the crowds and hearing the speeches on what would soon become a most significant day in American history. I’ve posted it at DonPolson.blogspot.com among today’s offerings. I also cherish memories of my own activities that advanced the cause of civil rights.

Most disappointing was the incorrigible tendency of Democrats to politicize everything; by that I mean the exclusion of Republicans at every turn (the Senate’s only African-American, Republican Tim Scott, wasn’t invited), and the appeals to blatantly Democrat issues and ideas, no matter how disingenuously presented (Bill Clinton saying, preposterously, that it’s easier to buy a gun than to register to vote).

What I found truly disturbing, and relevant to recent controversy over a rodeo clown donning an Obama mask, was the photo of an American flag with Barack Obama’s face replacing the 50 stars in the blue field. As I’ve shown, there is a mainstream acceptance, even celebration, of poking fun at our presidents; or at least there was until the current selective outrage by Democrats over such practices (Saturday Night Live—ok; rodeo clown—for shame).

However, President Obama’s face replacing the stars representing our 50 states seems to confirm the casual, even disrespectful, regard those on the political left have for our national symbol. I find only reprehensible motives for such a misuse of the American flag, suggesting that the core principle of our entire constitutional form of representative democracy—the United “States” of America—can blithely be supplanted with the visage of their “dear leader.” This is of a piece with a flag widely used by the left and Occupy partisans that replaced the field of stars with corporate symbols. No corporation has a blank check on mine, or anyone’s, monetary freedoms or political liberties, but Obama personalizes the supremacy of “rule by men” over “rule by law” and the apparent slide into soft despotism currently characterizing the executive branch.

On California’s implementation of ObamaCare—also known as ACA, or Affordable Care Act—there are some troubling developments. Mainstream news media have generally taken the “never is heard a discouraging word” approach, apparently believing fealty to the Obama-crat regime demands protecting readers and viewers of their incisive “reporting,” from unpleasant developments in the ACA rollout. The agenda, as demonstrated by the preponderance of political cartoons on this page, seems to be to direct or deflect everyone’s attention to a phony narrative that places all blame for any problems with ObamaCare implementation onto Republicans. Think of the Star Wars mind-trick: “These are not the droids you are looking for.”

However, California has no such barriers as Republicans are effectively neutered in Sacramento; hence, while “some Democratic officeholders warn of the likely disasters lurking in Obamacare” (Max Baucus calling it a “train wreck” in the making), all is proceeding apace here in the Golden State. Nonetheless, “With the recent regulatory declaration that the state exchanges need not verify income information for Obamacare subsidies, the Obamacrats opened up a huge potential for fraud that will most assuredly be exploited.” (Powerlineblog.com, July post “Invitation to a Defrauding, cont’d”)

Indeed, our Democratic Insurance Commissioner, Dave Jones, has raised red flags over potential ripoffs of actual consumers, reported by AP:

“As California prepares to launch its health care exchange, consumer groups are worried the uninsured could fall victim to fraud, identity theft or other crimes at the hands of some of the very people who are supposed to help them enroll. The exchange, known as Covered California, recently adopted rules for a network of more than 21,000 enrollment counselors who will provide consumers with in-person assistance as part of the federal Affordable Care Act. In some cases they will have access to personal and financial information, from ID cards to medical histories.

“But the state insurance commissioner and anti-fraud groups say the exchange is falling short in ensuring that the people hired as counselors are adequately screened and monitored. [Jones] also said the exchange does not have a plan for investigating any complaints that might arise once the counselors start work. That means consumers who might fall prey to bogus health care products, identity theft and other abuses will have a hard time seeking justice if unscrupulous counselors get hold of their Social Security number, bank accounts, health records or other private information, he said. ‘We can have a real disaster on our hands,’ Jones, a Democrat, said in an interview.”

To whom it may concern, I’ll not be answering loaded, hypothetical “gotcha” questions on “same-sex whatever” until said questioner stakes a position on the real violations of conscience in commerce I pointed out—people being forced to “celebrate” that to which they morally object. Are you for or against?

