Monday, May 21, 2012
So Call Me "Birther"
We seem to have a problem, sometimes, with stating the obvious.
Breitbart.com has been doing utterly invaluable work, digging up hitherto-undiscovered details about President Obama's past. (It's invaluable because virtually no one else is willing to do it -- meaning that, for a great many things about the President's past, we know nothing other than what he has chosen to tell us.) Yet even breitbart.com is mincing their words in order to avoid the "birther" controversy:
Breitbart News’ discovery of the 1991 biography distributed by Barack Obama’s then-literary agency, which stated (incorrectly) that Obama had been “born in Kenya,” confirmed what we have been saying for months as we pursued “The Vetting” project.
(emphasis added)
"Incorrectly"? On what basis do they make that claim?
Follow that link, and you'll see the same story:
This is all quite factual. That a literary agent for the young Barack Obama reported him as having been born in Kenya is not evidence that he was. Rather, it is evidence, as Breitbart says, that President Obama has felt free to identify himself in divergent and contradictory ways over the years. (It makes little sense that BHO's biography of the time was written by anybody but him; it makes even less sense that a publicity-hungry young Harvard graduate, eager to make a name for himself, would not read a press release about his as-yet-unwritten first book, or would fail to correct an error in that bio. In other words, we can be sure that BHO read the bio stating he was born in Kenya and was comfortable letting it stand, just as a few years later he would read the proofs of Dreams From My Father, stating that he was born in Hawaii, and was comfortable letting that stand too.)
But still we've tiptoeing around the issue here. breitbart.com is bending over backwards to avoid suggesting, even for a moment, that he was born anywhere but Hawaii, according to the accepted narrative (i.e. the one provided by the President).
Well, if they won't say it, I will. WHY SHOULD I BELIEVE THE PRESIDENT WHEN HE SAYS HE WAS BORN IN HAWAII?
(Please note: I'm not claiming that he was born in Kenya, because I haven't seen a Kenyan birth certificate. By the same logic, I'm not claiming that he was born in Hawaii, because I haven't seen a legitimate birth certificate from there either! Neither the much-ballyhooed short form certificate, nor the belatedly-released long form, pass the smell test.)
It's painful to say this, but at this point, I have no reason to believe much of anything the President says, merely because he says it. This goes beyond his many broken campaign promises (closing Guantanamo, not raising taxes on anyone making less than $250K, and so on). But he also claimed, many times, to have lived with his mother and father in Hawaii, which has been thoroughly debunked. He claimed that his dying mother was denied health-care coverage, when in fact she was covered.
It is simply not enough to believe the President's word with respect to anything about his own past. We have now seen that he was comfortable claiming to have been born in Kenya, when it suited him to do so. (He is also on record as being challenged, during his 2004 Senate race, as not being a natural-born American, to which he supposedly retorted, "So what? I'm not running for the Presidency.")
So I'm perfectly willing to believe that the President was born in Hawaii... but so far I've seen no conclusive evidence I was willing to accept. And frankly, given that the President has already claimed as his a birth certificate that is a transparent fraud, should I trust him if he produces another one that looks better?
Much as I respect and admire breitbart.com and the work they're doing, I think they're dropping the ball here. Let's say it again: THE BEST EVIDENCE WE HAVE THAT THE PRESIDENT WAS BORN IN HAWAII IS HIS OWN WORD... and that's just not good enough.
What would it take, at this point, for me to believe that Barack H. Obama II was born in the United States? Frankly, I'm not sure... but it would have to come from somewhere other than the White House. They've muddied the waters enough already.
And if we did find convincing evidence that the President was born in Hawaii, as he now claims he was, the question would still remain -- why did he go to so much trouble to hide, up to and including the production of a fraudulent birth certificate?
If, on the other hand, we find convincing evidence in the other direction -- well then, the reasons for the hiding become clear, don't they?
"Incorrectly"? On what basis do they make that claim?
