The Daily Gouge, Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012

On October 1, 2012, in Uncategorized, by magoo1310

It’s Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

First up, the WSJ‘s Bret Stephens details how….

Benghazi Was Obama’s 3 a.m. Call

Libya was a failure of policy and worldview, not intelligence.

Why won’t the Libya story go away? Why can’t the memory of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and his staff be consigned to the same sad-and-sealed file of Americans killed abroad in dangerous line of duty? How has an episode that seemed at first to have been mishandled by the Romney camp become an emblem of a feckless and deluded foreign policy?

The story-switching and stonewalling haven’t helped. But let’s start a little earlier.

The hour is 5 p.m., Sept. 11, Washington time, and the scene is an Oval Office meeting among President Obama, the secretary of defense, the national security adviser and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi has been under assault for roughly 90 minutes. Some 30 U.S. citizens are at mortal risk. The whereabouts of Ambassador Stevens are unknown.

What is uppermost on the minds of the president and his advisers? The safety of Americans, no doubt. So what are they prepared to do about it? Here is The Wall Street Journal’s account of the meeting:

“There was no serious consideration at that hour of intervention with military force, officials said. Doing so without Libya’s permission could represent a violation of sovereignty and inflame the situation, they said. Instead, the State Department reached out to the Libyan government to get reinforcements to the scene.”

So it did. Yet the attack was far from over. After leaving the principal U.S. compound, the Americans retreated to a second, supposedly secret facility, which soon came under deadly mortar fire. Time to call in the troops?

“Some officials said the U.S. could also have sent aircraft to the scene as a ‘show of force’ to scare off the attackers,” the Journal reported, noting that there’s a U.S. air base just 450 miles away in Sicily. “State Department officials dismissed the suggestions as unrealistic. ‘They would not have gotten there in two hours, four hours or six hours.'”

The U.S. security detail only left Washington at 8 a.m. on Sept. 12, more than 10 hours after the attacks began. A commercial jet liner can fly from D.C. to Benghazi in about the same time.

All this is noted with the benefit of hindsight, and the administration deserves to be judged accordingly. But it also deserves to be judged in light of what it knew prior to the attack, including an attack on the mission in June and heightened threat warnings throughout the summer.

So how did the administration do on that count? “That the local security did so well back in June probably gave us a false sense of security,” an unnamed American official who has served in Libya told the New York Times last week. The logic here is akin to supposing that because the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center failed to bring down the towers, nobody need have been concerned thereafter. But let’s still make allowances for the kind of bureaucratic ineptitude that knows neither administration nor political party.

The more serious question is why the administration alighted on the idea that the attack wasn’t a terrorist act at all. Also, what did the White House think it had to gain by adopting the jihadist narrative that a supposedly inflammatory video clip was at the root of the trouble?

Nobody can say. (Saaaay WHAT?!? Stephens goes on to say exactly why in his review below.) All the administration will acknowledge is that it has “revised [its] initial assessment to reflect new information that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack.” That’s from James Clapper, the director of national intelligence. It suggests that our intelligence agencies are either much dumber than previously supposed (always a strong possibility) or much more politicized (equally plausible).

No doubt the administration would now like to shift blame to Mr. Clapper. But what happened in Benghazi was not a failure of intelligence. It was a failure of policy, stemming from a flawed worldview and the political needs of an election season.

Let’s review:

The U.S. ignores warnings of a parlous security situation in Benghazi. Nothing happens because nobody is really paying attention, especially in an election year, and because Libya is supposed to be a foreign-policy success. When something does happen, the administration’s concerns for the safety of Americans are subordinated to considerations of Libyan “sovereignty” and the need for “permission.” After the attack the administration blames a video, perhaps because it would be politically inconvenient to note that al Qaeda is far from defeated, and that we are no more popular under Mr. Obama than we were under George W. Bush. Denouncing the video also appeals to the administration’s reflexive habits of blaming America first. Once that story falls apart, it’s time to blame the intel munchkins and move on.

It was five in the afternoon when Mr. Obama took his 3 a.m. call. He still flubbed it.

