ShrinkWrapped

Memorial Day 2010

The depth of gratitude we owe to those who have sacrificed so much in order for us to be able to live the lives of immeasurable freedom,  comfort, and luxury we enjoy today is quite simply impossible to calculate. 

Today many thousands of men and women are continuing the tradition of  putting their lives on the line to protect us. 

Say a prayer and give some thought to the brave men and women who have given their all and for those who continue to stand between us and barbarism.

Please consider a donation to Soldier's Angels or some other worthy charity that helps ameliorate the loss and pain of their families.

Jules Crittenden has a touching tribute and a solid collection of Memorial Day links: First Memorial Day

Beauty's Only Skin Deep

“Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.”
-- Ava Gardner

Ava Gardner was a legendary beauty.  She had it all, looks, sophistication, fame, money; she could have any man she wanted and she ended up marrying a succession of self-involved creeps:

Ava Gardner Reflects on Ava Gardner

Fame and money are a heady brew and before too long Gardner was drinking heavily, dancing all night, and being courted by Mickey Rooney, MGM's biggest little star. Her marriage to Rooney—he relentlessly cheated on her—lasted a year.

She did even worse by marrying crazy man, Artie Shaw, real name: Arthur Jacob Arshawsky, who was determined to educate his tobacco road wife. On their honeymoon, Shaw gave her a stack of books that included War and Peace and Das Kapital.

Ava yawned.

The egomaniacal band leader was further upset when he discovered that his movie star wife had no idea how to iron his shirts, and this seething cauldron was enraged when she didn't fill his coffee cup to the precise level he indicated. Their disastrous marriage also lasted one year.

Can a woman do worse than Artie Show?

Sadly, she could and she did.  Ava Gardner destroyed her career with alcohol.

Ava Gardner, from what little I know of her, may well have been an example of the beautiful woman whose beauty allows her to remain superficial and shallow; a woman like this is an exemplar of a type of narcissistic Psychopathology in which the surface (looks, attributes) is over-valued in the service of using the environment (other people) to support self esteem.  It is not at all unusual for such women to find men who value them primarily for the way that their beauty reflects well upon the man who has obtained her.  In this way, the man is able to prove his worth to others; if he can get a beautiful woman, he is elevated in the eyes of his audience.  In both cases, their self esteem, even when superficially high, rather fragile.  At the core, the narcissist fears he is worthless and unlovable and spends most of his or her life trying to entice or force the environment to offer them tribute. 

It is never a surprise to find that relationships between mutually needy Narcissists are rarely successful.  For the narcissists, other people are not fully three dimensional; rather their value lies in how they affect the Narcissist.  The tragedy of narcissism is that as we age and inevitably lose those superficial attributes that have attracted acclaim and celebrity, the Narcissist lacks the inner resources to maintain their self-esteem and self regard as the "flush of youth" fades.  The aging actress or beauty who desperately resorts to plastic surgery to delay the inevitable decline can become almost addicted to the process in the belief that she will be able to preserve her youth and looks forever.  When it fails, as it must, depression (or its evil twins of drug and alcohol abuse) is common.  Likewise the professional athlete who needs the adulation of the crowd may hang on long past the time his skills have eroded; once in retirement, depression often beckons.  We have seen so many tragic examples that such personal disasters, beyond their utility for schadenfreude, have become trivialized.

Other forms of narcissistic pathology are more commonly seen in our politicians, who believe that they are above the rules.  The feelings of power that come with being able to control people, deliver largess to great applause and sycophancy while being elevated above the concerns of the mundane can be intoxicating.  A classic case was the former Governor of New York who not only needed a beautiful prostitute to make him feel more manly but was destroyed by the very laws he championed.  Hubris is often a sign of Narcissism run wild.

We all contain Narcissistic tendencies and vulnerabilities.  Our current zeitgeist encourages those who do not appreciate the distinction between the surface and the depths of a person.  Ava Gardner's comment would be taken as a post-modern insight of great depth were she a celebrity alive today prattling on during some day time talk show. 

When young we all tend to be at our most Narcissistic; adolescents, almost by definition, suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, where their moods and self esteem depend on the state of their social life and their standing in the hierarchy at any given moment.  Americans have a special proclivity to becoming trapped in extended adolescence.  (And apparently we no longer even expect 26 year olds to be able to survive on their own; eg, Obamacare.) 

Cassandra linked to a remarkable news story and tried to address it seriously:

Looks, Men, Women: Blah, Blah, Blah

So are women who work hard to look good insecure, or do they just understand market forces? The older I get, the more value I see in examining the adaptive value of male and female behaviors that cause conflict and misunderstanding. While I'm not a big fan of rigid stereotypes, is it really reasonable to assume that people do things we don't understand/agree with for no reason (the old, "He/she only acts that way b/c men/women are insane/irrational/overemotional/not reasonable like I am").

What's interesting to me is the area of overlap. Today women are completing school in record numbers. We have careers, in most cases, before we marry and have children. This makes pregnancy a lot less risky because for the first time we can support ourselves and any children we might bear, if need be. That reduces the value of a man's earning potential and forces him, if he wants to win the best quality female (however he defines that), to bring additional qualities to the table.

I'm often bemused when I hear men go on about how women only care about the size of a man's wallet. When I fell in love with my husband, it was tremendously important to me that he have integrity and be dependable because when a woman is pregnant or has small children, she makes herself enormously vulnerable in a way I don't think a lot of men understand. His earning power was not something I even thought of. My assumption was that if he was dependable, he'd keep a roof over our heads if I needed to stay home and care for our children. But I also thought of wage earning as a shared and negotiated responsibility neither of us could unilaterally delegate away.

