Major Hasan is honest about himself; why aren’t we?
On December 7, 1941, the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor was attacked. Three years, eight months, and eight days later, the Japanese surrendered. These days, America’s military moves at a more leisurely pace. On November 5, 2009, another U.S. base, Fort Hood, was attacked — by one man standing on a table, screaming “Allahu akbar!” and opening fire. Three years, nine months, and one day later, his court-martial finally got under way.The intervening third-of-a-decade-and-more has apparently been taken up by such vital legal questions as the fullness of beard Major Hasan is permitted to sport in court. This is not a joke: See “Judge Ousted in Fort Hood Shooting Case amid Beard Debacle” (CBS News). Army regulations require soldiers to be clean-shaven. The judge, Colonel Gregory Gross, ruled Hasan’s beard in contempt, fined him $1,000, and said he would be forcibly shaved if he showed up that hirsute next time. At which point Hasan went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, which ruled that Colonel Gross’s pogonophobia raised questions about his impartiality, and removed him. He’s the first judge in the history of American jurisprudence to be kicked off a trial because of a “beard debacle.” The new judge, Colonel Tara Osborn, agreed that Hasan’s beard was a violation of regulations, but “said she won’t hold it against him.”
The U.S. Army seems disinclined to hold anything against him, especially the 13 corpses plus an unborn baby. Major Hasan fired his lawyers, presumably because they were trying to get him off — on the grounds that he’d had a Twinkie beforehand, or his beard don’t fit so you must acquit, or some such. As a self-respecting jihadist, Major Hasan quite reasonably resented being portrayed as just another all-American loon gone postal. So he sacked his defense team, only to have the court appoint a standby defense team just in case there were any arcane precedents and obscure case law he needed clarification on. I know that’s the way your big-time F. Lee Bailey types would play it, but it doesn’t seem to be Major Hasan’s style. On the very first day of the trial, he stood up and told the jury that “the evidence will clearly show that I am the shooter.” Later, in one of his few courtroom interventions, he insisted that it be put on the record that “the alleged murder weapon” was, in fact, his. The trial then came to a halt when the standby defense team objected to the judge that Major Hasan’s defense strategy (yes, I did it; gimme a blindfold, cigarette, and tell the virgins here I come) would result in his conviction and execution.
Major Hasan is a Virginia-born army psychiatrist and a recipient of the Pentagon’s Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, which seems fair enough, since he certainly served in it, albeit for the other side. Most Americans think he’s nuts. He thinks Americans are nuts. It’s a closer call than you’d think. In the immediate aftermath of his attack, the U.S. media, following their iron-clad rule that “Allahu akbar” is Arabic for “Nothing to see here,” did their best to pass off Major Hasan as the first known victim of pre-Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. “It comes at a time when the stress of combat has affected so many soldiers,” fretted Andrew Bast in a report the now defunct Newsweek headlined, “A Symptom of a Military on the Brink.”
Major Hasan has never been in combat. He is not, in fact, a soldier. He is a shrink. The soldiers in this story are the victims, some 45 of them. And the only reason a doctor can gun down nearly four dozen trained warriors (he was eventually interrupted by a civilian police officer, Sergeant Kimberly Munley, with a 9mm Beretta) is that soldiers on base are forbidden from carrying weapons. That’s to say, under a 1993 directive a U.S. military base is effectively a gun-free zone, just like a Connecticut grade school. That’s a useful tip: If you’re mentally ill and looking to shoot up a movie theater at the next Batman premiere, try the local barracks — there’s less chance of anyone firing back.
Maybe this Clinton-era directive merits reconsideration in the wake of Fort Hood? Don’t be ridiculous. Instead, nine months after Major Hasan’s killing spree, the Department of Defense put into place “a series of procedural and policy changes that focus on identifying, responding to, and preventing potential workplace violence.”
Major Hasan says he’s a soldier for the Taliban. Maybe if the Pentagon were to reclassify the entire Afghan theater as an unusually prolonged outburst of “workplace violence,” we wouldn’t have to worry about obsolescent concepts such as “victory” and “defeat.” The important thing is that the U.S. Army’s “workplace violence” is diverse. After Major Hasan’s pre-post-traumatic workplace wobbly, General George W. Casey Jr., the Army’s chief of staff, was at pains to assure us that it could have been a whole lot worse: “What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty.” And you can’t get much more diverse than letting your military personnel pick which side of the war they want to be on.
