Left uses baseless smear in attempt to defeat principled WI justice

Things are getting very ugly in America's dairyland. NR editorial:

The Left long ago stopped pretending that court proceedings were anything other than exercises in raw-power politics, and so they’ve taken their fight against Wisconsin governor Scott Walker to the state supreme court — not in the form of a lawsuit, but in the form of a multimillion-dollar intervention into an election to a ten-year term on the court.

Wisconsin supreme court justice David Prosser went to bed one night a respected former prosecutor, and woke up the next morning the target of a $3 million union-run smear campaign, falsely accused of being an enabler of pedophiles. That is what you get when you oppose the political machine that has been fleecing taxpayers in Wisconsin and elsewhere for a generation. Or, as in the case of Justice Prosser, when they suspect you might merely stand in their way and do your job. [. . .]

Even the boys in the case denounced the ad as the exploitative fraud it is, and one averred that he’d vote for Prosser. But what is the suffering of exploited children when there are union dues on the line?

Please go to NR for the entire shameful story. If you choose to help:

Because of legal restrictions, Prosser cannot solicit contributions to aid his campaign under this onslaught. But you can help his campaign by helping the Wisconsin Club for Growth (donate here) or donating to Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (donate online here; fax donation form here).

William Jacobson is supporting Justice Prosser through the Tea Party Express  (donate here) and alerts us to more union thuggery directed against Wisconsin businesses:

Members of Wisconsin State Employees Union, AFSCME Council 24, have begun circulating letters to businesses in southeast Wisconsin, asking them to support workers’ rights by putting up a sign in their windows.

Well, they're not really asking. More like threatening:

If businesses fail to comply, the letter says, “Failure to do so will leave us no choice but (to) do a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means 'no' to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members."

Pass it on.

Many thanks to Michelle Malkin and Doug Ross for linking.
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Enemies of choice

They love the word, but boy, do liberals hate the concept of choice, as in real choices freely made by individuals and families:

The House passed a measure Wednesday to revive a school-voucher program for the District of Columbia despite opposition from the mayor, the District’s congressional delegate, teachers and the White House.

Of course they're all in thrall to the teachers unions. But regardless, why would they want to loosen their death-grip on their near-monopoly? What would be in it for them?

Mayor Vincent Gray (who has wasted no time in making his administration a joke of corruption and nepotism) believes parents should sacrifice their children to this sacred institution because "the city’s public school system is improving." Good one. Even if it is, and that's highly debatable, real children are attending these schools now. How bad are they?

For decades, D.C. public schools have been the worst in the nation.  The system ranks 51st in the nation, and is plagued by school violence.  Only 14% of eighth-graders are proficient in reading.  Just 55% of the students in D.C. public schools graduate.  During the 2007-08 school year, 3,500 calls were placed from D.C. public schools to the Metropolitan Police Department.  More than 900 of those calls were to report school violence such as assault.

It's downright criminal. But the ruling class is unanimously lined up against school choice of any kind, all the while pretending they care about the kids of DC.


Another enemy of choice is Planned Parenthood, who masquerades as  something it isn't to stay in the business of, er, "protecting women's health." Lori Ziganto posts this smoking-gun video from LiveAction:



No, in spite of their breast-cancer-pink bus, Planned Parenthood's mission, in theory and in practice, has nothing to do with health. Matthew Archbold:

When Live Action called the abortion giant a woman named Samantha answered the phone and when asked about mammograms she did something completely surprising. She told the truth.

“We don’t…um… deal with the health side of it so much…we’re mostly a surgical facility.”

Ah, finally some truth from Planned Parenthood. That is the statement that tells all if you ask me. They don’t deal with health. They are an abortion facility. That’s what they do. We’ve all known it. And Live Action got them to admit it.

This admission flies in the face of their multi-million dollar p.r. campaign. This admission flies in the face of the hemming and hawing from the legislators refusing to defund Planned Parenthood because it might harm women’s health.

Another fraudulent organization that seeks to "help" people make "choices" that just happen to line its own pockets is the AARP. You'll be shocked, shocked to learn that it stands to make zillions from Obamacare, to the detriment of its own members. Hyscience:

Simply put, the AARP has put their own financial self-interest well ahead of the interest of its members. While many seniors have wondered why the AARP would support a government controlled healthcare system that many believe would lead to rationing of their health care, and/or worse ... it appears that question has now been answered.

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Relax: They're "professionals"

The enemies of our enemy are doctors and lawyers. I for one am greatly relieved.

Photo from The Guardian

Quick -- someone from the White House -- get that man a labcoat!

President Obama:

"Well, first of all, I think it's important to note that -- the people that we've met with have been fully vetted. So, we have -- a clear sense of who they are. And so far, they're saying the right things. And most of them are professionals, lawyers, doctors -- people who appear to be credible. 

Cue laugh track. What would Obama know about credibility? He went on:

That doesn't mean that all the people -- among all the people who opposed -- Qaddafi, there might not be elements that are unfriendly to the United States and our interests. ... And that's why I think it's important for us not to -- jump in with both feet."

Right. Because nothing beats a half-baked limited-scope kinetic-whatsit. By all means, keep your options open.

But hang on. One credible source believes about 1,000 of these credible pros are jihadists. Washington Times: 

A former leader of Libya’s al Qaeda affiliate says he thinks “freelance jihadists” have joined the rebel forces, as NATO’s commander told Congress on Tuesday that intelligence indicates some al Qaeda and Hezbollah terrorists are fighting Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s forces.

Former jihadist Noman Benotman, who renounced his al Qaeda affiliation in 2000, said in an interview that he estimates 1,000 jihadists are in Libya.

So of course, we're considering arming them. And we're not talking machetes.

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Montgomery County's budget fight

Gotta love the headline: Accustomed to generosity, Montgomery County struggles with budget limits

Is it really "generosity" when it's other people's money?

Liberal, affluent Montgomery County, Maryland, braces itself for the worst -- no more free Viagra:

At a time when public employees unions are fighting for their lives elsewhere in the United States, the munificence of Montgomery’s benefits package was captured in an e-mail this month notifying workers, in the understated prose of a Q&A fact sheet, that “the County will no longer cover the cost of purchasing medications used to treat erectile dysfunction (ED).”

Even in the private sector, where many large private employers provide some coverage for drugs such as Viagra, only a small minority do so in Montgomery County style — without limits.

Officials said ending the ED benefit for county government employees, retirees and their families would save $400,000 a year.

Ike Leggett, a Democrat, has read the writing on the wall and proposes cutbacks in county employee benefits:

Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) proposed a $4.35 billion budget this month, representing a slight increase of 1.8 percent. Last year, the budget actually fell, something that hadn’t happened in the wealthy Washington suburb in more than 40 years. But Leggett’s current proposal has proved even more unsettling for many, in part because of the cumulative impact of previous cutbacks.

There is also an air of permanence to some of Leggett’s proposals that has shaken the preferred narrative in Montgomery, namely that everything is certain to bounce back to the way things were after a few tight years.

But the soaring property values and incomes that helped drive the expansion of Montgomery's generous government services and employee benefits during the boom years are unlikely to return soon, if ever. Taxes are already bumping up against political or legal limits. And the county has yet to set aside billions of dollars needed to cover employee pensions and retiree health-care costs.

