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SUNDAY,  APRIL 11,  2010

DRIVING MISS DIXIE – AT 9:59 P.M. ET:  The actress Dixie Carter has died.  She was a gifted actress, as is her husband, and survivor, Hal Halbrook. 

We received the following e-mail from one of our most loyal readers, John Harris, and I thought you might be interested:

I read this morning that Miss Dixie had passed.

I had the honor and pleasure of meeting and driving Miss Carter a
little over a year ago. She was in town for the Austin Film
Festival to attend her latest, and, as it turned out, her last
film, starring with her husband Mr. Holbrook.

I met her at the bottom of the escalator with a discrete sign
saying “DC." I saw her immediately, and she waved; a small woman in
slightly baggy clothes – her traveling clothes she told me later –
and said she hoped the sign was for her. I told her that of course
I recognized her, and I did. She was 69 and still beautiful.

We got in the car and headed into town and she told me she didn’t
feel well – too much traveling, she hated to fly, but she loved
to sing so she had to travel. She asked about me and I told her
some and we talked politics and show business and how they all
tied together, and how she really did get her head stuck in that
staircase scene. (The set carpenter had to cut her out.)

She had opinions about our new young president and it was no secret that
she was a conservative. But I’ll leave that to others. She told
stories and I listened and laughed. She asked for my number and I
gave her my card; she called Mr. Holbrook and told him to look for
me when he arrived the next morning. And he did. But this story is
about Dixie.

The next evening they went to the movie and the following morning
I picked her up at her hotel. But this time I took the black
stretch limo. When she came out of the hotel, the transformation
was complete – dressed to the nines, she looked years younger, and,
when she saw the stretch she said, “For me????” I took her bag and
said “Hey, all the big stars get the limo.” She laughed and
thanked me and got in. But then she moved up to the front of that
long car, right behind me so we could continue to talk. And talk
we did all the way to the airport. It was a good day.

I wish the best to Mr. Holbrook and her family. She will be missed.

Indeed. 

April 11, 20    Permalink

WILL HE BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY? – AT 7:10 P.M. ET:  The United States is about to convene a meeting in Washington on nuclear proliferation.  Noble gesture, not much substance.  The Times of London notes:

Terrorists including al-Qaeda pose a serious threat to world security as they attempt to obtain atomic weapons material, Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, declared on the eve of a global summit in Washington to prevent a nuclear terror attack.

President Obama will call on the leaders of 47 nations today — the biggest gathering of heads of state by a US leader since the founding of the UN in 1945 — to introduce tougher safeguards to prevent nuclear material ending up in the hands of terrorists. As far back as 1998, Osama bin Laden stated that it was his Islamic duty to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction.

During the two-day Nuclear Security Summit, Mr Obama will try to convince representatives, including David Miliband. who is standing in for Gordon Brown, that the dangers of loosely guarded atomic material are so grave that a global agreement is needed to stop al-Qaeda going nuclear.

The summit is part of Mr Obama’s strategy to put nuclear weapons at the top of foreign policy. He signed a treaty with Russia on April 8, restricted the role and development of US nuclear weapons last week, and is trying to reach agreement on new sanctions against Iran. The Iran component of his strategy will be raised during the summit, notably with President Hu of China, who agreed to attend the event after initial doubts.

COMMENT:  This is all very nice, but it reflects the "meeting mentality" of this administration.  While firm words will be spoken, the American policy toward both North Korea and Iran has essentially collapsed, and North Korea is one of the world's biggest proliferators.

The president tells us he thinks the United States should lead by example.  Okay, Barack, lead!  When you beat up on our allies and allow the Iranians to roar past deadline after deadline on their nuclear program, do you think anyone will take you seriously?

Not much will come out of this conference unless the president can show that there are real consequences that the violators will suffer.  He has not shown that.  Until he does, all the rest is commentary.

April 11, 20    Permalink

DOES BARACK UNDERSTAND THIS? – AT 5:06 P.M. ET:  President Obama's approval rating in the daily Gallup tracker has reached an all-time low.

Only 45% of those polled approve of the job the president is doing, whereas 48% disapprove.  Approval in the low 40s is getting to be the norm with this president. 

