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Roger Simon says Hispanics are the next target of the liberal racism machine.
Roughly ninety-five percent of racism in America today now either emanates from liberals or is generated by them. The Democratic Party relies on racism because, without the perception of serious ongoing racism in our culture, the identity politics on which the party depends would disintegrate. As presently constituted, they wouldn’t win another national or statewide election. This makes the Democratic Party by necessity a virtual racism-manufacturing machine.
The Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons are not anomalies. They are the motor that drives the car. Barack Obama could in no way be a post-racial president as promised, even if he wanted to be (doubtful). He wouldn’t have had a party anymore.
Do I exaggerate? Actually it’s worse. Because economic policies such as tax preferences for disadvantaged neighborhoods a la Jack Kemp that could have benefited black people are anathema to Obama and liberals, African Americans have little chance of improving their condition. No original ideas are instituted. It’s always the same old, same old from the days of Lyndon Johnson. Result: seventy percent of black children born out of wedlock and all the other horrifying statistics that are only a key stroke or two away for anyone with a computer — numbers on food stamps , unemployed, black-on-black crime, etc. …
Megan McArdle posts on the Supreme’s second look at the healthcare act.
Just as those of us who covered the Affordable Care Act were investigating new topics to cover, the Supreme Court yanks us back in. Today they agreed to hear a set of cases involving the availability of insurance subsidies on federally operated insurance exchanges. (I will henceforth refer to this collective body as the Halbig case for ease of reading.)
Sounds kind of boring, right? Actually, this could severely damage, even potentially kill, Obama’s signature program. I won’t recap all the issues that an adverse ruling would create for our health-care overlords, but if you are interested in the details, read my write-up from this summer. For the rest of you, suffice to say that this case could ultimately determine whether the program survives, and if so, in what form. …
Ed Morrissey reports on WaPo’s slams of the president.
This hasn’t exactly been a banner week for Democrats, but especially so for Barack Obama. The Washington Post corrected him twice this week on claims made by the President’s denial of reality in his post-election press conference, the first time in a formal fact-check from Glenn Kessler. Obama tried arguing that the election results didn’t really reflect on ObamaCare despite the success of Republicans in defeating Democrats who supported it — or even those who refused to answer the question — because ObamaCare has reduced the costs of health care in every year since its passage. That assumes facts not in evidence in terms of causal relationship, Kessler notes, and isn’t true on the facts anyway:
”In fact, despite the president’s claim of a decrease of every year, the White House’s own chart shows that the 2013 estimate represents a slight uptick from 2012, when adjusted for inflation and population. As the White House report puts it, “the three years since 2010 will have recorded the three slowest health-care spending growth rates since record keeping began in 1960.” That is impressive, but it is not the same as health costs going down “every single year” since the law was passed in 2010. …” …
Politico piece calls for the firing of Valarie Jarrett. Pickerhead thinks this would be a mistake. She is probably more responsible for administration mistakes than anyone else. We need her next to the president, whispering in his ear telling him how wonderful he is.
Almost since the start of Barack Obama’s presidency, people who have actual, real duties in the West Wing of the White House—the working, executive part of the government, that is—have been urging him to do something about Valerie Jarrett. Push her into the East Wing, where she can hang out with Michelle Obama and the White House social secretary, or give her an ambassadorship—or something—but for Pete’s sake get her out of the way of the hard work of governing that needs to be done.
Now it’s really time to do it.
Let’s stipulate right away that it would be unfair to blame Jarrett, the longtime Obama family friend and confidante, for the walloping that the president and his party suffered at the polls on Tuesday. And Jarrett will no doubt be needed in the weeks ahead to comfort her old pals, Barack and Michelle. What happened on Tuesday almost couldn’t be worse for Obama personally—not just the Senate’s going Republican but all those governorships lost, including Illinois Governor Pat Quinn’s defeat in Obama’s adopted home state, even after the president and first lady came to Illinois to campaign for him. The morning after the elections, Democrats and their top staffers were hopping mad, blaming Obama and, by extension, his staff for the defeat.
But let’s also face facts—and expect the president to do so as well. We’re at that point in an already long-toothed presidency when things inside really need to change. In the days before anyone knew how brutally the Democrats would get beaten, politicians and staffers and pundits were urging a shakeup of the White House staff. …
The New Republic has more on Jarrett.
Even at this late date in the Obama presidency, there is no surer way to elicit paranoid whispers or armchair psychoanalysis from Democrats than to mention the name Valerie Jarrett. Party operatives, administration officials—they are shocked by her sheer longevity and marvel at her influence. When I asked a longtime source who left the Obama White House years ago for his impressions of Jarrett, he confessed that he was too fearful to speak with me, even off the record.
This is not as irrational as it sounds. Obama has said he consults Jarrett on every major decision, something current and former aides corroborate. “Her role since she has been at the White House is one of the broadest and most expansive roles that I think has ever existed in the West Wing,” says Anita Dunn, Obama’s former communications director. Broader, even, than the role of running the West Wing. This summer, the call to send Attorney General Eric Holder on a risky visit to Ferguson, Missouri, was made by exactly three people: Holder himself, the president, and Jarrett, who were vacationing together on Martha’s Vineyard. When I asked Holder if Denis McDonough, the chief of staff, was part of the conversation, he thought for a moment and said, “He was not there.” (Holder hastened to add that “someone had spoken to him.”)
Jarrett holds a key vote on Cabinet picks (she opposed Larry Summers at Treasury and was among the first Obama aides to come around on Hillary Clinton at State) and has an outsize say on ambassadorships and judgeships. She helps determine who gets invited to the First Lady’s Box for the State of the Union, who attends state dinners and bill-signing ceremonies, and who sits where at any of the above. She has placed friends and former employees in important positions across the administration—“you can be my person over there,” is a common refrain.
And Jarrett has been known to enjoy the perks of high office herself. When administration aides plan “bilats,” the term of art for meetings of two countries’ top officials, they realize that whatever size meeting they negotiate—nine by nine, eight by eight, etc.—our side will typically include one less foreign policy hand, because Jarrett has a standing seat at any table that includes the president.
Not surprisingly, all this influence has won Jarrett legions of detractors. They complain that she has too much control over who sees the president. That she skews his decision-making with her after-hours visits. That she is an incorrigible yes-woman. That she has, in effect, become the chief architect of his very prominent and occasionally suffocating bubble.
There is an element of truth to this critique. While aboard Air Force One at the end of the 2012 campaign, Jarrett turned to Obama and told him, “Mr. President, I don’t understand how you’re not getting eighty-five percent of the vote.” The other Obama aides in the cabin looked around in disbelief before concluding that she’d been earnest. …
Late Night from Andrew Malcolm.
Fallon: Joe Biden will soon visit Turkey, Ukraine and Morocco. So, Biden’s advisers are learning how to say “I’m sorry” in all three languages.
Meyers: On Sunday, a couple got married on a Southwest Airlines flight. They didn’t want to get married, but the seats were so close together, they had to.
Fallon: A new study finds that babies hear three times as many words from their moms as from their dads. My wife said “That’s so fascinating!” I said “Cool.”