RUTHFULLY YOURS

Jim Geraghty’s laugh-to-keep-from-crying send-up of the federal bureaucracy.
Soaring levels of government waste, fraud, and abuse leave many of us wondering whether we live in an alternate reality. We shake our heads in despair and wonder when the absurdity will stop. Jim Geraghty goes one step further and, in his just-released “mock history” — The Weed Agency: A Comic Tale of Federal Bureaucracy Without Limits — embraces the madness for madcap effect. He sat down to discuss the book — is it fact or fiction? — with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: Admit it: You’re hoping the state of Colorado jumps to conclusions and makes your book a bestseller based on the title.

Jim Geraghty: If confused stoners drive The Weed Agency to the bestseller list, I won’t complain. I should probably start claiming that the book was printed on rolling paper. They’re probably the demographic most likely to forget to return it and ask for a refund.

Lopez: You write, “Everyone who comes to Washington intending to cut the government comes with some other goal as well — defense, abortion, schools, whatever. And everyone who likes the government the way it is has gotten very, very skilled at figuring out how to get us to focus on the other stuff.” Is it really all that bad?

Geraghty: I’m not sure if it’s bad so much as it’s reality. Sometimes that other stuff is really important — Ronald Reagan came to Washington aiming to win the Cold War as well as reduce the cost and size of government; 9/11 obviously completely overwrote the original agenda of George W. Bush’s presidency. As presidencies and congressional careers progress, some priorities inevitably squeeze out other priorities. Cutting spending has one of the worst effort-to-reward ratios in governing. You don’t get to name federal facilities after yourself, you don’t get ribbon-cutting ceremonies and boasts of jobs created. You don’t get to brag in campaign ads that you created a program to solve some problem. You don’t create a constituency that wants to see that spending continue and get you reelected in order to ensure that that spending continues. You put yourself at risk of attack ads declaring you cut something that’s popular and beloved. So the natural incentive for lawmakers, even conservative ones, is to focus on other issues and topics where there is better return on the investment of time and effort.

Is Obama capable of touching anything without converting it into fertilizer?

Hot on the heels of the White House’s reckless outing of the CIA’s chief spy in Kabul — which itself was a mere station break in the ongoing VA medical-abuse scandal — Obama waded into the world of America’s sole POW in Afghanistan. Obama swapped Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl for five Guantanamo detainees. Bergdahl is now undergoing medical examinations in Landstuhl, Germany, and these Taliban leaders have left tropical detention for new lives in Qatar. Not to worry: Qatar agreed to assure that they do not leave that Middle Eastern nation — for one year.

Ruining yet another weekend, and weakening America even further in the process, Obama managed to accomplish several new milestones with this one action.

First, America’s long-standing policy of never negotiating with terrorists is now fully ablaze. As strategic reversals go, this was a five-alarm fire.

Free-market economists like to say: Incentives matter. While kidnapping Americans previously bought terrorists nothing from the U.S. government, Obama’s message to the jihadists is: “Go ahead. Kidnap more Americans.” Terrorists now know that a wobbly-kneed America will negotiate with them.

“All praise is to Allah Almighty!” Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar said in a statement Monday on its official website. “This huge and vivid triumph requires from all Mujahidin to offer thanks to the Benevolent Creator who accepted the sincere sacrifices of our Mujahid nation and managed the release of these five renowned Mujahidin from the enemy’s clutch.” Omar added: “May Allah Almighty get, just like these five heads, all those oppressed prisoners released who are incarcerated in the path of liberating their country and serving their creed.”

Even worse, Obama fixed the jihadist–American foreign-exchange rate, not at one to one but at five to one. Islamofascist thugs now know that the price tag for an American’s safe return is at least five of their comrades.

‘Unique and Exigent Circumstances’

Although the Framers didn’t get around to the executive branch until Article II — the real business of government, they thought, would normally be carried out by Congress — the Constitution nevertheless vests awesome, but not unlimited, power in what James Madison called the “chief Magistrate,” the president of the United States. This is right and proper, for the president, as commander-in-chief, needs the flexibility to be able to respond quickly and decisively in case of national emergency.

Appealing to that necessity is what stands behind the Obama administration’s objection to the federal law requiring that the president give Congress 30 days notice [1] before releasing prisoners from Guantanamo Bay. There were, the administration argued, “unique and exigent circumstances” why that law should not be followed in the case of Bowe Robert Bergdahl, the Army solider who is reported to have deserted [2] his post while on guard duty in June 2009 after announcing his loathing [3] for America and hatred of the Army. “I am ashamed to be an American,” he wrote in an email to his parents. “And the title of US soldier is just the lie of fools. . . . The horror that is America is disgusting.”

