Pejman Yousefzadeh

Just when you think you have seen it all …

We’ll start by noting yet more evidence that the IRS’s audits of political groups was entirely inequitable in nature:

When the Barack H. Obama Foundation sought tax-exempt status to raise money for good works in Kenya, the Internal Revenue Service provided quick help.

The IRS approved charitable status for the foundation, which was run by President Obama’s brother and named after his father, in about a month’s time. The IRS also agreed to give the group this important financial status retroactively, back to 2009, when it had begun its fundraising.

The 34 days the IRS’s Cincinnati office took to process the foundation’s application stands in contrast to the waits of several months — and sometimes longer than a year — that several conservative groups say they experienced with the same office. Obama has apologized, saying Americans have a right to be angry that the office improperly targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny.

And more:

The Internal Revenue Service scandal involving the apparently unjustified targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups has also hit home with the Hispanic community.

George Rodriguez, former president of the San Antonio Tea Party, said that when the organization applied for non-profit status, leaders were intimidated by IRS workers with excessive paperwork and meddling questions.

“They asked us all sorts of things that were out of the norm,” Rodriguez, now head of the conservative South Texas Alliance, told Fox News Latino. “We knew these questions were not the norm and we had our suspicions about them.”

The New Yorker is not generally known as a right-wing rag—it is very much an Obamaphile publication, in fact—but even it can’t deny that there was something very wrong with the Obama administration’s response to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi:

On Friday, ABC News’s Jonathan Karl revealed the details of the editing process for the C.I.A.’s talking points about the attack, including the edits themselves and some of the reasons a State Department spokeswoman gave for requesting those edits. It’s striking to see the twelve different iterations that the talking points went through before they were released to Congress and to United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, who used them in Sunday show appearances that became a central focus of Republicans’ criticism of the Administration’s public response to the attacks. Over the course of about twenty-four hours, the remarks evolved from something specific and fairly detailed into a bland, vague mush.

From the very beginning of the editing process, the talking points contained the erroneous assertion that the attack was “spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved.” That’s an important fact, because the right has always criticized the Administration based on the suggestion that the C.I.A. and the State Department, contrary to what they said, knew that the attack was not spontaneous and not an outgrowth of a demonstration. But everything else about the changes that were made is problematic. The initial draft revealed by Karl mentions “at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi” before the one in which four Americans were killed. That’s not in the final version. Nor is this: “[W]e do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qa’ida participated in the attack.” That was replaced by the more tepid “There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.” (Even if we accept the argument that State wanted to be sure that extremists were involved, and that they could be linked to Al Qaeda, before saying so with any level of certainty—which is reasonable and supported by evidence from Karl’s reporting—that doesn’t fully explain these changes away.)

Democrats will argue that the editing process wasn’t motivated by a desire to protect Obama’s record on fighting Al Qaeda in the run-up to the 2012 election. They have a point; based on what we’ve seen from Karl’s report, the process that went into creating and then changing the talking points seems to have been driven in large measure by two parts of the government—C.I.A. and State—trying to make sure the blame for the attacks and the failure to protect American personnel in Benghazi fell on the other guy.

But the mere existence of the edits—whatever the motivation for them—seriously undermines the White House’s credibility on this issue. This past November (after Election Day), White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”

Remarkably, Carney is sticking with that line even now… .

Read the whole thing. And recall that from the very outset, Obamaphiles have assured us that criticism of the administration on this issue was misguided and partisan, without any real credibility. So much for that claim. (The talking points are linked in the excerpt, but I am going to provide another link to them here.)

Ron Fournier sums up matters rather well:

“These changes don’t resolve all of my issues or those of my building’s leadership.” With that sentence, one in a series of emails and draft “talking points” leaked to Jonathan Karl of ABC News, the Obama administration was caught playing politics with Benghazi.

Summaries of White House and State Department emails — some of which were first published by Stephen F. Hayes of the Weekly Standard — also contradict the White House version of events that led to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice misleading the public about the cause of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. installation in Libya.

Where does this all lead?

