HAPPY VALENTINE DAY!
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Justice Clarence Thomas: America Too Sensitive About Race
American society is more "conscious" of race than it was in the segregated south and during the early period of the civil rights struggle, U.S. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas told a college audience on Tuesday, Yahoo News reported.
Thomas told students at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, Fla., that he was saddened that America was more race conscious than it was in that earlier era.
He spoke of growing up as a Catholic and African American in Savannah, Ga., "the first black kid" to attend his all white school. "Rarely did the issue of race come up," Thomas said.
"Now, name a day it doesn't come up. Differences in race, differences in sex, somebody doesn't look at you right, somebody says something. Everybody is sensitive. If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I'd still be in Savannah. Every person in this room has endured a slight; every person. Somebody has said something that has hurt their feelings or did something to them – left them out."
The university is an interdenominational Christian faith-based school offering liberal arts and select professional studies.
Thomas said the shabbiest treatment he'd received was not from southern whites.
"The worst I have been treated was by northern liberal elites. The absolute worst I have ever been treated," said Thomas. "The worst things that have been done to me, the worst things that have been said about me — by northern liberal elites — not by the people of Savannah, Georgia."
Thomas also spoke of how faith played an important role in his job on the court.
"I don't know how an oath becomes meaningful unless you have faith. Because at the end you say, 'So help me God.' And a promise to God is different from a promise to anyone else."
Thomas, 65, is one of six Catholics on the court. There are three Jews and no Protestants. Nominated by president George H. W. Bush, he has served on the Supreme Court since 1991
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Last night two very bright and well informed friends joined me for drinks at our home then dinner at one of our clubs. We came together to discuss the nation's problems, to agree upon what they were and to hold another dinner meeting to see if we have answers.
One of my friends brought me a book to read entitled; "Non Labels - A Shared Vision for A Stronger America. Before I turned in, I read half the book and finished it this evening. Basically the message is that we are a divided nation and will solve our problems only if we come together in pursuit of 'shared common goals' because that will focus attention on what we agree with and not where we disagree.
The best article was written by Professor Michael E. Porter, entitled: "America's Test;: A National Strategy For National Competitiveness."
At the present time Obama is focusing on sharing a shrinking pie for cynical political gain rather than growing the pie for the nation's benefit..
The best article was written by Professor Michael E. Porter, entitled: "America's Test;: A National Strategy For National Competitiveness."
At the present time Obama is focusing on sharing a shrinking pie for cynical political gain rather than growing the pie for the nation's benefit..
The Non Label organization is young, was founded by Jon Huntsman, who ran for nomination for president on the Republican ticket, and Junior Senator Joe Manchin, from West Virginia . Both were former governors and worked together in the past.
These are my thoughts regarding our nation's problems (no particular order of importance) which need identifying and then solving by agreeing on them.
1) The national debt and its impact on debasing our currency.
Debase a nation's currency and you debase that nation's values and character.
Failing to pay for current expenditures is immoral.
Failing to pay for current expenditures is immoral.
2) Government intrusion into the family
This has led to what one of my friends described as unwanted or out of wedlock pregnancies and children whose prospective futures are less fortunate and secure.
3) Education
We no longer offer a curriculum that is challenging and vocation oriented . We have allowed unions to dumb down our nation as well as PC'ers to introduce a lot of administrative crap and self esteem nonsense. Read the posting by Prager in a previous memo. If so, what did you think?
4) Size and integrity of government
The greatest threat to our Republic is the decline in support of government. Therefore, it is imperative that Government succeed in its endeavors so citizens will have confidence.. Smaller government, with less bureaucracies, is likely to succeed better than big bloated government.
Also, smaller government is less expensive, therefore, less debt incurred and intrusive threat to our freedoms.
Furthermore, trust in government integrity is critical. The current administration's many lies and spinning of information undercuts this trust. (See 1 below.)
Big government, its failures, its gum shoe intrusiveness and many lies have lead to disrespect for and distrust of authority.
Getting American citizens to feel better about their government should begin with simplification of how we raise revenue from taxes. The current system is too Rube Goldberg, too complex, favors special interests and thus is despised by most Americans. Furthermore, less than half of American pay any income tax and thus they have no skin in the game for improving government. This is a very unhealthy condition.
The recent IRS scandal borders on Himmler's Gestapo and is dangerous because it under-girds free speech and protest (even Dr. Carson agrees.). This is why Obama and Holder are dangerous and why their brand of unconstitutional leadership is divisive and destructive. It borders on tyrannical and arrogant governance.
5) National character
I do not know how we return to what it means to be an American but we must recapture the American character which I always thought embodied these ingredients:
Patriotism, love of country, charity, self-responsibility, respect for your fellow person, positive can do attitude, willingness to work hard to improve one's lot, a belief in some higher being or force, if you will, You get the point. (See 1a below.)
6) Money and Campaigns
The Supreme Court has ruled free speech allows for basically unlimited money to become part of the campaign process. Incumbents spend an increasing amount of time raising money for the next campaign and become beholden to their moneyed contributors. This is dangerous, makes it more difficult for challengers to succeed and the high per cent of politicians being returned to office is unhealthy.
If we can solve these six pernicious trends, then I will regain a positive stance but if we continue along our current path I believe America will simply fade and become another nation on the dust bowl heap of history - big, still powerful but a wisp of our former self.
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Palestinians remain preoccupied with funding terrorism and teaching hatred in their school curriculum. (See 2 below.)
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America's plight vis a vis the losing war against al Qaida. (See 3 below.)
Our declining credibility. (See 3a below.)
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Thinking the unthinkable! (See 4 below.)
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Next year's SIRC President's Dinner, John Podhoretz, weighs in on Obamacare. (See 5 below.)
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America's plight vis a vis the losing war against al Qaida. (See 3 below.)
Our declining credibility. (See 3a below.)
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Thinking the unthinkable! (See 4 below.)
