Audio:AndnowawordfromMikeDitka

Audio: And now a word from Mike Ditka about this Redskins “horsesh*t”

posted at 6:01 pm on August 20, 2014 by Allahpundit

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I can’t say this counts as news-y — the guy’s a self-described “ultra-ultra-ultra-conservative” and Palin fan so go figure that he’s impatient with political correctness — but it sure is red-meat-y and palate cleanse-y. After listening to it, I’m almost inclined to forgive him for refusing to blow up Obama’s political career on the launchpad in 2004 by running for Senate in Illinois, an idea Ditka toyed with but ultimately declined to pursue. “Biggest mistake I’ve ever made,” he later said. And now here we are 10 years later, with the leader of the free world watching the world melt down from the 18th green. So, so weird. It’s like time-traveling into the future and finding out that Skynet and its army of Terminators could have been prevented if only Tony Siragusa had run for Congress.

Anyway, he’s fighting a losing battle here:

“The league respectfully honored my request not to officiate Washington,” [Mike] Carey said. “It happened sometime after I refereed their playoff game in 2006, I think.”

For almost all of the final eight seasons and 146 games of Carey’s career, the first African American referee to work a Super Bowl — the official named with Ed Hochuli as the best in the game in a 2008 ESPN poll of coaches — essentially told his employers his desire for a mutually respectful society was so jeopardized by Washington’s team name that he could not bring himself to officiate the games of owner Daniel Snyder’s team.

“It just became clear to me that to be in the middle of the field, where something disrespectful is happening, was probably not the best thing for me,” Carey said.

Carey was quietly, and now not so quietly, protesting the Redskins name for the past eight years unbeknownst to the wider public. He shares an employer now in CBS Sports with Phil Simms, who’s also considering dropping “Redskins” from his vocabulary when he covers one of the team’s games a few weeks ago. For all the sturm und drang in the media, especially lefty media, over the “Redskins” name the past 18 months or so, the NFL’s been highly effective at keeping a lid on it among league personnel and their adjuncts, the broadcast teams. Once that starts changing, though, the elephant will be fully inside the room and then the league, and Dan Snyder, will face more pressure to make it go away. We’ll see what Simms does. Quite frankly, after calling them the “Redskins” absentmindedly for decades, I doubt I could police myself well enough during a running commentary to refer to them exclusively as “Washington.”

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Tags: conservative, Mike Ditka, NFL, obama, redskins, simms, snyder

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MitchMcConnell’semptypromise:We’llforceObamato

Mitch McConnell’s empty promise: We’ll force Obama to rein in government or else risk a shutdown

posted at 3:21 pm on August 20, 2014 by Allahpundit

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Does anyone actually believe this?

I guess Kentucky Republicans who don’t pay attention to politics but who’ll end up deciding this year’s Senate race anyway do. God bless democracy.

“We’re going to pass spending bills, and they’re going to have a lot of restrictions on the activities of the bureaucracy,” McConnell said in an interview aboard his campaign bus traveling through Western Kentucky coal country. “That’s something he won’t like, but that will be done. I guarantee it.”…

McConnell risks overreaching if he follows through with his pledge to attach policy riders to spending bills. If Obama refuses to accept such measures, a government shutdown could ensue. Republicans bore much of the blame for last year’s government shutdown, which was prompted by conservative tactics McConnell opposed, and their fortunes rebounded only when the administration bungled the rollout of Obamacare.

But asked about the potential that his approach could spark another shutdown, McConnell said it would be up to the president to decide whether to veto spending bills that would keep the government open.

Obama “needs to be challenged, and the best way to do that is through the funding process,” McConnell said. “He would have to make a decision on a given bill, whether there’s more in it that he likes than dislikes.”

To repeat: Does anyone actually believe this? McConnell was one of the sharpest Republican critics of the “defund” strategy that produced a government shutdown last fall. Watch the clip below if you need your memory refreshed. He’s fond of saying about it, “There’s no education in the second kick of a mule,” i.e. the GOP paid a political price for the 1995 shutdown and then foolishly paid the same price again in 2013 (although the backlash was blunted by public outrage at the Healthcare.gov meltdown that was happening simultaneously). Quote: “I think we have fully now acquainted our new members with what a losing strategy that is.” He hates shutdowns almost as much as the people in the GOP’s donor class who bankroll him do.

And yet here he is, soothing conservatives who are leery of reelecting him by vowing to take the fight to Obama this time and make him cause a shutdown if he refuses to agree to Republican demands. And he wants you to believe he’s going to do this while prominent Republicans, including his pal Rand Paul, are declaring their candidacies in 2016. It’s the purest nonsense. To believe it, you need to believe that somehow, if Obama vetoes the sort of bill McConnell’s describing here, that the GOP will win the ensuing media war over who “really” caused the shutdown. Which party, do you suppose, will the press hold responsible? Whom did they hold responsible in 1995, when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and went head to head with a Democratic president? The party that loves government, the bigger the better, or the one that doesn’t?

