Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…
a sign of how relations with the west have deteriorated in recent years
in addition to being a piece of news which must surely be an homage to the apologizer-in-chief's brilliant forward-looking policy of smartdiplomacy (Update: spasiba to Instapundit).
The document, "About the Strategy of National Security of Russian
Federation", was signed by President Vladimir Putin on New Year's Eve.
It replaces a 2009 version, endorsed by then-President Dmitry Medvedev,
the current prime minister, which mentioned neither the United States
not NATO.
… Relations between Russia and the West reached a low after
Russian forces annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014,
after protests in Ukraine forced its pro-Moscow president to flee to
Russia.
Reminder: Back during the 2008 election campaign, Sarah Palin was vilified for saying another incredibly dimwitted thing, that the election of a pacifist like Barack Obama to the White House
would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next.
(Gratefully, intelligent people like those writing for Foreign Policy were around to remind everybody that in fact, such an invasion was, and is, "an extremely far-fetched scenario.")
A "sign of how relations with the west have deteriorated in recent years" is the Thomson Reuters journalist's wording of choice.
"In recent years," Vladimir Soldatkin?! "Recent"?!
You might read some blogs once in a while, Vlad. Over there, in your MSM office. And their posts.
and has asked the former president to campaign for her in New Hampshire after the New Year.
Bringing in Bill to rescue a flailing Hillary actually sounds like a
pretty decent strategy. It appears that she’s trying to cash in on the
curious but nonetheless real phenomenon of Clinton nostalgia—Bill
Clinton nostalgia, that is. People genuinely like the former president
even if they can’t name a single thing he accomplished while in office.
Even so, Bill’s rescue operation reflects poorly on Hillary. It’s as
if she’s saying “Yes, I know I’m a dud as a candidate—but my husband’s
pretty cool, isn’t he?” Oh, yeah. He practically invented cool.
William Jefferson Clinton may not be a particularly good leader but
he’s certainly a masterful politician. He’s got that cool vibe that
Hillary doesn’t. The Clintons have long recognized this problem and have
even reached out to their friend Steven Spielberg for help, asking him
to refer Hillary to an acting coach so she could learn what Bill
instinctively knows. Hillary grew weary of the lessons quickly.
Lib-Dems don’t appeal to nostalgia and they usually chalk it up to racism when
Republicans do; now that Hillary Clinton realizes that Bill is a
lot more popular than she is, nostalgia’s okay
While Hillary’s invocation of Clinton Nostalgia is understandable it
is also out of character for a progressive Democrat. Lib-Dems don’t
often appeal to nostalgia and they usually chalk it up to racism when
Republicans do. The good old days never were, they say. Or at least they
used to say that until Hillary Clinton realized that her husband is a
lot more popular than she is. Now nostalgia’s okay.
It is worth noting however that Team Clinton relied on almost exactly
the opposite strategy for winning hearts and minds the last time they
occupied the White House. When Bill accepted his party’s nomination at
the 1996 Democratic National Convention he spoke boldly of the future,
leaning heavily on his campaign’s official slogan “Building a Bridge to
the 21st Century.” In that speech, he used the word “future” ten times, the words “21st Century” twenty-two times, and the word “children” a whopping thirty-six times! As any do-gooder will tell you, the children are
the future—making the two words practically interchangeable. The speech
was classic dumb-downed politics, the use of repetition and glittering
generalities to hammer home one simple, emotionally-charged message:
Democrats are the future, Republicans are the past.
Speaking as one of those children Bill Clinton mentioned thirty-six
times—I was fifteen years old at the time of the convention—I will say
that we’ve arrived at the future he spoke of…and it sucks. It’s no wonder Hillary is placing her bets on nostalgia.
Remember back before everything sucked? Yeah, my husband was president then.
So just what went wrong in the meantime? A lot of things, I suppose,
though if I had to choose just two I would name 9/11 and the 2008 fiscal
crisis as the most substantial. Bill Clinton bears a large portion of
the responsibility for both of those events which makes me wonder why so
many people seem to eagerly await his comeback tour. He’s not solely
responsible for either event, of course, but he does deserve the lion’s
share of blame.
… As economist Stan Liebowitz wrote: “From the current handwringing, you’d
think that the banks came up with the idea of looser underwriting
standards on their own, with regulators just asleep on the job. In fact,
it was the regulators who relaxed these standards–at the behest of
community groups and ‘progressive’ political forces.”
