Archive for March, 2015

H8ters

Tuesday, March 31st, 2015

Crysta-OConnor-Memories-Pizza

The new war on religious people (of whom I am not one) takes on a new urgency as Huffington Post detects a new threat to the republic.

Pence and his state have faced significant national backlash since he signed RFRA last week. The governors of Connecticut and Washington have imposed bans on state-funded travel to Indiana, and several events scheduled to be held in the state have been canceled. Organizers of Gen Con, which has been called the largest gaming convention in the country, are considering moving the gathering from Indiana as well.

Nearby cities like Chicago are capitalizing on the controversy, with Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) trying to lure Indiana-based businesses into his city.

UPDATE: 1:52 p.m. — White House press secretary Josh Earnest responded to Pence’s comments Tuesday, saying the Indiana law has backfired because it goes against most people’s values.

No, it is against the left’s values. The institutional left. The hysteria extends beyond the usual left and may involve a few weak willed Republicans like those who pressured Arizona governor Jan Brewer to veto a similar bill a year or so ago. Fortunately, Arizona has a new and presumably more firm governor.

Narrowly speaking, that is, the left’s hatred of RFRA is about preserving the authority of the cake police—government agencies determined to coerce bakeries, photo studios, florists and other small businesses to participate in same-sex weddings even if the owners have eccentric conscientious objections.

Whether Indiana’s RFRA would protect such objectors is an open question: The law only sets forth the standard by which state judges would adjudicate their claims. Further, as the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights group, notes, the Hoosier State has no state laws prohibiting private entities from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. (It does have same-sex marriage, pursuant to a federal court ruling.) There are also no such antidiscrimination laws at the federal level. Thus under current law, only certain cities and counties in Indiana even have a cake police.

The “cake police” are, of course a term of art from James Taranto to describe the opportunistic left who enforce the gay rights agenda on unsuspecting Christians.

“As Michael Paulson noted in a recent story in The Times, judges have been hearing complaints about a florist or baker or photographer refusing to serve customers having same-sex weddings. They’ve been siding so far with the gay couples.” That is, the judges have been rejecting small-business men’s conscientious objections and compelling them to do business with gay-wedding planners. Bruni approves.

Without harboring animus toward gays or sharing the eccentric baker’s social and religious views, one may reasonably ask: If a baker is uncomfortable baking a cake for you, why call the cake police? Why not just find another baker who’s happy to have your business?

This, of course, is far too simple.

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Drill, Baby, Drill.

Wednesday, March 25th, 2015

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It looks like the battle for Saudi Arabia has begun and, if it follows the pattern of other Obama wars, it will be soon lost, or so Richard Fernandez believes.

Even the New York Times sees it.

President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi fled Yemen by sea Wednesday as Shiite rebels and their allies moved on his last refuge in the south, captured its airport and put a bounty on his head, officials said.

The departure of the close U.S. ally and the imminent fall of the southern port of Aden pushed Yemen further toward a violent collapse. It also threatened to turn the impoverished but strategic country into another proxy battle between the Middle East’s Sunni powers and Shiite-led Iran.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies believe the Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, are tools for Iran to seize control of Yemen and say they intend to stop the takeover. The Houthis deny they are backed by Iran.

The stakes are very high for Europe, especially.

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A Tribute to Lee Kwan Yew

Tuesday, March 24th, 2015

Thomas Sowell has a fine tribute to the leader of Singapore who died yesterday.

It is not often that the leader of a small city-state — in this case, Singapore — gets an international reputation. But no one deserved it more than Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of Singapore as an independent country in 1959, and its prime minister from 1959 to 1990. With his death, he leaves behind a legacy valuable not only to Singapore but to the world.

Born in Singapore in 1923, when it was a British colony, Lee Kuan Yew studied at Cambridge University after World War II, and was much impressed by the orderly, law-abiding England of that day. It was a great contrast with the poverty-stricken and crime-ridden Singapore of that era.

Today Singapore has a per capita Gross Domestic Product more than 50 percent higher than that of the United Kingdom and a crime rate a small fraction of that in England. A 2010 study showed more patents and patent applications from the small city-state of Singapore than from Russia. Few places in the world can match Singapore for cleanliness and orderliness.

Mr Lee had an impressive life story, himself.

Lee graduated from Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University, with a double starred-first-class honours in law. In 1950, he became a barrister of the Middle Temple and practised law until 1959. He co-founded and was the first secretary-general of the People’s Action Party (PAP), leading it to eight consecutive victories. He campaigned for merger with Malaysia, a move deemed crucial to persuading Britain to relinquish its colonial rule in 1963; but racial strife and political tensions led to Singapore’s separation from the Federation two years later. Leading a newly independent Singapore from 1965, with overwhelming parliamentary control, Lee oversaw the nation’s transformation from a relatively underdeveloped colonial outpost with no natural resources into an Asian Tiger economy. In the process, he forged a widely admired system of meritocratic, clean, self-reliant and efficient government and civil service, much of which is now taught at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

He was a great man and his legacy is being maintained in spite of faint praise from the NY Times.

