Preferring death to house-cleaning, William Brandol quit beating carpets in the yard of his house and went to an abandoned quarry to jump into the deep hole

From the International Herald Tribune's 100 Years Ago section:

1913 — Death Preferable to Cleaning

Preferring death to house-cleaning, William Brandol quit beating carpets in the yard of his house, at 16 Centre street, Nutley, N.J., a little before noon yesterday [May 12], and went to an abandoned quarry and prepared to jump into the deep hole. Brandol decided he would leave a note: — “Dear Wife, Farewell. I can’t beat carpets or clean house, and it ain’t no use of your trying to make me.” When he had finished the noon whistles were blowing, and this reminded Brandol that his wife was to have corned beef and cabbage for the noon meal. He decided that he liked corned beef and cabbage more than he disliked house-cleaning, so he placed the note in a cleft in the rocks, returned to the house and ate a tremendous quantity of his favorite delicacy.

What could have been......

The news this afternoon is certainly grim:

Another month, another 95,000 people lost their jobs in the eurozone.

The EMU unemployment rate nudged up a point to 12.2pc, but this understates those who have dropped out of workforce. The European Commission says the real rate for Italy is around 20pc, not the declared rate of 11.2pc.

There are now 19.4 million registered unemployed in Euroland and 26.6 million in the EU as a whole. There are 5.6m youths below the age of 25 looking for jobs.

By comparison, the US economy looks to be in absolute rude health. Would that be the case had US policy-makers been following the economic advice of the NYTs Paul Krugman, circa 2005:

Americans tend to believe that we do everything better than anyone else. That belief makes it hard for us to learn from others. For example, I've found that many people refuse to believe that Europe has anything to teach us about health care policy. After all, they say, how can Europeans be good at health care when their economies are such failures? 

Now, there's no reason a country can't have both an excellent health care system and a troubled economy (or vice versa). But are European economies really doing that badly? 
The answer is no. Americans are doing a lot of strutting these days, but a head-to-head comparison between the economies of the United States and Europe -- France, in particular -- shows that the big difference is in priorities, not performance. We're talking about two highly productive societies that have made a different tradeoff between work and family time. And there's a lot to be said for the French choice. 

First things first: given all the bad-mouthing the French receive, you may be surprised that I describe their society as ''productive.'' Yet according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, productivity in France -- G.D.P. per hour worked -- is actually a bit higher than in the United States. 

It's true that France's G.D.P. per person is well below that of the United States. But that's because French workers spend more time with their families. 

O.K., I'm oversimplifying a bit. There are several reasons why the French put in fewer hours of work per capita than we do. One is that some of the French would like to work, but can't: France's unemployment rate, which tends to run about four percentage points higher than the U.S. rate, is a real problem. Another is that many French citizens retire early. But the main story is that full-time French workers work shorter weeks and take more vacations than full-time American workers. 

The point is that to the extent that the French have less income than we do, it's mainly a matter of choice. And to see the consequences of that choice, let's ask how the situation of a typical middle-class family in France compares with that of its American counterpart. 

The French family, without question, has lower disposable income. This translates into lower personal consumption: a smaller car, a smaller house, less eating out. 
But there are compensations for this lower level of consumption. Because French schools are good across the country, the French family doesn't have to worry as much about getting its children into a good school district. Nor does the French family, with guaranteed access to excellent health care, have to worry about losing health insurance or being driven into bankruptcy by medical bills. 

Perhaps even more important, however, the members of that French family are compensated for their lower income with much more time together. Fully employed French workers average about seven weeks of paid vacation a year. In America, that figure is less than four.

So which society has made the better choice? 

I've been looking at a new study of international differences in working hours by Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser, at Harvard, and Bruce Sacerdote, at Dartmouth. The study's main point is that differences in government regulations, rather than culture (or taxes), explain why Europeans work less than Americans. 

But the study also suggests that in this case, government regulations actually allow people to make a desirable tradeoff -- to modestly lower income in return for more time with friends and family -- the kind of deal an individual would find hard to negotiate. The authors write: ''It is hard to obtain more vacation for yourself from your employer and even harder, if you do, to coordinate with all your friends to get the same deal and go on vacation together.'' 

And they even offer some statistical evidence that working fewer hours makes Europeans happier, despite the loss of potential income. 

It's not a definitive result, and as they note, the whole subject is ''politically charged.'' But let me make an observation: some of that political charge seems to have the wrong sign.

American conservatives despise European welfare states like France. Yet many of them stress the importance of ''family values.'' And whatever else you may say about French economic policies, they seem extremely supportive of the family as an institution. Senator Rick Santorum, are you reading this?

According to the latest statistics, Europeans are indeed working ever fewer hours these days, months, years. They must be absolutely ecstatic at the moment, what say you good doctor?

At the dawn of the 21st century, the military’s primary concern seems to be “diversity”, not winning wars

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the military’s primary concern seems to be “diversity” with all of its hideous hydra heads, not winning wars

writes Iraq War veteran Benjamin Duffy in his post on Barack Obama's Recipe For A Weaker Military.

 The Pentagon continues to charge full speed ahead toward integration of women into combat roles by 2016. If you harbored any doubts that standards will be lowered in order to achieve the goal, rest assured that they will be.

Perhaps you’ve heard otherwise. In January, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told reporters,

”If members of our military can meet the qualifications for a job — and let me be clear, I’m not talking about reducing the qualifications for the job — if they can meet the qualifications for the job, then they should have the right to serve, regardless of creed or color or gender or sexual orientation.”

