kenlacrosse

I only have one thing to add to this story. I’m glad I was going to school in the ’80s, because there’s no telling just how dead I would have gotten myself in the current atmosphere.

(Steven Hayward)

Scott totally scooped me the other day on the best photo of the week (“But Syriously“), but I’ve still got the second best, in which Sarah Palin gets the last laugh (again).  But there’s some other goodies in this week’s batch, too.

Well, at least this beats the U.S.S. Jimmy Carter, an “attack” submarine:

See Megan McArdle’s fine column for more on this theme:

In honor of (the phony) Talk Like a Pirate Day:

Hillarywine?  Hillarywhine, yes–but the prospect of this is almost enough to make me give up drinking:

And finally:

THE VALUE OF ARMED MINORITIES: Lumbee Indians Face The Ku Klux Klan:

The rally was scheduled for the night of January 18, 1958, in a field near Maxton, N.C. The stated purpose of the gathering was, in the words of Catfish Cole, “to put the Indians in their place, to end race mixing.” The time and location of the rally was not kept secret, and word spread quickly among the local Lumbee population.

Reports vary about the number of people gathered on that cold night, but there were thought to have been around a hundred Klan members. They brought a large banner emblazoned with “KKK” and a portable generator, which powered a public address system and a single bare light bulb. When the meeting began, the arc of the dim light didn’t spread far enough for the Klansmen to see that they were surrounded by as many as a thousand Lumbees. Several young tribe members, some of whom were armed, closed on the Klan meeting and tried to take down the light bulb. The groups fought, and a shotgun blast shattered the light. In the sudden darkness, the Lumbees descended upon the field, yelling and firing guns into the air, scattering the overmatched Klansmen. Some left under police protection while others, including Catfish Cole, simply took to the woods.

Captured banner worn by Charlie Warriax and Simeon Oxendine, Lumbee.From Life Magazine, the captured banner worn by two Lumbee Indians, Charlie Warriax and Simeon Oxendine.News photographers already on the scene captured the celebration. Images of triumphant Lumbees holding up the abandoned KKK banner were published in newspapers and magazines throughout the world. Simeon Oxendine, a popular World War II veteran, appeared in Life Magazine, smiling and wrapped in the banner. The rout of the Klan galvanized the Lumbee community. The Ku Klux Klan was active in North Carolina into the 1960s, but they never held another public meeting in Robeson County.

Punch back twice as hard. (Thanks to reader John Steakley for the link).

Just how much fight is left in Barack Obama?

Various actors, ranging from Benjamin Netanyahu, the Republican Party, Vladimir Putin and Iran are trying to decide how much they can risk against a weakened President. In each case their dilemmas take the form of how hard to press. Or in Netanyahu’s case, how much can he still trust the man who promised the Jewish lobby he would take care of Israel.

The Washington Examiner looks at the GOP debate over fighting Obamacare. Some conservatives want to defund Obamacare.  But some, like Ted Cruz, don’t think they have the votes to do it.  Obama has drawn a hard line against even negotiating with Republicans on Obamacare or even the debt ceiling, leading to the threat of a government shutdown, which the Democrats believe will work in their favor.

The liberals believe that the critics will shut up and join them at the trough. The New York Times described the lucrative careers of lawyers who crafted the labyrinthine piece of legislation and are now advising insurance companies on ways around its byzantine toils. “Washington’s health care revolving door is spinning fast as the new online health insurance marketplaces, a central provision of President Obama’s health care law, are set to open Oct. 1. Those who had a hand in the law’s passage are now finding lucrative work in the private sector, as businesses try to understand the complex measure, reshape it by pressing for regulatory changes — or profit from it.”

That means boom times for what might be called an Obamacare cottage industry, providing work for dozens of former administration and mostly Democratic Congressional officials whose immersion in health policy minutiae, and friendships, make them invaluable to private business.

The ultimate Democratic Party defense has been to stop the mouths of their critics with gold. But gold has been running short lately just as it has been doing in every Blue setting. For the GOP the question is whether to retreat before the Obama machine or risk fighting it; in other words whether to keep playing the game or wait for a new deck of cards to be shuffled.

But if Obama was reluctant to negotiate with American conservatives, he was falling all over himself to make a deal with Iran. Although the Telegraph says Obama claims Iran reached out to Washington for a nuclear deal it now appears the reverse is true.

Buzzfeed reports that the Sultan of Oman hand carried a letter from Obama to Iran. “The White House asked Sultan Qaboos of Oman if he would deliver the letter”, a process which the NYT charmingly describes as a ‘finding a penpal’. The NYT says, “this week, Mr. Obama indicated that he might finally have found a pen pal in Tehran.”

Reuters reports that Obama reflected, or perhaps took a 45 minute walk alone with his phone and decided that “the U.S. is ready to resolve the nuclear issue in a way that allows Iran to demonstrate that its nuclear program is for exclusively peaceful purposes.”  That wording does not inspire confidence. You can probably guess what that means and so too can Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is heading for Washington on Sept 30 “for talks expected to focus on Iran’s nuclear program”, ostensibly to plead for more pressure on Iran.

