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Please note the correction to our 8:49 p.m. post.  The president's approval stands at 43%, while 48% disapprove.  We regret the error in the original.

SATURDAY,  AUGUST 14,  2010

HOLY SMOKE OVER HOLY GROUND – AT 8:58 P.M. ET:   More and more, President Obama resembles a Japanese kamikaze pilot who can't wait to get into the plane. Last night he made a strong, completely unsolicited defense of the mosque at Ground Zero...while speaking to a Muslim group at the White House. 

Today the president backed off a bit, saying that, well, he really wasn't endorsing the mosque, just the right of its sponsors to build it where they want to build it.

That doesn't wash.  Obama has created a new mess.   

There has been the predictable uproar.  The position of those who oppose the mosque, 70% of Americans according to surveys, was well summed up by Sarah Palin:

Mr. President, should they or should they not build a mosque steps away from where radical Islamists killed 3000 people?

Please tell us your position.

We all know that they have the right to do it, but should they? And, no, this is not above your pay grade.

If those who wish to build this Ground Zero mosque are sincerely interested in encouraging positive "cross-cultural engagement" and dialogue to show a moderate and tolerant face of Islam, then why haven't they recognized that the decision to build a mosque at this particular location is doing just the opposite?

There hasn't been any polling since last night's presidential declaration to determine whether this latest trip to kamikaze land has further damaged Mr. Obama's standing. 

Urgent Agenda's spirited reader, our resident cheerleader and a founding subscriber, adds her blunt and telling comment:

Barack seems to be saying all religions are created equally.  So where the hell was he at the National Prayer Breakfast?

Yeah, really.

August 14, 2010     Permalink

WELCOME TO THE BASEMENT – AT 8:49 P.M. ET:   President Obama scores his lowest ratings yet in the Gallup Poll.

The president's approval rating stands at 43%, while 48% disapprove.

Gallup makes the point that the party of a president whose approval dips below 50% loses, on average, 36 seats the House in midterm elections.  With Mr. Obama at 43%, the GOP is in position to win the 41 seats needed to take the House and send Nancy Pelosi back to obscurity.

August 14, 2010      Permalink

GERMAN ECONOMIC SUCCESS – AT 6:07 A.M. ET:  Reader Tino Manus alerts us to stories about the new German economic success.  Germany is defying the trendiness of Europe, and is getting results.  From The New York Times:

BERLIN — Germany has sparred with its European partners over how to respond to the financial crisis, argued with the United States over the benefits of stimulus versus austerity, and defiantly pursued its own vision of how to keep its economy strong.

Statistics released Friday buttress Germany’s view that it had the formula right all along. The government on Friday announced quarter-on-quarter economic growth of 2.2 percent, Germany’s best performance since reunification 20 years ago — and equivalent to a nearly 9 percent annual rate if growth were that robust all year.

The strong growth figures will also bolster the conviction here that German workers and companies in recent years made the short-term sacrifices necessary for long-term success that Germany’s European partners did not...

...A vast expansion of a program paying to keep workers employed, rather than dealing with them once they lost their jobs, was the most direct step taken in the heat of the crisis.

And...

By paring unemployment benefits, easing rules for hiring and firing, and management and labor’s working together to keep a lid on wages, Germany ensured that it could again export its way to growth with competitive, nimble companies producing the cars and machine tools the world’s economies — emerging and developed alike — demanded.

Germans steered clear of the debt-fueled consumption boom that many believe contributed to the financial crisis. During the recession, Chancellor Angela Merkel resisted the palliative of government spending that the United States and some European partners felt was crucial to restoring growth.

COMMENT:  Okay, okay.  Message received.  We should study what Germany has done, but we should study it with care.  Remember, it wasn't many years ago that Americans thought the Japanese economy would take over the world.  It did not.  It became something of a basket case because of a number of factors, cultural and economic.

Germany has apparently done some good things.  But always look at economies over the long term.  Will the German economic success last, or will it founder on a lack of imagination and a shortage of the dreamers and innovators that have often kept America strong?

Let's not repeat the mistake we made in thinking the Japanese were nine feet tall.  We can learn from others, but never sell Americans short.  Some boys fooling around with computer parts in California garages during the 1970s changed the world.  So far, German economic decisions have changed only Germany.

August 14, 2010      Permalink 

OH GEE, THANKS – AT 6:04 A.M. ET:  President Obama has graciously consented to spend some vacation time on the Gulf Coast.  Aren't you excited?

