Mark Steyn's Blog, page 47

Unsettling

I am no fan of 9-9-9 and not particularly of Herman Cain, but his present woes say more about us than him. Nobody other than the participants knows what went on in his "encounters" with these complainants, and the entire episode is a cautionary tale in the perils of the odious and far too widespread practice of "settling". But honestly:

There were also descriptions of physical gestures that were not overtly sexual but that made women who experienced or witnessed them uncomfortable.

What does that mean? Because, if you're going to destroy a man's life over it, it ought to mean something. A "gesture" that is not "sexual" but that makes women "uncomfortable" enough to threaten sexual harrassment?

But then everyone's "uncomfortable" these days, aren't they? On the Sunday gabfests, those sanctimonious pills Bob Schieffer and Tom Brokaw were a-huffin' an' a-puffin' about Cain's gross irresponsibility in allowing his campaign manager to "promote" smoking in a political ad. Mark Block is apparently the new Joe Camel. It was a close call but the nauseating Schieffer edged out Brokaw in moral finger-wagging, flaunting his own credentials as a cancer survivor. So what? Unlike Schieffer, I quit smoking at 17, when I figured out that a less dorky haircut would do far more for me with the chicks than pretending I enjoyed unfiltered cigarettes ever would. Yet for the first time in decades I feel a sudden craving for nicotine, possibly while making non-sexual gestures of an uncomfortable nature.

What ought to make America "uncomfortable" is that it's broke and it's heading for collapse. But, judging from the preoccupations of our media, very few Americans are discomforted by that. On the other hand, even if we were solvent, I very much doubt that a society made up of social arbiters with Brokaw and Schieffer's tender sensitivities and with millions of its citizens ever more ready to be discomforted by an ever wider of ever more inappropriate if entirely non-sexual gestures would be likely to survive. Or even remain capable of basic social interaction.

Let's hear what these gestures were. Then we can mandate sensitivity training to eliminate them. Which will stimulate the vital sensitivity-training sector of the economy.

PS While we're at it, why are so few Americans "uncomfortable" about being held hostage by JetBlue for seven hours on the tarmac at Hartford, Connecticut? All the coverage is pansy-boy stuff about how if they hold you for over three hours without food, water or functioning bathrooms you might be eligible for government-mandated compensation. Big deal. Why can't you just say "Screw this, I'm outta here"? The fact that hundreds of airline passengers are "comfortable" in complying with this nonsense is way more ominous for the future of the republic than Mark Block blowing smoke rings.

The Irish Mohammedan Army

When readers on the National Review 50th anniversary cruise round the British Isles woke up one morning to find themselves anchored just off Waterford, several of them commented to me that the view looked almost too perfectly Irish. Waterford is the oldest city in the country, and the surrounding 40 shades of Kilkenny green on a beautiful summer's morn made it appear like the opening shot of a Disney movie about a cute leprachaun.

But looks can be deceptive. My former colleagues at The Irish Times report:

THE KNOCK ON THE DOOR of Ali Charaf Damache’s Waterford home came on the morning of March 9th last year. Within hours, news of the arrests of Damache and six others detained during searches of 10 addresses in Waterford and Cork had rippled across the world. The four men and three women were held in relation to an alleged plot to kill Lars Vilks, a Swedish cartoonist who had depicted the prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog. Adding to the intrigue was the fact that two female converts from the US, including one Colleen R LaRose, who used the internet pseudonym Jihad Jane, were being linked to the alleged plot.

I was at a Danish Free Press Society conference with Lars Vilks in Copenhagen last year. He's an old secular Euroleftie who thinks he should be able to do the same jokes about Islam as he does about everything else. He came home one evening to find the jihad boys had firebombed his kitchen. As they escaped across the snowy field heady with the thrill of their glorious victory, they noticed that they'd accidentally set their clothes on fire, and, after some effort to extinguish them, were forced to discard their smoking trousers. Unfortunately, in abandoning their pants and scampering off through the icy night in their jihadist BVDs, they neglected to remove the charred driver's licenses and other identifying documentation, from which police were able easily to track them down. Muslim terrorists are all Yosemite Ahmeds - until one of them succeeds.

