THURSDAY,  SEPTEMBER 24,  2009

THE TERROR BEAT - CONT'D - AT 8:18 P.M. ET:  We've been following the major terror investigation centered in New York and Colorado, but there are new developments in other apparent conspiracies:

Federal authorities arrested a 19-year-old Jordanian citizen whom they said placed an inactive car bomb today at Fountain Place, a 60-story skyscraper in downtown Dallas.

Hosam Maher Husein Smadi has repeatedly voiced his intent to serve Osama bin Laden and al-Qa’ida and commit “violent Jihad,” authorities said in a prepared statement...

...Authorities said that Smadi was under continuous FBI surveillance. Federal agents posed as members of an al-Qa’ida sleeper cell. Smadi, who was in the U.S. illegally, allegedly told them that he came to the country specifically to commit “Jihad for the sake of God.”

And there's this, in Illinois:

WASHINGTON, Sept 24 (Reuters) - An Illinois man was ordered held on Thursday on charges he tried to blow up a federal building in the state capital, a case unrelated to the New York terrorism plot.

Michael Finton, also known as Talib Islam, was arrested in Springfield, Illinois, and charged with attempted murder of federal officers or employees and trying to use a weapon of mass destruction, charges that carry a life sentence.

"Fortunately, a coordinated undercover law enforcement effort was able to thwart his efforts and ensure no one was harmed," David Kris, assistant Attorney General for National Security, said in a statement.

Finton was arrested on Wednesday in Springfield as he used a cell phone to try to detonate the bomb he believed was inside a van he had just parked outside the federal building.

COMMENT:  That's three plots broken up within a week.  But we are fighting the law of averages.  We should be grateful that we have excellence in law enforcement, and that some of our enemies are incompetent.  But sooner or later, luck runs out. 

We cannot, with integrity, link these plots directly to the appeasement policies of the president.  But certainly Mr. Obama's lack of resolve and focus increases the morale of those who would harm us.

September 24, 2009   Permalink

PARENTS FIGHT BACK - AT 7:54 P.M. ET:  Did you ever think you'd see this in our country?  An elementary school in New Jersey has been indoctrinating kids to accept a "love Obama" mindset.  Fortunately, parents detected what was going on, and are fighting back.  You really must read this:

Parents of students at a New Jersey elementary school are up in arms after a class of young kids was videotaped being "brainwashed" into singing the praises of President Obama...

...Video of the students at the Burlington, N.J., school shows them singing songs overflowing with campaign slogans and praise for "Barack Hussein Obama," repeatedly chanting the president's name and celebrating his accomplishments, including his "great plans" to "make this country's economy No. 1 again."

One song that the children were taught quotes directly from the spiritual "Jesus Loves the Little Children," though Jesus' name is replaced with Obama's: "He said red, yellow, black or white/All are equal in his sight. Barack Hussein Obama."

For the actual lyrics to these "educational" songs, go here.

For the exciting video, go here.

The video has set off families in Burlington who said they were horrified that their children at the Kindergarten through Second Grade school were being "indoctrinated" to view the president like a cult figure.

"I'm stunned -- I can't believe it's our school," said Jim Pronchik, who told FOXNews.com his 8-year-old son Jimmy was one of the 18 students in the video. "We don't want to praise this guy like he's a god or an idol or a king or anything like that. That's the wrong message to be sending."

COMMENT:  The sad reality is that there are many teachers who see no problem with this.  They are taught in many teachers' colleges to have, as the current educational jargon goes, the right "inclinations."  In other words, they're taught a leftist party line vaguely defined as "social justice."  To people like this, it's entirely logical to sing songs of praise for dear leader.  Democratic traditions mean nothing.  These traditions, including the idea that leaders report to the people, not the other way around, are seen as the deceptions of the "oppressor."

We'll follow this.  And those of you who are parents of young children should exercise your citizenship rights and ask what is being taught at school.  You own those schools.

September 24, 2009   Permalink

POOR TASTE IN MEN - AT 6:22 P.M. ET:  What is it with Hillary?  She's already demonstrated her poor taste in men, big time, but it continues.  When will they ever learn?  When will they ever learn?

