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Some readers may have read my piece, "The Brightness of the President" earlier this month on Power Line.  Frank Tipler, professor of mathematical physics at Tulane, has written a wonderful response to it, published at Power Line today.  For those interested, it's here.

TUESDAY,  JUNE 15,  2010

THE PRESIDENT HAS SPOKEN – AT 9:05 P.M. ET:  Look outside.  The oceans are receding.  The oil is drying up.  BP is building windmills.  Taliban fighters are playing Doris Day records.  And all because of Barack.

Okay, now wake up.  According to The New York Times, here's what Obama said:

WASHINGTON — President Obama told the nation Tuesday night that he would instruct BP officials “set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners” harmed by the Gulf oil spill, and he named Navy Secretary Ray Mabus to develop a long-range plan to “restore the unique beauty and bounty of this region.”

Aren't we lucky.  Question for lawyers:  Does the president have the legal authority to "instruct" BP to do anything?   I don't know Ray Mabus, but isn't secretary of the Navy a full-time job?  Is the "long-range" plan something for weekends?  Vacation days off?

You just don't get the feeling that this administration puts much thought into anything the president says or does.  It's show biz.

Democrats and their allies immediately seized on Mr. Obama’s address to say it could help swing the public behind comprehensive energy legislation, stalled in the Senate, that would address dependence on foreign oil and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are responsible for warming the planet.

It would also cost American families a mint, with no guarantee of results. 

But Republicans, who are deeply opposed to Mr. Obama’s idea of capping carbon emissions, accused the president of manipulating the crisis for political gain.

“Exploiting the tragedy in the Gulf to try to ram through a devastating job-killing national energy tax is more of the same Chicago-style politics that has the President’s approval ratings plummeting to an all-time low,” said Michael Steele, the Republican National Committee chairman.

A bit harsh, but pretty accurate.  Before we enact more Obama legislation, we'd better find out exactly what's in it.

The speech changes nothing.  No new ideas.  No breakthroughs on cleaning up the mess. 

You didn't miss anything.  But be careful of that "energy" legislation, with its accompanying costs and taxes. 

June 15, 2010       Permalink

COMING TO A LIBERAL, UNDERSTANDING CITY NEAR YOU – AT 8:06 P.M. ET:  This has happened in Britain before, and should be a warning to us.  But the people who allow this kind of thing to happen don't care:

Screaming hate and brandishing vile placards, Muslim extremists and far-Right groups clashed yesterday in ugly scenes that marred a parade by soldiers.

Around 40 members of a group called Muslims Against the Crusades (MAC) arrived with inflammatory banners featuring slogans such as 'Butchers return' and 'What are you dying for? £18k'.

They were soon confronted by 100 people, some wearing English Defence League T-shirts, who shouted 'scum' and 'Muslim bombers off our streets'.

Police, who had received intelligence warning of trouble at the march in Barking, Essex, separated the groups behind barriers on opposite sides of the road.

But violence flared after 200 soldiers from 1st Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment - who lost five men in a recent tour of Afghanistan and had been granted freedom of the borough - marched past thousands of well-wishers.

MAC supporters shouted slogans such as 'murderers, murderers' and 'British troops go to hell', while the mainly white crowd opposite, some of whom are believed to have been BNP supporters, threw frozen pork sausages and chanted 'scum' and 'Allah, Allah, who the f*** is Allah?'

COMMENT:  Well, neither side behaved well, but I'd point out that the Muslim extremists are welcomed into Britain by British immigration policy.  Why?

The other nuts are commonplace and can be dealt with by the police.

We recall the horrible welcome accorded some American troops when they returned from their noble effort in Vietnam.  It can happen again. 

June 15, 2010      Permalink

A WARNING FOR EUROPE – AT 7:17 P.M. ET:  Some people really do understand the debt crisis in Europe.  From London's Daily Mail:

Democracy could ‘collapse’ in Greece, Spain and Portugal unless urgent action is taken to tackle the debt crisis, the head of the European Commission has warned.

In an extraordinary briefing to trade union chiefs last week, Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso set out an ‘apocalyptic’ vision in which crisis-hit countries in southern Europe could fall victim to military coups or popular uprisings as interest rates soar and public services collapse because their governments run out of money.