McConnell has a history of empty rhetoric about brinksmanship with Obama too. Remember this?

The Senate’s top Republican signaled Tuesday that he will seek to extract concessions from Democrats in exchange for lifting the nation’s debt limit in 2014, potentially foreshadowing a grueling fiscal fight during an election year.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said that he “can’t imagine” that the debt ceiling increase will be a “clean” one — meaning that it will have no conditions attached to it. McConnell, a key negotiator on deals ending the debt ceiling standoff in 2011 and this year during the government shutdown, noted that past significant legislative agreements have been attached to such increases. He was skeptical that the House or the Senate would have an appetite to hand President Barack Obama a clean debt limit hike.

Two months later he voted for cloture on — ta da — a clean debt-ceiling hike, even though Harry Reid had more than enough votes without him to break a filibuster by Ted Cruz. And so we already know what’ll happen next year: McConnell and Boehner will pass a spending bill with some riders attached, Obama will veto it, a shutdown deadline will loom, and eventually McConnell will agree to a clean bill while promising to fight another day. How many times do you need to see this movie to know the plot?

It will, perhaps, not surprise you to learn that Kentucky Democrats are having a field day with the excerpt above, claiming that McConnell’s already cooking up new shutdowns for America. They know which side is helped by shutdown politics. And so does Mitch the Knife, which, again, is why this is an empty threat.

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Quotesoftheday postedat10:41

Quotes of the day

posted at 10:41 pm on August 18, 2014 by Allahpundit

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President Obama on Monday lamented the shooting of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Mo., saying the episode showcased the distrust that minorities in many communities have of their local police officers.

“In too many communities around the country, the gulf of mistrust exists between local residents and law enforcement,” Obama said, weighing in on the raging controversy. “In too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and seen only as objects of fear.”…

Despite their anger over the death of black 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was shot to death by local police, Obama said protesters had no right to use violence against police or loot area stores.

“Let’s seek to heal rather than to wound each other,” the president said.

***

On one level, Obama’s decision to watch and wait on high-profile incidents in which race seems to play a role makes perfect sense. As president — and particularly as the country’s first African American president — his words carry huge weight. He and his team know that and want to do everything they can to help calm situations while allowing those in charge on the local level to do their jobs. At the same time, Obama is caught between a genuine — and much-expressed — desire to use his unique experiences to move the country beyond its divisive racial past and the realities on the ground, which suggest we aren’t in that post-racial America just yet.

In many ways, Obama’s difficulty in navigating matters of race as president mirrors his struggles in other areas. He has repeatedly and eloquently spoken about race — and his experiences in making his way in the world as the son of a white mother and a Kenyan father — over the past decade. But those words have done little to heal the racial wounds in the country. Perhaps it’s too much to expect any one individual, even the president, to help finally close such a deep and long-standing gash on the country’s conscience. But such is the historic nature of Obama’s presidency that many people, both white and black, expect him to do just that.

Today at least, Obama’s vision of a post-racial America looks even further away than it did that night a decade ago in Boston.

***

As violence raged in Ferguson, Mo., last week, President Barack Obama was hobnobbing with high-class political friends at an exclusive country club. On Sunday night, as the situation on the ground hit new lows, he and First Lady Michelle Obama were enjoying a jazz concert followed by dinner on Martha’s Vineyard, where they were vacationing.

The death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown at the hands of a white police officer, and the subsequent violence by police and protesters, has once again put Obama on defense over his handling of crisis situations, coming under fire from all corners of the political spectrum for a slow response to the controversy. In recent days, Obama has faced calls to visit Ferguson first-hand to see the violence and attempt to bring about a peaceful end to it. But Obama, wary of being seen as diverting law enforcement resources, is unlikely to make the trip until the situation calms down…

“Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now,” Obama said, calling for a national conversation on both the progress made since the Civil Rights era and the work as yet to be done.

But once in office, Obama abandoned that conversation for more pressing priorities, from the economy to health care to pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq. His race, he hoped, would be a footnote to his policy agenda. And when he did try to engage in that conversation, he got burned.

***

To make matters worse, blacks face additional challenges at home and in the streets. There is a crisis in black fatherhood: while just 29 per cent of whites are born out of wedlock, the figure is 72 per cent for blacks. One result is a racial imbalance in welfare dependency: African-Americans make up about 13 per cent of the population yet 39.8 per cent of those on welfare rolls. Other frightening statistics point to a serious cultural malaise. Four out of five black women are overweight or obese; black women account for nearly 36 per cent of all abortions performed in the United States.