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Next year's SIRC President's Dinner, John Podhoretz, weighs in on Obamacare. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1) Obama's Fate
By J.R. Dunn
It's no surprise that Barack Obama's authoritarian streak is revealing itself at last. It was always there; clearly apparent in his rhetoric (e.g., his envy of Chinese president Xi Jin-ping's powers), his abuse of executive orders, his threats against Congress, his sultan with fly-whisk attitudes toward his opposition, and even his vacations, which reek more of third-world trash gamboling on the Riviera than any American leader (George W. Bush settled his mind by clearing brush in Texas, Reagan at his ranch in Santa Barbara. Obama unfortunately finds the brush already cleared in Martha's Vineyard and Hawaii.) The sole question that remains is how anyone can deny it.
Suharto ran the country as his personal fiefdom for the next thirty-odd years. At the end of that period he had distinguished himself as possibly the most corrupt ruler in history, with a fortune of thirty billion plus stashed in various foreign banks. His avaricious family, which controlled most of the county's industry, pocketed at least as much. Under Suharto's control, Indonesia became notorious for its atrocities in West Irian and East Timor, at the same time meandering its way to a vague prosperity that in no way matched nearby Singapore and Malaysia. (To give Suharto due credit, he did not allow dogs to eat off the china.)
When he eventually turned his eyes toward politics, Obama gravitated to the single place in the United States that most resembles a third-world tyranny -- Chicago. Controlled for years by a single party, and for much of that period by a single family (the Daleys), Chicago embodies Indonesian corruption and authoritarianism (if not climate) to a point beyond the understanding of luckier Americans. (Among other techniques of control, when a Chicago precinct captain ascertains that a voter has cast his vote the wrong way, the miscreant's garbage cans -- owned by the city -- are confiscated, and he's left on his own to solve the problem of family waste disposal. Suharto never came up with anything more effective than this.)
So it's no surprise that Dinesh D'Souza should be facing heavy penalties for a "crime" that earns wrist-slaps for Democratic supporters, that the degradation of the IRS should be, not punished, but applauded and supported by the likes of Charles Schumer, that Bill DeBlasio should choose to punishhis own voters -- that is, inhabitants of the Upper East Side who made the error of voting against him in the primaries before coming around in the general election --by withholding the plows during the recent blizzard (as pure a piece of Suhartoism as you will find in this country), that Andrew Cuomo, son of America's foremost Thomas Aquinas scholar, should call for the removal of nearly half his state's population for thought crimes. They are following the example of their party leader, a boy who was raised among the wolves, who spent six years in one of the most odious political cultures of the mid-20th century. And we expect him, all grown up, to act as a true heir of Washington and Lincoln?
1a)The Uniting Principles Glenn Beck Should Have Talked About
By J.R. Dunn
It's no surprise that Barack Obama's authoritarian streak is revealing itself at last. It was always there; clearly apparent in his rhetoric (e.g., his envy of Chinese president Xi Jin-ping's powers), his abuse of executive orders, his threats against Congress, his sultan with fly-whisk attitudes toward his opposition, and even his vacations, which reek more of third-world trash gamboling on the Riviera than any American leader (George W. Bush settled his mind by clearing brush in Texas, Reagan at his ranch in Santa Barbara. Obama unfortunately finds the brush already cleared in Martha's Vineyard and Hawaii.) The sole question that remains is how anyone can deny it.
Obama comes by his attitude toward government honestly enough. Just before the 2012 election I published a piece here at AT analyzing Obama's political background. He spent most of his formative years in Indonesia, exposed almost exclusively to the influences of Indonesian culture -- Islam, mass public corruption, and a political system based on two-fisted authoritarianism. Obama's political heritage is rooted in the postwar Islamic strongman role pioneered by Gamel Abdul Nasser, the leader of Egypt from 1953 to 1970, and then refined by numerous other such figures, including Achmed Sukarno and Mohammed Suharto of Indonesia.
Sukarno was a colorful leader who controlled a populist coalition of the military, the peasants, and the intelligentsia (among them a powerful communist party), through a three-ring political circus in which the main attraction was Sukarno's never-ending one-man battle against the West. After nearly two decades of this, the country was in serious danger of going into the dumpster -- Sukarno had pulled Indonesia out of the UN and was kissing up to the Chinese, in the process turning ever larger sections of government over to the local communists. This lost him the military, always a mistake for a third-world strongman, and in 1965 things came to a head with a bungled coup (planned by whom? -- something that remains uncertain to this day) in which a number of military officers were murdered. The army struck back, and after a confused interlude featuring massacres across the country, the communists were out (most of them -- estimates range up to half a million -- dead), Sukarno was under house arrest, and General Suharto had ended up as maximum leader.
Suharto ran the country as his personal fiefdom for the next thirty-odd years. At the end of that period he had distinguished himself as possibly the most corrupt ruler in history, with a fortune of thirty billion plus stashed in various foreign banks. His avaricious family, which controlled most of the county's industry, pocketed at least as much. Under Suharto's control, Indonesia became notorious for its atrocities in West Irian and East Timor, at the same time meandering its way to a vague prosperity that in no way matched nearby Singapore and Malaysia. (To give Suharto due credit, he did not allow dogs to eat off the china.)
This was the political culture in which Barack Obama came to consciousness. This is the way of life he was first exposed to, and obviously enough, the way he thinks things should be. A single all-powerful ruler, lazy and with few demands on his time, his dictates carried out by a loyal cabal, a terrified and obedient opposition, total corruption, show initiatives that are meant solely as theater with no concreteresults expected, and levels of luxury unattainable even by the world's billionaires. This is the program he is attempting to carry out, the system he wishes to put in place. It is not communist, it is not socialist, it is not democratic, any more than Nasser, who probably used the word as often as Lenin, was a socialist. It is pure third-world authoritarianism. This is what half of the American electorate, largely consisting of Low Information Voter boobs assisted by mulish conservatives, put into office two times in a row in the sophisticated, technologically-advanced 21st century.
When he eventually turned his eyes toward politics, Obama gravitated to the single place in the United States that most resembles a third-world tyranny -- Chicago. Controlled for years by a single party, and for much of that period by a single family (the Daleys), Chicago embodies Indonesian corruption and authoritarianism (if not climate) to a point beyond the understanding of luckier Americans. (Among other techniques of control, when a Chicago precinct captain ascertains that a voter has cast his vote the wrong way, the miscreant's garbage cans -- owned by the city -- are confiscated, and he's left on his own to solve the problem of family waste disposal. Suharto never came up with anything more effective than this.)
