TUESDAY,  AUGUST 11,  2009

THE REAL NIGHTMARE - AT 7:16 P.M. ET:  We cannot verify this from independent sources, but the story, from the Times of India, seems well reported.  I thought it was important to pass it on:

WASHINGTON: Pakistan's nuclear facilities have already been attacked at least thrice by its home-grown extremists and terrorists in little
reported incidents over the last two years, even as the world remains divided over the safety and security of the nuclear weapons in the troubled country, according to western analysts.

If accurate, this is extremely serious stuff.

The incidents, tracked by Shaun Gregory, a professor at Bradford University in UK, include an attack on the nuclear missile storage facility at Sargodha on November 1, 2007, an attack on Pakistan's nuclear airbase at Kamra by a suicide bomber on December 10, 2007, and perhaps most significantly the August 20, 2008 attack when Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers blew up several entry points to one of the armament complexes at the Wah cantonment, considered one of Pakistan's main nuclear weapons assembly.

And...

Pakistan insists that its nuclear weapons are fully secured and there is no chance of them falling into the hands of the extremists or terrorists.

But Gregory, while detailing the steps Islamabad has taken to protect them against Indian and US attacks, asks if the geographical location of Pakistan's principle nuclear weapons infrastructure, which is mainly in areas dominated by al-Qaida and Taliban, makes it more vulnerable to internal attacks.

Yes, I would imagine it would.  All the attackers need is to be lucky once, and get their hands on a few weapons...assuming they can get them out of the storage bunkers.

The story describes the precautions Pakistan takes to secure its nuclear weapons, but Professor Gregory adds that "despite these elaborate safeguards, empirical evidence points to a clear set of weaknesses and vulnerabilities in Pakistan's nuclear safety and security arrangements."

Sleep tight tonight.

August 11, 2009   Permalink

RASMUSSEN ON THE HEALTH PLAN - AT 4:14 P.M. ET:  Scott Rasmussen is reporting today the lowest numbers the Democratic health plan has yet received in his polling:

Public support for the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats has fallen to a new low as just 42% of U.S. voters now favor the plan. That’s down five points from two weeks ago and down eight points from six weeks ago.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that opposition to the plan has increased to 53%, up nine points since late June.

More significantly, 44% of voters strongly oppose the health care reform effort versus 26% who strongly favor it. Intensity has been stronger among opponents of the plan since the debate began.

COMMENT:  Yes, the majority now opposes the plan.  However, I caution again:  This can be turned around.  The Dems now have a 42-percent base in favor.  Their position is slipping, but that's still a reasonable point from which to rebound.

And the Dems can turn the tables, asking what the Republican plan is.  There has to be, on our side, either a plan or at least some major fixes to a system that almost everyone believes has serious problems. 

Start with the fixes.  The GOP can propose five things to do immediately that will improve the system, and proceed from there.  Just saying no is not good enough.  I'd begin, by the way, with malpractice reform, tort reform, now draining the health-care system of up to $200-billion (with a B) a year.  And I'd write a health-care contract with America, listing the rights all Americans would have under any GOP health-reform plan.  One page.  Not more.  How long, after all, is the Bill of Rights?

August 11, 2009   Permalink

MONITORING - AT 3:32 P.M. ET:  I've been monitoring the midday news reports on the cable systems, as I do most days, and there's been more heavy coverage of the health-care town meetings.  This coverage has the potential to hurt our side, and hurt it badly.  The news organizations are are emphasizing the bad behavior of a few protesters.  That is what biased journalism does.  CNN is particularly outrageous.

News coverage today consisted of shouting matches at town meetings, contrasted with President Obama's cool, articulate presentation of his side of the argument at a meeting that he attended.  Inevitably, the opponents came off looking awful, fanatical, even threatening.  From the way these meetings are covered, you'd think no one had any intelligent objections to the Democratic plan.

We've cautioned here before about the consequences of rude and loud conduct.  We cannot complain about extreme behavior on the other side - like the antics of Code Pink or the "9-11 was an inside job" crowd - and then condone it on our side.  We should learn a lesson from student civil-rights protesters of the early 1960s, who were taught how to behave, how to respond to taunts, even what to wear, to appear their best on television.  It's part of the political process.

