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JANUARY 14,  2011

WISDOM OF THE PEOPLE – AT 6:35 P.M. ET:  The American people continue to show far greater wisdom than some pundits and politicians in assigning blame for the Arizona shootings.  Support for the idea that "rhetoric" caused the tragedy has dropped even further since a poll taken right after the event:

Saturday's shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, in which six people were killed, could not have been prevented, 40 percent of American voters say in a Quinnipiac University national poll released today. Another 23 percent blame the mental health system, while 15 percent say it was due to heated political rhetoric and 9 percent attribute the tragedy to lax gun control.

American voters say 52 - 41 percent that "heated political rhetoric drives unstable people to commit violence," the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds. Liberals rather than conservatives are more responsible for such rhetoric, voters say 36 - 32 percent.

And...

"Americans seem to be rejecting the blame game for the Arizona shooting. By far, the largest number thinks this tragedy could not have been prevented," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "Although a bare majority of voters say political rhetoric might drive unstable people to violence, less than one in seven blame it for the Arizona incident.

COMMENT:  We note again what we reported this morning, that, despite the horror of Saturday's despicable act, attacks on members of Congress have only occurred five times in the nation's history. 

Americans are ahead of the experts.  Not that unusual, I've observed.

January 14, 2010       Permalink

NEW RNC CHAIRMAN – AT 6:12 P.M. ET:  The Republican National Committee has a new chairman, having chosen not to reelect embattled current Chairman Michael Steele:

Oxon Hill, Maryland (CNN) - The Republican National Committee tossed out controversy-plagued chairman Michael Steele Friday and tapped Wisconsin GOP Chairman Reince Priebus to lead the debt-ridden party organization into the 2012 presidential election cycle.

Priebus managed Steele's successful campaign in 2009 and went on to serve as RNC General Counsel, but he resigned the post in December to launch his own bid for the chairmanship after some arm-twisting by Steele critics eager to find a competent committee insider to replace their gaffe-prone leader.

"I am here to earn the trust and support of each and every one of you," Priebus said, addressing the RNC following his win. "I am going to start working right now as your chairman. We all recognize that there is a steep hill here ahead of us, and the only way we will be able to move forward is if we're all together."
Priebus said the RNC's top priority should be to ensure that the GOP's presidential nominee in 2012 "has the organization in place to beat Barack Obama."

COMMENT:  I can't say that I know much about the gent, but the Red State blog reports that it has had plenty of mail from grassroots figures endorsing him.  We wish him well.  He will have an uphill job, trying to retire the committee's 20-million-dollar debt and defeating President Obama in 2012.

Michael Steele was an energetic chairman, the first African-American to lead the Republican Party.  But he was gaffe-prone and turned out to be a fine man in the wrong job.  I hope that his defeat doesn't lead to cries of "racism" from the usual suspects.  After all, the RNC elected him.

January 14, 2010       Permalink

BLUNT TALK FROM HILLARY – AT 9:47 A.M. ET:  Hillary Clinton has returned to Washington from her magical mystery tour of the Middle East.

She blundered along the way, seeming to compare the Arizona shooter with Al Qaeda mass murderers, and stating that the Arizona guy had a political motive, something now essentially disproved.  It was not one of her greater moments.

But, later in the trip, Secretary Clinton made some blunt remarks that have sent ripples through the Arab world and prompted us to wonder whether something has changed, for the better, in the Obaman view of the universe.  From The New York Times: 

DOHA, Qatar — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered a scalding critique of Arab leaders here on Thursday, saying their countries risked “sinking into the sand” of unrest and extremism unless they liberalized their political systems and cleaned up their economies.

Speaking at a conference in this gleaming Persian Gulf emirate, Mrs. Clinton recited a familiar litany of ills: corruption, repression and a lack of rights for women and religious minorities. But her remarks were striking for their vehemence, and they suggested a frustration that the Obama administration’s message to the Arab world had not gotten through.

Gee, I'm shocked that the message had not gotten through.  As the old rock song says, "Wake up, little Suzie, wake up."

“In too many places, in too many ways, the region’s foundations are sinking into the sand,” she said to a stone-faced audience of foreign ministers, businesspeople and rights groups. “The new and dynamic Middle East that I have seen needs firmer ground if it is to take root and grow everywhere.”

Remarkable.  Good for Hillary.

