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ELECTION - 23 days from today

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2010

THE END – AT 7:58 P.M. ET:  I have to report this, even though it's not the kind of thing we usually do here:

I was in a local supermarket today.  I like to go to the supermarket myself so I can sneak junk food into the house.  I was trained in the CIA.  I have my ways, believe me.  (Now my devoted wife will find those chocolate bars.  But remember, dark chocolate is good for the heart.  I read it somewhere.)

So I'm in aisle 5 and suddenly the PA system comes on.  A pleasant-sounding lady informs the shopping public that copies of The New York Times are on sale at the front of the store.  She then announces, with a deadpan voice,
"Stop 'n Shop is the official supermarket of The New York Times."

I am not kidding.

That is an exact quote.

I knew The Times was in some trouble.  I didn't know it was this bad. 

Mark the date – 10-10-10.  It won't happen again for a long, long time.  On this day civilization came to an end.  The New York Times has designated an official supermarket.  I could have understood Whole Foods.  But Stop 'n Shop?

Goodbye, good taste. 

Oh...you can find former editors working in aisle 6.

October 10, 2010      Permalink

CREDIT WHERE IT'S DUE – AT 6:39 P.M. ET:  This got lost in the shuffle of the week's news, but I think it's important.  American companies can do things right, and often do:

FORTUNE -- General Motors and Chrysler are beginning to make some headway after getting a financial and operational overhaul compliments of the U.S. bankruptcy court. But Ford, operating free of interference by the court or the federal government is moving even faster and is beginning to put real distance between itself and its two domestic rivals.

Ford's U.S. sales in September rose 40% over a year ago, and it has gained retail market share in 23 of the last 24 months. By comparison, GM's sales rose 11% last month.

COMMENT:  This is a function of management.  Good management should be rewarded, bad management expelled.  We should be reading more about Ford.  If the guys are doing the job, give them the glory.

October 10, 2010      Permalink

A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN IN WASHINGTON? – AT 11:35 A.M. ET:  Nile Gardiner, one of Britain's sharpest observers of American Politics, believes the Obama presidency is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and that Mr. Obama's future is bleak: 

Forget the myth of an Obama recovery. The past week has been disastrous for the White House and America’s increasingly disillusioned Left. No wonder the angry and desperate Vice President Joe Biden is talking about “playing hell” if his party suffers defeat in November.

Gardiner gives five reasons for the Democratic mental-health crisis:

1.  A new Gallup poll suggests the November mid-terms could result in the biggest victory for Republicans in the House since 1894.

2.  The Senate now hangs in the balance.

3.  The economic figures are grim.

4.  A quarter of Democrats have turned against the president.

5.  George W. Bush is now as popular as President Obama.

Ah, it's always great to have good news.  Everything that Gardiner reports is true.  But a word of caution:  Always remember that old saying, "Be careful what you wish for."  We will be delighted if, on November 2nd, America dissolves from ObamaNation to RedState.  But then Republicans, especially if they're in control of both houses, must produce.  And they must produce while an ultra-liberal Democrat is in the White House, and with a press that will be both hostile and frustrated.  And it must do this while keeping some of the less stable personalities in the party at arm's length, which is a technique Reagan perfected.  They have their nuts, we have ours.  But ours will get the biased press treatment.  Theirs will be portrayed as visionaries. 

We have an exciting time coming up:  a defining election, and an immediate plunge into the 2012 campaign.  This is almost as good as watching Christiane Amanpour's audience reduced to three people at the Harvard Divinity School.

October 10, 2010      Permalink

TROUBLE IN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC – AT 10:48 A.M. ET:  "Oh there's trouble, my friend, trouble right here in River City."  Well, I doubt if they're singing that line from "The Music Man" in Tehran these days, but maybe they should, if they could get it past the morality police.  But there is definitely trouble in Iran.  There has apparently been some mighty fine espionage in Iran's nuclear program:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran acknowledged Saturday that some personnel at the country's nuclear facilities were lured by promises of money to pass secrets to the West but insisted increased security and worker privileges have put a stop to the spying.

The stunning admission by Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi provides the clearest government confirmation that Iran has been fighting espionage at its nuclear facilities.

