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SUBSCRIPTION DRIVE - NOT BAD

DAY 14

Good day yesterday.  Saturdays are usually dead during subscription drives, but this drive has seen the exception.  Our Saturdays have been very much alive. 

But we still have a way to go to reach our goal.  

URGENT AGENDA SERIOUSLY NEEDS SUBSCRIPTIONS AND DONATIONS TO CONTINUE OUR WORK AT A HIGH LEVEL.

I think we perform a valuable service here.  Many readers tell us that we're the first place they visit online each day.  That is very encouraging, and reflects the loyalty our readers have shown.  They know that Urgent Agenda is written for a special, intelligent audience, not a mass audience. 

But publishing Urgent Agenda is costly, and we count on subscribers and donators to keep us going.  Without you, we're history.  Our first two years showed dramatic growth, but this last year has been tougher.  Clearly, the economy is a factor.   But we must have a stable financial base in order to continue.

Once again we ask our regular stalwarts to consider expanding their subscriptions or making an additional donation.  And we ask our new readers to subscribe or donate.  Please don't put the burden entirely on a core group.

If you like what you see each day, and you want to be sure it's there tomorrow, please subscribe or donate.  You can do so by PayPal under SUBSCRIPTIONS, in the right hand column of this page, opposite these words. 

You can also subscribe by mail.  If you'd like to do that, just send us an e-mail at service@urgentagenda.com, and we'll reply with our mailing address.  (We don't like to publish it to avoid mailboxes stuffed with Viagra ads.)

The most important reason to subscribe or donate is to support our work.  But, in addition, you become a member of The Angel's Corner, and receive our twice-a-week e-mailed page, most of which is devoted to short essays by our readers, who are invited to comment on anything they wish, at whatever length they choose.  It is the liveliest part of Urgent Agenda.

We hope to have you aboard.

SEPTEMBER 18,  2011

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 9:51 P.M. ET:

IT'S GREEK TO US – Greece is on the financial edge.  A default by the major nation would create an even greater economic crisis in Europe.  The Greeks are pressured by other nations to reduce their spending.  But, internally, the Greek people, brought up in a welfare society, are demanding a continuation of the welfare state.  The president of Greece, George A. Papandreou, has cancelled a trip to Washington to deal with the crisis.  Europe's problems, which extend well beyond Greece, could affect us here, dramatically so, if European nations start to default. 

ANOTHER WONDERFUL ALLY – Fox News, in a new report, presents evidence that Pakistan spread nuclear technology around the world for years, in exchange for cash and help with its own program.  The recipients of the technical aid were China, Iran, North Korea, and Libya.  We have taken our eye off the ball here.  Iran isn't even on the front pages any longer, and neither is North Korea.  But both continue with the nuclear weapons program.  North Korea already has the bomb, and Iran is moving toward it.  When they have a nuclear weapon, the face of the Mideast could be changed.  Of course, President Obama will reach out to them.

ANYONE NOTICING? – Some 26 people were killed by government forces in Yemen today, and more Syrians were killed on Friday.  Does anyone care?  The so-called Arab spring, now stretching into fall, continues, and we have a responsibility to be apprehensive over what is happening.  There is no country going through upheaval in which we can be sure that the rebels are any better than the corrupt dictators they want to replace.  President Obama does not seem terribly engaged.  What else is new?

MITCH MIFFED – Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana, himself a hot property in the GOP presidential sweepstakes until he pulled himself out of the running, now says he's dissatisfied with the Republican field, and that there's still time for others to get into the race.  It's impossible to know if he was hinting that he might reconsider, but at this point I wonder if anyone cares.  You can play coy only so long before people get disgusted at the maneuvering.  Ditto for Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani.  I, too, think there's room for someone else, but have no idea who it could be...unless it's Marco Rubio.  Whoever comes in at this stage has to swing a mighty bat. 

September 18, 2011       Permalink

WHEN LOONIES MEET – AT 11:26 A.M. ET:  Ah yes, what really is wrong with Obama is that he's not liberal enough.  If only he was more liberal, he'd surely be way out front in all the polls.

And there are people who really believe that.   The Washington Post has their exciting, inspiring story:

Liberal activists and academics displeased with the Obama administration’s handling of several issues popular with progressives say they are seeking candidates willing to mount a primary challenge against President Obama next year.

The group, led by consumer advocate Ralph Nader and scholar Cornel West, said it faults Obama for the escalation of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for extending tax cuts first enacted by George W. Bush and for his actions during the recent debt ceiling negotiations.