All this raises two questions: the first, how a healthy polity could have elected such a creature. We will skip that for now, since I will shortly be laughing too hard to type.
The second, and more urgent is: how far can this go?
Many on the right insist that they know the answer to that: that it will go all the way, that the jackboots will begin stomping, the barbed wire will go up, the Constitution will vanish and the commonwealth, under the thumb of President-for-Life Obama the First, will subside into third-world lassitude, violence, and corruption.
All this is supposed to happen when Obama does two things: calls off any new elections and declares martial law. The kindest thing we can say about this thesis is that it was worked out in ignorance of the actual political and legal mechanics. (e.g., there is no provision for "calling off elections" or declaring martial law in federal statute. Obama would have to appeal to Congress for the first and the state governors for the second, in neither case with hopes of success.) We must not take counsel of our fears.
We need only ask ourselves how Obama's political mentor Mohammed Suharto would have ended up if he'd tried his game in the United States. Thirty years of absolute power would be unlikely; more like thirty years in Leavenworth. An uneducated medieval polity is the starting point for such a train of events, not the finishing point.
Which doesn't mean that we can rest easy; much unpleasantness can and will occur. Consider New York State. Andrew Cuomo governs downtown Albany and New York City. He pays attention to nothing else in the state -- the Mohawk Valley, the Finger Lakes, the Adirondacks, may as well not exist. He acts for two interfaced elites -- political in Albany and financial in NYC. The rest of the state is peasantry, without jobs, without hope, without a future, enabled to subsist by federal welfare programs.
Now, what in the world does this remind us of? What else is New York State but a temperate zone third-world country? (It even features the governorship handed off from father to son -- granted a brief interlude -- much as we see in such regimes.)
This is what the Democrats have in mind for the rest of the country. The prospect we're facing is not 1984, or Nazi Germany, or even Suharto's Indonesia. It is contemporary Argentina, controlled by elites, bouncing from one political extreme to the other, run by an ever more bizarre train of lunatics, with a government that relates to the people in much the same way that a parasite relates to its host.
Can this be stopped? Only if we begin acting like citizens of a republic, which may well be too much to ask.
All the same, I tend to view the world though the eyes of a novelist, in which seemingly unrelated events and activities -- the subplots -- inexorably intertwine over time to bring about a grand climax. Looking at the current political situation, I sense the approach of nemesis. Our antagonists have gone a little too far. They have said too much, have threatened too many people, and have done so in words that they can't back off from. How can Cuomo explain away his contempt for millions of citizens of his state? How can Schumer excuse his call for a government agency to act outside the law? How can Obama convince the country, in light of his trail of abuses and rhetoric, that he's just one more president like any other?
The simple answer is, they can't. They have been too defiant, have acted with too much arrogance, have been too blatant, too ugly, and have revealed too much. Now the balance must be restored, one way or another, with or without the cooperation of the political classes of this county -- and perhaps of any classes at all.
It will not be by revolution, or uprising, or a walkout by Congress, or a blazing speech by an opponent. It will come by way of something minor -- a curse overheard on the golf course, an insult thrown at a helpless citizen, a sick child denied treatment under ObamaCare. Then the collapse will come, like a sudden clash of cymbals. The Furies will be unleashed. In the same way that an avalanche is unleashed by a mere footstep, events will spin out of control, impossible to stop or direct. The forces have been building up for years. Eventually, they will burst forth. When that happens, there will be nothing human that can stop them. Study the fate of the Romanovs, the Hapsburgs, the Hashemites, and Soviets, the Ceaucescus, Qaddafi, Mubharak... and for that matter, Achmad Sukarno himself. The pattern is clear... the only question is how much time remains.
1a)The Uniting Principles Glenn Beck Should Have Talked About
By Wayne Baker
Incivility can be fun. It was for Glenn Beck, he recently admitted in a Fox News interview. Looking back on his career at Fox, he apologized for the divisiveness he promoted, wishing that he "could have talked about the uniting principles a little more." Rather than a conservative warrior in the culture wars, he revealed himself to be a culture war profiteer who enriched himself by supplying the conflict. And he's not the only one.
Are there uniting principles? Right now, millions of Americans are hoping we can heal our painful divisions. The good news, after extensive nationwide research, is that Americans share a wide range of core values. This newly released research, which I conducted though the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, shows that Americana have common ground around 10 core values. These values are strongly and widely held across demographic, religious, and political lines.
Rather than continuing to tear our communities apart with angry arguments, our leaders and media personalities could launch a new movement toward civil dialogue starting with these 10 values.
What are the 10? Respect for others -- for people of different faiths, races and ethnicities -- is one of them. Many Americans cite a lack of consideration for others as a big reason for moral decline in America, but the overwhelming majority of Americans put a high premium on respect and kindness.
Americans believe strongly in equal opportunity -- 90 percent of Americans endorse this value. Freedom is another core value. A founding ideal for the United States, freedom is not an abstraction for most Americans, but a value learned early in life.
Americans place a premium on security -- keeping the nation safe and secure from internal and external threats. This value competes with other core values, such as freedom and respect for others, as illustrated by the current controversies about mass electronic surveillance of American citizens.
Self-reliance and individualism is another value that has been part of American national identity since the founding, but it must be balanced with community. Part of that balance comes from another core value -- justice and fairness.
Other core values include getting ahead -- a "moral mandate" in America; thepursuit of happiness; symbolic patriotism, emotional attachment to symbols such as the flag and anthem; and critical patriotism, opposition to American policies by citizens who love the country and want it to live up to its high ideals.
The realities of American society can be at odds with core values. The chances of actually getting ahead, for example, are lower here than they are in several other countries. And, America is a leader in economic inequality, with the gap between rich and poor now at levels not seen since right before the Great Depression.
These 10 values are high ideals and many times we don't live up to them. But failure to achieve these values should not discourage us; rather, it should motivate us to strive even harder to realize them.
After so much anger and so many bitter words, is civil dialogue possible in our Wild West of digital media? The answer, surprisingly, is: Yes! As a social scientist, my research included promoting a daily online dialogue about values and hot-button issues in the news. Since 2008, this OurValues.org project has proven that rich, robust and civil dialogue is possible even on the thorniest issues of the day. The key is starting from an understanding of the core values we share -- rather than starting with the myth that Americans are divided into irreconcilable warring camps.
