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SATURDAY,  FEBRUARY 7,  2009

MR. PRESIDENT, WOULD YOU PLEASE CLARIFY- AT 10:38 P.M. ET:  The New York Times describes the conflict in Congress over the stimulus bill:

But the competing bills now reflect substantially different approaches. The House puts greater emphasis on helping states and localities avoid wide-scale cuts in services and layoffs of public employees. The Senate cut $40 billion of that aid from its bill, which is expected to be approved Tuesday.

The Senate plan, reached in an agreement late Friday between Democrats and three moderate Republicans, focuses somewhat more heavily on tax cuts, provides far less generous health care subsidies for the unemployed and lowers a proposed increase in food stamps.

But another Times story features this appeal by the president:

WASHINGTON — President Obama urged Congress on Saturday to swiftly resolve its differences in the sweeping economic recovery measure and “put this plan in motion” to bring fiscal relief and new jobs to all corners of the country.

COMMENT:  Which plan, Mr. President?  Which plan?  Some leadership might be indicated here.  You spent hours last night with some friends at a dance program.  Fine.  Wonderful.  Great art form.  Now spend hours urging your party to get rid of the pork in that "stimulus" bill.  Turning everything over to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid hasn't exactly gone over big with the American people. 

SOME TRUTHS ABOUT IRAN - AT 6:16 P.M. ET:  My Iranian-freedom activist friend Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi refers us to an article from the Progressive Iranian-American Committee containing this quote from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates:

“I have been involved in the search for the elusive Iranian moderate for 30 years. (Laughter.) I was in the first meeting that took place between a senior U.S. government official and the leadership of the Iranian government in Algiers at the end of October, 1979.

Every administration since then has reached out to the Iranians in one way or another and all have failed. Some have gotten into deep trouble associated with their failures, but the reality is the Iranian leadership has been consistently unyielding over a very long period of time in response to repeated overtures from the United States about having a different and better kind of relationship.

COMMENT:  President Obama should have this quote mounted on his desk, and look at it the next time he goes into flights of fancy about "negotiations." 

THIS JUST IN - AT 1:09 P.M. ET:   Reader Joseph J. Gallick rushed us this news photo of a global warming protest.  Things are getting tense: 

FINE PIECE - AT 11:29 A.M. ET:  Reader James Birdsall alerts us to this fine piece, published at Hudson New York (for which I also write), dealing with the Mideast, and explaining the new divisions within the region.  This is very well done and required background for anyone hoping to understand what's happening on the ground:

The recent Gaza war was portrayed by the international media as a local military conflict between Israel and Hamas. However, this war, like the 2006 war in Lebanon and various other military and political events in the last three decades in the Middle East have a common denominator - namely, all stem from the conflict between revolutionary Iran and the Saudi Kingdom and the respective camps of each. This conflict is key to understanding the Middle East in the 21st century.

COMMENT:  Like all recent presidents, Mr. Obama will try to "solve" the Arab-Israeli conflict.  But without an appreciation of the larger conflict around it, he will have as much success as his predecessors.

STRAIGHT TALK - AT 11:12 A.M. ET:  From London's Telegraph:

Basra is now less dangerous than Manchester, the general commanding British troops in Iraq has said.

Maj Gen Andy Salmon told The Daily Telegraph that following months of steady improvements in the security situation in Iraq's second city, the rate of violent crime and murder in Basra has fallen below some major British cities.

"On a per capita basis, if you look at the violence statistics, it is less dangerous than Manchester," he said, hailing a "radical transformation" in Iraq's prospects.

COMMENT:  Says a heck of a lot about Manchester, doesn't it?  But what it says about Iraq is great.  I wish someone would give former President Bush the credit he deserves.  Won't happen for a while.

FOX NEWS CALLS IT THE "SPENDULUS" BILL - AT 10:18 A.M. ET:  From Fox:

Senators have reached a tentative deal on a version of President Obama's economic spending plan, including about $811 billion in spending and tax cuts, that will win enough Republican votes to move forward.

Sens. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Susan Collins of Maine appeared to be the critical Republicans to sign onto the bill, giving Democrats the 60 votes needed to advance to a final vote. Democrats also voiced confidence that Republican Sen. Olympia Snow of Maine also would vote for the plan.

COMMENT:  There apparently will be no more than three Republicans voting for this monstrosity.  That pretty much tells the story.  The Republicans are correct in opposing the bill.  Something of this size deserved more than three days of debate.  It takes three days just to read the thing.  One observer said the printed bill weighs more than seven pounds. 

NOT BAD

Posted at 9:42 a.m. ET:

The president has had a bad week, and is nursing a series of self-inflicted wounds - poor vetting of appointees, incompetent handling of the so-called "stimulus" bill, and an improperly partisan speech Thursday night, right in the middle of stimulus negotiations.  He needs a set of instructions.

