UN VOTE ON CRIMEA

The Atlantic has an interesting map showing how countries voted with regard to condemning Putin's actions in the Crimea.  It  is also of note that Armenia voted with Putin and against the Ukraine (read Armenia's reasoning in the article).  There is western unity, but there are also many abstentions in South America, Africa, and Asia.

UN General Assembly Vote on Ukraine's Territorial Integrity 

Yes

Abstain

Absent

No

RUSSIAN ARMS INDUSTRY

The US government is supporting the Rosoboronexport, a major Russian arms dealer.  So Washington is criticizing Putin for his actions in the Crimea and slapping the wrists of a few Russian billionaires while a billion in tax payer money is going to Russia for weapon systems--only in bureaucratic Washington!

Arms exporter Rosoboronexport has raked in $1,133,783,077 in Defense Department contracts since 2011, according to federal contracting records. Shortly before these contracts began getting the green light, Rosoboronexport had been the subject of U.S. sanctions for assisting Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.

Today, senators sent a strong bipartisan message to Obama: cancel all existing contracts with the Russian arms exporter including upcoming deliveries, scrap plans to ink new contracts, and put the company back on the sanctions list where it belongs.

WHENCE OBAMA'S FOREIGN POLICY?

Using sources in the Washington Post, Richard Fernandez analyzes Obama's unwillingness to never admit a mistake.


Washington Post editorial editor Fred Hiatt hopes that president Obama will re-think his foreign policy after a series of failures, though deep down he conceded that Obama probably wouldn’t. Hiatt asks the rhetorical question: “defeat can lead to defeatism, or it can lead to constructive rethinking. Which path will President Obama take after setbacks overseas?” And he provides his own answer. Neither. It will lead to complete denial and more wishful thinking.

The instinctive White House response will be to head into the political bunker: to deny that it ever displayed isolationist tendencies while painting critics as wild-eyed warmongers. This reflexive belligerence is understandable given that Obama’s political enemies will happily use overseas setbacks to score points.

On Saudi Arabia:


Of course the pose of omnipotence and omniscience must be helped along by a little smoke and mirrors. Eli Lake at the Daily Beast notes the State Department is hiding what the Saudi’s teach their kids. “The most comprehensive study of Saudi textbooks ever commissioned by the U.S. government was completed at the end of 2012, but to this date the State Department has kept it from the public”, probably because it refers to Christians and Jews as “apes and pigs”.

CONFRONTING PUTIN: THE OPTION OF SANCTIONS

Some Russians believe that economic sanctions instituted by Europe and America in response to Putin's Crimea venture will not work.  In fact, the West and especially France, might end up losing more than it gains.  Sanctions have never seemed to work--Iran and Syria are still moving forward.  And Cuba has faced US sanctions for over half a century and it has not forced Castro to change his policies.

Military cooperation with Russia has been suspended by the UK and Germany in the wake of the recent events in Crimea.

However, EU sanctions on military-technical cooperation represent one of the weakest links in the "fight" against Russia. Suffice it to say that exports of European armaments make up not more than 1 percent of the total amount of export-import contracts for Rosoboronexport, the Russian state intermediary in arms deals.


After the U.S., Russia is the second largest supplier of arms and military hardware in the world. Russian defense industry enterprises have a full production cycle, from the base material to the end product. So, in fact, EU sanctions on military-technical cooperation will have no serious effect on Russia's defense capability.

MEDIA INCEST

Media execs have relatives working in the White House or State Department so the issue becomes one of whether media execs ignore or don't cover some stories well to protect these relatives.

FIGURING OUT PUTIN

From the New York Times.  Peter Baker discusses how three presidents (Clinton, Bush, and Obama) have tried to work with Putin.  None of them have been particularly successful.

Bill Clinton found him to be cold and worrisome, but predicted he would be a tough and able leader. George W. Bush wanted to make him a friend and partner in the war on terror, but grew disillusioned over time.

Barack Obama tried working around him by building up his protégé in the Kremlin, an approach that worked for a time but steadily deteriorated to the point that relations between Russia and the United States are now at their worst point since the end of the Cold War.

On Putin:  “He’s not delusional, but he’s inhabiting a Russia of the past — a version of the past that he has created,” said Fiona Hill, the top intelligence officer on Russia during Mr. Bush’s presidency and co-author of “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin.” “His present is defined by it and there is no coherent vision of the future. Where exactly does he go from here beyond reasserting and regaining influence over territories and people? Then what?”

THE ECONOMY UNDER OBAMA

From Investor's Daily.

BAD SCIENCE

Stanford University is going to open a center for the study of "bad science"--I thought it was only theologians who did bad science?


