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MONDAY,  MARCH 29,  2010

I WONDER WHY – AT 10:19 P.M. ET:  CNN is down in the dumps again.  The numbers are just not holding up:

CNN continued what has become a precipitous decline in ratings for its prime-time programs in the first quarter of 2010, with its main hosts losing almost half their viewers in a year.

The trend in news ratings for the first three months of this year is all up for one network, the Fox News Channel, which enjoyed its best quarter ever in ratings, and down for both MSNBC and CNN.

CNN had a slightly worse quarter in the fourth quarter of 2009, but the last three months have included compelling news events, like the earthquake in Haiti and the battle over health care, and CNN, which emphasizes its hard news coverage, was apparently unable to benefit.

The losses at CNN continued a pattern in place for much of the last year, as the network trailed its competitors in every prime-time hour. (CNN still easily beats MSNBC in the daytime hours, but those are less lucrative in advertising money, and both networks are far behind Fox News at all hours.)

COMMENT:  Unimaginative programming, a clear, indisputable leftist slant, and sometimes bizarre editorial judgment, are among the two to three hundred reasons that CNN is sinking. 

The network just got rid of one problem:  Ideologically obsessed Christiane Amanpour is heading for ABC, which frees CNN to make positive changes in its foreign coverage, if it wishes.

The trouble is, it probably won't.  CNN represents a point of view, and most Americans don't care for that point of view.

March 29, 2010  Permalink

ON THOSE LITTLE BLUE PILLS AGAIN – AT 7:01 P.M. ET:  She's back!  We did a post on F.P. (First Poodle) Hillary Clinton just minutes ago, reporting that she'd bashed Canada.  But now she's back.  What's Hil doing?  Why, naturally, she's giving a pass to China:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, launching a G8 foreign ministers summit on Monday, said the world could not accept a nuclear-armed Iran and that China could help resolve the impasse with Tehran.

Speaking at a meeting expected to focus on Iran, Clinton played down fears that China was out of step with the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council on the question of imposing a fourth round of sanctions against Tehran.

"In fact, China is part of the consultative group that has been unified all along the way, which has made it very clear that a nuclear-armed Iran is not acceptable to the international community," Clinton told CTV in an interview.

COMMENT:  Oh, come on.  I mean, really now.  This is the trouble with this Obama crowd.  They believe they're so smart that they can fool all the people all the time.

China has made it absolutely clear that it will not go along with effective sanctions on Iran.  It has repeated that decision over and over.  The most we'll get from China will be some symbolic sanctions, which won't slow the Iranian nuclear program even a minute.

This is really pathetic stuff.  Our Iran policy has already failed.  Hillary should either resign or be silent.  She's embarrassing herself, although she had plenty of practice at that when she was first lady.

March 29, 2010   Permalink

SHOCKED, SHOCKED, TO FIND THIS OUT – AT 6:45 P.M. ET:  Detainees released from Guantanamo seem to be going back to their old specialty, as Fox News reports:

Prior to his release in December, Abdul Hafiz was Prisoner Number 1030 at Guantanamo Bay. Now, less than four months later, he's back home in Afghanistan and working for the Taliban -- just the latest of more than 100 released detainees who have returned to terrorism, according to the Pentagon.

Hafiz, suspected in the March 2003 kidnapping and murder of an International Red Cross worker, was the "Taliban head of all Madrassas ... responsible for recruiting and sending young men to fight for the Taliban," according to U.S. government memos. He was said to have maintained contacts for Mullah Mohammad Omar, the leader of the Taliban of Afghanistan, and to have admitted to participating in jihad against the Soviets.

But despite the list of charges against him, the U.S. government transferred Hafiz to his home country in December. And now, a senior U.S. official tells Fox News, he is back on the battlefield. According to a published report, Hafiz has been appointed by Mullah Omar to oversee ransom demands for kidnapping victims and to coordinate with nongovernment-aid organizations operating in the Taliban's areas of influence.