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2)PA allocates $46 million more
for terrorists in 2014
This is in addition to tens of millions the PA already gives
in salaries and other benefits
to terrorists in prison and released terrorists
PA's funding of terrorists is enabled by money
the US and European countries give to the PA
for salaries and its general budget
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Most Western countries have laws and regulations prohibiting support for terrorists or former terrorists. The US, the UK, Holland, Norway, Sweden and others have debated, proposed and/or passed laws or motions in parliament against giving the Palestinian Authority money that ends up in the hands of terrorists. In spite of their laws and their opposition, these countries continue to fund the PA's general budget, thereby paying tens of millions of dollars to terrorists as salaries and other payments.
Last week, the PA announced that it will be giving an additional $46 million a year to released prisoners, a category which includes hundreds of murderers of civilians. Since the PA cannot cover its monthly budget payments without Western aid, these additional payments to terrorists will also be facilitated both directly and indirectly by Western donor money to the PA.
The official announcement was made by the PA Minister of Prisoners' Affairs Issa Karake, who said that the PA government has approved a regulation of the Prisoners' Law that "is concerned with improving conditions for released [prisoners]," a regulation whose "budget... has been estimated at 160 million shekels a year."
This 160 million shekels ($46 million) for terrorists, including mass murderers, is made possible by international donors. This was made clear in the PA Minister's announcement. He explained that the PA was not able to fund this financial support for released prisoners in 2013 because of its "large budget deficit," so it will only start in 2014:
"Karake noted that the government has acknowledged the importance of the regulation and the need to implement it according to the rules. However, due to the large budget deficit and the PA's financial situation, establishing the budget, which has been estimated at 160 million shekels a year, has been postponed until April [2014]."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 6, 2014]
Significantly, the PA did not cover its 2013 budget without hundreds of millions of dollars from Western donors, tens of millions of which went directly into the bank accounts of terrorists. Since there have been no reports of massive improvements in the PA economy freeing it of the need to receive Western aid to pay its budget, clearly the PA is counting on Western donor money to facilitate this $46 million to terrorists as well.
In 2011, Palestinian Media Watch exposed that the PA pays high salaries to imprisoned terrorists. Similarly, the PA gives salaries, grants and other financial benefits to released terrorist prisoners. Since then, many European countries have condemned the PA's use of their money to pay terrorists. However, the PA responded to Western criticism by mocking European donors for wanting their money to remain "clean." In the words of the same PA Minister who announced the $46 million for released prisoners:
"The Europeans want their money that comes to us to remain clean - not to go to families of those they claim to be 'terrorists.' [They] need to renounce this occupation (Israeli) mentality. These [prisoners] are heroes, self-sacrificing fighters (fedayyeen), and fighters who fought so that we could live in dignity... These heroes, whom you [the audience] are applauding, must live in dignity, so that we will continue to hold our heads high. We appreciate the people of the revolution and are proud of them."
[Official PA TV Live, Nov. 4, 2013]
Although the PA has rejected the European demand not to fund terrorists, neither the US, the UK, Holland, Norway, Sweden or any other donors have announced over the last year a cessation of funding for PA salaries or the PA general budget, from which the PA pays the terrorists. It is therefore not surprising that the PA continues to use donor money as it pleases against donor wishes. In addition to paying salaries to terrorists, the PA uses donor money to glorify terrorist murderers, propagate libels demonizing Israel, promote violence and spread Antisemitism among its people [see PMW documentation]. To this, the PA has added and additional $46 million payment to terrorists, which will be paid by Western taxpayers in 2014.
The following is a longer excerpt of the report on the additional budget of $46 million that the PA has decided to allocate to imprisoned and released terrorists:
"[PA] Minister of Prisoners' Affairs Issa Karake said that it has been decided that the budget for the fifth regulation [of the Prisoners' Law] approved by the government will be set this coming April [2014]. [The fifth regulation] completes the remaining implementing regulations of the Prisoners' Law, and is concerned with improving conditions for released [prisoners]. This will be done as an appendix to the [general] budget, so its implementation will begin this year and [apply] retroactively.
Karake noted that the government has acknowledged the importance of the regulation and the need to implement it according to the rules. However, due to the large budget deficit and the PA's financial situation, establishing the budget, which has been estimated at 160 million shekels a year, has been postponed until April. [He added that] a ministerial committee has been appointed to prepare the appendix to the budget.
Karake emphasized that this regulation will contribute considerably to solving many problems that prisoners face after their release and that it is part of the regulations and laws for all services for the prisoners, in a just and transparent manner, and in accordance with the law. Likewise, he noted that the government has made the prisoners' issue one of its priorities and is investing all its efforts in easing their suffering given what is available (i.e., availability of funds).
Karake thanked the President [Abbas] and the Prime Minister [Hamdallah] for their great efforts and for their [accepting] responsibility for the prisoners' cause, whether at a political or social level, or at the livelihood level. On another matter, Karake said that the government has approved a regulation for exempting released prisoners who have served more than 20 years in occupation prisons from paying customs duty, as well as a regulation for covering the costs of fertility [treatments] for released prisoners who are suffering from fertility
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3) Is the US powerless to stop the spread of al-Qaida?
By James Rosen
Why we're losing the "war on terror" and will likely continue to do so
There was bipartisan consensus after the 9/11 attacks, in Congress and among Americans, that the United States would never again ignore rising threats in distant lands and allow al-Qaida or other terrorist groups to gain sanctuary as it had in Afghanistan.
More than a dozen years ago, nine days after the World Trade Center towers fell and the Pentagon burned, President George W. Bush told a joint session of Congress: "The only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it and destroy it where it grows."
Lawmakers leapt to their feet and burst into applause; Bush's approval rating soared.
Now the black flag of al-Qaida flies in Fallujah, the group and its offshoots are spreading across the Middle East and Africa, and their fighters are battling for control of cities not only in Iraq but also in Syria, Lebanon and beyond.
"Harbor no illusions: Al-Qaida is not on its heels or even on the run," Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, told McClatchy.
"Their operations in Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and large portions of Africa indicate that al-Qaida is alive and well," Rogers said. "The group and its affiliates continue to metastasize, establishing new safe havens from which to attack the United States and our interests around the world. Now is the time to redouble our efforts to defeat this enemy."
