Let’s get this straight. We’re going to be ‘gifted’ with a health care plan we are forced to purchase and fined if we don’t, which purportedly covers at least ten million more people without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that didn’t read it but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a president who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, for which we’ll be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that’s broke!!
Things are certainly different in Switzerland. Can you imagine trying to get these federally-licensed in the USA?
The photo shows a pair of Glock pistols attached at their receivers, and set up to be fired full-auto… sideways.
Not one, but two, full-auto Glocks! (No safety, remember? Just that trigger lever.) And sideways, to boot. This has got to be the greatest firearms idea since the duck foot pistol.
Just the thing if the crew of your ship happens to take a sudden notion to mutiny, but otherwise completely useless and more than a little dangerous.
The Doppel-Glock-Pistole was produced by the Swiss arms manufacturer H.P. Sigg and featured in an article in Schweizer Waffen Magazin, in the issue of December 1997..
Someone recently sold a previous prototype using two CZ-52 chambered in 7.62 Tokarev on Egun . The bidding ended at 136,00 EUR ($18984.24)
The Glock set is comprised of more contemporary pieces, so it would probably bring more at auction, but the CZ-52s actually have safeties. They are kind of neat guns, but were crudely finished during the the Communist era.
Spanish edition: The Last Ringbearer—Discover the Other Side of the Legend
History is written by the winners, we all know. A mischievous Russian biologist and Tolkien fan named Kyrill Eskov decided to attempt to imagine the history of the concluding years of Third Age of Middle Earth from the perspective of the losing side.
As far back as 1999, he published a nearly 300-page alternative-to-the-Lord-of-the-Rings-version, titled The Last Ringbearer. The Eskov Ring was subsequently published in a number of other major European languages, but the closely-allied-to-the-Valar Tolkien estate idealistically has absolutely blocked its publication in English.
Finally, Yisroel Markov, a Manager of Investment Reporting at Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management, completed his own English translation (batted out over “a few dozen lunch hours”). He ran his translation past the author for correction and approval, and then made it non-commercially available on-line last December.
Eskov treats the Tolkien version of Middle Earth history as pious myth and propaganda. The real conflict, in his version, was between the anti-technological Gandalf using barbarous and brigandish men as his cats’ paws against the rational and scientific civilization of Mordor.
Mordor, as you see, is much more favorably portrayed:
Barad-Dur rose six centuries ago, that amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle Earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic. The shining tower of the Barad-Dur citadel rose over the plains of Mordor almost as high as Orodruin like a monument to Man – free Man who had politely but firmly declined the guardianship of the Dwellers on High and started living by his own reason. It was a challenge to the bone-headed aggressive West, which was still picking lice in its log ‘castles’ to the monotonous chanting of scalds extolling the wonders of never-existing Númenor. It was a challenge to the East, buckling under the load of its own wisdom, where Ying and Yang have long ago consumed each other, producing only the refined static beauty of the Thirteen Stones Garden. And it was a challenge to a certain someone else, for the ironic intellectuals of the Mordor Academy, unbeknownst to them, have come right up to the line beyond which the growth of their power promised to become both irreversible and uncontrollable.
And Gandalf and Saruman are also a bit different.
Arnor, the Tower of Amon Súl
November, year 3010 of the Third Age
“A state that is unable to feed itself and is dependent on food imports cannot be considered a formidable foe.”
Those words were uttered by a tall white-bearded old man in a silvery-gray cloak with its hood thrown back; he stood with his fingertips resting on the surface of a black oval table, surrounded by four people in high-backed armchairs, half in shadow. By some signs, his speech had been a success and the Council was on his side, so now the piercing dark blue eyes of the standing man, which contrasted starkly with the parchment-yellow skin of his face, were focused on only one of the four – the one he would have to battle now. That man, huddling tightly in his blinding-white cloak, sat at a slight distance, as if already separating himself from the rest of the Council; he appeared to have a strong fever. Presently he straightened out, clutching the chair arms, and his deep and smooth voice sounded under the dark ceiling:
“Have you any pity on them?”
“On whom?”
“On the people, Gandalf, the people! As I understand it, you have just sentenced the civilization of Mordor to death, in the name of the higher good. But any civilization consists of people, so they would have to be exterminated, completely, with no chance of recovery. Right?”
“Pity is a poor adviser, Saruman. Haven’t you looked in the Mirror with the rest of us?”