Polls show that Americans are turning strongly against the Democratic plan, to the extent that there's a plan.  But we can still snatch defeat from the jaws of victory if Americans are repelled by shouting, cursing and wild arguments.  Several leading conservatives, including Sarah Palin and Mitch McConnell, have made this same point.

So, it's important to be careful.  Good behavior, strong arguments, well-prepared statements, work much better than screaming matches.  The American people aren't at most of these meetings.  They only see news reports on television, and it's the networks who decide what is shown. 

August 11, 2009   Permalink 

THE TRAGEDY OF BLACK AMERICANS - AT 10:23 A.M. ET:  Add to the list headed by Dorothy Rabinowitz the name of Walter Williams, the distinguished African-American teacher and commentator, who also has the courage to reveal unpleasant truths.  He understands the tragedy of black America, and how African Americans have been used, misled and exploited by the political class, their real problems often going unsolved: 

In 1940, 86% of black children were born inside marriage, and the illegitimacy rate among blacks was about 15%. Today, only 35% of black children are born inside marriage, and the illegitimacy rate hovers around 70%.

Today's breakdown of the black family is unprecedented. It began in the 1960s with the War on Poverty and the harebrained ideas of the welfare state. In the mid-1960s, Daniel Moynihan sounded the alarm about the breakdown in the black family in his book "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action."

At that time black illegitimacy was 26%. Moynihan said, "At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of the Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family." He added, "The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States."

Moynihan's observations were greeted with charges of racism and blaming the victim. By the way, the welfare state is an equal-opportunity family destroyer. Today's illegitimacy rate among whites, at nearly 30%, is higher than it was among blacks in the 1960s when Moynihan sounded the alarm. In Sweden, the mother of the welfare state, illegitimacy is 54%.

COMMENT:  And yet, this tragedy is rarely discussed, especially in universities, whose faculties claim to care so much about African Americans.

We've been here before, of course.  In the 1960s we watched, in New York, as the great New York City public-school system, which had successfully educated generations of immigrants, was destroyed before our eyes by people claiming to want to "help" black students.  Not only weren't they helping these students, they really didn't care about them.  They cared only about their leftist ideology.  Black kids were simply pawns on their political chess boards.

Things are better in New York today, but there is danger ahead.  The old forces that did the damage are trying to make a comeback.  And the Obama administration, far from being the post-racial government we'd hoped for, is being dragged down by some of those sixties ideas that just won't go away.

We need the likes of Walter Williams to get us back on course.

August 11, 2009   Permalink

A PRESIDENT IN TROUBLE - AT 8:57 A.M. ET:  Dorothy Rabinowitz of The Wall Street Journal is one of the most perceptive commentators working today.  Today she examines the President's inadequate performance in the health-care debate:

It’s not hard now to envision the state of this crusade with just a month or two more of diligent management by the Obama team—think train wreck. It may one day be otherwise in the more perfect world of universal coverage, but for now disabilities like the tone deafness that afflicts this administration from the top down are uninsurable.

And...

It shouldn’t have been surprising, either, that the tone of much of the commentary on the town-hall protests was what it was. There was Mark Halperin for one, senior political editor for Time, bouncing off his chair, Sunday, in agitation over all the media coverage of this rowdiness—“a horrible breakdown of our political culture, our media culture” and so “bad for America,” as he told CNN’s Howard Kurtz.

To which Dorothy responds:

There was no such hand-wringing over the decline of civil debate, during, say, election 2004, when cadres of organized demonstrators carrying swastika-adorned pictures of George W. Bush routinely swarmed about, and packed rallies. There was also that other “breakdown of our media culture,” that will dwarf all else as a cause for embarrassment, the town-hall coverage included, for the foreseeable future. That would be, of course, the undisguised worshipful reporting of the candidacy of Barack Obama.

Ahem.  Ah yes, that coverage.  But of course there was no bias, just an understandable media examination of the multicultural, internationalist, non-BUSH (!!) aspects of the 2008 campaign.  What's a reporter to do?