Panetta summed up the classic argument in favor of allowing women to serve in combat roles: If standards remain the same, why shouldn’t a woman be allowed the opportunity to meet them? Good question, though I’d suggest that anyone who asks it doesn’t know the state of today’s military. This isn’t your daddy’s army, or even your older brother’s.

 … We now know that efforts to lower standards are already underway. The US Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) is currently conducting a scientific review to determine gender-neutral physical standards for the co-ed combat units of the future. Why is a fancy study even necessary? Won’t women be expected to meet the same old standards that men always had to? Well, no. If that were the case no study would be needed to formulate new standards because they would simply apply the old ones.

The newly minted gender-neutral standards will likely fall somewhere between the current “gender-normed” separate standards of today’s military. … Combat effectiveness will thus suffer on two fronts—units will be forced to include both males and females who otherwise wouldn’t be qualified. The standards will be the same for both genders, only lower. If a woman is too weak to throw a grenade sufficiently far to avoid blowing herself up, that’s fine because a man who does the same will also pass. Equality is a wonderful thing.

How difficult it can be to explain this to people who think that the current policy is just petty sexism. Proponents of women in combat roles like to tug at our heart strings with emotional appeals to fairness, insisting that gobs of women who are both qualified and patriotic are simply not permitted to do the most for their country because male chauvinists won’t let them “try out for the team.”

The number of women who are truly qualified is probably paltry, hence the lower physical standards already in place across all services. Yes, a few exceptional superwomen may be able to make their male counterparts look like chumps. I met a handful of these women during my army years. The military will not however, formulate policy with only the top one tenth of one percent of womankind in mind.

The new policy of women in combat arms is not about allowing women the opportunity to meet the same standards; at least not the current standards. It’s about lowering the bar for both sexes, a recipe for a weaker fighting force.

Fast Food Accounts for 54% of Restaurant Sales in France

According to a recent survey on restaurants, the French prefer fast food to their fine cuisine.

Sacrebleu says Hervé as Time's Courtney Subramanian tells us that Fast Food Makes Up 54% of Restaurant Sales in France

As NPR reports, food consultancy firm Gira Conseil conducted its annual survey on restaurant spending in France and found that 54% of total sales belong to the likes of McDonald’s, Burger King and Subway. The new fan favorite increased 14% in consumption in the past year, shattering any notion that the French, known for world famous chefs and sophisticated palates, look down on the cheap and easy alternative to traditional restaurant dining.

McDonald’s racks up more than 1,200 locations in France, Subway has opened hundreds of stores in the past 10 years and Burger King, which shuttered its French locations 16 years ago, recently returned to the market.

An uncomfortable message for those who believe that Stalinism was an aberration or a reaction to mistakes made by the West

FIRST and foremost, Stalin was a communist, who believed that the sacred cause justified the most extreme measures

writes The Economist in its book review of Robert Gellately's Stalin’s Curse (Battling for Communism in War and Cold War):

what non-believers would call unparalleled barbarity. This central message in Robert Gellately’s masterly new book is an uncomfortable one for those who believe that Stalinism was an aberration, or a reaction to mistakes made by the West. It is facile to say Stalin was simply a psychopath, that he believed in terror for terror’s sake, or that the Red Tsar’s personality cult replaced ideology. A Leninist to his core, he was conspiratorial, lethal, cynical and utterly convinced of his own rightness.

Mr Gellately's latest work has a good claim to be the best single-volume account of the darkest period in Russian history. It is part of a crop of excellent new accounts of the era. It sits well with Timothy Snyder’s 2010 book, “Bloodlands” (about mass killings) and Anne Applebaum’s “Iron Curtain” (which deals with eastern Europe after 1944 and which came out last year). It is also a worthy successor to his “Lenin, Stalin, Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe” (2008), which compared and contrasted the three monsters.

Stalin’s supposed strategic genius gets short shrift, along with his generalship. Because
communist doctrine said all imperialists were equal, Stalin failed to see that the Western powers were not the same as Nazi Germany, and might even be useful allies against it. For all his paranoia and cynicism, the Soviet leader was determinedly friendly to Adolf Hitler, apparently believing that close ties with the Soviet Union made a Nazi attack less likely. But Hitler saw it the other way round: relying on Soviet imports endangered his long-term goal of destroying communism.

Where Stalin excelled, again and again, was in ruthlessness and attention to detail. … Communism probably killed around 25m: roughly the same toll of death and destruction as that wrought by the Nazis.

Aside from the chief villain, Western leaders too come in for quiet but deserved scorn.   Both Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman failed to grasp their counterpart’s malevolence. Winston Churchill made casual deals that consigned millions of people to slavery and torment. The foreigners thought Stalin was a curmudgeonly ally to be coaxed and cajoled. He treated them as enemies to be outwitted. Far from provoking Stalin into unnecessary hostility, the Western powers were not nearly tough enough.

Why castigate the U.S. for having intervened in Iraq for "no reason," given that Saddam had "no" WMD, while doing nothing in Syria now that Assad does have WMD?

Ah! what didn't we hear in 2003 when the question of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq arose!

remembers Lucien SA Oulahbib as he evokes the Western Contradictions Face to Face With Chamical Syria.

