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Streetwise Professor has the idea that the president is a cross between Nero and Captain Ahab.

The world spins into chaos, and Obama is so detached and indifferent, fiddling while it all burns. But maybe the comparison with Nero is unfair. To Nero. After all, Nero allegedly had a purpose in mind when burning Rome: it allowed him to bypass the Senate and rebuild Rome to his grandiose plans. (Bypassing the Senate . . . maybe there are more parallels than I thought!) Obama just appears to not want to be bothered. Or perhaps he is like Major Major Major Major, promoted well above his competence and knowing it, and retreating to the confines of his office and quarters in order to avoid confronting things he is incapable of solving.

Exhibit 1. Yemen is exploding, with Iranian-backed Houthis seizing power and the desperate Saudis striking back with air strikes. This obviously raises the possibility of conflict between the Saudis (and the rest of the GCC) and Iran. But the administration still defends the “Yemen model” as a success. No. Really. Spokesman “Josh Earnest” (that has to be a made up name, right?) says the concept of relying on foreign governments to fight terrorism is right, even though the government we relied on in this case has utterly collapsed.

Exhibit 2. Even though the tension between Russia and Nato is at Cold War levels; even though Russia is making nuclear threats against Nato members; even though the easternmost nations in Nato are increasingly anxious that Putin has them in his sights; even though there are doubts about the credibility of Section V of the Nato treaty; and even though Nato is struggling to find a way to respond to hybrid war, Obama is refusing to find time in his busy schedule to see the new head of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg. …

Jonah Goldberg is calling him Dr. Ignoro.

… While the White House claims that it cannot pretend Netanyahu didn’t make those remarks, it has no problem playing make-believe with comments from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (currently serving out the 10th year of his four-year term), who has repeatedly said the Palestinians will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Abbas, who literally has a Ph.D. in Holocaust denial, is what counts as a Palestinian moderate. Nonetheless, he formed a unity government with Hamas, the terrorist group openly determined to slaughter the Israelis.

But such facts are no match for Obama’s limitless powers to pretend away annoying details. Why, just last week, Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, responded to chants of “Death to America” by saying, “Of course, yes, death to America.” The White House is pretending he didn’t make such comments. And when the administration gets a deal with the Iranians on their nuclear program, the president will take it to the U.N., not the Senate, because ignoring Congress — and the Constitution — is simply what he does on days that end with “y.”

Barely six months ago, Obama cited Yemen as a great example of how successful his counterterrorism approach is. This week, as Yemen spiraled toward civil war and American military forces fled, Obama went golfing, ignoring the whole mess. (For Dr. Ignoro, the golf course is like his Batcave or Fortress of Solitude).

When his own advisers, military and civilian, warned Obama that fully bugging out of Iraq would be calamitous, leaving a vacuum for terrorists and Iranian meddling, the president ignored the advice and pretended everything was fine.

When a reporter for The New Yorker asked him about the Islamic State gobbling up Iraq, Obama explained why they should be ignored: They’re just a “jayvee team,” he said. …

Paul Mirengoff gets the back story of the faux outrage at Netanyahu from David Bernstein of Volokh Conspiracy.

… On March 6, less than two weeks before the election, a major Israeli newspaper published a document showing that Netanyahu’s envoy had agreed on his behalf to an American-proposed framework that offered substantial Israeli concessions that Netanyahu publicly opposed. Let’s put on our thinking caps. Where would this leak have come from? The most logical suspect is the American State Department.

So here’s the dynamic: Netanyahu, while talking tough publicly about terms for an Israeli-Palestinian deal, was much more accommodating privately during actual negotiations. Just before Israeli elections, the U.S. government likely leaks evidence of his flexibility to harm Netanyahu. As a result, Netanyahu starts to lose right-wing voters to smaller parties, and the left-leaning major opposition party takes a lead in the polls, putting Netanyahu’s leadership in question, just as the U.S. wanted.

Netanyahu responds by using increasingly right-wing rhetoric (including denying that he ever agreed to the framework in question), to win back the voters from smaller parties that the leak cost him. He wins, and almost immediately announces that his campaign rhetoric was misunderstood, and that he still supports a two-state solution when conditions allow. The Obama Administration then announces it nevertheless has to reassess relations with Israel, allegedly because Netanayahu is no longer committed to the two-state solution. …

Jonathan Tobin thinks it is time for the spiteful spat to end. 

A week has now passed since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was re-elected in a decisive win that deeply disappointed the Obama administration that made no secret of its desire that he be defeated. But rather than cut its losses, the White House continues to dig itself in deeper in a conflict with the Israelis with an interview in which President Obama expressed concern for the future of Israeli democracy all the while making it clear that he would like to invalidate the verdict of Israeli voters. But that was not all. The president also sent his chief of staff to speak at the conference of the left-wing J Street lobby. There, James McDonough brought an audience of critics of Israel to its feet by vowing that the U.S. would not cease its efforts to force the Netanyahu government to “end 50 years of occupation.” All of this stoking the fires of conflict forces us to ask why the president is so invested in this effort. The answer isn’t reassuring, especially for those who wanted to believe the president’s 2012 re-election pitch that claimed he was a true friend of Israel.

As I noted yesterday, one motive for the conflict with Israel is the disagreement over the Iran nuclear negotiations. The president clearly is not willing to get past his anger about Netanyahu speaking to Congress in opposition to the deal that the U.S. is offering the Iranian regime. With the talks moving into their final stages, it seems likely that Iran will sign an accord, especially since, that country’s so-called “hard-liners” appear to be thrilled with the concessions that their nation has forced out of an Obama administration so fixated on its goal of détente with the Islamist regime that it is willing to retreat from every principle it went into the talks to defend. …

And Jennifer Rubin thinks the anti-Israel blitz has gone too far.

… The disparity between the president’s treatment of Israel and his rush to embrace our enemy is so evident that even the mainstream media are forced to acknowledge it. The Hill reports: “Congress is growing hostile to the emerging nuclear deal with Iran, leaving President Obama with little political cover as he approaches a critical deadline in the talks. . . . But as details of the still-evolving talks have dribbled out of Geneva, where Secretary of State John Kerry is leading the process, lawmakers are amplifying concerns that the administration is granting too many concessions to Tehran.” And when the New York Times starts raising the red flag that Obama may be “overplaying” his hand, you know things have gone way beyond anything we have seen in any prior administration. The Times agrees with many critics’ assessment of what is going on:

“Israeli analysts are now suggesting that Mr. Obama and his aides might be overplaying their hand, inviting a backlash of sympathy for Mr. Netanyahu, and that they may not have clearly defined what they expected to gain diplomatically by continuing to pressure the Israeli leader.

The president’s harsh words have been deemed by some to be patronizing and disrespectful not only to Mr. Netanyahu but also to the voters who rewarded his uncompromising stances with a resounding mandate for a fourth term.”

The president is known to be vitriolic toward those who cross him, but what is going on here is more than peevishness. …

Peter Wehner thinks the president has an ideological need to weaken Israel. 

Why do the president and his advisers, when given the choice of how to interpret Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s comments about a Palestinian state, choose the one that heightens tensions with Israel? Why the constant refrain that “We cannot pretend those comments were never made”? Why the inability to get over the fact that Netanyahu won (and in important respects Obama lost) the Israeli election? Why not move to repair relations?

Part of the answer is undoubtedly the personal pettiness of Mr. Obama and his apparently unquenchable hated for the Israeli prime minister. But something more, something deeper, is going on here, too.

The president is using Prime Minister Netanyahu’s comments to achieve an end he has clearly wanted all along: the weakening of the Jewish state. Mr. Obama is the product of a progressive milieu, including in the academy, where hostility to Israel is widespread. …

And Doug Schoen, a Dem pollster says Bibi is here to stay, and it is time for the president to grow up.

… We don’t have enough friends to be treating Netanyahu this way, even if he did advocate a single state solution in his campaign. And considering that just this week, we saw two horrendous acts of terrorism in the Middle East in Tunisia and Yemen, the reasons that Obama should firmly commit himself to Israel and Netanyahu continue to mount.

Further, the fact that just a few days ago John Kerry said the U.S. would be willing to negotiate with Syrian President Bashir al-Assad – who is responsible for the deaths of over 200,000 of his own people – while Netanyahu has to wait two days for a congratulatory call from President Obama is completely out of whack with everything I know about diplomacy and politics.

All this is to say that it’s high time President Obama put aside his personal animus towards the Israeli Prime Minister. Netanyahu has a strong, convincing mandate to govern and there should be no doubt that we will need his friendship as the Iranian nuclear negotiations continue and beyond. 

The prime minister is here to stay. It’s time for the Obama White House to grow up and make the relationship work.

The cartoonists are good today; Michael Ramirez especially, who has the president saying, “We realize now ISIS is a big problem, so we have launched another attack – on George W. Bush.”

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Walter Issacson’s biography of Steve Jobs made a big splash and sold three million copies. Turns out many at Apple were not delighted with the book and they have cooperated with a competing tome. Times of India reviews the new attempt – “Becoming Steve Jobs.”