All of this is made worse by a police and judicial system that seems not just imbalanced against blacks but actually designed to put more of them in prison. The War on Drugs and mandatory sentencing has gone hand-in-hand with racial profiling to send large numbers of African-Americans to jail for small infractions: they now account for around 40 per cent of the prison population. For a sense of how, for many blacks, the police are an agency of state repression, consider this alarming fact: in Ferguson, 67 per cent of residents are black but 94 per cent of the local police are white.

Why has electing a black president not changed all of this? One answer is that while Obama is a president who is black, he has never sold himself as an expressly black president – that is, he tries to operate outside of the racial narrative rather than play a leadership role within it. He is evidence to the young black child that, yes, anyone can make it in America.

But what he was never going to be was someone who would confront racism head on or seek a substantial redistribution of power and money of the variety that many civil rights leaders feel is necessary to help the poor.

***

To be clear, I didn’t have any unrealistic expectations for Obama. I didn’t expect him to pump a black fist in solidarity or scream “fight the power” from the makeshift press room. I didn’t even need him to take a clear side on the issue. I did, however, expect him to tell the truth. Instead, the President delivered a polite but ultimately dangerous message to the American public…

Obama has also placed the highest priority on remaining calm. While this may seem reasonable on its face, particularly against the backdrop of rioting and looting, his words failed to acknowledge the legitimacy of black anger. Black people die violent deaths way out of proportion to their numbers, sometimes killed by rogue cops and even more often each other. Why would we not be angry?

But unlike black-on-black violence, which is tragic but typically punished through proper legal channels, killings of unarmed young people by law enforcement continue to happen with impunity. Instead of acknowledging the legitimacy of black anger over this, the President simply told us to calm down and stop looting. In doing so, he joined the chorus of far too many politicians and civil rights leaders who understate and trivialize righteous anger in order to show the public that they have “the people” under control.

***

The problem is the White House no longer believes Obama can bridge divides. They believe — with good reason — that he widens them. They learned this early in his presidency, when Obama said that the police had “acted stupidly” when they arrested Harvard University professor Skip Gates on the porch of his own home. The backlash was fierce. To defuse it, Obama ended up inviting both Gates and his arresting officer for a “beer summit” at the White House…

Making matters worse, Obama’s presidency has seen a potent merging of the racial and political divides. It’s always been true that views on racial issues drive views on American politics. But as political scientist Michael Tesler has documented, during Obama’s presidency, views on American politics have begun driving views on racially charged issues…

If Obama’s speeches aren’t as dramatic as they used to be, this is why: the White House believes a presidential speech on a politically charged topic is as likely to make things worse as to make things better. It is as likely to infuriate conservatives as it is to inspire liberals. And in a country riven by political polarization, widening that divide can take hard problems and make them impossible problems.

President Obama might still decide to give a speech about events in Ferguson. But it probably won’t be the speech many of his supporters want. When Obama gave the first Race Speech he was a unifying figure trying to win the Democratic nomination. Today he’s a divisive figure who needs to govern the whole country. The White House never forgets that. There probably won’t be another Race Speech because the White House doesn’t believe there can be another Race Speech. For Obama, the cost of becoming president was sacrificing the unique gift that made him president.

***

I’m not saying the protests in Ferguson aren’t justified—they are. In fact, we need more protests across the country. Where’s our Kent State? What will it take to mobilize 4 million students in peaceful protest? Because that’s what it will take to evoke actual change. The middle class has to join the poor and whites have to join African-Americans in mass demonstrations, in ousting corrupt politicians, in boycotting exploitative businesses, in passing legislation that promotes economic equality and opportunity, and in punishing those who gamble with our financial future.

Otherwise, all we’re going to get is what we got out of Ferguson: a bunch of politicians and celebrities expressing sympathy and outrage. If we don’t have a specific agenda—a list of exactly what we want to change and how—we will be gathering over and over again beside the dead bodies of our murdered children, parents, and neighbors.

***

***

“I have to be very careful about not prejudging these events.”

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Tags: change, darren wilson, hope, michael brown, obama, post-racial

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Openthread:Semi-retiredpresidentforcedtosay

Open thread: Semi-retired president forced to say something about Ferguson again

posted at 3:55 pm on August 18, 2014 by Allahpundit

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He’s scheduled to speak at 4 p.m. ET, just as this post is going live. The poor guy: All he wants to talk about is amnesty, impeachment, and corporate “inversions,” and those darned looters keep throwing him off-message.

