Archive for 2015
November 16, 2015
WASHINGTON POST: Clinton’s debate performance leaves trail of fodder for political adversaries. Ya think?
BREAKING NEWS FROM 1789: It’s Too Late to Save France.
NEW YORK POST: College protests being organized by Obama group Organizing For America.
Given the likely impact on a key Democratic constituency, I’m surprised these aren’t being organized by Republicans.
ASHE SCHOW REMINDS HILLARY CLINTON: Actually, No One Is Against Equal Pay For Equal Work.
During the Democratic debate on Saturday, Hillary Clinton claimed that Republicans were against equal pay or equal work.
This is false.
No one is against equal pay for equal work (it’s also already the law). The problem for Clinton is that what she is referring to — the gender wage gap — is not about women making less money for doing the same job as men.
The wage gap compares the median salary of all women with the median salary of all men. But on aggregate, women work fewer hours than men, and take more time off from work. Women also tend to enter lower paying occupations than men. This is not a wage gap — it is more accurately described as an “earnings gap.”
Men and women make different career choices. There is no unspoken rule in American that allows companies to hire women for less money than they would pay men.
The only way to truly close the wage gap is to force women to make different choices — which is impossible — but Democrats don’t want to admit that.
Yep.
I’D BET THEY’RE ASLEEP IN NEW YORK. I’D BET THEY’RE ASLEEP ALL OVER AMERICA: “Could Paris Happen Here?”
—Headline yesterday in the Times.
The New York Times.
Related: “It’s not the most poorly timed NYT article ever, but this David Brooks article — ‘My $120,000 Vacation’ — was published yesterday,” Ann Althouse writes. “It got me thinking back to September 11, 2001, a day when I spent the morning reading the paper NYT delivered to my doorstep. I calmly read it for an hour or two before setting off for work, not knowing what those who used TV or radio in the morning already knew. What was in the paper that morning? Maybe you remember: ‘No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen.'”
ROSS DOUTHAT: A Crisis Our Universities Deserve.
The protesters at Yale and Missouri and a longer list of schools stand accused of being spoiled, silly, self-dramatizing — and many of them are. But they’re also dealing with a university system that’s genuinely corrupt, and that’s long relied on rote appeals to the activists’ own left-wing pieties to cloak its utter lack of higher purpose.
And within this system, the contemporary college student is actually a strange blend of the pampered and the exploited.
This is true of the college football recruit who’s a god on campus but also an unpaid cog in a lucrative football franchise that has a public college vestigially attached.
It’s true of the liberal arts student who’s saddled with absurd debts to pay for an education that doesn’t even try to pass along any version of Matthew Arnold’s “ best which has been thought and said,” and often just induces mental breakdowns in the pursuit of worldly success.
It’s true of the working class or minority student who’s expected to lend a patina of diversity to a campus organized to deliver good times to rich kids whose parents pay full freight. And then it’s true of the rich girl who discovers the same university that promised her a carefree Rumspringa (justified on high feminist principle, of course) doesn’t want to hear a word about what happened to her at that frat party over the weekend.
The protesters may be obnoxious enemies of free debate, in other words, but they aren’t wrong to smell the rot around them. And they’re vindicated every time they push and an administrator caves: It’s proof that they have a monopoly on moral spine, and that any small-l liberal alternative is simply hollow.
Or as the great Walter Sobchak might have put it: “Say what you want about the tenets of political correctness, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.”
Which might turn out to be the only epitaph for the modern university anybody needs to write.
Ouch. Though the “frat party” angle seems a bit thin, post-UVA.
YEP: After boasting for three years that he “ended” the Iraq War, Obama says it was Bush’s fault.
At a press availability over the weekend about his new bombing campaign, the president kvetched about all those people who keep insisting that he ended the Iraq War: “What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision.” It is true that the Bush administration had agreed to end our troop presence, and if we were going to stay, Obama had to negotiate a new status-of-forces agreement with the Iraqis. Why it didn’t happen is a complicated question, and Iraqi resistance is part of the answer.