If this trend continues, and the Republicans do extremely well in the midterms, the president's wings will be clipped on domestic policy.  The problem is that presidents have shown themselves to be sovereign in foreign policy, and Obama might just push bull-headedly forward with some of his reckless appeasement antics. 

The 2010 and 2012 elections are shaping up to be among the most critical in our recent history.  They also will be brutal, and involve exceptionally painful choices on taxes and spending. 

There is a Chinese curse:  "May you live in interesting times."  We are living in very interesting times, and this president is not mastering them.

April 11, 2010    Permalink

IRAN TO PROTEST U.S. AT U.N. – AT 11:12 A.M. ET:  What?  Is it possible that an enemy of the United States thinks Obama is a tough guy?  Probably not.  This is just a rhetorical ploy: 

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran will lodge a complaint with the United Nations about what it sees as U.S. President Barack Obama's threat to attack it with nuclear weapons, the foreign ministry said on Sunday.

Obama made clear last week that Iran and North Korea were excluded from new limits on the use of U.S. atomic weapons -- something Tehran interpreted as a threat from a long-standing adversary to attack it with nuclear bombs.

"The recent statement by the U.S. president ... implicitly intimidates the Iranian nation with the deployment of nuclear arms," Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a televised meeting with military and security officials.

"This statement is very strange and the world should not ignore it since in the 21st century, which is the era of support for human rights and campaigning against terrorism, the head of a country is threatening to use nuclear war."

COMMENT:  The Iranians know that Obama has no plans to attack them with nuclear weapons, or anything else other than whipped cream.  But this is a slick propaganda move.

Now, does Obama reply by standing firm and ridiculing the mullah madness?  Or does he show his usual eight-flavor pudding spine and "clarify" his policy, essentially satisfying the Iranians.  Stand by.

April 11, 2010    Permalink

DIDN'T SHOW, WINS ANYWAY – AT 10:44 A.M. ET:  Mitt Romney, who didn't attend, won the straw poll at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans.  The certifiable nutcase Ron Paul, however, was only one vote behind.  From CBS:

NEW ORLEANS -- Mitt Romney won the straw poll at the Southern Republican Leadership conference here Saturday in a victory that will be taken as a sign of the former Massachusetts governor's strength as a 2012 presidential candidate.

That's because the 2008 GOP presidential hopeful elected to skip the conference to continue his book tour.

Romney triumphed by a single vote over Ron Paul, who took second place 439 votes to 438. Both men won 24 percent of the vote. Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich essentially tied for third with 18 percent of the vote each.

1,806 ballots were cast by the conservative activists who attended the conference. No other candidate got more than four percent of the vote.

COMMENT:  Ron Paul always drags his army of black-helicopter spotters to these beauty contests, hoping to boost his absurd presidential ambitions.  Paul is a dangerous eccentric, some of whose views on national security actually come from the fringe left. 

The danger is that, if Paul ever develops influence in the GOP, it can destroy the party by driving out everyone who can pass a basic psychiatric screening. 

April 11, 2010    Permalink

IT'S CLOSE IN THE MOTHER COUNTRY – AT 10:25 A.M. ET:  Britain will hold a general election on May 6th, less than a month from now.  The polls are tightening.  The conservatives seem to have thrown away the lead they've generally enjoyed for many months:

The general election is too close to call, opinion polls suggested Saturday, four days after campaigning officially began for the May 6 vote.

The Conservatives had led Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour party for most of the past 18 months but the gap has narrowed in recent months and many commentators are predicting one of the tightest races in decades.

An ICM survey for the News of the World newspaper of 96 key Labour-held marginal seats found Conservative support had dropped four points to 36 percent since January, while Labour was unchanged on 37 percent.

The third Liberal Democrat party surged five points to 19 percent.

The pollsters said a similar result on election day would hand the Conservatives the biggest number of seats in parliament but not enough for a majority, a rare situation in Britain known as a hung parliament.

A number of new national polls supported this view.

An ICM survey for the Sunday Telegraph put the Tories on 38 percent, up one point on a similar poll published on the first day of campaigning on Tuesday. Labour were down three points on 30 percent and the Lib Dems unchanged at 21.

A YouGov poll for The Sunday Times also put the Tories up one point on its poll last week, to 40 percent, but Labour were up three at 32 percent and the centrist Lib Dems were down two on 18 percent.