COMMENT:  Can you imagine if, during World War II, we released Nazi prisoners to go back and fight for the Fatherland?  Or even the small number of Japanese prisoners we captured?  (The Japanese did not readily surrender.)

That makes Hafiz just the latest addition to an increasingly long list of former Guantanamo detainees suspected to have returned to terror. The Pentagon, in an estimate issued in January, now believes that roughly 20 percent of the 560 detainees who were released from Guantanamo are back on the terror front lines.

American troops will die because the United States is releasing enemy combatants.  It is madness, utter madness, and yet it continues.

March 29, 2010   Permalink

DID SHE GET UP ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE BED AGAIN? – AT 6:30 P.M. ET:  First Obama Poodle Hillary Clinton is at it again.  Her new target:  Canada.  Guess the Obamans didn't get enough of a charge going after Israel:

CHELSEA, Quebec - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized Canada Monday for not inviting all those with legitimate interests in the Arctic to a meeting about the region.

In her prepared remarks for an Arctic Coastal state meeting, Clinton said she had been contacted by representatives of indigenous groups who were disappointed they were not invited and that Sweden, Finland and Iceland — the three Arctic States not represented — had similar concerns.

COMMENT:  Are these Obamans on some kind of prescription drug that has bad side effects, like profound immaturity?  Is there an ally of the United States they like?  They've humiliated Britain, France, Germany, Israel, and Australia.  Now Canada must feel the wrath of the righteous administration.

I wish we'd treat our enemies as badly as we treat our friends.

What is our beef?  Canada didn't invite "indigenous groups"?  Huh?  International conferences are usually reserved for nations, with governments and capitals, and flags and stuff.  Indigenous groups?  Would that include, oh, Macintosh users?  The NRA?  Tea partiers?

Put in your demand today to be invited to the next international conference.  Just be really indigenous.  Feel it and live it.

March 29, 2010    Permalink

WHITEY DON'T PLAY THAT – AT 10:02 A.M. ET:  A new survey shows that the president is having a major problem with white male voters:

Millions of white men who voted for Barack Obama are walking away from the Democratic Party, and it appears increasingly likely that they'll take the midterms elections in November with them. Their departure could well lead to a GOP landslide on a scale not seen since 1994.

Joy to the world. 

For more than three decades before the 2008 election, no Democratic president had won a majority of the electorate. In part, that was because of low support -- never more than 38 percent -- among white male voters. Things changed with Obama, who not only won a majority of all people voting, but also pulled in 41 percent of white male voters.

And...

Today, among whites, only 35 percent of men and 43 percent of women say they will back Democrats in the fall election. Women's preferences have remained steady since July 2009. But white men's support for a Democratic Congress has fallen eight percentage points, according to Gallup.

White men have moved away from Obama as well. The same proportion of white women approve of him -- 46 percent, according to Gallup -- as voted for him in 2008. But only 38 percent of white men approve of the President, which means that millions of white men who voted for Obama have now lost faith in him.

And...

Most voters vote their interests. And many white men by the 1980s had decided the Democrats were no longer interested in them.

Think about the average working man. He has already seen financial bailouts for the rich folks above him. Now he sees a health care bailout for the poor folks below him. Big government represents lots of costs and little gain.

Meanwhile, like many women, these men are simply trying to push ahead without being pushed under. Some once believed in Obama. Now they feel forgotten.

Ironically, "the forgotten man" was once a Democratic rallying cry.  No more.

Finally, a word of advice:

But recall the Depression. FDR's focus on the economy was single-minded and relentless. Hard times continued, but men never doubted that FDR was trying to do right by them. Democrats should think about why they aren't given that same benefit of the doubt today.

COMMENT:  Because today's Democratic Party isn't interested in the working man, unless he's a member of some approved, "oppressed" group.  In fact, the party has contempt for the very people it claims to represent.  And those people have caught on.