The stark warning came as it emerged that EU chiefs have begun work on an emergency bailout package for Spain which is likely to run into hundreds of billions of pounds.

The stark warning came as it emerged that EU chiefs have begun work on an emergency bailout package for Spain which is likely to run into hundreds of billions of pounds.

COMMENT:  We should recall that all three countries were recently run by dictators, including the colonels in Greece.  And if the debt crisis should spread, add Italy to the list, and possibly even Germany. 

The tragedy is that there are some "intellectuals" in Europe who wouldn't mind dictatorships, except they'd demand dictatorships of the left.  Individual freedom means very little to a certain class of deep thinkers.

And let's also caution that democracy isn't guaranteed in the United States, especially if government gets greater and greater control of things, and Obama-appointed judges approve the schemes.

June 15, 2010      Permalink

BULLETIN – AT 6:35 P.M. ET:  Washingtonpost.com has a new headline up at this hour:

Signs of strain in BP, White House relationship

We wonder how much journalistic shoe leather it took to dig that one out.

June 15, 2010      Permalink

PATHETIC, JUST PATHETIC – AT 10:43 A.M. ET:  Related to the story just below, the United States continues to cozy up to third-world dictatorships, the better to be "understood" by those advanced societies.  Anne Bayefsky reports on the latest chapter in our decline as a nation:

Just as Iranians were reminded of their stolen June 2009 election and continued oppression, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) decided to kick them while they’re down. On June 10, with the active involvement and approval of the Obama administration, the Council adopted a decision on human rights in Iran that was a sentence long and contained no condemnation whatsoever.

The context was a review by the Council of Iran’s human rights record, as part of the Council’s consideration of all 192 UN states. The review featured a vigorous defense by Iranian representatives of Iran’s stellar human rights achievements, followed by Iran’s rejection of a host of “recommendations” made to improve its actual behavior. The “outcome” was a sentence identical for dictatorships and democracies alike, in which the Council merely refers to a bundle of documents containing praise, criticisms and responses without drawing any conclusion attributable to the Council itself.

The incomprehensible UN decision reads: "The Human Rights Council...Adopts…the report of the Working Group on the Islamic Republic of Iran, together with the views of the Islamic Republic of Iran concerning the recommendations and/or conclusions, as well as its voluntary commitments and its replies presented before the adoption of the outcome by the plenary to questions or issues that were not sufficiently addressed during the interactive dialogue in the Working Group.”

The reaction from the Obama administration was to declare victory and to manufacture something positive to say about Iran. On June 10, U.S. Ambassador Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe rushed to the UN microphones in Geneva to announce repeatedly: “I have to emphasize that we are very pleased that Iran was willing to participate at all…. In the case of Iran, we applaud the willingness to participate at all…. We’re pleased that at least they were willing to show up.”

COMMENT:  What a pathetic embarrassment.  We praise the Iranian thugs for showing up.  What is equally pathetic is that there has not been a single resignation in protest from the Obama administration.  We expected more of Hillary Clinton, but she's fallen in line. 

We joined the Human Rights Council, ostensibly to improve it, after it was boycotted by President Bush (who looks better and better every day).  Instead, we've adapted to the Council's ways.  How chic and third-world we've become.

June 15, 2010     Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 9:46 A.M. ET:  As freedom fighters in Iran commemorate the first anniversary of their failed uprising, failed in part because Barack Hussein Obama Jr. would not get behind it, Australian journalist David Burchell laments the West's behavior toward those who fight for democracy:

IT is surely one of the great paradoxes of this age that while many of our cleverest minds have fallen headlong in love with peoples whose causes are more or less entirely alien to us, we can find no stirring in our hearts for peoples whose greatest hope is to become . . . well, more like us.

Thus we artlessly dispatched our hearts on a sentimental journey to Gaza designed for our benefit by the canny Islamists in Ankara and their bloodstained allies in Gaza; people who, in any other context, would treat our Western soft-heartedness and woolly-mindedness with undisguised contempt.