From the Economist:


“WHY most published research findings are false” is not, as the title of an academic paper, likely to win friends in the ivory tower. But it has certainly influenced people (including journalists at The Economist). The paper it introduced was published in 2005 by John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist who was then at the University of Ioannina, in Greece, and is now at Stanford. It exposed the ways, most notably the overinterpreting of statistical significance in studies with small sample sizes, that scientific findings can end up being irreproducible—or, as a layman might put it, wrong.

MEDIA & CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION

The media is silent about Christian persecution.

The United Nations, Western governments, media, universities, and talking heads everywhere insist that Palestinians are suffering tremendous abuses from the state of Israel.  Conversely, the greatest human rights tragedy of our time—radical Muslim persecution of Christians, including in Palestinian controlled areas—is devotedly ignored.

 

The facts speak for themselves. Reliable estimates indicate that anywhere from 100-200 million Christians are persecuted every year; one Christian is martyred every five minutes. Approximately 85% of this persecution occurs in Muslim majority nations. In 1900, 20% of the Middle East was Christian. Today, less than 2% is.

WESTERN WEAKNESS

Michael Auslin:  "Why Did Russia Invade Ukraine? Because The West Is Weak."

One can only assume that China, Iran, and North Korea are watching Crimea just as closely as Putin watched Washington’s reactions to East and South China Sea territorial disputes, Pyongyang’s nuclear provocations, and Syria’s civil war. Putin knows that fewer than 70,000 U.S. military personnel are currently stationed in Europe, and many of those are support positions. Western European countries, meanwhile, have shrunk their militaries to the point where they are essentially home defense forces.

Liz Peek at the Fiscal Times. (Great Britain)

President Obama’s weak response to Russia’s invasion of Crimea has elicited widespread scorn, with critics like Mitt Romney charging that the U.S. is constantly behind the curve of world events.

We are not alone.

Europe has had nearly a decade -- since Moscow cut off gas supplies to the region for the first time-- to ready itself for renewed Russian misbehavior, but has been caught as flatfooted as Obama. Instead of reducing their dependence on gas from Ukraine and Russia, the leaders of Western Europe have chosen to combat climate change. Instead of investing in secure energy, the EU has invested in green energy, driving up energy costs, reducing competitiveness, and allowing Putin to remain in the driver’s seat.

This is beginning to sound like the 1930s.

The Irish Times.  The Irish are picking Putin over Obama.

If we have to pick a side over Crimea, let it be Russia.  ‘When it comes to double-talk, however, there is no contest. Putin is never going to be a match for Obama at talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time.’

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION

The government in the United States is withholding more information and making it harder to find out what various agencies are doing.

The Obama administration has a way to go to fulfill its promises from Day 1 to become the most transparent administration in history.

More often than ever, the administration censored government files or outright denied access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, cited more legal exceptions it said justified withholding materials and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.

OBAMA'S PUTIN DILEMMA

From the Atlantic.  Obama needs Putin, maybe more than Putin needs Obama.  Without some kind of cooperation from Putin, Obama's foreign policy could self-destruct (although some critics do not think he has a foreign policy).


Then there is Ukraine. The challenges to the president are formidable, and they start with a larger reality: Dealing with a lion’s share of the other crises above—Syria and Iran, especially—requires trying to reach agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin, either to help resolve them or at least to refrain from making them much, much worse. Putin saved the president from a huge embarrassment with the intervention to resolve Syria’s chemical-weapons stockpile, just before the Senate would have voted down his request for authorization to use force to punish Assad for using the weapons repeatedly against Syrians. Russia is a key player in the delicate negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. Moscow can make the U.S. transition out of Afghanistan more painful and disruptive, and can be a positive or negative player in negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.

WHITE HOUSE FAVORITISM FOR GM

From the Fiscal Times.  The question of whether the Obama administration was protecting GM from massive recalls while going after Toyota for its defects is being raised.  The issue of "crony capitalism" seems to be pervading Washington.  Some companies, who support Democrat policies, get favored treatment while others do not. 

The House Energy and Commerce Committee announced two days ago that it would undertake an investigation into why it took GM until quite recently to address a decade of complaints about stalling problems with several car models, and why the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration did not demand a recall of the troubled lines earlier on. Reports of unexpected stalling in Chevy Cobalts began to trickle in as early as 2003 when 7 incidents were relayed to NHTSA. . .

Why would the Obama administration sanction such a tough crackdown on Toyota, while leaving GM in peace? Certainly, the White House wanted GM to succeed. Having handed out $86 billion in bailouts to GM, Chrysler and GMAC, Cash for Clunkers, the Warranty Commitment program, the Supplier Support program, $41.5 billion in TALF loans for auto finance companies, loans from the DOE for electric car development, Recovery Act funding for battery makers and research monies funneled though the Advanced Research Projects agency, the White House had gone all-in on the success of Detroit.

