Obama the wuss

For a short time I was proud of Obama for his stated attention to teach Syria a lesson for using chemical weapons, which he had previously told them they had better not do.

But now it seems that Obama is putting this off for at least 10 more days to allow Congress to approve it, and Republicans in the House of Representatives might not even approve it just because they hate Obama, even though they would have approved George W. Bush making the same request. Furthermore, the administration has been talking more and more about how limited the response is going to be.

One almost gets the impression that Obama is secretly hoping that Republicans in Congress will vote “no” so he gets to avoid doing anything but can put the blame for doing nothing on Republicans.

France supports Obama

British Parliament may have wussed out, but France supports Obama. This is a big shift in French politics from back in the 1980s when France wouldn’t let our planes flyover France en route to bombing Libya. Maybe having a Nobel Peace Prize helps.

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Obama has completely lost any element of surprise with respect to this attack, but I guess U.S. armed forces don’t need surprise any more than Mike Tyson would need surprise in order to give a little kid a well-deserved spanking.

Do car seat laws reduce fertility?

You used to be able to fit four little kids in the backseat of a regular car. But today, with car seat laws, you can fit only two. Many middle class people can’t afford to have more than two kids, because means that have to buy a huge expensive minivan to hold them.

Bill de Blasio, next mayor of NYC?

Bill de Blasio is pulling ahead.

In my own informal poll of one white senior citizen living in the outer boroughs, she told me she intended to vote for de Blasio, and the reason seemed to be that he was the only white heterosexual Democratic candidate who didn’t email pictures of his penis to young women.

With a super-left-wing-liberal as Mayor, and no Republicans anywhere to stop him, New York City is doomed.

The world needs a cop

There have been comments along the line of “why does the U.S. have to get involved in this Syria mess?”

The compelling reason is that just as bad neighborhoods in New York City need police to keep law and order, the Middle East is a bad neighborhood that needs a cop to keep order.

So then the obvious next question is why does the cop have to be the United States? The answer is that we are the only country capable of doing the job. You also don’t want multiple countries playing cop. Just as we don’t want gangs of armed vigilantes wandering around the bad neighborhoods of New York City.

Maybe after another few decades of immigration from third-world countries and other left-wing policies, the United States will no longer be the world’s richest country, and China will take over the job of being the world’s cop. I can’t say that this is a future we should look forward to. (On the other hand, I suspect that China will be a better cop because they will take less crap than we do.)

The real story why the group was ejected from the restaurant

As reported at Radio Facts:

You’re only getting one side of story here. I work at the restaurant and your representation of the events is way off base. The group was being loud and obnoxious to both customers and staffers. They kept complaining about their long wait and were talking about how “whitey” was able to get seated, but they were not. The problem was that they had a large group and insisted on sitting next to each other. We only had one area that could accommodate their large group and the patrons in that area were not done. So yes, some “whities” were able to be seated before them, but only because they were going to a different area. We also seated non-whites in other areas too…They made this a racial issue before anything. One of the guests also insulted a deaf white girl because she didn’t respond to one of them telling her to move (she was deaf and didn’t hear them) They were also all standing in the middle of the walk way, making it difficult for customers to leave. We asked them if they could move over, but they said they can stand wherever they want, and if we wanted them out of the way then we should seat them. The customer that was offended was offended by a particular individual’s constant uses of the word “n*gger” When asked to stop, he threw out a long string of racial epithets against one of my co-workers.

I believe this account a lot more than I believe the mainstream news media account.

War against Syria!

Obama, who has won the Nobel Peace Prize, is pretty transparent in that he has decided to go to war against Syria. There are reports of a big movement of aircraft to the British Sovereign Base Area on the island of Cyprus.

Bashar Assad is doomed. Iraq couldn’t withstand a massive U.S. air attack, neither can Syria. We don’t have to put any boots on the ground to do this. Once we destroy a lot of his military with our aircraft and missiles, the rebels will be able to take over.

The rebels who are likely to take over will probably be Islamist types allied with Al Qaeda, but that’s stupid Obama’s fault for not getting involved a lot earlier when we had the opportunity to support good non-Islamist rebels.

In previous wars against Libya and Iraq, we were quite successful in quickly gaining air superiority and destroying the enemy’s air defense. Therefore, if Assad wishes to retaliate, his best chance is with a preemptive retaliation, attacking the base on Cyprus. He should also use his chemical weapons for an effective preemptory retaliation. What good is that big stockpile of chemical weapons if he doesn’t grab the opportunity to use it and go down swinging?