Lars Vilks takes all this in good humor. Nevertheless, it is still faintly stunning to me that you can find within a population the size of Waterford and Cork seven Muslims willing to participate in a plot to kill a Swedish artist. Even at the height of the Irish "Troubles", you'd have been hard put to find seven residents of Waterford willing to participate in a plot to kill, say, a British cabinet minister.

But things are different now:

Damache allegedly sent a message to Khalid, asking him to recruit online ‘some brothers that can travel freely . . . with EU passports.’

Celebrate diversity!   

Adult Babies

Last Thursday was officially “Diaper Need Awareness Day” in the State of Connecticut. Were you aware of it? There are so many awareness-raising days, it’s hard to keep track. Maybe we could have an Awareness-Raising Day Awareness Day. At any rate, the first annual Diaper Need Awareness Day was proclaimed by Dan Malloy, governor of the Nutmeg State, and they had a big old awareness-raising get-together in New Haven. It’s not clear yet whether they’ve got an official ribbon. We’re running a bit low on ribbon colors these days: It’s not just pink ribbons for breast cancer, but also teal for agoraphobia, periwinkle for acid reflux, pink-and-blue ribbons for amniotic fluid embolisms, and pinstripe ribbons for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. We could use a Ribbon-Hue Awareness Day to raise awareness about how we’re falling behind in the race for more ribbon colors.

#ad# If you’re wondering what sentient being isn’t aware of diapers, you’re missing the point: Connecticut representative Rosa DeLauro is raising awareness of the need for diapers in order to, as Politico reported, “push the Federal Government to provide free diapers to poor families.” Congresswoman DeLauro has introduced the DIAPER Act -- that’s to say, the Diaper Investment and Aid to Promote Economic Recovery Act. So don’t worry, it’s not welfare, it’s “stimulus.” As Fox News put it, “A U.S. congresswoman in Connecticut wants to boost the economy by offering free diapers to low-income families.” And, given that sinking bazillions of dollars into green-jobs schemes to build eco-cars in Finland and a federal program to buy guns for Mexican drug cartels and all the other fascinating innovations of the Obama administration haven’t worked, who’s to say borrowing money from the Chinese politburo and sticking it in your kid’s diaper isn’t the kind of outside-the-box thinking that will do the trick?

In fact, the federal government already provides free diapers for at least one lucky American. Stanley Thornton Jr. of California receives Supplementary Security Income disability checks from the Social Security Administration in order to sit around the house all day wearing a giant diaper and a giant onesie, sucking on a giant pacifier and playing with a giant baby rattle. Stanley Jr. runs a website for fellow “adult babies” called BedWettingABDL.com. I believe I first heard of the “adult baby” phenomenon some years ago in London. If memory serves, there was a club, and the members lay around in giant cribs being read bedtime stories by a bosomy nanny. Minor celebrities and possibly backbench Tory members of Parliament may have been involved. In those days, it was what we called a “fetish” and you had to do it on your own dime. Now it’s a “disability” and the United States government picks up the tab. And, if that’s not progress, what is?

Sen. Tom Coburn happened to catch Stan with his babysitter and fellow disability-check recipient on a reality show, and wondered how a chap capable of running a popular website and doing such complicated carpentry jobs as his own giant highchair could be legitimately classified as “disabled.” But the Social Security Administration said Junior qualifies, and Senator Coburn was condemned as heartless: Why, if those mean Republicans got their way, the streets would be crawling with giant babies bawling, “I want my mommy!” Conversely, if Congresswoman DeLauro gets her way and the stampede for government Huggies gets going, Stanley Thornton Jr. will still be entitled to park his giant pedal car in the disabled space while the penniless single mom from Hartford has to leave the Toyota at the back of the lot and hike in.

#page# An able-bodied man paid by the government of the United States to lie in a giant crib wetting his diaper week in week out is almost too poignant an emblem of the republic at twilight. But, as Hillaire Belloc wrote, “Always keep a hold of Nurse / For fear of finding something worse.” Only last week, ABC News reported:

At a million-dollar San Francisco fundraiser today, President Obama warned his recession-battered supporters that if he loses the 2012 election it could herald a new, painful era of self-reliance in America.