A clever take on the national mood:

legendary comma use RT @CBSNews: JUST IN: President Obama to deliver remarks at 4pm ET on the situation in Ferguson, Iraq

— Rembert Browne (@rembert) August 18, 2014

He’s actually not on vacation today but back at the White House for a previously scheduled briefing on Iraq and a hastily scheduled briefing by Holder on the Michael Brown case. I doubt there’ll be much news here: He’ll cast a vote of confidence in Holder’s decision to conduct a DOJ autopsy on Brown’s body and he’ll say something vague but positive-sounding about Jay Nixon’s decision to call out the National Guard, even though that sort of undercuts the anti-militarization point made by police critics lately. And there’ll be the usual on-the-one-hand demand for protesters to act peacefully with the on-the-other-hand demand for the police to use no excessive force. This is still worth watching, though, as the longer the Ferguson drama goes on, the farther Obama will need to stretch to satisfy disparate constituencies. Some black commentators, like Michael Eric “Holder is the new Moses” Dyson, are starting to grumble that O’s been too quiet about how the police treat black men. Other people, media figures among them, are getting fidgety that looting’s still happening more than a week after Brown was killed. Good luck on the tightrope, champ. Don’t look down!

He’ll also say a few words about airstrikes against ISIS, of which there have already been 68 and counting. The next time someone tells you that Republicans reflexively oppose everything O does, show them this poll from Pew. Democrats support the airstrikes 54/35; Republicans support them 71/14. While we wait, for those who haven’t heard it yet, here’s the audio of Dana Loesch’s chat on Friday with “Josie,” a woman purporting to be a friend of the cop who shot and killed Michael Brown and relaying his account of what happened. People are sending me links to Don Lemon talking about this on air today, as if somehow we’re first hearing of “Josie” only now and CNN had discovered her. Not so. Loesch had this posted three days ago. If you don’t have time for the clip, here’s a quickie transcript.

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Tags: darren wilson, ferguson, holder, michael brown, Missouri, national guard, obama

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Quotesoftheday postedat10:41

Quotes of the day

posted at 10:41 pm on August 14, 2014 by Allahpundit

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Attorney General Eric Holder released the following statement Thursday following his meeting earlier today with President Obama to discuss the latest developments in Ferguson, Missouri:…

“For one thing, while the vast majority of protests have been peaceful, acts of violence by members of the public cannot be condoned. Looting and willful efforts to antagonize law enforcement officers who are genuinely trying to protect the public do nothing to remember the young man who has died. Such conduct is unacceptable and must be unequivocally condemned.

“By the same token, the law enforcement response to these demonstrations must seek to reduce tensions, not heighten them. Those who peacefully gather to express sympathy for the family of Michael Brown must have their rights respected at all times. And journalists must not be harassed or prevented from covering a story that needs to be told.

“At a time when we must seek to rebuild trust between law enforcement and the local community, I am deeply concerned that the deployment of military equipment and vehicles sends a conflicting message.”

***

Another officer asked us to wait and called a supervisor. After a few minutes, he came back and told us this was a “hot zone” and that he couldn’t guarantee our safety. We thanked him and said that we didn’t expect him to, and yet we still wanted to reach the protest site. He said we couldn’t walk down the street and that we would have to get there some other way.

“What would happen if we walked down the street?” Flores asked.

“You’re not going to walk down the street. If you insist on going down here, and you want to disobey the orders of the police that have been given to you, thoroughly and fairly, you’ll most likely be placed under arrest.”

“On what charges?” I ask.

“Disobeying the directions of a police officer,” he answers…

This is what a media blackout looks like.

***

Michelle McCaskill, media relations chief at the Defense Logistics Agency, confirms that the Ferguson Police Department is part of a federal program called 1033 that distributes hundreds of millions of dollars of surplus military equipment to civilian police forces across the United States. The materials range from small items, such as pistols and automatic rifles, to heavy armored vehicles such as the MRAPs used in Afghanistan and Iraq…

Since the creation of the 1033 program by Congress in the early 1990s, the program has distributed $4.3 billion of excess equipment, ranging from innocuous office supplies to bomb-disposing robots and other advanced technology. The flood of military supplies — along with the continuing drug war and grant programs from other federal agencies that provide military-style equipment — has pushed the culture of police forces far from its law-enforcement roots…

St. Louis County law enforcement agencies received twelve 5.56 millimeter rifles and six .45 caliber pistols from the Department of Defense between Aug. 2, 2010, and Feb. 13, 2013, a Missouri public safety official confirmed Thursday. Ferguson, Mo., is within St. Louis County. The Pentagon allows information on “tactical” equipment to be released only at a county level, so which police department(s) in the county received the weaponry is not available.