And yet our hearts have no space whatever for the thousands of young Iranian students who, on Saturday, defied the threats of their government, the beatings of the extra-legal militias, and the pusillanimity of their erstwhile leaders, merely to ask for the right to have their votes treated with dignity, rather than being fabricated out of some dodgy Russian software in Iran's Ministry of the Interior.

To the best of my knowledge, not one single person has died at the hands of Iran's green opposition, even as thousands of their number have been arrested, hundreds sexually and physically tortured in prison, and dozens murdered in loneliness, often in the most squalid and humiliating of circumstances. Their cause has been Gandhian, almost to a fault. ("The students will die, but they will not accept humiliation", they chanted at Tehran University.)

And yet their plight leaves us entirely cold. Who knows: if they strapped bombs to themselves, or professed a secret admiration for the racial policies of the Third Reich, would they then become sufficiently exotic to pique our jaded imaginations, and would we then love them a little more?

COMMENT:  Burchell is, of course, referring to the Western left, that gang of political prostitutes who will do anything and say anything to be promoted in a university or on a newspaper, grab an award, acquire a commencement-speech invitation, or just be invited to a proper party on Manhattan's west side.

Now that left has a champion in the White House, a man who took four days to make it to a microphone to say a few boilerplate words about freedom when Iranians were in the streets.  Think about the implications.

June 15, 2010     Permalink

EVEN IN NEW YORK – AT 8:58 A.M. ET:  It isn't only Barack Obama who's suffering in the polls.  Even in New York we're seeing a drop in Democratic candidates' numbers, although not nearly enough to produce a GOP upset.  But, hey, it's early yet.  From the New York Post:

ALBANY – Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s huge lead over his Republican rivals for governor slipped in recent weeks as independent support for Democrats tumbled across the board, the latest Siena poll found.

The statewide survey shows Cuomo’s favorability rating fell eight points to 59 percent, its lowest level since December 2008. The Democratic standard bearer remains the state’s most popular figure, but he lost significant support from independent voters in hypothetical matchups against GOP hopefuls Rick Lazio and Carl Paladino.

However, the poll shows those voters aren’t exactly leaping into the Republican column.

Cuomo leads Lazio 60-24 percent, down from 66-24 percent on the eve of the state party conventions last month. He ahead of Paladino 60-23 percent, compared to 65-22 percent in the earlier survey.

The state’s two Democratic U.S. senators, who each face election this year, suffered similar declines as independents walked away from New York’s ruling party.

Both Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand saw their commanding leads over a field of unknown Republicans shrink. Schumer’s favorability dropped 10 points to an all-time low of 54 percent.

COMMENT:  Opportunities present themselves, but opportunities must be seized.  One can only imagine what would be happening if there were an effective Republican Party in New York State.  But there isn't.  Republicans are content to pick up the leftovers that Democrats leave them.  Cuomo is beatable for governor, but not by a candidate who's polling at 24 percent. 

I don't think Schumer is beatable.  But Gillibrand, a nonentity appointed by outgoing Gov. David Paterson to fill Hillary Clinton's seat, and running to serve out Clinton's term, is clearly beatable.  But the GOP can't come up with a stellar candidate in a place that calls itself "the empire state."

In New York, the Republican Party belongs to the highest-ranking Republican official in the state.  There ain't no Republican too high right now.  And Rudy Giuliani looks like a man who has retired from electoral politics. 

June 15, 2010     Permalink

OBAMA GALLUPS INTO THE SUNSET – AT 8:49 A.M. ET:  Mr. Obama continues to produce weak poll numbers.  Nothing he does seems to improve them, and there's nothing on the horizon to suggest that his situation will improve.  From Gallup:

PRINCETON, NJ -- President Barack Obama's job approval rating is 46% for the week ending June 13, with an identical number disapproving. This matches the lowest weekly job approval rating of Obama's presidency, recorded two weeks earlier, and is slightly lower than the 47% from a week ago.

Two record-low three-day job approval ratings in the past week helped Obama's weekly average tie the lowest of his presidency. Gallup reported a 44% approval rating last Thursday and again on Saturday. Prior to last week, the lowest three-day approval figure for Obama in Gallup Daily tracking had been 45%, a percentage that has now been reached seven times since the start of April...