“In a week and a half, I will go to the United Nations General Assembly, and before that I will meet with President Obama. I intend to focus on stopping Iranian nuclear program. Really stopping the nuclear program,” Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting Tuesday.

The prime minister presented four criteria for doing so: ”1. Halting all uranium enrichment; 2. Removing all enriched uranium; 3. Closing [the Fordo enrichment facility at] Qom; and 4. Stopping the plutonium track.”

Netanyahu is evidently trying to draw lines which he hopes Obama won’t cross. The danger for Israel is that Obama, having thrown away the Syria card respecting Iran, will now fold like a cheap suit and offer Teheran a free hand in exchange for a meaningless promise not weaponize their fissile material backed by some “United Nations” guarantee.

But if the Republicans and Israelis are still showing respect Obama, al-Qaeda by contrast is openly trying to take over the leadership of the Syrian rebellion against Assad. With campaign “Expunging Filth”, al-Qaeda launched an offensive against “the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army”. Al-Qaeda is killing anyone foolish enough to have trusted Obama in Syria.  Time adds “a Syrian town on the border with Turkey has been captured from the Free Syrian Army—not by forces loyal to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, but by Islamist rebels backed by al-Qaeda. The violent takeover of the town has laid bare the deep rifts that plague the movement to oust Assad.”

It also lays bare the conviction that Obama will not respond in any meaningful way. It is a belief apparently shared in the Pentagon. The Washington Post ran an amazing piece say that the US military leadership is angry about being used in a meaningless and shambolic way.

The prospect of a new U.S. military intervention in the Middle East elicited grumbling from a war-weary generation of senior commanders and veterans who share similar reservations to those voiced by the former defense secretaries. Their reluctance was informed by lingering distrust over the administration’s handling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have been wound down in ways that have left many in uniform feeling apprehensive, if not bitter.

But there was also trepidation about a White House that many career military officers say has monopolized decision-making in a tight circle dominated by civilians and that often deliberates endlessly, seemingly unwilling or unable to formulate decisive policies.

A cynical observer might be led to believe that Obama has embarked on a policy of appeasement abroad to buy him the resources to expand his power domestically. The Washington Times noted that in Obama’s most disastrous foreign policy week “TIME puts Vladimir Putin on its front cover everywhere but America”.

The most recent cover of TIME Magazine features a photo of him on its front cover, alongside the caption — rewritten with caps removed — “America’s weak and waffling. Russia’s rich and resurgent — and its leader doesn’t care what anybody thinks of him.”

This cover is only being published in TIME’s international editions, though. Here in the United States, a football player replaces Putin. Instead of the latter’s success, a story about compensating college athletes is the top story.

This indicates where Obama intends to win. The rest of the world can see the truth. They don’t vote early and often. But the low-information base must be fed a steady diet of celebrity news, sports stories and puff-pieces to keep their mental world just as it was in 2008, “stuck on stupid” — when the LightBringer had a firm grip on the ocean levels and all was well with the future world that never came.

In reality things have not worked out too well for Barack Obama.  His administration is now rotten to its core, unable to face enemies abroad, incapable of tapering the money machine, yet unwilling to yield the slightest ground on the Obamacare racket because that’s what he needs to buy off his critics and pay off his supporters. The question facing the other political players, ranging from Israel, Russia, Iran or the GOP is how much longer Obama can continue and get away with it.

While the administration has abandoned the field of foreign policy, it still believes it can hold its domestic forts. But things may be different this time. Obama’s bombs have cratered the political landscape. They have weakened both his minions in the Democratic Party and his reliable interlocutors in the Republican Party. The withdrawal of the Summers nomination and the shrinking stature of John McCain are both indicators that the old coalition ain’t what it used to be.  Obama’s domestic position is probably weaker than it once was.  The next few weeks will see it tested and the results should be interesting to watch.

Andy McCarthy is betting “he’ll cave” if the Republicans defund Obamacare. “His political position is untenable, even with the media carrying his water. He will be grinding things to a halt to force Obamacare on the public even though he himself has slashed Obamacare for the benefit of big business and members of Congress.” McCarthy may be right, but the question is whether the Republicans will have the guts to try it. That is not a given.

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(John Hinderaker)

This is one of those stories that don’t need to be characterized, let alone embellished. You can draw your own conclusions. Today, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing on Benghazi at which Patricia Smith and Charles Woods, the mother and father respectively of two of the men who were killed by terrorists, testified. The Democrats on the committee didn’t even have the decency to listen to what these victims of the Obama administration’s gross negligence had to say.

