MONDAY,  NOVEMBER 30,  2009

THE END FOR GE AND NBC? - AT 9:46 P.M. ET:  According to The New York Times, the way has probably been cleared for the sale of NBC Universal to Comcast:

General Electric has reached a tentative agreement to buy Vivendi’s 20 percent stake in NBC Universal for about $5.8 billion, helping clear the path to a sale of the television and movie company to Comcast, people briefed on the matter told DealBook.

But much remains to be negotiated, these people warned. The Vivendi agreement values NBC Universal at $29 billion, less than the $30 billion or so that G.E. and Comcast had agreed to last month.

Harmonizing the two values, as in so much of the talks over NBC Universal, may take days to do. But people briefed on the matter said the companies are aiming to announce a completed deal by Thursday.

COMMENT:  It is virtually impossible to predict the impact of this on the entertainment industry or the general public.  Broadcasters and movie studios are delicate mechanisms, where talent, flair, hype and business sense combine to produce either flops, hits, or, usually, something in between. 

GE should never have owned NBC.  Its management of NBC has often been uninspired, and GE is a major defense contractor owning an equally major news operation, which is an inherent conflict of interest.   That news operation, NBC News, has lost a great deal of its luster over the years.  One mission of Comcast must be to restore its status, or sell it to someone else, which I think is quite possible.

Comcast is currently a transmitter, not, to use the awful and trendy term, a "content provider."  It knows nothing of providing content (which we used to call drama, comedy and news).  So don't be shocked if, after the highly publicized acquisition, we see the same old Hollywood faces back in action.  Hollywood is a place where people fail upward, getting better jobs no matter how poorly they've done in the previous ones.  Some Hollywood types justify this by claiming that failure gives one "experience."  Under that logic, Hollywood is the most experienced place in the world.

Hollywood also has a powerful establishment, made up of a continuing group of agents, lawyers, financiers, and executives who will try to capture Comcast as quickly as possible.  They may succeed.

I hope Comcast knows what it's getting into.  To call someone a shark in Hollywood is a compliment.  We wish Comcast well, if its deal goes through.  We hope it improves both NBC and Universal, and that its ulcers are below the average number.

November 30, 2009   Permalink   

THE ORDERS GO OUT - AT 7:34 P.M. ET:  The only thing we know specifically about the president's Afghan strategy, to be announced tomorrow night, is that it's driving the left crazy.  For that the president deserves at least one hand clapping.  We'll give him the other one if he delivers a winning strategy, and backs it up.  The Washington Post reports:

President Obama has informed his senior advisers of his Afghanistan war strategy decision and ordered his commanders on the ground there to begin carrying out the plan.

Speaking Monday to reporters at the White House, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama met Sunday evening in the Oval Office with Vice President Biden; Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs; Gen. David H. Petraeus, chief of U.S. Central Command; national security adviser James L. Jones; and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Sounds reasonable, until you get to this:

According to advisers, Obama intends to outline the escalation and an exit strategy in the Tuesday speech, which is likely to run roughly 40 minutes. Gibbs reiterated Monday that Obama "will make clear this is not an open-ended commitment."

Huh?  Is that part of a strategy, or part of an attempt to appease the Nancy Pelosi Lightning Brigade?  If Obama signals a will to win, he might make some progress and convince those of us who've been critical.  But if he provides the enemy with, essentially, a timetable for withdrawal, he will just compound his problems.  The enemy has all the time in the world, and they can wait us out. 

For Barack Obama, this is a critical moment, a moment when America will learn what he's really made of.  So far, he has been a weak, vague and indecisive leader.  Let us see if he's capable of change we can believe in.

November 30, 2009   Permalink

THE DOUBLE STANDARD - AT 6:02 P.M. ET:  Once again we see the double standard - one standard for the West, especially the United States, and another standard for Islam.  From The New York Times:

GENEVA — Switzerland’s political leaders on Monday faced a chorus of criticism at home and abroad over an overwhelming popular vote to ban construction of minarets.

The referendum, which took place Sunday, has propelled the country to the forefront of a European debate on how far countries should go to assimilate Muslim immigrants and Islamic culture.