Politics: It would be naïve to expect any White House to ignore the political implications of a foreign policy crisis occurring two months before a presidential election. But there is a reason why no White House admits to finessing a tragedy: It’s unseemly. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland injected politics into the U.S. response to Benghazi when she raised objections to draft “talking points” being prepared for Rice’s television appearances.

One paragraph, drafted by the CIA, referenced the agency’s warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months prior to the attack, as well as extremists linked to the al-Qaida affiliate Ansar al-Sharia. In an email to officials at the White House and intelligence agencies, Nuland said the information “could be abused by members (of Congress) to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either? Concerned …”

The paragraph was deleted. The truth was scrubbed.

How much more has to be revealed before the administration’s response to the Benghazi attack gets seriously investigated?

This is appalling:

Harvard professor and famous historian Niall Ferguson reportedly made some bizarre and offensive remarks about economist John Maynard Keynes at an investment conference yesterday.

According to financial writer Tom Kostigen, the editor at large of Private Wealth and Financial Advisor magazines, Ferguson made two startling suggestions about Keynes at the Tenth Annual Altegris Conference in Carlsbad, California:

• Keynes’ economic philosophy, Ferguson reportedly suggested, was the result of Keynes not caring about future generations.
• Keynes didn’t care about future generations, Ferguson reportedly suggested, because Keynes was gay and did not have children.

To his credit, Ferguson has now apologized. Good for him, but why make the comments in the first place? It is incumbent on those who criticize the application of Keynesianism—and I include myself in that group—to make sure that we understand what Keynesian arguments are, lest responsible criticisms get drowned out by the backlash against irresponsible criticisms. And as a general matter, it helps not to cite Keynes’s sexual orientation when criticizing his economic philosophy. There is no tie whatsoever between the two, and frankly, even before he sought to make the connection, Ferguson should have wondered whether the presence of heterosexual Keynesians might undermine his argument.

But as I write, at least Ferguson has apologized. Dick Harpootlian, by contrast, doesn’t seem to have the good grace or intelligence to follow Ferguson’s example:

Conservatives are outraged after a Democrat in South Carolina allegedly insulted Republican Gov. Nikki Haley’s Indian heritage at a party gathering in Columbia on Friday.

The state’s Democratic Party Chairman, Dick Harpootlian, is believed to have said the party will take on the Conservative in the next gubernatorial race and send ‘Nikki Haley back to wherever the hell she came from.’

Gov. Haley was born in the U.S. but her parents are from India.

Yahoo political reporter Chris Moody tweeted on Friday that Mr Harpootlian made the comment, in support of Democrat challenger Vince Sheheen, who has declared he will run for governor.

There were no details on the venue or context for the comment but Harpootlian is at the helm the 2013 Dem Weekend in Columbia, South Carolina.

One can easily imagine what the popular media reaction would be if a Republican state party chair made similar comments. Note that Harpootlian was an early and fervent supporter of Barack Obama in 2008, and bundled nearly $400,000 for Barack Obama’s re-election. The responsible thing for any enterprising journalist to do is to ask the president whether he stands by Harpootlian’s disgusting comments, or whether he is willing to condemn them. Thus far, of course, we have heard crickets from the administration, from the media in general, and naturally, from the port side of the blogosphere.

I have a hard time believing that Jon Huntsman will ever be president of the United States; the memory of his last campaign lingers, and not in a good way. But as this story points out, Huntsman’s policy platform is increasingly getting adopted as the GOP’s platform.

This ought to come as little surprise given the Republican defeat of last year. The party needs to re-examine its policy positions, and whether those positions are causing it to lose at the polls. To be sure, the policy examination is incomplete—it has hardly even started, in fact. But what’s certain is that things can’t keep going the way they have been for the Republican party when it comes to policy stances.

So while Huntsman may be lampooned for the way in which he ran his 2012 campaign for the presidency, and while he might never reach 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue himself, he can be thanked for having started—however inadvertently, perhaps—a conversation on what the Republican party ought to stand for. Hopefully, more people will join that conversation, start an intellectually and philosophically vibrant debate, and figure out how to make the GOP more appealing to voters.