And so we looked apprehensively at the new administration's first major international outing - a speech by Vice President Biden at an international security conference in Munich this weekend.  We promised at Urgent Agenda to be fair.  Automatic opposition is not our thing here.  Biden, when speaking off the cuff, can be a walking train wreck.  His Munich speech was carefully prepared, and not bad at all.  We've read a number of reports and, despite the attempts by some journalists to label it "a clean break" from the Bush years, it was not.  There was far more continuity than break, and that is good.  Obviously, we have to wait for the words to be put into practice to see if the American spine remains firm, or starts to bend.  That will be the real test.

The New York Times gives a comprehensive report:

MUNICH—Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. rejected the notion of a Russian sphere of influence, promising that America’s new government under President Obama would continue to press NATO to seek “deeper cooperation” with like-minded countries.

Mr. Biden, in a much-anticipated speech at an international security conference, also said that the Obama administration would continue to pursue a planned missile-defense system that has angered the Kremlin, provided the technology works and isn’t too expensive. The missile defense shield, Mr. Biden said, is needed to “counter a growing Iranian capability.”

Fine thus far, although we must object to the "too expensive" notion.  Defense against nuclear-tipped missiles is never too expensive.  If money becomes the escape clause, then we go into opposition.  But the overall thought here is fine.

In the Obama administration’s first outline of how it will conduct America’s relations with the rest of the world before an international audience, the vice president signaled a tough line on Iran. “We will be willing to talk to Iran,” Mr. Biden said, in a departure from the Bush administration. But Mr. Biden quickly tacked back to a refrain common during the last years of the Bush presidency, and spoke of offering Iran’s leader a choice: “Continue down your current course and there will be pressure and isolation; abandon the illicit nuclear program and support for terrorism and there will be meaningful incentives.”

Has to be spelled out, of course.  The details are critical.  But that was a good statement of basic American policy. 

“We will not agree with Russia on everything,” Mr. Biden said. “For example, the United States will not recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. We will not recognize a sphere of influence. It will remain our view that sovereign states have the right to make their own decisions and choose their own alliances.”

Good.  Fine.

...any chance for a rapprochement between Washington and Russia at this conference all but evaporated, foreign policy experts said, after Obama administration officials concluded that Russia pressed Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet Republic, to close the American base in that country. The base is crucial to the American-led fight in Afghanistan that Mr. Obama has identified as his central national security objective.

Okay.  At least the United States came to the right conclusion and made its feelings known.  The base-closing, a major act of hostility to our interests, wasn't papered over.

On Friday, the opening day of the conference, Iran’s Ali Larijani, the speaker of the parliament, told the audience that Mr. Obama’s decision to send George Mitchell, his new envoy, to the Middle East to listen and not to dictate was “a positive signal” but also said that, in terms of Iran, “the old carrot and stick cliché” — ironically, the very strategy that Mr. Biden outlined — ”must be discarded.”

So, the conflict remains pretty much where it was.  I have no idea what the Bush haters will say now.  Maybe they think Bush is still under the Oval Office desk and that Dick Cheney is sending daily memos to Biden.  (Not a bad idea.) 

We'll watch this day by day for any signs of slippage or deception.  But the vice president acquitted himself well on this first international outing, and, although our judgment must be tentative and cautious, we're pleased to say it.

February 7, 2009.      Permalink          

WATCH THIS CAREFULLY - AT 8:33 A.M. ET:  The New York Times updates the very important story of Pakistan's release from house arrest of A.Q. Khan, the world's greatest nuclear proliferator.  The release is widely seen as a snub to the United States:

Mr. Khan, 73, considered in the West as a rogue scientist and a pariah who sold technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran, is revered as a national hero in Pakistan for his role in transforming the country into a nuclear power.

The ruling to set him free seemed as much a political decision as a legal one, intended to shore up support for the government of President Asif Ali Zardari, which has been derided in the Pakistani press as being too close to the United States...

...Issued by a court of limited jurisdiction set up under the previous government, the decision came just days before the Obama administration’s special enjoy to the region, Richard C. Holbrooke, was scheduled to visit Islamabad.

COMMENT:  The key now is how the United States reacts.  We need Pakistan, but we also need it to be cooperative.  The Bush administration withdrew an earlier demand for Khan to be interviewed by the CIA over his past proliferation activities.  Obama could restore the demand, now that Khan is free.  Holbrooke is an effective diplomat.  Watch this one closely.