Steve Jobs prized secrecy from his executives and employees during his tenure at Apple. Now his top lieutenants are speaking out — to help shape the legacy of Steve Jobs.

Through interviews and tweets, Apple brass, including the chief executive, Tim Cook, are throwing their weight behind a new unauthorized biography of the Apple co-founder, “Becoming Steve Jobs,” which goes on sale on March 24. In the book, executives take aim at another title, “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson, an authorized biography published shortly after Jobs’ death in 2011.

Isaacson’s best-seller did a “tremendous disservice” to the Apple chief, Cook said in the new book, written by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli, and excerpted in the April issue of Fast Company.

“It didn’t capture the person,” Cook said. “The person I read about there is somebody I would never have wanted to work with over all this time.”

Jony Ive, Apple’s longtime design chief, added his criticism of Isaacson’s biography last month in a New Yorker profile.

“My regard couldn’t be any lower” for the book, he said, noting that he had read only parts of it.

Eddy Cue, Apple’s chief of software and internet services, endorsed the new book on Jobs in a tweet last week: “Best portrayal is about to be released — Becoming Steve Jobs (book). Well done and first to get it right.” Apple’s iBooks account also tweeted last week that “‘Becoming Steve Jobs’ is the only book about Steve recommended by the people who knew him best.”  …

Inquisitr reports on a promising treatment for Alzheimer’s.

Researchers in Australia have devised a treatment that effectively reverses the effects of Alzheimer’s disease.

A team from the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) at the University of Queensland has come up with a non-invasive therapy based on ultrasound technology that essentially de-plaques our brain, thereby allowing neurons and their network of connections to work better. The ultrasound based therapy clears the brain of neuro-toxic amyloid plaques. …

… The team used focused therapeutic ultrasound, which beams sound waves into the brain tissue, without opening by the skull. Essentially, these sound waves oscillate at a very high frequency, thereby gently opening the blood-brain barrier, which is a layer that protects the brain against bacteria, and stimulate the brain’s microglial cells to move in.

Microglial cells are essentially the body’s waste-removal cells. Once these cells get past the blood-brain barrier, they’re able to scrub out the toxic beta-amyloid clumps before the blood-brain barrier is restored. The ultrasound therapy offers these cells a window of a few hours to do their job, before the barrier has a chance to re-erect.

The results have been astounding. The team claims that 75 percent of the participants had their memory functions fully restored, with zero damage to the surrounding brain tissue. However, these participants were lab-mice. …

And if you can’t wait for the process to be approved for use, Inquisitr also reports on beer’s magical Alzheimer’s fighting properties. That’s right – BEER! 

Scientists have confirmed what men claimed all along – beer is good for your brain.

A group of Chinese scientists have determined what you always knew deep down in your heart: Beer is good for the brain. The beer draws its superpowers from hops, the female flowers of the hop plant Humulus lupulus, which are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer. However, apart from contributing to the signature taste of the beer, hops releases a chemical — Xanthohumol — that has the potential to fight off neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

Xanthohumol, commonly referred to as Xn, has successfully fought off cell damage that could have ruined the brain. Though wine may have been touted as the great protector and healer of cells in the old age, Xn has been previously proven to fend off cancer, viruses, obesity, and inflammation. Its brain-boosting benefits though haven’t been seriously studied — until now. …

The Wall Street Journal says our demand for healthier food is changing the balance of power in the grocery business. 

Orders for organic burritos, Thai stir-fry and other frozen products from Amy’s Kitchen Inc. have been growing so quickly that late last year the company bought a second factory—an Idaho plant that H.J. Heinz Co. had just shut amid shrinking demand for its frozen food.

Started in 1988 by a married couple who named it after their daughter, Amy’s in recent years has expanded beyond the world of specialty grocers into mainstream supermarkets like Piggly Wiggly and Price Chopper. Sales have surged 72% over the past five years to $443 million in 2014.

“Everyone said when we reached a certain size our growth would slow,” said Andy Berliner, co-founder and chief executive. “We keep waiting for that to happen, but we’re still growing so fast.”

Amy’s and other smaller companies focused on natural and organic foods are feasting on shifts in tastes among consumers distrustful of established food giants’ products and ingredients. The rise of these smaller companies, helped by growing interest from big retailers, is eating into demand for brands that for decades were commonplace in American kitchens, like Kraft Foods Group Inc.’s macaroni and cheese and Kellogg Co.’s breakfast cereals. …

Another other worldly talent of elephants is reported by National Geographic.

South Africa—Chishuru, a large African elephant bull with a talent for sniffing out TNT, stood in front of a line of seven white buckets.

Inside one of the buckets on a recent morning was a slight trace of TNT on a piece of paper stapled to the bottom. Chishuru’s job was to find out exactly which bucket it was—using his nimble trunk to guide the way.

The elephant ambled between the buckets, snaking his long trunk into each one—there were different, harmless scent traces in each bucket—and taking a big sniff before moving on to the next. At the fifth bucket he paused and raised his right leg, indicating to a research team that this was the one with a trace of TNT inside. Bingo. …

… Elephants have 2,000 genes for smell, the most of any animal on Earth—more than twice those of the domestic dog and five times more than those of humans, according to a 2014 study in the journal Genome Research.

A previous study in Kenya found that elephants can distinguish which tribe a person belongs to by their smell, and will actively avoid those from tribes that have been hostile toward them. 

And in postwar Angola, elephants have beenobserved avoiding landmine fields, possibly because they can smell the mines underground.

At the Adventures with Elephants ranch, a safari business about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Pretoria, owner Sean Hensman knows how smart and skillful the giant mammals can be.

“We are only scratching the surface of what we know about this animal,” says Hensman. …

The fastest growing metro area in the US is the Villages near Orlando. NewMax has the story.

The latest estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau are in, and the fastest-growing city is not an oil boomtown or a magnet for new immigrants, but a senior living community outside Orlando, Fla., with a reputation for attracting active retirees.

The Villages, a sprawling senior community of 114,000 residents, increased 5.4 percent in the year ended July 2014, making it the country’s fastest-growing metro for the second straight year. That’s triple the growth rate for the state of Florida and far faster than Myrtle Beach, S.C., the second fastest-growing U.S. city, which expanded 3.2 percent. …

 

 

Another wonderful day without articles on the latest disasters from President Bystander.

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A couple of our favorites comment on the passing of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew. Max Boot is first. 

There are many reasons to judge Lee Kuan Yew a genius. Not the least of them is the fact that he attended CambridgeUniversity—the alma mater of Stanley Baldwin (the do-nothing British prime minister of the 1920s-1930s), the Cambridge 5 spy ring (Kim Philby et al.), and Jawaharlal Nehru, among others—and managed to emerge not only a sensible person but also one of distinctly free-market views. He had the advantage, of course, of having been raised in the Crown Colony of Singapore, which, like Hong Kong, continued to practice unfettered capitalism long after it had become unfashionable in the HomeIslands. Thus Lee fashioned in Singapore, the city state he ruled from 1959 to 1990, one of the most dynamic free-market societies on earth—one that has remarkably enough gone from per capita GDP of $512 a head in the 1965 to over $56,000 a head today, making it richer than Japan or Germany.

He was seemingly immune to the Fabian Socialist nostrums taught at Cambridge and other British universities in the first half of the twentieth century—misguided ideas which did so much to mess up developing countries in Africa and Asia where they were dutifully imported by credulous Oxbridge and London School of Economics graduates. Lee harked back to earlier British ideas—the ideas associated with free market apostles of the 19th century such as Richard Cobden and John Bright of Anti-Corn Law League fame—and his tiny state greatly benefitted from his iconoclasm. …

… Neither a democracy nor a dictatorship is likely to produce a leader of Lee Kuan Yew’s caliber very often. But the saving grace in democracy is that there are limits on what the chief executive can do. Indeed the genius of America’s Constitution is that it has allowed the United States to survive presidents such as James Buchanan, Millard Fillmore, Herbert Hoover, and Jimmy Carter. Singapore and its many imitators would be well advised to stop trying to replicate Lee Kuan Yew and instead institutionalize systems that are robust enough to flourish under leaders of lesser caliber.

Thomas Sowell also had thoughts.

… Today Singapore has a per capita Gross Domestic Product more than 50 percent higher than that of the United Kingdom and a crime rate a small fraction of that in England. A 2010 study showed more patents and patent applications from the small city-state of Singapore than from Russia. Few places in the world can match Singapore for cleanliness and orderliness.

This remarkable transformation of Singapore took place under the authoritarian rule of Lee Kuan Yew for two decades as prime minister. And it happened despite some very serious handicaps that led to chaos and self-destruction in other countries.

Singapore had little in the way of natural resources. It even had to import drinking water from neighboring Malaysia. Its population consisted of people of different races, languages and religions — the Chinese majority and the sizable Malay and Indian minorities.

At a time when other Third World countries were setting up government-controlled economies and blaming their poverty on “exploitation” by more advanced industrial nations, Lee Kuan Yew promoted a market economy, welcomed foreign investments, and made Singapore’s children learn English, to maximize the benefits from Singapore’s position as a major port for international commerce.