Remembering the great civil rights march of 1963

by Paul Mirengoff in Civil rights, History, Race and racial bias

Participating in the great civil rights march of 1963 didn’t exactly change my life. But it made my course more fixed, helping inspire me to become a lawyer and, in my first job as such, to work for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
That’s why I’ve written about the march on August 28 of almost every year I’ve blogged.
Today, on the 50th anniversary of the march, I thought I’d pull together just about everything I remember about August 28, 1963. That way, it will all be written down in case I begin to forget things:

I had been favor of civil rights for Negroes (as we said back then) since 1958 when I did a short report for school about civil rights legislation proposed by President Eisenhower. So when I heard there was going to be a civil rights march, and that my father intended to participate, I wanted to be part of it. My parents agreed that I could go.
My best friend was going to come with us, but his mother vetoed the idea at the last minute. Her decision was understandable. There was much talk that the march might turn violent. President Kennedy reportedly shared this concern.

I was nearly certain there would be no violence. Why? Childish optimism, probably — the same sort of optimism that had convinced me there would be no war with the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis. But my parents must also have been pretty confident there would be no violence on August 28.

My father and I left our home in the D.C. suburbs early. He wanted to stop by the Department of Labor, where he worked, to take care of a little business.

There was quite a buzz at the DOL that morning. A number of folks who worked in my father’s unit were preparing to march. A few of them had signs. We marched with my father’s colleagues, before splitting up during the speech-making phase.

As we began walking towards the march, the size of the crowd seemed impressive, but not overwhelming. But then I saw bus after bus after bus unloading people. Nearly everyone I saw getting off a bus was black.

This contingent contained folks of all ages, but my impression was that they were mostly young. What really impressed me was their dress — immaculate — and their demeanor — excited and determined, but fully under control. There wasn’t going to be any violence this day.

I hadn’t met people like the black marchers before. They seemed very different from the blacks I had encountered growing up in Southeast Washington, and there were no blacks in the Maryland suburb where I now lived.

At this moment, the civil rights movement became for me more than an abstraction. And I was more confident than ever that it would succeed.

The march portion of the day was thus incredibly uplifting.

The speech-making portion proved less so, at least until the end. By the time the speechifying began, the August heat and humidity were nearly unbearable. As for the oratory, it must have been good — these weren’t chumps who were speaking — but there was too much of it and it became repetitious, or so I felt.

After what seemed like a very long while, we decided to get something to drink. We found an enormous line and waited for the better part of an hour (as I recall) to get to the front of it. All the while, the speeches kept on coming.

We took our drinks and moved back towards the Lincoln Memorial. We managed to get closer than before, though we were still far away.

As soon as we found our new places, Martin Luther King began his speech. Did a hush fall over the increasingly restless crowd, as everyone now recalls? I think so. I know that very early in the speech, my father and I exchanged looks. This, we both understood, was greatness.

I remember getting a big kick out of a little-remembered line from Dr. King:

We cannot be satisfied as long as a colored person in Mississippi cannot vote and a colored person in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

My cousin from New York (who occasionally contributes to Power Line) had it in for New York mayor Bob Wagner. I figured that Wagner, along with every other liberal New York politician of note, was in the crowd. It amused me that King would take this shot.

I guess King went one-for-two on this portion of his dream.

King’s speech rescued the afternoon for me. The march ended on a wonderful high.

We then headed for a downtown hotel where my father’s old socialist friends were gathering. On the way, I overheard several young, white D.C. policemen sharing their impressions of the day. They seemed almost as enthusiastic as I was.

Each noted that they had witnessed no violence or impropriety. But one officer shocked his companions by saying that he had seen a few members of the Clan. He quickly clarified that he meant Frank Sinatra or some of his show-biz pals. This was before they became known as the Rat Pack — a more politically correct but still unappealing handle.

When we got to the hotel, I was physically, intellectually, and emotionally exhausted. Instead of listening in on the political discussion, as I normally did, I bought a copy of a football magazine, found a quiet corner of the lobby, and read a preview of the 1963 football season.

Not soaking up the impressions and comments of my father and his socialist friends remains my only regret from the day.

I have never been more optimistic about politics than I was that day. Fifty years later, I think there would be agreement across the political spectrum that my optimism was excessive.

But today I want to note the extent to which the optimism was justified. Less than a year after the great march, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which, among many other things created the EEOC for which I would later work). More historic legislation followed, and over the next decade or two, barriers to equal opportunity were smashed. Today, we have a black president.