CLIMATE CHANGE IN HISTORY

A warming period may have helped the Mongols invade Russia by providing more pasture land.  Horse cavalry were critical for their invasion. 

Each Mongolian horseman in Genghis’s army is said to have had up to five horses, which provided a supply of meat as well as transport. Higher grass yields would have also caused a boom in camels, yaks, cattle, sheep and other livestock, Dr Pederson said.

“The weather may literally have supplied the Mongols with the horsepower they needed to do what they did… Before fossil fuels, grass and ingenuity were the fuels for the Mongols and the cultures around them,” he said.

At the same time this article appeared, Senate Democrats were meeting to spend all night talking about how to convince people that climate change is real today. Maybe they are worried about another Mongol invasion. But I guess the fall elections are more important than fighting climate change.

Despite that bravado, Democratic leaders made it clear they have no plans to bring a climate bill to the Senate floor this year. Indeed, the issue is so politically charged that a host of Democrats who face tough re-election fights in the fall opted to skip the session. Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mark Begich of Alaska and Kay Hagan of North Carolina were among Democrats who stayed away.

All this "blether" reminds me of last year's Senator Cruz's filibuster against Obamacare.

UKRAINE AND THE NUCLEAR OPTION

USA Today gives some background on the nuclear disarmament of the Ukraine.  In 1991 the Clinton administration promised that the US would protect the Ukraine's "territorial integrity" if it gave up its nuclear weapons.


To reassure the Ukrainians, the United States and leaders of the United Kingdom and Russia signed in 1994 the "Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances" in which the signatories promised that none of them would threaten or use force to alter the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.

IRANIAN VIEW OF OBAMA

With all that is happening in the Ukraine others are watching how effective Obama is or will be. There is not much coverage in the American press regarding how other countries view his presidency.


An Iranian cartoon.

CENSORSHIP PRESSURES FROM THE WHITE HOUSE

Zaid Jilani, a liberal and Obama supporter, describes how the White House controlled what a liberal organization reported.  Reporters were not free to disagree with administration policy.


One of the controversial topics that was very constrained in our writing at ThinkProgress in 2009 was Afghanistan. CAP had decided not to protest Obama’s surge, so most our writing on the topic was simply neutral — we weren’t supposed to take a strong stand. Given that I had just moved up from Georgia, and the American South has a much higher proportion of its population in the Armed Forces, I felt particularly strong that we should oppose the continuation of the war. The people who ran CAP didn’t really agree.


Later. . .


Soon afterwards all of us ThinkProgress national security bloggers were called into a meeting with CAP senior staff and basically berated for opposing the Afghan war and creating daylight between us and Obama. It confused me a lot because on the one hand, CAP was advertising to donors that it opposed the Afghan war — in our “Progressive Party,” the annual fundraising party we do with both Big Name Progressive Donors and corporate lobbyists (in the same room!) we even advertised that we wanted to end the war in Afghanistan.

THE WORLD PRESS VIEWS THE UKRAINE CRISIS

The BBC gives a short summary of different reactions by news sources around the world to what is happening in the Ukraine crisis.  A couple I liked.


In China, Beijing's Global Times takes a realpolitik view of the situation. It headlines an editorial: "US and Europe's cannon of words no match for Russia's physical tanks".


Mexico's The Press:  "We live in a world where the rule is that there are no rules, where the points of reference are that there aren't any and in which we even supposedly have a governing body, known as the United Nations, it only represents a club of disunited nations."

TOLSTOY & THE UKRAINE CRISIS

Robert Zaretsky in the Chronicle of Higher Education goes back to the Crimean War and Tolstoy's Sevastopol Sketches to make some parallels.  He sees Tsars in Putin.  But then he goes on to compare Napoleon in the early 19th century to Putin.  But he makes no comparisons of any current western leaders.  Maybe one could find Obama or Merkel in these past events as well.


But Zaretsky is a professor of literature and does not seem to have much awareness of the West's role, especially in the Crimean War.  Maybe Europe "overreacted" in 1854 just like it could today.

STOPPING PUTIN

Robert Tracinski gives options for Washington to use in dealing with Putin.  He sums his analysis up with:

So far, Putin has been way inside our decision cycle, moving troops on the ground while our leaders are still just trying to figure out what’s going on. In the OODA loop—Observe, Orient, Decide, Act—Putin has been in the “A” mode, while President Obama can’t quite manage the first “O.”
Let’s put the shoe on the other foot. We need to act in a way that is big, sweeping, complex, and fast, leaving Putin as the one who is confused and scrambling to catch up, So implement all of this fully, right away. If Putin wants us to reverse any of it, he can ask to negotiate after we’ve made our move.

