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FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 2010

END THE WEEK ON A HAPPY NOTE – AT 7:33 P.M. ET:  Political prognosticator Charlie Cook has some very good news for Republicans:

...Mr. Cook, who is editor and publisher of a newsletter that bears his name, and who stands as perhaps the most respected crystal-ball gazer in politics, now says it more definitively than ever: Republicans are on track to win back control of the House of Representatives, claiming their most coveted prize of 2010.

"I think Republicans are going to get the House back," he said flatly in a conversation taped for WSJ.com's "Big Interview" segment, which will be posted on the site Friday morning.

To be precise, Republicans need to win 39 Democratic seats to get control of the House, and Mr. Cook's current estimate is that they are in line for a 35- to 45-seat gain. "But frankly, I think we're being very conservative with that," he added. "The odds of it being higher than that range are a lot better than lower."

And...

The basis of his analysis is simple: This doesn't look or feel like a normal midterm election. "There are two kinds of elections," he said. "There's sort of the Tip O'Neill all-politics-is-local, and then there are wave elections. We're seeing just every sign in the world that this is going to be a wave, and a pretty good-sized wave."

COMMENT:  From his mouth to you know whose ears.  But we're ten weeks from the only poll that counts.  Work, work, work.

August 20, 2010      Permalink

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT – AT 7:09 P.M. ET:  Secretary Clinton announced that Israel and the Palestinian Authority (which controls the West Bank, but not Gaza) will start face-to-face peace talks on September 2nd.

Hmm.  September 2nd is the 65th anniversary of the signing of the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay.  Just a note.

Should we be optimistic?  Pessimistic?  Well, let's put it this way:  The Palestinian delegation can't speak for all of "Palestine," since a good chunk of it is controlled by Hamas, which rejects peace talks.  So any agreement can only be partial.

We've been here before.  The parties negotiated face-to-face for years, with little to show for it.  As Bill Clinton points out, the Israelis put forth generous proposals in the late 90s, and they were turned down.  The Israelis are wary of making still more concessions, and then being told to make more and more, just to get a signed piece of paper. 

And there are plenty of interests who oppose a peace agreement, including the increasingly powerful Iranians, Hamas itself, Hezbollah, and leftist groups in the West, who would like to see Israel, becaue it is an American ally, defeated.

So, I'll lean toward pessimism, but I'd like to be pleasantly surprised.

August 20, 2010      Permalink

IS OUR AMERICA BEING DISMANTLED? – AT 9:29 A.M. ET:  Thomas Sowell, one of the most brilliant writers working today, asks an alarming question:  Is the America we know headed for extinction at the hands of today's elites?

How did we get to the point where many people feel that the America they have known is being replaced by a very different kind of country, with not only different kinds of policies but very different values and ways of governing?

Something of this magnitude does not happen all at once or in just one administration in Washington. What we are seeing is the culmination of many trends in many aspects of American life that go back for years.

And...

It is not just evil people who would dismantle America. Many people who have no desire to destroy our freedoms simply have their own agendas that are singly or collectively incompatible with the survival of freedom...

...Someone once said that a democratic society cannot survive for long after 51 percent of the people decide that they want to live off the other 49 percent. Yet that is the direction in which we are being pushed by those who are promoting envy under its more high-toned alias of "social justice."

Inevitably, we must look at what our "educational system" has become, and what it is doing to our country.

It is not just particular segments of the population who are under attack. What is more fundamentally under attack are the very principles and values of American society as a whole. The history of this country is taught in many schools and colleges as the history of grievances and victimhood, often with the mantra of "race, class and gender." Television and the movies often do the same.

When there are not enough current grievances for them, they mine the past for grievances and call it history. Sins and shortcomings common to the human race around the world are spoken of as failures of "our society." But American achievements get far less attention-- and sometimes none at all.

And try criticizing this ugly trend in American schools.  Be prepared to be labeled a "McCarthyite." 

Abraham Lincoln warned of people whose ambitions can only be fulfilled by dismantling the institutions of this country, because no comparable renown is available to them by supporting those institutions. He said this 25 years before the Gettysburg Address, and he was speaking of political leaders with hubris, whom he regarded as a greater danger than enemy nations. But such hubris is far more widespread today than just among political leaders.

Those with such hubris-- in the media and in education, as well as in politics-- have for years eroded both respect for the country and the social cohesion of its people. This erosion is what has set the stage for today's dismantling of America that is now approaching the point of no return.

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing.  It's well worth it.  Sowell has it right.

August 20, 2010      Permalink

IRANIAN INTRIGUE – AT 9:02 A.M. ET:  Con Coughlin, of London's Telegrah, reports on a series of mysterious explosions inside Iran:

In the past few weeks Iran’s gas infrastructure, which is central to the country’s energy requirements, has been hit by a series of unexplained explosions.

