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I appeared on Silvio Canto Jr's show from Dallas last night.  It's here.

OCTOBER 10,  2011

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 10:58 P.M. ET:

DOLLARS FOR THE CAUSE – Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law professor and "consumer advocate" who's taking on Senator Scott Brown for the U.S. Senate seat from Massachusetts in the 2012 election, is being flooded with campaign contributions.  Warren raised $3.1 in the last six weeks, making her one of the top fundraising candidates in the country.  It appears that most of the loot was raised out of state, which we'd expect, since defeating Brown is a national Democratic priority.  Brown is in for a major fight.  He's already being accused of being anti-woman, a pretty typical charge from the kind of trendy liberals who support Warren.  Next he'll be a racist.  Or a descendant of cowboys who fought native Americans.  You see where this is going.

THANKS FOR YOUR WISE COUNSEL – Al Qaeda in Yemen has confirmed the deaths of American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, the American propagandist, both killed in an American drone attack.  And the terrorists are joining the anguished souls of America who worry about the practice of an American president ordering the killing of American citizens.  Never mind that these two birds were making war on their fellow Americans.  “Where are what they keep talking about regarding freedom, justice, human rights and respect of freedoms?!” the Al Qaeda statement asks.  We appreciate their concern for our civil liberties, but somehow don't think Al Qaeda is a worthy authority on the subject of human freedom.

BANZAI! – Apparently channeling the Japanese kamikaze of World War II, the Democratic National Committee embarked today on its latest suicide mission – throwing its support behind the "Occupy Wall Street" movement.  Nancy Pelosi has expressed her delight, as has the director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.  Apparently, the TV footage of the demonstrations, complete with vivid descriptions of some of the "protesters" – fine if you're not eating – failed to deter the Dems.  This is a far cry from the Democratic Party some of us used to know.  It's back to the sixties.  If you still have tie-died jeans in your closet, get 'em out.  LSD also welcome.

THE SON SOMETIMES RISES – Jesse Jackson Jr. is now facing the fight of his life to hold onto his congressional seat, which he first won in a special election in 1995.  His district has been redrawn, bringing in white suburban voters who might not automatically pull the lever for the son of a civil rights icon.  He is being challenged for the Democratic nomination by former Congresswoman Debbie Halvorson, who is more of a centrist, and who considers Jackson a do-nothing congressman.  Jackson's name has been dragged through a number of recent political scandals in Illinois, and he is no longer considered untouchable.  But it will probably take a third candidate, drawing votes from Jackson, to allow Halvorson to win the nomination, considered tantamount to winning the election in the heavily Dem district. 

October 10, 2011       Permalink

LOWERING OBAMA, RAISING CAIN – AT 8:35 P.M. ET:  A new IBD/TIPP poll,  which has produced respected results in the past, reports that, by 51%-41%, Americans don't think President Obama should be re-elected. 

Among independents the gap is 54-36. 

At the same time, Gallup is reporting a further rise for Herman Cain. 

Republicans' support for Herman Cain has surged to 18%, their support for Rick Perry has sagged to 15%, and their support for Mitt Romney remains relatively stable at 20%. However, Romney's support is matched by the 20% of Republicans who are unsure which candidate they will back for the Republican nomination in 2012.

Gallup's Oct. 3-7 update of Republicans' preferences for their party's 2012 presidential nominee shows that Romney since mid-September has regained a numerical lead over the rest of the field, mainly because Perry's support has dropped by half over the same period. At the same time, support for Cain has more than tripled, from 5% to 18%, creating a competitive three-way race for the nomination between Romney, Cain, and Perry -- all within five percentage points of each other. Prior to now, Gallup has had Romney out front, Perry out front, or a two-way battle between them.

Also of note in the new results are Ron Paul's return to single-digit support levels, and the failure of Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Jon Huntsman to make significant gains.

COMMENT:  What's noteworthy is that no one has a commanding lead, unusual for the history of Republican nomination fights.  Usually, by this time, one candidate stands out.