These are the things we might do if we had real, decisive leaders in the Washington. Perhaps that’s too much to expect from this administration, but let’s at least stop pretending that good options don’t exist. They do, and if we don’t use them, the fault isn’t our resources. It’s our leadership.

A CRITIQUE OF OBAMA'S FOREIGN POLICY

This blogger of diplomacy has a gift for writing.  The blogger analyzes a WAPO editorial.

The Washington Post editorial board, that decades-long stalwart purveyor of standard American progressive "thought," has had a revelation; it is not exactly equivalent to Saul on the road to Damascus, but it might be akin to Jimmy Carter on the road to political oblivion. I refer to that moment in January 1980, following the prior month's Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when Jimmy Carter--silver medalist in the Worst President Ever category--angrily announced, "Brezhnev lied to me!"
FOR FIVE YEARS, President Obama has led a foreign policy based more on how he thinks the world should operate than on reality. It was a world in which “the tide of war is receding” and the United States could, without much risk, radically reduce the size of its armed forces.

The number of foreign policy disasters in increasing--will Obama pass Jimmy Carter's administration in foreign policy ineptness?

He also has an interesting view of Putin. Right on.

Putin is a man of hard-work, careful preparation, an avid student of potential opponents, willing to exploit opportunities, and, above all, driven by a vision on his mission: restoring Russia to the top ranks of the world hierarchy. He is determined to end what he sees as the world's mistreatment and disregard for Russia. He saw the condescending manner in which Clinton and other world leaders treated the amiable sclerotic alcoholic Boris Yeltsin, who named Putin Prime Minister in 1999. Putin will not allow that again. He wants his legacy to be the man who restored Russia's greatness and made the world recognize it.

OBAMA IN 2008

Obama on government surveillance:

As president, I will follow existing law, and when it comes to U.S. citizens and residents, I will only authorize surveillance for national security purposes consistent with FISA and other federal statutes.

Obama on presidents using executive authority:

I will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law. The problem with this administration is that it has attached signing statements to legislation in an effort to change the meaning of the legislation, to avoid enforcing certain provisions of the legislation that the President does not like, and to raise implausible or dubious constitutional objections to the legislation. The fact that President Bush has issued signing statements to challenge over 1100 laws – more than any president in history – is a clear abuse of this prerogative. No one doubts that it is appropriate to use signing statements to protect a president's constitutional prerogatives; unfortunately, the Bush Administration has gone much further than that.

See the whole list at the Boston Globe.

ASSAD WINNING IN SYRIA

From the Fiscal Times.  It looks like Assad is winning in Syria--the writer says Assad is making "momentous gains."  This is a setback for Obama's policy and with his relationship with Putin souring over the Ukraine, Washington has been left without influence in the crisis.

Taken together, Assad’s victory, his continued slaughter of those who oppose him, his repeated human rights violations, his failure to live up to the terms of the deal, and his undermining of the peace talks amount to a stunning defeat of American diplomacy. Nearly 50,000 people have died since the United States confirmed the use of chemical weapons last summer, bringing the total number of casualties to more than 140,000.

OBAMA, KERRY AND ISRAEL

Secretary of State John Kerry's friends are saying his work on a Middle East peace was undermined by President Obama.  Obama got personal with Netanyahu in a personal telephone call according to the report.  Kerry was blind-sided.

"The timing could not have been any more deliberate — an assault on the prime minister’s policies delivered precisely as Netanyahu was flying in to meet with him, and on the first day, too, of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC’s annual tour de force conference across town,” Horovitz wrote. “At the very least, that might be considered bad manners, poor diplomatic protocol, a resounding preemptive slap in the face: I’ve just told the world you’re leading your country to wrack and ruin, Mr. Prime Minister. Now, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

 

CIA BUGS SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE

From the Guardian.  Obama knew about it and did nothing about it.  I don't recall this ever happening before.  Executive power run amok.

McClatchy and the New York Times reported Wednesday that the CIA had secretly monitored computers used by committee staffers preparing the inquiry report, which is said to be scathing not only about the brutality and ineffectiveness of the agency’s interrogation techniques but deception by the CIA to Congress and policymakers about it. The CIA sharply disputes the committee’s findings.

“If, as alleged in the media, CIA accessed without permission or authority a computer network dedicated for use by a Senate committee, it would be an extremely serious matter. Such activity, if it occurred as alleged, would impede Congress’ ability to carry out its constitutional oversight responsibilities and could violate federal law,” Levin said in a statement on Wednesday.

HAS PUTIN BLUNDERED?

Alexander J. Motyl.

Whatever Putin’s choice, he’ll have to expend enormous resources on pacifying a hostile population. According to a public opinion survey conducted in mid-February by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, support for unification with Russia stands at only 26 percent in Ukraine’s east and 19 percent in the south. In Crimea, supposedly a hotbed of Russian irredentism, only 41 percent want to join Mother Russia.

