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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

SNIPPET OF THE DAY – AT 9:47 P.M. ET:

From London's Telegraph:  A US city is handing out parking tickets with pictures of yoga positions on them in a bid to calm down angry recipients.  Parking control officers in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have been issued with 40,000 of the placatory citations. They are the brainchild of one Daniel Peltz, an "artist in residence" with the Cambridge Traffic and Parking Department. The tickets have an image of a yoga position on the front of the envelope, with instructions on the reverse on how to implement various moves.  Susan Clippinger, the city's transportation chief, tells The Boston Herald the purpose of the tickets is to "debunk the idea that all parking tickets are a hostile action. We’re not writing tickets to get somebody. We’re writing tickets to help make the city function.”

Only in a place like Cambridge, Massachusetts, would that logic make sense.  So remember, next time you see the tell-tale summons under your windshield wiper, don't think, "I was legally parked."  Think, "I'm helping to build a multicultural center to increase peace and harmony."  But you'll still have to pay.

September 23, 2010     Permalink

YOU WANT SOME RESPECT, GIVE SOME RESPECT – AT 8:58 P.M. ET:  One reason the UN has essentially fallen apart is the fact that the Islamic nations pretty much control it, and use it for their own purposes.  Thus, this absurdity:

(Reuters) - Islamic states sought on Wednesday to have the United Nations human rights council condemn a U.S. pastor's suspended plan to burn Korans, saying it was part of a pattern of global anti-Muslim violence.

A resolution submitted by Pakistan for  he 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) asks the council to speak out against what it dubbed "the recent call by an extremist group to organize a 'Burn a Koran Day'."

The resolution, which diplomats said was likely to be passed as the OIC and its allies have a majority on the 47-nation body, made no reference to condemnation of the plan by President Barack Obama and other U.S. and foreign leaders.

The arrogance and hypocrisy of this is almost beyond belief.  The resolution will pass, of course, because the "Human Rights Council" would pass a resolution declaring the moon an Islamic state if the OIC asked for it.

But here are nations, many of which are completely intolerant of other religions, where a Bible can be burned with no penalty, and where human rights are flouted as if they're minor annoyances.  And they want the nutty actions of a Floriday pastor condemned, even though the pastor withdrew his call for a bonfire.

And then people wonder why many of these countries live in the tenth century.  They have a misplaced sense of priorities and a perpetual sense of grievance.

European diplomats said they were unlikely to vote against the OIC resolution, as their governments had already condemned the Koran burning idea, but feared it would be used to increase pressure for actions on defamation and "Islamophobia."

Those "actions" would make a mockery of free speech.

The United States joined the Human Rights Council under President Obama.  President Bush refused to join, correctly denouncing the council as a kind of fraud.

Time for us to get out.

September 23, 2010      Permalink

WE WELCOME THE INDEPENDENTS – 8:15 P.M. ET:  A new Pew poll confirms the march of the independents.  It was a different story two years ago:

In an ominous sign for President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, independent voters now favor Republicans by nearly the same margins that they went for Obama in 2008 and his party in the 2006 mid-term, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released Wednesday.

“For the third national election in a row, independent voters may be poised to vote out the party in power,” Pew concludes.

From their mouth to you know whose ears.

Unlike the most recent election cycles when independents complained about the lack of progress in Washington on major issues facing the country, these critical swing voters now are expressing high anxiety with what Congress and the White House have already done.

Overall, 45 percent of independents disapprove of the health care reforms passed this year compared to 41 percent who approve of them. A third of independents say Obama’s economic policies have made conditions worse for them rather than better, compared to 24 percent who take a more positive view.

“They feel that the issues have been dealt with but not in a way that is satisfactory to them,” said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center.

That's the point, and it's one the GOP should drive home – that the Democrats ignore what their constituents say, and do whatever they please.   There's an arrogance, a haughtiness.

“Trust in government is at one of the lowest points in 60 years of polling,” said Kohut. “It’s a backlash against what is seen as government policies and programs that are too liberal or too much in the vein of government expansion.”

About the only good news in the survey for Democrats is that a reasonable chunk – about 40 percent – of independents said they still maintain some level of support for the president or his party. Those respondents, however, are not nearly as motivated to vote as their discontented independent brethren.