She's been championing the cause of the former president of Honduras, legally and constitutionally ousted by his country, and expelled.  He slipped back into Honduras some days ago, and is now holed up in the Brazilian embassy.  Here he speaks to us, revealing just who Hillary is loving now:

TEGUCIGALPA -- It's been 89 days since Manuel Zelaya was booted from power. He's sleeping on chairs, and he claims his throat is sore from toxic gases and "Israeli mercenaries'' are torturing him with high-frequency radiation.

"We are being threatened with death,'' he said in an interview with The Miami Herald, adding that mercenaries were likely to storm the embassy where he has been holed up since Monday and assassinate him.

"I prefer to march on my feet than to live on my knees before a military dictatorship,'' Zelaya said in a series of back-to-back interviews.

It's those Israeli mercenaries.  They're the ones!  Don't you want this man, an ally of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, back in power?  Hillary does, and has threatened the new government of Honduras if Zelaya is not invited back on the throne.

Oh, it gets worse.  Now Hillary apparently gets a Chris Matthews tingle up her leg when she dreams of another worthy, the king of Saudi arabia, the very king whom Obama bowed down to in his first month in office:

Amid all the coverage of President Obama’s address to the United Nations, we should also note the obsequious “salute” that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave yesterday to Saudi King Abdullah. Using the occasion of Saudi Arabia’s national day, Clinton heaped unqualified and unrelenting praise on the monarch for, among other things, enhancing our security, showing friendship to other religions, helping liberate women, reforming education, and supporting peace with Israel.

Wha..? 

No mention was made of the fact that Saudi Arabia remains the only country in the world without a public church, or that is has been singled out by the State Department as one of the world’s worst religious persecutors. In Saudi Arabia today, women still cannot leave home without the permission of their male guardians, and even then are banned by the state from driving. Meanwhile, the Saudi Ministry of Education continues to post online its curriculum of hatred and violence toward Jews, apostates, polytheists, and (generally speaking) the religious “other,” which even Saudi journalists and editors themselves acknowledge has led to easy recruitment of suicide terrorists from among Saudi youth. Those Saudis who dissent from such of the monarchy’s repressive policies are often charged with “blasphemy” and similar offenses and thrown into the Kingdom’s deplorable prisons.

King Abdullah has, however, done at least one thing that warrants a tribute from Clinton: He was one of the largest donors to her husband’s foundation.

COMMENT:  Or maybe the guy is just rugged and good-looking, in a Saudi king kind of way. 

But I suspect that it's the money that talked.  Hillary has always understood the meaning of green.

September 24, 2009   Permalink

ESCALATION - AT 6:14 P.M. ET:  We've been following the ongoing terror investigation in the United States, apparently the largest in years.  Now there's a major arrest, one that reminds us how close we often come to disaster:

A Denver airport shuttle bus driver who was arrested there last weekend was charged in Brooklyn on Thursday morning with conspiring with others to make and use bombs.

The driver, Najibullah Zazi, 24, had been arrested with his father in Denver and accused of making false statements. But his indictment in Brooklyn on Thursday was far more serious. Mr. Zazi was charged with one count of conspiring with others, who are not named, to use one or more weapons of mass destruction, including bombs or other explosives.

The authorities said Mr. Zazi bought chemicals that could be used to make bombs from Denver-area beauty supply stores and had bomb-making instructions on his laptop computer. They said he had mixed chemicals in a suburban Denver hotel room in the weeks before his arrest. Attorney General Eric Holder released a statement saying that the government believed that “any imminent threat” from the case had “been disrupted.”

And...

“We are investigating a wide range of leads related to this alleged conspiracy,” Mr. Holder said. “We believe any imminent threat arising from this case has been disrupted, but as always, we remind the American public to be vigilant.”

COMMENT:  Good to see the attorney general involved.  I would have liked to have seen, amidst all the appeasement at the UN, a statement from the president himself.  After all, the city where he's been hanging out, New York, was the target of the plot. 

September 24, 2009   Permalink

NEW BOUNCE FOR OBAMA - AT 9:47 A.M. ET:  Rasmussen is reporting a small bounce for the president, possibly due to his active international week at the UN, where he's a star attraction.