The numbers do emphasize, however, the crucial importance of tomorrow night's debate for Rick Perry.  Expect a lot of combat, not all of it in good taste.

October 10, 2011       Permalink

CALL AL GORE!  QUICK!  QUICK! – AT 8:58 A.M. ET:  What's going on here?  Didn't these Brits get the message?  Don't they know we're all about to burn up?  What's wrong with these colonialists?   From Britain's Express:

BRITAIN is set to suffer a mini ice age that could last for decades and bring with it a series of bitterly cold winters.

And it could all begin within weeks as experts said last night that the mercury may soon plunge below the record -20C endured last year.

Scientists say the anticipated cold blast will be due to the return of a disruptive weather pattern called La Nina. Latest evidence shows La Nina, linked to extreme winter weather in America and with a knock-on effect on Britain, is in force and will gradually strengthen as the year ends.

The climate phenomenon, characterised by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the Pacific, was linked to our icy winter last year – one of the coldest on record.

And it coincides with research from the Met Office indicating the nation could be facing a repeat of the “little ice age” that gripped the country 300 years ago, causing decades of harsh winters.

The prediction, to be published in Nature magazine, is based on observations of a slight fall in the sun’s emissions of ultraviolet radiation, which may, over a long period, trigger Arctic conditions for many years.

COMMENT:  Al Gore must immediately leave his mansion – well, one of his mansions – get into his private jet and fly to England to set things straight.  How dare anyone predict cold weather?  Don't they realize the damage they can do to the global-warming industry?

Anti-science, that's what it is.  Anti-science.  I hate it when people start asking questions.  Real scientists don't ask questions when Al Gore arrives.  That's right, isn't it?

October 10, 2011       Permalink

DEBATE TOMORROW – AT 7:56 A.M. ET:  A critical Republican debate will take place tomorrow evening at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. 

It is critical because, I think it is safe to say, it will be make-or-break for Rick Perry.  When he announced his candidacy several months ago, he was seen by many Republicans as the great hope.   And it's been downhill from there.  His debate performances have been shockingly poor.  He often appears indifferent and poorly prepared.  He has a history of making incendiary statements about key issues like Social Security, and they've come back to bite him.  After leading in the polls immediately after his launch, he's slipped back, trailing Mitt Romney in most of them, and even trailing Herman Cain in some. 

It's now reported that his political staff, which is highly regarded, is making drastic changes in the Perry campaign, and in the candidate, insisting on rigorous debate preparation, and also insisting that the candidate, who's had a habit of fading away as debates progress, get more sleep.

And there's something else.  In the past week the ugly issue of Mr. Romney's religion – he's a Mormon – has erupted, tanks largely to a key supporter of Mr. Perry's, a pastor in Dallas.  The man called Mormonism "a cult."  That's pretty disgraceful stuff in this day and age.  As one who recalls when candidate John F. Kennedy had to go to Houston to assure local ministers that his Catholicism would not interfere with his presidency, I'd thought we'd gotten beyond this stuff. 

Rick Perry had a chance to show that he could be a truly national candidate by responding vigorously to that pastor's slur, and he blew it.  He issued a lukewarm written statement about religious tolerance, etc., etc.  He missed the moment to show presidential leadership.  So, I'm sorry to say, did Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain, who ducked the issue.  But it was Perry's supporter who made the statement, and Perry had a special responsibility to disassociate himself, and he did not.  What is Rick Perry thinking?  Anything?  Perhaps he will use the debate to show that he isn't just a local pol with a swelled head.  He doesn't have too many chances left.

There is much that is good about Rick Perry.  He's been a successful governor of one of our largest states.  He strikes me as, fundamentally, a decent man.  But there's a difference between the minors and the majors, and right now Perry is hovering in between.

October 10, 2011      Permalink 

SEVERE WARNING ON IRAN – AT 7:36 A.M. ET:  I think the American mindset is that we, or the Israelis, might have to strike Iran to take out its nuclear program, and that we have time to make that decision.  But now a serious expert is warning us that the window is closing.  If it does close, we will be in for a very different, and far more frightening, Middle East.  Have a nice day. 

