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SUNDAY,  MARCH 28,  2010

THE STRANGE WORLD OF THE OBAMANS – AT 7:55 P.M. ET:  They live in their own bubble, create their own reality, and believe they can sell their damaged goods to the rest of us, at full price.  Right now their illusions heavily involve the Mideast and Iran.

Consider the line peddled today by David Axelrod, Obama's chief political adviser, who increasingly is acting as foreign-policy explainer:

Axelrod told CNN that at the start of the Obama administration, Iran was united while the world was divided on how best to deal with Iran.

The situation is now reversed, he said, as the world is coming together while Iran itself is divided.

Axelrod added that he was pleased with the cooperation that the Russians have offered and believes Moscow would support fresh penalties against Tehran.

Oh dear Lawd.  That is a super-crock.   Iran has always had divisions. It's never been united.  And the world is as divided now on how to deal with Tehran as when Axelrod's new messiah took office.  We can't get any serious action going.  The best we can do is another set of mild sanctions that the Iranians just laugh at.

Does anyone buy that line?

And then of course we have the administration's march of appeasement through the Middle East, and elsewhere.  We recently returned our ambassadors to Syria and Libya.  Why, if we engage the Syrians and Libyans, we're told, they'll come to like us.  Well, here is the answer from Syria and Libya:

Syria and Libya teamed up Sunday to pressure Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to quit peace talks with Israel and return to violence, delegates to an Arab leadership summit said.

In the wake of that call, Arab leaders gathered at their summit in Sirte, Libya on Sunday failed to reach a consensus on whether the Palestinians should resume stalled talks with Israel.

Gee, thanks fellas.  And thanks for the great work of the Obama administration in making such advances.

Remember, 2012 isn't that far off.

March 28, 2010   Permalink

WELL WELCOME, NICKIE – AT 7:17 P.M. ET:  It's always encouraging when a journalist wakes up from a deep sleep.  Today we celebrate the semi-awakening of Nicholas Kristof, Pulitzer-Prize-winning leftist columnist for The New York Times.  He is also a winner of Urgent Agenda's coveted Pompous Fool Award.  Now, with a bulb flashing over his head, Kristof writes:

In the United States and other Western countries alike, it is mostly boys who are faltering in school. The latest surveys show that American girls on average have roughly achieved parity with boys in math. Meanwhile, girls are well ahead of boys in verbal skills, and they just seem to try harder.

The National Honor Society says that 64 percent of its members — outstanding high school students — are girls. Some colleges give special help to male applicants — yes, that’s affirmative action for white males — to avoid skewed sex ratios.

A new report just issued by the Center on Education Policy, an independent research organization, confirms that boys have fallen behind in reading in every single state.

COMMENT:  I'm so moved, really so moved.  Nicholas Kristof, who receives honorary degrees for his brilliance, has finally discovered what parents of boys knew 15 years ago.

As a father of daughters, I'm delighted that girls are doing so well.  Viva!  But there have been problems with boys, and they are getting worse.   There may be many reasons, but Kristof himself alludes to one – the fact that written materials with appeal to boys just aren't that available in schools.  Indeed, under the influence of radical feminists and leftist "educators," books with male appeal are often not ordered, not put on library shelves, not used in class, and sometimes even removed.

Traditional male values like honor and bravery are also disparaged and ridiculed in many schools.  Again, the leftist influence that has risen since the 1960s, combined with the demands of some feminists (by no means all), has done its damage.

This is a national issue, and a growing national tragedy.  I'm glad to see that Kristof has finally written about it.  Now maybe he can get his trendy colleagues to do the same.  The feminist movement should be applauded for the emphasis it has placed on educating girls.  No issue there.  Now feminists should help to correct the problems afflicting boys.  They will find that their first allies will be mothers of sons.

March 28, 2010   Permalink

SO SAD – AT 6:37 P.M. ET:  It was sad enough for Volvo, once the industrial symbol of Sweden, when it was sold, but at least it was sold to Ford.  Now, another sale...