Singapore’s schools also taught the separate native languages of its Chinese, Malay and Indian Tamil peoples. But everyone had to learn English, because it was the language of international commerce, on which the country’s economic prosperity depended.

In short, Lee Kuan Yew was pragmatic, rather than ideological. …

 

And this appeared in a piece by Henry Kissinger.

… The great tragedy of Lee’s life was that his beloved wife was felled by a stroke that left her a prisoner in her body, unable to communicate or receive communication. Through all that time, Lee sat by her bedside in the evening reading to her. He had faith that she understood despite the evidence to the contrary.

Perhaps this was Lee Kuan Yew’s role in his era. He had the same hope for our world. He fought for its better instincts even when the evidence was ambiguous. ….

We return to Mr. Sowell who after writing about the accomplishments of Lee Kuan Yew turns his attention to someone who has been a nothingburger. He writes on Hillary Clinton’s lackluster record. 

… For someone who has spent her entire adult life in politics, including being a Senator and then a Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has nothing to show for all those years — no significant legislation of hers that she got passed in the Senate, and only an unbroken series of international setbacks for the United States during her time as Secretary of State.

Before Barack Obama entered the White House and appointed Mrs. Clinton Secretary of State, Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq had notified their higher ups, stationed in Pakistan, that their cause was lost in Iraq and that there was no point sending more men there.

Hosni Mubarak was in charge in Egypt. He posed no threat to American or Western interests in the Middle East or to Christians within Egypt or to Israel. But the Obama administration threw its weight behind the Muslim Brotherhood, which took over and began terrorizing Christians in Egypt and promoting hostility to Israel.

In Libya next door, the Qaddafi regime had already given up its weapons of mass destruction, after they saw what happened to Saddam Hussein in Iraq. But President Obama’s foreign policy, carried out by Secretary of State Clinton, got Qaddafi removed, after which Libya became a terrorist haven where an American ambassador was killed, for the first time in decades.

The rationale for getting rid of Middle East leaders who posed no threat to American interests was that they were undemocratic and their people were restless. But there are no democracies in the Middle East, except for Israel. …

Joel Kotkin posts on the tension arising between tech companies and some of their allies on the left.

The rise of today’s progressive-dominated Democratic Party stemmed from a brilliant melding of minorities, the poor, the intelligentsia and, quite surprising, the new ultrarich of Silicon Valley. For the past decade, this alliance has worked for both sides, giving the tech titans politically correct cover while suggesting their support for the progressives’ message can work with business.

Not only did tech overwhelmingly favor President Obama with campaign contributions but Obama also overwhelming won the Silicon Valley electorate, taking the once GOP-leaning Santa Clara County with 70 percent of the vote. After the 2012 election, a host of former top Obama aides – including former campaign manager David Plouffe (Uber) and press spokesman Jay Carney (Amazon) – have signed up to work for tech giants. Perhaps even more revealing was the politically inspired firing last year of former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich for contributing to California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage.

Yet, despite these ties and PC eruptions, this alliance between the ideologically and the technically advanced shows signs of unraveling. This reflects, over time, what Marxists might have referred to as “contradictions” between two very different worldviews: the disruptive, acquisitive, aggressive spirit inherent in entrepreneurial capitalism and the increasingly egalitarian, property-controlling instincts of the progressive Left. To many progressives, the Silicon Valley elite are no longer scrappy up-and-comers, but increasingly resemble a new oligarchy.

Like the nobles of the Middle Ages or the corporate hegemons of the industrial era, Silicon Valley billionaires are increasingly asked to take responsibility for many of society’s ills. These include a wide range of issues, from feminism and race to privacy and, most critically, class inequality. Supporting gay marriage or measures to fight climate change may no longer be enough to win over progressives.

Arguably the most widely acknowledged conflict – at least the raciest – involves sex discrimination. From its inception as a cradle of technology, the Valley’s culture has been highly masculine. Indeed, roughly 26 percent of tech industry workers are women, well below their 47 percent share of the total workforce. …

John Steele Gordon says Cruz, with his lack of experience is a right-wing version of you know who.

Barack Obama was spectacularly unprepared to be president and, except for the true believers, his presidency has been a disaster because of it. He had no executive experience whatever but was supposed to be the chief executive officer of the largest organization on earth, the federal government. He had no political leadership experience, having been a backbencher in both the Illinois Senate and the United States Senate, with no legislative accomplishments to his credit. He had no foreign affairs experience. He has proved to be a terrible negotiator, ideologically rigid and contemptuous of any opinion but his own, although negotiating—getting to yes—is the very essence of politics. Today Senator Ted Cruz is announcing his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president. Is he qualified? …

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Walter Russell Mead posts on President Ahab and “the great white whale.”

President Obama perseveres, convinced that everyone will thank him when the Great White Whale of Middle East policy—a lasting nuclear deal with Iran—is finally harpooned. But as the endgame draws nigh, a unified chorus of naysayers is rising in volume.

With the House nearly united against him, can Obama still stand? Today, 360 Representatives (including more than half of the House’s Democrats) sent a letter to the President warning that permanent sanctions relief for Iran must entail new legislation from Congress. More from The Hill:

“In reviewing such an agreement, Congress must be convinced that its terms foreclose any pathway to a bomb, and only then will Congress be able to consider permanent sanctions relief,” [the letter] adds.

The letter stops short of supporting legislation pursued by the Senate that would allow Congress 60 days to weigh in on any final deal before its implementation.

However, it adds, “We are prepared to evaluate any agreement to determine its long-term impact on the United States and our allies.”

Taken on its face, this letter would apparently doom the Iran deal in the form it is being presented through leaks from the negotiators. Iran is insisting on a time limit for the deal; the House appears to be saying that no such time limit will be acceptable to the U.S. Congress. If House Democrats stick to this message, the President’s Iran policy looks doomed to veto-proof rebukes from both branches of Congress.

This is probably not what President Obama meant when he promised to fight the partisanship in American politics, but he seems to be creating a strong bipartisan consensus on the Middle East. (He’s also been something of a uniter in the Middle East as well; Israel and the Sunni Arab countries have never been closer than they are now.)

The Dem-supported House letter isn’t the only high-profile rebuke to emerge today from the President’s camp. President Obama’s old CIA director is saying that the Iran-backed Shia militias are worse news than ISIS. In an interview with the Washington Post, General Petraeus was blunt: …

Walter Jacobson of Legal Insurrection claims he has the back story to the president’s Bibi tantrum. 

The Obama administration has vented its fury at Israel based on Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, and pre-election statements.

None of those issues justified the complete fury coming from the administration. It just didn’t add up.

Now The Wall Street Journal reveals the back story — one in which the Israelis found out about secret negotiations and secret details concealed from Congress, and told Congress. Now the administration is promising long-term damage to Israel that will last beyond this administration.

It also becomes obvious that the meme that Netanyahu has been acting to help his reelection is wrong. There is a long history of Israel trying to stop a disastrous deal being negotiated in secret. Netanyahu’s opposition has been based on security concerns for years, not the recent election.

The Wall Street Journal’s article is titled Israel Spied on Iran Talks.

That title, however, is not really the story. The story is that Israel learned not only that Obama was hiding secret Iran nuclear negotiations from Israel, but also later found out details that Israel shared with Congress. The article is lengthy, and behind the paywall.

Here is the intro: …

Yesterday we closed with a review of Shelby Steele’s latest book. We pick up the same thread in a Daily Beast article on the “last sane liberal.” It’s about Patrick Monyihan who foresaw 50 years ago what the havoc the left/liberals would wreck on all families; black and white. 

The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan is being vindicated—fifty years too late. His once-infamous March 1965 “Moynihan Report,” is now considered prophetic, anticipating the dissolution of the American family, and not just in African-American communities. But for all the New York Times talk about “When Liberals Blew It,” as Nicholas Kristof boldly put it, liberals—and most Americans—are still blowing it. Until we confront the modern confusion between liberalism and libertinism, Moynihan’s true warnings will go unheeded, and American society will continue degenerating.

In 1965, as Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty gained momentum, Moynihan, a 38-year-old Assistant Secretary of Labor, boldly warned about the epidemic of illegitimate African-American births. The “deterioration of the Negro family” ensnared blacks in a “tangle of pathology.”

Anticipating the next half-century of social tensions, Moynihan noted that establishing legal rights was not enough, the challenge was ensuring equal opportunity. “The most difficult fact for white Americans to understand,” he wrote, was that economically and even socially “the circumstances of the Negro American community in recent years has probably been getting  worse, not better.” The once stable black families of the 1950s disintegrated, as the same openness that boosted the civil rights movement also undermined traditional family structure for blacks and whites, weakening community structures and strictures.

By 1990, the percentage of black children born to unmarried mothers hit 70 percent. Thanks to this all-American values breakdown, with sexual expression trumping traditional repression, today, over 40 percent of all American births are to unmarried mothers. Many of the 50th anniversary pieces have noted that, while any particular family configuration can work, collectively, the key variable separating America’s privileged and troubled kids is whether they are raised in two-parent families or single-mother households. …

Another foolish left/liberal idea that punishes the poor are the minimum wage laws. Thomas Sowell writes on the current experiment in San Francisco.