Nota Bene: I endorsed Huntsman for president, and interviewed him as well.

Say, remember all of the fuss that got raised about Mitt Romney’s foreign accounts? Remember how his decisions to park money in the Caymans and in Switzerland showed that he wasn’t a patriotic American, or something?

Ahem:

As recently as 2010, Jack Lew, President Obama‘s nominee to be the next secretary of the Treasury, had $56,000 invested in a CitiGroup venture capital fund based in the Cayman Islands’ notorious Ugland House, a building whose mailboxes are home to nearly 19,000 corporate entities, many of them tax shelters.

The investment has been in public documents for years and drew no attention when Mr. Lew was confirmed to be deputy secretary of state in 2009 and director of the White House Office of Management and Budget in 2010.

But the fund is coming to light as Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats are zeroing on taxes lost to off-shore entities, including hedge funds, as a way to stave off $1 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts set to begin March 1.

Aides in both parties said it was quite likely to come up during his confirmation hearing Wednesday. Senate Democrats are struggling to come up with a package of spending cuts and tax loophole closings that could stave off the automatic spending cuts — known as sequestration — for at least three months. Tax breaks for hedge fund managers and offshore tax shelters are a prime target.

The Finance Committee held hearings in 2008 burrowing in on Ugland House, a nondescript white building in George Town, Cayman Islands, that shelters a bewildering number of corporate headquarters.

“Today we will take a look at some ostensibly crowded halls, those of the Ugland House in the Cayman Islands,” Senator Max Baucus of Montana, the committee’s chairman, said, opening the hearing. “That is a remarkable five-story building that the G.A.O. tells us has some 18,857 tenants. Today we will examine whether many of those tenants are feasting at America’s taxpayers’ expense.”

[…]

“President Obama has been almost obsessively critical of offshore investments,” [Senator Charles] Grassley said. “He called Ugland House ‘either the biggest building or the biggest tax scam on record.’ That makes this Cayman Islands investment of his top official and now Treasury secretary nominee worthy of attention. The irony is thick. Members of the Finance Committee will question Mr. Lew about his foreign investments at the hearing.”

Now, let’s be clear about something. Unlike those who accused Mitt Romney of a lack of patriotism simply because of where his money was/is located, I am not about to make the same accusations when it comes to Jack Lew. That’s because I’m not a McCarthyite and that’s because Romney’s critics during the 2012 presidential election campaign proved the truth of Samuel Johnson’s saying: Patriotism really is the last refuge of the scoundrel, and I don’t feel like being a scoundrel, thank you very much.

But if Romney’s critics have any semblance of intellectual honesty, they will attack Lew as viciously as they attacked Romney. I doubt they will, of course. In addition to being scoundrels, they are likely hypocrites. They will hold their tongues and pretend that this story simply does not exist.

But that doesn’t mean that the rest of us ought to be silent about the story, or about the fact that there are a lot of port-side politicians and pundits who are as disingenuous and dishonest as they are demagogic.

Link:

The U.S. economy posted a stunning drop of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, defying expectations for slow growth and possibly providing incentive for more Federal Reserve stimulus.

The economy shrank from October through December for the first time since the recession ended, hurt by the biggest cut in defense spending in 40 years, fewer exports and sluggish growth in company stockpiles.

The Commerce Department said Wednesday that the economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter. That’s a sharp slowdown from the 3.1 percent growth rate in the July-September quarter.

The surprise contraction could raise fears about the economy’s ability to handle tax increases that took effect in January and looming spending cuts.

The story does mention that “one-time factors” might be responsible for the economic contraction. One certainly hopes that the contraction is not part of some broader trend that might herald yet another recession. However, it would be a good idea—you know, just in case we are in the midst of some larger economic slowdown—to reverse the tax increases that became part of the fiscal cliff deal. Of course, this would mean that we would have to get the approval of Democrats to lower taxes and let people keep more of their money; always a tricky enterprise. Still, it is worth it to have Republicans push to lower recently raised taxes—including the payroll tax, which is hitting the middle class hard. It ought to go without saying that in this case, good economic policy is also good politics; by trying to repeal the payroll tax increase, Republicans will be able to get more money in the hands of middle class voters and counteract the perception that they only favor tax cuts for the rich. Note the story’s reference to the fact that “a key measure of consumer confidence plummeted this month after Americans noticed the reduction in their paychecks, the Conference Board reported Tuesday.” That alone ought to raise alarms and prompt an effort to bring an immediate end to the payroll tax increase.