In overall approval, the president is ahead, 51% to 48%, his best showing in about ten days.  In Ras's presidential approval index, measuring the gap between those who strongly approve of Mr. Obama's performance, and those who strongly disapprove, the president is behind by five points, 33% to 38%, his best performance in about eight days.

If past trends continue, this slight bounce will disappear within a week or so.  Even with the bounce, the president's numbers are not the kind you post on the refrigerator.  He is struggling to stay above the 50% mark, with many difficult decisions confronting him.

September 24, 2009   Permalink

OBAMA'S SPEECH - AT 9:01 A.M. ET:  Like most Obama speeches, his address to the UN General Assembly yesterday is now forgotten.  The Gettysburg Address it was not.

Some conservatives were much harsher on the speech than I was, and they may well be right.  But, as I told a reader, I set a low rhetorical standard for this president, who never fails to disappoint.  He always sounds more than the president of the world, or some other planet, than president of the United States.  I don't think, by the way, that the public is buying this.  You see absolutely no excitement about the Obama foreign policy, except perhaps, at the editorial offices of exotic journals.

The mainstream media is doing its best to present Mr. Obama's very physical presence at the UN as some kind of transforming experience.  He has come, he has waved his hand over the assemblage, there is peace on Earth and good will toward men...and it's cooler, too.

The Russians have indicated they may go along with further sanctions against Iran.  The Israelis and Palestinians may get back to what passes for the peace table in the Mideast.  There are all kinds of mays coming out of this high-profile week at the UN, but no definites.

The president chairs the Security Council today.  It's being promoted as a groundbreaking event:  No American president has ever chaired the Security Council before, probably because they all had enough common sense to stay away.  But we'll wait for the photo op, see if Khadafy shows up to sit near Mr. Obama - whom he described yesterday as "my son" - and watch to see if the president of the United States displays any backbone, a rarity.

Then Mr. Obama goes on to a meeting of the G20 in Pittsburgh.  Are you asleep already?

September 24, 2009   Permalink

THE OBAMA MENTALITY - AT 8:51 A.M. ET:  Victor Davis Hanson, one of the great essayists of our time, has looked at the Obama persona, and finds it heavily influenced by the halls of ivy, poison and otherwise. 

Now, I happen to love academic people, but I'm not starry eyed.  The president has hung out with a class of academic who would gladly flunk me, and probably most of our readers as well.  Hanson explains:

If you are confused by the first nine months of the Obama administration, take solace that there is at least a pattern. The president, you see, thinks America is a university and that he is our campus president. Keep that in mind, and almost everything else makes sense.

Yeah, that's right.  He makes the rules and we pay the bills.

In his limited experience, those who went to Yale or Harvard are special people, and the Ivy League environment has been replicated in the culture of the White House.

Note how baffled the administration is by sinking polls, tea parties, town halls, and, in general, “them” — the vast middle class, which, as we learned during the campaign, clings to guns and Bibles, and which has now been written off as blinkered, racist, and xenophobic. The earlier characterization of rural Pennsylvania has been expanded to include all of Middle America.

For many in the academic community who have not worked with their hands, run businesses, or ventured far off campus, Middle America is an exotic place inhabited by aborigines who bowl, don’t eat arugula, and need to be reminded to inflate their tires. They are an emotional lot, of some value on campus for their ability to “fix” broken things like pipes and windows, but otherwise wisely ignored.

Ignore them at your peril, as the polls are showing.

The tragic burden of an academic is to help the oppressed, but blind, majority.

In the world of the university, a Van Jones — fake name, fake accent, fake underclass pedigree, fake almost everything — is a dime a dozen. Ward Churchill fabricated everything from his degree to his ancestry, and was given tenure, high pay, and awards for his beads, buckskin, and Native American–like locks. The “authentic” outbursts of Van Jones about white polluters and white mass-murderers are standard campus fare.

Professor Hanson's disillusionment continues:

Some wonder where Obama got the idea that constant exposure results in persuasion. But that too comes from the talk-is-everything mindset of a university president. Faculties are swamped with memos from deans, provosts, and presidents, reiterating their own “commitment to diversity,” reminding how they would not “tolerate hate speech,” and in general blathering about the “campus community.”

And...

University administrators worship private money, and then among themselves scoff at the capitalism that created it. Campus elites, looking at a benefactor, are fascinated how someone — no brighter than they are — made so much money, even as they are repelled by a system that allows those other than themselves to have pulled it off.

I've noticed that liberals, especially on campus, are impressed by two things - style and money.  Substance is well behind.  Thus we see (a standard academic phrase) that it's common practice at Columbia University in New York to bash Dwight Eisenhower, who was Columbia's president briefly, in the late forties, because he didn't have an academic style.  His wisdom and experience didn't count for much.  And his wife's hairdo was inappropriate.

Many of the former Professor Obama’s problems so far hinge on his administration’s inability to judge public opinion, its own self-righteous sense of self, its non-stop sermonizing, and its suspicion of sincere dissent. In other words, the United States is now a campus, we are the students, and Obama is our university president.

COMMENT:  I just wish some of the Obama team could play football.  Or badminton or hopscotch.

But remember, there are wonderful college professors as well, even at decidedly liberal institutions.  They slip in somehow.

September 24, 2009   Permalink

CAN THE MIRACLE HAPPEN? - AT 8:17 A.M. ET:  Can Republicans win back the House next year?  Michael Barone, who probably knows more about American politics than any other mortal, looks at the evidence so far:

There’s starting to be some speculation that Republicans might recapture a majority in the House in 2010. That would require them to gain 40 seats—the exact number they needed to gain in 1994, the last time they recaptured a majority from the Democrats.

And...

Currently Real Clear Politics reports that Democrats lead Republicans by only 41%-39% in the generic ballot. But there’s a clear difference between the results shown by pollster Scott Rasmussen, who limits his surveys to those he determines to be likely voters, and other pollsters. Rasmussen currently shows Republicans leading 42%-38% and has had them ahead every week since the results he reported June 28—just about the time the House was passing the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill by a 219-212 margin.

Interpreting the numbers:

Now comes political scientist Andrew Gelman, on the 538.com blog run by the Obama enthusiast and gifted numbers cruncher Nate Silver, saying that the generic polls suggest that Republicans could recapture a House majority in 2010. I have noticed that over the years generic vote questions have tended to understate the ultimate Republican percentage of the popular vote for the House.

But still, Barone is extremely cautious.  He notes that the anti-Obama trend we've seen could be reversed.  Also, most polls still show the Democrats ahead.  And, very critically, the Republican Party is, on its own, not popular.

Having said all that, I think the chances of the Republicans recapturing the House have to be rated now at well below 50%. But I think they’re not as negligible as I thought even a few weeks ago.

COMMENT:  Even if the GOP doesn't take back the House, the Dems could be so badly dented that the liberal wing of their party would find it impossible to govern.  The power could shift decisively to a coalition of Republicans and moderate Democrats, a combination that had a controlling interest from 1939 onward, for a number of decades.

September 24, 2009   Permalink

OBAMA LOSING THE INDIES - AT 7:55 A.M. ET:  President Obama and his party are losing the most crucial voting bloc of all - the independents.   From the Washington Examiner:

Independents gave Obama the White House last year with a vote for pragmatic competence. They have been repaid with partisanship and dithering. And unlike liberals who Obama has quickly re-energized after their summer doldrums, independents are devilishly hard to win back once they lose faith.

The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, the Rolls-Royce of public surveys, showed that for the first time, independents disapproved of the president's performance, 46 percent to 41 percent.

For the first few months of the Obama administration, independents, who make up about 43 percent of the electorate, reflected overall public opinion in giving the president consistent approval ratings of about 60 percent. But now, unaffiliated voters are less positive than the overall electorate, which is holding steady at 51 percent job approval for Obama.

It gets more grim, if you're living in the White House:

More shocking is that independent voters now favor a Republican-controlled Congress by a four-point margin and would overwhelmingly like to see their own member of the House replaced.

Those are the kinds of numbers you see before electoral hurricanes like 1966 or 1994.

What is particularly striking is the reason for the independent defection:

The cause of the drop is foreign policy, where the approval for the president's performance dropped 7 points since July to 50 percent.

