SUNDAY,  AUGUST 23,  2009

BRACE YOURSELF - AT 9:08 P.M. ET:  Iran is on a human-rights campaign.  I'm sure we're all moved.  From The Washington Post:

TEHRAN, Aug. 23 -- Iranian lawmakers voted overwhelmingly on Sunday for a bill creating a $20 million fund intended in part to expose human rights violations by the United States, the ILNA news agency reported.

Passage of the bill suggests the depth of mistrust that remains between the nations as Iran faces a September deadline to respond to President Obama's offer for talks. Iranian lawmakers said the legislation was in retaliation for what they consider similar action by the United States.

The U.S. Senate passed a bill in July that would allocate $30 million for technologies to allow the U.S. government's Farsi-language satellite and radio stations to bypass Iranian government efforts to jam their broadcasts. An additional $20 million would be set aside for developing Web sites and other technologies that will improve Iranian access to censored information. An additional $5 million is authorized for documenting information about human rights in Iran.

COMMENT:  I would view this story very seriously.  Yes, I know, the Iranian action, taken while dissidents are on trial for their political views, looks ridiculous.  But there is an ugly alliance between Muslim extremists and leftist groups in the West, and that alliance can surface again, with seed money from Iran.  Don't be shocked if "scholars" at Western universities, including those in the United States, suddenly decide to study "American human rights violations and abuse of Iran," and to do so with Iranian funds.  It happens with Saudi funds all the time.   There are professorships of "Middle Eastern studies" at Western universities, financed by the democracy-loving Saudi government. 

And don't be shocked either if some of those "exposing" human rights violations by the United States wind up being seriously interviewed by CNN.

Money talks, and money is what funds "human rights" studies.

August 23, 2009   Permalink

UNBELIEVABLE - AT 6:15 P.M. ET:  Well, we must praise The New York Times - rare here - for a hard-hitting piece on the gross negligence of the Obama administration in filling key policy posts.  The numbers here are staggering, and they point to an incompetence administration run more like the Chicago political machine than the United States Government.  No surprise there:

WASHINGTON — As President Obama tries to turn around a summer of setbacks, he finds himself still playing without most of his own team. Seven months into his presidency, fewer than half of his top appointees are in place advancing his agenda.

Of more than 500 senior policymaking positions requiring Senate confirmation, just 43 percent have been filled so far — a reflection of a White House that grew more cautious after several nominations blew up last spring, a Senate that is intensively investigating nominees and a legislative agenda that has consumed both.

The sluggish pace has kept Mr. Obama from having his own people enacting programs central to his mission. He is trying to fix the financial markets but does not have an assistant treasury secretary for financial markets. He is spending more money on transportation than anyone since Dwight D. Eisenhower but does not have his own inspector general watching how the dollars are used. He is fighting two wars but does not have an Army secretary.

Will you go to bed tonight more confident that your security is in good hands?  No, I didn't think so.

“If you’re running G.M. without half your senior executives in place, are you worried? I’d say your stockholders would be going nuts,” said Terry Sullivan, a professor at the University of North Carolina and executive director of the White House Transition Project, which tracks appointments.

Of course the piece does, as is required, throw some barbs at President Bush.  What would a New York Times story be without that?  But the point is clear:  This administration is functioning on half its cylinders. 

Change we can't believe in.

August 23, 2009   Permalink

SOME SANITY ON HEALTH CARE - AT 5:51 P.M. ET:  Some of the sanest members of Congress, like Joe Lieberman, are suggesting that we approach health-care "reform" incrementally, rather than trying the "great revolution" idea.  This approach might upset Che or Lenin, but it makes sense for America.  From The Politico:

Sen. Lieberman said "in a word, yes" when asked if it's time to shift to an incremental approach to health care reform, and called the Senate Finance Committee's effort to work out a bipartisan bill "the great hope now."

“Morally every one of us would like to cover every American with health insurance, but that’s where you spend most of the trillion-plus dollars, said the Independent from Connecticut, who caucuses with the Democrats. "I'm afraid we’ve got to think about putting a lot of that off until the economy’s out of recession.”