Modern feminism presented women with a binary choice.  Either tend to your looks and define yourself as non-serious and defendant or ignore your looks and declare your independence.  Cassandra has it almost right.  In fact some women work hard to look good because they are terribly insecure (ie for primarily narcissistic reasons) while others like to look their best for their own pleasure and to please their man.  Likewise, men do many things to increase their appeal to women, sometimes for purely narcissistic reasons (to acquire a beautiful women for display) but more often out of a combination of reasons, including the desire for a truly intimate relationship with someone who can become their closest confidante and best friend.  Those who never progress from the superficial will never be able to achieve intimacy.  Those who fail to grasp this end up writing articles like this:

Why Beauties Get Cheated On Big Time!

Guess what girls -- don't be envious of the most beautiful women in the world

Look at Elin, look at Sandra Bullock, look at Halle, Britney, JLo, Reese, Julia Roberts, Jessica Simpson -- they've ALL been cheated on!

It's become irrevocably clear -- beauty is no vaccination against having your man cheat, and it's happened in every public area.

Models — gorgeous supermodel Christie Brinkley cheated on by her architect husband Peter Cook.

Politics -- stunning Silda Spitzer cheated on by her husband Eliot Spitzer.

Sports -- head turner Cynthia Rodriguez cheated on by her Yankee star A-Rod, and then when it comes to the world of celebrity, the list goes on and on with Jesse James' transgressions against his beautiful Oscar-winning wife Sandra, who thanked him in her acceptance speech, is just the latest jaw-dropper. So why doesn't beauty confer ANY protection against a cheating spouse, fiance or boyfriend?

It is not beauties who get cheated on all the time but people for whom relationships are primarily Narcissistic exercises, where the value of the other lies in how they make the Narcissist appear to the world.  (NB: At any given moment, the world can be as small as a hotel room.)  Since such relationships are firmly rooted in the superficial, deeper desires for connection and intimacy are rarely possible once the initial flush of physical intimacy relents.  The headline might better have explored: Why Narcissists Get Cheated On Big Time!

Black Crows

Ever since Nasim Taleb introduced the idea of the Black Swan event, the term has been over used to such an extent that it has become a cliché.  Stagflationary Mark  points out that true Black Swan events must meet three criteria:

Black Swans Are NOT Everywhere  
Black Swans Everywhere

Karen Gibbs, editor of the Gibbs Perspective, recently told attendees of The MoneyShow Las Vegas that Black Swan events aren’t as rare as they once were.

In 2007, Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. In it, he argues that most of the really big events in our world are rare and unpredictable.

Taleb lists three criteria for such an event: It must be a surprise to the observer; it must have a major impact, and [will be] eventually rationalized by hindsight as predictable.

By definition, black swans cannot be everywhere.

...

Once something becomes predictable, then it no longer qualifies as a black swan event.

The Greek economic crisis is yet another Black Swan event, although those studying the situation saw legal accounting sleight of hand mask the country’s profligate spending, cheap money and few, if any, financial controls.

No, it isn't. If those studying the situation could see it coming then it definitely was not a black swan event. They did not need to rationalize it later as being predictable. They were predicting it.

One of Stagflationary Mark's commenters pointed out that what we are now seeing are not Black Swans:

Watchtower has pointed out in the comments that what we are seeing might be black crows, and not black swans. That makes a lot more sense to me, especially since they can be seen in great numbers.

As seen at, "Crows, and especially ravens, often feature in European legends or mythology as portents or harbingers of doom or death, because of their dark plumage, unnerving calls, and tendency to eat carrion (including those of humans)."

There are a lot of Black Crows circling about these days.  The global economy remains on a hair trigger; any of a number of predictable events could easily trigger a double dip.  These include economic events (the failure of the Eurozone bail-out to work as planned, a California default, etc) but perhaps of greater danger is the risk of a War breaking out in the Middle East and/or Northeast Asia.  Consider:  Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms and Bam's daze of the weak.  President Obama, despite his inclusion of an exception for non-Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty signatories, has effectively eroded the American military deterrent for our enemies and his behavior, of supplication for our enemies and attacks on our friends can most certainly be understood by our enemies as reflecting a weakened will to support America's interests or allies.

(A note to Judge Crater, et al: I do not think anyone on this blog supports "more wars" as you have suggested; however, we do believe that the more credible the threat of force, the less likely force will be necessary.  It is something most of us learned in the elementary school playground.)

According to Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, (Ret) there is clear evidence of Iran shipping chemical weapons to Hezbollah.  Bill Whittle's interview of the General is chilling: Former US General Warns of Chemical Attacks Against Israel.  Considering the evidence that Syria has been shipping Scud missiles (capable of carrying chemical warheads) to Hezbollah, and that Hezbollah's rhetoric has recently escalated, this does not seem like a stable situation.

Lebanese Army Fires on Israeli Warplanes: Military

Lebanese anti-aircraft guns opened fire on two Israeli warplanes that were violating Lebanon's airspace on Wednesday, a military statement said.

"The anti-aircraft batteries fired in the direction of Israeli warplanes that flew over" the Shebaa region of southern Lebanon at medium altitude, the statement said.

Earlier in the day, two aircraft flew over southern and northern Lebanon before returning to Israeli territory, it said.

While Lebanon's army publishes almost daily reports of Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace, the military rarely opens fire unless the planes fly within range of its guns. [Empahsis added-SW]

The overflights are a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended a devastating 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah militia.

