United States Senate’s worst year ever ends…. The two-year budget deal passed 64-36 Wednesday (9 GOP senators crossed the aisle to vote for the bill; 3 other GOP senators who voted to cut off debate Tuesday voted against the final bill), given 2-1/2 cheers by policy ace Peter Ferrara, albeit saddled with the odious military pension cuts Democrats insisted upon: Read More ›
Telltale clues to identify ally betrayal….. Here’s how to tell: Conduct secret negotiations with your ally’s mortal enemy, based upon wrongly presumed common interests & hence goals, including back-channel talks going back five years, even one found to be conducting one or another form of war on you & your ally, on a matter viewed as existential by your ally. Read More ›
John Kerry’s interim disaster augurs catastrophe…. Sunday morning’s interim nuclear deal that six Western powers made with Iran’s rulers is a disaster in search of catastrophe–the latter in the form of the planned final deal six months hence. On Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace began his report on the deal having been reached with “While many were sleeping”; it Read More ›
“O” lie? Depends upon the meaning of “good plan”…. What lies at the root of Team Obama’s defense of “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it. Period.”? In essence, Team Obama channels Bill Clinton’s famous line (0:05) during l’affaire Monica, “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’, is.” Yet one estimate is that Read More ›
Eighteen days in central Asia leave a visitor with indelible impressions of societies that, while poor by Western standards, are doing far better than many wealthier countries. A central facet of life in the three “Stan” countries I visited — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan — is that they wear their Islamic faith lightly. Their societies survived seven decades of harsh Read More ›
Michelle, in the Oval Office with a candlestick?….. Guess whose college chum landed the no-bid contract for the ObamaCare website software, acing out three other aspirants? On, now to Kathleen Sebelius: Please, please–PUH-LEEZ!–keep her, Mr. President. She is the perfect exemplar of all ObamaCare represents: pray that Sebelius KEEPS her job. She is part Nurse Ratched (3:10), except that the Read More ›
A fiasco for the governmental ages…. Begin with ObamaCare’s latest humiliation statistic: more people have signed up to go to Mars when technology permits, than have signed up at the federal government’s health care website. At a time of record public distrust of government and their leaders, this happens. As for the president’s telemarketing pitch from the Rose Garden on Read More ›
We learn why O-Care roll-out crashed & burned…. Last night Donald Trump, the honoree at TAS’s annual Robert L. Bartley dinner (RLB was the legendary Wall Street Journal editorial page guru for three decades), told an anecdote that explains why governments mess up so often. During the mayoralty of Ed Koch the city tried to renovate Wollman’s skating rink, a Read More ›
More Big Picture viewpoints: Churchill’s memorable twin cautions about the Middle East. In 1929, after the victorious powers had carved up the region, WC explained: The whole of the Middle East is intimately related. Beneath the smooth surface of British rule and the slender garrisons which normally sustain it are smouldering the antagonisms of centuries. There are always feuds and Read More ›
What President Obama and too many others miss…. Herewith recent Big Picture viewpoints: Several top analysts, Michael Ledeen (“It’s War, You Idiots!”), David Goldman (“America’s Problems in the Middle East Are Just Beginning”), Roger Kimball (“Cairo is Burning? Where is President Obama?”) shred the feckless Mideast policies & naive worldview of the Obama administration. Ledeen writes: [T]here’s a global war, Read More ›