… A recent story in a San Francisco newspaper says that some restaurants and grocery stores in Oakland’s Chinatown have closed after the city’s minimum wage was raised. Other small businesses there are not sure they are going to survive, since many depend on a thin profit margin and a high volume of sales.

At an angry meeting between local small business owners and city officials, the local organization that had campaigned for the higher minimum wage was absent. They were probably some place congratulating themselves on having passed a humane “living wage” law. The group most affected was also absent — inexperienced and unskilled young people, who need a job to get some experience, even more than they need the money.

It is not a breakthrough on the frontiers of knowledge that minimum wage laws reduce employment opportunities for the young and the unskilled of any age. It has been happening around the world, for generation after generation, and in the most diverse countries.

It is not just the young who are affected when minimum wage rates are set according to the fashionable notions of third parties, with little or no regard for whether everyone is productive enough to be worth paying the minimum wage they set.

You can check this out for yourself. Go to your local public library and pick up a copy of the distinguished British magazine “The Economist.”

Whether it is the current issue or a back issue doesn’t matter. Spain, Greece and South Africa will be easy to locate in the table near the back, which lists data for various countries. Just look down the unemployment column for countries with unemployment rates around 25 percent. Spain, Greece and South Africa are always there, whether or not there is a recession. Why? Because they have very generous minimum wage laws. …

Kevin Williamson writes on the fact challenged president.

‘Can I trust what the president says? That’s a yes-or-no question.” So inquired U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in response to having been lied to by the Obama administration. The administration wants to use a presidential decree to enact an amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants; half of the states have rallied behind Texas in arguing that this is unconstitutional, that the president is arrogating to himself a legislative power that is properly Congress’s. Lawyers for the Justice Department, led by Kathleen Hartnett, assured the court that no action on DAPA — Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents — would be taken until Judge Hanen had made a ruling on whether to issue an injunction against it.

“Like an idiot, I believed that,” the judge says.

The Obama administration, being what it is, ignored its promise to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas and began handing out reprieves as fast as it could, issuing more than 100,000 of them. When the annoyed judge demanded to know why the Department of Justice had lied to a federal court, Hartnett argued that the reprieves were being handed out under a different set of guidelines. The judge was not buying it. Among other things, the administration is offering three-year grants of immunity, which are not authorized by the earlier authority under which it purports to be operating.

It is easy to understand why the administration is in a hurry to sign up as many people for its illegal amnesty as it can: The more beneficiaries there are, the more difficult it becomes to revoke the amnesty, even when it is confirmed as being illegal and unconstitutional. Judge Hanen already has sided with the states on a substantial issue, handing down that injunction he had been considering.

That Barack Obama and those he holds near have a funny way with the truth is not news. The president famously claimed in a speech in 2007 that the great civil-rights march in Selma, Ala., led to his conception: “There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don’t tell me I don’t have a claim on Selma, Alabama.” He was in fact born years before that march happened — his parents were divorced by the time of the march — but one can see how such mythology would appeal to a man with Barack Obama’s messianic pretensions. …

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Austin Bay on the diplomacy of fools.

Poles knew September 2009 would be a bitter month. It marked the 70 anniversary of their country’s great geo-political catastrophe, the start of World War 2 and their nation’s imprisonment.

The 21st-century bitterness Poles did not expect was President Barack Obama’s shocking Sept. 17, 2009, announcement. To “reset” U.S.-Russia relations, Obama said he had terminated U.S. participation — which meant Polish participation as well — in what Poland and other U.S. allies regarded as an essential NATO and European defense program: deploying long-range anti-missile missiles in Poland (Ground Based Interceptors).

The peaceful order Obama said his decision would achieve dismayed Poles who know from experience that the Kremlin’s version of a reset usually involves Russian military resurgence, not peace. Obama’s abrupt termination of a major, negotiated multi-lateral policy worried them. His failure to consult Warsaw infuriated them. History added injury; the date on which he announced his flip-flop appalled them. …

… Polish dismay with US optimism precedes Obama. In 2001 they cringed when George W. Bush said he looked in Vladimir Putin’s eyes and got “a sense of (Putin’s) soul.” Poles saw a KGB colonel gulling a naive American. …

… World War 2 taught Poland that collective defense matters. Weak nations need strong allies. But in a world where destructive actors possess long-range missiles and have the intent to use them, an adequate defense requires international participation. The Poles understand that a robust missile defense is a key element in collective defense protecting constructive nations from destructive actors. They also understand that constructing and deploying complicated weapons requires a long lead-time.

Obama’s September 2009 concession didn’t transform. It may yet yield strategic disaster. Moreover, he does not learn from his mistakes. Utopian goals guide his Iran policy. He breaks promises on whim, and today allies wonder if Obama would honor America’s NATO commitment. …

And it’s not that the history is inaccessible, Pickerhead wrote a piece in March, 2010 that kicked off with reference to the slight we gave to Poland.

Perhaps it is strange for a free market blogger to suggest American knowledge of Russian history is woefully inadequate. But, we really are ignorant of that part of the world. If the Obama administration knew more, maybe they would have picked another day to tell Poland we were caving to the Russians and canceling plans for Eastern Europe’s missile defense shield. Instead, they picked the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland. That was a minor event in the overall war, but it was followed by typical Bolshevik horrors, including the massacre of 22,000 Polish officers at sites like KatynForest. 

Poles will never forget.    

As we approach the rolling 70th anniversary of the major events of World War II it is easy to forget the conflict was underway for almost two years before all hell really broke loose. This period started with the September 1939 invasion of Poland by, first Germany, and then Russia. Then came the German invasion of France and the Low Countries in May 1940, and finally the German move against Russia in June 1941. In the eight months between the invasions of Poland and France, headline writers had fun reporting on the “Bore War” and called it ”Sitzkrieg” rather than Blitzkrieg. 

In and around Russia, though, there was a lot of activity. A border incident with Japan in Mongolia at Khalkhin Gol turned into a small war, and in Europe there was the Winter War with Finland. The world ignored the first because it was far away and overshadowed by the contemporaneous Hitler-Stalin Pact; was aghast at the second, and kicked Russia out of the League of Nations. The Red Army’s poor showing against Finland was further embarrassment for Russia and led to Hitler’s fatal misunderstandings about Soviet forces. …

In yet another example of his thundering ignorance, the president has proposed mandatory voting. What would he do? Would he hire another 16,000 IRS agents to complement those hired to enforce the health care act? Pickerhead has always maintained that free people are those who don’t feel the need to vote. John Fund starts the comments.

Since he will never again see his name appear on a ballot, President Obama is finally telling us what he really thinks.

“If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country,” Obama said yesterday at a Cleveland town hall meeting. “It would be transformative if everybody voted.”

He also said it would be “fun” to force through a constitutional amendment restricting the free-speech rights of Americans to contribute money to politics. Fun?

Mr. President, we wouldn’t be America anymore with forced voting and people fined or jailed for using the First Amendment to express political views.

When it comes to voting, only eleven nations in the world actually enforce laws requiring people to vote. Several nations have tried them and dropped the idea, including Chile, Fiji, and Italy, which rescinded the policy in 1993. “There was finally a consensus that it was a basic infringement of freedom,” says Antonio Martino, a former Italian foreign minister. “Forcing people to vote violates their freedom of speech, because the freedom to speak includes the right not to speak.”

Indeed, not voting can send a message just as much as voting. If times are good and major parties are in broad agreement on major issues, a low voter turnout can be a sign of a healthy democracy. Similarly, in times of discontent when major parties are not offering up clear and compelling alternatives, non-voting signals that the legitimacy of the process is being questioned.

President Obama gave his real motivation away during his Cleveland riff by noting that Democrats stayed home in last November’s election, in which his party was crushed. It won’t surprise you that his motivation is political. Recall his famous post-election comment that he also heard the voices of Americans who didn’t vote. This week the president said “the people who tend not to vote are young, they’re lower income, they’re skewed more heavily towards immigrant groups and minority groups. We should want to get them into the polls.” But rather than blame himself or his party for the failure to inspire his ostensible supporters to vote, the president is turning to the idea of dragooning them to the ballot box.

The columnist George Will once said: “Really up-to-date liberals do not care what people do, as long as it is compulsory.” President Obama has joined their ranks. …

John Hinderaker comments on compulsory voting.

… It is hard to know where to begin. The idea of forcing Americans to vote is, frankly, un-American, and would have been regarded as such by every American political leader from George Washington through George W. Bush. If an American wants to stay home on election day, it is his God-given right to do so. The idea that policemen should herd Americans to the polls, or the IRS should withhold extra taxes if they don’t appear on a voter list, is repugnant. …

WSJ Editors weigh in.

We’re going to need more IRS agents. That’s the gist of President Obama’s latest bid to impose yet another mandate on the American people. This time he wants to require all Americans to vote, whether they want to or not. … 

… Some Americans have already got a taste of what President Obama’s fondness for government by mandate means. Before it won its Supreme Court case, the crafts chain Hobby Lobby was faced with fines of $1.3 million for every day it refused to obey the contraceptive mandate. This year, with the April 15 tax deadline approaching, many young and healthy Americans who have disobeyed the Obama mandate to buy health insurance from the government’s limited menu are going to have to deal with the IRS.

