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JUNE 12,  2011

THE RESET BUTTON BROKE AGAIN – AT 11:56 P.M. ET:  Remember when President Obama descended from the galaxy to become our president?  He promised that our relations with Russia would be "reset," apparently believing that any friction we'd had with Moscow was caused by BUSH (!!) and CHENEY (!!!!).

Uh, apparently the reset button was improperly connected, or maybe the spring broke, or they got the wiring wrong.  You know, it's so hard to get good button men today.  They're always out playing golf.

The Russians are becoming more hostile every day.  There's been no reset.  They're uncooperative and they're starting to develop advanced weapons again.  Then there's this:

MOSCOW – Russia is voicing concern about a U.S. warship now just off its shores in the Black Sea.

The guided-missile cruiser USS Monterey, which is taking part in annual joint military exercises conducted by NATO and Ukraine, is an integral part of U.S. plans to create a missile shield in Europe, which Russia opposes.

Russia's Foreign Ministry issued a statement Sunday saying Russia "has repeatedly stressed that we will not leave unnoticed any elements of U.S. strategic infrastructure in the immediate vicinity of our borders and will consider any such steps as a threat to our security."

That's pretty strong stuff, especially when directed at a weak American president.  Of course, the fact that Obama is weak allows for the Russian strength.

Russia agreed to consider NATO's proposal last fall to cooperate on the missile shield, but insisted the system be run jointly. NATO rejected that demand and no compromise has been found yet.

If Russia becomes increasingly hostile, we will face an array of threatening forces greater than that faced since the Second World War – Russia, China, militant Islam, and even some adversaries in Latin America, like Chavez's Venezuela, which has alliances with both Iran and Russia.  That will require superb American leadership, which means replacement parts for the chaps we have now.

June 12, 2011       Permalink

GET WELL, GABY – AT 12:07 P.M. ET:  The first photos of Gabrielle Giffords taken since she was shot in Tucson have just been released.   For someone who's been through her ordeal, she looks fine:

Obviously, Congresswoman Giffords has a long path to travel.   Her ability to speak, according to an aide, is still far from normal. 

We wish her well.  She's a traditional pro-defense Democrat, married to a Navy captain, who is also a senior astronaut.  And she has a fine, honorable reputation.  We want to welcome her back to Congress. 

June 12, 2011       Permalink

COMING SOON TO A TRENDY TOWN NEAR YOU – AT 11:48 A.M. ET:  Well, actually, I hope not.  There is a disturbing story out of Britain today that shows what political correctness can do to a society.  It can destroy its values and its standards.

Of course, there are really several Britains.  The Britain we love is the Britain of Churchill and Margaret Thatcher – strong, resolute, with a defiant spirit.  But there is another Britain, leftist, conformist, unthinking, under the mindless spell of multiculturalism.  That is the Britain we see in this story, from London's Telegraph, and it should worry us:

Police have been accused of “covering up” a campaign of abuse, threats and violence aimed at “Islamicising” an area of London.

Victims say that officers in the borough of Tower Hamlets have ignored or downplayed outbreaks of hate crime, and suppressed evidence implicating Muslims in them, because they fear being accused of racism.

We are seeing the same thing here.  We saw it after the Fort Hood shootings, when even our own Defense Department did handstands to avoid mentioning that the shooter was a committed jihadist.

The claims come as four Tower Hamlets Muslims were jailed for at least 19 years for attacking a local white teacher who gave religious studies lessons to Muslim girls.

The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered more than a dozen other cases in Tower Hamlets where both Muslims and non-Muslims have been threatened or beaten for behaviour deemed to breach fundamentalist “Islamic norms.”

One victim, Mohammed Monzur Rahman, said he was left partially blind and with a dislocated shoulder after being attacked by a mob in Cannon Street Road, Shadwell, for smoking during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan last year.

“Two guys stopped me in the street and asked me why I was smoking,” he said. “I just carried on, and before I knew another dozen guys came and jumped me. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in hospital.”

