It’s Patriots’ Day—the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, regarded as the official start of the American Revolution, although Massachusetts and Maine (once part of Massachusetts) are the only states that officially celebrate the occasion.

Boston does so mainly by the running of the Boston Marathon, which has nothing to do with the history but is still a good show, if you like that sort of thing (I’m not a keen fan, although it’s fun to watch in person). But here on this blog let’s just think a moment of the repercussions of that day back in 1775, when they fired the shot heard round the world .

No one really knows who fired that first shot; eyewitness reports varied, as they often do. But it was considered the true beginning of the military conflict that ended with the establishment of our country, and was fought by militias composed of ordinary citizens who were defending (among other things) their right to their munitions. You might say they were clinging to their guns, although not bitterly.

There was no internet, and no cellphones then. Nevertheless, the militias had developed an efficient way of communicating, and not just through the illustrious horseman Paul Revere:

The ride of Revere, Dawes, and Prescott triggered a flexible system of “alarm and muster” that had been carefully developed months before, in reaction to the colonists’ impotent response to the Powder Alarm. This system was an improved version of an old network of widespread notification and fast deployment of local militia forces in times of emergency. The colonists had periodically used this system all the way back to the early years of Indian wars in the colony, before it fell into disuse in the French and Indian War. In addition to other express riders delivering messages, bells, drums, alarm guns, bonfires and a trumpet were used for rapid communication from town to town, notifying the rebels in dozens of eastern Massachusetts villages that they should muster their militias because the regulars in numbers greater than 500 were leaving Boston, with possible hostile intentions. This system was so effective that people in towns 25 miles (40 km) from Boston were aware of the army’s movements while they were still unloading boats in Cambridge.

The original Boston Tea Party had already occurred, and Britain had passed what were known here as the Intolerable Acts to punish the rebellious colonists, the most intolerable being:

The Boston Port Act…[which] closed the port of Boston until the East India Company had been repaid for the destroyed tea and until the king was satisfied that order had been restored…

The Massachusetts Government Act…Under the terms of the Government Act, almost all positions in the colonial government were to be appointed by the governor or the king. The act also severely limited the activities of town meetings in Massachusetts. Colonists outside Massachusetts feared that their governments could now also be changed by the legislative fiat of Parliament…

The Administration of Justice Act allowed the governor to move trials of accused royal officials to another colony or even to Great Britain if he believed the official could not get a fair trial in Massachusetts…George Washington called this the “Murder Act” because he believed that it allowed British officials to harass Americans and then escape justice…

The Quartering Act…allowed a governor to house soldiers in other buildings if suitable quarters were not provided…

The Acts were meant to punish Massachusetts. But like many acts of tyranny, they only caused a backlash. The outrage spread to other nearby colonies, and were seen as a threat to the liberty of all:

The acts unintentionally promoted sympathy for Massachusetts and encouraged colonists from the otherwise diverse colonies to form the First Continental Congress. The Continental Congress created the Continental Association, an agreement to boycott British goods and, if that did not get the Coercive Acts reversed after a year, to stop exporting goods to Great Britain as well. The Congress also pledged to support Massachusetts in case of attack, which meant that all of the colonies would become involved when the American Revolutionary War began at Lexington and Concord.

Which brings us back to today, Patriots’ Day.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps…

[ADDENDUM: This is not entirely unrelated.]

One of Obama’s most enduring characteristics (one he shares with many on the left) has been his belief in the power of words [emphasis mine]:

When the Right, in trying to figure Obama out, says “watch what he does, not what he says,” they’re using a principle that seems self-evident. But it’s not that way for liberals and the Left, who are often far more interested in declarations of intent, in eloquence rather than achievement. If a person has the right goals in mind, if a person sounds like a good person, that’s the most important thing. And if liberals and the soft Left (the hard Left is quite different) are moved so mightily by words and speeches, they tend to conclude that everyone in the world shares that tendency.

Aha, you might ask, but what about Reagan? When conservatives credit Reagan’s bold words in a speech for the fall of the Soviets, they’re making the same mistake, aren’t they? But when Reagan said “tear down this wall” the words were not spoken in isolation. There was conviction behind them, but far more importantly, they were not “mere words.” They were embedded in a lengthy policy of many years’ duration towards the USSR (he made the speech in June of 1987), plus knowledge of Russia’s own internal weaknesses and the ascension of Gorbachev the reformer.

This is not only very typical of left, it’s true of post-modern trends in academia. Obama has long been surrounded by people for whom “text” and “narrative” reign supreme.

But PC academia is about as far as you can get from the sphere of ruthless leaders and nations jockeying for power and position in an armed and very non-abstract world. Does Obama truly believe that the administration’s efforts to verbally re-brand our enemies will matter to anyone except a few English lit professors [emphasis mine]?:

Rogue states” is being pushed aside in favor of the less confrontational “outliers.”