Gandalf pointed to the large object in the middle of the table, which looked most like a huge bowl full of quicksilver. “There are many roads to the future, but whichever of them Mordor takes, no later than three centuries hence it will access the forces of Nature that no one will be able to harness. Would you like to once again watch them turn the entire Middle Earth and Far West into ashes, in a blink of an eye?”
“You are correct, Gandalf, and it would be dishonest to deny such a possibility. But then you should exterminate the Dwarves, too: they have already wakened the Terror of the Deep once, and it took all our magic to prevent it from escaping. You know that those bearded tightwads are mulishly stubborn and not inclined to learn from their mistakes…”
“All right, let us not speak of what is possible, and speak only of the inevitable. If you do not wish to look into the Mirror, look at the smoke rising from their coal furnaces and copper refineries. Walk the salt pans into which they have turned the lands west of Núrnen and try to find one living plant on those half-a-thousand square miles. But make sure not to do it on a windy day, when salty dust rises like a wall over the plain of Mordor, choking everything in its path… And note that they have done all that barely out of the crib; what do you think they will do later?”
“Gandalf, a child is always a disaster in the house. First dirty diapers, then broken toys; later, the family clock taken apart; to say nothing of what happens when he grows up a bit. A house without children, on the other hand, is a model of cleanliness and order, yet somehow its owners are usually not too happy about that, especially as they age.”
“Saruman, always have I been amazed by your cunning ability to turn another’s words inside out, and disprove obvious truths via sly casuistry. But by the Halls of Valinor! it will not work now. The Middle Earth population is now a multitude of peoples living in harmony with nature and the heritage of their ancestors. These people and their entire way of life are now under a dire threat, and my duty is to avert it at all costs. A wolf plundering my sheep has its own reasons for doing so, but I have no intent of figuring them out!”
“I am, by the way, no less concerned with the fate of the Gondorians and the Rohirrim than you are; but I look further into the future. Do you, a member of the White Council, not know that the totality of magical knowledge by its very nature can not grow beyond what was once received from Aulë and Oromë? You can lose it quicker or slower, but no one has the power to reverse the loss. Every generation of wizards is weaker than the previous one; sooner or later men will face Nature alone. And then they will need Science and Technology – provided you haven’t eradicated those by then.”
“They don’t need your science, for it destroys the harmony of the world and dries up the souls of men!”
“Strange is the talk of Soul and Harmony on the lips of a man who is about to start a war. As for science, it is dangerous not to them, but to you – or, rather, to your warped self esteem. What are we wizards but consumers of that which our predecessors have created, while they are creators of new knowledge? We face the Past, they face the Future. You have once chosen magic, and therefore will never cross the boundaries set by the Valar, whereas in their science the growth of knowledge – and hence, power – is truly unlimited. You are consumed by the worst kind of envy – that of a craftsman for an artist… Well, I suppose this is a weighty enough reason for murder; you’re neither the first nor the last.”
“You don’t believe this yourself,” Gandalf shrugged calmly.
“No, I suppose I do not,” Saruman shook his head sadly. “You know, those who are motivated by greed, lust for power, or wounded pride are half-way tolerable, at least they feel pangs of conscience sometimes. But there is nothing more fearsome than a bright-eyed enthusiast who’d decided to benefit mankind; such a one can drown the world in blood without hesitation. Those people’s favorite saying is: ‘There are things more important than peace and more terrible than war’ – I believe you’ve heard this one, no?”
“I accept the responsibility, Saruman; History will vindicate me.”
“I have no doubt that it will; after all, history will be written by those who will win under your banner. There are tried and true recipes for that: cast Mordor as the Evil Empire that wished to enslave the entire Middle Earth, and its inhabitants as non-human monsters that rode werewolves and ate human flesh…”
Eskov continues the pattern of debunking. Aragorn is a cynical and conniving schemer. Hobbits do not even exist. Nor do Nazgul.
[Correction: It never pays to post on books one has not finished, sigh. Yes, there are Nazgul. But, the major figure who gets killed in the Battle of the Fields of Pellenor is not the Chief Nazgul. See below.]
Compelled unwillingly to initiate war by raids on its vital food caravans crossing the fords of Osgiliath, Mordor tries desperately for a blitzkrieg victory, but on the field of Pellenor the Mordorian cause begins to appear doubtful as a force of zombies arrives at the army’s rear. The Southern Mordorian Commander hastened to the point of crisis.