***

But part of the problem with the program, according to the ACLU, is a lack of transparency and oversight. Few restrictions are placed on what equipment law enforcement can request or how they use it. The organization concluded that the only significant restriction placed on departments is that they not sell whatever equipment they receive. In fact, departments are required to use the equipment that they receive within one year, which Dansky said could actually incentive the use of the equipment even when it’s unnecessary.

“The program contains a built-in incentive,” she said. “As these local police departments receive this equipment, there are no meaningful constraints on their ability to use it.”

“If all you have is a hammer,” she added, “everything looks like a nail.”

***

What is beyond dispute is that since Ferguson erupted in response to this tragic incident, the authorities haven’t done much to instill public confidence. Not only have they declined to release relevant details, much like the police officer in question is accused of doing, they have escalated the situation very quickly by engaging in a series of clashes with understandably upset demonstrators…

[T]his situation calls for a political force that will defend the Bill of Rights, rather than practice identity politics. That means ensuring that peaceful property owners are free of looters and law-abiding demonstrators are not crushed by SWAT teams. It also means taking an appropriately skeptical view of both police claims and Al Sharpton…

If libertarians and the best kind of conservative have any insight, it is this: government works for the people whose tax dollars sustain and support it, not the other way around. When this basic order of things gets reversed, Ferguson isn’t too far around the corner.

***

If you want an indication about where someone sits on the dividing line between conservative and libertarian, sometimes it’s as simple as how they answer this question: how do you feel about cops? Do you naturally tend to trust them, viewing them as a necessary and needed hedge acting in defense of law and order? Or are you naturally suspicious of them, believing them to be little more than armed tax collectors and bureaucrats with a tendency to violence and falsehood in service of their whims? Are cops the brave individuals who stand between the law-abiding and those who would rob, rape, and kill, or are they the low-level tyrannical overpaid functionaries of the administrative state, more focused on tax collection in the form of citations, property grabs, and killing the occasional family dog?…

The population of Ferguson has reacted with obvious frustration, followed by an overreaction of rioting and looting. The cops have responded by what seems from all appearances to be a massive crackdown on protesters and criminals alike, an escalation of arrests that includes tear gassing people for doing little more than yelling epithets from their own back yards. And so those people stopped throwing bad words and started throwing bricks and molotov cocktails…

“Justice is the end of government,” James Madison wrote in Federalist 51. “It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.” It can be lost because of the mob, or it can be lost because of the response to the mob – and conservatives who believe in law and order should understand that. Responsible governance in this situation would involve de-escalation and conciliation, not militarization.

***

I guess the question is, after again remembering that we should never condone the looting or destruction of property of innocent bystanders: Are we really okay with asking people to just accept that cops can gun down a teenager and whitewash the whole incident and take that laying down or just “oh well, that’s life sometimes”? Because I’m not. I think if the cops don’t believe that there’s some line that will cause the public to rise up in arms against them we are in deep trouble…

I guess in the final analysis I’m fine with the criticisms of the very obvious excesses of the Ferguson riots but I’m not as willing as many are to categorically condemn the impulse. In fact, I’m glad that the impulse still exists within America to say that there’s a point beyond which they won’t be pushed by the authorities even if they do look more like a Marine division than a police force these days. And I understand the anger and frustration and with police brutality that led to this particular situation, even though, again, we can’t say definitively what happened in the Michael Brown situation.

When America dumped a bunch of the Crown’s tea into Boston Harbor the British called us rioters, looters, and worse. What’s happening in Ferguson is maybe not that, but our country was founded on the impulse of being willing to take only so much crap from a disconnected and unresponsive government, and I hope that impulse isn’t gone forever.

***

While there is no simple fix to race relations in any part of American life, there is an obvious way to reduce violent law enforcement confrontations while also building trust in cops: Police should be required to use wearable cameras and record their interactions with citizens. These cameras—various models are already on the market—are small and unobtrusive and include safeguards against subsequent manipulation of any recordings…

According to a year-long study of the Rialto, Calif., police department, the use of “officer worn cameras reduced the rate of use-of-force incidents by 59 percent” and “utilization of the cameras led to an 87.5 percent reduction in complaints” by citizens against cops.

Such results are the reason that the ACLU is in favor of “police body-mounted cameras,” as long as various privacy protections and other concerns are addressed. And it also explains growing support for the policy among elected officials. In the wake of Eric Garner’s chokehold death in July, New York City’s public advocate is pushing a $5 million pilot program in the city’s “most crime-plagued neighborhoods” as a means of restoring trust in the police.

***

There’s something else, harder to discuss but, like so many such things, urgent nonetheless. Deep breath: The black community cannot pretend that the stereotype of black men as violent comes out of nowhere.