Follow that link, and you'll see the same story:
Note from Senior Management:
Andrew Breitbart was never a "Birther," and Breitbart News is a site that has never advocated the narrative of "Birtherism." In fact, Andrew believed, as we do, that President Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961.Yet Andrew also believed that the complicit mainstream media had refused to examine President Obama's ideological past, or the carefully crafted persona he and his advisers had constructed for him.It is for that reason that we launched "The Vetting," an ongoing series in which we explore the ideological background of President Obama (and other presidential candidates)--not to re-litigate 2008, but because ideas and actions have consequences.It is also in that spirit that we discovered, and now present, the booklet described below--one that includes a marketing pitch for a forthcoming book by a then-young, otherwise unknown former president of the Harvard Law Review.
It is evidence--not of the President's foreign origin, but that Barack Obama's public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times.
This is all quite factual. That a literary agent for the young Barack Obama reported him as having been born in Kenya is not evidence that he was. Rather, it is evidence, as Breitbart says, that President Obama has felt free to identify himself in divergent and contradictory ways over the years. (It makes little sense that BHO's biography of the time was written by anybody but him; it makes even less sense that a publicity-hungry young Harvard graduate, eager to make a name for himself, would not read a press release about his as-yet-unwritten first book, or would fail to correct an error in that bio. In other words, we can be sure that BHO read the bio stating he was born in Kenya and was comfortable letting it stand, just as a few years later he would read the proofs of Dreams From My Father, stating that he was born in Hawaii, and was comfortable letting that stand too.)
But still we've tiptoeing around the issue here. breitbart.com is bending over backwards to avoid suggesting, even for a moment, that he was born anywhere but Hawaii, according to the accepted narrative (i.e. the one provided by the President).
Well, if they won't say it, I will. WHY SHOULD I BELIEVE THE PRESIDENT WHEN HE SAYS HE WAS BORN IN HAWAII?
(Please note: I'm not claiming that he was born in Kenya, because I haven't seen a Kenyan birth certificate. By the same logic, I'm not claiming that he was born in Hawaii, because I haven't seen a legitimate birth certificate from there either! Neither the much-ballyhooed short form certificate, nor the belatedly-released long form, pass the smell test.)
It's painful to say this, but at this point, I have no reason to believe much of anything the President says, merely because he says it. This goes beyond his many broken campaign promises (closing Guantanamo, not raising taxes on anyone making less than $250K, and so on). But he also claimed, many times, to have lived with his mother and father in Hawaii, which has been thoroughly debunked. He claimed that his dying mother was denied health-care coverage, when in fact she was covered.
It is simply not enough to believe the President's word with respect to anything about his own past. We have now seen that he was comfortable claiming to have been born in Kenya, when it suited him to do so. (He is also on record as being challenged, during his 2004 Senate race, as not being a natural-born American, to which he supposedly retorted, "So what? I'm not running for the Presidency.")
So I'm perfectly willing to believe that the President was born in Hawaii... but so far I've seen no conclusive evidence I was willing to accept. And frankly, given that the President has already claimed as his a birth certificate that is a transparent fraud, should I trust him if he produces another one that looks better?
Much as I respect and admire breitbart.com and the work they're doing, I think they're dropping the ball here. Let's say it again: THE BEST EVIDENCE WE HAVE THAT THE PRESIDENT WAS BORN IN HAWAII IS HIS OWN WORD... and that's just not good enough.
What would it take, at this point, for me to believe that Barack H. Obama II was born in the United States? Frankly, I'm not sure... but it would have to come from somewhere other than the White House. They've muddied the waters enough already.
And if we did find convincing evidence that the President was born in Hawaii, as he now claims he was, the question would still remain -- why did he go to so much trouble to hide, up to and including the production of a fraudulent birth certificate?
If, on the other hand, we find convincing evidence in the other direction -- well then, the reasons for the hiding become clear, don't they?
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
President Zelig
What do you call an American leader who rewrites the history books, simply to insert his own name on practically every page?