— Huh?! WMD in Iraq?! But how could you believe such nonsense?! —Uh ... didn't Saddam have such weapons for a time when using them against the Kurds and Iranians? Wasn't there at the time a henchman of Saddam's who was called Chemical Ali as he gassed right and left? — Perhaps! but that was before ...  — Before what?! ... — Before ... — So there had been WMD ... — yes, but "before" ... and "after" the first Gulf War Saddam had been disarmed… —But the stocks … what happened to them? Where did they go?…

In The Secret History of the Iraq War (2003, HarperCollins, p 54), Yossef Bodansky wrote that

Using their wide array of technical capabilities, US Intelligence tracked Iraqis as they used barges and other river craft, particularly in northwest Iraq near the Syrian Border, to transfer and store materials used in its WMD programs, laboratories, and technical facilities.

A type of bilateral aid between two neighbors that is completely understandable, given that Saddam and Assad (the elder Assad at the time) were players on the same team, the Ba'ath party, Nasser's spearhead of the famous "Arab nationalism", the term "nationalism" being accepted in the West without the slightest problem. It was even a subject of scholarly studies. There was obviously no talk at the time of any kind of "right-wing" movement, no, and some indeed even spoke of a progressive, secular party, yes truly they did...

— The ADM "never existed", repeats Pascal Boniface in the microphone of BFM Buziness on Monday, May 27, on the same day that a report from Le Monde testifies on the use of chemical weapons in... Syria, which contains an impressive arsenal. — And so? ... — The "red line" drawn by Obama (in person) has been reached, has it not?

Well no ... How come? ... Here we get into Molière with touches of Marivaux: the USA and the UK (Blair and Bush) were accused by all those principled souls, including Pascal Boniface, of having intervened in Iraq, that "secular republic", because of those WMD which "never existed" (at least not "after" their alleged "dismantling"), but now when they are clearly seen to exist in Syria, this changes exactly zilch, as Obama kicks the problem out of sight while Europe votes to lift the arms embargo. Something that doubles as good news for Hezbollah, which will soon be gaining an impressive war booty, as well as Hamas, which will be precipitating everyone, including Israel and Iran, into bloody conflict. Egypt is not far away, especially if the war can be a way to address its growing socio-economic problems ...

However, why castigate the U.S. and the UK for having intervened in Iraq for "no reason", given that Saddam had "no" WMD, while doing nothing in Syria now that Assad does have WMD?

Moreover, the vehement howls of protests of some, speaking of lies and manipulation etc, were based on the premise that if there indeed were WMD, then yes the war would have been legitimate, but they were required to be present, absolutely, it was really the sine qua non! Except that now WMD are present, they are definitely present, and the West's eyes turn in another direction, the voices demand more "proof" etc ... especially on the U.S. side ... In addition, Roland Garros has just opened, plus Cameron's Ibiza holidays had to be canceled two days after the videotaped assassination of a soldier in the name of Islam which had nothing to do with Islam, according to the same Cameron who was not known to be an expert or a Ph.D. in Islamic studies. Islam which is being torn asunder in Syria while nobody can say who, between Assad and his enemies, is the most Muslim, especially given that the so-called "secular" Baathism never was meant to refer to atheism, since Arabic socialism never considered the original Islam as being in any way a foreign entity.

So chemical weapons exist, the Le Monde journalists have even seen them in action. And that's all, folks. End of story. Please welcome Realpolitik. Obama has too much to do in Asia. For ten years, Bush and Blair have been dragged through the mud, insulted, demonized. Some even accused them of having instigated the current war between Sunnis and Shiites, as if it had never existed before, and as if the division between Sunni and Shia was a "Bushist" creation. One feels like howling with laughter at such nonsense worthy of Canal +'s Grand Journal, RTL's On Refait le Monde, and all these programs licking the boots of public service media, as typified by Charles Enderlin and his obstinacy in making people believe that the child Mohamed al-Durrah was killed by "Israeli" bullets while in truth, he has no way of knowing (and Philippe Karsenty proved otherwise, highlighting the new Dreyfus affair as it has been dubbed by S. Trigano).

In short, mountains of rubbish have been written and continue to be written. Meanwhile, the Iraqi Kurds have escaped the clutches of Arab progressivism and Syrian Kurds are following in their steps, while waiting for the Turkish Kurds and Iranian Kurds ... The Medes' ancient empire is recovering, regenerating ... When will it finally be France's turn to wake up?

Update: France "Is Positive" That Sarin Gas Has Been Used "Several Times" by Syria's Assad (aka Saddam Hussein's Neighbor)

Why must Republicans be targeted when a scandal, or three in this case, hits a Democratic president?

In a twinkling [Barack Obama] has gone from a weakling Jimmy Carter to a modern-day George III

writes The Economist's Lexington as he compares the Benghazi scandal to the IRS scandal, suggesting Republicans are opportunists.

    Why must Republicans be targeted when a scandal, or three in this case, hits a Democratic president?  Were Democrats painted as opportunists, enraged or other, during Watergate and the Valerie Plame affair (no deaths in either)?  Were Democrats described as playing politics?

    Lexington claims (Notes on three scandals, May 18) that it was a "dizzying turnaround" to go from depicting Barack Obama as "a weakling Jimmy Carter" in the Benghazi scandal to "a modern-day George III" in regards to the IRS misconduct.

    The two positions are not incompatible, however, far from it.  Au contraire.  In the opinion of people on the right, Barack Obama is one more leftist who believes in the fairy tale that America, and the West, have no international enemies — none, at least, that are not of their own invention.  America, it turns out, is its own worst enemy.

