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OCTOBER 14,  2011

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:24 P.M. ET:

SETBACK IN BRITAIN – There is probably no finer member of the British government than the secretary of state for defense, Liam Fox.  A Churchillian, a passionate believer in the special relationship with America, a conservative, and a man devoted to rebuilding Britain's defenses, he represents the Britain we love.  I heard him speak in New York and was deeply impressed.  Sadly, Fox committed a foolish blunder in mixing some personal business with his government position and has been forced to resign.  It is a major setback, but Fox should have known better.  I don't know how he can be replaced.

REVOLTING – Donny Deutsche, the advertising guy who doubles as a TV talk-show host, has gone degenerate in saying that the Occupy Wall Street moment needs a "Kent State" moment to galvanize support.  "Kent State" refers to the 1970 killing of four students at Ohio's Kent State University, when National Guard troops were called out to confront unruly protesters.  While Deutsche assured viewers that he wasn't suggesting anyone get killed, the comparison was revolting.  Oh, by the way, Deutsche sold his advertising agency in 2000 for $265-million.  Apparently that allowed him to feel our pain without suffering any himself.

MORE "PROGRESSIVISM" IN SAN FRANCISCO – The latest brilliant idea to come from Nancy Pelosi's home base is for waiters and waitresses to receive mandatory 25% tips.  Of course, naturally, some "workers" think it's a great idea.  Others do not, pointing out that the whole idea of a tip is to reward good service, and that the size of the tip reflects how good that service really is.  It's a bad idea, although probably no worse than "golden parachutes," that symbol of crony capitalism wherein failed executives get millions of dollars to live a corporation, and are paid handsomely for their failure.

OBAMA VS. WALL STREET – Reports from Washington say that the Obama campaign will try to harness the energy of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement and run against the Street in the 2012 campaign.  If Romney is the nominee, he will be targeted as a tool of big banks and investment houses.  The problem with this approach is that Obama himself has been close to Wall Street, has raised plenty of money there, and raised more money on the Street in 2008 than did John McCain.  Another problem is the number of fabulously wealthy Democrats in Congress, including Nancy Peels and John Kerry.  And I think it's foolish for anyone to get to close to the "occupy" movement, just as it was foolish to get too close to the Egyptian demonstrators during the "Arab spring."  Americans reacted to movements like this in the 1960s by going right, and electing Nixon, not by going left.

October 14, 2011    Permalink 

SNIPPET OF THE DAY – AT 11:17 A.M. ET:

From Fox:  Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is apparently in a hurry to get ahold of a new iPhone 4S.  NBC11 is reporting that Wozniak was first in line when he showed up Thursday at the Apple store in Los Gatos.  With the new device going on sale Friday, Wozniak told the station that even though he has two new phones on the way, he plans on staying overnight outside the store.  Wozniak was one of about five people who were in line around 2 p.m. Thursday at the store.

Either Wozniak is a real down-to-Earth guy, or this is a shrewd PR move for some undisclosed purpose.  Wozniak is very bright.  He might now emerge.

THE MAN WHO... – AT 9:20 A.M. ET:  There is probably nothing sadder in this election season than seeing the collapse of Rick Perry.  He is America's longest-serving governor, and a successful governor at that.  He is known as a vigorous campaigner.  He is engaging and warm.  Two months ago he was the great hope of GOP conservatives, unhappy with the field.  Now he is approaching the status of an also-ran. 

So what happened?  Byron York has the best piece I've seen on this, and it serves as a warning to other would-be presidential candidates:

Blaming the Texas governor's problems on a lackluster debating style -- as Perry himself has done after a number of poor performances -- answers only part of the question. Yes, debates are particularly important this campaign season. But debates are more than just style and popularity contests. They reveal deeper things about candidates; voters watching debates can learn not only how a candidate handles tough questions but whether he is really, truly prepared to run for the White House...

...The Rick Perry who has taken the stage in four Republican debates so far is a man who, for all his governing success in Texas, appears not to have thought enough about why he wants to be president of the United States and what he would do if he achieved his goal. When critics gently say that Perry's presentations have been "light on details," they're really saying Perry doesn't seem to have thought things through.

And that is the image that's developing.

For Romney, debate preparation involves taking all the things he has already thought through and finding the most effective way to present them in one-minute answers. For Perry, debate preparation is trying to learn new stuff about national issues that he should have been thinking about a long time ago.

It's often pointed out that since Perry entered the Republican race late, on Aug. 13, he had little time to build a campaign organization and hone a campaign pitch. That's true, but the fact is, if Perry wanted to be president, he should have been thinking seriously about the substance of national issues -- not just money-raising and state chairmen -- years before he declared his candidacy.