Chairman Darrell Issa tweeted this picture. The far side of the room belongs to the Dems:

Katie Pavlich writes:

During the second portion of a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing about Benghazi Thursday on Capitol Hill, the majority of Democrats on the Committee left the room and refused to listen to the testimony of Patricia Smith and Charles Woods. Ms. Smith is the mother of Sean Smith, an information management officer killed in the 9/11 Benghazi attack. Charles Woods is the father of Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, who was also killed. …

The far side of the room, shown empty in the photo, belongs to the Democrats. The only Democrats who stayed were Ranking Member Elijah Cummings and Rep. Jackie Speier.

No comment. I mean, really: no f’ing comment.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Going for broke: The multiple lost decades of US household income. Is it possible to have a recovery while the standard of living collapses? To be fair, these problems started before Obama took office. But (1) he was sold as the fixer-of-everything; and (2) he’s made things worse. And note the acceleration of income inequality during his term.

Details here. Relief here.

It’s comforting to know that Ben Bernanke’s likely successor, Janet Yellen, is fully committed to a policy of Pushing On That String.

The Economist thinks this chemical weapons deal is getting worse all the time:

he deal looks good only because the mess Mr Obama had got himself into was so bad. Step back, and the outcome looks rotten.

For a start, the deal itself is flimsy because it will be so hard to enforce. Mr Obama reserves the right to attack a delinquent Syria but the unpopularity of military action among America’s voters makes it clear that only an egregious breach, such as another chemical attack, could stir the country to action. Although Mr Putin would lose face if Syria brazenly defied the agreement, he now knows that Mr Obama needs his support. Given that Russia cares more about diplomatic parity with America than about de-fanging Mr Assad, it is more likely to prolong the crisis than resolve it. Nor is it clear that Russia can force Syria to comply. Mr Assad may co-operate at first, when the will to enforce the deal is strongest. But it is hard to impose disarmament during a civil war. As time drags on, Mr Assad is likely to frustrate the process—both to keep some chemical weapons and to be seen to defy America.

America’s credibility as an ally has been undermined.

Ya think?

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Food stamp usage rising as families struggle to put food on the table.

So I saw this Drudge headline and figured he must have taken Professor Ditherton Wiggleroom out of context, because there’s just no way Wiggleroom thinks we’re that stupid, or is that stupid himself. But out of fairness to Drudge, I clicked on the link to see what the Professor had actually said, and here are his actual words:

“Now, this debt ceiling — I just want to remind people in case you haven’t been keeping up — raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt; it does not somehow promote profligacy. All it does is it says you got to pay the bills that you’ve already racked up, Congress. It’s a basic function of making sure that the full faith and credit of the United States is preserved.”

Obama went on to suggest that “the average person” mistakenly thinks that raising the debt ceiling means the U.S. is racking up more debt:

“It’s always a tough vote because the average person thinks raising the debt ceiling must mean that we’re running up our debt, so people don’t like to vote on it, and, typically, there’s some gamesmanship in terms of making the President’s party shoulder the burden of raising the — taking the vote.”

I think he was stoned, and I’m not kidding. Either Wiggleroom was stoned when he said those words, or stoned when he or his speechwriter wrote those words, because that is not how a non-stoned person speaks or thinks. As a young man I spent four years in the former Pot Capital of the World™, Humboldt County, CA — and I know these things.

A buddy of mine and I used to get high and crack each other up for hours. We figured it might be smart if one time we kept a list of all the funny stuff we came up with while stoned. So we smoked and laughed and wrote things down, and smoked and laughed and wrote things down. And laughed and wrote things down. Later, looking at the list, we were a little surprised that it said “Cheese” and that was it.

So a stoned person might get it in their heads that raising the debt limit doesn’t actually incur any debt because… the debt, it’s already there man. It’s already there! And the debt becomes this thing in your mind, this huge concept you can’t quite wrap your brain around, because it’s already there. Don’t you see? Congress already did it already. Whoa.

If I’m not making any sense to you, it’s because I’ve put myself fully back in that frame of mind I spent so much time in, way back when. And stoned is exactly how the Professor sounds in that speech. He sounds like 22-year-old me, laughing his ass off for two hours at the word “cheese.”

And before the usual (and vile) prog suspects accuse me of racism, remember that I just spent 250 words or so comparing the Professor to a bunch of idiot 20-something white kids (including me), living in one of the whitest (and most vile-y progressive) places in America.

But that speech Wiggleroom gave, that statement he made. It reveals a level of thinking — if “thinking” isn’t too strong a word — appropriate to a college dorm or the faculty lounge. It is so far removed from reason and reality, that it must have gotten there in one of two ways. There’s the short way: Smoke some pot. And the long way: Spend a bunch of years in Ivy League schools being untaught how to think.

Or, I suppose, both.

Although I did just think of a third option, and that is the Professor simply isn’t very smart.

IBD on ObamaCare:

• Family premiums haven’t gone down by $2,500 annually, as Obama repeatedly said they would. They’ve gone up $2,976.

• Workers are increasingly finding that they can’t keep the health plans they like, despite Obama’s pledge that they can.