“I think it’s a real mistake to try to jam through the total health insurance reform--health care reform plan that the public is either opposed to or of very passionate mixed minds about. It’s just not good for the system—frankly, it won’t be good for the Obama presidency….There are other fights to fight,” Lieberman said on "State of the Union," listing climate change, regulatory reform, and the war in Afghanistan.

“Great changes in our country often have come in steps….let’s focus now on how to reduce costs,” Lieberman said, adding that the six members of the Finance Committee – three Democrats and three Republicans – "agree on about three-quarters of what needs to get done."

COMMENT:  Lieberman's approach requires leadership, which is precisely what we're not getting from the White House.  The blame for this mess must be placed squarely on the shoulders of Barack Obama.  He has no real ideas, can't even describe the plan he wants, and has left the fate of reform in the hands of the reckless House Democrats.  Americans are starting to understand that the man they elected last November is unprepared for the presidency, and is anything but the moderate who was sold to us.

August 23, 2009   Permalink

LOOK IN THE MIRROR, BARACK, THE MIRROR - AT 11:37 A.M. ET:  Victor Davis Hanson explains to President Obama who the president should blame for his current troubles.  Guess the answer:

Liberal columnists decrying the Obama administration’s supposed lack of partisan fortitude and eagerness for a nasty fight for health care seem oddly detached from reality. The opposition to Obamacare would have gone nowhere had the president offered a concise plan, had his team kept repeating four or five logical and easily understandable talking points, and had he prepared a few pat answers to the more controversial elements of the plan, from the public option to so-called “end of life” panels to treatment of illegal aliens and the real cost.

That hits it.  And...

Instead, Obama and his advisers, in lazy fashion, outsourced the plan to the partisan left-wingers of the Democratic party who are key House chairs. They in turn offered up a 1,000-page legalese mess, which the administration’s key players never read, and which Obama arrogantly thought he could wing through in a few weeks with his “hope and change” / “trust me” cadences.

The result...

Now the problem is not just that health care is going down, but that in the process the administration has tarnished the blue-chip Obama brand, and we are in a sort of emperor-has-no-clothes moment.

COMMENT:  All right, great argument.  I buy it.  But there are two questions now to be answered:  1)  What will Obama do in response to his problem?  Remember that the presidency is, indeed, a bully pulpit.  The president has greater opportunity to turn things around than any other official, witness Bill Clinton's turnaround and eventual reelection; and 2) How will the GOP react to Obama's decline?  If it doesn't react with creative plans of its own, it can arrange another Democratic victory by default.

August 23, 2009   Permalink

McCAIN SAYS NO TO NEW TAXES - AT 10:33 A.M. ET:  John McCain is throwing down the gauntlet on new taxes:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. John McCain is refusing to consider raising taxes to reduce the ballooning deficit.

McCain was asked on ABC's ''This Week'' whether he would make a similar pledge as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to do whatever it takes to bring down the deficit over the long run, such as raising taxes.

COMMENT:  The question is whether the GOP will stick to its guns on this.  The Dems, especially the leftward contingent, can't wait to raise taxes to pay for its spending spree.  Republicans must resist on principle and demand budget cuts, with no program sacred.

And please be alert to increases in hidden or quiet taxes, such as taxes on businesses, which get passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices, but aren't labeled as taxes on the individual.

August 23, 2009   Permalink

WHY, HOW BUSHIAN - AT 10:08 A.M. ET:  From Fox News:

The White House hired a private communications company based in Minnesota to distribute mass e-mails, helping to shed light on how some recipients received e-mails in support of President Obama's health care plan without signing up for them, FOX News has learned.

The company, Govdelivery, describes itself as the world's leading provider of government-to-citizen communication solutions and says its e-mail service provides a fully-automated on-demand public communication system.

It is still unknown how much taxpayer money the White House provides to Govdelivery for its services.

