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AT OUR LATEST ANGEL'S CORNER:  READERS BLOG ABOUT THE DANGER OF RECKLESS DEFENSE CUTS; THE PROBLEM OF REPUBLICAN MODESTY; THE MOUTH OF JANE FONDA; AND THE MOUTH OF BARACK OBAMA; ASSIGNING BLAME IN THE DEBT DEBATE; SKEPTICISM ABOUT POLLING; AND MR. PARKINSON'S LAWS

JUNE 21,  2011

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE:

VULGARITY IN IRAN – Good friends Susan Kohen and Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi alert us to an Iranian tragedy.  A 32-year-old evangelical Christian pastor has been ordered by the regime to renounce his Christian faith or face execution.  This is one of a number of measures the regime has taken to crack down on Christianity within Iran.  And the pastor's lawyer has now been sentenced to prison by the authorities for daring to defend his client.  Note please the deep interest in these outrages by "intellectuals" in the West.  Sure.  They're more interested in whether the prisoners at Guantanamo get enough TV's and hi-fi systems.

SOME PEOPLE STAY TOO LONG – Mayor Mike Bloomberg of New York, a billionaire, has a certain daffiness that's come out more and more, as he pursues his third term as mayor.   One gets the feeling that most New Yorkers feel he's stayed in his chair a bit too long.  It has been announced that hizzoner will donate $50-million to a campaign to eliminate coal-fired power plants.  I'm not kidding you.  That's apparently the best cause Mayor Mike could find for 50 mil.  He might have considered giving $50-million in scholarships to the children of middle-aged workers laid off because of the financial shenanigans of the crony capitalists Bloomberg has known most of his life.  He could have asked them to match his gift.  But I guess we'll all sleep better knowing the mayor is on the coal patrol.

ANOTHER HOLLYWOOD BLUNDER – Yeah, I guess the golden age of Hollywood is truly over.  A new film for the young has just opened:  "Captain America:  The First Avenger."  It's set during World War II, and first reports say it gives a "nuanced" view of Adolf Hitler.  A nuanced view?  Apparently so.  And it's also apparent from the less than hardline denunciation of Hitler that the restraint was due to not wanting to offend the large German market.  Reportedly, Hollywood marketers think there's some nostalgia going on over there.  Next, look for a film depicting vicious American sailors attacking peaceful Japanese tourist planes over Pearl Harbor.  I always knew there was another side to the story.

NORTH CAROLINA WEAK FOR OBAMA – Obama carried the state in 2008.  North Carolina has changed over the years, with a large influx of researchers and suspicious northern types.  But the liberal trend may be ebbing.  Obama's job approval has dropped 14 points since May, with some 52% now expressing disapproval and 44% feeling positive about the president.  North Carolina, however, still has a large African-American population that is loyal to Obama.  Independents are fleeing him, though, with some 60% expressing disapproval. 

July 21, 2011     Permalink

TINY TIM – AT 10:09 A.M. ET:  Tim Pawlenty, former governor of Minnesota, and candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, is not having a good week.  From the Daily Caller:

As a result of Tim Pawlenty’s poor performance in its latest national poll, Public Policy Polling will no longer include the former Minnesota governor on the list of candidates it polls in a direct match-up against President Barack Obama at the state level. Pawlenty will still be included in PPP’s Republican primary polls.

PPP is set to release the results of its national poll this week. Teasing those results on Monday, Tom Jensen, PPP’s director, tweeted: “Rick Perry debuts in our national polling at 12%. Will replace Pawlenty in our state level general election polls because T-Paw is now 8th.”

He later clarified to The Daily Caller that Pawlenty was “only being dropped from our general election polling at the state level [from] the people we test against Obama. That’s limited to the top 5 in our national polling. He’ll still be in the Republican primary polling.”

COMMENT:  Pawlenty is a decent, competent guy, but his quiet personality counts against him, and doesn't have much cred with Republican primary voters.   He is being outdistanced by fellow Minnesotan, Michele Bachmann.  When Rick Perry gets into the race, I suspect Pawlenty will pretty much disappear. 

And then there's Jon Huntsman, the former governor of Utah, and Obama's ambassador to China, who announced his candidacy recently.  Anyone see him around?

July 21, 2011       Permalink

SNIPPET OF THE DAY – AT 9:52 A.M. ET:

BEIJING (AP) -- At first, it looks like a sleek Apple store. Sales assistants in blue T-shirts with the company's logo chat to customers. Signs advertising the iPad 2 hang from the white walls. Outside, the famous logo sits next to the words "Apple Store."  And that's the clue it's fake.  China, long known for producing counterfeit consumer gadgets, software and brand name clothing, has reached a new piracy milestone -- fake Apple stores.