• ObamaCare is adding to federal budget deficits, as IBD recently reported, even though Obama claimed it would cut red ink.

• The law is hurting small businesses, not helping them.

Yet Professor Ditherton Wiggleroom insists that the only reason people don’t like his signature legislation is because Republicans have spent “billions of dollars … misinforming people.”

Or it could be that people have noticed their shrinking paychecks, their shortened work hours, their lowered expectations, all those thousands of health services layoffs, the shockingly rampant cronyism, and all the rest, and concluded that ObamaCare is a bad law which has made just about everything worse.

Nah. It’s the Republicans.

WHEN REAL LIFE OUTPERFORMS CONSPIRACY THEORIES: The Clinton Foundation’s man in Cairo was also the Muslim Brotherhood’s. “How did the Clinton Foundation come to select El-Haddad to be its man in Cairo? We can only speculate. But we know that Huma Abedin (wife of Anthony Weiner) is one of Hillary Clinton’s most trusted advisers. We also know that both of Abedin’s parents have been major figures in the Muslim Brotherhood. The same is true of El-Hassad’s father — a top foreign policy adviser for ousted president Morsi, according to the Free Beacon. It’s a small world, about which Andy McCarthy has more to say.”

WEAK HORSE: Frustrated Dems Increasingly Defying Obama. So, in other words, the Democratic Party is growing more racist?

Related: Vulnerable Dems Flee From Anti-Gun Nuts in Party: “Do vulnerable Democrats want to see this issue on the radar again? Probably not.”

(Paul Mirengoff)

The “Age of Obama,” as John noted yesterday, is marked by record poverty, declining incomes, unprecedented numbers depending on federal poverty programs, and millions leaving the labor force in despair.

To be sure, Obama inherited a deep recession. But economists John Taylor and Lee Ohanian (both of the Hoover Institution) remind us that “nearly all recoveries following severe U.S. recessions have featured robust economic recoveries that rapidly restored real income, output, and employment to their pre-recession trends.”

This recovery has featured none of the above. The numbers cited by John and those set forth by Taylor and Ohanian show this to be one of the weakest recoveries on record.

Nor will it do to attribute the pathetic recovery to the fact that the 2007-09 recession resulted from a financial crisis. Taylor and Ohanian tell us that research by Michael Bordo of Rutgers University and Joseph Haubrich of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland show that U.S. recoveries following financial crises are typically faster, not slower, than average.

So what has been the problem? According to Taylor and Ohanian, the problem resides in “poorly designed and implemented government policies [that] have impeded capital and technological investments and hiring.”

Since the fall of 2008, the U.S. government has adopted dozens of policies that were advertised as being necessary to restore prosperity. These policies impacted many key economic channels, including monetary and fiscal policies, commercial and investment banking, manufacturing, housing, and the environment. But many of these policies have depressed growth by distorting the normal forces of supply and demand that are critical for a market economy to function well and create new jobs.

Many of the policies that were implemented were based on old Keynesian models that advocate temporary spending increases and one-time tax rebates, while others created new regulations of economic activity in key sectors. But both of these policy responses misdiagnosed the problems facing the American economy. The spending policies had little impact on the economy other than to increase government debt, and regulatory policies raised business costs and depressed growth.

The crown jewel of Obama’s economic policies was a stimulus package of nearly $1 trillion. It failed to spark a healthy recovery for two reasons:

One is that attempts to stimulate spending likely had a much smaller impact than was advertised.

The second is that the type of spending that was supposed to be undertaken – including investment in government infrastructure – simply did not materialize in any significant way. State and local governments did not use these federal funds to significantly expand infrastructure spending. Instead, these governments increased transfer payments and reduced debt, and the nation’s employment rate continued to decline.

What about programs designed to help specific sectors, such as the automobile industry (“cars for clunkers”) and housing?

These policies did little to strengthen either industry. Sales of autos and homes temporarily increased while these policies were in place, but then sales declined sharply once the policies ended. These policies were pure subsidies to some auto and home buyers, with little if any impact on the industries that were supposed to be helped.

Working against recovery is uncertainty over our economic policy:

Specifically, there has been considerably uncertainty about tax rates, with key tax provisions expiring each of the last several years and with little clarity on how tax rates would change over the long haul. Between 2009 and 2011, roughly 250 tax provisions expired, about 10 times the number of provisions that expired in 1999.

These expiring provisions make the tax system highly unpredictable, which in turn depresses the incentive for business to make long-term investments in capacity and technology, and holds business back from significantly expanding their workforce.

What is the answer to the current stagnation? Taylor and Ohanian conclude:

Getting the U.S. economy back on track requires restoring transparency and simplicity to the tax code, including reducing the U.S. corporate income tax rate, and reducing marginal income tax rates, which now exceed 50 percent in some states. In addition, growth will be enhanced by labor, energy, and environmental policy changes that make it less costly to hire workers and reduce the cost of becoming energy independent.

When these changes are made, the U.S. economy will recover strongly. But without these changes, the U.S. economy will continue to significantly underperform, just as it has for the last four years.

And none of these changes will be made during The Age of Obama.

DOSSIERS ON ENEMIES ARE TOO VALUABLE: Contrary to Claims, IRS Has Not Destroyed Conservative Donor Lists.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Insiders Reaping Profit After Drafting ObamaCare. “Those who had a hand in the law’s passage are now finding lucrative work in the private sector, as businesses try to understand the complex measure, reshape it by pressing for regulatory changes — or profit from it. That means boom times for what might be called an Obamacare cottage industry, providing work for dozens of former administration and mostly Democratic Congressional officials whose immersion in health policy minutiae, and friendships, make them invaluable to private business.” Chaos Umpire sits. . . .

HIGHLIGHTS IN JOURN-O-LISM: New York Times Editors, Columnists Met Off-The-Record With Obama During Syria Push.

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Obama’s “Red Line” Remark Was Not A Gaffe, It Came From Hillary.

CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY: EU Ethanol Fuels Boondoggle Raising Global Food Prices. “Getting rid of biofuel programs would cut Europe’s food costs in half by 2020, and lower global food prices by 15 percent.”

Hey, it’s not me calling it a crime against humanity. It’s a United Nations expert.

Sigh:

The number of planned layoffs at U.S. firms surged in August to their highest in half a year, with industrial goods manufacturers the hardest hit, a report on Thursday showed.

Employers announced 50,462 layoffs last month, up 33.8 percent from 37,701 in July, according to the report from consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

I’m all out of clever on these stories. But then I remember that we’re stuck with Professor Ditherton Wiggleroom for the next three and a half years, so at least I’m all stocked up on anger and grief.

(John Hinderaker)

I mentioned this in a post earlier tonight, but it deserves separate billing: in a sharp break with normal diplomatic protocol, Russia’s Vladimir Putin yesterday called American Secretary of State John Kerry a “liar.” This isn’t the kind of thing that heads of state and senior diplomats say about one another. Here is the context:

Speaking to his human rights council Wednesday, Putin said, “This was very unpleasant and surprising for me. We talk to them (the Americans), and we assume they are decent people, but he is lying and he knows that he is lying. This is sad.”

The exact reference is unclear, but presumably Putin meant to denounce Kerry’s defense of the Syrian rebels, who Kerry said were mostly moderate and not affiliated with al Qaeda or other extremist groups. Unfortunately, Putin may well be right about this one. The State Department responded huffily:

State Dept. spokeswoman Jen Psaki called Putin’s comment “preposterous” and said Kerry is a decorated combat veteran who has had more than words aimed at him, according to the Associated Press.

Well, that’s all right then! But the fact remains that Russia’s President has discarded all diplomatic niceties and has insulted Barack Obama’s Secretary of State, who was, it goes without saying, speaking for Obama. How did Obama respond to this extraordinary slight? Upon arrival in the Soviet Union–no, wait, I mean Russia–Obama shook Putin’s hand as though nothing had happened:

In the real world, actions as extreme as Putin’s would have consequences. But in Barack Obama’s loser universe, the only response is, “Thank you Sir! Might I have another?”

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN: Dem Congressman Charges Intelligence “Manipulated” To Promote War.

J.D. TUCCILLE: Maybe a Government That Constantly Violates Rights Is More Rotten Than We Realize.

HEY, THEY FORGAVE HIM FOR THE FIRST ONE: Will Democrats Forgive Obama for Blowing His Second Term? “Obama’s most stalwart fans will blame ‘obstructionist Republicans’ who they will say managed to overcome broad public mistrust to block the president’s agenda. But this, too, is a damning verdict on Obama’s presidency. If an unpopular GOP can govern the country from one chamber of Congress where a relatively popular president could not, what does this say about the president’s competency in office?”

Everything.

JAMES TARANTO: Quagmire At Home: Did Obama even have a war plan for Capitol Hill?

The committee vote shows that both parties are divided. As the Washington Post notes, two of the panel’s 10 Democrats, Connecticut’s Chris Murphy and New Mexico’s Tom Udall, voted “no.” Three Republicans voted “yes.” The Senate’s most junior member, Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey (elected in June to fill the John Kerry vacancy), voted “present,” although his comments suggest he was leaning toward “no” owing to “my worry about a greater involvement in Syria.”

One is tempted to mock Markey for that old Obama gambit–”he vowed to make a decision by next week,” the Globe reports–yet one resists the temptation when one reads his rationale: “Asked why he didn’t just oppose the authorization, as did some of his colleagues who had similar concerns, he said, ‘A “no” vote would have indicated I had sufficient information on which to base the decision. Which I did not.’ ” Given the way this administration bullied through ObamaCare and other domestic legislation, it is easy to believe that concern is well-founded.