COMMENT:  That's good news, but please remember that it's a national survey.  We have national polls, but we don't have national elections.  Even a presidential election is really 50 separate state elections for the electoral college.  In November we'll be voting state by state, district by district.  Each race must be fought separately.

September 23, 2010      Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 9:35 A.M. ET:  From the great Anne Bayefsky, one of the best foreign-affairs writers of our time, on the Fox News website.  She is discussing Mr. Obama's appearance today before the UN General Assembly, and the way it's being spun by the White House:

The White House described the “dramatically” different Obama foreign policy as one which includes a warm embrace of the United Nations. It also claimed that “the new era of engagement” has been a major success, pointing to U.N. sanctions on Iran, momentum against nuclear proliferation, and U.S. participation in reforming the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The facts suggest otherwise. Nobody at the U.N. believes that the Iran sanctions will prevent an Iranian bomb. The weak Security Council sanctions adopted after 18 months of engagement garnered fewer votes than the sanctions adopted during the Bush years. The president himself has knotted together the issues of nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament, thereby making non-proliferation efforts much more difficult.

In May, the president agreed to co-sponsor an international conference intended to redirect the heat from Iran to Israel in the name of disarmament. And a year after the U.S. joined the U.N. Human Rights Council, Libya has become a member, anti-Israel hysteria has reached new heights, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference has informed the administration that reform is dead in the water.

None of that, however, is likely to mean the president will confront real world evils during his moments today at center stage. At a Monday press briefing with America’s U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes indicated that Obama will repeat his tired-out mantra on Iran. It’s still about an “open door” policy that remains open, despite Iran having made it crystal clear it has no intention of walking through. The president is evidently oblivious to the image of weakness he has projected, and will continue to project, in the General Assembly.

COMMENT:  And who will pay the price for that weakness?  America's allies, certainly.  But, ultimately, it may be paid by our armed forces, long after Mr. Obama has left the White House and become secretary-general of the United Nations.

September 23, 2010      Permalink

OH, NOW THEY TELL US – AT 9:12 A.M. ET:  Now that General Stanley McChrystal has been forced out and humiliated by President Obama, a Pentagon report vindicates him, and raises troubling questions about the whole episode.  From The Politico:

A Pentagon investigation has determined that neither Gen. Stanley McChrystal nor the senior officers in his inner circle made the disparaging comments to Rolling Stone that led to the general’s downfall in June.

McChyrstal was relieved of his command of U.S. troops in Afghanistan after a Rolling Stone article portrayed his team making snide remarks about Vice President Joe Biden, National Security Adviser Jim Jones and others.

But as first reported Wednesday by the New York Times, the Pentagon’s investigation into the case has established that McChrystal didn’t make any of the comments himself. In fact, Pentagon officials told POLITICO Wednesday that McChrystal was never even a “person of interest” in the probe.

The Times said that the investigation may now be focused on a mid-level naval officer who was also part of McChrystal’s group. But the paper said that the naval officer has told Navy officials that he did not make the remarks in question, either.

And this, naturally...

Reporter Michael Hastings, who wrote “The Runaway General” for Rolling Stone, reportedly declined to talk with the Pentagon’s investigators.

Of course, and I'm sure some haughty reason was given.  Mustn't compromise press independence, you know.

I always thought it odd that a general with McChrystal's experience, and the hand-picked staff around him, would make the inflammatory comments about the administration that roasted McChrystal...especially to a magazine that never had any regard for the military.  Now we know that there's no evidence they ever made these comments.

This reminds me of the case of Ray Donovan, President Reagan's secretary of labor, who was also smeared, then was cleared, then asked publicly, "Where do I go to get back my reputation?"  General McChrystal must feel the same way.

Comments, White House?

September 23, 2010     Permalink

THE JOY IS IN THE DETAILS – AT 8:29 A.M. ET:  I've been a bit uneasy about the generic numbers numbers for Congress recently, as several polls showed a tightening of the gap between Republicans and Dems.  But a new analysis by Real Clear Politics eases our burden:

McClatchy/Marist polled registered voters, and found Republicans leading by two points, 47 percent to 45 percent. Of course, this is of registered voters, not likely voters, and so the actual spread among the electorate is probably a few points more in the Republicans’ favor. A more ominous sign for the Democrats is the fact that Republicans lead 61 percent to 34 percent among those who describe themselves as “very enthusiastic” about voting. Also ominous – the Republicans’ lead seems to be fairly evenly spread between the regions: -2 in the Northeast, +4 in the Midwest, +4 in the South, and +3 in the West.