Israel argues that the overflights are necessary, despite the resolution, to monitor what it says is massive arms smuggling by Hezbollah, also in breach of the same resolution.

Last month Israeli President Shimon Peres accused Syria of providing Scud missiles to Hezbollah, which Israel alleges has stockpiled more than 40,000 rockets, some capable of reaching large towns in Israel.

Damascus has rejected the allegation but the armed Hezbollah which controls southern Lebanon has neither confirmed nor denied it.

Meanwhile, North Korea continues to practice brinkmanship on the Korean peninsular:

North Korea to Suspend Naval Hotline With South

Some people console themselves with the thought that it is all a mistake:

Why Did North Korea Do It?

So: my guess is that it was an accident. Or perhaps some combination of #3 and #5, a rogue commander who fired the shot because of some kind of chaos in the chain of command. Then, once the deed was done, we got all the usual North Korean bluster and delusion that we've come to know and loathe over the past few decades.

Others seem much more clear-eyed:

Pyongyang'd Again

A North Korean submarine torpedoed and sank a South Korean gunboat in March, killing 46 sailors. This was the conclusion of a thorough investigation by experts from the U.S., Australia, Britain, and Sweden, last week. The White House then decried "an act of aggression," omitting that it was also an act of war. The latest of many.

While it is true that the leaders of North Korea are insane, it is not helpful to leave matters there. Even the insane have motivations, and in this case, numerous allies. In the past, Pyongyang's most belligerent acts have been performed with a certain base cunning, and generous consideration of the interests of their allies: chiefly Iran, and China.

Most notably, as I have written before, Pyongyang tends to create an incident at a moment when the heat is rising on Iran; and the favour is often returned by the ayatollahs. The two countries are obviously pooling nuclear and missile expertise, and both benefit from technology provided by China and Russia -- which in turn shield both against sanctions at the United Nations. This game puzzles the West's finest strategic minds. (And I say that facetiously.)

If one of these situations, low trust environments in which paranoia is more highly rewarded by reality than denial, explodes into a conflagration, there will be many people who are surprised.  The markets will react with horror and a flight to safety.  However, war in the Middle East or Northeast Asia will not be a Black Swan but merely the arrival of the carrion Black Crows which are currently circling the globe.

The United States is perceived by our enemies as being less likely to protect itself or its allies (and this perception is continually reinforced by the Obama administration which seems to be blind to optics at home and abroad.)

Iran, North Korea and their allies feel empowered and emboldened by a combination of American weakness and the protection of patron states.

Internal stresses in Iran and North Korea are typically addressed by externalizing the problem.

The pressure for an Israeli assault on Iran's nuclear program is increasing by the day.

HISH (Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, Hamas) saber rattling increases as Iran approaches a nuclear capacity.

In such an environment, where he who strikes first has a major advantage, how could anyone be surprised if war breaks out?

Bringing the War Back Home

Back in the halcyon days of the late 1960s, when "speaking truth to power" was as easy as marching in protest rallies and bravery was re-defined as fleeing the country to avoid serving in an unjust war, one of the slogans commonly bandied about was that we were "bringing the war back home.*"  By "fighting in the streets", we would show the home front the horrors that were being inflicted, in our names, on the peace-loving, freedom fighters of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese.

*[Bonus points for anyone who can identify the provenance of the song, Bringing the War back Home.  Double points if you can hum the tune.  Googling is cheating in this instance.]

Much of what was accepted wisdom in the late 1960s has been superseded by reality since then but on the Left, the belief that the use of force by anyone in a position of power and authority was inherently corrupt and evil (except in those situations when the authority in question was on the Left and wielded power in the name of a Left wing ideology)  has informed much of the behavior of the Left until the present.  There is a touching, though inane, consistency to their positions, as well.  Just as for the last 9 years the Left has done everything in its power to make the effective use of American power more difficult** now some of the same foolishness is being suggested for those who protect us at home.

**[Consider: multiple leaks of secret programs, restrictive ROEs, the assumption that our enemies were more credible than our own servicemen and women viz torture allegations, flushing Korans, etc, while exaggerating and generalizing from American errors and crimes  as in >50 front page stories about Abu Graib in the NY Times, despite the abuse having been recognized and punished by the military itself; the list is endless.]

Two new examples courtesy of the mindless useful idiots of the Left:

Just another act of deadly treason

Yesterday, The New York Times published another front-page article based on a leaked classified document. This time, it was an order signed by Gen. David Petraeus authorizing black operations against adversaries and such dubious friends as Iran, Syria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

Gee, thanks. We really needed to know that. The world's a better place now.

Yet the Times' sin was the lesser one. The paper has long since given up any pretense of patriotism. (Ugh! Yuck!) Its editors are just publishing and perishing as citizens of the world.

It's whoever leaked the document that bears the burn-in-hell blame.

We must be able to keep secrets in wartime. But we can't. Because domestic political agendas trump national security in every administration nowadays.

Exposing that seven-page classified document warned our enemies (and pseudo friends) that we've expanded our efforts to uncover terror networks and potential targets. This not only increases the virulent paranoia in the region's police states, but poses a mortal danger to agents, special operators and the innocent.

People will be tortured and executed because of this.  The New York Times will feel virtuous; someone in the Obama administration will feel pleased that he has increased his President's bona fides as a strong defender of America (does anyone actually fall for this any more?) and blood will be on their hands.

And then there is this; from the evil to the ridiculous:

'Don't kill' pol in a cop-out

An assemblywoman under fire for sponsoring a bill that asks cops to shoot gun-wielding suspects in the arms and legs brushed off the outrage yesterday -- although she admitted she is no expert on police work.