The emerging black middle class continued to grow. I feel confident that nearly all of the young blacks who poured off the buses on August 28. 1964 became part of that middle class, if they didn’t belong to it already.

Today, I have very limited optimism about race relations in America going forward. I hope that’s mostly a function of being 64 years old, not 14.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/08/remembering-the-great-civil-rights-march-of-1963.php

Monday, September 2, 2013

Obama is talking America into a war

George F. Will: Opinion Writer

Obama is talking America into a war

By George F. Will,

Barack Obama’s foreign policy dream — cordial relations with a Middle East tranquilized by “smart diplomacy” — is in a death grapple with reality. His rhetorical writhings illustrate the perils of loquacity. He has a glutton’s, rather than a gourmet’s, appetite for his own rhetorical cuisine, and he has talked America to the precipice of a fourth military intervention in the crescent that extends from Libya to Afghanistan.
Characterizing the 2011 Libyan project with weirdly passive syntax (“It is our military that is being volunteered by others to carry out missions”), he explained his sashay into Libya’s civil war as preemptive: “I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”

With characteristic self-satisfaction, Obama embraced the doctrine “R2P” — responsibility to protect civilians — and Libya looked like an opportunity for an inexpensive morality gesture using high explosives.
Last August, R2P reappeared when he startled his staff by offhandedly saying of Syria’s poison gas: “A red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.” The interesting metric “whole bunch” made his principle mostly a loophole and advertised his reluctance to intervene, a reluctance more sensible than his words last week: Syria’s recidivism regarding gas is “going to require America’s attention and hopefully the entire international community’s attention.” Regarding that entirety: If “community” connotes substantial shared values and objectives, what community would encompass Denmark, Congo, Canada, North Korea, Portugal, Cuba, Norway, Iran, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Poland and Yemen?
Words, however, are so marvelously malleable in the Obama administration that the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of “coup” (“a change in the government carried out violently or illegally”) somehow does not denote what happened in Egypt. Last week, an Obama spokesman said: “We have made the determination that making a decision about whether or not a coup occurred is not in the best interests of the United States.” So convinced is this White House of its own majesty and of the consequent magic of its words, it considers this a clever way of saying the law is a nuisance.
Section 508 of the Foreign Assistance Act forbids aid to “any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup” until the president determines that “a democratically elected government” has been restored. Secretary of State John Kerry was perhaps preparing to ignore this when he said something Egypt’s generals have not had the effrontery to claim — that the coup amounted to “restoring democracy.”
Perhaps Section 508 unwisely abridges presidential discretion in foreign policy, where presidents arguably deserve the almost unfettered discretion they, with increasing aggressiveness, assert everywhere. And perhaps if Obama were not compiling such a remarkable record of indifference to law, it would be sensible to ignore his ignoring of this one.
But remember Libya. Since the War Powers Resolution was passed over Richard Nixon’s veto in 1973, presidents have at least taken care to act “consistent with” its limits on unilateral presidential war-making. Regarding Libya, however, Obama was unprecedentedly cavalier, even though he had ample time to act consistent with the Constitution by involving a supportive Congress. As Yale Law School’s Bruce Ackerman then argued:
“Obama has overstepped even the dubious precedent set when President Bill Clinton bombed Kosovo in 1999. Then, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel asserted that Congress had given its consent by appropriating funds for the Kosovo campaign. It was a big stretch, given the actual facts — but Obama can’t even take advantage of this same desperate expedient, since Congress has appropriated no funds for the Libyan war. The president is simply using money appropriated to the Pentagon for general purposes to conduct the current air campaign.”
Obama is as dismissive of “red lines” he draws as he is of laws others enact. Last week, a State Department spokeswoman said his red line regarding chemical weapons was first crossed “a couple of months ago” and “the president took action” — presumably, announcing (non-lethal) aid to Syrian rebels — although “we’re not going to outline the inventory of what we did.”
The administration now would do well to do something that the head of it has an irresistible urge not to do: Stop talking.
If a fourth military intervention is coming, it will not be to decisively alter events, which we cannot do, in a nation vital to U.S. interests, which Syria is not. Rather, its purpose will be to rescue Obama from his words.

