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The first two items today are from Pickings last December 24th. They are reminders of how bad last year was for the president. And Glenn Reynolds is a proven prescient professor with his call that 2014 would be worse.
John Podhoretz reviews the president’s terrible year.
When Barack Obama sings “Auld Lang Syne” on New Year’s Eve, he will have reason to think back, with a deep sense of nostalgia and not a small amount of regret, on the last time he sang the song.
If he gets a lump in his throat as he recollects that glorious night one year ago, who would blame him? After all, he was riding about as high as a man can ride on New Year’s Eve 2012.
There he was, almost literally the master of the universe — the canny victor of the 2012 election, having run what was instantly regarded as the most brilliant technical campaign in American history. He used that victory to prevail in a “fiscal cliff” showdown with Republicans the last week of December that led to the significant tax increases on the well-to-do he had sought since the beginning of his first term. He had a 53% approval rating; only 40% disapproved.
In a few weeks, he would be inaugurated for a second term and, liberated from the demands of running again and emboldened by his win, he would that day offer the country an unabashedly and unapologetically left-wing vision of the American future toward which he was guiding it.
“Preserving our individual freedoms,” he said in a startling turn of phrase, “ultimately requires collective action.” …
Glenn Reynolds thinks 2014 will be even worse. Condign punishment is what we say.
A lot of people are saying that 2013 was President Obama’s worst year. Roll Call headlined, “Subdued Obama Hopes For Better 2014.” The Hill reported, “Obama names health care rollout his biggest mistake of dismal year.” Most people seem to think it was. But I think it was average, in the manner of the old Soviet joke:
Ivan: So how was your day?
Boris: Average.
Ivan: What do you mean, average?
Boris: Worse than yesterday, better than tomorrow. So, average.
Unless something turns around, Obama’s 2013 is likely to be similarly “average”: Worse than 2012, but better than 2014.
It’s true that Obamacare has been a debacle, wrapped in a catastrophe, shrouded in a disaster. But it’s also become clear that it was founded upon a lie: …
Matt Lewis of the Telegraph, UK has the honors explaining how bad this president is.
The trailers were great, but the movie was horrible.
Six years in, that’s the general consensus on the Obama presidency. Having ridden a wave of “hope and change” to the White House, President Barack Obama has failed to deliver on his huge box office, err, ballot box expectations.
Just how bad is it? Since it is summer “blockbuster” season, I’ll explain thusly: There’s a difference between being bad and being most awesomely bad. You and I probably never even hear of the worst movies made. They are forgotten, not mocked. But the truly disastrous flops – the Water Worlds and Ishtars of the world – are the movies that come with huge budgets and huge expectations.
Obama fits the latter category – extremely talented and hyped, but ultimately, unsatisfying. True, I’ve been making this case for a long time – but now, there’s evidence.
A Quinnipiac poll released in America this week has Obama ranked as the “worst president” since World War II. For various reasons, this may or may not be entirely fair, but considering his competition included Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush, this is problematic. And, what is more, a majority surveyed also said “the nation would be better off” had Mitt Romney won presidency. …
But it gets unbelievably worse. Victor Davis Hanson posts on the presidential trip to Texas yesterday.
Surely reports that President Obama is going down to Texas at the height of the Katrina-like border debacle to raise money at the home of the popular but often polarizing filmmaker and Quentin Tarantino–collaborator Robert Rodriguez are the stuff of right-wing mythology?
No one could be so politically dense as to head south in the direction of this catastrophe only to pull up short to huckster campaign funds — while under a lingering cloud that such special-interest money solicitation in the past typically has taken precedence over national security (cf. the need to retire early on the night of Benghazi in order to prep for an important fundraiser the next day in Las Vegas, where the selfish go to blow their kids’ tuition money).
That the Obama money-raiser is purportedly being hosted by filmmaker Robert Rodriguez also cannot be true. The latter is famous for ultra-violent exploitation films of just the sort that gun-control liberals have insisted glorify (true) assault-weapon violence for profit and influence the deranged to translate such violent fiction into murderous fact. …
Spectator, UK reviews a book on the survival of Boris Pasternak and the international politics that swirled around the publication of Dr. Zhivago.
… It is natural to wonder how Pasternak survived the Stalin era. This may have been in part because he somehow, perhaps guided by some unconscious instinct for self-preservation, established what one could call a ‘personal’ relationship with Stalin. This began after the suicide of Stalin’s wife in 1932. Thirty-three other writers published a collective letter in the Literary Gazette; Pasternak managed to append a separate message of his own.
Like nearly all Soviet writers, Pasternak joined in some of the public denunciations of the politicians sentenced to death during the show trials of the mid-1930s. He refused, however, to sign a letter calling for the execution of Marshal Tukhachevsky and other senior generals. Ignoring Pasternak’s clear refusal, the authorities included his signature in the published text of the letter. Pasternak then wrote to Stalin, saying he could not act as a judge of life and death. He also wrote letters to Stalin about Maya-kovsky, and about the Georgian poets he was translating. The unexpected tone of these letters, their odd fusion of reverence and intimacy, could well have made an impression on a tyrant concerned about his place in history. Whether Stalin truly said ‘We won’t touch this cloud-dweller!’ is uncertain, but there is no doubt that he kept at least one of Pasternak’s letters in his personal archive. …
Mental Floss has 20 things you don’t know about chocolate.
2. Chocolate Is Actually a Vegetable—Kind Of.
Milk and dark chocolate come from the cacao bean, which grows on the cacao tree (theobroma cacao), an evergreen from the family Malvaceae (other members of the family include okra and cotton). This makes the most important part of the sweet treat a vegetable. …
19. There Are Two Kinds of Cacao.
Most modern chocolate comes from forastero beans, which are considered easy to grow—though the crillo bean is believed to make much tastier chocolate.
20. Chocolate Has a Special Melting Point.
Chocolate is the only edible substance to melt around 93° F, just below the human body temperature. That’s why chocolate melts so easily on your tongue.