 |
Morning Jolt May 22, 2014 We Begin the Morning with Some Undignified Begging Let's begin by noting the awkward situation of asking others to buy your book when National Review is beginning its spring webathon asking for donations. Secondly, I hate asking people for help. I particularly hate asking readers for help, because all of you are already kind enough to give me your time and attention every morning. You have a lot of choices in this media landscape that is more crowded than the sets of Soylent Green, and everybody and their brother has a morning newsletter. I hope that most mornings I can give you something a little bit different, funny, thought-provoking, and enjoyable to read. Above: The 2014 Political-Newsletter Writer Convention; during my keynote address, I screamed like a madman, 'E-mail subscribers are people! They're peeeeeeeeople!" But I have been told, directly, from on high, that the difference between my book being perceived as a high-selling success or a low-selling failure largely depends upon my willingness to be shameful in the coming weeks. Sigh. Here we go. My publisher recently shared with me the number of pre-orders of my book on Amazon.com so far. The publisher is satisfied, but I'm not so much. I know that there are [FIGURE PARTIALLY REDACTED BY NR E-MAIL ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT] hundred thousand of you who get this newsletter, and that the number of people who have pre-ordered a copy is. . . a significantly smaller number. ("They're directly comparable, just like the numbers in Jill Abramson's salary and the numbers in her predecessor's salary!" — Pinch Sulzberger.) If you're among those who have pre-ordered already, thank you. If you haven't. . . now would be a good time. I realize I had talked about the official publication day, June 3, being the big "Everybody Buy My Book on Amazon and Let's See How High We Can Get in the Amazon Rankings" day. I'll still probably do that — I know some folks who will be ordering multiple copies for their friends that day — but I realize some folks may want to get theirs as soon as it arrives. Or you may be busy that day. As noted before, buying my book is probably the one of the least expensive favors you can do for me: only a $13 cover price, $9.94 on Amazon, $9.99 on Nook, and $7.99 on Kindle. It's aimed to be a good, quick, fun beach read. If you're looking for a sense of what the book is like, check out the web site of the fake-but-accurate U.S. Department of Agriculture Agency of Invasive Species, found at www.theweedagency.com. The stuff that's on the site hints at the world depicted within the book, but is not (other than the complimentary chapter) in the book. Think of the web site as the DVD extras! In fact, order the book, and I'll do a Q-and-A with any e-mailed questions. I only have one e-mail address, the one at the top (or is it bottom?) of this message, jiminturkey@gmail.com. And once again, all sales up to one week after the official publication date count towards getting on the bestseller lists. So if you buy before June 10, you're helping me out a lot. And now, on to the rest of the morning's news. . . Obama Offers Well-Worn Scandal Spin in Response to VA Problem from Hell I could spend all day dissecting President Obama's depressingly predictable comments about the VA scandal. Let's aim for the short version. Begin with the president's claim that he — and we — need to wait until until VA Secretary Eric Shinseki and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Rob Nabors complete their respective reports. Contending that there's some doubt about whether there was falsification of records -- when 26 VA facilities now face allegations — is credulous to the point of willful blindness.
Then Obama said, "we launched an all-out war on the disability-claims backlog. And in just the past year alone, we've slashed that backlog by half." Mr. President, one of the key accusations in this scandal is that the books are cooked, so the accuracy of the figures you cite to support your claim are in dispute. Obama ignoring this means A) he's willing to claim that allegedly falsified records are true to save his own butt or B) he really hasn't followed this story at all, and doesn't even know what the core accusations are:
Finally, Obama declared, "Nobody cares more about our veterans than Eric Shinseki." The performance of his department offers mounting evidence to the contrary:
Did I say this was the short version? The Myth of Barack Obama Ron Fournier takes to the Ezra Klein to the woodshed, and it's a beautiful thing. Similarly, I loved Pete Wehner's post "New Obama Narrative: Epic Incompetence," but I feel like it needed a bit of expansion. Because it's not merely the competence that never arrived after all the hype of 2007 and 2008, but the entire gamut: Bipartisanship: Obama doesn't really respect anyone who disagrees with him; he prefers to adopt an "only adult in the room" pose, demagogue issues, and attack straw men. He'll talk about the need for a "new tone" and then stand by as his allies attack opponents as "not one of us", accuse them of committing felonies without evidence, and even of causing cancer. Far from the post-partisan healer he was sold as in 2007-2008, he's a ruthless demagogue who urges his followers to "get in their face" and "punish our enemies." "Don't think we're not keeping score, brother." Honesty and willingness to acknowledge inconvenient truths: He thinks nothing of saying something that isn't true if it helps him at the political moment -- "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan." When the promise is broken, it's everyone else's fault but his . Engagement with the world: The president is functionally an isolationist and not that interested in the world beyond our borders. Russia's aggression doesn't trouble him enough to move beyond routine sanctions. Whether it's the territorial saber-rattling of China and Japan, the Iranian nuclear program, the Syrian Civil War, increasing violence in Iraq, the increasingly routine provocations of the North Koreans, or the prospect of leaving a bloody, Taliban-re-conquered mess in Afghanistan. . . it's clear from his weak-tea proposals, sporadic public comments, tone, and body language that the president wishes it all would just go away. Consistent Concern: He doesn't give a rat's tush about half the things he criticized in the Bush administration: the increasing national debt, a dysfunctional VA, domestic surveillance, concerns about Americans' privacy, meeting with lobbyists in the White House, appointing lobbyists to high-level White House staff positions, rewarding big-time donors with ambassadorial appointments. . . A Focus on What Matters Most: His own staffers have described him as "impatient and disengaged" in key meetings, and the intelligence community has wondered how closely he reads his briefings. With increasing frequency, he says he learns about problems within his own administration from media reports. (See the NRCC's new "Obama Excuses" page.) He really enjoys the good life of the presidency and doesn't see any reason why he should limit public expenditures on himself and his family during hard economic times. He recently laughed, "That's the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want." Accountability: Obama is perfectly fine with letting his subordinates investigate themselves and assess their own failures — the Justice Department's investigation of itself in "Fast and Furious", the U.S. State Department's review of its own actions before, during and after the Benghazi attacks; he picks his own people to examine his own NSA policies on domestic surveillance, and now Eric Shinseki will get to the bottom of any wrongdoing at the Department of Veterans Affairs. He rarely if ever fires staffers; the rare cases, like General Stanley McChrystal or Jofi Joseph, involve cases where an underling criticized him. Even the most consequentially incompetent, like Kathleen Sebelius, are given a soft landing months after they've made crucial errors to avoid administration embarrassment. Respect for the Constitution: He was sold to us as a Constitutional law professor; in office, Obama enacted policies that violated almost every amendment in the Bill of Rights. ADDENDA: Don't look now, but North Korea's acting up again this morning: "North and South Korea briefly exchanged artillery fire across their disputed western sea border Thursday, Seoul's defense ministry said. No damage was reported on the southern side." To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com
National Review, Inc.
Manage your National Review subscriptions. We respect your right to privacy. View our policy. This email was sent by: |
No comments: