Our President Has Forgotten Who We Are

The Weekly Standard posted an article yesterday about President Obama’s remarks in Cuba.

The article reports:

“President Castro, I think, has pointed out that in his view making sure that everybody is getting a decent education or health care, has basic security and old age, that those things are human rights as well. I personally would not disagree with him,” Obama said.

“But it doesn’t detract from some of these other concerns. And the goal of the human rights dialogue is not for the United States to dictate to Cuba how they should govern themselves, but to make sure that we are having a frank and candid conversation around this issue. And hopefully that we can learn from each other.”

Obama made the comment at a joint press conference with the Cuban Communist dictator.

This is the video from YouTube:

Does anyone truly believe that the people in Cuba have freedom of speech,  the right to bear arms, etc.? President Obama needs to rethink his definition of human rights. It is a shame that the reestablishing of a relationship between the United States and Cuba did not include a demand for increased human rights in Cuba in exchange for the economic benefits Cuba will reap from the relationship.

This Isn’t How It’s Done On CSI

On Friday, Breitbart.com posted an article about the actions of the FBI regarding the home of the killers in San Bernardino. The actions taken by the FBI were inappropriate; and unfortunately, fit a pattern of conduct that is not constructive.

The article reports:

The shocking sight of journalists storming into the apartment of the San Bernardino terrorists, less than 48 hours after the attack, was apparently allowed by the FBI, which handed the apartment back over to the landlord, who let the media in with a crowbar.

How much information will be lost to the investigation because the FBI was so quick to leave the place where pipe bombs were being built and ammunition was being stockpiled? How many sets of fingerprints will never be investigated?

Unfortunately this is not a unique situation for President Obama’s FBI.

The article further reports:

For example, the government has done almost nothing with the treasure trove of intelligence information it recovered during the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in May 2011. Stephen F. Hayes of the Weekly Standard has waged a lonely battle to force the government to take the intelligence seriously–intelligence that could disrupt terror networks and prevent future attacks around the world. “They haven’t done anything close to a full exploitation,” perhaps only 10%, he quoted one analyst in May 2015.

The following year, after the Benghazi terror attack–which the Obama administration insisted was a protest over a YouTube video–the FBI arrived on the scene several weeks later, after terrorists and curious locals had enjoyed the opportunity to roam the scene and remove or change whatever they wanted. Fox News reported on Oct. 5, 2012 that an FBI team had waited for weeks before visiting the consulate, and that they stayed only briefly. (To this day, Democrats insist a video explanation was plausible.)

Somehow I am convinced that this is not the way CSI would have done it.

Utopia Doesn’t Really Exist

Yesterday The Weekly Standard posted an article about life in Sweden. It seems that many Americans on the political left view Sweden as the ultimate example of successful socialism.

The article reports:

Instead, Sanandaji shows, the root of Scandinavian success can largely be found in culture. These countries, and Sweden in particular, have historically had remarkably high levels of social trust, family values, a strong sense of work ethic, and social cohesion. The notion of the “Protestant work ethic” goes back far longer than the modern welfare state. Scholars like Max Weber, Sanandaji shows, long ago noted that the Protestant countries of northern Europe had an overall higher living standard and economic success than most. The often-celebrated equality of Scandinavian countries, too, began well before the welfare state was developed.

Again, these traditions and values by no means came with the welfare state. Sanandaji shows that these Scandinavian values follow people as they move abroad, even for generations: Americans of Scandinavian descent, whose ancestors left way before modern welfare states were established, tend to carry many of their norms with them. The median incomes of Americans with Scandinavian heritage is 20 percent higher than average income in the U.S. as a whole, and poverty rates in this group is roughly half of that of average Americans.

We could learn from this. The American welfare state has destroyed the family–not strengthened it. The “Protestant work ethic” has been thrown under the bus as second and third generation Americans find it easier to collect welfare checks.