COMMENT:  If Republicans do very well in November, it will be because of the enthusiasm gap.  In 2008, with Obama leading the ticket, the Dems clearly had the enthusiasm going away.  Times have changed. 

But enthusiasm is temporary.  We still have more than a month to go before the election.  Republicans can get tired and Dems can get energized by the fear campaign being waged by Democratic leaders.  So the GOP must be out there every day, stirring up the troops and getting them to the polls.

September 23, 2010     Permalink

GIVE THE GIRL A BREAK! – AT 8:11 A.M. ET:  It's heartbreaking, and will probably become a TV movie.  Just a few days after Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand turned red when Harry Reid described her as the hottest U.S. senator, she's dissed again in a new New York poll stunner:

SurveyUSA shows New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand leading Congressman Joe DioGuardi by a single point, 45 percent to 44 percent, while Quinnipiac shows Gillibrand with a 48 to 42 point lead. According to SurveyUSA, Gillibrand leads in NYC 54 percent to 35 percent, but is losing upstate and, more importantly, the New York suburbs.

New York is a really bright red state, and the fact that former GOP Congressman Joe DioGuardi is that close is remarkable.  Maybe there is a revolt brewing.

One of Gillibrand's problems is that she could walk down a street in New York, and no one would know who she is.  She was appointed to fill Hillary Clinton's seat, but she doesn't have Clinton's political savvy.

DioGuardi is about as beautiful to the eye as Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey.  Neither has been invited to appear on "Dancing With the Stars."  But he comes off in TV ads as a practical, sharpened-pencil guy, a trained CPA, and this may be the year in which that has appeal. 

This poll comes a day after another poll had GOP gubernatorial nominee Carl Paladino only six points behind Dem stalwart Andy Cuomo. 

Is New York seriously in play?  It appears that way, but we'll be alert for future polls.

September 23, 2010     Permalink

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2010

DOES CHRISTINE HAVE A CHANCE – AT 7:05 P.M. ET:  I watched Christine O'Donnell on Sean Hannity's show last night, and I must tell you that she was delightful.  That's the good news.  The bad news is that it may be too late.

O'Donnell thoughtfully answered the charges against her, especially the one about owing back taxes.  She explained that this was an IRS error, and that she has the papers to prove there was nothing owed.  She was poised and mature in handling these issues.

Trouble is, she should have done this weeks ago.  Instead, her campaign referred questions to her website, which means voters who weren't participating in the Republican primary (which she won) never had a chance to hear her defend herself on TV.

Two basic rules of politics:  1) Never let anyone else define you, and 2) answer every attack and pulverize the attacker. 

I've never seen a candidate savaged the way Christine O'Donnell was savaged after she won her primary.  I was watching CNN yesterday, and you'd think O'Donnell doesn't even have an opponent in the general election.  There were no questions about him, none whatever.  I watched over the weekend as Bob Schieffer ridiculed O'Donnell's "witchcraft" past – she fooled around with some weird folks in high school – but never heard Schieffer or anyone else note that Hillary Clinton once tried to channel Eleanor Roosevelt while Clinton was first lady.

The result of the assault is that O'Donnell didn't get the usual post-primary bounce.  A poll put her 11 points behind her opponent a few days after the primary.  She's now, according to Rasmussen, 15 points behind.

It was a late O'Donnell surge that allowed her to win the Republican primary, that and dissatisfaction with the liberal tendencies of her opponent, Congressman Mike Castle.  Can there be another surge?  Well, it's tougher in the general election, when you're dealing with Democrats and independents.  And it's tough in a traditionally Democratic state.

The odds are against Christine O'Donnell.  She doesn't have much of a record, and she's made some whopping mistakes.  But miracles happen, and she's got to fight.  She's already made one good decision – not to do more national TV, but concentrate only on Delaware.

If I were a betting man, I wouldn't bet on her.  I want to be proved wrong.