Young black men commit about 50 percent of the murders in this country, 14 times more than young white men. Or, where do murder rates among young white men go up each summer the way they do among black ones in cities like Chicago? “Flash robs” happen when large groups of teens beset a store and steal from it, and I’m sorry, but these are rarely white affairs.

There are reasons for things like these. However, we are being unrealistic to expect America to watch these things and think it’s okay because the boys don’t have Dads and decent-paying low-skill jobs aren’t always easy to find. Let’s face it: If Korean boys regularly did things like this, we’d all be scared to death of them…

I wonder if the black community could step it up some on this. We need to devote some more energy to figuring out what we can do about The Violence, because among all else that it destroys, it feeds a perception bias that ends up killing innocents like Michael Brown.

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Tags: ferguson, looting, michael brown, Missouri, obama, pd, police, protest, riot

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FraternalOrderofPolicechief:Discussingpolicetactics

Fraternal Order of Police chief: Discussing police tactics from Martha’s Vineyard won’t calm the situation, you know

posted at 8:01 pm on August 14, 2014 by Allahpundit

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Smart politics. PDs are in a precarious position right now, criticized universally by the left for what happened last night in Ferguson and by many on the libertarian and libertarian-ish right, future presidential candidate Rand Paul among them. If that heat stays bipartisan, legislation to end federal provisions of military weapons to local police might happen. The fastest way to short-circuit that bipartisanship is to frame the argument as one between Obama and the police, knowing that Republicans will be more inclined to side with the cops if O’s on the other side. And so:

“I would contend that discussing police tactics from Martha’s Vineyard is not helpful to ultimately calming the situation,” director Jim Pasco said in an interview with The Hill.

“I think what he has to do as president and as a constitutional lawyer is remember that there is a process in the United States and the process is being followed, for good or for ill, by the police and by the county and by the city and by the prosecutors’ office,” Pasco added…

Pasco said both police and members of the public are entitled to due process but said he is not convinced police have used excessive force in Ferguson.

“I’m not there, and neither is the president,” Pasco said. “That is why we have due process in the United States. And this will all be sorted out over time. But right now, I haven’t seen anything from afar — and maybe the president has — that would lead me to believe the police are doing anything except to restore order.”

I’m assuming Pasco would have grumbled about Obama’s criticism regardless of where he delivered it, but mentioning Martha’s Vineyard is a nice touch too. You take his point: It’s easy to judge cops when you’re clinking champagne glasses with Vernon Jordan on the 18th hole, not in the thick of it with people who are throwing bottles at your head. If you missed Obama’s statement earlier, though, catch up now. He did say that there’s no excuse for police to use excessive force, but he prefaced that by emphasizing that there’s no excuse for using violence against the police — and he pointedly failed to say, when mentioning Michael Brown’s death, how Brown died or who it was who shot him. It was the vaguest, most banal “we all need to behave better” oatmeal, but Pasco still saw an opportunity in critiquing it.

Incidentally, it’s also apparently the position of the Department of Justice that St. Louis County PD has used “excessive force,” which explains why there are no fewer than six(!) DOJ departments now on the ground in Ferguson according to BuzzFeed. I think the feds have chosen the term “excessive force” carefully: They’re not accusing the police of brutality, which suggests beating people, just of using more force than they really need to to control the crowds.

In any event, as Ed noted earlier, the St. Louis County police are no longer on the case. The Missouri Highway Patrol is in charge now. Here’s Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon making the announcement, and reading it fast enough that it sounds like he’d rather be anywhere in the world except there.

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Theobligatory“ObamadancedwhileFergusonraged”photo

The obligatory “Obama danced while Ferguson raged” photo

posted at 6:41 pm on August 14, 2014 by Allahpundit

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The fact that it was taken at a country club in one of the toniest areas in the United States isn’t what makes it obnoxious, but it does add a zesty “disengaged ruling class” stink to it, don’t you think?

I know you’ve already seen it on Drudge and/or Breitbart but it can’t be reposted enough. And let’s be clear: As much as this lends itself to an easy “What if Bush did it?” analysis, and as much as that analysis would be entirely correct, it really would have been callous had Bush danced the night away on yet another night of cops battling protesters after a fatal shooting in the midwest. It’s not a matter of “optics,” it’s a matter of giving a minimal enough sh*t about what’s happening in the country you govern to not be partying while it’s going down live on cable and the Internet. That was one of the things that supposedly made him the anti-Bush in 2008, right?

you had one job pic.twitter.com/xWYbFVswCz

— iLoveScienceSexually (@AceofSpadesHQ) August 14, 2014

Ace is trying to spread my joke about Obama being “semi-retired” but he’s not really “semi”-retired anymore, is he? He’s done. He wouldn’t have let this photo happen if he wasn’t. Next stop: The Villages.