The Crimean invasion may turn out to be the greatest strategic blunder of Putin’s career. Indeed, it could even lead to the end of Putinism.

But then again, can President Obama really counteract "one tough dude?"  I liked the picture posted by Roger L. Simon: will the finesse of Obama conquer the strong punching glove of Putin?

ARIZONA: HOMOSEXUAL v. RELIGIOUS RIGHTS

Ilya Shapiro supports homosexual marriage and the Arizona religious liberty bill and gives 9 reasons why.

UKRAINE & WASHINGTON DECISION-MAKING

Daily Beast.  U.S. intelligence said Putin would not invade the Ukraine--it sounds like American intelligence is as ignorant as it was before 9/11.  The reason:  the Soviet foreign minister told Secretary of State Kerrey that Russia would honor Ukraine's "territorial integrity". 

Nonetheless, until Friday, no one anticipated a Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory."Nobody thought Putin was going to invade last night,” one Senate aide who works closely on the Ukraine crisis. “He has the G8 summit in Sochi coming up, no one really saw this kind of thing coming." This source also stressed that events are still moving quickly on the ground. “There is still a question about whether this is Russian troops coming across the border or Russian troops moving around the installations in Crimea.”

It seems like a lot of assumptions are being made by Washington.  (And no one seems to remember the 2008 Russian move on Georgia).  And the Obama administration was still "formulating options and hoping for the best."  (Underlining mine)  A dose of realpolitik is needed in the administration.

Michael Barone has come up with an interesting list of 7 options that the administration could use.  He also refers to Walter Russell Mead's comment.

Mead makes the point that the pundits who predicted until Saturday that Russia would not move into Ukraine are solipsists -- they assume that Putin sees the world as they do and will act as they would. That would indeed be nice. But Putin doesn't see the world they way we -- Obama supporters and Obama critics -- do. We are told we should not mourn the transformation of a unipolar world into a multipolar world. It's just selfish to want to see the United States as the world's leading power. But the alternative is between a unipolar world and a zeropolar world, in which aggressive actors like Putin's Russia, the mullahs' Iran and Syria's Assad can inflict tyranny, suffering and death to millions--and no one can stop or (preferably) deter them.

Mead has a very critical assessment of administration foreign policy.

Anthony Codevilla interprets the events in the Ukraine more broadly, noting the weakness of the American military.  And it is not just Russia that is threatening American interests, but China is as well.  Obama has said "there will be costs," but what kind of leverage does he really have?  No one fears America anymore.

And Josh Rogin at the the Daily Beast wonders if any of Obama's plans will work.

But Simon Shuster in Time believes it is Putin who will be backing down. His popularity has slipped in Russia and there will be economic problems.  There is not upside for Putin in this invasion.

PUTIN DECISION-MAKING ON THE UKRAINE

From World Affairs Journal.  Putin's attempt to use force will ultimately not work.

UKRAINE TIMELINE & ADMINISTRATION STATEMENTS

Richard Fernandez has an analysis of Obama's public comments on the Ukraine crisis.  He analyzes a number of videos of Obama making public statements.

Events are now moving so swiftly that Obama himself has become an irrelevancy. He let the crisis overrun him without so much as a cabinet meeting or an attempt at a council of national unity.  The gooks are in the wire and he’s declared Happy Hour for the Democratic Party. But that only underscores the problem. He’s history one way or the other. The problem is to keep from joining him.

Secretary of State's February 27th comments here. We shall wait and see if his assessment is justified.  He’d received assurances from the Kremlin that it wouldn’t be an aggressor despite a Russian flag hoisted above a parliament building in the Crimean peninsula.

PALIN, THE PROHPETESS ON THE UKRAINE

In 2008 Palin said that if Obama is elected, Putin may invade the Ukraine.  At the time she was mocked and criticized.  But recent events seem to be justifying her evaluation of Obama's foreign policy leadership.

RUSSIA'S "UNCONTESTED ARRIVAL"

The administration is not calling the movement of Russian troops into the Crimea an "invasion" but an "uncontested arrival." Clearly the Obama administration does not want to see this as a crisis or the infringement of Russian interests on the Ukraine.  I can't ever recall when the term "uncontested arrival" was ever used in history.  Not even Chamberlain in the 1930s was clever enough to come up with this terminology.  So don't look for Washington to do much to pressure Putin.

RUSSIA SEEKING BASES

From Ria Novosti.  It looks like Putin wants to be a much larger geopolitical player.  Russia is trying to get bases in Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, the Seychelles, Singapore and several other countries.

Most of those bases are in the western hemisphere. . .he is sending a message to Obama and Washington. 