FRIDAY,  FEBRUARY 6,  2009

OIL DROPS - AT 7:09 P.M. ET:  From AFP:

Oil prices plunged below 40 dollars a barrel in New York on Friday, as grim unemployment data stoked concerns about weak energy demand in key consumer the United States, traders said.

New York's main futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in March, fell as low as 38.60 dollars per barrel. It later stood at 39.54, down 1.63 dollars from the close on Thursday.

COMMENT:  Question:  Why are gas prices at the pump rising? You'll notice that the administration has shown no interest in that.

IN HIS OWN WORDS - AT 4:58 P.M. ET:  Joe Biden, in speaking to Democrats about Iraq, said this, according to the AP:

He said the administration must be "very deeply involved" not just in drawing down troops in a careful manner but also in helping Iraqis reach true political reconciliation. "We're going to have to get in there and be much more aggressive in forcing them to deal with these issues," he said.

COMMENT:  If you were an Iraqi, how would you take that remark?  We're going to be more aggressive in forcing them to deal with certain issues?  Isn't that what they call unilateralism?  Isn't that what they call dictating?  Isn't that what the Dems called BUSH (!) tactics?

Biden also said this:

"We've got to make Afghanistan the world's responsibility, not just the United States' responsibility," he said, eliciting cheers.

COMMENT:  The world's responsibility?  There's that "world" that guys like Biden are always talking about.  How you gonna do it, Joe?  Any strategy involved?  That's the part they never talk about.

Biden goes to Europe this weekend for a security conference.  Feel more secure already? 

SHOCKED, SHOCKED - AT 4:42 P.M. ET: 

JERUSALEM (AP) -- The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees suspended aid to the Gaza Strip on Friday, accusing the territory's Hamas rulers of stealing a delivery of humanitarian supplies for the second time this week.

The announcement by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency deepened tensions between the international body that assists the majority of Gaza's 1.4 million people and the Islamic group that controls the coastal strip.

COMMENT:  Compare please with Jimmah Carter's kind comments about Hamas. 

MORE ON THE KHAN JOB - AT 4:53 P.M. ET: 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House says President Barack Obama wants assurances from Pakistani leaders that a newly freed Pakistani scientist accused of leaking atomic secrets isn't involved in any of the activity that led to his arrest.

The State Department said earlier Friday that the release of Abdul Qadeer Khan from de facto house arrest would be ''extremely regrettable.'' Khan is the scientist who helped Pakistan develop nuclear weapons and allegedly leaked atomic secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya.

COMMENT:  So they'll get assurances.  So what.  How do we enforce those assurances now that the man is free?  Pakistan waited until Obama took office to release him.  That will be noticed in a part of the world where any hint of weakness is taken very seriously.

McCAIN IN ACTION - AT 4:12 P.M. ET:   From The Politico:

Sen. John McCain took his most direct shot at President Barack Obama since the presidential campaign on Friday morning, using a Senate floor speech to criticize the president for mocking the Republican concerns over the massive economic stimulus package.

In a fiery speech Thursday night before House Democrats, Obama rejected the GOP’s characterization that the stimulus package was merely another spending bill.

“What do you think a stimulus is? That’s the whole point. No, seriously, that’s the point,” Obama said at the retreat in Williamsburg, Va.

On Friday morning, McCain fought back.

“The whole point, Mr. President, is to enact tax cuts and spending measures that truly stimulate the economy,” McCain said. “There are billions and tens of billions of dollars in this bill which will have no effect within three, four, five or more years, or ever. Or ever.”

COMMENT:  John McCain is the most patriotic of men.  He has looked for ways to help President Obama.  If he is making a statement like this, then the honeymoon is over...after two weeks.  The president can either realize he's in trouble, or face real political combat.

Mr. Obama's speech Thursday night was entirely inappropriate.  It was a raw political speech at a moment when he should be doing everything possible to improve the stimulus package and unite the country behind it.  This isn't change we can believe in.  It's Chicago politics, which never changes.

BABY, IT'S COLD OUTSIDE - AT 3:47 P.M. ET:  From Rasmussen:

More bad news for the media.

Fifty-four percent (54%) of U.S. voters say the news media make global warming appear worse than it really is. Only 21% say the media present an accurate picture, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey...

...Common to all surveys about the media, Republicans are more critical than Democrats.

COMMENT:  The American people are watching, and thinking.  That's bad news for both the media and the fashionable left.

FINANCIAL GENIUS - AT 3:02 P.M. ET:  The Dow is up 210, to 8274, despite the stunning job losses reported this morning.  Apparently, according to the financial gurus, Wall Street "likes" the idea that the losses will lead to passage of the stimulus package. 

COMMENT:  Hey, unemployed father of three, you're a useful statistic!  This is what they call "investing" on Wall Street these days. 