Leggett’s decision to break with the results of the county’s collective-bargaining process, coming amid the intense national debate over fiscal stewardship and employee rights, has sharpened the local rhetoric. Instead of furloughing workers, a temporary step he proposed last year, Leggett is proposing that employees increase what they pay for health-care coverage and retirement benefits. That amounts to a lasting rollback in take-home pay.

Leggett is now like a terrorist or something:

Still, scores of chanting protesters also streamed through the glass doors just outside Leggett’s second-floor office during their demonstration Thursday and focused their ire on the county executive. “He’s terrorizing my home, my economic situation,” said Ride On bus driver Santiago Gonzalez, with his 4-year-old son bouncing on his shoulders. “We can’t let him keep stepping all over us. . . . He’s taking money away from me and my son.”

Even worse, he's being called a "cheese head" and a "radical Republican." Is that the thanks he gets for carefully avoiding taking anything away from the teachers?

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Steyn on culture: The abolition of childhood

In today's piece, Mark Steyn pulls all the cultural threads together. Referring to  yesterday's sexualization of childhood update, he writes: 

Wonderful! So we'll be available to identify any Third Grade boys thinking about a sex change and issue them with Abercrombie & Fitch push-up bras. A state commissar hectoring grade schoolers into approved orientations isn't merely "the sexualization of childhood" but the totalitarianization of childhood. 

Mark calls it "the abolition of childhood, and the mass conscription of the young for a hideous social engineering project." And our social degeneration has enormous consequences:

In a way, this is part of the same story as Libya, and I'm not so sure that in the long run it isn't the more important part. Islam will readily acknowledge our technological superiority: If you want to operate a no-fly zone over Benghazi or send an unmanned drone into Waziristan, we have the capability and they don't. The difference is that Islam thinks our technological superiority doesn't matter - because we're unmanned drones in a more basic sense: we believe in nothing except the most transitory and dreary self-gratification, an endless adolescence that begins with a push-up bra at eight and continues through free government condoms for 30-year olds. Not only do the surging Muslim populations in European cities have no wish to "assimilate" with such a culture, they do not believe they will have to - for they have bet that such a society cannot survive.

Steyn follows up on a couple of compelling points touched on in his recent talk with Milt Rosenberg: the impossibility of "aspirational love songs" in the absence of traditional courtship rituals, or as Mark puts it in today's piece:

Listening in recent weeks to young women in both New York and London complain that the men they meet would rather look at pictures of them naked on the Internet than actually see them naked in the same room reminded me of The Children Of Men, in which P D James' characters, liberated from human fertility, find sex too much trouble.

Women blame men and men blame women for their contemporary disconnectedness and mutual dissatisfaction. That's what comes of adopting a consumer mentality toward "relationships." Western civilization has largely given up on love and has thereby rendered itself infertile. And it's threatened by a culture  that reproduces itself with great efficiency, but only by enslaving those who actually bear the fruit. If love enters into the begetting of these children it's more a fortuitous accident than the raison d'etre of the union. Imagine, if popular music were possible under sharia, the "love songs" this culture would produce.

Read the rest of Steyn's piece, in which he is compelled to embrace his own squareness.


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Listen live to Jonah Goldberg on WMAL

In case you're up and you'd like to hear him in his talk radio debut, click here.


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The sexualization of childhood continues

Ed Morrissey wonders, "Is it possible to be both disgusted and jaded at the same time?" Oh yes, certainly. I do it all the time. What inspired his question is the advent of "push-up" bikinis for little girls who have nothing to push up. I'm not surprised, either, but some very uncivil thoughts, involving images of large kettles of boiling oil, pass through my mind when I think of the people responsible for the sexualization of children.

But they wouldn't be selling it if parents weren't buying it.

Along those lines, Jennifer Moses asks, Why Do We Let Them Dress Like That? 

All of which brings me to a question: Why do so many of us not only permit our teenage daughters to dress like this—like prostitutes, if we're being honest with ourselves—but pay for them to do it with our AmEx cards? [. . .]

I have a different theory. It has to do with how conflicted my own generation of women is about our own past, when many of us behaved in ways that we now regret. A woman I know, with two mature daughters, said, "If I could do it again, I wouldn't even have slept with my own husband before marriage. Sex is the most powerful thing there is, and our generation, what did we know?"

I think she's right. When the sexual revolution hit, young people were its victims as well as its proponents. And they knew very little about the consequences of what they were doing. Sex is powerful, though few outside of religious circles will tell you so. In the secular world it's often promoted as mere recreation, a "fun" way to "unwind," and the less personal the better.

Sexual abstinence is hard to discuss with one's children without a moral hook to hang it on. Pushing sexual morality on anyone, including your kids, is the opposite of cool. No one wants to be Ned Flanders. Moses continues:

We are the first moms in history to have grown up with widely available birth control, the first who didn't have to worry about getting knocked up. We were also the first not only to be free of old-fashioned fears about our reputations but actually pressured by our peers and the wider culture to find our true womanhood in the bedroom. Not all of us are former good-time girls now drowning in regret—I know women of my generation who waited until marriage—but that's certainly the norm among my peers.

So here we are, the feminist and postfeminist and postpill generation. We somehow survived our own teen and college years (except for those who didn't), and now, with the exception of some Mormons, evangelicals and Orthodox Jews, scads of us don't know how to teach our own sons and daughters not to give away their bodies so readily. We're embarrassed, and we don't want to be, God forbid, hypocrites.

She's right. Secularists don't know how to teach modesty and chastity to their children. The very words embarrass their sophisticated sensibilities. (By the way, I'd include serious Catholics in Moses' list of exceptions.)

Still, in my own circle of girlfriends, the desire to push back is strong. I don't know one of them who doesn't have feelings of lingering discomfort regarding her own sexual past. And not one woman I've ever asked about the subject has said that she wishes she'd "experimented" more.

I applaud Moses' partial rethink of the glorious sexual revolution, and encourage her and her friends to take an even harder look at that "lingering discomfort." Their daughters' welfare is at stake, and they know it.

As for the girls themselves, if you ask them why they dress the way they do, they'll say (roughly) the same things I said to my mother: "What's the big deal?" "But it's the style." "Could you be any more out of it?" What teenage girl doesn't want to be attractive, sought-after and popular?

And what mom doesn't want to help that cause? In my own case, when I see my daughter in drop-dead gorgeous mode, I experience something akin to a thrill—especially since I myself am somewhat past the age to turn heads.

That's a damning revelation, that grown women are still vulnerable to the siren call of popularity and will sacrifice their daughters for a vicarious thrill. If the mother is that shallow, the daughter is doomed.

I wouldn't want us to return to the age of the corset or even of the double standard, because a double standard that lets the promiscuous male off the hook while condemning his female counterpart is both stupid and destructive. If you're the campus mattress, chances are that you need therapy more than you need condemnation.

How about a standard in which promiscuity is rejected by both men and women (or boys and girls, as is so often the case)? There are young men out there, at least a few, who don't view young women as vehicles for their own gratification. I imagine most of them come from the exceptional groups listed above. They make wonderful husbands and fathers. Moses wraps it up:

But it's easy for parents to slip into denial. We wouldn't dream of dropping our daughters off at college and saying: "Study hard and floss every night, honey—and for heaven's sake, get laid!" But that's essentially what we're saying by allowing them to dress the way they do while they're still living under our own roofs.