Oh, no! The horror!

#ad# “Self-reliance” is now a pejorative? Nice to have that clarified. And San Francisco, a city that registers more dogs than it has kids enrolled in its schools and in which adults are perforce the children they never bothered having, seems as good a place as any to make it official. In less enlightened times, “self-reliance” was the great animating principle of the American experiment. By the standards of the day, George III was one of the most benign, caring rulers on earth: You were his mewling charges, and he was the regal babysitter. Then a bunch of settlers in small towns clinging to wilderness and thousands of miles from His Majesty the Nanny decided they didn’t need him and they could stand on their own. What’s the word for that? Oh, yeah: self-reliance.

Is it too late for a Self-Reliance Awareness Day? No, there’s no ribbons. Make your own damn ribbon. If that’s too much to hope for, how about a Multi-Trillion-Dollar Debt Awareness Day? The ribbon starts out black but turns deeper and deeper red. How about a We’ve Spent All the Money Including the Money for an Awareness-Raising Ribbon Day? An Impending Societal Collapse Awareness Day?

Yes, yes. I’m aware the cost of diapers adds up over a month, and you can’t use your food stamps to pay for them. Tough. This country’s broke. As I said last week, it has to pay back $15 trillion just to get back to having nothing at all. And that’s more money than anyone ever has had to pay back. Were you aware of that? Distressingly large numbers of Americans still pining for ever more swaddling in the government cradle seem entirely unaware.

Congresswoman DeLauro is thinking too small: Maybe we could all be issued with free diapers. As a casual glance at the headlines suggests, there’s almost nothing you can’t get government to pay for, but that’s no reason not to demand more. At its core, the “Occupy Wall Street” movement (in the political rather than the diaper-filling sense) is a plea for ever more extended adolescence funded at public expense. Don’t knock it. Dozing around listening to drum circles all day is more dangerous than it looks. Last week, several dozen members of “Occupy Las Vegas” occupying land located under the final approach to Runway 19 at McCarran International Airport narrowly missed being hit by a 50-pound slab of what’s euphemistically known as “blue ice” that fell from the bathroom of the president’s plane. Perhaps, as a symbol of the new post-self-reliant America of adult babies, Air Force One should be fitted with a giant diaper.

--- Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2011 Mark Steyn

Bulk-Ordering While Rome Burns

The dwindling band of federal taxpayers will be heartened to discover that its hard-earned dollars are not merely being sluiced to green start-ups to build unwanted eco-cars in Finland or used to buy guns for Mexican drug cartels to kill large numbers of people. They're also being deployed to stimulate the publishing industry by purchasing huge numbers of the president's books at public expense to give away to all the new friends America has around the world. From the Washington Times:

The U.S. Embassy in Egypt, for instance, spent $28,636 in August 2009 for copies of Mr. Obama’s best-selling 1995 memoir. Six weeks earlier, the embassy had placed another order for the same book for more than $9,000, federal purchasing records show.

So the U.S. Embassy in Cairo spent $38,000 on Dreams From My Father?

The hardback edition retails for $25.95. For an order that size, let's assume the State Department got a trade discount of 50 per cent, and each copy cost $12.98. Can it really be the case that the American ambassador knew 2,927 Egyptians panting for a freebie of the president's book?

What proportion went to Mubarak cronies now reading it in jail? And how many went to Muslim Brotherhood aficionados who find it comes in handy to thwack Copts with?

Given that the Defense Department's bulk purchase of the fraudulent Three Cups Of Tea doesn't seem to be doing much for the Afghan campaign, maybe the Pentagon could buy $38,000 worth of Dreams From My Father and drop it on Mullah Omar.

"Mark Steyn Seems Unaware..."

The blogger Canadian Cincinnatus dissents from the general thesis of After America:

What determines the future is not one particular set of physical tendencies but the vector sum of all of them. While Mark Steyn listed many trends in his book, he did not mention the increased competetiveness of American manufacturing or the US’s increasing energy self-sufficiency. These are important factors that should not have been left out.