Apparently, we should call him President Obama.
The Heritage Foundation’s Rory Cooper tweeted that Obama had casually dropped his own name into Ronald Reagan’s official biography on www.whitehouse.gov, claiming credit for taking up the mantle of Reagan’s tax reform advocacy with his “Buffett Rule” gimmick. My first thought was, he must be joking. But he wasn’t—it turns out Obama has added bullet points bragging about his own accomplishments to the biographical sketches of every single U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge (except, for some reason, Gerald Ford).
Oh, come on. Did he really?
Yes, he did. Check out http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/, and click on the biography of any President you like, from Calvin Coolidge onwards. Every single one, with the exception of Ford, has a new "did you know?" trivia paragraph added that mentions Barack H. Obama. The other biographies don't have such a trivia section, leading me to believe the trivia was added solely as an excuse to mention our exalted leader's name.
As The Anchoress comments: "Pity the President. he is such a small and insecure man."
I hope he continues to pull stunts like this. If he does, Mitt Romney might become America's first unanimously elected president since George Washington.
UPDATE: This seems relevant. If President Obama hasn't yet described the Osama bin Laden operation this way, it's probably just a matter of time.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Movie Stars and Politics
Jennifer said it.
And she's perfectly right. Why is a movie star's opinion on politics worth more than, say, a cab driver's? Why should I care what they think?
It's not like being famous automatically earns respect for anything other than that which got you famous. That's why Albert Einstein, for example, went on record with high-minded gibberish in re politics (which was not his area of expertise by any means).
So we can respect actors, say, who are good at what they do, for being good at what they do. Respect in other areas (such as opinions on international politics) will need to be earned separately.
For what actors are good at, quite frankly, is lying -- pretending to be someone they're not.
So I need not care what they think, and indeed I don't. But they ought to care about what I think... because they're selling a product -- their ability to entertain me -- and I don't need to buy it if I don't feel like it. If I can't see an actor's face without getting upset about something stupid he said, I won't pay money to see him. (Did the entertainment industry learn nothing from the Dixie Chicks?)
As Samuel Goldwyn is reported to have warned his scriptwriters: "You gotta message, use Western Union". Or, to put it even more directly, there's this lovely exchange from Inherit the Wind:
Hornbeck: May I ask your opinion, sir, on Evolution?
Shopkeeper: Don't have any opinions. They're bad for business.
On Israel and Iran
Charles Krauthammer hits it out of the park with his latest Washington Post essay, comparing Israel's security situation now to that just before the Six-Day War in 1967.
It's a simple comparison to make. Israel faced an existential threat then (from Egypt's Nasser, threatening to destroy Israel and making it clear that he had the means to do so), as now (Iran's Ahmadinejad, ditto). And then, as now, Israel responded to a looming threat with an interesting political move -- the establishment of a National Unity Government by inviting in the opposition. (Imagine if, in response to the threat of war, President Obama were to appoint Republican party leaders to key Cabinet positions. Yes, this is a big deal.)
But Krauthammer goes on to point out that Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu has done this when he had a powerful incentive not to. Negotiations had already been underway to advance early elections -- far from unheard of in Israeli politics -- with the expectation that Netanyahu's Likud would win those elections handily. So why would Netanyahu turn down a chance for an easy election and four more years in power?
Because, as Prime Minister Eshkol understood in 1967, and as Ariel Sharon advocated more recently, at a time of national emergency you want as broad a base as possible. Israel's Knesset now represents an astonishing 78% of voters... and Israel's government, for now at least, is on the same page vis-a-vis Iran.
Prime Minister Menachem Begin didn't do this when he ordered the destruction of Saddam's nuclear reactors in 1981, just weeks before a national election. It was difficult not to see this as a cynical political move, intended to guarantee re-election, and Begin took a lot of heat for that. But Netanyahu now has the country behind him, tangibly and dramatically -- and he did so in a way that was obviously not a re-election ploy.