Please note, in reading the story, that Muslims are among the victims.  They often are.  More Muslims have been killed in terrorist attacks around the world than members of any other group, giving the lie to the propagandists who tell us that our "policies" lead to terrorism. 

This is a great piece of reporting, and I highly commend it to you.  We are watching Western civilization eroded, and that erosion may get worse as we avert our eyes to solve our economic problems. 

Be on guard...and learn what policies are in place in your local law-enforcement agencies.

June 12, 2011      Permalink

THERE WAS A TIME... – AT 11:17 A.M. ET:  I've never been a fan of mindless nostalgia.  You know, people who tell us how perfect everything was "back then," as opposed to right now.  There were plenty of things wrong in the America of my youth, including the exclusion from full participation in American life of a number of groups. 

However, there were many things right about our country back then.  A wonderful popular culture, with music written by real composers like Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, and lyricists like Oscar Hammerstein II.  Great movies that we still watch today, as we wonder whatever happened to our storytelling talent.  A media that was respectful of the country and its values.  Schools that existed to teach students the fundamentals of a fine education, not to indoctrinate them in leftist babble.  And a certain indescribable warmth that linked us together as Americans.   It was something we felt.

Bob Greene has a wonderful column today describing something else about that era – the fact that American companies identified with the American soldier, and were proud of it: 

The two wars in which the United States became engaged after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have often felt as if they have little to do with the daily lives of civilians at home. People in the nation's cities and towns carry on with their business; the volunteers in the military fight. Life on the home front goes on.

It's rare to find an advertisement that makes a direct point of linking a company or manufacturer with America's wars.

And...

Contrast that with advertising that appeared in U.S. newspapers and magazines during World War II. The difference is stark. Back then, many ads went out of their way to show consumers that the companies -- whether they made wristwatches or paint or ball bearings -- were proudly involved in the fight overseas.

"Time is Short, Adolf!" proclaimed the headline on a 1942 ad from the Philco Corp., manufacturer of radios, phonographs, refrigerators and air conditioners. The illustration showed a skeleton holding a pistol aimed at the right ear of Hitler. The text praised the men and women of Philco: "The incentive and inspiration for their war achievements are Victory and the survival of America's freedom."

If you ever get a chance, go to a library that has the bound volumes of LIFE magazine from World War II.  You'll see page after page of the ads that Greene is talking about. 

Maybe all those ads were there because it was a different kind of war.

Or maybe it was because, back home, this was a different America.

COMMENT:  Alas, it was a different America.  Sure, it was an America that could stand improvement, and we improved.  But it was an America with so many wonderful things about it. 

Think of this:  Sixty-five years ago, American kids were dancing to the music of George Gershwin.  They were going to movies like "Thirty Seconds over Tokyo" and musicals like "Meet Me in St. Louis."  They were laughing at the clean comedy of Jack Benny.  Contrast please with today.

I'm afraid we threw out the baby with the bath water.  If we don't invite that baby back into our homes, we will never have that America again.

June 12, 2011       Permalink

WHERE OBAMA STANDS – AT 11:02 A.M. ET:  The president has suffered a sudden and substantial decline in the Rasmussen survey, which polls likely voters.  He had been showing some strength in that survey, but is slipping back to fire-sale numbers:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 23% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Thirty-nine percent (39%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -16.

And...

Overall, 47% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president's performance. Fifty-three (53%) at least somewhat disapprove.

And get this:

When President Obama first took office, 39% of voters nationwide expected the economy to be stronger in a year. By July 2009, confidence that the economy would be stronger peaked at 45%. By the middle of 2010, just 37% expected the economy to be stronger in a year. Now, just 31% hold such optimism.

If we had a parliamentary system, Obama might well lose a vote of confidence.  He is clearly in trouble, and yet polls show him doing respectably well against any Republican opponent.  That means that the GOP clearly has its work cut out for it.  It has such opportunities, if it gets its act together, nominates a strong candidate with wide appeal, and constructs a platform that can attract the independents who are abandoning Obama in droves.