March 29, 2010   Permalink

HE DOESN'T KNOW NOTHIN', AND HE DOESN'T WANT TO KNOW NOTHIN' – AT 9:22 A.M. ET:  One of the great myths about Barack Obama is that he's an intellectual.  He is not.  An intellectual is widely informed, is curious, is endlessly challenging his own ideas.  Obama fails all three tests.  He doesn't know much, doesn't seem to want to know, and hasn't exactly challenged the myths he lives by.

Oh, sure, he's "bright," whatever that means.  And he has some nice diplomas.  And he speaks well, although it's hard to recall anything he says.  (Compare please to Ronald Reagan.)

But in the hothouse atmosphere of the left, Obama's brain is a big deal. 

I've noticed that the left is concerned with two things – style and money.  Substance is way behind.  The left is comforted by the way someone sounds, whether he (or she) speaks in the proper manner, whether there's a hint of intellectual superiority, real or not.  Thus the left, in the 1950s, fell madly in love with a shallow governor named Adlai Stevenson, who spoke beautifully and had nothing to say.  I stood right behind Adlai Stevenson once when he was making a speech.  Eloquent.  Well phrased.  Can't recall a damned thing he said. 

Now, more and more people realize that we have the Second Coming of Adlai in the White House.   American Spectator has a piece that reports on one impression of Obama gleaned by businessmen visiting him at the White House.  The comment is by a representative of a corporation that had to take a big charge against profits because of the passage of Obamacare:

"Most of these people [in the Administration] have never had a real job in their lives. They don't understand a thing about business, and that includes the President," says a senior lobbyist for one of the companies that announced the charge. "My CEO sat with the President over lunch with two other CEOs, and each of them tried to explain to the President what this bill would do to our companies and the economy in general. First the President didn't understand what they were talking about. Then he basically told my boss he was lying. Frankly my boss was embarrassed for him; he clearly had not been briefed and didn't know what was in the bill."

Impressive.  Very impressive.  Of course, Rev. Wright never lectured on business economics. 

The problem extends overseas.  Our dear leader has felt...

" slighted" by European leaders and their staffs, such as French president Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, both of whom have come away less than impressed with Obama's style and substance.

And those are two of the most pro-American leaders in Europe. 

Change we should never believe in.

March 29, 2010   Permalink

BARONE ON FOREIGN POLICY – AT 8:35 A.M. ET:  Michael Barone, one of the most astute observers of American politics writing today, adds to Steve Hayes's excellent piece (see just below), to point out that Obama's collapsing foreign policy consists of abusing our friends and appeasing our enemies.  How long will this disgrace last?

Barack Obama's decision to postpone his trip to Indonesia and Australia -- to a democracy with the world's largest Muslim population and to the only nation that has fought alongside us in all the wars of the last century -- is of a piece with his foreign policy generally: attack America's friends and kowtow to our enemies.

Examples run from Britain to Israel. Early in his administration, Obama returned a bust of Churchill that the British government had loaned the White House after 9/11. Then Obama gave Prime Minister Gordon Brown a set of DVDs that don't work on British machines and that Brown, who has impaired vision, would have trouble watching anyway.

And...

Some may attribute these slights to biases inherited from the men who supplied the titles of Obama's two books. Perhaps like Barack Obama Sr., he regards the British as evil colonialists. Or perhaps like his preacher for 20 years, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, he regards Israel as an evil oppressor.

And...

In the meantime, Obama sends yearly greetings to (as he puts it) the Islamic Republic of Iran, exchanges friendly greetings with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, caves to Russian demands on arms control and sends a new ambassador to Syria.

We haven't exactly gotten a big payback from Obama's lurch to the left in foreign policy:

And so Obama, the object of so much adulation in Western Europe, seems to have had only the coolest of relations with its leaders. The candidate who spoke in Berlin is now the president with no sympathy for the leaders of peoples freed when the wall fell. They are seen as impediments to his goal of propitiating Vladimir Putin's Russia, where Joseph Stalin is now an honored hero.

Obama's concessions to Russia have not prevented Russia from watering down sanctions against Iran. And Obama's display of scorning Netanyahu has not gotten the Palestinians to sit down face-to-face with the Israelis, as Netanyahu has promised to do.