Asked about her critics' contention that the proposed legislation will put police lives at risk, Annette Robinson (D-Brooklyn) told The Post: "I understand that."

She insisted that cops use too much force, but acknowledged she is unqualified to assess the issue.

"Not being a police officer, I would not be able to discuss the instance or the time that happens, but I do know that it happens, most often in the communities that I represent, and it happens too often," she said.

For those who need it spelled out, Bookworm eviscerates this clown in her discussion of The “shoot to wound” proposal in New York:

This one is right up there with the medal the military is contemplating for courageous restraint — an honor, Rush Limbaugh says, correctly, will surely be awarded only posthumously.

Is there anyone else out there who thinks it utterly insane that we, as a society, blithely assume that our troops and police should take all of the risks on our behalf, while we systematically strip them of their right to defend themselves against the bad guys?  Oh, wait.  Of course it makes sense.  I’m just looking at this whole thing wrong.  If you’re a Progressive, the troops and police are the bad guys.  It’s the ones on the receiving end of the evil cop and evil American soldier guns who are poor, misunderstood victims of the man, of America, of white imperialism, etc., and it’s only right and proper that they have the upper hand in any engagement.

Feh!

Presumably Assemblywoman Robinson buys into the meme that police disproportionately target minorities in our cities.  The Left are adepts  at Distorting the Truth About Crime and Race.  I won't excerpt from Heather Mac Donald's excellent article (beyond the chart below) but want to point out that she actually uses numbers, rather than feelings, to support her conclusions. 

In fact, New York City Police stop Blacks less often than would be warranted by actual crime statistics, a measure of their fear of the Race industry in our fair city.  The losers, those who suffer higher rates of crime by these predators than warranted, are, of course, Black New Yorkers.

It all fits together nicely for the Left.  Anyone who is a member or supporter of the White Power Structure, derived from the descendants of the White Europeans who established this country, is a priori guilty of oppression, while those who identify as persons of color, are a priori, innocent victims of assumed oppression ... even when such innocents have been forced to resort to violence by their oppressors.  It all makes a twisted kind of sense.  That it threatens to destroy our ability to think and perceive and impairs our ability to defend ourselves is only rarely acknowledged as the goal, and then only by those who are most enamored of their distaste for this coutnry.

Unforgivable and Unbelievable

AJ Strata rarely succumbs to anger and vitriol, but this is beyond the pale:

The Unforgivable Actions Of President Obama

How many good people have fought and died for this country? How many bodies have been torn asunder and permanently scarred fighting for this great republic? What other group of Americans has sacrificed so much for the rest of us than our military? President Obama is going to go down in history as one of the worst presidents of all times – a distinction he earns every week.

I find it unconscionable that our young, inexperienced and hapless president is skipping out on one of this nation’s most important remembrances. It seems honoring our fallen heroes at Arlington Cemetery is too much of a burden for ol’ Barack:

Go to The Strata-Sphere and read the whole thing.

This is either a calculated insult to our armed forces or an unbelievably stupid miscalculation.  It is indeed unforgivable.

The Oceans Continue to Rise

A Neoconservative is a Liberal who has been mugged by reality.
--Irving Kristol

It may be that it is time to update Irving Kristol's old aphorism; perhaps it is more fitting to say that liberals who have been mugged by reality become

More of a Libertarian:

Hit the nail on the head for me here... Libertarians can no longer dodge political wars. I'm more of a libertarian, not an upper case Libertarian, as the article notes. Calling myself "more of a libertarian" has been a great survival tool, growing up in New York and now living in California. From the article (which is a must read, definitely click the link):

"The casual libertarian, though, is probably from Gen X or Gen Y. They read most of "Atlas Shrugged" in college, saw "Schindler's List" and came to the conclusion that government power was dangerous and that people should do whatever they want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else.

They didn't like the PC scolds on the Left or the uptight Young Republicans on the Right, so they did their own thing and thus became "more of a libertarian."

And as long as the central political fights in America were about morality and foreign policy, liberals recognized "more of a libertarian" as a declaration of noncombatant status.

But the battles of today are all about the size and shape of government."

As noted in Colliding With Reality, there is a shift going on in the zeitgeist.  The idea that top down, big government responses can solve our problems is being fatally discredited by the events of the first year and a half of the Obama administration.  Roger Simon suggests that

The Culture Wars are turning

I’m going to hold my explanation for a moment, though you are probably ahead of me, and move on to a report near the top of Drudge tonight from Real Clear Politics. Apparently, for the first time, those bastions of the most conventional liberalism in our society, the networks, are turning on Obama. Reason: BP and the oil spill. It’s supposed to be Obama’s Katrina. Of course, I no more blame Obama for the spill than I do Bush for Katrina. Nor do I blame either of them for the difficulty in cleaning up these disasters. Those are unfair accusations. There are plenty of things to attack Obama about — like the worst foreign and domestic policies since Andrew Johnson — without having to pin a drilling accident on him, bad as it is. But the media, that never vetted him and have given him a pass on virtually everything, are attacking him now. Why?

They sense — and Woody and Friedman sense with a different reaction — that the Culture Wars are turning. It’s partly the Tea Parties, but it’s more than that. It’s the zeitgeist. The times, they are definitely a-changin’. Liberalism, as we have known it for decades, is on the defensive. With the welfare state unsustainable, it has nowhere to turn and its adherents are turning tail in every direction. They are mad and they are, in many cases, unmoored. Lifetime ideologies are beginning to crumble. Personality constructs are at risk.

