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TO OUR READERS:  Please click on Urgent Agenda several times during the day.  We hope, in 2011, depending on the news, to put up at least one post during the afternoon hours, so there'll always be something new to read.  So visit us regularly.

JANUARY 20,  2011

THE HANDOUT SOCIETY – AT 9:08 P.M. ET:  First the cities, and then it will be the states.  The script is certain.  From Fox:

Grappling with a brutal economic climate, more than 200 of the nation's mayors have descended upon Washington to urge President Obama to help cities out of the fiscal morass they find themselves in as state and federal aid dries up.

Several mayors, attending the annual National Conference of Mayors, met behind closed doors with the president and Vice President Biden on Thursday afternoon. Job creation is high on the agenda as the local executives push the administration to help find work in America's cities and townships, where 85 percent of the nation's population resides.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said the group had a "great meeting" in which the president said he would focus on economic development and "the need for the federal government to partner with cities."

"What was clear to me, this is a president who is focused on our cities," Villaraigosa said after the meeting.

More than one-third of the nation's 363 metro areas are expected to have unemployment rates higher than 10 percent at the end of 2011, according to a report released by the conference and Global Insight.

COMMENT:  I don't think there's any chance the House will vote for handouts for cities, especially those known to be profligate.  The question is whether the president has the power to use funds artfully by directing them to cities, in the absence of a specific law preventing it. 

Don't be shocked if state governments follow the mayors to D.C.  California is against the wall, New York is pinned to the wall, and Illinois is through the wall. 

The answer, of course, is twofold:  1) make the economy grow; 2) cut government spending.  There are some signs that both New York State and New York City are starting to confront the demands of public-service unions.  That's nice, but I want to read the fine print in any contracts that are signed.

January 20, 2011      Permalink

NOT A GREAT SIGN – AT 5:05 P.M. ET:  What is the state of the economy?  Who knows?  Numbers are contradictory, but one thing that's clear is that the housing sector is anemic.  The bubble really has burst, and some economists feel the end of the pain is not near.  Inevitably, this has political implications.  The election year is 11 months away.  From Bloomberg:

Builders began work on fewer homes than projected in December, a sign the industry that triggered the recession continued to struggle more than a year into the U.S. economic recovery.

Housing starts fell 4.3 percent to a 529,000 annual rate, the lowest level since October 2009, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey called for a 550,000 rate. A jump in building permits, a proxy for future construction, may reflect attempts to get approval before changes in building codes took effect at the beginning of this year.

ompanies like KB Homes and Lennar Corp. project demand will be slow to rebound as elevated unemployment and mounting foreclosures discourage buyers. While low borrowing costs and falling prices are helping revive sales from last year’s post tax-credit slump, Federal Reserve policy makers are concerned housing may undermine the economic expansion.

COMMENT:  Unless some foreign catastrophe intervenes, the economy will remain the dominant political issue.  We are still facing high unemployment and a sagging housing market.  Unless these indicators improve, Mr. Obama could be in serious political trouble next year...assuming the public blames his administration for the continued distress. 

But don't underestimate the Obama political machine.  They will attempt to blame the Republican House for extending the recession, just as Harry S. Truman blamed the "Republican do-nothing Congress" in 1948, and won the presidency against huge odds. 

Further, don't ignore the power of the price of gas at the pump.  It continues to rise, just as the Obamans are making additional drilling in the U.S. extraordinarily difficult.  Nothing like a kamikaze economic policy.

January 20, 2011       Permalink

WHERE OBAMA STANDS WITH VOTERS – AT 9:35 A.M. ET:  A new poll shows a fascinating divide by age in public perception of the president.  From The Politico: 

While a new poll shows Americans are sharply divided over whether President Barack Obama’s first two years in office have been a success or failure, a substantially larger percentage of voters over 50 see him as a failure compared with those under that age.

