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JANUARY 27,  2011

BULLETIN – AT 6:29 P.M. ET:  The Illinois Supreme Court, in a unanimous 7-0 decision, has just put Rahm Emanuel back on the ballot as a candidate for mayor of Chicago.  Absentee voting begins Monday.  The election is February 22nd.

Rahm Emanuel can run for mayor, the Illinois Supreme Court has ruled. In a 7 to 0 decision, the court Thursday said an appellate court erred in taking Emanuel off the ballot earlier in the week.

COMMENT:  Good decision.  Voting is the heart of democracy.  To take someone off a ballot because of an extreme interpretation of residency requirements is a very bad thing.  Let the people decide.

This is important nationally because Illinois is a critical state, and the mayor of Chicago wields substantial political clout. 

This will probably help Obama in Illinois, as Emanuel is Obama's man there, but he really doesn't need much help in his home state.  At any rate, we have to call 'em as we see 'em, and this was a wise decision.  No person, of whatever party,  should lose his or her residency when going to Washington to serve in an administration.

January 27, 2011       Permalink

AND NOW THE DETAILS – AT 6:14 P.M. ET:  We can talk about cutting the budget, but we must be careful of what we cut:

OTTAWA, Canada (AP) — Defense Secretary Robert Gates is accusing Congress of dumping what he calls a "crisis on my doorstep" by holding the Pentagon to last year's spending levels.

He said this has the potential to create a $23 billion budget gap this year that could weaken a wartime military.

Gates says it is increasingly likely that Congress will not act on the Pentagon's 2011 budget request — which would have the effect of forcing the Pentagon to make do with last year's amount.

Gates is warning of emergency cuts to make ends meet.

COMMENT:  Gates is one of the grownups in this administration.  When he speaks, we should listen.  Irresponsible cuts in defense only mortgage our future, and bring us back to the pre- World War II days.  Yes, the defense budget must be examined for excess and unneeded acquisitions, but when Bob Gates says he has a problem that could weaken our defenses, responsible people must listen.

January 27, 2011       Permalink

WHAT WAS THAT HE SAID? – AT 9:11 A.M. ET:   President Obama's lavish statement, during the State of the Union speech, that "we've broken the back of this" recession, has come under critical scrutiny.  Eyebrows were raised, right up to the ceiling.  Jim Geraghty of NRO notes why:

In December 2010, nonfarm payroll employment decreased in 35 states and the District of Columbia and increased in 15 states. The largest over-the-month employment decreases were in New York (-22,800), Minnesota (-22,400), Florida (-17,900), and Georgia (-17,500). The largest over-the-month percentage decreases in employment occurred in Minnesota (-0.8 percent), Alabama and Hawaii (-0.7 percent each), and Delaware and Georgia (-0.5 percent each). The largest over-the-month increases in employment occurred in Texas (+20,000) and South Carolina (+9,000). The largest over-the-month percentage increases in employment were in Idaho (+0.6 percent), Montana and South Carolina (+0.5 percent each), and Alaska (+0.4 percent).

That actually reverses a favorable (although small) trend during most of the year.  We are far from out of the woods.

I wasn't surprised to see my state of New York lead the way in employment decreases in December.  New York is now the largest out-migration state in the country.  High taxes.  Poor job prospects.  A state government that is practically bankrupt.  Who could ask for anything more?

January 27, 2011      Permalink

SNIPPET OF THE DAY – AT 8:55 A.M. ET: 

From The Politico:  Visiting Iowa for a movie premiere, Nevada Republican Sharron Angle wouldn’t rule out a run for president.  “I’ll just say I have lots of options for the future, and I’m investigating all my options,” Angle said Wednesday when asked whether she was considering a bid for the White House, the Des Moines Register reported.

One option she has, and that she should seriously consider, is shutting up.  Sharron Angle botched a Senate campaign against Harry Reid that had been seen as an easy pickup for our side.  She needs re-training in a secure facility.

January 27, 2011      Permalink

OH DEAR, OH DEAR, GET THE WHITE-OUT...BEFORE THEY NOTICE – AT 8:40 A.M. ET:  It appears that another piece of "climate change" research – you know, that "settled science" – has fallen apart.  From Britain's Telegraph:

Researchers have discovered that contrary to popular belief half of the ice flows in the Karakoram range of the Himalayan mountains are actually growing rather than shrinking.

The discovery adds a new twist to the row over whether global warming is causing the world's highest mountain range to lose its ice cover.

It further challenges claims made in a 2007 report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the glaciers would be gone by 2035.