It would be interesting to have Sgt. Bergdahl’s views on “the horror that is America” now that he has had an opportunity to spend five years as the guest of the Taliban in Afghanistan. It would also be interesting to know exactly what “unique and exigent circumstances” prompted the Obama administration to exchange Sgt. Bergdahl for five high-level Taliban terrorists — the hardest of the hard core, as John McCain put it — who were cooling their heels in Gitmo. (What do you suppose these thugs and murderers will do now that they’re free? Go sight-seeing?)

At least six U.S. servicemen were killed searching for Sgt. Bergdahl. And Rep. Howard McKeon and Sen. James Inhofe are surely correct that the exchange imperils the lives of others. “Our terrorist adversaries now have a strong incentive to capture Americans,” they said in a joint statement. “That incentive will put our forces in Afghanistan and around the world at even greater risk.”

Today’s liberalism is about as liberal as the Hellenistic world was Hellenic — a glossy veneer over a rotten core.

In the old days, liberalism was about the means to an end, not the end itself. Since the days of Socrates, liberalism enshrined free inquiry, guided by inductive thinking and empirical use of data. Its enemies were not necessary organized religion — some of the Church fathers sought to find their salvation through the means of neo-Platonic cosmology and Aristotelian logic — or government or traditional custom and practice, but rather deductive thinking anywhere it was found.

Yet today liberalism itself is deductive. It has descended into a constructed end that requires any means necessary to achieve it. Take any hot-button liberal issue: censorship, abortion, global warming, affirmative action, or illegal immigration. Note the liberal reaction.

I don’t like most of the assigned readings that now pass for the university’s seminal texts of the liberal arts. But on the other hand, I don’t believe in triggers to warn students of what is inside a book. Otherwise, I might insist that universities put a warning on Rigoberta Menchú’s or Barack Obama’s autobiographies: “Trigger Warning: these are fictive accounts that rely on occasional invention and adaption and so do not, as the authors have claimed, reflect actual events.” Nor would I want a written trigger for the book flap of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, along the following lines: “Trigger Warning: Ms. Goodwin has admitted past plagiarism in her works, a fact that may be necessary to weigh when evaluating her present history.” Readers can determine for themselves to what degree past confessions of plagiarism should guide their own studies.

Nor do I favor yanking Bill Maher off television — in Paula Deen or Duck Dynasty [1] fashion — for his serial profane and misogynist attacks on Sarah Palin and other conservative women. Nor do I want a running Trigger Warning on the bottom of the screen, as Maher talks: “Trigger Warning: We do not endorse Mr. Maher’s sometime misogynistic and reactionary use of slurs against prominent women with whom he disagrees.”

You may not have noticed, but, over the weekend, Europe died.

“The First World” basically succumbed to a long illness. It gave up the ghost as an economic force, as a culture and even as a continental political entity.

Here are two very different signs:

“Anti-Europe” politicians swept to power in the European Union (EU) parliament on a crest anger at leftist EU bureaucrats who built up layers of regulation of daily life that are unpopular with millions of people;
A well-trained terror squad murdered four people in Brussels, the seat of the EU—only the latest episode of Jew-hatred in Europe’s greatest cities. from London, Paris, Toulouse, Marseilles, Copenhagen

“Oh don’t worry about the Fascists and Right-wingers who won one small election, and don’t get alarmist about one incident of extremism,” say the feel-good crowd, but they are fooling themselves and trying to fool others.

The anti-EU vote in the European Parliament elections is not just a passing phase, and it is not just an eruption of “fascist,” “nativist” or “right-wing” emotions.

There is significant anti-EU feeling among responsible and intelligent people in many countries in Europe—people who have seen years of fat-cat EU politicians living in a fantasy world of statist theories that leave economic and social chaos.

Greece—a country that endlessly rewards incompetence and then gets bailed out—is a prime example. Some Greeks get 14 monthly salaries in 12 months.

Official unemployment continues to rise in most European countries—England, France and even Germany—but the real joblessness has climbed over 20-percent in countries like Spain. Meanwhile, people in England, France and Germany no longer want to pay pensions for slack workers in Greece and Spain.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/a-jailed-marine-and-a-silent-radical-in-chief-on-the-glazov-gang/print/

This week’s Glazov Gang, guest-hosted by superstar Josh Brewster, was joined by Titans Karen Siegemund, Founder of Rage Against the Media, Bill Whittle from BillWhittle.com and TruthRevolt.org, and Mell Flynn, President of Hollywood Congress of Republicans.