HONG KONG — Ford Motor reached an agreement on Sunday to sell its Volvo subsidiary to a Chinese conglomerate, in the clearest confirmation yet of China’s global ambitions in the auto industry.

Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, based in Hangzhou, agreed to pay $1.8 billion for Volvo, with $1.6 billion in cash and the rest in a note payable to Ford.

The sale of one of Europe’s most storied brands shows how China has emerged not just as the world’s largest auto market in the past year, but also as a country determined to capture market share around the globe.

COMMENT:  How pathetic.  First, it demonstrates the joke that Sweden, which Western leftists like to look to as the ideal society, has become.  Today Sweden is a rapidly declining nation, some of its cities overrun by Muslim immigrants who have no intention of becoming Swedish.  It has lost its industrial symbol, Volvo, and replaced it with more socialism.

I have no idea why Ford couldn't make Volvo work.  Maybe the Chinese, with lower labor costs, will have more success. 

And in America, GM is now controlled by the government. 

China is rising, and its military is growing markedly stronger each year.  It has bought a huge chunk of our national debt.  It is, however, a massive nation beset by problems, including substantial unrest and dissent. 

The competition between China and the United States will probably become the major international economic story in the next half century.  We can win this, if the government gets out of the way and lets American entrepreneurship loose.

March 28, 2010   Permalink

OH YES, THERE'S THAT LITTLE PROBLEM – AT 10:56 A.M. ET:  In a week in which President Obama 1) helped us toward bankruptcy through health-care "reform," 2) beat up on the Israelis, and 3) sucked up to the Russians...other stuff was happening.  Nothing serious here.  Pass it by:

WASHINGTON — Six months after the revelation of a secret nuclear enrichment site in Iran, international inspectors and Western intelligence agencies say they suspect that Tehran is preparing to build more sites in defiance of United Nations demands.

Well, why not?  You need a lot of power to recharge iPods. 

The United Nations inspectors assigned to monitor Iran’s nuclear program are now searching for evidence of two such sites, prompted by recent comments by a top Iranian official that drew little attention in the West, and are looking into a mystery about the whereabouts of recently manufactured uranium enrichment equipment.

You'll notice the sense of urgency in the Obama administration.  We'd been promised "crippling" sanctions on Iran.  Well, we didn't get enough votes for that at the UN, so then we were promised "biting" sanctions.  Well, that didn't sell to the Chinese either.  Now, apparently, we're going for "softer" sanctions to maintain "unanimity."

The Iranians are sure frightened. 

An Iranian bomb would change the face of the region, and make Iran the dominant power, as the neo-isolationists begin to withdraw American forces.  It is hard to see how the United States can benefit from the policies we're currently pursuing, policies that sound tough at first, and become increasingly soft as the months and years go by.

There are many reports that the Obamans have resigned themselves to Iranian nuclear weapons.  Well, whoopee for them.  Mature adults living in the real world have not resigned themselves because they understand the implications...like a nuclear device being sailed into Baltimore harbor in the hold of a ship, and set off by a suicide squad.  Saturday's Orioles game cancelled.

March 28, 2010   Permalink

DISGRACEFUL – AT 10:24 A.M. ET:  One of the favorite words in the liberal vocabulary is "McCarthyism."  It's the all-purpose curse, the catch-all one-word attack.  But Dems know how to practice "McCarthyism" with the best of them.  Joe would be proud:

Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, has summoned some of the nation's top executives to Capitol Hill to defend their assessment that the new national health care reform law will cost their companies hundreds of millions of dollars in health insurance expenses. Waxman is also demanding that the executives give lawmakers internal company documents related to health care finances -- a move one committee Republican describes as "an attempt to intimidate and silence opponents of the Democrats' flawed health care reform legislation."