Although the head of the panel Dr Rajendra Pachauri later admitted the claim was an error gleaned from unchecked research, he maintained that global warming was melting the glaciers at "a rapid rate," threatening floods throughout north India.

The new study by scientists at the Universities of California and Potsdam has found that half of the glaciers in the Karakoram range, in the northwestern Himlaya, are in fact advancing and that global warming is not the deciding factor in whether a glacier survives or melts.

COMMENT:  When is this country going to finally establish a blue-ribbon commission, like the Challenger commission, to get to the bottom of this?  The farce has gone on long enough, especially the farce involving data supplied by the UN, that great center of integrity and righteousness.

A commission, made up of experts of unimpeachable reputations, could determine what we know, what we don't know, and what we should know, to make valid choices.  This is long overdue.

Why don't we have such a commission?  I suspect it's because there are powerful interests, with financial stakes, involved in the whole shady enterprise of "climate change."

January 27, 2011       Permalink

DETAILS, DETAILS, WHO NEEDS DETAILS? – AT 8:31 A.M. ET:  There are these little problems with Obamacare.  Why do people bring them up and ruin the party?  From Fox:

WASHINGTON -- Two of the central promises of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law are unlikely to be fulfilled, Medicare's independent economic expert told Congress on Wednesday.

The landmark legislation probably won't hold costs down, and it won't let everybody keep their current health insurance if they like it, Chief Actuary Richard Foster told the House Budget Committee. His office is responsible for independent long-range cost estimates.

You may be certain that some ultra-libs in the Obama administration are researching the possibility of sending this cat to Guantanamo.  That's the way they did it in Mother Russia, didn't they?

Foster's assessment came a day after Obama in his State of the Union message told lawmakers that he's open to improvements in the law, but unwilling to rehash the health care debate of the past two years. Republicans want to repeal the landmark legislation that provides coverage to more than 30 million people now uninsured, but lack the votes.

Foster was asked by Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., for a simple true or false response on two of the main assertions made by supporters of the law: that it will bring down unsustainable medical costs and will let people keep their current health insurance if they like it.

On the costs issue, "I would say false, more so than true," Foster responded.

As for people getting to keep their coverage, "not true in all cases."

COMMENT:  The truth comes out, drip by drip.  Why couldn't this have been determined before the law was passed?  Now it is up to the Republicans to come up with fixes, get them passed, and take the credit.  That's the way the game is played.

January 27, 2011       Permalink

EGYPT ON THE BRINK – AT 8:08 A.M. ET:  Egypt is the heart of the Arab world, and a key ally (so to speak) of the United States in the Mideast.  But the authoritarian government of Egypt is being threatened by the same kind of unrest that recently toppled the government of Tunisia. 

CAIRO (AP) — Egyptian activists protested for a third day as social networking sites called for a mass rally in the capital Cairo after Friday prayers, keeping up the momentum of the country's largest anti-government protests in years.

The outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest and best organized opposition group, has thrown its support behind the demonstrations and if its significant support base joins Friday demonstrations, it will be a big boost to the grassroots movement calling for the ouster of longtime President Hosni Mubarak.

The protesters could also be energized by the imminent return of Mohammed ElBaradei, a Nobel peace laureate and the country's top pro-democracy advocate. ElBaradei is expected to return Thursday night.

The 82-year-old Mubarak, who has led Egypt for nearly 30 years, has not been seen in public or heard from since the protests began Tuesday with tens of thousands marching in Cairo and a string of other cities. The protesters have vented rage over the government's neglect of poverty, unemployment and rising prices.

The demonstrations pose the most serious challenge to date to Mubarak's authoritarian rule and culminate a steady rise in discontent that had already raised serious questions about how long he can keep his grip on power.

COMMENT:  The United States has issued a lukewarm, pro forma declaration in general support of "rights," but the spread of democracy has never been a priority of this administration.  Lebanon has now slipped under almost complete Hezbollah control, which means Iranian control, and there is rioting in Yemen, a terrorist hotbed.

We seem to have been caught off guard...again.  And of course the old Arabists who hang around Washington and the Middle East "studies" departments of our universities don't have much to say at all. 

We project weakness under Obama, and no one in the Mideast seems to listen to us, or to care at all what we say.

January 27, 2011     Permalink

JANUARY 26,  2011

LOOK, IT'S MUCH LESS EXPENSIVE THAN AN AIR TICKET – AT 8:34 P.M. ET:  Another traveler arrives in America.  From the Los Angeles Times:

U.S. border authorities have arrested a controversial Muslim cleric who was deported from Canada to Tunisia three years ago and was caught earlier this month trying to sneak into California inside the trunk of a BMW, according to court documents.

At least he got to ride in a luxury car.

