Everyone keeps telling me that short posts sprayed out more frequently are vastly better in the blogosphere than long-form, more deeply considered analysis less often offered. But they never say better for what, or for whom. Well, never mind that for now. I’m so busy with other, higher priorities, that I’m in a rare mood for some disconnected staccato notes—exactly the sort of “tune” so dear to the segmented presentism of what passes for a discourse. I already feel icky about it, but here come three shorts.
First, notice the NYT piece in today’s paper, page A10 of the print edition, by Sanger, Shanker and Schmitt, about the CW mess in Syria. The gist? No one has agreed to protect the convoys of toxic goop, no one is willing to pay for the conveyance and destruction operations, and while Norway seems willing to do the marine transport, there’s no place to transport the stuff to. Albania declined after riots shook the government, which was considering the idea. Not even the Russians, whose fault it is that all the stuff is there in the first place, have offered. (Big surprise.)
Worse, there is some evidence, not cited in the NYT article, that the al-Nusra types are trying to get hands on some of this stuff, however foolish that may be on their untrained part, and may have already succeeded. This is ironic, of course, because the chances of that happening were much less before the location of the chem sites were revealed in the course of implementing the deal, and will be much greater still if anyone actually tries to move this stuff in the middle of a war. The original half-witted notion we had, that the destruction would take place within Syria, would have required financing in the billions of dollars and years just to build the proper facilities—this the NYT article does point out.
Inescapable conclusion: The Obama Administration bought into this Russian-inspired CW deal idea out of political desperation, to rescue itself from its own mistakes, without ever having thought through how it could work. And now we’re in a situation where the entire effort not only looks to come a cropper, but might even produce serious counterproductive outcomes.
Why tell you all this? Because if you’ve been reading my blog on a fairly regular basis, you already knew what this NYT article would say. I warned from the start that this deal, aside from being a sideshow compared to the civil war itself, was likely to prove unworkable. You can go back and look it up—my November 13, September 30, September 20 and September 11 posts should do the trick.
Second, in my Nov. 5 essay in Tablet, I warned that the wheels of the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel were coming off. I explained the complexity of the three-sided causal formula, and projected it into the future at a greater remove than most folks these days care to think about or plan for. Some folks did not pick up on that…..and others were sure I was exaggerating, if not just plain wrong.
Well, take a look around today, not even two weeks later: Was I? I never imagined when I sat down to write in late September that both the President and especially his Secretary of State would utter the hurtful and foolish things they have said in recent days. Labeling anyone who dares to criticize them, or points to inconsistencies in their own behavior, as “warmongers” is really beyond the pale. I wish Prime Minister Netanyahu had been more reserved and judicious in his public remarks—but then I’ve wished for that for decades now, in vain—but the sudden and sharp deterioration in the relationship clearly owes more this time to Washington’s misdeeds, not Jerusalem’s. I did not want to be proved right so nastily and so soon, but I have to say: Go back and reread the Tablet piece—or read it for the first time, as the case may be—and perhaps the deeper reasons why what is happening is happening will become clearer to you.
Inescapable conclusion: Administration principals ran their mouths in public about Israel to cover up their own broken promises and rash concessions without having thought through how it would affect the relationship or the issues at play. And now we’re in a situation where the episode might produce serious counterproductive outcomes, even possibly a desperate Israeli military strike on Iranian facilities.
Third, for something completely different, a juxtaposition for your delectation concerning Obamacare and voter identification provisions.
As to voter ID laws and regulations in the states, you are no doubt aware of the fracas that’s been going on over this, all the way to the Supreme Court, because it elides on the renewal (or lack thereof) or amendment of the Voting Rights Act. Suffice it to say, it’s not hard getting me to believe that the motives for restrictive laws may be partisan in nature—specifically, the idea that making it necessary to have a valid photo ID in order to vote will disproportionately discourage would-be Democratic voters over would-be Republican ones. But it’s hard to prove motives.
The other side of the argument, meanwhile, is rarely voiced in the MSM, which is that it is simply absurd not to require voter identification in order to safeguard the integrity of the democratic process. Non-citizens should not be allowed to vote. Citizens should not be allowed to vote more than once per election in a given district. Citizens should not be allowed to vote multiple times in different districts. With all due respect to the zombie lobby, dead citizens should not be allowed to vote. Anyone who disagrees with any of this needs a remedial course in democratic theory and practice, either that or a psychiatrist.
But all of that is possible nowadays in lots of places. When I go to vote in Montgomery County, Maryland, all I have to do is give my name and confirm my address with a grunt. No one asks for any ID. I could be pretty much anyone, from anywhere. This is ridiculous. But the Democratic activiste types are actually fine with that, because, for example, having undocumented aliens vote helps them. It’s the lax pro-Democrat status quo that’s the outrage, not sincere attempts to mend it.
Hence the nonsensical fictions about how hard it is to get a photo ID, and how having to do so discriminates against the handicapped, old people, illiterate people and so on. It is actually not that hard to get a photo ID…..if you actually are a citizen. And it’s not very expensive. If some people can’t readily get to a place that makes one on their own, and if they can’t find the necessary documentation, all sorts of community service folks will help you. In many places they will fall over each other trying to assist, including giving you the money you need.
Ah, but it’s supposedly simple for these same poor, illiterate or semi-literate or handicapped people to sign up for insurance on the new insurance exchanges. Horse twaddle it is. To use that website, even when it’s working, you also have to have ID of some sort to establish at least a scintilla of eligibility, and then you have to make your way through page after page after page of bureaucratese. And of course you must be basically computer-literate, and have access to a computer with internet, even to start the process.
Democrats are doing big-time double-speak here, assuming ease when it suits their politics interests and assuming difficulty when it doesn’t. Republicans do the same thing, of course, but this particular juxtaposition is particularly glaring.
I warned long, long ago in this blog (you could look it up) that Obamacare might not survive its own administrative birth. After all, we saw signs of this many months ago already when one aspect after another of the plan got delayed—usually announced on Friday afternoon so’s no one would hardly notice. But even I did not suspect that the train wreck would be as telegenic as it’s been. And it could easily get worse. The main fear of the Administration right now is that not enough healthy young uninsured people will sign up to make the arrangement financially feasible. If the insurance pool is too small, the rates will skyrocket, and the government’s promise to subsidize poorer people will break the budget and the bank to the point that it will become politically impossible and collapse of its own weight.
Inescapable conclusion: The Obama Administration launched the Obamacare program for purely political reasons, without ever really having thought through how it could work. And now we’re in a situation where the entire effort not only looks to come a cropper, but might even produce serious counterproductive outcomes.
Ah, but Republicans who want to wreck the Obamacare experiment have an obvious and relatively easy way to ensure that outcome. All they have to do is promise to reimburse fines for rejecting the personal mandate once it kicks in in a few months. A lot more uninsured people will stay away from Obamacare if it’s free to them. All they’d need to do to get reimbursed is show proof of having paid the fine—if the Republicans can get it together to launch such an effort, whether in their own name or in some barely disguised super-pac incarnation. The effort, which would be unambiguously legal, might not be cheap, but it would certainly be affordable compared to the outsized sums the GOP spends on campaigns nationwide. The fact that, so far as I’m aware, no senior Republican figure has raised such an idea is just more evidence of how brain-dead these guys are. (No, I’m not even a Republican…..)
What a country. What an Administration.
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