This is the first time we've seen foreign policy produce such bad polling news for the White House.  And why?  Americans hold the military in very high esteem.  Obama seems to be in conflict with his own military leaders:

We hear that Obama is waiting to see what happens next before deciding to continue with his own strategy of an Afghan surge. His team is reading a book about how the Kennedy administration was led astray by the military and holding a series of meetings about the way forward.

A flip-flop on what Obama called a "war of necessity" just last might well send the independents to the exits for good.

And we'd be so, so sad.

September 24, 2009   Permalink

WEDNESDAY,  SEPTEMBER 23,  2009

THE POLITICAL YOUNG - AT 11:18 P.M. ET:  There's an old rule in politics:  Never depend on the young.

Jack Kennedy remarked, as young girls jumped up at down as his car passed by during the '60 campaign, "I wish they were old enough to vote."  Other candidates have been bitterly disappointed by the size of the youth vote on election day, compared with the "enthusiasm" they'd seen earlier.

Barack Obama did deliver the youth vote, but there seems to be some youthful remorse, as AP reports:

CHICAGO — Young Americans showed their collective power when they helped vote President Obama into office. Inspired by his message of "change," they knocked on doors, spread fliers, voted for him by a 2-1 margin, and partied like rock-the-vote stars when he won.

Since the election, though, that fervor has died down — noticeably. And while young people remain the president's most loyal supporters in opinion polls, many people are wondering why that age group isn't doing more to build upon their newfound reputation as political influencers.

"It's one thing to get excited about a presidential candidate. It's another thing to become a responsible citizen," says Jennifer Donahue, political director for the New Hampshire Institute Of Politics. She and other political analysts think they have yet to prove themselves.

COMMENT:  It's the same old story.  The young are not dependable in politics.  And wait until they get the invoice for Obamacare, and have to buy insurance that they don't want or may not even need.  Watch their reaction then.  I can see it:  YOUTH FOR SARAH.

You betcha.

September 23, 2009   Permalink

BULLETIN - AT 7:59 P.M. ET:  The United States, a few minutes ago, walked out on the speech of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, citing hateful, anti-Semitic rhetoric.  Other nations also walked out.

To be fair, it was Canada that led the way.  The Canadian delegation wouldn't even attend the speech.  Applause for Canada.  Semi-applause for the U.S., which took too long.  But at least the Obamans finally did walk.

September 23, 2009   Permalink 

MADNESS, CONT'D - AT 7:45 P.M. ET:  Nancy Pelosi lives in Pelosiville, a small town cut off from the adult world.  It's a wonderful place - munchkins everywhere, tofu dinners, every second person a Berkeley graduate.  The town anthem, "No to Bush and His Lackey, Cheney," is a toe-tapper that has gone to the top of the local charts. 

Now Nancy, Pelosiville's leading citizen, makes her latest move.  Despite growing public opposition to the Democratic health-care plan, Pelosi has taken action to make the plan even more liberal, going back on her word to more moderate Democrats.  From CBS News:

When House leadership brings a final health care bill to the full House floor, it may be more liberal than moderate House Democrats expected, according to reports.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is planning to include in the bill a tax on wealthy Americans, as well as a more robust government-run health insurance plan (or "public option"), abandoning the compromises leaders in a key committee worked out with the moderate Blue Dog Democrats, according to Roll Call.

COMMENT:  It gets worse.  House Dems have rejected a proposal to make the final bill available for 72 hours before a vote.  In other words, the American people, and Congress itself, will be denied a reasonable reading period.  What are they trying to hide?

In the Senate, a proposal to wait for a Congressional Budget Office report on the actual cost of the plan before going further was also turned down by the Democratic majority.  Even Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, the most liberal Republican in the Senate, objected to this outrage.  What, she asked, can happen in the few weeks it will take to get the figures?  Why shouldn't Congress know the full cost?

The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is pushing and pushing and pushing.  What can stop this runaway train?  Late reports say that it is moderate Democrats who are balking, and that Nancy may not, ultimately, have the 218 votes needed to pass her plan in the House, which would kill the whole thing.