In a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Thursday to mark the second anniversary of Obama’s inauguration, 45 percent of voters under 50 say he’s been a failure and 47 percent believe he’s succeeded, compared with a majority - 51 percent - of adults over 50 who think he’s failed and 45 percent saying he’s done well...

...Overall, Americans are closely split on their view of Obama’s first two years, with 45 percent saying they consider his presidency a success, while 48 percent said it’s been a failure.

Americans aged 50 to 64 are the most negative on Obama, with 56 percent saying they consider his presidency a failure, while 41 percent consider it a success, CNN found. However, people over 65 see the first two years in a more positive light, with 46 percent of those over 65 saying they see the first two years as a success, while 44 percent say they’ve been a failure.

Americans ages 35 to 49 also aren’t happy with Obama’s first term. Only 38 percent of them say Obama’s been a success, while 51 percent said he’s been a failure.

COMMENT:  That is not exactly a ringing endorsement, but neither should it mean that Republicans can be complacent.  You can't beat somebody with nobody, and right now the GOP has nobody in the presidential sweepstakes who is a favorite to beat Obama in 2012.  The party has historically been rigid about presidential nominees, tending to choose "the next in line," rather than trying for something daring.

Daring may do it.  Next in line will not.

January 20, 2011      Permalink

SNIPPET OF THE DAY – AT 9:23 A.M. ET:

From WorldNetDaily:  Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie suggested in an interview published today that a long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate for Barack Obama may not exist within the vital records maintained by the Hawaii Department of Health.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.  I can almost hear the can of worms being reopened.  Say Neil, I hear it's in a cookie jar buried just outside Pearl Harbor.

January 20, 2011      Permalink

TIME OUT FOR GOOD NEWS – AT 9:05 A.M. ET:  Amidst the gloom, there is sometimes a ray of light.  We don't see much good news about education, but here is some...from Britain.  Some in the mother country are waking up to the enormous damage the left has done to the educational system, and steps are being taken.  Americans, please copy.  From London's Telegraph:

Children will be expected to learn the kings and queens of England, read great works of literature and master mental arithmetic under the biggest shake-up of the national curriculum for more than 20 years.

Yay.  They can even include George III.  We won't mind.

A major review of school subjects – launched today – is expected to lead to a focus on the essential knowledge pupils should grasp at each key stage of their education.

The move is intended to reverse more than a decade of dumbing down of primary and secondary school subjects in favour of trendy skills-based lessons and “cross-curricular themes”.

Yeah, we know.  It happened here, too.

Launching the review, the Coalition said the last Government stripped vital content from the national curriculum, leaving pupils with a poor understanding of English literature, maths, science, foreign languages, history and geography.

Reforms introduced in 2007 saw key historical figures such as Winston Churchill cut from the secondary school history curriculum, the Coalition said.

Mustn't talk of victory.  Much too upsetting.

The secondary geography curriculum fails to cover a single country other than the UK, it was claimed, while the names of all continents, rivers, oceans, mountains and cities have also been deleted.

And pupils taking music in secondary schools are not obliged to study a specified composer, musician or piece of music.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said “profound mistakes” made with the curriculum by Labour led to England plummeting in international league tables.

Already, teachers' groups are expressing anguish and pain.  This is a typical comment:

Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT union, said: “Teachers want another curriculum review like a hole in the head. This is a pointless review when ministers have already determined that children should have a 1950s-style curriculum."

Yup.  Give us a good 1950's curriculum, updated with developments since.  Kids in the 50's learned well, and standards were higher and more disciplined.  What's wrong with that?

January 20, 2011      Permalink

REALISM ON IRAN – AT 8:40 A.M. ET:  There's been much optimistic talk recently that Iran's nuclear program may have been set back by American/Israeli sabotage and the effect of tougher sanctions.  There is a real danger we'll be lulled to sleep.  Now, an important American scientific organization is trying to jolt us back to reality.  From Fox:

ISTANBUL -- The U.S. is joining five other world powers for talks with Iran this week publicly confident that international efforts have slowed Tehran's capacity to make nuclear arms and created more time to press Tehran to accept curbs on its atomic activities.