COMMENT:  We support the Tories, although with less than irrational exuberance.  David Cameron, the Conservative leader, is no Margaret Thatcher, or Winston Churchill.  We don't have to worry about Obama sending a bust of Cameron back to England, as he did with a bust of Winston Churchill, because no one would think of making a bust of David Cameron.

However, he'll do, and is better than the current Labour government.  And a conservative government in London would drive Obama crazy, which is a delightful side benefit.

Of course we'll watch this closely.

April 11, 2010    Permalink 

MORE PATCHWORK – AT 10:16 A.M. ET:  Having watched their boss, the prophet Barack, humiliatec the Afghan president in public, two members of the Cabinet are trying to make amends.  It's pathetic: 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon chief and the top U.S. diplomat say Afghan leader Hamid Karzai has a positive relationship with the Obama administration despite recent tensions.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton say Karzai and the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan meet regularly and have a positive relationship. Clinton says Karzai's living under extraordinary stress.

And we certainly didn't help matters with our hectoring of him in public.

Oh, there's this, from Fox:

The president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, has cast doubt over NATO’s planned summer offensive against the Taliban in the southern province of Kandahar, as more than 10,000 American troops pour in for the fight.

Karzai threatened to delay or even cancel the operation — one of the biggest of the nine-year war — after being confronted in Kandahar by elders who said it would bring strife, not security, to his home province.

Visiting last week to rally support for the offensive, the president was instead overwhelmed by a barrage of complaints about corruption and misrule. As he was heckled at a shura of 1,500 tribal leaders and elders, he appeared to offer them a veto over military action. “Are you happy or unhappy for the operation to be carried out?” he asked.

The elders shouted back: “We are not happy.”

“Then until the time you say you are happy, the operation will not happen,” Karzai replied.

COMMENT:  We'd all better get our acts together over there.  The lives of American troops are involved.  We can start by sending a list of countries to the president, divided into "allies" and "enemies," and ask him to memorize the list.

April 11,  2010    Permalink

SATURDAY,  APRIL 10,  2010

YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS UP – AT 10:34 P.M. ET:  Do you have an image of Scotland Yard?  Brilliant.  Professional.  No-nonsense.  Filled with Sherlock Holmses.  Maybe you'd better think again.  From The Times of London:

SCOTLAND YARD has bowed to Islamic sensitivities and accepted that Muslims are entitled to throw shoes in ritual protest — which could have the unintended consequence of politicians or the police being hit.

News of the concession by the Metropolitan police has come to light amid a series of trials of more than 70 mostly Muslim demonstrators who were charged with violent disorder after last year’s Gaza protests outside the Israeli embassy in London.

Aquib Salim, 21, an IT student at Queen Mary, London University, who was involved in a shoe-throwing incident, is almost certain to avoid a prison sentence as a result.

Chris Holt, Salim’s solicitor, said he was likely to get a suspended sentence after he pleaded guilty to a single charge of throwing a stick at police lines.

“The court accepted that the earlier shoe-throwing incident was simply a ritual form of protest and therefore not a criminal act of violence,” Holt said.

COMMENT:  This is idiotic.  Little by little, our Western civilization is surrendering to the "cultural" needs of violent anti-social groups.  We've tried that in American inner-city schools, and it's been an absysmal failure.

This is what Scotland Yard should be saying:  "You're in Britain now.  We have rules here.  We respect your religion, but you must follow the rules that all citizens follow."

There is no Churchill waiting in the British wings.  The British can only save themselves.

April 10, 2010    Permalink

GOOD DAY FOR AMERICA – AT 7:38 P.M. ET:  We don't do many feel-good stories here, but it's Saturday night and the Washington spin machines have stopped spinning for the day.  So here's a story to make you feel good:

ATLANTA (AP) -- Kwame James waited nearly 10 years to be sworn in as a U.S. citizen, a long time compared with the time he spent helping subdue would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid on a trans-Atlantic flight.

James, now 32, wore a gray pinstriped suit and blue tie this week during the ceremony, which ended years of immigration limbo that began after he helped thwart the terror attack aboard a Paris-to-Miami flight in December 2001.

The 6-foot-8 basketball player was napping when a flight attendant roused him. Ten rows back, Reid was scuffling with passengers and the crew after he tried to ignite explosives hidden in his shoes. James helped tie up Reid with belts and headset wires, and took turns holding Reid by his ponytail with another passenger until the plane could land in Boston.