Government ministers trying to contain the fallout from the vote voiced shock and disappointment with a result that the Swiss establishment newspaper Le Temps called a “brutal sign of hostility” to Muslims that was “inspired by fear, fantasy and ignorance.”

The country’s justice minister, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, said the vote was not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture, but reflected fears among the population.

With support for the ban from 57.5 percent of voters, however, ministers were forced to acknowledge that they had failed to quell popular anxieties about the impact of what right-wing parties have portrayed as “creeping Islamization.”

COMMENT:  Oh, double double, toil and trouble.  All this anguish.

First, maybe there's a reason for popular anxiety, like a bit of bother over honor killings, terrorism, and sheer hatred coming from some elements among Muslim immigrants.

Second, maybe some of the "establishments" of Europe would have a bit more street cred if they condemned the horrible bigotry that is routine in much of the Muslim world.  The anti-Christian and anti-Semitic stuff is churned out like rivets.  And yet we are supposed to "understand" this "cultural difference." 

I personally think the vote has disturbing aspects because of what it can lead to down the road.  Europe, after all, doesn't have a great track record in the treatment of minorities.  But this is a classic case of chickens coming home to roost.  The smug "sophisticates" of Europe, indifferent to the legitimate concerns of ordinary people about the beliefs and practices of some Muslim groups, and trying ever so hard to understand the "root causes" of Muslim hostility, didn't even see this coming. 

My fear is that actions here, like the recent decision to try the mastermind of 9-11 in a civilian court, reflect just the kind of thinking we find among the blind elites of Europe.  We should be warned.

November 30, 2009   Permalink

NOT EXACTLY ENCOURAGING - AT 4:54 P.M. ET:  Terrorism targeted at nuclear plants is the kind of thing we don't take seriously until it happens, or almost happens.  This story from India, a nuclear power, reminds us of the need for vigilance:

THE deliberate contamination of a water cooler at an Indian atomic energy plant has raised serious security concerns, just two weeks after the country's nuclear installations were placed on high alert because of a suspected terror threat.

India's nuclear officials were in damage control last night over the breach, in which an employee is believed to have contaminated a staff water cooler with a radioactive isotope which, when purified, is used as a trigger in thermo-nuclear bombs.

With debate raging over the potential for Pakistan's nuclear weapons to fall into malevolent hands, the Indian security breach will raise further questions over nuclear safety in the region.

The contamination was detected last week at the Kaiga nuclear power plant in the southern Indian state of Karnataka when routine urine samples found that 55 workers at the site had unusually high levels of radioactivity in their bodies.

It was eventually traced to a water cooler outside the nuclear power plant's "operating island".

But the safety breach became public on Sunday night only when the country's Atomic Energy Commission chief Anil Kakodkar admitted an investigation was under way into the act of sabotage, suspected to have been committed by an insider.

COMMENT:  This is India, a relatively stable, reasonably modern country.  Pakistan, next door, is in perpetual chaos.  Its nuclear weapons are stored in one of the most unstable parts of the country.  We have a critical interest - a direct, personal interest - in maintaining the security of the Pakistani arsenal, security that would be threatened if Afghanistan, next door, falls into the wrong hands. 

Notice the level of interest in this threat within the left wing of the Democratic Party.  If you give me a week, I might be able to find it.

November 30, 2009   Permalink

DID I READ THIS RIGHT? - AT 11:34 A.M. ET:  Apparently I did, and maybe it's a sign of the times.  Jon Meacham, the editor of the very liberal Newsweek, is pushing the idea of Dick Cheney running for president in 2012.  No, I'm not kidding.  It's here:

I think we should be taking the possibility of a Dick Cheney bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 more seriously, for a run would be good for the Republicans and good for the country. (The sound you just heard in the background was liberal readers spitting out their lattes.)