    To the left, therefore, a good leader is someone who ignores or minimizes the misdeeds of foreign countries and who, with the simple power of the word, can heal the world — exactly as Obama has done with such states as Russia and China (conveniently ignoring such things as the imprisonment of opposition leaders, the killings of reporters, the delivery of missiles to Syria, saber-rattling in the China Sea, etc).  All the while taking on the clueless traditionalists at home.  Better yet, he is one who travels to countries around the world to apologize for America and the West.

    After the Arab Spring (for which George W Bush and his overthrow of Saddam Hussein get not an iota of recognition) and after Ben Laden's demise (all the work indubitably of one Barack Obama), we were told that, thanks to "smart" diplomacy, the newly-"democratized" Arab states were now our friends as well, that Al Qaeda had been defeated, and that terror was a thing of the past.

    When the phone call for help came from Benghazi, therefore, it proved the unthinkable — that the leftist fairy tale was defective — and the reaction of the apologizer-in-chief and his White House was first to freeze and later (I am being generous here) to twist the truth.

    Moreover, the camaraderie that the apologizer-in-chief seems to enjoy with foreign leaders, from elected leaders to autocrats, does not seem to be mirrored in his relations with Americans who don't believe in the same avant-garde dreams that he he does.

    Indeed, in this New Age mantra, as it happens, it is not true that there are no enemies; there is one exception — those in America (and in the West) who are so reactionary as to believe in enemies and to see through the other fairy tales — notably economic — of the left.

    And the voices of these (conservative) Americans must be silenced, minimized, or ridiculed, insofar as possible, and if these people can't be silenced, they must be dealt with ruthlessly.  And so it was that in this atmosphere, the operatives of IRS knew what targets to pick.

    Thus it is that Obama appears — quite consistently — as a weakling abroad while a tyrant at home (they are two sides of the same coin), which in turn explains why he is described as someone who bears no love for his country, or for his countrymen, or rather for those countrymen who aren't sophisticated enough to subscribe to the left's self-serving fairy tales.


From The Economist's Lexington column:

Republicans have duly pounced, and in doing so executed a neat pivot away from their Benghazi rage. In essence, the real charge driving their Benghazi scandal was one of dereliction of duty, and the insinuation that Mr Obama is too weak (or does not love his country enough) to use American might to keep his own envoys safe. Now Republicans have begun calling him a tyrant, willing to use government power to crush freedoms crafted by the founding fathers. In a twinkling he has gone from a weakling Jimmy Carter to a modern-day George III.
 
That may be a dizzying turnaround, but it makes political sense. The IRS row is, at a minimum, a gift to Republicans ahead of 2014 mid-term elections, while the AP row deals a double blow to a president who has disappointed supporters over civil liberties before, and suffers from chilly relations with the press.

More broadly, calling Democrats weak on national security used to be a vote-winner. Two costly wars have altered that. This may be the first lesson of the scandals now lapping at the White House door. Spend months attacking Mr Obama for using America’s might too cautiously, as in Libya, and he shrugs it off. Attack him for government overreach, and he is on the defensive. For supporters of an activist government, these are perilous times.

During the 2008 campaign five years ago, Lexington compared one of the candidates to Tricky Dick; but it was not Barack Obama…

More Leftist Civility Lesson-Giving: “We’ll all celebrate Maggie ’Cause it’s one day closer to your death”

In another New York Times item about the Iron Lady, Jennifer Schuessler shows again how the demand for civility is one-sided.

“The lady’s not for turning,” Margaret Thatcher famously said in an early speech. But almost from the moment she moved into 10 Downing Street in 1979, Mrs. Thatcher, who died on Monday at 87, was most definitely for filming, recording, and generally excoriating by British artists and writers who saw a rich target in her stiff-necked conservative politics and stiffer coiffure.

From the beginning, some of the toughest depictions came from musicians. Opposition to her free-market ideology infused albums like Gang of Four’s 1979 “Entertainment!” and, in the same year, the Clash EP “Cost of Living,” the cover of which Joe Strummer reportedly wanted to include a collage featuring Mrs. Thatcher’s face and a swastika. … In 1985 Billy Bragg, Paul Weller, Kirsty McColl and other musicians founded Red Wedge, a collective aimed at forcing her to do just that.

When that effort failed, some turned to dark fantasies. In “Margaret on the Guillotine” (1988), Morrissey trilled “People like you/Make me feel so tired/ When will you die?” Elvis Costello, in “Tramp the Dirt Down” (1989), promised “When they finally put you in the ground/I’ll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down.”

… Onstage Mrs. Thatcher’s presence was felt in the West End as early as 1981, when she and her husband, Denis, once spent an awkward evening at the farce “Anyone for Denis?” She received acid portrayals in plays by Alan Ayckbourn, David Hare and Peter Morgan, whose new play, “The Audience,” about Queen Elizabeth II’s meetings with her prime ministers, has drawn some criticism for its depiction of Mrs. Thatcher as a combative, racial-epithet-slinging vulgarian at frequent odds with the queen. (“What is it about the left that it attracts so many contemptible, vicious and anti-social people these days?” Lord Tebbit, one of her former cabinet ministers, said to The Telegraph.)

The news of her death hardly seems to be softening the portrayals. Tonight’s performance of “Billy Elliot,” according to a press representative, will include the usual rendition of “Merry Christmas, Maggie Thatcher,” which includes the verse “We’ll all celebrate/’Cause it’s one day closer to your death.”