That treatment, or rather its memory—like the adulation of his great mass of voters—has had its effect on this president, and not all to the good. The election over, the warming glow of those armies of supporters gone, his capacity to tolerate criticism and dissent from his policies grows thinner apace. His lectures, explaining his health-care proposals, and why they’ll be good for everybody, are clearly not going down well with his national audience.

And this, the best of Dorothy:

The president has a problem. For, despite a great election victory, Mr. Obama, it becomes ever clearer, knows little about Americans. He knows the crowds—he is at home with those. He is a stranger to the country’s heart and character.

He seems unable to grasp what runs counter to its nature. That Americans don’t take well, for instance, to bullying, especially of the moralizing kind, implicit in those speeches on health care for everybody. Neither do they wish to be taken where they don’t know they want to go and being told it’s good for them.

Finally...

It took this battle over health care to reveal the bloom coming off this rose, but that was coming. It began with the spectacle of the president, impelled to go abroad to apologize for his nation—repeatedly. It is not, in the end, the demonstrators in those town-hall meetings or the agitations of his political enemies that Mr. Obama should fear. It is the judgment of those Americans who have been sitting quietly in their homes, listening to him.

COMMENT:  A great column by a great journalist, who was finally awarded the Pulitzer Prize after years of opposition from the usual suspects, who resented the fact that she dared to ask politically incorrect questions and come up with equally unacceptable answers.

August 11, 2009   Permalink

THE DEMOCRATIC TRAP - AT 8:16 A.M. ET:  The Democratic Party is in serious trouble.  In a way, it's a victim of its success in the last two election cycles.  The Democrats have never learned - at least in the last generation - how to handle the true believers in its ranks, the leftist ideologues, many centered in the California, Massachusetts and Washington state delegations to Congress. 

These people represent a faction that came back to the Democrats during the sixties as part of the so called "anti-war" movement, and contains the leftward fringes of the civil-rights and feminist contingents.  They were responsible for the nomination of George McGovern in 1972 and the destruction, for decades, of the traditional Democratic coalition.  It was Bill Clinton who, more or less, was successful in patching that coalition back together, if only tentatively.  Barack Obama held it together by claiming to run as a moderate, a claim rapidly unraveling.

Now there is worry that the true believers will do more harm to President Obama than will the Republicans.  Like most true believers, and the Republican Party has its share as well, they demand that every idea they propose be endorsed in full, no compromises, and believe that they, and not the broad middle, represent the will of the American people.

Rational Democratic strategists like Lanny Davis are worried.  Their worry reveals the contempt they have for the ideologues.  Davis writes in The Politico:

I worry more about purist ideologues of the left in my Democratic Party who believe on health care that perfect is the enemy of the good.

I'll bet many such advocates, sincere and dedicated as they are, are also those who already have the luxury of a health care policy or the wealth to afford one. If they were one of the 45 million people who have no or little insurance, I'll bet they would be willing to accept an insurance system that guaranteed their equal access to the health insurance system without the public option -- at least for now.

Davis hits on a ticking time bomb within the party - the influence of wealthy ideologues who will never be affected by their own ideology - the kind who can easily write a check for the most expensive health-care plans or who have first-class air tickets in their leather attachés so they can get out in case of riots.

Harry Truman knew how to handle the extremists within his party.  In 1948 he understood that elections are won in the middle, and basically told the hard-core segregationists, on the one hand, and the old hard-left "progressives" on the other, that there were limits to what he could accept.  They walked out.  He won.

August 11, 2009   Permalink

     
QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 7:38 A.M. ET:  From David Keene in the San Francisco Examiner:

Americans are finally getting a good look at the man in the White House. They’ve been thrilled by his speeches, love his kids and almost desperately want to believe he is who they voted for. It turns out, however, that he simply can’t tolerate disagreement.

In President Barack Obama’s view, those who disagree with him really ought to just shut up. His critics, after all, are the people responsible for the problems he was elected to solve, dupes and hirelings of those responsible, or dangerous kooks.

COMMENT:  I'm afraid that Keene, who is head of the American Conservative Union, is right.  The president comes from the intellectual class that believes it is superior to the rest of we mere mortals.  Even on health care, the most personal of subjects, "we know" seems to be their rallying cry.