A phalanx six deep and about a hundred men across moved unhurriedly across the field in total silence. The warriors were dressed in gray cloaks with hoods covering their faces, and were armed only with long narrow Elvish swords; they had no armor, no helmets, not even shields. There was something weirdly out of place about the soldiers in the forward rank,
and it took the commander a few seconds to understand what that was: they were literally studded with three-foot Umbarian arrows, but kept advancing just the same. They were commanded by a horseman in their rear, wearing a tattered camouflage cloak of a Dúnadan ranger, his faceplate closed. The sun was almost directly overhead, yet the horseman cast a long coal-black shadow, while the phalanx cast no shadow at all.
An aide reported to Commander-South that neither cavalry nor the mûmakil were able to breach the ranks of those warriors; the animals became wildly uncontrollable on approach. In the meantime, the invincible phalanx kept pushing northwest – fortunately, rather slowly. ...
When the Commander-South neared the phalanx, his mount reared and almost tossed him from the saddle. Now he could see the enemy warriors clearly and knew that the numerous ‘panic-mongers’ were right. These were, indeed, the living dead: respectable-looking parchment-skinned mummies with eyes and mouths carefully sewn shut; horribly bloated drowned men dripping greenish goo; skeletons covered with tatters of blackened skin, cause of death now indeterminable to the best pathologist. The corpses stared at him, and a chillingly terrifying low growl went up; such is the growl of a sheepdog about to go for the enemy’s throat. The general had no time to be terrified, though – a dozen gray figures have already detached themselves from the rear right corner of the formation, clearly intending to block his way to the indecisively halted Dúnadan, so he spurred the stallion again.
He broke through the line of the dead with surprising ease: they turned out to be rather slow and no match for a fighter of his caliber one-on-one. A hanged man with a lolling tongue and bulging eyes had barely raised his sword when Commander-South sliced through his sword-arm with a lighting-fast horizontal flick of his wrist and then cut the enemy almost in half from the right shoulder down. The others backed away for some reason and made no more attempts to stop him. Meanwhile the Dúnadan was clearly deciding whether he should fight or run, and seeing that he had no chance of escaping, dismounted decisively and drew his Elvish sword. So that’s how you want it, eh? Fight on foot – fine. Shouting the traditional: “Defend yourself, fair sir!” the commander of the South Army jumped nimbly off his horse, thinking in passing that this northern bandit hardly deserved to be called ‘sir.’ The phalanx had already moved away a hundred yards or so and kept going; seven of the undead stood in the distance, not taking their unseeing eyes off the duelists; a ringing silence fell.
He suddenly realized with a clarity that amazed him that this one duel will determine the outcome not only of this battle, but the fate of entire Middle Earth for many years to come. His inner voice then said in an eerily pleading tone: “Think this through, while there’s still time! Please!” – as if trying to warn him without knowing how. But he had thought this through already! They are both lightly armored, so his curved scimitar will have a clear advantage over any straight western sword; the guy doesn’t seem to be a leftie, so no surprises there; it would’ve been better to fight on horseback, but let’s not be greedy… It’s all set – ready to serve, as the saying goes!
The Dúnadan awaited him without trying to maneuver: knees slightly bent, upraised sword held in both hands, hilt against the belt buckle; all his earlier indecisiveness was gone. The general quickly approached to within about seven paces, right up to the maximum reach of the northerner, and started feinting: right, left, then his favorite distracting move – a quick pass of the scimitar to the left hand and back…
A terrible blow in the back felled him. He managed to twist sideways (“Spine’s still there…”), lifted his head and thought distantly: yes, I have underestimated those deaders… so they can move real fast and real silent when needed… northern bastard… Amazingly, he managed to get up to one knee, using the scimitar as a crutch; the corpses, having already
surrounded him, stood still with swords raised, awaiting word from their commander. The latter was in no hurry; pushing the helmet to the back of his head and chewing on a straw, he gazed at his fallen foe with interest. Then his calm soft voice broke the silence:
“Welcome, Commander-South! I knew that you would come for a one-on-one fight, as is the custom by you nobles,” he smirked, “I was only concerned that you wouldn’t dismount, like I did. Had you kept to the saddle, it all could have been different… I’m glad that I didn’t overestimate you, fair sir.”
“You cheated.”
“You fool! I came here to win this war and the crown of Gondor, not some stupid duel. As Tulkas is my witness, I have often played heads-or-tails with death, but always for a goal, never for the hell of it.”