September 23, 2009   Permalink

SARAH - AT 5:36 P.M. ET:  Almost lost in all the excitement about the vast progress toward world peace and clean sidewalks being made at the UN this week is the fact that Sarah Palin, speaking outside the United States for the first time, made a significant speech in Hong Kong.  It was closed to the press, but, inevitably, a recording got out, and reporters were able to interview guests.

Some of the press reports contained the usual sneering.  I mean, how could this woman be taken seriously?  And reporters were quick to point out that some guests walked out, which will get them invitations to the best parties.  CNN went further, naturally, and proved through "man in the street" interviews that Palin wasn't known in Hong Kong at all.  An eager scribe showed pictures of Sarah to passers-by, who didn't recognize her.  I wonder if they would have recognized photos of Obama last year. 

But Sarah got good marks from a number of guests for a speech in which she advocated "common sense conservatism."  The Wall Street Journal, which has the recording, gives excerpts here.  An example:

The more politically open and just China is, the more Chinese citizens of every ethnic group will be able to settle disputes in court rather than on the streets. The more open it is, the less we’ll be concerned about its military buildup and its intentions. The more transparent China is, the more likely it is that they will find a true and lasting friendship based on shared values as well as interests.

Not bad.  The speech is intelligent, whether one agrees with individual points or not.  If Palin makes more speeches like this, and and speaks over the heads of the press, directly to the American people, she could be back in the game.

September 23, 2009   Permalink

AT THE UN TODAY - AT 4:13 P.M. ET:  We here in New York are keenly aware of the United Nations, primarily because it's responsible for so many traffic jams.  Other than that, I can't think of anything else.

General Assembly week is the really bad week each year.  Streets are blocked off, motorcades float around town with all these "world leaders" who come to make their speech and have dinner, not at McDonald's.  Sirens scream.  The NYPD does its usual great job in keeping order. 

The biggest story this week was where some of the thugs would stay.  Most hotels don't want them.  Fear of bad publicity, bombs, and items like that.

President Obama spoke to the General Assemby today.  I'm happy to report that his speech was bland, containing nothing new.  There were no new apologies or surrenders, or ideas.  Basically, using many words, he announced that he wasn't Bush.  He got lots of applause.  If Obama said, "The roof is falling in and we're all about to die," the UN would applaud.  The president's best/worst moment of the day came when the speaker following him, Libya's Moammar Khadafy, said that he wished Obama could serve for life.  Moammar has not read the U.S. Constitution.

I was switching channels to get a feel for the coverage.  I remain amazed at the in-the-tank-for-Obama coverage on CNN, especially from one Rick Sanchez.  CNN is practically a branch of the White House.  Obama, in CNN's eyes, is wonderful.  He has restored our standing in the world.  He is popular.  He is loved.  But he still must clean up what BUSH (!!) left.  And journalists wonder why their credibility is so low.

We now await Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who will do his famous magic act, and will also receive applause.  We'll report on his appearance.

September 23, 2009   Permalink

THE BRITS GET IT - AT 7:02 A.M. ET:  We've said here many times that British writers often do the sharpest reporting on American politics.  What a great example we have this morning in Nile Gardiner, in The Telegraph, who writes a piece gently titled...

The UN loves Barack Obama because he is weak

The subtlety, the British understatement.  Oh, I love it all.  Gardiner goes on in a similar soft spirit:

He is the first American president who has made an art form out of apologizing for the United States, which he has done on numerous occasions on foreign soil, from Strasbourg to Cairo. The Obama mantra appears to be – ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do to atone for your country.

Well, there goes the Obaman idea that he's the second coming of Jack.

The UN is not a club of democracies - who still remain a minority within its membership – it is a vast melting pot of free societies, socialist regimes and outright tyrannies. Obama’s clear lack of interest in human rights issues is a big seller at the UN, where at least half its members have poor human rights records.

And the worse the record, the greater the chance of being elected to the Human Rights Council.

His appeasement of Iran, his bullying of Israel, his surrender to Moscow, his call for a nuclear free world, his siding with Marxists in Honduras, his talk of a climate change deal, have all won him plaudits in the large number of UN member states where US foreign policy has traditionally been viewed with contempt.