Civility? Not Applicable for a Conservative — Even When It's at His or Her Funeral

One leftist group, calling itself Good Riddance Maggie Thatcher, said it had sought prior approval for its supporters to turn their backs on the cortege [for the funeral of the Iron Lady], as they did when the gun carriage was nearing St. Paul’s Cathedral, Christopher Wren’s magnificent domed edifice in the heart of London’s financial district

Anybody wondering about whether the invitation to embrace civility, politeness, and the display of decent manners is only a one-sided affair, with the double standards applying to conservatives (international as well as American) alone, need only take a look at John F Burns and Alan Cowell's New York Times report of Maggie's London funeral (slideshow).

At Ludgate Circus, close to St. Paul's, a small group of protesters gathered, some with banners reading, Now Bury Thatcherism." Some jeered and shouted "Good riddance!" 

Just imagine the outrage had conservatives — again, British or other (say, Tea Party members) — done the same at the funeral (!) of some leftist icon.

Margaret Thatcher in Her Own Words

Happily, we learn that

the protesters’ rhythmic shouts of “Waste of money!” and “Rest in shame!” were overpowered in a countering wave of clapping, cheering and chanting of “Maggie! Maggie! Maggie!” by crowds straining for a view on the approaches to the cathedral.

Unfortunately, there is as follows — and the snub (if it can be called that) doesn't only seem to be the fault of American leftists:

One of the few jarring notes at the ceremony came from supporters of Mrs. Thatcher, who called President Obama’s decision not to send any senior members of his administration to attend the funeral a slight, in view of Mrs. Thatcher’s influential role as President Ronald Reagan’s partner in facing down the Soviet Union. The American delegation was led by former Vice President Dick Cheney and two other veterans of Republican administrations, George P. Shultz, 92, and James A. Baker III, 82. 

Funeral organizers said that they had invited all the former American presidents, but that none had accepted. Officials said they had cited a range of reasons, including poor health, in the case of the first President George Bush, and previous engagements, in the case of the second President Bush. Initially, organizers said there was a possibility that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would attend, but she, too, declined, as did Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. 

The absences drew critical comment from across the spectrum of British politics. Gerald Howarth, chairman of a Thatcherite group of Conservatives in Parliament, told The Daily Mail: “The bond forged between the U.K. and the U.S. through Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher was instrumental in ending the cold war and liberating millions of people. That the present administration feels unable to be represented as the world marks the extraordinary contribution Margaret Thatcher made will be a disappointment to those who served with her in that endeavor.” 

“Look at us — we’re Moroccans selling Japanese sushi to the French”

“Look at us — we’re Moroccans selling Japanese sushi to the French,” Mr. Benamer, now married with a child, said on a recent weekend, sitting in his Champs-Élysées restaurant beneath a wall covered with Warhol-style images of a geisha. “If we had allowed ourselves to be stigmatized, France would lose out — on good sushi, yes, but also on the hundreds of jobs we are creating.”

Liz Alderman has a New York Times article on France's banlieues and the efforts, by some, to make a success of their lives (video).

Mourad Benamer remembers the day his parents first visited the sleek new sushi restaurant he had just opened near the Champs-Élysées. Against all odds, Mr. Benamer had broken out of the rough suburb, or banlieue, where he grew up in a family of poor Moroccan immigrants just northeast of Paris, and hit on a formula that would soon turn into a business success beyond his dreams.

“We came from a place where there was injustice and a lack of opportunity,” Mr. Benamer, 36, recalled of his banlieue, Bondy. But there he was in the heart of tourist Paris, on a winter afternoon in 2007, with his mother pointing incredulously to truffle-and-foie-gras maki being rolled out to patrons at Eat Sushi, which since then has expanded into a chain of 38 restaurants across France.

“How did you manage to do all this?” she asked.

His answer was simple: he did it on his own. 

“I was not going to let this feeling that we have no chance keep me closed inside the banlieue,” Mr. Benamer recalled recently. 

 “I was not going to let this feeling that we have no chance keep me closed inside the banlieue,” Mr. Benamer recalled recently.

For decades, the disadvantaged suburbs that ring Paris and other large French cities have been places of privation, plagued by discrimination and poverty. France has long vowed to improve the plight of the banlieue populations, often Muslim and primarily people with Arab or sub-Saharan African family roots in the French colonial past. Despite pledges by Nicolas Sarkozy when he was president to address economic and social inequality after a series of violent riots in 2005 and 2007, though, critics say little has changed. 

That is why a new generation of people like Mr. Benamer are trying to turn the suburbs into incubators for entrepreneurs, who see using their own initiative as the only way up and out of the banlieues, which are home to an estimated 10 percent of France’s 63.7 million people.

Contentions Obama is the Ultimate Ad Hominem President

The Peter Wehner article (thanks to Instapundit) deserves quoting in full.

At a fundraising event earlier this week in New York City, President Obama said this:

What’s blocking us right now is a sort of hyper-partisanship in Washington that I was, frankly, hoping to overcome in 2008. My thinking was when we beat them in 2012 that might break the fever, and it’s not quite broken yet. But I am persistent. And I am staying at it. And I genuinely believe there are Republicans out there who would like to work with us but they’re fearful of their base and they’re concerned about what Rush Limbaugh might say about them…

As a consequence we get the kind of gridlock that makes people cynical about government. My intentions over the next 3 ½ years are to govern. … If there are folks who are more interested in winning elections than they are thinking about the next generation then I want to make sure there are consequences to that.