As if to back up the secretary's remarks, there's a new poll taken among Palestinians living in East Jerusalem, which reflects the disillusion of many with Arab society:

JERUSALEM (AP) — A poll suggests that a plurality of Jerusalem Palestinians would rather remain in Israel even after a peace deal and the creation of a Palestinian state.

A poll this week shows that 35 percent of Jerusalem's Palestinian residents would choose Israeli citizenship over Palestinian citizenship.

Thirty percent said they preferred Palestinian citizenship. Another 35 percent said they did not know.

Respondents who chose Israeli citizenship cited freedom of movement, higher income and Israeli health insurance as the reasons behind their choice.

Pollsters from Pechter Middle East Polls and the Council on Foreign Relations, a U.S. think tank, interviewed 1,039 people. The margin of error was 3 percentage points. The poll was released Wednesday.

COMMENT:  I don't know how Christiane Amanpour will spin this, but she'd better figure out something fast. 

We've been told that if the Arab-Israeli dispute is solved, all the problems of the Middle East, and maybe the rest of the world as well, would evaporate.  What a myth.  What a propagandistic myth.

January 14, 2010       Permalink

THIS IS A TRAGEDY – AT 9:15 A.M. ET:  The frauds and phonies of the political left claim to be concerned about the fate of America's minorities.   If that is true, though, why do tragedies like this go virtually undiscussed?  And why, if we try to discuss them, are we called racists?

About 90 students at a Memphis High School are either pregnant, or have been recently.

The startling news was confirmed by a high ranking city official and comes as the community plans to roll out a new initiative to help combat the problem.

However, one Frayser High School graduate says teen pregnancy is not a new problem for the school.

"When we would come back from summer break, there would be a thousand people pregnant. We were like, what's going on?" joked Alicia Williamson, who graduated from Frayser in 2004.

"There were a whole lot of bellies. You had to watch out so you didn't bump into them. Being 2011, I thought a lot of them would have thought this is not the right way to go, having babies during school time," she added.

The organization, Girls, Inc. teaches girls about preventing pregnancy.

Deborah Hester Harrison, who heads the organization, says Memphis's teen pregnancy rate stands at between 15 and 20 percent, almost twice the national average.

In the Frayser zip code, the rate is about 26 percent.

And whose fault is it?  You know the answer:

Harrison partly blames the media.

"So much of our society is sexually oriented. As adults we can look at that and it doesn't impact us, but kids are different," Harrison said.

Honey, that same media is available in high schools where the pregnancy rate is close to zero.

It's why Girls, Inc. offers classes where teenage girls "care for" computerized babies to give them a feel for what teenage parenthood is like.

How moving. 

This is an ongoing tragedy.  About 60 years ago, the African-American teenage pregnancy rate wasn't much higher than the white rate.  But something terrible has happened to black family life, and the man who first warned about it in 1962, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was called a racist for his efforts.

If problems like this are not solved, no amount of inspiration by Barack or Michelle will make a difference.  But many are reluctant to discuss the unspeakable.  That word – racism – is still too potent.

January 14, 2010       Permalink

STARTLING – AT 8:33 A.M. ET:  Here is a piece of startling information that has escaped much notice during the current "discussion" over whether conservative talk radio had anything whatever to do with the attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona:

Conservative talk radio, which at times does get a bit strident, often focuses its criticism on members of Congress.  You'd think, given that fact, that there would have been a number of attacks on those members, if talk radio had the potency attributed to it by its critics.  After all, this is a nation of 312 million people, and there are unstable folks in that huge population.

But the facts are dramatically different.  As USA Today reported:

House records indicate only a few assassination attempts against members of Congress: A duel between two House members in 1838, a brutal fistfight over slavery between two House members and a senator in 1856, an attack by Puerto Rican nationalists on Congress in 1954 and the ambush of a California congressman in 1978 while he was on an investigative trip to Guyana.

COMMENT:  The number of attacks is incredibly small throughout our history, despite the stereotype of America as a violent country.

If talk radio had the impact its critics say it has, the number of attacks on members of Congress wouldn't be one, it would be one hundred, or one thousand.  The proof that talk radio doesn't inspire our population to violence is in the numbers, which are, as we've noted, startling.