President Barack Obama is finally doing what he’s been telling Americans to do all summer: He’s spending time with his family on the Gulf Coast.

His toe-dip of a visit is less a relaxing, presidential vacation than it is an all-inclusive business trip. In fewer than 27 hours in Panama City, Fla., Obama will meet with business owners about the lingering impact of the BP oil spill, deliver a speech at the U.S. Coast Guard office and star in a series of photo-ops intended to jolt to the region’s sagging tourism industry.

COMMENT:  Oh, we're just so grateful.  We're so delighted that dear leader has been able to squeeze in a visit to the Gulf Coast between Michelle's now-famous trip to Spain and the first family's upcoming 10-day vacation on Martha's Vineyard.  We hope Gulf residents will send thank-you notes and cakes to the White House.

Even The Politico, hardly a right-wing outfit, observes:

One night in Panama City before spending 10 days in Martha’s Vineyard hasn’t helped combat any building perception problem. The Gulf Coast trip seemed almost grudging.

It is grudging.  Obama put it on the schedule only after repeated complaints that he'd ignored the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of the oil spill.  We regret, of course, that the first family will be forced to do a few hours of slumming before visiting the truly beautiful people in the Vineyard.

Yuch.

August 14, 2010      Permalink

AUGUST 14 – AT 6:02 A.M. ET:  Today is the 65th anniversary of the end of World War II.  It was on this day in 1945 that Japan surrendered.  I remember someone shouting up to my mother, who was in our fourth-floor apartment in New York City, "The war is over, the war is over!"

The feeling, for many, was bittersweet.  Like many American families, we had suffered battle casualties, although none in our immediate household.  In apartments and homes that displayed gold stars in the windows, celebrations were muted. 

Victory was preceded by the use of two atomic bombs.  Americans understood why they had to be used.  Having read the horror reports from Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the last two great battles of the Pacific war, they realized how ghastly American casualties had become.  They understood what an invasion of Japan, made unnecessary by the nuclear bombs, would cost.

And yet, in the decades since, we have been repeatedly lectured by so-called "peace activists" about the use of the atomic bombs.  Some years ago, a group of "curators" at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington attempted to turn the exhibit of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, into a festival of left-wing thought.  Why, the Japanese were merely defending their "sacred" empire, the text for the exhibit said.  There was a moral equivalence.  Maybe we didn't quite understand the nobility of Japan.  There was nothing in the text about the rape of China, and the unspeakable behavior of the Japanese military in the Pacific.  Veterans were furious.  They'd been there.  They'd seen.

Fortunately, the Smithsonian withdrew the exhibit for rewriting.  On cue, the "intellectuals" of the mainstream media started their whine.  The New York Times accused the veterans of "hijacking history."  Well, history had indeed been hijacked by that withdrawn exhibit.  But it had been hijacked by the curators, demonstrating what came to be known as "political correctness."

The veterans who won that August 14th victory are dying at a great rate now.  The youngest American servicemen in 1945 would be about 82 today.  In the next few decades, a living World War II veteran will be a rarity.  We owe those veterans much, but perhaps the greatest thing we owe them is to prevent the wanton distortion of history that demeans their victory and the meaning behind it.  It is because of their sacrifice that Americans today can write, publish, broadcast, dissent, and interpret events any way they wish.  But with those rights come responsibility.  We hear a great deal about the rights.  We don't hear enough about the responsibility.

August 14, 2010     Permalink

FRIDAY,  AUGUST 13,  2010

RIGHT FROM HIS ELITE MOUTH – AT 8:55 P.M. ET:  President Obama has now spoken out about the mosque at Ground Zero.  Where did he make his statement?  Why, natch, at a White House dinner celebrating the Muslim holiday of Ramadan.  Nothing like some groveling, which this president does so well.

We're alerted to the president's statement by Andrew Malcolm at the L.A. Times's Top of the Ticket blog:

...as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.

Oh, please.  This is standard elitist stuff.  The elites, when they run out of logical arguments, always run up the "rights" flag.  This isn't a matter of rights.  It's a matter of what's right.  It's a matter of showing some respect for the sensitivities of others.  As we've pointed out here before, there is no Japanese Shinto shrine at Pearl Harbor.  Pope John Paul II, a giant of our time, ordered Carmelite nuns to remove a convent from Auschwitz because he understood the sensitivities of others.  If you want respect, it's a good idea to show some. 

