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Roger Simon doesn’t want to go to war with a fool for a leader.
Okay. I’m an idiot. What was I thinking? I apologize.
Any administration that could have the temerity to send the nauseating serial Benghazi prevaricator Susan Rice, on the anniversary of that event yet, to explain to Congress why our representatives should approve a strike on Syria not only should NOT get the aforesaid approval, they should be forbidden approval for anything more significant than the choice of wallpaper in the White House rest rooms — and even that I’m not so sure.
In earlier columns, I supported an attack on Syria because I abhor Bashar Assad and his (or his minions’) use of chemical weapons and because I have even less regard for his mentors, the Iranian mullahs. I wanted to discourage them both.
Well, naturally. Who wouldn’t?
But in my overweening contempt I overlooked — or more exactly chose to ignore — the obvious. We would be going to war with a blind man as our commander-in-chief. And I don’t mean a physically blind man like the Japanese samurai Zatoichi, whose heroic exploits were magnificent despite his infirmity, if you remember the film series. I mean a morally, psychologically and ideologically blind man incapable of coherent policy, action or even much logical thought on any matter of significance, let alone on such a crucial one with life and death at stake.
Maybe it took the the looming anniversary of the Benghazi tragedy — and the Theater of the Absurd mondo bizarro image of Susan Rice once again acting as a spokesperson — to remind me of that and knock sense into me, but I apologize to my readers. I should have known better. …
But, Norman Podhoretz things are working just the way president bystander wants.
It is entirely understandable that Barack Obama’s way of dealing with Syria in recent weeks should have elicited responses ranging from puzzlement to disgust. Even members of his own party are despairingly echoing in private the public denunciations of him as “incompetent,” “bungling,” “feckless,” “amateurish” and “in over his head” coming from his political opponents on the right.
For how else to characterize a president who declares war against what he calls a great evil demanding immediate extirpation and in the next breath announces that he will postpone taking action for at least 10 days—and then goes off to play golf before embarking on a trip to another part of the world? As if this were not enough, he also assures the perpetrator of that great evil that the military action he will eventually take will last a very short time and will do hardly any damage. Unless, that is, he fails to get the unnecessary permission he has sought from Congress, in which case (according to an indiscreet member of his own staff) he might not take any military action after all.
Summing up the net effect of all this, as astute a foreign observer as Conrad Black can flatly say that, “Not since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, and before that the fall of France in 1940, has there been so swift an erosion of the world influence of a Great Power as we are witnessing with the United States.”
Yet if this is indeed the pass to which Mr. Obama has led us—and I think it is—let me suggest that it signifies not how incompetent and amateurish the president is, but how skillful. His foreign policy, far from a dismal failure, is a brilliant success as measured by what he intended all along to accomplish. The accomplishment would not have been possible if the intention had been too obvious. The skill lies in how effectively he has used rhetorical tricks to disguise it. …
NY Post Editors point out the jobs report shows president bystander now has labor force participation rates worse than Jimmy’s malaise.
Jimmy Carter must be smiling: Another president has finally broken the record he had held for the worst rate of participation in the job market by American workers in modern times.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Friday job numbers show the nation’s “labor force participation rate” — i.e., the percentage of Americans over 16 who have jobs, or are looking for one — dipped to 63.2 percent.
That beats the sad record of 63.4 percent set in 1978, a harbinger of the Carter-era stagflation and malaise to come.
Yes, the unemployment rate last month ticked down a tenth of a point, to 7.3 percent. But that’s only slightly better than the 7.8 percent rate that prevailed when Obama first took office in 2009. …
More on the report from Michael Strain.
Today’s employment report is very disappointing. Nonfarm payroll gains came in below expectations – payrolls grew by 169,000 jobs in August. Worse still, revisions for June and July lowered gains for those months by a combined 74,000 jobs. The three-month moving average of employment gains now stands at 148,000 new jobs per month. At that rate, the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution’s jobs gap calculator reports that the jobs gap won’t close until after 2025. That’s over twelve years from now.
