Monthly Archives: September 2014

Obama Gave a Pretty Speech

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As he often does. But what did President Barack Obama really say? I’ll elide his bald claims regarding his having “consistently taken the fight to terrorists who threaten our country.” Threats like ISIS; like the terrorists who destroyed our Benghazi consulate and butchered our Ambassador there, along with three of his security detail; like al Qaeda in the Maghreb and al Qaeda in Yemen; like the Taliban in Afghanistan, from which—and whom—we’re retreating; …. Yes, yes, we’ve killed a few key players in some of those gangs, but we’ve not damaged the gangs themselves in any material way. But enough of that.

Obama said,

ISIL is not “Islamic.” No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim.

But Islam does condone the killing of innocents, when they’re unbelievers, infidels. Oh, wait—Islam doesn’t consider them innocents.

Obama said,

…following consultations with allies abroad and Congress at home, I can announce that America will lead a broad coalition to roll back this terrorist threat.

And again,

America will be joined by a broad coalition of partners.

But who are the members of this broad coalition? Who will lead the surface forces? Who will lead the air forces? Who will lead the economic forces? Oh, wait—

…in the coming days [Secretary of State John Kerry] will travel across the Middle East and Europe to enlist more partners in this fight, especially Arab nations….

There isn’t a coalition, after all. What’s he going to do, then, if the coalition doesn’t materialize? Walk away from the problem? Again?

Obama said,

I have made it clear that we will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are. That means I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as Iraq. This is a core principle of my presidency: if you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.

I’ll ignore the fact that this is the Bush Doctrine. I do note that he said this in the context of contesting with ISIS. But it’s also a broad, uncaveated statement. Is Obama now saying that he’ll attack al Qaeda in the Maghreb? That he’ll step up his attacks on al Qaeda in Yemen? That he’ll resume attacks on the Taliban in Afghanistan? Or is this just more of Obama’s muddled messaging?

Obama said,

[I]n Syria, we have ramped up our military assistance to the Syrian opposition. Tonight, I again call on Congress to give us additional authorities and resources to train and equip these fighters.

What assistance? He’s been resistant all along to arming those whom he derided as recently as August as being “former doctors, farmers, pharmacists, and so forth.”

He’s also maintained all along that he needs no “authorities” from Congress to deal with the al Assad régime or to work with the Syrian rebels (although having Congressional comity would be nice, he’s also said). What’s changed?

And then there’s this. Obama opened his speech thusly:

I want to speak to you about what the United States will do with our friends and allies to degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL.

What does he mean by “degrade?” We “degraded” ISIS with the limited air strikes we made to help free the Yezidis, to help the Kurds retake the Mosul Dam, to help the Sunnis (!) defend the Haditha Dam.

What is his definition of “destroy?” Rome “destroyed” Carthage, and the Allies “destroyed” NAZI Germany. Within Obama’s penchant for treating terrorists as common criminals, the Federal Courts have, more or less, “destroyed” the lives of a couple of terrorists brought to trial.

What, exactly, are Obama’s victory conditions? He’s always provided his exit conditions, even to the point of announcing in advance when he would exit. He’s always said what he won’t do to achieve “victory,” or an enemy’s “degradation,” or an enemy’s “destruction.” But he’s never said what, in his mind, constitutes winning.

There’s also a subject he chose not to address Wednesday night: funding. In many respects this is the most important: no conflict (Obama still won’t call this a war, and Kerry, the day after this speech, told CNN that we’re not at war with ISIS; it’s a “significant counter-terrorism operation”—so, what, the FBI will be the lead agency?), regardless of the conflict’s national life-or-death importance, can be fought for free. Just ask the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

How will this conflict be funded? What spending will be reallocated, what taxes imposed, what borrowings engaged?

Certainly, most of these questions need not have been answered in Wednesday’s speech, but we’re already two days later without answers. He must answer these questions in the next few days. If answers are not quickly forthcoming, Obama’s claims in his pretty speech will be shown to be of a piece with another of his claims in that speech:

From Europe to Asia…we stand for freedom, for justice, for dignity.

Just like his administration has stood for the freedom, justice, and dignity of Russian-occupied Ukraine.

A transcript of Obama’s speech can be read here.

In a World without US Leadership

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…still more PRC aggression.