Why? Because Cheney is a man of conviction, has a record on which he can be judged, and whatever the result, there could be no ambiguity about the will of the people. The best way to settle arguments is by having what we used to call full and frank exchanges about the issues, and then voting. A contest between Dick Cheney and Barack Obama would offer us a bracing referendum on competing visions. One of the problems with governance since the election of Bill Clinton has been the resolute refusal of the opposition party (the GOP from 1993 to 2001, the Democrats from 2001 to 2009, and now the GOP again in the Obama years) to concede that the president, by virtue of his victory, has a mandate to take the country in a given direction. A Cheney victory would mean that America preferred a vigorous unilateralism to President Obama's unapologetic multilateralism, and vice versa.

Well, I must say I'm numb.  Will Jon Meacham ever be invited to a proper Manhattan party again?  Is his name currently being removed from Rolodexes all over Martha's Vineyard?

A campaign would also give us an occasion that history denied us in 2008: an opportunity to adjudicate the George W. Bush years in a direct way. As John McCain pointed out in the fall of 2008, he is not Bush. Nor is Cheney, but the former vice president would make the case for the harder-line elements of the Bush world view. Far from fading away, Cheney has been the voice of the opposition since the inauguration.

Liberal psychiatrists are rushing to Meacham's office as I write.

No one foresaw Cheney's reemergence as a force in the politics of the 21st century until it happened. So perhaps the pattern is set, a pattern of insistent denial of interest—until it turns out that, hey, he is interested. Cheney's memoirs are due to be published—and thus due to be promoted—in the spring of 2011, not long before the caucuses and primaries begin. I'll bet you that the Barnes & Noble in Des Moines (there's a big one at The Shoppes at Three Fountains) is on the book tour.

I hope it is. 

Look, Cheney has a bad heart condition, and I don't think he'll be running.  But the fact that the idea can be presented seriously by a serious person is inspiring.  Maybe there are elements of the mainstream media that are starting to realize that the last administration had great virtues, and among them were the strong and clear convictions of Dick Cheney.

I hope, though, that if Cheney surprises us and runs, Obamacare is already in place, for the liberals will need a great deal of medication.

November 30, 2009   Permalink

THE NOT-SO-GREAT-MAN LEAVES - AT 10:35 A.M. ET:  The Wall Street Journal marks the departure of the failed head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose failures got him the Nobel Peace Prize.  Sound familiar?

Mohamed ElBaradei caps his contentious and ultimately failed 12-year stint as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency today, having spent many years enabling Iran's nuclear bids only to condemn them in his final days in office. Mr. ElBaradei combined his rebuke of Iran with his familiar calls for more negotiation, but we'll take his belated realism about Iran as his tacit admission that Dick Cheney and John Bolton have been right all along. Let's hope the education of the Obama Administration doesn't take as long.

Yes, it's time to agree that Cheney and Bolton, both despised by the American left and its disciples in the press, have been right all along.  However, I don't think you'll see that concession in the press.  My experience has been that the media will happily correct a minor mistake, to prove its "responsibility," but will rarely correct a major one.  The reporting of the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam, in which Americans were told that a decisive military victory was actually a defeat, has never been corrected by any mainstream publication or broadcast outlet.

"Time is running out for Iran to address the international community's growing concerns about its nuclear program," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said yesterday, but the West has said this many times before. Earlier this year, Mr. Obama said Iran had a deadline of September.

The Iranian regime is laughing all the way to the reactor building.

"A few years ago [the West] said we had to completely stop all our nuclear activities," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last month. "Now look where we are today."

And the great facilitator has been Mohamed ElBaradei, who always urged more negotiations in the face of overwhelming evidence that negotiations with Iran accomplished nothing.  Of course, our deeply experienced and sophisticated president bought the negotiations line entirely.

Those are the words of a man who believes he has Mr. Obama's number. And until the President, his advisers and the Europeans realize that only punitive sanctions or military strikes will force it to reconsider its nuclear ambitions, an emboldened Islamic Republic will continue to march confidently toward a bomb over the wreckage of Mohamed ElBaradei's—and Barack Obama's—best intentions.

Well said.  Iran, even more than Afghanistan, will be a test for Obama - a test of whether he lives in the real world, and whether his party will allow him to function in that world.  Hang onto your seatbelts.  It's going to be a bumpy year.