But while diplomats and officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency -- the U.N. nuclear monitor -- agree that Iran's enrichment program has struggled over past years, the Federation of American Scientists warns against complacency.

It notes impressive improvements in the performance of the Iranian machines that enrich uranium -- an activity that has provoked U.N. sanctions because it could be used to make nuclear weapons.

Washington's message is essentially this: Iran is struggling with uranium enrichment, a process that can create both nuclear fuel and fissile warhead material. Significantly, that view is backed by Israel, Iran's implacable foe and considered to have the Mideast's best intelligence on Iran's nuclear strivings.

If true, that leaves more time to negotiate in hopes Iran will come around and give up enrichment -- thereby removing the threat of an Israeli or U.S. military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

But in a study shared ahead of publication with The Associated Press the Washington-based FAS argues that Iran last year appears to have increased efficiency of the machines that produce enriched uranium by 60 percent, giving it the technical capacity to produce enough material for a simple nuclear warhead in 5 months.

COMMENT:  Back to reality.  If true, this is a very alarming development, which makes the current diplomatic timetable instantly obsolete.  Combined with the crisis in Tunisia, instability in Egypt, and government collapse in Lebanon, it looks like an interesting year in the Mideast.  Guess all that outreach and warmth haven't produced much.

January 20, 2011      Permalink

ON THIS DATE – AT 8:01 A.M. ET:  This is the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of President Kennedy.  No matter how you feel about JFK, it is a moment to reflect on the event.

Kennedy was many things, some good and some not.  His family was more than problematical, his father a fascist sympathizer and minor-league bigot whose fortune made Jack Kennedy's career possible.  Kennedy himself had been a junior senator with an intellectual bent but one who'd made little impression in the Senate. 

I worked in the 1960 campaign as an aide to Senator Paul H. Douglas of Illinois, when I was on the other side politically.  Douglas's preference for president that year was Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri, the former secretary of the Air Force.  But he was close to Kennedy, whom he described to me as "brilliant, but cold."  It turned out to be an apt description.  We traveled with Kennedy often when he came to Illinois.  He was a dazzling performer up close, but had to work hard to overcome the feeling, far more widespread than history has acknowledged, that he was underprepared for the job of president.  The incumbent, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had been a five-star general in the same war in which Kennedy was a Navy lieutenant.  Americans noted the contrast.   

Kennedy's inauguration was the most dazzling Washington had seen, with movie stars dropping from the rafters.  For Jack Kennedy was glamour and poise.  Frank Sinatra, later to become estranged from the president, organized the entertainment.  It was Kennedy who brought Hollywood to Washington, big time.

And yet, although his name is constantly evoked by the Democratic Party, the fact remains that Jack Kennedy could not be nominated for president by his party today.  He was a national-defense liberal/centrist.  His stirring (although cliché-ridden) inaugural address would anger the controlling faction of today's Democratic Party, which would regard Kennedy as militaristic and nationalistic.  Kennedy's was the party of Harry Truman.  Today's party is the party of George McGovern and Barack Obama.

Say what you wish about Jack Kennedy and the privileges that allowed him to become president, but he did inspire a new generation of Americans to contribute, and he inspired them correctly – putting military service at the top. 

It might be wise today to go back and look at the Kennedy administration, with all its faults, and compare it, especially at the moment of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, with the Obama administration.  Kennedy, in his words, was willing to pay any price in defense of freedom.  Obama wants a discount. 

January 20, 2011     Permalink

JANUARY 19,  2011

THE HOUSE ACTS – AT 8:09 P.M. ET:  The House voted to repeal Obamacare today.  But Harry Reid has already said he won't permit the matter to come to the floor in the Senate.  So, the vote is symbolic:

House Republicans passed a bill to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care plan Wednesday, taking their first major step toward rolling back the massive overhaul that has dominated the American political landscape for almost two years.