...In contrast with earlier in the year, when Obama's approval dipped solely among independents and Republicans, the latest decline -- on the order of two to three percentage points -- is seen about equally with all three party groups.

COMMENT:  In other words, Obama is declining among Democrats as well.  But we give our usual caution:  While this is good news for our side, there is nothing to suggest that the Republican Party is gaining any great popularity.  Republicans are benefiting from the president's declining favorability and monumental ineptitude.  Recall please that Carter, despite a disastrous record, was leading even the great Ronald Reagan until the last weeks of the 1980 campaign. 

There's hard work ahead.  No slouching.

June 15, 2010     Permalink

OBAMA ADDRESSES HIS SUBJECTS – AT 8:26 A.M. ET:  We await President Obama's speech to the nation tonight on the oil spill, with the same enthusiasm with which we await Helen Thomas's debut as a Victoria's Secret model.

It is of course a thrill when dear leader addresses us, giving us the benefit of the wisdom he's accumulated in life.  And that's only the first minute.

What to listen for tonight?  Nothing, really.  The president will rail against BP, which certainly deserves a good chunk of the blame, and surely must write some large checks.  He'll weep and wail about the people of the Gulf, whom he probably regards, privately, as a gang of racists.  He'll tell us all he has done, including going down to the Gulf between rock concerts at the White House, and filling up on good Cajun food.

But most of all, the president, reflecting the theme of this administration, will not let this crisis go to waste, and will make "proposals."  Watch those proposals carefully.  They were probably dreamed up in about three minutes.  They will cost plenty, and produce little, but will make various constituencies happy.

This is a failed administration.  However, failed administrations, even after they start losing popularity, can do immense damage.  The Carter administration, which Obama's resembles, left us with huge inflation and a new, hostile Iran.  We can only imagine what gifts we're about to receive from a man who clearly regards himself as above his meager nation.

So watch tonight.  Have potato chips ready.  You'll need the sound of the crunching to drown out the spin.

June 15,  2010     Permalink

MONDAY,  JUNE 14,  2010

BUT THE GIRL NEEDS THE FINER THINGS – AT 8:12 P.M. ET:  There is major buzz about Nancy Pelosi's new quarters in gracious San Francisco.  From Fox:

San Francisco is a high-rent city. Just ask Nany Pelosi.

The House Speaker's district office in the new federal building in San Francisco costs a whopping $18,736 a month -- the highest rental paid by any member of the House -- or, more precisely, the highest rental paid by taxpayers on behalf of a member of the House. The rental price was reported by Roll Call on Monday.

That bill is almost twice as high as that of the next most lavish member, way-left Congressman Jerrold Nadler of New York, for whom taxpayers pay $10,600 for the district office. 

The Democratic congresswoman moved last fall from her old office in the Burton Federal Building, which she occupied for 20 years, to a "greener" space in the city's new federal building -- a move and a high price that her spokesman, Drew Hammill, says was amply justified.

Hammill cited the new building's increased security measures and the new office's larger size as reasons for the move -- and the expense. "The new office space is 3,075 square feet, nearly a third larger than the old space, which was of inadequate size," he told FoxNews.com.

Oh, look, the lady needs elegance.  What kind of people do you think she represents?  These are the finer people, the elegant people, the people who drive up to the office in Mercedes Benz SUV's with their "save energy now" bumper stickers and Al Gore hood ornaments.  You want them to see a fine office, with the proper appointments.

I mean, what do Nancy's critics think San Francisco is, the Midwest?  The South?  The flyover regions? 

I say, give Nancy the office of her dreams – espresso bar, peace posters, and Obamacare explanation room, all done in oak. 

After all, she's for the people.

June 14, 2010     Permalink

THIS IS DISGRACEFUL – AT 7:40 P.M. ET:  We have the finest fighting forces in the world.  Not everyone is admitted.   What is outrageous is the number of young Americans who are completely unqualified.  Consider:

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – A nonprofit group says that up to 90 percent of young Philadelphians are ineligible for military service because of criminal records, obesity or lack of education.