Ms. Moses needs to keep thinking about this. Perhaps she could talk to some women outside her own circle to get some perspective from mothers whose daughters not only don't dress "like that," but don't have any desire to do so. She might also read Hold On To Your Kids, which has a chapter on promiscuity. These peer-driven, popularity-seeking girls are desperately trying to fill a void.

Have you noticed who is conspicuously absent from Moses' piece? Yes, dear old dad. Does he have any input on this issue, or is he merely a meek, or spurned,  bystander? Is he physically or emotionally absent? If so, could his absence have anything to do with his daughter's premature desire to attract men?

Bonus item from the UK: Isn't it about time we started quizzing 11 year-olds about their sexual preferences? 

Children as young as 11 could soon be asked about their sexuality without their parents’ consent, it has emerged.

Teachers, nurses and youth workers are being urged to set up pilot studies aimed at monitoring adolescent sexual orientation for the first time.

A report commissioned by the Government’s equalities watchdog found that it was ‘practically and ethically’ possible to interview young children about their sexuality.

Controversially, it says parental consent, while ‘considered good practice’, is not a legal necessity.

Put that kettle on the fire.

***
Ten minutes after I posted this, Kathryn Jean Lopez posted this: The AmExed Sexing Up of the American Tween. She echoes a few of my thoughts and adds many worthwhile ones of her own.

***
Linked by Mark Steyn (thank you), who connects all the dots:

In a way, this is part of the same story as Libya, and I'm not so sure that in the long run it isn't the more important part.

It's a must read. My follow-up here.

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Smitty on mom

Materialistic fools rush in:

This is steeped in falsehood. Motherhood IS a career, and anyone who’d condescend toward my mother for raising three well-adjusted children has outed him- or herself as a godforsaken fool.

Furthermore, I’d assert without proof that those saying that parenthood in general and motherhood in particular are somehow worth less than materialistic career pursuits:

• are directly responsible to the cratering of the birthrate,
• hasten the insolvency of the bogus social welfare programs they espouse,
• are among the least happy members of the Brave New World they’ve created,
• systematically project their failure on conservatives,
• foam at the mouth when they hear the name “Sarah Palin”.

I'd call it a vocation rather than a career, but no need to quibble. You go, Smitty! Read the rest.

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"Internationally authorized" and open-ended

Wow. As long as it's "internationally authorized" and not "of vital US national interest," Obama's kinetic whatchamacallit in Libya is a-okay.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates:

“It was not — it was not a vital national interest to the United States, but it was an interest and it was an interest for all of the reasons Secretary Clinton talked about.  The engagement of the Arabs, the engagement of the Europeans, the general humanitarian question that was at stake,” he said.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:

Tapper asked Clinton, “Why not got to Congress?”

“Well, we would welcome congressional support,” the Secretary said, “but I don't think that this kind of internationally authorized intervention where we are one of a number of countries participating to enforce a humanitarian mission is the kind of unilateral action that either I or President Obama was speaking of several years ago.”

Which reminds me of this great post from Power Line: His Royal Highness Will Be Pleased to Welcome Your Support! Back to Hillary:

“I think that this had a limited timeframe, a very clearly defined mission which we are in the process of fulfilling,” Clinton said.

"A very clearly defined mission"? Even Eugene Robinson isn't buying that.

And apparently Secretary Gates didn't get the memo on the "limited timeframe" spin:

Asked whether he expects the mission to be over by year's end, Gates said, "I don't think anybody knows the answer to that."

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Libyan woman's rape claims stifled

After Libyan woman’s rape claims, methods of Gaddafi government put on display:

The drama began when the clearly distressed woman ventured into the five-star Rixos Hotel, where members of the foreign media are staying, and burst into the breakfast room, shouting that she had been detained and raped by militiamen loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi.

“Look what Gaddafi’s militia have done to me,” she said, raising her long black robe to reveal scratch marks and blood on her thigh. There were also bruises and lacerations on her cheeks, and marks on her hands and ankles indicating that she had been tied up.

A small group of reporters gathered around to listen. She gave her name as Iman al-Obaidi and recounted how she had been detained by Gaddafi militiamen at a checkpoint two days earlier and raped by 15 of them.

“I was tied up. They defecated on me. They urinated on me. They violated my honor,” she said.

As she spoke, hotel staff members, security guards and government minders closed in on her and began dragging her away. Journalists who tried to protect her were punched, and one, Charles Clover of the Financial Times, was knocked to the ground and kicked. Shortly afterward, Clover was deported. He had been told the night before that he would have to leave the country because the government did not like his reporting.

Two waitresses grabbed knives and screamed that the woman was a “traitor” to Gaddafi, and one threw a coat over her head in an effort to silence her. Government minders, who are assigned to supervise and supposedly protect journalists, snatched a CNN camera and smashed it, and one of them pulled a pistol when the cameraman tried to take it back.

Eventually, the woman — screaming, “They are taking me to jail!” — was hauled outside to an unmarked car, which whisked her away at high speed.

It was all caught on camera:



The way the waitresses pounce on her is especially painful to watch.



Initially, the government accused the woman of being both drunk and mentally disturbed, but the police subsequently backtracked on that:

After the episode, Musa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, said she appeared to be drunk and mentally ill. He said that the authorities were investigating the case, including the possibility that her reports of abuse were “fantasies.”

In a news conference later on Saturday, Mr. Ibrahim said that Ms. Obeidy was in the custody of Libyan police detectives who were treating her as a sane person with a credible criminal case of abduction and rape. “It is a criminal case, not a political case,” he said, promising that it would be investigated to the full extent of the law and that she would have a chance to meet again with journalists.

Kudos to the journalists who tried to intervene on the woman's behalf, including Charles Clover, who was physically attacked and then put in a van and driven to the border.

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What part of "broke" don't they understand?

Like responsible parents, those with a clue must continue to hammer on the number one point: We're broke. The children don't want to hear it, so constant repetition will be necessary.

Mark Steyn in London:

Still, on balance I prefer the class-war thugs trashing the joint, who at least have the courage of their convictions. The “nice” people bussed in from the shires struck me as some of the most stupid people I’ve ever met anywhere on the planet. One elderly lady from Yorkshire told me she was there because her grandson’s university fees were likely to go up. I was in a cranky mood because I hadn’t had my coffee. “You can protest all you like,” I said. “But this country’s broke, so all you’re doing is postponing its reacquaintanceship with reality, and ensuring that your grandson and his contemporaries are going to be stuck with the tab because you guys spent their future.” I pointed out that in her part of the world – northern England – as in Wales and Northern Ireland, the state accounts for three-quarters of the economy. And it’s still not enough for the likes of her and her pals.

She stared at me blankly. “Well, I don’t want to argue,” she said politely. “I just think it’s a disgrace.”

It's a childlike stupidity -- only a dependent, immature being could demand more when there's nothing left -- and the tantrum is only getting started.

Another from Mark on the spot: Earth Hour in London. Read them both and click on his links.

Must run. Enjoy your Sunday.