The chance for a military strike to succeed in stopping Iran’s race toward a nuclear weapon is becoming “slimmer” as Tehran continues to produce and disperse its enriched uranium and technology, according to Prof. Avner Cohen, a premier Israeli-American scholar on nuclear proliferation.

“I think we are moving to the point that the chance of success for doing something effective militarily is getting slimmer,” Cohen warned in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.

“The fact that the Iranian nuclear program is further dispersed, that the time for Iran to reach a breakout capability gets shorter and that material can be moved quickly from site to site, would require a very dynamic intelligence capability to know where everything is,” he said.

A professor and senior fellow at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California, Cohen has written two groundbreaking books on Israel’s nuclear program – Israel and the Bomb and The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb.

Furthermore, according to Cohen, even if Israel had all of the intelligence it would still be impossible “to know that you know everything important since you do not know what you do not know.”

Israel and other Western countries have expressed concern in the past that Iran might have additional undeclared nuclear facilities.

COMMENT:  Douglas MacArthur said that all military disasters begin with two words – too late.  It probably will be too late fairly soon to do anything serious about Iran's march to the bomb.  And it's reliably reported that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta recently visited Israel with the specific mission of pressuring the Israelis not to launch an attack on the Iranian program.  No one seriously believes that Obama will.

The Iranian bomb, whether announced or not, will change the Mideast equation.  Iran may believe it then has no reason to fear a nuclear strike by the U.S., Israel or other nations because Iran's opponents will know that Iran could strike back in kind, at least on a limited basic.  Also, when Iran gets the bomb, many other countries in the region will want it as well, setting off a regional nuke race.

We have not taken this seriously enough.

October 10, 2011       Permalink

THIS NAILS IT – AT 7:16 A.M. ET:  We're told we're in an economic recovery, yet no one I know believes it.  Now we have the key reason for that gut feeling, and it's devastating.  From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — In a grim sign of the enduring nature of the economic slump, household income declined more in the two years after the recession ended than it did during the recession itself, new research has found.

Between June 2009, when the recession officially ended, and June 2011, inflation-adjusted median household income fell 6.7 percent, to $49,909, according to a study by two former Census Bureau officials. During the recession — from December 2007 to June 2009 — household income fell 3.2 percent.

The finding helps explain why Americans’ attitudes toward the economy, the country’s direction and its political leaders have continued to sour even as the economy has been growing. Unhappiness and anger have come to dominate the political scene, including the early stages of the 2012 presidential campaign.

President Obama recently called the economic situation “an emergency,” and over the weekend he assailed Congressional Republicans for opposing his jobs bill, which includes tax cuts that would raise take-home pay. Republicans blame Mr. Obama for the slump, saying he has issued a blizzard of regulations and promised future tax increases that have hurt business and consumer confidence.

Those arguments may be heard repeatedly this week, as the Senate begins debating the jobs bill. The full bill — a mix of tax cuts, public works, unemployment benefits and other items, costing $447 billion — is unlikely to pass, but individual parts seem to have a significant chance.

The full 9.8 percent drop in income from the start of the recession to this June — the most recent month in the study — appears to be the largest in several decades, according to other Census Bureau data. Gordon W. Green Jr., who wrote the report with John F. Coder, called the decline “a significant reduction in the American standard of living.”

COMMENT:  And Americans' anger is magnified by the feeling that the pain is not being shared equally.  We pick up a paper and read regularly of what Sarah Palin correctly calls "crony capitalism" – the vast payments to well positioned members of the old boys' network, whether the recipients have performed well or not.  The ousted CEO of Hewlett-Packard reportedly received a $13-million golden parachute...for failing. 

There is nothing worse economically than watching your standard of living fall.  It leads to frustration, anger, and a flailing out.  We can ridicule these "occupy Wall Street" demonstrations, and sneer at the screwball statements made by some of the demonstrators, but this movement will grow unless there's an economic turnaround...and soon.  And there must be a sense that the economy is working fairly.