“Islamic radicalism” is being converted to the less religiously freighted “violent extremism.”

And in one of the most important speeches of his presidency, Barack Obama omitted a term that was the Bush administration’s obsession: terrorism – part of a larger effort to de-emphasize the problem in Obama’s relations with Muslim states…

The White House often tries to downplay the changes, but observers say officials must expect that the linguistic shifts will have substantive impact - otherwise they wouldn’t bother with moves that leave Obama so vulnerable to criticism.

“They are taking a significant political risk when they do these kinds of things, when they make any kind of deviation from the status quo,” said Dan Drezner, a professor at Tufts University’s Fletcher School. “These sorts of things generate all kinds of blowback. They have to think the blowback is worth it, otherwise making the changes would be both stupid and thankless.”

The administration defends the moves, saying that by needlessly antagonizing or alienating nations and groups, it can make it harder for the U.S. to build alliances against them.

The Obama administration has shown zero understanding of how to build alliances even domestically, much less internationally. But in general, alliances are built by finding common goals and/or by quid pro quos in the real world that appeal to self-interest. Without such grounding in reality, words are flimsy meaningless things—otherwise known as BS.

As for convincing Muslim nations to ally with us against terrorists, they will do so if they find it worth their while. In this endeavor, does Obama truly think anything is served by refusing to use the word “terrorists?”When last I checked, many Muslim countries themselves suffer at the hands of terrorists and are quite Draconian in the methods they use to fight them.

Joe Lieberman seems to get it:

“This is not honest,” Lieberman said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Three thousand Americans were killed not by some amorphous group of violent extremists or environmental extremists or white supremacist extremists. They were violent Islamist extremists motivated and organized by the ideology preached by Osama bin Laden.”

“And unless we’re honest about that,” he said, “we’re not going to be able to defeat this enemy.

Of course, it will take a lot more than honest language to defeat terrorism. But honest language is a requisite step, and dishonest language fools no one. The Obama administration’s refusal to call things by their proper names communicates nothing but pandering and weakness rather than resolve and strength. And even Osama bin Laden knew that the Muslim world admires a strong horse and looks down on the weak.

[NOTE: Therapists often adopt the same verbal ploy Obama is using here. They call it “reframing;” here’s a post I wrote a few years ago about how this phenomenon works in the world of therapy vs. the world of terrorism.]

Any of you tech people got theories on what this might signify?

…on the “dangerously delusional” and “self-indulgent irrelevance” of Obama’s nuclear summit.

Yes folks, you heard it here first—Obama’s polls are sagging because he hasn’t been blaming Bush enough:

When Obama first arrived, he often arraigned his predecessor’s record. The first chapter of Obama’s initial budget document was “Inheriting a Legacy of Misplaced Priorities.” Obama still delivers some similar jabs. But more often, he diffuses blame for the downturn across “a perfect storm of irresponsibility… that stretched from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street.” Obama, at other points, has emphasized his continuity with Bush’s approach, particularly on financial bailouts. (Liberal critics such as Reich believe that link extends beyond rhetoric to policy.) The result is that Obama has mostly shelved what political scientist Stephen Skowronek of Yale University calls “the authority to repudiate.” That’s the effort, employed by consequential presidents, such as Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, to build support by portraying their agenda as the remedy for their predecessors’ failures.

Absent such a framework, public opinion about the economy is clearly shifting toward the GOP as the downturn persists. Obama’s economic approval rating has sagged to around 40 percent, and his lead over congressional Republicans on managing the economy has virtually evaporated.

Here’s a long interview in the Telegraph with Obama biographer and New Yorker editor David Remnick. I already wrote about Remnick and his book here, but the interview provided a few more glimpses into the Remnick (and the general liberal/left media) style of dealing with Obama.

I was struck by the fact that, although Remnick is not only admiring of but even awed by the president (I watched another TV appearance with Remnick where he clearly conveyed this), he manages to let slip a couple of inadvertent truths in his Telegraph interview. For example, he makes it clear that Obama had to learn the Chicago black vernacular and style that was not native to him in order to fit in and present himself as a bona fide black leader there. The second is Remnick’s use of the words “gall” and “ballsy” to describe Obama (he might just as well have said “narcissistic” and “arrogant,” although he certainly doesn’t):

…[W]hat is the first major address that Barack Obama gives to the African American community after he is announced for the presidency? He goes and gives a speech in Selma, Alabama, this resonant place of the civil rights struggle, and he talks about the Moses generation – the generation of civil rights, the generation of King – and about himself and the Joshua generation. He is giving himself an enormous task and with great gall: he is placing himself at the head of a generation; and I’m going to take you where? To the Promised Land. That’s an amazingly ballsy thing to say.