Milestone?  Are they kidding?  They're nowhere near us.  Fake Apple Store?  We have a fake president.  Take that, China!  When you develop your own version of Barack Obama, give us a call...on an iPhone.

THIS WILL NOT HELP OBAMA'S APPROVAL – AT 9:31 A.M. ET:  The new weekly jobless claims figures are out, and they follow a familiar, depressing pattern:

More Americans than forecast filed claims for unemployment benefits last week, reflecting the volatility of applications during the annual auto-plant retooling period.

Applications for jobless benefits increased 10,,000 in the week ended July 16 to 418,000, Labor Department figures showed today. Economists forecast 410,000 claims, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey. The data included about 1,750 additional job cuts due to the Minnesota government shutdown, the agency said.

Employers have been reluctant to hire more workers over the past two months on concern the recovery was slowing and growing unease over stalled negotiations to extend the federal debt ceiling and reduce the budget deficit. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke last week said recent data showed “continuing weakness” in the labor market.

Any number above 400,000 is considered grim. 

Job gains have slowed in the past two months, raising concern about the durability of a labor market recovery. Payrolls expanded by 18,000 workers last month, the smallest gain since September, after increasing by 25,000 in May, Labor Department data showed July 8. The jobless rate climbed to 9.2 percent, the highest this year.
Banks and manufacturers are among companies still cutting jobs.

COMMENT:  What will Obama say?  Will he blame it on BUSH (!!)?  CHENEY (!!!!)?  This is the worst economic climate that we've seen in the lifetime of many of us.  There does not appear to be any reason to expect good news in the near future.  And it's perfectly obvious from a variety of news reports that the business community has lost faith in the Obama administration.  We also face a rise, not a decline, in foreign threats.

We've sure had change we can believe in.

July 21, 2011       Permalink

OBAMA'S CONSISTENTLY TROUBLING APPROVAL RATINGS – AT 8:45 A.M. ET:  Andrew Malcolm of the L.A. Times's Top of the Ticket blog has a sharp historical analysis of the president's approval ratings:

Great news for President Obama's never-ending, billion-dollar reelection campaign: His job approval rating didn't get any worse last quarter.

Of course, they're still not all that great -- they've averaged below 50% for most of his 912-day-old presidency.  In the quarter between April 20 and July 19, Gallup reports this morning, the Democrat averaged a 46.8% job approval.

It could be worse; Obama's seventh quarter average was only 44.7%.

But he's a long way from what now seems like the halcyon days of 63% approval after his first quarter, back in 2009 when Obama's term was so full of promise, like closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, holding unemployment below 8% and bringing partisan Washington back together.

The good news for the aging Obama, who starts his 51st year early next month, is that both Presidents Reagan and Clinton also averaged below majority approval in their 10th quarters and still went on to a second term.

The bad news is that Jimmy Carter did the same in 1980 and went on to defeat. Also, both Reagan and Clinton showed significant approval improvement between their ninth and tenth quarters.

Obama did not.

COMMENT:  As each month brings us closer to the election, it's clear that the GOP has a magnificent opportunity.  But head-to-head polling still predicts, even at this early date, a close election, and the outcome is far from guaranteed.  The liberals will fight for this president as they have for no other because of his historic symbolism and because the Democratic Party is mired in the thinking of the 1960s, as is Mr. Obama.  But, looking at the Republican field, no one can be considered close to a shoo-in.  These polls cannot be allowed to put us asleep.

July 21, 2011        Permalink

A SHARP WARNING – AT 8:29 A.M. ET:  The tenth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks is less than two months off.  Al Qaeda may choose to mark it in its own stylish way:

US officials fear al-Qaida will attempt a massive September 11 anniversary attack by sabotaging a major utility facility with the use of insiders that the terrorist organization has successfully planted in such facilities, a US intelligence report released on Wednesday states.

ABC quoted the new US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report as warning that violent extremists have obtained such insider positions and are planning physical and cyber attacks at a major facility, including a chemical or oil refinery.

"Based on the reliable reporting of previous incidents, we have high confidence in our judgment that insiders and their actions pose a significant threat to the infrastructure and information systems of US facilities," the report reads. "Past events and reporting also provide high confidence in our judgment that insider information on sites, infrastructure, networks, and personnel is valuable to our adversaries and may increase the impact of any attack on the utilities infrastructure."

