WEDNESDAY,  AUGUST 12,  2009

SHE FEELS, SHE KNOWS, THE SPIRIT IS WITH HER - AT 10:40 P.M. ET:  One thing that should always inspire us is the superhuman abilities of some of our public servants.  I'm moved.  I'm sure you will be, too:

Detroit, Mich. - Michigan just experienced its coldest July on record; global temperatures haven't risen in more than a decade; Great Lakes water levels have resumed their 30-year cyclical rise (contrary to a decade of media scare stories that they were drying up due to global warming), and polls show that climate change doesn't even make a list of Michigan voters' top-ten concerns.

Yet in an interview with the Detroit News Monday, Senator Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.) - recently appointed to the Senate Energy Committee - made clear that fighting the climate crisis is her top priority.

"Climate change is very real," she confessed as she embraced cap and trade's massive tax increase on Michigan industry - at the same time claiming, against all the evidence, that it would not lead to an increase in manufacturing costs or energy prices. "Global warming creates volatility. I feel it when I'm flying. The storms are more volatile. We are paying the price in more hurricanes and tornadoes."

COMMENT:  I'll sleep better tonight knowing that Senator Debbie is in the air, her awesome senses picking up all the celestial dangers that threaten us.

Now if she can only develop a sense of how Detroit can sell cars.  Can you feel those customers, Debbie?  Can you sense their needs?  Are you with them on their test drives?  Feel those new electric cars, Debbie.  Feel them.  Hallelujah!

August 12, 2009   Permalink   

GOP HEALTH-CARE IDEAS - AT 5:18 P.M. ET:  Reader Michael Emerson alerts us to a health-care-reform plan proposed by leading Republicans.  We have urged the GOP to come up with alternatives to the liberal plan, and this is certainly one possibility .  But it must be built on, publicized, and embraced by the party.  See what you think by going here.

August 12, 2009   Permalink

WATCH YOUR THOUGHTS! - AT 4:55 P.M. ET:  From Fox News:

This isn't a cookie-cutter administration.

The Office of Management and Budget is considering reversing a nine-year ban on using "cookies" to track users' preferences and interests on federal Web sites.

The shift in policy is being billed as a way for government to enter the 21st century and for federal agencies to use the same technology utilized on news sites, retail sites and social media networks. Online retailers, for example, use cookies to suggest items of interest based on previous purchases. If you recently bought a New York Yankees jersey, a Web site might recommend buying a book about Alex Rodriguez the next time you visit.

But some privacy advocates say changing the policy for federal Web sites is troubling. If you check out the FBI's Most Wanted List, they say, the government would know. If you want information from the CDC about pregnancy or AIDS, the government would know. Big Brother could quite literally be watching you.

COMMENT:  And these people complained about Bush's surveillance policies.  Of course, Bush was peeking in at terrorists, truly a moral outrage in the Obama universe.  These new people just want to know about the rebellious mobs out there...formerly called citizens.

August 12, 2009   Permalink

ROMNEY UP IN N.H. - AT 4:40 P.M. ET:  It's much too early, but I thought you'd be interested in this, from The Hill:

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leads the Republican presidential field in the home of the nation’s first primary, according to a new poll.

Romney is the preferred choice of just over 50 percent of New Hampshire voters, according to the poll. Romney easily led former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who clocked in at 17 percent.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich pulled 13 percent of the vote, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who has set himself up as Romney's main opponent so far, won just 3 percent.

Romney's early lead comes a year and a half after the one-time governor of the neighboring Bay State finished second in the New Hampshire GOP presidential primary, taking 32 percent of the vote to Sen. John McCain's (Ariz.) 37 percent.

COMMENT:  Not surprising.  Romney's expertise on economic matters will serve him well, assuming, as we should, that the economy will still be a big problem during the next presidential campaign.  Also, he's very well known in New Hampshire, having been governor of Massachusetts.

But the presidential campaigns won't start seriously for another two years.  Plenty of time for others to come forward.

August 12, 2009    Permalink

NO CLASS - AT 3:20 P.M. ET:  From AP:

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- One of the two TV reporters held in North Korea for 4 1/2 months hopes her story will lead to more public awareness of the plight of journalists incarcerated while reporting from hostile countries.

In a brief letter released Wednesday, Laura Ling of Los Angeles says it was the groundswell of support for her and her colleague Euna Lee that not only freed them but kept her spirits up during her imprisonment.