Things got worse when wealthier borrowers began to demand the same
terms for their loans as poor people got. It was rather difficult to
tell a person with good credit that he couldn’t have the same terms as
someone with bad credit. Fueled by easy money from the banks, often
loaned at favorable interest rates and sometimes with no down payment
necessary, builders got to work adorning the American landscape with new
homes.
We learned that a dismal threshold has been passed. The value of
property that police departments seized through civil asset forfeiture —
usually without accusing, let alone convicting, the property owners of a
crime — exceeded the value of property stolen by nongovernment burglars.
This list of 2015 ludicrousness could be lengthened indefinitely, but
enough already. The common thread is the collapse of judgment in, and
the infantilization of society by, government. Happier New Year.
I went to see the new Star Wars film
and I was (very) happy I did
People have allegedly found all sorts of plot holes,
but the only one which really bothered me
I have not seen talked about anywhere
BIG SPOILER AHEAD
DO NOT READ FURTHER
IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FORCE AWAKENS
Once a central figure is gone, a new crew forms for the Millennium Falcon:
Rey and Chewbacca; fair enough — but why — why on Hoth?! — does
Chewie remain co-pilot while the young novice takes over the pilot's seat?
Doesn't the older and more experienced Wookie, the one who has so
many years of flight behind him, deserve to advance to full pilot on the ship
he has served on for so many years, with the novice starting out
(à la Obi-Wan Kenobi and other Padawans) in the novice position?!
Extolling the business virtues of
helping workers balance family and employment demands, including
providing paid time off for the birth of a child, Obama said that if
France can provide the benefits, so can the United States.
“Other countries know how to do this,” Obama said. “If France can figure this out, we can figure it out.”
France provides some of the most far-reaching worker rights in the
developed world, including limiting a standard work week at 35 hours and
providing 16 weeks of paid maternity leave.
France also has an unemployment rate that has hovered above 10 percent for more than two years, well above the rate of unemployed in the United Kingdom and the United States, which are both in the 6 percent range.
Obama made the comment at the first White House summit for working
families, which sought to amplify issues like paid maternity leave and
the ability to take paid leave to take care of elderly loved ones.
“Many women can't even get a paid day off to give birth,” Obama said.
“There is only one developed country in the world that does not offer
paid maternity leave, and that is us. And that is not a list you want to
be on, by your lonesome.”
The White House hosted the summit jointly with the Center for
American Progress, a liberal think tank, and it served in part as a
campaign pep rally focused on turning women voters out in November.
Just in case there was any lingering doubt that Planned Parenthood
doesn’t give a hoot about “women’s health”—or anyone’s health, for that
matter—the abortion giant is now on record favoring the “right” of
HIV-positive people not to disclose their status to sex partners.
From their pamphlet, the ironically titled “Happy, Healthy, and Hot”:
“Your decision about whether to disclose may change with different
people and situations. You have the right to decide if, when, and how to
disclose your HIV status.”
Surely the pamphlet only means friends and co-workers though, right?
Actually, no. The pamphlet continues: “Some countries have laws that say
people living with HIV must tell their sexual partner(s) about their
status before having sex, even if they use condoms or only engage in
sexual activity with a low risk of giving HIV to someone else. These
laws violate the rights of people living with HIV by forcing them to
disclose or face the possibility of criminal charges.” The pamphlet then
encourages the reader to get involved to change such laws “that violate
your rights.”
So basically Planned Parenthood is encouraging people to pull a
Charlie Sheen; or at least condoning it. The renowned actor revealed in
November that he had known for about four years that he is HIV positive,
though he claimed that he always informed his sex partners of his
status, with “no exceptions.” This came as something of a surprise to
Bree Olson, Sheen’s former live-in girlfriend, who thankfully tested
negative. … “He doesn’t even value my life,” said Olson about Sheen’s revelation. No kidding, cupcake.
Her only purpose was to serve his pleasure. If she had to die so that
he could get his rocks off, that was, in Sheen’s calculation, a price
worth paying. …
It’s hard to believe that such selfish people as Charlie Sheen really
exist but they do and they’re actually a lot more common than you might
imagine. The fact that Planned Parenthood, which masquerades as a
reputable medical organization, endorses the “right” not to inform sex
partners of HIV status tells us that the camel has already gotten its
nose under the tent. Though the attitude may not yet be mainstream, that
doesn’t mean it could never be.