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Saturday reads

Steyn's Saturday column: The Art of Inconclusive War

It is tempting and certainly very easy to point out that Obama’s war (or Obama’s “kinetic military action,” or “time-limited, scope-limited military action,” or whatever the latest ever more preposterous evasion is) is at odds with everything candidate Obama said about U.S. military action before his election. And certainly every attempt the president makes to explain his Libyan adventure is either cringe-makingly stupid (“I’m accustomed to this contradiction of being both a commander-in-chief but also somebody who aspires to peace”) or alarmingly revealing of a very peculiar worldview:

Read on.

George Weigel explains How Democrats View the World:

In briefest compass, eight ideas have shaped the foreign-policy perspective of today’s Democratic establishment. Different leaders will emphasize one or another of these ideas, and circumstances will dictate the ways in which these ideas are applied to real-world situations. However, anyone wanting to dig into the subsoil of the incompetence, ineptness, and just plain bad judgment currently on display had better be prepared to reckon with these eight ideas — and with the fact that people in power actually swear fealty to them.

Among them:

Conflict is not the normal political phenomenon that it was assumed to be for millennia. 

and:

Peace is not a matter of a rightly ordered and law-governed political community; rather, “peace” is a state of mind that can be willed into being.

Read the whole thing.

The military now regrets naming Obama's kinetic-limited-scope thingummy Odyssey Dawn:

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a senior fellow with the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, said "Odyssey Dawn" doesn't send the right signal for a mission already under criticism for potentially being open-ended.

"It kind of denotes almost a wandering around the landscape," he said. "Odyssey, in this case ... reinforces the bad perceptions already out there."

Other items:

Who is the enemy of our enemy?: Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links, US, allies, ponder arming Libyan rebels and, 'Al-Qaeda snatched missiles' in Libya.

Meanwhile, in Egypt: Egyptian Soldiers Forced Women Protesters to Undergo “Virginity Tests” During Revolt Against Mubarak and Muslim Brotherhood appears to have seized the Egyptian revolution.

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Music break: Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me

From Suzy Bogguss's Swing CD, a classic:



Nat King Cole:



Mose Allison:



Bonus: Mose Allison does Don't Get Around Much Anymore




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Winging it

Via Hot Air and Politico, we learn that Obama is "avoiding" an address to the nation on Libya until he sees how things shake out:

That’s not to say the president won’t talk about Libya over the next few days, aides say, but he’s not likely to succumb to pressure to deliver a long, explanatory address to outline his elusive endgame to the nation until the path ahead becomes clearer. 

That's called "winging it." As one analyst dryly observed, "I am surprised these things were not worked out beforehand."

Presidential spokesman Jay Carney:

“The issue of format and forum is not the question here. It’s the fact that he has addressed this on multiple occasions and will continue to address this. I’m not ruling out format or forum in the future in any way.”

So keep your eye out for a presidential visit with the girls on The View, or maybe an update on the president's Facebook page.

Being new at these things, Obama and company are finding the handoff to NATO to be trickier than they thought it would be:

The U.S. welcomed NATO’s decision to take over command of the no-fly zone over Libya, but the alliance’s new role doesn’t allow America to swiftly take on a supporting role in the effort as the Obama administration had wanted.

American sea and airpower remain key parts of the effort to keep forces loyal to Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi from attacking civilians after allies balked at assuming complete command of the campaign that began six days ago. The U.S., along with France and Great Britain, maintains primary responsibility for attacks on Qaddafi's ground forces and air defense systems, which are the toughest and most controversial parts of the operation.

Charles Krauthammer:

This confusion is purely the result of Obama’s decision to get America into the war and then immediately relinquish American command. Never modest about himself, Obama is supremely modest about his country. America should be merely “one of the partners among many,” he said Monday. No primus inter pares for him. Even the Clinton administration spoke of America as the indispensable nation. And it remains so. Yet at a time when the world is hungry for America to lead — no one has anything near our capabilities, experience, and resources — America is led by a man determined that it should not.

A man who dithers over parchment. Who starts a war from which he wants out right away. Good God. If you go to take Vienna, take Vienna. If you’re not prepared to do so, better then to stay home and do nothing.

RTR. Obama doesn't want to be a leader.

***
Steven Hayward on that, and on the questionable constitutionality of Obama's scheme to place US military forces under foreign control:

Under the current operation, however, Obama's place in the chain of command is ambiguous. Even though an American sits at the apex of NATO, it appears as though the command decisions involving American military forces will be coming from a NATO committee rather than from the commander-in-chief. This is almost certainly an unconstitutional delegation of the President's command responsibilities; it is incompatible with the "commander-in-chief" clause of Article II of the Constitution. Among other things, it dilutes Obama's accountability for the results. This may well be Obama's strongest innermost desire, of course. He clearly has no stomach for his duties as commander-in-chief, and in handing over to NATO is voting "present" once again.

Read the rest.

***

Do not miss Victor Davis Hanson's Hard Truths on Libya. (Any way we could get Obama to read it?)


Linked at MichelleMalkin.com -- many thanks.
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Clear as mud

Clarity from the world's most articulate man:

The exit strategy will be executed this week in the sense that we will be pulling back from our much more active efforts to shape the environment.

Got that? And hey, just so there's no misunderstanding: it's not a war, it's a kinetic military action.

I don't understand why Obama decided to take action in Libya. Don Surber has a theory:

We only have a president who wants to do something big. Just what it is and how to do so is unimportant.

RTR.

It's Mission Impossible to Define.

Via Politico:

BREAKING – “France: Libya operation may last weeks, not months” – AP/Paris: “The international military operation against Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's forces may last days or weeks - but not months, France's foreign minister [Alain Juppe] said Thursday.” 

Any bets on when that will morph into "months, not years"?

Or perhaps, as Jim Geraghty fears, Obama will have a private 'oops -- my bad'  moment and bail:

This is my new worry: Obama will realize what a complicated mess he’s just charged into, realize that seeing this through would mean telling the American people things they don’t want to hear and require telling his own party to grow up, and he’ll try to find the military equivalent of voting “present.” My guess is that means after a certain number of air strikes, declaring victory and ceasing military operations, declaring that cause that got us into this, protecting civilians is now the responsibility of “the world community.” Our allies shrug, pointing out the obvious, that they don’t have the resources to continue operations anywhere near the current tempo. Most of the rest of the world yawns and turns away. Qaddafi resumes his offensive against the rebels, who start to feel like the Kurds after the Gulf War, and begin fermenting bitter anti-American feelings of betrayal as they retreat towards the Egyptian border.

RTR.

***
Mission creep: Door open to military coordination with rebels?


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Leaving Detroit

It's what people do. The Motor City has lost 25% of its population in ten years.

Michael Barone:

Fully one-fifth of the housing units in Detroit are vacant, and of course many more have simply disappeared. I was in kindergarten in Detroit in April 1950, when the Census Bureau count for the city was 1,849,568. In the intervening 60 years the city’s population has declined by 1,135,791 people. The city’s population is down 61% in those years. When people ask me why I moved from being a liberal to being a conservative, my single-word answer is Detroit. The liberal policies which I hoped would make Detroit something like heaven have made it instead something more like hell.

Who killed Detroit?