Obama proclaims that through persistence he can make the leaders of Iran, North Korea, Russia, China and the Palestinians see things our way. The evidence so far is that they are making him do things their way -- and that our friends are wondering whether it pays to be on America's side.

COMMENT:  But think of the joy in the faculty rooms of the Ivy League.

Obama is the most left-leaning president we've ever had, and is even to the left of the flabby George McGovern, whose ruination of the Democratic Party is legend. 

We hope that a dramatic increase in Republicans in Congress after November will help to turn the tide against this presidential impostor.  If the GOP takes control of just one house of Congress, it can initiate investigations into our disgraceful, and dangerous, foreign policy, and start putting some real heat on our Looney Tunes administration, including First Poodle Hillary Clinton.

March 29, 2010   Permalink 

OUR IRAN POLICY IN FREE FALL – AT 7:52 A.M. ET:  Nothing is more important, and more pathetic, than our collapsing policy toward Iran.  The Iranians have won every round.  We keep making excuses.  Steve Hayes, in the Weekly Standard, has a terrific account of how sad things really are.  Just read this first paragraph:

On March 24, Obama administration officials briefed reporters on what was described as a very positive development in the U.S. effort to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon: China had agreed to participate in a conference call to discuss sanctions.

Yeah, that's right.  Our famous victory consisted of getting some Chinese official to get on the phone.  I'm blown away by our influence.

So here we are. After 15 months of pleading with the mullahs and entreating our allies for help, Barack Obama’s Iran policy is such a dismal failure that administration flacks are left to tout as a breakthrough Chinese participation in a phone call to discuss watered-down U.N. sanctions that few believe will work.

And Iran’s enrichment proceeds apace.

Do you get the sense that the president isn't really that interested?  It's hard not to get that sense.

In October 2009, Kenneth Pollack, a Clinton administration official and author of a first-rate history of U.S.-Iranian relations, said, “If by early next year we are getting nothing through diplomacy and sanctions, the entire policy is going to be revealed as a charade.” Plan B, Pollack noted, is “containment,” adding: “In their heart of hearts I think the Obama administration knows that this is where this is going.”

I'm afraid that's right.  We'll "contain" the Iranians, even though suicide is part of the mullah creed.  We'll be sold the line that it's no different from containing the Soviets. 

Well, there are two differences:  1) An Iranian bomb instantly makes iran the major power in the region, an overwhelming loss for the United States, and 2) Iran may just use the bomb, even if it means giving it to a well-controlled terrorist group.

But let's not worry about details.

John McCain, who's been terrific and firm on the iran issue, compares the Obama administration to another infamous government:

He said he had been rereading William Manchester’s biography of Winston Churchill and was struck by the similarities between the naïveté of Neville Chamberlain and the willingness of the Obama administration to accommodate the mullahs. “They’re just flailing. A few days ago the president said he wanted to talk some more,” McCain said, incredulous, referring to Obama’s message on Nowruz, the Iranian new year, which renewed the administration’s offer for negotiations. The overture, following Iran’s dismissal of several previous “final” deadlines for new talks, is “consistent with the thread of appeasement throughout history. It’s that same idea that if we’re nice to our enemies, they’ll do what we want.”

But that's what The One believes.  He believes in his voice, his words, above all else.  He believes he has come to save us.

Ultimately, of course, it doesn’t matter whether China participates in a conference call about weak U.N. sanctions that will have a negligible effect on Iran’s behavior. And containment, the de facto policy on Iran today, will become the acknowledged Obama administration approach to Iran.

Which means, of course, that Iran will have the bomb.

COMMENT:  Patrick Daniel Moynihan, the late senator from New York, once wrote an essay on "defining deviancy down."  He argued that, once we accept a lower standard in anything – like the rate of crime – we get used to it.  My great fear is that the American people will get used to the deviancy of this administration, its intellectual and moral corruption, and its adoption of 1930s-style appeasement policies.

Remember, troops will be coming home from Iraq.  That's something Americans like to see.  They may be fooled into believing that we're safe, that Obama is succeeding.  And they will be wrong, and their children will pay the price.