November 30, 2009   Permalink

HONDURAS VOTES - AT 9:41 A.M. ET:  Honduras held its much-anticipated presidential election yesterday.  It seemed legitimate and proper, and a conservative won...which means that in the eyes of some people it couldn't possibly have been legitimate.  From The Wall Street Journal:

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- A conservative rancher named Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo took the Honduran presidency in elections Sunday, five months after the country's last elected president was forced out of the country at gunpoint. Now Hondurans must wait to see if the international community, which has been divided over the crisis, accepts the winner as legitimate.

The results gave Mr. Lobo 56% of the vote, well ahead of Liberal Party candidate Elvin Santos at 38%, confirming voters' expected punishment of the Liberals -- party of both the deposed president and the interim government that ousted him.

That's an awfully persuasive victory, don't you think?

While the small Central American nation is expected to get crucial support from the U.S., it will likely continue to face opposition from regional heavyweights such as Brazil and Argentina. The U.S., in agreeing to accept the winner, is now in a delicate position -- with Brazil, for example, which is housing exiled leader Manuel Zelaya in its Honduran embassy and recognizes him as president.

Brazil's president hosted the president of Iran this last week.  The Brazilian regime associates with only the best people.

Note this:

About 61% of Hondurans voted, and turnout, which was up from 2005, was seen as a crucial factor in persuading more countries to back the vote. The turnout was a loss for Mr. Zelaya, who had urged supporters to boycott the election. After the vote, Mr. Zelaya condemned the elections on CNN saying: "Absenteeism triumphed. ... These elections don't correct the coup d'etat."

Zelaya is an ally of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.  He gets support from some of the leftist regimes in Latin America and from the usual suspects here.  Apparently the Honduran people are less enthusiastic.

November 30, 2009   Permalink

REMARKABLE - AT 9:19 A.M. ET:  Michael Barone reports on a survey that reveals the extent of the president's political problems.  From the Washington Examiner:

It’s not too early, apparently, to test opinion on the 2012 presidential race. Pollster Scott Rasmussen has asked likely voters to decide between Barack Obama and three reasonably well-known Republicans, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin. He also asked about their preferences in three-way pairings between those candidates and recently-resigned CNN commentator Lou Dobbs. There are three interesting findings.

Number one. Obama is essentially tied with all three Republicans, leading Huckabee 45%-41% and Palin 46%-43% and even with Romney at 44%-44%. In other words, Obama is running at his job approval rating level, which Rasmussen has at 46%-54%. This is reminiscent of the 2004 general election, in which George W. Bush’s 51% of the vote mirrored his job approval numbers.

And...

I don’t think these numbers are anything like a reliable indicator of how the 2012 election cycle will unfold; they’re more like a referendum on Obama today, and not a particularly complimentary one. But it’s interesting that three Republican politicians, each with his or her own liabilities, are still running about even with Obama.

COMMENT:  It's true that Rasmussen surveys do tend to show Republicans slightly higher than some other polls.  But, even taking that into consideration, these are extraordinary numbers.  They give encouragement to us for 2010, if the Republicans can get over their love of defeat and get to work.

November 30, 2009   Permalink

A MOMENTOUS WEEK - AT 8:40 A.M. ET

This will probably be the most momentous week of the Obama presidency.

Consider:  First, The Senate begins debate today on the president's signature domestic initiative - a health "reform" bill that is a mess to start with, is facing increasing public opposition, and can't get a consensus within Obama's own party in the Senate.  Great leadership, Barack.

Second, the president makes his already-famous speech on Afghanistan tomorrow, laying out his divine vision for the future of that country and our involvement in it.  He has waited to long to decide, losing the confidence of the defense establishment and depressing morale, not only in our own military, but among our allies.  Further, his own party, especially in the House, is already against him on this crucial decision.  There are already warnings that the left may try to cut off funding, Vietnam style, for the war.  There are warnings from the other side that his presumed strategy isn't a strategy at all, but a political compromise designed only to minimize opposition until he can figure a way out of the war.  More great leadership, Barack.