The author and journalist Randy Shilts, who died of AIDS in 1994,
shed light on the homosexual community’s culture of denial in his 1987
book “And the Band Played On”. Among Shilts’s premises is that
homosexual political leaders talked a great game when it came to
combatting AIDS but their action was lacking. They refused to consider
any countermeasure to the AIDS “epidemic” that might hamper their sex
lives. The most they would do is promote the use of condoms. They
refused to speak out against the hookup culture that pervaded and
continues to pervade the male homosexual community or, heaven forbid, to
tell male homosexuals to keep their butt cheeks together. …
One can almost understand the rationale behind this kind of reckless
denialism. The disease was discovered in 1981, just a few short years
after male homosexuals had established sexually “liberated” enclaves in
places like New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. …
In the mid-1980s, the author David Horowitz, who was then on a
journey from the Marxist Left to conservative Right, sat down with Randy
Shilts to discuss AIDS, the burgeoning menace then stalking San
Francisco. What Shilts told him was shocking. As Horowitz wrote in his
biography, “Radical Son”: “According to Shilts, it was the gay leaders
themselves who suppressed the research findings, along with the fact—now
generally accepted by medical officials—that AIDS was a sexually
transmitted disease. This was difficult to believe, but when I checked
Shilts’s story, it turned out to be true. The Stonewall Gay Democratic
Club, one of the political powers in the community, had summarized the
politically correct view prevailing among activists in a slogan: ‘Sex
doesn’t cause AIDS—a virus does.’ The activists were afraid that
identifying the disease with promiscuous sex and also with gay sex—95
percent of the cases in San Francisco were among homosexual males—would
stigmatize the ‘gay life-style’ and create a political backlash.”
Yeah, and we wouldn’t want to stigmatize the “gay” lifestyle, would
we? I don’t know what’s wrong with stigmatizing a filthy sexual practice
rife with adverse health consequences, including AIDS of course, but
also gonorrhea, anal cancer, and intestinal parasites. We stigmatize
smoking, why wouldn’t we stigmatize anal sex? Put me down as pro-stigma.
Unfortunately, male homosexuals whine that their rights are being
violated whenever anyone looks askance at butt sex, the activity that
apparently defines them. They demand not only the right to engage in
dangerous, unhealthy sexual behavior, but the right to positive
affirmation as well.
Sadly, the medical community seems to be fulfilling their wish.
Doctors these days live in fear that their careers will be summarily
ended if they advise against anal sodomy—which is pretty good medical
advice, no matter how you slice it. To cite just one example, consider
Dr. Paul Church, a well-respected urologist who was recently fired from
his position at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston
for opposing the homosexual lifestyle on moral and medical grounds. His
story began in 2009 when BIDMC sent out an email inviting staff members
to ride on the hospital-sponsored float in an upcoming “pride” parade.
Dr. Church responded with a mass email of his own, asking why a hospital
would endorse a behavior with undeniable health consequences that
include death. “If a medical scientist cannot raise research that the
federal government’s Centers for Disease Control clearly shows
homosexual conduct as harmful,” he concluded, “then that means that your
health, my health, medical science — all of that is being called into
question simply because of a political agenda.”
He was right, of course, though it’s dangerous to be right when your
employer is wrong. The torrent of homosexual outrage came down on Dr.
Church hard. After a lengthy fight with BIDMC, he lost his job.
He may lose his positions at other Boston-area medical centers,
including Harvard Medical School, where he also practices medicine.
Church was essentially fired for being a good doctor, for staying
true to the Hippocratic Oath he took to “do no harm” at a time when all
the other doctors around him had abandoned theirs. “Truly caring for the
well-being of individuals requires telling them the truth about their
choices,” said Church. “The hospital does this on less controversial
issues such as smoking and diet.” Yes, that’s true, but smokers and fat
people don’t have well-financed and well-organized political apparatuses
and they don’t crush people who get in their way. That’s the
difference.
The homofascists had to make an example out of somebody and they
chose Dr. Church. The chilling effect will be felt far and wide—no one
will dare point out that homosexuals are perverting medicine’s core
mission, though they plainly are.