Liberalism contains fatal contradictions which cause it to fail whenever put into practice; these fatal contradictions  occur in both the domestic sphere and the international, and Obama is failing in both areas.  When the New York Times, the closest thing to a Liberal catechism that exists, cannot avoid noting the truth of Margaret Thatcher's insight, that Socialism (and what is liberalism but socialism-lite?) must fail because "the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money" the death of liberalism is certain. 

Internationally, the risk of war on the planet is higher now than when the reviled cowboy, George W. Bush was President: [HT: Glenn Reynolds]

Obama has failed in peace efforts and lost influence in Mideast

Syrian President Bashar Assad said Monday that the United States has lost its influence in the Middle East due to its failure to contribute to regional peace, in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

U.S. President Barack Obama "raised hopes" in the region, said Assad, but has failed to accomplish any significant peace maneuvers.

Assad's comments came just before Obama was to meet with Lebanon Prime Minister Sa'ad al-Hariri to raise Washington's concerns about Syria arming Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

And: [HT: The Corner]

North Korea threatens military action in disputed waters

North Korea on Tuesday threatened military action if the South continued to violate its waters off the west coast, further stoking tension on the peninsula after the sinking of a South Korean warship.

The increasingly war-like rhetoric hit Seoul's financial markets, prompting financial policymakers to call an emergency meeting on Wednesday to look for ways to calm investors.

"Should the South side's intrusions into the territorial waters of our side continue, the DPRK (North Korea) will put into force practical military measures to defend its waters as it had already clarified and the south side will be held fully accountable for all the ensuing consequences," North Korea's KCNA news agency quoted a senior official as saying.

The furious war of words -- the North referred to the South's government as "military gangsters, seized by fever for a war" -- follows a report by international investigators last week which accused the hermit North of torpedoing the Cheonan corvette in March, killing 46 sailors.

Liberalism in practice depends on taking ever increasing amounts of money from the most productive to give to the least productive.  In foreign affairs, since Vietnam Liberalism has depended upon taking a quasi-pacifistic stance (where the use of military force is almost never justified*) and assuming that by setting a peaceful example, our enemies ("friends we haven't talked to yet") will behave as reasonably as we imagine we are behaving.   Neither of these approaches is tenable indefinitely; in fact, it would require a true miracle worker to square the various circles of Liberalism.  Amazingly enough, that is who the Liberals thought they were getting with Barack Obama.  Barack Obama accepted and reveled in his depiction as a worker of miracles; who can ever forget what his victory in the Democratic primaries foretold?

Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal ...

Last night the left wing media began to turn on Barack Obama:

THEY'RE WORRIED

Can blame for gross inaction on the Gulf oil spill be shifted away from Obama indefinitely? Some on the left are clearly beginning to realize the anti-BP OUTRAGE (!!!) machine has begun to lose its effectiveness

While that won't stop many "progressives" from continuing their relentless tirades against Big Oil, there is increasing worry that the president's mishandling of the situation has become difficult to defend.

That has the state-run media desperately searching for new ways to cover for him, including attacking Sarah Palin and other Republicans. But none other than Official White House Apologist Chris Matthews has now raised the question of Obama's "eventual" responsibility.

Making the case in blunt terms is MSNBC libtalker Ed Schultz, who used his television program to plead with the federal government for quick action (though it now seems much too late)

In practice there is little Barack Obama can do to stop the leak**, yet when a person has been once expected to stop the rise of the oceans, such an act as stopping a simple leaking oil well should be trivial.

When a human being is raised to Sainthood, the expectations of his followers rise commensurate with his rise. 

Obama's manifest failures will have little psychological impact on the majority of those who voted for him:

Those who never entered into the fantasy of Obama as the Second Coming will abandon him in droves as they appreciate that not only is he not the embodiment of all that is good and pure in this world but is, in reality, nothing more nor less than an inexperienced Chicago pol, with all the baggage such an appellation brings with it.

Among those who have devoted themselves in worshipful adoration, there will be three potential responses:

1) Many, especially among the young, will find themselves disappointed and turn cynical.  All politicians will be tarred as liars and crooks.  Many will simply withdraw from political engagement, some permanently but others only temporarily.  These people are potential additions to the ranks of the "more of a libertarian" cohort.

2) Those who have been most committed and whose weltanschauung revolves around their Liberalism (with its self esteem enhancing promise of being part of a more moral and ethical, idealistic core) will either feel terribly betrayed, with Obama suffering a devaluation even greater than the initial idealization.  Some will become full bore revolutionaries, concluding that Right and Left in this country are indistinguishable.  The majority will be more likely to dissolve into apathy.  Some day they may be salvaged  and join "more of a libertarian" cohort.

3) The last group will be the true believers in Liberalism, such as Tom Friedman.  They will continue to imagine a better world in which the unkempt and unschooled masses are led by their betters to a brighter future.  If a little fascism is required in order to achieve their dreams of a better tomorrow, the old mot of broken eggs and omelets will suffice.  They will, as they have done so many times in the past, conclude that their ideology would work, if only done correctly and without the opposition of the Right, also known in less guarded moments as "counter-revolutionaries."  And, perhaps, next time they won't be such nice guys.

*Since Vietnam, Liberal politicians have professed to support military activity when such a stance polled well.  Their true ambivalence becomes unmistakable the moment there are significant casualties and/or difficulties in the execution of the policy. 