We have to be careful here.  There are serious problems in the health-care system, problems that introduce great inefficiencies and inflated costs.  These problems should be solved.  The trouble is, Obama's plan will not solve them.  It may even make them worse.  We who oppose his approach must have a coherent plan of our own, and show the American people who the problem solvers really are.

In the meantime, we do have the right to dissent, even if it means disagreeing with The One.  Says so in the Constitution.

August 11, 2009   Permalink

MONDAY,  AUGUST 10,  2009

CHICAGO TRUTH - AT 11:34 P.M. ET:  We don't usually quote Britain's premier leftist paper, The Guardian, but the paper has done a fine job of describing the horror of Chicago, President Obama's home city, in 2009:

Fourteen children have died violently in the last year within walking distance of the Obamas' home. In all of Chicago, 42 children of school age have been killed, most at the end of a gun and all a short drive from the president's house. The youngest was three, the oldest 18.

The centre of the blood-letting is the city's poor and overwhelmingly black South Side, precisely the spot where Michelle grew up and Barack set out on his self-proclaimed "improbable journey" as a community organiser in his 20s. The geographical compactness of the carnage is spelled out inside the offices of the Black Star Project, an education programme for young black people. On the wall is a big map of the city. In the middle of the map, close to Lake Michigan, is a letter "A" pinpointing where the Obamas live. Yellow stickers cluster around the "A" like darts around the bullseye. Each one stands for a child under 18 who has died violently. The stickers all lie within black neighbourhoods of the city, while the white neighbourhoods are sticker-free.

And...

"The number of children who are dying here in the city of Chicago is astronomical," says Black Star's director Phillip Jackson, quoting the figure of 605 children shot – wounded or killed – in the city over the last year and a half. "Stop and think about it: these are children! This is a catastrophe. And it's happening right in front of our eyes."

By his reckoning, some 13 soldiers from the city have died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The number of children lost to violence in the city during the same period is 290.

COMMENT:  What a tragedy.  And the president of the United States was focused, two weeks ago, on a black professor in Cambridge who was offended by the lawful actions of a police officer.

Why is that horror happening in Chicago?  In part, it is happening because the nightmare isn't being correctly addressed.  Murder has been dramatically reduced in New York and in some other cities.  But not in Chicago. 

One reason may be that Chicago is the home of some of the worst frauds and hustlers in the African-American community, who show an interest in the lives of black children only when they're taken by a white.  Overwhelmingly, they're taken by black shooters, and so they don't have the proper political value.

This problem will continue until the people of Chicago come to their senses, as New Yorkers did, and throw out the old political establishment, replacing it with the Chicago equivalent of Rudy Guiliani and Mike Bloomberg.  I'm not holding my breath.

August 10, 2009    Permalink

ARE WE NEXT? - AT 6:29 P.M. ET:  This, from Britain, is absolutely pathetic:

LABOUR slammed the brakes on its war against violent extremism yesterday - amid fears it had upset Muslim voters.

Millions spent preventing Asian kids becoming terrorists will now be used to tackle right-wing racists in WHITE areas.

Community cohesion minister Shahid Malik admitted he was softening his stance because Muslims felt stigmatised.

But a former Labour aide called the move a "dangerous dilution" of the Government's counter-terrorism strategy.

And...

Tories branded it a shameless bid to win back Muslim voters who deserted Labour over Iraq and Afghanistan.

More than £45million a year has been spent on measures to prevent Al-Qaeda recruiting young Muslims in the UK.

COMMENT:  The Tories are right.  This is about votes and power, and shows why demographic change is so critical.  With predictions that Europe and Britain will be 25% Muslim by 2050, we have a right to be concerned - it isn't racism - about the political impact of that change.

Multiculturalism, like the American Constitution, is not a suicide pact.

August 10, 2009   Permalink 

TEMPER, TEMPER - AT 6:03 P.M. ET:  There will be a discussion at home about this:

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's temper flared on Monday when a Congolese university student asked for her husband's thinking on an international matter.

"My husband is not secretary of state. I am," an obviously annoyed Clinton replied sharply.

A week after former US president Bill Clinton traveled to North Korea to secure the release of two detained American journalists and stole the limelight from the start of his wife's first trip to Africa, Clinton was clearly nettled by the question at a town hall forum in Kinshasa.