The vote was 245 to 189, and unanimous GOP support gave the vote the same partisan feel of the March vote to pass the law, underscoring once again the hardened political lines of the health care debate. Only three Democrats backed the repeal, a smaller number than Republicans had once predicted.

COMMENT:  The Democratic number is disappointing, but remember that most of the Dems who would have voted with the GOP on this one were defeated in November, leaving the Democratic House delegation even more liberal than it already is.  I wouldn't be shocked if the Dems voted to extend Obamacare protection to Karl Marx.

January 19, 2011      Permalink

THE SOCIALIST IS RIGHT! – AT 6:31 P.M. ET:  Now, how often have you read that here?  I choke on the words.  I choke and gasp.  But (teeth grinding) socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont got something right today, and credit must be given, with reluctance.  From ABC News:

ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe reports: With Chinese President Hu Jintao in Washington this week for a state visit, one US senator is raising an uproar over the Smithsonian Museum selling products made in China, such as miniature sculptures of presidents.

The gift shop at the National Museum of American History – located right on the Mall in the nation’s capital – sells various miniature statues of presidents past and present, from George Washington to Barack Obama, that were manufactured in China.

“It appears that a museum owned by the people of the United States, celebrating the history of the United States, cannot find companies in this country employing American workers that are able to manufacture statues of our founding fathers, or our current president,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, said in a letter to the museum.

“That is pretty pathetic!” he exclaimed. “I was not aware that the collapse of our manufacturing base had gone that far.”

“As a nation,” he said, “we have all got to be aware that one of the major reasons that the unemployment rate in this country is so high is because it is increasingly difficult to find products in our nation’s stores that are manufactured in this country. Our national museum should do its best to be a model in helping us address that crisis situation.”

Sanders posted pictures of the statues on his website at http://sanders.senate.gov/statues.html.

COMMENT:   A Chinese Lincoln doesn't appeal to me either.  If Abe only knew.  

We've got to put America back to work.  If we can make B-29's, we can make those statues, dammit.  But I hope they leave out Carter. 

January 19, 2011      Permalink

BUT WE MUST ASK NO QUESTIONS – AT 6:16 P.M. ET:  Have you noticed that those who thoughtfully question the "science" of climate change are called anti-science, whereas those who blindly accept the climate-change line are called pro-science?  We're glad the skeptics are keeping up the fight, despite the smears.  Consider:

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A climate change study that projected a 2.4 degree Celsius increase in temperature and massive worldwide food shortages in the next decade was seriously flawed, scientists said Wednesday.
The study was posted on the website of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was written about by numerous international news agencies, including AFP.

But AAAS later retracted the study as experts cited numerous errors in its approach.

"A reporter with The Guardian alerted us yesterday to concerns about the news release submitted by Hoffman & Hoffman public relations," said AAAS spokeswoman Ginger Pinholster in an email to AFP.

"We immediately contacted a climate change expert, who confirmed that the information raised many questions in his mind, too. We swiftly removed the news release from our Web site and contacted the submitting organization."

Scientist Osvaldo Canziani, who was part of the 2007 Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was listed as the scientific advisor to the report.

The IPCC, whose figures were cited as the basis for the study's projections, and Al Gore jointly won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2007 "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change," the prize committee said at the time.

Ah yes, the Nobel Peace Prize.  Yasir Arafat, Jimmah Carter, Al Gore...  What an embarrassment.

Canziani's spokesman said Tuesday he was ill and was unavailable for interviews.

Probably got a bad cold from the sub-freezing temperatures.  Oh, they're caused by global warming.

COMMENT:  Dwight Eisenhower, in his farewell address delivered 50 years ago this week, warned of the influence of governmental grants on science.  He also warned about scientific elites with undue power.  We still have to worry about both.  It's time for first-class scientists with impeccable reputations to step forward and demand a Challenger-like investigation into the whole area of climate change, determining what is known and what is not. It's remarkable that this has not been done, but, alas, there's a lot of money involved in the climate-change industry.