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Arrested development

In a recent CNN interview, our philosopher-king president revealed that his thinking on war and peace stopped evolving somewhere around age eleven:

I'm accustomed to this contradiction of being both a commander-in-chief but also somebody who aspires to peace. 

Peace through strength? Does that ring a bell? Did all our wartime presidents not aspire to peace?

Even after two years of this, Obama's arrogance/ignorance/ideological blindness is still jaw-dropping.

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Comments on Libya

Ben Stein wonders who put the UN Security Council in charge of US foreign policy:

But, when did we amend the Constitution to declare that the United Nations had control over our military? When did we abolish the part of the Constitution that said Congress had the right to declare war? Now, I well know that in recent postwar conflicts, we don't have declarations of war. But we have Congressional  debates. We have funding votes. We have a sense of the Congress or some kind of resolution.

This time, zip. Nada. Nothing. Just France and the U.K. and Norway saying that it's time to go to war, and off America goes to war. And off Mr. and Mrs. Obama go to a South American "fact finding" trip for the POTUS and a fun sightseeing junket for the Obama girls.

(I wonder if there has ever before in history been a national leader who sent his country to war -- and the same day went off on vacation. Has that ever happened before? )

Never fear; the president has shaved a few hours off his junket to show us how engaged he is.

Jonah Goldberg thinks Obama missed his moment:

That was the time to seize the moment, to give Qaddafi a shove when he was already off-balance. If the dictator had been toppled when the rebels were gaining strength, America’s support would have been written off as incidental, with the Libyans taking credit for their own revolution.

But such an approach would have required America to run down the court alone, out ahead of its allies and the international community. For Obama the multilateralist, that would have been too much unilateral hot-dogging.

So Obama slowed things down to set up the play he wanted rather than the play the moment demanded. As a result, Qaddafi regained his balance.

But it was never meant to be. By definition, only a leader can execute a fast break. Obama is no leader.

Daniel Foster reports that the rebels are going to need a whole lotta help:

The upshot: the opposition is poorly armed and poorly trained, with no real plan, and defecting regular military units have been slow to reorganize and break out from Benghazi to join their cause. Worse, the western no-fly zone is providing only incidental cover for a counterattack against Qaddafi forces, and at some points of engagement — such as the critical Ajdabiyah — the rebel advance is being halted by as few as three to five tanks.

“We have no plan. We are just going like this. We have no army,” says one rebel volunteer. “It’s not a good thing but we have no choice. We are fighting to win or die.”

Quagmire.

The suit, and the office, are empty. Ed Morrissey:

Obama refused to leave the country when ObamaCare was at risk, but refused to postpone a trip while putting the US military in harm’s way in Libya for the first time.

And his head is full of mush. Get this from Tom Maguire:

I understand that Obama is trying to not lead a fractious coalition of the uncertain, but this is ridiculous:

Obama says Qadhafi could stay

President Obama indicated on Tuesday that Muammar Qadhafi may still have an opportunity to “change his approach” and put in place “significant reforms” in the Libyan government.

Asked by NBC’s Savannah Guthrie what the U.S. commitment is in Libya if Qadhafi remains in power but continues to pose a threat to his people, Obama appeared to leave the door open for political reforms.

“You are absolutely right that as long as Qadhafi remains in power, and unless he changes his approach and there are significant reforms in the Libyan government that allow the Libyan people to express themselves, there are still going be potential threats against Libyan people—unless he is going to step down,” Obama said.

Obama did manage to backpedal during his own comments; its reassuring that at least Obama is still listening to himself.

RTR. He keeps asking us to let him be clear. Please, be our guest. Contrast Obama's vague waffling to George Bush's clarity, as quoted by Mark Steyn. I doubt Obama is capable of being that clear, even if he wanted to be, which he doesn't.

***
Update: Who's in charge? Germans pull forces out of NATO as Libyan coalition falls apart


Linked at Michelle Malkin -- many thanks.
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Steyn on WGN

In case you haven't yet listened to Mark Steyn's talk with Milt Rosenberg consider this your reminder. It's long but that's a good thing. Mark covers a wide range of subjects, including the "desperate sadness" of the hook-up culture, and popular music:

I think in broader social terms, if you don't have, for example, certain kind of courtship rituals, its very difficult to have meaningful love songs. . . . . I'm always staggered by the sadness when you talk to, say, single women of a certain age in New York City in the year 2011 . . . . The courtship rituals of 2011, the kind of men that are out there, the roles of the sexes, these things make a song like It Had To Be You difficult to write.

Also discussed: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, why the Japanese don't loot, town government, Barack's brackets, the borders, the bonobo, and much more. Go listen.

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What do you want for $4 million an hour?

An unofficial ballpark estimate of the cost of Obama's war in Libya is $100 million a day. After a while that adds up to real money. Sen. Richard Lugar isn't happy:

“Congress has been squabbling for months over a budget to run the federal government for a fiscal year that is almost half over,” Lugar said in a statement Monday.

“We argue over where to cut $100 million here and there from programs many people like,” Lugar said. “So here comes an open-ended military action with no-end game envisioned.”

Kevin Williamson:

Hourly cost of whatever it is we’re doing in Libya: about $4 million. Total cost of building one mile of border fence, as undertaken by our horribly inefficient, bloated, largely incompetent federal government: about $2 million. So, every 30 minutes we’re in Libya is one mile of border fence we could have built: Assuming the mission is accomplished in each case, which investment would make us safer?

And that leaves out the human cost. Thank God the two American airmen whose jet crashed wound up in safe hands. It could easily have been otherwise. War is hell. It would be nice to know why our military is involved this one.

No one knows for sure. Is it to protect civilians (open to definition), to remove Qaddafi's forces from particular locations, to take out Qaddafi himself, to help the "freedom fighters" (whoever they are), or the latest, from our errant president: to "install a democratic system"? (Do you think that can that be done in "days, not weeks," too?)

Rich Lowry calls it an unholy muddle:

We’re engaged in mincing definitional games about when we’ll target the Libyan military and when a rebel is a civilian worthy of protection and when he isn’t. I’d think at the very least we’d be hitting what we can of Qaddafi’s ground assets in and around Ajdabiya, Misrata, and Zawiya, given that it was an unconditional demand of President Obama that Qaddafi remove his forces from those places in his speech Friday. That demand seemed to make the most minimal goal of the military campaign rolling Qaddafi back from all the gains he had made in recent weeks.

Now, who knows? I think I have a higher tolerance for diplomatic opacity than many others in here, but this is ridiculous.

Another area of confusion is the "handing off" Obama insists will happen soon:

"Right now, we're in discussions with our partners about the nature of that transition, the nature of the command structure that will follow on from the actions that we're undertaking right now," Obama deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters traveling with the president en route to Chile.

"We anticipate, again, that that command structure will include our European allies and will take place, we've said, in a matter of days, not weeks," he said. [. . .]

The confusion "shows why you need to figure these things out in advance," said Robert Hunter, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, now at the RAND Corp., a research organization. "I am surprised these things were not worked out beforehand."

Amateur hour.

H/t: Hot Air headlines

Linked by Doug Ross -- many thanks.
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Problems with polygamy

Matthew Archbold doesn't think polygamy is cute:

While the legal groundwork to topple marriage is being laid firmly, the cultural groundwork is also being being firmed up. The polygamy based show “Big Love” just signed off after five successful seasons. And TLC’s “Sister Wives” is even getting their own cutesy ads like this one.