The revelation comes after the White House acknowledged this week that people were receiving unsolicited e-mails from the administration about health care reform and suggested the problem was with third-party groups that placed the recipients' names on the distribution list.

COMMENT:  If this were the Bush administration, reporters from the nation's "leading" news outlets would be descending on the White House, and ominous editorials would be in their second draft, warning about a vast fascistic propaganda machine operating, Nazi-style, from the White House under the command of a latter-day Goebbels.

Am I wrong? 

You are being watched.

August 23, 2009    Permalink

POLL STUNNER - AT 9:56 A.M. ET:  In a stunning rebuke to President Obama, today's Rasmussen poll reports the worst numbers recorded for the president in Ras's presidential approval index.  This measures the gap between those who strongly approve of presidential performance and those who strongly disapprove.  That index this morning stands at minus 14. 

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 27% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -14. These figures mark the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President. The previous low of -12 was reached on July 30.

And...

Prior to today, the number who Strongly Approved of the President’s performance had never fallen below 29%. Some of the decline has come from within the President’s own party. Just 49% of Democrats offer such a positive assessment of the President at this time.

At the other end of the spectrum, today’s total for Strongly Disapprove matches the highest level yet recorded. The 41% mark was reached just once before and that came one week ago today. Seventy percent (70%) of Republicans now Strongly Disapprove along with 49% of those not affiliated with either major party.

COMMENT:  We always stress that polls are snapshots in time, and can change abruptly within a day or two.  But these are pretty jolting numbers, and the president will need all the distractions of Martha's Vineyard to get away from them. 

By the way, you may be sure that these polls are reported regularly by embassies in Washington to their home countries.  The attitude toward Mr. Obama by foreign ministries will be affected by his assumed popularity among American voters, and Rasmussen polls among likely voters.

Another cautionary note:  Obama's polling misfortune is not a guarantee of Republican resurgence.  The GOP's numbers are less than stellar, and need work.

August 23, 2009   Permalink

SATURDAY,  AUGUST 22,  2009

A PERSONAL FAILURE - AT 11:48 P.M. ET:  The press and broadcast outlets are filled with analysis of why the president is suddenly doing so poorly.  All presidents, of course, go through bad patches, but what is happening to Mr. Obama is extraordinary.  Disagreement with his policies has turned to visceral anger, and some of that anger is directed against a man who, only months ago, was considered a modern Mr. Congeniality.  Fred Barnes, in the Weekly Standard, hits it on the head: 

For Obama, there's still worse news. Not only has he lost ground, but public support for his health care proposal has collapsed to the point that a majority of Americans prefer no reform at all to his plan. And the more he stumps for it, the less support it attracts. Rather than a peripheral phenomenon, the noisy opposition in congressional town hall meetings turns out to be a reflection of the deep national suspicion of Obamacare.

Two conclusions are inescapable. The first is that Obama is not Mr. Persuasive, a compelling orator like FDR, swaying public opinion with his words. Quite the contrary, he has failed to sustain public backing for his economic stimulus package, his decision to shut down Guantánamo, his proposed spending, the takeover of General Motors, bailouts in general, and now health care reform.

And...

The second conclusion to draw is that Obama has been dragged down by his health care policy. The more he's identified himself with it, the less the public likes him. There's nothing irrational about this. Why should people without a partisan allegiance to Obama hang with him when they dislike his signature policy? There's no good reason.

Besides, it shows the public is paying serious attention to a national issue. This doesn't happen often. Democrats and Obamaphiles may not like the drift of the debate over health care, but it was Obama who prompted it. Now it's exposed his lack of persuasiveness.

COMMENT:  Hmm.  That's not a great recommendation to a college of Obama's choice.  Ironically, the very characteristic that propelled Obama to power - his ability to make a good speech - is now hurting him.  It's hurting him because, as president, he's not as good at it as he was when a candidate.  And it's hurting him because it's overused.  As Barnes points out:

In our televised age, the public quickly grows tired of political leaders. When Obama spent a half inning in the broadcast booth at the baseball All-Star game in St. Louis on July 14, he was pressing his luck. Americans routinely boo politicians when they're introduced at sports events, where they don't belong. This is a healthy habit that Obama and his entourage may be unaware of.