Although the US State Department says no specific threat exists, materials recovered during the operation that killed Osama bin Laden in May suggest that al-Qaida seeks to carry out an attack on or around the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

COMMENT:  Question:  If these insiders at American facilities have been detected, why are they still there?  It's pretty clear from this report that the screening procedures used in hiring people for sensitive facilities needs to be examined and strenghened. 

It's logical that Al Qaeda will want to mark the 10th anniversary of its handiwork.  Every citizen should be asked to be on alert.

July 21, 2011     Permalink

JULY 20,  2011

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE:

THE PERRY PUSH – From what I can see, there appears to be a very well orchestrated campaign to build excitement for Texas Governor Rick Perry's entry into the presidential race.  Today the story is that his wife is pushing him to get in.  When the wife endorses the plunge, you may be sure that the plunge will soon follow.  Frankly, I like the way Perry is building his entry.  He's created buzz, which has the effect of expanding excitement...and smoking out the journalistic enemies who will attack him.  Already The New York Times is at work, having published two hit pieces.  But now Perry's people can see where the liberal press is going, and head them off at the pass.  The GOP isn't exactly known as the party of excitement, so any drum-beating is welcome.  We're getting some drum-beating.

SO WHO'LL NOTICE? – The Postmaster General says we may soon lose Saturday delivery because of Postal Service deficits and falling volume, and may have only three-day-a-week service within 15 years.  Now, I like the friendly postman, and the mail has often brought me great delights, as well as credit-card bills.  But I suspect the Postal Service will go the way of the horse and buggy at some point.  Electronic mail, speedy express services, and the general preference of online retailers for UPS and other private companies, are causing massive changes in the letter and package delivery industry.  But, ah, how some of us will miss those old handwritten letters, the kind we got during our school years from girlfriends or boyfriends, or those we thought were girlfriends and boyfriends.  What e-mail can compare?

MICHELE FIRES BACK – Michele Bachmann has now released a letter from the attending physician of Congress attesting to her good health and asserting that she has her migraines under control.  The fact that she released the letter indicates that Bachmann understands that this issue won't go away.  She is soaring in the polls, and may well benefit from a sympathy vote from those who sense, correctly, that she's the target of a campaign launched by anonymous sources to discredit her by raising health questions.   Her strongest argument is the intensity with which she's waging her campaign, with no interruptions, and no medical crises.  There are some former staffers, who apparently don't care for her, who seem to be at the heart of the whispering campaign.  If she rises further in the polls, you may be sure that the usual journalistic suspects will be dispatching reporters to go through her garbage, as they did Sarah's, to see if there's anything medically devastating.  Kind of makes you lose faith in democracy sometimes, doesn't it?

ROMNEY EDGES OBAMA IN RASMUSSEN POLL – A new Rasmussen poll has Mitt Romney defeating Barack Obama among likely voters, 43-42.  But a generic Republican leads Obama by six points, meaning Romney doesn't do as well as no-name.  A PPP poll has Romney and Obama dead even, with Obama defeating Bachmann by only seven points.  Rick Perry did not figure in these polls, but, given political conditions, we have to believe he'll do well very quickly.  The PPP poll has Sarah Palin 16 points behind Obama, a hint that maybe this isn't her year.  Still, don't underestimate the president.  He is a superb campaigner, and a deceptive chap who will try to convince us he's really an American patriot, and slightly right-of-center at that.  Some will buy the package, as too many did in 2008.  Republicans must operate on all cylinders, and, as we've advocated here before, must develop a strategy for dealing with a hostile press, which will try to save its hero.

July 20, 2011    Permalink 

GENTLEMEN, DON'T START YOUR ENGINES – AT 11:25 A.M. ET:  Because we are affected by them every day, gasoline prices can have a serious effect on how we perceive the economy, and how we feel about political leaders.  Gasoline prices are headed up again, not good news for the president:

Drivers are paying more for gas again.

Agencies that track gas prices showed the price rising in the past week both nationally and in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

AAA said there was a 5-cent-a-gallon increase in the past week for regular gas nationally, up to $3.68.

In New Hampshire, AAA reported the price at $3.71 yesterday, up 4 cents from a week ago. In Massachusetts, AAA had the price of gas at $3.77, up 5 cents from last week.

AAA said the prices are back where they were a month ago in New Hampshire. They are $1.05 cents higher than a year ago, up from $2.66. Prices are up 3 cents from a month ago in Massachusetts, up $1.07 from last year.