The group said Saturday it is seeking six “recognizable, articulate” candidates who would not mount serious challenges to Obama, but “rigorously debate his policy stands” on issues related to labor, poverty, foreign policy, civil rights and consumer protections.

The group’s efforts come as Democrats are growing increasingly pessimistic about the country’s direction. Fewer than three-quarters of Democrats approve of Obama’s job performance, and less than a third believe the nation is headed in the right direction, according to the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll.

But Obama is building a formidable reelection campaign that is easily exceeding quarterly fundraising goals and is on course to raise more than $1 billion. Campaign aides last week defended the president’s slipping approval numbers by noting that more than a year before the election, he is attracting thousands of volunteers and small-dollar donors.

Nader said Saturday it is “very unlikely” he would challenge Obama, and that he is gauging the interest of former lawmakers and governors, academics, authors and labor leaders.

COMMENT:  How stimulating.  Actually, President Obama may be wishing for the kind of debate that Nader and West are trying to encourage.  Then he could come out looking like a moderate again, which is the bill he sold us in 2008. 

The Nader/West crowd calls itself "progressive," when in fact it's actually regressive.  It dreams of a return to the 1960s, and they'd probably look great in tie-dyed jeans.   The rest of us would, politely, like to get beyond their out-of-date fantasies.

September 18, 2011      Permalink

HEAVY HITTERS SNUB CALIFORNIA GOP MEET – AT 10:54 A.M. ET:  One of the greatest weaknesses in the Republican Party is that its state organizations, if they exist at all, are often seen as bad jokes.  In New York the party is basically a skeleton, a paper power, which waits for some major Republican figure to put some meat on the bones.  In California, the most populous state, the party is...well, get this, from The Politico:

LOS ANGELES - The front-runners in the GOP presidential race were nowhere to be found as California Republicans met in Los Angeles over the weekend, giving underdog candidates a chance to press their argument that the nation will recover from its economic malaise only by shrinking government to the bounds of the Constitution.

The crowd at the state party convention - as usual dominated by the more conservative elements in the GOP - warmly received U.S. Reps. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Ron Paul of Texas.

When the frontrunners won't even show up at a state convention in the most populous state, a message is being sent.  This isn't the California GOP of Ronald Reagan.  Ron Paul won its straw poll. 

California is now a reliably Democratic state.  That won't change until the party broadens its base, and understands that, as one of my professors taught, a major purpose of a party is to "organize the electorate."  Making ideological points is fine for movements and social clubs. 

To add insult to injury, Mitt Romney was campaigning in California while the convention was on.  Talk about a snub.  Rich Perry was in Iowa. 

California, once the golden state, is a mess in so many ways.  An eccentric Republican Party, which should be winning elections from the incompetent Democrats, isn't making things any better.

September 18, 2011       Permalink

THE TRUTH ABOUT TAXES – AT 10:39 A.M. ET:  Taxes are a hot issue on both sides of the political aisle, and no subject generates more mythology than the issue of who gets what in the tax system.  President Obama is trying to convince Americans that corporations are stealing the country blind.  But, incredibly, the liberal Washington Post runs a piece today that, in effect, says, "No so fast, Barack."

As President Obama and congressional Republicans argue over how to rewrite the U.S. tax code, the debate has revolved around “loopholes” for corporate jets and ending “carve-outs” for well-heeled special interests. But if the goal is debt reduction, that’s not where the money is.

Broad tax breaks granted to millions of families at all income levels dwarf the corporate giveaways. Over the past two years, largely because of these popular benefits in the federal income tax code, the government has reached a rare milestone in tax collection — it has given away as much as it takes in.

The number of tax breaks has nearly doubled since the last major tax overhaul 25 years ago, with lawmakers adding new benefits for children, college tuition, retirement savings and investment. At the same time, some long-standing breaks have exploded in value, such as the deduction for mortgage interest and the tax-free treatment of health-insurance premiums paid by employers.

All told, federal taxpayers last year received $1.08 trillion in credits, deductions and other perks while paying $1.09 trillion in income taxes, according to government estimates.

Only about 8 percent of those benefits went to corporations. (The write-off for corporate jets equals about .03 percent of the total.) The bulk went to private households, primarily upper middle-class families that Obama has vowed to protect from new taxes.

COMMENT:  That doesn't mean there can't be improvements, but I wish Obama would stop scapegoating corporations.  There are good corporations and corporations that don't measure up.  There are tax benefits for corporations that make sense, and some that don't.  The issues of fairness in the tax system, and the level of taxation, require serious discussion and a rational examination of the nation's needs.  The demagogues, including the president, are not helpful. 