Third, Iran is coming home to roost.  With its announcement yesterday that it will be starting ten new nuclear plants, Iran, bottom line, has signaled the end of negotiations, unless we make major concessions.  Yet the strongest statement about Iran's continued, outrageous defiance came not from the United States, but from France.  Obama has been so pathetically weak on Iran that the Europeans look like Army Rangers by comparison.  Our entire Iran policy consists of Hillary Clinton threatening "crippling" sanctions, which, so far, no one has agreed to outside her immediate household.  Nice going, Barack. 

The president is in serious trouble.  The internet is filled with articles, both foreign and domestic, reporting that citizens, and governments, have lost confidence in him.  His belief in his own mystical powers, and his own mouth, was clearly misplaced.  He has gotten nothing done.  And, while he could probably win a "king of the senior prom" contest, he can win little more.  His approval rating in some polls has dropped below 50%.  That's not exactly Biblical prophet territory. 

Can Obama redeem himself? 

It is true that many presidents get off to a rocky start.  Reagan's first year was uneven, and he dropped in the polls.  Kennedy's first year was a foreign-policy disaster.  Reagan went on to greatness.  Kennedy righted himself in his second year. 

But Obama is neither Reagan nor Kennedy.  He is a leftist, something now obvious to the public if not to CNN, and yet his greatest opponent may turn out to be the left wing of his party, which is warning him about straying. 

Yet, stray he must.  He must learn from Reagan, and from FDR before Reagan, that no president can become a captive of his party and expect to lead effectively.  We remember Reagan as a great conservative.  Yet, he was careful to maintain a correct distance between himself and the movement, allowing him flexibility in governing. 

Obama's speech at West Point tomorrow night will give some hint of whether he's grown in office, or is simply a small Chicago politician in a job too big for him.  Will he rise to the challenge, or begin his journey to the dustbin of history? 

We'll watch, we'll blog live, we'll see.

November 30,  2009   Permalink

SUNDAY,  NOVEMBER 29,  2009 

CLIMATEGATE EXPANDS - AT 7:39 P.M. ET:  Our wonderful correspondent, Renee Nielsen, who did those poignant reports during the Mumbai terror attack, alerts us to the latest in what is being called "climategate," the falsification of data on climate change.  From The Times of London:

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

Why do I get the feeling that this is the tip of the iceberg?

The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.

COMMENT:  It is time for major investigations, not only involving East Anglia, but the entire field of climate change.  The nations of the world have been asked to alter their economies, spend trillions, and reshape lifestyles, based on calculations that are increasingly suspect.

The dissenters, often described by the global-warming guys as crackpots or even Holocaust deniers, look increasingly good.  Polls show that the American people, no dummies, are becoming suspicious.

Congress should act.  But look who controls Congress. 

November 29, 2009   Permalink 

IRAN DEFIANT - AT 7:13 P.M. ET:  Iran is escalating its conflict with the civilized world, as The New York Times reports:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran approved plans Sunday to build 10 industrial scale uranium enrichment facilities, a dramatic expansion of the program in defiance of U.N. demands it halt enrichment and a move that is likely to significantly heighten tensions with the West.

The decision comes only days after the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency censured Iran over its program and demanded it halt the construction of a newly revealed enrichment facility. The West has signaled it is running out of patience with Iran's continuing enrichment and its balking at a U.N. deal aimed at ensuring Tehran cannot build a nuclear weapon in the near-term future. The U.S. and its allies have hinted at new U.N. sanctions if Iran does not respond.

The White House responded with its usual mush:

The White House said the move ''would be yet another serious violation of Iran's clear obligations under multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions and another example of Iran choosing to isolate itself.''

COMMENT:  Negotiations with Iran have failed, utterly and completely.  The Iranians have dribbled the ball into Mr. Obama's court.  Iran and Afghanistan are coming due at the same time.  And the president's own party in Congress won't support anything but an appeasement policy.

Welcome to 2010.  We've all heard the old Chinese curse:  "May you live in interesting times."  The times are getting very interesting.