COMMENT:  Oh great.  Now this is about "journalists."  In fact, North Korea is holding many, many Japanese and South Korean citizens who don't have the privilege of a press card.  But there is only silence about them.

The Japanese and South Koreans must be seething at the fact that we got our "journalists" (who work for Al Gore, that legendary editor-in-chief) out of captivity, but there was no relief for Japanese and South Korean families.  They weren't even mentioned.

Another triumph for "engagement."

August 12, 2009   Permalink 

RASMUSSEN - AT 9:46 A.M. ET:  Rasmussen this morning is reporting the highest overall disapproval rating for President Obama that Ras has measured since inauguration.  Some 52% of those polled disapprove of the president's job performance, while 48% approve. 

The president cannot seem to get any traction from anything.  True, we're in the middle of the summer, and the real political season won't begin until next month.  But clearly Mr. Obama is in trouble, with nothing coming up that looks promising for him.

President Kennedy had an unsuccessful first year in office, but rose in prestige in 1962, as a result of his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  But Obama has problems on his left, which may make any tough action in foreign policy particularly difficult.

August 12, 2009   Permalink

MORE ON THE AFGHAN DILEMMA - AT 9:17 A.M. ET:  An Urgent Agenda source, who  has traveled frequently to Afghanistan and has always been reliable, sends us this message about the situation there:

Some thoughts on Afghanistan, sparked by some items from around the internet:
 
Journalist Michael Yon weighed in with this:
 
"We've been losing the war in Afghanistan since at least 2006. Losing does not mean lost, but the trends are not looking good. Afghanistan will not be a 'civilized' country by 2020. Maybe by 2100 Afghanistan can honestly be called a stable, developing nation. If Afghanistan is to be lifted from the stone ages, progress here will be marked not year by year, but decade by decade."
 
As you know, I have been harping about the lack of adequate troops to conduct the counterinsurgency doctrine that seemed to work in Iraq and about the convoluted, fractured chain-of-command that hampers both the military and civilian sides of the effort to develop a unified strategy in Afghanistan.
 
But Yon puts his finger on a basic problem that I should probably be more emphatic about:  Afghanistan may be fundamentally unreformable:
 
1. No memory of itself as a nation.
2. No broadly shared concepts of civic governance beyond that of the local village in most places.
3. No economic foundations upon which to build and finance the trappings of civil government
4. No real prospects for trade
5. A dedication to and lack of shame about levels of corruption that completely undermine basic civic and corporate government.
6. No education system
7. No transportation system
8. No power grid
 
Very little that is natural in Afghanistan draws its people together as a "nation." 
 
Further, outside of NATO, it is in almost no one's interest that Afghanistan be a coherent,competent nation.  Regional powers Iran and Pakistan will be wary of a new competitor.  India doesn't mind a resurgent Afghanistan, but only to the degree that it be used as a stick to poke Pakistan in the eye.
 
Most Afghans do not see themselves as Afghans first.  They are first and foremost Pashtuns or Hazaras or Tajiks or what have you.  Their perspectives rarely go beyond their valleys or even their own villages.  Powers come and go...families remain.  They do not look to Kabul as a source of national strength or legitimacy.  General McKiernan related the story of when he was in central Afghanistan and asked how many members of a group had visited Kabul.  A smattering of hands went up.  Then he asked how many had been to Tehran.  Half the room raised their hands.  Anecdotal but telling...
 
The major drug warlords, who profit whether the Taliban or an inept western-style democracy is in power, do not want a central government powerful enough to disrupt their trade.
 
The Arab world has no real interest in the rise of a non-Arab Muslim power in the southern Asia, especially one with spotty adherence to "orthodox" Islam. 
 
The Russian "stans" prop up and support the northern tier Tajiks as a barrier to the less familiar and less friendly Pashtun world to their south. 
 
Afghanistan is always on the road to somewhere else, both literally and figuratively.  Today, it is seen by too many bad actors as a cudgel to be brandished against their enemies. 
 
Angelo Codevilla had this to say recently:
 
LOPEZ: What is going to happen in Iraq? In Afghanistan?
 
CODEVILLA: Iraq is breaking into its three constituent parts. The sooner the better. Let us hope that the Turkish government's peace initiative with the Kurds provides Kurdistan with what it needs to hold off whatever united Shia-Sunni assault Prime Minister al-Maliki can cobble together. Other than being anti-Kurdish, Iraq's Sunni and Shia will not agree on anything.
 
