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MAY 28,  2011

SHREWD OBSERVATION – AT 10:53 P.M. ET:  Michael Barone, one of our best political analysts, is amused that journalists are shocked, shocked, by the latest economic statistics...and indeed they've been shocked, shocked, ever since Barack Obama took office.  But how much longer can they be shocked?

Unexpectedly!

As megablogger Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, has noted with amusement, the word "unexpectedly" or variants thereon keep cropping up in mainstream media stories about the economy.

"New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly climbed," reported CNBC.com May 25.

"Personal consumption fell," Business Insider reported the same day, "when it was expected to rise."

"Durable goods declined 3.6 percent last month," Reuters reported May 25, "worse than economists' expectations."

"Previously owned home sales unexpectedly fall," headlined Bloomberg News May 19.

Shock, shock.

Which raises some questions. As Instapundit reader Gordon Stewart, quoted by Reynolds on May 17, put it, "How many times in a row can something happen unexpectedly before the experts start to, you know, expect it? At some point, shouldn't they be required to state the foundation for their expectations?"

One answer is that many in the mainstream media have been cheerleading for Barack Obama. They and he both naturally hope for a strong economic recovery. After all, Obama can't keep blaming the economic doldrums on George W. Bush forever.

And...

It's obviously going to be hard to achieve the unacknowledged goal of many mainstream journalists -- the president's re-election -- if the economic slump continues. So they characterize economic setbacks as unexpected, with the implication that there's still every reason to believe that, in Herbert Hoover's phrase, prosperity is just around the corner.

And...

Obama and his policymakers told the country that we would recover from the deep recession by vastly increasing government spending and borrowing. We did that with the stimulus package, with the budget passed in 2009 back when congressional Democrats actually voted on budgets, and with the vast increases scheduled to come (despite the administration's gaming of the Congressional Budget Office scoring process) from Obamacare.

All of this has inspired something like a hiring strike among entrepreneurs and small-business owners. Employers aren't creating any more jobs than they were during the darkest days of the recession; unemployment has dropped slowly because they just aren't laying off as many employees as they did then.

In the meantime, many potential job seekers have left the labor market. If they re-enter and look for jobs, the unemployment rate will stay steady or ebb only slowly.

We tend to hire presidents who we think can foresee the future effect of their policies. No one does so perfectly. But if the best sympathetic observers can say about the results is that they are "unexpected," voters may decide someone else can do better.

From Barone's pen to you-know-whose ears.  The economy will be the key to next year's election – that and the quality of the GOP nominee.  We could be in a depression, but, if the GOP nominates a clunker, Obama would still win. 

Although not much political news is being made this weekend, there is great political activity, with GOP candidates gladhanding all over the country.  Watch things start to heat up in the coming weeks, as the Republican race becomes more spirited, and possibly more vicious.

Then we'll receive more "unexpected" economic news.  And someone will figure out a way to blame BUSH (!!).

May 28, 2011       Permalink

A LITTLE SHOW BIZ CAN'T HURT – AT 10:55 A.M. ET:  That's something Ronald Reagan always understood.  The Republican Party, not exacting the most exciting institution around, was, just a few weeks ago, heading into a dull primary season, and generating little excitement.  But things have changed, as Fox reports:

Just when the GOP 2012 presidential field appeared fully formed, a few Republican stars are sending strong signals that they might throw their hats into the ring.

After months of resisting calls to join the contest, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Friday he would consider it. That could reshape the GOP field, adding a sitting governor who has never lost an election.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin also sent a jolt through the party with the announcement of a campaign-style bus tour along the East Coast, the latest possible contender to stand up since Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels announced last weekend that he would not run.

And former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is heading to New Hampshire next week, further stirring speculation that he will jump into the still-gelling field.

Add Michelle Bachmann, who's clearly aiming to get in.

Perry, the longest serving governor in Texas history, would bring conservative bona fides, a proven fundraising record and a fresh voice. Even as Perry's closest advisers say he has no intention of getting in the race, he has methodically raised his profile, fanning interest.

And there is now some serious buzz that Paul Ryan may be reconsidering his "no," which could be turned into a "yes." 

Keep it going.  Keep it interesting.  Keep it competitive. 

And demand that Marco Rubio run.  He is the one candidate with the rhetorical skills to take on Obama.

A little political theater always helps.

May 28, 2011       Permalink

AGAIN? – AT 10:34 A.M. ET:  The president of the United States does not know history.  Indeed, given the buildup he received as the greatest brain in the political history of the Universe – he doesn't know much at all.  And once again he's committed a gaffe:

WARSAW — President Obama held up Poland as a model for Arab nations undergoing political upheaval on Saturday, saying its peaceful overthrow of Communism provided lessons for Tunisia and other countries struggling with the chaotic aftermath of popular revolts.