If news about an economic contraction alarms you, and makes you wonder whether your ability to provide for yourself and your family, to keep a roof over your heads and put food on your tables—not to mention enjoying the occasional indulgence like, say, eating out, going to a movie, or having a decent vacation—is put at risk, well, that’s just because you don’t see the beauty in the entire situation:

In response to the news today that the economy contracted -.1 percent in the final quarter of last year, Democrats are touting the claim that this is “the best-looking contraction in U.S. GDP you’ll ever see.” The claim was originally made by chief U.S. economist for Capital Economics Paul Ashworth.

“The drag from defense spending and inventories is a one-off. The rest of the report is all encouraging,” Ashworth also claimed.

The claim was quickly seized upon by Democrats, looking to share good news about a contracting economy.

There. You see now, gentle readers? Once you learn to appreciate the aesthetic delights of our current economic predicament, all of your troubles will melt away. Until the collection agencies call, of course.

Mind you, in the event that the aesthetics of the situation stubbornly refuse to appeal to you, the Democrat-in-Chief has another excuse handy:

White House press secretary Jay Carney laid the blame for a surprise economic contraction squarely at the feet of congressional Republicans Wednesday, saying economic threats during the “fiscal cliff” negotiations had prevented important defense spending.

“Our economy is facing a major headwinds, and that’s Republicans in Congress,” Carney said.

Recall that during the election campaign, Barack Obama told us that the economy was improving, that it would continue to improve and that he deserved the credit for the improvement. Now that we learn that the economy has contracted, we also learn that Barack Obama has suddenly and magically lost his powers of economic omnipotence and that the downturn is all the fault of Republicans. One wonder when this administration will be mature enough to concede that bad things can and do happen on their watch—things for which they are responsible. At the very least, I suppose that we have to give thanks to a merciful God for the fact that the administration has not blamed George W. Bush for the downturn.

At least, not yet.

I recognize that this has been something of a downer as far as blog posts go, so let’s end it on a high note:

The IRS is doing a better job at getting new employees on board quickly, a new federal audit has found.

The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration found that the IRS has almost met the goal, set by the Office of Personnel Management, to bring on new hires in 80 days or less.

By contrast, the agency said in 2009 that it was taking an average of 157 days – or roughly five months – to hire staffers.

I guess the jobs are where the action’s at.

Recall that it wasn’t until one day before election day that 60 Minutes finally admitted what most of us knew; after the attacks in Benghazi, Barack Obama initially refrained from calling the attacks an act of terrorism. This of course meant that Mitt Romney’s charge regarding the issue—allegedly “fact-checked” by Candy Crowley during the second presidential debate—was right all along. I’ll repeat what I wrote regarding this revelation:

The fact that this piece of news–which could have turned around the perception that Romney misstated the facts on Benghazi in the second debate–was not released until the day before the election is completely inexcusable and represents journalistic malpractice at its worst.

Of course, it ought to go without saying that I stand by those words. And of course, it ought to go without saying that 60 Minutes is nowhere near done shilling for the Obama administration.

Those who decided to sit through Steve Kroft’s interview with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton must have wondered why 60 Minutes was essentially giving free favorable publicity to both the Obama administration and to any Hillary-for-president campaign that we are forced to endure in the future. Eliana Johnson shows that when it comes to interviewing Democrats vs. interviewing Republicans, 60 Minutes has very different standards:

Because so much of an audience’s reaction hinges on these intangibles, it’s useful to compare last night’s interview with another, the one the program conducted last year with House majority leader Eric Cantor. I’ve put a number of clips from the two interviews side-by-side above. 