But Obama was perfectly content with the outcome. “The leaders of all the major Iraqi parties had privately told American commanders that they wanted several thousand military personnel to remain, to train Iraqi forces and to help track down insurgents,” according to a definitive account in The New Yorker by Dexter Filkins. Obama was “ambivalent about retaining even a small force in Iraq,” Filkins writes. American officials negotiating with the Iraqis were left without guidance from the White House for months, and when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki offered to sign an executive agreement — bypassing the problematic Iraqi parliament — the administration said “no.”
Filkins quotes an Iraqi politician: “The American attitude was: Let’s get out of here as quickly as possible.” And why not? This was the fulfillment of Obama’s defining political promise. When we were out of Iraq entirely, he didn’t say how regrettable it was; he declared “mission accomplished.” It’s only after the ensuing disaster that we learn he was an innocent bystander. It may be that Iraq — after being largely pacified by 2009 — would have fallen apart even if we had maintained a residual force. But troops on the ground gave us the influence to restrain Maliki from his worst instincts.
And I suppose I should repeat my Iraq War history lesson: Things were going so well as late as 2010 that the Obama Administration was bragging about Iraq as one of its big foreign policy successes.
In the interest of historical accuracy, I think I’ll repeat this post again:
BOB WOODWARD: Bush Didn’t Lie About WMD, And Obama Sure Screwed Up Iraq In 2011.
[Y]ou certainly can make a persuasive argument it was a mistake. But there is a time that line going along that Bush and the other people lied about this. I spent 18 months looking at how Bush decided to invade Iraq. And lots of mistakes, but it was Bush telling George Tenet, the CIA director, don’t let anyone stretch the case on WMD. And he was the one who was skeptical. And if you try to summarize why we went into Iraq, it was momentum. The war plan kept getting better and easier, and finally at the end, people were saying, hey, look, it will only take a week or two. And early on it looked like it was going to take a year or 18 months. And so Bush pulled the trigger. A mistake certainly can be argued, and there is an abundance of evidence. But there was no lying in this that I could find.
Plus:
Woodward was also asked if it was a mistake to withdraw in 2011. Wallace points out that Obama has said that he tried to negotiate a status of forces agreement but did not succeed, but “A lot of people think he really didn’t want to keep any troops there.” Woodward agrees that Obama didn’t want to keep troops there and elaborates:
Look, Obama does not like war. But as you look back on this, the argument from the military was, let’s keep 10,000, 15,000 troops there as an insurance policy. And we all know insurance policies make sense. We have 30,000 troops or more in South Korea still 65 years or so after the war. When you are a superpower, you have to buy these insurance policies. And he didn’t in this case. I don’t think you can say everything is because of that decision, but clearly a factor.
We had some woeful laughs about the insurance policies metaphor. Everyone knows they make sense, but it’s still hard to get people to buy them. They want to think things might just work out, so why pay for the insurance? It’s the old “young invincibles” problem that underlies Obamcare.
Obama blew it in Iraq, which is in chaos, and in Syria, which is in chaos, and in Libya, which is in chaos. A little history:
As late as 2010, things were going so well in Iraq that Obama and Biden were bragging. Now, after Obama’s politically-motivated pullout and disengagement, the whole thing’s fallen apart. This is near-criminal neglect and incompetence, and an awful lot of people will pay a steep price for the Obama Administration’s fecklessness.
Related: National Journal: The World Will Blame Obama If Iraq Falls.
Related: What Kind Of Iraq Did Obama Inherit?
Plus, I’m just going to keep running this video of what the Democrats, including Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton, were saying on Iraq before the invasion:
Because I expect a lot of revisionist history over the next few months.
Plus: 2008 Flashback: Obama Says Preventing Genocide Not A Reason To Stay In Iraq. He was warned. He didn’t care.
And who can forget this?
FACT: President Obama kept his promise to end the war in Iraq. Romney called the decision to bring our troops home “tragic.”
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 22, 2012
Yes, I keep repeating this stuff. Because it bears repeating. In Iraq, Obama took a war that we had won at a considerable expense in lives and treasure, and threw it away for the callowest of political reasons. In Syria and Libya, he involved us in wars of choice without Congressional authorization, and proceeded to hand victories to the Islamists. Obama’s policy here has been a debacle of the first order, and the press wants to talk about Bush as a way of protecting him. Whenever you see anyone in the media bringing up 2003, you will know that they are serving as palace guard, not as press.
Related: Obama’s Betrayal Of The Iraqis.