Said Jaziri, the former Imam of a Muslim congregation in Montreal, was hidden inside a car driven by a San Diego-area man who was pulled over by U.S. Border Patrol agents near an Indian casino east of San Diego. Jaziri allegedly paid a Tijuana-based smuggling group $5,000 to get him across the border near Tecate, saying he wanted to be taken to a “safe place anywhere in the U.S.”

The arrest marks the unexpected resurfacing of the 43-year-old cleric, whose protracted legal battle to avoid deportation drew headlines in Canada. A Tunisian immigrant, Jaziri was deported for failing to disclose a criminal conviction in France while applying for refugee status in the mid-1990s.

But Jaziri’s supporters said he was targeted for his fundamentalist views: Jaziri backed Sharia law for Canadian Muslims and led protests over the publication of the prophet Muhammad cartoons in a Danish newspaper in 2006.

Another champion of freedom of the press.

Jaziri is being held as a material witness in the criminal case against the BMW’s driver, Kenneth Robert Lawler, who has been charged with immigrant smuggling. He is at the San Luis Detention Facility near Yuma, Ariz., according to his attorney, Wayne Charles Mayer. His bond has been set at $25,000.

COMMENT:  As an act of compassion, someone should tell the imam what rights he has as an illegal immigrant to California.  Education.  Social welfare.  The latest plastic surgery.  Let's show that this isn't a war against Islam.

January 26, 2011      Permalink

THE UNNOTICED MOMENT – AT 7:06 P.M. ET:  You've all been reading analyses of the State of the Union message, even though it's already been forgotten.  The 24-hour news cycle requires endless coverage of the same story, if only a speech.

Overall, my reading of the punditocracy is 1) the speech was highly political, 2) designed to position Mr. Obama for 2012;  2) it was well delivered and seemed to make an initial positive impression on the American people, if most flash polls are to be believed; 3) but it lacked detail and tended to be a desirable laundry list with no means of paying for it.

In addition, many pundits criticized the president for the thinness of his foreign-policy comments.

I'd like to bring up something else, and I'm surprised no one has noticed it:  There was a point in the speech when the president spoke of the probability of some cuts in the defense budget.  This was unsurprising.  But then he said that some people wanted even deeper cuts.  There was an immediate burst of applause, and it was not from a small number of people.  What we heard was the left wing of the Democratic Party in the House and Senate, the wing that now firmly controls the party, the wing that has little or no interest in national defense.

When Harry S. Truman ran in 1948, he confronted the segregationist wing of his party, which promptly walked out of the Democratic National Convention and backed Strom Thurmond in his third-party bid for president.  What many don't recall is that Truman also confronted the small, but vociferous hard left of his party, refusing to bow to their demands for appeasement of their darling Soviet Union.  Truman's ally in this struggle was Eleanor Roosevelt.  The hard left, following the segregationists, also bolted the party and backed Henry Wallace, who had been Franklin D. Roosevelt's third-term vice president, for president.

The leftists, and their spiritual heirs, eventually drifted back into the Democratic Party in the sixties, some to oppose the Vietnam War, others as part of the civil-rights and feminist movements.  They gained control of the party in 1972 with their nomination of George McGovern, and they have been a significant force ever since, coming into their own with the election of Barack Obama in 2008.  They are far out of the mainstream, representing perhaps 18-20% of the American people.  They oppose the war on terror, or any other war America might fight, favor the nanny state, and believe that democracy is the thing that happens when they win. 

The fullness of that applause – applause for the further disarming of America – was frightening.  These people must be defeated, for the future of this country depends on it.

January 26, 2011      Permalink

A TALE OF TWO ECONOMIES – AT 6:32 P.M. ET:  There is the Wall Street economy, and then there's the real economy, and they are not meeting, which is dangerous:

From CNBC:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 8.25 points, or 0.07 percent, to close at 11,985.44, ending below the psychologically important 12,000 level after rising as high as 12,020.52 during the session. It was still the highest close for the Dow since June 19, 2008, which was the last day the Dow closed above the benchmark.

And...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Buyers purchased the fewest number of new homes last year on records going back 47 years.

Sales for all of 2010 totaled 321,000, a drop of 14.4 percent from the 375,000 homes sold in 2009, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. It was the fifth consecutive year that sales have declined after hitting record highs for the five previous years when the housing market was booming.

COMMENT:  Gee, I thought Democratic administrations helped the average guy.  Did I miss something?  And wasn't Obama the man of the people?  Did I miss something there, too?

I'd better read between the lines.