Nearly 10 years later, James would rather talk about how happy he is to be a new citizen and his passion for music.

''I became a citizen of one of the best countries in the world and I am very happy,'' he said Friday, a day after he was sworn in as a citizen in Atlanta. ''All the things that people come here for, that's what I'm here for, the opportunity. You can come from nothing and become something here, just through hard work.''

COMMENT:  Welcome.  Maybe Mr. James can make a tour of our college campuses and tell his story.  If they'd let him.

April 10, 2010    Permalink

THE WISDOM OF HALEY – AT 7:05 P.M. ET:  Haley Barbour, the successful Republican governor of Mississippi, is also a former national chairman.  He is giving some very good advice these days about the importance of winning, rather than simply maintaining ideological purity.  From The Wall Street Journal: 

“I’m so focused on winning. If we don’t win we can’t fix things,” said Barbour, who was at the helm of the Republican National Committee in 1994 when Republicans were swept in to power. He said today’s political environment is better today than it was in that historic election year—that is, if Republicans don’t screw it up.

Yeah, that's what I worry about.  Screwing it up is easy.  Winning is hard.

“Not everybody in the Republican Party is as conservative as Haley Barbour, but I’ll tell you what, Haley Barbour can’t get elected governor in Vermont,” the governor quipped to the 3,500 attendees.

“This message of unity is so important that we cannot let ourselves be torn apart by the idea of purity,” he said, adding that ideological fights should be waged in Republican primaries—and the winners should be embraced by the party.

And finally...

“Stay focused on 2010. Don’t worry about 2012,” he said, “I hope nobody here spends one whit of time on the 2012 presidential election.”

COMMENT:  Right on.  We discuss 2012 more because it's entertaining than for any intelligent purpose. We must win this year to stop the Obama runaway train, and set ourselves up for the 2012 race. 

Insistence on rigid ideological purity will only destroy our effort.  Reagan was anything but ideologically pure.  He understood political reality and the need to win.  Same with FDR, who had to work with a decidedly conservative Southern wing of his party. 

And Sarah Palin worked with Democrats as governor of Alaska, and sometimes took on elements of her own party.

There must be a set of core beliefs, obviously.  That's what differentiates us from the other guys.  But lockstep thinking ain't what America's about. 

On to victory.

April 10, 2010     Permalink

OBAMA THE MILITARY STRATEGIST – AT 11:30 A.M. ET:  Wesley Pruden, who takes no prisoners, bluntly assesses our new nuclear-weapons strategy, as declared by President Obama.  Obama yesterday ridiculed Sarah Palin's criticism of the strategy as coming from an unqualified person.  As compared, to say...?  From The Washington Times:

America will survive the Obama administration, though it might test the limits of the patience of the divine providence that has protected our republic so far. The president, who no doubt means well, wants to give us all a cheap thrill. That's the most generous explanation of his adventure into nuclear policy.

The Democrats mock Sarah Palin's credentials for venturing into anything more serious than moose hunting, but their man's lengthening record in dealing with the rest of the world gets scarier and scarier.  His banging his head on the floor to bow deeply enough to foreign kings and potentates was infuriating, but relatively harmless, like his apology tour of the Middle East to reassure Islamic red-hots that we understand that crashing airplanes into skyscrapers and blowing up innocents are just the rituals of a religious cult that we have a duty to better understand.

Told you.  No prisoners.

Now he's getting into seriously important territory. His Nuclear Posture Review, revealed this week, sets out for the first time that the United States "will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons [nations] that are party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty" - even if in answer to chemical, biological or cyber attacks.

Yeah.  We're all smiles.

But presidents before him understood the value of discretion and secrecy. Why tell prospective enemies what, exactly, you'll do in such circumstances? Such reticence would be difficult for a president in love with the sound of his voice, confident in his ability to make a speech so pretty that it would melt the hearts of the vilest villains.

And...

Mr. Obama told the New York Times that the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or the NPT, will not only reduce the American nuclear arsenal, but "outliers" like Iran and North Korea "should see that over the course of the last year-and-a-half we have been executing a policy that will increasingly isolate them so long as they are operating outside of accepted international norms."