**Barack Obama has been AWOL in the one area he could battle the oil spill:

It has been two weeks since Governor Jindal and the State of Louisiana requesting permission for dredging to build new barrier islands to stop the oil headed towards the state's wetlands and beaches.  Still no answer from Incompetence Central --Team Obama.  The Administration is making the Coast Guard answer questions about the delay in decision, but it isn't the Coast Guard's call --it is the president's, and he's not making it.  But you can be assured that today someone at the top will tell us it is BP's fault and BP will pay.

BP cannot approve the dredging.  Only Team Obama can do that and it refuses to do so.

On the Money

One of the reasons I enjoy reading my friendly blog competitor Jay Adler is that he is very smart and can construct very good arguments.  Today he took a good look at the ongoing Peter Beinart-Jeffrey Goldberg exchanges and he nailed it:

The Mystery of Judgment

Now, I share Beinart’s displeasure with the West Bank settlements, always have, but they exist in a formidable complex of history and policy. It is a judgment to focus on the settlements above all else, and a bad judgment. I wrote to Goldberg suggesting a question to Beinart for part III of the discussion. Apparently, Goldberg is not yet letting me choose his interview questions for him, but I’m working on him. I suggested he ask Beinart why Beinart had not, instead of the above, written the following reformulation of it, which would, of course, have changed his entire article.

But over the long run, the best way to undermine Netanyahu and Lieberman and people like them is to give hope to those Israelis and Jews who do want a two-state solution. In Barak, and even Olmert, we had such leaders. Surely in those circumstances continued anti-Semitic education in Palestinian schools, Muslim calls for the destruction of Israel and rejection of every Israeli peace offer, which simply convinces Israelis that they will never have a genuine partner in peace, is deeply self-destructive. I want the major American Palestinian groups to say so, loudly. Instead, they deny the Palestinians are in any way responsible.

Jay has gotten to the heart of the mystery.  People who genuinely support the Palestinians' (imagined) desire for a state should be doing everything in their power to convince the Palestinians that the path to a state lies more with Gandhi than with Yasser, yet typically such supporters instead either ignore or excuse Palestinian blood lust.  The underlying dynamics of their support are the subject of a great deal of learned pontificating but I will leave it for now that their support of Palestinian statehood is marred by their refusal to acknowledge that a state is not the primary intent of the Palestinians and this inconvenient truth is so destructive to their liberalism and attendant self-regard that it must be ignored as a way to preserve intact their mental structure.

Sadly, Jeffrey Goldberg did not use Jay's question.

Colliding With Reality

In all sorts of ways our Politically Correct, and increasingly corrupt, political culture is colliding with reality, and not surprisingly, reality looks to be the winner.  This is taking place in the international arena, in the political/economic environment, and even making some inroads among the liberal elites.

First, internationally, those famous chickens we have heard so much about, are coming home to roost; Richard Fernandez does an excellent job parsing President Obama's speech to the West Point cadets in the context of the recent act of war committed by North Korea against our ally, South Korea:

The New International Order

Obama understood that power must ultimately be undergirded by economic strength. That is fair enough. But if the steps the Federal Government have been undertaking at “home”, both in the form of unprecedented deficits and its deference to the Green Lobby and the teacher’s unions sap the strength of the American economy and saddle it with mega-programs, then Obama’s new “international order” simply becomes a statement of intention to beg abroad after he has blown his wad on the new domestic order. After propping up a number of politically sacrosanct interest groups that are “too big to fail” the Administration may be frankly telling the West Pointers that there will simply be no money left for anything else. In way the West Point speech can be restated in this way: ‘after we have finished doling out the tax dollar for entitlements, entitlements which we cannot sustain anyway; and after having raised taxes to the level where business growth tapers off to zero, then that’s all she wrote. Therefore we are going to deal with all future international crises — and by that I include global warming and nation building — through multilateralism and diplomacy.’

The risk inherent in this approach is that it will pay in weakness abroad for political pork at home. Can this new multilateral world order work? Probably not without a core of hard power.

Second, note the growing undercurrents in our political/economic environment; here summarized by Clark Judge:

"Seizing the Moment --or Not"

For years, the GOP’s national leadership has been all but clueless about the disenchantment growing around the nation.  But now, in talks with senior Republicans around town and beyond, I increasingly sense that the message of 2006 and 2008 is sinking in.  Not everywhere, but among the more astute. They understand that the GOP Congress’ of George W. Bush’s presidency and the President himself totally dropped the tax and spending ball, and this is why voters turned them out.
 
In many respects, those who switched from Bush in 2004 to the Democrats in 2006 and 2008 and are now returning to the Republicans share the concerns of Henry Olsen’s swing vote in Britain.  They highly prize individual autonomy and enterprise.  They are emphatically citizens, not subjects, and are showing themselves to be super sensitive to what they see as Obama Administration moves to subject them to the whims of an overreaching government.  More broadly, they see astronomical increases in Federal spending (and the taxes that will inevitably go along) and vast expansions of Federal power as threats to the national character, in particular to democratic self-government and to the freedom to chart one’s own course in life.  Increasingly, as I say, the most astute leaders in Congress understand this.

...

It was Victor Hugo who said that there is no power on earth equal to an idea whose time has come. In this Sunday’s New York Times Thomas Friedman wrote (see: http://tiny.cc/8he7m) of the disappearing room for fiscal error in the United States today. There is much Friedman will never understand (he works for The New York Times after all), but if he has started to grasp this truth, the truth that drives the Tea Party crown and the American swing vote, if even he understands it, we may be witnessing the arrival of an idea’s time.