“Everything not forbidden is compulsory.” That line comes from British writer T.H. White, in his novel recreating the life and times of King Arthur. White meant it as mockery. President Obama doesn’t get the joke.

Shame, Shelby Steele’s latest book, is reviewed by Joseph Epstein. 

‘You,’ a character in Ossie Davis’s 1961 play “Purlie Victorious” says to another, “are a disgrace to the Negro profession.” The line recurs to me whenever I see Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson making perfunctory rabble-rousing remarks in Ferguson, Mo., Madison, Wis., current-day Selma, Ala., or any other protest scene where their appearance, like Toni Morrison on a list of honorary-degree recipients, has become de rigueur. I wonder if Shelby Steele has also been called “a disgrace to the Negro profession,” and this for diametrically opposite reasons. Had he been it could only have been by people who, despite their endless cries for social justice, in one way or another have a deep emotional if not financial investment in keeping black Americans in the sad conditions in which so many of them continue to find themselves.

Shelby Steele is one of the very few writers able to tell home truths about the plight of black Americans. …

… The author has a fierce racial pride, and his writing about blacks in America is without condescension and imbued with deep sympathy. He is a brother, make no mistake, but a brother quite unlike any other. What distinguishes him is his openly stated belief that blacks in America have been sold out by the very liberals who ardently claim to wish them most good. He regrets that affirmative action, multiculturalism and most welfare programs purportedly put in place to show racial preference, far from liberating black Americans, have failed to advance their fortunes. Judging from high crime, divorce and unemployment rates, as well as relatively low rates of high-school and college completion, a case can be made that liberal policies have harmed them. To cite a single statistic: In 1965, the year after passage of the Civil Rights Act, 23.6% of black births in America were to single women; today that number is 72%….

… The author’s conclusion is that black America sold itself out, entered “a Faustian pact,” as he puts it, by placing its destiny in the “hands of contrite white people.” Doing so, he writes, “left us pleading with government, not for freedom, which we had already won, but for ‘programs’ and ‘preferences’ that would be a ladder to full equality. The chilling result is that now, fifty years later, we remain—by most important measures—in the position of inferiors and dependents.” The liberalism that has come into prominence since the 1960s, Mr. Steele believes, “has done little more than toy with blacks.” …

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Back to the Washington Miscreant. We start with Josh Kraushaar from the left/liberal National Journal. You know things are bad when even liberals can see what a disaster this president has become. Imagine policies so dumb both parties in congress will soon unite in opposition.

Throughout the contentious debate between the White House and Congress over the Iran nuclear negotiations, one important piece of the equation has been largely overlooked: American public opinion. If voters were confident that President Obama was striking a good deal with Iran that would prevent Tehran from getting nuclear weapons, he’d have little trouble getting support from the legislative branch.

But the reason the president is facing such bipartisan backlash is that an overwhelming number of voters are deeply worried about the direction of the negotiations. Think about how rare, in these polarized times, mobilizing a veto-proof majority of congressional Republicans and Democrats is for any significant legislation. Yet despite all the distractions, Congress is close to achieving that goal: requiring the administration to go to Congress for approval of any deal. …

… History has shown that Obama is willing to ignore public opinion to accomplish his goals even when it’s against his own political interest. The ends, in the White House’s view, ultimately justify the means.

When Scott Brown won Edward Kennedy’s deeply Democratic Senate seat in Massachusetts by running against the president’s proposed health care plan, Obama forged ahead with polarizing legislation that is dogging his administration to this very day. Even though his advisers warned him against issuing any executive order on immigration before the 2014 midterms—citing battleground-state polling showing it would be highly unpopular—he pursued it anyway after his party lost nine Senate seats. In his postelection press conference, Obama copped that he cares as much about the views of the people who didn’t vote, rather than citing the decisive rebuke from those who went to the polls to reject the direction he has pursued.

On Iran, Obama’s behavior toward the people’s representatives in Congress is even more dismissive. Knowing how widespread the opposition is in Congress, the administration is looking to bypass the Senate’s role in weighing in on a deal. It’s a position that has alienated him even from usually reliable allies such as Sen. Tim Kaine. …

… Being so dismissive of public opinion is a dangerous game to play, especially when it comes to foreign policy. For all his mistakes in conducting the Iraq War, former President George W. Bush secured a bipartisan congressional authorization for declaring war against Iraq, working to rally public support in 2003 to win that approval.

Obama views that equation backward: Getting the outcome he wants, and then attacking his opponents for not going along with him. It certainly hasn’t proved to be a healthy process domestically. Now he’s trying to extend that approach to the international stage.

Jonathan Tobin thinks we have had enough of amateurs in the White House. 

Last week, our Seth Mandel wrote an interesting piece about the way radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt might shape the 2016 Republican presidential contest both by hosting a GOP debate and through his probing no-holds-barred interviews with the contenders. Yesterday, as if acting on cue to prove Seth’s point, Hewitt had Dr. Ben Carson on his show in what should be considered one of the first real tests of the likely candidate’s mettle. Rather than lob softballs at the good doctor as most conservative talkers would do, Hewitt not only asked tough questions but paid particular attention to what was likely to be Carson’s weak spot: foreign policy. The results were illuminating and should alert those right-wing populists who think Carson is ready for the presidency that he is anything but.

A famed neurosurgeon, Carson is surely as intelligent as anybody who’s ever run for president. He’s not completely ignorant about foreign policy and seems to be a supporter of a strong America and an opponent of terrorism. But he was soon tripped up by faulty knowledge of some basic facts about the world and history. Though quick to offer opinions about what to do about Russia, Carson didn’t know that the Baltic States are already NATO members. When asked to identify the roots of Islamic terrorism he replied by citing the Biblical conflict between Jacob and his brother Esau, failing to realize that Islam is only 1,400 years old and not “thousands” as he claimed. He also cited the possibility that Shia and Sunni Muslims would unite against the United States when in fact the two factions are at each other’s throats in a conflict that is fueling Iran’s quest for regional hegemony.

Carson says he’s planning on studying the issues more closely in the future and seems to regard this as a minor detail that can be corrected but as Hewitt said:

“I want to be respectful in posing this. But I mean, you wouldn’t expect me to become a neurosurgeon in a couple of years. And I wouldn’t expect you to be able to access and understand and collate the information necessary to be a global strategist in a couple of years. Is it fair for people to worry that you just haven’t been in the world strategy long enough to be competent to imagine you in the Oval Office deciding these things? I mean, we’ve tried an amateur for the last six years and look what it got us. …”

David Harsanyi posts on the left’s ugly Israel freakout. 

After years of ginned-up conflict, Barack Obama has finally found a pretext to change the contours of the United States-Israel alliance. Israel’s policies might not be changing, but the administration will “reevaluate” the relationship, anyway.

POLITICO reports that Obama may, among other things, stop shielding Israel from international pressure at the United Nations. So Americans can look forward to joining Sudan or Yemen—feel free to pick any autocratic dump, really—in condemning Jews for living in their historic homeland and relying on democratic institutions rather than a consensus at the United Nation to decide their fate.

So our morally chaotic foreign policy is coming to a predictable climax. At least on this issue. Obama, with no more elections to run, will now use these threats to pressure Israel into compliance on an Iran deal that looks more dangerous every day. That’s not surprising. What is, though, is how self-proclaimed Zionists have co-opted some of the most absurd justifications for throwing Israel to the wolves. …

Michael Goodwin says Israel should be aware of obama.

First he comes for the banks and health care, uses the IRS to go after critics, politicizes the Justice Department, spies on journalists, tries to curb religious freedom, slashes the military, throws open the borders, doubles the debt and nationalizes the Internet.

He lies to the public, ignores the Constitution, inflames race relations and urges Latinos to punish Republican “enemies.” He abandons our ­allies, appeases tyrants, coddles ­adversaries and uses the Crusades as an excuse for inaction as Islamist terrorists slaughter their way across the Mideast.

Now he’s coming for Israel. ..

… Against the backdrop of the tsunami of trouble he has unleashed, Obama’s pledge to “reassess” America’s relationship with Israel cannot be taken lightly. Already paving the way for an Iranian nuke, he is hinting he’ll also let the other anti-Semites at TurtleBay have their way. That could mean American support for punitive Security Council resolutions or for Palestinian statehood initiatives. It could mean both, or something worse.

Whatever form the punishment takes, it will aim to teach Bibi Netanyahu never again to upstage him. And to teach Israeli voters never again to elect somebody Obama doesn’t like.

Apologists and wishful thinkers, including some Jews, insist Obama real­izes that the special relationship between Israel and the United States must prevail and that allowing too much daylight between friends will encourage enemies.

Those people are slow learners, or, more dangerously, deny-ists.

If Obama’s six years in office teach us anything, it is that he is impervious to appeals to good sense. …

Kevin Williamson has an interesting post on Arabs voting in Israel.