September 18, 2011     Permalink

SEPTEMBER 17,  2011

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 8:35 P.M. ET:

BACHMANN STRUGGLES – The informed buzz across the internet is that Michele Bach mann has failed in her struggle to get back into the GOP presidential race, and has had a very bad week.  Bach mann was rising after a win in the Iowa straw poll, but fell back badly when Rick Perry entered the race.  They appeal to the same constituency, and Bachmann votes floated to Perry.  She tried to attack him in debate this week, but blundered badly afterward by suggesting that a particular vaccine, an issue in Perry's health-care record, might cause mental problems.   One of the basic rules of politics is that you don't give medical advice.  Bach mann, grilled by Jay Le no (it's come to that) could not get out of the hole.  She gets another chance in this week's GOP debate.

HOLLYWOOD MYTHOLOGY – One of the great myths about Hollywood – I saw it firsthand – is that it's a modern, cutting-edge industry.  It is not.  It is out-of-date, lagging, and refuses to learn much that is new.  Thus, we are about to be treated to a remake of "Straw Dogs," a Sam Pecking film of decades ago.  Now it will be set in Mississippi, which will be portrayed horribly.  No one is defending Mississippi's role during the civil rights era.  But the state has changed, has many, many black officeholders, and is not the state of yore.  But Hollywood, stuck as it is in the 1960s, refuses to accept it.  Like many on the left, the Hollywood establishment is comfortable in its bigotry, while denouncing bigotry in others.

IT'S ABOUT TIME – British Prime Minister David Cameron is launching a GREAT campaign to put the word "great" back in Great Britain.  He will market his country abroad as a great place to visit and invest in.  It's about time.  There are two Britain's, the Britain of Winston Churchill and the Britain of the pathetic welfare state.  I think Cameron admires the Churchill version.  For years Britain has buckled under the weight of its irresponsible left and its dumb ed down multiculturalism.  Celebrating GREAT Britain is a great idea, especially if the British educational system can be bothered to teach British kids the wonderful things about their history.  We might even try it here.

KINGMAKER? – New York real estate mogul Donald Trump is emerging as something of a kingmaker in the GOP.  He had dinner last week with Rick Perry, whom he later called Jim Perry, and breaks bread this week with Mitt Romney.  Trump's support can be important because a political figure doesn't want Trump opposing him.  Trump can be persuasive in denouncing the flaws and weaknesses in a candidate.  He has a famous name, and he's been successful.  He also appears on Fox News regularly, and he comes prepared.  It would be great if Trump took on the lame Republican Party in New York and tried to rebuild it.  It needs work.

September 17, 2011       Permalink

PATHETIC – AT 11:24 A.M. ET:  Did you ever think you'd see the day when the "Palestinian Authority," a fraternity of goofballs, corruptionists and career politicians, who depend on foreign handouts, would verbally threaten the United States?  Well, it's happening, and it shows what occurs when an American president projects weakness.

The PALs are defying American wishes by asking the UN Security Council to declare them a state, even though they refuse to engage in direct negotiations with the Israelis over the terms of a state.  The US has properly announced it will use the veto to thwart this absurd request.  From the Jerusalem Post:

The Palestinian Authority on Saturday warned the US against using the veto to thwart its plan to seek membership for a Palestinian state in the UN next week.

The PA said that a US veto would "destroy" the two-state solution.

The warning came hours after PA President Mahmoud Abbas announced in a speech in Ramallah that he would ask the UN Security Council to accept membership of a Palestinian state.

Chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat warned that the US Administration's use of a veto to foil the PA move would destroy the two-state solution.

"Anyone who supports the two-state solution should back the Palestinian effort [at the UN]," he said.

Erekat hinted that the Palestinians would consider dismantling the PA if the US thwarted their statehood bid.

Is that a threat or a promise?

Zakariya al-Agha, the PLO's top representative in the Gaza Strip, also warned against the consequences of a US veto at the UN next week.

He said that the PA was going to the UN because US President Barack Obama, in his last speech to the UN in 2010, talked about the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state within one year.

COMMENT:  Amazing how they quote Barack Obama, who now says he's opposed to what they're doing.  It shows they simply don't take the man seriously.  Does anyone any longer?

The U.S. will veto the proposal, but the General Assembly, which cannot grant full membership to a nation, will vote the PALs some kind of junior status, itself a reckless act. 

And another nail in the coffin of a UN that has long outlived its usefulness.