Mr. Obama’s statement, a variation of what he’s said countless times in the past, is worth examining for what it reveals about him.

1. President Obama is once again engaging in what psychiatrists refer to as projection, in which people lay their worst attributes on others.

In this instance, the most hyper-partisan president in modern times is ascribing that trait to Congressional Republicans. What we’ve learned about Mr. Obama over the years is that he that while he is unusually inept at governing, he’s quite good at campaigning. He certainly enjoys it, having taken the concept of the Permanent Campaign beyond anything we’ve ever seen. It turns out it’s the only thing he does well—no human being in history has raised campaign cash quite like he has—and it’s all he seems interested in doing.

On some deep, subconscious level, though, Mr. Obama seems ashamed of the path he’s chosen. And so the president projects those traits he loathes in himself on to others. To give you a sense of how deep the malady runs, the president does more than merely project; he actually preaches against the very character flaws he himself cannot overcome.

2. The president can hardly go a day without impugning the motivations of his opponents. They never have honest differences with the president. Instead they are suffering from an illness (“fever”), cowardice (afraid of what Rush Limbaugh might say about them), and lack of patriotism (caring about elections rather than future generations). Mr. Obama is the ultimate ad hominem president.

3. The president spoke about cynicism toward government. But if the president is really concerned about this phenomenon, he might look at his own administration, which is dealing with multiplying scandals. I would submit that misleading the country in the aftermath of the deadly siege on the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, the IRS’s targeting of political opponents, and seizing the phone records of journalists might well deepen the public’s cynicism toward government. And for the record, trust in the federal government has reached new lows during the Obama years. Might he have some responsibility for that?

4. Mr. Obama professes deep concern “about the next generation.” Those words would be a bit more believable if he were not handing off to the next generation a crushing debt burden that will take generations to undo, if  it is ever undone. No president holds a candle to Mr. Obama when it comes to engaging in generational theft.

5. As for gridlock: This is actually inherent in our system of government. It’s called “checks and balances” and “separation of powers.” The president might want to consult this document for more.
I understand Mr. Obama has complained many times that there are checks on his power, but I prefer the wisdom of James Madison to the ambitions of Barack Obama. And, oh, by the way: greater gridlock in Mr. Obama’s first two years in office would have prevented passage of the Affordable Care Act, which the presidential historian George Edwards has called “perhaps the least popular major domestic policy passed in the last century” and which Democratic Senator Max Baucus has warned is a “huge train wreck coming down.” It turns out that gridlock, if not always ideal, beats passing really bad legislation.

Just over a hundred days into his second term, the president finds himself weak, wounded, and on the defensive. Which means Mr. Obama will need to find new enemies to blame, new people to target, and new divisions to exploit.

This is what Hope and Change looks like five years in.

Reports of Thunderstorms Wreaking Havoc in France Prove That Global Warming Is Real And Must Be… (Hold on a second!)

We finally have it.

Proof.

Proof!

Proof of the reality of global warming, and how it is tweaking the weather, as the (Paris-based) International Herald Tribune reports on the Thunderstorms Wreaking Havoc in France along with news of the river "[overflowing] and [doing] great damage" in addition to fitful remembrances of "the persistent rains of last summer" and the generally "continual wet weather which has been experienced in France for some time past."

Finally, we can shut the mouthes of the climate-deniers and set the record… —

Wait… Hold on! What? What?!

The item appeared in the newspaper's 100 Years Ago section?!

It's actually from 1913?!

1913 Thunderstorms Wreak Havoc in France

PARIS — With the persistent rains of last summer still fresh in the memory, some uneasiness has been caused by the continual wet weather which has been experienced in France for some time past. Anxiety is being felt at the various summer resorts lest the holiday season be spoiled this year as completely as it was last year. Those who had intended taking houses at the seaside or elsewhere in the country are hesitating, and the resulting delay is bringing about a state of affairs which augurs ill for the coming season. The Huisne has overflowed and done great damage.

Highly Recommended: The Jihadist Plot — The Untold Story of Al-Qaeda and the Libyan Rebellion

 A remarkable development took place in the midst of the 2011 conflict in Libya: the United States and its allies changed sides in the war on terror. From virtually the very start of the unrest in Libya in mid-February 2011, there were troubling signs that the insurgents, whom the Western media insisted on presenting as peaceful “protestors,” were in fact violent Islamic extremists whose methods bore a clear resemblance to those of al-Qaeda. Indeed, the methods of the rebels—including beheadings and summary group executions by shots to the back of the head—clearly resembled not merely those of al-Qaeda, but of that branch of al-Qaeda that was most notorious for its brutality: namely, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The resemblance, as it turns out, was not accidental. Famous for its religious fanaticism, the eastern Libyan heartland of the Libyan rebellion was in fact well-known in counter-terrorism circles as a hotbed of support for al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda in Iraq.

 … The streets of Benghazi were in fact awash with al-Qaeda flags in the days following Libya’s “liberation.”

From John Rosenthal comes The Jihadist Plot (The Untold Story of Al-Qaeda and the Libyan Rebellion),  which tells you everything that you (and that Hillary Clinton) always wanted to know about Benghazi but never thought to ask — and then some.

John Rosenthal has often been the subject of No Pasarán links along the years, most notably, perhaps, the very opening item on his blog, regarding September 11 (the original 2001 attack, that is): The Legend of the Squandered Sympathy.

