President Obama Reaches Out to Working Moms like Gwyneth Paltrow

Today on NRO

JONAH GOLDBERG: If the White House would falsify records about this, it can deceive the public about larger issues. The Cartagena-Hooker Cover Up.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Our “ally” Turkey supports jihadists while joining the U.S.-led coalition against them. Erdogan’s Double Game.

ELIANA JOHNSON: Republican Vance McAllister’s misconduct has left his conservative district up for grabs. The Boor of the Bayou State.

JOHN FUND: Every election year has them. Which races this year might surprise us? Next Month’s Upsets.

SLIDESHOW: AH-64 Apache.

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty

October 10, 2014

President Obama Reaches Out to Working Moms like Gwyneth Paltrow

Of course:

[Hollywood star Gwyneth] Paltrow called the president’s push for equal pay “very important to me as a working mother.”

Even Politico couldn’t stifle a chuckle at the irony in her remarks, held at a $1,000 per ticket — $15,000 for dinner — DNC fundraiser at Paltrow’s house:

Gwyneth Paltrow wants President Barack Obama to know: she’s just like everyone else.

She makes $16 million per movie, sure, but that doesn’t mean that she’s not worried about Obama getting equal pay legislation through Congress.

Demote Harry Reid This Fall

Caleb Howe notes Paltrow’s reference to herself as “a working mother” and adds, “after which the collective guffaw from armies of au pairs and nannies in LA and Manhattan briefly set the planet Earth off its rotational axis.”

Politico helpfully reminded readers of the last time Paltrow discussed her particular difficulties and challenges as a “working mother”, and why they’re so much more difficult for her than non-celebrity moms:

Paltrow took heat earlier this year when, announcing her “conscious uncoupling” from Coldplay singer Chris Martin, she cited the strains on their marriage that she said were “much harder for me” than the average working parent.

“I think it’s different when you have an office job, because it’s routine and, you know, you can do all the stuff in the morning and then you come home in the evening,” Paltrow said then.

There is a hardened cocoon of entitlement, self-absorption, and self-pity around many of our national elites.

Just in Case You Were Feeling Too Safe This Morning…

Oh, terrific:

ISIS may already be thinking of using Ebola as a low-tech weapon of bio-terror, says a national security expert, who notes that the “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” and terror groups like it wouldn’t even have to weaponize the virus to attempt to wreak strategic global infection.

Such groups could simply use human carriers to intentionally infect themselves in West Africa, then disseminate the deadly virus via the world’s air transportation system. Or so says Capt. Al Shimkus, Ret., a Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College.

And with a significant portion of West Africa now in an open epidemic, it arguably wouldn’t be difficult for a terrorist group to simply waltz in and make off with some infected bodily fluids for use elsewhere at another time.

They wouldn’t even have to “isolate” it, says Shimkus, who teaches a course in chemical and biological warfare. He says that if ISIS wanted to send half a dozen of its operatives into an Ebola outbreak region and intentionally expose themselves to the virus, they very well could. The idea is then once they had intentionally infected themselves, they would try to interact with as many people in their target city or country of choice.

But hey, no need to stop flights from Ebola-infected countries, right?

A Nice Change of Pace: A Peace Prize Winner You Can Actually Admire

The Nobel Committee broke out of a long slump and selected a genuinely admirable Peace Prize winner -- two, actually:

A 17-year-old Pakistani girl who survived a Taliban gunshot to the head for her advocacy of female education became Friday the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, winning alongside an Indian advocate for ending child labor.

Malala Yousafzai, who has become a global spokeswoman for the rights of children after her long recovery, was awarded the prize just a day after the second anniversary of the attack on her in Pakistan’s Swat Valley.

Co-winner, 60-year-old Kailash Satyarthi, has been a longtime crusader against child slavery, and is credited with saving tens of thousands of lives.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Yousafzai and Satyarthi “for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.”

By awarding the prize to two advocates for children — one Indian, the other Pakistani — the committee hoped to send a powerful message not only about children’s rights, but also about its hopes for peace on the South Asian subcontinent. In recent days, the two nations have exchanged fire over a disputed border region in some of the most serious clashes in years.

Last year the prize went to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, for their work in Syria. Of course, last month the very same group said Syrian dictator Bashir Assad is "systematically and repeatedly" using chlorine gas against his foes. Last year’s prize wasn’t the worst in recent memory, but it seemed a bit premature.

In case you’ve forgotten some of the Nobel Committee’s more dubious selections:

2012: The European Union
2009: Barack Obama
2007: Al Gore
2001: To the United Nations, “for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world.”

Tune In Tomorrow to . . . ‘As Oregon Turns’

When people say politics sounds like a soap opera . . . they have no idea. Take a look at Oregon:

A few years ago, Oregon’s first lady, Cylvia Hayes, shared her rags-to-riches journey — from her dilapidated childhood home in Washington state, to a tent on government land in Oregon, to the governor’s mansion, where she now lives with Gov. John Kitzhaber (D).

But she never mentioned the Ethiopian immigrant she married 17 years ago and divorced in 2002. When stories seeped out this week that she helped him obtain U.S. residency in exchange for $5,000, she said she needed the cash.

“It was a marriage of convenience,” she said in a statement. “He needed help, and I needed financial support.”

Hayes, 47, wiped away tears during a news conference Thursday, explaining that when she married the 18-year-old immigrant in 1997, she was “associating with the wrong people” and attempting to pay for classes at Evergreen State College near Seattle. She said she used the money to buy a laptop and cover school expenses. She was so “ashamed and embarrassed” of the illegal union she never even told Kitzhaber, her fiance — until the Willamette Week peeked into her past earlier this week.

She actually offered a pretty thorough apology:

This is the most painful part for me. John Kitzhaber deserved to know the history of the person he was forming a relationship with. The fact that I did not disclose this to him meant that he has learned about this in the most public and unpleasant way. This is my greatest sorrow in this difficult situation.

I apologize deeply for my actions and omissions, first and foremost to John, the person I love and respect above all others. I also apologize to my friends, family and colleagues who have trusted and supported me. And to Oregonians, I deeply regret not being right up front about the fact that I had made a serious mistake. I owe you all an apology.

A bit of credit to Hayes for saying, “It was wrong then and it is wrong now and I am here today to accept the consequences, some of which will be life-changing.” But if there are consequences, they will be personal, not legal; the statute of limitations for visa fraud has run out.

ADDENDA: Look for more thoughts in the near future on this theme — that the disappointment of 2012 persuaded a lot of conservatives that their efforts don’t make a difference . . . which, I fear, may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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