MONDAY,  OCTOBER 19,  2009

THE EYES AND EARS OF THE PUBLIC, IN ACTION - AT 7:41 P.M. ET:  Our careful, check-it-out mainstream media has had another glorious day, informing the American people.  The Politico reports with pride:

In a dramatic shift, the Chamber of Commerce announced Monday that it is throwing its support behind climate change legislation making its way through the U.S. Senate.

Only it didn’t.

An email press release announcing the change is a hoax, say Chamber officials.

Several media organizations fell for it.

A CNBC anchor interrupted herself mid-sentence Monday morning to announce that the network had “breaking news,” then cut away to reporter Hampton Pearson, who read from the fake press release.

Pearson quickly followed up with a second report saying the “so-called bulletin” was an “absolute hoax.” Smelling a rat, CNBC’s Larry Kudlow demanded to know whether the White House had been involved.

In a story posted Monday morning, Reuters declared: “The Chamber of Commerce said on Monday it will no longer opposes climate change legislation, but wants the bill to include a carbon tax.”

Reuters updated the story to acknowledge the hoax, but it was too late: The Washington Post and the New York Times had already posted the fake story on their Web sites.

COMMENT:  This, from a profession that recently was fact-checking a Saturday Night Live sketch critical of President Obama.

Now, the key question:  Would the press have run with this story had a left-wing organization suddenly endorsed a right-wing policy?  What do you think the answer is? 

October 19, 2009   Permalink

ANOTHER EMBARRASSMENT - AT 7:10 P.M. ET:  The mainstream media, which normally becomes hysterical at any perceived threat to its freedom, if the threat is from the domestic right, has been remarkably casual about a real threat, supported, to our embarrassment, by the Obama administration.  Law professor Jonathan Turley writes:

Around the world, free speech is being sacrificed on the altar of religion. Whether defined as hate speech, discrimination or simple blasphemy, governments are declaring unlimited free speech as the enemy of freedom of religion. This growing movement has reached the United Nations, where religiously conservative countries received a boost in their campaign to pass an international blasphemy law. It came from the most unlikely of places: the United States.

While attracting surprisingly little attention, the Obama administration supported the effort of largely Muslim nations in the U.N. Human Rights Council to recognize exceptions to free speech for any "negative racial and religious stereotyping." The exception was made as part of a resolution supporting free speech that passed this month, but it is the exception, not the rule that worries civil libertarians.

And for good reason.  This is part of a campaign, normally waged by the left, to restrict any speech that favored parties don't like - simply by labeling it as "hate speech" or speech that creates "a hostile environment."  On college campuses, logic like this has been used to introduce speech codes that basically ban anything a particular group might find "offensive."  Thus, the listener becomes the censor, with the legal power to destroy.

In the resolution, the administration aligned itself with Egypt, which has long been criticized for prosecuting artists, activists and journalists for insulting Islam.

Hey, it's a different perspective, a different narrative, Jonathan.  Let's get with the program.

While not expressly endorsing blasphemy prosecutions, the administration departed from other Western allies in supporting efforts to balance free speech against the protecting of religious groups.

Unbelievable.  Incredible.  Again, the United States, under Obama, is softer than the Europeans.  And many reports say the Europeans are getting worried that American foreign policy is turning into pillow talk.

This is simply another signal that the Obama administration is taking the United States in unprecedented directions, directions that contradict our most basic values.

October 19, 2009   Permalink

AN ACTUAL DECIDER, AND HE LIVES IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD - AT 6:01 P.M. ET:  Silvio Canto Jr., on whose radio show I often appear, alerts us to the president of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, who's showing the president of the United States a thing or two about making decisions:

Can President Calderon give President Obama some lessons in leadership and decision-making?

Isn't it nice to have a president who makes decisions?

It's a clear contrast to having one who votes present!

At the very least, could President Calderon teach a lesson about the excesses of public sector labor unions?

Silvio quotes the Wall Street Journal's Mary Anastasia O'Grady:

"Eight days ago, just after midnight on a Sunday morning, Mexican President Felipe Calderón instructed federal police to take over the operations of the state-owned electricity monopoly, Luz y Fuerza del Centro (LyFC), which serves Mexico City and parts of surrounding states. The company's assets will stay in the hands of the government but will now be run by the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), a national state-owned utility and the major supplier of LyFC's energy.