“You cheated,” repeated Commander-South, trying not to cough with the blood from his pierced lung slowly pooling in his mouth. “Even the knights of the North will not shake your hand.”
“Of course they won’t,” laughed the Dúnadan, “since they will be kneeling before the new King of Gondor! I beat you in an honest fight, one on one – so it shall be written in all the history books. As for you, they won’t even remember your name, I’ll make sure of that. Actually,” he stopped in midstride, hunting for the stirrup, “we can make it even more interesting: let you be killed by a midget, some tiny little dwarf with hairy paws. Or by a broad… yes, that’s how we’ll do it.”
What a scoundrel!
This is about as far as I’ve gotten so far, but it is apparent that the real protagonists are going to be a field medic from Umbar and an Orocuin recon scout. It seems unfair to wait for me to finish the whole thing before sharing the news and the link.
My own guess is that Tolkien would not have much liked Eskov’s pastiche and would have considered his perspective unsound, but I think he would have declined to block its publication.
Iowahawk catches Paul Krugman lying with figures and nails his slimy hide to the barn door.
Please pardon this brief departure from my normal folderol, but every so often a member of the chattering class issues a nugget of stupidity so egregious that no amount of mockery will suffice. Particularly when the issuer of said stupidity holds a Nobel Prize.
Case in point: Paul Krugman. The Times’ staff economics blowhard recently typed, re the state of education in Texas:
And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average.
Similarly, The Economist passes on what appears to be the cut-’n’-paste lefty factoid du jour:
Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows:
South Carolina – 50th
North Carolina – 49th
Georgia – 48th
Texas – 47th
Virginia – 44th
If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country.
The point being, I suppose, is that unionized teachers stand as a thin chalk-stained line keeping Wisconsin from descending into the dystopian non-union educational hellscape of Texas. Interesting, if it wasn’t complete bullshit. ...
[A] state’s “average ACT/SAT” is, for all intents and purposes, a proxy for the percent of white people who live there. In fact, the lion’s share of state-to-state variance in test scores is accounted for by differences in ethnic composition. Minority students – regardless of state residence – tend to score lower than white students on standardized test, and the higher the proportion of minority students in a state the lower its overall test scores tend to be.
Please note: this has nothing to do with innate ability or aptitude. Quite to the contrary, I believe the test gap between minority students and white students can be attributed to differences in socioeconomic status. And poverty. And yes, racism. And yes, family structure. Whatever combination of reasons, the gap exists, and it’s mathematical sophistry to compare the combined average test scores in a state like Wisconsin (4% black, 4% Hispanic) with a state like Texas (12% black, 30% Hispanic). ...
So how does brokeass, dumbass, redneck Texas stack up against progressive unionized Wisconsin?
2009 4th Grade Math
White students: Texas 254, Wisconsin 250 (national average 248)
Black students: Texas 231, Wisconsin 217 (national 222)
Hispanic students: Texas 233, Wisconsin 228 (national 227)
To recap: white students in Texas perform better than white students in Wisconsin, black students in Texas perform better than black students in Wisconsin, Hispanic students in Texas perform better than Hispanic students in Wisconsin.
I never thought I’d hear of a longer case of original ownership of a classic automobile, but Curmudgeonly & Skeptical reports on one which puts Alan Clark’s Jag 120 in the shade.
Mr. Allen Swift (Springfield , MA.) received this 1928 Rolls-Royce Picadilly P1 Roadster from his father, brand new – as a graduation gift in 1928. He drove it up until his death last year…..at the age of 102. He was the oldest living owner of a car [bought] new. ...
He donated it to a Springfield museum after his death. It has 170,000 miles on it, still runs like a Swiss watch, dead silent at any speed and is in perfect cosmetic condition. (82 years) That’s approximately 2000 miles per year.
Sam MacDonald gives a nice compliment to a particular Yale undergraduate organization.
I honestly think that if I ever were to take a sharp right turn, I would very much prefer to send my kids to Brown than to one of the strongly “conservative” colleges. Just to challenge them. I don’t think kids are THAT malleable. For heaven’s sake, half of the conservative movement is run by members of Yale’s Party of the Right. They somehow managed to emerge from the indoctrination unscathed.