Crews from the PRC’s boats cruising around the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, islands claimed by Vietnam while the PRC claims all of the Sea including the Paracels, have attacked Vietnamese fishing boats and assaulted their crews on three separate occasions since August.

In addition, on those occasions the Chinese have seized various items of equipment from those Vietnamese vessels.

In denying these accusations,

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying called the accusation groundless, saying that on Aug 15 a Vietnamese vessel trespassed into China’s maritime territory. She said Chinese authorities confiscated explosives on the vessel.

“We urge the Vietnamese side to better manage its fishing activities and stop trespassing on Chinese territory,” Ms. Hua said.

Notice that. In denying the accusations, the PRC’s Foreign Ministry confesses to the equipment seizures—those explosives. In denying the accusations, the Foreign Ministry admits to the Chinese sea grab, repeating its claim that the South China Sea is a Chinese private lake.

It’ll only get worse over the next couple of years, or more.

Careful What We Ask For

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President Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor was in the People’s Republic of China earlier this week. Among other things, Susan Rice broached the idea that the PRC’s help in dealing with ISIS would be useful.

There’s always a quid pro quo, though. The PRC is likely to want our help in dealing with the separatists among the Uighurs in western China and in Tibet. It’s also unclear what practical use the PRC could be against a terrorist group in the Middle East that’s targeting Western security and not Eastern.

Getting the PRC involved here doesn’t seem a good idea.

Obamacare and Health Coverage Cost Growth

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President Barack Obama promised us, all those years ago, that if only Obamacare were enacted, a family’s health plan premium would drop by $2,500 per year, and no one would lose their employer-provided health plan. Period.

These two graphs from The Wall Street Journal draw a different…picture.ObamacareCost

These graphs cover the period since 1999. As the upper graph shows, the premiums for employer-provided health insurance and, since Obamacare’s passage in 2010, for employer-provided health plans, have risen at a steady pace—unchanged by Obamacare, and specifically, no drop in premium cost. It’s the same with the employee’s share of those premiums; that share’s pace of increase also has been unaffected—that is, no drop in cost—from Obamacare.

Now look at the lower graph. After spiking in Obamacare’s year of enactment in 2010, the per centage of businesses offering health plans to their employees has fallen to the lowest level in the 15 years depicted.

At best, Obamacare isn’t lowering employer-covered workers’ health coverage costs. There has been, though, a sharp decrease in the number of folks even offered employer-provided plans.

(That wages have risen much more slowly than health plan premiums is a different subject.)

Continued VA Cover-Up

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This time with the VA’s IG participating. It’s an unfortunate side effect of having an organization’s inspection/watchdog function be an internal one, even if it works for the organization’s boss and not for anyone further down the totem pole.

Crucial language that the Department of Veterans Affairs Inspector General could not “conclusively” prove that delays in care caused patient deaths at a Phoenix hospital was added to its final report after a draft version was sent to agency administrators for comment….

The single most compelling sentence in the inspector general’s 143-page final report on fraudulent scheduling practices at the Phoenix veterans’ hospital did not appear in the draft version, according to a staff analysis by the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

It was inserted into the final version, the only one that was released to the public, after agency officials had a chance to comment and recommend revisions.

It’s certainly legitimate for IG draft reports to be run by the group just inspected and about whom the report is being written, but that’s to give the inspectees an opportunity to check facts and to suggest corrections to factual errors. Giving the inspectees the ability to “correct” the conclusions themselves is entirely illegitimate.

A separate report, written by the inspectee, is a normal part of the proceeding. Here, the inspectee indicates its concurrence with IG conclusions and its plan of corrective action regarding those conclusions. It’s also in this separate inspectee response report that the inspectee indicates its disagreement with a conclusion and the reasons for that disagreement.

Then the IG responds, again in a separate report, indicating its acceptance of the inspectee’s disagreement or the IG’s overruling of the inspectee, with the original conclusion standing and the inspectee required to take corrective action. All three of these reports are part of the official record.

Notice that: the legitimate course is to disagree with an IG conclusion, in writing, in a separate report, not to rewrite the IG conclusion itself.

And the cover-up of the cover-up:

The House committee obtained the draft version of the report late Thursday, after the [Washington] Examiner published a story that IG had been refusing its release.

Again, I say, it’s time to disband the VA altogether and send the VA’s existing budget and what would have been its future budgets directly to our veterans as voucher checks with which they can be free to seek out their own doctors and their own medical facilities.