Well said.

August 22, 2009   Permalink

LEFTIST WEIRDNESS - AT 7:48 P.M. ET:  You would think the left in America would finally realize that 75% of something is better than 100% of nothing.  No such luck.  Even as the Obama health plan sinks into the mud, facing a wave of popular resistance, the so-called "progressives," who are really regressives, are demanding that the most disliked part of the proposed "reform" plan be included:

Through most of the summer, opposition to President Obama and his health-care initiative has come almost entirely from the right. In the past week, however, the president has been trying to tamp down a noisy uprising on the left.

The immediate cause for the rebellion is growing concern among Obama's progressive allies that he is prepared to deal away the public insurance option to win passage of a health-care bill. Obama insists that he still prefers the public option as part of any legislative package, but some friends on the left now clearly doubt his resolve.

COMMENT:  Look, very few people love their health-insurance company, but the objections to the public option are serious, and based on experience.  Yet, the left demands it as a price for support.  Once again the left demonstrates that what it's really interested in is not real reform, but control.  We often see this in eduational programs in large cities.  The left is more interested in who controls the programs than in their impact.

There is a good chance that the left wing of the Democratic Party will wreck the possibility for any serious compromise, and set real reform, practical reform, back years.

August 22, 2009   Permalink

NO HOORAYS FOR HOLLYWOOD - AT 6:57 P.M. ET:  The financial reports out of Hollywood, always presented breathlessly, are simply another indication of the decline of our popular culture.  From the Washington Post:

If 2009 is remembered for anything in American cinema, it might be as the year grown-ups and Hollywood finally agreed to call it quits.

This is the year when such slick, star-driven, adult-oriented movies as "State of Play," "Duplicity," "The International" and "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" underperformed at the box office. And when talking-toy movies like "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" and "G.I. Joe" raked in millions.

Suddenly, movies for grown-ups are in the cross hairs. "I'm caught up all in it," Spike Lee said recently with a rueful laugh, noting that the sequel to his 2006 thriller "Inside Man" is hanging in the balance. "I'm waiting on Universal," he said.

COMMENT:  Hardly a news story.  Hollywood has been driving adults out of movie theaters for more than a generation, and the exclusion campaign has worked.  So-called "youth-oriented" films became the craze in the late sixties, and the definition of "youth" seems to be getting younger every year.

Hollywood's executive suites are filled with a management type best described by writer Larry Gelbart as "a fetus in a three-piece suit."  Not the best judge of grown-up movies.

How do you get mature adults into movie theaters?  With well-made films containing great plots, strong characters and good writing, films that are entertaining.  Not too many around. 

Hollywood today is a highly educated industry.  Isn't it interesting that, as the level of education has gone up, the quality of the films has gone down?   We kind of see that in journalism, too, don't we? 

August 22, 2009   Permalink

AND NOW THE SEQUEL - AT 11:15 A.M. ET:  Tea parties are coming back, this time targeting the Democratic health-care "reforms."  Fox News reports:

If Democratic lawmakers thought all the furor over President Obama's health care plan expressed this month at town hall meetings was dying down, they might be in for a surprise Saturday.

That's when citizens are planning anti-"Obamacare" rallies across the country Saturday in all 435 congressional districts.

And their message is clear: We will not stand for socialized, government-controlled health care.

The same groups who made the "tax tea parties" possible in April are behind this weekend's movement. American Liberty Alliance, FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity are working with The Sam Adams Alliance, among others, to stage the rallies.

COMMENT:  It is remarkable to see the amount of political activity we're having in August, when politics often shuts down, except for political conventions.  But it is critical that this push be extended into September and October.  The administration still has the media on its side, and it's easier for the president to organize a PR push, with TV coverage, than to get hundreds of thousands to come to rallies.  Don't let up.