When the American left needs to vent its rage at its reactionary opposition at the loudest volume and in the shrillest tones, when anything resembling rational debate simply will not do, when it’s time for a real old-fashioned over-the-top hair-pulling, fingernail scratching attack, the progressive camp turns to its fattest and flittiest combatants: Frank Rich and Andrew Sullivan.
Alas! America must really be turning to the right. Despite both men’s admirable records at releasing passion and their unequaled capacity for burying their adversaries in billingsgate, we learned yesterday that both would be moving on from their current well-paying and prestigious positions.
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Frank Rich
Jack Schafer notes that going from the New York Times to New York Magazine is not a step up the ladder of success.
Let me see if I’ve got this straight: Frank Rich is leaving a weekly column at the nation’s most important daily newspaper for a monthly column at the second best weekly in the country.
If Rich’s move is about wanting to spend more time with his family, gain greater distance from Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal, free himself to pursue his HBO projects more aggressively, or to work once again with New York Editor Adam Moss, with whom he has a mind-meld, I understand. But unless the deal came with Bloombergian bags of cash, it makes no sense.
I’m not suggesting that Frank Rich will disappear when he departs the Times for New York magazine, but the switch will transform him from the fat man in the biggest room in the oversized mansion of newspaper journalism to just another high-profile scribbler at a magazine. Oh, the New York press release says Rich will be editing a special “section anchored by his essay,” and be commenting on the magazine’s Web site, but it’s a step down. Today, Rich’s column appears in supersized format in the Sunday edition of the New York Times, which has a print circulation of 1.35 million, and more than 34.5 million unique monthly visitors to its Web site, compared to New York magazine’s 405,000 circulation and 8.5 million uniques.
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Andrew Sullivan
Meanwhile, Sarah Palin-hater-extraordinaire Andrew Sullivan is also moving. His Daily Dish is departing from from the prestigious Atlantic blog-site to become part of a shaky start-up web-site operation involving Tina Brown’s Daily Beast joining up with Newsweek. Newsweek recently was sold reputedly for $1 (and the assumption of a ton of debt) by 92-year-old Sidney Harman.
Union demonstrators chanting “Shame! Shame!” (rather hyperbolically and monotonously, I thought), and eventually “You Suck!”, hounded and ultimately trapped GOP State Senator Glenn Grothman near the doors of one of the entrances to the Badger State’s Capitol. (around 2:50)
It was beginning to look like the mob was close to attacking the white-haired state senator, when Democratic Rep. Brett Hulsey (wearing orange pro-union t-shirt) interposed himself between Grothman and the mob and managed to hold them off, as alarmed demonstration leaders in the rear hastily changed the chanting to “Peace-ful, Peace-ful.”
Remember Congressman Mike Capuano’s (D-8thMA) February 22nd statement that “Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary.”?
Capuano’s rhetorical call to spill blood in the cause of Unionism (later retracted and apologized for, after the comment received national attention) might very easily have been responded to in reality yesterday. Republican legislators had better take to approaching the capitol with bodyguards or police escorts.
Our friend Bird Dog from Maggie’s Farm linked the video below, featuring the 2004 annual procession in the Umbrian city of Orvieto celebrating the 1263 Miracle of Bolseno, in which a communion host produced blood during the moment of consecration of the mass, affirming the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.
The procession carries the corporal of Bolseno (the small cloth on which the host rested during the consecration) through the city of Orvieto on the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Thursday following Trinity Sunday, the date on which the Catholic Church celebrates the institution of the Holy Eucharist.
The feast day was created in 1264 by Pope Urban IV, reputedly on the basis of the inspiration of the miracle of Bolseno.
In any event, the procession is a remarkable spectable and a marvelous survival of an ancient European tradition. What an extraordinary number of groups and organizations Orvieto seems to possess!
Stanley Kurtz suggests skepticism, pointing to Barack Obama’s record of willingness to misstate his real position when he finds it politically expedient to mislead the voters.
Obama loves capitalism like he opposes gay marriage. That is the larger lesson I take from President Obama’s recent decision to stop defending DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act). What does gay marriage have to do with capitalism? It’s all about Obama’s true beliefs.
About a week before Obama’s inauguration, the Windy City Times (“the voice of Chicago’s gay, lesbian, bi and trans community”) revealed that on February 15, 1996, in the midst of his first campaign for the Illinois State Senate, Obama told a local gay paper in answer to a questionnaire: “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.” That was news in early 2009, because Obama maintained steadfast opposition to gay marriage throughout his 2007-08 presidential run. (The Windy City Times reporter who found the original questionnaire with Obama’s statement claims to have stumbled upon it only just after the election.) So it turns out that if you unearth previously hidden documentary evidence of what Obama believed about same-sex marriage in 1996, you have a better guide to his actions as president than his own campaign promises or early presidential statements from 2007-2010.
