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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2010

YOU WANNA WORK THERE? – AT 6:23 P.M. ET:   What an example of the way Washington really works.  Even weddings aren't sacred.  From The Politico:

Peter Orszag, the former White House budget director, won’t have the West Wing firepower he’d hoped for when he marries ABC News anchor Bianna Golodryga in Manhattan on Saturday.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and senior advisers David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett have all sent regrets.

The New York Post's “Page Six” gossip column reported: “The Obama power trio were expected at the lavish nuptials, but decided not to come at the last minute. The snub comes after Orszag, who resigned as budget director in late July, wrote an op-ed column that clashed with the Obama administration's stance in favor of raising taxes on earners of more than $250,000 a year.”

Now, of course, anonymous sources assure The Politico that the terrible trio had never planned to come in the first place.  You mean, all three?  You believe that? 

Look, it's the game down there.  Once you leave, you're toast.  If you say anything negative after you leave, you're burnt toast.

Harry Truman once famously said that if you want a friend in Washington, get a cocker spaniel.  But, the way things have degenerated, even a cocker spaniel would have sent regrets to Orszag.

I'm sure it will be a lovely wedding without the White House staff, and a good time will be had by all.

Oh, there's some leftover food from three empty places.  Anyone interested?

September 25, 2010     Permalink 

SNIPPET OF THE DAY – AT 10:53 A.M. ET:

(Reuters) - At least 280 crocodiles have escaped from a Mexican refuge near the Gulf of Mexico after heavy flooding caused by Hurricane Karl, Mexican media said Tuesday.

And three quarters are already in the U.S., with offers of scholarships.

September 25, 2010      Permalink

IT'S GETTING BORING, IT REALLY IS – AT 10:31 A.M. ET:  Will someone please send President Obama a note?  Please say something like, "Dear Mr. President, it really isn't a good idea to talk about all the options you have on Iran, when everything you've done to stop the Iranians has failed.  I'm falling asleep, sir, I really am."

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Friday there are a "host of options" available to the United States and its allies if sanctions against Iran fail to thwart its nuclear ambitions.

How about naming a few, Mr. Prez.

Obama, speaking in an interview with BBC Persian, said he prefers a diplomatic solution to the nuclear standoff with Tehran but that would require a different attitude from Iran.

The U.S. president, in New York for a session of the U.N. General Assembly, used the Farsi-language broadcast to send a message to Iran, whose leadership has defied Washington's efforts to curb Tehran's nuclear program.

"We are willing to reach out with an open hand, to the Iranian government and the Iranian people," Obama said as he reiterated his willingness to engage diplomatically.

How many times has he said this?  Notice the Iranian reaction. 

The Obama administration has recently pushed through new sanctions in the U.N. Security Council and imposed unilateral U.S. penalties. "We do think that the sanctions raise the costs for the government," he said.

Asked what other actions could be taken if sanctions do not work, Obama said: "There are a whole host of options. And these options would be exercised in consultation with the international community."

Oh, I can't wait for that "consultation."  I look forward to the wisdom from Libya, or South Africa.

Obama, who did not specify what additional options he had in mind, said a diplomatic solution remained possible. "But it is going to require a change in mindset inside the ... Iranian government."

He doesn't have any other options in mind.  That's the problem.

The United States and other Western powers suspect Iran seeks to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran says it only wants nuclear technology for civilian electricity generation.

Yes, all those hardened plants are there just to power iPods and hair dryers.  In the spirit of multicultural understanding, I accept it.

September 25, 2010      Permalink

AND THEY DON'T SPEAK FRENCH EITHER – AT 10:04 A.M. ET:   Knowledge is such a wonderful thing.  We've struggled to find the explanation for all the anger out there, and the massive shift in the GOP's direction.  We needn't have struggled.  John Kerry has the explanation.  We are relieved.  From the Boston Herald:

A testy U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry yesterday blamed clueless voters with short attention spans for the uphill battle beleaguered Democrats are facing against Republicans across the nation.

“We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening,” Kerry told reporters after touring the Boston Medical Center yesterday.

You know, I really knew it all along.  It's the voters' fault.  Why do we still insist on giving these people a ballot? 

Conservative political blogger William Jacobson, who writes Legal Insurrection, immediately pounced on Kerry’s comments, saying that attitude is why voters are looking to shake up Capitol Hill by electing upstart candidates such as U.S. Sen. Scott Brown.

“It just continues the Democrats’ theme that the reason people are upset is because they don’t understand. They’re not smart enough. That sort of rhetoric just gets people even more upset,” said Jacobson.

COMMENT:  This man Kerry was one state shy of being elected president in 2004. 

Oh, by the way, I wonder if Kerry believes the voters were also stupid in 2008, when they elected Obama, and a Democratic House and Senate.  It must be a recent problem.