I didn't mention the US's increasing energy "self-sufficiency" because, aside from higher oil prices making domestic production more competitive in recent years, I don't see it. As for "the increased competitiveness of American manufacturing", see page 212:

At America’s founding, 90 per cent of the labor force worked in agriculture. Today, fewer than three per cent do. Food is more plentiful than ever, and American farms export some $75 billion worth of their produce. But they don’t need the manpower anymore.

So the labor force moved to the mills and factories. And they don’t need the manpower anymore. Manufacturing produces the same amount with about a third of the labor that it took in 1950. By 2010, the US economy had restored pre-recession levels of output but without restoring pre-recession levels of employment.

Which is yet another chill in the citizenry's winter of discontent.

Re: Laughing All the Way to the Bank

Re that Herman Cain video:

Okay, I take back everything I said yesterday about his lack of knowledge of foreign policy, national security, social issues, etc. He's got my endorsement just for Mark Block's cigarette exhalation. Haven't seen anything like that since Sammy Davis Jr took a drag in the instrumental break of "With A Song In My Heart" at the Royal Albert Hall a couple of decades back.

When the 'Stan Hits the Fan

Don't get me wrong, I like Herman Cain. I like "Imagine There's No Pizza": It would be the greatest presidential campaign song since "Tippecanoe And Tyler, Too." I like his sunny disposition: Mien can be determinative -- it's why Rick Santorum is right on almost everything, and going nowhere. I like Cain's electrified fence gags, on the general principle that no sane person should climb into the straitjackets of the politically correct enforcers. 

And yet, and yet. . . . The foreign policy, hostage-trading, abortion stuff is becoming more difficult to ignore. I don't think Charles Krauthammer's assertion that Cain's "winging it” fully explains it, nor does the Pundette's that he is "incoherent." Cain's boast that he can't name the president of Beki-beki-beki-beki-beki-beki-stan gets closer to it. It's a cute line, notwithstanding that parochial braggadocio is easier to carry off when you're a soaring hyperpower rather than a multi-trillion-dollar sinkhole whose citizens' future is increasingly mortgaged to foreigners of one degree of unsavoriness or another.

But the ’stan shtick is a glimpse of the greater truth - that there are whole areas of public policy in which he simply has no interest. None. You ask him a question and from the recesses of his mind swim up half-recalled phrases from some panel discussion he caught once long ago, and he hopes he grabs the conservative line ("I'm proud to stand by Israel," "we don't negotiate with terrorists," "life begins at conception," whatever) but just as often he doesn't (with Gretchen Carlson this morning: "No, abortion should not be a part of the political discussion").

His fans say he's being set up with "Gotcha" questions. But these aren't the Hoogivsastans way out on the fringe of the public policy map. They're the first stops on the central thruway of American politics, and have been for most of Cain's adult life. And it's becoming harder to avoid the obvious truth that he hasn't given them a moment's thought.

It would be nice to have a candidate with a sunny demeanor who gets the urgency and understands the way fiscal insolvency, foreign affairs and social policy interact. But maybe from a talent pool of 200 million or so that's an unreasonable expectation. 

The Times They Aren't A-Changin'

Just when you thought Occupy Wall Street hadn't a single new idea in its pretty little empty head, the geniuses dust off the old banjo Bolshevik. From The New York Times, "Pete Seeger Leads Protesters, On Foot And In Song":

Mr. Seeger, whose activist credentials go back at least as far as a benefit concert that he and Woody Guthrie did for California migrant workers in 1940 and who wrote or helped write populist ballads like like “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” and “If I Had a Hammer,” ...set off south, walking at a brisk pace and accompanied by a crowd of about 600, some of them carrying placards declaring support for the self-declared 99 percent that have been occupying Zuccotti Park for five weeks...

“He’s a symbol of the peace movement,” said one of the marchers, Larry Manzino, a retired research scientist from Piscataway, N.J. “He’s a guy who never caved, a guy who had integrity, a guy who stood up and said no when he had to.”