The series of mysterious explosions began at the end of July when the state-owned Tehran Times reported that a pipeline carrying gas from Iran to Turkey had exploded near the eastern Turkish town of Dogubayazit. Iranian officials blamed the blast on Kurdish rebels.

Or, they blame faulty maintenance.

But the high number of attacks on Iran’s gas pipelines within the space of less than a month will inevitably raise suspicions that this is the work of professional saboteurs. The CIA, for example, is known to have a clandestine operation underway to destabilise the Iranian regime. Certainly the prospect of facing the next winter without adequate fuel supplies would not go down well in a country which has still not come to terms with last year’s rigged presidential election contest.

I certainly hope that the U.S. or its allies are involved in this, and in a lot more. 

Meanwhile, Washington believes the Iranian nuclear program has run into trouble.  From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, citing evidence of continued troubles inside Iran’s nuclear program, has persuaded Israel that it would take roughly a year — and perhaps longer — for Iran to complete what one senior official called a “dash” for a nuclear weapon, according to American officials.

Administration officials said they believe the assessment has dimmed the prospect that Israel would pre-emptively strike against the country’s nuclear facilities within the next year, as Israeli officials have suggested in thinly veiled threats.

The problem is, we seem more concerned about preventing Israeli military action than in preventing an Iranian bomb.  And, beyond sanctions, there does not seem to be a Plan B. 

If the U.S. is correct in its intelligence assessment, that would place achievement of an Iranian nuclear weapon right in the middle of our 2012 presidential election campaign.  It could prove a critical issue, a point of sharp division between the accommodating Obama and a more realistic challenger. 

August 20, 2010       Permalink 

AN ANNIVERSARY – AT 8:16 A.M. ET:  Today is the 90th anniversary of the first radio broadcast.  No, Rush wasn't on it:

On August 20, 1920, the radio station WWJ, known then by its call sign 8MK, aired the first public broadcast ever at 8:15 p.m. Using a borrowed phonograph from the Edison Shop, Howard Trumbo placed a record on the turntable. He chose two records for the occasion: “Roses of Picardy,” and “Annie Laurie,” two of the most famous World War I songs. Frank Edwards, one of WWJ’s first operators called into the night on-air “This is 8MK calling,” to the delight of an audience listening on homemade receivers, in perhaps 30 Detroit homes.

COMMENT:  Thirty homes?  CNN would kill for those numbers.

August 20, 2010      Permalink

YOU CAN'T EVEN BE IRONIC ANYMORE – AT 7:56 A.M. ET:  We began yesterday's edition of Urgent Agenda with an ironic and sarcastic report on the president's latest vacation:

BULLETIN:  PRESIDENT GOES ON VACATION TODAY – AT 8:05 A.M. ET:  President Obama leaves for Cape Cod after lunch today, starting a 10-day vacation with his family.

We thought you'd like to know about this, and to be assured that the president and first lady are finally getting some time off.  My goodness, there are people who actually begrudge our leader this bit of time in the sun. 

Our knowledgeable readership obviously got the sarcastic tone, given the fact that this is the Obamas' sixth vacation this year.  Little did I realize that the next day, this morning, the AP would say almost the exact same thing, and mean it seriously:

VINEYARD HAVEN, Mass. (AP) - Finally, President Barack Obama can relax on vacation.

The Gulf oil leak is plugged. The last combat troops are out of Iraq. And Congress is on its own summer break. 

You can't make that up.

At least Britain's Telegraph, which was on to Obama early in his administration, gave us the reality in the first paragraph:

The Obama family will begin their sixth holiday of the year today, an 11-day sojourn in Martha’s Vineyard, the island destination of the wealthy and well-connected American elite.

That'll play well in Peoria. 

Bill Burton, the deputy White House press secretary, said that the US president was “going to spend a little time recharging his batteries” at the Massachusetts island ahead of the November midterm elections.

“There will be some hiking, some time at the beach, some time at the ice cream store - all the sort of things you do when you’re at Martha’s Vineyard. You enjoy the people and the good food.”

We're sure the unemployed and underemployed are impressed. 

This White House might have its collective tin ear checked.

August 20, 2010     Permalink

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 2010

ON THE MOSQUE – AT 7:55 P.M. ET:  A few thoughts about the controversy over the mosque at Ground Zero.

As readers know, I have to do a great deal of reading every day to put Urgent Agenda together.  Some of the things I've read in the last week have been among the most disheartening of my career.  If people wish to be in favor of the mosque, that's fine.  Make your argument.  But the viciousness and arrogance of the attacks on those who oppose the structure are reminiscent of the tactics that we used to call McCarthyism.  Our friends on the left have discovered the Constitution, a document they often prefer that their favorite judges ignore.  They now cite our "core values as expressed in the Constitution," they wave the flag that they've insulted a good part of their lives, and they denounce anyone who disagrees as a racist and a bigot, or, remarkably, as "un-American."   It is perfectly plain that they regard themselves as our betters, lecturing to the unruly masses.

