David Brooks, "The Post-Trump Era": How Obama Tangoed While Brussels Burned

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"The timing was awkward, coming right before the Brussels bombings, but Obama is roughly right on his facts: 464 people drowned in America in tubs, sometimes after falls, in 2013, while 17 were killed here by terrorists in 2014 (the most recent years for which I could get figures). Of course, that’s not an argument for relaxing vigilance, for at some point terrorists will graduate from explosives to nuclear, chemical or biological weapons that could be far more devastating than even 9/11. But it is an argument for addressing global challenges a little more rationally."

- Nicholas Kristof, "Overreacting to Terrorism?," March 24, 2016

In one of the most insensitive opinion pieces in the history of The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof yesterday explained away Obama's indifference to the horrors of the attacks in Brussels by telling us that "our brains sometimes mislead us." Or stated otherwise, it was perfectly okay for Obama to participate in a "wave" at a Havana baseball game and tango in Buenos Aires, i.e. fiddle while Rome burned, because only "17 were killed here by terrorists in 2014." Although Kristof makes mention of 9/11, he conveniently decides not to tell us of the 2,977 terror-linked deaths on that date, or that bridges and tunnels leading into Manhattan were closed, subways in New York City were shut down, and all flights over the US and Canada were cancelled. The cost to the US economy of 9/11: some $3.3 trillion. Needless to say, flights over the US and Canada are not cancelled when someone drowns in a bathtub, as tragic as such a mishap might be.

I am at a loss for words to condemn Kristof's coldhearted support of Obama's insouciance which derives from a narcissistic personality disorder.

Fast-forward 24 hours: In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "The Post-Trump Era," David Brooks doesn't even mention Brussels. Rather, regarding "Reagan Orthodoxy," Brooks would have us know:

"Now along comes Donald Trump, an angel of destruction, to blow it all to smithereens."

Something bad? Heck no! Ever cheerful even about the onset of middle-age (you will recall his prior euphoric opinion piece), Brooks concludes:

"We’re going to have two parties in this country. One will be a Democratic Party that is moving left. The other will be a Republican Party. Nobody knows what it will be, but it’s exciting to be present at the re-creation."

Excuse me, David, if I skip the celebration.

Meanwhile, in a Times op-ed entitled "Crazy About Money," Paul Krugman today also avoids any mention of Brussels. Instead, Krugman tells us that Ted Cruz "has staked out positions on crucial issues that are, not to put too fine a point on it, crazy." Krugman's conclusion:

"The moral here is that we shouldn’t be surprised by the Republican establishment’s willingness to rally behind Mr. Cruz. Yes, Mr. Cruz portrays himself as an outsider, and has managed to make remarkably many personal enemies. But while his policy ideas are extreme, they reflect the same extremism that pervades the party’s elite.

There are no moderates, or for that matter, sensible people, anywhere in this story."

Hillary, a secretary of state who set up a porous email server in her home basement that could be hacked at will by all of America's enemies, and Bernie, who would slash the US defense budget in the face of threats from ISIS, Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, are more "sensible" than Ted? Yeah, right. And on the subject of "sensible," let us not forget Krugman's proposal for a trillion dollar platinum coin.

Moreover, who is Krugman, who once declared, "It’s clear what kinds of things the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators want, and it’s really the job of policy intellectuals and politicians to fill in the details," to school us on "moderation"?

These are noxious times in which we live.

Thomas Friedman, "Blowing a Whistle": The NSA Is Going to Save Us from Another 9/11

Suppose terrorists have hidden a dirty bomb in Manhattan and are threatening to detonate the bomb unless the US releases all of its Guantanamo prisoners. The bomb is timed to go off in another two hours, and there is no time to evacuate the city. Millions are expected to die slow painful deaths from radiation poisoning and cancer unless the bomb is found and defused. Then suddenly, one of the al-Qaeda conspirators is captured, but he refuses to talk. Would you waterboard him, or read him his rights and wait for his lawyer?

Me? Wait for his lawyer? I wouldn't hesitate to go far beyond waterboarding the bastard, and yet I am appalled by the revelations of NSA information gathering, which contribute very little to American security. Even with warnings from Moscow, this data didn't prevent the Boston Marathon bombing. You see, it has nothing to do with the quantity of the data accumulated, and everything to do with theory and focus.

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Blowing a Whistle" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/opinion/friedman-blowing-a-whistle.html), Thomas Friedman plays on our 9/11 paranoia:

"Yes, I worry about potential government abuse of privacy from a program designed to prevent another 9/11 — abuse that, so far, does not appear to have happened. But I worry even more about another 9/11. That is, I worry about something that’s already happened once — that was staggeringly costly — and that terrorists aspire to repeat.

I worry about that even more, not because I don’t care about civil liberties, but because what I cherish most about America is our open society, and I believe that if there is one more 9/11 — or worse, an attack involving nuclear material — it could lead to the end of the open society as we know it. If there were another 9/11, I fear that 99 percent of Americans would tell their members of Congress: 'Do whatever you need to do to, privacy be damned, just make sure this does not happen again.' That is what I fear most.

That is why I’ll reluctantly, very reluctantly, trade off the government using data mining to look for suspicious patterns in phone numbers called and e-mail addresses — and then have to go to a judge to get a warrant to actually look at the content under guidelines set by Congress — to prevent a day where, out of fear, we give government a license to look at anyone, any e-mail, any phone call, anywhere, anytime."

Tom wants to "prevent a day where, out of fear, we give government a license to look at anyone, any e-mail, any phone call, anywhere, anytime"? Me, too. But didn't Snowden just tell us that "I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal e-mail" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance)?

Friedman quotes from an essay by David Simon, the creator of HBO’s "The Wire": "this kind of data collection has been a baseline logic of an American anti-terrorism effort that is effectively asked to find the needles before they are planted into haystacks, to prevent even such modest, grass-rooted conspiracies as the Boston Marathon bombing before they occur." Okay, but did it stop the Boston Marathon bombing? Not a chance.

Sure, I want to prevent a future 9/11, which is more likely to arise today as the result of an Iranian cyber attack, but unlike Tom, I'm going to be politically incorrect. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey (http://www.pewforum.org/Muslim/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-exec.aspx):

"Few U.S. Muslims voice support for suicide bombing or other forms of violence against civilians in the name of Islam; 81% say such acts are never justified, while fewer than one-in-ten say violence against civilians either is often justified (1%) or is sometimes justified (7%) to defend Islam."

Only 1% of US Muslims "say violence against civilians is often justified," and only 7% say that such violence "is sometimes justified"? These numbers are frightening. As I said earlier, everything has to do with theory and focus - here is your focus. Thanks to Pew, there is no additional need for theory.

And where is Obama in the midst of this storm? From the isolation of Rancho Mirage in California, he will soon be traveling to Tanzania. On Tuesday, Politico reporter Glenn Thrush Tuesday asked Jay Carney whether President Obama should "have a fireside chat with the American people" about the NSA’s surveillance program. Carney's answer (see: http://freebeacon.com/carney-refuses-to-answer-why-obama-wont-speak-to-american-people-directly-about-nsa-scandal/):

"I’m not saying — I think I just said, Glenn, although I appreciate yours and the former Attorney General’s specific recommendations about the modalities of presidential communication, the president has and will speak about this subject."

Yup, they're already firing up the teleprompters, but in the meantime, the president is doing what he does best: He likes to watch.