“How could this happen? How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction?” Thus Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed what she supposed was the reaction of many Americans to the September 11, 2012 attacks in Benghazi that left American ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead. The questioning and self-doubt showed “just how confounding the world can be,” Clinton observed. But the world is not so confounding when one is correctly informed, and the Benghazi attacks are not so confusing and “senseless” as the Obama administration insists. They are in fact the direct consequence of American policy in supporting the Libyan rebellion against Muammar al-Qaddafi, and they make perfect sense when one knows how thoroughly the rebel forces were affiliated with and inspired by al-Qaeda.

Those same forces proudly fly the al-Qaeda flag to this day. They do so not in secretive “jihadi encampments”—such as those for which drones dispatched by the Obama administration are reportedly searching in Eastern Libya. They do so rather in broad daylight on the main boulevards of Benghazi and other Libyan cities. One does not need drones or sophisticated surveillance technology to find them. Videos of the military parades of the Libyan mujahideen—to use their own preferred terminology—are readily available on local Arabic-language websites and YouTube pages. 

Update: Six months later, the New York Times clings bitterly to the left's Al Qaeda-was-nowhere-to-be-seen picture

We no longer have a society of voters capable of making prudent, wise decisions; Over half our electorate is now composed of narcissists who vote for their own selfish interests

If Skip Coryell is to be believed, Obama Has Won! (Is Civil War Inevitable?)

Gratefully, this was written before Obamagate erupted. Still, he has some chilling observations…

Obama’s primary objective (his mission statement if you will) is “To fundamentally change America.” Many argue that he’s already done that. I would argue that America was already fundamentally changed years before he was voted into office.

Three things paved the way for the Obama Presidency: 1. God was banned from the public arena. …

2. We lost the public school system. Once God left the schools, the liberals took over the education of our young. Right under our noses they captured that generation as well as the next generation (produced by the prior litter via unholy out-of-wedlock sin.) They dumbed us down, churning out millions of low-information voters. And since God wasn’t there to hold us accountable, it was easy for liberal teachers to sell our children a menu of selfish immorality. Kids don’t know any better unless they’re taught at a young age that serving others is better than serving your own vain and selfish appetite. Humans are inherently evil, not inherently good. Without God we have no compass.

3. We lost the media. The media, that stalwart fourth estate, the unofficial branch of government that always kicks in when the politicians lose their way, is no longer with us. Instead, the media is owned by the liberals. I should go farther and say that the media is now simply a soul-less, masturbatory tool of Barack Obama. … Now, the American people are so desensitized to immorality that it no longer matters what the president does. It’s no big deal. Sell machine guns to Mexican drug cartels and cause the death of Border Patrol agents? No problem. Withhold security from the Ambassador to Libya? No worries. He’s toast. And through it all, the media remains complicitly silent.

If politics is a game of Chess, then liberals are Bobby Fischer, and conservatives are The Three Stooges. In a cunning game of patience and forethought, conservatives just can’t compete.

Conservatives have always relied on informed voters with integrity and moral fiber, but they no longer have that advantage. It became clear to me that when Barack Obama won his second term: America was lost. We no longer have a society of voters capable of making prudent, wise decisions. Over half our electorate is now composed of narcissists who vote for their own selfish interests.

So where does that leave us? Is there any hope at all for America? Maybe, but I’m skeptical.

The Three Terrors

 The Three Terrors (Shookhran to Hervé)

Can we not agree that the Obama administration has established a culture conducive to the type of stereotypical thinking that could lead to the IRS scandal?

It's disgraceful that government bureaucrats, whether on their own initiative or at the direction of superiors, singled out anyone for special scrutiny, but what their selection criteria were makes it even worse 

writes David Limbaugh.

Reportedly, the IRS field office in charge of evaluating applications for tax-exempt status decided to focus on groups making statements that "criticize how the country is being run" and those that are engaged in educating Americans "on the Constitution and Bill of Rights."

 … If the First Amendment means anything, it is that the full force of the federal government will be used to safeguard, not suppress, the liberties of American citizens to utter political speech, especially speech critical of the government. But instead, this IRS sought for abuse groups that criticized the administration and groups that wanted to teach people that under our Constitution, such government officials have no right to do this type of thing.


But speaking of this effort to pass the buck to "low-level" players: Can we not at least agree that the Obama administration has established a culture conducive to the type of stereotypical thinking that could lead to this? Didn't the Department of Homeland Security under this administration list right-wing groups as extremists and potential terrorists? Hasn't President Obama himself referred to tea partyers as "tea baggers"? Haven't other Democrats deliberately depicted tea party groups as violent extremists who are a hair trigger away from armed revolution?

Liberals have been trying to vilify conservative talk radio for years now, suggesting that its strong political opinions lead to violence. That is preposterous, but if we were to apply the same type of standard to Obama, we could say that he has personally fomented a climate of hate against conservative groups, such that the IRS targeting was completely foreseeable. Surely, it's fair to hold the president to his own standard.

Consider: Obama's "bitter clingers" remark, his statement that conservatives who want a "small America" are dragging America into "a race to the bottom where we try to offer the cheapest labor and the worst pollution standards," his calling Republican congressmen "hostage takers" for opposing his tax policies (does that ring a bell, i.e., those who criticize the government?), his despicable statement that Republican leaders are "willing to compromise (their) kids' safety so some corporate jet owner can get a tax break," Vice President Joe Biden's saying Republicans "have acted like terrorists" and are using threats of shutting the government down as a "weapon of mass destruction," Obama's looking on with approval as Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa said of the tea party, "Let's take these sons of b----es out," and his spiritual adviser the Rev. Jim Wallis' saying, "And to be blunt, there wouldn't be a tea party if there wasn't a black man in the White House."
 