But it might not be so simple.
Spending constraints, questionable outcomes of the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, anti-democratic backlashes across the Middle East and the broader turbulence unleashed by the Arab Spring have left U.S. leaders uncertain of how to counter a new wave of Islamic extremism
After nearly 6,600 American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, at a cost of more than $2 trillion there and in the broader "war on terror," the United States may lack the money, the policy know-how and the political will to respond aggressively to the al-Qaida resurgence.
The Pentagon's budget is down substantially from its 2011 high-water mark, with more cuts in store.
U.S. combat troops have left Iraq and are leaving Afghanistan.
When President Barack Obama tried to rally public and congressional support last September for a military strike against Syria — even one with no American boots on the ground — his appeals fell flat.
Fifty-two percent of Americans think that the United States has "mostly failed" to achieve its goals in Iraq and Afghanistan, while 37 percent think it's "mostly succeeded" in Iraq and 38 percent see mainly success in Afghanistan, according to a Pew Research Center poll released last month.
Jeremiah Pam, a visiting scholar at Columbia University, served as a financial attache at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad during the height of the Iraq War. He later completed major governance assessments in Iraq and Afghanistan for retired Army Gen. David Petraeus and former Ambassador Ryan Crocker when they led U.S. military and diplomatic efforts in the two countries.
Pam said the current unwillingness of American political leaders to respond forcefully to the al-Qaida comeback reflected doubt among counterinsurgency experts after the failure of massive military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to create long-term stability.
"We've seen that large-scale occupation is not a very effective or sustainable way to deny safe havens to terrorist groups," Pam said. "So we're left in a very difficult position. The policy solutions that we thought worked have been shown in practice to be imperfect. We certainly have less confidence in them than we did even four years ago."
Stephen Long, a national security professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, said he saw a backslide that went back more than just a few years.
Under the pressure of rapidly changing and unforeseen events unleashed by the Arab Spring, Long said, Obama is moving away from Bush's ringing pledges to support democracy and oppose tyranny around the globe.
"The idealism of the Bush 'freedom agenda' has finally bumped up against the realities of global politics," Long said. "We're not likely to see blossoming democracies in Afghanistan or Iraq anytime soon, so we have been backed into a corner where we've had to exchange stability for some of the more lofty promises of democratization."
From Iraq and Afghanistan to Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the United States is supporting autocratic governments in a manner that recalls the Cold War stance of backing anti-communist despots.
Then, the overriding goal was to prevent the advance of Soviet influence; today, the mission is to stop the spread of al-Qaida-style terrorism.
The Obama administration is shipping Hellfire missiles and providing intelligence, training and logistics to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who American analysts say is helping to fuel the al-Qaida resurgence through repressive measures against Sunni Muslims from his Shiite Muslim-dominated government.
"The primary and empowering causes of Iraq's current violence are not extremist movements or sectarian and ethnic divisions, but its failed politics and system of governance," Anthony H. Cordesman and Sam Khazai, analysts with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in a draft e-book that the Washington research center is circulating. "These failures are led by the current Maliki government."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has reneged on promises to sign an accord that would enable some 10,000 U.S. troops to remain in his country as a safeguard against al-Qaida's growth there and in neighboring Pakistan.
Obama recently summoned his top military commanders to the White House to discuss the way forward in Afghanistan. White House press secretary Jay Carney said that whether U.S. forces stayed there beyond this year was "contingent upon the Afghan government signing the bilateral security agreement that we negotiated last year in good faith."
In Egypt, the administration is working with the caretaker regime of Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi seven months after he joined a military coup that deposed the democratically elected government led by the Muslim Brotherhood, which el-Sissi has since branded a terrorist group.
U.S. political leaders are having second thoughts about providing arms and other aid to Syrian rebels as al-Qaida fighters and other Muslim extremists have moved to dominate the movement opposing President Bashar Assad.
"I must reluctantly conclude that of the possible outcomes, Assad winning (the Syrian civil war) is not the worst one," retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, who was the CIA director under Bush, recently told Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based TV network.
As local groups across the region vie to use its name because of the cachet, Tamara Cofman Wittes, the Middle East policy director at the Brookings Institution in Washington, cautioned against exaggerating the strength of al-Qaida.
"There are a lot of localized violent extremists who for one reason or another may see an advantage in embracing the al-Qaida brand, but whose concerns, whose sources of support and whose targets are primarily localized," she said. "And it's very important that the United States, as it pursues these threats, continue to carefully make distinctions and differentiation."
Hayden, though, painted a nightmare alternative scenario in which al-Qaida-linked warriors control a 400-mile swath of territory stretching westward from Fallujah and Ramadi, near Baghdad, across Iraq and into Syria.
"The Syrian revolution has been hijacked by Islamist extremists, by al-Qaida," he said. "They've become the controlling element in the opposition. Left unchecked, what we could end up with is a pre-9/11 Afghanistan-like state comprised of (Iraq's) Anbar province and the eastern Syrian desert. But unlike Afghanistan, not in the middle of nowhere but in the middle of the Middle East and 100 or 150 miles from major urban centers: Damascus and Beirut and Jerusalem."
In a candid and at times contentious interview with Al-Jazeera analyst Marwan Bishara, Hayden acknowledged that the increased Islamic sectarian warfare in Syria, Iraq and beyond may be in the United States' interests.
"To have Sunni extremists battling with Shia extremists in a fight to the death in a way that consumes their energies so that they are not focused on other potential enemies or targets in a very practical, realpolitik sort of way is probably not the worst of all possible worlds," Hayden said.
Hayden bristled at Bishara's attempts to compel him to admit that the United States has failed to defeat al-Qaida. Osama bin Laden is dead, Hayden said, and most of its other top leaders have been captured or killed.
"We are now, in my view, relatively safer here in North America from that threat from al-Qaida prime," Hayden said.
Marie Harf, State Department deputy spokeswoman, almost mocked bin Laden's successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, on Jan. 23 in downplaying the threat from the remaining core al-Qaida organization in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"Essentially the entire leadership has been decimated by the U.S. counterterrorism effort," she said. "He's the only one left. I think he spends, at this point, probably more time worrying about his own personal security than propaganda."
Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, is concerned lest today's local threats in Iraq and Syria become tomorrow's broader dangers to the United States.
"The biggest threat to our national security is (if) this ungoverned territory becomes areas where we have terrorist organizations that become dominant and then try to export their terrorism outside of the Middle East and into several other countries, including the United States," Odierno told the National Press Club last month.
3a) Obama's Hollow Promises Abroad
by Daniel Pipes
As U.S. credibility and stature diminish in world affairs, the American president and his secretaries of state and defense engage in eloquent denial. Unfortunately for them, realities trump words, even persuasive ones.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, "where the water-cooler chatter was about America's waning influence in the Middle East," John Kerry proclaimed himself "perplexed by claims... that somehow America is disengaging from the world." Nothing could be further from the truth, he asserted: "We are entering an era of American diplomatic engagement that is as broad and as deep as any at any time in our history." Likewise, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has called for "a renewed and enhanced era of partnership with our friends and allies."
In this spirit, Obama has made multiple promises to reassure allies.
To South Korea, which depends on the American "tripwire" to deter a demented dictator who could flatten Seoul within the first few hours of an artillery barrage, Obama promised that "The commitment of the United States to the Republic of Korea will never waver."
U.S. and South Korean troops train together.
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To Japan, which depends on the U.S. Seventh Fleet to deter increasingly aggressive Chinese encroachment on the Senkaku Islands, he reaffirmed that "The United States remains steadfast in its defense commitments to Japan," which the State Department specifically indicated includes the Senkaku Islands.
To Taiwan, whose security against the Peoples Republic depends on the American deterrent, he "reaffirmed our commitment to… the Taiwan Relations Act," which requires the United States to maintain the capacity "to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security of" Taiwan.
To the Philippines, worried about its territories in the South China Sea claimed by China, particularly the Spratly Islands and Scarborough Reef, he reaffirmed a commitment to the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty that provides, in the event of an armed attack, that the United States "would act to meet the common dangers."
One of the many Spratly Islands.
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To Saudi Arabia, alarmed by Obama's appeasement of Iran in the Joint Plan of Action, he reiterated "the firm commitment of the United States to our friends and allies in the Gulf."
And to Israel, isolated in a sea of enemies, Obama declared "America's unwavering commitment to Israel's security," because standing by Israel "is in our fundamental national security interest."
Trouble is, first, that Americans doubt these fine and steadfast words:
- Record numbers of Americans believe that U.S. global power and prestige are declining, according to the Pew Research Center. For the first time in surveys dating back to the 1970s, "a majority (53 percent) says the United States plays a less important and powerful role as a world leader than it did a decade ago," while only 17 percent thought American power has been enhanced. An even larger majority, 70 percent, "say the United States is less respected than in the past." And 51 percent say Obama is "not tough enough" in foreign policy and national security issues.
- More than two thirds have a negative opinion of Obama's handling of Iran, the Mellman Group found; a majority (54-37 percent) support targeted military strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities rather than allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons.
- McLaughlin & Associates finds that 49 percent of respondents think that America's standing has been diminished during Obama's five years in office; 40 percent think America's adversaries now look at Obama with contempt.
Josef Joffe, editor Germany's "Die Zeit" weekly.
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Second, Pew Research reports that half the publics in Britain, France, and Germany, as well as a third in the U.S. and Russia, see China eventually replacing the United States as the world's leading superpower. Two-thirds of Israelis think Obama will not stop the Iranians from getting nuclear weapons.
Third, world leaders in countries as varied as Japan,Poland, and Israel hear Obama's promises as unrelated to reality. Speaking for many, Josef Joffeof Germany's Die Zeit weekly finds "consistency and coherence to Obama's attempt to retract from the troubles of the world, to get the U.S. out of harm's way. … to be harsh about it, he wants to turn the U.S. into a very large medium power."
Successful "diplomatic engagement" (as Kerry calls it) must be backed by consistency, power, and will, not by nice words, hollow promises, and wishful thinking. Will the Obama administration realize this before doing permanent damage? Watch the Iranian nuclear deal for possible changes, or not.
Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2014 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4) Will Asia Repeat Europe's Mistakes?
By Alistair Burnett
Historical analogies often take the place of analysis - even more so when the implications of analogy are too horrendous to be spelled out. As we prepare to mark the centenary of the outbreak of First World War, ominous parallels are being drawn between rising tension betweenJapan and China and that between Germany and Britain before the outbreak of the World War. Such comparisons are relevant. China and the United States and its ally, Japan, today may not be the mirror image of European powers which came to blows, but the cascading alliances that led to the conflagration in 1914 still hold lessons for today.
The parallel to 1914 grabbed international headlines when, during a meeting in Davos Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe said the situation between China and Japan was similar to that between Germany and Britain a century ago. Officials tried to clarify afterwards, insisting Abe had not suggested there would be a war. By evoking 1914, the prime minister knew the image he conjured.
The reaction to Abe's comments suggest that drawing analogies between 2014 and 1914 may not only be potentially misleading, it can also add to the tension: China responded by accusing Japan of being a "troublemaker" - the role many have ascribed to Germany in the run-up to the First World War.
If those 1914 comparisons are to hold true, then China would be seen as playing the role of Germany, the rising power, challenging the established power, the United States, in the role Britain played a century ago. This is often called "the Thucydides Trap," named for the Ancient Greek historian of the Peloponnesian War, during which Sparta had confronted the rising power of Athens.
Washington and Beijing are clearly wary of each other, yet it's also clear both want to avoid conflict. While Chinese economy will continue growing faster and top US GDP in the next decade or so, the two countries are economically and financially interdependent. China is also modernizing its military and developing its navy and air force, so it can secure the sea lanes it now depends on to import the energy and raw materials on which its economy depends, and this challenges the US dominance of the seas in Asia maintained since the Second World War.
The Obama administration has pursued its "rebalance" or "pivot" to Asia for the past three years. This has involved focusing military as well as economic attention on the region and has raised suspicions in China where many see it as a Cold War-style containment policy. American officials insist the pivot is not containment and avoid any appearances of the US calling the Chinese out; instead US officials are urging Beijing to be more transparent about its military capabilities and to develop crisis management mechanisms so accidental conflict can be avoided.