We shudder to think what might have happened had the 9/11 anniversary fallen on a Sunday: The Obamao might not have gotten in all 18 holes!

Bret Stephens initial refusal to theorize notwithstanding, it’s plain why the Administration’s been lying about Libya: it exposes how hapless their foreign policy’s actually been, particularly their craven overtures to Islam. With mere weeks before the election, and memories of Jimmy Carter’s Iranian hostage crisis stirring, blame for another Middle East debacle is the last thing The Dear Misleader needs. And if Mitt Romney has half a clue, he’ll ensure its a misstep he never forgets.

Next up, courtesy of CommentaryMagazine.com, Abe Greenwald wonders….

Whence Sacrifice?

“We live in a sacrifice-free bubble of volitional delusion.” If Mitt Romney put his private fundraising speeches through a syllable-multiplying machine he might come up with something like that—generalizing, demonizing, and dismissive of entitlement-happy American moochers. And liberal columnists would mug him for it.

But in fact a liberal columnist wrote it. The line appeared in Frank Bruni’s Sunday New York Times column about the lost American virtue of sacrifice. “It’s odd,” writes Bruni. “We revere the Americans who lived through World War II and call them the ‘greatest generation’ precisely because of the sacrifices they made. But we seem more than content to let that brand of greatness pass us by.”

Indeed we do. And he certainly tells conservatives nothing new when he writes: “The size of the federal debt and the pace of its growth can’t be ignored.” And those of us who’ve long been dismayed by the Obama administration’s use of class warfare can only agree with Bruni’s contention that “[t]hese days sacrifice is what you recommend for others, not what you volunteer for yourself.”

But there is an extraordinary absence in Bruni’s discussion: the word “culture” appears nowhere. The column redefines sacrifice as a government ask, and not a personal or cultural virtue at all. For Bruni, sacrifice is to be reclaimed with an eleventh hour pronouncement from the president to render unto Caesar. Government will tell us to part with what is ours so that it can get America’s house in order. Simple as that. He wants Barack Obama and Mitt Romney to talk seriously about American sacrifice in the upcoming debates so that Americans will in turn think seriously about it themselves.

There is a great and growing divide between what our political reality demands and what our culture now produces, and Bruni gets nowhere near it. Sacrifice is vanishing because the cultural institutions that promote or sanctify it—family, faith, and patriotism—are on the wane. “In 1960, two-thirds (68%) of all [American] twenty-somethings were married,” a 2010 Pew study found. “In 2008, just 26% were.” And in 2011, American births fell to a 12-year low. To previous generations the demands of family meant a life defined by self-denial, delayed gratification, and the giving of one’s time, energy, and money. Is a 42 percent drop in those who claim such an existence supposed to have no effect on the quality of our national character? Can this be fixed with a White House call to duty?

To the snickering celebration of progressives, religious belief is tumbling in America as well. Particularly among the so-called “millennial” generation. Among Americans 30 and younger, belief in God has fallen 15 percentage points in the last five years. With that belief goes the divine endorsement (and inspiration) of selflessness, charity, and sacrifice. Indeed, the simultaneous rise in youth devotion to the Occupy movement offers a beautiful illustration of a generation’s transition out of an institution of sacrifice and into a sub-culture of entitlement. Frank Bruni should try interrupting an anti-banking drum-circle chant to tell Occupiers they need to sacrifice more because Obama says so.

And of course there’s the fading belief in American exceptionalism, today considered by progressives to be a kind of imperialist thought crime. Last November, Pew found that 49 percent of Americans agree with the statement, “Our people are not perfect, but our culture is superior to others,” while 46 percent of Americans disagreed. (In 2007, 55 percent said American culture was superior; in 2002, it was 60 percent). Why make sacrifices for a country that’s no better than any other on the planet?

It makes sense that Bruni avoids discussing the cultural underpinnings of our increasingly selfish citizenry. As Yuval Levin discusses in a brilliant essay (featured in today’s Cover Story) in the current issue of the Weekly Standard, “the progressive view of government has long involved the effort to shrink and clear the space between the individual and the state.” Culture, in the progressive view, should collapse itself to make room for increased government as needed. It is not surprising then that Bruni not only looks to the president to simply decree a renewed sense of sacrifice but that he also considers the end of military conscription as a possible culprit for sacrifice’s waning.