Pennsylvania-based Mission: Readiness released its report Monday. It says 1 million Pennsylvanians are ineligible for the same reasons.

Mission: Readiness is made up of more than 150 retired generals and admirals. The group wants state and federal funding for pre-kindergarten programs that it says give children a solid foundation for academic and personal success.

The report says 145,000 Philadelphians ages 18 to 24 cannot meet the military's medical, moral and mental standards.

Nationally, the Department of Defense estimates that 75 percent of young adults are disqualified from military service.

COMMENT:  That is absolutely stunning.   With all that is known about bringing up kids, about education, about nutrition, this is what we've produced. 

I just hope the military maintains its standards, and doesn't fall for the "we must understand other cultures" game that is bound to be played. 

As a nation, we have work to do.  The legacy of the lax, lazy, full-of-excuses 1960s, continues.

June 14, 2010     Permalink

THE MAN MAY NEED PILLS – AT 7:19 P.M. ET:  Is the president really losing it?  Some of his recent statements take us all the way to creepsville and back.  Consider this, from the New York Daily News:

WASHINGTON - President Obama, in a stark and striking comparison, said the devastating impact of the BP disaster on the national psyche "echoes 9/11."

No, no, no, Mr. The One.  Americans can tell the difference between a major accident and a wilful enemy attack. 

The endlessly spewing oil rig off the Gulf Coast - like the terror attacks of 2001 - will influence the nation's future long after the crisis passes, the President said in a provocative Oval Office interview with Politico.

So will a lot of other things influence the nation's future.  Let's take back the words, shall we?

"In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11, I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come," Obama added in language that underscored his new sense of urgency about the disaster.

The interview, conducted Friday, was released Sunday - and sparked an instant debate among some 9/11 family members.

And most were pretty appalled:

...Jack Lynch, whose firefighter son Michael was killed in 2001, felt Obama misspoke.

"To compare an environmental accident, if that's what you call it, to a premeditated terrorist attack is ridiculous," he said. "Politicians have no sense of reality."

And, sometimes, no sense of propriety.   We don't casually compare things to a day on which nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered. 

The president is still trying to find is voice on the oil spill.  Better he should find his mind.

June 14, 2010     Permalink

AND ANOTHER TURKEY WE MUST DEAL WITH – AT 10:29 A.M. ET:  The Obama administration has been mounting a campaign to sell Obamacare, but it's pretty clear the public isn't buying.  This will be a major campaign issue that Republiicans can exploit, if they show they have an alternative.  Scott Rasmussen reports:

For the second week in a row, 58% of Likely U.S. Voters favor repeal of the national health care plan adopted into law by Congress in late March. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds 36% oppose repeal.

These findings include 47% who Strongly Favor repeal and 28% who are Strongly Opposed.
Rasmussen Reports has been tracking sentiments about repeal since the plan’s passage, and opposition to the legislation remains as strong since its adoption as it was beforehand. Support for repeal since March has ranged from a low of 54% to a high of 63% in mid-May. Opposition has ranged from 32% to 42%.

The Obama White House last week began a public relations initiative to sell the plan to voters as the mid-term elections near. Right now, a number of Democratic candidates – and incumbents, in general – are hurting in part because of the voter backlash against the health care plan.

Most voters (50%) continue to believe that the health care plan is bad for America and that it will hurt the quality of care while driving up costs and the budget deficit. Thirty-nine percent (39%) say the plan is good for the country. Just three percent (3%) think it will have no impact.

COMMENT:  The Obamans are hoping that early delivery of some benefits will help turn public opinion, but I doubt it will.  There are simply too many stories coming out that warn of problems with the program, and also warn that many current plans – including those that patients like – will  have to be scrapped.

Poor presidential leadership in formulating Obamacare in the first place can be blamed for public response.  But Obama will blame BP, which his advisers will claim stands for BUSH PROBABLY (!!).