January 14, 2010       Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 8:17 A.M. ET:  From a distinguished reader, regarding the left's real view toward violence:

I can't believe our political discourse has become so poisoned.  Interesting in that violence has always been romanticized by the Left, allowing them to embrace actual murderers and terrorists like Che Guevera.  I am hoping that the American people remain sensible about all this.

COMMENT:  True.  The left has always had a special place in its heart for violence, while ignoring its human consequences.  The left – not true liberals, but the real left – was silent in the face of the Cambodian genocide, the Rwanda genocide, and, remarkably, the unspeakable wave of violence in American cities since the 1960s, which has taken the lives of tens of thousands of African Americans, presumably a group the left cares about, but really doesn't.  And, of course, let us not forget the left's embrance of the Hitler-Stalin Pact in 1940.

The left is not about human beings.  It is about an ideology, which stands above all.  Remember one of the favorite slogans of the left:  "You have to break a couple of eggs to make an omelet."  How touching.

January 14, 2010       Permalink

THIS JUST IN – AT 8:11 A.M. ET:  The headline of the day, from The Politico, regarding President Obama's speech in Tucson:

Arizona Speech was Challenge to Write

For this, some parents of a journalist paid $42,000 a year for college.

January 14, 2010     Permalink 

JANUARY 13,  2011

OBAMA'S NUMBERS REBOUND – AT 9:09 P.M. ET:  It may be an awkward moment to be talking about political gains and losses, but we must report.  President Obama's poll numbers are rising, as noted by the Weekly Standard, and it's a lesson for Republicans, some of whom think 2012 will be easy:

Good news for the president. After nearly two years of sliding downward, his job approval numbers have ticked up a little bit. The average of major media polls in December had him clocking in with a job approval of about 45 percent. As of early January, his numbers are up to about 49 percent. The two daily tracking polls have shown similar movement. At the beginning of the month, Gallup had the president around 45 percent approval while today he is at 48 percent. Rasmussen has found similar movement.

And...

This is a good time to remind Republicans that 2012 is not going to be a cakewalk. It is extremely difficult to unseat incumbent presidents, if for no other reason than the fact that people want the president to succeed, giving him a structural advantage that the challenging party simply does not enjoy. Republicans will have to nominate a sharp candidate with broad appeal who inspires confidence that he or she will do a better job in the middle of the country. Otherwise, President Obama will surely win a second term.

COMMENT:  We have also stressed here that Republicans must take into account, and work to overcome, the terrible bias of the mainstream media.  There was no real media strategy on our side in 2008, and John McCain suffered because of it.  Ronald Reagan learned to speak above the heads of the media establishment and directly to the American people, with obvious results.

President Reagan, when chided over the fact that he'd been an actor, also said that he didn't know how anyone without acting training could be president.  He was making a good point.  A presidential candidate must have the rhetorical skill to present himself, or herself, to the American people, and that skill must be assessed during the nominating process.

January 13, 2011      Permalink

YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THIS – AT 6:10 P.M. ET:  At a time when we're concerned about extremism, volatile speech, and potential violence, this story appears.  It's from Fox News.  I'd love to know if anyone else will have the guts to run it:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations said it will remove a poster from the group's website promoting an upcoming conference that encourages people not to talk to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The poster, which appeared on the website of CAIR’s California chapter, features a sinister-looking FBI agent with the headlines “Build a Wall of Resistance” and “Don’t Talk to the FBI.” The poster was designed in the late 1970s or early 1980s and has been reproduced by various groups and activists since then in response to alleged harassment by the FBI and to protest grand jury subpoenas.

“I think it’s subject to misinterpretation,” spokesman Ibrahim Hooper told Fox News Radio when speaking about the poster. “We decided out of extreme caution to take it down.”

The poster was promoting a conference called “FBI Raids and Grand Jury Subpoenas: Know Your Rights and Defend Our Communities.” The keynote speaker is Hatem Abudayyeh, identified by CAIR as an activist and Palestinian community leader whose home was allegedly raided by federal agents in September.

The conference is scheduled for Feb. 9 at the East Side Cultural Center in Oakland.

Hooper conceded the poster “crosses the line,” but refused to renounce the artwork and blamed critics for fomenting what he called a manufactured controversy.

COMMENT:  Manufactured controversy?  Really?  A poster tells Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement, when human life might be at stake, and that's a manufactured controversy?

I suppose the usual suspects will crawl out of the woodwork to denounce those who protested the poster as "Islamophobic," but it won't wash. 