Now Perry is paying the price for that lack of preparation. And if that, in fact, is the real problem behind his poor debate performances, then he's not going to improve as a candidate in the next few weeks. It's far too late for that.

COMMENT:  I'm afraid it's true.  It was also true of Fred Thompson in 2008.  He also was the great hope.  But when he finally entered the race, nothing happened.  He didn't seem ready, or even that engaged.  And the same thing was true of Ted Kennedy, when he tried to unseat fellow Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1980.  In the key moment of Kennedy's campaign, he was asked by Roger Mudd why he wanted to be president.  He stumbled around for an answer, wandering aimlessly through some clichés.  That pretty much ended it.

We could easily say – and it would be true – that Barack Obama was unprepared for the presidency when he ran.  But the disgraceful bias of the press protected him.  There is no such protection for a conservative Republican. 

I have the gut feeling that Rick Perry might have been a very fine president, with a strong sense of what America is about.  I doubt now that he'll ever get that chance.  But his experience teaches us once again how hard it is to run for president, and how well prepared a conservative has to be.

October 14, 2011       Permalink

HERMAN IN THE SPOTLIGHT – AT 8:49 A.M. ET:  The buzz is all about Herman Cain, who's rising to the top in several polls of Republicans.  Will it last?  Should it?

As we've noted here, Cain's rise seems fueled, at least in part, by the anyone-but-Romney position of many conservative Republicans, who have been looking for an alternative to the former Massachusetts governor, whom they clearly do not trust.  It reminds me of the old basketball cheer, familiar to anyone who went to high-school games:  "Jones, Jones, he's our man; if he can't do it, Ellsworth can;  Ellsworth, Ellsworth, he's our man; if he can't do it, Carlson can."

First there was Bachmann.  Then there was Pawlenty.  Then there was Perry.  There almost was Palin, but she dropped out, as did another "almost," Chris Christie.  Mitch Daniels said no. 

Now it's Herman Cain.  Frankly, I have my doubts.  Cain is an intelligent, engaging man with a good record in business, although he's never run anything more than a medium-sized company.  He isn't David Packard, of Hewlett-Packard, who served as Undersecretary of Defense.  He isn't Charles Wilson, of General Motors, who served as secretary of defense. 

Cain is attractive, straightforward, with a wonderful story of a man coming from a hard-working family (his mother was a maid) and making it on his own, despite racial barriers.  But we know so little about him.  He has no record on foreign policy.  Even though he is capable, unlike many politicians, of saying "I don't know," there may be too many things he doesn't know.  We were burned in 2008 by electing a minor Chicago politician with a golden voice to the presidency.  I don't want to see us burned again.

So Herman Cain has to expand his horizons vastly beyond his now-famous, if unknown, "9-9-9" plan for tax reform.  His campaign is minimally organized.  He has little money.  He's not been subjected to serious questioning, although that will probably now change.  Naturally, racialists accuse him of not being a "legitimate" black man because he refuses to toe the standard leftist line.  He's parried that charge beautifully, and shows he has real fight in him.

His "9-9-9" plan is coming under fire, including concentrated fire from conservatives.  It includes a national sales tax that may well impact the average American severely.  Yes, it freezes all income tax rates at 9%, but most in the middle class and below pay far less than that when deductions are applied.  They may pay more under Cain's plan.  Cain claims his 9% corporate rate will allow companies to lower the price of their products, offsetting the sales tax.  But will they?  Or will the windfall go right into the pockets of the same vastly overpaid executives so many Americans are enraged about?  Cain must detail his plan and offer real answers to serious questions.

Cain may turn out to be another flavor of the month.  Or, he could go all the way.  There's another debate next week.  He'll have a chance to prove himself, or fade under concentrated fire.  

October 14, 2011       Permalink

WASHINGTON FINALLY NOTICED – AT 8:32 A.M. ET:  We've been reporting here that large stores of missiles are missing from the Libyan arsenal.  There have been fears that they will fall into the hands of Al Qaeda, Hamas, or Hezbollah.  Some stories running now indicate how serious this can be.  Some of these misssiles are surface-to-air, capable of bringing down airliners taking off or landing.  From WaPo:

TRIPOLI — The United States is planning to dispatch dozens of former military personnel to Libya to help track down and destroy surface-to-air missiles from Moammar Gaddafi’s stockpiles that U.S. officials worry could be used by terrorists to take down passenger jets.