March 29, 2010   Permalink

TERROR IN MOSCOW – AT 7:40 A.M. ET:  There has been a new terror attack in the heart of Moscow.  From The New York Times:

MOSCOW — Female suicide bombers set off huge explosions during rush hour Monday morning in two subway stations in central Moscow, officials said, killing at least 35 people and raising fears that the Muslim insurgency in southern Russia was once again being brought to the country’s heart.

COMMENT:  President Obama has denounced the attack.  Isn't that precious?  I'm sure his ringing statement will deter the next one.

Once again we're reminded how vulnerable we are to a few determined terrorists, brainwashed in jihadism.  This attack killed at least 35.  It used conventional explosives.  Think ten years down the line, and what terror groups might possess.

Oh, by the way, Obama's statement reads as follows:

"The American people stand united with the people of Russia in opposition to violent extremism and heinous terrorist attacks that demonstrate such disregard for human life, and we condemn these outrageous acts."

Notice that there is no assignment of blame, no condemnation of jihadism.  It's just your usual generic terrorist attack.  Pretty typical of this new Washington crowd.

March 29,  2010   Permalink

SUNDAY,  MARCH 28,  2010

THE STRANGE WORLD OF THE OBAMANS – AT 7:55 P.M. ET:  They live in their own bubble, create their own reality, and believe they can sell their damaged goods to the rest of us, at full price.  Right now their illusions heavily involve the Mideast and Iran.

Consider the line peddled today by David Axelrod, Obama's chief political adviser, who increasingly is acting as foreign-policy explainer:

Axelrod told CNN that at the start of the Obama administration, Iran was united while the world was divided on how best to deal with Iran.

The situation is now reversed, he said, as the world is coming together while Iran itself is divided.

Axelrod added that he was pleased with the cooperation that the Russians have offered and believes Moscow would support fresh penalties against Tehran.

Oh dear Lawd.  That is a super-crock.   Iran has always had divisions. It's never been united.  And the world is as divided now on how to deal with Tehran as when Axelrod's new messiah took office.  We can't get any serious action going.  The best we can do is another set of mild sanctions that the Iranians just laugh at.

Does anyone buy that line?

And then of course we have the administration's march of appeasement through the Middle East, and elsewhere.  We recently returned our ambassadors to Syria and Libya.  Why, if we engage the Syrians and Libyans, we're told, they'll come to like us.  Well, here is the answer from Syria and Libya:

Syria and Libya teamed up Sunday to pressure Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to quit peace talks with Israel and return to violence, delegates to an Arab leadership summit said.

In the wake of that call, Arab leaders gathered at their summit in Sirte, Libya on Sunday failed to reach a consensus on whether the Palestinians should resume stalled talks with Israel.

Gee, thanks fellas.  And thanks for the great work of the Obama administration in making such advances.

Remember, 2012 isn't that far off.

March 28, 2010   Permalink

WELL WELCOME, NICKIE – AT 7:17 P.M. ET:  It's always encouraging when a journalist wakes up from a deep sleep.  Today we celebrate the semi-awakening of Nicholas Kristof, Pulitzer-Prize-winning leftist columnist for The New York Times.  He is also a winner of Urgent Agenda's coveted Pompous Fool Award.  Now, with a bulb flashing over his head, Kristof writes:

In the United States and other Western countries alike, it is mostly boys who are faltering in school. The latest surveys show that American girls on average have roughly achieved parity with boys in math. Meanwhile, girls are well ahead of boys in verbal skills, and they just seem to try harder.

The National Honor Society says that 64 percent of its members — outstanding high school students — are girls. Some colleges give special help to male applicants — yes, that’s affirmative action for white males — to avoid skewed sex ratios.

A new report just issued by the Center on Education Policy, an independent research organization, confirms that boys have fallen behind in reading in every single state.

COMMENT:  I'm so moved, really so moved.  Nicholas Kristof, who receives honorary degrees for his brilliance, has finally discovered what parents of boys knew 15 years ago.