The president did speak eloquently about the difference between those who attacked us on 9-11 and true, moderate Islam.  But I do wish he'd left out the part about the Ground Zero mosque.  If you want to make a remark like that, make it in New York in front of the families who lost loved ones.  That's the kind of spine this president just doesn't have.

August 13, 2010      Permalink

DON'T LAUGH TOO HARD – AT 8:38 P.M. ET:  I'm always amazed at how dumb some politicians think we are.  Consider the illustrious case of one Andrew Cuomo.

Now, many of you know that Andy is the attorney general of New York State, a state where corruption is as normal as traffic jams.  His father was the three-term governor.  The Cuomos are New York State government.  If New York had a Mount Rushmore, the Cuomos would be all the faces. 

But, er, there's a problem.  New York State government has become a joke.  It has all the credibility of Bill Clinton teaching virginity.  So now Andy is running for daddy's old job, and he's got to figure out how he separates himself from a state government that's been the family business.

So what is Andy touting in a new rush of TV ads?  Why, of course, it's his "tough" (the required word) 20-point plan to clean up state government.  I mean, you watch the ads and you'd think the man had never set foot in the state capital.  Andy, who is state government, is going to go in there with a big broom and clean it up.  Now, we might legitimately ask, if Andy is so concerned, where was the 20-point plan, say, last year?  I get the feeling this "plan" was developed by some campaign aide in about five minutes.

Oh, by the way, where did we last see Andy?  We saw him a few nights ago toasting Charlie Rangel at fast-buck Charlie's big birthday bash in Manhattan.  Let's not risk losing any important support here.

And they wonder why we laugh.

August 13, 2010      Permalink

PALIN DERANGEMENT SYNDROME – AT 9:58 A.M. ET:  Eventually Palin Derangement Syndrome, now officially listed in the directory of liberal mental maladies, was bound to claim some victims.  Let the list begin:

A New Hampshire state representative has resigned his position and announced he will not run for re-election after writing that a dead Sarah Palin is "more dangerous than a live one."

State Rep. Timothy Horrigan stepped down Thursday after posting a Facebook page in which he described the "myth" of the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican presidential candidate.

His resignation comes after another New Hampshire Democratic candidate apologized the same day for his Facebook post in which he wished Sarah Palin and the father of her grandchild, Levi Johnston, had been on the plane that crashed Tuesday, killing former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.

"Just wish Sarah and Levy [sic] were on board," Keith Halloran originally wrote in reference to Palin and Johnston, her daughter Bristol's ex-boyfriend.

In his post, Horrigan wrote, "a dead Palin wd [sic] be even more dangerous than a live one...she is all about her myth & if she was dead, she cldn't [sic] commit any more gaffes."

In his apology Thursday, Horrigan didn't say much about being wrong for the sentiment.

"I apologize to anyone who feels they need an apology from me. And anyone who feels the need to be angry at me is free to be angry at me. I made some mistakes, but I am not ashamed of who I am. I am not ashamed of anything which I am. Nothing anyone says to me is going to change the way I feel about myself -- especially if you don't know me," he wrote on his website.

COMMENT:  Does the word "jerk" come to mind?  The idea that any adult could make the kind of comments that these guys made, and not realize that there'd be consequences, is beyond me.  Maybe the key is the word "adult."

August 13, 2010     Permalink

SAY IT AIN'T SO, MICHELLE, SAY IT AIN'T SO – AT 9:17 A.M. ET:  Added to the president's woes is the fact that his wife either isn't following the script, or is following one written for her by the opposition.  Whichever the case, Michelle Obama's poll numbers are heading into Barack country.  Yesterday, Michelle was the ultimate weapon.  Today she's in need of retraining.  From Byron York at the Washington Examiner:

After a widely admired start in the White House, first lady Michelle Obama's popularity is falling and, if the current downward trend in her approval ratings continues, could touch lows not seen since the scandal-tainted days of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Obamas and the Clintons, together again.  What a movie!

In the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 50 percent of those surveyed say they have a positive opinion of Mrs. Obama. That's down from 64 percent in April 2009 and 55 percent in January of this year. The first lady's positive rating is barely ahead of her husband's personal approval figure, which stands at 46 percent in the new poll.

It's lame to go to Spain when many others are feeling pain.