What our friends on the left lack is humanity.

Ulysses S. Grant could have been entirely legalistic when he met Lee at Appomattox, but Lee later commented on how moved he was by Grant's feeling for the Southern soldiers, and how he appreciated the respect that Grant displayed, and the generosity of the surrender terms. 

The United States could have been legalistic, and cite legal precedents, when the surrender of Japan was signed aboard the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945.  But a young Japanese diplomat, present for the signing, later wrote how touched he was by the respect the Americans showed for the Japanese delegation.  It was a respect that continued during Douglas MacArthur's enlightened occupation of Japan.

John Paul II removed a group of Carmelite nuns who'd set up a convent at Auschwitz, in Poland.  The pope was Polish.  Had he insisted that the nuns remain, he would have had Poland behind him.  But he understood the sensitivities of others, and the convent was closed. 

I happen to know the family of a fire lieutenant who died in the 9-11 attacks.  He always taught his children, "If you want respect, give some."  But there has been little respect shown for the families of those whose lives were cut short on September 11, 2001.  A little lip service, maybe, but little more.  We're told that we must uphold our Constitutional traditions, even though there is absolutely no Constitutional right to build a structure at a particular place.

About ten years ago a radical college invited an African-American radical, imprisoned for the murder of a police officer in Philadelphia, to deliver its commencement address by tape.  When the widow of the officer wrote a letter to the college protesting, she received a patronizing note from the college president, reminding her of the First Amendment.  There was absolutely no compassion shown for her suffering, for what she and her children had lost.  It was all cut-and-dried legalism.

There are many stories like that, and they go to something I've learned over the years:  The left is cold.  Leftists are not the "caring" people they claim to be.  They live their lives by their college board scores, their degrees and their ideologies.  People mean very little.  It is hardly a secret that both Betty Friedan, the founder of modern feminism, and Bella Abzug, the leading champion of feminism in the U.S. Congress, both treated women terribly.  All that counted to them was some abstract "cause."  Human beings were simply pegs on a board.

In the mosque debate we are seeing that left-wing coldness played out.  We saw it in the indifference of the left toward the Cambodian genocide, and to the mass murder in our own cities during the past half century. 

And so I think we are living through a defining moment, a moment that splits America between those who understand what it is to be human, and those who live entirely by their presumed intellects.  Many thought President Obama "cool" when he was elected.  Now they see him as ice.  There is a difference.

Liberalism is an honorably philosophy, but liberals, in my youth, were very different from what they are today.  They need, more than anything else, a period of introspection and self-examination, to contemplate what has happened to them, and why Americans are rejecting them in such massive numbers.

Two years ago this country elected an African-American president with a Muslim background.  The humanity and generosity the American people showed was stunning.  I only wish that the president we elected, those around him, and the political and journalistic class that supports him, would show some of that same humanity and generosity.

August 19, 2010     Permalink 

ECONOMIC STUNNER – AT 9:36 A.M. ET:  If this election campaign is fought over the economy, the Dems may be in even worse trouble than current polls show.  Get this:

New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly climbed to a nine-month high last week, yet another setback to the frail economic recovery.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 500,000 in the week ended August 14, the highest since mid-November, the Labor Department said on Thursday.

Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast claims slipping to 476,000 from the previously reported 484,000 the prior week, which was revised up to 488,000 in Thursday's report.

A Labor Department official said there was nothing unusual in the state level data. The data covered the survey week for the government's closely watched employment report for August, scheduled for release early next month.

"There are some technical factors out there and the seasonal factors seem to be pushing it up a little bit. But given the trend of claims it looks like the economy ran into a wall in August," said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-MitsubishI UFJ in New York.

COMMENT:  Compare please with our first post this morning, announcing that President Obama starts a ten-day vacation after lunch today.  How do you think that will go down when juxtaposed with these employment figures?  Think mosque at Ground Zero. 

Are we slipping into a double-dip recession?  I am not an economist and don't know.  But if we are, the implications can be catastrophic.  When the current crisis hit in 2008, conveniently for Obama right before the election, the country had some money to fight it.  We don't have much in the bank right now.  And the public is clearly losing confidence in this administration. 

Obama should cancel his vacation, send his family away and stay in the White House, working on the economy.  Appearances count.  But he won't.  And Americans will notice.

August 19, 2010      Permalink

MOSQUE MADNESS – AT 8:53 A.M. ET:  The mosque controversy continues.  The president made this into a national issue Friday night in one of the biggest political blunders I've seen a president make. 