"A guy who had integrity" is leftie code for "didn't repudiate Stalin until half-a-century after the old monster had died", as Seeger belatedly did in 2009. "Activist credentials" is the preferred New York Times euphemism for being reliably wrong on every single issue for the last 70 years, starting with his opposition to the Second World War. (Not to mention he ripped off Solomon Linda, the black South African author of "Wimoweh", who died penniless. Because, unlike poor Mr Linda, Mr Seeger was shrewd enough to have a - what's the word? - "corporation" to protect his business interests.)  

But good for OWS at finally finding the perfect soundtrack for its fresh youthful idealism. I believe Pete serenaded the Zuccotti Park crowd with his searing protest song, "Where Have All The Showers Gone?"

(Knit-cap tip: Ed Driscoll.)

Biden's Fourth-Grade Economics

In one of those inspired innovations designed to keep American classrooms on the cutting edge of educational excellence, the administration has been sending Joe Biden out to talk to schoolchildren. Last week, it was the fourth grade at Alexander B. Goode Elementary School in York, Pa., that found itself on the receiving end of the vice president’s wisdom:

Here in this school, your school, you’ve had a lot of teachers who used to work here, but because there’s no money for them in the city, they’re not working. And so what happens is, when that occurs, each of the teachers that stays have more kids to teach. And they don’t get to spend as much time with you as they did when your classes were smaller. We think the federal government in Washington, D.C., should say to the cities and states, look, we’re going to give you some money so that you can hire back all those people. And the way we’re going to do it, we’re going to ask people who have a lot of money to pay just a little bit more in taxes.

Who knew it was that easy?

#ad#So let’s see if I follow the vice president’s thinking:

The school laid off these teachers because “there’s no money for them in the city.” That’s true. York City School District is broke. It has a $14 million budget deficit.

So instead Washington, D.C., is going to “give you some money” to hire these teachers back.

So, unlike York, Pa., presumably Washington, D.C., has “money for them”?

No, not technically. Washington, D.C., is also broke -- way broker than York City School District. In fact, the government of the United States is broker than any entity has ever been in the history of the planet. Officially, Washington has to return 15,000,000,000,000 dollars just to get back to having nothing at all. And that 15,000,000,000,000 dollars is a very lowball figure that conveniently ignores another $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities that the government, unlike private businesses, is able to keep off the books.

So how come the Brokest Jurisdiction in History is able to “give you some money” to hire back those teachers that had to be laid off?

No problem, says the vice president. We’re going to “ask” people who have “a lot of money” to “pay just a little bit more” in taxes.

Where are these people? Evidently, not in York, Pa. But they’re out there somewhere. Who has “a lot of money”? According to President Obama, if your combined household income is over $250,000 a year you have “a lot of money.” Back in March, my National Review colleague Kevin Williamson pointed out that, in order to balance the budget of the United States, you would have to increase the taxes of people earning more than $250,000 a year by $500,000 a year.

Okay, okay, maybe that 250K definition of “bloated plutocrat” is a bit off. After all, the quarter-mil-a-year category includes not only bankers and other mustache-twirling robber barons, but also at least 50 school superintendents in the State of New York and many other mustache-twirling selfless public servants.

So how about people earning a million dollars a year? That’s “a lot of money” by anybody’s definition. As Kevin Williamson also pointed out, to balance the budget of the United States on the backs of millionaires you would have to increase the taxes of those earning more than 1 million a year by 6 million a year.

#page#Not only is there “no money in the city” of York, Pa., and no money in Washington, D.C., there’s no money anywhere else in America -- not for spending on the Obama/Biden scale. Come to that, there’s no money anywhere on the planet: Last year, John Kitchen of the U.S. Treasury and Menzie Chinn of the University of Wisconsin published a study called “Financing U.S. Debt: Is There Enough Money in the World -- and At What Cost?”

Don’t worry, it’s a book with a happy ending! U.S.-government spending is sustainable as long as by 2020 the rest of the planet is willing to sink 19 percent of its GDP into U.S. Treasury debt. And why wouldn’t they? After all, if you’re a Chinese politburo member or a Saudi prince or a Russian kleptocrat or a Somali pirate and you switched on CNN International and chanced to catch Joe Biden’s Fourth Grade Economics class, why wouldn’t you cheerily dump a fifth of your GDP into a business model with such a bright future?

