He left us and we rejoiced;
then an even more unbearable person came.
Arabic proverb
Obama's Latest Foreign Tour
Back in 2008, Obama gave a speech in front of nearly 200K Germans in Berlin; in 2013, it was probably less than 3% of that, all of them invited guests. He found himself less popular, given his failure to shutter Gitmo and his aggressive, spreading use of drones. He delivered a quixotic speech, including yet another defense of his convoluted Syria policy, nuclear arms reduction with Russia, and a dead-on-arrival renewed climate change initiative.
We have this snippet from a morally self-superior, clueless Obama, in a grossly oversimplifying, incompetent analysis, superficially trying to compare religious tensions in Northern Ireland to segregation in the Old South:
Issues like segregated schools and housing, lack of jobs and opportunity — symbols of history that are a source of pride for some and pain for others — these are not tangential to peace; they’re essential to it. If towns remain divided — if Catholics have their schools and buildings, and Protestants have theirs — if we can’t see ourselves in one another, if fear or resentment are allowed to harden, that encourages division. It discourages cooperation.What a load of condescending, pretentious crap; religious diversity and religious-affiliated institutions have not been divisive in the US. What people object to is tyranny, and the solution begins with a respect for individual rights, not some socially-engineered Kumbaya moment: as Wikipedia points out: "Recently "Kumbaya" has been used to refer to artificially covering up deep seated disagreements. To say "It's all Kumbaya" means "It's fake unanimity.""
The Chelsea Clinton Gaffe
I usually don't get in the way of a progressive shooting himself or herself in the foot. Chelsea Clinton was so anxious to pay tribute to the nation's largest abortion services provider (Planned Parenthood) that she publicly wished her teenage unwed great grandmother, pregnant with her maternal grandmother, had had access to their services. Wait a minute. She has degrees from Stanford, Oxford, and Columbia; she'll get it any day now...
I can't say I've read every piece and commenter on the gaffe, but there seems to be an obvious point no one seems to be pointing out. Let me quote Washpo:
More than six out of 10 women who give birth in their early 20s are unmarried, the Census Bureau said Wednesday [May 2013]...Overall, 36 percent of all births in the United States were to unmarried mothers in 2011...The birth rate for unmarried women in 2007 was up 80 percent in the almost three decades since 1980, the report said. But in the previous five years alone, between 2002 and 2007, it was up 20 percent.With all due respect, the number of unwed pregnancies has skyrocketed despite record business by Planned Parenthood, public sex education, etc. The boys locker room in my high school gym class had a condom machine. Inexpensive birth control and condoms are available in your neighborhood drugstores, innumerable other outlets, even at Sam's Club. It's not rocket science; girls can tell guys, "My vagina has a strict dress code." Is there any more reason for Ms. Clinton to believe that her great grandmother would not have been in the same category today, whom get pregnant despite Planned Parenthood more accessible than ever?
There are a number of contributing factors to the status quo. One is morally hazardous and/or socially experimental public policy, in particular, a social safety net available to single mothers; another is a more sexually permissive culture with declining religious influence and less social stigma associated with extramarital pregnancies; a third is declining stability of the family, with divorce, spousal abandonment, latchkey kids, etc. (I do not claim this list is exhaustive.)
Follow-Up Odds and Ends
- Miscellany: 5/25/13: WWII Vet Still Being Evicted. As you may recall, a WWII vet, John Potter, had given his daughter power of attorney, whom used it without his informed consent to put the house he built decades earlier in her own name. The father and daughter had a falling out, part of which involved disputed visitation to Potter's autistic son; the father discovered the title transfer and tried to get it reversed, but the courts eventually ruled that he had waited too long after the transfer to file a dispute. Potter's granddaughter, estranged from her mother, set up an Internet appeal for money to buy Potter's house back from his daughter (raising about $140K). Although I didn't write it at the time, I thought the issue had become so bitter and personal, I didn't believe the daughter would sell back to her dad at almost any price. She probably spent money on lawyers over the legal dispute. This does not mean I think the daughter is morally justified; I could never do to my parents what this lady did to hers. My parents raised 7 kids on modest income, and they earned their retirement. Parents give us the greatest gift of all--life. Once we are adults, their obligations are done.
I subscribe to the O'Reilly Factor Talking Points podcasts; I have rarely watched FNC for some time now. The podcasts do provide a context to key stories. Over the past week, Bill O'Reilly endorsed a version of the Senate immigration bill with a border security agreement while Laura Ingraham, a conservative talk show host and O'Reilly substitute host, is an opponent. Bill is more a populist whom has mentioned on multiple occasions if he was a low-earning Latino looking to better the lot of his family, he would probably also look for a way across the border. Ingraham prefers to focus on alleged aliens taking advantage of social safety net programs.What really irritates me is that Ingraham is arguing immigration bill advocates are economic illiterates while she is talking economics issues. Here is some relevant discussion from Alexander Tabarrok (HT Don Boudreaux):
Virtually all economists agree that immigration increases the wealth of the United States. For example a group of economists all of whom had been either president of the American Economic Association or a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, were asked “On balance, what effect has twentieth century immigration had on the nation’s economic growth.” 81% of these prominent economists answered “very favorable”, not a single one said slightly or very unfavorable....The usual complaint about immigrants is that they “take jobs” away from native workers. The complaint has little basis in fact, however. ..Do immigrants use more welfare than natives? Is the immigrant use of welfare increasing? The best evidence on both of these questions is no.There's also a moral question, e.g., splitting families from American-born children. Here is one past example where restrictions on immigration led to tragic results:
During most of the 19th century there were very few controls on immigration. But beginning in the latter part of the 19th century and especially in the early twentieth century, xenophobia and racism led to the passing of a quota system that drastically restricted the number of people who could immigrate. After the 1924 immigration act, immigration fell by 90 percent. The new immigrant quotas were especially harsh towards European Jews. Before the quotas had been put into place, about 100,000 Jews were migrating to the United States every year but after the quotas were put into effect the flow trickled to only about a few thousand a year, if that. Many Jews were desperate to leave but they had no place to go. A thousand refugees on the boat “Saint Louis” left Hamburg May l3, l939, but were refused admission to Cuba—then under the control of the United States and then were refused entry into the United States. In the end, they had to return to Europe, where many of them were deported to the concentration camps and were murdered by the Nazis in the holocaust.We need to stop trying to criminalize people whom contribute to our economy in different ways: migrant farm work, nannies, construction work, the hospitality industry, etc. We need to stop blaming hard workers forced to work around dysfunctional, almost nonexistent legal temporary worker programs. The Ingrahams, Coulters and other angry talking head demagogues are causing serious damage to the GOP brand. Conservatives are seen as hostile, judgmental and anti-family.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Robert Ariail and Townhall |
The Beatles, "I Want to Hold Your Hand". Hands down (no pun intended), my favorite love song. Nothing else quite encapsulates the sheer joy of falling in love with a girl; the bouncy arrangement is infectious. It was the group's initial American #1 (in England, "She Loves You" charted first but followed up in America). Arthur Fiedler & the Boston Pops had a minor pop hit with a subsequent cover instrumental.