On Thursday and Friday, the companies -- so far, they include AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar, Deere, Valero Energy, AK Steel and 3M -- said a tax provision in the new health care law will make it far more expensive to provide prescription drug coverage to their retired employees. Now, both retirees and current employees of those companies are wondering whether the new law could mean reduced or canceled benefits for them in the future.

COMMENT:  Under what authority can a House committee chairman simply demand that corporate officers appear before him to defend a financial opinion?  What is the legitimate legislative purpose?

This is, as the unnamed Republican charges, pure intimidation.  It's designed to shut people up. 

Joe McCarthy, who actually turned out to be right on many things, but who went way over the line in behavior, used his committee chairmanship to threaten and frighten.  Now Henry Waxman is working from the same playbook.  "Waxmanism anyone?"

March 28, 2010    Permalink

BACK TO THE REAL WORLD, BARACK – AT 10:11 A.M. ET:  President Obama experienced a bump in the polls after the passage of the health-care bill.  But, according to Scott Rasmussen, the bump is healing, and reality returning:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 28% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -16 (see trends).

The President enjoyed a modest bounce in the polls following the passage of health care legislation last week. However, his Approval Index rating is now back to where it was last Sunday, just before the House voted in favor of his health care plan. All the bouncing of the past week has come among Democrats. There has been virtually no change in the opinions of Republicans and unaffiliated voters.

Note the part about unaffiliated voters.  Obama has lost the independents.  Unless he can get them back, his political future can be very grim.

Overall, 47% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty-three percent (53%) disapprove.

We track these things day by day.  Approval of Obama is falling below 50% in most polls.  The economic signs are not good, especially as they pertain to employment.  This is not a healthy brew for Dems for November.  However, Republicans have a remarkable capacity to sit on their hands and not exploit opportunity.  Light a fire under them whenever you can.

March 28, 2010   Permalink

THE END OF CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT – AT 10:01 A.M. ET:  The moment we have dreaded.  From The New York Times: 

If any one show has represented the post-9/11 era on television, it is “24,” the Fox drama that has offered counterterrorism as entertainment for nine years.

On “24,” torture saves lives. On “24,” phones are tapped, plots are disrupted, terrorists are killed, and one man, Jack Bauer, will stop at nothing to protect the American people. For viewers, “24” is part sum of all fears, part wish fulfillment in an age of shadowy enemies.

For Fox, the show’s trademark clock is about to stop ticking. Nearly a decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that so heavily influenced people’s perceptions of the series, cast and crew members said they were told on Friday that it had been canceled.

If this be treason... 

I am going into mourning.  I will need the spiritual help of readers for some time to come.  Words of sympathy, words of encouragement, Bible verses.

There is no Monday night without "24."  In my home we will go directly from Monday afternoon to Tuesday morning.

The last episode will air in May.  After that, darkness.  They will probably replace it with some prissy series about teenaged love in a California high school.  I can't wait.

This is how civilizations die.  Roman civilization started to die when the hit series, "Clockum Countum Jackum Bauerum" stopped playing at the Coliseum.

March 28, 2010   Permalink

SATURDAY,  MARCH 27,  2010

IDIOT'S DELIGHT – AT 8:04 P.M. ET:  Anyone with even minimal experience in foreign affairs knows that Obama's soft line toward Iran and hard line toward Israel would have predictable results.  Those results have started to appear:

Arab states should prepare for the possibility that the Palestinian-Israeli peace process may be a total failure and prepare alternatives, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said on Saturday.

Translated:  We can get out of this peace business and blame Israel.  Obama will support us.

"We have to study the possibility that the peace process will be a complete failure," Moussa told a summit of Arab leaders in the Libyan town of Sirte.

"It's time to face Israel. We have to have alternative plans because the situation has reached a turning-point," he said.

Translated:  Obama is more Palestinian than the Palestinians.  Can we be less?

Mousa did not specify the alternatives - but one option could be for the Palestinians to bypass the peace process and declare a state unilaterally.

