Obama

A Rant – but I’m Tired of the 6:00 News

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“Third party payer systems are always inflationary.” Steyn points to one of those truisms Obama seems to have never understood. Subsidiarity is another. Someone from Romney’s background knows that knows efficiency, responsibility, community – with every fiber of his being because this is his life as Shannon so solidly summarizes below. It isn’t just that Obama doesn’t take care of his blood relations and Romney has long stretched that responsibility out to increasingly large communities. He knows what fulfills him and what works. He probably also thinks it is good. What are we doing with a president that can’t even imagine such responsibilities?

I want to hear my president talk and to have a sense that he doesn’t see

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Obama and Netanyahu

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Jonathan Tobin:

But not only was Obama not interested in any such gesture, he was not prepared to tell him this to his face. This snub may stem from the open dislike the two men have for each other, but as I wrote earlier this week, this is about more than personalities. The message from Washington was clear: Israel has no leverage over Obama on this issue even during the presidential campaign and will have even less in a second term.
 
Netanyahu has been accused of trying to play politics with Obama during the last months of the presidential campaign or of favoring Mitt Romney. But whatever Netanyahu thinks privately, it should be understood that his concern transcends any misgivings about Obama’s penchant for picking fights with Israel during the past four years. If he really thought Romney might win, he would be showing more, not less patience with Obama since presumably Israel would only have a few months to wait before getting a different answer from a more sympathetic White House.

It’s worth reading Tobin’s post in full, as well as his earlier post (linked in the quoted segment above).

As Tobin makes clear, the media’s “clash of personalities” framing of the issue has helped Obama by obscuring the conflict of interests between his administration and Israel. Obama will do nothing substantial to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons and no longer cares who knows it. Perhaps if he is reelected he will begin to discuss “containing” Iran, and eventually will push for a regional nuclear treaty that will be designed to get Israel to disarm in exchange for Iranian promises. Good luck with that. In any event it seems unlikely that Obama, who was unwilling publicly to oppose the mullahs when it would have been easy to do and might have brought them to heel, will begin to act resolutely against them once they acquire nukes.

The key insight from Tobin’s post may be in the last sentence of the second paragraph above. If Netanyahu were confident of a Romney victory it would make little sense for him to engage the obstreperous Obama now. The fact that Netanyahu decided to run the risk suggests that he thinks Obama is likely to be reelected or that little time remains for an effective strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. If this reasoning is correct Israel may attack soon, perhaps shortly after the election if Obama is reelected.

The current situation is more than a little like the period before the Six Day War. There are bellicose enemies, feckless allies, an existential threat to the Jews, fruitless diplomacy under the clock, much FUD about a possible world or regional war as a result of an Israeli attack, a difficult tactical problem, and a coalition government in Israel. Some things that are different are the degree of direct US involvement in the Middle East, Islamism, the absence of the USSR, and probably a weaker political consensus within Israeli society. We will know soon enough what Netanyahu and his cabinet decide to do.

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them…

UPDATE: See also this post on Israeli politics (via Seth Mandel).

UPDATE 2: Richard Fernandez puts Obama’s bungling into perspective in the context of long-term US policy mistakes:

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President Obama’s 9/11 in Libya

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President Obama faces his own “9/11” today as Islamist crowds attacked both America’s Libyan and Egyptian embassies and killed our Ambassador in Libya and two other Americans with a rocket.

So what can we expect from Pres. Obama?

A strongly worded diplomatic communique? A demarche? An Arclight air strike across Libya?

What we seem to have gotten was a weakly worded diplomatic communique with a political back pedal, when criticized.

If this follows the usual Obama Administration script, expect to see multiple emails asking for campaign contributions based on Gov. Romney “not stopping criticism of the American government at the water’s edge“.

UPDATE:
Gatewaypundit now has photos of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens’s body being paraded through the streets of Libya.
What I cannot believe is that both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are claiming those photos are of the Ambassador being taken to a hospital.
We should be getting a Pres. Theodore Roosevelt “America wants Pedicaris alive, or Raisuli dead!”.
Obama Administration Reacting to Ambassidor Stevens's Murder
Instead we are getting the ROTC Cadet from ANIMAL HOUSE screaming “REMAIN CALM. ALL IS WELL!” as the riot engulfs him.

Why is the election so close ?

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I have been watching the trends in the election campaign thus far. I actually watched much more of both conventions than I expected to. My present question is Why is this election close ?. Powerline blog asks the same question and has a rather gloomy conclusion.

But it now appears that the election will be very close after all, and that Obama might even win it. It will require a few more days to assess the effects (if any) of the parties’ two conventions, but for now it looks as though the Democrats emerged with at least a draw, despite a convention that was in some ways a fiasco. In today’s Rasmussen survey, Obama has regained a two point lead over Romney, 46%-44%. Scott Rasmussen writes:

The president is enjoying a convention bounce that has been evident in the last two nights of tracking data. He led by two just before the Republican convention, so he has already erased the modest bounce Romney received from his party’s celebration in Tampa. Perhaps more significantly, Democratic interest in the campaign has soared. For the first time, those in the president’s party are following the campaign as closely as GOP voters.

John Hinderaker comes to the following conclusion, at least tentatively.

On paper, given Obama’s record, this election should be a cakewalk for the Republicans. Why isn’t it? I am afraid the answer may be that the country is closer to the point of no return than most of us believed. With over 100 million Americans receiving federal welfare benefits, millions more going on Social Security disability, and many millions on top of that living on entitlement programsnot to mention enormous numbers of public employeeswe may have gotten to the point where the government economy is more important, in the short term, than the real economy. My father, the least cynical of men, used to quote a political philosopher to the effect that democracy will work until people figure out they can vote themselves money. I fear that time may have come.

I have several other theories that are more optimistic. The polls may be wrong for several reasons. Citizens have been deluged with accusations of racism by frantic Democrats. Those who plan to vote for Romney may simply be misleading pollsters. In California about 30 years ago, the black mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, was ahead in the polls going into the 1982 election. In the event, he lost in spite of appearances on election day. Absentee ballots were credited with turning the result into a win for Deukmejian, his GOP rival. The racial effect is still disputed.

Two theories of the racial effect are in competition. One holds that white voters are less likely to vote for a black candidate. The fact that a number of black office holders have been elected by majority white districts, including that of retired colonel Allen West, should dispute that theory. Another is that white voters are reluctant to disclose voting preferences to pollsters, which might expose them to changes of racism. Voting against Obama is widely attributed to racism by Democrats and, especially, the progressive left.

It is not clear if either of these theories has validity. It would be very depressing to think the theory of dependency on government is valid.

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