The weapons experts are part of a rapidly expanding $30 million program to secure Libya’s conventional weapons in the wake of the most violent conflict to occur in the Arab Spring, according to State Department officials who provided new details of the effort.

Fourteen contractors with military backgrounds have been sent to help Libyan officials, and the U.S. government is looking at sending dozens more. Thousands of pamphlets in Arabic, English and French will be delivered to neighboring countries so border guards can recognize the heat-seeking missiles, the officials said. It could grow to become one of the three biggest U.S. weapons-retrieval program in the world, along with those in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A little late, I'm afraid.  There's this disturbing report from the Jerusalem Post:

Egypt security officers said they intercepted surface-to-air missiles smuggled from Libya through the Sinai peninsula, the Washington Post reported, a day after Egypt reportedly flew fighter jets over certain areas of Sinai without requisite permission from Israel.

According to the Washington Post report, an Egyptian source said that Palestinians in Gaza had likely struck a deal over the weapons with contacts in Libya.

Such weapons pose a serious threat to Israel, which regularly patrols the strip with "helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft," the Washington Post reported. It is the second time in a month that Egyptian security forces announced they had intercepted smuggled weapons in Sinai.

If one of those missiles brings down an Israeli plane, a new Mideast war could break out.  And it would be comparatively easy to break those missiles down and send parts around the world.  This is a growing story, and I suspect it will lead to some real tragedies.  Terror groups have long sought a supply of shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles.

October 14, 2011       Permalink

NEW YORK MAYOR CAVES, DEMONSTRATORS MARCH – AT 8:15 A.M. ET:  There's been a disturbing development in the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in New York.

The city's increasingly erratic mayor, Mike Bloomberg, cancelled plans to order the demonstrators out of the private park that they've taken over so the park can be cleaned.  Media outlets report that the city administration feared a confrontation with police.

So, what is the result?  Predictable.  The New York Post reports:

About 200 Occupy Wall Street protesters -- emboldened by officials backing down this morning from evicting them from their Zuccotti Park campsite for a cleaning -- stormed Wall Street, leaping over barriers and getting into a fracas with cops.

The throng of protesters streamed on to Broadway, blocking traffic, setting up a confrontation with police who are waiting for them on the street.

Things turned predictably violent as cops tackled protesters and chased them up the street -- forcing everyone to the sidewalks -- in what turned into a melee.

Police arrested at least eight people on Beaver Street, as a throng of protesters flipped over a police scooter on Broadway.

Cuffed protesters yelled, "The whole world is watching!" Shame on you!"

That slogan is right out of the sixties.  I'm afraid the truth is coming out about many in this "movement."

Joseph Vitulli, 32, an unemployed man from Brooklyn, said, "The city tried to intimidate us, they threatened us and tried to put us in our place. But we showed them what we are all made of and we did it without violence.

"We came together, we got the support we needed and we won. This is huge for us. We showed them that our solidarity and commitment to the cause is stronger than the threat of arrest. We're on a roll. Nothing can stop us now."

Allison Schwartz 22, a waitress, said the protest continues.

"I can't believe it. I thought it was all over. I was so ready to be arrested," she said. "I thought that's what it was going to come down to. This changes everything. I've never been more confident that we are all going to make a difference. They're going to need an army to stop us now. A few cops wont make a difference."

The brazen act comes after Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway said the owners of the private park, Brookfield Office Properties, had put off the power-washing that protesters said would kill their demonstration, which has been on since Sept. 17.

Hundreds of people crowded in to the park overnight as a sign of strength against the police who said they would escort the cleaning crews and remove any protesters who refused to leave.

COMMENT:  We also now learn that demonstrators in Boston spat at some Coast Guard women who were passing by.  That, too, is right out of the sixties.

And we also see an increasing number of anti-Semitic signs.  The magazine that started all this, AdBusters, has a history of anti-Jewish articles. 

We try to be fair here, sometimes to the dismay of some readers.  We report what we see and avoid jumping to rash conclusions.  But events of the last few days are disturbing, especially as this movement now has the endorsement of leading Democratic Party officials. 

Stand by for more.

October 14, 2011     Permalink

OCTOBER 13,  2011

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 9:56 P.M. ET: 

ALL HERMAN ALL THE TIME – Herman Cain is having a great time.  As this week's ABR (anyone but Romney) candidate, he's picking up support rapidly.  Rasmussen now has the GOP race as Cain 29%, Romney 29%, Gingrich 10%, with Gingrich making his best showing.  Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi now says Cain could sweep the South and that his own wife would vote for him.  A new poll shows Cain leading in Florida, with Romney not far behind, and Gingrich third.  Rick Perry, having struck out in three straight debates, is fading as a major factor.  But Herman had better watch out.  Other anyone but Romney candidates, like Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty, have come and melted.  It's fun while it lasts.