January 26, 2011      Permalink

INEXCUSABLE – AT 10:01 A.M. ET:  I like Michelle Bachmann.  She's a smart, attractive lawyer and Republican member of Congress.  She's far better informed than another attractive Republican I like, Sarah Palin.  True, she has a history of making gaffes, but she seems to have brought that problem under control.

However, Bachmann's decision to give a televised response to the State of the Union address last night, speaking on behalf of the Tea Party, was ill-considered.   It turned her from a potential national leader into a rogue politician, speaking for a militant faction.  Paul Ryan gave the official Republican response, and Bachmann, perhaps unintentionally, undercut him.  There must be a unified response.

Bachmann tried to get into the GOP House leadership, and was turned down.  Inevitably, some observers are now saying that she harbors a grudge, thus her own rogue role last night.

In addition, she strangely seemed to be looking away during her remarks, not into the camera, ruining the chance of any real, human connection with the TV audience.  That has now been explained.  It turns out that there were two cameras, one provided by the Tea Party for its own video streaming, the other the pool camera for the TV networks.  Bachmann chose the Tea Party lens, a mistake in terms of numbers of potential viewers.

The camera issue was inexcusable.  The chance to address a TV audience is rare for any politician, and to have it botched by camera confusion simply doesn't happen in the grown-up leagues.

The GOP leadership must now sit down with the Tea Partiers and stress the need for unity, a unity absolutely vital if we have any chance at all of unseating Barack Obama in 2012.  And Michelle Bachmann, who has many gifts, must determine her own role.  The ideal role would be a bridge between Tea Partiers and the GOP establishment, with an eye toward strengthening the conservative cause.

And no more camera problems.

January 26, 2011      Permalink

SNIPPET OF THE DAY – AT 9:40 A.M. ET:

From Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace:  We reported earlier that Lauren Booth, sister-in-law of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, had converted to Islam. Now she is touring Muslim countries with a radical group called Viva Palestina demanding that her in-law by tried for the invasion of Iraq. (The fact that Saddam Hussein regularly killed devout Muslims who opposed his rule doesn’t seem to factor into her thinking.) Oh, and she also says that it’s Western women who are oppressed. She learned that tidbit in Iran. It appears to me that her “conversion” has less to do with a religious experience and more to do with joining a cult.

Family dinner will really be fun for the Blairs.  Wish we were there.

January 26, 2011      Permalink

FLUNKING SCIENCE – AT 9:02 A.M. ET:  Well, the president was right on one thing last night...we are falling behind in science.  And one reason is that our schools either aren't teaching it very well, or our kids aren't learning it, or both.  From AP:

UNITED STATES - Scores released Tuesday from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress indicate there are still vast numbers of students with rudimentary levels of science knowledge.

Just 1 percent of high school seniors scored at the advanced level. Twenty-one percent scored as proficient, while another 40 percent were considered below basic.

The test was updated in 2009 and couldn't be compared with previous years.

A member of the board that oversees the exam says the low number of advanced-level students means there is a small pipeline of those likely to pursue science and technology careers.

And yet, as Michelle Malkin points out, in a fine piece of reporting, there really is no money shortage, no "investment" shortage in our educational system:

Our government already spends more per capita on education than any other of the 34 wealthiest countries in the world except for Switzerland, according to recent analysis of data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Overall inflation-adjusted K-12 spending has tripled over the past 40 years, the Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy points out. Yet American test scores and graduation rates are stagnant. One in 10 high schools is a dropout factory. And our students’ performance in one of the most prestigious global math competitions has been so abysmal that the U.S. simply withdrew altogether.

Maybe, shock, we should ask how the money is being spent.  Oh, excuse me.  We can't do that.  It would be oppressive.  It would also violate the sanctity of "academic freedom."  And, Heaven forbid, it might do violence to our respect for "cultural choices." 

What Malkin's statistics prove is that money is not the answer to educational mediocrity.  Educational excellence is the answer.  And educational excellence isn't what most schools are about. 

We might add that teacher-training schools are often more concerned about instilling leftist ideas in future teachers than in training them to instill high standards.  Why should we be surprised at the result?

January 26, 2011      Permalink

THE KING'S SPEECH – AT 8:48 A.M. ET:  They are noticing.  Some pundits are waking up to the reality that the president of the United States had so little to say about foreign policy in his speech last night.  It is shocking.  Foreign policy is the province of the president, and he is commander-in-chief of a military at war.  Yet foreign policy seemed like a footnote at the end of the State of the Union.  If we are attacked again in this country, it won't be because we don't have high-speed rail, but you'd never know it.