Read more from George F. Will’s archive or follow him on Facebook.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-obama-talks-himself-into-trouble-with-syria/2013/08/28/8f1ef83a-0f3f-11e3-bdf6-e4fc677d94a1_story.html

Obama’s higher ed plan — a power grab, not a shake-up

by Paul Mirengoff in Education, Obama administration

President Obama has announced a plan that he claims will make “college more affordable, tackle rising costs, and improve value for students and their families.” The key elements of his plan are (1) a federal college-rating system that will evaluate colleges on measures such as graduation rates, the number of low-income students served (i.e., the percentage of Pell Grant recipients), graduate earnings, and affordability and (2) the tying of federal student aid to this federal rating system by giving larger Pell Grants and lower student-loan interest rates to students who enroll in colleges that fare well on the federal scorecard.
I agree with Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation that Obama’s plan is a bad idea. The federal rating system is unnecessary. Plenty of private outfits — most famously, U.S. News and World Report — rate colleges on a broad array of criteria. Relevant information about colleges is easy to come by, and from sources more trustworthy than ideologically-driven federal bureaucrats.
While the first elements of Obama’s plan is merely unnecessary, the second element — tying federal assistance to the federal rating system — strikes me as pernicious. First, I doubt the federal government’s ability to rate colleges with sufficient accuracy to justify attaching monetary consequences to its ratings.

Second, Obama’s plan will increase the federal government’s ability to coerce colleges into embracing even more fully a left-wing agenda — e.g., discriminating against whites in admissions and hiring, unfairly disciplining male students based on flimsy allegations of sexual harassment, and so forth.

Third, even if the federal government were able to come up with a reasonable and unbiased rating system, it would still have no business discriminating financially against the families of students who decide to attend colleges they (and the families) believe are better suited to their particular purposes.

Fourth, I agree with Rep. John Kline who says “I remain concerned that imposing an arbitrary college ranking system could curtail the very innovation we hope to encourage — and even lead to federal price controls.”

Finally, I see little reason to believe that Obama’s plan would meet its alleged purpose of reining in college costs. Obama is not talking about reducing federal subsidies to colleges and universities as a whole; he’s talking, it appears, about redistributing them. Thus, the impact of his proposal on costs would probably be marginal, at best.

Higher education in the U.S. could use a shake-up. But Obama isn’t proposing one; he’s calling instead for a federal power grab. It is not the answer.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/08/obamas-higher-ed-plan-a-power-grab-not-a-shake-up.php

Delbert Benton and Christopher Lane Hate Crimes Show a Massive Racial Divide in America

Amy Sterling Casil

Delbert Benton and Christopher Lane Hate Crimes Show a Massive Racial Divide in America
© KXLY Spokane

Described as "the kind of nice old man who'd become your friend in minutes," World War II veteran Delbert "Shorty" Benton was assaulted by two teens in the parking lot of the Eagles Lodge in Spokane, Washington, at around 8 p.m. on Wednesday. He died in the hospital Thursday morning.
Benton's death has already gone viral, and is uncovering deep racial divides, simmering anger and disgust with the media. Most pointedly, many are asking: Why has the death of Benton — and similarly the death of Australian college student Christopher Lane in Oklahoma — largely been ignored by a media which was, only a couple of weeks ago, absolutely obsessed with the Trayvon Martin/ George Zimmerman case. Both the Benton and Lane case feature victims who died in race-related attacks. The only difference between the Benton and Lane cases compared to the Martin case is that they feature white victims and black assaulters.
Much of the current outrage in the Benton case is clear a reaction to the non-stop media coverage of the Martin shooting, which accelerated to 24-7 during the lengthy trial of George Zimmerman. People are rightfully asking why the Zimmerman trial was more important than many world news events, and questioning the assertion by many that Martin's shooting death was a premeditated hate crime.
Read more: The Christopher Lane Murder Wasn't a Tragedy, It Was a Hate Crime
Also read: Alleged Christopher Lane Killer James Edwards Jr: "90% of white ppl are nasty. #HATE THEM."
But after the Benton and Lane crimes, the media has been more restrained. Even President Obama, who commented on the George Zimmerman trial, has remained silent about race, bringing into question why he chose to speak out for Trayvon Martin, but not for an elderly veteran or foreign student.