The third is that Remnick gives an entire lengthy interview focusing on the formation of Obama’s identity as a black man without ever once mentioning Frank Marshall Davis, the man hand-chosen by Obama’s grandfather for that very task (and who was mentioned in Obama’s biography as such, although solely by his first name). Instead, Remnick says [emphasis mine]:

He grew up in Honolulu and went to a highly privileged school where there were a couple of other black students, and in a place with no black people around, except for the occasional soldier on the basketball court or at a party. So, where does he get it from? He watches TV, he reads books; I mean, it’s a really mystifying, difficult thing.

It’s only mystifying if you pay no attention to that Frank Marshall Davis behind the curtain.

But Bobby Rush, the man who beat Obama in his only campaign defeat (and who happens to be black as well), seemed to know something that Remnick didn’t get. Rush is quoted as saying [emphasis mine]:

So, here he is in his congressional office: it’s very nice that Barack has won finally, and he’s mocking him, and then he gets up and he just sashays across the office. And he said, you know, back then he didn’t walk like that when he ran against me. You know, he’s accusing him, even to this day, of inauthenticity; as if we all don’t learn, as if we are born with walks and all kinds of things.

Then again, since Remnick has just spent most of the interview describing how the already-adult Obama (we are not born with walks, but we usually learn them in childhood) had to imitate and adopt a black identity as he went along, a person could be forgiven for thinking that Remnick is failing to see that his own words prove Rush is correct.

Then there’s the nuanced, Clintonesque language Remnick uses to describe Obama’s treatment of Alice Palmer [emphasis mine]:

When he ran for [Illinois] state senator he committed an act of impiety against the long-standing regulars there by refusing to step back from [incumbent] Alice Palmer, who had a much deeper relationship to the community than he did.

Remnick makes it sound as though Obama’s only offense against Palmer was to run against her and/or criticize her, and that that was what angered the Chicago regulars in the community. This is a duplicitous insinuation of Remnick’s, more for what it leaves out than for what it says. I haven’t read Remnick’s book, so perhaps I should give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he may have told more of the truth about Obama and Palmer (or Obama and Frank Marshall Davis) in it. In fact, he probably did at least go into those incidents somewhat. But if so, his interview was purposely misleading.

If you don’t recall the story of Obama and Palmer, let me help refresh your memory. Read the whole thing, because it’s a complicated and hair-raising story. But here are some excerpts [emphasis mine]:

Perhaps some of that latter business of the divorce records was “fortuitous,” but perhaps not (I wrote more about that incident and others here). But there is no question that in the Palmer fracas—which was the very first primary in Obama’s very first run for any public office—Obama already amply demonstrated a combination of traits we have come to know him for: ruthless and cynical coldness, disloyalty (you might say Alice Palmer has the place of honor under the Obama bus), and unctuous BS excuses that disavow responsibility (”That part of it I wish had played out entirely differently”). He also exhibited a fierce determination to use his knowledge of the legal system to oust all rivals and eliminate choice for the Democratic voters of Chicago (remember, Obama didn’t just successfully get Palmer booted from the primary ballot; he did so to all four of his challenges and ran unopposed in the Democratic primary, which in that Chicago district was tantamount to being elected).

All of this information is not only in the public domain now, it was in the public domain long before the 2008 election. I wrote about it all at length while Obama was running for president, as did other bloggers and journalists on the right. But the MSM barely touched it, and hasn’t done so even now. The mythmaking continues.

Pigs fly, and NBC science reporter Jay Barbree is quite shaken when he notices a bold lie that Obama told. Fortunately for Obama, MSNBC’s Alex Witt jumps to the president’s defense and tries to mitigate the damage, as any good MSNBC reporter should:

BARBREE: …I’m a little disturbed right now, Alex. I just found out some very disturbing news. The President came down here in his campaign and told these 15,000 workers here at the Space Center that if they would vote for him, that he would protect their jobs. 9,000 of them are about to lose their job. He is speaking before 200, extra hundred people here today only. It’s invitation only. He has not invited a single space worker from this space port to attend. It’s only academics and other high officials from outside of the country. Not one of them is invited to hear the President of the United States, on their own space port, speak today. Back to you Alex.

WITT: Alright Jay I can understand why that would certainly get you a bit upset. I will say, on behalf of the Obama administration, they contend that 2500 new jobs will be created, even more, they say, than the 2012 Constellation would have created, that program. So I know all this remains to be seen, but understandably we get why you’re upset, right now. Along with many others down there. Let’s see if the President clears that up later today. Jay thanks so much.

[Hat tip: The Anchoress.]

Cunning and duplicitous bot:

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This House of Representatives seems intent on making history, and it’s not a good sort of history.

If passing a budget—or even proposing one—causes problems and the need for debate with opponents, then hey, why do it? After all, money can be appropriated without one.