"The net effect of the move is to dethrone 42,000 members of the Mexican Union of Electricians, which had won benefits over the decades to make Big Three auto workers in Detroit blush. When the liquidation is complete, it is expected that the company will employ about 8,000. To appreciate the magnitude of Mr. Calderón's decision, think of Ronald Reagan's firing of the air traffic controllers—only bigger. As one internationally renowned Mexican economist remarked on Sunday, it is 'the most important act of government in 20 years.'...

"...LyFC losses were mounting because the union's productivity is a fraction of that of CFE and because the company balance sheet has been hemorrhaging due to technical problems as well as electricity theft.  Its costs were twice its revenues..."

Silvio continues:

In other words, LyFC was not in the power business.

Instead, it was another failure looking for a subsidy from the people who pay taxes!

We congratulate President Calderon for being decisive!

Beyond Mexican domestic policy, the LyFC story is another little window into what happens when the state takes over something that should be private and operating in the free market.

Yes, take a good look at LyFC in Mexico.

Yes, this is what happens when the state runs something.

As Ms. O'Grady writes, "There's a lesson here somewhere for Mr. Obama."  The problem is, Mr. Obama hasn't learned many lessons very well.  And, as for his decisiveness, do we laugh now, or cry later?

October 19, 2009   Permalink

AS AN ANNIVERSARY APPROACHES - AT 10:24 A.M. ET:  We're approaching the first anniversary of President Obama's election victory.  (Okay, scream now.)  But the numbers of last year are not the numbers today.  Rasmussen reports that the president continues to be in trouble, and can't seem to get out of it:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 30% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -10. This is the fourth straight day the Approval Index has been in negative double digits (see trends).

Support for the health care plan proposed by the President and Congressional Democrats is down to 42%. Fifty-four percent (54%) are opposed.

COMMENT:  There doesn't seem to be anything on the horizon that can improve those numbers.  We will soon be starting the active campaign, leading up to the 2010 midterms.  It is possible, just possible, that Barack Obama, the anointed one just yesterday, could prove to be a drag on the Democratic ticket.

October 19, 2009    Permalink

THE IMPENDING CRISIS II - AT 10:01 A.M. ET:  It's been standard practice for the current administration to blame BUSH (!!) for every problem it encounters, including drafty windows in the White House.  Why, if it weren't for George W. Bush, Obama could simply go around cutting ribbons.

It's not a new gimmick.  For decades the Democratic Party ran against Herbert Hoover.   

Reader Jean Spik alerts us to a column by David Shribman, in the normally pro-Obama Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, signaling that the old excuses simply don't stand up any longer.  It is now the Obama administration, and maybe Rahm Emanuel should slip a note to the boss alerting him to that unpleasant fact:

There is a moment...in every administration, when the burdens of the predecessor are transferred to the present occupant of the White House. For a while the upheaval in Cuba was Dwight D. Eisenhower's problem. The day in April 1961 when the Bay of Pigs invasion collapsed in confusion it became John F. Kennedy's problem (and part of his presidential identity), even though he was reading from the Eisenhower playbook. For weeks, even months, Vietnam was a problem to be blamed on Kennedy, or Eisenhower, or the French, but eventually it became Lyndon Johnson's war and, following that, Richard Nixon's.

Mr. Obama's...moment came in the last week or so, though it is impossible to specify the precise moment it arrived.

And...

Now, as the Obama era unfolds, there increasingly is less patience for the familiar arguments that the war in Iraq started in obfuscation, that the conflict in Afghanistan was ignored for too long, that a lethal combination of lax regulation and laissez-faire fever pushed the economy to the brink, and that Iran spun out of control while Americans focused on lesser threats in the region. All that might be true, but it can no longer be part of the Obama repertoire.

And...

For now that the Bush era is in the past and we are clearly in the Obama years, the president faces new tests, offering us new opportunities for reaping new insights about the man who occupies the Oval Office. Indeed, moments like this are unusually revelatory. At the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy admitted a mistake and changed course. At the Gulf of Tonkin, Johnson hunkered down and continued the direction the Kennedy administration had set out. At those moments, we learned something important about both men.

This is the context in which to view President Obama's much-maligned decision to change the nation's anti-missile strategy by abandoning missiles and radar in Poland and the Czech Republic in favor of a sea-based defense.

Now the president faces similar questions about Afghanistan and Iraq -- and about the American economy at home.

Finally...

With unemployment at 9.8 percent, the highest in a quarter-century, it no longer is enough to blame President Bush. It's Mr. Obama's problem now.