We’re living in an era of hedonism, in which a substantial portion of
the population careens from disco to disco and from orgasm to orgasm.
Not all such hedonists are homosexuals, of course—there is always the
occasional Charlie Sheen—but a significant number of them are. There is
nothing they won’t do just to keep the good times rolling. They don’t
care about other people’s health or safety, nor do they care about facts
or truth. They care only about their own pleasure and they will stop at
nothing to secure it.
In more Fabius family news, Morandini reveals that France's foreign minister was spied upon while visiting Germany.
Laurent Fabius thus joins the list of targets spied upon by the Bundesnachrichtendienst's (BND's) eyes and ears, including the International Court of Justice, WHO, the FBI, and Voice of America, as well as numerous companies, European as well as American, not least of which was Lockheed.
But, hey…
…if America ain't involved, it don't make da news…
(Or, certainly, it does not turn into a major scandal.)
Les services secrets allemands ont espionné le ministre français des
Affaires étrangères Laurent Fabius, affirme mercredi la radio publique
allemande Berlin-Brandebourg (rbb), qui apporte de nouveaux détails dans
l’affaire d’espionnage qui embarrasse depuis plusieurs mois la
chancellerie allemande.
«Laurent Fabius a été mis sur écoute par le BND», les services de
renseignement extérieurs allemands, souligne la radio sans préciser ses
sources. Elle cite également parmi les cibles des écoutes allemandes la
Cour internationale de justice de la Haye, l’Unicef, l’organisation
mondiale de la santé (OMS), le FBI, la radio financée par les Etats-Unis
Voice of America ou encore «de nombreuses d’entreprises européennes et
américaines, dont l’entreprise d’armement Lockheed aux Etats-Unis».
asks the monthly magazine Geo in its regular multiple choice question game (you have to click on each photo to see the three options to choose among).
With Ryann972's "statue men" photo, you must choose among the following three options:
• On Chile's Easter Island (they would be the earliest Moai statues)
• Near China's Xian city (they would count among the Middle Kingdom's terra cotta soldiers)
• On France's Martinique (this would be the exotic island's Slavery Memorial)
Before scrolling down this post and reading on, see if you can guess the answer (FYI, I nailed it, as did 80% of Geo readers).
We discover that the correct answer is the third and last one (the first two did sound far-fetched), to which we are treated with further information informing us that slavery was not abolished in France in 1794, as we had previously thought, but only in 1974!
Now comes one of those feel-good stories you only
read about on Facebook or in the Reader's Digest.
In the 1980s or 1990s there was a cartoon of a helmeted astronaut at the door of his landing module, making a report of his first impressions to headquarters back on Earth while looking out at a barren planet. Barren except for one thing: Next to the spaceship was what looked like a gargantuan heap of laundry. The caption read:
Houston. We have found the missing socks.
As some of you know, I am for the time being living
between Copenhagen and Paris. Like most people,
I suppose, I have orphan socks that I hesitate to throw
away — in both places. (That is, I am determined to
throw them away until… the last second — at which time
I relent, reckoning, I may just run into that other sock
within a day or two.) The last time I was in Denmark,
I thought, I will take my half dozen orphan socks from
Copenhagen to France, and see if any good news would
transpire.
After 13 hours on the highways of Denmark, Germany,
Belgium, and France (not to forget the 45-minute ferry ride),
I arrived in Paris. Lo and behold, one of the orphan socks
from one country was an exact match with one orphan sock
from the other, separated by 1208 km (the exact distance
from my place in one city to that in the other).
What a continual source of trouble [the revolver] is.
In 1901, a reader of the New York Times signing as Solon, Jr wrote a missive to the Gray Lady urging it to take action and embark on gun control or a peculiar form of same.
According to a recent report, American film director George Lucas experienced
a baptism of fire on the Elstree set of Star Wars back in 1976. Instead
of the work ethic he was used to when filming in the States, a very British
adherence to union rules prevailed which meant shooting was delayed for
twice-daily tea breaks. What Lucas failed to appreciate is that for the
British, tea is more than a warm beverage. Tea is a way of life. It is the
answer to almost any problem that arises. In the face of disaster we put the
kettle on. We are very serious about our tea.
