LA Times headline: “Obama’s strong-willed national security team”
If Barak Obama will include people of differing viewpoints in his administration, that could be a refreshing change from the type of personal loyalty demanded by George W. Bush. Good for him if he is more like a Ronald Reagan than a GWB in that respect.
But why that term “strong-willed” to describe people of conflicting views? Isn’t that just a little Leni Riefenstahlish?
Jon Friedman at CBS News Marketwatch says he and others in the MSM are having some Obama-Remorse. Now that they’ve puffed up Obama when it counted, they would like to balance it by criticizing him a little when it doesn’t matter so much. It’s similar to what happened when Clinton was elected, and for that matter after every election that I can remember. The MSM waits until it doesn’t matter any more and then sets the record straight so it can claim some semblence of objectivity.
CBS Marketwatch concludes by posing the MEDIA WEB QUESTION OF THE WEEK: “Have the media treated President-elect Barack Obama too kindly for the past year – and, if so, should that kind of treatment end now that he has won the election?”
I presume the answer to the first question is obvious to everyone. As to the second, I suggest that the MSM not overdo the Obama-Remorse. They should criticize him just enough to salve their consciences, but not so much as to reform their behavior. It’s a great time-saver knowing that the MSM are completely predictable. If they tried to report objectively, then people would have to start taking them seriously — perhaps even reading and watching what they have to say. This would cut into peoples’ already busy schedules. Other, more worthwhile activities would have to be eliminated to make room.
No, it’s better that the media just keep on doing the behaviors we’ve come to expect.
Suzanne Fields says Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday.
Maybe, maybe not. People of many cultures, on many continents, have had harvest festivals in the fall. And I can’t tell for sure from here, but I’ll bet they have had contained some sense of acknowledgment of the source of all the harvest goodies.
One thing Thanksgiving is, though, is a religious holiday. And one of the neat things is that the extreme secularists don’t notice, probably because they don’t think about it hard enough. Those who are intent on the most extreme separation, not only of church and state, but of religion and public life, are so busy removing the word Christmas from official use that they don’t stop to think that the concept of Thanksgiving makes no sense except as an acknowledgement of the divine. They might argue that it’s a time for thanking each other, not thanking God. But thanking each other in the sense that there is any morality associated with it makes no sense if there isn’t a concept of God lurking in the background. I challenge anyone to try to make it otherwise. That is, I challenge anyone do any thanking without any “attaboy me” or “ought to”s or other morality associated with it.
Thanksgiving isn’t a religious holiday in a sectarian sense, like Christmas is, but in an abstract sense it is a religious holiday — perhaps the most purely religious holiday we have.
George Orwell would have a hard time writing 1984 if he did it now. Back in the 50s and 60s people understood instinctively why they wouldn’t want to live in a world with 24×7 surveillance of their lives. Now, as we’re getting closer to that level of government monitoring, they’re getting used to the idea:
Minority Report-style CCTV that spots crimes BEFORE they happen
Page One headlines from Wednesday’s WSJ:
So much fear. One wonders how our intrepid WSJ reporters can come up with so much objective information about the states of mind of the millions of people involved in the markets. Polling? Intensive surveys? Do they get psychologists and psychologists to analyze people?
But here’s one where they slipped up:
I predict the writer who came up with that is not going to be in Murdoch’s organization for long. There is not a word in it about fear or any other inner emotional state.
Jiansheng Chen (not her real name) gets a Leviathan’s Anklebiter award. She is a Falun Gong practitioner, and had an effect on the policewoman who was part of the torture crew in charge of her. Ethan Gutmann tells about it in “China’s Gruesome Organ Harvest” in the latest issue of The Weekly Standard. The last paragraph below describes it. A person has a responsibility to try to save those who would torture him/her, according to this belief system. In this case, there were genuine tears from the police woman.
Chen was a “nontransformable”–with an edge. Not only did she refuse to renounce Falun Gong, but she shouted down anyone who did. Chen was getting medication three times a day (possibly sedatives), so drug-testing can’t be ruled out. Yet as her resistance dragged on, the police said: “If you don’t transform, we’ll send you away. The path you have chosen is the path of death.” For eight days efforts were made to persuade Chen to renounce Falun Gong or gain her submission by torture. Suddenly the guards ordered her to write a suicide note. Chen mocked them: “I’m not dead. So why should I sign a death certificate?”
The director brought in a group of military police doctors wearing white uniforms, male and female. The labor camp police were “very frightened” at this point, according to Chen. They kept repeating: “If you still won’t transform, what waits for you is a path to death.”