I suspect that the more likely scenario is that Assad will follow the strategy used by Saddan Hussein and Colonel Kadafi, which is to not take any offensive action against us until after we’ve destroyed most of his military capability. Assad is clinging to the false hope that Syria will be another Vietnam and not another Iraq or Libya or Serbia.

Assad will probably try a few feeble attacks against Israel with whatever he has left after the initial American attack. Obama will tell Israel they aren’t allowed to retaliate.

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I won’t miss Assad at all. He has been a pain in the ass to Western interests with no redeeming qualities. Unlike Colonel Kadafi, who was the world’s most entertaining, flamboyant and fashionable dictator. And humble too, remaining a mere Colonel when he could have promoted himself to General. Kadafi, I miss.

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“Mike” writes in a comment:

Since there had already been an early chemical weapons attack and Obama didn’t do anything, I think it’s a safe bet that Assad thought he could do whatever he wanted and no one would interfere.

I think he’s still mostly right on that. At least from the news reports, the air strike we are planning will not attack his chemical weapons stockpiles or go after Assad personally. It looks like they are going after a few command and control targets. So if that’s the case, then yes, Assad will be damaged, but not irreparably. He will still be able to function and conduct the war. So I don’t see the scenario that you do of a massive air campaign for regime change.This is more of a cruise missile finger wagging.

Yes, it’s possible that Obama will just launch a few cruise missiles, a slap on the wrist.

Why does it cost so much to raise kids?

Jayman pointed me to an Atlantic article comparing the cost of raising kids in 1960 to 2011.

My interpretation is that children are actually quite inexpensive to raise if you just account for food and clothing for them. This assumes that there’s a woman at home who wouldn’t otherwise be working, you send them to public schools, you don’t spend money on summer camp, expensive after-school activities. And you already have the space in the house for them.

Healthcare has gone up in price a lot, but according to the pie chart, it has only gone up from 4% to 8% of the cost of raising a child.

Raising a child becomes extremely expensive if you have to pay for childcare, live in an expensive city like New York where space is at a huge premium, or if you believe that you need to send them to private school or expensive after-school activities and summer camp.

This explains why prole whites living in white parts of the country can afford to churn out big families. Space is cheap out there, they have public schools, and they aren’t in a status competition to send their kids to the most expensive activities. They can buy their kids clothes from Walmart because all of their kids’ peers also are wearing Walmart clothes.

Technology “wrecks” jobs in the NY Times

The NY Times online commentary on How Technology Wrecks the Middle Class has been doing very well on the Most Emailed list, so the message is getting out.

The article itself doesn’t say much I haven’t already said in my blog. Technology hurts value creation jobs. The replacement jobs are high-skill value transference jobs and low-skill service jobs, providing unnecessary services for the people with better jobs.

Remember that just any old college degree isn’t good enough to ensure that you get into the value-transference track. Many college graduates are working at those low-skill service jobs. Harvard is highly recommended.

Syrian foreign minister says Syria will defend itself

Associated Press interview with Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mikdad:

“There will be no international military intervention,” Mikdad said in the interview at his office. “If individual countries want to pursue aggressive and adventurous policies, the natural answer … would be that Syria, which has been fighting against terrorism for almost three years, will also defend itself against any international attack.”

“They will bear the responsibility for such an attack, which will result in killing thousands of innocent people, as happened in Libya, and committing criminal actions against a sovereign country,” Mikdad added. “Syria will not be an easy target.”

Mikdad did not elaborate on how Syria might defend itself, but he said such an attack would trigger “chaos in the entire world.”

When is the last time that a country the United States attacked defended itself in any meaningful way that made America sorry for getting involved? The Vietnam War (in which we never actually attacked North Korea)?

There are Americans who are sorry we were involved in Iraq, but that sorrowfulness didn’t happen until well after the government of Saddam Hussein was completely eliminated. It was a bunch of non-governmental guerrillas who caused us to be sorry and not the Iraqi army. America is not good at occupying countries, but we are very good at destroying enemy military might and civilian infrastructure without taking any meaningful damage in return.

I wonder, is it possible for any small country to retaliate against us in any meaningful way? After two wars against Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia and Libya, one can either conclude that none of those countries were capable of retaliating, or that their military leadership was incompetent. With respect to Iraq, I definitely think that Saddam Hussein was very hands on in telling his military what to do, and that he was incompetent.