… Political
correctness is the oppression of our intellectual movement so no one
says anything anymore just in case anyone else gets offended. What
happens if you say that and someone gets offended? Well they can be
offended, can’t they? What’s wrong with being offended? When did "stick 'n' stones may break my bones" stop being relevant? Isn’t that what you
teach children? He called me an idiot! Don’t worry about it, he’s a dick.
Now you have adults going “I was offended, I was offended and I have
rights!” Well so what, be offended, nothing happened. You’re an adult,
grow up, and deal with it. I was offended! Well, I don’t care! Nothing
happens when you’re offended. “I went to the comedy show and the
comedian said something about the lord, and I was offended, and when I
woke up in the morning, I had leprosy."
Nothing Happens. “I want to live in a democracy but I never want to be offended again.” Well you’re an idiot.
How do you make a law about offending people? How do you make it an
offense to offend people? Being offended is subjective. It has
everything to do with you as an individual or a collective, or a group
or a society or a community. Your moral conditioning, your religious
beliefs. What offends me may not offend you. And you want to make laws
about this? I’m offended when I see boy bands for god sake.
It’s a valid offense, I’m offended. They’re corporate shills, posing as
musicians to further a modeling career and frankly I’m disgusted. …
We keep hearing how Barack Obama is the most intelligent man to enter the White House, which is why he is constantly appealing to, and lecturing, the American people (as well as members of Congress) to go for "common sense" solutions.
Remember the man who victoriously knocked the gavel for the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris?
Aka France's Foreign Affairs Minister doubling as President-designate of COP21?
Laurent Fabius?
Well, you must decide for yourself whether the following is somehow symbolic, because, very frankly, you can't make this up.
A couple of days after Laurent Fabius brought down the gavel for a glorious new future for mankind, and just as he was thanked in parliament with a standing ovation, his son spent 12 hours in police custody for forgery andfraud, as wellas money laundering.
But Thomas Fabius isn't only wanted by the French police. Just to make things a bit more interesting, Laurent's oldest son, a playboy who apparently has something of the gambler about him, has a U.S. arrest warrant issued in his name—for bounced checks running in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and written in Las Vegas, of all places, totaling $3.5 million ($1,000,000 to The Palazzo, $900,000 to the Cosmopolitan, etc…).
The Daily Telegraph's Henry Samuel:
The playboy son of France’s foreign minister was taken into custody on
Tuesday as part of an investigation into forgery, fraud and money
laundering, just as the father was receiving a standing ovation in
parliament.
… As they searched the property in Paris’
literary Left Bank on Tuesday morning [a palatial €7.3 million (£5.3 million) apartment], Laurent Fabius, his father, was
receiving rapturous applause in France’s National Assembly for his part
in clinching an historic global climate deal over the weekend.
Le parquet de Paris a ouvert en 2013 une information judiciaire pour
faux, escroquerie et blanchiment, confiée aux juges d'instruction René
Cros et Roger Le Loire, visant le fils du chef de la diplomatie
française.
In addition to the French police, Thomas Fabius is wanted by a U.S. arrest warrant issued in Nevada:
The playboy son of France’s
foreign minister faces arrest in America for spending $3.5m (£2.3m) in a
Las Vegas gambling frenzy only for the casinos to see his cheques
bounce.
Nevada state court has issued an arrest warrant following a criminal
complaint over several bad cheques Thomas Fabius wrote to three casinos
on 15 May 2012 — the day before his father, Laurent Fabius, officially became foreign minister in President François Hollande’s Socialist government.
Thomas Fabius, fils du ministre des Affaires étrangères, fait l'objet d'un mandat d'arrêt aux Etats-Unis pour des chèques en bois, d'un montant total dépassant 3,5 millions de dollars, qu'il a rédigés pour des casinos de Las Vegas.
Ces énormes dettes de jeu ont été contractées dans la nuit du 15 au 16 mai 2012, selon l'hebdomadaire Le Point qui a révélé l'affaire.
Ce même 16 mai 2012 Laurent Fabius était officiellement nommé chef de la diplomatie française.
Update: I am told that this post is unjust, that Thomas Fabius is an adult with allegedly no connection (?) to his father.
That might seem to be a valid comment if you believe that the workings, attitudes, and beliefs inside families, especially families of the ruling élites, in the exact same timeframe have no meaning at all. Had something positive occurred in the Fabius family, for instance, one can be sure it would be treated with pride by all the other family members.