Mr. Obama, wrapping up a six-day trip to Europe with a stop in this staunch American ally, paid tribute to the elders of the Solidarity movement, which led the uprising in Poland, as well as young activists just back from Tunisia, where they offered advice based on Poland’s experience.

“Poland has navigated that process as well as any country in recent history,” Mr. Obama said at a meeting that included Solidarity leaders, though not Lech Walesa, who was out of the country. The president said he wanted “all states undergoing similar experiences to learn from Poland.”

COMMENT:  It's perfectly fine to praise the Polish example, but conditions in the Arab world are so different that the comparison collapses almost immediately.  Poland is in Europe, which has at least a passable democratic tradition.  There is almost no democratic tradition in the Arab world.  While Poland has a religious history tied to the Catholic Church, that institution has gone through dramatic change and reform in recent decades.  Militant Islam, which is growing in the Mideast, is still stuck in its past.  Poland became free at least in part because of the collapse of the Soviet Union, under pressure from the Reagan-Thatcher-John Paul II coalition.  No such condition exists in the Mideast.

Obama committed a similar gaffe recently when he compared the Israel-Palestinian conflict to the Irish dispute with Britain.  Some commentators gently pointed out that the Irish never intended to destroy Britain, whereas a good part of the Palestinian movement is committed to the destruction of Israel.

The problem with people who speak well is that they're often tempted to speak again, when silence might be a wiser alternative.  For this president, given the mess created by his speech designed to pre-empt the Israeli prime minister last week, silence might become the smart weapon of choice.

Oh, by the way, the above quote is from The New York Times, so in the tank for Obama that it whitewashed the reason that Lech Walesa is not meeting the president.  It's not because he's out of the country.  Walesa is snubbing Obama, as reported by AFP:

Lech Walesa, Poland's Solidarity-era legend, ex-president and 1983 Nobel Peace Prize winner said Friday he would not accept an invitation to meet with fellow Nobel winner US President Barack Obama.

"It's difficult to tell journalists what you'd like to say to the president of a superpower. This time I won't tell him, I won't meet him, it doesn't suit me," Walesa told Poland's public broadcaster TVP.

Obama is due to arrive in Poland later Friday after the G8 summit in France.

Walesa was originally scheduled to meet Obama Saturday along with other key figures in Poland's post-1989 transition from communism to democracy.

According to sources close to Walesa, he was expecting a personal invitation from Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 shortly after taking office.

COMMENT:  This is a prime example of why The Times is no longer trusted by a large segment of the population.

May 28, 2011       Permalink 

UNBELIEVABLE – AND DANGEROUS – AT 10:12 A.M. ET:  It is hard to believe this is happening in a modern, democratic country (and a country whose culture I dearly love):

Italian government officials have accused the country's top seismologist of manslaughter, after failing to predict a natural disaster that struck Italy in 2009, a massive devastating earthquake that killed 308 people.

A shocked spokesman for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) likened the accusations to a witch hunt.

"It has a medieval flavor to it -- like witches are being put on trial," the stunned spokesman told FoxNews.com.

Enzo Boschi, the president of Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), will face trial along with six other scientists and technicians, after failing to predict the future and the impending disaster.

Earthquakes are, of course, nearly impossible to predict, seismologists say. In fact, according to the website for the USGS, no major quake has ever been predicted successfully.

"Neither the USGS nor Caltech nor any other scientists have ever predicted a major earthquake," reads a statement posted on the USGS website. "They do not know how, and they do not expect to know how any time in the foreseeable future."

COMMENT:  This is pure madness.  It reflects an attempt to find someone to blame.  Since earthquakes can't be predicted with any precision, the government might look at building codes, which often are responsible for permitting catastrophic damage during a quake. 

This is dangerous stuff.  It's a kind of political correctness.  And we shouldn't be self-righteous about it.  In some of our own colleges and universities, both students and faculty have been destroyed by disciplinary action based on the latest political fad or trendy theory. 

We would hope that this persecution of scientists will be cut short by the Italian legal system.

May 28, 2011    Permalink

MAY 27,  2011

OUR FUTURE DEFENSE – AT 10:34 P.M. ET:  As we enter Memorial Day Weekend, it's appropriate to report on the cautions expressed by outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who has served both President Bush and President Obama.  Now that he is growing free of the political restraints of office, Gates is speaking out more directly about the future of American defense.