I think this pattern applies across the board. Essentially, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, my political biography of the president, argues that the Obama of 1996 is the real thing, while the president’s “post-partisan pragmatist” persona merely serves as a cover for his long-held incremental program of radical change. Or, as I put it in the book, only the president’s past reveals the full meaning of his plans for our future. That Obama favored gay marriage in 1996, disguised that fact during the 2008 campaign, then effectively reverted to his original position when president, doesn’t prove that the same pattern applies to other issues. Yet it certainly does make my argument in Radical-in-Chief more plausible.
It’s sometimes claimed that Obama’s early leftism was nothing but a sop to his Hyde Park constituents. Yet it would be tough to argue that Obama’s pro-gay marriage stance in 1996 was insincere, while his later opposition was deeply held. Gay marriage didn’t become a national issue until 1995, when it looked like Hawaii’s highest court might force legalization on the state. That prompted Congress to pass DOMA, as a way of preventing other states from having to follow Hawaii’s lead.
DOMA cleared Congress with ease in 1996. So when Obama first endorsed same-sex marriage, he was taking an outlier position on the left. How many people “evolve” from that kind of stance to sincerely held opposition to gay marriage? Religious conversion might prompt such a change. But Obama embraced Reverend Wright’s Christianity back in 1988, and Wright was in any case well known for acceptance of homosexuality and hostility to Christian social conservatism.
We also have an interview Obama gave to Windy City Times in 2004, when he was running for US Senate, in which he explicitly frames his new-found opposition to same-sex marriage as a strategic move, rather than a matter of principle.
By the time Obama published The Audacity of Hope in 2006, his support for gay marriage and open talk of strategic positioning were both suppressed. Yet if you read the book closely, the political calculations are clear. Obama never directly says he opposes same-sex marriage in Audacity. Instead he says that society “can choose to carve out a special place” for the union of a man and a woman. (Not “should” carve out a special place for man-woman marriage, but “can.”) Then he rests his view on the “absence of any meaningful consensus” on a new definition of marriage. (The unspoken implication is that, as public opinion shifts, Obama might shift, too.) Obama even says in Audacity that his opposition to gay marriage may be due to his “infection” with society’s prejudices, so he pledges to remain open to “new revelations” on the issue. In retrospect, it’s clear that Obama was setting himself up in Audacity for a policy shift as president. Although he ostentatiously wonders whether he’s been “infected with society’s prejudices,” in reality he’d never actually shared those “prejudices” to begin with.
It’s also emerged since his recent policy shift that the Obama justice department has been “defending” DOMA in a manner designed to subvert the law. Obama has tailored his arguments in defense of DOMA in such a way as to play into the hands of the law’s opponents.
Now if someone were to say that Obama’s socialist views in 1996 tell you more about his plans for our economic future than his campaign promises or public statements as president–while adding that Obama’s efforts to shore up the free enterprise system are actually designed to undermine it over time–that person would sound extreme. Yet this apparently intemperate statement accurately characterizes Obama’s history on the gay marriage issue. ..
[What applies to gay marriage] applies to economic policy as well. In other words, Obama loves capitalism like he opposes gay marriage–which is to say, not much.
Stanley Kurtz links this video demonstrating Obama lied about his intentions to replace private health insurance with the federal government as the single payer.
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In his ruling striking down Obamacare, Judge Vincent recognized the same mendacious habit, quoting in his opinion, Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign statement that the federal government had no more constitutional authority to force everyone to buy health insurance in order to make health insurance affordable than it would have to solve collapse of the real estate market by ordering everyone to go out and buy a house.
, my political biography of the president, argues that the Obama of 1996 is the real thing, while the president’s “post-partisan pragmatist” persona merely serves as a cover for his long-held incremental program of radical change. Or, as I put it in the book, only the president’s past reveals the full meaning of his plans for our future. That Obama favored gay marriage in 1996, disguised that fact during the 2008 campaign, then effectively reverted to his original position when president, doesn’t prove that the same pattern applies to other issues. Yet it certainly does make my argument in Radical-in-Chief more plausible.