The comment would especially make sense if, by some accident, the same rules happened to apply to conservatives. (See especially Prescott Bush, and the Bush family being lambasted for their (grand-)father's foreign dealings, with a German régime recognized by all countries prior to World War II and before the Holocaust had even started, in a time when the elder George Bush was 10 and 50 years prior to any Bush attaining the White House.)
If there is one thing that frustrates me to the uttermost degree, it is the seeming unwillingness, or inability, of GOP contenders — and I suppose that to some extent it involves the dread of being called a racist — to go after the man in the White House and the policies that he has championed for almost eight years.
Even this year, when, thankfully, most of the hopefuls are bringing a stop to the GOP politeness game à la John McCain/Mitt Romney campaigns, they are not taking full advantage of the situation.
Even Ted Cruz (whom I've supported for the past few months) does not do this enough — although he has been doing it more than anyone else.
Even, incredibly, Donald Trump does not do this enough. (He attacks more the policy than the man behind them, as well as Hillary the candidate but much less so than the man who has presided over those policies since 2009.)
In short: Hillary Clinton (or whoever the Democrats' candidate turns out to be) and Barack Obama should invariably be lumped TOGETHER in whatever criticism is made of the Democrat party and its members' administration of the country in the past seven years.
Three recent developments that should be picked upon unceasingly— especially when the candidate or any of his competitors (!) are being attacked personally:
1) The insanity of Obama's Iran deal, with the offer of $100 billion to the ayatollahs (see an example at the bottom of this post), not to mention the apologizer-in-chief's attendant domesticpolicy;
2) the petulant and puerile outbursts of Obama — allegedly the most intelligent
man ever to run for the White House — his ugly mocking, which can be
called akin to juvenility and childishness (a puerility which makes the
GOP's remain-polite-to-Obama-at-all-costs game even more ludicrous);
3) and evidence of the double standards of the media (no recent development, this, but then, okay, neither was/is the ugly attitude of an extreme leftist nor was/is his smartdiplomacy).
Ben Carson went for the jugular during a press conference when the media kept asking him about the West Point controversy.
I do not remember this level of scrutiny for one President Barack Obama,
when he was running, in fact I remember just the opposite, I remember
people just said, "oh we won't really talk about that relationship, oh, Frank Marshall Davis,
oh we don't want to talk about that, Bernadine Dorne, Bill Ayers, we
don't want to know about that, all the things Jeremiah Wright was
saying, ehh not a big problem.
Goes to Occidental college, doesn't do all that well, somehow ends up at Columbia University, I dunno.
His records are sealed." Why are his records sealed? You're not
interested in that? Can somebody tell me why? I'm asking you why are
they sealed? Don't change the subject. Will someone tell me please why
you have not investigated that.
Something with the words "a scholarship was offered" is a big deal, but
the president of the U.S. his academic records being sealed is not. Tell
me how there is equivalency there. Tell me somebody, please.
Because you see, what you're not going to find with me is somebody who
is going to sit back and be completely unfair without letting the
American people know what is going on; the American people are waking up
to your games.
Ben Carson should be taking on Obama all the time. As should all the others. But as far as I can tell, the surgeon stopped doing it.
They should also be getting to the root of an issue.
For instance, the only real news about the "controversy"
of Ben Carson's not advocating a Muslim for president is not the
content of that very statement, but — and any of the candidates could have picked up on this — the apparent dread of liberals and their media brethren to the horrific idea of
having a Christian, i..e., an average, everyday American (never mind an
evangelical Christian), for president.
Regarding a recent Donald Trump outburst, Paul Ryan intoned that
This is not
conservatism. What was proposed yesterday is not what this party stands
for and, more importantly, it’s not what this country stands for.
We need to aggressively take on radical Islamic terrorism but not at the expense of our American values.
First of all, with regards to Ronald Reagan's dictum on remaining united, offhand I do not have too much issue (relatively speaking) with attacks on fellow Republicans. But by all means, follow it up with an "on the flip side", with an attack on the Democrats — and by that I mean, not just on Barack Obama, and I mean, not just on Hillary Clinton (or on Bernie Sanders); I mean, follow it up with an attack on both of them, on all of them, together. (Actually, an attack means little more than a neutral and objective description.)