CORRUPTION IN THE BUREAUCRACY

I suspect this is the tip of a much larger iceberg.  From the Washington Examiner:  "Top Treasury employees swindled thousands of dollars, in-the-know bosses did nothing."  The taxpayer is footing the bill for the corruption and high-living that takes place in the higher level of the bureaucracy.

THE IRS SCANDAL TIMELINE

From the Wall Street Journal, "Connecting the Dots."  Bradley A. Smith gives a timeline to how the scandal developed.  However, he doesn't mention Obama's 2009 speech in Arizona where he jokingly kidded about using the IRS to audit his enemies--was this a Freudian slip?  And a number of Democrat senators were pushing the IRS to engage in its singling out of conservative groups.

The mainstream press has justified its lack of coverage over the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups because there's been no "smoking gun" tying President Obama to the scandal. This betrays a remarkable, if not willful, failure to understand abuse of power. The political pressure on the IRS to delay or deny tax-exempt status for conservative groups has been obvious to anyone who cares to open his eyes. It did not come from a direct order from the White House, but it didn't have to.

ABORTION RACIST?

In Mississippi 72% of the babies aborted are black even though whites make up a slight majority of the population. Sounds like genocide to me.  I wonder where Planned Parenthood stands on this?  Its founder Margaret Sanger would not have been particularly concerned.  One of her quotes regarding African-Americans:  "...human weeds,' 'reckless breeders,' 'spawning... human beings who never should have been born."

And if you look at Table 12 on this CDC report whites have a much lower abortion rate across the states that reported than blacks and Hispanics.

POLITICAL APPOINTEES IN OBAMA ADMINISTRATION

From WAPO.  An academic appointee to the National Council on the Humanities was expected to sign a document that she would never criticize the Obama administration in order to be appointed.

WHERE ARE THE SUPPORTERS OF THE CHAVEZ REGIME NOW?

7 famous supporters of the leftist dictator of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. Most of his supporters were (are?) the Hollywood elite.

EVENTS IN THE UKRAINE

John Fund's assessment--television and images played a major role in the events.

Regimes can stay in power in an age of mass media only if they have enough murderers willing to gun down people in the street. Snipers were willing to kill their fellow countrymen in the streets around the Maidan last Thursday, but their superiors reached a breaking point when the shots didn’t achieve the desired level of fear. “The shooting stopped when the security chiefs realized the game was over — not because they didn’t have enough Kalashnikovs, but because they proved ineffective: For one person killed, many more came out on the Maidan,” Maria Semykoz, a Ukrainian economist from Lvov, told me by e-mail.

The activities of Ukrainian protesters are compared to medieval military tactics.

But to understand why the protests succeeded in toppling Yanukovych, it’s worth taking a glance at its strategies and military-style tactics. The protesters not only built a broad and inclusive coalition, but innovated where it mattered most: on the streets.

Really, it turned medieval.

Protesters shot fireworks with makeshift launchers. In combination with throwing stones and using slingshots, they overwhelmed disoriented Berkut special forces units, who were pelted with flying objects as fireworks exploded around them.

IRS & OBAMA TARGETING

From the Heritage Foundation.  A discussion of how Obama attempts to stop groups that oppose him.


Opponents are targeting businesses or business leaders who support conservative causes, for example.


“Media Matters, David Brock’s group, has intentionally made clear in fundraising pitches their intention to expose donors, so that other left-wing groups and they can organize boycotts of these conservative donors,” said Smith.


CP Politics discusses how Obama tried to silence groups supporting his Democrat rivals in 2008.


"You go all the way back to the Democratic Primary in the Spring of 2008, and you find Bob Bower filing a complaint with the Federal Election Committee against an organization called the American Leadership Project, which was backing his opponent in the primary, Hilary Clinton," Strassel recalled. She argued that the IRS targeting scandal is only the latest version of this sort of political attack. The Obama campaign also went after a group supporting John Edwards, the WSJ columnist said.

THE LEFT & THE MEDIA

The case for the Liberal attempt to control the media.


Cronkite even used to close his broadcasts by intoning, “and that’s the way it is, today” followed by that day’s date. They insisted that they were just giving us news and that they were impartial, and they did sound dispassionate, but reality was otherwise. By choosing what was news, what they prioritized, the tone they used and whom to interview, the old set of journalists were able to bias the news. Comment, context and background in the transmission of news massage the message. It wasn’t just news we were getting. When Cronkite turned against the Vietnam War the gig was up, and LBJ knew it, saying famously, “If I’ve lost Cronkite I’ve lost the nation.” The nation really did pay attention to what Uncle Walter said.

EVOLUTIONARY & HOMOSEXUALITY

Researchers in Great Britain are struggling to find how evolution can support the homosexual belief that homosexuality is genetic.