In my book "The Great Destroyer," which was published in 2012 … I reported that some were alleging that "the Obama IRS (was) 'using the routine process of seeking and granting tax exemptions to undertake a sweeping, top-down review of the internal workings of the tea party movement in the United States.'" I added, "Recall that Obama's own campaign organization, Organizing for America, once labeled tea party opponents of Obamacare 'right-wing domestic terrorists.' ... If Team Obama views tea partyers as a dangerous threat, would it really be surprising to learn that it treats them as such?"

Treading

The Very Reason

Regarding the IRs's targeting of the Tea Parties and of group wanting to teach the constitution…

…needless to say, this along with the attendant big government (and big spending) ramifications, is precisely — not paradoxically — what gave birth to the Tea Parties in the first place…

Hot Trailer From Depardieu Film on a DSK-Type: Du sexe, du sexe, et encore du sexe

Gérard Depardieu won't be a earning a single dollar for playing a Dominique Strauss-Kahn type in the movie Welcome to New York (the movie's trailer), which is based on the DSK scandal in the the Big Apple's Sofitel. He's doing it for the pleasure of working with Abel Ferrara.

Photos from the New York set appeared in The Daily Mail (merci à Duncan) recently, as the French movie star as the Russian movie star and the rest of the crew reenact the media storm surrounding the sexual assault trial in the company of Jacqueline Bisset co-starring as his then-wife, the French TV reporter Anne Sinclair.

In an interview with Swiss Television RTS last year, Depardieu revealed he agreed to play the part because he found his fellow countryman 'arrogant and smug', adding: 'He is very French. I will do it, because I don't like him.'

Defenders of Benghazi Are All-Knowing, and Have the Military, and Every Little Detail, Figured Out

In response to Meghashyam Mali's Hill article on the Robert Gates defense of Obama's Benghazi response, claiming critics have a “cartoonish” view of U.S. military capabilities, leftists keep making a variant of this argument:

Nobody from the other bases could have gotten there in time to do anything.

Each attack was only about 20 minutes. And they were 7+ hours apart. Nobody from the other bases could have gotten there in time to do anything.

How do you — how does anybody (!) — know that?!?!

This is hindsight, pure'n'simple (and hardly accurate hindsight at that).

How about a building on fire? Do firefighters conduct an in-depth study before they send their men in?! Do they know precisely how long the fire will last or how long they have to save people inside?


SPECIFICALLY:

you receive a call from Benghazi, what, 5 (10?) minutes after the attack has begun — How do you know, how does Obama know, how does Hillary know, how would Bush know, how would Cheney know, how does the special forces commander know, how do the Pentagon generals know, how does anybody know… how long the attack will last, and/or how long those poor souls in Libya will hold out?

Is it 20 minutes? Is it 7 hours? Is it 2 days? Is it a week? Is it ten days (the Alamo)? Is it 20 seconds?

The purpose of military, especially the special forces — any of their members would tell you (as well as Robert Gates) this — is to put themselves in harm's way when the call comes, and hit fast'n'hard — that's what they signed up for and that's what they train for.

Then we are told as follows:

And if we sent few more people and if we lost more lives due to that … if we sent another dozen or two people there against thousands, could we avoid the incident or we would have lost few more brave soldiers?

And it is conservatives who allegedly have a cartoonish view of the military?!

Yes, in typical Hollywood fashion, the bad guys, just because they are so bright and because they snarl so much, and because those evil genius' evil minds have everything so well planned out, they succeed in almost effortlessly wiping out an entire platoon, an entire company, of baby-faced teen-agers in uniform, as if the American soldiers were nigh-defenseless children…

When the call comes, 5 minutes after the attack — the military will tell you (as well as Monsieur Gates, or BHO, or either Clinton) — that is the exact moment that you start reacting! You send the choppers into the air, you send the planes towards the target (with — naturally — all options open, including the one to call the raid off as they approach the city when the Marines or what have you are — what? — within say 15 miles of their target).

Sorry, but the option to stay put, hundreds of miles from Benghazi, is indefensible.

Update: Reader Radegunda points out that two of the reasons given by the Obama defenders cancel each other out:

Here are two excuses that were given:

1. We couldn't go into an uncertain situation.
2. We would have gotten there too late to make a difference.
Those two lines are mutually exclusive.
And neither is plausible on its own.

Mike Dd adds:

Hmmmm

Then why did over 700 retired Special Oprations servicemen send a letter to the congress requesting an investigation? These people are told a lot of things 'off the record' by their buddies still in the thick of it, they know what is going on....and they do not have a cartoonish few of the military.

Gates said: “To send some small number of special forces or other troops in without knowing what the environment is, without knowing what the threat is, without having any intelligence in terms of what is actually going on on the ground, I think, would have been very dangerous,”

There was a drone flying overhead for most of the attack...and when you don't know what is going on...you either send in a small recon force of a probing force. The assertion that they did not know what was going on during an ATTACK means that you do SOMETHING to find out what is going on, not sit and wait to see what is going to happen next. The sum of the difficulties with this incident is that there seems to have been a failure to take any action followed by the whole storyline about some utube video that has proven false.