November 29, 2009   Permalink

FASCINATING - AT 11:29 A.M. ET:  The Politico has a fascinating take on the president's upcoming (Tuesday night) speech on Afghanistan.  Will there be a return to...to....Bushisms?

As President Barack Obama prepares to make the case for sending more troops to Afghanistan, some allies are urging him to return to a line of argument little heard since the Bush years: the United States has a moral obligation to protect the Afghan people, particularly women, from the Taliban.

Obama ran on a promise to restore cold-eyed calculations of national interest to American foreign policy, a reaction against President George W. Bush’s tendency to cast a confrontational foreign policy in terms of the freedoms it would achieve for nations that did not have them. And he has governed without the public appeals to human rights that marked American foreign policy ventures from Kosovo to Iraq.

But realism has proved, at times, a hard political sell. Bloodless talk about “engagement” has left the Obama administration without a compelling story to tell or argument to make. And its emphasis on process has only increased the pressure for more tangible results.

In Afghanistan, the White House was reluctant to play up the Taliban’s excesses and the plight of Afghan women while it considered withdrawing from an active role in the country’s governance. But as Obama moves toward sending additional troops – reportedly more than 30,000 more – to the country, supporters of the policy are urging him to stress human rights in an effort to revive support for an increasingly unpopular war.

COMMENT:  You mean, it's possible Bush was right?  Y'think?  Isn't it remarkable that the man sold to us as the most pure, the most idealistic, the most high-minded leader in the history of humankind has to be reminded of human rights? 

Will Obama move closer to...BUSH (!!)?  Look, he's accepted most of the Patriot Act.  Miracles happen.

But there's a problem.  Some of the people trying to sell Obama on the "human rights" approach say it would have appeal to the left wing of his party, which is resisting a buildup of American troops in Afghanistan.  That I doubt.  The left does human rights these days only when convenient.  I suggest that the human rights argument will have greater resonance on the right, where, in recent decades, there's been far more attention paid to idealism in foreign policy.

November 29, 2009   Permalink

     
QUOTE OF THE DAY - TEACHING VALUES TO IMMIGRANTS - AT 10:58 A.M. ET:  Directly related to the story below, Britain's great columnist, Janet Daley, remarks on the need to teach immigrants the values of the societies they're entering, something not always done.  From The Telegraph:

How do you create a home-grown terrorist? For a while, Britain seemed to hold the copyright on the formula for this. First, you import a huge number of people from places where there are unresolved historical conflicts, with no stipulation that they learn anything about their adopted homeland (not even its language). Then you make no attempt to integrate these groups – which are large enough to constitute self-sustaining communities – into the culture and political traditions of the country that is now their home, nor do you advise the schools to inculcate any sense of pride or pleasure in the new national identity to which they are entitled...

...So eager are you to show that you accept other cultures whose attitudes and assumptions (on, for example, the treatment of women) are opposed to the official values of your society, that you benevolently overlook what is being taught in their schools even when those schools are being supported by government funding.

Daley points out that this has been the British way.  She notes that America thought that "it can't happen here," until recently.

When the Muslim American Major Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire at Fort Hood, he did not just murder his military colleagues: he killed the American illusion that "it couldn't happen here."  And he unleashed an argument not just on practical topics such as racial profiling but on the much wider question of how much America's foreign policy decisions – how it should conduct itself in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example – should be influenced by the feelings of minority groups within the US itself.

The left, led by its journalistic shock troops, argued that Major Hasan was just a stressed-out shrink who snapped.  Nothing to do with militant Islam, nothing to do.  At the same time, the left argues that our "policies" inflame Muslims and lead to things like this.  Daley notes the left's problem:

The Left-liberal camp is now in the rather uncomfortable position of holding two contradictory interpretations of Major Hasan's actions. There is the one that Mr Krauthammer describes: this incident is a one-off act of lunacy, so the fact that Hasan was a Muslim is of no importance (even if he thinks it was – after all, he is insane).

But the other argument made by the Left puts Hasan's religion at the centre of his action: Muslims, even ones born and bred in the US, are being driven to violence by American foreign policy.