September 22, 2010     Permalink

REPUBLICAN PLEDGE TO AMERICA – AT 6:20 P.M. ET:  CBS News has obtained a copy of the new Republican Pledge to America, a modern version of the very effective Contract With America that Newt Gingrich unveiled in 1994.  The pledge will be publicly unveiled tomorrow morning.  Here, according to CBS, are the highlights:

Jobs:

- Stop job-killing tax hikes

- Allow small businesses to take a tax deduction equal to 20 percent of their income

- Require congressional approval for any new federal regulation that would add to the deficit

- Repeal small business mandates in the new health care law.

Cutting Spending:

- Repeal and Replace health care

- Roll back non-discretionary spending to 2008 levels before TARP and stimulus (will save $100 billion in first year alone)

- Establish strict budget caps to limit federal spending going forward

- Cancel all future TARP payments and reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Reforming Congress:

- Will require that every bill have a citation of constitutional authority

- Give members at least 3 days to read bills before a vote

Defense:

- Provide resources to troops

- Fund missile defense

- Enforce sanctions in Iran

The CBS link has a reprint of the whole text.

COMMENT:  Sounds good to me.  Not original, but solid.  The Dems are already out with a wild-eyed attack on the document, using the usual scare tactics, and labeling it as a gift to the rich.  As we said here yesterday, the GOP must be ready with 1) a massive campaign to explain the pledge; and 2) a counterattack that will answer every criticism – every one.

Remember the advice of Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey Jr., (whom I once had the honor of meeting):  "Attack, repeat, attack."

September 22, 2010      Permalink

SNIPPET OF THE DAY – AT 10:50 A.M. ET: 

From AOL News: 

UFOs have monitored and possibly tampered with American nuclear weapons, according to a group of former Air Force officers who will make their claims public next week at a Washington, D.C., news conference.

"While most of the incidents apparently involved mere surveillance, in a few cases, a significant number of nuclear missiles suddenly and simultaneously malfunctioned, just as USAF security policemen reported seeing disc-shaped craft hovering nearby," says Robert Hastings, author of "UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites."

On Monday, at the National Press Club, Hastings will present six former Air Force personnel who will break their silence and disclose dramatic first-hand experiences with UFOs at nuclear weapons sites.

The White House will respond that President Obama inherited this situation from Bush, and that he, Obama, has reached out to the UFO's and shown respect for their culture.

September 22, 2010      Permalink

OH DEAR, OH DEAR – AT 10:34 A.M. ET:  Washington is all abuzz about Bob Woodward's new book on the Obama administration, especially its portrayal of Obama as philosopher in...I mean commander in chief.  WaPo has a description.  Take Advil first:

President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward.

Frustrated with his military commanders for consistently offering only options that required significantly more troops, Obama finally crafted his own strategy, dictating a classified six-page "terms sheet" that sought to limit U.S. involvement, Woodward reports in "Obama's Wars," to be released on Monday.

According to Woodward's meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review, the president avoided talk of victory as he described his objectives.

"This needs to be a plan about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan," Obama is quoted as telling White House aides as he laid out his reasons for adding 30,000 troops in a short-term escalation. "Everything we're doing has to be focused on how we're going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It's in our national security interest. There cannot be any wiggle room."

Words like "victory" apparent never left the launching pad.

Obama rejected the military's request for 40,000 troops as part of an expansive mission that had no foreseeable end. "I'm not doing 10 years," he told Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a meeting on Oct. 26, 2009. "I'm not doing long-term nation-building. I am not spending a trillion dollars."

Woodward's book portrays Obama and the White House as barraged by warnings about the threat of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and confronted with the difficulty in preventing them. During an interview with Woodward in July, the president said, "We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger."

And why were we stronger?  Does the name Bush come to mind?

The portrayal here, and elsewhere, shows a president who has little conception of strategy, and no conception of how to be commander in chief.  This book will not help the administration.

September 22, 2010      Permalink

SARAH RISING – AT 9:17 A.M. ET:  Andrew Malcolm at the L.A. Times's Top of the Ticket blog raises some intriguing questions about Sarah Palin, whose stock seems to be soaring.  (Even the liberal commentator Mark Halperin was favorably assessing her earlier this week.)  Andrew posts a new Sarah video and asks:

Watch it. See if you think it's from someone who is not running for, oh, say, the nomination for an important office from a major political party. Or laying the foundation to play a major role in that decision by assembling a following of numerous like-minded, loyal folks.