June 12, 2011     Permalink

JUNE 11,  2011

COMMON SENSE IN BRITAIN – AT 10:25 P.M. ET:  With our own government in the grips of environmental trendiness, we aren't fully aware of the degree to which the British government is similarly stricken.  Now, a leading Tory is calling for an end to the adolescent silliness.  We hope to see more cries like this here.  From London's Daily Mail:

The Coalition’s obsession with climate change is damaging Britain’s recovery from recession, former Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson warns today.

That's chancellor of the exchequer, their equivalent of secretary of the Treasury.

Writing in the Daily Mail, Lord Lawson delivers a scathing assessment of David Cameron’s so-called ‘green agenda’ and says it is ‘time this Government grew up’.

Lord Lawson, one of the most respected Tory figures of recent decades, accuses the Prime Minister of risking Britain’s economy to make a ‘symbolic’ point.

In a devastating verdict he writes: ‘The Government’s highly damaging decarbonisation policy, enshrined in the absurd Climate Change Act, does not have a leg to stand on. It is intended, at massive cost, to be symbolic: To make good David Cameron’s ambition to make his administration “the greenest government ever”.

‘My dictionary defines green as “unripe, immature, undeveloped”.’

Hear, hear, Lord Lawson!

His comments came after former Civil Service chief Lord Turnbull accused ministers and officials of pandering to global warming ‘alarmists’ and piling huge, unnecessary costs on ordinary families.

Lord Lawson, Chancellor under Margaret Thatcher, goes further today, saying that plastering Britain with wind farms will push up bills to families and businesses without producing any real benefits. The switch to ‘low-carbon’ energy is expected to add £200 to annual energy bills.

He writes: ‘This price increase would be economically damaging at the best of times; and these are not the best of times.’

COMMENT:  Some common sense from across the pond.  What good will a "green" economy be if it plunges a country into poverty and want?  We hope Lawson's clear-mindedness makes it to our shores, where even the Republican frontrunner, Mitt Romney, has spoken favorably of "climate change" trendiness.  American energy prices are soaring at just the moment that low prices are needed to restart the economy.  The president seems completely out of touch.

June 11, 2011      Permalink 

SNIPPET – AT 10:20 P.M. ET: 

WASHINGTON — Under fierce pressure from fellow Democrats to resign in a sexting scandal, Rep. Anthony Weiner announced Saturday he was entering professional treatment at an undisclosed location and requested a leave of absence from Congress.  An aide for the embattled New York lawmaker made the disclosure in a statement shortly after several Democratic party leaders demanded he quit for exchanging messages and photos ranging from sexually suggestive to explicit with several women online.

Why don't they just take away his computer, his password, and, most important, his digital camera?  Poof.  He's cured.

THE ELUSIVE GOD PARTICLE, AND A LESSON FOR US ALL – AT 11:40 A.M. ET:  Physicists have been searching for the so-called "God particle," the basic building block of matter, also called the Higgs boson.  They have suffered a setback in that search, and we are getting a good lesson in how science actually proceeds, a lesson we can apply to other national discussions that are allegedly based on "scientific findings."  From Fox:

The quest for the elusive Higgs boson seemed over in April, when an unexpected result from an atom smasher seemed to herald the discovery of the famous particle -- the last unproven piece of the physics puzzle and one of the great mysteries scientists face today.

Researchers were cautious, however, warning that it would take months to verify the finding.

Their caution was wise.

Scientists with the Tevatron particle accelerator at Chicago's Fermilab facility just released the results of a months-long effort by the lab's brightest minds to confirm the finding. What did they find? Nothing.

"We do not see the signal," Dmitri Denisov, staff scientist at Fermilab, told FoxNews.com. "If it existed, we would see it. But when we look at our data, we basically see nothing."

"At this point I'd say the chances are 50/50 for the Higgs to exist at all," he said.

The results -- submitted Friday to the science journal Physical Review Letters -- are a heartbreaking setback for scientists and armchair experimenters worldwide, who have been following the particle-physics treasure hunt like a baseball fan monitoring stats.

COMMENT:  Sometimes "science" succeeds, and sometimes it doesn't.  It is a constant series of investigations, proceeding on evidence, experimentation, and observation.  Compare please with our discussion about "climate change," in which we are assured by the hustling classes that the science is "settled." 