#ad#Since 1970, public-school employment has increased ten times faster than public-school enrollment. In 2008, the United States spent more per student on K–12 education than any other developed nation except Switzerland -- and at least the Swiss have something to show for it. In 2008, York City School District spent $12,691 per pupil -- or about a third more than the Swiss. Slovakia’s total per-student cost is less than York City’s current per-student deficit -- and the Slovak kids beat the United States at mathematics, which may explain why their budget arithmetic still has a passing acquaintanceship with reality. As in so many other areas of American life, the problem is not the lack of money but the fact that so much of the money is utterly wasted.

But that’s no reason not to waste even more! So the president spent last week touring around in his weaponized Canadian bus telling Americans that Republicans were blocking plans to “put teachers back in the classroom.” Well, where are they now? Not every schoolmarm is down at the Occupy Wall Street drum circle, is she? No, indeed. And in that respect York City is a most instructive example: Five years ago (the most recent breakdown I have), the district had 440 teachers but 295 administrative and support staff. If you’re thinking that sounds a little out of whack, that just shows what a dummy you are: For every three teachers we “put back in the classroom,” we need to hire two bureaucrats to put back in the bureaucracy to fill in the paperwork to access the federal funds to put teachers back in the classroom. One day it will be three educrats for every two teachers, and the system will operate even more effectively.

It’s just about possible to foresee, say, Iceland or Ireland getting its spending under control. But, when a nation of 300 million people presumes to determine grade-school hiring and almost everything else through an ever more centralized bureaucracy, you’re setting yourself up for waste on a scale unknown to history. For example, under the Obama “stimulus,” U.S. taxpayers gave a $529 million loan guarantee to the company Fisker to build their Karma electric car. At a factory in Finland.

If you’re wondering how giving half a billion dollars to a Finnish factory stimulates the U.S. economy, well, what’s a lousy half-bil in a multi-trillion-dollar sinkhole? Besides, in the 2009 global rankings, Finnish schoolkids placed sixth in math, third in reading, and second in science, while suffering under the burden of a per-student budget half that of York City. By comparison, America placed 17th in reading, 23rd in science, and 31st in math. So the good news is that, by using U.S.-government money to fund a factory in Finland, Fisker may be able to hire workers smart enough to figure out how to build an unwanted electric car that doesn’t lose its entire U.S.-taxpayer investment.

In a sane world, Joe Biden’s remarks would be greeted by derisive laughter, even by fourth graders. Certainly by Finnish fourth graders.

--- Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2011 Mark Steyn

Re: What Will Qaddafi's Death Teach Our Enemies?

Cliff, there is a lot of truth in what you say. No one should weep for the pock-marked old drag queen's vicious end. But, if 'twere done, 'twere better it had been done by the Americans after Lockerbie, or by the Brits after one of his diplomats shot and killed a London policewoman, Yvonne Fletcher, in St James's Square, or by any other western nation after one or other of his many provocations twenty years ago. The post-Iraq Gaddafi of the last eight years was seen throughout the Arab world as a western ally. As recently as this spring, his son Khamis (a "reformer", according to the State Department) was welcomed to this country and officially received at Nasa and the Air Force Academy. His visit to West Point was cut short only because the revolution broke out and he had to return to Tripoli to start shooting large numbers of people.

Bernard Lewis said a few years ago that, in the Middle East, America risks teaching the lesson that she is harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend. So far the score in the Arab Spring is pretty consistent: On the CIA rule, Gaddafi, Ben Ali and Mubarak were SOBs but perceived, to one degree or another, as the west's SOBs. Baby Assad wasn't our SOB, and he's still in business, and getting aid and comfort from a supposed US client regime in Iraq. And the two most assiduous ideological exporters, Iran and Saudi Arabia, have vastly increased their influence. So has the Muslim Brotherhood.

On the other hand, it's bad news for Ukrainian nurses. And for Beyonce, who won't be getting any more million-dollar paychecks for playing the palace.