August 22, 2009   Permalink 

DON'T TELL THE PRESIDENT - AT 10:26 A.M. ET:  Look, the guy's on vacation.  He won't want to know this:  Rasmussen is reporting that his presidential approval index - measuring the gap between those who strongly approve and strongly disapprove of the president - is in negative double digits for the first time since July 31st. 

Some 39% strongly disapprove, and 29% strongly approve.  Rasmussen polls among likely voters, which we take to be the most accurate measure.  These are the people who actually decide who's president.

Obama's ardent campaigning this month has either made no difference, or has had a negative impact.  He's overexposed.  People are getting tired of the slogans.  They still can't get a clear picture of what's in the health plan. 

Now the Obamas have flown to Martha's Vineyard, symbolic playground of the liberal elites.  Who said this White House is politically sharp?

August 22, 2009   Permalink

THE QUEEN, TOO? - AT 10:09 A.M. ET:  The scandal surrounding Scotland's decision to release the Lockerbie bomber, and his hero's reception in Libya, continues to grow:

LONDON (AP) -- Britain's leaders faced strong pressure Saturday to account for any role they might have had in the release of the Lockerbie bomber after Moammar Gadhafi credited senior British officials and members of the royal family for influencing the decision.

He actually did credit the queen.  Now, Gadhafi's mind doesn't always hit all cylinders, but a statement like that has to be investigated. 

Britain has condemned the scenes of jubilation in Tripoli at the return of bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi and has flatly denied there was any trade deal linked to his release.

AP is also reporting that Gadhafi hugged the guy publicly, despite repeated warnings from tough-as-nails President Barack Obama.  I guess our next step is to send a letter from the teacher.

But opposition politicians say comments from Gadhafi's son -- who said the release was often brought up during trade talks -- should be examined.

''It is very important, I think, for the reputation of our institutions of justice that it is made clear beyond any doubt that this was not connected with some political trade,'' David Lidington, the opposition Conservative Party's spokesman on foreign affairs, told the BBC.

COMMENT:  This is a can of worms.  But given British "sensitivity" to Muslim feelings, and given the fact that Libya has a lot of oil, and given Obama's "outreach" to every thug who has an oak desk, and given the mention of the queen, I'd bet against any extensive probe.  An outrage has taken place, but "it's time to move on" will soon be heard.

August 22, 2009   Permalink

ROOTS OF FAILURE - AT 9:51 A.M. ET:  As Johnny Carson used to say, "You know you're in trouble when..."

A president knows he's in trouble when analysts accept as a premise that he's in trouble, and move on to try to find the origin of the problem.  It's kind of an advance political autopsy.  The Politico is doing the cutting:

Barack Obama’s Big Bang is beginning to backfire, as his plans for rapid, once-in-a-generation overhauls of energy, financial regulation and health care are running into stiff resistance, both in Washington and around the country.

The Obama theory was simple, though always freighted with risk: Use a season of economic anxiety to enact sweeping changes the public likely wouldn’t stomach in ordinary times. But the abrupt swing in the public’s mood, from optimism about Obama’s possibility to concern he may overreaching, has thrown the White House off its strategy and forced the president to curtail his ambitions.

Some Democrats point to a decision in June as the first vivid sign of trouble for Obama. These Democrats say the White House, in retrospect, made a grievous mistake by muscling conservative Democrats in swing districts vote for a cap-and-trade energy bill that was very unpopular among their constituents.

Those moderate Dems are paying for that vote, and they're not feeling warm toward those liberal Dems who pressured them.

“The majority-makers are the freshman and sophomores from conservative districts where there’s this narrative building about giveaways, buyouts and too much change at once,” said a top House Democratic strategist, who requested anonymity to discuss internal politics candidly. “There’s this big snowball building in those districts. That’s why those folks are so scared."

Ah, a snowball in this time of "global warming."  Don't you just love it?

And what is the liberal response?  They're claiming Obama isn't liberal enough. You know, you go to bed with liberals, you wake up with socialists.

August 22, 2009   Permalink