I think we will have a very volatile 2012.  Election years have that potential, this one in particular.

October 10, 2011     Permalink 

OCTOBER 9,  2011

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 8:10 P.M. ET:

I DON'T THINK SO – An Iranian military commander has declared the "Occupy Wall Street" protests as the start of an "American spring" that will topple the capitalistic system.  The esteemed general might contemplate the difference between the way we handle demonstrators and the way his own regime handles them.  So far we haven't seen the U.S., Army in the streets shooting people for protesting, nor will we see it.  Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, meanwhile, has denounced the "horrible" suppression of the demonstrators in New York, something we hadn't frankly noticed.

MORE GRIEF FOR EGYPTIAN CHRISTIANS – We reported earlier today on the growing fear of Egypt's Christians that anti-Christian Islamists are gaining power.  Tonight comes word that 19 people have been killed in clashes between Christian demonstrators and a combination of Muslims and military forces.  The Christians had been protesting recent attacks on churches when they were apparently attacked themselves.  The potential for major sectarian violence is growing in Egypt, and in several other Arab countries where minority Christian populations live.  Any interest, Mr. Obama?

"FAST AND FURIOUS" GROWING SLOWLY AND SURELY – The "Fast and Furious" scandal, involving a screwball attempt to release guns to be sold to Mexican drug cartels in the hope that tracking them would lead to cartel leaders, is growing, with a House committee planning to subpoena Attorney General Eric Holder, who claims he knew nothing about the operation before news of it went public.  The scandal involves the fact that so many high-powered guns got loose and have apparently been used in murders.   We learned today that some 40 assault weapons from the program have been found in the home of a feared cartel leader in Juarez.

DISGRACEFUIL, IF TRUE – A conservative journalist named Patrick Howley, associated with the American Spectator, claims he "infiltrated" a group of radical leftist protesters outside the Air and Space Museum in Washington, claiming to be an ally, and instigated the clashes that led to the museum's closing yesterday.  If true, Howley should be dismissed immediately.  We have to practice what we preach on our side, and journalistic misconduct is absolutely unacceptable.  Let's see how this develops.  No excuses, please.  Conservatives historically have been far stricter about misbehavior in their ranks than have liberals, and we want that record to continue.

October 9, 2011       Permalink 

LESSON FROM THE GIPPER – AT 10:44 A.M. ET:  A lesson from the Reagan administration just how sick our economy has become under Obama.  From The Wall Street Journal: 

...the economy is producing far fewer jobs than you'd expect in a typical recovery from recession. Over the past six months the U.S. economy has created an average of 72,000 jobs a month, roughly half the pace needed to chip away at the jobless rate. The hardest hit have been minority workers, with the jobless rate for blacks still 16%, Hispanics 11.3%, and teens 24.6%.

As it happens, the biggest one-month jobs gain in American history was at exactly this juncture of the Reagan Presidency, after another deep recession. In September 1983, coming out of the 1981-82 downturn, American employers added 1.1 million workers to their payrolls, the acceleration point for a seven-year expansion that created some 17 million new jobs.

The difference between then and now isn't the magnitude of the recessions but the policies the U.S. pursued to restore growth. In the Reagan expansion, spending and tax rates were cut, regulations were eased, and government was in retreat. Today, we've had a spending and regulatory boom, the threat of higher tax rates, and a general antibusiness political climate. Policies have consequences.

COMMENT:  They certainly do.  But how can you have wise policies when we have a president whose election was heavily influenced by press coverage, who was never vetted, and who was elected largely because of cultural factors?

I think the best we can hope for under Obama is years of economic stagnation, European style.  And yet, Americans may reelect this president, again because of cultural factors.  If they do, this country will be severely hurt, and may become the second-rate power the leftists in the Democrat base so fervently wish for.