When such liberal luminaries as Tom Friedman and Andrew Cuomo are starting to see the light, it is clear that our unsustainable course will be changing in the near future.

There is no doubt the Republicans can yet snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and in fact, victory in November 2010 and 2012 will earn the victors little in the way of traditional political rewards; the cupboard is bare and there will  be little largess left to reward political allies, yet only by doing the unpopular and difficult will the Republicans regain legitimacy and deserve their victory.

Finally, at the base of all this is a nascent recognition that culture and reality trump politics, something which the Far Left (among whom I include Barack Obama) has failed to appreciate:

Moonshine or the Kids?

There’s an ugly secret of global poverty, one rarely acknowledged by aid groups or U.N. reports. It’s a blunt truth that is politically incorrect, heartbreaking, frustrating and ubiquitous:

It’s that if the poorest families spent as much money educating their children as they do on wine, cigarettes and prostitutes, their children’s prospects would be transformed. Much suffering is caused not only by low incomes, but also by shortsighted private spending decisions by heads of households.

It is a relatively short, though difficult, distance from recognizing that some of the poor are poor because of their culture (ie, their behavior) and that their culture is not simply the result of their poverty, to a recognition that not all populations are exactly equivalent, that some cultures are inimical to the modern world and that some cultures are insensitive to diplomatic language. 

The most committed ideologues prefer to bend reality into compliance with their ideologies, and in a wealthy nation, with an expanding economy, in a generally peaceful world, there is a great deal of room for such elasticity in perceptions of reality.  In a crisis, when reality reduces the margins for error, such self-imposed perceptual blindness endangers us all. 

It is close to the point of no return for the current administration.  They can yet tack back to the center, confront our enemies as assiduously as they confront their political opponents, and begin the difficult task of rationalizing entitlements of all sorts and shrinking the size of our bloated government.  Just enumerating what needs to be done is a useful antidote to the belief that the Obama administration is likely to do any such thing.  They are too wedded to their ideology and can only forge ahead or forfeit their claims to enlightenment and truth.  We must hope that the upcoming change occurs before too much more damage can be done.

Timing Isn't Everything

The Obama administration is doing its best to show us that the Healthcare bill will be good for all now that it is passed and we have the opportunity to find out what's in it.  In fact, they are speeding up the roll out of its features:

Accelerated schedule for ObamaCare implementation not fooling anyone

After watching popular revulsion over ObamaCare rise over the last several months, the Obama administration strategized that an accelerated roll-out of its provisions would increase its popularity.  Over the last few weeks, the White House has pushed hard to advance its public relations by celebrating each early implementation, but a new survey shows that it hasn’t helped at all.

Read the post and look at the numbers.  It is not pretty.

Coincidentally, today a very sick patient came to see me in a state of acute anxiety.  She is Disabled (for Psychiatric reasons) and has private insurance which has payed for some very expensive medication which has controlled her debilitating symptoms for the last two years.  She was just notified that under provisions of Obamacare her co-pay for one of her medicines is going from $30 a month to $90 a month.  She has very little money and cannot afford this.  At the same time she is not destitute and has too many assets to qualify for the Patient Assistance Program from the Pharmaceutical Company.  As a result she will have to stop her very effective, but newer and expensive, medicine and take high doses of an older, cheaper medicine which has known dangerous side effects.

She was once sympathetic to Obamacare, but now is disillusioned.  I hope she does not become acutely ill because of this change in Rx.

Slippery Slopes and Cliffs

Although rarely couched in similar terms, both Left and Right agree on the Slippery Slope Hypothesis.  For the Left, any increase in government power during Republican administrations is considered a danger to civil liberties and fought assiduously.  For the Right, any expansion of government scope and size during a Democratic administration is considered a danger to basic freedoms and fought with an almost mirror image intensity. 

[Interestingly, the usual response when there is a change of administration from one party to the other is for the previously passionately held positions to be quietly shifted into the shadows, few government powers are ceded, and the once unacceptable expansion of government becomes the new baseline.   A classic example is how all of the "fascist" incursions into civil liberties during the Bush administration have become, some only after rather feeble attempts at retreat, SOP for the Obama administration.  In fact, many of the Bush era threats to our freedoms have been expanded by the Obama administration, most notably the use of extra-judicial assassination, including of American citizens outside the boundaries of the United States.]

Because the Slippery Slope Hypothesis is accepted by all the players, the ability to make reasonable distinctions and the existence of "gray areas" is ignored by the ideologues, often with untoward effects.

For the true believer, the Slippery Slope means that any compromise is dangerous.  Such a  stand can lead to completely foolish, though consistent, positions:

Rand Paul, telling the truth

If we use "gaffe" in its proper, Kinsleyan form, that's what U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul issued to NPR yesterday, and that's what he defended on Rachel Maddow's show last night. He told the truth about his stance on the Civil Rights Act. I've posted the video and transcript below the fold, because I find it fascinating to watch Paul stand by his philosophical and legal stance and refuse to dissemble in a way that would, you know, get people to stop accusing him of some archaic form of racism. It reminds me of the way his father, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), stuck by his belief that the Civil War didn't need to be fought even when he appeared on "Meet the Press." The stakes were lower for Ron Paul, though -- he stood no chance of winning the GOP's presidential nomination, while Rand Paul stands a good chance of being elected to Senate.