In Afghanistan, things will go from bad to worse, unless and until Pakistan wins its war against the new "Taliban." These are not to be confused with the version that existed up to 2002. The new breed are a product of the juncture between the Saudi-financed Madrassa movement and Nawaz Sharif's party. In Afghanistan itself, the attempt by foreigners to impose central government control will do nothing but increase opposition. We will not be as brutal as the Soviets, and will be less successful. Nation building is another manifestation of liberal hubris.
 
 LOPEZ: Will Afghanistan soon become Obama’s war?
 
CODEVILLA: It is already.

COMMENT:  Fascinating, if depressing, report.  Afghanistan is indeed Obama's war and he is, naturally, already getting heat from his political left, which wants to abandon Afghanistan as it wanted to abandon Iraq as it wanted to abandon Vietnam.

Like other foreign policy crises, Afghanistan is coming to a head for Mr. Obama, who will have an interesting second year in office.

August 12, 2009   Permalink


AFGHANISTAN OFFENSIVE - AT 8:12 A.M. ET:  A Marine offensive in Afghanistan is being reported as a major military move, and possibly a foretaste of things to come.  From Fox:

DAHANEH, Afghanistan — Helicopter-borne U.S. Marines backed by Harrier jets stormed into a Taliban-held town in southern Afghanistan before dawn Wednesday and exchanged heavy fire with insurgents, killing at least seven.

Associated Press journalists traveling with the first wave said militants fired small arms, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades after helicopters dropped the troops over Taliban lines. Fighting lasted more than eight hours, as Harrier jets streaked overhead and dropped flares in a show of force.

But...

The Taliban put up such fierce resistance that Marines said they suspected the militants knew the assault was coming.

That is bad, and part of the problem over there:  Some of the "good guys" we're working with are probably bad guys. 

And the reality:

Casualties have mounted as U.S. and NATO troops ramp up military operations following President Barack Obama's decision to deploy 21,000 more American forces to Afghanistan this year to cope with the rising Taliban insurgency.

Last month, U.S. and NATO deaths from roadside and suicide bomb blasts in Afghanistan soared six-fold compared with the same month last year, as militants detonated the highest number of bombs of the eight-year war, according to figures released Tuesday.

COMMENT:  You'll notice the lack of interest in casualties in Afghanistan in our mainstream media.  Compare please with the hysteria and hatred that erupted when we suffered casualties in Iraq, when the president was BUSH (!!).

August 12, 2009   Permalink

MUST HAVE BEEN A MISPRINT SOMEWHERE - AT 7:44 A.M. ET:  One of Mr. Obama's main selling points of his health plan, to seniors at least, just evaporated, as The Politico notes:

The AARP spoke out Tuesday to correct President Obama's statement, in Portsmouth, N.H., suggesting that the influential ...

... advocacy group had endorsed Democratic health care reform legislation.

AP: "At the town hall in Portsmouth, N.H., Obama said, 'We have the AARP onboard because they know this is a good deal for our seniors.' He added, 'AARP would not be endorsing a bill if it was undermining Medicare.'

"But Tom Nelson, AARP's chief operating officer, said, 'Indications that we have endorsed any of the major health care reform bills currently under consideration in Congress are inaccurate.'"

AARP officials have appeared at White House events promoting health care reform and hosted a recent tele-town hall on health care featuring Obama.

COMMENT:  AARP apparently heard from its members, who've been accusing the senior-citizen organization of selling out its constituency.  Seniors are especially concerned about Obamacare because of the fear, justified or not, that its adoption will lead to the government rationing health care to the elderly, and even to hurrying the death of "non-productive" citizens.

You know, if they read Urgent Agenda, do you think they'd even give me an aspirin?  Half an aspirin?

August 12, 2009   Permalink

MORE CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN - AT 7:36 A.M. ET:  Another example of the new, bold executive leadership that has arrived in Washington   to assist The One transform us into perfection:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A proposed government plan to use National Guard troops to help stem Mexican drug violence along the southern border is stymied by disagreements over who will pay for the soldiers and how they would be used.

Ordered by President Barack Obama in June to help secure the border with Mexico, the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security drafted a $225 million program to temporarily deploy 1,500 Guard troops to supplement U.S. Border Patrol agents.