Remember, many of those we remember on Memorial Day wouldn't have needed memorials had America been strong and ready.  From The Wall Street Journal:

In a series of farewell speeches, Mr. Gates has warned against cuts to weapon programs and troop levels that would make America vulnerable in "a complex and unpredictable security environment," as he said Sunday at Notre Dame. On Tuesday at the American Enterprise Institute, Mr. Gates noted that the U.S. went on "a procurement holiday" in the 1990s, when the Clinton Administration decided to cash in the Cold War peace dividend. The past decade showed that history (and war) didn't end in 1989.

"It is vitally important to protect the military modernization accounts," he said, and push ahead with new capabilities, from an air refueling tanker fleet to ballistic missile submarines...

...In historical terms, the U.S. spends relatively little on defense today, even after the post-9/11 buildup. This year's $530 billion budget accounts for 3.5% of GDP, 4.5% when the costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars are included. The U.S. spent, on average, 7.5% of GDP on defense throughout the Cold War, and 6.2% at the height of the Reagan buildup in 1986.

Most Americans are unaware of how little we actually spend on defense.  The leftist press makes it appear that we're mortgaging our entire future to the Pacific Fleet.

But on coming into office, the Obama Administration put the Pentagon on a fiscal diet—even as it foisted new European-sized entitlements on America, starting with $2.6 trillion for ObamaCare...

...Last year, Mr. Gates said that the Pentagon needs 2%-3% real budget growth merely to sustain what it's doing now, but it could make do with 1%. The White House gave him 0%.

It pretty much tells you what Obama plans for his second term, and it is chilling.

"More perhaps than any other Secretary of Defense, I have been a strong advocate of soft power—of the critical importance of diplomacy and development as fundamental components of our foreign policy and national security," Mr. Gates said at Notre Dame. "But make no mistake, the ultimate guarantee against the success of aggressors, dictators and terrorists in the 21st century, as in the 20th, is hard power—the size, strength and global reach of the United States military."

That's a crucial message for Republican deficit hawks, and especially for a Commander in Chief who inherited the capability to capture Osama bin Laden half way around the world but is on track to leave America militarily weaker than he found it.

COMMENT:  This is a lesson we have to learn over and over, and each year we put flags on the graves of those who paid the price because the lesson wasn't learned well enough.  The left may get its little victory in cutting the defense budget, but some kid from Iowa will be left vulnerable in battle because of it.  Then the left will shout, "Bring the boys home," not really caring about any of them.

May 27, 2011       Permalink

DEVASTATING – AT 10:13 A.M. ET:  Historian Walter Russell Mead examines the week that was and concludes that it represented a foreign-policy catastrophe for President Obama.  His piece, with the wrenching title, "The Dreamer Goes Down for the Count," is from The American Interest:

I had never thought there were many similarities between the pleasure-loving Charles II of England and the more upright Barack Obama until this week. Listening to his speeches on the Middle East at the State Department, US-Israel relations at the AIPAC annual meeting and most recently his address to the British Parliament the comparison becomes irresistible.

“Here lies our sovereign king,” wrote the Earl of Rochester about King Charles:

Whose word no man relies on.
Who never said a foolish thing
Or ever did a wise one.

This seems to capture President Obama’s Middle East problems in a nutshell. The President’s descriptions of the situation are comprehensive and urbane. He correctly identifies the forces at work. He develops interesting policy ideas and approaches that address important political and moral elements of the complex problems we face. He crafts approaches that might, with good will and deft management, bridge the gaps between the sides. He reads thoughtful speeches full of sensible reflections.

But the last few weeks have cast him as the least competent manager of America’s Middle East diplomatic portfolio in a very long time. He has infuriated and frustrated long term friends, but made no headway in reconciling enemies. He has strained our ties with the established regimes without winning new friends on the Arab Street. He has committed our forces in the strategically irrelevant backwater of Libya not, as he originally told us, for “days, not weeks” but for months not days.

Read the whole piece.  It's devastating.  Mead says of Obama, "...he’s taking another ride in the clown car, and this time it isn’t a victory lap." 

No it isn't.  And the main event – Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon – is barely mentioned by the president.

We remind readers that the election is only 18 months away.  Make or break.

May 27, 2011      Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 9:38 A.M. ET:  It is remarkable to observe the depths to which some journalists go to justify and protect Barack Obama.  From The Los Angeles Times's Opinion L.A. column:

In her weekly column, Meghan Daum defends President Obama's dialect and the manner in which he addresses an audience:

"But consider this: It's not that Obama can't speak clearly. It's that he employs the intellectual stammer. Not to be confused with a stutter, which the president decidedly does not have, the intellectual stammer signals a brain that is moving so fast that the mouth can't keep up. The stammer is commonly found among university professors, characters in Woody Allen movies and public thinkers of the sort that might appear on C-SPAN but not CNN. If you're a member or a fan of that subset, chances are the president's stammer doesn't bother you; in fact, you might even love him for it (he sounds just like your grad school roommate, especially when he drank too much Scotch and attempted to expound on the Hegelian dialectic!)."

