Moe Lane

I know what Edward Luce was trying to say, here…

No one would accuse President Barack Obama of being Nixonian.

…but the truth of it is that my immediate response would be: Sure.  Richard Nixon did things.  He regularized relations with the PRC, got us out of Vietnam, set up the Environmental Protection Agency, and put a man on the Moon*.  Hell, Nixon was a better Democrat than Barack Obama could ever hope to be.  Cruel of me to point this out, I know.

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Glenn Reynolds, while noting just how bad it’s getting out there under Bloomberg for New York City residents who don’t happen to be mega-rich, offers this invitation:

You’re welcome to move [to Tennessee], so long as you don’t start agitating for the same policies that drove you out.

I’m wondering if any state legislatures might decide to try to back up that sentiment with appropriate legislation.  Probably not; it’d be hideously inappropriate and probably unconstitutional.  But remember, Blue state transplants: your new Red state neighbors were smart enough to create the safe place that you’re currently fleeing to.  Learn some humility, Sparky.

Michael Crichton, by way of Ed Driscoll:

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

Ayup.

Byron York, on Ted Cruz [Link fixed: thanks to jbird in comments]:

Cruz has gotten a huge amount of coverage for his strong performances at hearings involving Chuck Hagel, guns and immigration. For whatever reason, some in the press have been amazed that a Princeton- and Harvard-educated lawyer, former solicitor general of Texas and winner of multiple cases before the U.S. Supreme Court would be good in a hearing room. He is.

You’d think that both Byron and I would have gotten used to the incredibly provincial mindset that dominates journalism in the Imperial Capital; and I think that normally we have.  But every so often they still unfavorably surprise us.

…of the distinguished gentleman from Georgia:

I support killing bad guys with drones overseas. Hell, I’m okay with killing bad guys in the United States with drones if they are about to cause imminent harm. But the administration’s standard was far too nebulous. It is opposed by a majority of Americans. Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, and others who are okay with drone attacks on bad guys supported Rand Paul because Paul found the sliver of ground on which they could all be opposed to an Obama Administration policy.

- My colleague Erick Erickson, over at RedState.  As most of you know, I self-identify as ‘neoconservative:’ and my major problem with Barack Obama’s foreign policy is that he’s trying to do what he thinks George W Bush would do under the same circumstances, only he’s not very competent even at that.  But I loved watching that filibuster.  It was utterly guilt-free; I’m aware of Rand Paul’s likely defense stances, but he managed to keep the debate framed in terms that I could accept without quibbling.  And then he made the administration give way on a point.

That last point is important: because the last time I checked neither, say, John McCain and/or Lindsey Graham (who I don’t actually particularly dislike) have done as well lately.

Moe Lane

PS: I think that the time has come for Senator McCain to announce that this will be his last term in office.

There are a bunch of people out there worried that Charlie Crist possibly wasn’t the get for the Democrats that they thought that it was:

“There are Democrats out there who can’t get their arms around [former Florida Governor Charlie] Crist. I get it,” [Democratic operative Steve] Schale said. “They spent 20 years of their activist lives working against him. It’s a process.”

I know that there’s a bunch of people out there who are a little ticked at Governor Rick Scott right now, and I don’t blame them.  But if Charlie Crist actually does become the Democratic nominee then the people who are most upset at Scott must understand that most of the rest of their current compatriots will decide that being a systematic party and ideological turncoat easily trumps wanting to expand Medicare.  :shrug: I just tell you this stuff; I don’t actually cause any of it.

Via

Interesting piece on Fla’s Democratic field for Gov – Crist is still the 800 lb gorilla (and the snake) ow.ly/irzmF

— Kirsten Borman (@kborman) March 6, 2013

It certainly was, John.

In the past, presidents have reluctantly acceded to policies enacted by a Congress with enough power to override a White House veto. But this was and is something else: [President Barack Obama] himself sought the imposition of bad policy for the purpose of blackmailing himself and others into making better policy.

That’s ironic. And the thing is, the political system itself has no sense of irony. The political system is very literal. It can’t be expected to understand when a policy is intended to be sardonic — as Obama’s was.

President Obama messed up.  I originally wrote that as “President Hipster,” but I try to keep a tight lid on the name-calling; judging from 2001-2009, that habit reduced the median IQ of the Online Left by about ten, fifteen points.  Besides: hipsters generally stay within their own social space boundaries.

Kathleen Parker, of all people, on the True Meaning of Bob Woodward and CarryingWatergate*:

Drip by drip, the Obama administration has demonstrated its intolerance for dissent and its contempt for any who stray from the White House script. Yes, all administrations are sensitive to criticism, and all push back when such criticism is deemed unfair or inaccurate. But no president since Richard Nixon has demonstrated such overt contempt for the messenger.

I’ll merely add that the messengers have more or less earned that contempt.  Sorry, but it’s true.

(via Hot Air Headlines)

Moe Lane

*The circle closes.

I am not in complete agreement with Jim Geraghty over the foreign policy intentions of this President – I think that Barack Obama is black-boxing his natsec responses to match what he thinks Bush would do, and that means that Barack Obama will probably try to intervene in Syria* – but I can recognize the power of this attitude (without sharing it**):

Hey, my Turkish friends so upset by a bloody civil war across the border and a flood of refugees, remember “Valley of the Wolves: Iraq”? Remember when that film suggested that Jewish U.S. army doctors in Iraq were harvesting organs from Iraqi civilians to be sold in Israeli, and that U.S. soldiers use Iraqi children as human shields? Yeah, remember that? Well, go solve your #*%&^ border problems yourself.

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Dems Tout Claim: ‘Best-Looking Contraction in U.S. GDP You’ll Ever See’

…I mean, how the heck does anybody expect me to beat that? I’m just a man.  I’m just a man.

Hot Air, as part of the fallout from Allahpundit’s blinking-eye disbelief at the thought that Ed Schultz could possibly believe that there are no gun laws in Chicago:

Pro tip: There’s a reason constitutional challenges to gun laws tend to come out of deep blue jurisdictions like Chi-town and D.C. rather than, say, Tennessee.

…for the benefit of Ed Schultz, the answer is “because that’s where the draconian gun laws come from.”  And the reason why people care is because draconian gun laws have a disproportionate impact on law-abiding citizens.

I wonder if Josh Gerstein of Politico had to suppress an involuntary snort of horrified laughter?

Some who have worked with Hagel on foreign policy issues say the attacks are absurd and that his views on the Mideast are mainstream.

“He has never expressed a thought that could be considered even remotely hostile to the people of Israel or the State of Israel. … The charges are simply absurd,” said Henry Siegman of the U.S./Middle East Project, which prepared some of the policy statements that Hagel endorsed. “The charges of anti-Semitism are vicious, really ugly stuff.”

Siegman suggested that many of Hagel’s critics aren’t advocating for Jews or for Israel but for the Likud Party-led government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Pro-tip: when you’re trying to defend a man against being an anti-Semite, don’t suggest that the reason for the initial charges is because of an international Jewish conspiracy.  It… muddles… the message; or perhaps it does not.
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