Right.  Who needs a peace process when we can get what we want without it?  And now for the even more ominous part:

He also said the Arab League should open a dialogue with Tehran to address concerns, especially among Iran's neighbors across the Gulf, about its nuclear program.

Translated:  Obama is weak.  He's getting nowhere with Iran.  We're not protected.  Maybe we'd better cozy up to the mullahs.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the summit said indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians cannot continue unless Israel stops building in the settlements.

"We cannot resume indirect negotiations as long as Israel maintains its settlement policy and the status quo," Abbas said at the opening session of the two-day summit.

This had never been Palestinian policy before Barack Hussein Obama Jr. came to office.  He's messed up the entire thing and weakened, not strengthened, our position in the Mideast.  And the Arabs, natural enemies of the Iranians, whom they fear, may knife us on Iran if Obama can't get the Iranians to end their nuclear program. 

When you learn your international diplomacy as a community organizer in Chicago, this is what happens.

March 27, 2010   Permalink

SARAH SHINES – AT 7:44 P.M. ET:  I've had some doubts about Sarah Palin, but I must say that she's really begun to shine.  Her appearances on Fox News have gotten better and better, and her public speeches have been sharpened.  She's taking on the press, and we can only cheer:

SEARCHLIGHT, NEV. – Firing back at critics who say that she and other conservatives had encouraged harassment of House Democrats who supported the healthcare overhaul, Sarah Palin Saturday ripped the media for casting her and tea party activists as violent.

“When we talk about fighting for our country, let’s clear the air right now about what we’re talking about,” she told an estimated 20,000 tea partiers gathered for a rally in a windswept desert lot about four miles north of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s tiny hometown. “We’re not inciting violence. Don’t get sucked into the lame-stream media lies.”

Palin said “violence isn’t the answer.” She said “our vote is our arms” and encouraged activists not to be discouraged by the passage of the Democratic healthcare overhaul bill last week, but rather to channel their energies into defeating congressional Democrats who supported the legislation.

We should note that buses filled with tea partiers were pelted with eggs in Nevada today.  Now, if liberals had been pelted with eggs by conservatives, the media would call the eggs "symbolic hand grenades."  Military historians would be called in to tell us, in somber, academic tones, that "egg" was military slang for "bomb."  Get the connection?

Liberal media hacks, meanwhile, continue their attempt to connect protests against health "reform" to segregationists and racists of the 1960s.  It's part of the liberal nostalgia for that era.  If only they could catch a tea partier burning a stethoscope on a congressman's lawn, this crowd would be in Heaven.

Well, wait, they don't believe in Heaven.  Okay, maybe they'd be in Beverly Hills.

March 27, 2010   Permalink

NO TASTE, NO CLASS – AT 7:21 P.M. ET:  Newspaper unions are correctly outraged at the behavior of The New York Times, whose top executives book bonuses equal to the amount of "givebacks" that union members at the Boston Globe, owned by The Times, were forced to endure.  Here we side with the working stiffs.  From the New York Post:

Those paydays that New York Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger and President Janet Robinson received last year are once again coming back to haunt them.

The Boston Newspaper Guild, which absorbed more than $10 million in pay and benefit cuts to members last year in order to save The Boston Globe, has lashed out at the Sulzberger and Robinson 2009 bonuses and are demanding their lost wages and benefits be restored.

"We were astonished to learn that the two of you received more than $10 million in stock awards and options in 2009," the Guild wrote in an open letter urging its members to send to Sulzberger and Robinson. "During the year for which you were so richly rewarded, the 600 members of the Boston Newspaper Guild gave back almost the same amount in pay and benefit reductions -- $10 million to be exact -- after you threatened to close our newspaper, lay off hundreds of people, and strip Massachusetts of its largest newspaper."

"Now that the Times has shown it can afford to lavish so much on a few top executives, we expect our pay and benefit cuts will be restored in the coming months."

