| Dear Readers (particularly my male readers who do, in fact, need personal maternity coverage; your plight has been ignored for far too long!), I was going to dedicate this entire "news"letter to gloating over the glorious, nay magisterial, fustercluck that is Obamacare. But a few factors transpired against me. No, none of those factors include the sanctimonious finger-wagging trollery we hear so much from liberals these days that it is somehow wrong to root for the failure of a law that deserves to fail. Frankly, I don't quite get the charge. Conservatives said the law wouldn't work and will be bad for the country. We've been pretty consistent on this point (See: 40-odd House votes to repeal, 8 bajillion conservative op-eds, magazine articles, radio diatribes, tea-party protests, the 2010 midterms, etc). And now that it is going into effect and isn't working and is proving bad for the country, we're supposed to suddenly act as if this is terrible news? Or, as some argue, this is the moment for Republicans to work with Democrats to make this horrible law more bipartisan. I mean I guess I can see why politicians shouldn't gloat too much or rub it in. The I-told-you-there-were-alligators-in-this-river guy is particularly annoying when a very large reptile, (yes probably an alligator; stop saying "I told you so" already!), is pulling off your arm. And Obamacare is gnawing at the figurative limbs of lots of Americans like a giant alligator (or perhaps a crocodile! Heh) and no one should find joy in their misfortune. But, please don't tell me not to take any satisfaction in the misfortune of the Democrats. Oh, no, wait, I said that wrong. Please do tell me that so I can laugh in your face and perhaps even do some lift-my-kilt taunts like they did in Braveheart. Not since Dan Rather climbed the jackass tree and then fell off, hitting every branch on the way down, has there been a story this satisfying and just plain enjoyable. But as I said, I'm not here to gloat. That's because Rich Lowry (praise be upon him) asked me to do a piece for the magazine gloating about all this. So tune in to the next exciting issue of National Review! Barack Obama, Super Genius My column today is Doric. I made it out of papier-mâché and later I shall don my spaghetti-strainer codpiece and knock it over like Hercules. But that's none of your business. I know what you're thinking, "If you're going to pretend you're Hercules, you should probably make your columns Ionic, not Doric." Frankly I think it's weird that when I conjure the image of me in a spaghetti-strainer codpiece, the only thing that comes to your mind is architectural pedantry. Maybe we should just change the subject, sicko. On NRO today I write about this idea, still flourishing in the cubicles of MSNBC and elsewhere, that Barack Obama is a super-genius tactician who is always thinking ahead of his adversaries. This has always been nonsense, but the latest proof is the fact that during the battle over the government shutdown, Obama didn't trade a delay in Obamacare for some massive spending concessions. Look at it this way. Imagine you completely forgot to write your term paper on Ionic columns because you got into an egg-eating contest. You wouldn't have gotten into the contest, but the guy who said that no man can eat 50 eggs got under your skin. Anyway, the term paper is worth half your final grade and you need to pass the course in order to graduate on time and take that job as the baby-oil guy on the Hawaiian Tropic calendar girls bus tour. Worse, the paper is due tomorrow morning. The professor calls you and says, "Hey, I need to leave town for a week. I'm giving everyone in the class an extension on the term paper if you don't tell the dean I'm playing hooky." How do you respond? Do you say, "Okay professor. I was ready to hand it in, but I guess I can take an extra week as, you know, a favor to you." Or, do you say, "Sir. Deadlines exist for a reason, and frankly I will not be an enabler to the loosening of standards in society. For shame, sir, for shame." Now admittedly this is the worst analogy since a drunk Homer Simpson explained the fairer sex to Bart: "Son, a woman is a lot like a [Homer looks at refrigerator] . . . a refrigerator! They're about six feet tall, 300 pounds. They make ice, and, um . . ." But you get the point. In poker, if you know the other player will stay in the game with a better hand, it makes zero sense to bluff with a crappy hand. The roll out of Obamacare was like Obama being called after raising endlessly and when he threw down his cards he didn't even have an ace for high card. Instead he had a two, a seven, a four, a nine, that extra card with the rules written out in small print and an expired coupon for the Olive Garden. Trading an Obamacare delay for something -- anything -- he wanted would be like trading some non-magic beans (so unmagical they're in fact some pebbles and a stale Jolly Rancher) for a really nice cow. Man, I gotta work on my analogies. Take Note, Conservatives One point I didn't get to, though, is that liberals aren't the only ones clinging to the idea that Obama is a master strategist. Distrust of Obama on the right -- while always understandable and usually warranted -- often becomes conspiratorial. Virtually every time some story makes news, I get e-mail from folks on the right saying "Obama orchestrated THIS to get THAT out of the news." Or, "This was his plan all along!" What's interesting to me is that this idea -- Obama's got an evil secret agenda he's executing masterfully -- is often held simultaneously alongside the idea that he's a complete fool, totally out of his depth. Well, which is it? A similar cognitive dissonance existed on the left under Bush. They believed Bush was an idiot ("He talks funny!") and they believed he orchestrated any number of brilliant frauds on the American people. The most egregiously confused lefties were the "truthers" who were convinced that 9/11 was an "inside job" and that Bush was a fool. (And let the record show that