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Spengler writes on the power vacumn created by this feckless administration.
There’s a joke about a man who tells a psychiatrist, “Everybody hates me,” to which the psychiatrist responds, “That’s ridiculous – everyone doesn’t know you, yet.” Which brings me to Barack Obama: one of the best-informed people in the American security establishment told me the other day that the president is a “Manchurian Candidate”.
That can’t be true – Manchuria isn’t in the business of brainwashing prospective presidential candidates any more. There’s no one left to betray America to. Obama is creating a strategic void in which no major power will dominate, and every minor power must fend for itself. The outcome is incalculably hard to analyze and terrifying to consider.
Obama doesn’t want to betray the United States; he only wants to empower America’s enemies. Forcing Israel to abandon its strategic buffer (the so-called settlements) was supposed to placate Iran, so that Iran would help America stabilize Iraq, where its influence looms large over the Shi’ite majority.
America also sought Iran’s help in suppressing the Taliban in Afghanistan. In Obama’s imagination, a Sunni Arab coalition – empowered by Washington’s turn against Israel – would encircle Iran and dissuade it from acquiring nuclear weapons, while an entirely separate Shi’ite coalition with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would suppress the radical Sunni Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This was the worst-designed scheme concocted by a Western strategist since Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery attacked the bridges at Arnhem in 1944, and it has blown up in Obama’s face.
Iran already has made clear that casting America’s enemies in the leading role of an American operation has a defect, namely that America’s enemies rather would lose on their own terms than win on America’s terms. Iran’s verbal war with the American president over the violent suppression of election-fraud protests leaves Washington with no policy at all. …
… Obama’s policy reduces to empowering America’s enemies in the hope that they will conform to American interests out of gratitude. Just the opposite result is likely to ensure: Iran, Pakistan and other regional powers are likely to take radical measures. Iran is threatened with a collapse of its Shi’ite program from Lebanon to Afghanistan, and Pakistan is threatened with a breakup into three or more states.
Obama has not betrayed the interests of the United States to any foreign power, but he has done the next worst thing, namely to create a void in the region by withdrawing American power. The result is likely to be a species of pandemonium that will prompt the leading players in the region to learn to live without the United States.
In his heart of hearts, Obama sees America as a force for evil in the world, apologizing for past American actions that did more good than harm. An example is America’s sponsorship of the 1953 coup in Iran that overthrew the left-leaning government of Mohammed Mossadegh. …
… Obama’s continuing obsession with America’s supposed misdeeds – deplorable but necessary actions in time of war – is consistent with his determination to erode America’s influence in the most troubled parts of the world. By removing America as a referee, he will provoke more violence than the United States ever did. We are entering a very, very dangerous period as a result.
Abby Thernstrom writes on the Ricci/New Haven decision.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Ricci v. DeStefano is very good news. The court said clearly and decisively that employment law only rarely permits quotas to remedy racial imbalance.
Most racial preferences — for example, in college admissions — are shrouded in secrecy and dishonesty. Not here. In 2003, after 58 whites, 23 blacks and 19 Hispanics took tests to determine who would qualify as captains and lieutenants, no blacks and two Hispanics ended up eligible for promotion. The city’s civil service board refused to certify the results, denying promotions to all who had earned them. As the chairman of the New Haven Board of Fire Commissioners had earlier told the firefighters, many of whom were Italian, some men would not be hired because “they just have too many vowels in their name[s].”
Seventeen white candidates and one Hispanic sued, claiming a violation of their legal and constitutional rights. They struck out in the district court and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. …
Another of our favorites, Jennifer Rubin, liked Abby’s piece.
… It is tempting for the Senate not to dwell on Ricci or on the upcoming Sotomayor confirmation hearing. After all, there is the economy, healthcare reform, and many less controversial topics. But nothing can be more important.
We forget how critical these nominations and confirmation hearings can be. After all, without the nomination and confirmation of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, Frank Ricci could well have been stuck with his terse dismissal from the Second Circuit. The very fiber of our society may be altered by one or more of the appointments Obama is likely to make to the Court during his presidency. Are we to look the other way when the victimization mongers raise a fuss? Or do we as a society tell employers to stand up to intimidation and resist the urge to discriminate against those without a civil rights lobby behind them?
It behooves the Senate to take seriously its responsibilities, to question Sotomayor and to consider why it is that she could not discern the issues, articulate her reasoning, and reach a defensible result in Ricci. Future Frank Riccis who may come before the Court in the years to follow deserve nothing less.
Thomas Sowell on health care.
… Politicians may talk about “bringing down the cost of medical care,” but they seldom even attempt to bring down the costs. What they bring down is the price — which is to say, they refuse to pay the costs.
Anybody can refuse to pay any cost. But don’t be surprised if you get less when you pay less. None of this is rocket science. But it does require us to stop and think before jumping on a bandwagon.
The great haste with which the latest government expansion into medical care is being rushed through Congress suggests that the politicians don’t want us to stop and think. That makes sense, from their point of view, but not from ours.
They may be anecdotal, but Mark Steyn and Jonah Goldberg have some government-run health care stories.
David Harsanyi comments on cap and trade.
Facts. Costs. Consequences. Who cares?
We’re in the middle of pretending to save the planet, baby.
If it’s about helping the environment, suspend reason and salvation is yours. I’m sure you’ve also had a lot of smart and compassionate folks tell you lately: Doing something — anything! — is better than doing nothing.
So the House did something. It passed a “cap-and-trade” bill that would ration energy, destroy productive jobs, levy the largest tax increase in U.S. history and, for kicks, penalize foreign trade partners who failed to engage in comparable economic suicide.
Now, assuming there are no speed- reading clairvoyants in Congress, no one who voted for the 1,200-page bill — plus the 300-page amendment dropped the morning of the vote — could possibly have read it. …
Scrappleface says Sotomayor may sue Supremes over their Ricci ruling.