COMMENT:  But will he see it as his problem?  This is  president whose main weapon is his mouth.  He seems to feel that he can talk his way out of anything, and talk his way into the presidency, which he's done.  He does not, unlike Kennedy, admit mistakes.  His vendetta against Fox News indicates that he's running, as several commentators have charged, the most think-skinned administration in recent memory. 

It may be Obama's moment.  But he has a tendency to turn the clock ahead.

October 19, 2009   Permalink

THE IMPENDING CRISIS - AT 8:28 A.M. ET:  I get the sense, in surveying news and commentary around the internet, that even liberal writers sense that there's an impending crisis in the Obama administration.  The president's obvious lack of leadership can no longer be hidden.  His inability to sense the difference between campaigning and governing is a public embarrassment.  These things are bad enough.  But, increasingly, we get the feeling of a growing fear - not annoyance, or frustration, or disappointment - but fear.  The president may well, through his dithering, and his adolescent view of the world, be putting us in danger. 

Reader Bart Rogers reminds us that some of the most perceptive work on Obama is being done by British writers.  Toby Harnden of London's Telegraph reports on something that should scare anyone with a knowledge of recent American history - Obama's dependence on Joe Biden, whose track record on foreign policy is something only a mother could admire.  Harnden's piece is delightfully called, "Joe Biden: the worrying rise of Barack Obama’s Mr Wrong":

Want to know how to deal with a momentous issue of war or grand strategy? You could do a lot worse than check out what Vice-President Joe Biden thinks – and plump for the opposite.

Mr Biden was chosen as Barack Obama's running mate last August because he was old, white and supposedly knew a lot about foreign policy. I say "supposedly" because really Mr Biden's overseas expertise amounted to having spent a long time as chairman of the Senate foreign affairs committee, knowing the names of lots of world leaders, and being able to josh around amiably with them during congressional junkets across the globe.

Feeling safer?

The real difficulty with Mr Biden, however, is his judgment.

On all the big questions, he has been – to put it politely – on the wrong side of history. In 1990, he voted against American forces expelling Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. He voted for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and advocated splitting it into three states along ethnic lines. He opposed the Iraq troop surge of 2007 that pacified the country and rescued the US from the jaws of defeat.

That's only the start.  Going back to the 1970s, Biden's judgment on foreign policy has been consistently wrong. 

Now, Mr Biden is pushing a policy of what he terms "counter-terrorism plus" – a scheme which involves a much smaller military presence in Afghanistan, with al-Qaeda elements being targeted at long range by military drones and smart missiles.

This runs entirely against the counter-insurgency doctrine convincingly outlined by Gen Stanley McChrystal, who wants an extra 40,000 troops to enable NATO forces to protect and influence the people while mentoring the Afghan army and police, and gathering intelligence on the ground.

The problem is that Mr Obama may now be listening to Mr Biden.

You'd think he'd know Biden's record.  But maybe he agrees with it.

Mr Obama's inclination on troop levels seems to be to seek a middle way – a "splitting the baby" option that could be the worst of all possible worlds.

The usual vultures are circling:

The Left, sensing that Mr Obama is wavering and beginning to rethink his campaign contention that Afghanistan was the "good war" as opposed to Mr Bush's evil Iraq adventure, is throwing its lot in with Mr Biden. There's a solidifying conventional wisdom in Washington that Mr Biden's star is in the ascendant.

And that should worry all of us.  I think Harnden gets it right.  Hamlet is listening to the wrong court jester.

October 19, 2009   Permalink

WAIT A SECOND, DON'T THEY KNOW THAT "THE ONE" HAS BEEN ELECTED? - AT 8:12 A.M. ET:  The Washington Post runs an extremely disturbing story, and warning, about an increase in terrorist recruitment, coinciding almost precisely with the coming of the Age of Obama. 

I'm confused.  I thought everyone was laying down their weapons and singing "Kumbaya."  I must have been watching MSNBC. 

The report:

BERLIN -- Midway through a propaganda video released last month by a group calling itself the German Taliban, a surprise guest made an appearance: a cleanshaven, muscular gunman sporting the alias Abu Ibrahim the American.

The gunman did not speak but wore military fatigues and waved his rifle as subtitles identified him as an American. The video contained a stream of threats against Germany if it did not withdraw its troops from the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan. Although the American's part in the film lasted only a few seconds, it has alarmed German and U.S. intelligence officials, who are still puzzling over his background, his real identity and how he became involved with the terrorist group.