Like I said, we think he’s nuts; he thinks we’re nuts. Right now, there’s a petition on the Internet seeking to persuade the United States government to reclassify Hasan’s “workplace violence” as an act of terror. There are practical consequences to this: The victims, shot by an avowed enemy combatant in an act of war, are currently ineligible for Purple Hearts. The Pentagon insists the dead and wounded must be dishonored in death because to give them any awards for their sacrifice would prejudice Major Hasan’s trial and make it less likely that he could be convicted.
Hence, the Internet petition. Linking to it from their homepage, my colleagues at National Review Online promoted it with the tag: “Thirteen people lost their lives with dozens of others wounded. And now the man responsible wants to claim it was workplace violence.”
That’s not true — and actually it’s grossly unfair to Major Hasan. He’s admirably upfront about who and what he is — a “Soldier of Allah,” as he put on his business card. On Tuesday, he admitted he was a traitor who had crossed over from “the bad side” (America’s) to “the good side” (Islam’s). He has renounced his U.S. citizenship and its effete protections such as workplace-violence disability leave. He professes loyalty to America’s enemies. He says, “I am the shooter.” He helpfully informs us that that’s his gun. In this week’s one-minute statement, he spoke more honestly and made more sense than Obama, Gates, Casey, the Armed Forces Court of Appeals, two judges, the prosecution and defense lawyers, and mountains of bureaucratic reports and media coverage put together.
But poor old Hasan can say “Yup, I did it” all he wants; what does he know?
Unlike the Zimmerman trial, Major Hasan’s has not excited the attention of the media. Yet it is far more symbolic of the state of America than the Trayvon Martin case, in which superannuated race hucksters attempted to impose a half-century-old moth-eaten Klan hood on a guy who’s a virtual one-man melting pot. The response to Nidal Hasan helps explain why, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, this war is being lost — because it cannot be won because, increasingly, it cannot even be acknowledged. Which helps explain why it now takes the U.S. military longer to prosecute a case of “workplace violence” than it did to win World War Two.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/355421/know-thine-enemy-mark-steyn
Tim Scott denounces Harry Reid’s remarks on race
Sen. Tim Scott, the U.S. Senate’s only black lawmaker, said Friday he is “disappointed” in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s “offensive” comments about race made during a call-in radio show in Nevada.Reid, a Democrat, said Friday he “seriously” hopes that Republicans are not blocking President Obama’s initiatives because he is black.
Reid was was responding to a caller who asked him if he believes Republicans are working to make President Obama a failure, which some Republicans had signaled they would do when he was first elected.
The Nevada Democrat pointed to comments made in 2010 by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in which he said his goal was to make sure Obama was a one-term president.
“They haven’t changed much,” Reid confided to the caller. “It’s been obvious they are doing everything they can to make him fail.”
Reid paused, then added, “I say this seriously. I hope it’s based on substance, and not the fact that he is African American.”
Shortly after the talk show ended. Scott, R-S.C., issued a response:
“I am sincerely disappointed by continued attempts to divide the American people by playing to the lowest common denominator. Instead of engaging in serious debate about the failed policies of this administration – from the ever-increasing burdens created by the national health care reform plan to the tax-and-spend approach to economic recovery, along with countless others – Democrats are once again trying to hide behind a smokescreen.
"Our country deserves more from those in Washington. I hope Senator Reid will realize the offensive nature of his remarks and apologize to those who disagree with the president’s policies because of one thing – they are hurting hard-working American families.”
http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2534106
Did You Catch Obama’s Surprise Benghazi Revelation During Presidential Press Conference?
President Barack Obama revealed for the first time the existence of a sealed indictment in the Benghazi terror attack, a move that would mean legal trouble for anyone other than the commander-in-chief.
During a presidential press conference
on Friday, Obama was asked why justice has been slow in the aftermath of
the Benghazi attack that left four Americans dead, including U.S.
Ambassador Chris Stevens.
“[W]e have informed, I think, the
public that there’s a sealed indictment,” the president said. “It’s
sealed for a reason. But we are intent on capturing those who carried
out this attack, and we’re going to stay on it until we get them.”