this was not a particularly marginal view among Democrats. We always hear how crazy the "birthers" are -- who simply believe (falsely, I think), that an ambitious politician lied about the place of his birth so he could be president. Inconceivable! Racist! Deranged! Meanwhile, truthers believed that a guy they considered too stupid to finish a kids-menu maze at Chuck E. Cheese somehow orchestrated the single most complicated act of domestic terrorism in American history, without a single corroborating whistleblower or document ever showing up.) Making God Giggle Anyway, the point is that, sure, Obama has an agenda he doesn't lay bare for all to see. He couches his ulterior motives in platitudes and sound bites. Pretty much every politician does that. But most of his "hidden" motives aren't in fact very well hidden. He's personally further to the left than politics will let him be. He believes in economic redistribution. He thinks America's superpower status has a lot of downsides. He thinks the government should have more control and influence over peoples' lives. Etc. These are not shocking revelations. In fact they're not even revelations at all if you've been paying the slightest bit of attention. But even if he has far more sinister motives, even if he were a crypto-Muslim Stalinist hell bent on liquidating the rich and forcing the rest of us to have an Islamist gay wedding paid for by the government so long as both grooms got maternity care, he'd still have to operate in the real world. And, among the core insights of conservatism is the simple fact that reality is awfully complicated. It's not ridiculous to have a plan. I myself plan to nap this afternoon and I'm reasonably confident I'll pull it off ("It's just crazy enough to work!" -- The Couch). But at the heart of conservatism is a healthy skepticism about the technocratic romanticism that says people are like cogs for the smart set to arrange. Whether it's Edmund Burke talking about the variety and mystery of human existence or Friedrich Hayek explaining the knowledge problem or your grandmother telling you that God laughs at those who plan, the point is the same. Forces great and small outside your control get a vote in how your life turns out and they cannot be reliably brought to heel. Whatever Obama's will, the mere application of it to the machinery of the state in no way guarantees he will see it realized. Lenin was very smart and yet he continually failed to join the crooked timbers of humanity into the right angles he so admired. And while Stalin wasn't as bright as Lenin, he had the advantage of absolute and total power over his country (which is a nice thing to have, though a terrible thing to give anyone (but me!)). And yet the bologna of humanity rejected the grinder of Communism. In North Korea three generations of dictators have dedicated themselves to making their country a technologically advanced and prosperous superpower. And yet, in Pyongyang, they would kill for a website that worked as well as Healthcare.gov (or, in fairness, for a bowl of rice). Mao killed tens of millions of his own people to "prove" that collectivization works and capitalism doesn't. How'd that work out? Well, today you can buy a great Mao T-shirt at one of Walmart's many downtown Beijing locations. I'm not comparing Obama to Stalin, Lenin, or Mao (people on the right do way too much of that). I'm simply making the point that even in countries where they have a comply-or-die system, designed to make it as easy as possible to impose one man's will on a society, wholesale planning is still impossible folly. Even if Obama were the polymathic, superwonk, light-bringing übermensch wunderkind badass he seems to think he is, it's very, very unlikely he'd succeed in fulfilling crazy outside-of-the-box schemes, because our entire system is set up to thwart and stymie people with crazy outside-of-the-box schemes. Indeed, it's stymied better men than Obama. That's because it's not just Obama who isn't smart enough to plot out every move and counter move in a 300 million piece 3-D chessboard where the pieces can move themselves, form coalitions, and act on both rational interests and irrational desires while also interacting with the billions of pieces on other boards. No one is that smart, except God -- and He's too busy laughing. Various & Sundry Last night for the fourth year in a row, the Goldbergs followed family tradition and dressed up like zombies. Every year we pick a different kind of character and than zombie it up. My daughter insists on it. Last year, I was the zombie prom king and the Fair Jessica and my daughter were prom queens. The year before that, I was a zombie football player and they were zombie cheerleaders. And last night I was a zombie airline pilot and my ladyfolk were zombie stewardesses. I normally don't post pictures of daughter on the interwebs for obvious reasons, but I figure when she's zombied-up it's as good as a disguise. So here ya go: 
In other news, I'm coming to Beantown and Hell's coming with me! And by Hell, I mean Steyn, Lowry, Geraghty, and the whole gang! Yes, it's a fundraiser -- but we need the money! And we will reward your generosity with beer and bon mots!
Good news Polish readers! The Polish language edition of Liberal Fascism goes on sale this week -- in Poland. Get your copies now! Speaking of Liberal Fascism, here's a great picture. Speaking of the world's largest chicken nugget, here it is. Woops, I guess I wasn't actually speaking of the world's largest chicken nugget, that was my internal monologue. Oh well, Russia is still a very strange place. Balloons! Mouse!
Human progress, for the win! These people are voters! (Some icky content.) So are these people! Don't cry, baby. This week's cool map! Adding "Harry" to Plato makes him awesomer. And of course Debby's links! | 
Megyn Kelly -> Pete Hegseth responds to 2017 rape accusation. 🔥 vol. 3, issue 13 | December 6, 2024 Quick Hits All the news you need in...
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