U.S. and European counterterrorism officials say a rising number of Western recruits -- including Americans -- are traveling to Afghanistan and Pakistan to attend paramilitary training camps. The flow of recruits has continued unabated, officials said, in spite of an intensified campaign over the past year by the CIA to eliminate al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders in drone missile attacks.

COMMENT:  The Western recruits can then return and fade into society, indistinguishable from other citizens.  They pose a severe danger because they're virtually impossible to detect.

Apparently, neither these recruits, nor the people who train them, have been influenced by the "new atmosphere" brought to Washington by Barack Obama.  Shock

October 19, 2009   Permalink

ANOTHER GREAT BENEFIT OF OBAMA'S "OUTREACH" - AT 7:58 A.M. ET:  Iran appears to be bothered by a weekend attack that killed leading members of its Revolutionary Guard, the real power in the country.  From Fox News:

The chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guard on Monday accused the United States, Britain and Pakistan of having links with the Sunni militants responsible for a homicide bombing that killed five senior Guard commanders and 37 others.

"Behind this scene are the American and British intelligence apparatus and there will have to be retaliatory measures to punish them," Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari said, vowing a "crushing" response.

Could be rhetoric, but with Iran you never know.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said those behind Sunday's bombing are hiding across the border in Pakistan, and in a phone call with his Pakistani counterpart on Monday he demanded their arrest.

Iran also made clear its nuclear intentions, for the 101st time, so Obama might finally understand.  From Reuters:

Iran will further enrich uranium itself if nuclear talks fail with the UN watchdog, Russia, France and the United States in Vienna on Monday, an Iranian official said.

"If the talks do not bring about Iran's desired result ... we will start to further enrich uranium ourselves," Ali Shirzadian, spokesman for Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, told Iran's official IRNA news agency a few hours before the talks start.

The UN nuclear watchdog will host the meeting to discuss details of sending Iran's low enriched uranium abroad for further processing and return to Tehran.

The issue was agreed "in principle" between Iran and world powers in Geneva on Oct. 1. But Iranian authorities have so far shown no public hints of flexibility over Iran's nuclear row with the West.

The UN Security Council has imposed three rounds of sanctions on Iran for refusing to stop its sensitive enrichment work.

Shirzadian said Iran had no intention of suspending its enrichment.

"Buying nuclear fuel from abroad does not mean Iran will stop its uranium enrichment activities inside the country," Shirzadian said.

COMMENT:  Another famous victory for the student government president in the White House. 

We are going nowhere fast, but Mr. Obama's eye seems to be on his Nobel acceptance speech in December, not on the real world the rest of us must live in.

October 19,  2009   Permalink

SUNDAY,  OCTOBER 18,  2009

REMARKABLE PIECE - AT 8:16 P.M. ET:  I've had some comments recently on the tragic state of the black family.  Now the Washington Post has published a remarkable article by a local teacher on the impact that family - or lack of family - has had on the performance of his students.  Please read this.  It is an antidote to the frauds and phonies in the education establishment and the once-respectable civil rights movement, who endlessly tell us that more cash is the answer:

"Why don't you guys study like the kids from Africa?"

In a moment of exasperation last spring, I asked that question to a virtually all-black class of 12th-graders who had done horribly on a test I had just given. A kid who seldom came to class -- and was constantly distracting other students when he did -- shot back: "It's because they have fathers who kick their butts and make them study."

Another student angrily challenged me: "You ask the class, just ask how many of us have our fathers living with us." When I did, not one hand went up.

COMMENT:  Read the rest. 

October 18, 2009   Permalink

GOOD-BYE GIFTS MAY BE IN ORDER - AT 7:56 P.M. ET:  Fox News reports, with fine photographic portraits, on seven major Dems who are in electoral trouble for 2010.  They are Harry Reid, Chris Dodd, John Murtha, David Obey, Barbara Boxer, and Blanche Lincoln.

Oh the tears, my sense of anguish.

Actually, Blanche Lincoln, the moderate senator from Arkansas (the story incorrectly says Nebraska), is pretty decent, and represents a wing of the Democratic party that we'd like to see strengthened.  As for the others?  Why do I think the country will survive without the wit and wisdom of Barbara Boxer, or the deep strategic sense of John Murtha?

But no celebrations yet, please.  As the story says, it is tough to beat incumbents.  And the Republic Party has developed a remarkable skill at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Hard work ahead, but it's always encouraging to see the opposition a bit uneasy.