While it was widely reported that the
first “charges” in the Benghazi investigation had been filed, Obama’s
comments marked the only official confirmation on record of a sealed
indictment. Administration and intelligence officials have repeatedly
refused to confirm reports of a sealed indictment.
There’s a reason no one has been
willing to talk. Under federal law, “no person may disclose [a sealed]
indictment’s existence,” and a “knowing violation … may be punished as a
contempt of court,” ABC News reports.
It’s unclear whether Obama revealed the
existence of a sealed indictment by accident, but the president is
clear either way, according to Peter Zeidenberg, a former prosecutor in
the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section.
“The [president], by virtue of his
position, can’t violate any non-disclosure/confidentiality rule,” he
told ABC News. “One of the perks of being the head of the executive
branch: Nothing he says is technically a leak. If he does it, it is
authorized.”
However, “[A]n argument could be made that a sealed matter can only be unsealed by a court,” he added.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington and the DOJ both declined to comment when contacted by ABC News.
A White House official said the
president was only “referencing widely reported information and was not
asked about, nor did he comment on any specific indictment.”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/09/did-you-catch-obamas-surprise-benghazi-revelation-during-presidential-press-conference/
Links between Benghazi attackers and Algerian gas plant terrorists?
How blind is the Obama administration to the global threat of Islamic terrorism? The recent terror alert, which was precipitated by a conference call between 20 different al-Qaeda offshoots, along with the rise of jihadism in North Africa shows just how extensive these terrorist networks have become despite all the effort we've made to attack and cripple them.Authorities sifting through the rubble of the Algerian gas plant attack from last year have made some troubling connections between those North African terrorists and those who attacked our diplomats in Benghazi.
Reuters:
Inquiries into the bloody assault on an Algerian gas plant are uncovering increasing evidence of contacts between the assailants and the jihadis involved in killing the U.S. ambassador to Libya nearly a year ago.
"And now the environment throughout the Maghreb has become conducive to expansion as well," said Tankel, who is writing a book on how jihadis adapted after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
The extent of the contacts between the militants is still unclear and nobody is sure there was a direct link between the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the carnage at In Amenas, where 39 foreign hostages were killed in January.
But the findings, according to three sources with separate knowledge of U.S. investigations, shed some light on the connections between Al Qaeda affiliates stretching ever further across North and West Africa.
The lack of detail, meanwhile, highlights the paucity of intelligence on jihadis whose rise has been fuelled by the 2011 Arab uprisings and who have shown ready to strike scattered Western targets including mines and energy installations.
That makes the region an even greater worry for Western countries at a time of heightened security over the threat of more al Qaeda attacks in the Middle East and North Africa.
At the center of the web is Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which has expanded far from its Algerian birthplace and now has links to other jihadi groups in Maghreb countries, including Tunisia and Libya. Their shared ideology combines with other, often financial, interests.
"Its leaders are survivors; they are opportunists," said Stephen Tankel, an Assistant Professor at American University in Washington.
Apparently, we've been nearly asleep at the wheel while these sophisticated networks have been developing in a strategically important part of the world. And the bottom line is that they seem to be growing stronger while we become relatively weaker.
Not a recipe for success or even progress.
Obama announces $195 million in aid for Syrians in celebration of Muslim holiday
Edward-Isaac Dovere @IsaacDovere
State Dept: "On the occasion of Eid al-Fitr, President Obama announced today more than $195 million in add'l humanitarian" aid to Syria
The Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr is a celebration of the end of the month of Ramadan, but President Obama is celebrating it Christmas-style, as he gives a big gift from your pocket to the Syrians.