In recent weeks, Iran has announced the arrest of several nuclear spies and battled a computer worm that it says is part of a covert Western plot to derail its nuclear program. And in July, a nuclear scientist who Iran says was kidnapped by U.S. agents returned home in mysterious circumstances, with the U.S. saying he was a willing defector who was offered $5 million by the CIA but then changed his mind.

The United States and its allies have vigorously sought to slow Iran's nuclear advances through U.N. and other sanctions out of suspicion that Tehran intends to use a civil program as cover for developing weapons. Iran denies any such aim and says it only wants to generate nuclear power.

There have been periodic reports that major espionage operations have been conducted in Iran, by both Israel and the U.S.  This is the first confirmation by Iran that some of these operations bore fruit.

During the Cold War the Russians and their satellite states would periodically announce the arrest of some of their nationals, accusing them of spying for the West.  We would describe such charges as "trumped up," but they were generally accurate.  People working for us would occasionally get caught.  This is the first time, in my memory at least, that Iran has even acknowledged that some of its own people had committed espionage for the West. 

We'll follow this and report any juicy details.

October 10, 2010      Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 10:27 A.M. ET:  A distinguished physicist has resigned from the American Physical Society.  And most people would reply, "So what?"  But the resignation of Professor Emeritus Harold Lewis of the University of California from the prestigious scientific body is causing a stir because it challenges the establishment position on "global warming."  Professor Lewis writes:

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

Meteorologist Anthony Watts describes the resignation as "an important moment in science history. I would describe it as a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door. It is worthy of repeating this letter in entirety on every blog that discusses science."

You can find the entire letter here.  It is worth reading.  Among other things, Prof. Lewis warns of the influence of government money on science, something President Eisenhower warned about in his farewell address to the nation in January of 1961.  That was the famous "industrial-military complex speech," but only that part is remembered because it has served the purposes of the political left.  The warning about government money and its influence on science was forgotten...until now.

We are in the midst of an election campaign, and it's easy to forget that "global warming" is one of the main building blocks of the leftist agenda, which it will pursue regardless of who wins in three weeks.  Professor Lewis cannot be put away on a shelf and denigrated as a crackpot.  He is a distinguished scientist.

We hope a revolution among scientists is underway.  Maybe it's too much to ask for.

October 10, 2010     Permalink 

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2010

QUICK!  MAKE SURE BARACK DOESN'T SEE THIS – AT 9:04 P.M. ET:  Obama comes with enough resentments.  He doesn't need one more.  Can you imagine what they think of this at the White House?  From The Hill:

Embattled Democrats are increasingly turning to former President Bill Clinton to prop up their campaigns in the final weeks before November's midterm elections.

The former president is far and away the biggest draw for the party less than a month out, hitting races in states where Democrats would rather President Obama stay away.

With Obama's campaign schedule featuring recent stops in solidly Democratic states like California, Delaware and Maryland, it's Clinton who is helping Democrats trying to win over centrists and independents in states like West Virginia, Kentucky and Arkansas.

I mean, the man goes to states "where Democrats would rather President Obama stay away."  This will do wonders for Obama's relationship with his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, married in a strange sort of way to Bill.  I'll bet someone puts a tack on her chair before the next Cabinet meeting. 

Bill Clinton has been officially rehabilitated.  No one mentions Monica anymore. 

Another one who must be dyin' is Professor of Peanuts and Nobel laureate Jimmah Carter.  No one asks him to campaign, even in states where Obama can't go.  He can only get a campaigning gig overseas, preferably in a hostile country. 

GREAT MOMENT IN HISTORY:  The moment when elder statesman Bill Clinton leads a Democratic delegation to the White House in late 2011, to ask Barack Obama to step aside for the 2012 election.  Will it happen?  I think the odds are ten to one against...today.  Those odds might change.

October 9, 2010      Permalink

DISGRACEFUL – AT 8:18 A.M. ET:  As you know, Jerry Brown, the Democratic candidate for the California governorship (a position he also held decades ago, in an era of vinyl records), has been involved in an ugly incident. 