Plus: Maybe that Iraq withdrawal was a bad thing in hindsight. Obama’s actions, if not his words, suggest that even he may think so.
BYRON YORK: In debate, Dem views unchanged by Paris carnage:
If, before the Democratic presidential debate in Iowa Saturday night, a Republican operative had been told that, in the wake of the Paris attacks: 1) Hillary Clinton would refuse to apply the phrase “radical Islam” to ISIS; 2) Bernie Sanders would maintain that climate change is a greater threat to national security than ISIS or Islamic terrorism in general; and 3) Martin O’Malley, with Clinton’s agreement, would insist that the U.S. stick to a proposal to admit 65,000 Syria refugees into the country. If a Republican operative had been told that, he would have been delighted at the prospect of future ads portraying Democrats as in denial about the threat Islamic radicalism poses to the United States.
“Clinton tells GOP how to defeat her,” John Podhoretz wrote yesterday in response to Saturday’s debate. But is the Stupid Party smart enough to listen?
GEORGE WILL: On American Campuses, Freedom From Speech. “Yale’s president, Peter Salovey, dealt with the Crisis of the Distressing E-mail about Hypothetical Halloween Costumes about as you would expect from someone who has risen to eminence in today’s academia. He seems to be the kind of adult who has helped produce the kind of students who are such delicate snowflakes that they melt at the mere mention of even a potential abrasion of their sensibilities.”
His behavior was embarrassing, and unworthy of the office. Or, these days, emblematic of it.
Related: What Would Benjamin Silliman Think?
HILLARY’S MARINE CORPS FABLE GENERATES PUSHBACK FROM JIM WEBB:
Maybe he’s thinking ahead to a Trump-Webb (or, hell, Cruz-Webb, Rubio-Webb, Carson-Webb or Fiorina-Webb) “national unity” ticket. . . .
JAPAN’S ECONOMY BACK IN RECESSION: Japanese economy shrank 0.8 percent in the third quarter, Reuters reports.
When was it ever out of recession? And why did we follow their economic model to produce similar results, as Nick Gillespie warned would happen in an early Reason TV clip from June of 2009 as the numerous busted flushes of hopenchange crony corporatism and the government bailouts of GM and Chrysler were just getting started:
Related: John Hawkins on “The 7 Keys To Trapping As Many Americans As Possible In Poverty.”
BERNIE SANDERS ON THE ECONOMY:
SANDERS: This is what I think — this is what many economists believe that one of the reasons that real unemployment in this country is 10 percent, one of the reasons that African American youth unemployment and underemployment is 51 percent is the average worker in America doesn’t have any disposable income.
Republicans should be saying this too — and it wouldn’t hurt to quote Bernie, whose many statements along these lines have unaccountably gotten little press.
THE SEDUCTIONS OF SAFETY, ON CAMPUS AND BEYOND:
On college campuses, we are having continuing debates about safe spaces. As a teacher, I think carefully about the intellectual space I want to foster in my classroom — a space where debate, dissent and even protest are encouraged. I want to challenge students and be challenged. I don’t want to shape their opinions. I want to shape how they articulate and support those opinions. I do not believe in using trigger warnings because that feels like the unnecessary segregation of students from reality, which is complex and sometimes difficult.
Rather than use trigger warnings, I try to provide students with the context they will need to engage productively in complicated discussions. I consider my classroom a safe space in that students can come as they are, regardless of their identities or sociopolitical affiliations. They can trust that they might become uncomfortable but they won’t be persecuted or judged. They can trust that they will be challenged but they won’t be tormented.
I agree. I sometimes tell my students, jokingly, that “this is a safe space.” But what I make clear is that by safe space, I mean a space where it’s safe to express your opinions and be judged only on how well you support them.
HOW ISIS RELIES ON EDWARD SNOWDEN’S LEAKS TO OUTSMART WESTERN INTELLIGENCE: Terrorists “now use encrypted channels and couriers to avoid detection.”
And concurrently, as Glenn noted last week, summing up Richard Fernandez’s recent article, “Western Pacifism Has Driven Warfare Underground, At Some Cost.”