As for the American people, if Congress has given up on the need to answer to them, why bother to even pretend to try? All bets are off now. This is the lame duck Congress to end all lame duck Congresses, and it has its own agenda.

[NOTE: As the article observes, “Since the Budget Act of 1974, the House has never failed to pass a draft budget (even though Congress as a whole four times failed to enact one).”]

The SEC has charged Goldman Sachs with “defrauding investors by allegedly marketing a financial product tied to subprime mortgages without telling them a big hedge fund was on the other side of the trade.”

My first question was one which appears at the end of the WSJ article:

…Bill Larkin at Cabot Money Management [says]. “The question is, has the SEC discovered what may have been a common practice across the industry? Is this the tip of the iceberg?”

Goldman Sachs stocks have gone sharply down, as might be expected. Goldman Sachs says it is innocent, as might be expected (lt also could be saying, “Some thanks we get!,” considering it was one of the biggest contributors to the Obama campaign in 2008).

Here’s the scoop on what is alleged to have happened at Goldman:

According to the SEC, Goldman structured and marketed a synthetic collateralized-debt obligation, or CDO, that hinged on the performance of subprime residential-mortgage-backed securities.

The CDO was created in early 2007 when the U.S. housing market and related securities were beginning to show signs of distress, the SEC complaint said.

“Undisclosed in the marketing materials and unbeknownst to investors, a large hedge fund, Paulson & Co. Inc., with economic interests directly adverse to investors in the [CDO], played a significant role in the portfolio selection process,” the complaint said.

The complaint said Paulson had an incentive to stuff the CDO with mortgage-backed securities that were likely to get into trouble. SEC enforcement chief Robert Khuzami alleged that Goldman misled investors by telling them that the securities “were selected by an independent, objective third party.”

A specific person with the dramatic-sounding name of Fabrice Tourre (man? woman? literary light? entertainer?) was named as “”principally responsible” for creating the CDO. Here’s some background on the 31-year old Goldman VP and Frenchman Tourre, from the HuffPo. He may not be an entertainer, but he does exhibit a certain flair:

In an email to a friend on January 23, 2007, the London-based trader called himself “The Fabulous Fab” and warned about the coming collapse in the subprime mortgage securities market, according to the SEC complaint. In the message, he also dramatically expresses his own lack of foresight about the consequences of his risky trading activity:

“More and more leverage in the system. The whole building is about to collapse anytime now… Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab[rice Tourre]… standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities!!!”

Monstrosities indeed. Here are two related posts of mine, in which I discussed how carried away the financial world got with complex interactions they poorly understand but used and manipulated in order to make short-term profits (see this and this).

Did Tourre really believe his own hype, that he was immune to the collapse all around him? Or did he merely think he could get away with it and get out in time? I assume we’ll hear more about this, as well as his side of the story.

Commenter “manju” wrote:

With the teaparties driving the republicans toward simple-minded libertarian sloganeering, conspriacy [sic] theories (birtherism), and even an ahistorical revival of the confederacy(McDonnell, Barbour), the top candidates become less and less electable. we may very well be looking at a reverse mcgovern scenario in ‘12. even now, its not looking too good for the right on the presidential front, as evidenced here [and then a link to an article by Andrew Sullivan].

Manju is what’s known in the trade as a concern troll—that is, someone who comes onto a blog being very “I’m one of you, guys” (or, as in the case of manju, neutral), and then voices worry and pessimism about the effect of some phenomenon he/she is trying to discourage. Here, it’s manju versus the Tea Parties.

Commenter Steve H. came back with a good response:

“”With the teaparties driving the republicans toward simple-minded libertarian sloganeering””

As opposed to the nuanced Ivy League minded progressive sloganeering thats nearly destroyed the country?

I’ll take simple. Because truth and decency really are simple.

But I’d like to drag Winston Churchill in to back Steve H. up:

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

Now, that was an eloquent man.

Nobody’s suing for divorce yet. But the honeymoon between Jewish voters and Obama may be over, or at least that first high flush of romance is gone.

This survey indicates that 42% of Jewish voters would vote for Obama again while 46% would “consider” voting for someone else. Although that word “consider” is a bit hard to interpret—to me, it could just mean they’d entertain the thought, if only for a brief while—it still shows a certain amount of disillusion. In addition, 50% disapprove of the way he’s handling Israel while only 39% approve, and 52% disapprove of Obama’s plan to recognize a Palestinian state within two years regardless of whether Israel agrees and only 28% approved. And so on and so forth.

The survey was conducted on April 8 and 9, among 600 “likely Jewish voters”—although I assume that ought to actually read “Jewish likely voters,” since I would guess that they were likely voters, not likely Jews. Just the nitpicky grammarian in me.