Committees are not necessarily representative of the Senate as a whole (except in terms of their partisan makeup), but if we assume for the sake of argument that this one is with respect to this question, Senate passage will be a very close-run matter. Seven “no” votes out of 17 amount to a hair over 41%, just enough to sustain a filibuster. Add in Markey to make it eight votes of 18, and you’re at 44%.

And that’s in the chamber the president’s party controls. . . .

Republicans also have reason to suspect that Obama’s decision to request congressional approval was an effort to put them on the spot–and his ludicrous denial yesterday that he “set a red line” or that his credibility is at stake reinforces that view.

The fierce watchdogs of the press, confronted with this brazen falsehood, show themselves once again to be Obama’s pet hamsters. Instead of giving a “pants on fire” rating, PolitiFact.com’s Jon Greenberg claims Obama was “reframing comments rather than denying them.” Greenberg can’t even say the statement is half true, so he withholds a rating altogether. Peter Baker of the New York Times has his own euphemisms, writing that Obama was “citing longstanding international norms” and “trying to break out of his isolation.” The funniest dodges come from Shawna Thomas of NBC News, who on Twitter calls Obama’s whopper “a definite change in tone” and an attempt “to unilaterally widen the circle of responsibility.”

That last one is priceless. Next time someone accuses you of trying to weasel out of a commitment, say you’re just trying to widen the circle of responsibility.

The press will abandon Obama last. Their loyalty is their honor.

Yesterday I found myself thinking Putin had it right over our very own Secretary of State, and now this:

Chinese President Xi Jinping told his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama on Friday that the crisis in Syria should be resolved through a political solution and not a military strike, state news agency Xinhua said.

“A political solution is the only right way out for the Syrian crisis, and a military strike cannot solve the problem from the root,” Xinhua quoted Xi as saying said at a meeting with Obama on the sidelines of a G20 summit in St. Petersburg in Russia.

While I doubt there’s even a political solution — certainly not under Professor Ditherton Wiggleroom’s leadership — Xi is right that a military strike solves nothing.

Our only national interest in Syria now is to make sure that chemical weapons never leave that country. The only way to really guarantee such an outcome would be an invasion to physically remove them, which the international community won’t support, the President couldn’t lead, the Congress wouldn’t approve, and the American people wouldn’t stomach. Next up, a quarantine. The Turks would watch the north, the Israelis the south, and we’d use air and naval power to cover the coast and the desert roads between Syria and Iraq. That’s a much smaller coalition, but still one Wiggleroom is incapable of putting together.

There really isn’t a third option, unless you count stumbling around the world stage making incoherent and impotent demands.

Yesterday, I texted a non-economist friend to say how sad I was to learn of the death of Ronald H. Coase, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1991. She wrote back, "Was it sudden or unexpected?" Well, I answered, he was 102 years old. So no. Not unexpected.

As for sudden, it did feel so to me. I haven't actually seen Prof. Coase since I moved from Chicago ten years ago. But I've just finished work on a new book with Paul Nunes on the new age of disruptive innovation (based on our March 2013 HBR article, "Big Bang Disruption"). That work brought me back, as so many things do, to Coase's early writings — in particular his two searingly critical yet insightful essays, "The Nature of the Firm" (1937) and "The Problem of Social Cost" (1960). In these last few months, Coase, his ideas, and the very large intellectual debt I owed to them were all very much in my thoughts. So, yes, his death struck me as sudden.

"The Problem of Social Cost," Coase once told me, was the reason he spent his career not in an economics department or a business school but at the University of Chicago School of Law. As The New York Times recounted in its obituary, during a famous dinner party Coase had to fight the entire economics department at Chicago to convince them that his novel theory on the relationship between property rights and legal rules — ever-since known as the Coase Theorem — was correct.

The group, which included Milton Friedman and George Stigler, was eventually convinced, but they didn't invite Coase to join the department. Yet "The Problem of Social Cost" has proven to be one of the most-cited articles in the history of economics.

The earlier essay, "The Nature of the Firm," is justly famous for its introduction to economic literature of the concept of market friction, or what Coase called "transaction costs." Transaction costs, Coase argued, explained why some interactions were left to the market and others were internalized in increasingly large, complex enterprises.

"The Nature of the Firm" was published in 1937, when giant multinationals such as General Motors were just coming into prominence. Coase had observed first-hand the efficiencies to be gained by internalizing market transactions. Having finished his coursework at the London School of Economics but with another year of required study to go, Coase secured a traveling scholarship, which he used to come to the United States to see for himself what firms were like — what they did and didn't do, and why.

This was perhaps his most radical contribution to modern economics. He always insisted that the more theoretical, formula-driven work that economists tended towards were of limited value. In articles, reviews, and speeches, he spent his entire career — all eighty years or so of it, up to and including one of his last publications, an essay in HBR in December 2012 — admonishing, extolling, and sometimes outright pleading with his colleagues to turn economics into a true social science, one driven by empirical research. (He gave up on traditional economics in 1996 and started his own group, the International Society for New Institutional Economics, which continues to this day.)