The warmth Steve Kroft displayed toward Obama and Clinton was, to me, unmistakable; the three laughed together like old friends. Leslie Stahl, on the other hand, brought no such levity to her interview with Cantor, which aired on January 1, 2012. At times, Stahl seemed downright hostile, at one point narrowing her eyes and asking “What?” 

Kroft asked questions such as, “Why did you want to do this together, a joint interview?” and “Why were you so insistent about wanting her to be secretary of state?” Kroft asked not a single follow-up question, even when the president made implausible assertions such as, “when it comes to Egypt, I think, had it not been for the leadership we showed, you might have seen a different outcome there.” This, by the way, as Muslim Brotherhood snipers gunned down protesters from the rooftops in Cairo. 

Cantor, on the other hand, was challenged at every turn. He fielded questions such as, “Why go through this brinksmanship, gamesmanship, one-upsmanship? Explain it. Maybe there’s a real good answer,” and “Congress has a 9 percent approval rating. What do you think this conveys about confidence in our government? Don’t you think this is shredding that?” Stahl challenged Cantor on his assertion that he is willing to compromise with the president on fiscal issues: “Okay, but what about revenues? A compromise. You wanted the spending cuts, they wanted revenues,” and, later in the interview, offered, “But revenues reduce the deficit.”

Stahl did her job. Politicians should be subjected to tough questions and have their assertions challenged, not swallowed wholesale, as America watched Steve Kroft do last night. 

No one should be surprised that Republicans get tougher treatment on 60 Minutes, but no one should complain about tough treatment per se. Politicians should be forced to go through the wringer when they sit down with journalists. The trouble is that in the world of 60 Minutes, the only politicians who appear to go through the wringer are Republicans. Imagine that.

Evidently, Steve Kroft is Barack Obama’s “favorite interviewer,” and the president “likes 60 Minutes.” It is not hard to understand why, but actual journalists should get at least a little bit worried if politicians claim to like being interviewed on their shows; it could be a sign that said politicians believe they are getting free passes from the journalists on those shows, and not being challenged on the issues of the day. I suppose that it is also worth noting that Kroft “thought” that the president and his secretary of state were “very affectionate with each other.” How this is newsworthy is anyone’s guess.

I’ll tell you what is newsworthy when the president and the secretary of state sit down for an interview: Foreign policy! Here’s Kroft on why he decided to surprise everyone and upset the expectations of any substantive viewers that he had by not delving into any serious foreign policy discussions when he had the chance to hold the feet of both the president of the United States and the secretary of state to the fire:

“I would have liked very much to delve into some areas of foreign policy and what is going on in the world, but it was not anything we could take on in 30 minutes,” Kroft said, noting the time offered by the White House.

Besides, he said, there are opportunities to ask those questions in presidential or state department briefings.

“What was not ever likely to present itself was the opportunity to sit down and talk to them about their professional relationship,” he said. “We thought that was the most important thing to do. You can watch their body language. You can judge what their relationship is.”

So, instead of discussing foreign policy, Kroft decided to be the Richard Attenborough of Obama-Clinton body language. And this is supposed to edify and educate us? This is supposed to ensure that we are caught up on the issues of the day? Given that Barack Obama, as president, is supposed to deal with foreign policy issues (and has a remarkably free hand to do so as president, compared to the constraints that are placed upon him by having to deal with Congress in the realm of domestic policy), and given that Hillary Clinton is the secretary of state for the love of all that is holy, one would think that foreign policy issues would receive some kind of serious attention. Alas, one would be wrong.

But at the very least, we might expect some attention to be paid to the prospect of Hillary Clinton running for president in 2016, right? Here’s Kroft on that issue:

“[Barack Obama is] not interested in endorsing somebody for president and she’s not, right now, interested in running, so the whole thing is kind of silly,” [Kroft] said.