The prices are still below the record highs of $4.04 for New Hampshire and $4.09 for Massachusetts, set three years ago this month, AAA reported.

Drivers in Hawaii, Alaska and Connecticut are now paying more than $4 per gallon.

AAA, in an analysis of gas prices on Monday, said crude oil prices were being affected "by debt concerns and continued gridlock in Washington surrounding talks to raise the U.S. debt limit."

COMMENT:  This is one of the issues that sank Carter in 1980.  If the economy is weak, unemployment high, and gas prices at painful levels, Obama will have a hard time explaining himself to the 2012 electorate.

July 20, 2011       Permalink

ANOTHER BURSTING BUBBLE – AT 10:02 A.M. ET:  The high-tech bubble burst in the 90s.  The housing bubble is continuing to burst.  And now Michael Barone, superlative political observer, looks for another bubble to pop.  Frankly, it's long overdue.

It's the education bubble.  Vastly overpriced college "educations," sought after fanatically by a student and parent population whipped up by warnings that you'd better get in, get that degree, and get out, and write the checks, or your life is over.  Not so fast, professor.  From the Washington Examiner:

...some people see signs that another bubble is bursting. They call it the higher education bubble.

For years government has assumed it's a good thing to go to college. College graduates tend to earn more money than non-college graduates.

Politicians of both parties have called for giving everybody a chance to go to college, just as they called for giving everybody a chance to buy a home.

So government has been subsidizing higher education with low-interest college loans, Pell Grants and cheap tuitions at state colleges and universities.

The predictable result is that higher-education costs have risen much faster than inflation, much faster than personal incomes, much faster than the economy over the past 40 years.

Moreover, you can't get out of paying off those college loans, even by going through bankruptcy. At least with a home mortgage you can walk away and let the bank foreclose and not owe any more money.

And...

...what have institutions of higher learning accomplished with their vast increases in revenues? The answer in all too many cases is administrative bloat.

Take the California State University system, the second tier in that state's public higher education. Between 1975 and 2008 the number of faculty rose by 3 percent, to 12,019 positions. During those same years the number of administrators rose 221 percent, to 12,183. That's right: There are more administrators than teachers at Cal State now.

These people get paid to "liaise" and "facilitate" and produce reports on diversity. How that benefits Cal State students or California taxpayers is unclear.

It is often said that American colleges and universities are the best in the world. That's undoubtedly true in the hard sciences.

But in the humanities and to a lesser extent in the social sciences there's a lot of garbage. Is a degree in Religious and Women's Studies worth $100,000 in student loan debt? Probably not.

And...

Now consumers seem to be reading the cues in the marketplace.

An increasing number of students are spending their first two years after high school in low-cost community colleges and then transferring to four-year schools.

A recent New York Times story reported that out-of-staters are flocking to low-tuition North Dakota State in frigid Fargo.

Politicians, including President Obama, still give lip service to the notion that everyone should go to college and can profit from it. And many college and university administrators may assume that the gravy train will go on forever.

But that's what Las Vegas real estate developers and home builders thought in 2006. My sense is that once again, well-intentioned public policy and greedy providers have produced a bubble that is about to burst.

COMMENT:  Excellent and perceptive column.  I spoke last year with a leading educator, someone whose name many of you would know immediately, who was speaking about the same thing.  He described the tuition increase at his alma mater, from his student days to the present, pointing out that it was vastly greater than the rate of inflation.  He told me about a niece who attends a "prestigious" college...who is home more than she's in school. 

Bubble about to burst, but the colleges will fight fiercely, invoking the battle cry, "It's for the children."  Yeah, right.

July 20, 2011      Permalink

SNIPPET OF THE DAY – AT 9:41 A.M. ET:

From the Jerusalem Post:   When the severed head of a wolf wrapped in women's lingerie turned up near the city of Tabouk in northern Saudi Arabia this week, authorities knew they had another case of witchcraft on their hands, a capital offence in the ultra-conservative desert kingdom.  Agents of the country’s Anti-Witchcraft Unit were quickly dispatched and set about trying to break the spell that used the beast’s head.  Saudi Arabia takes witchcraft so seriously that it has banned the Harry Potter series by British writer J.K. Rowling, rife with tales of sorcery and magic. It set up the Anti-Witchcraft Unit in May 2009 and placed it under the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPV), Saudi Arabia's religious police.