For its part, President Xi Jinping's government is calling for a new type of great power relations with the US, and although it's not clear yet exactly what this means in practice, Beijing seems to want to improve relations with Washington.
Yet tension in East Asia is rising - especially between China and Japan.Unlike relations between Germany and Britain a hundred years ago, the present-day tension between China and Japan has its roots in past conflicts between the two countries.
Many Chinese do not think the Japanese leadership has fully accepted the country's responsibility for the invasion of China in the 1930s and 1940s. Chinese students learn about the widespread atrocities committed by Japanese forces in gory detail, while Japanese nationalists play down the details and China says many Japanese textbooks whitewash the invasion - all of which means there's been no real reconciliation. China and Japan also have a long-running territorial dispute over control of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea arising out of the first Sino-Japanese war of the modern era in the 1890s. The islands were annexed by Japan after that war in 1895, but 50 years later, after the Second World War, unlike other territories conquered by the Japanese, they were not returned to China, but instead occupied by the Americans. By the time the United States decided it didn't need the islands in the early 1970s, China was ruled by the Communist Party and Japan was a US ally, so Washington returned the islands to Japanese control.
Growing more powerful in recent years, China has increased pressure on Japan to acknowledge there is a dispute over the islands. China now regularly sends ships and planes to patrol near the islands, the Japanese respond with patrols of their own, and the likelihood of an accidental clash is increasing.
So even if comparisons with 1914 are off the mark, conflict between China and Japan could still be a possibility.
Abe is a seen as a nationalist who would like Japan to move on from the pacifism imposed on it by the United States after 1945. He may not go as far as changing the pacifist elements of the constitution, but he wants to change Japan's defense posture, so the armed forces take a more assertive role - up to now, Japan has relied heavily on the United States to defend the areas around it - and he justifies this by pointing at China's growing military capabilities and doubts over Beijing's intentions.
In Beijing, Xi is focused on reforming the economy and cleaning up the corruption that's undermining the Communist Party's legitimacy, which would suggest he does not want a war. But for his reforms to succeed, maintaining tension with Tokyo and a sense of threat from abroad is useful as it encourages loyalty to the center. Xi will also need support of the military and security apparatus for his reforms as he takes on vested interests in the party leadership, provincial governments and large state enterprises, and this makes compromise with Japan more difficult. Chinese public opinion is also hostile to Japan, evident in opinion polls, social media and the ease with which anti-Japanese boycotts occur.
So, domestic politics as well as geopolitics are driving both China and Japan to be more assertive, and this worries Washington. When Abe visited the controversial Yasukuni shrine for Japanese war dead at the end of December, it not only stoked tension with China and South Korea which issued strong protests, the United States publicly stated it was "disappointed."
In his comments at Davos, Abe, presumably thinking of the strong trade links between his country and China, said the economic links between Germany and Britain did not prevent war in 1914. Some listening to the Japanese prime minister came away with the impression he thinks pecuniary interests may not be strong enough to deter a military clash.
If a conflict between Beijing and Tokyo were to break out, the US could not bank on its other ally in the region, Seoul, given the tense relations between South Korea and Japan which have their own territorial and historical disputes. So Washington would choose between honoring its defense treaty with Japan and avoiding direct conflict with China. As Washington would stand to lose the trust of many allies in the region and is not noted for eating humble pie, the odds would suggest support for Japan. So if there is any parallel with 1914, it could turn out to be in how cascading alliance commitments can cause a wider war.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5)
‘ObamaCare both
sucks and blows’
I could rage on and on about Monday’s gobsmacking announcement that the Obama administration is once again unilaterally delaying a key aspect of its health-care law and what this act of astonishing royalism suggests about the president and his fundamental disrespect for the American system of checks and balances.
But I’m not going to. Instead, with all the dignity that a 52-year-old man and father of three can bring to the task, I will offer these observations instead:
The parallel to 1914 grabbed international headlines when, during a meeting in Davos Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe said the situation between China and Japan was similar to that between Germany and Britain a century ago. Officials tried to clarify afterwards, insisting Abe had not suggested there would be a war. By evoking 1914, the prime minister knew the image he conjured.
The reaction to Abe's comments suggest that drawing analogies between 2014 and 1914 may not only be potentially misleading, it can also add to the tension: China responded by accusing Japan of being a "troublemaker" - the role many have ascribed to Germany in the run-up to the First World War.
If those 1914 comparisons are to hold true, then China would be seen as playing the role of Germany, the rising power, challenging the established power, the United States, in the role Britain played a century ago. This is often called "the Thucydides Trap," named for the Ancient Greek historian of the Peloponnesian War, during which Sparta had confronted the rising power of Athens.
Washington and Beijing are clearly wary of each other, yet it's also clear both want to avoid conflict. While Chinese economy will continue growing faster and top US GDP in the next decade or so, the two countries are economically and financially interdependent. China is also modernizing its military and developing its navy and air force, so it can secure the sea lanes it now depends on to import the energy and raw materials on which its economy depends, and this challenges the US dominance of the seas in Asia maintained since the Second World War.
The Obama administration has pursued its "rebalance" or "pivot" to Asia for the past three years. This has involved focusing military as well as economic attention on the region and has raised suspicions in China where many see it as a Cold War-style containment policy. American officials insist the pivot is not containment and avoid any appearances of the US calling the Chinese out; instead US officials are urging Beijing to be more transparent about its military capabilities and to develop crisis management mechanisms so accidental conflict can be avoided.
For its part, President Xi Jinping's government is calling for a new type of great power relations with the US, and although it's not clear yet exactly what this means in practice, Beijing seems to want to improve relations with Washington.
Yet tension in East Asia is rising - especially between China and Japan.Unlike relations between Germany and Britain a hundred years ago, the present-day tension between China and Japan has its roots in past conflicts between the two countries.