There is no such thing as settled science.  Science, by its nature, is never settled.  And it certainly doesn't rest on computer models that try to project weather patterns 50 years from now.  The experiments at Fermilab have produced disappointment, not certainty.  Fortunately, Al Gore was not calling the play by play. 

This is a cautionary tale.  Politicians and real scientists don't mix very well.  I'd rather listen to the scientists, especially those, like Dr. Denisov, who are immediately prepared to tell us what they don't know.

June 11, 2011       Permalink 

OH, JUST WHAT WE NEED – AT 11:12 A.M. ET:  Is there any end to our problems with our "Pakistani allies"?  Apparently not.  Get this, from WaPo:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Twice in recent weeks, the United States provided Pakistan with the specific locations of insurgent bomb-making factories, only to see the militants learn their cover had been blown and vacate the sites before military action could be taken, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.

Overhead surveillance video and other information was given to Pakistani officials in mid-May, officials said, as part of a trust-building effort by the Obama administration after the killing of Osama bin Laden in a U.S. raid early last month. But Pakistani military units that arrived at the sites in the tribal areas of North and South Waziristan on June 4 found them abandoned.

U.S. officials say they do not know how the operation was compromised. But they are concerned that either the information was inadvertently leaked inside Pakistan or insurgents were warned directly by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or ISI.

COMMENT:  I don't think Americans yet realize how serious the situation with Pakistan has come.  Pakistan is a nuclear power.  Its security services have been influenced by Al Qaeda and the Taliban.  While Pakistan assures us that its nukes are secure, we really can't be sure.  Even if the weapons are disassembled, their nuclear cores could be stolen if security falls apart.  Dirty bombs can be made.

And Pakistan is a direct threat to India, the world's largest democracy.

Pakistan housed Osama bin Laden a few blocks from its equivalent of West Point, then claimed they didn't know he was there. 

We are about to draw down our troops in neighboring Afghanistan.  That will give encouragement to those trying to destabilize Pakistan.  And not far away is Iran, which knowledgeable authorities now say may be within months of a nuclear weapon.

Have a nice day.  I hope the president is interested.

June 11, 2011       Permalink

SARAH ON SATURDAY – AT 10:45 A.M. ET:  There's still plenty of buzz about the 24,000 Sarah Palin e-mails released by the state of Alaska yesterday.  And a lot of the buzz has to do with the fact that the whole incident is a bust.  Nothing of significance has been found, despite the fevered efforts of mainstream journalists, some of whom have actually asked for the help of readers to go through the messages.

Could this mess actually help Sarah Palin?  Thomas Lifson, at American Thinker, believes it can, and gives us our quote of the day, pointing out that Bill Clinton's popularity actually went up during the impeachment process that dominated his second term:

It seems incongruous to put Bill Clinton in the same sentence as Sarah Palin, but the political jujitsu the former president accomplished when struggling with the damning evidence of Oval Office misconduct and perjury in its cover-up has a lesson. The American public loves underdogs and despises bullies. Polls asking the public about various occupations inevitably find that politicians and media rank near the bottom in terms of credibility and likability. President Clinton and his attack dogs recognized that the impeachment-minded GOP House could be demonized, in effect spray painting him with Teflon® against their attack.

One can at least wonder if something of the same process might be at work with Mrs. Palin. She has demonstrated time and again an ability to confound her haters with unorthodox tactics, turning their fury back against them. The feeding frenzy in Juneau offers her another opportunity to turn the tables on those who seek to destroy her.

COMMENT:  Lifson makes a good point, although I hasten to add that the press was on Bill Clinton's side, and isn't on Sarah Palin's.  However, I hope the public is on Sarah's side.  Perhaps voters will notice the intensity of the hatred directed at Sarah, while Barack Obama gets a free pass on almost everything.

But again I express my frustration that Sarah resigned her governorship.  It simply deflated her stature.  She hasn't regained it.  I think the future is uncertain, but some public outrage at what the press is trying to do to her would at least be encouraging.

June 11, 2011     Permalink