The labor force participation rate fell to its lowest level since the late 1970s. The rate of employment also fell. While a drop in the unemployment rate – as happened this month; it’s down to a still-awful 7.3% – is usually good news, a labor force that shrinks in size along with a drop in the number of employed workers is nothing to celebrate.
The three-month moving average of payroll gains – a good measure because it smooths out noise from any one report – has been trending down since the start of the year. …
… It’s important not to get lost in the statistics and politics, and to remember why all this matters. Our badly damaged labor market is an economic crisis, yes, but it is first and foremast a moral, spiritual, human crisis. …
Digital Journal answers why dementia occurs more often in wealthier countries.
People living in ‘wealthy’ countries appear more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease due to greatly reduced contact with bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms. This leads to them having weaker immune systems.
This argument comes from researcher who state that they’ve found a significant relationship between a nation’s wealth and hygiene and the rate of Alzheimer’s in a population. …
We need to be wealthy since a saline drip (sea water) can cost $700. The NY Times reports.
… A Chinese-American toddler from Brooklyn and her 56-year-old grandmother, treated and released within hours from the emergency room at St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital, ran up charges of more than $4,000 and were billed for $1,400 — the hospital’s rate for the uninsured, even though the family is covered by a health maintenance organization under Medicaid, the federal-state program for poor people.
The charges included “IV therapy,” billed at $787 for the adult and $393 for the child, which suggests that the difference in the amount of saline infused, typically less than a liter, could alone account for several hundred dollars.
Tricia O’Malley, a spokeswoman for the hospital, would not disclose the price it pays per IV bag or break down the therapy charge, which she called the hospital’s “private pay rate,” or the sticker price charged to people without insurance. She said she could not explain why patients covered by Medicaid were billed at all.
Eventually the head of the family, an electrician’s helper who speaks little English, complained to HealthFirst, the Medicaid H.M.O. It paid $119 to settle the grandmother’s $2,168 bill, without specifying how much of the payment was for the IV. It paid $66.50 to the doctor, who had billed $606.
At White PlainsHospital, a patient with private insurance from Aetna was charged $91 for one unit of Hospira IV that cost the hospital 86 cents, according to a hospital spokeswoman, Eliza O’Neill.
Ms. O’Neill defended the markup as “consistent with industry standards.” She said it reflected “not only the cost of the solution but a variety of related services and processes,” like procurement, biomedical handling and storage, apparently not included in a charge of $127 for administering the IV and $893 for emergency-room services.
The patient, a financial services professional in her 50s, ended up paying $100 for her visit. “Honestly, I don’t understand the system at all,” said the woman, who shared the information on the condition that she not be named.
Dr. Frost, the anesthesiologist, spent three days in the same hospital and owed only $8, thanks to insurance coverage by United HealthCare. Still, she was baffled by the charges: $6,844, including $546 for six liters of saline that cost the hospital $5.16.
“It’s just absolutely absurd.” she said. “That’s saltwater.” …
Tree Hugger reports on a pear tree still bearing fruit at age 383.
When the first European settlers stepped foot on Plymouth Rock in 1620, the landscape they encountered must have felt like the epitome of wildness. In time, of course, cottages and farmhouses, roads and footpaths would sprout up even there as ‘civilization’ took root. But little could they have guessed, from those fragile early shoots, that the whole wild continent would be tamed in just a few short centuries.
It may be hard to believe, however, but one of America’s earliest settlers is still alive today — and still bearing fruit after 383 years.
Among the first wave of immigrants to the New World was an English Puritan named John Endicott, who in 1629, arrived to serve as the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Charged with the task of establishing a welcoming setting for new arrivals upon the untamed land, the Pilgrim leader set about making the area around modern-day Salem as homey as possible.
In approximately 1630, as his children watched on, Endicott planted one of the first fruit trees to be cultivated in America: a pear sapling imported from across the Atlantic. He is said to have declared at the time: “I hope the tree will love the soil of the old world and no doubt when we have gone the tree will still be alive.” …