Many Chinese do not think the Japanese leadership has fully accepted the country's responsibility for the invasion of China in the 1930s and 1940s. Chinese students learn about the widespread atrocities committed by Japanese forces in gory detail, while Japanese nationalists play down the details and China says many Japanese textbooks whitewash the invasion - all of which means there's been no real reconciliation. China and Japan also have a long-running territorial dispute over control of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea arising out of the first Sino-Japanese war of the modern era in the 1890s. The islands were annexed by Japan after that war in 1895, but 50 years later, after the Second World War, unlike other territories conquered by the Japanese, they were not returned to China, but instead occupied by the Americans. By the time the United States decided it didn't need the islands in the early 1970s, China was ruled by the Communist Party and Japan was a US ally, so Washington returned the islands to Japanese control.
Growing more powerful in recent years, China has increased pressure on Japan to acknowledge there is a dispute over the islands. China now regularly sends ships and planes to patrol near the islands, the Japanese respond with patrols of their own, and the likelihood of an accidental clash is increasing.
So even if comparisons with 1914 are off the mark, conflict between China and Japan could still be a possibility.
Abe is a seen as a nationalist who would like Japan to move on from the pacifism imposed on it by the United States after 1945. He may not go as far as changing the pacifist elements of the constitution, but he wants to change Japan's defense posture, so the armed forces take a more assertive role - up to now, Japan has relied heavily on the United States to defend the areas around it - and he justifies this by pointing at China's growing military capabilities and doubts over Beijing's intentions.
In Beijing, Xi is focused on reforming the economy and cleaning up the corruption that's undermining the Communist Party's legitimacy, which would suggest he does not want a war. But for his reforms to succeed, maintaining tension with Tokyo and a sense of threat from abroad is useful as it encourages loyalty to the center. Xi will also need support of the military and security apparatus for his reforms as he takes on vested interests in the party leadership, provincial governments and large state enterprises, and this makes compromise with Japan more difficult. Chinese public opinion is also hostile to Japan, evident in opinion polls, social media and the ease with which anti-Japanese boycotts occur.
So, domestic politics as well as geopolitics are driving both China and Japan to be more assertive, and this worries Washington. When Abe visited the controversial Yasukuni shrine for Japanese war dead at the end of December, it not only stoked tension with China and South Korea which issued strong protests, the United States publicly stated it was "disappointed."
In his comments at Davos, Abe, presumably thinking of the strong trade links between his country and China, said the economic links between Germany and Britain did not prevent war in 1914. Some listening to the Japanese prime minister came away with the impression he thinks pecuniary interests may not be strong enough to deter a military clash.
If a conflict between Beijing and Tokyo were to break out, the US could not bank on its other ally in the region, Seoul, given the tense relations between South Korea and Japan which have their own territorial and historical disputes. So Washington would choose between honoring its defense treaty with Japan and avoiding direct conflict with China. As Washington would stand to lose the trust of many allies in the region and is not noted for eating humble pie, the odds would suggest support for Japan. So if there is any parallel with 1914, it could turn out to be in how cascading alliance commitments can cause a wider war.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5)
‘ObamaCare both
sucks and blows’
I could rage on and on about Monday’s gobsmacking announcement that the Obama administration is once again unilaterally delaying a key aspect of its health-care law and what this act of astonishing royalism suggests about the president and his fundamental disrespect for the American system of checks and balances.
But I’m not going to. Instead, with all the dignity that a 52-year-old man and father of three can bring to the task, I will offer these observations instead:
Neener neener neener.
Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.
Face it, all of you who celebrated and wept and danced when it passed back in March 2010, all of you who viewed it as the historic moment of transformation for the United States: This law is a lemon.
As Bart Simpson once said, “I didn’t think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows.”
It’s what early computer geeks used to call a “kludge,” which Webster’s defines as “a system made up of poorly matched components.” It was a workaround solution to an enormous problem it is only going to make worse.
Remember: The law passed in March 2010. It was to go into full effect on Jan. 1, 2014. That means the administration had almost four years to get its ducks into a row. Four years. That was more time than it took us to win World War II, which we fought across three continents, a bunch of islands and two oceans.
And yet here we are, four years later, and the administration has spent the past six months effectively rewriting the law for both political and practical reasons.
It shouldn’t be able to do this, because it is, you know, a law. The president doesn’t write laws. Congress does. He signs them and it’s his job to implement them. If he can’t write laws, he can’t rewrite them either.
But he is, and without resistance. Someone would have to stop him from doing it. But Democrats won’t stop him from doing anything, and the changes he’s making actually do limit ObamaCare’s deleterious effects, so Republicans have no incentive to stop him.
The rewriting began even before the famous Web site made its debut on Oct. 1, 2013. A month earlier, Patrick Hedger of the conservative activist group FreedomWorks delineated 11 provisions in the health-care law the administration had unilaterally revised or delayed. (Another eight had either been repealed or defunded by Congress along the way; one was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.)
By far the biggest was a one-year delay in the so-called “employer mandate,” imposing fines on businesses that do not provide health care to their full-time workers. On Monday, that delay was extended to two years for smaller businesses — because, you know, once you delay something one year, why not two? Why not 10?
The way this is going, the administration could just repeal every provision of the law unilaterally and still claim its historic legislation had passed and was its signature accomplishment. After all, it will still be on the books. It’s the law. It just won’t be enforced, like the law that says you can’t pick your feet in Poughkeepsie.
The disastrous healthcare.gov rollout beginning in October led to a series of other delays and postponements.
ObamaCare apologists are at the ready with excuses and explanations: Republican obstructionism slowed things down. The constitutional challenges slowed things down. Resistance from GOP governors slowed things down.
Come now. The administration had untold numbers of federal employees and more than 1,300 days to do what it had to do inside its own shop to prepare. The law didn’t go into effect for 500 days after the Supreme Court refused to put it out of its misery in June 2012.
The simple fact of the matter is, it couldn’t get things to work because ObamaCare is unworkable. It’s a jury-rigged mess that needs about 300 moving gears to mesh perfectly for it to function at all. It’s pretty clear that it never will. (And, yes, I feel sorry for the millions of people the law has already harmed, and the tens of millions more that it’s set to harm.)
The question is whether we’re going to spend decades layering new systems on top of the kludge or whether we’re going to be sensible about this and throw the whole thing out. And start anew.
It is a painful moment for all those who believed, and still seem to believe, in the world-changing and epoch-making properties of the Affordable Care Act. To them I extend the world-weary sympathies of a man in middle age who knows the meaning of disappointment and loss . . .
Naaaaah.
Nanny nanny boo boo.
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