January 19, 2011     Permalink

TODAY'S THE DAY – AT 9:26 A.M. ET:  Republicans in the House today will begin their control of that body in earnest by voting to repeal Obamacare.  It is only a symbolic vote, as Fox News reports, but it begins the long crusade to reform that pathetically flawed piece of legislation:

WASHINGTON -- The new Republican-controlled House of Representatives is certain to vote Wednesday to repeal President Barack Obama's health care reform. The Democratic-controlled Senate is just as certain to let the measure die.

Republicans and Democrats adopted a more civil tone without angry shouts as they debated the repeal legislation on the House floor Tuesday just 10 days after the shooting rampage in Arizona that left a Democratic congresswoman wounded and lawmakers of both parties stunned.

COMMENT:  Republicans must proceed with extreme caution here.  Americans don't like Obamacare, but they do want reform of the health-care system.  Republicans must come up with alternatives to replace unpopular provisions of the current law, while keeping the parts that are popular, like preventing people with preexisting conditions from being turned down for health insurance.  Republicans will not win public favor, and reelection in 2012, if they simply oppose. 

January 19, 2011      Permalink 

INDIGESTION AT THE WHITE HOUSE – AT 8:42 A.M. ET:  And it isn't coming from the state dinner for the visiting head of China.  It's coming from a hard-hitting piece by the great Fouad Ajami in today's Wall Street Journal, linking Hillary Clinton to the policies of...George W. Bush, and dissing President Obama at the same time: 

"In too many places, in too many ways, the region's foundations are sinking into the sand," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Arab autocrats in a remarkable speech in Qatar last week.

The Arab landscape all around her provided ample confirmation. In Tunisia, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, a despot who has been in power for nearly a quarter-century, was reeling. His people had conquered their fear and had taken to the streets. In Cairo, the Pharoah the Pax Americana has indulged through five American presidencies appeared to be losing his touch, his once-tolerant country engulfed by sectarian troubles between Muslims and Copts. Lebanon, which had once been a showcase of American success in the region, was once again in the throes of a political crisis.

But there was a truth that our secretary of state glided over. Sinking into the sand, too, is the worldview that informed President Obama's approach to the Middle East.

Ouch.  Major ouch. 

...the word went forth to the despots in the region that the American campaign on behalf of liberty that Mr. Bush had launched in 2003 had been called off. A new Iraqi democracy, midwifed by American power, was fighting for its life. The Obama administration would keep Iraq at arm's length.

This break of faith with democracy was put on cruel display in the summer of 2009, when the Iranians rose in revolt against their rulers. True, American diplomacy was not likely to alter the raw balance of power between the regime and its democratic oppositionists. But the timidity of American power, and the refusal of the Obama administration to embrace the cause of the opposition, must be reckoned one of American foreign policy's great moral embarrassments.

And...

It took the embattled Muslim liberals a while to catch on to the moral indifference of the Obama administration. But catch on they did, and in their unequal struggle with the tyrannies in their midst they have operated on the reasonable assumption that the leading liberal power in the world order had no interest in the promotion of their liberty.

But...

For a fleeting moment in Qatar, George W. Bush seemed to make a furtive return to the diplomatic arena. He was there, reincarnated in the person of Hillary Clinton, bearing that quintessential American message that our country cannot be indifferent to the internal arrangements of foreign lands. The Arab world presents a great strategic and moral challenge. These are states with a broken compact between rulers and ruled. The rulers produce the very terror and rage they propose to hold back. The oppositionists, meanwhile, are a great, troubling unknown.

COMMENT:  Fouad Ajami is a national treasure, a professor at Johns Hopkins who refuses to bend to the trendy thinking of the moment.  His whole column, one of the most important pieces of recent months, is worth reading.