The Times Co. declined to comment.

COMMENT:  I'm always amused when a newspaper declines to comment on a news story about itself. 

Once again the Times management shows its usual lack of class.  Sulzberger, who would not have his job, or any job at the Times, if he didn't come from the ruling junta, claims to be a man of the people.  In a commencement address at an obscure college a few years back, he apologized to the graduating class because his generation hadn't created a perfect world. 

He is not a man of the people.  He's a hypocritical leftist.  He's liberal, as long as it doesn't cost him anything.

March 27, 2010   Permalink

WHAT?  WHAT?  YOU MEAN THERE ARE COSTS INVOLVED?  – AT 11:04 ET:  And, you know, all along I thought the health-care plan would be free.  Isn't it free when the government does it?  Get out the calculator, the one with the fresh Duracells.  From The New York Times:

Because of the new health care law, Arizona lawmakers must now find a way to maintain insurance coverage for 350,000 children and adults that they slashed just last week to help close a $2.6 billion budget deficit.

Louisiana officials say a reduction in federal money to hospitals that treat the uninsured under the bill could be a death knell for their state-run charity hospital system.

In California, policymakers estimate they will have to come up with an additional $500 million a year to make necessary increases in payments to Medicaid providers.

Across the country, state officials are wading through the minutiae of the health care overhaul to understand just how their governments will be affected. Even with much still to be digested, it is clear the law may be as much of a burden to some state budgets as it is a boon to uninsured consumers.

Please note how carefully the press dissected the bill before it was passed.  I'm kidding.

“The federal government has to account for states’ inability to sustain our current programs, much less expand,” said Kim Belshé, secretary of California’s Health and Human Services Agency.

Yeah, Kim, Congress really agonized over that.

In contrast, states like Massachusetts and Wisconsin, which already have extensive health care safety nets, do not expect to spend much more money, while still taking in billions in federal grants.

Hmm.  What does that last sentence tell you?  It tells you that this could have all been done on the state level, with states performing their traditional roles as great laboratories.  It was not necessary to have a massive federal overhaul of the entire health-care system.  The federal government should have restricted itself to needed reforms that could only be enacted by federal law. 

Yesterday we reported on the costs that big corporations, major employers, will now face.  Great way to get us out of the worst economic downturn since the thirties. 

March 27, 2010   Permalink

IS HE STILL AROUND? – AT 10:33 A.M. ET:  The Rev. Jesse Jackson, apparently trying for the kind of comeback usually reserved for old lounge singers, now pronounces on the political atmosphere of the country:

(CNN) – Rev. Jesse Jackson, president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, condemned the charged political atmosphere of the moment in harsh terms Friday, comparing some conservative and Republican opponents of heath care reform to enemies of the civil rights movement.

Please note that the left always winds up describing its opponents as racist, stupid, or violent.  Substantive issues need not apply.

"These days will live in infamy, as the scenes of our elected representatives shouting, 'you lie' and 'baby killer' echo inside the halls of Congress," Jackson said in a statement released by his office. "We've stooped too low when protestors begin hurling the 'n' word at African American congressman, and start making direct and indirect threats at representatives who supported the historic health care legislation."

There is no evidence to support the charge that the "n" word was hurled at black congressmen.  Direct and indirect threats have been made against both conservatives and liberals for years.  Cries of "BushHitler" did not bring any reprimand from Rev. Jackson.  When Chris Matthews described former Vice President Cheney as the "bathtub ring" of the Bush administration, did Rev. Jackson call in? 

"These and other radical statements from members of Congress, conservative talk show hosts and "protestors" are drawing ideological lines – states' rights versus federalism, harkening back to the cultural lines drawn over the civil war and modern civil rights movement," he said. "They revive our worse fears and divisions."