As a father of daughters, I'm delighted that girls are doing so well.  Viva!  But there have been problems with boys, and they are getting worse.   There may be many reasons, but Kristof himself alludes to one – the fact that written materials with appeal to boys just aren't that available in schools.  Indeed, under the influence of radical feminists and leftist "educators," books with male appeal are often not ordered, not put on library shelves, not used in class, and sometimes even removed.

Traditional male values like honor and bravery are also disparaged and ridiculed in many schools.  Again, the leftist influence that has risen since the 1960s, combined with the demands of some feminists (by no means all), has done its damage.

This is a national issue, and a growing national tragedy.  I'm glad to see that Kristof has finally written about it.  Now maybe he can get his trendy colleagues to do the same.  The feminist movement should be applauded for the emphasis it has placed on educating girls.  No issue there.  Now feminists should help to correct the problems afflicting boys.  They will find that their first allies will be mothers of sons.

March 28, 2010   Permalink

SO SAD – AT 6:37 P.M. ET:  It was sad enough for Volvo, once the industrial symbol of Sweden, when it was sold, but at least it was sold to Ford.  Now, another sale...

HONG KONG — Ford Motor reached an agreement on Sunday to sell its Volvo subsidiary to a Chinese conglomerate, in the clearest confirmation yet of China’s global ambitions in the auto industry.

Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, based in Hangzhou, agreed to pay $1.8 billion for Volvo, with $1.6 billion in cash and the rest in a note payable to Ford.

The sale of one of Europe’s most storied brands shows how China has emerged not just as the world’s largest auto market in the past year, but also as a country determined to capture market share around the globe.

COMMENT:  How pathetic.  First, it demonstrates the joke that Sweden, which Western leftists like to look to as the ideal society, has become.  Today Sweden is a rapidly declining nation, some of its cities overrun by Muslim immigrants who have no intention of becoming Swedish.  It has lost its industrial symbol, Volvo, and replaced it with more socialism.

I have no idea why Ford couldn't make Volvo work.  Maybe the Chinese, with lower labor costs, will have more success. 

And in America, GM is now controlled by the government. 

China is rising, and its military is growing markedly stronger each year.  It has bought a huge chunk of our national debt.  It is, however, a massive nation beset by problems, including substantial unrest and dissent. 

The competition between China and the United States will probably become the major international economic story in the next half century.  We can win this, if the government gets out of the way and lets American entrepreneurship loose.

March 28, 2010   Permalink

OH YES, THERE'S THAT LITTLE PROBLEM – AT 10:56 A.M. ET:  In a week in which President Obama 1) helped us toward bankruptcy through health-care "reform," 2) beat up on the Israelis, and 3) sucked up to the Russians...other stuff was happening.  Nothing serious here.  Pass it by:

WASHINGTON — Six months after the revelation of a secret nuclear enrichment site in Iran, international inspectors and Western intelligence agencies say they suspect that Tehran is preparing to build more sites in defiance of United Nations demands.

Well, why not?  You need a lot of power to recharge iPods. 

The United Nations inspectors assigned to monitor Iran’s nuclear program are now searching for evidence of two such sites, prompted by recent comments by a top Iranian official that drew little attention in the West, and are looking into a mystery about the whereabouts of recently manufactured uranium enrichment equipment.

You'll notice the sense of urgency in the Obama administration.  We'd been promised "crippling" sanctions on Iran.  Well, we didn't get enough votes for that at the UN, so then we were promised "biting" sanctions.  Well, that didn't sell to the Chinese either.  Now, apparently, we're going for "softer" sanctions to maintain "unanimity."

The Iranians are sure frightened. 

An Iranian bomb would change the face of the region, and make Iran the dominant power, as the neo-isolationists begin to withdraw American forces.  It is hard to see how the United States can benefit from the policies we're currently pursuing, policies that sound tough at first, and become increasingly soft as the months and years go by.