From the official White House release:
Michelle and I send our warmest greetings to Muslims celebrating Eid al-Fitr here in the United States and around the world. During the past month, Muslims have honored their faith through prayer and service, fasting and time spent with loved ones.And:
To help the many Syrians in need this Eid al-Fitr, the United States is providing an additional $195 million in food aid and other humanitarian aid, bringing our humanitarian contribution to the Syrian people to over $1 billion since the crisis began. For millions of Americans, Eid is part of a great tapestry of America’s many traditions, and I wish all Muslims a blessed and joyful celebration. Eid Mubarak.Exit question: Would the announcement go as unnoticed if George Bush had announced millions for Christians on Easter?
http://twitchy.com/2013/08/08/obama-announces-195-million-in-aid-for-syrians-in-celebration-of-muslim-holiday/
Reid: Hey, ObamaCare is only the first step toward killing the health-insurance industry
Finally, Harry Reid and Tom Coburn agree — ObamaCare is designed to fail. John McCormack at The Weekly Standard notes the convergence after Reid’s appearance last night on PBS Las Vegas’ Nevada Week in Review, where Reid counseled patience for the panel fretting over the inept rollout of the Affordable Care Act. Just keep in mind that no one thinks ObamaCare will actually solve the nation’s problems, or even last for a significant period of time:In just about seven weeks, people will be able to start buying Obamacare-approved insurance plans through the new health care exchanges.
But already, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is predicting those plans, and the whole system of distributing them, will eventually be moot.
Reid said he thinks the country has to “work our way past” insurance-based health care during a Friday night appearance on Vegas PBS’ program “Nevada Week in Review.”
“What we’ve done with Obamacare is have a step in the right direction, but we’re far from having something that’s going to work forever,” Reid said.
When then asked by panelist Steve Sebelius whether he meant ultimately the country would have to have a health care system that abandoned insurance as the means of accessing it, Reid said: “Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes.”First, though, you have to kill the insurance industry, which is what the public option was intended to do. The problem now for Reid and his cohorts is that insurance companies will get a little richer, at least in the short run. The mandate forces everyone into the system, and more importantly, onto comprehensive policies that would make little sense otherwise for younger, healthier adults.
Even with the community-pricing “reforms” in the ACA, this becomes a treasure trove for the insurance companies, and a massive wealth transfer from younger and poorer Americans to older, wealthier Americans in two ways. First, the pricing limits on policies mean that those older Americans who access the system more will have their premiums subsidized by those who use it less. Second, the investor class with stakes in insurance companies will benefit from the largesse, at least to some extent, that derives from the ACA’s picking of younger pockets.
That will last only as long as the fleeced don’t notice their predicament. When prices skyrocket, services get restricted or delayed, and the federal red ink starts to flow in earnest, that’s when Phase II will have to begin, according to Coburn:
“More than two years after the passage of Obamacare, the data overwhelming show the law will fail to achieve its core objectives of lowering costs and improving access,” Coburn wrote in 2012. “That, ironically, may have been the design. By making private insurance unaffordable for everyone, it will become available to no one. All that will be left is government-centered, government-run, single-payer health care.”As McCormack notes, this strategy isn’t exactly a secret anyway:
As liberal Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein said in 2008, organizations on the left pushing for health care reform were pursuing a “sneaky strategy” to “put in place something that over time the natural incentives … move it to single payer.”
So the big question on the left and right isn’t really whether or not Obamacare will eventually fail, but what comes after it fails.What should come after its failure is a reliance on free-market forces, including the end of comprehensive insurance in most cases, replaced by hospitalization coverage and health-savings accounts (HSAs) for Americans to pay retail costs for routine care. That will force price transparency, which then allows for normal pricing signals to reach the consumer rather than be blocked by third-party payers. Providers will then compete on price and performance as they should — and as they do in the cosmetic surgery and Lasik markets now. Perhaps this experiment in big-government intervention and market distortion will make an even better argument for that path rather than a government takeover that follows government incompetence and rationing. We can certainly hope so, anyway.
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/08/10/reid-hey-obamacare-is-only-the-first-step-toward-killing-the-health-insurance-industry/
Is Obama 'Insuring' Softball Questions?
There is widespread acceptance of the proposition that the mainstream media is fully in the tank for Barack Obama, and all his vague but pleasant-sounding initiatives.Even when you discount the fact that the president generally makes himself unavailable to take questions from the media in the first place, and carefully pre-selects those few from whom he actually does take questions, this sycophancy is not completely understandable.
For many journalists (both broadcast and the more primitive paper-and-ink types) who were inspired to get into that business by the dogged determination of Woodward and Bernstein, a simple acceptance of presidential platitudes and soaring phrases that illuminate complete nonsense seems impossible.
Or maybe it's not impossible.