The two agencies are wrangling over how to structure the deployment, but the primary sticking point is the money, according to senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

COMMENT:  This could be cleaned up in a minute by one firm phone call from the White House, or maybe a beer get together on the White House lawn.  But apparently the call hasn't been made and the get together hasn't been scheduled.  This week the president is meeting with the president of Mexico.  Wonder what our southern pal thinks about the executive competence of his amigo up north.

August 12, 2009   Permalink

TUESDAY,  AUGUST 11,  2009

THE REAL NIGHTMARE - AT 7:16 P.M. ET:  We cannot verify this from independent sources, but the story, from the Times of India, seems well reported.  I thought it was important to pass it on:

WASHINGTON: Pakistan's nuclear facilities have already been attacked at least thrice by its home-grown extremists and terrorists in little
reported incidents over the last two years, even as the world remains divided over the safety and security of the nuclear weapons in the troubled country, according to western analysts.

If accurate, this is extremely serious stuff.

The incidents, tracked by Shaun Gregory, a professor at Bradford University in UK, include an attack on the nuclear missile storage facility at Sargodha on November 1, 2007, an attack on Pakistan's nuclear airbase at Kamra by a suicide bomber on December 10, 2007, and perhaps most significantly the August 20, 2008 attack when Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers blew up several entry points to one of the armament complexes at the Wah cantonment, considered one of Pakistan's main nuclear weapons assembly.

And...

Pakistan insists that its nuclear weapons are fully secured and there is no chance of them falling into the hands of the extremists or terrorists.

But Gregory, while detailing the steps Islamabad has taken to protect them against Indian and US attacks, asks if the geographical location of Pakistan's principle nuclear weapons infrastructure, which is mainly in areas dominated by al-Qaida and Taliban, makes it more vulnerable to internal attacks.

Yes, I would imagine it would.  All the attackers need is to be lucky once, and get their hands on a few weapons...assuming they can get them out of the storage bunkers.

The story describes the precautions Pakistan takes to secure its nuclear weapons, but Professor Gregory adds that "despite these elaborate safeguards, empirical evidence points to a clear set of weaknesses and vulnerabilities in Pakistan's nuclear safety and security arrangements."

Sleep tight tonight.

August 11, 2009   Permalink

RASMUSSEN ON THE HEALTH PLAN - AT 4:14 P.M. ET:  Scott Rasmussen is reporting today the lowest numbers the Democratic health plan has yet received in his polling:

Public support for the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats has fallen to a new low as just 42% of U.S. voters now favor the plan. That’s down five points from two weeks ago and down eight points from six weeks ago.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that opposition to the plan has increased to 53%, up nine points since late June.

More significantly, 44% of voters strongly oppose the health care reform effort versus 26% who strongly favor it. Intensity has been stronger among opponents of the plan since the debate began.

COMMENT:  Yes, the majority now opposes the plan.  However, I caution again:  This can be turned around.  The Dems now have a 42-percent base in favor.  Their position is slipping, but that's still a reasonable point from which to rebound.

And the Dems can turn the tables, asking what the Republican plan is.  There has to be, on our side, either a plan or at least some major fixes to a system that almost everyone believes has serious problems. 

Start with the fixes.  The GOP can propose five things to do immediately that will improve the system, and proceed from there.  Just saying no is not good enough.  I'd begin, by the way, with malpractice reform, tort reform, now draining the health-care system of up to $200-billion (with a B) a year.  And I'd write a health-care contract with America, listing the rights all Americans would have under any GOP health-reform plan.  One page.  Not more.  How long, after all, is the Bill of Rights?

August 11, 2009   Permalink

MONITORING - AT 3:32 P.M. ET:  I've been monitoring the midday news reports on the cable systems, as I do most days, and there's been more heavy coverage of the health-care town meetings.  This coverage has the potential to hurt our side, and hurt it badly.  The news organizations are are emphasizing the bad behavior of a few protesters.  That is what biased journalism does.  CNN is particularly outrageous.

News coverage today consisted of shouting matches at town meetings, contrasted with President Obama's cool, articulate presentation of his side of the argument at a meeting that he attended.  Inevitably, the opponents came off looking awful, fanatical, even threatening.  From the way these meetings are covered, you'd think no one had any intelligent objections to the Democratic plan.

We've cautioned here before about the consequences of rude and loud conduct.  We cannot complain about extreme behavior on the other side - like the antics of Code Pink or the "9-11 was an inside job" crowd - and then condone it on our side.  We should learn a lesson from student civil-rights protesters of the early 1960s, who were taught how to behave, how to respond to taunts, even what to wear, to appear their best on television.  It's part of the political process.