Yuch.

September 25, 2010     Permalink

A TALE OF TWO ELECTIONS – AT 9:48 A.M. ET:  From The New York Times:

KABUL, Afghanistan — Evidence is mounting that fraud in last weekend’s parliamentary election was so widespread that it could affect the results in a third of provinces, calling into question the credibility of a vote that was an important test of the American and Afghan effort to build a stable and legitimate government.

The complaints to provincial election commissions have so far included video clips showing ballot stuffing; the strong-arming of election officials by candidates’ agents; and even the handcuffing and detention of election workers.

And from Fox News:

When Catherine Engelbrecht and her friends sat down and started talking politics several years ago, they soon agreed that talking wasn’t enough. They wanted to do more. So when the 2008 election came around, “about 50” of her friends volunteered to work at Houston’s polling places.

“What we saw shocked us,” she said. “There was no one checking IDs, judges would vote for people that asked for help. It was fraud, and we watched like deer in the headlights.”...

...“Vacant lots had several voters registered on them. An eight-bed halfway house had more than 40 voters registered at its address,” Engelbrecht said. “We then decided to look at who was registering the voters."

COMMENT:  If I may be permitted a question:  Why is it that The New York Times, and the bulk of the mainstream media, only show an interest in election fraud if it takes place in a foreign country, but show no interest at all in the massive fraud committed in American cities? 

It is likely that fraud will be substantial this November...in the United States.  Disturbing signals coming from the Justice Department suggest that corruption and intimidation will not be investigated if it's committed by favored groups.  And yet, only Fox seems interested.

I think it's quite possible that several close races could be decided by corrupt practices.  Indeed, it's quite possible that Al Franken is in the Senate today because of voter fraud in Minnesota in 2008.  Where is the outrage from the institutions that claim to be "the eyes and ears of the public"?  I don't see it.

September 25, 2010     Permalink

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2010

SNIPPET OF THE DAY – AT 8:30 P.M. ET:

BOGOTA, Sept. 24 (UPI) -- A former paramilitary leader was crowned a beauty queen at the close of an annual pageant at Colombia's Good Shepherd prison.  Diana Layton, 21, who joined a right-wing paramilitary group at the age of 12 and acted as commander of a death squad, won the tiara and gift bag following the pageant at the Bogota prison, the Toronto (Canada) Globe and Mail reported Friday.

I just want to know if they sang the song:  "There she is, Miss Inmate 625..."  There were teary eyes, I'm sure.

September 24, 2010     Permalink

BIG POLL DROP FOR OBAMA – AT 8:12 P.M. ET:  A new CNN poll, just released, shows more problems for the embattled president:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 (UPI) -- President Obama's approval rating dropped 8 points in three weeks to the lowest level since he was elected U.S. president, a poll released Friday reported.

Only 42 percent of those surveyed for the CNN/Opinion Research Council poll said they approve of the president's handling of his job, while 54 percent said they disapprove. Even more, 56 percent, said Obama had failed to meet their expectations and they are disappointed in him.

His approval rating was 50 percent in a poll at the end of August, CNN reported.

The numbers are bad news for Democrats in the midterm elections with only 37 percent of likely voters saying an Obama endorsement would make them more likely to vote for a candidate. Almost half of likely voters said support from the Tea Party would push them toward a candidate.

Well, that's refreshing.  The poll was taken this week, which means it may reflect voter response to the revelations in the Woodward book.

Ironically, Obama has been gaining in the Rasmussen poll.  We look at polls over a period of time, and RealClearPolitics does a good job of averaging them.  The current RCP average is 45.1% approval for the president, and 50.1% disapproval.

September 24, 2010      Permalink

FINALLY, SOME COMMON SENSE – AT 7:54 P.M. ET:  Remember Bill Ayers, the radical professor, former extremist member of the Weather Underground, and good friend of Barack Hussein Obama Jr., whom Obama claimed he barely knew when running for president? 

Well, Professor Ayers has retired from the University of Illinois.  But a funny thing happened to him on the way to the usual retirement honors.  From the Chicago Tribune:

In a very unusual move, University of Illinois trustees Thursday denied giving emeritus status to controversial retired professor William Ayers.

The vote, at a U. of I. board meeting in Urbana, was unanimous and came after a passionate speech by board chair Christopher Kennedy, who invoked the 1968 assassination of his father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, in saying that he was voting his conscience.

The other trustees, without comment, also voted against the appointment.

Ayers, the Vietnam War-era radical, had been an education faculty member at UIC since 1987. He retired effective Aug. 31 and then sought the emeritus faculty status, a largely honorific title that includes some benefits such as library privileges.

And...