Trayvon Martin's death was relentlessly exploited by media to incite and outrage racial division. Even I was angered by the unwarranted comment of Rep. Frederica Wilson that "Trayvon was hunted down like a dog, shot down in the street."
I recognized the very real trend of racial bias in law enforcement in the initial reports regarding the case. I was outraged on behalf of Trayvon's parents and friends, learning that it took 24 hours before the young "John Doe" in the morgue in Sanford, Fla., was identified as the missing child reported by his parents, and equally outraged at the length of time it took to pursue the case when authorities knew the basic facts of the incident. Wilson's comment put me over the edge not only because she screamed it a month after the crime for publicity's sake, but because her statement was just plain false and misleading.
Crimes uninvestigated and unprosecuted, and thugs of any/all races beating up the elderly and disabled, the homeless, unaccompanied gay and transgendered people, and sexual predators preying upon young children and women of all colors — these tragedies unfortunately occur every day.
The problem with Trayvon's case is the same problem as with Delbert Benton's and Christopher Lane's case: An outrageous wrong has occurred and many are devastated. Justice may not be served.

I wonder if Rep. Frederica Wilson will take time out of her busy day to contact Lane's family in Australia, or his fellow athletes at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma, and let them know how outraged she is that "Christopher was hunted down like a dog, shot in the street."
That's exactly what happened.
Delbert Benton was beaten down like a dog in a parking lot.
That's exactly what happened.
By failing to provide the same coverage to the Benton and Lane cases as they did to the Trayvon Martin case, the media is sending the message that they don't care about the elderly or veterans, and they do not care about student-athletes from other countries. It's hard to say what they do care about. If it's just ratings, they have a funny way of showing it, as ratings for traditional media continue to decline. A lot of it has to do with relentless and false publicity for loud-mouthed politicians, and yet more to do with repetitive and false coverage that suits individual political or social agendas. It's a shame they keep leaving common decency on the cutting room floor.

delbert-benton-and-christopher-lane-hate-crimes-show-a-massive-racial-divide-in-america

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Pure Evil: Obama’s Union Goons Picket Child’s Funeral, Harass Mourners, Unleash Dog on Family of Dead Woman

by Jammie

How depraved can these lefties get? Picketing funerals now? We thought this was the domain of bottom-feeding scum like the Westboro Church, but now apparently greedy union thugs are getting in on the act.

A judge ordered one of Chicago’s most politically powerful labor unions to suspend picketing against 16 funeral homes last week after receiving reports that striking Teamsters had, among other things, disturbed a child’s funeral.
SCI Illinois Services, Inc., one of the nation’s largest funeral home chains, asked a district court to intervene after striking funeral directors and drivers with Teamsters Local 727 allegedly harassed grieving families.
“We are grateful that the court agreed to issue this temporary restraining order, and we are hopeful that it will help protect grieving families who are experiencing the most difficult times of their lives,” Larry Michael, managing director for SCI Illinois Services, Inc., said in a release. “While we recognize and respect the Teamsters’ right to lawfully picket, we have been shocked and saddened by their attempts to make grieving families the target of the cruel and outrageous attacks.”
The company testified in its filing that union members blocked grieving family members from leaving its parking lot, used bullhorns to shout obscenities at workers and mourners, and unleashed a German Shepard on a dead woman’s daughter and husband.

Geez, can it get any sicker than that? Of course it can.

The funeral home was eventually forced to call the police when picketers allegedly disrupted a child’s funeral with laughter. The officer asked the Teamsters to leave, but protesters returned when he drove away.
“We will be here for the visitation; we will be here for your funeral,” Teamster driver Lester Plewa allegedly shouted into a bullhorn as a funeral director met with a dying man planning his arrangements with family members.

Pure evil. Don’t forget these are the type of vermin who helped foist Obama on an unsuspecting nation:

Secretary-Treasurer John T. Coli, one of Illinois’ most influential labor leaders, heads the 6,800-member union. Coli brokered the Teamsters endorsement of Barack Obama during his then-long shot campaign for the Democratic nomination—a major turning point in the 2008 primary.

http://www.jammiewf.com/2013/pure-evil-obamas-union-goons-picket-childs-funeral-harass-mourners/

Obama’s Speech Is a Confession of Impotence

ByMegan McArdle

“What we need,” President Barack Obama told a group in Galesburg, Illinois, today, “isn’t a three-month plan, or even a three-year plan, but a long-term American strategy, based on steady, persistent effort, to reverse the forces that have conspired against the middle class for decades.”
Inequality, layoffs, economic insecurity -- it’s a conspiracy! Sounds sinister . . . and yet, in a way, oddly comforting. A conspiracy is something you can do something about: find the villains and slay them. On the other hand, titanic and impersonal forces like globalization and technological progress are harder to vanquish.