June 14, 2010     Permalink

TURKEY BECOMING A TURKEY – AT 9:48 A.M. ET:  Members of Congress are starting to speak out about the tragic turn that Turkey is taking...moving from American ally and moderate state, to supporter of Hamas and Muslim extremism.  From the Washington Times:

For years, Turkey has held a special place on Capitol Hill as a NATO ally and Muslim country maintaining close economic and military ties to the Jewish state. Turkey has acted as a go-between in Israel-Arab dialogue. But that relationship started to sour several years ago, and now some in Congress are taking a second, more critical look at Turkey.

"I urge you to condemn Turkey's support of IHH which has been known to maintain ties to terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Al Qaeda," Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., New Jersey Democrat, wrote in a letter to President Obama. "I also ask that you condemn Turkey's reaction to the incident involving the flotilla. Rather than engaging in an open dialogue, Turkey has chosen to recall their ambassador from Israel and disrupt diplomatic relations. … Turkey has chosen to ignore the facts and force its own view of events through threat. We can not allow these same old tactics to prevent us from taking the right position."

Since taking power in 2002, Ankara's Justice and Development Party (AKP) has developed closer ties to Iran and Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization that controls Gaza.

One GOP congressman, now running for governor of Michigan, nails it exactly:

Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said there is "growing concern" about Turkey in Congress. He blamed, in part, Mr. Obama's foreign policy of reaching out to Iran and criticizing Israel, while one of his top advisers, John Brennan, talks of "moderate elements" inside Iran-supported Lebanese Hezbollah, also a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

"Obama over the last 18 months has sent a clear signal to people in the Middle East that it's OK to reach out to these organizations, Hamas, Hezbollah," Mr. Hoekstra told The Washington Times.

"People like Turkey, they can go basically wherever they want. … This administration, they've totally moved away from any leadership role in the Middle East and everybody now is a free agent doing what they think is best," he said.

COMMENT:  Another great foreign-policy triumph for the Obama administration.  Even Turkey is drifting away.  You can count the foreign-policy successes of Barack Obama on the fingers of one ear.

Turkey, of course, is also a member of NATO.  Ankara's behavior creates an unprecedented crisis for the Atlantic alliance.  This is the first time a member nation has begun moving toward what most rational Europeans and Americans would consider the enemy camp.  Question:  How long can Turkey do this and still remain within NATO?  No one knows the answer, but many Europeans have a hostility toward Turkey already, part of it based on culture and ethnicity, and I wouldn't be shocked if Turkey were expelled from NATO within five years, assuming its current course is intensified.

June 14, 2010     Permalink

HUH?  NOW HERE'S AN INTRIGUING BIT OF POLITICAL STRATEGIC THINKING – AT 9:15 A.M. ET:  From Jon Ward at The Daily Caller:

Turns out, not all Republicans are rooting for their own to win the House.

“I want Republicans to make massive gains but I want them to fall one vote short of taking the House,” said Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary to President George W. Bush. “I want to see more evidence that Republicans are ready to govern. I want to see more substance, particularly on what spending they will cut.”

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who has been tasked with recruiting candidates by House Minority Leader John Boehner, confirmed that this view is held by numerous party operatives and leaders, though none in Congress.

“There are some Republicans out there that I respect, that are very, very bright, that root against us getting the majority,” McCarthy said at a recent lunch with reporters. “They believe it’s a two-cycle election. They believe they may get the White House. They think if we got the majority somehow it protects Obama.”

“My belief is, you grab it when it’s there,” he said.

I'll side with Kevin McCarthy on this one.  You take victories when you can get them in politics.  Then, through innovative, popular action, you prove that you deserve to win again.

The political concern among some conservatives about a Republican takeover is two-fold: that it would produce a backlash by Tea Partiers against the GOP and that it might make it easier for President Obama to win a second term in office.

If the GOP came to power and was unable or unwilling to make the reforms on spending and reducing the deficit and debt demanded by an increasingly restless constituency, it could create a backlash in 2012.

The strongest negative reaction would likely come from the Tea Party. Leaders in that movement are ambivalent about whether or not Republicans regain the House back or not.

No, no, no.  Republicans understand that they must do the job if they gain control.  They understand that the public turned against the GOP in 2006 and 2008 in part because the party wasn't living up to its principles.  The lesson has, in my view, been learned by the leadership. 