I fully agree that we need a higher level of decorum.  But the one-sided accusations contribute nothing to a charged atmosphere.  And talk-show hosts?  Sure, some conservative hosts go over the top.  But where was Jackson when talk-show host Al Franken, Now Senator Al Franken of Minnesota, was embarrassing himself on Air America? 

It's all part of the imagery that leftists have of themselves:  We're better people, more refined and intellectual, and we're fighting uncouth monsters.

Right.

March 27, 2010   Permalink

THE REALITY OF CRIME – AT 10:11 A.M. ET:  For decades this country was sold the phony line that the "root cause" of crime was "socio-economic factors."  It was garbage.  Yes, there are some socio-economic factors involved, but, shock, the ones that actually are involved are the very ones the "root cause" crowd refused to discuss – like fatherlessness.

Crime occurs when people in a deteriorating cultural environment believe they can get away with it.  No city has had more success in fighting crime than New York, and it did it by radical improvements in law enforcement, and by having the right numbers of cops to do the job.

Now, the crime picture is darkening, and Mayor Mike Bloomberg is blunt about the cause.  His comments have national implications, especially at a time when so many states and cities are in fiscal trouble:

A disturbing spike in murders and other serious crimes is leading city officials to believe the NYPD’s famed “blue line” is growing way too thin.

“It is worrisome,”Mayor Bloomberg said on his radio show yesterday, noting that Police "Commissioner [Ray] Kelly and I talked at length about it."

"We have fewer police officers than we did before," the mayor said. "More cops always helps."

So far this calendar year, the number of New York City murders has jumped a scary 22 percent over the same period last year -- from 86 slayings up to 103 this year.

And...

Bloomberg noted that the total number of such crimes is "still very low" compared to the sky-high rates seen in years such as 1990, when murders hit an annual record of 2,245.

But he and others admit that the NYPD's shrinking manpower level -- from 41,000 cops in 2001 down to about 35,000 today -- could be playing a factor in the increased crime rates. The city expects to shed around 1,300 officers in the upcoming fiscal year through attrition, and also is threatening to lay off a whopping 3,150 cops if the state slashes related funding.

One top police official said, "There are just a lot less people out there . . . the type of presence we have had that deters shootings."

COMMENT:  The state of New York is approaching bankruptcy.  Funding will be cut.  In many municipalities, the first thing to go when funding is cut is police officers.  This can and will have a devastating effect.  And then the "root cause" crowd will come out of the woodwork again, probably supported by Barack Obama, and will demand new "social programs" that they can run.

Back to the sixties.

March 27, 2010   Permalink

THIS IS THE WAY HOLLYWOOD WORKS – AT 9:47 A.M. ET:  So I failed?  So what?  I got good experience.  Give me a raise.  The UN's climate chief seems to have learned his personnel policies from the film industry.  From Fox:

The outspoken chairman of the U.N.’s climate change body is to adopt a neutral advisory role and has agreed to stop making statements demanding new taxes and other radical policies on cutting emissions.

In an interview with the Times of London, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, apologized for his organization’s handling of complaints about errors in its report.

He also apologized for describing as “voodoo science” an Indian Government report which challenged the IPCC’s claims about the rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers.

But Dr Pachauri, 70, rejected calls for his resignation and insisted he would remain as chairman until after publication of the IPCC’s next report in 2014.

He claimed he had the support of all the world’s governments and denied that, by remaining in post, he was undermining the IPCC’s chances of regaining credibility with the public.

“It is not correct to say there are people who don’t trust me,” he said.

Of course not, Raj.  Why would anyone not trust you?  Of course you can stay on.

“I will try to clarify that I’m not prescribing anything as a solution. Maybe I should be more careful [in media interviews] in laying down certain riders. One learns from that and I’m learning.”

And that movie you made that cost $125-million and brought in six thousand bucks?  Could happen to anyone.  We value the experience.  Here's your new Mercedes.

COMMENT:  Does the term "hustler" come to mind?

March 27,  2010   Permalink