...in an emotional statement, Kennedy discussed his reasons for voting against Ayers' request.

"I am guided by my conscience and one which has been formed by a series of experiences, many of which have been shared with the people of our country and mark each of us in a profound way," Kennedy said.

He said he could not confer the title "to a man whose body of work includes a book dedicated in part to the man who murdered my father."

Kennedy was referring to a 1974 book co-authored by Ayers, "Prairie Fire," which was dedicated to a long list of people including Robert Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan and "all political prisoners in the U.S."

We haven't heard much from Christopher Kennedy.  He apparently is one of the Kennedys who has stayed out of trouble and does useful work.  We can only applaud the stand he has taken...on behalf of basic decency, and we're pleased that the other trustees unanimously agreed.

Of course, the usual suspects immediately came out of the woodwork:

A UIC professor said Friday she was "shocked" by the trustees' decision not to grant Ayers emeritus status.

"Professor Ayers has a 47-page resume of academic accomplishments," Barbara Ransby, a professor of history and African-American studies, wrote in an e-mail response to the Tribune....

..."It is a real threat to academic freedom, and the foundation of a democratic university, when we begin to make professional and institutional decisions based on personal or political sentiments, however strongly felt they may be," she wrote.

Yeah, right.  Out comes the academic freedom flag, used regularly to cover up all kinds of misconduct.  I can only imagine what Ms. Ransby's response would be to a similar decision by the trustees regarding a professor who'd made racist comments.

The trustees acted correctly, their decision reflecting well on the values their university should uphold.  No one's academic freedom was affected.

September 24, 2010     Permalink

GOODBYE, EDDIE – AT 9:18 A.M. ET:  Eddie Fisher has died.  Now, for some of our younger readers, that statement may elicit a huge question mark.  But for the rest of us, it elicits memories of a different cultural time in America.

Despite my years in the Hollywood and TV game, I never met the man.  By the time I got in, he was out.  But Eddie Fisher was one of the most important, and one of the best, of the post-World War II popular singers.  Go to YouTube and hear his rendition of "Any Time," and you'll see what I mean.   The voice was pure and musical, and the lyric was treated with respect.  Young girls of the period thought Eddie was singing directly to them.

I recall Fisher's TV program, "Coke Time."  (In those days, coke meant the soft drink.)  The program was 15 minutes in length.  In the fifties, there were a number of 15-minute network music programs.  I remember that Peggy Lee had one.  They were terrific, virtually all music, and good music.  There were actual melodies.  And you could understand the words. 

Fisher was very much the new Sinatra in that period.  The teen-aged public waited on every story about him, especially how he was "discovered" singing at Grossinger's, the Catskill resort north of New York City, by the legendary comedian, Eddie Cantor.  (False.  Tanya Grossinger, a member of the family, once told me, when I worked at the Tonight Show, that the whole thing was prearranged.)

The sad fact, though, is that two things conspired to end Eddie Fisher's reign.  The first was the coming of rock 'n' roll.  He wasn't a rocker, and never could be.  That wasn't his style.  The second factor was even more serious:  Fisher couldn't handle his personal life.  In "the wedding of the decade" he married Debbie Reynolds, who at that time had built an image of "America's sweetheart."  Young, pretty, pure, the girl next door, Debbie was everything a young man in America could want.  (False.  It was an image.  Easy she was not.  One of my friends in Hollywood was a member of her family, and Debbie used to babysit him.  He told me how she'd lock him in the closet.  Just your nice, average American girl.)

But Eddie met Elizabeth Taylor, fell in love, and divorced Debbie.  That was essentially the end of his stardom.  You did not, in those days, divorce the girl next door.  You stayed with her and had a family.  Compare please to Hollywood standards today. 

Eddie descended into drugs and, eventually, another divorce.  He tried to make a comeback, but his time had passed.  Two autobiographies he wrote offended members of his family, especially his daughter with Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia in "Star Wars." 

In recent years, Fisher faded into almost complete obscurity.

But let us remember the great singer that Eddie Fisher was.  His talent cannot be denied.  It was the man who let the talent down.

September 24, 2010     Permalink

WE FEEL SO SAFE KNOWING THESE GUYS ARE IN CHARGE – AT 8:57 A.M. ET:  One of our great, and realistic, nightmares is that nuclear materials can be smuggled into the U.S. across the Mexican border.  In fact, it's probably inevitable.

But not to worry.  Homeland Security is in charge.  Consider this, from Fox News:

The Department of Homeland Security has wasted up to nearly a half billion dollars in taxpayer money and time on its current plans to develop technology at the nation's borders to detect nuclear material being smuggled into the country, according to two recent GAO reports cited by a Republican senator on Thursday.