The spate of "phony" scandals swirling around Washington right now must raise a few eyebrows, even among the apparently jaded members of the journalist class. What began as an attack on the Tea Parties and other right-of-center (and occasionally far-right-of-center) organizations by the IRS has spread to allegations of involvement by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for the same purpose, and there are now rumblings of some involvement in the same "phony" scandal by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). And that's only one of this administration's "phony" scandals. Ultimately, each of these organizations reports to the president, either directly or indirectly.
One has to wonder, though: just how many government agencies, departments, commissions, administrations, boards, bureaus, offices, or whatever does it take before a "phony" scandal becomes a "real" scandal? Is it three or more? Or do scandals move along a sliding scale? Might a scandal progress from a "phony" scandal to a "faux" scandal, to an "ersatz" scandal, to an "artificial" scandal before it finally becomes a "real" scandal?
Then there is the "phony" Department of Justice (DoJ) scandal that involves the wiretapping (or meta-data collection or whatever this invasion of privacy should most accurately be called) of the Associated Press and FOX News reporter James Rosen and Rosen's parents.
To get a judge to issue a warrant approving this activity, the DoJ even went so far as to swear to a judge that Mr. Rosen was effectively an unindicted co-conspirator under the 1917 Espionage Act. These invalid assertions were made by the DoJ and the main investigative arm of the DoJ, the FBI. Again, each of these organizations report to the president, either directly or indirectly.
Of course, there is the ever-popular "phony" Fast and Furious scandal, with the DoJ playing a central role once again, but apparently co-starring the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Coincidentally, both the DoJ and DHS report directly to the president.
The deaths of four brave Americans during the embarrassing fiasco in Benghazi have the fingerprints of the Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Defense. It is apparently kismet that all three of these government agencies report directly to the president.
So what do these scandals, "phony" or otherwise, have to do with the softball questions that leave the president almost completely unexamined by the media? Well, there is one other agency that the president indirectly controls -- the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). That control is exercised by selecting commissioners for the FCC, including such people as Mark Lloyd. Mr. Lloyd is the chief diversity officer for the FCC. The FCC has significant impact on the licensing of radio and television stations. Mr. Lloyd, as a proponent of diversity, can have a disproportionate impact on who is allowed to broadcast, encouraging women and other minority groups to challenge existing firms who are current license holders over racial and gender diversity, as well as content.
Mr. Lloyd, as the head of the Leadership Council for Civil Rights, participated in a panel discussion and said (emphasis supplied):
In Venezuela, with Chavez, is really an incredible revolution - a democratic revolution. To begin to put in place things that are going to have an impact on the people of Venezuela. The property owners and the folks who then controlled the media in Venezuela rebelled - worked, frankly, with folks here in the U.S. government - worked to oust him. But he came back with another revolution, and then Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country.
Wikipedia, not often accused of right-wing extremism, offers this initial paragraph in its examination of Hugo Chávez's relationship with the media in his nation:
Although the freedom of the press was mentioned by two key clauses in the 1999 Constitution of Venezuela, in 2008, Human Rights Watch criticized Chávez for engaging in "often discriminatory policies that have undercut journalists' freedom of expression." Freedom House listed Venezuela's press as being "Not Free" in its 2011 Map of Press Freedom, noting that "[t]he gradual erosion of press freedom in Venezuela continued in 2010." Reporters Without Borders criticized the Chávez administration for "steadily silencing its critics". In the group's 2009 Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders noted that "Venezuela is now among the region's worst press freedom offenders."
So the FCC has an officer who apparently admires the man who tightly clamped down on journalistic freedom as having led "an incredible revolution." Why would anyone in his position, in a nation whose Constitution dictates in the First Amendment that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press," claim that such a man is admirable unless he also admired, and desired to emulate, the control that Chávez had over the media?
American media executives, and American journalists, might have political positions with which we cannot agree, and they might not even appear sensible, but for the most part, they are still intelligent people. And they remember a lot of what they hear or read.
They see how this administration has approached dealing with those it might view as "enemies." They have heard how a president's choice for the FCC views control of the media. They actually know James Rosen, and they know he was under the potential for indictment under the 1917 Espionage Act. And the media, of all political stripes, are, in the end, for-profit enterprises. Any governmental interference, or excessive "investigation" in the style of the IRS scandal, would be of potentially lethal in terms of profit.