GORE BACKS THE OCCUPIERS – Al Gore is now actively backing the Occupy Wall Street movement.  No doubt he'll have the entire windmill industry behind him.  Gore joins a growing list of fabulously wealthy people who are endorsing a movement that is opposed to fabulously wealthy people.  We wonder whether Gore will have his limo driver take him down to the one of the protest sites where he can take the air temperature and maybe announce that from now on he's going entirely to Japanese bikes. 

THE IRAN PLOT – President Obama says Iran will be held responsible for the alleged plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States, and for other plots, like the alleged plan to blow up the Israeli embassy in Washington.  But the Saudis are pledging a restrained response, and it appears that nothing beyond sanctions and economic tightening are on the agenda for now.  The president also said that information confirming the plot, which could have killed hundreds of Americans in the nation's capital, had come from multiple sources.  It was revealed that the U.S. has had direct contact with the Iranians over the plot, even though the two nations don't have diplomatic relations.  The question is what will happen if Iran is linked to a further plot to be carried out on American soil.  Ironically, a tough American response in the middle of an election year could strongly benefit Obama.

DEFENSE WORRIES – Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has issued still another firm warning about irresponsible defense cuts.  And now Senator John McCain has said that he will move to nullify any unreasonable cuts by legislation.  The fear is growing among national-defense experts that the Pentagon may be asked for cuts that could seriously endanger the main mission of protecting the United States.  Already Panetta is saying that some proposed cuts could drive the U.S. out of Africa.  What is sad is that some Republicans, betraying the party of Ronald Reagan, are not resisting further cuts in military spending, the better to appeal to the green eyeshade crowd that is becoming increasingly powerful in GOP ranks.  Shame.

October 13, 2011     Permalink 

THINNING THE HERD? – AT 9:30 A.M. ET:  There's another Republican debate next week, this time on CNN, which means a much larger audience than the Bloomberg debate a few nights ago.  Also, there is now talk of moving some of the Republican primary voting forward, with the possibility of the New Hampshire primary being held in early December.  The debates take on an urgency.   We are getting close.

One of the key questions:  Who'll drop out?  The field is too big, the debates too unruly, with so many candidates.  Voters want to settle on a few candidates and hear them debate against each other, without sharing the time with those who really have no chance.

Most speculation swirls around Perry.  Byron York, of The Washington Examiner, asks, "After another bad debate, is Rick Perry finished?"

After two consecutive weak debate performances, Perry was under considerable pressure to do well on Tuesday. He didn't. In fact, Perry was so underwhelming that the candidate himself began explaining away his performance just moments after the debate ended. "Debates are not my strong suit," he told a friendly crowd at a Dartmouth fraternity house not far from the debate hall.

But they're the only game in town right now.

"He's just disappeared," said top Romney strategist Stuart Stevens. "He keeps saying, well, I've only been in this race eight weeks. It's like they don't grade on the curve in a presidential race. It doesn't matter. People don't care. The idea that the governor of Texas is playing the pity card is sort of distasteful."

And...

Cain's rise just underscores the fact that, after several months of campaigning, the Republican field is still competing with itself for the right to challenge Mitt Romney one-to-one. For weeks, that seemed to be Perry's natural position. Carney, the top Perry aide, believes it still is. "Ultimately, the battle for the nomination will be, I think, between Mitt Romney and someone else," he said after the debate. "Our goal is to make us that someone else."

The question after Tuesday night is whether Perry did anything at the debate to make progress toward that goal. The answer -- best expressed by Perry's own "not my strong suit" comment -- appears to be no.

COMMENT:  If next week's debate finishes Perry, who is next?  Herman Cain is.  He is now Romney's most serious challenger, but Romney is proving difficult to beat.  Yet, Cain is ahead of Romney in several polls.  Romney will have to go after Cain, essentially destroy him with a velvet glove, always sensitive to the racial issue.  If Romney can't basically neutralize Cain, then Romney might well become the Hillary Clinton of 2012, the inevitable winner whose inevitability was ended by an African-American.   If the polls are correct, it could happen. 

We'll have a furious seven weeks ahead. 

October 13, 2011       Permalink

NEW JOBS REPORT – YUCH – AT 8:52 A.M. ET:  The weekly unemployment claims report is just out, and there's no improvement. 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of people applying for unemployment benefits was mostly unchanged last week. A slight dip in applications suggests the job market isn't getting much better.