By the way, CAIR is often described by the fashion plates of the mainstream media as "moderate."  Remarkable, isn't it?

January 13, 2011      Permalink

FINALLY, AFTER FIVE DAYS – AT 5:52 P.M. ET:  We have complained mightily here about the knee-jerk first response of the mainstream media to the Arizona shootings.  We've also griped, correctly, that certain institutions in American society, like colleges, are too often exempted from criticism.

To its credit, The New York Times runs a story today raising serious questions about the performance of the alleged shooter's college, which knew that he had serious mental deficits.   

TUCSON — Many people had a glimpse of the deep delusions and festering anger of Jared L. Loughner, but none seemed in a better position to connect the dots than officials at Pima Community College.

After the release of detailed reports on Mr. Loughner’s bizarre outbursts and violent Internet fantasies that the college had kept, the focus has turned to whether it did all it could to prevent his apparent descent into explosive violence last weekend.

In September, Pima had suspended Mr. Loughner and told him not to return without a psychologist’s letter certifying that he posed no danger. But it took no steps to mandate that he have a psychiatric evaluation, which in Arizona is easier than in many states.

Laura J. Waterman, the clinical director of the Southern Arizona Mental Health Corporation in Tucson, criticized Pima officials for not initiating an involuntary evaluation.

“Where does it reach a level where you say this person shouldn’t be a part of any community and we have a responsibility to do something about that?” she said. The clinic, which offers walk-in psychiatric crisis care regardless of a patient’s ability to pay, is one of the agencies Pima students are referred to when they need mental health services, including students who have been suspended like Mr. Loughner.

No record of Mr. Loughner seeking or receiving mental health care has surfaced.

And the college's response:

“It is part of our practice to provide students with information of where they can go,” said Charlotte Fugett, an official at the college. “It’s their responsibility to find a practitioner.”

So impressive.

The fact is that there is a history going back more than three decades of actions to discourage or even block involuntary commitment of mental patients.  Back in the 70s, some civil libertarians believed, and apparently still do, that it is a violation of someone's rights to involuntary commit that person because of certain mental disorders.

The crusade against involuntary commitment must now be reexamined.  It has produced some catastrophic results, including the phenomenon of dangerous people wandering the streets, possibly in possession of a weapon, and mentally ill people becoming homeless and even freezing to death.

The road to Hell, as we were taught, is paved with good intentions. 

The Times story is worth reading.

January 13, 2011      Permalink

SNIPPET OF THE DAY – AT 10:02 A.M. ET:

David Nelson, the elder son of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, the brother of Rick Nelson and the last surviving member of the television family that perhaps more than any other stood for the Eisenhower-era middle-class American dream, died at home in Los Angeles on Tuesday. He was 74.

It may have been artificial, superficial, and sugar-coated, but "Ozzie and Harriet" had a serenity and decency that told us that family was a pretty important thing.  We could use a little of that today.

January 13, 2011       Permalink

MORE ECONOMIC DISTRESS – AT 9:29 A.M. ET:  Coming after the home-foreclosure report, our second post up today, the new jobs report can only add to apprehension that the economic recovery is sluggish at best, an illusion at worst.  From Bloomberg:

The number of first-time claims for unemployment insurance payments jumped in the first week of 2011 to the highest level since October as more Americans lined up to file following the holidays.

Initial jobless claims rose by 35,000 to 445,000, according to Labor Department data released today. The median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey called for 410,000 filings. The average number of applications over the past four weeks, a less-volatile gauge, increased to 416,500.

Today’s figures follow a report last week showing the U.S. added fewer jobs than forecast in December, underscoring the concern of Federal Reserve policy makers about the labor market. Economic growth may need to accelerate further and encourage companies to ramp up the hiring necessary to reduce the unemployment rate.

“Firms won’t go out and hire a lot of people until they’re confident that demand is increasing,” Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James & Associates Inc. in St. Petersburg, Florida, said before the report. “Demand is improving but it isn’t enough.”

COMMENT:  An economy is based partly on psychological perception, and the indicators of the last week will not improve that perception. 

Let's see how the mainstream media spins this.  As we've seen this week, it's already in 2012 mode, protecting President Obama, and it will be a formidable force in his corner, as it was in 2008.