Further, since the mandate of the current coalition expires in 18 months, we can expect some sort of resolution of Iranian nuclear ambitions before then.
Israel -- and her allies and supporters worldwide -- can take heart, knowing that the man leading Israel is a brave and clever man who knows exactly what he's doing -- and who has demonstrated that Israel's survival is more important to him than his political career.
Read the whole thing.
(Hat tip: Power Line.)
News Flash: US Military Calls For Violent Measures
Does that headline seem as ridiculous to you as it does to me? I would have thought that this can be simply assumed. It's like saying that the Pope has come out in favor of people going to church on Sundays, or that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced that he doesn't like Israel. This is supposed to be news?
Apparently it is. Wired.com writes breathlessly about about a course, taught at the Joint Forces Staff College by Lt. Col Matthew Dooley, that suggests a war with Islam may be coming, and that extreme measures may need to be taken in such a war.
I'm having difficulty seeing what all the excitement is about here. First of all, Wired reports that the Pentagon has already canceled the class; furthermore, "The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff recently ordered the entire
U.S. military to scour its training material to make sure it doesn’t
contain similarly hateful material, a process that is still ongoing". That seems pretty thorough to me. But Wired complains that Lt. Col. Dooley is still at his position (although he is under investigation).
Okay, so a teacher is found teaching material that his higher-ups find objectionable. The class is canceled, the teacher is put under investigation, and a nationwide search is conducted for similar class materials so that they can be purged too. And this is somehow not enough? Was the U.S. Army supposed to execute Lt. Col. Dooley without trial, or something?
Furthermore, why the uproar? We have seen incendiary lectures given in the US Military before, which were not condemned by anyone. (Not until the lecturer decided to commit murder, that is.) And why paint with such a broad brush? The Wired headline reads "U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam", blaming the entire US Military for the actions of a single instructor, as though he was teaching official US Army doctrine. (The fact that his class has been so thoroughly repudiated by the top brass should indicate that, on the contrary, Lt. Col. Dooley was working on his own here.)
The reasons, of course, should be obvious. Dooley's lectures were harshly critical of Islam and Muslims, something that is not to be tolerated in any form today. (By contrast, Maj. Hassan's lectures on the superiority of Islam, and on the need for Muslim US soldiers to disobey orders, were perfectly acceptable.)
But let's take a closer look. Granted, Lt. Col. Dooley was teaching about the possibility of an all-out war against Islam as though it was a distinct possibility, and he explored the connotations of that in ways that many might view as distasteful. But isn't that what military planning is all about? Any competent military has detailed plans, written up and ready for immediate execution, to deal with situations that are unlikely in the extreme. We can rest assured that the US Military has war plans for what to do if aliens attack us from the moon, if a volcano suddenly appears in the middle of Yellowstone National Park, if Alaska declares independence and cuts off all connections with the rest of the US, and so on, and so on.
The reason for this should be obvious. When faced with a military emergency, or an emergency with military implications, we don't want to be making it up as we go along. We want to have plans in place, ready to go. If a preposterously unlikely event happens and the US Military isn't prepared for it, then someone hasn't been doing his or her job.
So we can expect the military to have all sorts of plans, including some non-politically-correct ones. But we're not even complaining about that. Wired protests that a course was taught to military officers, exposing their delicate ears to negative depictions of Islam. This is not policy; this does not in any way change current US military planning. It's just a class. And this is supposed to be a scandal?
Yes, apparently it is... one requiring inaccurate headlines to scare as many people as possible. (The headline puts quotes around Hiroshima, i.e. "use 'Hiroshima' tactics for 'total war' on Islam". Did Dooley teach that? He didn't have to; all he had to do was mention the word 'Hiroshima'. Could they not find a single direct quote from Dooley that was incendiary enough for them?)
I can see reasons for people to be upset by this class, certainly. But I don't see why hysteria of any sort is justified here.
(hat tip: Ed Driscoll, writing at Instapundit.)