I watched it. I can't decide whom I'd like to throttle more: smirking Kody with his surfer hair or the seemingly mindless women who "married" him. (Guys: Wouldn't one of them be enough?)

Archbold reports on the battle being fought against traditional marriage right now in Canada:

Canada, which legalized same sex marriage in 2005 is now awaiting a judge’s ruling whether polygamy laws are illegal. Just this week, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association intervened by calling for Canada’s polygamy law to be “relegated to the scrap heap of history."

Where is that scrap heap, exactly? It might be a pretty decent place to live.

Archbold lists some of the damaging personal and cultural effects of polygamy.  Phyllis Chesler, in a piece about the underwear bomber back in 2009, brings up another issue: the high cost to the sons of polygamy:

Both men are lonely sons of Allah, yearning for paternal attention, even affection, in a polygamous culture in which fathers have too many children and little incentive to pay close attention to any one of them. This is devastating, especially to sons, because the culture overly values fathers and men, and grossly undervalues mothers and women. Thus, the attention a son may receive from his mother (if she is not sent away, as Bin Laden’s mother was) does not make up for the missing and longed-for father.

I have often thought that the way many Arab Muslim brothers brutally order their sisters around not only reflects how their fathers treat everyone, but is also a measure of their frustration about not being able to bond with their absent, lordly fathers. Thus, for a number of reasons, prison-style sexuality as well as homosexuality and homosexual pederasty is as rampant as it is forbidden in Arab and Muslim culture.

Arab and Muslim sons desperately want their fathers. But their fathers are busy marrying other, younger wives, having other, newer children, and founding financial empires. They want their fathers to redeem them from the shameful fate of living in a world of mainly women–which they do when they are very young; and of course, they want their fathers for reasons of identity and inheritance.

Is anyone arguing that it's better for a child to be raised in a polygamous household than in a traditional family, or are the children (as is usual in our brave new world) not considered at all?

Related, from Wintery Knight: Queen's University feminist says that polygamy should be permitted

Also see Mindelle Jacobs, writing for the Calgary Sun:

Credible experts warn repeatedly that polygamy is harmful to women and children.


How can it not be when men disguise megalomania in religious trappings and sow the seeds of misogyny and social dysfunction? That’s not religion, it’s pathology.

Do we want to be the first western country to OK polygamy?

[Feminist Carrisima] Mathen sees nothing wrong with it.

“(The polygamy ban) is a regression … to a time when we were much more comfortable with using the criminal law to promote a very narrow kind of moral value,” she explained.

What a weird way to champion women’s rights.

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Weeks, not days

I think we all saw this one coming. Contrary to what we were told the day before yesterday, Chuck Todd tweets:

Bit of breaking news from WH on Af1, WH now says military handoff to enforce No-Fly zone will be in a "couple of weeks."

As the song says, Weeks turn into years, how quick they pass. (H/t: Hot Air headlines)

Some assorted commentary:

Ed Morrissey:

First, though, Obama has to actually lead, which involves coming home and talking with Americans rather than juggling soccer balls on the streets of Rio while he sends the military into a new theater of action. Kurtz’s panel mentions the strange public relations of the White House leading up to the start of Operation Odyssey Dawn, but practically no media has pointed out that Obama is likely the first President in the modern era to launch aggressive military action against another nation without addressing the nation from the Oval Office, or even sticking around Washington to lead during the opening phases of the operation.

That's so old school, sitting around in the war room with all those uptight bores. They look at you like you've got two heads when you try to switch one of the monitors to ESPN. (Maybe if Obama invited a few friends in to liven things up, he'd take more of an interest.)

Niall Ferguson: 

Obama, a novice in foreign affairs, is a president without a strategy. Once a critic of American military intervention in the Middle East, once a skeptic about the chances of democratizing the region, he now finds himself with a poisoned chalice in each hand. In one there are the dregs of the last administration’s interventions: military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan that he is eager to wind down. In the other is a freshly poured draft of his own making.

It's all very Shakespearean, but not in a good way. RTR.

Timothy Carney:

Setting aside the wisdom of the intervention, Obama's entry into Libya's civil war is troubling on at least five counts. First is the legal and constitutional question. Second is the manner of Obama's announcement. Third is the complete disregard for public opinion and lack of debate. Fourth is the unclear role the United States will play in this coalition. Fifth is the lack of a clear endgame. Compounding all these problems is the lack of trust created by Obama's record of deception.

He keeps his transparency award on the shelf next to his Nobel peace prize.

Victor Volsky:

The famous Occam's razor principle states that the simplest explanation is the most plausible one. Applying it to dispel the fog of propaganda, it becomes glaringly obvious that Obama is an accidental president, a lazy and indecisive incompetent devoid of any ability or desire to perform the job to which he was elected by a gullible majority, who loves the perks but hates the duties of his office; who loves to play but hates to work. Have a good look at the man occupying the White House: what you see is what you get. The Emperor has no clothes.

Or as husband put it this morning (after asking me whether we were any in new wars today), "He lucked into the presidency."

***

Commenter LibertyAtStake writes below:

'Ann Compton, ABC News!' just told me over the radio they haven't even identified WHO TO MAKE THE HANDOFF TO. Her words: "nobody ready and willing."

This is now officially a three-ring circus ...

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Let him be clear

Obama's favorite phrase takes on deeper irony as Americans try to comprehend his muddled mission in Libya.

Sen. Richard Lugar:

“We had better get this straight from the beginning or there is going to be a situation in which war lingers on in country after country, situation after situation, all of them on a humane basis, saving people,” he said.

Lugar worries that President Obama has not fully explained how the situation will unfold. “We really have not discovered who it is in Libya that we are trying to support,” he said. “Obviously, the people that are against Qaddafi, but who?  In eastern Libya, for example, a huge number of people went off to help the Iraqis, against the United States, in a war that is still winding down.”

Lugar argued that Congress deserves an opportunity to consider military action before it moves forward. “We are not declaring war at this point,” he said. “If we are going to war with Libya, we ought to have a declaration of war by the Congress.”

Or at least a consultation:

But GOP sources say Obama does have an obligation to "consult" with Congress, and those sources do not believe that Obama's discussion with Congressional leaders on Friday -- one source called it a "cattle call conference call" -- was enough to satisfy that obligation.  "The administration was simply informing Congress that it was happening, as it was happening," says the source.  "There was no consultation beforehand."

Speaker Boehner calls for clarification:

The President is the commander-in-chief, but the Administration has a responsibility to define for the American people, the Congress, and our troops what the mission in Libya is, better explain what America’s role is in achieving that mission, and make clear how it will be accomplished. Before any further military commitments are made, the Administration must do a better job of briefing members of Congress and communicating to the American people about our mission in Libya and how it will be achieved.

Hillary says we're not leading this, but Byron York believes we really are, because no one else can:

That became entirely clear in Gortney's briefing. "In these early days, the operation will be under the operational command of General Carter Ham, commander of U.S. Africa Command," Gortney told reporters at the Pentagon. "And the commander of Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn, which is the name of this operation, is Admiral Sam Locklear, who is embarked on board USS Mount Whitney in the Mediterranean."