The question, of course, is whether Hillary's speech in Qatar marks a change of policy, or was merely a case of her speaking out of turn.  We're being told this week that Mr. Obama will be taking a tougher line with China, during that country's leader's current visit, than he's taken before.  We'll see, and we'll see how long it lasts.

Obama is gearing up for the 2012 election, and his previous appeasement policies will not help him with the great American center.  Further, the far left in his party, which adores appeasement, really has nowhere else to go.

But if Obama is reelected, and no longer needs the voters...then what in foreign policy?  Do you feel a chill?

January 19, 2011     Permalink

SNIPPET OF THE DAY – AT 8:30 A.M. ET:

From the Toronto Sun:  Funnyman Seth Rogen was left stunned by a recent encounter with his moviemaking hero George Lucas - because the Star Wars director spent 20 minutes telling him the world would end in 2012...He recalls, “George Lucas sits down and seriously proceeds to talk for around 25 minutes about how he thinks the world is gonna end in the year 2012, like, for real. He thinks it."

Hollywood is taking careful notice, realizing what the end of the world would do to the "Star Wars" franchise.

January 19, 2011      Permalink

HERO BILL? – AT 8:14 A.M. ET:  When the term "political courage" is used, the name Bill Clinton doesn't usually come to mind.  But the former prez is showing some real guts this week by campaigning for his former aide, Rahm Emanuel, who's running for mayor of Chicago:

Washington (CNN) - Former President Bill Clinton came to Chicago on Tuesday to give a strong endorsement to his one-time aide Rahm Emanuel, who is the frontrunner in a heated primary race to determine who will be the next mayor.

"You need a big person for the job. Now Rahm is not even six feet tall. He probably weighs about 150 pounds...but in all the ways that matters he is a very big person for this job," Clinton told a crowd of several hundred.

Clinton's campaigning took courage because the black establishment in Chicago, which is stuck in the 1960s, resented the former president's endorsement of a white candidate.

"Bill Clinton doesn't live or vote in Chicago. He's an outsider parachuting in to support another outsider. For Clinton to come to Chicago on the day after Dr. King's birthday to insert himself into the middle of a mayoral race with major black and Latino candidates is a betrayal of the people who were most loyal to him. It's a mistake," Renee Ferguson, a spokeswoman for Carol Moseley-Braun, told CNN.

Absolutely disgraceful.  I think Dr. King would have been appalled by a statement like that, using his name.  As for Rahm Emanuel being an "outsider," he is a former congressman from...Chicago.

Good on you, Bill Clinton.  And we don't say that here too often.

January 19, 2011      Permalink

CORRECTION AND UPDATE – AT 8:00 A.M. ET:  Yesterday we reported on legal questions regarding Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her seat in Congress.

It turned out that the article we quoted contained an error.  We said that, under Arizona law, Congresswoman Giffords's seat in the House can be declared vacant if she cannot perform her duties for 90 days.  A subsequent article pointed out that this only applies to state and local officeholders.  Only the House of Representatives can declare a seat vacant...and that ain't gonna happen in the Giffords case. 

UPDATE:  Regarding the shooting yesterday at a Los Angeles high school, there seems to be some tentative acceptance by authorities that it was, somehow, an accident, although I still hope that claim is challenged and investigated.  What wasn't an accident was the student's bringing a pistol to school.  Apparently, screening of packages and backpacks at the school is haphazard.  The gun will probably be blamed.  It's a complicated story, as the L.A. Times notes:

Friends of the suspect said he was not known as a violent boy, but had brought the gun to school for his own protection.

"I think he was just scared," classmate Para Ross said, "Scared of what was going to happen when he left school and took the bus home. There are a lot of gangs around here. People are dying."

What a tragedy.  But race is involved, so authorities are treading carefully.  As I said, the gun will probably be blamed.

One of the wounded students was shot in the head and is critical.  The other student's wound, a neck wound, is not considered life-threatening.

January 19, 2011     Permalink