What a record.  Build the man a monument, just not in the USA.

The Obama administration is now overseeing and implementing the biggest decline in American global power since Jimmy Carter. Unfortunately it may well take another generation for the United States to recover.

COMMENT:  The problem is, Obama's most influential supporters don't want us to recover.  And we may not, unless we reverse the effects of this creeping collapse in next year's midterm election.

September 23, 2009   Permalink

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE CAPITOL - AT 6:52 A.M. ET:  We are consumed by foreign policy this week - back to that in a few minutes - but let's not forget that Congress is consumed by health care.  Now Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, whose personality cries out for medical resuscitation, is threatening the so-called "nuclear option" to get his favored bill through the Senate.  Fox News reports:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid threatened on Tuesday to use a procedural maneuver to steamroll opponents of health care reform, even as a Senate panel began delicate negotiations over a package that could have the best chance at passing.

The Nevada Democrat, who has issued similar threats before, spoke as the Senate Finance Committee began debate over Chairman Max Baucus's reform plan. Reid threatened to use a budgetary tool called reconciliation -- also known as the "nuclear option" -- that would allow Democrats to pass key parts of the legislation with a simple majority, as opposed to the 60 votes needed to avoid a Republican filibuster.

COMMENT:  This would blow up the Senate.  The procedure was developed for budgetary matters, not for bills that involve one sixth of the economy and penetrate every family. 

The American people, in poll after poll, have shown their skepticism about the health plans now before Congress.  In some cases it's outright hostility.  To shove an unpopular bill through the Senate using parliamentary gimmickry could produce a backlash that would make the town meetings look like Tupperware parties.

What Congress lacks today, among 4,000 other things, is legislative leaders like Lyndon Johnson or Sam Rayburn, who knew how to maneuver, to build coalitions, without wrecking the place. 

Well, the Senate does have Al Franken and Roland Burris.  Be thankful for small blessings - very, very small.  Get out the microscope. 

September 23, 2009   Permalink 

QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 6:41 A.M. ET:  From distinguished author and scholar Mark Helprin, in the Wall Street Journal.  He reflects on the fact that Obama cancelled the missile shield that President Bush had promised Eastern Europe, and agreed to vague negotiations with Iran, even though Iran has taken its nuclear program off the table.  Obama took these two actions in the same week:

Stalin tested Truman with the Berlin Blockade, and Truman held fast. Khrushchev tested Kennedy, and in the Cuban Missile Crisis Kennedy refused to blink. In 1983, Andropov took the measure of Reagan, and, defying millions in the street (who are now the Obama base), Reagan did not blink. Last week, the Iranian president and the Russian prime minister put Mr. Obama to the test, and he blinked not once but twice. The price of such infirmity has always proven immensely high, even if, as is the custom these days, the bill has yet to come.

But who is to warn the American people, especially young Americans?  We have a profession of journalism that has now lost most of its World War II generation of reporters, for whom the word "appeasement" had meaning.  We have an academic arena controlled by the political left, pounding into young heads the idea that it is America, and not totalitarianism, that is responsible for the problems of the world.

And we have a president whose life has been influenced by extremists, who share a dark view of the United States and its history.

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, whose name is forever linked with the appeasement policies that led directly to World War II, also believed his mission in office was to correct the flaws in his country's past, especially what he perceived as Britain's harsh treatment of Germany after World War I.  We see in American and allied military cemeteries around the world exactly where that led. 

Today the president addresses the UN General Assembly for the first time.  Will he speak as president of a nation that has done more to bring democracy and progress to the planet than any other, or will he grovel before the scores of corrupt dictatorships and professional "victims" who make up much of the "community of nations"?  The speech will be a test of whether he's learned anything in his eight months in office, or whether he still believes himself to be The One, a blessing to Earth, a man whose wisdom is above that of all men.  We'll know in hours.

September 23, 2009   Permalink

EXCLUSIVE REPORT ON AFGHANISTAN - AT 6:30 A.M. ET:  As readers know, Urgent Agenda has an anonymous source who travels to Afghanistan and has extensive knowledge of the conflict there.  Here is our expert's take on the decisions President Obama, who called Afghanistan "the good war," must make:

Obviously, McChrystal's boys feel things are urgent and can't wait while Obama dithers.