About Megan McArdle»

Megan McArdle is a Bloomberg View columnist who writes on economics, business and public policy. Her book, "The ...MORE
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Unfortunately, there’s no easy villain to be conquered, no easy fix to bring the middle class back to the glory days of the 1950s and 1960s. Inequality and economic insecurity are rising everywhere in the developed world, not just in America. This is not a matter of policy tweaks or bad, greedy people. It’s a matter of seismic shifts in the global economy.
Nonetheless, in his speech, Obama claimed that he could do something about the ills facing us -- that he had a plan to bring back the bourgeois boom. But the strategies themselves were less than promising.
“The first cornerstone of a strong and growing middle class has to be an economy that generates more good jobs in durable, growing industries," the president told his audience. "Over the past four years, for the first time since the 1990s, the number of American manufacturing jobs hasn’t gone down; they’ve gone up. But we can do more.”
“So I’ll push new initiatives to help more manufacturers bring more jobs back to America. We’ll continue to focus on strategies to create good jobs in wind, solar, and natural gas that are lowering energy costs and dangerous carbon pollution. And I’ll push to open more manufacturing innovation institutes that turn regions left behind by global competition into global centers of cutting-edge jobs.”
Obama has been promising green jobs for years, and failing to deliver them for just as long. There’s little evidence that more environmentally friendly energy sources will be net job creators. The middle class may enjoy bluer skies if we convert more of our power generation capacity to wind and solar. But we’ve no reason to think that they’ll enjoy more green in their wallets.
The manufacturing innovation institute, meanwhile, is just another iteration of an idea that’s been around for longer than Barack Obama has. Go to any Rust Belt city and you’ll find research campuses, innovation institutes and similar institutions named after hopeful politicians who promised that a new manufacturing base would coalesce around this exciting agglomeration of creative minds. Unfortunately, in most instances it has turned out that manufacturing bases would rather coalesce around cheap land, low taxes and acres of uncongested freeway.
Besides, the problem in America is not that we suddenly lost our manufacturing mojo. In fact, we’re still very good at it; according to the Boston Consulting Group, the inflation-adjusted value of our manufacturing output has more than doubled since 1972. But our manufacturing employment is down by one-third, because production is highly automated in most industries. Even small metalworking operations now use computer-aided design and robots as much as they do grizzled machinists.
The same problem besets other areas the president leaned hard on ... evergreen promises like better education and infrastructure. These are splendid ideas -- America’s port and rail infrastructure badly needs updating, and a better-educated workforce is a worthy goal. But these things will not magically produce loads more manufacturing jobs, much less boost the income share of the middle class to 1970s levels. They will make the economy somewhat more efficient, we hope. But that efficiency, if it comes at all, will be decades away. And especially in the case of education, it may not come.
We have a very good idea of how to construct port architecture capable of receiving a supertanker. On the other hand, we are not very good at keeping inner city and rural kids from dropping out of high school. And the main policy lever that Obama has at his disposal -- pouring more money into the school system -- is not very well correlated with improved outcomes. In fact, we’ve been trying it for decades in our nation’s worst schools, with not much to show for it.
"But what about early childhood education?", you ask. It’s a better option than funneling more money into high schools, but I’m still not convinced it will scale. And although high-quality preschool can help improve outcomes for poor kids, it doesn’t make them into world-class STEM workers; it somewhat reduces the likelihood that they will drop out of school or go to prison. Excellent goals, but not quite the same as restoring the lost middle class.
The president also wants to lower the cost of a college education by reforming the student loan system. Yet playing with the interest rate on student loans is not going to give much of a boost to the middle class when already 60 percent of college graduates are taking jobs that haven’t traditionally required a college degree. Better educated waitresses may be a fine thing for America, but is it really bolstering our bourgeoisie?
The rest of the speech was similarly disappointing, a grab bag of things that people like the sound of -- more secure retirement, more secure health-care access, rebuilding communities. Obamacare is supposed to take care of one of these, though the implementation has gotten off to a rocky start. As for the rest, the president outlined no meaningful plan to achieve these noble goals, and probably for good reason: the president doesn’t have much power to fix these things. In 2011, for example, he touted his administration’s “Strong Cities, Strong Communities” initiative to reverse the social and economic decline in vulnerable cities. To give you an idea of how effective the whole thing was, one of the six cities selected for the program was Detroit.
If you listened closely, the speech seemed like a confession that the president knows he can’t do much. The deep problems afflicting America -- social and economic breakdown in inner cities and rural areas; rising economic insecurity; widening gulfs between ideologies, regions, and socioeconomic classes -- are simply far beyond the president’s reach.
But we don’t like to feel like our president isn’t even trying. And presumably, Obama hates to feel like a do-nothing. And so we get speeches that ultimately tell us what we already know: that we’d like to get to a better world. If we only knew how.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-24/obama-s-speech-is-a-confession-of-impotence.html