One more thing. I tweeted this last night half-serious, half-joking:

On a hopeful note, we're all but guaranteed a terse, uncomfortable, carefully scripted Obama statement before the next 18 holes tomorrow

— Allahpundit (@allahpundit) August 14, 2014

The serious part was that his statement would be painstakingly worded to avoid offending anyone. The joke was that he’d be back on the links right away. After the new uproar, I thought, he’d stick to lower-profile vacation activities for a day or two to signal he was taking this seriously. Welp:

@NumbersMuncher Statement ended at 12:58. He arrived at the golf club at 1:05.

— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) August 14, 2014

Does that sound like a man who’s merely semi-retired? In lieu of an exit question, go read this from Business Insider. It’s a comfort at least to know that he’s studying some important data while all this is going on.

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Tags: cecil, hillary, hug summit, Martha's Vineyard, obama, White House

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Endgame:Malikitostepdown,supportAbadias

Endgame: Maliki to step down, support Abadi as new prime minister of Iraq

posted at 4:04 pm on August 14, 2014 by Allahpundit

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America was tired of him, Iran was tired of him, the Sunnis were really tired of him, even the country’s Shiite-in-chief thought it was time for him to move along. There’s no doubt he would have dug in on last weekend’s attempted coup if he thought the military would protect him, but they were prepared to cut him loose as well.

And so an ignominious reign ends with a whimper.

Maliki: I withdraw my candidacy for PM in favour of Abadi to safeguard unity & stability of Iraq, political process pic.twitter.com/iSIAWI3oai

— Sajad Jiyad سجاد (@SajadJiyad) August 14, 2014

It was Sistani’s letter a few days ago demanding a new prime minister that sunk him, apparently. Without a Shiite base of support, he had nothing.

Whether you think this is good news or bad news depends on whether you think Iraq can and should be preserved as a nation. With Abadi now in charge, the U.S. will be inclined to stick with the dream of a single multisectarian Iraq for awhile longer. Maybe Abadi can make nice with the Sunnis, which in turn would make things harder for ISIS in Anbar province. If the Sunni chieftains there now have a reason to reconcile with Baghdad, there might be a new Awakening in the offing. Good news! On the other hand, bad news: The more the U.S. clings to the “one Iraq” idea, the more it necessarily resists the idea of an independent Kurdistan. It could be that Abadi’s going to get a trial run from the White House to see how he does in making the Iraqi army less sectarian and in making sure the Kurds get their fair share of U.S. aid and arms. If he follows Maliki’s lead and tilts towards Shiite hegemony, Obama can pull the plug quickly and throw in with the Kurds. And then that’s the end of Iraq as far as America’s concerned.

Why did Iran end up pulling the plug on Maliki, though? Did they conclude, anticipating Sistani’s move, that he had lost so much support even among Shiites that he was no longer an effective proxy? Or were they worried that Iraq really was on the verge of breaking up, with Baghdad about to lose what little influence it still has over the Kurds and Kurdish oil assets?

Update: Some people on Twitter are celebrating the fact we finally, finally have a peaceful transition of power in a democratic Iraq, which will hopefully set a precedent for governments to come. I guess, but Maliki only took the civilized route when he had exhausted all other options and alienated pretty much the entire country. He left because he couldn’t find enough people in the military to keep him in power at gunpoint. He could have done this years ago — and had the opportunity — but fought bitterly to keep power, and now the country’s on the brink of breaking apart and being overrun by barbarians. Some victory.

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Tags: abadi, Iran, Iraq, Kurds, maliki, obama, sistani, u.s.

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JohnLewis:WhatObamashoulddonowin

John Lewis: What Obama should do now in Ferguson is, uh … declare martial law

posted at 2:01 pm on August 14, 2014 by Allahpundit

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I understand the frame of reference. Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne to desegregate Central High; the Marines were sent in during the L.A. riots after the Rodney King verdict to keep the peace. This idea of using troops to maintain order when racial tensions blow sky high somewhere in America isn’t out of the blue, especially for someone who participated in the civil rights movement. But this is a singularly terrible idea on a day when elements of the left and right have coalesced to criticize — ta da — the militarization of the police. The solution to cops in fatigues with heavy weapons, I’m thinking, isn’t bona fide soldiers in the streets with heavier weapons. Although one of the many nasty byproducts of having a warrior police force is that the arguments against actual military occupation start to weaken. Who would you rather take your chances with as a protester, a U.S. Marine who’s been rigorously trained and who understands there’s a fierce taboo against soldiers using violence against American citizens or a local cop who hasn’t dealt with many riots before and who’s finally getting to test out some of the impressive weapons the feds have given the force?