All this sounds very nice, and impressive to the editorial board of the New York Times and various think-tank "experts" who put their faith in paper promises, but that treaty hasn't changed much in the world where the rest of us live.

Hmm, we've noticed.

But the worst of what Mr. Obama's latest feel-good initiative will do is to make him still smaller in the eyes of the enemies that he thinks the United States doesn't have. These adversaries, who may be evil but aren't dumb, will conclude that they're not dealing with a president so much as a community activist who wandered into the White House on a nation's naive whim.

Wonderfully stated.  And finally...

We've avoided World War III so far largely because the United States has been the ultimate guarantor of the security of most of the Free World. This guarantee worked for 70 years because the Free World believed that the United States meant what it said. Now Mr. Obama would eliminate that trust and dismantle the guarantee. It's more of his vision of a Little America, neutered and pacific, like the neutered and pacific little nations of Europe. Some thrill.

COMMENT:  That says it.  But it will take a new president to reverse course.  This one is convinced of his own wonderfulness, and is sure that the rest of the world is merely misunderstood. 

Go dig that shelter.

April 10, 2010     Permalink

OBAMA SUPREME COURT STRATEGY – AT 11:01 A.M. ET:   The Politico reports that the White House is choosing a pragmatic, rather than an ideological, approach to selecting a nominee to replace Justice Stevens: 

THE BIG IDEA – “Obama doesn't want SCOTUS fight,” Glenn Thrush: “Liberal leaders see the resignation of Justice John Paul Stevens as a once-in-a-term opportunity for Obama to nominate an unabashed liberal to balance an increasingly conservative high court – while energizing the demoralized Democratic base just in time for the midterms. But few if any of the eight to 10 potential nominees being mulled by the White House are progressive firebrands, and White House officials aren’t keen to pick a major new fight after the year-long health care battle, according to people close to the process. ‘The bottom line,’ said an administration official, ‘is that we want to walk in there with someone who is confirmable.’ Obama exuded moderation during his brief announcement in the Rose Garden Friday, avoiding the empathy criterion he famously espoused prior to picking Justice Sonia Sotomayor. …

COMMENT:  As noted here yesterday, the Stevens departure leaves the Court with zero Protestants.  In an age when diversity is touted, that has to enter into the president's calculations.  At the same time, there is pressure to appoint another woman, in anticipation of Justice Ginsberg's possible resignation this year or next.  So a Protestant, female moderate liberal might be the ideal choice.

April 10, 2010    Permalink

MEDIA CHANGE? – AT 10:32 A.M. ET:  Is it possible that some in the media are starting to see The One differently?  Or maybe they realize they can't keep up the myth of divinity forever in the absence of divine performance. 

Rasmussen has a new service called Media Meter, which tracks favorability or unfavorability of media converage of the Obamans.  For the last week the meter shows 48.3% positive coverage and 51.7% negative. 

Of course, this can't undo the damage done by the in-the-tank coverage of the 2008 election campaign, which helped so much to elect Obama.  But we welcome any sign of greater balance in reporting The One's activities. 

But be careful.  The meter is only an overall assessment.  Some negative coverage may occur if the media outlet involved thinks the president isn't acting liberal enough. We're getting some of that these days as the left develops a bunker mentality, realizing it can't cancel the next election, always possible in the old country.

April 10, 2010    Permalink

POLISH PRESIDENT KILLED – AT 10:10 A.M. ET:  From The New York Times:

MOSCOW — A plane carrying the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, and dozens of the country’s top political and military leaders crashed in a heavy fog in western Russia on Saturday morning, killing everyone aboard.

Television showed chunks of flaming fuselage scattered in a bare forest near Smolensk, where the president was arriving for a ceremony commemorating the murder of more than 20,000 Polish officers by the Soviet secret police after the Red Army invaded Poland.

COMMENT:  It is a staggering blow to Poland, as much of its political elite was wiped out. 

President Obama showed disrespect for Poland last year when he canceled a missile-defense program that the Poles, under threat of Russian disapproval, agreed to host.  Now, Mr. President, is the time for the grand gesture.  Can you understand that?  You must personally lead the American delegation to the funeral, as DeGaulle led the French delegation after the assassination of President Kennedy.  You don't just send Biden in a case like this.

April 10,  2010     Permalink