The Gang gathered to discuss A Jailed Marine and a Silent Commander-in-Chief, analyzing why Obama hasn’t made a statement that Andrew Tahmooressi could be his son.

The Titans also focused on “A Jailed Marine and a Silent Commander-in-Chief,” “The VA Hospital Scandal and Double Standards,” “Ted Cruz Rising,” “The Growing American Police State?” and much, much more.

Don’t miss it!

Apparently the reality that America’s economic output declined by 1 percent in the first quarter, retail and home sales are plummeting, and a record-setting 1 in 8 (or 10 million) American men in their prime working years between ages 25–54 aren’t working or looking for work will be no impediment for a president determined to impose a radical environmentalist agenda on the nation. On Monday, the Obama administration announced the first-of-their-kind national limits on carbon emissions from the nation’s more than 600 coal-fired power plants. The proposed regulation, implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), will demand a 30 percent cut in emissions by 2030.

At a Feb. 11, 2014 hearing of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations related to the status of clean coal programs, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) spelled out the real-world consequences of such a plan, explaining that Americans could expect an increase in electricity costs ranging from 40 percent at a coal gasification facility, to as much as 80 percent at a pulverized coal power plant, according to the Department of Energy’s own documentation. The reliably leftist New York Times illuminates the implications, noting that the regulations could lead to the closing of “hundreds” of such facilities.

Unsurprisingly, the effort completely bypasses Congress, undoubtedly because it would be as DOA as it was when the Democratically-controlled legislative branch failed to pass such cap-and-trade legislation in 2010. Thus our constitutionally-comtemptuous president has rendered members of Congress superfluous, even as the EPA becomes their de facto replacement.

The administration offers a degree of flexibility in achieving these goals. They include allowing states to reduce emissions by installing solar, wind or other energy-efficiency technology, and by creating or joining cap-and-trade programs at the state or regional level that allow such entities to cap emissions, and then buy and sell permits that allow plants to continue to emit greenhouse gases—as long as they pay a suitable fee for doing so. That fee that will inevitably be passed down to consumers. Yet in keeping with the administration’s imperialist impulses, if such state- or regionally-imposed rules do not satisfy the EPA’s guidelines the agency will act unilaterally to force such entities into compliance.

Those affected are planning to sue. “Clearly, it is designed to materially damage the ability of conventional energy sources to provide reliable and affordable power, which in turn can inflict serious damage on everything from household budgets to industrial jobs,” said Scott Segal, a lawyer with Bracewell & Giuliani, a firm representing coal companies in anticipated litigation. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt also plans to challenge the regulations in court. “The Clean Air Act clearly sets out a role for EPA to suggest guidelines, while granting states authority to develop and implement specific proposals to achieve the goals of the Clean Air Act,” he told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Should the EPA’s proposed regulation force states to adopt a ‘cap and trade’ scheme or any other specific proposal, it would violate the law and likely be challenged in court.”

Such challenges, as well as litigation anticipated by other industry groups and other states such as West Virginia, North Dakota, Alaska and Texas revolve around the EPA’s use of a little-used section of the Clean Air Act to create its new regulations. The implementation of section 111 (d) of the Act is necessitated by the reality that carbon dioxide isn’t regulated under major Clean Air Act programs that address air pollutants. The EPA claims it has used that section to previously regulate five sources of air pollutants, but none of those approach the magnitude of their attempt to regulate carbon dioxide.

‘We Swore to an Oath and We Upheld Ours. He Did Not.’

The Obama administration is facing mounting questions about the controversial prisoner swap that freed Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from jihadists in Pakistan in exchange for the transfer and ultimate release of five senior Taliban commanders previously held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Lawmakers are questioning the wisdom and legality of the move. Intelligence officials are expressing deep concerns about its ramifications. And those who served with Bergdahl—or took risks in the efforts to rescue him—are directly challenging the Obama administration’s characterization of the former captive and his actions.

In an appearance on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, National Security Adviser Susan Rice claimed that Bergdahl “wasn’t simply a hostage, he was an American prisoner of war, taken on the battlefield.” She added: “He served the United States with honor and distinction.”

“That’s not true,” says Specialist Cody Full, who served in the same platoon as Bergdahl, and whose tweets over the weekend as @CodyFNfootball offered an early firsthand account of Bergdahl’s departure. “He was not a hero. What he did was not honorable. He knowingly deserted and put thousands of people in danger because he did. We swore to an oath and we upheld ours. He did not.”