In Reihan’s post, this from the New York Times jumped out at me:

“Arab voters are streaming in huge quantities to the polling stations.”

It is impossible to imagine a Jordan or a Syria or a country pretty much anywhere else in the Middle East in which a journalist might write of Jewish voters: “They were being bused in in droves.”

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Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace and it’s director for 15 years writes on why he is a climate change skeptic. 

I am skeptical humans are the main cause of climate change and that it will be catastrophic in the near future. There is no scientific proof of this hypothesis, yet we are told “the debate is over” and “the science is settled.”

My skepticism begins with the believers’ certainty they can predict the global climate with a computer model. The entire basis for the doomsday climate change scenario is the hypothesis increased atmospheric carbon dioxide due to fossil fuel emissions will heat the Earth to unlivable temperatures.

In fact, the Earth has been warming very gradually for 300 years, since the Little Ice Age ended, long before heavy use of fossil fuels. Prior to the Little Ice Age, during the Medieval Warm Period, Vikings colonized Greenland and Newfoundland, when it was warmer there than today. And during Roman times, it was warmer, long before fossil fuels revolutionized civilization.

The idea it would be catastrophic if carbon dioxide were to increase and average global temperature were to rise a few degrees is preposterous. …

The Wall Street Journal reviews James McPherson’s new look at the Civil War. There is some new in this, and it is also worth being reminded of what an unmitigated disaster our country produced as it joined the world in abolishing slavery. The anti-slavery movement in Great Britain spread its gospel to all areas of the globe touched by British power. Even Russia freed the serfs peacefully. But not here. Not only were 750,000 killed, but the framework was created for the apparatus of the modern state. One form of slavery was abolished; to be replaced by another. 

The shooting will have been over for a century and a half this spring, but the casualties keep mounting. As recently as a decade ago the best estimates of the soldiers killed in the Civil War put the number at 600,000; today’s scholarship has increased the toll to three quarters of a million. That was 2.4% of the American population when the war began. As James M. McPherson observes in his brisk and engrossing book, “The War That Forged a Nation,” if the same percentage of Americans were killed in a war today, “the number of war dead would be almost 7.5 million.”

But the appalling mortality rate is hardly the only reason the war lives on in our culture. Mr. McPherson sees the war as lying at the heart—and the midpoint—of the American past, a terrible clarification of the ideals on which the country had been established in 1776. “Founded on a charter that had declared all men created equal with an equal title to liberty,” the author writes, America had by the 1850s “become the largest slaveholding country in the world,” an irony that vexes us even today, so long after Appomattox.

Mr. McPherson has been writing about this war for 50 years, and in “The War That Forged a Nation” he distills a lifetime of scrupulous scholarship into 12 essays—two new, the others extensively revised from previously published versions. Yet the book has none of the haphazard feel of an anthology, and readers will finish it with the sense that they have received a succinct history of the whole struggle, as well as numerous fresh and occasionally controversial observations. …

OK, we know the following post from Watts Up With That is almost unreadable. But the main thing is to report that no tornadoes have occurred so far in the month of March, That’s a notable event so the post is included. But, you don’t have to try to read it now that you know the one important fact.

The US tornado count for March 2015? Zero. That’s right, so far this month there have been no tornadoes reported in the U.S. — this is only the second time this has happened since 1950, according to Weather Channel meteorologist Greg Forbes.  “We are in uncharted territory with respect to lack of severe weather,” Greg Carbin, a meteorologist at NOAA, said in a statement. “This has never happened in the record of [Storm Prediction Center] watches dating back to 1970.” …

March Madness will be happening through the beginning of April. Slate provided a guide on how to fake your way thru.

So everyone in your office is talking about the NCAA Tournament, but you don’t know the difference between John Calipari and calamari? (One is a slimy bottom-feeder; the other is squid.) Fear not! Your friends at Slate are here with a cheat sheet to help you fake your way through the early stages of the tournament. 

Midwest Region

Talking points: College basketball purists hate Kentucky coach John Calipari for building his teams around so-called one-and-done players who leave school as soon as they become eligible for the NBA draft. These people are assuredly aghast at the chance that the top-ranked Wildcats, who went 34–0 this year, might end up running the tournament and posting a perfect season, thus validating Calipari’s tactics to those who claim he doesn’t do things “the right way.” Talk these people off the ledge by noting that this year’s Kentucky squad relies heavily on veteran players like junior forward Willie Cauley-Stein and sophomore guards—and identical twins—Aaron and Andrew Harrison. Then push them back up on that ledge by noting that collegiate amateurism is a farce and that in a system that’s already ethically bankrupt, “the right way” is any way that wins. …

East Region

Talking points: While the first-seeded Villanova Wildcats haven’t lost a game since Jan. 19, you know that the team to watch in the East is Virginia. The second-seeded Cavaliers don’t score a lot, but they play a smothering help defense that leaves opponents desperate. Coach Tony Bennett’s “pack line” scheme is designed to minimize paint scoring while forcing low-percentage jumpers, and it’s very effective. Feel free to yell “Defense wins championships” at the top of your lungs whenever the Cavaliers force their opponents to take an ugly outside shot. You can also feel free to croon a few bars of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” whenever the coach is shown on TV. It’s not the same Tony Bennett, but that joke doesn’t wear thin until like the fifth or sixth time. …

More on the NCAA tournament as a Louisville fan faces up to the thuggery. Story from the WSJ.

This was supposed to be myannualcolumn for taunting the gimmick-riddled realm of Kentucky basketball.

Then three weeks ago, a shock came across my Twitter feed. The starting point guard for my hometown squad—Louisville—was charged with raping two women in one night.

The accusation rattled me to an extent I did not anticipate, forcing a difficult reckoning: Perhaps this team I held so dearly really was no different from the rest of college basketball, a sport of collapsing moral norms.

Energized by winning, I had grown desensitized to the sport’s rolling scandals, the billions of dollars, the towering coaches’ salaries. The Cardinals brought me pure joy, most recently in 2013 when they won the national championship. But something cumulative, something disgusted, emerged after those allegations.

What does it mean to be a fan in 2015? Does being loyal mean being unquestioning? In fact, does being a fan require willful ignorance? …

ZME Science posts on salt and how it is mined or extracted.

Salt is one of the most common and yet most controversial substances on Earth – you can’t really live without it, but too much of it might kill you. It used to be very expensive, now it’s really cheap, and most of it is used for industrial purposes. It’s in the foods we eat, in the planetary oceans, and in us… but where does it come from? …

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Peter Wehner posts on Netanyahu’s historic win and obama’s humiliating loss. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stunning victory yesterday — polls at the end of last week had people writing off his chances — means he will become only the second person to be elected prime minister for a third term (the other being Israel’s founder David Ben-Gurion). “King Bibi” has established himself as one of the dominant figures in the history of the modern state of Israel. Mr. Netanyahu is hardly a person without flaws. But for those of us who admire his toughness and moral clarity on world events — and who appreciate his obvious love for his nation and for ours — it was a splendid turn of events.

As for the current occupant of the White House, it was a disastrous one.

Barack Obama has an obsessive animosity when it comes to Prime Minister Netanyahu, which he has demonstrated time and again. So much so that Obama and his aides did everything they could to influence the Israeli election, from smearing Mr. Netanyahu — referring to him as a “coward” and a “chickens***”  …

John Podhoretz has more on Bibi’s win and the American president’s loss.

… The president (or his team) shipped close campaign aides to Israel to help Bibi’s opponents, and one State Department-funded group helped coordinate the line of attack.

The strategists going after him figured out that the key to the election was to stimulate what might be called “Bibi exhaustion” in the electorate. Their approach was to remind centrist voters of Bibi’s failure to do anything about the nation’s spiraling cost-of-living crisis, which had helped bring hundreds of thousands of Israelis into the streets in mass protests in 2011.

It worked. A bit. The Zionist Union won something like 24 seats, an improvement for its core Labor Party from 15 seats just two years ago. But the thing is, Israel’s left doesn’t have any answers to the nation’s pressing problems either — and is seen as too ready to capitulate on hard-core defense and security issues.

So, in the final days of the election, trapped in his own backfield, the Zionist Union coming hard upon him as Obama and his minions cheered from the skyboxes, Bibi eluded its grasp and made his move. Love him or hate him, you have to admit that Bibi pulled off a pretty spectacular piece of footwork in the most exciting election finish I can remember.

More from WSJ Editors.

… The victory is a remarkable personal triumph for Mr. Netanyahu, who is now Israel’s second longest-serving Prime Minister after David Ben-Gurion. He gambled that he could assemble a more stable center-right coalition, as well as by giving a high-stakes speech to the U.S. Congress on Iran two weeks before the election, and in the final days stressing above all the security themes that must be Israel’s abiding concern.

Mr. Netanyahu and Likud were trailing in the polls in the final week as the opposition stressed the rising cost of food and housing and an economy that had slowed to about 3% growth from near 6% in 2010. But in the closing days Mr. Netanyahu played up that foreigners (read: President Obama) wanted him defeated, …

Jennifer Rubin posts on President Petulant.

