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Ron Christie has ideas of how, after a lousy year, the president can turn his record around. It is good Ron highlighted Susan Rice’s comments about Benghazi being a “false controversy.” It was a disaster for the country and the administration has never stopped lying about it.
… Valerie Jarrett is the president’s closest political adviser as well as a close friend of first lady Michelle Obama. Reports persist that White House staff are afraid of presenting information to the president that might upset Jarrett—information that might enable Obama to receive a more accurate picture of a dilemma before making a decision.
The president needs to send a message to his inner circle as well as the American people that he is singularly focused on bringing in the best and the brightest—those with Chicago political connections should be on notice. The White House is insular to begin with; surrounding yourself with people seeking to curry favor are doing the country a disservice. Incompetence has been tolerated by this president for far too long. Better to bring out the broom and start sweeping some folks out.
When I was sworn in as special assistant to President Bush, White House Chief of Staff Andy Card reminded me that I served at the pleasure of the president for the time being—both the pleasure and the time being could end before I wanted them to. Service in the White House is meant to be temporary and focused on the business of the American people. I found knowing that you could be fired at any moment for any reason keeps one’s mind strongly on the task at hand. Dear White House Staff: You serve the American people first. You should know when it is time for you to go and allow someone with a fresh perspective to take your place.
A brief aside: National Security Adviser Susan Rice telling CBS News’s Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes this week that the death of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, was a “false controversy” is revealing. Does this reflect the president’s view or does he have an atmosphere in the White House where this line of thinking is encouraged? Whatever one’s thoughts on Benghazi, the death of innocent Americans murdered while serving their country is hardly a false controversy, Mr. President….
Paul Mirengoff of Power Line posts on how new federal regs designed to right the mortgage market will only make it worse. Of course! The government always screws it up!
The almost non-stop stream of Obamacare twists and turns should not divert our attention from radical new regulation of mortgage financing that will take effect, pursuant to Dodd-Frank, on January 10, 2014. Diane Katz of the Heritage Foundation has the details.
As Katz points out, Washington’s response to the financial crisis of 2008 rests on the premise that the housing bubble and subsequent crash were the fault of unscrupulous mortgage lenders who took advantage of naive, uninformed consumers. In reality, she says, “lenders and borrowers were responding rationally to incentives created by an array of deeply flawed government policies.”
What were these policies? Primarily, (1) artificially low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve, (2) the massive subsidy of risky loans by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, (3) and the low-income lending quotas set by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
In the all-too-familiar pattern, Washington now seizes on the problems caused by its own poor policies as the basis for grabbing more power with which it can craft new bad policies that will lead to more problems. Indeed, as noted below, the new mortgage financing rules actually double-down on “diversity” policies similar to those that helped produce the financial crisis. …
Mirengoff also provides diversion as Mark Steyn and his editor at National Review have a kerfuffle.
John has mentioned the controversy between Mark Steyn and his National Review editor, Jason Lee Steorts. The matter centered around Steyn’s column of last Friday called “The Age of Intolerance.” Citing the experience of Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson, who came under attack from gay rights activists for expressing his view of homosexuality, Steyn argued that the forces of “tolerance” are so intolerant that they threaten to make ours a decidedly illiberal society.
Steyn led off his column with two old jokes about gays. The first, from Bob Hope, was, as Steyn said, “oddly profound” because it somehow foresaw the intolerance that Steyn attacks.
The second joke, from Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, was stupid and unfunny. Steyn, though, wasn’t holding it out as an example of clever humor, but rather as an example of something one can no longer say on television. And, as usual, Steyn put the gag to clever use in his piece.
Steorts found Steyn’s piece “less than illuminating” and characterized it as “200 percent felt and half thought.” Steyn fired off a pointed response to which Steorts replied. …
Here’s Jason the Editor.
… On the other hand, I can’t agree with Mark that anything of value is lost when derogatory epithets go out of bounds in polite society. They tend to be bad even for humor, substituting stereotype and cliché for originality. People who used them in different times need not be regarded as monstrous, nor must the canon be censored; we could instead feel good about having awoken to a greater civility and make generous allowances for human fallibility.
By way of criticizing speech, I’ll say that I found the derogatory language in this column, and especially the slur in its borrowed concluding joke, both puerile in its own right and disappointing coming from a writer of such talent.
And Mark’s retort to Steorts.
Having leaned on A&E to suspend their biggest star, GLAAD has now moved on to Stage Two:
‘ “We believe the next step is to use this as an opportunity for Phil to sit down with gay families in Louisiana and learn about their lives and the values they share,” the spokesman said. ‘
Actually, “the next step” is for you thugs to push off and stop targeting, threatening and making demands of those who happen to disagree with you. Personally, I think this would be a wonderful opportunity for the GLAAD executive board to sit down with half-a-dozen firebreathing imams and learn about their values, but, unlike the Commissars of the Bureau of Conformity Enforcement, I accord even condescending little ticks like the one above the freedom to arrange his own social calendar. Unfortunately, GLAAD has had some success with this strategy, prevailing upon, for example, the Hollywood director Brett Ratner to submit to GLAAD re-education camp until he had eaten sufficient gay crow to be formally rehabilitated with a GLAAD “Ally” award.
It is a matter of some regret to me that my own editor at this publication does not regard this sort of thing as creepy and repellent rather than part of the vibrant tapestry of what he calls an “awakening to a greater civility”. I’m not inclined to euphemize intimidation and bullying as a lively exchange of ideas – “the use of speech to criticize other speech”, as Mr Steorts absurdly dignifies it. …
Charles Krauthammer says the government is “treating insurance companies like errand boys.”
This is at least the 15th unilateral change in Obamacare that the administration has made without changing the actual law. That’s unconstitutional; that’s lawless. That’s banana republic stuff. As George indicated, the last change was made by a letter from the HHS secretary. That is the what you do it in a banana republic. If you want to know what the law is on a Wednesday, you check the correspondence of El Presidente instead of looking at law. There is no law.
It’s as if the whole 2,000 pages of Obamacare — which nobody has read anyway — are completely irrelevant. it’s simply an authorization for the president and the HHS secretary to do anything required. And today, it wasn’t even announced. It wasn’t even — it was leaked. And the people in the administration who leaked it refused to give a name. It was anonymous. It was like Watergate; it was like Woodward and Bernstein.
And the insurers, the people who have to sign up the people who sign up tomorrow, were not even informed, it was a simple change in the software. The insurers are upset because they only have eight days to register anybody who signed up today, and now it is seven days. They have no time. But again, this is the administration’s running the insurance companies like errand boys. They are extensions, they are instruments, they are essentially an arm of the government and we’re seeing it every day.
In the end, if this fails, this arm of the government, the insurers, are going to have only one recourse and that is going to be a bailout. Ahuge government bailout with your tax money and with mine.