“He walked off—and ‘walked off’ is a nice way to put it,” says Specialist Josh Cornelison, the medic in Bergdahl’s platoon. “He was accounted for late that afternoon. He very specifically planned to walk out in the middle of the night.”

“He was a deserter,” says Specialist Full. “There’s no question in the minds of anyone in our platoon.”

In interviews, several of Bergdahl’s platoon mates described a soldier who was contemplative, detached and quixotic. He wrote adventure stories—”Jason Bourne, Ramboish type of shit,” says one soldier—that placed himself at the center of the action. “He’d write ‘Bowe Bergdahl walked across the dark and dusty street’ or something like that.”

It is commonplace to attribute much of Israel’s domestic tensions to supposed Jewish discrimination against the country’s Arab citizens.[1] Nearly every Israeli Arab nongovernmental organization insists that such discrimination characterizes the Jewish state in general and its labor markets in particular.[2] The Israeli media routinely interview Israeli Arabs (and non-Ashkenazi Jews) who claim to have been victims of discrimination. These allegeations are echoed by Jewish Israeli academics, think tanks, and journalists, especially on the political Left, not to mention the international anti-Israel movement and the boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign. Indeed, the U.S. Department of State has even joined the growing outcry concerning Israel’s alleged racist discrimination against its Arab citizens.[3]

Of course, in reality, Israel is the only Middle Eastern entity that is not an apartheid regime, and the apartheid slander holds no water whatsoever save in the minds of the Jewish state’s enemies and defamers. Yet discrimination is a scientifically empirical question subject to testing and not a matter of subjective personal opinion. Stripping away the venomous anti-Israel rhetoric, the legitimate question remains whether and how much discrimination really exists in Israel.

Inequality Myths

Ethnicity in Israel is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Both Jews and Arabs are subdivided into ethnic sub-groups, making exploration and analysis of ethnic disparities a complex challenge. In official statistical data on income, Israeli Arabs are treated as a single population group, but this is somewhat misleading. There are important differences in socio-economic status and performance among Arab Christians, Arab Muslims, and Druse. Those sub-categories are in fact amalgams of even smaller divisions. For example, there are interesting differences between “ordinary” Arab Muslims and Bedouins. The Israeli Income Survey sample does not include the Arab population of the “occupied territories,” except for East Jerusalem and the small population of the Golan Heights, both of which are formally annexed to Israel.

Ethnicity among Jews is even more complex. It is commonly measured in Israel for statistical purposes based upon the continent of birth of the person or the person’s father. Jews born in Asia and Africa (or the children of fathers born there) correspond roughly to Sephardic or Mizrahi Jews. Those born in Europe, the United States, or Australia (and their children) correspond roughly to Ashkenazi or Western Jews. These distinctions are imperfect as there are Ashkenazi Jews who come from Asia and Africa (including South Africa and some Egyptian Jews) and Sephardic Jews who come from Europe (including from Greece, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria). Over time this “continent of birth” criterion for defining ethnicity is losing its validity because of the rapid increase in native-born Israelis who are themselves sons and daughters of native-born Israelis. In addition, the high intermarriage rate among Jews in Israel from different communities is blurring ethnic distinctions.[4]

Hillary Clinton will shortly release a memoir, Hard Choices, chronicling her tenure as secretary of state. If what she has to say in its pages resembles what she had to say from the stage at the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) annual Global Forum on May 14—where she claimed undue credit for implementing sanctions against Iran—it’s worth setting the record straight now.

In reality, the Obama administration, and Clinton ’s State Department in particular, opposed, dragged their feet on, and sought to water down every piece of sanctions legislation introduced by bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate. With that history now being rewritten, let’s review the actual record.

President Obama took office believing that personal diplomacy without “preconditions” would convince Iran ’s leaders to relinquish their nuclear ambitions. As Clinton later explained in an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley, “We believed that the effort of seeking engagement would actually strengthen our hand.”

Others were unconvinced. In April 2009 Congress signaled its skepticism of this “carrots and carrots” approach by introducing several sticks in the form of sanctions bills—of which the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act of 2009 (IRPSA) was the most notable.

Sure enough the administration’s “outstretched hand” was met with an Iranian middle finger over the following months: There were repeated Iranian rebuffs of negotiations; a stolen election in June; Tehran’s atavistic repression of the pro-democracy Green Movement which followed that election; Iran’s rejection of a comprehensive fuel-swap deal after commitments were made to the contrary; and, finally, Iran’s disclosure of its secret underground Fordow enrichment complex after that site had been discovered by Western intelligence services.

Consequently, towards the end of 2009, congressional skepticism about the administration’s quixotic diplomacy morphed into open hostility.