October 18,  2009   Permalink

COMPLETELY RECKLESS - AT 6:35 P.M. ET:  The White House is out with a new party line on Afghanistan.  It sounds to me like a dodge, the start of a possible excuse to do nothing, or at least nothing effective, which this president has shown is his great talent.  From AP:

President Obama does not intend to decide about sending additional troops to Afghanistan until he is satisfied that the Kabul government can work effectively with the United States, a top White House aide said Sunday.

"It would be reckless to make a decision on U.S. troop levels if in fact you haven't done a thorough analysis of whether in fact there's an Afghan partner ready to fill that space that U.S. troops would create and become a true partner in governing," said Rahm Emanuel, the president's chief of staff.

Oh, come on.  We know they have problems, but we have interests.  This isn't student government.  We may have to work to develop the Afghan government, but we can lose the whole effort at the same time...if we don't have enough boots on the ground.

Mr. Emanuel gave no timetable for a presidential decision in Afghanistan.

No sense of urgency.  That's the message being sent to our enemies.

He said the White House plans to have additional strategy sessions this week and next, extending a review process that began after the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, reported that more U.S. troops are required.

The central question, Mr. Emanuel said, "is not how much troops you have, but whether in fact there's an Afghan partner."

No, the central question right now is numbers of troops.  I don't minimize the problems with the Afghan government, but they can't dominate.  Also, Emanuel didn't address the fact that Pakistan, right next door, must be stabilized.  Will more American troops in Afghanistan assist with that?  I don't know, but it's a key question to be asked, and actually answered.

Councils of war breed defeatism, Douglas MacArthur's father taught his son.  And business schools warn of "paralysis by analysis." 

Looks like we're cursed with both.

October 18, 2009   Permalink

OBAMA, SON OF CARTER - AT 11:36 A.M. ET:  The great John Bolton warns about Obama's dithering, and its dangers to America.  Apparently, when Obama got the job description, he didn't notice "decisiveness preferred."  From The Los Angeles Times:

Weakness in American foreign policy in one region often invites challenges elsewhere, because our adversaries carefully follow diminished American resolve. Similarly, presidential indecisiveness, whether because of uncertainty or internal political struggles, signals that the United States may not respond to international challenges in clear and coherent ways.

Taken together, weakness and indecisiveness have proved historically to be a toxic combination for America's global interests. That is exactly the combination we now see under President Obama.

Nothing like telling it like it is.

Obama is no Harry Truman. At best, he is reprising Jimmy Carter.

The unkindest cut.  No, wait.  This will be read in Los Angeles, in Hollywood.  That's probably a compliment.

Beyond the disquiet (or outrage for some) prompted by the president's propensity to apologize for his country's pre-Obama history, Americans increasingly sense that his administration is drifting from one foreign policy mistake to another. Worse, the current is growing swifter, and the threats more pronounced, even as the administration tries to turn its face away from the world and toward its domestic priorities. Foreign observers, friend and foe alike, sense the same aimlessness and drift. French President Nicolas Sarkozy had to remind Obama at a Sept. 24 U.N. Security Council meeting that "we live in the real world, not a virtual one."

When the French lecture us for being too soft, we're in trouble.

Canceling the Polish and Czech missile defense bases is understood in Moscow and Eastern European capitals as backing down in the face of Russian bluster and belligerence. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev threatened the day after our 2008 election to deploy missiles targeting these assets unless they were canceled, a threat duly noted by the Russian media when Obama canceled the sites.

And...

On nuclear nonproliferation, North Korea responded to the "open hand" of engagement by testing its second nuclear device, continuing an aggressive ballistic missile testing program, cooperating with other rogue states and kidnapping and holding hostage two American reporters. Obama's reaction is to press for more negotiations, which simply encourages Pyongyang to up the ante.

But we're engaging, we're engaging.  It's a dialogue - just like college!

Finally, Obama's agonizing, very public reappraisal of his own 7-month-old Afghanistan policy epitomizes indecisiveness. While there is no virtue in sustaining policy merely for continuity's sake, neither is credit due for too-quickly adopting policies without appreciating the risks entailed and then fleeing precipitously when the risks become manifest.

And...

Our international adversaries undoubtedly welcome all of these "resets" in U.S. foreign policy, but Americans should be appalled at how much of our posture in the world has already been given away. If Obama's first nine months indicate the direction of the next 39, we still have a long way to fall.