There are many reports that the Obamans have resigned themselves to Iranian nuclear weapons.  Well, whoopee for them.  Mature adults living in the real world have not resigned themselves because they understand the implications...like a nuclear device being sailed into Baltimore harbor in the hold of a ship, and set off by a suicide squad.  Saturday's Orioles game cancelled.

March 28, 2010   Permalink

DISGRACEFUL – AT 10:24 A.M. ET:  One of the favorite words in the liberal vocabulary is "McCarthyism."  It's the all-purpose curse, the catch-all one-word attack.  But Dems know how to practice "McCarthyism" with the best of them.  Joe would be proud:

Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, has summoned some of the nation's top executives to Capitol Hill to defend their assessment that the new national health care reform law will cost their companies hundreds of millions of dollars in health insurance expenses. Waxman is also demanding that the executives give lawmakers internal company documents related to health care finances -- a move one committee Republican describes as "an attempt to intimidate and silence opponents of the Democrats' flawed health care reform legislation."

On Thursday and Friday, the companies -- so far, they include AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar, Deere, Valero Energy, AK Steel and 3M -- said a tax provision in the new health care law will make it far more expensive to provide prescription drug coverage to their retired employees. Now, both retirees and current employees of those companies are wondering whether the new law could mean reduced or canceled benefits for them in the future.

COMMENT:  Under what authority can a House committee chairman simply demand that corporate officers appear before him to defend a financial opinion?  What is the legitimate legislative purpose?

This is, as the unnamed Republican charges, pure intimidation.  It's designed to shut people up. 

Joe McCarthy, who actually turned out to be right on many things, but who went way over the line in behavior, used his committee chairmanship to threaten and frighten.  Now Henry Waxman is working from the same playbook.  "Waxmanism anyone?"

March 28, 2010    Permalink

BACK TO THE REAL WORLD, BARACK – AT 10:11 A.M. ET:  President Obama experienced a bump in the polls after the passage of the health-care bill.  But, according to Scott Rasmussen, the bump is healing, and reality returning:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 28% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -16 (see trends).

The President enjoyed a modest bounce in the polls following the passage of health care legislation last week. However, his Approval Index rating is now back to where it was last Sunday, just before the House voted in favor of his health care plan. All the bouncing of the past week has come among Democrats. There has been virtually no change in the opinions of Republicans and unaffiliated voters.

Note the part about unaffiliated voters.  Obama has lost the independents.  Unless he can get them back, his political future can be very grim.

Overall, 47% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty-three percent (53%) disapprove.

We track these things day by day.  Approval of Obama is falling below 50% in most polls.  The economic signs are not good, especially as they pertain to employment.  This is not a healthy brew for Dems for November.  However, Republicans have a remarkable capacity to sit on their hands and not exploit opportunity.  Light a fire under them whenever you can.

March 28, 2010   Permalink

THE END OF CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT – AT 10:01 A.M. ET:  The moment we have dreaded.  From The New York Times: 

If any one show has represented the post-9/11 era on television, it is “24,” the Fox drama that has offered counterterrorism as entertainment for nine years.

On “24,” torture saves lives. On “24,” phones are tapped, plots are disrupted, terrorists are killed, and one man, Jack Bauer, will stop at nothing to protect the American people. For viewers, “24” is part sum of all fears, part wish fulfillment in an age of shadowy enemies.

For Fox, the show’s trademark clock is about to stop ticking. Nearly a decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that so heavily influenced people’s perceptions of the series, cast and crew members said they were told on Friday that it had been canceled.

If this be treason... 

I am going into mourning.  I will need the spiritual help of readers for some time to come.  Words of sympathy, words of encouragement, Bible verses.

There is no Monday night without "24."  In my home we will go directly from Monday afternoon to Tuesday morning.

The last episode will air in May.  After that, darkness.  They will probably replace it with some prissy series about teenaged love in a California high school.  I can't wait.

This is how civilizations die.  Roman civilization started to die when the hit series, "Clockum Countum Jackum Bauerum" stopped playing at the Coliseum.

March 28, 2010   Permalink