"You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?" she replied incredulously when the male student asked her what "Mr. Clinton" thought of World Bank concerns about a multibillion-dollar Chinese loan offer to the Democratic Republic of Congo. "If you want my opinion, I will tell you my opinion. I am not going to be channeling my husband."

The question was left unanswered as the moderator of the event quickly moved on.

COMMENT:  I hope she's just as tough with the Iranians and North Koreans as she was with that student. 

I assume Barack Obama got the message as well.

August 10, 2009   Permalink

RASMUSSEN - AT 9:40 A.M. ET:  After a few days last week of upward motion, the president's poll numbers are sinking again in the Rasmussen survey.  This morning Rasmussen has overall approval of the present's performance at 49% and disapproval at 51%.

Even worse, the presidential approval index, measuring the gap between those who strongly approve and strongly disapprove, now stands at minus nine, 30% to 39%.  Rasmussen polls among likely voters.  Minus nine is the president's worst showing since July 31st. 

August 10, 2009   Permalink

A LITTLE TRUTH TELLING - AT 9:18 A.M. ET:  Ah the spin, ah the noise, ah the anguish.  The liberal Dems are beside themselves trying to condemn those who have come out to town meetings on health care.  And the main argument is that these are sinister people who don't represent the country.

Problem is, they probably do, as the Washington Times notes:

The White House's claim that large and boisterous protests against health care reform over the past week have been scripted performances, underwritten by industry lobbyists and the Republican Party, continues to run into a stubborn reality check: public polling on the matter.

For more than two weeks, polls have consistently shown growing resistance to President Obama's reform proposals, largely because of concerns about the nation's deficit and debt.

"There are a number of statistically valid public opinion polls that show that there has been a dramatic increase in public concern about escalating deficits and debt levels and our nation's increased reliance on foreign lenders," said David Walker, the nation's former comptroller general.

COMMENT:  What is so hypocritical about the liberals' performance is their refusal to deal with some of the greatest abuses that drive health costs up - like out-of-control malpractice suits, the kind of suits that made John Edwards a multimillionaire.  There is absolutely no malpractice reform in the health-care bill now before the House, largely because of the power of trial lawyers in the Democratic Party. 

Again, though, we must urge caution:  Defeating Obamacare is not good enough.  There are serious problems in the health-care system that cry out for solution, and our side must present an intelligent, workable plan of its own, not simply say "no."  The decline in the polling fortunes of the Democrats has not been matched by any increased love for Republicans.  That love will have to be earned.  So far I don't see the effort being made.

The great conservative columnist, Charles Krauthammer, who is a medical doctor, wrote recently of the vast inefficiencies in our current system.  If the GOP focuses on eliminating those inefficiencies, it will have made an enormous contribution, without wrecking American medicine in the process.  There's work to be done.

August 10, 2009   Permalink

OUTRAGE - AT 9:15 A.M. ET:  This story is coming in under the radar, but it will grow, and can easily turn into a major campaign issue.

This is a nation of immigrants.  The great majority of immigrants are here legally, and that includes the overwhelming majority of Hispanic-Americans.

But there is a problem with illegal immigration, as we all know.  That problem is about to be compounded by rules for next year's census that, if carried to their logical conclusion, can create real fury in the United States, as The Wall Street Journal reports:

Next year’s census will determine the apportionment of House members and Electoral College votes for each state. To accomplish these vital constitutional purposes, the enumeration should count only citizens and persons who are legal, permanent residents. But it won’t.

Instead, the U.S. Census Bureau is set to count all persons physically present in the country—including large numbers who are here illegally. The result will unconstitutionally increase the number of representatives in some states and deprive some other states of their rightful political representation. Citizens of “loser” states should be outraged. Yet few are even aware of what’s going on.

In 1790, the first Census Act provided that the enumeration of that year would count “inhabitants” and “distinguish” various subgroups by age, sex, status as free persons, etc. Inhabitant was a term with a well-defined meaning that encompassed, as the Oxford English Dictionary expressed it, one who “is a bona fide member of a State, subject to all the requisitions of its laws, and entitled to all the privileges which they confer.”