Martial law is also a terrible idea politically for Democrats, of course. I guarantee there were people in the White House audibly groaning as Lewis floated this rhetorical air biscuit for a lefty audience on MSNBC, knowing that it’ll put (a little) pressure on Obama to take his advice and further knowing that conservatives would have a field day turning out voters in November after O declared “martial law” in a midwestern town, even for a day. If the National Guard is sent in, the order will come from Jay Nixon, precisely because the party is eager to keep Obama far away from this. Better that he spend his time golfing than giving military orders in a situation that’s already racially inflamed.

Oh, and the reason Andrea Mitchell doesn’t press Lewis on any of this is because she’s riding along on the dumbest, lamest lefty read on Ferguson. She’s not going to rock the boat, especially at John Lewis’s expense.

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Tags: civil rights, ferguson, John Lewis, martial law, obama

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Openthread:ObamatoaddressFergusonunrest

Open thread: Obama to address Ferguson unrest at 12:15 ET; Update: Back to the golf course

posted at 12:01 pm on August 14, 2014 by Allahpundit

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Actually, the announcement doesn’t say what the topic is (maybe there’ll be an Iraq update too?) but c’mon. One of the major subplots on Twitter last night while the commentariat was gawking at police-soldiers shutting down media coverage in Ferguson was how freakishly tone deaf it was for Obama and Hillary to be partying the night away on Martha’s Vineyard. I kid you not, a White House spokesman tweeted this right in the middle of it:

Readout of tonight's social gathering coming shortly – spoiler alert: a good time was had by all.

— Eric Schultz (@Schultz44) August 14, 2014

That prompted this, the plain elegant truth of which has drawn 500 retweets and counting as I write this:

If Bush was President at a fancy party while Ferguson was happening, this would be your coverage all night long. pic.twitter.com/S3Q0kpPBVm

— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) August 14, 2014

The main target last night for the media’s outrage at political passivity was Missouri’s Democratic governor, Jay Nixon, who’d ducked the standoff until today but has finally bowed to pressure and ordered St. Louis County police off the case. That means The One will be all alone out on a limb unless he speaks up quickly. Expect something terse, uncomfortable, and verrrry carefully scripted before he heads back onto the links for another 18 holes. Although, to be fair, Charles Cooke had a point when he wrote about this a few days ago — no matter what Obama says or doesn’t say about this, he can’t win:

If he remains silent, he will be accused by the Right of vacationing while the country burns, and by the Left of not caring enough about justice. If he does say something, he’ll be accused of interfering with — and possibly prejudicing — an ongoing legal inquiry, of making the story about himself, and of feeling it necessary to involve himself in each and every issue that makes the national headlines. As for the detail, any official statement would be fraught with peril. If his comments were delivered in a less-than-perfect manner, he might inadvertently say something that gave a poor impression; by contrast, if he read prepared remarks from a teleprompter, he’d be accused of sounding disinterested. Worse, perhaps, he might be seen to be taking sides. If he pleases those who wish to see a restoration of law and order, he will look as if he is siding with authorities and ignoring the concerns of black Americans who consider the police to be a threat. But, if he discusses race in a general sense, he will look as if he is deciding what happened prematurely, and as if he is stirring up grievances that have — in some quarters — already been blown out of proportion. Some will even accuse him of stoking a “race war.”

The only person on either side who looks forward to Obama wading into a racially charged incident involving the police is Chris Matthews, who gets another chance to dust off some Washington/Lincoln analogies. Benjy Sarlin makes a fair point too: As easy as it is to say “Obama should go to Ferguson!”, him doing that might turn a situation where there’s some rare bipartisan outrage into a red-versus-blue thing. We’ll find out soon. Exit quotation:

We are departing a “why won’t Obama speak” news cycle for a “can you believe what Obama said” news cycle.

— daveweigel (@daveweigel) August 14, 2014

Update: One more leftover last night from Guy Benson, who imagined how President Strawman would frame the debate this morning:

@allahpundit some say the rioters are completely justified, while others defend all police actions…

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) August 14, 2014

Update: He said there’s no excuse for violence, but these two reactions pretty well sum up the rest:

Obama Declares It Is Time For Government Authorities to Let Journalists Do Their Jobs, Declines to Take Questions from Press

— jimgeraghty (@jimgeraghty) August 14, 2014

That didn't take long: @BarackObama has arrived at a golf course here in Edgartown.

— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) August 14, 2014

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Tags: ferguson, Iraq, ISIS, obama, Ukraine

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