Polls show that Americans are turning strongly against the Democratic plan, to the extent that there's a plan.  But we can still snatch defeat from the jaws of victory if Americans are repelled by shouting, cursing and wild arguments.  Several leading conservatives, including Sarah Palin and Mitch McConnell, have made this same point.

So, it's important to be careful.  Good behavior, strong arguments, well-prepared statements, work much better than screaming matches.  The American people aren't at most of these meetings.  They only see news reports on television, and it's the networks who decide what is shown. 

August 11, 2009   Permalink 

THE TRAGEDY OF BLACK AMERICANS - AT 10:23 A.M. ET:  Add to the list headed by Dorothy Rabinowitz the name of Walter Williams, the distinguished African-American teacher and commentator, who also has the courage to reveal unpleasant truths.  He understands the tragedy of black America, and how African Americans have been used, misled and exploited by the political class, their real problems often going unsolved: 

In 1940, 86% of black children were born inside marriage, and the illegitimacy rate among blacks was about 15%. Today, only 35% of black children are born inside marriage, and the illegitimacy rate hovers around 70%.

Today's breakdown of the black family is unprecedented. It began in the 1960s with the War on Poverty and the harebrained ideas of the welfare state. In the mid-1960s, Daniel Moynihan sounded the alarm about the breakdown in the black family in his book "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action."

At that time black illegitimacy was 26%. Moynihan said, "At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of the Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family." He added, "The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States."

Moynihan's observations were greeted with charges of racism and blaming the victim. By the way, the welfare state is an equal-opportunity family destroyer. Today's illegitimacy rate among whites, at nearly 30%, is higher than it was among blacks in the 1960s when Moynihan sounded the alarm. In Sweden, the mother of the welfare state, illegitimacy is 54%.

COMMENT:  And yet, this tragedy is rarely discussed, especially in universities, whose faculties claim to care so much about African Americans.

We've been here before, of course.  In the 1960s we watched, in New York, as the great New York City public-school system, which had successfully educated generations of immigrants, was destroyed before our eyes by people claiming to want to "help" black students.  Not only weren't they helping these students, they really didn't care about them.  They cared only about their leftist ideology.  Black kids were simply pawns on their political chess boards.

Things are better in New York today, but there is danger ahead.  The old forces that did the damage are trying to make a comeback.  And the Obama administration, far from being the post-racial government we'd hoped for, is being dragged down by some of those sixties ideas that just won't go away.

We need the likes of Walter Williams to get us back on course.

August 11, 2009   Permalink

A PRESIDENT IN TROUBLE - AT 8:57 A.M. ET:  Dorothy Rabinowitz of The Wall Street Journal is one of the most perceptive commentators working today.  Today she examines the President's inadequate performance in the health-care debate:

It’s not hard now to envision the state of this crusade with just a month or two more of diligent management by the Obama team—think train wreck. It may one day be otherwise in the more perfect world of universal coverage, but for now disabilities like the tone deafness that afflicts this administration from the top down are uninsurable.

And...

It shouldn’t have been surprising, either, that the tone of much of the commentary on the town-hall protests was what it was. There was Mark Halperin for one, senior political editor for Time, bouncing off his chair, Sunday, in agitation over all the media coverage of this rowdiness—“a horrible breakdown of our political culture, our media culture” and so “bad for America,” as he told CNN’s Howard Kurtz.

To which Dorothy responds:

There was no such hand-wringing over the decline of civil debate, during, say, election 2004, when cadres of organized demonstrators carrying swastika-adorned pictures of George W. Bush routinely swarmed about, and packed rallies. There was also that other “breakdown of our media culture,” that will dwarf all else as a cause for embarrassment, the town-hall coverage included, for the foreseeable future. That would be, of course, the undisguised worshipful reporting of the candidacy of Barack Obama.

Ahem.  Ah yes, that coverage.  But of course there was no bias, just an understandable media examination of the multicultural, internationalist, non-BUSH (!!) aspects of the 2008 campaign.  What's a reporter to do?

That treatment, or rather its memory—like the adulation of his great mass of voters—has had its effect on this president, and not all to the good. The election over, the warming glow of those armies of supporters gone, his capacity to tolerate criticism and dissent from his policies grows thinner apace. His lectures, explaining his health-care proposals, and why they’ll be good for everybody, are clearly not going down well with his national audience.