Should We Bomb Syria? + You go to war with the president you have (multiple views from smart Powerlineblog guys)

Should We Bomb Syria? [With comments by Steve and Paul]

John Hinderaker in Obama Foreign Policy,

No, I don’t think we should. While the United States has substantial interests in the Middle East, I can’t see that we have a major interest in who rules Syria, as between Assad and the al Qaeda-led rebels. That seems to be the consensus, and I don’t see anyone arguing that we should try to topple Assad. But if we aren’t trying to help the rebels win, then what are we trying to do?
I take it that Paul, for one, thinks that punishing Assad for using chemical weapons is a valid purpose. I am skeptical, for several reasons. First, there are, and have been, many regimes that abuse their people in various ways. Generally speaking, we do not undertake to “punish” them for doing so. While the use of chemical weapons on civilians is evil, it is not clear that it is any more so than the use of machine guns. It seems to me that we should not undertake to punish without a strong, and clearly defined, security interest.
Second, I have no confidence in our ability to calibrate a strike so finely–enough to punish, but not enough to tip the balance of power in the rebels’ favor. It seems highly likely that whatever we do will be either pitifully inadequate, or unduly heavy-handed. As the unfortunate experience of the “Arab Spring” shows, the last thing we want to do is inadvertently bring about an extremist Muslim regime in Syria.

Third, there is a good deal of truth to Colin Powell’s “Pottery Barn” theory–if we break it, we own it. I don’t see any happy outcome for Syria (or, for that matter, any Arab country) in any foreseeable time frame. Sending a few cruise missiles Assad’s way can’t influence Syrian history in any significantly positive way, but whatever we do, its impact will be exaggerated forever. We will find ourselves being blamed for whatever ills Syria suffers for the next 50 years, no matter how silly such claims may be. And apart from hyperbolic claims, any attack certainly will entail civilian casualties and other undesirable consequences.

It goes without saying that the fact that Barack Obama proclaimed a “red line” and now feels embarrassed about it is not a good reason to intervene.

Sometimes the best thing we can do is stay out of the way. It may be that a year or two ago, we could have played a constructive role by supporting relatively sane elements among the rebels, but those days are gone. We can’t support the rebels now without aiding Islamic extremists. In my view, if we are not prepared to bring about Assad’s demise–and we probably shouldn’t be–the best thing we can do is stand aside. Sometimes history is tragic, and there isn’t anything we can do about it.

STEVE adds: I don’t really need to do a separate post with my views, so I’ll add them here. I line up with John for the most part, both on the merits and because I have zero confidence in the Obama administration to carry out a serious strategy. The best we’re going to get is a “symbolic” attack that will probably kill some hapless night janitors in some warehouse in Damascus.

The case for a punitive attack because of a crossed red-line on chemical weapons is morally serious, and you could do something that would send a serious message to Assad: destroy his personal palace. Just to make sure (and since we don’t necessarily want to tip the war to the rebels), we could inform him in advance that we’ve decided he has to sacrifice his personal palace, and that he’d better clear out if he wants to live. If he installs human shields, we could attack secondary targets in the form of the residences of his top officials. I’m certain Obama will consider none of these things.