After the Spain trip brought the first extended bad press of her time as first lady, the White House, and some of its allies in the press, pushed back by claiming Mrs. Obama will still be much in demand. News accounts suggested her "sky-high popularity," her role as "cultural and fashion icon" and her "incredible force" will boost Democrats across the country. Now, with the Wall Street Journal/NBC numbers, that's not so clear.

And...

...one more lavish outing and nobody will be talking about her as the White House's best asset.

COMMENT:  My, how the not-so-mighty have fallen.  But don't underestimate the press factor here.  When push comes to kill, the media will protect the Obamas, in whom whole journalistic careers are invested.  And there is time for the White House to correct mistakes.

The Clintons were down, yet Bill Clinton won a decisive victory in the 1996 election.  Opinion about the Obamas will be affected by what Republicans do, and the candidates they nominate.  It is not enough to watch the agony in the White House.  Our side has to be ready to govern, and do so effectively and to public acclaim.

August 13, 2010      Permalink

THE INDICTMENT – AT 8:44 A.M. ET:  There is no longer much doubt that the Obama administration is in steep decline.  Nile Gardiner, who was one of the first of the British pundits to recognize that our emperor has no clothes, or clothes that don't fit off the rack, examines just what's gone wrong.  This piece is receiving very wide circulation:

The last few weeks have been a nightmare for President Obama, in a summer of discontent in the United States which has deeply unsettled the ruling liberal elites, so much so that even the Left has begun to turn against the White House. While the anti-establishment Tea Party movement has gained significant ground and is now a rising and powerful political force to be reckoned with, many of the president’s own supporters as well as independents are rapidly losing faith in Barack Obama, with open warfare breaking out between the White House and the left-wing of the Democratic Party. While conservatism in America grows stronger by the day, the forces of liberalism are growing increasingly weaker and divided.

And...

Growing disillusionment with the Obama administration’s handling of the economy as well as health care and immigration has gone hand in hand with mounting unhappiness with the President’s aloof and imperial style of leadership, and a growing perception that he is out of touch with ordinary Americans, especially at a time of significant economic pain. Barack Obama’s striking absence of natural leadership ability (and blatant lack of experience) has played a big part in undermining his credibility with the US public, with his lacklustre handling of the Gulf oil spill coming under particularly intense fire.

And...

On the national security and foreign policy front, President Obama has not fared any better. His leadership on the war in Afghanistan has been confused and at times lacking in conviction, and seemingly dictated by domestic political priorities rather than military and strategic goals. His overall foreign policy has been an appalling mess, with his flawed strategy of engagement of hostile regimes spectacularly backfiring. And as for the War on Terror, his administration has not even acknowledged it is fighting one.

Gardiner then goes on to list ten reasons why Obama is failing.  It is a stunning indictment, and well worth reading, a good companion piece to Fouad Ajami's indictment, which we noted yesterday.

The Titanic is sinking.  But, not only does the captain not realize it, he isn't even sending up flares.  So how can anyone come to his aid?

August 13, 2010      Permalink

FOREIGN POLICY RESULTS REPORT – AT 8:18 A.M. ET:  Another exciting report noting the results of President Obama's brave outreach to a misunderstood world, in marked contrast to George W. Bush's coarse, American-style realism, which creates all the wars and also increases ice cream stains on white shirts:

Russia has announced that it will start loading uranium fuel into the nuclear reactor of the Bushehr nuclear power station in Iran on August 21, a spokesman for Russia's state atomic cooperation reportedly told Reuters Friday.

According to the report, the spokesperson was quoted as saying that the addition of fuel will be crucial to initiating the country's first nuclear reactor, although it will not become operational.

In a telephone conversation Rosatom spokesman Sergei Novikov said, "The fuel will be loaded on Aug 21. This is the start of the physical launch (of the reactor)."

"From that moment the Bushehr plant will be officially considered a nuclear-energy installation," he told The Associated Press.

The United States has called for Russia to delay the startup until Iran proves that it's not developing nuclear weapons. Russian officials said that the latest UN sanctions against Iran won't affect the Bushehr project.

COMMENT:  The Obama administration calls on the Russians to do many things, and we're generally ignored.  That, increasingly, seems to be the case around the world.  I guess all that classroom stuff about reaching out, smiling, and apologizing for the Rocky Mountains being rocky hasn't exactly cut it.

August 13, 2010     Permalink