A Pox on Anti-Vaxxer Pols
Are anti-vaxxers the soccer moms of 2016? Not likely. Chris Christie gave them a shot but he’s not breaking out from the Republican pack.
Politicians often “inoculate” themselves by condemning an issue expected to be unpopular with voters. A hard line against parents who don’t vaccinate their children could be the litmus test of the day for 2016 presidential campaign. Christie may need a booster.
He’s quarantined himself from interviewers on his luxury trip to England.
Men in Green
I Googled Obama-Robin Hood and got 10,400,000 links . Obama-Peter Pan brought 1,800,000. Obama-Fantasy was good for 51,600,000.
I’m guessing he’s one of the men in green.
The popular Robin Hood story is that he steals from the rich and gives to the poor. Except the real Robin Hood – the legend anyway- stole from the Sheriff of Nottingham who taxed the poor.
In that story President Obama wouldn’t be Robin Hood. He’d be the Sheriff of Nottingham, except he taxes the rich. Well, the poor too if you want to get into the Obama Care weeds.
He’s obsessed with fairness. In 2008 Charlie Gibson pointed out that when Clinton and Bush cut the capital gains tax, revenues increased. He asked Obama if he would increase the capital gains tax even if it meant less revenue to the government. The future president said he would – in the interest of fairness.
Dan Henninger in Thursday’s WSJ Wonder Land column wondered about fairness:
Other than the president, the one other slice of the American population that obsesses over fairness everywhere is children. Every parent knows that about the age of four, kids in groups start saying, “That’s not fair.”
If you have a birthday party and cut pieces of the cake for all, one of them will say, “Her piece is bigger than mine. Why is she getting a bigger piece? That’s not fair.”
And parents, ever since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, have felt obliged to instruct their children on the reality. Life isn’t going to be “fair.” And the path into the future requires more than envy, tantrums and grabbing what belongs to others.
Cradle-to-grave fairness may be infantile, but the idea lives on, especially in politics and most of all in Mr. Obama’s mind.
Even Jimmy Carter knows life’s not fair.
Anyway, in President Obama’s mind it doesn’t matter if he’s Robin Hood or Peter Pan. We’ll always be the serfs.
Never Again
It’s “never again’ time again.
The beginning of January marked the murder of 4 Jews at a Kosher market as part of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonist massacre. Last week marked the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Also last week, Dr. Krauthammer and Professor Victor Davis Hanson wrote about the current status of Jews in the world. “Never again” isn’t a sure thing. Anti-semitism has been the norm in Europe “for millennia” reports Krauthammer. The murder of 6 million Jews by the losing side set the cause back for a while. But now it’s on the rise again.
Jews aren’t concentrated in Europe anymore. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasralla likes funneling them into Israel. Krauthammer says, “It took the Nazis seven years to kill 6 million Jews. It would take a nuclear Iran one day.”
President Obama was a no-show at the Charlie Hebdo world leaders’ march for solidarity. He’ll be a no-show in March for Bibi’s speech to Congress too.
In the meantime, The Washington Free Beacon reports that Iran has targeted Benjamin Netanyahu’s children for assassination.
Deflategate XLIX
Tom Brady’s idol, Joe Montana, thinks Brady is the deflategate mastermind. But he also thinks Brady’s an NFL all time great. Happy Super Bowl!
Blizzard Bust
Boston got busted but the blizzard was a bust in New York. Central Park got about 8 inches of snow. Not bad but not very historical. “Potentially historical” is how the National Weather Service predicted the blizzard. That caused Louis C.K. to write, “Well I didn’t know you could call a thing historic if it hasn’t happened yet.” His Madison Square Garden show got cancelled.
The New York Post‘s John Podhoretz said, “don’t blame the media, blame the politicians.” Governor Cuomo shut down the subway system for the first time in 101 years – “because he wanted to”. Now that’s historical. Podhoretz called NY Mayor DeBlasio a “6-foot, 5-inch wagging finger, ordering everybody to go inside and stay inside if they knew what was good for them”.
Kevin Williamson summed it up in National Review. “If you happen to be a power-hungry politician, a state of emergency is a very useful thing”.