Yesterday, the people behind the mosque rejected an invitation to meet with Governor David Paterson of New York to discuss ways of easing the tension.  This is outrageous behavior.  These people claim they want the mosque at Ground Zero as a means of "healing."  Healing whom?  They won't even meet with the governor of the state.  And one of these worthies also refused to rule out funding from Saudi Arabia and Iran.  Maybe we'll have stonings at Ground Zero just to celebrate "diversity."

Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York has entered the picture with a thoughtful suggestion:

Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in New York, said Wednesday that he would gladly help mediate between the proponents and critics of an Islamic center and mosque planned for a site two blocks from ground zero.

The archbishop said that it was his “major prayer” that a compromise could be reached, and that while he had no strong feelings about the project, he might support finding a new location for the center.

Speaking during an impromptu news conference at Covenant House, a Catholic shelter in Manhattan for homeless youth, Archbishop Dolan invoked the example of Pope John Paul II, who in 1993 ordered Catholic nuns to move from their convent at the former Auschwitz death camp after protests from Jewish leaders.

“He’s the one who said, ‘Let’s keep the idea, and maybe move the address,’ ” the archbishop said. “It worked there; might work here.”

COMMENT:  The archbishop is a good guy.  All sides should accept his good offices.  If the people behind the mosque turn down the archbishop, as they turned down the governor, they will prove their ill intent, and show that this isn't about healing, but about Muslim triumphalism. 

One really weird idea to emerge yesterday, and it came from Maureen Dowd and from a surprisingly inept editorial in the Washington Post, was for former President Bush (43) to intervene and throw his support for the mosque.  The logic apparently is that Bush showed respect for Islam right after the attacks of 9-11.

Huh?  I thought it was liberal doctrine that Bush ruined, for four or five hundred years, our relationship with the Islamic world.  Now the cry seems to be, "Bring him on!"

Bad idea.  A better idea would be for Bush and former President Clinton to join Archbishop Dolan in offering to mediate.  Even Obama could send a representative, but we hope it isn't the professor who got into trouble with the Cambridge police.

August 19, 2010       Permalink

KEEPING US MISINFORMED – AT 8:16 A.M. ET:  I happen to think that self-punishment is an important part of building character, so I tuned in to CNN last night.

You know, I have no idea what those boys have in mind.  Their ratings are through the basement, with no improvement in sight, and they seem to have little idea how to fix things.  A few weeks ago they put Shirley Sherrod, Agriculture Department official, on Mount Rushmore.  Last week they did the same to the airline attendant who abandoned his passengers and slid down the chute.

Last night the leftist brigades at CNN heralded the fact that our last combat units are leaving Iraq. One CNN "journalist" breathlessly said, "We've waited seven and a half years for this moment," as if addressing parents on their daughter's wedding day.  We were informed endlessly that no WMD were found in Iraq.  We were never informed, not once, that WMD programs were indeed found in Iraq, and were ready to be restarted once the UN lifted sanctions.  Since sanctions were due to be lifted in 2003, the year we went in militarily, we can only imagine where Saddam Hussein would be in WMD development had we not acted.  No talk of that on CNN.

CNN tried to portray Iraq as either an embarrassment or a catastrophe, take your pick.  Fortunately, David Gergen provided some adult balance, but the whole tone of the reporting had that typical liberal sneer to it.  It was an echo of the past.  Many of these reporters were tutored by the Vietnam generation, which handed down the accepted "narrative" that Vietnam was a mistake and a disaster.  No, it was a disaster only when we pulled the plug on our South Vietnamese allies, but that part of the narrative gets left out.  If I closed my eyes last night, I was hearing the same clichés I heard from Vietnam reporters in the late sixties and early seventies. 

I did not watch all of the "reporting," but the fact that Iraq was saved from a sadistic madman and his equally sadistic sons got short shrift.  Iraq may not be in spectacular shape, and its government is still a mess, but it hasn't got a dagger pointed at anyone, and it isn't developing WMD. 

We will have a military presence in Iraq in the form of training and support units.  The story is not over.  We should refuse to accept the blabbering of liberal journalists who wanted that story to end last night.

August 19, 2010      Permalink 

BULLETIN:  PRESIDENT GOES ON VACATION TODAY – AT 8:05 A.M. ET:  President Obama leaves for Cape Cod after lunch today, starting a 10-day vacation with his family.

We thought you'd like to know about this, and to be assured that the president and first lady are finally getting some time off.  My goodness, there are people who actually begrudge our leader this bit of time in the sun.  Why, he works night and day, throwing out first balls, defending mosques at Ground Zero, raising money for the Democratic Party, engaging in the agonizing duty of choosing ice cream flavors.  He needs this time to unwind, to rub shoulders with all those common folk who vacation on Cape Cod.  The place where he's staying only charges $50,000 a week.  Dearies, that is a STEAL in these northeast parts.  I don't want my president staying at a Holiday Inn Express, or going to one of those vulgar places where they play country and western. 

And yes, this is sarcastic.

August 19, 2010     Permalink