If the GOP does gain control, it can confront Obama directly.  There'll be some real dust-ups.  Obama has proved far less formidable in governing than in running, and pressure from a new GOP majority can rattle him.  I suspect that Republicans can increase the president's vulnerability in 2012, not decrease it.

June 14, 2010     Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 8:43 A.M. ET:  Reader Alan Weick alerts us to an excellent piece by Kyle-Anne Shiver at Pajamas Media, containing this bit of truth:

Barack Obama holds, I think, the distinction of having been the presidential candidate with the highest self-esteem of any in American history. There was that moment in July 2008, when Lara Logan of CBS asked candidate Obama whether he ever had any doubts concerning his utter lack of foreign policy experience. The beyond-audacious candidate gave the one-word answer “Never.” An answer that pretty much says it all about this president’s inability to gauge reality.

Here we are less than two years into a presidency which appears more and more by the day as though it were some cosmic cruel joke. Americans are learning the hard way that political indoctrination parades as education, with grave national peril as its handmaid. An Ivy League degree ain’t what it used to be, in other words. At the very least, one would think that higher education ought to impart some sense of reality, some ability to prioritize problems, some idea how the real world works. If Barack Obama is any example, then one would need to conclude that the Ivies are long overdue for a bubble-burst, too.

Indeed they are, and they are joined in that overdue status by many other "prestige" colleges and universities.  Glenn Reynolds, a professor himself, who runs InstaPundit, predicted last week that the college bubble was about to burst, and I'm inclined to agree.  More and more parents are asking what their kids are getting for $42,000 a year...and that figure is temporary.

Kyle-Anne Shiver goes on:

When I see a president with enough leisure time on his hands to party (not on his own dime, lest we forget) chime in on a baseball umpire’s call, and never miss a beat on the Democrat fundraising circuit or a chance to shave one more point from his golf score while crises explode unfettered from here to kingdom come, I see a president so out of touch with reality that it would take a complete nitwit not to assume the man has simply lost all his bearings. Flipped out. Gone ‘round the bend. Is so out to lunch that he doesn’t even have the good sense to pretend he’s hard at work so as to quell the public’s growing-more-frantic-by-the-day concern.

I get the feeling he just doesn't like the job.  He likes having the job.  Obama reminds me of those many people I met at The New York Times who were bored to tears, yet were determined to die at the paper, their bodies lying in state at their desks for decades...just so they could say they wrote for The New York Times. 

We ought to make a deal with Obama:  Keep the title, leave the office.  Early.

You can even keep the neat jacket with the seal.

June 14, 2010     Permalink

GOOD MORNING, WHITE HOUSE, HERE'S THE POLLING NEWS – AT 7:55 A.M. ET:  There's a point in any failing administration when the American people start to catch on, and they let us know it.  Gallup has produced some evidence that the light bulb is going on above the heads of more and more voters.  From Byron York in the Washington Examiner:

A new Gallup poll asked respondents whether they think the views of the Democratic party are "too conservative, too liberal, or about right" and then asked the same question about the Republican party. The results: 49 percent of those surveyed say the Democratic party is too liberal, while 40 percent say the GOP is too conservative. That 49 percent figure for Democrats, Gallup says, is the highest number for the party since 1994, just before Republicans won the House and Senate.

The number of Americans who say the Democratic party is too liberal has been increasing in the last two years, while the number who say the Republican party is too conservative has been decreasing.

Gee, I wonder why the Dem figure has been increasing.  You don't think driving us into near-bankruptcy has anything to do with it, do you?

The change in perception of Democrats has been most marked among independents. In 2008, 40 percent of independents said the Democratic party was too liberal. Now, it's 52 percent.

Elections are won and lost in the great middle, and among independents.  The Democrats' problems among independents are a good omen for the GOP this year.  We have four and a half months until the election.  If Republicans do the job, we could have a very satisfying election night.

However, as Urgent Agenda subscriber Chris Corbett said on the radio show we did with Silvio Canto Jr. last night, it's important for the GOP not to raise expectations too high.  Then, anything below those expectations looks like failure.  The idea is to run as if you're 20 points behind, and be delightfully surprised by the result.

June 14, 2010     Permalink