The United States, Gortney stressed, is in full charge of the Libya operation. Although Gortney said there would be an "eventual transition of leadership to a coalition commander in the coming days," he also added: "That said, the U.S. military has and will continue to use our unique capabilities to create the conditions from which we and our partners can best enforce the full measure of the U.N. mandate."

A different take from JE Dyer, We're not in charge, folks:

The void in strategic communication from the administration is what matters here.  When such communication is present, US policy – well-founded or otherwise – is being executed by American forces.  Even Carter and Clinton got that right.  When that communication is not present, American forces have been placed in the service of policies defined – or merely hinted at – by others.  Minus the rendering of payments, our military is, in effect, being rented out.  No good can come of that.

In practice, the mission appears open-ended:

One piece of news might raise eyebrows — the US has sent fighter jets from Sicily to attack Gaddafi’s ground forces around Benghazi:
That would seem to go beyond the UN mandate for a no-fly zone. The Pentagon tells NBC that their interpretation of the mandate is that they need to protect civilians, an interpretation that would leave practically no option off the table.

As gratifying as it is for some of us to watch our Air Force take target practice on Qaddafi's air defenses, the last thing we want is for our military to be involved in yet another insoluble mess in the Arab world.

I'm surprised, given the political unpopularity of the move, that Obama has chosen to go after Qaddafi with force. Americans are already strongly opposed to a third war and their distaste will only increase when some of the wrong people lose their lives, which is inevitable. Any theories as to why he's gone ahead with this?

Another reason to stay out of this: Cruise missiles go for something like $1,000,000 a pop. We've already launched 112.


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Music break: A Garden in the Rain

How about this --



I love it. Sinatra sang it, too.

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Questions about Libya

If you're already feeling queasy about our new military involvement in Libya, what follows won't reassure you:

John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, tells National Review Online that President Obama is dithering on Libya. “Every hour that goes by shows me how [Obama] is not ready for this,” he says. “I am feeling sick to my stomach that we are into something where the president does not know what he is doing.” [. . .]

Bolton notes that the president did not establish a deadline for Qaddafi or explain how he would proceed militarily. This lack of a clear strategy, he worries, could inflame the situation.

“We have lost a huge opportunity by waiting to act so late,” he says. “A real president would have had his military plan ready to go the minute that resolution was adopted, and he would have implemented it.”

Read the rest.

Tom Maguire: To The Shores Of Tripoli Benghazi: Special "Days Not Weeks" Edition:

SENDING A STRONG SIGNAL: The Times gets inside the decision process and reassures us that Obama is commited to vacillation and weakness. After explaining that this is Hillary's war, they deliver this jaw-dropper:

On Thursday, during an hour-and-a -half meeting, Mr. Obama signed off on allowing American pilots to join Europeans and Arabs in military strikes against the Libyan government.

The president had a caveat, though. The American involvement in military action in Libya should be limited — no ground troops — and finite. “Days, not weeks,” a senior White House official recalled him saying.

"Days, not weeks"? Seriously? Because several folks (Ross Douthat, Jeffrey Goldberg, Clive Crook) have made the seemingly obvious point that if Qadaffi simply accepts a cease fire in place (which is, after all, what the UN requested), that may not result in the fall of his government. In which case we may be propping up the rebels in Benghazi for years, not days. Is Obama really not aware of this possibility? Does he seriously think the US will abandon its role in the no-fly zone after a few days if the situation is unresolved? Or is he really just too focused on the NCAA upsets to think clearly about this?

I envision a slight recasting of Hillary's Eleven, a star-studded caper film with Hillary Clinton asking Barack Obama "Are you in or out?" Because it doesn't sound like Barry realizes we can't be in for just a day or two.

Jake Tapper reports that Obama has told Congress that, after the initial "heavy kinetic activity," "the US would then take more of a supporting role." We don't know what that role would entail nor how long it would last.

Charles Krauthammer points out that Obama is demanding more than a ceasefire in place:



The relevant portion Krauthammer is referring to:

Now, once more, Moammar Qaddafi has a choice. The resolution that passed lays out very clear conditions that must be met. The United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Arab states agree that a cease-fire must be implemented immediately.  That means all attacks against civilians must stop. Qaddafi must stop his troops from advancing on Benghazi, pull them back from Ajdabiya, Misrata, and Zawiya, and establish water, electricity and gas supplies to all areas. Humanitarian assistance must be allowed to reach the people of Libya.

Let me be clear, these terms are not negotiable. These terms are not subject to negotiation. If Qaddafi does not comply with the resolution, the international community will impose consequences, and the resolution will be enforced through military action.

What happens when Qaddafi ignores Obama's demands that he surrender control of those cities? Beware mission creep.

Also unclear: Who are the rebels?

Then there's the question of the Constitution. Andy McCarthy: Go to Congress First.

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Mother of the year

The award goes to Lashawnda Allen of Houston, Texas:

Allen told the roommate that the two kids were in the apartment and that her toddler was drunk. When the roommate rushed inside to check on the kids, she found Allen's 4-month-old baby hanging off the bed with the sheets tangled around her waist, turning blue. But, the 20-month-old was nowhere to be found, the station reported.

A neighbor told police she had found the toddler in the parking lot and the toddler appeared to be intoxicated. The roommate then called an ambulance, reports the station.

Allen admitted she'd been drinking Four Loko that day and had fallen asleep. When she woke up she said she saw the toddler on the floor with an empty Four Loko can, the station reports.

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Various & sundry

I'm short on time today but here are a few things:

Mark Krikorian on war in Libya:

Of course our armed forces will again perform brilliantly, and Qaddafi and his repellent mafia clan will be hanging from piano wire in no time. But everyone knows we’ll end up staying to pacify the country, trying in vain to reconcile one gang of cretinous barbarians with the neighboring gang of cretinous barbarians. As loathsome as Qaddafi is and as richly as he deserves death, there’s nothing happening in Libya that warrants even one American soldier risking a twisted ankle, let alone his limbs, his mind, or his life.

I agree. Read the rest.

Tom Maguire:

Well - is a military effort over Libya really going to simply commence, with no Congressional debate or Presidential address?  Amazing - I would not expect that from the First Ditherer.  And frankly, starting something that looks like a war with no public support, debate, or preparation is absurd.  On the other hand, this is a huge weekend for the NCAA March Madness, so we can't really expect Obama to emerge until early next week.

On the perpetual campaign trail, Obama's been warning lefties not to take him for granted. Apparently, Brazilian progressives didn't get the memo; a planned speech in the historic Cinelandia public square in Rio de Janeiro has been canceled due to anti-American (or anti-Obama?) "signage." But the spectacular beaches will make up for that rejection, I imagine.

More rejection:

Bless her little cotton socks - teenage pop sensation Rebecca Black feels she's being "cyberbullied" in the wake of hostile reaction to her song Friday. Well, Miss Black should spare a thought for the millions of men, women and children who stumbled upon the video to Friday and as a result are now either in therapy or in a coma.

The 13-year-old Black, a cutie-pie Californian, released the song after her mother paid a LA record label, Ark Music Factory, $2,000 to indulge her daughter’s ambition to become a pop star. [. . .]