The article concludes:

But that tradeoff still stands. If anything, the Scandinavian countries are good examples of how important it is to uphold social values and virtues that work. When Swedes voted a center-right coalition into government in 2006, they did so based on a platform that emphasized hard work and individual responsibility in a society where all too many healthy people of working age were living on welfare. This tradition of individual responsibility goes back all the way to the time when Sweden was largely a rural, farming-based country with individual tillers, Sanandaji points out.

The lesson isn’t only that the Scandinavian model is difficult to copy, but that it would even be outright unwise of a country like America to do so. What left-leaning people in America and other countries should ultimately learn from the Scandinavian model is that for redistribution of wealth to be possible, there must first and foremost be enough wealth to distribute. 

Poverty has much more to do with culture and behavior than it does with money.

There Will Be More Of This To Come

The Weekly Standard posted an article today with the following headline, “NYT Columnist Blames Scott Walker for Teacher Layoffs That Occurred Before He Was Governor.” Details, details, details.

The attack on Scott Walker is moving full speed ahead. It is up to Americans to do their homework and figure out how many of the horrible things this man is being accused of actually happened.

The article at The Weekly Standard quotes a New York Times article by Gail Collins. Ms. Collins describes a recent speech given by Scott Walker in Iowa:

Mainly, though, The Speech was about waging war on public employee unions, particularly the ones for teachers. “In 2010, there was a young woman named Megan Sampson who was honored as the outstanding teacher of the year in my state. And not long after she got that distinction, she was laid off by her school district,” said Walker, lacing into teacher contracts that require layoffs be done by seniority.

Well, there are some problems with that description.

The Weekly Standard reports:

There are two problems in this section of Collins’s column: First, she accuses Walker of dishonesty, but she’s just quibbling over semantics. Is it really inaccurate to describe someone named an “outstanding first-year teacher” by the Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English as a “teacher of the year” for short? I’ve never seen much of a difference: In the headline of this 2011 piece, I described Sampson as a “teacher of the year,” but in the body of the piece I precisely described her award. Walker has been telling this story for four years, and no one thought his description of Sampson was dishonest until Gail Collins heard about it.

But the big error in Collins’s piece is her claim that “those layoffs happened because Walker cut state aid to education.” As you can see in the excerpt above, Collins is talking about teacher layoffs that occurred in 2010. Walker did not become governor until 2011. 

If you are a casual reader of the New York Times, the newspaper of record has just misled you. I seriously doubt they will bother to correct their mistake, so you are left with the impression that Scott Walker cut education funding and laid off teachers. What a horrible person! Only, what you have been told is a lie.

The article at The Weekly Standard also points out:

The truth is that Walker’s reforms actually saved teachers’ jobs. Right before the 2012 Wisconsin recall election, Walker’s Democratic opponent Tom Barrett couldn’t name a single school that had been hurt by Walker’s policies. When Walker’s 2014 Democratic opponent Mary Burke was asked to name any schools hurt by Walker’s collective bargaining reform, she relayed an anecdote she’d heard secondhand about one school. Burke’s story didn’t check out, and the superintendent of that school wrote a letter telling Burke she didn’t know what she was talking about. 

The message here is clear–do your own research.

 

No, Mr. President, America Did Not Fall Short–You Did

Today’s Weekly Standard posted a short article about some comments made by President Obama regarding Afghanistan.

The article reports:

“So, you know, I think that, have we achieved everything that some might have imagined us achieving in the best of scenarios? Probably not. You know, there’s a human enterprise, and you know, you fall short of the ideal,” said Obama.

This comment infuriates me. First of all, the President did not give the military the number of troops they asked for to do the job. Second of all, he withdrew troops before the actual fighting season. Third of all, he told the Taliban exactly when he was planning to leave so that they could wait us out. Fourth, he established rules of engagement that made it very difficult for American soldiers to defend themselves, much less fight a war. Afghanistan was the victim of failed leadership from the Obama White House. Unfortunately, we may watch Iraq fall victim to the same problem.

Strong leadership would bring us much closer to the ‘ideal.’ Voting ‘present’ will not accomplish anything.

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