KRAUTHAMMER

Posted at 9:03 a.m. ET

Charles Krauthammer declares that, for Obama, the bloom is off the rose, or the glisten off the ivy, or whatever:

"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe."
-- President Obama, Feb. 4.

Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared, "We have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.

And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn't understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent.

And now, with the secretary of labor-designate in some tax trouble, we wonder if that new rule will be waived.

And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

It's not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war...

...It's the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus -- and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus...

And yet the president defends it.

The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington.

And yet all the self-righteous on the political left are defending it.

Finally:

After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal...

...I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.

And we haven't even begun with foreign policy.  Wait for the first crisis.  If the president trips, he'll be Cartered.

February 6, 2009.      Permalink          

PORK WON'T HELP - AT 8:58 A.M. ET: 

Feb. 6 (Bloomberg) -- The unemployment rate in the U.S. climbed to the highest level since 1992 in January and payrolls tumbled as the recession showed no sign of abating.

The jobless rate rose to 7.6 percent from 7.2 percent in December, the Labor Department said today in Washington. Payrolls fell by 598,000, the biggest monthly decline since December 1974, after dropping by 577,000 in the previous month.

COMMENT:  Now compare the problem to the proposed solution, a "stimulus" package in which much of the spending won't kick in for a year or more.  Some stimulus.

HOW MANY DO WE NEED? - AT 8:37 A.M. ET:  From AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is bringing in a team of outside advisers to help steer the economy out of a tailspin, while ridiculing Republicans for clinging to a ''losing formula'' as the nation plunged to the crisis point.

COMMENT:  First, we hope these people paid their taxes.  Second, how many advisers does the president need?  The White House is filled with them.  Is there any office space left?  Telephones?  Ball-point refills?  The president was elected in early November.  It is three months later.  A sound economic plan should be in place.  It doesn't appear to be. 

A CRITICAL MEETING - AT 8:32 A.M. ET:  From The Washington Post:

President Obama will meet today with victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the USS Cole bombing and their families as his administration reviews how to handle detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The meeting comes as the judge overseeing military trials at Guantanamo ordered charges against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri withdrawn, overturning an earlier ruling that the case against the alleged organizer of the Cole bombing should go forward Monday as scheduled.

COMMENT:  This is a critical meeting for the president.  We recall that Bush 41 met with relatives of those who died in the 1988 sabotage of Pan Am 103 over Scotland, and came off as cold and indifferent, in the words of some who were there.  Mr. Obama cannot simply make this a photo op or a time for soothing words.  He must lay out a clear, firm agenda for seeking justice for these victims.  Appeals to "American values," by which some in his camp mean concern only for the rights of the accused criminals, will not go down well. 

IRAQ VOTES - AT 7:41 A.M. ET:  Paul Mirengoff, at Power Line, has an excellent analysis of the Iraqi election, and observes:

The election thus gives the lie to the view, articulated mostly by liberals but also by some on the right, that democracy could not take hold in a country like Iraq. In fact, Iraqi voters behaved just the way voters usually behave in democracies - they rewarded success and punished those seen as obstacles to success; they rewarded those who put the national interest first and punished those who exalted extraneous interests.

COMMENT:  But please note that the Obama administration has uttered not one word of thanks to the Bush administration for making Iraq's democracy possible.  Smallness.

ANOTHER GREAT ALLY AT WORK - AT 7:34 A.M. ET:  From AP:

Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the world's leading rogue nuclear sales entrepreneur, was released from house arrest by a Pakistani court on Friday.

The nuclear scientist, considered the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, sold centrifuges and expertise to countries with secret nuclear weapons programs, including Libya and Iran, before his operation was disrupted in 2003.

COMMENT:  Oh great.  Something else to worry about.  We hope, but cannot assume, that the gent's mail and phone calls are monitored.  Another day in the war on terror.   

VERY GOOD, VERY GOOD - AT 7:25 A.M. ET:  Andrew Malcolm, of The Los Angeles Times, has a wonderful parody this morning, concerning the adventures of one Obama appointee who appears to be under a cloud. Consider:

In an amazing news coincidence, on the very same day as the US Air Flight 1549 emergency radio tapes were released, The Ticket has exclusively obtained the tapes of recent emergency radio conversations between ground traffic controllers with the Obama administration's White House and Rep. Hilda Solis.

She's the California House member and secretary of Labor-designate whose confirmation is before the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Hers is the latest Obama Cabinet nomination in trouble over tax issues. Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer have already gone under the bus.

The dramatic tape excerpts tell a compelling story of confused but calm determination and political professionalism during the sudden tax emergency and unexpected descent this week. Here are the exchanges between Solis and the White House:

This is very good.  We can all use a laugh.  Please read.