But since gay and lesbian people have fewer children than straight people, a problem arises.

"This is a paradox from an evolutionary perspective," says Paul Vasey from the University of Lethbridge in Canada. "How can a trait like male homosexuality, which has a genetic component, persist over evolutionary time if the individuals that carry the genes associated with that trait are not reproducing?"

IRS RULES & FREE SPEECH

From the Chicago Tribune.  The IRS wants to curb free speech, but it also lets some social advocacy groups off the hook by letting them camouflage political activity.

DID THE 2009 STIMULUS WORK?

Various links here.

CAMPAIGN DONATIONS, 1989-1914

From Open Secrets:  a list of the biggest donors to Republicans and Democrats.

THE PERSONALITY CULT OF CHE GUEVERA

What Michael Totten observed in Cuba regarding the glorifcation of Che Guervara in Cuba. . .and how at least one American is brain dead regarding the horrible atrocities committed by Che in the name of his communist revolution.  There are more posters of him in Cuba than of Fidel and Raul Castro!

“Just as Jacobin Paris had Louis Antoine de Saint-Just,” wrote French historian Pascal Fontaine, “revolutionary Havana had Che Guevara, a Latin American version of Nechaev, the nineteenth century nihilist terrorist who inspired Dostoevsky’s The Devils. As Guevara wrote to a friend in 1957, ‘My ideological training means that I am one of those people who believe that the solution to the world’s problems is to be found behind the Iron Curtain.’…He was a great admirer of the Cultural Revolution [in China]. According to Regis Debray, ‘It was he and not Fidel who in 1960 invented Cuba’s first corrective work camp,’ or what the Americans would call a slave labor camp and the Russians called the gulag.”

US HEADED FOR DEMOGRAPHIC DISASTER

Reacttons to Harry S, Dent Jr.'s book, The Democratic Cliff.  The US is facing the same destiny Japan began in the 1980s.

From the New York Post:  Implicitly, Dent is saying: Don’t blame politicians, the decline of manufacturing, education or cheap foreign imports for the economic stagnation that has already begun and will continue for many years. Blame your parents and grandparents for losing interest in having children back in the Sixties.

The Amazon reviews.

DEMOCRATS VIEW OF WORK

From Michael Goodwin:

"Opportunity created by affordable, quality health insurance allows families in America to make a decision about how they will work, or if they will work,” Jay Carney said. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi applauded the law for freeing people from “job-lock.”

HILLARY PREPARES FOR 2016

The New York Post reports that the Clintons have an enemies list that includes Dems who supported Obama.

The Daily Mail adds more information.

From Time:  Then-Sen. John Kerry, who would succeed Clinton as Secretary of State years later, was among the worst offender in the eyes of Clinton aides, according to the book, HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton. Kerry endorsed Obama at a critical moment in the race, after Clinton had recovered from losing the Iowa caucuses to win the New Hampshire primary.

The Hill:  “It wasn’t so much punishing as rewarding, and I really think that’s an important point,” said one source familiar with Bill’s thinking. “It wasn’t so much ‘We’re going to get you.’ It was ‘We’re going to help our friends.’ I honestly think that’s an important subtletly in Bill Clinton, in his head. She’s not as calculated, but he is.”

It would be political malpractice for the Clintons not to keep track of their friends and enemies. Politicians do that everywhere. The difference is the Clintons, because of their popularity and the positions they’ve held, retain more power to reward and punish than anyone else in modern politics. And while their aides have long and detailed memories, the sheer volume of the political figures they interact with makes a cheat sheet indispensable. “I wouldn’t, of course, call it an enemies list,” said one Clintonworld source. “I don’t want to make her sound like Nixon in a pantsuit.”

NBC COVERAGE OF THE OLYMPICS

The Soviet period of Russian history is referred to "as one of history's pivotal statements."


George Orwell, call your office. As he wrote in “Politics and the English Language,” in 1946, such euphemisms are “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable,” and certainly describing Communism as “one of modern history’s pivotal experiments” fits the bill in spades

US FOREIGN POLICY IN DISARRAY

Richard Fernandez summarizes the disintegration of US-Russian relations.  The situation in the Ukraine is dismal and in an attempt to weaken US relations with Europe Russia leaked the "f__k the EU" quote from a state department official.  And on top of this problem there is the failure of US policy in the Middle East and Iran. 

The irony is that Obama campaigned on the platform of “smart diplomacy.” But as things have turned out, he was smart only in his own mind.