It is not clear from that passage whether Kroft thinks that the discussion is silly, or whether the president does. If the latter, what does Kroft think of the president’s designation of the subject as “silly”? If the former, why does Kroft think that it is “silly”? Does Kroft really believe that the issue of whether the president supports a potential presidential run by his secretary of state—with whom he is sitting down for a joint intervew, for the love of Heaven!—is silly? Can he defend that proposition? Can he defend it if it is the president who thinks that the subject matter is “silly”? If so, how? We are not told. Presumably, Kroft is still too busy focusing on Obama-Clinton body language signals to give us an answer.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that when it comes to criticism of Kroft’s style and lack of substance, Kroft says “This is something that has not been on my radar screen.” Because, you know, God forbid that Steve Kroft should be forced to take heed of criticism and improve his work product.

I beg to differ. And so do a lot of other people:

An independent investigation of the fatal attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Libya on Sept. 11 found that “grossly” inadequate security and reliance on local militias left U.S. diplomats and other personnel vulnerable, the State Department told Congress on Tuesday.

The review of the assault on the mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans faulted systemic failures of leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department, according to an unclassified version posted on the department’s Web site Tuesday night.

The review by the Accountability Review Board said the temporary, lightly defended compound where Stevens died lacked disciplined oversight of its security operations. The diplomatic post’s ad hoc nature, with inexperienced staff members working there for short periods, “resulted in diminished institutional knowledge, continuity, and mission capacity,” the report said.

Finally, the report said State Department officials in Washington ignored requests from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, for additional guards and better security for the Benghazi compound, which served as a temporary U.S. consulate for eastern Libya. It also said that there had been worrisome incidents in the weeks before the attack that should have led to increased security, but the report did not identify any specific threats to the compound on Sept. 11.

All of which makes the following paragraph impossible to take seriously:

Despite the broad security failures, the report did not single out any individual officials as violating procedures and did not recommend any disciplinary action.

Especially given the paragraph that follows immediately afterward:

The report also concluded that, contrary to initial reports by the Obama administration and by media outlets, there was no protest outside the outpost ahead of the attack and that the assault on the diplomatic compound and the CIA annex was carried out by terrorists.

Heads should have rolled over this debacle and the media should have made a much bigger issue about it during the election season. Unfortunately, too many people in the media were busy being cheerleaders for the president rather than journalists.

This is a good thing. Let’s discuss why:

• Susan Rice falsely claimed that the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi was not premeditated—this despite the fact that when one brings RPGs to a gunfight—as the terrorists in Benghazi did—premeditation usually figures into it.
• Susan Rice engaged in outrageous misstatements of fact when discussing the attacks in Benghazi.
• Susan Rice’s discussion of the events surrounding the battle in Benghazi was designed more to provide political cover to Team Obama during a presidential election than it was to provide the American people with facts concerning the attack on our consulate.
• Even if we assume that Susan Rice was led astray by flawed talking points given to her by the intelligence community, we still have to face the fact that Rice appears to have done none of the things a responsible principal would do in order to get access to better information.
• When Susan Rice met with Senate Republicans to explain her actions, she ended up raising more questions than she answered. Many more.
• Thanks to Susan Rice’s investments, she would bring massive conflicts of interests to the table if she were named secretary of state. And incidentally, how is it that Rice was able to go through four years as America’s ambassador to the United Nations without someone calling her on those conflicts of interest?
• For that matter, how is it that Susan Rice was able to go through four years as America’s ambassador to the United Nations without someone calling her on her closeness to African despots and dictators?

ON Sept. 2, Ambassador Susan E. Rice delivered a eulogy for a man she called “a true friend to me.” Before thousands of mourners and more than 20 African heads of state in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Ms. Rice, the United States’ representative to the United Nations, lauded the country’s late prime minister, Meles Zenawi. She called him “brilliant” — “a son of Ethiopia and a father to its rebirth.”

Few eulogies give a nuanced account of the decedent’s life, but the speech was part of a disturbing pattern for an official who could become President Obama’s next secretary of state. During her career, she has shown a surprising and unsettling sympathy for Africa’s despots.

This record dates from Ms. Rice’s service as assistant secretary of state for African affairs under President Bill Clinton, who in 1998 celebrated a “new generation” of African leaders, many of whom were ex-rebel commanders; among these leaders were Mr. Meles, Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Jerry J. Rawlings of Ghana, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Yoweri K. Museveni of Uganda.