… At this point, Obama’s gross pettiness and rudeness are there for all to see. There is little argument that he has been trying to oust Netanyahu, creating a federal case out of a speech and dispensing aides to badmouth him on background to docile reporters. Obama obviously was a “loser” in one sense, but unlike the real loser (Herzog), Obama cannot bear to call and congratulate the elected leader of the Jewish state. This is not just an insult to Netanyahu, but to the democratic country that elected him. For goodness sake, Obama has called Vladimir Putin to congratulate him after an election widely believed to be fraudulent.

There can be little doubt why relations are so poor. Obama shows more deference to the unelected dictatorships in China, Russia and Iran than he does to our closest Middle East ally. Unfortunately, that message rightly or wrongly is received by our foes that even when it comes to such an ally, the U.S. administration will kick its “friend” to the curb. That communication does more to weaken our bargaining hand than does a letter from 47 senators — which actually tried to impress on the Iranians they had to give us a better deal to get Congress on board.

There is no word as to whether Hillary Clinton has sent her congratulations. But it is clear she has decided to embrace the Obama foreign policy. With that goes the willingness to snub and undercut friends in search of deals with foes who will not keep their word. Nothing could speak more plainly about this administration than the Obama post-election sulking.

This is a good spot for a post from Mark Steyn on a lawyer who was killed in Pakistan. Remember the doctor who helped us find Bin Laden? Well, his lawyer was just gunned down in Peshawar.  

… The doctor is in jail because he’s a friend of America. The lawyer is dead because he’s a friend of a friend of America. How come the United States could plan a flawless operation to bust into Osama’s compound and put a bullet in him, but it couldn’t do a thing for the operation’s indispensable human intelligence?

This is usually the point where I quote the great Bernard Lewis’ words when we chanced to be on a panel discussion a few years back – that America risked being seen as harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend. And so it goes, from Iran to the Islamic State to the morgue of the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar.

Andrew Malcolm with late night humor.

Gov. Scott Walker at the Gridiron Dinner: “Hillary Clinton isn’t here tonight. When I asked why, I was told you couldn’t afford her.”

“When Jeb Bush was governor in Florida, he had to deal with a left-wing dictator just 90 miles from his border. I can relate: I have the same thing with Rahm Emanuel.”

“The staff exodus in this administration has begun. Pretty soon, the only one left reporting to Valerie Jarrett will be President Obama.”

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Streetwise Professor posts on the strange juxtaposition of the president, who blew up the Iraqi Status of Forces Agreement because the Iraqi Parliament had not approved it. Now the same idiot is saying our legislature is not entitled to comment on his cave to the Iranians.

@libertylynx points out a very interesting contrast. The awful developments in Iraq over the last several years, most notably the rampage of Isis and the dramatic expansion of Iranian influence in the country, are directly attributable to Obama’s decision to withdraw all US military forces.  He did so after failing to negotiate a Status of Forces agreement with the Maliki government. This occurred primarily because of a particular demand that Obama made of Maliki: namely, that the Iraqi premier get his parliament’s approval of any agreement. Obama stated that such approval was necessary to make the deal credible and viable. He said legislative buy in was essential. Of course, this did not happen, and almost certainly Obama knew it would not happen. This gave him the pretext to bug out.

Fast forward 3-4 years. Whereas Obama had insisted on Iraqi legislative approval of a deal with the US, now Obama is dead set against letting the American legislative branch have any say whatsoever in a deal with Iran. So much for the need for legislative approval to give a deal credibility.

Obama obviously has no principled view of the role of the legislature in foreign policy. He didn’t want a Status of Forces agreement, so he insisted on Iraqi legislative approval because he knew it would not be forthcoming. He desperately wants a deal with Iran, so he adamantly opposes American legislative approval because he knows it is not likely to happen. His views on legislative involvement in diplomacy are not principled, but merely instrumental and change with the circumstances. …

Now we learn from The One that the rise of ISIS is George Bush’s fault! Is there a more contemptible person in DC? Pajamas Media has the story.

OBAMA: “Two things. One is ISIL is a direct outgrowth of al Qaeda in Iraq that grew out of our invasion which is an example of unintended consequences — which is why we should generally aim before we shoot.”

I never saw such a classless American president. He knows perfectly well that President George W. Bush won’t defend himself, because he — unlike Obama — does have a sense of decorum. So Obama quickly tries to put the blame for his own failures on Bush.

This isn’t about left versus right, but about being a gentleman rather than a bore. It’s clear which one Obama is.

Of course he isn’t just rude, he’s also lying. George W. Bush made some tragic mistakes, but ISIS’ rise is all on Obama. He was informed about the group’s potential a full year before it started its reign of terror, yet did nothing.

Ron Christie writes on Ferguson and how, as always, President Agitator made things worse.

… The fact is, most Americans never should have even heard about a shooting involving Michael Brown and police officer Darren Wilson. Every day in communities large and small, criminals commit crimes that elicit interaction from the police. In the instant case, it is a fact that Michael Brown committed a crime in a small town on August 9, 2014, failed to heed Officer Wilson’s instructions, and was shot to death when the officer thought his life was in danger. The shooting never should have happened—a young man never should have committed a crime and never should have rushed at a police officer.

Sadly, this incident provided the perfect opportunity for those who think that America is inherently racist and permanently ensconced in a 1965 Selma, Alabama, mindset with an opportunity: an opportunity to declare that a racist cop had gunned down an innocent black youth as the teen shouted “Hands up, Don’t Shoot”—a fictional account that never happened.

On matters of race involving local police investigations, President Obama has not been shy about injecting himself into the narrative while shaping the desired outcomes. In 2009 when Harvard Professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates had a disagreement with a Cambridge police officer outside of his home leading to his arrest, the president opined that the officer “acted stupidly.” Never mind that Mr. Gates didn’t have his keys and was thought to be breaking into a home by the police officer in question. What I found revealing at the time is that the president offered the Gates incident as showing how “race remains a factor in this society today” when the facts revealed race had nothing to do with the interaction between a professor and a police officer.

Turning to the ginned-up cauldron of race that is now Ferguson, the president was once again quick to offer his opinion on local matter on which he knew nothing of the facts at hand. …

Turning to another disgusting DC denizen, John Fund writes on Hillary’s cover team.

Hillary Clinton explains her use of a private e-mail account and a secret server to conduct State Department business as a matter of “convenience.” But congressional investigators are almost as interested in the fact that two of her closest advisers, personal aide Huma Abedin and chief of staff Cheryl Mills, also had e-mail addresses on the secret server. Were they also interested in “convenience” or intent on shielding their work from public-record requests?

For many years, the two women have served as Hillary’s inner-palace guard. In turn, she has gone the extra mile to keep them close. In 2012, Abedin was granted status as a “special government employee,” allowing her to collect a State Department paycheck while skirting disclosure rules about her holding down lucrative private-sector jobs — among them work with the controversial Clinton-family foundation.

Cheryl Mills’s link with Mrs. Clinton goes back even further than Abedin’s. The 49-year-old Stanford Law graduate joined Team Clinton before Bill Clinton was even sworn in as president in 1993, serving as deputy general counsel for his transition team. …

… The Post noted that Mills had “endeared herself to the Clintons with her never-back-down, share-nothing, don’t-give-an-inch approach,” the same style prevalent today in Hillary’s e-mail controversy.

And that style is also prevalent in the way that various officials seem to have exerted efforts to ensure that the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi won’t embarrass Hillary. Ray Maxwell, a former assistant secretary of state for North Africa, has told reporters that Mills was one of several Clinton aides who on a Sunday afternoon “separated” out Benghazi-related documents that might put Clinton or her team in a “bad light.”  …

George Shultz was lately learning us about what Reagan would have done on the climate. Steve Hayward begs to differ and reminds Shultz of a few things.

I love George Shultz, Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state and one of the heroes of the endgame of the Cold War. He began every meeting with a Soviet official with a specific human rights complaint about a dissident the Soviets had locked up, just to get under their skin and keep the pressure on. He was magnificent in his meetings with the Soviets after the shootdown of KAL 007, and in his one-on-one’s with Gorbachev in the Kremlin. He was the ideal complement to and instrument for Reagan’s Cold War grand strategy. His memoir of those years, Turmoil and Triumph, is well worth reading.

So it is a regrettable duty to disagree with his Washington Post article Friday entitled “A Reagan Approach to Climate Change,” in which Shultz argues that Reagan would have embraced a revenue-neutral carbon tax “as an insurance policy” against climate change because Reagan embraced the Montreal Protocol that eliminated chloro-flourocarbons (CFCs) in order to reduce damage to the stratospheric ozone layer.

Leave aside the carbon tax argument for a moment. One of the greatest mistakes of the climate change enterprise was adopting the Montreal Protocol as a diplomatic and policy model for greenhouse gases, and Shultz perpetuates this mistake, even as some of the smarter environmentalists (yes, there are a few) have come to understand this mistake. …

… I once heard Shultz tell the story that when oil prices fell sharply in the mid-1980s, and hence gasoline prices went down to something like 79 cents a gallon, he proposed to Reagan that it was a perfect time to embrace a 50-cent-a-gallon gas tax that would promote conservation and reduce the federal budget deficit. Reagan, he recalled, smiled in a way that made clear to Shultz that Reagan wasn’t about to consider the idea for a second. And neither would Reagan come anywhere near a carbon tax. I’m wondering if Shultz’s pal Tom Steyer wrote this article for him?