Did you notice anything missing in this video, as we did? (Answer down below.*)

As we wrote here on The Ticket Tuesday, a majority of Americans now say their views match Palin's. Or vice versa.

Play the video.  What do you think?  Please send us some thoughts.  Oh, by the way, what's missing from the video is that Sarah doesn't mention either political party.  Hmm.

September 22, 2010      Permalink

JIMMAH MUST BE LOVING THIS – AT 8:49 A.M. ET:  Jimmah Carter has been all over the tube this week promoting still one more book of wisdom, getting back at his enemies and proclaiming his divinity and greatness.

Trouble is, the political talk about him is taking a different turn.  Reader John Catherwood alerts us to this John Fund piece reporting on the comparisons between Jimmah and another self-proclaimed deity:

Comparisons between the Obama White House and the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter are increasingly being made—and by Democrats.

Walter Mondale, Mr. Carter's vice president, told The New Yorker this week that anxious and angry voters in the late 1970s "just turned against us—same as with Obama." As the polls turned against his administration, Mr. Mondale recalled that Mr. Carter "began to lose confidence in his ability to move the public." Democrats on Capitol Hill are now saying this is happening to Mr. Obama.

Mr. Mondale says it's time for the president "to get rid of those teleprompters and connect" with voters. Another of Mr. Obama's clear errors has been to turn over the drafting of key legislation to the Democratic Congress: "That doesn't work even when you own Congress," he said. "You have to ride 'em."

Lots of hopey changey stuff when Mr. Obama took office.  It didn't last long:

But within a few months, liberals were already finding fault with his rhetoric. "He's the great earnest bore at the dinner party," wrote Michael Wolff, a contributor to Vanity Fair. "He's cold; he's prickly; he's uncomfortable; he's not funny; and he's getting awfully tedious. He thinks it's all about him." That sounds like a critique of Mr. Carter.

I wish they'd told us that during the campaign.

Foreign policy experts are also picking up on similarities. Walter Russell Mead, then a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Economist magazine earlier this year that Mr. Obama is "avoiding the worst mistakes that plagued Carter." But he warns that presidents like Mr. Obama who emphasize "human rights" can fall prey to the temptation of picking on weak countries while ignoring more dire human rights issues in powerful countries (Russia, China, Iran). Over time that can "hollow out an administration's credibility and make a president look weak."

And...

Liberals increasingly can't avoid making connections between Mr. Carter's political troubles and those of Mr. Obama. In July, MSNBC's Chris Matthews asked his guests if Democrats up for re-election will "run away from President O'Carter." After much laughter, John Heileman of New York Magazine quipped "Calling Dr. Freud." To which Mr. Matthews, a former Carter speechwriter, sighed "I know."

Don't you love it?  Don't you just love it?  Enjoy.

September 22, 2010    Permalink

COULD THIS BE POSSIBLE? – AT 8:15 A.M. ET:  The Quinnipiac poll is highly respected.  Q is out this morning with a real New York stunner:

ALBANY - A stunning new poll this morning shows Democratic Attorney General Andrew Cuomo holding a mere six point lead over bomb throwing Buffalo businessman Carl Paladino in what until now has been Cuomo's runaway race for governor.

The startling Quinnipiac University survey of likely voters showed Cuomo ahead of Republican Paladino by 49-43 percent, a far cry from the 60-23 percent lead he held in a Quinnipiac poll of registered - but not necessarily likely - voters released Sept. 1.

Since the poll's margin of error is plus- or minus-3.6 percent, the findings - if accurate -- mean the race between the popular and well-known attorney general and the little-known but highly controversial, Tea Party-linked, Paladino could be a dead heat.

COMMENT:  The key here is "likely voters."  Enthusiasm this year is far higher among conservatives than among liberals, who are crushed that The One has not yet brought peace on Earth and good will toward men. 

We'll wait for other polls, which may or may not confirm this result.  But if the poll is accurate, we may see a political revolution in New York.  And, if accurate, it may be an indicator of what's happening around the country.  We stress the word "may." 

I'm underwhelmed by Paladino, who has the elegant style of a junkyard dog.  But I can't help but be impressed by his winning the GOP gubernatorial nomination.  Stand by on this one.

September 22, 2010     Permalink