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.  Have you ever read such a superb specimen of elitism.  Why, why, Barack Obama is just so smart he can't keep up with his own brain.  Aren't you impressed?  Don't you feel lucky to have Obama as your president?

Who cares about two years of a catastrophic foreign policy.

Who cares about a domestic policy that has failed to produce any real results.

Can you just imagine what Meghan Daum would have said about Lincoln?  "What, this buffoon with less than a year of schooling.  Can't America do better?  Where is Harvard?  Where is Yale?"  And we don't have to ask what she would have said about Ronald Reagan.

There is a segment of the press made up of people who would put their college board scores on their gravestones.  To them, indicators of high intellect are the only factors that matter.  Judgment, wisdom, maturity, integrity, experience, are the stuff of the middle brows.  Reader Jacqueline Reckseit reminds us that a sane Czech columnist wrote that he was less concerned about the inadequacies of Barack Obama than about the kind of people who put him in power.  That columnist is correct.  We can survive Obama.  We may not survive the mentality that allowed him to rule over us.

May 27, 2011       Permalink

WORRY ABOUT CHINA – AT 8:55 A.M. ET:  Our eyes have been focused elsewhere, but the Chinese are quietly building their military strength as we plan cutbacks, and our leading aircraft project is in jeopardy.  From The Washington Times:

The threat from Chinese advanced weapons, including new stealth fighters and ballistic missiles, dominated concerns expressed by senior military officers at a Senate hearing this week on the military impact of delays and problems with the new fifth-generation F-35 jet.

Two senior officers in charge of U.S. air power voiced increasing worries that U.S. forces will not be prepared for a future conflict with China, during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services airland subcommittee on Tuesday.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Herbert J. Carlisle, deputy chief of staff for operations, said China’s rollout earlier this year of a new J-20 stealth fighter, which has made two or three test flights, is very troubling, along with another joint Russian-Indian stealth jet.

Both aircraft could be sold to Iran and affect a future U.S. intervention there against Tehran’s nuclear program.

“Those are discouraging in that they rolled out in a time that we thought there was maybe a little bit more time, although we weren’t sure of that,” Gen. Carlisle said.

The three-star general’s comments echoed earlier comments by Navy Vice Adm. David J. Dorsett, a senior intelligence official, who said of the J-20 in January that “we have been pretty consistent in underestimating the delivery of Chinese technology and weapons systems.”

U.S. military fighters will remain a pace ahead technologically of both the Chinese and Russian stealth jets. But if there are further F-35 delays, “then that pacing is in jeopardy,” Gen. Carlisle said.

COMMENT:  Did we ever think we'd be concerned about the Russians again?  But both China and Russia are growing increasingly assertive, while we worry about public opinion in Belgium. 

We will be cutting back on defense just when potential adversaries are forging ahead.  Why doesn't that look smart?  Why does it look so Obama?

May 27, 2011       Permalink

A WARNING FROM NEW YORK – AT 8:41 A.M. ET:  I think this is the second time in recent weeks that we've run that headline.  New York has, along with California, always been a major social laboratory that often influences other states.  But New York is an absolute mess, with a third of its young people indicating a wish to leave.   So now New York has become a warning sign.  Don't do things this way.  Consider this, from The New York Post:

New York state's school systems deserve an F -- in financial accountability.

State taxpayers spend substantially more money on education than any other state in the nation but get far less in return on their investment, according to a shocking new federal study released yesterday.

New York schools on average spent $18,126 per student in the 2008-2009 school year -- tops in the nation, the Census Bureau reports.

That's nearly $2,000 more than the $16,271 spent in neighboring New Jersey and 80 percent higher than the national average of $10,499.

But the Empire State's four-year high-school graduation rate of 73.5 percent ranked a lowly 39th in the nation, two points below the national average, according to a separate analysis by the National Center for Education Statistics.

By comparison, Massachusetts -- which spends $4,000 less per student -- has an 83 percent graduation rate.

New York has doubled its per-student spending over 10 years. For five consecutive years the state has spent the most per student in the nation.

COMMENT:  New York has been going to a party for years, a party paid for by Wall Street and real-estate bubbles, and ridiculously high state taxes.  We've been told, of course, that it's all "for the children."  It is always is.  Must not cheat the "children." 

Now we see that, no matter how much is spent on what passes for education, the results are catastrophic.  Education is a business, and in New York it's big business.  The biggest losers are minority kids, whose parents are told by local "community" hustlers that the more we spend on education, the better it will be for their families.  No, it's usually better only for the hustlers, whose friends wind up on the school payrolls.

Don't do education our way.

May 27, 2011     Permalink