Filed under “you just can’t make it up.” We learn from Power Line that one day last week the president and the first lady went to LA on separate f**king flights!!!!!!

It’s been nearly a month since Glenn Reynolds voiced his recurring refrain: “I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER GODDAMN THING ABOUT MY CARBON FOOTPRINT.” Glenn reserves the refrain for links to stories reporting egregious overconsumption of carbon-based fuels by liberal hypocrites concerned about your contributions to  climate change.

Glenn’s refrain comes to mind in connection with the recent story reporting “Obama, first lady fly to Los Angeles on same day but take separate flights.” The linked story also touches on the costs incurred and would probably elicit a bonus reference to Louis XIV or Marie Antoinette by Glenn as well. Let’s go with the graphic below.

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

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We have a bunch of stuff on fossil fuels and how they will save the world. WSJ Weekend Essay is first. 

The environmental movement has advanced three arguments in recent years for giving up fossil fuels: (1) that we will soon run out of them anyway; (2) that alternative sources of energy will price them out of the marketplace; and (3) that we cannot afford the climate consequences of burning them.

These days, not one of the three arguments is looking very healthy. In fact, a more realistic assessment of our energy and environmental situation suggests that, for decades to come, we will continue to rely overwhelmingly on the fossil fuels that have contributed so dramatically to the world’s prosperity and progress.

In 2013, about 87% of the energy that the world consumed came from fossil fuels, a figure that—remarkably—was unchanged from 10 years before. This roughly divides into three categories of fuel and three categories of use: oil used mainly for transport, gas used mainly for heating, and coal used mainly for electricity.

Over this period, the overall volume of fossil-fuel consumption has increased dramatically, but with an encouraging environmental trend: a diminishing amount of carbon-dioxide emissions per unit of energy produced. The biggest contribution to decarbonizing the energy system has been the switch from high-carbon coal to lower-carbon gas in electricity generation.

On a global level, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar have contributed hardly at all to the drop in carbon emissions, and their modest growth has merely made up for a decline in the fortunes of zero-carbon nuclear energy. …

 

… Although the world has certainly warmed since the 19th century, the rate of warming has been slow and erratic. There has been no increase in the frequency or severity of storms or droughts, no acceleration of sea-level rise. Arctic sea ice has decreased, but Antarctic sea ice has increased. At the same time, scientists are agreed that the extra carbon dioxide in the air has contributed to an improvement in crop yields and a roughly 14% increase in the amount of all types of green vegetation on the planet since 1980.

That carbon-dioxide emissions should cause warming is not a new idea. In 1938, the British scientist Guy Callender thought that he could already detect warming as a result of carbon-dioxide emissions. He reckoned, however, that this was “likely to prove beneficial to mankind” by shifting northward the climate where cultivation was possible.

Only in the 1970s and 1980s did scientists begin to say that the mild warming expected as a direct result of burning fossil fuels—roughly a degree Celsius per doubling of carbon-dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere—might be greatly amplified by water vapor and result in dangerous warming of two to four degrees a century or more. That “feedback” assumption of high “sensitivity” remains in virtually all of the mathematical models used to this day by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.

And yet it is increasingly possible that it is wrong. As Patrick Michaels of the libertarian Cato Institute has written, since 2000, 14 peer-reviewed papers, published by 42 authors, many of whom are key contributors to the reports of the IPCC, have concluded that climate sensitivity is low because net feedbacks are modest. They arrive at this conclusion based on observed temperature changes, ocean-heat uptake and the balance between warming and cooling emissions (mainly sulfate aerosols). On average, they find sensitivity to be 40% lower than the models on which the IPCC relies. …

 

… We should encourage the switch from coal to gas in the generation of electricity, provide incentives for energy efficiency, get nuclear power back on track and keep developing solar power and electricity storage. We should also invest in research on ways to absorb carbon dioxide from the air, by fertilizing the ocean or fixing it through carbon capture and storage. Those measures all make sense. And there is every reason to promote open-ended research to find some unexpected new energy technology.

The one thing that will not work is the one thing that the environmental movement insists upon: subsidizing wealthy crony capitalists to build low-density, low-output, capital-intensive, land-hungry renewable energy schemes, while telling the poor to give up the dream of getting richer through fossil fuels.

Also from the Wall Street Journal we learn a new wave of fracked oil is held in reserve by producers and will hit the market when prices stabilize.

The ocean of oil from U.S. shale drove crude prices back toward six-year lows Friday, and American energy companies say they are poised to unleash a further flood that would keep prices from returning to lofty levels for a long time.

The International Energy Agency reinforced the prospect of a prolonged slump in energy prices Friday, saying U.S. oil output was surprisingly strong in February and rapidly filling all available storage tanks. The Paris-based energy watchdog said this could lead to another sharp drop in crude prices, which fell by about 50% late last year.

The report sent oil prices tumbling around the world, with the global benchmark Brent crude falling $2.41 to $54.67 a barrel. The U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate lost $2.21 to settle at $44.84, less than 40 cents above a six-year low it reached in late January. Last summer, both traded well above $100.

It was only last month that the IEA said a price recovery seemed inevitable because the U.S. production boom was likely to cool. Instead, “U.S. supply so far shows precious little sign of slowing down,” the agency said Friday. “Quite to the contrary, it continues to defy expectations.”

Independent shale-oil producers have slashed their planned 2015 spending on drilling by $50 billion, compared with last year’s, but have promised to increase production by focusing on their best oil fields. Total U.S. crude oil production hit a high of 9.4 million barrels a day in the week ended March 6, according to federal data.

Now many are adopting a new strategy that will allow them to pump even more crude as soon as oil prices begin to rise. They are drilling wells but holding off on hydraulic fracturing, or forcing in water and chemicals to free oil from shale formations. The delay in the start of fracking lets companies store oil in the ground in a way that enables them to tap it unusually quickly if they wish—and flood the market again. …

Walter Issacson writes on innovation.

… Some of those advances seem almost trivial, but progress comes not only in great leaps but also from hundreds of small steps. Take for example punch cards, like those Babbage saw on [weaving] looms and proposed incorporating into his Analytical Engine. Perfecting the use of punch cards for computers came about because Herman Hollerith, an employee of the U.S. Census Bureau, was appalled that it took close to eight years to manually tabulate the 1880 census. He resolved to automate the 1890 count.

Drawing on the way that railway conductors punched holes in various places on a ticket in order to indicate the traits of each passenger (gender, approximate height, age, hair color), Hollerith devised punch cards with twelve rows and twenty-four columns that recorded the salient facts about each person in the census. The cards were then slipped between a grid of mercury cups and a set of spring-loaded pins, which created an electric circuit wherever there was a hole. The machine could tabulate not only the raw totals but also combinations of traits, such as the number of married males or foreign-born females. Using Hollerith’s tabulators, the 1890 census was completed in one year rather than eight. It was the first major use of electrical circuits to process information, and the company that Hollerith founded became in 1924, after a series of mergers and acquisitions, the International Business Machines Corporation, or IBM.

One way to look at innovation is as the accumulation of hundreds of small advances, such as counters and punch-card readers. At places like IBM, which specialize in daily improvements made by teams of engineers, this is the preferred way to understand how innovation really happens. Some of the most important technologies of our era, such as the fracking techniques developed over the past six decades for extracting natural gas, came about because of countless small innovations as well as a few breakthrough leaps. …

Steve Hayward posts on the closing of SweetBriarCollege.

Along with the OU expulsions, the big story in higher education over the last week or so is the surprise announcement that Sweet Briar College will be closing its doors at the end of this academic year. Although the college as an endowment somewhere near $90 million, declining enrollment at the all-womens’ college has led the trustees to conclude that there is no future for a single-sex school out in rural Virginia. Sweet Briar’s fate is being heralded as a harbinger of the coming collapse of the “higher education bubble” (Glenn ReynoldsTM), especially small liberal arts colleges, which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.

But there is an amazing failure of imagination here—rooted in the institutional liberalism pervasive in higher ed—and a terrific opportunity for an educational entrepreneur.

One of the claims about why the college has no future is that its location is too remote from the attractions of urban civilization necessary for today’s students. Excuse me, but has anyone around Sweet Briar ever heard of Hillsdale College, which is much more remote than Sweet Briar, and yet thrives for the simple reason that it is self-consciously different (that is, conservative) from other liberal arts colleges.

So what if Sweet Briar had decided that instead of trying to compete head-to-head with Smith and Wellesley, they self-consciously set out to be the anti-Smith and anti-Wellesley? I have little doubt that a women’s college that advertised its deliberate rejection of the gender politics of “mainstream” womens’ educational institutions would have no shortage of applicants for admission.

This would have required an act of imagination on the part of Sweet Briar’s president, James F. Jones, Jr., and the trustees. But of course Jones is your typical mediocre liberal. …