PAUL adds: I agree with John that punishing Assad for using chemical weapons isn’t enough justification for intervention. I agree with Steve that our valid interest in doing so comes close.

But there are two other interests to consider. One is deterring Assad from engaging in further chemical weapons massacres. If we succeed in this objective, we will save lives and prevent suffering. Sure, people will continue to be killed as long as the war persists. But to my knowledge, Assad isn’t randomly killing hundreds of innocent villagers by lining them up and shooting them, and he isn’t likely to do so. He does inflict painful death on hundreds of innocent villagers when he uses chemical weapons.

Because deterrence is uncertain, though, more justification is needed. This I find, albeit not without some hesitation, in our interest in preventing Assad and his sponsors Hezbollah and Iran from winning the civil war. This seems to me the worst outcome possible in Syria, and momentum has swung in favor of Assad.

A rebel victory is far from ideal, and we can’t be sure that our intervention, if it’s meaningful, won’t produce that victory. But I don’t regard a rebel victory, with the concomitant defeat (in effect) of Iran, as unacceptable. Islamist extremists are very influential in the north of Syria, but less so elsewhere. And if we turn the tide decisively against Assad, we can become influential too.

I wouldn’t be shocked if a post-Assad Syria turned out to resemble Libya. As I said, that’s not ideal. But subtract the Benghazi fiasco — a one-off, let’s hope, and preventable — and the outcome in Libya isn’t unacceptable.

Again, it’s the Iranian angle that makes an Assad victory so hard to swallow. Syria can become Iran’s Vietnam, but not if Assad continues his military comeback.

Most likely, though, our intervention wouldn’t bring about a rebel victory, but merely deprive Assad of his momentum and Iran and Hezbollah of their proxy victory. It would also vindicate important international norms and perhaps save lives.

As for being blamed for whatever might prove unsatisfactory following our intervention, we’ve already incurred the enmity of both sides in the civil war — indeed, we had it all along. We’re going to be blamed no matter what; inaction won’t spare us. This prospect shouldn’t deter us from pursuing valid and important purposes.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/08/should-we-bomb-syria.php

You go to war with the president you have

by Paul Mirengoff in Obama administration, Syria

At Ricochet, Arthur Herman, a historian for whom I have great respect, argues that we shouldn’t want President Obama to attack Syria because we shouldn’t want this particular president “to make any decisions where American interests are at stake — and where Americans, and possibly many others, may die.” This is true, Herman contends, even if there is a strong case for intervening in Syria.
I agree with Herman’s critique of Obama’s “serial weakness in his dealings with Iran, with China, and with Vladimir Putin.” I also agree that Obama has displayed “serial incompetence in Egypt” and “negligence and irresponsibility in Libya and Benghazi– not to mention…mendacity in covering up that negligence.”
It’s almost enough to persuade me that Herman is right. However, I am not persuaded.
First, whether Obama intervenes or not, he will inevitably make decisions regarding Syria “where American interests are at stake.” A decision not to intervene — the decision he has made for two years — affects event in Syria. And the U.S. has an interest, whether it intervenes or not, in the outcome of the civil war.

It matters to the U.S. whether control of Syria remains in the hands of Assad (now basically a client of Iran) or falls into the hands of either Islamic extremists or Muslims who are less extreme. And it should matter to the U.S. whether the use of chemical weapons to murder large numbers of non-combatants goes unpunished.

Second, Herman’s argument, it seems to me, would have counseled against wanting Obama not to kill Osama bin Laden in Pakistan — an action that put U.S. lives in harms way and affected our relations with the Pakistanis. It would counsel, I take it, against ever using force against Iran during the Obama administration, even if we reach the point that the Iranians are on the verge of attacking Israel with nuclear weapons.

Third, the consequence of inaction in response to criminality is usually more criminality. If Obama doesn’t act against Assad, he and his allies — Hezbollah and Iran — are likely to become emboldened. I don’t think we should encourage these actors do their worst until January 2017 (and let’s not assume that, even then, we’ll have a president upon whose judgment we can rely; we may have Obama’s former partner in fecklessness).

The world is a dangerous place — too dangerous for us to wish the U.S. to rule out one set of responses — sometimes the only effective kind — just because Barack Obama is president.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/08/you-go-to-war-with-the-president-you-have.php