Richard wrote, “The infrastructure to support the secret wars has been growing over the years. The rise of foreign and domestic surveillance deserves an essay all to itself. But today, a network of secret bases, landing strips, agents in place, spotters and communications networks has been laid over the length and breadth of the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. Fleets of unmarked planes, swarms low visibility drones and secret warriors make up a ghostly army that is endlessly engaged.”
But with seemingly very little show for it. As James Delingpole quipped last night, “Candle-lit vigils; hashtags; tricolor Facebook profiles: the West strikes back.”
France’s attack on ISIS in Raqqa, Syria yesterday doesn’t sound like that much more, in the scope of things: 20 bombs were dropped from a dozen aircraft, ten of which were fighters.*
After 9/11, George Bush famously contrasted his approach to removing Saddam Hussein with his predecessor’s preferred style. “When I take action, I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It’s going to be decisive.”
That action worked, as Joe Biden and Barack Obama grudgingly admitted in 2010 and 2011, until, as the New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins documented, Obama chose to remove the American military from Iraq. When, in an interview with Filkins last year, Hugh Hewitt said, “America leaving [Iraq] in 2011 may have been the worst strategic decision of many bad strategic decisions over the last ten years.” the Iraq War critic replied, “It’s hard to conclude otherwise.”
Once he leaves office, perhaps the American military can finally take Mr. Obama’s motto to heart: “Punch back twice as hard,” rather than the current minimal footprint approach.
* Give them credit for the right idea, though. As one person joked on Twitter, “Weird how Jordan & France go bomb the shit out of ISIS Terrorists after attacks & Obama arrests a YouTube director.”
END COLLEGE FOOTBALL, Victor Davis Hanson writes:
The truth is that the university is a dysfunctional institution. Free speech no longer exists. Trigger warnings, micro-aggressions, and safe zones have created a climate of fear and bullying on campus. Affirmative action criteria emulate the abhorrent ‘one-drop’ rule of the Old Confederacy. Campus identity is defined by race and gender, but never class. Annual hikes in tuition exceed the rate of inflation. Faculty are paid widely asymmetrical compensation for instruction of the identical class, depending on archaic institutions like tenure and seniority. Non-teaching personnel have soared. Graduate PhD programs have proliferated, even as jobs for their graduates have shrunk. Undergraduate university graduation rates have declined. College graduates are assumed to earn high paying jobs; but the dismal rate of bachelor degrees translating into employment commensurate with staggering college costs and student loan debt would prompt federal investigations of fraud and false adverting in any other institution.
At the center of such chaos and contradiction, sits college football — the most hypocritical of all university institutions. It may have survived past liberal criticism that it was a veritable money-making and exploitative industry, run amok and immune from the campus laws that govern faculty and students. But it should not survive present liberal demands for racial diversity, proportional representation due to disparate impact, and zero-tolerance for sexual assault.
Related: Carl Cannon of Real Clear Politics on “Riding the Academic Tiger.”
SORRY, I OPPOSE A DRAFT, AND I OPPOSE MANDATORY “NATIONAL SERVICE” EVEN MORE: Ron Fournier: How To Defeat ISIS With Millennial Service:
I know a better way to fight ISIS. It starts with an idea that should appeal the better angels of both hawks and doves: National service for all 18- to 28-year-olds.
Require virtually every young American — the civic-minded millennial generation — to complete a year of service through programs such as Teach for America, AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps, or the U.S. military, and two things will happen:
1. Virtually every American family will become intimately invested in the nation’s biggest challenges, including poverty, education, income inequality, and America’s place in a world afire.
2. Military recruiting will rise to meet threats posed by ISIS and other terrorist networks, giving more people skin in a very dangerous game.
This may seem like a radical plan until you compare it with two alternatives: the status quo, which clearly isn’t working, or a military draft, which might be the boldest and fairest way to wage the long war against Islamic extremists.
Remember in September when the beheadings of two Americans galvanized the nation against ISIS? President Obama, who had dismissed ISIS as a “JV team,” promised, “We will degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State. Nine months later, ISIS is winning.
Well, that part’s true. But it’s because of the personnel at the top, not at the bottom, of the chain of command.
WELL, SO MUCH FOR THAT DNC-MSM TALKING POINT: Two Paris Terrorists Lived in Supposedly Mythical ‘No-Go Zone’ Neighborhood in Brussels.