The challenge of course goes beyond the nature of our government. One can rail against the entitlement policies of Barack Obama and others but in a sense those policies are a form of accommodation with a culture that’s turning away from the non-governmental institutions that promote personal responsibility, charity, and sacrifice. Frank Bruni finds it “odd” that we’re giving up on a virtue we praise only because he pays no attention to how that virtue was instilled and passed on. He quotes a string of presidents who spoke of American sacrifice in this or that light, as if “sacrifice” is an incantation or logic command to be programmed into our political life when desperately needed. It is not. Sacrifice, rather, is the personal and cultural reality of people who’ve toiled in hopes of seeing its delayed rewards—for themselves or for others. A sense of sacrifice is what generations of Americans found in the institutions that they built and maintained specifically because they expected neither moral nor material elevation from their government.

Particularly when the nominal Leader of the Free World can’t see the necessity….

….to set any kind of example.

Since we’re on the subject of Dimocrats bereft of any sense of responsibility, Townhall.com‘s Guy Benson notes….

Obamacare’s Killing Jobs, Says Guy Who Voted for it Twice

Take my last shred of honor, integrity and credibility….please!

By all means, please tell us about the job-killing consequences of the monstrous law you voted for twice, former Democratic Senator:

The Supreme Court decision in June upholding the Affordable Care Act leaves in place a tax on medical devices that threatens thousands of American jobs and our global competitiveness. It will also stifle critical medical innovation in the industry that gave us defibrillators, pacemakers, artificial joints, stents, chemotherapy delivery systems and almost every device we depend on to save lives. The 2.3% tax will be charged to manufacturers on each sale and takes effect in January. Many U.S. device companies, in response, have already announced layoffs, canceled plans for domestic expansion and slashed research-and-development budgets.

The hit will be severe. For a typical company, a 2.3% tax on revenues equals a 15% tax on profits. When combined with a 35% corporate tax and state corporate taxes, the tax rate for the medical-device industry will exceed 50% in most jurisdictions. Many marginally profitable businesses will then hemorrhage red ink, since they’ll have to pay the excise tax whether they are making money or not … As a result of the looming device tax, production is moving overseas, good jobs are going to Europe and Asia, and cutting-edge medical devices will now be produced elsewhere for import into the U.S. Meanwhile, the impact on the quality of care is incalculable but no less real. Thirty billion dollars must be taken out of operations or R&D. Who knows what lifesaving devices that might have been developed will fall victim to this tax?

That’s Indiana’s Evan Bayh writing in the Wall Street Journal, sounding the alarm over one of many atrocious provisions in a law that he played a decisive role in passing. Here’s the editor’s note that accompanies the column:

Mr. Bayh, a Democrat, is a former governor and U.S. senator from Indiana. He is a partner at the McGuireWoods law firm, which represents several medical-device companies.

Partially due to his votes on this issue, Bayh chose not to face voters in 2010. He cashed out and joined a law firm that represents an industry that’s going to be decimated by one of the many taxes and accounting gimmicks that Democrats — himself included — used to manipulate and hide the true cost of their partisan bill. Note the passive voice in “falling victim.” Bayh’s concern about American jobs and medical innovation “falling victim” to Obamacare’s taxes would be slightly more believable if he hadn’t been one of the active victimizers back when this mess could have been stopped.

Two additional notes from the Obamacare file in recent days:

(1) Obama: “If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.” Reality, via a new nationwide survey of employers:

(2) Obama: “We’re going to reduce costs an average of $2500 per family on premiums.” Reality:

But it turns out that family premiums have increased by more than $3,000 since Obama’s vow, according to the latest annual Kaiser Family Foundation employee health benefits survey. Premiums for employer-provided family coverage rose $3,065 — 24% — from 2008 to 2012, the Kaiser survey found. Even if you start counting in 2009, premiums have climbed $2,370. What’s more, premiums climbed faster in Obama’s four years than they did in the previous four under President Bush, the survey data show.