I had personal experience of Coase's passion for hands-on research — the beginning of a long and always surprising relationship. In the course of an independent study during my third year of law school at Chicago, I came across an interesting experiment going on at nearby Motorola, which had built software to "engineer" complex contracts.

The system was built to help lawyers select the most useful clauses and knit them together, simplifying the often-wasteful process of negotiation between Motorola and its business partners. If clauses had already been reviewed and agreed to in previous contracts, why not start with those rather than drafting from scratch? Why not, in other words, eliminate as many of the transaction costs as possible?

I arranged a visit to meet with Motorola's contracts team. And then I thought, why not invite Coase? He was long-since retired and had just won the Nobel Prize, but he still had an office at the law school, and still participated occasionally in activities of the school's law and economics program. So I wrote him a note and invited him to come along. To the astonishment of some of my faculty advisors, his secretary called a few days later to say he would be pleased to join me.

I picked Prof. Coase up at his home and drove him out to Motorola headquarters in suburban Chicago, where we spent the afternoon quizzing the lawyers and the system's developers, and where we had lunch in the company cafeteria. Coase, then a spry 80 year-old, asked the most interesting questions, and delighted our hosts with stories about the company's early history. At the end of the day, Coase thanked me for inviting him and for serving as chauffeur, and told me to let him know when I was next going to take to the field. I was stunned from beginning to end.

I graduated law school, but after a very brief time practicing at a Silicon Valley firm I returned to consulting, which I had done for a decade before. That in turn led to my first book, Unleashing the Killer App, which took an early look at how the Internet was changing the nature of business strategy.

But the insight that grounded Killer App came to me at a conference, listening to engineers talk about how open networking standards could simplify connections between devices and users. And I thought, ah, it's all about transaction costs. In my notes of the conference, I wrote down, simply, "Coase!"

Chapter Two of Killer App argued that Coase was the father of the new economy, where technology in the market was reducing transaction costs more quickly than technology inside firms, which couldn't adapt as quickly. The result, I said, was that firms would get smaller, or even virtual — a simple corollary to Coase's 1937 observation, which I called "The Law of Diminishing Firms."

I sent Coase a draft of the chapter, and he quickly sent back a stern handwritten note to say that I had misread some things. (Coase was notorious for his plain-spoken criticisms.) We should meet for lunch soon, he said, so he could set me straight. Of course I agreed immediately, and met him, tail tucked firmly between legs, at a nearby coffee shop a few days later. As it turned out, my sins were more venal than cardinal — I had erred mostly in a few biographical facts about Coase, which were easily corrected.

The revised chapter met his approval, or in any case did not generate any further disapproval. When I invited Coase to come to the launch party for the book, well, he came, and patiently answered questions from some very surprised attendees, who didn't expect a Nobel laureate to show up for a book party for a non-academic publication. I had long ceased being surprised by anything Coase did or did not do.

Since then, Chapter Two of every book I've written has been about the impact of Coasean economics on whatever I'm writing about, whether business strategy, technology deployment, or regulatory policy. But in truth, every chapter, every book, every blog post I've written is, in some sense, in debt to Coase. If not his insights, then certainly his work ethic.

Most of the obituaries, remembrances, and accolades he will deservedly receive in the coming weeks will focus on his groundbreaking work, his uncompromisingly critical mind, and his devotion to his field. I will read all of these. But I will be tempering these portraits of a daunting intellectual giant with fondness for the Ronald Coase I had the pleasure to know, a man who was inexplicably kind to me whenever I asked him for help.

As J.E. Dyer at the Conservative Optimist notes, the key element in the Syrian crisis that has escaped notice so far is strategic risk. The relevant question as he rightly points out, is not whether the US military can deliver a pinprick blow on Assad. It can.  But the United States must also meet its global responsibilities in addition to handling whatever Syria may portend. It must simultaneously uphold nuclear deterrence, serves as a counterweight to China and Russia in Europe, it provides security for the seas and is the principle shield of the West against terror.

As I pointed out in the post America as Jackie Chan,  the US is like that redoubtable kung fu star in that it must keep all the world’s Ming Jars intact while simultaneously fighting off the bad guys.  Since the armed forces have been severely downsized under Obama, the incremental risk of doing that is much greater now that it has a smaller global design margin. The Syrian operation must pull men off one part of the wall to commit them to another. The total risk is not what can happen in Syria. It is what can happen in Syria plus what can happen in places where the forces have been thinned. Can America keep all the Ming Jars safe while still fighting this bad guy?

Dyer writes:

For Congress, the important question to pose to the military is what level of risk we incur if we go into a moderate-size Syrian operation with the forces we have right now….

In any air-campaign scenario involving Syria, he said, two capabilities likely needed would be F-16CJ Wild Weasels, which are specially configured for suppression of enemy air defenses, and F-22s.

Squadrons of both those capabilities were grounded earlier this year, save for Raptors on deployment to US Pacific Command’s area of responsibility, in order to pay the remainder of the service’s tuition-assistance bills.