Knowing this and seeing how the administration has intimidated and damaged the goals of organizations such as the Tea Parties, would any rational person not see the potential for harm to himself and his own organization? The message has been delivered. Oppose this administration at your own risk. This is commonly known as intimidation.
With 80,000 pages of federal laws, rules, and regulations, there is an endless array of charges that can be brought against anyone. Even frivolous charges, even with charges of prosecutorial misconduct being leveled for bringing a case in the first place, the defendants would be forced to spend enormous amounts of money to defend themselves, plus having to know that part of their taxes are being used to prosecute them in the first place.
So perhaps we should view these media "softball" questions as a pre-emptive defense position. That would be the most charitable view we could take. Otherwise, we would have to conclude that the mainstream media are acting in collusion with the administration to undermine the Constitution of the United States of America.
In one view, they're showing themselves to be weaklings. The other, treasonous. But no heroes can be seen, no matter what the answer might be.
The day after Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, one of the paper’s columnists, Eugene Robinson, appeared on “Morning Joe”. Robinson is a reliable voice for conventional liberal opinion, and on this particular day, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2013, conventional liberal opinion held that Bezos’ purchase of the Post for $250 million was an act of bravery and humanity comparable to the Marshall Plan.
At one point Joe Scarborough observed that rich and powerful men—Warren Buffett, Chris Hughes, Barry Diller, and of course Michael Bloomberg—have been in the habit of buying newspapers and magazines. And in most cases, Scarborough said, the moguls have been humbled by the experience. No amount of technical or financial wizardry seems capable of forestalling print journalism’s demise. “I just wonder, what’s going to be different here?”
Robinson’s answer was priceless. In just nine words, he distilled to its essence contemporary liberalism’s attitude toward wealth and power. “There are rich guys,” he said, “and there are rich guys.” And from what Robinson has heard—no doubt from totally independent and objective sources—Jeff Bezos, whose net worth is estimated at $28 billion, is “a prince among men.”
Really, though, why did Robinson stop there? Why not say Bezos is a king among men, or a Caesar, or a son of Odin? To increase one’s status by flattering a social superior is no trifle. Ruth Marcus, for example, likened Don Graham’s sale of his money-losing paper at an overvalued price to Sophie’s choice. In the book and movie Sophie, a Holocaust survivor, “had to decide which cherished child to save and which to send to the gas chamber.” Don Graham faced a somewhat similar situation. Think about that. “If the comparison sounds hyperbolic,” Marcus writes—curiously, she doesn’t suggest that the comparison might sound offensive—“you don’t know the Grahams.” Marcus does.
That all rich people are equal, but some are more equal than others, is an unspoken axiom of American politics. It has created all sorts of confused and sloppy reporting of which the Bezos story is only the most recent and high profile example. And it has led reporters and editors to overlook one of the most important stories of our time: The connection between the liberal ideology of the global financial elite and the social pathologies—inequality, communal dissolution, family breakdown—that plague liberal society. Inward looking and self-obsessed, status seeking and conniving, the press is all too eager to ask what the sale of the Washington Post means for its industry, and all too complacent about what the deal says about power in America.
When the sale of the Post was announced, writers, editors, and producers sought to determine Bezos’ politics for a simple reason. How the media judges one’s billions determines whether one will be celebrated or scrutinized. Which sort of rich person is Bezos: a Bloomberg (good) or a Koch (bad)?
Bezos needn’t worry. Since the 2006 election cycle the contributions of Amazon’s political action committee have favored Democrats. Most of his personal contributions have gone to Democrats, too, including to liberal stalwarts John Conyers and Pat Leahy, though he also has donated to Republicans Slade Gorton and Meg Whitman. He gave millions to bring same-sex marriage to Washington State, and $100,000 to defeat the state income tax increase championed by Bill Gates Sr. He supports the Internet sales tax making its way through Congress.