January 13, 2011      Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 8:41 A.M. ET:  In one of the most informed analyses of why the left went berserk this week in its attacks on Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, Daniel Henninger of The Wall Street Journal recalls the intellectual basis for much left-wing thought:

What happened in November has to be stopped, by whatever means become available. Available this week was a chance to make some independents wonder if the tea parties, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Jared Loughner are all part of the same dark force.

Who believes this? They do.

The divide between this strain of the American left and its conservative opponents is about more than politics and policy. It goes back a long way, it is deep, and it will never be bridged. It is cultural, and it explains more than anything the "intensity" that exists now between these two competing camps. (The independent laments: "Can't we all just get along?" Answer: No.)

The Rosetta Stone that explains this tribal divide is Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter's classic 1964 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Hofstadter's piece for Harper's may be unfamiliar to many now, but each writer at the opening of this column knows by rote what Hofstadter's essay taught generations of young, left-wing intellectuals about conservatism and the right.

After Hofstadter, the American right wasn't just wrong on policy. Its people were psychologically dangerous and undeserving of holding authority for any public purpose. By this mental geography, the John Birch Society and the tea party are cut from the same backwoods cloth.

COMMENT:  Henninger is correct, and I would go beyond his comments.  The cultural divide even includes such items as how someone speaks, the schools someone attended, and, of course, the part of the country from which someone came.

It was only a few years after Hofstadter wrote his essay that the left erupted over Vietnam, and over its dislike of Lyndon Johnson's culture, the way he spoke, his Texas roots.  He wasn't Kennedy.  He didn't have the right diploma.  And Texas was quasi-Southern.  In fact, the hatred against Johnson, a hatred that ignored his vast contributions to civil-rights legislation in 1964, began right after he was inaugurated, and he never overcame it.  He won the 1964 election only because his opponent, Barry Goldwater, was perceived as outside mainstream American politics.

The cultural divide explains much about the attacks on Sarah Palin.  True, she's created some of her own problems.  But had she been from Massachusetts, had she attended Wellesley, had she been pro-choice, the reaction would have been entirely different.

January 13, 2011       Permalink

MEANWHILE, IN THE REAL WORLD – AT 8:23 A.M. ET:  The Arizona shootings have understandably taken our eye off other issues, like an economy whose recovery is ultra-fragile.  Consider this, from Fox:

The bleakest year in the foreclosure crisis has only just begun.

Lenders are poised to take back more homes this year than any other since the U.S. housing meltdown began in 2006. About 5 million borrowers are at least two months behind on their mortgages and more will miss payments as they struggle with job losses and loans worth more than their home's value, industry analysts forecast.

"2011 is going to be the peak," said Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at foreclosure tracker RealtyTrac Inc.
The outlook comes after banks repossessed more than 1 million homes in 2010, RealtyTrac said Thursday. That marked the highest annual tally of properties lost to foreclosure on records dating back to 2005.

One in 45 U.S. households received a foreclosure filing last year, or a record high of 2.9 million homes. That's up 1.67 percent from 2009.

COMMENT:  This is a catastrophe, but doesn't get much play in the mainstream media.  I can't think of much that is worse economically than a family losing its home. 

We were given "good" employment news last week, only to find out later that it wasn't very good at all.  The unemployment rate went down, but only because more and more people are leaving the work force.  If the employment picture doesn't actually improve, and if foreclosures escalate, the political implications for the president and his party can be grave.  Unless there is a major foreign crisis, the economy will still dominate our political discussion.

January 13, 2011       Permalink

ARE THEY HAPPY NOW? – AT 8:09 A.M. ET:  We warned about this just a few days ago, after the anti-Palin hysteria started.  From ABC News:

An aide close to Sarah Palin says death threats and security threats have increased to an unprecedented level since the shooting in Arizona, and the former Alaska governor's team has been talking to security professionals.

Since the shooting in Tucson, Palin has taken much heat for her "crosshairs" map that targeted 20 congressional Democrats in the 2010 mid-term election, including that of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was the main target of Saturday's attack.

Friends say Palin, a possible 2012 contender, was galled as suggestions of her role in the tragedy have swirled.

COMMENT:  This increase in threats against Palin was inevitable.  Yet, I still have not heard anyone on the left denounce them.  President Obama could be gracious and order the FBI to investigate the threats, and he could even offer Palin some temporary federal security protection, for she may actually need it.

I have rarely seen the kind of viciousness that has been directed at Sarah Palin this week. 

January 13, 2011    Permalink