Pragmatic even about death and averse to a cult of personality, Mr. Lee, who died Monday at age 91, said the house would cost too much to maintain and would become a shambles when “people trudge through.”

There was no wrecking ball on Mr. Lee’s quiet street on Tuesday, and the official memorial does not begin until the public viewing of his coffin in Parliament on Wednesday.

But Singaporeans are asking the same questions about the larger house that Lee Kuan Yew built — modern Singapore and the vaunted “Singapore model.” Will it survive him, or has the sleek Asian financial hub outgrown his father-knows-best style of government?

Among members of the country’s increasingly assertive and demanding electorate, there are calls for a new social contract, a more consultative government and participatory rule-making.

They may be ready for democracy now but there was no question about it then.

The Obama strategy.

Sunday, March 22nd, 2015

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Many of us on the right have considered Obama to be feckless and uninterested in foreign policy. That seems to have been a mistake. He has strategy but it involves an alliance with Iran.

A lengthy essay by Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and a former senior director of the National Security Council, explains the strategy. He also explains why the Obama Administration is so determined to keep it a secret from the American public and, more importantly, the Congress.

How eager is the president to see Iran break through its isolation and become a very successful regional power? Very eager. A year ago, Benjamin Rhodes, deputy national-security adviser for strategic communication and a key member of the president’s inner circle, shared some good news with a friendly group of Democratic-party activists. The November 2013 nuclear agreement between Tehran and the “P5+1”—the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany—represented, he said, not only “the best opportunity we’ve had to resolve the Iranian [nuclear] issue,” but “probably the biggest thing President Obama will do in his second term on foreign policy.” For the administration, Rhodes emphasized, “this is healthcare . . . , just to put it in context.” Unaware that he was being recorded, he then confided to his guests that Obama was planning to keep Congress in the dark and out of the picture: “We’re already kind of thinking through, how do we structure a deal so we don’t necessarily require legislative action right away.”

Things seem to be moving in the direction that Obama wishes but they are also increasing the danger of a disaster in foreign policy.

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A tipping point approaches.

Saturday, March 21st, 2015

The Obama Administration is close to announcing a deal with the government of Iran on their nuclear program. The deal will include some weak language on delay in the acquisition of a nuclear weapon by Iran and the dropping of all sanctions against the regime by the US and its European allies. This will be a disaster, in my opinion. The New York Times has another editorial today which includes delighted anticipation of the deal and more invective against Prime Minister Netanyahu who opposes the deal.

“In a way, the administration has already won,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East adviser to Democratic and Republican administrations. “If you get agreement by the end of March, it will be historic in nature, it will have demonstrated that the administration is prepared to willfully stand up to Republican opposition in Congress and to deal with members of its own party who have doubts, and has withstood Israeli pressure.”

The “historic agreement” will fulfill the ambitions of the allegedly “moderate” Iranian president Rouhani. The Weekly Standard has a nice biography of Rouhani ( which means “pious” or “a cleric” in Arabic.)

Yet since 1979, throughout his entire political career, he has systematically violated what even hard-nosed Islamic jurists might consider sacred obligations that rulers owe their subjects.

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Netanyahu wins in Israel !

Wednesday, March 18th, 2015

In spite of the best efforts of the Obama GOTV team, the Likud Party in Israel improved its position in the Knesset and its leader PM Netanyahu will be the PM again. The LA Times is, of couyrse, outraged at the “cynical ” win.

Netanyahu fought to hold on to power in the worst way. In a desperate attempt to win the support of hard-line voters, he repudiated his tepid-from-the-start support for a two-state solution in which Israel would coexist peacefully with an independent Palestinian state.

His previous support for the Palestinian state was “tepid-from-the -start” in 2009 because there was a new left wing government in the US and he wanted to avoid controversy even though he did not believe that the Palestinians were serious about two states. Mitt Romney was equally skeptical but willing to make gestures toward the hoary concept. This, of course, outrages the left, which is in a weird alliance with radical Islam.

Dropping all pretenses, he played the race card early on Election Day, posting a Facebook video with an explicit ethnic message: “Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls.” The intent was obvious—to scare the hell out of right-wing and anti-Arab voters who had not yet hit the polls. This brazen move followed another brazen sop to the right. On Monday night, Netanyahu declared that if he were elected, he would never permit the establishment of a Palestinian state. With this last-minute pander, Netanyahu reversed his previous public position—announced in a 2009 speech—that he supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Arabs, of course, are not another “race.” They are Semites, just like Israeli Jews. The left insists that Jews are European and are oppressing the poor local Arabs. Mitt Romney was attacked in the same left wing article.

a donor asked Romney how he would solve the “Palestinian problem.” Romney provided a detailed reply and insisted that the Palestinians have “no interest whatsoever in establishing peace, and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish.”

He noted that a Palestinian state posed “thorny questions” and became quite passionate in detailing the issues at hand:

Some might say, well, let’s let the Palestinians have the West Bank, and have security, and set up a separate nation for the Palestinians…[B]ut the border between Israel and the West Bank is obviously right there, right next to Tel Aviv, which is the financial capital, the industrial capital of Israel, the center of Israel. It’s—what the border would be?