COMMENT:  As the writers note, few are aware of what's going on.  But they will be, and we'll probably have talk radio to thank. 

While we have a right to be angry at any rigged census - and there will be attempts by the left to rig it - we must also approach the issue of illegal immigration in a thoughtful, sane manner.  That hasn't always been the case.  It's easy to demagogue the issue.  But this is an opportunity for our side to come up with a creative solution and show that we can solve problems, not just oppose what others do.

August 10, 2009   Permalink

THE OBSCENITY - AT 8:15 A.M. ET:  Anger is building at the decision by the Obama administration to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, to Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and former chief "human rights" official at the UN.

Ed Lasky of American Thinker alerts us to a great piece at Pajamas Media, pointing out Robinson's vulgar record.  A lot of attention has been focused on her animus toward Israel, but it's her contempt for the United States that demands more attention:

Discussing the Iraq war in a November 2005 interview with Reuters, she remarked cheerfully that “what I find living now in the United States is an encouraging, wide sense of some of the checks and balances kicking in. … In Congress you have, at last, a sense, of ‘we were misled, we should have been more attentive.’” “It was not a legitimate war,” Robinson told Reuters flatly, “and I am glad that more and more people … are coming out to say so.” “The poor, beleaguered people of Iraq are not better off,” she added. Apart from respect for the office of the presidency, why, after all, should Obama not want to honor someone who provided a touch of gravitas to “Bush lied, people died”?

And...

Indeed, Robinson denied outright that the 9/11 attacks constituted an act of war. Thus, for instance, in a June 15, 2002, editorial in the French daily Le Monde, she suggested that talk of a “war” on terrorism was merely an unfortunate choice of words. The fact she herself had called for captured al-Qaeda members to be treated precisely as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions appeared not to trouble her in this connection.

And...

Among other things, the Presidential Medal of Freedom is awarded for “especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States.” Whether Mary Robinson’s agitation against the “war on terror” represents such a contribution is very open to doubt. The most obvious proof to the contrary is provided by the 9/11 attacks themselves.

COMMENT:  You wonder how an award to an airhead like this could be made.  Didn't anyone know of Robinson's record?  The woman presided over the despicable Durban I hatefest in 2001.  Didn't anyone recall?

Maybe the Obamans did remember, and thought of her as wonderful.  There is substantial suspicion - but no direct proof - that Samantha Power was behind this ridiculous award.  It wouldn't surprise me.  She and Robinson think alike.

Robinson's award devalues the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  She's done nothing to advance freedom, much to advance its enemies.  But, alas, she fits in well with a certain element in this decidedly leftist administration.

August 10, 2009   Permalink

THE TIDES OF AUGUST - AT 7:31 A.M. ET:  August is supposed to be a slow news month. (Actually, it's not.  World War I began, more or less, in August of 1914.  World War II ended in August of 1945.)  However, the 24-hour cable news cycle has made every month a headline month.  This one, despite all the Washington vacations and recesses, seems especially busy and significant:

- The president's popularity is plunging, and his main initiatives are in serious trouble.

- Town meetings around the country reflect the growing anger in a country that voted for "change" without actually knowing what it was voting for.

- The nation grows increasingly apprehensive about the amount of money being spent, and how it is being spent.  Stories of Wall Street's return to huge, unearned bonuses and banks being completely uncooperative in opening credit markets are not helping public confidence.

- The foreign policy of the Obama administration is producing nothing, with even the secretary of state admitting that there are virtually no prospects that Iran will engage in serious talks on its nuclear program.

- The president is about to go on a vacation to lavish digs in Martha's Vineyard, playground of the nation's elites, demonstrating - as if further proof were needed - that the Obama administration has become politically tone deaf.

Welcome to governing.

The president is in trouble and the country is in trouble.  A man who was worshipped as a demi-god only 60 days ago has returned to human status, despite the protests of Chris Matthews, whose leg continues to tingle every time The One announces the baseball scores. 

At the same time, the Republican opposition, obviously enjoying the reversal of fortune, continues to coast without a program of its own.  If it gets one, it might have a real shot next year at taking back the House.

August will be interesting.  Autumn looks to be spectacular.

August 10, 2009   Permalink