IN THE MAIL: The Business of Winning: Strategic Success from the Formula One Track to the Boardroom.
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Archive for 2014
August 29, 2014
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 477.
DICK CHENEY, YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD, THEY READ YOUR BOOK: Captives held by Islamic State were waterboarded. “Critics of waterboarding have said for years that the practice endangered Americans, putting them at risk that they will be subjected to the same brutal treatment at the hands of the enemy.”
Given that I expect something more along the lines of skinning and salt, or the Pear Of Anguish, from ISIS, waterboarding seems comparatively mild. But since the Evil United States did it, and every Right-Thinking Liberal on the planet condemned it, ISIS figures it’s the bee’s knees.
Who was thinking this far ahead? Dick Cheney, that’s who.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: If You Want To Stop ISIS, Here Is What It Will Take.
AT AMAZON, take 20% off watches.
Also, take 30% off Jewelry.
Personally, I think these earrings are just the thing.
OIL AND FRICTION in Iraq.
WASHINGTON POST: Why Obama’s ‘We don’t have a strategy’ gaffe stings. “Polls have increasingly shown that Americans view Obama as a weak commander in chief without much direction or heft t0 his foreign policy. . . . And as a series of overseas foreign policy crises have popped up in recent years, the White House has remained largely hands-off — a decision that rightly or wrongly feeds the narrative of it not having a real strategy. And it certainly didn’t help that the White House set a so-called ‘red line’ of the Syrian government using chemical weapons on its people, but didn’t actually do anything when it crossed the red line. And then Obama goes and says something like he did Thursday.”
But I love how the Post still can’t write about an Obama gaffe without taking a jab — make that two jabs — at Romney along the way.
UPDATE: Points And Figures: “When the world is crashing around you, that’s not an answer. The time to answer the question with, ‘We don’t have a strategy yet.’ was was a year ago.”
A year ago, Obama was calling ISIS “junior varsity.” Plus:
Supposedly, with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, we had an A team working on these problems. She has pretty much screwed the pooch and I would hate to see how badly she could do as President. At the same time, where has Obama been? It’s not just that he is golfing, but goes deeper than that. It’s not political party differences either, because in a time of crisis, elections shouldn’t matter. CEO’s and Presidents make decisions for the good of the country; not minutiae or teacher’s pets.
His investors and his Board of Directors are looking for some definitive action that can bring some calm before the world goes spinning out of control. But, his brain is vacant. America feels listless, and also it feels like dominoes are falling that could bring us to a situation we don’t want to be in. There are parallels to both WW1 and WW2, but every new chapter has its own twists and turns. The future requires its own imaginative thinking.
Great leaders have core values. When things go nuts, they can rely on those core values. They are bedrock that help to speedily build a plan to get the ship right. This is why when an early stage company starts to grow, one of the things great CEO’s do is build a corporate culture. When in doubt, they can rely on the core values of that culture to seize the day, and employees internalize it to put out fires.
What are Obama’s core values, and do they mesh with the American culture we have created over 200+ years?
Yeah, I don’t think anybody considers Obama a “great leader” anymore, and nobody wants to talk about his core values.
UPDATE: Ten Obama Press Conference Lowlights. “It is hard to tell which was worse — the substance of the president’s remarks on Thursday or that he thought it was a good idea to go out there, with no real news on anything. He confirmed what many of us have long suspected — there is no strategy for dealing with the Islamic State, which his own advisers — but not the president — say is a real threat to the homeland. Obama would only say the Islamic State is a threat to Iraq. It leaves one wondering if he really thinks a jihadist state in the Middle East is no big deal for the U.S.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Michael Schrage corrects me — it wasn’t a year ago that Obama was calling ISIS junior varsity, it was just last January.
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Canada has quietly and politely become, well, more American than America.
VULNERABLE INCUMBENT MARY LANDRIEU (D-LA) now facing residency questions. “Landrieu doesn’t own a home in Louisiana, but is registered to vote at her parents’ home in New Orleans. She does, however, own a $2.5 million house in Washington, which she and her husband built. That address is listed on the statement of candidacy she filed with the Federal Election Commission in January, but the senator listed her parents’ New Orleans home when she submitted forms to qualify for the ballot last week.”
JACOB SULLUM ON THE SIXTH CIRCUIT’S DISGRACE: Federal Appeals Court Endorses a Heckler’s Veto of Provocative Preaching. “Confronted by citizens lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights and bystanders lawlessly punishing them for it, the police sided with the violent hecklers.”
My advice: Become a violent heckler. That’s what they reward, so that must be what they want.
MEET THE LAWYER WHO’S OUT TO destroy the “college sports cartel.”
BARACK OBAMA’S anti-Israel animus.
NO EASY EXIT from the Euro. “However stupid the creation of the euro was, undoing it will not be easy. . . . That doesn’t mean that it won’t eventually happen; I still think this remains a real risk. But if it does, public officials will probably be denying the possibility right up to the bitter, unpleasant end.”
FARHAD MANJOO: The Future Could Work, If We Let It.
I’M SURE IT’S BECAUSE THE NEWS WOULD BE EMBARRASSING FOR REPUBLICANS: IRS dragging feet in release of inter-state migration data. “The (compiling of) IRS migration data was actually cancelled a few years ago, but it was reinstated thanks to a lot of political pressure from Congress. But since that reinstatement they have taken a quite a long time – and that is a disservice to taxpayers.” I’m pretty sure that it’s not the welfare of taxpayers they’re looking after.
BECAUSE CAYMAN IS A SMALL PLACE, THEY’RE MERCILESS ON IMMIGRATION.
August 28, 2014
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: How Northeastern Gamed The College Rankings.
I DUNNO, I THINK THAT Obama’s tan suit looked pretty good.
I mean, empty, of course. But it looked good. But that’s been an Obama hallmark from the beginning.
UPDATE: But what do I know? When You’re a Leftist President Who’s Lost Esquire…
FACES OF EVIL: Rotherham: the council leaders who presided over child abuse scandal.
The author of the Rotherham child abuse report said that by 2005 ‘nobody could say “I didn’t know”‘ about child sexual exploitation in the town. But who was in charge?
And note that while they ignored child rape on a scale of hundreds or thousands, there was one sin they couldn’t ignore: “The woman who presided over the last five years of failure as the boss of children’s services at Rotherham Council is the same executive who removed three children from their foster parents because they were Ukip voters.”
Tar and feathers would be merciful and mild.
Related: Douglas Carswell’s defection to Ukip is a seismic shock to the British political system.
SCIENCE: Women who don’t sleep around before their wedding have happier marriages – but men can play the field without worry, study finds. I’m not entirely sure the causal relationship holds up here. Women who are disinclined to be satisfied for long may sleep around, and thus also not be satisfied in marriage, but the sleeping-around isn’t the cause.