And this, the best of Dorothy:

The president has a problem. For, despite a great election victory, Mr. Obama, it becomes ever clearer, knows little about Americans. He knows the crowds—he is at home with those. He is a stranger to the country’s heart and character.

He seems unable to grasp what runs counter to its nature. That Americans don’t take well, for instance, to bullying, especially of the moralizing kind, implicit in those speeches on health care for everybody. Neither do they wish to be taken where they don’t know they want to go and being told it’s good for them.

Finally...

It took this battle over health care to reveal the bloom coming off this rose, but that was coming. It began with the spectacle of the president, impelled to go abroad to apologize for his nation—repeatedly. It is not, in the end, the demonstrators in those town-hall meetings or the agitations of his political enemies that Mr. Obama should fear. It is the judgment of those Americans who have been sitting quietly in their homes, listening to him.

COMMENT:  A great column by a great journalist, who was finally awarded the Pulitzer Prize after years of opposition from the usual suspects, who resented the fact that she dared to ask politically incorrect questions and come up with equally unacceptable answers.

August 11, 2009   Permalink

THE DEMOCRATIC TRAP - AT 8:16 A.M. ET:  The Democratic Party is in serious trouble.  In a way, it's a victim of its success in the last two election cycles.  The Democrats have never learned - at least in the last generation - how to handle the true believers in its ranks, the leftist ideologues, many centered in the California, Massachusetts and Washington state delegations to Congress. 

These people represent a faction that came back to the Democrats during the sixties as part of the so called "anti-war" movement, and contains the leftward fringes of the civil-rights and feminist contingents.  They were responsible for the nomination of George McGovern in 1972 and the destruction, for decades, of the traditional Democratic coalition.  It was Bill Clinton who, more or less, was successful in patching that coalition back together, if only tentatively.  Barack Obama held it together by claiming to run as a moderate, a claim rapidly unraveling.

Now there is worry that the true believers will do more harm to President Obama than will the Republicans.  Like most true believers, and the Republican Party has its share as well, they demand that every idea they propose be endorsed in full, no compromises, and believe that they, and not the broad middle, represent the will of the American people.

Rational Democratic strategists like Lanny Davis are worried.  Their worry reveals the contempt they have for the ideologues.  Davis writes in The Politico:

I worry more about purist ideologues of the left in my Democratic Party who believe on health care that perfect is the enemy of the good.

I'll bet many such advocates, sincere and dedicated as they are, are also those who already have the luxury of a health care policy or the wealth to afford one. If they were one of the 45 million people who have no or little insurance, I'll bet they would be willing to accept an insurance system that guaranteed their equal access to the health insurance system without the public option -- at least for now.

Davis hits on a ticking time bomb within the party - the influence of wealthy ideologues who will never be affected by their own ideology - the kind who can easily write a check for the most expensive health-care plans or who have first-class air tickets in their leather attachés so they can get out in case of riots.

Harry Truman knew how to handle the extremists within his party.  In 1948 he understood that elections are won in the middle, and basically told the hard-core segregationists, on the one hand, and the old hard-left "progressives" on the other, that there were limits to what he could accept.  They walked out.  He won.

August 11, 2009   Permalink

     
QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 7:38 A.M. ET:  From David Keene in the San Francisco Examiner:

Americans are finally getting a good look at the man in the White House. They’ve been thrilled by his speeches, love his kids and almost desperately want to believe he is who they voted for. It turns out, however, that he simply can’t tolerate disagreement.

In President Barack Obama’s view, those who disagree with him really ought to just shut up. His critics, after all, are the people responsible for the problems he was elected to solve, dupes and hirelings of those responsible, or dangerous kooks.

COMMENT:  I'm afraid that Keene, who is head of the American Conservative Union, is right.  The president comes from the intellectual class that believes it is superior to the rest of we mere mortals.  Even on health care, the most personal of subjects, "we know" seems to be their rallying cry.

We have to be careful here.  There are serious problems in the health-care system, problems that introduce great inefficiencies and inflated costs.  These problems should be solved.  The trouble is, Obama's plan will not solve them.  It may even make them worse.  We who oppose his approach must have a coherent plan of our own, and show the American people who the problem solvers really are.

In the meantime, we do have the right to dissent, even if it means disagreeing with The One.  Says so in the Constitution.

August 11, 2009   Permalink