The president is in a tough spot of his own making. To balance his rejection of Bush's "blunder" in Iraq and to establish his defense policy bona fides he embraced the "good" war in Afghanistan: clear connection to 9/11, a broad coalition, and relatively low troop levels. But once he actually had to govern he found that things there were much more complex than he and his advisors understood, and in some ways far more difficult than the situation in Iraq.

The president tried to save himself some time by sacking General McKiernan and perhaps hoped that the new team might find some elegant, low-risk way to improve the situation in Afghanistan.  Spokesmen pretend that he is sending new troops, but the troops that are arriving now were requested by McKiernan under the Bush administration.  

McChrystal now sees what was hobbling McKiernan: far too few boots on the ground, a dysfunctional command structure, and (some) unreliable allies.  The "neo-Taliban" is on the rise and Obama must now decide:  Will he "write the check" required to make a serious effort to continue the counterinsurgency efforts?  He has verbally committed to this on several occasions, but now that the day of decision is upon him, he seems to be seeking an easy way out.

Will he abandon the current mission?  This mission is not murky and vague as he asserts, but very clear:  establish a stable central government in Afghanistan that will be capable of governing itself and preventing the use of its territory as a terrorist base.  

It IS a very difficult mission. There may be good reasons to think the mission is too difficult and to seek alternate means of preventing the return of Al-Qaeda, but talk of using air power, special forces and additional Afghan forces to manage the country from afar is pure fantasy.  

There are no easy options, and an abrupt withdrawal has some real dangers:

1.  Afghans who decided to cooperate with NATO, counting on promises of a long-term commitment, will be left exposed and extremely vulnerable. 

2.  Pakistan is left in a particularly awkward situation. Obama administration officials have rightly identified that the insurgency problem as a regional one, pointing to the porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border as a source of sanctuary and resupply for rebels. Recently, prodded by the US, the Pakistani Army has been putting pressure on the Pakistan Taliban, and is having some limited success. But without a strong US presence in Afghanistan, Pakistanis will face an enemy now free to evaporate to the Afghan side of the border, sort of the reverse of the problem that has caused us so much trouble.  A now emboldened Pakistan Taliban may destabilize this nuclear nation.

3.  NATO will suffer a severe blow to its confidence, prestige, and will to execute future missions.  Some of the nations participating enthusiastically in this mission--I am thinking particularly of Poland--have been doing so not so much because of their interests in a stable Afghanistan, but more with an eye toward a confident, successful NATO, which a resurgent Russia must respect and account for. An ignominious withdrawal and the perception of failure will cause a crisis of confidence in Europe.

4. The Taliban will return, though not in as widespread a manner as in the past:  warlords in the north and west of the country will not allow this.  But it is likely to return with a vengeance to the Kabul area, the east and the south, especially around Kandahar, Ghazni and Khowst.  It is not certain that Al-Qaeda will be welcomed back with open arms (real rifts developed between the Afghans and the Arab Al-Qaeda hands), but it is possible.

5. Ironically, Iran will be source of stability in the region that we will have to rely upon (though not openly), undercutting our leverage in attempting to contain its nuclear ambitions.  Iran does not want chaos on its borders, and has strong religious and cultural influence deep into Afghanistan.  

Even if McChrystal gets the troops he is requesting and is somehow able to develop "unity of effort," despite the less than ideal command structure, I am skeptical about our ability to produce long-term stability in Afghanistan.  We may have to be satisfied with Afghanistan devolving into a collection of fiefdoms, governed by strongmen whom we quietly support in their efforts to fend off the Taliban.  But getting from here to there will be ugly and embarrassing for the West, and will severely reduce our will to act decisively in support of our interests.

The good war was a mirage:  the coalition that lent legitimacy has hampered operations, and the low level of troops has prevented any serious attempts at counterinsurgency.  

As for the ties to 9/11...well, who thinks about that anymore?  That was just a crime spree, to the new administration's way of thinking.

Well stated, by a real authority.

September 23,  2009   Permalink