COMMENT:  Bolton's comments will be dismissed by the usual suspects as the "old belligerence," but they're on the money.  Obama's policies cannot lead to peace.  Surrender, maybe.  But not peace. 

It is surrender, though, that many of the intellectual leaders of the left crave.

October 18, 2009   Permalink

DUMB AND DUMBER - AT 10:41 A.M. ET:  The administration continues its war on Fox News, which seems increasingly foolish and desperate.  From The Politico:

White House senior adviser David Axelrod said Sunday that the Fox News Channel is "not really a news station" and that much of the programming is "not really news."

"I’m not concerned," Axelrod said on ABC's "This Week" when George Stephanopoulos asked about the back-and-forth between the White House and Fox News, founded by Rupert Murdoch.

"Mr. Murdoch has a talent for making money, and I understand that their programming is geared toward making money. The only argument [White House communications director] Anita [Dunn] was making is that they’re not really a news station if you watch even — it’s not just their commentators, but a lot of their news programming.

"It’s really not news — it’s pushing a point of view. And the bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way, and we’re not going to treat them that way. We’re going to appear on their shows. We’re going to participate but understanding that they represent a point of view.”

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said on CNN's "State of the Union" that Fox "is not a news organization so much as it has a perspective."

COMMENT:  What is remarkable here is the childishness in attacking the most popular news channel now operating.  What's hypocritical is complaining that Fox has a point of view, implicitly denying that other news outlets do.

Fox does tilt right.  But other outlets tilt left.  The difference is that Fox's news shows - as opposed to commentary shows - generally play it straight, whereas the news operations of some other outlets lean to the left, and call it news.

Every independent survey shows that Fox gives ample, and fair, coverage to the liberal point of view.  And I don't recall any complaints about the fairness of their broadcast interviews with liberal personalities. 

One of the problems here is the narrowness of today's liberal elite.  If Bill O'Reilly does a segment on a judge going soft on violent offenders, the liberal elite considers that "right wing" or "conservative."  It's actually neither. 

How should Fox react?  By not changing at all.  The attacks on Fox News build the Fox audience.  People can judge for themselves, and vote with their remotes.

I'm not saying Fox is without flaws.  But there's probably more fair reporting from Fox than from any other broadcast news outlet.  For many in politics, though, Fox represents the first time they've actually seen the conservative view fully presented, and respectfully presented.  And it disturbs them.

October 18, 2009   Permalink

WELCOME TO THE 51ST STATE - AT 10:24 A.M. ET:  From some excellent reporting in the Washington Post:

In a city whose HIV/AIDS rates are ten times the national average, one in three of D.C.'s AIDS dollars earmarked for local groups in recent years went to organizations cited for falsified documentation, few or no clients, incomplete spending records or not running any AIDS programs whatsoever. Meanwhile, District residents living with HIV/AIDS have struggled to find care.

And...

While the sick languish in alleyways and on park benches in the city with the nation's highest AIDS rate, D.C. government has allowed widespread waste throughout its system of HIV/AIDS services.

COMMENT:  Repeat after me:  "We need more government involvement in health care."

Well, the fact is, some jurisdictions do a reasonable job, but D.C. doesn't.  And D.C. wants to be the 51st state. 

This is just another classic example of political correctness run amuck:  Don't hold people responsible for their failures, even when they're using government funds.  We must "understand" their cultural deprivation. 

Sure, understand cultural this and cultural that, but people are dying.  D.C. is a federal area.

Looks like another ACORN scandal.

October 18,  2009   Permalink 

SETTLING SCORES IN IRAN - AT 10:13 A.M. ET:  There's been a major blow to the ruling powers in Iran, as The New York Times reports:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — At least five commanders of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were killed and dozens of others left dead and injured in two terrorist bombings in the restive region of the nation’s southeastern frontier with Pakistan, according to multiple Iranian state news agencies.

The coordinated attacks appeared to mark an escalation in hostilities between Iran’s leadership and one of the nation’s many disgruntled ethnic and religious minorities, in this case the Baluchis. The southeast region, Sistan-Baluchistan, has been the scene of terrorist attacks in the past, and in April the government put the elite Guards Corps in control of security there to try to stop the escalating violence.

COMMENT:  A significant internal action, obviously.  The attacks were suicide bombings.  Naturally, the government in Tehran hinted that foreigners were involved, but it appears, at least this morning, that this was part of the internal conflict going on in Iran.

October 18,  2009   Permalink