Libertarian Reason magazine says Bezos has donated to its Reason Foundation. “If Bezos is a libertarian, however,” wrote New Yorker editor David Remnick, in what has to be the week’s most condescending sentence, “he is not one of the deeply conservative mold of the Koch brothers, who have shown signs of wanting to buy mainstream publications, including the Los Angeles Times.” Here Remnick, without any real evidence, is offering a sort of benediction for the Internet tycoon, cleansing him of any association with the dread word “conservative,” and signaling to fellow manufacturers of taste and opinion that the new owner of the Post, unlike you-know-who, is not to be feared and loathed. He is playing the traditional role of media gatekeeper, keeping friends in and conservatives out.
Reading Remnick’s piece about the Post, where he used to work, one can’t help noticing its tone of ambivalence and mystery. Bezos’ move unsettles him, partly because he can’t figure the guy out. And this confusion over Bezos’ politics has contributed to a secondary confusion over Bezos’ motivation. It is far easier for the Northeast Corridor’s legion of “content producers” to ascribe motivation to someone when they know his politics. Then there are only three options. Depending on where he falls on the ideological spectrum, a billionaire can be well meaning, stupid, or evil.
These categories seem to break down when applied to someone of Bezos’ stature. Remnick is clearly flummoxed at why all this is happening: “Why he would pay a quarter of a billion dollars in cash for a newspaper remains an open question.” Brad Stone, the author of a forthcoming biography of Bezos, told the New Republic that when he heard news of the deal, “My reaction was sincere shock.” And New Republic owner and editor in chief Chris Hughes, who won $450 million in the Harvard housing lottery, laughably suggested, in what reads like a parody of a TED talk, that Bezos bought the Post for the same reason he, Hughes, bought TNR. “Brands matter.”
Hughes comes closer to the mark in his first sentence of his piece. “It turns out Silicon Valley does give a damn about Washington,” he writes. The identity of who ever has doubted Silicon Valley’s interest in Washington is a mystery Hughes leaves unsolved. But the implication that Bezos’ act was political rings true not only for the obvious reasons—Amazon spent $2.5 million on lobbying in 2012 and $1.7 million so far in 2013—but also for less readily apparent ones. His politics may be unusual to New York City and Washington, D.C., but they are commonplace in Silicon Valley and are coming to define the contours of debate. Bezos’ acquisition of the Post is part of a migration of power from California to Washington, in which the twenty-first century industrialists displace their twentieth century predecessors.
For some time now, the winners of the information economy, the caste of bobo knowledge workers and symbolic analysts, have been ascendant culturally, financially, and philanthropically. But only in recent years have they become particularly interested in partisan politics. An early example was Eric Schmidt of Google’s interest in President Barack Obama. (He’s now interested in Cory Booker.) Silicon Valley favored Obama and the Democrats overwhelmingly in 2008 and substantially in 2012. The contributions have been significant enough that last year the president sided with tech over Hollywood in the fight over the Stop Online Piracy Act. The borders between the most fashionable startups and the data-mining operations of the Obama campaign were hard to discern.
Now, though, the moguls themselves are taking an active role in policy debates. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, whose net worth at the moment is around $16 billion, announced this shift in 2010 when he pledged $100 million to the Newark school system and began appearing alongside President Obama and Governor Chris Christie. Last year Hughes followed the trend when he bought the New Republic. In April, Zuckerberg founded Fwd.us to lobby for the Senate immigration bill, which would expand his ability to hire at low wages high-skilled labor from abroad. On the very day that Bezos bought the Post, thereby becoming a force in Washington, Zuckerberg delivered a speech on immigration reform alongside illegal immigrant activist and filmmaker Jose Antonio Vargas.
The “about us” section of the Fwd.us website is a tech billionaire who’s who. Supporters include major players at Dropbox, Accel, Benchmark, SV Angel, Al Gore’s Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Microsoft, LinkedIn, YouTube, Airbnb, Netflix, Paypal, Groupon, Khosla, and Zynga, along with Sean Parker, Barry Diller, Marissa Mayer, Eric Schmidt, and Bill Gates.
Like Remnick, I would not use the word “conservative” to describe any of the individuals on this list. Even if they sympathize with the Republicans on a few issues, even if they favor an amorphous policy of “fiscal responsibility,” I would bet my lunch money—or, better, theirs—that they place far more importance on abortion rights and same-sex marriage, free trade and amnesty for illegal immigrants, green energy and gun control and a “humble” foreign policy, than on low taxes and spending. They share the worldview projected onto the front pages of the Washington Post, the worldview of the men and women that manage the world, the worldview of the rich and famous and powerful. It is a worldview that treats those who disagree or have different priorities as threats, yet wonders why ordinary Americans seem alienated from authority, bereft of confidence, and distrustful of institutions.