October 9, 2011       Permalink

LET'S SEE IF "HUMAN RIGHTS" GROUPS SHOW THE SLIGHTEST INTEREST – AT 10:23 A.M. ET:

CAIRO (AP) - On her first day to school, 15-year-old Christian student Ferial Habib was stopped at the doorstep of her new high school with clear instructions: either put on a headscarf or no school this year.

Habib refused. While most Muslim women in Egypt wear the headscarf, Christians do not, and the move by administrators to force a Christian student to don it was unprecedented. For the next two weeks, Habib reported to school in the southern Egyptian village of Sheik Fadl every day in her uniform, without the head covering, only to be turned back by teachers.

One day, Habib heard the school loudspeakers echoing her name and teachers with megaphones leading a number of students in chants of "We don't want Ferial here," the teenager told The Associated Press.

Habib's was allowed last week to attend without the scarf, and civil rights advocates say her case is a rare one. But it stokes the fears of Egypt's significant Christian minority that they will become the victims as Islamists grow more assertive after the Feb. 11 toppling of President Hosni Mubarak. It also illustrates how amid the country's political turmoil, with little sense of who is in charge and government control weakened, Islamic conservatives in low-level posts can step in and try to unilaterally enforce their own decisions.

Wagdi Halfa, one of Habib's lawyers, said the root problem is a lack of the rule of law.

"We don't want more laws but we want to activate the laws already in place," he said. "We are in a dark tunnel in terms of sectarian tension. Even if you have the majority who are moderate Muslims, a minority of extremists can make big impact on them and poison their minds."

COMMENT:  Gee, where have we heard this before?   We hustled Mubarak, an American ally, out of power, without any regard to who would replace him.

And in Syria, despite the cruelty of the Assad regime, Christians are expressing fear that his ouster would bring down the wrath of militant Islam on them.

The plight of Christians under militant Islam is rarely covered by the trendy press.  Maybe now, in the face of increasing abuses, that will change. 

October 9, 2011      Permalink

GOOD FOR JERRY – AT 10:11 A.M. ET:  Governor Jerry Brown of California has done the right thing in vetoing a bill that could have let the leftists in college administrations run wild.  It took guts for a liberal Democrat to do this, so praise is due. 

(Reuters) - California Governor Jerry Brown on Saturday vetoed legislation that would have allowed California universities to consider race and gender in student admissions, even though Brown said he agreed with its goal.

The measure was the latest attempt to scale back, or repeal, so-called Proposition 209 approved by voters in 1996. It bars public agencies from considering race or ethnicity in everything from awarding contracts to accepting undergraduates.

"I wholeheartedly agree with the goal of this legislation," Brown wrote in his veto message.

But the Democratic governor said the courts should determine what should happen to Proposition 209.

For more than 15 years, Proposition 209 has prompted fierce debate. Opponents said it narrowed opportunities for women and minorities to succeed in California. Supporters countered that it simply created a system where individual ability was rewarded.

The California Supreme Court last August ruled that it was constitutional.

COMMENT:  There are thoughtful ways for universities to serve historically underserved communities – through outreach programs, recruitment of talented kids and intermediate training for kids who have been trapped in inferior schools.  But as soon as you give legal approval to take race and gender into consideration, you open the door to major abuses by ideological militants in school administrations.  Remember, the sixties crowd is in charge of many colleges and universities today.

Also, including gender is simply redundant at a time when women substantially outnumber men on many college campuses.  (And more power to those women who've pursued, through their own talent, higher education.)

Also, when you specifically permit considerations of race and ethnicity, you take the pressure off specific communities to improve themselves and their school systems.

We in New York watched, in the turbulent and corrupt 1960s, how the great City College of New York, once known as the poor person's Harvard, was wrecked before our eyes by a crazed liberal idea called "open admissions," which rapidly expanded the number of minorities admitted.  The problem is, many of those kids lacked the basic skills for college, forcing "City" into a long decline.  Open admissions was repealed by courageous New York educators and leaders some years later.  City College has risen again, and minorities are still heavily represented.  But this time the kids are better prepared because they're not admitted if they're not.   And no one is demanding "open admissions" again.

October 9, 2011     Permalink