So Paul Ryan attacks Trump for not understanding what America stand for. Fine. By all means, do so. But, at the same time, follow up the above statement with something to this effect:
[To the credit of all our candidates, however — and I mean all of them — not one of them has referred to any member of the opposition party as terrorists or the equivalent of Iran's religious fanatics. Nor, indeed, has any of them mentioned the Democrats as the worst enemies of their career.]
An aside: Often I have wondered what was the best comeback — the best succinct comeback — on issues raised by liberals.
On the issue of gun control, and how well it works in those Western European countries we should always be seeking to emulate, I came up with one three or four years ago. Last week the New York Times published it as a response to their "Gun Epidemic in America" editorial.
Through the years, I have also often thought about what might be the best response to being called a racist, a bigot, a fascist, or a homophobe or being told "you are full of sh1t." (Thank the person. Profusely.)
Returning to our candidates: I would to say that the perfect candidate would
refrain, should refrain, as best as possible, from attacking his fellow
Republicans all the other candidate. Even if they attack him (or her),
he (or she) will look better to the voters if, au contraire, (s)he continuously defends all the others (Marco Rubio showed this brilliantly in his comeback to Jeb Bush (“My
campaign is going to be about the future of America, it is not going to be
attacking anyone else on this stage; I will continue to have tremendous
admiration and respect for governor Bush”).) Even if, to be entirely honest, no one can deny that there is some degree of weasel-ness involved… It may also have been Marco Rubio who stated that anyone on this stage would be better than Hillary Clinton or than any Democrat…
In any case, I have never loved Marco Rubio more than during the third Republican presidential debate when he pointed out that
the Democrats have the ultimate Super PAC. It's called the mainstream
media … And I'll tell you why. Last week, Hillary
Clinton went before a committee. She admitted, she had sent e-mails to
her family saying, "Hey, this attack at Benghazi was caused by Al
Qaida-like elements." She spent over a week telling the families of
those victims and the American people that it was because of a video.
And yet the mainstream media is going around saying it was the greatest
week in Hillary Clinton's campaign. It was the week she got exposed as a liar. It was the week that she got exposed as a liar... But she has her super PAC helping her out — the American mainstream media.
It was brilliant.
Almost. Almost brilliant.
The Florida senator should have mentioned the apologizer-in-chief's name too, and should have hammered it home. Again and again. And again.
Witness the outburst, rewritten:
… the Democrats have the ultimate Super PAC. It's called the mainstream
media … And I'll tell you why. Last week, Hillary
Clinton went before a committee. She admitted she had sent e-mails to
her family saying, "Hey, this attack at Benghazi was caused by Al
Qaida-like elements." She [and Barack Obama] spent over a week telling the families of
those victims and the American people that it was because of a video.
And yet the mainstream media is going around saying it was the greatest
week in Hillary Clinton's campaign. It was the week she [and Obama] got exposed as [liars]. It was the week that [they] got exposed as [liars]... But she [and Obama have their]
super PAC helping [them] out — the American mainstream media. [Obama and Hillary lied to the American people, Obama and Hillary lied to the international community (the apologizer-in-chief repeated the lie six or seven times in an address before the United Nations), and Obama and Hillary lied to you people in the MSM. And you know what? You couldn't care less. You didn't care then. And you don't care now.]
Or perhaps that meme should be turned around: Americans died, Obama lied.
How 'bout:
Americans died, Obama lied, Hillary denied.
If, like me, you have been made angry about Barack Obama's mocking Republican candidates as not being able to "handle a bunch o' CNBC moderators" and wondering what kind of comeback would be best to counter that childish behavior with, well, finally it struck me: the best thing would have been effectively to act — to have acted — preemptively.
How well would Obama's bogus charge have played, even with his own base, had Rubio mentioned his name as well every time he charged the media of being indifferent to Hillary's actions, actions which were not only failures but lies?
Would Obama even have dared make the mockery in the face of such a statement? (Quite possibly — given the media double standards — but it would have looked much less convincing to the average voter…)
Finally, with regards to the three points above, the sentence I would like to hear a candidate, several hopefuls, all contenders say a variation of over and over again (the Republican names in the sentence depend on who is speaking, obviously—indeed, this is one more thing that Paul Ryan could have, should have, added to the end of his bromide against Donald Trump):
[We keep hearing how Barack Obama was, is, one of the most intelligent people to enter the White House, and a man who keeps appealing to, and lecturing, the American people to use common sense solutions. I suppose that is because neither I [whichever candidate is speaking], nor Ted Cruz, nor either of the Bush brothers, nor even Donald Trump would ever dream of bestowing a gift of not $100 million, not $1 billion, not $10 billion, but $100 billion to the ayatollahs of a country whose leaders regularly lead the people in chanting "Death to America!" and "Death to the West!"]