“One hundred years from now your grandchildren and mine will look back and say this was the beginning of an African renaissance,” Mr. Clinton said in Accra, Ghana, in March 1998.

In remarks to a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that year, Ms. Rice was equally breathless about the continent’s future. “There is a new interest in individual freedom and a movement away from repressive, one-party systems,” she said. “It is with this new generation of Africans that we seek a dynamic, long-term partnership for the 21st century.”

Her optimism was misplaced. In the 14 years since, many of these leaders have tried on the strongman’s cloak and found that it fit nicely. Mr. Meles dismantled the rule of law, silenced political opponents and forged a single-party state. Mr. Isaias, Mr. Kagame and Mr. Museveni cling to their autocratic power. Only Mr. Rawlings and Mr. Mbeki left office willingly.

So, all things considered, it is good that Susan Rice will not be the next secretary of state. The bad news is that this opens the way for John Kerry to be secretary of state, and apparently, the strongest case for John Kerry at the State Department is that he is tall, he is not much of a thinker, and he can follow orders really well.

And there are some who wonder why it is that we cannot have nice things.

I will never quite understand what it is about food trucks that so often have municipal governments up in arms, but there is something about them that brings out the worst in city bureaucrats and law enforcement. Of course, in Chicago—where yours truly can be found—the degree of officious meddling that has to be endured by food truck proprietors (and their patrons) is nothing short of ridiculous. Alas, Chicago is not alone in having to put up with this nonsense. Consider this story from Arlington, VA:

For those of you who follow IJ’s National Street Vending Initiative, you most likely know that cities across the country pass arbitrary and anti-competitive laws that make it practically impossible for food trucks and other vendors to succeed.  An opportunity to fight against one such law has presented itself in Arlington, Virginia.

Arlington County has a law in place that prevents food trucks from operating in one place for more than 60 minutes.  A local food truck named Seoul Food received a notice for violating this rule.  According to the owner of the truck, he informed the police officer that he did move from one parking spot to another within the allotted time.  The police officer still cited Seoul Food, however, because in the officer’s view the truck had not moved “far enough.”  It is important to note that the County Code does not specify any minimum distance a truck must move; it states only that “the vehicle must remain stopped for … no longer than sixty (60) minutes.”  Arlington Code Section 30-9(B).

The penalty for violating Section 30-9 is severe.  The Arlington County Code classifies a violation of the sixty-minute rule as a Class 1 misdemeanor, which is punishable by “confinement in jail for not more than twelve months and a fine of not more than $2,500.”  Thus, Arlington considers selling food to willing customers from a legal parking space to be as serious as  Reckless Driving, DUI, and Assault & Battery.

If you’re not appalled, I wonder about your sanity.

Of course, it is worth remembering that there is a certain group of people out there who, upon reading this story, may well almost uniformly express its outrage and disgust concerning the city of Arlington’s actions. They may even express outrage and disgust concerning the actions of the city of Chicago when it comes to food trucks. In the next breath, however, this same group of people will tell you, me, and anyone else who will listen that we should have a government big enough to tax you more, interfere with local decision-making when it comes to educating your kids, and impose upon you a one-size-fits-all health care regime straight out of Washington, DC.

You may have scorn for these people, but for Heaven’s sake, don’t ignore them. They make up a group big enough to have re-elected a president just a little over a month ago. And yes, that ought to be a source of concern to you.

1. There was only one Obama/Biden sign at my polling place, versus 6 Romney/Ryan signs. Conclusion: Romney will carry Illinois. (I can dream.)

2. I wrote my name in for an office because a Democrat was running unopposed. I don’t remember which office it was. This is a problem because if I win, I won’t know where to show up for work. All I know is that the office was not Emperor. Alas.

joshuatrevino:

“We’ve seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it’s connected to the vaccines. This person included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it.” 

— Barack Obama, April 21, 2008. The science was not inconclusive.

No one who ever said or says this had or has any business being president.