But hey, it’s not like this was a promise Obama made over, and over, and over, and over, and over again, right?

As the WSJ relates:

The 60th Vote Regrets

Now Jim Webb and Evan Bayh tell us.

Let’s give ’em something to remember us by!

….Messrs. Webb and Bayh can lament what might have been, but the bitter truth is that the only way voters can undo their damage is by defeating Mr. Obama in November and electing a Republican Senate. Otherwise, both men will have left their country economically weaker and health care less affordable than it was when they decided to run for office. That should be their real regret.

That….and burning in Hell for all eternity.

So Evan and Jim, here’s to you; a small token of America’s appreciation for your Monday-morning misgivings:

And in the “Every Vote Your Money Can Buy!” segment, courtesy today of Bill Meisen, the Dayton Daily News reports….

1 million Ohioans using free phone program

Fees on phone bills pay for $1.5 billion national Lifeline program

Not to mention he got the phone for free; you know….just in case of emergencies!

A program that provides subsidized phone service to low-income individuals has nearly doubled in size in Ohio in the past year — now covering more than a million people. ….the size of the program in the state — and profits to the increasing number of cellphone companies involved — has exploded in recent months, according to a Dayton Daily News analysis of program data. The program in Ohio cost $26.9 million in the first quarter of 2012, the most recent data available, versus $15.6 million in the same timeframe in 2011. Compared to the first quarter of 2011, the number of people in the program nearly doubled to more than a million.

Growth could cost everyone who owns a phone. The program is funded through the “Universal Service Fund” charge on phone bills — usually a dollar or two per bill — and the amount of the fee is determined by the cost of this and other programs. A growth of $100 million in this program could result in an increased fee of a few cents on the average bill, according to officials from the agency that administers the program. The total cost of the program nationwide was $1.5 billion in 2011, up from $1.1 billion in 2010.

….Advocates for the poor say this growth is to be expected; eligibility is dependent on having a low income or being in a program such as food stamps or heating assistance, and that population is ballooning, they say. “I am unable to have a cellphone and I need one for emergencies,” said Aliesa Azbill of Dayton, who is in a work training program at Community Action Partnership. She said the 250 free minutes she gets per month through SafeLink isn’t enough to use it for much more than emergencies.

She said it has come in helpful when her home phone has lost service or her 12-year-old daughter goes to the library and she wants her to be able to reach someone in an emergency since public phones have become rare.

250 free minutes per month isn’t enough; how many emergencies does this ditzy freeloader HAVE every 30 days?!? Ms. Azbill’s attitude proves one thing: freeloading….

….knows no racial bounds!

In a related item forwarded by George Lawlor, FOX News informs us….

Obama administration held dozens of meetings on food stamps with Mexican officials

Se habla food stamps!

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/01/vilvilsack-reacts-to-republican-concerns-about-mexican-nutrition-awareness/

Meanwhile, as the candidates prepare for Wednesday’s main event….

Psaki worried Obama will be too ‘professorial’ for couch-sitting beer drinkers

President Obama’s campaign spokeswoman said she’s concerned Obama will sound too “professorial” to resonate with the low-information voters tuning into the presidential campaign for the first time during this week’s debate. “[W]hat the American [people] are looking for is not just a professorial list of facts or accomplishments or even goals,” Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said yesterday as part of her ongoing, almost-comical attempt to lower expectations going into the debates. She then lamented that Obama “has a tendency to give longer, substantive answers.”

Psaki’s concern that Professor Obama will appear during the debates is understandable given that “he was the third-lowest-ranked lecturer” at the University of Chicago Law School in 1999.

Still, Obama’s background as a professor is more of a running joke in conservative circles than a typical Democratic criticism of the president. So why would Psaki bring it up now (beyond, again, the absurd expectations game that both sides play)?

Maybe it has to do with their target audience. “He wants to speak directly to the families — the people who are on their couches at home, having snacks, drinking a beer, drinking soda, whatever it is, and tuning in for the first time — and that’s who he’s speaking directly to,” she said.