Responding to some of the criticism coming her way, Black told The Daily Beast in her first interview: "Those hurtful comments really shocked me. At times I feel like I'm being cyberbullied... Friday is about hanging out with friends, having fun. I felt like it was my personality in that song."

Maybe Rebecca's mom didn't do her any favors when she thrust her into the limelight.


I'm 100% unqualified to comment on this but . . . . Vasectomies Spike by 50 Percent  During March Madness:

“They need at least a day with ice, keeping the area cool,” Jones said. “Not so much because it hurts, it really doesn’t hurt much – but it’s an area that swells very easily. So, if they’re going to spend a whole day doing nothing – it’s not hard to figure out that they’d want to do it on a day they’d like to be sitting in front of the television. There’s nothing that makes guys want to be in front of a television more than March Madness.”

Some urologists take advantage of the increase and offer incentives like coupons for free pizza delivery, sports magazines and “survival kits,” which are given to the men after surgery, USA Today reported.

The docs are obviously trying to promote a casual attitude toward voluntary sterilization, and it seems plenty of men are buying it.


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"We-we-we so excited"

The viral YouTube sensation Friday is attracting more than a million hits a day.  Andrew Klavan calls it the Worst. Song. Ever. I'm not willing to go that far, but it's god-awful for sure. Klavan:

Cole Porter lived in this country once.  So did Irving Berlin.  And I'll be honest and say that I believe, when the rubble of what was once our civilization is unearthed by future generations (next Thursday, by my best guess), their archeologists will discover that American music peaked somewhere between 1930 and 1950.

Indisputable. Just in the ten years from 1934 to 1943, American songwriters burst forth with I Get a Kick out of You, Just One of Those Things, I've Got You Under My Skin (Cole Porter), Let's Face the Music and Dance, Change Partners, I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm (Irving Berlin), They Can't Take That Away From Me, Love is Here to Stay, (George and Ira Gershwin), Day In, Day Out (Rube Bloom and Johnny Mercer) Skylark (Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer) and The Way You Look Tonight (Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields).

Since then a vacuous youth culture has risen and come to dominate popular music and entertainment. This is music by and for 13 year-olds. So yeah, Cole Porter it ain't:

Kickin’ in the front seat
Sittin’ in the back seat
Gotta make my mind up
Which seat can I take?

Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday
Today i-is Friday, Friday (Partyin’)
We-we-we so excited
We so excited
We gonna have a ball today

Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin’ forward to the weekend

Et cetera. But hey, people aren't actually paying to watch it. So maybe all isn't lost.

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On Planet Obama, life's a beach

Get used to this kind of rhetoric. We're going to be hearing it for the next year and a half:

Obama told a gathering of top donors and Democratic officials that, while his work is not finished, "we have made extraordinary progress over these last two years."

"When you look back at the track record of work that we've done over the last two years, I think it's fair to say the promise we made to the American people has been kept, that we have delivered in change that we can believe in," Obama said.

[Insert your own primal scream here.]

As in 2008, Obama is intent on remaking America:

Obama praised Plouffe's short tenure at the White House. "We've already seen just the enormous focus and energy and wisdom that he brings to the task of trying to make America adapt to the 21st Century and be successful for generations to come," Obama said. [. . .]

"As 2012 unfolds, I expect that we’re going to have a lot of questions and there are going to be vigorous debates, but I don’t want us to lose sight of the huge opportunities we have to seize the moment and make sure that America is not just changed, but is changed for the better," Obama said.

Yes, it's all going beautifully, and in case you were concerned, he's really enjoying himself, even if the job is a bit tiring:

"There are times where Michelle reminds me that I volunteered for this job," Obama said to laughs. "Because she looks at me and I looked tired.  But I'm telling you, I am having an extraordinary time, because there aren’t many moments in our lives where we know that we’re making a difference. And this is one of those moments."

Tired? Maybe he can catch up on his sleep on the beach in sunny Brazil. The White House defends the flight down to Rio:

'The President is taking this trip because he is committed to growing the economy and rebalancing our national security posture,' Mr Carney said after he was asked if the trip might be shelved.

'He remains confident he can fully execute his job when he is on the road,’ added Mr Carney.

He said the President will monitor ‘all major issues, all the time’ wherever he is.

Which means they get ESPN in Brazil.

Mr Obama will be giving a speech at the Cinelandia Square in Rio on Sunday and his family is expected to join him to take in the city sights, including the famous Christ the Redeemer statue on Corcovado Mountain.

The Obamas will be heading to the beach after meeting Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in the capital Brasilia on Saturday.

JWF calls him delusional. It just seems that way to those of us stuck on planet Earth.


Linked at MichelleMalkin.com -- many thanks.
Many thanks, too, to Doug Ross.

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Barack the Unwilling

Or perhaps just the Uninterested. John Podhoretz calls him Bartleby the President:

The moment demands that he rise to the challenge of showing America and the world that he is taking the reins. How leaders act in times of unanticipated crisis, in which they do not have a formulated game plan and must instead navigate in treacherous waters, defines them.

Obama is defining himself in a way that will destroy him.

It is not merely that he isn't rising to the challenge. He is avoiding the challenge. He is Bartleby the President. He would prefer not to. 

Read the rest. Along those lines:

Fred Thompson: The Brackets of Leadership

Don’t get me wrong, I like putting together an NCAA basketball tournament bracket just as much as the next guy. And let’s acknowledge that NCAA hoops brackets and things like fantasy football pools can be productivity drains in many offices across the country. But the difference between President Obama and the rest of us is that we aren’t calling a meeting of the White House communications staff to rehearse our bracket unveils for a national TV audience while ducking national-security issues, budget negotiations, Social Security reform meetings … you get the idea. And certainly most of us are not picking our brackets with the help of the DNC and an eye toward swing-state votes in our bracket-buster picks.

Ace of Spades: I never want to hear about "The Pet Goat" again

Bush was trying not to alarm young schoolchildren. Obama is alarming everyone. At least he's starting to scare the hell out of me.

Fishersville Mike: My pet bracket

Jim Geraghty: If You Can’t Hack It, Shift Your Focus to the Bracket?

Mark Steyn: Deep Background

Pat Austin: Are You More Worried About Obama's NCAA Brackets Than You Are Japan?

Lonely Conservative: Obama Fiddles While Rome Burns

Keith Koffler: President Obama’s Trivial Pursuits

Allahpundit: Anxious world looks to White House and wonders: Who’s Obama picking for the Final Four?

This is a rare case where I think (hope?) that even our resident liberal trolls will admit that a Republican president in the same situation would be utterly destroyed by the media for wasting time on something so inane as NCAA brackets at a moment of global high anxiety. Libyan rebels holed up in Benghazi are preparing to make their last stand, with all that entails; cable news is wall-to-wall with updates on how much worse than Three Mile Island the situation in Japan is and whether Californians should be stockpiling iodide. And meanwhile, this guy’s talking about Pitt’s perimeter game.

Our own: World in crisis, Obama hits links and Spectator-in-Chief fills out brackets

Then again, maybe it's a good thing:

Shawn Macomber: Embrace the Siesta Presidency!

Gene Healy: Obama does less damage when he's golfing or Madness bracketing on ESPN

I'm sure there are many more out there but I'm out of time. Feel free to post links in the comments.

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