Why not?  We all know the old severed-head-wrapped-in-women's-lingerie gambit.  And America – this is gross negligence – doesn't have its own Anti-Witchcraft Unit to deal with it, another result of irresponsible cuts to the defense budget.  We'd better hustle and catch up.  And what a TV series that unit would make.  Theme music already written:  "It's Witchcraft," sung by Johnny Mathis.

OBAMA IN TROUBLE IN MICHIGAN – AT 9:14 A.M. ET:  Winning industrial Michigan in next year's election is close to a necessity for President Obama if he plans to keep his current residence and phone number.  But he is currently behind Mitt Romney in that state.  From The Hill: 

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leads President Obama in Michigan, according to a new poll.

Romney, whose father was governor of the Wolverine State, leads Obama in a head-to-head matchup by 46 percent to 42 percent, within the survey's four-point margin of error.

Michigan is likely a must-win for Obama. He took 57 percent of the vote there in the 2008 presidential race after Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) gave up on the state and pulled out resources a month before the election. But a brutal local economy has hurt Obama with Independents: in the poll, he trails Romney 42 percent to 31 percent with that key group.

Another worrying trend for the president: Detroit, the anchor of any Democratic coalition in the state, has continued to hemorrhage people, losing a quarter of its population since 2000. The state's African-American population has also dropped significantly.

The poll of 600 likely voters was conducted from July 9 to July 11 by the Lansing-based EPIC/MRA.

COMMENT:  True, the name Romney is familiar in Michigan.  Mitt's father not only was governor, but had been CEO of the now-defunct American Motors Corporation.  I suspect, though, that any solid Republican can do well in the state because of its economic condition and the failure of Democrats to help much.

Consider a Perry-Rubio ticket.  Texas Governor Rick Perry can go to Michigan with his superb record of job creation in Texas, a record bound to impress a state with severe unemployment.  If his running mate is Marco Rubio of Florida, that state can be sewn up for the GOP, and it is the largest of the swing states.  Not a bad start for the GOP.  Perry-Rubio is starting to sound awfully good.

July 20, 2011       Permalink 

MICHELE UNDER SCRUTINY – AT 8:40 A.M. ET:  We don't do "predictions" here, and you should be skeptical of writers who say things like, "As I predicted six months ago..."  If you read that, go back and look at the totality of the writer's predictions.  I'll bet you'll find he got one out of fifteen right...the one he now brings up. 

And so it wasn't difficult for us to say yesterday that the issue of Michele Bachmann's migraines would resurface.  I can't claim a great prediction.  Anyone who's studied the history of political campaigns knows that health questions about a candidate are brought up again and again, sometimes by opponents, usually by opponents' surrogates.  In 1956, Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic nominee for president, himself brought up the issue of President Eisenhower's recent heart attack, although Eisenhower was clearly functioning in the presidency.  We noted yesterday that in 1972, Senator Tom Eagleton of Missouri had to leave the Democratic ticket led by George McGovern over questions about electro-shock therapy.  And, lowest of the low, rumors were circulated during the 2008 campaign that John McCain might have been psychologically incapable of being president because of the damage done by the torture he endured as a POW in North Vietnam.

Now we have The Politico, in its lead story this morning, piling on about Michele Bachmann's migraines.  While the Politico still does some useful reporting, it is a liberal site, and is drifting further left.  You will probably see it quoted less here in the future.  Today's piece on Bachmann is particularly vile, as it hints that she may be psychiatrically impaired by migraines, and the drugs used to treat them.  While there are some self-serving comments by the writer that attempt to be "fair," the piece is filled with conjecture and with provocative quotes from experts, none of whom have actually examined Ms. Bachmann.

It is clear that Bachmann did have some severe bouts with migraine, the way the rest of us may have had other illnesses.  She must deal with the issue directly, and discuss legitimate medical questions put to her.  The issue will not go away.  But I hope we may be spared the amateur reporting present at The Politico this morning.  Other news organizations, to their credit, have had certified physicians doing medical stories.  Physicians have told me, and many laymen know intuitively, that any true examination of a person's medical condition starts with a good history.  We do not have that good history on Bachmann, and I would want it studied by qualified physicians, not political reporters.  It is not enough to "report" on medical episodes that may well have occurred before the individual received proper treatment.

Bachmann is in the crosshairs.  Only she can defend herself.  She does it brilliantly, yesterday pointing out that she's maintained a grueling campaign schedule without missing a minute.  Her detractors will try to bring her down on this issue.  I hope, assuming her report on her medical condition is honest, that they flop, and that there's a backlash.

July 20, 2011      Permalink