Under his watch the 70-year-old Pax Americana has fallen apart. Al-Qaeda has flourished. President Benigno Aquino of the Philippines caught the tone of rising concern when he warned, in an interview with the New York Times, that China was doing to Southeast Asia what Nazi Germany did to Central Europe in the late 1930s. “At what point do you say, ‘Enough is enough’? Well, the world has to say it — remember that the Sudetenland was given in an attempt to appease Hitler to prevent World War II.”

Scary times.

NEW US AMBASSADOR TO ARGENTINA

President Obama has appointed Noah Mamet as his nominee for the ambassador to Argentina.  Mamet's only qualification appears to be that he bundled $1 million in donations for Obama's presidential campaign. While political hacks are often appointed to ambassadorships, normally an appointee has "some" knowledge of the country to which he or she is being sent.  Mamet has admitted never even visiting a Latin American country let alone Argentina.  And evidently there have been a series of less than stellar diplomatic appointees to various posts by Obama.  Obama may even out do President Ulysses S. Grant for poorly prepared appointees. 

From the Washington Examiner.  Mamet's ignorance is even more marked in this account.  Argentina is in the middle of a crisis and he seems to know nothing.

Buzzfeed reported Mamet's nomination angered Democratic donors. "Democratic Party donors complain privately that Mamet unfairly leveraged his clients' work for his own political gain and benefited from a close personal relationship with President Obama's campaign manager, Jim Messina," Ruby Cramer wrote.

BILL GOTHARD

I never was fond of this fellow and his teaching, but he was "adored" by so many conservative Christians. When his brother was in some kind of sex scandal many years ago, I thought something was not right.  Now the truth of Bill Gothard's sexual misconduct is coming out.  Authoritarian Christian leaders do not model Jesus Christ in any way.

PUTIN & THE OLYMPICS

Bob Costas in his Olympic NBC coverage had a rather laudatory piece on Vladimir Putin's leadership in the world.  He noted that last year Forbes magazine named him the most influential leader on the world stage (Obama was second). 

I was thinking that maybe Bob Costas should have run this clip.

COPTS IN EGYPT

The future for Egyptian Copts is rather grim.  So much for Islamic compassion.  Dhimmni status is the goal.

Patterns of persecution continued after the revolution and were reinforced. The number and scope of the attacks swelled dramatically and they were no longer limited to obscure villages or shantytowns but spread to the streets of Cairo and in front of the official TV headquarters. Church buildings were attacked and burned, mob violence against Copts was on the rise, and the new horror of forced evacuations from villages was becoming more common. Copts in small villages were increasingly forced to adhere to the Islamists’ standards and vision enforced on the ground. Accusations of blasphemy and insulting religion rose with Copts as their primary targets. Seven Copts today linger in Egyptian prisons as a result of court verdicts due to such accusations. The most worrisome aspect for Copts remains the participation of their neighbors, coworkers, and people they had grown up with in attacking them. Even if the Egyptian state ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood miraculously decided to intervene, the local hatreds are now impossible to contain.

IRS DRAFTING SECRET RULES

From the Daily Caller.

The Obama administration’s Treasury Department and former IRS official Lois Lerner conspired to draft new 501(c)(4) regulations to restrict the activity of conservative groups in a way that would not be disclosed publicly, according to the House Committee on Ways and Means.

No one would then no about why an organization was denied approval (or approved).

At least 292 conservative groups were subjected to unfair targeting between 2010 and 2012, against six liberal groups that were allegedly given similar treatment.
I guess the IRS believes liberals are more honest.

CBO ANALYSIS OF OBAMACARE, 2014

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just looks at the facts--it is not a partisan group.  Its analysis of the impact of Obamacare is grim.  It is slowing growth and an estimated 2.3 million jobs will be lost.

CNBC.

The Hill.

Fox News. 

The White House response. Jobs have been added because of Obamacare.  A critique of the White House statement.

AMERICA IN DECLINE

An interesting column by David Goldman on America's weakened condition economically.  He has graphs to support his argument.

It’s hard to ignore a second signal that the U.S. economy is dead in the water, though: on Monday the Institute for Supply Management reported the steepest drop in manufacturing orders since December 1980.

The problem is NOT government spending, contrary to the well-meaning obsession of the Tea Party. That will BECOME the problem a decade or two from now. The problem now is obstacles to investment: the highest corporate tax rate in the world, onerous regulation, the crazyquilt uncertainty of Obamacare. America needs aggressive tax cuts and regulatory rollback. It also needs to spend more on infrastructure, which is becoming a major obstacle to growth. It needs to spend more on R&D, particularly on cutting-edge military R&D. The way to do this, I’ve argued for years, is to emulate Roosevelt’s alphabet-soup federal agencies and put unemployed Americans to work repairing infrastructure at $20 an hour, rather than paying $50 an hour to the construction unions. That’s heresy from a free-marketeer like me, but it makes economic sense and will drive the Democrats crazy.