Chen was blindfolded. Then she heard a familiar policewoman’s voice asking the doctors to leave for a minute. When they were alone, the policewoman began pleading with her: “Chen, your life is going to be taken away. I’m not kidding you. We’ve been here together all this time, we’ve made at least some sort of connection by now. I can’t bear to see this–a living person in front of my eyes about to be wiped out.”
Chen stayed silent. She didn’t trust the policewoman–why should she? In the last eight days, she had been hung from the ceiling. She had been burned with electric batons. She had drunk her own urine. So, the latest nice-nice trick was unconvincing. Then Chen noticed something dripping on her hand–the policewoman’s tears. Chen allowed that she would think about transforming. “That’s all I need,” the policewoman said. After a protracted argument with the doctors, the police left.
Practitioners like to talk about altering the behavior of police and security personnel through the power of their own belief. It’s a favorite trope. Just as a prisoner of war is duty bound to attempt escape, a Falun Gong practitioner is required by his moral code to try to save sentient beings. In this spiritual calculus, the policeman who uses torture destroys himself, not the practitioner. If the practitioner can alter the policeman’s behavior, by moral example or supernatural means, there’s some natural pride, even if the practitioner still gets tortured.
From a Google News screen shot:
No short cuts or quick fixes wanted, but we need quick action.
Obama’s buddies in the media really ought to pay a little attention to the words they’re using.
I envision a wartime planning meeting: “Gentlemen, the enemy has penetrated our perimeter in three locations. We need quick action. There is not a minute to lose. The situation is deteriorating rapidly. But we want no shortcuts or quick fixes.”
Such decisive leadership.
I imagine it could be a lot worse, though, if he actually did exert leadership.
We’re getting a good look at what “re-regulation” of our economy means. It means that government regulators can violate the privacy of individuals’ records for partisan political gain, and get by with a belated slap on the wrist.
Mind you, it doesn’t always work this way. When a couple of employees in the administration of Bush the Elder took a peek at Bill Clinton’s passport files during the 1992 campaign, they were fired immediately.
But that was a Republican administration. In Ohio, under Democrat Governor Ted Strickland, some employees took a look at Joe the Plumber’s records for information to use against him. They’re getting by with short-term suspensions. Nobody is getting fired over there, which serves to send the message to future privacy violators that if you do it for the right cause (i.e. the right side) it may very well be worth the risk.
When Linda Tripp’s records were illegally leaked for partisan political purposes, nothing substantial was done about it. Guess which party benefited from that one?
When health care workers violated the privacy of celebrities at UCLA’s medical center, at least one person was fired. But I suppose there was no overt partisan political cause to be served by that one.
Yes, government regulation is a wonderful thing to have. Keeps those nasty free marketers under control.
He’s great, as always. Here is just one nugget out of many good ones: ”
A: I was very negative about the invasion of Iraq. That’s another subject I should have written more about, explained more. I thought the war was unjustified. But my stand led to a Novak-hates-his-country piece in the National Review, which caused me a lot of grief and cut me off at the White House. I should have explained more about why I took the position I did. I probably should have written more about foreign policy in general. If I told you I accomplished some huge feat, it wouldn’t be true. But I’m not ashamed of what I’ve written. I stand by it.
(I wish I had said more, too.)
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Ezra Levant: “Anti-Christian bigot Lori Andreachuk quietly moved out of HRC”
So in Canada, you can still get rewarded for human rights abuse. Just the same, I wish all of this was getting some coverage in the U.S. press. We’re supposed to be all excited in anticipation that the Obama presidency will make other countries like us again. But the same people who tell us to care more about what other countries think are paying zero attention to a huge free speech issue in Canada.
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Stocks Could Stabilize After Election
A news item from November 3, in the “Happy Days Are Here Again” department.
We knew it was unsustainable, but it’s good to see the era of Democrat-style re-regulation coming to an already. And I like that term, “bailout fatigue.” From the Washington Post:
Stung by the escalating costs of various Wall Street bailouts, lawmakers pressed the executives to say how they would spend $25 billion from the taxpayers.
“The American people have bailout fatigue,” said Rep. Spencer Bachus (Ala.), the panel’s senior Republican.
Several lawmakers also berated the auto titans for traveling on private jets to ask for a government handout.
“There’s a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into D.C. and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hands,” said Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.). “It’s almost like seeing guys show up in the soup kitchen in high hat and tuxedo.”