In one program, the Government Accountability Office concluded the technology was being pushed too hard too fast. In another case, the equipment was too big and it didn't fit into the cargo container inspection lanes.

“This is not a picture of good government at work,” said Gene Aloise, a senior investigator with the GAO who covers homeland security.

He added that the department had been warned repeatedly about the problems.

“It's not good government, it's not best practices and in some cases it wasn't even common sense.”

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, noted that the lack of basic communication smacked of dysfunction.

“The first thing that you'd think would be done, would be that the department would talk to the agency that's going to use the equipment to find out what would work,” Collins told Fox News on Capitol Hill. “In this case, millions of dollars was wasted because one office did not talk to another office about what was needed.”

COMMENT:  You would also think that, nine years after 9-11, we'd have systems, and even second-generation systems, in place.  What we lack in Washington is a sense of urgency, a sense that these threats can kill us.

Nuclear materials smuggled across our borders can lead to an attack with more casualties than we have suffered in all our wars put together. 

Heads should roll.  But heads are firmly attached in the Washington bureaucracy.  The sad fact is that this story will probably be forgotten in a few days because much of the mainstream media shies away from stories that suggest anything bad can come from south of the border. 

September 24, 2010      Permalink

DEMS CHICKEN OUT ON TAXES – AT 8:36 A.M. ET:  We'll have to wait for the lame-duck session of Congress that follows the election to learn what our tax rates will be next year.  This is really great for family and business planning.  The Politico reports:

Small-business legislation cleared Congress on Thursday even as Senate Democrats retreated from the second big plank of their post-Labor Day session: a vote on making permanent middle-class tax cuts set to expire at the end of this year.

After all the bold talk, it’s a remarkable turnaround — and loss of nerve — that all but ensures that the House also won’t act before going home next week.

Ah, a profile in courage. 

Senate Democrats feel the sting more because they had been at the forefront in wanting to elevate the issue with President Barack Obama before November’s election. The goal then had been to combine small-business relief with middle-class tax breaks in a powerful one-two punch; instead, the party now risks being seen as an aging boxer in the crouch, dodging blows rather than going on offense.

Oh, that's so wounding, so wounding, and so true.

The problem, apparently, is that the Dems didn't want to extend tax cuts for "the rich."  But "the rich," if you look closely, includes many small businesses, struggling for survival, which would see their tax bill go up. 

Republicans should pounce, right now.  Don't let the other side set the narrative, or the vocabulary.  While it's technically true that we're talking about the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts, the practical effect is a tax increase, almost certain to depress the economy. 

September 24, 2010      Permalink

RACE FOR THE SENATE – AT 7:53 A.M. ET:  Investors Business Daily has an excellent roundup of where we stand in the Senate races.  They're up to date and the piece is well researched. 

A strong tide should lift Republicans to victories in several Senate races, with polls pointing to an ever-expanding list of states in play.

Of the seats now held by Democrats, Republicans have a good to excellent chance of winning Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Arkansas, North Dakota and possibly Indiana are all but assured GOP pickups. Others, like Illinois and Nevada, remain close in the polls.

Polls out this week show Republicans have a real shot at winning West Virginia while other surveys suggest a New York Senate race is competitive.

The New York possibility is a particular stunner.  However, caution is required.  Dems have made strides in several states recently, as traditional Democratic majorities reassert themselves:

In Delaware, polls all year had Rep. Mike Castle leading Democrat Chris Coons, even though 62% of state voters went for Barack Obama in 2008. But GOP primary voters gave the nod to Tea Party fave Christine O'Donnell. All of the post-primary surveys have given Coons a double-digit lead over O'Donnell.

In California, Sen. Barbara Boxer has led Republican Carly Fiorina in the past six polls, as Democrats' huge party registration edge in the state may be reasserting itself...

...Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., has a tough fight vs. Republican businessman Dino Rossi — who narrowly lost races for governor in 2004 and 2008. Elected in 1992 as just a "mom in tennis shoes," she is no longer an outsider. But after trailing in some polls, she holds a slim lead, hitting 50% or above. SurveyUSA has her up 50%-48%; Rasmussen gives her a 51%-46% lead.

The Democrats, knowing that many in their traditional base depend on government programs, are engaging in their usual scare tactics.  "They're gonna take away your Social Security!"  In fact, increasing dependence on government is practically a Commandment on the left, in part because it guarantees victory at the polls.

But polls in West Virginia and New York offer Republicans hope that they could pull out a Senate majority.

Well, we hope so, but we'll see.  It's very tough.  We're not in the predicting business here, but I'm imagining a Senate with 47-48 Republicans.  That would not mean control, of course, but it would probably be enough to block radical legislation.  It's the Supreme Court nominations I worry about...as well as other judicial nominations.

September 24, 2010     Permalink