Daley concludes:

What a miasma of moral confusion we are succumbing to – all for the sake of avoiding a question that must be asked: how does a liberal society cope with a minority in whose name acts of violence are carried out in its midst? Surely the answer must involve a much more muscular liberalism: a robust belief in the values that permit people of different beliefs to live together peaceably and an unapologetic determination to enforce those values in every quarter of the country.

COMMENT:  That's what liberalism used to stand for, but no more.  Now it's a term that's often a euphemism for something much further left.  That is especially true in Britain and Europe.

Daley nails it:  How do we welcome people of "other cultures," while at the same time demanding that they adhere to American values?  Or British values?  Strange, but we did it so well at one point.  When I was growing up, and attending school in the once-great New York City school system, it was expected that we would pledge allegiance to the flag, sing patriotic songs, and learn, without apology, about the great ideas that are the foundation of this country. 

If you were an immigrant, you were expected to become an American.  Yes, the melting pot never fully melted.  People clung to old cultures, but, at the same time, they wanted their children to be fully American, while respecting the traditional ways. 

Today, we've become far too accepting of the notion that an immigrant group can stay foreign and not accept their new country.  There can be no America if that attitude persists, but "no America" would be just fine in some precincts of the left.  They relish the thought.

We don't want to go backward, but a return to a higher notion of immigration would not be a bad thing.  The motto of the United States - "Out of many, one" - should guide us.

November 29, 2009   Permalink

BACKLASH - AT 10:27 A.M. ET:  So much for European tolerance and liberalism, as AP reports:

GENEVA (AP) -- Swiss voters approved a move to ban the construction of minarets in a Sunday vote on a right-wing initiative that labeled the mosque towers as symbols of militant Islam, projections by a widely respected polling institute showed.

The projections based on partial returns say Swiss swung from only 37 percent supporting the proposal a week ago to 59 percent in the actual voting.

Claude Longchamp, leader of the widely respected gfs.bern polling institute, said the projection contracted by state-owned DRS television forecasts approval of the initiative by more than half the country's 26 cantons, meaning it will become a constitutional amendment.

And...

The move by the People's Party, the country's largest party in terms of popular support and membership in parliament, is part of a broader European backlash against a growing Muslim population. It has stirred fears of violent reactions in Muslim countries and an economically disastrous boycott by wealthy Muslims who bank, shop and vacation in Switzerland.

Get your watches while you can.

There is indeed a backlash building in Europe.  While it is understandable, given the behavior of some Muslim groups, in the context of European history it could get very ugly.  Despite all the yapping of the chattering classes, Europe down deep is not very welcoming.  The Europeans may love to chide the Americans, but we do multiculturalism far better than they ever did. 

Now that Switzerland has voted, look for similar measures to be proposed in other countries.  With the possibility of a Europe/Muslim clash on the horizon, at least a clash between traditional Europeans and Muslim immigrants, a nuclear-armed Iran, with missiles capable of hitting Paris, takes on an entirely new and chilling meaning.

November 29, 2009   Permalink

TO OUR HEALTH - AT 10:09 A.M. ET:  Now that we've all added to the excess calorie problem in America, let us not forget that the Senate takes up the health "reform" bill tomorrow.  But it is not the season to be jolly among Democrats, for they've run into trouble, as Fox reports:

WASHINGTON - The 60 votes aren't there any more.

With the Senate set to begin debate Monday on health care overhaul, the all-hands-on-deck Democratic coalition that allowed the bill to advance is fracturing.

Some Democratic senators say they'll jump ship without tighter restrictions on abortion coverage.

Others say they'll go unless a government plan to compete with private insurance companies gets tossed. Such concessions would enrage liberals, the heart and soul of the party.

There's no clear course for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to steer legislation through Congress to President Barack Obama. You can't make history unless you reach 60 votes, and don't count on Republicans helping him.

COMMENT:  And in the midst of this, President Obama will announce his Afghan plan on Tuesday, which is almost certainly going to enrage more liberals, as the president is expected to send more troops to the war zone. 

The liberals may need the kind of calming drugs that only the Congressional health plan will cover.

November 29,  2009   Permalink