Gene Robinson is right. There are rich people and there are rich people. And Jeff Bezos is a prince among men.
http://freebeacon.com/welcome-to-the-jungle/
Princess Chelsea
Who would care about Chelsea’s political opinions if her name weren’t Clinton?
Has there ever been anyone the media have wanted to see run for public office as desperately as they do Chelsea Clinton?Asked Monday if she planned to run, the former first daughter told CNN, “Not now,” adding that she currently lived in a city, state, and country where “I really believe in my elected officials, and their ethos and their competencies.”
Then she added, “I had very much led a deliberately private life for a long time, and now I’m attempting to lead a purposely public life.”
Cue the media-hype cycle. “Chelsea Clinton Leaves Door Open to Political Run, but ‘Not Now,’” ABC declared, while the Huffington Post blared, “Chelsea Clinton: I’m ‘Attempting to Lead a Purposely Public Life.’” CNN announced: “Chelsea Clinton still open to running for office,” and the Washington Post helpfully detailed “Where Chelsea Clinton could run for office.”
Seriously?
Clinton is no doubt an accomplished woman: She graduated from Stanford and has since obtained master’s degrees from both Oxford and Columbia; she is currently working on a Ph.D. in international relations. She is the co-founder and co-chair of the Of Many Institute for MultiFaith Leadership at New York University.
But let’s be honest: Virtually no one would care whether she ran for office or not if her last name weren’t Clinton. Yet because of that name, the media remain enthralled — even if Clinton herself rarely returns the love. She has given notoriously few interviews, even telling a nine-year-old reporter in 2008, “I’m sorry, but I can’t talk to press, and unfortunately that means you, even though I think you’re cute.”
One outlet that did get access was Vogue, the hard-hitting fashion magazine that was also home to a glowing profile (“A Rose in the Desert”) of Asma Assad, wife of the Syrian dictator, in 2011; it ran a 6,500-word profile of Chelsea last year. Revelations from the interviews included that Chelsea has “an obsession with elaborate coffee drinks” and that “Unlike most nerdy academic types, however, Clinton is also a social creature, happy to put on a party dress and go out for a good cause.” (Needless to say, if Clinton ever slipped up and said something interesting, Vogue kept it off the record.) For the fashion spread that accompanied the piece, Clinton was photographed by Mario Testino — the same photographer who took Prince William and Kate Middleton’s engagement shots.
Clinton herself joined the media last year, doing occasional features for NBC. (NBC’s curious obsession with the daughters of top politicians is another topic in itself: Jenna Bush Hager, Meghan McCain, and Abby Huntsman also work at the network.) Critics were not wowed. “Even with network producers and editors, they can’t make her start to look like a competent on-camera interviewer,” wrote the Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik in March; he went on to complain that Clinton talked too much about herself during her interview with author Judy Blume. “In case anyone was wondering how Chelsea Clinton’s cushy ‘special correspondent’ ‘job’ at NBC is going, the answer is awesome, if you like fake interviews about advertising that really just serve as advertising,” snarked New York’s Joe Coscarelli, talking about Clinton’s feature on the Geico and AT&T commercials.
Of course, Clinton is hardly the only figure the media over-covers. (Just consider Lindsay Lohan.) But there is something curious about it. Where, for instance, is the media speculation about whether Jenna Bush Hager or Barbara Bush plans to run for office someday?
The Clinton coverage also belies the fact that, in America, we theoretically believe in meritocracy. Clinton’s opinions and her potential political future should be of no more interest than those of any other random person — yet hers get inches and inches of ink, and squeeze out coverage of, oh, actually elected politicians.
We don’t need political dynasties in America. And if the media want to scrutinize the Clintons’ political progeny, reporters should look not at Chelsea but at Anthony Weiner, whose wedding to Hillary’s top aide was presided over by none other than Bill Clinton. Clean-cut Chelsea may be the person the media want to show as representing the Clinton political legacy, but she’s hardly the most qualified candidate.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/355415/princess-chelsea-katrina-trinko
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