Applications ticked down 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 404,000, the Labor Department said Thursday.

The four-week average, a less volatile measure, declined for the third straight week to 408,000. That's the lowest average in eight weeks.

Still, applications are higher than they would be in a healthy economy. They need to fall consistently below 375,000 to signal sustainable job growth. They haven't been below that level since February.

The report suggests that layoffs have declined in recent weeks. Weekly unemployment applications are a barometer of layoffs. But other data show hiring hasn't picked up.

COMMENT:  The rule of thumb is that any unemployment claim number above 400,000 is bad news, and we've been seeing numbers above 400,000 regularly.  There is a sense, a mood, that this may be permanent, or the next thing to permanent, a jobs recession that could go on for years.  This country must create a minimum of 150,000 new jobs a month just to keep pace with population growth, and that is not happening.

One thing that is not measured by the traditional indices is underemployment or grudging employment.   Millions of people, though employed, are earning far less than they once did.  Others are straining, in a normally two-income household, to make up for the loss of one of those incomes.  Still others have been forced out of the industry they'd wanted to work in, to other, less pleasurable lines of work.  We can easily become a bitter, discontented nation. 

And no one seems to have answers that excite the American voting public.

October 13, 2011       Permalink

THE BIZARRE MR. OBAMA – AT 8:33 A.M. ET:  We now learn that President Obama was on track to deliver an apology to Japan for our use of the atomic bomb to end World War II.  It was, apparently, part of his magical apology tour, portraying his own country as savage and cruel.  But the Japanese balked at the apology.  From Investors.com:

Leaked cables show Japan nixed a presidential apology to Hiroshima and Nagasaki for using nukes to end the overseas contingency operation known as World War II. Will the next president apologize for the current one?

The obsessive need of this president to apologize for American exceptionalism and our defense of freedom continued recently when Barack Obama's State Department (run by Hillary Clinton) contacted the family of al-Qaida propagandist and recruiter Samir Khan to "express its condolences" to his family.

Khan, a right-hand man to Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed along with Awlaki in an airstrike in Yemen on Sept. 30. We apologized for killing a terrorist before he could help kill any more of us.

It's yet another part of the world apology tour that began with Obama taking the oath of office to protect and defend the United States and its Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, something he immediately felt sorry for.

And...

A heretofore secret cable dated Sept. 3, 2009, was recently released by WikiLeaks. Sent to Secretary of State Clinton, it reported Japan's Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka telling U.S. Ambassador John Roos that "the idea of President Obama visiting Hiroshima to apologize for the atomic bombing during World War II is a 'nonstarter.'"

The Japanese feared the apology would be exploited by anti-nuclear groups and those opposed to the defensive alliance between Japan and the U.S.

COMMENT:  I would have loved to have heard the discussions in the Japanese Foreign Ministry.  What is the Japanese equivalent of "amateur American president"?  One of the most striking things about Obama is how he has lost the respect of foreign governments.  Here is a man who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in his first week in office, essentially for having "promise."  Now the world knows that he is in way over his head and has never understood foreign policy.  He has weakened a country that the world depends on.  And so he has nowhere near the political good will that he had when taking the oath. 

Defeat him before he apologizes again.

October 13, 2011       Permalink

AMERICANS GLUM ON WHERE WE'RE GOING – AT 8:09 A.M. ET:  One of the key indictators that pundits look at to gauge the American mood is the right track/wrong track number that comes out of polling.  Right now Americans think we're heading off a cliff without a helmet or a parachute.  From Andrew Malcom at Investors.com:

Somehow, 16% of likely American voters still believe the country is doing swell.

Rescue teams are out looking for them right now.

Sixteen percent is not much of a political base for President Obama to build a 2012 reelection campaign on. In fact, the right track number is down two more points just since last week and down 16 points since last October.

And...

Not surprisingly, perhaps, 91% of Republicans believe the country is on the wrong track.

Ominously, though, fully 80% of independents, so crucial to any president's election, are now convinced the country is on the wrong track.

And a substantial majority of Democrats, those expected to be the most loyal to the Chicagoan, are also now thinking wrong track by 59%.

COMMENT:  In a situation like this, the traditional political approach is to say to the voters, "I may be bad, but the other guy is worse."  The Dems are already taking pot shots at Mitt Romney, under the assumption that he will be the Republican standard bearer.  The campaign is entirely negative.  Pointing to Barack Obama's accomplishments is hardly productive.

The Obamans must destroy their Republican opponent.  This is the Chicago crowd, and destruction is second nature.

October 13, 2011     Permalink