The writer helpfully points out that the “West Bank” does not share a border with Syria.

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As one can see, it is almost three miles to Syria from the West Bank. Romney’s point is made well by such maps.

The leftist hysteria over Netanyahu’s victory is shared by a sulking White House, which refuses to congratulate Netanyahu.

I will though. Congratulations !

A Very good explanation of Hillary Clinton.

Sunday, March 15th, 2015

Kevin Williamson is one of my favorite writers and I have read his book and thoroughly enjoyed it. Today he has an excellent column on Hillary Clinton that seems to me very insightful.

[T]he Democrats place an extraordinary value on cleverness: They are the party of the student council, and Bill Clinton has spent 50-odd years proving to the world that he is the cleverest boy at Hot Springs High School, and his admirers loved him not in spite of his gross opportunism and dishonesty but because of those very things. Finally, the Democrats rejoiced, a man who can show those Republicans for the unsophisticated, unclever fools that they are! Mrs. Clinton is at the moment looking somewhat short of clever.

I have thought all along that Bill was the clever boy in school who was almost an accidental president. George Bush was convinced to raise taxes at the beginning of a recession, I have always believed, as part of a deal to get Democrats to vote for the Gulf War. There has been considerable speculation about Al Gore’s vote for the Gulf War.

Later that night, Sen. Gore called Greene and asked if Sen. Dole had scheduled him for a prime-time speaking slot. When Greene said nothing had been finalized yet, Gore erupted, “Damn it, Howard! If I don’t get 20 minutes tomorrow I’m going to vote the other way!”

Gore wanted more time on TV. What about Dan Rostenkowski ? The Democrats supported Bush in the Gulf War vote by a minority of 32% of their members

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Amnesty and Our Future.

Saturday, March 14th, 2015

I came across an excellent long post at Bookworm this morning. I have been very aware of the growing presence of illegal aliens in California for the past 40 years. Not far from my home you can see some of it as Hispanic men gather at street corners looking for day labor.

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Two such corners are at Jeronimo and Los Alisos in Mission Viejo. Another is a half mile away at a U-Haul yard where people rent trucks and trailers. Every morning you will see 50 to 60 men standing on the corner and running over to any car that seems to be slowing down or stopping.

Anyway, here are a few reflections on what is happening.

The communists’ big moment came in 1995 when no one was looking. That was the year that the Democratic Socialists of America, a communist group, put one of their own — John Sweeney — in as head of the AFL-CIO. Overnight, the AFL-CIO, an organization that was once ferociously anti-communist and that opposed amnesty because it would hurt working Americans, turned into a pro-communist, pro-amnesty group.

More than that, through the AFL-CIO, communists suddenly owned Congress. After all, unions (headed by the SEIU, which outspends the next two donor organizations which are also Leftist) are the largest contributors to Democrat politicians.

Ok, Ok I know that communists are an old story. Still, what we see in this country is Socialism gaining adherents among the young and poorly educated and among the rich who consider themselves immune to its ill effects.

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The Man Who Would be King

Friday, March 13th, 2015

Another great post from Richard Fernandez today.

Give me the power and I will make the trains run on time. Make me Queen and I shall give you bread. Truly great men can resist the temptation to turn themselves into autocrats. King George III asked his American painter, Benjamin West, what George Washington would do after winning independence. “West replied, ‘They say he will return to his farm.’ ‘If he does that,” the incredulous monarch said, ‘he will be the greatest man in the world.’

But we live in a lesser age. And modern pygmies would rather be gimcrack kings than be remembered as a president of the United States of America. Should anyone succeed at “Caesarism” there might be personal glory in it a spell. But Caesar would still live under the Hollow Crown and such a system would bring lasting instability to the magnificent — and regrettably ordinary — Republic.

Such is our fate.

Hillary hoves into view again.

Monday, March 9th, 2015

Hillary Clinton is another radical lefty on the same pattern as Obama. She has been around longer and is better known so she may have less success even with the automatons at HuffPo. That piece is about six levels below the top at the reliably left wing blog. Even so, it may presage trouble.

The decision to address the issue comes amid mounting criticism of her use of a personal email account, which did not comply with State Department regulations issued in 2005 governing email used for official business. Reports in the New York Times and the Associated Press detailed how Clinton used a private server, housed in her suburban New York residence, to channel her emails, which are supposed to be maintained as part of a federal agency’s historic record.

Examples of some hacked e-mails from that server are here and are interesting.

That’s pretty tame and the HuffPo attention right now is on a letter sent by Republican Senators warning Iran that an agreement that is not ratified by the Senate is not a treaty and can be reversed by the next president.

Their action is a brazen, breathtaking attempt to sabotage U.S. foreign policy and stampede America into another war in the Middle East.

While U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is trying to negotiate the most critical elements of a deal to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and avoid war, the Republicans are actively trying to undermine his efforts to get a deal.

Can you imagine the reaction if members of Congress had sent a similar letter to the Soviets urging them not to sign an arms control agreement because the United States would not keep our end of the bargain?

The heavy breathing does not include mention of numerous actions by Democrats to subvert actions by Republican Presidents.

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