So is Rand Paul a racist? No, and it's irritating to watch his out-of-context quotes -- this and a comment about how golf was no longer for elitists because Tiger Woods plays golf -- splashed on the Web to make that point. Paul believes, as many conservatives believe, that the government should ban bias in all of its institutions but cannot intervene in the policies of private businesses. Those businesses, as Paul argues, take a risk by maintaining, in this example, racist policies. Patrons can decide whether or not to give them their money, or whether or not to make a fuss about their policies. That, not government regulation and intervention, is how bias should be eliminated in the private sector. And in this belief Paul is joined by some conservatives who resent that liberals seek government intervention for every unequal outcome.

The full transcript of Rand Paul's appearance on the Rachel Maddow Show accompanies David Weigel's article.  What is notable is that Rand Paul offers principled and almost reasonable arguments for why government intervention in private business is unwise, yet such a stance completely ignores the reality which necessitated the Civil Rights Act.  The South was segregated and only Federal intervention was going to change that in any meaningful time frame.  Rand Paul, in his efforts to avoid the Slippery Slope has gone off the cliff (though he has since walked himself back from the edge; Allah has a nice summary of some of the issues involved.)

Glenn Greenwald offers an example of someone on the Left who maintains a consistent ideological pressure against the Slippery Slope (referred to as "the policy ratchet" by John Quiggin) and is willing to ride his position right off the cliff:

A primary reason Bush and Cheney succeeded in their radical erosion of core liberties is because they focused their assault on non-citizens with foreign-sounding names, [this is merely a variant of the apparently obligatory meme that what primarily motivates Republicans is racism-SW] casting the appearance that none of what they were doing would ever affect the average American.  There were several exceptions to that tactic -- the due-process-free imprisonment of Americans Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla, the abuse of the "material witness" statute to detain American Muslims, the eavesdropping on Americans' communications without warrants -- but the vast bulk of the abuses were aimed at non-citizens.  That is now clearly changing.

The most recent liberty-abridging, Terrorism-justified controversies have focused on diluting the legal rights of American citizens (in part because the rights of non-citizens are largely gone already and there are none left to attack).  A bipartisan group from Congress sponsors legislation to strip Americans of their citizenship based on Terrorism accusations.  Barack Obama claims the right to assassinate Americans far from any battlefield and with no due process of any kind.  The Obama administration begins covertly abandoning long-standing Miranda protections for American suspects by vastly expanding what had long been a very narrow "public safety" exception, and now Eric Holder explicitly advocates legislation to codify that erosion.  John McCain and Joe Lieberman introduce legislation to bar all Terrorism suspects, including Americans arrested on U.S. soil, from being tried in civilian courts, and former Bush officials Bill Burck and Dana Perino -- while noting (correctly) that Holder's Miranda proposal constitutes a concession to the right-wing claim that Miranda is too restrictive -- today demand that U.S. citizens accused of Terrorism and arrested on U.S. soil be treated as enemy combatants and thus denied even the most basic legal protections (including the right to be charged and have access to a lawyer).

This shift in focus from non-citizens to citizens is as glaring as it is dangerous.  As Digby put it last week:

The frighting reality is that not even Dick Cheney thought of stripping Americans of their citizenship so that you could torture and imprison them forever --- even right after 9/11 when the whole country was petrified and he could have gotten away with anything. You'll recall even John Walker Lindh, who was literally captured on the battlefield fighting with the Taliban, was tried in civilian court. They even read him his rights.

I think this says something fairly alarming about the current state of our politics.

...  

It is not hyperbole to observe that all of the above-cited recent examples are designed to formally exempt a certain class of American citizens -- those accused of being Terrorists and arrested on U.S. soil -- from the most basic legal protections.  They're all intended, in the name of Scary Terrorists, to rewrite the core rules of our justice system in order to increase the already-vast detention powers of the U.S. Government and further minimize the remaining safeguards against abuse.  The most disgraceful episodes in American history have been about exempting classes of Americans from core rights, and that is exactly what these recent, Terrorism-justified proposals do as well.  Anyone who believes that these sorts of abusive powers will be exercised only in narrow and magnanimous ways should just read a little bit of history, or just look at what has happened with the always-expanding police powers vested in the name of the never-ending War on Drugs, the precursor to the never-ending War on Terrorism in so many ways.

There is actually much to agree with in Greenwald's post and he is one of the few on the Left who is at least minimally consistent.  (The conspicuous silence of so many on the Left to what were once intolerable assaults on our Rights, not to mention to the ongoing Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is telling.)   There is a real danger that our fear of terrorist attacks may lead us to undermine civil rights in dangerous ways.  Where he slides off the cliff is in not recognizing that the single greatest threat to our civil liberties would be another successful terrorist attack that produces mass casualties.  By allowing reasonable impingements on our absolutist reading of legal protections we make successful attacks less likely and preserve our fundamental rights.  If we offer Miranda Rights to all terrorist suspects and as a result a successful, preventable attack takes place, our Constitutional Protections are liable to be suspended in a much more global manner than is currently being done on the margins. 

Unfortunately, because of the fears of being seen as sliding down the Slippery Slope, many of the relaxations of legal protections are being promulgated without any discussion and without any consideration of due process.  For example, I have no problem with using drone attacks to kill terrorist, even if they are American citizens residing in foreign countries; I do have a problem with such a policy being unilaterally adopted by the Executive without Congressional involvement. 

One of President Bush's great failings was in not involving Congress in decisions concerning terrorist prisoners of war.  Temporary abrogations, in limited circumstances, of Constitutional Rights in the service of the preservation of our Rights, needs to be adopted in a transparent process involving our Legislative and Executive branch.  This would prevent the kinds of unilateral and often unacknowledged, ie secret, abrogations of Rights that can most easily lead us down the Slippery Slope.