September 17, 2011       Permalink

THE CONSTITUTIONAL MANDATE – AT 10:53 A.M. ET:   There is concern at the Pentagon, entirely justified, that the current, widespread demand to cut government spending might end up requiring irresponsible and risky cuts to the defense budget.  There is a Constitutional mandate to raise armed forces.  But even some so-called conservatives seem to be forgetting it.

George Will, who has been somewhat skeptical of some of our military ventures, now shares the same concerns about reckless cutting, as he reports on the worries of new Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta:

Panetta’s most immediate worry, however, is visible from the windows of his office overlooking the Potomac — Capitol Hill, where the supercommittee created by August’s debt-ceiling agreement is sitting. By Thanksgiving, either it will agree to do something important — reduce the next decade’s debt by at least $1.2 trillion — or its disagreements will trigger something important: a sequester.

This would take from military budgets nearly $500 billion, in addition to a minimum of $350 billion in cuts already scheduled. An almost trillion-dollar trimming, Panetta says flatly, “cannot take place.” Actually, he knows it can: “The gun to the head could really go off.” Even without a sequester, the military “is going to be a smaller force.” And with a sequester? The 1.5 million active-duty members of the armed services and 700,000 civilian employees of the Defense Department depend on an industrial base of more than 3.8 million persons. According to the Pentagon, a sequester would substantially shrink those three numbers, perhaps adding a point to the nation’s unemployment rate. The cuts would leave the smallest Army and Marine Corps in more than a decade and the smallest tactical Air Force since this service became independent of the Army in 1947. The Navy has already shrunk almost to its smallest fleet size since World War I.

And...

Time was, when Democrats looked at the defense budget with a skeptical squint, Republicans rallied round it. No more. Few Tea Partyers remember Washington’s hawk-vs.-dove dramas. They live to slow spending, period. They are constitutionalists but insufficiently attentive to the fact that defense is something the federal government does that it actually should do. And when they are told that particular military expenditures are crucial to force projection, they say: As in Libya? Been there, don’t want to do that.

COMMENT:  The Tea Party members have played an important role in encouraging public discussion of the federal budget.  But, as Will says, too many of them "live to slow spending, period."  You have to decide what to cut...and what not to.  Some Tea Partiers strike me as narrow ideologues who fail to understand the consequences of their actions.   They are the right-wing equivalent of the "movement" types in the Democratic Party.

Senator Lindsey Graham, when he learned of possible plans to severely cut the defense budget, said that the party of Ronald Reagan had died.  I don't think that's quite so, but death is getting closer if Republicans abandon their Reaganesque support of a strong national defense to save some dollars up front.  Will writes:

“The next few months,” Panetta says, “are going to tell us a hell of a lot.” But the meaning of what is told may not become clear for 10 years.

So true.  And it has been so true in the past, as well, when reckless military drawdowns have ended in tragedy, and paid for in blood.

September 17, 2011       Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 10:40 A.M. ET:  We don't normally quote Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post, an alleged conservative who often has very un-conservative things to say.  But she has a very solid point in her column today that may well explain the popularity of Rick Perry:

GOP pop quiz: With whom would you rather roll your dice — a Harvard lawyer who wants government to bankroll jobs through higher taxes? Or a Texas A&M grad/Air Force pilot who has successfully run one of the largest states in the country?

Distilled, this is really a brains-vs.-gut question — erudite theorist vs. plain-spoken doer — not that the two need be mutually exclusive. Would it be too much to ask that a well-read mind come packaged in a human vessel that also has had some experience in the trenches of ordinary life?

It is noteworthy that Democrats tend to think that government can solve most problems, while Republicans prefer the thought that individuals unencumbered by meddlesome government do the better job. Extrapolating, then, “smart” folks would rather rely on bureaucrats, while “stupid” people prefer to rely on themselves. Again, might some combination of the two — smart government that incentivizes self-reliance — work best of all?

And...

... anyone who thinks Republicans are stupid is missing the point. What those dummies Bush and Perry have in common, other than having been Texas governors, pilots and cheerleaders (what is it with Texas?), is that they’re not stupid at all.

COMMENT:  That is correct.  I'd also point out that, at one time, the Dems were regarded as the "stupid" party, the party of immigrants and bigots.  The Republicans considered themselves lofty and above us all.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was considered such an intellectual lightweight that some referred to him as "featherduster."

Today the Dems parade their Ivy League degrees – Barack and Michelle each has two of them – and they often leave it at that.  Clearly, Obama is in over his head and lacks the practical experience, and practical wisdom, that successful presidents must have.

At the same time, Republicans must be careful not to come off as narrow-minded mediocrities.  As Lincoln and Reagan showed us, you can be smart and practical at the same time.

September 17, 2011     Permalink