If the Syrian operation ends with a pinprick it is pointless. But if it is a prelude to a much larger then what is that larger operation? The situation is made worse because everything has now become relatively more expensive in security terms. The implosion in credibility McCain always talks about now means that the US actually has to actually expend military force where a warning once would have done. America must pay in strategic cash since Obama’s political credit card has been revoked.

How much is that doggie in the window when all the extras and hidden provisions are figured in? Michael Ledeen can’t shake the feeling there are considerations in the Syrian operation beyond the public reason of ‘punishing Assad’ for using chemical weapons.

Messrs Cameron, Hollande and Netanyahu must have weighed in, along with Erdogan, Saudi King Abdullah, and others.

What others? What about the Iranians? We know that Obama sees Iran as the key to “solving” the Syrian mess, and we know that Obama has authorized secret contacts, even before he was elected, and Swiss diplomats are forever brokering meetings and carrying messages back and forth. What if the Iranians offered him a deal? Or perhaps the Omanis, who have been key middlemen in the deals leading to the release of American hostages?

What sort of deal? Many are possible. What if the Iranians, the real rulers of Syria today, offered to betray Assad, replace him with a military junta under their control, and organize a peace conference if the Americans lifted unilateral sanctions?

Obama would certainly be tempted to delay bombing Syria if he were led to believe that a peaceful rabbit could be lifted from a diplomatic top hat by those new moderates in Tehran, or those proven wheelers and dealers in romantic Muscat, wouldn’t he?

I don’t have an answer to How? or Why?

All the great powers are interesting in something. Germany is now open to considering that chemical weapons were used by Assad against civilians. Perhaps most astoundingly the ex-President of Iran has accused Assad of the the same thing just yesterday. “Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said the Syrian government, a strong ally of Tehran, had carried out chemical weapons attacks against its own people, the semi-official Iranian Labour News Agency reported on Sunday.” Yet neither the UK nor Germany are joining in the fireworks and, insofar as we know, Iran will probably defend Assad. Whatever moral qualms the Western allies have about chemicals they’re interested enough to do something about it and are in practice treating Syria like a tar baby and Iran is treating Assad like a favored son. Can’t you hear it now? “You do it Obama. We’re right behind you.”

The answer to Dyer’s question about strategic risk must for the present remain — ????. We don’t know how long the Syrian string is until we start pulling on it. The basic reason for our ignorance is that Obama has conducted his policy largely in secret. He’s made deals we can’t even guess at and people are on the hook for what they don’t even know about.

To this day we don’t even know definitively what Benghazi was about, only that it was about a video. And now Obama is going through this enormous exercise to punish Assad for using chemical weapons. It can’t be about the number killed. Anyone who is interested in the tally of claimed civilian deaths in Syria can go to LCCS Syria. Today 118 civilians died. Yesterday there were 39, the day before 72, before that 66 and go back another 24 hours and it was 104. The Syrian civil war goes through about 1,000 lives every two weeks. The idea that Barack Obama is sufficiently outraged about the manner of the latest victims demise when the previous 100,000 deaths did not move him is peculiar indeed. One commenter on Facebook described the proposal to launch an attack based solely on moral outrage with the old Chinese proverb: 脱裤子放屁 which translates to “like taking off your pants to fart” — something ostentatiously and and insanely superfluous.

Just what exactly is Barack Obama up to? Perhaps the greatest benefit of Barack Obama’s recent fall to earth is that it has forced him to explain himself to others; to share a problem with other Constitutional authorities instead of bearing the entire load on the shoulders of his genius. What is President Obama betting the farm on? And how much is that doggie in the window?

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Did you know that you can purchase some of these books and pamphlets by Richard Fernandez and share them with you friends? They will receive a link in their email and it will automatically give them access to a Kindle reader on their smartphone, computer or even as a web-readable document.

The War of the Words for $3.99, Understanding the crisis of the early 21st century in terms of information corruption in the financial, security and political spheres
Rebranding Christianity for $3.99, or why the truth shall make you free
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99, reflections on terrorism and the nuclear age
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99, why government should get small
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99. Fiction. A flight into peril, flashbacks to underground action.
Storm Over the South China Sea $0.99, how China is restarting history in the Pacific
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RASMUSSEN: Startling Findings About Race Relations, Then And Now:

Nearly 2/3 of all voters say that race relations have improved over the last 50 years.

But just one-in-10 say that race relations have improved since President Obama took office in 2008. Blacks are even less convinced than whites and other minority voters that things have gotten better.

How’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya?

Kroger Co. will stop providing spousal health insurance benefits on Jan. 1, Indiana Public Media reports. The Cincinnati-based company’s agreement with several unions, including Local 700 United Food and Commercial Workers, is still more generous than what is required by the Affordable Care Act, union leaders say. The agreement includes a pension fund, pay increases and health insurance benefits for part-time workers who are on the clock for as few as 20 hours per week. The law requires companies…