During a private discussion with aides, accidentally recorded, someone suggested that Meg Whitman, the GOP candidate, be painted as a "whore," apparently because of her stand on pensions for public workers.  Brown was heard saying that he would use that.

That was sickening enough, and the Brown campaign could manage only an anemic, half-hearted apology, issued through an aide.  What was especially outrageous was that the National Organization for Women, despite the incident, endorsed Brown yesterday.  What were they thinking?  Apparently, they weren't thinking about much of anything.  But once again we see how little interest so-called "feminist" groups have in the welfare of women.  They've become basically adjuncts of the hard political left, and front operations for the abortion-on-demand crowd.

It's very sad, because the women's movement, with all its faults, has made important contributions to women's rights, especially in the workplace.  But, at base, it was always a movement of the political left.  In recent years, it has succumbed to the leftist discipline, which places the interests of women pretty far down the line.  Note the lack of support for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries of 2008, as opposed to Barack Obama.  On the left, race always trumps gender.  It's the way things are.

These old groups are now on life support.  My guess is that new women's organizations will be formed in coming years, much more moderate, more attuned to the real issues facing women, and far removed from the rigidities of the 1960s.  And they might even show some interest in the oppression of Muslim women.

In the meantime, NOW might consider withdrawing its endorsement of Jerry Brown until he shows some contrition for that vulgar incident.  I'm not holding my breath.  After all, the slur was only against a Republican woman. 

October 9, 2010      Permalink

EVEN THE NEW YORK TIMES – AT 8:14 A.M. ET:  Again we note the sin of overconfidence, but it's nice to know that even The New York Times realizes it has a ticket on a political Titanic: 

It has become fashionable to speak of a Democratic comeback, but we’re not really seeing one in our forecasting models. Certainly there are some individual races — particularly on the East and West Coasts, as well as some gubernatorial contests outside these regions — that look better for Democrats than they did a few weeks ago. But we’re showing Republicans gaining ground where they need to gain it to maintain decent chances of taking over the Senate. We also show improvement for them in the House forecast this week.

Our model now estimates that the Republicans have a 72 percent chance of taking over the House, up from 67 percent last week. Moreover, they have nearly even odds of a achieving a net gain of 50 seats; their average gain in a typical simulation run was between 47 and 48 seats. However, the playing field remains very broad and considerably larger are possible, as are considerably smaller ones.

COMMENT:  On Tuesday we will be three weeks out from election day.  Three weeks are four lifetimes in politics.  Anything can happen, but so far the GOP has run a reasonable campaign, with a very impressive ground game – the "get out the vote" stuff. 

All will depend on turnout.  If our troops go to the polls, a smashing victory may be in prospect.  And we must convince our liberal friends of the joys of staying home on election day.  Suggest a good book, a documentary about folk singers, or even the collected speeches of George McGovern.  Who wants to go into a cramped voting booth when you can listen to Joan Baez recordings?

October 9, 2010      Permalink

DON'T FORGET THIS – AT 8:10 A.M. ET:  We cautioned yesterday about taking our eyes off the foreign-policy ball during our election campaign.  Now we're reminded why:

NORTH Korea is forging ahead with work to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, which could add to its atomic arsenal and raise the risk it will sell nuclear know-how abroad, a study says.

-The report published by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) overnight came after warnings from South Korea that "North Korea's nuclear threat has progressed at a rapid pace and reached a very alarming level".

South Korea also said this week the North is restoring facilities at its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, the source of weapons-grade plutonium in the past.

In the report, Taking Stock: North Korea's Uranium Enrichment Program, authors David Albright and Paul Brannan wrote that North Korea was developing centrifuges to enrich uranium.

The program is an "avenue for North Korea to increase the number and sophistication of its nuclear weapons and for it to proliferate to others who seek to build their own centrifuge programs", the authors wrote.

COMMENT:  The proliferation issue is key.  Should North Korea become destablized as the old order passes, nuclear material and information can get loose.  There are plenty of eager buyers, even people who live in the caves of Afghanistan. 

We have made no progress with North Korea, or Iran, but the administration seems unconcerned.  It may take a shock to wake us up.  But then it will be too late.

October 9, 2010     Permalink