I have long been a critic of the German foreign policy debate
writes Clemens Wergin, predicting America's current mess (in the New York Times, of all places) already a year and a half ago
— of its freeloading on the American security umbrella, coupled with moral grandstanding whenever the Americans did things their way; of too much analysis of past events and not enough thinking about how to get things right in the future; of its tendency to take words as a substitute for deeds. That’s why I have usually given the Americans the benefit of the doubt: At least they took on problems nobody else was willing to tackle.
But then, at the height of the Syria conflict and just after yet another of Barack Obama’s
speeches, I suddenly understood the problem with this American
president and his foreign policy. He sounded just like a German
politician: all moral outrage, but little else to help end one of the
most devastating civil wars of our age. President Obama, I thought with a
sigh, has become European.
Indeed,
the less this president wants to get involved in something abroad, the
more he dials up his rhetoric. That the American president finds things
“unacceptable,” one of his administration’s favorite words, doesn’t
carry any real meaning anymore; it certainly doesn’t mean that America
will try to change what it deems “unacceptable.”
… Polls
suggest that Americans are not happy with the results of Mr. Obama’s
foreign policy, though they still shy away from the costs that more
engagement around the globe would entail. Welcome to my world. It sounds
awfully European to want to have one’s cake and eat it at the same
time.
There
is a certain irony in the fact that President Obama’s foreign policy
finds its Waterloo in the same country that shipwrecked the Bush
doctrine: Iraq. It is true that the Bush administration seriously
mishandled the war in Iraq. But it is also true that after the surge,
George W. Bush handed Mr. Obama an Iraq that was in much better shape
than it is today.
By
rushing to the exit and teaming up with the Iranians to reinstall Prime
Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki after he lost the elections in 2010 — and
by not confronting him forcefully on his anti-Sunni policies — the
Obama administration undermined the progress American troops had paid
for very dearly.
Then
came another deed of omission in Syria. For years Middle East experts
had warned that the civil war in Syria would not be confined to that
country, but would spill over into neighboring countries. But Mr. Obama
stood back, using rhetoric and admonitions while ignoring the experts.
Yet they were right: The crisis in Iraq is a direct result of Mr.
Obama’s nonconfrontational strategy in Syria.
When he was first elected in 2008, Barack Obama was hailed on the old
Continent as a president with almost European sensitivities and
worldviews. But the compliment was unintentionally double-edged. For
more than two decades now, Europeans have assumed that the world would
remain comparatively stable and wouldn’t need much hard power to be
maintained (at least European hard power, that is). So too, it seems,
does Mr. Obama.
While
Mr. Obama’s new style of diplomacy — soft power and nonintervention —
was at first seen as a welcome break with the Bush years, five years
later a dismal realization has set in. It turns out that soft power
cannot replace hard power. On the contrary, soft power is merely a
complementary foreign policy tool that can yield results only when it is
backed up by real might and the political will to employ it if
necessary.
Ultimately,
the measuring stick for a successful foreign policy is not how many
nice and convincing speeches a leader makes, but whether he succeeds in
getting things to go his way. … the list of actors and countries that are actively pushing against
European and American interests, and getting away with it, grows ever
longer.
Barack
Obama wanted America to learn from Europe’s soft-power approach. But
while Europeans are loath to admit it, they know that European soft
power often doesn’t work either — and that it is a luxury that they
could afford only because America’s hard power always loomed in the
background. And when they dropped the ball, America would pick it up.
And
therein lies the lesson to our American friends who seemingly want to
become less involved and more European: There is no second America to
back you up when you drop the ball.
Reminder: Back during the 2008 election campaign, Sarah Palin was vilified for saying another incredibly dimwitted thing, that the election of a pacifist like Barack Obama to the White House
and I was (very) happy I did
People have allegedly found all sorts of plot holes,
but the only one which really bothered me
I have not seen talked about anywhere