Jackson Diehl, at the Washington Post:

The focus of this State of the Union address was domestic rather than foreign -- and perhaps properly so, given Americans' continuing preoccupation with the economy. Even in that context, though, President Obama's portrait of U.S. engagement in the world was thin -- and weak.

By Obama's account, the most important American foreign initiatives in 2011 will be retreats -- the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. The president portrayed the two wars not as vital missions but as loose ends to be wrapped up. In Iraq, he said, "we finish the job of bringing our troops out" -- even though Iraq's pro-Western parties, such as the Kurds, would like at least some American soldiers to stay. In Afghanistan, "we will begin to bring our troops home." Never mind defeating the Taliban -- Obama didn't set that goal.

What of Middle East peace, a great focus of Obama's first two years? The president didn't mention it. Nor did he discuss the spreading popular unrest in the Arab Middle East, other than to say that the United States "stands with the people of Tunisia," whatever that might mean. The efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, and North Korea from expanding its arsenal, were covered with perfunctory phrases.

And British observer Nile Gardiner, whom we've often quoted:

For the second year running, President Obama has demonstrated that he is no world leader, and frankly has little interest at all in foreign policy.

The war in Afghanistan was barely a blip on the president’s teleprompter. With over 100,000 American troops on the ground fighting the Taliban in defence of the United States and the free world, one would have expected the president to have dedicated more than a miserly 132 words to the war effort and the stakes involved. There was no sense from the president of a plan for victory in Afghanistan, or the wider importance of the conflict within the context of a global war against Islamist terrorism, which he resolutely refuses to even identify.

Similarly, the Iranian nuclear crisis, arguably the biggest foreign policy challenge facing the Obama administration in 2011, was barely mentioned, meriting a single, rather pathetic line in the speech. Nor was there any declaration of support for dissidents in Iran, or a clear signal that the United States stands with those who are being brutally suppressed by the Islamist dictatorship.

Again in a major speech, Barack Obama has shied away from taking a clear stand on human rights issues, in marked contrast to predecessors including George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. The plight of hundreds of millions living under tyranny, from Burma to Zimbabwe to North Korea, was ignored altogether. No US administration in living memory has paid less attention to the spread of liberty and freedom across the world than the Obama presidency, and this was glaringly apparent in Obama’s State of the Union address.

COMMENT:  Accurate comments, but will the president's foreign-policy debacle have much effect at the polls in 2012?  Absent an attack on our soil, I would tend to doubt it.  Americans are focused on the economy.

Historians have pointed out that the Great Depression of the 1930s was one of the causes of World War II, because citizens of the democracies were so focused on their economic plight, and had little patience for discussion of the military buildup in fascist countries.  History doesn't repeat itself, but the psychology of history repeats itself, and that is what we might be seeing.  The attacks of 9-11 have faded into memory, and Americans are being lulled into complacency once again.

January 26, 2011      Permalink

WHILE WE SLEEP – AT 8:29 A.M. ET:  We've been focusing on the State of the Union speech, but much has been happening in the Middle East, and much of it can cause dangerous convulsions.  Once again, the "reach out" administration has been caught off guard, and has been reaching out to the wrong people.  From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — As the Obama administration confronts the spectacle of angry protesters and baton-wielding riot police officers from Tunisia to Egypt to Lebanon, it is groping for a plan to deal with an always-vexing region that is now suddenly spinning in dangerous directions.

In Egypt, where a staunch ally, President Hosni Mubarak, faced the fiercest protests in years on Tuesday, and Lebanon, where a Hezbollah-backed government is taking shape, the administration is grappling with volatile, potentially hostile forces that have already realigned the region’s political landscape.

Add Tunisia, where a popular revolt overthrew the government.  The president, in his speech last night, finally got around to supporting the people against the dictator, but it was an afterthought...the same mistake he made in being too slow to support the Iranian people in their uprising against the mullahs.

These were surprising turns. But even the administration’s signature project in the region — Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations — became even more intractable this week, with the publication of confidential documents detailing Palestinian concessions offered in talks with Israel. The disclosure makes it less likely that the Palestinians will agree to any further concessions.

In interviews in recent days, officials acknowledged that the United States had limited influence over many actors in the region, and that the upheaval in Egypt, in particular, could scramble its foreign-policy agenda.

What?  We have limited influence?  Even with a demigod in the White House?  Why, why, I'm crushed.  Weren't we told that this president could wave his hand across the landscape and change the world?  Weren't the oceans going to recede right after Inauguration Day? 

No.

Our foreign policy in the Mideast is falling apart.  We don't seem to have one in Latin America, and the North Koreans get away with what they want to get away with.  China seems similarly unimpressed with godliness at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

A very bump year coming up.

January 26, 2011     Permalink